The M Machine

The M Machine is a short novella written by Exotoro.

P for Prologue
"Alright, what the hell is this?" asked Lara. She glanced at her friend in the beanbag, who could only push her red hair back as she played on her Nintendo Switch. Standing before her was a giant metal block with the letter M emblazoned on the front. Seriously, what the hell was this? It was huge, being a cube of stainless steel. How the hell did it even get in their building? The thing was much bigger than the door that was needed to enter the building, and she could only shake her head slowly as she just kept looking at it. She could see her reflection in the steel, but also the pure black M on the machine.

Well, she had assumed it was a machine. It hummed like one, she could certainly feel that against her palm. Lara and her friends had stolen about all the shit in the building, including the permit for it, but she was completely unfamiliar with it. "Yo, Robin, seriously, what the hell is this?" asked Lara. The girl with the red hair, Robin, put down her Nintendo Switch and looked at it.

"It's a M Machine," replied Robin. "It has M on the front."

"Yeah, but what is it?" asked Lara.

"I don't know. Have you asked Barry?" asked Robin, putting up her shoulders slowly.

"No, I haven't asked fucking Barry." Lara scowled.

Barry was a piece of shit and the only one who spent more time playing video games than Robin and the only one who spent more time jacking off than herself. Those were practically the only two things he could do. Everything else proved he was a fucking waste of space, but they were just a bunch of kids left after everything went dark and they were the only things left. He fucking reeked of his own cum and shit.

"Well, I don't know. Marian and Juan haven't gotten back since yesterday and well, poor Will got eaten last week. I try not to think about these fucking things, Lara." Robin growled.

"Hey, hey." replied Lara, putting her hands on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry, but it's fucking bleak out here and you're yelling at me about some fucking box I don't know how it even got in here and just..." Robin started crying. Lara hugged her close as she continued to sob. "I don't want to go... I don't want to die..."

"You're with me, okay? I'm the fiercest fucking bitch here, I'm not going to let them take you." replied Lara. Robin could tell she meant it, and that helped simmer her down a bit.

"I'm just so scared..." Robin shivered. Lara moved her face closer to hers, planting a kiss on her cheek. Robin blushed a deep red. Lara would usually try and reserve some distance, but Robin was just holding her tight and close.

"R-robin..." Lara said, feeling her unusually close. Robin looked into her eyes intensely and without knowing how they got there, their lips were pressed against each in a deep kiss. Lara was taken aback by the forwardness of it, but it was something she had actually wanted for a long time. As she felt Robin's hands move up her shirt, she could tell something else she wanted for a long time was going to happen too.

"Hey, what happened to the electricity?" asked Barry from the stairs. Lara and Robin quickly parted from each other. Piece of shit. Lara had only hoped there would be time later to truly mess around with Robin in the way both of them desired. Right now, they had to deal with this piece of shit.

"I dunno, maybe it's a bad socket now. It's not like the tentacle monsters steal fucking electricity or some shit." growled Lara. Robin hugged Lara tight.

"I dunno, I tried the rest of the sockets. I think I should probably try the downstairs ones..." Barry replied, taking a step down. Robin rushed over to her Nintendo Switch.

"Yeah, I don't think you'll be having much luck either. My charger stopped charging too." Robin replied. The lights were always off in the building, but what gives? Something was off. Something did cut off the power supply.

Lara growled. "Great, you must have wasted all of it, you piece of shit!" Lara said, about to throw a punch at Barry if she could find his dumb ass. She stopped before she could even see him. Nah, he wasn't behind it. But that mean someone was going to have to look to find the source of the damage. She wanted to get Barry out there because if she was going to sacrifice anyone on this, it would be the lazy, awful sack of shit that hadn't done anything for anyone since they arrived here. Lara knew that was a bad plan though, because Barry wouldn't know jackshit about where to look and it'd be an absolute suicide mission. She didn't want to send Robin, not when they were close to probably having sex. And well, she wasn't sending out herself. "...I'm sorry, I don't think there's anything we can do."

