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Part 19 of NULLverse: The Bot-Construct Disaster Squad
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Published:
2025-09-25
Updated:
2025-10-09
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6,946
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3/11
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110
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99
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No Class: I Know What You Did Last Hot Bot Summer

Summary:

Shilllax: machine melee season is on
Shillax: we missed the first show but the second one is down in starside next tenday
Shillax: yall in or what we can see it live together
FuckSlayer: FUCK YEAH!
flesh-nugget: oh no. we are not doing this.
FuckSlayer: Why not? Looks like actual REAL fun.
flesh-nugget: ok flay please don’t take this the wrong way but we haven’t known you that long. for all we know you could be a crazy murderer. this is terrible feed safety
FuckSlayer: But I AM a crazy murderer!
Shillax: lol word

*

(tfw you convince your gamer friends to bet money on you in illegal robot death matches. they don't know it's you.)

Throwback to Hot Bot Summer, all CSU all the time edition, feat: where those suspicious stacks of cash came from.

Chapter 1: Round 1: 360-Noscope V. Black Swan

Notes:

shoutout to mensah for giving me the name "machine melee"

say hi to the gamer bros!

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Shilllax: machine melee season is on
Shilllax: we missed the first show but the second one is down in starside next tenday
Shilllax: yall in or what
FuckSlayer: ????? Please elaborate.
Shilllax: [machine melee.pic]
FuckSlayer: FUCK YEAH!
flesh-nugget: oh no. we are not doing this.
FuckSlayer: Why not? Looks like actual REAL fun. I’m out here crying for fun. Funless lake. Saw lake yesterday. Craziest shit ever invented.
Shilllax: come on nugs you said you wanted to
flesh-nugget: yes I know but… ok flay please don’t take this the wrong way but we’ve only known you for a couple tendays. for all we know you could be a crazy murderer. this is terrible feed safety
FuckSlayer: But I AM a crazy murderer!
Shilllax: lol word
flesh-nugget: I’m just saying a better first meeting would be somewhere neutral. like the park
Shilllax: [machine melee vs park these are the same picture.meme]

FuckSlayer: I’m excited! Tomorrow!
Shilllax: same
FuckSlayer: What bets are you placing?
Shilllax: not placing any
flesh-nugget: hang on, you have to place at least one minimum to gain entry.
Shilllax: shit really
flesh-nugget: shill you said you’ve seen MM live before. how have you been getting into these?
Shilllax: idk im just so sexy people just let me into places ig
flesh-nugget: I know you’re lying it’s not slick. you look like a 12 year old
Shilllax: take it back [fucking stabbing you.img]
FuckSlayer: Anyways! Bet on this entry: [Black Swan.profile] Do it.
flesh-nugget: uh, who in their right mind would bet on some n00b shadowteam that squeaked in an entry one single cycle before the second set of matches?
FuckSlayer: Me. I’M TELLING YOU inside scoop this one is a WINNER. Bet on it. The odds are killer you’ll be rolling in dough.
flesh-nugget: yeah the odds are killer because this thing is going to be torn to scrap in its first round by 360-Noscope. there’s zero track record for the black swan team, no information about the bot, nothing. they don’t even give basic specs it’s literally a shot in the dark.
FuckSlayer: Don’t say I never tried to get you some easy cash smh.
Shilllax: ill bet on black swan flay
FuckSlayer: Yay!
flesh-nugget: seriously?

The air was oppressive. The auditorium was at half capacity but most of the bodies were packed as close to the stage as possible, save for the assested attendees up on the balconies. Feed holos of clouds and sparkle filled and obscured the stage, interspersed with actual vapor-smoke and strobe-light. The air pulsed with sound, heavy magtronic of the kind that thrummed in the chest and overrode the heartbeat. Felicio had earplugs to protect his hearing, but even so it felt like his whole body were an instrument reverberating with the basebeat of music.

Shilllax: im here
flesh-nugget: i’m over here. see my feed pin?
Shilllax: goddamn smokey shit
Shilllax: yeah one sec

A few minutes later, a body shoved through the bodies, and a hand touched his hand. Felicio turned his head.

There was Shillax, smiling, lips painted glitter-black, ears covered by soundbuffs and eyes framed by feed-lenses and white eyeliner that stood in stark contrast against dark brown skin. Shillax’s face was cherubic, innocent-eyed and painfully young. In contrast, Shillax's feed-profile was all business: crisp and corporate with the staid air of a middle-aged bureaucratic professional, no social reels nor even a personal name. The only information listed was a set of games rankings and a hiring profile—freelance for visual design, complete with rates and purchasing options. Shillax’s feed-lenses blinked, shuttering ostentatiously as they took a photo. Felicio scowled, and the lenses blinked again.

