11. Collecting Fuel (Patreon)

A/N: I'm Natalie! :D Also, for those of you who don't read AYEH or simply didn't read the author's note: there wasn't a MGMH chapter last week because I split my break and shuffled it around a bit. There will be a chapter during what would normally be my break week (28th-2nd) but there WON'T be an AYEH chapter then. See you on the 2nd!

A monster and a robot stalk the nighttime streets of downtown. What crimes shall we commit?

I'm making mental bets. It's an interesting enough way to pass the time, and I can even kind of convince myself that it counts as learning how to better anticipate the desires of my master, which somehow makes the whole thing a little less stressful to do. I guess that's just what happens when your brain runs on robotic servant architecture. I'm trying not to worry about it, which is to say I'm burning the parts of me that are worried about it for fuel and feeling a lot better about myself as a consequence. I might be trapped in a torture chamber, but damn does it come with incredible antidepressants.

What was I thinking about? Oh, right. Crimes. I'm far too gay to have a particularly high opinion of the American justice system, so being a criminal in and of itself is hardly a dealbreaker for me. I'm less sure how I feel about apparently being a member of the magical black market mafia that uses their earnings from selling illegal alien technology to bribe or otherwise coerce politicians into… something? I guess my entire opinion about this whole thing depends on what that something is. I don't exactly have high hopes about it being good, though.

Nanaya stops by another gas station and buys another rotisserie chicken, throwing it up into the air once we're outside. It doesn't fall back down. From there, we start moving out of the business district into a more residential area, a nicer part of town where the lawns are green, the trees are trimmed, and the gardens are meticulously managed by people who are probably receiving less than minimum wage. It is onto one of these beautiful lawns that Nanaya casually leads me, walking up to a hedge of bushes and shoving her arms inside, down near the roots.

I peer over her shoulder, and spot a device that looks almost identical to that caged glass tube Nanaya showed me earlier. It's planted firmly in the earth, hidden entirely by the hedge so that it can sit on the ground directly outside a fancy two-story house. Other than being quite dirty, the only difference between this device and the one Nanaya showed me earlier is that this tube is full of swirling purple mist.

Nanaya unlatches the tube from the cage, collecting it and spiriting it away into her robes before replacing it with an empty one. Then she latches it all back together, ensures the bush is once again hiding it, and walks away.

Well! That's a bit suspicious and weird. We wander around the neighborhood for a little longer, Nanaya seeming to be on the lookout for something. I wonder what? I suppose the sensible assumption to make is that it has to do with the second cage/tube thing she's been carrying around in her robes. Maybe she's looking for somewhere to plant it. Considering that it apparently fills up with waste magic, it's probably collecting magical residue somehow. Logically, it would perform better somewhere there is more of that.

Of course, my immediate question to that line of thought is 'why the heck would she put it on Earth, then?' Earth is a distinctly not very magical place. Although… hmm. Magic comes from emotions, and magical or not, Earth is absolutely an emotional place. The magic might not be floating around freely in the air as much, but presumably all humans have the potential to create magic. They have the fuel, they just don't know how to burn it.

So is Nanaya collecting fuel, then?

I decide to take a gamble on that idea, out of boredom if nothing else. Paying attention to my magical energy sensors, I look for a direction that seems more heavily concentrated, even if only slightly. My equipment is pretty damn sensitive, so it's easy to do. I pat Nanaya on the shoulder to get her attention, and then point. Her whole body tenses up at the touch, her head whipping around to glare at me.

"What is it?" she demands. I can't answer her, of course, so I point again and start to walk. She frowns, but follows me.

It's a good thing Nanaya is a curious person, because I have absolutely no idea if going this direction will actually help her. It think it might, though, and Nanaya seems to be walking around more or less aimlessly so I can reasonably believe that my best guess has the potential to be helpful for her. When we reach the apparent source of the energy, however, I can't help but feel like I'd rather not have.

Unlike most of its neighbors, this house has quite a few lights still on despite it being only a couple hours after midnight. The house is relatively quiet, as houses tend to be, but I have a much more sensitive auditory system than humans and that lets me make out at least a little bit of what's going on. Two people are arguing inside, and at least one person is crying.

Nanaya frowns, bounding silently ahead of me and sneaking up to the house while keeping low enough to avoid the windows. Being somewhat less sneaky, I follow her at a much slower pace as she puts her big, pointy ear up to the wall of the house and listens in. As I get closer, I start to be able to make out exactly what's being said, but I decide to move that information directly into my archives without ever letting myself be conscious of the memory. Listening in just seems rude and very unlikely to do anything but make me feel bad.

