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Everything hurt, it was painful but not in a way that Tango knew. Everything felt different, his nerves felt wrong. What was happening?
His arms hurt, how did they hurt? He saw his arm get ripped off, he saw it, why could he feel them now?
It was so difficult for him to open his eyes, his body didn’t obey him. It felt so wrong and it was scary. He didnt know what was happening. The room he was in, it was blurry but looked like Xisumas base, there was a mash of colors in the room, people? He couldn’t tell, everything was so blurry and he struggled to even look that way.
He heard footsteps, everything sounded slightly staticky, what was happening?
“Tango? Tango? Can you look at me?” He struggled but was able to look at the voices source. A yellow helmet, Xisuma.
He tried to talk, but his body wouldn’t work, he felt things moving, what were they? That didn’t feel like it should. Instead of his voice, he heard a faint garble. He couldn’t talk, he could talk he couldn’t talk.
“Tango, calm down,” a new voice, Doc? “Tango look at me.” He heard a faint whir as he looked at Doc, what was happening?
“Tango, it’s okay, youre safe now, it’s okay.”
Doc pulled tango up so he was sitting, and Tango almost wished he hadn’t.
Metal, mechanical parts, sliver castings around his arms and legs. Wires and tubes, a Comm pad built into his arm. His skin...his skin felt wrong, what little skin he had left, it was wrong. He looked at Doc.
“Tango, we couldn’t save you, you had sustained to much damage for a respawn. This was our only way.”
Tango garbled, he was so scared, it hurt, he garbled as if asking doc why.
“You would have died Tango. We can’t lose you. I know is weird and scary but it’s okay. You will be okay.”
Tango wanted to cry, he didn’t know if he could. It was difficult to move.
Doc carefully instructed Tango on how to move and function with the new robotic parts, teaching him how to evaluate the sensations that were sent to his brain, how to exist in a sense.
“How much of me is still me?”
Doc looked at him sadly, “not a lot. You still have your brain and some nerves, but that’s mostly it. We have a system like a heart, but much smaller to give oxygen to your brain, we had to make it so your brain can still function and everything, the system gives it the nutrients it needs. It’s hooked up in the mainframe. We tried to cover up as much of the mechanics with silicone skin, you have coolant tubes instead of veins basically, you have a metal bone structure. We made these-“ doc pulled out what seemed to be a small thumb drive, “- it auto downloads all your data at all times, and saves the most recent version of you it can, weekly it will have a copy of you downloaded and saved to the mainframe. Just in case something goes wrong.”
“There’s another thing,” Xisuma kneeled next to him. “Ive saved all your mechanics to the code, like I have for doc and Iskall. You aren’t alive enough for potions to work on you anymore. So I-“
“Not alive enough? Like dead?”
“No no no. If you were dead that would be ah, not good. You aren’t recognized as a player or a mob by the code, respawn won’t work for you. So the drives copy you, save all the data, and pull you into the code itself so when you die, you are ‘summoned’ like an entity, to your bed and your mechanics will be auto repaired and fixed in the respawn, but we can’t risk anything like that yet.”
“We wont be able to heal you, so we’ve built a system into you that will allow us to safely kill you and have you respawn.
It scared tango, but Doc promised it would be okay. Tango still saw the slightly angry glances laced with pity that the other hermits tossed his way. He knew he had fucked up, he didnt know how to resolve it, he owned Doc and Iskall so much for saving him, but he definitely felt that they should have.
Zedaph and Impulse wouldn’t leave his side. Slowly he fell back into the normal rhythms of life and they were there every step of the way, and thank god they were.
———
Bdubs normally isn’t angry, hes normally very hyper and happy, but he still felt a bit of resentment toward Tango. And his filter is nonexistent when hes angry.
He ran into Tango in Aque Town, Tango was looking at the building while Impulse and Zedaph gathered supplies, Bdubs was working on his subway whe he came up and saw Tango.
“Oh! Hi Bdubs!” The brunette turned away sneering.
“Bdubs?” Tango stepped softly down into the subway. “Are you okay?”
“No im not fucking okay! You nearly killed us all!”
“Bdubs I’m sorr-“
“Don’t say sorry! You almost ruined everything! You fucking crippled Wels! You basically silenced Grian!”
“Bdubs-“ tango backed out of the subway but Bdubs didn’t stop.
“You leveled Rens base! I wish Doc never saved you!” Bdubs realized what he’d said after he said it. Tango looked at him with wide eyes. “Tango-“ tango ran, he turned and ran away, Bdubs cursed as he tried to climb out of the subway, when he reached the surface, tango was no where to be seen.
———
Tango ran, through the shopping district, past other hermits, past Zedaph, he ran. He stumbled into the nether and took off again, abandoning the paths and running wild, he didnt know how long he’d been running. He’s passed the upside down a while ago.
He dropped unceremoniously to the floor, sitting on the soft netherrack, a huge cliff dropping down to a lava ocean just infront of him. He let his mind run rampant. Bdubs was right, he did fuck everything up. He ruined things.
Impulse flew as fast as he could, Zed barely keeping up, he flew to Tango coordinates, he was in the nether. He saw a figure on a cliff, Tango.
“Tango?” Impulse landed behind him, the blonde ignored him, staring at the lava, legs dangling over the edge of the the cliff. The mechanics looked worse for wear, the metal casing spluttering under the extreme stress of his running. The wires tangled, the red indicator lights blinked. His systems were failing.
