Hello ladies and gents, it's Metrophor. :3
Wow, I barely got this sucker up and already I'm getting reviews? Now that's flattering.
I fixed up the problems in Chapter 1; that'll teach me to save in RTF. Thanks, reviewers, for letting me know- I appreciate it.
Anyway. Where was I?
Oh yes.
Welcome to chapter two, wherein you are introduced to the rest of Mysterious Hand's owner. 3
Wall-E is, as always, © Pixar.
Vox, on the other hand, is © Metrophor (me. )
I'd be honored if someone sued me over this, but please- really. Don't.
--
Ex Machina
Chapter: 02
"Are you getting all of this? I can't believe it! We can actually go home!"
"But Captain, Directive A113-"
"-doesn't seem to be relevant any more."
"Captain, if you would just-"
"You patched the transmission through!"
"Regardless, I cannot allow-"
"Ah, ah, ah, ah. Do you hear that, AUTO? Do you hear that? That is the sound of me not caring. If you'll excuse me-"
--
He woke to a world of silence and of perfect white. No sounds reached his ears save for the faint, protracted humming of electrical equipment; the air was cool and still and somehow dank... he might have added, like a wine cellar, if he had ever actually been in a wine cellar before.
Which he hadn't.
He wondered for a moment if this was what being dead was like: an all-suffusing whiteness, the feeling of detachment from one's body, surrounded by a corona of brilliant light.
Of course, in the next instant, his logical mind reawakened and he realized that what he was staring at was the ceiling of some kind of medical bay. And there was an overhead lamp shining smack into his face.
Wait. His face. So he wasn't dead then.
Yes... That made sense. Or at least, he thought it did. It was... difficult to think. Everything seemed as if it had gone into soft focus in his head, clear thought slipping through the fingers of his mind.
That meant that the smooth surface he was lying on must have been some type of stretcher or operating table, then. But he still could not comprehend where he was, or moreover how he had gotten here in the first place. Wasn't he supposed to be on the bridge-?
WALL-E drew back his head sharply when the man on the medical table moved. The recycling unit had just been working up his courage to reach out and touch the stranger's shoulder, in spite of the fact that EVE -who was floating placidly on the other side of the table- was giving him a look that suggested if he tried it he would be pulling back a smacked hand. She loved him, yes, and his curiosity had probably saved this gentleman's life, but it could be exasperating in its tenacity at times. Not that she was complaining, precisely... she just found herself wishing he came with an 'off' button every once in a while.
The object of their combined scrutiny moved a little again, eyes shifting behind lids that had been open just a crack before, and which had just as hastily shut, probably in reaction to the difference in lighting. His lips moved as well, just a bit, mouthing words too slurred and subaudible for even EVE's sharp hearing to pick out, except for one single phrase.
"...status report..."
EVE floated a little closer, curious, her head rocking to one side in an effort to hear better. Her efforts, however, turned out to be in vain, because in the next instant-
Gzrrrnk... kthunk kthunk.
The stranger flinched involuntarily. What was that? It sounded distinctly metallic, the whirring of hydraulics suggesting a machine of some kind. Which wouldn't have been distracting, considering how largely robotics factored into daily life, but that sound had come from a position about three inches away from his left ear.
What-?
The man's head rolled sluggishly in WALL-E's direction, at the exact same moment the 'bot happened to look down, so that for a moment their foreheads were nearly touching. Whereas a few seconds ago he had been lying so perfectly still that he might have been a mannequin, now his eyes were wide open and if not precisely alert, then at least displaying a sharpness that was unnerving in its focused scrutiny.
"Oh, hey! You're awake!"
The stranger's eyes snapped off of WALL-E, the excited revelation coming just when the silent staring match had stretched on long enough to become actually uncomfortable. The former's eyes panned back and forth a moment, unsure as to where this newest addition to the room was until he stood (ponderously) up.
While it was obvious that the individual lying on the medical table was part of the crew staffing the ship that had crashed (the fact that they'd hauled him out of the wreck was proof of that, to say nothing of his attire), Captain McCrea had -frankly- never seen anyone, or anything, like him except in video clips presented by the Axiom's computer.
To McCrea, he looked so thin as to be emaciated, his black-and-white uniform -which was a rough approximation of the Captain's own- loose rather than form-fitting; at least where it wasn't in shreds or blackened from soot. It was an aspect enhanced by the fact that had this other captain been standing upright, he would have been about as tall as his fleshier counterpart. But his lack of bodily tissue and his attire weren't what had piqued McCrea's interest (and, all right, made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up when the stranger had looked at him).
