A Dumbass Isekai Protagonist's Guide to Surviving Murder Drones

_______

That night, like I had resolved to, I went in to check on Yeva. Entering the room, I took a longer look at the pair of corpses. Our processors were in our chrome domes, so I knew Doll's dad was… really fucking dead, and fuck me in a not-sexy way, that sucked . "Rest in peace Mikhail… or Mitchell, if that nickname I heard actually means what I think it does," I told him, offering the guy an actual, serious salute. "I'll to my best to keep your kid safe, as well as try to bring your wife back as soon as I can manage it without Doll flipping the fuck out."

Moving on, I checked Yeva, pulling her Cabin Fever ID lanyard out of the way, and offering a silent apology for pulling her shirt up. Her lower torso looked torn open by what seemed to be V's teeth , which would check out for how she lost oil so fast, between that and the head wound. Might not have even had the time to start regenerating, which actually could have saved her, because V would have pegged her as a Solver Drone and made sure she stayed dead. Her upper torso, however…

Completely intact. Not even a scratch. I checked her back too, and yeah, there were some scratches and a dent that was more cosmetic than actual damage probably from falling backwards after V domed her, but likewise, completely undamaged. It was very plausible her core was unharmed in there. Still… I took a moment, took an unnecessary breath, and then said, "You probably can't hear me right now, if you are still technically alive, Yeva, but I'm gonna do my best to bring you back, and if I can't, I'll make sure to take care of your daughter. I'm not gonna let the hand fate dealt her stick as long as I can do something to stop it. I promise. She's my friend, and I'm gonna keep her safe."

I made sure to smooth Yeva's shirt back into place, referencing my memories to get it back just how it was before, and then headed out of the room and decided to focus on something that I could do from "home" before I turned in for the night… huh , I thought, I see my damn secret lair as more of a home than the hab I live in half the time. I really am an unhinged maniac. Shaking my head with a sardonic grin, I headed over to my personal PC and decided to start rewriting From Ashes to Dust , my old fanfic from my first life. Being able to thought-to-text on my OS is fucking amazing for getting everything down at a rapid pace, let me tell you. 500k words retranscribed in two hours, and then I decided to take a break and start getting to work on TLoTK. I've also put together all of the game that had existed back in my first life, and was now painstakingly trying to put something together that would look like something MassManic would have done. I wanted to write a nice ending for Michael and Ahmya, damnit!

_______

Soyuz nerushimy respublik svobodnykh--

I snapped awake in the middle of the night, and checked my internal clock. It was fucking 3:30 in the morning, why the hell is Doll calling me? Still if she was, it had to be important, so I picked up.

"Hello?"

" Joe, can you open your door? I'm outside. "

"Huh." It wasn't really a question, because I was genuinely nonplused.

" Please open your front door ." She sounded nervous, so I sat up, pulled on a pair of shorts (I slept in a t-shirt, and old human hangups meant I still wore underwear), slipped my feet into a not-oft-used pair of crocs I'd printed a while back, and walked to the door. My internal fusion reactor meant I wasn't actually tired , per say, more that I was just sleepy because I was used to sleeping at this time, and had just been in sleep mode. I opened my front door, and Doll was there with some clothes slung under her arm and wearing her pajamas. Her optics were hollow, and I threw away my confusion to replace it with concern.

"What's going on, Dolly?"

" I had a nightmare that Khan came and took away Mama and Papa. I… I'm really scared. I know you have everything handled, but I can't help myself. Can I… can I check on them? "

You know, I thought , I did not expect to be bringing a girl into my house alone for the first time to be for her to check on the corpses of her parents that we'd just smuggled over here. Also, get your fucking minds out of the gutter, 4th Wall! I flipped from vaguely concerned to "comfort the traumatized kid," and stepped aside to let her in. "Right this way, Doll," I told her, and she shuffled in, clearly nervous, and I waited as she walked in turned on the light in the bedroom where her parents were, and just… stared at them for a few moments, before a huge amount of tension seeped out of her frame.

" I… I'm still scared ," she said.

I sighed, and sent her a file via DM. She looked at me with a raised eyemote, and I explained. "Program I coded to shut down dreams entirely, been using that shit for years now."

" You have nightmares ?" she asked me.

"Haven't for years, because I haven't dreamed for years," I told her with a grin.

" What did you have nightmares about? " she asked me.

I overclocked--

Kelsey's death, cut down by Doll.

Penny's death, neck snapped and squashed as an AFTERTHOUGHT.

Braidon's death, head exploded and corpse burning for the rest of time.

Darren's death, torn apart and partly eaten by a feral Uzi.

Rebecca's death, legs torn off in that same horrific jump by an Uzi completely unable to control her own actions, dying while literally dragging herself back to her friends to try and warn them.

Sam, ripped apart as well.

Emily. Poor girl with her head ripped off.

Doll, getting jumped by the Solver in the mines beneath Cabin Fever. That split second shot of Cyn's body wearing Tessa's flayed skin leaping at her like a fucking FNAF jumpscare.

Her collapsing in the Cathedral after she somehow escaped from that.

The tendrils dragging her comatose body away from N and Uzi.

Her core squirming in its lips.

The swallow before it slurped up the last tendril.

"Oh yes! Get snuck upon!"

--I snapped back to real-time less than a quarter of a second later as my fists clenched. "Nothing good," I said in a gruff voice, a tone that said drop it and brooked no argument.

" Are you… okay ?" she asked me.

I gave a brief, slightly broken laugh before I stopped myself. "I should be asking you that, Dolly," I told her. "You wanna sleep on the couch?"

" Huh ?"

"Nothing to it," I said, "I'm sleeping on my bed, you can have the couch. You're closer to your parents, so that'll ease your subconscious, and you won't have any dreams once you install that program."

Doll's optics finally filled back in, and she walked over to the couch and laid down. " Thanks Joe… " she trailed off. " I… I really can't repay you enough for all of this. "

I sat down on the little table in front of the couch. I had an idea, all of the sudden. Was it wrong to try and leverage this? Probably, but it was an opportunity I'd be willing to take to try and get that happy ending I was shooting for. "One day, somewhere in the future, I'm gonna ask you to do something you're not gonna like, Doll," I told her, my thoughts crossing over to a certain Disassembly Drone I knew Doll hated, for very justifiable reasons. "I want you to promise me that you're gonna put your personal feelings on that matter aside, and think about the situation logically," I told her. "Do that for me, and I'll call things square."

She looked at me, optics dropping, but still attentive. " What could possibly be worth you calling everything I owe you even ?" she asked me.

"You'll find out when I tell you that day," I told her.

She closed her optics, and turned her head to face the ceiling. A few seconds passed, and then she said, " I promise, Joe ."

"Thanks," I whispered. "Sleep well."

A few more seconds, and then, in a drowsy, vulnerable voice, " Are you still there, Joe ?"

"I'm still here, Doll. I'll keep you safe." I told her.

" Thank you ," she whispered. A few seconds later, her optics displayed the words [Sleep Mode] in Cyrillic.

I waited another minute before I quietly crept back into my bedroom. As I went back to sleep myself, I very firmly resolved that if Uzi teased me over this, this time I was gonna kick her in the shins…

________

Lizzy and Uzi came over the next morning, because I'd sent them a text that Doll had nightmares and crashed at my place, and I gave her a program I'd coded to prevent dreams entirely. They actually managed to arrive at the same time, too. And, as completely expected by this point, Liz's first question was, "You slept with Joseph?!?"

Doll blinked twice, before half her visor lit up with red hash-marks. " W-what? No, Liz, I didn't, I-I-- "

"She had nightmares. I gave her the program I made to shut off dreams, and let her sleep on my couch while I slept in my bedroom with my door locked ." I sighed. "Liz, you need to fucking chill ," I told her. "That was out of line."

Lizzy seemed to realize that, and her optics immediately hollowed as bisexual (apparently polyamorous) panic transitioned to actual regret. "I'm sorry. That was wrong of me," she admitted. "I… I fucked up, and shouldn't have said that, Dolly."

Doll took a few seconds to mentally recover from that. " I can… see how that would be misinterpreted, " she said. " It's okay Liz. Just… please don't do that again. We're just friends. "

Thank fuck I only had to deal with Liz pinning after me… and Doll… at the same time , I thought.

"Hey Joe?" Lizzy asked. "I'm sorry too. I… I went and fabricated something for you. Not as awesome as Dolly's, but I think you like simpler stuff better." She pulled out another locket from one of her pockets, and offered it to me. Uzi, who'd been content to watch, started laughing over the UMPT immediately.

