Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Callback Ping.”

J shot up in her bed, hitting her head on the top bunk, flopping back down rubbing her screen. Running her hand across her face, she found no issues. Sighing she sat up slowly and swung her legs to hit the floor rubbing what would have been the bridge of her nose if it wasn’t for her visor. ‘Same damn nightmare. Still can’t remember much of it…’ She thought to herself in an exasperated tone. Standing up, she stretched as she opened her drawer to see no clothes were in it. She had forgotten to do laundry. Again. The disassembly machine growled, scolding herself.

“Son of a mega corp-” She spat out as she dug through her clothes on the floor she had been reusing for the past few days. A message popped into her visor like a popup ad. “Don’t you get tired of doing this?” She dismissed the notification and continued getting ready for the day, knowing if she argued back against her notifications, she’d be here all day and late for work. Khan expects her for a big WDF meeting tonight after she’s done helping V and N command some tropes that have apparently been giving them trouble. She slumped in her posture, thinking about having to go up to them. Especially after…

“Callback Ping.” That hideous smile.

J shook herself out of her thoughts. ‘Not now.’ She thought, despite the fact she had said this over and over since it happened. Pressing a hand on a scanner, the door to her bedroom opened to the rest of her lonely apartment. Quiet and timid air flooded into her shockingly warm room. She knew something was wrong with the vents in her room, but she didn’t have the energy to suck in her pride yet and ask for a technician, and J would rather overheat than let someone see the state of her room. The empty cans of oil supplements, the dirty laundry that stacked high as a worker drone, the mess of her desk and drawings she kept hidden under books of the colony layout so she wouldn’t see that horrible smile she always draws that just won’t leave her alone.

A long and heavy sign came from the drone as she finally took a step out of the room, letting the door close behind her as she walked past her spare room. The colony had so many extra apartments in this wing due to past reasons, she basically had the whole two-person apartment to herself for half the price. But maybe that wasn’t a generous offer, but a bribe to not slash at their necks and drain the oil from their forms. The twin tailed drone's eyes lowered and narrowed at the thoughts. J swung open the fridge, grabbing a fresh can of oil, smiling slightly at the comedic sight that was her fridge. Several cans lined the fridge, all with the same label of oil supplements and nothing else. It would be sad if it wasn’t something out of a cartoon she would watch with Tessa.

“Callback Ping.”

J frowned, suddenly no longer finding the sight funny, and closed the fridge. Cracking the can open, it made a fizz. She bought some of the carbonated substances in an attempt to shake up her livelihood. She took a sip and spit it out intentionally. “Holy fuck, why does it do that?!” J had never had a need to eat and drink other things, so carbonation was something she wasn’t used to. Despite her hateful reaction, she took another sip more prepared for the feeling so the oil bubbling in her mouth, slightly less appalled this time. “One hell of a wake-up, I guess.” She said, sticking a straw in the can and grabbing her work bag, throwing it onto her shoulder and opening the front door to an empty hall. She never saw anyone around here aside from a group of teens trying to spray paint something or tell scary stories only to be scared by the sight of her. She liked it empty. It was better that way.

The halls echoed her steps as she left the practically abandoned wing and entered the busy main apartment one. She barely recognized many of the drones, only really recognizing the ones from the WDF, but even then she couldn't remember their names too well. Not to say she barely talked to them, but those details tended to slip her mind often. She couldn’t remember Uzi's name half the time and opted to call her toaster often to initiate banter from her to recall her name by stating it to her. She also recognized some of the other drones the toaster hung out with. God, what were their names?

“Hey J!” Oh. Fuck. A drone walked up alongside her, and she was able to identify his voice. However, the name eluded her, and that was about to be a big problem. The drone smiled at her with his bright green eyes and school uniform. She recognized him, he was the one that showed up with the others. The one that threw a pipe at her while…

“Callback Ping.” Horribly yellow eyes.

She narrowed her eyes at him, feeling a wave of fear and anger seep into her core. He noticed the shift in emotions and noticeably became softer in tone. “How’s it going? I feel like I haven’t seen you in a while. Done anything interesting?” He asked, making J suspicious of his intentions. Why question her? Why be interested in her? Was he planning something? She rolled her eyes cartoonishly, looking straight ahead and picking up her pace, leaving him behind with a saddened frown. “So much for small talk…” He mumbled to himself out of earshot of J.

J signed as she heard V and Ns voices through the door of the training room. She paused at the door listening in, not quite caring about the words they were saying but the tone it was in and the way they spoke. N was always easy to read, or at least most of the time. However, she always felt there was some underlying tone in his voice, something more mocking than friendly like he always presented himself. V however, was always so flat and avoidant. She never wore any kinda emotion that wasn’t anger on her sleeve. She always avoided conversation when she could be typically disinterested by the world, or so it seemed. J sighed and raised her hands to her abdomen, shaking them side to side a bit. It was a habit she picked up to regulate her systems, and it was normal for disassembly drones. She always told herself or others who ask, but she never dared tell that to one of them, opting to suck it up and not do it at all. Unprofessional and completely a lie. She had no idea why her systems weren’t self-regulating, and she had too much pride to find out from a professional.

J pushed open the door, stopping N and Vs conversation. The expected expressions came forth, a smile as big and bright as the sun and a mildly interested frown.

“J! You actually came!”

“Yeah. I work here. I kinda had to.” she said, not meaning to sound so flat and agitated.

“Wow, so unpredictable as always.” V picked at her teeth, pulling out what looked like a roach antenna. Gross.

“Thank you, V. Glad I can keep you on your toes after all this time.” J retorted back, rolling her eyes slightly. “So why exactly was I called to help your squad? You can’t possibly be doing that bad that I needed to be dragged here on my major business meeting.”

“Well uh. How do we put this?”

“N accidentally set someone on fire, I got ‘dangerously close’ to killing someone, and Uzi told us we did so bad the whole colony might go back to being scared of us.” V blurted out as N took too long to answer. J stared at them, blinking slowly.

“So you're too good at killing. Is what I’m hearing.” V and N nodded, Ns being slowly slightly ashamed. “I would expect that from V but not you N. How did you even manage to set someone on fire? We’re allergic to fire!”

“Well, I uh-” J cut him off.

“Actually, forget I asked, we don't have time, your training shift starts in three minutes. I don't want you to be late.” J said, walking past them towards a locker that had her name on it, noticing V roll her eyes, which J ignored. N and V struck up conversation with each other in a hushed tone. The grumpy machine chose not to listen but felt nervous about this choice in activity and retreated into her analysis, speaking quietly to herself.

“Okay, V and N. V and N.” She mumbled, looking for their class schedule to find out what exactly they are doing. “Basic battle stations and improved sense of danger. Okay noted.” J tried to look for any previous notes on these sessions but found nothing annoying her. “Of course.” J turned on her pegs, snapping out of her analysis. “Okay, so what do you guys normally do in these sessions? It’s not as intense as mine based on the class name and description.”

The two stopped talking as she turned to them and V tapped her chin with a claw. “I usually chase them around while N tries to teach them how to stand.” She shrugged, making N narrow his eyes at her. “That is far from the truth! They know how to stand! They just are unbalanced and not good at teamwork.” N said, a shockingly cohesive and informative report as he continued. “They kinda just. Try to throw each other under the bus when we practice colony defense against attacking drones with V.” J nodded. “Alright, that's a pretty normal thing for worker drones, it's hard-wired in them to throw someone against something to escape. Means we need to rewire it, basically.” J paced slightly, thinking out loud, giving N and V some insight on why they were doing such things.

J pulled the worker drone manual out of her pocket, making the two raise an eyebrow at her but decided not to question it. J flipped the pages and stopped at the one she wanted. “Worker Drones are built in a specific way that they are meant to be disposable and easy to replicate, and so they are very fragile and will abandon others for the sake of survival. We can rewire this by team bonding and creating a real threat that requires teamwork. If your team doesn’t get along, it will fall apart before you can blink in a real battle.” She said, still pacing, only stopping as she almost stepped on a worker who mumbled a nervous apology and whispered to the other.

N stopped paying attention for a moment as he heard other workers whispering near him.

“Isn’t that J?”

“Think so. She’s scarier in person.”

“I heard she’s ruthless and mean.”

“Don’t say that so loud! She might hear us.”

The two drones quickly finished up putting their stuff away before quickly passing J. The male drone looked over to see she was too lost in thought as apparent by her visor reading “Analysis process 37%” and he tilted his head to look at V who looked like she hadn’t been paying attention at all looking bored and mildly annoyed. V and J were still on bad terms with one another, he knew that, and it made him nervous. He couldn’t decide if he preferred them outwardly hating one another over the passively tense air between them. He took his hat off and ran a hand through his platinum white hair in a calming motion, trying to relax, sighing slowly and quietly before adjusting his hat. “So we need to do more team building exercises to get them to be friends? As much as I love friends, I’m pretty sure team building was always your thing, J.”

“As if she ever did any of them anyways.” V said in a tone that was an attempt at a joke, however J simply looked annoyed at her before starting to speak. V couldn’t tell if she was just mad at her, or she interrupted her at a 99% analysis. She didn’t care. But V was always a bad liar.

“Essentially yes. Your group is very underdeveloped in training. Normally I would tie my newbies together in groups and leave them in the woods and tell them to come back in under 12 hours and if they didn’t, I’d hunt and eat them.” J said in a nonchalant tone as if that was a completely normal thing to say. She only clarified when she noticed N and Vs horrified looks, as well as a worker or two that were still in the room. “I didn’t actually eat anyone!” She said, causing N to relax but V to still narrow her eyes at her. “The point of it is I put them in situations where they need one another and force them to reach a goal while a threat is present. I never actually eat them, but I do hunt them to encourage them to work towards the goal before I tell them they failed, and they are gonna get a horrible grade on it.” She said as V nodded slowly, “That's… not entirely a horrible idea. Kinda smart, actually.”

J nodded, smiling a bit. “Yeah, honestly I would have done that to you two if I had the chance, but we were kinda… busy.” A small nervous sweat appeared on her visor as she said that. Shaking her head, she looked at her internal clock and turned around. “Let's get going!”

____________

 

“DEAD! DEAD! DEAD! ALL OF YOU WOULD BE DEAD RIGHT NOW, YOU BOX OF BOLTS AND MINI OIL RIGS!”

“I’m surprised it took her a full hour before she lost her mind.” V said as she pressed a foot on a worker drone gasping for air, which V ignored. N walked over and shoved her foot off the worker, and it rolled over and gasped for air. “Don’t be like that. She’s doing better than we usually do.” The drone said side eyeing her as she slammed her face into a notepad she had, repeatedly as she stood around a bunch of worker drones on the floor. V rolled her eyes. “You have a lot of faith in us, N. Stop being such a suck up to her. She’s not our boss anymore.” N looked like he wanted to defend himself but said nothing, looking sad.

J had put the workers in groups and told them to defend each other from other teams and the disassembly drones. The intent was to get them to work together and team up against the bigger drones, but as perusal they turned against one another and threw their teammates against the murder machines, often forgetting they had teammates. N and V easily swooped in and knocked many of them down, pairing up with each other while J simply watched to observe how they did, and it was horrible. J wrote notes furiously, tearing them off and slapping them onto the drone's faces, reading various aspects to improve on and in detail where they went wrong. J bit at her branded pen as she replayed the video memories and went back to writing before handing out more paper. Even handing N and V their own, which got a confused look from them. “Why does mine say ‘not effective enough to kill? I expect better from you, V’?” J looked back at her and N and snapped out of her writing spree, taking the papers back before N could read his. “Shit. Sorry, force of habit, I guess.” She said, sounding genuine to Vs surprise. She looked back at all the drones looking at their papers but didn’t care enough to read them, only looking at their expressions. Many confused, some saddened and a few just shocked.

J stood around the drones looking around before sighing, getting many of their attention as she spoke again. “None of you would survive an attack, actually, maybe that guy.” She said pointing to a drone somewhat upright against the wall with his own paper. “You’re only still standing because V forgot about you, however, he didn’t push his teammate against a murder drone!” She said, looking back at the vast group. Many looked ashamed as she said this, making her sigh. “However. I see promise in the way some of you reacted despite the ultimate ending, but you seem to forget that this isn’t a free for all. To survive is with your team, not just you, unless you wanna live a lonely life or not live at all.” She said flatly, despite saying some mildly positive words. “Your leaders of this group are V and N. Do not forget that. They are much nicer than I am. I can promise you that. Listen to them and learn how to fight for one another and not yourself. If you can’t work as a team, I’ll see to it myself, you won’t work for the WDF AT ALL.” Her voice sharp and filled with venom was enough to get some gears turning in the drones heads. She snapped her fingers and pointed to the racetrack of the gym court. “I want 10 laps for the HORRIBLE performance they got today! Back to the locker room after you’re done and see your sorry asses out to your next class! NOW!” She snarled, getting the drones to jump and scramble to get up and start running as she turned back to her former squad mates.

V looked around a bit nervous. “Can. Can you actually-”

“No, I can’t, but it might kick them in the ass enough to know that trying to work in the WDF isn’t just about being cool.” J stated plainly how she lied through her teeth. V wasn’t sure how to take it that her former squad leader lied so perfectly and seemingly didn’t care. N looked impressed, stepping closer to J looking over at her notepad which was full of notes and diagrams from the training session. “How did you know that would work? Anytime me and V yell at them, they just kinda don’t do anything.” J sighed a bit looking at her notes, filing them digitally as she talked to them. “Because I’m mean and ruthless. You’re not. You’re the friendly murder drones that saved the planet. I’m just the superior of the WDF advanced mobile force that no one ever sees unless there’s a meeting.” She said not a hint of sadness in her tone, almost like she was proud of it. Normally the two would be glad she was proud of something as she had seemed off as of recent, but this was more concerning than anything.

“I wouldn’t say you’re mean-” N started before J cut him off.

“I just called them mini oil rigs, told them their performance was horrible and said a guy only could survive an attack because he was forgettable. I’m mean N. I like it that way. People don’t question me and make my life easier.”

“You could loosen up a little at least. We barely see you J. You won’t even come over half the time and when you do you’re so late you stay for the last five minutes and leave.” V said snagging Js attention out of her pride filled self loner attitude. J felt both N and Vs eyes on her suddenly. The way they both were waiting for an answer, staring her down. Vs expression felt of a hostile one, so she returned it. “I like it that way. Plus, I have things to do.” She said snappily before rushing off to the locker room to leave, having done what she came to do. N moved to try and stop her, but V grabbed him, shaking her head.

“V come on, we can’t just-”

“She doesn’t want to be bothered, N. Why waste your time?”

“I thought we were bonding! Like old times!” V gave him a sympathetic look before avoiding eye contact and attempting a flat face, but N knew better.

“There are no old days anymore, N.”

The boy looked down, shifting his eyes away from V entirely. He had been trying to reach out to J for the last few months since they last found her outside the bunker attempting to fix her pod. He wasn’t sure what she was doing, but after a week of offering to let her stay in the bunker, he got her to cave in and accept when he said they had an entire empty wing she could live in and scavenge parts for the pod while she was fixing it. The male drone intended to let her fix it but after some time she started sticking around longer in the day and eventually ended up landing a full-time job with Khan for the WDF which N was excited about however it seemed his workaholic coworker took this opportunity to distance herself further from them much to his dismay. Uzi never seemed to care that much when he talked about her, usually just asking him why he cared so much for his old shitty boss before telling her tail it needed to ‘shut its trap’ leaving him to reflect why.

He hadn’t found an answer yet.

____________

 

J kept a quick pace as she left the locker room, heading towards the main area of the colony, knowing she needed to be at a meeting later and going back to her apartment would make her inclined to stay home. So despite her discomfort she headed towards the WDF meeting place, stopping by the food court to grab some oil supplements, pushing her fingerprint onto the machine before it dropped one down. Khan had ordered the fingerprints of the disassembly drones for the oil supplement machines to keep track of who is using what. J felt it was a bullshit reason and was pretty sure Uzi got V and N theirs, and it was just to keep an eye on her.

The terrifyingly tall drone growled at the thought, opening the can before chugging it and throwing the can away after crushing it in her hands. J thought about the interaction between her and V and she frowned. She was nothing like she used to be. While no longer shy, V no longer was transparent like she used to be. She was grouchy or at least she thought J was never sure nowadays, and wanted nothing to do with her. She knew that much; just wanted to take a dig at her while she was there and could.

While standing around she took a look around trying to get a grasp on her surroundings, for a cold and dead planet there was a shocking amount of plants in this Outpost such as grass, small flowers and clovers in pots from seeds they scavenged. J stared at some of the flowers while she had a moment and kneeled down to them. They were short and such a vibrant color of yellow despite the lack of sun. The clawed creature felt the plant on her hand, smiling a bit as she felt the soft petals. So delicate and easy to hurt if not careful. It would be nice to have one of these in her apartment. Maybe brighten up the place.

“Callback Ping”

J suddenly felt sick to her stomach. ‘What? What even-?’ She stood up, feeling her face hurt in a nauseous way. Her own spit felt thicker as tears welled in her visor eyes unexpectedly. Breathing she took a moment before looking down at the flowers again and the feeling crept back onto her making her turn away and walk away feeling grossed out and unsure why adding to her uncomfortable feelings. She walked past a few students, avoiding eye contact as they jumped and moved out of her way. She pushed a hand up to her mouth as she felt her body threaten to hurl as she resisted it and pushed her way into the health room where she leaned over the sink and spit into it.

The nurse there paid no mind to her as she patched up a student who had gotten his arm seemingly ripped off. “Off you go. Go.” The smaller drone attempted to argue, but the nurse shooed him out before turning to J. “You gotta stop spitting in my sink, bot.” She said, crossing her arms, looking at the taller drone, seemingly with no fear in her eyes. Somehow this comforted and insulted J at the same time. “Sorry Dot.” She said, as she turned to the smaller drone once, she hacked up a good amount of her spit in an attempt to remove the lingering feeling of oil in her mouth.

The drone known as Dot now sat down at her desk and pointed to a chair. “Sit.” J looked at her confused, often Dot would just shoo her out after she came and did this, but now she was being told to sit? “What for?” She asked, not yet taking her seat. “Well, you can’t stand forever while I’m talking. Now come on.” Her mildly southern accent bleed through her words as she talked and tapped a pen on her desk in a sense of urgency. J reluctantly took a seat; she had time she needed to kill anyway. “Okay finally. Now what in this frozen wasteland do you keep coming in here to spit in my sink for and more importantly, what's been going on with you lately?”

J suddenly became very uncomfortable. Had she really been doing that so often she needed to be questioned about it? “Uh, I just, get, uh. Like the oil in my mouth, it kinda feels weird sometimes-” “Don’t bullshit me. You’re avoiding the question.” J flinched at her tone, too familiar. She gave her a snarl, Dot didn't even flinch, pissing her off more. “I’m not! I haven’t even gotten to your second question! I’m fine! A bit of oil stuck in my throat is all, is that too much? I already told N and V I’m fine, I'm not answering anything more.” She hissed as she stood up, knocking the chair down before leaving the room, all while Dot sighed and wrote something down.

J power walked aggressively, snarling at any worker drone who made eye contact with her, making a beeline for the meeting room. ‘I don’t care if it's not for another hour. I need to get away from these insufferable toasters before I pop an oil vessel.’ She moved without thinking and didn’t notice her shaking hands as she made it to the WDF production wing and sitting in the office meeting room lobby sighing as her CPD was in overdrive from her rush in an attempt to cool her off. A popup came up about her oil usage and how it was higher than it had been for the last few days. She blinked it away as another popup came up in a completely different format that just read, “That’s really pathetic. [Okay]” with a button option which she clicked to get it to go away.

Another one popped up right after.

“You walked an extra hour, and you are using more oil than normal. You let yourself go.”

Another one.

“What would [ ] say?”

The name was blacked out in her filtering. Good. That still works.

