The inexorable march of time kept grinding on, months passing by as I spent the days strengthening friendships and enjoying a second childhood, and the nights building Vault 2, crafting weapons, putting finishing touches on Vault 1 (that Anarcho-Syndicalist Banner looked sick as fuck ), and slowly, painfully , working my way towards the sentinel bootloop frequency via process of elimination. There was something nice about the repetitiveness of the tasks I did (I could do without the weekly sessions of flashbanging myself though), the mundanity of life, and I was happy to just genuinely enjoy myself as those days ticked by, because I knew there'd be days in the future where fecal matter inevitably hit the oscillating, bladed wind-producing device at terminal velocity. Honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I hadn't seen the sky in person for over a year and spent every night conceptualizing, designing, and manufacturing war crimes to use against Robot Cthulhu Satan and its minions, I could almost forget that there were genocide robots prowling the surface above Outpost 3, who wanted to end my second life in an incredibly violent and painful manner. But still, even with the future looming overhead, the days passed by with a calming normality. And it was on a day like any other, a (Copper 9) year and four months since I ended up here, that our friend group finally started to branch out to what any self-respecting anime or light-novel would term a B-Team.
Ever since the traumatic events of the Door-en-ing (the fact that the name stuck still made me chuckle on occasion) that I only narrowly avoided succumbing to by turning my ability to hear off whilst Khan literally waxed poetic about doors for four hours (I looked at some of the memes made afterwards, the dude literally waxed poetic about doors at one point), Emily and Trevor had been hanging out with us. Not nearly as often as we hung about with each other, but we could confidently call them friends and vice versa. Kinda made me sad that Emily and Rebecca weren't sisters like in some fanfics, but that wasn't canon, so it is what it is. Trevor was just a generally swell dude. Not as cool as Thad (I don't think it was possible to match how cool that guy was), but a solid dude you could rely on to watch your back, and he was really determined to follow in his folk's footsteps and join the WDF, doing his mom proud and honoring his dad's memory. Emily was cracking out of her social shell more and more as time went by, smiling and being more animated, and happy that we respected her enough to wait to start eating lunch when she sat with us and wanted to pray first. The two hung out with each other even more often than they did with us, and fast becoming pals that looked like they'd always have each other's backs. I'd long since resolved to make sure Emily made it through everything still alive, but seeing her actually being happy with us made me double down on committing to it.
Still if they were gonna eventually be the B-Team when it came to my Dumbass Isekai Protagonist's Plan to Save the Universe (shut up, I was still workshopping the name), I should probably get them more directly connected to us. And so it was that I decided to act upon that plan while we were all sat together for lunch that day. I finished my bite of my sandwich (weird how I actually got used to that in about a year. Would organic food feel wrong to eat, now?), and then opened my industrial press of a mouth.
"So, I was thinking," I started, and all eyemotes at the table glanced over to me, "We should probably add Trevor and Emily to the group chat, right?"
Lizzy blinked a couple times. "Oh yeah, totally!" she said
"I'll send invites," Rebecca added.
A second, and then Trevor started laughing, while Emily's optics went hollow and she looked over at Thad. "Did you actually name it The Neglected Children of Outpost 3 (and Thad)?"
Thad started chuckling. "Dude, it's hilarious ." Emily slumped in relief.
"I came up with the name," I bragged. Then I snapped. "Oh yeah, you want me to turn your parental controls off?"
Both of them snapped their gazes over to me. "You're cheating ?!?" Emily asked with a gasp. "Is that how you're so much better at CAPTCHAS?!?" I leaned back a bit, because the girl actually looked a little offended.
I waved my hands back and forth. "No, I'm just weirdly good at that!" Because I was an ex-meat person, lol. "I was mostly asking because some of us drop a lot of f-bombs or other curses and we figured that the bleeps would get annoying."
"I was starting to wonder at that," Trevor remarked, while Emily just groaned and started muttering under her breath about how unfair it was that she put in so much work and I just naturally coasted through CAPTCHAS. Actually made me feel a bit guilty, but then I remembered I was making sure her head stayed attached to her torso and that she didn't even have to worry about being the Final Girl, so the guilt went away. Trevor awkwardly patted a hand on her shoulder a few times.
"Yeah, the lads in medical apparently forgot to turn that on when they put my noggin back together, and I didn't exactly have folks to enable it themselves anymore, so I've just been giving everyone the ability to swear because cursing is funny, and anyone who says swears weaken speech are fucking morons," I explained… Damn, there was a universe where the cast from Guns, Drones, and Love were reacting to this, and I just personally dissed Aki Miller's mom. Hey! Your son is a perv who stares at Uzi's ass! Had to overclock to suppress my urge to laugh at my unhinged train of thought and its routine of trolling the 4th Wall, because I was painfully aware of my circumstance and did said trolling as a coping mechanism for all the existential dread. Then I added, "Except Uzi. She hacked her own controls herself."
The both of them looked over at Uzi for a moment, clearly impressed, and she blushed under the attention, before looking to the side and muttering something that ended with "Bite me…" I absolutely did not hide my snigger, and Uzi just turned and shot me a glare, which only made me laugh harder. Then Emily added gasoline to the fire by saying in a petulant tone, "There are definitely some curses I want to use about how unfair it is that you're so good at math." I wasn't the only one laughing at that point, and my mental correction of Actually, Emily, I'm cheating with a combination of having a calculator in my head, memories from a past life, and being really good JCJoogle-Fu (Still can't believe those fuckers actually bought out Google) didn't exactly help me stop laughing.
When we all calmed down, I got invites from both their OS' and disabled another pair of parental controls… and also got the sudden feeling that I was pissing off some version of Lizzy's dad from another timeline in the process… was there some running gag going on where I just never found out the dude's name? Because it still hadn't come up in passing even once so far, and this was getting kind of ridiculous. Anyways, a few moments later, the group chat came up.
Horror_Movie_Survivor: Before anyone else asks, I came up with the name when I went through a phase where I was into Horror Movies when I was 5.
Holy shit , that was an ironic name for Trevor, considering the guy lives through the whole series. Once again, the only thing that saved me from bursting into suspicious laughter was my overclock, which both Uzi and I had been slowly and steadily improving, her more than me.
TheLastCrusade: Before anyone asks ME, I'm into DOOM. It's a VERY Christian game. Killing all the demons, you know? And I came up with the name back when I was playing the Re-times-63-Master of Darkest Dungeon, and running the all-crusader party was my favorite comp.
