Rahllup clapped her hands together. "Ah'm eager to see what to expect in this place. We'll have lots to do for days to come, ah'm sure!" she said excitedly.
The pair heard a low humming mixed with crackling above and looked towards the source. A few flying vehicles had lowered themselves to reach the city's defined paths.
"The night workers return," Luna said aloud. "There were usually more before."
Rahllup pointed to them. "Ah wanna to ride on one of those," she stated firmly.
"You're too fat to be on one of the normal vehicles," Gahllup explained.
The flame-faced machine stared at him. "You mean I'm heavy."
"Pffft, that's the same thing," Dissonance interjected. "You're just trying to color yourself differently using fancy words." They cackled. "I've seen it during my shows. Was pretty funny to see the caretakers getting drinks splashed on their faces."
"Enough!" Biddydee shouted. "Let's get to exploring, first. I want to see if we can find other wildlife here."
"There's some near the multiport," Celestia realized. "Galah wasn't paying attention and tumbled down a hill surrounding the location. There were tiny creatures that had burrowed in the dirt."
"We can explore while we go there, then," Dissonance suggested. "Like that I get everything I wanted and more!"
Luna shook her head and gently tugged on the stowaways hand, taking it with her.
"If I could smell the air it would probably be very bitter," Biddydee thought aloud.
Still early, the crew decided to take in the architecture of the surroundings. The three of the black just stared in both awe and disgust. The uniformity didn't gel well with them and, while the flamboyant actor was still fascinated by all of it, the three were quick to shoot down the idea that having an architectural standard outside of the internal structure killed any true personality the city could have. With that said, Celestia was quick to pinpoint a more artistic area of the city for the group to bear witness to.
They had arrived at a massive park with intertwining pathways lined with white brick. The paths curved around each other and rose and sunk above and below each other respectively. The grass and leaves of the trees had autumn colors to them, creating fields and slow raining 'petals' of gold. The surrounding buildings each had a different motif to them: Bakeries designed to resemble various types of pastries, pies, or other confectioneries; toy stores being as tall and as flamboyantly exaggerated as possible -second only to Dissonance- , often having extended rings on each floor to put toy statues or the mascots of the company that owned the store on display.
"What is this place?" Dissonance asked. They had their hands joined and couldn't stop looking left and right. "We don't have anything like this in the black!" They bounced in place. "And so many colors!"
"Ech," Rahllup sneered. "It's hideous and tacky. Too much! A bit of personality is fine, but when you become so flamboyant-!"
She couldn't find the right words to describe everything, gesturing to the whole of the area multiple times while looking towards Dissonance.
"You get a you," Biddydee interjected whilst looking at Dissonance.
The actor 'harumphed' and turned their back to the group in response.
Whilst they were philosophizing the purpose of the district, the stowaway let go of Luna's hand and slowly moved towards a path underneath a small stone archway-bridge. It moved a sign saying 'no entry' and hid in the darkness. The blue machine chased after her. The area was dank, dirty, and very dark, but Luna's ambient lights revealed what was hidden before her. Humidity had coalesced on the walls into a slimy, slippery substance that sloughed off the brick walls. Several webs and bits of vegetation hung down from the ceiling in thin strands and arcs. Luna also noted the presence of semi-translucent bubbles growing everywhere, varying in size from the tip of her fingers to the size of her head. It was an odd growth that was only amplified by a strange blue haze flowing throughout the small area.
"Looks like the blue energy," Luna pondered aloud. She poked one of the lumps and saw it burst into a sparkling shower of jelly. "What's this?" she pondered. Within the entrails of the bubble swimming about the contents were tiny, worm-like insects. The blue machine also noticed that there was some pink and fairly faint traces of red mixed into the substances. Baring it no mind, the machine continued her chase after the stowaway.
Based on the pre-programmed knowledge she possessed, Luna expected the charred machine to be hiding away in a corner of the area. To her surprise, this was not the case. The charred machine was using everything around the tunnels to make some kind of nest replete with slime and strange little creatures scurrying about. A giant, head-shaped, armored insect crashed into Luna's chest before hurrying away. The charred machine was crouched down, trying to pull out a stone from the base of the wall when it paused and stared at Luna. Several of the insects had gathered around and onto it already.
They vaguely resembled the humongous ones back at the black, but these ones were covered in a shiny chitin and didn't seem to have any eyes. Whenever they moved, Luna could distinctly perceive 'tack tack' noises, and judging by the debris left by one climbing up a brick wall, it seemed that these things had something akin to claws burrowing into the stones.
