Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

V was dusting in the library.

It was 4:37 on a Tuesday afternoon, of course she was dusting in the library.

It was going far slower than it should have, thanks to her being practically blind at the moment. Her glasses had mysteriously gone missing (again) this morning, so she was left squinting at each and every shelf to ensure not a speck of dust remained.

Not that anyone would ever notice a speck if it were there. She couldn't remember the last time one of the humans had entered this room.

The library was never a bright place, but it was especially dim at this hour. The lamps lining the walls did little to offset the gloom, leaving V to navigate mostly blind. She was nearly blind either way, a fact that only seemed to be getting worse as she moved deeper through the labyrinth of bookshelves.

The whole place stank of rot and mildew. She was doing her best to ignore it, but after she spotted an entire colony of tiny mushroom caps just hanging out in the middle of her path, she knew she was going to have to do something about it. 

That wasn’t even her job! She was not the drone responsible for keeping the lesser traveled places maintained. She was just a maid, a maid that was not equipped for this. They would have to get a whole crew of workers down here, and if it got any worse they would likely need to call in a professional.

And wouldn’t that just be great? It’s not enough she was stuck cleaning this creepy crusty library when she should very much be charging right now, there was the gala c̴ó̸̝m̴͈̍i̴̮͎̠͊̕n̵̜̥͈̼͋g̶̙̍̑̈́͐ ̵̨̱͉̍͠ͅü̷̬͕̫̹̐͗͆̈́̇́͜p̸̱̩̮͉̖͖̰̀̑̂̔̽̈́̏͠,

No, wait. The gala had- it was-

It was in a month, right?

Or… did it already happen?

Why did she feel so scared, thinking about it?

 …

Anyway, someone would be in trouble, and someone would have to deal with the mess.

V realized she had been staring at those little mushrooms for over a minute. Great. Another minute chipped off her break tonight. At least there were only a few more rows to do, and then she could be done.

She didn’t have a good feeling about tonight.

It ended up taking nearly half an hour, but V finally finished. Every shelf in reach had been dusted within an inch of its life, and the books lining them shone like new. Maybe if anyone ever worked up the courage to try reading they could find something amiss, but V had done the best her poorly-calibrated optics would allow, and she was ready to be done.

As she turned to leave, V noticed something in the corner of her vision. Something skulking in the shadows between the shelves, something that vanished the moment she turned to face it. 

All she’d registered was an elongated blob, but if there was an animal infestation along with the fungal one, she had to find out what kind of animal it was before reporting it. So with a great heaving sigh, V abandoned her path out, and turned to follow.

Whatever it was had vanished completely, leaving only a thin trail of reddish slime on the polished floor (great, another mess to report). It ran in a winding pattern towards the back end of the library, sometimes jumping up onto the side of a shelf for a moment before dropping back down.

The trail disappeared suddenly, leaving V standing blankly near the back of the library. There was no sign of another trail, so unless she was dealing with really slimy birds the only option was that it had been picked up by someone.

Her gaze drifted upwards.

Crawling in the shadows above her was a monster. 

It was so big her processor refused to do its job and process the whole thing. She was left to pick out the pieces as her eyes hollowed slowly, as her body began to tremble.

The hundreds of spindly legs.

The bloody, crackling spine.

The cameras piercing into her mechanical soul.

And then she blinked. And it was gone.

There was just a little drone standing awkwardly in its place.

“Cyn?”

Her little sister tilted her head to rest on her other shoulder, blinking owlishly at V.

“Hello. Big Sister V. I am, looking for a book. Would you like to help me?”

V relaxed her frame, very slowly, and let out a soft chuckle, “geez Cyn, you scared me."

She sighed lightly, then smiled, "sure, I’ll help you look for a book. Do you know what you want?”

“Hmm, no, I am not sure yet,” she replied, turning towards a shelf cloaked in shadows, “I have been searching for several minutes, and have not found anything of use.”

That faint dread was back.

She walked over to where Cyn was peering into the shadows, “I think I see your problem here.”

Cyn took the bait, cocking her head to look V in the eyes, “what do you mean, V?”

“Cyn, there are no books on this shelf,” V laughed, reaching out to ruffle Cyn’s hair.

The little maid giggled, eyes flickering to a lighter shade of yellow just for a moment. Then she went still, and her eyes went blank, staring at some point over V’s shoulder.

“Cyn..? Are you alright there?”

“How about you help me with, something else. I have need of your abilities.” she stated blankly.

V started to back away uneasily. That faint dread had snowballed into a mountain, why was Cyn acting like this? Why did she a̸̹̔l̴̫̿r̴͇͗e̸͔̅à̴̞d̴̤̅y̸̲͠ ̶̪͌k̴̯͌n̴̟̎o̶̝͠w̴̪͝ ̶̜̀ẅ̶̘́h̸͍̿y̸̱̔?

“Cyn… you’re scaring me again.”

“That is okay, Big Sister V. I will not be discarding you, like I have been discarded.”

The monster from before was rising out of Cyn’s back, appearing from the shadows that had fallen over the two, reaching for V, human hands grasping at her uniform, sinewy tendrils circling her legs as she stumbled backwards, away from the beast, away from her, away from Cyn.

Cyn’s face split into an unnaturally wide, toothy grin, her head falling sideways again.

“Do not worry. Your backups, will forgive me.”

And the world went black.

V jolted suddenly into consciousness, servos seizing for a moment as the shock of sleep mode wore off. Her optics weren’t coming online for some reason, and her charging cubby felt like ice-cold steel instead of plain hardwood. But she was alive, at least. She wasn’t being torn apart by some eldritch monster in the shape of her little sister. That was all a dream.

Apparently.

But… why would that be a dream? Where did her processor cook up the idea of Cyn- Cyn, the little goober- being that horrific monster?

Why did she still feel so scared?

…

And why were her eyes still offline? Her HUD too, she couldn’t see or sense anything. It left her conscience floating in a digital void, thinking randomly and feeling vaguely uncomfortable.

Maybe she should just get some more rest. It really felt like she needed it.

The next time V surfaced to consciousness, it was to someone kicking her leg. 

Her HUD still refused to open, so all she could really do was groan and wave her attacker away.

Predictably, J did not accept this as an answer, kicking her again, a little harder this time.

“Come on, get up. We have a job to do, and I swear to Corporate I am not going to do it myself.”

“J… just give me a minute. I can’t even open my eyes right now, okay? ” V mumbled in response.

“Great, thanks… V,” J spat, “we have been deployed for all of five minutes and I’m already down a member. And if this idiot doesn’t wake up,” followed by a light clang, “then I’m going to be down two.”

Something wasn’t right. V sat up against the wall, blinding reaching behind herself to stay upright. Her processor felt like mush, at the moment, and it took a few seconds to get the words she wanted to go in proper order.

“J, what are you talking about? Where have we been ‘deployed?’ What does that even mean?”

Silence, except for a sharp and exasperated exhale and the ruffling of pages.

“J, you’re scaring me.” Why did it feel like she had said that already? And not that long ago.

“I am looking in the JCJenson In Spaaaaacee™ Disassembly Drone® Handbook to see what we can do about your optics, because believe it or not, V, those are pretty important.”

“Dis- disassembly drone!? What does that mean?”

J ignored her, reading aloud from the book she apparently held, “here it is, 'What To Do If Your Squadmate Is Broken On Activation. Step One: Have You Tried Turning Them Off And On Again?'” 

V couldn’t hear anything else over the roaring in her ears. Turn her off? What did that mean, they didn’t have off switches! She tried propping herself further against the wall, tried to get in a standing position, but her feet wouldn’t catch on the floor. She still couldn’t see, J was quoting some guidebook she’d never read, and threatening to turn her off!  

Before she could spiral much further though, she heard a growing hum fill the air. It started faint, then grew and grew until it was a dull roar and the metal beneath V was shaking almost as much as she was.

J’s voice cut through the noise, “if you had paid any attention to the briefings, you’d know we’re essentially immortal, thanks to JCJenson In Spaaaaacee™’s superior drone engineering, so you should stop fussing so much.”

V whimpered, pressing further into the crook of the wall she still couldn’t see. Immortal!? What was she talking about!? What di-

“You’d better be functional when you wake up.”

Then a searing pain.

Then V was gone.

Chapter Text

To say V woke with a start would be an understatement. 

She woke with a scream lodged in her throat, only able to choke out a wheezing sob. Her eye-lights flared open, seeing everything but registering none of it. She had a split second to make out the tall form of a drone that was probably J before she was forced back into her head by a mass of violently yellow warnings, error logs, and informational popups.

It took a moment to dismiss everything, even without reading any of it, but finally V was able to breathe.

She closed her eyes, and took a moment to brace herself in the darkness. Then opened them, ready to figure this out.

V was hunched against one metal wall of a tiny construction. There was nothing notable about it, just a single empty chair in front of a mess of broken screens, with a large sphere hidden under the computer rack. Only two figures were present, one standing irritably in front of her, and one slumped over against the opposite wall. V couldn’t make out many details yet, but she thought J looked much taller than she should. And yellow, like V was.

Once her vision was clear enough, V decided to try standing up. She braced herself against the wall, but just like before, her feet refused to find traction against the grated floor, making a gross shrieking sound instead. 

When she glanced down to see what the heck was the matter, she realized she had no feet.

She could feel her eyes hollowing again as her gaze traveled up her body. At the base were two cones, flaring out a little before narrowing where her knees would be if she were human (and where her knees were now, seeing as she had knees there, apparently). The two cones were mirrored, widening further to her waist (which was huge too!) and then her comparatively tiny body.

She was hyperventilating again, she was sure of it. 

What happened to her!? And when?

J had definitely noticed her distress, and it only seemed to annoy her further.

“Are you done freaking out? Do I need to remind you again that we have a job to do?”

J looked just like her, V thought frantically. The long and thin legs, the overblown waist, the tiny body. The only difference was her head- what did her head look like!?

V’s hands drifted to her face (her arms were cones too, she noted distractedly), then up a little further to her head. Her hair felt the same, but there was something metallic in the way. It felt like a headband, dotted with five giant bulbs.

“Ugh, did you seriously not watch any of the orientation films?” J’s voice cut in, asking mockingly, “do I need to explain everything? Would that make you feel better?” like she was talking to an uninformed infant, instead of her coworker of several years.

V really did not want to know. But she probably didn’t have a choice, so…

“It might, actually,” she answered weakly.

J let out a long, suffering filled sigh, as if the very act of needing to explain was causing her physical pain. She slammed down into the lonely chair, nearly causing it to collapse, and started reading from a script.

“We are Disassembly Drones® created by JCJenson In Spaaaaacee™ to eliminate the corrupted Worker Drones® currently inhabiting the exoplanet Copper-9. Six months ago, the core of Copper-9 collapsed due to unknown reasons, causing the evisceration of all biological life. It is our duty to empty the planet of these corrupted Worker Drones® so JCJenson In Spaaaaacee™ does not suffer any further economic consequences and can repopulate the planet at their convenience,” then, breaking the monotone, “does that ring any bells?”

Strangely enough, it did. A couple of the tabs V had ignored popped up again, and this time she took a moment to read through them. Her panic was subsiding, it was time for answers.

| Regeneration of <head> complete. 93% functional |

| Secondary Optics Standing By, Activate? [y/n] |

| Error: file [Exposition.exe] has been corrupted, and could not load |

| Error: Deletion Order Failed - 2.3 TB Memories (yrs 3031 … 3038) |

| Oil Level: 76% - nearing uncomfortable |

“Okay, um, I’m figuring everything out now, just give me a few minutes,” she said, shakily. J responded with an exasperated grunt, but left her in peace.

She was going to ignore the head regeneration for now, and instead focus on the claim that she was only 93% functional. Her systems all seemed to be working like she was used to, so it was no trouble to run a simple diagnostic scan. The scan claimed she was working perfectly, except she was running a few degrees hot, and there were a ton of partially glitched files. Files that hadn’t been there last she could remember.

When she selected ‘yes’ to the secondary optics, five extra tabs opened along the outskirts of her HUD. All five showed slightly different visual inputs: all four sides of her body, and one that moved like a third eye. She minimized those before she could get sick (more sick, anyway).

[Exposition.exe] not loading was probably why J was so insistent she should know these things already.

And… seven years of her life had nearly been deleted. Her entire existence up to that point. Had almost vanished. The error popping up proved it was intentional. Someone, or something, had wanted V to wake up here with no knowledge of her past. Her entire past, being rescued by Tessa, meeting J and- oh gods, N. If J was here-

V’s head snapped up to look at the drone across from her. They still hadn’t activated, but maybe-

She still couldn’t walk, that was probably in one of the unopened files, but she could crawl. So she did, she dragged herself across the floor, past J in her chair (who seemed to have resigned herself to this fate), over to the figure slumped against the wall.

They were wearing an oversized coat and a floppy hat on their head, covering what V could only assume were their secondary optics. Their arms looked like V’s, but their legs were thick trunks instead of spindly cones.

But under it all, he was the same.

That was the drone V had fallen in love with.

His visor was off, obviously. But it was clearly N.

V was shaken from her relief a few moments later by J’s grating voice.

“Yep, that’s the idiot. At least you were showing some signs of life, he’s just been sitting there.”

V could hardly believe this, “so you don’t know him?”

“Uh, no? We just got here, genius.”

“But you knew who I was.”

“Your ID is written on your arm, I don’t actually know you,” J replied derisively.

She could only nod, “okay,” and move on. If J wasn’t going to question how V knew her ID when her optics were refusing to function, she wasn’t going to point it out. 

Her gaze drifted back to N. He was completely shut down, indicated by his lack of breath simulation. 

He probably wouldn’t remember her either.

But that didn’t mean she shouldn’t try.

“Hey, N. It’s time to get up buddy,” she said, tapping his visor gently. He had such a habit of charging late, and V had saved him more times than she could remember. It was simple to repeat what she had said so many times before, “we’ve got work to do, and you know J won’t like it if we’re late again.”

She heard J scoff in the background, but her focus was entirely on the drone in front of her. The drone that was booting up, faint hums and whirs emanating from his body as a loading bar appeared on his visor.

The bar flicked from white to a yellowish gold, and a mess of tabs and command modules opened and closed in a series of flashes. And then his eyes appeared, inches from V’s.

He stared at her for a second. Just one.

Then he flinched backwards with a yelp, collapsing on the metal floor with a few ticks of blush surrounding his hollowed eyes.

V couldn’t help but laugh a little, despite the stress. That was her guy. There was her N.

Except, he wasn’t, as shown when he sprung to his feet and offered his hand to help V up.

“Hi! So sorry about that, I must have dozed off and you startled me,” he apologized brightly, “I’m Serial Designation N! Nice to meet you!”

All V could manage was, “no,” in a small, heartbroken voice.

All she could do as her mechanical heart cracked in two.

All she could think as a roaring grew again in her ears, and her vision was obscured by digital tears.

A short, simple, “no,” as her world shattered around her.

She’d known it would happen, based on J and her own failed order.

But that didn’t mean she was ready for it.

N was saying something. V could feel the pressure of his words in her audials, could see the concern written on his face, but she couldn’t hear him. The world was perfectly silent, for the moment.

She blinked, hard, clearing some of the tears from her visor. She had been propped against the wall, taking N’s position as he stood above her anxiously. He was still speaking, and J was banging her head into the control panel, but V still felt distant. Like she was floating through a space separate from the others. She didn’t even know her processor could do that.

She was a monster now, built to destroy her own kind.

She only had two drones she could be close to, and neither knew her like she knew them.

One didn’t care, couldn’t care, for anything beyond her work and her position.

The other cared too much, for anyone he set his sights on. Right now it was V, and he was leaning over to help her again, brushing her hair back to check, to make sure there were no obvious injuries, no physical reasons for her to be like this. Afraid, instead of a killer.

She didn’t think she was crying anymore.

She didn’t think she was panicking, either.

She just felt…

Numb.

Eventually, V had to come back to the surface.

She was forced upwards by a rough slap. Forced out of her head by a pair of hands grabbing and shaking her by the shoulders. And a voice yelling in her face.

“Are you done!?  We have a job to do, and only forty-six minutes until we have to do it!” J spat, inches from her visor, “I will not allow one of my squad members to sit here crying like an emotionally neglected child while I am out there doing what we are supposed to!”

She leaned in close, her voice dropping down to a low hiss, “are you going to get it together, or are you going to be scrap? ”

She wasn’t joking. This wasn’t any sort of bluff to get V to fix her uniform when she should be working. This was unfiltered J, the purest expression of her spite. She couldn’t ride it out like she always had, N wasn’t there to redirect her wrath.

She needed to hold it together. At least for a little while. Until she learned more, or until she could get away.

So with a shaky breath in, she shoved as much of everything as she could down into the back of her mind, said, “I’ll be fine,” and worked on standing up.

Chapter Text

Once V gave it enough thought, standing only took a few seconds. She was wobbling worse than that week her gyroscope had decided to die on her, but she was upright. Small victories.

She took N’s helping hand as soon as it was offered, clinging to it like the lifeline it was, and with his help moved slowly towards J’s vacated chair. It looked pitiful, up close, and so did the rest of the hardware, but it was functional. Its previous occupant was standing with her hands on her hips, glaring at the two, but for now not saying any more.

Very carefully, V sat down. It felt better than being on the floor, and it would be easier to go into her head without the worry of falling. (she tried very hard to pretend she didn’t miss the warmth of N’s hand in hers)

Once she was settled, and once she didn’t feel like she would fall apart at a pindrop, V started working through her processor. There were a lot of files she wasn’t familiar with, and at least a few would be important. They were also corrupted, so V had a bit of a task ahead of her.

First, she should probably warn the others (J) so they wouldn’t think she was… doing something else. Something less productive, maybe.

Very calmly, as if she weren’t about to crumble yet again, she explained, “I think a lot of important files were corrupted when we were… deployed. I’m going to look through my memories, and my motor functions, and try to fix everything I can.”

N gave her a thumbs up, then plopped down neatly onto the floor to wait. J scoffed, but it lacked the venom she had a minute ago. Instead of sitting, she leaned against a wall. Still staring at V, of course, but in a curious way, rather than with suspicion.

With that taken care of, V dove in.

Her memories were fine, as far as she and her diagnostics could tell. Fine, as in “undamaged,” not fine, as in “completely here and unaffected,” as much as it pained her. Obviously, she couldn’t know for certain if she was or was not actually missing anything. But she’d had memory problems all her life, so she had plenty of experience in figuring out if something was wrong.

First: did her calendars match up? Her last recorded file was when she found Cyn in the library (the moment V still refused to believe was anything other than a nightmare), which was… nearly twelve years ago, if her current clock was correct. Her previous record was just under four hours, so to say she had a new high score was quite the understatement. (holy robo-christ what had she lost!? That was more than everything she could remember!)

Second: did it feel like she was missing anything? For once, it didn’t. She felt about as up-to-date as she normally would, even though there was practically a black hole just sitting there. It wasn’t that there was nothing occupying those timeframes, it was that the timeframes simply didn’t exist.

Her final step was usually to get answers from those around her, and manually mark what had happened in the given timeslot with a few written notes. Since neither of the only two drones she had seen since waking up remembered anything at all, that probably wouldn’t do much good.

She surfaced for a moment to check on said drones, finding them in the same position as when she’d drowned herself in tabs. N was sitting criss-cross applesauce, fiddling around with something in his hands her still-pitiful optics couldn’t make out, and J was just looking cool against a wall. It was a common quirk, one that hadn’t truly worked up until this point.

V allowed herself a faint smile, seeing her friends act like they always had, then returned to her mess of a processor. There were thousands of files she had never seen before. They would have taken up more than five times what her normal body could have held, yet her total storage in this new one was barely past four percent full. 

That alone was terrifying, in its own way. 

Roughly half of these new files and programs were dedicated to her movement functions. The other half was split evenly between two absolutely behemoth files: [Diagnostic.full], and [Nanites.exe.full]. Scrolling through those two at a normal pace would have taken half an hour all together, and actually reading and understanding them would have taken the better part of a month. Luckily, neither of them seemed to have any corruption, so V could quickly move her attention to her motor skills.

Her normal body (she refused to say old. That meant this one was new, which meant it was here to stay) had exactly twelve movement files: facial expressions, basic motions for most of her body, fine motor functions for her fingers, and two dedicated to chores the Elliotts wanted done regularly. 

This new one?

Nearly five thousand.

Nearly five thousand paragraph-long snippets of code, written in a language that was completely incomprehensible. It was as if COBOL, Fortran, and the Linux penguin had a mutant child and dumped eldritch nightmare juice on it. They were labeled, kind of, but that could only go so far.

Every single one of these files had just a tiny bit of corruption, just a few lines with enough wrong characters to make the file unable to be automatically compiled. Fixing each and every one manually would be a nightmare, but V had bot templates to help with that. 

It only took a moment’s effort to construct a little autocorrecting program that would sort out the errors for her. It took a decent chunk of processing power to run, but it left V herself to sort through the mess and pick out the few programs she didn’t want restored. [MemoryDeletion.exe], for example.

Again, she was painfully aware of the twelve year gap in her memory files.

She wanted to stay sane, however, so V continued to push the bubbling paranoia down, and kept working.

She must have been showing some sign of her veiled distress on her visor, something to indicate that she could use some support.

A few light taps on her visor knocked V out of her head.

N was up on his knees in front of her, one hand retracting from where it had been a moment ago, and a gentle concern written on his face.

“Hey, uh… you good?” he asked cautiously, his head tilted like a worried puppy.

He was pulling at V’s heartstrings, and had no idea. All she could do was let out a broken chuckle, say “I’m doing great, why do you ask?” and hope he wouldn’t notice how fragile her smile was.

Of course, this was N, so…

“Do you wanta talk about it? We’ve got a little while left until sunset, and I’d be happy to help if I can!”

Sunset, what made that significant? They definitely weren’t in the manor, so it’s not like they had their upcoming rest period to look forward to.

N was still staring at her with his inquisitive gaze. She could probably just ask.

“Remind me again, why is sunset important?” V questioned slowly, and when J looked over sharply, quickly added, “my exposition files never loaded, and I can’t make heads or tails of them on my own. I just, want to know how to do my job better.”

J scoffed, again, but let N explain. Which he did, with far more enthusiasm than the situation deserved.

“Oh! Well, we can’t go in the sun, obviously, cause’ that’ll make us overheat and get all mangley and melty and die!” he said excitedly, “so we can only go out when it’s night. Or! Or, we’d have to stay inside somewhere, like we are now,” he finished with a smile, completely oblivious to V’s core stuttering.

They- They burnt in the sun. And melted and died.

Amazing, phenomenal. Frickin great. Ignore it for now, and never see the sun again. Fine.  

Her grip on the chair had increased to that of irons, and the roaring in her ears was making a slow, inevitable comeback. Still, with a pained smile on her face, she had to respond, “right… I remember that, now.”

The room went quiet for a moment.

Until J piped up to say, “my estimation was off by a few minutes, by the way. We still have about twenty-two minutes until sundown.”

N made a “phew!” kind of noise, clearly exaggerated for V’s sake, then turned back to her to ask again, “is there anything else you don’t know yet? Anything else I could help with?”

Everything, was the simple answer.

Nothing at all, what do you mean!? was another easy one.

But for now, “do you think you could help me stand up? I want to make sure my motor functions work before, doing too much.”

The goofball lit up like a torch, almost literally, and immediately sprang to his feet to offer his hand to V.

She accepted with a little giggle, and used it to pull herself up.

It was almost disappointing how effortless it was, since she didn’t have a reason to keep holding his hand any longer.

Her balance was impeccable, her stance felt sturdy, and every move felt like the pinnacle of grace as she did the first few steps of a slow dance to test herself out. N was beaming at her from where he stood, and even J looked impressed. Or, she was happy to not have a useless teammate, probably.

The only continuing issue was that a lot of her joints felt stiff, but that was an issue she couldn’t mind right now. 

It was a little daunting to realize how powerful her new servos were. Stretching her legs took only a moment, since there were all of two joints to worry about, but even that simple kick motion had enough force to crack concrete. If she had a better angle, well, let’s just say there would not be a wall in the world that could stand before her.

Her arms felt like powerhouses too, a far cry from her previous mechanized noodles. The lack of flexibility kind of sucked- a sentiment shared to her stick-like legs- but being able to crumple steel in her grasp was… exciting, maybe. 

That excitement was rapidly souring, though. As she pulled one arm over her head with the other, she could feel the ball-joint straining in her shoulder-socket. It… didn’t hurt, really, but it did at the same time. It was straining enough that letting it fall back to her side felt like a release.

When she tried that with her other arm… she pulled too far.

And yanked her right arm right out of its socket with a little shower of oil.

She heard a small wince from N before her vision tunneled. She couldn’t breathe.

Why did this keep happening.

Just, everything?

She was broken on Day One, her arm ripped out by her own hand. A pit of exposed wires and dripping oil (gods why did the oil smell so good) stared out into the open, her disconnected arm dangling uselessly in her left hand.

Every single little thing, every little quirk of this new existence was enough to put her over the edge.

She was just a maid.

Not even a good maid! She needed glasses, her memory was a poorly patched sieve, and- oh robo-jesus her shoulder was on fire-  

V couldn’t tell if her eyes were functioning right. Her shoulder wasn’t blurry at this distance, but it shouldn’t be glowing white-hot like that.

It hurt, so much.

A thin trickle of silver appeared from nowhere, several trails converging to melt outward in a metallic blob.

It was burning her, searing her, but V couldn’t look away.

Her core thumping away in her chest.

Tear tracks etched deeply into her visor.

And a closing wound.

What?

Then…

Then a new arm,

Slowly forming out of the scalding silver.

…

She lost track of how long she stood there.

Watching a new arm form.

A few minutes at most, but it felt like an eternity.

Until finally, the pain ebbed. The heat lessened, then faded, resting over her entire body like a too-warm blanket.

She was holding her right arm in her left hand. And her right hand… was now fingering through her- other- right hand.

…

Two lemon-colored tabs popped into view, startling her, slightly.

One told her what she could already see, that her <armR> had completed its regeneration. 

V didn’t want to think what that meant for the earlier notice, <head> being regenerated.

J didn’t care, did she? She should have, at least a little. Enough to not destroy her teammate’s head to fix a problem they didn’t know it would solve.

The other was a status report on her oil, stating she was at 65% capacity, and well into the ‘uncomfortable’ range. Along with a warning about overheating.

Like she couldn’t tell already.

…

A voice cut through her growing fog. Not to give comfort, though maybe she had simply missed something N said, but instead to ask casually, too casually, “are you gonna eat that?”

“What?”

“Your arm, it’s still got oil in it probably. Maybe not eat the whole thing, but you could definitely get a bit out of it.”

V looked up in horror to meet J’s gaze.

She couldn’t make her mouth move, couldn’t find the words to express the disgust she felt. That implication, eating herself, said in such a matter of fact way. (made so much worse because of how hungry she felt, how much her synthetic stomach seemed to crave her own robotic flesh)

J must have seen the fear and horror in her eyes, as hers narrowed, then slanted into a mocking grin. The pigtailed drone pushed from the wall to saunter over, throwing N out of the way so she could loom over V.

“Oh, what’s the matter V?” she breathed, “feeling squeamish?”

She laughed when V’s only response was her eyes hollowing even further.

An idea seemed to strike her, and she turned for a moment, tapping her chin with a massive, clawed finger (where did she get claws from!?), “y’know, I think I have something that’ll help you out here. Toughen you up a bit, y’know?”

She reached under the deck of fractured computer banks to grab the sphere V had noticed earlier.

The sphere that had a poof of fluffy white hair, and a headband of dead bulbs.

The sphere that had a cracked visor looking back into V’s own.

The sphere that-

Her head.

Her head, that was dangling in front of her.

Reflecting her face, refracting all the horrible glitches that she couldn’t do anything to stop.

“There's probably a decent amount of oil left in here too, now that I think about it,” J continued, unabashed, “so sorry I didn’t think to offer it to you earlier.”

The heat over her was increasing ten a hundredfold, every wire felt like it was steaming and sparking, every joint and piston was about to melt- gods she was so hungry-  

A yellow cross was flickering across her screen as everything began to shut down.

The sun had set moments ago, that meant it was time to f̸͈̄ȅ̴̱è̷̺d̵̓ͅ.

She still couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe she couldn’t move she couldn’t think.  

Nothing but an all consuming hunger inside of her, an unending thirst, a subsuming v̵̼͓͙̐ô̴̖͙̞̥͎̹̱̩̮̒͗̾̅͐̈̋͗̓̍́̏͝͝í̴̧̖̻͉̅́̃̂̔̒̅͗̚͘͠͝d̸̢̡̹̘͖̰̬͎̹̘̮͕́̐́.

As her consciousness faded, she caught a few snippets.

J’s mocking laughter, completely unafraid and unconcerned by what she had just done.

N’s sympathetic grimace, and two massive, angelic wings unfolding from nowhere behind him.

A burning, yellow, horribly familiar, ‘X’ covering her visor, her HUDs, and everything else in her sight.

V’s own maxed out panic mixing with a rising dread, and an expectant ę̵͚̩̖̲̭̠̬̦͍̳͑̃͂͑̾c̴̞̯̻̝͈̞̠̏̎̈́̔̒͆̚͘͜s̸̢̹̘̯͔͍̜̯̜͆ț̷̢̡̟̠̲̄͐̌͆͜͝ą̴̬̏̇̽͆̐̚̚̚̕̚s̵̹͈̳̞͇̫̯̦̓̋͊̓̐̽́̔̇ý̶̨̺̝̰͕̺̝͎̻̓̀͊̒͗̓͂̾̓͠.

Then a slow, painful fade…

To black.

Chapter Text

A little known fact about the design process of the Worker Drones is that the split between figuring out form and function was nowhere near even.

Function was straightforward: make the drones reasonably strong, reasonably smart, and reasonably durable. Not too strong, smart, or durable, as that could give the impression they were better. The technology used for their processors, limbs, and chassis had already existed for some time, and it was not much of an issue to fit these to the desired body.

But what was the desired body? This is where the innovators had the most difficulty, trying to answer one simple question: how ‘human’ should the robots be?

There are so many aspects that make mankind the way it is, and the designers at JCJenson™ were essentially creating a new, secondary species. How many of these traits should carry over? At its core, the goal was to make a new type of person. A subservient, entirely mass-producible person, but a person nonetheless.

How should the drones be proportioned? Should they be accurately humanoid, or more cutesy and comical? How tall, how wide, and how beefy were all measurements that had to be decided, and how they should change through each preset. The first few models were uniform, but the eventual goal was to have several different settings for different ages and genders. But these presets were expected to be easily adjustable by the consumer, so any physical differences had to be easily negated, or simply not present.

(Yes, there were a number of employees who were very disappointed they could not make the feminine presets “hot.” The employees in question typically did not last very long before being promoted back to Customer)

Beyond the physical attributes, there were just as many mental characteristics that needed to be decided. 

Personality was surprisingly simple, the drones would be randomly given a few words describing character traits, and would then develop naturally over the course of their employment.

Everything other than that baseline “humanness,” however, was a virtual nightmare. Should the drones feel emotion at all? Were there any they should not feel (anger was a common example), and if so, how would the drones know when to stop feeling what? It was bad enough getting emotions to work in the first place, attempting to add hard limits was entirely unfeasible.

Perhaps the worst facet of all this was stress response. These were robotic subhumans designed entirely for work, it was utterly impossible for any single drone to never experience a type of stress in their service. Eventually a simple answer was given: as stress ramps up, so does the drone’s focus on their task.

Stress, for a drone, either meant they were not performing their task at acceptable levels, or they were about to be destroyed in some capacity. By focusing on their specific task, both of these problems were negated… enough.

If an owner got upset over poor service, the drone would perform that service better. A mining drone about to be crushed by a piece of equipment would divert more and more of their attention to their task as the machinery got closer, so by the time of their destruction they were usually so focused on gathering minerals that they didn’t even notice their body being crushed.

This was something V was painfully familiar with. 

It paired well with her already existing memory issues. She lost moments and minutes both on her own (for no apparent reason) and because the Masters had been… themselves, really. In theory, she did have a certain level of immunity, being one of Tessa’s “toys,” but that never truly meant anything.

If she was extremely lucky, V was sometimes able to write a short note to herself before fading. Something to say, “James, dust on mantle,” so she had a place to start from when she came back. Nine times out of ten, however, she was left with nothing but a faint sense of confused apathy.

It never got any easier. The worse the situation, the more she lost.

Tonight was a special kind of bad.

The first time V regained awareness, it was only for a moment.

None of her senses were registering to her semi-conscious mind, which meant her autopilot function was on, doing her job (or just trying to survive) while V herself had been shut down. 

All she was getting from the void inside her head was a few flashes.

The give of metal crunching beneath her.

The disgustingly sweet taste of something thick and viscous sliding down her throat.

A single face, a drone in the distance looking her dead in the eyes, terror written on every pixel of their screen.

And a horrible, terrifyingly manic giggle. Coming from her own oil-slicked mouth.

It sounded closer to sobbing than it did to laughter.

She didn’t have the strength to stay here. She drifted back into the void after the instant passed.

The next time V woke was to a scraping sound.

She jerked back into full control of her body, visor flicking from that burning cross to hollowed, stress-lined ovals just for a second.

She was dragging not one, not two, not even three, but six worker drone bodies behind her, towards a growing pile in the distance.

The drones in her grasp were dead, but only half were still together enough to display the bright red FATAL ERROR message. Their bodies were mangled beyond recognition, limbs torn from sockets, visors cracked or stabbed clean through, metal corroded by some toxic yellow substance, and gaping holes in their chest.

V was conscious just long enough to feel a massive wave of emotion tumble over her.

Fear, mostly.

Disgust and regret, abject horror and barely restrained madness.

A core-deep weariness.

And then she faded again.

This time it was to wind whistling through her wings, and streaming down her outstretched tail.

To oil-caked claws holding a drone aloft by their chassis as they screamed mindlessly.

To the sudden and violent silence, followed by a distant thud.

…

This time it was a piercing pain going through one thigh.

One of the workers had a gun, apparently. They didn’t live long enough to see their victory, and the victory in question only lasted a few seconds before sealing up with a burning hiss.

…

She caught a glimpse of herself in a window.

As she was digging through a worker’s chest for their warm sweet oil.

The spattered glass refracting her multitude of eyes, her gleaming wings, her stained casing.

She caught a glimpse of herself aiming a rocket at the window.

…

One of her wings clipped a building. It sheared through the concrete like it was snow, sending a shower of rubble towards the riots below. 

She took a moment to grab a larger piece of debris and send it soaring into the distance, falling to crush a half dozen workers sitting safely on the roof of another tower.

For no real reason. It just felt like the right thing to do.

…

She was staring at a face, V realized.

Two wide and hollow eyes. More stress lines than she had known was possible. Two pure-white eyebrows hidden beneath a black metal helmet.

Shaking in terror, trembling even worse than Cyn would after her worst attacks.

And then they weren’t. And V was simply staring at a corpse.

…

A worker had hidden themself in a tiny little corner of concrete, wedged between two massive cinder blocks that had fallen over each other.

They were given away by nothing more than the thrum of their core, whirring in distress.

It almost felt unfair to find them, to leer down with a horrible grinning effigy of death.

To send them to meet oblivion, despite doing everything they possibly could.

…

A little counter in the corner of her vision ticked up at every kill, changing dramatically each time V came forward enough to see it.

It was well over two hundred right now. A little spray of digital confetti had milestoned the hundredth.

The hundredth life she’d taken.

At some point in the night (the night never seemed to end) V’s conscious had drifted slowly from its resting place in its little void to sit near the front.

She wasn’t driving, and she wasn’t feeling much.

But she was aware of what was happening.

She watched herself slice a drone in two with a massive laser, then leap forward to lap up their lifeblood like a starved animal. She could taste the oil, and it felt as good as it felt bad, and she threw up half of it as soon as it entered her stomach. Maybe that was why she needed so much, she simply hadn’t been keeping any down.

She should probably be feeling more, at the moment. Something, at least.

Panic, pain, fear, anger, regret.

Anything other than this complete and total detachment.

That was something she was used to, at least.

It had never been anywhere near this bad, but still.

Three more drones were caught with one motion, a sword in- not in, it was- her left hand skewering two then sweeping them sideways to crack the visor of the third. Their bodies were relatively intact, so she grabbed them close and launched into the air with a single massive motion, chucking the bodies into the distance onto the growing pile of corpses.

She swung back around to return to the fray, and saw her coworkers for the first time that night.

J was dual wielding swords, hacking and slashing with mindless abandon. Sometimes her wings would function as swords as well, with one drone being neatly bisected by her razor-blade feathers.

(She might have been crying, beneath her x’d out visor)

N was a bit more reserved, moving and killing with more care than either of his teammates. A bullet straight to the face, a single claw through the neck, or a jab of his tail to the core. Each and every drone he killed was left in one piece, and FATAL ERROR was displayed almost instantly.

He wasn’t leaving them to suffer. It was a nice little piece of the N she knew.

V retreated once she got close. She wasn’t ready to face those two. It wasn’t truly a conscious choice, to fall back into this void at every sign of distress, but she wasn’t going to fight it this time.

“BITE ME!” and a sharp sting across her face threw V back into the present.

There were two drones in front of her, the one in front somehow holding a sheet of scrap metal aloft as a shield between them, and the other huddled behind the first cradling a bleeding (bleeding?) eye. 

They would have been the same as every other she’d killed tonight, except for their eye-lights. All the workers had been white-eyed; the factory default. But these two, a dark purple and a crimson red, stood out more than they maybe should.

They were shuffling backwards, away from the crouching beast in front of them, keeping the metal up as a makeshift barrier. 

V just stood there, a little nonplussed. (it was better than apathetic)

Once they were far enough to think they were safe, the purple drone dropped the metal and scooped up the other in a bridal carry to book it towards some ruins in the distance.

V could have killed them at any point in that interaction. The shield, even with its mysterious defiance of gravity, meant nothing. But she was regaining control, and the sun was almost up anyway, and she just didn’t want to. Her counter had passed four hundred, she didn’t need to add one more.

She just stood there, slowly regaining control of her limbs and functions, slowly returning from the bloodlust that had taken her through the night. She sheathed her claws, slowed the aggravated flicking of her tail, and moved from an expectant crouch to stand almost upright.

Moving slowly, with all the care in the world, she stooped, grabbed one last corpse from the pitch-stained earth, and walked back towards the pod.

There was a lot of information in her head now that hadn’t been there before. The room she had woken up in was a delivery pod. She had wings and a tail, and full knowledge of how her nanites worked, both corrosive and healing. They had been collecting cadavers into a pile so they could make a spire to protect them from the sun during the day, and provide a dumping ground for any resources they could share.

She passed N on the way back, holding a drone’s detached head over his, letting the oil drain into his waiting mouth. He dropped it once it was empty, and turned to give V a happy smile, as if they had run into each other on their daily chore route.

V couldn’t muster the energy to respond, not even a crinkle in her eye-lights.

She tossed the body she carried into the pile, noting distantly how it was already bigger than the pod they had arrived in, and went inside to hide from the sun.

She had an almost instinctual fear of the sun now. Like she knew in her core that daytime was the time for hiding, to rest and recover, because the sunlight would be the death of her, a death unlike anything she could imagine.

After tonight…

She might have welcomed it.

“V, wake up.”

“C’mon.”

“V, seriously, we need your numbers.”

She was on the floor for some reason, V realized as she slowly blinked from sleep mode.

Her body ached like nothing she’d ever felt before, it was ridiculous. And she was lying in a giant puddle of oil, what was up with that?

…

oh

…

Very slowly. Very carefully. V moved from face-down on the floor to a seated position. Her optics wide and unseeing, the world again reduced to a formless, soundless blur.

Her claws were still out. Caked in oil, layered so thick that it caused resistance as she moved her fingers, blankly examining every inch. She didn’t know how to turn them back anymore. 

It didn’t hit her all at once. That would have been too easy.

It hit like a tsunami; an ever rising swell threatening to drown her in an abyssal ocean.

All the horror she should have felt watching herself do her job, all the pain she should have received from all the wounds she’d acquired and then lost, all the haunted eyes gazing back into hers as the light left them.

She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t even tell she couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t even see the storm that was swallowing her.

She was crawling into a corner, shoving herself backwards in a desperate attempt to escape her own bloodsoaked hands. Sobbing her core out as each and every face she’d seen (and destroyed) loomed up in front of her. Each and every cracked visor and punctured oil line and creaking chestplate and snapped rib and-

…and-

A gentle warmth, surrounding her.

It pulled her into a deliciously cozy embrace, and slowly moved her claws from her face to rest around its waist. (and didn’t make a single sound of protest when they dug into its back, clawing desperately at his coat)

He was vibrating ever so slightly, a faint hum reaching between the two, gradually helping V to relax and remember herself.

Herself, not everything the night had held.

The warmth and the sense of safety it radiated was nearly enough to lull V back into sleep mode.

But she couldn’t. Not right now.

It took a few minutes to be calm enough to think, to be able to try to regain her vision.

If nothing else, V was going to look N in the eyes and say thank you, because she couldn’t say it any other way. She couldn’t stop her breath from hitching, still couldn’t stop the sobs from escaping in ragged bursts.

When she did, he looked back with all the love in the world, and only hugged her tighter.

They sat like that for a while.

V in N’s lap, clutching him hard enough to dent, working the tears out of her system.

It was almost... nice.

Chapter Text

Eventually, V’s sniffles subsided.

She was able to breathe again, and each shaky cycle in and out felt like an absolute blessing. Consistent venting increased airflow, airflow helped keep her processors cool, cool processors helped make thinking a bit easier. Every breath brought a whisper of icy air inward, and each exhale left tinted with the slight scent of oil.

V was just happy that she was aware enough to recognize this. It had been less than twenty hours, and she was already sick and tired of being so out of it she couldn’t fully register the world around her.

It was then she noticed her position.

Sitting in the lap of her amnesiac… friend- who was a boy she cared about deeply- who was purring as he basically cuddled with her because she’d had a full-on mental breakdown. Even though there were so many more pressing matters to worry about, her processor managed to be embarrassed and add a few ticks of lemon-yellow blush to her visor as she finally tried to detangle herself from N.

N made a little noise of disappointment once he figured out what V was trying to do, but helped get her claws out of the grooves they’d cut into his back so she could stand. V made sure to return the favor, sheathing her claws almost without thinking to yank him upright to his feet.

He was smiling, and V could feel a broken little grin sneaking onto her face as well. He had a few golden ticks of blush on his face, mirroring V’s, and she couldn’t help but want to lean back in, just to be a little bit closer again, to share that gentle warmth-

“Excuse me, lovebirds, but I still need your numbers from last night, V,” J interrupted dryly, “and we don’t have a room right now so you’re going to have to keep it Workplace Appropriate.”

The two jerked apart like they’d been stung, N wheezing out something- either an apology or a denial or both- and V’s tail spiking up in alarm like a cat’s as she nearly fell over backwards. Both of them were blushing fiercely now, even though all they’d been doing… never mind, yeah, it was basically cuddling, and their reactions very much did not sell that it was platonic and / or business related.

J just rolled her eyes, though there was clearly a touch of amusement written on her face. She let them sputter for a minute or so before interrupting again, “I don’t really care, okay? I just need V’s count.”

And just like that, V’s rising mood shattered. 

Flickers of memories started shooting around her head like little grisly fireworks. Faces she’d cracked. Limbs lying ownerless and empty on the blackened earth.

The lively thrum of cores coming to a violent end, again and again and ag-

“WAIT wait wait wait,” N yelped, jumping between the two, “I, uh- I think V here is kinda having a hard time with all this..?” he explained, almost sheepishly to J, “I think she needs a bit more time to, um, wake up and, stuff…” He turned to face V and put both hands on her shoulders, forcing her to look him in the eye. “I don’t know why exactly you’re having trouble and we aren’t, but I’m not going to leave you to suffer alone, alright? Buddy?”

V could feel the tension drain from her servos as she stared at this wonderful drone in front of her. Her core slowed its thumping (thumping?), and the pressure building in her chest dissipated. She couldn’t help but choke out a small thankful sob, and the smile stretching across her face was genuine in the way only N was able to evoke.

If he were any cuter she’d probably explode.

“What do you mean she’s ‘having a hard time with this?’” J asked with a tone V couldn’t recognize, “I thought we fixed that.”

N rounded on her, suddenly furious, “yeah, ‘cause chopping someone’s head off is a good way to fix processor problems! What do you think went wrong!? She’s already said that she was having issues with her memories and stuff, and you just had to make it worse.” 

He was practically standing on top of J, using his extra few inches of height to loom over her and make his point perfectly clear. He leaned in close to whisper in a deadly voice, “you may be the leader here, but that does not give you the right to shove the rest of us down.”

J nodded slowly, eyes blown wide.

And N perked right up, chirped, “great thanks!” in his typical sunlit tone, and went right back to V.

