Chapter Text
C-800 came back to ‘consciousness’ in the past, rage still simmering beneath the surface of his fur, all the way down to his core.
Well, the fur wasn’t exactly his, he supposed. C-800 had never considered its source before, but he had no doubt that Mangler had skinned a few cats, likely lab-grown to share the exact same color as each other, to make him aesthetically pleasing. A waste of ‘living targets’, his past self would’ve called it.
Nowadays, though, he was pretty happy about it. Cats were, after all, a favorite of… well, he supposed it didn’t matter anymore. Not until he, too, got sent here. Or rather, ideally, until he managed to get back with that cat lady’s head in tow.
Despite his antenna having survived his way here, he still hadn’t received a message from the future. Considering the circumstances of his departure, that was to be expected, although for him, too, not to have sent anything was worrying, to say the least. Maybe the communication simply cut when the time-traveling distance was too large. C-800 hoped so, as the other option was that something had happened to…
Thinking about the circumstances that led him here only made the anger within renew in intensity, prompting C-800 to will himself into not thinking about it, at least for a time, despite how impossible such a task seemed. He needed to focus on the mission; coming back was a secondary goal.
Luckily for him, a helpful distraction showed itself in the form of a cat approaching him, its body language indicating curiosity and excitement. It was probably happy to have found a new friend in the middle of nowhere.
C-800 would’ve laughed at its foolishness, had his systems been implemented with such a feature. He brought out his shotgun and aimed at the creature, giving it no time to worry before pressing the trigger, ending its life in an instant. He stared at the pile of blood and guts on the floor, eyelids slowly blinking—one of Mangler’s favorite details he’d ever implemented in one of his designs. Well, before he moved on to his newer toys, at least.
And to think he would’ve once enjoyed the act of accomplishing his purpose.
Now, he merely wanted to be done with this mission. Despite the circumstances of his landing up here, C-800 dared to hope that Mangler had prepared a way back for him, should he succeed in his mission.
That was, in fact, the very reason he prioritized killing the cat lady over immediately finding a way back; he would simply not be allowed back, should he arrive empty-handed. Even with her head pierced upon his claws, he wouldn’t be welcomed back as a hero, but there was no point banishing a functional, sentient tool that had efficiently accomplished its purpose.
Hell, Mangler would probably love to parade him around in his lab while he was still alive, instead of impaling his body on the wall and singing embellished tales about his accomplishments like he’d done with some of his other creations.
At least, killing cats served as fantastic stress relief. His programming, too, was satisfied by the act of propulsing lead through one of those creatures; being able to give in to his own murderous instincts was always quite the relief.
It was much less relaxing, however, when those same instincts made him shoot a flying cat that had just landed down next to the previous one’s remains.
It took him a second to notice, of course, just how wrong that sounded. Cats did not fly, nor did they look like that, so small and feathery.
Despite this, he couldn’t help but see the creature as a cat, feeling his metallic claws unconsciously clench around the trigger of his gun, the explosion sound ringing throughout the silent street. How strange, that killing this non-feline cat fed him the same burst of sheer good that the more typical cat right before just did.
His censors were probably busted, likely from the time-travel. C-800 couldn’t tell for sure, seeing as he also couldn’t perceive the creature as anything but a cat, yet it seemed like the most logical explanation. It only became more probable as he found even more variations of cats, including one that stood up on two legs and had a decoy head of some kind. Despite shooting it clean off, the cat had still managed to run off.
He just hoped he hadn’t shot anything important. His programming filled him with approval with each press of the trigger, at least, which made for quite the fun hunting session, compared to the more technical, reward-less trials back in his native time.
Enjoying the euphoria of cat genocide, C-800 continued his murdering spree all the way up to a strange house on a hill, one his censors heavily insisted he go and visit. Despite not being able to see past walls himself, C-800 knew his cat-detecting gear had been granted such an ability; he just hoped the house wasn’t filled with those tower-like, smelly cat variants. He had already been led to small, wooden boxes filled with them a few times throughout his trip to the house, and the experience had left him annoyed at his own smell for the next while.
C-800 wondered why Mangler had bothered to give him a sense of smell, when he seemed so against his creations showing the slightest amount of sentience. His best guess was that his creator thought it could be useful to track down fleeing or hiding prey, though his sight and his enhanced hearing, respectively, were both better at doing so.
