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safeturnip · 26 days ago

Text

tell me that my lonesome nights are over

words: 2.7k

characters: GoodTimesWithScar, ImpulseSV, Skizzleman, TangoTek, GeminiTay, Grian

summary: While extracting valuables from an old manor, Scar and Grian encounter a monster and are forced to hide

additional tags: Alternate Universe - R.E.P.O., memory loss, monsters, mild horror

(written for @mcyt-soulmate-sweepstakes !!)

AO3 link

***

Retrieve and extract.

It was a simple enough order to follow, and maybe the robots had been created because the order was so laughably simple. Why waste a perfectly good human to do menial work when a group of robots could do the job just as well? It was safer, cheaper, easier—the robots got destroyed in the process of clearing out a targeted building? No problem! Just slap together a new set of robots from spare metal in the scrapyard, inject premade software into their systems, and send them on their merry way.

In the kitchen of an ancient, once-resplendent manor, Scar stared helplessly as the plate he'd just picked up shattered apart into splinters of glowing green. He didn't understand why the plate had broken; he'd barely touched the door of the cabinet he was taking it out of. He'd made sure that his manipulation of the plate had been full of precision and accuracy, and it had all been for nothing. At least none of his other fellow robots had been around to witness his failure.

From a couple rooms down, Scar could hear the sounds of the other robots arguing amongst themselves. After doing a final quick scan of the kitchen to see if there were any other valuables—nothing—he headed in the direction of the squabbling.

The manor was a blurry, smudged-out picture of orange and brown. Wallpaper peeled despondently around the edges, furniture upholstery faded and flaked off of the wood and metal frames of chairs and sofas and beds, floorboards creaked even when nothing was moving across them. The building had the air of a painstakingly carved marble statue that was slowly losing the war to time and the elements.

Scar's footsteps were muffled by the mouldering carpet, the beam of his built-in flashlight cutting through the gloom about as effectively as a cold knife through a block of ice. Cobwebs reached down from the ceiling, trailing along his head and neck as if they wanted to ensnare him, drag him into the manor's depth, make him a part of the deteriorating brick and rotting wood and suffocating darkness. Scar shook off the delicate silver threads and continued on.

Faded portraits of long-dead people stared down at him as he wandered through the rooms and hallways of the manor. He kept his head on a swivel, sensors on high alert for audio or visual indicators of any possible danger. He knew there were monsters prowling the abandoned hallways and rooms; just earlier he'd been jumped by a monster that had wrapped itself around his head and vomited up a disgusting green goop that destroyed any valuables he'd come across. The other robots had shooed him away from the cart and drop point until the puke monster had grown bored of him and detached from his body. Scar didn't blame them; he understood their thought processes perfectly. Extracting valuables was more important than his survival—than any of their survival, in fact.

The hallway opened up into a wide room with its ceiling's crossbeams propped up haphazardly along the walls as if the screws and nails holding them in place had simply given up and surrendered them to gravity. Hearing footsteps above him, Scar peered up, and a yellow figure dropped down from the catwalk of broken beams, narrowly missing Scar.

Scar stumbled backwards. "Whoa, watch out!"

"Sorry, man," Impulse said apologetically, taking a mirroring step back. Caught in his grasp was a vase, a delicate thing of whisper-thin porcelain with white and blue patterns crawling around its sides. Scar was surprised that Impulse hadn't shattered the vase when he jumped down. He gave the room a cursory scan, and, after seeing nothing, followed Impulse as he left the room.

There was a library in this manor, with towering bookshelves crammed full of books, old fragile things that smelled like dry paper and forgotten memories. Near the door, Skizz was struggling to manoeuvre a gigantic wooden crate. A bold arrow painted in bright, near-glowing white pointed upwards in a manner that seemed almost like a warning. Skizz jumped in place as he struggled to free the crate from a bookshelf, muttering in frustration to himself, something that struck Scar as a very human thing to do.

"I need some help with this!" Skizz called.

Tango walked over, his hand already outstretched to help Skizz with the crate. "Wha—there's like, basically no value left on this, Skizz!"

"Hey!" Skizz protested. "It was taking you five months to get here, what did you want me to do?"

With the two robots' joint effort, the crate was freed from the snare of the bookshelf, and they started to slowly drag it out of the room. Right before he walked out of the door, Skizz turned around and said, "Oh—Scarface! Thanks for just standing there and watching me struggle with this." It was almost impressive how much sarcasm he was able to pack into one sentence.

"Yeah, of course!" Scar responded easily. "I'm always happy to help."

Skizz left the room with an affectionate mutter of, "This guy . . ." his voice trailing off as he disappeared in the direction of the first drop point.

