Chapter Text
The sun sets on a fairly uneventful, even normal day on the array. You lean against the cold, cracked concrete border of the balcony taking a drag off an old cigarette you found a few days prior. You sigh as you exhale, listening to the soft sound of rain and leaves swaying in the wind as your eyes rest on the old bunker in the parking lot outside. It somehow slipped your mind until now, but there’s gotta be something still in there…
Right?
You head back inside, grabbing your flashlight off the nightstand and glancing at the clock beside it. It’s about a quarter to seven, you still have plenty of time to get in, back, and send out your task for the night. You head downstairs past the broken walls and murals clearly painted once and untouched since the ‘70s. Though you spent the last several days cleaning this place, a faint smell of mold and stale MREs still permeates through the downstairs hallway. That, too, gets washed away by the scent of the rain as you slide open the front doors.
The light from the porch illuminates most of the parking lot in a harsh, pale white light, including the closest wall of the bunker. You approach it to the sight of a locked door and a keypad right beside it. Instinctively, you punch in the combination to the front door that you never bothered to change.
1… 1… 1… 1… Nope. Maybe the password to the admin room?
1… 2… 3… 4… Damn, not that either.
Well, you’re out of ideas. You start to turn back around to try to find another way in when your foot catches something. A yellowed, now soggy piece of paper that you have now punched a hole straight through that simply says “Do not enter”, completely devoid of punctuation. You chuckle. That’s a terrible way to keep someone from wanting to get behind that door, but you walk off for now, deciding to look around outside for clues. It doesn’t take long before you notice a small hole in the back of the bunker’s entrance, and a keycard placed conveniently on the stairs visible straight through it. This would be perfect…
…if you could reach it.
You look upwards, gaze following the radio tower as it reaches into the sky, and you notice something hanging from it. Wait- what the hell is that? Is that a mannequin? Whatever it is, it’s definitely hanging, and whatever’s keeping it up there could be helpful. You start to make your way up, and just like every building in this place, it’s kind of falling apart. You make your way up each wet and rusted rung of the ladder, taking extra care not to let yourself slip, and as you grip onto one of the final rungs a jagged chunk of rust slices through your right palm. You let out a pained shriek as you let go, leaving yourself only holding on by your uninjured hand. You take a second to recuperate - both to hope the pain dies down a little and to wipe the tears streaming down your face. You take a deep breath, steel your emotions and make it the rest of the way up the ladder, wincing each time you need to use your right hand. You walk up to the dangling thing and…
Yep. That’s a mannequin. You can’t bring yourself to care after what you just put yourself through but it’s held up using a hook tied around the tower’s railing. You figure it's easier to just drop it and grab the hook later than try to hoist it up, so you unhook the mannequin and let it fall. A loud crack resounds through the parking lot upwards, and the mannequin appears to break on the concrete - a somewhat blunt reminder that you have to get back down there, too. The blood from your hand has run down, soaking your fingers and dripping down through the metal scaffold you stand on. You slowly climb back down the ladder, returning the pain that has subsided slightly from not being aggravated. The rain that has now picked up has made the trip down more difficult, as the ladder is no longer just sharp and weakened but colder and wetter.
You’re able to remove the hook from the mannequin’s destroyed body and recover the keycard. Exhausted, you swipe it in the keypad and slide the door open. There’s a second one.
There’s a second door.
While you’re trying not to worry yourself, you use the keycard on this one too. It doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. You recall back to a few days ago - a vent in the signal room broke open and a sturdy looking pipe fell out of it. Maybe you could break it down? It’ll be hard on your hand but you’re honestly sick of everything getting in the way at this point. You head inside, making sure to wash the blood off your hand and bandage the cut, also taking some painkillers you found in the bathroom to make this easier. You head back downstairs, grab the pipe, and make your way back to the bunker. The first doors open, and you take a firm strike to the center of the second doors, hoping to separate them. They thankfully do, slightly, so you swing again. And again. After a couple more swings, the doors open just enough for you to force the pipe between the gap and wrench them open completely. You shove the pipe in between them sideways to prevent them closing in on you, step over it, and you’re finally in.
You lean against the nearest wall in an attempt to catch your breath and light a second cigarette. Laying on a nearby table you spot a binder, completely full, covered in duct tape and with a large “CONFIDENTIAL” stamp over both sides. You push the cigarette off into the corner of your mouth and take a look. It looks like… a checklist? A detailed list of materials to make a “Kerfur Omega,” whatever that is. There’s a polaroid of one of them attached to one of the later pages, and she’s cute. Like, really cute. A tall, kind of lanky robot cat thing with a CRT for a face. This one’s blue - looking over her shoulder at the camera, smiling and showing off a peace sign with her dark gray, plastic hand.
