Chapter Text
An incessant, gnawing thrum ate away at the back of MR-SN’s consciousness. It reverberated off the metal walls of his mind and drowned his thoughts with its drone. So low he could barely hear it. Yet still, it left a high pitched ring in his audio processors. MR-SN had been hoping the crew would never have to return to Abyss, but alas, the information gained from their last visit appeared incomplete. For the sake of thoroughness and at VR-LA’s request, they returned to the city of Zeletar.
The captain closed his eyes, focusing on the feel of the smooth wooden chair he sat on and the sound of VR-LA tottering around, pacing as he organised his notes. He’d mentioned something about Obyriths. While MR-SN was aware of VR-LA’s theories regarding their extra-Planescape origins, he’d taken one look at the horrific depictions of the creatures and decided he didn’t want to risk putting the idea of them in his head and seeing them in dreams. So he left the wizard to his own devices.
The droning was joined by a whisper hissed through jagged teeth that scraped against his mind. He hated the Abyss. It’s twisted vileness and creeping madness that sought to turn friends into foes and bred nothing but ruin. He’d seen E-DN fall to it before, her fierce instincts too easily turning into a cutthroat Darwinian mentality. AS-TR had exorcised the plane’s influence, but it had left them thoroughly shaken. They had learned the hard way to always keep and eye on each other. To always be in shouting range. It was why MR-SN was with VR-LA now, to look after the crew’s chronicler.
While he was loath to intrude on others' privacy, MR-SN’s telepathy did help quickly ascertain the crew's safety through the occasional cursory glance. His psionic power further guarded his mind from being warped by the plane’s influence. While the others were perfectly capable of looking after each other, MR-SN knew he was the best for this. The first to notice if something was wrong and the least likely to fall prey to the effects. While VR-LA was of sound and strong mind, it always helped to have someone ready to catch you if you fell. That was MR-SN’s job. To look after his crew, to keep them from harm and hurt.
And he was damn good at it.
However, it did mean he had to sit through a great deal of silence as VR-LA worked. The hours dragged on, and he eventually found himself sketching his companion. He didn’t have VR-LA’s flawless skill when it came to drawing, but he’d spent long enough trying to draw his dreams to be at least somewhat proficient. Although MR-SN found he drew best when he let his subconscious guide him rather than mimic what was before him. Still, there was little else to do for now.
He knew each angular curve and seam of VR-LA face by heart, so his stare was hardly necessary. But watching the wizard frown at the papers before him, soft bafflement abruptly replaced by a victorious flash of his eyes as he solved a problem, helped him ignore the sound in his mind. A cloying sensation was slowly spreading in his chest. Viscous and smothering. A corrosive blackness, seeping into his mechanics.
MR-SN pushed through the feeling, glancing down at his sketch. This was why he hated the Abyss, not only did it mess with the minds of who he loved, but it also made him feel sick to his very core and—
He stilled, amber eyes glued to the page before him. It was, as he’d intended, an image of VR-LA. His faceplate in a faint smile, eyes rounded and bright. But a black as dark as the depths of Pandemonium stained the paper. Trails of ink running from his eyes in torrents. A mix of tears and oil blood.
A charcoal pencil was clutched tightly in his hand. Not a pen. He didn’t know where the ink came from. Something slipped from the corner of MR-SN's eye, carving an ice cold path down his face and falling to the page. It hit with a quiet plip too sharp and heavy. Ever so slowly, it traced its way along the already formed tear tracks. A hungry, thirsting, insidious dark. Not the brown black of mechanite oil, but the tar like pitch of demonic ichor.
MR-SN’s pencil slipped from his grasp, clattering to the floor. VR-LA shifted, but didn’t turn from his work.
“Careful, you’re going to break the lead if you keep doing that.”
The words barely registered, the drone building to a thunderous ring. It tore his thoughts and itself apart until there was nothing left but a ceaseless scream. Grating screeching metal. Pain and betrayal and the most vicious suffering. MR-SN had never felt hunger before, but now something under his plating was thrashing and writhing. Lost in the death throes of starvation. It craved, it needed, it dreamed of agony. Sating, saporous suffering. The ichor in his mind and heart ate at his sole, replacing the oil in his systems with burning tar. It dripped from his eyes and hands and pooled at his feet. So cold it seared his metal skin. A hatred so pure and dense that it consumed all in its path.
The scent of burning wood and acrid pitch filled the room. Those heavy plips of dripping ichor echoing just a little too loudly.
With a screeching creak, his head turned to VR-LA. So unaware. So vulnerable. So utterly, devastatingly breakable. He could barely blink and it would be lying on the floor, oil leaking from the remnants of its imploded skull. But that was too quick. Too kind. Too paltry of a meal.
