Chapter Text
“Right then. Let’s see if. Designation Blade-Three. Activate. Ah, I’m no good at galactic, lemme just. ꖎ𝙹リ⊣╎リ⊣, ∷⚍ᓭℸ ̣ ᒷ↸, ⎓⚍∷リᔑᓵᒷ, ↸ᔑ||ʖ∷ᒷᔑꖌ.”
Three comes to slowly. This in and of itself is unusual; most of the time, its handlers do not like to give it time to wake up slowly, as, while this better allows Three to assess its surroundings and circumstances, it also wastes precious time it could be using on whatever task its handler has given it. The disorientation is manageable; it is designed, after all, to handle things such as disorientation. It is simply inefficient in a different way than being woken up slowly.
Three suspects one day, it will be fixed so that it has no disorientation, and therefore no inefficiency. Apparently not today, though. It is being woken up slowly.
“Holy shit, that worked.”
Its new handler. It still hasn’t specifically commanded anything of Three yet. Perhaps they are trying a new strategy. Allowing for Three to figure out what’s happening around it first. It assesses. It is still in one of the branch bases. It had recently been placed here to wipe out a server that had been infected with Listener influence. Mission had been a success. It had been put back to sleep to prepare for transport to another mission.
Had it failed its mission? It is—it had been meant to be transferred to another base. It is singularly odd that it is awake before then. It attempts to assess its new handler to determine if the handler is the type that prefers to only have Three speak when spoken to, or the type who prefers Three know what it is being punished for before it speaks.
Three glances at the person standing in the room with it. Humanoid in presentation. Wearing casual clothing—an infiltrator? Three is not often used on infiltrations, though it is designed to appear human enough to be useful for them, so long as it does not flare its feathers or linger too closely.
“Uh. Shit. Fuck. I wasn’t supposed to be here. Uh. Right then. You. Woke you up. Bit of a mass murderer, aren’t you?”
That’s a question.
It doesn’t understand the question.
Hm. Okay. Well.
“Attempting to comply. I am a valuable weapon?” Three tries, and braces.
“What?” its handler says.
“Attempting to comply. I am a valuable weapon?” Three says in the exact same intonation.
“Yeah, okay, smartass, heard that the—there are stories about you,” the handler says. “Say you don’t have mercy. You probably—hey, I can ask! Were you one of the bastards who got Grian?”
Three attempts to remember. Three is not meant to remember assignments between missions, but it appears to have been woken up with some urgency, judging by the handler’s voice. Also, the handler is seemingly mad at it for killing things, which is a tad bit stupid, but Three is not meant to judge when it has stupid handlers, even if they’re very, very stupid.
Three isn’t meant to lie, but saying it doesn’t know the answer to something is… non-optimal. It does not have a better answer, though.
“I do not keep such records. Previous handlers or top leadership would—”
“Dammit!” says the handler. “Dammit, I don’t have time for stalling.”
Three does not have any idea what this handler means. It just woke up around two-hundred and five seconds ago. If its handler does not have time for stalling then it has no idea what its handler considers stalling, or time, or anything else here. Three is just existing. Its handler has not yet given any orders.
“You know what your crimes are,” its handler says, and, ah, okay. Three does not, in fact, know what it did wrong, but this is the sort of handler that wants Three to guess.
“I will finish the job as assigned,” Three says.
The handler stares for a long moment. “What? No. I’m not asking you to finish the job, whatever it was, wasn’t told why you all have a temporary command here. Why on earth would I ask you to finish the job? No, I’m going to take you out before you have the chance to kill anyone else, simple.”
“Oh. Okay. Will comply,” Three says.
Well. That was probably inevitable, Three thinks. If Three were not a weapon of war, but were a proper Watcher, it imagines it might be upset about this. However, Three cannot say it is particularly upset. Surprised, certainly—it doesn’t think it’s done anything worth getting decommissioned over. But upset?
It suspects decommissioning will be fast. If it is slow, it will also have an end. So it doesn’t think it needs to be all that upset.
Its handler, though, is holding a short diamond blade and staring.
“Uh—you. You’re good with that?” its handler asks.
