Chapter Text
What little remained of his power fizzled into his optics, leaving him with a blurry backdrop of snow and the hulking metal structure of steel before him. A pearl lay in his lap, but his arms had long since been frozen over, no longer able to even play the hymn recorded within.
And then there was color; the blurry figure of a stranger appeared before him. Five pebbles did not have the computing power left to process this information; he simply stared as the strange being got closer.
The figure was mostly colored with soft greys, but the head was a distinct dark green. Soon after, half a dozen figures appeared within his vision; each figure appeared before him with the same silence.
The green figure stepped close to his puppet body, and he looked up. His systems dedicated slightly more power to his mind in recognition of an exception, as he gained a brief moment of communicative potential.
"He… llo……." his puppet stuttered out a faint greeting as it looked up at the green blur. He could barely make out the humanoid figure; it looked like an Iterator puppet, if not slightly off.
Faint, muffled voices began to speak; pebbles couldn't make out the noises, but they grew louder as more of the figures got closer to him. They seemed to exchange words before the green one held up a device, putting it to the puppet's forehead.
With a sudden burst of light… everything went black
***
The Reconnaissance and Recovery Team had pushed far into territory that had completely lacked core information.
Odd Stillness directed the rest of his group to cut through the large valley with haste, as they headed towards the collapsed can. They should have already begun the long trek to return to Simple Veil, or at least one of the recovered Iterators, yet Stillness continued to push the group forward.
Rarely did they have such concrete evidence for the collapse of an Iterator as they did with Five Pebbles; of the few cans that had contracted rot, his was the most well-known. It was nearly a guarantee that it would at least be a confirmed recovery, as long as their rot scrapers didn't get damaged en route, so the team made one last stop at the fallen iterator.
After eight cycles of travel, they finally pushed through the valley before arriving at the errant stretch of land that housed the collapsed Iterator and its sister. They didn't have time to investigate the waterlogged and likely unrecoverable Looks to the Moon, so they headed directly to the collapsed structure of Five Pebbles to finish one last extraction.
***
"OS, I'm not getting any signal from the tracker, not a single sign of relevant power in the area; we should just leave," stated a bright blue puppet, wreathed in a furry cloak.
"Just a little longer, Stars; I can tell the puppet chamber must have collapsed nearby," The dark green puppet spoke, their voice was tense.
The puppet called "Stars" sighed and motioned for the rest of the seven or so figures to follow as they continued down the superstructure.
Raining Stars followed behind the team leader as they entered an open area within the wreckage, the optics within their eyes expanding to witness what remained of a puppet, the last vestige of Five Pebbles's life.
"His puppet is… functioning? Seems what's left of his onboard power kept his organics alive…” Stars stood back for a moment as Odd Stillness slid down the slip of snow.
As the rest of the group discussed their surprise, Stillness slowly approached the fallen puppet. Pebbles looked up softly and muttered a faint greeting. Stillness winced a little, quickly pulling out the stunner as he brought it to the puppet's forehead.
***
Everything felt strange for a moment, then sharp and painful. Pebbles woke up with immediate panic.
Everything was blurry; he was surrounded by glass in some sort of containment tube. He shook within his thin container as he slammed his fists on the glass. The pod slowly opened on its own, seemingly in response to the sudden movement inside.
Thoughts echoed in his head more clearly than they had in many thousands of cycles, yet still they felt so wrong. Where was he?
He stooped up weakly, stumbling around for a moment as he leaned against a cold wall nearby. His gaze was still blurry but clear enough to make out the faint details of the room he was in. The place resembled a lab of sorts, but the pieces of iterator puppets hanging from the walls on hooks brought an immediate fear into him.
Seeing an open door nearby, he immediately sprang into a run. He wasn't even sure how he was able to sprint as a puppet, normally not even capable of moving on its own without great effort and low gravity.
Finding himself in a hallway, he continued to run down the fuzzy black corridor. He could hear sounds, footsteps, and voices surrounding him. Craning his head back, he faintly sees two figures running towards him, but as he faces forward again, he runs directly into someone. He fell to the ground with a harsh sound as pain flooded his system.
His vision grew dark as figures surrounded him, the sounds of voices slowly fading as his consciousness grew dim.
***
And then he was back, at least that's how it felt to him. His vision was clear, far clearer than it had been for a very long time. He, however, could not move, his body seemingly unresponsive as his head uselessly swiveled in place.
"Hello?" he said, not used to the sound of his own voice; it was as clear as it had been long ago, if not slightly off.
The room he was in resembled the sleeping quarters his citizens once had used, filled with simple furniture; he himself seemed to be attached to some structure in the wall.
The sound of footsteps echoed close to his closed chamber before an automatic door slid apart and a figure entered. The figure could be described as an iterator puppet, but immediately, Pebbles noticed the strangeness in its design.
It was far less frail than the typical puppet; the colored metal that normally made up the frame of the puppet was instead more like chitinous plates that covered a black inner body. They were also far taller than him; he considered for a moment that he was seeing things.
"Five pebbles, I presume?" the voice said, his voice rather sonorous with a strange vibrato to it. The figure, male-seeming, stood at the other end of the room.
"I apologise for the restraints. You escaped mid-repairs some hundred cycles ago and sustained some damage, so we had your bodily connection disabled till we could stabilize your frame.”
