Chapter Text
It had been quite some time since William Boar last paid a visit to the Offshore & Drilling District. Odd that he had not returned to his old workplace more frequently, considering his proficiency with drilling, dour disposition, and equally dour atmosphere of the overcast sky blanketing the sky above his head, one would have thought this place would have been a veritable vacation spot for the Derrick Man. Boring, plain, and, most importantly, painted with muted, gray and brown colors. It was everything the cog could have ever wanted from a workplace, were it not for one major deal breaker.
The weather.
He grumbled, glaring daggers up at the clouds that had begun to sputter rain upon him – the work of Misty Monsoon, no doubt. He knew she was still stationed here, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to run into her while making his way down Anchor Avenue. Not only would an encounter with her result in at least an hour’s worth of wasted time from shaking her off his trail, that woman had been the whole reason for his request to move to the Central Oil District. The move was requested by him to find any breathing room away from her that he could, what with her constant distractions that drew him away him from his work, and her propensity to hound him with useless, useless questions on his breaks. Idiotic small talk such as “What’s your favorite grade of oil? Is diesel more bitter to you? Ever considered adding sweeteners to your morning oil?” and “Would you rather talk to me if I was a worm?” echoed around his head as he walked, passing by some other suits on duty. He rolled his eyes at that last one. What did that even mean? He knew Alton had said stranger things to him on the rare occasions the Land Acquisition Architect had time to meet him for cogfee (exactly once since his reassignment), often conducted in a far more rambunctious manner, often accompanied by the near guarantee of property damage. Alton had the tendency to destroy things in the wake of his enthusiasm for developing and working with the land, to the dismay of any easily breakable items surrounding him. He recalled as the other cog had apologized profusely for shattering his old lamp at that meeting, to an utterly absurd degree. William had reassured him it was fine, the toons had done worse damage to his office space in the past (and he was paid more than enough to cover a rusty old lamp he never used anyway), but he insisted on paying him back, having swiftly shoved two tickets to the upcoming High Roller show into his hands, saying it was the least he could do, as he had no time to burn, and no one to go with.
(That obnoxious toon had ultimately forced her way into partaking of the other ticket, but that was a story for a different time.)
He liked Alton. Despite his hyperactive personality, he found he got along amicably with the cog, and could appreciate his enthusiasm for his area of work. He was the kind of suit to be excited by the proposition of functional AC, zoning, and planning commuter routes, and found a kind of comradeship within him as a result. Plus, he was honest, considerate – perhaps to an... almost screaming fault, but every word that flooded out of him was true. Work got done around him, which was more than he could say for some of the other managers in the company.
His pace slowed, taking care to follow Alton’s instructions as he edged carefully around the looming toon headquarters, sticking to the shadows. His eyes glinted ominously in the dark, scanning for the first warning signs of potential silly activity as he slipped down an alleyway, relieved that no toon came rushing out the doors with a freshly baked fruit pie for his face. In fact, the street was utterly devoid of toon activity, he realized, as the thinnest of grins took over for the briefest of moments. It was probably the oncoming storm that had forced those mangy critters to depart, but it ensured that he could have a nice, relaxing meeting with his friend – perhaps Misty had actually helped him for once.
The office of the Land Acquisition Architect, Alton S. Crow, stood silently nestled in its little out of the way corner, close to a small fish pond that looked as though it had been all but forgotten about. That was another thing William appreciated about his work; he was smart about it. Why, he’d been the one to suggest disguising his office over in the Central Oil District to blend in with the surrounding buildings – it was ingenious! Granted, he thought, as he leaned against the elevator railing to go up to the main office, this building would have stuck out like a sore thumb had it been placed on the main boulevard. But those toons couldn’t “tell their rear ends apart from striking pure retail gold”, according to Alton. In other words, it was a wonder they managed to put up as good of a fight as they had been.
