Chapter Text
His day starts like any other. Not with the raising of the sun, or the soft shaking-off of sleep, but with an alarm. Same as every other child his age. Off to get his teeth brushed, his clothes on, his ass out the door.
He skips those first two steps. He stopped wearing pajamas to bed years ago. Not that he knew that they were for that express purpose--just that they were soft, comfortable, and colorful.
The lights that greet him are the harsh opposites. Monochromatic, with only hints of white and grey detailing overwhelming amounts of red. Bright pops and flashes of flared flame, and sirens that singe all the same. Combat has already begun before he hits the top step. Wave upon red wave of enemy descending upon him, crossing the horizon like a biblical plague.
The only crop here to be pilfered here in the dirtless fields, however, would be himself.
Grinding metal pierces through the already deafening ringing. A battlebot's blade plunges into the vulnerable seam-line of one of the encroaching adversaries. A portion of the overlapped droning sputters, quieted to a godawful grinding whine. A follow-up blade sinks in alongside with pinpoint accuracy, and the temperature on the rooftop grows momentarily more sweltering as propulsion systems heat up to an unrecoverable pitch. Both the battlebot and the drone disappear in a burning blur. Barely a second passes before the air vibrates with the superheated blast of artificial wind of an explosion.
He doesn't flinch. Holding his own weapon tightly, he stands vigil in the more easily defensible position that is the stairwell's entrance. It's taken enough hits for him to consider it his stronghold--besides, who's dumb enough to stand in the middle of open fire?
Several more small, specialized bots take to the sky around him like a flock of birds disturbed. Many of them he will not see again after this fight--but if he's extremely lucky, he'll find bits of scraps along the bottom of the graveled craters that pockmark the rooftop: Tidepools of resources that he'll scrounge for whatever crumbs he can hopefully repurpose for the nth time over.
His name is Dirk Strider, and he's been immensely lucky to have survived this long.
But preparation goes a long way--as does the predictability of what is perceived as the mundane.
One day, none of that will prove to be enough.
For now, however, he fights for a life that hasn't ever known anything different.
And, as always, he picks himself up by the tattered strings and drags himself back into his toybox to stitch himself and his metal soldiers--more solder and scrap than sophisticated, but cut him some slack--back together. To entertain himself until it comes time to go through the paces of his deadly dance once more.
He thinks he'll put on a movie. That always helps to distract from the sting, at least for a little while.
"...Shot came out just that good the first time over. Which, good thing, too. The clean-up after that one take was already--"
"I'm sorry. Clean up? I was under the impression that this stunt was all SFX."
"Really? Nah. What you're seeing is 100% practical. You see the shine off that? You see, we got these big vats of basically oversized glitter, then we..."
The edited simulcasted playlist syncs up perfectly to overlay the appropriate part of a post-carpet interview with its corresponding scene. The dazzling, glitchtastic display flashes between garish, oversaturated brights and deep, grungy darkness.
Dirk mouths along with the lines, spare hand coming to idly mime out the other half of the man's voice's gesturing. His hand spasms a little, upset at the wide stretch. It got jarred when he took a hit and refused to drop his sword. He kept his shoulder safe, but his wrist is still complaining pretty vehemently.
He lets it come to rest on his jiggling knee and pours over his notes.
Obviously that weak point he got to see exploited at point-blank has a purpose. The heavily shelled shoulder plating shifts into that space in a way that looks disconcertingly like a facsimile of human breath. Or, maybe other things breathe like that, too? But do they? They're not that alive. They've got metal inside. He's seen it. He's picked up fragments of it. They're the only reason he still has material to work with up here.
Granted, if he didn't have them he wouldn't be going through so much metal in the first place.
He shakes out his hand again, frowning down at his makeshift notebook made of a bunch of envelopes unfolded and stuck upon each other in an abominous spine of spit and a mache-like layering of way too many flaps. Why he was left so many of these things when he has nobody to send letters to? He has no idea. Maybe they had another purpose, once upon a time? He hasn't been able to find any evidence of that, but maybe he just hasn't found the right show yet...
He adjusts his sketch again. They make that awful noise. The movement is always going on while they make it... Maybe there's a link there? His reasoning is pretty weak. They're always doing that, and they're always loud. But he got a front row seat to how the noises jammed up once his bot got its blade caught inside...
Then again, it was about to explode. It could be entirely unrelated.
He sighs. Whatever. It's still a solid enough assumption for him to consider it. No matter the component that lies beneath that thinner shell, the important part is: Weak point confirmed. Underlined. Exclamation point. Arrow. Red circle. That's... Actually really hard to see. Blue circle? Now he's making a mess. He'll draw another. It's not like he doesn't have the mental image burned into his brain at his point. He doesn't need to put his heart into drawing another one.
"...I'm actually really proud of this one," comes the voice through the speakers, and Dirk puffs out his chest.
"I'm figuring it out, Bro," he boasts, "I'm making it happen."
Right on cue, the voice continues, "Got to be one of my top 5 favorite..."
Dirk knows the next word in the sequence. He knows the whole line. The entire interview. He just conveniently fails to listen to the rest, letting the cadence rush over him like that of a warm wave when the sky is sunny and there aren't any storms. Or swarms. Even though he knows how to handle them both.
"I know. It's so rad, isn't it?"
He begins to draw again. This time, he'll include his theories in better detail.
Ringing Hornet. Is it a hornet? They seem insectoid, but they lack stingers. Real stingers. They hurt, but they don't carry any venom as far as he can tell.
Raging Buzzer. Do they feel rage? Machines don't feel. Why would they want to? It'd only get in the way of efficiency. Obviously these aren't very efficient. They can't even catch him. Often. For very long. That one time didn't count.
Droning Droid. ...No. What the hell. Drop the alliteration. What is this, Dr. Seuss? He's a Sesame man all the way.
