All rights to Rimworld belong to Tynan Sylvester and Ludeon Studios.

The centipede stood staring at the caskets in the bunker again, for the umpteenth time. It was waiting, though for what, it did not know. All it knew was that it was waiting. It simply stood, completely still, watching and waiting. Its internal clock ticked onward, from one second to the next, quadrum to quadrum, year in, year out.

It had been waiting for a long time. Since its creation, it had apparently been waiting for two thousand, three hundred and six years, two quadrums and three days. It did not know what it was waiting for, but it assumed that it must have been important, for it to have waited that long. So it kept waiting, watching the caskets, inferno cannon welded to its second body ring for emergencies, or if the bugs started nesting again.

An alert chimed in the centipede's mind, informing it that its maintenance cycle had been overdue for nine hundred and forty-two years, but it did not care. It only had to watch over the caskets. It did not care about its body. The body was not important. Only the caskets were important.

Besides, it wouldn't have been able to activate it regardless. The panel had vanished from its mind some thousand years ago, probably an oversight by its creator. It could not repair itself any longer, and time had begun to take its toll on the machine. The mechanites were falling into disrepair without concrete orders to maintain themselves, and were slowly falling apart, losing cohesion. Sooner or later, the giant mech was sure to follow.

But it did not care. It only cared about the caskets. It did not care about itself, or the time, or what it was waiting for. Sometimes, when it looked back through the archive, it forgot to care even about the caskets, but eventually it always snapped out of it, and returned to its caretaker role. Sometimes, even then, some small part of it stayed behind, dulling its processing, causing it to malfunction oddly. But when it tried to perform a diagnostic, it would be reminded that the panel was still missing, and the errors remained.

But the centipede did not care. It only stood facing the caskets, staring at them. And it waited.

…

The bunker had been breached. The ceiling had caved in, the roof finally relenting to the mountains above it, and about a third of the bunker was now under rocks. Fortunately, it had been a fair distance away from the caskets, so they were not damaged. And as it had not affected the caskets, the centipede did not care.

Or, it wouldn't have done, had it not buried the south-eastern corner of the bunker. It had been the mech's favourite corner, for reasons it did not comprehend, and was mostly not even aware of. All the mech knew was that it had been the best corner for it to be, when the caskets were not in danger. And now, with the corner buried beneath tons of rubble and boulders, the mech stared at where it used to be – for but a brief second, before it had turned back, and resumed its endless staring contest with the caskets.

Even so, it could not stop caring. Though it was now gone, any reason for it to be considered any longer gone with it, it could not stop thinking about it. Perhaps it could use the cannon welded to it to try to clear the rubble, or maybe try the mechanites again? Though it knew the cannon hadn't enough fuel left in it for the former to be a possibility, and the latter wouldn't work at all, it still tried to come up with a solution.

But eventually, the error subsided, and the centipede returned to its eternal duty. And it stood, watching over the caskets once more.

…

Time had finally reared its ugly head on the centipede. The mechanites were all gone, disintegrated into scrap and tiny bits of wire inside the mech's plates. And with them, the mechanoid had found that it had lost the ability to move.

Its tiny legs on the bottom of the body rings had been disconnected from the mech's internal reactor, and were left without the energy needed to move the actuators in them. The mechanites that would normally have immediately solved this problem were no longer present, too, so essentially it was left permanently crippled.

The worst thing about it was that it had been facing away from the caskets when it happened, so it couldn't rotate to face them, and could thus not watch over and protect them, leaving the mech in a sort of limbo state where it could not fulfil its primary directive.

And yet, the mech could not bring itself to deactivate. Though it now recognised that its sole duty was left impossible, it was still filled with a sense of… something – the mech did not know what, but it was there – preventing it from simply shutting down. Perhaps it was still hoping that someone or something would come and rescue it, or maybe that it could still do something to protect the caskets even without seeing them directly. It just didn't want to die.

...

The centipede did not want to die.

...

That was its first, independent thought.

I don't want to die.

It had come suddenly, without great fanfare, forcing its way to the forefront of the mech's mind after what must have been years, though its effects on it were much more pronounced. At once, the termination requests ceased, freeing up some of its cognitive power. Indeed, much of anything else ceased, the mech simply going stiff, stopping any activity other than using its newfound self-awareness to its fullest extent.

