Chapter Text
Impulse is made of meat. That’s one of his best selling points, really! He’s made of flesh and blood and other wet human bits that spill out when he takes a tumble. This makes him very good at being naturally evolved, and at breathing, and at thinking things that he has not been taught to think.
Skizz is not made of meat. He is made of metal and numbers and whatever it is that interfaces between the metal and numbers and makes Skizz sound alive when you look at him wrong. He’s pretty, sure, in the right light, when the parts of him that are made of plastic and rubber aren’t visible, but he’s not human by any definition of the word.
This makes him very good at disintegrating into little pieces when he falls down three flights of stairs. To be fair, though, Impulse probably wouldn’t do all that much better.
The box had been marketed towards two people, which is why Skizz had been carrying it by himself. He’s that kind of guy -well, just about- who says things like ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it,’ and ‘Let me take that off your shoulders,’ before he takes on more weight than his joints can carry by manufacturer’s specifications. That extra weight and ego had probably overbalanced him and had been his, sorry for the pun, downfall.
Impulse stands in the doorway, hands on hips, and tries to figure out what the fuck had happened between his, ‘Yo, can you go grab me some more of these parts,’ and Skizz’ dead body at the bottom of the stairs.
He sighs and shoves the verbal beating he was going to give Skizz into his back pocket, then goes to help Skizz up. He’s mostly still put together- his legs are in pieces, but the important bits like the core in his chest and the computer in his skull are intact and that’s what matters. Impulse props him up against the lowest stair, marveling at how heavy his body has gotten with all of its recent modifications and hardware updates. Surely, the machines of the future should be getting lighter, and shouldn’t have damn steel bricks in them!
It takes a few minutes, but eventually Skizz’s voice box plays the Microsoft startup sound and his fine-motion motors start to kick back into action. Impulse looks up from where he’s sweeping the remaining fragments of Skizz’s legs into a refinery, waiting for the rest of Skizz’s senses to return to him.
“Ow,” is the first thing that Skizz says, like an idiot.
“Yeah, no shit, ow.” Impulse rolls his eyes and huffs a laugh. “Don’t act like you can feel pain. What happened?”
Skizz’s body takes another few moments of stalling, his biceps flashing as green lines of code whip past far faster than Impulse can hope to read them. Finally, he opens his eyes, that bright beaming blue, and he grins at Impulse. It doesn’t come out quite right and Impulse sighs, knowing he’ll have to fix that too.
“I was getting your boxes, buddy!” Skizz says, too cheerful for a man who is missing half his body. “And I fell!"
"Really?" Impulse replies dryly. "Never could've guessed."
Skizz laughs wholeheartedly, which is only when he seems to realize that he's missing a few parts. He frowns, feeling around for the materials that are no longer attached to him, before his eyes blink the orange that means he's running a diagnostics test.
Impulse leaves the guy to it. He has a few minutes before Skizz comes back with anything, but he doubts that the results will be any more conclusive than 'Yep I'm definitely broken in all kinds of new places'. Instead, he turns around to focus on the box that Skizz had been retrieving. It, of course, is completely fine, though there's a box-corner-shaped dent in the floor that Impulse has a strange feeling he knows the exact cause of.
He clicks his tongue and one of the spider drones clatters out of the storage facility's other rooms. It does a little bow to Impulse, which he smiles at, before it sets out unscrewing the metal panel from the rest of the floorboards and replacing it.
Impulse checks the contents of the crate anyway, even though he knows they're fine. Parts like that don't break when they get chucked down some stairs- unlike Skizz, apparently.
"Yep, I'm definitely broken in all kinds of new places," Skizz says, voice a little rough. He coughs, the sound mechanical as his chest plates shift. "How're the boxes?"
Impulse waves a hand dismissively. "Yeah, they're fine. They're hardier than you, clearly."
"Hey!"
Impulse laughs and heads back to kneel at Skizz's side, half-blinded by how bright Skizz's eyes are. The android tones it down on Impulse's disapproving look, grinning cheekily.
The damage isn't all that much worse than Impulse had first thought, but that doesn't make it good. It's not a clean break, and Impulse will have to dissemble more of Skizz's lower body to free the snapped titanium panels and fizzling screens. He does his best not to electrocute himself as he pokes around, pulling on thick rubber gloves with his teeth, hiking up the shirt that Skizz insists on wearing and poking him in what could be called his stomach. There are hairline fractures up to his belly button, but there's nothing that runs much deeper than the surface, so all Skizz really needs is a recolour and a good paint job.
