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Mechanical and Alive
There were moments Jaune could forget. They were only ever moments and she only ever cherished them after the fact, but with everything she had she cherished them. That was the problem; she didn’t have much. When those moments passed, the little she had became starkly clear.
Her metal fingers held the paintbrush, she knew that. How she knew that made no sense to her conscious mind. She had to trust mechanical instincts that were not at all natural. Her glass eyes saw the canvas, but not the way she used to. The paints on her palette were vibrant, but they weren’t correct and she had no way to convey how.
Her fingers made a creaking, tinny groaning noise as she clutched the brush harder and tried to pick a color to begin. She didn’t know where to begin.
“Mmmmm,” she half groaned, half growled, and it didn’t sound right because it didn’t leave her throat the way it used to, and she didn’t hear it the way she wanted to. Of course not, she didn’t have a throat, and she had sensors where she was supposed to have ears. “Mmmmmmmm...!” she growled again as she stared at the paints, trying to will them to make sense the way she needed wanted them too.
“Dang it,” she said, knowing her eyes should have been stinging. But she did not have eyes. She could not cry. “Dang it, dang it, dang it,” she said before just swiping her brush through too many paints and slashing it across the canvas once, twice, a third time. Her joints creaked with the sound of gears that needed to be oiled, because SHE needed oil now.
“Stupid!” she shouted. “Stupid! Idiot! It’s... It’s your fault!” Then a stab and a stab and another stab, imagining the canvas was Hoaxe’s face, and the horrendous rainbow was what leaked out of him. “It’s your fault I’m broken!”
Then her hand, with the force of a machine, tore through the canvas. Her brush splintered into pieces as she crushed it, the palette shattered in her other hand, and all the while there were rumbles and groans that weren’t supposed to be there.
And she felt none of it.
She had the thought to scream. To yell. All she really wanted was to cry. No, that wasn’t true. She wanted to cry, and she wanted to hold someone. Her sister, her girlfriend, by the Queen she’d even take holding hands with Zasp at this point. And that... that desire was fading. Her mechanical voicebox mimicked the sound of heavy breathing that she knew was fake as she thought of that. Her wants were fading. She was fading. Some moments she could forget. This wasn’t one of those moments. Instead it was so painfully clear she was a machine, and machines weren’t able to feel anything.
She became as still as a machine left on but told to do nothing could be. She wanted to paint this... this feeling. This lack of feeling. Maybe then the others in the village could understand. But no. There was no image, shape or composition that could get across the lack of sensation. All her life she’d painted the warmth of color. How could she paint being devoid of it? Jaune half-wished Artia was here to help, but she was probably in some factory pressing molten metal into plates. Maybe if she was lucky she was in a junk heap. Devoid of life. Like Jaune had been.
Even if Jaune could paint it, they could not get it. No one could. Not Vi, not Mothiva, not even Leif with his metallic limbs as much as everyone assumed. This full metal transformation left Jaune numb in a way no one could understand. Worse, they were afraid. She was “The Buzz-Bot” to the village, not Jaune. Her shell was a reminder of the state of the world right outside the swamp. Jaune was sure a lot of them were expecting her to attack at any moment.
She pulled her hand out of the ruined canvas and looked at her paint-stained hand. The paint should have been cold and slimy, but it wasn’t. It should have hurt to punch it, but it didn’t. “I can’t feel pain,” she whispered to herself. “Stupid idiot Jaune, you can’t feel anything. You can’t taste Vi’s snacks, you can’t feel Mothiva’s hugs. You can’t feel the air. You can’t... feel.” The light that made up her electronic eyes faded in and out as the false breathing faded. “Oh goddesses. Is... is the leaf wearing off? Am I gonna... gonna...?”
“Jaune?”
Jaune’s visual sensors lit back up and she turned around. “V-Vi,” Jaune mumbled.
