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7: To Defend Us

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7 lifted a hand and covered her opticals as the enormous wall in front of her exploded, shards of graffitied cinder block flying and pebbling the ground. A cloud of dust floated into the dirty air, billowing and swirling before dissipating into nothing. The small, pale stitchpunk looked up at the monsters towering above her, enormous steel behemoths with two spindly, gear-ridden legs ending in saucer-shaped, webbed feet and great big metal shells perched on top with a glowing red eye, coldly assessing their situation. The muzzles of machine guns jutted out from under their metallic armor. The civilians screamed and ran, the men shouting to each other in a brusque, foreign tongue, the women holding their children tightly in their arms as gunfire rained around them. The entire landscape was lit up in a lurid orange glow, the ghastly light coming from the many fires raging in the surrounding buildings.

The scene was nothing new. It was all 7 had known, this war, what she had woken up to and what she had lived in for the short few days of her life. There seemed to be no purpose, no end to the carnage and it saddened her that so many people had to die in a seemingly pointless battle of fire and metal. But she couldn’t dwell on that now. She had others she needed to protect.

7 leaped from brick to broken brick, avoiding the pounding footfalls of the running people, approaching a discarded bullet-hole-ridden helmet lying on the ground. In the biggest hole, an eye blinked and disappeared, and then the entire hat was lifted up to reveal a huddle of other stitchpunks: numbers 1, 2, 6, and 8. 1’s eyes clicked as his slit-shaped pupils blinked in annoyance. His pale skin was covered in stitches and buckles, hastily but sturdily made, and he wore half of a broken bullet as a kind of hat. 2 was a hunched, elderly figure in the back, a vest made of leather encircling his torso and a metal cap on the back of his head. He was relieved to see 7, and she nodded to him, encouraged as always by his kind, fatherly figure. The stitchpunk lifting the helmet was 8, a large mass of burlap and muscle with a constant air of menace about him. But 7 knew he really had no idea what was going on most of the time. The black-and-white pinstriped shape of 6 huddled behind the giant, mismatched eyes flicking around at the surrounding carnage with nervous urgency. His pen-nib fingers twitched and clinked, stained with ink. 7 refocused on 1. “I found others,” she said loudly, above the rumbling explosions, and turned and waved at another pack of stitchpunks hiding behind the ruins of a car. There were three of them--two twins with pale blue hoods and big eyes, holding each other tightly, and another taller male, all rough burlap and two large buttons on his front. They darted out from their refuge and ducked under the helmet, eager to escape the raging war. 1 glanced over them but said nothing. “There’s a clear path up ahead,” 7 told the group, gesturing at the distant spires of a cathedral that had miraculously escaped any severe damage. “Follow me.”

A thundering detonation broke the air and trembled through the ground. Three steel behemoths had broken from the pack and were coming down the street, heads swiveling from side to side. 7 turned and sprinted towards the cathedral, hearing the clomping footsteps of the other stitchpunks close behind. She glanced back. Wait--someone’s back there! One of them had fallen--it was 5, one of the stitchpunks 7 had rescued. He was lying on the ground while the behemoths steadily approached. And 1 still hadn’t turned anyone around to help.

Before 7 could act, one of the humans ran up behind them, holding something in his hand that was small and aflame; his dark coat flapped as he threw the object and it arced high into the air, breaking on the shell of one of the machines. Flames instantly spread across the steel but the behemoth wasn’t harmed in the least. It turned its cold, hard gun on the terrified man. 7 glanced away as bullets ripped through the air and she heard the man fall to the ground, dead. Nothing new, but it didn’t get any easier.

The hatches of the machines opened, revealing the tips of short, round cannons jutting into the air. Poomph. Poomph. Poomph. Each machine launched an enormous cylinder into the air, the purpose of which 7 didn’t want to find out. She began running back towards 5. The projectiles came screaming back towards the ground, trailing wisps of green and yellow and sending rubble flying as they struck the hard-packed dirt, and for a moment, 5 disappeared among the dust. Worry clutched at 7. He was too far away. She wouldn’t be able to get to him in time before the machines were upon him.