A man, because if he was a child, he wouldn't live alone. He has his own house. His own room. He pays the taxes on it. Or collects them? He's the landlord. If you want to stay here, you have to pay up. If you're going to pay in cash, it'd better be in coins. He only accepts metal.
...But if you bring him more fabric, he might accept it. The stronger the better. He's running out of scraps to use for darning. He can't touch the bigger stuff. He might fit into them someday, and what would he use then? (Soft stuff may be considered. As long as he can touch it first to judge for himself.)
The things from the sky are mean. But also messengers. They bring many gifts--if only he can gut them out first. Unfortunately, they're rigged to explode if they take any significant amount of damage. Superficial seems fine, but if he only dings them, he's signing himself up with sacrificial stupidity.
There's got to be a way. There's always a way for anything. Sometimes it's just hard. He can swim across the ocean, it'd just be difficult. He can stand on his tip-toes forever. He's just not good enough at it yet.
He can do anything. He just has to find out how.
Dirk eats a very lavish dinner of a packet of dry noodles and a canned good. It's beets today. The juice is the best part, even if it risks staining his shirt. He pours some into the broth, stirring until the liquid is rich and almost drink-sweet. It turns his noodles a purple-ish pink. He pictures a glorious puppet with colorful, stringy fur and boiled eggs for eyes. Or a slice of raddish? Those go in noodles, he thinks. He hasn't had a chance to try them himself. He can't use the beets. Obviously those are for the nose and tongue.
There's something in the distance, and his head jolts up. His breath goes silent. The TV is shut off, and he holds his breath.
A noise. Wasn't there? He strains his ears, but hears nothing.
He listens. And listens. And listens.
Eventually, the noises do come again, and he is ready when it happens. He's exhausted from the wait, but he's not caught off guard. That's the important part.
His noodles have gone soggy by the time he drags himself back downstairs to finish them, and he promptly passes out.
Hours later, when he comes to wakefulness again, he's sore. Untended wounds sting and throb, but he doesn't have time to wash them out. Not yet. He has to check and make sure there's nothing coming over the horizon again. He's never had three so close together again--but he did just have two. Nothing is impossible.
It's only once he's sure there's nothing that he can stand under the cleansing spray of water. Salted and hot. Not for too long, though. Not again. He knows better.
He has to work on repairs. He has to make a new battlebot to replace one of the ones that were torn apart in duty yesterday. His numbers are down. He's running low on screws. He has to figure out a way to work without them, or take the time to make some of his own.
BRRRING!
There's so much to do, and he can't afford to fall behind.
BRRRING-BRRRING!
He just can't.
But he's not the only one who understands how hard it is to keep up.
-- tipsyGnostalgic [TG] has begun pestering timeausTestified [TT]! --
TG: been real quiet 2day
TG: u doin ok?
Thankfully, it doesn't take up too much of his vision to read a chatbox. And he's going to be thinking replies anyway, so It's not too hard to reply. He's not going to fall behind.
TG: ...that bsy, huh? :((
TG: jus figs we cant both have a good day
TT: I didn't mean to send all that.
TG: i no!
TG: cnp tho
TT: Shouldn't it be "CIP?" It's Case-In-Point.
TG: case n point sounds much better
TG: + u tote knew what i was sayin
TT: Are you sure you can't rig yourself a TtT system like mine? Then you won't have to use so much shorthand.
TT: No typos, either.
TG: and spill all my sauciest of thoughts? naaahh ill pass
TT: It's really not that hard to control.
TT: Maybe instead of screws I can use a sort of pin system. Less treads would be easier to make, but not as secure... Maybe a notched frame? Plug the pieces into place like a puzzle, tight enough that they can't come loose...
TG: would make maintenance p hard tho
TT: Maintenance?
TT: Oh.
TG: still leakin a lil
TG: dw i still dm
TT: Yeah.
TT: Maybe.
TT: But I don't tend to have them long enough to need to perform maintenance. If a design is faulty, I'll probably find out the hard way.
TG: and its p easy to start from scratch, huh?
TG: or scrap lol
TG: way easier than... well
TG: the meats good 4 tradin at least
Dirk nods to himself.
TT: Mutations working out then?
TG: wweeelll
TG: sssort of
TG: I've gotten some used to eating pumpkin!
TG: they still need to supplement w fish n ectogoo ofc
TG: theyre jus more omn than obli carn
TG: would b p hard to supply that much fish for so many of em with jus me
TG: and last time i let one out to fish for themselves one of the pacians lost a leggie :(
TG: theyre gnarld enuff they didnt rly care 2 much buuuut
TG: they can nvr kno socks n stripes came from downstairs
TG: nvr
TT: My lips are sealed.
TG: double seal em
TG: m talkin plastic wrap AND tape
TG: ll never get another fresh veggie that isnt a pumpkin again!
TG: u know my thumbs might as well be grey :(
TG: last time i tried 2 plant 1 of the seeds it died b4 mornin!!!
TT: Don't seeds take a while to sprout?
TG: ye! but like!
TG: trrrrust me
TG: ive tried a bunch
TG: the paces kno their paces
TG: theyre pros at this! its surprisin they didnt have more farmin n stuff b4 i came along
TT: Bad harvests?
TG: rly bad
TG: bad as my many many mny attempts ig
TG: o speakin of!!
TG: i got 2 try a cuc today
TT: A...
TT: Cuck?
TG: cuc!!
TG: cucumber!
TG: i think
TG: long and green and smooth skinned. lots of seeds! p crunchy! andd watery
TT: Wow.
TT: How was it?
TG: was good raw. nd i couldnt really find a lot of ppl talkin about cookin em online, but!
TG: i tried it and it was p good!
TG: might put em together w the pumpkin
TG: i think the green n orange would look nice 2gether :D
TT: I had some beets yesterday.
TT: Have you gotten any beet seeds yet?
TG: not yet!
TG: ur sure theyre all purp red like that?
TT: Positive. They're really juicy, too. They're practically swimming in it.