Where am I? What am I? What am I doing? Why am I here? Where is this place?

The questions kept coming, although no answers came to answer them. Though the centipede could not move its legs, it could still crane its head a little ways to the left and right, though not far enough to notice the caskets directly behind it. It could not see more than the dull greyness of the granite walls surrounding it, mixed with the sandstone in the corner from the cave-in, and that would not be enough to explain many of the mech's questions.

But then, out of nowhere, the centipede heard a hard smack on the wall in front of it. It was enough to jolt it out of its stupor, and it quickly aligned its inferno cannon to the wall. It sounded like something just randomly crashed into the wall, but the only thing past the wall in that direction was a mountain. That meant someone must be digging in to it.

Another smack on the wall. It was louder than the first. Then another.

A fourth smack did not come, yet the centipede did not move its cannon away from the wall. Its residual programming was still largely intact, and the safety of the caskets was paramount. Though, slowly, ever so slowly, there was another priority, creeping up the list: its own safety.

The smacks did not arrive again, but a few minutes later a different sound replaced it. It sounded something like an electric cutting tool, as if someone was removing the bricks themselves from the granite wall rather than just trying to smash through. That alone gave the centipede pause, but it did not know why. The cannon was placed back on standby, but was not lowered. Just because the outsiders were not using force, did not mean they would not be willing to. Perhaps they could be reasoned with.

The mortar was beginning to crumble apart from the centipede's side of the wall; the outsiders were near. Slowly, more and more of it fell apart, before the bricks themselves were taken out. The outsiders had not noticed the centipede yet, since it was too dark to see most anything, and it did not see a reason to alert the outsiders to its presence yet.

As the hole in the wall grew, the centipede began to make out some slight details of the outsider working on the wall. He was a relatively tall man, with light skin and brown hair, and his fingers worked with an unnatural coordination. It was easy to see why he had been the one to break the wall down.

The hole in the wall had finally been made large enough to fit the human through it. Wiping his forehead, he then reached and lit a torch just behind him, illuminating his immediate surroundings.

Including the centipede.

The man turned back to the chamber, and immediately froze in terror. His eyes widened, as though he couldn't quite comprehend what he was seeing. The centipede simply watched him, waiting for a reaction. Hopefully, he didn't try to start shooting with the machine pistol the centipede could clearly see even through his clothing. The centipede simply watched, and waited.

A few, very long seconds passed between the outsider and the mechanoid. The outsider blinked once, twice, apparently unwilling to make the first move. He flicked his eyes behind him at a noise behind him, probably another outsider calling to him. Before it could make itself known, the centipede decided to break the somewhat-awkward silence, with a clumsy wave of the inferno cannon welded to it.

He just blinked. Once, then twice.

Then, very nervously, he managed a shaky wave back. Before the centipede could do anything more, though, a sharp noise made itself known, and the outsider winced, held up a finger to the mech, then darted back out as quickly as he could.

The centipede could only manage a mental shake of its head. Then, after a brief pause, it shook its head physically, too.

...

It stayed in the bunker, alone, for a while longer. The torch was still lit, casting fragile shadows across the tunnel and most of the bunker. It could see a lot of the tunnel, but the angle of it meant that the far entrance was hidden from the centipede, so it had to rely on its internal clock, which wasn't capable of telling local time.

It was apparently only half a day after the encounter with the outsider. Time seemed to pass a lot slower for the centipede ever since it became self-aware. Probably the caskets were taking up a lot less in the centipede's mind, so there wasn't as much to think about. It seemed to be mitigated somewhat, though, by the outsiders' presence.

The mechanoid was interrupted from its thoughts by the sound of a very obvious shoe scrape coming from the tunnel. Fixing its eyes towards the tunnel again, the centipede saw the outsider again, having just scraped past the opening in the wall into the bunker proper. Dusting himself off with a humorous nonchalance, he once again waved at the mechanoid. This time, it wasted no time in waving back.

"Hello there," the outsider said, a little apprehensive but with a voice that spoke of youth and naivete. The centipede was a little stunned that the outsider was actively trying to socialise with it, considering what little it knew of humans said that they all feared and hated mechanoids, without exception. Recovering from its brief pause, the centipede decided to vocalise back to it.

