That was the third sick animal Roz had brought to her home in a week. A sea bird and now two otters. While she left them in the care of Fink and the others, her reasoning device had led her down to the shoreline. Something must’ve been wrong with the water…
The robot knelt on the beach, zeroing in on a portion of the water that seemed…cloudy. She carefully dipped a few digits in to scoop up a few drops, running a scan on them as they beaded against her metal. She…did not recognize this composition. It’s salt water, certainly, but it’s not right.
The water in the distance shifted, stirred by something unseen. Hexxus lingered in the shadows of the shoreline, dripping into the edges of the polluted tide. He watched the metal creature; the little machine with the curious gaze and impossible hands; scooping, scanning, fixing. How strange. . .
Order bending chaos. A machine, programmed for efficiency, yet nurturing the wild, mending what he had only sought to corrupt. Hexxus tilted, a ripple of smoke coiling through the air and above the rocks of the shoreline, just out of sight. He studied, probing, twisting the currents around him. Such potential wasted. Yet. . . intriguing.
The question tasted like oil on water, bitter and sharp, impossible to resolve. Hexxus let it linger. He would watch a while longer, this anomaly, this threat to entropy. Perhaps the forest had found a new rhythm. Perhaps he would enjoy learning its tune.