“Do you think they noticed?” She stared at this one for a moment. Too long. But she wondered. Did they notice? She hoped they didn’t. Too surrounded by popups and horrible messages seemingly from nowhere she didn’t even think to register what they would notice but she knew who. V and N. What was this thing they noticed anyways? Did they notice? What was it? One after another popup kept showing up with these words. It was something she was sure of, however, no matter how long she sat there she couldn’t figure it out, and it ate her.

She checked her internal clock and saw it was time for the meeting. So she stood up, opened the door and entered the dark meeting room still surrounded by her popups, almost scared to close them as if she’d forget once they close.

Chapter Text

Khan stacked papers neatly in the meeting room as J walked inside, getting his attention. She looked up at him nervously and averted her eyes from his, taking her seat quietly as she closed some of her popups, leaving some still open and shifting to some other tabs to pass the time waiting for the others. Khan was quiet for a while, leaving her to have time to tap her hands against her legs as her regulation meters were out of control. She smiled slightly, beating an AI at chess, until Khan cleared his throat, making her face fall flat out of habit.

“J.” She tensed up at her name and his tone.

“Khan.” She addressed him, showing he had her attention. He looked uncomfortable at the formality and gave her a forced smile.

“I just wanted to ask, before the rest of the workers come in, if you’d like to participate in the school reprom. N and V had lent a hand in repairing the school gym, so I was wondering if you and your team could lend a hand in setting it up and optimizing productivity.” J narrowed her eyes at him.

“Didn’t Nori tell you she didn’t want me anywhere near Uzis school life?” His visor displayed a sweat droplet for a moment. “Also, why ask an advanced task force for a school dance?”

He sighed and looked tired. “Yes, she did say that. Our students aren’t really excited for the dance after last time.” ‘Rightfully so.’ She thought to herself. “And I just think if you were to help out, maybe they wouldn’t feel as… unsafe.”

“Oh.” She said getting the idea suddenly. HE felt unsafe. A murder drone who sided with the evil entity in the same colony as him and his family. He looked nervous at her as he continued.

“I also think it would be beneficial to you to… mingle.”

“What.”

“I-I’m just saying, maybe talk to more than the WDF! It feels unhealthy, you only seem to be indulging in business related conversations.” He stated, clarifying his intentions, despite not being very clear originally. Khan had always been… odd to her. He would share lots of advice she didn’t really get, or suggest things she’d never hear him say to the others. While Nori wanted nothing to do with her, Khan always felt like he never stopped talking to her if he had the chance.

Ping. “It’s a ploy.” A popup rang in her head.

“Well, I have nothing to talk about that isn’t business related.” J said stubbornly, getting a disappointed look from Khan. It hurt.

“Well, please at least consider it. I know Nori can be… Intimidating but you’re always welcome over, N and V like to spend the weekends over a-and on Wednesdays we WDF like to host card games over at my house or by the main door. If you’re interested. Usually around 6 if no one is late.” He really was trying. She sighed, wanting this conversation over.

“Yeah, I’ll think about it.” He smiled, pleased with this answer, as he nodded and went back to organizing his slides and papers for the meeting.

As drones piled in, a few waved to J who often gave a nod back not wanting to move her arms and a few even attempted to chat her up to her annoyance. Just because someone doesn’t show up to the office doesn’t mean she's all buddy buddy with them. J had asked to be a remote worker for her filing and note-taking when she wasn’t training the trainees, but boy did that just give them reason to talk to her. She didn’t have the energy to humor conversations when she could be as efficient as possible at home. Actually, she never had the energy for conversation at all. She was sure that was a normal thing, and she was just tired from bad sleep.

“Callback Ping.”

She tensed up a bit. ‘Dammit’ The sick feeling came back but she swallowed hard and chose to choke it down. Khan raised a hand for attention and the room fell silent as he glanced around and started roll call.

“Dave?”

“Here.”

“Shara?”

“Here.”

“Jacob?” no answer. He sighed, writing down something on his notebook as he continued. Once all finished, he pulled up his papers and started handing them out. “As you all may know, this is an important meeting. We're here to discuss the transfers from the other outposts.”

“Why are we getting transfers, if I may ask?” Shara popped up. She was sharp and quick to ask questions. J knew that, and it was her reason for avoiding her at all costs.

“The outposts are getting more recruits than they can train, and they have significantly less need for protection, being in colonies with few to no… attackers.” He said that last part cautiously. They all knew what he was going to say. He moved on quickly, not letting the air get stale. “The reason we need this meeting is because I actually want to see how many teams are ready for the field and who needs more time or extra hands in their team. Js team is holding strong despite minor issues, she’s already squashing out as her team advances. Her squad will suffice for now, resuming training with no changes other than potentially getting a whole new squad.” J felt a burn of pride at his praise enough to make her smile, bringing her out of her funk. It was almost magic, the way his praise meant so much despite her feelings just a moment ago.

“Dave’s team is lacking members and has had the most quits this semester. Not an issue on his part. I heard of the party crashing and the spite the team had for one another, which only leaves him with 4 members as of now. Dave will get the majority of the new recruits with his low squad count, about 7 or 8, and I trust you can bring them together; they should be on the same level as your squad currently.” Khan said writing down a list of squad member names he's getting next semester and handing it to him. “Your squad isn’t ready to pass but they are doing well enough to keep them. Keep up the good work.”

Shara looked nervous as Khan brought his attention to her. “Shara, your lack of notes on your squad makes it hard to tell where they are at with their skills and team work, or even how many will leave us this semester. While I get that you are good at relaying information, I really need these notes. I will be adding a few recruits to your squad but I’m not sure how behind or ahead they will be.”

Shara looked disappointed in herself. “Sorry Khan.” She stuttered. “It’s just hard to keep track of that stuff, let alone write it all down, I’ll get that fixed-” J cut her off. “Have you tried sending Khan voice mails using your recorder tab?” She suggested.

Shara looked at her, shocked she even spoke to her, let alone gave her a suggestion. “I uh. No, I haven’t, actually. We have one of those?” J nodded, smiling a bit, to even Khan's shock. J took this opportunity to pull out her worker drone manual and flipped to the page on the exact, once again getting some raised eyebrows. “Yeah, it says here all worker drones have access to visual and vocal recordings if a distress call is not currently activated within the drone and can be manually switched off by a remote host, which would have been the original owner company.” She said, basically remembering it all from memory but wanting to look at the diagrams of the worker drones again. Before she could mention another fact regarding drone tabs, Shara pipped up again, more concerned than anything.

“… Why do you have that?” J blinked at her, confused herself.

“Well uh. Worker Drones have different anatomy and features. A lot of their core mechanics are something we have to go against as WDF trainers, and I need to be able to properly know what will kill them or not.” Khan closed his eyes like he was pained at her statement. ‘Oh, here it comes.’ He thought.

“What?! So you're studying how to kill us?”

“WHAT?! NO! I already know how to kill, I just-”

“J you’re not helping your case. Shara this isn’t how we talk to our coworkers.”

“Well, my fellow coworker is an ex killer!”

“Shara you are dismissed.” Khan said sternly, staring at her.

“Huh-?”

“You are dismissed from the meeting, you can go home. That’s not a suggestion.” She gave him a startled look before glaring at J and getting up before closing the door with a slam. Khan sighed before giving J a sympathetic look. It killed her. She quietly put the manual away, letting Khan continue to talk and address other squad leaders and how they can increase performance or if they are doing enough. J didn’t speak another word the whole meeting. Her mind raced with her words, and the horror she felt was something she hadn’t felt in a while.

“Callback Ping.”

The thoughts didn’t stop even when Khan pulled her aside after the meeting to apologize for Shara and tell her she was super helpful in her suggestion. His words mean nothing to her. She was right back where she was before. Drowning in the shame that is that she didn’t belong here. She felt nervous exiting the meeting room, not realizing she had tabbed out halfway through it. She just wanted to go home. The popups continued, sometimes even came attached audio files of her words. “Ex-killer” But did she ever stop being one?

She made her way back to her apartment to find it dark and warm as usual. She stepped inside before turning the light on with a switch that was uncomfortably too far from the door for anyone who isn't used to her apartment. The door closed behind her, and she stared at the dirty dishes in the sink and the trash scattered around and overflowing in her trash can. She walked over to her fridge before taking out about 4 cans of regular non-carbonated oil and bringing them to her living room and grabbing the remote before making herself comfortable. She popped open the first can as she turned on the worn down TV she managed to jailbreak from the colony shows. She found out some shows from other human planets still worked on, the ones that simply went down in either their own core collapse or some kinda disease they couldn’t cure instead of being eaten by the Solver. She liked the human shows, even the ones that use drones as the butt-end of a joke. It felt so comforting. It was like she was home and not trapped with hundreds of enemies waiting for the right moment.

She shook the thought away and looked through her popups before attempting to close them, only to have them reappear right after she closed them. She groaned in annoyance before turning the TV volume up to drown out the sound of her mind. She loved watching this show, it was a comedy of some sort about living in a home full of monsters and one normal guy. He was kicked out as a kid and has been living with the monsters since he was 16. “But despite being monsters,” He would say to anyone he’s met. “They are more human than me at times.” That stuck with her since she first watched it. It was her first human life show she had ever seen and the first show that popped on when she got her TV jailbroken. She always wondered if the guy was like how she felt now. Out of the ordinary for her group. Sure, her, V and N were all drones but she never felt quite right standing next to them. Never could she tell if she felt too good for them for what they did to her, or if she didn’t deserve a spot next to them for what she’s done.

She felt the emotions bubble up in her and chugged down a can of oil, raising an eyebrow she noticed it tasted weird. She looked at the label again before noticing her mistake. “Spiked” She had picked up her alcoholic oil. She debated putting it back and getting regular ones but she thought about when was the last time she had gotten to taste any form of alcohol. She remembered V and Ns…

“Callback Ping.”

That one did it. She shot up from her couch and rushed over to the sink before hurling into it as the nauseous feeling came back as she tried to shove memories down. Popping up too fast for her to close them all before she read some of them.

“Yeah! No! You two enjoy yourselves, I’ll be okay! See you two before sunrise!” Transcript 09-17-3071 Pre Hunt message.

She closed the message player before more came up. ‘I can’t relive that.’ She thought, looking down into her sink, seeing the horrible mess. Dishes not even worth cleaning, packs of open food gifts from N she started eating but couldn’t find the strength to keep eating, mold growing on some of her counters from the leaking pipes in the apartment. This place was in shambles. ‘I can’t let anyone see this’ She would always tell herself when N or V offered to come over and hang out. Her visor let a stray tear fall from her eye and she quickly tapped her visor to make it disappear. She can’t do that right now. She just needs to relax. Just sit down.

She forced herself out of her crouched stance and made her way back to the couch before grabbing her open can and sending its contents down her throat. Maybe if she got fucked up enough, she won’t have to remember or the popups will stop working. She sighed as she finished off the can, already feeling heavier laying down on the couch, turning her head to the TV. The heavy feeling was oddly comforting, and the sounds of the TV lured her into a sleepy state. She pulled the blanket off the side of the couch and onto herself before closing her eyes and starting the shutdown process of falling asleep. Her legs and arms clicked offline and attempted to adjust to the fact she wasn't sleeping hanging. It won’t prevent the soreness tomorrow but it helps. Her vents adjusted to the change in airflow needed as her breath became shallow needing less cooling and her true eyes clicked off starting with taste, then the hearing as it dulled and became muffled, then the eyes and last her smell. A sleep mode display came upon her visor with two additional factors under it.

Intox: Mild

Bad time mode: true

 

____________

Ping.

“.You need to wake up”

Ping.

“.J I’m being serious”

Ping.

“!J”

J shot up from her couch startled, but for once not from a nightmare she couldn’t remember. She grabbed her phone off the table to find it was dead, which she scowled at. ‘Not from there’ She deduced, unsure where these messages and pings came from. She opened her internal messaging system. Maybe N or V were trying to reach her and couldn’t because of her dead phone. She scrolled through her notifications and took care of emails while she sat up to sit on her couch and sent over some documents Dave needed, saying he didn’t get a chance to ask her for them at the meeting. Scanning her notifications, she sorted through them as she swiped past ads or notifications for socials she never used before staring into her visor in mild horror. There were no messages. Her notifications were empty and she had no messages.

“Oh, so I'm finally losing it.” She mumbled to herself cynically.

Ping.

She nearly jumped out of her skin, she looked at her messages only to still see no new messages. “God is this gonna become a problem too?” she sighed as she pulled the blanket off of her and pushed herself to get up feeling wobbly and her head hurt. “Oh seriously? One can. Fuck, I’m a light weight.” She didn’t have work but she planned to go out instead of moping around all day. “Ugh… I can get through this hangover. Ugh.” J picked up her unopened cans and put them back into the fridge, organizing it neater than she did before when she grabbed the wrong one by accident. She looked at her sink again, staring into the black ooze that ejected from her body and walked over, turning the sink on, letting everything run down the drain. She stared into the sink for a moment, feeling her body stiffen as she thought to clean the plates and crusty mugs before turning the running water off and turning around. She stood adjacent to her hallway, staring at her front door. “Any second now.”

Click!

Letters dropped into Js apartment through a small flap in the door. 11:45 A.M. Just like it always is. She walked over to the letters and picked them up. 3 letters as per usual. One from N, one from the weird news kid at Uzis school and a third one from the WDF regarding complaints or emails or updates since she worked from home. She sat down in her favorite chair and opened Ns letter, seeing what the moron wrote.

“Hi J!

Hey so I know you’re probably mad at me right now after yesterday but I wanted to check up on you. You seem really distant recently, and I guess I’m worried we did something. I know you and V aren’t so buddy pals right now but I’d love to hang out! If you want. Okay bye!”

He didn’t even need to sign off for her to know it was him. She smiled a bit. “Moron bot.” She set it aside as she opened the second letter. She was almost sure this kid was sending these letters to the wrong apartment.

“BIG NEWS! The Jackson special!

You heard of the prom now get ready for the REPROMENING! Last year's prom sucked major ass! That freaky girl totally killed and ate people, and not in a hot way like when V does it! Like so not cool, so Uzi is making the prom 2! It’s gonna be so rad! Please come, it will be awesome! Okay later babe (to all the hot girls out there)”

“Didn’t even end it with a period.” she said, sucking her teeth amused. She felt the urge to ball up the paper but she stopped herself. She wasn’t sure why but she felt a pull to not ball it up. “Ugh, I’m not in the mood for moral crossroads.” The female disassembly drone said as she set the half flier half note aside. She grabbed the last one, she felt happy to almost be finished with her morning mail routine. She hated when she didn’t or was running late because she decided to do it but she absolutely had to or else her day would simply be ruined. She couldn’t explain it but she would feel weird and wrong if she didn’t so she tried not to forget. She ripped open the letter. The envelope had no name or return address, just her own. Weird. She flipped it open.

“I know where you live.”

She sat there, feeling her core stop momentarily. There was nothing else on the page. Nothing on the back or the envelope herself. It wasn’t even written by hand. It was typed out and printed, leaving no way to trace it back to the writer. She looked it over several times, unsure how to take this. Was this a threat? Who IS this person? How did they get her apartment number? These flew through her head faster than she could realize how long she sat there. Looking. Starring. The room suddenly felt cold. A sweat ran down her visor nervously as she set the letter aside as well. She stood up, grabbing the letters and putting them away in a box and setting it in her hallway closet, suddenly very anxious. Believing the letters going away would make her feel better she tried to calm down as she realized her breathing was shaky. What a weird thing to get so worked up over. It’s just one letter. Nothing to worry about. It’s just one.

J started walking towards her bedroom in an attempt to find something that didn’t look utterly hideous on her for today. Uzi had given her jeans and shit that were too big for her and too thin for V so they would have to do as she stood around her room topless trying to find a shirt.

“UGH! I NEED TO DO LAUNDRY!” She growled angrily at herself as she pushed around old shirts with stains and general bedroom smell before she found a halfway decent shirt, but of course it’s the worst shirt she had ever seen in her life. “Okay, so do I wanna smell or look stupid today?” She asked aloud. When did she start doing that? She thought about it and she figured she’d rather die than be known as someone who smells like roadkill, picking the horribly bright blue and yellow neon shirt. It didn’t even look good on the ground, let alone her. She sighed, knowing this is the price she pays for being lazy and not wanting to do laundry. She’s never lazy in public but she really let herself go behind closed doors.

She walked into the bathroom across from her bedroom and scrounged around for a can of anything to make her smell less bad. She never had the energy to get in the shower, so a can of Axe should do it for now. She pulled out a brush from the cabinet under the sink and gave her hair a brush since it looked god awful. As she finished, she paused, looking at herself in her broken mirror she punched in frustration the other day. Its shatter marks stretched far, leaving a beautiful spider web if under a different circumstance.

She closed her eyes. She felt so overwhelmed. What the hell was that letter? Who was it from? Did she piss Shara off that badly? What happens now? What's going to happen to her? That last question terrified her the most. She didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t want to tune back into the life she was living. ‘I want out’ her mind screamed. ‘I WANT OUT’ She expected to hear nothing back, however she received something.

Ping.

She opened her eyes. She felt suddenly different. However, nothing changed, it seemed. ‘Maybe screaming in your mind helps after all. Take that V.’ She thought in annoyance at her. She was too wrapped up in her thoughts to notice that the color on her visor had shifted. Less yellow and more of a pale one, almost white.

She sighed looking down at her hand seeing it shaking, and she let it happen, shaking her hand more violently as she let a calming sigh slowly come out as she felt her processors regulating once again. She still felt uneasy but she was more ready to get out the door now. She set the brush down and rubbed her face a bit to make sure the regulation was fully processed before taking strides towards the front door. “I’m gonna fuck this day up.” She pressed for the door to open and took a stride out.

She felt different this morning. Lighter and had a bounce to her step. She felt like there was a presence, but not an uncomfortable one. However, when she looked around, she found no one there. It was… weird considering she felt so panicked a moment ago. She decided to brush it off; she had made her mind up. She walked absentmindedly, taking the chance to really think about what she was about to do with her day off. Khan was right for once. She really did need to ‘mingle’ but in that friend way. She really let herself grow distant. Time to fix that! It would be better for her! She thought about her word choice in her last thoughts. They were off. She couldn’t place why but decided it didn’t matter at that moment.

She waved to a couple drones on her way towards the school gym, causing a few drones to look at her confused, even the one who recognized her as they have never seen her smile this wide. She didn’t even notice she was smiling. It came so naturally to her. Why was that? She ignored her own questions as she bumped into a drone. “Oof! Sorry-hey wait, I recognize you!” She said, looking down at the small green-eyed drone. He looked back up at her, taking a step back due to the height difference. “It’s Thad right?”

“Oh! Hey! Sorry, I didn't see where I was going. And yeah, it’s Thad. You seem… in a good mood?” He said, slightly uncomfortable by the shift in tone from yesterday. He’d expect such a smile and cheery attitude from N.

“Oh yeah I kinda I don’t know, just felt better today. Bit of a headache but feeling GREAT today! Kinda hungry though, might pick something up on my way to the gym. Where are you off to?” She rapidly fired information at him, seeming genuinely interested. It made his head spin but he decided to go with it.

“I uh. Just came from the gym, Uzi asked me to go get N and V for the reprom. Are… you helping with it?” J nodded her head so vigorously it made her a bit dizzy.

“Yeah! Khan suggested it to me and mentioned you guys might need some help! Going to talk to her about plans before I go grab some help for it. He suggested my squad would be a good amount of people to help out. I should get there and stop keeping you, tell V and N I said hi!” She said, pushing past him and waving goodbye to him. He simply stood there and waved before continuing his walk to V and Ns place. ‘That was… weird. Even for her.’

