jadedjada

Title: His Heart is Steel, Part 7
Summary: We look into the universe from which everyone’s favorite mechanical monster first originated. A meeting is placed and a plan is set, as we begin the series of events and inner turmoils that cause the once lovable Pollo to become the evil, vengeful villain known as Mechakara.
Characters: Marzgurl, Nostalgia Chick.
Warnings: Really disturbing fucking imagery, you guys. I mean it. Mentions of death, blood, torture, all kinds of shit. And insanity. And angst, so much angst. This is a DARK CHAPTER. You've been warned.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, all characters belong to their rightful owners.

Just one more short chapter explaining one more character backstory before we get into the action. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, part 5 is here, and part 6 is here. Enjoy!

Marzgurl yawned and rubbed her eyes sleepily, leaning on the bed in the infirmary. It was a great temptation to just lie there, beside her patient, and go to sleep for a week, that was how tired she was. But she had to stay awake, if only for a few minutes more. She had to make sure everything was okay with the Nostalgia Chick.

Which it was, for the most part. She just lay there, as immobile as ever, quiet except for the soft hum of the respirator, and the occasional *beep!* from the heart monitor. Marzgurl wiped her chin, even though there was no drool there, and just stared, thinking about the future.

A lot of people wondered why she spent so much time worrying about Nostalgia Chick. Joe and Lisa in particular would pester her over it, making jokes about the Tin Man having a heart, Spocks' human half, all that stuff. It didn't bother her much, to be honest. Nothing bothered her much. Even the fact that nothing bothered her much didn't bother her much, although sometimes she wondered if it ought to.

Marzgurl laughed, in spite of herself. It was truly fascinating, thinking about how much had changed in so little time. How far she'd come, or in some cases, how low. She couldn't always tell which was which.

Still, she had to admit she seemed more clear headed now than she once did. She remembered, in some vague sense, her days before the outbreak. Memories she felt oddly disconnected to somehow, as though she was looking into the life of someone she wasn't a part of anymore, someone who's feelings she couldn't relate to in the slightest.

God, she was an idiot then.

Stupid, naive, and useless. Even back then she knew it to be true. You could say she was something of an insecure person, and really who could blame her? Being a part of the Channel Awesome community, a community that consisted of such incredible people. Heroes, villains, scientists and wizards, people who'd done and seen things beyond her comprehension. Marzgurl had done nothing. She was nothing, as far as her own lack of an ego told her. Even her videos weren't all that popular. Not compared to certain others.

There was only one time during all those years as a CA official that she had felt any sense of belonging, any sense that she deserved to be there. It was a little over a year ago, when the Critic got this crackpot idea that they should takeover a small nation. And take it over they did, at least for a little while, before it inevitably went awry. But for a few days there, when they were all large and in charge, those were days Marzgurl felt power. For they had chosen her, of all people, to lead their troops as the head sergeant. Her, the head sergeant! Bossing people around, being useful! She did it quite well too, as far as everyone was concerned. She impressed them so.

So when the announcement of PAOLA came out, and mass panic began to spread all throughout everywhere, it seemed only natural that she would be one of the first for Linkara to call.

She remembered how nervous she was when he told her he was planning on making a base for them all to hideout in. How unsure. She remembered how that nervousness began to fade as he explained what he wanted her to do. He wanted her to be the one to lead them in battle, be the head sergeant again, just like she was before! And she got excited, if you can believe it. Excited about an upcoming apocalypse. She set out alone, feeling all the confidence in the world as she did so, even though she lived in Texas and the journey would be long and hard. In that moment, she felt like she could do anything.

And then that journey happened. And she saw what the apocalypse was really like.

Even now, the thought of it all made her feel disgusted with herself. A dreamer, that's what she had been, a stupid dreamer! That was before she saw civilians being torn apart by electric currents, before she heard screams and explosions fill the air without stopping. The blood of people she knew, filling the streets of places she was familiar with. Guns shooting every which way, people going mad and raving and needing to be put out of their misery. That was what happened in Texas and beyond. That was the horror she knew.

But she survived. Somehow, through either sheer determination or sheer dumb luck, she managed to survive.

Moving through other groups was how she did it. Finding people, any people, who were aiming to go somewhere or take down PAOLA or simply to try and survive, and getting as far as she could with them until she had to move on. Or until they were destroyed.

It meant loss, so very much loss. She must have seen dozens of people she fought beside, people she befriended, die at the hands of those damned Paola-bots. Each time she would be hit with utter grief and horror, each time she would cry herself to sleep at night so she didn't have to go through it during the day. Still she pressed on, still she kept true to her idealistic vision of all her friends waiting in Minnesota, all okay, all ready to fight. This was what kept her going. This was what kept her fighting back despair.

Then she reached New York. Where she then found the Nostalgia Chick.

