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Chapter Text

“BEAU!!”

The little pill’s systems registered the shrill call and jolted him out of sleep mode, adrenaline programs already firing to get him running at high speed. His eyes booted online as spindly limbs burst from the bottom of his body, hands and legs grasping whatever surface was in reach to catapult him out of the bundle of blankets he was resting in.

A scream crashed through the endless dark hallways of the labs, sending his virtual heart into his stomach but giving him a better direction to follow: the lobby. The compact drone veered off the straight path to a nearby vent hidden by loose boxes and swapped his hands for screwdrivers, pulling the grate off and scuttling through his personal shortcut.

“HELP!!”

Beau relied on his metallic legs to scrape through the tunnel as he opted to pre-empt whatever threat could be through the approaching exit with twin smgs, speeding up with his eyes closed to circumvent the need to open the gate normally.

“AH’LL KILL YA!”

He burst through the vent into the open lobby, pointing his weapons at the first thing that moved: Alice struggling like a drone possessed against…N…just trying to hug her.

“BEAU!” his mother cried out, face lit up in a beaming orange blush, “HELP ME GIT THIS FREAK OFFA ME!”

Beau lowered his guns before switching them to regular hands to place on his ‘hips’. His mother almost looked offended by the deadpan he sent her way.

“THIS IS SERIOUS, BEAU!”

N made a kissy face and moved his face closer to Alice’s forehead, redoubling his attempted bearhug at the same time. The cannibal, caught between a rock and a smoochy place, pushed his head back with her hands—surrendering herself to the hug in compromise.

“HE’S TRYNA DO GROSS NONSENSE AGAIN!”

“Oh come on, honey! Let me give you a little kiss before I go to work!” The larger drone whined playfully, giggling at Alice’s flailing like she wasn’t foaming at the mouth. “Pleeeease, just a little one!”

To make the act seem more approachable N started humming the onomatopoeia for his incoming kiss, which only made Beau’s mother fight back harder. Her tail whipped around violently, scratching N’s coat and slicing cuts into him that only served to make him hold back giggles.

“THE HELL OFF ME YA PSYCHO! GIT! GIT!”

Her arms were eventually overpowered by his face, finally getting that coveted kiss on her forehead that pulled a screech from her and froze her body in place. He let her go right after and his mother scurried like a rat caught by an exterminator behind the lobby’s front counter: orange light blazing out of every open space behind her hiding spot. Her head peeked up soon after, with a shaky finger pointing at N.

“Y’ve had y-yer fun naw, g-git to work N.”

N gave her a salute before walking up to Beau, throwing a fist in front of him to bump—one he gleefully did, both of them waggling their fingers away while Beau played “explosion.mp3” to match—as he walked out to the far end of the lobby. Under the light of the moon from the opening to the surface he turned around and waved enthusiastically.

“Bye Honey! Bye little buddy!”

With goodbyes out the way, the yellow-colored drone unsheathed his wings and blasted off into the night.

As soon as his takeoff launch ended Alice lifted herself from her hiding spot, dusting herself off with the dredges of a blush still on her face: one that flared back up as she looked away from Beau’s pointed stare.

“Ah don’t know why he can’t be normal bout’ himself, always gotta be weird. Ah’m surprised y’aren’t scarred with that degenerate shit he keeps pullin’ in public.”

She shuddered at the memory of what happened not one minute ago.

“D-damn horndog…”

N landed in the same lobby 2 hours later, and despite the room being exactly the same—minus the company of two specific people—the place felt colder to him. The sounds of his 3 ‘guests’ behind him didn’t help: the new disassembly squad landing behind him quietly.

“So, this is the place?” One of the drones, L as he introduced himself as earlier, probed as he walked forward casually, hands in his open letterman jacket.  

N turned back and nodded at L and the rest of the squad.

“Yeah, there were so many workers down here, it’s a goldmine!”

The disassembly drone to the left of L, SD-I (stuck with the prefix to avoid confusion, he felt a little bad about that honestly), moved a curl out of the way of her visor and gave him a particularly suspicious look.

“So where’s your squad, N, was it?”

“Oh, haha yeah they…kinda got trapped?” he answered, scratching the back of his head sheepishly. At her continued squinting he continued, putting his index fingers together in embarrassment, “They told me to go get help since I wasn’t going to be enough to get them out, since I’m the useless and terrible one.”

The three looked at each other for a moment before nodding, and the one that hadn’t said anything yet, Serial Designation X, stepped forward and put his open hand between him and N.