… still. That was one key point where the two coworkers diverged in their likemindedness. William had seen firsthand what some of those vicious little creatures could – and would – be capable of. Alton’s carefree enthusiasm, almost to the point where the cog seemed as though he thought himself made of pure, invincible titanium, deeply concerned him. That kind of thinking is exactly what the toons capitalized on, the pride before the fall of a 100-ton weight bashed your head in. He was more than capable of defending himself, but the thought gnawed away at him as the doors opened smoothly to his office.
Empty.
William stepped out, head swiveling back and forth seeking Alton, confused. A clock set into the wall read their agreed-upon meeting time off to him, no second more, no second less. He should be here, unless perhaps something came up toon-wise? Maybe he left a note, if that was the case? The room looked normal, aside from a slightly messily wrapped box on Alton’s desk... and a giant, gaping hole in the floor that he soon discovered with a nasty shock. He very nearly fell in, windmilling his arms and sucking air sharply in through his teeth as he stumbled backwards.
“Cog, are you only just deciding to do renovations out here?!” He balled his fists, venting to the air around him, peering down the hole to ascertain what kind of work was exactly being done. And how come it wasn’t covered up? Usually, the suits he directed wouldn’t be nearly that careless, to leave this big a hole right in his own office without proper precautions. Alton could get ahead of himself at times, but it wasn’t like him to leave such a hazard like this out in the open without some kind of warning, much less in his own office. “Alton, you couldn’t have found a different day for-?!”
He felt all the furor rising in him dissipate at once as he froze in place, eyes fixated on the crumpled form lying prone two or three floors down, like an unfortunate bird that had slammed its little head into a window it couldn’t see until it was too late. His systems were still trying to register the sight, oil dripping off his head down into the pit onto his fallen coworker’s head.
“Alton?”
The Land Acquisition Architect lightly stirred, looking up at William. One of his eyes was outright busted, and the other was flickering on and off, in time with his voice, too faint to hear from high above. It looked like he winced from the motion.
The light on the other cog’s chest looked dull. And it was growing dimmer by the second.
He felt something catch in his chest – a breath, a cry of fear, a sob – yelled something back down that he thought (he couldn’t exactly recall later) were words of reassurance, dashing back to the elevator and slamming a fist into the button to go down, shaking from the sight as calm music pumped back in. Eyes darting around impatiently, he stared, wide-eyed, at his expression, at himself in the reflective steel, a deep-set frown of tense, clenched teeth drilling back into his gaze. He almost didn’t recognize himself – he had never felt fear like this before in his entire time working for this company, much less for another person, much less for ANY of his coworkers. It was no secret he despised most – if not all - of them, but Alton was the exception – he was one of the few cogs he found to not get on his nerves, and in return, he was one of the few to not find him dreadfully boring. Unnerved, he tried to alleviate his nerves by flashing a forced smile to the metal doors. The reflected face adopted a deranged-looking grin, strained, looking for all the world like a disturbing antique mask. Immediately, he dropped it, watching as his resting, grouchy face peered back, unimpressed with himself. Grumbling, he rubbed his temple, wiping oil off his brow as he recalled something that the toon, Rain, had told him – that he should try to smile once in a while, or risk having his face permanently set like that. A little bit late for that one.
It was a swift ride down in actuality, no more than a minute at most, but to William it felt like an eternity. The second the doors opened to the bottom floor, he bolted out, at once at his friend’s side. He bent down, shivering as one of his hands made contact with a large, mixed puddle of still-warm oil and gasoline; the sight was even worse now that he was up close and able to assess his friend’s damage. One of the servos at his joints looked to be bent in the wrong direction, and another was stripped of the connective plating at his shoulder, exposing tubing and wiring to the air. Someone had also attempted to open him up, by the looks of it – hence the leaking fluids, seeping through his suit covering the wound.
“Alton? Alton, what in the name of good oil happened to you?!” He tried not to sound desperate, voice almost squeaking as high as one of those accursed mouse toons, trying to see if he could move his friend, gently taking ahold of what was left of his torso and trying to right him to a sitting position. He’d lost... a lot of fluids, William noticed with a sinking feeling in his chest, and it didn’t seem as though he would be getting up any time soon. Mentally, he kicked himself for not bringing along an oil can or two, even though he knew it probably would have leaked out of the cog as soon as he drank it.
