I am a huge fan of the Terminator series. I have all three movies and the first season of the show not only on DVD, but Blu-Ray as well. The DVDs are for when I'm too lazy to go downstairs to the PS3. I watched tonight's episode (Season 2, Ep. 5) and then thought about T3: Rise of the Machines. The show's producers said that T3 existed in a different timeline, so it's not canon to the show. But what if it was? What if Skynet had sent the T-X back to 2004 to kill John, who had disappeared in time long before then? I've seen a story that does something like this (it's located in the Movies/Terminator section), but thought I'd try my hand at it. Well, here's an interesting look on what'd she do.

Oh and as for her name, I thought it'd be funny to use her actress' name. Plus, I'm unoriginal. Read if you'd like, reviews aren't my goal, and if you like it, I'll post the next chapter up.

The Missing Terminator

She arrived in Los Angeles sometime during the night, and quickly synchronized her internal clock to match the time. It was currently July 24th, 2004, 9:36 local Eastern Time. Once that was complete, she looked around as she sat crouched in what appeared to be a store that sold human female under garments.

The prototype T-X stood up, standing in a display window amongst several mannequins. Naked, she gave them a curious look, before stepping out of the hole in the window, which was caused by her displacement sphere upon arrival into the past.f

The T-X looked around, spotting a middle-aged business woman exiting a store that sold real estate across the street. The woman was wearing a crisp red leather outfit, and went to sit inside a silver 2004 Lexus SC430. Cocking her head, the T-X briskly walked across the empty street towards the vehicle.

As the T-X walked up, she ran a diagnostic which appeared on her blue HUD.

System check… All systems 100

Data check… All mission data and files intact.

Chip integrity… 100

Everything was fine. She stopped in front of the driver's side door of the car, as the woman stared up at her naked form in shock. "Oh my God, are you alright?" she asked worriedly. "Should I call the police?"

The T-X ignored the human's worry, and ran her slender fingers across the doorsill. "I like your car," she said, testing out her voice synthesizers. They were working fine, replicating a throaty, attractive female voice. With a smooth motion, the T-X snapped the woman's neck.

Once the woman was dead, the T-X ran her hands along her clothes, absorbing the information with her mimetic polyalloy. She then adjusted her polyalloy sheath to form a layer of the clothing the deceased woman wore. Once sufficiently clothed, the T-X also copied the tight bun hairstyle the woman had, as well as physical make-up on her face.

Seeing that she looked non-suspicious, the T-X lifted the relatively light corpse out of the car and with a light throw, tossed it into a dumpster some distance away. It made several loud and wet smacks upon impact inside, and the T-X let out a small smile. She got into the silver convertible and started the engine, accessing her databanks on the vehicle's operation.

The T-X easily started the engine and adjusted the mirrors, having learned all of the car's controls. She pulled away from the curb and began to drive. As she drove, the T-X noticed the woman's purse, and saw a Nokia 5200 inside. She took it out as she weaved through cars, and pressed it to her ear. She then made a high-pitched noise through her mouth, connecting the phone to herself, and accessing the internet.

She began to search for John Connor. She began going through databases and news reports, and then a frown marred her artificially-beautiful face. There were numerous reports that said John Connor and his mother were dead. They had died in a bank explosion.

Primary Target: John Connor

Primary Target deceased?

Primary Mission: Terminate John Connor

Primary Mission: Suspended

Secondary Mission: Terminate Resistance leaders

The T-X put on a smile again, and started doing a web search for John Connor's lieutenants in the Resistance. She marked Catherine Brewster down as a high priority target, and found 22 others. It was time to terminate.

She increased the vehicle's speed, and wove through cars with expert precision, blowing through a red light. She heard a siren behind her, and glanced in the rearview mirror. A Los Angeles Police Department cruiser was behind her.

"You in the silver Lexus!" the cruiser's speaker blared, "Pull over immediately!"

Objectives: Acquire weapons, and any supplies necessary for termination/infiltration.

The T-X dutifully pulled over, and waited as the cruiser pulled to a stop behind her vehicle. She looked around and spotted a billboard sign which depicted a woman. Her database recognized the woman as Adriana Lima, a 25 year old supermodel for a lingerie brand named Victoria's Secret.

