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V1. Supreme Machine. Child of man. Humanity’s magnum opus. A marvel of biorobotic engineering, built as the final weapon of a lost war.
And the biggest pain in Gabriel’s ass this side of the River Styx.
The problem with being one of only two V models ever constructed was that meant that spare parts are exceedingly hard to come by. Anything scrounged up from other machines were more than likely completely incompatible with its specialized design structure. Other than the voicebox repurposed from a Swordsmachine and its two stolen arms, not much else in its body had been sourced from anywhere but its own construction facility.
That meant when something breaks- there was a decent chance it could not be properly fixed.
The blood of husks were not friendly to its filtration system. Hell kept the abominations it made walking the line of decomposition and survival, so the blood V1 had been running on since its descent had slowly but surely been clogging up its filter with debris and rot. After their truce, it was able to get by on primarily Gabriel’s blood—divine blood being purer and nearly able to bypass its filter altogether— but even that began to fail as of late.
Worst of all, the machine themself seemingly refused to take Gabriel’s worry seriously. They would admit that the failing functions and subsequent side effects were unpleasant, but the second even a hint of concern slipped into Gabriel’s voice, they would snap upright and assure that they were fine; They would handle it. But weeks had dragged on and its symptoms only worsened.
The normally hyperactive machine— always on the move for somewhere new to explore or something hidden to find— began spending far more time at rest in their little home apartment in Lust. They would say it was working on repairs, but Gabriel would often peek glances when they weren’t looking and find them motionless and heaving hot air out of their fans. Gabriel would also find them leaning on walls for stability or sitting at any given opportunity. V1 would blame it on a recent trip to Fraud messing up its balance systems, but he knew they hadn’t visited Fraud in weeks.
If anything, the most concerning of all was that the usually blunt and honest machine was lying to him. It made him worry that this was all possibly even worse than he already knew.
————-
The two of them had been laying in bed for over an hour, though neither of them slept.
It was shaking again— its body trying to speed up the bloodflow through its fuel lines. Gabriel knew how much they despised the function and pulled them closer, wrapping his wings around their much smaller body until they were fully engulfed in the gentle blue light. He felt their hands pull him a little tighter and the shaking slowed, but never fully subsided.
“V1…” his voice was cautiously gentle, the way you’d talk to a scared, wounded animal in hopes it wouldn’t run away, “You can’t go on like this.”
For several moments, the blue machine gave no indication it had heard him; Eventually a quiet beep sounded in a sad, defeated tone.
“Is there anything, anything at all I could do?” He couldn’t help it. Desperation hung like a wet towel over his words and his mind. V1 was hurting and he felt so helpless. Strange, how different things are now. When they had met, the thought of feeling anything strongly about the machine at all would have never crossed his mind, then the thought of feeling anything but seething burning hatred would have sent Gabriel into an even deeper state of rage. Now, holding them so close that their plating would leave heat rash on his skin from their vents, the thought of losing them left a hole deeper and emptier than the fathers light ever could.
They tried to pull away, but he merely pulled them in tighter, digging their harsh metal edges into his skin. It hurt, but he used the pain to ground himself.
“Please,” it took all his strength not to let his voice crack under the weight of his fear, “I will go to the furthest corners of hell, the highest planes of paradise, I will overturn every rock and tree and building on the surface. If there is something that can be done, tell me and I will do it.”
He choked back a sob as he did his best to steel himself again. The echo of his helmet did nothing to conceal his anguish. “After everything, I can’t lose you now to something as infuriating as a human engineering flaw.”
“Please don’t let your pride leave me without you V1…”
“Please don’t leave me alone…”
V1’s fans picked up something harsh as it pushed the angel away to sit up. It looked defeated, shoulders hunched forward and staring at its hands in its lap. Gabriel’s chest was tight, afraid he had said too much, but after a moment the telltale crackle of its speakers indicated it was trying to speak aloud.
“ANGEL.”
Gabriel hummed. They didn’t normally speak through their voicebox, often preferring to sign as its speech function was fairly limited, but whenever it did it meant it had something important to say.
“L UST.”
Gabriel sat up as well, resting his hand on their wingpack. “We are already in lust.”
V1’s fans slowed, then picked up again as it thought hard, then slowed once more. Its old preprogrammed voice library held painfully few words in it, so it took a good deal of processing power and creativity to work out how to get its ideas across.
“RIGHT.” Another brief pause before continuing, “DO YOU RE MEMBER THE POWER G RID?”
Now it was Gabriel’s turn to pause, but he felt like he was finally getting somewhere so he didn’t bother to try and understand yet. “Yes, I remember. You showed me a few of them a while back because you were so proud of fixing it.”
“WE NEED TO BREAK THEM AGAIN.”
“What? Why would we-”
“GA BRIEL.”
Gabriel bit his tongue and V1 slowly turned its head, faceless gaze meeting faceless gaze. Expressions or not, he could clearly tell what it was meaning to convey. Please. And Gabriel was out of time to try and argue.
