One gloomy Christmas night, Florida state's governing figure, given his severe distrust of the military, asked Aegis corp. to investigate why a large hole appeared violently in a remote part of his state.
Given it being christmas, most of the more reputable Aegis members were already on more important, and charitable tasks.
A group of the resulting riff-raff was assembled and dispatched to an area somewhere in the Oenfenokee region.
Upon arrival, they were greeted by the blasted remnants of what seemed to be a subterranean research facility. It was all but completely decimated. An explosion of some sort bore a hole several stories deep in the facility.
The group leader ran an anomaly scan of the area with a shoddy, but cool-looking wrist PC...
Definitely a research facility of some kind, no discernable weapons remained if it wasn't. A depth scan showed 18 stories.... ...*Ding!* A power signature. Albeit faint, but unusual in it's composition.
"Damn." he murmured, "It's on the lowest floor too. I knew we were gonna have to trek way the hell down there."
Closing the scan panel on his PC, *Blip!* it promplty crashed. "Damned Win'DOHs XP." he grumbled, with a heavy emphasis on "DOH".
"Alright! Let's get this over with. I don't want to have to spend all of damned Christmas down this 'effing hole."
Recklessly, the group trundled into the depths of the facility. It was a fairly un-eventful trip to the bottom floor. The facility's lowest floor took on a very different appearance compared to what remained of the rest of the facility. A textured pale grey surface with irregular facets lined the walls. The corridors seemed to branch from one central point - where according to the scan, the power signature should be.
Not wasting any time, they made their way towards the center of the lower floor. The damage from the explosion was most apparent here, the walls scorched, floors lined with display panels and workstations which were now in total disarray. The group shortly reached a decimated vault-like door that still partly sealed the central room. A single phrase could be discerned through the scorch marks on it's surface:
MWP-7831X
"This looks like it. Be careful, we don't know what the hell's in there." The leader said, speaking quietly. One by one, they squeezed past the door, entered the room and navigating through and around the piles of varying metal and rubble.
The explosion didn't seem to vaporize much of the upper floors or ceiling, judging by the amount of debris they had to climb over and around. Cresting one such pile, the leader spotted a faint red glow in one of the rooms far corners and slowly crept his way towards it plaing one hand on the weapon at his hip.
Nearly right on top of the glow, it flickered, and then began to dim - all but vanishing completely. Rubble falling on rubble could be heard, and he paused in his approach - the sounds stopped, and he resumed.
*SCREEEECH!*
A metallic howl pierced through the air, sparks flew from amidst a pile of rubble and the glow intensified.
"CHRIST!" the leader wailed jumping nearly out of his skin. He fumbled for the rail gun about his waist, and fired a quick blast at the pile of rubble the sparks were coming from.
A muffled hollow glass-like ringing followed by the sound of exploding rubble could be echoed through the complex.
The glow became more of a steady light. Not waiting for the dust to settle, he fired again. Another hollow glass-like ringing, quickly followed by a loud, but muffled popping sound and flurry of blue sparks.
Oh yes, and more metallic screeching.
*SCREEEECH!*
Another shot, this time resulted in a loud metal colliding with metal to echo through the open facility. The red light flickered, and dimmed back to a faint glow.
Stumbling, over the surrounding piles of junk, the rest of the group soon after arrived at the noisy pile of rubble.
"Fuck! God-damn it! Why is it always me that runs into the scary shit in these places?!" the leader fumed, trying to gaze through the settling dust cloud.
They all peered, and waited... the dust cleared enough to reveal a half-buried fairly battered and venomous looking droid - with a large rail-sized dent in it's cranial plating.
It unsteadily reared it's head and gazed back at the group with glowing red eyes. It tried to move it's free leg, but only produced more of an erratic jitter, and more sparks.
"I'll be damned. I know what happened here." one of the less crew piped up.
"Santa went and crashed his sleigh. And this little fella must be Rudolph!".
The group broke out in a short, but welcomed bout of laughter.
"Hah! Santa run's Windows on his Reign deer, no bloody wonder he crashed." The leader added, holstering his weapon.
"Alright, let's get Rudolph-XP here back to HQ. The tecchies will probably want to tear him down, or knowing them, try and flog it on ebay."
They began to free the driod, all the while further restricting what little range of motion it's limbs had left, hauled it out of the facility and back to Aegis quarantine facilities.
Aegis was none to excited about the "Santa crashed into a swamp" report they got back from the crew they sent out. The were excited however, by "Rudolph-XP" that they brought back. Though in need of extensive repairs, no time was wasted in getting to work on restoring the droid's functionality.
In the year that passed, repairs went smoothly. Some of the components on the didn't seem terrestrial. It's power generation for one, was presumed to be of alien origin. It made absolutely no sense what-so-ever - it just seemed to work.
This was reasoned to be the cause for the destruction of the facility where the unit was found - a poor attempt at replication of it's power source, but on a much larger scale.
The droid was officially tagged "Rudolph", or "Rudolph-XP", and considered hereafter. to be Aegis property.
All comprehensible repairs have finally been completed, and the time has come for field testing.
