literature

Yes, that'll be the way home (pt.6)

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Literature Text

Day five, dawn.

Rabbit grunted and hauled herself upright. She spat a clump of grass out and gazed wide eyed at the surroundings. They’d been unconscious for an entire day in the middle of nowhere. At least the jetpacks were a minor success, though admittedly the robot siblings hadn’t quite perfected crash landings. She soon came to realise that Peter turning down her requests for rocket skates was rather well founded after all, considering they'd disconnected from the jetpacks completely and they were nowhere to be seen. Not exactly 'safe harmless fun' as she would've put it.

“S-Spine?” she called out.

She felt a sudden twinge on her left side and reached up to hold her arm. She shrieked suddenly. The left arm was completely gone!

“W-where’s my arm!”

“L-l-l-looks l-like you’re a r-r-rather armless automaton, Rabbit!” chuckled a familiar booming voice.

“Spine!” Rabbit cried happily and ran towards her brother as he carefully picked his way up the hill.

“N-n-need a hand? Heh…ha…” Spine collapsed forwards, face down in the grass clutching Rabbit’s missing arm.

“C-c-c-come on n-now, p-p-puns and glitches are m-my thing! D-don’t go stealin’ a gal’s identi-t-ty!”

Spine babbled incoherently, giggling inanely in between limb related puns. He wasn’t in great shape from what Rabbit could tell. He’d suffered yet another hard knock to the head when they crashed and his otherwise immaculate attire was completely dishevelled and torn in several places.

“A-a-and you’re s’posed t’ be the sensible one, huh?”

“Shaddup.”

She pried her missing arm from Spine’s hand and eased it back into the empty sparking socket. She sighed heavily as it dangled uselessly owing to the severed connections.

‘Mikey’s gon’ be piiiiissed…’ she thought to herself.

Spine rolled himself over onto his back and stared at the sky. He was slowly coming to his senses again, though still heavily disoriented. He puffed a small cloud of steam from his lips.

“Where’d you reckon that scientist got to?”

“I ‘unno,” Rabbit shrugged, toying with her immobilised arm, “D-d-does it matta? I think the m-more important part is finding our way home. Y-y-your cell workin’?”

Spine reached in his trouser pocket and pulled out his phone. It was completely crushed and beyond repair.

“I dunno, could be,” he retorted sarcastically.

“St-stunningly helpful!” Rabbit cried in exasperation and threw herself down to the ground next to Spine, “So whadda we do now?”

Spine thought for a moment and smirked.

“Arm-wrestling match?”

Rabbit glared at her brother indignantly.

“First of all, how dare you…”

~*~

“ARGH! I can’t take this anymore!”

“Easy, Steve, you need to calm down.”

“How, Mike!? HOW! I shouldn’t have left town without them! We shoulda stayed! They’re obviously in trouble and we can’t help! How are we…”

“Steve Negrete, pipe down this instant!”

Steve and Michael turned to face Peter flanked by the twin Matter Masters in the doorway.

“Gah. Sorry, Petes, I just…”

“Getting worked up won’t help matters. Come with us. We found something in the mobile Wi-fi log.”

“Really? So we can locate them after all!” Michael cried out optimistically.

“Not exactly. And don’t get your hopes up.”

The one-man-band noticed David and Bunny’s grim expressions. Not good news at all.

“S-so… what did you find?” Steve asked nervously.

“A draft message from Rabbit. We managed to salvage it from the remote backups. And I’d rather only you two saw it at this stage.”

“What about…”

“Hatchworth is in no state to see it, the Walter workers are busy and Matt isn’t here. Now come.”

Steve relented and he followed the group down the hallway with Michael in tow. They soon reached a small study with a projector. Peter motioned to the four chairs situated in front of the screen.

“Sit.”

He plugged in a small USB stick to the computer and hooked it up to the projector. The file took a painfully long time to load as the humans sat in an awkward silence.

“So, uhh, did you…” Michael began.

“Just watch,” David interrupted solemnly.

The screen was filled with white noise before finally focusing onto a figure that resembled Rabbit’s online avatar.

“Rabbit!” Michael and Steve yelled collectively.

“Guys? GUYS!” the panicked message started and quickly silenced them, “We’re- we’re in trouble! Spine’s hurt! There are people here and I…I… I’m so sorry! I-”

The message was cut short by a mechanical scream and switched immediately to white noise, followed by a system message ‘ERROR. MESSAGE FAILED TO SEND. DRAFT SAVED 00:47 AM.’

The humans sat in stunned silence.

“No… Rabbit… Spine…” Michael sank down his seat.

Steve’s face was full of remorse, “I… I shouldn’t have left them. We should’ve gone to look for them.”

“Stop punishing yourselves. It won’t help. Besides, there wasn’t anything you could’ve done. The robots wander off all the time. What could you have expected?” Peter retorted as he ripped the USB from the computer.

“Should’ve expected the worst…” Michael groaned.

“We- we also salvaged one image from Rabbit’s optic feed,” David added quietly.

‘And you won’t believe who it is either…’ Bunny mimed.

“Who?”

“GUYS!”

The conversation was cut short as Carolina rushed into the room panting heavily.

“What!! What is it!?” Peter snapped angrily.

“Hatchworth’s picked up their signal!”
Spine and Rabbit soon find out that they're just not cut out for careers in aviation. Meanwhile the Walter workers have found something... unpleasant on the mobile back-ups they managed to salvage.

(Also who's the mystery person they saw!? Ahhh! *flails arms*)


N.B. All characters belong to their respective owners in SPG (www.steampoweredgiraffe.com/ ). This is purely a fan-based creation.
© 2014 - 2024 Paelfire
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SteampunkMaster's avatar
I really love your back-and-forth commentary between Rabbit and Spine. STOP MAKING ME LAUGH SO HARD WITH ALL THESE PUNS!!!