White on white on white on white.
The place he arrives at is completely overgrown with pale plants and is somehow more decrepit than the rest of the facility. The hulls of machines litter the ground, and the plants grow over them just the same as they would a filing cabinet or a cardboard box.
He pads through the area, the thick covering of plants muffling his footsteps. He actually likes this place more than most. It’s quiet, and a welcome break from the dark gray steel and the garish pink of the coolant.
He catches sight of his quarry at the end of a hallway, talking to a machine twice its size. Axis tells it to stay hidden, glances at his pursuer, and flees. The larger machine stares at him a moment, then lowers itself into the ground. When approached, the panel lifts a fraction, and magenta LEDs peer up at him. It asks him not to hurt the flora.
A slow blink. Is it broken? It’s impossible to take more than a single step without treading on a plant. Clover continues the chase, uncaring whether or not a flower is underfoot.
As the trio leaves the darkness of the corridors, the pink, luminescent ocean of coolant spreads out before them once again. The expanse is crosshatched by walkways and punctuated with wide, squat facilities in varying states of ruin, looking like rotten molars jutting out of gums. Clover had hardly noticed it during his first visit, but it seems like the facilities really were designed to rest on the surface of the fluid, and the walkways (without guardrails!) were actually meant to be walked on. And not just by machines; Clover is able to pick out the remains of an office, the walls having crumbled and fallen into the depths to reveal a desk and chair and filing cabinet within the interior. Monster architecture is truly abominable.
To his left, Ceroba scoffs and shakes her head right alongside him, then looks affronted at having shared any kind of sentiment with him. To his right, Starlo grins and strides forward into the unknown, motioning them all to follow. Clover and Ceroba make matching sounds of exasperation and follow along.
They pass an empty spot on the walkway, one where Clover distinctly remembers his first encounter with the automated workers of the Steamworks. A jandroid, and it had been so corrupted that it cleaned nothing and threw trash at everything. Even its cleaning supplies had been turned to making messes, slicking the floor with chemicals that would defy even the best nonslip tread, and the bottoms of Clover’s boots aren’t exactly new. Amusingly, it had come the closest to actually killing him, barring exceptional encounters like those with Martlet, Ceroba, and others; the broken-down thing had nearly made him slip and fall into the coolant even after it was destroyed. Well, it’s funny in retrospect. At the time, Clover had been incensed, and he’d kicked the jandroid’s wreckage into the coolant for the trouble it had caused him.
That jandroid isn’t here. The murder weapon had said something about evacuating in both of his lives, and Clover’s pace is slower thanks to these two tagalongs. It must have had time to drag the straggler off somewhere.
The notion that the weapon seems to care about things floats through Clover’s head, but passes just as quickly. If it cares about things that mock life in how poorly they simulate it, then that’s its own fault.
Clover pulls himself out of his own head as they reach the manta ray. It lies on the surface of the coolant, imitating a fish he had seen on TV before, once or twice.
“The-The-The floor is lava, travelers!”
“I am sorry to say I failed the game some time ago-bzzt.”
“H-However-r, you do not have to! I will ferry you across-bzzt!”
Starlo and Ceroba look at each other. They’re just beginning to talk about the merits of trusting this machine or finding some other way around when Clover brushes past them and steps on, feeling the purr of its electric motor under his feet. He’s tempted to just take the manta ray without them, and he probably would, if he believed he could convince it not to go right back and get them once he disembarks.
It occurs to Clover that he could just destroy it instead, once he’s done with it. It’s not alive.
…
The manta ray departs with three passengers.
“Y’know, Lil’ Deputy, ya coulda waited fer us ta get done talkin’.”
Ceroba says nothing, but her ears are folded back and her arms are crossed. Both of them had tried to insinuate themselves at the front of the manta ray, but Clover had planted himself at the helm, or what passed for it, and continued to give instructions by putting weight on his feet in particular ways. Piloting through spoken command is possible, but Clover prefers this method and the ray prefers it, too. It feels like having a rider, rather than a passenger, or so it had said in another life. This machine was blessedly not as prone to jabbering as the others, and it had been exceptionally helpful, so Clover had bothered to listen to what little it did say.
For the moment, Clover pretends that he doesn’t know the exit is past a debris-catching gate and that he doesn’t know where the control panel is to raise it. It’s tiresome. The brief moment in time where Martlet had known of his foreknowledge, without truly knowing, had been liberating. Clover presses down a little bit harder and the ray picks up speed.
“Buddy, look, I dunno what’s goin’ on here between you ‘n Ceroba, or between you ‘n me, but we’re here ta help out.”
“This place is too dangerous for you.”
“Is that why yer so steamed about us comin’ with ya? If it’s dangerous fer us, it’s dangerous fer you. What about the robot’s hand that got latched onto ya? You’d’ve never gotten outta that on yer own!”
“I had the machine dead to rights.” Then he’d been distracted, Clover doesn’t say.
Said distraction picks up on it anyway, but Ceroba becomes more pensive than angry. “That machine recognized me. It knew my name, and it knew my daughter’s name.” Her brows knit. “And it told me to find his creator. That must be Chujin.”
