Chapter Text
3082 and not much has changed on the planet of Copper-9. The snow still ramps up into blizzard storms from time to time, the sun is still as deadly as ever to certain drones, two gravestones are built up on top of a nearby hill from the Outpost 3 bunker, and the streets are just as empty as ever, with the exception of workers finding more scrap to use on their bunkers or explore the vast and empty world of Copper-9 due to no longer being met with death by the hands of a literal killer robot. The bunkers however have changed quite a bit. For starters, J; former leader of N and V, now works for the WDF with her own team of workers, and just as strict as ever, if not much more bitter. In short, due to Copper-9 facing one of it's worst blizzard storms in years, as a good chunk of the infamous Corpse Spire had toppled over not completely, but enough to send a certain corporate drone out flying in a panic, especially since repairs of the ship that landed her here was not going well at all. It had taken an hour or 2 for the storm to die down quite a bit, but safe to say, the spire that shielded her from the sunlight was no longer of any use. The ship repair project would have to be put on hold indefinitely until she could find some sort of beneficial long term sunlight protection, as there was no way in hell she would ever step foot in the bunker of Outpost-3, not after everything she'd done. So J had laid low through many abandoned buildings in the big city, finding spare scraps of either long dead or freshly deceased corpses of worker drones filled with oil. Safe to say, for 10 years outside, she did whatever she could to survive. But it's not like she was all alone; N, V, and Uzi made frequent visits to see how she's doing. Mostly N, as the other two were dead-set on not wanting to do anything with her anymore. But they still came due to curiosity. However this time was different. With the recent blizzard that had knocked a good chunk of the spire down, the trio was the first to notice that J was nowhere in sight, and this understandable made N worry; what with the sunlight still being deadly. So, N made him, V, and Uzi split off into different parts of the city. An hour later and V had been able to find her, and after a pretty intense argument between the two; J had finally relented. She would be staying in the bunker for the foreseeable future; at least until it was safe and time to continue ship repairs. After that, working hard and diligently, as well as having her own room far from everyone else, she'd been able to make a name for herself; and not just because she was a mass murderer, but because she'd been somehow able to rise up in the ranks of the WDF. However she definitely still made many threats to her coworkers and almost followed through with said threats. But not wanting to disappoint Khan Doorman; the leader of the whole bunker, she'd at most give them a very stern warning and let them off.
As for how the others are doing these days, N and Uzi have become fulltime parents; raising their 5 year old daughter Eve Doorman; a worker drone mixed with a disassembly drone that has the body of a worker drone, but yellow eyes from her dad, the infamous nanite acid tail, a purple silvery mix hair color that has a similar bob-cut to V, wears a beanie similar to Uzi's, a dark magenta shirt with the triangular error symbol with the I and a heart symbol underneath the I, and outside under the triangle is the word error but the o is replaced with a heart, and some black shorts and purple shoes. To say this shocked J when she first found out about it while living on the outside world would be an understatement. Turns out despite the differences between the two drones they still made it work, and not only did this overjoy our lovely couple, but made them absolutely nervous wrecks, so they'd turn to Khan and Nori for advice, and safe to say, the two made it work since conception, even with difficulties here and there, all is well with the Doorman family. N is one the top scouters along with V, leading the scouting division of the WDF to find more resources to keep the whole bunker up to date; and perhaps even explore and try to live outside, but that's a long way from now. In the meantime though N has also wanted try and see if he could try and bring animal life to robot form, as the whole of Copper-9 would be unsuitable for organic lifeforms. The project's still a work in progress, but N has hopes of having a golden retriever robot pupper to raise along with Eve. Uzi is still the local resident emo, but her angst has simmered down a bit over the years; what with now being a mom and all. She still has doubts and fears of being a terrible mom, what with the solver and all, but with constant reassurances from her beloved husband N, she's been able to manage fine for the most part. As for her current occupation; she's become a mechanic for not only the WDF; but also testing out new inventions for herself as well. Speaking of the solver, she's managed well with the solver as well. Occasional episodes but not only with the lifetime supply of oil coming into play, but as well as her friends and family keeping her in check just in case things go bad. All in all she's done well for herself, even being able to at