A Dumbass Isekai Protagonist's Guide to Surviving Murder Drones

(Rebecca)

Something was different with Uzi these past three days. She'd gone off on Joe at his birthday party, literally announcing her intent to find out whatever secrets he was supposedly keeping, and then a couple weeks went by where she was paying attention to the guy like a Murder Drone stalking a worker in hopes of it leading them to more. Then, she'd come back in on Monday and all that preteen angst was just gone . Like it wasn't even there. Uzi had seemed distracted a few times that morning, but even when her cousin Doll asked, she said she was fine. But she stopped bristling at all of Joe's obscure references and jokes, seemed to get some of the inside jokes Joe told that only he laughed at, and had stopped commenting on the weird things he did in general.

And that, like… made me curious . I wanted to know what changed . Not to like, use it against either of them, but because this was prime gossip, and I lived for gathering that shit! Plus, I could tease the both of them over it. Oh! What if they were dating?!? I just had to know!

So, I got up after spending the night in the guest room at Darren's, grabbed him, and had him following me quietly as we waited around a corner on Joe's usual route to school. "So…" the boy I totally had a crush on but wasn't willing to admit it yet asked me, "is there a reason we're hiding around a corner?"

"Gossip gathering, duh!" I shot back at him.

"For?"

"Uuuuugghh, Darren ," I chided. "Joe's right, you really need to work on your situational awareness."

"Sorry 'Becca," he said, the pet name making me flush.

"Just… work on it," I said, looking away, before adding, "Speaking of, we're gonna spy on him, because something weird is going on with him."

"Isn't there something weird always going on with Joe?" he asked.

I turned back to give him a deadpan. "You're aware of that , though?"

Darren gave a sheepish shrug that made my core flutter. Stupid adorable boy!

"--ome on!" I heard Uzi's voice from around the corner, and I clapped a hand over Darren's mouth and made a shush sign with my other hand. The boy mutely nodded. "Not even a little?" the goth whined.

"Nope, I ain't talking about it!" Joe replied.

"Please?"

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Pretty please?"

"Uzi, I have long since mastered the art of 'not giving a fuck,' you aren't badgering me into talking about it."

Talking about what? I thought as Uzi and Joseph rounded the corner. And since when did they walk to school together?!? I silently reiterated to Darren to keep quiet, and he flashed on his optics [Got it 'Becca!] and I had to bite my tongue to keep from squealing with embarrassment. Aaaaaaaaaaa! We started creeping after Joe and Uzi as they walked, staying in earshot but keeping back far enough to escape casual notice.

"Not even a tiny bit ?" Uzi begged him again.

"Uzi Doorman, I will not talk about shipping our friends, and that is final," Joe told her. My eyes widened. Joe shipped people?!? That was his secret? Did he like, actually pair all of us off with each other in his head? I looked at Darren, who looked just as shocked. "Oh!" Joe called out, dropping something from his coat, reaching down to pick up a screwdriver while I dragged Darren behind a locker to hide. "Damn, gonna have to check my pockets later, might be a hole in one of them," he muttered.

"Don't change the subject, Joe!" Uzi protested, and I silently echoed the sentiment.

Joe sighed, shaking his head, "Uzi, Uzi, Uzi, I will not talk about shipping, no matter how much you protest," he told her, as they resumed walking, and Darren and I trailed after them.

"I won't even ask about me!" she pleaded. "What about Doll! Or… or anyone ! Come oooooooooon!"

"Gods-fucking-damnit Uzi, no means no! "

"You can't just tell me all that stuff and then not tell me who secretly has anime rizz!" What stuff? I thought.

"I can and I will," he shut her down.

"One thing!" Uzi whined. "Just one, and then I won't ask you ever again!"

Joe stopped. " Ever again?" he said, turning to Uzi. I peaked around from a corner, Darren also peaking from above me.

"I promise!" Uzi said.

"Show me your hands," Joe said.

"Damnit!" Uzi said, revealing she had crossed fingers behind her back. "Fine! Really for real promise!"

Joe sighed again, mulled it over for a moment, and then gave a shit-eating grin. "Fine."

"Yes!" Uzi whispered.

Yes! I thought.

"Yes!" Darren whispered almost inaudibly right next to me.

"I totally ship Rebecca and Darren with each other, especially after all the times I caught them holding hands, the fact that he lets her stay at his house, and that they dreamily stare into each other's optics every now and then and think nobody notices." Joe turned over to look straight at us . "And also, because I know my anime tropes, and this was the perfect place for some people to try and spy on me, so I faked dropping a screwdriver to discreetly check behind me, and felt like getting a little payback on the person who thought they could farm gossip off of me, Rebecca! " I meeped , and Darren fell over with a squawk from behind me, tumbling into full view in the hallway. "Nice try," he said, still grinning from audial to audial.

"Wha-bu--"

Joe cut me off. "And for the record, if I did see Uzi as something more than a friend, it would be as the gremlin little sister I never had."

"Thanks Jo-- Wait, bite me! " Uzi spat at him.

"Once again, no, you'd taste like angst," he deadpanned at her, and then sidestepped her attempt to kick his shin before leg-sweeping her, and then catching her arm before she could actually hit the floor, hoisting her back up and depositing her on her feet, all in the same motion. "You're gonna have to work on martial arts and stuff by the way, can't learn all your skills from pirating anime, Uzi," he teased.

Uzi growled at him. "One day, I'm gonna make you eat those words, Joe!" she protested.

He rolled his optics. "I'll be waiting for it," he drawled.

"'Becca?" Darren asked, and I flushed as he looked at me. I wasn't ready to tell him yet! I wasn't ready to tell him yet! I wasn't ready to tell him yet! I looked down and braced myself for some kind of rejection that would break my core--

And then arms wrapped around me. I opened my optics to see Darren hugging me. "You're cute," he said, like it was the simplest fucking thing in the world.

I snapped my arms around him too. "I like you too," I admitted in a small voice.

"So, can we date?" he asked.

"You already are," Joe commented.

"Shut up, Joe!" Darren, myself, and even Uzi snapped at him, but the jerk just started laughing his stupid metal ass off.

He calmed down after only a few seconds, and then added, "For the record, I will never actually try to force a ship, or make someone love someone else, but that isn't gonna stop me from wanting certain people to get together."

"So you do ship everyone!" Uzi accused.

"And?"

"You are a menace , Joe," Darren commented.

"And you all are gonna make us late for school if we don't get back to walking," Joe shot back.

Uzi glowered at him, but rather than snap like she usually did, she just sighed, and said, "Yeah, we probably should get going," she admitted.

"Okay, seriously, what the hell happened between you two?" I asked them.

They both looked at each other, and then looked back at me. "Secret Stuff," they said in tandem.

"Wait, you like, actually have secrets?" Darren asked.

"That's a secret," Joe replied.

"What kinda answer is that ?" I protested.

"A secret one," Uzi said, a gremlin grin gracing her own faceplate.

Before I could scream at Uzi for being as arbitrarily obtuse as Joe all of the sudden, Joe himself said, "You can hold hands in public now by the way, I'll totally kick the asses of anyone who gives you flak about it."

I went to scream at Joe instead, only for something to grab my hand, and I looked to the side to see Darren holding it with a sheepish grin on his face. "What?" he asked. "I might have poor situational awareness, but even I know Joe would totally kick the asses of anyone who made fun of us."

I blushed. "FINE!" I spat out. "Keep your secrets! But only because this worked out really well, you… you… Shipping Mastermind!"

"I work very hard to balance just the right amount of being a jackass while still being loveable for it, signorina ," Joe said, giving a mock-bow paired with a two-fingered salute.

"He really does," Uzi begrudgingly admitted.

We set off for class, and I lost myself in the fuzzy feeling I got from intertwining my fingers with Darren's, and by the time we'd gotten to school, any thoughts of what I was doing before that had long vacated my processors.

___________

(Kelsey)

Seeing Daren and Rebecca come into class a few days ago, actually holding hands in public, was surreal as hell. I didn't actually think they'd do it anytime soon, but according to Uzi, Joe had caught Rebecca snooping on him to try and farm gossip and outed her crush in front of both of them. Of course, everyone but Darren himself knew Rebecca had a massive crush on the guy, and everyone but Darren himself-- and maybe also Braidon, but that's because he had trouble remembering basically anything after all his trauma --knew that Darren also liked Rebecca. So the outcome was honestly really obvious. Still, I won my bet with Lizzy and Doll that they'd get together before their 10th birthdays, so I was inclined to see if I could do something nice for Joe later.

