Aether had been picking through rusted metal and filth for two hours before everything went sideways. Methodically working the graveyard of crushed chassis and stripped husks, sliding pieces into his worn canvas bag because no one would miss it. A cracked coolant pump. Copper wiring. Two servos that might fit his left knee if he convinced them hard enough with a wrench and a prayer. Vigilante work was noble. Vigilante work meant something. Vigilante work also did not cover rent. Picking through trash and moving debris did. It wasn't glamorous but it was a job. At least that's what Aether told himself when it came to every odd job he took and there had been a lot.
He hadn't heard the crane operator return from break. The magnet hit like a fist from God. One moment crouched between compacted sedans, the next wrenched violently upward, the kind of force that didn't negotiate. His bag exploded apart. Salvage rained down in a glittering arc as his body slammed into the circular face of the electromagnet with a sound like a car crash condensed into a single syllable. THUD. The breath left him. For a long, humiliating moment he went wide-eyed and confused, suspended twelve feet off the scrapyard floor, arms pinned at awkward angles, cheek mashed against the metal. Then his HUD flickered to life. FERROMAGNETIC INTERFERENCE DETECTED… LEFT SHOULDER ACTUATOR STRESS FRACTURE… He tried to pull his arm free. His shoulder screamed; not metaphorically, but with a genuine mechanical whine as his elbow locked halfway through. His servos fought the pull and lost. A trickle crossed his upper lip. He went cross-eyed trying to look at it before the warning confirmed it: blood. Highly acidic blood, threading down from his nose, dripping twelve feet to the dirt below. It sizzled where it hit. "Brilliant..."
"F- fuck..." He couldn't reach his phone, welded to his pocket by the laws of physics. But his internal comm still worked, mostly, the signal chewed up and spat back out by the field drowning his hardware. He forced a message through the static with his coordinates. Need pickup. scrapyard. don't ask. Short. Dignified. Professional. He waited. The crane swayed gently. The magnet did not move. He tried again to pull free and his body answered with a full-body glitch that sent his eyes rolling back in his head. Half a second of stuttering darkness before slamming back online with a fresh cascade of warnings, legs kicking involuntarily, body thrashing like something caught. Like something panicking, though he would deny that word with his last functioning breath. He stared at the garbled string of characters that had apparently been his second message, arriving on Layken's end looking like something a cat had typed. Then he growled, low and rough, the sound vibrating strangely through the metal pressed against his chest. An animal sound. Embarrassing, really. Another trickle of blood crossed his lip. Answer the damn message, old man.
@halcyonsboys