FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It was broken, damaged, and forgotten, left to rot as a harrowing pile of parts and scrap, hardly recognizable as the thing it once was. It was tortured, torn, and ratty, crying out for the attention that no one could afford. It was lifeless, an effigy of joy and good times reduced to ruin and neglect. It was awful in a word, a tragedy wrote upon the nightmares of children.

Arthur stood above the broken animatronic fox, looking down upon it with an unwavering gaze, his face a mask of indifference. And yet, beneath that stoic facade, a stirring of sorrow bubbled just beneath the surface. Within that wretched amalgamation of parts—the rusty metal, frayed wires, and torn, tattered flesh—the man saw the beauty that it once had been. He saw through to the joyous creature that lay dead before him, and felt the yearning that only his heart had ever found.

She deserved to be pretty again. She deserved to be called such, identifiable as feminine, for 'it' was simply too insensitive, insulting even to no small degree.

She deserved to live, even if no one else thought so.

Arthur knelt at her side, committing to memory her identity. He'd never call her an 'it'; no one ever would again. In a large, ebony hand, he pulled from her shabby remains her head, the metallic skull somehow light amidst his strength. Her jaw hung loosely from its decrepit hinges, exposing the facade of an iron tongue that had by and large rusted away, leaving a sickly brown organ where once shimmering steel had been. All but four of her teeth remained, filed steel pokers that bent at awkward angles. Her muzzle was bear, exposing the metallic structures of her narrow maw. Her nose-pad was missing, likely taken by vermin to amass some macabre treasure thought to be of value. Her eyes were lifeless, or rather the one that remained. The other was conspicuously absent, lost to the ages and likely to never be seen again.

Her ears clung loosely to her skull; she looked sad, as though she lamented everything she'd become, and Arthur sighed.

"You's a pitiful sight, girl," he said to the lifeless head in his hand. "Broken and forgotten like nobody ever did care 'bout ya. Just look at the mess they left ya in! God damn shameful, I tell ya."

He rotated her skull so that her hollow eyes met his own, and he leaned his head down to touch the cool remnants of her forehead against his own.

"Well," he said softly, the depth of his baritone voice carrying in it a tinge of sympathy for the doll. "You's deserve better than this. You's deserve to be cared for and loved...And remembered."

He pulled the skull back so that their eyes met again. "I remember you," he said. "Don't know if you remember me; I wasn't that old when we first met, weren't no older than the kids that left ya here; but, I remember. You's was the pretty one, the cute thing with the soulful voice. Ya, I remember you singing and dancing on stage, moving them hips that got little Arthur all excited," he chuckled. "Ya, I definitely remember you, girl!"

He openly laughed as he twirled the skull in his hands, moving it through the air in some morbid dance that ended the moment her jaw unhinged and fell to the ground with a metallic clatter. The smile left his lips, and the laughter died as he saw it lying there. "I remember you; just, not like this." He sighed and reverently placed her skull back amongst the rest of her remains. "Not like this."

He stood up, looming above the decrepit doll as memories played through his mind: memories of a vibrant animatronic swaying to the rhythm of a lively beat as she sang her sultry song. Memories of a bright and happy smile forever faceted to an immortal face, and the genial greeting from a machine made friend.

Memories that were only the sum of their parts as he looked down upon her shattered pieces, and his face again took on its stoic visage.

"You's sure deserve better than this, girl," he said again. "Lot's better. Now, I don't know if you remember me, and frankly, I couldn't care less about it. My memories are all I need. I ain't asking ya to trust me neither, so you put that out of your head right now. After what ya been through, y'all don't need to be trusting nobody anyhow. All I want is a chance," his voice faltered, but only for a moment as he cleared his throat.

"Just give me a chance; that's all I'm asking. Give me the chance to put a song back into your soul; give me the chance to put a groove back in those hips. Give me the chance to give ya life again, girl, that's all I want. And if that ain't enough for ya, then you's can be rid of me for good, and that'll be the end of it."