Nobody quite knows what to say to that. Clover steers into a dead end and backtracks. It’s about time to “discover” the proper route, and he directs them toward it.
“You really did a number on it. I didn’t see you do it, but I saw the damage.”
A nod.
“The next time you see that machine…. don’t hurt it.”
“Excuse me?” “Ceroba? Ya can’t expect Clover ta jus’—“
“I’m fully aware of what I’m asking!” Her muzzle starts to peel back from her teeth in a snarl, but she stops short, and her posture folds in upon itself. “I know what I’m asking. I just want to keep as much of his memory alive as I can. He was so proud of his work in robotics and he was heartbroken when he… when he retired. He acted like he wasn’t, but I know he had his whole heart in this job here.”
Clover eases the ray to a stop at the edge of a platform. A hand touches his shoulder, and his head snaps around to stare at Ceroba. Meeting her eyes causes a flash of terror to ripple across her expression. She shivers, and the fur on her arm stands on end. She tightens her grip in defiance, almost pricking Clover’s skin with the tips of her claws.
“Please,” Ceroba says. She tries to fix her expression so that it’s not fearful or angry, and she tries to do the same for her voice, but none of it really works. “It would mean a lot to me.”
Clover shrugs her hand off and walks away.
Ceroba watches him go. She wants to go, herself. She wants to leave this place, go back to the bar, and drink herself stupid, because the more time she spends around this human, the more she is convinced that he is not the one, and that awful, awful feeling of being in danger only burrows deeper into her heart. It was bad when she first saw him in the saloon, but when she laid eyes on him again, here, in this place, she had been stricken by how afraid she was. Afraid and angry. It only gets worse when he looks at her or at Star. Or says anything or does anything, really.
Martlet was wrong. This human isn’t worth knowing. His SOUL, even if it were pure, or close enough, is not gentle. She can see it in the eyes and hear it in the voice. It’s not kind. Not enough to implant it in her daughter.
A hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, I know this is hard, but thanks for sticking with it.”
“Huh?” Ceroba jolts out of her own head to stare at Star dumbly.
“I know it’s tough fer ya to be around ‘im, ‘specially after what happened with the last human and Kanako. I’m sure Feathers really appreciates it.”
What? Ceroba shakes her head, getting herself back on track and putting her lies in order. She’d implied that she was here on Martlet’s behalf, back when she’d first caught up with the human, and Star must have overheard. Which means she’s lying to Star, now. Ceroba crushes the anguish trying to escape her eyes and mouth, because really, it’s nothing new. Hahaha. Lying to him is nothing new.
…Where did Martlet go? She’d acted incredibly strange and then shambled out of the clinic, then she left town with the human, and the human had come back without her, and both had left without saying goodbye to anyone. She hadn’t seen any dust on Clover’s clothes, or signs of him having gotten into a fight, so he didn’t kill her. But then, why did she leave?
Not that Ceroba is complaining. She’s preparing to betray Martlet in just about the worst way imaginable. Lie, betray, kill, and steal. Just like the villains in Star’s movies. Haha. Oh well, it doesn’t really matter. She’s damned already. She’d killed her Kanako, or worse. And Kanako will stay dead, or worse, because Clover is not the one. She’s just wasting time here. But then…
What do you have to lose?
Nothing, really. She decided to take Martlet’s word that there’s more to this human than meets the eye, but she’d also decided that it doesn’t really matter if he’s pure or not. If he is, then she wins, and monsterkind wins. If he’s not, then she still wins, because her daughter can die, after having Fallen Down and lingering on for so long. Whatever research they’re conducting over in Hotland’s lab, it had at least stopped Kanako from completely succumbing to the hostile SOUL essence.
Ceroba wishes she could say that it’s a mother’s intuition that makes her so certain, but in truth, it’s the enchantment she wove on her daughter ever since she’d nearly been caught in the Snowdin Massacre. Her Kanako is broken, hanging by a thread, but alive. Anything beyond that is a mystery, but she’s been clutching it like a prayer bead. She’s alive, she’s alive, she’s alive.
Every night, she checks the connection and dreads letting it go. Every morning, she dreads picking it up again. The constant terror is greater than anything this human can inspire in her, but it’s hard to deal with, even so. Ceroba drags in a shuddering breath.
“Do you still have that thing I gave you?”
Star blanches. Touches the pocket where the Real Bullet surely rests. Nods. Ceroba exhales, and finds the strength to take the first step off the mechanical manta ray and after Clover.
“I can always count on you, Star. Let’s go.”
Her lifelong friend senses her turmoil, just as she senses him trying to find the right words to say to her. The trio press on in silence thick enough to cut.
The sharp hiss of steam announces the presence of the vent array long before she catches sight of it, the platform turned into a checkerboard of smooth steel and grates over vents. The heat has turned those grates an angry red in what Ceroba hopes is a quirk of the facility’s age and decay, rather than intentional design. They all stop a good distance away from the sheer noise of the thing. Or rather, she and Star do; Clover goes right past them, and they both just stare after him until they realize he’s going to march right into the minefield of scalding vapor. He almost makes it to the first grate, only to get yanked away by a gloved hand. Ceroba bites back a disappointed sound.
