Chapter Text
Except for me.
The peaceful sunrise morphs instantly into a clouded sky. Ruin appears above the ground rather than on it, landing crookedly in the deadened grass. Pale yellow leaves drift down alongside him. One of the first things he notices is how severely color clashes with the landscape.
The animatronic is slow to regain his bearings, optics readjusting to the dimmer light. It's...the same spot. The exact same field he was just in. He turned in a slow circle to inspect his immediate surroundings, finding them almost insultingly tame. Ruin had expected fire, the bottom of an ocean, maybe, not this drained mirror of his faux gravesite. With a half-hearted scoff and half a mind to critique Titan's choice of scenery
Whether it was day or night would be its own mystery if not for their still recalibrating internal clock, which provided that it was eight P.M. currently. Abysmal air quality told him those clouds are almost entirely ash. Ash meant fire, perhaps a far-off explosion? He slowly found the trail he'd taken before, deciding to investigate. Self-preservation was merely a concept now, but that doesn't mean he's too keen on suffering any damage that might trap him in this place even longer. So, they'll be careful, as always. There must be something left here that he can use to his advantage. At the very least, information.
The walk to the source of the smog is uneventful. The rocks along the path are unaltered in their placement, the few upright trees unbothered in their positions. This unsettled him to a small degree. Why exactly would Titan send him here? If the goal was exile, are they trapped here to wander?
That carefully maintained smile had erred more towards bitterness than triumph when the variant bid him farewell. Ruin could recognize an act when he saw it, and the angry desperation of the astral killer had been thinly veiled from the start. No matter. They had no right to critique someone else's brand of villainy. What's done is done.
"Dust to dust, then." He mused.
As the skeletal remnants of civilization began to jut through the ground like stalagmites, Ruin found his thoughts plagued with prose. Here treads the protagonist through the epilogue of their story, journeying off into their interrupted morning.
Mourning. Nobody would mourn him, and those few that did would move on quickly. He regrets the stress Charlie was put under, and that he may never see Tiger Rock again. Charlie has her family for support, and Tiger...would deal with Ruin's absence. However. Someone "dying" with no chance at closure did tend to cause problems. It drove Nexus off the deep end, and though he loathes to admit it, Ruin knew grief has similarly blinded him before. Rows upon rows of hypocrites fill the seats of this particular theater.
Although...he gave himself too much credit.Tiger would not go mad with delusions of revival. He probably wouldn't even look. Not that they'll lose any sleep over it. Ruin never? had a desire to be sought after in such a dramatic way, especially by someone who ultimately amounted to little more than an unusually trustworthy co-worker. Distantly he felt the wind grow colder.
Terminating the line of thought before it had a chance to linger, they hummed to pass the time, another nondescript showtune completely out of sync with the grim backdrop.
It became obvious that this dimension was completely and utterly dead the further Ruin walked into the evening. No birds flitted from the husks of the flora, no insects that he could see skittered between the brittle grass which sprouted from the scorched pavement.
A war zone is what it was. Ruin's curiosity grew tainted with nostalgia. How long had the town been reduced to this? Had anyone survived, and if so, would they find him? They'd been tasked with preventing worlds from ever reaching this state. This could be one of the hells he was too slow to prevent. Confronting the fallout of a potential failure was daunting in its own way, but for now he tried to focus on the grim facts of this scenario. Resuming his "work" was out of the question until the bot secured a portal out of here.
...It smelled of ozone now, a prelude to a storm. Yet rain never fell, and the sky never thundered. Finding the origin of the blast may be more of a hazard than answers are worth. The dying field was miles away by now, but if the clouds were any indicator of the affected area, it hardly made a difference.
"Well. I underestimated your sense of irony." The exile spoke to the irradiated air; hands held still at his sides. There's no audience in the heavens.
Ruin looked upon the corpse of this dimension and wondered if Titan had ever stopped mourning their family.