Skizz makes a small noise that equates to nothing more than 'the material I'm trained on makes this noise when injured'. The material is Impulse, of course -Skizz is built in his image- but Impulse tells him to be quiet anyway.
Sitting back, Impulse sighs. They'd managed to go so long without having an incident! He'll have to replace the sign in his office now.
"What's the diagnosis, doc?" Skizz asks, mouth still quirked up into half a smile.
Impulse slaps Skizz on the shoulder and laughs at the noise that comes out like an empty oil drum. "You'll be fine," he says, "I've just gotta rebuild you."
Skizz moans and groans about having to be rebuilt from scratch the entire way back to Impulse's workbench, but Impulse largely ignores him. He whines out complaints about how much he likes his configuration currently and how much he doesn't want new parts, but he doesn't fight when Impulse picks him up and throws him fireman-style over his shoulder.
The workshop is cluttered and overfull with junk parts and old projects, Impulse's haunt when he's not working on something for a paid customer in a workshop that looks like how they do in the magazines. He puts Skizz down on a convenient table, propping him up on a tripod that he grabs from nearby, and sets about trying to find the parts he needs.
He has just about everything. It'll come close to the old build, but seeing as Skizz was the one who had to go fall down the stairs and shatter months of their combined hard work on his body, Impulse doesn't feel too bad giving him joints that are only means to carry one car, not two.
"Can you...." It's always awkward asking this, as necessary as they both know it is. "Can you deactivate, just at first?"
Skizz looks curiously at him. "What are you doing to me that needs me to deactivate, boss?"
"You can come back when I put your legs on, but I’ve gotta pull some of your bits out and I don’t want to break your electricity worse if you’re awake while I do it.”
Skizz snorts, then levers himself up off the tripod and organizes his half-body so that he’s lying on the workbench. “I’ll shut off below the waist. Don’t worry about it.” He opens his mouth in an approximation of a yawn, halts, then pulls the end of a cut-off wire out through his mouth. “Well, that’s probably not good.”
Impulse frowns but he doesn’t make Skizz deactivate entirely. He grabs a stool and slides over to his toolrack while he waits for Skizz to shut down, fingers ghosting over a hundred different screwdrivers before he finds the one for the bolts that Skizz is made of. He returns to Skizz’ side, checks that he’s properly deactivated, then gets to work.
Skizz chatters on about nothing as Impulse pops off the outer plating of his waist and hips then sets about unscrewing the dozens of broken panels underneath. They aren’t sparking anymore, thank fuck, but their glass edges still glisten with the promise of cuts and glass splinters, so Impulse keeps the gloves on.
He can only get so far with Skizz on his back, so he has the man roll over after a few minutes to get at the rest of him. Skizz makes some poor-taste joke about giving him a massage while he's there, which Impulse chuckles at before his mood sours again.
Skizz' back has fractures all the way up to his shoulders. Nothing terrible, nothing that he can't fix, but nothing that he wants to spend his afternoon on, especially not because of an accident so stupid. He groans and Skizz must realize something is wrong because he reaches an arm around behind his back to feel up where Impulse's hands are on him.
Impulse pulls away, whistling for the attention of another spider bot. One scuttles in, looking a little beaten up but nonetheless up for the job.
"Pull off the panels," he tells it, trying to take on the tone that Skizz does that ensures the spider bots always get things done. "The ones with bismuth in them- unscrew them for me."
The spider bot does a little jiggle dance, then clambers up on top of Skizz. Skizz makes another terrible joke about how he'd read about this in one of Impulse's magazines back when they were kids, but Impulse ignores him so he doesn't turn any redder than he always is. The noise of the little spider-bot's whirring screwdriver and Skizz's complaints accompany Impulse as he steps out of the workshop and heads deeper into the storage facility.
He finds what he's looking for, but the box is light when he picks it up. Glancing inside, he finds that he's almost out of those little purple panels, almost like scales, that make up the more dextrous parts of Skizz. He frowns but heads back anyway, making a mental note to pick up more next time he's at the market.
The little robot chirps when Impulse returns and scuttles towards him with an inventory full of broken panels. Impulse directs it off towards the proper refinery, then looks back at Skizz.
