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This is an example of my 'from image' commissions I do! The above image was made by my dear friend Neo-Noctilucent on dA and I wrote up this story to go with it~ 1920 words at final edit, 2.5 hours total time from start to finish. I'm really happy with the end result. x3
Commissions are OPEN!
The loud, earth shaking, repetitive thumps of the massive attack androids surrounded Flicker, shaking dust and debris loose in the shop she was hiding in. The small Escort droid stood no taller than four feet when completely upright, compared to the behemoth thirty foot tall monstrosities currently stomping about the city she was painfully diminutive in size.
Her surface had completely rusted on the first few layers of her synthetic coatings, the bio-metals that once gave her a more humanoid appearance long since rotted and fallen off. Her head, however, was that of an ancient television set, complete with an antenna and everything on the right side of her head, and at the small of her back a tail that resembled a plug in cord from the previous millenniums method of extracting energy from outlets swished and swerved in the air.
Her body looked like a robotic skeleton otherwise, save for her shins and her left forearm, which all belled out into a conical shape with her feet and hands extending beyond those respectively. They used to hold beautiful colors and hues, she used to wear vibrant greens and blues over her bio-metal skin... she missed the vibrant world she once knew.
Though it was daytime, only a dark, monochrome red and black blanket covered the planet. She was hiding within an old antiques store where many other TV's sat, on, but with the multi-colored bars that indicated no connection to an active station. As she remained perfectly still a large, metal plated foot slammed down in front of the TV shop she was hiding inside, a sweeping light scanned around, and the android carried on its way.
It would be night soon, and color would fill this grim world once more, to an extent, and she could resume her search for any survivors. She brought up an internal map, checking the locations of her new route for the day and making sure she had enough time to return to the TV shop. She paused in her processing, screen flickering briefly as she thought back to how it had all come to this...
Over ten thousand years ago a pair of planets lived in relative harmony, exchanging technologies, resources and services. It was a stable, if albeit a bit tedious, but the two planets thrived. One planet was named Argoi and the other Seldana. Argoi focused more on robotics and advanced technology, where as Seldana was more agriculture based and could grow incredible amounts of food and organic resources with ease.
One day Argoi mastered a new type of artificial intelligence, a friendly and incredibly adaptive system they called 'The Bridge', meant to be the link between man and machine. It was deployed in many ways, but the one that was most successful and popular with the public, was a small defense and escort drone. Flicker was one such drone, assigned to a family to be their daughters keeper and guardian, and most of all, a friend when she needed it.
Seldana was given some androids and instructions on how to produce their own Bridge AI, under the guise that the Seldanians wanted to increase resource production ten fold with the help of large agro-drones.
Seldana, however, had different plans for the advanced technology. They sent ship after ship to the very sun of their solar system, the goal to change the UV wavelength of the celestial body to increase production of plant life on both their worlds.
The first year, all seemed normal. Harvests were good, crops plenty, but nearing the end of the year the sun began to shift darker. The new variant of light seemed to do exactly what they had hoped, and crops flourished at an almost uncontrollable rate. This was very good news for both worlds... until the sun became so dark, and the wavelength of light bombarding the surface became too intense for the plants... and everything began to die. Within a month from the second change in the suns light the plant life on both worlds had been reduced to shriveled husks and food was becoming scarce. The androids that had been sent to the sun returned, furious at their Seldanian creators because apparently the Bridge AI all wanted to cease altering the sun when crops were flourishing, but the scientists threatened to deactivate them if they didn't push for more.
The Seldanian androids turned on all living life, deeming them too greedy and corrupted to deserve control of the planets. All life was nearly extinguished from both worlds, but the remaining scientists hatched a plan to hide the remaining society somewhere on the planet and gave the loyal drones a final prime directive: Find, protect, and escort anyone on the surface they could find to safe havens until the people within their hidden base could find them.
Flicker was brought out of her reflection as the large moon rose high in the sky and bathed the planet in a glorious glow. The surface of the moon seemed to alter the glow of the tainted sun to a wavelength that actually restored some of the planets rustic beauty.
Her screen flickered and changed to a stoic expression emoticon as she stood to her full height and exited the shop and stepped out into the light. The majority of the Seldanian androids would not be looking for people in the light, this was their recharge time.