Vi stood at the doorway of the makeshift art studio. She chewed her bottom lip and looked at the hole in the canvas. “Um. Hey, Jaune. You’re-” she stopped herself and twiddled her f-fingers. “Uhh, new painting’s not going so well?” The much shorter bee was Jaune even a bee winced at her own words. “That didn’t sound so lame in my head.”
“Oh d-don’t worry about it!” Jaune said, metallic face creaking slightly from her attempt to smile as she awkwardly held up her hands and flailed in a try at being calming. She remembered the ruined canvas and brush and stepped to the side to block them from Vi’s view. “Just, uhh. Trying out new art techniques. Really weird, super complicated, I know it’s not your thing.”
“Uh-huh.” Vi looked down at and kicked the ground, wings slowly flapping in that way Vi did when she didn’t know how to sit still.
“I-” Jaune began, getting caught on... not her throat, because she didn’t have one. Just, caught on what awkward feelings made her feel bad, staring at her hurt little sister. “I’m really, really sorry, Vi.”
Vi looked up, tilted her head, blinked and said, “Huh?”
Jaune shut her visual sensors and her antennae clicked as they rocked forward and back. “I’m sorry I yelled at you earlier! I-I was having a really hard time, because of, just, everything.”
Vi crossed her arms and furrowed her brow. “Oh, yeah?”
“And it’s, it’s been really hard,” Jaune crackled. “A-And I got into a fight with Mothiva earlier. Except it wasn’t really a fight, it was more like- But I shouldn’t put all that on you, because you’re the little sister, and I’m the big sister, right? S-So I’m... I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled at you and said what I said. I shouldn’t have done that.”
Vi waited for a few moments. Her face was clearly trying to contort to look irritated, but Vi couldn’t maintain it. Despite being so young, she’d been getting good at controlling how she reacted to her emotions. Jaune sensed her hate for Hoaxe heating her metal innards, knowing he’d forced Vi to grow up too fast.
“Okay, I forgive you,” Vi said, looking off to the side as she spoke.
Jaune's abdomen wagged. “Really?”
“Yeah. But!” Vi’s antenna crumpled and she held up her beemerang. “You ever say you should go back to Hoaxe’s stupid factory again, I’m gonna hit you so hard, got it?!”
Jaune held back a comment that Vi had been getting really good at hitting robot bugs lately. Felt like it’d be going back on the promise she hadn’t made yet. “Okay. I’ll never say it again.”
“Good, ‘cause-” Vi’s throat got caught on a sob she refused to let out and Jaune felt so jealous and her throwing arm lost its strength, drooping. “I know everyone else is being dumb and is scared of you. B-But I’m not! You’re still my big sister, okay? I know you’re not...” Vi gulped. “You’re not some dumb Buzz-Bot. I never wanna see you like... Like that ever again.” She turned away from Jaune. From the images in her head, no doubt, of when Jaune wasn’t Jaune and pressed the alarm to alert a dozen soldiers to descend on her little sister. To... To hurt her.
Jaune looked away, rubbing one arm with the other hand. The metal of her palm slid against the yellow material and she hated the sound. Wincing and focusing back on Vi, she said, “I super promise.”
Vi smiled because a super promise was a real promise. Then she frowned, pocketed her beemerang and looked awkward all over again. “Oh, right, uhh. Mothiva... wants to talk to you.”
The screws at the ends of Jaune’s mouth sank in her grimace. Of course she knew she’d have to apologize to Mothiva too, but that one was going to be way harder. Not that getting a good headspace was easy, given the state of her head, but she really wasn’t feeling like dealing with Mothiva’s... eccentricities right then. Before everything, before Hoaxe, Mothiva’s bratty attitude would have been just what Jaune wanted to inspire something beautiful out of her brush. Right then, Mothiva was even worse at empathizing with her... condition more than Vi was.
“Can you tell her I still need a few days?” Jaune said, knowing full well she shouldn’t have been dumping this message on her little sister. Who else could she rely on in the tiny village of Bugaria, though? Not like many others came to visit the machine painter. “I’m really not in the mood.”