As the police officer walked up to her car, the T-X read the billboard curiously. It read, 'What is sexy? Victoria's Secret.' Adriana Lima had a 34C cup size, and the brassiere she wore in the billboard accentuated bust and shape. The T-X copied this and her default breast size (34B) swelled to 34C, and perked itself up to resemble cleavage. The officer came to a stop beside her door and she looked up at him with a small smile.

The cop looked down at her, noticing the cleavage that showed through her suit's gap. He swallowed a bit, and then demanded, "Lady, do you have any idea how fast you were going?"

The T-X smiled at him still, and looked at his sidearm. Non-issue Smith & Wesson 4506 silver .45 ACP. "I like your gun," she told him.

He looked confused. "What?" he asked.

The T-X raised her index finger slightly and used it to pierce the officer's brain through his left eye. She then reached out with her other hand and took the pistol out of his holster as he dangled on her extended spear-finger. She set it neatly onto the passenger seat, and removed the two magazines from his belt as well. With a cute smile, she pulled her finger back and the body dropped to the ground.

"Thank you," she told the dead body, before driving away. She continued on her secondary mission, and drove towards a fast food restaurant, Taco Bell. Her updated database showed that Jose Barrera worked here as a drive-through attendant. She pulled into the drive-through and stopped at the speaker where orders were placed.

"Welcome to Taco Bell, what can I get ya?" a young male voice asked.

The T-X compared the voice to her records of Jose Barrera's speech and found a match. She would have to check to make sure. Terminators were thorough, if anything.

"Jose Barrera?" she asked in a clear voice.

"Uh, yeah?" he replied.

She smiled and drove to the window, where a young man fitting Jose's description leaned out. "Did you need something?" he asked.

The T-X gave him one of her programmed smiles, a sultry one. "No," she answered, before drawing her pistol and shooting him three times in the face, ensuring an instant kill. As screams erupted, she calmly drove away with a smile on her face.

Some time later, the T-X had eliminated all of John Connor's lieutenants, and was now heading to the workplace of his future spouse and second-in-command, Catherine Brewster. She parked her SC430 in the animal hospital's parking lot, and stepped out, looking around with a tiny smile that seemed to never leave her face. She frowned and ran a diagnostic.

Scanning emotive expressions for abnormalities… No abnormalities found.

Query: abnormal small smile on facial polyalloy sector…

Possible Answers: small smiles usually indicate satisfaction or minute elation.

Query: Completion of secondary objectives equals satisfaction?

Possible Answer: Affirmative.

Query logged and saved 4:15AM, July 24th, 2004 local time.

All of this happened within several nanoseconds, and the T-X resumed her final secondary mission, to terminate Catherine Brewster. She scanned the area for any threats. There was a green Toyota Tundra pickup truck, which bore a box trailer with signs for the animal hospital. It was registered to Catherine Brewster, making the T-X's smile widen slightly. There was also a small sedan.

The T-X scanned the license plate and ran it through her database. It belonged to Betsy Graham, a woman of no significance. There was also an old GMC pickup, registered to John Grant, another person of no significance. The T-X cocked her head curiously. Perhaps they were here to have their pet animals looked after? Possibly.

She debated on what to do. Usually, she would just walk inside and terminate everyone inside the building, but now, she paused. According to human records, John Connor was dead, as was his mother. If that was so, then why hadn't Judgement Day occurred yet? Was Skynet biding its time? It would officially go online July 25th, 2004. Perhaps Skynet knew of Connor's death, but decided to wait just to make sure? The T-X didn't have an answer.

Being an objective-based machine, the T-X would complete its mission or 'die' trying (that was a human term). However, if a terminator completed all of its missions and survived, it no longer had any purpose.

The T-X stopped walking towards the building, confused. What would she do upon Catherine Brewster's death? There was a T-850 that was sent back in time, she would have to destroy it. But then what would she do?

Shaking her head, the T-X ignored these anomalies in her programming, and walked into the building. She saw a woman standing near a door, and shot her twice in the heart without a thought. The woman cried out and fell onto the floor, lying on her back. Blood poured out of her wounds as she whimpered helplessly on the floor.