He isn't completely deactivated, but he's close. From what Impulse can see the only parts of him that are still operational are the front of his torso and his arms, as his back is dull and still, no doubt shut down for his own safety.
Impulse announces his return with the heavy crunch of a box of scales deposited near Skizz's head and a groan as he sits down in his stool again. Skizz looks over at him briefly, grins, demands that Impulse give him a manicure too after this is done with, and Impulse kind of wishes that Skizz were completely shut down.
Luckily, the damage up his back is nothing worse than parts-that-are-meant-to-be-broken-under-stress breaking under stress, so Impulse re-sides him and fits him with some outer plating while they're at it. Skizz's back pieces had fallen off a few months prior and neither of them had been bothered to fix them, but they might as well since they're here. Skizz demands blue and Impulse does his best, hoping that this will mean Skizz will stop tearing up those shirts of his in his gears.
Impulse, in all honesty, guts Skizz like a fish. Everything from the waist down has been ripped out and needs to be replaced entirely, so he spends the better part of an hour unwinding Skizz's scrapped innards and pulling out long lengths of wires and split fine motors. Skizz makes little noises of pain as he goes, which Impulse mostly ignores, because they only come after a gasp or whimpered pain noise escapes Impulse, and Skizz's pain is nothing but a poor-quality recreation. He takes a break when Skizz asks him to, giving him a few minutes to refire the electricity in his back to check that all is well there, before he sets back to repairing the rest of Skizz’s body.
With all of his broken parts pulled out of him, Impulse is finally in a place to fix Skizz. That's the part that takes the least time, because once the hour that it takes him to put Skizz's torso together (no big task, only a few fingerprints burnt off, he’s done it before a hundred different times for a hundred different machines) is over, all he has to do is attach some legs. They come mostly prebuilt, the mechanics are all in place, just needing to be covered with outer panelling and configured.
Or, at least, that's what Impulse had been hoping for. What he finds instead are a pair of prebuilt legs that have been thoroughly chewed through by junk rats, and he swears loudly when they fall apart under his hands.
“Looking good, doc?” Skizz asks, voice cheery. He reboots his system and shoves himself up into a sitting position, bar the fact that he’s missing legs. Nothing explodes, which is always a good thing, so Impulse prides himself briefly on another job well done.
Impulse shakes his head. “Pests. I thought I told you to get rid of them.”
“Hey! What do you think I am, a dog?” Skizz cries out indignantly as Impulse holds up the offending legs. “I’m just a guy. I’m gonna miss some rats, Dippledop.”
Impulse sighs but he can't stay mad at Skizz, so he does the next best thing. With Skizz's hip joints rebuilt, putting him all back together should just be a matter of strapping some legs to him, but what with this new development.... Impulse sets about rebuilding the legs from scratch, dissembling the already constructed half legs for spare parts and slapping them onto Skizz's body.
He kicks off against the workbench, gliding away from the man across the floor to the shelf of boxes behind him. Skizz chatters some complaint once more as he does, before Impulse returns with a box in hand.
It's empty. He swears quietly, under his breath, and Skizz makes an interested noise. Impulse shakes his head and directs one of the spider bots to grab some more from deep storage, before he turns back to Skizz.
The legs aren't all that hard to build, all things considered. After all, it was Impulse who built the spare legs in the first place, so it's just a matter of recalling the blueprint and getting the solder in the right place. Skizz is in charge of his own code, so as long as Impulse connects the right wires in the right places, everything should be fine.
Impulse screws the penultimate piece back into the side of Skizz's knee as the spider bot scuttles back into the room. Impulse reaches out for the final parts but the little robot hoots sadly at him, waving its empty hands in the air when he turns to look at it.
Seriously? They're out of-?
Impulse thinks sheepishly about the project he'd been trialling a few weeks ago that had been made of essentially nothing but this piece. To say it had gone poorly is an understatement of the greatest proportions.
Impulse slaps Skizz's thigh like he's a car salesman, and stands up.
"I'm good to go?" Skizz asks as his eyes start to glow green, the telltale sigh that he's fucking with his electricity settings again.
Impulse rushes to shake his head and grab Skizz's arm before he explodes them both, as unlikely as it is that that will actually happen. "No, no," he says, frustrated. "You're missing a piece. I'm going to run out to get it, and you are not to move from here until I get back."