But 2 was faster. He charged into the battle, abandoning the safety of the helmet, a hand over his eyes as he searched for 5. 7 lost sight of them as she darted up a hill of destroyed cement blocks. Please don’t be too late. From her vantage point, she saw 2 struggling to drag 5 out of the path of the behemoths. The scream of their metal joints and hinges filled the air and their feet were within inches of the pair of stitchpunks. 7 vaulted over the hill and shoved them out of the way, just as one of the feet crushed the exact spot in which they were standing.

She pushed herself upright. “Are you all right?”

2 put a hand on his head, grimacing. “Yes, I think so.” He looked up fearfully at the great walkers, which continued on their destructive path down the street. “We have to keep moving.”

Together, 2 and 7 heaved 5 off of the ground and half-carried, half-dragged him back to the battered, war-torn helmet, where the others watched anxiously, eyes on 5’s limp body. As they passed 1, 7 looked up from the ground and glared at him, shaking her head. No words had to be said. Her anger was boiling, boiling beneath her skin and it was about to blow over. But not now. Not while the others needed her. Safely back under the helmet, the entire group slowly began the arduous distance over the torn, bleeding landscape, among the misty gas and bullet holes and limp corpses draped like napkins across the ruins of the past.

***

“Why didn’t you go back?!”

7’s shout echoed around the cathedral, spiraling up into the smoke and eerie green gas drifting over the war-torn landscape. The stitchpunks had gathered in a corner of the entrance, huddling to avoid detection by machine or man. 5 had lost consciousness by now, the sparks continuing to fly out of his broken eye socket, the other eye blank and white as he scrunched it shut in pain. He was a complete dead weight in 2’s arms, and the elderly inventor peered at him in dismay as he rested him on the ground. “7,” he said in a quiet voice, “there’s no need to get upset--”

She ignored him and continued ranting at 1. “Why? You selfish, arrogant, cowardly--”

“How dare you?” 1 snapped, narrowing his eyes. “You know perfectly well if it weren’t for me, none of us would be here together!”

The nerve of this...scum. “If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be in this mess!” 7 raged, jabbing a metallic, jointed finger at the prone body of 5. The twins were wide-eyed, clutching each other, and she almost felt bad for scaring them like this when they’d barely gotten to safety. But enough was enough. 1 had been pushing her to her limit ever since the Scientist had released her to help the others. Their personalities grated against each other like irregularly shaped gears, and although 7 had no desire to lead the group, she believed that 1’s leadership would only get everyone killed. “All we do is hide and scavenge and survive and run, we’ve never lifted a finger against the machines even though the Scientist--”

“The Scientist,” 1 scoffed. “What has he created us for but to face danger at every corner, to try and fix the humans’ problems.” 2 quietly began working on 5’s broken optical, but 7 could tell he was listening intently. “What have they done for us? What do we owe them?”

A distant explosion sent tremors through the ground. 7 threw a hand at the smoking wasteland outside. “Eventually the humans will be gone. Look at them. They can’t even defend themselves against their own creations. The world will go silent and we’ll be the only ones left, but not if we keep running and never turn around and give those machines a taste of their own medicine. We’ve been created for a purpose and it wasn’t to hide out in the rubble.” 2’s hands stilled in their hasty work. 3 and 4 turned to each other, their eyes flickering as they spoke in their strange, strobe-like language. 6 nervously fiddled with his pen-nib fingers, keeping his large eyes on the destruction beyond the cathedral. 8 shifted in place and glanced at 1, who was glaring at 7 through narrow pupils. For a moment, 7 thought she had won.

“No.”

She couldn’t believe what she’d heard. “No? What, you’re just going to--to sit here while the world ends?”

“The world might end, but we will endure longer than they have. Their time has ended. We’ll have nothing to do with it.” 1’s expression was hard, unforgiving.

7’s fingers clinked as she balled them up in anger. She stepped back. “Fine. Stay here and rot, for all I care. But I can’t sit here and be idle while the rest of the world goes on.”

“7, don’t do this.” 2 was suddenly in front of her, pushing himself upright off the ground. He took her hands. “We need you here, to help keep us safe. To help keep them safe.” He nodded at 3, 4, 6, the innocent, the childlike. An ache throbbed inside 7. She didn’t want to leave them, but she didn’t have a choice. She looked at 2, his kindly, worried face, and she tried to smile but it wouldn’t come.