In any case, his smell, as well as his other senses, were all overwhelmed by the ever-increasing amount of proof that many cats stayed around the area, the closer C-800 got to the house on the hill.
There were tracks upon tracks of cat paws all over the ground, many of which leading towards the city and the desert in the distance, all of which having very distinct smells, indicating just how many cats had gone through here. On top of that, there were a few tufts of fur strayed about here and there, as well as what looked like broken items that had never been properly disposed of.
C-800 almost thought he recognized some technology that definitely should not exist this early, though it was broken far beyond recognition, and so he couldn’t be certain. Still, he was not surprised by this; everything about this strange home screamed that it wasn’t a normal one, which explained why his censors were going crazy over it.
This was the cat lady’s home, he was sure of it.
And that realization brought with it another bout of anger, making his stride towards the house that much more determined. Were it not for this foolish human messing with the universe’s timeline, he never would’ve been granted the ‘honor’ of eliminating the threat from the past. He never would’ve had to deal with the possibility of having to stay here until his shell was too rusty to properly recharge. He never would’ve had to deal with leaving him behind, despite their many promises to one another.
This torture like no other was, well and truly, her fault.
C-800 would make sure to kill every last one of the cats in that building before shooting her limbs off one by one. Not before learning how to return to the future from her, of course. She’d managed it a few times already, surely she had a way to do so consistently—he’d heard rumors about her and her cats appearing in some kind of time machine.
When he arrived at the front door, he found the woman and four cats waiting for him in front, geared-up and clearly ready to fight. With his trusty shotgun in hand, C-800 rushed forward, enjoying the look of terror on the woman’s face as she realized just how protective his outer shell truly was.
The battle had been going on for far longer than C-800 thought it would’ve.
Despite feeling a fair amount of pride in how much of a technological marvel he was, thanks to Mangler programming such a trait into his very identity, C-800 could recognize the weaknesses in his design. While he had, by all means, a near-indestructible metal shell, it was never one that was meant to last.
Mangler had created him with the future’s cats in mind: disorganized, fleeting figures scraping by in the shadows while avoiding a controlling force that wanted them dead. The ideal cat hunter, himself—for a while, at least—needed to have as many options to track and kill, from close or afar, single-target or a whole group at once. Thanks to his many weapons, as well as his cat-like appearance, he could blend in from afar without raising alarms all the while being ready to throw grenades left, right and center the moment the opportunity to do so showed itself.
What the future’s cats weren’t, however, were fighters. They were malnourished and had to move every other week to avoid getting found out; they had no time to get in tip top shape and consider fighting back against the oppressing force, let alone the resources and the energy to gather tools and armor to fight them with. At best, the cats would gather together and pool some funds together to buy one strong weapon, fragile as it might have been.
His armor was specifically created to counter such a hail mary on the cats’ end; hell, Mangler was confident he could take a mini nuclear explosion to the face without flinching.
The woman’s cats, however, were completely different. Not only did they have gear, which already made C-800 more wary than he had ever been with the cats from his time, but they also all had these weird colors, as well as abilities he never thought a cat could have.
To be more accurate, abilities he never believed a cat could have. People had obviously seen them use many attacks, when they’d gone through his home and killed dozens, yet they had somehow managed to avoid every single camera on their way through, rendering them quite mysterious, all things considered.
C-800 had believed they simply had gear that allowed them to mimic some strange, very powerful skills.
He, clearly, had been wrong. While the power’s source was, indeed, contained within some gear—those collars, according to his sensors—they didn’t merely copy these skills’ power, they actually granted the cats the ability to own them, as well as many traits a mere cat should never normally end up with, no matter how many diseases and disorders they ended up saddled with.
This realization came to him the moment he saw one of the lady’s cats, a white one, slashing his blue ally. C-800 truly thought them stupid, for a moment, before seeing the blue one’s wounds close in real time, as if she had just taken some form of healing.
No amount of mere gear could make a claw heal someone so easily, let alone decide when to do so and when to hurt, instead—an ability he’d discovered the white cat had after taking a slash from his paw, a few minutes later.
