No trouble so far…
Nine walked with a stiff gait as their company moved through the Emptiness. He had been nervous about the trip ever since Seven had recommended it, and then the 'talk' he had shared with One before they left hadn't helped anything. Now that they were actually out here—all of them—all of his senses were on high alert for any sign of danger. The thought of something going wrong, as it always seemed to whenever he let his guard down, kept him going at a slow, careful pace with his eyes flickering across the ruins that surrounded them. His trepidation kept him toward the back of the group, where he could keep an eye on everyone: Seven—who, shaking her head, cast him a knowing, amused grin over her shoulder—led the front.
Maybe he was just being paranoid. They were moving in broad daylight and there wasn't a machine anywhere across the expanse of wasteland that stretched ahead of them. Still, he preferred being paranoid to being unprepared. His staff strapped to his back, Nine clasped tightly to a makeshift glaive: A new weapon that Five had made for him by welding together a steel rod and the blade from a pencil sharpener. Without practice, it felt clumsy in his grip. He could count on his fingers the number of times he had actually held it. At a time like this though, he preferred having it to his staff alone, which was suited better as just a light than for actual combat.
As the only one skilled with long-range attacks, Five also traveled toward the back of the group. Initially behind their second substituted 'wagon' which was pulled by the twins—an empty coal car from a train set—he slowed down, letting One, Eleven and Two pass him in order to walk alongside Nine. He gave him a partial grin, "It looks like the weather's let up today. That could be a good sign."
"Maybe," was all Nine could offer in reply, raising his shoulders in a faint shrug.
A moment after, the group had to stop. They had already reached the mine field that stretched beyond the ruins of the factory. They could navigate under or around some of the tripwires easily enough, but sometimes they had to take a different path because of the wagons. This time, they had to slip the wagons underneath a wire by guiding them over a small drop. Six, Ten, and Thirteen were the first to maneuver through.
"What do you think we'll find?" Five asked. His tone wasn't wholly sincere: He was asking just for sake of conversation.
"I'm not sure," he answered, "Really, there's a lot more things I'm hoping we don't find than things that we could." Besides the danger of the machines, there were some sights he wanted to avoid exposing the kids to as much as he could. The twins and Thirteen had likely seen more than there share, and he wasn't worried too much about Ten: It was the pair of younger girls that worried him most. Through it all, they still somehow managed to maintain a shred of innocence that he didn't want to tarnish beyond salvation—and there were plenty of threats and grim sights that could change that.
"Well, I'm hoping to find a few more bolts," Five sighed, "It's not like we could strip away all of the piping, but we need to figure out how to channel all the water in the library's main floor somewhere else. I'm starting to worry it could flood."
It already had—twice, actually—if only by a few millimeters above ground and near the open drainage system. It wasn't much, but it was enough to spook the twins to the point that almost everyone spent several days moving the books on the lowest shelves somewhere safer to avoid the risk of them getting soaked. Of course, to them, the books were secondary only to life itself: It wasn't too far-fetched to make that claim about any of the others either though. More than supplying a wealth of knowledge, booksserved as a treasured leisure to aid the otherwise bleak, taxing hours spent on chores and survival otherwise. There was also damage to the library's infrastructure to consider. It wasn't really a problem yet, but the rains continued to fall more frequently. They had to find a way to control the water flow before it became a real problem.
Nine glanced over his shoulder for not the first time during their journey. It would be dark well before they made it back to the library. Maybe I should talk to Seven about stopping somewhere for the night, he wondered. Outside of whatever dangers might come for them under the cover the darkness, the children lacked experience traversing it. Everything could look different from night to day and they were still rediscovering the world at their new sizes. They could see clearer in the dark than they could in their human bodies, but everything was strange to them. He didn't want to risk pushing them so early on. On one hand, the small challenge could he another step to helping them adjust: On the other, he still didn't know what limits their limits were.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Five asked, the curious phrase snapping him out of his musings.
