Work Text:
Two worker drones began backing away from their target in preparation for their shot. They could not afford to miss out on this moment. The green-eyed worker drone huffed, wiping some oil off of his mouth as he picked up Uzi’s railgun. He had suffered a wound earlier from the target’s SMG nearly hitting his core. They had been fighting for the better part of a few minutes—or maybe longer, they couldn’t tell—to attempt to exhaust the disassembly drone.
The railgun could be heard preparing to fire. This time, J could not afford being taken out in point-blank range. After all, she was not laying down pathetically on the ground this time. She hastily flew off to the side as the railgun blasted its green laser blaze out from itself.
It missed her. Not by too much, but enough to keep her integrity. She could not back down.
J watched as the two worker drones that previously rammed her with an entire school bus grew apprehensive and fearful all of a sudden. The railgun was hastily tossed aside by the green-eyed worker drone as he picked his pipe back up with stubborn confidence. However, before he could charge at her, the EMP in her right arm activated, sending its shockwave across a large radius, paralyzing both worker drones as they collapsed into the snow, the pipe dropping just a few inches away.
“Hmph, toasters,” J scoffed to herself. They should’ve tried harder than that.
Now having nothing more to do, she began to walk towards her spaceship. With nothing to focus on, her mind began to wander. She was meant to stick with the ship while all of the others flew down into the Cabin Fever Labs without her, and while the worker drones failed to stunt her, she knew it would be another several minutes of relatively boring waiting.
Relatively boring, except for the fact that it had been an awful while since she heard anything from Tessa. Hell, she even used her own radio a bit ago to inform her that the ride was available. However, the whole time that the crew were down there, nothing came back to J.
There was nothing about a new instruction to follow. There was nothing about the mission proving to be a success in getting what they needed, nor was there anything about a request for assistance. There was just nothing from her.
For whatever reason, the fact that she wasn’t receiving anything new made her feel off. J didn’t know why, but she was growing steadily worried about them all—except N and Uzi. She didn’t really care what happened to either of them, especially the latter. As long as he didn’t get himself killed, whatever he is doing down there doesn’t matter.
What does matter, however, was who else was down there: the two most important people in J’s life; the people she would absolutely die for if necessary.
Firstly, there was Tessa. As her colleague, J’s boss was absolutely important to her. Knowing that her boss was alive despite everything was, while confusing, a great thing. She always stuck with the Australian girl as if she were a magnet, even back in the Elliott Manor days where things would get especially rough. J trusted Tessa with her life, and that cannot be understated.
However, the more complicated subject that she found very important to her life was none other than V. With a job that both of them have to follow, they rarely get to spend time with each other without bickering about quotas, but Robo-God does J love spending time with V outside of it on the rare off-chance that there is that opportunity. She never understood why, but every time she was with V, she felt strange, in a way that wasn’t exactly bad. While on job, she always pushed those feelings down, but she couldn’t do that forever, and she knew that fact. Now that she was slightly anxious about how long it was taking for Tessa to respond, J was really wishing she talked to V about those feelings some time beforehand.
Recuperating herself back to the present and shoving her anxiety down as much as she could, J glanced at the two worker drones she briefly fought not too long ago. Well, “fought” is certainly an overstatement—barely anything happened; it merely felt like a playfight, and the EMP was her way of saying that enough was enough.
She could tell from the way they were moving that they were weakened, but were also slowly getting up. The green-eyed jock was faster at getting up than his pink-eyed teammate. They both locked eyes for a moment before he diverted his eyes to look for something. Oil could be seen coagulating at the corner of his mouth, leaving a single drop of oil in the snow. Picking up his pipe and simultaneously deciding that his intelligence was to be on par with a rock, he began screaming as he charged at J. The pink-eyed worker looked at the both of them with confusion as J nonchalantly caught the pipe in her hand due to the attacker’s weakness. He instantly stopped and became afraid all over again.
“Is that it? Is that all you’re going to do?” J sounded underwhelmed, but in all honesty, she was trying not to laugh at how pathetic that was.
The worker attempted to pull his pipe free, but his systems blared a brief error due to his weakness from the EMP, and he nearly fell over again. His next course of action was to run away slowly, panting as his legs propelled him through the snow and leaving J and the other worker drone alone. Good to know the toasters are still consistently stupid.
