Say it once, say it twice, fly with the moon at the dead of night...
It was a cutesy song about Halloween from a movie, but Shade remembered everyone singing it when Halloween was around the corner, and they’d belt it out at the Halloween party they had the night of. Halloween had been their time to shine, and boy, did every haunted house bot take the chance to shine like the stars they wanted to be. Songs, candy, dance, movies, drinks, they would liven up the night and shine, shine, shine.
And now they were dead.
Shade wanted to join the DWNs in the Halloween party, but he couldn’t. Not this year, at least, perhaps the next; but right now, he wanted to mourn the family he had lost. They weren’t taken from him on Halloween, but he had so many good memories on this day that he could never have again, and it brought a melancholy on his soul that he couldn’t free himself of.
Instead of remain within Wily’s base, Shade decided to visit the memorial he had built within the abandoned amusement park’s grounds. He couldn’t bury any of them, not with their bodies recycled for parts, so this was the best he could do. It could be better, but he found he couldn’t do any better without sobbing his core out.
As Shade stood in front of the memorial thinking of all of those lost the day the park had shut down, he wondered if he should say a prayer for the departed. It would make him feel better, but what god would hear the prayer of a robot? He didn’t know of any, and he wasn’t inclined to ask. He wasn’t looking for a religion, he was just hoping that, if they had souls, that they had moved on to a peaceful afterlife. That was all he wanted, but he wasn’t sure if they could have even that.
This world, and the next, felt nothing short of cold and cruel by default.
Shade sighed and put a hand to his face, wishing for just a moment that he could go back. That the amusement park had never been shut down, that his friends and family hadn’t been slaughtered and recycled, that he hadn’t become a soldier in the army of a madman hellbent on world domination. If he could go back, he most certainly would, but there was no back to go to.
There was only Dr. Wily’s army, and Mary’s little program to find a new purpose for lost robot masters.
Mary. The only other survivor. Shade almost couldn’t believe it, at times. She was the only other one who escaped, while the others were deactivated and incinerated. He wondered if she felt the same way about him; the disbelief that he was alive, but he somewhat doubted it. She was the one who sought him out, after all, so if she had any disbelief, she dealt with it before she found him.
Shade almost admired her dedication to try and mend the wrongs done to her and her friends and family. Making a program to try and find a new purpose for robot masters who had become obsolete was certainly an effort to prevent needless death and destruction, but Shade couldn’t see it as anything other than a foolhardy attempt to work within a system that saw robot master’s lives as disposable. They shouldn’t have to justify their existences with jobs they have to work in, they should be viewed as worthy of life on their own, but they weren’t.
Shade’s hand slid down his face as it began to rain, his core no less troubled than he was earlier. He was going to be here all night, contemplating his dead friends and family, contemplating Mary, and contemplating his life choices.
It was going to be a sad, cold night.