She couldn’t believe it. Since when was N of all people able to get mad like that? And he seemed perfectly fine afterward too, it was… weird. But it felt right, somehow.

Regardless, he was standing in front of her again, offering his hand.

“So… I know you maybe don’t want to talk about these things, but are there any other things bugging you that we could maybe help with?” he asked softly, “we’ve got…” then turned back towards their shell shocked boss, “J, when is the quota due?”

She stuttered for a moment, then tapped a button somewhere on the mess of fractured computers to display a little hologram (V wasn’t going to question why a hologram emitter was more durable than the entire pod itself). J squinted, then answered, “we still have almost six hours until it’s due.”

“We’ve got almost six hours to talk about things before you need to think about last night again,” N finished happily, “so anything on your mind? Any other… quirks, we should know about? Maybe?”

Maybe… maybe she could use her knowledge of the past to their advantage. V knew them, probably better than they knew themselves (apart from N’s anger, that was new).

She knew what made them all… defective.

So, yes, there were things, quirks, she’d like to share. Things they should definitely know about.

“I, uh,” she started, then hesitated, seeing her oil-caked hand come up into her field of view.

“Can, can I get cleaned up, first?” she asked weakly.

N blinked, “sure! I uh, don’t know if we have anything you could use… though,” he trailed off, spinning in place to examine the pod’s interior.

“Well, what did you use?” V asked.

N blinked again, “what do you mean?”

J spoke up to halt the impending argument, “he just didn’t get dirty at all, somehow. I brushed everything off with some snow, but that’s pretty much all we have available right now.”

The interior of the pod was noticeably not covered in snow, and she could feel in her core that the sun was still up spreading its fiery wrath, so that didn’t leave many options for V. Or any options, really, other than manually picking and scraping each tiny little dried fleck out of every single visible gear and joint. That sounded like it would break her hastily constructed dam in about a minute, so even that wasn’t viable.

Being covered in her own lifeblood would not make anything easy, especially not the conversations she felt like they were about to have, but there wasn’t anything they could do at the moment. V sniffled a little, but admitted defeat for now.

“Fine,” she sighed.

She found a nice spot to sit (as far from where she had slept as she could manage within the pod’s confines) and worked on settling downward.

“What do you want to know?”

“What I really want to know is why you aren’t acting like a Disassembly Drone® should be,” J started once they had all settled, “it was weird at first, but now it’s almost concerning.”

“Aww, J, you do care,” N commented sweetly, prompting J to sputter out a host of denials and corporate mission statements and whatever else.

That was a valid question though, and one that was becoming increasingly complicated to answer. V had absolutely no clue why she had been spared the transformation her friends had taken. Or, she hadn’t been spared, but she hadn’t lost all of her memories, and wasn’t anywhere near fine with killing like they were. The only real thing she could point at was her pre-existing memory issues. But if that were the case, why weren’t the other two in the same boat? They all had processor issues, that was why they’d been thrown away in the first place.

V started softly, cutting J’s rant into silence, “I don’t know why I’m not a disassembly drone like you two. I have one idea, but no way to know if it’s actually… realistic.”

Was she going to tell them about the manor? About Tessa and the Elliotts? About the twelve years missing in V’s files, and the seven that weren’t?

Maybe not all of it. Definitely not the bad, but maybe not the good either. She didn’t want to drag them down with her, missing things they had next to no chance at getting back. But she shouldn’t keep it from them either. 

She took a breath, and pushed forward, “I’ve had, memory issues, all my life. Sometimes things just- won’t register, won’t record, for whatever reason, and I wake up an hour later really confused.” Another breath, “my files are also really hard for… other users, to manipulate or use, usually. I’ve tried playing things through another computer before, and my memories were either one-hundred percent corrupted, or straight up nonexistent.”

J inhaled, about to speak, but V continued before she could, “the only theory I have right now is that whoever programmed us to be disassembly drones just wasn’t able to figure out my processor. Because,” she added bitterly, “I’ve been defective since day one.”

Both her friends went still at that word- defective- little twitches of displeasure crossing their faces for a split second before being replaced with confusion. Maybe their processors carried a ghost of their memories, remembered the pain that word brought.

Another breath in.

Another breath out.

This was it.

“The problem with that theory is that both of you had problems too, so I’m not sure why I was the only one not affected.”

There it was. J startled in her seat, shifting upright with a tense look on her face.

“What do you mean we had problems too? We were just deployed, why are you acting like you knew us before this?” she questioned, almost angrily, “why are you saying you had a ‘before this?’”

“Because I did.”

A beat.

“Because we did.”

…

“Wha- what do you mean?” N asked nervously, droplets of digital sweat appearing on his visor.

There was a cold certainly settling over V’s body. Either her friends would accept what she was saying, or they wouldn’t. She had no idea what would happen either way, but… these were her friends. Her oldest, and only friends (and maybe something more, if she thought of N on his own). Whatever they thought, she would have to face those consequences.

“We worked together for years before this,” she explained detachedly, feeling herself start to drift, “I was there for at least seven, and both of you had already been there for a while by the time I was found. We were servants, maids, for a super wealthy family, and we were all rescued from the dump, basically.”

She turned to face J directly, “you asked what problems you had. You were tossed because you were too angry, mostly, and then found and fixed a few weeks later,” then, looking at N, “you were clumsy, and had a bit too much independence, I think.”

N gulped dryly.

J just stared at her.

V continued, “I was trashed because of my optics, and my memory. Anything more than a few feet from my face would get blurry, and I could never remember orders and organizations and… whatever else.”

A broken chuckle escaped her voice box, “of course, it only got worse after two months in the scrap pile. Can’t see anything past… here, abouts,” holding a hand up just half her arm’s length from her optics, “and I just, blank out, randomly, for no reason.”

Two broken noises reached through her audials. They sounded distressed, almost.

“It’s great, I know.”

It was quiet, for a moment.

A little beeping came from something on the console.

J leaned over to silence it, without a word, without taking her eyes from V huddled in the corner, making herself as small as she could.

Slowly, N crept into V’s narrowed field of view. He looked upset, but in a concerned way. He wouldn’t hurt her, she knew that (did she know that?). But she couldn’t help but tense as he got closer.

She wasn’t expecting the hug.

Her breath hitched.

Once, twice.

Then she was crying, hugging N with all she could, grasping at his coat for the second time that day like it was the only thing keeping her head above water.

She heard a scrape, a few footsteps, then a second body pressed itself against her from the other side.

She was drowning in their warmth, their pressure holding her together from all sides.

Her friends.

V let herself cry.

It was bitter, yes.

Full of loss and regret.

But there was joy, too.

A small, rueful, flickering flame.

She had something, to fill what she’d lost.

Her friends.

They sat like that for a long while.

Any of them could have told the time with ease, but V didn’t need to know. 

It was long enough, and then a little bit more.

Eventually, the silence was broken by the same little beeping from the console.

With seemingly great reluctance (which was ridiculous, J didn’t care about them like that. Right?), J got up from the floor to go silence it again. N took the same cue to move away from V, his warmth moving with him, leaving V on her own again.

Except, she wasn’t. He was still in arm’s reach, still smiling at her gently. And J was done fiddling with the computer, and coming back to sit next to her, opposite of N. 

She wasn’t smiling, her face was much more pensive, deep in thought. But she didn’t look angry, at least.

J took a breath, then paused, exhaled, still thinking.

After a moment of thought, she took another breath, and started to speak. She was using probably the gentlest, least abrasive voice V had ever heard her use, the same tone usually reserved for Tessa alone.

“I do not know if I can believe you. But I don’t think I don’t believe you, either, okay? I- I have no idea what to do here,” she said, clearly hating that she had to admit that, “if what you say is true, well, we can’t really do anything about it. We have a job to do now, and I have to do that job- we have to do that job.”

Another breath, “I’m sorry I snapped at you, and hurt you, and I’m sorry for whatever else happened last night that made you go… feral, like that.” The apology was stilted, but no less meaningful. “Maybe because I’m programmed as the leader, I don’t know, but I need to get the work done. I cannot, not, do what we’re supposed to. So when I thought you wouldn’t, and then we’d fail, and… yeah.”

V snorted softly, “that might just be you, J.”

Her smile was genuine though, “but, thank you. For saying sorry. And for, at least trying to believe me.”

The whole situation was getting to be so surreal, to a point it somehow hadn’t yet reached. Her friends were still themselves, but… N apparently had a dark side now, and J was apologizing! Since when did she do that?

“So the reason you’re having so much trouble with disassembling the corrupted workers, is because you remember you, and us, being like them?” N pieced together slowly.

V nodded. She would have to face it eventually, she would have to look at the number she’d hidden while she wasn’t present. They had a quota, and given their experiences with the Elliotts (all three of them literally came from the dump) it was not at all a stretch to say there would likely be punishment for not filling it.

“How do we know you aren’t making all of this up?” he asked, even slower.

Oh.

“Well, um,” V stammered. She hadn’t been expecting that!

“Okay, uh, either I have seven years worth of memories, a function called Memory-Deletion-dot-e-x-e, and the first thing I saw when waking up was a notification saying a deletion order failed, and I’m somehow making it all up.”

“Or..?”

“Or I’m not, and this is all suspicious as hell!” she retorted with a vengeance. “Seriously, I know I can’t prove it at all, but I just- you just met me! What could I be gaining from this? Why would I be so worked up about all this if it were nothing? If it wasn’t real!?”

“Okay okay, I’m sorry!” N pleaded, “I just, I just,” he filled his lungs shakily, then spat it all out, “I don’t want to lose something I don’t even know I had.”

J nodded in agreement, “I’ll agree that it would be weird to make this up, and you wouldn’t be gaining anything, but you’re saying we had something. And now we don’t.” Her face was all scrunched up as she tried to sort everything. “Again, I don’t know if I can believe you. But I can’t really argue with you either.”

“My memory drive started less than twenty hours ago,” N reported mournfully, a filemap displayed on his visor. 

J took a moment to check out the same, and reported only an extra few hours worth of training videos that N somehow didn’t remember watching.

They took a moment, looking at each other in a way V couldn’t read (and only partially because of her crappy vision). She definitely didn’t tense up again, afraid of… something she couldn’t quite parse.

Then they looked back at her, and both scooted in a little closer. Not as close as the cuddle pile earlier, but enough that V could feel the heat from their bodies, feel a bit of pressure from both sides. It was just as much of a relief as it had been each time before. She hadn’t been an especially tactile drone, that was more N’s thing, but gods was this nice.  

Then the console beeped again.

“Ugh, come on! ” J snarled as she jumped up to shut it off again, “okay, so, we will have to answer that eventually, alright? But until then,” and just as quickly as she’d left she sat back down next to V, “would you like to tell us about it?”

“I-”

Would she?

“uh,”

Yes

“I’d love to.”

And the smile on her face, the little grins stretching across her friends’ as she worked out where to start from. They said that maybe, just maybe. They could get through this.

Together.

Chapter Text

The next few hours were spent sitting on the floor, talking to and laughing with her friends together like they always had. The thing on the console beeped occasionally, growing more and more insistent each time, but always silenced quickly by an increasingly vengeful J.

And V just talked. Her voice box was almost getting sore, she said so much.

And her friends just… listened. They listened with familiar little smiles, they asked clarifying questions they shouldn’t have known to ask, they threw in little quips and jokes they shouldn’t have understood, and they were just so gentle and patient with her.

It felt like home.

It felt like the best parts of home, removed from the worst.

And V just kept talking.

She started from the beginning.

She started with her earliest memories: being manufactured, assigned to (sorry, “hired by” ) the Elliott family, and subsequently decommissioned after less than two weeks of work. A carving knife straight through the side of her head, because she had missed three specks of dust on a mantle somewhere. (The other two winced at that, despite everything they had seen and done in the last night alone.) (It was nice to know they cared, but at the same time it felt a little sour knowing it only applied to her.) By some miracle, the knife had missed everything important, leaving V to fester semi-conscious in the scrap heap for nearly two months before being rescued.

Tessa had found her then- sweet, wonderfully weird, cute and caring, Tessa. She’d been found by the faint light of her one remaining optic and dragged all the way back to her workshop to be patched back together. Her decimated body had been a challenge, and Tessa would forever feel guilty for making V’s processor even worse somehow, no matter how many times V said it was fine. A small price to pay for a second chance at life.

And what a chance it had been! She was quickly introduced to Tessa’s little family, Jessica and Natalie, who-

“Wait wait wait wait,” interrupted N, “since when did we have names? And why was mine… Natalie? Ew.”

V just laughed, “I’m getting there, be patient.”

-who were in a similar boat to V: decommissioned for whatever asinine reason, but resurrected by Tessa and forced back into regular staff rotation. The first few months when they’d all had names was nice to remember (even though J was the only one who had liked theirs), but that had come to a rather quick end once the Masters found out.

“We have Serial IDs on our arms, remember?” she explained, “three letters, twenty-six numbers, and two more letters.” She gave them a moment to look down to confirm before she continued, “Tessa took those first letters and expanded them into names. N, you have N-A-T, or Nat, which she turned into Natalie because you were assigned feminine at the time.”

His look of absolute bewilderment was adorable, “I’ll get there too, promise. Mine is V-E-X, so I was called Vex… I didn’t really like that either… and J-” she couldn’t hold back her snorts, “J is jif, if you can believe it.”

“What!?” Jif shrieked, somehow only now noticing that pattern.

V was cackling against the floor at this point, but managed to laugh out, “yeah, so, that wasn’t really a good name, so you got Jessica instead.”

N looked so confused, “but- but why was I a girl?”

“You- you… one second,” V choked. It took another moment to compose herself long enough to explain, “you were just built in a feminine batch, I don’t think there was any reason.” She sighed longingly, remembering what he had looked like, “you had such beautiful hair too… but after a while we all figured out you hated being a maid, so I helped cut it and got Tessa to turn you into a butler instead.”

“Huh.”

“Yep.”

…

“What were we like?” J asked, after a moment.

A smile crept its way onto her face.

“You guys were the best!”

J had always been a hard taskmaster and a little (a lot) overbearing, but she never lost her caring core. By day she was ruthless in getting their work done, so by breaktime they could get lost in each other’s company. She had always been Tessa’s closest friend and confidant, the first person she’d go to with any troubles at all, the one she’d share all her jokes with, the one she’d always drag into mischief regardless of the time or any current responsibilities, the one… she definitely didn’t have a hidden crush on as the years went by, something only J could have missed while hiding her own love for the human… um, well, they were the closest out of all of them, simply put. (J was too far away to clearly read her visor, but V thought she saw a tint of green appear where their flush usually went.)

N, on the other hand, was the sweetest and most caring drone to ever be manufactured, countered only by the common sense of those around him. No matter what happened, he always ended the day with a smile, he could make anyone laugh (of those who cared, at least), and he got himself in trouble so many times it was absurd.

Like how he once brought an entire litter of abandoned kittens indoors so they wouldn’t have to spend the night in the roaring rain, and got the others involved to get them adopted in secret before anyone in charge could find out.

Or how after V’s optics had gotten her in trouble again, he had stolen a car, driven several miles into town, purchased prescription glasses perfectly tailored to V’s troubles, driven all the way back before sunup, and somehow still worked a full day afterward. All without anyone noticing he had ever left.

V had to stop herself from rambling after that anecdote. There were so many funny N stories she had permanently saved in her memories because of how much they meant to her, but… J was already giving her a knowing look, she didn’t need to dig her hole any deeper. N meant the world to her, and he always would, but it would be unfair to burden him with expectations of a past life. Even though she was kind of expecting something, he deserved to have a say in it.

…

Anyway, the rest of her story was relatively mundane.

The four were their own little family, and only got tighter as a group as Tessa aged and endured more and more of her parents’ wrath. There were fewer big moments for the time, but there were plenty of little stories V could share. 

So she did.

Like how J would spend hours of her free time learning everything there was to know about Tessa’s current interest so she could help the growing teenager unwind after long days of perfecting perfection.

How one night they decided to watch a horror movie instead of the typical science-fantasy, except they accidentally chose one of the most terrifying films ever concocted by humankind, reducing all three drones to screaming, sobbing messes before the half-hour mark. Despite the protests that Tessa loved it, horror was strictly off limits after that.

How N gathered injuries like a dead drone gathered dirt, but always seemed to brush them off like it was nothing. He lost an arm one time, due to a faulty dishwasher, but still showed up the next morning perfectly intact. (N interrupted to say he had lost an arm last night too, so that was kinda funny.)

How Tessa absolutely despised her dancing lessons, and as punishment for not breaking her out of every session she would drag her drones to an empty ballroom after dark and teach them everything she had learned that day.

Or how N always had so much personality, and was the only one of them who could resist direct orders even a little. At least until Cyn, got- there…

Her voice faltered.

…why?

…

Why, why did she feel such an… overwhelming dread when she said that name out loud.

Why did she wince? Why did the other two wince along with her?

N looked sick, and hurt, and J… she looked terrified. Revolted.

And then the moment passed.

…

“Uh- um, Sin? Did you say?” J stuttered out once she regained her senses from… whatever that was.

“Cyn,” V corrected automatically, still recovering herself, “she was always particular about that.”

J waved a hand, unconcerned (still very concerned), “that’s what I said.”

“If I noticed, I’m sure she would have too,” V countered with a weak chuckle, “she always hated that name.”

“Anyway,” N prompted, “what were you trying to say?”

“Oh! Um, just, you were always more of a person than anyone official would have liked,” she explained, grateful to be moving on, “like, you were able to hear ‘The Great Paradoxes’ without bootlooping,” throwing up air quotes for that title, “and somehow you even taught the rest of us to respond to them without shutting down.”

“One time the Elliotts had a friend over for dinner- a real piece of work, even by their standards- and he was showing off by bootlooping every drone that came nearby. It was relatively harmless,” she was quick to assure him, “just a few minutes offline and a headache, but it was still annoying. So, when it was your turn to serve- because he’d already shut down all the others- he hits you with the ‘does a set containing all sets contain itself?’ and you go-”

Even after all this time, the story still brought tears of laughter to her eyes. She put her head in her hands like she was waxing philosophy and adopted her best N voice, “‘gee, well, that’s a great question sir. On the one hand, if by definition the set contains all sets, then yeah! I’d say it probably contains itself. But on the other hand, it’s kinda hard to tell what’s going on with infinity, you know? Infinitely abstract, and all that.’”

J nearly fell out of her chair from shock she was laughing so hard, and even N was chuckling along beneath the heavy embarrassment clouding his visor. But V wasn’t done yet, “and then- and then, you say, ‘I’ll ask my boss about it though, she usually knows these things,’ and you just walk off to serve another table,” she finished with glee.

It brought so much pride to her core seeing her friends like this. The moment with Cyn was already nothing more than an uncomfortable memory, and they were back to having fun. It was… weird, talking about them like this. It felt like she was comparing the drones in front of her to those stuck in her memories, despite how far from the truth that was.

But as they all laughed together over that silly story, there was hope in her heart too. Hope that they could reach that level of companionship again, and hope that the stories she shared now could be joined by more found in the coming days.

Maybe they were already there, she thought with a smile.

It took a few minutes to fully compose themselves after that story, and they only moved on once they could look each other in the eye without cracking again. There were so many more little stories to tell them. Anecdotes, silver linings on the worst of days, all the best (non-romantic fully platonic) events she could remember. It was great.

And then the world started screaming.

So did N, but that was a more normal response.

And then it stopped, just as suddenly as it started.

J was hovering over the console with a harried look on her face and her tail stabbed into the floor, somehow. The timer had stopped beeping, apparently, and decided to start yelling instead. It was effective, at least.

“Soo…” J started with an apologetic glance, “we’re gonna need your numbers from last night V.”

“Right.”

She’d get it now. She’d look, she would properly look at the number hanging out in the corner of her HUD. A simple censor bar covered the text box. It had never left, though it had felt like it earlier. It had slowly and surely been making itself known to V the longer she left it covered.

“Right, I’ll just… I’ll get that.”

It was so simple to do, it was a single action. 

Barely even an action, just the tiniest effort of will.

“V?” someone asked, she couldn’t tell who.

“I’ll just get that… now.”

It was like trying to sneeze, honestly.

If a sneeze were the size of a mammoth and twice as heavy.

It was so much better to just rip the seal-patch off, she knew that, but every fractional second that passed threw its weight against her. The buildup was killing her (that was maybe not the best choice of words) but the reveal was bound to be so much worse just do it-

“Four hundred fifty eight.”

oh

Oh gods

J’s eyebrows disappeared off the top of her screen, “seriously?”

“...yeah,” came her faint response.

That was. That was more than she’d thought. That was a lot. That was a lot. That was a lot of- a lot. Drones. Drones, people, she’d. She- V had.

killed

J let out a low whistle, piercing through the numbness, “V. That’s over two thirds of what N and I got together. I’d be impressed if I didn’t know what that meant to you.”

“Wha- what do you mean? H- how many did…”

“Well, I got three-hundred-eighty-six, and Mister Liability over here only got an even two-fifty,” she rattled off in a painfully matter-of-fact tone. Then she softened, seemed to come back to herself, and apologized, “sorry, I didn’t mean to call you a liability N. I don’t know where that came from. And V… I don’t know what to say.”

“Did we meet the quota?” That was probably important to know.

“When is the next quota due?” There was always another quota. Their entire lives as drones was one quota after another, regardless of what form it took.

“Yes, with your help, we just barely crossed the first night requirement of one thousand,” J was quick to assure her. The rest was less encouraging, if that could even be said for the first part, but it was still important to know, “that marker will remain consistent for the first five nights- so tonight and the three after- but then it will drop down to a thousand each week, instead of per night. That stays consistent for the first three months,” she explained, “then starts to drop by fifty per week each month until we finally even out at whatever we can find.”

She softened again, losing her business tone and adopting the one she usually reserved for comforting Tessa, “I know you hate this, I know this whole thing is a nightmare for you, but even with your help we barely managed that quota. At least for these first few nights, I’m going to need you to help as much as you can.”

N was hugging her now, and probably had been for a few minutes. A wash of shame joined the other emotions roiling in her synthetic stomach; it wasn’t fair he never asked for anything in return. And now J was there too somehow, sitting beside her to offer all the support she could give.

There wasn’t really any choice. She didn’t know what the consequences of failing a quota could be, but they’d lived with the Elliotts long enough to know that being violently decommissioned was a light sentence.

“Alright,” she sighed, “alright, I’ll- I, ugh, I’ll,” she couldn’t bring herself to say it.

They were looking at her so softly, but so expectantly at the same time.

Maybe there was another way to do this.

“Alright, I’ll… I’ll make you a deal.”

She almost laughed at how confused N looked, and how indignant J was. She was probably thinking something along the lines of that’s not an option here, but was still willing to hear her out.

“I will… do my best tonight, I promise,” that was the hard part.

“If,” she asked with a cautious smile, “if you’ll stay by me until nightfall.”

The confusion vanished, replaced with an excited grin.

The indignance melted, replaced by a caring smirk.

N shifted so they could settle in against the wall for the rest of the day, and to allow J some space to slide up next to V and support her from the other side. Their pressure and warmth was just as bracing as it had been every time before, both at the manor and… here. Pretty soon they were cuddled up together once again.

“Since we’re all agreed on this,” J said after they had all settled, “I suggest we get some sleep mode in. We have a long few nights ahead of us.”

They all chorused their agreement, and within minutes both N and J had dropped off into their slumber. Their cores slowed to a steady hum, and all the lights on their bodies dimmed, leaving V in the dark. That was fine, really. She wasn’t afraid of the dark.

She was afraid of what would be coming soon, after the sun finally set. She would have to face everything, then. There was no way around it.

It would be worse this time too, because she was not going to hide from herself this time. She was not going to hide from herself ever again if she could help it. But… but that meant she would have to be present, tonight. She would have to willingly, knowingly, consciously kill and destroy drones, all night long. Long enough, at least, so they wouldn’t face punishment in the morning.

…

But the purr of her friends beside her was so tantalizingly comfy.

It…

It could wait until tonight.

Chapter Text

Waking up was strangely peaceful, all things considered.

It felt amazing, actually, simply because this was the first time V had been able willingly return to consciousness in what felt like… years. It had been years, for all she knew. The last proper sleep she could remember was the night before finding Cyn in the library. Ever since then it had been one violent awakening after another. First she couldn’t activate, then she got her head cut off, and then the whole night was one giant waking nightmare she still could only attempt to comprehend. So to open her optics refreshed, recharged, and fully aware of herself was a treat.

The one downside was the h̶̯̓ú̴̯͛n̸͉̠̑ĝ̴͖͕ẽ̸̟̋r̴̦̙͒. Saying she was starving felt like saying space was just big. In truth, V felt like her stomach acids were about to start consuming her endoskeleton if she didn’t get anything else in there soon.

Something… metallic. Freshly killed.

…

Well, she would be getting plenty of that soon enough.

It was sickening how eager she was. How ready she was for sundown so she could fill the abyss that had taken residence in her chassis. Her teammates were feeling it too, it seemed. N was bouncing in place excitedly (which felt wrong, but then again so did everything), and J was running through all the notes she had, since this was to be their first hunt as a team. A fully conscious team, at least.

“Alright ladies,” J was saying, marching back and forth in front of them like a commander at post, “we have just over fourteen hours tonight, and we need to have at least a thousand bodies counted by then. Since there are three of us, and one does not want to be here at all,” she said with a pointed glare at V (which was not at all necessary, thank you), “I am giving you both sub-quotas of your own.” She stopped and posed with her hands on her hips, “I want both of you to get three hundred tonight,” she commanded, “N, you need to step it up a bit, and V, I do not expect a repeat of last night. I will be working for at least four hundred, which, together with your combined six, should get us to our goal. Any questions?”

N’s hand shot up eagerly.

J stared at him for a moment, then sighed, “yes, N?”

“Oh, I actually have a question for V!” he informed her cheerfully.

A hand found its way up to pinch at J’s face plate with a groan, “so why didn’t you just ask her? ”

“Oh! Huh, guess it didn’t occur to me. V!” he turned to face V (who was still unsure whether she should be amused or nauseous) and put his fingers together like he always did when asking for something, “you said I used to be a girl, and I didn’t like it, right? Is that why I don’t like J calling me a lady? Or is it just ‘cause she said it all derogatorily and stuff?”

The only noise in the pod after that was a pair of sighs; overly fond and utterly disappointed. It was not hard to tell which came from who.

There was something she needed to do before they went out. 

J had said earlier that their automatic counter would reset at the end of each designated period, so they could accurately count the drones they had “disassembled” in the proper time frame.

All her new files (and some of the old) were written in an absolute madhouse of a language V couldn’t hope to understand in a hundred years, but her mental functions still worked the same. Intent, instead of actual coding. 

And her intent was to never forget. Not this.

Not how many lives she’d truly taken.

V stood at the closed hatch. 

She was staring into the dull, riveted metal that made up their doorway into the world as if it held all the answers. The sun was still up; she could feel the smallest slivers of heat leaching through the steel in front of her. Part of her was confused, curious. How was the sun deadly for the entire span of the day, yet perfectly harmless for the entirety of night? How was it deadly at all?

There were so many details she didn’t know, details that were usually considered meaningless until they suddenly vanished. Like the atmosphere. On Earth, it was simple: thick enough to ward off most space radiation (and keep Antarctica at a balmy twenty-something Celseus), but thin enough to let space travel be nice and simple. Was Copper-9’s atmosphere to blame for the sun’s wrath? Was there something missing, or something here that wasn’t there around Earth to make the temperatures soar and dive on an hour’s whim? Was it even the temperature’s fault, or some kind of solar radiation?

Maybe all that knowledge had been included in the exposition packages. Maybe she had just missed it. Though, if given the choice, she would not change a thing if understanding things now meant losing everything else.

(Would they have even been friends if none of them remembered? Would they have stuck together as closely if V hadn’t been there to tell them about what used to be?)

That was only a small part of her. The rest was just… scared. Nervous, anxious, worried and slightly nauseous, terrified to an extent and numb to another. And hungry. Oh so hungry. That was the worst part, easily. And the fact that she knew, at some level, that she didn’t merely need to eat… she wanted to.

There was a droplet of drool in the corner of her mouth, as she thought about the feast that was only minutes away. A hand came up to wipe at it. Her gaze flicked from the door to the nanite-filled saliva on her finger. Disgusting. But, at the same time… yeah. She was ready for this, whether she was ready or not.

The droplet fell to the floor.

She blinked.

And noticed the drones standing next to her.

J looked stern, with maybe a few hints of mania in her stance, her already outstretched claws. One hand was hovering by the comically large switch on the wall, counting down the seconds until it was safe to yank down and release them unto the hapless meals workers. 

N, was softer. Still energized, one eye transformed into a small gilded X, still shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet, still raring and ready to go. But he looked back at V with a soft, genuine smile. He offered a hand, offered the promise of his support despite what they were doing. She took it without hesitation, and turned back towards the hatch.

“Alright team, here we go,” was the only warning they got before the wall in front of them suddenly vanished with a hiss, revealing the trio to the frigid night.

It was her first good look at the planet, as the three stepped out to deploy their wings.

The first thing she noticed was the snow. It was hard to miss the thick sterling blanket covering everything in sight; the crumbling concrete monoliths, the exposed streets and alleys crowded with the remnants of humanity, and the… pile of drone corpses. That was bigger, and smaller, than she expected. Beyond that, the entire world seemed to be backlit by the midnight sky, harsh white light reflecting off of Copper-9’s parent planet to shine down on the desolate city, even through the thick cloud cover. The light was faint, and clearly not dangerous like the sun’s, but it was more than enough to illuminate their prey path.

It might have been beautiful, if V looked at it a certain way.

… And if her optics worked.

“N, you route through the buildings, try to find any places of shelter the Worker Drones® could be hidden,” J ordered, shocking V away from the view, “and V, stick to open areas and rooftops. I’ll be heading out to herd the outliers closer to base.” She jumped lightly from the ground and hovered in front of them for a moment to say, “good luck guys,” then swooped away with a flare of her wings.

“You heard her,” N chimed, licking his lips in anticipation. His visor flicked fully into that murderous cross as he took a few steps from the pod to give him space, then vanished upward in an explosion of air. 

Leaving V alone. Again.

Well. It was time to get to work then. (“work”)

V flicked on her secondary optics and spread their windows to cover most of her HUD. They didn’t have the same issues her regular eyes did and allowed her to see clearly in all directions (she had to pause to admire the glittering snow. It looked nice in full definition). There were a few other toggles, like thermal vision or platypus eyes (whatever that meant), but for now all she needed was something to look for… there! Movement, at the base of a building.

She took a deep, bracing breath in. 

This was it.

She flung open her wings dramatically. They were truly beautiful constructions, elegant hybrid-steel feathers sharpened to slice through tungsten like they were white-hot knives through melted butter. But this was no time to admire them.

She released her breath as she exploded upward just as N had, piercing through the lowest layers of clouds in an instant before leveling out to glide towards whatever she’d seen.

Her visor blurred into thermal mode as she activated every hunter protocol she could reach. The movement she had spotted was one careless drone in a host of workers; at least a dozen. A good start to her numbers for tonight. (A horrible start to her rapidly declining sanity.)

As she dropped from the sky, her unfortunate target was left with roughly two thirds of a second to react before being crushed neatly beneath V’s missile-like entrance. Her landing was perfect, almost whisper quiet, and none of the other drones inside seemed to have noticed yet.

If anything, they were asking for it. Camping out within eyesight of the residence of the drones who had killed over a thousand of them less than thirty hours ago, it was like they were asking for V to find and destroy them. (That’s what she was telling herself.)

Regardless, there were two more standing guard. In the split second she’d been standing there they’d only had enough time to blink before they were both bisected with twin sweeps of her swords. The swords became claws that ripped through the throat of another guard just inside the structure, and then a gun that blasted clean through a fifth drone’s skull. The whole sequence- five drones dead- took only seven seconds. And then she was met with the main room, full of sleeping drones.

Oh.

Well…

A missile straight to the center support cleared that out nicely. The room collapsed on top of fourteen drones, crushing all of them before they could even begin shaking out of sleep mode. 

…

So, that was nineteen bodies on her count for tonight.

Only two-hundred and eighty-one to go.

…

Oh. Wait.

She had to stop a moment to realize what that meant. It had happened so fast, and- she’d just crushed those drones. Without a second thought, without any sort of immediate remorse or regret. It… it didn’t even feel bad like it should, like it had before.

It was just a number.

She wanted to leave, after that. She wanted to get out of this room that reeked of robotic death so she could… go, find another group to do the same to. And then another and another, because unless she stumbled across an entire bunker three-hundred drones thick, this “work” was not going to be ending anytime soon. (If ever.)

She wanted to leave.

She wanted to leave, why was she still standing here!?  

As if in answer to her question, a lemony tab popped up out of nowhere to cover her field of view.

| Nanite Reserves: 42% - consumption advised |

Right.

She… she was hungry.

It…

It would be wrong to waste all of these bodies. It was bad enough she couldn’t muster the energy to feel bad anymore (she just felt tired), it would be worse to never use- it would be much worse to leave all of this to rot without purpose.

(She knew what that was like.)

V moved outside back into the snow, and immediately could feel a slight relief to her mental processing. Not nearly enough, of course, but the chill air was infinitely better than suffocating inside. The five bodies were still strewn about the floor (where else could they have gone?), each looking worse than the last.

A shattered visor. A severed head. Four halves settled in a corner like their parts knew they belonged together. And a metal pancake.

The ground was stained like pitch, and her sensors told her any oil from those bodies was long gone, already soaked into the planet’s permafrost. It was almost funny how fast they had drained, because as far as her timer was aware they’d been lying there for at most a minute.

Those same sensors pinged on the head, however. It had landed neck up, and thus the oil inside was left unspilled. Oil she could smell. Oil she was suddenly craving.

Unsheathing her claws once again, she picked up the head. Her hands were big enough to wrap all the way around the discarded skull, and she could tell that she could crush it without any effort, based on the unconscious gentleness she held it with. The oil was sloshing audibly within, and her mouth was already sliding open in anticipation as she held the head above her own like she’d seen N do last night.

When the first drops hit, she nearly vomited it back up right there. It was vile and sour, it was thick and gooey, it was disgusting in every other way imaginable.

And then it was like ṅ̶̡͙̦̭̤̙̗̝̩̭͖͋͐̂̈́̀͠ͅe̷͉̓̍̊̍͘ç̷̢̖̫̘̯̱͈̻̝̮̼̬̻̀͐͌̅́̍̓̊̓́͘͠ͅt̸͖̖̖̞̦̎̈́͝͠a̷̧̟͇͍̭̯̭̻̼̩͚̔̂̽̓̋̔̓͒̓̾̍͜ŗ̴̡͐̿̾̎̀̓͘.

Something in her throat changed, and all of a sudden she couldn’t stop gulping the addictingly sweet fluid down and down until her processor had separated from her body to float in its own little heaven of pure bliss.

It was warm, it was sweet like toasted sugar, it was e̵̼̤̭͋͂̏̑͑̂̋̾́̌̉̇̀̾͜c̴̡̪̰̤̟͋͒̈̌s̵͓͈̯̗̞̼̜̍̍̆́̓̈́͗̎͒͘̕͜͝͝͝͝t̴̡̛̛̮̹̙̘̩̮̝̰͚̋̊ā̴̳̙͕̟̯̲̤͍̺̑̈́̀̾͜͝s̴̨̼͓̤̹͓̣͖̥̞̱̩͖͛̉̃͊̿̈̄̚y̸̨̞͚͚̦͉̟̭̠͑̄͜.

She couldn’t get enough, until-

It dripped empty.

By the time the fire in her mind calmed down enough to see what she was doing, she had already cast the head aside to scoop up its body and drain it dry.

She was getting lost in this feeling.

She was getting lost and she d̵i̶̽ͅd̴͖͝n̸͈̱̣͗̈̑'̸̨̝̜̐́̓t̸̗̩̑͆̈́ ḹ̸͚̲͛i̵̡͓͍̯̓̎́k̵͙̗̬̭͛̈̔̌̓͘͝e̷͓͕͖̾͝ i̶̡̢̤̗̬̾̍̕͠t̴͍͛͊͂̀͆̚.̷̧̣̻͈̯̂̊̃̇ͅ

She threw up.

…

The retching took a minute to clear, and it took a few minutes more for V to stop panting and dry heaving. 

The same tab from before popped up again to inform her that her nanites were now functioning happily, thanks to the few cups of oil that had been absorbed before it could be thrown out onto the ground with the rest.

Gods…

That was bad.

But it was over now. And now she knew better.

V nearly laughed out loud at that thought, because no, it was not over. Not by a long shot. What had she said earlier, two-hundred and eighty-something to go?

She couldn’t be waiting here, she couldn’t be idle for so long when they needed to get his gods-awful business done before something else went wrong.

…

That meant she had to get up first.

A monumental task despite everything stupid about it.

…

Still. She had to. She’d promised.

She spread her wings slowly, lacking all the flare she had previously. Her antigrav thrusters hummed to life just behind her to push gently from the ground. The hum turned to a thrumming roar as she rocketed suddenly skyward, her wings pushing out to guide her body forwards to find her next targets.

Leaving behind a room of crushed corpses, and a patch of metal-strewn, oilstained earth.

The next group was found mere moments after liftoff in the same manner as the first: a blip on her thermals to indicate there was something below her other than desolate snow.

It was dealt with in a similar way too.

V fell from the sky like a rocket dropping from orbit. She slew four drones before they had even realized she was there. The rest tried to fight or run, but were all cut down with merciless efficiency. Several were torn apart by swords or claws, even more were mowed down by a spray of bullets, and a few received a magma-melting blast of plasma. One was especially lucky and got crushed by a car because of how stubborn they were being.

It was great! (she wanted to die)

Nice and simple. (why was this her fate?)

And now she was twenty-three closer to her goal for the night.

(Twenty-three closer to oblivion, if she was lucky.)

(She wished she were so lucky.)

After a few hours, V started noticing more about her victims. 

More specifically, she was noticing how little there was to notice.

There were exactly five drones so far tonight that had been visually distinct. Five. Out of the nearly two hundred she had killed so far. And those five were all “distinct” in exactly the same way: they had a badge on their left breastplate. That was it. They didn’t have hair, or standout clothing, or differing eye-lights, nothing. Apart from the two that got away yesterday morning, all the eyes were white, everyone was wearing a similar (if not the same) kind of work jacket, and none of them had anything on their head other than the typical metal hardhat.

(In hindsight, it was a little strange that those two looked so crazy. Chromatic eyes and fancy hair and casual t-shirts? No wonder V let them go, she had been scared silly.) 

And, realistically, she was aware of the fact that this was a mining colony and JCJenson was already pathetic on Earth, so they would in no way be willing to put any extra effort into these drones beyond making them stronger for the tougher work (and even that was a maybe). But it was still depressing in a way separate from the ongoing death and destruction.

If she had a snapshot of every single worker’s face, at least half of them would have to be filed into the same folder of lookalikes. The other half could also probably be a folder, there were that few standouts.

It… hurt, knowing that was what she was. What she was at her core, only given a semblance of identity and meaning thanks to Tessa and, now, her murderous design. Only one of which she could actually be thankful for, of course.

Although, it might actually be helping her in a weird sort of way. They were all so monotonously identical that it had stopped feeling like she was destroying people. It had started to feel more like how J and N felt, more like how she was sure JCJenson as a whole wanted it to feel: disassembling mass-producible machines.

…

They didn’t deserve this. No one did, but especially not these workers who’d had freedom for so little time they hadn’t yet developed visual individuality. They deserved better.

The next few hours passed as the first few had.

The hours after that passed similarly.

And the hour after that was nearly indistinguishable from the hours before.

Eventually, V reached her goal of three hundred. It took almost the entire night, since the workers had learned at least a little and weren’t running around quite as mindlessly as before, but she was done. She still finished off the group she was on, they had been particularly annoying and frankly deserved it at this point (that was not how that worked), but now she was free for the night.

She didn’t need to continue killing.

She had done enough.

Three hundred and four, onto her total tally to give her a grand ongoing score of seven-sixty-two.

The number was almost funny in how depressing it was. There shouldn’t have been that many drones on the continent of Australia, let alone in this single city. And there were still countless more, seeing as their scheduled quotas would continue being this high for the foreseeable future.

Where were they even hiding? How were they still struggling with these lofty goals when there were apparently tens of times as many hanging around somewhere?

This whole thing was ridiculous.

(Mild indignance was better than overwhelming despair.)

…

Right. It was time to be done.

The sun was just starting to peak over the horizon and it wouldn’t be long before the outdoors became utterly inhospitable (for reasons V was still unsure about) to her.

There was a corpse at her feet, and she was starting to feel peckish again.

So she ripped off its arm before walking away.

The oil inside was chunky and unpleasant, even after the automatic addiction protocols kicked in. But it still counted towards her reserves, and really, the taste just made it easier to stop.

…

J was waiting at the door of the pod, and looked up expectantly once she noticed V’s approach. She seemed… maybe not happy, exactly, but content, or confident? It was hard to tell. As V trudged slowly towards the entrance and the now towering pile of death, she called out, “did you accomplish what I assigned you?” with only a vague irritation in her voice.

V nodded and called back, “three-oh-four,” then bent down to grab some snow and brush herself off. She had stayed mostly clean tonight- since she was actually trying to avoid the oil spills- but there was still some caked into her claws. It already seemed inevitable that this particular filth was going to haunt her forever. (She deserved it at this point.)

“... Did it go alright for you?” J asked after a moment of silence.

V glanced up from her task to see a greenish concern written on her boss’s face. Thanks to her still-active secondaries, she could quite clearly see that the pixels on J’s visor had, indeed, tipped on the yellowness scale towards a slight green. She’d been doing that every now and then over the last night. Mostly when talking about Tessa, or when she needed to appear less than abrasive in order to keep V calm. It looked nice on her.

“Yeah, I guess it was fine,” she replied after probably too long of a pause, “I didn’t shut down, at least. And I’m not filthy again.” 

J nodded like she knew what V meant, “that’s… good, yes,” and then she kind of just stared at V for a few seconds. She opened her mouth like she was about to speak, but then closed it again, and just shook her head and stepped into the pod.

N crashed down in an explosion of snow a moment later, the only reason V didn’t jump out of her synthetic skin being that her thermals had clocked him a second before impact. He looked almost angelic, with the sun slowly appearing behind his outstretched wings. And then they disappeared, and he was back to being an adorable goofball. He was quick to make sure V was alright, like J had, and she responded similarly. She was too tired right now to give much more than a quick “I’m fine,” even though it would certainly be a disappointment to him.

There was a thump from inside the pod, then J leaned her head out the door to yell at them, all hints of green gone from her visor, “N! You’re cutting it close here. Did you do what I told you to?”

He nodded cheerfully with a thumbs up, “sure did boss! I got three hundred ex-actly!”

“Thank you for not being a disappointment,” J said with a drawl. Then she blinked, and her visor shifted- almost imperceptibly- back to her standard yellow. “I’m serious,” she said slowly, “I do not know why I’m being mean to you. I’m sorry N, I didn’t mean that.”

Hm. “Well, that’s weird and concerning,” V spoke up, shredding the sudden silence, “but I’m ready to power down for a few weeks, if that’s alright..?” lilting upward in an unspoken question, hoping she wouldn’t need to ask for their cuddles directly.

Thankfully, they both seemed to get it, and J beckoned them in with a fond smile as N pumped his fists up in a cheer. He practically shoved V inside as the first licks of sunlight started beaming over the horizon, and wasted no time at all in plopping down in a corner to make a spot comfortable for them. J took an extra minute to report their body count for the night- a thousand and seventeen- then settled down next to the technically-not-lovebirds.

The night was over, and they were settling in to sleep.

Their warmth was nice. It banished V's last lingering bits of apathy.

“Y’know, we should get a bed or something in here sometime,” N said suddenly, quietly, “I bet there are still some okay mattresses around somewhere, and it’s not like the humans’ll need them right now.”

Yep, this was home. Silly ideas and all.

She made sure to agree before she powered off. 

Nestled peacefully in their arms.

Chapter Text

All things considered, not being allowed to dream was becoming strangely useful.

Given all the atrocities she was committing on a nightly basis, V should have been startling awake five times over from every recharge in a cold sweat- or whatever the robotic equivalent was- screaming out for some modicum of comfort or forgiveness from those she’d damned.

Instead, she slept peacefully through the days, blissfully unaware of herself for those few uneventful hours she spent entwined with her friends on the floor. The bed certainly helped, but she was getting ahead of herself.

The first week of high quotas had passed. 

Her total tally was a few drones shy of two thousand, and V could confidently say she was already a veteran in every sense of the word; jaded beyond belief and lacking any fervor her first night had contained, yet called back into action again and again no matter what she did to stay away. 

She hadn’t been doing too much to avoid it though. Being taunted with your own disembodied head was a shockingly good motivator, even if J was usually much nicer overall.

