“Four units to the left… Push through this grove, and march forward. Destination in… about half a cycle.”
Loretracker Willow receded from the console and turned to press open a door. She nimbly swung herself up and over as the door closed behind her, then landed on the roof of the Caravan, where Alphi was waiting for her. The lumbering behemoth shuddered and groaned as it turned at her direction and began to follow the orders programmed in…
“We are not pursuing the lead we found in the cave, Loretracker…” Alphi said, curiously. Her tone lacked the confusion it might once have had, since she knew that Willow was always a step ahead...
“It is something that will take time and a bit of deduction, for certain. Meanwhile, we still must obey the mandates of those who are above us within the hierarchy; the Scientists have asked us to scout a location that may have primitive, but usable fuel. One step closer to returning to our homeland…”
“...Mm… Well, in my case… visiting for the first time?”
“...I suppose so…” Willow said, a bit wistfully. She took her usual seat at the helm of the Caravan, perched with her legs crossed and Alphi sat in the centre of their fold, nuzzling up to the larger bot’s belly…
“...But for now, we focus on the tasks at hand, and worry about questions of that nature later. This is simply the rote work of a Ranger…”
The Princess sighed and tilted her head onto her fist. Back to little more than watching the trees go by and wishing she was training already. She traced a finger on her glowing midsection softly and then chuckled to herself…
At least, of all the creatures who could be her caretaker, a Loretracker always had something interesting to talk about...
While the newfound leader of the Rangers wished for excitement, the trees around her rustled with activity as her fellow Forgeborn leapt through their branches…
Most were Dummies, who had a simple task; spread as wide from the Caravan as possible, so that the land could be swept for anything worth discovering. If something unusual was picked up on their sensors, it would be recorded and sent back to those who could review and pursue further action…
To the half-sentient robots who made up the drone corps of ‘lesser’ Forgeborn, it was probably a far nicer life than the tasks of the other dummy types; the endless dull analysis of a Scientist Dummy, or the Soldier Dummies and their destiny for the scrap heap…
Instead, the Ranger Dummies could leap through verdant nature, glimpse vistas and wild sights that even Elite Forgeborn could barely conceptualize… Yet, despite this, some still grasped for more than their station could achieve. Even half-sentience was enough to potentially foster a spark of curiosity…
Was it a wonder then that so many of even these lowly Forgeborn had found ways to sneakily install Internal Forges? It wasn’t really something they SHOULD have been doing, obviously, but where there’s a will, there’s always a shady blueprint that you can build for a few spare parts in privacy at some point… And then… Well…
...if you survived a messy self installation of it…
...You would end up like… her.
Just another Ranger Dummy, her grapple snapping to each branch as she swung along. Even her round tummy wasn’t so odd, as most Dummies used that space for storage far before the Internal Forge was discovered… yet the subtle glow of that gentle roundness showed it was no mere storage. How well could a womb tinkered together by a faceless labourer like her even work?
...The Dummy didn’t seem to know, nor care. The shimmering warmth made her giddy… The potential was enough of a fire in and of itself...
She had gotten this far, and now she just needed a little more… One more special ingredient to swipe when no one was looking, so she could finally experience…
...Oh?
She paused in her thoughts and in her swinging between the branches, landing on one to peer down at what looked like a small pond of liquid. Of course, water existed on Ova and a little bog wasn’t unusual… but something about the way this one gleamed and shimmered in the light drew the lesser Forgeborn’s eye…
She attached her hook to the branch and began to rappel down the size of the immense tree. She unspooled her line slowly… caaaarefully… not wanting t-…
SNAP!
...had she damaged the line while she went along? Perhaps while she installed her womb, something had been severed? Or… More likely… The strain of the extra weight put just enough fray to the cord that it wore down, until…“!!!”
SPLASH!
The cover she had placed atop her midsection for concealment clattered to the side… She hit the pool directly, briefly submerged in what was certainly NOT water, and then quickly pushed herself back to the surface…She gripped the shore and yanked herself out immediately. Her eyes were wide and her body quivered as she saw what was clinging to her…
Nanoculi, the Scientists called it… it was the raw liquid metal that formed the pieces and components in one born from an Internal Forge, like Alphi had been. It was a thin, silvery substance tinged with faded colour, and according to what she’d heard… it was somehow alive, even in this state.