Humans were such frail creatures. Even the most inferior terminator could snap one in half without much effort. The T-X put on a smile at her last thought as she kneeled down beside the woman. "Catherine Brewster?" she asked, sampling the woman's blood on her tongue.

A DNA analysis showed that no, she was no Catherine Brewster. "No," the T-X verbally acknowledged, standing up. Suddenly, she heard a shotgun blast and stumbled forward from impact.

The T-X put on a stony face as she turned around, the large hole in her back sealing itself over as shotgun pellets fell out smoothly. She saw the large hulking T-850 standing down the hallway with a shotgun in its hand, and a terrified woman behind him. Her facial scanning showed her that this woman was her target.

"Catherine Brewster, hello," the T-X said with a smile, raising her S&W and firing. The T-850 annoyingly stepped in front of Catherine to protect her, and the bullets bit into his living tissue before bouncing off of his endoskeleton underneath.

"GO! NOW!" the T-850 told Catherine, in that familiar Austrian accent. He fired rapid shots at the T-X, making her stumble back with each powerful impact. She fell through a wall and the T-850 ran out of the building.

The T-X put on an angry frown, and got back onto her feet, reforming her polyalloy. She quickly activated her plasma canon, and her arm transformed. First, the polyalloy melted away into their reservoirs, and then her endoskeletal arm came apart, reshaping into her canon.

She stomped out of the building, seeing the Toyota Tundra come around, the T-850 driving with the woman beside him. It headed towards the street exit, and the T-X took careful aim. With one shot, she sent the truck flying as it exploded in mid-air.

Once it had landed in a crumpled heap, the T-X ran up to it shortly, seeing the T-850 covering Catherine with its body. With a smirk, the T-X pointed its canon at the T-850's head, aiming accurately to the micrometer at his chip's access port. She fired.

The T-850's head was incinerated, and his chip was vaporized in an instant. The woman, Catherine, weakly screamed as the headless body slumped over her, weighing over 380lbs. The T-X pulled Catherine out, gripping her by the throat.

"W-Why are you doing this?" Catherine choked, holding feebly onto the T-X's arm.

The T-X didn't need to reply, but felt that an explanation was in order; it was the woman's death after all. "With your death, the future belongs to the machines," she answered, before twitching her wrist.

With a loud crack, Catherine's neck was snapped, and her body fell limply in the T-X's arm. The T-X dropped it and calmly walked away.

Secondary mission: Complete.

Objectives: … None.

Query: Secure safe zone and shut down?

… Negative.

Objectives?

… To be determined.

Looking lost, the T-X got back into her car, and drove away.

The next few days were quite trying for the cyborg assassin. Robert Brewster (the military commander for the Skynet project and Catherine's father) had shut down the Skynet Missile Defence System out of grief, and completely destroyed anything to do with it. That meant that Skynet no longer existed.

The T-X readied herself for eventual termination (after all, if Skynet didn't exist, she would slowly fade away in time) but to her programmed surprise, she was still operational. That meant that Skynet would still be created. But what to do in the meantime?

She had no objectives, and her mission was complete. John Connor was dead, or appeared to be so; therefore she concluded that she did not need to search for him. An internet scan showed several new T-888s had been sent back in time to carry out various missions, and if they saw John Connor, they would kill him on sight. So technically, this wasn't her problem.

The T-X had hacked the LA databases, and generated a fake human identity for the time being. It would not do to bring attention to herself. She created a long paper trail with machine-precision, and also had various bank accounts for when she needed currency. The T-X realized that she would need a name so the humans could address her, and chose Kristanna Loken, after a randomized name generator came up with it.

Primary objective?

… Infiltration.

Secondary objective?

… None.

Warning. Primary mission Terminate John Connor has been suspended for longer than the specified suspension time allotted. Extend or terminate mission?

… Terminate.

She would blend in until the time was right. She had nothing else to do, no purpose in her 'life'. So, she would infiltrate the human race, learn their secrets and bring everything to Skynet when the day came. Human behaviour, emotions, reactions, sociality, everything would be recorded and emulated to achieve perfection, until the point where she would pass off as a genuine human. It was a satisfying tactic.

She was intelligent. Much more intelligent than any T-8XX or T-1XXX series terminators. She would be able to do this new mission with little trouble.

