Concordia: Dreamnoblade Oneshots and Songfics

Why

[PATROL SEQUENCE INITIATED. UNITS DEPLOYED FOR SURVEILLANCE. REPEAT, PATROL SEQUENCE INITIATED. UNITS DEPLOYED FOR SURVEILLANCE.]

That wakes him up.

His vision struggles to adjust fully to the world around him, the bleak and monochrome grays and silvers of his surroundings stretching on for miles in the narrow hallway ahead of him. He's long stopped taking track of how long he's been here; the construct known as time was quick to fade in face of long days with barely any distinction among them. The distant, automated robotic voice repeats the redundant scheduled announcement falls over the hum of functioning engines. The hiss of steam being blown out the exhaust pipes, the squeak of unoiled parts trying to function as they had before, the groan of the reservoirs under the strain of several gallons of liquid... all come together to form the cacophony of sounds that makes up the machine's melody.

He, too, was a part of that symphony.

He knows exactly how he ended up here. There was no internal turmoil, no questioning his fate, no wondering where things went wrong. He was no human plagued with the philosophy of existence, as he had already been programmed to be able to identify the cause to an effect. His databank has every memory stored perfectly, as clear as the skies on a sunny day and yet this particular one transcended that amount of clarity somehow.

Perhaps, once upon a time, there was purpose to his creation. There was reasoning behind the oil that ran through his bodice like blood to a human, there was reasoning behind the metal base that held him upright like a skeleton to a human. However, all things faded to the test of time even with a timeless creature like him. Be used and succumb to wear, be unused and succumb to rust; cruel is the life of the machine. It had taken him so long to realize the fallacy in his thinking. He hadn't seen it when his own creator looked at him with distaste and called him scrap metal, nor when he was thrown behind the iron bars of his dingy, cramped cell. No, it was when he landed roughly on the floor from the force of impact. A lone, rusted screw that had already been loosened from natural movement escaped his body and rolled along the cobblestone. As he watched it come to an eventual stop, he finally knew.

Even something as miniscule as a screw had a purpose: to support something much greater than life itself and hold it together. But for he who had been locked away, for he who was deemed a failed piece of technology and was simply waiting for reassembly to be the predecessor to what he couldn't be... what purpose was left?

Unused joints creak dreadfully as his body struggles to catch up to the commands his central system gave. It had been so, so long since he stood upright like this. He was degrading by the second, the force of his body almost making his knee pistons buckle and send him back to the hard stone that would dent him even further. Thankfully, he manages to stabilize himself before he breaks out of his flimsy restraints and runs one now free hand over the mossy walls. Temptation seeps through the crevices of his damaged self, and in that moment he decides to go against his own hardwired programming. As he takes a deep breath in preparation, the rust encasing his body begins to crack and peel away. Miserable is the shedding of copper snakeskin, but lying beneath the torturous wrapping... is him.

And he is Techno. A corroded screw, tumbling along the ground. No purpose, no reason, nothing to support.

Even then, he still finds reprieve in the glimmers of hope in the form of sunlight peeking through the cracks in the walls. If he could just... perhaps? He trails over the crumbling brick, searching, feeling for signs of weakness. The sensors in his fingers linger over one such spot, and he braces himself as he lets the familiar tendrils of his own energy running down the wires from his core to his outstretched hand. He may have internalized his current worthlessness, but then again machines were initially made with certain capabilities in mind. Just like this one.