Iron Drumbeat Chapter 4 (Patreon)

General CW for some messed up shit. There's a fluffy cute reward at the end though!

“What?” I squeaked, “Who are you?”

“I am King Mi-DOS,” the robot explained, gesturing all grand-like at the scrap heap with his equally scrappy arms. “Distant but direct scion of the great originator, and lord of all the lands encompassed within the malignant vapour!”

My alarm quickly turned to confusion, and I asked, “King of the… scrap heap?”

Mi-DOS lunged forward so fast I barely saw him move, pressing a robotic finger to my lips. Lips that were just a little fuller than before, a little more… girly.

“Shhhh,” he hissed, glancing around with his one eye. “Don’t let them hear you say that. They’re just a little broken.”

“Who?” I asked, matching his whispering volume.

“The others like me… the computers,” he said. “They’re a little banged up, but I’ll fix them in no time! You too, while I’m at it. I’m sure the fluffy rat I have collared will be of some use as an assistant in the procedure. I’m told you squishies like to leak everywhere when you do maintenance.”

Oh no, that sounded very worrying. Collared fluffy rat? Leaking? Nuh-uh, that didn’t sound like something I’d be keen to participate in. Well… except my legs, if it was my legs he was talking about… “Fix me how?”

“Your locomotive appendages,” he replied, clanking when he pointed down at my twisted stumps. “Obviously we’ll be upgrading them in the process. Flesh is often far inferior to the majesty of composite and steel.”

I tried to push myself away from him, alarmed. "What? Nah, you don't need to do that."

His whole body went still, except for his eye, which focused itself on me like I was a fat wallet full of credit chits. "I need another assistant, so you will be submitting to the upgrades."

My heart pounded against the inside of my ribcage, and I brought my arms up and pushed away from him as hard as I could. I'd rather take my chances in the fog than with some nutty junkyard brassware surgeon.

"Ah, a fear response," he quipped calmly. "Such a biological reaction. I see I'll be needing a collar for you too."

Fuck, I was so weak. My arms were useless, and with no legs…

The crazed robot raised his arm and a small attachment clicked out from under it. Whatever it was, it let out a pop and there was a sharp pain in my chest, followed by a much more comprehensive catalogue of agony that seared my nerves.

Time skipped a beat, following the example set by my panicked heartbeat. Wh— my back hit steel and I arched up with the pain.

"S-shit!" I gasped, eyes flying back open.

Darkness that wasn't at all scared of the dim lighting around us hid my change of scenery for half a second. Then, bright white lights snapped on and I hissed, trying to cover my eyes against their glare.

He didn't move, except to twitch spasmodically. Where was I now? What just happened? I was talking to that robot and then…

I looked around, my poor confused brain trying to get a grasp on my situation. The room I was in was built from scrap metal and messy welding. I was laid out flat on a clean metal table, and all around me were hospital carts stacked high with various tools for surgery.

Up in the rafters, a flash of movement caught my attention, and two large beady eyes stared back down at me. Whatever it was up there in the darkness, it was about the size of a large housecat, but humanoid, still fluffy, and sporting a big tail.

"Assistant! Get down here and help me!" Mi-DOS screeched.

The creature flinched, but was quick to obey the robot king. It wasn't hard to figure out why. Around its dark grey furred neck was the unmistakable white glint of a shock collar. The animal was pretty much exactly what I originally thought it was—a monkey-cat-fox hybrid, complete with fuzzy triangular ears on its head and a blunted snout. Unlike each of those animals though, its eyes held the unmistakable depth of true sentience.

It regarded me as it approached the nasty-ass operating table, and I tried to read the expression in its eyes, but it was like trying to understand the emotions of a brick. Silently, I pleaded with it, trying to convey my desperate need to get the fuck off this table. All I got was a tail curling down around its ankle and a subtle tilting of the head.

“Good, now get me the scalpel and a vacuum cleaner,” the robot said, and floated over beside me.

“Mi-DOS, please… this is fucked!” I cried, stumbling and slurring all over my words. “At least tell me what you’re going to attach to me, I don’t want to be some monster again, please—”

My begging was cut short with a slap across the face, and tears welled up in the corners of my eyes.

“Silence, biological,” Mi-DOS told me in that same haughty robotic tone of voice he’d used since the start. “You will be improved so you can help me with my grand plan. I will brook no argument!”

A small fluffy hand came into view, complete with a thumb that allowed it to grip the scalpel the bot requested. My throat went dry, and I gave up inside.

****

It didn’t take long for me to pass out. The pain was fucking awful, and it didn’t stop. I woke up a few times while Mi-DOS and the assistant were working, but all I remembered were images of blood, bone, and metal.

My stomach roiled at the memories, and in my half asleep state, I almost fell back into a dream that threatened to have me reliving it all again.

I panicked and struggled against the tide. It was like pulling myself out of a deep, ice cold lake of sewage. Shifting my weight, I blearily cracked my eyes open and took a look around. It was a different room to the one I was… in before. It reminded me of the inside of a copper airvan that landed to arrest another gang one time.

The walls still held passenger seats, or at least the brackets where they could be bolted. One seat had a little nest of clean fabric, pillows, and a tattered rabbit plushie. I was lying on a bed that’d been bolted in place of the seats on my side of the room.

Up at the front of the airvan, the cockpit door was wedged open at the top with a bar, revealing that the whole thing was gutted and replaced with a pile of random scrap components. Just like me, they all had the look of broken things that'd been repaired and then dumped in this room without any care.