Suppressing a sigh, I accepted the gift. And opened it up, revealing one of the inside faces to have a picture of myself with all my friends, taken a bit after the presents were handed put at my 10th birthday party. It was a nice group photo, that Rebecca had given the idea for because "It would totes look cute as hell on my Spacebook." It was… it was actually a really nice gift.

"Thanks, Liz," I told her. "This is amazing," I said, completely honest.

"It's…" Lizzy trailed off. "It's just a friend gift. I promise . I… You've done a lot for Doll, and I really appreciate that, and so I wanted to give you something so you always have us all with you."

Uzi stopped making fun of me (I currently have 55 unread messages sent from her during overclock in the last 23 seconds. I'd skim them for anything actually important, but I knew from experience that the odds were that most of them were laughing emojis and they'd all be deleted on my end within the next 5 minutes or so.) at the realization that this was actually a platonic gift instead of Liz crushing on me. "That's… really well thought out, Lizzy," she admitted.

I put the locket on my neck, and stepped up and gave her a brief hug, causing her to tense up and squeak, before I let go and stepped back. And I decided to just bite the fucking bullet. "Liz… I got a lot of personal shit going on. I… I'm not looking for a relationship right now. I thought if I pretended not to notice that you'd drop it, but that's not fair to string you along like that." I held up a hand as she opened her mouth. I overclocked, and thought about it. Really thought about it. Lizzy was nice. Way better than her canon counterpart. She was funny. Compassionate. She cared about her friends. I liked knowing her. I wanted to get to know her better. I liked spending time with her. And… I guess she was actually kinda cute. But she didn't know who I really was, and even if the age gap wasn't an issue for her , it was for me until she was at least legal. So, with all that sorted out in my own thoughts, I cut the overclock and said aloud, "That's not a no …" She closed her mouth. "It's a not right now . Like I said, I got personal stuff I've been dealing with in my own head for a while now, that I'm gonna still be dealing with for a while longer. I don't want you just… pining over me, but if you do still feel like this whenever I sort my own shit out, I'll think about it again then, okay?"

The blonde was blushing up a storm, Uzi's jaw was dropped because she didn't think I'd actually address this, and Doll was mouth agape because she evidently hadn't realized that at all. "I… you…"

"I'm happy to still be your friend. Maybe in the future, I might want to be something more than that, but not now . I'm sorry if that hurts, Liz, but it was wrong of me to let you think I didn't notice for so long, and I'm more sorry for that."

"It's not a no?" she asked me, looking on the verge of tears.

Fuck it, I'm already gonna go to hell for all the war crimes, I thought. "Just a 'not now,' Liz," I confirmed.

Lizzy lunged forwards and hugged me again, but this time, it was just as a friend. "Thanks Joe," she whispered. "I… I'm not gonna push you to sort out whatever you have going on, but I'm gonna hope you sort it out sooner rather than later, okay?"

I pat her on the back once, and then we both let go. "I'm hoping that I can get past it sooner rather than later as well," I told her. Granted, that was gonna be another eight years at the minimum, and I felt like shit for not telling her that, but she'd probably find out about who I really was before then, and understand my hangups as well… I hoped.

"Holy shit , you actually addressed it," Uzi blurted out.

I gave Uzi a deadpan. "I am not a dense anime protagonist," I told her.

" You have a crush on Joe ?!?" Doll shouted out, finally having collected herself.

Everyone gave Doll a look. "You are literally the only person here who didn't at least have an idea of it," I told her.

"I even heard Darren mentioning that he thought she was into him," Uzi said.

"Wait, everyone knew?" Lizzy asked, blushing.

"You could not have been more obvious," I said.

Liz put her face in her hands and groaned. Doll went up to her and gave her a hug, and Lizzy squeaked and her blush covered over half her visor. And Doll completely fucking missed that. I was… genuinely tempted to point it out, but I was never gonna force a ship. " It's okay Liz ," Doll told her. " He didn't say no , " she emphasized. Uzi and I shared a look, and then glanced back at Lizzy just in time to see her look at us, before her optics flashed to the text [Abject Bisexual Angst] for two seconds before flicking back, Doll missing that too. Uzi and I both had to overclock to avoid bursting into laughter at that.

Lizzy managed to worm her way out of the hug, and only looked a little miserable at the psuedo-rejection she'd gotten. Then Doll spoke up again. " I'm gonna take a page out of Joe's book and change the subject ," this time Uzi and I did start laughing, " I just want to thank all of you again for helping me out. For caring. For… for agreeing to keep Mama and Papa secret. I'm… I'm sorry for not thinking you'd accept it, cuz, Joe ."

"I mean, from an objective standpoint, it's really fucked up, but we all have our messed up secrets, so I'm not gonna call you out on it. We're already keeping Robot Cthulhu Satan a secret, so what's one more to the pile?"

"Okay, like, not to make light or fun of Dolly literally still having her parents in your hab now, but what the hell are you keeping that you think is on par with that?" Liz asked.

" Does it have to do with whatever personal stuff you're dealing with ?" Doll added.

"Kinda, Doll," I told her. "But for what it is… I'll tell you both one day, I promise. I'll tell you as much as I can. Just… I'm not ready for it yet."

" I trust you, Joe ," Doll told me. " I'll wait for you to be ready ."

"I'll… hold you to that, Joe," Lizzy said.

We talked a bit more after that, and finally convinced Doll to give Uzi and I keys for her hab too, now that her… you know… mortally challenged parents weren't in there anymore.

________

A couple more months have ticked by since the last bout of bullshit I've had to deal with. We were in 3066 by this point, and I was starting to feel slightly pressured even though I objectively knew I still had plenty of time to keep prepping and throwing a wrench in the timeline. Liz' 11th Birthday had come and gone, and she seemed to be genuinely happier now that she knew I was aware of her affections but hadn't outright rejected her. Everyone was generally doing good, they were making marked progress with parkour and martial arts training, and I'd slipped in the suggestion of using actual practice swords and whatnot. They were definitely behind Uzi and myself, but they were way ahead of the rest of their peers for being ready for the coming storm. I was starting to workshop ideas on how to address them when I inevitably brought them into the fold.

Doll had been training with her Solver more and more as well, getting used to larger weights, lifting things for longer periods, mastering [TRANSLATE] while also figuring out [SCALE] and [ROTATE] as well as [EDIT]s on the fly. It really was like an Eldritch muscle. She trained herself to overheat, cooled down with donated oil (I'd been starting to slip in the occasional thermos with oil that I'd made at the lair, and it seemed to be just as good as the stuff straight from drones), and then the next time she went, she could push herself just a little further for the same amount of oil. I'd done some math, and if she kept up the current rates, she'd blow her canon counterpart out of the water within about two years. She was gonna be seriously impressive on the battlefield. I was looking forward to it as well. The knowledge that she'd be able to defend herself had been doing wonders for my stress and worries about her, and I'd been feeling better as a result. Doll… had also taken Khan up on his offer to live with him and Uzi, so her uncle now had her set up in the guest room. She had sleepovers with Uzi more often than not. It did occasionally cut into Uzi's availability for secret Isekai stuff, but Doll and Uzi both were aware that the other liked their privacy, and respected that. Uzi had respected Doll not wanting her to come to her hab for over a year, never pressing the issue when she asked and was turned down, and Doll likewise respected that Uzi wanted to sneak out at night to do unspecified things. Hell, Doll had sleepovers with Liz almost as much as she did Uzi.

On the combat frame front of things, I'd come to the realization that a fully 360-degree rotatable neck ala The Exorcist would not only be really practical, but also funny , and also would make it way harder to snap our necks, so Uzi and I drafted a design for it, figured it out, went to the fabricators (the IDMPs), and then the Drone Maintenance Station to go add them into each other. Yeah, my motion tracker and radar and sonar meant I basically had eyes on the back of my head, but I could now turn the eyes on the front of my head to the back in less than a second thanks to the hardware overclocks we'd integrated into everything.

I had fully functional and tested chainswords now, with the teeth made of Khan-grade alloys and the rest of the weapon's casing made of CrCoNi. Yes, I had an Eviscerator variant lined up and ready for Emily, 4th Wall. You don't need to ask. And while Uzi genuinely loved her combat pickaxe… chainsword . Which was totally valid , and so I'd hooked her up with a one-handed chainsword variant that was long enough to be used in both hands if needed, and the pickaxe would be a backup to that. She was gonna have fun with it, I could already tell.