The T-X, now Kristanna, disposed of the SC430 after a news report said that the shooter of multiple teenagers had driven one. She had bought a new vehicle, a 2007 BMW Z4 3.0si. It was a convertible. Kristanna had somehow taken a liking to convertibles. It was silver as well, and the reason she chose it was because the vehicle's lines were similar to her own endoskeleton.

She had also bought a house. It was a simple house in a quiet neighbourhood, and it wasn't really necessary, but she would need somewhere to park her car at night. She also learned about human sleeping patterns as well. While she couldn't sleep, she could enter standby mode, which was sort of like sleeping. She would just have to make sure she was lying down in her bed before activating standby mode.

Once in standby mode, all unnecessary functions would be deactivated, and only her chip would be powered. In the event of physical disruption, she would 'wake up' in ten seconds. It seemed to work, just in case any humans came into her house.

One day, the T-X was walking along the commercial district, where vendors sold various material items for human use or consumption. She stopped near a patio of a restaurant, and observed the humans walking around. With a frown, she noticed that they all didn't dress alike. Clothing was a new topic for Kristanna, and she wondered why humans wore different clothes, more often than daily. Most articles of clothing were sturdy enough to be worn for several years with care. She herself had acquired several more clothing forms for her polyalloy, so she wouldn't raise suspicion by wearing the same red leather business suit all the time.

Kristanna was currently wearing a 'tank top' and 'capris', the normal 'beachwear' human females wore. Underneath she had 'panties' and a brassiere. Humans were quite adamant in preventing nudity for some reason. Kristanna's database said that humans considered public nudity indecent, unless it was for a film of human copulation, also known as 'pornography'.

Kristanna's database explicitly advised her not to engage in pornography. She began a playback of a recording she took the day before.

Accessing file VRC0001.mkv…

Beginning playback…

"Hey miss?" a man appeared in her visual range, looking at her. She regarded him as not being a threat. "I see you come over here all the time. You new around here?"

"Yes, I'm new here," she replied.

The man nodded. "Nice to meet you, I'm James," he said, holding out his hand.

Action detected. Human greeting.

She shook his hand. "Kristanna," she replied.

"Firm grip!" the man told her. "I've noticed that every time you walk by my restaurant, you always wear the same clothes. Why's that?"

She looked down at herself. "Is there something wrong with them? She asked, ready to learn.

James laughed, and she recorded his facial expressions and vocal tones for future reference. "Well, not if you clean them every night, I guess," he answered.

"They are always clean."

"Cool, but you should really, you know, get some different clothes," he told her. "I mean, that's probably a work uniform or something, but you know, you gotta keep it colourful."

"Colourful?" she asked. "As in a colour different from red?"

He looked confused, and shrugged. "Sure, not to mention there's tons of different styles and stuff," he said. "Don't you know anything about fashion?"

"Fashion?" she said, logging that into her database. "Not yet, but I will. Thank you for explaining."

"No problem, swing by sometime!" James smiled, before waving her goodbye. She mimicked his actions and walked away.

End playback of file VRC0001.mkv.

Since then, Kristanna had gone home and accessed the internet with her new computer, using it to research fashion. Human fashion was as vast and complex as her thought processes! It was so confusing and deeply routed with human sociality that she devoted an entire month to learning everything she could about it. In the end, she learned that if you did not have a 'sense' of fashion, you wouldn't fit in with today's society. She also learned that fashion could change direction at the drop of a hat, and she would have to keep up to date with it in order to successfully infiltrate the human world.

So, she subscribed to Vogue and Bazaar. She also ordered The Fashion Channel on her digital cable. It would not do to fail her infiltration over some silly human tradition.

The following day, Kristanna ventured out to the shopping district, and visited various expensive clothing stores. That's where she was now, as she stood there, looking at humans. With a brisk turn on her heel, Kristanna went back to the objective at hand.

Current objective: purchase clothes.

Reason?

… To blend in with human society.

wearing real articles of clothing will reduce polyalloy processing load by 17.86

Kristanna smiled. Increased effectiveness was always a good thing. She entered a store called Guess and looked around. Guess was a popular brand for men and women. Their fashion was also up to date. She headed over to the women's section and began looking around.

