Yep, still doing it.

Should I be worried that no one's stopping me?

So... you remember how I said that PIXAL's body was drastically changed during the events of the Unitized AU?

Well, if you need a refresher, here:

In the Unitized AU, PIXAL is disassembled and left for dead in a scrap heap. Her eyes and ears are taken, as well as her legs and arms; her jaw was also broken during the procedure, to the point that both sides of her face are heavily deformed. However, her central processing system is still intact, and she readily resolves herself to finding her boys.

She escapes the scrap heap by systematically pulling the wires out of her body to act in place of her limbs. Once she's out, she sets off to search the world for signs of her boys. Ms. Yang, the chairwoman of Unitized and the person behind her and her boys' recent downfall, never revealed to her where they were hidden, so she has to search the world. PIXAL knows and accepts this.

But in her disassembled state, the job is a tedious one. She gets around fine thanks to the signals she gets through her wires, similar to how a blind person would feel the earth's tremors in order to find their way, but it's not enough. There are corners of the world that even her wires cannot reach. She continues the search for nearly a century and a half, sneaking onto ferries and trains in order to travel to distant places, though her patience is wearing thin.

Along the way, she realizes that her appearance is hideous - why else would she keep feeling others running from her? She stumbles across a mask shop and finds one with an attached long cloak that affectively hides her disfigured body. She doesn't realize it, but the mask is also hideous and unpopular, so the owner of the shop doesn't even notice when she takes it.

She also figures out early on that she can't exactly talk to people in order to find her boys; her jaw is broken, so she can only speak in deep vowels. It doesn't really matter even if she did try to talk - her ears are gone as well. She can make out what a person is saying if her wires are around their mouth, but hardly anyone gets close enough for her to do so.

As the years turned into centuries, PIXAL started to hope that her boys had gotten out on their own and were walking the streets somewhere. Her search shifts from fingering dark corners to fingering people, grabbing them with her wires and feeling their features in an attempt to find her boys. It's a desperate method, but it's the only one she has.

Rumors had already been circulating about a "Metal Banshee" that could be seen sliding onto trains and boats and planes, its thin metal wires skittering across the ground. But when this Metal Banshee started grabbing people, feeling them, and then letting them go, the stories turned from rumors to myths. Now there's an international urban legend about the Metal Banshee, who hides in every dark corner, waiting to pounce upon those left alone and feed on their life force through her wires. As the legend goes, you can tell if she's near by listening for the sound of metal sliding over the ground, and a low mournful wail.

Little do people know, the Metal Banshee is just a Nindroid teacher, stripped down to her wires and barely clinging to life. The only thing keeping her going is the hope that her body will be returned to her, and with it, her lost students.

In the picture, the word she's trying to ask is "...Boys...?" It's the last thing she says before she grabs a person to feel their features. She's still searching for them.

Dark, I know. But hey, everyone needs a little angst, right?

I'm working on the next chapter of "First Realm and Beyond", I promise! For some reason, it's just a lot harder to come up with something original other than going off of a video game script. I should have something up by the end of the week, though!