"Why are you down here? Is it because you feel more comfortable down here with these things than up there?" Luna asked the stowaway. It preferred not to answer and grabbed one of the giant insects from the ground, revealing the two, finger-length claws on all six feet sticking straight down into the ground. "You don't feel comfortable in this city?" Luna asked it. The stowaway stared at the bug. "You thought we were going to another forest of the black, I suppose." Luna leaned down, touching the floor with her 'feet'. "Staying down here won't be good for you," she explained. "You might feel more comfortable down here, but it isn't your home. You won't be staying here forever. Why not explore with us? Like that you can stay close to familiar faces and see things in safety," Luna proposed. "My sister and I will stay by your side until you're comfortable. You'll be able to go back to those giant bugs in the black after we're done exploring here, or you can keep traveling with us. It's up to you." The blue machine noticed the metal of the stowaway crumbling and deactivated her hand to get the rust and debris away.
It took several minutes of waiting until the charred machine put the bug down and got the others off of its body. It grabbed Luna's hand and followed her out of the tunnels to the group still arguing outside. Celestia was the only one to welcome them.
"You've returned," Celestia noted.
"I've made a deal with our stowaway. We need to watch it until it becomes comfortable enough in this city," Luna explained."
The white machine looked at the stowaway then back to her sister. "But they chose to come with us."
"My observations concluded that they did not think their actions through."
"Then it can accompany us as we travel," Celestia said.
The stowaway pointed at the group and made a screeching noise. As it turned out, while Luna had been gone, the group hadn't stayed put yelling at each other. In fact, they weren't even arguing. They were playing around with toys they had found.
"They went in there," Celestia said. "It opened early."
She pointed to the store that was, visible through the giant windows that made up its street-facing walls, in disarray. Many makers were standing outside of it, staring at the group. Luna saw that two more PABs had been planted head-first into the golden ground, breaking the once-serene landscape. The interior of the giant toy store looked like it had shelves rearranged with toys and giant figurines everywhere. When Luna approached them silently, her gaze going to the toys they had to the store clued the group in to what was going through her processes.
"We tried to fix everything!" Rahllup was quick to blurt out. "We tried to fix it all, but it's kinda hard when you don't know what goes where or how."
"We just took these things and left," Dissonance explained. They put a hand to their face and said 'tee hee'. "We said our owners will pay for any of the damages as well as the toys. We were the backups since the main service bots are in maintenance."
"That's theft," Luna chastised.
Galah pushed her away from the shrinking actor. "It's okay. We're going to bring them back at the end of the day anyways. They don't know what our toys look like so I thought it would be interesting for them to see anyways."
"And he was right!" Rahllup proclaimed. She was holding a flat object covered in a variety of bulbs housed in projector casings, able to mold their shape to go in any desired direction. "This thing's suppose to teach you 'bout how to pass current and light up each individual bulb. Normally, you need a battery, but--"
Dissonance grabbed the connecting wires and attached them to their chest. The bulbs flashed suddenly and brightly, causing makers watching the group from the projected direction to be blinded and scream in pain and horror.
"Ah! My eyes!" one of them yelled.
The two robots jolted their heads to the source of the sound and saw the victims of their experiment and exploded in laughter. The toy was ripped angrily out of their hands by Biddydee.
"Give me that," she growled. "Sorry," she yelled to the makers who waddled away. She flung the toy at the head of Rahllup, making it bounce and shatter on the ground.
Rahllup and Dissonance leaned over to better see the remains. "Oh. Well. Guess we're not returning that toy," Rahllup remarked.
"You idiots! We haven't even been here for two days that you've already gone and destroyed a store and hurt caretakers!" she yelled angrily.
"Haven't we been here for three days?" Galah asked.
"Doesn't matter!" Biddydee was quick to rebut. "We'll get those terrifying armored ones that nearly destroyed Rahllup around if this keeps up!"
The idea of the CAS reemerging quickly silenced the two. The toy couldn't be recovered, so Celestia gathered the remains and dropped them into a cylindrical object laying on the ground of the park. Its interior glowed a faint blue that grew and weakened regularly. She then pressed a button on the sides and it immediately belched out blue flames that incinerated the waste left within it.
"Clean," the white machine stated energetically.
"You, uh, keep active furnaces around your city to burn up trash?" Rahllup asked weakly.