“We’ll help you get your squad back, but in exchange all of the tin cans down here are ours for our report.”

N’s hand tightened a nearly imperceptible amount, but the extra bulbs on X’s head caught the motion; his stoic face lifting into a small smirk.

“Unless you’re fine getting your team back yourself, Mr. ‘useless and terrible’.”

Instead of rising to the bait, the ‘lone’ drone simply smiled back and shook the given hand before beckoning the squad into the dim halls.

“I can lead you guys to them,” he called out behind him to the other drones, “they aren’t far away.”

Something about the entire thing didn’t sit right with X, but he couldn’t tell what exactly. Someone with their team trapped should be a little more panicked, or at least worried, while N was nothing but sunshine and rainbows in comparison to the expected mannerism. He couldn’t do more than simmer on the gut feeling though since he didn’t know this drone; his weird happiness also shouldn’t have been present when he described himself as useless and terrible, so it could just be him as a person. Still, the gut feeling didn’t outweigh the potential bounty as it stood, so they would follow the lone disassembler into the catacombs, but his squad would stay grouped up—just in case. He signaled his squad members to stay close.

The dilapidated hallways and spotty lighting made for a place that felt like it was closing in on them from all sides, not helped by the wayward wires and infrastructure that hung loose from some unknown damage. The air drifted pungently around the squad as they followed behind the man in front, the heavy wafting of oil promised an unknown violence that could likely repeat in a moment’s notice. They had five bulbs upon each of their heads with 360 degree vision and it still felt like they were the ones being snuck upon.

X’s processor ran in overdrive to decipher what his gut continued screaming at him for, taking in everything about N from what he could see. It hit him with a cold dread when the drone up front took a turn down a door nearly covered in rubble.

‘He knows this place, and knows it too well for it to just be a return trip to his squad.’

By the time N rounded to face them in front of a slightly crunched door X was far past caring about the original deal; his mind had already been made up that something was up.

When they walked up to the door they could hear the faintest of glitchy voices behind it: feminine with a slightly haughty bite to it.

“N-NnnNNnN-N—heLLllP mE p̷̤̉L̸̮̈́—Get ou-ouT of m̴̝̭͖͈͑̑̃̕͝y̵̥̠̙̯̐—hERrrRe…”

The squad all peered at N over the suspect voice as proof of his squad being there, one which he caught the unsaid question from.

“She had magnets on.” He stated simply, smile never leaving his face.

X couldn’t help it; he chuckled. His hand held his head as he let it drop and laughter trickled out of him, louder with every expended breath. Soon he was standing upright in near hysterics: truly, this was the funniest thing he had witnessed in all his years online.

In an instant his mirth ceased, and in its place was a sword shoved right by N’s neck. His squadmates only took a second to fall in line and back up his threat with guns trained.

“You’re not telling us everything.” The accusation spilled out through grit teeth with the assurance of someone who already knew the answer. “Spill.”

The simple smile on N’s face didn’t falter, even with the weapons aimed at his head. His hands raised in a slow surrender with a calm that made X’s arm need more focus to keep still. The drone looked to the side at the door before sighing, smile finally changing from a blank smile to a more relaxed one. “What gave it away?”

The confession of deception brought out digital sweat X would never tell L or SD-I about; they were stuck in what was likely enemy territory with a guide that had unknown intentions, and they had no idea if or how close the fangs of a trap hung around them. His squad members were a bit more oblivious to the grander problem, so they took up the mantle of interrogation.

“You haven’t showed a lick of concern for your ‘downed teammates’ that we’re supposed to be freeing,” L sneered. “You’d think someone’d be more anxious about them instead of all jolly like you are.”

N tilted his head to the side, a loading bar popping up on his visor as his face scrunched in thought, “…Wait that’s it? That’s just me though; if I didn’t ask what gave it away I could’ve just…oh—OOOOHHH that’s what she meant by ‘open book with a smiley face bookmark’!”

All tension and mystique seemed to melt off N as he groaned and smacked his head, giving little attention to the trio with weapons drawn.

“You’re not getting off the hook with simple merriment, mind you.” X pressed, pressing his sword into N’s neck more to emphasize his point. “Talk!”

N didn’t even look at the sword, flicking it away with a single finger as he turned his attention to the door they’d been arguing in front of the whole time. X stepped back and whipped out a rifle from his arm when N’s other hand slammed through the steel and gripped the metal, ripping a strip of it out like it was paper. The room inside was devoid of any yellow light, instead containing nothing but darkness, a set of orange eyes in the far corner, and—most alarmingly—a disassembler’s EMP attachment dangling right where the strip was removed.

