State Of The Art (formerly known as "Yuki Intro) - yep, it's now completed, and there's a Q&A at the end!

State Of The Art (Yuki Intro)

    It was dark out by the time private investigator Yuki Shiro set out to invade the grounds of the Zoxxon Oil refinery in Gothametropolis. She drove to the general area at the southern end of the city near the interstate, but had to approach on foot. There were armed guards at the gate, which was electronically activated.

    "Please, I need your help," a woman begged her earlier that afternoon. "I have nowhere else to turn. The local authorities refuse to get involved."

    She then asked Yuki to accompany her to Phantomhawk Memorial Hospital, where the woman's daughter was in intensive care hooked up to a respirator and being given saline and diuretics intended to flush chemicals from her system. The chart said that the child had been exposed to an unknown chemical while playing in a creek at an apartment complex near Dullard's Corner.

    Directly within sight of Dullard's Creek was the Zoxxon Oil refinery. Yuki made note of it, even as she told the woman, "I don't know for sure if I can help you. But I'll try."

    The twelve foot fence around the Zoxxon facility was electrified, but it was no trouble for Yuki to take a running start and use her artificial body to launch herself into a somersault over the top of the barbed wire. Being heavier and more sturdy than a natural human, she landed hard on the concrete at the other side, splitting it at her feet as she squatted to absorb the impact.

    A second later, she was on her way, slipping between tanks, night vision activated to see clearer than the wandering armed security force ever could.

    "Good afternoon," she spoke softly to a strange man who was home at a condo in Dullard's Corner while the sun was still shining. "I was wondering if you might have noticed any odors from the creek running through here?"

    "Odors?" he replied with a question.

    "This dweeb?" a teenage girl interrupted from behind him. She stepped outside to add, "Fake-O wouldn't smell a dead fish if he woke up next to one. Not that he did or anything."

    The man, wearing a bright yellow coat, frowned. "Kerry, don't you have something else to do?"

    "Not really," she replied, and stood there for a full two seconds with her arms folded before she added, "Oh, I see. Dweeb boy wants to get lucky with the purple haired girl. Good luck, fakeman!"

    "Heh." Yuki couldn't help but smile when Kerry went back inside the house.

    "She's not my daughter," he started to say. He hesitated when he realized that he had just implied something worse. "Um...I mean...she's the little sister of a friend of mine, and--"

    "I think I got the picture," Yuki laughed. "I could see she doesn't quite resemble you. What's your name?"

    "Visionary," he replied.

    There was a moment of silence while Yuki waited for the rest of his name, but didn't get it. "That's your real name?"

    "It's what I'm sticking with," he told her. He turned around abruptly when he realized that Kerry was mouthing 'Dweeb-o' behind his back and pointing at him.

    "Just stay away from the creek," Yuki warned him. "Kerry too. There is something wrong with it."

    "Who are you? And don't tell me you're Environmental Services, I'm with the Legion and we can tell the difference."

    "I'm a private detective named Yuki Shiro," she told him. "I'm working for someone who's child became ill after playing in the creek." Yuki raised an eyebrow. "Still care to check my credentials?"

    "Nice going, lame fake dweeb-o!" Kerry exclaimed from behind him. "At this rate you'll never get laid."

    "Kerry!" Visionary looked at Yuki again, and this time he was blushing red as a beet. "Don't mind her," he said.

    "Thank you for your time," Yuki told him. "And good luck with her."

    Oddly enough, it was the obnoxious brunette teenager who Yuki remembered just as she approached the Zoxxon refinery building, resembling an old brick warehouse. The memory made her smile for a moment, keeping her from becoming too high-strung about her covert op. She purposely skipped a fire exit door and looked up. The second floor contained swing-open glass windows.

    Another running jump sent her up to the second floor ledge, and she slipped in through a newly swung open window. Just as she guessed, inside on the second floor was a computer control system. She pulled a cable as thin as a hair from her jacket pocket and attached from the back of her head to the computer's networking port.

    "Morons," she whispered to herself. The computer system had absolutely no security. They mistakenly thought keeping their system isolated from the internet would keep it safe. She began quickly searching their files, trying to find something about chemical discharge.

    Then she found it. "Bingo," she whispered. She frowned when she realized that the chemical released was referred to only by an experimental name, and its composition - stored in another file - was so complicated that she couldn't decipher it. She would need a chemistry expert to understand this.