Speaking of him, apparently whatever issue Uzi had with the guy and whatever secrets he'd been keeping had gotten resolved at some point, and now Uzi was in on all his strange jokes and references. Didn't really matter to me though, as long as he was happy. I figured that Andrew would have appreciated me looking after the guy who had been piloting his body ever since that day. Joseph… he really was so different from Andrew. He was crass where Andrew was sweet, carried himself with a confidence Andrew never had, dressed nothing like him, and acted like a man on a self-appointed mission where Andrew had been happy to just spend time with me. And… I knew Andrew was gone by now. I knew he was never coming back, and that Joseph had nothing to do with waking up in his corpse, but until the day where he finally transferred to his teenage frame, I'd see him, I'd see the tiny scratch just to the left of his visor that Andrew never buffered out and Joe either didn't care about or never noticed, and I'd see the body of the boy I used to know. And that wasn't his fault, but it still hurt sometimes. And I think Joe knew that, because he was always so patient when something reminded me of Andrew, never pressuring me, and just letting me move past it on my own time.

Andrew… Andrew had thought that Rebecca and Darren would have totally made a cute couple too. And I knew that this wasn't some part of Andrew shining through, I knew that the doctors had said he'd suffered a complete identity death with no hope of recovering memories, I knew not to get my hopes up (and, as Joe so often put it, "Hope was the first step on the road to disappointment"), but seeing them come in holding hands, hearing that story from Uzi, I was still thinking about Andrew days later. He would have loved to see those two finally be a couple, and in a way, the person in his body being responsible for that was him seeing that through from beyond the grave.

And speaking of the catalyst for all my angst (Uzi would never let me live it down if she found out), Joe sat down next to me before classes started that day. He was quiet for a few seconds, and then asked in a genuinely hesitant tone, "Something about Andrew got you in a mood these past few days?"

I looked up at him, optics showing my blatant shock, and asked, "How'd you know?"

"About 3 out of every four times I see you upset, it's because something I did reminded you of him," he said, and then he paused and looked pensive. "Am I… exacerbating the issue right now? Do you want me to get Lizzy to talk to you instead?"

I sighed, berating myself for being upset with him for something out of his control when he was being so considerate about it on top of that. "No, no… it's not your fault."

Joe sighed next, turned over, and quietly called out, "Uzi, you're the resident angst expert, help me out here."

"Bite me!" was the shouted reply, shortly followed by "But fine!" The emo girl sauntered over, and asked, "Alright, what's Kelsey angsting about?"

"Something I did reminded her of Andrew," he said.

"Was it getting Darren and Rebecca together and them acting like lovesick puppies the past few days?"

"How'd you know?" I asked, shocked.

"Anime tropes," Uzi said with a roll of her eyemotes. "Two people get together because Joe, you start angsting that same day. Logic dictates that Andrew shipped them, while Joe getting them together while piloting his body reminds you of him."

I blinked a few times. "You're right, but how does that make any sense?"

"Anime logic," Joe said. "Think up the most overly complicated, absurd explanation for something, and that's it."

I looked back and forth between them, opening my mouth and then shutting it a few times, before settling on, "Since when did you two literally start thinking on the same wavelength?"

The both of them froze for a bit under a second, before Joe opened up with, "I mean, we kinda always had a similarly unhinged thought process, it's just that we came to an understanding a while back and are now communicating with one another and I'm not trolling her with my obscure references anymore."

"Yeah, Joe told me some stuff and I get all the stupid jokes he makes now," Uzi agreed.

"When did that happen?"

"A while back," Joe said with a shrug.

"What prompted it?" I asked.

"Mutual character growth," Uzi said.

I looked back and forth between them a few times. "Holy crap, you really do say the same stuff now," I blurted out.

Joe started laughing immediately, but Uzi flushed and instead started protesting. "Nope! No! I am not an-- uh, not the same kinda protagonist Joe is!" Joe started laughing harder. "Bite me Joe, this is all your fault!"

"Different subgenre Uzi, but an anime protagonist is an anime protagonist," he replied between chuckles.

"I have no idea what's going on," I admitted.

"Standard stupid shit," Joe said.

"I'll… take your word for it?" I hesitantly replied.

"Yeah!" Uzi said.

I turned to her. "Are you two, like, dating?"

Joe started laughing again. Uzi immediately went hollow-opticed. "Ew! No! No way! I am not dating him! That's disgusting !"

Joe stopped laughing after a few more seconds. He mimed wiping a tear of mirth off his visor. Then his gaze narrowed and he said in a dead even tone that actually made me a bit nervous, "I have zero intention of dating Uzi, and I am not going to take rumors that I am doing that in a pleasant manner. We always thought on a similar wavelength, came to an understanding on things a while back, and are now collaborating on planned deicide."

"Wait, that wasn't a one-off joke?" I asked, eyemote raised.

"The art of god-slaying is something that requires serious time, dedication, and effort, Kelsey," Joe said, with a straight face that neither confirmed nor denied anything. So Joe probably just roped Uzi into his nonsensical jokes, I thought, and snickered. Said typical Joe mannerism was also a sharp difference from Andrew, which I appreciated after all the angst I've been dealing with the past couple of days. Then Joe's eyemotes shifted to a sympathetic expression. "Seriously, though, are you feeling better?"

"Yeah," I admitted honestly. "Thanks for that. It's just… I'm looking forward to when you're finally ten," I added, mulling over my own thoughts for a minute, and then finally deciding to confess, "Once you're in that teenage frame I can stop seeing Andrew's body every time I look at you."

Joe winced, and I felt kinda bad, but before I could apologize, he said, "Yeah, I am very much looking forward to that as well," he said.

"Believe me, he really is looking forward to it," Uzi commented.

Joseph's visor flickered for a moment, and then he sighed. "Well, class is about to start, so we should probably get to our seats. Abbi cura , Kelsey," he finished with a smile.

"Yeah, you'd better feel better. Angst is my thing!" Uzi added.

I giggled. "Thanks, both of you," I told them, and gave them a wave as they headed to their seats.

The rest of the day went by noticeably lighter on my mind compared to the week prior.

___________

(Lizzy)

Robo-god it is weird suddenly being so much taller, I thought. Still, it was my 10th Birthday, dad had taken me to Dr Hayden (guy gave me the creeps), and I'd been turned off while they transferred my hardware to my teenage frame, so this was my new reality now. My blonde hair was longer, but I kept the cat-ear bow because it made me cute, though it was now a hot pink and much longer. Penny had gone and made me a new outfit as a birthday present, and I loved it! She found an amazing shade of black to paint my hardhat for some nice contrast, a white crop top, and above that was a silver-studded black synth-leather jacket. Below that was a hot pink, slit-pleated skirt ( with pockets!) to go to halfway down my thighs, with some black short-shorts under it, a black synth-leather stud-belt (the studs were still silver) to keep it in place, and with suggestions from both Uzi and Joe, Penny had also made me some hot pink socks that went under a pair of thick soled white converse boots. It was like, totally cute in a girly punk kinda way, and I took a ton of selfies with it and linked Penny's Spacebook when I posted them. Girl was actually getting commissions from other kids at school, and it was flooring her. Penny deserved that and more, though, she was a fashion queen .

Still, it was my 10th birthday, and everyone else was still 9, so that meant I could channel my inner Machiavellian Queen Bee and say, "Kneel before your Queen , peasants!" to everyone gathered at my birthday party.

Joseph gave me a deadpan stare, the first to reply (he did that often, like he could just think faster than the rest of us, or something) as he jerked a thumb to that pin he'd added to his jacket a while back. "I'm an Anarcho-Syndicalist, Liz, I don't recognize royalty."

Uzi was the next to respond. "Plus, you're only gonna be taller than us for like, 13 more months at the max, and less for a lot of the rest of us."

Incensed, I fired back with, "Yeah, but I'm taller than you now , so ha !"

"So very mature of you, my lady," Joe sarcastically drawled.

I fought down an embarrassed blush. "You're just jealous I'm taller than you!"

"No, I'm pissed at being shorter than six feet tall in general, you have nothing to do with that."

Uzi of all people snickered at that, and I didn't get why she was laughing considering my favorite emo gremlin was the shortest out of all of us. "You would be," she remarked.

"Aren't you like, literally the shortest person here?" Rebecca asked from the side.