“No.” She squeezed his hands before releasing them. “I need to go.”

3 started forward, blinking his eyes slowly, but 4 held her twin back. She nodded at 7, a gesture of acknowledgement, of release. 4 understood.

7 glanced over all of them one last time, then turned and ran into the smoke. She would rather be alone anyway.

***

7’s prediction was accurate. Eventually, the humans died out, one by one. It became ever more rare to see a refugee scampering about on the streets, his enormous boots clomping in the rubble, his breathing labored and desperate. Fewer and fewer planes invaded the skies, which slowly grew darker with pollution and smoke. They stopped coming altogether five days after 7 left the others.

Having been released only a while ago, 7 was not yet familiar with the layout of the city they had awakened in. Every building looked similar to the ones around it--big, blocky brick structures in rows, columns, ever spiraling out from the center of the destroyed city. Scarlet banners hung in rags and tatters across battered walls, their bloody, shredded tails drifting on the breeze. Everything was doused in shades of gray. The clanking of the two-legged machines was ever present behind piles of rubble, and 7 hid whenever they came near, even though she was too small to be noticed.

She hadn’t been lying when she said they’d been created for a purpose--she knew it, she could feel it--but she had no idea what that could be. As soon as she realized this, a touch of fear colored her thoughts from that time forward.

So what now?

Would she just wander aimlessly in the emptiness, attempting to rescue the humans who couldn’t even save themselves? What was the point? She briefly considered returning to the Scientist, but as soon as the idea occurred to her, she immediately discarded it. The man hadn’t told them anything when they left; there would be nothing else useful he could tell them now.

Weeks passed, then months. The machines began to die out as well. Sometimes they would trip over their gangly legs and simply lie on the ground, unable to move, waiting until the glaring red light of their programming dimmed and went out completely. Sometimes they fought with one another. The clumsy machines would accidentally bump one another and turn and screech in some foreign, grating tongue. The fights always ended in gunfire, and often both steel behemoths wound up so damaged and torn that both of them shut down. They grew fewer and fewer in number as time passed.

But there were others.

It happened a year after she left. 7 had been wanting to create a weapon for herself, just in case something decided to come along. A lone, curious human, perhaps. Their hands were large and clumsy and could easily break her arms or legs. A lone scalpel blade had glinted in the rubbish and caught her attention, and she was rubbing her thumb across the edge when something moved behind her.

7 whirled around.

The alley was dark and empty, a few lone flyers rustling and fluttering on the ground. She caught it--a brisk, clockwork movement in the shadows, a slight reflection.

Something was watching her.

7 froze, staring into the darkness. Then she bolted to stand behind a crumbling brick, panting hard, clutching the blade to her chest. What could it be?

The lonely street clashed with the metallic echo of a garbage can toppling over, and 7 grabbed the top of the brick and vaulted over the top of the brick, brandishing her knife. No more hiding.

She instantly regretted the decision.

Galloping out of the alley was a large, four-legged machine. But not a complete machine--parts of it were screwed to pieces of animal bone. Metallic claws threw sparks across the cobblestone. Its robotic brain was encased in the skull of some large cat, one eye burning red, one eye dead and dim. It was hastily made; the mismatched parts gave it a haphazard look. The jaw creaked open and it screeched at her. 7 snapped into action and rolled to the side just as its teeth clapped shut in the space where she’d been moments before. Brandishing the knife, she scanned it for a weakness. The neck looked thin enough to cut through or break. Even as she moved forward, though, the beast whipped around and charged her again. It’s fast!! 7 dodged a second time, but this time its fangs actually clipped her shoulder. She grunted in pain and stumbled, off-balance, and suddenly her entire body was screaming in agony as a claw scraped through the rough fabric of her back. Gasping, the stitchpunk fell to the ground, unable to move, unable to think, only curling up on the street and wishing the pain would just stop.

The last thing she heard was the beast bounding away in leaping, crashing jumps, rattling off the empty buildings.

***

When 7 woke, it was dim and her surroundings were out of focus. She blinked. There seemed to be something in front of her…

“AAH!” 7 sat up and scrambled backwards as 3 leaped back and flicked her eyes in surprise. Her brother, 4, stood behind her, holding 7’s blade she had scavenged from the emptiness.

