#which is how Pluto got leaves and tendrils here

[tangleslime2]

Bugtober day 8: Lore

"Pluto has taken to its environment very nicely."

(what do you mean it's day 10???)

[doodlebeeberry]

The Right Ascension of Pluto

stones passed her by, some pebbles, some taller than herself, most—if not all—of those moseying past her face shimmering with tiny flecks of mica under the light of her screen. She tapped one with her singed toe, watching as it spun slowly before flopping back and watching the swirl of stars that’d appeared overhead while she’d been out. And she waited. And waited. And waited and waited and waited and waited and wondered idly if she was still moving at all. The stars hardly seemed to change. “It can't take him this long, he should have called back by now.” She checked her clock. It had been fifteen long, arduous minutes since he’d hung up. "Oh."

an old oc story from last year i forgot to post here! ft. a robot oc im very fond of

ao3

CoCo was tiny, at least by human standards.

A given, seeing as she’d never physically grown. She changed, certainly, from replacing her casing to cracking her screen, but, try as she might, she couldn’t push beyond the 5’3” she was stuck with; her hardware simply couldn’t.

But that was fine, in her view. She’d grown accustomed to the two-foot height difference early on, and, quite frankly, couldn’t imagine herself being anything closer to average.                          

It even came with its advantages, allowing her to sneak off without regard or blame the faultiness of her neck’s artificial nerves on her constant looking up rather than her avoidance of proper maintenance and general disrepair.

Did she sometimes need to jump on tables to get people’s attention? Sure. Was she always the one overlooked in headcounts? Of course! But it was all unimportant in comparison.

Most of the time she didn’t mind being small.

Most, however, was underlined. Italicized. Written in bold. Whatever you’d need to bring it emphasis.

Most of the time, she didn’t mind.

Not always.

Certainly not now.

She was dwarfed by the cosmos around her, which always seemed as tiny as her from the ground. The distance, she reasoned, had often left her dreaming of balancing the stars on her fingers like grains of sand, or hoping to catch an asteroid in her hand.

Now, floating in the infinite, hundreds—no, thousands —of kilometers away from everything, all alone, she felt...small.

Petite.

Minuscule to a degree she hadn’t felt since she was young, facing the solar system for the first time.

How did she keep getting herself in these situations?

Why?

She was all alone. No supplies, no communications. Staring down the scraps of a ruined ship. She was small. She was scared. She—

—she needed to move before she got nailed by an asteroid the size of her living room.

She scrambled to push against the scraps of debris, leaving hardly a hair between her heels and the giant flaming rock hurtling past and a slight singe on her plating that she ignored in favor of fumbling for the severed right arm attempting to drift away.

As though in reply, the mangled wires sparked at her. Spindly tendrils of fear ensnared her for a passing moment as the universe around her nearly stilled. She sighed, the sound compressed and riddled with static.

“Alright, note,” CoCo said to the vast expanse of space, “don’t ruminate in an

active asteroid field.”

She turned her head upwards, closing her eyes and mumbling, “unless you wanna lose another limb.”

A beat passed and she opened her eyes, searching the distance for a ship, for any sign of life at all. A menagerie of stars stared back, framing a green smear in the center. Unremarkable from here, sure, but she’d seen pictures of the distant galaxy in the past, a careful dance of greens and pinks and blues, light as silk, hot as fire, lovely as a galaxy could be.

She chose to ignore it, curling into herself and inspecting her damaged right arm instead. Wires dangled from one end, plating scuffed and scratched, fingers curled slightly inwards. The sight reminded her of the keen ache living around the elbow joint where it was once connected. She shook her head and pushed the sensation away, hugging the arm closer. The damage was bad, but not irreparable.

She counted herself lucky. It could have been worse.

“Ok,” she breathed. “Let’s try this again.”

Her antennae twitched and shifted, mirrored by the slight twists of her head, leaning in every direction, searching. Her brow furrowed as she hummed, attempting to concentrate.

It didn’t take long for her volume to grow until she was nearly screaming in frustration.

“Gh—no! This isn’t working!” Her arm shot to her side as the empty socket sparked.

