Chapter Text
Cora was lost. Completely and utterly lost. She hated to admit it, but she honestly had no idea where she was. She looked around aimlessly at the towering junk piles all around her, rusting metal and dead robots consuming her vision. Hamegg and the circus had just settled onto the Surface below Metro City, and her, Zane and the twins were told to go out and find parts for his newest robots for the Robot games after the circus shows. She hadn't been very enthusiastic about it, but agreed because it seemed like the better option than cleaning the porta potties.
Looking around again, she thought that the cleaning duty sounded like the better option. Her and the kids had been searching for parts when a heap of robots and scrap metal fell out of the sky and flung them apart. Cora was just unfortunate enough to take a tumble down a steep ravine. It looked like it used to be some sort of dam before the lake it used to hold dried up, leaving it barren and chalky. She had taken quite the tumble down it, surprisingly only receiving a few scraps on her knees, elbows and shoulders. She was lucky she didn't break any bones.
When she had gotten up several minutes after the fall, groaning and dusting herself off, she realized that there was no way she was going to be able to climb back up the thirty foot slope. She had waited for a couple hours to see if Zane and the twins brought help, but when the sun started setting and no one came, she figured that Hamegg didn’t care enough to come and get her and she was left for dead. She was angry, but had expected it, to an extent. She got up and started wandering down the ravine to see if the was a way out of the steep walls.
She had been walking for several hours before she came across a groove that allowed her to exit the dark ravine and into the last light of the setting sun. That was nearly an hour ago, and the sunlight was almost completely gone now. It was getting cold and she had nowhere to sleep for the night. She was so far away from the circus that there was no way she was going to just stumble back home for the night, and she was hungry. To say she was frustrated would be an understatement.
“Aaahhhgg!” She shouted, kicking an old robot head in her frustration. What she hadn’t expected was for someone to answer her shout with a shout of their own.
“AHHH!” She heard coming from around the junk pile she was standing next to. Another shout followed it, the odd sound of metal grinding together reaching her hears. A metallic voice was speaking, but she was just too far away to actually understand the words. She made her way cautiously around the mountain of metal to see a figure stumbling around at the top of a pile of scrap metal a fair distance from her. She watched in slight shock as the figure was crowded by dysfunctioning robots, the metal beings clinging to the figure as if they were trying to tear it apart. The figure jerked away from them, pulling an arm off of one of the older modeled robots, but before anyone could do anything else, the metallic voice was back, shouting something that caused all of the robots and the figure looked up, just in time to see a pile of trash drop out of the sky on top of them. The robots were crushed, while the figure went flying, tumbling head over heels down the metal pile and skidding to a painful looking stop at the bottom.
She winced, having full sympathy for what appeared to be a young boy at the bottom of the pile. Deciding that he seemed to be struggling to get up, she started to make her way over to the kid. He looked to be around her again, maybe thirteen or fourteen. He finally rose to his feet, holding his left shoulder, which seemed to be sagging slightly, she wondered absently if it was dislocated. She got closer to him as he sat down on a small mound of metal, seemingly gazing at metro city in the distance. She heard him sigh.
“What do I do?” She jumped slightly, thinking for a moment that he had spotted her and was speaking to her, but she quickly realized that he had been talking to himself. Unfortunately, her slight startle had caused a little more noise than she had intended, and the boy whipped around to look at her, jumping to his feet.
“wh-who are you?” The boy stuttered out, taking a step back. He seemed really skittish, like he was preparing to leap into the skies and fly away. She nearly snorted at the thought.
“The name’s Cora, and you are?” The kid seemed to relax a little bit, before he tensed again, eyes widening. The reaction was startling, but before she could even think, there was a loud groan of metal bending unnaturally, and she looked up to see the mountain of trash she was standing next to tower over her like a twisted tidal wave.
“Look out!” She heard the kid shout. She didn't even have time to scream before strong arms wrapped around her waist, pushing her back and out of the way as the mountain came tumbling down with a thunderous crash. She landed on her back, hard. The boy was on top of her, arms still gripping her sides with surprising strength for his size. She groaned slightly, the air having been knocked out of her on impact with the scrap covered ground. The boy scrambled off of her, sitting on his knees next to her legs, seeming to be looking her over as she blinked the stars out of her eyes.