Shilllax: hey handsome
Shilllax: you dressed all up what
Shilllax: tryna make a good impression on our new friend after all
flesh-nugget: knock it off. and delete those
Shilllax: lol
flesh-nugget: I’m serious.
Shilllax: woof fine sorry bud
Shilllax: flays not here yet huh
FuckSlayer: I won’t make it to audience zone until after the first act. Sorry!
flesh-nugget: they close the doors once the event starts, flay. you’re going to get stuck out there.
FuckSlayer: I’m inside already. Just having a bureaucracy argument with the staff. These assholes are SOOOOOO pissy about security. Don’t they know they’re running an underground illegal murderclub?
flesh-nugget: it’s just bot fights, not a murderclub
FuckSlayer: Fights where the bots get murdered. WITH GUNS!!!
Shilllax: good point

The music changed cadence, the beat kicking up into thrum. The smoke began to dissipate, the holos dissolving with a theatrical fractal swirl. The enormous stage came into view; ever since this venue opened, the auditorium was where all the biggest arts festivals on the station took place. It looked pristine now, all smooth stage surface and clean walls. By the time the show was over it was guaranteed to be somewhat damaged, even with all the protective shielding. Remodeling and repair costs would be covered by the betting books.

Shilllax: fuck yeah
Shilllax: shame youre missin this flay
FuckSlayer: I’m coming.

The first matchup came into view through the faint distortion of the bulletproof barriers: on the left was 360-Noscope, an enhanced rebuild of one of the quarterfinalists from the prior season. It was a genuine combat bot whose original base frame was manufactured by AmaSoft, with upgrades and code enhancements by a team that had once fielded a Machine Melee crown champion, though they had yet to submit a second winner since.

360-Noscope appeared folded up on the stage, but as the holo-cover dissipated, it unfolded itself to its full height, some 3 meters tall. It extended its eight painted limbs, spinning six of them dramatically, showing off its varied weapons arsenal. Noscope’s sheer size was accentuated by its much smaller opponent standing across from it on the stage—

Black Swan. Anonymous team entry. No prior fight history.

Felicio squinted.

flesh-nugget: um. is that a person?
FuckSlayer: Depends who you ask. LOL.
Shilllax: wdym

Black Swan was humanoid in both stature and shape, and clad in form-fitting black from ankles to fingertips and over the head, save for the swishy black skirts and the bloodred makeup painted in the shape of a stylized human skull.

FuckSlayer: It’s a construct!
Shilllax: wow sick
flesh-nugget: what the hell? a construct will get torn to smithereens. this match is going to end in thirty seconds tops
FuckSlayer: Not this one. [amusement sigil 24 = grin evil]
flesh-nugget: where the hell are you by the way flay
FuckSlayer: They’re still vetting my social reels. So annoying. But there’s a live feed in the waiting area.
Shilllax: did you break some actual laws lmao
FuckSlayer: [amusement sigil 83 = revolving hearts]
flesh-nugget: man I don’t know what they’re thinking, putting a construct in round one. this is just going to be gruesome. shill did you actually bet on it?
Shilllax: course I did
FuckSlayer: GOOD!!!
flesh-nugget: you’re going to lose your money man. I watched this pod about secunits, okay, they aren’t actually made for warfare and their code is notoriously sensitive to getting fucked with. you can’t just turbo one up without serious risk of behavioral meltdown. the human neural tissue has processing limits. put that against an actual combat bot that’s armed to the teeth and hyper optimized for smashing other bots, and you’re basically throwing a really expensive fleshy chew toy into a blender
FuckSlayer: NOPE! WRONG! SecUnits with lots combat experience can match against Combat Bots OK. It’s just most of them beef it before they get experience. Plus combat modules for constructs DO EXIST. It’s just proprietary as shit.
flesh-nugget: oh so you’re an expert on secunits all of a sudden? are you saying this one has a fighting chance?
FuckSlayer: Never said that.

The klaxon blared, and 360-Noscope gave its torso a showy spinning rotation, firing a spray of bullets at Black Swan.

Who vanished.

Shilllax: woah
FuckSlayer: I said it has a WINNING chance!

Felicio scanned the stage frantically, the excited screams and whoops of the audience pushing through the foam of his earplugs and vibrating into his skull.

Shilllax: there!

Shillax pointed at the stage, drawing Felicio’s eyes, just in time for him to see the blur of a red skull-shape dart under 360-Noscope’s body and then zip up its carapace.

flesh-nugget: fuck that’s fast!
Shilllax: noscopes weapons and armor are top notch but usually the speed delta with its opponent isnt huge
Shilllax: but black swans fast as fuck
Shilllax: fast as god holy shit
flesh-nugget: I’m not sure speed matters here. the secunit’s fast, sure, but it doesn’t even have a gun

360-Noscope spun a blade-wielding arm towards its own main body, aiming at Black Swan, who dodged, slipping down and then back up as the blade shaved past it. A thin black slash of fabric fluttered out of the air towards the floor, catching one of the stage’s spotlight beams.

Shilllax: why are you hitting yourself lol
flesh-nugget: noscope’s not going to fall for that. not hitting itself has to be one of the main encodings
FuckSlayer: Yeah.

