Chapter Text
“Get up, Puppy.”
Static blinded him, filling his audial and visual sensors. He gasped, pushing through the pain coursing through him to sit up, his hands sinking into the powder surrounding him. His processor sent unpleasant sensations all throughout his joints as he righted himself, feeling like something fundamental was wrong with him. He shook his head to try and dismiss the static and error messages peeking through it. Powder cascaded off of him, he must have been laying for some time. What was that voice? Puppy - was that him? Where was he?
The static in his sensors resolved itself to show him the ruined cityscape filled with snow and ash around him. Wind howled past his audials. Looking down at himself, he was also covered in it; he must have been sitting here a while. Something seemed wrong with what he saw of himself. He got the impression that his limbs should be smaller, less rigid, less conical.
He turned his head around, looking for anyone else. Someone to tell him what was happening, where he was, who he was. His five extra sensors, studded in a halo mounted atop his head, picked up on a range of different spectra. It was extremely disorienting as he got used to to seeing six different layers of the cityscape around him. But it confirmed that he was alone. So who had been talking to him?
“Me, Puppy.”
He jolted up in shock, swinging his head about. There was no one. And the voice was oddly echo-y. He tried to speak, ask if someone was there, but no words came from his vocoder. He frowned, trying several times, and realized he probably looked very stupid just opening and closing his mouth. There was another impression then, like information that was accessed often. Often enough that it had worn physically into his processor. He was supposed to be stupid and useless. He tensed up, feeling like something was supposed to attack him now. His optic halo began a threat analysis of the environment.
“Oh, but you’re going to be very useful to me, Puppy. I’m afraid I can’t argue with your intelligence, though.”
Shakily, he pushed himself to his feet. Snow and ash fell from his shoulders as he got up, his coat free to flap about in the wind. He wanted to be useful, that sounded really nice. But how did she know that was what he was thinking about? Could the voice read his thoughts? Who was she?
“You’re an open book to me, Puppy.”
Huh. That was neat, even if he had no idea how she got in his head. She kept calling him Puppy, though. Was that who he was?
“It is now. Because that’s what you are: my Puppy.”
Puppy felt a thrill shoot through him. He knew what dogs were; it must have been important if he knew that and almost nothing else. He loved dogs, they were so cute and loyal, and so gentle too. He wanted to be like that. His tail swayed behind him at the thought.
“You will be a perfect Puppy for me, won’t you? So loyal, and so cute .”
The voice’s tone was strange when it called him cute, like she meant something else. But she called him loyal and cute, like a dog! And puppies were the cutest of them all! His tail began fully wagging behind him. He would be the bestest puppy for her.
“Oh, you will be. We have a lot of work to do, Puppy.”
Wait. Hold on. Puppy looked behind himself again, and his mouth dropped open in shock. He had a tail! He felt like that was something that he should know about, if it was in his design. Actually, looking over himself, he noted a lot of things that just felt off. His legs, especially the lower segment, were much larger than he felt they should have been. Similarly, his arms widened to the wrist, which was very strange.
“But there’s some things we need to take care of first. Feeling a bit hot, Puppy?”
Now that she mentioned it, he did feel a little hot. The snow had started to steam off his chassis, and a conveniently timed notification popped up on his visor. A hazard triangle with the text ‘High Temp’ under it. So the uncomfortable warmth he was feeling probably wasn’t normal then.
“Not quite. But don’t you worry, Puppy. We’ll get you fixed right up.”
Wow, the voice was looking out for him! That was really cool, having someone who could read his thoughts and cared about him. His tail wagged even faster, even as he whined from the discomfort. He thought it was a little odd that he could whine but not talk.
“Don’t think about it too hard. First, get to the skies.”
His head tilted up towards the sky above him. He looked around, confusion filling his processor. How was he supposed to do that? Did she mean to climb the buildings?
“You really are fried, aren’t you Puppy? Get your wings out.”
Wings? He had wings?
He checked through his subsystems regarding his various parts. A program in his arms read as ‘arsenal,’ which was a little concerning to him, but the voice told him to look for wings. Once he found them, they quickly popped out of his back, almost pulling him back onto the ground from how rapidly his center of gravity changed. He staggered backwards, righting himself when he turned on the antigrav generators in the wings. That was also very convenient.
“Now fly.”
With the wings out, it was like he had had them since forever. He knew exactly how to crouch to the ground to get the best lift for when he pushed off, the anti-grav generators in his feet keeping the speed from his jump far beyond what physics should allow. He came to a stop among the clouds, staring in astonishment at the sky above them.
The stars were truly beautiful. They twinkled while he stared, watching the sky painting with so many different spectra of light. The rings of the planet stretched out beautifully in front of him, creating a stunning view with the backdrop of the noise of the night. He wondered what it would be like to fly amongst it, immersing himself in that sea of vibrancy.
“Yes, yes, so beautiful. Look down.”
He did a spin in the air, reveling in the cool rush of freezing air against his hot chassis. A ruined city stretched across the planet beneath him, so many dark shapes stretching towards the sky, trying to escape the barren land they were anchored to. He frowned. There didn’t seem to be anything there as opposed to what was above him. Until his sensors all locked onto movement, double and triple checking that it wasn’t a fluke. The movement was a long distance away, though. He idly marked it on some kind of internal network without thinking, not being able to come up with a reason. Maybe he was a scout?
“Ugh, defense drones. I was hoping that she did actually manage to beat some kind of hunting protocol into you. Listen, Puppy. You need to go to that sensor contact. It will help with your problem. You’ll know what to do when you get there.”
Puppy complied immediately. He didn’t know anything yet, but maybe it was like his wings, and his programming would take over! He hoped that whatever it was would be as fun as flying; feeling the air rush against his chassis and his coat flapping in the wind was amazing. And he was so fast! It was even helping a little bit with the heat.