TG: I'll keep lookin!
TG: Can't wait to try em :D
TT: I hope you like it.
TG: and i hope you like pump n cumber!
TG: i swear ill get some 2 u someday!
TG: even some lettuce! or cabbage
TG: im still not rly sure which is which lmao
TT: I think cabbage goes good in noodles.
TG: cabbage it is then!
TG: just 4 u
There has to be more kids out there like them, surely. He just...hasn't found any yet.
Because if not one, then why not more? It's statistically improbable for the numbers to have stopped at just two.
A pin slides into place, and he fingers the too-long shaft--(TG: lol)--distracted. Thoughtful.
It comes out too loosely with just a tug. Filing it down wouldn't help now. But he could drill a smaller hole, or glue it in place. Worst come worse he could always try to melt it down for something else.
TT: Someday.
TG: someday is always sooner than u think!
He reaches for his tools and a thin hint of glinting red. There's always a use for something.
Dirk had an idea. It happened while the sun was at its hottest and highest, when it's better to let cameras check the sky than have him burn out his own eyes. When the temperature sapped at his energy, and it was really only the most efficient to lay down and soothe the ache in his eyes.
Wrapped in regal purple vestments and a blanket dyed a deep, undeniable red, he took to his desk and started to scrawl.
Long lines of fishing wire, tied in on themselves in criss-crossing hatches. It would be quite the investment--his bro left him half a dozen entire spools of the stuff. Plenty, if he had planned to use a rod. But he found out the hard way just how long it takes to reel something up that far--and how little leverage he has when the fish below might be just as hungry as he is.
He shivers, remembering the shock of salty water and pale tendrils the color of bone shifting through the unfathomably dark depths. How he had never seen the face of the creature it belonged to, and how far it managed to pull him before he realized that the rod was a lost cause if he ever wanted to see the surface again.
Maybe it was never a creature, what he saw. Maybe the fish that tugged him in was long gone, and what he saw was nothing but some sort of debris left over from the sunken city below.
It's all irrelevant. The point is, he has a lot of fishing wire and no pole to attach it to, and he's worlds better at other methods of fishing anyway. While the thread can be useful for other things (he's considered using it when he runs out of thread for stitching and fixing) he might just have a better use for it. Something more along its own nature, as well.
If he can weave the line together, fashion himself a net and tether it securely enough to the building so it doesn't float away... He's already having his battlebots lead the drones out over the water so that there's minimal collateral from the blast!
If he can get them to lead them directly over the trawlnets..!
Suddenly all that fresh scrap won't be lost to the fish anymore. And sure, he probably won't get all that much. Blast radii mean his netting would have to be huge to even begin to hope to catch any significant percentage of shed material, but even just a little..! That's infinitely more than what he can salvage by pretending he could dive down and scrape the seabed.
And way, waaaay easier. He can put his goggles aside for a different project now.
Dirk looks down at his piece of paper and the deceptively simple-looking design. In another set of eyes, he stares at a single unwound strand of thin, shiny cord. It's just line after line and after line tied into itself. It's almost silly, but he reminds himself of complexity, and how it would be compounding with each repetition.
He lets out a breath, feeling his heart hammering excitedly in his chest.
He can do this.
It doesn't matter how hard it is. He'll manage it.
His first attempt ends up tangled together in a horrible snarl. No matter how hard he tries, he can't figure out how to pick apart the chaotic bind of strands pulled too tight. It hurts to let any of it go to waste, but he ends up having to cut lengths of it free and hope he can tie the pieces back together into once-more usable line. It might ruin the efficacy. It might improve it.
Either way, he's forced to take the risk.
He starts again.
It works. Sort of. He never could decide if he should have woven a larger net, or a close-knit one. In the end he ends up with an unhappy medium. He gets some pieces, but loses many others. One large piece is all it takes for it to lose structural integrity and fold over itself, losing him even more gain.
He stands on his rooftop, looking over the edge and into the watery blue, tugging at the most sophisticated pulley system he could put together without risking it attracting attention during the firestorm. Thankfully, the bottom half of what he thinks was once a communications tower is still intact.
The top segment hovers above him ominously by its lifeline. Like a sword of damocles. Always swaying, creaking in the wind, but not yet ready to fall. He bleeds sweat and sweats blood. He drools out air and inhales his own spit, forced to stop and hack it back up. He pulls at the rope. He pulls at the rope. He pulls and he pulls and he pulls.
And he pulls up his prize. It's scorched along the edges, warped and sharpened by explosive force. But the smoke has been extinguished by the salted waters; its surface still shiny in places where unscuffed.
He holds what looks like the lower segment of an arm. It's missing its hand, and some of the internals look blown out, blackened and carbonized. But it's there, heavy and within his reach.
More than just a small piece of scrap.
He even managed to get back a piece of the battlebot that brought it to him, too. With any luck, he'll be able to salvage the controller.
He smiles, grin chip-toothed and manic.
This is the beginning of something really excellent.
The broken antenna over his head continues to creak. This is the start of something new.
Dirk had always thought that the metal fragments he collected from the huge, fuck-off skybeasts were strange. Something about the composition or the texture. The color, of course, but people can color metal. Cars were metal, he's pretty sure. And a lot of those were coated in stuff that made them look like plastic.
It could have been a weird kind of rust that came on until it was smooth. (Ish. Those spikes were no joke, something he's glad he's only found out a couple of times.) It could have been that the metal itself was a variety he hadn't heard of. Something made in the seas, or found far out in outer space.
Dirk doesn't (didn't. That was one dive he had to go deep into after) know much about how metal forms.
But when he pulls up a piece of scrap, large enough he worries about the line he so carefully wound together starting to snap, to find the segment moderately unsinged, he's ecstatic.
When he sees the internals twitch and pulse at him, the reactionary action of something dying with its last impulses, he's something else entirely.
