Written by MonsoonMusic
Edited by Zombiepaper
Read by You
Chapter 1* watch?v=EHcuxJNTWXM*
Monsoon was entranced. The bot, a slightly misshapen automaton with an exposed brain, sat in his disheveled lab researching his newly acquired artifact.
The green triangular artifact had such an alluring effect that he snatched it immediately during his daily electronics junkyard scavenging, hurried home, and it took until he was there to see a persistent ooze everywhere from the cement floors to the clearing he made by shoving half-finished or half-scrapped projects back on his massive workbench table.
The little automaton was so captivated by the artifact that he only noticed the unblinking eye following his movements after he struggled to connect his circuitry to the servers behind him, but he could not because his four lanky fingers were now covered in this viscous slime, so the self-operating machine instead spun around his workbench chair, stood, walked toward the beeping and blinking servers, then slipped the slimy artifact into the analyzer. The analyzer buzzed and gave him a buzz. The mechanical being scanned his hardware to find a new folder with some files including a cryptic note and a new executable file.
"EW_ ?"
Sputtered Monsoon on his barely functioning speech software. This thought of a "dream" choked the green automaton. Concernedly puzzled, he ran his finest antiviral software while staring at the artifact's eye. As the software scanned his hardware for any malicious changes, he relaxed his gaze on the artifact's eye that still oozed slime, so when the antiviral software did not find a single dangerous file, he did not hesitate to give an all-clear to running this executable.
A gnarled swirl of purple, pink, green, black, and white plasma beams shot out from the artifact. He stumbled back and knocked over his analyzer chair. The artifact rattled in the analyzer, which rattled the once-sturdy servers. They fell violently after they shook loose, crashing into everything in the poor lab. The vicious artifact then floated and created a vacuum that began sucking objects toward it. Before Monsoon could duck for cover...
...The now further misshapen automaton awoke somewhere distinctly not in his lab with a throbbing pain in the back of his head.
"W-What happened? Where am I?"
As Monsoon struggled to stand, he brushed off some dust from the green metal that encased his legs, and he surveyed the strange landscape. His optical sensors detected a looming green tower with a familiarly massive eye in the far distance of the brutal landscape. The eye shifted its gaze on the battered automaton but looked away with disdain. Lights from massive corporate buildings glistened in the stormy night. The streets were covered in the same substance he had been studying in his lab.
"It seems the slime and the situation I find myself in are connected."
Shaken by the sudden shift in reality, and in awe of the majesty of the tower in the sky, the automaton with his brain leaking almost disturbingly walked brainlessly towards the opposing, obelisk tower. He soaked in the dark-gray atmosphere of this forsaken land that was full of chaos and calamity yet seemed strangely calm. As he approached the massive structure, he suddenly collided with something unfamiliarly warm and fuzzy.
"HEY WATCH WHERE YOU'RE WALKING YOU STUPID JUVIE!" A small creature chided the automaton as it brushed itself off. "Jeez, you ruined my favorite shirt…."
The automaton's turquoise optic sensory systems had never seen a creature so... beautiful... before. But before his systems could process what he had just seen, the demure, delicate and heavenly creature clad in very light red had vanished. Racking his processing power to identify the creature only yielded one result. One illogical result. The data entry showed this creature was canine, yet there were female and human traits in the results. The automation was roped in by the mysterious creature regardless of its chemical biology. His scans also picked up more organic lifeforms toward the tower. Disheartened but determined, he walked for what seemed like hours to get answers. When he arrived at what seemed like a bustling city center where he was greeted by two seemingly humanoid creatures. One was adorned in purple attire while emitting an inviting smoke and smiled with bright green teeth, while the other wore pink.
"WELCOME TO ENDLESS WAR, A FREE TEXT-BASED MMORPG PLAYABLE ENTIRELY WITHIN A DIS-"
The automaton's auditory circuits crackled discordantly. Although he proceeded to smile and nod while the creatures darted around the clearing just outside the city center, he could not hear their proclamations. His hardware automatically ran a well-being diagnostic that required his complete attention. When the diagnostic finished, the machine's audio receivers picked up the following.
"...AND FINALLY, GO MINE, GET SOME SLIME, AND DO SOME CRIME!"
Screeched the violent pink creature thrashing about, while the chill purple creature threw a dab as they vanished.