J stopped by one of the oil stations and decided to take a swig of the carbonated ones again, liking the fizz feeling. She popped it open as she reached the gym doors, heaving it open to see a total of four drones in the gym. Uzi and that pink eyed one, as well as two others she didn’t recognize. Uzi slammed her head into her clipboard as she yelled, presumably at the pink drone who seemed to be ignoring her on her phone. She took a sip as she walked closer and listened in.

“WHY can’t you take ANYTHING seriously?! Like I’m doing YOU a favor after your INSANE girlfriend crashed the party!” The pink drone rolled her eyes.

“Like, not my girlfriend. Totally just a person I felt bad for.”

“Didn’t YOU host her funeral?” The drone formed a small blush.

“Like not important, Hot Topic.”

“Why are you even here if you don’t care?!”

“To hear you yell about this insane project.”

J watched the two bicker before accidentally making a loud slurp sound catching the attention of both drones, even tearing the pink drone's gaze away from her phone seemingly surprised that someone even showed up.

“Oh robo Jesus! J?!” Uzi said seeing her as J gave her a small wave and looking her up and down. “What… what are you doing here?” Before J got a chance to speak, the other drone interrupted.

“That is the ugliest shirt I have ever seen.” She said before taking a picture and going back to her phone. J looked down at her shirt.

“It’s not that bad…” She said, a hint of sadness in her voice. “And your dad told me you’re hosting prom and said I should come by and help.” Uzi gave her a suspicious look and studied J for a moment.

Uzi had never seen J in anything but work clothes. Jeans and frankly the worst shirt ever was NOT what she expected to see. She had an unsettling smile that reminded her of N. It was uncharacteristic of her from her normal attitude. She didn’t feel too good about J anyways being an ex enemy who was suddenly very chummy with her when she would normally avoid her like the robo plague.

“Okay… well first off we don’t even have the tables set up, the table cloths keep being used as napkins by little miss popular here-”

“My name is Lizzy. Learn it.”

“Neither of the two drones can reach the ceiling beams to hang up the streamers and lights, my dad didn’t approve of my firearms' idea, and I have no food supplier aside from that guy's MOM and I still haven't gotten my coffee I asked for an hour ago!” She spat out, staring at Lizzy, seeming to be the culprit for the lack of coffee.

Lizzy confirmed with the statement, “Not your maid.” The last word got a small flinch out of J but she stuffed it down. She wasn’t letting another ping ruin her day.

“Sooo what I’m hearing is you need some hands and a lot of them.” Uzi nodded, raising an eyebrow as J pulled out her phone and groaned. “Shit… either of you have a charger?” Not even looking up, Lizzy tossed a small box and a cord at J who jumped in surprise at stuff being thrown at her. She looked confused before Lizzy spoke.

“It’s a battery pack. Works like an outlet.” J nodded before plugging it in and waiting a moment as her phone started charging. She took a sip of her oil as she tried to maneuver her phone and this ‘battery pack’ in one hand before it turned on, and she started typing, opening her squad group chat. Uzi turned away, letting her do her thing as she yelled at one of the drones.

“Hey! No slacking off! We have work to do!” J snickered at her.

“You sound like me.”

“Ew.” J looked up, offended, before putting her phone away and setting her can down on the table nearby after she chugged the rest of it.

“Anyways, what needs to be hung? How do you want this to look? Theme? Any particular colors and order? More lights than streamers, or the other way around? I guess if you want dark, you'd go for less light, but there is a lot in this box.” Uzi didn’t even have time to register that J had moved and was rummaging through the ceiling box with all the questions she just threw at her.

“I uh. Okay. It’s dark themes and uhhh I don't know purple? How am I supposed to know color theory?” J looked at her holding multiple items in her hand looking at them intently like she was thinking. “I guess red would look good too?”

“Hmm purple and red… a bit of a contrast, purple would be more relaxed as light colors would feel less of a ‘I'm in a horror movie’ feel. I think the red streamers would be good with purple lighting, as the dark would dull it a little, making it less obvious. The cloths on the tables should definitely be black or at least gray to keep the room feeling less stuffy and noisy. Maybe with red napkins and plates.” J listed off ideas Uzi didn’t entirely hate, nodding a bit. She seemed to take note of these suggestions, writing them down. “Okay, I’ll stop bothering you and let you work. Should have a few of my squad come by that wanna help and ask you for instructions, they are very good at following instructions.” With that J unsheeted her wings with the box in hand and took off, landing herself on top of a support beam in the gym setting the box next to her as she picked out the right things.

Uzi stared up at her. ‘She’s acting weird’ J would never come up and talk to her, let alone act that cheerful. Something was up. Yet, she had no idea what it could be, seeing she was completely out of the loop on Js life compared to the others. The only things she’s heard about J was from N telling her how distant and closed off she’s become. This… was nowhere near what he was describing. She sighed, knowing she didn’t have time to care, let alone ask questions. The prom was in a week. She needed progress done. She turned and made another loud gester to Lizzy, who continued to ignore her, and she yelled in frustration. This was going to be a long, long day.

Chapter Text

N scrambled to keep up with V sprinting to the gym, Thad trailing along behind both of them. “V! Slow down! It’s not that serious! What’s gotten into you?!” He yelled losing breath trying to talk to her as she ignored him and pushed open the gym door getting Uzis attention, nearly dropping the table she was carrying on her foot.

“ROBO GOD! What is with you people today?!” V ignored her, stepping in, looking around frantically, seeming to hold back a smile but failing.

“Uzi! Uzi! Where’s J? Is she still here?”

“Uh. Yeah. She’s up there.” Uzi said pointing up and being shocked how much progress J had made in the few minutes, she looked away. J took quadratic strives across the beams effortlessly moving across them and jumping between them setting up streamers and lights often with her teeth not wanting to mess up her flow that was interrupted anyways from V.

“Oh my god. J! J get down here!” J was taken aback by her name being called, V watched her scramble and nearly fall off a support beam, getting a snicker out of her. J looked down before trotting across a beam towards the wall to climb down safely, not able to disengage quad mode in that position. Once on the ground, her joints wheezed and clicked in ways Uzi had never heard before, walking over to V giving her a suspicious and curious look. “Oh my god.” The arrogant drone whispered.

“What?” V didn’t even get a chance to answer, she simply burst into laughter, leaning over holding her stomach before grabbing a table for support as she laughed maniacally.

“Oh my robo god, that really is the worst shirt I have ever seen, the picture doesn’t do it justice!” J looked over at Lizzy in annoyance.

“You sent V the picture?!” Lizzy smirked.

“You could say that.” J rolled her eyes.

“It is NOT that bad… is it?” She said, turning to Uzi, who only turned her head away to avoid eye contact.

“I-I’ve seen worse? Okay, no, it’s pretty bad.” Uzi admitted not being able to lie.

Before any of them could continue, Thad and N came through the door, breathing like they just nearly suffocated. “V! Why… why… were you… running?!” N gasped out between breaths as he staggered over to her and the rest of the group, not even noticing J yet.

“Uh, this comedy gold?” V said, pointing at J who in return gave her the coldest glare V had seen since the last time they had a full conversation.

N looked up from the ground, letting go of his knees and looking at J. “J! Hi! Nice shirt!”

“You did not!” V laughed out that N even said something nice about it, considering it was the most horrible clash of colors known to man that hurt her eyes.

“It’s not that bad! Could be like your shirt last week with the-” V cut him off with a sword hand to his face.

“We promised to never speak about that!” J snickered.

“Sounds like two of us have questionable fashion choices.” She said, getting narrowed eyes from V. N looked between the two, a bit confused by the different emotions going up in the air. J having a small smile with V was mildly annoyed. Typically, opposites of what they would be.

“Sooo…” N started out looking at J who returned his gaze. “Are you helping out with the reporm?” J nodded to his delight. “Really?!”

“Yeah… I already started on the ceiling decor, kinda hurt my back doing it.” She said pushing on her back, hearing a pop to which she gasped and coughed a bit. Uzi looked over worried while N and V didn’t flinch. “Ow. Fuck. I really need to put some oil in my joints.” N immediately went through his pockets and pulled out a can with a different label then the normal cans they drink. It had a small spout like straw coming out of it to which N popped the cap off handing to J.

“I always keep a can on me! Uzi makes me now.”

“Good, you never used to oil your joints before. How are they, by the way?” J asked, striking up conversation as she let some drops into her knee joints as she bends them slightly, getting the oil all around.

“Oh well, you know, kinda the same old same old. I found out I can bend my neck like this-!”

“Do not!” J said, standing up straight as N grabbed his head. “You moron, you’re gonna kill yourself.” She handed back his oil can to get his hands on his head as he smiled sheepishly.

“Right. Sorry.” As they talked Thad pulled Uzi aside, talking quietly not enough to get N or J's attention but leaving room for V to eavesdrop.

“Hey, has she seemed… weird to you lately?”

“V or J? Both of them are weird.”

V snapped her attention to the two and gave a hiss. Thad looked over sacred and just smiled.

“J. Yesterday, she looked at me like she wanted to kill me. Now she's. Talking to N.”

Uzi looked over at the two seeing N had started talking about something and instead of a disinterested look or her immediately shutting him up she seemed to be listening, even speaking a few times. “Okay yeah she seems to be acting weird. I kinda assumed she just hit her head or something while getting up this morning.” She seemed truly disinterested and more annoyed by this change in behavior. Thad made a noise like he was surprised and tried to object before getting a box shoved in his face and Uzi announcing he was on stage decor duty, forcing him away seemingly annoyed with so much chit-chat as V rested on his words herself.

V stared at J feeling a weird familiarity to her mannerisms. It wasn’t very pleasant, yet she knew it was still her. V walked over to the two, one of her hands on her hips. “So, what's going on in Dumb and Dumber town over here?” J immediately dropped her friendly attitude and looked at V with bored eyes. “Fine. Glad Dumbest, our mayor, could join us.” V hissed at her, insulted. J didn’t even smirk; she simply narrowed her eyes and turned back to N. “I need to go back to the decor.” She said flatly and started walking away, and N looked at V with an annoyed expression.

“What?! I didn’t-”

“Yes, you did V.” He cut her off. V said nothing as she crossed her arms and looked away from N towards J who stretched out her legs popping them into a quadrupedal form and jumping onto the gym walls to climb up onto the beams and trotted over to her box which she stuck her face into picking out things not even bothering to use her hands. V looked away feeling a bit guilty but not for long as she walked over to Uzi looking to stop being bored.

J sat up on the crossbeam, finishing up the decor as her mind wondered. Her tail wagged, keeping her balance.

Ping.

“Note to self. Don’t trust V.”

She growled slightly at the thought of V and her general attitude she has. Hostile. Untrustworthy. Threat. She wasn’t about to be in danger again. Before her thoughts could continue, she was shaken out of them by the gym door being opened.

“Whoops! Sorry!” The drone entering the gym said pushing it too hard. Uzi slammed her clipboard on the ground in annoyance.

“ARE ALL OF YOU GONNA DO THIS OR DO WE HAVE TO REMOVE THE DOOR?!” The drone blinked at her as a few more walked in behind him, holding the door open.

“Is… is that an order, ma’am?” J poked her head out from the beams to look down at Uzi, looking like she was about to pop an oil vessel, before calming down and taking a deep breath.

“No. Who are you exactly?” The short drone puffed up his chest slightly to prevent his slouch he had upon walking inside.

“J’s training squad. She told us you might need some hands around here. You must be Uzi.”

“What gave it away?”

“Brash attitude, purple hair, strange angry yet god-like horror aura were the only description she needed to give us.” He said smugly pointing behind her to the tentacles she had unknowingly unsheeted gripping a can of oil in one and holding a box in another as another had grabbed her floor clipboard. She looked back and forth between the blue-eyed drone and the appendages she still wasn’t quite used to, and blushed slightly in embarrassment.

“Ugh. Whatever. Can you guys handle more than two instructions at a time, at least.”

“Heh! I can handle six.” The drone said, a hint of arrogance in his voice. Uzi narrowed her eyes slightly, intrigued if the arrogance was justified or not.

“Alright. First!” She swiftly handed the conversing drone a box and shoved another onto a nearby drone, snapping him to attention. “These are the table decorations. They have specific orders they have to go in. Every other table has to alternate between purple and red appliances. The tables should be all black and despite the fact I keep removing these candles out of the box I keep finding more, and you will NOT put them on the tables! All of you are dumb and will set fire to the place!” Uzi pointed to another group of two and started on another rant. “You two! Table set up! I need them on the outskirts of the gym, but not too close! Max of 15 tables! Make it work!” The two nodded before getting to work rolling the stacked nearby tables away, talking amongst themselves about how they are going to arrange the tables as they roll them around in neat fashion.

J watched overhead as they went, taking note of how well they take orders, move efficiently, and how they work in pairs rather than large groups. Even for volunteer work, J was always making sure to take notes missing no details on her squad so she could give Khan an accurate report. She was finished with ceiling decorations and just wanted a break from the rest of the group. She stared down at the makeshift leader of the group, taking Uzis instructions and making them a reality before gazing at the stage at the end of the gym that was thrown together almost half haphazardly but definitely enough to hold a few drones. ‘Must be for the prom queen. Didn’t V say she was voted prom queen somehow?’

J attempted to recall the events, but her memories blurred a bit, being only imaginary recreations of the event. Uzi had given J a small run down of last prom around the time she was brought back to the bunker.

“Yeah, like that crazy chick Doll slung some pipes into V while she was up there. Tore her arm off and shit. Pretty nasty, but she was okay, obviously.” J simply nodded, not speaking much, however picked up on Uzis' mumbles. “Like you even care, probably.” J looked over at her, slightly walking faster than her. She stared for a moment, and it only took a moment to see a familiar face. The way she held herself and the way her swearlish hair was slunk like the overhung moon. However, she quickly averted her eyes upon seeing the tint of yellow in her visor.

“Callback Ping.”

J shook her head out of her thoughts and felt dizzy. Was the world spinning? J quickly grabbed onto the support beams when suddenly she realized she was moving, leaning off the beams and holding on, scrambling to raise her feet up to the beam. “Oh! Shit!” She yelped out as she accidentally knocked the box on the beam off attempting to get her footing, still missing the beams as she attempted to pull herself up. The box would have fallen with a crash if N and a few other drones hadn’t raced to grab it. N held out the box as he collected a few falling items, and the table crew grabbed the further away ones, putting them back in the box as N held his hand out for it.

To J's surprise, it was V who called out. “J! You okay up there?” Her tone came off stronger than she expected, J could have sworn it was concerned. She pushed the thought away almost as quickly as it came. J grunted as she got a footing and pulled herself up all the way before looking down at V making eye contact. V could have sworn her eyes were suddenly more vibrant but she couldn’t quite make much out without her glasses. “J?”

“Yeah! I’m fine!” J yelled back down.

“You should come down! Those beams aren’t as sturdy as they look!” Uzi interrupted them. “Also, try not to drop anything on our heads again!” J gave her a hardened look, getting a confused look from Uzi, who was shocked by the sudden change of attitude towards her. Uzi rolled her eyes as J turned from her and went to the side of the gym she climbed up originally. “Robo god, what's her problem?”

“Wish any of us knew.” V said a hidden tone Uzi couldn’t place but realized she walked back towards the stage before she could question it. Uzi groaned.

“Why are murder drones so dramatic all the time?” She turned to where J was standing and walked over to her. “Hey.” J immediately tensed up and looked at her hollow eyes. She had a slight slouch, probably to keep eye contact with Uzi. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, dude.” When J didn’t respond, Uzi looked around at the rest of the gym, getting a good idea of how everything was going. “Who knew running an event would be so stressful. How did you deal with it? Running your squad?” J averted her eyes, opting to look down, her arms pulled up defensively into a T. rex type of position flexing her claw like hands as she spoke.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged as she said it. “It wasn’t that hard, I kinda had to be an asshole and things worked out.”

“I meant the stress.” J remade eye contact with her.

Ding. A popup. “Did you ever manage it?”

J narrowed her eyes at Uzi, who flinched slightly. “We are not connecting.” She practically snarled. “I suggest you stop that now.” J turned from her and made a beeline to the bleachers across the gym. Uzi starred in plain shock at the aggressive nature of her tone before walking back to the main set up area where she planted her face in N's chest, who gave her a confused look before patting her head asking if she was okay.

J sat down on the bleachers as she crossed her arms and leaning back she sighed. She scratched at her arms slightly, not because of any particular itch, but an itch that she felt under her metal skin. Like there was something she needed to tear out, but nothing ever came. Scratches is all that was left when she was done, and she always felt annoyed when she did. She took a deep breath, attempting to slow her core rate as it was pounding out of its mine from the mild confrontation. She was too busy scratching and trying to keep herself from freaking out. She didn’t even notice a drone sitting down with a laptop next to her. She only noticed when he groaned in frustration, getting a jump out of her.

“Oh! Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you.” The drone said, flinching at her as she moved. “I was trynna get this stupid thing to work.” He said, turning his gaze back to his screen and flashing an annoyed expression onto it again.

J leaned over taking a look curious. The smaller drone turned his laptop to show her, noticing the lean. “It’s just a thing, it's like not a big deal.” He said, slightly embarrassed he was showing another person what he was doing, but he couldn’t help but feel pride that someone seemed interested in what he was doing.

“Oh. You’re writing JavaScript.” She noted as she got a good look at it. “Your formatting is all jumbled and cluttered, are you a beginner?” Before the drone could say anything, she shook her head. “Well, actually you’d probably be at least a middle class beginner with some of these terms. Don’t they teach this in school?” He nodded.

“Yeah, it’s actually homework, I just can’t figure out what's wrong with it!” He groaned. “I’m surprised you're even interested. My classmates hate it, heh.” J smirked.

“We run on JavaScript. It's important to know it, it's really easy to mess things up, though. Like how you probably have a syntax error you can’t see because your code is so muddied. A proper format should look like this.” J grabbed the drones' laptop before backspacing a bunch of code and removing unneeded things from the code and compressing it to a much neater code. The smaller drone leaned over watching her as she typed, effortlessly compiling the code into its new format.

“Woah! That’s what he meant I guess… Thanks!” The drone smiled at her, and she returned it, as well as the laptop. “My names Rex, by the way. What's yours? Are you like a junior in college? I feel like I’ve never seen you.” J snickered slightly, shaking her head.

“No. I’m actually one of the WDF squad trainers. College sounds boring.” She said, attempting a joking tone. It seemed to land with Rex as he giggled, nodding his head.

“Yeah, it kinda is. Long lectures, bored professors, you know that kinda thing. But they have a geek club! We… kinda just talk about games and coding for fun kinda stuff. I am kinda surprised a WDF worker is even interested in code. Most people who sign up are kinda ‘Grrr! I need to protect my colony!’ Or ‘Grrr! I can kill people legally!’ all the time.” He said, rolling his eyes. J rolled her as well.

“Oh yeah those two get those guys,” She said pointing to N and V across the gym talking to each other not paying much attention to their expressions, “Once they are given to me, I weed out those ones, and they often leave or get dismissed.”

“Ooh, that's why Josh looked so mad when I asked him about training.”

“Oh yeah, Josh sucked, haha!” She said, letting out a laugh. Rex gave a nervous laugh.

“Yeah, he… wasn’t very happy ‘murder drones’ were running the program and said it sucked anyways. He’s kinda an asshole.” Rex said putting up quotations around ‘Murder Drones’ felt strangely nice. Like he didn’t see them that way. “My mom is like that all the time. Always telling me the WDF was ‘better off as a real drone program’ whatever that means. I don’t know, it seems silly. The whole killing everyone thing was like months ago, get over it.” He said, not even looking at J anymore, staring at his code as he typed away continuing to talk to her. She thought about his words for a moment and how he spoke to her. Calm, confident, hint of shyness yet no fear in sight. Almost like she didn’t mind her being there. It was somehow uncomfortable and comforting at the same time, and it made her head spin.

“J.”

“Hm?”

“My name is J. I realized I never answered you.”

“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t even notice! I was so busy talking about my mom. She’s kinda a pain.” J rolled her eyes, smiling.