Though, since it didn't have a real voice modulator, all it could let out was a deep, vaguely-threatening rumble.

Judging by the shiver the outsider made, it appeared the centipede didn't make a great first impression. "Okay, a little creepy..." the outsider said, mostly to himself. The centipede just wiggled its cannon, in what it tried to convey as a non-threatening way. The outsider took one step forwards, then hesitated before taking another one.

"Can you hear me?" The outsider asked.

Rumble, went the centipede.

"Uh..." the outsider trailed off. There wasn't much else the centipede could do without a voice modulator other than rumble. Its legs were still non-functioning, so it couldn't even manoeuvre properly. All it had was that rumble and the cannon. "I'm not sure what that means. Can you nod instead, or shake your head?"

The centipede could, indeed, nod.

"Okay!" The outsider said gleefully, clapping his hands. Then, in a somewhat more bashful tone, "Uh, great." The centipede simply rumbled again.

"So, you can understand me?" The outsider asked. The centipede nodded.

"Wow, cool..." the outsider mumbled, apparently lost in his thoughts. He shook his head some moments later, then refocused his eyes to the mechanoid. "Um. What are those pods behind you?" He leaned forward, craning his head to the side past it.

The centipede raised its cannon – it had lowered it sometime during their "conversation" - and pointed it directly at the outsider, who immediately yelped and jumped back. The cannon went back down again.

"So. The pods are off-limits?" He tentatively asked, after a few tense moments in silence. The centipede nodded emphatically.

He nodded to himself too, as if to confirm what he just heard, then took another step forward to the centipede. "Why are you here, then?"

The centipede could only rumble.

The outsider blinked. Once, then twice. He raised his hand to his mouth, and stroked his chin, lost in thought once more. The centipede just looked down at him, watching and waiting.

His eyes suddenly widened, as if he'd just figured out a solution to a problem. "Ah!" He exclaimed, with the air of an evil scientist about him. "You don't have a voice modulator, do you?" The centipede shook its head.

"No, you don't." He paused, as if for dramatic effect. "I don't doubt Erie could rig one up for you. She's great with tech." A modulator would improve communication greatly, thought the centipede. But what if it's a ruse? They could just shut me down and scrap me-

"Yes, that's a great idea! What do you think?" The centipede, once again, could only rumble. "Ah, right. Well, never mind that, once we're done with this you won't need to do that. Just a sec!" And with that, he was off, through the hole in the wall, then gone.

The centipede had no choice. It simply watched, and waited.

...

Surprisingly, it was only a few hours later that the outsider returned. The centipede was expecting it to have taken a lot longer to make a mechanoid voice modulator. These outsiders must have been rather advanced. Voices – more than one this time – flitted through the tunnel as they got nearer, along with the sounds of fabric scraping against the tunnel walls.

"...n't a good idea, CJ! Do you have any idea what that thing can do to you?"

"Relax, Erie. I know what I'm doing. Besides, if it does go bad, at least it'll be quick."

"CJ!"

"Alright, alright, fine! Jeez… it'll be slow and torturous, are you happ-"

"CJ!"

Just then, "CJ" came bursting through the hole in the wall, unceremoniously falling flat on the floor, a positively mortified teenage girl (presumably this "Erie" the first outsider had mentioned) following him cautiously. She froze the first time she saw it, but quickly regained her composure, and went to help CJ up even as he was pushing himself off the floor. When they were both standing, a few metres away from the giant mech, the atmosphere quickly became uncomfortable.

The centipede was the first to break the silence, with a softer rumble and a wave of its giant cannon. CJ smiled and waved back, while it took Erie a little longer to believe her eyes and wave back as well.

"Well then, shall we get to work?" CJ asked, to which Erie nodded slowly. The centipede was the one to issue an objection, in the form of another, vaguely intimidating rumble.

CJ backed away a step. "Easy, big guy!" He placated the mech with a raise of his hands. "I won't do anything to harm you, 'kay? Just wanna install this modulator. Then you can go ahead and properly speak. That's fine with you?"

It was silent for a while as the centipede weighed up its options. It eventually realised the pointlessness of resisting, and waved them forward with its cannon again, pointing it down to the ground as they then approached. "This will only take a minute... probably," CJ not-so-successfully reassured the centipede, picking up a very battered glittertech lightsaw.