Speaking of Uzi, we'd both been workshopping ideas for higher-grade internal cooling fans, as well as systems to disperse heat better. I didn't want to risk inducing more oil or coolant to her body in case the Solver could adapt to the new baseline and guzzle it faster , but supplementary systems to externally disperse heat, or speed up internal dispersion to a point of external dispersion, could be viable. Uzi herself had the idea of internal heat sinks that could absorb excess heat, and then redirect it straight to cooling fans connected to our "airways." A Solver Drone would basically be exhaling heated air constantly once they started using their powers in any significant capacity, almost like a dog, but it's an additional heat dispersal method, and so we were working on a design we'd probably have implemented in a month or so. I myself came up with the caveat to make that system toggleable; it wouldn't do to exhale clouds of steam if we're trying to sneak in general, and would be worse if there are Murder Drones or other entities with thermal vision when we're trying to do it.

On the surface, we've done significantly more setup with monitoring equipment on the surface during the days. We had passive radars and quantum comms relays have been all over the place, as well as a bunch of strategically placed speakers, some of them even near the corpse spire, though we were extra careful whenever we had a direct line of sight to the place, and only approached it on bright, cloudless days. I'd been placing cameras everywhere , spraypainting Anarcho-Syndicalist emblems on walls, and generally using the daylight to set stuff up to start unnerving the local DDs before I even actually fired the first shot. Given that some of the graffiti, especially in areas surveillance revealed that J patrolled, were defaced with missile fire or lasers overnight, I was definitely accomplishing that goal.

As for the titular Murder Drones themselves, we've been watching J, N, and V overnight via the aforementioned cameras, and it turns out that J does have her squad run specific patrol routes at specific times, assigned to a third of the city each. Which means we can predict them. I've already plotted out two buildings J likes to perch on to survey the surrounding ruins, and rigged up 500kg bombs (yes, modeled straight after the ones from Helldivers 2. Once again, a hearty vaffanculo to SONY for making me have to get Isekai'd a millennia into the future to be able to play that game on Xbox… I got the distinct feeling that the fingers on a monkey's paw just curled somewhere…) on the ground floors of them. I've plotted out a specific time of night that J should be on top of one of them, while N is as far from V as possible. I had a plan coming together, and Uzi and I agreed that we were ready to kick things off soon.

________

(Serial Designation N)

Another day, another patrol on this frozen, forsaken hellscape to do my job and do it well! The skies were clear, not a toxic deathstorm in sight, we were keeping up with quota, and everything was going alright… well, almost everything. V still couldn't remember my single-letter name, which… you know, kinda hurt, but I wasn't gonna admit that! Always gotta stay positive! Like golden retrievers. Man, I wish I could see one of those adorable goobers in person… Also, J is angrier than usual. Some kinda worker has been going around and spray-painting "socialist propaganda" everywhere, which… kinda messed up considering that they were rouge AI that the Company sent us to terminate, and socialism was bad for the economy! At least, according to J. I didn't know much about economics myself.

Speaking of, I saw red, black, and gold in the corner of my visual feed, and some worker looking at it! Oh, time to make the squad proud! I lanced down, shifting an arm to a sword, and pounced, blade punching straight through the worker, killing her before she even knew what hit her. I drank a nice filling of that WARM, SWEET oil, and then decided to save some of the rest for whoever got back to the Spire first. But first, seditious inflammatory imagery to investigate! Oh, I bet J would be so proud I was picking up corporate jargon!

I walked up to the wall to investigate. On closing and taking a closer look, I sighed. Yeah, that was another Anarcho-Syndicalist emblem spraypainted prominently onto a wall. Wait-- uh, "communist!" Because that's what J told me to call it, after she slapped me in the back of the head the last time I corrected her. I wasn't supposed to give those "filthy corrupted toasters the slightest modicum of respect, especially after they now had the gall to adopt ideologies that are the antithesis of the Company," after all.

"Dangit," I muttered. I shuffled around, taking a look to check for any footprints, but didn't come up with anything. There'd been some light wind all day, and whoever this was only went about when the sun was out. I absentmindedly caught my tail before I accidentally melted my hat (I had to spend an entire quarter killing workers the best I could for J to give me a replacement. I was never gonna do that again), and brushed some of the curls of my ash-white hair out of the way of my facial optics. My short-sleeved black winter coat with its golden furred collar and black belt rustled as the wind started to pick up, and I checked to make sure my yellow skull armband on my left bicep hadn't come off. J got mad when that last happened, too! I didn't wanna disappoint her! She was awesome , always looking out for my performance… even if it kinda felt like she didn't really like me that much, sometimes. But I was sure that was just tough love!

Oh well, time to head back-- wait! Dead worker, can't forget to grab them! J always wants me to bring the kills right back. Oh boy, I've only been out for 10 minutes, and I've already got my first kill for the night! I bet J was gonna be so proud of me for doing my job well! Winging back to the Corpse Spire (the biggest one on the planet, just like J liked!), I did kinda wonder what was going on. This was a new development in these past few months. I had this gut feeling that something bad was gonna happen soon, and that left me really worried about my squadmates. Touching down at home base, I pushed down that odd feeling I'd had the past couple weeks that I was being watched , dropped off my kill, and took a look around, and-- "Hi J!" I said with a happy wave.

Peg feet tapped against the snow as she took a glance over to me, eyes narrowed, before one eyemote raised. Silver twin pigtails tied with black ribbons gently swayed in what wind crept through the Spire, Her short-sleeved black shirt with side pockets towards the bottom was tied at the waist with a black synthetic leather belt to look like a skirt, and they were as freshly pressed and well-kept as they always were. Beneath that, she had a dark yellow shirt with a black tie, and the yellow Company armband with a skull emblem on her left arm just like mine, completing that secretary appearance she strived for. J really liked looking professional, after all. She was a model employee, and I wished I could be half as good at my job as she was! Her legs were painted to look like she was wearing knee-high stockings with visible suspenders. Of course, I made sure to never actually look at them with my facial optics. The last time I'd had those eyes looking at them, J had gotten embarrassed and then angry and even V had gotten upset, and I didn't wanna make either of them mad, so I made sure I never stared at J's legs ever again!

"Ten minutes and you already brought a body in…" J actually smiled at me. "Not bad, for once, N."

"Thanks J!" I told her. "And I even left some extra oil for you! Made sure not to backwash either!"

J blinked, having opened her mouth, and then shut it, before settling on, "Huh, I'll give you credit for that. Adequate employee performance so far."

I smiled back at her and waited patiently and at a professional distance as she drained the rest of the body, and then said, "Right, before I get to putting that on the Spire, I, uh, saw one of those communist emblems sprayed onto another wall and wanted to report that to you since you me to do that when I saw new ones on my patrol routes."

J looked annoyed, but not at me, which was always a positive. "Those malfunctioning revolutionary dissidents…" she muttered. "Ping me the location, N." I saluted, and did exactly that. She gave me a nod, and then added, "Back to work, then, we have a quota to fulfill, and so far you've actually been doing decent this quarter."

"On it, J!" I said with a smile, turning around to launch off, before we both stopped at the sudden manic laughter approaching. Oh! V was coming! Just act natural, N. Totally cool, just gotta hide my crush and be professional .

V came in literally carrying a ball of mangled and dismembered worker corpses that she dropped into a pile as she laughed with sadistic glee, before touching down as her hunter's cross flickered out. "Oh man!" that beautiful voice rang out amidst those peals of angelic yet very concerning laughter, and I had to fight the urge to let my tail wag, "I just fed a guy his own entrails in front of his family, and then killed them too! Just like that time I did it a few months back!"

I nervously chuckled. "I… I know V. I was there , last time."

She snapped her gaze over to me, something visible in her optics so fast I wasn't sure if I actually saw it or not, before they hollowed. "Who are you?" she asked, and I hid my grimace because that hurt , but I didn't wanna show it. I took a look as she stared at me like we hadn't been working together for years (even if I seemed to be missing patches of those years for some reason-- but I was sure they'd sort themselves out eventually!), seeing her facial optics framed by that ash-silver bob-cut, my gaze trailing down past her neck to the dark grey, short-sleeved crop coat with golden fur on the collar and cuffs that was the only article of clothing she wore beside the yellow with black skull armband every Disassembly Drone had. Her legs-- oh Company why didn't she actually wear pants --were painted black up to her thighs, like thigh-high socks, with yellow and black hazard stripes at the end of her feet and at the tops of the black paint as well.

The woman I was crushing on took one look at me and then rocketed back off, ignoring J's calls of protest to sort out the bodies for placement on the Corpse Spire, and I just stood there and gave a shaky laugh. "I… I-I'm N!" I called after her, shoulders slumping. "I know one letter's hard to remember, but I'm sure you'll get it eventually!"