“William...? … oh, so... so you came t’day... sorry. Some toons came by, th’ usual... er. Sorta. Got real, ah, busted up.”
Alton’s head hung down at a weird angle, not too dissimilar to a ragdoll’s. He was trying to move his head to look William in the eyes, failing with a short, sharp exclamation of pain, jerking his head back suddenly.
“Don’t move around so much.” He felt another shudder run through his titanium spine as he realized there were wires spilling from the dented, splintered metal tubing that composed Alton’s neck, sparking when he had cried out. The last thing they needed was for both of them to go up in a giant fireball. “’Course I came all the way out here. I haven’t missed a single meeting since being hired to this company, and I do not intend to start doing so now.”
“... I’d gone out and... gotten you somethin’.” Alton’s head drooped further down, his one functional arm resting on his blood-red service light. “Jus’ some old rags t’ help with... y’know, all th’ oil that... keeps escaping. From yer tanks. I... I ‘member you havin’ problems wit’ yer product output ‘cause of it...”
Oh. That must have been the package he’d seen upstairs. He briefly considered running all the way back up there to grab it, to help staunch the flow of oil out of his body, but that would leave Alton alone down here with far more grievous injuries than just low fluids, by the looks of it. It almost looked as though someone had stripped him for parts, judging by a quick cursory glance over the external damage. He still didn’t know how bad the internal damage was. And, if all that oil around the two did ignite, no one would be there to try to extinguish it. Besides, a dulling light could mean one of several things, including...
…including...
… including, maybe, irreparable damage to the cog’s internal components and skeleton...
No. No, no no no no. That was impossible. Only one cog had ever been pronounced dead – at least in the official sense – Alton was at no risk of something like that. Was he? This damage... it... it was severe, in every sense of the word, but was it severe enough? There wasn’t any way for him to confirm or deny – the exact explanation for the death of Atticus Wing had never been released to public, if it was even known to begin with. But what if the toons had taken – or broken - something vital to the repair and rebuilding process of the cogs?
His friend’s head sparked again as he grunted once more in pain, his whole body seizing briefly. William didn’t feel like playing with his friend’s life – this was far more destructive than what toons tended towards, unless a few of them had particularly twisted ideas of what a joke was.
“... what kind of toons did this to you?”
“I... I didn’t get a real good look at ‘em.” Alton gripped his light on his chest a bit tighter, as if that would help him hold on. “... I fell right on my head soon as I lost th’ battle against those mangy beasts, but didn’t have any of this here... damage... till I woke back up.” His head tilted a good forty-five degrees too far to the left. “Best I have is that they thought I was playin’ possum. Coulda been the ones I lost to, coulda been some other vermin on cog land.”
William nudged Alton’s hand to the side, checking the light and seeing if he could fix some of the damage under his suit, noticing more than a few vital parts looked to have been... extracted. Gears, mostly, but there were bundles of conspicuously missing tubes that were accounting for the leaks. He sucked air nervously through his teeth, dread settling into his shell as his fears appeared to be proven more and more by the second.
“Where is... everyone else?” He asked, tearing a strip off Alton’s suit to stuff in to keep what little oil his body still retained. Not that either of them would have liked the answer, in any case.
At this, Alton fell silent.
“Alton? Hey. Stay with me.” William nervously placed a hand under his chin, checking to see if the bulb in his one functional eye was sputtering out. He noted with a sigh of great relief that it was not.
“... I have no darned idea. All of ‘em jus’... took off, is what yer sayin’?” Even in his current state, a reasonably angry edge was infused into his words – not directeed at William, but at their good for nothing, incompetent coworkers. He more than understood the feeling.
“I haven’t seen anyone else. There's some suits patrolling outside, but I don’t think any of them are the ones you direct.”
Alton leaned his head back, rubbing his hat as his functional eye twitched, proceeding to launch into a long string of curses and insults of an impressive magnitude considering his rapidly dropping energy level. It made William smile despite the grave circumstances – even on the brink of defeat, his friend’s energy couldn’t be truly dampened.
