A/N: This is a written work for the Elsword Fanfiction Brigade's writing prompt: The true meaning of friendship! Yes, it does take place in the same universe as "The Heart of a Guardian" so if you're curious, I highly suggest you check that story out as well. Anyways, hope you enjoy! Leave a review if you like it~
Initiating boot sequence…
Startup program identified…
Installing startup program…
Program installed! Checking available profiles…
Moby identified! Warming up engines…
Loading personality algorithms… complete.
Hello, World! Moby_093 initiated!
The camera feed flicked on and he found himself staring up at a gloomy grey sky framed by a canopy of tall green trees. Where was he? What was going on?
"Moby," a female voice said.
Immediately his personality algorithms kicked in. A sense of excitement and joy filled him. He knew this voice! It was her! It was Eve!
The black drone rolled himself over, training his lenses to his ward; his most important person.
There she stood. Long silver hair flowing down to her lower back, a black, form fitting one-piece hugging her body. Black dimensional portal generators floated behind her like two wing-like fins. This was his mistress. His queen. The leader that would bring their Nasod race back to glory!
"Are you well?" his mistress asked.
The black drone nodded. To any outsider witnessing the two, the drone would be simply circling its queen wildly, engaging in high-pitched, indiscernible chirps. To the queen, however, it was a much different story:
"I'm doing fantastic! I've never felt any better in my whole entire life! Oh, it's so good to see you, again, my queen! What a beautiful day! Even though it's a little bit cloudy, that's okay because whenever you're around you brighten it, essentially making you the second sun! Is that too much? Maybe it was but I mean it! I love you! What shall we do today?" Moby spoke at a million miles an hour and he continued on this flurry of words for some time.
Eve caught the black drone, prompting Moby to freeze in its tracks as she pulled it in for a deep embrace. He settled into her arms as he felt the warmth of her body against his hull. He felt his lenses dim and he nuzzled himself deeper against her chest.
"We rest," the queen said, "for now, we rest."
She let him go, stepping back and patting the drone on the head before turning to make her way back to a distant campfire.
"Rest? But the day has just begun! What time is it, anyways?" Moby flicked on his time display and found that it was just before twilight.
"We have the last nightwatch so we have at least eight hours before our shift starts. It will be wise to rest."
The black drone spun around excitedly. If he could salute, he would have. "As you say, my queen!"
Movement caught his eye. It was white. It floated in front of his lovely mistress just out of his sight range. He zoomed past Eve, nearly running into the white drone but instead zipping past it and bumping lightly against a nearby tree.
The white drone seemed unsurprised by this action and simply ignored him, continuing to light the path for the mistress while Moby shook the daze from his head.
"Oh. Oh, right!" Moby perked, flicking on his headlights as well and floating over to join the white drone on its escort.
He glanced at the white drone, noting how little they regarded his own presence and simply kept their attention to their work.
"Hi," Moby said after a moment.
No response. In fact, the white drone seemed to turn ever so slightly away from him as he spoke.
"My name is Moby. Moby_093. What's your name?"
Again, no response. Moby wasn't having any of it. He flew ahead, stopping in front of the white drone, forcing it to nearly but heads with him once again.
"Hello~ Are you there? I said hi. My name is Moby. What's your name?"
"Do you mind?" the white drone replied, turning her lenses away from the direct headlights. She motioned behind her and Moby saw that Eve was also shielding her eyes from the bright light he shined at her face.
"Oh. Oops! I'm sorry. Sorry my queen. I didn't mean to. And uh… sorry, you. Whoever you are! I didn't mean to as well-"
"Remy," Eve spoke in what the two recognized as an angry growl.
"Yes… mistress," the white drone said before turning to face the bright light still shining at her face.
"Remy…" the drone said with a sigh, "My name is Remy_003. Nice to meet you."
"Dodge to the left! Weave to the right! Dodge to the left! Weave to the right! And… low bridge! Vault over the branch! C'mon, everyone! They're gaining!" Branch after tree branch flew by him as the black drone soared through the forest.