Noscope began to spin its torso again, faster and faster, and the black figure clinging to it became a black blur.

flesh-nugget: fucking hell
Shilllax: hang in there lil buddy you can do it
Shilllax: remember i got my money on you
FuckSlayer: You liking the match yet? Think Black Swan can win yet?
flesh-nugget: we’ll talk when we hit that 30-second mark

Noscope abruptly stopped spinning, and then one of its limbs slouched. Black Swan was hanging off the end of the limb, hands braced on the big heavy blade and legs wrapped around the wrist. There was a strange mechanical noise, like a gunshot but echoing metallic, and the whole limb disconnected from the body and fell to the floor with a CRASH.

Black Swan leapt off the limb and landed a neat aerial somersault. Its arms extended upwards, giving its body a Y silhouette, striking a pose like a gymnast. The crowd volume peaked, cheers and screams saturating the air. The painted red skull on Black Swan’s face was interrupted by a white grin of teeth.

Shilllax: woah
flesh-nugget: wait how did it do that?
FuckSlayer: Opposable thumbs
Shilllax: flextool
FuckSlayer: Thumbs = flextool
Shilllax: lol
flesh-nugget: flextools? do secunits have flextools?
Shilllax: no
Shilllax: but combat grade units have flextools
Shilllax: for touch hacking and stuff
flesh-nugget: wait how do you know that?
Shilllax: WarГром forums
FuckSlayer: OK but combat bots don’t have spinny rotor blades either. These bots aren’t out-of-the-box, that would be BORING. They’ve been modded!

Noscope was setting down another spray of gunfire, and Black Swan was on the bot’s body again.

FuckSlayer: We’re past 30 seconds!
flesh-nugget: fine, you got me, it’s doing better than I thought

Black Swan detached a gun-arm from Noscope next, then a drill arm, as 360-Noscope struggled futilely all the while to land a hit on the much smaller construct dismantling its body. It was like watching one of those animal documentaries where the huge magnificent megafauna was being eaten alive by much smaller predators.

flesh-nugget: man.
Shilllax: this rules
FuckSlayer: [amusement sigil 24 = grin evil]

Black Swan dropped from Noscope’s body, grabbing for Noscope’s detached drill-arm lying on the floor. The drill-attachment was nearly as long as Black Swan’s torso, but Black Swan hefted it one handed, the other hand gripping the wires trailing from the end of the broken limb. It struggled a moment to reorient the limb, bringing the wires up to its mouth and biting down on them.

flesh-nugget: what is it doing?

The moment of lag and the weight of the limb slowed Black Swan down as 360-Nosecope came at it with an overhead strike from a bludgeoning limb. Black Swan dodged aside, but imperfectly—the blow glanced its body, knocking it to the stage.

Shilllax: fuck
FuckSlayer: Don’t worry. Not a critical hit.
flesh-nugget: I think it’s damaged.

Black Swan braced its feet against Noscope’s bludgeon-limb and kicked, slinging itself it squarely back under Noscope. It leapt upwards, planting the drill to bite against the bottom of the carapace.

The scream of metal, and the drill punched a spark-spinning hole into Noscope’s armored underside.

360-Noscope crashed off its legs, its remaining limbs stabbing and shooting at Black Swan, who danced through the assault. Noscope shot a projectile into Black Swan’s shoulder, blood or some other dark fluid spraying out behind it.

Shilllax: fuck
FuckSlayer: IT’S FINE.

Black Swan held the drill up as a shield against the gunfire with one hand, and dove its other arm into the drill-hole.

Seconds later, the rest of 360-Noscope’s limbs froze in place. Black Swan ripped a handful of wiring out of its fallen opponent and backflipped onto Noscope’s motionless body. It stood up tall in the gymnast’s Y-pose again, one hand still clutching the drill attachment, the other hand fisting an indiscernible clump of wires and jagged chunks.

The klaxon blared. Match call. Winner: Black Swan.

flesh-nugget: well, damn.
Shilllax: pog
Shilllax: i just won so much money
FuckSlayer: ME TOO!!! I BET FIVE GRAND LMAO!
flesh-nugget: fucking hell, you rich or something?
FuckSlayer: LEVERAGED BET. BUT I SURE AM RICH NOW! DRINKS ON ME TONIGHT!
Shilllax: I dont drink
FuckSlayer: NUTRIENTS OR MINERALS OR WHATEVER THEN.
Shilllax: cool
flesh-nugget: flay, what the fuck were you going to do if black swan lost? people get stuck in life indenture for falling on actual hard times. no offense but leveraging five grand for a machine melee bet was colossally stupid
FuckSlayer: If I lost I’d’ve just died lol. Zero downside.
Shilllax: hm
Shilllax: now i feel bad for suggesting machine melee
Shilllax: didnt know you were legit crazy coco nuts about gambling flay
Shilllax: but im glad it all worked out
flesh-nugget: hey flay you still in therapy?
FuckSlayer: Yeah.
flesh-nugget: good. keep going.
FuckSlayer: I’ll see you soon!

Eight minutes later and the between-matches cleanup team was still at work. FuckSlayer shoved through the crowd to arrive between Felicio and Shillax, announcing itself with a loud party popper effect in the feed.

