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Charlotte Emily felt numb. This, a small part of her brain reasoned, was probably a good thing, considering she was currently staring at her own severed arm resting in a ditch on the side of the road. John was driving her back from a date when a deer jumped in front of his car, forcing him into said ditch and totaling his car. Charlie was probably lucky that an arm was all she lost considering the fact that the car’s hood was practically split in half around a tree trunk. Speaking of which…
“John? John?! Are you ok?!”
“I’m Fine… I think.” Charlie watched in relief as her boyfriend crawled out of the brush he got launched into, rubbing the quickly-forming bruise making its way up his arm. “I got twigs places they do not belong, but I’m mos-” John stopped, eyes dialing in on Charlie. She barely had time to wonder what was wrong (again, thank you weird robot brain) when he rushed to her side, staring at her missing limb.
“Charlie! Your arm! What happened?!” Before Charlie was able to respond, John was already tearing his shirt, wrapping it around her bleeding stump. “Shit, shit shit shit! We need to get you to the hospital!” He turned around in panic, desperately searching for her severed arm. Once he found it, he rushed back into the ditch to pick it up, still babbling as he approached her once again.
“John.”
“The hospital’s able to reattach limbs, right?!”
“John!”
“Shit, how do we get there in time?! Do you have your phone with you?!”
“ JOHN !” Charlie snatched her limb from him in frustration, smacking him across the face with it. Luckily, the shock of it finally got John to shut up, staring at her owlishly. “John, we’re not going to the hospital.”
“What!? Why!? Charlie your arm got ripped off!” Charlie sighed before shoving the messy, dripping end of her severed arm into his face, forcing him to look at it. Unlike the side still attached to her, currently looking like a bloody chunk of meat as it should, the severed half’s true appearance showed. In place of muscle there were wires, in place of bone there were metal rods, and in place of blood a thick oil dripped down onto the forest floor.
“John, how, exactly, do you plan on explaining to the doctors that I’m not human?” Charlie made her way down the ditch, opening the thankfully unmangled back seat and tossing the limb in before pulling out John’s spare coat, wrapping it around her shoulder to hide her stump in case any good samaritans stopped for them. “Aunt Jen was the one that always gave me my check-ups, It's kinda hard to hide machine parts from someone digging through you, even with the disk on.”
“But… your Aunt Jen’s out of town, What do we do now?” She wished she didn’t feel so irritated at how uncomfortable John looked when forced to acknowledge her nature. Logically, she understood why her friends tended to dance around the subject, avoiding it when they could and hiding behind euphemisms when forced to. They were trying to avoid upsetting or insulting her, she knew that, but she couldn’t help feeling that they had some sort of problem with what she was.
“Don’t worry, I have an idea.” Charlie had to fumble a bit to get her phone out of her pocket, due to it being on the wrong side of her body. She dialed the familiar number, holding the phone up to her ear. “You’re… not gonna like it though.” It only took a few moments for the phone to click, connecting her with her only hope right now.
“Schmidt Auto Garage. We’re currently closed, if you need a tow, I can ref-”
“Mike, It’s me. I need help” Charlie heard shifting on the other end of the line before the voice spoke again, sounding much more engaged.
“Charlotte? What happened?” She had to hold back a flinch, the tone bringing a chill up her spine even the sight of her limb couldn’t. Mike didn’t have quite the same voice as his father, but it was close enough to catch her off guard at times.
“Right, so…” Charlie didn’t know why she felt so guilty. It was like she was being forced to fess up to a teacher, or her dad. “Me and John were going on a date.. And we kinda… Crashed? And my arm came off and Aunt Jen’s out of town and you’re kinda the only one I know with robot experience and-”
“ CHARLIE , calm down.” Charlie looked down in shame, especially considering how she reacted when John did the same thing. “You said your arm came off? …Know what, never mind. Just give me your location. I’m going to assume you need me to bring the tow truck?” Charlie gave him the street name and thanked him before hanging up. She turned to John, only to see her boyfriend staring at her upsettingly.
“Really? Afton?” Charlie couldn’t lie, she found it kinda cute how protective her boyfriend was whenever Michael was involved, despite how annoying it could get at times. Unfortunately for him, now was one such time, and she demonstrated what she thought of his objection with a roll of her eyes as she sat down the the side of the road to wait.
“Yes, really. Can you think of anyone else who could fix my arm?” John sat down on her damaged side, using his wide frame to further hide her missing limb. Hurricane was a small town after all, and any word of someone’s arm coming off would spread way too fast for even Mr. Burk to curtail. “Besides, sins of the father and all that. Mike’s a bit… creepy, yeah, but he’s not that bad!”