Okay, Three really doesn’t know how to answer that one. It sounds like a trick question. Three obviously cannot answer ‘no’, because it’s irrelevant, but the tone suggests the handler thinks ‘yes’ is also an incorrect answer. Also, Three is not sure it has ever been ‘good’ with anything. It is not upset, though, which, once again, the handler’s tone suggests is an incorrect answer?
Oh no. Three has taken too long to respond. The handler is beginning to look increasingly distressed. It really does want to be decommissioned quickly, if that’s happening, so it should not distress the handler.
“I am willing to comply,” it says. It is a bit of a non-answer. Three really hopes the handler doesn’t notice.
“What does that mean?” the handler says. Ah. They did notice.
“I am willing to comply with my decommissioning.” A pause. Does the handler need it to show initiative? “I can offer the most effective points at which to destroy my heart as requested.”
“No!” yelps the handler.
“Oh,” Three says. “I can also offer less effective points for decommissioning, but you said you valued your time and did not want to stall.”
“Don’t do that either!”
Three almost asks why, but stops itself.
“Holy shit. Okay. Sure. I…” The handler starts pacing. Three, uncertain of what to do, flares its feathers a bit before gingerly lifting itself out of its sheath. It can at least move to stand at the ready; it will be just as easily reachable for decommissioning from a parade rest as it is inside of its sheath, and even if it hasn’t been directly ordered to stand yet, its handler seems as though it may require some sort of assistance shortly.
It watches, baffled, as the handler paces around the room. Outside, it hears alarms begin to sound. Intruder alarms. Well, it hopes its handler knows about that.
The handler looks up. “You’re really just going to let me kill you.”
Oh boy. More trick questions.
“I will comply with orders.”
“Oh, wow, I can’t—I can’t do that.”
“Don’t worry. I can make it easy.”
“Don’t!”
“Complying.”
“Fucking hell.”
The intruder alarms get louder and more insistent. The handler looks up. “I have to leave,” they mutter. That’s suspicious. “I’ve got to—but I found the Watcher’s Blade, I can’t just leave you here alive, not with what you normally…”
Three politely waits for the handler to finish. The handler looks up.
“Right. Really only one option, then. I’m going to have to steal you. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?”
Three stares for several seconds. It takes into account everything it has learned about this handler so far. It adds in the fact ‘apparently this is an intruder who is stealing me’. It then considers what another handler may do if Three either rebels against the thief or appears to have failed to immediately recognize the thief. The thief did, in fact, have the correct command words. Perhaps, if asked, Three will simply say it is a weapon to be used as directed, and does not have the capacity to recognize when command words are given in error. It will certainly be punished for that, but it will be far, far less painful than any reconditioning that may otherwise be required.
“Complying. With. Being stolen,” Three says.
“Huh. Really?”
On second thought, though, this handler is very, very stupid. Perhaps Three should attempt to—no. It’s. Three cannot rebel. Three would not be lying. Three will simply… adjust.
“Sweet, this really will be easy! Right then, my Watcher serial killer friend, follow me, and let’s get out of here.”
“Complying,” Three says, rather hoping this will all make a bit more sense in a moment.
Three does not know the facility but so well. It has some sense of the layout, but unlike most of the places Three goes on missions, it was not meant to understand the layout of this place. A security risk, apparently, though Three has no idea how. It’s not as though it would normally have anyone to spill details of the place to. A handler normally takes it through any Watcher facilities that are not the main nest, as to make sure Three does not understand how any roosts work should it ever turn on them.
Now, following behind a thief who seems to know how to navigate the halls as well as if not better than Three, it’s beginning to wonder if there had even been a point to that.
“This is the fun part,” the thief tells Three. “They’re looking for us with their all-seeingness. Well, hah! All-see this!”
Three is struck by the desire to tell the thief that is not, in fact, how that works, but knows better than to talk back to a handler. It will instead simply think this very loudly until such a time that the thief asks for input. This is not normally an effective tactic, but it is the only tactic that does not get Three in trouble or break any rules. This is an inefficiency Three hopes its handlers fix at some point in the future.
Regardless, the thief is surprisingly good at sneaking around Watchers who are looking for them. There does not seem to be the sort of alert or presence that would suggest the Watchers are yet aware the thief has decided to steal Three.
Interesting. It’s likely that they have yet to look.