The railgun still laid in the snow, each light being red as it slowly recharged. J kept it in mind, in case the other worker drone attempted to pull anything. To her surprise, however, she doesn’t move much, just glancing at her phone the whole time as if a scuffle never happened.
With the eerie silence being only interrupted by Copper-09’s winds that J is accustomed to, the anxiety she tried to shove off slithered back into her mind. No matter how much she tries to push it down and act like nothing’s wrong, she can’t help but worry. She doesn’t even know why she feels worried, even though she knows the concern. Any time she was able to forget about it, it always came back like a persistent snake.
The lack of a response, the silence, they all surmounted as uncomfortable evidence that the two people she actually cared about could be as good as gone. She refuses to believe it, and she never will. They’re both extremely competent; they wouldn’t die like that.
It’s why she barely gave it any thought when she began to walk away from the shuttle, and walk toward the pit that was the Cabin Fever Labs. She didn’t care that it would’ve gone against Tessa’s order. J had to know if everyone down there was well and alive. As she gets closer, she contemplates it deeply.
Just before she can make up her mind, she notices a familiar face rapidly flying out of the pit, with a slight sound boom joining them as they leave the pit. They quickly land on the ground after leaving the pit, and J can fully recognize who exactly it is.
The one who left was the male disassembly drone, with his iconic pilot hat and trench coat. J had a chance to notice that his coat had been unevenly painted with dark stains of oil. She could tell from his facial expression—hollowed out optics that seemed to become thinner when he saw J—that he was definitely skittish.
The main thing that caught her eye, though, was a glint that came from his hand. She could tell that it was the spaceship keys that she had dropped upon being hit by a bus. For once, she wasn’t too unhappy with seeing him, knowing that he had those.
She would’ve been excited about getting the keys back, even. However, with him starting to approach, there were better things to focus on.
“N?” J called out.
His pace picks up, almost sprinting. J takes an apprehensive step back.
“N, what are you—”
“Oh my Robo-God, J! You’re alive!” N interrupted her almost immediately, being very quick to hug her. The keys he held in his hand could barely be felt on her back. She felt her anxiety rising again.
She shoved him off of her, contemplating slapping him in response as a way to tell him to not do that again. What’s up with him?
“Tch, yeah, of course I am!” J scoffed, masking her anxiety with her usual confidence. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
It was uncomfortably quiet when N hesitated to answer her question. The only sound that pierced their audio sensors was the howling of the wind. J looked over to the side for a second, and saw that the worker drone had not left. J hadn’t even realized that her own facial expression was becoming more and more scared as she was struggling to quell her fears.
Looking back at N, she thought about it for a moment. N rarely ever looked like this. He was rarely this afraid, rarely this clingy. When oil would get on his coat, it was usually towards the upper half of the front of his jacket with little variation. This time, however, the oil was a lot less picky for location.
“W-Well.” he finally choked out. “V… U-Uzi…” N’s voice had already deteriorated to a point that J almost didn’t recognize it at first. He sounded like he was on the brink of total loss of composure. His tail rested on the snow.
“What about them?” J asked in response when he paused again, her voice subtly wavering. She was getting impatient.
“J, they’re—they’re gone!” He suddenly yelled out, yellow digital tears slipping down his visor.
J felt her limbs tense up into stiff metal parts. At that moment, she felt like she couldn’t even move if she wanted to. Her own eyes hollowed out, and her breath quickened. As much as she expected it to happen to Uzi, there was absolutely no way that V could’ve been taken out.
“N—” She attempted to speak, her voice cracking slightly.
“Tessa… wasn’t who she seemed!” His voice was losing what little confidence it had. “It was… i-it was…” he trailed off. He seemed too broken to follow that up with anything.
She stared at him intently, processing what he said, and immediately attempting to deny the truth of it. She didn’t want to believe it. She never wanted to believe it. No, V isn’t dead. Tessa isn’t dead, she was always alive. She did think it was strange that Tessa showed herself to be alive again, though. No, no, they’re alive. They’re alive, and they always were!
N was visibly trembling upon what he said. They both were, but it was a lot more obvious with him. It was why when a click sound could be heard, it startled him greatly, which in turn startled J. The sound of the keys clacking in N’s hand did not make anything better. Her head whipped around to the source of that click sound, N’s gaze following shortly after.