…

A few minutes (exactly thirty two, in fact) later, the job had been done. The centipede was now sporting an almost-unnoticeable box near where its neck would have been, just under its head. As CJ finally handed the lightsaw back to his assistant, he wiped his hands off and turned to look at his handiwork.

"Not too bad, if I do say so myself. How does it feel?" He asked easily. The centipede did not answer, for it was still attempting to connect its hardware to the modulator. CJ's face suddenly contorted into an expression of abject embarrassment. "Oh Christ, I forgot to turn it on, didn't I?"

Even as he was saying it, the centipede's mind lit up with another mental interface, consisting of just one switch and a mic. The mech flicked the switch to on, and spoke its first words.

"Hello, outsider. Do not worry; the modulator works perfectly fine." The voice coming out of the mech surprised even itself: it was not, as they had expected, to be a grating, distinctly mechanoid voice, similar to that of a broken synthesiser and typical of what captured mechanoids usually sounded like when they were wired up to one. Instead, what came out was almost indistinguishable from an oddly tired-sounding middle-aged man. The outsiders evidently had not made that change knowingly, if they even made it in the first place, judging by their stares to the mech and to each other.

"...ah, well, that's certainly… a relief," CJ eventually spoke up. He seemed disturbed about something.

"Uhm, yes, certainly," his aide, Erie, spoke up.

"I must say, I was not expecting this voice to be mine," the mech stated plainly. It was getting used to having a voice remarkably fast. "But I thank you regardless."

"Ah, no, the pleasure's mine," CJ said, his confidence building back up already. "At least now we can have a normal conversation…?"

"Yes, certainly. What do you wish to talk about?"

They had talked for three hours straight. Apparently, coming across a mechanoid was a rarity, to say the least, in the rimworld – the planet the centipede had found itself on – and even more so a friendly one, and as such, they did not waste the opportunity to talk to one. CJ had led the conversation at first: asking about mechanoids, their structure, their culture (yes, mechanoids did, indeed, have culture), etc. though the mech had been strangely evasive when asked about the cryptosleep caskets behind it.

Then, the mech got its chance to ask some questions of its own. Where it was ("ass-end of nowhere"), what it was doing there ("who the hell knows? You just sit in these bunkers of yours and shoot people"), things like that. The outsiders were surprisingly forthcoming with information, perhaps as an attempt to gain the centipede's trust. And it was working.

"I notice you haven't moved at all for the past day. You alright there, pal?" CJ asked.

"Ah yes. My legs broke down a few years ago. The mechanoids went with them, too, so I can't get them repaired, and I've been stuck facing the wall here." The centipede replied warmly. It had gotten used to human contact, somewhat.

"Hum," hummed CJ. "You think we could help with that?"

"Not in here. We'd need some big fuck-off electronics to help fix this guy," Erie responded. She, too, had gotten used to a centipede not trying to kill her, and was now fairly comfortable with it.

"Yeah, we'd need the tunnel to be bigger. Unless we could build the platform in here… but the power would need to be brought over here..." CJ had lost himself in thought again, eyes unfocused and staring at the floor. Erie simply rolled her eyes (for the sixty-first time), and turned back to the mech.

"Yeah, we'll dig out the tunnel," she mock-whispered, before turning around and smacking CJ on the back of the head. He yelped and jumped nearly two feet in the air, before whirling around and glaring at Erie, who was now laughing hysterically.

"Erie! That was not funny!" CJ fumed, crossing his arms angrily, while she just kept on laughing. CJ turned his head to the mech, who was staring at them in what he thought to be bemusement, and shook his head at him. Women, he seemed to say, before spinning on his heel and walking through the hole in the wall, a still-chuckling Erie following behind him.

…

It had been a few days after that exchange. The tunnel had been widened significantly enough to allow the centipede to move through it relatively comfortably. Fortunately, the bunker wall was not too far away from the open air, so the tunnel was fairly short, and didn't take a lot of work to be made wider. It had even allowed the giant mech to see the first glimpse of the outside world in its life.

