Chapter Text
Metal eyelids slid open, revealing shining blue lights in Clank’s eyes as they awoke. They shifted a little, turning their head from side to side and hearing the soft grinding of steel inside them as they did so. They wiggled their metallic fingers, looking around. Rows and rows of identical metal humanoids stood in the room around Clank. Red, silver, and gold metal made patchwork Warforged, some sleek and made for dexterity, others larger and made for strength. Clank was thinner than the larger Warforged, but more hardy than the smaller ones. They wondered what was going on, what they were here for. They knew they were Clank and they knew they were a Warforged, but they didn’t know much else. What was their purpose? Who had created them?
As they looked around, they noticed other Warforged opening their eyes. Red, blue, and purple light shone from throughout the room as these new Warforged did the same thing Clank had just done, looking around for anything familiar. Clank doubted they would find anything. How could there be anything familiar if they were all new? And they were new, because they were too polished and nice to be old.
As they contemplated speaking to the other Warforged, they heard the deep screech of the metal door at the front of the room opening. A tall humanoid, with skin this time, stepped into the room, wire frames with lenses sitting over his eyes. The human walked down the rows of Warforged standing in the room, holding some sort of board and scribbling on it. He prodded at the Warforged around the room before reaching Clank, inspecting their eyes and scratching something down onto the board, on which there was a sheet of paper with some text on it that Clank couldn’t quite make out. Then the man reached forward and tweaked something on Clank’s shoulder, forcing their jaw to drop involuntarily, before he whipped out some sort of tube from the long coat he wore and pushing it into an indent in Clank’s throat and snipping it short with a gleaming dagger. With a tap to Clank’s head, he walked off as their mouth snapped shut painfully. The tube felt uncomfortable and foreign in Clank’s mouth, and they tried their best to ignore the feeling.
A few hours later, Clank was standing in the same spot when the door opened once again. Clank screwed their eyes shut in preparation for the next uncomfortable sensation, but upon hearing two sets of footsteps, they opened their eyes once more. The bad man stood at the front of the room, but he was joined by a tall woman, examining the rows of Warforged critically. The woman pulled a small block of metal out of a pocket in her coat and tapped at it for a few moments. Suddenly, Clank felt something in their legs, where they hadn’t before. As the feeling began to spread upward to the rest of Clank’s body, they realized they could now move their body, bit by bit. The man from before began to walk around, ordering the Warforged to stand in different areas of the room as he checked tags around their necks. Clank was ushered to one corner in the same way, huddled in a mass of living metal as they waited for their next orders.
The next thing Clank knew, they were standing in a different, unfamiliar room, cold tile clinking under their feet and the chandelier hanging from the ceiling illuminating their metal with bursts of gold and silver light. Looking around, it was apparent that this room itself was worth ten times as much as Clank’s life, if not more. A door opened at the front of the room, and Clank turned to see a hunched woman enter the room, leading another woman, tall and regal. The second woman looked at Clank, a look of disgust flitting across her face for a split second before she schooled her features to a more natural look.
“What are you doing gawking like a chicken at me? Get to work.”