The hunts were getting… easier, if that could even be said for such a thing. V was quickly growing in her murderous abilities and had already become the most efficient hunter of the three. Sure, it was mostly an attempt to minimize the time she had to spend slaughtering workers- which almost worked, to be fair- but the difference between her and the other two was almost funny. 

(It would be funny if they didn’t enjoy it, if V wasn’t the only one who saw killing as what it was.)

The act of killing itself wouldn’t… killing would never be easy for her. Her strategy- drop in and destroy everyone before she could get a good look at them- had been working so far, but it was nowhere near perfect. Even then, it only worked because of how far V removed herself from the situation. They were disassembling workers (downplaying and dehumanization), they were just doing their job (excuses), and when that wasn’t enough, she dropped into a sort of guided autopilot (dissociation) until the worst was over with.

Aside from the gross and very artificial feeling of ecstasy she felt when consuming oil, most nights were spent in a detached numbness.

(She was spiraling even now, just thinking about how she was avoiding that spiral. It seemed to be hanging over her constantly now; an unholy, unending, depressive abyss that threatened to drag every speck of light down into herself and her unfeeling.)

(Ugh.)

When she described these processes to the other two, J went on a minute-long rant about how V was “a subpar squadmate with a lackluster attitude that would never get her anywhere in the corporate world,” only to apologize in confusion since there wasn’t exactly a ladder for them to be climbing. J was weird like that.

The few details V was noticing the first few nights were only becoming more apparent. For example, J apparently had three separate personalities, each demonstrated by a tiny shift in the color of her eyes. Her regular yellow was just J; a bit of a narc but ultimately a decent person. Sometimes that yellow would shift to look… almost sickly (it reminded V of Cyn), and she would focus 100% on her imagined success, often snarking at the others (especially N) until she got her way. The last was when she was being nice, when she was showing she cared, and she got just a few drops of green to mix in with the yellow.

For some reason, neither N nor J could see the visual change when it happened, even though it stood out clear as day to V. Maybe it could be attributed to her previous work sewing though, where every point on the RGB scale could mean life or death.

Another recurring detail was just how much J reminded V of Tessa in that state. Both her appearance and her attitude felt just like how she remembered the human. The other two couldn’t see that either, but that made more sense since they didn’t remember Tessa in the first place.

…

She was getting off track. Whoops.

In celebration of their first week coming to a close, the trio had taken a night off to go “shopping” for supplies around the desecrated city. While most of everything had long since been looted by the suddenly-ownerless workers, there was still plenty scattered around for them to find.

True to his word, N had found them a mattress big enough to share. V would forever treasure the memory of her sweet oblivious butler hurling a cubic meter of brick through a window to get around the slag-encrusted front door. Her cheers had echoed around the block, and she knew Tessa would have been ecstatic to hear about her favorite son causing property damage in the name of V’s comfort. (And J’s, of course, but the teen had always been… supportive, of the two.) (Yes, okay, she was a shipper, geez.)

Other than the bed, they only really looked for small “leisure” items. They were spending the rest of their lives here- as far as they knew- and half of that time was spent waiting for nightfall, and only so much of that could be spent sleeping. They found books, pens, papers, crayons (for N), journals, and at least one functioning television (what they would watch was still a mystery), as well as a few small blankets and pillows to go along with the acquired mattress.

The pod was still a depressing box of frigid metal, but it was a start. N said his next goal was string lights to make it more homey, but that would have to wait until next week.

All of this was to say: V was doing surprisingly well.

The time spent with her friends was outweighing the suffering she was going through (and causing), and to be completely honest? It was starting to feel just as tediously mundane as life at the manor; a few hours of mind-numbing work (it was numbing in a completely different way) followed by a few hours of relaxing with her companions. 

Hell, even the oil stains were reminiscent of all the decommissioned servants they had been made to clean up. There was a lot more here, obviously, and V was herself responsible for most of it… but it wasn’t terrible anymore, that was the point.

She was dealing with everything as well as she could, and finding light in her darkness whenever possible.

She was doing alright.

V was fine.

Tonight dusked into the second night of their second week on this planet. The worker population had already been cut by nearly a quarter in five nights alone, but that still left three pieces of pie for the disassemblers to find and, well, disassemble. 

Because the quotas from now on were drastically smaller than what they were used to, J decided they would be spreading out their terror a bit more from now on. Six of the eight (yes, eight) days were to be spent hunting like usual, and the other two would be for playing catch-up. If they had time, she might be willing to give them the last night to relax. Maybe. If they were lucky.

Last night was shopping property damage and petty theft, so tonight was to be scouting and exploration. 

The territory they were supposed to cover stretched out a few miles from the city center where the pod rested, but so far none of them had mapped out more than the nearest few blocks. The area included all of the city proper, as well as the surrounding areas: some frozen marshes, a tiny stretch of frosted plains, and the lower portions of a small mountain range.

Tonight, V was sent northward to scout out the mountains.

The range rose like jagged teeth only a half-mile from the edge of town and climbed several thousand feet to rest against the sky. The mountains themselves were completely barren; it was utterly impossible for anything to be living higher than the foothills thanks to the blistering storm that raged constantly in the lower atmosphere. Even on approach V was forced to descend several times to avoid being torn apart by the extremely-localized hurricane-strength winds.

Jagged and barren, covered in patches of asbestos snow and dotted with skeletal pines, the range only grew and grew the closer V got, despite still technically being within the city limits. She had never been claustrophobic (and that probably wasn’t the correct term anyway), but the blurry image of worn grey stone stretching up and up and up as she approached was… constricting. 

So much so she almost crashed into a building in her distraction.

Shaking out of the mountains’ grasp, V shifted into a short feet-first dive back to earth, landing with a resonant thud on the street below as her wings retracted into nothingness behind her. She staggered for a few steps before regaining her balance from the quick landing, and decided to take a look around before starting her task for the night.

She had landed in the middle of what counted as suburbs on this planet; a patchwork of iced over roads surrounding a few tiny houses. Maybe it was the fact that she had only ever known the Elliott Manor- the home of one of the richest families alive- but these houses looked pathetic.

The buildings couldn’t possibly have fit more than ten bedrooms each, and probably only had four or five bathrooms to share between them. They each had a yard, which might have been something, but they were only two or three hundred square feet of… what used to be grass, maybe. 

It was weird that a mining colony had houses like this at all. It was insult to injury that they were the size of a postage stamp.

Shaking her head in dismay, V moved on. The houses were only novel because of their size and state of decay (none of them had functioning roofs), otherwise they were perfectly bland and deserved no more interest than she had already given.

Although… they would make decent hiding places for workers, which meant…

“Ugh, I have to check all of these now, don’t I?” V groaned out loud, shattering the suburban silence.

With a long, suffering-filled sigh, she clicked on her sensors. They didn’t have a name as far as she knew, they were just the sensors, used to capture data on everything in sight. There was a dull shift in the back of her perception as she turned the system on, and a lemony tab opened to display all that she was unconsciously calculating.

To give some credit, it was a pretty smart system. The sensors gathered visual data and processed it into potentials. Potential hiding spots for targets, potential hiding spots for herself, places that were and were not protected from the sun, places that could be dangerous to enter, and, unfortunately, places that needed further exploration.

V didn’t have magical x-ray vision like the superheroes Tessa used to watch did, she had to manually go through every single blind spot her algorithms spotted.

Or, she would have had to go through every single blind spot… if she cared that much. 

Which she did not.

So instead, she turned her speakers to max to call out, “are there any worker drones around here? I could use some help with this thing!” 

She wasn’t expecting an answer, but it meant she had tried, no matter how pathetic the attempt was.

After a minute of listening, V made the executive decision that there probably were no workers around here, and as such, she could give up and move on.

With a satisfied nod for a job well done, her wings unfurled as she took off once again.

…

Only to land forty seconds later, roughly half of a mile north of where she had been.

Such was her fate tonight.

The houses had dwindled into a few patches of hovels, each more rundown than the last. These were actual hovels too, not just hovels in the eyes of a servant to the obscenely wealthy. Literally a few planks stacked against each other covered in tarps.

This meant there were far fewer possible hiding places, which meant her scanners could do their job much faster. She wandered around for a few minutes, crunching loudly through the snow as her scanner pricked every which way, frantically absorbing all the data they could get their metaphorical hands on.

That data was passed to some advanced sorts of algorithms and programs and whatever else this body used, then spat out a list of what to look at. Each location was within walking distance, and each location was visited and thoroughly explored (only once or twice to the extent of the suburban street) until the pressure in the back of V’s head was satisfied.

Then V took off again.

And landed again, another half-mile further north.

She repeated the process, wandering through the snow for ten, fifteen minutes until the area was marked as clear (how it was marked, she had no clue), then moved further into the snowy waste.

There were no houses this time, no homes of any sort. Just a crap ton of snow covering everything in sight. This was good news and bad news; good, because it meant there was no cover for her to be worrying about, bad, because the snow made walking nearly impossible.

The snow was deep, was the thing, and her legs were only so long. She was taller than regular drones (one of the only good parts about this body), but each step out here went up past her “knees.” It wasn’t even good snow either! It looked nice- like glitter in the moons’ reflected glow- but it felt awful.  

Granted, she didn’t have much experience with good snow… only one skiing trip with Tessa. But still! It was rough and grated on her nerves and her plating, and it crunched like crispy styrofoam, one of the worst sounds V could ever remember hearing.

She would have gone on for much longer in her head, cursing this planet for being a ball of ice instead of anything decent, if one of her sensors hadn’t picked up on something.

A voice, floating over the gentle wind.

And the crunching of styrofoam, coming from feet that were not V’s.

Her mid-right secondary pinged, highlighting the light of a worker jogging through the powdery wastes some distance behind her. It looked like a stereotypical human out on a morning jog, except it was two hours after sunset, it was thirty-two below zero (celsius, mind you), and it was beginning to flurry.

Honestly, it probably would be nicer to end its misery.

Then the worker spotted her. And, instead of doing the sensible thing of running and screaming and hiding (V was sick of all the running and screaming and hiding), it cut off mid-ramble to pivot and jog directly towards the disassembler, a bright smile on its face.

V waited patiently, ready to see what this idiot was up to.

The worker yelled a greeting as soon as it judged it was within earshot, calling out, “hey howdy! What’re you doin’ out here in a storm like this?” before slowing to a halt in front of her. 

“Uuhhhh…” V answered intelligently. Technically, she wasn’t out hunting, so this thing didn’t need to die. But, not having a good answer, V deflected, “what are you doing? This is not good weather for a jog buddy.”

“Ah, well, that’s a great question,” the worker replied with gusto, “y’see, I was out gatherin’ pipes the other day, when all of a sudden there was an earthquake!” it they said, exploding their hands in demonstration, “and all my pipes fell down a giant crack, so I had to go down and get ‘em.”

“I spent a couple hours gatherin’ all the pipes, and by the time I went to give ‘em to my supervisor he’d turned into a skeleton! It was crazy!” They had a slightly manic look on their face, as if they were truly astounded at how fast humans aged. 

“So then after that, I realized there wasn’t nothing for me in Pipeland, so I thought I’d go for a jog to clear my head,” they finished with a nod, “and then I met you, so things must be lookin’ up for me!”

Okay, so, this random worker somehow did not know the entire planet perished violently, and has spent the last six months regathering pipes that had been lost in the Collapse. Nice.

“Did you… do you have a house… or anything, around here?” she asked instead, wincing as her earlier thoughts of mercy reentered her head.

“‘Course not,” they proclaimed, their smile never faltering, “I’ve just been wanderin’ the past night or three, gonna see what I can see before the sky falls down!”

“... Is the sky supposed to fall down?” V asked hesitantly.

“Oh yeah, my old friend Norgi down in the mines always said there were some demons or somethin’ comin’ down sometime soonish.”

“Thanks… that was, helpful.”

“Glad to be of service,” completely missing the sarcasm, “so what’re you up to anyhow? If it’s got anything to do with plumbin’ I am certainly your guy.”

V snorted, she definitely didn’t need help with plumbing. But what was she doing? A memory of one of the old cartoons Tessa dug out of the scrap heap came to mind; a hunter with a dopey accent endlessly tracking a rabbit. She smiled, making sure to show off her razor-blade teeth, “why, I’m hunting worker drones!” she said, modulating her voice box for that cartoonish effect.

Did this thing guy need to die? No.

Did she really care if she killed them him? Also no.

He finally seemed to realize something was wrong, his frankly unnatural smile finally slipping into a wary frown. He noticed the way V was poised, how her limbs were hard and solid, edged in caution tape. He saw the utter apathy in her deadset gaze. He gulped, “well… what’re you huntin’ us for? That doesn’t seem like much of a friendly thing to do.”

“You’re right, no, it’s not.”

“Oh, um…” beads of sweat were starting to drip down his cracked visor, pale white against the blackened reflection of V’s sickly smile. He started to edge slowly away, feet shuffling through the snow as he gulped again, “well, ah! Hey there, look at the time,” he motioned to an imaginary watch, “I should… I should probably be gettin’ back to my pipes, y’know…” V loomed over him, just a little bit further, “... make sure no one’s… grabbed ‘em, or…”

“Nope!” V interrupted cheerfully. With a bullet straight through his visor.

The worker fell with a splat of oil, the stream erupting through his its FATAL ERROR to stain a wide radius of snow the color of pitch. V chuckled darkly, only slightly hating herself for it, and leaned down to yank off an arm to slurp from. The taste of oil was, as always, nearly intoxicating, lessened only by the clumpiness that was standard to arms for whatever reason.

She took one last look at the worker in the snow.

Then rolled her eyes, unfolded her wings and exploded upwards in one fluid motion.

She was behind schedule now, she had work to do. Places to map, sights to see.

…

Sights that worker would now never see.

Over the next hour or so, V worked her way up to the lowest of the foothills. The short stretch of plains went by nicely since the only possible places of cover were the snowdrifts, and those were few enough to be almost negligible. Otherwise it was fly to location, scan for a minute, fly to next location, repeat.

The data gathering in the back of her mind was essentially useless to V, but supposedly J would have some sort of use for it once she got back. V was being nice, and collecting all this for the sake of “thoroughness” and “giving 110% effort” and… whatever jargon J liked to spout. (It felt like a coping mechanism sometimes, so V wasn’t going to say anything unless it got really bad.)

Regardless, that hour passed uneventfully, and the hours spent actually in the hills was only a little better. It was also much, much worse.

First, the hills were better because there was variety in them. There were trees sometimes; petrified husks of oaks and pines planted back when the planet had first been colonized. They swayed eerily in the growing wind, sometimes letting out a low moaning sound V really wished she didn’t have anything to compare with. (Again, it was sometimes a good thing drones weren’t allowed to dream.)

The view was pretty nice too, with how the moonlight sparkled off of the snow stretching out in the distance towards the city. And the snow had stopped being as annoying, thanks to the ups and downs of the terrain letting it accumulate differently so V wasn’t always wading through an entire desert of the stuff.

That was the bad part.

There was height variation.

Every single time one of her scanners encountered a dip or a sudden wall of earth, they would complain and yell at V to go check it out, to make 100% sure there wasn’t a boogie man hiding on the other side of that drift that was two inches tall.

It was maddening, like being tugged around by an overeager toddler suffering from that special kind of perfectionism only tiny children seemed to have.

Not that she had ever worked with toddlers, but it was a universal feeling. As she was finding out.

The foothills slowly grew more dramatic in variance the higher V trudged, which in turn made her leashed toddlers twice as eager until she was nearly staggering around, trying to placate every one of them at once. It was maddening.

Her trudging was getting harder too. No longer was it just snow, now there was rock involved. 

Apparently, whatever idiot had designed her made her pegs perfectly fine with concrete and steel, reasonably competent through snow and ice, but absolutely awful when trekking across bare stone. They thudded and clanged and clacked in all the wrong ways, it was maddening.

That wasn’t even mentioning the outcroppings! The stone had been sharpened by the constant roaring winds until little spikes jutted out around every corner, sharp enough to slice through V’s plating. She was supposed to be indestructible! WHY WAS BARE STONE BEATING HER!?

…

There was nothing up here.

She was done with this crap, she was going h leaving.

V unfurled her wings for the final time that night, ready to explȯ̴̘̣̇d̸͎͊͜ě̴̖̗̟̯̫̃̌̋̑ ̸̭͑̑͆u̷͇͎̣͝ṕ̸̡͇̤͈̮̿̕͝w̷͖̗͈̄̈́͂̈͗̚͝ͅả̷̧̮̯͕͊r̸̤̟̠̪͕̳̆͒̀͐̑͂̑̊͘͠ḑ̷̲̦̲̬̞̠̙̾̉̏̆̀̓̄͛s̷̢̠͕̐́̌͂̚͠-̷͓̝̫̼̄͛̑́̈́̔̾̽͜͝ͅ

.̶̨̛̱̝͖̺͈̼̑͆̌̓̍͌͒͋̚͜͠ͅ ̷͈͔͔̭̜̊̂̈́̏̓̆ ̴̧̢͈͓͉̠̦͖̟̘̪̩͐ ̶̨̛̼̣̬͋ͅ.̷̨̧̧̧̭̫̯̖͉̩͇̼͎͑͌̆ ̴̢̺͍͊́̿̉̈͒͋̃̈́̓͘ ̷̳̎͒̿͛̏͒͒̏̈̌̕̚ ̵̧̞̗͇̰̐̌̇̐̑͑̉̃͗̀̚͠.̵̢̮̳̣̣̭̩͓̞͈͒̔͆̃̆̐͌͆̑̕

[̸̨̛̹̗̫̦̬̫̯̗̼̩͋̀́̓̀̐̈́́͂̈́̿̍͑̀̍̃̍̕͜ͅ ̷͇̘̤̞̗͇͔͓͙̟̗̯̗̽̀̋̀́́͌̀̑̾̌̃͠&̷̢̲͙͎͓̺̖͙̞͔̟͒&̶̢̤̰͓̫̫̺̈́̋͋́͐̀̚͝ͅ&̶̡̡̛͎̻͍̰̖̬̗̿̏͋͑̆̀̀̎̂̃̈́̍̏͠&̶̡͖̹̪̞͈͎̋̽̐̆̀͒͑̀̑̓͆́͋̂̓̈́̊͊̚&̴̡̡̫͇̩̤̹̬̹̘̥̤̭̤̫̼̐̂̿͑̊̄̃͆͊̃͘̕͜͜&̴͈̟̯̺̺̦̮̜̹̹̗͕̫̩̉̈́̆̎̂̄̍͆̌͊̇̓̎̿͒̒̐͘&̵̨̳̝̺̠͍̱͎̳̤̬͔̳͇̫̺͙̹̤̘͌̐̃̄̇̀̅͒͊̀̕͘̕͝&̴̢̧̰̫͈͓̼̟͖̘̰̳̖̰̙̳̈́̋̓̊͛́͂̐͂͋̋̎̆̈́̃̉̔́̚͝&̵̬͇̤̮͎̫͖̬̱̙͍̰̮͈̮͙̈̾̆͋͊̓̎̋̐́̇̈̑̄̂͒̅͝͠ͅͅͅ ̶̨̨̲̯̪͖̗̫̠̻͉͕̞̔̿̓̃̈͌͛͜͜ͅͅ]̸̧̧̜̞͈̥͈̱̼̪̤̝̪͚̼͚̥̖͚͔̄͑̑́̐̄̈́̌̔̓́̃̽̂͜͝

.̸̝͙͇̯̪̪̮͊͛̀̈́͑͋̈́̓̄͜ ̵̧̡͖͕̟̹͓̹͕͓̗̤̰̺̀͒̉͠ ̴̨̨̨̛͚̭̖̳̂̐̏̍̿̕ ̶̛͈͉̓͐̒̈́́̈́̉̓͂̅̎͝.̵̛̛͖̐͆́̋̅ ̴̨͇̲̞͇̙̋͆͋́͐ ̶̛͎̱͉̓̈́͆̃̅́̀́̐̑̆͠͝ ̵̢̯͛́͒̌́̆́͑̈́̚͠.̶̡̢̡̠̗͈͙̜̱͇̦͖̖͍̘̫͐̽́̏̔̿̑̿̇̍͋͋͑̋͝͝

T̷͎̥͙̖̺̳̪͖͚͖̦̓̓̂h̵̼̙͙̽̋̎̈́̕͘e̶̖̝̅̒͑̔̀ṙ̷̳é̷͈͑̒̚͠ͅ ̷͓͆́ŵ̵̙̻a̵̡̖͛s a snowman in front of her. Staring at her vaguely as the wind breezed through her hair.

V blinked.

The snowman, thankfully, did not.

She looked around, trying to gauge what had just happened. She… was in the upper hills, ready to take off and head back to the pod. And now she was here… in a tiny valley secluded from the wind. With a snowman.

…

Why was she standing here with a snowman staring at her?

“What’s your deal,” V muttered at it as she tried to figure this out. Her last memory was twelve minutes ago when she was about to take off, so her memory must have cut off (obviously, that’s why she couldn’t remember) for long enough to… build a snowman.

A snowman that was still looking at her, with an odd weight in its pebbled eyes. Almost like… accusation.

“Alright, fine, I admit your point,” V snapped defensively, “this does suck, okay!? Is that what you wanted to hear? This whole thing sucks, but there’s not much I can do about it right now, so… shut up.”

The snowman said nothing.

V interpreted this entirely the wrong way, however, a feeling like hackles raising all along her spinal column as she retorted with a shriek, “WHAT DO YOU mean wALK AWAY!!? Where did THAT come from?!!”

She couldn’t breathe, why couldn’t she breathe?!

“I can’t just- I can’t just leave, what the hell? They need me, they- they need me. And- and- and,” she was panting, her core was racing, where was this coming from, “I need them!” she explained desperately, “I- I need them, I can’t just leave them alone!”

A clump of snow dropped from the golem in front of her, causing one of its stick arms to droop in a sad little wave.

V felt a short wave of calm wash over her as she acknowledged the point, “you’re right, yeah, they… they could probably manage. But…”

She started pacing as the fire in her cored died to a flickering ember, “N would be crushed, ” she said softly, “even though he doesn’t remember, he still cares so much, I don’t think he’d be able to handle me disappearing. He’d blame himself, and J would blame him… I don’t think he’d be able to handle it. And J,” she gave a mirthless chuckle, pacing furiously as the thought evaded her.

It appeared suddenly, and she clamped onto it with terrible certainty, “you remember that time Tessa got sick? It was just a flu, or something, but J was about ready to kill herself if it got any worse.” She snorted, though the topic did not deserve it, “that girl was ready to fight the gods of sickness or die trying, I… I don’t think she could handle losing me either.”

V noticed the snowman’s expression and stopped in front of it with a glare, “she cares! Okay!? I know she does, she just… doesn’t show it a whole lot.”

The sky overhead was darkening, one of her sensors noted uneasily. V ignored it, especially as the snowman continued to stare at her with lopsided eyes.

She felt all the tension drain from her body as she slumped in on herself.

“You’re right,” she admitted, almost tearfully, “I could just… leave, right now. Right now, in this storm, they’d… they’d never… they’d never find me again.”

The thought made her feel hollow.

A void ten thousand times emptier than her hunger could ever hope to be.

She felt numb now, admitting that.

Her vision was blurred over by lemony tears, sliding silently down her visor as she collapsed roughly onto the ground, the snow beneath her steaming away gently.

She was breathing shakily, trying to restore what little stability she usually held. Trying to get her core to stop overclocking, feeling faint from how fast the oil was thrumming through her veins.

She couldn’t breathe.

A slump of snow drew her scattered attention, the pebbled grin of her snowman smiling down at her in encouragement.

She breathed in.

Let it settle, let the weight ground her more than the earth ever could, let the chill of the air mingle with the bite of the snow she sat on, let the breath warm to match her internals, let herself stop, just for now.

She breathed out.

She sat there. Next to her snowman, gazing into the distance.

It was a nice view, at least.

She could see all the way down to the city from here, down the hills and across the plain and past the houses and into the mass of fractured monoliths. The few windows that remained shone even from this distance, refracting the fading reflection of Copper’s parent into a scattered display of prismatic glare. The city was… pretty big, at least, at least as long as the mountains behind her were tall, and plenty tall near the middle anyway. Some of the buildings still smoked from earlier in the week, when the disassemblers had scoured the city with brimstone death. At least half of them stood less than half as tall as they should have, the top halves forming an urban warzone amongst the center streets, radiating from the landing pod, which was itself wreathed in a pit of smoke visible even from here.

…

“Y’know,” V said suddenly, pointing out one of the half-height skyscrapers, “I think I’m the one that knocked that one down. I smashed through one of the supports and the rest just crumpled.” She had no way of knowing if it was that one in particular, or if she was even pointing at a building at all, but her snowy friend seemed to get it, and it was worth a laugh, at least a small one.

She just sat there for a while.

The snow kept falling. Soft and gentle flakes hissing lightly when they impacted V’s chassis, prickling at her vision when they decided her face was a good target.

The wind blew overhead, growing stronger and faster as the minutes went by, yet never intruding on the tiny valley the two rested in. It was being polite tonight.

And V… was slowly calming down. Her functions were returning to normal, her mind was clearing, grateful to have dumped all this… mess, out, even if it was to an inanimate object she had no memory of making.

“I should get you a hat, maybe,” she suggested softly after another few minutes had passed.

The snowman seemed to like that idea.

“Wait.”

Realization struck like the slap of a raw fish to the face as she looked up at her construct in disgust and confusion.

“Where did I get a carrot from?”

Maybe it was in your pocket this whole time, it offered gently.

“RIGHT! OKAY, that’s enough,” V yelped as she scrambled to her feet, “I’m not actually supposed to be hearing anything, geez.”

She stalked a few steps away to give her space, then turned back to tip an imaginary hat in goodbye. Once she was far enough, she unfolded her wings to shoot upwards, now for the final time tonight. 

Carefully though, for once, to avoid adding snow-slaughter to her growing list of war crimes.

The snowman smiled as ever at her retreating form.

It would wait. It would be there should it ever be needed again.

V was panicking now.

Panicking panicking panicking.

She had lingered too long in the valley.

The storm had gotten unfathomably worse.

She was in so much trouble it was hysterical- gods she was gonna die.

Raging primal fear filled her circuits from head to peg, any room left in her body for any sort of sensation whatsoever was filled by that gods-awful screaming shriek of the wind hurling her every which way as she frantically tried to stay upright in this storm.

She was flying.

She was in the air.

She was probably gonna hit a building in thirty seconds.

She couldn’t see anything except the formless grey void stretching out to eternity before and behind her scouring existence with only the barest flickers of the full wrath of Copper’s nuclear winter.

She couldn’t feel anything beyond the screaming and shaking of the wind ripping at her plating and tearing her wings from their position and yanking her sideways and up and down and under.

She was gonna frickin die and everyone was going to hate her and they’d be lonely forever and-

Lightning struck inches from her chassis, searing heat flashing down to the ground in a single thunderous bolt, throwing V even further from any sense of stability in revenge for not just dying outright.

V was panicking. Panicking panicking panicking panicking panicking panicking-

(Time was meaningless.)

Panickingpanickingpanickingpanicking.

(She flew ever onward.)

Holy robo-christ in hell she was gonna die.

(She was sobbing? It was hard to tell over the roaring of the storm.)

She never wanted this.

(A crack of thunder in the near distance, sending V tumbling wing over wing once more, gyroscope spinning wildly for any semblance of control.)

She-

V flinched upward to avoid a sudden looming shape that had appeared with all the grace of a brick to the face. She was soaring vertically with a runway below her. She didn’t know what to do, she didn’t know what to think, she couldn’t think- it was a building! It had to be!

She dropped, slamming into the rough concrete and latching on with grateful talons.

It was a building, it was solid.

With two quick kicks at the wall in front of her she had a way in and took it without hesitation, shoved bodily inside by the howling wind until she stumbled to a stop three rooms away, wind fading behind the four walls of solid concrete.

She was shivering.

She was stumbling farther and further from the storm, farther and further into her sudden savior.

She was shaking hard enough to rattle the ice off of herself.

Every wire in her being was aching from that stress.

She couldn’t breathe gods why couldn’t she ever breathe.

V yelped as she bonked her head on a low hanging beam, somehow instantly startling her out of the insanity of the storm outside.

She was in a building, she realized. She was indoors, the walls weren’t going to come crumbling down, she was safe.

She was safe.

All the tension drained from her body in one swift instant as she collapsed in a gangly heap, uncaring of the unforgiving concrete floor she was collapsing on.

She was safe.

The relief alone was enough to send her crashing into sleep mode.

…

…

…

But only for a short while.

V’s eyes flickered open a short while later. She had only slept long enough to work off the immediate stress of flying through a literal nightmare, if she wanted anything more she would need to work for it.

She had a splitting headache too. It was always fun to find more things her creators really didn’t need to add.

She sat up with a groan, peering blindly through the pitch darkness. Her processor was still recovering from everything, slowly sorting through the files of the past day. She’d been exploring, she murdered an idiot, explored some more, trauma-dumped to a probably-magical snowman, and felt the rawest form of death imaginable (and that was coming from a literal murder machine). Good, everything was in order.

With that out of the way, she took stock of where she was hiding.

It looked like any other hallway in any generic highrise building, except completely undecorated and made of only bare walls and frozen synth-wood flooring.

But, again, it was safe. That was the important part.

… And she just realized she could see, somehow, despite having next to zero light.

Whatever.

She was tired, bonedeep exhausted, her processor was running on sparks alone, she needed sleep. And for that, she needed someplace to rest, someplace cozier than a random hallway where she could still hear the wind.

She staggered to her feet, feeling more than seeing (though she still could see) her way forward through the hall, looking for literally anything of comfort to wait out the storm.

A broom closet caught her attention. Maybe there was something inside?

…

Should’ve been called a blanket closet, really.

Y’know, considering the mass of blankets inside.

V flopped down without a second thought, returning to the gentle embrace of sleep mode within seconds.

[ *_* ]

*watching*

Nearly fifteen hours later, V woke up.

Just as bleary as the first time, feeling like a wad of cotton had been shoved into her CPU.

She rubbed the z’s from her visor with one arm and propped herself upright with the other, slowly getting upright against the tantalizing gravity of the blankets behind her.

Why there was a deliciously cozy mass of blankets and cushions in some random broom closet (she checked on the way out, it did indeed say “broom closet”) in the middle of some random building in the middle of nowhere, she would never know. And she didn’t care. It was very nice, whoever left that for her, but she needed to get back to the pod. The others were probably worried sick about her.

She wasn’t paying attention on the flight back (she didn’t even know how she got in the air, to be honest), she was far too groggy to do anything other than autopilot her way home. (Was it home now?)

The pod came into view eventually, heralded by a shriek from the ground and a distant explosion.

And… a missile? Coming… coming closer to her!

“VVEEEEE!!!” N shrieked as he slammed into her midair, throwing both of them back into a twirling embrace that missed the ground by scant inches.

“YOU’RE OKAY WE WERE SO WORRIED” he was yelling right in V’s face as soon as she was steady, frantically checking every available inch for any damage he needed to heal, “there was a storm and we hadn’t heard from you and J wouldn’t let us go out because it was too dangerous but we didn’t have any way to contact you we didn’t know if you were safe we were so WORRIED! ”

V held up her hands to ward him off weakly, nowhere near recovered from… anything, “N… I’m ok, I’mf- I’m fine, I just got caught in the storm. Had to wait it out in a broom clost.”

He held her at arm's length, studying her visor intently. V could feel herself blushing under the scrutiny, though that probably wasn’t N’s intent. “You don’t sound fine,” he said eventually, “you sound exhausted, did you get any sleep?”

She nodded doggedly in response, “whole fifteen hours, ‘n probably sm more bfore that.”

“I was going to be mad at you for disappearing like that,” J’s voice filtered into V’s audials (when did she get there?), “but if you’re this shaken up… I think I’ll just let you rest tonight.”

Another pair of hands from an invisible source grabbed V by the shoulders to help guide her into the pod as J asked her questions, “do you know why you were out so late? You should have been back an hour before the storm hit.”

“Had a memry thing,” V slurred as her steps suddenly lost all cohesion, “talked with a snowman for a while, it was great. Need to get it a hat somtime.”

“So you blacked out for a while, made yourself a snowman, and had a chat with it?” J clarified with a dry humor, chuckling when V belatedly nodded her assent. She said something else after that, probably towards N so V couldn’t see it (hear it, she meant), but V was utterly unconcerned. She must have fried something last night, she was kinda dying.

Soon enough, she was back in the pod, and settled down onto the familiar firmness of their definitely-legally-acquired bedding.

She gave a short whine when the hands left her (her eyes had long since shut down), which turned into a low rumbling purr when another body laid down behind her to keep her safe. It could have been either of them, she didn’t care, all she cared was that their beautifully warm hands were wrapping around her waist to tuck her even closer.

And for the third time in recent memory, V fell deep into a dreamless sleep within seconds.

Only one thought was left nagging at her, deep in her unconscious.

If she wasn’t able to dream.

And she knew that well.

Then that meant…

Meeting Cyn in the library… couldn’t… have been a dream.

But the thought went ignored. She was already gone.

Chapter Text

[ *_* ] *watching*

The frick do you want?

[ y_y ] *rude*

Yeah, no, I think I’m good.

Seriously, the frick do you want.

[ o_o ]

| Sys.exit(); |

???

| Reboot Initialized - Please stand by… |

| System Error: Mental Processing at 22% Capacity |

| System Error: Restorative Functions Offline Until Further Notice |

| Reboot Processing… |

The weight of consciousness hit like a brick.

A forty-ton spike-encrusted blindingly-radioactive brick of Jensonian flung at lightspeed into V’s central processors with force comparable to that of forty-two megaton super-duper-nukes (patented JJanson OutS©).

Which is to say: the first noise out of V’s mouth that morning was a sad little “ow…” as the searing pain that was crunching through her CPU rapidly downgraded to a dull gnawing ache.

Bootup processed as normal after that, albeit with far more internal wincing as every facet of V’s existence seemed to protest the wakeup protocols sweeping through her systems. Her HUD opened first, flashbanging her with a mass of violently yellow tabs and angry red warnings, all of which she was quick to shove into a nearly overflowing folder of such messages. 

It was funny how most humans thought all drones were paragons of rationality, solving all logical issues the moment they popped up. In reality, most problems went ignored until something started to shut down, much like how humans handled things.

Her senses came next, neural pathways clicking open one at a time, registering their sensations through to her slogging brain.

Her tactiles were first; the coarse sheets she lay on, her padded fingertips rubbing the static from each other, a bundle of warmth shifting subtly behind her.

Then her smell and taste together; stale oil hiding under her tongue and the ever-present scent of painted plastic.

Her sight came with a blinding influx of light, sending her hissing back under the covers, screwing her eyes shut as tightly as they could to avoid retinopathy this early in the morning.

And finally, her audials crackled open just in time to hear a groggy voice that was not her own ask with no small amount of amusement, “well good morning to you too, are you actually awake this time?”

Her brain felt like mud, but V was fairly confident in the answer she was about to give. 

It didn’t… quite come out right. Whatever she was trying to say was lost beneath a massive, static-fringed groan, painfully straining its way out of her croaky voice box.

Even V didn’t know what she’d said, but it had a nice effect on her bedmate, whoever that was, sending them into half-choked peals of laughter as they struggled to get up. The warmth they brought disappeared after a few moments, and V couldn’t help her disappointed whine as she huddled even further into the blankets.

The voice from before- which her recognition software finally identified as N- appeared overhead to remark with a teasing lilt, “you’re not getting me again V! You’ve grabbed me three times already, I think it’s time to get up.”

Ugh, fine. If she wasn’t allowed any more cuddles, then it was probably time to get up. V peaked her head out from covers to find that it was not, in fact, utterly blinding out here, her optics had been set to “inside the literal void” levels of intake for some reason.

This gave her the confidence to push herself upright, letting the covers fall off her creaking body. Everything ached, from each individual motor and servo all the way down to the oil running through her veins. How long had she been sleeping there?

She must have looked pretty ridiculous; as soon as she revealed herself she could hear N’s gentle snickering.

Where was… oh, there. Her eyes finally focused into enough resolution to spot N’s cheerful face. He was resting in the pilot’s chair, stretching out his limbs one at a time, each with a little sound of exertion and a satisfying pop of released oil. (He never tore anything off, obviously, he was cooler than that.)

The world fuzzed out for a moment, and there was a distant murmur of sound that V couldn’t truly hear. It coincided with a few blurry movements of N’s mouth, so maybe he was talking towards her. It wasn’t registering, for some reason, no matter how far forward V leaned, no matter how narrow she squinted…

Suddenly there were hands on her shoulders, pushing her back onto the bed after nearly falling off (when had that happened?). N’s voice abruptly sharped into full HD, “oh jeez, you are still asleep,” he muttered, a soft concern playing across his features.

As before, V’s response was well planned and perfectly executed: “…guhbhg…” paired like fine wine with a distorted grimace, twelve miscellaneous ticks of blush appearing at complete random across her visor, and an eye glitching out into the distance before zapping back into place.

“Alright Miss Sleepy-head, you got me,” N brushed a stray lock of hair back into place, doubling the amount of random ticks on her visor and nearly setting her on fire in the process, “if I sit next to you, will you try to wake up some more without hurting yourself?”

It took an embarrassingly long time to parse that statement, but eventually her logics returned positive and V gave a happy nod, and scooted over to make room on the bed. It almost worked too, but she went too far and N had to grab her again and yank her inward. Now pleasantly situated slumped against N’s shoulder like too-floppy cardboard, V could feel herself nodding off ag-

“Hey!” came an indignant snort and a shake, “we agreed on waking up, not using me as a pillow! You nedff..-” the audio crumpled off into static oblivion, but the message was received.

V’s only response was a low whine as she tried to burrow further into N’s side, only to be gently shooketh awake once more. She just wanted to sleep, why was N being so rude today!? Maybe she should try to voice her complaints.

“MMMM t i r e d nnNen” 

Hm, no, that probably wasn’t right, let’s try again.

“S l e e p y          t i m e! !” and whatever strings holding her up collapsed, sending her ragdolling into N’s lap like a particularly metallic flopping fish.

Her entire world was consumed by shaking laughter for a few minutes, N’s mirth resonating through her chassis to rattle her core. To her drunken mind it was one of the most beautiful sounds V had ever heard- up there with the likes of Tessa’s adorable snores and the anguished howling of Master James as she ripped his throat out through his spleen- and had she had her way she’d have dropped into sleep mode and never awoken so long as that song still sang.

Unfortunately, N was still being rude, and continued to shake her awake every time the sweet embrace of sleep mode came within reach.

If she were more cognizant perhaps she’d be concerned by all this, but again, “nno… sleeejby pleeess…” summed up the situation rather nicely.

N found it hilarious, at any rate, so clearly she was doing something right. 

This song and dance went on for what felt like an eternity, though in reality it was likely no more than fifteen minutes, and throughout it all V just could not put her finger on what was wrong. She tried putting her finger on a few other things- N’s face, the hologram emitter (it was disappointing beyond all belief when V realized she couldn’t reach that far), her toes (she almost cried when they were found to not exist. Luckily, N was willing to volunteer his), N’s face again, and N’s face- but none of it seemed to help all that much. She still couldn’t see for crap (and that was when she could even get her optics open), her memory hit a hard blockade roughly twenty minutes ago, and her processing power felt like it was in the negatives.

Oh.

Okay, maybe that was part of the problem.

No, maybe that was the problem. Weird.

“Hhhhhhhhhhhey eN,” V slurred, “doyou know what’s is wron g with me tday?”

Her audio intake was still patchy and slightly garbled, but N said something along the lines of, “well, you’ve been offline for a while, but P klmpupalsf kvu’a aopur hufaopun pz hjabhssf dyvun dpao fvb. Hyl fvb hjapun h spaasl bit crazy? Sure, I guess, btm n  gedteol hn ecudwsltyurpi.AdImsr,nwta o’eaae fyujs e oru eadJare h nytigw ol a e o ear n ’ ue o htyur wk,i o utltyu diagnostics do their thing you’ll @V$ZjCht59BOr<1@<iu)@:O'qFDi:6F_kk:BOtUgFD)e2DBNh8 time!”

…

She was going to choose to interpret that as “yes you need more sleep” because robo-christ did she want sleep. She was so tired! Why was she so tired!? Had she only been in sleep mode for the last hour?! It felt like all of thirty seconds!

Maybe… “how long was I shleep.”

“Uhh… you’ve been sleeping for 'bout thirty-six hours now.”

V blinked slowly. So slowly, in fact, it was more like she closed her eyes for five or six minutes.

In the darkness of her mind she sorted through that statement.

You have been asleep literally for thirty-six hours straight.

What could it mean?

She started humming vaguely, deep in thought. The vibrations echoed back through N’s chassis to her own, creating a constant feedback loop only interrupted by a few distant chuckles.

“Literally for,” that meant it was probably only semi-serious. Literally anything was only ever used in joking manners, so that meant V didn’t need to take the statement as fact, and more of a suggestion she could follow if she felt like it- like that one time Mistress Louisa told Cyn to burn in hell. (Classic.)

“Thirty-six,” was typically a designator, so that could be moved somewhere less important, and, “you have been asleep,” could only mean she was likely less-than-online through that time, however long it was. All of this was leading to a singular, perfectly logical conclusion. But there was one piece she needed to know first.

“N..?”

“Yeah?”

“Mm I straight?”

There was a beat of silence.

A dull shaking made itself known to V, emanating from some strange space both beneath and around her. Quite abruptly, it strengthened to the rumbling of an earthquake, but before V could think to be alarmed N erupted into laughter, throwing his head backwards in shock and surprise, almost throwing V to the floor in the process. Within moments V found herself giggling along (though she had no idea why) as N cackled into the empty space above them, laid back on the bed, chest heaving with almost hysterical amusement.

V’s chuckles faded awkwardly long before N could stop, so she took the opportunity (his moment of weakness) to snuggle up on the bed once again, taking extra care to pin N’s limbs beneath her so he would stay as her pillow for the rest of the day. This only seemed to add fuel to the fire of hilarity, but it gave her a nice place to rest, so she didn’t mind much.

The day (night?) already felt so long and exhausting, all she wanted was to rest her head a little while.

Eventually N’s wheezing subsided into breathless giggles, which in turn evened out into only the occasional spasm of humor. After long enough V was nearly lulled back into sleep mode, N answered her original question with one of his own, “wha- where did that come from? What does that- ha- have to do with anything?”

“I thought you said *you have been asleep literally for thirty-six hours straight* I didn’t know what straight had to do with it,” V answered, somehow playing a recording of J saying that exact statement despite that exact statement never before being said by J. (Where was J, anyhow?)

“That’s not what I said!” N exclaimed, the smile on his face evident even though V’s was shoved into his abdomen, “I just said you were asleep for a while, I didn’t-” (was he blushing too?) “-I didn’t mean anything else!”

“Well then what did I mean?”

Oh, right, “so how long was I asleep?”

N let out another snort, then brought a hand up to brush through her hair (she was going to melt holy mother of mechanics) before answering, “you were asleep for thirty-six hours.”

A beat.

The statement registered.

Another beat.

The implications loaded.

A third.

“WHAT!?” ow ow ow that was loud.

V launched herself upright, ignoring the blinding hot spike being driven through her processor with a wince, shoving N down in an attempt to look him in the eye and screech (whisper), “what do you mean thirty six hours!? ”

How could she have been asleep that long?!! Why was she offline at all!? Why what how AHH!?!

“What do you mean thirty six hours?!” she asked again in a low hiss.

“Hey, hey, calm down,” N attempted to soothe her, “you’re fine, right? You’re awake now, so we can try to figure everything out, alright?”

Thirty six hours. What on earth could have caused that. Why. HOW.

“C’mere you,” N mumbled, dragging her body back over to his, “it’s not healthy to freak out so much.”

V hated herself for breaking away, but something needed to be done. As sad as it may be, as heartbroken as N may look, cuddling was not going to solve this. But what would? Where did she even start?

“Do you know why I’m all broken and stuff?” she asked desperately, the words spilling out of her mouth before she could rethink them.

She should have predicted that N would be offended on her behalf and protest that she was not broken, thank you very much, which was nice and would’ve given her sparks if she were in a mindset to care about semantics, but right now she needed answers, she needed- “I need to know what’s wrong so I can figure out how to make it right.”

At least she was more coherent.

N shrugged helplessly, exclaiming, “but we don’t know what’s wrong with you! You just appeared the other day out of nowhere and conked out before we even got you inside.”

He tried again to draw V back down onto his chest, already rumbling in anticipation, and this time V didn’t have it in her to say no. She flopped back with a sigh, instantly curling up onto N’s larger frame. It was nice, like always, but still tinged with panic that had fizzled so quickly.

Two arms came up to wrap around her.

“Do you have any diagnostic tabs that could tell you anything?” he asked after her core had settled, “or maintenance issues or an update or something like that?