“Have you forgotten everything this families done to you? It’s just a matter of time until he shows his true colors, I know it.” It was Charlie’s turn to frow upsettingly now, William and Elizabeth has caused her no little suffering, she hasn’t forgotten. But she knew, and she knew John knew, that Michael has suffered just as much, probably more, at their hands then even she has. “Besides, how am I suppose to trust some creepy zombie?”
“Well, for one you could stop throwing holy water at him.”
“That was once !”
“Or shoving a cross in his face…”
“Hey!”
“Or try to stake him…”
“Ok, I apologized for that one. And it didn’t even work!”
“Of course it didn’t work, he’s full of metal!”
“Well, I-” John’s rebuttal was cut short as a pair of blinding lights turned the corner, pulling up to reveal a massive tow truck with the word “Schmidt” plastered on the side. A towering figure hopped out of the driver’s seat and approached them, flanked by the setting sun.
“You called?” Mike walked up to the edge of the ditch and shone a flashlight down, examining the wrecked vehicle. “Bloody hell.” He turned to John with a small smirk (Or more specifically the illusion of one) on his face. “What possessed you to drive into a ditch?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose you pompous pri-” Charlie put her hand on John’s shoulder, stopping him from blowing up. He was currently puffed up, trying to match Mike’s dominating scale. John was a big guy, but Michael was built like a quarterback when he was alive, and losing all the meat and bone that made it up did very little to change that, something Charlie chocked up to the same sort of soul magic stuff that kept the two of them “alive” so to speak.
“Thanks for coming so quick, Mike. We appreciate it, right ?” Charlie sent a pointed glare at John as Mike got to work on the car, putting up cones before hooking the truck’s pulley up to the back bumper, climbing back up the side to man the wrench and slowly pulling the totaled car back onto the road. Once it was firmly on asphalt, Michael began thoroughly checking the ruined front. “How.. Bad is it? Could you fix it?”
“Well, the engine’s totaled, gonna need a new one. Also new bumper, headlights, front axle, some of the pipes… It’s gonna cost ya, even with the family discount. Here, grab the tow hook for me.” Charlie grabbed the hook as directed, watching as Mike lifted the entire front of the car up enough for her to duck under like it was nothing. “Ok, see that long, bent bar? Attach the hook to that.” She did as told, moving out of the way as he set it back down. “There we go, front’s too damaged to attach to any of the normal spots.” He then turned to Charlie, eyes trailing her side. “Your turn now, show me the damage.”
Charlie took off her jacket, showing him the stump. He grabbed what remained of her arm and started looking at it with the same mechanic’s eye he did with the car, poking and prodding what still looked to her like lumps of meat.
“Do you think you can fix it?”
“Not at the car shop I can’t, Gonna have to take you to one of Father’s.” Charlie didn’t particularly like the sound of that, and she could tell John liked it even less. Fortunately, a quelling look from her was enough to stop him from speaking up about it. “You have the other part, right?”
“Yeah, it’s in the back seat.”
“Good, Let’s get this to the shop then.”
The three of them squeezed into the truck's front seat, Charlie pressed up between the two men. The trip was thankfully short, barely more than fifteen minutes passed before the truck pulled up to the large garage Michael called home. Mike jumped out of the driver’s seat and began the process of lowering the car down.
“Come grab your stuff, I’m putting this in the garage and then we’re heading off.” Charlie quickly grabbed her arm before her and John watched as Michael once again picked the front of their car like it barely weighed anything, slowly wheeling it in before closing the garage door. The two of them stood outside waiting for a while (long enough for Charlie to admire the sign hanging on the front window “Family discount Emilys only: Aftons pay double ”) before Mike exited through the front door with a new set of keys in hand.
“We’ll take my car.” Mike led them across the side of his shop, approaching an old, beat-up (and thankfully four-seat) truck. He unlocked it and hopped in the drivers seat, with Charlie sliding into the back. The truck was so old, it didn’t even have seatbelts in the back.
“Why is it that a mechanic can’t get his hands on a proper truck?” John scoffed as he got into the passenger seat, feeling the creaking springs below him squeak in protest.
“Show some respect, This old girl’s been running since before you could crawl. Besides, me being a mechanic is the reason why I don’t get anything newer, I know how they work too well to trust them.”
“This crapbucket feels like it’s gonna burst into a ball of flame as soon as you start it.”
“Yeah, feels like it, but little more than that.” In demonstration, Michael turned the key. Despite appearances, the engine started up without so much as a cough, purring smoothly under their seats. Mike turned to send John a shit-eating grin as he pulled out of the lot.
“So, where’re we going?” Charlie popped her head between the front seats, leaning forward in her seat to look out the front windshield.
“The Circus Baby underground warehouse.” Charlie could feel John stiffen next to her, and she wasn’t reacting much better. Neither of them had a good time in that god-forsaken place. “Hey, I don’t like it any more than you two, I’m the one who actually died there, keep in mind. But it's the only place with the tools we need right now.” Scratch that, none of them has had a good time there, good to know.
