Fainting twice in a row isn't generally good for your health. Thankfully, I was a robot, so the only thing that happened was a more-thorough inspection of my boot sector and such on my next startup. Speaking of, I found myself in a dark, somewhat dank room the next time I woke up. There was muffled sobbing coming from nearby, which I couldn't fucking see because my cameras hadn't adjusted correctly and everything was blurry, but I could definitely tell it was the same... kind of voice that Madeline had.

Wait, how long had it been? I checked my internal clocks for a bit, and the battery drain was comparable to... twenty-eight hours of unconsciousness? I was out for 28 fucking hours???

Trying to leap to my feet only resulted in me slipping and smashing my head into the ground. Concrete — slightly wet concrete — met my faceplate, which made a sickening crack that would really have been concerning if I was human. A second try got me standing, and I quickly started feeling around for a door. Or an exit. Or a light switch, which I honestly was not expecting to find — and which I was certainly not expecting to work.

The room was probably some small basement pantry or boiler room of some kind. The floor was polished concrete, with dilapidated but clean plastered walls on all four sides, and there was only a single door in or out. More interestingly, however, was my newfound companion: Madeline was curled up on herself on the other side of the room from me, hiding her face in her knees poorly; her bloodshot eyes poked out from underneath her hat with a mixture of what I was pretty sure was trepidation, fear, and dismay. I think it was those things, at least. With only eyes to go on, it wasn't totally simple.

"Um," I started, and then coughed because oh my god my throat was dry. Wait, had Madeline stayed with me the whole time? "...Did you stay here the whole time?"

"I, uh. Uh. Maybe." She cringed. "I'm sorry, I, uh, honestly didn't expect you to be alive. Like at all. I kind of, thought, you were dead? And I uh. And I sort of guess I just wanted to... honor your death or something?"

That sounded like the flimsiest excuse I'd ever heard, but it wasn't like I was any worse off than I was 28 hours ago. In fact, I was pretty sure the bite mark had been patched up by my good friend over here, so... no reason to worry, probably. "So you spent 28 hours and 45 or so minutes in a room with what you thought was a dead body doing jack fuck all? How are you alive? Do you not need food?"

"V—I'm a vampire. I thought. I mean I don't need to eat. It's more of a suggestion." Madeline's stomach rumbles, and she paled. Probably — the single lightbulb didn't exactly help with any of this. "Wu—wuh. Ignore that."

I walked over to her and squatted down. "Hey. Can I call you dude?" Madeline nodded. "Okay. Got it. That in mind: Get some fucking food, dude."

For a few brief moments, it felt like Madeline was going to argue, or start crying. Or start physically attacking me or something. Surprisingly, though, she just nodded and gently grabbed my arm. I guess it did make sense that she bit down on my arm when I let her grab it, but I still flinched. Not only because of the bite — which was surprisingly painless — but because oh my god, she'd totally been crying. Madeline's face seemed to be a little cold and damp, and I could definitely see some damp patches on the sleeves of her tunic-robe-thing.

Abruptly, Madeline stopped biting on my arm. "Oh god. I'm sorry."

"Then you're already better than most of Old Earth. I didn't need this arm anyways — and I have a spare body back at my base, so feel free. I'll just cordon off the coolant from the rest of my systems."

Madeline nodded, though not without a good deal of what seemed like trepidation, and started biting at my arm again. It was oddly calming, sitting in the cramped little room with my new... companion? Gnawing at my arm. Much more calm than earlier, at least; I couldn't see the person in front of me as anything but trustworthy if she'd really just stayed here and cried her eyes out for well over a day. That made the biting a lot easier to bear.

After a while, though, she stopped.  "O—Okay. I, um. I'll probably be fine for a bit. Can we start going back to your place? I don't want to keep draining you, it feels wrong."

That was probably a good idea anyways. I gave her a hand up, and then she led me back to the outside.

It was a dark night out. No stars, crescent moon. The ruins of large buildings were all around us; we were in the center of the city, a place I rarely traveled to because it'd been wiped clean of useful materials a long time ago. I'd only seen this place during the day. It was a land of jagged edges and concrete, yellowed in the sand and sun for possibly millennia. It was rebar and gigantic, ostensibly-unstable black boxes. 