“Tango?” Impulse heard Zed land behind him, he reached out, gently touching Tangos shoulder.
Tango was quiet, his voice uncharacteristically soft. “Bdubs was right.”
The blonde jerked forward, slipping off the ledge of the cliff, impulse pulled him back by his arm, there was a snap as Impulse yanked him from the air.
Tango kicked and hissed, trying to get out of impulses grip, trying to get back to the edge.
“Tango! Tango!” Zed held his face, calming him down. “Tango?”
Tango yelled, the sound echoing around the nether, he was so angry, so frustrated, Zedaph just carefully hugged Tango and let him cry into his shoulder.
Impulse sent a message to Xisuma, and soon the three 3 stood in Xisuma base, the unfamiliar nausea from teleporting slowly faded.
Xisuma dropped his tablet whe he saw tango, the mechanics falling apart like they were decaying.
“What happened? Bdubs told us to look for him but didn’t say why.”
“He ran into nether, for a really long time, I think the constant stress fucked with his mechanics.”
Xisuma nodded he slowly pulled Tango out of Zeds arms and lead him to the back room. He sat tango down on the table and pulled open a large slot in the wall. “Zed, can you put him out before I open this?”
“Uh okay.” Zed opened tangos vest a bit and typed the code into his small control panel on his chest. Tango was laid back as everything faded.
Impulse grimaced. Xisuma slid the metal sides of the box down to reveal the duplicate body for tango. He carefully removed the drive from Tangos command central and plugged it back into the duplicate body. He powered tango back up. The blonde groaned, rubbing his eyes as Xisuma pulled him up and handed him to Impulse.
“Tango? You good?” The blonde garbled and tried to pull away from impulse.
“Keep an eye on him, I’ll fix this.” Impulse herded Tango and Zedaph out as Xisuma began to remove the damaged metal plating.
———
“I fucked up, didnt I?”
Ren just stared at Bdubs, “Fuck Dude, you really did.”
Bdubs groaned and laid his head in the table, it had been nearly 4 hours since Tango ran off and Bdubs has been wallowing in guilt.
“Was i in the wrong completely?”
“Yeah.”
“Hey! But what he did-“
“Dont even fucking try Bdubs,” Ren slammed him hand on the table. “He didn’t know what would happen, he got hurt. Don’t try to justify you own fuck up.”
“He-“
“No. Can you imagine how scared he must have been? How scared he probably is now? That thing ripped him apart Bdubs. And we fucking left him. We left him so long he probably thought we weren’t going to save him. And when we did, he has to deal with the fact that he’s now a machine. He is a conscience uploaded to a robotic body working on a mainframe. Everything he knew has been ripped away. Don’t even try Bdubs.”
Ren stalked away, ears back and angry, Bdubs just sat at the table, Aque town was horribly empty. He ended up falling asleep in the seat.
———
Impulse ran his hand through Tangos synthetic hair. The smaller leaned against him as they watched movies. Zedaph was laying across the rest of the couch, his head on Tangos leg, the mechanical man just held on to Zedaph, like he was scared of letting go.
Impulse didnt know what to do, he didnt know how to help Tango. It was obvious he was hurting and Impules felt helpless as he failed around, trying to help him. Until he got an idea.
“Tango, do you want to take a break from the server for awhile? Just until people settle down?” Tango hesitated slightly but nodded against Impulse’s hand.
“Okay, I’m gonna set it so we can go hang out with Skizz for awhile.”
Tango mumbled something and turned back to the movie. Impulse shot off a few quick private messages. Skizz was ecstatic to see the trio again.
[Impulse: I’m taking Tango to go see Skizz, he needs a break]
[Xisuma: that will be good for him, I’ll watch over the farms and that will give us time to deal with Bdubs]
[Impulse: Thanks]
[Xisuma: its fine, he needs time anyway, also Etho has offered to terrorize Bdubs for awhile]
[Impulse: sounds fun for anyone but Bdubs, send us a highlight video]
[Xisuma: lol will do, ive opened the portal to the world hub]
[Impulse: okay, we’ll be on our way]
“Okay, lets grab our stuff and go?” Impulse lead the other two upstairs and grabbed some things before setting off to the shopping district. They passed a very suspicious Etho who was holding what seemed to be all of Bdubs beds, he waved beofre vanishing into the trees.
Zedaph clopped along the pathway, holding both his and Tangos bags. Tango was held by Impluse, resting his head on the tallers shoulder as he walked, the Android was tired, his body heavy, he felt himself slowly power down as they walked. That was fine, Impulse would wake him up when they got there.
The world portal warped and twisted before them. It shimmered in grey and blue. Tango shook slightly as they passed through the portal.
They hadn’t walked for very long before Skizz’s portal came into view, and Skizz himself was sitting outside of it, waiting for the trio. He perked up as they came closer. His normally wide smiled faltered as he saw Tangos state, he didn’t look like Tango anymore.
Skizz looked at impulse sadly, he reached forward with a shaky hand and ran his fingers through the abnormal still blonds hair.
Skizz shook his head, “let’s just go okay?”
“Yeah, he’ll wake up soon.”
“Okay.” Skizz just lead them though the portal, staying close to Impusles side and just watching Tango, he had to wonder, how much of him was still him?