Chapter Text
"The chihuahua is a rather small breed! Specifically bred to be about 6 to 10 inches in size, and can't grow any bigger afterwards!"
N smiled at the book page, before blinking. The quiet library's silence ate the soft mechanical buzz from his screen like candy, echoing it to the far end of the room.
"..well that doesn't sound nice for their kind.." The drone spoke aloud.
N had managed to get through two and a half animal sections in the library, most of those being dog books. And throughout all of those books, they made it clear that most dogs are bred to be unnatural compared to their ancestors for human likings.
And as someone who was and has been reprogrammed multiple times, fixed, and repaired to humans likings. It didn't sit right with him.
"I'm sure they are doing great though!" He put on a reassuring smile and turned to his left.
There, at the end of the hallway being lit up by thunder stood a lifeless drone, with an ongoing error 606 signal beeping on her sensor screen.
V stood perfectly still, glasses and cut hair the same as when she was powered off all that time ago.
Despite N knowing she couldn't hear him, he still tried to reassure the error screen on the drone as if she could.
He turned his attention back to his book before he heard a rather loud clack beside him, and one look showed a book that had fallen off a shelf next to him sat open facing down.
He quickly scooped it up, disregarding his dog book to make sure the pages on the one that had just fallen weren't wrinkled and bent.
Just as he was about to stand up to put it back, another fell down, followed by another.
Now those couldn't be coincidences.
He turned to the items and saw how they hadn't fallen open like the first one, therefore no pages could be crumbled, a few scratched on the cover but no actual damage.
Without his program screaming for him to check if they were messed up beyond repair, he finally got to processing it.
Those books couldn't have just fallen on their own, the one in his hands? He could chalk that up to it being put back wrongly, but two more? At a perfect time hitting the floor together?
No way.
Just then another tipped over and fell straight onto his head, sliding down to land at his feet.
Muffling his squeak of surprise, he took a step back from it.
Examining the cover, it was a horror novel, with black and green colors all over. He recognized it was a supernatural book of sorts.
And the other two were both in the same hook, horror genre.
N slowly slid the book he held into its correct spot on the shelf, before picking up the one at his feet to hold it, as if one move would make it hit his head again.
He gently turned to the powered off drone at the end of the hallway, looking at her as if she would confirm she saw everything too and that he wasn't going crazy.
But despite his efforts, she stood frozen just like usual.
He pushed the book into its correct place, and went to pick up the others, but a loud creaking stopped him.
The shelf was beginning to tilt the other way, and he couldn't really grab it with how packed the shelves were, giving little to no room for hands to hold onto unless he managed to toss books away to make an opening for himself.
The drone helplessly held his hands up at the shelf, not knowing how to stop it.
In a last ditch effort he began to sprint to the end of the hallway, in hopes of reaching the back of the furniture in time to grab it and push it right ways up again.
But right when he rounded the corner, the moving stopped, and left him wide eyed, hands still up in some surrender motion.
He was about to just run out of there, not wanting to be the drone who was last in the library before a big accident with the book shelf happened and be switched on by someone, despite knowing J and Tessa knew well he went there whenever he could so the idea it was him would be obvious.
A painful screeching from the side of the room caused N to jolt. He quickly whipped around to see a large scratch in the window, and soon a dark thick red liquid began to bubble and drip.
No not drip, spell.
It began to spell out something in crimson red.
All he got was the letter B before the drone ran out.
The gala was in a week.
And N was cleaning up another smashed flower pot.
These things have been happening for days by now, and by days he meant 2.
Smashed pots, thrown vases, ripped up paper, red blood (or what N suspected was blood) forming on windows and ceilings, table cloths falling off their tables.
One even draped directly over him!
Have all been happening nonstop, and N was starting to believe he was going through some robot insanity, maybe he had a drink spilt on him that messed up his ocular senses? No he'd remember that.
N sighed as he swept up the pot into a trash bag, slowly making his way to the trash chute to dunk it down.
Inside said chute he heard a muffled thunk.
And at first N thought another poor mouse had gotten lost inside the chute, but what he wasn't expecting was to see that same book he was reading nights ago, sitting perfectly balanced to be in the center of the chute so that it wouldn't fall in.
It was the dog book, the one about chihuahuas.
"Oh.. when did you get here.."
N gently picked it up, careful to not drop it down the hole as he tossed the bag in and shut it.
He tried to ignore the uneasy feeling as he examined the book.
"You're not supposed to be all the way out here."
He spoke to himself, as if the book would answer back.
With slow, reassuring steps he made his way to the library.
The one he hadn't visited since that night with the blood on the window.
He tried remaining calm, but the whirring of his inner cooling system speeding up the closer he got wasn't helping
Walking inside was... was as normal as he could have imagined it.
No scary ghost to scare him, or peek out from a shelf before tipping it over.