Arthur sighed and rubbed his eyes with a haggard hand, "I only got the week anyhow, girl. Schmidt don't want me here any longer than that. But, the way I figured it, I might as well use that time on something that matters. Couldn't give a shit 'bout the others just to be frank with ya. They seem well enough to roam all their own so fuck um I say; too damn tired to spare the attention anyhow, even with the rumors."

Above Arthur and the remains, a dull chime suddenly echoed throughout the halls. In the distance, the groan of a generator wound down unto silence, and the lights slowly dimmed. A door slammed shut, and the audible turn of the tumblers signaled that the establishment was officially closed.

"Bastard didn't even say goodnight," Arthur groused as the room was plunged into a dreary ambience, fitting of the body that lay strewn across the floor.

He turned his attention back to her. "You give me the chance, girl, and I won't let ya regret it. You's just sit tight, now, and let me grab some things from the office. I'll be back before ya know it."

And suddenly she was all alone again, left there as some pile of refuse, not even fit to be recycled. Her cold body lay unmoving, inoperable in a state of catastrophic disrepair. She couldn't move even if she wanted to. And by god, did she want to. How she longed to roam the monotonous halls of that place if only to be free from the ground. How she yearned to feel again, even if in tortuous agony. At the very least, the pain would've been a welcomed reprieve from the nothingness she knew.

The company, however brief, provided from a stranger that to her limited memory she could not recall, despite in hearing his words, had been nice—wonderful even in a word. He had been her first visitor in years; at least, her first human visitor. The vermin were always around; but then, they weren't much for conversation, and only ever brought about her ever deteriorating condition.

She found herself missing him, even if all she gleaned of him was in a brief smattering of minutes, and he had dislodged her fragile jaw. To the 'Mangle'—the harrowing moniker bestowed upon her in years past—however, she would gladly permit him to dismantle her remnants if only to feel the warmth of a human hand again.

She may have sighed, or likely cried had she the tears left to do so. He wasn't coming back, not tonight at least, not with the threat of the others catching him unawares. His was an empty promise; but, one that she could understand. No one had the time for her anymore, certainly not the tender loving care she so desperately needed.

So when the startling sound of a metallic toolbox striking the ground echoed within her tattered ears, she could only stare in frozen disbelief at the ebony man that again stood before her. She very well may have looked surprised, were her body still intact and the servos in her face still functional. Instead, her jawless skull remained persistently frozen as it had been for decades, even as the man reached down and took her skull in his formidable hand again.

"Sorry to keep ya waiting," he said. "Couldn't find my damn gloves; I hope ya don't mind, girl." He walked her over to a dusty counter, adjacent to the ruin that was her body and laid her skull to rest upon it.

"You's can sit right there," he said as he turned to kneel before her scattered parts. "That way you's can see all that I'm doing. Lord knows I wouldn't want some nameless nobody rifling through all my unmentionables without being able to keep an eye on him."

He chuckled softly, "Lord no, that wouldn't do, no-sir. And in saying that, the name's Arthur by the way: Arthur Johnston, AJ for short." He tilted his head towards her in greeting and then focused his attention to the mess before him. In a large hand he took what was left of her chest—a metallic skeleton devoid of the many mechanical necessities mandatory for her function. Her sternum was bent, curved at the process towards her spine. The ribs attached to it jutted out dangerously at odd angles; one of them was even missing all together. As he lifted the part from the ground, her spine came free of her pelvis and dangled morbidly from her chassis.

Arthur whistled, "Damn girl, I'm beginning to see why all them folks just call ya the 'Mangle': fitting a word that I could ever think of, that's for damn sure," he shook his head.

She knew that he would never see it; but, in hearing that dreaded word slip passed his lips, the 'Mangle' felt a most awful pang of misery creep through her processors. She loathed that word: Mangle. Even the sound of it was somehow icky, akin to placing one's hand into a vat of boiling puss and detritus. It sounded sinister by nature, as if her broken form was disgusting enough to mar any semblance of beauty.

But, then again, was she not so hideous? Did that moniker not suit her to a T? The weight of her despair only deepened as she realized the truth in such a matter. She was ugly and broken. She was a 'Mangle' in every sense of the word.

