He’d seen the night sky more times than he could count, though he’d only spent several nights beneath the sky he saw now. And he’d only recently grown accustomed to seeing it through human eyes, though one of those eyes no longer functioned. Micro had never felt anything but content to drive beneath the stars, trusting himself to the skillful old driver who guided him down countless roads to all kinds of interesting places. But now he drove himself on two feet through tall grass toward a smell so nostalgic that visions of his previous life flooded his young mind.
“A mechanic!” Micro shouted weakly into the night as he ran clumsily through the tall grass, unable to see the uneven ground beneath him.
“A what?” Blue asked with disinterest as she held onto his robes tightly, nearly being thrown from his shoulder every time he stumbled over a rock.
“A mechanic!” He repeated with a grin which defied his fatigue.
“You don’t smell that?”
“The smoke?” Blue asked.
“Not just the smoke.” Micro replied quickly.
“Hot iron! They must be repairing an older car.”
“And older what?”
“The iron smells old, older than me even!” Micro’s enthusiasm began to disturb Blue as he continued to increase his pace despite the exhaustion apparent in every step.
“Are you okay, there?” She asked tentatively, trying not to bite her tongue.
“There, that building there!” Micro announced happily, squinting his eye as he tried to discern its shape in the moonlight. He continued to catch the toe of his leather boots
“More humans, eh?” Blue replied as she looked ahead with glowing eyes.
“I’m really not in the mood for that. Wake me if there’s meat.”
“Okay!” Micro replied as she crawled back into his pocket to meditate.
The building became clearer as he continued to run, far from any other buildings in the village. Unlike the large stone construction of the temple of the mostly wooden buildings of the city, its walls appeared to be made from mud and its moonlit roof was nothing but bundled up grass. Micro didn’t dwell on the odd choice of building materials for the mechanic’s workshop though, as his eye was drawn to the smoke rising from the other side of the building, carrying the familiar scent of hot metal to him as his breaths grew ever more quick and shallow.
Even when he slammed his shin against a large discard chunk of slag near the house and fell flat on his face into the gravelly path in front of it, he kept smiling and dragged himself forward to the wooden door of the small building. He used the holes in the wooden slabs comprising the door as handles to bring himself back up to his feet, and knocked repeatedly as hard as he could.
“Excuse me?!” Micro shouted through the door into the dark building, but there was no immediate reply.
“Hello?”
He backed away, then took a step to his left to peer around the side of the building to the source of the smoke. Beside the house was a wood shed with no walls, at the centre of which a large furnace made of stones billowed out too much smoke for Micro to see through. A small gust of wind brought some of the smoke into his face, and though he reflexively attempted to shield himself with energy, he was unable to save himself from inhaling a deep breath of it.
“This…” He coughed violently.
“This is a weird… mechanic…!”
He stumbled back toward the door, unable to catch his already ragged breath while coughing to the point of dizziness. He sat down with his back to the door, trying to recover some composure before continuing his search, but the door suddenly gave way behind him. He let out a gasp in surprise as he fell backward into the doorway, and thought he saw an old man standing above him with one hand on the door and the other wrapped around a hammer.
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“Mechanic…?” Micro asked hopefully, his throat so dry that he thought his voice sounded more like an engine’s hum than a human’s voice.
“Hmph.” The old man scoffed, his expression difficult to understand through his thick grey beard. He was a tall man with broad shoulders, though his back bent by time and his figure seemed thin. The old man leaned out the door and looked to the left and right, nodded, then raised his hammer.
“Goodnight.”
“Ah…” Micro understood quickly that he was about to lose consciousness as the hammer began travelling to his head, but he was unable to do anything to resist. Then everything went black.
~
GRRR
Micro thought for a moment that he’d been awakened from his unconscious state by a fierce growl, but he realized quickly when he opened his eyes that he was not looking at the real world. Rather, he was looking around at the immaterial world where his chaos-coated soul resided within the crumbling remains of his core.
He felt less composed in the ethereal space than usual. While he usually enjoyed walking around the space in an immaterial representation of his current form, it felt more like he was floating now. He floated clumsily toward the remains of his core, and watched helplessly as the energy continued to dissipate into the air around him, unable to mold it like before with his soul still sealed away beneath the shimmering coat of chaos.
“This is going to be tricky…” He thought to himself, looking around at the mess. He picked up a brick after his hands finally began to take shape, and inspected it closely. The glowing green brick was full of cracks, and squeezing it gently resulted in it crumbling away like sand. He picked up a handful of the sand and squeezed it in two hands, recalling the method to construct a snowball, and found that he was only able to form an oddly shaped brick the size of a grain of rice, though it appeared to be stable.
“At least it’s possible, but I’ll need more energy…”
He sighed and continued to move around the chaos-covered truck, inspecting every part of its surface for damage. As he reached the back of the truck, he was content that it would remain stable for the time being, though even the chaos energy was slowly evaporating. However, he began to notice a muffled growl coming from beneath the truck.
“That’s odd…” He whispered as he stepped back from the truck to observe it.
“Wait…”
He bent down to look under the truck, and was immediately blinded by a bright white light. He staggered backward before regaining his composure, and his right eye gradually regained its sight. Squinting this time, he looked beneath the truck again to see the source of the light.
GRRRRR
There, beneath the truck, he saw something which he recognized to be a soul. Though he had only observed his own soul before that point, he felt there could be no mistaking the sensation it gave him when he approached it.
“Hello!” Micro called out calmly, waving to the soul beneath the truck while kneeling down to see it.
GRRR
The growling continued, but the fierce light the soul radiated seemed to dim as the soul gradually calmed. Sensing that the anxiety of the mysterious visitor beneath him had lessened slightly, Micro leaned closer to the soul.
“You must be the soul Nora sent.” Micro said softly. He reached out his hand to touch the soul, and was surprised by how soft the shivering surface of it was.
“What’s your name?”
Micro left his hand on the top of the soul, awkwardly leaning beneath the truck and trying to make out the shape of the ghostly being in front of him. The soul didn’t reply, but Micro was relieved that it had stopped growling. Its shivering also ceased after some time had passed.
“I know how it feels.” Micro sighed as the creature’s form finally became discernable, glowing less fiercely the more it calmed.
“You’ll be alright though. We’ll find a way home.”
Micro tried to crawl a bit closer to the creature, but bumped his head on the chassis above him with a loud bang. He recoiled in pain and rolled out from under the truck. He brought his hands to the site of his injury and found that some of the chaos energy coating it stuck to his head. He managed to pry his hand from the sticky mess on his head, getting some on his face in the process.
“Gah!” He tried not to startle the creature beneath the truck as he yelped in pain, but was surprised himself to see the creature suddenly crawl out from under the truck and jump up at his head, displaying an open mouth full of sharp teeth.
“Woah!” Micro shouted as the creature knocked him to the ground of his dilapidated core, unable to defend himself against the surprisingly strong soul. As he tried to raise his hands to push away the creature, he waited for the sensation of its sharp teeth against his skin, but was confused when something soft and moist met the skin of his face instead.
After a brief struggle, he finally managed to push the creature off of him. He rubbed his eyes, still stinging from the chaos energy, then felt the spot on his head where he’d impacted the truck chassis. He was relieved to find that no trace of chaos energy remained. Furthermore, when he opened his good eye to observe the creature in front of him, he was finally able to see it for what it was.
“Huh…” Micro tilted his head as he sat up and looked across at the soul. It was no taller than one of his tires, and its fur was long and fluffy.
“Good dog…”