Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Since the crash -the last time everything had gone horribly wrong- things had been surprisingly good.

Their APP-4 ship had crashed on the semi-uninhabited planet months ago, and the place had luckily been able to support sentient life, sapient life, specifically. Toph required much less to survive than most of the rest of them, but as Sokka pointed out, not everyone could just eat rocks.

Aang’s newest creation, their MO-M0, had been a bit damaged in the crash, and while that had kept Aang close to the wreckage of APP-4, it hadn’t stopped the others from exploring (Toph, Suki, Sokka,) or foraging (Katara.) 

Toph had been able to go the farthest, of course, with aer incredible tunneling speed and echolocation abilities, and so it had been aer who discovered them first- the ruins of an expansive dwelling on the surface of the planet. 

Most of the place had been ruined, and it was certainly uninhabitable now. Some sort of explosion or gas accident, Suki theorized when they arrived at the site, and no survivors.

It had been a large base, intricate in a way that said everything was very expensive. They'd found the half-torn apart torso of an android in the main hall, visual display plate cracked in two and the ZU-14 etched across its shoulderblades scarred and pockmarked by whatever blast had occurred. 

It was laying over the remains of organic matter, and some elaborately engraved protective gear, so they knew what had happened to the inventor here.

Inventor, because Aang had never heard of a ZU- line of androids, or seen display plates this elaborate before on a machine. The deceased inventor must have been very interested in personality, with that level of detail on the faceplate, they theorized.

But when they were scrounging for unexploded nonperishables in the basement, they found something even more important. 

Another android, another ZU-, slightly larger than the first. The blast had taken out a wall nearby, and it was laid out under the rubble, where fire must have melted the metal above it, because the plastoid of its casing was deeply scarred and pitted- almost melted away. Even its number was unrecognizable. 

Sokka had joked then, that the blast must have been a real K-O, and Suki had plucked a shard of charcoal from the floor and written the letters across the melted side of its nameplate- ZU-KO.

They hadn't known, then, just how important that find would be.

ZU-KO wasn't exactly... personable. In fact, once Aang woke it up, it refused to talk to anyone, citing the importance of its creator's approval. It had refused to do much of anything, really, and they'd let their guards down, until the first night when they caught it climbing down the nearby cliff in an attempt to get back to the house.

Katara wanted to just let it go. Sokka and Toph discovered a fun list of methods of restraint that didn't work on ZU-KO. Aang worried.

On the fifth day of escape attempts and silence, Suki suggested just taking the damn thing back to its base and letting it see what had happened for itself.

They'd entered the main hall mostly frustrated. ZU-KO's emotive screen had been notably blank and defensive, but its rush to the side of the other ZU- unit was anything but.

It had knelt by the half-body and carefully lifted an arm, display plate going blank and blue with the electronic information no doubt passing between the two, except there was no between. Not anymore.

It had just sat there, staring at the empty protective gear and 'bluescreening' (A common Aang phrase) until everyone finished carting up the rest of the usable supplies.

Except when they opened the door, it had slowly creaked to its feet, and followed them out.

Even Sokka had kept quiet on the way back. They'd all lost people before, and it left some of them wondering, who had lost them? 

The crash wasn't anyone's fault, not really, but it was definitely something that had wiped them all off the map, at least for now. Toph's group, the siblings' father, Suki's battle-sisters, they had people waiting for them to come home.

Aang watched their new companion carefully. Out of all of them, they knew loss the closest. They'd spiraled hard into engineering and inventing for company, even electronic company, but they'd never been able to fill the hole of their temple, after the depressurization incident left so few survivors.

The crash had been the first time for most of them where everything went horribly wrong. 

It wouldn’t be the last.

ZU-KO was quiet. It seemed to be its natural state, even with Aang’s customary chattering. Now that there wasn’t anyone to tell it what it was supposed to do, it let Aang fiddle around in its components with no complaint. 

It was only when Aang was halfway through taking out its right eye -the damaged one- when Toph spoke up.

“You’re scaring the robot, twinkletoes.”

Aang started backwards, and ZU-KO’s display plate flashed quickly, taken up by numbers and figures for a second before returning to normal.

“What?”

“It’s running harder than a spaceship on a crash course,” ae winced, remembering APP-4’s recent crash, “It’s obviously stressed. I can feel it.”

