Chapter Text
It was cold. All she could feel for a few moments was cold, until an unbearable agony suddenly struck her as her sensors properly booted up. Oh, she had fallen unconscious from the pain. She opened her eyes and looked down at the seemingly countless yellow lights staring right back as she was mercilessly ripped to shreds and put back together, the creature trying to perfect its craft. Panic filled her thoughts as all she could do was watch, her voicebox already too strained to scream any more. She felt as though she was passing out again, only to hear what sounded like a door opening as she was flung across the room.
A metallic thud echoed in the room as Aurora’s visor flickered from [SLEEP MODE] to her regular eyes, having hit her head against the wall in her sleep. She groaned in a mixture of pain and annoyance at being woken up in such a way before slowly getting out of bed. She had gotten used to sleeping in a bed instead of hanging upside down like a bat, much like all the other things she’s changed about her lifestyle to fit in better with the worker drones. Not for any nefarious reasons of course, she just didn’t want her mere presence being enough to unsettle them.
Aurora fixed her hair and began getting dressed, her choice of clothing a light grey sweater and a dark blue short-sleeved coat. After slipping her conelike arms into the jacket, she glanced at the mirror to see that she still had those signature stress lines under her orange eyes, a combination of the various restless nights and her very exhausting job. But she was doing it for the sake of innocent people, so there’s no room for complaining.
Upon opening the door to her room and stepping outside, Aurora saw that the hallway was almost completely empty, save for a few miscellaneous items left lying around. She walked past a few doors and arrived at the second-to-last one down the hallway with a sign above reading “3-5” before knocking on it. A few seconds of silence passed before the door opened and Aurora looked down to meet her friend’s eyes.
“You’re up awfully early.” Callum said as he stepped aside to let her in.
“Like you’re one to talk about sleeping schedules, Cal.” Aurora snarked back as she walked in and pulled an office chair from underneath a desk, sitting on it.
“So, is it done yet?” She continued, awaiting a response while looking around and opening the various drawers at the desk.
Callum quickly smacked her hand away from the drawers and replied, “Not for a while, and you’re not heading out again without it. I heard what happened on your last trip.”
Aurora glared at Callum but eventually just shrugged, knowing her friend was right. She had been too careless last time and almost paid with her life for it, though that’s always on the line when you’re fighting Disassembly Drones. But having access to the same arsenal they did would surely help, since her own is perpetually disabled for whatever reason. Callum had been working on a weapon that could switch between a gun, a sword, claws, etc. just like a Disassembly Drone to help Aurora. Being able to actually match their strikes or block instead of having to dodge every single time would make things much easier.
Callum reached under his bed and grabbed the weapon, a hand augmentation of sorts, to keep working on it as Aurora started tapping her fingers on the desk while playing Tetris on her visor. This continued for a while before Aurora got up to get some breakfast.
“Be right back, gotta make sure I don’t overheat and all that.” She said as she walked to the entrance of the room and grabbed the handle, pushing the metal door open with practically no effort whatsoever.
This time, she was greeted with a much more lively hallway with workers running around and, well, working. One was up on a ladder trying to fix a vent, another was gathering the tools left lying around on the floor. The colony had clearly woken up while Aurora was in Callum’s room. Of course you had the slackers, getting high off of magnets and such, but that was unavoidable. She walked through the hallway, passing by the hustle and bustle of an active workplace and greeting a few of the people she actually knew there.
Her trek through the colony’s base had ended at the corner of an office space, where she grabbed a mug, put it under a tube in the wall leading to the colony’s oil supply and flipped a switch to get it running. Within seconds, the mug was filled and she flipped the switch again to not waste any oil. She walked to a lobby area near the entrance of the base and sat down on some boxes while taking a few sips from her oil mug. It was a calm morning, no rush to get anywhere, no worries about protecting people, just Aurora and some warm, sweet oil. Nice and quiet… until she heard a muffled scream followed by banging on the massive door in front of her.
She immediately yelled for someone to open it, to which the guard dozing off at the door woke up and put his keycard to the reader next to the door, then hid behind a conveniently placed box. As soon as the doors began opening, her wingspan stretched to its maximum in preparation for the mad dash she was about to make. As she flew outside, she saw an injured worker drone limping inside and let out a sigh of relief before noticing that she wasn’t alone. A yellow X flashed in the distance as the Disassembly Drone closed the gap between them in the blink of an eye, making Aurora jump out of the way of its claws with the help of her wings as it crashed into the ground. It looked confused for a moment before being flung back by the force of Aurora’s foot connecting with its chin. Aurora took up a fighting stance as the DD recovered from the kick, its suspicions confirmed that it was not, in fact, up against a defenseless worker drone anymore. Neither one seeing a way out of the altercation, they prepared to battle it out for the lives of everyone inside that bunker.
The DD switched its hand into an MP5, firing a swift barrage of bullets that Aurora ducked and weaved around before launching herself at it. It prepared for a clash of blades, but Aurora stopped just shy of its sword range before bouncing up with a front flip and swinging down at the DD with an axe kick, forcing it to protect its head with both arms. Aurora took advantage of it being practically defenseless and quickly dropped down, throwing out a couple punches to its midsection before it can readjust. It tried to retaliate with its claws, but Aurora dodged each swing and spun around the genocide robot, neckchopping it before spinning back around and backhanding it, then following up with a kick to its side while it’s disoriented. The DD let out a growl as it realized it wasn’t much of a match in close quarters and decided to use a different strategy.
