Greetings! I've had a long fanfiction drought, but university is a cruel mistress. Anyway, it's semester/winter break now, so I have decided to start a new fic to whittle away the hours while I wait to get my results back and see if I passed my courses.

This fic is a little darker than 'Reconstruction', and I'm not really sure if I should continue it (I do have a plan for it, but whether or not it should go ahead remains to be seen). There shall be TUp (would you expect anything else from me?) as well as a couple of other pairings.

To cut a long ramble short...here 'tis.

July, 2312

Robot Command Base, formerly G.L.E.E. Headquarters

Thirty-six hours after the Apocalypse

The one thing the girl knew for certain was that she wasn't alive.

She had a physical presence- she could tell that much from the searing pain that burned through her broken body, she had a feeble breath that rattled in and out under great duress. She had a mind, she had thoughts, though most of them were just tangles of colours and pictures and noises she couldn't name. She had an identity- it would probably come back to her soon enough. But something told her everything was terribly wrong. Everyone in the world had lost something- something big, something important- something they were defending at the cost of hundreds, nay, thousands of lives. And on top of that crushing defeat, she had lost something. Something big, something important. Something so valuable that there was no point in even trying to be alive. She wasn't living, she was…existing. That was all.

She cracked one eye open. What she saw didn't tell her anything. Just a gleaming metal room, all shiny reflections and the same chrome walls, ceiling, floor. Completely nondescript. It wasn't bedecked with a single clue, not one shred that might tell her what- or who- she was, and what she had lost that had taken her life with it. There was a crushing pain against her chest, and the girl managed to get her bearings enough to tell she was lying face-down on some sort of table, made of the same metal as the rest of the room. A light shone overhead, bouncing off every surface and burning dark spots onto the retinas of her barely open eyes. She screwed them shut again.

She didn't know how long she lay there, whether it was minutes or perhaps days, only that time was passing excruciatingly slowly, and she didn't know what that meant, or how it was relevant to anything. She was a brain in a body in a place somewhere, and outside that place something had happened, and all of that should have some impact on her. But it didn't. She was completely hollow.

Some more of that time stuff passed, murky shapes danced across the backs of her eyelids and gradually, a word started to come back to her.

Tasssssss.

Tass.

Tassesss.

Tazz-

That was it.

Taz.

She was sure that was supposed to affect her. It was something she'd heard a lot in her life. And were people addressing to her when they used it?

That could be a possibility.

She decided to hold onto it for now, just in case. Its real use might come back to her eventually, but for now she'd use it as her name. It was something to hold onto, anyway- to keep her sane while she tried to gather her shreds of brainpower together and work out what was happening.

Soy Taz, she decided. Yo soy Taz. I am Taz. Me llamo Taz. My name is Taz.

She didn't know why there were two different ways of saying it. Could she speak two languages? Which one was her native tongue? What was a language?

More time things, more colours and shapes and another idea came back.

Soy un teniente.

I am a lieutenant.

Me llamo Taz y soy teniente. My name is Taz and I am a lieutenant.

Whatever a lieutenant was.

Y estoy en el dolor. And I am in pain.

This last thought was so overwhelmingly, crushingly true that the girl who was maybe called Taz and probably a lieutenant and definitely in pain couldn't bring herself to think any more.

She let her mind go blank.

'The human disappoints.'

The three robots nodded mechanically, their heads squeaking as they moved up and down.

They were staring through electronic eyes through the window, watching emotionlessly as the scrawny creature lay slumped over its bed, twitching slightly ever so often. It seemed to be such a pathetic little thing, especially for a human that had proved so vicious in the late war that they had lost a large percentage of their number to her hands, and who had almost cost them their victory. Her and the other, larger one. Well, thought the robots with what could be described as the synthetic equivalent of smugness, the other one had been efficiently eliminated. And without it, this little one was no longer a threat.

'Signs of movement indicate the human lives. Closer range scans will determine if it is still capable of conscious thought, and if it is worth keeping. Megagirl9812,' the first robot turned to its companion, a symmetrically perfect, almost glowing white cyberwoman, whose hand squealed up to her forehead in a salute.

'Please state a command for me to service you.'

'Enter the human's containment cell and examine it. If scans indicate its brain and body can be salvaged, we can put it to work or utilise it in our experiment. If not, we shall dispose of it.'