"Now, don't y'all fret none, girl," Arthur said as he again turned to face her decapitated skull. "Y'all may be busted up now; but, just give me some time. When I'm through with you, no one will ever call you the 'Mangle' again."

He set back to his work, sorting her many parts from the ruined pile that they had once amalgamated in, and again she found herself taken aback by the strange man. Had he truly felt her ire; her sorrow? Had he somehow felt her despair and uttered those words if only to soothe the fiery ache deep within herself? Was he truly so motivated to make her whole again, or was he perhaps bored and simply in need of something to do?

She watched his diligence silently, observing as a large calamity slowly resolved to some semblance of order. Gears and servos were lumped together, as were an arm—the other missing—and her legs, her remaining joints and digits, her torso and spine, her pelvis and hips, her paws, and useful scraps of fur. In an even larger pile, ever growing as he tossed all matter of things aside, were the many things about her that could not be salvaged.

And they were plentiful, comprised mostly of her inner workings. Artificial airways, bladder reservoirs, belts and hoses, pumps and circuitry, a mechanical heart that had not cycled her life-sustaining fluid in she wasn't sure how long. The intimate parts of her reserved only for that adult clientele seeking a one night stand free of guilt or worry; it was all tossed aside.

However kind the man's words were, they could never convince her of the lie he had shared. She was a 'Mangle', and nothing was going to change that.

She watched on regardless, having little choice in the matter as her broken skull could not move freely on its own. The man didn't seem to notice; she doubted there were any signs of life left within her one good eye to be seen by him anyhow. Instead, she drowned herself in a symphony sound: her parts clanging together, the staccato whirr of the fans within the comfort station, and the rhythmic sounds of the man working with the occasional grunt or curse he let slip passed his lips as he sorted her mangled body.

This went on for a time, the two locked in silence as one worked and the other merely existed, if such a state of being could actually be called that. It wasn't until the clock struck midnight that the 'Mangle' finally reasserted herself to the consciousness of her skull, and in seeing the man before her, if only for a moment, did she panic two-fold.

First came the rush of seeing her body sorted; her parts—at least those that remained—organized and placed aside with a vested measure of care and attention. True, while the pile that contained her useless scrap utterly dwarfed what was salvageable, it was still nice to see the loose composition of her true form again.

The second came the terror of seeing the man out in the open, vulnerable and completely exposed to the others who would soon be wondering the halls, if they weren't already. They were not known for their sympathy towards the biological flesh. To them, humanity was a disease, imperfect and damaged, nothing more than endoskeletons lacking the fine finesse of a proper animatronic suit. If they found him, they would take him away; if they took him away, she would never see him again.

The 'Mangle' did not like that idea, not in the least. She couldn't fathom why; but, perhaps it had something to do with the fact that he was warm, that when he held her skull she could bask in something other than the cold hard ground. Perhaps it was the kindness—however brief—that he'd imparted upon her, or the fact that he had cared, or at least pretended to, about her fate?

Whatever the case may be, the 'Mangle' did not want him to disappear alike so many others. He would never make it back to the safety of the office, this she knew. Her remains were far from the prying eyes of the day-goers, and even of those of the staff the frequented the place. She had been left to rot within the farthest reaches, visible only by the lone camera within her room. The office was some several winding hallways back towards the employees' entrance of the establishment, and to the man's unknowing misfortune, it would require that he venture through the lobby where the others were waiting.

A sudden clap from the hallway halted Arthur's progress, "Y'all hear that?" He asked to the severed head on the counter as he marched slowly towards the open corridor.

She had wanted to tell him to stop, to flee, to run as fast as he could to the safety of the outdoors, to jump through a window even if only to avoid the harrowing fate that awaited him! But she could not! She was broken, useless! A pile of scrap metal that couldn't even save her only potential friend in years! The only living thing with a soul to have cared about her at all!

The clap came again, and again, until finally it evolved into the unmistakable sound of footsteps preceded by a grating noise like nails across a chalkboard.