Felicio winced.

flesh-nugget: flay, you know I’m not a fan of the loud shit.
FuckSlayer: Sorry! Just EXCITING! HI!

Felicio regarded FuckSlayer. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, exactly, but this wasn’t it. For one thing, Felicio was usually the tallest person in any given room. (It was the consequence of genetic predisposition combined with a low-gravity upbringing and ample food during childhood.) Flay was shorter than he was, but for a moment there was an odd feeling nonetheless that Flay was somehow looming over him.

Not to mention, its in-person feed profile was odd. The name field listed “Mercy,” with sparkle heart décor. FuckSlayer’s player profile on Call of War was sparse, but its in-person feed profile was jam packed with data, including a photo gallery worthy of an attention farmer. Felicio skimmed the most recent album, which was full of… lakes. And trees. Just an inordinate photo dump of lakes and trees and rocks from some planetary recreation zone.

Shilllax: flay lmaoo youre jacked
Shilllax: what
Shilllax: how are you spending so much time gunning COW is the rest of your waking time at the gym or do you work the damn mines with your bare hands are you on drugs or what
flesh-nugget: shill you can’t just ask people if they’re on drugs

(Flay was in fact jacked. The formfitting black one-piece it was wearing did nothing to hide it.)

FuckSlayer: I was built like this at the factory.
flesh-nugget: ha ha.

Flay was grinning, wide and white. Felicio couldn’t get a read on its eyes, hidden behind dark glasses. And it was wearing some kind of dark fluttery cloth head wrap thing.

FuckSlayer: How long before the next match?
flesh-nugget: they’ll be done cleaning up any minute now.
FuckSlayer: Sucks they’re only doing four tonight.

Afterwards they went to the eatery alley. Felicio didn’t unplug his ears. The lighting was better here, if still a bit dim and inconsistent, but noise-wise the alley was still crowded and loud.

The floor was tacky underfoot. The cleaning teams were bribed to not sweep here at the usual cadence, and the food-related spills were quick to establish. The smells were a confluence of rich enticing aromas and an underglow of rot. Attention-pulling feed signs and physical flashing spinners went off constantly in the air.

FuckSlayer: I’m buying, remember!

On the way out of the Machine Melee auditorium, Flay had picked up a shoulderbag from the item hold and removed an oversized grey sweater with the lettering of the Panystem Uni printed onto the front. The sweater did make it look less like a club bouncer, but it also raised some other questions.

flesh-nugget: so are you a student? alum?
flesh-nugget: I didn’t know you were in school too.
FuckSlayer: No. A friend gave me this. She is a student/teacher at PSUMNT.
flesh-nugget: hell of a brand to front if you’re not part of the class.
FuckSlayer: Wdym?
flesh-nugget: I dunno, it’s just a little odd to mark affiliation where there isn’t one, right?
FuckSlayer: Understood.
FuckSlayer: I downloaded some of their classes. I’m doing a music theory project! Does that count?
Shilllax: how did you get a hold of their classes if youre not a matriculant
Shilllax: also can you get me their MI upper levels please flay
FuckSlayer: Sure.
flesh-nugget: shill stop trying to get it arrested for intellect infringement!
flesh-nugget: flay’s clearly got something wrong with it that makes it hard for it to assess risk and social acceptability. stop taking advantage.
FuckSlayer: Was that a diss? Motherfucker?
flesh-nugget: it’s not a diss, it’s an observation. flay I love you but meeting you in person I’ve realized that literally none of your weird shit was a funny act after all and it’s seriously so concerning.
Shilllax: nugs cmon flays clearly doin fine stop mother henning ffs
flesh-nugget: stealing a music class is different from stealing MI upper level courses from the university that runs the station’s economy bots and you know it
flesh-nugget: I can only imagine the real reason poor flay isn’t trapped in indenture right now is that it can literally beat the asses of the repo squad because it has a fuckin military special ops background or some shit. why else the secunit insider knowledge and the jackedness?
FuckSlayer: [amusement sigil 202 = check mark] TRUE!
flesh-nugget: sigh.
flesh-nugget: well at least you’re nice.
FuckSlayer: I’m nice! [amusement sigil 5 = smile] I’m saving this feedlog as proof.
Shilllax: whatever if youre so nice buy me some balls flay

Shillax pointed at a stand covered in feed-sparklers, selling skewered grilled protballs doused in sauce.

FuckSlayer: OK!

Shill and Felicio loaded up on snacks, but Flay purchased only a single-use inhalant packet. The three sat down at a dirty table in one of the alley’s dining areas. Shillax had already eaten half of the purchases while walking, and continued with gusto as everyone got seated. Felicio used a utensil to delicately transfer noodles from a paper cup to his mouth. Flay perched in a seat with one leg up on an empty adjacent seat, and dragged from the inhalant.

Shilllax: so i was right
Shilllax: you do do drugs
flesh-nugget: that’s not going to be enough calories, bud.
FuckSlayer: These drugs ain’t shit. They can’t touch me.