"Shut up about my height, miss 'I spent two years staring dreamily at Darren but couldn't admit to a crush!'"

"Oh, bite me, you goth!" Rebecca spat back.

The whole room went silent, Joe's jaw hanging open, and I absolutely screenshotted that.

"D… Did you just say Uzi's catchphrase, Rebecca?" I asked her.

"S-sh-shut up!" she panicked.

Joe started to cackle with manic glee, and Uzi's previously shell-shocked expression flipped like a switch as she started laughing as well. The whole room joined in, except for Darren, who just walked up to his girlfriend and offered her a hug as she buried her furiously blushing face into his jacket.

After another minute of mirth at Rebecca's embarrassment, Thad cut through it and changed the subject to offer my popular left hand a reprieve. "Alright, let's get to presents, already!" He reached into a pocket and fished out a bunch of matching keychains. "Got one of these for everyone," he explained. "Happy birthday Lizzy."

"Oh, these are awesome , Thad!" I exclaimed, everyone crowding around to get one of their own. It didn't matter that none of us used physical keys anymore, it was the thought that counted, and Thad thought of something we could all have to remind us all that we were friends.

"We're up next!" Uzi called out, followed by Joe, and the goth whipped out a new phone , oh my robo-god!

"Uzi did the technical work," Joe explained, "And I worked my magic to actually get the thing built. Still 64G, but we basically crammed a NASA Supercomputer into the thing, and you can still bluetooth it to your OS while having some of the smoothest operation and loading times in the frakking galaxy!"

I literally squealed with joy, running up and lifting them both up in a hug with my extra teenage frame strength. Uzi immediately started flailing and demanded to be let down, while Joe just accepted it with a quiet chuckle. "You're the best! You're the best! You're the best! " I screamed. Spinning around while Uzi yelled and Joe just limply remained in my grip with a smug grin on his face.

"Put me down, Lizzy!" Uzi screamed.

I rolled my optics. "Fine, Hot-Topic," I said, letting them both down, and ignoring Uzi bristling at that. "But only because I got more presents coming."

"You are so lucky it's your birthday, jerk!" Uzi protested. Joe just chuckled.

Kelsey stepped up next, holding out a bulky album. "I, uh, made a photo album with all of us, to preserve the memories," she said.

Two years ago, I wouldn't have realized that she did that out of guilt over having lost Andrew and a deep-seated fear that she'd lose other people she cared about, so she wanted to save whatever memories she could. But that was two years ago, before the dumbass in winter camo (who flinched ever-so-slightly as he repressed a wince) crashed into our lives in the wake of that Murder Bitch killing half our parents and putting Dolly into a position where she'd rather retraumatize herself every day living with her parents' corpses than let them go. Now, I had the sense of empathy to recognize the subtext, and I had Joe to thank for that. So I walked up to Kelsey without taking the book and wrapped her in another hug. She immediately latched onto me, sniffling once, but keeping any tears back. "Thanks, Kelsey," I told her, completely earnest. "I really appreciate it."

"Happy Birthday, Lizzy," she told me in a low voice, holding the hug for another few moments, before we separated, and I took the book, taking a quick walk over to my bed to reverently rest it there, intending to go through all the photos Kelsey took later.

Emily stepped up next, looking a bit abashed. "I know it's not much, but," she held out a small box with both hands, and I carefully took it and opened it to reveal a rosary whose beads and cross were made from pink rose quartz. "I asked Penny what she was making for you, and I thought this would match," she explained, looking a bit abashed.

I immediately put it around my neck and gave the other girl a hug. "It's amazing , Emily. I love it!"

"Thanks Lizzy," she said, a warm smile on her face.

Darren and Rebecca walked up next. "Girl, I gotchu ," the latter said, whipping out a whole bag full of synthetic products to make my hair nice and shiny and lustrous.

"Oh my robo-god you're the best , 'Becca!" I said, giving her a hug as well.

"Maybe you'll get someone to notice you," she insinuated, pulling back enough to waggle her eyemotes.

"What's that supposed to mean?!?" I hissed at her as a blush crept up my visor, but she just stepped back with a coy smirk, and Darren handed me a flash drive.

"I figured that you'd wanna be a cheerleader later with the whole popular girl thing you're doing," he said, "so I put together a bunch of cheerleading move tutorials for you," he said, rubbing the back of his head.

"Thanks Darren," I told him, leveling a glare at Rebecca, who just smirked back at me before Trevor stepped up.

"Yeah, so I had no real idea what to get," he admitted, "so I asked my mom, and she got me some kick-ass heavy duty fingerless gloves from the WDF surplus to go and dye pink, so you don't gotta worry about sweat on your palms messing you up later if you wanna do cheerleading in the future," he explained, passing them over.

I put those on straight away, and told him, "These are awesome Trevor!' Thanks!"

All eyemotes turned to the last drone to give a present, and Doll was a bit hesitant as she stepped up and held out a moderately sized box. " Had to sneak into requisitions at night to fabricate this one, and only got away with it because it's really small, relatively speaking, and I already had enough stuff I scrounged up to feed into the printer to get it going right away ," she said. " Happy Birthday Liz, " she added, looking away, a little nervous.

I took the box from Doll, carefully taking apart the hand wrapping on the box, opening it up, removing some wrapping inside the box, revealing an eight-inch, dull gray combat knife. I blinked a few times, and looked up at Doll, who still wasn't meeting my gaze. "Dolly?" I asked, confused.

" I… I wanted you to be able to protect yourself in case that thing ever broke in again, " she said. " I asked Joe, and he won't tell me where he got it, but he gave me an ingot of some kind of Chromium/Cobalt/Nickel alloy to make it with. "

"High entropic alloys are really fuckin' durable. Regular steel literally ain't cutting it when it comes to MDs," Joe piped in.

I gently set the knife to the side, and then stepped forwards and wrapped Doll in a hug that lifted her from her feet. She was warm. Literally, I think she needs more oil soon , I thought, but then, she should still be okay for another week or so. Maybe bring that up with Joe later? It's not outstripping all the oil donations from the rest of us regardless, but better to check just in case. I'm not letting her get hurt . "I love it, Dolly," I whispered to her.

The limp drone that was hanging in my arms suddenly hugged me right back, tight enough that I actually registered the strain on my chassis. " I don't want to lose you, too, Liz ," she whispered back.

"I'm not going anywhere, Dolly," I told her.

" Thanks for always being there for me, Liz, " Doll said.

I savored the hug as much as I could. "Thanks for being my bestie, Dolly."

We kept hugging for a few more seconds, and then Joe's voice came in. "Look, this is really freaking wholesome, but the battery acid in the cake is gonna start melting it if we don't get to it soon, so I'm gonna have to be the guy who interrupts the moment. Sorry."

I put Doll down, fighting down a blush as the Russian drone blinked a few times in slight confusion, before just shrugging. " Thanks for that metal for the knife by the way, " she told him.

" No problem !" Joe shot back in Russian, causing Doll's optics to widen before she looked away. That made me feel a little weird . Not bad -weird. Just weird… I mentally shrugged.

"Fine then!" I called out. "As your Renaissance Queen, I declare it is time for cake!"

"It's the Worker's Cake, Lizzy!" Joe said with a grin.

"Stop with your socialist agenda Joe!" Uzi berated him.

"Never! The Revolution waits for no one!"

I looked back and forth between them, something feeling wrong to me. "Are you two, like--"

"Liz," Joe cut her off, going from his usual self to dead-serious in less than a core cycle. "If you also ask me if I'm dating Uzi, I will be very upset," he said.

"Ew! Ew! Eeeeeeeew! Why the hell does everyone think that?!?" Uzi complained.

"You're suddenly all chummy with each other after months of Joe's unhinged mannerisms antagonizing you?" Thad asked.

"Stop talking about my character development!" she barked at him.

"So, you're not dating?" I asked Joe, while Uzi kept arguing with Thad in the background.

"Said it before, and I'll say it again. Uzi's like the gremlin younger sister I never had," Joe calmly explained, "And I platonically love her for it."

"Oh," I said, suddenly feeling way better. "Thanks for clarifying that."

He rolled his optics. "No problem, Liz. Now, cake?" he asked.

"Cake," I confirmed, and we all started to trickle over to the baked goodness waiting in the kitchen for us.