It made him fight more carefully, at least, with C-800 continuously walking back throughout the entire fight, doing his best to avoid the bird trying to claw out his eyes—optic sensors, to be more accurate—all the while wincing whenever the blue one managed to hit him with those white sparks of hers, as they burned the fur of his outer shell to a crisp faster than his opponents’ other attacks.
Still, no amount of caution while fighting would alleviate the fact that the cats could heal, while he lacked the ability to do just that.
Having walked back all the way to the edge of town, C-800 noticed how the attacks had worn down his armor enough so that he actually got hit. Curse Mangler for making feel pain; no amount of ‘learning his mistakes from the suffering’ mattered when he could learn anything he wanted by sticking a data key in his mouth.
C-800 wished he was kidding. It had been a convenient ability in the past, at least.
Now, he just felt as the dark red cat’s hook dug inside the opening, pulling him forward before ripping the opening apart, bringing his entire jaw along with it, the piece of metal dropping to the ground only for the bird to push it back into him with its wings, sending C-800 flying back.
He kept on fighting, of course, but his fate seemed already determined. This had turned into a battle of endurance, and although he had nearly enough firepower to cut through and win on the spot, the cats’ agility as well as the woman’s rare shouts allowed them to stand their ground against him long enough to heal back, time after time. He still got in a few good hits, and he’s pretty sure he gave the blue one a concussion strong enough to stop her from using her abilities as often as she once could, but the end result was unavoidable.
By the time his outer shell was destroyed beyond recognition, rendering him a walking bunch of mechanical parts that didn’t look like anything in particular, the dark red one managed to send their cleaver into his understomach, sending him to the ground.
C-800 growled as the woman approached, his vision—already damaged from the fight, going by the void-like black square he could now consistently see to the left, relative to wherever he decided to look—struggling to focus on her face from this low to the ground, rendering it blurry.
Still, as he felt his ‘consciousness’ leave him, he could only think of a certain ‘cat’ he really wished would’ve been by his side in his last moments.
C-800 came to ‘consciousness’ as nothing more than one of Dr. Mangler’s tools, an extermination machine meant to assist the authorities in ridding the world of the pests living among them.
And yet, as he would later learn, Mangler was not one to be satisfied with the bare minimum. That was the reason why he hadn’t stayed solely Mangler’s tool for very long.
When his lab had been given funding to produce a perfect weapon to kill cats, it had been assumed that a majority of his budget would go into research, into finding new methods to kill cats beyond what they could already do on their own, in order to save time and resources in the long run. People, according to Mangler’s many monologues, were expecting him to create a new variant of a gun, or a city-wide explosion that would instantly explode every cat unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast radius; something more standard, typical.
Mangler had been exceedingly glad to prove them wrong. He even had the golden opportunity to do so through his newest fascination, at the time: machines. Sentient ones, to be precise, for what was more fascinating than a ‘conscious’ machine, one who could learn from previous experiences and extrapolate new orders based on the current situation?
Their methods to kill cats didn’t need to be reworked, they merely needed to be optimised. Why bother spending coin after coin on new methods to kill vermin when shooting them with some lead worked perfectly well? All they needed was a form of manpower that would accomplish their role, but better, and robots were the perfect avenue to explore, in that sense. They were more resilient, didn’t need much beyond a bit of upkeep from time to time, and, most importantly, wouldn’t complain about being forced to work for inhumane periods of time.
Mangler’s research into robotics—simili-sentient robots, to be more exact—culminated into the creation of C-100, which, by all means, was a gigantic metal box with a screen. It was entirely useless, and would’ve likely gotten Mangler killed for wasting government funding, were it not for how he had somehow managed to simulate sentience in a robot.
The sheer potential of the idea, now that it had actually been done, protected Mangler from any repercussions his actions should’ve had. There was a near-infinite amount of money to be made in what would, to simplify the situation—as the government had clearly done—be the inevitable new direction the world’s most popular technologies would follow.
From then on, Mangler’s lab got an exponentially-increasing amount of budget from the higher-ups, with a lot of pressure put on him to deliver more grand technological advances, this time both in the weaponry department and in the day-to-day, more casual ones. According to Mangler—and his ego; not even coming to existence twenty minutes prior would’ve stopped C-800 from noticing it—he effortlessly took to the task and began producing robot after robot for the next few years, only perfecting his ‘consciousness’ technology time after time.