“There is nothing out here, meaning there shouldn’t be anything interrupting my signal! Or anyone else’s for that matter! So why. Isn’t. This. Working?!”

The vastness didn’t reply.

“Bah!”

She drooped, limp with defeat, bits of stone and metal passing by.

“So, this is it? I’m just gonna float here until my battery runs out?”

A meteor darted by a few feet away, displacing scraps of metal and sending them in her direction. One—a bundle of copper cables melted together—slowed to a near stop in front of her screen.

“Yeah, that sounds about right.”  

Laying back, she allowed the debris to make its way past her, brushing her antenna in the process. Sensations, familiar in the discomfort they brought her, bubbled up from her core. Something within her bleeped, but she disregarded it completely.

Drawing the limb as close as she could, she watched the wirers spark.

“I wonder if the girls even know I’m out here. Or my brother. Or my folks.”

She looked to the distant ruined ship. Her processor spun, screen flickering, fans humming louder to fill the space.

“I hope—“

Something hit her square in the head, silencing her. She would have tried to guess what it was, if not for the fact that it brought her every last system to a sudden halt.

Something was beeping. Less of a beep, really, and more of a shrill, inconsistent screeching blaring right in her ears. It wormed into her ears and made her want nothing more in the solar system than to turn off the alarm clock shrieking in her head.

Her cameras blinked on, staring out into near-empty space. A moment passed, and her senses cleared up enough to decipher the noise, not as a beeping, but a comprehensible message.

‘ Incoming call from— ‘

She answered. Her arm-socket sparked, driven by a largely unconscious action.

“Hello, yes? What is it? What do you want?” she chirped, curt, attempting to kick her

sleepy memory into high gear.

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

Snapping like a rubber band, her mind scrambled to fill in the gaps in response to the achingly familiar voice. She jumped, fumbling for a moment not to lose her arm to the gaping maw of the ceaseless vacuum pressing in on her from all sides. Loneliness crept in along the tail-end of her memories, but she pushed it away, the blanket of ice draped over her shoulders, in favor of slight inklings of excitement and chittered,

“Ixtlilton! Yes, you're—that’s—um-“ —she searched for words—“You heard me?”

“Of course I did, you’ve been screaming in our direction for hours. What’s

going on?”

“I...need your help.”

“Oh?” Something shuffled over the line.

“I’m a bit stuck in space right now. Would you mind coming to get me?

please?”

She imagined him, pausing in whatever idle tasks he was doing to process her words, staring at his wall, or out at the shoreline. Was it sunset now, she wondered, or night? She could never remember how his planet’s rotations worked.

An asteroid passed a few feet away, yet she still flinched back despite the distance.

He broke the silence.

“How did you manage that?”

“A ship crash.” CoCo rubbed the back of her neck. “Long story.”

“How long?”

“Too long.”

“Fair enough. Who else is out there with you?” She could faintly hear a

scratching sound. Ixtlilton preferred paper notes, she knew.

“Nobody. I’m all alone out here.”

The icy feeling returned with a vengeance. He sighed.

“Listen. I'm gonna go get some folks. I'll call you back once we set out. Keep

your tracker on, ok?”

Was her tracker even working?

“Alright. Talk to you in a bit.”

The line went silent.

She waited for a moment, ensuring that he’d actually hung up before poking around in her subconscious settings for her tracker controls, which never failed to give her a headache if she thought about the logistics too long.

Her tracker was off. She went to blink it on.

‘ System damage can render tracker coordinates inaccurate. Do you still

wish to proceed? ’ asked an internal voice. She ignored it, again, in favor of turning it on and scanning the information it relayed.

‘ Right Ascension: 19° 32 ’ 57”

Declination: -22° 20’ 54 ”’

“Sweet creation, that far?” She mumbled, “No wonder nobody’s come by yet.

No one’s here.” She took a moment to finally survey her surroundings properly and found herself somehow more dismayed than before. She’d drifted further out than she first thought, to the point where the only debris from the crash out here was herself. Instead, floating around her were an assortment of stones. Some pebbles, some taller than herself, most—if not all—of those moseying past her face shimmering with tiny flecks of mica under the light of her screen. She tapped one with her singed toe, watching as it spun slowly before flopping back and watching the swirl of stars that’d appeared overhead while she’d been out.