"What?"
"It's uh…" the latter scratched the back of his head sheepishly, "It's something Thirteen said once, when she wanted to know what I was thinking about. Two says it's an 'idiom,' but I don't really get it either…"
Blinking his optics, Nine looked down at the weapon in his hands. As he fought to say anything, the group soon began to move again down another long strip of earth. "It's just…" he grunted, ducking low to the ground as they crawled under a tripwire. "I can't stop worrying, you know? I already let so many terrible things happen that I can't help wondering what's next. It was enough when…" he paused, then continued in a low voice, "Well… before. And now we're trying to figure out how to raise a group of humans to be like us. And I just don't know if I'm really making the right choices for everyone."
"You're doing a better job than One did," Five snorted, then gave a concerned glance ahead to check if anyone overheard him. Catching no one's attention, a few seconds later, the inventor reassured him further, "I know it probably seems like you just keep getting thrown headfirst into things. I felt like that from the minute I woke up—and the Scientist was still around then. I mean… you woke up alone, so for everything you've had to get used to, one thing right after another, I'd say you're doing pretty good." His grin returning, he nodded toward the front of their party, "This is just another one of those headfirst things—and, hey, you don't have to deal with it alone this time. You know?"
Nine gave him an appreciative smile back. That's right. From newborn to leader in a few days' pace, to the discovery of humans to their sudden adoption in hardly any more time than that, his life seemed to move in a series of rapid events—where split discussions were the only ones that mattered—followed by brief reliefs during which he was left feeling just as lost as when he started. He didn't have to learn and make decisions by himself this time though: All of them were slowly working things out together.
Seven called him from the front. Picking up pace, Nine jogged ahead with Five following not far behind.
It would've taken them a little less time had they cut through one of the many the underground pipes that led to the Factory, but they didn't know what sort of shape they were in after the explosion. That was one of their goals for the trip in case they planned on returning for future explorations. That day, however, they had cut entirely across land. Now, as they crested over a mound that had once made a sniper's hideout during the war, they could see where the Factory had once stood from a somewhat elevated position:
It was impossible to call it a Factory anymore: Not a single wall was left standing in the valley of shrapnel that remained in its stead. Heaps upon heaps of metal that not even the Scavengers had managed to pick clean stretched across the landscape. The one area that stood out from the wreckage was the carved path where the Fabrication Machine had dragged itself free from its constraints like a mechanized nightmare to chase after the Stitchpunks—a memory that flashed through Nine's mind all too clearly. As grim a reminder as it was though, it seemed to be the only sort of trail they had to follow in the midst of the destruction: To the Stitchpunks, the collapsed beams, walls, sheets, and conveyers all overlapping one another amid the already chaotic scene had turned the area into one, huge multi-level labyrinth.
Nine inwardly cringed just from looking at it. There was no hope of investigating it all in a day's time and he blanked at the thought of where to begin. Shooting a glance over to the others, he found them in no better a state. Some of them looked down at the Factory's remains with jaw-smacked astonishment, some in horror of the things that had passed, some with pained confliction, and most everyone a mix of any of the three.
One was the first to break the silence, drawing an arm to his chest in repulsion and tightening the line of his mouth. "Good riddance," he chuffed, "That's one landmark the world should be happy to have cleaved off the face of the earth." Despite his words, however, there was something in his expression that was hard to read, as if for all the hatred he held for the place dancing like a fire in his eyes, there was something more he kept withdrawn. Nine knew why: The place made a poor memorial.
Before another heavy silence could follow, he steeled his resolve, stepped ahead of the group, and turned to face them. "Here's where we split up," he told them, his fists curling at his sides just at the thought. "Seven will take the first group around the perimeter to see how the tunnels held up. Five: you, the twins, Two, and Six will go with her. Everyone else comes with me to see what we can salvage."