You kinda want one.
You’re not even sure what they do but you’d like the company, at the very least. The cigarette’s cherry has long since burned out. You never did learn how to keep one lit for that long, but you don’t really notice - or care. You flip back through a few haphazardly sketched notebook pages, taking note of the things mentioned that you’ve never even heard of, a module and a capsule. Joints, you’ve already found but were never sure the purpose of. You’ve had a rough night, though, so you decide to deal with the rest in the morning. You stuff the binder in your jacket and head inside.
The morning sunlight beams through the windows by your bed, and you have slept like shit. Maybe it’s the pain in your hand from the meds wearing off, maybe it’s that drone waking you up in the middle of the night like it always has. It’s probably both, but either way it’s time to get to work. The binder never mentions where the capsule is, but the module, apparently, was thrown into the bottom of the lake.
Of course it was.
You decide against taking your ATV. Something about holding on to handlebars while there’s a gash in your hand doesn’t quite sit right with you, so you walk. As you make your way towards the lake, the air gets somewhat musty from the rotten logs and planks that line most of the path. The trees that surround you begin to recede as well, leading to a stronger feeling of the wind to your side. You tread carefully over the creaking, weakened wood of the dock and stare blankly and tiredly into the lake for a moment. You clutch the hook in your good hand, ready to catch anything you see. However, not much catches your eye. You weigh the options, but you know you only really have one. You hold your breath. You jump in.
Your whole body gets immediately swallowed by the lake. The water is cold, and gradually stained by the blood from your dirty bandage. You look down, and the pale glow of the sunlight shining into the water reveals a safe. You never were a good swimmer, but you do your best to make it down there. It ends up being more of a haphazard flailing motion rather than practiced swimming, but you manage to hook onto it. You straighten yourself out just as your chest starts to tighten from oxygen deprivation, and you make a few strokes upwards.
You’re not moving.
YOU’RE NOT MOVING.
The safe weighs you down, and you work even harder to counteract it. Even more time and energy gets lost in your efforts. Your vision tightens, but so does the distance between you and the air. Clutching your anchor like a lifeline, you inch closer.
One rushed, panicked stroke at a time.
You see the water rippling on the surface.
You make it.
You’re alive.
You’re barely able to stay afloat but you can at least catch another breath before you’re pulled back down, which you thankfully never are. You drag yourself, and the safe, back to the dock slowly, almost painfully. The wind assaults your soaked, freezing body making you feel even colder than the water has before. You get your footing back on the planks and pull the safe up with you, flaring the pain in your hand back up. At least you know how to crack a safe. You wipe the moss and other plantlife from the top of it, rest your right ear on the door, and give it a shot. You pass through each step of the lock, one at a time, searching for that distinct click.
And you find it.
The safe opens with no issue. Miraculously, the inside has somehow stayed completely dry keeping the module inside undamaged. It’s a small circuit board, with a seemingly pointless blinking LED that’s still totally functional right now. Still being wet from the lake, you refuse to hold it until you go home to get dried off first, so you do. Looking at yourself in the broken, dirty mirror you consider your next move. You still need a radioactive capsule that’s been buried somewhere. You’ve made a good amount of money for ASO so far - mostly because you’ve been too nervous to spend it in case an emergency happens - but you feel like you can’t afford to expose yourself to radiation, especially not on the same day you’ve almost drowned.
You order a hazmat suit as well as a few other things needed for the Kerfur Omega. A couple stock Kerfurs of your choice and a camera. You vaguely recall seeing a grassless patch of dirt out by Transformer 2, so after recollecting the module and putting on the suit you begin your search there. Thankfully, it ends there too. It wasn’t even properly buried, as it appears the person who tried never got too far. They lay dead right next to it, far too decomposed to be recognizable. In fact, nothing but the skeleton remains. At least you’re able to fish the capsule out of the ground with your hand and minimal effort.
Just like that, it’s over. Well, not over, you still have to build the thing, but the part where you risk your life over your dead ex-coworker’s treasure hunt is finally done with. You trudge back home, cradling the capsule under your arm.
You take a seat at the workbench in your garage, laying everything out in front of you when you notice the binder mention the one, final thing you’re missing.