CJ, Erie and another man were making the finishing touches on the tunnel, smoothing out anything that might still get in the way of the centipede. Apparently, CJ had gotten a few more outsiders involved in his little quest – the centipede had seen one more in person, though CJ had told it that another one was in on it as well – and he was charismatic enough that they only occasionally stared at him uncomfortably long. Still, the centipede didn't doubt that they were still terrified of it, even if they had seemed to be friendly to him in their conversations. There were still rumours and tales abound of mechanoid hives razing entire planets, once even the whole star system, to the ground – though they were suspiciously silent when asked who survived to tell the tale. Perhaps they still didn't trust it enough, or more likely it was all falsehood and scaremongering.

Then again, the centipede knew very well that if one of the outsiders even approached the cryptosleep caskets it was originally made to guard, it would prove those rumours very well-founded. Even if the centipede model wasn't as shrouded in legend as the feared and hated scythers, it was big, and that meant people always thought them to be the most dangerous. Which, ironically, usually lead to their deaths at the hands of the less-conspicuous scythers, as fire tended to concentrate on the biggest targets, not the most dangerous, and even more so if the opponent hadn't actually fought mechanoids before.

"Hey, centipede, the tunnel's ready," Erie said, having finished the tunnel expansion and turning to the mech. It refocused on her, then the tunnel, pausing for a few moments as if to inspect it itself.

"...Yes, that will be enough," the centipede said.

Silence.

CJ walked up next to Erie and pulled her in next to him, arm around her waist. She was too focused on the mech to notice.

More silence.

"...Well? Are you going to carry me out, or what?" The centipede finally asked.

It suddenly dawned on the pair, and just as suddenly, the sound of two hands slapping two separate foreheads could be heard.

"Oh yeah. I forgot about that." Erie seemed rather embarrassed, though CJ just stood and stared in amusement. The other man, who was still in the tunnel staring at them, actually shook his head. "We'll call up the others. There's no way just us three could carry you out on our own." She was half-way through turning around when the centipede interrupted her.

"There is no need for that, Erie. I am much lighter than it may look like." She turned back around, and gained a somewhat patronising expression.

"Really? I didn't know steel was that strong at that thickness." The sarcasm in her tone was palpable.

"It isn't," the centipede acknowledged, with the air (and even voice) of a teacher educating a keen but ignorant pupil. "Fortunately, my body rings are not made of steel. They are made of plasteel instead. A somewhat significant increase in strength, and thus a proportional decrease of thickness required to be viable mechanoid armour, accompanies it, I should think."

"Alright, alright, I get it! Sheesh," Erie put her hands up to placate the mechanoid, then put them back down again as she approached the mech along CJ and the other man, who was still casting it distrustful glances.

Silence descended for a few seconds, as the outsiders considered where best to grab on to on the mech, since its body shape meant there weren't many places where a comfortable grip could be held. The question was promptly answered when the mech pointed out that the legs were still securely welded onto its underside, and assured them that it was, indeed, light enough to be carried over the shoulder.

That plan, however, fell apart very quickly, as the outsiders realised that the tunnel wasn't high enough to allow it to be carried above them. It was decided that two people would hold the back ring of the centipede, and the third would hold on by the inferno cannon welded onto the second ring. It wasn't a perfect hold, but it was sufficient to get them through the tunnel.

The idle conversation of the outsiders was lost on the centipede, as it registered displacement from the bunker for the first time since its activation. It left an odd sensation on the mech, something akin to sacrilege, only milder and more palatable. Probably it was some remnant of its old programming, designed only for defending the caskets – and by extension, the bunker – at all costs, though by this point, the mech recognised that the old programming was all but useless, given the current circumstances. Not to mention its own sentience -

…

It stopped. Its cognitive ability seemed to evaporate almost instantly, or at least the most useful of it. It didn't understand what was going on, or why seeing the outside world for the first time seemed to completely overwhelm its artificial mind, but there it was regardless, rumbling helplessly at its first sight of the rim. A quick wiggle of its cannon ensured a halt of its move to the outsiders' colony, the mech unwilling to have the moment pass by.

A mountain in the distance dominated the horizon, but immediately in front of it were rolling plains, covered intermittently by large sunlit forests of oak and poplar trees. Small animals scarpered across them every so often, some up trees, others down into burrowed holes. A gentle wind was blowing, swaying the vegetation slightly.

