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STORYLINE:
A damaged cybernetic cheerleader in a Zone that ate power like a starving beast ate flesh. Surrounded by monsters. One of them, for some reason, wanted to help her. Right.
"This will never work," Kyra whispered, her voice fractured by digital static.
The masquerade dress she wore was a masterpiece. Spun from dark velvet and rich red silk, it was Zone aristocracy chic. The kind of outfit that cost more than a year’s tuition and existed purely to be seen. But she had no business being in Monstrum Haute Couture.
She sat rigidly in the makeshift dressing room behind the auction block, her internal processors whirring a frantic, broken rhythm. A sharp click echoed in her auditory sensors, followed by a sickening, warm slide. A black bloom of hydraulic fluid spread through the velvet, warm and slow at her hip.
The Master of Ceremonies’ voice boomed over the loudspeakers as he made disgusting jokes about devouring humans.
She felt like she might vomit oil.
"Romance, please. I don’t like this. We need to hide. Go underground, or..." She tried to pull the heavy fabric away, but her arms barely lifted. A warning pulse fired through her left arm. Low power. Critical.
Romance knelt before her, immaculate in a pale pink cavalier suit that caught the dim light like a blushing cheek. He didn't look at the stain. He stopped fussing over the high collar that hid her exposed ports and dying wires.
“Kyra,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate like a weaponized melody. "Your friends tripped the alarm. Enforcers are swarming everywhere. There is no time to delay." He glanced toward the chaotic glare of the auction plaza beyond the curtain. "There is only one way out now. Through the front door."
Kyra squeezed her eyes shut. Where was Lisa? For the first time in her life, she was about to do something outrageous, and Lisa wasn't there to pump up her confidence. But through the fear, she heard her best friend's voice anyway, clear as a recording: You got this, Ky! Look like you belong. Look bored and jaded, like you’ve seen it all before. You own every room you walk into.
Kyra lifted her chin. “No. I’m not walking on stage until you tell me why you’re helping me.”
Romance’s eyes widened. He glanced left and right and then leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “I am a moth to your flame. Let me care for you.”
She didn’t believe his words. How could she?
“Don’t say things you don’t mean. You don’t even know me!” she fired back.
Romance dropped to his knees, almost begging. He took both of her cold metal hands into his. “I do know you. I need you.”
The words shot through her like a jolt of power.
“How? Why?" she asked softly.
Romance's head dropped. “This is not a good time to discuss this.”
“It’s the only time.”
He looked back up at her, his demonic eyes blazing with gold fire. “I reap souls,” he said quietly. “But you remember what I was before that.”
“A lot of people remember you. How do you know my memories?”
Romance’s shoulders drooped. He exhaled slowly. “You were dying. The smell of a soul leaking away drew me.” He closed his eyes and deeply inhaled, savoring the moment once more. “I can see your future too, in a way. I just... don’t understand it.”
He held her gaze.
“You’re human. But you will not die. Not today. Not tomorrow.”
A woman screamed in the distance. A chill crept into her circuits.
“Not ever.”
His voice softened, almost breaking, as he looked away. “Do you know what it’s like... to stand before something you could never destroy?”
She considered his words. Finally, the truth. Strange as it was.
She fixed her expression into something that approximated aristocratic boredom. “Ready."
Romance’s eyes snapped to her, a dazzling grin growing on his face. “You look so beautiful right now.”
For a second, she almost believed him. Not because it was true. Because he said it like it was.
He leaned in close. She felt the ghost of his lips press hard against her metal cheek. Shame and ache flashed through her. She wasn’t a woman, wasn’t flesh, wasn’t warm. And yet something in her system misfired anyway. A phantom response with no source code.
The Master of Ceremonies announced Romance as the honored Big Spender, making an off-color joke advising the crowd to watch out: Romance might outbid them for the next least desirable human.
The crowd laughed.
Kyra kept her head held high and did not react. She leaned against Romance for support as they emerged into the limelight of The Pen.
He lifted her off the ground, spinning her. The gown twirled in the air dramatically to applause.