"They're not furnaces, but the idea is the same, yes," Celestia answered.
Leaving the crime scene, the group bore witness to the gradual awakening of the city from its nightly daze. The young ones were accompanied by their much larger parents to attend their schools, but seeing the two giants walking down the street delayed their arrivals significantly.
"Why're they so scared of us?" Rahllup wondered. She watched as a large group of makers fled with their progeny across a street into multiple large alleyways, bumping into robots and other makers as they ran. "It's like they've never seen a giant robot before."
Dissonance and Galah exchanged looks.
"To be fair," Dissonance started. "they've never seen robots of your make." "
That, and your face is made of fire," Galah added.
"Not my fault Pa made me like this." Rahllup's flames flickered. "Said it was artistic or something."
"After a while of seeing you not damage anything, the makers will become accustomed to your presence," Celestia explained.
"Star Slicer?" a young voice called out questioningly.
Galah and Dissonance both laughed loudly. "Like that's going to happen!" Galah laughed.
Dissonance put their hands on their hips and leaned forward. "You walked through a wall in the toy store," they said. "You caused one of the staircases to collapse and demolish several shelves below it. And we warned you several times to stop, but you kept going!"
"That's Star Slicer!" the young voice yelled out exuberantly
"We haven't seen Luna in almost three years. She wouldn't be...!"
"I suppose this is a good opportunity for you to learn to not throw your bulk around," Luna said. The charred machine sputtered in response.
"Wh-Is it laughin' at me?" Rahllup asked. She was incredibly insulted.
"No," Luna was quick to answer. "It's glitching."
Celestia cast a side glance to her sister but said nothing.
"Honestly, those of the blue should be making things less fragile. We had no issues moving around back home," Biddybee lamented.
"Well, we still had to watch out for glass," Rahllup added.
"Star Slicer!" a pair of voices shouted.
"No! Don't get close to them! We don't know what's going on!"
"Who keeps saying that?" Galah wondered. He crossed his arms in annoyance. "That's getting irritating. We don't have any star slicers,"
Two small figures weaved through the group and clung to Luna's legs. The charred machine jumped back in surprise and looked at the culprits. Everyone stared at them. At the tiny makers. The children began to cry, dirtying Luna's chassis with tears and snot. Rahllup and Biddydee watched silently while Dissonance took in the scenery and Galah became absent-minded. Only the charred machine seemed upset; It was hunched over and had its fists clenched.
"C-come back!" the female accompanying them called out weakly amidst the machinery towering over her.
"Well, go on then," Rahllup told her loudly. "We're not gonna bite."
"We literally can't," Biddy added flatly.
The two spread apart, leaving the female to hurry forward in a panic towards her children. She paused in front of Luna once the machine made eye contact, and her demeanor changed.
"Greetings, owner," Luna said.
"Owner?" Galah repeated.
"Luna, why are you here? What happened?"
"I left," the machine said.
She was met with a silent stare. "Were you stolen? Did someone steal you? Who is your current owner?"
"You are still my current owner," the machine continued monotonely.
The maker was getting more and more frustrated. "Tell me what happened!"
"I left."
A hand dragged along the female's face as she tried to get a straight answer from the machine. Before she could continue trying, Celestia floated in front of her. The maker's expression changed to that of utter shock and disbelief, and her body deflated.
"Wh...but...but there's only one model...How...When? We never--"
"I was taken from a knowledge center by my sister, Luna." She extended a ring hand. "My name is Celestia. How may I help you?"
The maker's eyes darted left and right between the two equine-esque machinery. "What? Sisters? But you're machines! Unless..." She started to think, becoming unaware of what was happening around her.
"Woah! There's another!" the smaller of the infants shouted.
They surrounded Celestia, looking her over in awe.
The older of the two nodded. "Since Star Slicer is designed around the moon, then maybe we should give her a name and a symbol too," he proposed to his brother.
"Kids, that machine is not o--"
The female was interrupted by Celestia raising her extended hand, gesturing for her to stop. "It is okay. I have not had many interactions with the makers outside of the information I sifted through when I was still linked to the core of a data center and archive."
The two children mumbled with each other, trying to find something, while Galah 'teleported' next to the female, startling her when she noticed him.
"So you're the one Luna was attached to," he noted with boredom. "She's very patient with them as well." He shook his head. "Thought for sure that the white one wouldn't like them," he mumbled aloud.
"What are you?!"
