The Fight of Our Lives - NewScapeSquad Fanfic

The Camera

Dawn's POV
Yay new characters with names!! I kinda assumed that you guys knew it was Dawn by now, so yeah!

I was panicking. Which is an unexpected emotion for me to feel. I almost never panicked. But when a strange boy decided to go jumping off a cliff because he was scared of my... condition, I kinda lost it. Hearing the boy scream as he fell into the darkness, and then when it was abruptly cut off, I jumped to action.

I had only been down in these caves for about a week, but my hard drive had already memorized half the cave's layout, so I knew where to go to get to him quickly. In the matter of seconds, I was flying down one of the caves to my left, blue hands glowing to light my way. But halfway down, my arms started to fade, becoming invisible. I now could only go by the soft glow of my faceplate. I swear, it was the most annoying ability ever. I mean, really? What's the point of having this cool power if I couldn't even control it? (Man. Dawn REALLY needs to meet Tommy and the Wolf *cough cough* Uni, when he talks about uncontrollable powers.... ☺️

Eventually, the tunnel opened up into the bottom of the gorge. It was wet and damp down here, water slowly dripping from the cliff top. It stank like rot, the consequence of years of mildew and mold taking hold down here. Splashing through the thin layer of water, I looked around franticly for any sign of the boy.

Then I saw a pool of red, slowly spreading outward from a central point. Sloshing through it, staining my cloth pants, I saw a dark shape, softly illuminated by the glow of my face. I rushed over, kneeling by his side. I saw that his face was out of the water, exposing a torn, bloody mask, open eyes staring at the ceiling. Bone jutted through the skin of his legs and he was not breathing, his smashed chest caved in. I knew that he must have been dead by now. But I still picked him up with my faded arms, as gently as I would a newborn child, and brought him back up, out of the gorge.

I let his head loll down. What use was holding it up when he couldn't feel the pain anyways? And I didn't want to touch the cracked back of his skull, blood and a disgusting slime oozing from it.

As I reached the top, I went over to my camp, and kicked my bag over, emptying its contents onto the floor, exposing a stolen blanket that I'd found. Using my invisible feet to roll it out, I set the boy's lifeless body onto it, balling up the blanket to staunch the bleeding on his head and legs.

Now that I could see him more clearly, I could tell that he had probably broken almost every bone in his body. The only thing that was still straight was his spine. Which was a good thing, cause if that was gone, well... I'd have nothing to work with here.

Taking out my bag, I emptied a lot of things out onto the ground: scrap bits of metal, circuit boards, chips, (WHHYYYYY! Now I'm hungry.) and a lot of other random metal parts. Also in there was a small photon metal cutter (Yea that's actual thing used to cut metal. It is not supposed to be portable, but who cares, it's my story. I got to use one in girl scouts. YES GIRL SCOUTS IS FUN. This is what I made.

Remember this symbol? If not go back to "The Lightning Girl") a strong lighter, a tiny surgical knife, and some other metal objects. These were supposed to be items that I was going to use to repair myself in due time, but the boy needed them more.

Taking a slab of metal, I measured the boy's arm, and using the plasma cutter, I made a long, thin strip, just wide enough for his forearm. With the knife, I made a long, vertical cut in his arms, and inserted the sheets of metal inside his forearm, stabilizing his bones.

Well, some humans would have been utterly confused if they saw me working. Why was I operating on and fixing a person who was clearly dead? But I was not human. I was a robot. And I knew how to fix these kind of things. Death was not the end for me. I could heal him. But I also knew that this would take more tools and parts than I had right now.

Working down to his busted legs, I felt something hard in the front pocket of his jeans. I pulled it out. It was a small card with a picture of the boy on it, surrounded by people who must have been his friends. They were all grinning at the camera like complete maniacs, and one of them, a red-haired girl, was doubled over, laughing (Not Ashlie). At the bottom of the picture, it said: Cory Crater.

So that was his name. I thought as I looked back at Cory. So far from his friends now, wasn't he...

I continued the operation. Sliding bits of metal under his skin, patching the parts of him that were torn, attaching chips and connecting wires to his arms and legs. Reaching for some more metal, my hand closed around empty space. Dang it. I thought. Now I'm gonna have to go back up to the surface.

I was always very reluctant to do so, because my power was so unpredictable. And now, with Cory to worry about, I had a lot more to steal than just the normal stuff. I was going to have to get at least two or three power cores, a blowtorch, and something to cover up Cory's face, and allow him to see.

Reaching for my bag, I filled it with the essentials that I would need, and as I did, I kicked something with my nearly invisible foot, stubbing my toe. I looked down, hissing, hopping on one leg. Then I stopped. It was the huge camera that I had found on my last journey to the surface. The camera that had caused Cory's death.

Overall, it was a beautiful thing. Smooth edged and sleek, I had stolen it from an artist who was painting in the park aboveground. I had hoped that she wouldn't notice that it was gone, at least only for a little while. But now that I looked at it, I could tell that I wouldn't be giving this back. Ever. Because I had just gotten a brilliantly terrible idea.

The lens was massive, almost as big as my face. Cory's head was smaller than mine, so it might just work. I put my stuff down beside me and knelt beside the camera, picking up a flathead screwdriver. Twisting, fiddling, and prying pieces off, I was able to cause the camera head to fall down, landing with a soft thump in my lap.

Bringing it up close to my faded metallic faceplate, weakly flashing light onto the camera, the lens almost looked like one giant eye. I looked over at Cory's dead body, and his mangled face.

I know how to fix you. But I'm not sure that you'll ever be able to see your friends again. I thought.

They'd be too scared...

Well that got dark real fast! Yayyyy! We've met every character!! So now it's going to be a little different. I'm going to write the next couple chapters at the same time. So basically, when they are all done, I'm going to ask you which set of characters you would like me to get back to first, and I'll post that chapter first. So basically, they still won't be meeting each other for a while yet.

All of the chapters that I've been posting have been happening in the same general time frame. When Nick and Ashlie first crash, Tommy is just getting into the woods. Then, the whole thing with Dawn and Cory is happening that afternoon/night.

So if you wanted to see Ashlie and Nick first, then I'd post that chapter. If you want to see Tommy and Uni again, then I'd do that chapter. Etc. (I really need to start another Google Doc for this... it is 18 pages long at this point...)

I also might not be posting a picture every time, either.  It just gets to hard sometimes, especially with all the fanart I've been doing recently...

Hope you had a great Easter!!!!

Have a sweet tweet day!!