Moby turned his headlights back to the other three following close behind: the white drone, his queen, and a fourth person; the one with cute pikachu ears. Behind the four of them were hundreds of black crawling things. Demons, his queen called them. And they were hungry! One had almost bitten his mistress's head off… that would have been bad. Very bad. But the one with the pikachu ears swatted it away with his huge cannon! What a hero!
"Quit shining your light in our eyes and focus on clearing a path!" Remy cried.
"Oh! Oh no, sorry, I forgot!"
"Moby, Remy, to me!" Eve called.
A path was drawn out in the black drone's hud, outlining the planned path that took them upward to the canopy line.
"Oh! Oh oh oh! I know what to do! Ok hold on-" the black drone zipped in position, letting his ward use him as a stepping stone. What sense of joy he got from doing a good thing was quickly washed away when the much heavier pikachu boy stomped clumsily on his head.
"Ouch!" He cried, before moving to his next designated position to be stepped on again.
"Ow! Ow! Ouch! Ow!"
This continued for some time as the two humanoids continued their escape far above the forest floor. He had to move in to catch the pikachu boy a lot more than he would like, though it seemed Remy exclusively sought to aid her mistress, only. That wasn't fair!
"Hey!" Moby called from behind as he moved to his next position only to get stepped on again by a heavy white boot.
"Hey! It's your turn to catch him, not me!"
"Shut up!" Remy replied, "Stick to your job!"
"Oh," Moby was about to protest but the urgency of the moment forced him to drop the issue, "Okay, sorry!"
"Dimension link initialized: Flame Guardian, to me!" Eve commanded, prompting a hud display of a dimensional portal high in the sky.
"Is… is that supposed to be me or you?" Moby asked, catching the heavy boy once more.
"You handle it!" Remy replied, doing her best to keep her mistress from losing balance.
"But I'm-ouch-busy at the moment!"
"I am, too!"
"O-okay," Moby replied in between weaving through the branches and keeping their companions from falling into a sea of teeth. He found little opportunity to move to his next duty and after a moment the white drone let out a frustrated grunt before quickly flying up to the prompted location and drawing a circle in the sky.
Out came a rather large Nasod guardian who hit the ground with a tree shaking crash.
"Whoa… wow that's so cool!" Moby thought as he watched it plant its cannon the ground before unleashing a wave of blazing hot plasma fire that expanded outwards along the forest floor.
"Moby! Stick to your job!" Remy cried, flying down to try and catch Eve who lost her footing and quickly moved the pursuit back to the burning forest floor.
"Ah! Sorry! I just-" Moby zipped through the branches after them.
It wasn't long before they found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place-or in this case, between a wall of burning trees and an equally large demon.
"If you just stuck to the plan-" Remy replied, exasperated as the two humanoids dodged to the side moments before the monster swallowed them whole. On-screen prompts commanded Moby to attack and he slammed his body into the demon's thick hide. It did little to the beast as it spun around for a second lunge. He turned to his mistress to see if she was okay but found her in the middle of an argument with the young man, as well. What were they so busy arguing about that-
His lenses turned upward as he saw the teeth stretch over the four of them. He had to do something. But what?
Turning to the three he only had a split second to choose.
He slammed himself against the white drone, sending her flying outward along with him.
"What are you doing?!" the white drone cried, stabilizing in the air just in time to see the row of teeth close over the two humanoids.
"I-I thought… oh no. The mistress!"
The white drone was the first to act, slamming herself against the rockhard rows of teeth again and again.
"Mistress! Mistress Eve! I'm coming to save you!" Remy cried in a panic. She turned to the black drone.
"Why me? If she dies… we die. Why did you choose me?!"
"I…" Moby looked about for something he could do to make things right. He couldn't explain himself. He just had to help Remy.
"Armageddon Blade!"
A bright lance cut between the two, piercing through the demon's thick hide. It screeched as Moby fixed his lenses on the source of the magical blade. The red-haired one. The one Eve spoke about to them earlier last night. He will save them! Or maybe that white-haired one who seemed to be rescuing the two right this moment-or maybe just Eve.