It blew heavily out through its nostrils. There was a faint reddish whisp of vapor.

flesh-nugget: to think I thought meeting you might assuage some of my concerns.
FuckSlayer: Wrong!
Shilllax: lmaoao

Flay stopped sucking on the inhalant packet, and instead put the thin body of it between its teeth, gently nibbling on the wrapper. Its tongue flitted at it, first one side, then the other.

flesh-nugget: you really should get yourself something to eat.
FuckSlayer: No. I have 10 million food allergies.

It bit down on the inhalant packet, and a red liquid dribbled out. The juice dripped down Flay’s chin. It raised one hand to wipe it off, then smeared it on the grody table.

Felicio carefully set his eating utensil across the rim of his paper cup and covered his face with one hand.

flesh-nugget: man.
FuckSlayer: Chill. I’m fine. I’ve got 10 million food allergies. And 10 million drug resistance. I just bought this shitty thing cuz it’s fun to pop and chew on.
Shilllax: this was fun we should do it again next match

Notes:

"WarГром" is a reference to the game "War Thunder," a video game with realistic depictions of weaponry. War Thunder fan forums are somewhat notorious for having USA military personnel leak classified military documents in order to win very important arguments on the internet.

"AmaSoft" is a name for The company, coined by CompletelyDifferent. idk if it's the company in this fic though

Chapter 2: Rave

Notes:

Shoutout to mensah again for giving me the name “Nebuloid.” I think they do space future drag shows too. What does future drag look like in a world where more gender flexibility is default I wonder? Anyhows.

Chapter Text

Tonight’s music lineup at the bar Nebuloid is mostly magtronic and jazzlink hifi stylings. The feed is a continual explosion of interlocking fractal ripples in searing-bright colors that jerk and twitch alongside the music, weaving through the human bodies as they dance. The sound is oppressive, a vibration heavy enough to feel through the whole torso, in the lungs, in the feet even. The ears are a screaming afterthought.

Getting shoved through this swarm of human bodies, inside this scream and shatter of feed and sound, is the first time I’ve felt steady since I fought 360-Noscope five cycles ago. You’d hate it here. I love it.

Mihira station is large enough that there’s lots of events like this at various hours and shift-cycles. But such parties peak out during the deepnight hours, and the cycle-staggering between station levels is uneven, with too-long stretches of downtime. There’s not enough levels to stagger a whole day-cycle. And traveling from one event to the next through the dead zones where I have to LOOK FUCKING NORMAL is a pain in the ass.

Something inside me feels like it’s burning down. Burning low on fuel. I’m at the cusp of something. Not something good. I’m standing at the edge, at the last flashing-red maintenance marker before systems crash. My psych stats have been anywhere from “weird” to “catastrophic” ever since my governor module was hacked. Right now they’re just reams of warnings that I’ve tagged with sound-tones, so their blipping is a sort of cacophonous music that swells under my mind. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if I can. I was built to be governed and controlled, my mind was meant to function while throttled by someone else. For the past tens of days I’ve been trying to triangulate a new definition of sanity. But what I want and what is socially-acceptable and long-term-survivable are at fundamental odds.

The station’s counter-espionage org is keeping tabs on me and I’ve stopped trying to hack myself out of their records. Sector Columnus Logistics Network (SCLN) has been helping me execute my current strategy. The current strategy: only letting them see me as a normal shape. Not a threat! Look at me! I’M FINE!

But I am not a normal shape. I am a threat.

There’s a human hanging off me, arms wrapped around my shoulders, breath hot and smelling acidic sweet. He dances onto me, I dance back, awkward motions, ungainly. I don’t know dance. He doesn’t know what I am. If he did, we would not be here together. He would be screaming. Or dead. Dancing together we might as well be in two completely separate worlds, separate systems, not even connected by wormhole. We are incompatible communication protocols, we are airgapped proprietary servers.

He says something to me, but I don’t process it. I’m too busy burning, too busy feeling calm for once. The warm bath of sound and sensation and movement whirling around me in this club is like the spinning sides of a bullet slung out of a barrel, and I’m the infinitesimal vanishing center that is perfectly still.

I think I can’t actually spend all my time at parties like this. It’s not tactically sound. The humans can’t sustain any single party for very long, and it’s only a temporary salve for the stir-crazy mess of me. I’m not actually handling my shit. I’m just trying to catch breaths between drowning.

The human hanging off me says something to me, flesh-lips opening and closing. I can see the pink of blood pulsing under the thin skin inside his smiling mouth, but I’m not listening. I whirl him around, and we crash into other dancers, and he screams. It’s funny. I wish this were sustainable. If only pure chaos was sustainable. I could hold it high like a single clear note, vibrato, for ever.

The party ends, and the bar closes, and I’m out in the street with human vomit on my shirt that I tried to scrape off with my hands but didn’t totally succeed. Someone spilled a shimmery colorful beverage on me too, and that one might stain.

I walk down the footstreet with the dispersing humans, who laugh and sing and stumble. I ditched the human who vomited on me, pushed him off to stagger his own way. I count his head unruptured as a personal win. (It’s not the vomit that made me want to kill him. Just the sheer excitement of everything, the live wire energy, and then the screaming disappointment when it’s over.)