Unfortunately, That revelation, (either the destination or Mike’s history with it, Charlie wasn’t really sure) more or less killed any conversation. The rest of the trip was spent in a tense silence filled only by the purr of the truck. None of them really wanted to get to their destination, but still, as the moon approached its peak, they pulled into the closed-down pizzeria all the same.
Mike climbed out of the truck and brought them around the back, unlocking the employee entrance. Charlie would have asked how he had the keys to this place, but as soon as she stepped into the dark, quiet building her throat closed up and she couldn’t make more than a off squeaking sound that she could only hope the others thought was the door shutting. Michael wordlessly stalked into the darkness, leaving John to fumble in pulling out his keychain light for the two of them to see.
Charlie and John hesitantly made their way through the empty halls. Their steps seemed to echo endlessly around them, and the dancing shadows cast by the small light played to the worst of their paranoia. Although Charlie believed that, after all she went through, Circus Baby’s Pizzeria would be creepy even if she visited on the sunniest of days, the blackness was no help in making her stop expecting some deranged machine to rush out from every corner.
They finally found Michael standing next to a set of elevator doors, and Charlie could tell he wasn’t faring much better than the two of them. Even when disregarding the tense look on his face (and she knew it was probably the disk working off her own emotions) his body was hunched up, looking like he was seconds away from either bolting or throwing haymakers.
“Come on.” He pressed a button on the wall, and the doors opened to an odd, circular elevator with a fan on the roof. They went down for a disconcertingly long amount of time, and Charlie could only guess just how deep they were going. “Father built this part long time ago, right after he discovered the power of Remnant. He was planning on making Circus Baby’s as a trap, so he would have plenty of material to work with. He almost opened, if not for Lizzy’s death.” The room finally stopped, the door in front of them opening into a darkness even more oppressive than upstairs. “This is where he learned everything he knew of Remnant, where he built all his twisted monsters, and where he plotted his own immortality.”
He reached out the door and flipped an unseen switch, sickening greenish-yellow lights flared to life, revealing the cramped hallway going perpendicular to the elevator. On the ground across from them, a small metal hatch was set into the wall. They were led down the right hall, which eventually spat them out into a large, empty room with pipes and wires running across the walls. The only thing taking up space was a small stage set against the far wall, a ring of lights illuminating it.
“Welcome to the Funtime Auditorium.” Mike deadpanned as he dramatically swept an arm across the room. He then turned to John and pointed at a small door situated next to the stage. “There’s a security room down that hall, you can wait there until we’re done.”
“What?!” Charlie flinched as her boyfriend began to shout, the bubbling nervous energy that had been building inside of him ever since they found out where they were going exploding out at once. “Screw that! No way in hell I’m letting you take Charlie somewhere alone, you frea-!” John’s violent objection was cut short as he felt the front of his shirt be grabbed and pulled upwards, forcing him to stand on his toes. Even that wasn’t enough to bring him to eye level with the man currently glaring into his soul. Charlie couldn’t be sure what he was seeing on Michael’s face right now, but for her it grew older, becoming a near-perfect replica of the face belonging to the man that still haunted her dreams.
“Listen here, you don’t like me, I get it, I wouldn’t like someone related to him either if I was in your shoes. And It’s cute how protective of your girlfriend you are, it is. But we’re going to be working with open Remnant here, and unless you want your soul to get stuck in whatever’s nearby when you finally die, you’re going to go sit your ass down in the security office. Got it?” The two men maintained eye contact for a few more moments before Mike sighed and let him down. “Look, there are working cameras in the office, so you can watch us if you need to.”
“John.” Charlie laid her good hand on his arm. “I’ll be ok, you should listen to him.” That was finally enough to get him to relent, sullenly marching through the door. She and Mike made their own way to another door, finding themselves in a small-ish room with a large metal table dominating the center. “Would he really end up like that, if he was in here?”
“Probably, maybe… It would depend on how long he was in here.” Michael gathered some tools before turning a nob on the wall. A hissing sound filled the room as a fine mist started setting in. “Granted, the closest this to possess is almost always one’s own body. Unless there was a more suitable vessel nearby. That’s how the original Charlotte ended up in the puppet, close proximity plus the fact Father didn’t leave anything to chance…” He stopped suddenly, as if only just then remembering who he was speaking to. “Apologies, It must be an uncomfortable subject.”
“No! I mean… yes, but I prefer how straightforward you are.” She lifted her arm as he approached, watching as he, to her eyes, poked at her bloody stump with a set of permanent markers. “Everyone else dances around it, treating it like the sheer acknowledgment of what I am, who I am, …I don’t know, makes it worse? You always treat it so matter-of-fact, it’s kinda relieving. Ya’know?” She kicked her feet, watching as the metallic mist swirled around as it was disturbed. “So this is Remnant? What’s the point of misting us like this?”