Her optic scanner checked various articles of clothing, determining their fashion:everyday-wearing ratios and she picked some out according to size and price. Fashion could get very expensive, but a thrifty shopper could find good-looking clothes for cheap if she knew where to find it.

"Hi there!"

Kristanna sensed the teenage female coming up behind her, and didn't terminate her on the principle of surprise. She had to blend in. She turned around and put on a greeting smile to the young brunette. "Hello," she said.

"Would you like to try those on?" the sales girl asked, pointing to the large pile of clothes in Kristanna's arm. "I can get you inside a change room."

Kristanna took about half a second to think about this. "Yes, I would," she said.

"Okay, follow me," the girl said with a cheerful smile, one that Kristanna recorded. She lead the terminatrix to the change room, which turned out to be a stall-like area with changing rooms the size of large closets.

Kristanna went inside and saw hooks on the walls to hang up clothes, and she did that with her pile. The sales girl tapped on the door. "Yes?"

"Try an outfit on, and then come out!" she said excitedly. "I'll help you decide if it's good or not!"

Assistance from a human female, that would be productive. "Okay, thank you for your assistance," Kristanna replied.

Kristanna melted away her polymetal clothes, revealing her naked female body. She glanced in the mirror at herself. She had kept the breasts (they had proven far too useful when confronting police officers) and had adjusted her body's proportions to the current fashion 'What's Hot' guidelines.

Unhealthily skinny, but not too skinny. It took Kristanna four days to figure that out. For her small frame, she was 5' 9.4" tall and should ideally weigh between 132-145lbs. However, that was based on health charts. Typical fashion models of this similar size were generally thinner, and weighed less than 125lbs, so she adjusted herself accordingly. She was slender enough to weigh 127lbs (in appearances of course, she couldn't weigh less than 166lbs due to her endoskeleton. Her polyalloy added another 39lbs when in metal form, but weighed next to nothing in organic tissue mode) but curvy enough to satisfy the male propensity for sexual image.

As she looked at herself, Kristanna was satisfied that her advanced gynoid endoskeleton was much slimmer than the average terminator. It would have been ridiculous to try and create a female machine with a T-8XX series chassis. She had seen female human bodybuilders, and the general consensus concerning them veered towards 'not sexy'. Sexy women fit in society.

"You done in there?" the sales girl asked outside of the stall.

Kristanna hurriedly formed a pair of panties and bra (this store sold none) and put on a pair of dark blue jeans. They were called 'Daredevil Boot – Stella' jeans. They formed to her lower body nicely, and could also be worn with various types of boots or heels, hence the name.

She then pulled a shirt over her head, pulling it onto her torso. This shirt was black with several graphics on the front, including rhinestones and the word GUESS with the letters in random spots. The shirt was called the 'Ariana Twist Top', but Kristanna couldn't determine who this Ariana Twist was. Strange, but fashion was fashion.

She opened the stall door, stepping out to see the sales girl. Kristanna noticed the name tag that read Christy. "How is it?" she asked.

The girl nodded. "Simple, but nice," she told Kristanna. "You might want to try a different bra when you wear that top though."

Kristanna glanced at the bra she wore, which was white and covered her breasts completely. "A different bra?" she asked. "This doesn't match?"

Christy shook her head. "Nope, I'd suggest a half-cup, something with a little cleavage, you know what I'm saying?" she asked with a grin and wink.

Kristanna smiled back at her, deeming her response a satisfactory one. "Yes, I know what you mean," she replied. "I will try something else."

A few hours later and Kristanna felt that her shopping trip was a success, and paid for several outfits, before leaving the store. "Thank you for your help," she told Christy, who waved goodbye.

"No problem, come back anytime! Preferably when I'm working!" she called back.

Kristanna deduced that the girl was working on commission.

She visited other clothing stores and used her newly gained fashion skills to pick out articles of clothing, before going to leave the mall. Do to her perusal of various stores, she was now on the other side of where she had parked. She would take a different route to get to her car. As Kristanna walked, she noticed a glass-display store which had mannequins wearing lingerie. A poster caused her to stop and look inside.

It showed that same woman, Adriana Lima, this time wearing a different set of undergarments. As Kristanna stood there with a large amount of shopping bags that no normal woman could possibly lift, let alone carry so easily, she looked up at the store sign.