______________

(Thad)

I knew I was a cool drone. It wasn't something I strived for, it just happened because I was a nice dude, and had caring parents that taught me to never do stupid stuff. Still, it was weird to wield as much sheer natural charisma as I normally did. I could literally get a bunch of kids who were pouring antifreeze on Uzi ( so not cool, by the way) to end up in the dogeza position in less than two minutes with words alone. My mere continued presence played a large part in initially reigning in Lizzy and Rebecca's worst impulses, though Joe was the one who kept them on the straight and not-so-narrow in his own weird way. I also had the weirdest feeling that said presence reigned in a lot of Joe's more unhinged impulses simply because he didn't want me to be disappointed in him. I had no proof whatsoever on that front, but my synthetic gut told me so, and I was inclined to listen to it.

All that being said, being the cool guy was awesome. People liked me, and I got to hang out with a whole ton of awesome people all the time. Sure, they all had their quirks… especially Joe, but that just made them all (Joe included) cool too. Like, take Joe himself, for example. Dude had a weird obsession with improving his dexterity and practicing parkour and stuff like that, going so far as to set up a course for it in one of the unused hallways in the lower levels of Outpost 3, and to be honest, I tried it out myself after watching him do it for a while, and it turned out to be pretty damn fun! So for Joe's 9th birthday, Darren, Trevor, and I had cleared out a bigger hallway with a warehouse at its end to set up a better course, and we'd been setting up jumps and rails and ramps to leap, roll, slide, vault, and whatnot over, under, and across. Joe had apparently been busy with something that morning, but said he was dragging Uzi along today to help with the setup. I was glad to hear it. He'd been antagonizing her for a while, and them suddenly getting along way better was really cool to see. I'd have asked if they were dating, but Joe'd made it clear they weren't a while back, and I was way too tactful to bring that up when I already had a gut feeling it had never been the case in the first place. Something had happened that no one else saw, they reached some kind of new understanding, and now they were collaborating on various projects and stuff.

Anyways, now that Darren and my own birthdays had come and gone (Joe had gotten me some sick running boots… though I wondered where he kept getting all this cool stuff from), we were in our teenage frames, and putting stuff in position for the final few bits of stuff we were setting up was way easier. I stretched, the gesture totally unnecessary but feeling oddly appropriate as I adjusted the bigger version of the outfit I'd been wearing in my last frame, Darren, out of some desire to emulate my own coolness, doing the same in the larger size of his old outfit. Penny did really good with making these, man.

"Trevor," I asked the guy as I saw him poke his head around the corner as he arrived, and damn , it was gonna be weird for him to be so much shorter than me for the next couple of months, "You got that ladder we needed, so we can rivet those rails into the wall to practice swinging on roof lips?"

"Yeah!" he called out, coming around the corner the rest of the way with a sizable ladder in tow, "Had to borrow it from my uncle Frank," he said. "This tall enough?"

I inspected the ladder for a moment, then literally plotted out a mathematical measurement comparison based on the height we wanted to reach. "Yeah, that'll do!"

"Awesome stuff Trevor!" Darren called out.

"I cannot wait until my own 10th Birthday and getting that new frame. Being taller is gonna rock for stuff like this, guys!"

"That's the spirit!" I told him. "Man, when we get to high school, we're gonna be the best sports team!"

"It's just a shame that Joe has zero interest in sports, you know," Darren commented.

"Hey, man," I told him. "If he doesn't care about it, he doesn't care about it, and that's cool. Yeah, it's a bit of a bummer, but I respect the guy's interests or lack thereof."

Speaking of, I could hear two voices coming closer, and assumed that would be Joe and Uzi on the way to help with the last of the setup for the parkour course. I was surprised that Uzi suddenly had an interest in this, but apparently Joe had convinced her to take a serious effort at it, somehow. Speaking of, I could hear her clearly now.

"...still can't believe you built that sick as hell railgun yourself! Holy crap , firing it was awesome!" Well… that was slightly concerning, I thought. Were they actually testing weapons somewhere? And a railgun ?

"Yeah," I heard Joe's voice reply, "it's pretty awesome for a video game railgun, Uzi, but there's a time and place to talk about that, and it's not here , for frak's sake!" Ooooooooooohhhhhh, that made way more sense. I slumped in relief. Man, I got worried about them for nothing. I should've known Joe was too cool to recklessly endanger kids with hypersonic weaponry.

" Oh ," Uzi said, and I winced from the sympathy for the embarrassment I could hear in that word. "Sorry, Joe."

"Just… fucking be careful , Uzi," he said.

"I will," she replied, actually sounding embarrassed. Damn , I thought, whatever happened between them must have been some crazy stuff.

They came around the corner a moment later. "Wassup, dudes?" Joe called out, giving a wave while Uzi rolled her eyes.

"Not much," I admitted. "Looking forward to having this course done today, and getting to give it a test run in the new frame though. How's it hanging yourselves, Joe-bro and 'Zi?"

"Not much myself," he replied. "Been designing a better entrenching tool to use once my own 10th rolls around."

"What's wrong with the one you got?" Trevor asked.

"There's nothing wrong with it," Uzi said with a roll of her optics. "Mister unhinged maniac over here just wants to build an even better one."

Joe gave her an annoyed gaze. "Takes one to know one, Uzi."

"Oh, bite me!"

"Said it before, and I'll say it again, no, you'd taste like angst."

"I despise you," she said.

"I can revoke railgun privileges."

"I don't despise you," Uzi amended.

"So!" Darren cut in, "I'm feeling weirdly situationally aware today, so Joe!" He turned to look at the guy. "You have any completely unhinged stuff to share with us today?" Good on Darren for reading the room and changing the subject, I thought.

"Oh, I got two things, actually!" he said, while helping Trevor set up the ladder, and pulling a power tool out of one of his coat's pockets. He handed Darren some screwdrivers, and passed me the power tool, while Trevor held the ladder in place and he and Uzi got some of the metal we needed to rivet down for this last bit. "First bit, I'm recoding a thousand-year-old RPG Maker game during my free time. The human who made it never finished it, but the demo I played was a blast, so I'm giving rebuilding Massmanic's The Last of the Kitsune an honest try and trying to finish the game. Probably gonna take me a while, since most of the future stuff is just guesswork, but I wanna take the opportunity I got to do something like that."

"I have no idea what that is," Trevor admitted, "But more power to you!"

"What's the other thing?" I asked, riveting down a metal beam while Darren kept passing me said rivets as needed.

"You guys ever heard about the Emu War?"

"The what ?" Darren asked.

"Emu War. Look up emus real quick," he said, and we all paused our tasks for a second.

"Oh, those things are weird . Why would there be giant flightless birds like that?" Uzi asked.

"Evolution is weird, and Australia is weirder," Joe explained, which… didn't really explain anything, but Joe did that a lot, so we all rolled with it. "Anwyay, speaking of Australia, way, way, way back in 1932, the Australian government had enough of them wrecking crops, and sent in their military with jeeps and machine guns to do some population control on the aggravating wildlife. The Great Emu War, some called it. Except the Aussies fucking lost to a bunch of flightless birds."

We all paused again. The rivet Darren was just handing to me dropped and impacted with the relative sound of a gunshot. I found my vocalizer first. "I'm sorry, what ?"

"You heard me right," Joe said, bending down, grabbing the rivet, and tossing it back to Darren, who barely caught the thing.

"They lost to the emus?" Trevor asked.

"Yep," Joe said, popping the p.

Uzi suddenly piped in. "Wasn't it like, literally ten dudes in a couple military jeeps with a couple machine guns against twenty thousand emus?"

"Yeah," Joe admitted, slumping a bit, " But , the way I told it was way funnier."

"Oh totally," Darren admitted.

"What if… we tell that to the others, but we don't mention what I pulled up on that internet search?" Uzi asked.

I snickered. "I'm down," I said. Everyone looked at me. "What? It's not gonna hurt anyone. It'll be funny !"

"Well," Trevor concluded, "If Thad thinks it's cool, it's gotta be cool!"

"What, I'm just the barometer of coolness?" I asked.

" Yes ," everyone else said simultaneously.

I blinked a couple times. "Okay then."

Joe started laughing for some inexplicable reason, and then Uzi joined him. I wasn't gonna pry, because that wasn't cool, but I thought it before and I'll think it again, Damn, whatever happened between those two must have been insane , man!