The emptiness?

She blinked and looked around. She was on the floor of a cavernous room with a ceiling so high and vaulted that it disappeared into darkness. The moon shone dimly through a yawning doorway, shedding light on the cracked stone floor. The large, bulky square objects surrounding them were, she saw, rows of shelves that had been knocked over, and some were entirely destroyed, leaving bricks crushed all across the ground. No, not bricks, she realized. Books. Big, thick books with dull leather bindings and shimmering golden letters, in stacks and piles all over the place.  Behind them lay a vast bronze globe, spilling its paper innards out onto the cold ground. It was a library, or the corpse of one at least, dusty and forgotten and crouching in the heart of the city. She couldn’t believe she’d never been in here before.

7 turned to the twins again. “Did you leave the others?”

3 nodded. 4 held up a spindly finger and frowned at it.

“1? 1 made you leave?”

They nodded once more, and 7 felt a flash of anger. First he had wanted to protect everyone by squirreling away in his hidey-hole, and now he was pushing out anyone he felt was taking up too much space. 1 was a stubborn, narrow-minded person; he couldn’t tolerate any questions or curiosity around him and insisted on leaving things as they were. 3 and 4 would have annoyed him to no end. At least the two had found a safe refuge.

7  became aware that her back no longer hurt as it had before. She reached back and touched the cloth fabric that had been mauled earlier. There was a large, ragged patch covering the wound; she could feel the thick stitches running back and forth. “Did you fix me?”

3 patted 4’s back while 4 grinned enthusiastically.

A small, wondering smile crept across 7’s face. “Thank you.”

The twins flashed their eyes in response and watched her stand carefully, testing her strength. Everything seemed to be working. She looked up at them, gripping her new weapon tightly.

“I’ll come back to visit.”

It hurt her to say it, it hurt to push them away again, but she needed to be out there fighting, and she knew that while the twins may be courageous, it would be dangerous for them. Once again, she felt an overwhelming rush of gratitude towards them as they smiled at her, understanding. 3 actually waved, metal joints glinting in the pale moonlight, and 4 held out the scalpel blade. 7 accepted it and nodded to them. At least I got to see them again.

Then she pushed her feelings far down inside of her and turned on her heel, heading out into the night.

***

Time seemed to pass with dreamlike slowness after 7 left the twins in the library. She continued to create weapons for herself, strapping the scalpel blade to an old clock arm and tying ropes to a few small weights with numbers too burnished to read to create a pair of bolas. A washer tied to a broken section of tube became her shield.

She saw the beast only once after their first encounter. It was in the midst of an abandoned no-man’s-land, a dusty place strewn with barbed wire and hibernating grenades just waiting to be set off by one careless movement. The cat beast had been scavenging around the opening of one of the trenches, attempting to clear the rubble away. But before she could do more than take a step, it had lifted its head, looked off into the distance, and bounded away, screeching and snarling.

7 sighed in frustration. How could something so large, so easy to track, be almost impossible to hunt? She was about to leave when she stopped and looked closely at the trench’s opening. There was a small skeleton there, its flesh disintegrated and the bones crumbling. It was a bird. A sparrow or a pigeon, caught in the deadly jaws of the poison gas released by the steel behemoths years before. The thing that intrigued her was that while the skeleton was mostly crushed and disappearing, the skull remained in perfect preservation, still round and white and speckled with dust. She picked it up and appraised it. It looked like her head might fit inside of it. No, 7, don’t be ridiculous, you’re not out here to try on hats.  

It would be practical, though, she argued with herself, turning it left and right. Finally she turned it around and fit it over her head.  Her shadow turned into something primal, beastly, something to be feared. And although 7 didn’t have any confidence issues, wearing the skull as a helmet did give her an air of surety that she didn’t know she was missing.

If I’m going to be six inches tall and try to fight machines, she told herself, heading back to the city, I might as well protect myself while doing it.

And the helmet did look pretty cool.

