Archive of Our Own ^beta

Pov LttM

Cycle 1 ~ Shoreline

“Poor Ruffles… you really need to be more careful…”

Looks To The Moon finished tying up the bandage around Rivulet’s arm before setting it gently on the island in front of her. Rivulet rubbed its face firmly against her hand, purring in the weird chittery way it always did.

“I wonder what you’d be able to tell me if the Mark went both ways… like how the hell you managed to drag yourself from Five Pebbles’s chimney stacks all the way here with dart maggots hanging onto you! Don’t think Iggy didn't show me that!”

Rivulet chuffed and looked away poutingly, but Moon only laughed and cuddled its face. It couldn’t help but cuddle back and purr some more. After some few minutes, it raised its head to sniff the air.

“Yeah, the rain’s getting close, you go. I’ll be alright! Just come back afterwards, that arm needs to heal.”

“Wah!” Rivulet told her, before slipping into the water and climbing up the remains of her neural terminus, no doubt to the shelter just on the other side of the pipe.

“Love you, water dancer! Sweet dreams!”
Happy chitters flew back to her.

The Rivulet didn’t come back the following cycle.

Pov rivulet

Cycle 3 ~ Shaded Citadel

Hate these damned things…

The Rivulet pulled its spear out of the dropwig’s corpse in front of it, turned around and kept trotting west. Something was calling it forward… pulling it somewhere. Perhaps it'd go visit Cupcake, the albino leviathan it found in an underground lake. Thankfully, with the neuron glow it (unknowingly) stole from Five Pebbles, it could let its mind wander without the risk of immediately dying to something otherwise exceptionally easy to kill or evade.
With the phenomenal speed that Chasing Wind decided to bestow upon it during creation, it soon found itself climbing a familiar, tall pole up to the Karmic Gate leading to the old abandoned factory ground.

Industrial Complex

The red lizard that was infamous for roaming one room between here and the suburbs (Rivulet nicknamed her Fuzzybutt) decided to direct her attention towards harassing the less fortunate green lizard who happened to be with her, making Rivulet’s journey further westward easier than it already would have been.
It found itself smelling rain when it was in a room eating a Karmaflower with a shelter overhead and Iggy was even more desperately harassing it than they had been the whole time since it’d left Moon’s can. They kept motioning back the way Rivulet came, signaling that Moon was that way, but it simply ignored them, not entirely aware that Moon was worried and wanted it to come home. It finished off the flower and violently shook its head in an attempt to ward off the harsher of the brief hallucinations, climbed up the pole overhead and listened to the shelter seal beneath it.

Cycle 8 ~ Subterranean

Rivulet shook its head to shove away drowsiness as it listened to the clanking of the shelter opening in front of it. It was a little astounded that it’d managed to make it all the way across the iterator facility grounds in less than a dekacycle. Well, it was as far west as it could reasonably go, seeing as the pier had collapsed; the only way left was down.
Within a half cycle, it was peering into the lake, dirty and dim sunlight bouncing off the surface. Rivulet could just barely make out the white scales and skin of Cupcake beneath the water.
Iggy kept flashing “hunter” at Cupcake. It just giggled and kept watching. A good few minutes passed, and the yellow overseer was obviously bored and tired of Rivulet not caring about what they were signaling. But… their eye caught something purple. They startled and flashed “hunter” at the creature, motioning for Rivulet to look immediately.
Rivulet looked.
They were armed with a white pole, and were holding onto the ceiling like a spider. Before it could investigate the creature's appearance any further, they dropped down right in front of it.
They raised the spear to Rivulet’s chin.

Pov spearmaster

“Who are you!?”

The blue fish-cat-slug-thing demanded in a terrified, cracking voice. Which was funny, considering it wasn't exactly in a position to negotiate. Spearmaster lowered their needle from hovering above its throat and stabbed it firmly into the ground beside them. They leaned on it and crossed their legs, looking at the other slugcat expectantly.

“I-I asked you a question.”

Spearmaster exasperatedly pointed to their mouth-less snout with a claw, as if to say, Does it look like I can answer you?

“Oh. …sorry.”

Spearmaster waved it away. No worries. It’s happened before.

“It has?”

They stared. Did it just – what – how –
Their focus fell on the yellow overseer. It was projecting words at the slugcat, with an arrow gesturing to Spearmaster.

Huh.

The slugcat laughed. The way its frills and fins bounced as it snickered… was… oddly captivating.

I-I’m Spearmaster… if that thing can somehow… talk for me…

“Oooh, that’s a pretty name! I’m Rivulet.”

Thanks… is that healed? I can get that for you.

“Oh! Yeah, it should be healed! Thanks!”

Spearmaster gently cut off the bandage around Rivulet’s arm using a small needle. It called me pretty… They thought as they led their new companion to the nearest shelter. And they thought it all cycle while the rain passed. They were grateful the overseer was not there to translate that.

Cycle 11 ~ Shoreline

“Come on! She’s just up ahead!”

Spearmaster followed Rivulet through eerily familiar rooms flooded and running with jellyfish-rich water. These rusted and decrepit metal walls bore horrifying likeness to the mechanical entrails they gripped onto for dear life what felt like a million kilocycles ago…
The two slugcats pushed into a pipe leading to a room consisting of tight, short tunnels. Eerily similar… almost disorientingly…
As they wiggled through the paths and into the pipe on the opposite side of the room, and emerged from the other end, Spearmaster’s suspicions were confirmed – and it made their stomach do backflips.

This is her neural terminus. This is her. …how long has it been? Why is she flooded? Where are all her neu–

Their thoughts were interrupted by cheerful shouting.