It was just the worker drone taking a picture with her phone. She snickered when N looked at her. “Oh my god, like, you guys looked really funny!” she gawked with a hint of sorrow in her voice. “You should do that again next time, y’know?”
“What’s your problem?” J growled at her, replacing one of her hands with claws and pointing a claw at the worker. N reached one of his hands out to her shoulder, but she slapped it away with the other, non-bladed hand. “Get lost! Go back with that other toaster who abandoned you!”
“Geez, chill out, girl. I’m just messing with you.”
The worker drone turned around, her back facing the two of them, and J could tell that she was typing somewhat quickly on her phone. Hers and N’s astute hearing could hear slightly unstable breathing on top of the rapid tap, tap, taps on the screen. Neither of them quite expected her to react in that way. N was not sure what he wanted to do, meanwhile J did not care enough to intervene.
She turned back around to face her squad member, her singular clawed hand replacing itself with her normal hand. Digital tears still slipped down his visor as he looked back at her. J’s own eyes were hollowed out. She hadn’t noticed when his eyes filled back in. She felt weird to admit that she didn’t even know if she was looking at N, with just how sullen and lifeless his general demeanor had been after the news was broken. She didn’t know what to feel anymore.
For now, she wanted him to leave. She felt awful, and she didn’t want him to see her feel so awful. At the very least, he’d leave temporarily.
“N, could you potentially recover V, if she’s still in there?” J ordered, although her voice was a lot quieter than anticipated. N still seemed to get the message. “Also, hand me the keys.”
“...Yes, I will.” N raised his hand, and dropped the keys on J's own. She looked at them as they lay restlessly in her hand.
At first, he wordlessly turned around and began to walk, furrowing out his wings in preparation. Before he entered, though, he turned back around to face J. “Can you… promise me something, at least?” He asked quietly.
“Promise you what?” J looked up from the keys.
N raised one of his hands to his chest, exhaling shakily. “Promise me you’ll be okay.” He gave her one last weak smile from him before he turned away from her and back to the Cabin Fever Labs. Before J could respond to him, he lifted off and flew down.
J had no idea what to feel other than pure fear. She was already nervous virtually the whole time, but with what he said to her, and his last message before leaving being such a daunting thing to say really made her worry. She mouthed what he said to herself. If N’s word was to be taken as fact, then Tessa hadn’t actually been here. If the news he broke were true, then V was as good as dead. If his final promise for her meant anything, it meant that there was something seriously wrong.
The only sound that interrupted the silence was the wind, and the worker drone’s continuous typing. It had sounded frantic earlier, but now there were large breaks between each one. She could barely hear her breathing, which did not sound stable. She only felt more uncomfortable with each breath that could be heard sucked in through the worker’s teeth. J’s chest felt heavy, her limbs still felt stiff, and she still felt lost. She didn’t understand any of these feelings at all. Everything felt like it had knocked her over constantly, even though she was still standing.
The main idea that she cared the most about kept coming back to her. The possibility that V was dead circled back into her mind, in and out over and over again. She never wanted more than to have been able to talk to her about everything, when there was the chance that she couldn’t get to do that. The fact there was a chance that she couldn’t get to do that was what made her feel worse.
One distinct memory of hers came to light as she stood motionlessly in the snow. One that she kept near and dear to her heart since the day it happened.
< ??/??/3071: 5 MONTHS AGO >
It was one of the squad’s off days, where they could hunt only if they wanted to, rather than out of necessity. The three of them sat atop a tall building while Copper-09’s two moons shined down at them. J sat in between V and N, with both of her hands behind herself. N’s tail could be seen wagging a little, and V did not seem like she was very enthusiastic about having this break. Whenever J was looking at something in specific, it was either the moons—usually the larger one that possessed rings—or the squad member to her left: V.
Any time she looked at V, she felt different. She never knew when this even started, but it torments her almost every time they’re on break. While her subordinate looked down toward ground level, J’s eyes locked onto the disassembler herself. When V wasn’t arguing with her about business or their performances, she just looked astounding. The moonlight proved to emphasize her beauty.
“Wow, this is beautiful!” N ecstatically spoke, kicking his legs that were draped over the side of the building. “I want to go here again next time we get a break from all of the murdering.”
