Chapter Text
The scythe-teleportation didn’t just deposit Fiore onto rusted metal—it spat her out like a piece of scrap rejected by the machine itself.
She landed with a cacophonous clang, her back slamming against a jagged pile of broken toasters and microwave shells. The impact drove the air from her lungs in a sharp gasp, and for a moment she just lay there, staring up at a sky the color of a dull, overheated engine—a uniform, oppressive orange with just a faded metallic glow that seemed to radiate weariness, barely making out the sun and the clouds.
“Ugh......,” she groaned, finally pushing herself up. A twisted piece of wire fell from her hair, and she spat out the taste of oxidized iron and stale oil. “Could these portals ever, I don’t know, not feel like being thrown down a garbage chute?”
Blinking to clear the spots from her vision, she took in her new surroundings. The Comatose Catacombs stretched before her, a vast, silent necropolis of discarded technology. Mountains of scrap metal rose like skeletal giants, their surfaces a patchwork of rust-red, corrosion-green, and the dull gray of dead steel. Washing machines lay on their sides, doors agape like screaming mouths. Towers of cracked monitors flickered with residual static, their dead screens reflecting the eerie orange light. Hulking car frames, stripped of tires and glass, leaned against each other as if too tired to stand. The ground was a treacherous carpet of loose screws, brittle circuit boards, and coils of wire that snagged at her light yellow sneakers.
The air was thick and still, smelling of burnt rubber, cold solder, and the deep, damp odor of decay—not organic decay, but the slow, inevitable rotting of plastic and insulation. A profound silence hung over everything, broken only by the occasional ping of contracting metal or the skitter of some unseen metallic creature. It was a silence that felt heavy, lethargic, a blanket smothering sound and ambition alike.
“Great,” Fiore muttered, brushing rust flakes from her sweater, which was now streaked with grime. “From a prideful bird in a tower all the way to a nap time junkyard. Just perfect.”
She’d been teleported here after jabbing the Comatose Catacombs icon on the Lustlands map—an orange symbol that slightly resembles a crossover of an engine with exhaust pipes and a gear. Sakuroma’s warning echoed in her mind: “Dozirc sleeps for months at a time. Good luck waking him up. Honestly, it’s a miracle if he even notices you’re there.” At the time, Fiore had snorted. How hard could it be to rouse one lazy robot? You yell, you poke, you maybe pull a plug.
Now, standing in this vast, sleeping wasteland, her confidence wavered.
A high-pitched, rhythmic whirring suddenly sliced through the stagnant air. Fiore yelped and dove sideways just as a sleek, rusty bronze train shot past on a set of rusted tracks embedded in the junk. It moved with ghostly silence aside from the whir of its engine, its windows dark, its sides emblazoned with a symbol she recognized—the mark of Sloth. It vanished around a colossal heap of refrigerators without slowing, leaving only a faint ozone scent in its wake.
“HEY!” Fiore yelled, scrambling to her feet and shaking a fist at the vanished train. “WATCH IT, YOU SPEEDING METAL ASSHOLE! THIS IS A JUNKYARD, NOT A RACETRACK! YOU COULD’VE FLATTENED ME!”
Her shout echoed briefly, then was swallowed by the all-consuming quiet. But underneath the returning silence, she heard it. A sound so deep and resonant it was less a noise and more a vibration in the soles of her feet, in the fillings of her teeth. Snoring.
It was a mechanical snore, a rhythmic, grinding whir-zzz...... whir-zzz...... like a colossal engine idling in its sleep, mixed with the occasional hydraulic sigh and the soft buzz of faulty wiring. It was coming from deeper within the Catacombs, a lullaby of lethargy that seemed to emanate from the scrap piles themselves.
Fiore squared her shoulders, a familiar, stubborn anger cutting through the creeping fatigue the atmosphere encouraged. She’d faced a dragon-lizard’s rage, a moth’s seductive games, a bird’s arrogant symphony, a goat’s endless hunger, a bee’s glittering greed, and a shark’s covetous deep-sea gaze. She wasn’t about to be stymied by something like a snoring appliance.
She began to follow the train tracks, her shoes crunching over a brittle landscape of forgotten functionality. She passed the “Small Appliance Graveyard”—a hill of blenders, coffee makers, and electric kettles, their cords tangled together like metallic vines. Further on was the “Data Tomb,” where shattered hard drives and gutted servers formed precarious stacks, their memory forever lost. The snoring grew louder with every step, becoming a physical presence that vibrated in her chest.
