Teamwork progress~

ET VOILA.

Wow, like, this was a lot of work.  I can see many flaws still present in this picture but hey!  More for me to  improve on later :D

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David and Marie wander the junk jungle when they get hungry.  It's hard to eat nowadays, when nothing grows anywhere and everything is made of metal.  So they do what they can, tinkering, playing, avoiding the broken glass.  It's quite nice, all except the hungry days.

One day they stumble upon a strange creature, big and brass and quiet.  Out of curiosity they take a glance around it, about it, inside it.  It's a king, a giant, sitting proud in a muddy meadow broken between the mountains of trash.  It looks so old, rusty and intimidating, with a big hole blown into it's side.  David doesn't want to touch it, but Marie's quite optimistic.  "Look," she points.  "There are birds sitting on it.  And, hey, grass!  Flowers! Maybe it's nice."

So David and Marie run to their little hole of a home at the edge of the junk yard, the door securely buried under mud to be safe for sandstorms.  It's small and packed but David finds his red toolbox immediately, as he always knows where everything is, and the two hike back to where the strange, silent thing lay.

They are not good at fixing it.  A few circles around the strange machine and Marie reads, on what must've been its hip, "Imperial XIV v.0012".  A war machine, from when there used to be a war, back when their grandparents were children.  The thing is so broken, no bullets in it's cannon hands, no energy in its blackened, jewel-like eye.  They are not good at fixing it at all.

But the two are quite resourceful.  They find things--nuts, bolts,  wires, clips, all sorts of little things that they use to patch up the big machine.  David works at the strange core, balanced on all sorts of objects to reach the hatch high above his head on the chest of the thing, and running his hands inside without really knowing what he should be doing.  Marie polishes with a little rag, wiping and wiping until the brown and rusty exterior shines bronze and gold again.  She even scrubs the large gears on the arm that's missing, and beams with pride when David praises her good work.

Weeks pass by, and then months.  They feel proud.  It's starting to look good, all the little glass bolts fixed, the hole rudely patched with a found piece of scrap metal soldered on to the best of David's ability.

One day, David balances himself on the shoulder of the machine, careful not to step on the flowers or disturb the birds that have formed a nest on the back of its head.  He is about to swing himself over, his rope wire secure around his waist, and slide down the side to work on the core as usual--but he spots something strange on the head of the machine.  It's a button, looking like an earhole on the machine's head.  Slowly, crawling over the delicate pink flowers, he goes over to touch it.

The machine rumbles.  Marie cries out in alarm and surprise, for down where she's wiping the palm , she sees the core, through it's little dome-window, begin to glow white-blue.  The light travels, weakly, from the core to the shoulders, each gem and jewel like little pearls lighting up and trailling, travelling down and down.  It stops at the broken arm, the broken leg, but the light travels until Marie's skin is blue with it, surrounded with it.

The eye opens, too.

And then Marie screams in surprise; the machine grabs her around her body, its hand big enough to envelope all of her.  It brings her up to its single eye, bleary and blinking like an old man rising from a long nap, and David throws his arms out, bellowing, "Wait!  Be careful with her!"

What a bizarre thing to say!  To a machine, a war machine at that--what were they thinking?  But there it was:  He shouts at the head, at Marie crying out and squirming in those shining brass fingers.  The machine creaks and moans, hinges still rusty despite the children's best efforts, and it pauses, swinging it's tired head to look at him.  "Hey," he says, hotly, with a chastising glare.  "We're fixing you.  Don't scare us like that.  At least be polite."

The machine--poor thing!  to be yelled at even though it's fought so many wars, to be chastised so immediately by a boy-child even though it had been broken when it was defending children like him--put Marie down. Back in the day, you see, it was a defensive machine.  It doesn't understand things like "attack" or "kill"--merely "protect", and often this was directed for civilians of the Imperial Empire, back when there was one.  David had known this a while ago when he examined its heavy layers of metal and its lack of weapons.  So he glares until the machine, like a puppy that's been scolded, lets Marie back on the ground.

 "Thank you," Marie says timidly, and gives the machine's arm a friendly squeeze.  The machine blinks, confused, but strangely feeling warm in its sky-blue core.  It watches quietly as the children chatter, scurrying like little mice all over it, fixing it cheerfully.  It is, in the way that only machines could be, touched.

And then, every day, the children visit their new friend, the poor machine that can't move because it's still missing half its lost leg.  To their delight, it understands their words.  To its delight, they find it's broken arm, lying not too far away on top of a junk mountain, shiny and brass.  To Marie's delight, it likes to lift her by its hands and often puts her on its shoulders, where the small patch of fertile grass heartily grows.  To David's delight, it learns to lift its wrist into position so he could place a ladder up to its chest, making  tinkering  inside of it's core much easier.

Months pass.  When it snows, they cuddle near the machine's core, where it's warm and mysteriously powered.  When it's hot, they sit and relax under the machine's shade, tinkering here and there some nuts and bolts that have fallen out of place.  They are not the best at fixing it, but the machine appreciates their efforts greatly.

(AND THUSLY BEGAN A BEAUTIFUL AND LONG, FRUITFUL FRIENDSHIP.)

I am not good at long plots with endings.  So I shall say that, for now, the machine was fixed, and the three lived happily ever after.  HELLSYEAH.