Vi scoffed and looked like she wanted to say something rude and, though Jaune wasn’t in a great place right then, was thankful Vi held back any snide comments about Mothiva’s and Jaune dating. “No, I can’t. You really need to talk to her. I think.”
That was different. Jaune’s metal eyelids whirred as she rapidly blinked. Again she could not truly feel it, but she tried to set that thought aside and mostly succeeded. “Oh, uhh. Really?”
“Yeah, really.” Vi crossed her arms and looked like the frustrated opposite of happy. “Like, really-really. I think you wanna talk to her right now.”
Out of what remained of her instinct, Jaune rubbed her head under her hat. “Are you sure?”
“I don’t wanna say it again!” Vi shouted, stomping her foot. “Some stuff happened and- Look, you just need to talk to her, okay? It’s, ugh, one of those girlfriend things.” Sticking her tongue out made Vi look like she’d tasted something sour. It reminded Jaune of those times Vi caught her and Mothiva kissing. Not that... Jaune was good at smooching with steel lips.
Jaune tried to set her lamentations aside, to the best of her ability. Vi was never particularly happy with Mothiva, so if Vi was pushing Jaune to talk, it HAD to be important. For the little comfort it gave her, Jaune mimicked the sound of a sigh. No lungs, no feeling of her chest expanding and contracting. Venus, did she miss those sensations. “Fiiiiine, fine. Send her in.”
Vi leaned out of the door and shouted, “HEY, MOTHIVA! GET YOUR STUPID BUTT OVER HERE, JAUNE’S OKAY TO TALK!”
“Did you have to tell the whole village...?” Jaune mumbled, but she found herself smiling. despite everything, Vi was still Vi. One of the few things that kept her going.
“Meh, like they care,” Vi said. “I’ll, uhh, leave you guys alone.”
And then this also kept her going; Jaune clasped her hands, stood on one foot and said, “In case we get all gushy and mushy? Ah mwah mwah mwah~”
Vi covered the sides of her head and crumpled her antennae again. “GROSS, SHUT UP! I’m juicing out of here before I puke, laters!” Vi buzzed her wings rapidly, faster than any other bee could, and vanished in a burst of speed.
Jaune shook her head and stood straight again. Yeah, Vi was still Vi. Jaune needed to remember that. Vi was worth existing for. And Mothiva, too. Even if Mothiva was kinda. Mmmmmm. Dopey.
Oh, that’s right. Jaune turned back to the canvas with a mess of paint and a hole in it. She didn’t want Mothiva to see that after... what she said. Jaune had to be strong, had to be okay. For Vi, for Mothiva. She could fake being okay. She picked up the canvas and tossed it in an easy-to-ignore corner and grabbed a fresh one to place on the easel. Just had to pretend everything was fine even if things could never be fine again. She picked up another brush
“Oh Honey-Mine, I’m home!” came Mothiva’s musical voice.
It sounded wrong, of course. Everything sounded wrong to those sensors Jaune had, but Mothiva sounded extra wrong right then. Was Jaune losing touch with music? Was she fading even faster? Jaune psyched herself up and quickly ran through some starting words for an apology before turning around. “Mothiva I-”
Jaune dropped the brush.
“Hi, Jaune!” Mothiva said, bringing her mitts together. The gizmos in her shoulders, elbows and wrists whirred. Her glass eyes “emoted” a joyful look, as though she didn’t have eyelids to do it with.
“Mothiva?!?” Jaune screeched, voicebox popping from sheer volume. Whether it was shock or trying to block the hideous sound that made Jaune cover her mouth, she didn’t know.
“The one and the only,” Mothiva said. Her hips whirred so much like Jaune’s as she stepped into the studio. “A little shinier than you’re used to, but I’m sure we can spin that into a “brighter star” kind of thing in my next poster. Now, I know what you’re thinking-”
“Mothiva?!?” Jaune screeched again, rushing up to the metal form of her girlfriend and coming to a stop. She weakly reached out, hand clanking from the shivers, but couldn’t work up the nerve to clasp Mothiva. “You’re-You’re a Buzz-Bot?! You’ve been roboticized?! Wha-What happened? Sweet Venus, are you okay?!”
