Carnival of Rust
Still, a distinct lack of hedgehog was the least of their problems now. For over the years, Scratch and Grounder had garnered a new enemy. Songfic to the song of the same name by Poets of the Fall.
Is it me, or has another good Scratch and Grounder fic been long overdue for years now? It's not just me, is it? You'd better believe it, hedgehog.
Oh, and is there any way one can separate the Hurt/Comfort genre? You know, into just "hurt"? Coz Hurt/Comfort is the best genre to put it in, except there's no comfort here.
Disclaimer: Scratch and Grounder ©® Sega, for the little time they were used. Now they're living a lie. Would you like cash back?
Rust really shouldn't have been a problem.
Not with them.
What with getting electric-shocked, squashed, beaten up, scrapped, restored, re-inflated, and generally hauled over the coals too many times to count thanks to a certain hedgehog and their master, you'd have thought a little thing like rust wouldn't have been a problem.
But it is a mysterious fact of life that everyone, organic and artificial alike, tends to sweat the small stuff more than the crucial life-or-death matters. Take football games, for example. Football games have been known to be postponed because of – wait for it – rain. Not because every player and his WAG are going through marital troubles and really can't muster the strength to walk out on the pitch, let alone kick a ball. Not because the life of the seedy football manager hangs in the balance. Because of poor weather. Rust is really no different, except the rain postpones robots and not football.
And besides, they'd been kicked out for incompetence and budgeting years ago anyway; it wasn't as if they had to care about the big things anymore. With their main duty out of the way, they had more small stuff to sweat. If robots could sweat.
So it was rust that bothered them, and it was rust that they had fought against.
And ultimately lost against.
Do you breathe the name of your saviour
In your hour of need
And taste the blame if the flavour
Should remind you of greed
Of implication, insinuation and ill will
Til you cannot lie still
In all this turmoil, before red cape and foil
Come closing in for a kill
Scratch and Grounder Robot. Ex-creations of Robotnic, ex-creators of havoc. The first was a robot chicken without the Seth Green; the other a meat-grinder bulldozer hybrid; but both brothers in crime used to share but one purpose in life. That purpose being to seek, capture and keep imprisoned the coveted Sonic the Hedgehog. At the former they'd proved surprisingly competent; in fact, in their peak period they often managed to detain him. As for keep, technically no, but at least they had tried their best.
Had tried their best.
But she is a fickle mistress is Fate. Extended failure streaks and constant bickering between the brothers (who, like all siblings, had coveted a sibling rivalry as to who was top dog in the eyes of 'father') can only go so far. And creator Eggman, then known as Dr Robotnik, refused to play ball after a while. One day, he just stopped commanding them back to be repaired.
Needless to say, it took a while for his disownment to sink in, and various kickings-out-of-the-fortress had to be made before they got the message. But by then, he had sold out to become Eggman, and no one noticed the absence of what had used to be his beloved…well…competent-at-times badniks.
Except Scratch and Grounder themselves.
Still, that was the least of their problems now. For over the years, the unprotected 'bots had garnered a new enemy: rust.
Come feed the rain
Coz I'm thirsty for your love
Dancing underneath the skies of lust
Yeah feed the rain
Coz without your love my life
Ain't nothin' but this carnival of rust
It was rust that kept them rooted to the ground, in a sense. They could no longer move – the joints hurt when they tried. The only view they had seen for the past 15 years was the same black landscape of scrap heap from underneath an old Mustang's perspective.
Rust also hurt the more competent parts. When was the last time they had just talked? It's harder than you think to form a coherent sentence when your beak is fused together with water and iron droppings. It's even harder when the cogs in your brain refuse to turn. It was a struggle just to stay conscious these days.
The invasion of rust had taken over their bodies and minds. It was like a fungus…or a virus. A body-feeding, mind-numbing virus.
It was perhaps ironic (another irony, we're full of them today) that Robotn--sorry, Eggman had built in all this protection from hedgehog beatings, two-tailed fox nabbings and Wes Weasley, but he failed to comprehend that what is little more than a virus could be a potential hazard.
It was the ultimate humiliation.
A good thing, then, that Scratch and Grounder had stopped feeling humiliation long ago. They had long since stopped feeling altogether. The rust was too much for that.
It's all a game, avoiding failure
When true colours will bleed
All in the name of misbehaviour
And the things we don't need
I lust for after no disaster can touch
Touch us anymore
And more than ever, I hope to never fall
Where enough is not the same it was before
In their more coherent moments, of which there were very little these days, their brains couldn't help but wonder what Sonic would say if he ever saw them now. If he somehow discovered their lifeless bodies, stuck in the same position, underneath the Mustang in the scrap heap.
Would he laugh at them, mock them for letting a little thing like rust get to their system? Most likely. He wasn't famous for showing sympathy in the face of an old enemy.
Would he just ignore them, speeding away, forgetting who they were? Wouldn't be surprising if he did, especially since they could no longer feel surprise.
Would they be transported to his living room, made the laughing stock of all his friends? Would their miserable stories end the same way as that Emerl guy who popped in once, them amounting to nothing but a 3.0 version of Punchbag: The Game?
As for pity…wasn't even an option. How did the old song go? "No one mourns the wicked."
Especially not little more than rustniks.
Come feed the rain
Coz I'm thirsty for your love
Dancing underneath the skies of lust
Yeah feed the rain
Coz without your love my life
Ain't nothin' but this carnival of rust
That's all they were now, wasn't it?
Scratch and Grounder, has-beens, has-niks. The laughing stock of the robotic community.
Not even worth the rust that covered them.
One day, perhaps, they would be found by someone who cared about their plight. They would be fixed. Oil would caress their joints once more.
They would stand up, slowly, hardly believing what was happening. Once they had their composure, they'd go find the only other place they knew. They'd give Eggman a piece of their mind. They'd show him they amounted to something…
Amounted to something.
Don't walk away, don't walk away
Oh, when the world is burning
Don't walk away, don't walk away
Oh, when the heart is yearning
But for now, they could not. They just had to sit there. Trapped as a sideshow for a sick carnival.
A carnival of rust.