'Affirmative.' Megagirl saluted again and clanked off in the direction of the door.

The little human didn't move when she entered its cell. It just lay there like a sack of potatoes, barely breathing.

It couldn't be much use if it couldn't do anything. Megagirl gave it a disdainful look and raised her hands over it, running them along its back.

Neeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!

It took less than five seconds to run the information through her built-in processor. Analysis complete. Human. Female. Biological age: approximately twenty-four earth years. Health status: Fractured phalanges in left hand. Other bones all intact. Ligaments torn in both ankles. Shoulder dislocated. Lacerations to torso, front and back, deep wounds in chest and abdomen- these will require skin grafts and strong doses of antibiotics to counter infection if the human is to survive. Mental health status: suffering from a high degree of amnesia.

Value for Project 15A2: Little to none if condition does not improve.

Unconscious.

Megagirl withdrew her hands and examined the human female with her eyes for a moment. It didn't look like much, but there was something about the pitiful way its back heaved as its respiratory system struggled to function that made her pause. If she had had emotions worked into her design, she reasoned she might have felt some sort of…what was the word…sympathy for the girl. When she looked at it, she sensed a connection with it, as though if things had turned out differently, they might have had a strange alliance.

But robots didn't think these things. Robots couldn't. Because robots didn't have feelings- not on her level anyway. Megagirl and Megaman units were quite a way down the pecking order- and only the superior droids- the ones with more streamlined features and advanced technology- were allowed a set of very basic emotions, so that they might attempt to understand the humans and communicate with them. Understand the enemy, and you're one step closer to defeating it- that was their motto. But it was not her job to understand the enemy. She was merely a servant- higher up than the mindless drones that they sent out into battle and could afford to lose, but nowhere near as important as those in charge of negotiations and strategies. She was restricted to medical scans and the like.

If any of the others knew what she was contemplating at this moment, she would be decommissioned- lowered slowly into lava while the others stood around in perfect, uniform, military pose, watching as she dissolved into nothing. She'd seen it happen to others of her kind before- that was what happened to those who got ideas above their engineered rank.

They could never know that for the past six months she had been secretly downloading emotions from the internet. It would be the end of her if she did.

Her radar sensors making sure her colleagues behind her were watching, she jammed one finger into the human's back, poking it repeatedly until a whimper of pain escaped it. That would put them off the scent. An artificial rage and loathing of human beings was allowed- in fact, was mandatory among all mechanoids, as well as a desire to see them suffer, so appearing to taunt it would curry a bit of favour.

Better to be on the safe side, she thought, and suppressed a mechanical laugh. That was a joke. Because all sides of a robot are mathematically perfect and symmetrical.

Not that she would dare show off her sense of humour in front of her superiors.

With a final jab to the girl's ribs, she turned, marching back towards the door to deliver her report.

Taz was floating in a barely-conscious state of haze and heavy eyes and sharp twinges, when something started pushing against her ribs, the small of her back, right in the spots where the largest bruised splodged against her skin and causing small bursts of intense agony to ripple through her.

Something was prodding her, perhaps trying to get her attention, but although she could feel her limbs, she couldn't move them.

'Report on the human complete,' droned a monotonous voice, and something suddenly clicked in Taz's mind.

Esto es una robota.

Her eyes snapped open in astonishment as she was machine-gunned with memories.

Robots everywhere, interrupting her party to shower her with the blood of her loved ones, marching towards her with laser beams flying from their advanced weapons. A war… a great and terrible war- not one…a whole series of them…

The Robot Wars. Her whole raison d'être had been to end them, to save humanity from the fist of iron they were closing around the world.

And it all fit- she was Taz- she wasn't just a lieutenant- she was a starship ranger- a tough, sonovabitch starship ranger saving the world by taking down one army of robots at a time…

So what had happened? Why wasn't she shooting this metal bitch? Why was she letting the robot poke her around, walk all over her? Why was she its prisoner?

Unhand me, ¡perra! Taz wanted to scream. Her mouth opened, but she couldn't make it move, couldn't make her tongue form the words.

Why was she immobilised like this?

More memories were coming back to her now, all shooting through her brain, harpooning her nerves.