But more worrisome to her? She could feel it had seeped into her… Invaded her at the most intimate of places… She shook her head firmly and backed away… only to suddenly thump herself against a tree trunk and give a soft whimper, arm tightly clutched around her midsection…
Her Forge whirred and hissed… She was briefly delighted when she realized she had put all the components together correctly, and everything seemed to function…
...then the reality of the situation smacked her straight in the gut, and she was forced to arch and spread her legs to make room, as her middle swelled quickly…
Too much of the living metal, and not quite the right safety protocols in place from her jerry-rigged womb. Now as it was given all the material it could want, it spooled up to do its job, and make a baby…
She tried to stand, but the sudden weight was too much. She thumped back to a sit and whimpered louder, but stopped just short of contacting her fellow Rangers for help. They might decide that her indiscretion deserved punishment, and she was unsure if she could go through that with a baby shuddering to life inside her…
...OH! Yes, it was beginning to move already, struggling and squirming... A healthy little Newborn… For another moment, she was distracted in drawing her hand down her middle. She turned aside to retrieve a more simple attachment for her arm from her storage, so she could have two hands to pet her middle and potentially help herself with…
In that moment, she was given just a hint of serene bliss… And then…
“Ky-Kyaaaaahhhh…”
She had to cover her transmission speaker to ensure the sound didn’t carry. With a hand clamped firmly on her ‘mouth’, and the other gripping her middle, she tried to stand again… but once more, it was reinforced that she could not…
...that she had so eagerly shoved her way into this task… And now she’d have to PUSH her way out...
The newborn robot wriggled and writhed, just as confused at their awakening as their mother was. But unlike her, they had no concept of the pain she would go through… They simply wanted out!
The poor Dummy squirmed and whimpered… Her knees thumped briefly together, then shoved apart wide. She gasped as sticky fluids splattered from her opening and across the ground…
...oh, she’d barely gotten to touch or explore that… The space between her legs, meant for birthing children and little else… She reached down confusedly and felt the damp residue of the amniotic ooze that had briefly filled her womb, surrounding her baby for what should have been months… or at least weeks of softer gestation…
Now, however, it was might as well have gone unused. It was little more than signal that it would be time to produce this baby, and VERY soon…
The Ranger groaned and dragged her claw down the bark of the tree she laid against, marking it deeply… She clutched at her middle, wondering in horror if she’d done something wrong… Was it supposed to hurt this bad?! Was she supposed to be in so much pain that she could barely think… Surely not…!
But whether something was wrong, it didn’t matter at this stage. She braced, and listened to her body… What was it saying?
It was merely squeezing right now… Crushing inwards, then releasing. Internally, a few processes were idly finished off… the cord was ‘cut’…Then, all at once, the baby’s broad head was shoved hard against her opening…
“KYAAAHHHH…”
That one she couldn’t muffle. Hopefully, her sisters were far away enough that the wouldn’t hear, and come to bear witness to her embarrassment…
She pushed herself back and moaned… Her limbs writhed, curling and scraping along the grass and roots below. She squeezed her eyes shut and huffed a few sharp ‘breaths’, releasing steam as she did...
...well, this is what she wanted, wasn’t it… To hold a baby in her arms? To have a young Newborn she could call her own…? To experience the same shining joy on the faces of Willow, and Alphi, and every other ‘mother’ that had been newly made upon Ova’s surface?!
She wanted to be a mommy too!
She gripped her thighs and pulled herself wider… She huffed a few more times, rocking softly and anticipating the climbing pain… Squeeze… Pressure… Squeeze… Pressure…!THUMP!!!
Like a boot kicked square at her midsection, she felt the violent contraction demand the baby be freed. As the remaining Nanoculi fizzled and evaporated in small spots, that which was within her finished forming new life… and then said new life wanted OUT.
She curled, and obeyed. She pushed, despite not really knowing what she was SUPPOSED to do… But her instincts demanded. Anyway, there was only one way for this child to come out;
The hard way.