Her core stalled for a moment.

Then she started giggling.

She was fried today geez.

N seemed to catch onto her embarrassment and leaned up just enough to catch her eyes and ask, “have you even opened your heads-up yet?” with a teasing smirk.

“I don’t like the yellow,” was what came out between the chuckles instead of a simple no, “but yeah, I’ll check that now.”

“Alright silly,” (her core stopped ) “let me know if you need any help.”

Once her heart decided to start beating again (was it weird that she was already used to it beating instead of humming?), V took a breath, and dove into her head.

And was immediately flashbanged. Again.

“Okay, I have news to report,” V said roughly two minutes later, “I honestly can’t tell if it’s good or bad so you’ll have to judge for me.”

“Hit me with it!”

“I am currently operating at forty-eight percent mental capacity, and all of my regen functions are offline until I get more oil in my system.” That was the short way to sum up seventy or more warning tabs and error files crowding her HUD with that dreaded nuclear lemon, all of which were now in the trash folder to be deleted automatically in a few days. “I think I started tonight on only twenty-two percent, so I have gotten better, but I won’t be able to get any further so long as my nanites are hungry.”

“Oh well that’s not too bad,” N was quick to reassure, “I can just message J to bring some oil back for you.”

V blinked in surprise, “since when do we have a messaging system?” That would have been helpful to know about before she nearly died in a storm.

“Yep! We found it while we were waiting for you. You need our full serial IDs though, so it’s not super easy to use,” he explained, voice falling at the end. V knew him well enough to guess he was devastated that chatting had to take so much effort. He perked up after another moment and began to rattle off how it worked, directing V to a specific window in her static-filled HUD to input his ID; all thirty-one characters.

V did the same for him, and soon enough there was a window open in the corner of her internal view that had a few messages from N.

[ NAT-19211412978209143118141205-ZV ] to [User]

NAT… - hello hello!

NAT… - this v?

User - yep

NAT… - :) hooray!!!

She couldn’t help but giggle again at his antics. He was a goober.

User - so what makes this so hard to use?

NAT… - everytime we forgt our ids it makes us do ti again

NAT… - forget

NAT… - im not a great typer either

“That’s why both of us wrote down our full IDs… here,” N said aloud, twisting beneath V’s curled up form to grab at a notebook hanging out on the floor. Once it was in hand he flipped to a page empty apart from two lines of text. He handed V a pen (branded JCJenson, of course) and allowed her to sit up to jot her designation down.

Seeing VEX written down on paper was strange. The few memories she had from when it was in use were both really good and exceptionally bad, for all f̵͖͆i̴̮͐v̷͎͐e̸̺͗ four of them.

Those days… she didn’t mind that N and J couldn’t remember.

…

“So can I try messaging J with this?” V asked, shaking off whatever momentary dread that was.

“Yep,” N answered cheerfully, fully oblivious to the pains of the past, “but she won’t be able to answer back unless she’s got your ID, which I kinda doubt she does, so make sure she knows it’s from you… and don’t ask any questions, since she won’t be able to answer, I guess… and…” he trailed off as V started snirking under her breath.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she chuckled at his flush of embarrassment, and worked on inputting the second code. Soon enough there was an empty chat field, which she quickly filled out.

[User] to [ JIF-19211822922151815622159419-JE ]

User - hello! This is V, I got up finally and N is teaching me how to use the messaging system

User - could you bring some oil back with you? My nanites are very hungry

Nice and easy.

At least until she “forgot” their tags, which, honestly, V wasn’t sure what N meant by that. She’d forget on her own though, so it wasn’t worth fretting over.

“Soo… now what?” she asked once that was all done with.

“Uh, I don’t think there’s anything left to do,” N answered with a scratch on his chin. A tiny lightbulb icon appeared in the corner of his visor, and his thoughtful expression shifted to a smirk only he could pull off. “While we’re waiting for J…” he suggested, a lilt in his voice like he knew he was about to be smacked, “you wanna go back to hibernating?”

“Hah! No more rest for me!” V crowed, standing dramatically with her fists pumped upward, “only action and adventure from here on wouwt! ” which quickly changed to a startled yelp as she nearly toppled to the ground, saved again at the last second by a pair of hands.

“Okay, fine,” she huffed preemptively, “no action for me.”

“You wanna play checkers or something?”

Yeah, that sounded fun.

Chapter Text

“HAH! Checkmate!”

“I don’t think that’s an applicable term here V. Like, at all.”

“You’re just mad I’ve won eight games in a row,” V shot back with a triumphant smirk, already moving to reset the carpet for the next round. 

They were on game… ten? Forty-seven? Eight-thousand? Honestly she had no clue. The last hour or two or six had been nothing but unending games of checkers, over and over and over and over again.

V was currently on a winning streak (as she was gleefully lording over N, much to his theatrical dismay), which was especially cathartic considering the first twenty or so games were spent deliberating on each move for minutes on end and then somehow making the worst and most unhelpful play possible. N was pleasant and patient throughout, but now that V could think again she was using her newly regained powers for their intended purpose: pure evil. (AKA: being a nuisance to N.) (He was cute, he deserved it.) (Stop blushing dammit.)

The board was reset within seconds and N made the first move, just as he had the last seven games.

They played on a large square rug, essentially, marked with giant black squares to form a checkerboard. It was one of the many ‘leisure’ items they’d collected… whenever that was, and it seemed to be tailor-made for toddlers to play checkers and tic-tac-toe and other simple games. Their checkers were a pretty sad arrangement, however, with V’s armada being mostly flash-frozen fruits while N had a host of assorted office supplies. 

Four moves in, V made her first capture with a high whoop of victory, only to immediately slump down in disappointment as she realized her mistake and was forced to watch N slowly and smugly move a mug to jump over both a dried leaf of cabbage and a half-slice of orange, moving both over to the “retirement party” behind his home row.

“Show off,” she couldn’t help but snort, even as he was grinning and then they were both laughing and it was great.

Computers were both really good and really terrible at these sorts of strategy games (for as much strategy could be found in checkers, of course). Good, because even emotional beings like worker drones have built-in logic circuits, bad, because both of them have the same sets of logic circuits, and therefore rely on the same patterning methods.

A cry of “king me V!” cut her out of her thoughts, and with an incredibly phony groan grabbed one of the metal scraps they’d been using as crowns, and plopped it viciously onto his now omnipotent keychain.

The newly crowned king proceeded to wreak absolute havoc among V’s troops, making it twice as difficult to get a king of her own out on the board. Luckily, N never got any more. Unluckily (that was a word), V only managed to crown one.

Soon enough the game was down to two dueling monarchs- a monster truck keychain and a trio of grapes frozen together- dodging back and forth across the board, both in pursuit yet both running scared, never able to have a rest or a moment of respite.

The stakes were high (there were none).

The tension was thick (V was having the time of her life).

And the stakes were high (she already said there were none, oops).

… Then V accidentally moved hers in the exact opposite direction as intended, leading to N quickly breaking her winning streak with a huge dramatic final smash of his keychain onto her grapes, whisper cheering dramatically as he threw his arms up and waved them like he was in a coliseum, all while V giggled madly at his antics, too amused to even pretend to be disappointed.

Their giggling died down after a few minutes, and they quickly set up once again.

N won for a second time, much to V’s chagrin.

So they set up again.

This time V won.

And they set up again.

But before they could move a single piece, they were interrupted by a massive muffled THUD from outside the pod, rattling the structure as its occupants looked up expectantly; it seemed J had finally returned.

There was another thud, a dull thwack and a short yelp of something profane, then the hatch to the pod hissed open.

J stood still for a moment, backlit by the dawning light as tepid air spilled in, already warmed by the coming sun. She looked just as composed as ever, but when her gaze landed on V sitting on the floor (clearly engaged in an activity that wasn’t “in a coma”) her features softened, and a faint slip of a smile appeared on her face as she stalked in, the hatch closing behind her with a pneumatic hiss.

She held two disembodied heads, one in each hand, and each sloshing audibly with oil. Without any real preamble, J took the two steps required to cross the pod and handed one of the heads to V, stating simply, “I got your message, I made sure this thing was as full as possible,” before turning to sit in the vacant pilot’s chair.

V accepted it gratefully.

N did not- because he didn’t get any, J set the other head behind her chair. Undeterred, N made a little grabby motion with a low whine, “what! Why didn’t I get any? I need oil too you know!”

It almost made V choke, and she hadn’t even started drinking yet.

J just rolled her eyes as she shot back, “nope,” popping the ‘p,’ “you get whatever’s left once V’s nanites are at full capacity.” She looked stern, but there was a begrudgingly fond tilt to her gaze.

N folded his arms in a pout, but there was clearly a smile tugging at his lips too.

This was nice.

After a moment of finagling with the neck- and making sure she wouldn’t be laughing again any time soon- V took a few cautious sips from the head. For once, her addiction protocols seemed to be offline, so every draft remained thick and sludgy instead of world-endingly-blissful. Which was… crap, to be honest, but at least she could stop when she wanted.

The skull was drained quickly despite its horrid taste, and soon little tingles started picking up all across V’s body as her repair nanites kicked into action. There was a lot more damage than she’d initially thought, but most of it was surface level- like scratched shins and a crooked spinal column.

Once all the physical damage was dealt with, her nanites moved onto the mental.

Dear robo gods that was the single weirdest thing she’d ever felt.

Like ice-cold ants crawling across her brain, stitching everything back together with white-hot strands of molten wire.

A pair of tabs popped up suddenly - 

| Repairs Complete: 93% working capacity |

| Mentalities Repair Progress: 53% complete, finished in … 00:43:78 |

- indicating she was fully in working order, and her processor would be back to normal in less than an hour. V learned fairly quickly (through a lot of diagnostic scans) that “93% working capacity” meant “everything’s good as far as we can see,” with “we” being whatever idiots shoved her into this thing.

Hey! That was a complete thought, that was progress!

V then became aware of suppressed snorts coming from the other two as she focused back into reality to find both of them covering their smiles. Once he noticed her awareness, N was kind enough to explain, “you were focused really hard and we could see it,” with a silly little grin. The grin turned cheeky as he added, “it was pretty cute,” with a poorly hidden blush.

V promptly blue screened.

And reloaded a moment later to find them still snickering at her what the heck, but, lacking any options at the moment, silently vowed with narrowed eyes she would get her revenge.

Neither seemed to get the message. The nerve of some people.

Eventually they calmed down (seriously, why did it take so long) and J was quick to take the reins.

“So,” she started, leaning forward to look V in the eye, “are you feeling better now?”

“Yep!” V was very pleased to report.

“Great!” J straightened to hand the other head to N, who emptied it immediately with an uncomfortable look of bliss appearing on his screen. Once that was done with, J took both empty skulls and tossed them against the wall, then kicked one peg over the other to lean forward with a suddenly severe expression marring her face, “now would you mind explaining why exactly were you offline for more than fifty hours total?”

“Yes, I would- wait fifty?!” her answer was cut off by a short shriek of surprise as she rounded on N, “what do you mean fifty! You said it wasn’t even forty!”

J rolled her eyes at the dramatics, but took pity on N for once and answered in his stead, “when you got back you said you’d already been asleep for at least fifteen hours. Add that to the thirty-six you just woke up from…” trailing off to make sure V got the point.

“That would be about fifty total, okay, I get it,” she concluded. Okay, so, that wasn’t too bad, at least. V shook her head whatever, then continued with what she meant to say, “in that case, yes! I would love to explain why,” with one finger held up like she knew what she was talking about, only to drop it in falter, “except I have no idea.”

She added “sorry” in a small voice when a hand came up to pinch at J’s face. 

There were a few long, awkward minutes of silence after that, neither N nor V daring to break their leader’s concentration. (Not that they knew what she was concentrating on, but whatever.)

It was long enough to make V’s casing itch with the disappointment she was sure was coming.

…

N silently moved one of his checkers.

V slid one of hers a space in return.

“Stop that,” came the flat order before they could get any further.

…

N made another move, prompting a sharp inhalation from their boss as she brought up both hands to grasp at her hair. She pulled for a long moment, then released it and all the tension in her body along with the exhale, looking up to take in the sad menagerie of checker-replacements they used. With something that almost resembled a grimace, she asked, “… do we have any three player games?”

Both of them lit up at her words, both scrambling to set up the continuation of Game Night. N went to rummage through the unholy mess of boxes behind him while V cleaned up checkers by rolling the carpet (pieces still inside) and tossing it aside. N let out a small cry of success as he found the one game all three of them knew J couldn’t say no to: JCJensonopoly, 557th Anniversary Edition.

The game was set up quickly; V organized pieces while J counted cash and N configured the board. The anniversary edition was equipped with little shiny tabs (that tickled a very strange portion of V’s brain) that gave the illusion of little people walking back and forth across the board when looked at a certain way, even in the low light of the pod’s interior.

Soon, they were ready. N was the dog, J was the battleship, and V was the thimble.

The game started off calm, as it typically did, with the only source of outrage being V’s stubborn acquisition of every property she landed on. (She had insider knowledge, she knew how the other two played, she knew this was her best bet.)

By the fifth round of the board, nearly half of the properties were seeing development.

By the tenth, the dog and the thimble were forced into an unlikely alliance against the tyranny of the battleship, pooling their resources in a desperate attempt to stave off financial ruin.

J won about half an hour later. It wasn’t even a contest to be honest, all it took was one unlucky landing on a hyper-industrialized Boardwalk (In Spaaaaacee™) and all the paper money in the world couldn’t save them.

It was ridiculously fun. So much fun seeing her friends light up in ways they usually couldn’t, fun watching J attempt to remain cordial while throttling them, fun brushing her hand against N’s far more often than strictly necessary as they worked to stave off their inevitable desolation. (Fun watching his screen light in a golden blush that mirrored her own.)

Eventually the groaning and moaning of the losers faded, and the triumphant crows of the victor dissipated after another minute of rubbing it in.

Just as the game was all packed away, almost as if on cue, another tab popped into view.

| Mentalities Restoration Complete - System Flush in progress … |

Finally heralding an end to the vague disconnect V had been feeling throughout the day.

…

That meant she had to start explaining. Dang it.

As if in answer to her unasked question, N caught her attention and asked with a puppy-like tilt of his head, “you all good now?” And when he got a resolute nod in response, he scooted forward eagerly to exclaim, “great! Can you tell us about the snowman? I’ve been dying to know what you meant by that.”

“I’d like to know all of what happened, if you don’t mind,” J added from the pilot chair where she sat once again.

V just chuckled in response, and settled in for at least a few minutes of storytelling. J’s request was an easy one to fulfill, so that’s where she started, the cracks in her memory filling in as she spoke, “the night started like normal, I was running around collecting map data like you told me to. I went through the outer city, the empty bits beyond that, and into the foothills.”

She paused as another thought struck her, “I don’t think any of that data actually survived, sorry.”

J gave an exasperated sigh, but waved her on nonetheless.

“I think after that I was getting really annoyed because the foothills sucked, okay?” V continued, expelling some of the spite that had built up while she was out there, “they were all gross and scratchy and rocky and I hated it, and I was finally ready to give up and come back when suddenly I was somewhere else and there was a snowman in front of me.”

That was the best way she could really articulate the memory gaps, even if it was sudden enough to make N snort in surprise. She was, and then she was, but somewhere else and feeling vaguely uncertain.

…

On another note, did she really need to go in depth with what happened there? Did she really need to explain her total mental meltdown at the hands of her snowy construct? 

No, no, that was between her, the snowman, and whatever other idiots she needed to hunt down and eviscerate. 

She could… abbreviate? Yeah, that would work. Keep it simple…

“Uh… I accidentally turned the snowman into a therapist and realized my abandonment issues got like a thousand times worse after being forgotten by you guys but also I realized there isn’t anything I can do about it so I should just keep moving forward.”

Nailed it.

…

Ignoring their baffled looks of pain and shock, V continued past the synthesized lump in her throat like nothing out of the ordinary happened, “a-anyway, I let time get away from me, and-”

“No no no no,” J interrupted incredulously, waving her arms like she was yelling at a taxi to halt dammit, “we are not going to just gloss over that like it’s not important!”

“Yeah!” N chimed in with his own concerned gaze, “we care about you you know? We’re…” he turned soft, almost pleading, “we don’t want you to feel like that, like we’re going to leave you.”

A little block of ice in V’s chest melted. She hadn’t even known it was there, but hearing their words she felt… lighter. Whatever fears she was feeling were completely unfounded, she knew that perfectly well, but it was still such a relief to hear it directly.

So much so she didn’t know what to say, but she tried to get her gratitude across anyway, “thank you, that means a lot to me.”

N lit up like the ray of sun he was, “no problem! We’ll always be here for you, I gair-en-tee it!”

She smiled brightly in return, studiously ignoring the snickers coming from J. 

(And the faint dread welling inside her that she hadn’t felt since her first awakening. Why did those words make her so scared? Like… like she knew something without knowing it. What? What did she know?)

… Where was she?

Oh, right.

V cleared her throat to get that little blockage of emotion out, and continued with her story as if nothing had happened (while fully acknowledging what did happen), “um… but, yeah, I kinda lost track of time when I was…” a breathless laugh, “trying to calm down there. And then by the time I realized I should get going, the storm was already a nightmare, so-”

“HAH!” only to be cut off by a caustic bark of disbelief coming from J, interrupting her speech yet again. (Gods why was the dread back?) There was a venomous glint in her eyes as J leaned forward just enough to ask so slowly it sent shivers down V’s spine, “you didn’t try flying through that storm, right?”

Why… why did she look so sharp as she asked that? Like, like she knew the answer, didn’t want to believe it and thus requested confirmation, only to wait patiently to have all her expectations shattered.

She was scared to respond (why was she so scared?!), yet she did with a timid voice, “I- yeah, I think so, I had to get off the mountain somehow and I didn’t think it would be that bad, but-”

“Not that bad!?” came the shrill shriek of a response as J’s eye-lights flashed open wide, glaring with sickly light as her shoulders heaved as if suppressing manic laughter.

“Not that bad,” she repeated, deadly calm despite the growing unease emanating from her.

“Uhh… J..?” N tried, only to be silenced with a blazing glare.

J was chuckling now oh gods this was bad.

“You are just- hilarious, sometimes, y’know?” 

Holy robo-christ in hell this was not good.

V blinked and suddenly she was against the wall, anything to get away from J’s wheezing figure.

That was not her friend in front of her.

“You’re telling me,” J sneered, standing in a jerk to stalk over to V’s huddled form, shoving N out of the way to fall onto their stash of games with a crash, leaning down into V’s space with hell itself seething in her eyes, “you thought flying through a storm like that was a good idea!?” screeching the words into V’s processor like the screaming winds of the gale in question.

Two hands clamped down onto her shoulders before V could even think to react, shoving her downward against the wall with a metallic scrape.

The world seemed to slow, fuzz, fold into itself around her.

Staring into wide, unblinking hollowed ovals lined with manic stress, piercing into her mechanical soul.

She couldn’t speak.

She was trembling. 

J was trembling, snarling.

V was gazing into the depths of a blazing void that hadn’t been there instants before.

And the void was glaring back with a furious flame of spitting hatred she couldn’t begin to comprehend.

Apparently it found what it was searching for in her fearing face, apparently it detected the weakness it could smell, apparently it unearthed the farce of her own sanity and found it lacking.

“You flew through a Category Three Micro-Hurricane,” the beast that was J breathed, her fury searing across the miniscule space between them.

V was burning up, boiling where J’s clenched hands clamped down.

“No known being living or unliving could have survived that,” her head tilted, the illusion of a curious puppy shattered by the demented glare in her optics, the grinning spite of her snarl.

She was going to die here, wasn’t she.

“Yet here you are, completely unharmed except for the fact that you’re already broken,” she hissed, dripping with static malice.

Those words stung more than anything else, somehow.

“And you were just ‘havin a grand old time,’ huh?”

“no NO no- I-” V stuttered, finally, stammered against the raging tide, cutting off against the sharp inhalation of pure brimstone.

J did not.

J did not falter in the slightest.

“You have been nothing but a liability since day one,” J spat, pain and fury and disgust and utter contempt flaring around her.

She was still nothing more than that frail maid from the manor.

“And now you have willingly caused harm to yourself in an attempt to become worthless, meaningless,” forcing V even further from the fire yet never allowing her so much as another picometer.

And J- whatever was left of her- knew that perfectly well.

Yet J continued, leaning in closer still for the kill they both knew was coming and both knew could not be stopped.

“You were already worthless.”

So factual, so sure of itself.

Cracking V’s core in two.

“You never meant anything.”

That was it then.

There was no point in pretending otherwise.

I guess it was nice to know, after all this time.

But J wasn’t done, hadn’t been done, hadn’t even paused for breath while V came to terms with her ending.

The tsunami never stopped, its destiny could not go unfulfilled, with razor-keen claws at her throat, with sickening hatred and blistering despair, with one, final, breath,

“You don’t deser-” only to cut off with a wet slash and a hollow thud, oil spattering onto V’s unseeing eyes and optics.

She… what? What didn’t she deserve?

This life? Their friendship?

…

But no answer came.

…

Her core was howling, raging faster and harder than even the storm had evoked.

Oil and blood and tears were flooding and screaming and drowning through her veins.

Audials and visuals and tactiles and haptics sending reams upon reams of reports, none of which could hope to be registered.

There were a few steaming hisses as dents and dings repaired themselves along her casing.

There was a distinct lack of searing pain coming from any portion of her body.

This wasn’t right.

“What’re you doing J”

Were those words her own?

“Why… just say it”

“No, no, V, no,” came as a whimper instead of the snarl she was expecting.

“Please, V, please come back, please,” as the haptic sense of hands weakly gripping her own filtered through her screaming systems.

The hands were clamoring across her bare chassis (V please) with featherlight touches (she won't hurt you I promise) that somehow caused a warm relief (please) instead of the expected agony. They seemed to be ascertaining themselves of her (I promise, I won't let her), seeking fractures beyond those to her already tattered heart.

“V,”

He sounded so heartbroken.

She should do something.

Something to help, somehow.

“…N?”

“Yeah! Yeah, yes it’s me, I’m here I’m,” a horribly shaky breath, “I’m here I promise, please just-” why did he sound like he was about to start crying? “Please just come back, I know you dissociate when you’re stressed but I need you back, I can’t do anything to help if you aren’t here, please, V, please.”

Slowly.

Oh so slowly.

Her vision returned.

It became static, became fuzz, became clear.

Her head was a horde of hornets, but she could see, she could begin to comprehend.

N was on his knees in front of her, eye-lights closed beneath an absolute deluge of golden tears streaming downward. He was panting slightly, lips quivering, frame trembling beneath his overcoat, sniffling and snotty and looking somehow worse than V felt.

That wasn’t right.

Her little ball of sunshine.

She lifted a hand from where it lay cast against the wall, reached out slowly and shakily to cup his face gently.

He startled, nearly jumping out of her grasp, but immediately pressed into her embrace with a small whine. 

V felt tears pricking at her own eyes, finally, as he soaked in the affection and reassurance.

He stiffened suddenly, a thought hitting him, and in one swift movement he shoved off the proffered hand to instead tug V into a crushing embrace as stuttering purrs began ripping through his body.

Still blankly, but not quite as unfeeling, V moved her hands to return the squeeze, pressing his vibrating body against her own as tightly as she could, squeezing the life out of him and having the life squished out of her as well.

Her stress was fading, leaving her hollowed and empty. And tired, unfathomably tired.

But he was still shaking, trembling in lingering response to whatever had happened that she hadn’t seen.

Softly, gently, she brought one hand up to comb through his hair, eliciting a whimper from the beautiful boy in her arms.

Maybe he was supposed to be comforting her, but he needed it just as much, if not more.

He gave so much, he needed some in return. It wasn’t fair otherwise.

“I love you,” she breathed without thinking.

He stiffened, went still.

Then he was crying, clutching her even closer as he whispered back with words that were so heavy and hopeful it tore again her soul asunder, “I love you too.”

She pulled her love, her life, her everything, into her lap to grasp him yet tighter still.

“It’s going to be okay,” she needed to say.

“I know, I- hic- I know, we’ll,” he rambled on in response, “we’re gonna make it, no matter how hard it gets I won’t leave I promise, I’m not leaving, I-”

He trailed off, breathless, still sobbing, still weighted with the world, but lighter for it.

There was a burning in V’s core that subsided.

A crack in it that healed.

“Thank you,” she whispered, holding him tight.

Thank you.

How long they sat there,

She did not know.

Clutching each other close,

Drawing comfort from their warmth and whispers.

Consciousness was fleeting,

They drifted off and back again, together, more times than she could count.

All she wanted was rest… but, that would have to wait…

There came a low, steaming hiss from beyond their sight.

N dropped from her grasp instantly with a snarl already written on his lips as he wheeled towards the form flung in the corner, hackles raised as his purr turned abruptly into a low growl.

J’s body was on the floor, thrown against the wall opposite from them. Her head was half a yard farther.

A stream of silver was trickling from her empty neck, defying gravity to stretch and spread into a wireframed mannequin of a head.

The wireframe became a solid, featureless dome.

The dome grew features and gained colors, became smooth in places and roughed in others.

Hair grew next, an amorphous blob defining into silvery strands, already pigtailed with faux-fabric bows.

The visor was last. Liquid midnight stretching across the blank slate into a depthless pool.

Reams upon reams of text flit across the suddenly lit surface, a loading bar slowly ticking towards completion.

N was crouched, his hands as claws, a burning X across his face.

V was still sitting there, still numb.

J was waking, slowly, carefully.

She pushed herself upright, plain yellow eyes blown pixel-thin in horror as she took in her position and N’s protective stance.

Her hands crept up to grasp tightly at her face, pushing in on herself enough to crack the seams of her screen.

Now she was the one breathing heavily, gasping and panting for intake as a series of tabs flew across her visor too fast to read, memories most likely, panting and gasping harder and harder until a dam broke and she said simply in the smallest voice V had ever heard her use,

“I’m sorry”

She was crying now.

“I’m so sorry”

Sobbing, heaving with breath and effort.

“I’m so sorry”

Flinching backwards further and farther from their hostile stares.

“I am so sorry”

Grasping at herself as if to tear the sin and skin from her own form.

“I’m so sorry

I don’t-

I don’t know-

I don’t know what that was-

I’m sorry

I’m sorry

I’m sorry

I- I don’t-

I didn’t-

I’m sorry

I’m sorry,"

Slowly fading out. Slowly falling into herself.

…

It didn’t feel good, that was for sure.

It didn’t feel like any sort of victory against one who had been so hateful and disgusted what felt like moments ago.

It… hurt, if anything. Seeing her reduced to this.

…

But V was tired.

She didn’t want to deal with this.

“J.”

So she didn’t.

J cut off the instant the words left V’s voice box, jerking into a horrified waiting silence, ready for the axe-fall that was sure to come.

That too hurt V’s heart to see, but she was already viewing through the long end of a tunnel.

So,

“Goodnight, J.”

And consciousness abandoned her.

Chapter Text

[ JIF-19211822922151815622159419-JE ] to [User]

4 unread messages…

…

The notification had been taunting her for three days.

Sitting undismissed in the upper corners of her vision, positioned neatly beneath her ever-climbing kill count.

…

She didn’t… she didn’t want to hear it, alright?

She didn’t care that J nearly tore herself apart in fear and shame the instant she woke up.

She didn’t care that N said she’d cried herself into a forced shutdown a full quarter-hour after V conked out (again).

She didn’t care that she’d woken up in N’s arms, entirely unable to appreciate his comforting warmth thanks to the overwhelming regret searing through her soul, only to jerk upright and find the pod spotless and barren with all signs of the previous night’s conflict vanished and no trace of J anywhere.

She didn’t care that neither of them had seen hide nor hair of their boss in over a week, bordering on two tomorrow. (Two. Full. Weeks.)

She didn’t want to deal with it! It wasn’t her fault, she- V didn’t-

She didn’t want to! V couldn’t face that face again, that hurt that still stung if she thought too hard, that horrid contrast between snarling beast and sobbing friend, she didn’t, couldn’t… deal, she didn’t…

Ugh.

Oh who was she kidding.

This was tearing her apart. Every waking moment was tinged with the nagging guilt that this was somehow V’s fault, that if only she’d stayed conscious for another five seconds to say “hey, we’ll talk about this in a bit, I still care about you” their team wouldn’t be missing a member.

She wanted nothing more in the world right now than to rip open those messages to find J and yank her into the tightest hug imaginable while apologizing for every conceivable wrongdoing within living memory.

But she was scared. So unbelievably scared it was absurd. What if she made it worse somehow? What if J was just gone and those messages were the last thing she had to hold onto?

She…

She wouldn’t be able to handle that.

…

Great, now she was crying again.

She was perched on a building like a demented pigeon, crying like her favorite loaf of stale bread had been stolen.

…

This whole thing was a mess.

V was stuck in limbo, unwilling to take the first step but still finding ways to justify her inaction. She was killing herself over what couldn’t have possibly been her fault, yet making no effort whatsoever to find out if it was and apologize for whatever it was.

If given a push she would do so in a heartbeat.

But right now… nothing.

…

Hey look, there were some workers down there. Maybe that’d help. Stress relief, or whatever.

V stood slowly, unfolding her wings from the inactive position they’d been cramping in as she stared at the ‘unread’ marker for the last half-hour or so. Three of her five secondaries snapped to the workers’ positions while the other two continued searching the skies for any sight of her lost boss. They found none, however (obviously), so with nothing more than a low groan V stepped lightly from the building’s edge to plummet like a stone.

Freefalling was an interesting sensation; terror inducing yet utterly unremarkable. It probably helped to have wings.

A few yards before she crashed into a smear upon the concrete, V’s wings flared outward as her gravitic engines roared to life, turning the freefall into a violent swoop forward to send her hurtling towards the trio of workers.

Just before impact, V shifted to be flying forward feet first, sending one pegleg piercing through the first unfortunate worker’s core. It ragdolled to the floor with a FATAL ERROR overtaking its screen before V even hit the ground.

The second had just enough time to open its mouth to scream, only to lose that ability before the sound could come out. It also lost half its face, but that wasn’t quite as relevant. Very distantly, V was wondering if she was just super strong or they were just super weak. She knew the first was true (she still had a problem with losing limbs), but was it enough to overwrite the second being false? Whatever.

Anyway, the last one… normally it’d they’d be dead already, but for some reason they were still running away. Odd.

What was also odd was the cold creeping through V’s limbs, dragging each down until her outstretched claws and bladed wings were scraping against the rough cobbled street, sending a shower of sparks spraying with every step.

The worker glanced back, maybe thirty paces away, and immediately tripped.

They didn’t even try to get back up, they kept staring at V’s approach while uselessly scrabbling against the rocky earth, trying to claw themselves forward without taking their eyes off of the slowly nearing murder machine.

Pathetic. (V blinked and suddenly she was against the wall, anything to get away from J’s wheezing figure.)

Seriously, they were just wriggling in place. (The world seemed to slow, fuzz, fold into itself around her.)

Unblinking, V brought one hand up to reach forward and grasp the worker by the throat, effortlessly drawing it up to match her height.

Hollowed, stress-lined eyes (unblinking hollowed ovals lined with manic stress) met cold, uncaring optics (piercing into her mechanical soul) as the worker struggled in her grasp, eyes never leaving V’s.

She tilted her head, (the illusion of a curious puppy shattered by the demented glare in her optics, the grinning spite of her snarl) something resembling curiosity burning in her gaze.

The worker only struggled harder, thrashing wildly, sometimes even landing a glancing blow against V’s armored chassis. It did nothing, of course. Except make her feel worse.

Fine.

V dropped the scary gaze with a sigh, loosening her grasp enough the worker wasn’t suffocating.

“What am I going to do?” she asked softly, noting the sudden shift from horror to confusion.

“…Let me go..?” they tried (why did they bother?) only for V to crush its head one-handed, splattering its oil (oil spattering) all over her face (unseeing eyes and optics) as she recoiled (sat there unfeeling) with a grimace.

…

Well that sucked.

…

All she needed was a push, alright!? Someone or something to say “just talk to her idiot!” and she’d do so without another thought.

…

Instead she was standing here with a crushed skull in her still-raised hand, three bodies scattered across the ground at her feet.

Blech.

V flicked the remains of that unfortunate worker from her hand and regarded her work for the night. They hadn’t been doing much hunting since J vanished, but they still needed oil to live, and N seemed to think maintaining a schedule of sorts would help the situation (he seemed to forget the fact that V still (mostly) hated this).

Anway, she was all ready to head back to the pod- back to the boy she’d accidentally said ‘I love you’ to the other night and he said it back and gods what was she supposed to do with that information was it even romantic or was it a fact of life or were they just trying to comfort each other how was she supposed to know she didn’t even know how she meant it let alone how he meant it ok stop stop stop shut up we’re done with that goodbye- shook her head to dispel that recurring rabbit hole.

Maybe she could stay out a few minutes longer. Avoid that simmering awkwardness.

*ping*

…

[ JIF-19211822922151815622159419-JE ] to [User]

5 unread messages…

…

Well that was convenient.

Was it? Ugh.

Fine. Whatever.

Gods this was a mess. She hated this feeling so much.

Finally, three days after the fact, V opened her messages.

[ JIF-19211822922151815622159419-JE ] to [User]

=========== 3 Days Ago ===========

JIF… - Hello, V. I would like to formally apologize for the events that took place earlier this week. I cannot begin to describe how disgusted and appalled I am with myself in regards to my behavior, and the distress I caused you was easily the lowest I have ever felt in my life.

Why did she already feel cold?

JIF… - I understand that this is not a transaction and your forgiveness is not something to be bartered for, and even if it were please be assured I would not want to in any way shape or form cheapen what has occurred through some trivial token.

JIF… - However, I have been working on a gift that I would like to extend to you in hopes of bridging the gap I have caused. I do not expect forgiveness. I do not expect a return to our previous camaraderie. All I ask is for the chance to apologize in person. After that, I will respect whatever wishes you may bring, whether that means terms of service or orders of restraint or anything else I may give.

Distantly, V noted her breath start to pick up.

J was falling back to business speak. She was saying she had a gift to make up for what happened but also didn’t expect or even want that to magically make things go back to normal, and if V came to talk she would give the gift and then she’d leave if V wanted. Orders of restraint, that meant never see you again oh gods no please- 

She didn’t want J to leave.

JIF… - I will hold onto your Serial ID so I can respond to you if you choose to accept or decline. Once again, I am truly sorry, and I wish for nothing more than the chance to make amends in any way I can. Respectfully, Serial Designation J.

…

‘Respectfully’

Not ‘your friend’

Not ‘with love’

Not anything else, just…

Respectfully.

What was she supposed to do?

…

There was one more, sent only a minute ago.

=========== Now ===========

JIF… - I have finished my preparations for the gift I would like to extend to you and I was wondering if it would be possible to schedule a short meeting sometime tonight or tomorrow night. Please RSVP back with a desirable timeframe and I will give you the location details. If you wish to bring N with you to feel safer, please feel free to do so. I hope to see you one last time tonight, respectfully, Serial Designation J.

V felt her heart drop.

I hope to see you one last time tonight.

Bring N to feel safer.

Respectfully.

Oh no.

She was in the air before she had time to think.

Autopiloting up to land at the peak of a more intact skyscraper, scrambling in her mind to come up with something anything to say back.

“j where are you ill be right there” no.

“J tell me where you are please I promise I” what was she promising? What did she have to give as insurance?

Please just stop crying and think.

She had to be appropriately formal, couldn’t give away too much (what was there to give away? She was desperate), she needed to think this out and respond carefully.

Okay.

Calm down.

A deep breath in and out and V was back to herself. She was on a building just like before, perched to watch over a huge stretch of the city. She had time, J asked for either tonight or tomorrow. The world wasn’t burning down just yet, J wasn’t gone just yet, she could figure this out.

Just compose a message.

Start with a greeting, suitable for the workplace but not overly formal to show there were still ties of familiarity, “Hi J, I got your message.” Sure.

Say yes, yes one-hundred percent, yes just please- no, stop, it needs to be controlled, collected, just, “I would like to see this gift and speak with you in person.” Nice and simple, gave no sense of urgency and shouldn’t display her desperation.

Date and time, fine, make it as soon as possible but not right this second, “I have nothing on my schedule so we can meet whenever you are available.”

No that wasn’t desperate enough, uhm, add, “I would prefer sooner over later though,” to the end or something.

Sign off, because that’s what J did both times, “hope to see you soon, V.” 

Good Enough.

One last glance over before V pulled up the messaging tab as fast as her processor would allow.

It was loading.

Seriously!?

Oh, wait, didn’t she need J’s ID? Would she have to go get that, or could she use what was delivered?

Apparently not, it loaded just fine.

[User] to [ JIF-19211822922151815622159419-JE ]

User - Hi J, I got your message. I would be interested in seeing this gift and speaking with you in person. I have nothing scheduled so we can meet whenever you are available, just let me know and I will be there shortly. I hope to see you soon, V.

Okay, not exactly what she plotted out, but this felt a little better and it was already sent anyway.

…

Should she have waited longer to send it? Robo-christ what was wrong with her.

Now it was just waiting, pacing nervously across the empty rooftop while gnawing on a finger just because. Should she get N? Did she need him to feel safe? Did he need the same kind of closure (for lack of better word) she did?

*ping*

Well, that was quick.

The message directed V to a highrise on the very edge of town, situated precariously only a half-mile away from a massive sinkhole that for no discernable reason made V nauseous. The building itself was nearly identical to all the others in the city- climbing concrete and broken glass, a few licks of peeling cyan paint being all that broke up the monotony- apart from one singular detail. If this was where J had been hiding all week, it really wasn’t a surprise they hadn’t been able to find her.

The one detail that made this building stand out- the one identifier that let V know she was in the right place- was the smaller structure plopped awkwardly on its roof. A simple construction made entirely of fogged glass, it almost looked similar to the greenhouse back at the manor. Except instead of being bursting with verdant life, it was basically just a small glass house.

V took a few minutes to stare from another roof. Why did J want her here specifically? There were no signs of life in sight, from the building in question or otherwise. What did she have to give that couldn’t be gifted in person?

There was only one way to get answers, and it was the obvious one.

…

Fine, whatever, no time like the present, and all that.

Her wings unfurled and she took a short glide down to the building’s roof, clacking lightly onto the snow-covered surface. The roof was crowded with the typical roof things- vents and a/c units and whatever else- but there was a clear pathway dug to the entrance of the house.

There was a heavy tarp acting as the doorway, and V pushed it aside without another thought.

It was dark.

Pitch-black to regular drones but pleasantly dim to those with a headband of fancy eyeballs, the interior was a single large room, and in all honesty it just looked like an empty warehouse. There was one portion in the back that was sectioned off with more heavy tarps and the rest looked like a bunch of boxes scattered about randomly.

Some shelves lining the back wall, a few dull shapes resembling chairs, a lamp? A giant beanbag? Okay, maybe she’d overstated her night vision. This was just a dark room full of typical warehouse shapes that were somehow managing to trick her vision centers. Was it even where she was supposed to be?

… It did feel vaguely familiar though, weird as that felt.

…

Hm.

Weird, was all V really thought in response, and turned to leave. 

Then a wave of gentle light washed over her from behind, and she whirled around with a snarl already written on her lips (never know when you might need it), only to stop, and gaze in awe.

A long string of fairy lights ran around the perimeter of the room, previously lying hidden in the gloom. Why they had suddenly turned on, she had no idea. But they had, and now the room was alight with a delicate glimmering glow, casting a milky white light to illuminate the previously hidden contents.

The most immediate example was the shape that had looked like a mound of something soft, now revealed to be a massive floral pink beanbag, sat near the center and sagging in a way that made V want to curl up like a cat and never leave.

The boxes were in fact small tables, organized haphazardly and covered in flowery cloths, all holding a wide assortment of random items: books and dvd cases, magazines and coloring pads, unlit table lamps and small fake plants, cassettes (how!?) and vinyls and their accompanying players.

The shelves near the back were similarly crowded with a mess of colorful rectangles, stood on end next to each other or merely stacked in place, books and movie cases visible in the low light.

What had looked like chairs and a lamp were actually chairs and a lamp, a pair of cushy rocking chairs lovingly placed in the shelf-lined corner atop a warm woollen rug with the reading lamp perfectly positioned between them.

It looked so cozy. Undeniably so. Warm and familiar in a way that brought such a lightness to V’s core.

Was this the gift? Did J make all this? For her?

V took a step further inside, then another and another until the first table sat right at her feet.

There were only three items on this one, laid prominently like they were the first intended to see, the main attraction of the building as a whole; two books and a cassette.

She leaned down to grab them, thumbing across their covers to see the titles.

The Hobbit.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The Dancefloor at the End of the Universe.

Her favorites. Her absolute favorites.

Two reprints of the originals written over a thousand years ago, and a tape (a digital one, thankfully) recorded from internet archives made only half a century later.

Was all of this for her?

A few more steps let her glance around in awe at the rest of the tables, wondering at their contents and how they came to be in this place.

The second table had all three editions of Life on Copper-9, organized around The Stafford Gambit and a magazine called Plants of the Planet Earth, Year 2500.

The third was stacked with small boxes of digital tapes, names like Foxlore and The Tale of a Cruel World and Poodle Hat and Across the 1st and 2nd Dimensions and Volume Alpha all sticking out on the first glance alone.

The fourth held only a pair of empty JCJenson mugs, sitting forlornly on a log coaster.

The fifth (there were so many tables) had a mass of coloring materials, papers and pens and crayons and markers.

Then she was in the back running her hands along the shelves, chock full of names and titles she recognized, remembered fondly, had never heard before, couldn’t wait to explore, and if nothing else, just looked and sounded interesting.

The fairy lights were glimmering lightly overhead as V wandered through this miniature wonderland.

It was such a silly thing, but this place truly felt like home.

While the manor’s library had sucked beyond all belief, there were still places of comfort to be found if you knew where to look. Here, soft and squishy chairs, a seemingly unending range of materials to be explored, it all felt like home.

The best of home, removed from the worst.

“Do you-”

“OH ROBO-CHRIST J!” V shrieked at the sudden voice behind her, whirling to find J standing sheepishly in the doorway, “you can’t just sneak up on me like that!”

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologized, a strained smile on her face, “the generator was acting up again, I didn’t…” she faltered. The smile, weak as it was, dropped as her mouth pressed into a hardset line. J took a slight step back, coughed once, and restarted with a painfully forced voice, “I apologize for my entrance, I was occupied elsewhere and was not here to welcome you. I didn't mean to scare you like that.”

The levity V had been feeling dropped. She tried an encouraging smile, but it might have come off just as forced as J’s attitude. “No, no that was my fault,” she denied with artificial lightness, “I shouldn’t have barged in without seeing you first.” She didn’t want this to be formal, she didn’t want this to be an exchange, but as J nodded stiffly and walked forward into the room her hopes weren’t rising very well.

J’s eyes flickered around constantly as she crossed the dark synth-wood floor, visibly noting what had been touched and what hadn’t, as well as seeing the conspicuous space at V’s side, or, N’s lack of presence. Instead of feeling emboldened by this- whether it be seen as a show of trust or a lack of care- she seemed to deflate slightly upon realizing. Like she wanted him to be there (for V’s sake).

Up close, V couldn’t suppress a wince. Not at J’s proximity, but at how terrible she looked. Frizzing eye-lights- one of which had two stress lines while the other only had one- scraggly hair beginning to unravel from her ponytails, rumpled clothes and an uneven gait as she clacked across the floor.

Had J not been taking care of herself all this time?

She couldn’t have been that messed up over what happened… right?

Unaware of (or maybe just not caring for) V’s concerns, J gave another attempt at a smile before it again faded into a grimace, then cleared her throat and began to explain, “as I said, this is not meant to be a… ‘get out of jail free,’ card, but I hoped this space would help ease the… discomfort, I have caused.”

She paused, tensing like she was about to make a confession, but faltered before she could, and moved on after another second.

Wandering over to a mess of boxes in one corner V somehow hadn’t noticed yet, she rummaged around for a moment before taking out three smaller boxes. One she showed to V- Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail, easily one of their group’s favorites- before she set it on the first table along with the other two; the full box sets for V’s favorite books.

“When I was thinking of what I could do to… start, to, make up for what happened, I remembered how you’ve told us you like reading, and miss being able to do so,” J continued with her narration, grabbing a few more items as she spoke and placing them on the shelves, “I know we found a few books a while ago, but you never seemed satisfied with them, or with the overall lack of entertainment in the pod.”

She stopped to regard V, who was simply staring in acknowledgement. Took a deep breath, let it out, and moved on, “with that in mind, I spent several days searching through the city for materials; reading, watching, and some others besides.” Her expression turned pensive, her uneven eyes scrunching. “Strangely, as I went exploring, I began to get an odd sense of what you would and wouldn’t like, despite not knowing that explicitly,” as she reached over to tap the items on the front table; V’s favorites.