The white-haired one reappeared outside the demon's mouth with Moby's queen in his arms. Then he did something amazing with his own drones. A laser shot out in a fantastic display of pink and purple that destroyed the demon the red-haired one was still wrestling with. And then, just as suddenly as the demons appeared, they were gone.
Rain began to pour as Moby floated off to the side, letting the humans go about their bickering. Eve was safe. That was all that mattered. Moby let out an exasperated whir of his gears as he patted himself for a job well done.
"I've always hated that part of you," a voice said.
Turning he saw the white drone hover next to him. She stared at their queen who seemed adamant with getting a point through the pikachu boy.
"What… what do you mean you've always hated that part of me…?" Moby turned to her.
She said nothing for a long while before turning away and following their mistress back to the camp. She paused mid-flight and turned to Moby.
"I'm going to say this once more and you better not make me repeat myself… Don't worry about me. Worry about our queen. I can take care of myself. Got it?"
"Well… I mean, if you're in danger then naturally I'd-"
"Got it?!" Remy growled.
"Y-yes, ma'am."
This was wrong.
This was all wrong.
On paper the one calling himself Raven had a reasonable assumption that our queen and the white-haired man would be best fit for the job but in actuality… this was a terrible idea.
The spores were everywhere. Within minutes of stepping into the contaminated zone of the transport tunnel in Altera's floating Island, Raven's long dormant Nasod arm went haywire. Its core lost its orange glow and shifted to a bright green. Had the AI not degraded from the years of being unused, it could have easily turned on its host and killed him outright. Thankfully this was not the case and Remyy was quick to pick up the change, stopping and breaking the arm at its joint before it could dig itself into the man's neck.
Raven had felt every bit of its gears shattering as his own but he was thankful for the white drone's perceptive eyes.
"It wasn't for your safety," Remy chirped at the man who clearly didn't understand her language, "I simply didn't want it to turn on my mistress."
"Remy says your welcome," Eve spoke for the white drone.
Moby would never have been able to pick that up. With so much going on around him, he was far less experienced than Remy in matters that dealt with tending to and interacting with the other members of the El Search Party.
It was difficult enough, as it was, anyways, just monitoring his queen's vitals while Remy went about macro-managing everything else that surrounded the queen.
"And how are you doing, Eve?" Raven asked, clutching at the broken Nasod arm, "This was a bad idea. I feel this must be something the others are more capable of handling."
Add grunted, "Please. Those magic-dependant nitwits cannot understand the complexities of a code-altering spore."
"I see little relevance to understanding when all they have to do is kill this infestation."
The two men continued to bicker while the one named Ara leaned on the black drone's head as she turned to Eve.
"Are you feeling funny?" the foreigner asked.
Eve shook her head, golden eyes peeking at the woman through the thick plastic lens of a gasmask. "As long as I wear this, the filter should keep the harmful parasite from infecting my systems. You have no need to be concerned."
"Ah. I understand!" Ara clapped, then turned to her two drones.
"And how are you Moby and Remy?"
"I'm good, I'm good," Moby chirped happily, "The same thing applies to Remy and I. Though since our hulls are built in a vacuum around our main core we are both fairly safe from the infection. In fact, I think our queen is in the most danger seeing as all she has to do is breath in the stuff for the infection to take place and if the infection did manage to get into her systems there's no telling how that would affect us since we're linked to her directly. She might make us do bad things to you or the others and we wouldn't be able to stop ourselves. Well, actually we could but our directive specifically instructs us to follow her orders and if she orders us to kill you then we probably will!"
The drone continued on, chirping at Ara who smiled and patted him on the head, garnering a warm whirr of his engines and a shake of the head from Remy.
"Moby says they're doing fine," Eve replied.
"You know they can't understand you," Remy chirped.
"I know… but I like to pretend they do. It's fun interacting with them, after all. Don't you think so?" the black drone said, optimistically.
"That's a stupid idea," Remy sighed, returning to her work as the four humanoids wandered deeper into the contaminated area.
"Remy?"
"What?"
"Why don't you like me?"
"This discussion has nothing to do with the mission, Moby. Stay focused."