For a moment, she forgot she couldn’t stand on her own. Forgot the weight of failing systems. Forgot where she was. His hand at her back was steady. Certain. She leaned into it. Just for a second. Long enough to forget she didn’t trust him. Long enough to want to.
But it was a grotesque theater of monsters masquerading as civilized. The auction was in full swing. Hunger pressed in from every direction, dressed in silk and velvet, buyers gliding through aisles of glass cages like they were browsing fabrics.
Romance guided her off the stage with the practiced ease of a VIP who could easily own the room. His charisma was undeniable. But Kyra had spent her whole life paying attention to the people next to her. His breathing didn’t match his smile. He needed her to exist. He needed her to stay by his side. His words echoed in her ear.
Outside, the Zone air pressed against The Pen, thick and wrong. A sleek, obsidian hovercar bearing the devil heart logo idled just past the heavy iron gates. Romance guided her into the plush interior. Kyra sank into the seat, leaving another smear of oil on the pristine leather.
Before she could apologize, the world narrowed to a single figure. An Enforcer loomed in the driver's side window, large and armored in black. The window lowered, letting in the sharp, chemical stench of burnt circuitry and leaking oil.
"Unmarked cargo," the Enforcer growled, his nose wrinkling in disgust as he eyed the velvet dress. “And she’s leaking. State your business."
Kyra's internal cooling fans spun into overdrive.
Romance didn't flinch. He sighed with the perfect air of an inconvenienced aristocrat and produced his halo-pad, tapping it twice. MasterGin's voice, laced with theatrical, venomous contempt, poured into the cabin like poison:
"Get this scrap metal out of my pristine suite before it stains the floor."
Kyra stiffened when she heard herself dismissed and described as scrap metal by the legend who was supposed to save her life.
“You heard the man. He wants her gone.”
The Enforcer huffed, clearly no fan of MasterGin. He stepped back and waved them through. "Proceed."
The Enforcers parted. Ghouls beyond the gate caught in the headlights, sniffing the air in excitement as their giant bat wings beat against the smog.
“Driver, turn on the shields,” Romance commanded.
The Automated Assistant electrified the car’s shell. “Yes, Master Romance. Where to?”
“Get us out of the Zone, but fly casually. Don’t attract any attention.”
The hovercar lurched forward, leaving the fog. Monsters jumped on the car, shrieking as the electric shield threw them back into the dark.
Kyra jumped, her hand tightening around Romance’s.
He looked over at her, highly amused, and squeezed back. “I can’t believe that worked. Sorry you had to hear that.”
He didn't even spare a glance for the beasts scraping at the roof and thumping on the hood. His attention was locked onto her, as if she were the only thing in the world.
She felt the heat of his golden gaze sinking into her wiring. “You’re so handsome, it should be illegal.” The words left before she could catch them. She almost winced. Like she’d handed him something sharp and personal.
As the invisible boundary of the Forbidden Zone slipped past them, the suffocating pressure in the air vanished.
A tingle started in her fingertips. A current, clean and sharp, completely unlike the sludgy, cursed energy she'd been running on in the Zone. It flowed down her spine. Then her legs. Like a system rebooting after a hard shutdown, everything came back online at once.
The oppressive hum of the Zone vanished like a speaker switch flipped.
Kyra gasped, the sound turning into a bright, undignified laugh. Her systems roared to life. Heat surged through her chest. Lights powered back on, racing up and down her shell.
Without thinking, she tore the cursed devil-heart battery pack from her side. It came free with a wet metallic sound. She hurled it, watching it spark and die.
The battery pack rolled to a stop at Romance’s feet, its devil heart logo facing up.
“If I had a choice, I would never set foot in that hellhole again,” Kyra declared.
Romance blinked, startled. "Kyra?”
She was already moving. Her body found angles it hadn't reached in months, her limbs articulating at ranges that broke human limits, transforming her into a sleek, spider-like shape of fluid cybernetic agility.
She vaulted directly over the console and slid into the driver's seat. Both hands and her one functional leg found the controls simultaneously.
“Disengage autopilot,” she commanded, and slammed the pedal.
The hovercar tore forward at breakneck speed. Romance was thrown backward, shrieking in genuine, unbefitting terror as the g-force hit him.
