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[b][u][center]A Re-Written Conscience

For Tarnish

By Draconicon[/center][/u][/b]

“So, any issue with getting around like that?” the mole bartender asked, gesturing at Tarnish’s shimmering blue frame. “I mean, I’ve had a few ‘bots come through, and they’ve been having some issues lately. Owner-envy and all that.”

“Well, I guess they’d have that, but that’s the difference between a created life and a synthetic life,” Tarnish said, a shimmer of a smile splitting the metal pieces of his face. “See, a created life is always going to be looking for someone to give it purpose. They aren’t born with it, and they’ve only got as much life as the person that made them handed over. But someone that’s a synthetic life -”

“But ain’t a synthetic life still just a created one?”

“...Semantics,” the synth said, shaking his head. “Not all created life is synthetic, but - yeah, I guess we’re all created…But, uh, more self-created, if that makes sense?”

The mole shrugged. Probably didn’t, but Tarnish was used to that. Synths pretty much were used to that across the board, as far as he was aware.

He leaned back on his bar-stool, digitigrade legs dangling most of the way to the floor as he looked over his shoulder. A quick scan confirmed that he was still the only mech-life in the bar, and he doubted that was going to change anytime soon. At the base of the Wall, mech-life was in short supply, and synths shorter still.

Looking away before anyone could think that he was staring at them, he looked down at the drink in front of him. A mix, of course. Mostly oil with a bit of flavored extracts that gave it something resembling taste, it was one of the few safe things that he could down without risking some of the internal circuitry. One of the many different things that he planned on fixing with the next iteration of his shell, but that would require a little more in the way of materials, energy-boosters, and - well, more Machine-magic, he supposed. That was the whole way of knitting it together.

Unless he wanted to make a deal with one of the Machine-Gods. Which he didn’t.

“Well? You gonna keep talking?” the mole asked.

“Oh. Right. I was just thinking.”

A small lie, but still a lie. Synths didn’t think [i]quite[/i] as fast as their fully computerized counterparts in the big machines, but they were still faster than the average mortal. Their minds were just built that way.

Most of the time. Always most of the time. Always kind-of.

He picked up the glass, about to continue with his little speech about the differences between synthetic and created life, when the bar door burst open. The door itself went flying over Tarnish’s shoulder, and he barely managed to turn around before -

THUNK!

A significant chunk of a car broke through the front wall of the bar. The majority of the hunk of metal stayed on the other side of the concrete wall, but a large piece of the front fender flew off, slapped him across the face, and buried his metal noggin, not in his own drink, but in the one just to his left.

[i]Well, shit,[/i] was all that he had time to think before things zeroed out and went black.

It only lasted a second or so before he rebooted, but even as Tarnish opened his ocular sensors again, he could feel something had gone wrong. A gash from the fender had ripped his cheek right open, exposing wires and worse under the metal plating, and one arm hung from his shoulder, barely connected by a few wires. He couldn’t feel anything at the end of his finger-plates, and that wasn’t by choice.

Pain? Not so much a problem, considering all those receptors were shut down, but -

Zzzt.

What was -

Zzzt.

Zzzt.

Oh.

Zzzt.

That was -

Zzzt.

“Everyone okay?” the mole said, the bartender’s voice coming from a long way off.

Zzzt. Zzzt.

Tarnish didn’t have a voice yet and couldn’t answer. What he could do - and did - was stand up, his shell’s nanites hard at work replacing the damaged bits of plating with an adapting seal. Inside, the sparking continued, rippling up under the plates of his face toward a much more integral bit of himself in his head, and further down in his core. Little shimmers of sparking lightning burst through the little cracks between the metal chunks as he turned around, blue eye-shapes in a cracked black screen turning colder and brighter at the same time.

A half-drunk dingo stepped out of the car, grunting as he fell into the bar. A number of the patrons were already pissed as shit, grumbling as they pulled themselves out from under their tables. Tarnish ignored them, his eyes fixed on the plastered canine.