“... buncha low-life, yellow-bellied worms!” He spat, head jerking so violently that William was scared it could snap off. “I oughta- I oughta have ‘em all fired into th’ harbor, soon as I-”
He stood up, the light in both his eyes and chest flickering, going dark as his servos all froze up, sending the much taller cog crashing on top of William, who yelped and collapsed along with him.
“Alton, I told you to not move, didn’t I?!” He barked out, more in fear than anger as he rolled him back onto the floor, seeing the light faintly flicker back on in his friend and feeling an immediate rush of relief after the scare. Was it possible to feel someone else’s life flashing before your eyes? He swore the puddle of oil had grown twice as large in the last few moments, uncertain how much of it came from Alton, and how much of it had dripped from his own head as the stress got to him. Exhaling sharply, he firmly set both his hands against his shoulders to ensure he wouldn’t try to spring back up again. “Stay. STILL.”
The architect fell unusually silent, nodding as best he could to show he understood. He wouldn't meet his eyes. The light in his chest was dwindling further, still desperately fighting to burn, but fighting a losing fight all the same.
“William, er... real... real mighty strange request, but, ah...” A small amount of oil pooled at the edge of one of his lights, dripping onto the floor. “... if... if I were to, ah, kick th’ bucket right now, wouldja...”
“You are NOT dying, Alton.” He leaned down, right in his face, holding on tighter to his body, voice firm even as his brain told him his friend very likely was. “Not on my watch, you hear? You must have a repair kit, or spare parts, or- or I could- maybe a street manager...”
“... William.” His head leaned against his shoulder now, the little caution tape ribbon brushing against his face, defeated, his voice taking on a nervous, glitchy undertone as his systems started reaching a critical level. “I don’t wanna talk about that at this here point. Let’s... let’s talk about anythin’ else. P... Please?”
The Derrick Man relaxed, resigned understanding etching its way across his face as he let go of his shoulders. It had already been too late since before he’d even arrived. He could feel oil start to worm its way out of his own goggles, wiping it away swiftly as he sat back on his knees for a few moments as everything that had happened bore down on his shoulders with the weight of five hundred tons of solid rock. Overcome with a strong feeling of weakness, he decided to lie down next to Alton. He stared up at the brand-new building skylight above them, his hands clasped over his own chest. Lying down in a puddle of oil on the floor and feeling like crap wasn’t exactly new to him, but this was the first time he’d had someone by his side.
“The... the show was good,” he finally spoke, after what felt like an eternity of quiet, “the one you gave me those tickets for.”
“Ohhh. That’s nice. Glad... glad you could find a use for ‘em.”
More ticking minutes of silence echoed around the two - for so long that William was half certain he’d passed away in the dead quiet - before Alton piped up once more.
“... I managed t’ record th’ TV premiere. Guess I... I won’t get t’ know who that mysterious High Roller feller was, huh? Darn. I was jus’ itchin’ t’ know...”
If he had lips, William would have bitten them nervously at that moment. TV premiere? Oh. Oh, cog, he sincerely hoped they didn’t have a camera on the audience. He’d never hear the end of it if his coworkers knew he was willingly sitting next to that toon.
He pushed the worry aside, turning his head to him with an awkward grin, “Oh, you want to know who High Roller was? You’d never have guessed in a billion years -” he leaned in, almost conspiratorially, “- it was Buck Ruffler and Dave BruBot. And they fused.”
“Whaaaa...? Cogs... can do that? First I've heard of it.”
“Apparently. They danced together, or something stupid like that, right after that duck fell from the ceiling...”
Fell. Buck had fallen...
William sat bolt upright, the oil slicking off his body like water off a duck’s back, the gears turning in his head, playing back the show in his mind. That’s right – the duck had fallen flat onto the stage. Nothing new for Buck Ruffler to injure himself while on the job (or even while merely existing), but when the two had fused, hadn’t all the damage that resulted from the fall vanished? Granted, it had been minor scrapes and dents at best – nothing like what Alton had suffered – but would it be possible for him to...?