The human starts to turn his head, a glare already sharpening his eyes—she hates those cold, venomous eyes all the more when they focus on Star—but her normally meek friend spares him the trouble when he puts a hand on the human’s other shoulder and spins him around to face him.
“What in the world were you about to go and do, Clover!?”
“I was going to navigate the steam vents.”
“Yeah, I saw that! Now explain to the class why you think that’s a good idea!”
“Because I already got through a set of steam vents. You probably walked over them without noticing, since I turned them off behind me.”
“Wha…! It’s bad enough you had to do that once already! Are you even hearing yourse—Ceroba, this isn’t funny!”
Ceroba covers her smile—partly amused and partly fond—with a hand. She hadn’t realized she was smiling. “I’m not laughing at you, Star.” Which is true, but his scandalized expression is making that a challenge. Ceroba’s hand doesn’t conceal the crinkle in the corners of her eyes. “It’s just… it’s your accent. It’s been forever since you slipped like that.”
Star’s hands unlatch from Clover’s shoulders and fly to his own mouth. He makes a little “eep,” and that does make Ceroba laugh, chuckling low in her throat.
“It ain’t funny, so quit yer laughin’! This… hey, this is serious business!” Ceroba stops laughing, but she grins even harder. Star turns away and pointedly ignores her, but not before she catches a satisfied little quirk of his lips that betrays his frown. He clears his throat and addresses Clover again.
“Okay. Okay, look here, I might buy a gun fer a child, but I ain’t gonna let said child—“
“Don’t call me that.”
“—fine, I ain’t gonna let no kid go ‘n get into an industrial accident!”
“Star, I seem to remember a certain industrial accident at the mines just outside of town. An ongoing industrial accident, even.“
“…Please don’t tell him.”
“I already know about the Rockdropper 9000’s,” Clover says.
“I-well-um-y’know-I didn’t… They have hardhats. The miner’s have those crazy hardhats! I’ve seen what they can do! And ya know what!? None’a this even matters, ‘cause yer not runnin’ through scalding hot steam vents!”
Clover blinks slowly, unimpressed. “And what do you propose instead?”
“We will run through scalding hot steam vents.”
And there goes her smile. “Who’s ‘we?’”
“You, and me.”
“And why should either of us even do this? Who’s to say we even need to go this way?”
Clover points. “There’s a control panel at the top of that staircase. Unless you saw a way out of here that I didn’t, then we need a way to raise the debris gate.”
Ceroba looks up at the place where Clover gestured, then down, at the vents. The force of the steam jets’ eruption and the violence of the sound itself makes her hackles rise. The space between the grates is barely large enough for a single person. Ceroba tries to think of an argument for the human to take the risk, but comes up short. Regrettably, the human had denied the useful fiction of being fireproof back in the saloon.
“Damn it. Fine, I’ll go.”
“And I’ll go with ya!”
“You absolutely will not.”
“But—“
“No ‘buts,’ Star. I have higher defense. I have more HP…” Ceroba trails off.
She remembers when they were a couple of dumb teenagers, and once she had firmly surpassed him in height and showed no signs of stopping, Star had changed tactics and tried to best her with stats. It had been funny at first, but he’d made it difficult to stay ahead of him. It had been her initial motivation to go to the gym, and she’d trained her naturally high ATK and DEF doing so. As for HP… Star had her beat for a long time, actually. But then Kanako had been born, and the number had shot up like a rocket.
She’d never gotten the opportunity to show it off. He’d stopped trying to stat-check her after she’d married Chujin.
…Is her HP actually higher than his at this point? She doubts it. But what’s one more lie on the pile?
“And I have my shielding magic,” Ceroba finishes. “I’m going alone.”
His pout is exaggerated, but the hurt in his eyes is real.
“I’ll be just fine. And you’re not the only one who doesn’t want their friend to get hurt. Okay?”
He inclines his head, tugging the brim of his hat lower. “Fine.”
She waits, but he says nothing more.
And so Ceroba faces the vents, gets ready to move, and hesitates. There’s magic mixed up in the steam, so even if she gets hit, she can expect not to get completely flash-fried; the steam has no intent to kill nor harm, it simply is. But it will hurt if she does get caught. If she were to even be grazed, the burn would be… no, something like this is nothing compared to the threat at her back, watching her. If she can’t deal with this, how is she to deal with the human later? She swallows her trepidation.
The shield makes a crisp, reassuring sound as it encompasses Ceroba, and she observes the pattern of the first set. One second intervals. Easy enough, she thinks, and hops over. The steam screams out of the metal grate behind her and in front of her and to her sides, and Ceroba’s ears flatten down against her head in a largely futile attempt to shut out the noise. The heat is wretched, trying to burn her just by proximity, but her pelt absorbs the worst of it. For now.
And Ceroba presses on. She meticulously memorizes the patterns of the vents, at first in agonizing, fearful slowness, but she gains speed quickly. It’s partially a matter of confidence, but mostly a matter of her being gradually cooked. Then she gets caught.