When he and Seven were planning for the journey there the previous night, they had already considered having to divide their numbers. It wasn't left to debate that the two of them would take the lead, each of them more fit for combat than the others. He knew that Seven would want to keep the twins within her sight, that Two could best examine the damages, that Six could likely map the way easiest, and that he could trust Five to help defend them. It was dumb fate that placed him with One as the only born Stitchpunk in his own group, but after their brief conversation before they had left, he was almost happy about it. It gave him a chance to see firsthand how One thought about handling the former-humans. Sarah and Peter could also be relied upon in a pinch, so that made their defenses fairly even from the other group.
"I wanna stay with Seven!" Peggie suddenly exclaimed, then bit her lower lip at her own outburst with a flickering, embarrassed gaze to those around her.
It caught several of them off-guard. Although it was plain to anyone that the young girl had taken a shine to the warrior, she hardly left her little sister's side: The pair stayed almost as closely by each other as the twin's did. Nine shot Seven a questioning look, but after a moment getting over her own surprise, she raised brow in return. Leaning on her spear with a hand on her hip, she smirked and gave him a limp wave of her wrist. It's your call, she seemed to say.
"I…" he blinked, unsure at first, "I guess that's fine. Ok then!" The more he actually thought about it, the better it was. If they were willing to separate, then it meant they were getting more comfortable around the others as individuals. Unfortunately, however, the feeling didn't appear to be shared by everyone. The youngest of them stared at her feet with a slight, panicked look until her oldest sister stepped over to brace her at the shoulders—the latter hardly any more thrilled, but able to hide her concern a little easier.
"I-I'll stay with Thirteen t-then…" Six offered in his usual, staggering voice, a moment's excitement quickly overcome by a wave of nerves against his own boldness. It prompted a smile from the adolescent against her own reservations.
"Good!" Nine nodded, echoing the word under his breath as if to convince himself. For strategy's sake, it wasn't much of a change: The twins could catalogue the tunnels just as well as—or likely even better than—Six could map them. He just hoped the separation wasn't too much of a big step for the young girls. Against further comment, he kept silent for a brief moment before continuing, "We'll divide off that way and try to regroup before sundown. If we can't all make it back, we'll signal each other. Two?"
Once called, the elder lifted up a newly crafted version of his former headlamp, made from an altered signet ring with its gem removed and instead outfitted with a small bulb similarly to Nine's lightstaff. He had plated it around its circumference to adjust it to the size of his and wire it to a small battery pack; and he was able to turn it on and off by screwing and unscrewing a cap located on the right side. Two made it flicker twice, just to prove it worked, and then returned it to his pack.
Nine nodded again, this time in affirmation, "Then I guess we're ready to set go then. We'll see each other soon."
Seven and the others took the smallest of the two wagons with them . Twelve had a skip in her step as she followed after them, so close that she was practically on the warrior's heels. Whatever the rest of her siblings may have felt, she—for the time being in the very least—was eager to spend the day elsewhere. Nine watched on as the remaining three siblings stared after their sister in hesitation. Finally, it was Sarah who, shaking her head, grabbed their own group's wagon and beckoned for the others to follow. "Rosie, Six, hop in!" she said as Ten can over to help her push.
Nine barely had time to piece together their mischief, and when he did he was too late. With Ten and Thirteen pivoting the toy truck's momentum, the four youths began to ride down the slope to the ruins below. He tried to stop them, but they were already moving and gaining speed by the time he neared the edge: He could only watch as they rolled down, the seconds it took for them to begin to slow from flat ground and friction a strain on his nerves.
They made it safely, a light chorus of cheers climbing back up from where they now waited for him and One to follow after them. The young leader looked to his predecessor only to be met with a stern, if somewhat amused, leer as though he were talking a wicked, smug enjoyment out of the situation. The latter said nothing at first, but stepped forward, clapping him on the shoulder. Aged, tired optics fell on him, then the others, then back again.
"Don't look at me to take charge when they begin to call for you, Nine: You're their leader. Good luck."