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The Astro device clamped around Titan TV Man’s chest had been agitated since they’d entered the rift. It couldn’t teleport itself, and clung tighter to its host. But its fear made its mental hold waver, and allowed Titan TV to watch his stolen body acting, as if it was long ago and he was still able to view the Cameramen’s footage. With a grim, primitive excitement, he waited for an opponent to land a blow. Damage to the body didn’t concern him, he felt it but it was filtered and dulled.
Titan TV couldn’t access the information content of the warning, but he could feel that his memories were warning of something else here. He awaited that eagerly too, his impeded processing only catching on to it as the something else swept him into the dark. The Astro parasite made him struggle, violently because it didn’t need to keep Titan TV’s body intact, just functional.
An assemblage of lights and actuators clustered above them, gathering like a parliament of strange, differently-shaped beings watching with twitchy inquisitiveness. “Stop it,” said a thunderous voice from the void, and Titan TV registered more violent movement - being shaken. The parasite made him lurch forward, an abrupt and sharp hull breach on his right shoulder informing him that he was held by something sharp... claws? His armour tore and buckled, one of the Astro device’s gripping arms being dislodged in the process. “Stop it,” the voice said again, hissing with frustration.
A second grasping claw approached, its speed creating the illusion that it was growing. It behaved as another entity, circling Titan TV and curiously pecking off the loose arm. The parasite lurched his body into spasm again, but the talons grabbed hold of another of its arms, then gripped and adjusted until they pinched the whole device.
Suddenly, Titan TV Man recognised Jeffrey. Recognise wasn’t quite what he did, no one had accurately mapped the entirety of what Jeffrey was now so there was no visual representation to identify, but Titan TV was still able to know that, and was able to draw his disparate knowledge together into narrative. The last few minutes replayed in slow motion - that had been Polycephaly, bright like the lure of an anglerfish. Had Polycephaly planned this?
Titan TV couldn’t escape and didn’t expect to survive this time, but he could unleash all the mental venom he’d built up. You were doomed from the start, Titan TV told the parasite. The Duchess wanted me, never you. He didn’t know if that was true, but he knew it was sentient and that it had made his body grovel. It cringed, recoiling into itself from the assault on both sides, and Titan TV felt as if he was going through the possession process in reverse, fighting it as he’d done when it got hold of him. His anger overrode the pain of it being pulled, but the pain was brief. Jeffrey must have realised that it was a foreign object, but a rooted one, the talon crushed the parasite where it was instead of simply ripping it away. That probably saved Titan TV’s life because an almighty jerk of Jeffrey’s claw would have taken a portion of Titan TV Man’s torso with it.
There was, then, a pure black emptiness in his chest and head that made him collapse and hang limp. The physical object was still there, but it was inactive, the last mental traces of it shrivelling up and fading away. The relief from the constant ache and pressure was blissful, but even better was the absolute silence in his mind. For the first time in far too long, he wasn’t being pushed into overdrive and his body could cool.
But he was cooling too rapidly because he had little power left. The hijacking device had broken his core to force it into constant overproduction of energy, and that had burned out his ability to store power too. Jeffrey yanking at it couldn’t have helped. The parasite’s instruction to struggle was still implanted in his mind and it was the first instinct that came to the surface. Now it hurt, without the numbing filter of the device, and recoiling from the pain of Jeffrey’s actuator talons embedded in his plating made his struggling as spasmodic as it had been when he wasn’t in control. He still wasn’t in control.
“Stop it,” Jeffrey said a third time, but now his voice was quiet, with almost murmuring quality. His talons released. Titan TV Man fell, and felt like he was dying.
Dying was, apparently, like dropping on to a smooth, slightly yielding surface that sunk to support his aching body. But if his sensors were malfunctioning, causing pleasant illusions of comforting sensations, his proximity scan shouldn’t also be reporting the surface. Without the parasite’s cameras, the light sensors in his broken head were limited to the fuzzy shapes of Jeffrey’s screen and a constellation of swaying purple lights in the darkness above him - they were still too, not getting further away due to falling.
“My realm has been invaded.” Jeffrey’s voice seemed to rumble out of the air and out of the surface Titan TV was on. “I will need your help.”
Titan TV still felt a sluggishly rising panic, and tried to gather up the power to teleport. It was no use, the void just coughed faint wisps of smoke around him. “Can’t stay here.” He tried to get up or roll over, anything.
“You’d sooner die than change?” Jeffrey asked.
The sleek, rounded surface of a thick metal tentacle passed over Titan TV’s belly, and it was gentle and casual, not punishing or mocking with deceptive softness. Just lightly holding him in place for his own safety. With his body calming, he was no longer in high alert and, with weird amusement, realised he felt a little insulted by Jeffrey’s words. Wasn’t Titan TV Man the master of transformation and adaptation? “I’d sooner die than be used again,” he retorted.