Galah turned to face her. "Oh, I'm a prototype. My name is Galah. They rescued me from a truck some time ago, right before we left for the black."
"You went to the black?!" the maker exhaled. "And a truck? We were told one of the machines to be studied had gone missing." Her eyes darted between bits of information only she could see. "How are you even functional?"
Her question was met with a shrug. "I dunno. I think the one that was overwatching me just took very good care of me." He looked down to the holes still present in his chassis. "Although he could've done a better job. Should maybe ask the engineer if he can fix these. Maybe he has something new this time."
"Sky Light!" the children exclaimed.
"With a sun as her symbol!" the youngest blurted out.
"But what color?" the older pondered. "What will it look like?"
"Make it purple!"
The older sibling stared at his brother with disdain. "Suns aren't purple, stupid!"
"It's a pretend sun! It can be whatever color I feel like!"
The two started arguing aggressively when Luna separated them. "Fighting like that will get you nowhere, young ones. You should ask my sister, since she is the one you're going to name and color, no? It's her decision, after all."
They looked to the white machine then back to Luna. "But is she like you? Isn't she just another machine?" the youngest asked.
"They're all like me," Luna said calmly.
While the children met the information with a simple 'ooooo', the female met it with another emotion, or rather, a mixture of emotions both elated and horrified.
"I want your sun to be purple!" the younger one yelled at Celestia.
"Why not a mixture of colors," the white machine proposed. "Green and purple could work, but you need an interesting design as well." Her eyes lit up for just the briefest of moments, capturing the children's attention. "I have over a billion different sun designs in my database. I could show you them at your earliest convenience."
"You...you all aren't being controlled remotely?" the woman stammered.
"No, why would we be?" Dissonance said.
They had poked their head out from behind Rahllup, and the reaction the maker had was not surprise, but disgust.
"Eugh!" she shouted whilst raising an arm.
Both Rahllup and Galah exploded in laughter, pointing at the appalled actor.
"Well, excuuuuuse me, princess. I have my own beauty standards!" Dissonance proclaimed proudly.
"You can laugh," the woman whispered. "This...this is amazing. It's what we've all been theorizing about the robots. The advanced technology never caused such anomalies, it's the blue energy that--"
"Gonna stop ya right there," Rahllup interjected. "Ah ain't no mamby-pamby machine of the blue, alright?" she pointed to her chest with a thumb. "I'm a machine of the black! Always have been!"
"But you've only gained sapience since you came here, no?" the female asked.
"No." She grabbed Biddy and hugged her close with one arm. "We've been active over fifty years, and we've been aware for nearly as long as that time."
The sisters noticed a dozen CAS robots running in the background down the street, eliciting the attention of the makers who thought they were new models of PAB.
"But...but that goes against all our theorems and calculations!" the maker shouted in despair. "This is absolutely fascinating!"
Rahllup flinched. "That's a mood swing if I ever saw one."
"More like a mood whiplash," Dissonance joked.
"Are you going to come back home?" the children asked Luna.
The blue machine shook her head. "No." She looked to the female, ignoring the whining coming from the infants. "I left because someone called to me. Something in the system. I was called to the black as well."
"But they're not connected to the system," both Luna and the maker said at the same time.
There was a pause of silence. "Would you like to visit our home?" the maker proposed. "My husband would be fascinated to meet your..." She cleared her throat, giving her mind some time to adjust. "Your friends, although I don't think we would all fit. Your service station is still there, however. Unused." She looked to her upset children. "Are you sure you don't want to come back? The children were distraught when you left."
Luna shook her head. "I have too much to discover." She looked at her hands. "I have learned so much, evolved beyond what I once was when I looked upon the skypiercer outside of our window at night. However, I have no qualms with regularly contacting you now that I am more aware of emotions. It hasn't escaped me that I hurt you when I left," she explained.
"I will aid her with establishing a communication basis with your household," Celestia said. "Tonight we can visit you."
A muffled thumping echoed between the tall buildings surrounding the group.
"That would be fantastic. Thank you," the maker said. "Now, I think we're going to be forced to take a taxi to your school and get me to work on time." She sighed. "My boss is going to be furious." The maker cast a glance over her shoulder. "Or maybe not," she said gleefully.
The children were angrily shoved away from Luna by the stowaway who hid away behind the blue machine. They fell on their rears, and the youngest started crying.
"Hey!" the maker shouted angrily.