Finally, the tracks led to a clearing of sorts, a flat expanse of packed debris before a massive, makeshift throne constructed from the carcasses of vintage cars, buses, and an industrial crane’s cab. And there, dominating the space, was the source of the sound.
Dozirc.
He was monumental, a demon of dormant industry. Thirteen feet of sculpted scrap metal and tarnished alloy, his form was less a humanoid shape and more an accumulation of mechanical parts that had settled into a slouching, resting form. His primary armor was a patchwork of orange steel plating, rusted in intricate patterns. His abdomen was dominated by a central core—a circular housing of thick, frosted glass within which a soft, blue energy pulsed lazily, synchronized with his snoring. Whir-zzz...... the light brightened. Whir-zzz...... it dimmed.
Instead of legs, thick bundles of electrical cables—their dark colored insulation frayed and eroded—sprawled from his lower body like the roots of a metal tree, twitching occasionally with weak static discharges. Four large exhaust pipes jutted from his broad back, emitting thin, perpetual streams of gray, metallic-smelling smoke. His left arm ended in a massive, gear-shaped hand, and welded seamlessly into its center was a microphone, its casing scratched and worn but its grille glowing with the same steady blue as his core. His right arm lay limp at his side, fingers loosely curled.
His head was a blocky, heptagonal angular helm with two large, circular lenses for eyes, currently shut. His mouth grill was slightly ajar, and from it issued the deep, grinding snore that ruled this domain. He was the king of this silent, sleeping kingdom, a monument to inactivity.
And perched on the curve of his right shoulder, tiny in comparison, was another figure. A smaller, cat-like robot, about the size of Fiore herself. Her body was sleek orange metal, and her head was a thick, dark screen like it's from an old computer. On it, a simple pixelated icon of a closed eye with a Zzz above it glowed softly. She was curled up, her own form of silicone-and-metal limbs drawn in, and a soft, purring sound—a tiny fan whirring—escaped her. This was Rogato, and she was just as asleep as her master.
Fiore planted her hands on her hips. “Okay. You. Big guy. Nap time’s over.”
No response. The snoring continued unabated.
She cupped her hands around her mouth, summoning the voice that had shattered school windows. “HELLOOOOOO!?! EXCUSE ME?!?!”
Nothing. Not a flicker from Dozirc. Rogato’s screen icon didn’t change either.
Frustration, hot and familiar, boiled up. She was tired, her throat was scratchy from countless battles, and she was lost in a hell designed by a sleepy engineer. She stomped her foot, kicking a loose bolt. It skittered across the metal ground with a pathetic clink. “WAKE! THE FUCK! UP! YOU OVERGROWN, RUSTY COFFEE MAKER!”
Her voice echoed and died. The snoring was the only victor. Whir-zzz......
Fiore growled, scanning the ground. Her eyes landed on a hefty, fist-sized lug nut. She bent, hefted it, and with a grunt of effort, hurled it not at Dozirc’s imposing body, but at the tiny robot on his shoulder.
The lug nut sailed in a high arc. Clang! It struck Rogato’s screen dead-center.
The effect was instantaneous. The sleeping-eye icon shattered into pixels. The screen flashed to life, bright white, then resolved into two wide, blinking, pixelated green eyes. A cartoonish question mark appeared above them.
“Whoops!”
The little robot uncurled, her antennae twitching and emitting a soft bzz-bzz sound. She stretched her flexible limbs with tiny whirrs and hopped lightly down from Dozirc’s shoulder, landing on the ground with a delicate tap. She tilted her screen-head at Fiore.
“Greetings! I am R0-G4-T0! Robotic assistant to master D0-Z1-RC!” Her voice was chirpy, digitized, but charmingly glitchy, dropping syllables like a scratched CD. “But formal designations are inefficient! You can simply call us Rogato and Dozirc!” She did a little spinning hop, her ears flopping.
On his throne, Dozirc's voice chip made a sound like he's smacking his lips, and his snore deepened.
Fiore stared from the gargantuan, sleeping demon to the perky, tiny robot. “Okay......,” she said slowly. “This is the Comatose Catacombs, right? The Sin of Sloth’s......uh..... bedroom?”