Barry seemed shocked by this. "Wait, for real? We're just stuck like this?" asked Barry.

"Well, I can't send you out there, I can't send Robin out there, and I can't send myself. All three are not worth the risk, really." Lara replied.

"I'll fucking do it..." Barry replied, walking down the stairs as he went out into the wasteland. Well, no point in stopping him. Lara leaned against the M Machine, her arms laying across the machine's front side, her back against the M.

"Well, I suppose we have all the privacy we want, Robin." replied Lara. Robin shook her head.

"How can you be thinking of that when Barry's out there on a fucking suicide mission?" asked Robin. She looked actually kind of pissed. Lara stuck out her hands.

"Alright, I may have misread the mood. Yes, we need to do something about that, but with no weapons or anything, how are we going to do that?" asked Lara.

"I dunno... you can think of something if you actually put your mind to it..." replied Robin. Lara sighed, her back hitting the wall of the M Machine. The machine roared with a new life, Lara moving back as she watched it slowly transform, shifting into new block shapes like Tetris blocks. She held Robin tightly as the two stood back. The machine was shifting and transforming, breaking the ceiling before it suddenly stopped, steam shooting everywhere.

Before them was a giant steel mecha, with the cockpit open.

"Holy shit." Lara shouted. Robin walked cautiously towards it, Lara joining her. Lara hopped inside the cockpit, taking the front chair as Robin made her way in the back. A bunch of buttons were in front of Lara and Lara knew how to operate precisely none of them. She tapped on a button with a classy looking C printed on it, which closed the cockpit. Well, she was committed to this now.

The button layout became more familiar with her now. It was like a QWERTY keyboard, although she could only presume that every single button did something that started with the letter on it. In front of the keyboard was two twin joysticks. Each girl had a holographic screen to view the outside world. Using the right joystick, Lara was able to turn the mecha's head to the left and then to the right, viewing the world through it's "eyes".

"This kicks ass." Lara said in disbelief.

"Well, we need to get going now." replied Robin, clearly unsure of what was going on. Lara nodded and kicked the left joystick forward, the mecha moving forward. She pressed the F key, which she hoped to GOD was the flight button.

She was right, and the mecha began to hover off the ground. Moving the joy stick while holding the F key made it ascend higher, while pressing down on the joystick made it descend kind of clumsily. "Okay, don't lie, this kicks ass!" Lara shouted.

"I mean, it does, but I'm unsure what my buttons do..." replied Robin, glancing down. She had a bunch of colored buttons, the whole rainbow plus black, white, and brown. She tapped the red button, with a red laser coming out from the mecha's "eyes". Perhaps somewhat lower, as they were able to see it on their camera.

"You must be special moves or something!" replied Lara. She took to the skies to see if she could locate Barry. It didn't take her long... Barry had hardly moved too far and already one of the tentacle monsters had him in it's grip. Lara took another guess as she looked at the tentacle monster from afar, pressing the H key to home onto the monster.

This time, she was wrong in her assumption. They plummeted to the ground. "Is... H for Halt?" asked Robin. Probably. Lara pressed the F key and began to take off again. She pressed the L key, hoping to god it was for lock-on. This time she was correct as a reticle appeared on the tentacle monster. Robin eagerly pressed the red key, turning the tentacle monster into goo. Barry howled in pain. His leg was also goo.

"Oh... that's kind of unfortunate..." grimaced Lara.

"Eek... that's just kind of gross." Robin replied.

Barry looked like he was in serious pain so they halted the robot and opened up the cockpit with the C key. They rushed over to him.

"The giant mecha was cool and all, but did you really need to melt my fucking leg off?" he screeched at the two of them.

"Well, I don't know what else you wanted us to do. Anyway, we're going to go back to the mecha and look for another place to stay. Maybe we can do something about your leg or something later." Lara replied, helping Robin take him inside the mecha, where they laid him flat. They took off with a press of the F key, soaring through the desolate landscape.

Thus ends the beginning of this tale.

Trivia

 * This story was written when Exotoro was just really bored, having no real plot outline to follow.