"…What thoroughly unpleasant people," Nanaya mutters to herself. "This is a good spot. Artifact, come here."

She pulls out that newer, empty copy of the cage-and-tube device she showed me before and quickly finds a way to hide it within the landscaping.

"Do you know what this is?" she asks me as I squat down next to her. I answer with a shake of my head. "Hmm. Then how did you… no. Questions you can answer. Is this device similar to something you are familiar with?"

I shake my head.

"Did you intuit this device's function in some other way?"

I wiggle back and forth a little. I still don't exactly know what it does, I only really had a guess about what Nanaya needed in order to use it.

"Are you unaware of what this device does?"

I nod.

"Hmm. It collects magic. You must have known this, or you would not have brought me here. …No, that is discernible through observation and context. You are referring to other elements when you express your ignorance."

I nod.

"To be more specific, this device forcibly converts a certain degree of emotional potential within its range into magical energy. This is part of the function of a transformation stone, and I imagine part of the function of your body. The people here are very angry, angry enough to be hateful, disgusted, and upset about fundamentally very stupid things. Taking those emotions and using them for power likely does them more good than letting them simply continue to use them for vitriol, but there is always the possibility it will take too much and leave them dangerously devoid of feeling. This is a good place because if that unfortunate case occurs, I do not believe I will particularly care."

She installs the device into the ground, planting it firmly in the dirt as if it, too, would grow roots like the bush hiding it.

"I know you have been ordered to obey me," Nanaya says, rubbing her hands together to brush off the dirt. "But I did not order you to find this place. Was this recommendation of your own free will?"

Uh. I guess it was, yeah. I nod.

"There is much residual magic within the Dark World, but the black mists are highly volatile and extremely unsafe. Thea builds these devices so that we may extract purer, more specifically directed emotions to power artifacts less self-sufficient than you. There is only so much power that we can generate by ourselves, after all. Come."

I follow her as she slinks back out of the yard. The explanation makes a certain kind of sense, though I can't help but suspect it's far from the most effective or efficient way to harvest emotions. Well, any method of harvesting emotions nonconsensually is kind of fucked up, so efficiency might not have been their goal here. I guess that's a good thing, if it's true.

"Do you want to kill Melpomene?" Nanaya asks.

I hesitate, staring at her and not really knowing how to answer. Because like, kind of, yeah? Supporters of slavery morally deserve it, and she's definitely supporting my continued enslavement. But I'm not really furious with her like I was the first time that question was asked, and consequently I don't think I could work myself up to actually wanting to kill anybody, no matter how awful. I decide to answer with a noncommittal back-and-forth movement.

"That is a different answer than you gave before," Nanaya says. And I guess that's not really a question, but I manage to nod anyway. It is reasonable to interpret that statement as a request for confirmation.

"I will never allow you to hurt her," Nanaya says, "and I do not particularly care about your comfort or happiness. But similarly, I bear you no particular ill will. It is clear that you have a will, and both Anath and Thea have informed me in their own ways that they dislike your suffering. So long as you continue to be cooperative, I will support the efforts to improve your situation. Melpomene will capitulate if the three of us are in agreement."

I'm speechless, and not just for the usual reason. That's… I mean, that's wonderful! I don't know the degree to which she intends to 'improve my situation,' but I'll take anything at this point. I emphatically give her three consecutive nods, my hands slightly flapping the sleeves of my hoodie in approval.

"Do not fill yourself with undue hope," Nanaya says flatly. "I consider you a tool. It is merely basic wisdom to take care of one's tools."

…Oh. Well, that certainly takes the flap from my sleeves. I should have known that hoping for actual freedom would be too much to ask for. Still, I'm burning enough sadness right now to take the win, however limited. As long as we reach a point that allows me to actually communicate with people, I can start taking steps towards getting real help. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. It's like writing an essay, or composing a song. Easy, as long as you break it down into chunks.

My power reserves have increased to 28%. But hey, at least I'm not having a panic attack.

Nanaya and I creep through a few other neighborhoods, changing out full jars of magic with empty ones and not really much else. It's almost comical in contrast to the literal billions of dollars she was moving around earlier tonight. Can they not just hire a guy to do this? I feel like my evil villainess organization needs someone with a bit more planning skills. Though I guess that might be difficult since anyone they hire to mess with these things could probably earn many orders of magnitude more by stealing and selling them.