Rogato’s screen flashed a cheerful check mark. “Bingo! You are in the central resting zone of the Comatose Catacombs! All technological and mechanical matter eventually winds up here when its primary function ceases! We perform...... minimal recycling! Master says excessive activity is inefficient!” She gestured with a clawed hand towards the mountain of blenders where Fiore had passed by earlier in search for Dozirc. “That is the ‘Small Appliance Graveyard.’ Master occasionally repositions there for variety when he's feeling a bit adventurous! When he is...... briefly ambulatory.”
Fiore nodded, her eyes drifting back to the slumbering giant. “I see..... Right. So, you. Little one. Can you do me a huge favor and wake him up? He is the Infernaling I need to...... talk to, right?”
Rogato’s screen face smiled. “Affirmative! Master is the Infernaling of the Sin of Sloth! However......” The smile turned into a grimacing emoticon. “Master is currently in his 752-hour maintenance and recharge cycle.”
Fiore’s brain, sharp despite her exhaustion, did the math. 752 hours. “A day has 24......” Her eyes widened.
“That’s...... over thirty-one days. A MONTH? HOLY FUCKING SHIT he sleeps for a MONTH?!”
Her screech echoed through the clearing. A cascade of loose screws rattled down a pile of microwaves.
Dozirc’s snore hitched for a half-second, then resumed its steady, grinding rhythm. Whir-zzz......
Fiore dragged her hands down her face, leaving smudges of grime. “UUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHH! SERIOUSLY?! I have to wait a MONTH? I can’t...... Alec will think I’m......!” She cut herself off, the panic real and cold.
Rogato’s screen flickered, the smile freezing and distorting for a second. “I-initiative to a-activate Master can be...... uh...... attempted. But his sleep protocols deeply programmed.” Her voice began to stutter, the glitches becoming more pronounced. “If you w-wish to g-get his atten-tion, you might wanna try s-something that causes him to-"
Her cheerful expression glitched, scrambled into static, and then the screen went entirely dark. She stood motionless for three seconds.
Fiore leaned forward. “Uh..... Rogato? You okay? I didn't break you, did I-?”
Bzzt! The screen lit up again. “-WAKEUP! S-s-sorry!” she buzzed, her voice more distorted. “M-m-my battery cells are on the f-f-fritz! I require charging, but m-master’s deep-cycle state prevents system access for repairs.” She swayed slightly. “Anyways! G-Good luck! I recommend...... auditory stimulus!”
And with that, her screen dimmed again, though she remained upright, a statue awaiting a command.
Fiore looked from the dormant Rogato to the snoring Dozirc, a profound sense of absurd hopelessness washing over her. She was in a realm whose ruler’s primary function was not to function. How do you fight sloth? You can’t punch laziness. You can’t out-sing inertia.
But she had to try. Alec was waiting. Her world was waiting. She pulled the microphone from her pocket—the one Stitchriol had given her, now scuffed and dusty—and stared at it. Her throat protested at the very thought. She’d sung for wrath, lust, pride, gluttony, greed, envy...... Her voice felt frayed, a worn-out cord. But what else was there?
“Oh. My. Actual. FUCKING. God,” she muttered to the uncaring junk piles. She flipped the mic on. A low, resonant hum echoed the snoring for a moment before she swallowed hard.
Maybe...... maybe a lullaby would work in reverse? If this place responded to sleep, perhaps the right kind of sound could break the cycle instead of encouraging it. She didn’t have a plan. She just had desperation, and a melody that felt as tired as she was.
Song: Lullabyte
The music didn’t burst forth; it seeped into the atmosphere. A slow, soothing synth pad washed over the clearing, like the hum of a power grid at midnight. A gentle, rhythmic clicking, like a slow metronome or a cooling engine, set the pace. It was music designed to slow the heart, to droop the eyelids, to validate every ounce of weariness in one’s soul.
Fiore took a deep, shaky breath and began to sing. Her voice was softer than it had been in any previous battle, stripped of its usual defiant edge. She didn’t shout; she crooned, she murmured, weaving her lyrics into the sleepy melody.
She walked slowly towards the throne, her steps quiet on the metallic ground. She sang of stillness, of quiet, of the peace of not trying. She sang to the sleeping demon, offering a vocalization of his own domain. Her words painted pictures of endless, undisturbed rest, of machines dreaming of the day they were first unplugged.