“I wish I was doing something else right now,” deadpanned V a second or two later.
“I know, V, but it’s nice to take a break every once in a while.” N responded.
“...I guess.” V looked over past J and towards N, and the disassembler in the middle averted her eyes, looking down at the ground herself. “There are just more fun things to be doing than staring at what little stars we can even see.” V didn’t seem to notice J staring at her, and N looked back at the moons.
She let out a deep exhale. She didn’t understand how or why her systems were acting up in the way they were, but her visor felt slightly warmer than it was supposed to feel. It was not helped by the feeling of her stomach twisting around inside of her. The wind seemed louder when nobody spoke, and she almost wanted to lift her hands off the building’s roof just to cover her face. Fuck, why is this happening?
“J? Are you alright?” N eventually asked, looking back over to his left. “Your tail’s moving around a lot.” (V looked over to her, saw J’s tail thrashing around—that neither of them were actually aware of until N pointed it out—and didn’t have much of a reaction that J could gather.) “Is something on your mind?”
“No, I’m fine.” J didn’t look at either of them. “I’m just… I guess, somewhat content.”
“Are you sure?” he questioned.
“Get off my case,” J answered with some embarrassment. She shoved those feelings down as much as she could. “I said I’m fine.”
V set her right hand down next to her as she used it as support to pick at her teeth with her other, clawed hand. J’s eyes gravitated over it, rendering her attempts at hiding her feelings completely useless. She almost wanted to move her own left hand over to V’s. She wanted to hold her hand, even. She looked back down to the ground before she did anything stupid.
The twisting in her stomach was worsening. She felt so unbelievably embarrassed just sitting there, almost wishing she didn’t take this day off. V was just her coworker, nothing more, but Robo-God did she for some reason like to hang out with her when they weren’t bickering.
“...What’s up with you?” She didn’t notice in any of her eyes that V looked over soon after J looked away. “You’re acting like a mess.”
“A mess? No, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” J responded quickly, suppressing an awkward laugh.
“You know exactly what I’m talking about. I rarely ever see you blush.”
“Fuck,” J whispered quietly, before responding more audibly. “Just forget it!” She leaned forward and raised her hands up to hide her visor. She hadn’t realized that yellow blush marks were very apparent on her visor.
“No can do, boss.” V adamantly proclaimed.
“Never speak of this again.” She lowered her left hand onto the ground next to her, but kept her right hand over her visor. God, this was so pathetic.
“C’mon, we’ve got to talk about it again eventually.” V snickered. “How could we not?”
“Uhh—” N tried to intervene.
“V, just forget about it, please.” J was defeated.
“Can’t have my fun, I guess.”
Suddenly, J felt something rest on her left hand and over her fingers. J uncovered her visor and rested that free hand on the ground as support, her expression becoming visibly more flustered as she looked down and saw that V’s hand was on her own. Her eyes hollowed out due to sheer surprise. V could be seen looking towards the moons with a sly smile on her face, and small little blush marks on her own visor. Both of their tails thrashed around a little bit, with J’s moving around more than ever. Holy shit.
“Uhh—why are you—” J stammered. She could barely think straight with how overwhelming these feelings were.
The only word V said as an answer when she interrupted J was, “Bored.”
“Fuck you.” J’s voice subtly cracked as she moved some of her fingers to interlace with V’s. V didn’t stop her, and her yellow blush marks did not change.
< PRESENT DAY >
Once she stopped reminiscing, J almost wanted to cry right then and there. She wiped at her visor just in case any stray tears were beginning to slip. Her limbs were still stiff, and yet she looked around anyway. The toaster was still there, although she stopped typing on her phone. Instead, she was standing in the snow mindlessly; barely sentient, almost.
She slowly walked toward the worker. “...Why are you still here?” J’s voice was harsher than she expected, but did not do anything to change it. “Why haven’t you left yet?” Her vision felt hallucinatory in nature, because her own denial was affecting whether or not she believed the worker was actually there.
She began standing right next to the worker drone, and only then did she notice how tense she was. Her phone was not even in her hand, but rather on the surface of the snow. J herself did not feel any better seeing this worker in distress, which made even less sense to her than her apprehension of N’s fearful state. Her own expression of dismayed sadness felt so impossibly ingenuine that she couldn’t reason anything about it out.