J walked up behind me, and I winced as I got rapped on the back of the head… but it was lighter than she usually did. "Hey, synergistic liability!" I looked over at her, but she was only sorta glaring. "Considering your usual performance, you're doing… adequate … tonight, loathe as I am to admit it. Don't let her get your quota fulfilment down… or we're gonna have problems , got it?" She glared, and I nodded hastily.

"I'll do my best J!" I got out. "I always try to!"

J scoffed, leveling a deadpan at me. "Sometimes your best isn't good enough." She looked at me for another few seconds, and then sighed. "But still, while physical reinforcement can be an effective measure of ensuring compliance, that was needless workplace hostility on V's part. I'll talk to her and tell her to try to at least acknowledge your existence. You're the worst performer on the squad, but you still do perform. But no workplace fraternization, got it!"

I perked up, and gave J a genuine smile. "Thanks J! You're the best!" She narrowed her facial optics at me, and then I flinched, "And yeah, no flirting on the job, got it!"

"Good. Now get going, because I need to sort out these bodies now," she complained.

"You got it, J!" I said, and then rocketed off. I was gonna do my best, and make her proud! And maybe also woo V by being super good at my job? Maybe that was what I needed to do to get her to notice me? Well, only one way to find out!

Now if only I could shake that bad feeling I had about the near-future.

________

(Joseph)

The moon (and the giant form of Copper 8 in the distance) was bright tonight. Everything was ready to go to finally kick off my war on god, and I had Andrew's emotional repression programs running at a low intensity to help keep my nerves calm as I waited under a thermal camo cloak, stock still, ready to ambush. Uzi was held up several floors above in a nearby building with a line of sight to our ambush spot a few hundred feet away. I had her in the supportive role because I didn't want to risk her getting shot at and tripping her Solver this early. I had briefly considered trying to do this solo, but I shot that down just as fast because I trusted Uzi, wasn't gonna try and patronize her, and the help was really welcome. It was possible we'd be in a 3v2 if shit went wrong anyways. She had one of my railguns, as her SAHMPA was still in its prototype phases, and having that explode on her while fighting Murder Drones would be bad . She also had a war crime shotgun and a DU Deagle as backup, plus her chainsword and combat pick, and was waiting almost entirely under a camo cloak as well, railgun aimed and just barely poking out.

I had a DU AR, Friendship (I wasn't joking about naming my bolt pistol that), a war crime shotgun of my own (with a DU slug loaded at the front, to be fired before the actual war crime shells), and Doll's entrenching tool at the ready, as well as my hidden blade as a backup on my left wrist. I was crouched behind a partly destroyed wall to a building, hidden under a camo cloak designed to also hide heat signatures, shotgun held in both hands, waiting to go. There was also a human skeleton next to me, and yeah , it was kinda fucking unnerving to see the bones of my former species en masse when I was first out here, but a month of exposure to that does wonders for making you numb to it. Mentally healthy? Probably not, but I'd always been a bit uncaring about skeletons in videogames, and given the circumstances and lack of flesh or organs on any of them, I kinda just internally rationalized them as dead NPCs and then tuned them out beyond making sure to avoid stepping on them because snapping bones were loud .

There was a fake Worker Drone corpse that Uzi and I had printed, filled with oil (and explosives), and then tore open such that it looked like a MD had gotten to it, and then left it in the open. It was the bait, and V was the one we were trying to lure into our trap. I kept calm (by cheating with Andrew's emotional repression programs), and took and slowly released a breath when my passive radar pinged me with an approaching aerial contact.

Isekai_Protagonist: Ready, Uzi?

Darkxwolf16: Yeah, and I remember the plan. Let's get some packback.

I confirmed via checking the camera feeds that I had access to that J was surveying several surrounding blocks from atop one of the buildings she frequented, next to an old train depot, which had spare parts and scraps that drones still eking an existence on the surface liked to frequent for scavenging purposes. V landed near the corpse, visible to my passive sonar and motion tracker even if I wasn't actually facing her.

Isekai_Protagonist: You may hit the Up Right Down Down Down when you're ready.

Darkxwolf16: I still can't believe you ACTUALLY coded those first two bombs to the in-game stratagem input.

Isekai_Protagonist: To be fair, it was ONLY these two bombs.

Darkxwolf16: I'm rolling my eyemotes while looking in your direction.

Isekai_Protagonist: lol

I heard V's pegs tapping on the snow, a few sadistic giggles fading out as they came to a stop. "Ugh," I heard Nola Klop's voice from someone who definitely wasn't Nola Klop-- and subsequently overclocked to avoid laughing at the sudden realization that she also voiced Kelsey and Rebecca, and that Micheal Kovach, N's VA, also voices Braidon --followed by, "Freaking N going off his assigned route again and leaving a mess to boot!" She sighed. "Just… just do your job… make sure he does his job, and She'll leave us alone, V…" I slowly, quietly began to rise from my crouch, twisting body and head alike to get an eye on V-- damn dat ass , but also no visible waste ejection port --and leveled my shotgun, combat software active, reticle lining up with the base of V's left wing, hardware overclock active, the toggles on the software overclock and my active radar and sonar ready, just waiting for Uzi to--

BOOOOM

V whipped her head to the side as the blast on the other side of the city echoed through the night. I toggled everything on, started recording to go over the footage later, resighted since she shifted, confident that the blast would have taken care of J for at least a couple minutes, confirmed my aim was on-point as the world ticked on in slow motion and V's head just started to turn to me, and I pulled the trigger.

The DU slug punched right through, shearing the wing off entirely. She screamed out as I racked another, "standard" war crime shell into the chamber. My second pull of the trigger dumped out a cloud of oxidized hellfire and burning shards of tungsten carbide.

That was for Andrew and his parents.

She stumbled back as her upper torso was stretched and dented, but not penetrated. Annoying, but it made sense the housing for their cores would be more durable than the rest of them. I pumped the action, and fired a third time.

That was for Kelsey's vision and her parents.

She'd just shifted her right arm to a MP5SD, and the flechettes from my own shot ripped it and part of her forearm to metal shreds as she flinched back from the impact and screamed again as bits of white phosphorus clung to her and started burning. Chk-Chk . Another shell ready. Fourth trigger pull.

That was for Trevor's dad.

This shell went into the point where her lower torso met the upper. I had a bit of penetration, and actual damage to her central chassis, but more importantly, she stumbled a bit closer to the fake drone corpse. I remote triggered the concussive charges we'd stuffed in it, and V was thrown to the side when they went off, landing on her right side as I chambered the fifth shell and stepped forwards, grim determination on my face. I pulled the trigger again.

This is for Rebecca's parents.

The fifth shell went into her upper left leg, scorching her thighs as she screamed louder and severing her left lower leg from the rest of her body entirely. Chk-Chk . Sixth shell ready. I fired.

This is for Emily's parents.

V was trying to push herself into a kneeling position with one leg and one arm, the other only half-regenerated while still sizzling from white phosphorus, right wing raised in front of her to shield herself. I stopped before I could get close enough for the nanite acid tail I knew was still behind her. Didn't want to shoot that and risk splashing burning nanite acid everywhere. Shot number six's full force slammed into V's bladed wing, the metal shrieking in protest as white phosphorus ate at it and burning tungsten carbide slammed into it at lethal velocities. Pump. Shot number seven ready. Pull the trigger.

This is for Braidon's sanity and his parents.

V's remaining wing properly dented from this impact, the metal starting to glow red as a pained scream erupted from her vocalizer yet again.

This is for laughing as you did all of it.

Pump. Aim. Shoot. Shot number eight weakened the wing further. There were holes in it now, and I was watching the WP eat away at it in real-time.

This is for Doll's parents.

Shot number nine made her scream louder as what was left of V's wing was sheared off entirely. I saw hollowed, fear -filled optics stare at the determined grey glare and bared, fanged teeth on my own face, and lined up my barrel with her face.

This is for Doll, bitch.

Shot number ten reduced V's head to melting scrap . Her body tumbled backwards as the WP kept sizzling and kept her regeneration at bay. I reached into a pocket, and grabbed a shell, and started reloading, just like I'd practiced for months. The motions went smoothly and without interruption. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 . Pump the action. Gun down, overclocks off. I snapped back to real-time. Ten seconds had passed since my first shot. The sound of the gunshots was still echoing off the dead buildings around us.