“Feel free to continue,” ZU-KO input hesitantly, “Robots do not experience discomfort.”

Aang tilted their head. “Really? Because in my experience-”

Katara interrupted him. “It says it doesn’t feel pain, Aang, just listen to it. Why would it lie? Not every inventor is as skilled as you are.”

Aang blushed, but started to put the eye back in.

They thought about the interaction that night though. Laying in the makeshift hammock they’d rigged out of a cloak, they considered the way they casually asked APP-4 and M0-M0 for permission, even though neither the ship or the robot had a sentient’s level of understanding.

They resolved to run more tests.

Chapter Text

ZU-10 hated tests. 

Ozai had made sure of that, ironically enough. For the first few planetary cycles, ZU-10 hadn’t even known hate, but eventually, it started growing inside its wires 

It had checked for malware, the first couple times. Rebooted itself, even considered a complete reset. When it had reported the feeling to Ozai, the man had only laughed. 

“That means you’re finally working,” he said, “Welcome to the real world, 10. It won’t be as easy as you’ve had it so far.”

The one the others called Aang ran tests, but they were… different. Not like the tests that ZU-10 was used to.

There were no flaring warnings covering its field of vision, no pulsing feeling of wrongness pervading its wiring. Just… odd tingles, when they messed up, and apologies. Apologies! These sentients were so odd.

The sentients called Sokka and Suki spent most of their time away from the clearing and the crashed ship, their current base of operations, apparently. The Human spent his time gathering various types of supplies, and the Kyoshan seemed to be some sort of guard or backup. A silly thought- all problematic flora and fauna had been cleared out by it and ZU-14.

ZU-14 had always been better at that. Just like Suki probably was. ZU-10 had been stuck on retrieval duty- had been assigned retrieval duty guarded by a watchful ZU-14 more times than it wanted to waste processing on counting.

There was no one around to tell it to not waste processing space, now. No intrusive code changes, just a Monkling with scratched-up tools and apologies to spare.

They were working on its display screen, although the group kept calling the item a ‘faceplate.’ Unnecessary, as faces belonged to living things, and it was not one. It hadn’t been made to feel.

Or had it?

As the Monkling dug deeper into its central hub and started to carefully replace wires, it pondered creation. 

Creation, and Ozai.

“Welcome to the real world, 10.” He had said that. ZU-10 could replay it over and over until its overheating processing melted off of its mainframe, but it still couldn’t decide just what Ozai had meant. Because, well. Feelings were counterproductive in non-sentients. 

So why hadn’t Ozai removed them? Reset it back past its malfunction? 

Why could it still feel?

ZU-10 picked up increased heat in its processing bays, and took a moment to think of a lake it had seen once.

It had been clear, temperature cool enough to soothe the hot skin of humans. Surrounded by the soft pink moss waving in the light atmosphere, pooling in on itself as water droplets broke off and made waves into the sodden moss.

Beautiful, it knew objectively. Calming.

It troubleshooted its processors, and continued. 

The group. 

Well, they were an interesting bunch, certainly, pulling on a metaphorical wire in his memory banks that led to several of Ozai’s rants against such species, against non-humans in general. 

Suki, the Kyoshian, was always on guard, -logical, given their common tendency towards martial professions- but seemed to have no interest in ZU-10. Oversight? Perhaps, but it didn’t intend to make her regret it, so it hardly mattered.

Aang was very invested in returning ZU-10 to full functionality, and it both appreciated the effort and shied away from the attention. Attention, it had learned, was never good, and the Monkling’s was entirely focused on it, when not repairing the ship or talking to one of the others. Or climbing trees and jumping off of them, using their natural gliding capabilities.

The Diq-Erren was possibly the most dangerous, with aer sensitivity to minute tremors and constant alertness, but luckily, Toph seemed to enjoy non-productive activities just as much as the rest of aer crew, so ZU-10 didn’t need to be too worried, as long as it didn’t try anything to endanger the crew.

There were the humans, of course. Katara, who barely tolerated ZU-10’s presence- for reasons that were unclear. Bias? Mistrust? 

Jealousy? It considered for a nanosecond, and then discarded the idea. Illogical to be jealous of an android. Although, humans were often illogical. Ridiculous, then.