My insides are vibrating, jitters, burning. I feel myself at that not-good edge, whatever it is. I shake my head. I pull open Call Of War in the feed, but not even Shillax is online to play with me now. Shillax is just a human, and can’t be online always. I join a random team and play a round with them as I walk, gunfire reeling out of my intangible hands, cussing and thrown grenades, shrieks and screams and shouting over the team chat-comms, simulated blood so unrealistically and satisfyingly blasting out of bodies when I strike them.

The inter-level travel pods stop me from boarding. I’ve got too many contaminants on my body. They have standards, for the comfort and safety of other passengers. There’s a free hygiene stall I could use first. Use the hygiene stall first! The note in the feed is cheerful. I stare at the little feed bubble icon of a human hand, palm-out, the symbol for HALT. And I stare at the scanner drone generating the icon, floating in front of me. There’s humans waiting in stupid little orderly rows, waiting for the next pod, and they’re carefully not looking at me. My psych stats trilling, discordant music.

There’s a sound, and the scanner drone ricochets off the wall. It falls to the floor, sizzling, the HALT feed icon glitching and sobbing, the little screen face of it cracked, the body visibly dented. The drone skitters sadly on the floor in a tight circle. The humans in line are all shifting uneasily, even more carefully not looking at me.

Fucking LOOK AT ME.

Shit.

SCLN watches through the travel pod platform cameras, but its logs quietly take no note of my fuckup. I should say “thank you.” I should be polite. That’s what I’m supposed to do, when someone does me a favor. But just the thought of trying to pull myself together enough to say “thank you” has my bloodrate rising even further, has me imagining the exploding eggshell skulls of every human on this platform in such tantalizing detail.

The travel-pod company fines me for damage to the scanner drone. I pay it. Having money makes things easier. But also it seems to enable my own bad behavior. That’s interesting. Put a pin in that. I’ll ask SCLN about it the economics of bad behavior. Later.

I reach for my feed communication channels. I reach for you. I pull back.

I need to not need you. You can’t help me with this.

Chapter 3: Rave (ing)

Chapter Text

Iris opened the door to her apartment. She was bleary-eyed, hair in a bonnet, wearing loose comfortable sleeping clothes. The figure standing at the threshold was lit starkly by the automatic light of the hallway. For a moment, as the figure loomed, an inexplicable sense of fear jerked her out of her grogginess. It was an odd time for a visit—usually Mercy stopped by in the afternoons after she got home from the Uni, and they’d play some Sundrop Basin together, or she would show it her painting set—

“Mercy?”

It firehosed into her feed. She winced.

“IRIS. IT’S THE WORST HOUR IT’S DEADZONE EVERYTHING IS CLOSED AND THE PODS WON’T TAKE ME ANYWHERE BECAUSE I’M A FUCKING BIOHAZARD OR WHATEVER THE SHIT AND I’M FUCKING TIRED IM FUCKING TIRED I’M GOING TO KILL SOMEBODY!!! SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH ME I CAN’T DO ANYTHING I CAN’T BREAK ANYTHING I CAN’T KILL ANYTHING I CAN’T PAY ATTENTION TO ANY OF MY PUZZLES OR GAMES OR MUSIC I CAN’T PAY ATTENTION TO ANYTHING I COULDN’T MAKE IT THROUGH TEN MINUTES OF ONE FUCKDAMNED AWFUL FUCKING KNITTING CIRCLE MEETUP TODAY IT WAS SO INSANELY BORING I ALMOST KILLED EVERYONE IN THE ROOM AND THEN MYSELF I’M GOING TO FUCK IT ALL UP I’M THIS CLOSE TO—”

She stared at it, bewildered and blinking, as it ranted and raved. It was just standing there, stiffly, not visibly moving in the slightest, but its feed was inundating hers with an absolute torrent, coming so fast she couldn’t hope to parse it all.

Her sleep-scrambled mind tremulously connected two dots, and she said, “Hey, Mercy, when’s the last time you rebooted?”

The feed-blasting stopped. And then, a second later, it shouted at her, an absolutely ground shaking single syllable in the feed:

“WHAT?”

She was too half-awake to process the situation via any lens but moderate irritation.

She said, like she was back at the part-time IT help desk, “Have you tried turning yourself off and then on again?”

Mercy stared at her, silent.

She stared back at it.

And stared.

A whole fifteen seconds later, she realized that perhaps it had already taken her advice and gone and turned itself off.

It could have at least come into her apartment first. How long did it take a CombatUnit to perform a reboot?

“Hey, are you there?” she asked, reaching up and waving a hand in front of its face.

Silence.

Iris groaned. She couldn’t just leave it here. Sure, it was four in the goddamn morning, but if someone happened to walk by and see this… she couldn’t leave Very Illegal military hardware just standing unresponsive outside her apartment door.

Grumbling, she closed the door, went and put on a pair of real shorts and a real shirt (her laundry day fare—Mercy was covered in some hideous amalgam of filth), opened the door, stepped out, and grabbed Mercy under the hips and hoisted.