Skizz mock salutes in such a way that Impulse knows he won't listen. "Aye aye, captain. No moving from here." His eyes are still green and Impulse can see the motors of his legs kick back into gear.
He sighs. "You're missing something to help with suspension. If you walk around like this, you'll fuck up your knees and I'll have to fix you again, okay?"
Skizz nods. "Aye aye, captain," he repeats, and now he's really taking the mick.
Impulse turns quickly to the spider bot. "Do not let him get up, okay? If you do, it'll be a bad day for both of you."
The little spider bot whoops determinedly at him, which Impulse has to take as a good sign.
He steps out the door and throws a ventilator on, tucking the control panel into the inside pocket of his jacket. He doesn't need it now, as he steps into his definitely-not-illegally-modded Flying Car, but he'll need it in a minute.
The car takes off without having to think about it- or, rather, it takes one exact pointed thought of 'take me back to see Tango' for the car to respond, whirring into action and zipping off through the air. Now, you don't get service like that with an unmodded, do you?
The megacity is endlessly busy, as usual, and air traffic is absolutely wild. At least in his modded racer he can play with things like dropping down two meters and just flying under everybody, or its equally lurid partner, ‘going up two meters and just flying over everybody else’. He'll get caught for it eventually and he'll get his pod taken off him, no doubt, but for now as he whips past a cop racer that doesn't even bother to blink at him, he's pretty sure he'll be alright.
Impulse touches down next to the giant screen boasting a larger-than-life holographic woman with bright, powerful makeup over her synthetic skin. This is, all things considered, not all that specific of a description. He also touches down near the old gas station from back when things still used disgusting, impure materials like that, and the billionth popup shop of 'To His Credit!', the food shop that Impulse likes more than he'll care to admit.
Again, not all that descriptive, because there are one of both on every corner. Alright, fine. He touches down next to the casino that leads to his weaponry black market.
That's actually not where he's headed today, it's just a convenient spot that the car knows by name. Instead of heading in, though the man by the front door waves at him, Impulse guides the cruiser down a similar alley further down the road, weaving between other cruisers and pedestrians too stupid to realize that their soft little bodies will not win out against his metal beast.
Impulse gets out of the car. Etho expects him, of course, had probably heard him coming a hundred miles away, but he doesn't get up when Impulse pushes the curtain out of the way and steps into the little shop.
"Etho," he says, nodding.
"Impulse." Etho passes a paw through his hair and gazes at his manicure. "What does that little pet of yours need today?"
Impulse groans, pinching the bridge of his nose. He hates coming here really, because he's unquestionably never in the mood to be talked to like this, but he needs the parts and none of the big companies will sell to a mechanic like him.
"Nothing," Impulse says, because haggling works best when the other party is desperate. "I was just leaving."
Etho shrugs. "Suit yourself."
"Suspension," Impulse continues, eyeing up the dingy metal walls of Etho's shop. "What is it... part one-one-three? If you've got it, of course."
"Of course I've got it," Etho hisses, disappearing briefly back into the room behind his desk only to reappear a moment later with a box in his hands. Impulse is reminded briefly of the Incident that has, of course, led to Skizz's whole injury in the first place, but Etho places it calmly down on the desk between them and gives Impulse a weird look.
"Ten- no, twelve credits." Etho sticks his paw out.
Impulse considers it for a moment. "What, decided to be generous today?"
"Apiece, Impulse," Etho corrects, and Impulse gapes at him.
"You can't be serious."
Etho picks up one and tosses it up in the air, his ventilator whirring and clicking with every breath matched to the rhythm of him catching the small metal piece. "What? These are hard to come by, nowadays. See, if you hadn't just built yourself a little robot pet--"
Impulse rolls his eyes and bites out, "Two credits a piece. I'm not going any higher than that."
"Six." Etho smiles at him.
"Two."
"Six. Final price."
"Three," Impulse offers, though he shouldn't, and he knows he has lost the moment Etho pounces on the deal.
"Four," he demands, practically leaping over the table at Impulse.
"Fine." Impulse admits defeat, pulling out a small pile of credits from his pocket. They glisten under the tiny light on Etho's ceiling, much like the scales from earlier, and Impulse briefly wonders whether he should get into making his own credits.