“Are you ok?” He asked her, fingers fidgeting, acting like he was holding himself back from patting her down for injuries. She groaned again, pushing herself up on an elbow, holding her head with her other hand. She blinked, looking at the landslide of trash that had devoured the spot she had been standing in only moment ago. I nearly died. The realization made her head spin. She looked over to the worried boy next to her, and found that he was still looking over her almost frantically.
“You just saved my life.” It was cliche, said a thousand times in romance movies, but in that moment, she was in shock and that was the first thing to come to mind, slipping out of her mouth before she could even think about it. The boy stopped his twitching, turning to look her straight in the eye. He blinked and looked at the spot they had been standing in, then turning back to her he gave her a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Yeah, I guess I did.” Then he became serious again, worry taking over his expression. “Are you alright? You’re not hurt, are you?” Cora just stared at him, blinking dumbly. Then her mind decided to start functioning again and she shook her head to clear it.
“Uh, yeah, yeah I'm fine.” She stood, wobbling slightly for a moment. She brushed her clothes off, even though they were dirty and ripped, making the act pointless. “Thanks for the save.” The kid looked a bit doubtful, but stood up as well, massaging his left shoulder once again.
“Yeah, no problem, I’m just glad I was fast enough.” He said, chuckling nervously towards the end of the sentence. Cora suddenly felt like she was missing something, like a part of the story didn’t line up. She looked back towards to pile of trash, running over the terrifying event in her mind. How did this kid move fast enough to save her. He was several feet away from her when they were talking, there is no way he should have been able to make it to her in time. He would have had to fly to get to her fast enough.
She turned to him, about to question him on the impossible rescue, but was stopped by the sight of the sunset behind him. The sun was completely gone, only a faint glow lighting the sky in pinks and oranges. Panic quickly rose to her throat. It was nearly dark and she didn't have any kind of shelter, nor water or food. While the Surface was sweltering hot during the day, it often reached freeing temperatures during the night. She would freeze to death if she didn't find a shelter of some sort, and fast.
“Well thanks again for the save, but it’s getting dark so I need to get going.” The boy looked startled, turning to the sky to see it quickly darkening. His nervous fidgeting came back, but she didn't have time to worry about that. She turned and started crawling over the trash, moving in the opposite direction from where she came. A moment later she heard a rustling behind her.
“He-hey Cora, right? Um, I’m kinda lost, could I maybe tag along with you for a while?” The kid voiced behind her, stuttering slightly, clearly unsure about the question. Cora stopped and turned to him. Normally she would be very cautious of strangers, especially people from this part of the surface, but this kid was rather disarming. She looked him over, his big brown eyes full of cautious hope. After a long moment, she shrugged, turning back around to continue forward.
“Yeah sure, why not.” She heard a relieved sigh and then the kid started to scramble to catch up with her. “I don’t think I caught your name, kid.” The boy froze next to her, suddenly looking sheepish again.
“I, uh, I don’t currently have a name.” Cora stopped to look at him again, skeptical.
“What do you mean you don’t have a name?” He looked downright depressed, shrugging his shoulders and looking at his shoes.
“Well, turns out I’m not who I thought I was, and it doesn’t feel right to use a name that is not mine, so I currently don’t have a name.” Cora could understand that. She had changed her name when she joined Hamegg’s circus, not wanting her old identity to follow her into her new life. Though that was an odd way of wording it. What does he mean that he isn’t who he thought he was? Using a name that wasn’t his? She decided to leave it be for the time being, tucking the thought in the back of her mind.
“Alright, so what do you wanna be called then?” she asked, starting to move again, the kid quickly following.
“Um, I don’t really know, I’ve never really thought about it before.”
“You don’t have any nicknames you could use?”
“No, not really.” Cora sighed, looking around her in the dimming light. Her eyes landed on a broken robot energizing pod. The glass dome shattered, leaving glittering daggers rising from the rectangular frame. The metal was dented and rusting, but in shining silver letters, a portion of the companies name shone in the last of the sunlight. She smiled, and pointed at it to draw the kids attention.
“What about that?” She asked, feeling triumphant already. She looked over her shoulder to the boy, making sure he saw what she was pointing at. He was looking at the shining word with curiosity, seeming to mumble it to himself a couple times before a small smile spread over his face. He turned to her, eyes glimmering with new found excitement.
“I like it.” He said. “Call me Astro.”