"Get… slime? Do… crime? OK!"
Using his scanners, Monsoon found the Toxington mine. This mine seemed vaguely purple and emanated a pungent odor. He found himself with a pickaxe and so he got to work. He mined, mined, mined, and mined for days. The meditatively tedious days of mining had yielded a large stockpile of slime, so the automaton had fashioned himself a tank to run on excess slime. During his time in the mines, the automation became friends with a strange creature.
"What do you mean you don't have a name?!"
Exclaimed the creature that had called himself Zombiepaper as they wrapped up mining for the day. The purple creature paused, surprised at the thought of not having a name, then took out a pen and paper from his varsity jacket to begin writing notes. Those writing instruments, and everything else about the creature's body, seemingly defied physics. Everything about him was as thin as a sheet of paper! He could even disappear at the right angle.
"My creator did not feel the need to name his projects. In hindsight, that's probably why no one cared when he disappeared ...mysteriously. He did leave me two documentary transcripts: one about monsoons and the other was producing music."
Explained the automaton as he remained confused by the importance of a name.
"How does MonsoonMusic sound for a name? Or Monsoon for short?"
Shrugging, as the green automaton finished eating the last of the 3D lobster meal that he received from the 2D creature, the machine nodded.
"Based. Looks like it's time to go back to base. Wanna join?"
The ever-smiling creature had packed up all of his mining tools and stood ready to walk.
"Sounds chill" shrugged the little automaton as the two walked.
Time flew by quickly in the city often called NLACakaNM, sometimes formally called New Los Angeles City aka Neo Milwaukee, other times colloquially called Slime City. Weeks seemed to last minutes in this strange world, or maybe it was a side effect of his jump to this reality?
Monsoon joined the purple-adorned gang for more excitement in his monotonous existence. The little automaton retrofitted purple atop his green exterior to match the purple gang's fashionable aesthetic. He learned the ropes from many of the other creatures and freak humanoids that resided within their home base, the somewhat obscenely named Cop Killtown even if he didn't mind the obscenity, and soon found his home within the gang violence. Among the four most ambitious of his group were two frogs, one that almost appeared ghostly in a small jar while the other drove a small purple car, a walking, talking - or rather, swearing - space taco, and a bespectacled mango. He joined their hunts sometimes. Other times, he mined, fished, and battled creatures named slimeoids. Hours spent mining, hunting, and praying to the large green obelisk called Endless War became a routine.
"Gang, I looked at the time! It's gonna be daylight soon! We should get back to Cop Killtown before we can't mine anymore!"
Yelled taco over the industrious noises of Monsoon's drill attachments at the Toxington Mines. The humanoid taco was adorning freshly-claimed scalps of what looked like a pirate and a man wearing pointy sunglasses. The miners ate the last of their food before they packed up their tools. Monsoon was joined this time by not only the paper creature, but a moth man named Sol, a small humanoid girl named Kit, and the bespectacled mango named Mangus that occasionally killed incoming targets along with the sunglasses-bespectacled taco. As they wrapped up their tools, Monsoon's circuitry recalled his first day in NLACakaNM. As he paused on the memory of the demure feminine canine, Monsoon felt weak. His programming burned with unbridled feelings until cooling fluid covered his internal circuitry. That fluid couldn't keep calm the feelings within his technological automation of …love?
He knew he had to locate the lovely creature.
Chapter 2* watch?v=XvMxJkTaE4I*
As the Killers darted about during their gleeful scalp-collecting for the day, Monsoon happened upon something in the bustling Downtown district he would have never expected to occur. Over the corpse of a freshly slain uncharacteristic Juvie stood the feminine canine that played and replayed in his memories. His heating system nearly short-circuited until he saw the characteristic creature... dressed in the signature pink of the detested Rowdys!
She had the most beautiful face Monsoon could have ever imagined. Her humanoid hair was disheveled. One of her canine ears stood alert while the other lopped down slightly. Her face had soft fur, with big brown eyes, and a soft nose. She wore exercise attire in light and dark shades of pinks and stood primed for combat. She reloaded her revolver until she aimed at her next kill. Their connection was immediate. The pink canine recognized the automaton even through his new purple surface, lowered her scope, and put her revolver away.