I holstered the shotgun, and darted forwards, drawing Doll's entrenching tool from my hip. I was careful to not get any WP on myself. First target on V's body, severing her tail just below the nanite acid stinger, and then roll it slightly away so I wouldn't accidentally step on it. I scrambled to get what I needed done as fast as I could. I slammed down Doll's gift onto V's remaining arm, violently severing it after three swings just below the elbow. A quick overclock to check the weapon showed it was still in perfect condition. I tossed the arm next to the acid stinger. I used the serrated end to hack and saw away at V's remaining leg just below the hip, tearing away at the joint to get it off faster. I reached into a pocket and slapped the stump with a small thermite charge, meant to just burn really hot and not explode, just to slow regen. I scrambled over to where her severed lower left leg had ended up, and then started placing all the parts I'd hacked off into a bag I had ready just for this. I then carefully placed the nanite acid canister into a special container I'd made to keep it from jostling and protect it from cracking. With my loot obtained, I got ready to bug out--

My radar (currently active) warned me about an incoming contact, and I pulled out Doll's entrenching tool, turned towards it, overclocks back on, and braced my weapon, as well as myself. A second later N rocketed in, hands turned to blades as they slammed into my braced weapon. The kinetic force of the impact sent us both skidding back through the silicate and asbestos snow, my boots digging a furrow in the stuff as I slid back several dozen feet, and my servos and synth-muscles groaned and creaked in protest, but I held firm as we bled off momentum. I locked my gaze to N's hunter's cross, and glared .

N bared his teeth right back, and I threw him off by jerking my entrenching tool to the side and pushing , and he stumbled back but flared his wings to right himself. Speaking of, I flicked my entrenching tool into its pick configuration, and darted to the side right as one of those bladed wings punched past the space I was occupying less than a second ago. N's hunter's cross flickered off to reveal surprised optics because the worker drone just dodged him, and then at bullet-time speeds, I slammed the CrCoNi spike of Doll's gift into the middle joint of N's wing, punching into that glowing yellow circle, and yanked on it, servos whirring, and tore it off . N screamed, and with a practiced motion I flicked the tool back to its standard configuration, stepped forwards, and swung again. To his credit, N blocked with one of his own blades, but stumbled back a step as I pushed hard against him. He raised his other arm and tried to swing at me, but I let go of the entrenching tool with my left hand, stepping to the side as I let him push it aside but not strike me, and clenched my left fist as I input the command to extend my hidden blade, the weapon shooting out to intercept N's other sword hand and throw it to the side, before I punched my fist forwards and plunged the weapon into N's shoulders. I saw a flash of yellow from behind him, raised a foot, planted it on his lower torso, and kicked him, sending him stumbling back as I pulled my own weapon out of him and dove , tucking into a roll as his nanite acid stinger missed me by inches, and then came up out of it. A moment to verify that the motion hadn't ruptured the casing of the stinger I looted from V, and then I retracted the hidden blade, reaching into a pocket. N leapt at me, and I pulled my hand back out, clutching a cross, the reforged present from Emily bursting into a brilliant purple light as I brandished my holy talisman against the oncoming Sky Demon.

N screamed as he tumbled, missing me entirely as I held the cross high and aimed at him, bathing the Disassembly Drone in concentrated UV light. Smoke was coming off him as he screamed and crouched to minimize his profile as he shoved his intact wing in front of him, and I started to back up as I kept shining it so I could give Uzi a clear shot. I dropped my entrenching tool and reached for Friendship as I saw N's hands start to shift. Overclocks meant I was faster on the draw, leveling the bolt pistol and dumping a round into N's right leg, right at the knee, the detonation blowing the limb off entirely as he fell. He flopped to the ground, flinched, looked up at me, and I felt kinda crappy because he was scared , and--

CRACK- BOOOOOOOM

--N's head and neck ceased to exist as Uzi nailed him with a railgun to the noggin. I resisted the urge to laugh at the fact that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. I whipped out a second thermite charge and slapped it at the base of N's regenerating neck as I set it off to stall his regen, and then rushed over to grab my weapon before I got to hacking both his arms off at the shoulder, pocketing them, and then carefully hacked off his tail as well, putting it in my spare container that I'd brought on the off-chance the first ruptured but the acid canister didn't or that I'd get to loot a second. I then put two shells into N's thighs to slow his regen further, reloaded those, and--

CRACK- BOOOOOOOM

--I glanced over as V's body flopped from the blast of Uzi's next shot, erasing whatever progress her head had made in regenerating.

Darkxwolf16: Her head was halfway reformed.

Isekai_Protagonist: I ain't blaming you, Uzi. No kill like overkill.

Darkxwolf16: Thanks.

Isekai_Protagonist: Active radars and sonars off. Let's go.

I cut my recording and fired my grappling hook into a nearby building, turning the aforementioned detection systems back to passive. Uzi moved from her position and booked it as well, the both of us using them in tandem with our parkour to leap and zip from ruined structure to ruined structure as we opened up several blocks of distance in less than a minute as our overclocked hardware carried us beyond Olympic sprinting speeds as we opened up the distance. We met up a few blocks later at a pre-designated rendezvous spot, just in time to turn around as our passive radars picked up a newly regenerated J zip in and touch down at our ambush site. Uzi stopped, flipped up the railgun, turned on the rails, took a knee, aimed, J came back up a few seconds later when she didn't find us, clearing the skyline but facing the wrong way, and Uzi snapped her gun up to track her before pulling the trigger.

CRACK- BOOOOOOOM

J's headless body dropped back below view. I glanced over to Uzi as she shifted her grip on the weapon to blow on the business end of the weapon. " Damn , that was a nice shot, Uzi."

"Thanks, Joe," she said with a grin. "That combat software and targeting stuff you programmed and pirated rocks ."

I raised a hand, and we fist bumped, before we both kept going. No clue when N or V would be back up, after all. 40 seconds and another two blocks later, we held up in an interior room of a semi-stable skyscraper under camo cloaks. Cameras I had set up and about gave me info on the movements of N, V, and J, all three Disassemblers coming up and looking decidedly upset as they flew around, J more erratically and carefully this time, looking for us. V flew directly overhead at one point, N also passing nearby, and J went on a vector that would have caught us out if we hadn't chosen to hide instead.

Two hours passed before the MDs apparently called off their search for us, but we waited another 20 minutes to be sure that they weren't looking anymore before starting to carefully creep back through the ruined cityscape to our secret tunnel, making sure to grapple between buildings where possible to avoid leaving footprints, even though the wind was at a good speed tonight and that would have been a minimal issue. No need to tempt Murphy after all. As we got to my secret entrance, I checked my cameras, and saw that J landed on the other building she frequents.

"Uzi?" I asked her, giving a demented grin.

She held up a finger, visor flickering as she checked the cameras herself. "Oh, J is on the other building!" she said, grinning just as gremlin-like as I was. "Would be a shame if I up-right-down-down-down'd, wouldn't it?" she asked.

A moment later, I heard another BOOOOM faintly in the distance as a 500kg bomb went off right under J for the second time tonight. We both started howling with unhinged laughter as we slipped into the tunnel proper and closed the entrance above us.

_________

Uzi and I set all the parts we'd looted in separate containment units in Vault 2's DD part room, waiting for about another hour to make sure they didn't start moving on their own. While we waited, I stepped out briefly to grab a bottle and a pair of glasses I'd made just for the occasion. Given that Uzi, who'd been standing outside the room with a thumb over the button that would douse everything in fluoroantimonic acid, hadn't pushed it, I assumed nothing bad happened while I was gone.

She glanced over at me, and then her optics widened. "Did you actually make wine for this?!?"

" This ," I said, brandishing the bottle as I set both glasses down, "Is the result of five months of a side-project to make robo-limoncello, and I was waiting for this exact occasion to bring it out."

"Does it actually taste like the stuff?" Uzi asked me.

I grinned. "You have no idea how long I spent mixing different kinds of fuel to get that taste, but I did!" I poured a glass for both of us.

"You're really giving a minor alcohol?" Uzi teased me.

"It's half of one glass, and we just threw hands with three Murder Drones and won ," I told her. "That's worth a fucking celebration!"

"Hell yeah!" she shouted, and I passed her one of the glasses.

"To eventual deicide!" I toasted.

"Let's kill god!" she cheered, and we clinked glasses.

" Salute , Uzi," I said, and then we both took a sip.

"Oh damn that's good," Uzi muttered.

"Five months," I reiterated.

"You really do cheat at life," she remarked.

"And you aren't too now, Miss 'I finished my character arc before canon started?'"

"Oh, shut up!" she laughed, and then asked. "The hell do you plan to do with two nanite acid stingers though?"

"N's will be to see if I can replicate them for bullets… but that's gonna be much later. Don't wanna fuck around with it until we're really sure that the limbs we looted won't be autonomous or gods forbid try to turn into a Solverpede at any point."

"And V's?"

