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They returned almost at dawn.
V and N had a night of mixed success in terms of finding more food. They had covered their food quota, yes, but just barely. They were barely scraping by with two corpses to store, which represented an incredibly low level for emergency reserves. It hadn't been the best night. Specifically for N, while it was the coolest thing on the face of Copper 9 to be able to go hunting with his crush, as they hadn't done for a long time, it was starting to get a bit tedious with V's constant complaining. Nevertheless he, bless him, was too nice to ever express his discomfort in any way.
"Damn it!" V exclaimed, carrying the body on her back. "These sneaky rats keep getting away! Is it too much trouble to keep them still so I can devour their viscera and chop them to bits!?"
It was probably the hundredth, or hundred and first complaint of that early morning. This time it was given as they flew agilely across the frigid air through which fluttered, as always, the snowflakes that reflected the perpetual ice age in which the planet was plunged. The tower of bodies was already visible from a distance, and N, in equal parts optimistic and infinitely in love, could not but try to offer words of comfort.
"It's okay V," he told her cheerfully, with that tone of his that never lost its sweetness. "Next time we'll have better luck. I'm sure you'll find some shelter bursting with workers!"
His crush glanced at him, sighed, and looked ahead, seeming to finally give up complaining now that they were about to arrive. N decided to change the subject, seeing that it was the first time since they had started the return route that she had been silent for more than about ten seconds. He had intended to talk about anything other than the matter of the hunt, and chose, being as he was, the first thing that popped into his head that didn't have to do with that.
"What do you think Uzi and J are up to?" His curiosity was irrepressibly genuine, trying to imbue the topic with legitimacy.
V moved a little ahead of him, only by a few centimeters, and glancing sideways at him for a moment, replied without taking her eyes off the ever-closer tower.
"No idea." Her response was still laden with bitterness from before, but, inwardly, there was a small appreciation on her part for her partner for at least trying to distract her neural net from how bad things had gone.
“As long as we don't find them making out in the snow, I don't really care much; it was cute in the beginning, when the two of them were barely hugging, but now it just makes me want to puke."
She acrobatically dodged a pole that crossed their path as they began to descend.
"Anyway..." she acknowledged, resigned. "We'll see soon enough. I'm sure they have a welcoming committee ready for us." A hint of a smile formed on her face. "Although the little one has made it so that at least J won't bug us so much if the rounds don't go as they should. That’s a small benefit."
N listened to her with full attention while keeping in time with the downward trajectory.
"Yeah," he concurred, as he began to slow down. "Haha, it's so weird to see her with a smile on her face for anything other than hitting me, isn't it?"
V had already lagged behind when she closed her eyes for a mere second mid-sentence. On the concourse in front of the tower, losing only a moment's composure, she increased her speed and caught up to him soon, landing a few feet behind her.
"Sorry about that...N." His name was said like someone trying to remember the scientific name of some terrestrial species, despite being a mere letter. "I just want this night to be over."
"T-that's okay!" He ran up to her, dragging the body of the dead drone by one hand. "Erm…tomorrow will be better, I'm sure of it! You always make it better!" His face expressed positivity, a small blush mark appearing on his visor.
His companion watched him, her expression changing to a slightly more graceful one, before she let out a soft chuckle.
"The worker is right, at times you seem more puppy than disassembler." Releasing a hand from the corpse he carried, she rested hers briefly on his chest. "Trying to make everyone feel good. I guess I can only thank you." Her amber eyes gestured towards the tower. "Now, come on, those two have to be waiting for us. It won't be long until dawn."
Firmly holding the body again, she began to walk towards the tower. N followed her immediately; his footsteps were completely muted by the incessant howling of the wind. Likewise, they could not get any idea of what the inside of the tower was like far beyond the threshold.
✠✠
She didn't know where it was.
Her optical sensors looked in all directions, while her weapon lay on her hands, mere inches away from activating. She could hear very well how the filthy creature scurried around what seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The golden glowing tail, such an obvious sign that any disassembly unit would have, was nowhere to be seen, and her nerves were growing frayed as she hurriedly left the sleeping area of the capsule; the door was not far, and if she ran fast enough, she might yet save her own skin.
