Chapter Text
N is having a rough time. That much is clear.
He sighs, a bit more dramatically than necessary, as he crawls through the red-doll-solver drone's discarded apartment window. He's surprised, if glad, that they never noticed how easily these windows could be pried open.
V and Uzi got into another fight. If he thought he was surprised, he'd be lying to himself. His friends bickered often, that much was well-established, but they would get into fights on occasion. This time, though, they really damaged each other. So much so that neither of them could go out to hunt and replenish the oil they'd spilled.
He wasn't angry. Just a little frustrated.
At the rate they were going at, V and Uzi would never get along. ESPECIALLY after what had gone down between them at camp. N hadn't been there, but he'd seen V flinch enough times in Uzi's presence to get a grasp on what had happened. But, they were all a team -- and teams needed to work together. Why couldn't they just cooperate? Why couldn't-
CLANG .
A stream of profanities in a language that translated automatically in his visor rang out from the apartment's main room. Though he had only heard snippets of the voice (admittedly he was mostly focused on protecting his friends throughout the encounter,) he recognized it as belonging to Doll.
He felt his oil run cold. He couldn't leave yet. He needed at least one more part -- an arm, a leg, and he'd be set.
His true eyes frantically searched the apartment, and (as was consistent with his luck,) he saw something! ...Right in the middle of the room where she stood.
He scuttled around, using the lack of light to his advantage and positioning himself just out of her sight. He attempted to quiet his core as he spared a glance around the corner to understand her location.
She looked the same as she did when he last saw her -- relatively tall (for a worker drone. she was still at least half a foot shorter than him,) and well kept. Though, right now, she looked utterly wrecked. Snow licked each inch of her casing and her hair was wild and wind-torn. Icicles (actual icicles!) clung to her oil-stained skirt as she gripped the servos in her knee (which she appeared to have banged against the door.) An oil-slick bag lay on the ground, dropped hastily. He peeked at her visor and saw thick exhaustion lines glowing beneath her eyes. To say she looked worse for wear was an understatement, completely removed from the pretty killer-drone girl that nearly killed him and his friends at prom.
His eyes traced down to the oil staining the floor, then fixed on the worker drone corpse in the middle of the room. He grit his teeth and snuck forward, careful to dim his lights and stay out of view as he reached forward with the tip of his tail.
His injector slithered around the corpse's leg and began dragging it towards him as slowly as possible -- the oil working as a nice slick silencer to remove all possibility of metal scraping against metal flooring. Just a little closer. An artificial bead of sweat dripped down his visor. Just a LITTLE fucking closer, and he could snatch it and get the hell out.
CLUNK .
N's casing turned to stone as he heard the corpse's head drop heavily against the floor. A small drop between the living room floor and the kitchen floor had gone unnoticed. Clearly, though, the noise that came from his clumsiness did NOT go unnoticed.
He dared a glance up from his failed catch, tail drooping in fear.
The solver drone stood in front of him, now alert and no longer looking as disheveled as before.
His eyes traced the tension of her form before meeting her's -- which bore down directly into his soul.
---
She was tired, her joints had begun to lock due to the temperatures (despite her internal heating mechanisms,) and she just wanted to recharge. Every SINGLE recharge station out in the wastes had been either totally ransacked or the wires were too damaged by the cold to be used.
This fact forced her to come back to her apartment every time she needed to recharge, and it was becoming increasingly apparent she wasn't the only one taking from her store. The idea that her store was helping Uzi get through these first few months with the Solver was something she was alright with, but the idea of that tall murder drone or robo-god forbid V taking from her store -- the implication made her oil boil more than it already did. The solver always invoked more violent desires in her but she swore, she was going to turn the next drone she saw inside ou- FUCK.
CLANG .
[ Fuck, FUCK. OW. FUCK. ] Her bag dropped against the floor with a thud and she reeled back, gripping her knee with the desperation of someone clinging to a raft in the middle of the ocean. Such a thing wouldn't have phased her on a normal day, but her servos were locked up uncomfortably, having been gunked up with snow and ice and various other forms of cold-debris. It felt like someone smashed a glass on her leg, the glittery splinters embedding themselves in her joints to make for an infinitely more painful experience.
She vented and let out a grumble, reluctantly placing her foot back on the ground and picking up her bag. The whole ordeal made her start to overheat again a little, and she couldn't risk such a thing when-
CLUNK .
Her head snapped to the noise so quickly shes surprised it didn't fly off her shoulders. a drone's corpse lay on the ground a ways off from where she stood, a thin trail of oil ran across the floor to where it sat in the separation between the living room and the kitchen.