"Hi, hello, hey. Who are you? It's been plaguing my operating system for cycles. Please, if there's no time to speak, just your name will suffice! Please..." cried the hopelessly smitten automaton.
"...LoveTech," she said meekly as she dashed away, her tail wagging as she slunk back into the shadows of the alleys. Her form was so entrancing to the poor automaton that he did not notice the grenade at his feet. After the explosion, he found himself in a small outcropping in the sewers of NLACakaNM.
"Well, at least I didn't fall in the sewer water this time. That's always hell for my internal mechanics," sighed Monsoon, despondent not only on his death, but the fact that his love was in the gang he had sworn an oath to kill! As he picked himself up, he waved at some of the familiar faces that chose to remain in that awful place, including two former Killers, a skeleton adorning a diadem that could have been wearing 3D glasses and the frog sitting in a jar that had once taught him so much about living in NLACakaNM. As they waved back, he readied himself, then evoked his revival back onto the slime-stained downtown streets.
As though it were a movie shown in the delightfully run-down Astatine Heights Cinema, the one creature he wished for most popped out from the shadows, the furry creature of his dreams.
"Uhm, hi... I never caught your name, so I decided to wait around till you came back."
The canine spoke so softly that Monsoon needed to adjust his auditory systems. Her docile voice soothed the machine in such a way that had never occurred to the automaton.
"My name is Monsoon M-Music the A-Automaton," he stumbled over his words until he paused and continued, "and it's an honor to meet you! L-LoveT-Tech," declared the automaton in a voice that almost cracked like a humanoid preteen. Monsoon stepped closer to LoveTech and extended his spider-like fingers towards the light-brown canine in a handshake. LoveTech tensed at the motion, relented, then shook the automaton's limb.
While they shook hands, Monsoon's hardware began to heat up in a way he never imagined. They stopped shaking hands and his diagnostics ran in emergency cool-off mode. When the automaton's sensors returned closer to normal, after giving him a canned warning to not put his hands into toaster ovens, his scanners turned to LoveTech's face. Her face increased in temperature so much that his hardware began running first aid scans for general entities until she smiled, and motioned for them to dodge into an alleyway. As they walked over the littered bodies of uncommitted Juvies that Endless War would soon send down to the sewers, Monsoon remembered that he had shared his passion with some of his Killer friends. They provided advice to the innocent, technologically-advanced automaton about love.
"Would you like to goo... out for some food somewhere?"
The love-struck machine had stumbled over his words through his terrible, practiced pun. His internal temperature rose to the warmest it had ever been before. All of his hardware ran diagnostics at full-speed until the little creature expressed a huge grin across her face and she ran toward him in a hug.
"Anywhere, Monsoon! I'd risk going even to Cop Killtown for you."
They had found themselves standing at the end of the alleyway, far enough away to not be noticed by any friend or foe, so they could be lost in each other's company until a signal brought them back to reality.
"All available Rowdys needed in Krak Bay," her gellphone blared.
"I'm sorry, Monsoon. My friends need help capping and I gotta help 'em. I wish us never to meet on the battlefield."
"I understand…"
The two exchanged awkward goodbyes before they walked discreetly into the streets. Finally, Monsoon had the answer he was looking for after so long in NLACakaNM. However, LoveTech and Monsoon were in a very strange situation that was sure to cause tremors in NLACakaNM. Their forbidden love would cause endless trouble for him and her. After all the advice he received from his fellow Killers, he couldn't tell them the truth he had just learned… Everyone would ridicule him enough to make him want to commit suicide or worse…
"Oh, what to do…" the poor automaton whispered.
As Monsoon wandered aimlessly toward Cop Killtown, kicking a few dead Juvies along the way, his memory banks recited all of the events related to love that he had encountered. He had asked everyone. He even asked taco! Recalling his memories, they were hunting down a man with a southern demeanor in pointy sunglasses that shined pink. taco, in a rare moment of vulnerability, told the innocent automaton information about romance that he had to fast forward through in his reciting. If he played the descriptions of seduction and romance at normal speed, the sheer number of unrepeatable words would cause the peacekeeping Endless War to shine more than just an evil eye at him. His memory banks continued scanning events until he replayed an early exchange with the 2D creature.
"You can ask me about anything. I'll never judge you, my friend."