Ah.

“Shit! GET BACK!” X screamed behind him, charging forward with his sword at the traitor.

“Hey honey,” The bastard wasn’t even looking at them, simply peering into the dark at the aptly honey-colored eyes. “I owe you five dolla—"

X never found out if his blade connected with N’s neck before a blue flash obscured his vision and sent him offline.

N booted up to the sight of a fluorescent light beaming at his visor, but before he could register anymore of his surroundings he found himself assaulted with a familiar case of giggles. He squirmed his legs frantically as the tickles crashed through him, laughing his sensors silly from the sensations. Through tears of laughter he could recognize Alice hunched over him, hands deep in his chest with a buzz saw and reckless abandon.

“Ah keep telling ya t’quit callin’ mah tools useless an’ terrible; yer included on that list, dumbo.”

“AH! Okay! Okay! I—hehe-! I get it!” All N could do was plead his case to her, tied up as he was.

She rose with a sigh, put the power tool down, and handed him a mug of oil with a finger sticking out of the top. At seeing the treat for a great job, N gleefully broke his flimsy restraints and accepted the warm sludge of goodness.

“W-w-WHAt iS tHi-th-thIs?” Both Disassembler and worker turned their attention to their third party: X adjourned with magnets on his head and tied up far tighter. He spanned his eyes across the room with hollow eyes, both from the magnet’s haze and likely some confusion too.

At the news of their captive awakening, Alice plopped herself on her rolling stool and pushed off N’s bed with her tail.

“Well, lookie here: our little treasure box’s online!”

N simply sat back and watched the scampering woman get to her favorite pastime, malicious sparkles in her eyes as she took one look at X before bouncing across the room collecting tool from their nooks and crannies—places he learned through finding out how bad of an idea trying to reorganize her things turned out to be a while back.

“Couple points fer figurin’ out somethin’ was up, but yer losin’ a good fewuv’em fer tryin’ to rush in like that.” Over time they made a game over scoring how well the disassembly drone squads handled their traps; some of them took N’s words at pure surface and played along like puppets while some actually put up a fight—just thinking about squad WTF’s assault had him thinking of how fitting the acronym was (forgive his language). All of them went down one way or the other though, so no reason not to have some fun while they reaped their rewards.

She paused mid-scramble to check X’s outfit out: an unbuttoned trench coat with just a scarf underneath. Her tail picked at her teeth in aimless movement as she contemplated the attire.

“…nah, y’lose some more fer the fit too.” She snagged something from a cramped drawer before flipping a section of the wall over and placing the letter magnets X, L, and I halfway down the metallic backside of the wall, “the other fits in yer squad getcha outta bottom tier, but mid-tier’s as far as y’all’re goin’.”

The mention of his teammates put some focus in X’s visor and sweat on his digital brow, and N nearly swooned knowing she’d done that on purpose; she loved making her prey squirm.

“Wai-wAi—my sQuad! WHEeEre aRe theY-y?!”

The woman crawled up her stool and leaned in close at X, turning on her headlamp to blind him and block out everything but her face.

“They ain’t anywhere y’gotta worry about, buddy. Ah’d be more concerned fer yerself if ah was yew.”

The question did make N wonder where the other two were, since they usually cramped whole squads into a single room for convenience.

“Now that I’m thinking about it, where are the other two at?” he pondered aloud.

Alice made a small hand wave gesture, “Puttem in another room with Beau to try his hand at part harvestin’ by himself.” The stool squeaked as she swiveled to face N, the barest hint of a blush appearing under her eyes while she fiddled with her tail-end between her hands. “Ah’mmuh…ah’m tryin’ t’lettim ‘spread his wings’ a bit, l-like y’were sayin’ earlier…”

She could’ve sworn N turned some sort of flashlight on the way he brightened up: fists curled right under his head to accompany the most embarrassing coo to have directed at her.

“AWW you sweet potato pie, I’m so proud of you!”

The orange-desserted pun of a pet name traveled through neural pathways that pissed her off the way it put digital fuzz in her core. She didn’t even know if he knew entirely what that did to her, but fuck him for doing it anyways.

‘…Later.’

She decided that little addition to the day’s itinerary internally, making damn sure she didn’t say any of it out loud.

A hand briefly flew up to block the gushing fool from her sight to aid her tactical head turn away from the light—lest it affect her day anymore—only to glimpse their captive’s face from the side of her peripheral vision.