“Mothers kinda suck, trust me, I’ve had plenty of bad experiences.” She said, her mind trailing back first to Nori and her hostile conversation that ended with Khan having to stand between the two and then to a more grim memory and name that made her tense but she was never sure why. What even was her name? She could never remember, it felt blocked out. She tore her thoughts away when Rex spoke again.

“I can imagine. With how parents are around here, I’m surprised all three of you are allowed to stand in this gym. Probably had something to do with Uzi and her dad. Shocking, he came around to you guys considering his wife. L-like no offense to you, it's just like you know circumstances and stuff and how people are and. Sorry.” Rex became frantic halfway through his explanation before simply apologizing. J noticed his slump and observed him a bit before saying anything.

“It’s okay, no, I agree.” Rex's expression raised a mildly shocked one as she continued. “It is kinda confusing. It’s weird, like we killed your wife. Why did you employ us?” She said laughing, slightly nervous that it was a joke in bad taste, until Rex let out a laugh at it. She felt suddenly relaxed and laughed with him. “It’s not even a good joke, what's got you laughing?”

“I don’t know just the thought of Mr. Doorman all like,” Rex stood up, setting his laptop down straightening himself and putting his finger under his nose to act as a mustache and in the worst Khan impression imaginable said, “Ah! Fine killing today, J was it? You have done a great job. Are you interested in doors?” J couldn’t contain her laughter, earning a wide smile from Rex.

“Dude, that was the WORST impression I ever heard.” J said, still smiling. “Yet incredibly accurate.”

Rex simply did a mocking bow with a grin. “Thank you! Thank you! At least someone appreciates my antics. My girlfriend hates it. Especially when I do it about her mother.” He said, putting a hand up to his mouth in a joking whisper, still loudly explaining it.

“I could imagine so. Most girls hate it when you insult their mother. Actually, most girls hate everything.” Rex nodded, looking a little nervous, agreeing.

“Yeah, she’s usually really nice, though. I love her a lot. Not to like to start talking about her, hehe.” J shrugged.

“It’s alright. You got a life with someone, it's fair.”

Rex sat down on the bleachers again, closing his laptop after saving his work, selfing it for later. “You’re pretty down to Copper 9 huh? It’s nice talking to someone who is pretty straightforward, instead of Uzi's aggressive angst or Lizzy’s unreadable tone. It’s like she doesn’t even care about anything that isn’t that other drone, what's her name?”

“V.”

“Yeah her! Like, at least listen to me if I’m supposed to tutor you. She just thinks I’m a nerd.”

“Tell me about it. Popular kids are always like that. V is practically one now, and it’s annoying. It’s like you can’t even talk to her without feeling like she wants you to die just from the way she looks at me.”

“Right! It’s like, so weird.” Rex pulled out his phone, checking the time. He stared at it for a moment, thinking. J noticed a sweat run down his forehead, and before she could say anything he put his laptop in his back and slung it over his shoulder before standing and turning to J clearly nervous. “Okay like I don’t wanna come off weird but like,” His words caught in his throat and a small blush came on his face, clearly embarrassed and awkward. “I enjoyed your company and liked talking to you, so would you wanna hang out again? It’s like cool if you don't. I just don’t talk to many people, and they usually are like ‘ahh Rex, you're so weird!’ and don’t hang out with me and oh my god I’m talking too much-”

“Sure.”

Rex stopped in the middle of his ramble, shocked by her answer. “R-really?”

J shrugged, crossing her arms. “Why not? You don’t bore me to death like most people.” She said nonchalantly. She held her confident outer shell strong, but deep under the crust she fought to not be overjoyed by the idea of not spending her days off bored out of her mind or slowly rotting away with her pile of dishes and trash.

Rex clapped his hands together doing a slight bounce, clearly excited, before opening his phone and showing her his new contact page. “Here! So we can talk later. I have so many projects I wanna show you later, if that's okay.” J failed to suppress a smile as she grabbed his phone, putting her number in and adding her name as ‘Super Cool Awesome Murder Drone’ earning a snort out of Rex as she handed it back.

“My phones like kinda dead right now, so blow up my phone all you want, and I’ll respond later.” J said forgetting her phone was attached to Lizzy’s battery pack. J looked Rex up and down, finally getting a good look at him. She figured she should remember how he looked if they were gonna hang out again. She made note of his blue eye color, his weird hoodie with bright-colored anthro animals on it and his greasy and unnaturally spiky hair. He had a weird hunch to him, not like other drones did, making him appear shorter. After J finished analyzing him, Rex nodded and turned on his heels before heading to the exit of the gym, waving to her presumably to go home.

Almost as soon as he left, Js phone buzzed to her surprise as she didn’t realize her phone was charging and pulled it out of her pocket seeing his text. “Hey J! It’s me Rex! Making sure you got thi…” The message cut off on her notification and she opened the message, tapping on the top part of the messaging app. She hit new contact and typed in his name.
“Super Cool Dude Rex”

Chapter Text

Beep beep.

Beep beep.

Beep beep.

Bee-

“UGH SHUT UP!” Uzi sat up from bed, grabbing one of her pillows, and swiftly tossed it at her clock across the room. It hit the clock with a thud, turning it off, giving Uzi some sense of peace. She rolled over, sliding off her bed laying on the floor, face down. Groaning, she pushed herself off the floor slowly to a stand. She picked up her pillow, tossing it back onto her bed annoyed as she pulled open her dresser, seeing her clothes organized and not on the floor like she wanted. “Stupid mom, she can. Bite me!”

Getting dressed, Uzi looked for her beanie on her lampshade, not being able to find it. “Oh no no no no no! Where did she put it?” Uzi frantically opened and closed drawers, looking under her desk, in between folder stacks on her messy desk before dropping next to her bed, finding it tucked underneath. “Thank Robo God. This woman drives me mad, I swear.”

“.We could eat her .DEVILISH GIGGLE”

Uzi groaned at the notification on her visor with the message. She could feel its presence the moment she woke up but she chose to ignore it. At least until she couldn’t. “Why don’t you bite me?”

“.Offer accepted”

Uzis' tail sprung to life, suddenly adopting neon yellow eyes and latching onto her leg. Its teeth pricked her slightly, barely being a full bite before it let go as Uzi let out a yelp.

“OW! Freakin! Quit it!”

Ping. User//: Nesting_Dollz has joined.

“Oh great.”

Uzi waited for another ping or notification or anything, but nothing came. She expected some kinda comment but she was oddly silent. She suspected she was simply observing and might leave later. She had enough to deal with already. Reprom was in a few days, and she had nothing to wear. Nothing she liked anyways, the dress she wore last time got torn when the planet was being obliterated by the ‘o’ mighty god’ she had absorbed a few months ago. Almost half a year now.

Uzi thought about months that have passed, she graduated from high school and was working to get into college as she has her gap year trying to get her life together as an adult and being the president of the “Don’t murder my friends” club for N, V and J. J made it easy never talking to them or anyone outside of work that she was aware of; but N and V enjoyed being part of the community making it easy for them to be a target.

N practically gets harassed anytime he’s out if V or Uzi isn’t accompanied with him. He always tells them he doesn’t really mind, and he is fine, but Uzi always recalls the sad look in his eyes after the fact. She always tries to comfort him the best she can but he is usually a bit closed off about it. He’s gotten better about it, occasionally coming to her about his problems or how he’s feeling.

Ping.

“Hey Doll. Got any grapes?”

“.Go [PARENTAL CENSOR] yourself”

Uzi groaned, realizing she never turned off her curse word censorship like she planned to. Thankfully, her internal translator was working and she could hear Doll just fine. Daily check-ups on her internal workings were always in order since her CPU was being used up all the time by three users. Her, the Solver or Cyn or whatever it was and Doll.

“You two better knock it off, we have stuff to do today. I don’t want to hear a peep out of either of you.”

“You say that every day.”

Her tail lit up, speaking as she grabbed it, snapping its mouth shut. She didn’t even bother talking back to it. She pushed open her room door and stepped out into the brighter hallway and living room, blinding her for a moment. Khan sat at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of presumably cold coffee as he looked through newspapers. He looked stressed, which was unlike him, until he saw Uzi and his expression lightened.

“Ah! Good morning! How’s my little bat doing?”

“Ugh! Dad! Don’t call me that!”

Khan giggled while taking another sip of coffee before setting it down, “How’d you rest? Any progress on the prom planning?”

Uzi nodded, smiling. “Yes, actually, J showed up the other day and had her squad show up to help.” Khan's eyes lit up before Uzi spoke again. “It was weird though. She’s weird.”

“Yeah, she’s quite the stubborn one. Surprised, she didn’t take over immediately. She’s a bit of a… micromanager at times.”

“You mean a control freak.”

“Well, that's a bit harsh. She just is very enthusiastic about order and organization.”

Uzi rolled her eyes at that. She didn’t get why her own freaking dad was so chummy with the literal traitor of his daughter's two best friends. She never liked J from the moment she met her to when she had to go out and find her to when she seemed to have mood swings and got all weird on her the other day. She was a control freak, that was just simply true. The way she bossed N around for everything and the way she always scolded V for kills or for leaving things misplaced, it was so annoying to hear about. That never made it easier for her to understand why the two wanted her to hang out, though.

Uzi had picked out some snacks from the cabinet in, looking for some solid food to help down her oil supplements. She hated the way it tasted but she knew they weren’t supposed to be taken on its own. It was like drinking protein shakes every day. She hated the idea. She downed a can she popped open from the fridge, chasing the horrible taste with a bag of chips and batteries. “Ugh, why can’t they just flavor this crap anything better? Straight oil tastes horrible.”

“?Have you tried gay oil”

“Shut up.” Khan looked at Uzi, confused. She returned the look, not sure what he was referring to, until it hit her suddenly. That wasn’t the Solver who said it. It was Doll. She just replied out loud. She groaned and smacked her visor. “Sorry that was. You know, the weird thing.” She pointed to the side of her visor, and Khan nodded.

“Ah! The weird ‘my daughter has multiple people in her motherboard’ thing?” He asked, having had to multiple times in the last few months since the Solvers defeat. Uzi nodded, groaning, before putting the empty bag of chips and her oil can in the trash. Though she would never admit it, she missed the taste of real oil.

She looked over at the fridge once again, seeing if there were any new drawings N had added to it. There were two replacing some old ones he made a few weeks ago, one was of him as a dog and V as a small cat on his head over his hat. It wasn’t good in any sense but it was cute and that’s what she loved about him. The other drawing was of all three of them together as humans, smiling and playing a board game. It was a lot better than the other, since he spent a lot more time drawing humans than animals. She always tried to get him to draw drones but he said he didn’t like it, she was never sure why.

There was a flier for the reprom on the fridge as well with flashy images and bold Comic Sans text saying “REPROM! AT GYM! NEXT WEEK!” it read like a zombie wrote it. She rolled her eyes at it, knowing Lizzy probably made it with that other kid that is always hanging out with her, who was always making the school news that no one read because it was stupid.

“?Can we go see Lizzy”

Uzi groaned as she swiped the notification away, leaving her on read. She hated Lizzy, everything about her made her skin crawl, and she certainly wasn’t going to fulfill the request from the drone who tried to kill her and their only hopes against the solver half a year ago. Uzi, ignoring the request, got another ping from Doll, which she knew was to make her reconsider. She never reconsiders, no matter how many times Doll asks. The pinging went away.

The emo drone grabbed her coat from one of the hooks next to the door before noticing one missing.

“Hey where’s mom?” Uzi asked, turning to Khan, still at the table.

“Hm? Oh, she went out. Said something about going to a mom hang out or something.”

“Didn’t she say she was too cool for that kinda thing?”

“E-yup.” Khan said with a pop as he took another drink of his coffee. “But since Yeva isn’t around anymore…” he looked down sadly, seeming to think fondly of the drone. He shook his head before going back to speaking. “She wanted to go out and see if she could find someone else to talk to, since being a stay at home mom gets lonely.”

“I see…” The mention of Yeva made her feel dizzy. She could feel the presence of Doll so clear like she was there but she pushed it away not wanting to deal with it. She had plans, she wasn’t going to let some Russian traitor get in her way.

Uzi put her coat on and patted down her pockets, checking the items she had, making sure she had her keys and phone at least, before taking her wallet off the shelf next to the door. She pushed the small hand scanner to unlock her door before marching out with The Solver smiling on her tail.

“!Ooo ?What are we doing today ?Can we eat dirt ?I love dirt .Are you gonna make us less ugly ?You’d look great in a bow .Why are you so ugly ?Do you ever get tired of boring life stuff, we should blow up the boiler room- !HMPH”

Uzi groaned, grabbing the tail's mouth, shutting it up. “Do you ever get less annoying?” The tail, still stuck with its mouth closed, shook as much as it could to indicate a ‘no’ before Uzi let go and attempted to tune out the tail's insistent talk. She had to find something to wear for prom and by god she was not gonna let two programs that are a pain in her tail ruin it for her.

____________

Uzi groaned as she mentally banged her head against a wall in frustration. Every store she’s been to, had either horrible taste or sold out of anything good. She wanted to go to Hot Topic, but the place was closed due to a “gas leak”.

“We don’t even need gas, why do we even have that?” She mumbled as she read the note on the door. She had to settle for thrift and too girly for her taste stores. Doll pointed out a few she likes, but Uzi dismissed nearly all of them, aside from a few which looked decent but had something about it she hated. Defeated by the lack of good dresses, the emo drone flopped into a seat in the shopping district looking up at the ceiling, groaning before looking around in her seat again.

She had visited all the interesting and less sketchy stores she could for today, and decided maybe she’d come back another day. For now, she set eyes on her anime and games store. Sighing, she got up and slumped over towards the store, remembering she needed to see if they had the new season of this anime N was really into but never wanted to watch with anyone else. She was never sure why, but always let him watch it on his own and info dumped about her latest obsession that they would watch together. V would usually come check on them and offer to make some food since it would be at their place. She insisted she didn’t like anime, but Uzi was determined to find something she would like.

The purple drone walked into the open doors of the shop looking at the racks of games they had available such as fighter, adventure and thriller horror games. Uzi looked over the in-game gift cards for some online fighting games before being disinterested. Doll made notes of some of the games and even tried to bring Uzis attention to a game that she ignored. Her tail kept making annoying observations about everything she was interested in, to the point Uzi had to hold onto it while looking at an anime she picked up seeming interesting.

“?Oooo you gonna watch your romance anime again because N didn’t cuddle you last night”

“Oh my robo god shut up you fu-” Not paying attention to where she was going, having looked back to yell at her own tail, she ran into someone. Dropping all stuff in her hands, she stumbled backwards but caught her balance before falling, to avoid making a fool of herself. “OW! Frickin. Watch it!” She snapped despite it being her fault, which she regretted a moment later.

“O-oh! Sorry! I wasn’t paying attention!” The drone said frantically before picking up some of her stuff she didn’t grab and handing it back to her. “I was looking for the RPG games, so I was just wondering, I’m sorry.”

Uzi softened her gaze as she sighed. “Sorry my day is just not going so well, I didn’t mean to get snappy.” She looked the drone up and down and noticed something. “Hey, aren’t you the kid in class B-4? Computer science?” She asked, having seen him somewhere. She recognized the oversized hoodie and the winter fluffy hat with hanging ears on the sides but couldn’t place the name of him.

“Oh! Yeah. Advanced programming, actually. We see each other on the way out between periods. You’re Uzi. Doormans kid.”

Uzi nodded, slightly uncomfortable that so many people know her name now when just a few months ago she was an outcast. Guess that happens when you save the planet from total absorption. “Yeah that’s me. Weren’t you my tutor for a year in programming?”

The blue-eyed drone nodded, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “Yeah I was. Your dad asked my mom if I was any good at the class and just bragged about my A in it.”

Uzi snickered at his shy behavior and small grin on his face. “Your mom? Seriously?”

“Yeah! Oh! I’m Rex. Diana's kid…” He said, trailing off, and suddenly it made sense.

“Ooh! Crazy Diana!” Uzi spoke her nickname like a curse but humorous. She had earned this nickname based on her several WDF calls her dad had received from her about the wildest things such as children after hours, despite it not being after hours, noise complaints from neighbors after she bought a measuring tool to see how loud was too loud by just the tiniest bit, multiple calls about “suspicious drones” which always ended up being N or V outside her apartment and very much more. She spent so much time on the phone with her dad it was a surprise that she never asked if he was single from how much she always told him “she liked a man in uniform”. Gross. Adults are gross.

“Yeah… That’s my mom. She’s… not so bad when you get to know her, though. She’s just kinda rough around the edges, you know how moms are…” Rex trailed off as he took in what he said before looking at Uzi, hollow-eyed. “Oh my robo god, I am so sorry I didn’t-”

Overwhelmed, Uzi stopped him. “Hey, hey, it’s fine, man. Relax, I'm not gonna bite.”

“!But I will”

Uzi snatched up her tail as it lunged at Rex, who flinched and covered his face in an X shape hiding his face before realizing nothing happened and uncovered himself. “Sorry, I won’t bite, but this ungrateful rodent attached to my behind will.” Rex giggled a bit at her anger as she fought with the tail a bit before he turned around at a sound.

“Hey! Rex! I found it!” Uzi looked up at the voice, raising an eyebrow since she immediately recognized it. Behind a corner, J leaned around it, looking at the two with a copy of a game labeled ‘Mortal Kombat’ on the front. J blinked at Uzi for a moment before Rex ran up to her.

“Sweet! I still need to find the RPG games for that multiplayer game, but this is just as great! I heard it’s horribly gorey!” J smiled proudly, walking around the corner so she wasn’t hunched over anymore around the mildly small store for her.

“Oh yeah, it has so many warnings on it, it’s going to be awesome! I found a few others like it but they all looked lame. There are also these cool alien ones too! Some of them are exported from old Earth files!”

“No way! Really?!”

The two continued on without seemingly a care in the world, going on about how J remembered all the combo and cheat codes for the one game and Rex explaining how it didn’t matter because he was gonna crush her anyways. As they talked, the she-devil inside her tail went silent. It shook away from her and hid behind Uzi, not speaking a word again to her. Uzi raised her eyebrow in confusion before she decided she didn’t have time to care.

Uzi snickered a bit, looking back at the two drones in front of her. “You two look like you have plans.” J suddenly looked nervous again, looking back at Uzi, which in turn made her feel awkward. “I didn’t expect to see you here, J.” She said, attempting conversation.

J nodded slowly, seeming to think about her words as she held the game copy. “Yeah, I normally don’t go out on my day off, but Rex asked if I wanted to help him find some games here.” Rex narrowed his eyes at her.

“And…?” J looked away nervously.

“And…” She trailed off, the words dying in her throat as she avoided mentioning anything else.

Rex rolled his eyes, looking back at Uzi. “I told her she couldn’t go out looking like a kid's coloring book, so I offered to take her shopping. OOF!” J slapped the back of his head, an angry symbol showing up on her visor. It wasn’t very hard from how he started giggling immediately, smiling mockingly at her.

“You didn’t have to tell her like that!” She protested as Uzi noticed the bag she was holding seemingly blending into the shelves, which Uzi figured was on purpose from her reaction. “Yeah! I went shopping, happy now?”

Rex nodded, crossing his arms. “Very.”

Uzi observed the two, taking in their behavior for a moment. It was weird suddenly seeing J so relaxed for that moment talking to Rex before she suddenly seemed to wall up, realizing she was still there. She tensed up and became closed off in her body language as she crossed her arms and formed a slouch, while Rex remained cheery and upbeat with her. Which was strange as is, as drones usually seemed indifferent or completely avoidant of the disassembly drones. In a really weird way, she felt like she was looking at a reflection of her and N. She was snapped out of her thoughts before she could finish.

“Hey it was nice catching up but we should get going soon. My girlfriend would totally chew me out if I was late to our date… again.” Rex said as he rubbed the back of his neck, which seemed to be a bit of a stim for him.