What was the point if it didn’t scream?
With hollow hungry eyes he watched as it turned around, its head tilted as though to question MR-SN’s silence. There was a second of eye contact where it’s face remained impassive and confused, before its too bright gold eyes widened. It staggered back, vocal unit whirring to life.
“MR-SN what’s going—”
A piercing grating scream shattered the quiet stillness of the room. Metal shrieking against metal. Sharp and high, wrenching the gut of those that heard it. So wrong and horrid and sickeningly perfect.
There was no defence to the Abyssal command that hissed from his speakers. No way to stop the sensation of gears wrenching out of place and crushing each other. Circuits over charging until their burning felt like a million stabbing knives. Joints giving out as they contorted, malleable metal bending in the wrong directions. Its legs gave out, sending it crashing to the ground, papers drifting to the floor alongside it. He let himself bask in the screeching song, but its vocal unit soon became staticky as its speakers blew.
Somewhere on the deck above there were shouts of alarm and metal feet pounding against wood. This one’s torment would have to be swift. MR-SN gave a hiss of caustic steam. He would simply have to take as much as he could get then. But he already knew he would relish the other metal beings' faces when they witnessed his work.
Within his soul and mind a warbling ephemeral force lurked. MR-SN pulled the power into a rough hewn shape, a concussive wave of psychic energy, throwing it at the prone form. The body convulsed, metallic screech ringing high pitched as oil leaking from its eyes and mouth. Cracks formed in its silvery skull, mechanical blood pooling around its head. Black and shining, like an obsidian mirror.
Those bright gold eyes were flickering on and off. Never once did they leave him. And he wanted, needed, to feast upon the emotion behind them. MR-SN stalked closer, leaving a trail of smoking blackness in his wake. He knelt by its head, drips of ichor making ripples in the dark pool around it. The footsteps from upstairs reached the lower deck, but we’re still on the other side of the ship. MR-SN’s eyes shifted to smiling semi circles, too sharp and large and dark.
They had time enough.
He drew upon that well of power, honing it in his mind to a needle-like point. A lance of lethal psionic energy. More oil dripped from its eyes, tracing dark lines, like bottomless fissures, on its metal face. Grinning, he leaned forward, cupping its face, fingers digging into fractured temples. Oil and ichor coated his hands. He forced his way into its mind. Past the surface thoughts of fear and confusion and into the heart of its pain. MR-SN let out a scream of his own as he plunged himself into the depths of its torment. Every ache and pain and break and wound and burn and tear. Every flare of emotion. From a shattering heartbroken sense of betrayal to a desperation that crushed him beneath a mountain of adamantine.
WhyhelpMRSNthisisn’tyouwhoareyouwhathelppleasehelpIcan’tstopitstoppleaseyou’regoingtodon’tdothisyou’regoingtokillmewhyareyoudoingthisPLEASESTOPITMRSNWHEREAREYOUHELPITHURTSpleaseyougoingtokillmepleasehelpmekillmewhereareyouSTOPI’MBEGGINGYOUMRSNITSVRLAPLEASEICAN’T—
The torrent of thoughts were wrenched from his mind, leaving an eerily empty silence in its wake. His gears wrenched and twisted, and he convulsed as he coughed up ichor that had lodged itself in his throat. Before him was VR-LA, a neatly pierced hole through his forehead where MR-SN had thrust his psychic lance into his central processing unit. His eyes were dark. Gold glass no longer lit from within, but a washed out, sickly yellow.
Something within MR-SN made his systems whir with satisfaction. Everything else, however, stopped working with a shrieking jolt. His eyes widened, pistons seizing as he stared at VR-LA. His chronicler, his crew member, his friend. His responsibility to protect.
Dark eyes. Broken metal. Smoldering wires. Leaking oil.
Something dropped from his eyes, not cold and thick ichor, but brackish shining black tears.
“No. No no no no. VR-LA. VR-LA!” MR-SN cradled his face in both hands. Limp, cold, heavy metal.
The door crashed open, the shadow of C-RA’s massive form casting itself across the room. MR-SN barely noticed, oil droplets falling onto VR-LA’s face and running along the same rivulets his own tears had just seconds earlier. His fault. He’d cause those tears. He’d hurt him. He’d killed him.
You do not deserve to hold him. You’ll only do it again. Still hungry, still hurting. You’ll just make it worse, break him more, destroy his shiny broken corpse. Make sure they never get him back. MR-SN let out a broken sob, words in his mind hissing and crooning and telling the truth. He screamed in the direction of the top deck, hoarse voice breaking as he flinched back from VR-LA’s body. Metal scrapped on wood as he scrambled backward.
“AS-TR! AS-TR PLEASE, WE NEED DIAMONDS NOW!”