"Somebody there?" Arthur called out, but was met only by silence. And then the footsteps became harried, sounding quicker and quicker, louder and louder with every passing second. The man suddenly backed into the room as if finally sensing the danger. He swept blindly at the ground as his eyes remained frozen to the open hallway, reaching for something, anything to defend himself with. His knuckles rasped painfully over something metal, and when it snapped up, he was clutching the 'Mangle's' severed arm. He held it aloft as he breathed deeply, a subtle panic slowly etching its way across his ebony features as the footsteps sounded just outside the room.

He raised the severed limb high above his head and poised himself to strike at a moment's notice, "I'm armed in here, mother fucker!" he shouted, oblivious to the irony. "You's ain't taking these parts, ya hear me?! I ain't gonna let no two-bit shit-bag take her away for scrap, so come on then! Come get some!"

Unbeknownst to a panicking Arthur, the 'Mangle' had heard his cries. For a third time in only a few short hours, the man had left her stunned. It was clear that he feared for his life. Perspiration dripped from his brown, his hands quaked and his knees wobbled uneasily. She could all but hear the frantic beating of his heart and imagined the fire that burned in his lungs as he respired so quickly. Yet, it wasn't in what he did that moved her; rather, in what he'd said, and said with such conviction. There was no robber on the other side of that corridor, not one that sought her broken parts anyhow, and she knew that. But, he didn't. He firmly believed that the establishment was being robbed, and that someone had come for her, for her uselessness, for the price of her body that now lay in neat piles upon the floor. And he was going to protect her remnants from a monster that didn't even want them, or exist at all for that matter.

Never before had she longed for the tears she missed so dearly, for if she had them, surely she would've wept. Who was this man that walked up to trash and defended it so valiantly when he owed her nothing at all?

The footsteps suddenly ceased, and from outside the corridor, a cold hand gripped the wall. Arthur saw this, but, in his fearful disillusion, he never saw the faux fur attached to it. Still, he raised his provisional weapon high, and he charged forth unto certain death with a battle-cry.

A piercing, discordant sound abruptly exploded throughout the building, a static discharge that grated in the man's ears and caused him to falter in his stride. Again, he stumbled back into the room, attempting to cover his ears with his hands while holding steadfast to the 'Mangle's' arm. Through squinted eyes he glowered at the corridor only to find the hand gone, and above the raucous noise he heard the footsteps beat a hasty retreat.

"Ya, that's what I thought you slimy fuck!" He bellowed. "You's get the fuck out of my store! Goddamn!" Arthur unceremoniously threw the arm back towards the pile and promptly collapsed before the countertop upon which the 'Mangle's' skull sat, finally able to cover his ears. The sound was unbearable, like a thousand voices trying to scream through the rotating channels of an old radio.

"What the fuck is that!" he shouted into the room. Amidst the unintelligible mummers that he heard, Arthur's imagination began to spurn him, running wild with thoughts of demons and specters that were rumored to haunt the old pizzeria. Harrowing images of bloodied children calling out to him, tortuous black hands reaching forth from the depths of hell to ensnare his legs and drag him under spilled across his mind. A pentagram wrought with candles, a demonic ceremony, and his disemboweled body strewn across a concrete slab, all this and more was all he saw behind his closed eyes.

Arthur screamed, and just as suddenly as the sound had occurred, it abruptly ceased. The room fell back into relative silence, the quiet hum of the comfort station fans and his own labored breathing all that persisted. Above him, Arthur could not see the glowing red iris faceted with the 'Mangle's' decapitated skull, and by the time he'd finally collected himself and stood, the iris had again faded to black.

The man was shaken, of that the 'Mangle' was certain. She wanted to hide from him, to show him her shame at causing him such discomfort; but, she couldn't. While he was so unaware of what had transpired, it had in fact been her that had caused such a ruckus. She had only wanted to protect him, to keep him safe as he had been so willing to do for her. She didn't want to let him go; she didn't want to let him die, not like that. Not after all that he had said and done for her. It was all she could do to ward off the others and allow him to stay; to remain alive.