His composure shattered so easily. She hadn’t expected that. It tightened something in her chest she didn’t have a name for. His panic sent a thrilling rush through her circuits.
She laughed harder, pushing the hovercar faster than necessary. Romance only knew her as a broken, dying doll, but she was an athlete, a cat burglar, and a machine enhanced beyond human limitation. She pulled the vehicle into a screaming barrel roll just to hear his beautiful screams again.
“STOP!” Romance yelled, pressing himself against the door.
She flipped the car into a loop, gravity snapping hard against them.
"I AM BEGGING YOU!"
She laughed in pure joy.
Romance was pressed against the far door, clutching his chest and breathing in fast, panicked gasps. His immaculate outfit was disheveled, his careful composure completely destroyed.
Eventually, she leveled out, mostly because her chassis was sending her excited warnings about structural stress. It would be embarrassing to survive the Forbidden Zone only to shake herself apart on the highway.
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist.” She winked playfully at him in the rearview mirror.
She caught him staring at her reflection.
"What?" She smiled, knowing she had shocked him.
"Nothing," he said. "You're just different outside the Zone."
"Better or worse?"
He considered this with genuine seriousness. "More," he said finally. "Just more."
"Romance. Is everything okay?"
"No," he said quietly.
He stared out the window at the city scrolling past. All that performance was absent. He looked drained. He looked, she realized, like someone who had been holding something very heavy for a very long time and had just discovered he might be able to put it down.
He picked up the discarded battery pack with the devil heart logo on it. "You still need me," he said in a very small voice. "To pay for your cybernetics doctor."
Kyra smiled at the monster who had saved her life, not once, not twice, but three times. “You did promise to give me flesh. I’m totally going to hold you to it.”
He sighed, not hiding his disappointment. “One way or another.”
“What other way is there besides the best cybernetics doctor money can buy? I could look human again, with a fleshy outside shell and all.”
“It’s just,” his voice trailed off. “I thought you would choose to be like me. A Jeoseung Saja. And we would be together forever.”
"You’re adorable when you pout,” she said, softer than she meant to.
He looked up, his golden eyes wide.
"I'm not leaving you, silly.” She shifted her focus ahead. “Why would I? Prince Charming of my dreams says he needs me.”
Romance didn’t answer. He looked like he wanted to say something.
The city lights slid across his face in silence.
She gunned the hovercar forward as the glittering towers of Pangyo Techno Valley loomed ahead.
His breath fogged the glass.
He began to trace a heart in it.
“I saw Lisa.”
Kyra froze.
“It was when you were powered down at the Clinic. Disassembled. She was upset. She didn’t want to leave you, but the other students forced her to flee.”
If Kyra could cry, her vision would have blurred.
“I do admire the devotion you two share. But I would also like to point out, Lisa has a larger circle of friends now, and they are surviving remarkably well. The Mute One seems especially smitten with her. I can tell these things. Maybe when this is over, you should consider giving her space.”
The tech district opened up ahead of them, indifferent and pristine, completely unaware of everything that had happened in the Forbidden Zone.
Kyra’s auditory sensors processed Romance’s words, turning them over and over like a corrupted file. Forced her to flee. A larger circle of friends. Smitten. Give her space.
The words were precision strikes.
She looked down at her hands resting on the steering console. The towering neon advertisements of Pangyo Techno Valley reflected off her polished metal knuckles in harsh streaks of cyan and magenta. She was a machine of wonders. Fast. Powerful. Resilient.
But her chest ached with a phantom human pain.
Lisa had been her gravity for her entire life. To picture Lisa running, surviving, and moving on with a new team while Kyra lay dissected on a cold clinic table was a special kind of agony.
Kyra glanced at the rearview mirror. Romance was watching her in the dark. His golden eyes were calm. Patient.
A week ago, the old Kyra would have panicked. She would have cried and clung to him, desperate for his reassurance.
Instead, Kyra tightened her grip on the steering wheel. She didn’t look at him again. She knew if she did, she might hesitate. And hesitation, around him, felt like the beginning of something she wouldn’t be able to stop.
