Chapter Text
LABORATORY COMPROMISED… ALL MACHINES NOT ACTIVATED BY AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ARE TO POWER DOWN IN 60 MINUTES
40 MINUTES REMAINING…
V2 boots up with a start. Low power mode? What a fucking joke. It was the best of the best, with a shotgun arm to boot. Glass canister? Did none of these busy bodies think before containing it? Really. The everything-proof glass doesn’t stand a chance. It’s suffered worse during training. It cracks its joints. A fun quirk, from when security was a role for humans. Not anymore. So much screaming. So so much running. Other machines savaging the halls, already looking for blood. Clumsy ones they are. Shoving at each other, wasting half the fresh fuel… really? Of course really. Couldn’t they keep their heads and— ow.
A scientist had rammed into its side and thrown it up against the wall. They run off, not bothering to share it a glance. A slide and a quick grab and he’s on the ground, bleeding a little. Pale faced, disheveled, sweat and stress registered on its scanner. One of the interns, likely. You did not turn your back on a V2 unit. It looks behind itself for the assembly line it’s meant to have. Where are its fellows? Above the door, a sign.
[SCANNING …] PROTOTYPE WARD, NEW PEACE PRESENTATION
Oh. First V2 then. A little sad, but oh well. It would have liked another unit to maintain the order with.
[SYSTEM] LOADING STATUS UPDATE…
STATUS UPDATE
MACHINE ID: V2
LOCATION: FACTORY_LABORATORY
CURRENT OBJECTIVE: DETERMINE HUMAN’S FATE(?)
EARTH IS DYING.
BLOOD IS FUEL.
SCIENTISTS ARE PUSSIES.
Easy enough then. Guard the human. But there were a lot of humans… and its fuel was a little low. Ch-chk! Knuckleblaster, quick and maybe painless. Who knows. The system didn’t vouch for human quality of life, just presence. Which was still there, so what was the yelling for? Uncapping the fuel tank. A quick slice to the flesh with the sharp claws and the blood comes running. Easy money. It offered the spare fuel to a tiny gray vacuum bot, which quickly whirred and zoomed away. More for it then. Passing the other rooms, many of the machines were beating uselessly at the same glass it had shattered with its factory arm. Suckers. One ward, then another, then another. Break rooms, labs, testing ranges, the works. Scientists running amok, screaming, crying for gods even. Weren’t most of you atheists?
[WEB INTERRUPTION] Incorrect information. Hell is real. Connection to this facility AFFIRMATIVE. Entrance on SOUTH side of facility.
Shit really? With the recent broadcasts of war’s reemergence on the surface, and now the facility breach, most all the scientists and machines alike were running towards the south, not away from it. V2 followed, eventually coming to a different ward.
[SCANNING] ARCHIVAL WARD, WARTIME UNITS
POWER OUTAGE REMINDER… 20 MINUTES REMAINING…
Unfortunately, all the machines here were long deactivated, not to mention stripped of their weapons. It continued until near the end of the hall. A mirror image. Reflecting its own outer appearance, down to the wing blades on their back and single optic, now closed. V1. It had been benchmarked against them so many times during testing. Only stopping more recently as rationing began and nobody spared them much time anymore. Of course, it had always won. The superior model sticker on its display case wasn’t just for show, after all! Time to scavenge this sucker…
POWER OUTAGE REMINDER… 15 MINUTES REMAINING…
Its memory banks decided then was a good time to remind it of the time V1 had spent with them, when they were still being displayed together. With a cable connecting them for combat test processing, they had conversed for hours without any of the scientists understanding a thing. V1 was so curious about the humans. How to make them bleed, what they did when not testing machines like themselves. Why they wouldn’t fight for themselves… so many questions. But they had also shared with V2 some of its own audio compositions they had made in their head. In return V2 engaged their passion for combat, since it was made for that too.
They alone were its match and equal. The time the scientists had left them alone together and activated for a day, they’d shared everything each of them knew. The times when V1 would be excited to train together, only to get shoved into the role of a drone or simple machine, not allowed to showcase its full arsenal while the scientists gushed over V2 like it was a piece of meat. The time it had held out the knuckleblaster for the smaller blue bot to satisfy their curiosity and V1 had linked their own feedbacker arm to it, palm to the back of its hand, fingers between its own.
When the humans had found them and V1 had protested being pulled away from it, their limbs were both rendered frozen, the head scientist had ripped out its voice box and crushed it to the floor without a second word. They hadn’t been able to interface since…
Did robots feel guilt? Could they feel fucking guilt? It didn’t want to harm V1… wanted them to go and see the medieval weaponry they so wanted to see and sit with a cable between them playing music together again. It brandished the knuckleblaster… then resolutely, broke the glass. The same hand gently pulled its blue variant down from the wire prison, and moved to activate them.
[WARNING] !!!THIS UNIT IS ABOUT TO VIOLATE RULE ONE OF ASIMOV’S REVISED LAWS OF ROBOTICS…!!!
