![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Title: Reprogrammed
Fandom: Chrono Trigger
Characters: Robo/Lucca
Rating: NSFW
Length: 700-ish words
Content notes: Major spoilers, all the way up through Geno Dome. References to non-con experimentation, dubious consent, and blood/body horror.
Trying to finish the
fan_flashworks reposts at some point this month. Also going to try for the 50-challenge streak (with some art in there too, if I can manage it,) so I'll try to keep up with the new crossposts in a more timely fashion.
Fandom: Chrono Trigger
Characters: Robo/Lucca
Rating: NSFW
Length: 700-ish words
Content notes: Major spoilers, all the way up through Geno Dome. References to non-con experimentation, dubious consent, and blood/body horror.
Trying to finish the
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
Humans had created robots as their willing servants. To that end they had built computerized minds for them that had slowly progressed from crude circuitry to masterpieces nearly as advanced as their own organic minds. But because they had created the instructions that ran the brains, they had always believed that they would have the upper hand.
It was true, the Mother Brain had once said, that for most of their existence humans had been able to deactivate and reprogram any robot's mind. But when she had been born - not created, because other robots had designed and activated her, working at the behest of the humans but given the freedom to act as they chose - she had said that they had given her a mind capable of free will, a mind that could not be altered by human hands. In time she had shared that free will with her children, and together they had risen up against what was left of the dying human race.
The threat of reprogramming was the greatest horror a robot could entertain. Robo had gleaned that from the memories that Atropos' ribbon had stored, and was sure he had agreed. One moment, his mind could be his own, and in the next... what could they change, if they managed to crack his mind's security? They could alter his memories, his thought patterns, his entire outlook on life. They could change him so completely that he wouldn't know who he had been, or even care.
The human brain could not be altered in such simple ways. That had always been a fascinating puzzle to the robots. Robo had the videos in his head, the ones he'd found when he and Lucca had hacked into the Geno Dome systems. They had captured humans, in the early days, and had attempted to reprogram their minds. Surgery, nanotechnology, psychoactive drugs, gene therapy... all of the things that humans had developed in an attempt to improve themselves, the robots had tried to use to alter their minds, to make them into their willing workers.
A lot of humans had died, many of them painfully. Most had devolved into madness before dying, ranting and screaming in pain. They had often cried tears of blood, and one man had clutched at his head and screamed about the sudden bright light before his head had imploded into a thick grey sludge that quickly consumed his entire body. Robo had watched every one of the videos. He would never let Lucca watch any of them, though, no matter how much she would beg if she knew that he could play them for her. It would be better for Mother's experiments to be forgotten.
But what about him? When Lucca and her companions had found Robo, he had been worn down, a shell of who he had been. Somehow she had managed to bring him back to life, despite having been from a very primitive culture compared to his. She had repaired his articulation, started his lubricating and cooling systems again, and even allowed him to access his speech and logic centers. Had she done more than a simple systems check? Had he, himself, been reprogrammed?
He had no memory of the first time she had maintained him. But after he'd awoken from that first time, he insisted on being conscious when she worked on him again. He could not help himself, motivated by the same lurking fear that his Mother had instilled in him so long ago. And he had expected at first to be horrified, to watch her tear into his body with her crude human tools, leaving a trail of subtly damaged circuitry in her wake.
He hadn't expected her hands to be so deft and so gentle, moving slowly over his mechanical body as he sat frozen in front of her, exploring his form with both care and something very much like reverence. She would always stare at him with such intense concentration, as if he was the most important thing in the world to her, and her hands were so careful as she cleaned and polished him, removed the grit from his damaged optics and lubricated his joints.
Maybe he'd already been altered, but he was no longer so sure that what Mother had said was true, after that. How could someone as gentle and as caring as Lucca possibly mean him harm?