Chapter Text
Mati was a perilous place filled to the brim with a wide variety of vicious predators. One of their favorite foods was the soft, squishy, and tiny watchdogs at the tail-end of the food chain.
The only strength the watchdogs had was numbers. As in, they could afford to sacrifice a few to serve as distractions while the rest ran away. Not that they didn't try to fight back. But confrontations meant inevitable casualties so they did everything in their power to avoid them.
Which mostly amounted to hiding in tunnels chiselled into high cliffs to take advantage of their climbing ability and escape ground predators. Each entrance was precisely sized to keep anything larger than a watchdog out. With the mushrooms and moss they cultivated, along with the wells they drilled, the modern generations had no reason to ever leave.
It wasn't a pleasant life. But it was safe. And the watchdogs that survived were the ones that learned to accept it. Every venture outside was a gamble with fate. One that all adventurous watchdogs eventually lost.
There was one runt that refused to accept their collective lot in life. He spent almost as much time on the ground as he did in the cliffs, desperately searching for a way to break free from their natural role. Whether that was by building weaponry or trying to escape the planet altogether. The rest of the watchdogs only saw him as a roughless fool living on borrowed time.
Peepers had reclaimed his name from others mocking him for his habit of frequently peeping out of their cliffside holes. Which they claimed would only get him eaten by a passing condor. But to their surprise he never failed to duck inside in time. As the years went by their attempts to discourage him had become his badge of honor.
Those idiots just didn't realize how important it was to find resources for his plans! And the most efficient way to do that was to keep an eye out for asteroids. They would ideally turn out to be wreckages that carried refined material and, when fate occasionally decided to smile upon him, salvageable technology or textbooks that taught him how to create his own.
Whenever Peepers saw a light streak across the night sky he'd calculate the location of the crash site and head out with his tools in hand. It had been just his trusty hammer and pickaxe for the longest time. Yet as his search continued— and he either repaired or created better tools— his extraction methods got more efficient.
Of course, even reducing the necessary time couldn't erase the inherent danger of mining in the clearings caused by astral impacts. So his continued survival was ensured through his exceptional agility and, later, a pistol with enough power to stun most beasts. He was still working on upgrading it to a level capable of piercing their vital organs.
Peepers' lucky break finally came when a mangled ship crashed within a few minutes walk from his home cliffs. It seemed fairly ordinary at first. Just a bunch of scrap metal. But then he noticed a skeleton in remarkably good condition that neared the height of their deadliest foes. If he could just revive it the watchdogs would have a protector! And he had an untested theory on how he'd pull it off!
Unfortunately he had no choice but to disassemble it if he had any chance of getting it home. Even after he'd told the watchdogs what he found and its potential they refused to participate in what they saw as another dangerous, harebrained scheme. Well FINE! He didn't need their help anyways!
It took him days to haul it to his workshop on the top floor of the cliffs, and far longer to set up his experiment. Yet it would all be worth it in the end. The rest of the watchdogs would beg for his and his creature's aid once his genius was realized!
A fierce storm brewed outside as Peepers made his final checks on his experiment's set-up. If anything went wrong he'd be screwed one way or another! Yet everything seemed to be in order. He just hoped he knew what he was doing...
The skeleton was strapped to a large stone table constructed for the occasion, both to hold it in place and to prepare for if it was hostile. Two wires were clamped onto the gold alloy rods drilled into its skull.
Said rods were hammered into thunderbolt shapes. If Peepers was going to do this he was gonna do it in style!
The wires spiraled around a long metal pole that stretched to the stars above his humble cliffside lab. Everything flammable had been stored in another room. Except, of course, the single black magic book Peepers owned.
It lay in front of him, opened to a powerful necromancy spell that he repeatedly chanted the verbal component of while waiting for the lightning to strike and activate his device. Peepers wasn't even sure if he believed in magic. But it couldn't hurt! And he needed all the help he could get...
Finally an explosive boom echoed through the tunnel system as green lightning danced on the thunder rod's surface. Peepers fought his temptation to go take a closer look as he continued his chant, pumping all the hope and determination in his heart into it. After a few seconds the skeleton had completely absorbed the lightning and Peepers knew he could stop.