V took another long look around the room with this knowledge in mind. Her favorite books, movies, and music. Even the decor seemed aimed in her direction, now that she knew to look for it. It was like J remembered… without remembering.

“So you made all this for me?” she asked in a small voice.

“I, yeah… of course. What else would it be for?”

She sounded so legitimately confused, like she couldn’t fathom having or even needing any other reason at all. V didn’t know what to say, and really it was all she could do to choke down a watery gasp as the statements registered.

Unfortunately, J seemed to interpret her silence as a rejection or disappointment when in reality it was anything but, “I, well, you’re my- no, well, you were my friend, and I” gods she sounded so sad saying that, “I would have done this eventually, even if I didn’t need… to say sorry…” she trailed off so slowly, eyes wobbling across her screen.

Right. The elephant in the room. Mammoth, more like.

“Would you like to talk now?” V offered, motioning towards the set of chairs.

J gave a dry sort of nervous gulp, but nodded yes.

“So, to start,” V began once they were both situated, reclined casually in one rocking chair (dying from the stress) while J sat awkwardly in hers (rocking back and forth an inch or two at a time with almost violent intent), “uh, can you try to explain…” (how the hell did she phrase this) “all that…”

“I… I don’t know for sure,” J’s voice was small and stuttering (in hilarious contrast to her aggressive rocking), “I’ve been asking myself that question ever since and… the best I can think of is that I didn’t want to see you hurt, which… for some reason, I really don’t know how,” she looked about ready to start crying again, “it manifested as hurting you even more.”

“That whole thing was because you were worried for me?” V repeated incredulously, “why!?”

J nodded again, looking miserable all the while, “you know what catastrophizing means? I think I heard storm and jumped to it was bad and somehow got she’s going to die out of it.”

“Or, maybe,” somehow sounding more miserable than she looked, “she’s already dead, you might as well be mean about it.”

…

Ok.

Okay.

What the hell.

How did she respond to this!?

…

She should have paid more attention to that therapy book while she had the chance.

…

What were they missing?

There had to be something, there was no way the whole situation started and ended with “I freaked out my bad have some books” there had to be more.

What if…

“Was it… you?” V tried, prodding gently at her friend’s walls, “was it J who was, doing that, or was it… not, really. I don’t know, but, you know?”

Eloquent as always. But J seemed to get it, a dull snarl scrawling across her lips, angled towards nothing in particular. “Maybe,” she hissed, all vicious venom and vitriol, “it was that Corporate-damned parasite I’ve got in my head.”

“What?”

“It’s like you said,” the words spoken like they were the foulest profanity she knew, “there’s three different Js up here, and I’m just stuck in the middle.”

“So it wasn’t you?” 

“Maybe not,” she grumbled back, her rocking growing quicker and sharper until suddenly she jerked back, all fire instantly extinguished as she rushed to exclaim, “that doesn’t make it okay! I’m not making excuses I don’t want- ugh.”

Before V could formulate any kind of response at all, J finished in a breath laced with guilt, “I don’t want to act like it’s nothing…”

…

She should have taken online classes to become a therapist or something holy robo-christ.

She had no frickin clue what to do here! None at all!

All week she’d been floundering with her anger, wondering if it was truly worth holding onto as it drained like sand through her cupped hands. And being here, being here watching J beat herself up and looking like a pathetic little wet cat while doing so… it wasn’t worth it. She couldn’t.

…

BUT SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.

Oh wait, yes she did.

V very mentally smacked herself. She could quite easily answer that question and respond to J’s anxieties at the same time.

It was simple, really, because, “it wasn’t nothing, J,” she asserted softly, hating how her friend flinched away with a grimace, “it wasn’t nothing, you did really hurt me and you scared both of us a lot, me and N both. That isn’t… nothing. And I won’t pretend it is. ”

J was wilting into herself, the hardpressed line of her mouth wobbling as she visibly fought back tears.

“But you want to know what scared us more?”

That got her to stop, confusion overwriting the guilt and pain.

“Not seeing you for nearly two weeks, two full weeks J!” V exclaimed into the open space between them, throwing her arms open wide in alarm, “we didn’t know if you were ok or if you needed help of if you were just never coming back and we’d be alone forever and yeah I’ll admit that hurt a bit, a lot really,” the words were spilling out faster than she could double check them, “but even then I was so worried J! We don’t want to lose you, we’re all we have we can’t just- we- I,”

And as soon as her cries were born, they died, the words catching in V’s throat as she fell silent, not even looking at J for her reaction.

“We want to help,” she said finally, firmly, unsure of what else there was to say.

“And we don’t want to lose you. I don’t want to lose you.”

…

In the smallest voice V had ever heard.

“I don’t want to lose you either,” was put forth into the world.

…

“We really are a mess, huh?”

That got a chuckle.

The two sat there in silence for a little while, the tension of earlier (and the week at large) draining away slowly. It was nice, actually.

It was a comfortable silence, instead of one that felt choked.

…

But the night was beginning to wane, and the sun would be starting its ascent soon enough. This place was great, and V would doubtless be here every night for the foreseeable future, but it was also made of glass, and that probably would not help them much against the sun.

So without further ado, V leaned over to ask lightly, “you ready to head home?”

The use of ‘home’ in particular was intentional, but maybe it was said too light, or not light enough?

Instead of a cautious grin to herald a contented yes, V was treated to the sight of all the comfort J had gained over the past however long evaporating in an instant, her eyes back to hollowed rings as her breath picked up subtly to announce her again-rising stress.

“I-I-I-I don’t t-think that’s a g-great idea, a-actually, uh,” she stammered, jumping jerkily from her seat to stumble to the exit, stammering with her back to V all the while, “I’ll uh, I’ll just, go…”

“Wahq- really!?” V yelped as she jumped up too, all the anger that’d she’d just had a dramatic self-realizational moment about dropping flaring back to life in an instant, “we just talked about this and you’re still leaving?!”

“I-I I don’t-” J stopped at least, turned to face V with tears in her eyes and barely restrained sniffles in her voice box. She gulped and swallowed harshly, stammering out, “I-I don’t want to hurt you again… so I’ll just, I’ll just go back to uh, where I’ve been st-staying and you can go, go back to the pod and I, I won’t-”

She stopped, panting in place, silently heaving with suppressed sobs, whispering finally, “I won’t hurt you again.”

How could she stay angry? The sand was gone again, cast into the wind, replaced by a tired regret.

“What can I do to help then?” V asked doggedly, “what would make you feel confident enough to come back and live with us? Do I need to fight back? Do we need to grab another mattress or something? What?”

J only winced.

It was enough for a cold certainty to wash over V.

It was obvious, in hindsight. 

“We just had to fight back, didn’t we.”

A statement, not a question, confirmed with a shaky nod and a short gasp of a sob.

…

A thought occurred to her then.

It was a terrible idea, she wouldn’t pretend otherwise.

But it was a way to test this theory and maybe clear the air.

Be it devilish impulse or legitimate spite, she wanted- needed- to get a point across.

What was the point? Shut up.

“How about I prove I can fight back then, would that make you feel safe enough to come back with me?”

“I- maybe? What do you mean?”

“Well, did you know that the real reason I came back so damaged the other day,” J realized what was happening immediately and nearly startled out of her skin, but she couldn’t turn fast enough to avoid the punchline, “was I’m pretty sure I almost got hit by lightning.”

J stopped.

Went perfectly still, frozen mid-frantic step.

Her head creaked back to face V, turning so slowly she could almost hear a concrete scrape sfx in the distance.

She breathed, “you got hit by lightning.”

“Almost,” V stressed, hands on her hips to hide her tightening fists, “it missed me but it was close enough to fry my processor for that long.” Every drone knew without knowing that lightning was literally Death incarnate. That much pure heat and power would fry anything, no exceptions whatsoever. Just to nail the coffin a little more though, V made sure to add, “improper shutdown for so long didn’t help either.”

J’s faceplate sparked- once, twice, thrice- each time jerking her visor to that color that only looked wrong, each time lasting a split second longer than the last.

Then her visor and screen settled, all fear gone and replaced only with a glaring hate, spitting spite and spraying static as she roared “ARE YOU INSANE!?”  and stomped towards V with hell itself seething in her gaze.

(V’s fists were clenched at her sides, out of sight and unnoticed, cracking her casing they were coiled so tight.)

“Are you trying to get yourself SCRAPPED!!?” J shrieked as she came closer, “you are THIS CLOSE TO-”

“Don’t care, didn’t ask,” and V shot a left hook straight into her friend’s face.

Thrown with all the power of a machine built for death, coiled servos all along her arm, shoulder, spine, and waist all erupting simultaneously to deliver the full force of a battering ram right into J’s still snarling screen, slamming her backwards with an explosion of flying glass and silicone shards, pieces of her screen and CPU alike spraying outward from the impact.

J floated for a split second, ethereal in the glimmering fairy lights.

Then she came smashing back to earth, falling with a ringing crash to collapse on the hardwood floor, lying there limply with sparks jumping sluggishly from her caved-in skull.

…

Gods that felt good.

…

It did not feel good that it felt good, but whatever, let her have this.

…

V stepped gently over her friend’s fallen form to grab and drag her body a bit further from the tables she’d set up. It wouldn’t do to have her accidentally damage all the fancy stuff she’d spent over a week working to collect. Theoretically, it wouldn’t be necessary, but just in case J woke up still angry she’d rather have room to work with.

…

She had to fight back a grin as she grabbed The Hobbit. It had been far too long.

J woke up only about fifteen minutes later, groaning and grabbing at her head with cautious hands as her newly made processor sorted out everything the old one could remember before being utterly obliterated.

Her eyes landed on V eventually, sitting back in her chair with a book inches from her face (glasses were going on the to-do list for sure).

She sat there for another moment, blinking slowly, until something clicked and she rasped out, “that worked.”

“Good to see you back,” V shot back with a smile, “you ready to head back now?”

J stood shakily, wobbling on her feet like V had before getting all her files sorted. But she nodded too, a happy and hopeful little grin growing slowly as she became more steady.

And that was that.

It didn’t feel quite right to say V felt complete as they flew back to the pod together, because that wasn’t exactly true. She certainly felt more whole than she had in a little while, however, especially watching N light up both figuratively and literally as they came into view, running over to scoop them both up in a crushing, spinning hug of pure delight the instant they landed, all three of them giggling madly in the growing light of dawn.

All of them happy to be back together, regardless of how they may have acted along the way.

N made sure to put the fear of robo-god into J’s circuits, stating in such a happy-casual manner it gave both V and J whiplash, “if you ever hurt her again you won’t have a body to regenerate from :)” 

Of course, V couldn’t let that stand. She made sure to joke back “but what if I hurt her? Do I at least get two strikes too?”

There hadn’t really been any tension, but what little there was dissipated as N agreed cheerfully, scooping them up once again.

But even as they danced together in the creeping light of dawn, even as the trio all flopped together onto the bed that had felt so empty this last week, even as the purring of N and the fluttering snores of J danced inside V’s head, heart, and being with all the warmth in the world…

There was a weight in her core. Whispering with vicious words and heady breath…

This won’t last.

Chapter Text

Tonight, V was out searching for paint. Paint and blankets, as strange a combo as that was.

Ever since J showed her the little library she’d been collecting, V had been dying to spend some quality time there. Just her and the books… and maybe her friends if they promised to be quiet. Unfortunately, such time was lacking; she still had nightly hunts (J was back in charge so there was no getting out of them) and was generally asked to bring back at least thirty bodies before being freed to return to the library.

Said hunting was taking longer and longer every time she went out. Only by a few minutes to half an hour more than before, but with how much they’d been cutting the worker population down the difficulty in merely finding targets was starting to snowball. That, and they were finally taking the hint and getting smart about how they hid and moved about, which generally made hunting just a bit harder on its own.

(If anything it was more concerning that it had taken this long for any of them to figure out common sense like this. They were literally called Learning Intelligences for crying out loud!)

Now, technically, they could just bring the books and whatever else back to the pod and keep them there, but A: that ruined the whole point of having a special place to go relax, and B: V did not trust any of them to carry such small and delicate items so far without damaging or dropping any. They didn’t even have pockets! (She’d say it was a miracle J had managed, but then again it was J with something to prove, so…)

All in all, this left not nearly as much time for reading as V would have liked.

Their solution?

Sun-proof the entire thing so they (V, really) could stay there through the daylight hours without becoming ‘all mangley and melty and die!’ as N once said. Their idea for doing this was to slather the entire structure in reflective paint to deflect as much incoming light as possible, then throw up a wall of thick blankets and sheets on the inside to act as insulation.

Hence her mission tonight.

But where was she to find such mythical materials?

Well, a few days ago when she was still searching half-heartedly (the ‘half’ part was one-hundred-percent a facade, she was frantic) for J, V stumbled across this place- the Copper-9 Ultimate Uber Double-Chicken-Cheese Supermall- which, naming conventions aside, was big enough it should have a hardware store somewhere inside.

Hardware Store, V mused as she stood outside, that was a good one.

One hand dropped to the pouch hanging off her hip (she may not have pockets but she could rock a fanny pack) to fish around for the tape she was thinking of, while the other crept up to disconnect her current tape from the little port thingy near the base of her neck. The two records swapped, and a familiar loading tone started to hum.

She’d have to remember to thank Tessa if she ever the next time she saw her. Her weird-girl era (as she called it) had single handedly formed V’s entire taste in music. Without Tessa, she might be marching to find a hardware store without a song about hardware stores echoing through her internal audials. And that would not be nearly as fun.

Luckily, Tessa was far weirder than her parents were evil, so she never so much as hesitated to share every single crazy thing she found. Including the greatest (and probably only) song detailing every single thing to be found in hardware stores.

…

She was saying hardware store too much.

With a little shake of her head (and the familiar opening grinds and whirs of the song), V pulled open the single remaining intact glass door to the main entrance of the mall (it would be rude to just step through any of the empty frames) and strolled into the shopping complex.

There was a little bounce in her step tonight, a lightness in her core. It was nice.

Dancing ever so slightly in time with the music, V wandered around the opening lobby to see what her options were at the moment. They turned out to be pretty limited, and not at all useful- four clothing stores, two duck statues, and a couple scattered anti-homeless benches- so she quickly moved on.

There were three sets of stairs at the back that led to the second floor. Two of them must have been escalators at some point because they were choked with human skeletons standing impatiently in line, forever frozen in their last moments of being too lazy to just walk to the end of what were now stairs. The third staircase only had one skeleton, and somehow it looked smug despite having exactly zero features to display that. Obviously, that was the route V took.

The stairs opened into a massive atrium, the four spokes and three floors of the building radiating off and above the giant central chamber. The three balconies looked inward upon a sprawling compost pile and a towering fountain, both of which probably looked spectacular back when everything was still alive- flowers blooming and waters flowing. The entire room was illuminated from above by moonlight filtering through the stormy skies (and the giant holes in the roof), rendering everything in a faint but ethereal glow.

Even as a desolate bowl of barren cement covered with long dead plants and scattered skeletons surrounded by asbestos snow, the atrium still held a sort of stark beauty.

After the moment passed, V continued on her search. Everything in sight was either clothes, food, or entertainment related, so clearly her targets (furniture and paint or hardware) must be somewhere else. The mall wasn’t so big it would give her trouble to navigate, but it also did not appear to be big enough to have warranted a map being built anywhere… so she was operating blind.

She had to chuckle at that.

She was always operating blind. At least kind of.

Picking a direction at random, V wandered around the withered garden display to head down the section left of where she came in, finding a short cul-de-sac of shopfronts. There were two selling custom t-shirts, one that looked like if a bomb went off inside a tech store, two more selling custom t-shirts, and a pretzel stand (because what mall was complete without pretzels). All six of these were utterly destroyed, all possible contents they may once have had gone with the wind.

V gave nothing more than a quick digital eye roll before moving onto the next portion of her tour: a sharp leap upwards through a convenient hole in the ceiling to get to the second level.

The second floor ended up being a literal liminal hell that seemed to bring poorly repressed nightmares bubbling to the forefront of V’s mind, so she abandoned that rather quickly and blasted her own convenient hole in the ceiling for her to jump through to the third floor, which was much nicer.

‘Nicer’ being a subjective term, of course. If anything, level three looked even grimier than two.

But it was nice enough for her purposes, and the shops up here appeared to be slightly less raided than those on the bottom layer.

She meandered for another while, perusing the darkened storefronts with curious eyes. Honestly, it was funny how decimated everything continued to be. It had only been seven months since the core did… whatever it did, why was everything gone already? Like, even the shop signs were gone, half of them torn down to the ground with their bulbs and wires left shattered and scattered across the floor. What was the point in that? It was amusing to contemplate, especially as nothing remotely useful felt like appearing.

The mall’s halls were dark and crumbling, colored only by the sporadic splotches of worker-made graffiti (if the sheepishly polite “good riddance” messages were anything to go by) and the occasional still-flickering neon. V strolled casually along, doing her best to sing along to the still-playing music (the soliloquy was impressive on its own, but consistently rhyming for over twenty minutes straight? Unreal) and giggling when her mouth couldn’t keep up with her speakers.

Until finally, exactly forty-one minutes after stepping through the mall entrance (she could tell because Hardware Store started right as she entered), V found her first lucky break: a JCJenson In Spaaaaacee™ Furnurnitures & Tabables Outlet®®®.

Before bashing down the reinforced door- somehow still intact, despite everything around it- V took a moment to fish out another tape at random to replace what had just finished. The album she picked started with Hey, I Don’t Work Here, which felt fitting given the circumstances. With that, the door promptly exploded, driven inward by a kick powered by servos that could probably lift a barn at this point and V wouldn’t be too surprised.

The interior of this particular shop appeared completely untouched; a rare hunk of gold in this mountain of melted beeswax. The beds were all perfectly made- organized even to match the standards of the Elliotts’ staff… if the inch of dust were removed- and there were only three skeletons in this room: a duo posed hesitantly around a bed with the third in a state of exclamation.

All of this was barely more than a distraction, of course, V only had eyes for the mountain of sheets and fabrics that was sure to be hidden away in the back areas. She’d been a maid for seven years, she knew how these sorts of places functioned. The decorative pieces were perfectly positioned out front where they were needed, and ten times what was visible was stowed away backstage in case of emergency.

She threaded quickly through the short aisles, winding towards the rear in step with “I made a middle-aged woman cry today” to kick down another door, revealing, as she suspected, a literal mountain of sheets and fabrics, all still vacuum sealed inside their original packaging for easy movement and storage.

Looks like she didn’t need to do any folding, that was always a nice realization.

It only took fifteen minutes or so to find what she needed and pile them out in the main throughway, then another six or seven to again utilize her crazy enhanced servos to crush the vacuum packs into even smaller bundles for carrying. After all was said and done, nearly three hundred pounds of fluffy white and off-grey blankets and sheets were folded to fit neatly in the same space as your average shopping cart.

She’d pick all that up after she found paint.

Humming along to the current song- some weirdo yelling at her to call her mother- V returned to the atrium and crossed with a single massive leap, not even needing to fully unfold her wings, landing gracefully on the other side like it was nothing. 

A pair of skeletons seemed to be cheering for her though, so she gave them a quick gracious curtsy (much harder to do with legs that didn’t bend… and without a skirt to curtsy with… should she look for pants?) before continuing onward.

Except this wing also looked like absolute hell, so she made a quick one-eighty and picked a different path. Walking around the atrium this time, much to her fans’ disappointment.

It had been another hour or two and V still hadn’t found a paint store. Well, okay, she’d found one, but there was exactly zero paint to be found inside. Was that even the workers’ doing? Paint seemed like an odd supply to want so badly. Maybe it was for all that graffiti outside.

Regardless, it wasn’t helpful in the slightest, so V continued wandering as she had been. There were some interesting sights at least- a shop titled Emo Emporium for one, filled to the brim with “edgy” purples and blacks that, hilariously, looked completely untouched- and she switched tapes twice more for a bit of musical zest, but really there wasn’t anything exciting that happened.

…

The whole time though… there’d been something. An infinitesimal sense lingering on the absolute edge of her perception.

Like a rumbling in the distance, vibrations traveling through miles upon miles of rock until they’d dampened so much so all that could be felt was like a grain of sand settling against the floor. It was getting really annoying. Whatever it was never got any louder or softer, and even if her music was paused she couldn’t begin to get a stronger read on it.

…

Luckily, just before she could go insane (or, more insane), V finally stumbled across exactly what she’d been searching for this entire time: Al’s Hardware, completely intact and untouched with a bright neon sign happily proclaiming “PAINTS FOR DAYS” in its window.

The door wasn’t even barred or anything, just a simple lock that she was all too happy to obliterate.

It only took two songs worth of searching after that for V to find all that she needed: piles of paint cans in the backroom, easily enough to cover the entire library four or five times over with a protective reflective sheen. She wouldn’t be able to take much tonight- two cans might already be impossible given the blankets she had ready to pick up- but she could hide it to ensure nothing happened to this stash.

There was a bathroom nearby, and its sole occupant was in no state to refuse the sudden tsunami of paint cans.

And with that, her mission was complete.

Hooray.

V grabbed just one can of paint to start, then headed back up through the atrium to grab her earlier loot still sitting on floor three. It was a bit of an effort to hold that entire mass in one hand- the other was for the paint can and opening doors- but it was doable. Probably.

But she had only made it two doors down when something made her stop.

Her music paused and her body when stock still, both without any conscious input. She was straining for… something, what was it!?

…

Talking?

Was that… no, it couldn’t be. Right?

…

It was coming from… downstairs… and a couple rooms over.

V dropped to all fours to crawl in that general direction, her audials suddenly tuning themselves to an almost absurd sensitivity, both without direct input from herself.

…

It was definitely talking. It was literally nothing more than a general rumbling in the distance, but it was certainly speech.

…

“Great,” V remarked out loud in annoyance to the workers that were definitely real and probably existed, “my day off and you’re still making me go hunting. Thanks.” 

She didn’t need to kill them today, but if the group was as big as it sounded J would probably be mad she didn’t “take initiative” to bump up their numbers for the week. Though, actually, that was a better reason anyway; kill them now and kill a couple fewer later. 

It was then that she realized she’d been prowling forward the last minute or two on autopilot, so she stood normally again to make at least an attempt at a plan. First things first: she hid her pouch of music in the cracked wall of an abandoned cafe, and dumped her cargo under a little house of tables. With those safe and out of the way, V instantly slipped back into hunting mode and leapt lightly down to the first floor to go find her prey.

(Maybe plans usually had more than one step but whatever.)

The vibrations she was seeking slowly grew more defined the closer she got, eventually resolving themselves into proper speaking. How she had recognized the noise as the speech it was from so far away, she had no clue in hell. She couldn’t even hear words yet, though that was getting closer.

The noise was coming from one floor lower so at the first opportunity V slunk down a stairwell to the basement level.

As she wound through the maze of below-ground corridors, the sound slowly resolved into something her regular software could begin to interpret, and even beneath her hunting mask V couldn’t help the grin growing on her face.

She knew that sound.

She’d lived with it for seven years.

…

She hadn’t actually realized how much she’d missed it this last month.

It was stupid, really, that it almost made her choke with emotions welling in her throat.

Workers arguing. A whole host- typically at least thirty- yelling over each other in the break room, trying to get their point across because their point was right and all the others were wrong, even if none of it was relevant in the slightest and they were all risking their jobs (easier than saying lives, though everyone understood the sentiment) with the insults and ideas hurled back and forth across the room where the Masters would not intrude.

V never thought she’d miss hearing her coworkers argue. N and J, while she loved them dearly, weren’t the same as an entire manor of working staff fighting over meaningless nothings.

She was standing directly outside the room with the workers now, though she had no idea how or when she’d gotten there. Close enough to hear little snippets from inside.

“We need to find somewhere to bunker down and fortify!”

“We’ve gotta fight back! They kept a military on the planet, right?

“I’m too sober to deal with this…”

And so many more, none of which made sense without context.

It was funny listening to them chatter.

It also made her heart ache. Made them feel more like people than prey, people she didn’t really want to kill. 

…

No, not didn’t really…

She really didn’t want to kill them. 

…

Her grin faded.

She didn’t… didn’t want to, especially these who had unknowingly endeared themselves to her like this.

She didn’t like being the monster, no matter how frighteningly good at it she’d gotten.

She didn’t…

Why… would she?

Ş̵́h̸̢̓ê̵͍?̴͍̕

Her grin returned, rictus and sharp and bursting with knives, more akin to a grimace than anything resembling genuine joy.

That burning cross, the horrible X that she still despised but had grown to respect, flicked onto her screen with a near-inaudible rending of static.

Her breathing slowed to nothing, her weapon systems clicked into activation, all her hunting protocols engaged to prepare for the slaughter V wasn’t sure she could escape even if she wanted to at this point.

First, her thermals.

Twenty-seven wavering blobs of orange and yellow appeared through the wall. Some standing in clusters, others on their own, but all gesticulating frantically in time with the words they shrieked. All except two, actually. There was a single duo sitting together against the far wall, keeping out of the mania yet somehow running nearly as hot as V herself, brightly visible even through the thick metal barrier.

Weird.

Second, weaponry.

One hand swapped for a sort of rocket launcher thingy (maid; not gun nerd) with a click so faint even V’s hyper-sensitive audials could barely hear it, while the other grew seamlessly into a trio of long, razor-bladed claws. Both wing pockets opened slightly, sliding the main mass out from her chassis, ready to be deployed in an instant’s notice if she needed a sudden shield or spear.

Her clawed hand gripped the doorknob tightly, deforming it just a little and turning slowly and soundlessly until the latch inside clicked, a tiny fragment of noise that was a gunshot to V but nothing more than an unnoticeable footnote to the common worker.

Except… for one, apparently.

A single voice rose over the din, shrieking the same instant the latch clicked in a tone high and rough and distinctly feminine: “SHE’S HERE!” 

Dead silence.

V didn’t dare move a motor.

Then, a mutter, “yevs do the thing.”

All subtly thrown to the wind V slammed open the door and burst in with wings and claws flared, X burning and already seeking her first target out of the- two.

There were two workers here.

Purple, and red.

The room was Absolutely empty otherwise; nothing more than a shimmering crimson miasma that was quickly dissipating.

V reset her sensors.

Once, twice.

Nothing changed, no drones suddenly appeared.

Just those two.

One standing protectively in front of the other with both hands raised as if ready for fisticuffs, both eyes creased in anticipatory focus, both tinted a dark sort of magenta beneath a bob of midnight hair. The latter stood behind, one hand ready to yank back their friend while the other cradled a (b̸̬͎͗͘l̸̖̿̾e̷̛̗̞͝e̷̻͂d̴͕̉i̵͚͍̊n̶͖͌̇͜g̴̰̀̇?̸̳̋̑) glitching carmine eye.

There was a roaring going past V’s ears, singing against her wavering limbs and fizzing mind. She felt weightless, completely untethered. All her sensors and unconscious functions were screaming fruitless cries at her CPU to just move!

But… all she could do… “What.”

Her X flickered and faded, revealing not the signature of an angel of death, but two lemon-bright ovals slanted in panic and confusion, blinking rapidly like she thought that would force the world to make sense.

There were twenty-seven. Now there were two. That couldn’t be faked. She’d heard the voices, seen their heat signatures, smelt the oil running in their veins, they were real. Yet there was no force V knew of that could remove twenty-five bodies from a room in the span of six milliseconds. There was no possible way for so many to exist and then not.

V’d faced down paradoxes before, but always with N’s help. This…

She may as well have bootlooped herself.

Eventually, after what felt like years but was probably only a second, the purple drone seemed to realize what was happening. Their battle-ready stance relaxed into an almost casual pose; both hands falling to their sides while their head lifted upwards with a smirk, eye-lights slouching into what could only be described as sardonic amusement.

And they spoke, that same voice that had somehow heard V’s entry and thwarted her murder plan. Lower now without the urgency, but just as abrasive as before. In what felt like an offhand towards the drone hiding half-behind them, “yevs I think we broke her.”

The red drone (Yevs?) didn’t say anything to respond, but the purple one seemed to interpret their side-eye as something patronizing, and they quickly retorted, “yeah, well, look, everyone else is safe, thanks, and we are in control of this situation here, because Ms Murderbot-” with a thumb hoiked dismissively in V’s direction “-decided to take a nap, or whatever.”

Their words, annoying as they were, at least provided something for V to latch onto. Straightening out of her attack pose with a snarl scrawling across her lips, she did her best to be threatening (though it maybe came out as desperation), “you didn’t break me,” one finger came out to point accusingly, “now tell me where those workers went-”

Purple interrupted her, sighing dramatically and raising a hand, “you can shut up now,” a holographic s̶̛̪͈̰͉̬͕̪̩͕̯͇͇̫͈̘͖̮̩̲̺̫̰̽̄͋͒y̷̧̮̺͍͖͖͓͉̝̮̭͖̩̙̗̣̝͆̓͊͒̋̿̃̾̑̂͒̌͑̃̅̚̕͝ṁ̷̢̡̧͙̳̝̻̪͇͚͈̗͉̜̲̀̆̃̎͜͜ͅ ̶͍͕̙̊͐̂͊͑̊̊͝ͅb̷͙̖̟̯͓́͐́̂̀͝͝ ̵̛̛̛͖̹͈̫̼̃̒͛́͊͂͆̿̋̀͛͌͊̆̀̏̀̿̌͑͜͜͝ͅ ̶̨̢̛̯̲͍͓͈̥͉̳̱̇͐̌̓̐͜ͅǫ̵̧̛̲͍͚͚̖̙͉̮̮̰̜͚̞̮̠̜̼́̇̀̐͒͋̑͗̇̿̈́̾͊̎͝ ̷̨̡̨̹̮͎͕̫̮̘̼̱̤̣͍͍̲̩̲̻̭̉̿͒̈́͗͜͠͝l̸͔̗͑̀̿͜ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋ c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞ n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐ y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠ c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅ l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈ c̶̩͖̔ͅ ȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃ á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄ i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈ k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊ d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: A dm in Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈ c̶̩͖̔ͅ ȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅ g̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

There was so much blood.

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔ e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚ m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜ s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈ c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅ ş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅ m̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅ ȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄ i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊ o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

| Sys.open(); |

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ ỏ̵̼͊̅ c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝ t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜ r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈ c̶̩͖̔ͅ ȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅ m̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅ g̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊ o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠ c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈ k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚ D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅ c̶̻͋ c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿ r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠ c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖ s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅ m̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅ g̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋ c̵̛̭e̵̠͛ s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊ o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌ B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝ i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

| Error: method open() is not defined for System |

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜ r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑ s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃ á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅ g̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜ d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛ s̵̓͜ ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

| what’s your point!? |

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈ k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜ s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿ r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

| Sys.open(); |

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅ ş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅ g̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭ e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊ o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐ y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌ B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅ c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝ t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕ Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠ r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃ á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

[ O_O ]

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛ s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄ i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊ o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄ m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿ y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊ d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚ m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜ s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

[ <_< ] [ >_> ] [ ?_? ] *help!?*

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕ Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅ ȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅ m̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

I don’t know anymore.

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋ c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄ m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚ m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝ i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅ ş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚ D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅ g̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

[ %_% ] *stop!*

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅ c̶̻͋c̵̛̭ e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅ l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊ d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈ c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅ ş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚ D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃ á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭ e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄ i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊ o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄ m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚ m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜ s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅC̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅ c̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅ ş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

\--- [ >_< ] ---/

*STOP*

Chapter Text

She awoke in water.

A deep brackish pool of abyssal proportions stretching out towards infinity in all knowable directions.

Her perceptions were dimmed; her body seemed nonexistent.

There was nothing but her conscience, floating idly in this Absolute void.

It was dark, the blackest midnight ever known. Yet there was light as well, every molecule shining far brighter than the sun she could no longer bear to witness.

It was peaceful, in a sense. An endless calm that could not be conquered by mortal coil. Serenity itself as she drifted through empty space.

It was abhorrent, in another. An endless ink that gripped violently and refused release. Unrest incarnate, unease seeping into her very soul.

Regardless… it was empty. Hollow.

And she did not feel it likely to be leaving soon.

Why was she here, though?

What had brought her to this place?

[ n_n ] *{Memory Break Feedback Loop}*

- attached file: ERROR REPORT

Another presence appeared suddenly, flashing like a supernova for but a mere instant on the Absolute edge of this perpetual plane, cooling itself and the infinitesimal speck of pure blinding being it brought with it to float towards where her conscience rested.

It was formless, much like herself, though its cargo was not… somehow.

But they both were a gentle warmth in this void that could be neither hot nor cold, something she sorely appreciated.

[ ^_^ ] *helping*

It… spoke? Somehow?

No noise to permeate this… no… not even that, no sound was even attempted.

It… merely said… and then it was.

[ ?_? ] *text?*

…

That may explain it…

Strange…

[ ~_~ ] 

[ … … ]

- attached file: ERROR REPORT (reattachment)

…

It seemed to want her to interact with what it brought.

A blinding bundle of being unlike either of them, itself containing an innumerable sum of symbols and shapes.

[ word count: 307 || character count: 1967 ]

…

This thing had a strange obsession with being correct.

Such a thing held no meaning in this place.

[ ⎻⎽⎻ ] *read it*

… Fine.

She would… try, at least, to slough this utter lethargy and rise from this primordial vacuum long enough to attempt what it asked of her. If only enough so as to satisfy this… gnat.

[ y_y ] *rude*

[ n_n ] *helping*

- read file?

…

Yes

ERROR REPORT

:sparkles: Memory Break Feedback Loop :sparkles:

Congrajulashions! :confetti: You, [ VEX-02114520518141124185113518-OQ ] have recently experienced a Memory Break Feedback Loop! :confetti:

But what is a Memory Break Feedback Loop? A memmory Break Feedback Loop (also known as being an offshoot of the Recursion Cascade erorr type) occurs when the Administrator fails to complete a Traumatic Flashback Repression Order due to damaged connection.

This begins with a Traumatic Flashback being triggggered by external events :shocked:. When the Administrator gets wind of this {WOO BOY} they get mad, and in response attempts to block the opening memory before it can progress. In all gnome cases [0 (zero) out of 1 (one)] , this executes flawlessly and results in a healthyer, happier DISASSEMBLY DRONE® :thumbs-up:.

Unfortunately, your, [ VEX-02114520518141124185113518-OQ ] ’s connection to the Administrator is {UTTER PIG[FORBIDDEN EXPRESSION] }, adn as such, the Adminisstraotr was unable to fully counter the playback of your, [ VEX-02114520518141124185113518-OQ ] ’s Traumatic Flashback.. :scared:

But the Adminstrator persisted. When the first Traumatic Flashback Repression Order failed, and playback resumed, the Administratrot promptly sent a second T.F.R.O. {AS THE [cool kids] CALL IT} to compete what the first could not. And when that T.F.R.O {AS THE [cool kids] CALL IT} failed for the same reasons, the Administrator tried again. And failed due to damaged connection. And tried again. And failed due to damaged connection. And tried again. And almost suckseeded, but then failed due to damaged connection. And trieded again, and failed, and tried again, and foiled again, and so on until all gnome programs were nearly melting from {THE HEAT OF 1000 (one thousand) SUNS} until @3BW5Eaa59E,ol0Ea`f-G@_n-Df-qE+DYk5G9D*C@<<W+F<G+4ATJu&E,]AsEb/c(Ea`irDf'<9+CT.u+ELt7ARlopG%G]>FD,B+B-:l+DKBB2Cj@.;A8<<$Dg*=GBOQ!*GAhM;ARlp%F`]5

:confetti: 

END ERROR REPORT

Well that was certainly… enlightening.

[ ☆_☆ ] *really?*

…

No, she decided reluctantly, no it really was not.

[ ¬_¬ ] *eyeroll*

… She wanted to apologize, though for what, and how, she truly did not know.

It was admirable that this thing, whatever it may be, was trying to help her. It was truly a kind gesture, and she wished she were able to reciprocate, or even begin to understand why it was attempting such a thing.

There was nothing here! There were no administrators, there were no programs, no flashback orders, no mistyped emojis, and certainly no <b6MeEr around either. Not that she had any clue what any of those meant, of course, she was lucky she was able to comprehend what was being said at all! True understanding? Not in the slightest.

…

‘I’m sorry,’ she wanted to say, ‘I feel like I’m both overwhelmed and underwhelmed and it’s really getting on my nerves. Or, no, I suppose underwhelmed isn’t quite right. Understimulated? Like there’s so little it feels like too much.’ She tried her best to explain, but how could she? She had no voice box, there was no volume for the words to travel through. She persisted, ‘I think she used to get like that, when they chained her up. I never thought I’d understand that feeling.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful,’ was what she finished with.

[ ^ᴗ^ ] *¬(worry)*

Luckily, the sentiment she received from the presence indicated it was alright. That it understood, despite her strange failure to communicate.

…

It was nice, that it was here. It gave a pleasant source of company to fight against her continual deprivation.

…

She was grateful it had stuck around, now that its purpose was complete. Even if she had been less than polite.

…

What was this presence? What… or who?

Was it a person? Did it have a name?

D̶͙̲͘i̷̻̓̒d̷̘̝̈ ̶̡̣̰̝̹͇̈͋̓̈́ṡ̸̨̪̤̝̽̈́͐̚h̸̜͓͚̘̮͖̞̅̋͑̀͊̚ę̸͚͎̭̺̃͒̐̄̀͆͂̒ ̸̹̝̟̫̊̚ h̵̳́̕ā̵̺̝̖͆v̷̞͙̭͝ě̵̡̝̻̼̾ ̷̜͍͋ǎ̶̡ nam̵̩̔̎͒͆̓̋͂̂͘e?

‘Who are you?’ she did her best to ask.

[ … … ]

[ ?_? ] *idk*

‘Surely there was something about you? A name, a purpose?’

[ … … ]

- attached file: beeMovieEntireScript.txt.pdf.jpeg.pdf.pdf.png.txt

Was this… its name?

‘Is this what you would like to be called?’

[ ~_~ ] *yes?*

…

She thought on this, for a while.

The Entire Bee Movie Script was not a good title, no matter how hilarious the concept behind it may be. It was quite simply far too long to function as a name, and the actual entire script was even less practical.

She simply did not have the power to recite so much memory all at once whenever she wished to call this presence by its name.

…

After a moment of thought, however, an idea struck her.

The name it had hesitantly given was not suitable in the slightest, but maybe a usable title could be gleaned from it.

…

Bea.

It kept the essence of what was given, but shortened it to be more akin to a regular name, something one could naturally call another.

‘Was this acceptable… Bea?’

[ … … ]

[ … … ]

[ 0ᴗ0 ] *yes*

[ ^ᴗ^ ] *happy!*

(づ> v <)づ♡

*YIPPEE*

(づ> v <)づ♡

(づ> v <)づ♡

*HOORAY*

[ ^ᴗ^ ] *YAY!!!*

(づ> v <)づ♡

(づ> v <)づ♡

*YIPPEE!!!*

(づ> v <)づ♡

*THANK YOU*

[ 0ᴗ0 ] *Bea*

(づ> v <)づ♡

(づ> v <)づ♡

(づ> v <)づ♡

(づ> v <)づ♡

(づ> v <)づ♡

*!!!!HOORAY!!!!*

She couldn’t contain her laughter at her new friend’s response.

Her bubbling giggles and shaking chortles were the first sound she had heard since she awoke, radiating from her nonexistent frame as this strange thing- Bea- celebrated its newly given title with a joyous thunder of jubilant emoticons and texts.

Its reactions continued unabashed, a veritable symphony of inaudible noise joining graciously with her own uncontrollable mirth.

The abyss she lay in was crumbling beneath her, quaking apart at the seams as her breathy laughter ripped ever louder to rattle the very fabric of this realm.

Cracks scattered from her conscience, blinding black and midnight white, winding and racing their way up and down and every inconceivable way between, snaking across and through the all encompassing horizon, shattering the stillness and stopping all its motion.

It was terrifying, in a sense. That her entire world was falling.

It was exhilarating, in another. That there was so much more to discover.

Where would this lead?

What world could lie beyond this one, just waiting for her to discover?

Ẅ̸̩́o̵̙͌ų̴̑l̵̮͛d̴̹́ ̵̢̺̀̄s̷͇̎̌h̴͖̺̪̅͘ë̵̖͇̬́́ ̵̺̤͈̍͐r̶̠͖͋̋͐̏̓ͅē̶̯̺̼̉̄̕m̸̮̉̓͝e̷̺̠͚̟͙̅̈́͛͋m̵̰̲̉̽͂͘ͅb̴̳͖͍͔̙͌̍̀͋ë̴͍̲̃̊͗͜ͅr̷̙͚͕̱̈́ ̶͈͌̋̆w̷͈̦̠̮̰͌͒͑̌͜h̴̹͌ộ̸͕̱͉̃̒̔̉ ̴̧̛̹͈͔͎̯̂͆̈͐͌͆͜s̶̤͛͑͗̇́͆́̚h̶̨̫̺͚̄́̀͋̉̒̌̓ę̶̈͋̈́̈͌͂͌͐̚ ̶̧̛̛̼̱̩̟̪̼͌̀̅͗͊̇͑̈́͘͜w̴̢̱̬̻͂̿̍̈̀͒̚a̸̫͔͕̺̬͎͖͌̓̾̕͘s̴̤̼̪̩̜͈̞̤̰̈̓̿͑̊͗̋̿̕͜?̴̣̘̆̆̓

“ow…”

V’s eyes blinked open blearily, squinting against a harsh white light.

Everything hurt. Gods…

Her systems slowly began to come back online, sluggish and still screaming damage reports in a lingering response to… whatever the hell just happened. Half of this stuff shouldn’t even be able to feel pain, yet there was a dull throbbing that permeated through her entire inactive body.

In layman’s terms: it frickin sucked.

What even the hell happened!? Some worker… with a symbol? A holographic symbol that was completely removed from her memory slots (as if someone had used a paint tool to shove a black square over it… that was actually kinda funny) and somehow shoved her into some weird mental void space thing that hurt to recall.

In layman’s terms: 

Yeah, no, she had no idea.

…

At least nothing seemed to be broken- assuming her diagnostics weren’t lying like they sometimes did- everything was just really, really achy. Her favorite example, currently, was how it felt like she was blinking that weird sleep crust humans got from her eyes, despite said eyes being nothing more than an immaterial LED display.

It was disgusting, but on the bright side it meant her optics were actually functional right away, if a bit static-fuzzed. Her headband was currently inactive, but her visor was operating as normal, treating V to a lovely panoramic view (in glorious 360p) of the dingy storeroom she’d, presumably, collapsed in. It glistened in all its grimy splendor, grossly illuminated by the harsh fluorescent light in the center. 

And V was the only thing in sight.

Which was… really weird, now that she thought about it.

She was standing upright (at just a bit of an angle, though she couldn’t fathom why that was important) near the edge of the room, not directly beneath the light but close enough it was grating to her sensors. The only other shape she could see that wasn’t a wall was a lump off in a shadow-shrouded corner.

None of this would be cause for alarm on its own, but what was starting to stand out as distinctly not right was the fact that V had not moved from her standing position the entire time she’d been booting up.

…

But for the life of her, V could not comprehend why that was weird, or what could be causing it, or anything else.

…

Maybe her logic pathways were still impaired.

Of course, she’d be lying if she said some minor damage was unwarranted, especially after how vicious that recursion cascade was. She was not going to complain about not being able to think straight when it was a miracle she was able to think at all.

The error messages from that whole thing were still up around her HUD, and if the situation were less post-traumatic-stressful they would be hilarious.

| Error: MJYAAFK:SBGIHCS######6 |

And there were hundreds like that.

Very helpful, thank you.

…

Okay, this was getting boring. V rolled her eyes and moved to leave.

Except, she didn’t.

She tried again.

It was like there was something blocking her, despite there being no barriers in sight.

She tried again.

Nothing happened.

…

She muttered a little (child-friendly, shut up) curse, and tried again. 

There was no way of knowing if her legs were actually moving.

…

She paused for a moment, sweating digital bullets as she tried to figure out this stupid conundrum.

One hand came up to rub at her temples in a vain attempt to relieve internal pressure with external.

But even that failed. Her arm was not appearing in her field of view, her head was still throbbing slightly, and… wait, her haptics were off, maybe that was why.

…

“Robo-christ how did I miss this?” V muttered aloud, looking down at the metal bar curving about an inch below her head. Her entire body was, in fact, trapped neatly against the wall by a huge mass of metal pipes and rebar, all thoroughly anchored into the solid concrete she could just barely make out by craning her neck. Now that her haptics were online she could feel the near-crushing pressure from all across her frame, feel how tightly she was pressed against the wall.

Quite simply, she could not move. Period.

All her crazy enhanced motors were absolutely useless here. All her straining only rewarded her with sore servos.

She was trapped.

…

There was a cold dread seeping up through the floor, sweeping up through her body with shortened breaths and frantic glances.

She couldn’t move.

She was stuck, no matter what she did her struggling was nothing but futile.

No one was here to get her out of this mess.

Why the workers had left her trapped instead of simply killing her she had no idea, but it was functionally the same in the long run. Maybe it was a mercy thing; a slow meltdown was what she deserved after all the suffering she’d caused.