I didn't even try to hide the laughter this time. Sweet mother of [NULL] this girl was fucking perfect . I resolved then and there that I'd figure out power armor, bolters, and chainswords solely so I could hook Emily up and turn her into a Sister of Battle ala Warhammer 40k.
Isekai_Protagonist: That name.
Isekai_Protagonist: Is fucking AMAZING, Emily.
Isekai_Protagonist: 11/10
TheLastCrusade: Thanks!
Horror_Movie_Survivor: What am I, chopped silicone?
Darkxwolf16: No, yours is pretty funny too, but its just that I played DD:RMx63, and Emily's is frickin' HILARIOUS, oh my robo-god.
Babeatron-Queenthousand: Yeah, like, even without the context Uzi has, that's just straight funny, lol.
Кукла: DEFINITELY subverted my expectations, that was for sure.
Thad_the_Chad: You've both got great names, but Emily's definitely takes the cake.
Horror_Movie_Survivor: >:-(
KayKay: lol
TotesBestGirl: That kinda name makes me wish you were my sister, Emily. Freaking amazing.
DarrenToDream: Nah, I think Trevor's is better.
Isekai_Protagonist: Darren. You have good taste in sports.
Isekai_Protagonist: But shit taste in games, man.
Darkxwolf16: LMAO! Roasted!
Кукла: Stop trying to start stuff, Uzi.
Darkxwolf16: BITE ME!
Horror_Movie_Survivor: Is it always like this here?
TotesBestGirl: Pretty much.
Babeatron-Queenthousand: Basically.
TheLastCrusade: I think it's funny.
I went to add something myself, but then the school's PA came on.
"Good afternoon, everyone!" the voice of Khan Doorman suddenly boomed. We all froze, and Uzi let out a depressed groan. "After the resounding success of my door lessons a while back, I had another brilliant idea to do Uzi proud with combining doors and education." I stared in abject disbelief. Holy fuck. What the actual fuck? Like, I knew objectively, Khan was a traumatized idiot who, due to said trauma, genuinely believed that if he cared about doors more than anything else, including his own kid, he could make up for the "death" of his wife, but actually seeing and hearing it in person instead of as a gag on screen was a whole 'nother ballpark. It was almost like he was literally hyper fixated on doors specifica-- oh. Well. I came to a sudden epiphany, Khan's door obsession suddenly making way more godsdamned sense. You know, I would have thought Uzi got the 'tism from Nori, but Khan being further along the spectrum than her actually makes sense. Then again, she could have definitely gotten it from both of them. Man, poor girl really got robo-autism-squared.
I tuned back into Khan's latest speech, realizing now that his neglect wasn't entirely born from trauma and moderate stupidity, but from trauma, moderate stupidity, and autism… so a full third of it was forgivable because it was out of his control. "So, to do my best by my kid, I'm going to host a mandatory Door Expo for all the schools, to help my daughter learn the ins and outs of doors and get her ready for taking after her old man, and to spread the wonder of doors to everyone ! It starts tomorrow morning at 9am sharp, so be sure to be there, kids!" The PA crackled off.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH!" Uzi screamed in unbridled, raw, visceral angst , and I really couldn't fucking blame her here. I just quietly stood up and walked over to her, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Just, fucking why dad?!? WHAT THE HELL?!?"
"If it's any consolation, I just came to the conclusion that your dad probably also has autism, and it's likely worse than yours by at least decent margin," I said.
Uzi looked at me blankly for a few moments, and then slowly turned to face forwards, and put her head in her arms on the table, and just started groaning. And by that, I mean a singular groan. That just kept going . Because we were robots. And didn't have to actually breathe to speak. Holy shit, she was actually doing that hilariously long groan from canon, and I actually couldn't find it in me to find the situation funny, because it was that miserable. Man, these kids really had fixed my own shitty sense of empathy as much as we all helped fix Lizzy's, huh? Doll shuffled over and gave her a hug, but she kept groaning.
"Holy shit," Thad muttered, and most of the optics on the table snapped over to him. You knew shit was fucked when Thad cursed. Like, super fucked. Dude didn't even curse during Armageddon, for frak's sake!
"I am so sorry for you, Uzi," Rebecca said.
Lizzy actually surprised me right there and then, though only moderately, because I was starting to get used to the more caring version of her I'd coaxed into being as opposed to her canon self. She got up, walked to Uzi, and joined Doll in giving the poor girl a hug. The emo in question was still groaning, by the way, and yes, it was still that same groan she started with. Just in case anyone was wondering.
"Damn, Uzi," Darren piped up. "I'm sorry."
"That's just… ow," Kelsey winced from sheer sympathy.
"I'll pray for your sanity," Emily said, reaching for her rosary and gently rubbing the cross with a thumb.
Trevor just shook his head. "I know it isn't worth jack shit," he said, dropping his first swear, "but you got my sympathies, Uzi."
The poor girl in question just kept groaning.
____________
Ye gods, Khan wasn't exaggerating when he said Door Expo. At a single glance, I catalogued 1,375 doors of various varieties on display within the confines of the converted warehouse he was hosting it in. There was even a to-scale replica of Door 1 assembled over there. Doors of every variety and every time period. There was a replica of the doors to the room in the Palace of Versailles where the treaty that lead to WW2 was signed, there was a door that was a replica of the doors to the Oval Office in the US Capitol, some actual authentic rice-paper sliding doors (where the fuck did Khan get those?), and near those a not-to-scale replica of the Gates of Gondor in the LOTR, right next to which were replicas of Hobbit Doors. A few (literal) doors down were replicas of the fake automatic doors from the original Star Trek, another not-to-scale replica of the doors to the IRL Jade Palace in China, (as opposed to the one from Kung-Fu Panda), a not-to-scale replica of the Holy Door at St. Peter's Basilica, a replica of the gates from Jurassic Park, and-- I glanced at the panel that detailed the name of what I was looking at, and then did a legit double take. Holy shit, how the FUCK did Khan get his hands on the original wardrobe from The Chronicles of Narnia?!? I glanced around, actually impressed by the sheer effort (and nothing else) that went into assembling a mongol horde of doors worthy of Khan Doorman… and also somehow getting the actual wardrobe from Narnia, not just here specifically, but getting it all the way to Copper 9 from Earth over a thousand years after the books were written and the movies made, and still in pristine condition to boot. There was a story there, that was for sure, and regardless of anything else, that was actually pretty fucking cool, and I really had to begrudgingly give it to Khan for that one. I also had to pause and overclock to not to gawk like an idiot when I saw a set of doors that were 1-to-1 life-sized replicas of all the doors from Minecraft. Damn, Microsoft added a lot of doors between now and 2025. But I swear to all that was holy, if I saw a door body-pillow on display I was going to fabricate a heavy flamer ala 40k and burn everything.