She soon reached what constituted the command bridge, aiming sporadically towards any possible place: the noises had faded slightly, but the wounded threat was still active, waiting for her to let the guard down and ambush her in revenge for the very strong blow to the chest, using the railgun as a bayonet.
She passed through the area with great speed, making sure not to trip over the swivel chairs, feeling an ever-increasing relief in her chest as she was about to leave. The indistinguishable door of the capsule awaited. The only means of opening it, a small button to operate the locking mechanism, was practically within reach. She turned her back for a moment on the escape route, preoccupied now with the sudden cessation of the noises. She waited there, for a few moments, for some kind of sudden attack, perhaps a mere slash to the head that would hit as soon as her guard was down just a little.
There came no such thing, so still aiming, she began to take timid backward steps towards the door. Her left hand, the one that merely served as another grip on the railgun, was in charge of reaching for the mechanism's button. She could feel freedom already very, extremely close; it was only a matter of crossing the threshold and she could soon escape the cruel and merciless fate that awaited her if she remained inside the pod any longer.
The disassembly unit seemed to have vanished into the bowels of the ship. Everything was as silent as before it first surprised her. The silence did not fail to give an extremely horrible feeling of anxiety. The worker gritted her teeth while reaching behind her back for the lock mechanism, which, to her good fortune, she had finally located. She turned her gaze from the front for a mere moment, and, facing the artifice, pressed the button that would give her freedom.
Or at least, the one that should have given it. As she pressed the button, immediately a small screen above it revealed a window of text. Relentless, unavoidable, and utterly contemptible was what could be read in perfect capital letters of a futuristic typeface:
"ENTER OPENING PASSWORD."
Her eyes hollowed at the shock of such news.
"No..." She began to press the button again and again, turning her back completely to the room and lowering her gun. "No-no-no-n-"
A rumbling behind her cut short her panic attack. The unmistakable sound of mechanical wings flapping in the stagnant air inside the ship immediately confirmed what it was; she immediately turned around, weapon raised, aiming at the drone that had just emerged from some unexpected nook at the top of the capsule, barely hidden in the relative gloom of the bridge. Her opponent began to laugh loudly, a laugh that evoked broken visors and severed heads; a laugh that had echoed both here and in the abandoned environments of Copper 9 countless times.
She watched her. Two yellow ovals locked onto her own purple ones, the worker’s mechanical pulse quivering only very briefly with the weapon in her hand.
"Interesting, isn't it, little worker?" She pointed one of her claws at her, leaning slightly in her direction, sarcastic and sly. "So close, but so far away...a real pity..."
She didn't flinch. She stood her ground, taking a step forward.
"Give me the password.” she demanded, waving the gun just a little. "Now."
The disassembler tilted her head slightly. An X replaced the two ovals.
"Or what are you going to do?" Her tone expelled curiosity, along with the anticipation that only the hunter can have with its prey. "Shoot me, little worker?"
Her lips and purple interface visor demonstrated a confident expression, ready for battle; the finger on the trigger immediately made a movement.
"Thanks for the idea," She spat.
The sound of the trigger immediately rang out, and died as quickly as it had come; the weapon remained in her hands, not having served its purpose; there was no beam of green light, not even a malfunction that would allow the device to be employed as an improvised grenade. The railgun did not react in any appreciable way to the act of its owner, who, already for the second time, had her eyes hollowed out. She clicked the trigger again and again, waiting for the saving shot.
"What?" Her gaze was riveted on the gun, which she eventually stopped triggering. "Why...?"
She heard the swing of a tail in front of her. She immediately looked up; ready to repeat her use of the device as a bayonet with immediate effect. But instead, she watched as the tail of the disassembler swung playfully behind her, clutching in a firm grip a small cylinder gushing green light.
"Looking for this?" she waved it in front of her, elegant, precise, not making a move more than necessary as she let her paws rest against her hips, smiling, displaying her fangs.
"Y-you..." Her tone oscillated between anger and fear.
The tail, graceful, as always, without much care, threw the source of power behind her enemy. It made a dry sound as it hit the ground. They were left again in that silence that could only presage the worst, announced already by the combat position adopted by the dismounted.
"Come." She slowly licked her fangs with her gray tongue. "It won't hurt, too much".