It was strange sometimes how familiar the robots were with each other. This was only their third mission together, yet Skizz had a nickname for all of the other robots, all of them knew how Grian would start humming the exact same song whenever he drove the cart, their exchanges were filled with an easy banter that had nothing to do with their directive but was done because the robots found it fun. Scar's interactions with the other robots were tinged with a niggling sense of recognition, like a half-completed sentence or a familiar melody heard from a distance away. Déjà vu, a constantly asked question of Haven't we done this before?

He pushed those thoughts away. What use did they serve for his current mission?

"—guy, bad guy, bad guy, bad guy!"

Scar turned towards the sound of the voice, and saw Gem hurtling into the room at top speed. Her stride abruptly slowed as soon as she passed the threshold of the doorway; her stamina must have just run out. The left side of her body had a melted look about it, the pink metal scorched and heat-warped into shapes that looked like distorted rippling waves.

"You okay?" Scar asked, right as Gem said, "There's a huge laser guy back there. I didn't have anywhere to hide, and he got me right as I was running away. He did some damage to me, but I don't think I need—"

Thunk. Gem's sentence was cut off as a cart appeared out of nowhere and slammed into her back, knocking her over. She collapsed down into her smallest form, the sound of her shriek drowned out by Grian's cackling. Of course it was Grian who was driving the cart; who else would be running over other robots like that?

Gem's limbs flailed around in the air as she gently rocked to and fro on her back. Scar reached out to pick her up, but she popped back to her feet before he could. "I don't want to be anywhere near you," Gem said to Grian as she sprinted out of the room, his laughter chasing her out.

Singing to himself, Grian parked the cart off to the side, tucking it next to a desk where it was out of the way from any potential monsters that might wander into the library. "Mister Sandman—" nudging a dusty-looking radio into a more stable position in the cart "—bring me a dream . . ." With the items in the cart secured, he trotted off in the direction of the nearest door.

"Oh, I think Tango's already cleared out that room," Scar informed Grian, and Grian hummed in acknowledgment, changing his course to head into a different room.

This one was smaller than the library, some kind of sitting room that hadn't seen any actual use for what seemed like decades. There was an old, wood-framed couch with fraying cushions and a few chairs strewn around the room like whoever had last sat in them had shoved them away and not bothered to see where they ended up. An old lamp with a crooked, moth-eaten lampshade cast a wavering, orange-tinged illumination around the space.

There was a soft click as Grian opened his map. "Man, I'm seeing yellow dots everywhere, but I can't—" Grian's voice abruptly cut off, the apertures of his eyes constricting to focus on something outside of Scar's field of view. "Hide."

Scar was already moving, sprinting to the corner of the room where a chair with red upholstery had been haphazardly shoved into. He dropped down to his smallest size, squeezing into the tiny space between the floor and the seat of the chair, nearly clipping one of the rotting wooden legs as he went. Black static flickered across his vision in protest at the sudden motion, and he waited anxiously for it to dissipate. At least he was close enough to the ground that he wouldn't break anything if he did suddenly shut down. Then Grian was sliding underneath the chair, his momentum halting only when he crashed into Scar with a muffled clank.

"What—" Scar started, but then he saw what they were hiding from.

A gigantic head floated into the room, silent as a shark drifting through the water. Though calling it a head was a grossly inaccurate description; it was about as much a head as a starving mountain lion was a kitten.

Desiccated skin wrapped tight around the framework of a skull, skin that was thin as paper, grey and dried-out, lips shriveled and pulled back to reveal a mouthful of sharp, bone-white teeth. Its eyes glowed like burning coals in the heart of a smouldering fire set in a pair of dark, cavernous sockets. Nerve endings trailed out from the base of its severed spinal cord like the tentacles on some kind of grotesque, nightmarish jellyfish. Even though Scar had seen the head before, seeing it for the second or third or tenth time was just as terrible as seeing it for the very first time.

If Scar was human, his heart would have been trying to pound its way out of his chest, his breathing sharp and shallow, sweat pricking his skin. But as a robot, there were no physical indicators of terror. Despite that, there was still something, some sort of self-preservation—not instinct, because instinct implied they were living beings. It was something similar, though, something that make then freeze in their tracks then sprint in the opposite direction when they heard the slow drag of a shotgun muzzle on the ground, the rasp of a dark cloak dragging over a metal-grate floor. They knew the monsters would stop at nothing to destroy them, and they did not want to die.

Maybe they'd been programmed to feel fear as a sort of failsafe, to ensure that as many valuables as possible could be brought back to the Taxman before the robots' inevitable destruction.