“Damn, we’re cut off,” the thief says after a moment. “Listen. You have any tricks out of here?”
“No,” Three says.
“Yeah, right, that’s obvious,” the thief says. “Can you help us… get around those guys?”
The thief gestures. Fledgelings. Foot soldiers. There are three of them. Not designed the way Three was, certainly; not high-ranking enough to be a particularly powerful threat. Potentially capable of seeing them, if they actually open their eyes or feathers, but Three isn’t particularly worried. Fledgelings tend to be bad about actually remembering to use their additional senses, on account of being young and meant to die.
Three was, by contrast, designed for combat with Players, with Admins, with Listeners. It also happens that makes Three deadly against everything else.
“Estimated takedown time: thirty seconds,” Three says. “Lethal or non-lethal. Non-lethal is harder, but less likely to draw attention; even unsuspecting Watchers will See if one of their own dies this close.”
The thief pauses. “I was thinking we were going to have to sneak past. Not fight through—look, I’m good when I get the drop on them, but not. That good.”
Three stares back. “You have stolen me. Are you going to use me?”
“Wow, phrasing,” the thief says. Three has no clue what the idiot is talking about. “And like, I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go along. You weren’t part of the plan. I was only supposed to get information, but that doesn’t help me, so now I’m here.”
Three is somehow both surprised and unsurprised by that statement. The thief seems like the kind of person who may not have a plan. It’s mostly surprising they’ve gotten this far without one.
“Fine,” the thief decides. “Take them down and get us past. Non-lethally.”
Three snaps into focus. It tangentially sees, through its sight on its back, how the thief startles and shudders as Three flares its feathers and prepares its claws, and then Three strikes. They really are just fledgelings. For an intruder like the thief, they may well be enough. Against Three, it’s sending them out to die. Obviously, they don’t know Three is here yet.
The fledgelings do not notice Three until it is upon them. Sloppy. Three has already severed one of their spines at the neck before they notice. Three steps to the side before the second can react, and Three has lifted its mask. The fledgling screams and collapses; honestly, most Watchers are so poorly trained to deal with torture. The third starts to try to retaliate, but fails before Three simply impales it on the nearest available object (the first one’s sword). It twitches and writhes, trying to escape, but is not dead enough or competent enough to send out any distress to the other Watchers. Three snaps back out of attention and adjusts its own mask. It’s cracked from the last mission, Three realizes. That will have to be fixed. If it breaks, the overload from having uncovered eyes will be a great inefficiency indeed. Its feathers settle. It slides back in place next to the thief.
“I said non-lethal,” the thief says, sounding weak.
“They are Watchers. Healing rate lower than my own, but these injuries will not kill if treated in the next two hours. Go.”
“Right,” the thief says. “Right. Superweapon. Sorta forgot that for a moment. Why did I forget that?”
Three flicks its wrist. The waterproof layer on its feathers causes the dark purple-black blood to slide right off.
“I forgot how fucked up these fuckers are. Having feathers for skin is freakier than even Jimmy’s chitin,” Three sees the thief mutters as they slide down another hallway. It is out of Three’s hearing range, but Three is trained to read lips.
Chitin? Ah. The thief works for the Listeners. That explains much. For another moment, Three considers the merits of ignoring orders from the clearly fraudulent handler, but—but it—it can’t do that. Unallowed. Even if it is the enemy stealing it. That is… simply what happens when prior handlers don’t properly secure Three. This is exactly why it must be trained to follow orders. A weapon should not get to… Unlike most Watchers, Three is well-equipped to handle torture. It will simply… it can’t disobey a handler. It hopes that is remembered later, when they are caught.
It sees the thief look back and shudder again. Right. Three makes sure its feathers are flattened down to look properly like human skin again. It forgets that being able to tell a false skin is false is unsettling to humanoids sometimes, and if its new handler does not like it, that will make this all much less easy.
Frightening. Not frightening to the handler. It must remind itself of this.
“You can—keep your eyes out. Or not your eyes? Honestly, wonder if you see the same way the rest of them do…” mutters the thief, and ah, that is a request that is actually an order. Three is familiar with those as well.
