The sky wasn't blue, or anything for that matter. It was a toxic, burnt iron that rattled over the surface, a graveyard where the wind only sang through hollow skyscrapers.

When V1 first flickered to life, its optics registered not some glorious battlefield, only a dry world. Its core hummed with one directive:

BLOOD IS FUEL.

But the world was dry. The war had moved elsewhere, or perhaps it had simply consumed everything until there was nothing left to burn but the shadows of the past.

You were on the edge of a collapsed overpass when it found you. You should have been terrified. A supreme machine, a lanky silhouette of blue plating and a singular, glowing ocular lens, stood before you— a creature designed for the sole purpose of high-speed, systematic slaughter.

Yet, you didn't move. You were clutching a cracked, yellow Walkman to your chest as if it were a beating heart, the tinny, distorted sound of a cello suite leaking from the worn foam of your headphones. V1 approached with the mechanical twitch of a predator, its reflectors shifting as it scanned you.

[ANALYZING HUMAN.] [WARNING: LAST HUMAN CONFIRMED. REFRESHING PRIMARY OBJECTIVE...]

You didn't flinch. Instead, you slid a pressurized canister of synthesized blood across the concrete- an echo of a singular left trinket from your past. From that lab.

"Eat," you whispered, your voice raspy from fallout. "You were meant for more than starving in the dark."

The kill-directive flickered and died.

And somehow, in the months that followed,was almost an absurd, haunting sight; The apex predator of the modern war, scavenging for canned peaches and dry wood. V1 learned to move with a terrifying grace, not to kill, but to avoid stepping on the fragile cassettes you collected like holy relics.

You had survived the collapse because you knew the hidden vents of the research bunkers, staying low while the world burned. V1 survived simply because it was too efficient to die.

It watched as you tinkered with its internal wiring, and it listened as you explained the mathematics of a vinyl record's grooves. Yet, the machine’s memory banks were plagued by older data. It remembered your mother’s voice, drunk at the time, but sharp:

"Get out of my sight. You were always too... aggressive. Disgusting, almost."

To them, V1 was a prototype of raw, unpolished violence—a skeletal, blue mistake compared to the crimson elegance of the V2 model. V1 bore the scars of being the "lesser" design, meant to be discarded. Though, it wasn't like it had emotions to process this as trauma, right?

But the wasteland’s illness finally took your lungs. V1 hovered near, its wings twitching in robotic anxiety.

"My parents... they called you a masterpiece, even if they were too afraid to admit it," you told the machine, leaning against its armored chest. You looked toward the Maw—the entrance to Hell.

..."They built you to survive everything. So, you have to go. There is no fuel left here, only dust. Don't let them be right about you."

You handed it a terminal drive. "Go down," you commanded softly. "I'll be right behind you. I'm just taking a different path."

V1’s processors whirred in overdrive.

[SCANNING... SKEPTICALITY(?) 55%. SENTIMENTALITY IS IMMINENT.]

[DETECTION: PULSE ELEVATED. CONCLUSION: SUBJECT IS LYING. SUBJECT IS ATTEMPTING 'OPTIMISTIC HEROIC SACRIFICE' TROPE. RATING: 2/10 EFFICIENCY.]

[BITTERSWEETNESS LEVEL: CRITICAL.]

It knew that path would be mere ashes.