Behind the Scenes: Comrade Skeleton

A minor encounter that takes places prior to 8chanmania XXXIV
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Bo Dallas opened his eyes to nothing. Before he got slammed by that weird floating thing, it had been dark out, but this was pitch black.
He felt around, finding only a smooth vinyl surface until his fingers wrapped around something hard and round.
Bo heard a great ‘shunk’ as lights kicked on; it was glaring and too-bright and he shut his eyes quickly, the sudden change too much to take.
There was a beep and an intercom kicked on. A booming, vaguely feminine voice greeted him.
“Welcome to the Aperture Science Research and Development Wing,” it said, voice unstable and grating. It seemed to be machine-generated, like one of those automated voices you’d hear at a train-stop.
In any case, Bo didn’t like the sound of that. He never signed up for ‘research and development’. He slowly opened his eyes, blinking away the pain as they adjusted to the spotlight’s intensity.
He was sitting on the floor of a cage, or so it seemed. Ahead of him was a semi-opaque glass wall emblazoned with ‘CAUTION’ and ‘DO NOT BREAK’, and a quick peek around revealed another wall just like it to his left and to his right. The cage was spartan, empty.
Bo was suddenly conscious of his hand, which was still holding on to something. He looked down at it.
His fingers were wrapped around a femur, a sparkly white human femur, and now that he knew what the thing was he realized that it felt real. At the very least it wasn’t made of plastic or clay like most models.
“Augh,” Bo said, chucking it away as he jumped to his feet, putting his back to the wall- there wasn’t just a femur in the cage with him, there was an entire human skeleton! Bones were scattered everywhere, even a skull, lying on its side on the floor of the enclosure.
The intercom kicked in again with a sharp beep. “Hurting your fellow test subject will result in DIS-qualification,” it said, “please patiently await further instruction.”
“What test subject?” Bo said, as if it could hear, “It’s just me and a corpse in here!”
Before his very eyes, the disassembled skeleton’s skull rolled and flipped, landing cleanly on its jaw. Bo swore and tried to shrink back further but the cage wasn’t conducive to ‘adding distance’, so he put his fists up instead.
The skull’s eyes lit up with an eerie glow, and it somehow hoisted open its maxilla and clacked at him despite an utter lack of muscles. A voice uttered out, disjointed even to the movement of its ‘mouth’,
“That’s Comrade Corpse to you,” it said, its voice a cross somewhere between a swarthy Russian’s and Gilbert Gottfried’s. As it spoke, the rest of the bones rattled menacingly.
The skull shot into the air, around head height in fact, and the rest of the bones began to levitate, rotating gently near the ground. As those bones assumed the correct angle they too shot up, rapidly assembling a complete and cohesive skeleton, somehow stable despite an utter lack of support.
“Though I’d much prefer Comrade Skeleton! Gyahaha,” it said, perfectly jovial.
“What are you?” Bo asked, still not letting down his guard. Comrade Skeleton’s jaw clacked, but before it could respond, the intercom popped on again.
“Now that both test subjects are conscious,” the voice said, “it is time to begin the preliminary test. You are approximately fifty meters away from a hatch that leads to SAFETY. Reach the hatch within your means.”
The glass walls fell away. Bo let down his guard a bit, turning to look around. The rest of the room was huge, a long corridor on an incline with them at one end and a big circular hatch on the roof of the other. It was about fifteen meters wide and forty long, but with the incline maybe the hatch being ‘fifty meters away’ was accurate either way. Between the two was a zig-zagging path up-hill, a thin and bridgelike thing that was suspended over a huge gap.
“Comrade flesh-man, what is this thing?” The skeleton pointed down towards their feet and traced a bony finger around the wall. There was a gap along it that stood a little over ankle-height, too small for a person to fit in but, but still big enough to be conspicuous.
Bo dropped to his hands and toes in a quick motion reminiscent of a burpee and stared into the gap, curious.
Thousands of glowing red dots stared back only just out of view from a standing position.
Bo shot back to his feet, backing away. Comrade Skeleton shuffled back as well, noting his reaction.
A few of the little dots crawled out- it was an electric eye for what was a little white spider-robot, smooth and unintimidating aside from the mental image its eight long legs conjured up. It was almost cute, when he looked at it closely.