___________

(Doll)

It was my tenth birthday today, and the third one that I haven't celebrated in my own home, or with my own parents. How could I, when I couldn't part with Mama and Papa's bodies even after all this time? And no one else would understand if they saw… except Lizzy. She understood everything. She always understood. She… I might have actually tried to kill myself if she hadn't checked in on me every day for that first week after that monster took Mama and Papa away from me. Lizzy kept me sane during that time, even as out of it as I was in those days, and there was no way I could ever repay her for that.

Lizzy, Uzi, and Joe; I didn't know where I'd be without them. He'd come out of nowhere in the wake of Andrew's death, and just… cared , despite everything, always so patient, always keeping an eye out for me, always wanting to make sure I was feeling better, him caring, him bringing Uzi back into my life, cuz caring , it just… the three of them pulled me out of a dark place in the wake of that monster destroying my life and family, and I could never thank any of them enough for all they'd done for me. All they kept doing. Uzi was someone I implicitly trusted with almost everything about me, and Joe had gone out of his way to get everyone to donate me oil when I started losing my own. It still kinda freaked me out that he'd been preparing for that exact scenario just on a paranoid whim and that he'd just been willing to offer me multiple gallons of his own oil with almost no questions asked beyond if I needed it in the first place. It just… I didn't have the words , in Russian, English, or even Italian, to describe how thankful I was to the three of them specifically, and to all my friends in general. The three of them specifically had accompanied me to medical to get my frame upgrade, Lizzy offering to hold my hand when I was nervous as they were shutting me down to transfer my hardware, my last sight in my child frame being the three of them offering me a supporting smile.

When I woke up, Penny had stopped by and left a new outfit she'd made for me as her birthday present. Penny had made me a deep crimson ushanka with black edges, and a standard Worker Drone's hardhat on the inside, with a little pin matching the one that Joe had started wearing on his coat front and center on it. I read up on that Anarcho-Syndicalist stuff he kept going on about, and if that monster was sent by JCJenson, then I'd be happy to join a Worker's Revolution to kill them and see how they liked it. I wore a dull black Soviet-style army coat with deep crimson on the edges, reaching about halfway down my thighs and split in the back like Joe's for better mobility, under which was a dark crimson turtleneck sweater Penny had come up with, which you could see because I'd chosen to leave the coat open. I had a really nice looking dark crimson skirt (with pockets) that went to a bit below my knee joints that the sweater went over the top of, that was held up by a belt with a dull silver buckle, and a pair of translucent black stockings that reached up above the bottom of the skirt on my legs. My boots were black with red laces, some nice combat style winter boots like Joe and Uzi wore, and they went halfway to the knee-joint segments of my legs. I still wore Mama's bracelet around my right wrist.

I blinked a few times as I started to sit up, mumbling answers to questions Dr Hayden was asking me as he ran a last few systems checks. Liz was right, it was weird to suddenly be so much taller. "...and, like you asked," he said, "we made sure everything involving your new frame's oil production and circulation are up to snuff."

" Thanks, doctor ," I told him. " Is there anything else ?"

"Unless you have any questions, no, you're free to go, and see the friends you have waiting outside. Eclectic bunch, those three are," he muttered that last sentence.

" Have a good day, then, Dr Hayden ."

"You too, kid!" he called out as I left the room.

As soon as the door shut behind me, I was immediately glomped by a now much shorter Uzi. "How're you doing cuz?" the purple-opticed drone asked me as she looked up from her hug.

" Feels a bit strange ," I admitted, " but I think that's just the height difference. "

" Damn ," I heard Lizzy mutter, and I looked over at her just in time to catch her freeze in place as she blushed for some reason. "I mean, damn , Penny does good work."

" That she does ," I agreed.

"Welcome, sister of the Revolution!" the final person waiting for me called out, Uzi throwing herself out of the way with an undignified "Gah!" before Joseph came in and wrapped me in a hug, though his head only went up to my chest right now. He was really cool against my chassis, even through the clothes. It was nice, and I found myself smiling. "Man, everyone's gonna be taller than me, damnit. Having the last birthday sucks ,"

"Of course the first thing you comment on is the socialist star she pinned to her hat," cuz snarked.

"Anarcho-Syndicalist," Joe said without missing a beat.

"Bite me, you semantically obsessed revolutionary!"

I rolled my optics as Joe let go and stepped back. "Happy Birthday, Doll," he said.

" Thanks ," I told him. " And I read up on your ideology. I thought it was interesting, and it would be a great insult to the people who sent those monsters after us, " I explained.

I just barely caught Uzi and Joe's visors have the briefest bit of visual clutter for a single frame, but decided it wasn't anything important. "Well, I'm glad you're enjoying it," Joe said, and then his tone shifted a bit, and he asked, "I assume we're doing your party at Liz's again? Because you still haven't cleaned yours?"

I stiffened instantly, and so did Lizzy, Uzi looking back and forth between her and I before her optics widened and then instantly snapped back to normal. I can't tell them , I thought. I can't tell them . "Yeah," Liz covered. "Girl never cleans her place up, y'know?"

I gave a shaky sigh in relief. "You know," Uzi said, "If I got autism, maybe you have a hoarding problem," And I immediately stiffened again. "We'd be willing to help you clean the place up, cuz," she said, completely earnest, and that made me so guilty .

"Yeah, neither of us would judge any kinda mess you got at home," Joe added. "I can promise that."

I flinched, and looked away. " I, I really appreciate the offer, you two, " I said, and I really did, but I just couldn't risk either of them telling someone and then Mama and Papa getting taken away, " But I'd rather not ," I finished.

"Well, the offer's open," Joe said, "Lack of judgment included."

"Same from me," Uzi said.

" I'll… I'll keep that in mind, Joe, cuz, " I told them, still not meeting their optics. Lizzy shifted as we walked to her hab, coming up next to me and offering her hand, and I grabbed it with my own. Lizzy blushed for some reason, but the contact helped ground me after I nearly panicked. Maybe I could… I winced, tightening my grip on Lizzy's hand. No, I can't risk it. I can't risk it .

The walk back to Lizzy's hab was mostly filled with small talk, asking me about what it was like to suddenly be so much taller, and to have a longer stride, and the three of them telling me that Penny did a great job with my outfit, and it made me really happy to hear that. Joe also said that he liked the Anarcho-Syndicalist pin I put on my ushanka, and we talked a bit about his ideas on a socio-economic model. His smile helped ground me, too. Uzi then went on and on about something called bolt-shells, and how mass reactive self-propelled micro-rockets with Khan-grade metals in the tips would work really well against Murder Drones. I didn't really understand a lot of the physics and engineering that not just cuz, but also Joe, went over when talking about it, but I did commit the topic to memory. They sounded like they would be really effective against that monster , and maybe, way in the future, I could see about getting them to try and make a "bolter" to go put that thing in the ground where it belonged.

We finally got to Lizzy's hab, and everyone already waiting there greeted us, wishing me a Happy Birthday, and I smiled back at them, but it wasn't quite a full smile, because Mama and Papa couldn't be here to see it. Couldn't be here to see my new frame. I stepped aside for a few moments after the last greeting I got, and leaned against a wall while hugging my arms to myself and closing my optics for a moment. I suddenly felt a hand on my shoulder, and flinched, opening them back up and looking to the side to see Joe offering a hesitant smile. " Thinking… about your parents? " he ventured in a low tone, in Russian.

I felt a blush creeping up my visor. Him going out of his way to flip to it for me always made me embarrassed, but it also made me happy. " H-how'd you know? " I asked him.

" Well, you're down on your birthday, and they're ," he hesitated for a fraction of a second, " not here, " he settled on, and I really appreciated that he always tried to make sure not to explicitly say "dead" when he mentioned them. " So that seemed the best explanation ."

" You're… really perceptive, " I told him.

He gave a lone chuckle. " Nah, I just cheat at life. "

" How? " I asked him.

"Trade secret, " he told me, and I narrowed my eyes at him, because this wasn't the first time he'd done this.

" What trade? " I asked him.

Joe… actually looked pensive for a moment, before becoming uncharacteristically somber. " One day… I'll tell you. I promise that some day in the future, I'll tell you. Not today , and not for a while yet, but I promise that I will tell you when that day comes. Okay, Dolly?"

My core skipped a cycle. " D-Dolly? "

Joe's optics widened. " Are you not comfortable with me calling you that? I mean, Liz does it all the time, so-- "

" I like it, " I blurted out, because I did like it when Joe and Liz called me that. It felt nice. " You can call me that, " I added, looking away from him as I flushed.