"I got a specific idea for that one, and I'm glad I kept it intact."

"But what are you doing with it, though?"

I grinned. "You gotta promise that you'll keep your mouth shut, Uzi."

She looked at me, squinting her eyes for a few seconds, and then held her hands up to show she wasn't crossing her fingers. "Fine, my lips are sealed."

"Birthday present for Doll," I told her as I sat back and finished my robo-limoncello.

Uzi's jaw dropped. "Holy shit , that's metal." A beat, and then, "You sure that's not gonna, like, traumatize her more?"

I raised a digital eyebrow. "I'm gonna assume your 'tism means you missed it, but Doll still hates V just as much as her canon counterpart, even if she's less likely to go off on a half-baked revenge scheme, and not at all likely to go full Carrie in the process. I gotta get her to cool her murder boner for V at some point, especially if you're gonna date her later," Uzi flushed a bit, "and the knowledge that I went out and fucked V up and then also took a trophy will be a great start for that."

Uzi thought about it for a moment, overclocking to check through her memories, and then concluded, "Yeah, that works. I'll keep quiet… and thanks for helping cuz get some kinda closure… and also make her hate V a little less so I don't feel as guilty for thinking she's hot," she muttered that last part.

I gave her a look , just long enough for her to start squirming in place, before I said, "You see Uzi, unlike you , I'm not gonna tease you about your romantic prospects."

She gave me a petty glare for a few seconds, and then sighed. "Thanks… and I'm sorry for that, it's just…" she took a half second, probably overclocking to find the right words. "It was nice to be able to mess with you for once."

I stepped forwards and put a hand on her shoulder, and looked her in the optics. "Uzi, messing with you all is a coping mechanism for the existential dread I experience every day as I plot and plan to keep you all alive through to the end of this mess. It literally helps keep me from having a nervous breakdown. Don't feel bad that you had a chance to mess with me back."

Uzi blinked a few times. "Do you need a hug, dude?"

"...Yeah," I admitted. She came forward and gave me one, and I hugged her back. We just stayed like that for a few seconds, and I slowly let out a breath. "This is nice," I admitted.

"You can like, vent to me, if you ever need to," Uzi told me.

"Might take you up on that," I admitted. "Not tonight, or in the immediate future… mostly because I don't wanna air my own insecurities when the 4th Wall might be watching. Gonna wait for a random week where nothing's going on, you know?"

"Trying to slip your trauma dumping between chapters or episodes or something?"

I laughed, feeling a bit better. "That's just how I roll."

Uzi giggled. "Never change, Joe. You're awesome just the way you are."

"Thanks Uzi."

A few more seconds passed, and then we let go of the hug and both sat down. "So," she said. "I've been thinking. On like, Liz liking you and your human hangups on that."

I raised a digital eyebrow. "Yeah?" I asked, slightly concerned.

"So, that pattern recognition I got from you led to me doing some math. Copper 9 has 30 hour days, right?"

"Yeah?"

"And a 14 month year with 441 days, right?"

"Yeah," I said a third time, wondering where she was going with this.

"So that means Copper 9 years are longer than Earth years, so going by Earth years, we're all way older," Uzi told me.

I overclocked and ran the numbers. 30 hours a day, 441 days a year… A Copper 9 year came out to just a bit over 1.51 Earth years. We were all 10, Lizzy was 11… Most of us were actually 15 or even 16 by earth years, and Liz was actually closer to 17 by Earth years.

"We'll all be 18 by Earth years when we're twelve in Copper 9 years," I whispered out loud.

"Yep!" Uzi said, giving me a teasing grin. "All you gotta do is wait for Lizzy to have one more birthday, and then you don't need to feel like you're a pedo anymore! In your face , Joe's stupid human hangups!"

I leaned back in my chair and let that realization sink in for a few seconds, forgoing the overclock to just enjoy it, and then I let out a quiet, "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck that's relieving. I only have to wait until I'm 12 by Copper 9 years to stop feeling like a fucking pedo!" I threw my arms up. "YES!" I shouted.

Uzi laughed at my completely justified reaction that knowledge, and I let her, because that was the best fucking news I'd gotten all day (besides our Murder Drone ambush going off without a hitch). That was… holy fuck that was so relieving. Only two more Copper 9 years and I could merely feel moderately disgusted with myself (which I could ignore as long as it was legal) instead of getting slapped with allegations.

Then Uzi asked me, "So if Lizzy asks you out once she's twelve in Copper 9 years--"

I cut her off. " If she actually has the lugnuts to do it? I might say yes." I took an unnecessary breath. "She's nice. Way better than her canon self, and I could see myself liking her in a romantic manner once she's legal ," I emphasized. "I'll think about it again then, and not a moment before. She might be over it by then, for all I know, or she'll start dating Doll, or something. It's another year from now, or even longer in Earth years by that metric. Like I said, I'll actually think about it then."

Uzi blinked a few times, and then gave me a deadpan look. "Damn, you being mature about this takes all the frickin' fun out of it."

I rolled my optics, but said,"Well, if you want something to laugh at, if my Isekai involved me dying, I'm now in my second life as a virgin."

Uzi burst out laughing. "Why would you admit that?"

" Someone was gonna ask me sooner or later," I said, and then shrugged. "It sucks, but it's whatever. I've gotten over it." And that was the truth. And then I had a realization. "Also… if you're gonna actually be 18 in two more Copper 9 years… then you'll be an adult who I'll trust with adult decisions. Assuming our antics don't trip your Solver by then, if you want me to try and dig into your OS to activate it once you're an adult by Earth years, I'll give it a shot."

Uzi sobered up quickly and looked at me, eyemotes wide but full. "Really?"

"If you're an adult, you're old enough to decide if you want to have the powers of Satan and Anime on your side. Just keep in mind that once they're on, you'll die in the light of day."

Uzi sighed. "Did you really just call the Solver the 'powers of Satan and Anime,' Joe?"

"Tell me I'm wrong."

She groaned. "You're not, and I hate it ." Now I laughed at her . "Also, we'd need more oil production in here. Especially if we turn DDs early."

I finished laughing, and then overclocked and thought it over. "Okay then," I said. "Let's get started on that third IGMP, so we can also set it to print oil ingredients as needed."

"And probably a 3rd CF reactor, or the 2nd for Vault 1," she said.

I nodded, "And if we're building another reactor, then we should tack on a 4th IGMP for Vault 1 as well, and then a 5th just for Vault 2 that we'll connect to its reactor.

"Sounds like a good plan," Uzi said. "But definitely not tonight."

"Yeah, tonight, we can rest on our laurels for a bit, and then pass the fuck out," I told her.

"Agreed… can I get another shot of that robo-limoncello?"

"… One more shot , not a glass, Uzi, and that's it."

"Yes! That stuff rocks!"

I laughed as I reached for the bottle.

__________

(Serial Designation J)

I liked to be calm. I liked to be professional. I liked to be the model JCJenson (in Spaaaaaaaaaaaaace!) Disassembly Drone unit. To be a shining example of what we should all strive to be, and something for N to try to emulate, however poorly he tended to do so and despite how much he got on my nerves with his blunders sometimes. That he at least engaged the unionizing toasters that jumped us, while I was blown up, had my head blown off, and was then blown up again only made not exploding into a seething rage that much harder. I took another few moments to just… run my vents and try to keep calm. The urge to explode and take out my anger on that synergistic liability had only been growing over the years, ticking up a little bit every single time he fell below quota, got distracted by befriending literal rocks, or wasted time pining after V (Hadn't that gone somewhere? More than once?)-- I winced as I felt a brief stabbing pain in my processors. No… why had I thought V had ever reciprocated? That had never happened. Maybe my head was still sorting itself after growing back after I'd been offlined three times?

I was still trying very hard to not start pacing and ranting inside the Corpse Spire, and decided that anything besides my own thoughts would be a good place to focus on right now. "Run it by me, one more time, V, what happened?" I asked her.

The normal sadistic mask she wore was gone, partly hollow optics staring ahead before she flinched. "I came across a corpse in the open. Mangled, looked like someone clawed it, but wasn't me. I thought that guy ," she said, gesturing at N, "had drifted out of his own assigned route and left a body just lying there for some reason--"

"I didn't!" N protested.