"Jesus Christ," Arthur said abruptly and turned his head to face the 'Mangle's' skull. "That was some freaky shit there! Maybe this place is haunted after all, eh girly? You know something 'bout that?"

He reached out and took her skull in his large hand, and for a moment, the 'Mangle' was warm again. He brought her lifelessness close to his face and gazed into her eye as though he were honestly expecting an answer. It never came, however, and just as quickly as he'd picked her up, he sat her back down again and the cold was all that was there to greet her.

"S'pose not," he murmured to her. "Something pretty like you has no business with evil things like that."

Pretty… It was only the second time that he'd called her that; she doubted that she would ever tire of it.

"Y'all just sit there a spell; I gotta check up on this place," he said over his shoulder as he walked towards the corridor, and before she could stop him—the sound nearly within her abilities to produce again—he vanished around the corner, and was gone. Ice filled her processers; it was not safe beyond her room; the others were still out there! He was still vulnerable: helpless! They were going to get him and when they did, she'd be all alone again!

Her eye began to glow red. Why hadn't he stayed?! Why did he have to leave?! Didn't he know what was out there; didn't anybody tell him?! They were going to get him!

They were going to get him!

They were going to get him!

They're going to get him…

No!

The sound again erupted into her room. It spilled forth into every nook and cranny; it filled the space wholly and completely until it had nowhere else to go but outward. It ballooned into the corridors, into the ventilation. It spanned beyond the many closed doors of the place; it reverberated off the walls of the common room, the employee lounge, even the kitchen and bathrooms. It reached far into the depths of the establishment, beyond even the parts gallery in the basement, and the patio just beyond the side doors.

It followed Arthur like a plague, one of which was his only salvation, though he didn't understand. To him it was merely a haunting wail the pierced him to his very core and turned what was once a languid investigation into a panicked sprint across every entrance and window, frantically searching for some kind of damage that was never found or even there in the first place.

Amongst his uncertainty and fear, however, Arthur dutifully upheld his contract with the establishment, and upon finding the place properly secured, he rushed back towards his charge, forsaking the relative safety of the office as he passed it by. The thought had never even occurred to him about how it was possible for an intruder to simply break in and vanish without a trace. Perhaps he didn't care; or perhaps he simply didn't want to know. For some reason or another, the only place he wished to be was at the side of some ruined doll.

He dashed towards her room, heedless of the many eyes leering at his back.

She sat just as he'd left her some half-an-hour ago, her red iris glowing in the dimness of her prison as she sang her broken song aloud. It warbled and droned, drowned out by the ephemeral static that her damaged processors just couldn't seem to manage. Again, she found herself miserable, wanting to cry as the man had yet to return. Perhaps he never would; perhaps her song was not loud enough to reach him and ward off the others?

He's dead…_She thought to herself. _My first friend in years is gone. Her song slowly wound down and faded unto nothingness. The dead did not need a song; they didn't need anything at all.

Thanks for the memories…_She mused sadly, _Even if I won't remember you for long.

The 'Mangle' resolved herself to silence again: to return to nothing more than the tattered parts that she'd been known by for so many years.

At least they're organized now.

Her iris began to fade; her power was limited; her mechanized brain would not allow her to cease to function—to die—she corrected herself. The redundant safeties and power augmentation devices would allow her to function so long as there was a photocell to be had, and while the lights of the pizzeria dimmed, they had yet to ever go out.

_So long as the lights are on…_She chuckled sadly to herself before her higher functions began to shut down. Her command line began to scroll through the necessary sequence, cramming information over already saved data across several damaged and inaccessible memory ports. She was careful to overwrite only erroneous information; things from years long past that held no true meaning to her anymore. The faces of children, of men and women that she recalled with perfect clarity but the day before obliterated in an instant, erased forever as though they'd never existed at all. Intimate encounters were always preferable; however, she had by and gone overwritten those many years ago. At one time she had been desirable; now, hardly so. When she had fallen to ruin, the memories of making love had been far too painful for her to hold onto, and she eradicated them at every opportunity.