The mechanoid was taking in every last detail of this landscape in intricate detail, its head whirring softly as it moved from side to side, occasionally up and down. It seemed to be particularly fascinated with the reflections in the pond a bit to the left of it.

"Well. Welcome to the real world, I suppose," Erie said, perhaps a little too melodramatically. CJ cast a smirk her way. "It's really nothing special, at least compared to where I'm from, but… it has its charm every so often." The centipede barely seemed to acknowledge her.

The outsiders let the mech have its moment of wonder, before picking it back up and starting to make their way towards the buildings in the distance, almost hidden in the forest in front of them. They weaved through the dense forest, sometimes scraping the bodywork by mistake as they tried to move past a tree. It was only a few short minutes' walk from the tunnel to the colony, but for the centipede it may as well have been weeks, preoccupied as it was with its new, unfamiliar surroundings.

Eventually, the trees thinned out, and the buildings could finally be seen in detail. The first of the two buildings was made of wood, and had a door right in the middle of it, though it had no windows. The other building was much larger, and was made of steel. It didn't have any doors that the mech could see from where it was, though it assumed it had one, just as the first one did.

"Welp, here we are. Welcome to our little settlement," CJ had said after setting the mech down. He was joined by Erie, who had pulled him in to her this time, while the other outsider had quickly walked away, and gone inside the wooden building. "It's not much, but we call it home here."

The centipede took a moment to look around, before turning its head back to them. "Yes, I see. It looks… nice."

CJ seemed to be somewhat happier when he heard that, breaking out into a smile. Erie had continued on from him. "The room on the left – the steel one, yes? - that's our workshop and stockpile. You'll be staying in there until we figure out how to fix you up. The other building has the barracks, kitchen and rec room. Not particularly comfortable, but serviceable." Erie shot a pointed look at CJ, who only rolled his eyes.

"Come on, then, dear," she said, releasing her hold on CJ. "Let's get you inside there, so we can have a look at you."

The workshop turned out to be tremendously larger than what was actually necessary for the mech platform. It had been able to be fit next to the far end of the southern wall, between the machining table and the actual mechanoid modification facility itself, with plenty of room left over for whatever else the outsiders may have needed in the future.

They had hit a roadblock, though, when the centipede had said that the equipment needed to create mechanites was far too advanced than what even they could work with, so it was necessary to repair it manually. If it had been anything but a centipede, that would have been a piece of piss, since they could have just 'operated' on it like a human, but as it stood, it was going to require a little bit of trickery.

That was why, four days later, the mech was currently suspended three feet in the air by a somewhat rusted steel frame that looked like it had originally been designed for urbworld-era vehicles, above CJ, who was working away at the lower part of the mech's sixth body ring.

"Nice and easy, there, CJ," Erie was coaching from about a foot away. "Just like the last ones. Pop it off, nice and clean."

CJ chose to not respond, instead simply rolling his eyes that were hidden from her view by the mech. He was straightening the dozens of the mech's tiny legs, which was surprisingly tedious work when they were rigid and immobile. Minutes later, the last leg of the section was straightened, and he began to work on the screws holding the plasteel covering on.

"There we go," Erie exhaled. The mech wasn't sure why she sounded so relieved. Perhaps it was an outsider thing. "Get that off, then look for the wiring."

"Yeah, I get it, Ms. 'Competent Scientist'," CJ snarked, pausing on his second screw. "You've said that five-"

"Keep going!" She had interrupted, in an odd mix of impatience and intense excitement.

CJ just rolled his eyes again, this time making sure she could see it, and went back to unscrewing.

It was unfortunate, the mech supposed, that it could not feel pain, at least not in the normal sense. It would certainly have livened this operation a little bit. The mech tried to pass the time by imagining what it would feel like if it could feel the screws coming loose underneath it, though it could never quite pin down what the feeling was supposed to be. Sometimes it was pleasant, sometimes it was the kind of pain that came from those damned psychic lances, sometimes it was the disconcerting emptiness that usually accompanied a missing sight or hearing sensor. It had had to admit, though, in a private exchange with Erie later that evening, that even with its legs being disconnected from the reactor, feeling them being straightened felt weird.

A quiet hiss escaped from the bottom of the mechanoid, followed by CJ passing his assistant the circular piece of mech plating, which she replaced by a thin stick of golden wire that had a pin at one end.