Even Uzi stopped groaning (damn, she really did groan for over 24 hours) to stare with hollow optics as we all trudged into the Outpost 3 Door Expo 3063. We all kinda just took in the sight for a few seconds, because sweet mother of [NULL], this was fucking something , all right. Kelsey was the first person to speak. "Is that… is that the actual wardrobe from the Narnia movies? Isn't it over a thousand years old by now?"
"I think it actually is," Emily muttered.
"No… it definitely is," I commented.
"Uuuuuuuuuuuh," Thad trailed off, and we all looked to where he was pointing at. On one of the walls, embedded into it, was an ordinary looking door, but with a stylized "4" painted on it.
" Please don't tell me that's what I think it is," Uzi begged.
Lizzy looked over with concern. "What do you think it is?"
" The 4th Door ," I muttered, genuinely concerned about the potential Insight Damage laying just beyond that seemingly innocent movable wooden barrier.
"Like, the 4th Wall, but a door ?" Rebecca asked, with mounting concern.
" I am not opening it, " Doll stated in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Yeah, this is a door Khan set up, I'm not risking that," Darren agreed.
Uzi just shook her head and took a step back.
"No pun intended," Trevor added, "But I think that door is better off left unopened."
"Agreed," I said without hesitation. That was… no . Just no. My 2nd life was fucked enough already . Didn't need to make it worse .
"I'm gonna need to pray after this," Emily murmured.
"I'm agnostic, but I think I might do the same," I said, only half -joking. I took one last, very disturbed look at the 4th Door , and then looked to the side, at a perfect angle for the 4th Wall , and just silently mouthed to where the camera probably was, What the fuck , man? I shook my head, and did my best to put that thing out of my mind. Glancing to the side and seeing Rebecca holding Darren's hand as she threw a terrified glance back definitely helped ground me. Because holy crap, those two were adorable together when Darren started sorting out his complete lack of situational awareness and Rebecca wasn't turning into a slutty bitch. Score to me when it comes to averting negative canon personality traits, I suppose. Did a decent job assuaging the guilt, and the shipping I was watching did the rest.
I glanced to my other side, seeing Uzi still with hollowed optics, and slumped shoulders, and overclocked to wrack my mind for a sufficiently unhinged topic that was so out there that it was guaranteed to snap her out of her funk because it was that absurd. 20 seconds in bullet time that was less than half a second in real time later, and my optics flickered to lightbulb emotes for a whopping hundredth of a second. "Hey Uzi," I started, "You ever think, that in another timeline, you had a little sister who was an Isekai character who had DID in their first life, so like only part of them was your sister by code, and the other parts were trying to help her with meta-knowledge to mixed degrees of success, and we all had to work together to save the universe from a bunch of eldritch horrors?"
I got a whole bunch of looks at that, and Uzi was the first to respond (after staring at me with what I was sure was an overclock of her own just to process the stupidity that left my vocal processors) with a, "Dude, you really do come up with the most random, unhinged shit sometimes."
"That really was out of nowhere, man," Thad added.
"Like, you still manage to surprise me with some of the stuff you come up with, Joe," Lizzy said, and Doll just nodded in agreement.
"Did it distract you from doors, though?" I asked.
Uzi went to retort at me, but then paused, optics widening. "Damnit, you did," she admitted, pouting at me, and my own grin widened.
I spread my arms out, taking a half-step forwards, doing my best impression of the "Well, what is it?" gesture from the OG Giantdad in DS1, and said, " Ho molti talenti, " I bragged. Doll started giggling, and Lizzy just shook her head with a grin on her face.
"Dude, what is it with you and Italian," Darren asked.
"È divertente!" I argued. Also, when I didn't have to actually learn a language and could literally cheat by downloading it to my OS, tapping into my linguistic and cultural roots from my first life was a sentimental way to connect myself to the human I used to be, though I didn't say that aloud.
" You do you, Joe, " Doll said.
"I've seen it a couple times before, but is this a thing he does frequently?" Trevor asked.
"Like, randomly say shit in Italian?" Lizzy asked. "Yeah."
"He's random with it too," Rebecca added. "Sometimes he does it a bunch in one conversation, and sometimes he goes whole days in English."
"We've kinda just written it off as 'one of those weird but kinda endearing things Joe does,'" Kelsey said. I gave a genuine grin at the praise.
"Like, carrying around that shovel everywhere?" Emily asked, looking over at the entrenching tool still on my hip.
"Oi!" I said, pointing a finger at her. "It's an entrenching tool , signora !"
Emily looked confused, and questioned me with "What's the difference?"
I didn't verbally respond, instead unholstering my weapon, and giving a well-practiced (seriously, I'd spent a lot of time practicing with this thing) flick, and with a satisfying clunk , the head of the tool shifted and had that wicked spike pointing outwards. At the sudden bevy of hollowed optics, and the startled gasp from Emily, "Woah!" from Trevor, and "Oh that's sick !" from Uzi, it occurred to me that this was the first time I'd shifted the tool in front of anyone.
"Sometimes," I explained, "you gotta dig a trench through something hard , like a door, or rock, or concrete, or a Murder Drone's face … that's what the spike and pickaxe configuration is for," I finished, flicking the shovelhead back into position, and reholstering my entrenching tool with a smug grin.
"Where'd you even make that?" Uzi asked me.
" That is a secret , Uzi," I said, clasping my hands behind my back and standing up on my tiptoes for a moment while wearing a cheshire grin. She gave me a deadpan look, and my grin only got wider.
"Uzi!" the last fucking voice I wanted to hear right now --actually, second to last. The last one I'd want to hear right now would be the Solver itself-- called out, and I actually cringed before turning around to see Khan Doorman walking up with a smile on his face that none of the rest of us were wearing. "Pretty sick doors, huh?" He spread his arms to gesticulate to the utter insanity around us. "Even pulled out the Narnia Wardrobe for this one! Now let me tell you, there's a story behind that one!"
Uzi clenched her fists, and I was 90% sure she was overclocked to try and reign in her rage.
Khan kept digging the hole he was in. "I'm opening so many doors to all these kids, am I right?" he chucked at his own joke.
Uzi's optics flickered. She grit her teeth so fast I faintly picked up the whir of strained servos as her mouth received the commands to do so from her software faster than the hardware could keep up. That she hadn't already blown up was a testament to her trying to internally speedrun her rage via bullet-time in her head, and she was still visibly struggling.
