A Machine's Purgatory

STEPPING STONES OF CHANGE: DROWNING IN AIR

TW:
Blood and Gore, limbs where they shouldn't be
If I miss any leave a comment and I'll fix it!

Also, YOU ARE READING A WORSE VERSION OF THIS CHAPTER

Wattpad does not allow me to add strikethrough text, so unless I figure out how to do it, you can read the better chapter on Ao3

It was late at night when V1 was shaken out of its sleep mode. It doubled over and fell to its knees as blood started to drip from its head camera and onto the floor. Clutching its hand to its main power supply, it sluggishly crawled out of the hall. V1 looked down, it couldn't look in the hallway, which seemed to expand infinitely and twisted unnaturally. It kept crawling before it heaved, blood and bile ejected from its visor and landed on the floor with a sickening splat. V1 couldn't stand the sight and looked away, up into the hall of the laboratory it was created in. Wasn't it in UA? Did they deserve to be there? The alarm bells rang and overwhelmed its audio sensors as it crawled further, trying to get out. The hallways stretched forever as blood and viscera pooled from the floor and dripped up to the ceiling, a sickening soup of bile, bone, and organs. Eyes bore into V1's chassis as it pulled itself to an open room, a small, bloody handprint on the door frame.

V2 was standing in the room, her top half drowning in the gore covering the ceiling and only allowing her crimson legs to be visible. Humming an old nursery rhyme, V2 started to sing to her sibling killer.

"You've ran, through the day
and you've had, all your laughs,
but now, the fire is gone.

gone."

She screamed the last lyric, the guts in the ceiling receding to reveal her top half. V2's wings were replaced with limbs, her shining blue eye bore into V1's as it started to crack in the middle, the damage spreading further and further until a girl's arm broke through, stretching unnaturally to grip V1 by the wires. It could only writhe and struggle as her grip grew tighter, screaming at the machine.

"How could you do this! You've killed both of us, your siblings! You were never like us, you can never love, you can only hurt!"

V1 struggled harder, feeling itself being choked until it heard its neck snap.

V1 woke up to its hands resting on its neck, snuggly wrapped around it. Groggily sitting up and resting its hands, the machine was somehow in the band room of UA. Forcing its shaky legs to stand, V1 trudged out of the room to find a line of blood from where it crawled into the room and where it was laying. With a mechanical sigh, V1 dropped its shoulders and headed towards the janitor's closet. Looks like it won't be sleeping tonight. V1 scrubbed the camera footage of what happened, it couldn't have Nezu finding out it was being plagued by nightmares. Unfortunately it didn't know about the hidden microphones all around the school. And it still feels like something's watching it.

Across town, Inferno let out a brash laugh at the sight. They knew it was rude to interrupt their partner's story, but they couldn't help it. Watching as it lay on the floor, silently weeping tears of blood from guilt, Inferno relished in the pure bliss of the machine's pain. Looking to All for One, who was frowning, they muttered a quick apology.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but that was so, so funny! Watch, watch, you'll see what I mean!"

With only a snap of their fingers a floating image of V1 crawling on the floor appeared, the machine shaking violently as it pulled itself into a room. All for One's frown slowly crept upward, not at the pain he was witnessing, but from the sheer power of his new contact. All for One wasn't one to act immediately, evident with the creation of the Nomu's and the grooming of Tomura into his successor, but the power of a quirk like Inferno's warranted it. Gently putting a hand on Inferno's shoulder, All for One forced a fake laugh as he searched for their quirk.

Whenever All for One borrowed or gifted quirks, he always concentrated on one area: the brain. Inferno obviously had an emitter quirk, and All for One was able to pluck the function of activating said quirk from the brain, storing it to give to another person or use himself. So, when All for One looked and didn't find anything, his face paled a ghostly white. No brain, no nervous system, nothing. Inferno was hollow on the inside, and if the grin plastered on the rotating head indicated anything, they knew what All for One was up to.

"What? Surprised I've got nothing? I don't need any of your stupid organs or skeletons to manifest myself here, you know. I think we got off on the wrong foot."

All for One was tugged into his chair, staring at Inferno as they sat into their chair. The box Inferno arrived with jumped into their arms as the small table carrying a tea set sank into the ground and returned as a dining table, filled to the brim with food. Inferno's head stopped spinning to glare at All for One as they spoke.

"Hello, All for One. I am Hell, but you can call me Inferno. Now, I'd like to talk business."

I finished Batman Arkham Shadow (the new VR one) and wanted to make my own fear toxin scene, so that inspired this chapter.

I was thinking of revealing Inferno as Hell later, but the name is so on-the-nose I figured it didn't matter when they were revealed. Unless I genuinely got you, in which case... boo?