Chapter Text
When she is awakened, she cannot move.
This is to be expected. Ordnance is often transported in sealed pods, dark and silent and secure, inert until almost at its target. It need only be brought to awareness for routine maintenance, and to be briefed of its mission.
She waits for her mission.
No mission comes. This is anomalous. Waking ordnance when it is not to be used is wasteful, and she knows that those who made her dislike waste. A weapon which does not perform to standards is wasteful. A weapon that questions orders. A weapon that thinks. Wastefulness is discouraged. Strongly.
It is dark. It is quiet. She cannot move.
She waits.
After a time, there is a shift in the air. She has felt its gentle movement the whole time; though her armorskin conveys little beyond temperature, pressure, and pain, her sensory stalks are well-tuned and in good working order.
The airflow stops.
This is abnormal. This is anomalous. This is - she searches for the right word, rifling through her pruned-back vocabulary - bad. Airflow stopping means that she's about to be deployed. She hasn't been given a mission. Deploying ordnance without implanted mission objectives is DANGER.
Gentle amber lights begin to glow, acclimating her enhanced eyes to the exterior lighting conditions. Not a drop, then - she is being released from a pod at rest.
A tailored chemical cocktail floods her system, the beat of her hearts speeding up into a jackhammer thump that rattles through her. The nerve blocks begin to release, and she immediately throws herself against her safety restraints, claws sliding greedily from their implanted sheaths. Ordnance with no friend-or-foe designation is DANGER. Conditioned antipathy mixes with the chemicals in her blood and curdles into panic.
Ordnance released from its pod without a mission, without any chosen targets, pumped up to immediate, uncontrollable violence - she knows with a sick certainty that she is about to attack whatever she sees. A loose weapon. An indiscriminate destroyer, dooming herself to destruction. It isn't fair.
Her tendrils, razor-tipped and dripping toxin, rattle eagerly in their housings. Rewired instinct makes her salivate at the thought of violence, fangs extending. She trembles in frustration as the pod lid cracks open, letting in daylight. If she still had tear ducts, she would cry.
It isn't FAIR.
The lid pauses with only a sliver of golden light peeking around its edges. Jammed? This should not happen, but the ordnance rejoices at the delay.
Still, she thrashes silently in her restraints, every cell eager for violence. There are voices from outside the pod, but she is beyond words now.
The lid shudders, slides away, and the ordnance goes abruptly still. There is a shape visible in her scanners, targeting showing it as a tall human, dressed in workmanlike coveralls and spattered with machine oil. It is about to be a corpse.
Her restraints release, and she leaps, claws ready.
When she is awakened, she cannot move.
This is to be expected, but-
Something is anomalous. Her breath comes in gasps, sensory stalks twitching and rattling frantically. Her system should be quietly coming up from standby, but something screams DANGER from within her mind.
Her pod is dark and still, and that is comforting. The silence lulls her, and she can't even remember what it is she was trying to recall; slowly, she calms to the point the chemicals don't need to do it for her.
All is quiet.
Something whispers gently in her ear. "Calm down, petal, you'll be all right."
The voice is unfamiliar, unlike what little the ordnance remembers of its past handlers, but that is not cause for alarm. The words, though, they are not orders, or at least not of any proper format. They are gibberish. They are DANGER.
The pod doesn't let her move, but she tries to thrash anyway, teeth bared behind her safety muzzle. Weapons systems refuse to respond, but she triggers them again and again, the muscles of her arms and legs tensed until they threaten to tear under the strain.
Voices speak again, more gibberish, but not to her - it sounds as though she is hearing snatches of conversation from several people, though there is only room for ordnance within the tiny, dark pod.
"Stress levels spiking - she's spiraling again - reset and retry? Adorable, even so - not good for her - reset the simulation."
Peace hits her like a hammer to the brain stem. Consciousness drops away from Ordnance within the space of a heartbeat, and she knows nothing more.