"Though I'm wondering if some of these kids can handle the sheer Khan- tity of doors here!" I had to overclock myself to resist my instinctive urge to blurt out how fucking awful that was. Lizzy audibly gagged, Rebecca didn't look far behind, and most of the others were either cringing or looking on in disgust or with mouths open in stunned shock. Uzi's expression went blank, her left eyemote twitching once.
"But I'm swinging the door wide open for all of them here!" Uzi started to slump, curling in on herself a little, limbs tensing. "Isn't this great , Uzi?" he asked.
"Dad--" she croaked out.
"I was thinking of hosting a Door Expo every year, because this is just amazing , Uzi!" Khan went on, a smile on his face. Thad buried his face in his hands and groaned, Darren outright facepalmed, Trevor went hollow-optic'd at the very idea of repeating this, and Emily started thumbing her rosary as she glanced back in the direction of the 4th Door before her lips began to move in what a lip-reading program recognized as a Hail Mary, and Rebecca hugged her totally-not-boyfriend as she looked genuinely scared. I looked over to Doll, and froze with slight panic as I saw her having drawn that knife Uzi had gotten her and Kelsey physically holding her back while Lizzy furiously whispered to her to try to get her to calm down. I discreetly stepped to the side to block Khan's view of that, in case he stopped hyperfocusing on doors and looked over, and I admittedly did briefly consider pulling my entrenching tool out, but decided that it was probably a bad idea.
Uzi's optics started narrowing to a glare. "Dad, I… I--"
But Khan just kept fucking going , and cut her off, probably not even realizing he did so, saying, "Oh, but why stop at yearly ? I could do this every month, no problem!"
"Let me stab him!" I heard Doll hiss from behind me, and I started to break out into a nervous sweat.
I heard Kelsey grunting behind me, and her voice whispered, "Thad, help!"
I heard footsteps shuffle over from Thad's direction, and resisted the urge to turn around, as Lizzy whispered. "Dolly, you can't just stab your uncle because he's an asshole!"
" Look at what he's doing to Uzi! " and then, " Thad, give me back the knife!"
"No." Thad said, and I untensed a bit. "Also, is there something going on with your optics, Doll?" Aaaaaaaaand tensed up worse than I already was. Oh fuck me in a non-sexy way , it was hard in an non-sexy way to not turn around with the concern I had for what was behind me, because it would make it more obvious.
Though the shit-show in front of me was just as distracting. Uzi was actually seething, fists shaking, teeth grit as she glared at her dad, who just kept making it worse , saying, "Oh, I know, I could spend some of my free time teaching a class about doors at your school!" Oh, you godsdamned stupid, moronic, traumatized, autistic door-fucker--
" Dad-- " Uzi forced through grit teeth, but he just kept fucking talking .
"And as a final project for the class, I'll have everyone build their own door themed on themselves! Oh, can't you just imagine it, Uzi?" he said, completely oblivious to the imminent meltdown in front of him as he clapped both hands on his daughter's shoulders. "An Uzi-themed door! We'll show it off to everyone! I'll replace the door to my office with it, so I can look at your door-themed likeness all the ti--"
Uzi Doorman had enough, and she fucking snapped .
The purple-haired emo drone swept her arms up to throw Khan's arms off her, and physically shoved him back. Khan stumbled a few steps, but kept on his feet, suddenly very confused. "ENOUGH WITH THE FUCKING DOORS, DAD!!!" she screamed, and the whole warehouse went silent.
"Uzi-"
"NO!" She cut her father off. "IT'S ALWAYS DOORS WITH YOU!!! EVER SINCE MOM DIED, IT'S ALWAYS BEEN DOORS. YOU FORGOT MY BIRTHDAY, THOUGHT YOU COULD MAKE UP FOR IT BY DRAGGING ME TO WATCH THE DOORS THAT MADE YOU FORGET IN THE FIRST PLACE, YOU DIDN'T KNOW I WAS BEING BULLIED FOR YEARS BECAUSE YOU WERE SO FOCUSED ON DOORS, AND IT GOT SO BAD THAT A FREAKING AMNESIA VICTIM HAD TO HELP ME OUT THERE AND RECONNECT DOLL WITH ME, WHICH YOU WEREN'T EVEN AWARE OF, AND YOU'VE ACTUALLY, UNIRONICALLY ASKED ME TO MY FACE WHY I CAN'T BE MORE LIKE FREAKING DOORS!!!"
"Uzi," Khan said, looking increasingly concerned, raising a finger. "Where is this coming fro--" I glanced to my side and forced myself to let go of the entrenching tool I'd been halfway to unconsciously drawing, and looked back up in time to see tears streaming down Uzi's optics as she kept screaming.
"BECAUSE YOU NEVER PAY ATTENTION TO ME!!! IT'S ALWAYS DOORS WITH YOU!!! IT'S ALWAYS ROBO-GODDAMNED DOORS WITH YOU!!!" she choked down a sob, and glared at her dad through her tears. "I HATE DOORS! I FREAKING HATE THEM!!! I DON'T WANT FOUR HOURS OF LECTURES ON DOORS! I DON'T WANT A DOOR EXPO EVER !!! I DON'T WANT YOU TO FORCE ME TO LEARN ABOUT DOORS IN SCHOOL OR TO BUILD A DOOR FOR YOU TO LITERALLY REPLACE ME WITH !!! STOP TRYING TO LITERALLY SHOVE DOORS INTO MY LIFE!!!"
Dead silence as Khan stared at his kid with hollow eyemotes. A few seconds, and then murmuring started. Uzi looked around suddenly, as if just now noticing that she was in a public space, and then, even while still crying, her optics went hollow. She looked around, left, right, past her dad, and then she suddenly broke into a sobbing sprint, barrelling past Khan and nearly knocking him down as she began to bolt for the exit. I finally took the opportunity to look behind me at the various gobsmacked and or horrified expressions of the others, and saw Thad casually slip Doll's knife into a pocket before anyone could notice it. Doll shook herself out of Lizzy and Kelsey's grasp and started running after Uzi first, Lizzy staring after her for a second before following, and one by one, the others started to run after them in turn. I turned to look at Khan's stunned expression for a few moments in overclock, our optics meeting, stunned eyemotes meeting a disapproving glare. There was a lot of stuff I wanted to say to the man right now, but tracking down Uzi before I could lose the others on her (currently only metaphorical) tail was more important. I broke eye contact and started running after the closest of our friends, in this case Emily, who nearly tripped, only for Trevor to turn on a dime, twist back, haul her back up, and get her going again without breaking stride. A dim part of the back of my processors noted that the feat took decent talent, and my opinion of the dude ticked up a notch… and I also thought that maybe, just maybe , I might start shipping them. Tremily? Emivor? WAIT! Trevor wanted to join the WDF, Emily was religious, and I wanted to arm both of them for the future. Knights Templar! The perfect ship name for them!!!