---

    Late at night, a bleary-eyed Al B. Harper answered a knock at the door of his remote cabin outside the city limits of Gothametropolis. A purple haired woman he recognized almost immediately stood in the doorway. She offered him a bottle of Super Bubble, and smiled.

    "I can use your help," she said.

    It was only a few minutes later that he stood in his lab, happily blowing bubbles with his pipe. Yuki sat on a stool next to a computer that appeared to be wired to all the known universe. She needed to pass along the designs of the chemical she found at the Zoxxon refinery, but images of them were currently locked away in her brain and her internal computer.

    "You sure you don't mind being hooked up to this computer?" Al B. asked. "It has much more power than you're used to. I spent the last month building it up to try to beat Langley's computation record, I had to use a combination of vaccum and spatial distortion to--"

    "Just hook me up, please." Yuki handed him the other end of a thin cord already plugged in to the back of her neck. She was fully aware when Al B. plugged her into the computer and began typing commands to access her operating system.

    "Whoa," he exclaimed happily as he blew more bubbles. "This is amazingly complex."

    "I'm giving you access only to the files you need," she warned him.

    "Aww, I can't explore?" Al B. sighed to himself and downloaded the files assigned. "What can you see in here?" he asked, pointing to his monster computer.

    She closed her eyes for a moment, and then shrugged. "I wouldn't try. I couldn't understand anything you were working on anyway."

    "You can't understand folding proteins?" Al B. asked, his tone suggesting that it was something everyone could understand.

    Yuki rolled her eyes and laughed. "Al, are you aware that you are a little out of touch sometimes?" He seemed hurt by that comment, so she gave him an apologetic look. "I'm sorry. That was uncalled for."

    He smiled and blew bubbles at Yuki. "Forgotten. I'm just glad to have a visitor." He disconnected the cable leading to Yuki and handed her the other end. "All done."

    She nodded and stowed the cable in her jacket. "You know that someone named Hacker Nine has been snooping around your computer system? He left small traces."

    Al B. turned pale for a moment. "I thought you said you wouldn't try to look into my system?"

    Yuki shrugged. "I had to check. Security anomalies made me curious. He left himself a back door, but I closed it for you."

    "Thanks," Al B. mumbled as he went to check the chemical design. He frowned when he realized what it was. "It's an industrial cleaner. Only it's been modified so it doesn't dilute in water." He shook his head sadly. "I don't know why anyone would produce something like this. It would last as long as some nuclear materials."

    "Perhaps," Yuki suggested, "it is meant to be used with nuclear materials?"

    "Hmm." Al B. stared at his computer screen a moment longer. "I suppose if they meant to suspend nuclear material in it to avoid leakage. Even so, this stuff will persist in a human being and can't be purged by water. Meaning the body can't get rid of it."

    "Oh." Yuki turned pale. "There is a child in the hospital who has been poisoned by this chemical. The doctors are giving her diuretics to try and purge her system."

    "It won't work." Al B. sighed deeply. "You have to find another chemical, Yuki. Something which bonds with this one and forces it to dilute. If you don't--"

    "The child will die. I know." Yuki slid off of the stool and stood up straight. "Wish me luck?"

    Al B. shook her hand quickly and wished her well as she slipped off into the night.

---

    The Zoxxon Chemical research facility was located in a large yet low profile campus within the wharf district. It was placed there to ensure that, like the refinery up river, tankers could pull up to load and off load materials.

    Yuki stood atop a crane she climbed easily at the neighboring Flask Dockyard, which was closed so late at night. It was a safe vantage point - even if the hired security found her, they wouldn't call the police anyway, since everyone knew the Flask Dockyard was Harry Flask's main distribution point for illegal imports.

    The Zoxxon research campus was four six floor modern looking glass office buildings all tied together with a sky walk system three floors up. The parking lot only surrounded two buildings and connected to the dock at the river - and it was very well guarded and lighted, causing Yuki to eliminate it as an entry point. The rest was surrounded by grass, trees, and darkness, perfect for sneaking in.

    She was dressed all in black up there, trying to remain as non-visible as possible in the darkness as she scouted a relatively easy way into Zoxxon's high security facility. At least outdoors, she wanted a clear approach. If she found herself in close combat indoors, that would be unavoidable.