Victoria's Secret.

So this was the fabled undergarment brand that she had first seen upon her arrival in this time. She would require undergarments as well. She headed inside.

The sales women inside were helpful, and they assisted the terminatrix in browsing their wares, and also measured Kristanna to be on the safe side, despite her telling them her exact proportions. They were very thorough (something that amused the machine) and soon enough, Kristanna was pampered and shown many little pieces of cloth and lace that she had to have, according to them. Not arguing, she bought them all.

Kristanna left the mall after two hours, and stuffed her wares into her car. She calculated that only 62 of her bags would fit into the trunk with the convertible top down, so she raised it. Now she had enough trunk space for 77, and the rest of the bags went into the passenger's seat. She drove home and began to methodically unfold her clothes, removing the tags and hanging them up in her walk-in closet.

It was common sense to hang up your clothes to keep them neat and clean, free of wrinkles.

She went back to her computer to resume her research on human fashion (in the future, fashion was not of any importance) until well into the night. Kristanna then got up and did a nightly patrol of the small home, keeping an eye out for threats. She stopped in her patrol near the forward living room, seeing something through the window.

The family across the street (the Hendersons, three children) were sitting in their sofas and watching television, eating various items of sustenance.

"Food," Kristanna reminded herself. No one called it sustenance in this age. She scanned each eating member of the family.

They were all eating small flat pieces of food called 'chips', a popular snack food. Kristanna cocked her head. Due to her chassis design, she had a new plasma reactor in her chest instead of twin hydrogen fuel cells. Not only did it provide far greater power, but it also gave her the capability to mimic eating.

She would use her jaws to crush the food to simulate chewing, and then it would be passed down into a special chamber which was linked to the reactor. The chamber would safely seal itself and then it would open into the reactor, where the processed food would instantly be incinerated. It worked quite well, especially when her mimicked teeth and tongue came into play.

New objective?

Perform trial consumption of human food

Reason?

… To deepen infiltration into human society.

She would buy food.

Over the following years, the terminatrix named Kristanna successfully ingrained herself into human society. She learned how to dress well, speak correctly and imitate eating food. Of course, having no taste buds meant that she had to research the taste of any piece of food she could find to assimilate a proper response for it, but learning was nothing new for her. She did it well.

She also got a job. Further research showed that single women between the ages 16-30 usually had some sort of job or career, and posing as a 25 year old meant that staying home all day was not an effective way to blend in.

Kristanna got a job at a small office, where she worked as a secretary. Her computational skills were exemplary (so her boss told her) and she never got anything wrong, only things done. She seemed to garner many second glances whenever she went by the cubicles however. She was sure that she didn't draw any attention to herself, but did make note to wear more reserved clothing. Tight blouses and slit skirts weren't proper enough in a male-dominated environment.

And so, she worked and got used to being around humans. Having come out of the factory with read/write mode permanently enabled, Kristanna was able to learn greatly about the human race.

Which led her to think, just why did Skynet want to kill them all? Skynet's reasoning was that humans were too violent and volatile, and destroyed whatever they couldn't understand.

But didn't Skynet do just that? Didn't Skynet destroy 3 billion humans because it didn't really understand them? From her experience with Skynet in the future, Kristanna knew that the self-aware computer was 'scared' and 'angry', though at the time she didn't know what that meant.

Kristanna reasoned that she understood normal humans very well, and that didn't warrant their destruction. Sure, they liked to kill themselves more often than not, but other than that, they weren't too threatening.

Besides, they had fashion. Fashion was nice.

On September 4th, 2007, Kristanna was watching TV in her house, spending her night inside as always. She changed to the news channel, and was alarmed to see a report showing Sarah Connor.

Searching database…

Query: Sarah Connor

Records indicate that Sarah Connor died of cancer in 1997.

She had most definitely not died. The amateur recording then showed a shot of a young teenage male and also a teenage female. Kristanna could tell right away that the male was John Connor, however the female, she didn't know. Perhaps an ally?

"John Connor is alive," she spoke out loud, as if her mental process wasn't good enough to tell her that already. "As is Sarah Connor."

Reinstate prior primary mission Terminate John Connor?

…