Chapter Text
[MISSION BRIEFING]
DATE:15/11/19 [4 MONTHS BEFORE MISSION:IRIS]
TIME:0020
LOCATION: SECTOR 56 MATA BASE
OPERATION ZONE: SOLAR ENERGY FACILITY [SOUTH-SOUTHEAST CYBERAYA]
OPERATING AGENTS: BAKAR [KOMBAT]. JENNY [TEKNO]. RIZWAN [INVISO]. ALICIA [NEURO]
OBJECTIVE: INVESTIGATE DISSAPEARENCES
AVOID COMBAT AT ALL COSTS.
The faint hum of reactors and electricity reverbrates throughout the facility. Four agents, 3 adults and 1 cadet (for some probably classified reasons) stroll through the catwalks. The cadet, Alicia Kheng, is especially excited for this mission, because it is her first time on the field.
Usually, she would just be training at HQ or maybe the Sector 56 base, all much to her caretaker's dismay, but today's the real deal. Her caretaker had allowed her to go on this mission, but she must be under high supervision from the other agents, just so she doesn't get hurt.
Talk about foreshadowing...
The team of 4 splits into 3 fronts. Bakar, the Kombat agent, a somewhat meaty man, will go to the storage warehouse to the south. Jenny, female Tekno agent and with high expertise in technology, will go to the control room towards the east. Rizwan, the Inviso agent and the leader of this team, along with Alicia, Neuro agent and a young cadet, will go to the main reactor.
And just incase one of them gets attacked, they can call backup, both currently on the field and back at base. And as advised by their general, General Rama, they are not encourage to attack unless provoked.
[MINUTES LATER]
Bakar checks around the warehouse, making sure to avoid being detected by the guards on-duty. While he sneaks around the containers and boxes, a sudden and unexpected blast rumbles through the large room. The guards immedeatly go to ground zero to investigate.
From the huge cloud of dust and broken concrete, a figure rises up. In what almost looks to be a show of intimidation, it unfurls a collection of individual pairs wings, 4 pairs in total, each glowing a bright yellow with the faint silhouette of weaponry engrained onto them.
It's head, resembling a security camera with it's singular, yellow eye and a long head, covered in blue plating, scans the area. It body is covered in steel plating, having the same navy blue coloring as it's head. It stood tall among the guards, who were a mix of confusion and horror.
With a swift motion, almost in an instant, it sweeps some of the guards away. The other guards charge in to attack, but is disarmed and knocked out in quick and brutal attacks. Bakar calls for backup and prepares for unavoidable combat.
He grabs a box nearby and throws it at the nearly 6ft tall machine of war to distract it. It looks it the direction of the agent and prepares to dash towards it. With the swift shuffle of metal and machinery, it closes in. Bakar activates his Plasma shields, weilded on his forearms, and braces for contact.
The machine lands a powerful punch on the shield, sending the man back a few steps. The machine calculates an approach and veers to the left, coming in for another blow. Bakar blocks and counters with a punch of his own. The machine steps back and recalculates, tagging the fists as 'DANGER' and the body as 'WEAKPOINT'.
Bakar doesn't wait and comes in for a punch, the machine dodges with insane speed. It then blocks one of his punches and lands a powerful punch square in the chest, sending the man flying into a pile of boxes. It approaches and prepares to finish the job when all of a sudden.
BANG!
A projectile smacks it in the face, or rather, the eye. Alicia has arrived. But wait, where's Rizwan?
The machine deems the new signature as 'HOSTILE' and prepares for combat. It comes in for a kick, but Alicia rolls to the side. It follows up with a punch, but that too was dodged. It starts calculating her next move and comes back in for another.
Alicia rolls to the side and prepares to fire her high-tech slingshot. The machine blocks the bullets with it's forearm and charges in when a brutal kick lands right on it's chest. Rizwan's here.
It stumbles back and prepares to counter when it is intercepted by Bakar and tackled into a wall. It pushes the man back and analyses the situation.
HOSTILES: 3
CALLSIGN: ALICIA
CALLSIGN: RIZWAN
CALLSIGN: BAKAR
PREDICTING ATTACKS... DONE
GENERATING ATTACK PLAN... DONE
PROCEED? Y
It reaches for one of it's wings, and pulls out a revolver. It takes aim and fires, the shot of energy whizzing past Bakar and Rizwan. Rizwan was the first to attack, charging in with his insane speed.
The machine takes aim on the approaching man and fires more. He dashes between the shots and gets within melee range and hits the machine with a jab to the neck. The machine staggers for a bit, giving Bakar room to land a punch to the stomach. It blows back with a swing, but Bakar blocks it and throws the machine away.