“Still, it was rude of me to bring it up.” Once he was done poking her, he started doing the same with her severed arm, holding it up to her stump as he marked the wires with different colors. “As for the Remnant, it helps facilitate the rebinding of your arm to you. Your body knows how its meant to work, so it should give me some wiggle room in the repairs.” He noticed her look and smiled a bit. “Would you like to see how I see it?”
As Charlie nodded, she felt his fingers dig into the area just under the back of her neck, the sound of a hatch popping open, and then the imperceivable hum of her illusionary disk wound down. In an instant, she went from flesh and blood to metal and plastic. Her skin turned into plates of soft, squishy material with visible seams between them. Her joints were also visible, and she watched in fascination as she moved her fingers around.
“So, this is what I always look like to you?”
“Yeah, don’t really have an inner ear to trick.” She watched as he peeled back the faux skin on her arm to give better access to the wires. “Here, look at this.” He held her arm up, grabbing an odd-looking tool as he did so. “Each of these wires acts as an entire muscle cluster, so when I do this…” He stuck the end of his tool up against one of the wires and Charlie watched as a spark shot out of the tip, causing the wire to contract in on itself and her middle finger to twitch slightly. “Cool huh? It can nearly perfectly simulate a human’s muscles.” He then put the tool down and picked up a tiny spot welding tool. Beginning to connect the small wires to the ones on her arm with the corresponding color. “Just another bit of proof of how advanced you are. Hell, the fact the disks work on you at all shows how dedicated Uncle Henry was.”
“I… never really thought of that. It didn’t occur to me that I shouldn’t be able to be tricked, but I guess it makes sense. Dad would hardly have wanted me to know I wasn’t human anymore… Or at all.” The two lapsed into silence as Michael worked on reconnecting her arm, the electric buzz of the welder and the constant hiss of the Remnant mist filling the void. It was only after he set down the tool that she spoke up again. “So… What do you look like, under the disk?”
“Not pretty. It took me a while to regain control of my body, and even longer to figure out how to stop the decay. You don’t want to see, even if you can’t actually throw up. And that’s not to mention if your boytoy really is watching us, Don’t want whatever fancy dinner you had all over the computers.” He kept consistently working, switching out tools regularly as he slowly reset her arm as it should be.” Just imagine if someone made a B-movie about zombies in space, you’d be surprisingly close.”
Charlie had no real way of knowing what time it was or how long they’d been down there. The sound of Michael working, and his soft explanation of a lot of the steps he was taking, caused the time to slip by unregarded. Even after He’d finished repairing her arm, and re-applying the faux skin over it all, Charlie was put through a frankly absurd amount of tests. Forced into getting poked repeatedly, moving her arm in certain ways, holding things of various weights, gripping stuff with only the tips of her fingers, and finally ending in her doing several push-ups before he was satisfied.
“I don’t know, it’s still kinda numb.” Charlie rolled her arm as the two of them re-entered the auditorium, frowning at it as she feels tingles run up her arm at random.
“Not surprising, I told you how stupidly advanced you are, my area of expertise is cars and animatronics, not a near-perfect replication of a human body. Jennifer can do the rest once she gets back.”
They entered the security office, finding John asleep at the desk. What surprised Charlie, and would have caused her to panic if not for Michael’s loud and exasperated groan, was the presence of a small spindly doll-looking thing sitting on the back of the chair with a marker grasped between its fingerless hands. John already had multiple drawings covering his face, and it looked like the doll was partway through drawing a dog of some sort when they interrupted. Mike half-heartedlly swat at the offending robot, sending it skittering away with a creepily high-pitched laugh. The commotion was enough to cause her vandlized boyfriend to wake up with a jolt, looking around him.
“What the-! What time is it?” He reaches up to rub his eye, causing him to smear marker ink across his cheek. This ended up being too much for Charlie, causing her to bust out laughing. “What? What’s so funny!? Charlie? Mike?”
-----
By the time the three of them made it outside the sun was well above the horizon, shining down on them and forcing Charilie to shield her eyes. John was still pouting after unsuccessfully trying to wipe the ink off with his sleeve, only succeeding in smearing it further across his face and further soiling the already dirty shirt. Michael had taken the time to explain what the doll, a ‘minireena’ as he called it, was and how it was mostly harmless without his sister’s spirit there to control them. Apparently they were ment to be backup dancers for Ballora, and tended to keep to the gallery. Their arrival must have been too tempting for that one, and it decided to get up to some mischief.
"Sooo..." Michael started once they were seated in his truck once more. "I don't suppose you called in to your job, John? I've only talked to the foreman once or twice, but he struck me as kinda a hardass."
" ...Oh god damn it."