" Oooooooookay then ," Joe said. " Might not use it often, if only because I'm lazy and that's an extra syllable, but I'll keep it in mind. "

I looked back up at him immediately, giving him a deadpan. "You , of all people, lazy? " I challenged.

" Conversationally lazy," he drawled, switching back to English, "It is a fact of life that si può essere pigri solo in alcuni aspetti. " or, as the autotranslators put it, "one can be lazy in only some aspects."

" You are… a very strange individual ," I told him. " But I like that about you ," I added.

His optics hollowed immediately. "Huh?"

" It makes you a better friend, " I explained to him, confused as to why he was panicking. He was my 2nd best friend after Liz (Uzi was my cousin, she was above friend status), someone I trusted with almost everything, and that was it.

"Oh!" he said, slumping in relief at… something. "That's fine."

"Hey cuz," Uzi called out, and I looked over, "You gonna open your presents or what?"

" Coming !" I told her.

"You feeling better, Doll?" Joe asked me before I could start walking.

I paused and looked over at him smiling at me. " Yeah, " I told him. " Thanks Joe ."

"No problem, Dolly," he said, and I smiled back.

We stepped back to the rest of the party, and Liz was the first to step up and offer a present. It was a small present, but Lizzy was still blushing as she offered it. "You gave me a really corefelt gift for my birthday, so I wanted to return the favor, Dolly." Confused, I opened the present, and pulled out a circular, silver locket. My optics widened, and I hesitantly opened it. On one side, there… there was a picture of me with Mama and Papa from when I was younger. My visual feed got a bit blurry as I swallowed. "I, uh, saw it one time when I was in your hab, so I screenshotted it and then printed it for this," Lizzy explained. I stopped looking at the photo for a moment, and checked the other side of the locket, which was filled in, but had a little crank I could twist with a finger and a thumb. I gave it a full rotation, and the room went silent as the locket began to play a familiar tune. I froze, and my processors played a memory file of when I was younger and Mama hummed that same song, the theme to Tetris, a game she loved , as she lulled me into sleep mode. I remembered how Mama felt warm , and I felt calm and safe in her arms. I hadn't felt her hug me in over three years now, because that monster took her and Papa away from me.

I snapped back to the present, and sniffled, my vision a complete mess as I cried. " I love it, Liz ," I whispered, stepping forwards and hugging her with every ounce of the deep affection I felt for my bestie for getting me something like this that I could muster. " Thank you so much. "

"You're welcome, Doll," she told me, as she hugged me back. "You mean a lot to me, and I wanted to show you that."

" You're the best friend I could ever ask for, Lizzy, " I told her. We held the hug for a few more seconds before I let go and stepped back, putting on the locket immediately.

"Damn," Rebecca said. "I don't think that… like, any of us are topping that."

"Yeah," Darren agreed.

"But speaking of," Rebecca continued, "I asked Penny for help with the designs but I made them myself," she explained, going over to a box she'd dragged over and pulling out a cheerleader uniform in red and gold. "Like, obviously we aren't gonna be on the team until we actually get to highschool, but I made them early, for all us girls, so we can match."

"I went and got some boots fabricated," Darren said. "A… lot of bouncing back and forth with Penny on what might be practical but also look nice," he admitted as he reached into the box he brought, pulling out a pair of red and gold boots to match.

" You two are awesome ," I told them, completely honest.

"Hell yes!" Lizzy shouted!

"Oh, these are actually really nice," Kelsey commented.

"There's… uh, more than enough for the three of you," Emily added.

"Well, duh , we made extra for all the girls," Rebecca exclaimed.

"She wouldn't take no for an answer," Penny said abashedly.

"I am not being a cheerleader!" Uzi cried out. "I will actually bite you if you try to force me into that outfit… they do look nice though, Penny."

"Thanks, Uzi!"

"You want me to do cheerleading with you later?" Emily asked.

"We made you a longer skirt and the crop-top is actually a full Tshirt, so don't worry about that," Rebecca said. "Still don't get you're whole religious thing, but I totes respect it."

Emily suddenly rushed up and gave Rebecca a hug. "You're awesome, Rebecca."

"Like, tell me something I don't know," she said, and then snapped her gaze to Joe, who was already opening his mouth, " That was rhetorical! "

"Muh," he went, and then pouted, everyone chuckling.

"I, uh, I don't think my present is gonna top all that, but I did make this from the heart," Kelsey said reaching into a pocket and pulling out a charm bracelet. It had a whole bunch of miniature stuff on it to represent everyone, and my eyemotes widened as I stared at them. There was a tiny phone to represent Lizzy, a raven for Uzi, an entrenching tool for Joe-- and yes, I actually thought that term, because Joe seemed to have a supernatural ability for knowing when people even thought of the thing as a shovel --a Bible for Emily, a tiny 2D rendition of the MLP G4 Trixie Lulamoon for Kelsey herself, a running shoe for Thad, a tower shield for Trevor, a basketball for Darren, a hairbrush for Rebecca (she seriously made an effort all the time to make our hair look great), a needle with thread for Penny, and a crow to match Uzi's raven for me.

I slipped it onto the wrist not occupied by Mama's bracelet. " I love it, Kelsey. Thank you! "

"A crow and a raven?" Joe asked. "So you're basically a less dysfunctional version of the Branwen Twins?"

" Oh, bite me, Joe! " both Uzi and I said in tandem, and then we both froze. Joe's optics widened to nearly cover his entire visor.

"This is the best day of any life I have ever lived," he said.

Uzi buried her face in her palms and gave a ridiculously overtheatric groan. I just stared blankly, having clapped my hands over my mouth immediately after saying it. Lizzy just started giggling, and Rebecca said, "Not so funny when it's on the other foot, huh !"

"You really are Uzi's cousin, Doll," Joe said, starting to chuckle himself.

"Aaaaargh that was so criiiiiiiiinge !" Uzi screamed in the background.

"Nah, 'Zi," Thad said. "That's a familial bond right there. Based as hell."

Uzi instantly stopped. "Really?"

"Really."

"YEAH!" cuz said, pumping her fists.

I started to chuckle, myself. The laughter kept growing. I was starting to shake after a few seconds, and then there were tears blurring my vision. Because… I still had Uzi, thanks to Joe. I still had family , and that was so amazing to me, right then and there. I let out tensions I didn't even know I had as I kept laughing, and it felt so nice to do it. I… I was so unbelievably happy to have all these people in my life, and--

There was a sudden blooming pain in my chassis, a burning heat , and I felt a stabbing sensation behind my right optic. I cried out, a hand flying to cover it, and I stumbled, only dimly aware of Lizzy having caught me before I could fall to the floor. There was a lot of shouting, and I thought I saw Joe pulling something out of his coat, and then I heard cuz' voice dimly, like through a fog, saying "Doll, come on, please drink," as something was pressed to my lips, and my mouth involuntarily opened and something so cool touched my lips, my hands snapping out as I starting downing whatever it was as it quenched the burning fire inside me, but it was still there when it ran out, still burning, but I could focus a little clearer. I saw Joe ripping open his own present for me, blinking hazily, and then he pulled out some kind of knife, walking over to me, and grimacing as he slit his own palm and put it up to my mouth, and then I tried to sputter because that was his oil , but it was so cool and I just started to lap it up like a damn cat , and I was flushing not just from the heat but because I was mortified . But a few more seconds passed and then suddenly I could think clearly again, and I pulled back, looking away as I curled in on myself. There was still some kind of off sensation in my chest, but I could ignore it now.

"--not that pocket, the one next to it," I heard Joe saying. "Yeah, that's the industrial sealant, can you give it a shake and then spray that on my palm, please?"

"How the hell are you so calm after that, dude?!?" I heard Trevor ask, followed by the sound of some kind of foam spraying for just a second.

"And how long were you carrying around a spare oil thermos?" That was Uzi.

"Oh, that's better," Joe said, followed by "Because if I'm not calm, how is Doll gonna handle that?" I started properly focusing again. "And also, I carry that around at all times, and you can't even call me paranoid because we literally just needed it."

" W-wha… " I trailed off.

"You started overheating really badly, cuz," Uzi said.

"Joe, like, apparently keeps a spare oil thermos on him at all times," Lizzy said, "and he basically poured it down your throat, but then you were still doing bad, so--"

Joseph cut in "So I kinda took out my own birthday present for you early, and then just slit my palm to give you some more straight from the source. Gonna have to skip my donation for the stockpile this weekend, though. Also, would have had to ask someone else to volunteer if you took any more than that."