Regardless, I left Khan and the Door Expo (and that godsdamned 4th Door that would forever haunt my nightmares) behind, following the others in their chase after Uzi.
_________
We found Uzi about 5 minutes later. She'd only made it a few hallways down, where she'd finally collapsed and been bawling against a wall. By the time I'd caught up, Doll was holding her as she kept sobbing, most of the others huddled around. Both of the cousins stayed at Lizzy's hab that night, Uzi not willing to go home and Doll not willing to leave Uzi to her own thoughts. I had told Lizzy to go nab Doll's phone to shoot a text to Khan to let him know, having to immediately specify afterwards that it's not because I cared what he thought, it's because the last thing any of us needed was the door-obsessed dingus thinking that Uzi had ran away from home and acting on that misconception, and I'd gotten an thankful look from both her and Doll when I told them they could call me in the middle of the night if anything came up before I'd left.
The next day in school, the lot of us had acted like herd animals, using our bodies to physically shield Uzi from the glances, scrutiny, and whispers of others as if she was our young as we made our way to class. The Anime Protagonist-to-be was still in an understandably poor mood after the events of yesterday. She was mostly non-verbal for the entire morning, only quietly humming an acknowledgement to inquiries to her emotional well-being that we directed to her. During lunch, Chad and his morons had started to walk towards us, but I headed off what would have been an inciting incident that would have led to a Doll-induced Solver-assisted massacre by standing up, getting in their path, and unholstering my entrenching tool while flashing the words [I will dig a trench. Through your FACE.] on my visor. He took one look at the serrated side of the shovelhead, and spontaneously gained a point in WIS when he immediately did a 180 and fucked off to the opposite side of the cafeteria.
It was on our way back to class that I finally decided to take a random shot and hope it didn't backfire. I glanced over to my side, where a blank-expression'd Uzi still shuffled along in our formation, and spoke up. "Hey Uzi?" Dull optics looked over to meet mine, and my core bled for this girl, after all the shit her dad put her throu-- I overclocked as a realization hit me, and thought, ye gods, we haven't even gotten to the "Doors are my real daughter" interview or "How to deal with your disappointing failure of a child" dissertation yet. Maybe I should have helped Doll stab the moron… No… no, he's gonna lock the fuck in at some point in the future and literally make a god bleed with doors… I'll… I'll just have to handle that shit as it happens. Hell, maybe I even butterflied it away with this fucking mess, instead. I had the sinking feeling I wouldn't be that lucky, though…
Aloud, I went back to normal time, and asked in a low tone, "You ever finish that mind-jacking program?"
"The what ?!?" Lizzy blurted out.
Doll nearly tripped as she whipped around to look at us, and everyone else came to a dead stop as well. Uzi, however… her optics regained some vibrancy to them. She looked at me, and started to grin, and it was a grin that genuinely made me scared . "I did…" she mumbled. "A while ago," she added, a bit more confidently. Her gaze started to focus more, the grin becoming predatory , and she looked right at me, and started to nod slowly. "Yeah, I need to vent right now. Let's go mind-jack Sam!"
"I'm sorry, what ?" Thad said.
"You're gonna do what to Sam?" Kelsey asked at the same time.
" Uzi, I thought you were joking when you said you were actually gonna code that !" Doll said.
"You knew she was doing this!" Rebecca hissed.
" I didn't think she was actually going to do it! " Doll shot back.
"You actually built something to steal a drone's sentience?" Darren asked Uzi directly, looking equal parts impressed and terrified (as he should be).
Uzi began to rub her hands together, letting out a laugh as she went from a nonverbal mess to the demented gremlin we all knew and (platonically) loved in just a minute. "Oh-ho-ho-ho hell yes I did! " She cackled.
"Doesn't that seem just the least bit wrong?" Kelsey tried to argue from a moral standpoint. Unfortunately for her, I was totally on board with this, not just because it would be funny (as long as it wasn't on me), but also because Uzi would need the practice to hack into and subsequently steal an Eldritch Horror's Admin Privileges from her future boyfriend and maybe also girlfriend. My mind briefly played back the voiceline of "No one traumatizes these weirdly hot robots but me! " and how that single line from Uzi not only echoed the sentiments of the entire fandom , but was also why at least half of said fandom headcanon'd Uzi as at least bi-curious if not outright bisexual.
I snapped back to attention fast enough to catch Uzi's reply. "Well, it's either Sam or Braidon, and the way Joe described how traumatized the dude is I think I might actually feel guilty if I mess with him, so Sam it is! Also, we can probably pass it off as a bad magnet trip."
"Maybe don't do it at all , 'Zi?" Thad asked.
Uzi and I looked at eachother, and she opened her mouth to reply--
"Can I film it?" Lizzy asked. Everyone looked over at her immediately .
"Liz, you are fucking amazing , girl," I said.
" Hell yes!" Uzi said.
" Liz! " Doll protested.
"What?" she questioned. "We all know that if we tell them no, they're gonna do it anyway !" She turned, and flicked her hair in a completely unnecessary but dramatic gesture. "Might as well get some entertainment."
"Can I film it too?" Rebecca asked.
"'Becca--" she cut Darren off.
"Lizzy's right, they'll totally do it anyways."
Thad sighed. "Just… just make sure no one gets hurt…" he said as he shook his head and slumped. Kelsey put her face in her hands.
Uzi and I just grinned at each other, both thinking on the same unhinged wavelength, though for different reasons. We all got walking again, piling into class, Emily and Trevor giving us a confused look as we came in later than most of the others. I opened the chat.
Isekai_Protagonist: We're about to do something stupid and hilarious folks. Stand by for entertainment.
Thad_the_Chad: [Shared a GIF]
TheLastCrusade: Should I be concerned he's sharing a head-shaking GIF?
Кукла: Yes
TotesBestGirl: No
KayKay: Yes
Babeatron-Queenthousand: No
DarrenToDream: Maybe?
I had to overclock to avoid laughing aloud as those 5 messages came in simultaneously. Uzi locked her gaze onto Sam, then her visor started to flicker, likely also overclocking, and she slowly put her head down to pretend to be sleeping (a suggestion I'd made), and then I sat back and waited as Lizzy and Rebecca took their phones out and began to film. From a few seats up, Sam suddenly went rigid. I overclocked, and a tenth of a second later, got a DM from Uzi.
Darkxwolf16: I'm in.