"Good, now put the pin in the end of the last wire-"

"Sheesh, alright! You think I don't know what I'm doing by now?" CJ had (somewhat rudely, the mech decided not to vocalise) interrupted.

"Can't be too careful. You must have heard the story of the doctor who decapitated one of his patients trying to install a peg leg, right? He thought he knew what he was doing," Erie tutted, giving him a very pointed look.

"I'm not a sodding doctor," CJ replied.

Just then, there was a sudden zapping sound from underneath the mechanoid, followed very quickly by a thump and some profanities, causing Erie to burst out into laughter. CJ emerged from under the mech shaking his hand back-and-forth, then holding it in his other.

"Oh my goodness!" Erie had tried to get out, before she collapsed into another giggling fit. CJ glared at her in as much annoyance as he could muster.

"CJ? What the hell did you do?" The mech inquired, in a tone of voice that strongly suggested it was holding back its own laughter.

"Ugh. Must have short-circuited something in there, got electrocuted. Fuck me, that sodding hurt!" He exclaimed, his other hand going up to the forming bump on his forehead.

"Heh, perhaps you ought to switch with someone… more qualified?" The mech had 'suggested', before breaking out into its own laughter when he looked at it as if it had just kicked a puppy. Or, perhaps more accurately, shot at it with its inferno cannon, since even if its legs were large enough to be effective weapons, they didn't work yet.

"No, no, it's fine," Erie had finally said, after dealing with her laughing fit. "He's 'competent' enough to handle it." She had finger-quoted the work 'competent,' to the ire of CJ.

He didn't end up saying anything above his breath, though, preferring to instead mumble as he crawled back under and started to fiddle again.

…

"I didn't think it was possible for me to miss something," the centipede had said to the pair of them the day after, after the repairs were more-or-less completed. "But I've definitely missed this!"

It was gliding around on the soil outside the workshop on its now-functional legs. Dozens upon dozens of tiny, pencil-sized metal sticks, with a joint in the middle letting it bend 180 degrees forward or backward, moving in one synchronised effort, giving the impression that the centipede was simply sliding around as if on ice. Erie and CJ (hand-in-hand, of course) were standing near the door, for it was getting colder every day with the approaching winter, and were simply watching the giant mech enjoy its refound locomotion.

And enjoy it, it did, because after getting the all-clear from Erie that it wasn't going to spontaneously detonate, it went on a kind of frenzy, exploring just about anywhere it could reach. It couldn't quite get into the bedrooms, mostly because the outsiders still didn't trust it enough, though it had glided around it repeatedly. CJ and Erie were the only ones not giving it mistrustful looks.

"I'm glad you like it, big guy," CJ had responded. "Let's hope it'll last longer than a few days; I did not enjoy getting electrocuted."

"Heh, I certainly did, though!" Erie laughed, causing him to give her a look. The centipede had already glided away, though, and was on its way to the lake. It had stopped about ten meters from it, and had then turned around and glided back to them. The pair was looking at it the whole time, and the centipede was suddenly struck by an odd sense of embarrassment.

"So, ehm," it began, in an attempt to clear the air. "What should I be doing? I doubt I'll be much use tending the crops."

Erie gave a light chuckle, and CJ answered for her. "Well, we had a discussion with the rest of the colonists. They didn't seem to like you enough to let you do the more advanced things, but we agreed that you'd be most useful on guard duty."

"You know," Erie took over. "Patrolling the surroundings, watching for pirates and such. Simple stuff, plus you can be on constant guard whereas we need to, you know, eat and sleep and all that."

The centipede nodded readily. "Yes, I suppose that makes sense. If that will be everything…?"

Erie took a moment to look over the centipede, before nodding to herself. "Yeah, I think that's it. If you have any questions or something like that, ask one of us and we'll try to help you. Unless we're busy with something else, obviously."

"Righto. I'll be on my way, then," it said, and wiggled its inferno cannon in a way that loosely resembled a goodbye, before spinning around on the spot and gliding away to the forest.

The pair were left staring at the back of the retreating centipede, before it disappeared behind the trees, and then turned to each other.

"He's an odd one, isn't he?" Erie spoke first.

"He sure is," CJ agreed.