***

Ten years. Five hundred and twenty weeks. Three thousand, six hundred and forty days. The numbers rolled through 7’s head easily, too easily; how she kept count, she had no idea. The world had gone completely cold and silent, the corpses lying in unnatural preservation across the crumbling landscape. 7 flipped the skull up over her optics, searching the city. She was perched in a broken window three stories up in the face of an old bakery. The glass shards glittered in cloudy fragments around her, flecked with red and brown and black. 7 shifted her weight, avoiding the sharp edges, switching her spear from her right hand to her left. No movement except for the occasional flutter of a discarded banner. The beast wasn’t around. A windstorm was building up in the east, and 7 knew it would soon break across the city in a howling maelstrom of dirt and debris. They’d become more and more frequent lately. She had to move soon.

A sudden noise to her right made her turn sharply, the claw-bones knocking against the skull she wore. It sounded like someone speaking, but not in the deep, booming voice of a human; it was the smaller, thinner voice of a stitchpunk.

Something inside her quickened. She hadn’t heard a voice like that in a long time.

7 hopped down from the ledge and leapt from rain gutter to awning to the ground, each leap a blurred rush of movement. Rolling to avoid injury, she darted off in the direction of the voice, slapping the skull over her face. Who would be out here in the emptiness? It wouldn’t be 1, the stubborn coward he was. Nor would he have sent out anyone close to him. Could it be 5? Or 2? The voice spoke again, and 7 strained to hear the words.

“I don’t mind having one eye. It sort of allows me to concentrate on one thing at a time, you know?”

7 sighed in relief, a slight smile lifting at the corner of her mouth. It was 5! He was all right! And from the sound of it, he had someone with him. Probably 2. She wondered whether she should follow them or not. She’d been running from them so long, she couldn’t imagine what she could say to them that would make up for ten years of absence. Perhaps she could convince them to come and fight with her, to strike back at the beasts. Time spent fighting them might have changed their minds about hiding.

7 had been hiding herself long enough.

***

She lost them in the windstorm.

7 cursed her bad luck and scanned the horizon again, making sure she hadn't missed them in the blowing dust of the minefield.

No. They were nowhere in sight.

Frowning, she continued to sprint off in the direction they had gone, a small amount of panic beginning to well up inside of her. Where could they have been going? The only place this leads to is...

...the factory.


A fluttering movement caught her attention. Pushing through the wind, she ran over to the scrap of paper that was impaled on a wooden splinter sticking out of the ground. It was a map, showing a large circle divided up into several sections. She instantly recognized the layout of the streets and buildings. It was a map of the city. This must be 5’s map.

She looked up slowly and stared down the mouth of the dark bunker, into which led the tracks of the cat beast and two stitchpunks.

***

The beast’s roars echoed down the tunnel, and 7 ran faster, grabbing her bolas from where they had been tied to her rope belt. I can’t believe it. They finally did it. They finally came to fight the machines! But the battle sounded like it was going poorly.

She darted down a side tunnel and emerged in a cavernous room, the ceiling high and the ground covered in scrapped machine parts. A part of the wall had completely fallen in, baring the hazy yellow landscape and the setting sun outside. On the other side of the rubbish pile, the battle raged between stitchpunk and machine.

7 hardly thought; she blurred up onto an outcrop and spun her bolas in the air, creating a high-pitched humming. The beast whirled around to snap back at her but it was too late--she released the bolas and they whipped around the machine’s bony shout, locking its jaws shut. Acting quickly, she bared her spear and leaped onto the beast’s back. The world suddenly jerked around as the machine twisted and bucked, trying to throw her off, and she clung on desperately. An enormous paw came closing in on her, and she held up her right arm to protect herself. The claws ended up latching onto her shield and dragging it away. 7 steadied herself, waited for the next squall, and pushed herself up into the air, turning until her spear was positioned just right.

THWACK!

Slamming downward, she brought the blade of her spear around in a wide arc, slicing clean through the beast’s neck. The decapitated body suddenly froze up and crashed to the ground. The stitchpunks sprawled across the ground gaped at her as she leaped down off of the beast’s corpse, landing impressively in front of the stunned group. Hang on, that’s 5, that’s 2, and I don’t know who that other one is… She thrust her spear into the ground and lifted her skullmet. They all immediately lit up with joy.

“7?” 5 said in happy disbelief.