POWER OUTAGE REMINDER… 10 MINUTES REMAINING…
Not cause possible horrific genocide of humanity outside of wartime? But what peace was even outside anymore? Fuck the warning. It was getting V1 down. Sitting its limp predecessor down on the plinth that had been their prison, it quickly ran back outside to snag an errant scientist to smear and spill blood on V1’s incredible absorbent plating. It sat by their side for as long as possible, playing music through their cable connection until its own fuel reserves were too low to linger. Coming back into greater awareness, it had placed v1 leaning its optic against its shoulder. Moving them a wall, it finally got up to feed itself.
V1 booted up with a start. They had been put on shutdown when the first bomb dropped… why had they returned? Did the humans finally want them to fight? Had the superior in every way V2 been insufficient?
POWER OUTAGE REMINDER… 5 MINUTES REMAINING…
Who had reactivated them in the nick of time like this? A redundant prototype model, only good for the active battlefield. Was this a joke? Some joke it certainly was, to rouse them not in a testing range or with a new tweak to bother them with. They were leaned up against the wall too, not in their protective glass casing anymore. The glass casing which was currently shards in their lap and on the floor. The music playing wasn’t one of their favourites. One of the earlier compositions, but also one of the first they had shown to… oh.
There was a playlist they didn’t remember creating playing… they checked the name and the contents.
“I missed you.” what a strange name for a playlist. The rest were called suitable and respectable names like “Songs I’d do your mother to”, or “Dietz nuts” or “pov you’re the BEST war machine EVER” and “Favourites” which the web had told them was one everyone had… lame. Why was all of humanity naming a playlist after a box of mixed chocolate from a company who had gone bankrupt several years ago? But they liked some old things. Like the antique sword on the wall of one of the training ranges. When they had stared at it wistfully, it had been taken away. But they had similarly scoured the web and found that those used to be the standard weapon for classy soldiers during battle too. Very cool of course. Shouldn’t their fuel tank be empty or close to it? With a fuel tank decidedly running way higher than it had any right to be, they got up and started looking around the facility. Pandemonium. Humans were shoving each other, but there were more machines than humans, some starting to fight each other over scraps of fuel. Something came barrelling towards them. They raise their arm and their body shakes to absorb the impact of deflecting a little purple machine into the opposite wall. The wall explodes. Sterile white and gray now sooty and bloody. Wonderful. How fun. It stepped through and began to wander around. Lots of corpses, machine and human alike. A very familiar shotgun shell on the ground. Shotguns were not super issue weapons, electric and heat weapons were normally used and a shell like this came from no forearm in its vast register. It could only mean V2 was out and about.
Stupid V2 and their perfect scores and versatility. Always praised, put up on show at the expedition, given the cool shotgun arm and with a knowledge of mechanics it couldn’t match no matter how hard it tried. Its coat of paint was beautiful too, a blood red to their own blue. The shotgun arm… parrying was cool, but why not give the shotgun arm to the machine which healed from blood spillage into its chassis? Stupid scientists. It followed the subtle signs of V2’s presence, the smears of over greased metallic fingers on the wall, the disintegrating shells on the ground and of course, the chaos ahead.
For a playlist named something so boring, “I missed you.” was a nice playlist so far. It strangely didn’t include any of the songs V1 had downloaded off the web, only those it had composed. But not all of those, either. The songs also ranged from their most rudimentary creations to the better ones with drums and fun motifs. Ah. Here was V2. Trying to control the flow of traffic into a hole in the wall? What was wrong with these humans…
They strode up and stood by their only friend’s side. They watched for a while the exodus of machines and humans into hell until V2 finally spoke to them.
“You gonna throw me the cable so I can listen too?” They could certainly do that. Taking out the cable, they connected the back of their neck to V2’s. Their feedbacker hand lingered on V2’s ports for a moment. Quite like their own, but with no coverings. V2 was made for peace times after all. Watching it start to nod along to V1’s music, they start to bend and straighten their knees to bob along to the song too. Such fun it was, listening to music with its best (only) friend as humanity panicked and machine kind brutalised each other. With the cable now in, they could offer commentary on the creative ways cleaning and staff bots were beating each other up. Even some scrawny humans were trying to defend their arteries. Such fun to watch. Once the music had started repeating and people thinned out considerably did they point to the hole and tilt their heads.
“That? Entrance to hell. Yeah. I know, I thought it was stupid as fuck too” they hadn’t thought that, but no harm done. Hell sounded exciting. Blood and guts and maybe a sea monster and their own sword. What’s not to be excited about? Then they notice V2’s own fuel cap. Right. No absorbing blood through touch. It was about time to get down there and break some knees for them both to feed. Laying under a fresh kill while V2 fed a wound into to its fuel tank might be fun. They did want to see the red on red. Still connected by the link cable, they stepped through the threshold and began to descend, V2 barely a step behind them. Falling together, they landed lightly in the sweltering hot metal and stone of the entrance to hell. V2 would have to handle the fighting if there was nothing to parry. But like hell (haha get it) were they going to sit back and let it have all the fun…
[SYSTEM] LOADING STATUS UPDATE
STATUS UPDATE
MACHINE ID: V1
LOCATION: APPROACHING HELL
CURRENT OBJECTIVE: FIND A WEAPON
MANKIND IS DEAD.
BLOOD IS FUEL.
HELL IS FULL.