An attempt was made to walk there side by side, but after the third time almost tripping over their own feet, Gabriel had picked them up and thrown them over his shoulder—potato sack style. He had been careful not to hit them on his pauldrones, but the machine's initial protesting thrashing caused a couple close calls before they eventually settled down against him.
They guided him to all the hidden panels of the power grid. How they managed to find these in the first place, he had no idea. A few unplugged wires later and the water feature by the first panel had completely stopped flowing, revealing an odly coloured elevator.
“TA-DAHHH” it waved its hands jazzhands style from behind his back. Gabriel ducked under the door and the elevator doors slid closed.
“May I ask where we are going, Machine?”
A warm puff of air against his shoulder indicated the machine’s consideration of the question.
“EASIER IF YOU DONT.”
———
Gabriel had seen some strange things while he presided over Hell, but V1’s pension for finding odd things always left him dumbfounded.
Exiting the elevator, Gabriel found himself in a strangely idyllic yet empty suburb. The street was clean, the trees and greenery rustled in the slight wind, and the only thing out of place was the black sky in the middle of an otherwise obvious daytime.
Tink tink
One finger of V1’s main arm lightly tapped against the stunned angel’s helmet before pointing at one of the nearby townhouses. The style looked almost Japanese in construction, but Gabriel was not familiar enough in modern human architecture to pass any certain judgement. He followed the sidewalk up to the door before knocking politely.
“Coming!” The voice was muffed through the door, but Gabriel startled nonetheless. He waited nervously, shifting V1 on his shoulder to make sure the machine was stable and comfortable.
After a minute or two, the door opened and the angel was struck dumb once again. Standing in front of him, wearing pink flower print pajama pants and a loose strawberry shortcake sleep shirt, stood what looked like another V1. The second machine looked just as shocked to see him, only to somehow look even more startled when it saw V1’s back end and legs hanging over the front of his shoulder. Even with their lack of faces, Gabriel was always impressed on how expressive the V model machines always were.
V1 (the first one) twitched their wings and wriggled their way to stand on their feet. As they hit the ground, they wobbled slightly and grasped onto the angel’s gauntlet for support. Despite himself, Gabriel felt a warm surge in his chest. He was helping, finally he was helping.
“GOT ANY SP ARE PARTS?”
“..Yeahhhh? Who’s this?” It’s voice (…her voice?) was far different than V1’s. First and foremost, it was definitely more feminine. Additionally, while still slightly robotic, it had a much greater fluctuation in tone, even for such small sentences. It sounded more like one of those old “vocaloid” instruments rather than the fully mechanical makeup of most machines.
“GA BRIEL.” V1 gestured to the angel as he gave a polite albeit unsure wave, then they spun around to introduce their body double, “MIR AGE.”
“Ohhhh.” A look of realization dawned on her and she shuffled into the doorway.
“Uhh, hi. Well, come in then. Make yourself comfortable. Don’t mind the mess.” She ushered them inside, seemingly more confused and skeptical than uncomfortable, and led them down the short foyer into the living room. “Do you want anything to drink? I have uhh…blood? And the tap water is probably fine.”
“Your hospitality is greatly appreciated, but I am fine, thank you.” Gabriel declined politely as he awkwardly sat himself on what he realized too late was a couch far too small for him.
Mirage returned to the living room with two small— almost medical looking— plastic pouches. Gabriel didn’t need to ask to know what was in them. She very casually tossed one to V1–who had taken claim to the left arm of the couch— and seemed even more confused and skeptical when V1 hadn’t even attempted to catch it before it hit their chest plating and fell into their lap.
“Woah, something’s really wrong. What the hell did you do?” Gabriel had never seen a machine imitate lifting a single eyebrow before, but somehow with a diagonal drop of her top shutter, Mirage got the message across.
V1 fiddled with the blood bag in its hands, prodding and squishing it like a fidget. “HELL BLOOD FULL OF IM PURE ITIES. DAMAGE TO FILTRATION SYSTEM CAUSING PER PET UAL FUEL SHORTAGE.”
The sound of overclocking fans pushed through the silence of the living room. It was probably taking all they had left to speak aloud so much and remain balanced on the couch arm, but Gabriel knew they wouldn’t sit anywhere else. Stubborn machine.
“Huh.” After a moment of thought, Mirage stood up and began walking to a closet in the hallway. “Have you been regularly cleaning your filter?”
Gabriel had a feeling he knew the answer to that.
“CLARIFY.”
A groan sounding far too human for a machine emitted from the hallway, and Mirage returned holding a bucket, scraper, toothbrush, and chemical spray bottle. She handed Gabriel all but the bucket before walking towards the kitchen.
“Hold this. You need to clean your filter, dipstick. No wonder you’re having issues.”
“NO WHERE IN UNIT MANUAL INDICATES FILTER CLEANING PROTOCOL."