The worker narrowed her eyes at the provocation, and without further alternative, firmly held the weapon. She executed, immediately, a frontal charge with the intention of knocking out her opponent.
✠✠
"J, Uzi!" V exclaimed, already in the middle of the enclosure. Her optical sensors quickly scanned her surroundings, but all she could make out were the inanimate bodies staring back at her with muted scopes. No hint of either of the living drones. "We're back now, you turtledoves!"
There was no response to the shouts.
"That's weird," she muttered, laying the corpse on the ground before repeating herself. "Uzi! J!"
No response. N also looked around. He had left his burden on the ground as well, somewhat confused. Such a thing had never happened before. Usually the two came to greet them immediately in order to receive a small report on how everything had gone. But on this occasion their welcoming committee had not been much more than a rather strange silence, not even the sound of passionate kisses on the snow coming from the back of the capsule had announced their presence. But N being as he was, he couldn't assume anything wrong.
"Maybe they're just asleep in the pod," he suggested, scratching his head a little. "It's almost daylight..."
"No," V interrupted. "Those two stay awake to make sure we've arrived safely, and neither of them are distracted enough to forget we've left."
N looked at her, somewhat confused as he briefly put his hand to his chin.
"And where do you think they are?" he asked in good spirits, really not knowing what to do in this situation.
V looked around, with a somewhat worried expression.
"Dammit,” she expressed, fed up. "Nothing horrible better have happened while we were-"
A sudden metallic clang, quite loud, made the two of them jump where they stood. Both dismounted units quickly went into hunting mode: N deployed his laser weapon and a sword arm, while V expanded her claws. In less than an instant, they were ready to spring into action.
"Where did that come from?" his partner murmured to him, looking in all directions with her sensors. "Do you detect anything?"
"Nothing," N observed, cautious, waiting. "Normal vision’s clear, thermal?"
"Yes," V replied.
Whatever heat signatures they could see were by now to be expected from a gigantic tower made of metal corpses subjected to freezing cold. They observed such cold surfaces before filtering through them, looking for any sign of heat other than what they already knew. Inevitably, both, seeing that their surroundings were clear, focused their sensors on the pod. With the low temperatures filtered out of their systems, they both immediately distinguished two very familiar heat signatures coming from within.
But what the figures revealed (one with the high temperatures of a disassembly unit, the other with the stable heat of a worker) was that J was lying astride Uzi, who appeared to be struggling to get her off.
“That cheeky bitch!" V muttered between her teeth, glancing at N for a mere moment before she started running towards the capsule at full speed. "Come on, Uzi needs help!"
N waited for nothing to follow his crush to save her friend from what had to be a horrible betrayal.
It was pure luck that she was still alive, if only just because of J's habit of playing with her food.
✠✠
She had soundly knocked her to the ground.
In a graceful movement with her tail and the non-cutting end of her claws, just like that, she was stripped of her only weapon, deprived of any means to defend herself. She tried to get up, having fallen face first. The weapon falling across the room, she tried futilely to extend her arm towards it, to regain the chance to escape.
"And what do you think you're doing, little worker?"
The voice of the dismantler fell on her like a bucket of cold water. The tail, the cursed tail grabbed her right hand, pulling at the joint and forcing her onto her back; she had retracted her claws, in a clear disregard for her ability to harm, and from one second to the next, she straddled her torso. Before the worker could do anything else, her hands were restrained above her head.
Her eyes had returned to being, for the moment, ovals against the blackness of the visor. Her pigtails fell to the sides of her head and formed a cascade of white hair around her, preventing her prey from watching anything other than the disassembler as she still struggled.
"Oh, poor thing…" Her tone was co-sentimental, filled with a venomous pity for her. "So flawed that she can't understand that it's useless to escape..."
She brought her visor as close as possible to her opponent's, until a small metallic noise signaled that they had come face to face. Uzi's expression trembled, shifting between a deep blush and snatches of the desire to escape her grip, her lips forming disjointed words that failed to create even the first part of any insult. J switched her visor back to hunting mode.
"I'm going to drink that delicious oil under your chassis," she purred, more seductive than threatening. "I'm going to use you for what you really are: Food."