" N ." I held up a hand, and he flinched, and… I actually felt bad. I remembered rushing to their distress signals as soon as I'd recovered from whatever bomb had been set off beneath me, finding no sign of attackers, taking back to the skies to engage in a search pattern, only to be offlined before waking up with a splitting headache because something took my head off. And then I'd had another bomb set off beneath me later. But from what I'd heard, N hadn't just been offlined instantly, he'd been maimed, shot, and burned by UV light… and I wondered how the hell one of those toasters had known to weaponize that. I took in a breath, and then let it out slowly , just like how the Company anger management tutorials showed. This wasn't his fault for once , I reminded myself. "Keep quiet until it's your turn or I directly ask you a question," I… actually struggled to say the next word, and some part of me actually felt guilty at that, " please ."

N blinked a few times, and even V stared in disbelief. "Uh, yeah! You got it J! I'll keep quiet!"

I rolled my facial optics. "V?"

"Someone detonated some manner of high-yield explosive in your section of the city," V said, "Which from what you told us, was a targeted effort at disabling you specifically," V frowned, optics ringing out, and I wondered what that was about, but considering she wasn't either ranting about how she wanted to turn the workers who jumped her into balloon animals or staring blankly ahead with hollow optics, I didn't pry. "A… worker… came up from under some kind of camouflaged cloak, modified to hide from our thermal sensors. He had some kind of shotgun. Before I could turn fully, he started firing. The first round that he fired, which we recovered, was some kind of Depleted Uranium slug," she said, shuddering. "It tore one of my wings right off of me. The next nine rounds were a series of some kind of flechette/incendiary hybrid shotgun shells, incorporating heated tungsten carbide and white phosphorus. He deliberately aimed at my hand when I went to fire back at him and disabled it with one shot, and didn't say a word the whole time. The tenth shot was to my face, and offlined me."

"Anything else?" I asked her.

"He… he knew to stop approaching before he could get in range of my tail." That was alarming. Some kind of smarter toaster actually trying to pick a fight with us? That knows about some of our capabilities and is planning around them? We'd let those deficit-building toasters sit in that Bunker for too long if they were getting so corrupted in their programming that they were no longer cowering and actually showing rudimentary tactics against us. This was the first time since the immediate days after Planetfall that those profit-void defective piles of scrap had actually fought back, and that was very alarming.

"N?" I asked him. " Now you can give your account again."

"Right!" he said. "So, I saw you were offlined, and had went to stop my own patrol to converge on your location like the protocols you told me said to," I actually gave him a nod at that. Barring… extenuating circumstances, he'd been starting to haul his own weight recently. I didn't know if this was just a temporary affair, or if he was actually finally fixing himself up, but positive performance deserved positive reinforcement. I made a mental note that if he actually met his third of the quota for the quarter, I'd give him a Company branded pen as a reward. "But then V's distress signal came on, so I had to decide to either look for you, or help V, and V's pretty --" N froze, and I saw V's facial optics hollow for a moment before she looked away and pretended not to notice, and then N blurted out, "V's pretty important to keeping up with the numbers, and since she was actively being attacked, I thought that I should reinforce her instead… since… uh…" I resisted the urge to sigh because this was just sad , "It seemed like you were just attacked as a one-off thing and V was the real target!" he recovered.

Credit where it was due, minus the floundering and blatant pining, he actually did give valid reasons for reinforcing V over attempting to render aid to me after I was… indisposed by that first explosive. "I engaged the worker drone," he said, trying his best to sound professional, and I started to wonder if, from all the times I'd been upset with his blunders, he was actually always trying his best and I didn't notice because it was his best and not the best I wanted. And… why it took me getting bombed twice and having my processors blown out by those shareholder-forsaken toasters to actually notice that. Maybe I had been too hard on him recently… including not noticing V acting like she hadn't even known him. We've been on a squad for years ! I understood not reciprocating his affections, but that was just unnecessary workplace hostility! I blinked a few times to refocus on N. "...it was actually really confusing, because I don't think that workers are supposed to be strong enough to handle me slamming into them at over 70 kilometers an hour, but he somehow knew I was coming in from behind him, turned, braced some kinda… I wanna say 'entrenching tool,' because he could flip the head to a pick configuration-- that's what he used to tear off half of one of my wings, and that hurt --" I gave him a deadpan. "Rambling! Sorry, J!" I clenched my mouth shut to not reprimand him, instead motioning for him to continue. "He blocked my dive and swords with his entrenching tool. Sent him skidding back a couple car lengths, but he kept his footing, and then fought back. Like… like he practiced for it. Oh! I just remembered: he had a little pin that matched those An-- I-I mean, communist emblems that we've kept seeing on his winter camo coat!"

My optics widened. That was a big detail. "So that damned Scrapper of a toaster has been planning this encounter? Is that what you're telling me?"

"M-maybe?" N guessed. "He had the same symbol, though. I know it was the same!"

"So you're telling me that this Scrapper has been stalking about this city for months , and we haven't noticed him? That he planned an ambush to try and steal our parts like salvage ?" Because we'd all done checks after coming back online, and on reviewing their memories, both N and V had regenerated limbs they'd still had when they'd been offlined. That Scrapper had literally stolen our parts like he was looking for salvage in the ruins. Our frames were Company property , and that unionizing corrupted toaster had no right to take them like the intellectual thief he was!

"Maybe?" N said. "The facts point to it. He also had a sniper supporting him, because I was offlined by something that blew my processors out while I was still engaged with him."

I blinked again, because that was another good catch by N. V wouldn't have known, because she was offlined, and I'd thought that Scrapper had shot me himself. "There's a second drone working with him?"

"I didn't see them, but definitely," N said. I revised my previous assessment. If he hit three quarters of his third of the quota, I'd be giving him that pen.

"Good catch, N," he smiled, actually looking proud of my praise… and that guilt deep in me was starting to build. Did… did positive reinforcement actually work better than negative on him? Maybe… I should test that. Purely to see if it results in performance improvements! If it did, it would be worth pursuing for better squad synergy.

"Thanks J!" he said, tail actually wagging like those golden retrievers he liked to yap about, and the guilt grew just a little more.

Well, no time like the present to test a hypothesis. "You've made significant contributions to this debrief, N." His smile grew, and his tail wagged faster before he suddenly grabbed it a moment before he could accidentally sting himself.

"Sorry."

I sighed, and ignored it this time. "Did you ascertain any other details about the attempted hostile incursion on our productivity?"

"The… the worker was angry ," N said, suddenly staring past me, optics starting to ring out. "Like, angry at me specifically . Like… intelligent angry."

My oil ran cold. You were doing so good N , I thought. Don't do this to me . "Do you believe that ?" I asked him, my tone likewise getting colder.

N's optics snapped to me, and he actually seemed to pick up on the sudden hostility, even V looking at him with what I thought might have been concern for just a moment before it shifted to a glare. "I, uh, o-o-of course not!" he protested. "I-I-Iiiiiiii'm" he focused a bit, "I'm just concerned that maybe the workers have been rouge and defective for so long t-that maybe this is a new bug we're s-seeing in their systems!" he said, digital sweatdrops pouring down his visor. "Maybe the bug is making them a little smarter?" He seemed to be recovering as he kept building on his excuse, and so I waited, still glaring. "Not, like, fully sapient, but maybe the Bunker drones behind those doors you hate are using those pill baby things I've seen other workers with before? Weren't they illegal? What if… if this is a new 'generation' down there that's developing hostility in their programming and copying weapon designs off of some kind of internet archive, because, you know, humans haven't been there to fix their code?" he asked, voice cracking at the end.

I paused, because as much as his explanation was absolutely him trying to cover his own ass that he might think the workers were a bit closer to intelligent than he should , those were good points he brought up, and those bunker drones using UNNs illegally were a very plausible explanation for them acting more intelligent and aggressive. I decided to keep an eye on him, but otherwise let things go. "Those are… genuinely good points, N. Don't continue down the line of thinking that the workers are anything more than corrupted, runaway AI, and we won't have to schedule a 'performance review,' understood ?"

N nodded very quickly. "Yup! Totally, I could immediately tell just how bad what I said earlier was, and I totally didn't mean to imply that I actually thought that!"

I gave him a nod, saying, "See that things stay that way, N," and then looked over at V, who'd been glaring at me ever since I said "performance review," and decided to tackle the other issue in this squad while I had it in front of me. "V?" I asked in a faux-sweet tone. The glare vanished and was replaced by feigned indifference as she shifted one hand to a claw and started picking at her teeth before N could turn to look at her.

"Huh?" she said, pretending not to care.

I gestured at N. " This is N, your squadmate for several years by now," I said, eyemotes narrowing. "Since you apparently didn't know that somehow, I thought I'd give you a friendly introduction to him, okay?"

"This doesn't seem friendly," N remarked, and I clenched my teeth before I glared at him. "Right, shutting up now!"