The worker had not responded to her at all. She decided to tone herself down a little. “She meant a lot to you too, did she?” The harshness wasn’t as strong as before, but it was still somewhat apparent. Nevertheless, the message seemed to have been received, as she inclined her head more to face the snow.
J inferred that whatever N had to say was affecting the insignificant worker too, just based on the nonverbal answer to her question. Her solemnness was cemented even further. First, it was Tessa—or someone else, according to N—not saying anything to her, then it was N returning to tell her that everything that could’ve gone wrong did go wrong, and now it was this worker being impacted by the same news. Her expression fell into one of sadness with a hint of wanting to cry all of the despair out. She couldn’t let herself break that easily.
After a while, the worker finally spoke, her voice breaking to a whisper by the end. “Not… not just her.”
“Not just V?” She inquired.
“No. I’m certain Doll’s down there, too.” The worker cleared her throat to try to give more clarity to her voice.
J quickly came to a conclusion about whoever “Doll” was. She knew everyone that went to the Cabin Fever Labs, except for the purple-haired Russian freak. To the blonde-haired worker’s credit, she did see reason to be confused; if V was dead, then who was to say that Doll was too? There’s absolutely no way V is actually dead.
She remembered the only thing that Doll said to her and “Tessa”. Here’s your key. The keybug for the Cabin Fever Labs. She also remembered what “Tessa” had said to her before she left. Mind my ship.
Before she could linger on those thoughts for long, another sound boom announced itself, startling both J and the worker drone. Their eyes glanced over toward the Cabin Fever Labs, and none other than N flew out again. He landed much faster than he did last time, and before he even spoke, J could tell that he somehow was even more terrified than the first time.
“J, you have to leave!” N yelled out, clearly panicked.
“What, why? What happened?” J asked, matching a similar level of panic to her squad member.
“S-Something’s wrong.” N’s speech was extremely fast and lacked coherency. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s clearly not good! I also found V, and she’s—”
“Calm down!” J exclaimed. She could not understand all of what he attempted to say through all of the stress. “What do you mean? What’s happened to V?”
“Whatever was left of V is what I found. I’m sorry!” The distress in his voice really emphasized how distraught he was. J would’ve been distraught as well if she had to tell someone about something like this. “Why… why did she do that…”
“Do what?” J hated how vague N was being with a lot of the questions she asked him.
“Just go! The planet is not—” N stopped himself. J really hated that he stopped himself.
“Is V dead?!” Her facial expression was one of anger as she clasped N's shoulders with her hands. She didn’t mean to come across as this upset with him, but she once again could not attempt to accept it.
Without warning, N stepped away from her, her arms falling to her sides as he covered his eyes and started to actually cry. Her eyes hollowed out at what that response certainly implied.
The next thing that he said after a minute or two of sobbing only served to make her feel worse. “I’ll go get her.” His voice was beyond broken.
“Wait, N, don’t—” J hastily tried to change his mind, but he already leaped up and flew back down into the Cabin Fever Labs for a third time. “God damn it! No, no, no, no—fuck!” Her panic had never been higher.
It was so incredibly silent at that point. J was strongly fighting her own tears; her breathing was more unstable than ever. She hyperventilated as the snake of fear tightened itself around her, and yet she felt like she couldn’t breathe at the same time; it felt like she manually took each breath in and out. She raised her hand up to her head. She felt a headache coming in.
J, mind my ship. That was an order, and yet, she felt so goddamn guilty for following it. She had no idea what was going on down in the underground labs, but she wondered if things could’ve changed had she been able to tag along.
Suddenly, the worker drone’s voice rang out. “I can’t take this anymore!”
The disassembly drone jolted her head in the direction of the worker drone, and took a quick step back as she noticed that she lurched forward and tightly embraced her without any warning. It startled her badly enough for her to lose her balance and fall backward onto the pearl white snow. The worker drone did not care that she fell on top of her, as she started sobbing into J’s coat without any care or constraint in the world.
J’s emotions kept desperately slamming onto her; weakening her as much as possible. Her gaze merely zoned out at the sky above them all. Pure sadness and the rage of Copper-09’s atmosphere were the only sounds that entered any drone’s audio sensors. Despite how difficult it was the whole time to keep herself steady and to not cry, she still kept her emotional resilience enough to not break down yet. She had to remain a strong leader, even after it all.