It was unfortunate that it had taken her so long to do so; the redundancy of her memory prevented her from deleting information stored within her memory banks. Without admin control—which was never granted to an automaton, at least not intentionally—memories were only overwritten when new ones were made without enough free space to store them on. It was the only part of her that she was thankful was damaged; it made memory control so much more realistic for the dismembered animatronic fox.

Her command lined winked out of existence with a completed task display flashing three times across her processors; its function had served her for another day. She considered shutting down the rest of her faulty systems; the reprieve of existence in sleep mode was more than desirable. However, no sooner had she considered the idea than had the frantic footsteps of something rapidly approaching thundered throughout the corridor. Her eye swiftly glanced in that direction; but, before she had any time to truly process the matter or reboot her higher functions, the ebony man suddenly rushed back into her room.

He came to stand before her skull again, leaning heavily upon the counter as he panted desperately for breath. Sweat dripped from his chin and stained the dust beside her skull a murky brown, though she hardly cared at all as she stared in excited awe at him.

He was alive.

"Mother…Fucker," he panted. "I am out of shape."

He was alive.

"Goddamn! I tell ya, girl, this place has some fucked up shit going on with its sound system. That crazy ass noise from earlier what scared off that spook followed me all over this place! I swear it was like I couldn't escape it! Sorry I took so long to get back here; but—and don't you go telling no body 'bout this—I flipped my shit and freaked! Ran all over this mother fucker until I found the sound room and ripped out ever cable I could find! And I tell you what," he said and leaned in closer to her skull, "I don't give a rancid, dirty fuck 'bout what Schmidt is gonna say 'bout it. He can either fix that shit right, or fucking deal with it not being hooked up while I'm here, and that's the damn truth!"

He was alive!

She didn't care about his coarse language or about the perspiration that now dripped upon her severed head. She didn't care that he seemed too ignorant to realize that it had been her song that had spared him from the others. All that really mattered to her was that Arthur was alive, and that he was truly there, standing above her flesh and blood! He hadn't left her behind; even amidst his fears he had stayed in that horrible place; he had come back for her!

"Need some damn Copenhagen," he muttered, oblivious to the musings inside the doll's head as he reached into his back pocket and pulled out his tin. He opened it and sniffed of its contents; the scent was sharp, moist, and fresh, telling of a hardy blend of finely-cut tobacco product fit to be suckled on. He took a large pinch in between his thick fingers; he rimmed the can with it: one, two, three times, and then he seemed satisfied. He lifted the ample pinch to his bottom lip and it was there that he tucked it in like a caring father might a child.

Arthur sighed in satisfaction, "Now that's what I needed," he hummed at the taste. "You know what they say," he said, eying the fox's skull upon the counter. "A pinch a day keeps the stress at bay, baby!" he guffawed loudly as he jigged across the floor, dancing with eyes closed to a beat that only he could hear.

The 'Mangle' watched him quietly, humored by the man's antics for the first time in years. For once, it was not her tears that she longed for, but laughter. He twirled about like a child on a sugar rush, throwing his hands into the air, kicking wildly out in front of him. He popped, locked, and dropped it more than once, and the 'Mangle' actually registered the sensation of mirth course through her processors.

It had been a long time since she had felt something like that; she was more than glad again that he had returned.

It was only a few short minutes later, however, that Arthur seemed to tire. His dancing slowed to a waltz, then to a crawl before he stopped altogether. He placed his hands onto his knees and huffed for breath, spitting something slimy and possibly caustic out onto the floor.

"Yep," he panted noisily. "I am definitely out of shape."

He sauntered languidly over to the pieces of the 'Mangle's' body and it was there that he sat upon the floor; his wind had yet to catch up to him, even as he dragged his toolbox closer to his side and unloaded several strange and unusual tools from its confines. He laid them out haphazardly, unlike the care he had devoted to her fragile remains.