V looked over at N, and pretended to be surprised. "Oh!" she said in a manner that didn't fool me for a second but N seemed to buy stock from, "I didn't notice you. Your name's N, huh? I'm V," and then she immediately looked back at me and tried to not notice him anymore.

"H-h-hi, V!" he said, voice shaky and looking like a kicked puppy as she looked away.

I grit my teeth, and finally stopped beating around the bush. If V wanted to play games, I'd threaten her with kicking her workplace harassment up to HR. "You should stop forgetting that he does , in fact, exist, V, or I'll have to file a grievance to Corporate, because this act is harming productivity."

V's optics hollowed instantly , and she started breathing heavily, leaving N and myself concerned. Why, of all things, did me threatening to report her set her off that badly? I felt another brief spike of pain in my processors, but it was gone just as fast. "I… I… I can… I'll… I'll keep that in mind, J," she said in a haunted voice.

I rolled my facial optics, suddenly finding that I didn't care why this worked, but only that it did , and that V would at least acknowledge N's existence. "See to it that you do," I said, arms crossed, and then added, "I'll adjourn this meeting here, but if either of you recall any other important details, make sure to share them, understood?"

"You got it, J!" N said, positively beaming , and I blinked because I couldn't recall him ever being this happy-- aaaaaaand he just grabbed his tail to not sting himself again. I sighed, and looked over to V.

"Understood… boss," she said through grit teeth.

"Good," I said, and flared my wings so I could fly up to where I slept and try to enter sleep before I got another sudden headache.

________

(Serial Designation S)

The latest batch of workers I'd been tracking had chosen to hide in an old mall. Given that I had thermal vision, it wouldn't save them. Twelve had been reduced to five in my initial ambush, all quick and clean kills. I wasn't sure if they were actually intelligent or not, but even animals felt pain, so I didn't want them to suffer needlessly, and so I always made sure that my kills were clean. If they were… well, I had a job to do, and I got the feeling that the Company wouldn't be happy if I decided to stop doing it… not that I could without dying from overheating anyways. I hadn't told R or P, but I was reasonably sure that the Company designed us this way on purpose. Again, this job sucked sometimes, but I was stuck doing it, so I may as well keep meeting quota to keep R happy. That way at least my downtime wouldn't also suck.

While I'd been bemoaning my unfortunate circumstances, I'd been tracking down those last five workers. No kids with this group, at least. I put a round straight through the core of one of them, waiting only long enough to see the male's visor flash to a red [FATAL ERROR] before lunging forwards and decapitating a second male outright. My tail lashed out and impaled a female through the visor, nanite acid melting her processors in an instant, before I lunged forwards and impaled another female through the chest, leaning forwards and crunching into her neck with my teeth to finish her off before she could scream for longer than a second. I paused to drink my fill of oil while my headband's optics tracked the last male run into a clothing store. He couldn't hide from my thermal sensors. Twenty seconds later, I'd slaked my thirst, dropping the body, and prowling after the footprints the last worker left.

The store was surprisingly intact, racks upon racks of clothing and mannequins all laid out before me, along with several human skeletons, but those were ubiquitous enough around here that they didn't even bear worth mentioning. I tracked the last worker into the women's section of the store, finding him hiding in a changing room an putting a round through his visor while he literally crapped himself in terror. I paused for a moment. Why didn't we excrete waste? We drank a lot of oil and occasionally even ate parts of workers, but I couldn't ever recall taking a dump. That… that was concerning… I shook my head though. More fucked up stuff that the humans must have built into us, and if it hadn't been a problem before now I doubted it would be in the future.

I started dragging the body with me, getting ready to collect them all so I could bring them back to the Spire… but then paused. That… that was a really nice black dress with some deep blue highlights there. I took a few steps closer to it. And… and I wondered how it would look if I wore it. Kinda… nice , maybe? But… I definitely didn't have the hips for it, and that felt wrong to me. I suddenly flinched, and ran a systems diagnostic. Everything came up fine, there was nothing wrong with my body. And besides that, I was a guy. I… I shouldn't be wearing dresses and stuff. That… that was weird . Was… was there something wrong with my processors? We'd been here for years without any human technicians to check us over. P was a neurotic mess, what if there was something defective with me? I squinted my facial optics and grimaced, and then tore my gaze away and buried myself in gathering the bodies to bring them back to the Spire. Whatever was wrong with me, I was sure if I just ignored it and buried myself in my work, I could deal with it that way. That's how P kept himself mostly sane. He just took out his rampant fear of black holes and anything that vaguely reminded him of them by violently murdering workers… Maybe it wasn't a good idea to do the same, actually. Still, I tried my best to forget about whatever that was as I got back to work.

________

The workers were added to the Spire, and the sun was still far away, so R, who'd come back with about as many bodies as I'd gotten while I was still setting mine into the Spire, had called a ten minute rest break before we got back to work, with P being able to take his whenever he actually got back himself. So now I was just left with my thoughts, and this vague feeling that there was something wrong with my processors for thinking like this, and some kind of discomfort when I thought about the fact that I'd look bad in a dress because my body wouldn't fill it out right, which just made me feel more bad because I shouldn't be wearing a dress because I was a guy, and--

"Hey!" I snapped out of my spiralling thoughts as R stood in front of me. "What's got you out of whack, S?"

"You… uh, care?" I asked him, because he'd always thought P's own neurotic issues made him weaker, and that bothered him.

"Mental health is important!" R told me. "Neglecting it or trying to push through it despite inner turmoil can affect performance and cause weakness, especially if the stress builds up and leads to a nervous breakdown. And whatever you got looks kinda recent, so hopefully we can nip this in the bud, so you can overcome it and come back stronger for it."

That he was actually concerned for his… admittedly on-character but strange reasons was, well, nice actually. I didn't think R actually really cared about us past our performance, but… I suppose he did , in his own weird way. So I decided to open up. "I… started feeling like my body is wrong recently. I ran a system diagnostic! More than once! And everything is fine! But… I still can't shake that feeling…" I finished and kinda just sat there and hoped I didn't regret this.

R looked me in the optics for a few seconds, digital brow furrowed, and then said, "Alright, whatever you got going on is leaving you in a funk. We already hit quota for this quarter, so just take the rest of the night off. Like I said, mental health is just as important to maintaining strength as physical health. Rest off whatever's bugging your processors and come back better tomorrow, dude."

Something about being called that didn't sit right with me, but I mentally shrugged it off because it didn't matter compared to R actually being supportive. "Thanks, boss," I told him.

He clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Don't sweat it. Just have a good rest."

I smiled at him, and he gave me a genuine grin back. And then we heard a woman screaming, and both turned as P flew in with a still living female worker drone, touching down and laughing manically as he tore into her, the screams shifting to gurgles and then dying out in a few seconds as she finally gave her the mercy of death, throwing the body to the floor and ripping a chunk out of her torso, crunching on her core with a savage grin, before looking back down at the body. Like a switch flipped, P's hunter's cross flickered out to reveal hollow facial optics, and then he stumbled back from the corpse, screaming out in blind terror as he shifted a hand to a MP5SD and started unloading into it. He dumped a good 40 rounds before he stopped and stood there, panting.

"Yo, P!" R called out, P's gaze snapping to R before he pointed his gun at him , hollow optics very clearly not seeing what was in front of him. R flared his wings out, ready to block any oncoming fire, and narrowed his gaze, but stayed calm. I shifted my arm to a laser, ready to remove P's head from his torso if needed. "What's going on dude? Why'd you waste a perfectly good body?"

P was breathing heavily for a few more seconds, before his gaze seemed to refocus, facial optics starting to fill, snapping to his arm, then to R, and he hastily lowered it. "I-I-I-I-I-I-I-It… black hole…" he whispered.

"What?" I asked. Because I knew he got scared shitless… did that apply to us if we didn't actually poop? Whatever. I knew he was terrified of black holes, but what did that have to do with… whatever the hell we just saw.

"T-t-t-the oil in th-the chest c-c-cavity… It looked like a-a-aaaaaa-a b-black hole…" he murmured.

R retracted his wings, and facepalmed. "Right, guess you're both taking the rest of the night off then. Fuck's sake…" he muttered. "I assume you had more kills than just that one, P?"

"Y-yeah, R," he said, starting to recover from whatever the hell that was.

"Then the both of you can help me round them up and stockpile the oil before we call it a night early, got it?"

"G-got it, boss," P squeaked out, and I gave him a side-eye because he was literally a fucking sociopath not five minutes ago and was now a stuttering nervous wreck again. I shook my head.

"Roger that, R," I told him, wings unfurling as the three of us took off.

Hopefully once this was done, I could sleep off whatever was making me feel weird.