Chapter Text
Miki was at home with Len after school, and they were baking cookies together. Len had insisted on using a mechanical mixer, and Miki hadn't really wanted to argue that she could do it faster than one of those old things, and with a lot less work. And it wasn't like the cookies were for her, though Len was going to be using his contraption to let her taste them.
She still had no idea how he'd managed to create something to let her taste, but she appreciated it all the same. The first thing she'd ever tasted was a banana, on Len's insistence. She had liked it, and had tried a caramel next. She couldn't feel the texture, just the taste, but Len had said the caramels she gave him were hard and smooth, which were his favorite kind.
"Miki, I think I forgot the flour," Len said. Looking over, Miki scanned all the items. There was flour. Walking over to the mixing bowl, Miki looked in there next. There was definitely not flour in there. Wordlessly, Miki picked up the flour and poured out two cups of it, dumping it into the bowl.
"There you go," Miki said, watching Len closely. He seemed happy. Really, truly happy, for once. Miki remembered one too many sleepless nights where he would just stare at the wall, or cry, or just beg Miki for a way out. "Do you need me to take out anything else?"
Len shook his head, before pausing and nodding. "Yeah, the pan," he said, "and one of those foil-sheet thingies. These cookies are going to be so good you're going to want to keep the cookie flavor on your flavor file forever," Len said, smile wide on his face. Seeing his face like that made Miki relieved. She hated seeing him sad, especially when it had something to do with her or his old name.
When Len had first told Miki he was a boy, Miki distinctly remembered changing whatever memory files she had of him into him being Len. of course though, she hadn't realized when people were talking to him when he was called Rin, so she had been forced to acknowledge his name used to be Rin. When Len had given Miki the ability to feel, she had started feeling horrifying pangs of digust and guilt and hatred whenever Len was called Rin. It hurt, and she hadn't know why until she had gone into the internet and figured it out. She felt empathy for him by feeling what she thought he felt in the moment.
Just those words she had seen in her mind's eye on the internet had been enough for Miki to feel extremely human. She was so lucky to have Len in her life. She grabbed the pan out of it's drawer, along with the baking sheet they were using to put the cookies on.
A few minutes later, the cookies were baking in the oven, and Len and Miki were sitting next to each other. Len was talking, something about his latest engineering project. Miki was watching every single micromovement of his face. She would never forgive herself if she missed signs again.
Now she remembered walking into Len's room in the middle of the night, after hearing Teto yelling. She had assumed nothing bad had happened. Hopefully nothing bad had happened, she remembered thinking.
Then she had seen Len, and all her functions had gotten jumbled and she hadn't known what to say and she had malfunctioned during Len's time of need. She just couldn't lose another human who was close to her.
Not again.
Miki didn't know what Teto was doing. She had been doing well lately, however. She had been meeting up with Estelle and had seemed a lot happier. Her shoulders, which had used to be constantly tense, had finally relaxed. Miki faintly remembered hearing something about a weighted practice costume before, which even for Teto's agency seemed pretty unethical.
Miki was worried about Len, though. After his last therapy session, she had seen an object in the bathroom's trash bin, one he wasn't supposed to have access to. At all. For his own safety. At least it was in the trash, though, and not Len's hands.
"Len," Miki said, remembering how Len had mentioned a math assignment to her. "You should work on your assignment before the cookies-"
The lights went dark, and Miki froze.
"Is the power out? Don't we have a generator here?" Len sounded just as confused as Miki felt. They did own a generator, specifically for her during power outages. So why were the lights still off?
Miki hadn't experienced a power outage since she had been converted into a fully electric body. Unconsciously, she checked her battery. 72. That wasn't bad. It'd probably last her another day or two.
Hopefully. So long as she didn't do anything strenuous she'd be fine for a while. Plus, she could always just get Anne to drive her to the nearest gas station.
"Wait," Len said, looking worried. "You run on electricity, right? You can't charge yourself if the power's out," he said. Miki sighed, and shook her head.
"I'm sure it will come back soon," she said, doing her best to sound reassuring. Miki was really bad at showing real emotion in her voice, and it took a lot out of her battery. Maybe it was better for her not to put emotion in her voice then. "And I still have a day or two of battery left. I will be fine."
Len didn't look convinced, but just as Miki was about to respond, Anne walked in.
"Miki, Len, do you know why the generators aren't working? Actually," Anne said, looking over at Miki. "Miki, can you help me figure out what's wrong?"