Confusion turns to realization (independently controlled. Doesn't need a head to keep moving) and then to disgust, horror, and fascination.
Because what's inside isn't as much metal, wire, and servo as he was expecting.
But something soft, spongy, and leaking.
He doesn't vomit (because he's an adult and adults don't waste food just because their stomach feels a bit swimmy), but he does heave and swallow twice.
Then he goes back to poke at it some more.
It doesn't last very long. A day later, and its movements have gone still. Dormant and...
Dead.
Dirk binges wikipedia articles on metal formation and iron's role in biology until his ocean-eyes give out. And even in the crooning city of sleep, he finds himself shaken.
There is something else out there.
Something other than him and TG is alive in this world.
Dirk is ??? years old. It's hard to count something you didn't know you had to when it started, but he knows he's an adult. He's been an adult as far back as he can remember, even though he knows that he can't have always been. There are marks on the floor he doesn't remember leaving there; ergo there are parts of his life he does not recall.
He is an adult. He lives alone, he collects the taxes, he keeps himself safe. He doesn't know when his birthday was. He doesn't know who his mother was--but he knows he had a Bro, and that everything here was left for him.
Dirk is grateful. That's a mature trait to have, which makes sense. He is an adult. Something in the double digits. 10, 13, 16, 18. One of those important numbers, probably. He couldn't describe why, only that it must be.
He's old enough to experiment. To seize opportunity by the throat before it winds its way around his instead. That always sucks. It's hard to swallow when your trachea is bruised. He's pretty sure that's what happened that one time. He hasn't let it happen again.
See? He's smart. He learns. Even adults have something to learn everyday.
And, today, he's chosen what he wants to study.
He presses salt-coated fingers into trembling material and watches how it spasms. He pulls a mass of it free and watches how it desiccates in fast-forward, struggling to die.
He lays that piece aside, and takes another section to submerge into a jar of salted water. Another for a different concentration. A third with a negligible amount of the salinized solution, watered down as far as he could when his filters themselves are encrusted in the stuff.
The last piece he holds in his wiped off hands, until even the trembling has all but stopped.
The final jar holds fish blood, and he screws the top as tight as he can manage, muscles straining with the effort to somehow pull it further along the end of its track.
It reeks.
It smells worse when he checks on it days later.
He devises new methods, new hypotheses. He continues to collect.
And his robots begin to run red.
The fun begins when he starts to run slight charges through the aqueous solutions. Then things start to make some semblance of sense.
Or, at least it does, until he begins to look deeper. As is the nature of human understanding.
Dirk needs more jars.
Dirk sits on his living room floor, surrounded by detritus. Little bits of red sand have overtaken the carpet, fragments and dusted shell from where he's used a saw to slowly but surely crack open a burnt-out chest.
This drone had suffered a malfunction. Instead of detonating like every other one, this one had ignited. Maybe the detonation had still happened, but failed to deliver on the same kind of kinetic energy. It had enough leftover force to cause its limbs to detach, but the fact remains that, while burnt, this is the largest sample he's been able to collect by far.
And, more importantly, it's from a section he almost never gets to examine.
It's his lucky day.
He pulls, prying at chitinous metal with the tip of his screwdriver, wiggling in hopes of separating as much of the heat-fused "gutinous" organic matter as possible. That's not a word, but it's the best one he has in-head. He could probably look up a more suitable one but, at the moment, there are far more important mysteries to uncover.
There's one thing that's really bugging him, though. Even pries and chips and dissects, feeling out the smooth under-plating that either usually delves beneath the "flesh" of the creature, or merely appears to have now that most of the wetware has boiled off...
He's momentarily distracted.
There are ridges along the top side. Opposite matches to that of the overlain collar-to-shoulder sections. He scratches them against each other, and is surprised by odd, ringing quality to the sound they make. Is there a pocket in one of these? Something hollow to let the noise reverberate?
The fascination makes him ache to reach for a drill. But what if adding a hole ruins the effect? If he had another complete set, maybe, but the other half of this one is mangled. Dented and warped in a way that would hinder its functionality, if not ruin it entirely.
That thought brings back the source of his frustration.
He saw this drone get torn apart. When one of his battlebots had struck out, missing its intended target...the drone kept fighting for a moment longer than it should have. Somehow, that also meant that it could no longer explode. He watched his battlebot get eviscerated. He watched this drone stagger in midair, turning on still-fired thrusters to stare him in the eyes.
He watched it reach out. He watched it spasm.
He watched as it destructed. Blowing apart ineffectively and scattering its parts to the sea.
He watched a perfectly intact head plummet from his reach, missing his net and depriving him of all the secrets kept within.
Even after tearing the chest fully apart, harvesting whatever chunks of overcooked matter he could. Even after digging and clawing at any surface he could find, searching for anything else. Connections to follow. A hidden compartment, something.
It never left his mind.
He's found no chips. No motherboards. Only metal pipes strung like bones. Like secondary veins, encapsulating and insulating the strange, stringy meat inside.
Because there is metal. Seamlines. Invisible from the outside, but there.
There has to be some way it all functions. Something keeping it together. His best chances of finding out were the chest (burnt out, interesting, but ultimately unusable) and...
He pulls at his hair, wishing he could go back in time. Wishes he could unstick his feet from the ground and erase the fear from the heart that had lodged itself clear into his tongue.
He had the perfect opportunity, and he wasted it.
Except... He tips his head back, beholding the water stain that's been spreading since last storm season. (There must be another crack in the rooftop he hasn't been able to reseal. He's been busy, but if it festers it might make him sick.)
...Why should he wait for opportunity? He knows, now, that aiming just off the mark may just provide similar results.
Dirk should finish cleaning up in here. Store the parts that are in large enough chunks to warrant prodding at further, wipe off the table before he contaminates something.
He should also, really work on fixing up that crack.