She zoned out so heavily that the only thing she paid any attention to were the sounds around her. She did notice that the worker’s sobbing had stopped, but she didn’t notice that she lifted her head slightly above her coat, and locked eyes with her.
“I can’t handle losing them.” She spoke quietly. “Either of them.”
J did not respond. She couldn’t feasibly respond; she was in a deep trance of her own misery. She didn’t even respond when the worker drone struggled to get her arms free, and then stood up once she did get them free. She only responded when she heard the snow crunch around her as the worker drone took a few steps away. Finally coming to her senses, she raised herself off from the snow, and moved to stand next to the worker drone. She didn’t know why she moved there.
N’s words began to linger in her mind after she stood around for some time. Tessa not actually being Tessa sounded absolutely ludicrous, but she was beginning to accept that fact a little more. Her actual boss might not have been here the whole time, but she could just keep ignoring that fact if she wanted to, for some sick reason. However, the thing she still refused to accept was that V was dead and that he was going to go “get her”. There was an insurmountable amount of evidence that she was dead, and yet she could not bring herself to fully accept it.
Her breath hitched. She was beginning to lose the battle against her own emotions.
The planet around the two female drones looked like a pearl that lost its beauty a long time ago. Oil stains in the snow that was either buried by more snow, or freshly painted; dilapidated buildings that scattered some of the planet with scraps from when humans roamed the planet; and the hundreds of worker drone corpses that were even more vastly dispersed than the run-down cities. It was like rust forming on a surface that it should not have formed on; dreadfully dark colors tainting an otherwise okay place. No part of the pearl was safe, not even what was inside it.
The silence around both of the drones had locked each of them in a chokehold. It gradually amplified more and more, and it especially felt suffocating to J. Her eyes were hollowed out all over again, her breath never having relaxed to normal at all. In fact, just thinking about it made her breathing more unstable. She really felt like she couldn’t breathe.
Her chest ached with a tightness that she could not describe herself. It could’ve been akin to compressing her core down to just the size of a mere atom. It could’ve also been her chest responding to a metaphorical hydraulic press that crushes her, getting slower and slower the closer and closer it got to pushing her down. Hell, it could’ve even felt like somebody she once knew hugging her so tightly that it would’ve easily been a death grip. There was no way to describe it perfectly, but it hurt really badly to not let it all out at this point.
She would crumble eventually, whether she liked it or not. Her breathing worsened slightly.
The asphyxiating feeling of everything crashing down on her began to feel like a death grip on her. For all J knew, it felt like V was hugging her right now. She never knew what that even felt like, but if this is what it was, then so be it. One look over at the worker next to her, and that feeling appeared mutual, even if it might not have been related to the same exact subject.
V was gone. There was no more talking to her, no more bickering about some stupid quotas, no more holding her hand during breaks, nothing. Tessa was never even here to begin with, and someone else was playing what was supposed to be her role.
J had been played like a damn fool, and the price she paid for such a mistake was to lose everything she cared about. It was now just her and N, and she wasn’t sure if he would even come back at all.
In all brutal honesty, J lost a part of herself too. The rings that made her eyes thickened; she was getting more and more desperate to keep herself as stable as she could be in this moment, despite simultaneously knowing it would be fruitless at some point soon.
The mental struggle to keep herself from crying was becoming more of a hassle to keep resisting as she broke down more and more slowly. The faux-asphyxiation became a genuine struggle to breathe as she kept holding her breath to stop any crying from slipping through. Her limbs tensed up.
The main idea kept on circling her mind as a vulture, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike at the carrion that was her emotional barrier. Everything she cared about was gone. She could try to argue all she could that it didn’t matter that much, but to just about everyone, it obviously did matter. Warping back and forth in her mind: V’s dead, V’s dead, V’s fucking dead, and she was about to lose it.
Eventually, she gave in. She couldn’t afford to keep pretending it was fine forever. She couldn’t take it any longer. Her sorrowful, broken voice broke the tension built up by such a long silence as she screamed “I’m sorry, V!” to the world before collapsing to her knees—nearly falling face-first into the snow—and lowering her face into her hands as she wept and wailed like never before.