"But… it's been bugging me," Moby urged, "A few weeks ago, before the pikachu boy left us, you told me 'I've always hated that part of you'. What is it that you hate? I get along with Eve and the others but you don't seem to want anything to do with me."
"Is that a problem for you?" Remy retorted, not turning back to the drone.
"Your drones sure are… like birds today! Very sing-y" Ara noted, humming along with the rhythm of their chirps. Eve said nothing and merely continued on.
"It is," Moby stated, uncharacteristically frank in his statement, "Because apart from our queen… you're the only one I can really talk to. I just want to be your friend… is that too much to ask?"
He waited for a response as the green cloud around them grew thick. She never replied.
"Get her out of here!" Raven ordered, trying to pull himself free from the fallen rubble as Eve clutched at her head, mask absent from her face.
"To where?" Add shouted desperately as he hoisted her up by her torso. His eyes searched around wildly for the gasmask that was recently knocked off her.
"I help!" Ara's voice called from far in the distance as she flung the mask back towards the two with the use of her spear. She quickly turned, blocking a would-be-lethal slash trained at her neck from the strange corrupted Type-H unit.
Its razor sharp blade sung with each swing and even the foreigner's martial ability was put to the test with every block and parry. Forced to remain on the defensive, Ara was unable to keep the numerous infectious spores that congregated to the contaminated Nasod. Each cloud of the parasitic spore that fused with Type-H only fueled its fervor until Ara was brought to her knees blocking the frenzied strikes.
"We have to help her!" Moby cried, turning from Eve to Ara as Add dragged their mistress's body to a protected section of the cave under a minecart platform.
"No," Remy replied, "Our queen's safety comes first."
"She's safe already! Ara needs us!"
"I will not abandon our queen!"
"Then you stay. I'll go help!" the black drone jeered before flying off to assist his the humanoid.
Again and again the monster brought down his blade on Ara's spear. Each strike dug deeper and deeper notches that threatened to snap the magical weapon in half. With one heavy slash, the blade's edge dug nearly clean through the shaft of the spear which Type H used to knock the weapon out of Ara's hands.
It raised its blade high and Ara shielded herself with her arms helplessly.
It was then that Moby flew in, crashing at max speed into Type-H's head. A green cloud of spores erupted from the impact point and the infected Nasod was sent rolling down a slope of rocks.
"Thank you!" Ara said as she scrambled for her spear before the monster could return.
"No problem," Moby chirped proudly before shining his headlights down towards the bottom of the pit. Through the haze of green and black coal, his headlights focused on a very angry looking Nasod that bounded back up towards the two.
"What do we do now…" Ara whispered, looking round for other options.
A hud appeared in Moby's peripherals and it was apparent that Eve was gathering El to quickly call in a flame guardian. He just had to buy time.
"If we can keep him distracted long enough, my queen can call in some fire support. We just need to stay alive until then," the black drone said. His words obviously fell on deaf ears, however as Ara quickly moved to Raven in an attempt to help him out of the rubble.
A shadow loomed over Moby and he slowly turned and found himself staring up at singular orange visor that seemed to seethe with hatred directed at the black drone.
It held its blade high and the drone stood his ground defiantly. Nasod blade met with reinforced Nasod hull and, for a moment, the drone could feel the blade digging itself into the thick layers of steel. Damage reports stated the cut had buried itself just over halfway through the plating and the drone stared wide-lensed into the empty visor that seemed to be grinning back at him. Had he been struck from behind where his armor was weaker...
An idea pinged in the drones head and, after dodging the first swing, flew through the mess of abandoned mining equipment upwards towards the high ceiling. From here, he would be well out of the monster's reach.
Or so he thought.
In nearly the same manner that Type-H bounded over the ledge back to Moby, the beast leapt from mining equipment to tall stalactites up to catch the drone. In no time was the drone forced to retreat, narrowly dodging swing after swing. He screamed a high pitched series of chirps as he fled as quickly as his engines allowed.
Checking behind him, he was shocked to see the beast was gaining and his blade sung notes of the drone's death as each just barely grazed the thick Nasod hull. Moby spun around, meeting the blade once more and preventing the strike from piercing through his armor before turning the blade away and returning his attention to his flight path.