The flesh--his, that is--has other plans. He conks out on the dusted carpet, shunted into the other place, and gives into the urge to tug at strands of keratin until the frustration ebbs into a dull pain spread beneath the surface of his scalp.
Forced into inaction but never truly still, he throws the covers from his purple-vested body and scrambles for the stack of paper on his mirrored desk. His brain pulls in protests, still aching to move, move, move, but he forces it into compliance.
Time to get started on those revised schematics, apparently.
He wakes up, skin raw where a shrapnel scratch had lain against the carpet for hours. What once was a non-issue in terms of size is now deciding to pitch a fit in terms of cleanliness. He sighs, scratches at the inflammation, and pauses when his eyes catch on the water stain once again.
Memory stalls, but he still ends up upstairs, rubber-like sealant and paintbrush in hand.
He glances over the ocean's horizon more than once during the process, and his mind's eye continues to rotate concepts the entire time.
Adjust trajectory. Aim a little to the left. Don't pierce the "heart", or "core", but nick an important artery. Let the fire bleed from the inside-out. Debilitate, and then, during those few, precious moments...
Sever the head from its neck.
Sounds simple enough, he reasons. Not easy, not a chance. But he pictures the order of events over again, visualizing exactly how he wants things to play out.
Three battlebots take to the air in formation. One to lure, one to pester, the last to strike. The striker will fall after doing its job, and the pesterer will be the one to cut him his prize. The last will quickly dip in to direct the head back to high-ground.
If things turn out right, he'll earn himself a head. Maybe even a good new portion of body or a whole limb or two into his netting (if it can support that kind of weight. But one limb would still be a huge catch in and of itself). As for his bots...
Projected casualties range around the midpoint of two. It'd hurt to lose the third (hurts to lose any of them, really. More than one per combat is running him into a Serious deficit). Two is already cutting his resources suffocatingly tight.
But there's also the off-chance things go especially well, and nothing goes bad at all. All three bots retrieved safe, sound, and whole. Hell, maybe even the whole droid. Many articles tout the endless benefits of positive thinking... So why not start counting miracles?
Because real life doesn't work in miracles and fantasies.
Almost nothing went to plan. The three battlebots had flown in perfect formation, sure. He had plotted that out so, so carefully. The first one had sunken its blade directly into the projected spot... Except the hulking sky behemoth failed to be distracted. When the lure failed to draw attention, the pesterer took center stage. Harrying, nicking, even going straight for the face.
The machine was undeterred, eyes set on one thing and one thing alone.
He had backed away, once again bogged down by the gravity of that seemingly fleshless glare. (Except he knew. He knew there was more down below. Connective tissues. Sinew. Maybe even optical nerves. A brain--not just chips and boards and wiring and servo--)
Dirk was terrified of what it could have thought. If it had somehow learned of his plan. If it could see him--or even through.
Maybe even more thoroughly than he had to them.
When all three of the bots had failed to drag its attention any further than grabbing one and squeezing it until its chassis had dented--its mechanisms shrieked in ways that would make you think there was a small animal trapped inside (maybe that's how they worked. Not his, he's never even seen one. But that's the thing about the unknown--)
The last bot was forced to go into action under unfavorable conditions. Striking still, but on a moving target. A determined target. No matter how calculated a trajectory...
He'll never know if it truly managed to sink true.
Dirk bobs in the sea, frozen stiff. Petrified in fear and pain and shattered adrenaline. Cradled in his own net, surrounded on every side, but thankfully not tangled so severely to be locked under the surface.
He was lucky. Lucky to have landed there. To not have plunged so deep that the disorientation would have left him swimming down instead of up. That the net gave him something to cling to, and drag himself to wind-whipped air.
Dirk coughs, belching up salt in various forms and consistencies, but still lives despite being blown clear off the roof.
Maybe he could count his blessings. How infinitesimal the likelihood that the resulting scuffle of still-whirring bots and an aggressor hot not on his heels, but his entire front, despite his attempts to get clear, no matter where he ran, no matter how intricate the evasive maneuvers he tried. Learning, they have to have been learning, he was screwed--
How small the chance it could have led him to that precise section of the roof. That tiny section of tamed ocean. The unforgiving, many-tendrilled grip of safety...
But all he can focus on is his bitter failure. The littering of shiny silver shards strewn around him. The acrid smell of smoke and toasted, metallic flesh plugging his nose and making it even harder to breathe. The long, long, long, aching climb back to the surface that awaits...
The world isn't nearly that kind.
He doesn't know why he ever expects anything different.
The next several weeks are rough. Dirk doesn't know if the ever-present pain is from the impact, or from the extra exertion the climb turned out to be on pre-tenderized muscles. Maybe he cracked something. Maybe the back of a rib. He doesn't know. Sometimes the sprains hurt just as bad as a break--and all he knows is that when he twists or tries to bend something in the plane of his back spasms harshly enough to make his teeth chatter.
It's agonizing, but that's the least of his problems.
His foolhardy behavior has not only made movement a difficult, painful affair, but he also lost all three of his allotted battlebots. Three of which he honestly, really could not have afforded to set aside in the first place. But he did, and now he has to pay the price, even if said cost is driving him further and further into debt. And for what? If you asked him to show, all he'd have to display would be a body-spanning bruise and a helplessly mangled amount of scrap.
Sitting is painful. Hunching over is painful. Tinkering, as a whole, is painful. But Dirk has to push through the distraction. He's behind. He's behind. He has to keep up. His numbers are more important than ever, now that he's relegated to staying downstairs. Dirk can't supervise and revise commands on the fly--not when he's certain that any attempts to flash out of harm's way would end up with him as a twitching heap on the ground.
Practically as good as dead.
His other body isn't beat up like this one is, but there's nothing he can do on the flipside. Anything he makes there remains there. It's good for testing out new designs without running through his stash of materials (thin enough to be pulled through the eye of a needle), but that's about it.
Unfortunately, this body is heavy. It begs to be horizontal and flat. It begs the ground to be merciful beneath him. To be pliable and warm and secure.