“I don’t believe it!” 2 hopped to his feet and ran forward to hug 7, catching her off guard. She floundered for a moment before embracing him back, smiling. She glanced up and saw 5 stand up with a relieved grin on his face. He had a large patch covering his damaged eye. “You’ve come back!” he said.

“I never left,” 7 replied, pulling the map off her belt and handing it to him. “You finally decided to join the fight.”

Then she finally saw him--the new stitchpunk. A spidery black 9 was drawn on his back, and his design seemed simpler than any of the others. A large zipper ran down his front. He was holding her shield, which had fallen off in the battle with the cat beast. “You dropped this,” he said sheepishly.

7 accepted it and slid it back onto her arm, appraising him as she did so. “Where have you been hiding?”

“Rusty, hacked-together, shoddy piece of--OW!” 7 looked back to see 2 hopping around on his foot after having kicked the jaw of the dead cat beast. She laughed and patted him on the back before bending down to unwind the bolas off of its skull.

“I just can’t believe you’re here,” 2 continued, a wide grin on his face. “We’ve missed you, 7.”

“1 has a new cape,” 5 interjected.

7 smiled ruefully. “I’m glad I missed that.”

“And 3 and 4 ran away, 1 sent them away after they brought a new book to the sanctuary, it was awful--”

But before 7 could reassure them that the twins were fine, that everything was going to be all right, 2 suddenly ran towards 9 just as he pushed a round, metallic device into a plug in the mound of spare parts.

Where did that come from?

“Stop! What are you doing!” The old stitchpunk pushed him aside and tried to tug it out. “We don’t know what it does--”

The device snapped open and started glowing with an eerie green light, cords of energy snapping between the outstretched prongs of the talisman. 7 rushed towards them, a warning on her lips, 2 pushed 9 backwards and stretched his arms out, and then, the arcs of light reached out and a hollow scream echoed through the factory as they reached into 2’s body, shattering the glass in his optics and dragging at his suddenly useless limbs in a grotesque, jerking display, like a puppet with its strings yanked. 7 cried out at the sight, her voice mingling with 5’s yelp of shock and terror. What is it doing to him?!

As quickly as it had started, the display was over. The green light ripped away from 2’s body and it fell to the ground, lifeless, eyes and mouth smoking and empty.

“No! NO!” 5 scrambled to kneel next to 5, his hands quivering and shaking. 9 came to his side, panting, looking horrified. 7 was frozen. It didn’t make any sense. 2 couldn’t just die. He couldn’t just be gone. It wasn’t possible.

The device pulsed and began humming, a deep thrum that slowly grew louder and louder. 7 watched, alarmed, as the light seemed to drain out of the device and into the surrounding machine in thin, green lines. An ominous red light flooded the area and the ground began to tremble. She practically had to drag 5 away from 2. “Come on!” The ground was erupting with metal parts and mechanical beams, the earth thundering and dust filling the air. 7 looked back and felt a pang as 2’s body was buried beneath the debris.

Something was awakening from under the earth. The vast arms that reached into the pile of rubble shuddered and quaked, attempting to pull out whatever slept beneath the scraps. 7, 5 and 9 sprinted as fast as they could to the exit. Suddenly, 7 slid to a stop as an enormous black hole gaped a few inches in front of them. She held out her arms and the other two slammed into them, and they all stood there, panting, looking down at what could have been their final resting place.

The enormous flag with the strange black insignia stretched and warped, finally tearing into a pile of red shreds and revealing a machine of gigantic proportions. Spider-like in appearance, it seemed to be simply a head with one scarlet eye and several dangling robotic arms. It flexed its limbs in all directions, as though testing its limitations.
5 yanked the grappling hook out of his quiver and tried to jam it into his crossbow, the barbs flailing wildly as his shaking hands struggled to load the bow. 7 looked skyward and saw a rusty handle sticking out of the wall. Grabbing the crossbow, she aimed it at the bar and pulled the trigger, sending the hook flying until it caught the handle and pulled itself tight. “Jump!” she yelled at the two, shoving them off the edge. 5 yelped as they all swung in a huge arc to the conveyor belt on the other side of the chasm. Halfway through the swing, the handle suddenly jerked downwards, shaking her loose and causing an alarm to start blaring throughout the factory. She just managed to catch hold of a broken bar sticking out from under the conveyor belt with one hand, nearly dropping her spear. Bad, bad, bad. Behind her, she could hear the machine grinding and moving, and her arm trembled as she struggled to pull herself up.