Arthur glanced towards her skull again. "Girl," he uttered softly, seriously. The change in his voice was so drastic; it had occurred so swiftly. Gone was his elation; gone was the fear. So suddenly, the man was dreadfully somber, his posture utterly rigid, and it caught the 'Mangle's' attention like a fly stuck to the web.

"This is the part where you give me that chance I talked 'bout," he said. "Everything I've got with me is my own personnel parts and tools. I ain't got no diagram of how you's used to be; I ain't got no instructions. All I do have is my will and a little knowhow, that's it. I can't tell ya that you'll be perfect; frankly, there's gonna be a lot of things missing, things that I'm gonna have to find to make you whole again."

Arthur sighed, "Look, Schmidt don't know 'bout this, and neither do my friends. What I'm doing here is technically illegal; I disabled the camera in this room. Frankly, I don't care 'bout legality. On paper, you's might have once belonged to the pizzeria; but, tonight, and for the next few days, you're all mine. And I'm gonna treat ya like you's should've been treated all along."

"So, that's it," he said as his eyes remained fixed upon her own. "You's good with all that; 'cause I'm ready to start." Arthur watched her for a time, stared at the decapitated head and gazed into a dull and seemingly sightless eye as though he were truly awaiting her answer. The 'Mangle's' head said nothing; it merely stared back at him, the same sad expression frozen upon her face.

"You's ain't got to say anything," he replied for her. "I'll just set to my work, and I'll ask you's again when there ain't so much of ya strewn out across the floor."

Unbeknownst to Arthur, the 'Mangle' had given her reply. Though she could not say it aloud, thoughts of her affirmation tore through her mind with a deafening wail. Of course, she wanted to cry again; Arthur looked somehow sad behind the stoic mask he wore upon his face as he began to work on her body. She never saw what parts he had in his hands; she only ever saw his eyes. They were a chocolate brown; even in the dim light of the room, she could clearly see that. Her own eye, damaged though it may have been, still possessed enough of her superior vision. She could count the pores on his countenance had she been so inclined; but, she wasn't. She only wanted to see what he saw; not the parts, but rather what they had at one time been. She wondered what she looked like in his mind; what drove him to try so hard to save a pile of trash?

He worked on into the late hours of the night; he never left her room again. The others, warded by her song, stayed away, fearful of what little wrath the 'Mangle' still possessed. All the while, she merely studied him, watched him, and forsook her treasured sleep mode if only to be in his company as a feeling she thought lost in her ruin casually tapped at the window of her soul.

By the morning, many of the organized piles littering the ground had not disappeared; rather, they were slowly coming together, joined as they were always meant to be. The floor, however, was far from bare, and it was clear to more than just Arthur that time was ever needed. For today, however, that time was drawing to a close.

Arthur groaned as he slowly stood to his feet. His joints popped, his back ached, and his neck was stiff. He stretched; a few more joints cried out in protest. He walked about the room to drive the blood back into his haggard legs. He cracked his neck, and then he sighed. The hours he had spent upon the floor had been long, and his body had grown weary of the awkward positions he had kept it in.

"That's all for the night, girl," he said over his shoulder as he walked towards the corridor. "I'm gonna see 'bout a few things today; maybe brush up on fluid dynamics, look for some guts. Gotta find a new spine and a neurological wiring harness too; yours was shot. Don't rightfully know 'bout your sternum, though; that's gonna be hard to match."

"We'll get there, though," he encouraged. "One thing at a time; that's what daddy always said. Anyhow, g'night, sweet girl, I'll see ya later."

Arthur stepped into the corridor, and then he was gone. The 'Mangle' listened to his footsteps until she couldn't hear them; she heard the sound of the front door slamming shut; she knew she was alone again. She was tired; her processors were sluggish. But, it had been worth it; she spent an entire night in the company of her new friend. Of those new memories, she was exceptionally careful with as her command line booted up and began to creep through the steady process of an improper shutdown. She overrode old memories; she latched on to new ones. She scrolled to her sleep-mode cycle and entered in the confirmation command with only a persistent thought lingering within her mechanized mind.

He called me sweet…