“How are you always late to everything?”

“I lose track of time! Now come on! We gotta find that game!” Rex pushed up his hat as he turned on his heels and started looking for the RPG section of games. J didn’t follow immediately.

She looked at Uzi, visibly uncomfortable, a small sweat displaying on her visor. She looked like she wanted to say something but changed her mind and simply waved and gave her a low “Later.” that lacked the venom it usually had yet lacked really anything behind it.

‘Just like V does when she’s hiding something.’ She thought as J went looking for Rex, following the sound of his voice as he spoke to her, not aware she didn’t follow him when he left. Uzi was unsure how to feel about the whole thing, and the interaction lingered in her mind for a bit as she bought the anime she wanted, getting ready to head home empty-handed.

She felt a tap on her shoulder. “Hey.” Uzi turned to see a J standing next to her. “I uh. Figured I’d recommend the store down the hall, Spencer's if you’ve never been since Hot Topic was closed. Saw some things I figured you’d like.” J held awkward eye contact for a moment before sweat slipped from her visor and she turned to re-find Rex in the store. Uzi thought about the suggestion for a moment, thinking of just going home, before she sighed and figured she’d give it a shot.

____________

J held her hands in the pockets of her slightly too big hoodie Rex had bought for her as he talked on about his plans for his girlfriends and his anniversary.

“I’m gonna have to buy flowers for her but I can’t remember her favorites. I think she likes red.”

“Roses are ALWAYS a safe option.”

“Hm. You’re right! What else should I do?”

“Umm… Dinner? Do Workers eat food? Is that insensitive to ask?”

“We do eat! Only rarely since our processors work very slowly to digest, but it's more to pass time then survive like you.”

“Hm. I see, I see.” J crossed her legs on the bench in the shopping mall as Rex texted on his phone. “Where is she anyways?”

“She says that she is at the spot but I don’t see her…” Rex trailed off, looking down at his phone scrolling back up in his messages rereading them over and over. Did he get something wrong? Was she mad at him and standing him up? Was he at the wrong spot? He searched his messages over and over for an answer that never seemed to come. He didn’t want to make her upset. He COULDN’T make Jena upset. His heart pounded, and he felt sweat start to leak from his visor and his eyes hallowed and-

He felt a hand on his shoulder, which made him flinch hard looking at J, she pulled her hand back. “Hey. Sorry. Are you okay?”

“Huh?”

“I can kinda smell fear. Murder Robot?”

Rex flushed slightly, embarrassed he forgot so easy. “Oh! Yeah. Sorry, I have really bad anxiety. Heh.” He let out a chuckle and J returned it but she felt he wasn’t telling the entire truth. She chose not to press, feeling it wasn’t her business. Rex's phone buzzed, and he sighed as he saw the text.

“?hey i got the addrex wrong can we do this another time”

“A dress”

“ADDRESS”

“whatever”

Rex texted back almost immediately. “Yeah! That’s okay! I’ll see you next week?” He stared at his screen waiting for an answer before seeing the read message and after a minute Jena going offline. He felt disappointed before sighing and looking at J.

“She got the place wrong and just wants to do it next week. What do you say, we take these violent video games to my buddies place and I rock your shit!”

“Okay, first off, don’t say it like that.”

“Okay!”

“Second off, you’re on toaster!”

Chapter Text

J pushed her hair from her face as she stared into her shattered mirror. Part of it was still intact from the crack, enough for her to see herself well enough, but not enough to see parts of her face that she felt were wrong or imperfect. Her hair laid down on her back, nothing holding it up like normal, wet and dripping slightly from a shower moments ago. She straightened her tie as she held back the urge to redo it again but not wishing to see herself struggle with it again.

Tonight was prom, and she was determined to look good despite not bringing anyone with her. The thought of any relationship between her and others left a sour taste in her mouth. She ran her fingers through her hair as she felt the water drip off it, and she sighed, picking up a brush trying to tame her wild hair before she pulled out her black ribbons and started doing one of her pigtails. She managed one before she stared down at her next, feeling dread kick up once again. It was HER favorite bow color. Pure black.

Callback Ping.

J stopped looking at it and started putting her hair up into her signature pigtails, completing her look. She didn’t wear her yellow undershirt, and instead wore a plain black shirt with her usual blazer and some dress pants she found while shopping. J didn’t like looking professional to parties but never liked looking casual, so a suit was a great compromise for her desires. It complimented her odd chest shape for her body and hid its imperfections well. However, it did highlight the slight bulkiness of her shoulders, which she usually slouched to hide. She figured it was going to be too dark for anyone to notice.

Ping.

The disassembly drone rolled her eyes as she felt the ping in her internal messaging system, however found no culprit to the annoying sound. No messages or notifications or any new emails. She considered getting looked at by a programmer, however she didn’t feel she trusted anyone with her internals for that. Uzi certainly wasn’t a good choice, and she didn’t trust some random stranger. She ran her internal virus detector and found nothing, just like the other day, and every time she did that she’d get another ping. J groaned and rolled her eyes before leaving the bathroom and taking some steps down the hall back to her living room.

J locked her eyes on the table with her mail on top, and she quickly picked up the letters and shoved them into the box in her hallway closet like last time. She didn’t want to look at them again. She pushed boxes around in her closet so the box that contained the ominous and scary wording letters would be first thing so she could get rid of them quickly. No matter how much she wanted to throw them away, she kept feeling the urge to look at them, to throw them into the box to hide away from the world. To keep her safe and let no one suspect a thing. She wasn’t bothered, and she’d never let the world see her so.

She closed the closet door and even locked it, feeling the urge that it was safer to do so. She left the door as it was and walked back to her kitchen and smiled slightly as the slightly less amount of rotting foods on her counter as she had a spike of motivation a few days ago after her gaming night with Rex at his friend's house. Her carpet was vacuumed the best she could without moving a lot of things, food thrown away however her dishes still stuck in the sink, but that wasn’t that big of a deal. She did something at least, and she was happy.

She felt a warm presence in her mind as she looked upon her accomplishments. This was a side effect of her frequent pings, she noticed. She felt like someone was there in the room with her, yet there never was, however it was never a bad one. It always felt familiar but yet like nothing at all. Like it was just her. She tried not to think too much on it, since she could never find anything in the drone database about it.

J looked at her internal clock and noticed she was quite early for prom. She tapped her foot as she decided what she’d do as she decided to grab a can of oil from her fridge and take a swig of it as she took a walk over to her couch and hopped over the back to sit down and decided to kill an hour or so before prom. She wouldn’t forget about it, right?

____________

She forgot about it. J stumbled as she sped walk and practically ran to the gymnasium, realizing she was almost an hour late to the start, and mentally kicked herself for it. Her peg legs hit the ground with aggressive clicks, feeling her mechanical joints grind against each other, and she hissed as she stepped wrong, causing a sharp pain. Still she pushed on and past the pain to make sure she got there and pushing one of the gym doors open she was immediately cast with a dark shadow of the dim room.

Drones were scattered around the gym in small groups seeming of 3 or more, a few of 2 and some in the corners of 1. She immediately felt she stood out as a few turned to look at her and notice the height difference. She could see the tops of their heads, and it didn’t use to unsettle her until recently. The more she hung out with Rex, the more she noticed the differences between him and her.

J made her way over to the snack table, trying to act natural and stand in a less awkward place. Shockingly, she didn’t see N or V as they would have stood out with her. She figured they would at least be here, or maybe she hopped. She sighed as she picked up definitely stale snack bite cheese on a stick from the table and looked mildly disappointed at the table. She reached for her phone and pulled it out of her pocket, checking her messages for no particular reason other than a hope she will see something change. She didn’t find anything.

Ping.

She goaned again rather loudly, getting the attention of some nearby drones, who quickly moved away from her upon noticing her in a less than neutral state of being. She still couldn’t find the source of these ghost pings, and it was pissing her off the more it kept happening. She scanned over her notifications again, hoping to see a source but was always left empty-handed. She scanned over her internal messaging system again but before she got a good look she jumped at a tap on her shoulder.

“Hey!”

“EEK!” J jumped and turned around quickly, lifting her hands up covering her chest as she looked at who walked up to her. It was N to her surprise. “Jesus. You’re gonna give me a coreattack one of these days.” J said, sighing as she held a hand up against where her core would be.

“Sorry! Didn’t mean to scare you, I called your name, and you didn’t answer.”

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” J said, flattening her voice intentionally as to not let any sense of emotion slip by. N notice the flat tone and opened his mouth to comment on it before he heard Uzis voice.

A short and shockingly well-dressed Uzi shoves her way into the small pocket by the food table, looking between N and J as she seemed to be shocked to see them together. J just felt her emotions bubble under her skin at the thought of her seeing her that way. She was sure she felt so high and mighty about those feelings too.

“N! Don’t freaking wonder off and leave me with Mrs. Popular asshat! Oh! Stupid parent censorship program!” She groaned as she tapped her head with her fist. She smoothed out her dark dress as it was ruffled from trying to squeeze through people, and it had little bat designs sewed on. It was cute, and J wasn’t sure if she was jealous of the fact it was cute on her or that she was cute.

She averted eye contact as she turned to grab a cup from the table and poured some punch into her cup and took a quick sip of it, finding it actually refreshing. It was a mango peach taste to it and shockingly not a hint of alcohol. Uzi and N were talking as she turned to look at them and as she tried to walk off N noticed and stopped her.

“Hey. Me, Uzi and V are chilling by the bleachers. Too many people, heh. Would you like to come hang with us? I know people aren’t your thing and all…” Uzi gave him a look. Confusion, uncertainty, hostility? She struggled to tell, however, when she looked towards the drone offering company she saw the soft and welcoming smile he was known for. She wanted to believe it was sympathy or pity or something worse but she sighed, knowing she didn’t have many options to not be miserable.

“Hm.” J let out an agreeable grunt and nodded, not wanting to let out a certain answer, afraid of what it would entail once she spoke it.

N smiled and let out a small jump, throwing his arms up. “Aw yeah! Gangs gonna be hanging out! I’m so good at this!” He led both Uzi and J back to the bleachers through the crowed of people and N walked up, smiling ear to ear, to V who looked up from Lizzy's phone who was showing her something.

“Where did you wander off to, metal head?”

“Hey that's copyright! And I saw someone who I figured wanted to hang out!” N side stepped and put his arms out showing a grumpy looking Uzi and J who slouched and crossed her arms seeming indifferent to the whole thing.

V looked J up and down and even sat up from her leaned back posture, seemingly surprised she was even there. “Wow, I didn’t think you’d come.” J looked between her and a random spot on the gym floor, avoiding eye contact from the drone, feeling her digital eyes burn into her skull.

“Well, when you put the effort into helping, you figure you’d come to the event too. I… also have nothing better to do.” J tapped at her arms, feeling anxious. V rolled her eyes at her but instead of a frown like she expected she smiled a bit.

“Then come sit down, will ya? Or are you gonna stand all night? You're off the clock.” V jabbed at her corpo speak with a bit of her own, causing Uzi to groan.

“Oh, don’t tell me YOU'RE starting that now!”

“Robo-God forbid murder women want to do ANYTHING around you, Uzi!” V retorted, getting Uzi riled up, and they started bickering all while V smiled seemingly enjoying it. J smiled a bit and sat down on the cold bleachers next to V although a bit of space between them this is the closest they had been next to one another in a long time. As much as she felt robbed of her gimmick V throwing in a corporate joke made her feel more at ease. More her speed of things. J took a sip of her drink, listening in on the conversation and taking a look around, observing the room.

She watched the drones on the dance floor dance in pairs or groups, never often alone. She assumed it was just how it was done. Dancing must not be a solo act, she assumed. She remembered how she used to dance with her all those years ago. Best not to think of even her name. It's been years, she best to forget it.

When did I start thinking like that? She wondered, taking notice of her odd change in thought patterns, however she pushed it away thinking she was in too deep of her thoughts. She looked at the silhouette of the drones in front of her, the dim lighting causing their faces to be almost impossible to see. It made her… nervous. She wasn't sure why but it felt imposing and almost wrong. She was unnerved. She looked away from the large gathering and down into her cup again, seeing the vibrations inside the cup, watching how the sounds traveled in the air to cause ripples inside the tiny container filled with liquid. It was fascinating how the world worked to her.

She had never felt so-

“Hey.”

Her thoughts were cut short. She looked up, snapping out of her trance to see Uzi looking at her and looking back at V.

“Has anyone noticed Js eye color is lighter than Vs?”

J raised a digital eyebrow at her and looked at V who turned to take a look herself, squinting a bit.

“What? No. My visor is the same hex as N and Vs-”

“No, it's definitely lighter. It's almost white.” V spoke up, sitting a bit more to get a closer look. Too close. Visors nearly touching.

J felt her fans kick up and pushed her away slightly with a hand with enough force to show she wanted space but not enough to be hostile as she felt a small blush form on her face. Way too close. V seemed to realize when she scooted herself away without much objection and an embarrassed look herself, but more grumpy than Js.

“It hasn't been that color in ages. Maybe I'm just low on oil, it's probably a cooling issue.” J said dismissively not too worried about it, seemingly, to which Uzi simply shrugged and sat back, seeming satisfied with the answer.

V however squinted her eyes at J before shrugging and dropping the topic, deciding to talk more about their previous conversation. J immediately tuned out the conversation, deciding she didn't have anything to contribute. No matter how close she sat near them, she never felt like she really belonged there, and she felt that weigh on her now more than ever. Old memories and words seeped into her mind like a virus eating away at her processor.

“They don't actually care about you. You know that, right?” The voice rang nearly so clear she would have sworn she heard it right next to her. She only knew that wasn't the case when she looked to her sides and behind her, feeling the hair on her neck stand up. She couldn't stand to be there anymore.

“I'm… uh gonna go get some more punch, I'll be back.” J spoke up, only to realize none of the group noticed that she said anything. She sighed and stood up and started her walk back to the table. “Why did I even come?” The room felt suddenly so dark and empty despite the amount of people inside the small gym. Faces blurry as they moved, and she felt the world sink with every step she took. Had she dug this hole herself? Probably. But what would self-pity get her? Would it matter in the long run? She felt on edge, like the weight of the world was on her. Was anything different from before?

Is it even real?

J felt herself walk and stumble into another drone, dropping her cup onto the smaller figure's head, spilling what punch was left onto the guy.

“Hey man! Watch where you're going!”

“God! My bad!” J snapped back with an aggressive and irritated tone but she didn't even get a flinch back from the drone.

“Weird ass guy, he needs to watch himself.” She heard him mutter to another drone as she turned away from him, making her skin run cold.

“He?” Can they tell? What made them think that? She did the best she could to avoid that kinda misunderstanding. The effort she pushed into her appearance. The long hours she spent changing every little thing about herself. Did she… not pass? The thought made her sick and uncomfortable. She felt like she was going to start crying, feeling the horrible dread fill into her stomach. She didn't feel thirsty anymore.

“I should just go home.” She decided. She wasn't going to find anything worth her time here, and she clearly wasn't wanted. That didn’t surprise her, and she should have known that. Why did she continue to get her hopes up over and over? She opened her phone expecting something, ANYTHING to convince her it was worth staying. But nothing appeared on the screen. Clean notification box just how she would normally like it, however now it made her feel so much worse.

“Hey! Hey!”

“Oh for the love of-” J growled hearing a voice get closer to her, not feeling particularly in the mood anymore for socializing before she turned and saw Rex dressed up in an admittedly cute suit, however his outfit was slightly odd due to his ushanka hat that he normally wore. Something about his presence made her stop tensing so bad, and she even smiled a bit at him.

“Oh! Hey! Sorry, I was… getting more punch.” J said lying about her attempt to leave, not wanting to seem pathetic or like he couldn’t keep talking to her. He tilted his head to the side almost dog like before looking at the punch bowl a few feet from the two.

“I think someone spiked that.”

“Oh come on! I had one drink and someone spikes it?!” J groaned out, throwing her arms up annoyed, to which Rex laughed and put his hand into his suit vest. J narrowed her eyes in confusion of this acting before he pulled, seemingly out of nowhere, a juice box from inside his vest.

“I hate the punch here, so I always bring these.” He proudly stated as he handed it to her, which she took and looked at it impressed. “I have many tricks up my sleeve.” He winked before shaking his sleeve on his right hand, dropping out a small fidget cube onto the floor. He cursed under his breath as he leaned over to pick it up. J snickered a bit as he shoved it back into his sleeve, seeming to look for the pocket he stuffed it in and put his hand on his hips, puffing out his chest. “I put many pockets in this suit. My mom let me.”

“You still ask your mom for permission for that stuff?” J asked in a small mocking tone, making him show small sweat indicators on his visor.

“Well yeah! She bought me it!” Before J could say anything else, a small olive green dressed drone shoved her was past the crowd, behind Rex.

“Robo God! There you are!” Rex spun around, startled by the tone of the drone. She seemed annoyed and bored before replacing it with a nervous look as her eyes wandered to J. They both felt uncomfortable for similar yet different reasons.

“Oh my robo god, sorry! J, this is Jena! Jena, this is J! Sorry I ran off, I wanted to grab her before she left.” Rex said, facing Jena who looked back at him, narrow eyes returning, leaving silence between the two. J couldn’t see Rex's face anymore, but Jena's eyes tore like bullets through her. There was a dull eerie feeling she felt at the medium brown haired drone she hadn’t felt in years before, Jena smiled slightly and almost like some kinda spell the air seemed to have lifted.

“It’s fine, just don’t run off like that. Tyler is about to chug a huge can of Drones Brew, and I don’t want you to miss it.”

“Drones Brew?” J questioned intrigued about the drink, slightly flinching at Jena's annoyed expressing she shot her way. However, before she could say anything, Rex turned his head to look at her, smiling wide.

“It's like this SUPER caffeinated energy drink, it says it causes paralysis!”

“A-and were gonna let him chug this thing?”

“Hell yeah, we are!”

“I need to see this immediately.” J declared, getting a wide grin out of Rex, who turned to Jena and wave his arms excitedly. But he stopped upon getting a disappointed look from her and set his arms to his side before speaking.

“I’m gonna head back over and help him get set up! Meet you there!” He said, flicking her finger guns before taking off, leaving Jena and J. Jena stood between J and the rest of this supposed group. She snarled at her with a look intended to kill.

“Just so we're clear.” She said, stepping closer to J, “That’s MY boyfriend. I don’t need some other bitch trying anything, so we’re getting that set straight.” J felt the anger seep off her in a way she felt all too familiar with. A very jealous girl with a goal. Her assertive tone made her uneasy and even intimidated. A worker of all people made her feel small with a simple tone. Too familiar. Fear. Fear pulsing into her core and seeding its way inside. “You got that, brute?”

Callback Ping.

“Yeah.” She responded quietly enough Jena could hear her. Not an ounce of pushback came from her. “Yeah, loud and clear.” She averted eye contact as she answered, and Jena smiled cheerily before speaking once again, tone completely shifting.

“Okay good! Now come on! He isn’t going to wait all day!” Jena turned around and started making her way past the drones once again, and J found herself following, perhaps not out of fear or a want but an old habit that a built into her over the years.

Oh, how old habits die hard. Was that the saying? She couldn’t remember.

J followed the small green-eyed drone to a small group of boys, one stacked on top of another who held a can and a funnel tube in each hand and the one below struggling to hold him up. J looked at the weird setup of drones and assumed this was their compromise of how long the funnel tube was, and watched as the small drones stumbled to stand upright and Rex tried to give advice to stand up right.

“Boys…” Jena said, causing J to flinch as she didn’t notice she was so close to her. Uncomfortable. Too close. Fear. She walked towards the group, getting an idea amidst her jumbled mind at the moment.

“Hold on, this isn’t going to work.” She said, pulling the top drone off of the other boy, who wheezed and fell to the floor.