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Mothiva said and reached out to take Jaune’s hand-
Jaune pulled away and placed her palms on the side of her head. She couldn’t feel them but she didn’t think about that. “You’re not fine! You’re a robot! No no no no, how did this happen?”
Mothiva scoffed and crossed her arms. “Calm down, Jaune, I’m fine, really. My utterly brilliant plan worked perfectly! That fake king didn’t get a single second of this beautiful voice.”
The studio became silent save for the gentle thrumming of two mechanical girls simply existing in the room, an unnatural sound that grinded against Jaune’s thoughts like what Mothiva had implied. She broke the quiet by repeating, “Plan?”
Mothiva nodded, the glass screens that posed as her eyes mimicking a proud furrowed brow. “Utterly brilliant plan,” Mothiva said again.
“You-” Jaune’s head quaked. “You got yourself roboticized on purpose?!”
“Uhh, yes? Duh. Isn’t it obvious?” Mothiva put her hands on her hips, the scratching of metal-on-metal unpleasant to hear.
“You-” Jaune gripped the sides of her head tighter, for all the nothing it did. “What?! How did-There’s no way Zasp would let you do this?!” she yell-asked, already knowing the answer.
“Tch, of course Zasp didn’t help me, the varmint,” Mothiva scoffed, her accent slipping through her refined tone ruined by the tinny sound of a speaker. “Kept saying, “Oh, it’s too dangerous,” or “This is your dumbest plan ever”. As if I needed his help to get past some brainless Buzz-Bots, anyway, but boy howdy having to sneak past him as well as the whole village was needlessly hard.”
“You snuck out to make yourself a robot?!?” Jaune yelled, throwing her hands to her sides. “That IS the dumbest plan ever!!! Why would you do that?!? Now you’re- you’re stuck like this! Like me! Why would you-” She stopped, the lights of her eyes shrinking to pinpricks.
Mothiva brought a hand to her chest, mouth curling into a frown, her own screws grinding from the motion. “...So Ah could understand.”
“No.” Jaune’s metal parts clattered as she shook, shutting her eyes tight. “No, that’s... that’s not what I meant.”
“Look,” Mothiva said, voice dropping her faux-refinement entirely and showing her Golden Settlement roots. The round plates her antennae were attached to swung in a machine-mockery of a nervous tick. “Ya’ll were right, Ah couldn’t get it in a million moons an’ Leif wasn’t gonna geddit either. You were all alone an’ Ah jus’ couldn’t geddit. Ah also couldn’t stand it.”
Jaune brought her hands together over her mouth. “Mothiva, you idiot. You sweet, stupid, loving idiot. You could have been turned into what I was.” That wasn’t even getting into what might have happened if she’d been caught, but for a moment Jaune let herself not care about the rest of Bugaria. Mothiva was all that she could think about, that bratty fool.
“Hmmph, as if!” Mothiva said, gaining back some of her haughty tone. “We used an Everlasting Leaf to get your mind back, right? I knew if I was chewing on one when I went into the thingamajig, I’d be fine.”
“You couldn’t have known that,’ Jaune said, muffled behind her steel palms.
“Hush, I did and I was right. My mind is still mine, because no one takes anything from the grand Mothiva! It’s still me in here.” Mothiva tapped her knuckles against her head, a donk sound filling the studio with each wrap. The noise was less hollow sounding than Jaune was expecting at this point.
“How did you get a-” Jaune began but shook her head. “You stole it.”
“Not my fault Venus wouldn’t share!” Mothiva huffed, again mimicking a furrowed brow. “I pleaded my heart out to her and she told me it was the worst use of a leaf ever! Hmmph! I showed her!”
“You... you fool.” Jaune shook her head. Her voice warbled. “You went through all that just to turn into a... into a robot. You’re stuck like this, maybe forever. Don’t you get it? We can’t change back!”