Her footsteps were light as ever, a soft tinkle of metal on ground as she walked along at a brisk pace, tail flicking about as she searched the ruins for anything organic that was alive. Most days she found absolutely nothing, some days she had found footprints, and one day she even found a baseball cap with sweat still within the rim of the hat, so she was positive some humans were still alive.
Though, today didn't seem like it would be one of those exciting days.
The moon had made its long trip across the sky and was about to wink out, Flicker had already begun to turn down the broken streets of the industrial sector. A place she seldom visited for its usually high amount of sleeping androids she didn't want to risk waking. She came across a large building that once used to be used to store grains and hay, an old farming building, and a small twinge of pain coursed through her synapse. Her mission, at long last, felt as though it were getting the better of her.
She came to a complete stop, looking behind her to see the moon, merely winking above the horizon now, and she held her right hand up to her face as the screen changed once more to the 'no signal' channel. She began to power down, this world was dead, and she would go out with her favorite memories of her host family playing... she could almost feel the warmth of the little girl she used to watch over, her eyes slowly closing before a tickle on a single finger had her screen bolting back on and a light flooding the street ahead of her coming from her TV.
There, with elegant and incredibly dark blue wings gently closing and opening, sat a beautiful butterfly. She recognized the species, a Blue Morpho. Her circuits fired with excitement, she could barely contain herself! She looked around frantically, catching one of the androids as it began to power up and signal for its brothers to do the same thing. Six of the massive androids began to rise and stomp about, she had not moved, still unsure where the butterfly came from and unable to tell herself to return in door. It had been well over a thousand years since she had seen organic life, the emotion was too compelling, she had to protect it!
One of the large androids thundered a signal to the others and pushed its way through the large farm storage building to get to the smaller robot, a known organic loyalist, but in the process found the very thing Flicker was looking for.
Like a rolling wave of liquid fire and silent as the grave, thousands of the butterflies burst out of the demolished roof top and spread into a spiral that bloomed out into the sky.
“ORGANIC LIFEFORMS DETECTED,” the closest android bellowed out as their hands collapsed into their arms and were replaced with large flamethrowers.
If Flicker had a heart, it would have skipped a beat.
She raised her left arm and retracted her hand inside the large cone and activated her defense systems, six large, S shaped lines cracked the rusted surface and her arm expanded open to reveal deep violet rod surrounded by little black spheres. Her anti-matter power core had been re-purposed to fuel her cannon with energy directly from the source instead of converting solar energy as it had many years ago. Something she adapted herself for dealing with the large drones!
Three bursts of energy fired off in quick succession as she bolted forward toward the swarm of beautiful butterflies, two of them striking their mark and bending the flamethrowers nozzle back up and pointed back at the android. The moment it tried to ignite the flammable fluid, the whole limb ruptured and exploded, sending a cascade of burning metal all around the ground as the behemoth collapsed and the remaining arm caught fire as well.
She moved quickly, ducking behind the wall of the farm house as the butterflies fled the area, and took out all but one of the androids the same as the first. Her systems were nearing an overheat, she wasn't designed to fire weapons this powerful, but she knew if she survived this she could follow the butterflies to their breeding ground- and that meant more life, and possibly humans!
Darkness had once again overtaken the world, only the flicker of her screen and her fuel rods within her arm illuminated the area. The androids she fought could only be seen if she spotted them with her spot light, or if they lit up their flamethrowers.
She followed the butterflies with her cannon arm, she knew the androids could not resist eliminating the beautiful, iridescent insects she had found. Sure enough she caught sight of the flame throwers being sparked and lit, though her systems warned of an imminent overheating, she launched another volley of three shots with glee.
The first two struck the tubing that held the liquids, the third struck it hard in the leg and took its support out from under it as it raised that leg to take a step. She watched with glee as the thing collapsed upon itself and erupted into flames, all its fuel lines rupturing and reducing the massive robot to cinders.
Her screen shifted to a smiling emoticon as she dropped to her knees and watched the butterflies flitting about. Her systems were overheating, a crash was inevitable, but... at least she won...
Hours later, her systems restarted. She came back online to find her outstretched right arm covered in beautiful blue butterflies, and as her screen flickered on and she looked down around herself, she could see that the entire colony had stayed with her when she shut down. Standing, careful not to harm the little creatures, she smiled and watched as they began to fly off in a unanimous direction. She was going to find the survivors, and see their smiles again.