She bared her fangs again, moving a little away from her prey. "I will enjoy every gasp, every move you make as I drain you...my stupid little worker..."
Uzi murmured nonsense. Her programming was taking the disassembler's words as if they were a drug, even with brief hints of the resistance shown before as she looked away as soon as her rival, after restraining her arms with her tail, unzipped her jacket, slowly; unhurriedly.
She stopped just after fully uncovering the circle-shaped light that glowed the same purple as Uzi's interface; her tail was still holding her arms firmly, while the soft hands began to caress her chest once she had uncovered that part of its prey.
"So much oil..." she whispered, her primal programming intermingling with her consciousness. "All to myself..."
Her claws emerged. Uzi watched silently. Mechanical lips quivering at the approaching climax of the affair, the moment they both always waited for in each iteration. It turned out to be, perhaps, the most sacred moment. The roles were not to be broken, not yet, not yet, for at least another little while.
She writhed on the floor as far as possible as soon as she felt J's claws slowly open a wound, small, just below the light on her chest; she immediately received a warning of an oil leak. She dismissed it, and gritted her teeth, hard, as small whimpers of pain barely escaped, held back by her own hard-won stubbornness.
"Thank you, sweetheart…" She had approached the wound, and abandoning just for a moment her part as disassembler, she addressed it, still partially submerged in the trance that this part of her sessions provoked. "Thank you."
She already felt the synthetic breath brushing against the somewhat exposed components, and it was just as the wound was about to widen from the incisors that the door of the capsule was opened with a resounding explosion. The spell that hung over them both cracked immediately, perhaps too soon. J had no time to do anything but turn to see, with all the respective anger, who had interrupted them, before receiving a huge blow in the face. She was sent flying towards the screen of the main console of the bridge.
Uzi didn't have time to even understand what was happening before V promptly lifted her off the ground forcibly, like a sack full of spare parts.
"At least you're still alive…" She noticed the wound on the worker’s chassis. "Good thing we got there in time, N!" The disassembly drone approached them without delay. "Take care of the dwarf, I'll take care of-"
"What are you doing?!" Uzi suddenly interrupted, upset, realizing that her girlfriend had just been brutally assaulted. "Put me down right now!"
She began to struggle with all her might, and V let go almost instantly.
"Ugh," V grumbled. "I don't get you, we go and save your life and you get mad, you really are an annoying worker…" She turned her back, resuming hunting mode. "Either way, J won't stand a chance against-"
Uzi stood up abruptly, and pushing V aside, rushed over to J, who was barely recovering from the sudden impact.
"J!" shouted the purple-haired one, "J, are you all right?!"
N, confused, as was V, could only watch as the worker began to help the dismantler out of the rubble of the console.
"What the hell did we just interrupt?" V reverted to her standard mode, and put her hands on her hips.
N shrinks back. "Guess we got a bit carried away with what we saw from outside...huh?"
V glanced at him for a few moments before redirecting her gaze to the pair.
"There better be a good explanation for this,” she near shouted with annoyance, frustration and traces of anger.
Uzi shot her a threatening look, before continuing to help J, whose visor glitched a couple of times as she began to recover from the daze.
✠✠
"Let me get this straight." V's expression was crammed with a neutrality that gave some angst, being someone who rarely held back whatever little she was feeling. "You two were...playing."
J was now sitting in one of the pod chairs, with Uzi at her side. The worker was applying regenerative saliva to her wounds with a cloth that the leader herself had moistened in her mouth. V, again, gave the two a look that clearly did not wield kindness.
"Yes." J's voice still sounded strange, due to the minor damage the force of the impact caused her voice box. "A game, for the two of us, fictitious, with clear rules." She clarified this with a small incipient blush in her visor.
"And you do it because why?" The jacket-clad disassembler crossed her arms, incredulity slowly etching itself into her eyes and mouth.
"J likes my oil," Uzi explained, continuing to apply the wet cloth with regenerative saliva. "But she doesn't like that it's all so easy".
The worker couldn't help herself but blush a bit with the rather dumbfounded expressions that, soon, appeared on both disassemblers’ faces. This certainly would require more explaining than this...but if that means that her girlfriend will not get assaulted again, it’ll be worth it, despite the embarrassment.