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chr0macide · 1 month

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Encounter

more magdalena stuff, this happens soon after she flees the villain base

debated whether I should post this or not because its edgier than what i usually write, she runs into Larry and bad stuff happens

TW graphic descriptions of pain and injury

this is ~2400 words divided into 2 chapters. the second one is tiny but i thought i ought to include it, because I feel like Larry came off as more of an asshole in chapter 1 than I intend for him to be oops

Chapter I – Found You

The forest floor squelched under the Engineer’s boots as she meandered through the trees. The rainstorm had passed, though not before turning the ground into a slurry of soil and soggy leaves. Her toolbox felt heavier in her hand every second, but she didn’t reduce her brisk pace. She’d deemed it too dangerous to walk along the road or any of the main hiking trails. Who knows who might have been skulking around there. She wasn’t the only one who had fled the criminal hideout after Miss Gearwise’s defeat.

She came to a sudden halt and let her crowbar fall to the ground, clutching a spot on her abdomen instead. It felt like something sharp and jagged was slicing her from the inside. The Engineer’s eyes were screwed shut against the pain, but the discomfort was mercifully brief. She’d already felt something like that once before. The only explanation was the wind-up key affixed to her back. She knew complications might arise when she’d implored the Warden to use it on her, but this was starting to worry her. Nevertheless, there was nothing she could do about it now. She picked her crowbar up and carried on.

The girl had some idea of which way the inner city was in when she’d set out, but every part of the woods looked the same, not to mention how impossible it was to see through the thick morning fog. She was starting to lose her bearings as she searched for one of the lesser-known trails. Hopefully she wasn’t walking in a circle.

She breathed a sigh of relief. There it was: a dirt path in the grass, worn in by years of footsteps. She walked in the direction that she believed was correct. It wasn’t too long before she glimpsed something luminous through the mist, but her ashen skin prickled with unease. The edges of the woods were still a fair distance away, and this didn’t seem like the glow of a campfire or cabin.

The Engineer’s stomach dropped. She understood what she was looking at when the pair of lights shifted. The automaton’s hinges creaked as he tilted his head curiously. The girl dropped her toolbox, too petrified to think of running away while she still could.

“Mr. Clockturn?” she squeaked.

She trembled even more than usual as Larry’s towering figure emerged from the haze. The Engineer clutched her crowbar close to her body. Her fingers squeezed tighter and tighter around it until her nails broke skin and left red notches in her palms. Her mouth was dry. The machine came to a halt in front of her… then chuckled at her apparent dread.

“Why do you look so afraid?” he asked.

Why did she look so afraid? Anyone with two brain cells to rub together was afraid of Larry Clockturn, and the Engineer had slighted him personally. Fortunately for her, it didn’t appear that he realized who she was with her mask on and lab coat missing. She didn’t want to respond to his question—he might have recognized her voice—but it would have been suspicious if she remained mute.

“I-I wasn’t expecting to see anyone out here,” she stuttered, but she relaxed just a little bit. Larry’s hold on his crowbar was visibly lax. He wasn’t brandishing it at her. He hadn’t come out here searching for potential victims.

A hint of confusion intruded upon Larry’s amused smirk. “Neither was I.” Had he met this girl before? His eyes caught a flash of tarnished metal on the girl’s back as she turned and looked around nervously. He stepped around her for a better view. “You have a prototype key.”

The girl jumped when he spoke again. Larry was staring at her like he expected her to explain. “Y-Yes. I… um…” the Engineer trailed off as she debated how much she should tell him. “I had the Warden insert it for me. Though I don’t believe it’s working as it should be,” she confessed.

That was obvious. Her clothes hung loose from her gaunt frame. Her eyes were bloodshot and what little of her skin that Larry could see was pallid and waxy. “Well, you ought to brace yourself. The transmutation isn’t pleasant,” the automaton laughed coldly, gesturing at his own metallic exterior as he walked behind her, “and I doubt this thing’s defects will make it any easier on you.”