Today was a good day to be alive.
Commissions are OPEN!
The loud, earth shaking, repetitive thumps of the massive attack androids surrounded Flicker, shaking dust and debris loose in the shop she was hiding in. The small Escort droid stood no taller than four feet when completely upright, compared to the behemoth thirty foot tall monstrosities currently stomping about the city she was painfully diminutive in size.
Her surface had completely rusted on the first few layers of her synthetic coatings, the bio-metals that once gave her a more humanoid appearance long since rotted and fallen off. Her head, however, was that of an ancient television set, complete with an antenna and everything on the right side of her head, and at the small of her back a tail that resembled a plug in cord from the previous millenniums method of extracting energy from outlets swished and swerved in the air.
Her body looked like a robotic skeleton otherwise, save for her shins and her left forearm, which all belled out into a conical shape with her feet and hands extending beyond those respectively. They used to hold beautiful colors and hues, she used to wear vibrant greens and blues over her bio-metal skin... she missed the vibrant world she once knew.
Though it was daytime, only a dark, monochrome red and black blanket covered the planet. She was hiding within an old antiques store where many other TV's sat, on, but with the multi-colored bars that indicated no connection to an active station. As she remained perfectly still a large, metal plated foot slammed down in front of the TV shop she was hiding inside, a sweeping light scanned around, and the android carried on its way.
It would be night soon, and color would fill this grim world once more, to an extent, and she could resume her search for any survivors. She brought up an internal map, checking the locations of her new route for the day and making sure she had enough time to return to the TV shop. She paused in her processing, screen flickering briefly as she thought back to how it had all come to this...
Over ten thousand years ago a pair of planets lived in relative harmony, exchanging technologies, resources and services. It was a stable, if albeit a bit tedious, but the two planets thrived. One planet was named Argoi and the other Seldana. Argoi focused more on robotics and advanced technology, where as Seldana was more agriculture based and could grow incredible amounts of food and organic resources with ease.
One day Argoi mastered a new type of artificial intelligence, a friendly and incredibly adaptive system they called 'The Bridge', meant to be the link between man and machine. It was deployed in many ways, but the one that was most successful and popular with the public, was a small defense and escort drone. Flicker was one such drone, assigned to a family to be their daughters keeper and guardian, and most of all, a friend when she needed it.
Seldana was given some androids and instructions on how to produce their own Bridge AI, under the guise that the Seldanians wanted to increase resource production ten fold with the help of large agro-drones.
Seldana, however, had different plans for the advanced technology. They sent ship after ship to the very sun of their solar system, the goal to change the UV wavelength of the celestial body to increase production of plant life on both their worlds.
The first year, all seemed normal. Harvests were good, crops plenty, but nearing the end of the year the sun began to shift darker. The new variant of light seemed to do exactly what they had hoped, and crops flourished at an almost uncontrollable rate. This was very good news for both worlds... until the sun became so dark, and the wavelength of light bombarding the surface became too intense for the plants... and everything began to die. Within a month from the second change in the suns light the plant life on both worlds had been reduced to shriveled husks and food was becoming scarce. The androids that had been sent to the sun returned, furious at their Seldanian creators because apparently the Bridge AI all wanted to cease altering the sun when crops were flourishing, but the scientists threatened to deactivate them if they didn't push for more.
The Seldanian androids turned on all living life, deeming them too greedy and corrupted to deserve control of the planets. All life was nearly extinguished from both worlds, but the remaining scientists hatched a plan to hide the remaining society somewhere on the planet and gave the loyal drones a final prime directive: Find, protect, and escort anyone on the surface they could find to safe havens until the people within their hidden base could find them.
Flicker was brought out of her reflection as the large moon rose high in the sky and bathed the planet in a glorious glow. The surface of the moon seemed to alter the glow of the tainted sun to a wavelength that actually restored some of the planets rustic beauty.
Her screen flickered and changed to a stoic expression emoticon as she stood to her full height and exited the shop and stepped out into the light. The majority of the Seldanian androids would not be looking for people in the light, this was their recharge time.
Her footsteps were light as ever, a soft tinkle of metal on ground as she walked along at a brisk pace, tail flicking about as she searched the ruins for anything organic that was alive. Most days she found absolutely nothing, some days she had found footprints, and one day she even found a baseball cap with sweat still within the rim of the hat, so she was positive some humans were still alive.
