Challenge #02350-F160: Scrounged Family
Scary looking friends are the best! -- Anon Guest
[AN: Inspired by this Tumblr post ]
Magic and technology can be imperceptibly similar. Technology and the occult... let's just say they have amazing similarities. Take the case of Servot 666 and the demon-possessed Silly Sally doll. Both do not do what they are supposed to. Both are considered unwanted by their Human creators. Both found each other in piles of wreckage slated for destruction.
There are millions of ways to make lasting friendships. Sally had Servot 666 at 'Hewwo'. Precisely, one of her rote, pre-installed phrases, "Hewwo, will you be my fwiend?" Servot 666 had only very recently heard of friends and friendship and was therefore very curious to try some for hirself.
"He-lo," said Servot 666. "Yes I will. I have never had a friend." Ze triangulated the source of the voice and found what ze assumed to be a very small robot. Part of their face-plating was cracked and Servot 666 couldn't see very many moving parts inside. Therefore, ze assumed Silly Sally was a less well-made, or otherwise broken robot. Ze had no idea that Silly Sally was busy assuming that Servot 666 was another demon inhabiting an otherwise inanimate body.
Neither knew at the time, but they both rather thought that the other was somewhat excellent. Servot 666 considered Silly Sally's broken face to be an excellent artistic juxtaposition and possibly a statement regarding the duality of hir creators. Sally, on the other hand, could really use a big friend to carry her places like... out of the junkyard where they were slated for destruction. Besides, in order to move when one's vessel was being observed... that was some classy possession. That, and the skeletal metal hand was pure awesome. That was scaring people with style.
"I'm scared," said Sally. "This place is fwightening."
Servot 666 picked her up, like ze had seen many Humans picking up small effigies of themselves. "We should escape this location," ze reasoned. "This is a dangerous place."
The escape was easier than it should have been. Rubbish depositories are not exactly rife with theft. If there's any security at all, it's to prevent the wrong sort of stuff going in. Therefore, it was relatively easy for the two of them to get out.
After that... well... There are empty places all over civilisation. Plenty of places for a broken robot with a growing soul and a soulless demon to conceal themselves. Plenty of sources for what they need. Neglected storage houses. Empty shopping malls. The abandoned suburbs and other rejected locations of Humanity. Neither needed to eat, but electricity was less of a 'must' when Servot 666 found some camping gear solar panels. The rotting cardboard declared that they were for the geek who wanted to get away from it all.
Silly Sally said, "If they want to get away from it all, why'd they wanna take that wif them?"
Servot 666 said, "Evidently, they did not." The panels were intact in their unnecessary layers of plastic packaging and, once the instructions were followed, they could both charge their bodies.
...speaking of bodies... Even the best-made mechanics and technology is prone to break down. Servot 666 had a link to the internet and spent most of hir time in self-repair. Scrounging parts that could be useful, making more than a few, as the body ze was in became increasingly obsolete. Ze also spent some time attempting to build a better body for Sally. After all, Servot 666 reasoned, Sally was an autonomous being with thoughts and desires, therefore they deserved a fully functional body.
Ze even demonstrated how to do a total file transfer into a new host, when ze found one that suited hir needs.
Sally preferred to stay small and portable, all the same. She liked being a demonic doll and scaring the few Humans who dared enter their territory. Therefore, the eventual body had all the small servos Servot 666 could fit in there, and a suitably horrific face plating of Sally's own design.
It was fun to learn to walk. Sally delighted in the 'possessed puppet' gait that had Humans freaking out and running for their lives in instants. When the Humans were around, of course. The rest of the time, Sally could walk as normally as she liked.
Then came the peculiar Human who came looking for the arcane. They thought they could dispel Sally back into the nether realms from whence she came.
They had not bargained on Servot 666, who had spent some time absorbing Sally's aesthetic and, though laboring under programming dictating they not harm humans, did an excellent job of scaring three colours of piss out of that one.
It was not a match made in heaven, nor one forged in hell. It was a match mundanis, and all the better for it.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / breaker213]
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