Entering a weapon store he found a big burly arm wrapped around his neck. "Sal!" The boy turn his left and was face to face with a large tan monster of a man. This guy looked like he could pick a bus up and beat Godzilla to death with it, well maybe if he didn't have that blue Hawaiian shirt on. "L.T., good to see you again. The rest of your lot is down at the bar, so will you be leading Team Thirteen into battle again?" Robert acted like he was thinking about it, "Depends, I will need a lot of ammunition, you got any peas for my little rifle?" Sal laughed and stroked his beard, "Hmm... of course! I got forty five, five five six, even forty mil for that launcher you have." Robert punched his friend in the lower torso, his fist rebounded off pure muscle, "I can see why you are so great on the job, off of it you are amazing." He has given a discount despite not wanting one, Sal just gave him the ammo. "Now come back by when your weapons are getting low on condition, I will teach you how to repair them and even how to machine the parts." Rob was glad to have such a good friend. "Now to get this ammo in my car..." He was carrying at least a hundred pounds of it all on his back. Finally he saw a black car on the curb, it looked like a nightmare. Low profile black all around, the windows were not able to be seen through, the thing had run flat tires, a push grill, was obviously full metal and armored inside, it had a roll cage, and on top of this had no backseat- just a black metal case full of weapons when needed, but right now was empty. Polishing the beautiful hood scope with his elbow the boy opened the car door and began storing his ammunition in the case. "Alright, now I will swing by the Garden and see if that paranormal event is still going on.
Humming down the side road leading out of the city buildings he came to a long dirt road leading into the forest. In the beta test he found that in this area glitches would occur, your health and stamina would become random symbols and for the time you were here nothing would display on your data tables. Disembarking from his car Robert saw the statue as usual, a while marble sculpture of a fairy maiden. "Time to check." Looking down he saw the glitch was better, he still couldn't access his items, but he could see his bars again. "Well, seems better, I bet they will fix it as time goes on." Turning Robert heard a scream, a very high pitched scream full of terror and fright, it belonged to a young girl he could tell and was coming from deeper in the woods. "I am coming!" He sprinted from the statue past the tree line and into the wooded area, drawing his 1911 from its shoulder holster he called out again, "Call out to me, where are you?" A small voice shouted as it came closer, "I'm right here!" It grew ever closer before a little girl came from the dark forest and bumped into Robert before falling upon her backside. "The monster is after me!" Raising his pistol Robert waited only half a second for noise to break, with three rounds his task was done. The rustling of leaves stopped, white fur hit the ground. "A bunny? You were scared of this?" He picked up the rodent, it was about the size of his torso. "Okay, never mind, this thing is pretty big." Looking at her he noticed she had cut her feet along the bottoms running. "Let me fix you up." Putting a hand into the satchel at his side he produced bandages and antiseptic. He saw her health bar go up as he worked, he had lost a few points, odd part was that she had more health than most bosses he had seen.
"May I ask your name?" The girl watched him as she sat on the stump, she was barefoot and wearing a white cotton sundress. "Errida, I gave myself that name." Robert raised an eyebrow and asked another question, "What does it mean then?" Her name only popped up as her tag after she gave it, she must have some ability relating to tags. "It means Error." He continued further, "May I ask why you did that?" She shrugged and spoke again, "Because I am a glitch, you did not notice the issues in this area?" She was right, his whole set up was trashed. "It is because they deleted a lot of my code." Her hair was a translucent grey and same for her eyes, she was very pale also. "They deleted my code, I was supposed to be the Fairy of this forest, an easter egg as you would say, if I player came to my forest I could bestow upon them a blessing or a curse. I was dropped as they found I disrupted the Arena." Robert looked at the girl in front of him, he saw exactly that, a girl, not some piece of broken code. "What if I gave you some of my data? I have back logs from the Beta, will that repair you?" Errida shrugged again and reached forward pressed her hand over the boy's heart, pulling it back she opened line after line of ones and zeros. "Your kill rate is high, says here you only died once and that was throwing yourself in front of NPC Civilians. Here is my code, you and me actually met but once." Pulling her hand back she had taken a line of code that was red. Bending it into a circle she put it over her head and it widened and tightened around her as it went down. Before Robert now was the same girl with grey hair, less sickly white skin, and blue shining eyes. "No longer am I a glitch..." Robert smiled and patted her on the head, "Guess you can now be," He tapped his chin in though, "Merida?" The girl nodded her head. "I took some of your coding, all there was left of mine was my abilities." He asked her what they were, "My ability is Blessing, as you can see over on your party list, if you click me you will see that I have the ability to add buffs to players as well as give them items or make them ones, I can also add an enchantment to them, but that was never tested. I can use my Curse or Smite powers also, those will kill players. They should also work on NPCs, but I do not know." Her stomach growled.
"I guess using my data to reconfigure yourself made you almost human to a degree then?" Robert got a lunchbox out of his bag and handed Merida a sandwich. He said grace and then they both ate. He gave her a juice box and she smiled contently. "So you've been running around this forest since the launch?" She nodded. "Well I cannot have that, would you like to accompany me then? I can't just let a little girl run around a forest with no weapons." She leaned over and rested her head upon his arm, "Okay." Robert's mind was arguing with itself, one half happy to have helped a little girl find safety, the other one angry because this would definitely cut into his budget. She needed clothes, food of course, toys and books. He just adopted a kid for all the rest of the world would ever know. "Guess we better head off, I need to get you clothes and such, then I have to go meet with my team." Merida looked at Robert, her eyes were a bright blue, "You are part of the SEAL ACEs Task Force, your classed as Special Operations Medic. You lead this task force, a sub group of the SEALs, your ACEs are Team Thirteen, the teams number as such One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, and Thirteen. Your rank is Lieutenant, I also see you have the ability to hide your tag or change it as needed, Black Operations it is called." Robert looked at the girl, "You read all of that?" She agreed with a simple head gesture. "I am a part of the system, as a Boss Class being I have a high level of clearance, I have a much more thoughtful AI though as I have all the emotions a human would." She stood from the stump and stretched, "Can we go now? I am tired." She whined and tugged at Robert.
Finally after having made the trip back to town he stood in front of the mall, "Welp, guess we are here." Robert had parked his car close to the door and was carrying Merida. People stared as he found his way to a children's clothing store at last. After much time she picked out a dress with a fluffy pink skirt and velcro shoes to match. She walked over to a holiday wall and found a little green uniform meant for Veteran's Day. "I want this too, please can I get it?" Robert agreed and bought it for her, he got all kinds of shirts, pants, and shoes for her, he bought more clothes for her than she even wanted. Next was the grocery was across the street, he got a cart full of groceries. Sitting her in the car he had her in a booster seat in the front. He would need to find a safer way for her to ride, but he had no backseat. He had Merida send the message out to his friends for him. It read simply
Does anyone have any clue how to take care of kids? Just hypothetical, me and a friend had a bet, you know that old song and dance.