Though, today didn't seem like it would be one of those exciting days.
The moon had made its long trip across the sky and was about to wink out, Flicker had already begun to turn down the broken streets of the industrial sector. A place she seldom visited for its usually high amount of sleeping androids she didn't want to risk waking. She came across a large building that once used to be used to store grains and hay, an old farming building, and a small twinge of pain coursed through her synapse. Her mission, at long last, felt as though it were getting the better of her.
She came to a complete stop, looking behind her to see the moon, merely winking above the horizon now, and she held her right hand up to her face as the screen changed once more to the 'no signal' channel. She began to power down, this world was dead, and she would go out with her favorite memories of her host family playing... she could almost feel the warmth of the little girl she used to watch over, her eyes slowly closing before a tickle on a single finger had her screen bolting back on and a light flooding the street ahead of her coming from her TV.
There, with elegant and incredibly dark blue wings gently closing and opening, sat a beautiful butterfly. She recognized the species, a Blue Morpho. Her circuits fired with excitement, she could barely contain herself! She looked around frantically, catching one of the androids as it began to power up and signal for its brothers to do the same thing. Six of the massive androids began to rise and stomp about, she had not moved, still unsure where the butterfly came from and unable to tell herself to return in door. It had been well over a thousand years since she had seen organic life, the emotion was too compelling, she had to protect it!
One of the large androids thundered a signal to the others and pushed its way through the large farm storage building to get to the smaller robot, a known organic loyalist, but in the process found the very thing Flicker was looking for.
Like a rolling wave of liquid fire and silent as the grave, thousands of the butterflies burst out of the demolished roof top and spread into a spiral that bloomed out into the sky.
“ORGANIC LIFEFORMS DETECTED,” the closest android bellowed out as their hands collapsed into their arms and were replaced with large flamethrowers.
If Flicker had a heart, it would have skipped a beat.
She raised her left arm and retracted her hand inside the large cone and activated her defense systems, six large, S shaped lines cracked the rusted surface and her arm expanded open to reveal deep violet rod surrounded by little black spheres. Her anti-matter power core had been re-purposed to fuel her cannon with energy directly from the source instead of converting solar energy as it had many years ago. Something she adapted herself for dealing with the large drones!
Three bursts of energy fired off in quick succession as she bolted forward toward the swarm of beautiful butterflies, two of them striking their mark and bending the flamethrowers nozzle back up and pointed back at the android. The moment it tried to ignite the flammable fluid, the whole limb ruptured and exploded, sending a cascade of burning metal all around the ground as the behemoth collapsed and the remaining arm caught fire as well.
She moved quickly, ducking behind the wall of the farm house as the butterflies fled the area, and took out all but one of the androids the same as the first. Her systems were nearing an overheat, she wasn't designed to fire weapons this powerful, but she knew if she survived this she could follow the butterflies to their breeding ground- and that meant more life, and possibly humans!
Darkness had once again overtaken the world, only the flicker of her screen and her fuel rods within her arm illuminated the area. The androids she fought could only be seen if she spotted them with her spot light, or if they lit up their flamethrowers.
She followed the butterflies with her cannon arm, she knew the androids could not resist eliminating the beautiful, iridescent insects she had found. Sure enough she caught sight of the flame throwers being sparked and lit, though her systems warned of an imminent overheating, she launched another volley of three shots with glee.
The first two struck the tubing that held the liquids, the third struck it hard in the leg and took its support out from under it as it raised that leg to take a step. She watched with glee as the thing collapsed upon itself and erupted into flames, all its fuel lines rupturing and reducing the massive robot to cinders.
Her screen shifted to a smiling emoticon as she dropped to her knees and watched the butterflies flitting about. Her systems were overheating, a crash was inevitable, but... at least she won...
Hours later, her systems restarted. She came back online to find her outstretched right arm covered in beautiful blue butterflies, and as her screen flickered on and she looked down around herself, she could see that the entire colony had stayed with her when she shut down. Standing, careful not to harm the little creatures, she smiled and watched as they began to fly off in a unanimous direction. She was going to find the survivors, and see their smiles again.
Today was a good day to be alive.
Category Artwork (Digital) / Fantasy
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 650 x 1223px
File Size 204.9 kB
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