“Aw, do we have to cancel?” “Boooo!” “Man, I had money on this.” J rolled her eyes and smiled.

“Quit your whining, I just think you should get professional.” She said smugly before taking the funnel cone and the admittedly small can from the drone and not even bothering with the tab stuck a fang into the top can, ready to pour. Her height very well added to nearly two drones, but not quite, making her nearly perfect to hold and pour. Rex laughed and threw his fists in the air.

“Let’s go! Tyler come one!” The drone she assumed was Tyler grabbed the tube and smiled like this was the best day of his life. Bit pathetic to J if it was, but was she in any room to complain when she was the one helping. She didn’t care.

As soon as J started pouring, Tyler stuck the tube into his mouth and started drinking as it flowed, and J was impressed by how long he managed drinking nearly the whole can with no break before stopping and coughing up some of the drink he must have inhaled. One of the drones on the side lines groaned as he pulled out his wallet and handed a couple bucks to another drone. Tyler throw his head back, eyes wild and wide with a huge grin.

“WOOOOOO! OH, MY ROBO GOD!” He howled and shook his head, practically imitating an animal. “I feel great! This shit goes HARD! I feel like I can-” He practically froze, staring off into the distance with his arms up slightly. Rex looked at him concerned and waved a hand in front of him, growing more concerned as he didn't move. J rolled her eyes as she snapped her fingers twice in front of his visor and tapping it, causing the screen to flicker to a blue screen with a loading bar.

“He’ll be fine, he’s boot looped. It’s basically paralysis like you said but it is caused by his processors not being able to keep up with its boost.” J said having seen N cause boot loops to himself on multiple occasions, ranging from being overly excited to drinking WAY too much oil for the energy boosts. N often got overly excited rather than the other, as both V and herself would eat more than they realize they needed and boot loop themselves by accident on hunts.

Rex sighed, relived his friend didn’t die on the spot and put his hand over to another drone seemingly asking for something and the drone gave him an annoyed expression and pulled out his wallet and handed Rex a twenty. J nodded, impressed he pulled off a bet. Jena walked up to the rest of the group, no longer hanging back behind everyone, seeming bored about the whole thing. One of the drones next to Rex side eyeded her before looking away, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

J helped another drone drag Tyler away to the side lines and lay comfortably on the benches. The drone thanked her for the help, although a bit nervous, she did her best to be polite. She nodded and told him it was no problem and walked off, not continuing the conversation, becoming nervous. She was anxious, but she wasn’t sure why. She felt watched. She felt eyes dig into her but she turned to find nothing. Her back burned with a familiar feeling of fear.

“What has me so pathetic right now?” She wondered to herself, speaking it quietly into the world so low it barely was even spoken. She turned her head a bit, looking back at the group, and she saw her. It was just a split second but she knew what she saw. The blood, the gore, the twisted maw and black hair and the X eyes with that putrid color of yellow. Her stare was what she grew to expect from the years of her failure. Anger and disappointment.

FEAR.

J held her breath, too scared to let it go, as if it would be disobedience. She felt her body go cold, and she shivered and closed her eyes for a moment at it. Reality came back to her swiftly, the long dead corpse was replaced with who she was supposed to be facing. Jena’s stare shifted to more annoyance than anything as she turned away from her, arms crossed. She still couldn’t breathe.

Ping.

“You need to get out of here!” She never agreed with a popup “Okay” so fast. She turned towards the direction of the exit and started speed walking towards it. She shoved past drones, ignoring their complaints, just wanting to just get out. She felt suffocated.

She felt a hand tap her back, and she let out the breath she was holding and turned to see her blue-eyed friend. He smiled shyly at her expression. She looked like a deranged animal. A mutilated beast. She took a shaky breath as he spoke to her.

“You okay? You kinda ran off…” She growled, making him flinch.

Danger. Trap. Push.

“Yeah I’m fine. I’m going home.”

“Oh. I’m sorry, was it something I said-” J cut him off before he finished.

“Dude, just go hang out with your girlfriend, I don’t care. Leave me alone if you know what’s good for you.” She turned, facing away from him, not looking at his upset face as she walked away from him. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to care. How could she let this happen? Almost let herself be put back into the devil's mouth to be chewed and spit back out. Not this time. She won’t let it.

The agitated disassembly drone shoved the gym doors open, letting them bang, but no one seemed to notice as she left. She didn't get far before she sat down at a bench outside the gym and sighed, leaning back against the wall. Home felt too impending and figured she'd feel worse if she went home.

“Half the people I don't wanna see will know to look there anyways…” she thought, growling to herself. She groaned as a drone sat near her on the bench as she tried to ignore him.

To her annoyance, she found the drone attempting to make conversation. She growled as she turned to look at him, hoping that would tell him she wasn't in the mood. This however didn't stop him only smirking, amused by this. She felt more annoyed than anything.

“God! Do you people just LOVE annoying me? Is this like a joke I'm not in on?!” She snapped at the drone, who flinched at her snapping teeth before he smiled once again.

“Well, aren't you feisty~” He spoke and despite her annoyance she felt herself slightly taken aback by his comment, combined with such a deep voice for a drone. She forced her expression away with annoyance at him not falling for some lame charm grab at her.

“Do you flirt with all women like that?”

“Like what?” He slurred his words slightly, clearly a cheerful tone in his voice with his smile.

“Like annoying them and then hitting on them when they get annoyed at you?” J sighed as she crossed her arms, slightly amused by whatever performance this guy had going on with her. He giggled and held his cup to his face as he tried not to show his stupidly wide grin. Despite his initial flirty vibe, he seemed less intimidating than what she first thought.

“Well, is it working?” He asked, looking over at her with a certain look in his eye, she recognized immediately. “I mean, I can’t be the first to try this on a pretty drone like you.” Despite her best effort, she had to admit the flattery and sweet talk got to her a bit. Was she interested? Maybe a bit. Was she nervous? Terrified. It had been too long since she had this kinda opportunity or moment with someone. Despite being a stranger, she felt like she had basically nothing left to lose.

“Sure. Maybe it is working.”

“My place?”

“Fuck it. Let’s do this.”

“Fuck yeah!” The drone said, pumping his fist in the air as she stumbled to stand up for a moment, causing J to roll her eyes at him as she followed him, occasionally making sure he didn’t bust his ass on the floor. J felt this was a bad idea for a moment. Maybe she was being impulsive and desperate for a feeling that didn’t suck. Maybe this wasn’t the most healthy way to do it. Was she really doing this?

“Fuck it, it's fine.” She decided, leaving the thoughts to wilt in her mind.

Chapter Text

A white eyed drone leaned against his door, shoving his metal hands into his pockets, searching for his key in the typical busy apartment wing. However, due to the major party, it was quiet and empty. J felt it was for the best if she was going to be doing a one-night stand it would be both the most pathetic drunk man she'd ever seen and on the perfect night no one would watch her go home with him.

He managed to find the key and shove it into the door and open it up, holding it to let her inside first. “At least a drunk gentleman.” She thought to herself as she took the step of no return inside.

Compared to her own apartment, the place was neat and clean. It was mostly a mute brown color seeing all the decorations weren't very colorful but it wasn't particularly a bad thing. The short drone stumbled to the fridge, slowly regaining his ability to walk, she noticed as he pulled out a can of something before looking back at her.

“I still have some uhh I think this is Diet Tumble if you want some.”

“Oh! Thanks.”

A bit nervous, she took the can in her hand and looked over the label. She never drank anything other than oil, so she wasn't sure what to expect drinking normal drone drinks. Once again, she didn't bother with the tab and stuck her fang into the can top and took a sip. It was a lemon-lime flavor with a slight fizz she expected from carbonation.

“Hot.”

J snorted, not expecting that reaction from the drone. “I think you'd find anything hot right about now.” She smiled slightly at this comment, looking down at the moderately drunk bot that seemed to pull out another thing from the fridge before shoving it into his chewing mouth. This didn't stop him from talking, though.

“Hey, I know a cute drone when I see one. Doesn't matter if it's because I'm crossed out of my mind.”

He finished whatever odd smelling leftover food he pulled out of the fridge as he rubbed his face seemingly still either too high or drunk, she couldn't tell at this point, to think fast enough. After pulling himself together, he smiled and leaned against the table.

“Sooo you got a name or do they just call you pretty~” J rolled her eyes at the drone but decided to entertain the interaction.

“It's J. Yes it's a letter and no it's not spelled J-A-Y and no it's not a boy's name.” She introduced her name, listing off the common misconceptions she had received in the few times she's told people her name. The drone nodded slowly.

“Niiice I'm Carter. So you like a girl okay everything is blurry, I wasn't too sure.”

J felt the oil in her system boil. Great. Fantastic. That makes tonight twice someone has been unsure if she was a girl. She sighed long and shallow, trying to keep herself calm despite the fact the comment stung as the drone named Carter moved on and opened the door to his room. It's now or never, she supposed.

The room was oddly bright, with the overhead lamp working just fine. It reminded J that hers wasn't working, and she couldn't figure out why. He didn't have a desk in his room, but a small table with a TV and a couple game disks sitting on it, with a small couch. His bed remained in the corner, with a few posters she recognized from the store she and Rex went to the other day looking for games. He really seemed to like this mute brown color, as that was the primary color for everything in the room just about. He had a shelf full to the top with small figurines and even some unopened boxed ones that seemed important. One she took notice of was a standing wolf creature with short fur that wore golden rings on its hand and tail. It was one of the boxed ones.

She looked away before he could try and start a conversation about them. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, and she hadn't even noticed he took his shirt off. She couldn't help but find his frame fascinating. Not even hot or impressive, simply fascinating. Worker drone bodies were different from disassembly drones, and their chest plate frame was one of them. All worker drones had rounded frames, while disassembly drones had specific gendered ones, either rounded or slightly pointed.

She realized she was staring and slightly blushed, more out of embarrassment than anything, as she worked on her own blazer as she sat down next to him. For a moment she knew this was a bad idea but she figured she was in too deep now to back out. The embarrassment from backing out would be too much for her, and her public image would only somehow tank further. Powering through her own decision was more than worth avoiding being known as a drone who led a guy on and backed out last minute. At least that's what she figured was true.

The moment her blazer was off, the smaller drone grabbed at her shirt and pulled her close and in for a kiss. The taste of gasoline and a metal not of their own form lured her in, and she stopped second guessing herself. It wasn't the act itself that she was chasing, it was the peacefulness and the dull buzzing of her mind slowed to a halt, giving her a quietness she hadn’t experienced in years. She strung her fingers into his hair, grabbing him, attempting to get a raise out of him. She wasn't unfamiliar with the sins she was acting upon. She figured she could have some fun while she indulged herself in something she'd hate herself for later, despite her best efforts to forgive herself.

Carter moved his hands from her collar and rested them on her chest, feeling her body in seemingly a curious manner. Workers would have no idea what kind of anatomy the murder machines had, so her body type entirely was foreign to him. However, they were similar in the way her chest was completely flat, nothing but the chest plate and the small indent of her type identification logo near where her rib cage was located. He tugged at her shirt in dedicating he wanted to remove it. J hesitated for a moment as she pulled away from him breaking the intoxicating kiss they were locked in, and she pulled the bottom of her shirt up over her head and tossed it to the side onto the floor, making sure to keep her back facing away from the drone.

The smaller boy grabbed at her hips, pushing her down onto her back. For a moment, J felt panic rush into her mind. This was a bad idea. This was a dumb idea. Why was she even doing this? She felt the second guessing herself flood into her mind due to the familiar and sudden movement. She felt the drone's small hands on her stomach, feeling the smooth black fabric that covered the middle part of her upper body. Despite the fuzzy texture resembling short fur or fabric, she could still feel the sensation and felt every small movement as he rubbed the sides of her midsection. It calmed her a bit but she wouldn't show she felt any particular way anyways.

Without warning the drone leaned forward and placed his tongue onto Js neck getting a surprised gasp out of her making her flush embarrassed by the noise. He didn't seem to mind as he continued with slow licks up and down her metal neck, feeling the ridges of the ring indentations. He practically tried to shove his tongue into the small indents and despite her best effort it drove J mad with pleasure. She grabbed at his lower arms not sure what to grab and bit at her lip attempting to not embarrass herself further but it proved fruitless. Carter bit down onto her neck, and J hissed in both pain and pleasure. The bite was unexpected but she felt herself shiver in pleasure when he grabbed her sides, squeezing slightly, digging his nails into them.

Pain was part of the reason she wanted this. Pain drove her to a sense of familiarity, of comfort, a true feeling of being alive. She grabbed the practically stranger's arms a bit tighter, digging her own nails into him. This simply encouraged him and bit harder, getting another hiss from J and a few exclaims of “ow!” When he pulled back, there was a dent of teeth marks in her neck, and he smiled dorkishly. It reminded J of her.

Of all the people she should be thinking of, this shouldn’t have been one. It made her feel sick yet still a vague sense of comfort. Why did all workers have that smile? Was she just seeing something that wasn’t there? Or was she being haunted?

She had snapped out of her thought process as Carter pushed himself back off her and was struggling with his pants. She rolled her eyes watching and decided to let him struggle for a bit, a little amused by the drunk idiot. She workered to pull her own tights off the fabric made specifically to fit her model as it was a hand me down from V as a “house-warming gift” they called it when she moved in.

The smaller drone managed to remove his pants with way too much effort needed, making J further question this entire decision. It didn’t shock her, he was one of the models of drones with working human like parts. It wasn’t all drones that had them, but the ones that did were easy to pick out since they acted a certain way and felt horny, unlike other drones who didn’t have them.

Carter gestured to his “dick” if you could even call it that considering the lack of organic features it's based off of. She knew what he was asking, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

“Not a chance, buddy.” His face fell and gave her a sad expression. The wet excuse of a man whimpered slightly in an attempt to convince her.

“Why not?”

“You’re not sticking that in my mouth.” She didn’t care where else he stuck that weird thing in her, the last place he was putting it was her mouth. Too many bad implications, memories, and she could easily lose control over the situation. Not again. Carter sighed and nodded, seeming to accept her boundary.

“Fine…”

The time faded away from them both as he aligned himself between her legs, and she felt her nerves act up again. No going back now, she thought. She grabbed at his shoulders as he leaned over on top of her, and she felt a familiar warmth in this position. However, it wasn’t fully what she expected as she felt his shoulders and felt a phantom sense of flesh. Rotting, gross and disgusting flesh. It startled her for a moment before it faded slowly into a familiar sense of agony. She stuffed her face into the drone's body as he pushed himself into her, and she hissed and gasped from the pain. She could practically smell the rot she used to be so familiar with. The rot of the corpse and it grossly brought her comfort. She didn’t know why she was having these sensations. Maybe too much reminded her of the old “bonding experiences” she had with that horrible creature. Yet she wondered why she felt a rush and sense of security at that moment of the horrible phantom smell.

The back and forth of the drone's hips didn’t help, the worse and more aggressive he got in thrusts. The aggression was familiar as he grabbed onto her hips to steady himself, but in tern dug his nails into her sides, causing a rush. She couldn’t get the smell out of her nose. She felt suffocated again. Yet, she was okay with it. It was just like things used to be. She felt herself overheating, steam came off her cheeks as she burned, and her fans ran kicking up speed so quickly. She felt at “his” skin and felt the familiar mush of flesh pealing, and she couldn’t be more happy. She bit down onto his shoulder and Carter let out a small scream from her sharp teeth, but it simply encouraged him further. He started burning and even noticeably received an overload screen, and J did as well, preparing them for the messy part. Carter pushed his screen against Js as he finally pulled himself out and hit his peak, sliding down to lay his head on her chest. His breathing was quick and J was focused on her own overheating warnings to notice him moving.

J felt the smaller drone flop to his side, breathing heavy with closed eyes falling upon his screen and his sleep mode activating nearly instantly. She sighed, breathing slowing from her high, feeling her CPU working into overdrive to cool her down. She jolted slightly, feeling her body twitch and shake from the overdrive. The tall drone laid out her legs, feeling them hang over the edge due to done bed not being made to fit people like her. There was a huge feeling of relief for a while, she felt amazing, she knew it was some kinda chemical program running itself but she didn’t care. It was the most alive she felt in possibly years, and she didn’t want to let it go so quickly.

She pushed herself up, letting her legs hang over the bed, and got herself up to find her clothes, not wanting to lie around naked for the next however long she was there for. She grabbed her pants and blazer and was confused by the weight of it before she pulled her phone out. It was nearly midnight.

“God… pathetic I went for so long.” She backhanded herself for her actions by the passage of time from the dance to now. She started dressing herself, and she opened her phone, checking her notifications. There were a few social media notifications she started looking at as she opened the bedroom door and slipped out quietly, finding herself in the living room to sit in the dining room kitchen.

She opened it, seeing it was the pink drone's account. Her name drew a blank on her again. Looking at her bio on the account, she concluded it was Lizzy and saw recent photos of her taking selfies with V seeming to be dumping the spiked punch onto Uzi, who looked PISSED to say the least. It made her giggle. It was easier to live her life though the screen of her phone. No personal relationships, no awkward conversations, no weird drones calling her a he. It was so peaceful. She felt a slight pang of sadness, seeing them so happy after she left but she was happy they didn’t have her to drag them down anymore. The self loathing seemed to have kickstarted early, despite her activities in an attempt to chase it away.

She drew her attention away to the message notifications, and that's when it hit her. Rex had texted. The drone she told off in a hurry to piss off. The drone that was so nice and friendly that she definitely completely ruined any chance of friendship. She sat her phone down on the counter, looking at the screen notification.

Robo god, was she dumb? Why did she say that? Why did she act like that? All because his girlfriend reminded her of someone to fear? That was stupid. That is completely unnecessary. Why did she do that? She opened the text from him.

“Are we still friends?” She felt her core was being stabbed multiple times over, and it hurt like hell. Were they? She wanted to push it away, she didn’t want to think about it, she didn’t need him, she didn't need anyone.

But she did. She did need him.

J grabbed her phone off the table and opened the profile and hit to call the drone she was practically livid at a few hours ago. She felt her nerves act up immediately as the ringing started. She hated the ringing. It ringed and ringed and ringed. He didn’t pick up. She felt her heart sink, thinking she really blew it this time. She failed to reach out again. Like she always did. She failed to let anyone in, and maybe this time she’ll really keep them out and away-

“Hey, this is Rex! My phone probably died or something but I’ll call you back later! Blehhh- BEEP!” His voicemail ripped through her thoughts and she stammered to think of what to say.

“Oh, uh shit, um. Hey, it’s J. Look, I uh acted really… stupid? I don’t really know what got into me and I…” she went silent. She searched for an excuse or a reason or anything she could explain herself for but she came up blank. She felt ashamed for both the behavior and the fact she had no reason. “I’m sorry. I don’t have an excuse. I get it if you don’t want to be friends anymore but I’d really like to. Especially since you did force me to get that one store credit card.” She giggled, finding humor in the positive interactions she had with this drone. To her, he wasn’t just a drone, he felt like he was really a person who saw her and not some shell like herself.

“So you can um just ignore this I guess if you don’t wanna talk to me anymore, I understand. Uh bye.” J hung up, letting the voicemail send itself over and setting the phone down, only to place her head on the table next. She groaned and placed her hands on the back of her neck, rethinking what she just did. She’s been making a fool of herself nonstop for the last few hours, and at this rate they are going to kick her out for being simply too annoying to everyone. She thought of the faces of Uzi, V and N.

“They are so disappointed in you.” She felt the popups like clockwork. Intrusive, unwanted and loud. “Only Cyn would take you back at this point.” She knew it was right. She knew it was true, and yet she felt her metal skin crawl at the thought of going back. It wasn’t that big of a deal, she didn’t know why she was making this such a big deal.

Ping.