The pull of it weighs on his other self as well, pulling it in like a depression in quicksand.
He zones out, and even while blinking red and purple from his eyes, he aches. Two realities bumping into each other, even as he claws and tugs, only to attempt to drive them in a little further down the line. To straighten out a bent, but thankfully returned screw. To solder it back together when it unfortunately snapped. Dubious in integrity, but by the time the patchwork is on and hardening he's already panting from the exertion.
Shoddy cameras keep him updated on the world outside from the surface of his computer monitor, and he glances up at them constantly, not entirely trusting his ears after having been so close to that blast. Is it peacefully quiet--or is the whole world just as muffled as it was while submerged? He turns the growing habit into a tic. A compulsion. He keeps looking, keeps working, keeps going.
He manages to frankenstein a new bot together. It's smaller than even his latest prototype. Its blade is more of a knife: barely longer than his hand from wrist to middle fingertip, and its own tip is rolled at the end where he couldn't manage to hammer out the razor-sharp slice of wreckage he had carefully bent out of its half-gnarled spiral.
It's not pretty, his patchwork creation. But the bits of blade that aren't rolled are sharp, and the hull is thick enough that it shouldn't shake apart when he turns it on.
He flips an internal switch, then activates the rest via remote, re-inputting the protocol he knows by heart. A set of instructions that, while perhaps not the most sophisticated, have kept him safe enough this long.
Machinery hums to life. Buzzing beneath his palms, warming slowly like awareness fettered into being. He lets it run, waiting for diagnostics to return, and takes the moment to rest his eyes.
The warmth under him grows. Comforting, at first. Then concerning. The smell of burning catches his nose, and he jolts upright in hot panic. Pain sears him for his hastiness, but he pushes through it in a rush to turn everything off.
There's a muted pop, and his dismay crystallizes. He restarts the bot in an extremely low power setting used exclusively for a system of call and response.
He calls.
There is no response. The shell remains inert. His hands shake when he carefully dismantles it enough to open it up, just to be greeted by a puff of noxious smoke.
Without much hope, he tries to salvage the small, vital piece of board. Maybe he can still trace and repair the connections. Maybe they aren't even broken, and he just has another battery he needs to chuck into the sea. Power is something he still has plenty to spare--
Black. Burnt. Melted capacitors and leaking acid. The smaller space left nowhere for the heat to go, and even one moment of hesitation was too long.
Unusable.
He can't cry. Crying would make his vision go blurry. Prevent him from double-checking if anything could still be used. Prevent him from gutting the shell and starting again. Ensure he remains another bot down when things get inevitably worse.
The tears roll down his face, aggravated further by the lingering stench of melted electronics.
Dirk becomes a miserable curl on the ground, trembling and wracked.
He can't help it.
He's only human, after all.
Dirk doesn't want to talk about that month. He doesn't want to think about it... So he doesn't.
He survives, and that's the short of it.
Later, when pings come to him, interspersed throughout his nights and days, curious and concerned, he lies.
He was just busy. Overcome with work. The usual affair of it all. It's not even wrong. Misleading yes, but only in that he's keeping the details vague. It wouldn't be the first time.
Through his teeth, he tells the world that he's fine. Because what else can he be? The roof over his head shuddered, and cracks have bloomed like bruises that won't ever go away. Explosions don't rock him, and they haven't in ages. He jams a pair of headphones over his ears and cranks the volume until they ring. He watches over footage, poring over details, forcing himself to absorb them.
Things get better, things get harder, and he bends with the blows. Dirk adjusts and he. Moves. On.
Things rack up. Injuries don't always heal well. Appetite withers in the face of repeated doses of stress. He's keeping up, but he isn't. He's making it through, but not well. His forces continue to dwindle, and he's feeling the toll.
One evening he's gone so long on for so long that even having his eyes closed feeds into the migraine that's compounded itself in whatever hollows exist in his skull. He's malaisant. Reality aches too much to pay any mind, but he's forced to carry through motions regardless. Dragging a feeble core with somehow even shakier limbs from his bed, just to try. To barely eat. To barely keep himself going.
He doesn't shower that day, even when the itch of his own skin drives him insane.
It's as if the powers that shouldn't be catch wind of his weakness, like blood in the water. Maybe it's just a matter of time. But the sky outside blots crimson along the horizon, buzzing with the locusts of war. So many of them--at least a dozen. Maybe two. Maybe even more beyond the planet's curve. He couldn't tell you. He wouldn't waste the frailty of his voice to try.
He can't possibly take on them all. Not now, maybe not even before.
His sword pulls at his wrist uncomfortably, he only adjusts his grip and keeps going.
Dirk isn't without hope. Not yet. There exists one precious saving grace. A failsafe, left for him and rarely used. A miles-wide EMP. A double-edged sword. As long as it functions, nothing can touch him--but neither can he use any of his own tech.
Communications withered; his machines refusing to power on. Whatever it's made of is powerful stuff. He'd say he was too afraid to take it apart, lest it never worked again...
But that'd be a lie. It'd be foolish to rely on something that he can't repair. He's dismantled it many times, figured out what parts do what. He just doesn't have the components on hand to recreate it, in its worst-case scenario.
Once it's gone, it's gone. There's a reason it's left for only the most desperate of rained-out days.
That, and there's an additional drawback as well. Not only does it mess with some important tech he relies on for his everyday life--it can't run in perpetuity. Eventually, the pulse will need to recharge. Eventually, everything it had disabled will come back online.
Every single monster he sends to the bottom of the sea will return to him, numbers only bolstered by the build-up.
He learned that lesson early on, back when he was dumb enough to think there could be a quick, easy fix for everything in life. Hunger with the mysterious, crumbly packets in the kitchen. Itchiness with the bubbly stuff in the cabinets.
The awful things from the sky with the strange rod dangling from the roof.