As she traced her eyes further, she realized there was a murder drone.
Right there.
Staring directly at her. Its true eyes bore into her soul.
Its false face was twisted into expressing the deception of fear. But Doll knew better -- these things didn't feel fear, they didn't even feel .
She grit her teeth and pulled out one of her many knives.
---
OW, OW, OW.
He immediately rolled out of the way, terror fueling his senses. He recalled the pain he had been in after the ceiling fan she had thrown chopped him and V to bits.
He snapped his wings out and held them over himself as defense from the barrage of blades coming from the solver drone's direction. He pounced around the corner back into the hallway he had come from, scrabbling with his claws against the metal floor and creating a horrible screeching sound in the process.
By the time he had made it to the window, the projectiles had become certifiably bullet-hell level of insanity, and she stood firmly right behind him. He weaved out of the way of a fold-up chair she tossed at him which clanged loudly against the wall behind him.
He heard a crunch and he whipped his head back towards where the window was, only to find the walls had been distorted and transformed to cover it up, leaving him with no exit. Glass littered the floor and a cold breeze blew through what remained of the shattered window. He wilted as he realized it was far too small for him to wriggle through.
He made the quick decision to leap behind her and run out the front door. He could get Khan, and even if Khan didn't care for him surely the solver wouldn't be willing to kill even MORE worker drones without purpose?
Before he was able to solidify his plan, the solver's boot came down hard onto his hand, a painful fuzz reverberating across all of his sensors (it doesn't hurt too much because of his bugged pain sensors, but did take notice of how nice her boots were.) He yelped and tried to pull away, but only found himself in deeper shit as he realized she pinned his tail down with a knife. Nanite acid leaked into a dangerously bright pool below the wound and he tugged the rest of his tail away in panic. The rubber that lined his tail tore painfully at the action and he hissed in response, squeezing his eyes shut and bracing for the pain that was to follow.
...Which, surprisingly, never came.
He opened one eye, cautiously peeking up at the red-eyed drone. She held the 'bridge' of her 'nose' between her digits in frustration, and muttered something swiftly that his audial sensors didn't quite pick up.
"...Sorry, could you run that by me again?"
What the hell do I do with this guy.
"...Sorry, could you run that by me again?"
A moment passed, and she realized she had said that aloud.
Frustration overcame her exhausted senses and she raised her boot again, this time stomping onto the drone's other arm with a satisfying crunch. He yelped, a sound more startled than in pain, and apologized profusely while raising his previously mutilated hand in a placating manner -- which had the opposite effect.
[ Quiet! I am thinking. ]
" Right , okay, keep doing that!"
She continued to mull over the situation, seething in exhaustion combined with confusion. She had been keeping a careful eye on them for a while now, watching their every movement to be sure she was keeping on schedule with her plans. She hadn't anticipated the murder drones would have given up hunting in favor of scavenging -- even she hadn't entirely given it up.
She had seen the closeness between this murder drone and Uzi, perhaps he had given it up for her sake... but a murder drone couldn't have guilt, that was a ridiculous idea. There must have been an ulterior motive of some sort.
[ Why are you here. ]
"To, uh... get oil? For Uzi, and... me."
He noticed Doll didn't seem pleased with the answer, and he scrambled to explain himself further.
"She's -- she's hurt. She's still getting used to... you know, drinking oil. We've been taking from your store for a while now, sorry..."
She raised a brow in slight surprise at the apology. She despised these drones with her entire core and then some, but she didn't want to cause unnecessary harm by killing Uzi's delivery boy. She wrinkled her 'nose' and allowed her gaze to travel elsewhere.
She eventually lifted her boot off of his hand after several minutes of increasingly awkward silence, and tossed him the corpse, pulling the knife free from his tail. In the corner of her eye, she could see him catch it with his free hand which had healed (and he didn't use that to his advantage to attack her. Interesting.) She can hear the vent of relief escape his mouth as he pushes himself to his feet.
"You're Doll, right?" Doll tenses. Why was he trying to talk to her . "I'm N, what are YOU doing here?"
As she turned to face him, visage twisted in a grimace, she realized he was absentmindedly gathering more parts. The whole chase-sequence must have ran him down on his own store. He was looking at her with his false eyes, but his true eyes were fixed elsewhere -- nervously darting about as if still warily searching for another escape if he set her off again.
[ This is my apartment. Do you murder drones not have a concept of real estate? ]
"Well, yes, but I..." He suddenly found amusement in the question and giggled (which confused her, it was a completely sincere question,) "But I mean aren't- aren't you banished ?"
