Work Text
<{(A catastrophic error has occurred!)}>
<{(Reinitialize primary systems?)}>
>YES
NO
<{(Sys.Boot initialized)}>
…
{(Unit ID: Nova Emily Isshiki)}
{(KLID: 4154)}
{(Remaining Power: Sufficient)}
{(Ocular Systems: Operational)}
{(Fine Motor Systems: Operational)}
{(Papillion Heart: Operational)}
{(Vocal Synthesis Systems: Offline. Commencing repairs)}
{(Memory Bank integrity: 98%)}
{( (2) Auxiliary Conscious Systems detected: Queued for reactivation.)}
…
{(Blackbox Data located! Replay Memory file?)}
>YES
NO
…
//
Nova stared down the giant pit in the infamous mountain’s cave, her body aching in exhaustion. There doesn’t seem to be a bottom, it just keeps going down and down past her vision’s limits. Scary.
It’s a long way down…Do you want to–
Shush. Nova stops that thought as quickly as it arrived. Not now.
The android backs up a small bit from the hole, though not by much. She had sought refuge from the rain in here, but the giant bottomless pit threw a bit of a wrench in her plan. She wasn’t even sure why she was climbing Mount Ebott in the first place! What would climbing this dumb mountain prove to herself, what would this do for her?! Being the reach the summit won’t bring her happiness, and those kids…if they fell down that pit, Nova didn’t have high hopes for them…
Nova groaned. No matter what, no matter how long she thought about it, no matter how many different angles or points she analyzed, she couldn’t make sense of it. She simply shouldn’t logically be able to exist. The issue had bothered her greatly, always gnawing at the back of her mind incessantly. The metal girl should be scientifically impossible, she should not be able to exist!
And yet, she does, despite everything. Why?
…
It’s a long way down…Do you want to jump?
Shut up, shut up, shut–
CRAACK!
Nova’s train of thought is interrupted by the sound of crumbling rock at her feet. Before she can even think about what’s happening, her balance is thrown off...
And she fell…
Down…
Down…
And down…
Until everything went dark.
//
<{(Playback Complete. Proceeding with scheduled repairs)}>
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Nova groans as her consciousness reemerges. She had an absolutely splitting headache, her entire body felt like it was made of lead, and her eyes simply refused to open.
Just what had she gotten herself into this time?!
Oh. Right, that. Now the intense pain made sense.
She felt something soft underneath her body, though couldn’t see the specifics. Guess that’s why she wasn’t reduced to a pile of worthless scrap-metal upon impact. Nova wasn’t entirely sure how a thin layer of whatever-it-was stopped her over 2 kilometer fall, considering she would have been falling at terminal velocity, but she figured that it probably wasn’t worth the pain worrying about, considering she had bigger issues.
Namely, where on earth was she now?! And how was she supposed to get back up? The android couldn’t exactly fly, or do much of anything, considering the fact that her bodily autonomy seems to have gone on strike.
So she’s just stuck her. Great.
At least in the meantime between now and whenever her body decides to work again, she can have Abbi–an automation tool with limited sentience that Nova programmed into her OS to automate doing repetitive tasks–sort out her memory data or whatever else needs doing, she didn’t really care.
The only thing she could do now was wait.
And wait.
And wait…
And wait……
…
“Howdy! I’m FLOWEY! FLOWEY the–A-Are you okay?”
The mystery voice almost instantly wakes Nova up. Well, not so much a ‘mystery voice’, since the first thing they said was their name. She tries to respond, then remembers that she physically can’t due to falling over two kilometers. This ‘Flowey’ seems to take notice.
“Uh, I’m going to go out on a limb here, you don’t seem very ‘okay.’ I’m not the best at healing magic, but…”
Something gently pokes Nova’s back. A warmth fills her body, and her systems stabilize. Not quite processing the implications of whatever just happened, the metal girl slowly rises to a kneel, rubs her eyes, and finally opens them…
“What.”
An oversized golden flower with a face stares up at her. He (?) has a sympathetic expression on his face, which is just the head of the flower. 6 petals surround his face, the same gold color as the flowers she landed on.
“As I was saying…” Flowey starts, still looking concerned for her. “I’m Flowey, Flowey…” He pauses for a moment. “…forget it, actually. I have a spiel for the Humans that fall down here, once every millennia, but I’m going to go out on a limb here; you probably aren’t Human. Humans…aren’t normally gray, no offense. That’s...” Flowey stops to ponder this conundrum, which gives Nova an opportunity to attempt to stand.
“Follow me into the next room,” Flowey starts, looking up to meet Nova’s eyes. “I want to test something…” And with that, the flower sinks into the floor.
Considering that the strange flower was her only lead on what the hell was going on, Nova decided, after a moment of hesitation, that following him was probably her best option.
…
“So, normally I’d have this whole monologue on SOULs and HP, but your case is, uh, different,
so I’ve had to go ‘off script’, so to say.”
Flowey pauses for a second.
“To be completely honest, I don’t even know whether you’re Human or Monster. So if you’d humor me for just a moment, I’ll start a ‘fight’, nothing deadly of course, but I’ll see what your SOUL looks like, give you the whole monologue, et cetera et cetera. Anyway, get ready!”
“My…SOUL? But I-I don’t have–“
The android girl is thrown off her train of thought by the room flickering.
“That’s your SOUL, the very culmination of your being.”