It rises up and goes in for a counterattack but is pinned back by Alicia's slingshot projectiles. It fires back with it's revolver, which gives the two men enough time to get close and deal a jointed combo on the machine, finalising with a jointed punch.
The machine gets up once more, reassesses the situation and comes in once more. Predicting the projectiles' trajectory, it dashes past them and closes in on Rizwan. The two then began exchanging blows, trading each punch and jab with extreme precision. As Rizwan goes in for a jab to the neck, a common knock-out spot for his pressurised gloved, the machine parries it and hits the agent with a punch to the chest, staggering him and allowing the machine to follow up with a kick, sending him flying.
Seeing this, Bakar and Alicia join up for an attack. Bakar comes in for a barrage of punches, all of which blocked or dodged with ease. Alicia's suppressive fire proved to be ineffective as all of them were dodged.
The machine kicks back Bakar and aims it's gun at Alicia. She dodges the shot and continues firing. Each shot punched away, all except one. The machine parried one of the projectiles right back at her. That projectile proceeded to smash straight into her right eye.
The aftermath was bloody. The projectile had popped the eye like a gory water balloon. What had remained was a bloody mess. She fell to the floor, clutching the missing eye, and letting out a pained yelp. One that signaled that it was bad.
Bakar tackled the machine while Rizwan went to check up on Alicia. Seeing her condition, he called for backup. Someone... anyone...
Bakar orders Rizwan to carry Alicia to Jenny, or at least away from here. The Inviso agent obliged and went to go get help. Bakar meanwhile stood firm against the machine. With a warcry, they charge towards eachother.
Jenny ran towards the warehouse after hearing Rizwan's signal. Then she sees it, Rizwan carrying Alicia, suit covered in the cadet's blood.
"What happened?!" The Tekno asks.
"No time! We have to go!" Rizwan orders, followed by the sound of crashing metal and wood from the warehouse.
The two adults charge forwards towards the exit. The continued sound of the battle behind following them closely. Soon they meet the backup team, General Rama (Neuro) and his squad (Rajesh, Kombat. Razman, Tekno. Rahul, Inviso). All equally distressed by the news.
The General orders the two to get out as they charge towards the warehouse. They oblige and began making their way to the exit when they are blocked by the machine. Bakar then comes back for seconds, crashing down from the vents above and pinning the machine down.
The machine, noticing the sudden increase in hostiles, knocks Bakar off and fires an explosive shot onto the ceiling before dashing away.
"GET BACK HERE!" Bakar yells as he gives chase, stopping as he notices the collapsing ceiling.
As the roof fell, he felt someone push him from behind. He fell forwards, away from the rubble. He looked back, a look of terror instantly covering his face.
It was the cadet, Alicia.
[EJEN ALI - PAINT THE WORLD RED]
SECTOR 45 BASE - RESEARCH CENTRE: 0145
20/03/20
That night, two bandits, Dos, an agile female adversary equipped with taser darts, dubbed 'ShoxStix', and Trez, a mountain of muscle with cybernetic enhancements in his arm, sneak into a M.A.T.A. Research Center located to the north.
After a minor struggle with the Droids, AI robots equipped for combat, when breaching into the facility, Trez takes over the CCTV room, while Dos disguises herself as a scientist by stealing Agent Jenny's clothes in the locker room.
When heading for their target, she meets Agent Bakar. The man, gullible as ever, lets her through, after a failed attempt at flirting her (me fr). Dos then enters a room using Jenny's tablet, and finds a prototype disk-shaped device with a metal and glass shell. Bingo.
Dos is about to take the device when all of a sudden the emergency alarm sounds. When Bakar and the M.A.T.A. droids enter the room, they find that Dos has escaped through the air vents, taking the device with her.
ALI BIN GHAZALI, SON OF DR GHAZALI [ONE OF CYBERAYA'S HEAD MINISTERS]
AGE: 12
GENDER: MALE (DUH)
THE NEXT DAY [21/03/20]
Ali wakes up after hearing a call from his father and realizes that he's late for school. After hastily changing his clothes, he rides his scooter and speeds to school, accidentally bumping into Aunty Faye, causing her to fall into the bushes along the way. After an encounter with Shaun and Syed in an alleway, those two being known bullies in his school, he continues his journey to get to school ASAP.
Meanwhile, Dos arrives at a stall called 'Cyber Nasi Lemak' and places the stolen device in a green box, leaving the password "Tempoyak Udang" to the vendor.
Ali goes down a flight of stairs and almost hits a cat and the stall, but manages to stop himself. Ali orders nasi lemak and asks for the side dish "Tempoyak Udang", which surprises the vendor, Wak Musang, who then gives him the green box containing the device without charge.