No, that distinction went to the fact that the strange captain's skin and hair had no more color to them than the room he was in. The man's skin was powdery-white, reminding McCrea of the plants two of the civilians had found the other day: ones that had been trying to grow underneath some fallen debris. They had been waxy pale, and starved-looking, too long deprived of the sunlight they so craved.
His hair was lighter still; when WALL-E, EVE and volunteering robots and humans had pulled him out the stuff had stood out around his head in uneven, feathery spikes, suggesting that prior to the crash he'd been in the habit of smoothing it back by some exterior means.
At first glance, when the stranger had shifted his head with the intent of pinpointing Captain McCrea, the latter had thought his eyes were black. Now, with the help of the overhead lighting and the angle at which the two were positioned, the Captain could tell that they weren't.
They were red.
However, before the combined effect could change from merely 'surprising' to something menacing, the survivor shut his eyes again and let his head drop back the half-inch it needed to go to connect with the table again.
He really wasn't so scary, McCrea thought; just kind of weird. He wondered why the newcomer's skin was like that... maybe he'd ask the computer later. She would know, he was certain; the ship's computer knew pretty much everything (or at least, everything her Captain could think of to ask). Boldness reasserting himself, the heavyset man moved over next to EVE, three pairs of eyes -two mechanical, one organic- peering down at their acquisition. Probably all the other passengers and machines were crowded around outside; a lot of them had heard the excitement and/or seen the rescue party returning.
"Hey... are you okay? Can you hear me?"
A silly question, but one that he felt needed asking. They hadn't seen anything outwardly wrong with the new Captain (and that was probably the most bizarre thing of all; that he didn't appear to be hurt), and he'd been breathing steadily from the time of his discovery, but the curiosity was eating at all three of the others in the room and for him to lose consciousness again... well, it was a good thing to be patient, but that virtue could only be stretched so far. It was all Captain McCrea could to to refrain from pelting the newcomer with questions then and there.
He reached out to give the pallid gentleman's shoulder a light shake, but stopped when, unexpectedly, McCrea got an answer to his question.
"Yes."
The stranger's voice was disproportionately deep: it rode just on the edge of becoming a baritone. It was also even more unexpectedly rough; almost grating. He sounded, frankly, like someone who had made a habit out of gargling with sandpaper.
His eyes were open again, but only to half-mast, their alarming coloration muted due to the shadows cast by his eyelashes. Slowly, the evacuee levered himself up on his forearms, taking in WALL-E (who seemed about ready to clamber up onto the table with him), EVE (who looked ready to haul WALL-E off if he tried it), and Captain McCrea by turns. He slumped to one side, right hand pressing briefly over his face.
As the stranger didn't seem willing to volunteer any further conversation, McCrea took the initiative again.
"That was quite a crash," he remarked, unnecessarily, a note of almost childish awe creeping into his voice.
The other human paused, glancing up over the edge of his fingers. His voice, when he spoke again, seemed faded and somehow disjointed, as if his attention wasn't all on the conversation.
"Crash...?" His gaze sharpened abruptly, and he seemed to study his surroundings much more closely. "...Where...?"
"Oh!" Well of course he would be confused. The white-haired Captain had been unconscious when they'd dragged him out of his ship; no doubt he would be terribly perplexed upon waking up in a new environment with a lot of unfamiliar people (well, sort of) standing around him. McCrea would have been. "Sorry." Fixing his audience with a wide and cheerfully welcoming grin, he waved an arm at the room, and -presumably- the area beyond with the beaming pride of someone who was displaying the cure for cancer. "You're on board the Axiom- on Earth!" The last two words were spoken with a profound air of the 'yeah-I-can-hardly-believe-it-either'. "We pulled you out of your ship after it... um... crashed," he added a moment later, sounding slightly more subdued.
"'We'?"
The disbelief in that single word was almost palpable. Personally, Captain McCrea thought 'on Earth' should have warranted that kind of reaction more than the knowledge that there were other people present, but...
...Well, he'd never received any transmissions from other ships during his time as acting Captain, either. If the computer hadn't kept him up to date on his history (as much of it as, in hindsight, AUTO probably thought was safe to tell him) he probably wouldn't even have imagined there were other ships. Maybe this guy had a right to be shocked.
A tugging on his shirt sleeve made the pallid Captain look over to one side, where WALL-E was leaning expectantly toward him. Even without many human characteristics, he managed to project an air of 'earnestness' toward his discovery. Having gotten said discovery's attention, one old metallic hand extended out and up, fingers spread open in what was unmistakably an offer for a handshake.
He'd obviously been brushing up on, quite literally, his 'people skills'.
"Wa-AAAH-lieeee," he squeaked, electronic voice rising several octaves on the second syllable of his name.