    As it turned out, she was lucky. There were very few security guards around the facility, most of them were concentrated around the heavy steel gate, assuming that no one would be able to scale the twelve foot walls. Yuki did another running somersault, as she did at the refinery, to clear the wall and the razor wire at the top.

    Once she landed on the lawn feet-first with a muffled 'thud', she switched to EM and infrared for a moment to search for cameras and security guards. There was indeed a single camera, and a security guard on the roof, but both were facing the opposite way. She dug her black boots into the damp ground and took off running toward the building as fast as she could.

    Just as she guessed, the security guard heard the footsteps and turned a spotlight onto the lawn. But by then, her back was already flat against the building, and she was still as the air around her. Once the spotlight switched off again, she found a found a fingerprint recognition panel and pulled it off the wall, wiring it to herself temporarily to open the door.

    The inside of the building was an eerie, sharp contrast to the outside. The walls were all painted pure white, and the floors were white linoleum. The ceiling was a pure white suspended ceiling with thin fluorescent lights running straight down the center. It was designed to look ultra modern and clean.

    But it also left nowhere to hide. No blind corners, no dark alleys, no pillars. Yuki felt her stress level rise a little as she started making her way down the hall, trying to happen upon a computer terminal which may help her navigate the building.

    She found better...but she would have to fight for it. A sentry robot rolled toward her on wheels from around a corner. It froze when she approached, and suddenly asked, "Identification please."

    Yuki examined the robot for a data port as it repeated its request. She smiled when she found something even better - a radio frequency transmitter it used to communicate with security. "Go ahead," she told it, "Transmit something. I dare you."

    It complied a moment later, only because Yuki gave it a kick as her identification. She hijacked the transmission before it could reach security's computer system, and instead used the signal to shut down the entire security system and all its cameras, as well as stealing a map of the campus.

    She began running now, as it wouldn't be long before security would begin patrolling the halls manually--

    "Hey!" a security guard yelled as she turned a corner.

    He reached for his sidearm, but before he could get his fingers around the pistol grip Yuki slammed her arm into his face, sending him airborne. He landed on his back, unconscious. Her first unlucky moment came immediately after when a voice from the guard's radio indicated that someone was trying to check his location.

    "Damn," she cursed to herself. She closed her eyes for a moment, and her physical form seemed to digitize and fade as her electronic camouflage activated. She hated using it too much - while her own internal battery constantly recharged itself with kinetic energy, the camo used much more power. She would have to plug in and recharge the battery dedicated to the camo later that evening, and be tied to a stupid cord for an hour or so.

    She didn't have to use it for long. A few moments later, after passing two security guards in the hall who were oblivious to her existence, she finally made it to a completely automated chemical lab. She drew a data cord quickly and plugged into the control computer to learn just what the lab contained...

    ...and then the unthinkable happened.

---

    Yuki was pushing herself to her limits when she raced, electronic camo flickering from the power strain, right through the parking lot and toward the steel entry gate.

    "What the hell...?" one of the security guards asked as a flickering female form carrying a white box raced toward him, launched off of the ground, and somersaulted clear over the gate. Both guards were shaking when they reached for their guns...

    ...but then they had more pressing matters to attend to. The chemical lab's control computer had failed, and the chem lab had a containment breach. Various caustic, cancer causing, and dangerous chemicals were being released into the air inside the complex of buildings.

    It was pure luck that most of those chemicals were being broken down into less dangerous components by a fire raging in the lab, which was now collapsed into the first floor after an errant mix of chemicals exploded unexpectedly.

    "Geez," Yuki whispered to herself once she was safely back at her car, parked safely at Flask Dockyard. "Al B. could have warned me."

    Al B. Harper's phone rang a moment later. He was surprised to hear Yuki at the other end.

    "I think I have the right chemical," she told him, "I'll be there shortly so you can verify--" She paused and whispered, "At least I hope it's the right one. If not--" she looked behind her at the fire glowing in the distance. "It's too late now. The lab is gone."

    "That was you?" Al B. asked. "You blew up the lab?"

    "Not intentionally," she replied. "Those idiots were using their security computer as backup for the containment system. Since I took that down first and then accidentally crashed the lab operations system--"

    "You have to be more careful around critical systems like that," Al B. warned.