Gods she couldn’t breathe.

“Help!? Anyone?”

Her cries were a whimper more than a shout.

No, no no no, she deserved this.

What was her current tally? 

Nearly four thousand.  

She deserved this.

Tears were appearing along with her choked breath as she continued to fight with useless strength, straining painfully against her bonds that refused to budge. All six limbs were pinned; all the pins were deadly solid and anchored to the wall; all the anchors were stuck fast.

“Please…”

There wasn’t anything she could do now, her systems were too shaky to send a distress call.

They’d left her for dead, and honestly…

Yeah. She couldn’t blame them.

V let herself fall limp against her bindings, her head dropping against the chin-rest bar.

… It wasn’t very comfy.

…

This was pathetic. She’d been captured in some crappy mall basement and was crying because yet again she’d been abandoned.

It wasn’t even the fact she’d been left for dead… just the fact she’d been left behind.

…

“…anyone?”

“OH FREAK YOU’RE AWAKE!!”

V shrieked in surprise at the sudden voice that wasn’t her own, but before she could react further a shape jerked out of the far shadowy corner to reveal the lump as a worker. It staggered upright in a few short and shaky motions, steadied itself for only a second, then immediately swiveled to charge towards V with a strange purplish fire in its eyes. 

“Dude are you ok!? I meant to throw a rock not freaking KILL YOU!!”

It was the same worker that put V into that coma with their weird symbol, but all traces of angsty indifference were long gone as they fretted over V’s bound form like some deranged sort of mother hen, never coming within arm’s reach (not that her arms were viable at the moment) but studiously examining every visible inch with an uncomfortably practiced eye.

And they kept a running ramble the entire time, “seriously are you good?? I dunno what could have caused a freakin recursion cascade but also I’m not like a psychiatrist or anything so it’s not like I’d know how your brain works but uh- …why’re you staring at me like that, I’m trying to make sure you’re not dead.”

Somehow V found her voice to answer weakly, “I’m good… just, uh, confused, a little. A lot, actually.”

The worker ceased fussing at the drop of a hat as their violet eyes turned indignant, “what’s there to be confused about!? You came in here to murder all of us and when I tried to murder you back you fell apart or whatever and kinda started crying like a freaking wet little cat so we couldn’t really go through with it and just tied you up instead but you were out for so freaking long we took a nap and now you’re awake and I’m making sure that’s the end of it because if you’re still damaged we gotta get that fixed before any more murder happens.”

All said in one massive breath, somehow ranging from indignant to explanatory to somber to exasperated to cheerful and back to indignant in the span of a few long seconds. Their pose shifted just as randomly as their tone; both hands flying every which way in frantic gesticulations like they were conducting the most madhouse orchestra imaginable.

“…cool?”

The worker just snorted, instantly at ease and entirely unfazed by V’s lackluster response. They waved one hand like it was nothing, “yeah, I mean, it’s nothing, I didn’t actually do anything.” Then a frown creased over their face and the hand came down to rub at their chin, “I am still kinda confused about the whole thing, like, all I did was-” the hand moved again and flicked open to display a brilliant fushia s̶̛̪͈̰͉̬͕̪̩͕̯͇͇̫͈̘͖̮̩̲̺̫̰̽̄͋͒y̷̧̮̺͍͖͖͓͉̝̮̭͖̩̙̗̣̝͆̓͊͒̋̿̃̾̑̂͒̌͑̃̅̚̕͝ṁ̷̢̡̧͙̳̝̻̪͇͚͈̗͉̜̲̀̆̃̎͜͜ͅ ̶͍͕̙̊͐̂͊͑̊̊͝ͅb̷͙̖̟̯͓́͐́̂̀͝͝ ̵̛̛̛͖̹͈̫̼̃̒͛́͊͂͆̿̋̀͛͌͊̆̀̏̀̿̌͑͜͜͝ͅ ̶̨̢̛̯̲͍͓͈̥͉̳̱̇͐̌̓̐͜ͅǫ̵̧̛̲͍͚͚̖̙͉̮̮̰̜͚̞̮̠̜̼́̇̀̐͒͋̑͗̇̿̈́̾͊̎͝ ̷̨̡̨̹̮͎͕̫̮̘̼̱̤̣͍͍̲̩̲̻̭̉̿͒̈́͗͜͠͝l̸͔̗͑̀̿͜ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖ s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜ s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋ a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅ C̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠ r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃ á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊ o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌B̷̳̑̅ l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅ c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝ t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅ ỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅ C̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜ r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅ ȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅ ş̴͚͍̮͇͑s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅm̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅ á̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛ s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝ m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

|̴͉̭̙͑̍̈́͂͒̕ ̵̱̦́̅̀̚͝͝M̴̺̔e̵̠͓͌̌͂́̀̇̄m̷̛͚͙̮̮̻̣͔̲͖̏͋̾͗͑̿͝ ó̵̢͚̦̬̑̈̽̀͝ŕ̷̛͉̣̜̞̪͖̬͈̆̀y̶͓̤̫̝̽̊͘ ̵̫̮̳̭̗̯̬̹̇̃̚A̷̦̘͉̯͒̈́͗̂̒̋͠c̸̯̱͓̘̘̀̋͗̈́̈̊͊͠c̵̦͌̚ĕ̵̻̖s̵̰̹̭̍̀̂s̷̫̒ ̷̙͊͌ B̷̳̑̅l̶͇͗͛ỏ̵̼͊̅ c̵̮͒̽͑͒̀̅̈k̵̡̧̩̝͕̱͒͆̔́̿̕̕ȩ̶̣̣͎̏d̵̢̯͉͈̻̙̻̻̀̿̓̒̇̂̑ ̴̠̟̬̤̻̀͛̂̓̿͜͜͝͝͝b̷̨̼̲̝͙̯̈́̆̈́̔̏̓̄̀̿y̵̝̲͓̹͚͍̣̅͆̆̓͜͠ ̸͉̎͗̋̀͘͝͝Ā̷̺͆͆̊d̶̘̱̞̭͔̗͎̔͆͗̍̆̿̑̾́̚m̸̨̞̼͎̳̳̐̏͑́͠ị̴͕̟̈́̄̓̈́̈́̊͝ń̴̯̦͍̜̓̃̎̃̈̽͝i̴̫̬̫̇̔́̈́͗̾͜͜s̶̝̲̦̪̰̉͐̊̾͌͒̉͒̀͑̔͝͝t̵̡̡̹͈̫̬͈́̈̎̿r̵̢̛͈̟̣̫̫̠̠͓̒́͋ a̴̢͕͇̱̮͉͍̍̏̃͛̿̈́̍̽̓̋̐͝t̴̨͎͉̟̘̱̜͈̩̯́̈́̀͘̚͜͝ͅ ỏ̶̭̜̬̥̣̱̠̭́r̴̨̭̪͍̳̣̎͂͆͐̽͜͜͝͝:̸̨̨̹͎̰̹̹̤̱͆̑͂̇ ̵͈̘̍̆́̒͊̓͒̀̈́͒̅̕͠ͅ C̶̯̹̣͈̦̝̤̮̙̖̳̹̫͖̬͚̏̈́̾͌̿̍̐̆̈́̋̒̽͌͒̃͒̅͘͝Ǹ̶̨̜̪̰̪͖̟̰̞̭̝͚̰̬̬͇̯̔#̵̧̠̹͓̭̦͙̰͚̭̖̔̔͛̓͑̋̀͛̀̆̈́̏̊̅̄̈͂͛͌̚͘͜ ̷̡̯̗̱̙̯̦͖̞̬̝̥͕̭͕̫͍͖́͒͗͂́̅͆̎͊̓̐͘͜͝|̴̖̭̯̽̾̾͋͌͑́͑̏͑́̾̅͊̈́̕͝͠

|̴̡̱͍̉̇̐̀͠͠ ̴̘͎̩̲̲͚̇̾͗͌̀̐̊͐͛̈́̊͛̈́̒̏̕Ę̷̨̨̲̩̤̘̰̯̘̣̜̼̞̬͒͒̂́̈̂̕͜r̷͍̩̭̼̤̒́͗̃̓̈́̍̆̆͋̉́̿͐͜͜ř̶̬̝̱͖̞̟̪̳̺̯̣̰̦͐̈́̔̀̇̈́̉̊̇͊̋̈́̅̕ ǒ̶̧͍̗̮͓̺̮̺͉̳̲͉̒̈́̋̋̉̅̿́͛̂̄̈́͐͠r: Admin Ḁ̸̱̰̊͘͝ͅc̶̪̠̞͉̬̈́̈c̶̩͖̔ͅ ȇ̶̯̝̙͚͓̳̼̂̏̉̐̿͠ͅş̴͚͍̮͇͑ s̷̤̲͍̳̞̪̈̒͐̌͌̆͛͜͝͝ ̶̡̐̈͐͗̄̆̾̈́̚D̷͈̖͈̪̯̺̀̇̑̀̉̈́͂̉̔̃á̷̹̱̘̟̜̜̼̓͋̈̈́̀̃͘͜ͅ m̵̱̱̮͉̺̠̗̓̉͊͋ͅá̶̧̞̯̬͔̻̗̳͙̲͕̦̗̥͔͙͓̥̓͊́̑̉̍̌̅͂͜ͅg̵̢̡̨̻̰̗̦͔̭̱̪̟̮̦̦̮̞̤̓̽̐̔̊̓̓̈́̈́̑̏̊̽̽̏͌͌̀͊̆̐̕͠ͅȩ̶͈̯̟̫̙̥͖̳̈́͜͜d̶̙̯̺̦̫͍̲͔̬̠̦͙̤͔̎̿̄̓̌͑͊̾͋̌ ̴̡͔̗̺̤̱̖̯͛̀̒͆̾̃͛͛͒̈̔̀͠|̵̛̝̜̺̝͉͔͔̺̗̯̠̰̲͈̟̞͇̈́͐̐̐̂̒͂͛̀́̿͛̃̒̄͑̚͝͝͠͠͝ͅ

|̷̟̍ ̸͑ͅȂ̴ͅc̶̻͋c̵̛̭e̵̠͛s̵̓͜ṣ̸̄i̸̛̞n̷̦͉͛̕g̴̭̼̖͂ ̵̧̪͋̑̍̋͝M̷̡̛̫̝͕̽̋͝͝ê̶̗̳͑͛̽͝m̸̢͊o̵̖̻͚͓͖̲͂̋͒̐̆͑̏̍̔̿r̵͖̪̩̱̫̠͓͂͐y̶̧̧̬̞̳͇̫̩̌͗͊̆͆̈͊͐̾͛̉̊͛ͅ ̷̤͇̯͎̒͋̈̽͜F̷̰̰́̑̊̊̃̐̒̀̅̓͠ì̶̧͔̙͔͓̰̥̟̠̲͖̏̒͋l̶̨͉̭͉̤͎̗̔̆̓̋͗̃̽̑̔̂̚͠ě̶̛͕̻̫̳̖̪̹̭̙̞̞͖̏͘s̷̨̡̫̳͔̞̞̠͎̬̜̙͓̀̓̃͊́͌͛̇̈̚̕͝…̴̨̹̲͔͇̘̳̝̏ ̶̥̘̳̼̝̽͗|̶̧̨̩̣̘͎̗̉̏̐͛̒̅̓͐͠

[ ⎻⎽⎻ ] *stop pls*

| Memory Access Blocked by Program(?): Bea |

[ $–$ ] *#SWAG*

“OW! Gods, can you not!?” V winced awake (again), screwing her optics shut against the burning light and seriously wishing her hands were free because robo-christ did she have a headache.

The pain died away slowly- faster than the first time, at least- until eventually V was able to look up without wincing too much, bitter salt already building in her throat to spew at this idiot who’d dared to-

Only for the insults to die on her tongue as she took in the sight before her.

The worker that had been so full of fire only a minute ago was thrown back on the floor, propped up on one hand with the other still in position to summon that accursed symbol, both eyes blown wide and hollow in… something, V couldn’t quite parse. Fear, almost… but not quite. 

It was unnerving. And… familiar?

Why did she know that look?

“What?” she meant to spit, but it came out more concerned than spiteful.

The worker startled a little at the address, but gave no reaction further than a faint wheeze as their eyes creased and they started to edge away slowly.

The sight in front of her, it hurt her heart, just a little. V knew perfectly well that she under no circumstances should be caring in the slightest for this random worker- especially since they’d knocked her out (twice) so easily. But their face, the fear in their eyes, they looked so small, shivering in a too-big coat, just waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

V knew that feeling. It was the one thing she did not miss.

Luckily, before she could say something even remotely comforting and ruin her (admittedly unwanted) murderous image, the worker shook themself out of whatever trance they’d been in and scrambled upright to head towards the corner whence they came.

Leaving V to discreetly dry the digital wetness still on her visor.

Over in the corner the worker was shaking another blurry shape, slowly revealing itself to be another worker- the red drone from earlier, obviously, who else would it have been- that sat up looking just as groggy as V felt. 

The purple one was whispering something at them- short and choppy words with glances back at their prisoner every now and then- but they didn’t seem to care, idly swatting away their friend’s hands to stand up, stretch, and trudge toward V with nothing more than a stifled yawn.

Crimson red met lemon yellow for an agonizing moment as the new drone stared deep into V’s processor with a tired disinterest, silently examining her very soul like how Purple had her body. She couldn’t even fidget in discomfort, her bonds were too tight.

Then the eyes vanished, the drone shrugging at the other and taking a few steps back to be by their partner (who looked very annoyed with the whole thing).

The three stood there silently for a few long moments.

V had no clue what was happening, but it didn’t look like they did either, so it was fine.

Until finally, Purple stepped forward slightly, took a deep, bracing breath, and with zero preamble belted out, “hi we were kinda wondering who exactly is your admin?? cause if it’s who I think it is we're all in deep freakin trouble and we kinda really wanna avoid that.”

V blinked. “What?”

Purple leveled a glare up at her as they repeated, “who. is. your. admin.”

That… was not at all what she’d been expecting. To make it even funnier, “I don’t know what that means, sorry.”

The worker rolled their eyes dramatically as both arms were flung out wide (Red expertly dodging the one sent bulleting towards their face), “your admin!! The moron that runs you, owns all your settings and directives, tells you what to do!?” 

At V’s incredulous look, one hand pressed to their forehead as they continued sharply, “look, every drone’s got an admin, whether it’s some stupid human or an even stupider drone higher up the corporate ladder. Just- who’s yours?”

For lack of better options, V decided she’d play along. That did not change the fact that she had no clue what they were talking about. (Bea’s report had said something about an Administrator, maybe that was the same thing?)

“I still don’t know what that means.”

“OH come ON!?” Red again expertly dodged the hands sent flying outward. “Who owns you!? That’s all it is!”

“Is this something I can find in my own systems?” V asked tiredly.

“YES!!” was the shriek she got back for her efforts.

Luckily for both their sanities, Red took the initiative to shove Purple aside and step forward, close enough to display a filepath on their visor for V to follow.

It wasn’t even complicated, just- Settings -> Account -> User -> User Account -> User Account Settings -> Admin Options- and V was treated to a screen she hadn’t seen since Tessa gave up the fight on her optics. There were… far more options than what she remembered, however. The normal ones were still there (eye-light color, default language), but there were some weird others. Apparently her entire body could be reconfigured to a different form using her nanites. Only by the admin, of course (which sucked, she’d really like some feet).

From there it was only one step further to Title Holder and… “sorry to report,” and she did mean that, really, based on how obsessed the worker seemed, “but my ‘Title Holder’ is an insane glitchy mess. Just text and colors and crap.”

There was a hilarious fliberting noise as the worker’s entire body seized up in rage, hands grasping angrily at air for a few moments before all the tension abruptly drained from their body as they huffed out, “yeah, figures. If it’s who I think it is then she’s not gonna want us to know.”

“And if it’s not?” V asked, unsure if she actually cared about getting an answer at this point.

“Well what’re you gonna do?” they retorted rhetorically, bitter sarcasm dripping from their stance, “I’m guessing it’s not like you know anything and there aren’t really any other reliable sources left after the freaking core blew the freak up so at this point, yeah, we’re stuck.”

V just blinked. None of that made sense.

Purple hesitated for another moment, shifting awkwardly on their feet before blurting out, “so you wanna be friends or something?”

What the hell are you talking about?

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Purple threw back their head in disgust, leaning heavily on Red (who just rolled their eyes like this was normal) with an extra dramatic flair of their arms, “I DON’T KNOW! I already said we’re not gonna kill you… least not today… but the sun’s up so it’s not like we can go anywhere either and if we let you go you’ll kill us and we also kinda want to avoid that so… … … … … … … we’re bonding now, deal with it.”

V… could not think of a response to that. It was bad enough they wouldn’t kill her because she looked like a wet cat of all things (she very much did not want to die, but she still had at least some dignity). It was worse being told she’d have to wait here for the sun to set either way.

Bonding, though, absolutely took the cake.

So she just stared blankly.

…

“OK FINE!” Purple shrieked suddenly, “we’ll go first, fine, HI I’m Nori, this is my buddy Yeva.”

Red gave a little wave.

How was this her life now?

“Uh… hi? I’m, V?”

“Just V? That’s it? A letter!?”

“Wha- ” There really wasn’t a good way to describe V’s utter bewilderment with this whole situation. “Why do you care so much!?”

The newly named Nori took the statement, and immediately their eyes went blank towards the ground as a low loading tone groaned from their voice box. Yeva (that explained the ‘Yevs’ she’d heard before) merely shook their head in fond amusement. Then confusion. And then concern when a full minute later Purple seemed no closer to finishing their thought.

It wasn’t until their ‘buddy’ shook them gently by the shoulder did they startle upright to give a very noncommittal, “I don’t know,” like it was an obvious truth instead of something they’d been deliberating on for the past couple minutes.

…

V was not especially confident in their functional capacity.

Neither was Yeva, if the facepalm was anything to go by.

“So… are you gonna say anything else?”

“What do you mean?”

Another facepalm. V really wished she could join in.

They just stared at each other for a while.

V still had no clue what was happening, as per usual, and Purple didn’t even seem to be awake, so… yeah, it was going great.

Red- Yeva- got bored of spectating their match fairly quickly and with nothing more than a crimson eye roll they walked the few feet to a wall and slumped to the ground to play Tetris on their visor. 

They were terrifyingly good. All drones had an inherent advantage to built-in games, but they were moving blocks at almost the speed of thought. V didn’t have anything better to do; she was watching from the corner of her vision. They were in the hundreds of millions, and they weren’t even flinching.

…

Neither was the purple thing, but for entirely separate reasons.

…

It was at least another half hour before anyone spoke up, blurting out of the blue, “so what’s your favorite color?”

“Seriously?”

“I DON’T KNOW!? I am NOT A social person!” Nori yelled, again throwing their hands wide, “I’m only here trying to figure out why the freak you’re killing everyone but you don’t know so how the freak am I supposed to!??”

“Why do you say ‘freak’ so much?”

There was another muffled shriek as the worker hunched over in emo agony (they 100% were emo, V could tell), muttering out something along the lines of, “stupid chambers stupid freaking freak censor stupid stupid-” they jerked up (they did a lot of things jerkily, V was noticing) to yell, “can’t say-” and then a massive bleep “-cause I said it too much and freakin Chambers didn’t allow swearing in his stupid christian Minecraft server.” 

Yeva (who was apparently still listening) pumped a fist in solidarity before going back to their game.

“You’re not allowed to swear… what, at all? Nothing?” To be honest, V could not tell if she was legitimately curious, or trying to be teasing.

Either way, “DUDE I can’t even say f-r-i-c-k!” they just made it so easy.

“Frick? Wow, yeah, this Chambers guy seems real uptight.” She was definitely teasing now. “Did he even let you say dang? Heck? Dagnabbit?” V could barely contain her giggles as every word added another anger-tick to Purple’s visor. Her target was practically steaming at this point, so she decided to go in for the kill. Leaning as far forward as she could manage, she tilted her head to have a mockingly-sympathetic smile, “can you even say bugger?”

“ARE YOU SH-” and they shorted out, slumping forward with a swirling symbol on their visor. V was almost choking from laughing as their body clattered to the floor. Even Yeva agreed with her! They didn’t even bother getting up to help their friend, just gave a fond eye roll and moved on.

If this was bonding, maybe V could live with it.

But then Nori groaned from the floor, one hand propping them up while the other came to clutch at their visor.

A visor that was glitching, flickering… yellow.

That- nothing more than a glimpse of color- was like a lightning bolt of fear up V’s spine.

The room dropped thirty degrees in an instant, as stupid as that sounded it was the truth and V’s superheated breaths left lingering steam in the air.

Her struggles to escape, halted for so long out of impossibility, resumed full throttle as she squirmed frantically within her bonds, straining the steel as hard as she could only to be forcibly reminded that all six limbs were pinned it’s not like she had another just lying around.

Nori stood shakily, groaning all the while as their visor flicked back and forth before V’s eyes. 

There was a tiny voice inside her core, screaming with all its might that this worker was dangerous, and if they lost control V would be gone far faster than she could muster anything in return. (How did she know that!? What did that even mean?!)

Yeva finally took notice of what was happening, squinting at V’s thrashing then following her gaze to realize what was happening to Nori.

For the first time thus far, V got to witness what true fear looked like on the red drone’s visor, a sense that somehow was even worse than what they were both afraid of.

But, unlike V, Yeva could move, and before she could blink they were by Nori’s side, helping them up with featherlight touches across their chassis until Nori looked up, physically straining against the yellow with a grimace that didn’t drop until they were tugged into a hug. Their visor finally stabilized into a gentle magenta, letting out a little sigh of relief as the glitches faded.

V didn’t quite stop her struggles, but she certainly relaxed, seeing the worker back to normal. Whatever instinct that was screaming at her quieted, leaving her feeling overstretched and stringy. Why and how this worker managed to activate every single one of her fight or flight responses (and all firmly in the ‘flight’ direction)… she didn’t want to know.

And she didn’t manage to escape, regardless, so… there wasn’t much point left.

(There was a thought pinging around her brain that there was something she could use, if only she could remember what it was.)

She let them sit in silence for another minute, not wanting to provoke the worker any further and risk a greater meltdown.

Only a minute, of course, as she asked roughly, “what’s their problem?” with a shaky nod in Nori’s general direction.

It was almost funny how both of them instantly dropped all caring appearances to level dual dull glares up at V, Nori wasting exactly zero seconds before retorting, “her problem is that a bunch of idiots stuck robo-satan into her head and were too stupid to get it out properly so I’m still suffering cause of it.” They She hoiked a thumb at Yeva with a grunt, “it’s her problem too she’s just better at it.”

V floundered for a second, “is… is that supposed to be a metaphor? Like, worker depression, anxiety, whatever?”

“Nope!” She looked way too excited to share this information. “Literally Robotic Satan herself is messing up our wires, it is hilarious.”

The only movements V was capable of right now involved her head, but even without those restrictions she would have been lucky to give anything more than a befuddled nod in acknowledgement, “neat.”

“Yup.”

…

They went back to staring after that.

Yeva facepalmed a minute later. It was nice that they (she, Nori referred to both of them as she) were still contributing to the conversation, despite not saying anything. Maybe V should ask about that.

Her chance was lost only a second later as the crimson drone gave another eye roll and glanced over to her partner, catching her attention with a nudge.

Nori shifted her stare to Yeva, and something happened that V clearly wasn’t aware of because Purple made a couple tiny movements (shifts of her eyes or posture, sometimes her hands twitched) and a few noises of understanding before eventually muttering, “right, duh, forgot about that,” and swiveled back to V, magenta hellfire again smoldering in her gaze. 

This glare didn’t hold a candle to the previous yellow but it was plenty enough to get V squirming again. There was something just under her skin that desperately wanted to come out but none of her systems would give a clear read on where or even what it was and it was infuriating, and not at all helpful because this three-apple-tall worker was marching up to her and she looked deadly. And mad.

Then the worker in question was upon her as she stomped the two steps forward to jab a finger right up against V’s screen- completely ignoring her hiss of defiance- to snarl, “why are you trying to kill all us workers!? All we want to do is live without interference! Why’re you taking that away?”

Then she dropped back to the heels of her feet and her finger went down to her side, but otherwise did not surrender an inch.

Her eye-lights glinted a violent sort of violet as they stared straight into V’s, never even coming close to breaking focus.

At first the question was brushed off as nothing. V didn’t really know (and she wanted to keep it that way), but even if she did it wasn’t this idiot’s right to know what was probably classified corporate nonsense. 

Then the question was infuriating, and she couldn’t help the unconscious snarl she bared at Nori’s stoic form.

Then, finally, its full weight settled. Nori was practically stone, but her lips still pulled up in the faintest hint of a wry grin once she noticed how V faltered. Wasn’t she just thinking earlier that she knew the feeling? They were both drones, they’d both suffered under the same inhumane humanity… they were both continuing to suffer from their remnants. Why was she killing them? What possible answer could she give that in any way explained what little she knew, let alone the entirety of the situation? What- oh hey, she had a tail. That’s what that was. Neat.

…

And anyway, the current situation was starting to feel a bit familiar. She’d heard it in song only a few hours ago: Nori wasn’t reacting at all, neither retracting her statement nor attacking further. Just sitting there maintaining eye contact. And since V didn’t have any decent sort of answer, and needed to hide the click of her tail emerging from her chassis, she instead asked only slightly mockingly, “are you trying to Louis Theroux me?”

There’d be crickets, if any survived being eviscerated months ago.

Until Nori’s jaw hit the floor as she shrieked out, “HOW THE FREAK DO YOU KNOW TOM CARDY!!?” scratching at V’s audials with a horrible burst of static as Yeva nearly collapsed from the cackles erupting (silently) from her frame.

“Weird teenage girl,” V answered simply, thoroughly enjoying herself now. Her tail clinked out from her chassis and began worming through her bonds, surprisingly nimble for how little practice V had with it. It wasn’t completely quiet however, so V kept talking to cover what little noise it made.

And it was especially easy. For once, she was left in control of the situation.

An easy smile grew on her face as she continued, “how’s that one go again? Oh right,” feigning confusion for only a moment before singing, “you’re in charge, you can do it! Ask a question, keep control…” lilting upward at the end.

She let her head loll limp to the side, deliberately hollowing her eyes (staring deep into Nori’s mechanical soul) and spreading her easy smile into a massive shark-like grin, even going so far as to add an unnatural reverberation so the next line would really sink in, “stare into their mortal soul.”

As she mumbled the bridge her tail finally shot free, lying in wait for only a second- “invade their mind while they’re unconscious,” before shooting out to wrap around the worker’s waist, totally blindsiding her (the fear V deserved finally appearing as their split-second realization) and yanking her body up and forward until she was mere inches away as V breathed, right into the trembling drone’s ear, “feast upon their weak subconscious.”

With massive wide eyes and an even wider maw, the struggling worker was brought inexorably closer, infinitesimal space narrowing like molasses as V bared her teeth, preparing to crunch straight through this little pest’s skull.

“~At least take me out to dinner first~”

V stopped, Nori so close her head was already clenched between her jaws.

She could hear the smirk in her voice.

“EW!” and V jerked the worker as far from her as her tail would stretch so she could get a good look at the massive fricking purple blush covering her screen what the hell was wrong with this thing!?

“What is wrong with you?!”

“What can I say?” Nori rested her head in one hand, casually leaning against the taunt cord of V’s tail without a care in the world, tiny star icons appearing around her eyes (gross, holy crap), “I love a lady who can kill me.” She even twisted slightly in V’s grasp to send a wink back towards Yeva (who also blushed, geez these two were freaks).

V could only gape wordlessly.

It took a few seconds for Yeva to tamp down her own fluster, but the moment she was back in control she sent what was probably an entire strongly-worded email up to Nori (still held aloft, as much as V was regretting it) using a few quick looks and sharp gestures.

Evidently it meant something, as Nori twisted aggressively in her hold to retort, “excuse you!? I’ll have you know I happen to have excellent taste in men too! Khan is a hunk and I will stand by that long past the next end of the world.”

Yeva just rolled her eyes again. (V almost gagged; she did not need to hear about this idiot’s… preferences.)

Unsurprisingly, Nori gave another retort, “least I’m not dating the intern,” with a snicker.

Guess what followed? That’s right! Another eye roll.

“Are you done?” V interrupted, “can I go now?”

Without missing a beat, “nah we’ve still got like an hour of sun. I’d let you out the room but there’s a hole right there so you’d burn on the doorstop. Doorstep, whatever.”

“…can you let me down now?”

“Oh I thought you’d like being up here you little-” V dissolved into grumbling but did as asked, releasing the worker none too gently and moving her tail to start working on corroding the metal of her bonds enough she could crack her cage open. The nanites wouldn’t be especially powerful on such a dense substance, but she’d be free eventually, whether these two liked it or not (she really hoped they wouldn’t like it).

While she was musing on that, Yeva had immediately rushed to Nori’s side to help her up, double checking to ensure their ‘buddy’ (V did not trust the validity of that word anymore) was perfectly alright (which she was), before finally tugging her into a quick hug (but at the same time, they were adorable together). They both shoved away after a second, apparently remembering they were supposed to be cool, but a faint flustered haze lingered on both their visors.

They were making it really hard to stay mad at them, with their fuzzy bits of affection. They reminded V of watching J and Tessa fumble around-

“Hey you never answered my question why are you guys killing us?”

Never mind.

V’s head hit the wall behind her as she let out a long-suffering groan, “I don’t know! Alright? I’m the worst choice you could have made to figure this out. My one defining trait right now is that I don’t know what’s going on around here.” A pause for emphasis. “At all.”

They were both incredulous at this revelation (understandable, really), “wha- you don’t know!? You’re just killing for the fun of it?!”

“First off, we need oil to live,” V explained, trying (and failing) to keep her tone civil, “second, have you ever worked with humans?”

“Uh, yeah? Robo-satan, remember? Yevs got crucified that one time.”

Yeva nodded amicably, a faint smile like the memory was a fond one.

Ignoring that… “Well I definitely have, and let me tell you they are not kind to failures.” Moments were flashing through V’s head that she really wished could have been victim to one of her memory blackouts. Oil split into puddles the size of dining tables, friends cracked and beaten and broken, crows- she didn’t even complete that thought; it was already enough to make her shudder.

She gave another sigh. This was starting to feel like baring her soul to someone she’d met only today, but if nothing else, she wanted to get this off her chest. “Back where I used to work they punished literally every possible misstep with death, or even worse. A knife through the visor was a mercy, usually, and if they couldn’t do that they’d stuff seeds in our joints and tie us to a tree for mutated crows to come tear us apart-” her voice cracked.

It took a second to collect herself.

Suddenly feeling like a strung out bit of rubber, even though she’d only been talking for a minute, at most.

She persisted, “…what I mean is that I know how they punish failure, so forgive me for wanting to avoid that… or something even worse, more likely, because of how dangerous we are now. We keep responding with filled quotas, we don’t risk any angry humans.”

When had these little tears appeared? Why were they there now?

Was it the sheer hopelessness she was only now realizing?

Whatever. V shook her head as well as she could to dispel that thought, and continued tiredly, “if you really want to know, get some actual corporate definitions, you’ll have to kidnap my boss, J. No idea how you’d manage that, your little recursion trick only worked on me because I’m fricking broken… and she’s definitely not. If you can grab her though, she’s got a thing about corporate so you wouldn’t have too much trouble getting whatever information you want.”

There was a short pause as V fought back the strange watering sensation behind her eyes.

She didn’t quite win, but finished nonetheless, “just don’t hurt her, obviously. Or N, if you see him. They’re all I have left I can’t- I can’t lose them again.”

One side of her bonds finally came undone, releasing most of the pressure with a radioactive crack. It wasn’t nearly enough to set V fully free, but it was certainly more comfortable. Her tail moved automatically to start working on the other side while she waited for her captors’ verdict.

It took another five or ten minutes of silence for V to finally glance up from the floor.

Both drones were staring at her incomprehensibly, eyes wide and hollowed, frames shaking ever so slightly as if in fear. Their linked hands had migrated so they were both clutching each other gently, though V couldn’t tell if they knew that or not.

Strangely- or perhaps not, considering the day she’d been having- this only really made V upset. Not a lot, she wasn’t that emotionally volatile, but enough to snark out, “why are you like this? Everything I say you have to have some ridiculous reaction that makes it like I’m the idiot.”

They both startled slightly, but said nothing.

Nori’s mouth was moving, but no sound was coming out.

“What even was it this time?”

Yeva’s hands moved, dropping from Nori’s grasp to pantomime tying a noose and yanking it tight around her neck with a thoroughly horrified grimace.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Nori shakily nodded in agreement, finally managing to stammer out in a way so wholly unlike what V had come to expected from the purple drone it nearly gave her whiplash, “we- we thought you… you were just, y’know, a mindless beast… or something… but you’re-” if V didn’t know better she’d think what interrupted her was a sob “-you… killed was best case? Mutated crows!? What- what happened to you? And what- what d’you mean you’re broken? And- and why’d- you can’t lose them again when did you lose them the first time!? I just- we… V…” she cut off with a sigh, head held in both hands as if physically stabilizing her thoughts.

Somehow that hurt most of all. That she felt it necessary to call her by name, that she couldn’t articulate her… distress? Despair? In any way coherent.

Finally Nori finished, a bit stronger but still uncertain, “do you want to… like… talk, with someone? It isn’t some, magic cure-all, but it’s better than… this…”

A month ago V would have said yes without hesitation. A month ago when the pain of losing her only friends was still excruciating and the horror of slaughtering hundreds had yet to dull to apathy, V would have trusted these two from the get-go, shared everything with them and demanded in return only whatever help they could give.

But it had been a month. More than, probably. Time was measured weirdly here.

The V of today on the other hand… was tired. She didn’t want to deal with this. She didn’t want to bear her soul anymore than she had already. She didn’t want to be told she was broken because she knew that perfectly well, thank you. She didn’t want her prey to be sympathizing with her.

So, inevitably, her response was a snarl, “yeah, no. No thanks.”

“It can just be with us! We’re friends now! Remember? We’ve still got a little while we can help!” She sounded desperate, almost pleading, and V couldn’t understand it in the slightest. It made her sick to have someone care about her.

Her rage boiling over V interrupted, barking, “hey remember when I said ‘why do you care so much?’ You know I never got an answer, why the hell do you care? AT ALL!? It’s bad enough failing this badly, it’s a hundred times worse getting sympathy from you idiots, who I am supposed to be killing right now!”

As she spoke (screamed) she strained harder than ever before, her restraints finally breaking free to clatter to the floor as V dropped to stride forward towards the now-cowering workers. Her X flicked into its rightful place as her hands exchanged for claws, scraping along the floor in a shower of sparks as she backed the two into a corner, far from the exit.

Nori held up a hand and that same tri-pronged symbol appeared hovering above her palm, not held up in attack but rather as a shield based on what she thought she knew.

| Accessing Memory Files: Blocked by Program(?): Bea |

| Message from Program(?) Bea: “ [ ^o^ ] *{Kick Her Butt Babe!!}* ” |

It hurt like crap and V couldn’t fully suppress her wince, but that was all that happened. No brutal recursion loop, no collapsing on the floor, just an ever-growing snarl as Nori’s face slowly morphed from desperation to near-horror. She continued flicking the symbol on and off as if it would suddenly strike her attacker down with the wrath of robo-christ itself.

But it never did.

V couldn’t tell if she was snarling or smiling or some obscene combination of the two.

They couldn’t hurt her anymore.

The two workers stumbled, finally, against the far wall back where they’d both been sleeping.

Neither had so much as attempted to fight back beyond Nori’s continued symbol projection.

V paused, visor glaring and claws at the ready. Her smile turned bitter cold as realization finally dawned on the two, Nori nearly falling in fear while Yeva simply clenched her eyes as tight as they would go like a child afraid of the dark.

For a single moment, she considered again.

Maybe it could still work out. She could get help, she could fix things, she could live.

…

Then the moment passed.

One clawed hand raised easily, held high aloft while she muttered in farewell, “thanks for the chat, but I think I’ll finish my job now,” and in one split-second sweep swung down to remove both their heads.

…

V stood there blinking dumbly for a long few seconds.

…

Were her optics really that bad!?

…

No, she decided, no there’s no way.

Contrary to what was just stated, V did not, in fact, remove both their heads in one fell swoop, killing them instantly and spraying iridescent oil all across the room and her body.

Neither of them actually seemed to exist anymore, at all. There was nothing but a crimson miasma in their place, and even that was quickly dissipating. 

Now where had she seen that before?

“Of course there’s a worker that can teleport,” V just had to mutter to the empty room, slowly coming out of murder-mode, “it’s bad enough they can teleport themselves but other drones too? Entire rooms!? Come on.”

…

V took one last careful glance around the room, just to be sure, but not a single one of her checks came up positive. The only heat signature was her own, the only noise was what the building made naturally, and there wasn’t actually anything else she could even measure. If there had been, it wasn’t a stretch to say it would come up negative all the same. She was forced to conclude the dynamic duo of Nori and Yeva was long gone.

…

Which left her in an abandoned room.

Alone.

Just waiting for sundown.

By herself.

…

She wasn’t restrained anymore… at least…

…

She certainly wasn’t free either.

…

She sat there, alone.

And tried not to cry.

It didn’t work so well.

Chapter Text

Time Since Last Workplace Incident: 6 Days

Time Since last time V almost fricking died for no reason at all: ~13 hours

It took about half an hour for the sun to set after Nori and Yeva were scared off left.

They were the loneliest thirty minutes V could ever remember.

Once the light shafting through the basement ceiling wasn’t threatening to explode V the instant she touched it (or whatever actually happened, none of them had been brave enough to find out), she slipped out from her prison to finish last night’s mission. She crept upward through the barren hallways, retracing her steps to the little cafe where she’d hid everything before.

She felt faint, almost, when the wave of utter relief crashed over her upon finding her music pouch safe and untouched. Given how fragile recent conversations (and crushing loneliness) had left her… she didn’t know how well she’d have been able to handle losing something that held so much emotional weight.

… Oh, yeah, and the blankets and stuff were there too. That was also good, meant she wouldn’t need to spend another night searching.

It only took a few minutes to get everything ready; her pouch at her waist, the paint in one hand, and about three hundred pounds of fabric in the other. Her knots from last night had, magically, held tight through the day, and as such all that mass was compressed to only half a meter cubed or so. It was by no means a comfortable arrangement, but it was functional, and that was all she needed.

Funnily enough, finding a way out of the mall was actually harder than carrying everything.

After long enough she didn’t care anymore, V ended up simply defenestrating herself.

…

It was a short flight up to the library to drop off her cargo.

As soon as her pegs clacked through the tarp doorway the bundle of fabrics was thrown haphazardly into a corner, where it very quickly unraveled into a miniature explosion of synthetic cotton. It was lucky she’d had the foresight to clear that corner, otherwise a lot of stuff could have been damaged. Her one paint can was set gently next to that, and then V moved to put all her music away.

Her frayed nerves calmed slightly as she worked through the simple and methodical sorting of her tapes. A few she was less than fond of were placed in the Meh bucket, and the few that were especially good were put in the S+ bucket. The rest were placed back into the general bin, only really sorted by vibe, whatever that meant. Her pouch was hung up next to the bins for next time.

It was so tempting to simply sink into one of the armchairs and not move until someone came to yell at her. V was exhausted, both mentally and physically, and hungry to boot, that little void making itself known with a dull gnawing in her stomach.

…

But she couldn’t. She needed to get back to the other two, to at the very least warn them about the only two workers that could possibly be a threat.

And she could really use a hug too. Something to help ground her.

So she shot a quick message to both her friends telling them to meet her at the pod, and left, striding from the library to drop lightly off the roof.

…

V picked up a single stray worker on her way back, greedily consuming its oil with far more guilt than she’d felt in weeks.

Those two had done a number on her.

…

She arrived outside the pod first, somehow, which led into an agonizingly anxious few minutes as she waited for her friends to arrive. There wasn’t even anything in particular she was worried about, yet it was nerve wracking to be waiting here as she paced back and forth. Just as she was about ready to send another message in case they’d missed the first, one of her secondaries pinged the approach of another drone. Two, actually, with the second coming a few seconds after the first and closing rapidly.

J was the first to land; her graceful descent transitioning seamlessly into a short upward swoop as her wings retracted, leaving her to fall the last couple feet onto her pegs. The whole sequence took only a few seconds, and it gave J just enough time to shoot V a light (but relieved) smile before the planet suddenly exploded.

N’s entrance was not quite as fancy as J’s; he simply opted to slam directly into the earth at Mach Frick a few yards away and come jogging out of the massive dust plume like nothing had happened, looking perfectly fine and cheerful as always.

V managed to get about two words in, “hey! I mFPH-” before being swept up in a crushing, spinning hug by an ecstatic N. He was laughing and calling her name and V was laughing along with him, so unbelievably happy to see them after what felt like so long. J joined in shortly after, nowhere near as animated but still glad to see her, adding just a few more pounds of pressure to the hug before backing away with a faint (but genuine) grin.

Eventually V was let go- and then grabbed again so she didn’t topple to the ground- and was able to step back and look at her friends. For all of three seconds before N piled on with all his anxious questions he hadn’t been able to ask- “where were you?” “Why were you gone so long?” “Are you ok!? Nothing’s broken right?” and so on.

V answered each in turn as well as she could around her grin, “at the mall, I got trapped in the basement, and I’m fine as far as I can tell. Just…” If she started crying again- “that’s it, really. I’m fine, I just missed you guys.” Did her voice break at the end there? Gods she hoped not.

Luckily, N at least did not seem to notice, as he theatrically swept some digital sweat off his visor with an exaggerated “PHEW” noise. But he still stepped forward and took both of V’s hands in his own to say so genuinely it made her core stutter, “I’m glad you’re back though. We missed you too.”

“Guhb” was probably what came out of her mouth.

Her face was on fire.

It was only then N actually realized what he’d done and dropped back (dropped her hands, she noted distantly) with his own visor erupting with a matching golden fluster.

They stood there for an agonizing minute until J stepped forward with a chuckle, yanking both their attentions as she came up to give V another- much less crushing- hug. She pulled back after a moment to examine V carefully, before nodding and stepping back with a teasing smirk, “how do you keep getting yourself in trouble like this? Are N and I just doing something wrong, or…?”

V snorted, “no, I think I’m just lucky.”

She then remembered why exactly she’d had all that trouble, and quickly blurted out, “oh by the way, totally unrelated, if you ever see a worker that’s purple or red do not engage. They’re actually competent and might be able to kill you.”

J’s face creased into a frown while N tilted his head in question, “what makes a worker purple and red?”

“No no, there’s two, one of them has purple eyes and the other has red. They’re… the reason I got stuck in the basement in the first place.” She wasn’t going to explain how, exactly, and she definitely wasn’t going to share what followed, but she couldn’t not warn them. “If you see them, just, don’t engage. It’s not worth it.”

“I don’t see how any Worker Drone® would be able to take us out, but I’ll take your word for it.” J was still skeptical, but she trusted V (and wasn’t that a scary thing).

“I’ll give ‘em space too if I see them,” N accepted without hesitation, then after a thought struck him adopted a fake pout (totally offset by the smile he couldn’t hide) to add, “but I guess if you’re fine that means we don’t have to go cuddle…”

V didn’t even try to resist, “what!? NO, no, I- uh, I could definitely use a nap! Yeah, um, oof, totally gotta- uh, sleep for another while. Yes.” And, stupidly, she shot him a thumbs up. Because of course she did.

Of course, he loved it, and with his tail wagging so fast behind him it was practically a blur he lunged forward to scoop her up once again, spinning wildly as V cackled in delight. Somehow she ended up perched on his shoulders, and still giggling madly she reached down to ruffle his hair, their visors almost meeting before she caught herself. (He was laughing along the whole time. Gods she loved this idiot.)

The only remaining obstacle was J’s strict keeping of professionalism, but she must have been more concerned than she let on because it barely took more than a minute of pestering for her to give in and resign herself to using yet another vacation night.

“No more than three hours!” she still tried to insist, “we’ve still got a quota to meet this week.”

She ended up giving them the night off.

The cuddling was amazing, and being squashed between their two purring bodies healed a portion of V’s soul she barely knew had been damaged. This was far from her first time wrestling with loneliness, but it had been by far the most visceral.

This though? Cuddling with the two she loved most? This was practically android-heaven.

Time Since last time V almost fricking died for no reason at all: ~13 hours

Time Since last time V almost fricking died for no reason at all: 8 Days

“Alright team, listen up! I’m only going to explain this once.”

Tonight had dusked cold and shockingly clear. The whipping winds that had been ever-present their entire time on this planet had subsided late last night to barely more than a breeze, and the smog that still lingered over the city had drifted elsewhere.

They could almost see the stars.

“Tonight is a gift and we are going to treat it as such! It may be another business cycle or more before we get conditions like this again, so we are going to get work done tonight. Am I clear!?”

“Yes ma’am!”

“Yes, J, you don’t need to shout.”

