SPG fic

Title: "I am The Jon. Nice to meet you!"

Fandom: Steam Powered Giraffe

Genre: Angst, Drama

Characters: The Jon, The Spine, Rabbit, Michael Reed

Information: The Bots get bored, and decide to play Hide-and-seek. But the game comes to an abrupt end, as something happens.

Author Note: Oh god, be warned. I have never ever written fanfic in my whole life, so this is my first. And for some reason it became an angsty one, so beware of badly written fic and feels, probably.


"I am BOOOORED!" Rabbit noisily exclaimed, throwing his arms in the air in frustration.
The humans were out for the day, probably running some errands, or just being out enjoying their human life. Which left only the three bots, alone at Walter Manor.
The Jon, sitting at a table close to Rabbit, agreed with a silent "Mhhhhhhhhhh." His face spoke ou the 'bored, bored, bored' he was thinking as well.

"Say The Spiiiine? Is there anything we need to do?" The silver automaton, who was also sitting at the desk, reading a book, glanced up to Rabbit and shook his head.
Rabbit sighed dramatically. "Nothing at a-a-all? Did we clean the house?" - "Yes." - "Did we feed the birds outside?" - "Yes." - "Did we put a fake poo-moustache in Mr. Reed's shoes today already?" "Yes, Rabbit-" "Did we-" The Spine noisily closed his book. "For Poppy's sake, Rabbit, there is nothing left to do for today. And I think Mr. Reed isn't surprised by your immature mousetache joke anymore. So would you please stop asking?"
Rabbit's body deflated and he slumped down on a free chair, letting his head drop onto the desk with an annoyed grunt.

"But we could always play something...?" The Jon offered with a smile. Rabbit's head shot up again, also with a smile on his face. "Playing, like what?"
"I don't know", The Jon pondered, "We could go draw something, and the others have to guess what we illustrated. But since your drawing skills aren't as good as mine, this could be difficult.", he smugly concluded, ignoring Rabbit's scowling and mumbled 'I am just as good as you, so you know...' "What about Hide-and-Seek though?"

The brass automaton clasped his hands with renewed enthusiasm. "Oh I looove Hide-and-Seek. Don't you too, The Spiiine?" "Not really", the silver one deadpanned. Being the most responsible and adult of them all, he thought of most of the games they played as childish and unnecessary.
But looking at his friend's faces, now filled with a bit of disappointment, he sighed and went on "... but I will join you anyway. After all we have nothing to do. so why not." His answer was welcomed by a brightly smiling The Jon and a very cheery Rabbit, who had already gotten up, ready to start the game immediately.

They decided on starting the first round of Hide-and-Seek with The Jon and The Spine hiding, and Rabbit being the one searching them, after counting to 1.000. As he was done, he cheerily announced it with an "ARE YOU READY? BECAUSE I AM COMING. YOU BETTER HIDE, WHEREVER YOU ARE", eagerly starting to search for his friends.

The manor was quite big, but having lived there for a long time already, Rabbit knew every nook and cranny, therefore every possible hiding place. Playing Hide-and-Seek was fun nevertheless, because sometimes his friends came up with clever palces to hide, he didn't even think of. Or at least The Jon did. The Spine usually gave up on hiding as soon as he got bored, to do something 'more productive' as he called it.

Which was why Rabbit was a bit disappointed to find The Jon first after a short while, sitting on the ground, leaning on a wall.

"But The Jooon, you are supposed to hide when playing Hide-and-Seek. We have played this game approxiametly 167349 times already, d-d-do I really need to explain the rules again?" Rabbit exclaimed with a sigh.

The golden Automaton didn't look up, nor did he answer Rabbit at all.

"Do you seriously believe in this You-don't-see-me-if-I-don't-see-you thing, The Jon? Because I can still see you, and you won't b-b-become invisible by staying quiet." He laughed a steamy laugh. Really, The Jon could be so hilarious sometimes. "Come on, let's go search The Spine together!" Rabbit held out his hand, offering The Jon to help him get up.

The offer was left unaccepted.

Furrowing his mechanical brows, Rabbit squatted down in front of his very quiet friend. It was so unlike him to be this calm.

"The Jon...?"

Rabbit turned his head, as he heard footsteps coming closer, it could only be one person -pardon, one robot.
The Spine came closer, wearing a bored epression. Well, that didn't take long for him to get bored today...

"I see you found The Jon already, so I guess this round is over now.", he rumbled in his Bariton voice.

"Something is wrong with The Jon." Forget about the game, Rabbit thought, his friend's behaviour started to puzzle him. Come to think of it, The Jon had been relatively quiet all day, not his energetic self they were used to. But seeing him sit there hunched over gave Rabbit a wierd sensation in his gearbox, something a human being would probably describe as 'concern' or 'worry'.