Disgust…

…revulsion at N giving her praise for doing better by Beau…

…looking at her like some thing…

…might as well be spitting in her face…

…the disrespect.

Her hand fell limp at her side as her focus zeroed in on her ‘guest’, paying no mind to her tail whipping erratically nor the ache in her face from a grin stretching onto her face: it wasn’t happy, and she’d have it be known soon enough.

“Actually N, howzabout ya go check on Beau fer a lil’ while?” Her voice felt lower as she shooed N out the room. “Ah think ah’m looking t’get more parts than oil outta this one: don’t wantcha getting’ bored sittin’ here.”

Said drone gave a habitual salute before heading for the door. His fingers clicked the first 2 digits off the passcode before slowing to a crawl, though by that point Alice’s focus had already drifted away from N, who was doing his best to become invisible so he could see just a bit of what was about to transpire behind him.

Her fingers twitched with anticipation as she grabbed a hammer and a chisel from her collected tools, giggles trickling out of her as ideas began forming in her CPU.

“Bargin’ in wit’ allat noise y’all were makin’, callin’ mah tools useless, then lookin’ at us all funny like that: ain’t got much in the way of manners, do ya?”

The spike finds a home jammed in X’s LED insignia on his chest, cracking the display and finally putting enough panic in him to start struggling. She placed the hammer right on top of the chisel, gently enough to not do damage but forceful enough for the feeling to make the body tense and still beneath her, before pulling the hammer off in a crawling ascent. Every inch or so her grip would loosen, just enough for the head to fall back down and dig the chisel in a tiny amount. Each impact pulled a flinch from X, and every flinch widened Alice’s grin as she relished in the discomfort inflicted.

“Good thing yer talkin’ t’someone who’s used ta teachin’ people how t’behave. In the meantime though, ah’ll think ah’ll find out what exactly marks th’spo—”

The chisel slipped next to a wayward nerve capacitor in X’s chasis, causing the next little tap to send waves of searing pain through his chest.

“STo-tOP, PLeASE! I-I—We cAn leAVe you alo-aloNE: tell evEryYYyone el-eLSe to—!"

His begging earned him nothing but a knife through his jaw, skewering his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

“Ah’m getting’ real sicka yer babblin’ an’ hissy fits.” Nothing in Alice’s voice changed aside from a small increase in volume, but the disappearance of the glee in her eyes set off far more danger sensors in his head than what was already blaring. “Y’can’t do anythin’ ah don’t want ya doin’ anymore, an’ all ah need ya t’do naw…” The hammer rose into the air: past a few inches, past the front of her face, then past the back of her head as Alice cocked her hand back as far as she could, “…is scream.”

‘Jens-̴s̷C̷-̸s̶-̷C̷Y̸N̸̦̞̯̈́-̶s̸o̸-̸y̶N̶ on, help me…’

N input the last digit into the door and slid out with the sound of a merciless thunk shattering glass and shearing metal behind him. The door closed soon after, cutting off the ensuing scream from a second thunk: its echo billowing out for only a single glorious moment.

Despite having fun getting to do what his mother did on his own, the beginning of the day eventually caught up with Beau, and it was pretty obvious to N that the little guy’s day was drawing to a close: only partially because he had to catch the spindly boy before he tipped over after completing his harvest.

His little ranger had an amazing day judging from the serene smile on his sleepy face, something he wished he could see a little more often around here. Still, he couldn’t be prouder of the pill, both for checking on his mom earlier (she wasn’t in any danger since it was just a silly ol’ hug, but if she ever was he knew Beau could make anyone into swiss cheese the way he charged in!) and cutting up those two guests all on his own…barring a little guidance from a primary source on Disassembly drones. N whispered to the little construct in his hands, “Good work out there, Nova Scotie: you did great today!”

He placed the boy into his bundle of blankets he liked to recharge in—this time N only marveling at how much of an egg in a nest he looked a little bit (improvement!)—before heading back to pick up the other no-doubt still working drone he knew.

The same door he left through hours ago opened to the sight of Alice tightening screws into a red blob covered in dark spots, which upon closer inspection turned out to be X’s core covered in magnet rocks. Each red limb claw twitched weakly from the multiple sets of screws skewering them before being seized into a single bunch by unkind hands. Her face bore teeth in a manner that felt closer to how a predator does than anything, though he knew Alice was having a probably concerning amount of fun pulling quiet whimpers out of the lump of a drone core.