She poured her own exhaustion into it—the bone-deep tiredness from fighting, from running, from being lost and afraid. The music swelled softly, a wave of synthetic strings encouraging surrender. Give up, it seemed to say. Sleep. Just sleep.
For the first minute, nothing changed. Dozirc snored. Rogato stood dark. Fiore kept singing, her voice growing hoarser, the lullaby wrapping around the clearing like a fog.
She put everything she had into making the song compelling, beautiful, a siren call to slumber. If she couldn’t wake him by fighting, maybe she could wake him by offering the most perfect, irresistible version of sleep he’d ever heard. Maybe the contrast, the celebration of his sin, would stir something.
She sang until the final, lingering note of the synth faded into the ever-present snore. The clearing was silent again, save for the whir-zzz......
Dozirc had not moved. His lenses remained dark. The blue light in his core pulsed with the same, unchanging lethargy.
Fiore lowered her mic, her shoulders slumping. Defeat, heavy and cold, settled in her stomach. It hadn’t worked. Of course it hadn’t worked. You can’t wake someone by telling them to sleep harder.
A flash of bright, warm orange light suddenly enveloped her, not from an external source but emanating from her own body. It was a different sensation than the previous transformations—not a surge of power, but a deep, creeping change, like metal fatigue setting in.
The light receded as quickly as it came. Fiore looked down at her hands—and a gasp, thin and robotic, escaped her.
The skin on the right half of her body was gone. In its place was sleek, brushed aluminum and gunmetal gray polymer. Her right arm, from the shoulder down, was a sophisticated assembly of pistons, jointed plates, and bundled fiber-optic cables that glowed with a faint inner light. Her right hand was a precise, three-fingered clamp. She raised her left hand—still flesh—to touch her face. The right side was cool, hard metal. Her right eye was gone, replaced by a glowing yellow lens with a faint, continuous whirr. A HUD flickered at the edge of her vision, displaying useless diagnostics about the surrounding scrap’s composition and ambient temperature.
Her voice, when she tried to speak, came out as a flat, synthesized monotone from a speaker grille now embedded in her metallic jaw. “So...... tired and drowsy...... need...... rest......”
She looked down at her chest. Her yellow cardigan and cargo shorts were gone, replaced by molded plastic plating. A bronze nameplate was riveted over where her heart would be:
[F1-0RE-1L4]_R1-CC1
This is her sloth clothing...... or rather...... parts.
“What...... happened to my voice?” the robotic half of her vocal processor intoned. “And...... my vision......?” Her organic eye was wide with horror; her mechanical lens merely adjusted its focus with a soft click.
Rogato powered on with a jolt. Her screen displayed a spinning circle of confusion that resolved into wide, surprised eyes. “W-wait! You’ve been here this whole cycle and...... I shut down a few times! When did you undergo cybernetic assimilation?!” She then smiled. "But it does feel cool, right? Your tensile strength has likely increased by 300%! You can probably lift a small car! Like I can!"
Fiore stared at her metal hand, flexing the clamp. It moved smoothly, but with a noticeable lag, as if every action required immense processing power. “Cool?! I look like a toaster with fucking legs! That tried to rebuild itself but failed miserably!” she groaned, the robotic monotone making the complaint sound absurdly calm. “And I’m so tired...... I could sleep for 752 hours too.....”
As if in agreement, Dozirc let out a particularly resonant snore that vibrated Fiore’s new metal parts. WHIR-ZZZ.
Anger, her oldest companion, flickered through her organic half, cutting through the cyborg-induced lethargy. “Oh for FUCK’S sake!” she yelled, her natural voice cracking from her left side while the right side emitted a distorted burst of static. “When is that dumb pile of scrap metal gonna wake up so I can go BACK to WHERE I BELONG?! I have nuns to prank! I have a tutor who’s probably LOSING HIS MIND!”
Rogato’s screen flickered a worried face. “No offending the master! But still...... this system anomaly doesn’t compute! You’re right, we need a diagnostic override! A hard reset! M-maybe the master will have the root cause analysis!” She turned her screen towards a distant, rundown factory building, its broken windows like dead eyes, a single smokestack emitting a thin, black thread into the orange sky. “Let me initiate the good old resonator in the factory! I’ll be right back! K-keep trying! He should eventually-”
Her screen went dark again. She powered down, collapsing into a still, orange heap.
Fiore rolled her organic eye (her robotic one just stared, unblinking). “You REALLY need a system update, Rogato......”