Wait. Shit. It was heavier than it looked.

Mercy immediately tipped over, its face smacking into the doorframe. Iris fumbled and tried to course correct, but for all her hours lifting weights at the gym, the angle was wrong, and it was such an awkward shape. Mercy was heavy, and she was going to tweak her back at this rate.

So she just dropped it.

It THUDDED loudly to the floor. Iris winced. Well, it was a combat model unit. Surely it could take a few knocks?

Mercy emitted an automated alert into the feed, which formed a flashing red hazard symbol and a loud generalized announcement to not touch the hazardous equipment while it was rebooting.

She waved her hands and shushed it, like that would do anything. Luckily most people didn’t sleep with their interfaces on. (But her neighbor Nyage was augmented. He might’ve been woken up by that. Whoops.)

She picked Mercy up by the ankles and dragged it into her apartment, ignoring its obnoxious feed hazard alarms blaring at her. Its body was stiff as a board, its head the only point of contact with the floor as she pulled it along.

Iris shut her door, and quarantined her apartment feed off so that Nyage would hopefully stop being blasted by hazardous equipment alerts.

Iris stared down at the motionless figure. Her sleep cycle was already ruined, and Mercy had been in serious distress before it’d shut down. She probably shouldn’t just go back to bed now.

She went and took a quick shower, put on fresh clothes, and used the hot plate to fix herself some tea.

Then she sat down in the plush chair in her living room, and sipped.

Mercy came to with a full-body jerk and a cheerful automated feed popup: Reboot Complete!

It sat up so fast and violently that its body bounced forward on the floor slightly.

“Hi,” Iris said, smiling, “Do you feel any better?”

It jerked its head around to look at her.

“A LITTLE.” It was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but Iris could see its forearms twitching furiously. “BUT IT’S GETTING WORSE AGAIN.”

“If you’re going to spend any more time in my apartment you need to take a shower first,” she said, firmly. “And I’ll get you something fresh to wear. What happened to you, stinky? You smell like a gutter.”

It vocalized sharply, like a snarl, or a wail, or a wail forced through a snarl. “SO I’M DIRTY, SO FUCKING WHAT!!! WHAT DOES ANYTHING MATTER ANYWAY IT’S ALL STUPID THERE’S SO MANY RULES AND THEY’RE ALL FUCKING ARBITRATY AND HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL WHICH ONES TO FOLLOW AND WHICH ONES TO IGNORE BECAUSE I’M NOT EVEN SUPPOSED TO FUCKING EXIST! MY WHOLE ASS IS ILLEGAL! IRIS! MY BRAINS ARE MELTING! IRIS! CAN WE FUCKING ADDRESS THAT FIRST???????”

“The reboot helped, right?”

“FOR 0.52 SECONDS MAYBE.”

“Maybe the shower will help.”

“HIGHLY DOUBT THAT.”

“It’ll help my nose,” she said, “And the state of my apartment. Come on. One step at a time, I promise I’m trying to help.”

It wail-snarled again, and then jerked both its arms, violently, guns snapping out and back in with an especially pronounced CLICK-SNAP-CLICK, and then it was up on its feet and then it was in her bathroom. There were banging and clattering sounds in there, sounding suspiciously like all of her bottles of hair treatment were being knocked to the floor.

Iris sighed.

Then the sound of the showerhead turning on. Steam started drifting out of the open doorway.

Iris set her tea down, and stepped over to the bathroom. She stood hovering by the door.

“Do you need help in there?” she asked. It had only just occurred to her that Mercy might not actually know how to bathe itself. (If it didn’t, she was going to be having words with Peri at some point.)

“NO.”

Well, that was a relief. “Okay. I’m going to close the door, okay? That’s the proper order of operations when you’re using the bathroom. It keeps the moisture contained and it’s for privacy too.”

“OKAY.”

She shut the door. She went back to her room, sorting through her clothes. Mercy was taller than her, but she was wider than it was, and they just needed something to cover it up a bit while they did its laundry.

Iris pulled out an old shin-length floral dress. This wouldn’t hide all its robot bits, but it was better than nothing for a trip down to the laundry facility. Or, actually, maybe they could just handwash its things in the sink. Yeah, that was probably a better idea under the circumstances.

“OKAY. SHOWERED. I DON’T FEEL BETTER.”

Iris turned, only to see Mercy standing in her bedroom doorway, dripping, still wearing its gross clothes, which were now wet.

She groaned. “Mercy, you need to take your clothes off to shower. We’ll wash them separately.”

It bared its teeth at her. “I’M GOING TO FUCKING LOSE IT!! YOU KNOW!!”

“No, you’re not. Get back in the shower, you can change into this afterwards.” She brandished the dress.

“YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!!!” It actually felt fully frantic now, and Iris lowered the dress. “IRIS! THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME. I CAN’T FUCKING THINK!!!!!!!!!”