Hearing the bell ring, Ali rushes to school, knowing that class has started and he is very late. A few moments later, a man dressed in black comes to Wak's stall and asks for "Tempoyak Udang". Wak then realizes that he has the wrong person.
At school, it was pretty usual for Ali. He is late, so he gets reprimanded by his teacher, Miss Munah for it aswell as failing in mathematics. His friend, Viktor, greets him with his cheerful nature as always. After that, it was a normal math class.
During recess, Ali chats with Viktor about his test results and asks him ways to improve his score. Ali carries the box of nasi lemak before inviting Viktor to go hide from the two bullies who are looking for him.
Ali and Viktor go hide in the men's bathroom. Ali feels ashamed for trying to help a bullied student earlier since now they had to hide in the men's bathroom of all places, but Viktor then reads a sentence from his tablet in the context of the conversation:
"Courage is not when you fight and win, but when you continue to fight for a noble cause despite facing numerous challenges."
At the same time, the device inside the nasi lemak box starts flashing, indicating that a tracking signal has been activated.
Meanwhile, at an abandoned construction site, Dos and Trez receive instructions from their leader via mobile computer to quickly find the device because 'MATA' has installed a tracking device on it and are quickly closing in on it.
Outside of the school gate, Ali shows off his newly learnt yo-yo to Viktor. After Viktor's mother's car arrives, Viktor invites Ali to play the game Detective Jebat, which is shown on Ali's tablet, later and then gets in the car and leaves.
Then, from behind Ali, Bakar appears, who turns out to be his uncle. After some proper greeting and a little joking on his height (he's 12 yet he's like 140cm tall, which is like >5ft), Bakar accompanies Ali to Zali Mart, a local mart in the district. As they walk there, Bakar's phone shows that he is currently with his objective, which is the device Ali had mistakenly took.
After Ali and Bakar enter the shop, Ali takes a bag of bread to buy, but then notices Bakar checking their surroundings. He dismissed it as Bakar just being Bakar, the overly gullible man he calls an uncle.
But then when they get to the back of the shop, Bakar asks Ali if he had taken anything that didn't belong to him, he checks his uniform and finds nothing. Bakar told Ali that he was in danger and takes Ali to another corner but sees Dos, cornering them.
Trez sees them from behind and pushes a shelf towards Bakar and Ali. Bakar manages to push Ali away so that he wouldn't be hit by the shelf and told him to run. So, Ali ran away on his scooter, followed closely by Dos who appeares from behind and activates her shoe accelerator to chase Ali down.
Meanwhile, Bakar fights Trez inside the shop. He is pushed back, so Bakar takes a bug spray and aims it at Trez's face, temporarily blinding the man. Outside, Dos quickly intercepts Ali, causing Ali to fall and get knocked out.
Ali is then taken to an abandoned development area He asks Dos what she wants from him. Dos then takes out a small, but very powerful device called the 'Infinity Retinal Intelligence System' or 'IRIS' from his nasi lemak box. Dos, seeing Ali's small size, guesses that Ali is nine years old and also guesses that he is one of the child agents/cadets trained by MATA. Ali wonders what this 'MATA' is and also why people keep calling him a nine year old.
Trez then takes out the contents of his bag, which earned an upset shout from Ali.
"Watch it! You can't just do that to people's stuff!" He exclaims (or whatever idk what would fit)
"Aww... look at him! He's all cute when he's angry" Trez teases
"Heh, I'm way cuter!"
Just then, Bakar comes from behind Trez and throws him away into a pile of boxes. As he goes to untie his nephew, Ali asks who these people are and whatever the fuck this has to do with him, among other things.
Then the agent comes face to face with Dos, who still remembers that failed flirting attempt yesterday.
"Please cooperate, miss. Return the IRIS, and all of us could-" he suggest, being cut off by getting his legs sweeped.
He stands back up, and continues. "Miss, no violence please. I will never do anything to harm you"
Dos pulls out her ShoxStix from her hairbun and charges in.
"Wait miss! Don't be like this! Not ladylike!" He mutters whilst dodging her jabs.
From behind, Trez comes in for an overhead slam, which collides with Bakar's fist, causing a huge shockwave to ripple across the building. Bakar is overpowered and is knocked onto his back.
"Oof, that hurt" he mutters.
"How was that? Want some more?" Trez challenges.
He stands back up and tells Ali to go, which Ali obliges as he grabs his bag and bails. Dos tells Trez to stop the boy, but Trez denies it, since he's just a frail kid, it'd just be a waste of time, throwing shade of Bakar's body shape in the meantime.
With a charge, the two men grapple with one another. Each landing and blocking hits. Dos comes from the side with her darts at hand. Not trying to get electrecuted, he dodges the numerous jabs.