According to him, although he felt immense pride in all of his creations, as well as the fact that they were now used by most of the city, he would always keep a soft spot for the C-100 series of robots, which he only ever attributed to his new, official releases when it came to cat-hunting robots.
C-800 had questioned the statement, wondering why Mangler would abide by such strict rules if C-100 itself, the very first of its lineage, had nothing to do with combat. His creator had pat him on the head, then, a sensation he had never fully forgotten since, smiling with an expression he had been—and, a month later, still was—confused by.
This was his first exposure to the concept of sentimentality, looking back. Well, feelings, rather—sentimentality was specifically about positive associations and memories one might have with either another person, an object or a place, according to Mangler. He kept on confusing the two, having no personal experience of his own to associate the words with.
His creator had associated the experience of explaining the difference between different terminology for feelings towards that of describing sight to someone who had never been able to see. It was, supposedly, an entirely different dimension of being, one that could only ever be understood through experience.
C-800, admittedly, didn’t personally care much about these feelings, beyond a vague sense of annoyance at the contradictions and inconsistencies between various terms that his systems picked up on, lacking the emotional expertise needed to identify the nuances involved. Mangler seemed fascinated with his C-800’s perception of them, on the other hand, and, eager to please, he stayed open-minded towards the idea of ‘emotions’, illogical and pointless as they seemed.
This state of his continued for his first few months of existence, with him not thinking too much about feelings, focusing much more on the many other things he had to learn to catch up and best his predecessors in the C-100 line.
Contrary to how he had gone about it the previous times, Mangler had decided he would teach C-800 what he needed to know personally, rather than off-load the work onto some random intern in the lab, or on one of the predecessors. This meant he never really got to learn about his previous versions, beyond seeing a few of them from afar every so often.
They were… strange, to say the least. Fittingly with what he knew of his creator, the C-100 line wasn’t a single sentient robot progressively getting better with insight gained from the previous iterations. Instead, Mangler seemed to enjoy starting from the ground up every time, sometimes even choosing a gimmick of some kind and sticking with it to the end, supposedly for his amusement.
Within the C-100 line, he had only ever seen C-500 and C-700. C-100, the original, was locked tight in a building just large enough to hold it. C-200 and C-300, while functional for a time, had been the victims of a malfunction that caused their insides to melt and re-solidify over and over, ending up with a mess of metal that could no longer function. Their bodies were strung up on the walls of the main lab, surrounded with trophies Mangler had supposedly obtained thanks to their creation. C-800 had found the practice strange, though his creator had attributed it to sentimentality, prompting C-800 to give up on understanding the behavior.
C-400, meanwhile, was a strange case. Mangler didn’t like talking about him—all he would ever say was that he was ‘no longer around’, and that he was the reason why the next few designs focused much more on the technical side of things, rather than managing to create a truly sentient machine.
C-800 had asked a sizeable amount of pleading cats to tell him more information about C-400 in exchange for their lives, whenever curiosity struck him hard enough for him to bother. They rarely ever answered him, and he made sure to kill them even if they did, but, from what he’d gathered, C-400 had probably caused his own death. Whether by slicing his metal open or by lingering around in a dangerous situation for an abnormal amount of time, he had no clue, but he was fairly certain he’d never get to learn more about this specific predecessor of his; Mangler wouldn’t appreciate knowing he’d tried to find more information about C-400 in the first place, let alone actually let anything more about him slip
C-500, on the other hand, was much less of a mystery. Although seeing her from afar multiple times, C-800 had never noticed anything special with her. She did her job well, and could hunt cats with proficiency, but her batteries often left her needing to charge, making her only marginally more resilient and efficient than humans at exterminating pests. Seeing as she was created right after the C-400 fiasco, she was also saddled with the reality of having a frankly under-developped personality chip, one which came pre-installed with very few traits and had little to no capacity for adaptive learning, which Mangler always compared to the ‘growth’ humans would go through as they experienced life.
She was good enough at her job, always coming back successful, and though the idea of entertaining any kind of bond with her was laughable, even despite his inability to laugh, he respected her for what she was: an efficient, although barebones, killing machine.