It jumped into the air before Aurora could continue her assault and fired a few missiles at her, forcing her to back away and dodge them. As she was focused on the missiles, however, the DD turned its other hand back into an MP5 and managed to hit her a couple times before she could shield herself with her wings. Aurora flinched at the new holes in her arm and leg and planned to sit back for a few seconds to let herself heal, only to see that same yellow X in the smoke of the missiles accompanied by a glinting blade about to cleave her head off. She just barely ducked under the sword swing and grabbed the DD by the arm, throwing it over her shoulder and slamming it into the ground. She brought her fist down at its head, planning to crush it in one blow, but stopped just shy of contact due to a sword forming from its hand inches away from her throat.
For a moment, it felt as though the world stood still. The DD’s visor flickered from its signature X into regular eyes and held its other hand up, signaling that it was willing to stop fighting. Aurora was shocked, to say the least. In all her time fighting DDs, never had any of them tried to stop fighting or give up on killing the workers she was trying to protect. She thought they’d all been turned into senseless killing machines.
“Hey, hey, let’s calm down, okay? I think we’re both a little confused about some things here.” It He spoke, trying to defuse the situation. “Let’s just start from a clean slate here, alright? I’m Serial Designation K, what about you?” He continued.
“Aurora.” She simply responded, pulling her fist away from K’s face slowly but prepared in case he tried something.
K in turn changed his sword arm back to normal and let it flop down to the ground, sitting up and noticing that he’d made a small imprint on the concrete. “Damn, she packs a hell of a punch.” He thought to himself while rubbing his neck.
“So, what’s your whole deal? Usually you guys just keep attacking until you can’t anymore.” Aurora questioned the anomaly of a DD while walking around him to look him in the eyes.
K responded truthfully, “Yeah, I’ve noticed that all the others seem to have some thirst for oil that I just kinda don’t.”
“Wait, you don’t want to kill workers and drink their oil?” She asked further.
“Yup. I’ve only been killing as much as I need to survive, I don’t really care for the quota or anything.” He continued.
“He doesn’t want to kill workers… how did that thing let him go? No, that’s not important right now, I might be able to convince him to help me out instead.” She hopped on a train of thought that would’ve gone on for minutes had K not interrupted it.
“So, what about you? You’re a DD too, right? Why are you fighting against us?” he asked.
Aurora jolted up a little at being snapped out of her trance, then sighed before speaking up, “To be honest, I’m not even supposed to be here. I was meant to be one of you, but I managed to escape that fate. I ran and ran as far away as possible, until I ended up here. The worker drones took care of me when I was on the brink of death, so I try to save them whenever I can.”
K paused for a moment. “The worker drones… took care of you? Even though you’re not one of them?” He seemed to be concerned about that fact.
She continued. “Yeah, they figured out that I needed oil to survive, so they hooked me up to their oil supply until my reserves were full. Speaking of which… I’ve got an offer for you.”
“Hm?”
“Since you don’t have any incentive to kill workers other than oil, here’s my proposal. Help me fight back against the other DDs and I’ll make sure these guys let you use their oil supply like I do.” She gestured to the bunker while giving her offer, then outstretched a hand to help K stand up.
He seemed to give it some thought, though he was most likely just considering the implications of worker drones having sentience based on the horrified expression on his face for a split second. Ultimately, he accepted the helping hand quite eagerly. She lifted him up to his feet and they gave each other a look of expectations and, to an extent, excitement before walking up to the bunker door and knocking on it.
The door opens up ever so slightly so the guard can see who’s outside. “Another one? We’re gonna run out of oil at this rate.” He nagged.
“Yeah yeah, keep telling yourself that, now open up.” She commanded.
The guard hummed to himself while opening the door, inviting the second drone who towered over all the workers and could kill any of them with a flick of their wrist into the bunker. This one seemed to be even taller than Aurora, though.
Aurora proceeded to take K around the bunker, giving him a tour of all the facilities in what would be his new home as well as fetching him a bit of oil. By the end of it, they had arrived at the guest rooms, where K would be moving in.
“So, what about your squadmates? You guys usually work in teams of three, right?” Aurora asked while walking to the bed of the room and leaning against a wall.
K scratched the back of his head and answered. “I think you might’ve taken care of those guys already, they haven’t come back to our pod in days.”
Aurora thought for a moment as K sat down on the bed. “Huh, I guess that means this sector’s relatively safe from Disassembly Drones, I haven’t seen any recently besides you and that other one I took care of last time. So we could try to broaden our horizon and start making trips further away from the bunker. It might be a bit of a pain though, since I only know the layout of this area.”
“Actually, I think I know a place not too far from here with a fully active DD squad. In Sector-3, if I’m remembering correctly. We could go there for a while and protect the workers there.” K chimed in in the middle of her rambling.
“Sector-3… last I heard, that’s where that Khan Doorman guy was. He designed the doors we have here that can keep DDs out. Good idea, they should be safe indoors but there’ll always be some morons running around outside, and with a full DD squad patrolling around I doubt many can make it back to their homes.” Aurora continued verbally planning their next course of action.
K put a hand to his chin while thinking. “Sector-3 is still some distance away, we’d probably have to take shelter in one of the bases there temporarily.”
Aurora nodded in agreement but thought to Callum and the prototype weapon that wouldn’t be finished for a while. Although, maybe things would be alright now that K was with her, he seemed to be better than the average DD. He did manage to stalemate her, even with all her experience fighting against them.
“Alright, we’ll leave in a few days. For now, just take your time getting used to living in a bunker. My room is 3-9 if you need anything.” She began walking out and gave a small salute to K before opening the door and leaving the guest room. The door closed behind her on its own.
K laid down on the bed, being a little put off at its springyness. “This’ll take some getting used to.” He thought as he began drifting off to sleep mode with a small smile on his face, mostly content with this being his new life.