Trez punches the ground and creates a shockwave to stagger Bakar while Dos jumps to avoid it. Dos throws her ShoxStix at Bakar's face but Bakar manages to barely catch it. Trez pushes Bakar from behind and tries to punch him. Bakar dodges, causing Trez to hit a pole.
At the same time, Ali runs down the stairs and falls over due to the shockwave above. His tablet was thrown out of his bag. Ali looks at his tablet and remembers Viktor's words while in the bathroom earlier that day.
"Courage is not when you fight and win, but when you continue to fight for a noble cause despite facing numerous challenges."
Bakar is starting to lose energy as he is locked into just dodging. Noticing Trez standing still, he thinks the man was tired too.
"That's all? Come at me!" He challenges tiredly
Trez smirks, followed up by Bakar being zapped from behind by Dos' dart. He is then cuffed to a pole. He struggles to break free as Dos walks back to the mobile computer, stunned by Ali just standing there about to take the IRIS.
Dos charges in to intercept, causing Ali to start panicking. Bakar tells him to use the device, which Ali tries to by putting it infront of him, the 'head' facing the bandits.
"HYAAAH!!"
At first, nothing happened. In confusion, Ali presses the center of the device and it finally activates, scanning Ali's face and transforming into glasses that lands on Ali's face. Ali's view changes into an easy-to-read data graphic UI. Guided by IRIS, Ali dodges Dos's Shox Stix.
Trez hits the floor causing a shockwave, causing Ali to lose balance and be thrown out of the building. Ali survives by hanging onto a rope hanging outside the building. IRIS suggests that they climb down to the nearest floor level, but Ali didn't have time to do so because Trez was pulling the rope up to the original floor.
Instead, Ali sneaks up next to Dos and Trez without being noticed. Once they noticed, Dos and Trez repeat their original attacks, all of which Ali was able to dodge, guided by IRIS, even causing the two bandits to collide into eachother. Dos is knocked away, overpowered by Trez's sheer mass, and is temporarily knocked out.
While this happens, Bakar tries to find ways to break free using some stuff from Ali's bag. Finding a somewhat powerful laser, he uses it to break the cuffs.
IRIS signals that Ali is running out of energy, and that Trez is chasing him from behind. IRIS plans for Ali to bait Trez into hitting the floor until a hole is made, which is what Ali does several times
"Stop running, brat!" Trez yells
"Aww... you're really cute when you're angry!" Ali teases
Trez angrily punches the floor, causing it to crack, alerting Bakar.
"Ali, stop! The floor will collapse!" Bakar shouts
"Wha- UNCLE!" Ali yelled back
"Oh... i see" the man grimaces, realising he just fucked up HARD
Plan foiled... oof. Now what?
Trez stops using punches and opts to just grab the boy. Dos wakes up and sees the opportunity to hinder Ali. She then appears from behild a support pillar and knocks out a shelf, causing Ali to dive out of the way and leaving him exposed and tired.
Bakar finally breaks free and manages to push Trez who is approaching Ali. The push is so strong that it finally causes the floor to crack under them. The two men fall down to the floor below. The last thing Ali saw before he goes unconcious was Bakar climbing back up from the hole.
The IRIS detaches from Ali's face, dropping onto the floor in it's normal form. Dos and Bakar race to get a hold of the IRIS, which Bakar won. As he taps it to use it, it denies him access. Dos takes this opportunity to kick Bakar right in the nuts, causing the man to fall to his knees.
Then, a voice from the computer, their boss, orders her and Trez to get out of there as MATA reinforcements are coming. She quickly grabs the computer and jumps down the newly-formed hole, escaping.
Ali regains consciousness in the control room of one of MATA's secret bases, Sector 56's to be exact, greeted by Bakar and Agent Jenny at his side, as well as General Rama who is glued to the screen in front of him.
Jenny explains to Ali that IRIS is a prototype device created by MATA that synchronizes with its wearer and analyzes all information it receives to provide extraordinary vision enhanced through computer perception.
General Rama interjects in a stern tone that once IRIS is activated, it cannot be used by anyone else. On top of that, the IRIS project had been halted after initial tests revealed unexpected risks, mainly energy concerns involving the user's stamina.
General Rama orders to eliminate him, dropping a drone from the ceiling because he already knew too much for a normal citizen. Bakar pleads to save his life by bringing up an idea to lock up the young Ali forever. Jenny suggests that Ali be trained as an agent while she tries to separate IRIS from Ali.
Bakar is less than pleased with the proposal, but Rama accepts and says that Ali has become a MATA's subjugation and is required to begin training tomorrow.
As Bakar escorts the boy back to the surface, a figure stood by the doorway, unnoticed by the two men. Clad in yellow and black, one singular eye shining brightly. With a stern, slightly feminine voice, it mutters.
"This'll be interesting"