Except none of those parts could remember the operation that fixed them. For the first time since the Coppers caught sight of us back in the underbelly of Cascarton, I had time to really absorb everything that'd happened to me.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It's like the universe was just out to get me, like I was a ball to be played with, thrown at walls, and crushed in its fist. I almost… I almost wished the operation Mi-DOS did ended with me bleeding out. Then, at least the misery would—

The pile of scrap shifted, and a pair of fluffy brown ears peeked up briefly over the pile. They were gone again in a flash, and suddenly a stubby cylindrical component was deposited over the top of the pile so that it rolled all crazy-like until it came to rest in the middle of the room.

What the hell?

Another component followed, and then another. Each piece was completely unrecognisable to me, the street rat from Cascarton, but they all looked to be in reasonable condition.

Soon, a little wiggly tail appeared, then a butt, with the rest of the animal following soon after. It had a heavy boxy frame in its hands, and it pulled the frame up out of the pile with a series of swift tugs. The heavy component was then dumped on the ground with the rest, and the intelligent little creature hopped down to survey its prizes.

We locked eyes and froze, each waiting for some sort of reaction from the other. An ear twitched. I took a breath.

Gosh, but it was cute. Oh! Wait, what was it that I heard about cats? You're meant to slow blink to say you're not a threat, right?

Like they were almost rusted shut and yearning for the tender caress of oil, I slowly closed my eyes, then opened them again. The cat-monkey did the same, while its tail rose right up. We continued the eye contact, but now it was all curiosity.

"Can you talk?" I asked, and promptly surprised the piss outta myself again with my new high voice. By the fog but it was going to take some getting used to.

The little dude shook his head, and sat down on his butt, curling his tail around him as he did so. Wait, was he a boy? I should probably ask, since… fuck, did I still count as a boy?

Wetting my lips, I asked, "Are you a boy?"

It shook its head.

"So… a girl?"

It shrugged and seemed to ponder the question for a few seconds. Finally, it gave a tentative nod.

"So if I call you she, that's okay?"

A firmer nod this time.

Continuing, I proposed, "But… your people don't have the same genders as humans?"

She nodded vigorously.

"So she is close enough?"

More nodding, then a happy swishing of her tail.

"Sick," I said, more to myself than her. It was sorta crazy that this random alien could understand me.

Out of habit more than anything, I shifted and went to sit up and swing my legs out of the bed, when I realised that I actually had legs again. Quick as a picker, I turned my attention to them.

They were bulky, at least in relation to my new feminine frame. Nah, they'd have been chunky even before the fog flipped my body upside down and inside out.

Externally, the legs were covered with angular dark metal plates that reminded me of sloped armour on a military vehicle. Internally, the legs looked pretty solid, except that none of the components matched. All up, the legs looked like an upper corpo in a black suit with a tie-dye shirt.

Of course, the feet were the craziest part. My ankle was way up my leg, while everything below had the general shape of a hoof, but with two big blocky triangular toes facing forward and one facing backwards. I flexed them experimentally and shivered when I felt them move.

"That feels so fucking weird!" I hissed, moving my new legs this way and that while a sharp, almost uncomfortable dissonance played my lobes like bongo drums.

The cat's ears perked up, and she approached cautiously, her eyes asking for permission to touch me. I moved my legs closer to her and nodded assent. Whatever she wanted to do couldn't be worse than the messed up signals I was getting from the tech right now.

She hopped forward and pulled at one of the plates on my left leg. It clicked and came loose, sending a jolt of pure fucky wucky wierd up my spine.

Quicker than Pix could've hacked a billboard, the cat twisted and pulled at things inside my leg, then sat back and motioned for me to test it. This time, when I experimentally flexed my toes, it felt normal, even a little dulled compared to before my legs got chomped off.

"Yeah, that's good," I said happily. She tapped her hands rapidly on the armour plate excitedly and hopped over to the other leg, repeating the process and then replacing the plates. I tested again and when nothing seemed wrong, I gave her a big happy smile, careful not to show teeth. "Thanks!"

Wait… we hadn't even said a proper gidday yet!

"By the way, my name's—" I faltered, suddenly aware of the fact that I didn't need to keep using that shitty street name. I couldn't remember what my original was, but I knew for sure that Skitters was lame as fuck. Time for a new one.

I glanced around quickly, then down at myself, looking for inspiration. My body was obviously that of a girl now, but it was a bit on the coltish, lanky side now, rather than being all sexy and curvy.

Lank? No way. Colt? Definitely not. I got chewed on by an abomination, maybe I could do something with that? Actually, I was basically made of scrap now, recycled from a bunch of different parts… recycled…

Like how the spiderflower in the lower levels has evolved to feed off heavy metals from the smelteries. Shit, what was the scientific name again? Pix mentioned it one time… Maliciclea. Mali. Melli.

"My name is Melli," I said, after a pause so long that the cat started messing with its scrap components again.

She paused what she was doing and nodded understanding, then reached over and plucked something small from the ground and tossed it to me. Catching it, I peered at the object and found a rusty metal bolt in the palm of my hand. "Rust?"

She shook her head.

"Oh, bolt?"

Her tail swished back and forth while she paused and took a second to think. Picking up another bolt, she stared at it in thought.

"You like to tinker, to fix things, build things, right?" I asked, finally understanding that she was trying to give me a concept rather than an actual word

Happily, she nodded and gestured for me to keep going.

"So, you're a tinkerer. I could call you… Tink?"

Emphatic nodding. Oh, she liked that one.

"Well then, Tink, it's awesome to meet you."