He ran a finger over her key as he spoke. The Engineer shivered and cringed away from the touch. Larry’s smile faded again. She was so familiar. Her identity was on the tip of his tongue. Larry stepped in front of her again, scrutinizing her with narrowed eyes. “Who are you?”

“I’m an indentured servant a-at the base,” the girl stammered, reluctant to divulge her name. “I-I mean, I was. I left during the infighting-”

Larry reached out and brushed her dark hair away from the left side of her mask.

Roses.

“Magdalena.”

She recoiled from his hand, but the automaton wrapped his fingers around her neck and hurled her into the mud before she had a chance to bolt. The impact knocked her mask askew. It slipped off of her face and onto the ground as the girl scrambled to stand up, but she didn’t even make it onto her hands and knees before Larry was upon her again, trapping her under his crushing weight.

“She made me do it!” Magdalena cried as she tried to wriggle out from underneath the automaton. “I never wanted any part of her experiments!”

Larry grabbed the back of her head in his enormous hand and shoved her face into the filth as he straddled her. “Is that so?” he hissed in her ear, all traces of pleasantry gone, replaced with malice and promises of pain. The disgraced crime lord remembered each and every one of his minutes in Mary’s laboratories all too well. He remembered the serrated edges of her tools as she cleaved him open, remembered the feeling of her cold hands on his coils and cogwheels and valves, remembered the scalding heat of the welding torch when she haphazardly repaired the wounds she’d wrought in him. And he remembered Magdalena standing next to her all the while with that same maddeningly vacant expression. It was so different from the way her haggard features were contorted with terror now. Larry liked that.

Magdalena’s squirming ceased when she felt Larry’s gloved hand close around her wind-up key. Nobody had tried to turn it before—she hadn’t had it for long—but she knew it wouldn’t induce any sort of enjoyable feeling. “Please don’t,” she whimpered.

Larry didn’t wrench her key around, but his jaws were parted slightly in morbid anticipation. The girl could feel the scorching heat seeping out of him. He wanted this to last. He adjusted his grip and turned it agonizingly slowly. Little by little.

Magdalena screamed.

Now she was thrashing even harder than before. She could feel the key’s roots twitching in dissent. It was like every nerve ending in her body was being torn out of her at once, but she could hardly even struggle with the automaton on top of her. “Please stop! I’m sorry! It hurts!”

Larry grinned.

Music to his ears.

“Oh, there’s no need to tell me that. I know what it feels like,” Larry snarled as he continued to wind her key towards the first checkpoint, but it wasn’t even midway there. His laughter dissipated after a moment, however. The automaton leaned in close. “On second thought… describe it to me,” he whispered, his voice thick with markedly false sympathy.

Describe it? Magdalena could scarcely think, let alone form words through her cries.

“Unless you’d rather die here,” Larry added when she didn’t answer. He tightened his grip on the back of her skull and pushed her face a little further into the mud.

Tears streamed down Magdalena’s face, mixing in with the murky rainwater, but fear compelled her to speak. “It feels like”—she had to scream again—“like my skin i-is being flayed,” she sobbed.

Larry had forced her key halfway around now. Magdalena convulsed. A few gears had already shown up embedded in her tissues since she’d left the base. It had been uncomfortable before, but now it was infinitely more excruciating as the toothed wheels unwillingly rotated backwards and carved bloody fissures along her innards.

Larry’s robotic eyes dilated appreciatively at her words. “Go on.”

“It—m-my-”

Her utterances dissolved into hysterical shrieks and supplications. Larry’s jaw clanked shut in annoyance. He grasped a handful of her hair and pulled her head away from the grime, drinking in the suffering on her face as he turned Magdalena’s key further still, but he released it right before it reached the point of no return. It snapped back to its original position. The way she writhed in agony beneath him was one of the most delightful sensations he’d felt in a long time, but his fun was over if the girl wasn’t going to contribute.

The automaton stood. Magdalena did not, still shuddering and gasping for air in the waterlogged dirt. Her lungs burned with every breath. There was a coppery taste in her mouth. Larry glared down at her, a disgusted sneer on his face.

“You sicken me,” he spat, delivering a kick to Magdalena’s side with his steel-toed shoe. She choked out a cry of pain. He didn’t put that much force into it, but after what she’d just gone through, it felt like someone was driving a blunted knife between her ribs.

Larry scoffed at the girl’s deplorable state and walked away without another word. She did not deserve an end to her misery, nor would it have been worth his effort.

Magdalena couldn’t move her head to look at him, but she heard his footsteps fading away. She tried shifting just a little bit, but her muscles howled at her in protest, so she simply lay there and listened to the leaves rustling above her gently. The girl let her eyelids close, thinking through her muddled ruminations that it wouldn’t be so bad to stay here forever. She lost track of how long she remained on the cold, indifferent earth. It might have been hours or mere minutes before she felt movement underneath her coat.

One of her diminutive mechanical insectoids squeezed out from under her. Magdalena was surprised it wasn’t crushed when Larry threw her to the ground. Then again, she had hardly any mass to crush it with, she thought as the bot crept over her. It paused behind her neck and scuttled over the side of her face.

Magdalena didn’t react.

It scratched at her skin with its pointy forelegs until she produced signs of life.

Magdalena groaned in weariness and irritation, but the sound came out as more of a croak. “That’s enough. I’m getting up,” she mumbled.

The android tumbled into the leaves as the Engineer hauled herself onto all fours. Every little motion sent another twinge of soreness through her limbs, but she had to get up. What if Larry wasn’t the only one lurking nearby? Magdalena clutched at the felled tree trunk next to her for leverage as she gingerly rose to her feet and slipped her coat off her shoulders to wring some of the water out.

Her insectoid’s legs flailed in the air for a few seconds before it righted itself. It crawled up her pants and into her overcoat as she put it back on. Magdalena staggered to where her mask had fallen. She didn’t have the energy to wipe the grime away before placing it back on her face. She grabbed the handle of her toolbox and picked it up, along with her crowbar. They felt even heavier than before.

Magdalena set her eyes on the dirt path and carried on.

Chapter II – Found Me…?

Larry took a small detour on his way back to the safehouse. He wasn’t quite ready to see the others again yet.

He nearly flung the rotting wooden door off its eroded hinges as he entered one of the abandoned homestead’s utility rooms. The bloodstained sheets and old clothing hanging from the shelves looked like silhouetted figures in the dark. The automaton’s eyes darted around frenetically. He kept thinking he’d seen movement at the edges of his vision, even though he knew he was alone. Alone.

The sound of his own gears whirring and rattling within him seemed so deafening all of a sudden. His footsteps thundered in his ears. His engine roared. Everything in this empty place was so loud, yet none of it did anything to drown out his feverish thoughts. He lifted his head and stared into the mirror at his rigid, unyielding faceplates. Smoky, acrid exhaust jetted from his vents, permeating the cramped space.

Cathartic.

She was only trying to survive. Mary would have turned her into another one of her projects.

So? Why would the life of a quivering pile of jaundiced flesh matter more than mine?

I know what it feels like. There was no need for that.

That bitch deserved it.

Didn’t she?

Of course she did. I should have kept going.

I—I-

Larry smashed his head against the mirror to silence his mind’s ramblings. The wall quaked. The glass shattered. The shards hit the floorboards noisily.

He kept his forehead against the remains of the looking glass for a moment, staring at the ground. A hundred glowing golden pinpricks watched him knowingly from the broken fragments. Larry tore himself away from the wall abruptly, staggering back as he shut his eyes and buried his face in his hands. His claws strained uselessly to dig into his impenetrable skin.

The automaton was as motionless as a statue for a few shallow breaths, but then he drew in a long breath of air and sighed. He removed his hat and brushed the slivers of broken glass away. His inner mechanisms decelerated. Larry laughed to himself as he looked down at the mess he’d made. Why had he gotten so worked up?

Larry redonned his hat. He stepped back into the frigid morning air and carried on.

#roblox break in #break in roblox #break in 2 #scary larry #break in oc #tw violence #cw violence

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