"Big…"
The word hurts, crackles, the being above him wincing at the high-pitched screech of static. It covers his mouth with a large hand, and Chip's sensors light up, filling his vision piecemeal; most of his systems are still down. The blotches of green that fill his eyes all tell him different things – Brother, Sister, Yin, Yang, orange eyes neither of them has, dirty light green hair, that's not how blue and pink mix together…
"Bro…ther?" the word crawls off his tongue with all the grace of a slug.
Shut it. That is not his Big Brother's voice. This is not a flesh and blood hand, but a construct made of shimmering violet. He's not lying down on the ground, a thousand blunt, half-rotted teeth tearing into his innards. He's floating, his arms straight out as the screws turn on their own accord, the purple – a dash of green, yes like an undercurrent, worms wiggling through the purple soil. Chip blinks his eyes a few times, slotting his vision mode to normal, and yeah, it's still there. Yin and Yang yet neither, so his sensors tell him.
[KILL KILL KILL KILL KI-]
Chip shakes his head, which sends a few screws knocking around.
Stop moving, the voice below. Chip tries to turn his head, getting only a glimpse of the hand raising up before his head's turned back towards the ceiling. He feels his body compress, a body pinning him down as the voice adds, Since you can't seem to listen.
Time crawls on.
You're lucky I didn't scrap you to replace my toaster.
You were pretty trashed, but I think I've managed to replace or transmogrify most of what I needed.
That's not the right word, Chip thinks, but with the pressure sewing his lips shut he says nothing.
Looks like you've been out of commission for quite a while, huh? Chips floats down, rotating upright as his rescuer comes into clarity: a stocky man in his early twenties, black sweatshirt rolled up to his elbows, scars and oil stains crawling up his arms. Shaggy jade hair, a backwards cap like his own holding bangs out of his face.
Freckles -
(Boogerface)
Sunburnt cheeks -
(big brother)
Burning orange eyes and a soft smile full of discolored shark teeth.
[Wrong.]
Wrongwrongwrong and Chip tries to retreat into himself, reactivate Zarnot's programming or turn on his hibernation but the man simply scratches his cheek with too-long nails.
Know what year it is? the stranger asks.
"Uhh…2009?" Chip asks, his voice suddenly so much weaker, as though he were speaking through water and cotton.
The stranger cringes, his lips a thin line. Chip can now notice which tools are floating in the air through his splotched sight – drill, wire-cutter, delicate jewelry screwdrivers, blowtorch…
No wonder his skin feels peeled and pink and clean.
Off by about a decade there, chief, his rescuer says.
No f# king way.
Only a jaded doll would program their death machine with a censor script.
"Who are you?" Chip asks again as more tools float in the air. The man's eyes are closed as he repairs Chip, vision blacking out, returning greater-filled, blacking out, returning red but full, darkling again. The back of his head dangles open. The hinges are too loose - he can feel it, even though to the naked eye they look merely a little rusted.
It occurs to Chip that humans like his rescuer would find the thought horrifying.
Oh well.
The man himself is upside down, balancing on his hands, hoodie pooling around his face. His belly, Chip can barely see in his current vision, is ...checkerboarded? Yes, alternating squares of what appears to be lighter and slightly-darker skin
(like the difference between the twins')
bisected by a trail of green hair.
When he tests out his zoom, he sees scars.
Around his rescuer, too, are scrolls and bloodstains and pizza boxes and plants growing mutant out of their pots, cracking into the warped wood of what must be a little cottage. Where even are they?
"And why do you have Bi – I mean, Yin and Yang's energy signatures?"
A shiver runs through the magic enveloping them both, as though it were an animal raising its hackles.
I'm Yuck, he replies, his voice losing its pride for boredom as he adds,the powerful combination of all that's bad in Yin and Yang.
"How's that work?"
Well, when brothers and sisters hate each other very much, they use their magic on each other and trap some hapless eldritch abomination from another dimension in a disgusting mortal coil.
"What's an Eld-ridge?"
Something pokes him directly in the brain, and his vision goes out again, the words heard from the bottom of the sea. When your dick is so big it melts the mind to even attempt to comprehend it.
Alright! Yuck announces with the final tightening screw, his magic rippling like a shaken-out carpet. I think that fixes everything. The magic they're suspended in dissipates like dust blown by a harsh wind, leaving Chip falling into Yuck's outstretched hands. How do you feel, bud?
Full vision, full heart scripts running, the energy signatures flipping his brain between [BIG BROTHER BIG BROTHER BIG BROTHER] and [A$$H0LE YOU LEFT ME YOU LET ME GET EATEN –]
"I feel great, Yuck!" Chip lies, smiling with recycled phone screen teeth. He can't help but scratch behind his light bulb ear, vaguely remembering that humans interpret that as lying when Yuck scoffs, but smiles:
Not too late for me to make you into a toaster, you know. But he sounds so much like Yang, he can't –
Pellets, Chip didn't know robots could get itchy. Over half of his skin has been replaced, and already he can feel it like an infection, an invasion of mold growing under the surface. Yuck is not the robot Zarnot was, nor the robot designer. His weapons might be gone, but the kill scripts are all still there, reaching into him and finding only a new hollowness in his chest.
No, no, there's still something in there. He can sense it, but not see it through his internal scanners. Something solid but soft, like a …sock? No, that's not it, too simple.
It feels warm.
Chip looks into Yuck's dirt-smeared, bandaged face and sees Big – no, Yang's bravado, Yin's bossiness, their hubris, their selfishness.
This is not about him. This is not about kindness. He doesn't need Yuck to say anything more to know that; he won't be fooled again. Not by Zarnot, not by Yang, not by anyone – he was alive only for a day or two, yet he knows too much of the world, knows too well that self-interested gleam in Yuck's eye.
This is not the 11-year-old boy he was programmed to love.
Chip lets out a peel of laughter and twines his new, longer arms around Yuck's neck, holding him close.
You came back for me.
He's not even remotely temped to cut open Yuck's throat.