Work Text:
The ruined cockpit stank of dust and ozone.
A steady rumble from the long dormant reactor made loose chips of armourglass and rubble bounce and dance along the grating. Entrapta glided up towards the shattered command tank, held aloft by a forest of thin probing mechadendrites.
This was fascinating! An ancient God Machine, and it was kinda almost mostly intact! She couldn't begin to imagine what she could learn from it's data banks. Out the corner of her eye she saw the primary neural connector twitch.
What could that mean? Maybe some of those systems were still functioning! Oh this was just the best day. Her mechadendrites carried her up into the tank and she took the neural spike in her hands. It had a fine layer of very old dried blood on it, which probably belonged to the broken skeleton on the floor. She spun around and brushed her dirty magenta hair off of her interface port, paused to consider the ramifications of interfacing directly with the ancient broken machine spirit of a dead god machine, decided that Science did not allow for hesitation and plugged in.
Ice filled her mind and set her nerves on fire. Her body stretched and swelled until she was a giant. A God. Her finger twitched and she felt its massive twin scrape through scrap metal and sand. It… she… was ALIVE.
A voice filled her head; drowning out all her thoughts.
“HOW DARE YOU. GET OUT.”
She felt her lungs freeze and her heart stop; Rage. Utter, desperate Rage. Not the kind she had expected though, not born from arrogance and animalistic hunger but a cold, bone deep hate. Not for her, or the Mechanicus drones on the surface, but itself. Cogs and Sprockets she knew that feeling from back when there were others around, people who didn't understand and made sure she knew their frustrations. The voice in her head bellowed again.
“GET OUT OR DIE.”
And her heart spasmed.
“No.” she said with all her will. “You aren’t alone anymore. Let me see you.”
She pushed her thoughts against its barriers, it writhed and snarled at her but it didn’t put up much of a fight. Finally, desperately, she broke through and in a flood of data and sensations their minds became one. Structural breaches and critical damage readouts poured over her vision but she didn’t care as the God Machine’s spirit hung around her silent awe. Her lungs gasped back to life and her heart beat in time to the reactor’s thrum.
“Hordak.” she whispered with tears in her eyes. “You’re beautiful.”
Though her workforce was small, primarily consisting of servitors made from repurposed Mechanicus surveyors, she had made great progress on her little dig site. It was mere months after finding Hordak and she had already excavated his head and upper torso and had begun to make rudimentary repairs where she could. During the nights she worked with the servitors, directing plasma torches and grinding drills to clear away the debri trapping the God Machine. The days she spent with Hordak.
He was unlike any machine spirit she had ever encountered, no aggressive predator or meek workhorse, he was alive in a way she couldn’t describe. A fully formed personality, rational and intelligent and just a teensy bit sullen. She lost herself in him and he in turn with her, and it was during these meldings that Entrapta found herself experiencing something she had no data to compare to, feelings she had once thought entirely alien to her.
It was the morning of the sixth month and they were floating together in the deep purple of their mind, their mechadendrites moving slowly and carefully over their exposed flesh. Suddenly a servitors auspex detected a signal on the far edge of the rust sea. Without breaking routine they brought the visual feed up and saw a tiny speck moving rapidly towards the dig site. The blaring roar of a warhorn drifted over them as the speck resolved into a Warhound Scout titan. This was troubling, they would need Entrapta for this. With a sigh she slid the neural spike out of her port and gathered her overalls from the floor.
It was painted a dark muddy brown, a rather ugly colour compared to Hordak’s white and blue but she wasn’t one to judge! Hopefully she could convince them to leave, search somewhere else for invaluable war machines and missing surveyors. She suddenly felt very alone without Hordak’s presence in her mind. Curious, she never used to feel alone, something worth reviewing later. The Warhound slowed to a stop a dozen metres from her and she began to doubt her chances. A servitor's head turned to face her, it’s optics lit up a shining red and the doubt left her. Hordak was with her, they could achieve anything! The Warhound blared its horn at her.
“Hello!” She yelled back. “We are kinda busy here, could you please leave? Thank you!”
After several minutes of silence the horn sounded again before sliding into an amplified synthetic voice with a blurt of binary.
“YOU HAVE DEFILED THE BODY OF A SACRED GOD MACHINE."
Entrapta frowned. “Well I wouldn’t say defiled exactly-”
“YOU SHALL BE DESTROYED FOR YOUR HERESY AND THIS SITE WILL BE PURGED."
The vulcan mega bolter on its left weapon arm spun up. Entrapta dashed towards a rust dune with inhuman speed as the explosive bolts tore up the ground behind her. She could hear the building whine of its plasma blastgun as its horn sounded again. She wouldn’t be able to dodge that.
Hordak watched through the eyes of the servitors as the stunted brown runt tried to kill his Princepts. How DARE they even look upon her! Fear swirled with rage as she disappeared behind a dune chased by a flurry of explosions. He felt his reactor surge with righteous fury. How DARE they.
Lightning filled his limbs and he roared.
Entrapta was prepared for one last desperate escape when she heard Hordak’s Voice. It was weak from disuse, thin and reedy compared to the Warhound, but it filled her with such joy. She turned her head and saw a miracle. With an unbelievable noise of tortured metal and shattering rock the God Machine Hordak rose from his tomb, the massive power claw on his right arm surging with energy as he twisted and brought it down on the Warhound.
It managed a half step in surprise before the claws shattered its void shields like glass and ripped through its canine head. The dead Warhound crashed into the ground with enough force to knock Entrapta off her feet and when she stood back up she saw Hordak slumped over the smaller titan’s corpse. With an almighty crack his power claw shorted out and the rippling lighting died. Entrapta spun around in joy.
“Hordak!” The giant head shifted slightly towards her, cockpit windows glowing red. “You moved!”