Just the same quiet library, nothing out of the ordinary. The mindless drones still stood lifeless with their yellow errors blinking, and the books stayed intact.
N slowly made his way to the post he knew the hardcover he had in his hands stayed at.
The more he walked, the more confident his steps were. No creepy slasher came out to get him, no books coming out with saws ready to bang his head into the wooden tiles.
Man he really shouldn't have read that horror book three weeks ago, who knew it would come back to mess up his censors so much he hallucinated?
Walking past the lifeless drones was a memory by now, and rounding the corner to where his friend stood still as ever was engraved in his files.
He smiled at her, and waved, and she moved not an inch. The soft mechanical blinking of the error screen on her face was enough to soothe his nerves.
He gently examined the area as he slid the book into its shelf.
No strayed horror novels on the floor, no blood on the window, almost as if it never happened.
It was just like he remembered it.
A few seconds of waiting with his hand on the wood of the shelf, he smiled, satisfied.
"I'll talk to you tonight V!"
He smiled and walked back over to the end of the bookshelf to leave.
Sadly maybe it was a bad idea to be so confident in those last few minutes.
A loud thud fell onto the floor in the next aisle.
N slowly turned his head to the sound, getting some awful dejavu.
A book sat on the floor, right next to the other powered off drones who were still in their previous activity motions as if frozen in time, unlike V who N made sure he moved to be standing more comfortably.
He fiddled with his fingers and weighed his options.
Walk away and have a book on the floor and possibly get caught by Mr. or Mrs. Elliot and get thrown out, or pick up one little book that was probably just placed too close to the edge and was totally not hau-
As N made his way to the book, another was thrown to the floor and he froze.
Staring wide eyed at the hardcovers that had strayed red text all over them.
More horror genre novels, a bit of fantasy but that didn't matter.
The first one had in big words DANGER IN CALICO CITY! and the second was labeled IT SAID IT IN JUPITER.
Both first words were in red.
Put together was
'DANGER, IT SAID'
N stayed frozen, blinking till his head tilted and without thinking he spoke.
"It said.. danger..?"
Almost on perfect timing, the danger book was moved away from It Said It In Jupiter to be more spaced out.
N blinked again, this time awkwardly smiling and laughing as he straightened his posture.
"I'm just gonna-"
Before he even took a step away, a loud screeching was heard in front of him.
His head turned quickly to the sound, and being etched in the floorboards was in very scratchy letters
'Dark'
'X'
'Wolf'
'17'
More confusion was toppled onto his fear.
"...danger in calico city, it said it in Jupiter DarxwolfL7..?"
A few seconds passed.
And it almost seemed as if whatever was tossing the books down at him was giving him a disappointed look, like the one J gives whenever N does something stupid.
The Danger book was then thrown fully across the room, completely away from him now, and N flinched at the sudden action.
He looked down at the words once again, and tried piecing it together.
'It'
'Said'
"D-..darkx.. DarkXWolf17..?
At first he thought he got the word wrong again.
But that was when he finally snapped to his senses, and realized how dumb he must look.
He was talking out into the open air, staring at books on the floor in a dark library with ruined wood floor boards that looked like someone was so bored they took a knife and carved gibberish into it that he's probably gonna get blamed for.
Right when N decided he was going to get Tessa to look into his programming, or even memory board, a bright light flashed.
It was coming from one of the powered off drones.
He quickly threw his head to the robot, just in time to see its body cracking, and bending In ways he definitely knew he could do but still didn't seem right.
The drone moving was one he recognized, but only appearance wise as he never knew them personally.
She had a maid dress much like J, Cyn and V (used to), with a band of white puffs sitting on its head. That same yellow band sat on its right shoulder just below the sleeve as a permanent marked for disassemble sign, one that every other worker drone N knew had. The drone stood in a mid action motion, feather duster in hand with one leg up, hair that curled over the front of its face, and swooped behind the head.
N always thought it looked like a crown hung low on someone rather than a normal hairstyle.
Is the drone.. repressing the error? Isn't that super rare? Cyn did it though, didn't she? Can V do it? But this drone has been out of it for months! Years?
Suddenly the cracking of distorted rusty limbs from not being oiled in decades stopped, and the drone leaned over with its hands at the floor and head hung low, one of the first times N has ever seen it move out of its leg up stance, and to be honest? It kinda weirded him out.
Till instead of the normal bright white glow, or even yellow that Cyn had, a brighter purple emitted from its sensors.
A color he has not seen ever before in the drones around the house.
N was still frozen as the head cocked to the side to stare at him.
Only when the drone quickly sprung to life and stretched itself was when he stepped back.
The drone blinked, and N could see on its eyes some hexagon symbols with arrows pointing out, ones he also hadn't ever seen before.
Soon the drone turned to its own hands and flexed, wincing at the audible creak it made with its rusted over joints till it turned over to N.
"FINALLY!"