Chapter Text
Cold.
Cold, dark, wet.
Blurry shapes and a wall of white.
Five Pebbles couldn’t see too well, not anymore, not with the degradation of his optic lenses and lack of neurons, so he didn't even try to identify most of the random shapes that moved across his vision.
The whole world blurred together anyway, the longer he was alive.
It wasn’t like there was much to see in his chamber anyway.
At this point, the only thing he could do was lay there in the snow, holding onto his music pearl, distorted music playing softly against the sounds of howling winds.
Cold.
Green.
There was something green in front of him.
…A fluffy creature?
“Little.. Green thing… Hello.”
He blinked at the green blur that moved towards him, unable to focus well.
A soft paw patted him on the face, but he didn’t react much.
Did the green thing visit him previously…?
He couldn’t remember.
The thing suddenly flashed in colors, and strained optic lenses tried to make out what caused the change in colors. Glowing, blue and yellow, coming from the green thing.
“...?”
The colors changed, blue glow shifting to red, and in a flash, a violent tremor threw Pebbles away from the creature.
…What?
What?
A flash of images filled his mind, of rot, of Moon, of weird creatures-
…Memories?
He haven’t had any memories in a long time, what-
Another flash.
He looked up from his position lying in the rubble.
Yellow turned to white.
Suddenly, it felt like the ground underneath him opened to swallow him whole, mind flashing with thousands of images at once, shoved into his mind at a rate too high for him to register.
Pink fingers clawed at the rubble falling around him, and then he was suspended in the air, and he was floating-
He fell on the ground.
Smooth, clear, pristine floor.
No more rubble.
More memories flashed through his mind, neurons flaring, connections being made at the speed of thousands of calculations all at once as everything fell into place.
A click, a zap, and Five Pebbles opened his eyes as his puppet seized, only to see… The ceiling of his chamber.
Unbroken.
Not freezing.
No rot.
No green creature.
…What?
He sifted through his memories, his neuron flies angrily buzzing through his whole can with an overload of data, close to bursting from the amount of images shoved into every single fly. Entire structure shook violently at the insane connection speeds, water intake rising to its peak once again, steam howling between pipes and electricity sparking.
…He could feel his structure. Not the rot.
He could feel the whole structure.
It was working once again.
Five Pebbles shot up from the ground, hands gripping at the head of his puppet, vision flashing with warning over an overload of data, because he could remember remember remember-
His body snapped forwards like a striking lizard as he grasped for his screens, on instinct, gripping and scratching at them like a feral animal rather than the iterator he was, because what…?
A shudder overtook his whole body as he thought of the snow, green thing, flashing colors, rot rot rot- He couldn’t see over the flashes of memories that he didn’t have just a second ago, vision completely taken over by the wave.
He seized, gripping the antennae on his head so hard he could feel one of them snap under his hand, but the pain didn’t even register over the whirlwind of flashing images and tremors.
Something dropped in his chamber, and a big, heavy and warm body flung itself at him, curling around his puppet. Three fingered paws grabbed his hands, trying to move them away from his antennae, but he
couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, what-
He seized again, and his arms moved on instinct to grab the weird creature pressing itself against his chest.
…Green thing?
No.
No, it wasn’t- It wasn’t fluffy like the green thing.
It looked like a blur of red.
…Why was it red?
A rough, wet tongue slid over his face, and he cringed back instantly, but it dulled the flashing in his mind. His entire superstructure still screeched, neurons getting overloaded and fresh connections zapping walls of electricity between each other, the sudden crash of electricity through every part of his structure electrocuting every being unfortunate enough to be in its path.
More electricity and water rushed through him than it ever did.
Not even when he was creating the rot was his structure so unstable, constant screeching and buzzing and zapping and burning , neurons close to bursting.
And yet… He focused back on the red thing, pressing his fingers into the mildly sticky flesh of the creature, his puppet still overtaken by tremors.
It didn’t seem to care about his painful grip at all, continuing to lick at his face and leaving it coated in saliva as if it was going to save him from the overload in some way.
…It did help, though.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the tremors slowed down, memories of thousands of cycles no longer flashing through his mind, and he could think more clearly once again. He focused back his eyes on the red thing, and…
…Little Ruffian?
…What…
That creature… She died. From old age. A LONG time ago.
She might’ve reincarnated into something else, of course, or maybe taken a dip in the void sea - Pebbles never found out what happened to her, she just… Disappeared one day, and he went on about his day - but this was very distinctly his little Ruffian.
The citizen drone buzzed next to her, as well.
Confused, he reluctantly let go of the creature, cringing a bit at the marks he clearly left in the skin of the being with his grip. She didn’t seem to mind, however, as she moved her face away from his head a bit.
Thankfully she stopped licking him, ew.
Her blank eyes said nothing, but the ears made it clear she was either unhappy or in a state of distress as they pinned back.
She let out a confused chitter at him.
“I… Hello.” He spoke up, back at the creature, but he was confused.
Why was his structure still standing?
What about the rot?
Why did he get his neurons back?
How did she come back?
…
…He suddenly realized with another shudder that the only way it could possibly work was if he somehow went back in time.
If that green thing managed to… Somehow turn him back in time, it made sense why the structure was still working and Ruffian was still alive…
Wait.
What cycle was it then?!
How far back did he go-
How far did the rot get!?
He pushed Little Ruffian away - at which she answered with an angry snort - and brought up a screen, scanning his whole structure.
