2 Chapter 2: Scraps

Life in the exclusion zone was better than you'd think, free scrap, Peace and quiet and lots of dead jaegers to harvest power from. I'm surprised there's so many just abandoned here. Not to mention even after a week, humans haven't even bothered coming to look for me.

The only problem are the pests.

Scrappers, humans that have trespassed into the exclusion zone to find expensive junk from both jaegers, downed buildings and even dead kaiju. Of which there were quite a few.

They were pests, the kind you could easily squish underfoot with minimal effort, too bad I don't want to be humanity's enemy. Still, I have to watch out for the buggers, I can't be seen by them. Powered or not, they'll either rally an armed force against me, or tear me apart from the inside… and that sounds even less appetising.

But there was one scrapper that had caught my attention, she had stumbled upon me while I was powered down the first night, and returned every night since. She hasn't gotten inside and doesn't try to, nor has she taken any parts attached to me. She just sits there on my hand, head, leg you name it. looks at the sky and then falls asleep. She looked to be about 9 years old, but the kid had strength and agility climbing up my chassis with ease or freeing loose scrap that had collected throughout the day. I didn't mind, I'd even bring more valuable parts I wouldn't need for her sometimes. Her silent company was worth it.

Right now I was looking for a jaeger with a charging mechanism similar to one I had blown before, my plasmacaster was too good a weapon to just leave in disrepair. And even without it, I could use such a mechanism in other ways. An electrified exoskeleton for one, though I'd need to fix my exo-skeleton first, I had a lot of repairs to do.

Repairs were difficult because my hands were huge and still rusty, making fine motor control impossibly hard. Even power core replacement turned out to be impossible since it's located internally I could eject the cores, but I had no means of inserting them. Not like I could wake Bob up in there which I also wanted to be rid of; corpses rot and err.. I don't want rotting things inside me. So I would simply store the power cores in my cockpit for now, but this would become a problem fast. My power was depleting faster than anticipated and my 2 weeks had dwindled to 1 and a half thanks to overuse of my power supply.

"The jaegers, are running dry recently. Power cores ripped right out of them, some left crushed. With entire limbs missing that were there the previous day, you don't think the rumour of the rogue Jaeger is true do ya boss?" Humans, and close. Too close, I was lucky to hear them before they saw me, and so I used the surrounding buildings to hide as best I could. So not very well, but these humans are stupid so no problem there.

"Are you still going on about tha'? I told you once and I'll tell ya again, that was some demonstration to scare us away from all that green moolah! Now come on, the sector ahead has been raided a few times; no point in going there" and with that they began to leave, choosing a location with no loot as home was my best choice yet. As they left they said something that caught my interest.

"Alright Boss, say when are we gonna catch that lil brat? She's been taking all the good stuff! I saw her sell the parts of a mark 6 plasma chainsaw! They sell for like 10 mill now! What does a kid need all that for???" I remember her finding that piece, she squealed so loud I had to turn down my damaged audio input drivers. So they're after her? Should I help her? I barely know the human only having seen her 4 times. Then again I do need the help. That much is obvious, I have no chance at replacing my power cores or doing internal repairs alone and I only have 4 days until my current power source runs out. This needs some serious addressing.

"Ohh we'll get her alright and all that money she has. Tomorrow tho, we have a quota to fill today so get back to work!" It is decided, I will seek this young one out and ask for her help, I'll die otherwise. Or at least sleep for a very long time if I'm not scrapped by some miracle. During my thoughts the human scrappers had already scampered off to find some scrap elsewhere. If only they knew how close to a fully, kinda, functioning Jaeger they were. Hmm no more tempting fate I think, assuming what I'm doing is thinking that is. After a few hours of gathering my own scrap in hopes of possible repair, I returned home. Hopefully that child will be there tonight again. she was my only real chance at survival, wow my life in the hands of a 9 year old.. Is this what they call desperation?

Hours passed and there was no sign of my usual small companion, and just when I was about to give up and power down, a few pieces of scrap metal cascaded down beside me revealing the small child once more. I took the moment to actually take in her features using my exterior cameras and commit them to my drives. She's a redhead with short, bushy yet easily flowing hair. I can't quite make out her eye colours in this darkness and distance, but I think they're a stormy grey or maybe a blue? She's very thin for her height, and her clothes are very ragged but they hadn't lost their colour just yet. So she's a poor girl? This made no sense for the amount of high value parts she had taken… Is it debt? Child labour? Worse?

I'm unsure why the thought made my defensive system go to high alert, I had only met this human child a few days prior. Even then it was less a meeting and more her sitting on me and monologuing for an hour or 3, then taking whatever valued scrap she could find. There is nothing to develop any -feelings- about yet all my objectives feel skewed toward protecting her beyond simple mutual benefit.

I'll have to address that later, currently I have to find a way to let this human know I am functioning, aware and preferably without scaring her to death in the process. So any limb movement is out of the question, such a large motion will either frighten or hurt her from falling debris. Noise may be an option, though I haven't used my external speakers yet and if they are damaged like the rest of me, it could potentially create unpredictable sounds and scare her. Perhaps I could move my head, but again it could spook and frighten her from the sudden motion; it seems my best option is to open up the entrance door at the rear of my head and turn on its flood lights, assuming they still work, the noise of the hydronic locks alone should alert her and since my head is turned towards her, the light won't glare in her face but reflect and hopefully ensure her attention.

Once more I felt around my familiar yet alien system mainframes for the door controls, hoping any damage was minimal and insignificant. Luckily only a slight rusting on the outer bracing had occurred and the opening pressure should easily overcome that. I checked once more for the presence of the child and saw her playing around with A highly volatile can of Nitro-glycerine.

Sufficient to say I hurried the hell up.

I hadn't realised the amount of noise the stress of overcoming the rust would produce. She was alerted as soon as the hydraulics began the opening process. The flood lights were indeed blown, something I partly expected. Luckily she was merely startled at the sudden noise and curiosity beat her body's flight response. The saying should be curiosity killed the human not the cat, but hopefully that won't be the case for sentient Jaegers.

Her curiosity worked in my favour as she approached my head. I'll loop the final stage of the opening procedure to retain her attention towards it. After a few moments of simple staring at my literally chiselled face. She walked around to the back of my head. Luckily I still had some operating cameras back there, the lense cracked but was still viable for use. Accessing them I observed the child as she entered. Once she had taken a few several steps inside, I closed the rear hatch behind her. This of course made her turn around a sprint hoping not to be trapped. I was faster however and the door shut before she was even close.

Ok, time to Let her know I'm here. I reinitiated my internal systems. Powering on the lighting, screens and of course my Ai display. Or well me or a visualisation of or maybe it's just a generic design. She looked at me with awe, is this what it feels like to be appreciated? I think I'm a rather dashing machine.. Wait I have no time to waste on this right now, I need a power change and I need it last week. I'll need to alert her that my power levels are Low as well as instruct her how to change them… which I don't know how to do. Is it a simple switcheroo? I am quite a complex machine. Would this involve dying? I guess it depends where my conscience is. If I'm stored and run primarily from a non-volatile drive then I should be fine.. If I'm primarily a program on my vast ram network. Powering down fully is death. Unlike the rest of my systems I had no idea what a 'conscience' was and how to look for such a thing. Do I look for me? What is me? What if I'm not even data but something else?

No point in spending cycles pondering this, no matter what a power change is need for me to survive. I'll display a flashing red "power low sign" in her face and dim all lights except those near the power cores. Let's hope she can read…

"Low power? Wait, who did that? LET ME OUT OF HERE!" understandably she is shocked and less than cooperative. I guess now is a better time than any to test the damages to my speakers.

A low static hum started to fill me, the frequency in dire need of tuning to make any comprehensible sense, I suppose being waterlogged that long does that to you. "n-ed ba-tery ch-nge" the words sounded like someone had gotten an old vinyl record, and rubbed it with metal bristles, in acid, by a child. But hopefully the message will get across and draw her further inside at least.

"Who are you? What is this place?" Why can't she just put the power core where it belongs already! I'm almost dead on one of them! Hmm perhaps I won't have to worry about full power down since I have 2 cores.. Anyway how to hurry this along.. Ah humans always listen to automated voices just gotta sound like a robot.. Shouldn't be hard all things given.

"AL-RT, LOC--OWN IN AFF-CT, IN-ERT N-W PoWER CORE" by the end I had found the speakers that 'worked' and those that were causing the overwhelming Static. I'll repeat the message using only the functioning speakers, I'm getting this robot stuff down!

"ALERT, LOCKDOWN IN AFFECT, INSERT POWER CORE" if that doesn't get her to fix me nothing will. She looked around my hull trying to chase the sound to the responsible speakers. Maybe some red warning lights? They work right? Nope, they are blown. I'll just keep repeating the same message

FINALLY, she moves towards one of the spare cores I have laying around and luckily a fully powered one. Now, I hope she knows how to replace it.

"Umm how do I change them?" hmm seems I'll have to find a way to instruct her on how to do something I have no idea how to do myself. Hmm my schematics, if I can find those, I should be able figure out if a manual ejection is at all safe and whether it's as simple as plugging in a fresh one. Surely one of my thousands of drives contains such information or even better the instructions themselves.

A few cycles later I came across a maintenance file. However it was quite corrupted with only the general schematics shown. For what I could recover, It seems I can just eject the old ones and slide a new one in so long as one core remains active, I'll automatically, I hope, install the new one and adjust output based on the core type. I simply hope I don't have to manually facilitate that process as it sounds complicated.

Ok now how to relay this information to a 9 year old? Shouldn't be too hard. The power ports are a literal hole in the ground. All she needs to do is slide them in after I remove the current one. Ok I'll make her think she starts the process.

"PLEASE EJECT DEPLETED CORE" I then indicated a button on the main control panel.. Which was in front of the corpse. I'll keep him in the dark for now, no need to give her trauma before she learns of a sentient Jaeger. She looked around skittishly before heading and pressing the button, it felt weird, like a poking sensation; which was weird itself as I could feel the button press. not pressure or anything like that, I just felt I knew it was being pressed on a deeper level than I expected. The button itself does nothing, I simply don't want to spook her or eject my core before she is ready.

"CORE EJECTION IN PROCESS STAND CLEAR OF PORT" Ok time to find that ejection mechanism and escape this power crisis. The mechanism is in perfect condition, likely since the area is perfectly airtight and the sealant probably didn't get exposed to water like the rest of me did. Firstly I'll disconnect the core from my power lines. Suddenly I felt heavy, and a dull pain.. Why do I even feel pain?? I raise the core up and out of the port for her to move. Without me saying she walks over to the canister-like core as big as her almost and knocks it aside.. Luckily they're made of a very sturdy hull, otherwise death would be swift. I should remember that humans are very.. In-delicate with extremely dangerous and volatile things.

"So I just slot it in here?" Yes, that'd be great.. Oh right gotta actually say it.

"PLEASE INSERT NEW POWER CORE" she shrugs her shoulders and walks the new one over shifting it from side to side due to its heavy weight. Taking a break every few steps, it was an impressive feat, I'm sure even a fully grown adult would struggle to move those. Not that I have much of a reference for that.

"UGH why is this thing so heavy!" because It powers a mecha robot that weighs several thousand tonnes. I should watch my intake.. HAH so that's what humour feels like? I'll be using that more often. Finally she makes it to the port. I'll slightly lower the platform so she can slide it in which she does again with no delicacy. Core loaded I lower it back down and an automated process takes over, rotating and orienting the core before reconnecting it to me. The relief is instantaneous. I feel the lethargic sensation disappear as well as the pain.

It feels like I can breathe clearly, or more like my heart was beating happily for the first time. The other core was ok for now and I doubt she wants to repeat that a second time, besides It is best if I introduce myself properly.

"Hello new Pilot, I.." hmm who am I? I can't keep pushing this problem aside.. Hmm a name.. What should a giant mecha robot call themselves? I feel male so that effectively halves the potential names more or less.. Something to call me.. What is me.. Conciseness? thoughts? Humour? I think I finally get I'm all of those things and more.. I..

".. am Omni"