The crying reached a crescendo as the cold, evening air touched the infant’s skin. Careful not to disturb the wreckage, Mayta opened the hatch. A quick sweep of the area revealed to her a set of footprints leading to and from the hatch, now filling with rain water. Almost indiscernible to any other monster, but to her, as clear as could be. The rust on the handle had been worn in the shape of a hand. On the handle of a hatch in the side of the contraption, Mayta’s sensors detected a discrepancy. Past the bearings that once held wheels taller than Mayta and before the interior that would no doubt have been the epitome of comfort in its own time came the wails of a human. The crying emanated from the guts of an ancient vehicle. Mayta arrived at the source, leaping off a massive cog onto the ground. But why would humans leave one of their own behind? Had one of them been hurt during their scavenging? It was dangerous work for a human, after all. Wanderers who would occasionally pick through the fringes of the boneyard for trinkets to sell in the next town. What was a human doing out here? The only ones that passed this way were human caravans. What little of her processing power wasn’t being directed towards saving the human began to speculate about the origins of the noise. Mayta ripped through the vines and roots with ease. The crags of metal and rust began to become swaddled by the thick vegetation slowly encroaching over the barren fields of debris. It was coming from the edge of the scrapyard. Mayta dropped the yoke of the travois and bolted towards the source of the sound. Even without her sophisticated audio software, her intuition as a mamono would have been sufficient to understand what the noise was. It was faint, barely audible over the murmur of rain around her. She stopped, extending two dishes from either side of her head. Mayta’s absent thoughts were interrupted by an unfamiliar sound tickling her audio receptors. The wider treads she now wore allowed her to traverse snow and sludge with ease. Without them, she would have sunken up to her knees. Mayta was grateful for Davi’s modifications to her feet. Taking one last look at the jungle of metal and overgrowth behind her, she began the long walk back home. She walked through the boneyard, collecting the scrap she had cut free and loading it onto her travois. Mayta released her hydraulic grip on the bulkhead she was hanging on to, letting herself fall to the ground below. The last chunk of metal fell free from the machine. Rain flowed over her metallic body, probing for any crack or crevice to infiltrate, and carrying on to the ground below after finding no purchase in her chassis. Deeming the ancient debris to be within acceptable levels of oxidation, she continued to cut her way through the ancient mechanical carcass. Mayta raised the small shields over her optic receptors and pinched away a small chunk of metal. Droplets of water hissed into vapor as she cut through the wet metal. The soft pattering of the rain around Mayta was interrupted by a low roar as her acetylene torch ignited again.
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