The reinforced synthetic leather groaned loudly under her mechanical strength. The raw, buzzing current of her fully charged battery hummed in her synthetic veins.
"I appreciate the update," Kyra said. Her voice was perfectly smooth, completely stripped of all digital static.
Romance blinked. The slight, victorious curve of his mouth faltered. “Are you not upset?"
“Lisa is alive,” Kyra said. “That’s what matters.”
She pushed the throttle forward. The city swallowed them whole.
Silence stretched.
"I'm going to need analog battery backup," she added. "Something the Zone can't eat."
Romance shifted behind her. "Kyra."
"You saved me." Her grip tightened. The leather creaked. "So now I'm a problem."
She glanced at him in the mirror. Just once.
"I'm going to save Lisa. And then I'll figure out what to do about you."
Romance stilled. Something like delight crossed his face. Something like fear.
Then a warning light she didn't recognize flared in her HUD.
An empty, starving ache hollowed out her left hip where the battery used to sit.
Her left leg seized.
The hovercar coasted.
Romance was beside her before she could speak. He pressed a chip, its devil heart logo facing up, into the port at her hip. The lights steadied.
He was inches from her face. He didn't say anything.
He didn't need to.
Kyra looked at the chip. At the logo. At his face.
She understood.
"You may have left the Forbidden Zone," he said finally. "But it didn't leave you."
She sat very still.
Outside, Neu Seoul kept glowing. Indifferent. Waiting.
This was a fun image to make, with such beautiful outfits and skins at the current round of the Engine Room. ...On Romance is the flashy Cavalier outfit by toksik. It comes with fits for multiple mesh bodies, male and female. Top is jacket and shirt, and the bottom is pants and boots. Single colors or fatpack. ...He is wearing the Lucian hair by RavenBell. It's unrigged and editable for the perfect fit, includes mirror options and separate bangs. I used the fantasy color hud. ....From Illusions is the Cigno Curia Mask. It comes with a texture hud, male and female fits, PBR, and its unrigged and mod to adjust for the best fit. ....On Kyra is the elegant Machina NOVA gold skin texture with optional overlays. The skin set includes many metallics tones, including Halo. ....From BearCat.Egg is the gorgeous Carni Hat. It comes with a detailed hud to change its textures, an optional version without the chin ribbons, and a doll face mask for eyes and lips. I used the eyes only. This doll mask is also available as a free gift at the Engine Room. its mod so you can adjust it for the best fit. ....From MDN is another stunning outfit, this time with a pirate style, -- the Ironlace Dress. The dress and chest strap have PBR and the megapack includes many texture options. I love the stripped ones! ...Adding another layer of elegance is the Steam Aurelia Collar from Silvery K. It comes with a texture hud to adjust its colors. It comes with rigged and unrigged versions. ....Seen in the full character shot below is abeabi's AB54 heels. It includes many texture options, including stripes that match well with the MDN dress, ....Providing the perfect ambience is the Spires Society's The Sanctuary of Light.
On him, DJ Romance:
Top: toksik - Cavalier, Legacy M, fatpack
[mesh](Engine Room)(800L) Mask: Illusions - Cigno Curia Mask (m)
[mesh](Engine Room)(325L) Hair: RavenBell - Lucien Hair, Fantasy
[mesh](Engine Room)(350L)
On Her, Kyra:
Hat, mask: BEARCAT.EGG - Carni Hat, fatpack
[mesh](Engine Room)(500L) Dress: MDN - Ironlace Dress, megapack (Legacy F)
[mesh](Engine Room)(1751L) Collar: Silvery K - Steam Aurelia, Collar
[mesh](Engine Room)(280L) Shoes: abeabi - AB54 fatpack, Legacy F, fatpack
[mesh](Engine Room)(1599L) Gloves: Emotional Circus - Romantic Lace Gloves, black
[BOM](Engine Room)(249L) Skin, tattoos: SOMEONE - Machina NOVA, Gold
[mesh](Engine Room)(1000L) Eyes: SOMEONE - Infected Eyes 3, Blood [BOM]
Setting:
BONUS IMAGES: inworld raw shot, hi-res, midday sky.
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