“Aw heck. You’ve... gone and gotten an idea, haven’t you?” His friend weakly smiled, even as the last of his fluids spilled out across the floor, spilled across his friend’s suit as William got up, holding his broken frame close to his body, his light left with only embers of luminescence. “I... I’d know that face anywhere.”
There was only one problem: Alton couldn’t dance in his state, and William would sooner rip his own drill off than be forced to dance with anyone, life and death situation or not. He wasn’t certain if this idea would even work, assuming they could skip the dance number altogether, as there was always the chance that the performers had that function installed just for the show... but this was the only possible solution he could see.
And Alton wouldn’t be around long enough for him to find another.
Now, how’d they done it? Without all the stupid dancing... just a handshake? He firmly grasped Alton’s hand, trying to not think about how weak the other cog’s servos felt in his hand, decreasing in strength as he increased his grip strength to try to make up some of the difference, focusing on the idea of connecting his systems to his own. Sharing his strength.
“We’re going to fuse.”
…
Nothing happened.
Alton’s head sagged forwards as William’s breath caught in his vents, paralyzed as he watched his lights dim, falling to the cold claws of darkness. His grip weakened, slipped away from his own, as he nearly crushed his hand trying to pull Alton’s failing systems back to him.
“Alton? ALTON?! HEY! HEY, STAY WITH ME!” He smacked the side of his head a little, trying to get his lights to rekindle, his heart flooded with raw, crude panic and hot, stinging despair. “WAKE UP! COME ON, WORK! Work... work, please...”
… Alton didn’t move, his lights extinguished. William held his limp hand close to his chest light, body heaving, eyes shut. If only- if only he could give his friend some of the fire in his own chest, if only he could spark some semblance of life back into his shell, reignite him with any kind of encouragement, any kind of gesture.
“Alton... I’m sorry. I’m so sorry... you... you have a good rest.” He blinked oil out of his eyes, chin now resting on the shell of his friend’s head (as Alton sometimes did to him to get his attention when he dropped by during work), his visual receptors unfocused. “You’re... long overdue for a vacation, I think. You... you work so hard for this company. If anyone deserves...”
He nodded to himself.
“... If anyone deserves a day off, it’s you. Alton S. Crow.”
He issued a long, shaking kind of sigh as the room seemed to gradually grow brighter through his tears, somehow. Maybe the sun had come out? But... all the windows were on the upper floors, weren’t they? Surely it wouldn’t be nearly this bold a light, considering this was the basement – even with the impromptu skylight above.
He fell silent suddenly, frowning as he was brought back to the room around him and out of his grieving thoughts. The room was... blinding, like someone had turned on a floodlight, but centered directly upon himself. He leaned back, squinting down at his friend’s body, now glowing. He realized with a start that his own was, too, as he felt a kind of energy rush overtaking him. No, overtaking both of them – he could feel his systems integrating something else into itself, could feel Alton’s presence again, a faint signal, slowly amplifying, regaining strength. He could feel him reach out to him through the connection, reassuring him that he was still alive.
He could feel Alton’s strength return to his hand, shaking his hand as if they’d just agreed upon a business deal.
He smiled, the most genuine he had been in a very long time, as he closed his eyes and allowed the sensation of the light to wash over him – over them - as they fused, somehow warm and cool at once, like the dawn of the first day in spring. He could feel his systems taking on all the damage Alton suffered, and felt as his friend had access to all his working parts in turn. What a fool he was, to think anything could have kept him down for long.
The light began to die down, as the pleasant sensation induced by it coaxed him into slowly closing his eyes, only just now realizing how tired he was, how drained his system battery had been by the visit, by the discovery, by all the stress and lost oil. A little time for a brief reset couldn’t hurt, would it? If anyone came by to check on them, they’d understand. Surely. His body felt heavier, somehow, but he was certain it was his imagination – his systems fooling him as the stress of the situation evaporated from him. Lowering him gently, warmly down into sleep mode.
Yes, a reset was in order.
On the bottom floor of the office building, a brand-new cog now lay, shutting down in preparation for a reboot of its newly merged systems.