The movement picked up as he got closer, whatever it was ducking away behind ruined cars. That wouldn't do; these things were supposed to help him with the overheating. Old programming kicked in as the gravity manipulators in his feet whirred, flipping over and amplifying the effect of gravity on himself to pull him down to the ground, streaking through the air as a comet. Snow plumed around his strike zone as objects were sent flying, including two figures with hollowed-out, glowing eyes, one set green and the other blue, tossed into the structures behind them. It was hard to see them through the fog his strike created, but his optic halo easily compensated.
He frowned for a moment, he didn’t mean to hurt anyone. He pulled his wings back in and went to go help the closer drone up, offering a hand and opening his mouth to apologize before he remembered he couldn’t speak when no noise came out. The drone on the ground, in response, screamed and scrabbled away from him, holding out an arm as a shield. Shocked, he pulled back, unsure of what provoked them. He did accidentally knock them down, but surely he wasn’t that scary, right?
Then the additional sensors on his halo tagged a warning. Puppy’s hand instantly shot up, catching the rock the other drone threw at his head with perfect precision. The two drones froze, staring at him, but he had stopped entirely. The threat analysis protocol he had yet to turn back off kicked in fully. His sensors were screaming at him, the information overloading him. He dropped the rock, trying to cover the halo and drew as much power as possible away from his visor, trying to block out the sensory input. Falling to his knees as it overwhelmed him entirely, assessing every snowflake, every shifting shadow, every echo of debris falling through the city.
“Hm, looks like I tweaked the sensors a little too high. How’s this, Puppy?”
And it all stopped. He vented rapidly, chest expanding and contracting as he got himself under control once more. His sensors now in perfect clarity, detailing two threats, medium size, four limbs, possible weapons, weak points, and velocity as they moved away from him. He knew exactly what he was supposed to do.
His wings sprung from his back once more, the gravity manipulators in his feet rapidly cycling to give him a boost as he closed the distance between him and the two threats in an instant. With a quick spin, his injector speared one through its vulnerable faceplate, while a wing bisected the other through its abdomen. A quick disassembly of both threats.
His sensors cleared of threat, Puppy was finally able to think again. And he looked down at what had been designated as ‘threats’ in shock of what he had just done.
The two drones lay at his feet, one flashing a FATAL ERROR through the cracks and hole his tail had created in their visor. The other weakly tried to drag themself away, a smeared trail of oil left in the wake of their torso, connecting to their fallen legs.
He grabbed at his halo in stress, not knowing what to do. Surely this couldn’t have been what the voice meant when she said he would know what to do with them, right? There was no way that he was supposed to kill people! That wasn’t right, it couldn’t be right, it couldn’t be his purpose!
“You do have an odd level of empathy for your kind. It was convenient to get to you, but now I'm starting to understand why that corpo-rat was so pissy over it. How to play this… Ah. Listen up, Puppy.”
He walked over to the drone dragging itself away. They looked up at him, their blue eyes hollowed in terror, and he played with his hands distressingly, not sure of how to proceed. He wanted to help, but how? The voice could wait, he needed to do something.
The drone’s visor flickered with a FATAL ERROR, and their visor changed to a resigned look. They tried to vent, finding themselves unable as their lungs were left on the trail some ways back. Then they turned over, stared at Puppy, their expression becoming angry, and they spat at him, just before their visor flashed to FATAL ERROR permanently.
His sensors tagged an incoming projectile and his hand automatically flew up to block the spit from touching him. He stared at it, eyes hollowed out. What… what now? He was a murderer. And from his hardware, and even his software, it seemed like that was what he was designed to be. But why?
“Listen, Puppy.”
The voice sounded agitated. He looked around, spotting the trail connecting the drone’s torso and their lower half. But underneath the nausea he felt, there was… hunger?
Before he knew what he was doing, he feel to his knees, picked up the torso, and tipped it up to drink from it.
The voice sighed in the background of his mind, his processor barely registering it over the pleasure received from the sweet, sweet oil flowing down his throat. Too soon, the oil stopped flowing from the torso, and he crawled over to the synthetic organs that had fallen out from it, greedily devouring them as well. Once he was done there, he moved to the legs, eagerly repeating what he had with the torso.
“Oh for fucks- That should be enough. Now, LISTEN.”
A mind-shattering pain filled all of his senses. He dropped the legs, curling into a ball, whimpering as his sensors glitched out. Everything he had, every nanometer of circuit registered nothing but pain. It was over in an instant, leaving him venting rapidly in the snow, covered in oil as he clutched at his head.
“Are you feeling like listening now, Puppy?”
The voice sounded so sweet. Like maybe she hadn't meant to hurt him. He nodded as best as he could while still curled tightly around himself.
“Good boy. I wanted to be nicer about this, but you made me do it this way instead. You are a murder drone. You were sent here by a malignant program to do horrible things in its name. But I saved you, gave you a purpose beyond that. I made you a good boy. The thing that made you; it made you to kill, to hurt, and mostly to be a perfect guard dog so its other pets get to kill and hurt more. You can only live off the misery and death of others. But now, I need you to help me.”
So he really was a bad drone? A murder drone, at that. The nausea began to overwhelm him again. But - she said needed him. That meant he could be good, right? That he could be useful?
“Yes. You belong to me now, Puppy. You can be good, as long as you do what I say. As for those clankers, don't feel too bad about killing them. These drones - they’re nothing. They mean nothing. The only thing that matters to you is staying functional to keep me safe, and being a good boy for me. Got it Puppy?”
His tail wagged weakly. He was so lucky to be taken in by her, so he could be good instead. He would be the bestest ever for her.
“Oh, you will be. Now grab that other body and get moving. The sun’s coming up soon.”