J let out an annoyed groan and slammed her fists on the stranger's table, sitting back up. Ghost pings once again. She felt like they were ghosts, and she didn’t want them or to see them or to hear them. She wanted nothing to do with them, yet they insist on bothering her. She felt like she knew what it was yet had no clue at all. She felt like she was going insane. She grabbed her phone, reopening her social in a half-hearted attempt to stop her mental spiral but she knew it wouldn’t help nearly at all.

She opened up the page to see different images of the party or texts about it. Many people seemed really happy, but a few seemed like downers in general, calling it lame. She saw a few pictures with V and N in the background, and a few from the pink drone with V. She looked really happy. In a way, she was happy for her, yet she felt a sick sense of jealousy. She wanted her to be happy but she felt so betrayed by it. J flipped her phone over and rubbed the bridge of her nose, sighing into her hands. She hated how she felt. She hated how she missed her old life. Her old purpose. Her old… master in a sense. No matter what she did, she always remained in her mind. Maybe she always would. Until she died for good, she had no way of knowing. Her back burned with shame.

She felt the table vibrate as her phone went off. She looked up, confused, before flipping it back over.

“I do still want to be friends :)”

She smiled slightly and felt digital tears start to cloud her vision as she looked at her screen. Maybe it wasn’t going to be all awful forever.

Chapter Text

Uzi took a sip of the punch she’d been holding onto for the last hour or so, swaying it in her hand slowly. She looked down at the liquid inside the cup as she finished her sip.

“Dude, whoever made this punch sucks ass at making punch.” V groaned, spitting some of it out from her own cup. “Maybe introducing them to MY punch would fix that.”

“Please. Don’t punch anyone V.” N said, smiling at her, looking over at where she sat as Lizzy scrolled her phone as per usual. The tapping on her phone was louder than Uzi was used to, and it irritated her a bit as she leaned over towards the white haired boy. She realized the group was smaller than it was originally. J was no longer sitting next to V, and she wasn’t sure when this happened. She wasn’t sure if she should press about her vanishing act or ignore it. She apparently didn’t have a choice in the matter.

“QUESTIONING TILT. Where did corporate lapdog go?”

V flinched at the devil tail perking up to mention one of the group members by her oh so ‘nice nicknames’ as it would call it, and glared coldly at the tail. ‘Cyn’ paid her no mind. Seemingly genuinely interested in where J had gone. It looked to the sides, scanning for a sign of her presents. Uzi grabbed it by its cord and pulled back.

“Relax, she probably walked off to get some more snacks. Why do you even care? She won’t talk to you.” Uzi snarled, particularly annoyed with its interests in the drone that’s been a pain in her ass talking to for the last few days. J was a hit or miss for her, especially as of recent. Anytime J was near her or had to talk to her, she felt like she was talking to a different person every time, yet it was like a light switch. Most days she was moody and down, only really talking to her in a hushed tone and barely at all claiming to be in a bad mood. Other days, she talked to her like she was having the best time of her life and would talk her ear off if she had the chance but she was always too busy chasing some idea she had or plans she was behind on.

Cyn rolled her eyes at Uzi and scoffed. It hated that she would remind it that J would avoid her like some kinda parasite. She knew she was going to want to talk to her eventually. It just had to keep trying, even if Uzi would help make it as hard as possible.

“She barely even talks to the rest of us.” V snarled, leaning back into her spot next to Lizzy, who sat up suddenly. V gave her a questioning look before the blond haired drone waved her hand dismissively at her, typing quickly and aggressively.

“Woah, what’s got you all excited? Haven’t seen you this excited since Tom broke his leg trying to use his oven.” N shared a confused and worried look with Uzi and V over this comment.

“Don’t ask.” Uzi rolled her eyes. “He wouldn’t give us details.”

Lizzy stared at V and shifted her eyes around. “Is… Is there a fourth one of you, by any chance?”

V shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Uh. Well-”

“No.” N said sternly, to the group's surprise. “There hasn’t been in a long time. It’s just us now.”

The neon yellow tail nodded slowly as he spoke. “He’s right. This is the last squad that came around to creation.”

Lizzy leaned back and started typing, once again seemly bored again, however clearly interested in the information. “Well then. J just banged France's boyfriend.”

“SHE DID WHAT?!” The static and typically monotone voice erupted in anger and seemingly out of nowhere. It curled its lip back to show its teeth, clearly enraged. “SHE FUCKING DID WHAT?!”

“Hold on! There’s no way!” Uzi sat up and practically climbed up the bleachers to look over Lizzy's shoulder, who shoved her away.

“Back off emo! H-HEY!”

Lizzy's phone was snatched out of her hand by Uzis intrusive tail, who was oddly interested in the problem and seemed eager to learn more as she dropped it in Uzis hands.

“Huh. Guess you're good for something.”

“Just read.”

“Ugh.”

Uzi struggled to open Lizzy's phone as it was locked, and guessed a password or two before getting in. She snickered as it was an easy password but felt a twing of sadness from somewhere in her brain that it was Doll's full name. She ignored it.

The messages were full of anagrams and short lettered words that didn’t full mean anything, and Uzi struggled to read them at first.

“Hey BFITW? What is the haps?”

“Ugh. It’s Best Friend in The World. I’m lying anyways.” Lizzy clarified in a matter of fact tone.

“That slutty asshole slept with my boyfriend. Can you believe her? She had the nerve to yell at me after I chewed her out. What the fuck, man?”
“Yeah, she’s like totally mad. Don’t know why we knew he was a cheater.” Lizzy snatched her phone back from Uzi while she wasn’t looking as N looked over to say something.

“This feels completely unlike her. Why would she even do that?”

“I mean, she’s like an adult, she can do what she wants. This is kinda the last thing I expect, though.”

Cyn poked her head around Uzi looking over at N who gave her an uncomfortable look. He hated that she pushed herself into their life as much as she does, and he noticed it, especially when it involved J.

“I agree with puppy boy.”

“Can you say anything that isn’t demeaning and rude?”

“Can you grow up?”

“WHY YOU LITTLE-!”

Uzi stopped as she felt a shift in the benches that she turned to look at. V has stood up and looked as mildly annoyed as usually, however there was a look of concern in her eyes. She crossed her arms like she was annoyed by the decision she was about to make.

“I’m going to go see her.” The moody drone said finally. “I’m getting her out of that apartment and doing something that isn’t destroying relationships for fun.”
____________

The hallway felt horribly imposing. It was dark, a few lights were broken, and outdated decorations were shattered around. V and N felt a familiar sense of dread standing in the hall, and it made both of them want to turn around and run. Why on Copper 9 would J choose an apartment in probably one of the worst places in the bunker? They both were thinking it and they got an answer almost immediately as V took a step down the hall, hearing a hallowing empty echo. J was the only one living down here.

N took the charge to Vs surprise. She insisted she could do this alone, yet N was eager to come check on J all the same as her. Maybe more than she was. She decided to press while they had time.

“So you know you didn’t have to come? J doesn’t like either of us.” N gave her a complex look.

“Well… I don’t know. I just have been really worried about her. She won’t be receptive to you either, you know.” V rolled her eyes and crossed her arms, not because she was mad but he was right.

She didn’t even know what J liked to do anymore she was so locked away from them. It was almost scary how up their asses J used to be to suddenly nothing. No calls, no letters, almost no talk unless she was off doing something already and happened to see them. It wasn’t like her, and they all knew it.

Upon walking up to Js apartment door, they took a look at it, seeing the mail slot empty, meaning she was home. V remembered that J was in charge of the mail retrieval as one of her jobs in the manor. Always on the dot at 11:45 A.M. she would be snagging it out of the mail slot like her life depended on it. In some ways, it did.

V knocked on the door hard, making sure she knew J heard her. She heard a small sound from inside the apartment before she said anything. “Open up J its me.”

“And me!” N said cheerfully, and V felt the chances of the door opening shrink tenfold.

“Yes and N.” She heard no noise from inside. It became so deafeningly quiet. “Come on J we know you’re home. What is going on with you?” V pressed, expecting to hear nothing back, however she heard footsteps. They grew closer to the door, yet no words were spoken. At this point, she wasn’t sure if she really was hearing her. V grunted before trying the handle of the door, only to feel it not even budge. Strange.

“J I can hear you. Are you gonna open the door or just be a creep?”

“V be nice.”

“Why should I be nice? She’s done nothing but avoid us like we’re the problem, and she won't even come out to tell us to fuck off!”

“Wh- what are you getting mad about? This was your idea!”

“I’m just saying that it would be nice if she just told us she doesn’t want to be around us instead of playing these games with us where we need to guess!”

“What are you even talking about? Did you want to do this or not?” V stopped her mild annoyance rant at his question. She looked at her door and then away, tapping her claws on her arm.

“Well. I.” She stuttered a bit.

“We can just go home.” V felt her throat close up at the idea. Walking away, achieving nothing and not even seeing J. Did she really want to do this?

“No. No we can’t.” She made eye contact with N who looked back and mimicked her worried expression. “I just need to hear from her.”

In their argument, neither had noticed the sound of the door sliding ever so slightly open, just enough to see the dim light of the apartment. As the two turned to look, they saw the crack and jumped at the hallowed half eye they say in it.

“Oh robo Jesus! You know that’s creepy, right!” V said, wondering how long she stood staring at them.

“Oh. Sorry. Um hi there.” She finally spoke, stuttering slightly as she scanned the two up and down. The small crack was big enough to notice small details around her. The several chain locks on the door were definitely raising a few questions, but the more pressing matter was how quiet she was and her lack of a snippy attitude. There was nothing visible of her aside from her eyes, giving them both an unsettling feeling in their stomachs. “Did you-” her voice cut into Vs thoughts, “need something?”

“Well,” N started off tapping the brim of his hat as a nervous tick he's picked up on, “we wanted to come check on you. Do you wanna talk about, I don't know, anything?” V rolled her eyes, annoyed by this nature of beating around the bush.

“How about the rumor that you’re a home wrecker.”

“V.” J sighed before she even had a chance to defend herself.

“I’m not a homewrecker if there isn’t a home to wreck first off.” J snipped back in her normal attitude V expected, and for once it was relieving. “Second off, if you’re just here to call me a slut, that’s already happened, so you can shove it.”

“Woah woah, I’m not that much of a bitch.” V said, smiling a bit in humor of her self-awareness.

“Actually, that’s kinda why we came. We heard it didn’t go so well.” N chimed in. “We just needed to come check on you.”

The hall became quiet again before a sigh was left from J and the door was shut.

“Oh come on-!” V started before she heard the sound of clicking and rattling chains before the door opened fully, revealing a very shockingly dressed J. They never see her wearing anything but formal wear or casual clothes so a tee shirt that looked fished out of the dump and way too long sweatpants wasn’t exactly what they expected to see let alone her hair down no bow in sight. She crossed her arms and leaned against the door frame, blocking most of the view into her apartment.

“Hey buddy.” N said in a sweet tone upon seeing her mixed expression of tense and annoyance. Something they were all too familiar with, yet it was different this time.

“Did your guy actually come to check on me, or did Uzi send you?”

The two disassemblers looked at one another a bit confused. They knew Uzi and J weren’t exactly on good terms, but J seemed to grow in distaste for the drone more and more, and they couldn’t place exactly why. “Well, no she didn’t. We came on our own.” N confirmed after a moment. That seemed to relax J a bit, as her hunched shoulders dipped a bit at this information.

“Okay.”

The air felt stale standing around saying nothing. There wasn’t much to say. Yet there was too much to ask. V crossed her arms as she tried to avoid eye contact with J who seemed to be looking at something inside her apartment behind the door, out of their sight. She rolled her eyes at whatever she was looking at like she wanted to say something but kept quiet.

“So.” J finally spoke once more. “Are you guys going to stand outside my door forever, or do you want to come in?” The two looked shocked at the offer as J pushed her door further open. There was nothing behind the door. V felt uneasy but nodded as N wore a smile at the idea.

“Okay!” He chirped, taking a step inside, leaving V and J in the hall. Js eyes kept flickering back to the spot in front of her hall closet narrowing her eyes a mumbling something under her breath V barely got. “Yeah yeah whatever.”

V invited herself in despite her feelings, and J closed the door behind them, setting only one of the locks instead of the four that were on it. The female disassembly drone was hit with the damp and hot air of the room and nearly doubled over, shocked by the gross air sticking to her body. The apartment wasn’t particularly the messiest but it was HOT. It burned, she had almost never felt heat this bad.

“Jesus Christ J!”

“The place doesn’t look that bad-!”

“No, it’s like boiling in here! Do you ever turn your air on?”

“A-air is expensive! Hell no!” J hesitated in her answer. She was right, though, Uzis dad always complained about the electricity bill because of them and their tendency to overheat. “It’s not that bad anyways you get used to it easy.” She stated like it was something to brag about, dealing with a room that could kill her.

‘Maybe she has lost her damn mind.’ V thought to herself.

“Woah! You have a game box!” N said, pointing at the black and red consol resting under her TV stand.

“It’s called Red Box. A uh, friend of mine gave me his old one so we could play games.” J said, seeming a bit ashamed to have admitted she didn’t buy it herself. However, N didn’t seem to care and was digging through her games she left on the table.

“What! You’re a Warcraft player?!” He said holding up one of the games with a dramatic and overly designed cover. “I never took you for a RPG player.”

J shrugged and leaned over the couch to look over his shoulder. “It’s fun, more of my friends thing. I do hop on when I get bored.” N rubbed a thumb on the cover. It was a game Uzi liked a lot, and he knew this by the yelling she would do. It had a picture of a dragon on it with a typical swordsman on the front next to various different races like the wolf people or the orcs. He loved playing as the wolf people since he could do a questline to become a full wolf at will and made traveling easier on the map but also he would get super cool screenshots doing this. V usually liked playing an orc or one of the dragon races so she could get power buffs and just destroy things. N wondered what J mained on the game but she probably didn’t play often from what he picked up on it not being her thing really.

“So.” V spoke up, looking over at the game with N before turning to J. “Do you want to talk about, you know.”

J sighed long as she sat down in one of the lone chairs in the living room. V followed after taking a seat next to N who held the game in his hands, seeming to fidget with it to keep himself focused on the clearly important conversation. “I guess. I doubt you two will leave unless I do.”

J leaned back, placing her hand on her cheek, trying to seem disinterested, but the smallest expression of shame creeped into her face that V picked up on. “I left prom because I was just feeling cramped and needed to leave. Guy came up to me hitting on me, figured he was just a drunk single loser, found out he was a drunk NOT single loser whose girlfriend chewed me out and accused me of being the problem and not her boyfriend, not mentioning he was in a relationship. I was bored. I did it for fun.” She spoke in a forced tone that was hard to read, and it was clear she wasn’t telling all the details, but pressing would have been impossible.

“Wait, so this guy just fully dating someone decided he wanted to hit on the murder robot?” V introjected, badly hiding the smile she crept into her face and J, surprised for a moment, reciprocated it.

“Heh yeah! Like, if you’re gonna cheat, why on the murder drone?”

“Maybe the antifreeze froze too many of his brain cells to think that through.”

“Well, he is missing some of his blood…”

“J!”

“What!” The drone flushed slightly at V exclaiming in shock.

“Sounds like you aren’t that sorry about it.” She said with her typical sly smile. She was teasing, but for once it didn’t set off any alarms for J. She crossed her arms and smiled a bit.

“Not really.”

“You dog!”

“Was he at least hot?” V and J both turned to N who asked the question. He stared back, looking between the two slightly awkward. “What?! I can’t at least ask?”

“I just wasn’t expecting THAT from you. You hate getting all touchy with me or Uzi.”

“Okay, that’s too much information for me.” J waved her hands in front of her, signaling that she was not wanting to hear that. “Also… kinda?”

“What do you mean kinda?” V leaned forward practically on the edge of her seat wanting to hear more.

“Like. I don’t know, he just liked my mannerisms. I don’t know.” J blushed slightly, seeming to keep some information to herself on the topic.

“Ooo let me guess,” N chimed in once more, “he had abs.”

“Absolutely not, he was as thin as the claws on my hand.”

“Girl, then WHAT was good about him?” V asked, laughing as N seemed deep in thought like he was trying to guess.

“I don’t know! He just wasn’t ugly?? What do you want?” J burst out as she laughed between words, not able to compose herself as Vs laughter and seemingly excitement was contagious.

“My bet was he had a big-”

“OKAY N we are NOT going there!” J interrupted before he could finish, however the deepening blush on her face did no good for her.

“I rest my case.” He said, leaning back on her couch as V howled in laugher at this ongoing discussion.

“You ain't resting NOTHIN’!” J voiced slurred into a mildly southern accent, causing V to just laugh harder and now seeming to struggle breathing as she coughed and leaned into N trying to compose herself. N simply smiled deviously, knowing he either was right or had an advantage to poke at her and get under her skin a bit.

J coughed to try and cover up her slurred voice and whipped her face that was almost certainly burning from the conversation. “I-I can’t just think a guy is hot?” She attempted to recover from the embarrassment, and it started to eat her. She attempted to let it roll off her back but she felt the shame creeping back.

“Your taste in men is probably about the same as Ns.”

“Heh-wait what?”

“Hey, I like my men like how I like my coffee!”

“Not at all?” V said with a smirk on her face. It was intended as a joke, but J felt her heart skip, nearly stopping. She tried to maintain a passive face but she suddenly felt like she couldn’t feel it or control it despite her trying so hard. She felt the panic rush and her hands go cold despite the room being blistering hot like V mentioned. All she could wonder and think at that moment was, ‘Do they know?’ She didn’t want them to know. They couldn’t know.

“Hey uh,” She heard Ns soft voice cut through her fog but only for a moment, “are you okay?”

She felt like her head was underwater, and she could feel the eyes in the dark staring at her. She drew too much attention to herself. She made them wonder and pry into her mind. She felt like there were claws and tentacles in her circuit board. She opened her mouth to speak, yet she felt the word die in her throat. ‘No.’

“Uh yeah, sorry. Uh I just…” J tapped the arm of the chair. They stared for an answer, one she couldn’t give them, but one she couldn’t think of a way out. “Yeah I’m fine.” She said firmly, hoping that would lift the smoke and the fire would stop burning her alive. She felt like she could feel her again. It made her feel sick.

N and V exchanged looks of concern, unsure of what to say. “Are you sure? You seem really tense.”

J attempted to seem less tense but made the forced action unfortunately really obvious. “Yeah yeah. I’m sure.” She said now avoiding eye contact feeling like it would be a death sentence, and they would see right through her.

V looked at her expression and the tension in her form. She didn’t know what she said to strike up the reaction, and it itched at her to know. However, she's learned by now J kept herself locked up tighter than some of the safes she’s seen the Elliott's kept in their house. She hated the thought of them and wondered if that was somehow related to their current silence in the room. She pushed the thought away and pushed up to a stand, getting both N and Js attention.

“We uh. Really should head back home. Uzi is probably waiting for us.” N looked between J and V before nodding and standing up. “Uh. Sorry for all this, by the way.” V said crossing her arms looking away from J not being able to meet her eye.

J looked up at her and nodded before looking away as well. J heard them make steps to the door, and she heard a whisper practically in her head like it was inside. “Do it.” She wasn’t sure why she listened but she did. She felt the window closing to ask, and something in her knew that. Shooting up from her chair, she turned the corner and looked over at the two opening the door, leaving. “Hey!”

The two looked at her shocked she spoke louder than she ment to. She cleared her throat before shifting her eyes and asking. “Uh do. Do you guys want to hang out again sometime? For old times sake or whatever.” For the first time in nearly a year, the two heard what they wanted to hear for so long. That she wanted them in her life.

They both lit up like the stars over the planet. “Hell yeah, we do!”

Chapter Text

The cold air rattled the windows of the even colder home the inhabitants were subjected to. The night made the everlasting storm rage on worse as branches clawed at the glass hoping and praying to be let in. The small scratches on the glass were proof of its attempt and failure, and something the Elliot's hated seeing. J knew better than to attempt to wash or clean it at this point in the night. She’d either get herself hurt or in trouble and accused of an escape attempt.

