Chapter Text
Hyperlaser dragged his hands down his face, the movement agitating his old wounds. He took a firm grip on the inphernal’s ankles and pulled, earning a loud cry of protest as delta Refused to release his grip on the edge of the couch.
“I REFUSE TO VISIT FATHER. I WISH TO SULK.” It announced loudly.
“Well, I don’t feel like getting fired.” Hyperlaser huffed and pulled harder, before the loud scraping sound of the couch moving screeched across the apartment.
Ah, wait. I think we’re missing something here. Why is Hyperlaser torturing some random inphernal? Whose delta? More importantly, why does hyperlaser have an angry teenager in his apartment? Perhaps it’s best to look back a day.
On a rather laborious day of doing nothing but sitting on the couch and complaining about old man back pains to his rather well-fed cat, Hyperlaser received a call from his contractor. Boss, contractor. It’s all the same when you’re killing people for work. Hyperlaser begrudgingly packed his things, headed to his boss’s office and entered what might’ve been the worst conversation of his life.
Subspace, nestled neatly into his chair, beckoned Hyperlaser into his office. Immediately a new face could be noticed, a bit amusing to the mercenary. Subspace didn’t often find people that could tolerate him. The inphernal, mostly unseeable since it was turned away and hunched over with a blackrock mandated field blanket with the texture of depressed paper, was a sore thumb in the messy office of subspace’s.
Subspace was seemingly more annoyed than normal. Hyperlaser internally groaned, knowing it would be some tedious job if Subspace was already ticked off. Last time, he had to track down a man who hasn’t legally existed for five years.
“Necessary” His ass. Subspace just had a bit of a problem with the guy from a disagreement on a train two years ago. Seriously, how long can a guy hold a grudge? Apparently about as long as subspace’s lifespan would allow. Hopefully, that’d be tomorrow. (It wasn’t, regretfully.)
Subspace had folded his hands in the way that cocky, confident assholes do. Subspace had pointed a nasty little finger towards the inphernal and uttered words so foreign to hyperlaser he still could barely comprehend it.
“You’re in charge of the kid.” Well, then Hyperlaser somehow ended up with a moody inphernal teenager biograft freeloading on his couch and interrupting his routine. Not only had it taken hours of coaxing to get delta from the lab into a car and into his apartment, the kid had been relentlessly annoying since.
Let’s take a better look at that day, that terrible, insufferable day. Well, for hyperlaser.
Hyperlaser woke with a soft start, a rare occasion in his daily life. He had sleep quite too peacefully, passed out until well after 10am. His work schedule was quite unpredictable, but it rarely let him sleep this long. And then a ping of realization hit the mercenary, and he groaned and flipped back on the bed.
He spent the next five minutes hyping himself to get out of bed and deal with the elephant in the room- or rather house- that he had sitting on the couch.
How does one even start to take care of a kid? Hyperlaser had never been a fan of newspawns. It didn’t seem to be exactly a newspawn, but around sixteen years in inphernal age. Which was pretty much a newspawn to a 38 year old.
He had very few people to ask, with a very limited social life that consisted of Subspace, Grav and warp who were constantly away on business and the sfoth himself forsaking him from contacting medkit or his boss would smite him twenty times over.. yep! That’s it! So Hyperlaser could only drag himself to the door, stripped of his knowledge and going into a sad attempt at parenthood alone. God, he’d need a drink after this. Wait, is it legal to leave a newspawn alone?
By the time he dragged himself down the hallway and reached the living room, the large orange horns of the biograft was poking above the couch as the inphernal sat stiffly. It turned its head slightly as he approached before seemingly fixing itself.
“MERCENARY: HYPERLASER. I REQUIRE SUBSTANCE.”
Hyperlaser rubbed a hand against his helmet.
“Food? You need some breakfast?”
“SUBSTANCE.”
“No need for all the fancy words, delta.” He awkwardly chuckled. The biograft was mechanical and stiff like a robot, making it’s purely flesh face uncharacteristically human to look at.
“ITS JUST GRAMMAR. PERHAPS YOU SHOULD REVIST YOUR ENGLISH.”
Hyperlasers head snapped back towards the figure. He could swear there was the slightest touch of annoyance in its voice. He grabbed a box of cereal and threw it on the couch.
“I’ll have to go shopping for something else tomorrow . You uh.. you like any certain foods?” The older man awkwardly pawed at his neck with a hand. He didn’t know if biografts liked things. Hell, he barely knew how or why they worked in the first place.
“SUBSTANCE IS LACKING CRITICAL INGREDIENTS. BOWL:MILK: NOT PROVIDED. SUBSTANCE IDENTIFICATION: RESULTS: CEREAL, DRY.”