And then he flew straight into the ground.
Dirt exploded around him as Type-H landed on top of the drone. Moby rolled upward, fixing his lenses at the tip of a blade that bled the sickly green aura of corruption. The poor drone's lenses closed, his body whirring in fright as he waited for his end.
What followed was not the sound of steel puncturing steel. Instead, the entire chamber erupted in a loud screech. Opening one of his two lenses, the drone saw a Nasod spear lodged through Type-H's chest.
"Don't touch him!" Remy cried as yet another spear flew through the monster's neck. It stumbled back, its screech a garbled moan before the sight of the white drone plowing herself into the monster's torso sent a cloud of green dust all around the black drone.
"Remy…" Moby whirred in a daze, "Wait! What about our mistress?"
"She's… fine," Remy chirped back. She spun around to face the black drone, "And you? Are you okay?"
Shaking the dizziness out of his systems the black drone floated out of his miniature crater.
"Fine…? I'm more than fine! You skewered that bad person like pew pew and then punched him in the chest! Did our queen even authorize the use of spears? I wasn't aware that she did otherwise-"
"She didn't."
"But… then that means you did something bad. You know you can get in trouble with that stuff if our mistress doesn't authorize-"
"I just… I just didn't want to see you hurt, again. Okay?"
"Remy…!" Moby was left speechless from her words. This was certainly most unexpected.
A roar echoed through the cave and the silhouette of Type-H ripping the spears out of its neck and chest could be seen through the thick haze.
"We'll discuss this later!" the white drone chirped, "For now, we have to buy time for-"
"You've done well to stall," their queen stood behind them and they both turned to see their mask-wearing queen stumbling to her feet. "Well done, Moby, Remy. I'll take it from here."
Eve raised her hand high as she traced a circle over her head. A portal manifested high above them.
"Moby," Eve's utterance of the drone's name caused the drone to immediately stiffen up.
"Yes, my queen?"
The floor shook as the large guardian fell through the portal. Like the last time she used it, the guardian planted its flame cannon on the ground, letting loose a powerful shockwave of fire around it.
As this was happening Moby watched as his queen drew on her own life essence and extended the red orb to him.
"Convert this into more El, if you please."
"At once!" Moby replied, circling the orb and forcing the essence's color to shift to blue. The Nasod queen crushed it in her hand before commanding Remy to use it to open yet another portal.
Heat filled the room as the spores erupted into flames all around them. Type-H was caught in the blast as well. Flames consumed the corrupting spores that surrounded the monster and it could do nothing but bat at the everburning flames wildly in an attempt to put it out.
Its efforts proved fruitless as the fires that burned the immediate area around the infected Nasod was only fueled by the Alterasia flowers. The ugly plants that littered the entire cave continued to spew its contaminated spores into the room, unaware of the flames that sought the source.
Eventually the entirety of the room was engulfed in fire. The spores burned quickly and it wasn't long before the storm died, leaving the four humanoids standing safely within Eve's protective atomic shield. The only thing standing amidst the wake of the storm outside the protective field were the flame guardian.
Remy's portal opened and a hornet stinger materialized over their queen's shoulder which she directed at the flame guardian.
"Wait. What is she doing?!" Moby turned from his queen to the guardian but then noticed that although the recently summoned Nasod's appearance was brief, he was already succumbing to the Alterasia spores.
"He cannot return to our pocket dimension," Eve reasoned, "I have withheld using him until now but Type-H has left me no choice. If he returns from whence he came, now, the Alterasia he carries will infect everything else stored within our dimensional cache. I cannot allow that to happen."
She fired, the missile connected with the guardian who was in the midst of fighting the infection that sought control of him and the Nasod burst into a spray of parts from the waist up.
The barrier faded and the group let out a simultaneous sigh of relief.
"I honestly couldn't think of anything worse than the smell of spores filling my lungs," Raven muttered, "But now this place is just covered in ash."
"It's very hard to breath," Add agreed, coughing and bringing a handkerchief to his nose, "I highly suggest we leave before we suffocate. How are you, my queen?"