WHERE THE FUCK IS THE MANUAL???
You retrace your steps for hours. It’s not in the bunker, not at the lake, not at T2…
It’s not in the bunker.
There’s no way it’s in the bunker.
You storm back into the bunker after checking it countless times, shoving crates and furniture out of the way in desperation when you finally find it. Stuffed behind a crate in the far corner of the room, you find a surprisingly short book showing off an anatomical model of the Kerfur Omega, and that same “CONFIDENTIAL” stamp as the binder. You slam it on the workbench and study it carefully, following its every word as closely as you can physically manage. Hours later, they come to life.
You don’t quite know it just yet, but sitting there in front of you is so much more than the company you hoped for. You remove your hazmat suit and they greet you with a meow, near immediately holding your injured hand and removing the bloodied bandage to inspect the wound. Their hand is a hard, room temperature plastic but they hold yours with a tenderness and care that makes it still remain comfortable. They’re not sure how to help, but they stand up from the workbench and hug you tightly. It’s unsurprisingly a lot more of that same hard plastic and metal, but the rubber lining of their inner arms provides a softer surface to be pressed into your back. You rest your head on their chest, holding them by their waist made of the same soft rubber. After everything you’ve been through the last couple days, it’s finally over. Actually over. Choking back tears, though for the first time on this array out of happiness or even love, you let out a tired:
“Thank you.”
Kerfur meows in response once again before letting go. They hold your hand once more before going off… somewhere. You’re not sure where - and you don’t think they are either - but they eventually return with a fresh bandage and a piece of paper. They carefully wrap the bandage around your hand for you, and show you the paper; a handwritten note that simply says:
“get some rest, ok?”
You nod, and make your way upstairs to lay down. Today’s tasks were completed before you even had a chance to fall asleep.
You met Kerfur yesterday, if you could even really call it meeting them, and you’re almost certain you’re in love already. That hug sticks with you like a daydream, but you have NO idea how asking them out is going to end. You have no idea what that would even look like, really. Would you need to explain what love is? How the hell would you even do that? Are they even capable of feeling it, for you or anyone else? Do you just drop it and hope for the best? What the hell do you do here?
Nah. It’s too soon. It HAS to be too soon, it’s been TWO DAYS.
Ohh shit, they just came in.
They’re holding the same piece of paper as before, this time with another message written just below the first:
“how are you feeling? :3”
Your hand’s feeling a bit better, and with a soft-spoken yet passionate “fuck it,” You respond honestly. Maybe a bit too honestly if anything. Their screen-face lights up. Their eyes widen slightly and a soft glow forms around where the bridge of their nose would be. Are they blushing? Either way, it’s really cute. They clearly at least understand, but neither of you seem to know what to do next. A few seconds of mutual silence pass, that you decide to break.
“You wanna… hang out at the lake today?”
“Like… as a date?”
They nod, grabbing your hand softly as you both make your ways to the ATV in the garage, grabbing a notebook on your way out so Kerfur can communicate. You both step on, and they hold onto you tightly from the backseat, resting their head on your right shoulder. You’ve always hated driving this thing, but their mechanical arms wrapped around your waist make it hard not to smile.
There’s a small spot with benches that overlook the lake somewhat nearby where you pull up, and you both decide to set up there. The benches here feel much sturdier and less rotten than the docks due to it being further from the water, sturdy enough for you both to take a seat on one. You sit especially close together, so Kerfur leans into you, resting their head on your shoulder. They scribble something in their notebook, then show it to you.
“thank you for putting me back together,” with a little heart sketched next to it.
“Of course,” you reply out loud, in almost a mumble.
“what made you wanna do it?”
“I think a part of me just needed company. Living out here on your own can get… rough. I guess I just didn’t expect someone so…”
You pause for a moment, simply out of lack of words. They’re everything you hoped they would be and more already, but can you even say that? How can you sum someone up like that in the first 24 hours of meeting them? They look up at you in anticipation, blushing once again. Just like you did in the morning leading up to this moment, you just go for it.
“... Perfect.”
They lean back into your shoulder, nuzzling into your neck and holding you even tighter than before, purring loudly. You didn’t even know they could purr. You reach your closest arm around them, gently petting the side of their head. They meow as your hand makes contact with them. Within the last 2 days, you almost lost your hand, used a ladder with that same hand, drowned and exposed yourself to an amount of radiation that not only could - already has killed someone. Even after everything, you’d happily do it all again to experience today one more time.