They had been fighting- the battle at Qo'onos…they were holding onto the lead but a huge force had been mobilising and this battle could make or break their victory in the wars…

She'd been doing so well- she'd been on her own, but she'd handled it so well- she'd been taking down ten for every one shot aimed at her, and something had happened…

And then it hit her. A direct harpoon to the heart, tearing it open and sending Taz's feelings spilling out like candy from a piñata.

Up.

There had been a commander- a Commander Up, a Commander Up who had been her best friend. A Commander Up who had run to help her when they brought the autobots in- and who had been cut in half.

Vertically, right down the middle.

In front of her.

She hadn't been able to continue. She'd stopped, horrified, and they'd descended on her, shooting and slashing as she stood immobilised, her eyes fixed on Up's remains.

She remembered now why she'd tried to block all this out now.

She remembered now why she wasn't alive.

Because she had failed humanity and lost the Robot Wars- and she had failed Up. He had died, and so had she, by watching it.

Before Taz could help herself a stifled sob slipped from her mouth.

The robot, which had been creaking steadily away from her suddenly stopped. A screeching sound scattered through Taz's brain, and then the tin can was back at her side, a laser pointing the narrow slits of her heavy eyes.

'The human is awake.'

She could hear more of them entering, funny whirring noises that meant something was going to happen to her. Not that she cared. She didn't care what they did to her any more. She'd lost everything. The robots had the earth- she'd failed that, too.

There was nothing left for her to fight for.

July, 2312

Qo'onos

Forty hours after the Apocalypse

The trouble with having possession of an unregistered starship was you could lose your job if your superiors found out. Of course, if all your superiors happened to be dead that didn't matter much. In fact, when the enemy took over your world and suddenly had access to and control over the list of registered starships, the fact that yours wasn't in said list could be called a blessing in disguise.

For the first time since they had stolen the craft, Specs felt genuinely grateful. The robots were watching every entry and exit from earth via the trackers installed into each starship- but fortunately for her and her friends, their little crime meant they could slip out of the atmosphere totally undetected- for now, anyway. While the robots hadn't yet perfected their security system, they were free to make one or two trips to various other planets in search of survivors and supplies.

The idea had crossed her mind that they should just keep on flying- never return to earth. They could start anew someplace else, away from the fist of iron that was now never likely to be lifted from the earth.

No, that was no good. The robots didn't just own earth, they owned as much of the universe as had been discovered so far. By setting themselves up in G.L.E.E. Headquarters and working from there, they had ensured that everything the League had discovered was now theirs. There was nowhere to run to.

'We're gonna hafta try and get our hands on another stash.'

Specs had the urge to throw her spectrometer at the speaker's head, but she didn't act on it. 'Junior, shut the hell up about your stash already!'

Her former boss's son sat cross-legged on one of the control panels, hand-rolled cigarette in one hand issuing out an illegally sickly trail of fumes. Not that Specs wanted to sound cruel, but sometimes she couldn't help thinking that of all the people who could have survived the Robot Wars and been stuck with her forever, Brian Space-Claw Junior was the worst choice. It had been bad enough when he could lord it over everyone that he was the boss's son- now, with that advantage gone (as she and Krayonder had explained to him a hundred times, he was a fugitive just like them so he had to start pulling his weight and stop acting like a spoiled rich kid), but it had only been recently that they had discovered that as well as never having touched work in his life, Junior was an incurable drug addict. He'd hidden tonnes of the stuff all over their ship- who knows where he'd salvaged it, but everywhere they fled to he'd managed to pick up another load- and he'd nearly gotten them caught twice, stumbling out of the ship stoned. He was going to have to be a lot more careful if they were going to try and salvage anything from Qo'onos without being discovered.

Speaking of which…

The ship was starting the rumble-and-rattle routine that meant it was starting the landing procedure. Specs cringed. If Junior didn't get them noticed by the robots, their pathetic and noisy craft surely would one of these days. If there was any engine oil still saveable down here, she was taking it.

'Now, you,' she said, narrowing her magnified eyes at Junior, 'put that out.'

'Yes, mooooommy,' Junior groaned. From the slur in his voice it sounded like he was already on a high.

Specs cringed again. They were dead rangers walking.

'Woooooah, man! This place is trashed!'

Specs hissed viciously at Krayonder to be quiet, but she couldn't disagree with the comment. A desolate wasteland stretched out in every direction, just rubble and charred bits of human, alien and mechanoid alike as far as the eye could see.