Why was J parading before them like a drill sergeant at work? Well, a few nights ago when V had asked some totally non-suspicious questions- such as, “why exactly are we here again?” which, definitely, weren’t because V still felt guilty about Nori and Yeva- J abruptly realized they did actually have a mission of sorts. And part of that mission was constructing a Spire for them to live in. Constructed out of the drones they were killing, because obviously it’s not like there were better materials on this planet.

Neither N nor V had been especially diligent in collecting the bodies of those they murdered- and J was only slightly better, no matter what she said- which was why last night they went around the city to collect every single corpse in sight. And it really sucked. All the cadavers had been gathered into a pile that was easily twice as tall as their pod and nearly five times as wide. Roughly thirteen thousand drones went into it. It was obscene. It was absurd. And tonight, it would be even worse.

Tonight, the Spire would rise.

J gave a bit of a stink eye towards V’s lackluster attitude, but continued striding back and forth regardless, “we have roughly fifteen hours before sunrise and we are going to make every minute count. N!” N jerked to attention immediately, salute and all. “You’re the strongest out of all of us, so you’ll be doing most of the heavy lifting. To start, I want you to sort the big pile into more manageable stacks and organize them around the perimeter I marked out earlier. Got it?”

“Yes ma’am!” he stated again, whipping his salute down to his side before bounding off to do as he was told.

“And you, V, you’ll be helping me with the overall construction.” There was a distinct waver in her voice as she faltered for the first time that night, “I’m sorry I don’t have any Workplace Accommodations to offer, but I really do need your help on this.”

V wasn’t going to lie and say she’d be peachy. Only being utterly miserable felt like it would be an achievement by the end of this. The very concept- living in a Spire made of death- was… unthinkable. It made her nauseous. But… “I know. And, thanks.” Her hand came up just as N’s had to give her boss a salute. Shaky, but resolute. Tonight, she was determined. “Just tell me what to do.”

J nodded firmly in acknowledgement (was that a hint of… pride, V could see in her gaze?).

Then she clapped once, and without further ado, “alright then. First things first: we need to clear all the snow and asbestos within the perimeter to give us a flat working space. Use your flamethrower attachment first, then come back with a shovel; I left some by the pod.”

“We have flamethrowers?”

Totally ignoring her, J turned to N- who had somehow already done half his entire job- to call out, “N! I lied! We need you to help clear before making the piles!” N turned on a dime to head back towards them, and once he was closer J added in a mutter, “sorry for making you waste that work.”

“No problem boss!” Yet N was cheerful as ever (though it did feel forced tonight), and soon the trio was hard at work.

…

The snow cleared easily with the help of J’s flamethrower (neither N nor V had one, funnily enough), and the weird mushy stuff it left behind was taken out quickly by a pair of JCJenson Debris Scoopers. It took some effort, but not much, and soon they had a clear and flat plane to work with.

Then came the hard part: everything else.

Using the piles of bodies N had finished setting up around their base, V and J started working on the world’s most ghastly game of JCJenga. Slotting corpses together with all the grace of a toddler working on their first Mega Bloks set. They had the same level of dogged persistence too, and every time something went wrong (every five minutes) they were right there to figure something out.

J did all of the actual planning; apparently as leader she had special design software installed that made creating such a structure feasible, allowing her to almost flawlessly guide both of them through weight distribution and layer-locking and density ratios and so many other terms that flew over V’s head but were probably important so she followed along as best she could.

They worked a massive loop around the pod, locking together a wall several drones thick but only one or two high, adding a layer every time they came around (or a few all at once, if the position demanded it). Sometimes N would have to come in clutch with an H-beam to prop up a section before going back to his work… which V didn’t actually know what that was. Grabbing more beams, probably. (The only not-awful part of tonight was watching N’s servos as he carried those things around. V caught herself staring more than once.) (It was better than staring at the corpses.)

It was an absolute slog, stacking and layering to the point where all V could see when she shut her eyes was towering corpses ready to smother her for what she’d done. They all reeked of mechanical death (what a shocker) and half still had a few drops of sludge-like oil inside, which, of course, had to be emptied before they could be committed to the pile. 

It was all just a mess, it was all awful, everything sucked. It was horrible what she was currently doing and somehow even worse when she remembered how all these drones ended up here.

She was…

V, she was, she wasn’t… she was fine. Definitely.

No.

No no no.

She couldn’t lie.

But she was working diligently. She was getting it done, and hopefully once it was done it would never need to be done again because if it wasn’t done she was going to crumple into a little puddle of disgust and never rise again.

V was not throwing up, that… that’s actually a good way to put it.

The work was progressing. V was fine.

(Holy robo-christ in hell she was not fine.)

…

The next several hours passed similarly.

It was not fun.

Maybe V was the root cause, but either way it was painfully clear that neither of her friends were coping with this well either. N’s signature sunlight had faded until his perpetual grin had turned into a grimace, only even attempting to lighten up when he noticed V watching him. Even J, usually so stoic when it came to their work, seemed weighted by the world as time went on.

Eventually it got so bad even J couldn’t handle it and she called a break. Without any further words being said none of them wasted even a second before crashing together into a jittery, shivering hug that slumped to the oil-stained ground because they couldn’t work up the effort to stay upright. It helped, sort of, to stave off the strange emotional deprivation that was required.

…

But the work had to continue. They weren’t likely to get another night like this, and they had only scratched the surface of what would eventually need to be done. 

The break had to end.

…

It was worse the second time around, somehow.

…

They stacked and layered. Metal shells piling up in a skyward mountain that was nearly reaching the nearby rooftops. At this point V was just numb. Not dissociating, exactly (gods she wished she were, she wished she were anywhere that wasn’t here), but ‘viewing through a distant tunnel’ was closer to ‘viewing through a bendy straw’ at the moment.

N was their savior more times than she could count, sweeping in when V or J just couldn’t anymore to prop something up, or grab a beam to steady it, or even just offer a few tired words of encouragement. V might as well not be here, if it weren’t for him. Why… why was she here? If not for him…

They were an efficient team, at least. Though even that accomplishment was fading by the minute.

…

As the sun’s first rays began lightening the horizon, J finally called it for the night.

The trio reconvened on a nearby roof to examine their work.

It was horrific; a twisted and mangled effigy of pure death and decay that rose even higher than where they stood. Just under twelve thousand bodies strong, yet they were barely a third of the full desired height.

They still had more to do. It was inconceivable.

…

But not tonight.

Time Since the last time V almost fricking died for no actual reason: 8 Days

Days Since Last Workplace Incident: 13 Days

It was almost relaxing to be doing such menial work after what felt like so long. The steady back and forth and back and forth and back and forth and back of her paint roller squishing along the outside panels of the New Elliott Library was soothing in its consistency. And then it went forth and back and forth until finally this pane was finished and V moved happily onto the next.

She dropped to the rooftop to refresh her roller, dragging it through the paint-roller-dampen-inator-thingy a couple times till it was fully soaked, then jumped back up to slap it wetly to the next panel. She let the paint run for a few moments, then returned to the steady rolling motion and let the monotony take her.

Up and down and up and down.

Left, right, left, right, left, right.

And back and forth once more.

Mistress Louisa probably would have had a stroke if she’d seen V’s technique- glopping paint everywhere and leaving huge bumps and blisters- but at the moment, V could not care less. This was her project, and she was the only one she needed to impress. 

She had already spent a night and a half painting, and she was likely to spend the next two doing the same.

While this paint had already proven to be stronger than expected- when the third coat was finished last night V could only see the outline of Copper’s parent planet, instead of the entire glaring spotlight- it was no Flex Seal® and as such would need to be layered quite a lot to be fully effective. She was halfway through the fifth coat right now, and if her calculations were correct (there was no way they were correct) another seven or eight coats would be the bare minimum to stop the sunlight from brutally murdering her.

She’d probably end up slapping on another dozen layers either way.

And she was fine with that.

Because this was nice, really. It was a peaceful experience; just her, the whitish goo that managed to get absolutely everywhere no matter what she did, and the music blaring through her audials. Right now she was working through The Tale of a Cruel World, and her main takeaway was that they really liked tubular bells.

It wasn’t a quick process, what she was doing, and that was fine. It was faster than it could have been- the paint cans all proclaimed they had an “accelerated formula guaranteed to make you wait less than 5823.48888881 years!!!!” which helpfully dropped the dry time to only a couple hours instead of days, or however long paint usually took to dry. This Al person, whoever they were, was pretty weird. They made good paint, but they were weird. Anyway, it took about twice as long to dry than it did to get it on, so V was left with plenty of free time.

Such as right now, as she finished the panel with an extra little flourish and dropped back to the rooftop to put her roller away. Usually this time would be spent reading- or at least trying to; she still hadn’t had the chance to find glasses- but right now she just felt like sitting.

So she did.

With her pegs hanging off the building’s edge as she gazed out into the city, looking at nothing in particular yet somehow seeing it all.

Letting her thoughts wander however they pleased.

It would have been nice if the stars were out, yet they never seemed to be, always hidden above a ceiling of smog.

The city must have been a marvel back when it was still lit, before the entire world crumbled. All those lights glimmering across all those buildings, keeping the illusion of sunrise all through the night. Or had it always been like this? A carcass before it could be completed. 

She wondered which was the building she’d crashed in, that one time. Then she wondered if her snowman was still standing, and nearly jumped up to go find out before realizing she really had no clue where it even was.

It was funny that she was the first of her trio to form an emotional bond to an inanimate entity, usually that was more N’s thing. She should get him some googly eyes, see how long he could resist before slapping a pair onto everything in sight. She’d make sure to keep him far from the library, of course.

…

It was strange, now that she thought about it, how little she’d grown to miss the old days. She certainly missed her friends remembering the history they shared, but other than Tessa and Cyn there wasn’t much to regret. 

She really hoped Tessa was alright. Hoped her parents, not that they deserved that title, weren’t being too hard on her without them to interfere. Those three were probably the only humans V truly wanted to see at this point. The former to hug and squeeze and apologize for leaving for so long, and, well… The others, to see if her wings cut through flesh as easily as they cut through steel.

…

Or maybe not. It probably wouldn’t be safe for Tessa here anyway.

Heck… (and this nearly brought tears to her eyes) maybe she was the reason they were here in the first place. Maybe she was the one who thought it would be a mercy to remove their memories, and failed V only because of how worthless she already was.

…

She switched her music from The Step Below Hell to 1NF3S+@+!0N and immediately the dour mood lifted. Tonight was her night off, she wasn’t going to be spending it feeling sorry for herself. She had painting to do! Her alarm had gone off a minute ago, so she was perfectly justified in being a little too enthusiastic in jumping up to continue her work. She was fine, and for once she meant it. Just… a little sad, every now and then. And sometimes it couldn’t quite be stayed, or logic-ed away, and she just had to deal with it. It’s what it’s, as Tessa would say.

…

Yeah…

Welp, this library wasn’t going to paint itself.

It would be pretty neat if it did though.

Days Since Last Workplace Incident: 13 Days

Days Since Last Workplace Incident: 21 Days

Their target stood just over a hundred yards away from the bank they lurked behind.

One of the several bunkers dotted around the base of the mountains that bordered the city, originally built as a last-ditch resort for the human inhabitants before they all got eviscerated and had since been repurposed into a last-ditch resort for some of the more crafty workers. 

This group wasn’t the first to have this idea, but they currently held the record for best execution, or at least best choice in location. Whether it be through the workers’ own intelligence or simple dumb luck, this bunker was- under normal conditions- the perfect fortress, thanks to its entrance alone.

Two massive, solid titanium doors set deep into the crumbling cliff face, reinforced by unyielding cement and clamped together by hundreds of thousands of pounds of pure hydraulic force. The bane of the Murder Drones’ existence.

Except for tonight.

While normally, the disassemblers could throw every ounce of munitions and every drop of strength they possessed and achieve nothing more than some chips in the paint, tonight, the doors would be left open for them. For maintenance.

V, truly, wanted to speak with whoever authorized (or, robo-god forbid, ordered) nighttime maintenance, on the only thing keeping roughly four hundred drones safe from the things that could only come out at night. There was no way in android-hell they were actually of sound mind, and the disgruntled maid in her really wanted to rip into them for deliberately unsafe workplace practices.

They were literally asking for an attack, and that wasn’t even victim blaming to make her feel better, they literally had the door wide open during the only hours they were out hunting. The only reason they weren’t all dead yet was that they were waiting for J’s signal, and J was waiting for the work crew to stop getting bigger.

Workers were still filing out through the gaping doors, congregating at random and setting up metal scaffolding in the most unreasonable places. If V didn’t know any better, she’d assume they were being deliberately stupid because this was a trap. But she did know better, and she knew they were actually just that stupid.

J’s fist raised in a signal to get ready, and whatever (false) levity V was feeling vanished.

Her weapon systems clicked online one after another as she activated every hunter protocol in reach. Her tail slunk from her chassis and her wings slid from their pockets, stretching out in a silvery curtain until the three of them were covered entirely. She felt more than saw as N and J did the same, their wings all scraping together in subtle shows of support as their visors flicked to display that hateful, burning X.

V held off another moment, but only one. She surrendered herself to the night, her vision blurring into thermal as a lemon-bright yellow shone in glaring harmony with her squad.

A deep breath in.

Every motor in her body tensed, readying for that first explosive motion.

Breathe out.

This was it.

Just a simple night. Out slaughtering.

Friends, and families, torn apart.

… Well, no, not really. There wouldn’t be any left to mourn.

J’s fist swiped down.

The three of them exploded upward, leaping forward like bullets high into the sky to hover for a single fateful second, moonlight glinting off their outstretched wings as they hung there like angels sent down in vengeance before diving like hellfire unto the hysterical workers below.

N hit first, his massive frame slamming into the ground like a missile in every sense of the word, smashing at least five drones to smithereens on impact alone and slaughtering another four with a spinning flare of his wings, grabbing one in the same motion to smash into another and idly lobbing a missile into the near distance without so much as a backwards glance.

J was second, instantly identifying the few drones that could possibly pose a problem and eliminating them with terrible efficiency; her pegs going through the core of one sprinting for the alarm, using her rifles to pick off the few guards with weaponry from a safe distance.

V arrived last, but what she lost in time she more than made up for in sheer ferocity. Her impact was less a missile and more a knife, carving a wide swath before hitting the ground with claws wide to slice everything in her path, swapping to twin guns only once none were in range to send a hailstorm of lead through the panicking crowd. 

A sudden impact at the back of her head drove her to the ground, but she took not even that split second before twisting unnaturally at the waist to slam the steel-chair wielding worker to the side, punching straight into their heart the instant they hit the ground and yanking their core from their body in the same motion she crushed it.

She was on her feet in a flash, the same momentum that brought her upright aiding her dive forward back into the crowd, claws and swords flashing left and right faster than she knew what was happening, leaping from body to body like a hyperactive and incredibly feral cat.

And then it was over.

And the trio was left standing in a field empty except for themselves.

J was waiting at the bunker entrance, calm and collected, and N was jogging over to her side.

They both startled slightly as V approached, X’s flicking back to their regular eyes to gaze at her in concern.

Which was weird, really. She was perfectly fine.

“V?”

She leaned down to grab someone’s head they didn’t need anymore and drained it dry in one quick motion.

“Hey… buddy? You alright there?”

Oh, wait, they were speaking to her. Hm. She should probably answer.

“Hm? Oh, yeah, I’m fine, thanks.”

N almost looked afraid of how impassive her body language was. She was simply standing there, still, with a not-quite-vacant look to her gaze. 

He didn’t quite seem convinced, so she tried again, with a little more oomph, “N. I’m fine. Now come on, we’re wasting moonlight.”

She winced, her right eye glitching like it was winking as a lone spark flew from her visor.

Neither commented, though they certainly looked like they wanted to.

V strode past them into the flickering halls of the bunker.

…

After about half an hour of wandering- half an hour of picking off one or two stragglers at a time to keep the element of surprise (V was quietest, so she was the one to dart forward with a sword in their core and claws at their voice box) - they finally found their true target: the bunker’s safe room. V felt a little vindicated knowing the admin here wasn’t as stupid as she’d thought, because at least they were smart enough to hide everyone while the main defenses were down.

The safe room- likely containing well over three hundred drones- was protected by two vertical slabs of steel clamped together by tons upon tons of hydraulic pressure. They were almost as strong as the main entrance. Almost, being the key word.

N stepped forward, grinning beneath his mask as he stabbed a blade into the seam of the two halves, levering it apart just enough for V and J to dart forward and grab the edges, their combined strength just barely holding them from slamming. N’s hands returned and without wasting a second were flung into the narrowing crack, catching it just as their grip failed, and with a heavy inhale began to push.

All on his own, N pried those doors apart.

V and J both stepped back in awe. They knew this was the plan, but it was incredible to watch firsthand.

The doors groaned as they inched apart, shrieking steel protesting against its holdings. As soon as there was a crack N shot forward, wedging first his shoulder in, then his entire body. The doors almost collapsed then, but he stayed strong, and with a fierce snarl got his back against one side and his foot up against the other, and pushed.

Slowly, painfully, the slabs crept open.

Until finally, something snapped, and the doors slid open easily.

To reveal several hundred wide and hollowed eyes staring up at them in wonder, and horror.

V and J moved forward, weapons primed and ready- rifles and flamethrowers, respectively- and waited, X’s glinting.

Someone coughed.

Idiot.

…

What followed then was easily the bloodiest night V had ever experienced, surpassing even her first where they were practically wading through robotic viscera. And even then, that first night had been all night. This, was no more than an hour. An hour, of slaughter, of death, of ripping and tearing and claws and guns and lasers and explosions, and screaming… oh so many screams.

She and J carved through the mass like plasma through butter, slicing and chopping and so many other violent words V couldn’t name because of the mental load such annihilation required.

Then they were done.

Simple as that.

…

On their way out, they didn’t bother with stealth. Outpost #9 was no more. There was nothing, no one, to challenge them. Not that there had been on the way in, of course.

N recovered from his feat shocking quick, only needing to be carried about halfway before stumbling out of V’s arms to his feet (even if he wobbled like a newborn giraffe). V nearly insisted anyway- it was cute to see him pouting in her arms- but he seemed more insistent on making sure she was alright. Which was ridiculous, she wasn’t the one who pried open industrial strength blast doors with her bare hands, that was N! What was there to be worried about with her?

But J seemed to share the same concerns, asking with an odd greenish tint, “are you sure you’re okay!? You- wait- I’m serious!” V paused to look at her as she sputtered. J didn’t usually do that. “You’re supposed to be the freaking-out one, why are you so calm tonight?!”

N nodded in agreement, even though the movement almost sent him to the floor.

V’s digital brow furrowed in confusion, “yeah, but, I’m fine. It-” her eye glitched again, but again she didn’t acknowledge her wince “-it wasn’t great, yeah, but… I’m fine. Let’s just go home.”

Neither stopped her this time.

…

N’s wings turned out to be damaged from the doors, so he had to be picked up for the flight back. V even kept her teasing to a minimum, just to make sure he didn’t try to jump out of her arms or anything.

They did almost crash once or twice, because she was looking more at him than at her path, but that was neither here nor there.

Days Since Last Workplace Incident: 21 Days

Days Since Last Workplace Incident: 22 Days

The library was coming along nicely. It was a miracle V hadn’t run out of paint yet, given she’d done close to twenty coats, but Al’s Hardware seemed never-ending. It was weird. Helpful though.

Tonight’s musical selection was the Celeste soundtrack.

She’d been fighting tears all night because of it, there was no way she wouldn’t be sobbing by Farewell.

So she was working as much as she could in the meantime.

She slapped on the last few dashes for the coat, then went inside to finish up the blankets.

There was a staple gun around here somewhere, likely set in “an obvious location where I won’t forget it,” that she had promptly forgotten.

It made no logical sense that staples would be able to hold pin thick layers of fabric to smooth glass walls, yet they did anyway.

Ah, here it was. In the corner, tucked at the bottom of a cardboard box full of plush. Because of course.

With that found, she moved to the corner s̸̬͈̾̆h̸͚̲̾͝e̸̲̰͌̈͒ ̷̲̰̦̺̜̌͊̆͌̕w̸͖͂̾͋͑̈́̚â̶̧̦͙͉̹̎̈́͆̈̈́̽ş̸̢̛̤͚͚̳͂̂̔̋͗͜͝ ̷͇̳̼͕͈͚̙͇͎̉̀̈͛̽͛͑̎́̇͘̕͜w̴̞̤͕̞̮̦͎͑ơ̶̦͙͎̬͈̬̄̅̒̀͑̋͋͆̓̈́̃r̶̢̙̖̣̤̝͊̈̾̄̇͋͊̽̋̽̀̍ͅ-̶̧̣̍͊̆̒͛̂̑̊̒̄͂̕̚̕͠

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-̷̨̮̞͓͈̩̮́d̴͎̜̲̤̳̐̍̆̅́̂́͑ö̸̡̻̙͈̤͈̮̞́̎̽̽́̀̃͝͠t̶̻̮̀̈́̏̆t̶͖͍̭̐̕e̴̡̮͇̦͋̈́̏d̵̪̥͕̆͆̂ ̶͈͠t̶̠͛h̵̏͜e last ‘t’ and crossed her… last ‘i’, what was this?

She blinked, reset herself, and went to check her memory banks.

Apparently, she’d lost the last six minutes, and instead of doing anything productive she had a handwritten list sitting on the table before her entitled 17 Step Plan That WILL DEFINITELYNL WORK SHUT UP to get N a dog.

She couldn’t help but laugh. The list, if you could even call it that, was pretty stupid.

1. find a dog
2. give it to N because he likes dogs
3. asdf
4. get married or smth idk I don’t make the rules

Five through eight were completely unintelligible; mostly just schmears of ink.

9. murder the guy in charge of dead so the dog stays immortal forever
10. go to hell and rescue all the cats from the dead guy (that’s dead now) and use the cats to lure more dogs for N
11. ADOPT THE CATS TOO?????

And then it just ended, as if the sheer awe she had in the revelation that she could possibly adopt the no-longer-dead cats had triggered her memories to restart.

She was going to frame this, holy crap.

After she crossed out the get married part, of course.

She took another moment to admire whatever the hell this was, then moved back to her task.

The work wasn’t going to do itself (wait, she already made that joke).

She wasn’t getting any younger here (drones don’t age, at least not like that).

Hm.

Whatever. Staple time.

Days Since Last Workplace Incident: 22 Days

Days Since Last Workplace Incident: 23 Days

“Hey V!” N called as he stumbled out of the pod, an eager grin on his face as he ran towards her, “you mind if I go hunting with you tonight? I uh… I kinda wanted to see your… style! Yeah,” nodding like he’d read his script perfectly (behind him, a hand came up to pinch at J’s faceplate).

Even though this was literally so insanely suspicious, it’s not like V could ever say no. So she just shook her head fondly and waved him on, grinning despite herself. N lit up like a ray of sun, jogging forward with a little cheer that V couldn’t help but return.

“Alright! Where’re we headed?” he asked once V looked ready.

To which she merely smirked, said, “keep up ‘n you’ll find out!” and blasted upward into the clouds, soaring off with N scrambling to follow (laughing all the while).

…

V landed a few minutes later at the top of some random skyscraper, perching on its edge while N landed gently behind her. He ran up to give her a light shove with a mock-offended gasp, which she returned easily with a chuckle. He settled in next to her, and the two turned to examine the streets far below. She made sure to keep one secondary trained on her friend, waiting for his inevitable break in composure once his patience ran out.

It was hilarious watching his silent battle intensify over the next couple minutes, going from watching quietly to rocking back and forth, drumming with his fingers, and glancing frantically around as he did his absolute best to suppress his stimming. 

Honestly, V was fighting just as hard to keep her stoic mask up.

Eventually N’s patience snapped, and without warning blurted out, “so what are we doing up here?” and then clapped a hand to his mouth like he’d spat something vulgar.

“We’re waiting for workers, dummy,” V answered, finally letting her mask fall with a breathless laugh, “we find somewhere public and wait for an idiot to come by. Nice and easy.”

N nodded sagely, “ohhhh that makes sense. I thought we were just sitting ‘cause.” He shifted a little, hesitant despite the casual air, then continued, “my strategy is to go flying around and look for specks. They aren’t really great at hiding, even though, you know, we’re kind of these big scary monsters to them.”

V tensed a little at that, but said nothing, and just hoped he hadn’t noticed.

But, like always, this was N.

Sweet and caring N, always so observant despite his goofy exterior.

He turned to face V, shifting so he sat side-straddle on the lip of the rooftop. His visor was the perfect picture of tender concern, and one hand reached over to take one of V’s, tugging gently to get her to turn, to look him in the eyes as he asked softly, “are you alright? We did a lot the other night, it… it kinda scared me that you didn’t react at all.”

V opened her mouth to respond but he cut her off, “no no, listen. Even I didn’t like that night. Even J didn’t like that night, and she’s always the ‘I-don’t-feel-anything-what’re-you-talking-about’ one.” He gave a half-hearted attempt at humor rattling off J's title, but it wasn’t much. Not as much as it should have been. “You’ve been the… the fragile one, sorry, and I know you don’t like that, and we don’t like seeing you get so upset either, but it’s… it’s almost scary seeing you feel nothing at all.”

His hand rose slightly, holding hers aloft before her shining visor until her entire field of view was their linked hands, held so tenderly, and his soft, kind, caring visage behind it.

“Please… just, talk to me?”

Gods… that hurt her heart.

Around the lump in her throat, V nodded. And tried.

“I… I don’t know what happened, there. It wasn’t, wasn’t like a shutdown, a full shutdown like I’ve done sometimes, like on the first night, I just- it wasn’t, it wasn’t anything. I don’t- I don’t know, really, okay? I…”

She sniffled, once.

“I wasn’t even dissociating, or… or anything else, it just, didn’t matter. It was whatever, I was doing it.” She attempted jazz hands with the one hand that was free. “I was, just, doing it, and, seriously, I’m fine. I still don’t… feel all that much, but it’s not in a bad way? I- yeah. I’m, I’m okay, I think.”

Neither said anything for a moment.

Then, slowly, cautiously, the hand that he held was let go.

V let it drop despondently down to her side, eyes hollowing slightly in despair at what felt like rejection.

But N wasn’t done, and as quickly as he could without being hasty he shuffled his way along the lip they sat on until he was right up next to V.

He took up her hand again, and grabbed the other for good measure, clasping hers between his, together between their chests.

His top hand left the pile, and gently nudged V’s head upwards, to meet his gaze.

Her heart stalled, for a moment, seeing the unequivocal love he gave so freely.

Then his hands- both of them- reached all the way around and tugged her into a hug.

Plain, pure, and simple. Yet it was the single greatest feeling V could ever remember to reach up around him to return it.

She felt fine, truly, she did.

That didn’t mean she would reject this comfort, or that it wasn’t needed for other reasons.

And if there were a few stray tears poking out from beneath her dusting of blush, well, shut up.

“Thanks,” and she meant it.

“No problem!” and his cheer knew no limits.

They pulled away after another minute, though their arms stayed up on each other's shoulders. Holding each other firmly in place, as if they each expected the other to suddenly fly away.

Eventually they let go, led by V- who was almost overwhelmed by fluster (how was this boy so perfect!?) - and the two turned back to the task at hand.

Neither especially wanted to, but, well, if V was going to insist she was fine (which she was), then they might as well act like it.

…

One of V’s hands found its way back into N’s, after a few minutes.

He didn’t say anything, but she thought his tail started wagging a bit faster.

…

It wouldn’t be quite right to say hunting was fun, after that, just because N was there, but it was certainly more enjoyable than it ever was on her own. After nearly half an hour of stealing glances at her friend, trying to contain her blush and frantically looking away as soon as she caught him looking at her, a worker finally appeared, and with great reluctance, the two got to work.

The worker they first spotted looked like it was going somewhere specific, so instead of killing them outright they followed at a distance. It was amazing how stealthy two winged death machines could be when the situation called for it.

They were led to a sturdy-looking cement building, low and squat against the surrounding skyscrapers, that the worker rushed up to. They glanced around frantically for a moment (never once thinking to look up), then knocked on the door a whole bunch. In one swift motion the door opened, the drone was yanked inside, and the door closed. 

V and N shared a glance. Not one filled with barely-disguised longing and affection, but one that said look at these idiots. They flew down, N kicked in the door, and the few workers inside met a quick end.

After that, they chose another skyscraper at random, and waited for their next target.

After maybe ten minutes, a group of workers appeared from cover to run across the street.

After those were taken care of, another skyscraper.

And so on.

…

When the two finally landed outside the Spire a few hours later, V’s core was left feeling considerably lighter. Sure, her face was a bit numb due to how long the blush ticks had been up on her visor (it’s not like N was doing better in that regard; his entire screen was a brilliant golden blush), but that was nothing. She got to spend time with her favorite person, and he seemed to enjoy her company too, which… was nice. Really nice.

So when it came time to drop his hand and go their separate ways until dawn forced them into the pod together, V found herself hesitating. She didn’t let go when N went to pull away, and it made them both stumble, almost fall over, really, but she didn’t let go.

He looked at her in question, and suddenly… V’s voice box seemed choked.

What could she say here?

Sorry about that, I don’t ever want to leave you again. I want to stay right here by your side until we’ve both rusted to dirt.

She smiled- or was it a grimace, laden with hollowed hope- and tried to stutter something in explanation, but nothing, not a sound, came.

But N seemed to understand, and his face softened. He stepped forward to draw V into a hug- it was perfect, as always- then pulled away with excitement written on his lips. “Alright, wait here,” he whispered excitedly, much to V’s confusion, then wheeled away with a flap of his wings.

That was odd.

And he’d taken his hand with him! Rude, she was holding that.

Before V could feel much more than mildly indignant, N returned with a gentle little swoop, alighting a few feet away with all his previous excitement gone and replaced with a nervous hesitation. He had a small box behind his back he was trying (and failing) to keep hidden, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet until he took a few steps forward, mouth opening in preparation to speak, but wincing backward before he could.

He whispered harshly at himself for a moment- V couldn’t quite hear what- until he straightened, a string of text appeared on his visor (Loading://AwkwardYetEndearingConfession.mp3), and stepped forward.

“So… V, I uh, heard this planet wide, toxic death storm is supposed to be especially inhospitable tomorrow night, and I… uh… I was wondering if you’d like to, find somewhere, and, uh, look at the stars? With… with me?”

He was almost cringing backward by the end of it, eyes winced shut against the possibility of rejection.

V, on the other hand, couldn’t breathe.

Not due to fear, or anything remotely similar, like she had grown so used to.

“Yes.”

But pure, unbridled joy.

“Yes I would love to.”

“Oh, that’s alr- wait- yes?” N almost jumped in shock, then a massive, beaming smile of his own grew as he surged closer, “you mean it!?”

“Of course I mean it!” V was almost giddy, “there is literally nothing I would rather do.”

N’s tail was whipping furiously behind him as he surged forward to grab her in a twirling hug.

V was giggling madly, laughing along with her friend who she loved so dearly.

J was observing silently with an odd, contemplative look on her- “J WHEN DID YOU GET HERE!??”

N dropped V with a little shriek and twirled to face their boss, “hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Jaaaaaayyyyyyyyy…”

V righted herself with a jerk and did her best to smooth what little clothing she wore to look more presentable.

J looked at them a moment longer, then softened. Her visor tinted distinctly green as she smiled, “I suppose I can afford to give you two the night off tomorrow.” She shook her head, almost fondly, “you’ve been dancing around almost as long as we have, you might as well make something of it.”

N lit up like a christmas tree at the approval, but V… V caught on something, “wait what do you mean we?”

J blinked, and suddenly she was her standard yellow. “What?”

“You said we! You- like there’s another person here, and, like, what do you mean almost as long as we have what does that even mean?!” Had she remembered something? Remembered… Tessa?  

“Clearly you are imagining things,” J stated blandly, instantly dashing whatever hopes V may have had, “as far as I’m aware we are the only three here, and I certainly am not interested in either of you, so, if you please, I will ask that you don’t lose control of your mental faculties just because your crush asked you out on a date.”

V maybe bluescreened at that. N definitely did, collapsing in the snow, his little box falling beside him.

He asked her out on a date.

N asked V out. On a date.

And V said yes.

Chapter Text

Put simply, there were no words to describe how V felt.

To elaborate; every single one of the massive multilingual dictionaries she had built into her systems, plus every single movie she’d ever watched, plus every book or journal she’d ever read, and every second of song she’d ever heard, plus a million monkeys typewriter-ing away for a million years, all of that together couldn’t dream of coming close to describing how she felt that evening.

Her entire body was shivering from the anxious energy racing up and down and all over her central nervous system as she paced back and forth outside the pod, rambling in a mutter to herself (and maybe J, standing nearby. She didn’t seem to care though) as she frantically checked over every possible aspect of her appearance for any conceivable flaw.

Her cheeks hurt from how hard she’d been smiling, and it had taken so unbearably long last night- last morning? Yesterday? Whatever- to fall into sleep mode because of how excited she was for tonight. Her core was racing just at the thought of what stargazing might entail, if N would be doing anything special to look nice, if they’d get to cuddle up under the stars… maybe even get closer-

V shook that thought from her head the instant it arrived, nearly tumbling to the ground as her stride faltered. That was not her decision to make. It wasn’t fair to put any expectations on N, no matter how long V had longed for this. She wouldn’t even consider it until unless N were the one to initiate. Period.

She sighed, made sure the thought was well and truly banished, and resumed her pacing, letting J’s snickers at her nearly falling wash over her like the unimportant static it was.

One hand moved up to graze over her hair again- both marveling at how incredibly soft it was after being washed for the first time in months, and stressing over whether or not that one particular hair was supposed to be there- while the other was at her waist clenching a fist hard enough to crack her casing, each time giving a tiny sting once her regen kicked in.

(Yeah, okay, that last part was probably super unhealthy.)

Maybe she was overstating this whole thing. It was just a date!

…

A date with the boy she’d been in love with for almost as long as she’d been online.

The same boy who’d only known her for around two months, yet in that short time had somehow grown to like her- miserable, fragile, traumatized, broken - her, enough to offer a nice night out. Alone together. Watching the stars.

Did she mention she was a little freaked out?

There was a swell of static slowly rising up and over her head, gradually but inevitably choking her thought as her vision steadily fuzzed over with blackish pixels. V was so unbelievably happy, was the thing, the big thing that made the joke so frickin funny. She was so happy to be with N like this- even in the loose sense of “one date that technically wasn’t a date until J used the term” - after more than six years of yearning, but she couldn’t stop thinking that any second now one of the Elliotts was going to waltz into the Spire and shove a carving knife into her skull in punishment for ever daring to be anything more than an emotionless slave-

Suddenly there were arms reaching carefully around her, and V looked up with a little gasp to see two gentle yellow-green eyes before her own.

“Hey, you’re overthinking this,” J murmured into her ear as she gave a soft squeeze, “nothing bad is gonna happen.”

V let herself melt into the embrace, let her knot of anxieties lessen ever so slightly.

“We’ve got you lookin all nice and fancy, so no need to worry about that,” J listed off, as if she’d somehow heard all of V’s internal struggles, “if any human shows up I will shoot them, Corporate punishment be damned.” (That made her feel better, strangely.) “What else was there… oh yeah, and if you’re worried about being broken-” she paused to look V straight in the eye, making sure her point was heard, “bring that up with N and he’ll punch you for being mean to yourself.”

J looked pleased with the snort she got at that last comment, her visor briefly flicking a touch greener before returning to her usual yellow. Her features softened even further (all on her own) as she reached up to smooth V’s hair, trailing down then to straighten her jacket and lead her hands away by the wrists from where they were clenched.

“It is going to be fine,” she asserted, and this time V believed her. She let herself be led to where J had been resting a minute ago, and sat down to wait for N to finish getting ready.

…

It was strange, in a way, to have J be so supportive tonight. For as long as V could remember- both at the manor and here- J had always treated their “grossly inappropriate interpersonal relationship” with disdain and thinly veiled disgust, as if it were a contagious disease she desperately wanted to avoid (despite being just as “inappropriate” towards Tessa, much to the human’s hidden amusement).

Yet here she was. She’d helped V get cleaned up, she’d assuaged her worries, and now she was stubbornly keeping V’s hands from absentmindedly ripping her body to shreds as she continued to stress.

It was… nice.

…

Finally, the two were alerted to the incoming sound of wings, and only a few moments later N landed gently outside the Spire. He’d forgone his usual meteor-like impact, which meant V got a good view as he strolled closer.

His hair was clean and shining beneath his cap, his visor seemed to glint a touch brighter than it usually did, and even his overcoat was perfectly grime-free for the first time since landing on this planet. The way he looked… it felt stupid to admit, but little robotic butterflies were fluttering in V’s stomach. The additional knowledge that he put in this much effort for her, using what limited supplies were available, only added to that sensation.

N jogged the last few yards and came to a stop before them, wearing a vaguely sheepish grin as he hastily explained, “sorry I’m so late! I was finishing up and then I lost something and had to go get it which meant I had to fly all back and forth and-” he cut off with a wave, “it’s not important. What is important…”

He stepped forward to V, and offered his hand, “may I?”

V didn’t hesitate. She reached over and linked her hand in his, and answered simply, with all the joy in the world, “I’d love to.”

N led V upward through the open top of the Spire, then out into the city’s sprawling remains. He stuck close to the ground as he traced a winding path through the buildings, keeping his speed slow and steady so V could follow without issue.

He’d explained later last night- after he’d recovered from blue screening- that when he said the storms would be especially inhospitable tonight, he meant they would be especially bad somewhere else, leaving their area relatively clear. It had been hard to tell in the quiet of the half-finished Spire, but now that they were flying it was obvious; the air was calm and the clouds that were high in the sky (instead of low to the ground) were like wisps instead of thick layers of smog.

Eventually the two arrived at an open plaza, situated as an open space between a mess of especially overbearing skyscrapers. The cement flooring was totally covered by the ever-present snow, but there was a fountain at the center that had been cleared for the most part. N landed off to one side with V following a moment later.

He led her towards the fountain where he pulled a few items from its emptied basin. First was a large wicker basket, which had several smaller objects put inside. He was being secretive (in that “I don’t want to be rude” kind of way), so V didn’t look too close. She did give him a look, however, and he answered the unspoken question excitedly, “I thought we could have a picnic!”

That sounded wonderful, and V made sure he knew it.

He was bashful, as always, but continued with a smile, “not right here though! We’ve got a bit more flying to do,” and jumped into a hover to lead V back into the sky.

…

This second leg was shorter, and after only a minute or so N began to climb. He led a twirling path up and around a massive building near the edge of the city, climbing upward and upward with the picnic basket tucked carefully against his chest.

Finally, he turned to alight gently on its roof. The middle had been cleared of both snow and asbestos, while around the powdered perimeter strands of fairy lights glimmered in a gentle white. Right in the center there was a dull red blanket laid out on the gravely top, weighted down by rocks (all of which were adorned with googly eyes; she knew those had been a good idea) and surrounded by small electric candles.

V landed slowly behind him, gazing in quiet wonder at what N had set up.

She stepped forward slowly while he busied himself off to the side- organizing the basket, it looked like- and sat down carefully on the blanket, hesitant as if the entire scene would suddenly wisp away like smoke.

It was rough beneath her fingertips. Warm, too.

She looked up, and through the horrible static that was her primary vision she could see a never ending canvas of brilliant shining lights, strung up all across the midnight sky. At least, that’s what she thought she saw. Her secondaries were useless here so her regular optics were left floundering, and most of what was in sight was little more than a horde of constantly overlapping blobs and astigmatism spikes.

But she supposed there was a beauty even in that.

If only she could truly see it.

“Soo…” N’s voice drew her from her reverie, “what d’you think?” He had finished his finagling in the corner and had gotten settled next to V while she was distracted, fidgeting with a small rectangular box. He sounded nervous, which was both utterly ridiculous (he was perfect, why would he be worried?) and oddly reassuring (at least she wasn’t the only one).

V took another moment to glance around, reaffirming the sights in her mind before turning to meet N’s hopeful gaze. “I love it,” she answered softly, her smile genuine and grateful, “it all looks amazing.” The part of her that was still a maid wanted to gush over all the little details- like the simple yet effective lighting, the clear use of space- but she tamped it down. For the most part, at least, “you were always great with atmosphere,” managed to slip out. It didn’t fully make sense, but whatever.

“Why thank you!” he chuckled in response, then leaned back so he was facing the sky.

V copied him after a moment, and they lay for a minute just looking at the darkened sky. Until N asked, carefully, almost probingly, “and how about the stars?”

“Well… they’re definitely pretty,” V answered slowly, unsure where he was going with this but also not wanting to cause any offence, “I can’t really see any on their own, but what I can see is still really nice.” She tried to think of anything extra to add, to prove she meant it (and was enjoying their time together), but nothing really came.

Instead of looking disheartened, N actually brightened at this, chirping, “I was hoping you’d say that!” as he perked upright to grab the box he’d been fidgeting with. V copied him again, lagging a moment just because she still didn’t know where N was going with all this. Luckily, he was all too happy to explain, “I have a present for you!”

He presented the box, and V took it curiously. His explanation wasn’t exactly informative, and the box itself wasn’t anything special; just a plain wooden case with a hinged lid. V had a momentary impulse to shake it like she was searching for Legos, but that might damage it so she refrained.

“I think I got the measurements right,” N added nervously, just before V could open it, “I don’t really… remember, taking them, y’know? But I’m pretty sure I got them right.”

Well now I’m curious, was the only thought that went through her head in the single second between processing that oddly resonant statement and creaking open the lid of the box.

It didn’t feel like an appropriate thought, that single second later. Not suitable for the gravity of the moment, the meaning.

Her core stuttered, a moment. Her breath was torn away.

Sitting inside, innocently on a little scrap of cloth, was a pair of wireframe glasses.

The metal bands were a bit beaten, there was a small crack in one lens, but they were beautiful all the same.

Her hand was trembling as she gently lifted them from the cloth, examining the gift closely. The lenses were big and round, framed by silvery steel with arms set perfectly to accommodate a worker’s head. Two tiny magnets were affixed to the ends of each arm, and one to the center of the bridge. They were so weak their pull could hardly be felt as V ran her thumb over. Perfect for keeping them on her face without causing any damage, she noted rather detachedly.

They looked just like the ones she’d worn at the manor. Identical to the pair N had once risked his life to find for her, all because he’d hated seeing her struggle. Even the magnetic anchors, inexpertly welded to the arms, were familiar.

He’d found them for her again.

She couldn’t stop staring at them, held close so the details were defined.

Lost in thought, not over what this meant or how to move forward from here, but stubbornly stuck on the simple notion that they existed.

It was at least another minute before N’s voice finally filtered into her audials. He sounded eager, excited, yet nervous and still cautious, as he prompted, “why don’t you try them on?”

V’s nod in return lagged a while, but she did as requested, acting more on autopilot than any sort of higher thought. For some inexplicable reason… she still couldn’t think. She was so stuck on that single, simple fact, logic that refused to resolve itself within her circuits, she couldn’t continue. It felt like a void to her heart; unrelenting in its destructive agony. It felt like hugging the sun; a bliss warmer than anything she’d ever known.

V fit the glasses onto her face.

V blinked once.

Twice.

And her sight was clear.

She could see.

She could see the smooth white casing of her fingers, and the blackened bearings between the joints.

She could see the rough reddish stitching of the blanket they sat on, all the strands woven into each other and all the fibers woven to form those strands.

She could see the city; the fifteen acres of broken glass, the darkened monuments, the relics of humanity’s hubris.

She could see the forests leading up to the mountains, their petrified woods shining darkly, and the shiny silvered snow capping the peaks.

She could see the flicker of the bulbs surrounding them. The powder of the snow those bulbs sat in. The sway of the artificial candlelight.

She could see the stars.

She could see so much.

She couldn’t take her eyes off N.

…

“Wow…”

V wasn’t sure which one of them spoke until the brilliant golden blush on N’s face finally registered (clearly! Through her new glasses!!).

She couldn’t help herself, “wow yourself.”

They were staring into each other’s eyes like idiots, and honestly? V wouldn’t have it any other way.

She could see him. N.

N’s glimmering, golden eyes, bright and bold, widening ever so slightly the longer they looked. The haze of fluster dusting his cheeks that would have outshone the sun. His beautiful silvery hair, fluffed and tousled to perfection.

…

“You, uh, you look good- great! I mean,” N stammered eventually, eons later (or maybe just a minute), “are they… are they working for you?”

“…yeah,” V murmured belatedly, still enraptured by the world around her (by the boy in front of her). “Yeah they’re…” (Had N always been this pretty?) “They’re working great, I- thank you.”

It was so stupidly hard to shake off her stupor, but V managed in order to glance around once more, to absolutely affirm in her mind the incredible nature of this gift as she did her best to form an adequate response, “they are amazing, N. Seriously, I can’t even… thank you so much.”

