To this child, it absolutely doesn’t matter if he’s enormous and made of metal. She likes him. Sometimes she attempts to climb him, and eventually she succeeds. In a few spans, they’re a regular sight around Gravas Station, with her perched on one of his blocky shoulders. He comes to look forward to the time he spends with See-ra, enjoying her artless rambling about her life. She’s lonely, he knows, because her parents are always busy, always working to pay the fees that keep them housed and fed.

He’s lonely too.

Or he was. Not as much anymore.

Though he has no plans to stay on station, he lingers, risking discovery because See-ra will be sad when he goes. And does it truly matter when he leaves? There’s no one waiting for him and nowhere else he needs to be.

He wanders the station, pretending to be one of the many maintenance droids, and nobody questions it. He marks the docking fees paid on his ship and he skims a few credits from multiple accounts to cover the cost of fueling his ship for when he eventually goes on his way. See-ra will tire of him. Little ones have short attention spans, or so he assumes.

Only she doesn’t get bored slowly. She…vanishes.

No one seems to know anything, and he can’t ask because such inquiries exceed the parameters of his alleged programming. He searches for her, quietly ghosting in the station system. And he finds her, caged and cowering in the docking facility. All he knows is that she’s imprisoned. He doesn’t know why, and it doesn’t matter.

Saving her does.

Without hesitation, he abandons the mechanical shell and dives with full power into the station’s network, skimming the current. The code is primitive and basic, no match for his own sophistication, and soon he is the station with all the power that entails. Her parents have been taken as well, and he skims the files. Taken to a pay a gambling debt, they’re all being sold. Projecting as a holo, Helix speaks to See-ra, who lifts a small face with tremulous hope.

“You’re safe. I’m here. Do exactly as I say and you’ll be fine.”

She listens, moving through the station like a shadow, waiting when he says to, hiding when he directs it. He reunites the family and books them passage on a ship that’s leaving immediately. The family boards together, terrified but grateful. He’s left alone again, still in control of a station full of beings who would destroy a family for profit–terrible beings, who don’t deserve to live.