Chapter Text
J could not recall when it was the last time she had a moment all by herself, as the majority of her memory banks were mostly in line with the same monotonous tasks that she had done ever since the beginning of her service in the manor.
After all, why would a drone need time to think about things? It was counter productive by every means of the word and a simple waste of time. As it would get in the way of proper efficiency, a Worker Drone should output on a daily basis.
But of course, nothing is always that simple. Not in the grand scheme of things.
Not when it would have been possible to prevent something so avoidable and pathetic substantially earlier.
J could only wince as her visor was directed towards her left arm, it remained completely unresponsive to the Worker Drones demands as it remained stuck in place as every time J moved her left arm a spring of error would pop up onto her visor alongside a ping of pain causing her to have to hold the arm in place so the pain could be more bearable.
This malfunction could not have occurred at the worst time possible.
Just an hour before J’s scheduled time to organize the butlers and maids for a feast the masters demanded, this occurred, and she was supposed to be giving the worker drones new directives to ensure everything went as smoothly as always.
She could not do that while she was undergoing some destabilization.
The only person within this manor who was both willing and had the adequate experience on fixing drones with minimal costs was only her boss.
Tessa James Elliott.
But she wasn’t even available at this time, not even for the rest of the week. As the boss and V were at some school related doctrine for Tessa’s future career and university. Leaving practically no one to fix any of the drones should any scenario occur where Tessa would be there to give her assistance.
While J would chastise herself for not reporting the systematic issue, the first, she felt something off with her left arm instead of shrugging it off, that was not her primary concern. Not even the second.
It was her masters that she was terrified of coming across.
She knew that Mr. Elliott and Mrs. Elliot were looking for any probable cause to have any drones that the boss herself pulled from the dump, to go back into the dump without any hope of the drone to come back. And she felt a tingling sensation that they were darting their eyes specifically towards her whenever they got the chance.
She knew that event was of utmost importance to them, and a single mistake would result in a hasty deactivation and removal from the vicinity.
And that was the thing that made J lock in a sitting position alone in the library, it was the only place that could give some sense of clarity to the Worker Drone but gave little comfort to the timetable.
Her CPU was running on overdrive as it kept trying to search for any feasible solutions to fix her situation, regardless of how ludicrous they would become. And when no results came up to her dim-witted mind, she began to run short simulations on every possible outcome that could entail should she go out in the condition that she was in.
They almost all lead to the same conclusion.
At this point, J felt her fate was sealed, no matter how many times her circuits tried to tell her she was overestimating the situation’s severity; experience taught her that one malfunction meant being sent to the dump.
She didn’t want to go back. She didn’t want to be forgotten aga-
Her inner thoughts were suddenly snapped with a brush of a finger as her entire system froze as her audio sensors detected someone’s footsteps within the library.
Nobody was supposed to be here at this hour.
That single reminder made J tense by a remarkable amount, she didn’t know if the newcomer was a drone or human, but the result would be the same, if it was a human, they would report to the Elliotts without a second thought, if it was a Worker Drone, they would just report her out of spite.
And it certainly didn’t make that thought process any better when the footsteps started to come closer towards the aisle that J was at, and from each step it took, it felt like they somehow knew where she was.
As they were about to come across to where the head maid was located, J felt like she just wanted to internally shut down, as the dread itself was just soul sucking to even bear witness to.
Once the figure faced to look at her, J weakly looked up to see who was the one to call her out so she could face corporate punishment. . .
Except it was. . not particularly the one the Worker Drone was expecting to see. As the figure that was standing on the entrance of the isle was not a faceless human she serves or a nameless Worker Drone she passes by the daily.
No, it was the boss’s favorite butler and the drone that J loathed the most.
N.
. . .
. . .
If her day could get any worse.
And judging from the expression that N had plastered onto his visor, he certainly didn’t expect to run into J anytime soon. Evidently with a stammered tone that soon followed. “O-oh hey J! I-uh. .I did a-all the demands for the day.” He started sheepishly.
J almost had momentarily forgotten about the steady pain that was encompassed in her arm as she instinctively was about to make a snarl remark towards the Butler as she moved her right arm to point at him before wincing in pain and retracting the arm back to her locked in arm.