“Ruffles!!! Thank goodness you’re okay! Please, please never run off that way while you’re hurt! You scared me, I missed you…”

Up ahead, they heard Rivulet laughing and talking, half to itself, half to her. They swam closer, carefully, almost as terrified as they were in Five Pebbles’s chamber that fateful cycle. They poked their purple head shyly out from an edge in the damaged metal entrance, and Looks To The Moon immediately fell silent upon seeing them.

“...messenger…?”

“Mom? W-what are you… t-”

Rivulet was cut off from talking as Moon placed it gently on the island and whirred over to see Spearmaster more closely. She beckoned them forwards and they obeyed, timidly waddling up and looking up at her with a potent concoction of fear, confusion, and awe in their eyes.

“...it’s you. I… remember you… I think…”

She gently picked Spearmaster up (much to their dismay), and placed them alongside Rivulet on her throne. She whirred above them both curiously, inspecting every last molecule of Spearmaster and getting her memory jogged.

“It’s you! I remember you! You sent… the…”

Spearmaster raised their ears and tilted their head.

“The… the dark red pearl…to the array…”

They lowered their ears and looked down at the ragged, explosion shaped scar on their sternum. The tissue never healed right, so it was lumpy and a much lighter color than the rest of their minuscule, permanent scratches. They returned their gaze to Moon, who clutched the cloth on her heart as if aching.

“Did it make it…?”

Spearmaster nodded.

“Good…” She whizzed back around and sat gently on the pile of rubbish that she’d called her home for what must have been hundreds upon thousands of kilocycles. “Come. Sit. I have a lot to catch you up on.”

Cycle 12 ~ Shoreline

“I-is it supposed to… make that noise…?”

“Aaaah!! You have such a pretty voice now!!!” Rivulet lifted Spearmaster off the ground in a bear hug (it was startlingly powerful) before turning around and thanking Moon about five times a second and giving her a (much gentler) hug, too.

Over the remainder of the previous cycle, Moon had dug through her blueprints and storage looking for anything to improve communication between Rivulet and Spearmaster with. She came across two microchip-speaker sets and had the grandest idea perhaps ever conceived. Not only did this provide Spearmaster with a proper, working voice, but allowed for communication between the slugcats and their Iterator guardian.

Spearmaster blushed at the bearhug and being called pretty and hid it in the least subtle way possible while the blue and pink companion of theirs hugged its adoptive mother.

“No problem, Ruffles!” She giggled. “Yes, yes, it sounds fine, Messenger! The static is totally normal, these speakers are quite old after all…” she tried to say around the slugcat almost as large as her, sharing a giant hug.

Spearmaster stood on the island, looking happy to be here, but nervous. They sat down on their heels and wrapped their thick tail around themself, something they did absentmindedly for comfort. They watched and listened to Rivulet and Moon talk and found their mind wandering in loops around Rivulet. They crammed those thoughts into a filing cabinet in their mind, but this ended up being in vain when it patted the ground beside it with its tail, signaling them to come hang out too.

As they lay loafed (?) next to their blue friend, it curled its tail around them, leaned into them and was purring. Spearmaster looked away immediately, face embarrassingly pink.

“Oh, Messenger ~”

Uh oh.

“Why so shy?”

They made a noise of embarrassment and curled tighter away from them both, but staying close still. Pouting.

“Ohhh…”

Spearmaster turned and scowled at her, but there was no real anger on their face. Moon just laughed and petted them. Rivulet looked up sleepily and nuzzled Spearmaster’s face, affectionately and absentmindedly.

They looked like they short-circuited. Moon would have cried laughing if she had tear ducts.

Pov rivulet

Cycle 14 ~ Submerged Superstructure

“Spearsy..? You awake…?”

Rivulet gently shoved Spearmaster's shoulder before startling when they shuffled.

“Five more minutes…”

Rivulet snickered and crouched beside them, admiring them. It hesitated before whispering a promise to return in their ear and giving them a small kiss on the cheek before slipping into the shelter exit. Their mind was riddled with “Why did I do that???” the whole time they were outside eating. They shoved blue batfly pupae into their mouth in a vain effort to water down the thousand-degree blush on their snout.

Spearmaster emerged from the den soon after, and they found Rivulet swimming around, simply enjoying the light filtering in from the broken roof. It approached cheerfully, but its smile lost a little light when it sensed the miasma about them.

Their eyes weren't the pure glassy pearls they usually were. Their expression was… clouded. Ill. They looked up at the roof of overgrown metal forlornly before their speaker collar crackled.

“I was here before. When Moon stood. It's just… so… surreal. Seeing her like this, I mean. Finding her flooded and crashed when I remember seeing her alive, it…”

Rivulet placed a paw on their shoulder and gazed at them, trying to be comforting.

“I guess I'm glad she doesn't hurt anymore. I read some of her internal diagnostic results… She was in so much pain. So much. It… tore me apart, traveling through her.”

Spearmaster was drawn into a gentle hug, and from their shoulder, Rivulet spoke softly.

“You're right. She doesn't hurt anymore. You can ask her yourself. In fact, I think she's way happier now. She quite enjoys the role of the mysterious dead robot lady sitting in the water with her cats!”

The purple slugcat's speaker crackled with staticy laughter, and they pressed the end of their snout (where their mouth would have been) to Rivulet's cheek with another giggle.

Its face took on the same bright hue as its gills and it stared at them for a long five seconds before turning and diving under the water embarrassedly. It looked up at them from the depths, its face still fuschia and its mouth strained in a “Well, this is awkward” way.

Spearmaster just laughed and looked at it cheerfully, although it didn't leave the water until it was time to hibernate again. It hoped they didn't mind; it kind of liked following them around shyly from the water. The way the light broke the waves was pretty.

Like them.

Sleep came easily that cycle.