" You, you… you just slit your own palm and fed your own oil straight into my mouth ?" I asked him, still mortified.

"Yeah, no biggie," he said with a shrug.

"Dude, that was pretty metal," Uzi told him.

"Gonna have to agree with 'Zi, that was really cool, the way you just handled that," Thad agreed.

"Uuuuuuuuuh, okay then," Joe said, some grey hash marks showing one of the very few occasions where he got embarrassed. "Anyways!" He suddenly changed his tone, "I guess that's a really good way to demonstrate my own birthday present," he said. "Made ya a pair of CrCoNi NKVD-style combat knives. As you clearly saw, they cut very well, and are also really damn durable to boot."

Uzi rolled her optics. "I made some throwing knives for you out of the same stuff. Figured you might as well start a collection at this point," cuz added.

Seeing the opportunity that they were taking to let me focus on something else-- I just knew I was gonna have a talk with them all later on upping my oil intake again . We were still building more oil than we were losing, but I hated it. --I decided to pursue that line of thought. " Where do you keep getting the metal for these ?"

Without missing a beat beyond what I thought might have been the slightest flicker on her visor, cuz shot back with, "The path of the anime protagonist is one with many abilities some consider to be unnatural," she said in a mock-sage tone.

" Was that a Star Wars reference ?" I asked.

"Yes," Lizzy said.

" But how does that answer my question ?"

"We're anime protagonists, duh !" Joe replied.

" You really did rope cuz into your unhinged nonsense, didn't you ?"

"It's so fun once I got it, cuz!" Uzi said, a grin I could only describe as "gremlin-like" on her face.

"Get what ?" Lizzy asked.

"That would ruin the joke!" Joe said.

" You two are impossible ," I told them.

"Thanks, we try!" Joe told me, completely unapologetic.

I sighed. " Can we get to the rest of the presents? The battery acid in my cake is gonna start melting it at this rate. "

Emily and Trevor stepped up next, evidently having teamed up for their gift. Emily pulled out a thumb drive. "Trevor and I spent the last two months coding a program to actively monitor your oil levels so that whatever's happening to you can be better kept track of."

"It syncs straight to your HUD," Trevor added. "I mean, we aren't as good at coding as Uzi or Joe are," everyone ignored them both sniggering in the background, more Joe than cuz, "but we still got it together on time."

"And yeah," Emily said, "we could have asked them for help, but that kinda defeats the whole point."

I downloaded the program and added the widget to my HUD. I literally got this frame less than an hour ago, and even after Joe gave me all that oil, I was still only on 87% of my maximum capacity. I winced.

"I'll go get another thermos tonight," Joe said, "Gotta refill the one I just used from the stockpile as well."

" Thanks ," I told him, and then, " Thanks to the both of you, too. This will really help ."

"No problem," Trevor replied.

Emily looked a bit abashed. "I'll admit, t-the robo-vampirism thing still kinda scares me, b-but! You're my friend, and I feel bad by being scared about it, so I'm trying to make myself used to it by doing this and donating you my oil and stuff."

I walked up to Emily and gave the girl a quick hug that made her squeak and go rigid. "It's okay, Emily. It scares me, too."

"T-Thanks, Doll."

I gave her a smile, and then all eyemotes were on Thad. "So," he started. "I didn't get anything physical , but I figured that for just this once , I could exploit how cool I am like Lizzy keeps hinting at," everyone glanced over to an embarrassed Lizzy, "so I pulled some strings and ran my moneymaker with the highschool, and the cheerleading team is gonna let you all try out when we get to freshman year."

" Thad ," I told him. " You are the coolest person in the history of cool people ."

"AAAAAAAHHH!!!" Liz cried out, literally jumping around and squealing with joy.

"Oh, that's amazing , Thad," Kelsey said with a massive smile on her face.

"Oh my," Emily said in a low voice… and that reminded me that Joe was right when he said sometimes she might as well have been a robot Fluttershy.

"Don't we need to like, train then?" Rebecca asked. We all froze. "Because, like, you put in a good word for us, so they're gonna be expecting some good stuff from us, right?"

"Oh!" Uzi said, perking up. "What if you all used the parkour course that the guys and I set up to practice?"

Joe snapped his gaze to Uzi so fast I heard his neck servos whir. "That is fucking genius , Uzi!"

"You are the best goth ever !" Lizzy cried out.

Uzi suddenly looked away, "Ew… I… I hate that you said that." And then she snapped her gaze over to Joe when he gave a shit-eating grin at her out of nowhere, and then her own gaze narrowed as she gave a petulant glare at him. Some kind of inside joke via DM, maybe?

"Parkour training?" Rebecca asked. "That… actually sounds fun."

"Great idea, cuz," I told Uzi, and she turned back around and preened at the praise.

"That's a really good solution, Uzi," Kelsey told her.

"It is really smart," Emily added.

"Thanks, everyone," Uzi said, looking a bit abashed.

Joe suddenly leaned over a bit. "Don't wanna be that guy, but I am literally watching the cake melt in real time," he pointed out.

I suddenly looked over to where he was, and yes , my birthday cake was starting to melt. The next few minutes were full of scrambling drones and hasty commands as we tried to down the cake as fast as we could, and I enjoyed the day for everything it was worth.

___________

(?)

I hate my job , I thought, as I flew through the night skies of Copper 9, before gliding to a stop and perching atop a ruined building. My tail flicked behind me, the eerie yellow glow of nanite acid moving as it did. I blew an errant strand of my curly hair out from in front of my visor. I had a whole mess of them in front and on the side of my head, but most of it was held in a pair of puffy back-length twintails behind me. I adjusted my black turtleneck sweater around my neck, my dark grey company cargo pants still where they should be, and I quickly double checked that the pair of nice glasses I found were still soldered to the sides of my head. I didn't need them, but they looked cute, and so I kept them.

There was movement down below, and I sighted in on a single worker drone creeping through the ruins of the city. He looked… scared as he did so. I grimaced, and checked my oil reserves. Not good. I'd need more tonight, or I'd have to skim off the reserves at the Spire, and I knew what that meant. I swooped down from my perch on high, the whistling of the air at my passage the only warning the worker had to look up, but I was already on him as I pinned him to the floor with my wings. "P-please don't kill me! Please don't kill me! Oh, robo-god, please don't kill me!"

I grimaced, and shifted my left hand to my MP5SD, leveling it with his processors before I shut my visual feed and fired. I hate it when they beg, I thought. I hate it when they beg. The Company says they aren't sapient, that they're defective runaway AI, but then why can they beg for their lives? Why do they look like they can feel fear? I felt nauseous as I drained his corpse dry of its vitae, feeling so guilty, because after so many kills, I was really starting to think that the Company was wrong about them being intelligent. Once I drained the body, I picked it up with my claw configuration on my hands, and winged back to the Spire, depositing the corpse at the base to weld onto it later, and winged back out, not wanting to deal with either the boss or the bitch if either of them were currently in.

Flying out across the city again, I kept scanning for more workers milling about. Regardless of how many we killed, there always seemed to be a trickle of them moving in from nearby areas trying to reach that stupid bunker with the really good doors that we knew a ton of them were held up in it… I kinda hoped we never actually got in. I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if we did. I… I didn't know if they were sapient or not, but the Company, despite me starting to think that they didn't really care for us, said they weren't… and I really didn't want to contemplate the consequences of the workers actually being intelligent beings. After another hour, I saw a few more worker drones creeping about below, and took a closer look. They had one of those little pill-baby things with them. Why did they have babies if they weren't sapient? I shook my head, checked my oil reserves, and kept flying. I wasn't… I wouldn't be able to go into sleep mode in the day if I went down there, even if it would be more than enough oil that I could spend the day in some random building instead of needing to top myself off at the Spire. Another hour, and I knew that the sun would be coming up soon, and I resigned myself to heading back to the Spire to top off from the reserves that the boss and the bitch had at near-overflowing from how much they killed.