Peepers carefully climbed up onto the table and walked up to the skeleton's head. He leapt back in surprise when the skeleton's eye sockets were suddenly filled with green light. Soon a bit gave way slightly to reveal two pupils. And they were staring right up at him.
It worked! Peepers immediately started to cheer and dance for joy. But he was soon interrupted when a deep voice said, "Um… where am I?"
Oh zrebtank! He never expected the corpse he revived to be sentient... All he needed was a mindless husk! And while he was impressed with himself for breaking even his own expectations... This would certainly complicate things!
Peepers sat down on the skeleton's shoulder and started to speak while fidgeting. "You're on Mati, or at least, that's what we call it." Surely their name for their homeworld was unknown to the rest of the universe when not a single one of them had managed to escape their terrestrial prison.
That didn't seem to mean anything to the skeleton with how they continued to blankly stare at him.
"Well, by we I mean the watchdogs." Peepers guestured at himself. "My species." Even if he never felt like one of his own kind on a personal level. "And this room here is my laboratory!"
Still nothing. Peepers was starting to suspect what the issue was.
"Excuse me.... Do you know anything about yourself?"
The skeleton groaned as they struggled to pull anything out of their mind. Yet after awhile he was forced to admit that nothing came up. "I'm just some guy, I guess? I dunno... kinda drawing a blank here."
"So you have amnesia." Peepers sighed as he gave up on his extremely short-lived hope of him telling him what lay beyond his planet. "Can't say I'm surprised. I did have to reconstitute your brain from trace fragments…"
The skeleton had a feeling that he wouldn't understand most of what that meant even if he did have any memory to go off of. But instead of demanding clarification, he asked, "So… why am I tied up?"
"Oh!" Peepers had genuinely forgotten about that in his excitement. "It was to hold your body in place while I revived you, but…" He averted his eye. "...you won't hurt me if I remove them, would you?"
"What!? No! Of course not!" If anything he felt compelled to keep this tiny creature safe.
Peepers hesitantly looked at him. There didn't seem to be any reason for him to attack. But if he was wrong…
Well, Peepers had never placed much value in his own life anyways.
Still his hands trembled as he undid the straps. The skeleton's wrists were left for last. Once he removed them he slid himself off the table and onto the floor. And as he did so he subtly reached for the blaster he kept in the holster under his cloak. Just in case...
The skeleton sat up and looked around, marvelling the complex machinery. Had all this been made for him? But as he got a better idea of the layout he noticed a glaring issue.
"How am I gonna get out of here!?" The only exits he saw were a ladder leading up to a hole in the ceiling and a tunnel covered by a curtain. Both were far too tiny for him.
"Um…" Peepers glanced up at the metal hatch above the skeleton. "...I probably shouldn't let you out before I let the rest of the watchdogs know about you..."
Then Peepers grinned. "But I promise to take care of that first thing in the morning!"
Yeah that seemed fair enough. The skeleton had noticed how this watchdog tried to hide his fear and could only imagine how the rest would react. Wouldn't want their first meeting to be them running away screaming.
Still... that left him trapped in this cramped room for the time-being...
"Can you tell me about them? So I know how to get them to like me?" What the skeleton really wanted was to learn more about the world he had woken up in. More importantly: He didn't want to be alone.
Peepers had started off with a basic overview of his species and their lifestyle before getting sidetracked as he bemoaned their existence. From there he talked about his efforts to change all that and fondly spoke of his exploits.
Which led to a bit of bitterness over what the watchdogs thought of said efforts leaking out before he realized he'd gotten too vulnerable. How would he ever get the skeleton to listen to him if he knew that he was a loser? Not to mention that he'd gotten far off-topic! He quickly shifted to speaking of watchdog etiquette.
The skeleton listened closely at first... But soon found that his mind was too foggy to retain most of it. So he settled for just letting the watchdog's voice wash over him while nodding at appropriate intervals. It was nice to just hear him speak.
Peepers continued until morning without tiring. It was the first time someone listened to him ramble instead of telling him to shut up! And actively encouraging him to keep going! With Peepers happily chattering away and the skeleton engrossed with his every word, neither noticed when a watchdog briefly peaked in.