It felt… So freeing.
He felt better than he did in thousands of cycles.
He wasn’t in pain with every movement.
The scan showed the rot inside his structure, but it was… Quite low of an amount, at least in comparison to what he dealt with later on in the future. To what he remembered the best.
A pang of fear took over him as he scanned the state of all his rarefaction cells.
All four were still active.
None touched by the rot yet.
He… He could remember the one on the right of his structure being the first one to get corrupted, but that was still…
Another scan.
It was a hundred cycles away before the rot would reach the outside shell and corrupt the first cell..
Currently, the cell was fine.
…In a hundred cycles it would not be.
Scan, scan, scan.
Ruffian huffed again next to him and patted him on the head, and he turned back to it.
Right! Right. The being was still here, confused over his sudden breakdown.
Probably confused why he was on the floor.
If he remembered correctly, he never sat on the floor back in that time, and even if something forced him to drop, he would get up as soon as possible.
Now, however? He was sitting on the floor, not even trying to get up.
Little Ruffian shoved her face in his neck, wet nose touching the exposed metal and he flinched away at the cold wetness, immediately pushing her away by instinct. Gross!
“I- I’m fine, citizen.” He finally answered, and she slapped her tail on the floor in anger. It seemed like she didn’t believe him.
“I just…” He deflated, once again shivering at the thought of the cold cold cold rot green thing-
“Something… Happened.”
Talking to the Ruffian made him feel slightly better, somehow.
“I… I will be fine.”
He suddenly thought about Ruffles, Moon’s creature, not so different from his own little Ruffian. It almost made him laugh at how similar those names were, but… Ruffles did not exist here yet.
Right.
He remembered how the wet rat reactivated Moon with his last remaining rarefaction cell.
He still had four remaining.
One would get consumed by the rot in a hundred cycles.
…
…He had to fix her, before his whole structure got taken over. He could spare the one that would stop working in a hundred cycles anyway, he-
…He didn’t want to be alone…
The thought was familiar.
He spent so painfully long in the snow, thinking about how he didn’t want to be alone.
He could not be alone now.
He didn’t want to be alone anymore.
He couldn’t be alone.
Cold white cold rot cold-
He started panicking again, puppet shivering violently, and Little Ruffian shoved her whole face into his neck once again. This time, however, he didn’t push her away. He slumped over her, body twitching as he tried not to think of the snow.
His chamber was too white.
It looked like snow.
Awful.
He calmed down after a bit, pressing his face into the sticky red creature as she once again started to lick him. At some point she attempted to lick his broken antennae, only to get zapped in the tongue by a bit of electricity.
She sneezed and stuck out her slightly burned tongue, and that made Pebbles finally realize that his antennae was broken.
One was still fine, and the other one… Completely snapped off.
Damn it.
He looked down at the metal rod on the floor with a slight sigh, before moving his eyes back to the Ruffian.
She once again seemed concerned.
“...Something strange happened, citizen.” He was still not used to having the ability to speak properly, yet. He was slowly settling back into his old reality, body growing more comfortable with all the processes.
Wait.
Wait, if the rot didn’t take over all the genetic modification areas, he could fix it! He could fix the rot!
It came from that area, yes, but only one sector was infected so far, which meant he had three that were in decent enough condition to allow him to create purposed organisms!
He could get rid of the rot before it killed him.
Sometime before Ruffles came to take his cell away from him, he began noticing some… Strange creatures, in the garbage wastes below him. His overseers kept showing them to him, and he quickly noticed that they let out a puff of chemicals that instantly killed all rot it came in contact with with deadly efficiency.
That was because those things evolved to eat the rot, and got stupidly effective at it, as anything but a perfect weapon would mean death.
Nature was more powerful than an Iterator could ever be, after all.
One should never underestimate evolution.
It was too late for him, by then, of course. Too much of his structure was gone for a small group of strange creatures to save him, especially considering they barely left the garbage wastes on their own, and had to consistently consume spore puffs to replenish their chemicals.
But now?
He had access to all he needed to recreate those creatures!
He was suddenly incredibly glad at the fact he allowed the overseers to lead one of them into his chamber so he could analyze them - and remove as much rot as they could until they had no more chemicals to use due to lack of spore puffs - even if, by then, he already knew it wouldn’t save him.
With a burst of anxious energy, he activated all the experimental chambers in sector four and three, - as far away from the rot as possible - mind already sifting through what he required to recreate the creatures.
“Citizen. I have… A mission for you. One of utmost importance.” He got up on wobbly legs before allowing his umbilical to drag him into the air, and it felt weirdly unfamiliar by now.
With how long he spent on the ground in the blizzard, it almost felt... Alien, to him.
In the past, however, it was his default.
He had to get used to it again.
Little Ruffian instantly stood up, ears pointing upwards as she listened to him speak, and she nodded at him to show she was willing to go on this mission.
“I… I need you to find and bring me as many spore puffs as you can carry. I think I might have a chance to get rid of the rot, once and for all.”
He could…
He could deal with everything else later.
He could send a spare rarefaction cell to Moon, he could talk to the local group, and he could begin to fix his mistakes so that he wouldn’t have to relive freezing in the snow, isolated, alone, and afraid.
He hated the cold.
But first - the rot.
“...I might require a lot of genetic material as well, so if you kill any being you do not plan to eat, bring them as well.”
He had a lot of work to do.
The… Green thing, whatever it was, gave him a second chance.
He couldn’t waste it.