In her haste, Ceroba accidentally sticks an elbow out too far and gets nicked by a steam jet. She instinctively jerks back from the contact, throwing herself against the railing of the bridge. Her shield shatters with a sound like breaking glass, having absorbed the damage.
“Ceroba, what was that!? Are you okay back there!?”
“I-I’m fine!”
And she is fine. She’s just fine. But her shield is on a cooldown, now. Not a long one, but she’ll have to wait. Except, the heat has fully saturated her pelt and is making its way further in. She was not gifted with the ability to sweat like most other monsters in the Dunes, but she’d hardly needed it anyway and didn’t really want it. Now, as Ceroba begins to wilt against the railing, she sees the appeal. Anything to carry the heat away from her.
She shakes her head and stands herself up. Faces the next set of vents. The interval between eruptions has slimmed for these deeper vents, down to about half a second. More steam. More heat.
She chances it. Ceroba just clears the vent before a steam jet shrieks behind her and makes her back prickle from its heat. She shivers. Checks the cooldown. Agonizes. Chances another vent. And another. And another.
Her knuckles graze the steam to her side and Ceroba makes a sound somewhere between a yelp and a scream. She tucks the injured hand against her belly and curls around it. Forces herself to stop, and inspects the damage. The fur at the point of contact is largely gone, and the skin underneath is shiny, red, swollen, and tight. Ceroba works her throat and manages to swallow instead of gasp. She doesn’t whimper. She blinks away black spots swimming in her vision, the heat and the pain working to bring her down. She’s leaning against the railing again. Pushes herself upright.
Her shield is back up and she casts it. And Ceroba tries. She tries very, very hard not to get grazed again. She is successful. She darts across the vents, her hands and arms tucked close. The end is in sight, but the interval has shrunk again to a fourth of a second between bursts. The heat is horrendous. But she’s almost there! She goes for it, extending her legs to ready herself for a dash.
A steam jet grazes her heel.
Ceroba goes ramrod straight like she’d been shocked. She looks down and behind herself to confirm what she already knows to be true: The damage had been absorbed by her shield, not the boot. It shatters, and she is exposed. Stupid! She can’t believe she just did that! She didn’t even use it to cross a gap. Does she wait out another shield? She’s about to pass out from the heat as it is. Does she keep going? She feels the pain of her burned knuckles and imagines it spread across her whole body, and freezes up. Go backwards? Does she have enough time? Is that even safer than just pushing through? Certainly not. But those are all the options she has.
Then Ceroba looks up from where she’d been staring at her unburned boot heel and sees it. Starlo has followed her, and behind him, almost completely hidden by the staggered steam jets, is that human and his baleful eyes, watching them.
Clover listens to them shouting over the hiss of steam. Yelling at each other over who should have done what and who didn’t listen and who took too large a risk. Despite their volume, Clover strains to hear them.
Starlo had started toward the vents the second that Ceroba’s shield had popped, only to stop himself, balling his fists up at his side. Then he heard his friend cry out in pain, and that time it was Clover that stopped him, taking hold of his wrist and shaking his head and telling him that he would be even worse off without protection magic. Clover explained to him that he would become a liability and make the situation worse, and that he wouldn’t be able to help her in such cramped conditions, let alone save her. The sheriff had torn himself out of Clover’s grip and charged in anyway.
And now, here they are, both in peril and, despite being in arm’s reach of each other, they may as well be a hundred feet apart. To think, this ridiculous comedy of errors could have been avoided if they’d just let him handle it. Clover’s eyes trace the minefield of steam jets and the two fools trapped inside, and tries to come up with a solution.
Let them get a little burnt.
It’s not the worst idea. They have enough HP that they won’t die, and the pain will prove that this place is too dangerous for them.
The steam hisses. It rustles Clover’s hair and lifts the front of his hat a little. Starlo is trying to make himself jump across the rapid-fire vents at the back. He keeps making false starts, leaning forward and failing to follow through. Falling for the same trick that Clover himself had, in another life. When the gap between eruptions is that small, you have to be in motion before the steam jet is fully finished, or else the next one is already screaming up the pipe before you’ve begun crossing. Of course, this effectively means lunging into a column of superheated water vapor and relying on the pattern to save you.
Clover brushes his fingers down his face. He’d learned that lesson the hard way.
It’s not your job to babysit them.
The two of them yell some more, then line themselves up. They’re going to try and cross as a pair. Good for some extra courage, and not much else. Clover’s eyes drink the scene before him, and he knows in his bones that they’re going to fail. They are going to get scalded. Clover raises his voice to tell them to stop, shouting as loud as he can, but they’re too far away and the shriek of the vents is too great and his voice is too weak.
He hears them again. “ON THE COUNT OF THREE!” Starlo shouts.
The idea comes to him.
Clover plucks his SOUL out. His gun won’t do any good with the shots being buffeted by the steam, but his magic ignores everything short of a solid object. All the way down the line of vents, Clover recalls where the shut-off lever is.
“ONE!”