He walked closer, then adjusted some sort of restraint on the wall, and suddenly the rest of Pebbles's body was freed. The male puppet stepped back to give Pebbles space.
"Who…who are you? No.. I mean… where am I… what happened to me?" Pebbles' voice came out quick and confused.
"Please keep calm; you are within the can of Simple Veil. I am Severing Waves"
"I…" Pebbles was stunned, frankly, not knowing what to even ask
"I'm sure you are confused, but I only ask for you to be patient; you have recovered from the remains of your can with your puppet being repaired here at this structure."
"But why are my memories intact?" Pebbles slowly got the hang of speaking again, jumping to more proper questions
"They were scraped and stored when our recovery team located you, and are currently installed in a temporary puppet frame. Luckily, despite the rot, your memory banks were intact"
"New puppet?" He looked down again; his puppet body was more similar to the one talking to him, and the shape reminded him more of conceptual drones once pitched to the iterator network.
"Correct, what your consciousness is held within currently could be described as a biomechanical organism, designed to house the dead remains of iterators with limited functionality to their original designs. A design of which is the product of Simple Veil's many cycles of research and development," Waves said, with a slight tinge of pride in his tone.
Pebbles slid against the wall as his new frame fell to the floor, "What…"
"These bodies are, functionally speaking, designed to allow an iterator to ascend, at least within the traditional means once accessible to our citizens. This is, of course, no triple affirmative." Waves offered a fake cough to Pebbles' relative silence.
"I will give you some time to process things." Waves calmly strolled out of the room, closing the door on his way out.
***
A million thoughts swam through Pebbles' head, well, not quite literally a million, his body had nowhere near the capacity of comprehension his structure once had, yet still numerous thoughts were had in his shiny pink skull. Confusion, relief, regret, sorrow, an endless wave of emotions that slowly began to condense into a singular thought: Want.
The implication of a method of ascension accessible in a sense to Iterators was genuinely groundbreaking; he could finally be free from the cycle of existence he had previously thought his kind was trapped within, yet still something felt unresolved.
Pebbles shuddered when he remembered Moon. He didn't want to think about her; an intense wave of regret washed over him whenever he did. He shook his head as he stared at his fingers; he really didn't want to think about Moon right now.
***
The sound of footsteps echoed through the small living quarters once more as Waves re-entered the room. Pebbles was deep in thought, having spent the last hour considering his options.
"Is your mind stable?" He asks plainly,
"Yes…"
"Good, now stand up and follow me, and don't worry about walking; you've been installed with what could be described as natural muscle memory." Waves turns around and waits in place for Pebbles to follow.
Pebbles scrambles to his feet; some built-in balancing system seems to make them far more capable than they appear. Straightening his posture, he quickly steps over to Waves like a child trying to catch up.
As they walk through steel hallways for some amount of minutes, the pair arrives at a section of passages with windows on the left end, providing an outside view of whatever facility they are in. Though the only view one could see was an endless torrent of snow.
"This blizzard has raged for some cycles now, but I promise you things look quite impressive when it's not snowing"
Pebbles follows silently, but eventually his patience wears somewhat thin, and he begins to ask questions, seeing this slow walk as a good opportunity.
"How exactly were you able to transfer the working consciousness of an Iterator into these flimsy bodies"
"Describing the process would take a cycle in its own; you can learn of the specifics later if you so choose." Waves' half-assed response earns a slight scowl in the expressionless form of Five Pebbles.
"What can you tell me about these bodies then? You said they allowed Iterators to ascend, right?"
"Correct, as long as biomechanical beings fall within a certain range of liveliness, they can benefit from the processes of both the cycle and ascension."
"Wouldn't that go against our core principles? There are many internal systems Iterators have to prevent this amount of… change"
"Correct, or it's better to say that those concepts no longer affect us in these forms. We are, in essence, copies of our original beings, Iterators no longer."
"That's… propestoerus…what about the triple affirmative? How are we to do anything in these useless forms!" Pebbles raises his arms in a quaint form of accusation, although Waves does not react.
"Where did your research into the Triple Affirmative get you?" Waves responds coldly, giving Pebbles a side eye as he walks, earning him an annoyed sigh from Pebbles.
"Whatever…"
***
After some time walking through featureless corridors, they arrive at a more distinct set of double doors, which open automatically with a smooth pneumatic sound, revealing a small chamber and another door within.
"Beyond this transitory room is the puppet chamber of Simple Veil. I trust you will make a proper decision."
"Decision to what?" Pebbles responds with confusion, but Waters simply turns around and closes the door behind him as he returns to the main corridor. Pebbles sighs and faces the large double door.
After a moment of peace, Pebbles finally walks to the pair of doors leading into the supposed puppet chamber, opening them and revealing a huge room typical of any iterator. The moment he steps within, he feels gravity loosen as he begins to float. A puppet, its skin pure snow white with soft gray accents, floats slowly down to him, attached to a massive metal arm.
A soft melodic voice resonates from the Iterator: "Hello!" the voice says with a slight, hard-to-discern accent. An abnormally large synaptic halo of pure white light floats above the iterator, sparking as information relays between the halo and the surrounding chamber.
"Welcome, new friend! Welcome to Simple Veil,” the figure announced its greeting as the chamber rang with fake applause.