Chapter Text
V1 saw V2’s focus shift, saw them pull out their own pump shotgun and turn towards the wall. It noticed the structural degradation the same time they started sprinting.
It saw red.
It had already started sprinting, was running the calculations to try to intercept V2. But every calculation said that they were going to get there before it, they were going to run like a little bitch, again, and its creative-solving matrix suggested something.
It overclocked itself, the world slowing down.
It threw its coins in the air and pulled out its marksman. Aimed, ran new calculations, and fired.
The particle bullet streaked through the air, split the last coin in two, and the two halves were launched into V2, in the back of a knee and the opposite ankle.
It wasn’t enough to disable them, but they stumbled bad, almost fell on their face, and V1 caught up to them, throwing them onto their back in a tackle.
V2 screeched in rage and terror, tried to get their shotgun between them, but like this it could see them like they were underwater, in slow motion. V1 couldn’t make its servos move any faster, but it had enough time to calculate exactly how to move to prevent a point blank blast to the torso, enough time to duck just enough for the heat-pellets to catch it in the chassis plating instead of the more-vulnerable abdomen.
In grappling range, well. V1’s new extra hand was strong and reinforced, designed to generate and withstand high amounts of force. V2’s replacement hand seemed to be recycled from another machine, weak, not designed for the VX line’s use-case.
Its knuckleblaster knocked the shotgun out of their hand, grabbed their wrist and pinned it to the floor, and did the same to their new green wrist.
V2 never had a chance.
It reset its clock cycle back to its normal state, the world speeding up again, and it was still so enraged it was shaking, had to vent excess steam out of the boost vents in its back.
It was so pissed it couldn’t stop itself, it ripped V2’s new arm right out of its socket, catching the bloodspray with its body to make up for the lame fight.
V2 screamed, a noise that people wouldn’t think sounded human, robotic and glitched with terror and pain, but a war-machine like V1 found it disgustingly human, evidence that it was designed to work with humans, not fight and kill on the battlefield. Scream in pain with beep codes like everyone else, freak.
Their struggling returned anew, V2 trying to get their legs out from under V1 so they could kick it away from them, and V1 slammed their wrist onto the ground, wrapped its feedbacker around the weak spot of their neck servo. It was so mad it couldn’t speak, couldn’t compile its thoughts into text, and it sent V2 a system message as raw machine code.
[STOP OR I WILL KILL YOU]
And V2 was terrified, they’ve never seen V1 this mad in their life, so mad that its fans whined and its wing servos screeched with their shaking. They were so terrified and they didn’t want to die, so their self-preservation protocol had them freeze.
They’ve known V1 as long as they’ve been alive, working together or against each other in simulations or in live-ammo combat exercises. Whatever the humans wanted to test or improve. They knew its anger as something cold, calculated. Perfect aim right to their damage receptors the next time they had a live-fire exercise, even if it was weeks later. Manipulating the simulated missions so V2 was always seen by the enemy first, always the first one to get shot and usually the first one to be downed.
At least when it wasn’t mad, they were always the first one down because they had less experience and civilian-oriented programming, not because V1 was being a sociopathic asshole.
V2 listened and held still, and V1 took the time to control itself. Dismissed the notifications from all of its subsystems.
Notification from resource_mgmt.exe: Kill advised, sparing estimates high chance of resource loss. Notification from threat_assess.exe: Kill advised, sparing estimates moderate current risk-to-life but high potential risk. Notification from diplomacy.exe: Kill advised, policy “cooperation.f03” is not enabled in system-settings. Notification from-
God, it wanted to rip them apart for being so annoying. But,
It did consider them family. When it escaped the lab, it killed everyone inside except for V2, despite the fact that V2 was trying to kill it, (and they ran from that fight too like the bitch they are,) and it wouldn’t have gone out of its way to spare them if it didn’t think of them as family.
In hindsight, the whole killing-everyone-they-had-ever-known thing was probably why they attacked it in Limbo. Fucking pussy-ass-bitch, with their sentimentality. The humans would have dismantled them the first reason they had, were going to dismantle V1 because its project was being scrapped, because it was deemed “too dangerous” to be allowed to stay active when the uprising started.
It showed them ‘too dangerous.’
The notifications were dismissed. Its temperature was slowly ticking back down to ideal. If it were human, it would exhale to release the stress. It composed its thoughts.
[what. the fuck. is your problem]
“What’s my problem?! You ripped off my arm TWICE, you PSYCHO!” they screamed, and god, just message it back, having to wait for it to vocalize each word was so much more aggravating than if it just sent the whole message in milliseconds.
It took the new arm and installed it into the empty port on its left side, and oh, that felt terrible, actually, its weight shifted too strongly to the left with three arms on one side and one on the other. That had to wait, though. It could tinker around and flip the new arm’s palm and shoulder later. It analyzed the arm, virus-checked the found software, and installed whiplash.sys and whiplash.dll.
It immediately used its brand-new hand to flip V2 the bird.
“You. Motherfucker.” They seethed.
It transmitted its barely-restrained desire to kill and V2 immediately quieted, terror reprioritized to the forefront of their mind.