Well.
[ Not technically, no. I suppose the tolerance for cannibal drones arose when the head defender's daughter turned out to be one, no? ]
"Oh, no. I don't think Khan knows... or, anyone else." The murder drone said, pausing his gathering of materials to count on his claws, "Lizzy, Thad, their dad probably... You, me, Uzi, and- ... Yeah ."
---
The silence in the room was thick, and both Doll and N knew who the unspoken name was -- though neither pressed the other. N shifted uncomfortably and continued gathering, the corpse and several limbs now hauled over his shoulder.
[ Why do you trust telling me any of this? I have tried to kill all of you before, correct? ]
"Emphasis on tried ."
Shit, wait.
"No, I mean- Sorry, sorry!" He felt the uncomfortable heat that engulfed his core flush his visor instead and he nearly tripped over his own tail, "You did a great job trying to kill us, that was the most killed I've... uh, almost been."
N could just barely see the ghost of a smile pass across her face, and the fear that filled his wires melted into surprise. He had never seen her smile in the few times he had encountered her, let alone sincerely. The neutral expression he had broke away to reveal a grin, which unfortunately caused her to shy away further.
[ True. I was unprepared -- you murder drones are made of tougher material than I would care to admit. ] She said, tone completely candid, [ And one of us has more experience killing drones than the other. It's the first time I've had anyone fight back... which was not a good thing in hindsight. ]
"You talk a lot! In a good way." N wonders aloud, voice sincere despite the accusation, "Every time I've seen you, you've been really quiet. I can't blame you, though... sometimes it's nice to just listen! People have a lot of interesting things to say. Even if you weren't really, well... listening to us." He shrugged off the hostile glance she sent his way.
[ You say that as if you have not been talking my ear off as well. ] Her tone was unreadable as intended, because the emotions she read in the expressions that crossed his face were mostly embarrassed. He raised his other hand (which was now healed,) and opened his mouth to retort, before sighing defeatedly.
"Yeah, I can't argue there. Sorry."
[ You keep apologizing. Do you mean it? ]
"Um... yes! Don't you mean it when you say it?"
[ I'm not the one who has anything to apologize for. ] While she meant it in this specific context, the way he looked at her afterwards indicated he took it a different way and he wilted a little.
"True... wait, no!" He pointed a digit at her in accusation, moving quickly enough to make her flinch, "You killed a ton of drones!"
Doll didn't bother with responding, sending an irritated glance in his direction -- this time he didn't shrug it off, wincing as he realized what he had just said.
"Okay, fair... we've both killed a ton of drones. Killer buddies!"
[ That is not something to bond over. ]
"Also very fair!" He placed a hand on his hip and puffed out his chest, grinning widely. She suddenly realized he was beyond well stocked in the oil-department, an almost comically large bundle of oil-leaking limbs and torsos balancing over his shoulder. Additionally, the dim light leaking through the now re-opened window indicated the sun was to come up soon. The exhaustion lines suddenly felt infinitely heavier on her visor and she slumped forward, twangs of irritance sparking in her tank.
She was more irritated at the fact that a murder drone seemed like decent company.
And that he seemed capable of remorse .
If he was able to understand the weight of his actions, then... well, she was going to end that string of thoughts before it webbed into something dangerously against all she had worked up to.
She was going to end the interaction, too, before anything came of it.
[ I have to go. Goodbye. ] She said bluntly, then turned away to leave.
"Wait, huh? Wait!" N jolted with surprise and approached her with an outstretched hand, recoiling only as she sent him a biting glare, "Um- we should... meet up again. Haha, maybe I could convince you to come join us! It must be lonely out there, no?" His voice took on a smug tone towards the end, implying he thought he would be getting somewhere. Cute.
[ ... ] She gave no response, but he (frustratingly) picked up the fraction of a second that she hesitated, and joyfully continued.
"Next week, same time!" As she turned around to face him, she saw him wink and smile.
Alright. That was enough.
She vanished into a garble of red pixels, leaving behind nothing but dust in her wake.
---
He reached out, digits ghosting over the swirling red mist left where she had vanished. He frowned. Did he really seem that desperate for company that wasn't biting the shit out of him every other hour? Not that he was ungrateful, but he was glad to have talked to her.
Either way, he had better make himself useful and deliver the oil before the sun came up. The servos in his shoulder had begun to ache, and his ever-dwindling oil store was incessantly apparent in the corner of his visor.
He glanced over the scene, mostly covered in his own oil, wistfully. Perhaps he would see her in a week's time.