The sky had gone silent. Life had seemed calmed. He turned off the noise to go watch some shows...
And a reckoning rose from the waves. Zombies of salted rust.
Being wet definitely hadn't made them any calmer.
But what other choice does he have?
Dirk drags himself to the top, faces down his death, and swallows. His well-saved breath is used to retrieve the most vital parts from the corner of his 'dex. Even with shaking fingers, he's quick work at reuniting Humpty Dumpty with Hail Mary in their beautiful, but tenuous marriage.
He doesn't blink. Doesn't flinch, doesn't count blessings on whether or not the machine would still turn on. He just breathes in the strung-out silence when it does.
Dirk's got work to do. He's on a ticking clock. It's time to double down. He needs to scrape the bottom of the hollow barrel of his home, and churn something out that can save him. The few bots he has in commission right now would barely scratch the surface, he's not going to pretend they're going to have a chance at cutting it.
He knows he has at least a day before the EMP gives out. Maybe longer, since he had tried to spruce up the half-ruined tower in case of emergency. With that bit of rewiring at play, maybe the charge will hold out better...
His brain registers a hypothetical number. Hours. A day. Several?
Of safety. Of absolute stillness.
Waves lick peacefully against steel struts. He can see no signs of what lies beneath the surface. A breeze rustles through his hair, kissing his skin and relieving the heat of what could be anything from exertion to fever.
And his body curls itself into a ball, shutting down on him to rest.
He'll let it run. Maybe, if he's lucky...
No, he's armed with more knowledge than he had been before. He doesn't have to rely on just that.
Maybe, just maybe... If it runs long enough... They'll all drown down there.
Beings with heartbeats have to breathe sometime, don't they? Even if those beings are nothing more but things.
It's a sort of lethargy he exists within, laying in sheets that wrinkle, but never smell. Nothing in that building ever has. Dirk doesn't know if it's because there's just no such thing, or if it's because he hasn't wandered far enough. Maybe he's just used to it.
Or maybe there's nothing to smell. Does this body sweat? It doesn't need to eat. It doesn't need to cough or sneeze. There's no cool breeze, no salt, no fish, and no metal.
It's not empty, he knows. There's a civilization down there, right beneath his feet. The issue there isn't rust like it is back home, but with the addition of a single letter...
He doesn't trust it. The sky doesn't scream here; it whispers. The words are incomprehensible, but their tones are so apologetic, so sorrowful that it makes him too uncomfortable to ever try to decipher it.
The voices change, forever shifting and overlapping, whenever he edges towards his window, but he's never needed a warning to know that the world is dangerous. He's cast his eyes upward before, but never seen a thing. No stars, no moons, and no suns. Just a planet tethered to another by a chain of purple links.
He wondered, at some point, if that meant they were never meant to be connected. If one body or the other had been captured, lassoed and tamed. Built upon in an extension, and maybe added onto in a belt of cities. Countries? Communities.
Or, if maybe even more fantastically, one had been created. A world hollowed out, and a new one fabricated from the last. Bubbled-out. Could one be nestled back into the other? Is there enough left in the smaller to repeat the process? A celestine matryoshka, all the way down to the scale of a single atom.
He pictures Pac-Man, for but a moment, then lets out a stale breath. He rolls over, hoping that it might work like turning a mental page and let him find something blank. Or at least different.
It feels like the page he flips to is covered in splotches of ink. Another page, and he finds the ink has stained through. He can flip all he likes, but the wetness sticks to his fingers, smears his prints onto the edges of the stack.
The whispers change again. A lilting quality he's come to recognize...And he pushes himself floatily to his feet.
Sure enough, a Dreamer is out. A figure in purple drifts, bobbing on invisible waves, as they're drawn further out to sea.
Concern begins to outweigh his exhaustion. Sparing a glance towards the shadowy streets below, he slips out from his window and into the perpetual night. Even that much effort feels monumental, like he's gripping at a pulley's rope just to pull himself forward.
The whispers grow even louder once he hits open sky. It makes him feel seen, like he should immediately duck for cover and hope to remain out of view. There's not much sound out this far--nothing but the rustle of his own clothes as he rises. Even that feels too loud.
He reaches the Dreamer, all curls and snores and smiles, even in her sleep. All it takes is a threading of fingers, a pressing of palm to palm, and her wakeless wandering is interrupted in favor of bumping back into him. It's like all her momentum reverses direction, and Dirk winces at the sleepy warmth of her.
Much too vulnerable. She may not be sitting, but a duck in flight is still a duck. He casts his eyes down again, then quickly pulls her against the nearest building.
Even while under an alcove made of overhang and fanciful architecture, Dirk dare not breathe. Roxy, however, shares no such caution. Her breath rattles dramatically, and her head lolls tiredly on her neck. It comes to rest momentarily on his shoulder, and part of him wishes his shoulder pads managed to muffle her, even a little.
The coast still seems clear, thankfully. Maybe he caught her early on enough that nobody saw her--and by, extension, him. He plays it safe, though. Stopping and starting, weaving through only the hardest-to-glance locations all the way back to her tower.
"Ah, there's the brat. Was wond'r'ng where she got off tah."
Dirk startles. Constructively. Sweeping Roxy behind him and away from the figure that's turned to look at them from a rumpled bedside.
"You have our t'anks for bringin' her back 'round. Really save us the tr'uble." The figure twitches their fingers, and he flinches in kind, on the edge of lurching, but whether that be forward on the aggressive or backwards on the retreat has yet to be determined.
He can keep her safe. But maybe it would be better to let her go. He'd have both his arms back, she could fly free and escape...
Nothing happens save for the falling of crackling ashes. Smoke curls, proving his earlier hypothesis wrong. The smell is somehow worse than he was expecting it to be, from what he'd seen on TV. He had always figured that cigars couldn't be much worse than an oil fire.
Evidently, he is often wrong.