Whatever other sentence that the butler wanted to say died the moment the wince came out from J voice box, he narrowed his eyes in initial confusion before they hollowed as he saw her place her arm over the other one while appearing to be shaking as well.
She was in pain.
Without a second thought on the butler’s mind, N moved in as he crouched down beside her with genuine worry splattered all over his face. “J-J?, what happened?”
The head maid didn’t want to give an ounce of indication to the butler, more so as she didn’t want to receive help from this buffoon in particular, but at the current state that she was. She had to relent.
Whether she liked to or not,
“My arm-” He began to look for the most appropriate words to utter as even she wasn’t quite sure what the overall issue was at hand. “Something is stuck inside of my arm”
N slightly peaked forward towards J’s left arm, hearing a very low but audible creek as the arm was moved, causing J to unintentionally flinch once more, and a warning popped up onto the female’s visor, one that she didn’t notice but was immediately caught by N.
While the head maid had expected some kind of reaction. Whether it was a typical stutter tone or he finally decided to mock her, she was half expecting it to come up.
She wouldn’t have believed that Butler would’ve anything more than that.
“O-Oh. .okay um, that’s pretty bad.” Was all that N could admit while J rolled her eyes at the obvious. “Do you need me to take you to Tessa’s workshop?” He said, while offering his hand to J.
The head maid had to take a moment to process the words that were uttered from the Butler’s mouth. Believing that her internal audio sensor has been damaged or something similar to that. Only to be quickly dismissed when the butler still had his offered hand in front of her.
J could only narrow her eyes as they were directed towards the butler who kept on his innocent but oddly confident smile. Which if he had both of those attributes on his face, then he was already well aware that Tessa wasn’t her. . but he had a solution.
Without many other options on the table, she relented. “Fine. .”
With a cheerful smile he gently grabbed J’s other hand with gentle care so as to not cause J to cause more pain, as J was now on her feet, he wrapped J’s right arm and his neck as he began to move them out of the library.
J didn’t know what to feel at the current moment, not on her left arm as it still stings. But more on the prospect of having the bozo right next to her help her walk towards Tessa’s workshop, which wasn’t that far thankfully but the walk towards there just felt. Off.
The maid didn’t have much of an answer, and probably won’t get one any time soon as N opened the shallow doors of the bosses workshop. Which, to take note of, they had arrived at the station more sooner than she had anticipated.
N then gently walked J over to a familiar bench that J and the butler were familiar with, the same bench that Tessa brought them, V and Cyn in. All repaired and refurbished by the boss, given a second chance for their programming to continue on.
After moving some tools away from the bench, N settled J down on the bench while another warning popped up on the women’s visor, N eyes narrowed slightly as he pondered what to say next to his coworker before he opened his mouth again.
“Okay sooo, you said that you couldn’t move your arm at all?” He said wanting to clarify what J had stated earlier.
J just merely slowly shifted her head to look at the butler with the most deadpan expression she could ever muster.
Taking the hint almost instantly, he chuckled awkwardly. “R-Right my bad,” He stated as he then casually grabbed a wrench as he spun the tool around his hand for a bit before he looked at the head maid with an unsure smile. “Okay uh, I know this might sound a bit unethical, but. . could you shut down for a bit? F-Five minutes at most?” He said quickly, adding in the last words.
“What.” Was all that the head maid said and the aura around that single word caused N to flinch momentarily as he saw J glare at him.
Not wanting to make J get the wrong idea, N stuttered out. “W-Well. .Tessa did mention that you are m-more comfortable w-while you are having a maintenance check or being repaired.” He explained as he raised his hands in a surrender motion towards the head maid.
J paused for a moment as her CPU had to register what the logistical idiot had just said to her, and within the short amount of time that she got, a silent semblance of terror was only expressed in her functions as the weight of those words finally went through.
. . . .Tessa didn’t. .Did she?
. . .
Oh, for the love of Robo-god, she did tell him about that.
. . . .
. . . .
Well. . if he knew that about her then. . it would be mostly plausible that Tessa also showed him how to repair drones. After all, it would explain the tremendous amount of times that Tessa had brought him in the workshop, especially after being with the boss during V’s and Cyn’s repairs.