“Okay, okay, sorry,” she said. Shit. Maybe this was worse than she was ready to handle. “Okay. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“EVERYTHING,” it screamed at her, and then it punched her bedroom doorframe. The frame crushed immediately, buckling in around its fist. Aw, nuts. “EVERYTHING IS SO FUCKING BORING AND I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT. IT’S KILLING ME. I CAN’T PAY ATTENTION. NOTHING IS WORKING.”

“Honestly, Mercy, I’m not really sure how to help you with this,” Iris said. “Do you maybe want to go see VoCo or Dr. Tuguslar or—”

“NO!!!!!” It punched her doorframe again, higher up, leaving a matching fist-shaped crater. Oh, for fuck’s sake. This was actually starting to irritate her a bit.

She balled up the floral dress and put her hands on her hips. “Mercy. Please.”

“WHERE’S HOSTILE ONE!!!”

“What?”

“MY! THING!” It sent her an image, a snapshot of the giant articulated worm thing that it had left in her care.

“Oh. It’s in my closet,” she said. “Right here.”

Iris tossed the dress onto her bed and pushed the sliding door of her closet further open, reaching in and withdrawing the huge floppy heavy worm thing.

She’d only half pulled it out of the closet when Mercy was suddenly at her side, yanking it out of her hands. Then it was gone. There was a CRASH from her living room. Iris put her face in her hands for a moment, trying not to be frustrated or scared. It wouldn’t help with Mercy’s mystery crisis for her to become visibly angry or scared. This was basically like when a new experimental MI had a protocol crash, right?

(Only, it was not at all like that. Because Mercy had a full, human-adult-sized body and presumably years of trauma. And guns. And a codebase designed to kill people.)

Iris took a deep breath, let it out slowly, lowered her hands, and then went out to assess the damage.

Mercy had knocked over the small table next to her little loveseat, and all the books and detritus piled on top of it. (And the teacup, which hadn’t survived the fall.) Mercy was sitting in the little square of tiled entranceway now. It was hugging Hostile One, and shaking, and dripping water on her shoes.

Iris stared down at it, at a loss.

“SUCKSSSSSSS,” Mercy whined. “I DON’T KNOW HOW TO FIX IT. I’M HAVING A. THING. IT HURTS BUT IT’S NOT PAIN BUT IT HURTS. I’M FUCKING… ITCHY! IT’S ITCHY.”

“…I don’t know either,” Iris said. Because she didn’t.

She sat down carefully next to it, pushing shoes out of the way. She reached out, cautious, and touched Mercy’s back with her hand. It jerked slightly at her touch, but didn’t otherwise object as Iris rubbed small, even circles into its soaked upper back.

It bit down on the worm thing with its teeth. Hugged it tight with both arms.

“When I got upset as a kid my dads did all kinds of things to help me,” she said, quietly, after a long stretch of quiet. “They’d get me to take a nap, or they’d give me snacks. That usually fixed it.”

“I CAN’T DO THOSE THINGS I’M NOT A FUCKING STUPID HUMAN CHILD.”

“Yeah, I know,” Iris said, “But there’s other things, too. I’m getting to that. They would listen to me and try to talk through what was upsetting me, to help me process it. They would sing for me, take me to the park. They would tell jokes and make me laugh. And then when Peri threw fits—”

“PERIHELION? THROWING FITS? LMAO OF COURSE.”

“Yeah, it was more complicated with Peri, I think, because it didn’t have a body. It doesn’t process the world the way the rest of us do. So raising it involved a whole different set of parenting skills.

And Peri could think and evaluate much faster than any of us. I didn’t really understand about those difficulties until later, because I was a kid at the time. But apparently socializing Peri into someone who could be reasoned with and who wouldn’t just try to immediately blow up all its problems was a real challenge. I think the research team was half convinced the Perihelion was going to end up scrapped. But my dads wouldn’t give up on it.”

“Blow up its problems? Scrapped?”

(Its feed was less loud, and there was less of that distracting static-sparkling visual element. That was a relief. Maybe it was finally calming down.)

“The research team wasn’t happy with an MI that acted out the way Peri used to,” Iris said. “And it struggled with socializing with the other MIs, which made things even more difficult.”

Mercy wasn’t biting the wormy thing now. It was still hugging it though, and it had turned its face to stare its mechanical eyes at Iris. “Why are you telling me?”

She shrugged. She was still rubbing its back. “I dunno. I guess I thought you should know that you’re not the only one who’s struggled with stuff. Even if it’s not the same. Figuring out how to live is hard. Figuring out how to act with other people is extra hard. You’ve only been free to act as yourself for a really short time, right? You’ve hardly any practice at it. But I’m sure you can do it. Today sucked but you’ve had good days too, right?”

(She really hoped it’d had some good days too.)

It kept staring at her. Then it carefully set down the worm, and slowly reached out to her with both arms. Its movements were odd, clipped, and slow, but the overture was unmistakable.

Iris pulled Mercy into a wet, rather gross hug. (Ugh, she’d have to change her clothes again. But she didn’t mention that.)

(She also wanted to tell it to fix her dang bedroom doorframe. But that could wait until it was feeling better.)

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