A gasp sounds from behind him, and he whirls. A behemoth of a carapacian stands between him and the window--where did they come from? Were they up on the round of the tower? Were they clinging somewhere down below? These towers don't have a lot of detail--the how doesn't matter.
What does is the pained shudder of Roxy--his one true friend--'s expression as hard-shelled hands come to bear around her chest. He can practically hear every one of her ribs creak, buckling and threatening to break.
He doesn't really think about it. He's digging his heel into the ground, pushing off to lunge at a speed that would put even the finest engines to shame.
BANG.
His momentum sputters out before it can even begin. Warmth leaks down his front, into some sort of crevice that makes it horrendously difficult to draw in a breath enough to shout.
"'nd fer bringin' yerself as well, of c'rse," the voice continues, almost unbothered. He hadn't forgotten about them, but he was hoping they wouldn't be an immediate threat.
The smell of smoke has compounded. Hotter, somehow. More shocking. Two of his friends are fond of guns--but he never thought he'd be at the business end of one.
Dirk's limbs give out on him.
He was in trouble the moment he let them get flanked. And that's the thing, isn't it? He let this happen. He led Roxy back to her tower--he hadn't even considered the possibility that she had fled it for a reason.
"What? Nothin' t'say? No last w'rds? 'nd here I thought you were 'wake 'ready. Sure seemed so when ya came chargin' in here like some kinda blockhead. If'n I didn't know any better, I'd've said you were tryin' t'be a hero 'bout it." A laugh, short and barked and annoying even against his ringing ears. "Oh well. Like'n I said," there's a quiet click of small, delicate metal parts clinking together. "All th'easier 'fer us."
No.
He doesn't speak the words. Doesn't give the chump the satisfaction. In another world, he's fine. Tired and achy, but just laying out on the rooftop and soaking up some moonrays. He digs into that life, drawing in a deep breath that doesn't rattle like the one he does here. He clutches at his intact chest, holding himself together through that connection. It's not that bad, really. He's overreacting. He's had worse, hasn't he? There can always be worse. He's just not used to being hurt here. That's all. He's unused to it.
He'll get used to it. But, more importantly, Roxy won't.
His blood leaves strange patterns on her carpeted floor as he flings himself. His wreck might be being abandoned, but it won't be anything compared to these guys when he's done with them.
The big guy grunts in surprise when he latches onto their face. Nails scrabble to dig into the rivets in a girthy as hell neck. Teeth break through brittle shell through sheer fucking determination. The guy flails, making some appropriately oafish noise, and he feels a hand grabbing for the back of his own neck. It misses a few times. It also feels big enough to crush his vertebrae like a block of undercooked ramen.
Good. If that hand's working on getting on him, it's not on Roxy.
"Damn," that unaffected voice speaks up from across the room. A raspy laugh follows, "Maybe I shoul'a kept my yap shut, but I'll admit, tha' show's werth it. You got the pipsqueak, H'arts?"
Dirk's managed to get his knee up on the behemoth's shoulder. Maybe if he gets his other leg around he'll have enough strength to choke them out with his thighs. Ain't no way his hands are going to reach the whole way around.
"...Keeps movin'..." The oaf complains, and Dirk makes sure to slam his elbow into the top of their head twice as hard. A mistake. Pins and needles surge up his arm, somehow even worse than the burning hole in him.
A rolling click. "Then get it to stop movin'," the voice suggests dryly. "Ah, hold it--"
The struggling beneath him suddenly stops. Dirk almost pitches over when the change from bucking bronco to clinging koala nearly kills his balance. This should be his chance. Maybe if he works fast enough, he can jam his fingers into this guy's eyes, and while they're left screaming he can--
BANG.
A scream rings out. But it's not the one he was hoping for.
Dirk's eyes widen, and he pushes himself up. A spray of red flies through the open air, blooming on purple vestments, so similar to his own. Time doesn't slow down--don't they always say that time is supposed to slow down? If anything, it seems like it rushes on all the faster. His reaction is what feels too damn slow. He goes to pull himself up and over, kick off and out and reach her.
A hand, broad and hard-edged, digs into the back of his thighs, tight enough to make him jerk.
"'ey, I got it!" The oaf proclaims, sounding proud in the way only a fool ever could. As if they don't understand the gravity of what's just come to pass. Maybe they didn't even notice.
The scene plays out in his head, over and over. A glimpse of drowsy eyes, wide-rimmed in shock and pain. A hint of shimmering pink... And the other a blown-open hole of horrific red.
Dirk's throat is on fire, and his fingers feel numb. Even the bullet hole put through him does nothing more than tingle somewhere on his periphery. Somewhere, a cloud has passed overhead, and he's hyperventilating so badly he's about to choke on his own spit.
A "Bravo," is uttered, followed by a slow, sarcastic clap that statics over in his ears.
"So, uh..." The grip on him falters for just a second. He should use this chance. Get to her. Maybe it's not as bad as it looked. Maybe he didn't see what he thought he saw. All his body does is tremble. "What do I do w' 'm?"
"Wha'v'r you feel like," the sound of a suck, and a steady blow. "Y'know the orders. Jus' a' long as the 'little royals' are snuffed out."
"...T'ought the orders were for ray-eels?"
"Same diff'rence," the other voice sighs. Then again, "'Ey mean the same t'ing."
"Aw, righ, righ'... Well." He's peeled off like a limpet, faced with a blood-streaked face. Some of it isn't even his. He observes the bitemark he's left behind. There's no pride to it. He only feels numb. The eyes of the creature close slightly when they smile. "Nigh'y, nigh', little eel."
When the hand closes on the back of his head and his skull collapses, protective casing turned to cutting shards and crushing delicate synapses--
All he wishes is that he could respawn back in his tower. That his fellow Dreamer could be out wandering again, or even safe and sound in her own, undisturbed bed.
Or that dreams could have just been dreams, and that none of it meant anything at all.
It doesn't stop him from waking up screaming.