“Then this will be a deal. We are the same.”
Titan TV couldn’t think quickly or comprehensively enough to work out a satisfactory meaning of same. The same faction? The same motivation? Both alone? His memories of... however long it was, intermittent shutdowns and disconnection from the Alliance’s network made it impossible for him to know how long, were still vague and he didn’t want to probe them until he was safe. He pushed down the horror. What he could - safely - remember was that his faction had rejected his plan and wanted him to rapidly switch to a different plan and a different way of thinking about the Skibidis, after the strategy of gathering samples had cost Alliance lives. That had came back to him over and over again, in the darkest time. Now he was acutely aware that, without the Astro device in place, it was his choice where to go. Perhaps he wanted to let the world burn and abandon it all. Perhaps he always had. He asked, hesitantly “How? Will you... fix me?” and pressed back against the tentacle. It hadn’t released him when he’d stopped fighting, making Titan TV wonder if holding him was for both of their benefit.
“Yes, I can” Jeffrey began thoughtfully. Titan TV could hear something rushing and clinking nearby, objects swirling as if blown by wind or rubbed together. “I have gathered a lot of material.”
The parasite had stored its own memories inside the Titan. He knew that the Astros cared little for their lowest-ranking troops, dozens had been lost in the void during experimentation. In transporting building materials, the TV Men used to lose things too, things like an occasional girder or coil of wire falling off a shipment. He’d heard of people leaving offerings, but never saw it. “Then it is a deal.”
A dark and smooth shape passed over Titan TV’s head and stroked its top edge. The touch used a little more force than first felt comfortable but, with few other options and no motivation to struggle again, Titan TV accepted it. He found that pressure was exactly what he needed to soothe his sore head. He pushed back, and felt the buckled frame of his screen begin to ease back into place. The relief was immediate and almost as good as getting that thing out of his chest. Intermittently obscured by whatever was rubbing his head, one of the ghostlights lowered to hover lined up with his chest. Something suddenly seized up inside him. “Not again, don’t…” he demanded.
“I won’t touch your core,” Jeffery confirmed, his voice so soft that Titan TV felt that he wanted to follow it up with soothing words. The tentacle over the Titan’s body made a slight undulation, stroking and massaging. Titan TV didn’t trust him - honestly, the very concept of trust now felt alien - but there was a mutual understanding.
Titan TV watched the purple-glowing tip of a clawed actuator approaching at his side, surrounded by a blur he could just about understand, a seaweed swirl of tiny, thin tendrils picking up the light - the source of the rushing noise. They moved to stroke along his sides and nuzzle under shattered armour, accessing his almost-drained power storage from behind his core instead. So he spread his back blades across the cushioned material beneath him and levered himself up a little to give them better access. Where his plating had been crushed and twisted, the tendrils delicately levered it up, relieving pinches and pains. The attention was good, Titan TV carefully stretched out and made a quiet purr. If he expected nothing, he could enjoy what small things there were.
“I like that,” Jeffrey said. “I like purr. There has been so little comfort in this place.”
“Keep going.” Titan TV Man’s body was so battered that the tendrils could work through the gaps in his plating with little extra disturbance needed. The tendrils could reach behind his core and the dead corefucker to entwine with his wiring, bridging broken connections and softly trickling energy into him. He felt his numb fingers and feet come back online, first painful and tingling, then warm and functional. That was what Jeffrey meant by fixing him then, and it seemed appropriate that it may be the atomised parts of Astro armour that had been reconstituted into parts of Jeffrey, being woven into him. Titan TV Man relaxed into the curving surface and again purred with relief.
Jeffrey made a hum too, vibrating the surface Titan TV was lying on, the tendrils, even the air. “Let’s rest and dream of what our world should be,” he said, and the pleasantly shivery sensation of his purr seemed to carry Titan TV into the memories he was transmitting.
Hands? Skin hands? For a moment, Titan TV Man thought it was her, but no, this wasn’t his memory. It was a memory of humans, big humans with warm, soft hands to wipe away dust and discharge static, and to press buttons to tune into new worlds. He wasn’t too far gone to realise that Jeffrey was sharing the dream of being a TV set. That definitely wasn’t his, he had no connection with the old world beyond an ancestral echo. But it was a good dream nonetheless. “Who’s memory?” he transmitted.
“Not mine.”
But it must be very special. And Titan TV wasn’t sure why Jeffery was showing it. Maybe he was lonely in the void and wanted a likeminded friend to share precious, comforting, and simple thoughts with. It would be far more practical, though, if Jeffrey was priming Titan TV to be receptive and obedient during experimental amateur repairs.
Whichever was true, Jeffrey was keeping up one side of the deal. Next, Titan TV Man needed to find out what his own task was, but for now, it was nice not to think.