The Spine must have noticed too, because he squatted next to Rabbit without leaving a remark on Rabbit overthinking things.
The Jon still hadn't moved an inch, and continued to be lifeless, even as Rabbit started poking his face. "The Jon. The Jon. The Jon. hey, The Jon."

A single drop of oil leaked from The Jon's eye. "Well that can't mean anything good", The Spine mused.
It didn't need any words, just one shared look, to make the silver and brass automaton agree on grabbing The Jon and dragging him to the laboratory. Whatever it was, that was keeping their friend this silent, they had to fix it.

They sat him down on the table and paused, cluelessly. "We should probably call Mr. Reed, or Sam to take a look at The Jon", Rabbit started. "You know they're out. Who knows when they'll come back." The Spine rolled his eyes. They were on their own. "But we can't wait any longer, can we? Who knows what' w-w-wrong."
Silence hung in the air, none of them felt eager to open up their friend and check what's wrong. Even though it was kind of a normal thing to do, none of them wanted to be the one finding out the bad news.
Both had a hunch of what might have caused this, and both dreaded it would come true.

The Spine finally grasped the nettle of it, and started shoving The Jon's clothing aside. Grabbing a screwdriver he then proceeded to open up his friend, trying to disclose the golden Automaton's grave secret.
The Jon's metallic stomach opened with a slight squeak. Suspiciously enough, this was the only noise they heard. No engine working, no rumbling at all.

"So...?" Rabbit asked, trying to peer over The Spine's shoulder.
An audible gulp came from the Spine's throat. "Rabbit, do you know if there's any Crytsal Pepsi left?" "I am not sure. The Jon usually refills before it is too late. W-w-why?"

"Because he ran out of Crystal Pepsi. His engine is completely dry."

In a heartbeat, Rabbit was out of the laboratory and on his way to The Jon's room. He was greeted by a mess - so much for the Walter Manor being completely tidied up.
He checked the giant tank that was usually filled with Crystal Pepsi and tried to open the tap. Nothing came out of it. He kind of expected that.
Remembering there still were a lot of Crystal Pepsi cans they had kept as reserve, he searched around in The Jon's room some more, and finally found them stapled up in the wall closet. That means, not so stapled up anymore, because as soon as Rabbit opened the closet, the lazily stacked up tower came tumbling down, adding to the mess that was The Jon's room.
To Rabbit's horror he found that all of them were empty. The wierd sensation in his gearbox from before returned, this time with greater force. Their feard had come true after all.

They had run out of Crystal Pepsi.

As Rabbit returned to the laboratory, The Spine, still at his golden friend's side, shot Rabbit a hopeful look, but it quickly dissipated as he received a head-shake in response. "What do we do now?" The Spine's quiet question would have gone unheard if it hadn't been so terribly silent suddenly.
"I-i-i don't know." Rabbit drew closer, taking a look at his friend again, who used to be so bubbly. If he wouldn't know better, Rabbit would say that seeing him like this, hurt. But Robots can't feel anything, so this thought was ridiculous, wasn't it? "We should wait f-f-for Mr.Reed. I hope h-h-he will know what to do."
Rabbit glanced over The Jon's open stomach. He knew there used to be a Koi in there, swimming just as lively as The Jon used to be himself. But that little heap of flesh that lay there lifelessly couldn't possibly said Koi.
He winced at the noise as he slammed The Jon's stomach-door shutwith more force than he wanted to. He didn't even want to close it, he just did out of reflex, he noted with confusion.
Turning away, Rabbit sat down on the floor next to desk, hugging his feet, The Spine stayed standing where he was. Together they waited in silence for agonizing hours, for the humans to return.
And waited.

And waited.

3 hours, 54 minutes and 28 seconds later, they heard footsteps coming from the Manor. Somebody had returned. This time it was The Spine who immediately left the room. Rabbit decided to stay put. Somebody had to stay with The Jon, or else he would feel alone.
The Spine returned with a very puzzled looking Mr. Reed. Appearantly the silver automaton didn't waste any time on telling their human friend what the exact problem was, and simply dragged him over with the words "Something's wrong. We need your help to fix this."
Michael stood in front of The Jon, still looking confused. "So... what is the exact problem with our pal here?", he asked, scratching his head. The two remaining bots looked at each other, then back to Michael, but none of them actually managed to spell it out what happened.
"Oh of course, just.. don't tell me then, this will make everything so much easier." Michael groaned in frustration and went on to take a look at The Jon himself.
After a minute of observing, he thought he found out why none of the Automatons wanted to tell. "Well, this is a problem indeed..."