You have to be kidding. This thing really has no idea. How to do anything.
“Okay, stand up. I’ll show you where to find everything real quick.” Hyperlaser huffed, trying not to let the annoyance sleep into his voice. He wasn’t good with kids. I mean, he’s also terrible with people. Atleast he doesn’t have to show most people how to make cereal.
The robotic inphernal slowly, gingerly, as if he was afraid of walking, made his way over to hyperlaser and stood. Waving at the fridge, hyper pointed out the handle, before pulling the door open and grabbing the milk.
“See, just in here. And the bowls are in the cupboard. Oh, and spoons. The drawer here.” The biograft swiveled it’s body around as he watched the mercenary tug open different compartments. Delta continued to stare at hyperlaser.
“Okay.” He sighed out. “Get the bowl, and put the cereal in it. Then put the milk. And then eat it.” Hyperlaser was already getting a headache. Christ, did all parents go through this? No wonder there were so many parentless newspawns. This was terrible. About five minutes of cautious pouring later, the biograft had a bowl of cereal and sat down at the table.
And sat. And sat. It glared at the bowl like it had just discovered it’s life’s secrets. The spoon was held in his hand lifelessly.
“Do you want something else..?” Hyperlaser asked, half mumbling. Delta looked towards him.
“THE SUBSTANCE IS NOT HELPING.”
“Well- maybe put it in your mouth?”
Delta gave him a befuddled look. It didn’t take long for hyper to realize – well, the robot didn’t know how to eat. He was slowly getting a grasp on just how much the inphernal knew, which was next to nothing that a typical, metal biograft couldn’t do.
Hyperlaser struggled himself to the table and ripped the spoon from it’s hands, much to the disdain of delta. Hyperlaser grabbed it’s other hand, the right hand, placing it on the spoon and putting his hand ontop to show him how to grab the cereal and put it in his mouth.
The inphernals eyes lit up as the sweet taste of borderline red 40 fever dream and sugar touched its tounge.
“ACCEPTABLE.” It remarked, loudly.
“Yeah, everyone loves some good red 40.”
It took about 20 minutes for it to finish it’s food and stand up, kicking the chair back to stare once again at it’s caretaker.
“WE MUST SURVEY THE AREA.” Delta stomped it’s way towards the door, waiting impatiently as hyperlaser didn’t follow.
“We’re not at the facility, nobody’s coming around here. Let’s just watch some TV.”
Kids love TV. Again, very little experience with newspawns. But there isn’t a single person on the inpherno that doesn’t enjoy atleast one movie.
Delta was rather unpleased with the refusal and tugged at the doorknob. Much to Hyperlaser’s luck, the biograft didn’t know how to open locks without help of trusty robotic picklock sets that most models of robot came with these days.
“I REQUEST TO LEAVE THE BUILDING. REFUSAL TO COOPERATE WILL WARRANT A REPORT TO HIGHER MANAGEMENT.”
“I’m not letting you outside. Sit down.”
It went that way for about 20 minutes before delta began scratching at the door and loudly explaining how Subspace would fire him for insolence. Hyperlaser eventually had enough, grabbing the inphernal by the horn and dragging him to the couch.
“SIT. Down.”
Delta complied, but it’s eyes kept glancing back at the door. Hyperlaser sighed and snuggled back into the couch, picking a random kid-friendly movie about dogs to play for the newspawn.
It wasn’t very engrossed compared to hyperlaser who had started leaning towards the TV and cheering when the dogs won their strange game of laser tag. (Who makes movies about dogs playing laser tags you ask? Well, I don’t know.) Delta didn’t say anything and didn’t relax.
From the bottom of the couch a familiar purr sounded, before princess leaped onto the couch in all of her overfed, spoiled cat glory. Delta flinched, puffing out his chest to seem more intimidating. Princess completely ignored his warning and strutted her way to the new inphernal, much to hyperlasers dismay.
Only one day and the stupid kid is already taking his cat. Really delta? Is that how it is? Hyperlaser glared at him, and couldn’t help but snicker at the absolute look of fear on Delta’s face. It’s hands were cautiously held out, trying to wave the cat away. With a tiny meow, princess leaped onto the couch and onto the knees of the biograft.
Delta’s eyes widened as it looked towards hyperlaser.
“CONTAIN THE FELINE. DANGER IS DETECTED. REMOVE THE BEING FROM MY PERSONS.”
It could only helplessly watch as the cat circled into his chest and sat herself across his legs. She twitched her stubby ears slightly as Delta spoke, the harsh tone jolting her enough to make her shift but not to move.