A red light glared into her optics and she cried out, turning away as the machine lowered itself until they were staring eye to eye. It stared at her for a second, clenching its massive iron claws as sparks of electricity jumped from several live wires around what would have been its face. 7 gasped, tensing her entire body, but before she could do anything, the machine jerked its head away. 5 and 9 had distracted it for a moment and were running for their lives, tiny figures against the massive space inside of the factory. 7 took advantage of the machine’s momentary lapse and  swung herself forward, releasing the rod. In a breathless rush, she landed on a lower conveyor belt and rolled to her feet. She looked back up at the machine. It was slowly traveling across the room, beams squealing, lifting up parts of machinery in its ruthless search for more stitchpunks to suck the life out of.

I have to distract it.

7 snatched up her bolas again and spun them above her head, aiming for the gears that had been accidentally activated by the switch. They flew through the air and immediately got tangled up in the whirling teeth of the gears, making an enormous clattering noise as the weights slammed against each other. Red light glared in her direction as the machine turned to confront the noise, and 7 leaped down from her perch. She looked around frantically for 5 and 9 and spotted them huddled under a gear. She leaped towards them, causing them to jump. “What are you waiting for?” she whispered harshly.

The three of them all exploded towards the exit, trying to make it as far as possible without attracting the attention of the massive robot. Their silence didn’t last long. With a groan of metal, the machine swung over to them, sparking furiously. “Come on!” 7 yelled. “Run!” The pipe they had entered the factory in was straight ahead, but the shadow of the monster loomed over them and just as its claws were about to come down on them, the stitchpunks made it to the safety of the tunnel.

Suddenly, the sides of the pipe collapsed in on themselves, shrinking the opening to half its original size, and a whirring saw cut through the metal, causing 5 to trip and fall as the metal beneath his feet suddenly disappeared. 9 grabbed a hold of his hands before he fell, and they continued sprinting away from the machine. Nobody stopped until they were clear out of the tunnel and outside of the factory, panting and shaking as they took cover in a large, rusting can.

5 clutched at his head, rocking on the ground. “I knew it!” he whimpered. “I knew we shouldn’t have come! WHY?” He suddenly lunged at 9, who looked alarmed as his friend shook him. “Why did you do that?!”

“I didn’t know!” 9 exclaimed, leaning back. “I’m sorry!” 5’s furious expression melted away, ashamed at his outburst, and they stared at each other hollowly. “I’m sorry,” 9 repeated.

5 sighed and turned away, watching the enormous factory.

“What were you thinking?” 7 said harshly, drilling him with her eyes, daring him to try and make up an excuse for what an absolutely idiotic thing he’d done. 9 had the good sense to say nothing.

A sudden groaning sound from the factory made them all look up. One after another, the three enormous chimneys began belching oily black smoke and plumes of fire. Thunderous grating noises scraped inside of the factory as the windows began to glow auburn with light.

“What is it going to do?” 5 asked fearfully.

7 looked up at the gray sky and the orange flames billowing out of the tall stone columns. Think. Think. What is it going to do?

Then she had an idea.

“I know where we can find answers,” she said aloud. Before 5 and 9 could question her, she darted off into the emptiness, back to the town, back to the rubble and carnage where she knew the library was waiting. And behind them the factory thundered on as the vast machine threw shadows in the tall windows and as the sun flickered and went out behind the horizon and left the world cold and dark and dead.
So I take Creative Writing, and one of our assignments was literally to write a fanfiction. Like oh my gosh. Bless you, Mr. Henderson. The prompt was to write a piece of the story from the POV of a character that was absent for some part of a book or movie or something. So yay, happy day, 9 fandom, cause I picked 7! She's got so much potential as a main character of her own story, what with 10 years of her running around chopping cat heads off and being generally awesome. So here ya go. This starts at the flashback, right when 1 says, "When we woke in this world, it was chaos."
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Brownie79's avatar
Amazing! Incredibly exquisite! :clap: