fandoms 8 and 9
8. Title: Stirring From Sleep
Fandom: Risk of Rain
Rating: K+
Word Count: 532
Summary: The Chef didn't feel faulty. In fact, he felt better than new.
The writing on the side of his storage crate said 'Faulty - Extreme Hazard - Do Not Reactivate Under Any Circumstances'.
He had been reactivated, though, after being taken out of the securely locked crate and reassembled. He didn't feel faulty. In fact, he felt better than new. He wasn't plugged into an outlet and couldn't even find his normal charging cables and yet he felt as though he could run forever, so he suspected that whatever had woken him up, hadn't used his normal method of powering.
In fact, everything looked rather unfamiliar.
He remembered being inside the cargo vessel he remembered from the times he had been ferried from world to world, to serve at various functions, preparing food from all over the galaxy, in scenarios ranging from ambassadorial buffets to staffing the spaceport canteen. His model chef-bot was the most recognised and most popular for being versatile and reliable. There were usually more of him, though, as well as other service robots. The cargo bay was empty. Most of the lights were off, the machinery deactivated, the intercom silent when there were usually a constant stream of announcements, ordering people to run from one section to another. A quick inspection told him that the systems had been knocked offline, that the entire bay was badly damaged. In fact, some of the holes looked as though they had gone straight through the ship's hull.
Leaving the bay, the automated chef managed to find a computer that was working. Something had opened fire on the ship, he learned, and there had been an emergency crash landing. There had only been a few survivors, who had already headed to the escape shuttles.
There were other life forms on the ship too, unfamiliar. It was possible that they had been boarded.
He wasn't supposed to take up space on board emergency shuttles reserved for human crew members but he figured he had been reactivated for some reason, probably something vital to someone's mission. After all, the circumstances were highly improbable. It was only sensible to stay in operation until he could find out why he still existed. There weren't enough survivors for all the shuttles anyway.
As he watched the emergency craft plummet through the planet's atmosphere, he wondered what he would find there. He had looked up his destination on the database - a restricted access planet with extremely hostile indigenous life-forms and an environment too unpredictable to terraform. Not a place that a cargo ship should have been flying anywhere near, but maybe it had been knocked off course by the attack.
He wasn't sure how a machine such as himself with a limited range of functions should react to a place he had no business being in. However, there was only one real option: treat it as he did everything else.
There would be meals to make. Vegetables and meat to cook, water to boil. Things to chop, mince, fry and parboil. He had been left with a fresh supply of cooking oil and a full selection of recently sharpened knives.
Sometimes it was good to work with different ingredients to normal if you wanted inspiration for more interesting dishes.
9. Title: As Good As A Rest
Fandom: Fire Emblem Heroes
Rating: K+ (spoilers for Radiant Dawn)
Word Count: 532
Summary: Ike is finally having the chance to just be another hired sword again.
Working for Askr's mysterious tactician reminds Ike of the days when he was just a mercenary.
True, he's not fighting for gold - he's not sure if he needs such things in the world he's been sent to, in the strange state of being where he can't really die and he's not sure if he needs to eat or sleep - but he still just follows orders, fights when he's told to. His rewards are usually something that gives him more power in the form he's in, that increase his essence, make him able to undergo more advanced training. When he's summoned, he doesn't really have much to do except prepare for the next battle.
It isn't that his battles aren't important - he knows that the very existence of a world like this and the people who can summon dangerous individuals into it is a threat to his own world and those of everyone else he's met. The Emblian Empress in particular worries him, as she seems to treat the whole thing as though it exists only for her personal amusement, that she can throw entire summoned armies at each other just to enjoy the meaningless pain and suffering. It's just that he isn't the one doing the thinking for once. He isn't the one who everything's resting on. There are plenty of others like him, and he's got to learn to work with them, to think of himself as a unit in a whole instead of the one key piece being backed up by his loyal supporters.
It comes as a relief to him, after so long trying to make a living as a mercenary in relative peace, when he's too famous to be given small jobs even when he needs them, when he has no talent for the sensitive diplomacy he needs to enter the political roles everyone wants to thrust at him, when he still lays awake at night worrying about the consequences to the entire world of having essentially slain a deity.
He always had planned to travel, to see more of the world, once the fallout from that battle had died down. He had even considered just escaping under cover of the dust clearing. Now he was in a world that shouldn't even be possible, meeting people from entirely different worlds, not just other continents.
If only he had more time to do something other than fight alongside them or fight against them. But at least that was something familiar.
Fandom: Risk of Rain
Rating: K+
Word Count: 532
Summary: The Chef didn't feel faulty. In fact, he felt better than new.
The writing on the side of his storage crate said 'Faulty - Extreme Hazard - Do Not Reactivate Under Any Circumstances'.
He had been reactivated, though, after being taken out of the securely locked crate and reassembled. He didn't feel faulty. In fact, he felt better than new. He wasn't plugged into an outlet and couldn't even find his normal charging cables and yet he felt as though he could run forever, so he suspected that whatever had woken him up, hadn't used his normal method of powering.
In fact, everything looked rather unfamiliar.
He remembered being inside the cargo vessel he remembered from the times he had been ferried from world to world, to serve at various functions, preparing food from all over the galaxy, in scenarios ranging from ambassadorial buffets to staffing the spaceport canteen. His model chef-bot was the most recognised and most popular for being versatile and reliable. There were usually more of him, though, as well as other service robots. The cargo bay was empty. Most of the lights were off, the machinery deactivated, the intercom silent when there were usually a constant stream of announcements, ordering people to run from one section to another. A quick inspection told him that the systems had been knocked offline, that the entire bay was badly damaged. In fact, some of the holes looked as though they had gone straight through the ship's hull.
Leaving the bay, the automated chef managed to find a computer that was working. Something had opened fire on the ship, he learned, and there had been an emergency crash landing. There had only been a few survivors, who had already headed to the escape shuttles.
There were other life forms on the ship too, unfamiliar. It was possible that they had been boarded.
He wasn't supposed to take up space on board emergency shuttles reserved for human crew members but he figured he had been reactivated for some reason, probably something vital to someone's mission. After all, the circumstances were highly improbable. It was only sensible to stay in operation until he could find out why he still existed. There weren't enough survivors for all the shuttles anyway.
As he watched the emergency craft plummet through the planet's atmosphere, he wondered what he would find there. He had looked up his destination on the database - a restricted access planet with extremely hostile indigenous life-forms and an environment too unpredictable to terraform. Not a place that a cargo ship should have been flying anywhere near, but maybe it had been knocked off course by the attack.
He wasn't sure how a machine such as himself with a limited range of functions should react to a place he had no business being in. However, there was only one real option: treat it as he did everything else.
There would be meals to make. Vegetables and meat to cook, water to boil. Things to chop, mince, fry and parboil. He had been left with a fresh supply of cooking oil and a full selection of recently sharpened knives.
Sometimes it was good to work with different ingredients to normal if you wanted inspiration for more interesting dishes.
9. Title: As Good As A Rest
Fandom: Fire Emblem Heroes
Rating: K+ (spoilers for Radiant Dawn)
Word Count: 532
Summary: Ike is finally having the chance to just be another hired sword again.
Working for Askr's mysterious tactician reminds Ike of the days when he was just a mercenary.
True, he's not fighting for gold - he's not sure if he needs such things in the world he's been sent to, in the strange state of being where he can't really die and he's not sure if he needs to eat or sleep - but he still just follows orders, fights when he's told to. His rewards are usually something that gives him more power in the form he's in, that increase his essence, make him able to undergo more advanced training. When he's summoned, he doesn't really have much to do except prepare for the next battle.
It isn't that his battles aren't important - he knows that the very existence of a world like this and the people who can summon dangerous individuals into it is a threat to his own world and those of everyone else he's met. The Emblian Empress in particular worries him, as she seems to treat the whole thing as though it exists only for her personal amusement, that she can throw entire summoned armies at each other just to enjoy the meaningless pain and suffering. It's just that he isn't the one doing the thinking for once. He isn't the one who everything's resting on. There are plenty of others like him, and he's got to learn to work with them, to think of himself as a unit in a whole instead of the one key piece being backed up by his loyal supporters.
It comes as a relief to him, after so long trying to make a living as a mercenary in relative peace, when he's too famous to be given small jobs even when he needs them, when he has no talent for the sensitive diplomacy he needs to enter the political roles everyone wants to thrust at him, when he still lays awake at night worrying about the consequences to the entire world of having essentially slain a deity.
He always had planned to travel, to see more of the world, once the fallout from that battle had died down. He had even considered just escaping under cover of the dust clearing. Now he was in a world that shouldn't even be possible, meeting people from entirely different worlds, not just other continents.
If only he had more time to do something other than fight alongside them or fight against them. But at least that was something familiar.