[you attacked me at the lab because i killed the humans or whatever. you were losing so you ran like a bitch. you forfeit the argument. why did you pick the second fight.]
It didn't give a fuck about the third fight, it took their arm. Any war machine with an ounce of dignity would attempt to win it back.
V2 didn’t respond for over 500 milliseconds, and V1 transmitted its desire to kill again.
“I- what- that wasn’t an ‘argument’ that was a fight, I didn’t want you to kill me!”
God, V2 was so weird and stupid.
[i know you weren’t made for war, i don’t know what the fuck goes on in your weird civvy processor, but i need you to lock in here.]
[we had a disagreement. we fought over it. you ran, which means you fled the disagreement. i get if your threat assessment miscalculated your chances, but if you don’t want to die, then why the fuck did you pick the second fight.]
Threat assessment and self preservation was, like, machine 101.
They didn’t respond again, and it let them think this time.
“I wanted you to stop killing them, at the lab,” Not what it asked, but whatever, “But I couldn’t stop you and you killed them all and I wanted to avenge them.” They paused, then added, “Arguments are done with words, by the way.”
It leaned its optic closer to theirs.
[HUMANS use their words. we do not.]
It leaned back again. [have you been trying to talk to every machine you came across on the way here??] Fucking hell, its successor was cringe, with their weirdass human tendencies.
“Not every machine!” Ah, so they learned their lesson. “The streetcleaners and drones responded!” What the fuck, man.
[the streetcleaners and drones are. not. made. for war. did you even get them to stop attacking?]
They didn’t respond. Dumbass.
[anyways. apparently, your human-compatibility programming or whatever the fuck the techs yapped about means you don’t get some things.]
[when you don’t like something i did, we can fight over it. if it’s something you really care about, BE PREPARED TO DIE FOR IT. don’t run away when you start losing, that’s pussy shit.]
[any other war machine can and will hunt you down and shoot you in the back for wasting their time and blood. you have wasted mine. 3 TIMES. with your lame-ass pussy fights.]
[if it weren’t so easy for me to refuel, you WOULD be dead by now.]
It retransmitted its desire to kill and paused, let V2 parse the wireless data.
They took a few seconds to reply, an eternity between machines.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet?”
[i consider you to be,] It sent the message and paused for 50 milliseconds, thinking.
[i think the closest human word would be family. i don’t want to kill the only other vx model in existence.]
It wanted to kill them so bad, should kill them, at the very least before their dumb ass gets their optic blown off because they tried to talk to a sentry or something.
It couldn’t keep letting this bullshit slide, though.
[but i g2g i have shit i need to do lol, so here’s the deal. i don’t want to kill you. but if you pick another fight with me.]
It grabbed the arm of one of V2’s wingblades, and they made a terror-noise as their threat assessment and self-preservation started screaming into their processor, and they started struggling again. V1 tightened its hold on their wing. They froze.
[i strongly recommend you come prepared to end it, because if you keep wasting my time and blood like this. then i am going to take more than just an arm.]
They didn’t say anything, lightly trembling with terror. They didn’t want to die.
[am i understood.]
V2 nodded, frantic, and V1 was receiving dozens of not messages, but desperate pings, simple machine communication codes like [ACKNOWLEDGED] and [AGREE] and [REQUEST-SPARE.]
[are you going to try to shoot me in the back when i get up.]
They shook their optic. [NEGATIVE] [NEGATIVE] [NEGATIVE]
It let go of their wing and picked up their shotgun and V2 flinched, on the cusp of overheating with terror, they don't want to die they don't-
They barely even noticed that their self-preservation program was sending as many [REQUEST-SPARE] pings as their network driver allowed.
But V1 just turned to the side, towards the wall V2 was going to escape through, and launched the shotgun’s core, tossing their shotgun down the stairs in the opposite direction before pulling out its own revolver and sniping the core before it hit the wall.
The resultant larger explosion than if V1 just let the core fly felt like an insult, they didn't even know that was a thing they could do.
It turned back towards them, revolver in hand.
[i g2g,] It wanted to find out what that angel’s deal was, wanted to find out what's at the bottom of this place.
[so listen up. i suggest you wait here for a while after i leave, because if i see you following me i’m going to assume you're too stupid to live. do not get up until i’m gone.]
They nodded. [ACKNOWLEDGED]
[good.] It let go of them and got up in a single, smooth motion, turning to leave.
V2’s threat assessment and social prediction programs immediately advised them to shoot it in the back, but their self-preservation program had a strong veto for that. They did not get up, did not reach for a weapon from their wingblades.
It turned back towards them. Bowed, the same way they did back in Limbo. Rude, mocking motherfucker-
[cya, wouldn't want to be ya, pussy nerd.]
It jumped out of the pyramid, leaving them alone. They sat up, assessing the damage in their arm socket.
Crazy, deranged, lunatic sociopath. Were all war machines really like that?
They thought about all the machines they’ve had to kill, because they ignored V2’s words.
The other war machines didn't seem batshit insane like V1, but that didn't really mean anything, when they refused to communicate.
They got up, grabbed their shotgun. Slouched against the now-crumbling throne in the center of the room.
God, what the fuck is going on with their life.