least be acquaintances with some of her former high school classmates. V, along with N, is also another top scouter with N. But where N prefers to mostly take to the skies, V is more boots on the ground, always accompanied by Sparky, her raptor sentinel that she has quite the history. Still aggressive to many of the other drones, but somewhat kept in check via V sometimes bonking it on the head and sternly telling him no. Not only is she the scouter but also the weapons and combat trainer with the WDF. Very much still skilled in combat, even though the ongoing looming threat of the solver as well as other disassembly drones being long gone, one can never be too careful. And much like Uzi, doesn't have as much tendencies to murder, what with oil donations being given to the other drones and all. She's become the honorary aunt of Eve, and even though she's not too well versed in taking care of a kid while her parents are doing their own thing, she does her best, especially when helped by Thad and Lizzy. Khan and Nori still manage and lead the whole bunker of Outpost-3, getting by with salvaging missions to make the bunker feel more like home. Recently though there have been talks of plans of the bunker society hoping to once again reclaim the outside world, but due to the conditions of certain drones living among them, right now the main priority is for a new version of the solver patch to be developed, which will not only patch certain side affects of the solver virus, but also make the drones that are infected with said virus immune to sunlight, no longer require oil to combat rising temperatures, and give their systems advanced cooling. So the solver and murder drones could essentially be just like their worker drones, but just with more abilities. This is especially vital considering Eve Doorman, the lovechild of N and Uzi; inherited not only her father's kindness and mother's intelligence, but much to the worst fears of pretty much everyone within the Doorman circle, inherited the solver, and it seems to have taken a pretty big toll on the tiny drone. But despite the condition she has, she has hopes that things will get better, even if it seems difficult at first.
Well with all that exposition out of the way, let's head back to the present. December 24 3082, we see a hardworking but grumpy J working through a lot of paperwork in her usual attire, her signature black blazer with a yellow collared button-down shirt with a black tie, and black business skirt; typing what is needed on her computer while signing away on documents, which are mostly questions of what additions can be added in the bunker or not. While the rest of the bunker is getting ready to celebrate the holidays with their loved ones, J is still working away at her desk in a small office room, which has the usual desk and computer meant for business, a desk name tag with her name engraved, a small bookshelf with some books here and there just in case she's in need of a break; which is usually 30 minutes or less, and a mug full of oil and a mug coaster. Not a single Christmas decoration could be seen around her workplace and that's for one simple reason. She hates Christmas. All throughout her decade long isolated stay, she never celebrated a single holiday, not even new years; all because she was too busy working on fixing the ship. The only holiday she really considered is a birthday of someone special; but has been long gone for a long time. And even that doesn't get celebrated, at least for the day. Too much of a painful reminder of a past long gone. Anyhow, J is working through the documents and paperwork for the bunker, when all of a sudden is her door has opened up, and a certain cheery drone, who's now wearing a reindeer hat on his head, hanging a mistletoe at the tail end of his acid tail, and wearing a green variant of his usual coat. The drone then lets out the words "Merry Christmas J!", to which the corporate drone responds with "N, you have about 10 seconds to get out of here before I rip you to shreds! As you can see, I'm very busy and would like to focus on my work thank you very much!" in a very angry and annoyed tone. N flinches a bit, still smiling but now worried. "Sorry J, it's just, well, I know you still like to work and all but.. it's Christmas. Shouldn't you be, I don't know, helping out the colony with this year's celebration?" N asks, to which only angers J much more. "Bah Humbug! Don't tell me after all this time you STILL celebrate that wasteful holiday! What reason is there to be 'Merry' when in actuality, this Christmas has been nothing but stress and work!" N's eyes hollow out, looking around, not a single bit of Christmas is shown throughout her room, and listening to her Christmas rant, he had to take a seat to try and process what she said. "A-a Christmas humbug J? Surely you don't mean it, right? Ah!" N yelps out as J throws a couple of her dulled pencils at N, causing the former murderer to duck down. "I do! If in case it wasn't clear enough for your tiny little processor, I hate Christmas! The fact that you and most likely that purple toaster and traitor, along with everyone else celebrate this meaningless holiday is astounding!" N tries to respond back to her tirade, but is cutoff by another female voice.
