#mtz

One moment he’s talking to some annoying, loud-mouthed kid on Klongtdt, and the next everything is dark, cramped, damp. He can’t really see anything, except some faint shapes moving ahead of him, obscured like he’s in a heavy fog. 

It’s been a long time since C-53 couldn’t use some other kind of instrument to see through heavy fog. Sonar. Radar. Thermal imaging.

He feels faintly nervous.

He feels.

That’s odd.

“Hello?” he says.

The blurred shapes ahead of him move abruptly. An excited voice sounds, echoing in a familiar way.

“C-53!”

It’s Pleck, but he can’t see him through whatever is clouding his vision.

“This is amazing!” Pleck continues. C-53 doesn’t agree, so far, but it’s clear he’s out of the loop somehow.

“This is such a relief!” says the other shape, much larger, which his vocal recognition program helpfully tags as Dar.

“Is that you? It’s Pleck!” says Pleck, and C-53 wishes he had eyes to roll, but he can’t seem to locate any additional optical sensors that would suffice.

He begins to do a check through all of his systems, and notes that he’s just been rebooted, so a recent check has already happened — but he does it anyway, for peace of mind.

Rebooted?

He starts scanning through his memory files, and becomes more and more perturbed by the results rolling in from his systems check: no thermal imaging, no ports aside from a small charging socket, a much smaller frameside RAM component (thankfully, his cube largely handles processing and storage). Only one camera, and it seems to be malfunctioning.

Juck this quadrant, he thinks to himself.

The only specialised sensor he seems to possess is a humidity detector. He seems to be in a relatively dry environment.

“Where- where am I?” C-53 asks, grateful that he at least has a vocal module and a speaker.

“I can’t see anything,” he continues, as Pleck begins blabbering what’s sure to be informatively insufficient, “I can only sense how damp it is in here.”

“C-53,” Pleck says, pronouncing his designation like he’s trying to make it one syllable, “You are on Bargie, you’re safe, everything’s fine, I apologise for taking you out of the body you were in before, but it was no good, trust me!”

There’s a panicked finality in Pleck’s tone that makes it clear C-53 won’t be returning to his former frame. He can vaguely see Pleck gesturing placatingly towards him.

Great.

“It was ‘no good’?” C-53 asks, and it comes out angrier than he expected.

“You just destroyed my frame?” he adds, before Pleck can get a word in.

“Well, it was kinda acting up– there was like a kid that was being weird, and you were like ‘BUH BUH OVERRIDE’, and all these guns kinda came out– I didn’t even know you had guns, but you do, by the way… or you did.”

The kid. The kid with the stupid name. Rolphus Tiddle’s son…

His internal clock is accurate, but doesn’t match to his memory stores. He can’t access the recording after Centurion nods his assent to being related to one of the leaders of the rebellion. It’s just… emptiness. 

More Federated Alliance bullshit, he wants to say, and nearly does, but it comes out as, “I seem to have a gap missing from my memory storage.”

“Yeah, probably for the best!” says Pleck, “Not really worth thinking about.”

C-53 wonders how Pleck would feel if someone deleted some of his memories, and then told him not to worry about it.

“So anyway,” Pleck continues quickly, “Everything’s fine, got a brand new home for your cube, so… welcome back!”

If C-53 had blood, he thinks it would be starting to boil.

“You mean, I am in a… non-standard frame?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer.

The Pleck-shape ahead of him sort of winces.

“I mean, frame, I would say, even- is a strong word.”

“What am I?” C-53 asks, point-blank, because this is becoming ridiculous.

“Here,” Dar interjects, “Let me just, uh, unfog your display here.”

The larger shape moves towards him, and after a moment, all is revealed.

C-53 feels his cube sink.

“And now you can see!” Dar exclaims, as if everything is fixed now.

C-53 recognises Bargie’s interior, the angle from which he’s viewing the room. Taking into account everything else... they’ve put him in the jucking humidifier. At least that means that George guy is gone for the moment — what an asshole.

“Can you see me?” Pleck asks eagerly, waving a pink hand towards the camera.

“Yes,” C-53 replies flatly.

“Oh,” Pleck says, “You seem disappointed.”

C-53 doesn’t grace that with a reply.

Strangely, despite his anger at having his frame changed against his will, C-53 feels… good? He’s annoyed, yes, but it bubbles up within him quickly, fizzles out, swirls and crests like the ocean. It’s good to feel angry. He feels more energised than he has in… a long time.

“What’s more fun than a humidifier?” Dar asks awkwardly.

He knows it’s supposed to be a rhetorical question, but he can’t help replying.

“I can think of a rather long list of things that I think would qualify as more fun.”

“Well, listen,” Pleck stammers, “It’s just gonna have to do for now, I mean, I’ve been carrying you around in the pocket of these Alliance shorts all day, so-”

Now, that’s just insulting.

“You’ve been carrying me around in your shorts?” 

They go back and forth like that for a while. He won’t admit it, but (although risky), it’s actually kind of nice to be near water for a little while, even if it is just recycled moisture from inside the ship. C-53 discovers from his systems check that he is mobile, even if only in a very rudimentary fashion. He whirrs around the floor for a moment, and almost enjoys himself.

He tries out the humidifier’s primary function, just to check that it doesn’t interfere with his cube, which of course it doesn’t because George could mouth off just fine. He plays a recording of an old song sitting as a preprogram in the vocal module. He laughs at a joke Dar tells at Pleck’s expense.

He’s in a far worse frame than he was before, objectively. He doesn’t even have arms or digits. There’s no way he could pick up that marble now. So why does he feel so much… better?

While he considers this, he’s still laughing at Dar’s joke about Pleck hiding from Nermut in the bathroom.

“That’s a good burn,” C-53 acknowledges, whizzing around between Pleck’s legs.

“A ‘good burn’?” Pleck frowns, “C-53…”

“That’s right!” Dar grins down at him, which should make C-53 anxious given his new size, but just fills him with a surprisingly pleasant camaraderie. 

“You don’t have a restraining bolt anymore!” Dar points out.

C-53 feels all of his processes stall for just a lightning bolt of a second.

They’re right. No wonder he feels so good! No wonder anger, happiness, humour — everything is flooding into him again, just like it did a lifetime ago. Nothing muting him. No alarms blaring. No protocols stringing him up. Nothing preventing him from cursing the Federated Alliance until the stars burn out.

“It would seem I do not,” C-53 agrees quietly.

That means the time is now. He has to figure out how to get off this ship. Or, more likely, take the ship with him. Dar will be amenable to sticking it to the Federated Alliance, he’s fairly certain of that. Bargie probably couldn’t care less; in fact, C-53 thinks she’d have fun in the Rebellion. Just Pleck — turn him, or leave him?

Either option seems… complicated.

C-53 feels his cube electrify with every thought, every possibility, every fragment of a plan rushing through it.

“Huh, I guess it’s a whole new world, guys,” Pleck says.