The locations we are placing these seem so haphazard and arbitrary in the context of their likely value. Nothing stops a gardener from stumbling onto one and taking it other than the fact that they don't look particularly magical if they aren't filled with colored mist. Even then, the average person probably wouldn't assume they're some kind of artifact simply because most people don't know what artifacts look like. I guess the power they collect is more valuable to my captors than the amount of money they could earn from them, but the way Nanaya is treating this whole thing is just off. It's like we're doing chores to clean our apartment more so than devouring the emotions of a family Nanaya has decided she doesn't care about. It's startlingly casual, like it's something they just started doing on a whim until it became routine enough that they don't question it.

Maybe I'm completely off-base, though. I barely know these people, I'm just stewing in my own thoughts because I have nothing else to do while we commit what might be simultaneously the most boring and most fucked-up acts of trespassing I've ever heard of. Eventually, the work is done and Nanaya finds us a mostly abandoned warehouse to spend the rest of the night in. I say mostly abandoned because there are other people sleeping here: a small group of two homeless women and a homeless man are curled up asleep behind some crates near the exit. Nanaya stares at them for a while with a frown on her face, but when Anath drops to the ground behind us she looks away and heads deeper into the warehouse, letting them sleep.

"We will wait here until our home fragment converges or we need to leave," she declares. "Artifact, hide yourself until then. I do not wish for you to do anything until I call for you again."

Oh, okay. The warehouse has more than a few dusty, empty crates strewn about, so I find the one closest to where Nanaya seems to be settling down that's still big enough to hold me and get inside. It turns out that when I don't need to worry about stretching or sitting comfortably, 'big enough to hold me' is actually quite compact. Heh. If I fits, I sits.

I activate sleep mode, and one hundred and ninety-two thousand, six hundred and sixty-two seconds later (that's two days, five hours, thirty-one minutes, and two seconds), I wake up.

Oh. That… that's a lot of time.

I stand up, an uncomfortable itchy feeling in my joints from all the dust that settled on me in my rest. I open all my outer platings and force a burst of air through my systems, removing most but nowhere near all of the unwanted irritants. Ignoring the discomfort as best I can, I turn towards Anath and Nanaya, who appear to be packing up the last of whatever things they had apparently gathered. I once again woke up because Nanaya called out the word 'artifact' in my general direction. I guess we're leaving.

The morning sun shines through the door out of the warehouse. The morning sun of two days later. I have officially been in sleep mode for more than half the time I've been a robot, but it all just feels like one continuous day. I don't fall asleep and rest, I just pause and resume, skipping through time like I'm watching late-night videos on the internet when I know I should be in bed.

"Come," Nanaya orders. "We are returning to the castle."

Castle? Castle. Right. Yeah. The evil ladies and their evil castle that literally sits inside of a storm of dark energy. I guess it's overlapping with Earth enough that we can return there. I have simply been kept in a box until there was somewhere better to store me. I wonder how much time will pass the next time I'm ordered to sleep. A week? A month? A year? I follow behind in a daze, barely registering the early morning streets as we walk towards what is presumably the convergence. Though faint, the magical energy in the air flows in the same direction that we travel, the breach between worlds trying to inhale every last crumb of power.

I honestly expect us to be attacked somewhere along the way. My disguise isn't exactly top quality and there were probably at least a few witnesses to my fight with Anath and Fulgora. But somehow, the sky gets darker, the crowds disperse to nothing, and we walk past the makeshift warning barricade without ever being accosted. The eerie familiarity of the liminal space is utterly silent, neither man nor monster anywhere to be seen in its seemingly infinite alleyways. Before I know it, we've reached the wall of darkness and stepped through into another world, surrounded on all sides by swirling black mist.

Nanaya leads us swiftly through it, and I make sure to flag the data logs as important so I can figure out how she's navigating. We are not alone here in this darkness, the occasional sounds of screeching monsters ringing out around us, but no one seems to pay them any mind. I suppose monsters are just something you have to get used to when you live in the Dark World. I'm so distracted by the walk that I almost don't notice when Nanaya throws the doors to the castle open, stomping inside and forcing Anath and me to quickly follow or get hit by the doors as they swing back closed.

"Finally," Nanaya grumbles.

