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(something i wrote a while back, after ceranovis and i had a discussion about a futuristic cyberpunk type sunless au that i tragically forgot to save as a conversation. i found it in the depths of my drafts, tacked an ending on, and here you go i guess...)

warnings for smoking, cursing, and potential body horror.

[ao3]

"End times, baby bird," said Foli, quietly, sprawling a little more expansively on the windowsill until his spine was a curve that fit neatly in the corner where ledge met wall, one leg tucked up against his chest and other hanging out the open window, bare feet pointed towards the ground thirty-odd stories below. "That's what they're saying. The apocalypse, the reckoning, the rapture, whatever the fuck you want to call it."

He exhaled slowly, blowing smoke out his nose, careful to make sure it went out the window rather than into the room – not that it mattered much, with the smog that hung thick enough to suffocate at this height. It was a permanent cloak of filth across the lower levels of the giant towers that crowded up into the sky, punctured only by the faint glow of neon and halogen from other people’s windows.

"Don't call me that," said Rayse, softly, attention distracted by the screwdriver in their hand and the unpleasant, mechanical grinding coming from their feet as the clawed, metal toes of their bird-like leg mods refused to move.

Humming frustration, they slapped at the metal, felt something click somewhere inside. Repeating the motion did nothing, other than produce a long, unpleasant grinding noise that ended in a crunch. The join between metal and flesh at their knee sparkled unpleasantly, and they cursed fluidly in a language Foli neither spoke nor recognised.

He'd lived his whole life in the slums, the lower fifty-odd stories of the skyscrapers tall enough they cast the ground-level streets into constant darkness – he'd never heard anything other than the common pidgin spoken there, a mish-mash of dialects and languages and cobbled-together grammar that was enough to get by. Wherever Rayse had been before they’d started running with this little rag-tag band, it sure as hell hadn’t been the slums.

Blowing another stream of smoke out the window, Foli grinned, lips curling into an expression that was equal parts fond and antagonistic. "Call you what, baby bird?" he asked, the picture of smirking innocence, tapping his cigarette absently against the frame of the window and hardly noticing when the ashes fell onto his bare thigh. He was only wearing boxers, and an oversized shirt permanently stained dark over the shoulder with something that refused to wash out, stretched out lazily on the windowsill with mussed, unwashed hair.

Rayse threw the screwdriver at his head without looking up from where they'd opened up the plating of their leg, smoke drifting up from the inner workings. Yelping, Foli dropped his cigarette out the window in surprise, snarling irritation as it spun through the air and out of sight. "Fucking- Shit, Rayse, really?"

There was a bark of a laugh from over in the corner, where a huge creature that seemed comprised almost entirely of shadow-dark fur and neon blue teeth lay sprawled on a ratty double mattress. The creature opened their mouth, baring glowing canines in a mockery of a smile, before huffing softly and dropping their head onto their paws with a low rumble of amusement.

"Hey! Hey, fuck you," said Foli, scowling at the screwdriver as it rolled across the bare floorboards, rubbing at the side of his head with the heel of his palm. He’d have a bruise there later, he knew, probably a nice lump if he was unlucky, and his lips twisted in a sour expression. "Wasn't that goddamn funny, Czol."

"Don't call me that," Rayse repeated, absent tone edged with a sharp warning as they picked a pair of tweezers from their haphazardly organised toolkit, picking at the small moving pieces of the mechanical limb until they found the piece of grit that had been causing problems. "Ah! There."

They picked it out with the all the delicacy and concentration of a heart surgeon, before sealing up the panelling and carefully screwing everything back into place, overlapping metal shifting against metal like scales as they stretched out and curled both sets of metallic feet, elongated toes and talons curling into bunched fists. "Good."

Fur shifted and rippled as Czol dragged themself to their feet, huge and hulking, large enough that their shoulders would easily come to chest-height on an average human. They padded over to Rayse – oddly silent on huge, clawed paws – and dipped their head to snuffle at the metal, before rearing up onto their hind legs with a huge effort, muscles rippling.

When they dropped back down, they were human – or humanoid, at least, somewhere behind the golden-yellow eyes, the extra mouth modded onto their throat, the shock of electric blue hair – settling easily on the ground with their legs crossed next to Rayse. "Wow!" they said, quiet but excited, reaching out a hand until it hovered just above the surface of the metal. "That's so cool! The way you just fix yourself up..."

Foli wrinkled his nose, mouthing that's so cool and pulling a face – only to wince when he looked up to see Rayse staring right at him. “What?” he snapped. “I didn’t say nothing.” Patting at his hip, he scowled when he realised he wasn’t wearing the jeans he’d left his lighter and a crumpled packet of cigarettes in. “God damn it.”

“I sincerely hope you didn’t,” said Rayse, coolly, one eyebrow raised as they stared at Foli and ignored Czol’s curious gaze. “And I wouldn’t,” they added, when Foli made to get off the window ledge and walk over to the duffle bag that held all of his clothes. “Lying and Fuzz will be back soon.”

They all had one – a single bag for all their worldly possessions, their whole life. There was no room for wardrobes and chests of drawers in a room that had to sleep five and serve as a kitchen. There was a table with a camping stove, a kettle, and a microwave on top of it, all plugged into the same overloaded plug socket, and several stained, secondhand mattresses covered in ratty blankets, and their duffle bags.

“Oh yeah?” muttered Foli mutinously, but he settled back down on the windowsill again nonetheless. “What’s Sir Lying gonna do about it? It’s none of his damn business.”

Rayse snorted at that, focusing their attention yet again on their legs as they continued tweaking them, watched by a fascinated Czol. “Lying makes everything his business,” they reminded him, humming a handful of notes from an unfamiliar tune as they opened up a section of metal a little higher up with a small wince. “We’re a pack, Foli.”

“Yeah!” agreed Czol, enthusiastically, rubbing the palms of their hands on the knees of their well-worn, fourth-hand jeans. “We’re a pack, and so everything we do is everyone’s business – because anything one person does affects everyone else. We can’t just think about ourselves, you know. We’ve gotta work together now.”

Grumbling softly, Foli leant back against the wall. “Sounding kinda like Lying there, kid,” he muttered. “Or an infomercial or something.” There was no heat to the words, though, no bite, just a quiet, resigned fondness.

He stuck one leg out the window, letting it dangle as he stared down into the seemingly endless abyss that stretched out into the fog below. Rayse’s eyes were boring into the back of his head, he could know – could feel the heat of their gaze like a laser, like a weight on his shoulders. “...Yeah. Yeah, I know,” he conceded eventually, softly, not taking his eyes off the smog swirling below. The vertigo of the drop was a ringing pressure somewhere behind his eyes. “A pack. I know.”

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