The irony of it was just sickening. Nostalgia Chick, of all people! The one who provided the whole reason she was there in the first place! It was Nostalgia Chick who'd gotten the job in Channel Awesome that Marzgurl had initially auditioned for. She just barely lost it to her, and the Critic gave her her own place on the site anyway. Out of pity, she'd felt at the time. Nostalgia Chick had everything she ever wanted, everything she was ever miserable for not getting. And she deserved it, no question about it, she used it as well as it could have been used! She was smart, tactical, fierce. Marzgurl admired her so, more than anyone ever knew. She looked up to her.

And seeing her in the state she was in, all broken and bleeding, surrounded by the bodies of her comrades...just didn't look possible at the time, didn't look real. But it was real.

Marzgurl sat up suddenly, all alert. She thought she'd heard a noise from down the hall. Intently she listened, for moments that stretched out like an eternity. Her heart was thumping. But after a while it appeared to be nothing, and she let herself relax again.

She never told anyone what exactly she found on that oh so fateful day in New York. It didn't seem relevant, for one thing, so long as they knew it was Saucybot who had done it (Which it was. There was proof in the schrapnel they found). Nobody needed to know how there were mangled bodies lying over everything, some of Chicks' old friends, some of just random bystanders. Nobody needed to know how those friends, the scientists in particular, had gashes and burns over them that indicated that they'd been tortured. Nobody needed to know how Nella, the Chicks' absolute best friend, had evidently ensured that she would still be alive by shielding her from unknown blows, and that she had to pull her body off of the Chick in order to get to her. Nobody needed to know. Not any of it.

But Marzgurl had known. Marzgurl had seen, had experienced. And it destroyed her utterly.

She hated herself for it, every moment of the way. Hated how pathetically she cried and screamed, hated how confused she felt over what to do, hated how close she came to the brink of insanity. She felt weak. She was weak. Here she was with a mission, a quest to bring this fallen member of their group onto safe ground, a long long way from here. Linkara, Angry Joe, Iron Liz, any of those others would have tackled this with no problem. She needed to be as strong as them. No, she needed to be stronger, strong enough to lead them into battle. And yet she was hesitating. She was being held back by her own pathetic feelings.

So that night, the night she found Chicks' poor, broken body, she came to a conclusion. A simple sounding conclusion. She decided to stop feeling on the face of it. She decided simply not to care.

And that's exactly what she did...or rather, what she didn't do. She bottled up all that anxiety, all that grief and fear, and placed it at the back of her mind to be ignored. For the weeks it took her to bring Nostalgia Chick safely to the base they were now in, she focused only on her determination, on the tasks at hand. And as she did so, all the misery in her mind began to fade away, so that by the time she arrived at Linkaras' doorstep, Chicks' body in her arms, she
felt nothing. Literally nothing. Nothing drove her, nothing affected her, other than the now natural need to get things done.

In other words, she was ready for duty.

Was she proud of herself? Sometimes she felt like she was. Other times, she really wasn't so sure. In many ways, she had gotten everything she wanted. A purpose. Respect. In truth, she really didn't think about those things in the same ways she used to. This was war, after all. What did her own desires matter? But even so, seeing the way everybody looked at her now...sometimes, with fear, sometimes with admiration, even sometimes with sympathy, which was not something she really understood...somehow it still had something of an affect on her, at the very back of her mind.

She enjoyed it, yes. But she wondered whether or not it was worth it.

Now they were almost at the end of their troubles, close to facing down PAOLA once and for all and putting this entire mess behind them. And after that, what would she do? Would she still be as unfeeling as she had made herself be? Would there be a way for her to go back to living a normal life?

What if she broke something in her that couldn't be repaired? Something important?

Would she even care if she had?

Marzgurl yawned again. She really was feeling exhausted. She ought to go to bed soon, especially knowing what a big day she had in store for her tomorrow. She looked down again, back at her comatose patient. In spite of everything she'd done, everything that made her doubt her reasoning and even her sanity, she still cared what happened to Nostalgia Chick. The utter miracle that she was still alive made her feel something resembling faith. It was she who made it happen, she who allowed it to be possible for Chick to go on. And she knew, thanks to Insano, that once this world was saved and everyone could go out in peace again, once PAOLA was finally, finally stopped, they would have the means to save her completely, to take her to a real hospital and give her all the care she needed. Someday, they could bring her back.

That was all she needed. That was why Chicks' health was so precious to her, that was why she was so nervous about letting Pollo, who she knew in her gut was starting to become a loose end somehow, take care of her for an entire day.

Because as long as Chick was alive, as long as Marzgurl was keeping her preserved and in shape, she knew she could never be broken. She could never call herself insane.

Because she was doing this for a reason. A reason that made sense.

At long last she stood up, and allowed herself to walk out of the infirmary and into her bedroom. Nostalgia Chick will be okay, she thought as she slumped back into her bed. She had to think that. She had to make herself believe that nothing bad was going to happen.

Because that was all she had left at this point.

That was her humanity.