Iron Drumbeat Chapter 6 (Patreon)

Well, that was one of the worst 48 hours of my life. Had to go to the hospital because the illness I caught was making it so fluids weren't staying down. Got so dehydrated I was basically a zombie. They had to give me fluids through an IV and all that. I only vaguely remember what happened, but apparently I had to be guided around by Ashlyn while she spoke for me. I am safely home now though and drinking all the water I want! Anyway, I wrote the like... 200 words this chapter needed to be finished and now I'm popping it out to you all!

Also, I've been running into a funny little problem. I've been writing a ton of stories that are either long term or short term patreon exclusive and it isn't getting me any views in the public. Idk what to do. All the stories I have public on scribblehub I'm either taking a break from (Lieforged and Ryn) or I've been terminally blocked on (Anamoor and Gauntlette). Anyone have any ideas? I'm very headempty rn.

Just how long had Mi-dick been in this place? Somehow, he'd managed to clear pathways through the massive piles of trash. Now, I know he gave me a map, but it wasn’t going to be all that useful when he didn’t have any sort of positioning function. How, by the spirits, was I supposed to tell which aimlessly meandering trash pathway I was on? They all looked the same!

Thankfully, one road had to detour around a particularly large wrecked vehicle, and I opened my map again to see if the blip in the path was represented.

Not only was it there, but the wreck was actually labelled. Looking back up at it, I took in the curved angles and armoured plates of the machine. The label said it was a Siluric Schain class heavy mech transport. Who the hell the Silurics were, I had not a bloody clue, but they sure had a sense of style.

The mech transport was about twenty metres tall, fifty metres long, and extremely heavily armoured. It wasn't just plain metal welded into wedges or whatever though. Nah, this thing was the deranged love child of a beetle, an old timey knight in armour, and an armoured personnel carrier. The beetle part was mainly because of the six chunky legs that were obviously how it used to get around, while the knightly aesthetic was from the curved plates with tarnished enamel embellishments. Ah, and the cockpit looked like the slit visor of some fancy jousting helmet.

For all it must’ve once been a beauty as it thumped its way to battle, though, it was completely busted now. The moisture in the air meant that almost everything was rusted shut, except for the four huge hatches on the sides that were very much open and were going to stay that way until the whole vehicle fell apart. More worryingly for the massive metal machine, was the two metre long hole that was ripped in the engine block. Something big had used a claw or a horn to pierce the two foot thick steel armour like it was cardboard to maim the fragile internal components. Even without the corrosion, I doubted the huge mech transport would’ve been able to function.

As I circled the huge machine, a flash of movement caught my eye, and I danced away from it with a yelp. Except the yelp was in a much higher pitch than before all this shit happened, and so the sound of my own voice spooked me further.

To make matters so much worse, the movement I saw? It was my own damn reflection in a large and shiny piece of plastic. Bloody hell, I didn't even recognize my own reflection anymore!

Although…

It was still my goofy-ass face, but things were odd. Tilting my face one way and then the other, I marvelled at how mental it felt to see all the slight changes in my features come together into the face of a girl.

Shit.

Sitting down heavily on an old appliance of some kind, I stared at myself in the mirror-smooth plastic. My guts were in open rebellion now, but not the kind where you knew it was the sus street food you ate a couple of hours ago. Nah, it was definitely an emotional rebellion, and I had no idea what all the cold and hot twisting meant.

Deep breaths, du— shit, uh… deep breaths Mali? What the hell name did I choose for myself again? Melli?

I winced. I was not vibing with that name anymore. The girl in the reflection was just not cute enough to be a Melli. She looked— I looked a lot more feral than cute. I think. Well, except my eyelashes were pretty great. Long as hell and dark. They made my blue eyes pop real hard now.

Honestly, if I met the chick in the mirror out on the town, I'd warn my crew not to mess with her 'cos she had crazy-eyes. Of course, one of the older boys might still make a pass, and then he'd come back to the hideout with ribbons ripped outta his skin from her nails.

Except, of course, that chick was me. Apparently I couldn't centre that fact in my head. No way I'd get all keen for a guy, especially not one of my fellow street rats. Gross.

Slumping further, I closed my eyes and tried to process all of the thoughts whirling through my head. So much had happened. Fuckin'... God! Tears began to bead in my eyes, and I swiped them away with a frustrated hand. A soft hand. I couldn't escape it. Nothing was the same. Nothing.

According to my new tablet, eight minutes passed in the blink of an eye while I had my breakdown. Felt like way longer, to be honest.

With a sigh, I pushed a hand out and moved to lever myself upright again. The instant my bare skin touched the cold metal of the mech transport behind me, however, my mind and sense of body exploded. A dull sense of pain began to ache in my chassis, and my hull itched with the fury of a million ants protecting their queen. I twitched and shook myself slightly, only for the pain in my chassis to spike, and I felt my ass hit the ground.

My awareness snapped back into the restrictive confines of my mostly organic self, and I stared in dazed confusion while the massive bulk of the mech transport returned to death.

"What. The. Fuck!" I shouted, almost demanding that reality calm the hell down for two seconds.

Was I cursed? Did I anger some vast cosmic god?

“Hey, whatever god I pissed off,” I yelled again into the chill air of the scrapyard, “Suck my dick! Go fuck yourself!”

I paused for a moment after my outburst and looked down at my crotch. Crap. The god in question was going to have a tough time following my instructions now.

You know what, though? That was his problem. I might— I might be different on the outside now, but whatever, that didn’t change the fact that I was someone who could survive in the shittiest circumstances that society could throw at me.

Leaping to my feet, I spun on my heel and kicked the massive mech carrier. Steel connected with steel, and honestly, I just expected to be going back to Tink with a repair job on my foot. Sparks flew, and I skidded across the broken asphalt of the road, but the massive busted titan moved slightly. Sure, it was like a centimetre at most, but it did shift.

“Thanks for making me feel like I can change things,” I told the transport, patting it with the flesh of my hand again without thinking. Nothing happened this time, and I stared at my hand in confusion. Okay… clearly there was more to whatever happened, but that was a job for future-me.

Present-me’s job was to go survey the region marked on my map, so I turned reluctantly and made my way further down the pathway. I spotted several more of the heavy mech transports in various states of disrepair, along with a few of the mechs they actually used to carry. What kind of enemy did these folks fight that required twenty foot tall death machines? Some of the weapons the mechs had were… odd, too. Even in Oceania, where technology was only just catching back up from the most recent dark age we knew that a halberd was old news.

My survey area, it turned out, was garbage. Literally. It was a huge garbage barge that was hilariously parked on its side in the middle of the scrapyard land.

Well, it was hilarious until I realised I was the guy who was going to have to get his racoon paws filthy sifting through that heaping pile of yuck. Ah, I mean… girl? Once again, correcting myself sent a shiver of weird emotions through my body.

Later that night, during what Mi-DOS called my Self Maintenance Cycle, I thought about my options. There was no way I was going to sit around being a slave for any length of time, which meant I needed a plan.

The first problem I had was the collar. Anything I did would come to a screeching halt when it went off. The second problem was Mi-DOS himself, who had the capacity to trap me in a respawn loop from hell. The third problem was the junkyard itself. As much of a goldmine as it was, it wasn’t really the kind of place to make a permanent home.

I wonder if Tink would be open to helping me, especially if I freed her too. She'd probably be up for it, considering the collar.

Gah, I just wish I had my old thieves' tools. At least I could do something with the mini-jammer. It was my most prized possession until I lost it on my old corpse…

Because when the fog reconstructed me, it didn't come with.

Because it wasn't a part of me, it wasn’t claimed by the fog.

Just like the collar.