Mothiva ughed. “We can’t change back yet. We just have to defeat that nasty ol’ Hoaxe and get the roboticizer blueprints for H.B. to figure out. We were gonna do that anyway, so it’s no big deal. All that’s changed is I have another reason to kick that monster’s hind quarters.”
“No big deal?!” Jaune threw her hands up as she cried out. “Mothiva, this is awful! Aren’t you miserable like this?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Mothiva said, eye-screens making an image like they were scrunching. “I already miss the taste of my chips so bad. And I spent hours re-figuring out how to sing and I still don’t have it right. It’s sooooo hard to adjust this stupid-awful voicebox thing right. I miss my vocal chords.” Mothiva’s tin antennae drooped and her eye-screens changed to pupils with a sympathetic edge. “Now... Now I get why you were so sad and miserable. I understand, really and truly.” She reached up and took Jaune’s hands in her own, locking metal fingers.
Jaune couldn’t feel them. But Jaune knew they were there. That Mothiva was there. That she wanted Mothiva there. It truly hit her how much she still cared. How cared for she felt in that moment, even if it was so terribly stupid.
“Mothiva...” Jaune said, voicebox hissing.
“And thus is the brilliance of my plan,” Mothiva cooed, a proud smile that the metal of her face could not obscure. Her thumbs pressed on the back of Jaune’s hands. Neither felt it, both knew it was there. “You don’t have to go through this alone anymore. I won’t let ya, ya hear? We’ll get through this, together. The most beautiful couple in all the world. Artists forever?”
“...Lovers longer,” Jaune finished. She could not cry. She wanted to cry. But by Venus, she wanted to cry. “I’m still here,” she cooed, the smallest smile making her screws quiver.
“Of course you are, darling!” Mothiva called, harrumphing. “And that brilliant spark of yours will keep shining. I’ll keep it that way. When you’re feeling overwhelmed by... all this, I’ll be here to listen.”
Jaune ruefully chuckled. To her surprise to her delight she could look Mothiva in those glass lenses and still see her. “I suppose so. And, I’ll be here for you. Can’t let you have the title of best girlfriend ever without a fight.”
“T’would be boring otherwise,” Mothiva half-laughed and pulled Jaune in close, pressing their heads together. The noise wasn’t exactly pleasant, but it wasn’t as awful as Jaune had expected. “Come here, Honey-Mine. I gotcha. We’re gonna get through this, and that’s a certified super promise.”
Jaune closed her eyes, finding a relief she didn’t know she could feel as she lightly nuzzled back. “You’re still an idiot but you’re my idiot you adorable hunk of scrap.”
Mothiva made a sound like her tongue that didn’t really exist was clicking. “Tsk, I’m a sculpture, please and thank you.”
“You know everyone in the village is gonna be scared of you, too,” Jaune said, mostly to hear Mothiva’s bratty answer.
“Bah, all that matters to me are my true fans.” Mothiva grasped Jaune’s hand a little tighter and wrapped her other around Jaune’s back for a hug that neither could feel, but both felt. “So long as I have them, I’ll be the happiest moth in the world, Buzz-Bot or otherwise.”
Yep, Jaune loved that answer. She still loved Mothiva. That... that was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. And this made it better; “You just want me to paint your portrait again,” Jaune teased, eyes half-lidded in a mockery of a disappointed glare. “You always sweet me up like that when you want a portrait.”
“Whaaaaaat? Pfffft, no,” Mothiva said, then quickly added, “But if you’re in the mood I won’t say no.”
“Oh, you grace me, miss Mothiva,” Jaune sing-songed, voicebox not quite getting it right. She didn’t care. “But if you don’t mind, I think... I’d like to make it half a self-portrait. If you can share a canvas, that is, oh Mothiva my Diva.”
Mothiva let out a haughty, if soft, laugh. “Ho ho ho~ I suppose I can grant that honor~”
And for a long, long moment, they both forgot.