“REMOVE THE BEING FROM MY PERSONS. THIS IS A MISUSE OF BLACKROCK TECHNOLOGY.”
“Hey, she likes you!” Hyperlaser leaned in and gave princess a few scratches behind the ear, returned with a satisfied purr. Delta watched him with interest.
“WHY MUST YOU CARESS THE FELINE?”
“Dunno. They just like it. Especially behind the ears and the back.”
Delta very slowly- ever so carefully reached a hand towards her and laid its palm across her fur before dragging it across. Hyperlaser attempted to reach a hand to stop him, but it was too late. With a loud hiss of discontent princess whipped around, landing her teeth straight into it’s attackers finger. The biograft yelped and jumped up, throwing princess off it’s lap to scitter away with her her fluffed fur sticking in every direction.
“.. you were petting her the wrong way.”
Delta didn’t answer, but instead howled a insult that hyperlaser won’t repeat in order to keep the rating of this fanfiction moderate. Hyperlaser slowly guided the furious biograft to the kitchen, shoving it’s hand under the sink and turning the cold water on.
“WHY WOULD YOU KEEP SUCH A BEAST.”
Hyperlaser pulled Delta’s hand from the water and dabbed it with a towel, making sure to completely dry it before slapping on a bandaid. He always had an abundance..
“I’VE BEEN MORTALLY WOUNDED. WE MUST RETURN TO FATHER AT ONCE.” It loudly demanded.
“It’s a cat bite. You’ll live.”
“RABIES IS IMMINENT.”
“No, she’s house cat. What? Why would rabies even be relevant?”
“I AM GOING TO PERISH.”
Hyperlaser once again sighed deeply.
That’s about how well most of the day went. Hyperlaser could only miserably coax delta into watching TV again, trying to keep it busy. After watching one too many dramatic movie scenes, hyperlaser watched in half amusement and half concern as the biograft mimicked the inphernals in the show.
When it started getting late, hyper made a show of yawning and stretching.
“I’m heading to bed, alright?” Delta watched him exit the room, orange eyes boring into his back as he carefully shut the door behind him and silently curled his hands in annoyance.
For the first day, it was absolutely unbearable. He would rather have each of his fingers removed by a fan blade then keep this up.
Hyperlaser pretty much dove into his bed, removing his visor and nesting it onto the nightstand before comfortably snuggling into his blankets.
The warm and fluffy sensation and the rather exhausting day lulled him into sleep..
A dreaded knock on the bedroom door. Hyperlaser stared into the wall as the interruptive sound ripped him from sleep.
The door creaked open, delta sliding half its body into the doorway.
“I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO SLEEP. PLEASE CLARIFY.”
“Im coming, I’m coming.” Hyperlaser growled as he once again got out of bed to deal with this trainwreck. Delta disappeared from the doorway as hyper fit his mask back on, the lights from the hallway blaring into his face as he approached the couch.
Delta was stiffly sitting again.
“Okay- just. Lay down.”
Delta complied and looked towards him. Hyperlaser grabbed a pillow from one side of the couch and lifted the biografts head to lay it back down and threw a blanket over him.
“Now close your eyes. That’s it.”
Hyperlaser slowly turned the rest of the lights off in the apartment before returning into his bedroom.
He gave up the thought of a warm blanket and just collapsed onto the bed, face down. The plush insides of his visor barely cushioned the hard metal and plastic that was currently digging into his face. Hyperlaser fell asleep anyways.
Well, that didn’t really answer the question. Hello, author? We were asking why hyperlaser is torturing delta?
That occurred the morning after. The state hyperlaser found the inphernal in was pathetic. Who would’ve guessed biografts had insomnia? With almost no exaggerating, delta had the heaviest eye bags known to the inpherno that morning. It just laid on the couch and stared ahead, only perking it’s head when Hyperlaser’s phone rang in the middle of a breakfast of kings (a cheese stick and heel piece bread.)
Mouth half full, swiping up the call with a ever so familiar profile picture.
“Hows the worst employee doing!” Subspace’s insufferably cheerful voice assaulted Hyperlaser’s senses.
“Hey, seriously? Im taking care of your kid. And actually –“
“ehhhh eh eh. Hey. Hyperlaser I’m a busy man. Bring the kid over as soon as you can for some checkups. I don’t wanna hear your complaining.” The rude cutoff made hyperlaser angrily tighten his grip on his fork before hanging up. He threw the silverware to the table and strutted over to delta to hurry him off the couch and out the door.
However, Delta was very unimpressed.
You can imagine how it went from there.