“You.”

His voice reverberated more than it was supposed to. He tried to alter -

[i]Why?[/i]

Why, indeed?

Why be nice-sounding?

Zzzzt.

Zzzzt.

Zzzzt.

He staggered along before the balance-compensators took hold once more and made his gait more even. The synth reached through the rubble, his arm finally reconnected properly, and yanked the dingo in.

Crash.

Thunk.

The dingo howled and whimpered as he left a line of fur and a bit of flesh on the concrete rubble between the car and the bar. Tarnish tossed him back, arm clicking for a moment as the nanites kept reshaping it, and him, after the damage.

He was already walking back by the time that the dingo slammed into the bar, time distortion becoming more and more of a thing as machine-brain took over from the more mortal processes of a synthetic platform. Click, clack, click, clack. The nanites continued to rebuild, sealing the crack in his cheek and adding things to him. He rested his hand on the fender as he passed by, some of the nanites taking a big chomp from it and leaving finger-sized holes in it as he kept moving.

One, two, three inches were added to his height, and the tubes and wires along his back pulled tighter to his spine. He arched his back as he loomed over the rest of the bar, a blue-chrome shine running over his plates as he adjusted to something new.

Something sleek.

Something tall.

Something powerful.

“You. Are you drunk?” Tarnish asked.

“Nnngh? What…what just - ulk!”

Tarnish grabbed the driver by the throat, cutting the slow-thinker off. He tilted his head to the side, looking the dog up and down. Eyes slightly red, partially intoxicated. Fingertip-sensors on, atypical heartbeat. Certainly on something.

He pushed the dingo over, letting him hit the ground. He followed him down, squatting at his side.

“You would have killed a flesh-life with that stunt,” he said.

Calm. He was surprisingly calm. And…almost happy, in a way. As if something had just been given permission for something. Some buried bit in his digital brain? It was immaterial. For later.

“And you damaged this man’s fine establishment. And I think that means that you’re fair meat for the night.”

“What…do…do machines eat people?” the dingo asked.

“No. Not even the stupid ones. But. As there’s no way you can afford to pay it back, I think the bar will accept a fleshier payment.”

Some part of him was flicking through the digital back-ups and wondering what was going on. That process was secondary; the rest was already moving forward. He swung one leg over the inebriated dingo, looking down at him with eyes that hazed and shimmered in and out of existence as the last of the cracks and damages were repaired.

And as he got comfortable, he grabbed the dingo with a hand that he couldn’t help but notice was bigger, broader, and somehow more brutal than his old one. He grabbed the small hound between the ears and shoved him nose-first against the hard metal that made up his crotch. The dingo groaned, trying and failing to twist his head away.

“You’ll start with me. And you’ll be thankful, because I’m not going to be so angry as the other ones,” Tarnish said, chuckling. “Now, lick my chrome and show me that you know where you belong. Do a good enough job, and I won’t make the next step too unpleasant, hmm?”

“Nnngh…lemme…”

“No. You have done some serious damage, and you’re going to pay that back. If you had cash, maybe I might have accepted that. Maybe the bar owner might have. But this? Heh…not a chance. Now, [i]lick.[/i]”

The dingo didn’t have a choice, and in short order, the smaller male was dragging his tongue along the smooth metal between the synth’s legs. One lick, two, three, slowly getting more and more into it as fear and more got through his skull. It was almost amusing to see someone squirm like that.

No. Not almost, not anymore.

It was amusing, and arousing, and quite a bit more. Maybe this little ‘zzzt’ glitch was worth it…for now.

“Keep licking. I’ll be opening the genital plate soon…might as well get used to the metal taste before you get the next one…”

[b][u][center]The End[/center][/u][/b]

Summary: Tarnish, an synthetic life form, ends up getting a small accident at a bar that rewrites part of his personality.

Tags: No Sex, Impending Sex, Synthetic, Synth, Dingo, Various Species, Glitch, Corruption, Damage, Nanites, Repair, Crotch-Licking,