Isekai_Protagonist: AWESOME.
Darkxwolf16: Oh.
Darkxwolf16: He's transmasc.
Darkxwolf16: Does this make me transphobic?
Huh. So I was right with my gut feeling there.
Isekai_Protagonist: Nah. Just makes you an asshole.
Darkxwolf16: Oh.
Darkxwolf16: I can live with that.
Darkxwolf16: What should I do first?
Isekai_Protagonist: DO A COOL FLIP!
"Sam" jerkily stood up, climbed on top of his desk, and the whole room went silent as he suddenly did a triple backflip out of nowhere. I had to start biting my tongue even with the overclock to keep down my laughter, and Lizzy and Rebecca weren't doing any better. I should feel like a horrible person for this, but I didn't! Man, did I have a fucked sense of morality.
Darkxwolf16: Quick! What now?
I had a eureka moment.
Isekai_Protagonist: Gangnam Style.
There was a pause that lasted a full tenth of a second as an overclocked Uzi-in-Sam's head had to process that brilliance, before Sam's body started to do the Gangnam Style dance on top of his desk while Uzi started playing the song from his speakers. Lizzy's dad walked into the room, took one look at the situation, and without saying anything, did an about face, and started walking right back out. The entire room, myself included, broke out in raucous mirth a second after the door shut.
"Dude," a random kid asked Sam, "What magnets are you high on right now, because I want some ," he said.
Uzi made Sam freeze, jump up, do a barrel roll, and land on one hand before snapping his gaze to the kid. "High?" Sam's voice asked. "Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!"
"Sam" dropped his hand, landing on his hardhat, and then started to spin like a damn top on his desk. I fell out of my chair, I was laughing so hard, rolling around on the floor while Lizzy and Rebecca struggled not to join me. Even Thad and Kelsey were starting to laugh.
"MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETS!!!" Uzi shouted via Sam's vocalizer, still spinning all the while.
Darkxwolf16: Give me one more idea, Joe!
I had to struggle to focus enough to type on my internal messaging app.
Isekai_Protagonist: I like trains!
"Sam" stopped spinning, and then did a triple somersault, landing on his knees and sliding along the floor towards the front of the room while miming playing an air guitar. "I like TRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNS!!!!"
Sam slumped over a second later, and Uzi jolted back up, shaking her head a few times as she started to stifle her own manic laughter. Sam himself groggily shook his head a few times, and then looked around, completely unsure of how he got to where he was and why the class was laughing. "W… Wha happened?" He mumbled, in a daze.
I had to struggle to stop wheezing from the floor before I could speak. "Dude… dude… I don't wanna do drugs, but holy robo-Jesus , that was the single best magnet-trip I have ever seen."
Sam stared at me blankly, while to my side, Uzi faked a yawn. "Damnit, I was taking a nap," she grumbled, pretending to still be depressed and tired, "What did I miss?" She was absolutely abusing the fuck out of overclock to say that convincingly.
"Nah I got that shit on film , Uzi," Lizzy said with a cheshire grin on her face.
Doll buried her face in her hands but was still shaking with suppressed laughter. The others weren't much better, and Rebecca was already posting the whole thing to Spacebook. Was this bullying? Probably, but Sam made Uzi cry that one time, even if Uzi totally fumbled the ball on that conversation herself, but Uzi's autistic, and Sam didn't have that excuse, so my own fucked up morality couldn't really bring itself to care.
Uzi just said, " Awesome ," and turned to shoot me a grin that I returned.
Operation: Cheer Uzi up from Khan Being an Asshole accomplished, people.
__________
That night, it was back to the Isekai Protagonist Grindset, and today I was putting my finishing touches on the secret door from Vault 1 to Vault 2. I'd built well over a dozen side rooms to the main hangar where the printers and workshop were, the firing range was recessed into a wall, and I planned quite a few purposes for the rest of the rooms. A panic room or 3, one was gonna be an armory, a couple public offices, and some break rooms, some of them for future "public" staff, and a handful for my inner circle. In one of those, I had a projector set up (in case we wanted to watch anime while on break). If you lifted the projector screen, there was a hidden button on the wall inside it, which, if pushed, flipped a panel on another wall. If you put a code into that panel, and then walked over to the opposite wall from it, and leaned against the wall, applying pressure with your back to a hidden pressure sensor on the inside of the wall, and also leaned with only one leg, having a foot against the wall to trip a second, separate pressure sensor, that got the secret door to open. I admired the stupidly complex hidden mechanism to actually get it to open for a moment, before it occurred to me that people out in the multiverse might think I was compensating for my no-longer-extant penis with all this, and I frowned and glared to my side at a perfect angle for a 4th Wall break. Overly complicated secret doors are fucking cool! Kiss my shiny robot ass, you testa di cazzos!
Anyways, beyond that being done and me starting to line the exterior of Vault 2 with Khan-grade materials, I had finally finished my designs for my shotguns and the war crime shells. I had briefly considered swapping the tungsten carbide flechettes for Depleted Uranium, but DU melts at roughly 1k Celsius lower than White Phosphorus burns at. Which was bad for my incendiary shells, but definitely something to consider for more conventional bullets. I was already thinking of creating a modified Desert Eagle and/or Glock for both hand-canon and machine-pistol options that I'd put DU rounds into, and those would be way faster to prototype without having to work around the insane temperatures the shotguns were subjected to. Hell, I could just copy designs off the internet archives and then modify them as needed. And after I had those… bolt pistol. 100%, definitely, absolutely, gonna get my hands on a real life bolt pistol, and then a full-auto capable proper bolter after that.
Also, I needed to build a decon room for any experiments with nuclear materials… as well as a separate room to do said experiments in. DU itself has essentially negligible amounts of emitted radiation, enough that even regular ass clothes can block most of it, doubly so for us robots, but it doesn't hurt to take precautions, and I'll probably end up experimenting with more nasty stuff at some point, so may as well get the room ready now… will probably set it up in Vault 2 though. Having nuclear materials accessible to the general public was a bad idea with humans. With Worker Drones? Better in the sense that there wouldn't be malicious actors who would try to cause problems with nuclear materials, but simultaneously worse in that many worker drones, earlier generations coded by humans especially, tended to not think of consequences when doing stuff. Basically, I had next to no chance of someone stealing nuclear materials I left in the open for nefarious purposes, but a higher chance of nuclear accidents occurring instead. So it was just a better idea to put all the radioactive shit in Vault 2 and make the whole thing a non-issue.
