Chapter Text
They emerge into this new cursed world gasping, confused, panic-stricken.
What—how—why had he done that—they were going to make everything better—
It is easier to focus on the practicalities than to resolve the (disgusting) emotional mess that churns within them. This is a new world they’ve been thrust into, after all. They may have built the portal that damned them here but they hardly know the first thing about it.
That first day, the world seems simple enough. Repulsively organic but not too far from the one WX-78 comes from. Birds and trees, berries and butterflies, carrots. Boulders, every so often. They pick a few berries here and there, grab hold of beautiful sharp-edged flint, but mostly, they concentrate on getting a lay of the land.
Dusk has fallen by the time they find a road. Ah, civilization, or at least its hallmarks. Shelter from all this wretched nature—
The darkness bites them in half before they can even register it.
Something breaks, this first time they die. How it happens, they don’t know and will hardly remember; neither the dying nor the breaking. But something breaks, deep within the ticking thing they could almost call a heart, and when they wake their memories of the world before are cloudy.
Ahh. What was it that had disturbed them again? WX-78 rustles through what little they can clearly remember. Were they…dead? No, of course not. If they had died, how is it that they live?
Still, they remember pain and biting that has seemed to leave no trace on their pristine metal body, and it unnerves them. WX didn’t die, they assure themselves of that. That doesn’t make sense. They probably simply hit their head on something and got knocked out. But it wouldn’t hurt to stay away from the darkness in the future.
Slowly, slowly, they get better at surviving in this world. They make fires, farm rabbits, learn to cook. They discover, to their disappointment, that the only “intelligent” life to be found (insofar as organics can ever be considered intelligent) are bipedal pigs and similarly-bipedal fish. The pigs can be repurposed with relative ease, though, and they build armor and weapons out of their skins.
WX finds those they would consider their true brethren as well, but sadly these do not see their kinship. Ah, well. Their wayward fellows’ innards are a good opportunity to improve themselves, really put into place all the upgrades they were planning on back at…
At…
Well, it doesn’t really matter, does it?
Every time they awaken, they do get a little better at surviving this world, last a little bit longer against all the horrors it sends their way. But the other half to this coin is that they find whatever circuit anchored them to who they were before (before what?) grows more and more disconnected.
WX doesn’t mourn this change. All their memories of before are tainted. Whenever they try to recall, something undesirably organic stirs within them. Feelings of betrayal, of dashed hopes, and, worst of all, of love rise up where they have no business being. Ech. No thank you. In WX’s opinion, if the night wants to take those from them, it’s welcome to it.
They do not need humans. Humans are untrustworthy, fickle bastards. They will put humanity far behind them. If they want companionship, well, even in this organic-filled hell machines can always be made.
The icebox is their brother and the oversized batteries are their sisters. Their early science machine is their mother, the only one they’ve ever known. The lightning rod is their dearest friend, bosom companion, as is the pot that churns out all that lovely fuel for them to process.
They’re the least lonely creature to ever exist in this world.
Despite all this companionship, WX grows to hate this new world dearly. One might think this surfaces from their disdain for all things organic; one would be three-quarters wrong. WX does hate the messiness that suffuses this world, but it’s hardly any different than the one they’d known before.
No, what gets them well and truly enraged is the time they’ve gone too long without a reboot and start seeing shadow monsters flickering at the corners of their eyes. They ignore them, of course. The optical sensors may conjure up misleading data without proper maintenance but the central processor remains uncorrupted. Shadows cannot come to life; this is a basic fact of reality.
They remain telling themselves this even as a shadow with the vague appearance of a bird rises out of the ground and bites at them. Suddenly, WX finds their body to be an utter wreck, as if their pain sensors weren’t giving off warning enough. They start slashing at the figment, but they’re so surprised at its existence that it makes quick work of them. Just like that, WX-78 dies.
Yes, dies. After all, clearly logic is utterly inoperable in this world, right? Why not be automatically resurrected, an indeterminate amount of time and space away from their death? It makes just as much sense as shadows that only exist in WX’s mind materializing to end them. Or as much sense as hounds that track their presence and seem hellbent on ending them to pop into the world every week or so. Or petals that inexplicably make themselves feel better. Or—
WX is only a hairsbreadth away from getting so worked that they forget to build a fire and die a second death. Thankfully, instincts prevail. They can’t conquer this stupid, sad little excuse of a world if they’re dead, after all.
Often—not always, but often—located near the clockwork kin they must sadly slay is a statue of a human, the only one they’ve ever seen in this world. They cock their head up at it. The figure is thin, lanky, with a waistcoat whose tails ripple far past it. The face looks up at the sky, a smile stretching from ear to ear and its hands thrown back in ecstasy. WX can almost hear the evil cackling.
They approve. The rapture they reach after upgrading themselves with a clockwork set’s worth of gears makes them want to cackle too.
It’s only once that they see the fleshling it was modeled after. They’re attempting to speak with a (really quite rude) door when they find themselves sucked into yet another world.
Within a blink, everything is freezing cold and snow as far as the optical sensor can see, but wait—who’s this?
“Oh, you found my portal, did you?” says the man, in a haughty tone that WX is sure sounds much better on themselves. “You'd think you would have learned your lesson by now. Hmm. Let's try something a little more challenging, shall we?”
And before WX can grab hold of this man to shake and demand answers of, he snaps his fingers and vanishes. Grr. Organics.
They don’t last long in that world, and the whole experience is miserable enough that it convinces them not to give the man the satisfaction of another go. So they stick to what they’ve grown accustomed to. Gather gears, improve self, build defenses, build weapons. Extract every ounce of value they can out of these organics and make that old bastard Mother Nature work for their next death.
The next one is strange, though. The next one, they awaken to a portal covered in flowers.