It spreads its senses. Hm. Higher-ranked Watchers are spreading their own Sight; they’ll be spotted soon, whether the thief means for them to or not. At least its new handler still seems to know how to navigate this place better than Three suspected. As though on well-worn instinct, the thief dodges around several places they could end up cornered again.
Of course…
“They’ve secured the spawn area,” Three informs the thief.
“Not a worry. Once we’re close enough, I have this,” the thief says, holding up a gold, beetle-shaped medallion that, had Three not already determined so, would have entirely given away that the thief worked for the Listeners. “Helps world-hop without a proper Admin or getting to spawn. Wouldn’t be much of a spy or a thief if I didn’t have an exit route, would I? Have to get closer to get you out, but, you know, you’re worth way more than any stupid marching orders, anyway.”
Three supposes that is true, though the battle plans can be changed to not include Three easily enough.
“As soon as we’re within sixty-four blocks, I can fire it off. You just keep an eye out, I’ll tell you if you need to do something else, yeah?”
Three knows. That’s how orders work. Listeners really must have no discipline, if they must be reminded of such things.
“We’ve been pinpointed by a commander,” Three says as they get closer to the exit range.
“Dammit, I’m normally better at avoiding detection than this,” the thief says. “Easiest way past them?”
“They can see us now,” Three says. “Estimated takedown time—”
“I don’t want to watch you do that a second time. Also, would they be the type of people to know your command words? If I want to steal you successfully—”
“They are aware of my presence,” Three says after a moment. It—it cannot refuse inquiries from a handler. “They… would know my command words.”
“They can’t get near us then, now can they?” the thief says. “Hold on. I’ve avoided their like before, it’s just a matter of doing it again. Ah, here.”
The thief pulls a feather out of their bag. It’s a Watcher feather, Three recognizes instantly; skin-toned on the topside, and with the black-purple, rainbow colors on the underside. A false-skinned Watcher. There is no way to remove it from a Watcher without killing them. It is unsurprising a Listener agent would have one.
“Sorry about this. Close your eyes. Not-eyes. Whatever,” the thief says, and snaps the feather in half.
Immediately, light and color and shape explode around Three. Three shakes it off. With the mask over its eyes, it’s able to somewhat tune out the very bright distress call. The ranking Watchers, however, would not.
“Run, follow me,” the thief says, and Three does not have a choice but to obey.
The intruder alarms are changed to distress alarms. Colors and shapes flash around them; it is lucky Three is well-designed to avoid distractions in a way most are not. More effective than a flash bang, Three thinks; clever in that way. Brutal in a way a humanoid who seemed angry about murder might be expected to be. Three raises its assessment of the thief a bit.
The ranking Watchers must think that it is Three who either caused or sent up the signal, and converge towards the signal, rather than them.
The way is clear to the area near spawn.
The thief holds up the medallion and grabs Three’s arm. “Ready yourself; travel like this stings a bit. One, two—”
The thief must have very low pain tolerance, Three thinks; it stings, but an acceptable amount. Not worth warning Three about. If Three were distracted by that sort of pain, it would be an unacceptable inefficiency.
They are in an empty world. Plains biome. A cow moos at them.
“We’ll need to do several hops,” the thief says. Three nods. At this rate, the thief may succeed in stealing Three for a time. Impressive.
They don’t hop yet, though.
“Should be smooth enough sailing that we don’t need to keep clean coms. I’m Martyn. Uh, he/him.”
Three nods and commits that to memory. Knowing the handler’s name makes communication easier. Some handlers do not tell Three, after all. Martyn. A very human name.
Three prepares for the next hop.
“Can you tell me your name?”
“Unit designation: Blade-Three,” Three says. It does not allow its voice to say: you already knew that, idiot. However, it is thinking this, because it is a reasonable thing to think in these circumstances.
“…right,” Martyn says. “Of course. Silly me. Knew that one. Alright, time to throw their trail, we’ll stay in a hub server for a bit before hopping home. Gods, Jimmy’s going to kill me when he realizes… Well, we’ll cross that bridge later!”
This is irrelevant, and Three is… uncertain why Martyn seems to expect Three to respond. After a few moments of very awkward silence, he gives up.