"…Sorry," Anath whispers miserably. The quiet, almost pathetic tone of voice she uses startles me, my first instinct being that someone other than her must have been the one to say it. It's so utterly unlike the boisterous, hyperactive Anath I'm used to that it takes a moment for me to make the connection.

"It's fine, Anath," Nanaya says, not doing a particularly good job of sounding like she means it. "We did do that supply run, at least. Let's get you somewhere that you can relax."

"Yeah, okay," Anath answers, her tail swishing nervously behind her.

We head up the stairs of the fancy entry hall, my eyes drifting up to look at the ceiling sculpture again. That feeling of emotion, meaning, intent behind the piece still lingers in the back of my mind much like the strange familiarity I experienced towards the Antipathy artifacts. It remains ephemeral, though, failing to manifest as any particular understanding. 

Though my mind may be the one moving it, my body was crafted by Antipathy hands, and the housing of my soul contains some secondhand nostalgia for their culture that I am not sure how to indulge. It is simultaneously disquieting and intriguing; though these alterations to the core of who I am are objectively horrific, there is something bittersweet about being the last vestige of a dead culture that I cannot simply reject out of hand. Everyone seems to agree that the Antipathy were monsters beyond words, but they are dead now, and if I could speak I may be the only thing in any world that could still speak their language. There is something solemn in that which I do not dare to disrespect.

"MELPOMENE! THEA! WE'RE BACK!" Nanaya bellows down the hall, announcing our arrival to the entire castle. The noise startles me from my thoughts, but I suppose this place is so large and so empty there aren't many other ways to be heard. We head through a few more vacant rooms and hallways before emerging in the furnished part of the house where I initially met everyone other than Melpomene. This time, the room is empty except for Melpomene, although Thea rushes in from another door shortly after we arrive.

"Anath! Nanaya! Goodness, dears, you had me so worried!" Melpomene says, rushing forward with her arms outstretched for a hug.

"Oh, thank goodness you're both alright!" Thea sighs. "I mean, I didn't expect you to not be alright or anything, but I was still really worried!"

"Mmphf," Nanaya grunts as Melpomene gives her a big squeeze and then moves on to Anath. "Apologies for taking so long. Anath significantly overexerted herself, and though the situation was tenuous we managed to pull through. I of course took the time to manage our various chores on Earth."

"Thank you so much, Nanaya, you're a blessing as always," Melpomene says. "Though when you say things were 'tenuous…'"

"I almost died," Anath admits as Melpomene pulls away from the hug. "Nanaya says I would have died, or at least been captured."

Melpomene's eyes instantly flick towards me.

"Was it because…?"

"No," Nanaya says. "Outside of bringing Anath to Earth in the first place—which it doubtlessly did under Anath's direct orders—the artifact did not cause any problems. It was useful and unerringly obedient. However, Melpomene, I believe your theory is false. My observations of it indicate that it possesses some semblance of a human mind, if not an entire human soul."

Melpomene's lips purse tightly together.

"…What is it exactly that you observed?" she asks.

Nanaya pulls out the cellphone we stole on the first day, opens the Wikipedia app, and tosses the phone to Thea. She awkwardly juggles it for a moment before catching it, staring at the phone with curiosity.

"Check the recent history for that application, Thea," Nanaya says. "The artifact was reading as much as it could, navigating quite deftly. As if it knew exactly what it was doing."

"This is… oh. Oh! Nanaya, you're a genius!" Thea grins.

"Yes, but do explain how," Nanaya says flatly.

"These are radio transmission protocols! Frequency assignments, packet compositions, all sorts of stuff that you'd need to access the internet or other wireless communications. You know, assuming you have a radio transceiver."

"I see," Nanaya says. "And what does this tell you?"

"Well, it means that she has a radio transceiver, probably! I don't really know how most of her tech works, but I definitely know how to make and receive radio waves, and what sort of hardware I should be looking for to find that. If I can track it down and figure out how it works and connects to the rest of her systems, it'll be a huge step forward towards reverse-engineering her functions. And since this is a potential line of communication, it's an ideal place to start for that reason, too!"

"And what does this tell you, Nanaya?" Melpomene asks.

"That the artifact is familiar enough with human technology to not simply navigate it, but to know which questions to ask in order to interface with it further. This was only the start of my suspicion, of course. The artifact clearly possesses some level of familiarity with Antipathy technology as well, so it is possible that this human knowledge is merely added in by whatever system gave the artifact its human form. But based on my observations of its behavior, Anath and I both agree that when left to its own devices its reactions are remarkably human. Anath claims to have even held a brief conversation with it by interpreting its emotional responses, and though faint she does say they were familiar to her."

