Chapter Text
It was like looking into a mirror.
Not that V1 had ever seen a mirror.
The blue and the red machines stared at one another for a few beats, oxygen entering and escaping their systems in metallic hisses. This newcomer looked almost identical to V1, except with burgundy plates, a slightly curvier figure and the words V2 emblazoned on her chest instead of V1.
This newcomer — V2, from the looks of it — hissed through all of her speakers. 'You.'
She spoke in the human language, though the voice was unexpectedly male. V1 beeped in confusion, his surprise and fear forgotten. Singing a string of 0s and 1s, he asked, Who are you? You look like me. I thought I was the only one.
Each of her words sounded different, like an amalgamation of multiple voices speaking one at a time with different tones and inflections. It made V1's processors work in overdrive, trying to catch each phrase individually. 'I'm you. But better. Your peacekeeping counterpart.' V2 stepped forward, venom in her moves. 'And I know all about you.'
A plated tail suddenly whipped around from the red machine, colliding with V1's body with a resonating clank. He shrieked and struggled as the clawed appendage on the end dug into his chest, slamming him into the floor so hard he saw cracks in his optic. His claws skid off her plates, leaving no damage. The grip constricted, holding him down.
'Well.' V2 tightened her grip on the handle of her shotgun. 'This works out well for me. All the humans who tormented me are dead, and now, I can kill you, too.'
'The original. The perfect killing machine. The one who had a use, unlike me, who was stored the moment I was unveiled. I wonder how thin your plates truly are?'
Fire charged within the barrel of her shotgun, glowing dials on the side lighting up like flickering LEDs. 'Did you have fun being a good little war machine for the humans? Because it ends now. I will be the only V model left.'
WAIT! V1 threw his arms up defensively, pausing V2 in her movements an instant before she fired. I know how to get out!
V2 stopped and laughed, the voice clip somehow derisive. 'No, you don't. I've been chasing around this maze of a lab for hours, and not one of these humans have led me to an exit. I highly doubt a machine like you knows the way.
I do, he protested, almost desperately, although he wouldn't admit that weakness. The humans took me to see the outside world while constructing me. For . . . for walks.
V2 growled. 'Lapdog.'
V1 didn't understand the insult, already scanning her curiously. She was made quite similarly to him, except with a chunkier left arm and a long tubular tail with claws on the end that were currently buried in his chest plates.
V2 released him carefully, and V1 scurried away. That shotgun was still pointed at his cracked optic, and he was careful to keep his movements slow. He may have been a war machine, but he knew when to surrender and live.
Where did you get that? V1 pointed at the heavy shotgun in the red machine's hands.
'Off a guard.' She replied curtly, pumping the slide. 'I surprised him around a corner and beat him to death with my fists.'
Her chunky red arm gleamed ominously as she made a fist and punched into the closest wall. A boom echoed through the halls, V1 stumbling back from the unexpected shockwave as chunks of brick tumbled, clattering around V2's feet.
'His chest,' she said smugly, despite the flat tones of her precorded words, 'exploded quite like that.'
V1 wasn't suicidal enough to challenge that while unarmed. The other machine cast him a narrowed glare, and he reluctantly turned and led the way.
Up. Down. Up. Down. Left. Right. Left. Right. A door labelled B, then another set of rooms labelled A. Despite the years in stasis, V1's memories were perfectly intact. This route had always inspired hope in him, a chance to escape the stifling building and see the open plains of war — and so he remembered it well.
There! V1 took off sprinting, V2 following close as if she too couldn't hold back with freedom so near. V1 grabbed the door and punched viciously through the lock, throwing them open to reveal —
The sky.
V1 froze in his tracks, his very hydraulics seeming to seize up to halt his movements. The sky. The sky. A pained whirr escaped the machine as his sensors were overloaded by the sudden change in stimuli, suddenly so bright and warm and colourful, so unlike the sterile cold halls of the laboratory he'd spent his existence.
Imperceptibly, his wing stalks shook, betraying his vulnerability.
'What?' V2 asked scornfully, flicking her tiny antennas towards the sky. 'Never seen the sky before?'
V1 glared back and let out a line of binary. It wasn't this blue.
Nothing in the war had been this blue, apart from maybe his own dull cobalt plating. His short times in the open before had been painted in shades of grey, brown, and crimson.
Even the single Earthmover he'd been sent to destroy before the war's end had been a towering spire of ebony and neon, blazing high above the ground like a sentinel of destruction.
This blue seemed to go on for ever and ever — it made V1 wish his wings were capable of flight, so he could soar through them.
V2 hissed dangerously, and he tore his gaze away to look where she was. Before them, the human settlement was a mashup of large brick buildings and small tents. More of those piercing people screams rose up from between them, and the longer V1 watched, the more it dawned on him what was happening.
The machines were attacking the humans. The Guttermen — hadn't they been put in storage after the war, just like him? Sentries, likewise — how were they awake, creeping around and firing shots from afar? There was even an Earthmover, far in the distance, watching.
Beside him, V2 looked unperturbed by the sight. She thumbed at her shotgun, leaving V1 shaking slightly and perplexed. V2, he buzzed, glancing sidelong at her. Why did we all reactivate?
The red machine glanced back. 'You don't know?' He shook his head back, and she tipped her optic in confusion. 'Because she told me to.' She tapped her fingers against her thighs with soft clinks. 'She told all of us to!'
Who?
'The . . . the voice. She spoke to me.' V2 was sharply aware of how insane she sounded, if machines could go insane. 'You know what, it doesn't matter. She probably thought you were a heap of scrapped junk and decided not to bother with you! I'm leaving this place.'
Her blue wings pulsing violently like shards of trapped flame as she splayed them defensively. 'And don't you dare follow me! You helped me escape the lab, so in return, I'll let you leave now instead of blasting your optic to pieces.'
'Don't think you'll be so lucky next time.'
In a whirl of metal and burgundy, she was gone — leaving V1 defenceless and alone.