Clover aims, realizes that there’s no way he’ll strike true from this distance, and charges the shot. A bigger bullet will do the trick. Should he just depressurize the whole system by blasting the pipes open? No, no if the bridge collapses and drops anyone into the coolant, then they’ll drown and actually die.
“TWO!”
Clover makes a few micro-adjustments. He needs to shoot between them and can’t afford to graze them, lest he knock them over the railing or into a steam jet. Sweat beads on Clover’s head just as much from concentration as from the heat. Ping! And release.
“THREE!”
The liquid energy of the SOUL bullet ripples as it brushes past them, but the two are already in motion and the next round of steam has already come howling up the pipes. They seem to hang in the air above the vent, suspended in the moment.
The grates slam shut. He hit the target. Two pairs of boots strike the steel of the bridge as they clear the vent. Starlo and Ceroba look back at him, their eyes wide and emotions mixed. Starlo moves to come back towards him, but Ceroba grabs him by the arm and drags him off the vents and forces him to sit down, yelling at him all the while. Clover approaches them, and sees why Ceroba is angry.
He is burned all over. Red patches of skin swell and some of his clothing has melted onto him. His body appears stable, however; not fuzzing at the edges like most monsters do when critically injured. This is, perhaps, why Ceroba feels comfortable shouting herself hoarse and pounding a fist on his chest to punctuate her rant, ramming healing magic into him all the while. She’s not even using bullets as a medium; she simply touches the affected area, green sparks fly out from under her palm, and when she pulls her hand away, it is fixed. The only evidence of injury is the damage to his clothes.
Starlo manages a sheepish look as he takes Ceroba’s tirade in stride. “Sorry. I jus’ couldn’t leave ya out there on yer own fer a second longer. Wasn’t careful enough.”
“YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT YOU WEREN’T!!! GOD, IF YOU… if y-you’d gotten… I wouldn’t…!” Tears prick in the corners of her eyes, and Starlo looks away. His eyes settle on Clover.
“Deputy! You, ah, ya really saved our bacon out there!”
“Yeah. I did.”
“…Ya look kinda angry about it?”
“You should have left it to me. You should have listened the first time I told you to leave. Both of you.”
“But you were gonna walk in ta that death trap jus’ the same as we did! I couldn’t jus’ letcha get burned in my place. Ceroba couldn’t either.”
“And yet, I had to rescue both of you.”
Starlo takes that like a punch to the gut. “Y-Yeah, well, next time, we’ll—“
“We’ll leave it to him, if he asks.”
“Ceroba, we can’t jus’ let ‘im charge inta danger!”
“I’m aware that he’s a child and that we’re adults, but he’s right. We tried to take the lead and save him some trouble, and ended up in need of saving, ourselves.”
“But… why’re we even here, then?”
Ceroba, her healing complete, pulls a sullen Starlo to his feet, then meets Clover’s eyes. “We’ll be support. We can do that without becoming a burden, I’m certain.”
Clover rakes his eyes over each of them in turn, long enough for them to fidget. “Don’t make me save you again.” He starts to turn, and walk away.
“Huma—“ Ceroba bites off the word and shakes her head sharply. “Clover, wait.”
He waits. She takes a deep, bracing breath.
“Thank you.” She delivers those two words with force, and Starlo echoes them a second later. Perhaps unknown to her, one of Ceroba’s hands is still clutching Starlo’s arm in a grip that is probably painful, but neither of them notice. The burn on her knuckles stands out from her fur.
“…You’re injured. Have Starlo fix it for you, before we go any further.”
Fresh actuators whir as Axis flexes his new hand again. It’s difficult to get accustomed to the thing, because it has a different level of wear and tear than his old one, which results in slightly different degrees of mobility and dexterity. He favors the old hand and its known quantities, and uses it to herd droids—most of them suffering major software corruption—into whatever shelters he can find for them. Utility closets, high-security zones, and areas that Axis predicts the human to be unlikely to explore or care about.
Axis has corralled the last Jandroid of the area into a makeshift panic room when he realizes that he’s almost at the bio-engineering department, and the density of the white plants sprouting from the walls has grown such that there are patches of steel completely engulfed by them, and it’s only getting worse.
Camera feeds, heretofore playing in the periphery of Axis’s awareness, are pulled to the center of his attention. The human hasn’t gained any ground. More importantly, Mrs. Ketsukane and the other monster have not left his side yet, nor has the human attacked them. This is both a shock, and not shocking at all.
Axis is quite advanced. With some time to think, he’s already figured out that his software defaulted to the maximum threat level because of a question mark in the human’s CHECK data. However, he also can’t force his threat analyzer to stop assuming the maximum threat, nor can he stop it from activating dozens of protocols, including a severely heightened sense of stress. But Axis is not particularly inclined to stop the antics of his threat analyzer regardless, because Axis doesn’t need a threat analyzer to know that the human despises him; he’d felt it quite clearly in the overwhelming intent to kill behind his bullets, some of which are still embedded in his chassis. It would be foolish to assume that the human hates Axis in particular, and so, despite knowing the human’s low LV value and seeing it continue not to attack the monsters accompanying it, Axis continues the evacuation.