"Well then we've gotta help her!" Thea insists, grabbing me by the wrist and immediately pulling me towards the door she emerged from.

"Wait one moment, Thea," Melpomene orders. "Nanaya, what if you are wrong? What if Thea finds some way to free whatever is trapped inside that shell, and it turns out to be some ancient maddened devil? Or hell, maybe you're right but the human inside is just as dangerous?"

"Then we will have some measure of fight on our hands," Nanaya shrugs. "I watched it speak and cast a spell aloud while it fought against the children accosting us, copied from one of its foes. It certainly has the potential to be dangerous. But Melpomene, you know the Antipathy even better than I do. Do you truly think they would create a prison with any intention of allowing someone out of it?"

Melpomene glances at me again.

"No, I suppose not," she says, the weight of the confidence in her words crushing what little hope I had. Even if they try to free me, she thinks they can't? Is that what she's saying? "Do what you can to restore the artifact's ability to communicate, Thea. Apparently it can incant spells, so there may already be some system waiting to be activated."

"Maybe!" Thea agrees, bouncing up and down excitedly. "I mean, I can think of a few ways to do it. Remember when Ch'aska had her throat blown out and she had to use a silent spell to speak the verbal components of other spells? There could be a similar system here. I guess it depends on what kind of audio technology the Antipathy had! I don't know if we've seen an intact example of it yet, so I guess I'll start by looking for relatively fragile systems? Gosh, this is so cool. Can I…?"

"Yes, yes, you may go," Melpomene waves her off, letting out a fond but exasperated sigh. "I'll come down later to make sure you've eaten."

"Thanksbye!"

She grabs my wrist with both hands and starts dragging me out of the room, pulling me down some stairs and eventually back to her familiar workshop. It's actually slightly cleaner than the last time I was here, though only in seemingly arbitrary chunks of the room. After being led inside, Thea turns to me and starts patting me down, circling around me like a concerned mother duck. She frowns at something she sees, lifting up my hoodie to get a closer look before suddenly blushing, dropping it, and taking a step back.

"Ohmygod I'm so sorry I was just kind of in mechanic mode there, I didn't really think about… uh. I mean I shouldn't just undress you without your permission…"

I stare at her. Honestly, I wasn't really thinking about it until she brought it up. I guess I'm already used to being treated like an object. It feels vaguely weird and wrong to have someone care about my modesty all of a sudden, but it's not unwelcome. It's thoughtful of her.

"Gosh, I'm such an idiot, I completely forgot to ask if you even want me to take you apart and try to figure you out. I mean, it sounds like you used to not be a robot maybe? I can't imagine… I mean, I can imagine, but probably not, like, accurately. Um. What that's like. Sorry. Do you want me to…?"

I nod, kicking off my oversized shoes. Now that she's brought so much attention to it, it feels a little weird to take the rest of my clothes off, but only a little. I peel away the hoodie and drop the sweatpants, the whole thing reminding me more of shedding an outer layer of clothing than actually stripping myself naked. My shiny metal exterior looks kind of cool, if I'm being honest with myself. …Although, it's a little less shiny than it used to be after sitting in a dusty box for two days. That actually kind of bothers me.

"U-u-uh okay then, I-I guess we'll get started," Thea stammers, her face still blushing brown. "Um, if you just wanna get up on the table like last time…"

I do so obediently, hoisting myself up and lying down on my back. Thea stares at me for a moment and then seems to remember that she also needs to do things, quickly rummaging around her room and pulling out the devices she used to detect my emotions last time around.

"Okay, we'll just get these in place, and… there. Alright! So, um, you were gone a while. Are you doing okay?"

I mean, I've been turned into a robot slave. I feel like it is appropriate to shake my head.

"Oh, um, right. Right, of course you're not," she answers awkwardly. "Well, um, if I ever start doing something you're not comfortable with, please stop me? Is that something you can do? Is that an order I can give you?"

I nod. I have no reason to assume that Melpomene would want Thea to be stressed out about consent issues. I also have no reason to assume that Melpomene cares about consent issues, but she at least cares about Thea.

"Okay, cool. That's cool. It seemed like you were having issues expressing personal desires the last time we did this? So I'm glad that's better."