"Do you think you can fix him somehow?" The Spine stepped forward, putting his hand on Michael's shoulder.
It took a moment for their engineer to answer them, and the response surely wasn't what they had hoped either. "I don't know", he admitted, "but I will try and see what I can do. We need to change his engine, since his current one ran out of fuel, and there's no Crystal Pepsi left at all, I assume...?"
The bots confirmed his assumption with a sad nod, and Michael sighed. He started to look around in the laboratory, searching what could come in handy for the 'surgery' he was about to do. What he found pleased him appearantly, because he turned back to the two Automatons and shoved them out of the room. "Well, leave it to me, then. His system totally crashed already, so I can try and put in another engine. He used to run on Water, didn't he? So let's go back to the roots. You guys go and get me some water, I will handle this."
He shooed them away, put on his goggles and slammed the door in their faces.

Rabbit blinked, rather comically. "Guess ... we should get some W-w-water then." "It seems so.", The Spine responded, as baffled as his fellow Automaton. He turned around, grabbed some money they had stashed for special occassions and headed for the supermarket, his brazen pal following him.

----

They returned with 12 bottles of Mineral water. Not knowing if it would actually work or not, they guessed this should be enough for now. Michael was still at work, at least the noises coming from the lab indicated he was.
Luckily they didn't have to wait for too long, and the noises died down and minutes later a rather satisfied looking Michael opened the door. "I think I made it. Now all i need is water to try and find out if it works."
The Bots helped bringing in the water bottles and looked at their automaton friend in anticipation. "I really hope you fixed this. I never thought I would say that, but I actually miss him being all loud and noisy."
"Nahhhw don't worry, I am 99% sure he will work again." Michael replied, grabbing a bottle of water to give The Jon's new engine the fuel it needed.
"Say..." Rabbit pointed at the dead Koi that now lay on the desk. "What about this little guy though?" Michael shrugged. "I am an engineer. I can fix engines and stuff, but I can't bring dead fish to life. You'd need to ask an Necromancer there, pal." He shut the door to The Jon's engines close and waited.
"That should do actually. The engine should start any second now..."
The three of them stood together in silence, waiting. Hoping.
Nothing happened at first and despair started to grow in each of their bellies, human or mechanic, but then small rumbling noises came from the golden Automaton sitting on the desk.

The Jon slowly opened his eyes again, the light diodes behind it started to flicker and lit up, emitting with a light blue. Wasn't it brighter than before...? It was closer to white now, or maybe it was just their imagination.
He opened his mouth and a little steam cloud emerged, reminding The Spine and Rabbit of their very first days.
The Jon blinked. Silence. Then: "Hello."

Everyone in the room started cheering, Michael looking a bit smug. "I TOLD you I could do it." - "Y-y-you're the best." Then Mr. reed found himself being hugged by a brazen Robot.
The Spine took a step towards his confused looking friend on the desk there. "good to have you back, my friend." He smiled. The Jon smiled back. But the smile looked more polite than actually happy.
"I am... sorry?", The Jon began, "... but I don't think I know what is going on. Who are you? Who am ... I?"

The mood in the room seemed to die down immediately, along with the three celebrating people's smiles. "What...?", was all Michael could manage, which was still more than what the others could.
"... Oh, did I say something wrong?" The Jon frowned, obviously unhappy about how his words affected these people. He didn't intend to make them sad.

"He can't remember.", Rabbit croaked. Michael massaged his forehead. "I should have seen this coming. Maybe I could get him to work again, but you can't expect him to be fully restored after such a change. I mean he runs on another energy source now, and his system had completely shut down before. his memory must be corrupted. Maybe even his personality changed... I- ... I am sorry."
Michael looked rather crestfallen. He was not the only one.
"So this m-m-means...-" - "We practically have a newborn The Jon sitting in front of us", The Spine concluded for Rabbit. "That means.. if it still is The Jon at all."
Everybody turned to look at said Automaton, whose confusion still was written over his face. "Listening to your conversation I take it that my name is 'The Jon'?", he said, politely smiling again. "Well then..", he offered his hand to the others. "I am The Jon, nice to meet you."

Rabbit hesitantly shook his hand, followed by the others. "M-m-my name's R-Rabbit." "The Spine." "Call me Michael.."

The Jon laughed happily. "Well then, I hope we will become friends. I love friends."
"Yes. Yes I hope so too..." The Spine replied with an attempted smile, but unable to hide a sigh.
He looked at his two other friends, and the three of them shared silent and sad thoughts.

The next weeks, months even, at Walter Manor would surely be different.
And difficult. Of that, they were sure.