I touched down in the giant mound of corpses that I hated living in and having to help build. Just… why did the Company literally want us to build a Corpse Spire from the bodies of the workers we killed?!? And if they weren't sapient, why call it a Corpse Spire instead of a Scrap Spire? At least there was no one else here yet. I could wing in, hit the reserves, top off my own internal reserves, did exactly that, and now maybe I could slip out and find somewhere else to go before sun-up--

There was a thump of something impacting the Spire outside, and I immediately cringed. That plan was right out. Please let it be the boss , I begged , Please let it be the boss. He's an asshole, but he's still better than the bitch, so please let it be the--

"Heeeeeeeeeeeeeey, runt !" the bitch called out as she flew in, dumping a pile of workers that I recognized as the ones I spared earlier. Oh no-- The bitch tossed the pill-baby up in the air, the thing still active and wailing in terror, and I stared in horror as she opened her mouth and swallowed it whole . I turned around, and had to fight myself not to throw up the oil I just drank. I barely held it down. That was, that was… oh my Company, that was so beyond wrong, I can't eve- "What's the matter, runt? Can't keep your oil down? No wonder you're so scrawny!"

"H-h-h-Hey, M," I said, taking in the sight of the bitch, trying to keep a glare off my facial optics. The other female member of my squad was bigger than me, taller than me, and given that she liked to call me a runt so often, stronger than me, just like the boss was. Serial Designation M has shoulder length hair that was the same shade of white as every Disassembly Drone, and also had a large, shoulder length pony tail that took up a huge amount of space behind her head, and thick bangs that didn't obscure her vision. Her only article of clothing was an oil-stained leotard, because she just loved showing off her body to the boss. I already knew she was gonna brag to the boss about eating that baby too, because she knew how much killing workers violently made him want her, and she loved making him stare at her like that.

"Awwwwwwww," the bitch mocked. "Is widdle Sewiawl Designatiown G aaaawwwl squeamish ?" she did a baby voice at me.

"Can you just leave me alone ?" I pleaded. "You already know I'm gonna be miserable the next few hours, anyways."

The bitch had the gall to laugh at me, before sauntering away and swaying her hips as she went, "Fine, but only because I know your virgin ass hates it, and that just makes it better for me!"

There was a whistle of bladed wings, and then the boss swooped in, landing on his feet. The boss, Serial Designation L, had sideswept bangs, shoulder length hair, and wore a black crop-top and pants with a dark brown coat. "Hey babe!" he called out to the bitch. "How was the trash disposal on those toasters tonight?"

The bitch turned around, "Oh, L," she twittered, "It was so fun ! I killed a whole family, and swallowed one of those stupid little football things whole !"

The boss literally shuddered as he stared at the bitch with naked lust that made me really uncomfortable even when I wasn't the target of it. "In the pod, now , M," he said huskily, teeth bared. "I wanna reward you for such good work ."

" Oh, " the bitch said, voice dripping with false concern. "What about the poor runt ? She's gonna be stuck listening to us the whole day …" I fought the urge to vomit again. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

"I couldn't care less," he said in a dead tone, the bitch cackling with laughter in response, before she strut towards the pod, exaggerating the sway of her hips even more , visor flashing on her hunter's cross as she visibly failed to repress a shudder when she watched the boss' facial optics flick back and forth to follow the movement of her posterior. I stalked away, going off to my own little corner in the spire, grabbing some pillows I'd looted and slamming them over my audials. Seconds later, I could hear the ryhtmic clanging of metal and plastics even as far away as I was, even with the pillows muting the sound, followed by grunts and moans to accompany them. I buried my face in another pillow and screamed to try and drown out the sounds of those two fucking like animals , like they would continue to do for hours , which they did every damn day , and the only repreive I could get was if I got enough oil that night that I wouldn't have to top off at the Spire and could sleep the day away in some apartment building that was sound enough to not let the sun in.

We didn't even have genitals! They were literally just dry humping each other the whole time! Why did the company give us a sex drive? Why did they make our crotches an erogenous zone?!? Why did they program us so that we could literally hump one another until our systems shorted from pleasure programs overloading in the equivalent to a climax?!?

…and why, from that one mortifying occasion where I'd caught a pair of workers doing the same, were the supposedly sub-sapient workers also programmed and designed like that?

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(?)

My locker was glued shut again. Freaking buttholes , I thought, being annoyed at my continued parental controls even as I reached into a pocket to draw out my glue dissolver in order to get it open. Why can't the leadership here be more like Khan Doorman? I heard that that dude launched an entire anti-bullying campaign for all of Outpost 3 just for his own daughter's sake . Finally getting my locker open, I reached in and grabbed my ipod, because I know some jerks would break it if I carried it around during the day , and went to leave, only for someone to shove me into the locker and slam it shut. I sighed in annoyance, and then heard Ross' voice from outside. "Aw man, sucks to be you, Freaky Franko!"

"It's just Franko," I sighed to myself, but quiet enough that he or his goons didn't hear. I'd long since learned that giving them a reaction only made them more annoying. I probably shouldn't be so used to this state of affairs, but it had been the case for the whole of grade school, and now that I was 14 and a high school freshman nothing had changed. Still, I'd modified my locker such that I could open it from the inside if needed after the third time I'd been shoved into it, so I just waited for the insults to end, and for the sound of their footsteps to fade away, before I shimmied the locker open and tumbled back out. I checked my ipod immediately, and say what you will about JCJ for building the genocide robots outside Outpost 4, at least once those bastards brought out Apple they actually built ipods that weren't more fragile than comically large panes of glass in cartoons, and built them such that you could swap a crummy battery out if needed. I sighed again, using a bluetooth program I'd spent a couple months coding to connect the ipod to my OS, and started to play Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to calm my nerves. I started to trudge back to the hab I lived alone in, having been an orphan for as long as I could remember. I ran a hand through my short, gray-blue hair, adjusting some of my haphazardly combed bangs as well as the pair of sunglasses I wore because they looked cool, and fixing the black hardhat that the shove into the locker had knocked askew. My red optics checked myself over, and I grimaced as my clothes were also ruffled, and I took a moment to straighten them out, starting with my long-necked dull blue jersey with a slightly darker blue on the torso from the underarms down, as well as my uniform grey cargo pants, making sure that they went over the tops of my brown boots rather than accidentally tucked into them.

Twenty minutes later, and I finally got into the sanctity of my own hab, letting the door shut behind me before slouching back against it. I was always a bit of a loner, preferring not to spend time with other drones my age, and much more content to listen to a variety of music. That apparently made me a target , though, a state of affairs which had continued throughout my whole life thus far, and the bullying and ostracization only encouraged me to delve further into my musical preferences. Right now, I was partial to the classics, but my tastes would shift every few months to a year or so. My last favorite genre was EDM. I loved collecting records for old human music, though. They were jerks of the highest order for sending in the Murder Drones, but darn if they didn't make some good music.

And speaking of… I'd checked the internet archives a couple days back, and found a store on the other side of the city above us that sold collector's editions of music records before the Core Collapse. What research I did said that the building was made of surprisingly sturdy materials, which meant it was likely to have survived. Given how mediocre my life here was, I didn't really care about the risk of dying if it meant getting my hands on those records, so I'd spent my free time going over blueprints for Outpost 4 and plotting a route across the city so I could actually reach the store. There was an apartment complex about about halfway between here and the store that I could probably set up as a waypoint to wait the nights out, since it was too far to walk in a single day, and the store was good enough that if I carried a power cell in a backpack, I could hide there overnight and recharge before starting the trek back. I could feasibly make a trip there and back starting Saturday morning and be back in time for Monday classes. Not that I needed to, I'd already cut classes enough times to realize the school didn't care if I showed up or not, so staying out a few extra days might not actually be that bad. I might even see about getting my hands on the parts for a solar panel and a generator, so I could hang out at the apartment for extended periods. Would be nice to have a couple days at a time to myself, and if the sun was out, I could actually see the darn sky overhead.

The only real obstacle to the plan had been getting in and out of Outpost 4 without anyone noticing, but that had been solved by searching those blueprints and finding a vent on the surface that I could feasibly use to sneak into and out of a subway tunnel right next to a station. So, I had my point of ingress and egress, I had a route and a safehouse both along the route and at the end of it to wait out nighttime so I didn't have to risk getting spotted by a Murder Drone, and I had a goal; getting my hands on some sick as heck limited edition records with good human music on them.

So with nothing to really lose beyond potentially my own life, I'd scrounged together all the things I'd need over the course of the week, and would be slipping out just before dawn on Saturday morning. I was… actually looking forwards to it. A chance to actually enjoy myself on a bit of an adventure to get some really cool records? That'd be worth the risk. It would be better than my crappy life down here, anyways…