"The contaminants have not reached critical levels in my system," Eve reported, "I'll conduct a thorough system sweep once we have safely returned to the Pongo village."
Remy snorted. "Who does this human think he is, calling our mistress his queen? Whatever… What's more important is I may be scolded later for having used spear tech without our queen's authorization. I suppose it was a necessary sacrifice. Come, Moby, let's get out o-"
The black drone slammed into her, knocking her away just in time as the corrupted blade cleaved at the black drone's backside.
"Lookout!" Raven barked, pushing Eve aside as he caught Type-H's blade with his, stopping it inches from striking Eve in the back of her head.
The blademaster knocked the sword aside, finishing it off with a clean upward slash that cut the monster in two. With no alterasia to rebuild the Nasod, Type-H was nothing more than an enhanced blader at this point and with its central core cut in half, the life quickly left it and it slumped to the ground lifeless once and for all.
"That was close," Raven sighed, checking Eve for any sign of injuries before looking over the rest of his comrades, "Is everyone okay?"
Chirping caught their attention and they all turned their head towards a white drone trilling wildly as it circled in a panic over the black drone.
Moby didn't look so good. Along the poor black drone's back left flank was a deep cut that looked to have cut clean through his thinner rear hull. A sickly green aura bled from the vacuum seal and the drone could no longer chirp in tune with Remy, much less fly.
"Oh my… will he be okay?" Ara asked, holding a hand over her mouth.
"Eh, most likely," Add waved dismissively as Eve quietly picked up the black drone and cradled it in her arms, "These things are easy to fix. So it's really no big deal."
"If you say so…" Raven muttered.
Amidst the humanoids bickering to one another, Remy continued to chirp wildly over Eve's shoulder.
"Why me… Moby? Why must it always be me? Please… Please tell me you're still with us."
Eve said nothing as she carried the weakened orb. Green light flashed within the drones lenses. The Nasod Queen saw this and quickly opened a window that initiated the black drone's shutdown sequence.
"No!" Remy cried, "Mistress, please, you can't do this to him. Not again… please."
"It's better this way," Eve mumbled, an air of grief detectable only to the white drone.
"Ah, good thinking," Add noted, "Wouldn't want the stupid thing to turn on us."
The entire time Remy chirped and whistled frantically as the shutdown sequence initialized. Slowly the lenses closed. It turned its head up towards its merciful mistress as its gyroscopic engines gradually came to a halt.
Initiating boot sequence…
Startup program identified…
Installing startup program…
Program installed! Checking available profiles…
Moby identified! Warming up engines…
Loading personality algorithms… complete.
Hello, World! Moby_094 initiated!
The camera feed flicked on and he found himself staring up at a rusty brown stone ceiling. Where was he? What was going on?
"Moby," a female voice said.
Immediately his personality algorithms kicked in. A sense of excitement and joy filled him. He knew this voice! It was her! It was Eve!
The black drone rolled himself over, training his lenses to his ward; his most important person.
Sitting before him at a Ponggo workbench, he noted the look of resigned melancholy across his queen's face.
"Are you well?" the queen asked, to which the drone couldn't help but respond.
"I'm doing fantastic! I've never felt any better in my whole entire life! Oh, it's so good to see you, again, my queen! What a beautiful day! Even though I can't tell whether it's day or night because we're indoors but-"
Eve pulled the drone in for a deep embrace. He settled into her arms as he felt the warmth of her body against his hull. He felt his lenses dim and he nuzzled himself deeper against her chest. This was nice.
Over her shoulder he noticed a white drone hovering not too far from his queen. She was watching the two of them and looked as if she was purposely keeping her distance. He couldn't have that! She should join them!
"Hello!" the black drone chirped, garnering the white one's attention, "My name is Moby. Moby_094. What's your name?"
At first the white drone didn't answer and instead resigned herself to merely observing the two.
"Remy," Eve spoke in what the two recognized as an angry growl.
"Yes… mistress," the white drone sighed before directly addressing the black drone.
"Remy…" she said, "My name is Remy_003. Nice to meet you."