And if it doesn’t go well. .
She has some company. .
With a sigh. She gave a hesitant but affirmative nod towards the butler. The butler gave an attempted reassuring smile but J didn’t even acknowledge it as she slowly looked forward as she slowly shut down her system.
But a single worry still remains in her core as she feels her systems closing down, while she wasn’t one to believe it. But. .
Would. . . N secretly shut?-
>Systems Shutting Down<
. . .
Serial Designation 10X111001 couldn’t move.
It couldn’t speak.
It couldn’t deactivate its visor.
It had to keep watching it’s torture.
Seeing all the rain continuously pour down onto her screen.
All it could feel was its body being touched by the rain as it continued to stain its body.
The body that encompassed the drone was difficult to pinpoint, it felt like it had multiple limbs, and yet it felt like it was still missing parts of it.
It felt like its right arm was in the wrong place.
It felt like its left arm was on the other side of its body.
It felt its legs were bending in warded together.
It felt like its neck was stretched too thin.
It couldn’t move them, yet it felt them move as if they had a mind of its own.
The only thing it kept seeing was a flickering light,
A pair of neon yellow colored eyes that kept staring at the discarded AI.
The way its eyes looked at the object, it looked at the eyes as if they were a new foundation.
A foundation of the many corpses that surrounded 10X111001.
The yellow eyes tried to look appealing to the drone, trying to make it look at it as some form of vain hope.
It didn’t follow its desires.
Now it just sneered at the drone, looking at it as if it spoiled a gift of a lifetime.
It tried to look away.
But it couldn’t.
It had to watch as the eyes kept a direct sight at the drone, looking at it as a stain of a filled up graveyard.
Almost as if it was promising.
Promising that if it ever dared to leave.
It would come back.
And it would be ready for something.
Something that. . .that would be very unwelcoming for the future to come.
>System Restoration Complete<
>Systems Offline Duration: 4 Minutes<
>Welcome Back Worker Drone J :)<
J’s visor lit up as the surroundings became clear, the head maid was in the confines of the workshop she was in. She hadn’t moved a single muscle, there was no pain to be felt in the slightest.
Not a single ounce of pain.
She unintentionally moved her left arm, not even taking note that she had regained full control of the arm with it also not emitting pain, but just to make sure that it wasn’t attached to her body in a wrong manner.
“Oh, you’re awake!” A cheerful voice interrupted whatever further thoughts the maid had in mind as the familiar voice entered her sensors, causing her to look at N who was placing the wrench back in a toolbox.
The butler spoke as he closed the toolbox. “Yeah, it wasn’t much a big deal or anything, your servos on that arm simply jammed, a simple, quick fix and that was all.” He gently explained as she turned to face her with a smile on his face.
And he froze upon seeing the expression on her face.
Her eyes were hollowed out with stress lines being shown, alongside with digital tears gently falling down her visor. The look on her face just appeared to be that of blank stare as was devoid of any emotion.
N, knowing that something was not right in the slightest, rushed up to J and stood in front of her. “J-J? W-What’s wrong?”
The woman didn’t give a response, she just sat vacantly on the bench not even acknowledging that increasingly worrying of the butler, not even when the Butler placed a hand on her shoulder did she give out a reaction. She was so lost in whatever thoughts she was stuck in.
It was unknown how long she would have stayed in that state until a warm embrace enveloped her.
That’s when she finally snapped out of it.
At any point of time she would’ve just snapped at him, at just the pure audacity to even just snatch her into his arms. To even violate her personal space.
And yet.
For the first time as J could remember.
This was. .the most welcominging thing that anybody has done to her.
Almost melting into the embrace the drone gave her, did she recuperate the hug back to N, letting out a choking sob in the process as she sunk her head into N’s neck as she held him tight in the fear of letting him go.
She sensed that the male under her grasp tried to talk to her, but she didn’t respond back to the drone, just kept on her grip tight around him. And eventually the drone himself went quiet as he solely went on comforting the women in front of her.
As tears fell down the head maid’s visor as she continued to grip the butler’s uniform, the only thing that she could feel was the warmth of being wrapped around another drone, the warmth that the core was emitting.
She. . .
Didn’t want to let go. . .
Never again. .