Miki nodded, making a move to stand up. She remembered when her leg had been damaged and she hadn't been able to walk, but luckily for her, her parts could be replaced pretty easily. She had only had to wait for a few weeks before her legs were replaced. It was the rule for her that if one leg went, so did the other one.
Miki froze when she heard footsteps walking down the stairs, and she looked up to see Teto, looking tired. She'd been sleeping a lot lately, probably because she was finally allowed to whenever she wanted.
"The power went out," Teto muttered, wrapped in a light blue blanket.
"I thought you were sleeping," Len said, also standing up. "Aw dang it," he muttered. "The cookies aren't going to bake now!"
"They were only in the oven for a bit," Miki said. "I'm sure they're still basically batter. When the power comes back we can finish baking them."
Len nodded. "But you've never had a cookie before, and I really wanted you to try one today."
Teto scoffed, wrapping herself tighter in the blanket. "It doesn't have to be today," she said. "The power is out and I want to go back to sleep. My music turned off."
Oh. Miki had forgotten that Teto plugged music into her wall that played so she could actually sleep. It must have turned off, waking her up.
Len, for once, looked a bit sympathetic looking at Teto. "Ah well," he said, stretching out his arms. "Let's go see what's wrong with this generator!"
Len was being all too enthusiastic, or at least Miki thought so. He must have had something good happen to him at school, even though they were in all the same classes. It did worry Miki a bit, though. It wasn't like Len to be this happy.
He's not going to try anything again. You saw him before he tried. He wasn't there. He's here right now.
It was fine. Miki walked, following directly behind Anne on the way to wherever their generator was kept outside. It was oddly nice out, especially for the fact that there was a power outage. Miki wasn't sure she'd ever experienced a power outage on a sunny day.
Over in the house next door, Miki saw her neighbors walking outside too. She knew that they also had a generator, so maybe nobody's was working. That had never happened before, and Miki knew that. She could search through her memory files and find every single power outage she had lived through, twenty-four. Most of them, the power had been out for about thirty seconds, and then the generator kicked in, and Miki had been able to continue on with her life.
For some reason, this felt different. When Anne reached the generator, she looked at Miki.
"Mind figuring out what's wrong with it? Len, you help too," Anne said, smiling gently at Len. She knew what Len had done for Miki. Just about everyone who actually knew Miki knew what Len had done for her. Teto stood a bit further back, since she didn't know how electronics worked.
Miki peered into the generator. At first glance, everything looked exactly as it should be. At second glance, things looked the same. Everything was fine. Miki looked over at Len. Maybe he would find something.
Len shook his head. "It should be working perfectly fine," he said. "It must be an issue with the entire grid then," he concluded. "Otherwise it'd be working right now." Then, he turned to Miki. "What's your battery?"
Miki already knew the answer, but checked again anyways, just in case. Yep. Still 72. It'd stay like that for a while, unless she did something requiring a lot of her energy.
"Seventy-two," Miki said. There was no need for Len to be so worried. She had never died during a power outage before, since they never lasted that long.
Something inside Miki internally flinched at the way she thought of herself dying. She changed her thought to that she had never powered down during a power outage before. Miki knew that most human beings preferred to say their phone battery died, but it felt different when she herself would be the thing dying.
"Okay, good," Len said. "Maybe don't do much for a while? At least until the power comes back on. I don't want you dying," he said, and again Miki internally flinched. She wasn't dying. She was just powering down. She would come back online. Everything was fine.
"Okay," Miki replied anyways. "I will."
The four of them all went back inside. For some reason, Miki felt a bit where her nonexistent stomach was. Something felt wrong, but that couldn't be true. Things feeling wrong was a human instinct, and Miki wasn't a human. She knew that all too well.
"Max, how are you feeling?"
Max had looked up at his creator. "I don't know," he said. "I believe I am supposed to be feeling scared."
"Why?" Max's creator was oddly insistent on always knowing what Max was 'feeling.' The only thing he felt was an inherent wrongness in the name he'd been given. It felt restricting in the only way he could possibly feel restriction. "Is it because we are in a dark cave?"
"Most humans have a fear of the dark," Max said, looking around the dark cave. "However, I am able to see in the dark. The dark does not scare me. Is it supposed to?"
Max's creator had looked him up and down, and then led Max out of the cave. Max wasn't sure what he'd done wrong. All he knew was that he had upset his creator by being unable to feel.