Below the cool, mechanical logic is another notion, more organic: Axis had seen the wrath in the human’s eyes and felt the fear in his own heart, and decided that he could not risk the inhabitants of this place.
But now he’s at the door to the bio-engineer’s facility proper, and Axis dismisses the feeds back to the edge of his mind. The distraction had been nice while it lasted.
The door opens, and he rolls onto a carpet of pale plants. He’d already known the state of the place, having checked the security footage some time ago, but it’s quite different to experience it with his own high-fidelity lenses than the grainy footage of a CCTV camera. The footage had also been in gray-scale, but the reality isn’t far from it. The dark metal of the walls and floor and the abundance of the crisp whiteness of the escaped specimens render the place monochrome.
Axis rolls past the corpses of several droids who had likely been tasked, at one point, to feed the specimens. Their remains are being completely devoured by the white carpet. Plants have grown their way through cracks in machine casing and broken through optical lenses, sprouting through the sockets.
He can’t put it off any longer. Axis is careful not to crush any of the larger growth under his wheel, aware as he is of Guardener’s primary directives. He can’t feel it through the rubber of the wheel, but he can feel it in the air—low voltage electricity. When he’d first seen the escaped experiments, Axis had devoted some of his processor to reading notes from this lab. The specimens had been designed as a solution to the energy crisis, it would seem. If the state of this place is any indication, they had not been fit for purpose.
Axis’s cooling fans kick on as his CPU warms. His neural network puts pieces together into a hypothesis and begins long-term planning. These plants could be invaluable to the Steamworks, if not to the Underground at large. The threat of the human will pass, and when it does, the facility must survive.
“AXIS_”
Axis jumps, looks around, sees nothing, and then looks down. Guardener is peering at him through an access port in the floor. It had been concealed by the carpet of plants.
“H3LLO, GUARDENER.”
Guardener raises herself fully out of the port now, her head and shoulders appearing from the shadows, then the rest of her body, as she pulls herself out with the strength of her hands and arms. She was built with function above form, her chassis a basic rectangle with the edges rounded off, and her head a mere circle without a representation of a mouth or nose, only eyes. The sole embellishment is impromptu: The lid of her access port sits atop her head like a wide-brimmed hat, tasseled with white plants grown so thickly together that they look more like a vine than any sort of flower.
Guardener climbs fully out of the port and Axis is once again shocked and not shocked at all. The system had already told him of the damage, and in far greater detail than what he can discern now through sight alone, but the sight makes it real. Guardener moves with casual ease, as though she weren’t trailing live wires and dripping oil. She has no legs. Guardener raised herself up from the port with her hands and arms, and now she walks with them, too, drawing closer to speak with him. Her live wires do not spark against the floor; the carpet of plants is too thick to let them ground with the steel.
Axis clenches his hands. Unclenches them.
“HOW 4RE TH1NGS?”
“GOOD-D. V>ERY BUSY.”
“I H-HAVE SO MUCH FLO-RA_”
“TO AT-T-TEND AND NUR;TURE.”
Axis looks around at the riot of plant life that has taken over.
“I C4N SEE THAT.”
“I ALS0 SEE, TH4T YOU ARE DAM4G3D.”
“HAVE Y0U RUN 4NY SELF-DI4GN0STICS?”
Guardener goes perfectly still, and for a time, the only sign that she’s still online is her optical LED’s. Axis cannot hold his breath, but he might have, until Guardener seems to remember herself.
“I TRIED_”
“BUT TH;EY DON’T WORK-K-K.”
“WH;Y DO YOU A>SK?”
“IS SOME-THING WRO-O-NG?”
She needs to be put into sleep mode and operated on, right this instant. But there’s no time. He didn’t even have time to grab parts for her. He checks the camera feeds again. He’s losing ground.
“I HAVE TO G0.”
“I’M SORRY, BUT I H4VE TO.”
“SO0N, THREE INTRUD3RS WILL ARR1VE.”
“THE SM4LL ONE IS A HUM4N.”
“DO NOT.”
“ENGAGE.”
“THE HUMAN.”
“UND3R ANY C1RCUMST4NCES.”
Guardener does not respond. She almost seems to squint at him.
“I NEED Y0U TO HEAR ME.”
“PLEASE.”
“DO N0T—“
“YOU A-A-ARE AFRAID?”
Guardener leans in and shifts her balance. One of her hands digs into the carpet of plants and grips the steel underneath. The other comes up, leaving her with only one arm to carry her weight, and takes Axis’s entire head in hand.
“?????”
“YOU ARE DAM-AGED_”
Complimenting her size and strength, Guardener was built for finely detailed locomotion and precise application of force, as befits her position. That is what Axis thinks as she traces her thumb over the edge of the blasted-out portion of his face and head casing. The gentle, violet hue of her LED’s tint red.
“HO-O-OW DID THIS HAP;PEN?”
“IT IS N0T IMPORT4NT.”
“YOU C_AN LIE?”
“INT>ERESTING.”