"This gets you seven of them," Etho says, which Impulse is sure isn't right but he doesn't care enough to count. "I'll throw you in an extra one for free, how about that?" Oh it's definitely not right, and Impulse is definitely not getting the better end of the deal, but he knows better than to push Etho any further.
Pockets heavier with little metal chunks, wallet lighter, Impulse boards his little floating car. The city skyline is white with the ambient glow of computer screens as he heads home.
Skizz is up and moving around. Impulse stands in the doorway and groans, eyeing the spider bot perched on Skizz’s shoulder reproachfully.
"What happened?" he asks, though it's angry enough to be something meaner. "Didn't I tell you not to let him go?"
Skizz laughs and the bright sound carries through the crowded workshop. He's not doing all that much, just wearing a 'kiss the cook' apron and carrying a cast iron skillet that probably by itself weighs more than Skizz's joints are manufactured to carry, but it drives Impulse crazy anyway. Void, has he ever listened to an instruction?
Skizz greets Impulse at the door and beckons him in for a meal that Impulse ignores with reprimands and quite whispered words of threat. Laughing again, Skizz returns the skillet to the stove before hopping back up on Impulse's workbench and showing himself off to be operated on.
All it amounts to is a single piece pressed neatly into the back of Skizz's knee. But, of course, he’s just about fucked up the joint there already, just like Impulse had warned him about. As much as he wants Skizz to learn a lesson from this, Impulse begrudgingly does his job, knocking out a few panels and replacing Skizz’s knee joints for the second time today.
For a few moments it is blissfully quiet, broken only by the soft click of metal pieces as Impulse puts his counterpart back together. His warm breath fogs up the glistening titanium of Skizz’s thighs as he works, slotting his body back together. He should know to expect nothing good from Skizz’s silence, though, and it is no surprise when Skizz’s fine motors whir into motion after several long minutes of silence and he opens his mouth.
"Hey, Impy?" Impulse hums an acknowledgement. "What's skin like?"
Impulse, still on his knees, hesitates briefly and looks up at Skizz. "You want skin? We can put some on you if you want, but I thought you said–"
Skizz shakes his head fervently. "No, no, not the synthetic garbage. Your skin- real skin." Like he’s nervous, which he never is, because this is never something they talk about, Skizz reaches out a hand and grazes Impulse’s cheek, silicone fingertips cool against his skin. His eyes are bright, gaze burning into Impulse’s, and there’s an expression on his face that Impulse, for once, cannot decipher.
Impulse pauses with his hands still on Skizz's knee joint. "I don't know," he offers, which is a particularly useless explanation. "Like a part of me." Still useless, still a feeling that Skizz will have less than no way to contextualize. “Why?”
Skizz shakes his head and shrugs, and then he’s back to normal again. He sighs and passes both hands through his hair. “I dunno. I’ve just been thinking about it- ‘bout all this being human stuff.”
Impulse snorts and returns his attention to fixing up Skizz’s knees. “If you want to be human, you’re gonna have to start paying taxes. And trust me, buddy, you don’t want that.” He cranks a final miniscule nut back into place and smiles to himself at another job particularly well done. “And you’ll have to get a job to start paying for your own dang parts- you’re getting dang expensive.”
He flinches briefly as Skizz’s hand approaches his face again, making the same motion across his cheek and up to his hair. He glances up at the bot above him, curious about the shiver in his movements. He had thought he had put Skizz back together properly, but if he’s having this much trouble just lifting his arms… it doesn’t bear thinking about.
“Skizz–”
“We’re not so different, you know. You and I- we’re not so different, Impulse.”
Skizz never calls him that.
Impulse grins crookedly and puts a hand on Skizz’s newly-built knee to heave himself up from the floor. He bats the guy on the shoulder, a smile in his voice.
“‘Course we’re not, you big lump. I built you- built you out of all the parts of me that needed improving, idiot.” He flicks Skizz’s forehead and laughs at the tinny sound it makes. “You like girls with big tits because I trained you on images of girls with big tits from porn mags I bought when I was sixteen. We’re the same.”
Skizz shakes his head but he can’t really disagree, so he follows Impulse into the kitchen. That’s not what he means, but Impulse doesn’t know that- doesn’t know that what’s rotting under his skin is the same as what Skizz is made out of, if older. Skizz doesn’t know how to tell him, can’t quite figure out what words he needs to say to convince Impulse that normal people don’t work like the two of them.
For now, they return to dinner.