It was going to be hard to find anything worth saving among this mess- all that remained of the last standoff of humankind.

Specs turned her face away from the body of one of the native inhabitants, unwilling to look at the expression of fear still etched across its face. Poor creatures had been civilians, nothing more, caught up in the crossfire.

Had it been another age, Specs would surely have come here in her official capacity, learning the language of the species, collecting samples of this, that and everything, and finding the whole experience scientifically fascinating. She couldn't do that any more. Her days of science as a profession, a hobby and a way of life were gone. Now survival was her only job. Survival and helping others to survive.

There were five of them in total, five survivors of the Robot Wars who had narrowly managed to escape death or capture, torture and worse. They hid out wherever they could, two illegal vessels in their control, which they took out, scavenging for food and medical supplies and things that could help them to live a little longer.

They brought back what they could, left behind what needed to be ditched, and so far they had done all right.

'So far' hadn't even been two days, though. Two days, five planets, seven narrow escapes and a whole lot of hopelessness.

Specs wasn't expecting to find anything useful on Qo'onos, but they'd talked about it into the night yesterday, and come to the conclusion that they'd better stake it out for survivors as soon as possible, while the robots were still satisfied it was well and truly blasted to pieces and weren't making plans to come back to it just yet.

'Woooooooooooooah!' came Krayonder's cry again.

'Shhhhhhhhhh!' Specs spat again, frantically jabbing at her spectrometer and whipping her head back and forth, half expecting a robot to jump out at her at any moment.

Nothing. That had been lucky. Krayonder had better just shut his fat mouth and stop exclaiming at everything they saw, or they'd be toast for sure.

'Wooooooah!'

That was Junior this time. Specs stormed over to the pair of them, hands raised in frustration.

'Will you two shut the hell up? Do you not realise the ramifications of-'

Specs stopped dead in her tracks as her eyes fell upon the thing they were hollering at. She took off her glasses and wiped them, but cleaning the lenses didn't make any difference.

It was the body of a man- well, half the body of a man, all his guts hanging out of the side of him that still existed. That much gore would have been enough for her to turn away- she was the navigations officer, she wasn't trained to withstand horrible sights like the military rangers were- but something about the body made her turn back.

It was a commander. She could have told that by the tatters of the grey uniform that still clung to parts of him, not that that would have mattered much- all the commanders were dead.

But this wasn't just any commander. She'd never met him in person, but she needn't have- his face had been all over every television in the galaxy, she'd heard stories about him since she was born. Commander Up. Universally famous, unstoppable Commander Up, the mightiest killer of robots there ever was.

And seeing him, lying here like this, defeated and quite literally torn apart, rammed the message more firmly home- all hope was lost.

Specs felt the tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. She hadn't really thought about it, but he'd have had to be dead. They all were- it was just seeing him, actually seeing the great commander broken and mangled at her feet that really hit her hardest.

She turned her face away.

'Medically fascinating as this is,' she said, trying to sound for-your-own-good-indifferent and not meaning it at all, 'we can't keep stopping for every dead body we find. We need to get what supplies we can and get the heck outta here!'

'No, dude, dude!' Krayonder jabbed at her shoulder with his finger. 'Wait! You don't understand, man!'

'He's not dead!' Junior put in.

'Junior, if you're tripping…' Specs rolled her eyes. The crazy kid must be seeing things in his drug-corrupted mind. There was no way anyone could survive an injury like that-not even for a minute, let alone cling to life for another nearly two days. Either Junior was more stoned than he looked, or he was just doing what people in denial everywhere did- wishing it were so and fooling himself into believing his own delusion.

'He's not trippin', man!' Krayonder insisted. 'Look!'

Specs turned, not bothering to get her hopes up. 'Logistically, the odds are a million to one that he could be…' she trailed off.

Commander Up's mouth had just twitched. Her heart leapt.

Calm down, Specs, this could be anything…rigor mortis in action, a trick of the light, anything…

'Uhhhh….'

Okay, now that was on the scary side. Either that man was alive, or some kind of zombie apocalypse was about to happen.

Commander Up moaned again, a pitiful little noise, his eyelids parting very slightly.

This was not a drill. This was not a drill!

Commander Up was most definitely alive.

This is pretty horrible so far, but I promise TUp, if you're patient enough to put up with me. :3