Bzzt! Rogato rebooted. “-WAKEUP!!!” she buzzed, springing upright. “S-s-sorry! B-be right back!” She took off in a scrambling sprint, her cat-like ears bouncing, towards the factory, leaving a trail of tiny pat-pat sounds.
Fiore was alone again with the slumbering giant and her own half-transformed body. The metallic fatigue was insidious. Her thoughts felt slower, weighed down. Her organic limbs ached with a strange heaviness, as if sympathizing with the metal. She stumbled over to a rusted-out fridge and leaned against it, the cool surface a small comfort. “Ugh...... if he’s not waking up after this...... I’m dozing off right here after I finish sulking......”
She let her head loll against the fridge, her organic eye closing. Just for a few seconds. The silence, the rhythmic snoring, the utter pointlessness of effort here...... it was all so...... comfortable. Why keep fighting? Why not just...... stop? Alec...... he’d move on. He'd get over it. Everyone always did......
No. Not here.
The thought was a spark in the gloom. A spark of pure, Fiore-style defiance. It wasn’t a heroic thought. It was a pissed-off one. She hadn’t fought a four-phase wrath demon, been glitter-bombed by a lust moth, dueled a prideful opera bird, out-screamed a hungry goat, bankrupted a greedy bee, and escaped a jealous shark just to fall asleep in a junkyard.
She forced her organic eye open. With a grunt of effort that was part human strain, part mechanical whirr, she pushed herself away from the fridge. She bent down, her metal fingers whirring as they closed around the microphone. It felt different in her clamp—cold, inert. She hefted it.
The cyborg-kid switched the mic on. This time, the feedback whine that answered was harsh, grating. She didn’t wait. She poured every ounce of remaining will, every frayed nerve, into her voice. It wasn’t singing anymore. It was a wake-up call delivered through a malfunctioning PA system.
Song: Slowstopper
The music that rose to meet her was glacial. A deep, sub-bass drone underpinned her clumsy percussion. Melodic lines emerged, but they were stretched, slowed down, like tape dragging. The overall effect was of time itself struggling to move forward.
For the first minute, nothing changed. Dozirc slept. Fiore fought against the music, against her own body, forcing her chant to stay sharp, to cut through the syrup of sound. Her cyborg eye showed her systems: energy levels dipping, cooling fans straining. She was literally fighting herself.
Nothing. The snoring continued. The blue light pulsed. Fiore felt a wave of that heavy fatigue again, threatening to swallow her anger. Her robotic arm moved slower. Her HUD displayed a low-power warning. She was running down. This realm was draining her battery, both literal and metaphorical.
She was about to give up, to let the song and her consciousness sputter out, when she saw it.
Tiny sparks of electricity began to dance across Dozirc’s chassis. They crawled from his cable-tentacles up his legs, over his torso, converging on his core. The blue glow of the core intensified, brightening from a dim pulse to a steady, vibrant shine.
The snoring hitched. The dark optical lenses flickered and opened. A faint, cyan light appeared deep within them.
Fiore’s robotic eye tracked the surge in thermal activity. Her human heart hammered against her ribs. She sang louder, the robotic harmonizer in her voice growing more prominent, meeting the mechanical atmosphere of the realm head-on.
With a sound like a vault door unsealing after centuries, Dozirc’s mouth-grate stopped vibrating. The exhaust pipes ceased their smoke. The cables shifted, coiling and uncoiling with a leathery skritch.
The giant optical lenses powered on fully, glowing a bright, intelligent blue with yellow pupils. They rotated slowly, then focused downward, pinning Fiore in their gaze.
A deep, resonant, and heavily processed voice filled the clearing, each word separated by a slight, processing delay. It was the sound of a massive audio system powering up one speaker at a time.
“Boot sequence...... complete. *Yawn*”
Dozirc’s head tilted a fraction of an inch with a soft whirr. He observed her, his gaze moving from her human side to her cyborg side, lingering on the mic in her hand. Slowly, with a symphony of grinding gears and hissing pistons, he lifted his left arm. The gear-shaped hand rotated, the blue-glowing microphone at its center humming to life, matching the frequency of Fiore’s.
Fiore grinned, a lopsided smile thanks to her half-metal face. This was it. The battle wasn’t with fists or fire, but with soundwaves and willpower against entropy.