The head floated closer to their hiding spot, mouth gaping open as if to scent at the air for its hidden prey. Grian crowded further backwards against Scar, pushing him into space they did not have. They were pressed close enough together that Scar could feel the faintly whirring vibrations from the near-silent circuitry underneath Grian's metal carapace.

"It's okay." Scar kept his volume low, barely louder than an exhale. Grian swiveled his head around to look at him. The apertures of his eyes were dilated in a way that looked almost like panic, something so raw and undiluted and helpless, that Scar felt obligated to add, "We'll be fine."

"Shh."

Scar darted his attention away from Grian and back to the floating head. It had paused in the centre of the room directly in front of the chair the two of them were tucked underneath, close enough that Scar could have reached out and grabbed it. What were they meant to do in this situation? They were sitting ducks in their hiding spot, a wall at their back and the monster at their front with no alternative escape. Scar wished they had some kind of weapon, anything to fight back against the monsters, anything that meant they wouldn't be forced to cower underneath a chair or table or shelf whenever the slightest hint of danger peered around a corner.

Failure was not an option, because failure meant they'd be dropped into a much-used arena, forced to fight each other to the death, their broken bodies left to slowly corrode away in the scrapyard—where were these thoughts coming from? Had he actually experienced these memories, or was it just a string of code written in to simulate another layer of fear? Scar desperately wanted to ask Grian if he ever experienced something similar, but didn't dare speak again, not with the head so close.

The head started to turn in their direction, and Scar braced himself for it to spot them, fling itself upon them with snapping teeth and murderous destruction.

A clatter came from somewhere outside the room, loud as a gunshot in the complete silence. The head whipped around toward the noise, mouth dropping open to emit a harsh, rattling growl before hurtling out of the room. Then, silence. It was gone. Grian glanced briefly back at Scar before shuffling out from under cover.

Once he was clear of the chair, Grian shot back up to his full height with a sharp accordion-pop of motion, blocking Scar's field of vision with his short, stubby legs. Scar followed him out, extending himself back up at a slower pace, keeping an eye on his lower motor to make sure it wouldn't short-circuit on him.

Grian was standing in the doorway, scanning the corridor outside the room. The words I am worried!! were practically floating above his head as he scanned from side to side in a paranoid fashion. He must not have seen anything because he backed away from the door and came to stand in front of Scar.

Before Grian could say anything, Scar tilted his head forward until his forehead knocked against Grian's with a hollow, metallic klonk that reverberated though both of their bodies. "See, Grian! Told you we'd be fine."

"I . . ." For the briefest of moments, Scar felt his balance shift slightly as Grian leaned reciprocatively into the reassuring touch. Then he pulled back from Scar, looking like he wanted to say something else—and a loud, mechanical rumbling sound echoed through their minds, breaking the moment. A new quota to fill up flashed into visibility in the corner of Scar's vision.

"Oh—looks like Gem's found the next extraction point," Grian said, gaze unfocused in a way that meant he was probably looking at the newly assigned quota as well. "Too bad we've been spending the past few minutes running for our lives instead of finding valuables."

"But look at us! We're still alive," Scar pointed out cheerfully. "And, hey—this room wasn't a total bust." Scar held out a hand, and from under the chair that'd served as their hiding place slid out a diamond, faintly haloed in a yellow light. Its price flickered briefly across his vision in green numbers before disappearing. He floated the diamond into the air and extended the treasure towards Grian like he would a brand-new toy to a pet. "Look, big money!"

"Big money, big money," Grian parroted, the diamond reflected in the glassy curve of his eyes, his voice pitched up into something that approximated happiness. And at seeing the other robot cheered up, Scar felt a flicker of . . . something, a sensation similar to that of sliding the cart over-brimming with valuables into an active drop point, watching the money tick up in his vision.

"Let's hurry up and get this to the rest of our friends before they bank everything," said Grian, plodding rapidly towards the door. Scar followed with the diamond still hovering in the air before him wreathed in yellow telekinetic energy.

Grian's map flashed briefly into his hand, casting a pale green glow across his face and the huge globes of his eyeballs as he plotted their course to the extraction point. "Right, I really hope we don't run into any other googlies on the way there."

"You know," Scar began conversationally, "if we had a gun . . ."

"Oh my—Scar, we are not getting you a gun."

#goodtimeswithscar #gtws #impulsesv #impulse #skizzleman #skizz #tangotek #tango #geminitay #gem #grian #giggs #do giggs+tango have a group name? is it stiggg??#oh well that's what i'll call them #stiggg #desert duo #hc #hermitcraft #mywriting

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