Slave Walker
“I need a favor, Sonia. Don’t worry too much. I’ll be handling the controls almost entirely myself. Leave dealing with those mindless drones just floating around out there to me.”
Peko’s voice carried the absolute confidence of a veteran pilot who had crossed countless battlefields.
She desperately needed a temporary power source to replace her sister Milli. Milli had taken the full brunt of the drones’ suicide attacks and now lay unconscious from the extreme shock.
A Slave Walker was a machine that drew its power from the bio-energy of the human unit locked inside it. Without another Slave Unit to fill that place, the massive steel beast was nothing more than a pile of scrap.
Peko looked at Sonia with eyes full of desperation and bowed her head once more.
“Just getting inside and staying still is enough. Please. We don’t have much time left!”
“I… if even someone like me is all right, then I’ll gladly help, Miss Peko!”
Her hesitation did not last long. If not for Milli’s sacrifice, Sonia might already have been in a hospital bed—or lying cold on the floor.
The sisters before her were, like her, people who protected Sky City. Once again, Sonia steeled herself and decided to find her courage as a hero of Sky City.
“…Thank you, truly, Sonia. I know how hard this decision is, and how unreasonable the request is. So I promise I’ll do everything I can to keep you safe.”
At Sonia’s resolve, a faint smile of relief finally softened Peko’s rigid face. She immediately opened the abdominal hatch of the Slave Walker and gestured for Sonia to enter the dark interior.
The thought of climbing inside a four-legged combat machine the size of a car made her heart flutter lightly. Sonia barely suppressed that tiny tremor and chose to trust Peko’s words completely.
Just stay still and it’ll be fine. Alongside pure selflessness, a different kind of desire quietly raised its head from the deepest part of her heart.
(If I perform well here… maybe there’ll be extra reward money or something… hehe…)
Holding both the noble cause of saving citizens and her own thoroughly personal greed at the same time, D-class hero of Sky City Sonia took her first step into the dark, cold interior of the Slave Walker.
“Good. Then stand on that platform you see further in and wait a moment. I’m going to run the temporary unit registration procedure now, so just follow the system’s instructions. All right—closing the Walker hatch.”
“Ah… understood…!”
The interior of the walking weapon was far emptier than Sonia had imagined.
On the floor, a clear red-tape rectangle marked the spot, accompanied by the words Please stand here.
It was spacious enough that Sonia could stretch both arms wide without touching the walls.
“Closing it now. I’m counting on you, Sonia.”
A heavy thud… clank. When Peko sealed the thick armored plate, all outside light was perfectly cut off.
Instead of total darkness, ominous red emergency lights like those in an underground tunnel softly illuminated the interior, casting grotesque shadows across every surface.
(It feels… just like a movie theater…)
Thud. Thud. From outside the Slave Walker came the sound of Peko rapping on the armor plating.
“We’re starting soon, so don’t tense up too much, Sonia.”
The moment those words ended, an emotionless synthetic electronic voice flowed from the speakers mounted inside the Walker.
Sonia focused every nerve on this bizarre situation she had never experienced in her life.
> Initiating temporary Slave Walker Unit registration procedure.
> Initializing existing slave data…
> The slave to be registered as this combat Walker’s unit: remove all clothing currently worn.
“…Huh? Slave…? And… I have to take my clothes off?”
> Combat Walker unit outer shell detection: FAILED.
> Redetecting… FAILED.
> Failed to recognize official Slave Walker attire.
> If not wearing prescribed attire, immediately remove all clothing currently worn.
At the sudden command, Sonia reflexively asked again. A machine that was not artificial intelligence naturally did not answer questions. It merely played the next recorded stage of the voice in mechanical succession.
> Subject who will become the Slave Walker Unit: remove all worn clothing.
“Ah… all right… It’s all for Sky City… and for me… Besides, no one’s watching, so it’s not… not really embarrassing at all…!”
She vaguely guessed that the phrase “slave data initialization” meant wiping the personal settings of Milli, who had been riding until moments ago.
For the sisters who had saved her, for her record, and for the citizens—she told herself this much was something she had to endure. With trembling hands, Sonia began slowly unbuttoning her blouse.
(Maybe… I’ll end up wearing something like that body suit Miss Milli had on…?)
Holding that fantasy, Sonia carefully placed even her final black undergarments on the floor.
As if it had been waiting, a single robotic arm slid silently out from the wall behind where she stood.
The arm that appeared so naturally picked up the clothes from the floor and tossed them into a storage bin inside the wall as if disposing of waste. The option of leaving this Slave Walker naked had now been completely erased.
> Do not move. Relax your entire body.
> All procedures will proceed swiftly.
“Ugh… what on earth is happening… Ah…! Cold…!”