She launched back into the chorus of Slowstopper, and this time, Dozirc joined her.
His voice was incredible. It was a bass so deep it vibrated in Fiore’s metal bones, layered with glitches, static bursts, and the melodic whine of straining servos. He didn’t sing words, but data—binary code translated into melody, error messages turned into harmony, the sound of fragmented systems trying to reassemble.
Fiore sang back, her voice the counterpoint—the spark of intention, the bug in the system, the un-scheduled task that demands processing power. They dueled in a symphony of resistance versus rest, a beautiful, grinding, melodic clash.
Rogato returned halfway through, skidding to a stop at the edge of the clearing. Her screen was lit up with excited, flashing stars. “You did it! Master is operational! And you’re...... dueting!”
Fiore saw her, nodded, and kept singing, pouring everything she had left into the song. This was it. She could feel it. The sloth field around them wasn’t just being challenged; it was being rewritten by their combined sound.
Then, at the peak of the duet, as their voices intertwined in a complex, mechanical fugue, Dozirc glitched. A violent, staticky screech replaced his voice. His body seized. The blue light in his eyes and core flickered wildly.
His mic arm dropped to his side with a heavy thud. The light in his eyes faded to a dim pinprick, then went out. His core’s pulse slowed, becoming erratic, then settled back into its original, slow, sleepy rhythm.
He slumped forward, his massive head dipping. A final, soft puff of smoke left his exhaust pipes.
Zzzzzzzz...... zhrrrrrr......
He was asleep. Again.
Fiore’s singing faltered and died. She stared, her hope crumbling as quickly as it had built.
“Dozirc? Dozirc, wake up!” she yelled, her voice breaking.
No answer. Only the slow, mechanical breathing, shallower than before, but undeniably the sound of sleep, leaving her alone with the sound of her own panting and the whir of her internal fans. She had poured everything into that song, and for a moment, she’d reached him. And it hadn’t been enough.
She sang the last few bars alone, her voice a whisper against the returning snore. When it was over, she lowered the mic, her chest heaving, her mechanical lungs emitting a soft, wheezing sigh.
The scythe-energy appeared without fanfare. It didn’t swirl aggressively; it simply manifested around her like usual, this time a silent, black vortex edged with tired orange light. It felt like the realm itself was giving up and ejecting her.
Fiore tried to move, to yell, to run to Rogato—but the energy was gentle and inexorable. It lifted her off the ground. She looked down at the little robot, who was waving her claws frantically, her screen displaying a crying face emoji.
Then the energy contracted, and Fiore was gone.
Rogato stood in the sudden silence, her screen flickering. The clearing felt emptier, colder. The only sounds were Dozirc’s resumed snoring and the distant, forlorn whistle of the automated train.
Dozirc let out a massive, grinding yawn—a sound of bending metal and released pressure. YYYEEEEAAARRRGGGHHH......
His eyes flickered back on, the blue light steadying. He shifted, looking around with slow, deliberate movements, and his gaze landed on Rogato.
“Oh. Hello. Rogato.”
Rogato scurried up his cable-leg and perched back on his shoulder, her screen flashing a relieved smile. “MASTER! You’re awake! Fully, this time! Did you see? Did you hear? The small one! The cyborg girl! She sang with you!”
Dozirc nodded, a ponderous motion. “Yes. I. tried. Communicating. With. Her. But. Unfortunately. My. Software. Glitched. Again. And. I. Fell. Back. Asleep.” He paused, his core pulsing softly as he processed. “She. Seemed. Confused. And. Annoyed. ......Probably. Because. Of. Me. Sleeping. And. Shutting. Down. Again. ......But. Not. Fearful.”
Rogato’s screen flashed a worried face. She clutched her bunny ears. “D-Did I cause her to disappear?! With the resonator? I-I-I’m sorry! I’m so sorry, Master! I promise it won’t—”
Dozirc raised his claw-hand, a slow, calming gesture. “You. Did. Not. Ro.” His voice was gentle, for a machine. “Something. Else. Caused. This.” He looked up at the unchanging orange sky, his gaze distant, as if looking through it. “It. Was. Just. Like. Last. Time. ......With. That. Boy. And. His. Girlfriend.”
Rogato tilted her head. “BF and GF? The blue-haired kid and his girlfriend?”
