On The Maintenance of Friendships

[crankyoldman]

Fandom: Original
Rating: PG (at least I think so)
Summary: Some girls take "making friends" a little literally. And Percival sees the light.
Notes: Written for steampunk month on Imaginary Beasts, which I didn't get done in time. Kind of a snippet from a larger work I may get to, may not. Since this next month's theme is Travel I may do something else with these kids, as I like them. XD Percival is named after my late cactus.



"Don't touch that! It's regulating his motor functions."

He had in fact expected to see some kind of white light, or tunnel, or maybe even some of his ancestors. Instead the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was a girl and a boy hovering over him like he was an engine.

The girl fixed her magnified and bespectacled eyes on him and poked at his chest with a sharp looking instrument. Which really should have hurt.

"There. Now poke his foot and see if it reacts."

The duel had killed him. He knew that. For a minute he wondered if he'd been reincarnated as a mechanical doll for a very strange child. But judging by the face that the boy was making--as if he'd swallowed a lemon and smelled something awful--there had to be a different explanation.

Better try and see if he could speak. "Excuse me... whatever are you doing?" He had been a gentleman before that foolish challenge. Maybe a few things more, but for some strange reason he couldn't recall quite yet.

The girl jumped back and made a squeaking noise. The boy flinched and in a delayed move drew a Clerk's baton. He would have sat up to greet them more formally, but these were odd circumstances. So instead he squinted as his young resurrectors. They were indeed young, couldn't be more than fourteen judging by the bluish color of the Clerk's coat.

"Stand back!" the boy said, with all the gusto a gangly boy whose only weapon was a familiarity with Aether could muster.

"Pardon me for startling you, but the earlier question still stands." He had been a bit of a gentleman for a soldier, he remembered that much. It was that sense of honor which had gotten him into a duel in the first place and now here as some sort of human toy for strange children.

"I told you that this was batty," the boy hissed to the girl, who was grinning quite a bit now that she was over being startled. He would have sat up to offer a hand to shake in the proper manner, but he was otherwise incapable of that. Perhaps there were issues of mobility when one came back from the dead.

"Hello Mr. Body, my name is AJ," the girl said, completely ignoring the boy. Well, that was certainly an odd name for a girl. Then again, if she was playing with corpses one could assume that her upbringing was less than typical.

"Percival Andros the Third," he replied. That was his name? How fussy.

"You can't make friends with him! We should unhook him from this contraption and let him go back to being dead like he's supposed to be," the boy huffed. Percival was getting the impression he wasn't very friendly. Then again, most Clerks were a little prickly. Probably all those years stuffed into small offices pouring over books. Then again, this boy was not particularly old.

"Nice to meet you, Percival. Would you like to go back to being dead? I guess it's only fair to ask before I do much else with you." At least one of the children had manners. AJ had a quiet and pleasant voice, like someone that sat and watched things a lot.

"I'm not in any particular hurry to go back to being dead, to be honest." Well, it was the human prerogative to stay alive, right? Percival was also curious as to how much he'd decayed and what exactly this girl had done to pull him back. Sounded interestingly complicated.

"What if a spring comes loose? This engine you're powering him with--"

"Could explode, I know. You might want to go back behind the wall over there, Dragon." Dragon? Well, the boy's parents certainly were wishful thinkers. From the glimpses earlier when the boy was hovering, Percival figured out that the boy was certainly not intimidating.

A now masked face hovered over his chest and poked at what Percival presumed to be his organs. There was no telling now what was in there, especially considering that AJ's gloved hands held mechanical and not medical tools.

It got dark in his vision very quickly, with a burst of something that resembled fireworks. Percival found it quite pretty.

---

He was upright when he came to for the second time. Percival at first didn't try to move, as he remembered that before the blackout he was certainly not mobile. Except for his mouth. Or was it even his mouth at all that spoke? He'd heard that someone with a decent grasp of Aether could project sound from something that is otherwise unable to speak mechanically...

My, he certainly had a good mechanical knowledge. Maybe he'd been an aeronaut or something similar in life.

"How are things progressing, AJ?"

She didn't seem to hear him. He looked around--he had eyes or something similar at least--and realized he could turn his head. Well that was certainly progress. AJ noticed that, for certain.

"Oh! I forgot to turn your vox back on." She turned something on his neck. "You made a mess of my workshop when you went out. Your body went all haywire."

"My apologies. Might I have a look at myself in a mirror?" Percival was more excited than anxious. After all, anyone that could figure out how to circumvent death clearly had enough skill to have made him into something interesting.

"Oh, yes. Only one of your legs is working, you pulled something loose earlier. I'll just wheel you over then." AJ was a fairly waifish thing, so she grunted as she wheeled him around. Percival couldn't take everything in, but the girl had quite an extensive workshop, it seemed. The mirror was visible now. If he were alive he would have sucked in his breath.