“Ah can’t kill ya, unfortunately fer yew,” she quipped, “but either way yer not done payin’ yer tab quite yet.” The protruding metal in X’s limbs was gripped and bent around the bundle of claws, removing the ability to move them independently from each other. “Fact is, ah don’t think yer gonna be payin’ this one off, so ah gotta make sure y’can’t have too much fun with yer buddies once ah’m done.” Alice lined another screw up with a power drill, all three claws aligned with the sharp metal, before moving her gaze to watch the core that thrashed as soon as the drill activated: twisting slowly enough to imply that she’d lowered the drilling speed of the high-speed drill down to a minimum.   

The woman finally raised her body from hunching over the core, spotting her audience of one with a stupid grin on his face as always. She rolled her eyes at the lug as she carried the core over to the room’s oven, slinging her tail around the handlebar to open it with a fluidity that casually flaunted her skill and practice in using her 5th limb.

“Having fun, honey?” N asked, though he already knew she did from the pep in her step she didn’t have before he left. He watched her aim the weary core’s lump of legs through the rack then slam the body onto it, clipping the sides of the core to the rack itself so the core could only flail its injured legs fruitlessly—the sizzle pulling the attention of the other jarred and relatively more comfortable cores that could only look on in pity—before the scene was obscured by the closing of the oven. She then looped her tail around the handle of a bucket of black-stained limbs and organs, languidly drifting it to the “laundry chute” in the room and dropping the whole thing in.

“Prolly ‘bout as much fun as yew’re havin’ with all that gawkin’.” She deadpanned, moving towards the door but meandering slightly in front of him until he moved to follow her.

“Hehe! How’d you know?”

She sighed at his shameless confession, and the two of them stayed in a comfortable silence as they navigated the endless-seeming halls of the labs.

Around the front of the labyrinth they called home Alice paused in front of an intersection, staring wistfully at one of the navigational signs that littered the place, and N’s eyes scanned the common object for context:

Emergency Assembly Area? None of them knew what that was for.

Secret Elevator? They didn’t care about going deeper.

Lavatories? Already blew up all the toilets in that one.

Exit?

...oh.

“Hey,” he started gently, ready to have the conversation again now that the conditions were a little better, “you thinking about my offer again?”

No reply, so he moved a bit closer.

“Like I said, just say the word and I can take you guys up top. I know there was a bunker we couldn’t break into before I left; it might still be there, and I know they had babies and younger drones.”

N slowly snaked an arm around her side and pulled her into a one-armed hug. He paused for a moment, but continued when she didn’t push him away.

“We can get him a body there, Alice.”

His pumpkin stirred at that, and while he spoke a little too soon about her staying in the hug, she simply leaned out of it this time instead of anything more, just enough to look at him directly.

“An’ like ah said, ah’m not riskin’ it til there ain’t none of them devils left.” Her tone was muted at best, conflicted as the number of ‘devils’ continued to lower with every successful harvest; she spoke like it was a punishment for her to wait. N broke eye contact and stared at the floor in thought.

It was something he could understand: many a conversation had already happened where they talked about the inability for them as a group to survive on the backfoot up top, so the safe thing to do was lead the predators down into home turf. The time spent making the surface safer didn’t make the time Beau lost any easier to digest though, and part of the reason he worked so hard to corral his kin was to speed the limbo up as much as he could.

“…None of ‘em but one, ah mean.”

Any melancholy in N was vaporized by both Alice’s words and looking up to find her beaming the most valuable thing in the labs at him: an honest, bashful smile. Much as he wanted to grab her in another hug and spin her in the air to give her something proportional to how he felt, he fought the temptation and instead went with an affectionate brushing of his arm on hers before continuing their walk.

N only made it a few steps before a stuttery call from behind halted him again.

 “A-aa-and one more thing…real quick?” Every word from behind pitched up a little higher and a little quieter than the last, like she barely pinched the end of the addendum out. He turned around to see Alice with a wobbly smile half concealed by a hand covering the side of her face, an absolutely radiant blush decorating her visor.

“N-naw that we’re alone’n stuff…” She mumbled into her hand, slightly rocking her whole body and fidgeting a foot on its toe section, before gently holding out her other hand in his direction. “…can y’do that thing again, the real dough-riser?”

He giggled at the shy way she always gave that particular request before grasping her hand in his. N paid no real mind to the way Alice gasped at the action nor how her breathing picked up when their fingers interlaced; he simply delighted in getting to hold her hand, basking in the small warmth he held as they walked through the orange-lit hallway to the nearest safe-room to retire for the night.

Chapter Text

Another thanks to Sukulentoo for the wonderful piece! Go visit their profile, they make incredible stuff!