I'd only seen the city during the day. But as I stepped out into the warm, dry night, I gasped at the sight before me.

The batteries I'd seen were powering jury-rigged LED fairy lights, strung up across the husks of great buildings among the dust and grime of this dead Old Earth city. A humanly-innumerable number of tiny points of light lit up the night sky in whites and golds and reds; all the yellows of the world reflected in an emulation of the stars. The light wasn't enough to pollute (though obviously not for lack of trying) — only a faint bit of color seeped into the ground like rainwater, and everything else seemed entirely lost to the dark of night.

Madeline rubbed her eyes and seemed to stifle a yawn, even as I looked up with my jaw hanging, and suddenly I was very aware of how long it'd take to get back to my little apartment from here. I coughed, looked to my left and right, then started hurrying off to make up for wasted time. Stupid goddamn beautiful night.

Halfway there (and still with the echoes of lights in the sky heavy in my mind, for some reason), Madeline darn-near collapsed into my back. I could almost smell the exhaustion coming off of her. In fact, if I tried, I probably could have. As I picked her up and gave her a piggyback ride, she snorted and woke up enough to thank me — and also ask a few questions.

"Haa... thanks. Soo. What's your name? I told you mine, it's only fair."

"Don't have one. Never needed it."

Madeline grumbled softly into the back of my neck. "Well make one up then. I don't wanna keep calling you 'cute robot' in my head. It feels bad."

"You can't just make up a name. It's just not how things work." I pointedly ignored what she said she called me in her head, like a good cute robot would. A good robot would, I mean. "I wouldn't know where to start, anyways. My serial is KZX-08, if that helps at all."

"Wehhhh, I made mine up. Who's gonna stop you anyways? It's the apocalypse, name yourself whatever ya want. Bite and maim anyone who says you can't. KZX doesn't feel good also. Make one up."

I stayed silent for a bit. "How'd you come up with Madeline?"

"Video game. Felt right. Used to call myself Titania, actually, but that didn't feel as good."

"Huh."

"I mean, let alone what I used to used to be called by. Mannn. That sucked."

"...Madeline does fit you better, yeah." I finally concluded. "I guess I could be called Ken?"

I could feel Madeline making a face at me from the back of my neck. "Nyeh. Bad name. Pick another one. Unless you really really like that one in which case I am going to make fun of you a little if you are okay with that."

"Um... Clay?"

"Clay sounds like a middling 40 year old bigot," Madeline deadpanned.

I mean, she was right. "I can't really argue with that, ha. Um, what would you pick?"

"Hmmmm," she said, lazily. "I think... Kaylin fits you."

"Kaylin? But that's a girl's name?"

"Mmh? Is it?"

"I think so. Not very common, but that's a girl's name."

"Huh. Okay. What's the... big deal?"

I did a brief double take, but I supposed that it was easy to mistake me with the body I had. "I'm not a girl."

"Ohh. Okay~!" Madeline said, in a loopy singsong voice. "I like your geeender. Crunchy."

"I'm literally just a guy. This body just had better energy generation capabilities. It's not like I enjoy being all girly."

"Mmmm, really? Couldn't you just, umm... take the generator out?"

"No, I couldn't—" I sighed. "Just shut up and let me walk us there. You clearly need sleep, so get it. Also stop asking questions."

"Okay. Goodnight, K~." Madeline said, in the same loopy voice. It was really starting to get on my nerves how much I was aggressively fine with her using that voice.

Still, the rest of the walk was quiet as requested. It was a little off-putting. The shadows seemed to lengthen as the silence grew, which lasted up until Madeline started purring (or snoring. One of the two). At that point, things went a little back to normal — but there was still a nagging feeling in the back of my head that things were not right. Paranoia was seeping in again.

Oh well. Nothing to be done about it, I supposed, resigning myself to the fear as we made the long trek back home. Damn the moon. At least the stars were nice about it — the moon in the sky itself seemed to mock me, hanging still in the sky as if proclaiming that all this was pointless.

I shouldered my friend, my burden, and kept going with a slight grimace on my face. If a single catgirl's purring was holding me between a panic attack and oblivion, I was going to raise hell when I got to the pearly gates — that was entirely unfair.

trigger7ff6

hey hi! heres another chapter of IRIA. hope you enjoy! as always, comment like subscribe. i am going to go to bed now