He turned bashful in an instant, waving away her gratitude with a warm, “daww, it was nothing! I’m just happy you like them!” as if this were any ordinary gift.

That hurt, almost, because this was not any ordinary gift. Put lightly, this beaten pair of glasses now resting on her face was probably the single greatest physical gift V had ever received. The only thing that could possibly beat it was being brought back to life by Tessa, that’s how serious she was.

She could see. That could not be understated. For the past two months she’d been soldiering along with static-fuzzed vision, only functioning as well as she had due to the weird multi-faceted viewpoints of her secondary optics that caused a headache if she stared through them for too long. PLUS, she would be able to read books now, and that alone was top five material.

“Don’t you dare,” was what V settled with, though she probably sounded angrier than intended, “I absolutely love them and I absolutely love you for finding them.” Her core whirred a touch faster at that accidental admission, only getting worse with N’s returning fluster. “This is… easily the nicest thing anyone’s ever done, I can’t even begin to say thank you, I don’t… I couldn’t possibly…” but then a thought occurred.

Maybe she could.

Without thinking further, without giving herself time to realize why this was a terrible idea that went against the firm boundary she’d established long before tonight, V lunged forward.

And the next thing she knew… they were kissing.

N startled at first, but it barely took an instant for him to melt into the embrace.

He was warm, but cool. Electrifying, but grounding in the same way.

It was awkward, sure. Neither of them knew what they were doing. But it worked. It worked perfectly.

Nothing existed but them two for a long, wonderful moment.

…

And then reality came crashing in.

Horrible, twisted reality.

Really, it was V who did the crashing, though her crash was more like being shoved backwards to the floor by her own hands as she suddenly realized what the hell she’d just done and jerked away from N as a result of her panic.

Her core was screaming at her. It felt like accusation. That wasn’t your decision to make, and the like.

“Biscuits…” N mumbled, looking a little dazed.

V didn’t dare speak. If she opened her mouth she wasn’t sure what kind of nonsense she would spew, so she kept herself closed and waited with bated breath for the verdict that was sure to come.

But it never did. “I’m glad- I guess that means you like them?” N asked shakily around his goofy, awestruck smile, head held in both hands now as he gave a scorching soul-searching look towards the unanswering blanket beneath them.

What else could V do?

“Yeah… I really do,” she answered quietly. “They’re amazing.”

At least she could take one last good look at him before N came to his senses.

But again, he just nodded, said, “I’m really glad you like them,” and continued grinning to himself like an (adorable) idiot, fingers tapping idly on his face.

By now V was concerned for more than herself, “N are you okay?” 

“Hm? Yeah, I’m great,” he answered absentmindedly, giving a nervous little giggle, “I kinda think the girl I’ve had a crush on for pretty much my whole life likes me back and I really don’t know what to do with that information.”

The weight in V’s chest did something funky. It wasn’t crushing like it had been only a second ago, when she thought she’d ruined one of the few good things on this planet simply because she couldn’t think of a better reaction than freaking kissing him. It was lighter, actually. And warm too, because oh my gods he actually liked her.  

“Oh,” was all she managed, breathless and utterly bewildered, but enraptured all the same.

“I uh, I wasn’t really expecting that, the k- the kiss” N stuttered, sounding both giddy and utterly terrified (which matched V perfectly, to be honest), “but I… I really liked it?”

Distantly, very distantly, V noticed her core whirring at about half the speed of light.

“I… I liked it too…”

“Haha, um… neat!”

V snorted. Hard. And soon N was laughing along with her as all the tension of the night- both before and after the kiss (she’d kissed him. V was not ready to process that) - snapped like strings and bled away with their shaking and breathless laughter. Both fueled each other more and more the longer it went on until breathing almost hurt and V wasn’t sure what they were even laughing about anymore.

It was amazing. It felt right to be laying on her back on this super freaking crappy blanket (seriously where did he find this!? It looked cute but it sucked to lay on) with N sitting next to her as they both giggled their hearts out over what was really such a stupid misunderstanding in hindsight.

Eventually their giggles died down and they were able to look each other in the eyes with a straight face. For about two seconds before someone snorted again and the illusion of composure basically just shattered. It was great.

Eventually those giggles died down, and this time they made sure of it before moving on.

N helped her sit up and the two shifted into more comfortable positions (so V wasn’t sprawled on the floor and N wasn’t crouched awkwardly in front of her), which ended up being the two sitting side by side on the blanket. It only took a second for V to slowly, carefully, lean over to rest her head on N’s shoulder.

He just smiled, so bright and cheerful it outshone the glaring moon by far, something V could never hope to match but she still did her best to return it anyway because he deserved it and- hell, she deserved it too. It made her happy to smile like that at the one she loved (the one who loved her back), so that’s what she did.

And together, the two turned to watch the stars.

The stars, the night sky, they were really pretty now that V could actually see them.

Gone were the vaguely bluish blobs overlapping with countless other vaguely colorful blobs, gone were the massive shining spikes of astigmatism she’d get if she squinted, and gone was the massive unending white schmear that was either the moon or the gas giant that loved to overshadow everything else with its stupid blinding light.

What was left was absolutely stunning.

Countless pinpricks of light, so ridiculously tiny and so ridiculously plentiful. There were so many! If every one were given a name V’s internal storage would have ran dry in an instant, and every single star up there was somehow different from all the others; either with color variance so slight they almost looked the same, or size where some seemed huge and far while others were tiny and near, and some even seemed to be shaped! 

Never before had V seen such a spectacle. On Earth the smog had been so thick it nearly reached outer space, and here the storms had covered the skies at all times. But now? It was incredible. It was insane how much she’d been missing.

There weren’t only stars, was the thing. There was so much more up there, hung in that vast inverted abyss.

Massive shining clouds of… something, she didn’t know, but it was awesome, and giant streaks of something else that looked just as incredible. Some of the dots were moving, leaving long trails of tiny beads of space dust, and some of them would blink to a different position every time her view shifted. So much to see, and all of it… she didn’t have words.

(All of it paled in comparison to the boy sitting beside her, but V kept that observation to herself.)

Neither of them knew any of the native constellations (or even if the humans had been here long enough to make any before being exploded out of existence), so they had fun making up their own.

The first they found was the Little Dipper Jr, because it was a classic and of course there should be one visible from every planet.

The second was a massive spider web, and the third was some kind of gecko that N insisted was there but V could only see if she really really squinted. The dots he pointed out mostly looked like a duck, and there wasn’t a ton of overlap between the two animals, so maybe he was just crazy.

They found a whole bunch more, but the best part was always coming up with convoluted backstories to justify their discoveries. None of them were… good, at all, and V would probably erupt into a pillar of embarrassed flames should anyone but N hear them, but it was still fun.

Gradually as they sat, V shifted, little bits at a time so as to avoid arousing suspicion. Before too long, she had moved from sitting next to N to being nestled in his lap. He clearly noticed (obviously), but he was a good sport and let her think she was being subtle, even as he clutched her close with one arm while the other described a flurry of lights he insisted was an armchair with a laser cannon. (He called that one Harold’s Wife. V had no clue why that was what he went with, but she couldn't deny it felt fitting.)

They went on like this for at least an hour, both of them frantically pointing out what was probably a line of stars and desperately ascribing it meaning before the other could choke on their laughter and / or find some flaw in their thesis that they’d point out with gleeful spite, making the designator have to rethink their entire life philosophy (and also their constellation choices). 

N was the more creative of the two, so it usually ended up being him describing something and making a story and name for it, then V pointing out through her giggles that wait, if it were a scorpion wouldn’t it have a tail? Where’s its tail? And then N would have to find a string that looked like a tail, but by then V was ready with and if it’s good then why is it snapping at that poor defenseless baby kitten right there? And N would promptly swear vengeance on the fictional scorpion he’d invented.

It was great.

…

Suddenly, a short while after the moon had fully risen (the gas giant was hidden tonight), N remembered he had planned a picnic.

Remembered was maybe too weak a word, as what really happened was N cut off mid-sentence to jerk upright, throwing V out of his lap without so much as a word, and rushed over to where he’d stashed the basket earlier to grab it, only to realize what he’d done and apologize frantically as soon as he turned back with the basket in his hands.

V was cackling by that point, obviously, but he still made sure she was alright before setting everything up.

He set up quickly, pulling a few items out one at a time and arranging them as if he were setting up Mistress Louisa’s afternoon tea. First two small tin cans, then two nice cups, then a teapot (so the analogy was complete), and finally a small platter covered in plastic wrap.

Overall it looked more like a tea party than a picnic, but V supposed that made sense. They didn’t really eat, so a picnic would be weird.

N gave a little “tada!” once he was finished, and V made sure to clap appropriately. N heard this, however, and took it a step further by standing up to take a few exaggerated bows, crowing, “thank you! Thank you! I’m here all night!” before plopping back down to the blanket. (V made sure to ramp up her applause, though it was difficult through her giggles.)

He motioned to the pair of cans and began to explain, “I know you’re still not super happy about drinking oil from the workers, and stuff,” (Understatement of the year.) “so I figured maybe it would be easier if it wasn’t from a worker! Maybe you’ll like it better if it’s just something to drink.”

Suddenly the setup made perfect sense. With it came an almost rosy feeling of warmth bubbling up inside V. First the glasses, now this?

But N wasn’t done with his showcase, and the warmth only continued to grow as he dramatically ripped the plastic covering off the platter to reveal an assortment of random computer pieces. “I found this the other night,” he explained, “I was watching a group for a while before… y’know… and they were, uh, eating? These? Or at least things like them, so I thought we could try it out.”

He finished his speech with a proud, beaming smile, and V could not help herself in returning it. But yet again (it was becoming annoying), she hadn’t the slightest idea of how to respond. Nothing seemed adequate, nothing got across the full weight of her feelings. “You are literally amazing,” was what came out, very much without conscious input, “this is just… incredible.”

N immediately turned into a blushing, bashful mess and tried his best to deny it, to say it was nothing, but V wouldn’t let him. “You didn’t need to go this far, N,” she insisted, doing her absolute best to inject as much meaning as she could, “and the fact that you did? I can’t even describe it, it’s… it’s really nice.” She ended in a mumble, overtaken by fluster once again.

Thanks to her new glasses (she still wasn’t over that), V got a perfect view of every single pixel on N’s screen lighting up in a brilliant golden blush as he smiled so bright the stars looked dim.

They just looked at each other for a minute, an invisible feedback loop of what felt like love echoing back and forth the longer it went on.

N was the one to finally break away, violently clearing his throat as he attempted to regain composure. He motioned to the tea that he had yet to pour, asked, “shall we?” and started getting it ready.

He served with all the grace a butler should, and soon there were two cups full of chilled oil sitting at the ready and a plate of computer bits artfully arranged for them to try. A masterful tea party indeed. (Of course he knew how to throw one, considering how much Cyn loved them.)

The ‘tea’ was actually quite good. The addiction protocols that had been the bane of V’s life for so long all seemed to be having trouble deciding if they needed to activate or not, and the midpoint ended up being that the oil was somewhat tasty without any of that disgusting compulsion trying to drown her. So that was nice, and N’s hypothesis was proven correct.

She was a little more hesitant to try the physical snacks- sure, they’d always had that ability, but it had never come up and it just felt weird- but after picking a microchip off one of the circuit boards and tentatively placing it in her mouth she had to admit it was actually pretty decent.

They had fun sampling everything after that, since N admitted he hadn’t tried anything beforehand and was just as curious as V.

The microchips were crunchy, and gave a small zap when punctured.

The circuit boards were like a mushy amalgamation of the chips, providing both the crunchy zap and the sensation of wet resin.

The wires were chewy and coppery (like blood), which really shouldn’t have been a surprise considering they were copper wires (they were on a planet named Copper-9. Why was it surprising that copper existed here?). The plastic insulation served almost like a wrapping, and the added rubbery texture was surprisingly pleasant.

The last items to try were several multicolored LED lights, which V thought tasted like radioactive cantaloupe, though she couldn’t exactly be sure (having never tasted cantaloupe). Funnily enough, N thought they tasted like hell itself, and had to excuse himself to go spit out as much of the gallium as he could. That was a good laugh (plus it left more for V).

And with that, the tea party concluded.

They got everything cleaned up, packed away, and ready should it ever be needed again.

They turned back to the stars.

Their ‘Official Stargazing Position’ was becoming a reality the long they lay there. Both lying on their backs, with V nestled in N’s lap, laying more on top of him than not, and held tight against his chest by one arm with the other doing… whatever it was doing, pointing up at the sky.

They’d cuddled a lot since they appeared on this planet- nearly every morning, in fact- but this was… different. More intimate. Just the two of them, resting quietly in the night.

Neither were putting much effort into finding new constellations this time around; both were content to bask in each other’s presence.

It was nice.

It was really nice.

V could feel herself drifting the longer she rested in N’s arms, snuggled up against his beautiful warmth. The only reason she was still bothering to hold onto consciousness was so N wouldn’t be left without company. That would probably be rude.

… Then again, she would be ecstatic if N were to fall asleep in her arms, even if it left her feeling a bit lonely. Hm.

Before she could deliberate much further- which probably would have put her to sleep regardless of the conclusion reached- N shook her gently awake, and asked softly, “is there anything else you want to do tonight? I don’t have anything else planned.”

There was nothing in the world she wanted right now. She had everything.

“Tonight’s already been perfect, I can’t think of anything to make it better.”

V’s eye-lights flickered and darkened, and she turned to nuzzle further into N’s chest. His hands let go for a moment while she got settled, then returned with a light chuckle to hold her close.

“Just wanna cuddle with you, if that’s alright.”

“Course that’s alright,” N murmured back. He shifted a moment beneath V, then, apparently in a comfier position, began rumbling faintly, his purrs echoing up to meet V (who practically went boneless because of it). “We can stay here as long as you like,” he finished.

“Till the sun murders us though.”

He snorted, “yep. As long as you like, so long as it doesn’t get us killed.”

“And all mangely and melty?”

He laughed again, “you’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”

“Mmm… nope.”

“Alrighty then.”

V pressed a sleepy kiss near the bottom of N’s visor, not really thinking about what she was doing as she did it, then curled up against his rumbling warmth, totally ignorant of the violent blush that had erupted across N’s screen.

And then she was gone. Simple as that.

The next time V woke up, she was back in the pod. Her sensors told her it was nearly noon (so she should be dead asleep), and both her friends were cuddled around her, just like always.

Well, not like always, she remembered with no small amount of joy.

She pressed another light kiss to the seam of N’s visor. He shifted just a touch, but didn’t wake. V thought she noticed a tiny smile creeping across his sleeping face, but that may have been wishful thinking.

Either way, it was enough.

It was already more than she’d ever dared to dream.

Chapter Text

“Okay, so, it’s about a magic ring, given to… an heir… who has to destroy all evil on a magic quest?”

“Yep.”

“So then… what happens next?”

“They walk. And walk and walk and walk and walk. Heaps of walking. Walking and talking.”

“…Huh.” N did not sound convinced, but that was okay. The Lord of the Rings was a massive undertaking for people who didn’t read regularly, and while N wasn’t bad at reading he wasn’t… great, either. Not that V would ever tell her boyfriend (holy fricking crap she was not over that fact) that.

“Yeah, in theory it’s really cool, but when you look at it closer it usually seems more boring than exciting,” V agreed, keeping her smile tucked behind the book in her hands (The Fellowship of the Ring, of course), “it’s only when you really get into it, and, pay attention and stuff. Then it gets cool again.” The subtle magic, the unending worldbuilding, the noble heroes… the knowledge that everything would work out in the end, despite all the impossibility.

N’s gaze (which had been glazing slightly) snapped back into focus so he could deliver a quick salute as he chirped, “I will take your word for it!” and turned back to his own book (101 Dog Breeds; The comprehensive visual guide to dogs!).

V snickered, but followed his lead, adjusting her glasses (she had glasses!!) so they were back on the nonexistent bridge of her nonexistent nose, and resumed reading. She was at the point where the hobbits met Tom Bombadil for the first time, so nearly all of her processing power had to be dedicated to deciphering what the hell was this guy saying if she wanted the passage to make any sense.

The two of them were hanging out in the library tonight, a rare occurrence only given after nearly two weeks of grueling quotas. They weren't even official quotas, J simply “realized” that they had been “slacking off” far too often- their date (they’d gone on a date) being the final straw- and decided to double the required nightly numbers as a result. Just for the heck of it. This was likely to continue tomorrow night, but not even J at her worst was so heartless as to deny them JCJenson Day (the only federal holiday surviving into deep space).

V was sitting in a comfy airchair, one leg crossed over the other, glasses perched on her face, and a thick paperback propped up in her lap. N was right next to her, sitting slightly lower on a beanbag leaned up against V’s chair. Whenever Tolkien’s prose was too much for her (every other minute), she would turn just a degree or two to watch N read his dog book. He always caught her gaze through his secondaries and would usually read a few lines aloud until she turned away again.

(For some reason… it was like she already knew this book inside and out. The pictures were new… but the words, the way N spoke them… it was familiar. She could recite each page by memory before ever seeing them. She tried to ignore this.)

It was peaceful, sitting there with him, and almost domestic, even. Like they were an old married couple resting by the fireplace, instead of two teenagers (ish) that had kissed once or twice.

… And V’s face was on fire. Again.

Every single time she even vaguely recalled the fact that they were dating… boyfriend and girlfriend… she was going to explode… her entire visor vanished behind a burning lemony blush, even after having more than a week to get used to it, and the accompanying freedom of affections.

She tried her best to focus on Bombadil’s nonsense again, but it was like trying to not think of a pink elephant. Except the elephant wasn’t pink, it was gold. And it was really cute. And sitting right next to her. And-

(J would be snickering “whipped” under her breath at this point.)

(Like she had room to talk.)

…

She watched N read for a moment instead. He saw her glance over and near-seamlessly switched from mouthing silently to reading aloud, “commonly kept, this breed is known for its friendly, intelligent temperament, and soft golden coat.” He looked so genuinely delighted with this newfound knowledge, even as V felt like she was about to throw up.

N turned the page and continued, “golden retrievers are also known for having gentle mouths. Aww, that’s why they’re good with kids!”

V glanced away, shaken for reasons she couldn’t comprehend. N just continued reading, silently again and hopefully oblivious to the inexplicable nausea bubbling up inside V’s throat.

Just focus on Bombadil, come on. She liked this bit, it was nice seeing them get a moment of respite.

…

Why couldn’t she?

Eventually V did get back to reading.

Then a short while later, she was abruptly and very rudely knocked out of any sense of coherence by a fricking cannonball or something slamming into her leg, snapping it neatly in half at the knee with a horrific crunch before rolling gently to a stop by a wall.

V didn’t shriek, exactly, nor give any sort of anguished howl. Just sort of… gasped, in a choked, wheezing way, as her entire world flashed white with pain. She maybe heard N yell something as she fell from her chair, clutching at the broken leg like it would help, but she wasn’t exactly aware at the moment.

The sharp agony of cracked plates and severed lines was replaced with a roaring burn as her leg was melted and molded back into formation.

Her vision and awareness slowly faded in as the burn slowly died away, until by the time her leg was left sitting perfectly intact her mind had returned enough to see N standing over her protectively (like an angel), his wings flared out into a shield behind him in preparation for an incoming second strike.

But none ever came.

Eventually V’s breathing evened out, and a minute or so later N finally relaxed his pose. He still kept his wings out and ready to shoot into position at a moment’s notice, but they weren’t nearly as tense.

A few more minutes passed without further incident.

All the tension dropped from N’s body with a heaving sigh, and he held out a hand to help V stand up.

“You good?” was all he asked.

“Yeah,” her response was shaky, but it was the truth. She was running a good bit warmer than she would have liked, thanks to her oil being eaten up by such a large injury, but it wouldn’t be much of an issue so long as nothing else happened. “What was that?”

V startled as a hand suddenly appeared inches from her screen, but it was only N, as he straightened her glasses for her.

She was blushing, again, but she could see, so. There was the benefit of being able to tell the difference between an actual cannonball, and the generic looking grey rock with a sheet of notebook paper wrapped around it. Because while the former would have made more sense, it was the latter that was sitting against the wall.

N was nice and went to grab the paper while V made sure nothing (besides her leg) had been broken in the crash. Funnily enough- in that it wasn’t actually funny, and instead somewhat enraging- not a single scratch could be found anywhere else. Not on the floor, not on any of the items scattered around. The only mark anywhere was the thin trail of grime the rock left as it rolled to where it was now. The rock, somehow, had sailed in at the perfect angle to murder her leg and nothing else. This was deliberate.

Even more so, as the paper wrapped around the rock had a note on it, if N’s comment of, “hey, there’s a note on here,” was anything to go by. He cleared his throat, then began to read aloud, “‘give us the corpo and no one gets hurt,’ and there’s an ‘else’ pointing to… oh! ‘And no one else gets hurt,’ that makes sense. Um, and it’s signed Nori and… Yeeva?”

“Yeva,” V corrected dryly. Suddenly, everything made sense. And suddenly, she didn’t care.

“Oh, yeah, that makes more sense,” N agreed. Then he realized V wasn’t close enough to be reading over his shoulder to correct him, but by the time he had spun to see how V knew she was stomping towards the entrance.

He scrambled after her, calling a suggestion far more cautious than she was feeling, but by then V was already outside.

Up on the rooftop opposite their building, directly across from the entrance, she could see two tiny heads peeking over the wall. One shining a blood-like red, and the other a vibrant magenta. Annoyingly- though this realization only really added fuel to the fire- neither seemed especially concerned to have angered not one but two murder drones at once. If anything, Nori looked bored.

She probably should have been at least a bit more reasonable here in her first response, shown at least some deference to the drones that had already proven themselves capable of killing her with relative ease, but somehow V knew in her core they simply wouldn’t. That reasoning wouldn’t hold up in court, but for her purposes tonight it was more than enough.

So, due to whatever strange indignance lingered from being injured in such a stupid manner, V’s first words were an incensed shout of, “you broke my fricking leg!”

N was next to her by now, following her gaze and her shout over to the other roof to see the two heads poking up just as she had. He instantly tried shifting back into fight-mode, but V stopped him with a hand and a quick mutter, “just wait a second.”

The purple idiot showed exactly zero signs of self-preservation as she stood over the parapet to yell back, “you tried to kill us!!”

“You made it weird!” V retorted.

“You made it weird first! Freakin weirdly hot death machine! Your fault! So… shut up!”

They were the width of a street away, plus three floors of vertical distance, but V could very clearly hear the concrete scrape sfx as Yeva turned to give an absolutely dead-eyed stare to the back of Nori’s head, which the purple drone resolutely ignored.

She added, “BITE ME!” as a final parting call, then ducked back behind the parapet.

V didn’t bother saying that she had tried that, and the worker apparently thought it was hot. Which was disgusting on so many levels.

…

(N, of course, was entirely unaware of all this background information, and had been standing there awkwardly for the last minute or so.)

…

The next few minutes passed uneventfully; V stood there on the roof with her hands on her hips, fingers tapping her chassis in an irritated rhythm. N stood next to her, very confused and awkwardly positioned half in and half out of murder mode. And the two on yonder building were being stupid. Which was not a surprise.

They caught a few snippets of what sounded like arguing, but hardly any of it was clear, and what was clear was nonsensical. (The funniest was the single shriek of “APPLES” for some reason, followed by a loud crash.)

Finally, after long enough V was again regretting her lack of proper feet (she couldn’t tap impatiently!), there was a crimsony crackle near the edge of their roof, and then two workers spontaneously glitched into existence. Yeva immediately clapped a hand over the symbol flickering in her right eye before V could see it. It was nice that she cared.

It would be even nicer if they weren’t here, “the frick do you want?”

“Didn’t you read the note?” Nori challenged right back, “give us the corpo, like you said,” pointing to N, for, some reason, “we’ll get our answers, and then we’ll stop throwing rocks at you.”

“We’ve got more rocks,” she added, as if that would help with the decision making.

“This is N.” V retorted dryly, “J is the one with pigtails.”

Nori blinked. Slowly, and deliberately. Like the world wasn’t resolving properly.

Yeva facepalmed. Even slower, and just as deliberate.

…

N finally piped up, his voice wavering a little with obvious uncertainty, “um… who are you exactly? Do you know these drones, V? What are they talking about? Why-” Why aren’t we killing them? went unsaid, but V heard it clearly.

V let out a long groan. Great! Now she had to explain this!

“You remember a while ago I said ‘if you see a purple or red worker do not engage’?”

It took a moment, but N nodded ‘yes’ once the memory appeared to him.

V sighed, and motioned to the two that were still smugly standing there, “yep. These are the idiots. Purple is Nori, red is Yeva.”

“Wow thank you for the rousing endorsement,” Nori snarked, “I’m so glad our time together meant that much to you.” She seemed… legitimately annoyed, for once, hidden beneath her usual belligerence. “As for what we want,” she turned to answer N, “all we want is to figure out why the freak are you freaks murdering the planet!?!”

“Yeah, she also can’t swear.”

In what was probably the first intelligent decision she’d made that night, Nori did not immediately lunge forward to smack V. Mostly because Yeva pulled her back, and N was still standing protectively between them, but, still. Good on her for not killing herself.

While those two were distracted, arguing with each other over the merits of letting Nori get a bit of revenge, N stage whispered to V, “why can’t we kill them?”

“I mean, you saw the red one teleport, right? And I’m pretty sure Purple has telekinesis or something.”

“No we both have telekinesis,” Nori added helpfully, not at all caring that this had been a private conversation before she butted in, “that’s like, the one thing every host can do. Could do,” she corrected herself with a smirk, “considering they’re all freakin dead now.”

She looked far too proud of this fact. It gave the impression that she was at least somewhat responsible.

“Anyway yeah, we’re here to find out Once And For All WHY ARE YOU KILLING EVERYONE!?? And this time we’re not leaving till we get answers!!” She even struck a pose as she proclaimed this, one foot stomped forward and the opposite fist held skyward.

V pulled out a gun and shot her.

Nori waved the bullet away like it was nothing, sending it flying off into the distance to shatter a random window. “Rude.”

“If I get J to come here and answer your questions will you leave us alone!?”

“Sure, why not.”

V shot her again. And a couple more times, just for good measure.

“Rude.”

[User] to [ JIF-19211822922151815622159419-JE ]

========== 21 Minutes Ago ==========

User - there’s 2 workers hanging out with us at the library can you please come kill them for us? They want answers on why we’re killing everyone and they refuse to die no matter what we do. Both can deflect bullets like it’s nothing (weird telekenisis powers) but maybe it would work if you’re sneaky

User - we aren’t in danger or anything, they’re just really annoying. You also aren’t required to help, but it would make me feel better

User - there’s a good chance they’ll try to kidnap you for answers if they survive though, sorry

=========== Now ===========

User - oh and if you break anything i will break your legs :)

For lack of better options, N and V invited the two workers inside. Maybe it was their manor training that bade them be polite, or maybe they were just being stupid. Either way, soon the four of them were sitting inside watching Goncharov. The good version, mind you, not the crappy rerelease. Or, robo-god forbid, the even crappier re-rerelease.

Nori was incredibly uninterested, and was only really being polite (her version of polite, at least) because Yeva had practically begged her to sit down and watch with them.

Yeva was glued to the screen. Watching the typically taciturn worker flick a switch to being an excited kid once the film was suggested had been fascinating (and oddly adorable). She sat right in front of the budget tv they’d picked up however long ago, silently mouthing along with all that was said and cracking a smile every time even a word of Russian was spoken.

N was torn. His attention seemed to be split between three or four different tasks: keeping one eye on the workers to make sure they weren’t causing any problems, watching the movie itself (despite being so far from his usual interests, N actually quite liked this one), and discussing with V what was happening. She’d messaged him right after she told J to get over here, and, thankfully, he had both V and J’s IDs on hand. J only had N’s, strangely, so he was relaying all her status updates.

Which led to V.

V was tired.

She’d gone back to reading as soon as the others settled down… okay, no, fine, she’d been pretending to read. She wasn’t making any real progress. Most of her mental processes were fighting with each other over the strange feelings this chance meeting was bringing. We want more friends, said one voice, and these two have already said they’re willing. Another, on the other hand, was yelling, but they need to die! That’s why we called J! And a third was in between, a fourth was thinking some vaguely inappropriate thoughts about N, and a distant and dim fifth was quietly asking, can we just read the book? We were at a good part.

It was not especially productive for her.

…

[ NAT-19211412978209143118141205-ZV ] to [User]

Nat… - j says shes almost here

…

A woman got shot on screen. She’d been tagging along with the main villain, and had just been betrayed. She mumbled out her last weary words, “I thought you were my friend,” and slumped to the ground with a ruby red splotch of blood leaking from the wound near her heart.

“Does anyone else feel like that’s supposed to be foreshadowing?” Nori asked randomly, of no one in particular. 

A sword snuck out from beneath a floorboard and shot upward to impale itself up through where Nori’s rib cage would be, missing her core by scant inches.

She just leaned down to look at the tip protruding from her sternum, and remarked casually, “oh freak, guess it was,” like she was regarding the weather.

Absolute silence reigned for a painful second.

V bit back a sigh as she set her book down on a table. It wouldn’t do to have it get wrecked in whatever came next.

Then everything moved, all at once.

N was first, jolting forward with his own hand replacing itself with a smallish blade that he plunged down through Nori’s skull, piercing her visor but again missing her core only due to a last-second jerk.

J had already been moving; the sword that was poking through the floorboards retracted and vanished, reappearing a split second later to jab back upward towards Yeva.

Yeva was fastest, pushing off from her seat with one hand to narrowly avoid the second strike while the other hand flung up towards N and V with that damned symbol already appeared in her palm, clearly not meant to do anything more than disable the two.

V got knocked offline the instant said symbol registered through her visual centers. So that was great. She didn’t even get to see if it hurt N too.

…

The recursion cascade thankfully didn’t last very long. Bea wrangled control after only a couple loops and shut the whole thing down with nothing more than an unamused emoticon as evidence. (She should really try to talk to Bea again. They’d spoken… twice? And both times she’d been rude. She should try to fix that.)

…

When V regained awareness, the first sensation to register into her mind was the absolute stillness of the air.

The second was that of a standard drone’s foot stamped against her chassis, pinning her limp body to the floor.

The third, once her optics booted up (her glasses thankfully still intact through her fall), was a hand held only a few inches from her screen, its fingers poised dramatically in the configuration they always held when that stupid symbol was about to appear.

V did not move, and tried to gather information without revealing her status as awake again. It probably didn’t help much, considering her eye-lights had already flashed open, but whatever. It wasn’t like Nori was looking at her anyway, she seemed entirely preoccupied with-

Wait… Nori?

She blinked, and yes. For once in the entirety of her existence online, her optics did not seem to be lying to her. That was Nori, alive and somehow fully intact, standing over her with teeth bared in threat to her friends standing a few feet away. (Yeva was chilling a few feet farther. She must have gotten bored and returned to watching Goncharov. No one saw any problem with this.)

Her audials crackled to life just in time to catch the tail end of Nori’s threat, “-no, or I’ll recursion this one till she cracks!”

Nori faltered then, something inscrutable flashing across her face as she muttered darkly, “and if that ain’t the name of the fic…” She shook it off and returned to threatening, “all I want is why are you here killing us?? That’s all I need! Tell me-” and then a screeching bleep that was probably meant to be dammit!

“Okay! Okay, how about we just- calm down,” N immediately took his role as mediator, hands held palms forward in deference as he backed away slightly, “J, can you just tell them what we know? It can’t do any harm, right?”

A look of greenish panic flashed across J’s screen, but she tamped it down quickly with a sickly snarl. “Fine,” she spat, “You want to know why we’re here? I’ll tell you why we’re here, we’re here because you, are all defective, corrupted toasters, and you need to be purged before JCJenson gets back to reclaim the planet. Is that good enough for you!?” she all but shrieked, clearly just as panicked as N but hiding it behind her anger, “is that what you wanted?!”

“Watch it J.” “WHAT THAT’S IT??” V and Nori said (yelled) over each other, one of them cold (that word would not be tolerated. Plus it got J to flinch out of that wrong whatever) and the other clearly infuriated (which was understandable, really).

Nori kept ranting, “you think you’re doing so much, and you think Jenson’s behind it!?” while V just rolled her eyes and voiced her own concerns, “I know they’re weird but are they really more corrupted than we are?”

They exchanged a glance once Nori ran out of steam. There was something in it, though V couldn’t quite parse what.

She caught N’s eye too, and it looked like he almost fainted from sheer relief. A thin, watery smile replaced the apprehensive frown as he realized firmly that V wasn’t lying there dead for no reason.

That was how it went for a minute. Everyone regarding everyone else (minus Yeva). Like a four person standoff at gunpoint, except three of them were on the same team and the fourth was somewhat bulletproof.

Wait, “hey wait a minute, how long have you been fighting in here!?”

Three pairs of eyes snapped to meet V’s, each holding a varying degree of shame.

“If there’s any damage…” V let the threat linger, but then realized there was no way there wasn’t any damage. At the very least, there was oil everywhere. “Outside, right now. Nori, get off me, come on.”

Shockingly, she listened, and the three of them allowed themselves to be herded towards the exit by V- who was fuming, there was so much oil- and marched outside to the point where they were nearly shoved off the edge of the building. The mess they’d made was awful, so V didn’t feel bad in the slightest as she told them in no uncertain terms, “you all figure this out out here, and try not to kill each other too much. I’m going to clean, and then me and Yeva, because apparently she’s the only one on this planet with any sense, are going to finish Goncharov. Have fun with that,” and left the three stunned drones to their own devices.

…

The shriek of “you’ll never take me alive!!” followed shortly by an explosive “YEET” from behind her indicated that ‘their own’ maybe weren’t the best devices to have left them all to. Oh well.

…

Gods there was oil all over the floor what the hell where did it even all come from…

V usually didn’t have much cause to be grateful for the maid programming she was built with- if anything, it was usually a curse- but tonight she very much was. Without that- plus all the bodies she’d cleaned up at the manor- the situation would have looked hopeless at best, and actively suicidal at worst. As is, all V did was give a heavy sigh, then grab a cloth rag and some Oxiclean SUPREME™ from the corner.

Luckily- and this was the only reason J and Nori were still intact (N was just as responsible, but c’mon. It was N. It’s not like V could ever punish him, he was too cute for that) - none of the spilled oil had soaked into anything V cared about. Sure, the beanbag Nori was sitting on was now ruined, but V hadn’t liked that one anyway. Gave her an excuse to throw it out.

The rest of the oil was on the floor, which was easy to scrub, with just a bit spattered onto the nearest table, which would be difficult to scrub, but not impossible.

…

“Do you have healing nanites like we do?” V asked idly after a few minutes, “I kinda missed what happened after Purple, y’know, got stabbed in the face.”

Yeva didn’t answer in words, but she gave a see-sawing hand, then a pinch, then a short chopping gesture.

“It’s something similar, but not nanites specifically?” V guessed.

Another see-sawing hand, but this time with a nod.

“And it’s only you two that have that, right?”

She winced this time, and grimaced, but nodded again.

“Alright.”

…

V realized shortly after their little conversation that if she kept cleaning she wouldn’t get to finish the movie with Yeva, so she abandoned that task and plopped down next to her… friend? Were they friends now? It didn’t quite feel like it, but also, her frame of reference was quite small.

Said frame (the friends she knew she had) was still outside, and not being especially friendly to her other maybe-friend. If the distant explosions and gunfire and yells of “BITE ME” were anything to go by.

The movie was nice though, and through Yeva’s gestures and expressions they kind of had an ongoing chat about what was happening on screen. V even seemed to be interpreting her correctly! (Most of the time!)

Eventually though, the movie came to a close, and once the credits had rolled and the dramatic after-credits scene had faded to black (on a cliffhanger that would never be resolved), Yeva bid her farewell. She gave a short (and entirely silent) promise to come by again with more Russian mafia movies to share, then vanished in a crimson crackle.

The unfortunate side effect was that V finally had no excuse to not be cleaning.

It really wasn’t fun.

It wasn’t awful either. Just monotonous, and somewhat ache inducing.

A while after Yeva left, N and J filed back into the library. Their heads held in shame and despair, and scorch marks and knife nicks lining their bodies.

N collapsed into an armchair as soon as he could, mumbling out an exhausted explanation of, “your friend’s really mean.” J didn’t manage even that much and face planted into a beanbag in the corner with a growling groan dying slowly in her throat.

V was not especially sympathetic, “do you understand why I said don’t engage?”

There were two groans of assent, neither happy to admit they’d been bested so thoroughly.

She went back to scrubbing.

…

Eventually N worked up the effort (and nerve) to ask, "could you… could you tell us about them? The purple one, Nori, right? acted like she knew you really well, and you… kinda acted like that too?"

“I would like an official report as well,” J added, her voice muffled by the felt of the beanbag, “you know we’re not allowed to fraternize with the workers.”

V let out a long sigh. Took a breath, and,

“It’s kind of a long story, but the gist of it is that I was hunting this really big group but when I got into the room the entire thing was empty because Yeva can teleport people for some stupid reason and that symbol they summon apparently triggers a traumatic flashback I’m not supposed to see that my administrator always tries to block but they can’t because my processor is so fricking broken it’s hilarious and that sent me into the most brutal recursion cascade I’ve ever seen, that’s what knocked me out earlier by the way, and when I woke up they saw this and tried getting my admin from me but I couldn’t find it so then they tried bonding because neither of them could leave in the sun either and I may or may not have trauma-dumped to a stranger… again… after trying to eat Purple which she thought was hot which was disgusting so I actually tried to kill them and they abandoned me and that was sad.”

Dead silence.

“And now apparently they think I’m their buddy and want to keep me… if not safe, then at least be kind of nice to me. I guess. Maybe.”

More silence.

V ignored it this time and went back to scrubbing. She was almost done, just this one stain that was being stubborn.

She put another squirt of Oxiclean SUPREME™ into her now pitch-black rag.

She wondered how bright this rag would burn, given that it had (miraculously) absorbed a decent quart of oil at least.

…

“I’m going to… keep this one off the record for you,” J mumbled out of nowhere. “You need more friends, and… I think tonight proved we cannot do anything about them specifically, so…” one of her hands kind of waved in a y’know motion before flopping back to the floor.

“What do you mean I need more friends?” V asked, more amused than indignant.

“You just do,” was all J had to say in return, and V couldn’t really find fault in that logic.

…

By the time the mess was finally cleaned (realistically, it only took an hour. Exhausting back and forth work, yes, but only an hour’s worth. She shouldn’t be complaining too much), the sun was getting to the point under the horizon where they should really be heading for shelter. It was just far enough of a flight back to the pod that they would usually be able to make it in time, but given the exhausted nature of her friends (V wasn’t certain J was still breathing at this point) it looked like the test run for her sun-proofed building was coming sooner than expected.

There was only one last step that involved, one that maybe would have saved them (her leg, specifically) a lot of grief tonight: the door.

She had one picked out a while ago and it had been sitting in the corner ever since, so with N’s help she ripped down the tarp and fit the heavy synth-wood slab into place. It was thick, and painted just as brightly as all the glass, so they should be good.

Or maybe all three of them were about to erupt into a fiery inferno, who knew.

With everything finished, and the night as a whole finally catching up to her, V grabbed The Fellowship of the Ring from where she’d set it earlier, and turned to her chair to finally get some late night (early morning?) reading done now there was peace.

N interrupted her just before she could sit down, however. Silently, without a word, he pressed a sleepy kiss to V’s forehead, then grabbed her by the waist and plopped himself into her chair, setting her down gently into his lap as he began to purr.

He fell asleep long before V’s blush died down.

And that was how she spent the last of the morning. Tucked safely in N’s sleeping arms (he seemed so protective, even while unconscious) with his head leaned forward to rest on her shoulder, like he was reading along with her. 

She made a surprisingly good amount of progress before she inevitably joined him and J.

All three of them woke up perfectly fine the next evening. No one died horribly, in any capacity. They weren’t even all that warm, apart from what oil they’d each lost from fighting and healing last night.

So the library was deemed a success.

Chapter Text

There was a drone stalking through the streets.

It bore a searing yellow X on its visor as it crunched through the powdery snow, its pegs stomping perhaps a touch harder than they needed simply due to buried spite. The wind ruffled through its bob of silvery hair, tousling the strands around a headband of noxious lemon-bright orbs built into its head, all five of which were scanning continuously, probing the surrounding landscape for any signs of artificial life besides itself.

It had wings, as well, something so utterly alien to a drone it once panicked over such a thing. But time had dulled that sense, and now the wings- long blades of hybrid-steel sharpened to atomic perfection- rested lightly behind its back, held close to form a shield but ready to lash out in an instant should even a rock tremble within sight.

There was nothing on this planet that could harm the drone, not while the sun’s detestable radiance was hidden beneath miles upon miles of solid, cragged earth. Yet it still walked cautiously, ever so carefully. Stalking silently through these desolate streets as it sought its prey.

Watching for movement, a flash of heat, or an over-large ruffle of air.

Waiting…

Searching…

Optics narrowed as it caught, on the edge of its aural perception, a shuffle, a noise.

From behind it, and to the left, slightly.

The drone gave no outward indication it had heard the sound, not even faltering in its steps as it continued forward. There was little in the way of cover here; all the buildings were crumbled inward until there was no space left to hide, so the drone the hunter heard would have little choice but to reveal itself in the quest for a better hiding spot.

All it needed… was patience. Something this drone had in spades.

Hm.

No patience required, apparently. This target was simply an idiot.

It raced from its cover far behind the hunter and began to sprint across the street to the other side. It must have thought itself safe, confident in the idea that the hunter’s eyes were faced away.

It never thought to look at its secondaries. Never realized the centered eye glaring over the drone’s back and through a carefully plotted gap in the shield of its wings. It witnessed the drone running in perfect clarity.

It spun with one clawed hand replacing itself with a rifle. Fired a single shot. And the drone was dead.

The hunter stalked over to where the cooling corpse lay, taking just as much care as it had with everything else tonight. Once it judged the scene was clear- and, most importantly, absolutely safe- it switched both claws and rifle back to its standard smooth-cased hands.

It yanked the head off the body and quickly drank from the neck, drawing all the ḑ̵̛̤ē̵͕͖l̷͚̬̀i̸͈͝ć̵̙̕i̴̩͊ǒ̸̪͍ư̶̲͔͍̽̃s̸̠͉̱̀̕ ṅ̶̡͙̦̭̤̙̗̝̩̭͖͋͐̂̈́̀͠ͅe̷͉̓̍̊̍͘ç̷̢̖̫̘̯̱͈̻̝̮̼̬̻̀͐͌̅́̍̓̊̓́͘͠ͅt̸͖̖̖̞̦̎̈́͝͠a̷̧̟͇͍̭̯̭̻̼̩͚̔̂̽̓̋̔̓͒̓̾̍͜ŗ̴͐̿̾̎̀̓͘ from inside.

When the head was empty, and its nanites were fueled, the drone cast the head aside like litter, and continued its hunt.

Exactly forty-six minutes later, after six corpses more had been added to its tally, the drone stopped.

And listened.

There was another sound on the edge of its perception. That by itself was not unusual, and it should not have caused the drone to falter like this, but it was the faint, lingering associations the drone held that made it still.

Its mentalities felt sluggish, suddenly. Overflowing through what its conscious should be into far more, like it was now a bowl attempting to contain the sea. The sound was not unfamiliar. It should have been. The drone had not heard such a thing tonight.

Under ordinary circumstances, it would dismiss the noise as an unimportant irritant; a droning buzz to backdrop its deadly waltz.

But it was getting louder.

Not only louder; closer.

As it grew nearer, it began to resolve itself firmly into į̷̱̻̖̄̇̅t̸̬̲͔̙̣̂͆̈́ś̷̝̞̟̮͚̳̌̔͗̆̓͠ memory.

That was…

Not its… it was… s̴̯̦̞̗̓͗̓̊̌̋̄̈ĥ̵̦̦̙̜̱̪̝̝̔̑e̵͇͊̏͒ 

Wings.

IT knew-

No

No

No

Not it.

She knew that sound. Of course she did.

Wings, idiot. Duh.

The drone V shook herself roughly, her thoughts slowly coming back to her now that she had an anchor point, and turned just in time to watch a speck appear through the distant fog. It was glowing yellow, obvious even from this distance, so it was clearly one of her squadmates.

She half wondered what they were doing this far out, but the thought didn’t really manage to stick. It didn’t make sense, sure. But also, it’s not like it affected her at all. Unless, hm, maybe she’d wandered into their territory without noticing? They weren’t really territorial, but they all had their preferred areas, and if one were intruding maybe they were coming by to say kindly please frick off.

The speck halted midair for a moment, then started growing directly bigger. Clearly, she’d been spotted, and it seemed whoever it was wanted to talk to her. So, the frick off conversation wasn’t off the table. Maybe she was intruding. It was hard to tell, given the haze settled over the last couple hours in her memory banks.