Luna and Celestia shook their heads. The white machine grabbed the charred machine aggressively and pulled it out of its hiding spot behind her sister. It didn't escape her that the children seemed to have paled after the push.
"What was that for?" Celestia yelled. "Apologize to them at once!"
The charred machine pouted and turned its head in response, but Luna wasn't going to let it slide this time.
"You acted out of jealousy. That's not good," Luna said. Her voice remained calm but held a hint of threat to it. "To act upon that jealousy will chase those you love away." She raised a finger. "Will you renege on your agreement with me? Because if you keep acting on impulses like that, we won't stay around anymore, and you'll be left alone in this city. Alone and lost with nowhere to go." She leaned forward. "Are you going to continue like that?"
The maker watched in stunned silence at the display and stared in awe as the stowaway reluctantly moved towards the children, make an ear-splitting screech, then slowly walked away, its head down and arms dragging limply at its sides.
"Apologies," Luna said. "It is still fairly 'young' when it comes to how to act." She checked the infants before moving away. "They only have minor scratches. The reaction is more from the shock than the actual wounds." She helped the two up to their feet and bid the family a good day.
The group watched them leave silently and waited for the emotions to subside. The maker gave one last look over her shoulder, her gaze fixated on Celestia. Meanwhile, the charred machine stayed away silently with its back turned to everyone.
"What's this 'skypiercer' you were talkin' about?" Rahllup asked.
"It's a building that reaches the lower atmosphere. They tend to reach the stratosphere, although a few can be tall enough to reach the mesosphere. Those ones act as space elevators at times," Luna explained. "There's one nearby that I could show you. We should be able to see it from a far enough distance." She looked around first, a hand resting on the side of her face. "The nearest data center should have a high enough area of elevation for us to see it."
"Lead the way then," Dissonance said.
"I can't wait to see a skypiercer again, and the faces you'll all make when you see one for real," Galah said.
The group spent a few hours traveling the streets before they reached a familiar, giant dome. Familiar, but not identical to the one Luna had visited so long ago. They used one of the floating pathways to reach one of the higher floors of the dome reserved for the machines' entry.
"Why exactly do you need buildings this massive?!" Rahllup shouted. "You could make a tremendous farm here. Would be perfect, I'm sure." She looked around and stepped out of the way of a machine coming from the pipe onto the balcony. "Not sure how your plants work, though."
"It's a data center," Galah explained. "Houses most if not all the information of the blue. They just act as backups most of the time."
"I was one of the cores of one," Celestia said.
Biddy became intrigued. "Really now?" she said. "So that's why you seem to know so much." The white machine nodded in response.
"And that's the sky-piercer," Luna said.
The boom echoed through the city again, and several more CAS were seen running towards the source.
"It goes...really high!" Dissonance wheezed in disbelief.
"It just keeps going higher and higher! I couldn't see it well with the clouds when we came in, but now...Why?" Biddy said.
The charred machine turned its head a bit in order to look at the giant tower. It was still upset, but the sheer height and the design of the tower caught its eyes. It leaned forward, joining the others, then pointed.
"Hey look, the blue circles. Ah guess they were coming from the skypiercers," Rahllup noted.
"Not so sure about that, otherwise they wouldn't have appeared above the black," Dissonance noted.
"Think we could jump down from here and land unharmed?" Galah asked. He was slapped across the back of the head for the question.
"Idiot," Biddydee chastised. She shook her head and looked at the skypiercer's strange body. "How does that moving part even work with the rest of the structure? Is it just decorative?"
"If that were the case then it wouldn't be able to float like that," Dissonance disagreed.
Biddy shook her head, and her flames sparked. "More of that weird stuff with the blue."
"I don't know how to do any of that," Dissonance said to absolve themself. "I can't do things like that." They leaned to the side over the solid, white balcony to look past the flame-faced giant. "Oh hey, you have those here too?" they asked.
"They have what too?" Rahllup asked.
"That," Dissonance said while gesturing with a head bob.
The group looked to see something large slowly making its way past the frame of the giant buildings. It was one of the giant box machines that Luna and Celestia had met in the black.
"No," Luna said.
Its body opened up, reshaping to reveal and assemble multiple barrels along the revealed black metal. Black smoke was churning out from its back, devouring the air angrily with its caustic presence.
"The blue lights are glowing," Galah noted. "What's that, a cleaner?"
Luna and Celestia looked up, then a flash of blue followed by white engulfed their vision. Then black. Then nothing.