He wasn't much more than a skeleton at this point. She'd discarded all but his spine and skull from his previous body; no rotting flesh or tissue hanging on anywhere. Instead of muscles there were bundles of metallic cords and a larger hydraulic for controlling the motion which would allow his legs to fold. A smooth coppery substance was in place of his kneecap, and his arms had a similar style. Instead of hands there were three pronged clamps. In place of a heart pumping blood there was what appeared to be a lubrication system hooked up to a pump. No eyes, just these complicated glass lenses. On top of his skull below those weird eye replacements was some more coppery sheeting, moulded to resemble just the outline of a face.

Percival had to wonder where his consciousness came from.

"Exactly how am I here speaking to you?" There were few ways to express concern over the lack of nearly all of one's body.

"Oh, your brain's still there. In fluid, of course. Dried brains don't last long after they've been jumped. It controls things, as long as the nodes are attached right."

A snort came from the corner, and Percival's new ability to turn his head proved to be quite useful. Dragon was still around, which was a bit of a surprise as Percival figured the boy would have run off by now, considering his reactions to their previous encounter.

"I'm never letting you talk me into helping you again," Dragon muttered. AJ gave him a large grin and he stopped. Well, some things certainly did not change.

"Exactly how long do you think this will work? I mean, I suppose that I will die again after a time." Yes, an aeronaut was certainly what he had been. He remembered how the world looked from up high, and how he had sometimes preferred it to family matters, which sometimes led to duels. And had led to his most inconvenient snuffing out.

AJ bit her lip. "I don't know... hopefully you can be around for a while."

---

Time passed differently with the usual markers of human sensations gone. Without sleep night was irrelevant and without pain he started to get the impression he was infinite in a way. But there were other limitations. That of his body; which was nothing more than a hydraulic and steam and the strange twinkle of intelligence from AJ's eye. No sensation in his limbs meant that sometimes he overextended them and dislodged parts and lost motor functions in places. No fingers meant that he couldn't do much more than grasp objects over a certain size, which was about that of an orange.

This left him a lot of time to think, and observe. Percival never had much time to ponder in life, too busy trying to keep his squabbling relatives from tearing themselves to pieces over some matter of an inheritance--and now there were many issues made plain. Had there even been an afterlife, or was the price of resurrection the inability to remember that?

It had not taken him long to realize there were ghosts in the large house that AJ insisted he stay in, lest some Politik come by and steal him away. She was generally an even-tempered girl who entertained herself; that was the first clue that her family was comprised of apparitions. The other clue was how the boy, Dragon, tended to walk straight through them when he came to visit.

"This is a good thinking spot, Percy."

AJ sat down on the stair beside him. The house was large and dour and if he were a nosy person--entity--he would have asked how she managed to maintain the illusion that at least one live adult lived here. But judging by the soot on the windows and the large drapes being always drawn, neighbors must have assumed those that lived in the house were mad or otherwise not worth visiting.

"I was just thinking about things."

"What sort?"

He flexed his arm, marveling again at how the last maintenance she had done had made the motion so much smoother. He was AJ's favorite project, amongst several he assumed were ways to gain income. Small things, no large vehicles or overly expensive devices.

"That I miss flying." Percival had meant to say something far less ungrateful, but it was on his mind. If he could not be honest with his creator then, well.

Her ocular magnifiers were on her head, so it was with her own eyes that he could see, their nondescript color much like her hair. That was the thing about AJ, if there was not something behind those eyes, something darkly brilliant, he would never have given her a second glance. Children should not have expressions like that, Percival decided. It was not right, and clearly there was something wrong about a world that allowed such a thing.

"Then maybe we should--"

Dragon came bounding in, babbling about something that likely only AJ understood. He never had a good understanding of Aether when he was alive and he certainly did not now that he was un-alive. Until he had seen the ghosts walking about the house--occasional servants, several children, a woman that looked very much like AJ should when she got older--Percival had been confused as to why a girl of AJ's temperament would spend most of her time with a know-it-all of a junior Clerk. But even if he could see the ghosts, he could not hear them, and the quietness of the house was rather oppressive.

What strange things death stunted, and how much like a normal child she looked while talking to her friend.

"If you will excuse me, I should do something useful."

Maybe if he let a little light in the place she would be less inclined to go digging in graveyards and the spectres would eventually go to wherever they were supposed to go. At this point, being endless seemed not half a bad thing. Maybe why ghosts happened and little girls took to building their friends was the reason he had come back like he did.

"We'll work on it."

"On what, AJ?"

"Your wings, of course."

Or maybe it was something else entirely.