Following the guidance voice, Sonia stood motionless on the red tape. This time, multiple robotic arms burst out from the walls on all sides at once.
They seized her neck, both wrists, both ankles, and her waist with not a single millimeter of error. Cold, smooth metal rings fitted around each point.
With a sharp click of machinery, the rings tightened snugly around Sonia’s slender neck, wrists, and ankles and locked firmly.
“It doesn’t hurt, but… this is… a little startling…”
She had believed the promise that she only needed to stand still, but this kind of restraint was beyond her expectations. Having her entire body fixed against her will was more than enough to fluster the naked blonde hero.
Before she could even grasp the situation, one robotic arm retrieved a card-sized sheet of paper from the storage bin, rubbed the surface, and peeled off a coin-sized transparent sticker. The sticky adhesive side was densely packed with microscopic needles invisible to the naked eye.
> Attaching management recognition sticker to the slave.
“Uh… uhh… Kyaa…?! Miss Peko? This is really okay, right…?”
As the robotic arm approached to press the unidentified sticker onto her forehead, Sonia flinched and tried to pull back. But the other arms already held her limbs and torso firmly with metal rings; the D-class hero of Sky City could not move an inch.
—Ah, that? It’s just a temporary registration sticker, so don’t worry, Sonia. Once we get out of here you can peel it right off.
—Hmm… how should I put it. Think of it as a free skin-beauty service. Right? Milli was fine with it. So please, just a little longer, Sonia.
“Ah… understood… But… skin beauty?”
Hearing her name called, Peko rapped the side of the Walker again with a thud-thud to reassure Sonia. Without this Walker they could go nowhere because of the surrounding drones. In the end Sonia abandoned all resistance, relaxed every muscle, and decided to accept whatever unknown sensation was coming.
> Slave management sticker: attachment confirmed.
Press… pop!
One robotic arm cradled the back of Sonia’s head to hold her steady while another firmly pressed the square transparent sticker onto the center of her smooth forehead. It was not the simple feel of adhesive.
A rough, scratchy foreign sensation, as if dry sand had been sprinkled, dug into her skin.
Slap!
As if confirming a component had seated properly, the robotic arm gave Sonia’s forehead a light tap to check that the sticker was secure.
“Ow… uuh… uh… uuh… My forehead keeps prickling… prickling… mm… maybe because the robot arm hit too hard…”
Sizzle… crackle…
Sonia had not yet noticed, but the microscopic needles of the sticker pressed to her forehead had already pierced the skin and settled into the dermal layer.
The needles began sending ultra-high-frequency micro-vibrations toward Sonia’s skull—vibrations too fine for human ears to detect.
If she had concentrated extremely hard, she might have heard a faint kyuiiing~ ringing directly inside her head. But for some reason the sound of her own heart, which had begun pounding even more violently in this bizarre situation, completely drowned out every tiny noise.
Sonia’s trembling body gradually regained composure along with the strange vibration humming from her forehead. It was not calm she had achieved by her own will.
There was a reason the walking weapon was called a Slave Walker. Of course a tiny minority of girls, drawn by masochistic tendencies of their own free will, chose the path of becoming units. But the history of this weapon held origins far darker and more coercive than Sonia imagined.
The core requirement for a Slave Walker Unit was that it be a woman of above-average high intelligence.
Long ago when the system was first developed, the weapon had been designed on the premise of forcibly inserting rebellious high-intelligence criminals, war prisoners, or slaves sold off under mountains of debt. That was precisely why it was a Slave Walker.
As the years passed, operational methods improved, yet the foundation of the system never changed.
Whether by choice or by force, any being that entered the hatch was no longer treated as a person but as a “Slave Unit” for driving the Walker.
From the system’s perspective, the essential first step was to break the will and neutralize the potentially rebellious, unstable bio-component before it could thrash about.
A compulsory procedure to make it gentle and absolutely obedient to the external pilot—the “Master.”
The special frequency emitted by the sticker attached to the forehead was designed to forcibly lower the target’s overall cognitive activity, leaving them in a blank, docile state.
Press…
(Co… cold…?!)
The instant the cold sticker was pressed hard against her forehead, a fine crackling noise accompanied an incomprehensible vibration that spread through Sonia’s entire skull.
It felt as if a powerful status-ailment magic had been cast directly inside her head. Complex thoughts scattered like mist, and her ability to analyze and judge the situation before her plummeted rapidly.
Of course the effect varied by individual. For Sonia it was either misfortune or fortune that while her resistance to physical attacks was above average, her resistance to mental interference was strangely, abnormally weak.
As a result, Sonia simply stood there calmly, like well-tamed livestock, without the slightest resistance or suspicion.