C-600, her, was one C-800 had never gotten to see. Not alive, at least; a picture of her was hung up on the wall, right next to C-300’s corpse. According to Mangler, she had been caught in an attack organised by the vermin in hiding, who had somehow gathered the funds to create a bomb. Wanting to leave an impact on the city and throw off their technological advances, they’d targeted her specifically, leaving nothing but metal oxide behind and a stray mechanical paw behind.
C-800 had asked why her paw wasn’t hung up on the wall along with her picture, considering how C-200 and C-300’s bodies were both put on display. Mangler had replied that he wished for people to remember the best version of his creations, not what remained of them.
Retroactively, having heard that explanation, C-800 finally understood C-700’s less-than-convenient design when it came to hunting cats. They were a tank, well and truly; a massive, metallic beast that could’ve probably undergone thousands of explosions without as much as a scratch on their shell. Time-wise, C-700 had marked Mangler’s shortest delay between two new iterations of the C-100 line, which, C-800 could only guess, had something to do with sentimentality.
According to the other people working in the labs—most of whom he’d simply scared into answering honestly—their personality was extremely close to C-600’s, to the point that some of them believed Mangler had used a copy of her personality chip. C-800 knew him too well to believe such a thing, as his pride in his creations was much too intense to try and copy his own work—even industrial production chains of his designs were completely out of his hands; he gave the bare minimum amount of blueprints necessary for their construction, always making sure to remove the personality chip.
He did not, however, rescind all plausibility to the idea that Mangler had unconsciously created a new design that was very close to the previous one.
And finally, marking the longest time between two new iterations of the C-100 line, was himself. A marvel of technology, one combining the good of every robot that had come before him. A perfect, deadly mixture of C-500’s diligence in her tasks and of C-700’s incredible armor, along with some new improvements when it came to inventory management—be it guns or grenades, he could carry it all without a sweat—and managing to seem friendly to the vermin at first glance.
The more Mangler praised his design, therefore praising both C-800 and himself, the more he was certain his personality chip had been implanted with an innate sense of endless satisfaction from his creator saying such things. With a pride tied to his very core, elated to be the creation Mangler was clearly the proudest of. He’d told him so repeatedly, in fact, a statement which C-800 simply couldn’t stop thinking about. Which he would later regret being unable to stop thinking about.
Since his creation, Mangler had nearly never left his side. Be it to show him around the city, to lead him to the training ground, to teach him how to use weapons or even to pass through the nights, his charging pod located next to the man’s bed, Mangler was always there. He and his creator were a unit, and he gladly took in all of the wisdom that was passed down to him, be it from Mangler himself or from C-700 and C-500 talking about their experience on the field, all the while Mangler looked on with a proud smile on his face from the side.
Even when it came to his missions, Mangler was still by his side. He never went on the field himself, of course, but when C-800 got back from his first hunt, blood still dripping from his claws and thin smoke still escaping from his sniper’s barrel, to find Mangler waiting for him with open arms, it was an experience like no other.
C-800 got to learn about his abilities, his roles, his home with Mangler by his side, with his beloved creator metaphorically holding his paw the entire time. He still didn’t understand sentimentality and emotions, nor did he get to know why cats were so evil, beyond simply knowing that they were, but he got to know who his ‘father figure’ was—a term he’d, at the time, learnt from a stray book someone had left in the research center—and that was enough for him.
Until, of course, Mangler suddenly began leaving him to his own devices, telling him that he knew what to do, and to continue training hard or hunting in his free-time until getting called back to base for a mission. With a bit of reticence, C-800 had understood the behavior, logically understanding that Mangler couldn’t stay with him all the time, and that now that he was functional, the man would allow him to live his own life, all the while continuing to care about his beloved creation.
It was fine. C-800 could tolerate it. He craved for a presence by his side that would always be there, sure, but he could live with this. He was still the favorite.
And yet, Mangler made himself more and more scarce, somehow always too busy to talk with his own creation, despite how they had been as close as could be mere days prior.
And yet, a few months later, despite not having spoken with him in weeks, Mangler still managed to teach him something.
Emotions, true emotions, in the form of seeing Mangler exit his robotics lab while announcing C-900’s creation as something boiled within him.