Moving on from that, I decided that I may as well get to my least favorite part of the week, and moved over to the small room I'd built on the periphery of Vault 1 to try and brute force the bootloop frequency. Fun times. I walked in, sighed, checked the flashbulb to make sure that the settings were indeed slightly different from the ones I used the last time to test it, verified that they were, stood in front of the bulb, and flash-banged my optics. I groaned, aggravated, as my efforts only resulted in me having to blink a few times to recalibrate my optics. By now, I'd automated most of the process, a simple mental command from my OS tweaking the settings ever so slightly as needed, and I looked at the bulb, grimaced, and set it off again. Once more, just suffering for my poor optics and dejection in my processors. I rolled my eyemotes, had the settings changed, flashed myself again, no luck. I sighed (something I did a lot while doing this), tweaked the settings, and then pressed the button to trigger the fla--
--I came back to awareness on the floor. I felt… dazed, for just a moment, before I sat up, confused. I was still in the room, still alone, and had been testing the flashbulb… the flash… bulb… oh . I pulled up my internal clock. It's been 10 minutes. Oh shit , I thought, and I scrambled to my feet, dashing over to the flashbulb, noting down the exact statistics for the flash I just used. I actually felt vertigo for a moment. Was this… Did I actually… I groaned. There was one way to be sure… and I'd have to test it again regardless just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. I set everything back to run the same frequency of light on the flashbulb a second time, braced myself, and then pressed the button agai--
--The first thing I did after I forced aside my disorientation on waking up again on the floor was check my internal clock. Another 10 minutes I couldn't recall had gone by. I started to chuckle from my prone position. That chuckle evolved to full blown manic glee in less than ten seconds. I whooped with victorious joy. I got it! I actually got it! Instantaneous KOs on anyone I want! Fuck yes! I gotta start setting this up in flashbangs, and in a pen light, and holy shit I'm so fucking ecstatic to be done with this!
I immediately copied down the settings for the flash a second time for redundancy. Was probably gonna run another test or two in a few minutes to be absolutely sure, including with literal sunglasses, as well as goggles, and a welding mask, to verify if each of those was actually capable of stopping a bootloop, but I was already thinking of ideas on how to make a polarized visor for my teenaged frame, that would filter light ever so slightly dimmer such that sentinel flashes wouldn't work on me by default. Actually, fuck it. The later testing could wait a few minutes, I was riding on a robo-dopamine high and wanted to head over to one of the PCs I had set up in the workshop to start designing a Men In Black style flash-pen to bootloop people with that I could carry around. I wanted to have that damn thing in my pocket yesterday .
____________
A year and seven months into my time on Copper 9, and Thad was having a shindig at his place, just for the friend group. About half of us were 9 by now, though the timing of my arrival meant my body was one of the youngest, and therefore I'd be waiting the longest to actually be able to kick off surface stuff with a teen frame. I will say, Thad threw some crazy good parties, and his parents were awesome for helping him host them. I can see why Uzi and N were so excited to get invited to one of his shindigs in episode 2 after they saved him from J's corpse turned into a Solverpede… and why even what the fandom referred to as Eldritch J was actually upset that she wasn't invited. But, you know, cool kids only, and trying to eat Thad so you can use a hologram of his likeness to lure other drones to their deaths so you can eat them to finish a mat-collection protocol and rebuild your host isn't cool. In fact, it's very uncool . Anyways, I was taking the lot of us through Elden Ring Re-Time-32-Mastered with a recoded version of the Seamless Co-Op mod to allow all ten of us to cause chaos in the Lands Between (Yes, I'd made a new character for it, and yes, it was an astrologer, because yes, mage/sorcerer builds were my favorites, and I wanted to use the Darkmoon Greatsword, and yes, even a thousand years later, Ranni's Welsh accent was like drugs for my audials), and cause chaos we did (Uzi was definitely looking stuff up in overclock, she'd gone out of her way to start be-lining for Frenzy stuff as soon as she'd found that first spell to blast the fires of Chaos out of her eyeballs in the Weeping Peninsula, and I already knew which ending she'd go for… have fun in The Hole to the Proscription, you gremlin).
We were about 4 hours into the play session (we used our industrial grade drone strength to drag all our TV's and consoles/PCs over to Thad's place to set up a LAN to get around From's infamous latency), myself having optimized cheesing bosses I shouldn't be able to conventionally kill to powerlevel and get good gear so that I could rush Ranni's questline only to come up to the roadblock that I had to get everyone else up to par so we could properly experience the glory of the Radahn Festival. And that's when Doll suddenly sucked in a breath, a hand leaving her controller to cover her right optic, grimacing. We all looked over with concern.
"Again?" Kelsey asked.
"Are you sure you're okay, Doll?" Uzi also asked. "Because this keeps happening , and I'm worried."
" I-I'm fine, cuz ," Doll weakly protested, and then she yelped, because Lizzy had grabbed her wrist and was already dragging her along.
"I'll take care of it," Lizzy said, as if commenting on the weather. "Sorry about cutting things short, Thad, we'll come back for our stuff tomorrow."
"No, no!" Thad said. "It's cool… but, are you sure everything's okay?"
"This, like, keeps coming up," Rebecca added. "Is there anything we can do to help?"
Lizzy grimaced, not meeting any of our gazes. I thought about the oil in my pocket, even now, and had to suppress my own grimace that I had no plausible excuse to have that on hand. "I got this," Lizzy said, sounding less than confident. "Totally handled, but like, thanks."
She left with Doll before anyone else could protest, and the play session fizzled out rather quickly after that. I resolved to keep an extra tab on Lizzy and Doll tomorrow. And I was starting to actually consider throwing caution to the wind and just offer them my oil, because I was getting really worried at this point.
_____________
(Lizzy)
I couldn't keep doing this. Not safely, at least. I cared about Doll. I cared about her so much. She was, like, my bestie. Better than the resties. But she kept needing more and more oil, and we still couldn't figure out why , and I nearly fell over on the way to class this morning. I would have fallen over if Dolly hadn't been there to catch me. I… I couldn't girlboss my way through this anymore. My oil wasn't enough for her anymore. I was gonna get hurt, and Doll was already so guilty from me giving her my own oil over and over, and she felt more guilty now. But… I couldn't just stop trying to help her. She still had her parents' bodies in her hab , for robo-god's sake! She needed help , but I didn't fucking know what to do !
I went through the first half of the day in a borderline haze, barely even going on my phone. I can remember Doll practically hovering around me, I remember her barely concealed guilt, Rebecca's concern. I think even Uzi asked if I was okay once, I was that obvious. Joe… he had a hand in one of his coat pockets all morning long, concern and even fear visible in his optics, and that made me feel worse, because he was always so seemingly collected and had some kind of plan for almost everything, but I was the reason he was looking like that. It was only after lunch that I started to feel better after giving too much oil for Doll's sake last night, and I only really started to snap out of a fugue state towards the end of the day.