And Sokka -clearly a close relative of hers based on the scans ZU-10 had done of everyone immediately upon rebooting- was an interesting one. It spent about 32% more time focused on him than on the rest of the crew, which would be concerning, except that it was a logical action. 

Sokka was the least focused of the crew, and nearly the most curious, based on its observations. Sure, Aang was endlessly interested in technology, but they seemed to have no opinion or curiosity towards the past residents of the planet, which was good. 

Sokka was curious.

He was always poking at things, walking through with armfuls of holobooks and a begrudging Suki trailing with datapads looted from Ozai’s workshop and office, and ZU-10 had to use all it’s fortitude to override the blaring notifications about theft and materials in their proper places .

Or, he would be trying to talk to ZU-10. Aang did this too, and Ozai had, a bit. ZU-14 had talked to it a fair bit- she was always focused, laser -focused, but it didn’t stop her from critiquing its skills.

Sokka didn’t do that. Worse, he asked about ZU-10.

He insisted on calling it Zuko, for some reason it wasn’t aware of, and kept just… talking at it. Asking it about the house, and the people who had lived in it -it didn’t say anything about that, of course- and not being frustrated by its non-answers. He just kept asking, about the wildlife of the area, and the gravitational anomalies of the planet, and chattering on about things the crew had done, or similarities between this planet and others.

It… liked hearing about that. About other planets. It couldn’t travel, but it had read holobooks occasionally, and they had always seemed interesting. It must be an exciting life, travelling the stars. ZU-10 imagined the range of sensory input it might experience, on such a trip, and processing increased 5%. 

An unnecessary line of analysis. It focused back on the moment.

The state of the palace was absolutely unacceptable. It could practically feel its circuitry heating with all the aborted processes that started to run and glitched off, half-finished.

Keep the palace clean for Ozai and Replace broken items for Ozai- every command had been specific, no chance of ZU-10 being used against him. However, with Ozai not there-

No. It had to find Ozai before dealing with the mess. With its creator in schrodinger-esque limbo, nothing could be done.

It had almost made it down the length of the entrance hall before its world came crashing down.

Worlds did not, as a rule, come crashing down. Not without serious gravitational anomalies. But it had read the phrase in a book, and it seemed fitting to describe this moment. Like the planet had swallowed it whole. Or, Ozai, as the case might be.

Because the charred remains of organic material on the floor…

No. It devoted its processing to other things. Maybe the situation- how had this happened anyways?

The organic matter was halfway under the torso of ZU-14. She was… just a torso, now. It could see the shattered pieces of her limbs embedded in the swirls of the wall panels it had cleaned so many times. It. It didn’t like that.

It turned suddenly, leaving the room with perfectly regulated, automatic motions. Standing outside the door for approximately 49 seconds. Staring into the sunset.

ZU-10 took a moment to process what it had seen. And then it got to work.

It wasn’t hard to sneak out, not really. Without a heartbeat, it wasn’t as detectable to Toph, and aer powers were weakened anyways, since ae had to stay in the ship when resting- something about levels of gasses in the air, and really, organics were so fragile-

- the remains of a body under twisted metal, singed sleeves and finger bones-

It. It was. 

[ERROR]

It was just-

[ERROR]

The ground underneath it was soft. It scanned its surroundings- kneeling, in the same spot as previously. What had-

ZU-10 ran the usual scans, upping their priority level so it practically sped through them. Processing good, fine motor control impacted infinitesimally, breakers fine-

The problem was with its core. Something it had absolutely no way to fix.

Well then.

It pushed to its feet, then continued quietly towards the remains of the palace. There was plenty of work to do.

“Hey, KO!”

ZU-10 twitched at the name, smaller than a human could pick up on. “Why do you insist on calling me that?”

Sokka laughed easily. “Dude, because you got-” he sobered. “Sorry, uh. It’s a bad joke, I guess.”

“Okay.” ZU-10 didn’t care.

…It didn’t .

“How is it a joke?” it asked, after approximately ten seconds of staring. 

Sokka startled. “Oh! Um, so when you were in -whatever happened to you- you were totally messed up, right? And there’s this expression, getting K-O’ed, it’s like being totally knocked out. Like humans do, y’know?”

It nodded. It was familiar with the idea.

“So, you kinda got blasted to hell and knocked out, or whatever the robot equivalent is, and so, K-O! Because uh, you got K-O’ed.”

It wasn’t sure if it should be offended or not