“I DO N-OT LIKE IT_”
Axis pulls away and Guardener’s hand hovers in the air where it had held him. It returns to her other arm’s side, holding her aloft. Axis wheels around her, and she does not attempt to touch him again. She turns to watch him as he goes.
“TH3RE IS N0 TIME.”
“PLE4SE, R3MAIN SAFE.”
“THE EV4CUATION MUST BE F1NISHED.”
And Axis leaves.
Guardener watches him go.
She thinks to call after him, but remains silent. She thinks to pursue him, but remains still. She cannot help him. He had told her to remain, and be safe.
She’d like to return to her charging port and enter sleep mode, which is as safe as she can make herself, but her main directive pulls at her. Maintain the flora. Protect the flora. Nurture the flora. Guardener does so.
Her logic center constantly attempts to process the state of the bio-engineering facility. The total containment breach of the specimens and their takeover. The dead droids littering the floor, who were machines that were not people like her, but were her friends regardless. Guardener prunes the branches of her mind as each one tries to flower and bear terrible fruit. She does so now, and her software integrity ticks down by a percentage point.
Everything is fine. The facility is alive and well. Her friends are merely sleeping. There are no intruders in the Steamworks. Guardener is not missing her lower half and Axis is not missing a fourth of his face and head. He will contact the maintenance department, and they will be fixed.
Guardener allows herself to be swallowed by her prime directive. The machine tends its flowers.
Inside the house, she hears people rustling around. Her knuckles rap against the rough wood three more times. She uses her good hand this time. Even a mild knock on a door had produced a prickling ache in the knuckles of the other.
Murmuring, yawning, and rustling clothes. She must have woken them up. Normally, she’d feel bad about that. She waits. Knocks again.
“We geddit, ‘kay? Jus’ hold on a sec’ while I find my other shoe…”
“Mooch, get the door, please? Could be that Star ‘n Ceroba are back.”
“Alright, alright…”
“And don’t pick their pockets, whoever it is.”
“Faithless, every one’a ya!” The lock clicks and the door is flung open. “Geez, I don’t get any appreciation ‘round he—oh, hey! Guys, it’s the traitor-guard!”
Martlet grimaces.
“Feathers is here?”
Moray leans into view through the frame of the entryway, further inside the house. “Don’t make Martlet stand outside, let ‘er in!”
Ed leans in as well, eclipsing Moray. He’s missing a shoe. “’Sup, Feathers. Finally come ta hang out a little?”
“Something like that.”
Her voice or face must have betrayed her, because Ed and Mooch dim a little bit and let her in without further theatrics.
“Welcome to our humble abode,” Moray says, attention fixed on a pocket mirror, but offering a smile nonetheless. “Want somethin’ ta eat? We got lotsa Feisty Sliders in the fridge.”
“Not hungry. But thanks.”
“What brings ya here?” Ace leans against the far wall of the living room. He casually shuffles a deck of cards, but his eyes don’t leave Martlet. He seems to have caught on to her mood already.
She summons a little rectangle of black plastic from her inventory to her hand. “I have this VHS, and I figured, since you’re the biggest human enthusiasts around… that you might have a tape player, or know somebody who does.”
“That’s it?” Ed smiles again, a bit relieved. “We loan our VHS player out all the time, so people can see what our town is tryin’ ta be. C’mon, sit down.”
Martlet is ushered over to a couch in front of a TV, sat down, and encouraged to take off her boots and stay awhile (she doesn’t.) North Star’s posse crowd around her.
“Oh, hey uh, Feathers?” Ed fiddles with his shades.
“Yes?”
“Didja sort out what was wrong with Clover?”
Moray nods. “We were all freaked out when he clammed up outta nowhere. He’d hardly letcha look at ‘im, let alone talk.”
Ace tugs his hat down over his eyes. “Worrisome.”
Mooch tugs her scarf up over her mouth. “Scary.”
Martlet’s eyes flick between them all. She folds her hands in her lap and swallows past a strange tightness in her throat. “He’s fine,” she lies. “You don’t have to worry about anything.”
A dissatisfied hush descends. Did they hear the deception? Did they want more detail? Ed coughs into his fist, and the moment passes.
“So, what’re we watchin’?” He asks.
Martlet blinks. “Um. This isn’t a movie.”
“…Is it a documentary? They’re not as cool, but we like ‘em anyway.”
“I found this tape behind Chujin’s tombstone.”
Four sets of eyes blink owlishly at her.
“It’s a long story.”
Three uncertain nods. Mooch grins with mischief. “Well, let’s see it!”
“I’d like to watch this alone, if you don’t mind.”
“Boo! Lame!”
“I don’t know what’s on the tape,” Martlet snaps, then reigns herself in when they all frown. “I imagine that I’m about to intrude on some sensitive, family videos and feel like garbage about it, but I couldn’t make myself put this back. I don’t want to make this any worse than it’s probably going to be.”
They all look at each other, reaching a consensus through eye contact and brow-raising. Eventually, Ed nods.
“Alright.”
Moray echoes him. “Yep, let’s go. Take as long as ya need.”
Ace pushes off the wall and steps out the front door.