Dozirc nodded. “Yes. BF. Sang. With. Me. Too. ......Then. They. Were. Gone. ......Same. As. Her.” He looked back at Rogato, the yellow pupils in his eyes softening. “So. Don’t. Worry. ......It. Is. Not. Your. Fault. ......She. Is. Elsewhere. Now.”
Rogato’s screen flooded with relief, displaying a happy, dancing robot. “Oh! Well, that’s good! I thought I’d broken the causality protocols or something!” She purred softly, snuggling against his neck joint. “Can we go back to standby mode now? My power cells are at 11%. I’m tired.”
Dozirc’s eyes, which had been soft, suddenly sharpened. The gentle blue glow intensified, tinged with a warning red at the edges. The ambient hum of the Catacombs dipped in pitch.
“Ro......?” he said, his voice dropping, losing its fragmented pause, becoming seamless and severe.
Rogato’s purring stopped. Her screen flickered to a neutral ‘listening’ icon. “Y-y-yes, boss?”
The lights in the distant factory—which had been emitting a faint, shimmering haze—flickered and died. The one crooked smokestack stopped its lazy emission. A wave of silent power rolled from Dozirc, making the very air feel thick and charged.
“I. TOLD. YOU. LAST. TIME.” The voice was no longer slow. It was a clear, cold, resonant command that vibrated in Rogato’s very casing. “‘ONLY. TURN. THAT. RESONATOR. ON...... IF. OUR. CREATOR. COMES. BACK......’”
Rogato’s screen flashed pure, pixelated fear. She shrank back, her bunny ears drooping. “I-I-I’m sorry! I just wanted to help! The girl was upset, and you were asleep, and I thought the emergency reboot sequence might—”
“YOU. DISOBEYED. MY. ORDERS. AGAIN.” Dozirc’s voice boomed, not loud, but dense with authority. It made the ground tremble. One of his cable-tentacles lashed out not at her, but at a nearby pile of washing machines. It wrapped around them and with a sickening crunch of compressing metal, crushed them into a single, dense cube of scrap.
“THIS. IS. YOUR. SECOND. WARNING.” He leaned in, the red tinge in his eyes glowing brighter, filling Rogato’s screen with its light. “OR. YOUR. CONSEQUENCES. WILL. BE. SEVERE. PUNISHMENT.”
Rogato’s screen displayed a waterfall of green, pixelated tears. Her whole body trembled. “I-I-I don’t want severe punishment! I-I promise it will never happen again! ROBOT’S HONOR!!!” She held up a tiny, trembling claw in a solemn oath.
Dozirc stared at her for a long, tense moment. The red light in his eyes receded, fading back to the calm blue and yellow. His core resumed its normal, steady pulse. The oppressive weight in the air lifted.
“......GOOD.” He closed his eyes for a second—a long, deliberate blink—then opened them again. His gaze was distant once more, looking past the junkyard, past the Infernalands, towards some unfathomable point in time or memory.
[Any. Millennium. Now...... I’ll. Wait. For. You...... As. Long. As. It. Takes......]
He didn’t explain. He didn’t need to. Rogato had heard the whispers in his sleep-cycle logs, the fragmented data packets about “the creator,” the being who had assembled him from the primordial scrap and given him purpose before vanishing into the void. Dozirc’s endless sleep wasn’t just sloth; it was a vigil.
Dozirc let out a final, deep, mechanical yawn that shook loose a shower of rust from his shoulders.
“......Zzz......”
His eye-lights dimmed to a standby glow. His body settled back into its throne of cars with a final, grounding clunk. The snoring began anew, a deep, rhythmic, and now somehow sorrowful sound that once again became the heartbeat of the Comatose Catacombs.
Rogato watched him for a minute, her own systems calming. Then, carefully, she curled up in her familiar spot on his shoulder, her screen dimming to display a simple, looping animation of a sleeping cat. A soft, contented purr, barely audible over the snoring, began to emanate from her.
“Purr......”
The realm returned to its stagnant equilibrium. The train whistled in the distance, a lonely sound. The mountains of scrap stood silent under the eternal orange sky. In the heart of it all, the Infernaling of Sloth slept on, dreaming of a creator’s return, his latest, brief interaction with a determined little girl already folding into the long, slow memory of his defragmentation cycle.
And somewhere else, far from the rust and the snores, Fiore was being deposited back onto the glittering streets of the Lustlands, her cyborg parts dissolving like a dream, her human form returning—cold, tired, but one step closer to home.