The introduction got a few moments' dumbfounded silence (though he did grasp the proffered hand with his own), which might have dragged on indefinitely had EVE, with a very non-robotic sigh, not decided to back the endearing little recycler up. Floating around the prone body of the man on the table, she bobbed up and down next to WALL-E and imitated him, careful not to offer her gun hand.
"Eeeeeee-ve," she reinforced, with a cheerful upturn of blue LED eyes. Slowly, the stranger's eyes shifted to her, and then to where Captain McCrea was still standing, more or less hovering on the far side of the table.
"Hi!" he said, still as cheerfully as he could muster (which wasn't hard, this was the only human not of the Axiom he'd ever seen). "I'm Brian McCrea, Captain of the Axiom. Welcome aboard!"
EVE, apparently thinking that someone as nonresponsive as the current subject of scrutiny could do with a little prodding, restructured her extended hand into a point. One of inquiry.
"You?" she asked, stretching her limited vocabulary as best she could. "Name?"
Having studied the various types of Earth flora and fauna in preparation for her main directive, she found she could liken his current facial expression to that of a goldfish. After a moment, however (she could practically see the light blink on over his head), comprehension dawned in his eyes and he relaxed, reverting back to the vaguely bemused attitude he'd been assuming up until that point.
"Vox." Again, he pressed a hand over his face, pinching the bridge of his nose in between thumb and forefinger in an attempt to concentrate. "...Captain Vescuya..."
The latter comment was spoken in a near-undertone, more to himself than to his miniature audience; very close to the idea of 'thinking out loud'.
"Fff-aaaaaaw-ks?"
That, of course, was WALL-E, who naturally struggled to process the unfamiliar sound as he guided the man's hand up and down in a jerky approximation of the shake he'd initiated.
"Captain," EVE corrected him, sounding as close to smug as any human could. She was, of course, pleased with himself- she and WALL-E had rescued someone. Rescued someone important.
Oddly, Vox looked almost... uncomfortable at the correction, though he said nothing to dispute it.
Vox Vescuya? Captain McCrea thought in bewilderment. What kind of a name is that?
Pursuit of that line of inquiry, however, was going to have to wait, for it was at that moment that this 'Captain Vescuya' sat bolt upright, so abruptly that it seemed he must surely have catapulted himself into midair had the action been any more forceful.
Ah, now it's coming back to him.
"The ship! The cargo. I." His white-skinned hands gripped the edge of the table, ponderously... stiffly... painfully swinging first one leg and then the other over it. "I must go back. I must make sure it is undamaged."
All the languidness had gone out of his bizarre, scratchy voice, replaced by a tension so acute it bordered on downright alarm. A tension that was undermined by the fact that the instant his feet touched the floor and he attempted to stand, Vox immediately lost his balance and would have fallen flat onto his face- had EVE not quickly ducked under him and, grabbing the side if his coat, buoyed him up (an action prompting him to lean against the table again).
"Cargo?" McCrea's ears had -figuratively speaking- perked up at the mention of what the wrecked spacecraft had been carrying. He hadn't let EVE or any of the other robots search it (though a lot of them had certainly wanted to, barring perhaps M-O, who was overwhelmed by frustration at the prospect of cleaning something so monumental), telling them to wait until they at least had permission. "Oh, right! Um... there's a pretty big hole in the side, but I think it just damaged some auxiliary functions."
Captain Vescuya's head snapped around to look at McCrea as he brought up the subject, with a speed that seemed totally out of keeping with his otherwise frail appearance. It was almost unsettling to have that much of someone's attention, but at the same time, it was kind of... flattering. "What were you carrying? Maybe we can help check in on it."
Instantly, the pallid newcomer's face shut down. Literally. It became so totally expressionless that Captain McCrea almost took a step back. "I'm sorry. I can't tell you that."
"Oh come on!" He hadn't accepted that excuse from AUTO; he sure wasn't going to accept it from another Captain. "You must have come here for a reason! We're all here together, right?"
"You don't understand." Vox at least had the grace to appear guilty; these were, admittedly, the people that had come to his rescue after all. "I would like to tell you. But I have been forbidden to do so."
"Really." Captain McCrea folded his arms, in a manner that said in no uncertain terms that no one was leaving this room until he got answers. "Who told you you couldn't talk about it?"
The answer, when it came, was rewarded by a complete, stunned silence.
"Shelby Forthright."
--
AN: Thus, chapter two concludes, and hopefully creates more questions than it does answers. :3
For those of you that are wondering- Yes, Vox is indeed an albino. I'm aware that albino humans usually have blue eyes, but he's DIFFERENT, dangit.
And no, it's not just chance that his name is so unusual, though I do like odd names.
You'll just have to wait until next time to find out more...
MAYBE.
OH HO HO I are eeevil, non?