    "I know that...now." Yuki sighed. She imagined Al B. blowing bubbles as he said that, just for her own amusement. "I'll be there any minute now."

    "How fast are you driving?" Al B. asked.

    "Not very," Yuki replied. "I've been on the way since I phoned you."

    "I thought you were using a pay phone," Al B. said. "The caller-ID says 'unknown'."

    Al B. heard a knock at the door, and the phone disconnected at the same time. He approached the door warily, opened it, and peeked outside. Yuki was standing there.

    "Who said I was using a phone?" she asked, as she smiled mischievously.

---

    As it turned out, the chemical Yuki found was the correct one. She made it to the hospital with time to spare, and the doctors, once verifying the information Yuki gave them, began giving the child small amounts of the new chemical intravenously.

    The recovery of the child was almost immediate. The recovery of the mother was almost immediate as well, and she pledged her entire life savings to Yuki in exchange for saving her daughter.

    Yuki declined. It wasn't much like a private investigator to turn down money, but she knew the mom would need the money to pay off hospital bills and to make up for time she took off work to be with her daughter on what she thought to be the child's last days.

    The doctor, baffled at Yuki's ability to find a cure, asked her where she found it. She pinned the credit for the solution firmly on Al B. Harper's genius. He wouldn't mind, and it would take suspicion away from her in case Zoxxon decided to prosecute someone.

    Either way, the time wasn't at all wasted. While Yuki didn't earn any money, and had to endure an hour and a half of camo battery recharge, she had her first good reference as a private detective in Gothametropolis.

    After all, who wouldn't want to hire the detective who saved a little girl from dying, and didn't ask for a penny in return?

---

--------------------------
Q & A S E C T I O N
--------------------------

Q: Why another female character?

A: Because I feel like it. There are plenty of male Parodyverse characters already.

Q: What is her synthetic body made out of? How is it constructed?

A: She has an entirely human brain and brain stem encased in a titanium shell, contained with a small, very powerful computer that interfaces to her brain. The computer can be abstracted through the brain to protect her systems from damage, as the human brain is more resilient and data safe than any system known. The rest of the body is made of a combination of synthetic and natural materials to give it that homey human charm. The actual composition is a secret.

Q: What is electronic camouflage?

A: It creates a electromagnetic bubble that pulls light around it to hide whatever is within. That's why it uses so much power, and after using it a while Yuki's own recharging system can't keep up so she has to recharge the hard way. It can also drain the battery dedicated to it, leaving her without camouflage until recharge.

Q: How does Yuki recharge?

A: Most of the time, she doesn't. The heat generated by her own movements is converted to energy, thereby also preventing overheating. The harder she works, the faster the batteries recharge. It's not a perfect exchange, but it's enough to work for quite a while without having to 'plug in'. The electronic camouflage uses more power than her entire body is capable of using, so that does require recharge.

Q: How strong/fast is Yuki?

A: Stronger than most human males, and as fast enough to chase down a car that isn't doing Need For Speed Underground. She can fall from heights that would shatter a human skeleton, and weighs about twice as much as a human female her size.

Q: Why does she resemble the lead from Ghost In The Shell?

A: Because she's based on Motoko Kusanagi. I purposely did that for easy reference.

Q: What type of outside interfaces can she use?

A: She can connect to any type of computer via a cord or wireless. She has a radio transmitter that can transmit to satellites, wireless networks, cellular, and ground stations. She can't transmit to any receiver that's switched off, of course, and she can't broadcast on a frequency if she doesn't know what it is. So broad-range interference of communications is usually out of the question. The exception would be if she managed to gain control of a much larger transmitter capable of such jamming.

Q: What about viruses?

A: Yuki doesn't suffer from diseases, her body is artificial.

And her built in computer is proprietary and well protected, making it immune to just about anything. In fact, it doesn't even operate like a normal computer. It uses conceptual processing (most computers use instructional processing) so it's more compatible with the brain interface. Don't ask me what conceptual processing is. I made it up.

Q: Add any other questions you wish!

Post By Anime Jason Thu Dec 09, 2004 at 01:51:11 am EST	Subject State Of The Art (formerly known as "Yuki Intro) - yep, it's now completed, and there's a Q&A at the end!

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