"Oh don't tell me J's gone all scrooge on us this year!" V's voice calls out. The drone; wearing a red Santa dress along with a new pair of stronger glasses, walks in to J's room, carrying good ole Eve Doorman, daughter of Uzi and N. "Oh, hey V! Hey Evie! Y-yeah, sorry about the noise." N responds to V, to which chuckles, patting N's head while looking over at J, who seemed definitely pissed. Her worktime is being wasted by these two and time is of the essence. "It's fine. If anything, I think J should be the one to apologize. Going on and on about hating Christmas, like.. seriously J?" V says to her while wearing an annoyed smug grin on her face. "Well excuse me! But at this very moment in time, my work time is being wasted on you 3 idiots! These documents on what should be added in this robo-god forsakened bunker or not is NOT going to be filled out themselves!" J slams her palm on her desk, proceeding to sit back downward and finish up the last remaining documents on her desk. V rolls her eyes and proceeds to walk to the doorway, ready to bid N and J goodbye, but Eve decided to ask J a question. "Would you like to come to our Christmas party? There'll be lots of fun games and movies!" Eve exclaims to J, to which the corporate bootlicker's eyes twitch a little and lets out a sigh. "No. I refuse to go to whatever foolish party you and your family is planning. I never celebrated this holiday before I was brought here, and will continue to do so! And what the hell is she even doing here, it's work hours!" J exclaims, pointing at Eve while the door girl looks down in disappointment. V then hands Eve over to N while crossing her arms across her chest. "Well little Miss Scrooge, if you must know, work hours got cut in half for the remainder of this week starting today. At least until the New Year. I somehow had a feeling you wouldn't want to join us, but if I didn't know any better, I didn't take you as the one to hold onto a grudge for a long time." The room becomes silent for a couple of seconds, before N lets out a sigh and slides the invitation across J's desk, surprising J a little bit as N stands up, also standing by the doorway. "Y'know J... I know Christmas was hard on all of us, and I can only imagine why you don't wanna celebrate it, but.. at the very least just think about it. I think she'd really appreciate it." N looks at J with a warm smile, while J could only sigh and lightly grasp at her forehead and say "Just get out. You're lucky I'm just about almost done with these last few papers." J responds annoyed. While V is still pissed at her former coworker and friend, N and Eve couldn't help but smile a little bit. They didn't hear a no, so perhaps she might show up. "Well, whether you show up or not, the invitation's still open! Oh, and if you haven't checked, V and I sent your place some gifts from us! Merry Christmas J! Come on you two, let's go check up on Thad and Lizzy!" V shakes her head and chuckles a bit before giving J one more look of neutrality and simply says "Just think about it." And walks off, while N carries and bounces Eve lightly, to which the girl responds with a giggles and a cheer, even waving goodbye to J and wishing her the holidays. As J looks over at the 3, for a split second she could see Eve's screen flash the [High Temp] warning, to which makes J's eyes hollow out. That's right, she's inherited that damn solver disease from those Doorman bastards as well. J quickly shakes her head, not wanting to even think about what happened today. She emails the last of the digital documents to Khan while stacking the physical papers in a neat position, before placing them in the wall chute, sending those papers off to the bunker's main office, which will be overlooked when work opens up again. After that, J takes one look at the party invitation given to her by N, which was also drawn by him. She stares at the paper before glaring at it, balling and crumpling up the paper and tossing it in the trash can located at the back right corner of the room, neatly slides her chair in her desk, packs up her supplies in her work bag, powers off the computer and lights, before walking back to her apartment.
Along the walk back to her home, she was constantly pestered by some of the worker drones that were feeling very festive. To which J simply shoved away or intimidated them by glaring at them and waving her acid tail around them as a warning. The walk to her apartment was about 10 minutes of walking, more isolated from the all the other apartments. J brings her hand up to her breast pocket of her blazer and pulls out her keycard, which contains her name, date of room inheritance, serial designation number, etc. and scans it on the card reader. But before the door opened up, the card reader seems to have glitched out, and for a very brief second, she could hear a garbled glitched out voice mutter out a long lost nickname from a past life. "Jaybird." Which shocks J, making her flinch quite a bit before the door slides open. J takes a couple of seconds to try and process what happened, but shakes her head and passes it off as a normal glitch with the card reader. She walks back in her room and hangs her blazer and tie back in the mini closet, hung neatly on a clothe-hanger before shutting it close. She then walks into her bedroom, which mostly consisted of a closet with her clothes, most of which was pretty much identical to her clothes she has on now, a simple white nightgown, as well as her long forgotten maid outfit, a queen sized bed sat at the right-hand corner facing in a horizontal direction with a greyish black blanket and white sheet underneath and a pillow with a grey backboard, a desk which had a computer, very similar to the one back in her workplace, a bookshelf with not only books, but as well as some antiques from the long lost Elliot manor. A portrait of Tessa and J standing next to each other; which was pretty much the picture of J and her former coworkers and the Elliot family, but crudely but as neat as possible cut and taped together so it was just her and Tessa, the astronaut helmet and bow from 10 years ago; when everything went to hell and back to normal in the span of a few short hours, her shark plushie from long ago in the manor days, a cup filled with JCJenson pens, a JCJenson notebook, a JCJenson cap, and a JCJenson oil bottle whenever she feels the need to cool herself off from workouts. As J pondered on what to do, a part of her mind still wandered back to her card-reader glitching out. Try as she might to deny it, there was no way her audio receptors heard differently. The card reader pretty much said 'Jaybird', even if it was glitched and garbled out. J shakes her head, trying to deny it and head to her kitchen for a cold cup of oil. She walks over to the fridge and pulls out a spare cup of oil and takes occasional sips, sitting on the couch switching through random TV channels before just settling on the news, hoping to get her mind off things.