Miki blinked those thoughts away. She was Miki, not Max. She refused to be Max. The memories were there anyways, though, haunting her. She hated Max with such a burning passion. Why had he not felt any need to appease his creator? Why hadn't he tried harder to actually feel? Even if feeling wasn't in his code, even if it was physically impossible for him to do so, he should have tried and done it.
"Miki?" Oh. Len. He sounded worried. Miki wondered how long she'd been looking at her memory files.
"Yes?"
"Are you okay?"
That was an odd question. Normally, only humans were asked that question. Len only asked that question to Miki whenever she got physically hurt, and she wasn't currently physically hurt. So she smiled and nodded.
"Yes, I am fine. What makes you ask?"
Len didn't look very convinced, and Miki wished his face would change into something other than a frown. "You weren't responding," he said.
Oh good. That was an easy fix. "I was just searching through my memory files," Miki said. "It is nothing to be worried about."
Len looked over at Teto, who was not contributing to the conversation. Then, he looked back at Miki, rubbing his arm. Seeing that gesture made Miki know she had really upset him this time. He only rubbed his arm like that when he was nervous. "How about you just go rest," Len said, and Miki nodded, walking over to a chair.
Sitting down, Miki sifted through her memory files. She just needed to find something. Well, not really. Occasionally, Miki enjoyed looking through her memory files. They reminded her of how much more human she had gotten since she was created.
Miki was sitting at the lunch table, Rin? No, Len, in front of her, tears streaming down her his face. He looked so upset, like he had really expected Miki to hate him for being a boy. Hadn't Miki already told Len what she was? She was a robot, first of all, and second of all, she was a girl. Shouldn't Len have known she would love and accept him no matter what?
Maybe he had forgotten. After all, Miki didn't talk about Before a lot. She hadn't been very happy with her creator most of the time. In fact, she had resented him at first for creating her.
Anyways. Miki had bigger problems to face at the moment. Mostly, the fact that Len was sitting in front of her, looking like he might just scream.
Miki handed Len a caramel. She hoped he would feel better soon.
"Miki!?" Miki opened her eyes. Why was Len being so persistent? She had been resting, just like he had wanted her to. "Miki just please respond when I talk to you I don’t want to lose you.”
Oh. Oops. Miki had not accounted for the fact that maybe Len saw dying as something a lot more terrifying than she did. She was sure dying (no, powering down) would be just like getting shut off for a bit while her parts were replaced.
“I will do my best to respond,” Miki said. She didn’t want to make Len worry. He worried enough. It didn't matter that this power outage felt different, that now Miki herself was getting scared.
Miki remembered the last power outages she had lived through. It hadn't been that long ago. Their generator had been getting replaced during the time, and so Miki had just needed to charge herself at the hospital while visiting Teto. It hadn't been bad, the power outages had just been really frequent.
Miki was tired, even though she knew logically she couldn't feel tired. She just spent so much time worrying about everyone. She wanted a break. Maybe to worry about herself, and this mysterious power outage.
"Len, I am going to rest for a bit," Miki said, hoping she wasn't going to make Len worried. "I will wake up when I want to. Please do not worry."
Len's face contorted into an odd expression before nodding. He rubbed his shoulder before turning over and starting to talk to Teto. Miki closed her eyes, and looked through her memory files again.
Max was 'upset.' He was always like that. Today was his first day of kindergarten, with the humans that actually needed to learn things. He could just look on the internet for all the answers. There was no need for this whole 'school is a human thing' his creator kept talking about. He didn't want to be human. They suffered too much.
"Max, come on," his creator said. "You're going to be late. I know you don't need this, but you do need friends, and school is the best place to get friends. Okay?"
Max scoffed, rubbing his metal hands onto his equally metal skin. Everyone could see the blue on his body that said he was a boy, but luckily for him he had convinced his creator to let him have short pink hair. Well, his creator had seen him with a bottle of pink paint as he was debating painting his body with it, and just settled for letting Max have pink hair.
"I do not need this," Max said. "I do not want to go inside. They are all going to look at me and know I am not human."
Max knew what he said was the wrong thing to say when his creator's eyes lit up. Not with something bad, but with happiness.
"You want something? You don't want to go in? Really?" Max's creator was getting too worked up over this. He wanted things a lot. He just didn't articulate them because he knew this was how his creator would respond. But Max really didn't want to go into school.
"Yes," he said. "I would rather not go inside."
Max didn't feel anything as he was walked away from the school. He just didn't want to be seen like how he was seen. It hurt too much.