Hermitcraft Nonsense

See the Stars?

Here's the first request! I have ideas for a couple, and then there might be a few that I don't get to before I decide to crack down and get to work with my big project.

Request by DayDr3am3r420

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"Aren't the stars beautiful, NPG? Why aren't you looking at them?" EX asked him.

NPG hummed with his quiet mechanical voice simulator. "I assume so. Everyone talks about them being nice. Where should I be looking?"

He didn't expect the surprised choke that came from his partner. "What does that mean?" EX questioned with a bewildered tone.

NPG shrugged. "I don't sense any anamoly surrounding us that would indicate where I'm supposed to be looking."

The android didn't have a reading of EX's emotions, but he somehow knew that the clone was looking at him.

"Don't you- you look up? Do you not see the millions of tiny lights above us?"

NPG tried to imagine such a thing- though very hard for his mechanical mind that had never seen something to have a concept of it.

"No."

"How are you missing it?"

NPG sighed. "I do not see? Not as you do."

EX was quiet. For too long.

"What do you mean...? You don't see? Then- how do you-"

"I have other sensors, duh," NPG added one of the "slang" terms that his friend had taught him. He was well aware that he possessed no optical input, why did he feel so... self-aware (he thought there was a better synonym that he did not know) to admit this to EX?

EX turned NPG's shoulders to him- he felt the touch and his spacial sensors flared that a human-sized form moved closer to him.

EX gently cupped NPG's face. His thumb brushed just above NPG's cheek and there was an intimate silence as there was the quiet sound and touch of the human's breathing.

"Then what are these that I've been looking at this entire time...?" he murmured. NPG couldn't decipher his emotion from his general database he had been developing. His voice was soft but laced with something he didn't know.

NPG shrugged. "I am unaware of what you're referring to, Exy."

There was a poke at NPG's face and he jolted at the very different surface than his skin that EX touched. It was hard and glasslike- was that on NPG's face?

"I don't know, the EYES that you have? With the double lenses that are always focusing and refocusing? And what I think is like a flash that I've never seen you use? How long have we known each other and I never realized that you're... blind?"

When EX said it like that, NPG felt... ashamed. He dipped his head and tucked in his shoulders.

"One thousand and twenty-three days," he quickly answered from his calculations from the Most Important Date. He had realized that EX didn't really care to know how long from the exact Most Important Moment when he asked that question (he also knew that EX didn't know that the time of their meeting was saved as the "Most Important Moment of My Existence" in NPG's memory files. The only other significant times were "Grian's Birthday" and "Creation Day" but he didn't really care about those anymore.)

EX groaned. "Too long..."

NPG sat still without looking up to EX. "It's alright, Exy. I'm perfectly capable of interpreting my surroundings based on my other sensors-"

"No it's not."

NPG stopped himself at EX's growl and he felt his equivalent of fear spike through him. EX's breathing had gotten heavier and his heartbeat raised. NPG knew this to be a standard reaction of either anger or fear, but for EX it was something that only happened when he discovered something about NPG that made him upset.

"How could that... that..." EX muttered something rather unsavory about NPG's creator under his breath, trying to respect NPG's wish to not disrespect Grian while he was unavaliable but failing with NPG's sensitive audio inputs. He did not react to it though. He knew that EX had strong feelings about both their creators that NPG did not share (for it was a human emotion) but understood the reasoning behind.

"...create you with this absolute atrocity of an organic body, but a mechanical mind so you call natural senses inputs and outputs when you just have ears and skin and blood, all except for your eyes? What kind of a sick joke was Grian trying to pull?!" the human shouted, presumably into the sky since it was not at all at NPG.

NPG shrugged. "I don't think he ever meant to joke when he summoned me."

There was another silence between the two. NPG could feel the fury rolling off his friend but didn't know how to quell it. It was hard for NPG to understand why EX always got so angry for him when he was not angry himself.

"What color is my hair?" EX asked suddenly.

"White," NPG immediately replied.

"How do you know that?"

"You've told me. When you decided to grow it out and stop dying your hair brown to look like Xisuma."

"Do you know what white looks like? Or brown? Can you describe them?"

With that NPG had no answer and he knew that the point that EX was trying to make succeeded. After a moment of no reply EX groaned that turned into a frustrated wordless yell to the "stars."

NPG hummed. "It's getting late. You should sleep."

EX huffed. "You should too. You can't run on naps between me figuring out tech stuff forever."

"It's called going into standby mode."

EX stood and gripped NPG's shoulder to force him to stand up and join him in their little wooden, rustic house the android had thrown together before their first night in this world.

"Call it what you want, but you need to actually sleep if you want to not be a zombie tomorrow morning. It's already past midnight."

As NPG picked up the heat signatures on his skin of the torches and lanterns of their house, he felt his energy levels dropping. He stiffled a yawn, that EX made no attempt to hide. EX climbed the stairs to their shared bedroom loft (for first night houses did not have enough room for separate bedrooms) while NPG opted to float to their bed made of two beds shoved together to make one.

"You only float when you're tired nowadays," EX commented with a hint of humor. NPG hummed and climbed under the covers, knowing exactly where his bed stopped and started so he wouldn't stub his toe.

EX put out the lantern lights with a quiet his that left only the muted light and heat of the torches downstairs. The bed let out a slight creak and the covers rustled as the human climbed into bed to snuggle for the night.

"Goodnight, Exy," NPG said clearly but still quietly.

"G'night, G," EX mumbled, "I'll take a look at your hardware in the mornin'... see if I can find that disconnect... You deserve to see the world for real, y'know."

NPG smiled as EX drifted away into sleep.

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Word count: 1155

Is this fluff or angst? I know it's both but does it lean one way or another?

NGL I forgot that for me NPG is a very disfunctional combination of human, demon, and robot until like halfway through so please forgive this very confusing portrayal of the roboy. He just exists and wants EX to be happy while EX wants NPG to be able to function as a being with him, and both without their creators.