Chapter Text
cold. you are very cold.
cold falls on your back. you open your eyes, yet can’t see what’s causing the cold.
you get up, snow rolling off of you. you’re… somewhere; ruined buildings tower around you, snowflakes falling as if the stars themselves decay at the thought of this place. something horrible has happened here, and you don’t plan to find out what.
and yet, it is still fucking cold. the sweater you have on isn’t really enough, especially as snow-soaked as it is now, so you shift your fur to be a bit longer. it helps somewhat, but… god, why is this place so cold?
you trudge onwards in the snow, passing many landmarks such as… ruins, abandoned buildings, and more ruins. this place seems… fun.
you continue walking, not sure of your direction nor your objective. snow blurs your vision at points. it's kind of starting to tick you off. but you shake it off, and you move on. you can barely remember how you ended up here (some strange fidgety tool? you’re inclined to say “radio”, even though that doesn't make sense) or what you were doing beforehand (the words “many, new” and a barrage of colors come to mind, though that doesn't tell you much, if at all). but if you could get here, you could… probably… leave at any time.
it takes a while before you happen upon something - a figure, in the snow. the weather has picked up quite a bit, making the figure look less like a real person and more like an amorphous dark blob against the “sky” (too snowy to know for sure). as you get closer, you notice exactly what's going on - a robot(?) with a snazzy hat looking through the snow.
you approach them to say hi! it'd be nice to have a fr-
-and they suddenly turn around, quite clearly startled by your approach. ah. maybe it would a bad idea to approach strangers in post-apocalyptic wastelands.
you work up the courage to say something after this little spook. “so, uh… hi! how's it.. going?”
he raises his hand with a half-hearted wave, about to say something when another figure comes shouting through the heavy snow.
“N! DID YOU FIND MY KEYS YET?”
“UH- J, THERE’S KIND OF A… SITUATION HERE? ALSO I STILL DONT KNOW WHY YOU NEED KEYS WHEN NONE OF US HAVE CARS…” the robot in front of you says.
the other voice (‘jay’??) becomes visible. another robot, with twin-tails (???) on her head. “for the last time, i use it for my jc jensen keycha- who the fuck… is this?” ‘jay’ raises her arm almost by instinct, swapping her hand out for a gun. hm. precarious situation you’ve landed yourself in here.
‘en’ responds to her, saying - “i don't know, my sensors can't make anything of them. highest match seems to be… ‘earth animal’.”
“what, like a human?” ‘jay’ chuckles, but.. stares at you with confusion. “hold on, i'm going to call in V, maybe she'll have some different knowledge or something. keep your arm aimed and ready.”
‘en’ switches his hand for a gun as well. “eh, sorry, it’s probably better to be safe than… sorry? i dunno…” he's not holding his arm up with much gusto.
“it’s, uh… fine…” you say as you stand there, frozen still. not much to do; they likely couldn't injure you too badly anyways (as you're a shapeshifter), and you're somewhat interested in how this will all play out.
eventually, jay returns with ‘vee’, the only robot so far with black hair.
“yeah, so what did you want me to d- ah, okay.” vee immediately aims her gun at you. no fucking around here, you guess.
“uh, V, we might want to hold back on the ‘immediately shooting’ thing. me and n still couldn't figure out what… this… was,” jay says.
“and? we're just going to allow this… pretty obvious worker drone in disguise to walk by here and live? come on, you know that's not how it works, J,” vee says.
“i mean… i don't really think we should just… shoot everything either… i dunno, i-i’m just spitballing here, it could- i mean, i could be wrong…” en stumbles out.
“come on, even N is disagreeing with me. lemme shoot them and get it over with,” vee says.
“ugh, you do make a good point… fine. if N says it's a bad idea, you got the go-ahead,” jay says.
“thank you. prepare to-”
you don't hear the rest of her words as you're too busy running away from the several guns pointed at you. you hear the vague sound of metal behind you. hopefully they don't have too much up their sleeve, but with robots you can never be too sure.
the unnatural flapping of wings. vee comes up in front of you, metal wings outstretched as she unsheathes her claws.
“come on, i was about to say ‘prepare to run’, you took the whole fun out of that!”
oh.. shit. you immediately halt, shift into the ground and slide through the snow behind her, hastily taking the form of some half-remembered bird and flying as fast and far as your wings will let you. *never. trust. robots.*
“COME ON, YOU LITTLE SHIT! GET BACK HERE!” you hear vee shout through the snow. what a stupid idea, what a stupid idea, what a stupid idea… you can barely see; you dodge things you think are bullets and misidentified snowflakes and all manner of strange sharp things till the flapping of metal wings gets too close; you take a hard dive, attempting to fly back up to confuse her, landing in the snow and unable to get back up.
a soft landing behind you. you don't turn.
“what? no oil? worker drones are really trying all this shit to get away from us nowadays, i swear…”
the flapping of wings, takeoff, you close your eyes, the pain becomes too aching to ignore, your form dissolving, slowly losing itself.