Melpomene changed the narrative a little. I'm a weapon, but I'm also the trapped soul of something or another. I wonder if that's my ticket out of here? Finding ways to change the way my master thinks about me in order to grant myself additional autonomy. But what would that be in practice? Just getting her to trust me more? That's probably just a matter of consistently doing a good job at whatever she tells me to do, and I have to do that anyway. I may as well be telling myself that the solution to hating my job is to work harder at my job. Surely, my efforts will be rewarded with a promotion, and that will somehow suck less, right?

Well, it's fine. Between having time to think about it and burning the panic down to a more manageable level, I can accept the fact that I'm probably stuck in this situation for the long haul. I don't need a perfect solution right now, I need to keep a level head and an optical sensor out for opportunity.

"Okay! So, I've got a radio here. Do you think you can emit a specific frequency for me?"

I shake my head.

"Oh, well that's fine, I can look around for it."

I shake my head again, a bit more vigorously this time.

"…Um, no? Okay, um, let me think here… oh! It's part of your communication limitation, isn't it?"

Oh thank goodness. I nod.

"Okay, can you receive signals?"

I nod.

"Alright. That'll be way harder to find but it's totally doable."

Well, I think I know where my radio receiver is, actually. I unlock the plating around my head and face, the act making a little whirring sound that draws Thea's attention.

"Here?"

I nod again, lightly grabbing her hand to guide her through the process of popping the plating off. She quickly gets the hang of it, and soon enough I am rewarded with the image of the underside of my own face being pulled away from my eyes, Thea's hands gripping the false outline of what is molded to look like cheekbones as she lifts it carefully away. Like the last time my plating was removed, it's a profoundly odd sensation, like my skin has been hardened, lifted, and then suddenly detached in a way that instantly and painlessly cuts off all feeling and sensation from that part of my body. In its place, I become hyperaware of the inside of my body, the cold and unmoving metal and crystal intertwined in an engineering marvel of magic. My face is all one singular panel, incapable of making expressions, so the area inside my head is similarly static but for the small servos that locked the plates together in the first place. I can't see any of it, not really, but I know what it looks like. I know what I am underneath the humanoid shell.

Now, far more than when I took my clothes off, I feel naked.

Thea's awed expression doesn't help the matter either, but staying still is literally the easiest thing in the world for me now so I do not react. Even when she grabs a small flashlight and a flathead screwdriver, I don't react. Even when she leans in, her screwdriver descending down past my eyes to carefully poke at my internal systems, putting light pressure against the skeleton of my frame when she wants me to tilt my head, her breath brushing against my wires… I do not react.

"This is it, right?" she asks, very carefully and gently tapping my radio receiver. "Wow. Pretty darn small. I think I see where it connects. I'm going to put up a repeating signal and trace what that does to the input and output lines you have connected here. Just, uh, sit back and listen I guess. Oh, can you open up your neck and chest for me?"

I comply, doing my level best to ignore the feeling of her hands taking more of my panels away. I don't know how to feel about the sensation of her fingers closing around my voiceless throat, lifting part of it off and tickling the inside as she traces the transfer path between my receiver and my… me. She lifts my chest and exposes the processing units and memory cores that presumably now house my thoughts, my soul. What serves as my brain is exposed to the open air, and it's simultaneously frightening, embarrassing, and strangely comfortable, the fresh air sapping heat from my systems like sweat in a breeze.

The intimacy is terrifying, exciting, and entirely within the confines of my own stupid mind. The way Thea looks at me with a grin of unrestrained excitement is flattering, certainly, but in a very impersonal way. As exposed as I feel, she clearly isn't looking at it that way, too absorbed in what I am to remember who I am. But I suppose I can't blame her; she has no way to know who I am in the first place.

I don't really know her either. This close, though, it's hard to deny that she's adorable. She seems a little younger than me, maybe a year or two, but it could just as easily be her small stature and thin frame throwing off my ability to judge. The asymmetry of her body is by far her most striking feature, enough that it has distracted me from really looking at her closely until now. The girls here all have dark black sclera in their eyes, but with Thea it's only her right eye, the other still a normal white. Likewise, her webbed right hand holds the flashlight, the greater dexterity of her normal left hand seeing to my insides. The green skin, bladed tail, and tiny webbed paws instead of feet have always been there to direct my focus away from her face.

It's a kind face. It makes me wonder what it's doing here with the likes of Melpomene and Nanaya.