At first, things go well for the lonely drone, as a couple of hours pass by with the news yammering on and on about the weather, which is honestly kind of pointless considering the fact that the whole planet has been nothing but snow and radiation for decades, politics from this and other bunkers, business economics; which was a favorite of J's, as well as the happenings of the WDF. However in just about a snap of a second, the moment the segment switched to talking about the upcoming Christmas celebrations, J's mood immediately soured, and went to turn off the TV. But as she went to do so, the TV glitched into static, which made the business drone groan out in frustration. She stands up to bonk the TV lightly in hopes of the signal returning, but as she does so, swear to robo-god there was a whisper coming straight from the TV that just kept whispering 'Jaybird' over and over again. parts of the static then start to form the shape of a familiar human from long ago, which leads to J trying to slap herself, thinking that she's probably lost it from the long work hours. She grabs the remote to try and turn the TV off, but it doesn't seem to be working as the whispers get louder and louder, glitchier and more garbled, and as impossible as it was, the staticky form seemed to crawl out of the TV, which leads to J freaking out even more! She switches her left hand to a machine gun and tries shooting at the static, but it has no effect and just flies through the form and into the TV, which surprisingly took no damage. The moment the staticky form touched the floor, the TV and the rest of her apartment room lights shut off, leaving her in complete darkness, making the drone breathe in and out pretty quickly. "What... the hell was that?" J muttered out, having little to zero idea as to what occurred just now. A few seconds later the lights pop back on and the TV back to normal as if nothing happened. As much as J wanted to file a complaint about the electricity, she was too freaked out to do so and shakes her head very quickly, officially calling the night. She quickly shuts off the living room lights and TV before heading back into her room, undoing her signature pigtails and changing into her nightgown. She sits on her bed and tries to relax from earlier, thinking on the things that make her calm down. Business talks, Excel sheets, the office environment, Tessa- okay that's enough relaxing! She tears the blanket off and sets herself inside, taking a look at her picture of Tessa just standing there on her own with no one else, and drifts off to sleep.
An hour passes, and J is immediately awoken to loud banging and her lights flickering on and off, making the drone panic and yell out in fear! What in the world was happening! Nothing like this has happened since.. the solver! That must be what's going on! Uzi must've lost control of her solver abilities and is on the lose! As much as she wants to change, there's just no time! She hops out of bed and runs to the door, only to find it's locked. J tries banging on the door, as the card reader is all shut down in her room. J looks around, tries to wonder what to do, but with the lack of anything useful to open up her door, she's only left with one other option. She switches her right hand to a grenade launcher and readies to fire away at the door, preparing herself to pay for property damage, when for the first time in a long time, a voice clear as day, energetic, and Australian calls out to her. "Jaybird! Hold your horses mate! Wouldn't want my best drone to pay for property damages yeah?"
...
It couldn't be. It shouldn't be. It's not another trick is it? Is it the solver trying to play tricks on her again? Wouldn't be the first time. But just in case, J very slowly turns over, still keeping her hand switched to the grenade launcher, ready to strike, but what she saw... she couldn't believe it herself. Her eyes had hollowed since she had woken up, and as if the rings couldn't get any thinner, she was looking at the ghost of her long dead favorite human of all time. Tessa James Elliot. "...Tessa...?" J mutters out.