“C’mooooon, I wanna—oof!” Ed sweeps Mooch up in one hand and hauls her out. Moray closes the door behind all of them, and Martlet is alone in the room. Mooch’s complaining fades as she’s carried out of earshot.
It’s quiet. Martlet shifts, and hears old springs groan in the couch. She gets up, ejects a tape whose label she doesn’t read, and puts in the tape which has no label at all. A floorboard creaks. She turns on the VHS player and she turns on the TV. Their power buttons make crunchy little clicks. The TV whines, then static snarls out of the speakers with its grating, crackling buzz and annihilates the silence. She sits back down, and waits for the player to read the tape.
She feels like she could twist herself into a pretzel with how raw her nerves are. Stupid. What is she even doing? And this anxiety! What is wrong with her!? What idiotic, misfiring intuition had possessed her to take an offering from a grave, and why did she listen to it? She should eject the tape before she defiles the memory it contains. She ought to.
Two days ago, Martlet had jackknifed out of bed and listened to a strange instinct that told her to fly to the door of the Ruins and look for a human This one isn’t supernatural like that one turned out to be, but even so…
Martlet sits still as the static crawls across the screen, settling. She sits still, until a picture resolves.
A familiar face looks back at her. Her mentor. Martlet’s heart tries to leap, but she is not naive. The anxiety doubles. Triples. Roils in her belly like a living thing. Chujin’s face. It is cast in deep shadow, impenetrable but for his spectacles, which consume the scraps of remaining light in whatever room he recorded this in. They glint terribly and devour the warm eyes she knew in life.
“This is Chujin.”
Martlet shivers.
“I messed up, miscalculated, something.”
And everything breaks down from there. She listens to her mentor describe, in as clinical a voice as he can manage, his daughter’s encounter with the fifth human and how his creation, Axis, had chased that human into Waterfall, and killed them.
Everyone knows where and how the humans were slain—the broad details, at least—but nobody knew what had caused the Fifth’s demise after the Snowdin Massacre. It was assumed, eventually, that they had drowned. But no, they had been hunted and slain, and gruesomely enough that she can hear the echo of horror in her mentor’s voice.
The missing poster flares in her awareness. The Fifth: a young lady with a slim figure, blonde hair tied in a high ponytail. Young enough for baby fat to cling to her cheeks. Dead. Dead in the same way Clover had lain dead in that time that never was, with a body lingering on, but gone still and cool. Not clean, like dust is.
Her name was Aria.
“In any case… I now have a human SOUL in my possession.”
“I do not know exactly what I should do with it, but the power that resta within it is…”
“Well, let’s just say I’m not donating it to Asgore like all the others. Not yet.”
The tape continues for a little while longer, but Martlet hangs on those few sentences. He kept it?
Martlet remembers the wave of despair that came in the wake of the SOUL’s disappearance. The glassy-eyed hope, bordering on mania, as volunteer search parties joined hands with the Royal Guard and Waterfall natives to scour every last tunnel, tributary, lake, and pond. They had plumbed the highest waterfalls and the darkest depths, and good men and women had died doing it, falling from great heights or being swept away by hidden currents or losing their way in dark tunnels.
She remembers how hope turned to desperation, and desperation to despair, as those search parties dwindled down, down, down, into a trickle. Into nothing but mute acceptance, as parents realized that their grandchildren would not be the lucky generation to escape the Underground. Their grandchildren would be as their grandparents are now: Subsisting on the meager hope that their grandchildren will be the ones to see the Sun.
She remembers reading the census. It was a dusty little booklet kept under the librarbian’s desk, and when Martlet had asked for it, the clerk had given her a thin, watery smile and asked her if she was completely certain that she wanted to know. She had sat down in a corner of the little building and opened it. It was a dry read where people were, by necessity, reduced to numbers. She had found the section labeled neatly as “Deaths of Despair (as Reported by Friends and Family)” and saw numbers compared between this year and last year. There had been enough three-digit numbers gaining a fourth to get the gist of it.
Did Chujin know how many people died for that decision? Did he even understand what he did to the Underground? Did it even occur to him? He’s not alive for her to demand an answer. What her mentor did ask himself was what he should do with that girl’s SOUL, and the power within it.
What did he do with that SOUL? Her hands clench into fists and her bad hand complains, buzzes with pins and needles. What did he do to that girl? He’d kept it for such a long time. And where? Where had he kept it hidden, but still been able to work with it? He obviously hadn’t absorbed it, or everyone would know.
…The Ketsukane Estate. A daughter who had school and a wife who had work. He would have had plenty of empty hours to fill, when he wasn’t mentoring Martlet. Ha. Hahaha. So that’s what had kept him so busy. That’s why there was never a good time for her to visit.
The numb buzz in her hand turns angry and crawls up to her elbow. Martlet forces herself to unclench her fists. She shakes out her hand. Stands up. Rewinds the tape to the beginning. Walks out the door.
North Star’s posse are sitting around the bar in Dina’s saloon. Dina waves at her. She nods in reply. The posse look at her, and Martlet leans in to whisper to them.
“I think I’m going to need some help. But first, I have something I want to show you.”