“Right, of course. You’re an eerie motherfucker, aren’t you? Just staring behind that thing of yours. Alright, remember, it’ll sting, though a bit less since we’ll mostly go through actual spawns. Three, two—”
Their hops take them through more empty, new worlds, several multiplayer hubs, a few smaller multiplayer servers, one or two abandoned worlds that may have been singleplayer or may have been multiplayer, and at least three different skyblocks before Martyn is satisfied. Three knows that even it would have had trouble tracking about three worlds ago, but more caution is almost always better than less with these things.
The world they stop in for the time being is a medium multiplayer world. It’s a game world, which means it should be easy enough to find a room to stay in. Plenty of Players stay for long periods of time in places like this. It’s not one of the largest hubs, but it certainly has enough Players staying at any given time that they will blend into the crowd. It’s something like what Three would pick, were it also trying to hide from the Watchers.
Martyn shoves the golden beetle back under his shirt. “I’ll handle the talking. You just sit and look as human as you can manage in that mask, okay? We’ve got to get that thing off of you—”
Three, by a subconscious input it fails to suppress, reaches to hold the mask in place.
“—but not until you have a replacement, I guess. Geez, the most emotion I’ve gotten out of you so far and it’s that.”
Stupid. Stupid. Three lowers its claw away from its mask again. Martyn appears to know a great deal about Watchers, but he may not have known that Three, specifically, had that weakness. It stands at parade rest and carefully controls itself so its feathers remain smooth, it continues to look relatively human, and it doesn’t stand out too much, as ordered. It will follow orders.
Martyn acquires them rooms. He either has enough of the local currency or the place has free lodging for a night without having to participate in the games; both are common enough in servers like this. It does not matter to Three.
They’re sharing a room, and it has two beds. It is plain. There is a single small window. Martyn starts stretching out over a bed. Three watches over the room. Fairly easy to guard. The door has a bolt, and shouldn’t open without a redstone signal from the inside, but it’s not impenetrable. The window is too small to escape out of properly; poor design. A single point of egress makes things much harder to defend than Three would like. Handlers like to place Three in charge of their physical security if Three is staying with one of them off-site. Martyn may be a thief, but he had Three’s code words, so he is also a handler. Three will comply with the usual rules.
“I like to stay out for a few extra days when I’ve got a mission after I’ve done my dead drop,” Martyn says. “Helps keep things separate from the home, you know? ‘Course, Jim’s gonna kill me either way. Think I already said that. Hey, do you think I should call ahead to warn him I’m bringing you?”
Why is he asking Three that.
“Communication lines on public servers are often insecure,” Three says after a moment, assuming that’s why the question is being asked.
“No, see, he’s really good at hearing from… ehhh, but it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission, and it’s not like I won’t bring you home, so really…”
It’s all irrelevant information to Three. Nothing Three can change. Nothing that matters.
…it’s really been stolen, it realizes.
It had only just activated earlier in the day. Time while server hopping gets confusing, due to different servers occasionally having different tick speeds, but it has been less than a day. Three can take some time to become fully oriented after awakening. Even after being given time to wake up, it still feels disoriented. The action is over, though. Martyn is rambling about things that are irrelevant to Three, such as what he should eat for dinner, and how long he should sleep. This means that, for peak performance, Three should process any events it has not yet processed, and compartmentalize them accordingly.
It has been stolen. That’s new. It has never been stolen before, and certainly never successfully.
It has a handler who works with Listeners. This is slightly less surprising. If it is to be stolen, it only makes sense it is by the enemy.
The handler must be obeyed. Three cannot disobey. That is true. Three cannot disobey a handler. Not one with appropriate code phrases. Martyn had authorization to command Three, even if that authorization is stated to be fake. It is not Three’s place to make those calls. Three is not allowed.
The situation is… unusual. Being stolen. Three only supposes it will start having to destroy those who oppose the Listeners, rather than the Watchers. That, at least, will be easy. Everyone dies the same way.
And when it is inevitably punished, either for not being stolen well, or for being stolen at all—
Three will know where it stands then.
Martyn falls asleep, mumbling something about Three getting any required sleep. Three has not been awake long enough to require sleep for function. It should not sleep unless necessary for acceptable efficiency, and certainly not on any beds. Instead, it stands by the door all night, as it is usually meant to. If this is not appropriate behavior when stolen, then it will endure and adapt.
That is what it is designed to do, after all.