And she waited.

And waited.

And waited and waited and waited and waited and wondered idly if she was still moving at all. The stars hardly seemed to change.

“It can't take this long to get a team. He should have called by now.”

She checked her clock. It had been fifteen long, arduous minutes since he’d hung up.

“Oh. That would make sense.” Unconsciously, she shifted her damaged arm and reached up towards her neck out of nervous habit, fingers meeting mesh rather than the soft cotton of her favorite bandana. She looked down.

“Right. That dog took it.” Her antennas flicked back. “So much for that.”

Cutting off the thought, she checked her battery levels.

‘ Primary battery: 0% ’

Sensible, she thought, she hadn't charged last night. Or was it two nights ago? She didn't bother checking the date.

‘ Secondary battery: 50% ’

“Great. Loving that,” she mused. A small rock slipped into the open socket and buried between the wires, prompting an alert to ring out. She considered it before closing her eyes and letting her thoughts fade away.

Nothing she could do about it for now.

“This is bad.” CoCo fretted, darting through the ship. Emergency lights pulsed overhead, illuminating everything the glow of her screen couldn't reach. The rapid thump of her footsteps and titter of her voice broke up what would otherwise be an eerie silence.

“This is bad this is bad this is so, so -”

A clamor rang out behind her. To her left.

She stumbled through the doorway into the cockpit, the massive ghost of a Cerberus looming over the controls a few feet away. It turned to her. Two heads yapped in tandem, the third growling. A scrap of purple fabric hung off one of the left-most head’s teeth. She reached at the empty spot below her neck, finding, as she expected, nothing. The ground shook as it barked.

“I can't understand you!” she cried, “I can't speak dog! But—but you can understand me, yeah?”

She cautioned a step forward. Its ears fell back.

“And I can tell your upset, and angry, and—and confused,” she gestured lightly as she spoke. “But that's—that’s ok! If you just step away from the controls I can help you!”

It lifted a single ear, growling inoffensively. She took another step forward.

“Y-yeah! We’ll find someone you can talk to. We’ll figure out why you’re here!”

Leaning slightly back, she extended her hand, palm open and out. She watched her fingers shake.

“I can help you feel better. Just—“

The room was bathed in yellow, neon and blinding, and the speakers blared the message painting every screen on the control panel.

‘Warning:’

The ship buckled beneath them, throwing her forward.

The creature was nowhere to be seen.

‘entering asteroid f—‘

A loud blaring filled her mind yet again, yanking her out of sleep mode and into reality.

‘ Incoming— ‘

She answered, dragging her thoughts back to the present.

“Hello?”

“Hey, we’ve set out.” Ixtiltion said, his tone steady, “Is your

tracker on?”

“Yeah, should be.”

“Alright, give me just a second.”

And so she waited, allowing the weightless nature of space to spin her slowly as she kicked off a stray rock. Her battery had dropped 2% throughout her slumber.

“My word that’s a distance,” Ixtiltion muttered. “were it not for the situation I’d say I’m impressed.”

“Thanks?”

“Don’t mention it. But how’d you manage to throw yourself to the edge of the

System?”

“A ship crash. Didn’t I tell you that earlier?” She forgot about the damaged limb for a moment in favor of putting a hand to her chin in contemplation. “I could’ve sworn I did.”

“No, I know that, but why? How?” He asked, “manned vessels don’t go through that

area, at least not recently. So what’re you doing all the way out there?”

She snatched back her arm, which floated in front of her face.

“I never said I was on a manned ship, necessarily.”

“..Did you have permission at least?”

“Nnnnooo?” she answered, failing to make it sound remotely positive.

The comment hung in the air.

“CoCo, that’s illegal.”

Thirty minutes later she passed a crumbling planet wrapped in a thin yellow ring. The few rocks around her now were all much bigger than herself, colored a dull gold. She stuck out.

“How long have you been out there, anyway?” he asked.

“I don’t know, a day?” She checked her calendar, hoping it was right. “No, wait, make

that two days.”

A beat.

“Why didn’t you call?”

