somebody put me together

Dr. Mason repaired my spinal column and one arm and left me on the bench to repair myself. It's not that hard..I've done it before. Especially now that I've repaired the other arm. But I don't even know if I should..

I failed. Last night I failed as a firefighter, and I failed again as a soldier. I used the most powerful weaponry the 19th Century has to offer..and I even violated my own code by resorting to my weapons cache from the 21st Century..yet still I was only a nuisance to those destructive orbs..I still hear the horrible drone of their engines in my memory banks!

..I barely had time to look up to see plasma rays battering me..eating away at my armour..then my internal systems..I rained down into the crater, my glowing sephiroth spinning like muticolored marbles in a bowl and bouncing off of my dismembered limbs until they rested at the center.

Next thing I knew, my brother Koen was standing over me, gold slitted eyes striking against his silhouette in the smoke-filled dawn. I could barely make out his face, but I could see his ears betrayed his despair. He lifed me by just holding my head in his paws. That is when I realized that's all I had left connected to me. Luckily I had hid my Soul Chip in the base of my skull. I tried to speak, but I had not tongue and no jaw to move.

Then he put me in a sack. And then he started loading the sack with the spheres...so they all jostled around me, in completely the wrong order. It felt like someone turned my soul into a jigsaw puzzle and kept trying to put back the pieces incorrectly. Then everything else..shards of the demon's bones I was built with. Random gears..pieces of my armour..and then scrap that definitely did not come from me! Couldn't he tell what was part of me and what wasn't?

Finally I was emptied onto the table, Father meticulously clearing the shrapnel away to place my skull and all the sephiroth in the right position..and they connect themselves to me immediately. I could tell by the exhaustion in his eyes and the tattered and bloody state of his clothes that he had spent a night handling triage.

"I'm proud of you, Qli. I truly am."

I could only divert my eyes from him. No lids to shut, no tears to shed.

I feel so..useless. Like a..yes, like a doll. My appearance is a matter applying metal, or porcelain, or volcanic demonflesh with an optional wrapping of human skin. Add a cocktail of blood from various species and voila. A coin-operated girl trying to be human and superhuman at once..and failing in both.