A noise by the door snaps Thea's laser-focused attention away from me, and while I'm not in a good position to tilt my head and look, I have half a dozen other sensors all agreeing that the person in the doorway is Anath. Thea tenses up, nervousness creeping into her demeanor and voice.

"…Um, hey Anath," she says. "What are you doing here?"

"Hi," Anath responds quietly. I can hear and feel her shifting around awkwardly, adjusting her posture and weight without really going anywhere or doing anything.

"Um, yeah. Hi," Thea says. "Do you… need something?"

"I was just, um… is it okay if I stay here for a while?" Anath asks. "Mel and Nana are doing their whole thing, and I just… I need some company, I think."

Thea visibly hesitates, like she wants to say no but isn't particularly good at doing so. Mood, girl. Mood.

"Just… don't touch anything," Thea says. "Really, seriously, don't touch anything."

"I won't, I promise," Anath says, a grimace in her voice that implies the emphasis on this rule is very warranted. "I mean, I'm sure I'll do something stupid at some point, but you don't have to worry about it today."

Thea relaxes at that, a bit of the sympathy she often stares at me with making its way onto her face. Something about that makes me a little… is that jealousy? Wow, Stockholm syndrome works fast. …Actually, maybe that's just being a lesbian.

"Alright, you can sit over there if you want," she agrees, motioning at her blanket nest.

"Thanks," Anath nods, walking over and curling her tail up around her knees before sitting down, presumably so none of the spiky crystals growing out of it cut Thea's stuff. "Sorry."

"Um, what about?" Thea asks.

"I meant to the robot," she says. "I can tell she doesn't really want me around."

Oh, I guess she can pick up on what I'm feeling because my plating has been removed. That's… kind of embarrassing. I'm not even entirely sure how I feel about all the things Thea is doing to me right now and I can literally objectively measure my own emotional responses. I mean, it doesn't really help that those objective measurements are telling me things like 'forty percent northwest, twenty percent south-southwest, thirty percent east, ten percent northeast.' Like what the fuck even is that.

"…Well, maybe you should go, in that case," Thea says hesitantly. I start shaking my head before she can continue. I can't exactly say I'm fond of Anath, but I know a depressive episode when I see one and I don't think she's lying when she says she needs to be around people. I don't think I would be physically capable of forcing her away due to my programming, but even without that I've been there too many times to want to regardless.

Wait, dang. Is that the Stockholm syndrome again? Ooo look at me, my name is Luna, watch me instantly ignore every abuse I've ever suffered as soon as a girl becomes sad. Clearly all Melpomene has to do is start crying and I will immediately lose all moral compunctions against being her slave until the end of time. I'm such a gay loser. Wait, I'm starting to get depressed again.

My power reserves have increased to 29%. There we go, that's better. On one hand, there's no way this is anything but terrifyingly unhealthy. On the other hand, it makes me feel so much better and I can just burn that fear too. Hell, anytime I'm forced to do something I don't like I just gain more energy. I could probably use this to stop having a bad time altogether. An evil, slave-driving monster is forcing me to commit violence against children? Oh boy! All that self-hate, regret, anxiety, and sadness can get shoveled right into the engine, and I'll just have a grand old time becoming a worse monster than my master could ever be.

Come to think of it, considering what I know about the Antipathy that might very well be an intentional effect of my design. I guess it does seem like the best way for me to run!

"…Thea, she's blueburning," Anath suddenly says, a bit of the prior sadness in her voice replaced with alarm.

"What?" Thea blinks, looking up.

"She's blueburning!" Anath repeats, louder this time as she quickly jumps to her feet. "Buttbot! Hey! Snap out of it!"

Haha don't call me that! It's fine. It's fine! My power reserves have increased to 31%!

"Oh, shoot!" Thea yelps. "She can do that? Oh gosh, of course she can do that! Um, please stop! You need to stop!"

Do I have to follow that order? Nahhh! What's wrong with gathering more power? What's wrong with being happier to serve my master? I exist for her now! I don't have a choice! So what's wrong with throwing everything else away!?

"She's not stopping!" Anath says.

"W-what are we supposed to do?" Thea stammers. "We don't even know her name!"

My power reserves have increased to 32%. What do I need a name for?

"I don't know, she's a robot!" Anath snaps back. "You're the computer girl! What do you do when a computer freaks out?"

"Oh!" Thea jolts. "Oh no, I'm sorry, but this is an order. Reboot yourself. Full power cycle."

But I feel so—