“My caller client’s still busted.” She chirped sheepishly. She could see him

clearly in her mind again, shaking his head.

“Good creation we need to get you fixed.”

She laughed, short and devoid of humor, hyper-aware of the ache in her shoulder.

“Yeah, probably.”

Several hours passed, interspersed by idle conversation as she drifted, waiting and waiting and waiting. During that time she decided she didn’t want to go stargazing for a good long while. She took to tracing the near-invisible seams of her arm, counting the rivets and answering her brother’s questions.

Her battery sat at 30%, driving her to wonder why it always seemed to drain so quickly while on call. A matter to tend to when she got home, she supposed.

She froze.

Something passed overhead, vaguely defined by the shadows.

It flew in wide circles, never moving too far off its path.

It was familiar, she realized. She knew it. She’d seen it before.

Her mind connected the dots for the worst.

Driven by a flurry of half-formed panic, she scrambled from rock to oddly-colored rock, ducking behind one that hid her from view.

She’d lost her arm in the rushing. Noth that she’d noticed.

It circled overhead once more before diving and driving a fearful bleep from her that was mercifully lost to the vacuum. She clung to the stone, trembling, dread welding her into place.

She hoped, against all hope, that she was too small for their Cerberus to see.

“Where are you?”

She flinched at her brother’s question, her speakers muted.

“CoCo?”

She couldn’t reply.

“Is your tracker broken?”

Goodness, she fretted, why was he still talking?

“Either that or mine is. I can’t see you.”

Boiling waters of frustration bubbled in her, desperate for him to—

“Are we even still connected? Hello?”

“ Stop talking! ” she whisper-yelled, ducking lower.

“Well, that—“

“Stop!”

“—answers that, but—“

“Sshhh!”

“—why are you shushing me?”

“Because it’ll hear you! Or hear me talking to you!”

“‘It?’ What do you mean ‘it’?”

That caught her attention, pushing back her fear in favor of confusion. Slowly, she reached for the top of the stone and pulled her head over the threshold just high enough to see where the horrible creature had been.

“There’s..nobody there?” She squeaked, pushing herself further out from behind the wall.

“of course not. Almost nobody comes out here.”

“Wh—but”—she stammered, drifting into the now-empty space, antennas

twitching—”the creature, the dog! It was right here!”

“Are you alright? You not making sense.”

Twisting to and fro she stared into the same speckled void she’d spent the past few days drifting through. Eventually, she stopped, nabbing her crinkled left antenna and tugging it nervously. She’d seen it. She’d seen it! Where could it have—

Something touched her head.

Terrified, she jumped back and turned towards whatever the perpetrator was.

Or who it was, in this case, as she came face to face with Ixtiltion, a thin frown cutting through the white background of his screen, an inversion of her own color palette, one hand outstretched, the other clinging to the creature he sat on.

The weight of a train smacked her in the form of a realization that, perhaps, should have dawned on her much earlier, visible only in the twitch of her right shoulder and a minute flicker of her screen.

A marvel of modern technology she is, she thought, and this is what you get.

“Well,” he said, pulling his arm back under his old pink shawl, “I was right about one

thing: You look awful. And what happened to your arm?”

It was at this point that she remembered she’d lost track of it and looked to her now-empty hand.

“I must’ve lost it.”

A beat.

“Must-have? What do you mean by ‘must-have’? Didn’t you notice?”

“I knew it was gone, I just”— she waved her hand—“lost it? No, wait. Misplaced it?

That’s not quite…” she rambled on and on. Not unfondly Ixtiltion rolled his eyes and once more reached out to CoCo.

“Ok, stop before you run your battery dry.”

She was only at 25% now.

“Sorry, I’m just..” she gestured in place of words. He followed the logic with ease.

“Don't worry about it. Let’s just get you home.”

She smiled, taking the offered hand and allowing him to pull her up, the creature casting a glance at the passengers before taking off.

Truth be told, CoCo couldn’t quite call herself relieved. Not yet. The chance to finally relax somewhat was much appreciated, but something still sat on her shoulders, prickling at her open socket.

She peeked behind her, at the wide-open nothingness they’d left behind.

There was nothing there.