Remnant - III

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Requested By : Gib

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It took several days to cross the southernmost section of the arid, craggy badlands on horse-back, meandering between isolated water sources and avoiding the scant Grimm that roamed the dry region. Animals were just as infrequent, consisting almost entirely of scavengers of various types that stuck nearer to the wetter hills to the south and back the way they'd come, and a handful of camels, nibbling at the fruit of cacti and the leaves of squat, prickly trees as they meandered from one water source to the next.

It was bleak, more rocky than sandy, and made all the more dour and dark by the green he could see only a day to his South and West.

But it was also quiet, and beautiful in a strange, harsh, difficult to describe, kind of way. And under its blistering sun and dry winds, he could almost forget about everything. The war, the pain his people wallowed in - Everything, nearly lost to the silence of sand and rock and dead wind.

Nearly…

But not quite.

Finally, the Grimm Peaks had come into view over the horizon. Great, craggy, black peaks that towered over the green coastline and the badlands around it's crawling, sometimes white-capped, peaks. Most of the South-Eastern coast was covered in the nasty, sharp mountains and their deep valleys, almost all of which were un-mapped and barren of most life beyond the swarms of Gryphons that dwelt throughout the great black peaks. The mountains continued out to sea, spiring out of the water like hundreds of sharp teeth, rolling out in a strange sort of wave and filling the shallow sea between with sharp, invisible rocks perfect for lurking aquatic Grimm. On land, the foothills around the outside of the Grimm Peaks were similarly known to be full enough of Grimm to prohibit exploration, but nothing like the Leviathans that lurked out at sea.

It was almost like something had warped the land, to create such a place. He'd heard some Atlesian scientist theorize that an asteroid had struck the land, resulting in the rolling waves of black rock. But he didn't know anything about that.

All he knew was that, between the badlands that spanned between Menagerie and the rocky sea that ran along its coasts, getting to the Peaks was a nightmare. And exploring them even more-so.

But he had coordinates, just north of the edge of the Grimm Peaks, where they reached into the heart of the badlands before blooming out South and East like the blight they were. And he'd given his word to help…

And besides, it was way too late to turn back now.

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Shockwave detected their approach thirty one standard planetary cycles before they would arrive and began what minimal restorative protocols he could manage in his damaged state. His body below the sternum was annihilated utterly - and he could not restore that on his own - but his left arm and upper chest were in a more stable state. And the earth around him was rich in materials he could extra and consume for rudimentary armor and incredibly primitive, painfully synthetic, cyber-matter that he used to reconstitute his chest chassis and shoulder. His arm was another, more difficult, story however.

Base pseudo-cyber-matter would not do to restore his arm, much less his cannon, and so instead he cannibalized pieces from his chest and shoulder, where the rudimentary cyber-matter would do, at least for a time. Presuming, of course, he did not need to put it through combat. But then, lacking legs might be the larger concern should that come to pass.

Equally problematic was that his diagnostics read his primary weapon as inoperative…

But at least he could lift his arm now, for all that was worth.

A diagnostics on his energy systems told him that he'd already cut his energy levels by a third just restoring some of his chassis and extracting the pseudo-matter. It would do, for now, though. Until better materials, and more power, came his way and he could do more.

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It took another couple of days to get to the coordinates, which were exacting to within fifteen yards in any direction. The area itself was a rocky, concave spot about a mile wide that looked like the ground had been cracked open. Sheer walls sprouted up randomly in jagged triangles and squares and sudden pitfalls into crevices that in some cases spanned over a hundred feet down into deep pits of similarly jagged, ragged black rock. It was so hazardous they were forced to dismount and lead the horses on foot, or risk them breaking a leg. At its nearly exact center, the ground gave way in a series of cascading slabs of dry, black and brown stone that formed a rough, treacherous and slowly narrowing slope down into a hole the size of an Atlesian tank.

Standing at the top of of the ramp, Ghira and his guide hesitated, until the man felt his Scroll vibrate in his pocket once more.

"Another alarm…?"

"I'll, uh, confess that it isn't." He sighed and fished it out to find the expected black screen and scrawling text.

"You are here." Shockwave said, "This is good. I am below. You see a path?"

"He's down there." Ghira sighed, pointing with a finger down the ragged path and offering the reins of his horse to his guide. She gave it a look and then gave him one when she reached for them and he explained, "I won't ask you to go down there, Ironbark. It's my risk to take."

"Glad we agree on that." She chuckled, shouldering her rifle and grunting, "You call, I'll come in ready to put someone down."

"Thank you, Ironbark."

"Yep yep." The woman nodded, dropping onto one of the rocks and shouldering her rifle on the cavern entrance down the ramp. "If you come running, stick to my right. I wouldn't want to hit you on accident."

"Right…"

He flexed his claws once and then withdrew them before making the trek down, as much waking as climbing over the cragged stones or dropping down from one upheaved hunk of earth and rock to another. Twice, the rock shifted and turned under him, and set his heart racing, but the treacherous terrain tolerated him more or less. As he got closer, the ragged opening in the rock grew more foreboding, with towering stalagmites and jagged, fang-like stalactites forming a looming maw. As if Remnant itself were snarling at him - warning him away, lest he be swallowed whole.

Still, he pressed on, into a kind of gloom that would have blinded a Human.

Luckily, he wasn't a Human.

The uneven, rough ground continued down as the cavern opened up into a wider chamber that finally bottomed out. Down here, the rock suddenly gave way to… Some sort of shavings? He knelt to run his finger through the dirt and found it brittle and flaky. Less like soil and more like sand, but… Rougher. More like stone that had been ground down, now that he considered it.

"Hello." He shot to his feet and looked ahead, to the back of the cave where the voice had come from as the smooth stone…

No, not stone, he realized as his eyes widened.

Dark metal, in a mix of violets and greys that broke free of the rock around it in a shower of the loose, ground up stone as a figure pushed itself up on a misshapen arm that ended in what looked like a long cannon barrel. Its head was just as malformed, cracked and sparking in a dozen places, and it didn't have another arm. Just a broad rectangle with a broken, ragged looking base and that single arm, shedding loose rock and the weird dust that covered the floor of the cavern.

"Uh…."

"Hello." The… Thing repeated, voice crackling and synthetic as it loomed over him, head nearly touching the ceiling of the cavern as it stabilized. "I am pleased you made it, Ghira."

"You're-" Ghira blinked and stood, growling irritably but relaxing his claws as he turned and looked around. "Shockwave? Where are you hiding?"

"I am not hiding." The machine's voice stated simply and flatly, echoing around the cavern around him. Ghira turned to the massive machine as it bowed its broken head and explained, quietly, "I am right in front of you. Or most of me is. I'm afraid that I'm in something of a rough state, as you can see."

"All I see is a robot…"

"Oh, can we please not do that?"

"Do what?"

"Call me a 'robot'." Shockwave answered simply, explaining in a flat, somehow amused and weary sounding voice, "I am a techno-organic being composed of cyber-matter and advanced metal-organic compounds capable of existing for millennia, and feats of technology you would view as magic. I'm something a bit more than a… Robot."

"I…" Ghira blinked, "I see."

"Somehow, I doubt that." Shockwave countered breezily, "Now, where are the items I ordered delivered? I'm in dire need of those components and that power."

"You make me sound like a delivery boy…"

"Are you not?"

"No!"

"I contacted you and requested you come to me and bring needed supplies in exchange for eventual payment." Shockwave countered gently, shifting its posture just the tiniest bit and showering him in dust and that weird, ground up rock. "What else would that make you, exactly?"

"A rescuer?!"

"The minutiae that separates the two is as broad as the minutiae that separates what I am from a base 'robot' as well." Shockwave pointed out meaningfully, and Ghira would swear he could feel it staring him down even without… Eyes.

"I get it." Ghira finally gave up, throwing his hands up in surrender, "Not a robot. But then-"

"I am a Cybertronian or, if you prefer, a Transformer." Shockwave cut him off sharply, adjusting again and scattering more snow. "Now, my supplies. Please, have them brought down so that I can commence basic preliminary repairs."

"I'll… I'll go get it." He sighed, turning and heading back up the way he'd come. Alex rose as he came up and he waved her off with a sigh, and started to explain, "So, this is going to sound insane…"

"We crossed the badlands for some Atlas bumblefuck that hacked your Scroll." She shrugged, "What could be crazier?"

"Well…"

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The next ten minutes were unfortunate, but amusingly educational as well - Alex Ironbark possessed quite the vocabulary, and she spent fifteen minutes showing it off before Ghira could calm her down and they got back to work. Shockwave catalogued each of the rather creative swears - he'd never been called a 'big purple piece of pickled piss' before - before running through the usual line of questions. 'What are you', 'why should I trust you', 'is your arm actually a gun', all the usual.

After that, another ten were spent bringing in his equipment.

Apparently, the path down to him was rough. Too rough for draft animals prone to broken legs and lethal tumbles. Tragic and troublesome, to be certain, but he had suspected as much would be the case. Resigned himself to it, for as little as he cared about the minute problem. He had hundreds of standard planetary cycles before his status grew dire, and it was unlikely in the extreme that moving some boxes would cause problematic delays.

The Dust Generator went first, hefted down slowly by Ghira while Alex followed, ready to assist if he asked for it while she carried the secondary parts in a small bag slung over her shoulder. As they approached, he dragged himself down, shattering stalagmites and stone slabs beneath him as he descended, and then stretching his arm out to the side to expose his chest to them. It hissed as it opened, exposing his Spark chamber to the two Faunus as they watched. A risky move, for a great many obvious reasons.

But not one he could avoid.

"Please, set up the generator at the base of my chest." He instructed them plainly, "You will find a power inlet to the side of my Spark chamber. Please connect the type four power connector I ordered brought to it and then to the generator."

"What do you mean, you ordered it?"

"I ordered these materials in Ghira's name, through his Scroll." Shockwave explained simply, "Thank you, by the by, you have been quite helpful, Miss Ironbark. Exactly as the others said you were."

"Others…?"

"Yours was not the only Scroll I accessed, Ghira." Shockwave answered the man, "I accessed numerous others before recommending her to Miss Khan in your stead."

"I-I see…"

"Ghira, I need a bonus for this shit." Alex snapped quietly, kneeling to set up the boxed turbine on the ground and pulling the sack around to start piecing it together. "Ghira, hook the cable up to his thingamajig."

"Spark Chamber-"

"Thingamajig." She waved him off amusingly, "I'll get the power resistors in place and set the turbine up."

"Yeah, I'm on it…"

The generator itself was a two-stage system, made up by a rectangular power conversion unit connected by a thick cable to a standing turbine. The turbine was housed in a box, with only the top of its wheel visible out the top of the box for ventilation, and was lined by Dust-resistors that collected the charge coming off of the grinding wheel and 'burned', creating very raw, very pure, Dust based energy that ran through the cable to the translator which converted it into semi-standard electricity. The cable was long and segmented, but was nothing special. Merely one of dozens of sub-types, for which he had built a conversion unit in his own torso during his repairs.

None of this was ideal, of course, but…

'Beggars could not be choosers', as the Earthlings had said.

While Alex finished setting everything up and tested the power systems, Ghira climbed his chest and socketed in the long cable. A moment later, Shockwave heard the generator kick on - a nanosecond before raw electricity arced painfully into his chest. He ignored the discomfort, channeling the power into his own metabolizer and groaning as his levels stabilised.

As it did, he asked, "Did you bring the camera as well?"

"You ordered that, too?!" Alex practically shouted, "You know what that thing cost me?"

"No."

"Of course not, because why would you? What the hell..." Alex sighed as she stood and pinched her nose - a mostly vain way of trying to stave off typically stress induced headaches among Humans and, apparently, among this subspecies as well. Finally, she asked, "What is it even for?"

"I require the components to assist in repairing my head." Shockwave explained, "The advanced photographic systems and image translators can be easily cannibalised and retrofitted by my means into parts to repair and replace the components I lost."

"Which cost me, and Menagerie, a camera worth ten thousand Lien…"

"You didn't get the topographical survey camera."

"It was the only that fit your - his, I mean, requirements." She snapped at the man, "I didn't think about it, because I figured we were going to survey out here!"

"I will compensate you." And it would have to be now, he realized. Such emotional outbursts were irrational, of course, but he could easily deal with them. Bringing his arm around he rumbled, "Your rifle, please."

"My rifle?"

"Yes." He answered, "I will demonstrate my compensation."

She didn't say anything for a moment, before she unslung her rifle and held it out. He scanned it, cataloguing its parts and intentions rapidly, before he reached out and his arm split open to reveal a dozen small manipulator claws, three fingered and fitted with dozens of joints. She squawked, but he ignored her, pulling the weapon away and disassembling it in front of her eyes.

The stock was wooden and he abandoned it entirely, replacing it with a hollow stock built out of his own armor plating. The firing mechanism was rudimentary as well, with a small magazine in the housing that held five rounds and no more. He pulled it out and consumed the raw materials, using them to produce an energy capacitor and cyber-forming the barrel. He replaced the Dust based rounds with a block of ammunition housed above the energy capacitor and reassembled it all, holding the sleek purple framed, silver-barreled, weapon out to the woman.

"I have replaced and upgraded your weapon with a heat based projectile system which you will be able to fire one thousand and twenty two shots prior to needing to replace it." He explained while she looked over the weapon, "Please be careful when you use it. Its power yield is higher, as is its recoil, and most things will not survive a direct hit."

"Define most things."

"Any lightly armored entity under two tons in armor supplemental mass." He explained, "That rifle is the most advanced, and among the most powerful, infantry-based anti-personnel weapons on this planet at present. These are the items which I will use to compensate you for your aid. Now, please retrieve my camera and raw materials."

Neither of them hesitated for more than a second before turning to go get his things, and he couldn't help but chuckle.

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