She pushed… She shoved, but her untrained mind miscalculated and mistimed. She draped an arm on her forehead and let out another long groan, unable to stop herself from doing so…
So much pulsing agony from a body that barely knew what pain was before. She had fallen from a high tree, smacked her head on low branches… But none of it even remotely compared to the fire burning through her components. Her servos, her ‘muscles’ strained desperately to move the oversized Newborn carefully through her…
“Haaahhh… Big…”
...Dummies couldn’t speak much, besides the Scientists. But they could capture a few words in their database… This one seemed appropriate for the moment; the baby felt bigger than she was, with a head wider around than the hull of the ship they’d flown down on… There was no hope of squeezing it out through such a tiny, spasming opening...
Yet her maternal instincts would not let her give up… And the strain of labour wouldn’t let her catch up to her fellow Rangers for help…
The contraction hit again, slamming into her full force. The bot arched and openly howled now, as she pushed… And PUSHED…
Somehow, during it, she’d changed positions… She went from against the tree, to all fours, to on her knees… She likely changed much more than that, as time began to melt and lose meaning all around her. Nothing existed nor mattered but the baby destroying her hips…
She curled her fist and clawed the tree again, marking it forever with ther effort. She arched, and howled, gripping at her thigh to pull it a bit wider. The baby’s head suddenly thumped against her exit, more fluid spilling and drooling heavily as it did…
No more… No more! She couldn’t do this for much longer… But the Newborn… They were right there! Sat heavily, just waiting to be birthed… She could give up now, and likely burn her core out while her baby fizzled its own lifesigns…
Or… She could PUSH!
She bore down with all the strength in her trembling little body. Gripping her middle, digging her metal hand’s claws directly into the tree next to her, she arched and screamed loud enough to echo through the valley they were exploring…
She strained… She shoved… She cried out for it to be over, and then gave one final strained snarl as something caught… And then…
SPLUT...
...she slumped heavily to the ground, quivering in agony… Everything hurt, and she felt empty… As if she had just had her guts torn from her and tossed on the ground…
She remained still for several minutes, hoping the pain would fade. It lessened, but it didn’t go fully away, to her dismay…
...fortunately, she was distracted from it quickly. A soft whimper had her sit up immediately, and look…
She had done it. Between her legs rested the small, nubile little baby Ranger. The Dummy gripped her face, her eyes widening in shock…
...she had done it.
With shaking hands, she picked up her baby and clutched her tight. The little thing squirmed to get comfortable, then rested against her mama with a happy little coo of contentment…
“...aah…”
The Ranger felt fluid leaking from her eyes. Likely she was internally damaged somehow, but… it didn’t matter. Her baby was in her arms. She’d done it… That’s all she cared about…
For a time, she merely sat there and hugged the baby tightly to her chest… She rocked softly under the shade of the tree until she felt at least a bit of strength return to her limbs. Then, with effort, she pushed herself up and began to stumble onward…
On through the dense foliage, with a baby clutched in her arm, following the signal back to the Caravan… Her mind had abandoned its task of scouting entirely, and was instead fixated entirely on the sleepy Newborn she’d managed to make…
...for the first time, truly, she felt bliss… This was why every Forgeborn, even lesser ones, strived to have one of these Internal Forges…
It was perfect… And there was no way, no matter what they said or did, that she would give up her baby… OR her womb…!
...as she travelled through the trees to reunite with her kin… The leaves around the clearing rustled gently…
...A small band of Scrappers emerged, carefully moving forward and crouching near the pool…
Some of them had new Scrapper children visibly growing inside them. Others had the babies carefully strapped to safe cages on their back, or even had grafted a third arm to always hold their offspring…
One of them dipped their rusted hand in and lifted a palm full of the Nanoculi…
...their eyes narrowed as they put the pieces together, and realized that she was holding the missing piece… The one thing they needed to begin creating new babies, new TROOPS, en masse…
...The mishmashed Forgeborn stood, and pointed back off into the distance, where the wasteland dunes could be seen…
The Scrapper’s leader would want to know of what they’d learned here in the lush forest...