The robots began to emit a steady hum; moments later, spiny silver blades shot out of their white casing, which started to spin at impossible speeds, blades oscillating slightly up and down from the sheer force of it.
“Run!” Bo shouted, turning around and sprinting for the bridge. He could hear the crr-crack of calcified feet on vinyl right behind him, and a crescendo of humming whirling death-bots close behind that.
“We’re boned!” The skeleton shouted. Bo was too focused to worry about that, staring at his path- the bridge narrowed and banked left and then back forward; instead of turning he strafed along it, refusing to lose any time to the things behind him.
A death-bot flew past his face. It had launched itself from the bridge behind, he realized- these things could jump. Bo took one last good look at the path and hopped, turning around to face the oncoming menace.
He sidled along at as close to full speed as he could manage. Another death-bot threw itself at him and he leaned hard, dodging the thing. He heard a ‘clunk’ as it struck the chasm and fell into whatever it was below- he refused to look down.
Then Comrade Skeleton bumped into him and he nearly fell off. The pile of bones looked at him apologetically, pulling him along as they started to run again.
“This is too narrow for the two of us,” the Skeleton said, “you go on! It is my burden.”
Yet another death-bot launched itself at Bo, and this one met its mark- but Comrade Skeleton threw up an arm, the whirling blades digging deep into the bone but eventually rolling off, angular momentum sending it flying up past their heads and off into the chasm. Bo looked hard at the gash.
“After that?” he frowned something fierce at the Skeleton. “Like hell I’m going to leave you, comrade!”
He snatched the Skeleton’s skull off of the rest of its body, ripping it away. The thing clacked confusedly.
Bo ran along the bridge. “You’ve got to Bolieve!” he shouted, and he chucked the skull up and away. It soared through the air, covering the last twenty meters in an instant and skidding across the safe arrival.
Bo whipped around. He dodged the bones as they flew past- chasing the skull that had left them behind. “We can make it!” he practically screamed, ducking as the rib-cage launched violently past; the death-bots were nearly on him now, so he threw himself back into his mad sprint.
Now that he was alone there was more space to maneuver, but that space dwindled as the walk got tighter and tighter. He began to rely entirely on sound to dodge the death-bots, ducking and jumping and bobbing as the violent humming flew past him as he made the mad dash.
After what felt like an eternity Bo had finally made it to the last stretch. He stumbled onto the one-foot-wide catwalk that the bridge had become. He could almost count down the steps- twelve to go, then ten, then seven, and three, and two, almost there-
He could hear a death-bot as it whizzed behind him and he leaned, dodging it narrowly. The silvery blade slashed his cheek and he could feel a warm trickle on his face past the immediate sting, but Bo didn’t especially care, because Bo was falling.
He turned his head, looking down at the pool of what was most assuredly acid far below; he watched the robot that finally killed him as it melted away, metal and case alike.
Bo shut his eyes tight; but he felt something snatch his shirt, catching him in the air as he fell. He whipped his head up to see.
Comrade Skeleton had caught him, holding on with both arms, and it was trying to haul Bo up. Bo grabbed onto the skeleton’s miraculously-somehow-connected-to-its-body bones and pulled himself, and when he was high enough he snagged the corner of the safe platform and rolled up.
“I got the hatch open,” it said, “but we must hurry. The bots are nearly upon us.”
Bo nodded, shuffling forward on hands and knees and then back on his feet in a sprinter’s run. He slung himself onto the ladder, climbing it with all the desperation of a person running from a pack of agitated chainsaws. When he made it to the dark chamber above the hatch, he rolled in and lay on his back, exhausted.
From the corner of his eye he could see Comrade Skeleton climb up only moments later, and the bag of bones cranked the hatch back shut just in time for Bo to hear the sound of metal on metal and the wave of machines crashed against it. The room was nearly black without the light from below, only a thin trickle from the cracks in the closed door above them and a thin glow from the skeleton’s eyes.
“We’re alive,” Bo said, “the both of us.”
“Thank you, comrade,” the skeleton said, “truly it was a group effort.”
The skeleton paused, as if in thought before speaking again. “Now let me tell you of this thing called Communism.”
Category:Lore