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[…SYSTEMS COMING BACK ONLINE]
Five Pebbles opened his eyes after a while of being shut off for maintenance-
And he couldn’t see.
A mild error must have occurred. Or maybe an optical system had been updated, and needed a moment.
That wouldn’t be too uncommon. He was made in such an unseemly hurry, that it would make sense for something like this to happen.
He felt something like a tear run down his cheek.
No, not a tear. Still able to assess his systems, he found that multiple cooling fluid veins had been damaged, as well as-
…Both his eyes.
They were gone.
Pebbles immediately sent out an alarm to maintenance. He put his hands over where his eyes were to stop the flow of fluids, hating how hollow it felt.
Maintenance responded. They’d be here eventually. But Pebbles wanted to see the damage himself.
He called upon an overseer, having it look around his chamber before sending him the data. Thank goodness that worked.
Oh great karma.
It looked as if his eyes were clawed out, the scratches around their former places showing clear intention and malice.
But that wasn’t the most horrific part.
There on one of his chamber walls, pained in his own cooling fluid, was a single word.
‘Abomination.’
- —— -
Four cycles passed in a daze.
Pebbles’s advisors and citizens busied themselves with extravagant apologies, though they weren’t exactly the one’s to blame.
It was obvious that the Citadel fanatics were behind this.
On a better note, Pebbles had been made new eyes.
Or rather, the best they could do.
Everyone was ascending. It was practically becoming an order. It was a miracle anyone left wanted to, or could, make the eyes.
Pebbles refused to be thankful for that, though. He was glad they were dying. All of them. The horrid parasites had done nothing but harm to him.
The eyes themselves were usable, at least. They were white, instead of the usual brown or black. Everything was also a bit blurry, but that hardly mattered. It’s not like Pebbles needed to see, when he could just process the raw data of texts.
His puppet chamber didn’t have much of a view anyway.
What he WAS worried about was Moon, and what she’d do if/when she found out.
Pebbles wouldn’t admit that he wanted to talk to her, to vent about how much he hated his citizens.
Or how he was scared of being hurt so badly again.
No, he would do as he always did, avoiding video calls from the other Iterators and giving Moon as little details about how he was doing as possible.
…He might tell Suns later.
But other than that, no one had to know.