“Yeah, cuz they thought you’d be killing like- living dudes.” She retorted, punctuating her last statement with the same full head eye roll V1 does when Gabriel says something obvious. It makes him chuckle a little and V1 elbows him below his chestpiece. The bucket in her hands was now mostly full with slightly steaming water and had a rag hanging off the side. “Open up, I’ll show you this first time I guess.”
To Gabriel’s utter shock, V1 promptly slides off the coach arm and sits down on the coffee table, opening their chest panel without so much as a beep of complaint. It took them weeks of slow building trust and vulnerability to even let him know that panel worked like that, let alone let him poke around inside them.
He was not upset—far from it. He was relieved. He had expected some kind of fight or pushback or…something! Who was this machine? V1 had never mentioned her before, yet they seemed so close. They were the same model, but Gabriel was sure it had just been them and V2. And this was not V2.
But his questions could wait. He would rather not interrupt when things were going so well. Mirage took back all of the items she handed the angel before and sat herself on the floor in front of V1, up on her knees so her optic was level with the inside of their chest cavity.
“So I don’t know if it’s supposed to be removable,” she began, poking into the lower corner of their chest, “but it comes out super easy so I don’t see how it wouldn’t be. Just slides up and out.”
Craning his neck, Gabriel watched as blue metal fingers took hold of a thin piece of…something that sliced diagonally through the machine’s silicone liver. She held it up to show, and for once he was glad neither machines possessed all of the senses of organic beings. The stench of iron and rot permitted the whole room until Gabriel was near gagging in his helmet.
“Ah, so this was what you were talking about.” She ran a single finger across the mesh panel, streaking the red-brown sludge down with it. “Gross.”
Gabriel listened as intently as he could as Mirage explained the process for cleaning it. Soaking the outer coating with the chemical cleaner before scraping it down with the scraper, more chemicals and the toothbrush to really get in the divots of the filter, then using a wet cloth with water to rinse the chemicals off before sliding it back into place. It all seemed relatively simple, but she did warn that this had to be done frequently because it looked like the organ itself has also sustained some damage and will likely work less effectively.
V1 was nodding along, but Gabriel could tell it was only half there. The light he had noticed indicated its powersave mode had been blinking for at least a few minutes now, but if Mirage noticed, she didn’t mention it.
“Well, that’s as good as it’s going to get for now.” Wiping the remaining grime off her hands with the washcloth as she stood up. Gabriel offered to help her clean up the supplies and muck, but Mirage casually declined. She mentioned something about the iron in the dirty bucket water being good for some of the plants in her garden and she would get it all sorted later.
“For now,” she said, poking his chestplate with a tink. She was the same height as V1, only barely coming up to his shoulders. Hip popped out and arms crossed, she shook her head in an exasperated manner, “You take this bucket of bolts home. It hasn’t been listening to me for at least five minutes now so I hope you got all that, lover-boy.”
Pink tinted at the bottom of his wings, but looking back at V1 slouched on the coffee table, fans finally whirring at a normal speed, a warm, pleasant feeling blossomed in his chest. He scooped them up into a proper hold, not over his shoulder this time but held in both arms against his chest. They beeped once at him in minor protest, but he clinked his helm into theirs and they relented, shutting their optic and returning to a low-power state. Not quite asleep- but not quite awake either.
Mirage opened the door for them, and Gabriel turned around at her steps.
“Thank you, Mirage. This has been a really difficult few weeks for them. I cannot begin to thank you enough.” He tilted his head down and would have kneeled if it weren’t for the awkwardly balanced machine in his arms. Mirage cocked her head at him again and waved him away.
“Don’t mention it. I owed Blue a favour anyway for a pick-me-up a while back.”
“If I may ask,” Gabriel requested, finally allowing his curiosity to get the better of him, “how do you two know each other? Are you two…”
“Siblings? No. I was never built, I have kind of just existed here for a while.” She spoke casually enough that the tenseness and hesitancy Gabriel felt melted away. “It ran into me one day and got me out of a really bad spot mentally. Since then it’ll show up every now and again and just hang out. We do movie nights every other Thursday, when it remembers.” She closed the top and bottom shutters of her optic, glaring at the barely there guilty party.
“Its talked about you though. Not a lot, but it doesn’t tend to bring up much of the outside.” Her stance shifts slightly, a little more inward and unsure. “You’re welcome to stop by too, if you want. There’s not a lot here but I uhh, I’ve got Mario kart?”
Gabriel could feel his wings flapping slightly behind him, and he tried to keep his voice steady to not betray all the flattered emotions welling up inside.
“Thank you, I’m sure I’ll find my way back here somehow. I look forward to it.”
That seemed to bring her confidence back. She straightened her posture again and gave a single light knock to V1’s head, producing a slight clang.
“Okay okay, get outa here. Don’t get all sappy on me.” But there was a smile in her voice as she shooed them away.
“It was lovely to meet you Mirage.”
“You too Angel.”