J scrubbed at the kitchen island that had lasting stains from the new human cook the Elliott's hired. He wasn’t very good, as she can tell from the smashed up plates and glass and the dark stains of red on some of the counters. He was however kind and cleaned up after himself despite the stains he could never clean. He always came back to see it spotless anyway, thanks to Js efforts to clean within the night.

J was used to cleaning up after others. V was too clumsy and small to reach many places and such when she tried, shattered objects were left in her wake. N often cleaned up after Cyn and never had time to clean up after himself. Something J would always get on his case about, but always come up behind his mess without being asked anyway. Never noticed or appreciated, but the lack of broken drone parts make up for it. She had no desire for appreciation anyway.

Tessa would always give praise to V and N for their good jobs, and they would love it, but when it came time for J she’d do anything to deflect it. Stating N did better or that Cyn deserved some acknowledgement for her efforts in a cleaning. Tessa would never appreciate her modesty and called her “too selfless” but J knew she shouldn’t be anything else but selfless.

It was technically not permitted for J to be up late cleaning, and often did it in secret. However, if J left the messes of her coworkers unattended, she was sure they would be hurt. Or even worse. It was a dangerous task she took on, but one she didn’t consider noble. It was in some way selfish, as she wished to keep these drones around on her own feelings. Lightens the chorus, keeps Tessa happy, and maybe it made her less lonely. Horribly sickishly selfish, but a sin she delved into like the sinner she was born to be.

Avoiding a potentially drunk and tired Mr. Elliot was often a main threat to her secret work in the shadows, especially when lugging around her bleach buckets to remove the red stains from carpets or countertops and the in-between of floorboards. Whether it was wine or something more sinister, it had to be removed. She spent a good while cleaning up the kitchen, making sure to remove shards of glass and dispose of it accordingly. She reorganized the spices in the kitchen the way the Elliot's liked, so the new cook wouldn’t get yelled at come inspection day, which should have been the next morning. He was going to learn the hard way things worked around here, but anything she could do to keep the beasts of the manor calm, she’d do it with hast.

There was more work to be done tonight then before since N let Cyn out of Tessa's room once again. Tessa had been working to make sure she was functioning the best she could before letting her work, however, the more problems that showed up, the more Tessa became worried she wasn’t fixable. J remembered what Tessa said to her about Cyns condition.

“If I can’t fix her, my parents are going to make me disassemble her.”

J knew she was right and it sickened her. Her parents already didn’t ‘entertain her dumpster pets’ as is. She knew Cyn had good intentions in her attempts, the way J would be annoyed that she was missing something before Cyn would come and tug on her skirt to hand it to her. Or the way Cyn would always bring J her favorite stuffed whale whenever she got overwhelmed and was forced to be put in the workshop after overworking her joints. Cyn tried, and that made it harder to dislike her.

She was an old drone, like J was. Her parts were breaking down faster than her, despite being younger than her, and J sympathized with her struggle. They were a similar model, however some differences in design showed some reason for her broken body. Js model was built with the intent to keep a drone around for a while, but Cyns model was a disposable one. A prototype even. Not ment to last, and certainly wasn’t. Didn’t make J feel any less sympathy for her failing body as she races against the clock to stay around as long as possible before breaking down or being disassembled.

Despite the drone's charm, J would always feel an eerie air around her. Something never felt quite right about her and it felt so offputting. She’d catch Cyn speaking to herself at times, seemingly when she’d think no one was around. Never quite understanding the one-sided conversation, she’d often just keep it to herself, never mentioning it. It didn’t make the whole situation any less strange.

J snapped out of her trance of cleaning at the soft sound of footsteps. Her fingers became cold. She felt her core pick up in speed as she listened. It wasn’t any of the Elliot's footsteps or her coworkers. No, she memorized the sounds deep into her code. This was someone else.

The kitchen was an interesting room with its open arch door into the dinning hall. However, at that moment it made it horribly menacing. The darkness of the hall was nothing she had ever seen. Just blackness like a void beckoned her like a horrible siren, she felt sick to answer. J grabbed a flashlight off the table she kept with her during the night for when the lights of the manor would go out. She flicked it on and shinned it down the hall. It was like she hadn’t even turned it on. The darkness was a thick blanket on the hall the light wouldn’t dare penetrate.

J swallowed hard and opened her mouth. “Hello?” She called out into the darkness, hearing her voice echo off the walls. “Is someone there?” She wasn’t sure what to expect from this attempt. Maybe that the person in question would leave, or that it was nothing at all. However, what she got was far worse.

“Hello?” Something answered back. She couldn’t see it, but she heard it. The voice. That shouldn’t have been right. It couldn’t be right. “Hello?” It called again.

“H-hey man, that isn’t funny. Knock it off.” She spoke once more, attempting to puff up her chest to not seem scared. Why did it speak in that way?

“That isn’t funny.” It copied. The darkness continued to speak, and her horror only grew. Whatever was talking to her spoke in her own voice. “Hello?”

“Stop that! Look, I-I won’t say anything. Just- leave.” Her voice slipped into a desperate tone. She didn’t know if this thing was reasonable, but she had to try. Her fingertips and face ran cold as she held the flashlight tightly, holding onto the small comforts she could. It went quiet. Even the outside wind and branch tapping had stopped. J could hear the house natural creaking and even worse she heard light thuds of footsteps approaching from the darkness.

“Funny. Funny. Funny.” It mocked as Js breathing picked up, falling back against the kitchen island side as she tried to back away from the hall. The lights of the kitchen flickered as J scrambled to hide from whatever was getting closer and closer, dropping her only light source in the process. J pulled open the cabinet under the sink and crawled inside, cramming her body into the small space before closing it, leaving herself inside.

From the cracks of the door she saw the lights go out fully, the darkness fully engulfing her as she sat holding her breath. The soft steps circled the kitchen around, the sound of things hitting the tabletops and cabinets rang in her ears as it got closer yet not hitting her spot every time. For a moment she thought she was going to be okay. However, the realization soon came to her as it hit every cabinet in a row, skipping over hers before knocking quietly on hers. It was toying with her.

“Knock. Knock.”

____________

J opened her eyes as she felt her core pick up faster and faster and her breathing came out raspy and dry. She couldn’t force herself to sit up, holding herself firmly down on her bed, digging her hands into the sheets. She froze up at the sound of more knocking. She forced herself to sit up and slowly open her bedroom door and quietly moving down the hall.

“J?” J felt her shoulders relax and breathe a heavy sigh. Her mood softened, but was now confused. Why was N of all people here? J flicked a light switch on her wall in the hallway before turning down to her door and checking the peephole. She couldn’t take a chance.

It certainly was N visually. Dumb smile, some weird dog shirt, however she was confused by the lack of his hat. “Hello?”

J sighed before unlocking all the chains, once again pulling out the mail from the slot while she had the chance. She must have slept in. The door opened to reveal an interestingly dressed N. His shirt was a picture of a dog, but not just a like design of a dog, just a ripped from the internet PNG of one and some knee-length cargo shorts. Classic N fashion.

“Uh. Hi?” J answered finally, hand full of mail.

“Hi! Sorry, did I wake you up?” He said, probably noticing J was wearing a long T-shirt that went down past her knees. She realized suddenly she was not wearing pants and looked down at herself, glad the shirt was so long.

“Guh-! Uh yeah. What even has you at my door right now?” She said, trying to avert her thoughts from the fact she was half naked and didn't want him asking.

N pulled his arm up to show J a tool box she didn’t even know he was holding. “So I know you didn’t want us asking about the air, but I talked to Mr. Uzis dad… and he said there is actually no wire connection to this wing anymore so I wanted to know if you would let me try and fix it?” He smiled shyly as he offered up the solution to her. J knew her air didn’t work and half the lights didn’t, but she didn’t want half the colony knowing. Especially Uzi.

“Oh no, there is no way-”

“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming.” J stopped her argument mid-sentence. “I know you're going to tell me you don’t need people knowing you need help, but you seem to need it.” J grumbled at this.

She considered it for a moment. On one hand it's free labor, on the other she doesn’t want him thinking she needs him. She can’t be asked to get a technician in here, and he did say he didn’t tell anyone, so Uzi doesn’t know.

She gave a big sigh. “Fine. But don't touch any of my stuff!”

____________

Robots and guns. A combo that you'd hate to see. One you hate to even hear about. But this was a reality for many of them. A silent colony was a good colony. That was how it was taught for Ruthbore after he left home. His stained jacket waved slightly as a breeze swept the hallway. He rolled the barrel of his revolver and clicked it shut. Randomly, a bullet was held in the chamber. Randomly, someone will die. He let out a small breath so as to not alert anyone nearby as he waited.

His team could be heard inside an apartment, ravaging the remains of the home. He knew someone was still inside. Alive. Waiting. As they cleared out, he walked into the mess they made. They banged down the door of another target home and screams quickly were silenced as he observed the bloodbath that was the 4th target home. He felt a twisted anger but understood. The home of a traitor family. But that didn't make it easier.

He walked through the puddles, ignoring the small bodies in the room. It made him queasy. He closed his eyes and listened.

Down the hall.

In the bathroom.

Leaving the vent.

He opened his eyes to a half lid, finding himself in the bathroom. A drone halfway climbed down from the vent in the ceiling. A man. A was father. He stared wide-eyed at the purple drone, who held a revolver in his hand.

“My baby.” He gasped. “My poor baby girl. Nothing left for us. We did nothing!”

Ruthbore felt sadness and guilt bubble up. “I know.” He raised his revolver and fired. Lucky shot. His circuits splattered across the wall and his wires exposed sparked as “FATAL ERROR” showed on his visor.

“I know.” He said quietly into the now dead air. He turned to leave, flipping the light off. Leaving the dead to rest peacefully. Rolling the revolver around his hand, he slid it back into his holster, laid on his side. He observed the oil across the hall walls and moved his hand to the wall slowly. He felt a flash of heat and a “HIGH TEMP” popped up, causing him to flinch and twitch his hand back.

“Hey! Single Shot! We have another room for ya!” His teammate shouted at him to get his attention. Ruthbore covered his eye as he looked at his comrade. “You okay?”

“Yeah, some oil in my eye. I'll be there. Keep moving.” He shooed out the fellow drone as he looked back at the wall. He swore he saw markings in it but shoved the idea aside, smashing his hand onto the wall and smearing it. Destroying any chance one could appear. It would not take him over.

He left the room to find his team in the hallway, conversing. “You heard of that one kid in the other colony?” “You mean the one that took down the Murder Drones? Yeah, sounds like horseshit.” “What’s a horse?”

Ruthbore ignored them, opening the door to the recently murdered drone apartment. More small bodies. Sick. Horribly sick. For once, he found no one. Not a sound. Not a trace. Not a single room unchecked. He didn't feel pride for them, however. He left with the same frown he always dawned. His team was still gathering around, chatting as if they hadn't killed innocent families in their homes. “I’m just saying, that major planet quake couldn't have been anything else!” “I doubt it even happened, I didn't feel it.” “How DID you sleep through that?”

Ruthbore rolled his eyes and pulled out his revolver and spun it, making a noise as he popped in bullets at random. They turned to look at him as he flicked his wrist with a click. “Seven people you missed. Mr. Mirandese will be very disappointed. You should worry about your performance scores more than rumors of an eldritch god that may or may not exist.” He raised his revolver to one of his teammate, who flinched. “He may ask me to take a chance.”

“Geez okay! Okay! Relax dude! It’s not that serious.”

“It… is kinda that serious.” One of the people he was chatting with turned to him shyly. “Single Shot here does everything by chance, and that includes if Mr. Mirandese keeps you around or not… and you don’t just get laid off.”

“Should have learned that from the onboarding.”

“I didn’t show up to onboarding!”

“Sounds like your own damn fault.” The group continued into conversation as they made their march back to the deployment truck to return home through the connection tunnels built under the planet's surface, made years ago by the first group of drones who lived in the colonies. The trucks black, barely armored, but working, drove slowly but faster than they can walk. Once aboard his designated truck with his assistant commanders, they started getting a move on.

“Hey Ruthbore.”

“Dropping formalities now? What's the situation?”

“We got a radio call earlier before you joined us. They asked for you specifically on a mission.”

“Is that so?”

“It’s to go to Outpost 8.” Ruthbore became quiet. His home colony. His faction was a dangerous and frankly sick sub category of the Worker Defense Force. Such a place for a mission gave a horrible feeling.

“Why?”

“They need to talk to Mr. Doorman at Outpost 8 regarding the Murder Drones and some… rumors.” A simple information retrieval mission. “But first they want you to retrieve your stuff back at camp.”

“Wait.” Did he mean..?

“That’s right, Ruth, you’re going home. They approved your leave. Your service has been top of the line for years now. You’re free to either join Outpost 8 immediately or settle down. We’ll have you move back with family to start and get you situated, and before you leave for Outpost 8 you'll be relived of duty.” The driver told him flatly but a hint of happiness in his voice for him. “Tell Thad his sibling is coming home.”

____________

Khan Doorman was a man of many things. An idiot, an absent father, a bad doorman. But one thing he wasn’t was an uncompassionate man. He was a man who saw the better in everyone, even people who wronged him personally. His wife was his balance. Nori knew there was bad in everyone, no matter how good. However, she lets this blind side her with hate and distrust. She hated his workers, and he trusted them. He distrusted his daughter's actions, and she distrusted the feelings. Communication was not always their best trait in their relationship. But one they told each other they would work on when they reunited.

Khan Doorman was a flawed man. But isn’t everyone? He flipped through his piles of complaints at the kitchen table. His faction was the training faction. He was no bootcamp, but he was in charge of creating an opening for the WDF for other Outposts. Outpost 5 was requesting a meeting, and he felt his nerves start to fry in his motherboard. Outpost 5 was not a division you wanted to hear from. All these complaints needed to be resolved before they showed up a few days from now. He was receiving a possible new commander, decided he wanted to accept, and they said they have a few questions about rumors circling the colony.

He knew what rumors they were talking about. Uzi. He flipped through his papers. Complaints about trainees informality, rude behavior, authority abusing. The Murder Drones. He sighed as he flopped the papers on the table. Nori turned the corner of the hall and heard the plap of the papers. “More complaints on the murder machines Uzi brought home?”

“Honey, you know they hate that.”

She shrugged uncaring. “Well, what’s the complaints this time?”

“Well, new recruits are using their ‘authority’ to boss around other folks.” “Mhm.” “Some drones are ‘abnormally’ rude. We both know this is about V.” “Figures.” Nori grabbed a glass from the cabinet and poured a glass of oil from the fridge they keep from donors. She topped it off with some circuits and wires mixed in and a little finger as a decoration, and sipped from it.

Khan looked at the pile of papers he set aside. “And there are complaints about J.” Nori turned shocked, confused.

“Star Child?”

“What?”

“Your prized commander? What did she do? Kill another person's wife?” She asked, mild bitterness in her voice.

Khan sighed. “No. They want her taken off the WDF entirely. But no complaints like that have been filed against the other two.”

“Any reason why?”

“Well, it says, “She’s rude and unfit to lead. Teaching horrible ideas into our kids heads about how we are all made to die, and keeps a book about how to kill drones.” Which. Only one of those is true. And not even that true at best.”

“Well, she is rude.”

“This is true, but so is V.”

“Hm. Fair point.”

“Why single her out? This actually isn’t the first one. I’ve been getting this kinda complaint since that re prom thing.” Khan flipped the pages of his other complaints, writing notes on procedures to take to fix them, ignoring the one relating to the Murder Drones. He knew a lot of the older drones didn't approve of his decision to let the Murder Drones into the colony or to let his daughter influence his decision, or that he was running the WDF at all. His colony knew he was incompetent, but that didn’t make it easier to tolerate.

“She’s gotten more aggressive complaints that I can’t even show her reasonably.”

“You’re too nice to her.”

“I don’t think you understand.” He said coldly to Noris surprise.

“Is this all that's really bothering you?” She lightened her tone as she spoke to him. “You seem more uptight about something that can’t be complaints this time.” Khan sighed and put his reading glasses down, rubbing his visor, showing his true exhaustion.

Nori sat down at the table with him and set her hand on his that laid on the table. Khans shoulders relaxed as he let out a deep breath. “Outpost 5 is coming in a few days.”

Nori felt her solver instincts perk up suddenly. “What for?”

“They want to talk about Uzi. The.. Thing.” he flicked his hand to gester over to her. “And probably the Murder Drones.”

“I mean, maybe they will understand times have changed?”

“I've heard some awful rumors recently. Their credibility is questionable, but the source is frightening.” Nori tilted her head, listening intently. “When they requested a bunch of drones for their faction they created a sub faction allegedly as the ADA, Anti Drone Assembly. I received a letter from an old drone who used to work in the WDF here and was sent out with them. Later I received a letter I have to give to his family.”

Khan rubbed the temple of his head as he looked at the stacks of paper he had, feeling how utterly unimportant they all felt in the grand scheme of things. “If I don't read correctly how this meeting goes and if the Murder Drones are seen here while they are…” He went quiet. “I don't know.”

Nori swirled her glass in one hand and continued to hold Khan's with her other. The room was quiet as Uzi was out with presumably the two Murder Drones. “Maybe we should involve Uzi. She has more say with the Murder Bots than we do.”

“I just don't want to involve her in such a dangerous situation!”

“She's handled worse!”

“But our daughter shouldn't have to!” Khan pulled his hand back from Nori and slammed a hand on the table in frustration. “I didn't protect her from the Murder Drones the first time around, and I didn't protect you. Even if it went right, she shouldn't have to have done that!”

“You need to understand she can handle herself!”

Khan let out a heavy breath as he sat a hand on his head, leaning into it. He didn't want to, but he knew he had to involve Uzi.

What a failure of a man.

____________

N pulled some wires together and they made a loud spark. “Oh! Haha, whoops!” He said cheerfully before trying again, and suddenly a loud clank was heard and a whoosh! Was heard though out the apartment.

“Well, I’ll be damned to hell…” J said, arms crossed as she watched N wrap the wires together with electrical tape, making sure to have it wrapped tight to not undo itself. “Can’t believe you actually did it.”

“I'm a pilot!”

“See that-never mind.” N climbed down from the ceiling, pushing the tile back to its original spot. “I am just surprised you know what half those wires do.”

“Well, I have been looking into the wires in Uzi's house before she told me not to anymore because I made all her lights go out.”

“That sounds right.”

“But now that I have my own place, I get to mess with the wires all I want! Except when Vs power goes out because of it, and she comes to beat me up about it.”

“I thought you two were rooming?” J asked, sitting down at her table looking over her mail finally that she had a chance. N set his tool box on the table and sat across her as he organized inside before answering.

“We were for a while, but the place was too cramped with us both. And V wanted her own space but didn't want to…” He hesitated. J felt a shift in her mind. She knew what he was going to say. So she said it for him.

“Didn't want to be like me.” N waved his hands frantically, sweating suddenly at J's defensive tone.

“No! No! Not at all! She-she just wanted to stay close by!” J didn't believe it for a moment. She snarled at the thought of V yet didn't understand why fully.

She was mad at her, but why is she? She knows it's because she thinks she's exempt from her own hate, but isn't J like that too? She hates her, but why? She abandoned her. But why did she feel that way?

“She uh ended up moving next door and comes over occasionally.” N said, rubbing the back of his neck as J gripped her mail as she read it. More threat mail. Increasing in details. Even making sure to include her old squad mates. She set it aside face down, so N didn’t read it, but her face probably spoke more than she did.

He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a ‘BARK!’

J flashed her visor with a “???” as she flinched back at the sound. N pulled out his phone and smiled shyly. “Sorry. Uh Uzi texted.” He looked down at it and tilted his head in confusion.

J was going to continue flipping through her mail before he looked up.

“Apparently Mr. Uzis Dad-”

“Mr. Doorman?”

“Yeah. Uh, he needs to see… all of us.”