I'd been prepared to get up and trudge home, still tired from the oil loss, glancing over to check on Dolly, only to find that she'd been staring at me for who knows how long. Damn, I was off my game from the low oil if I had that kinda loss in situational awareness. Her gaze hardened, and she looked to the side before nodding to herself, standing up and grabbing my hand, pulling me up herself, before tugging me along as she walked over to where Uzi was getting ready to leave. I didn't let go of her hand. Totally because I was still a bit disoriented. " Cuz ," she spoke up, grabbing the emo's attention, " I need your help with something. Can you follow us? "
That raised alarm bells in my processors. "Dolly, I'm--"
She cut me off. I tried to ignore how her being assertive with me was… really cool. At least I didn't blush. " It's not okay, Liz! I-- " She cut herself off, and looked away from the both of us with grit teeth.
"Whatever this is," Uzi said, an uncharacteristic amount of seriousness creeping into her tone, "I'll help."
" Thanks, Uzi ," Doll said, looking up at her and giving her a heartfelt smile.
We weaved through the crowds of leaving students, and I caught one last concerned glance from Joe before I lost sight of him. About 15 minutes later, we were alone in one of Outpost 3's many, many corridors, and we came to a stop. "Alright, what's going on?" Uzi asked, turning around to look at us. I caught her glance down at our hands, and hastily stopped gripping onto Doll's, trying to think of a way to divert attention so the gremlin wouldn't tease me, but she didn't say anything about that, instead asking, "Is this about Doll being low on oil?"
I glanced over at Doll with alarm, already seeing her opening her mouth, and I blurted out, "Doll, you're gonna tell her . I, I can still help! You don't need to get other people involved."
Doll looked me in the optics. " You're gonna get hurt , Liz. And I should have told her sooner, anyways. I trust her, but you kept insisting you could handle it alone, but it's clear you can't anymore. " I grimaced and looked away, because she was right , even though I really didn't want to admit that.
"Tell me what ?" Uzi asked. "You two are making me worried !"
Doll turned, took a few steps forwards, and wrapped Uzi in a hug. The other purple-haired drone went stiff for a moment, but then returned it wholeheartedly. "I'm sorry, Uzi," she said, before tightening the hug for a moment and then stepping back. "I've been losing oil for a while now. I don't know why or how, or how to stop it, but it keeps happening. Lizzy was… she was giving me her own oil because my own systems can't replace it fast enough, but the rate at which I'm losing it keeps increasing, and she can't safely give enough anymore, and I don't know what to do!" she said, optics hollowing out. "You're smart, Uzi, and I trust you. Is… is there anything you can do?"
Uzi looked at us both, and I swear I caught a flicker on her optics for just a moment, before her expression rapidly shifted from worry to determination. She took a breath. "Look," she began, "I'm willing to give my own oil too, but this is gonna be a problem that looks like it's gonna keep getting worse. Can we go to Joseph?"
What.
" What? " Doll echoed my thoughts
"Joe's weird," Uzi said, and both Doll and I immediately nodded in agreement, "But, he also like… plans for random stuff, if that makes sense. Like, I talk to the dude about Murder Drones, and he actually has detailed ideas to stalk them and stuff. He also thinks stuff out, and if he could come up with a solution to get you," she said, pointing at me, "and Rebecca to not just stop bullying me, but also become my friends, and do that on the fly while I was threatening to beat him with a wrench, he might be able to think outside the box for this."
"You were gonna beat him with a wrench?!?" I asked.
Uzi grimaced, and looked away. Poor girl still had trouble keeping eyemote contact with us sometimes. "I had… a lot of trust issues and stuff… and Joe still wanted to help me. I trusted him then, and he delivered. I'll try my best to help you out regardless, but I want you two to trust him here."
" Are you sure , Uzi? " Doll asked. " This is… really personal to me. I trust, Joe, but… " she trailed off.
"Yeah, this is totally a personal thing," I agreed.
Uzi rolled her optics. "Joe already keeps like half a dozen secrets from us, like wherever the hell he made that shovel," she glanced around, as if expecting Joe to materialize just to correct her that it was an entrenching tool as he so often insisted. I wasn't ashamed to admit that I glanced around too. The guy was really particular about that, for some reason. Uzi shook her head. "He can keep one more secret."
Doll looked at Uzi for a few seconds, not saying anything, before sighing. " If you're sure, cuz. "
"I am," Uzi said. "He's probably in his hab by now, let's check there first."
"I could totes text him to check," I said.
Uzi blinked. And then sighed and slumped. "Robo-goddamnit, why doesn't this stuff occur to me?"
" Maybe it's the autism ?" Doll suggested.
"Stupid humans, and their stupid autism, and their stupid sadistic assholes giving us autism," she started grumbling, while I opened a DM to Joe.
Babeatron-Queenthousand: Hey Joe?
Isekai_Protagonist: Wassup?
Babeatron-Queenthousand: You at your hab RN?
Isekai_Protagonist: Yeah?
Isekai_Protagonist: What do you need?
Babeatron-Queenthousand: Can, Doll, Uzi, and I come over RQ? We need to talk about something.
There was about a second longer than Joe usually took to reply before he did.
Isekai_Protagonist: Yeah, no problem. I'll go get out some snacks or something.
Babeatron-Queenthousand: K. Thnx.
Isekai_Protagonist: NP
"He said he's good," I said aloud, cutting off Dolly laughing at Uzi's grumblings. We were off to his hab seconds later.
_________
I was still tired when we got to his door and hit the bell, and Joe opened it a second later. Of course the doofus would be waiting the entire time for us. It was… actually kinda sweet of him to care that much, and not the first time I've noticed him go out of his way to make sure we were okay. I could still reflexively pull up the memory file of when Chad nearly shattered my visor before Joe caught his wrist. I hadn't even seen him creeping up to be ready to intercept that. He took a concerned look at the three of us, gaze lingering on me for a moment, before flicking down to the gloves I was wearing. My own eyemotes went hollow. Did he know?
"Come in," he said in an even tone, stepping to the side and gesturing inside. He had a couple of bottles of antifreeze on his table, one of each in our favorite flavors. My optics widened. He really was observant. We sat down at his kitchen table without fanfare, and he passed a bottle over to each of us. "I got a feeling I know what this is about, but I'd rather you tell me than guess." Doll and I looked at one another, worried, but Uzi spoke up before we could.
"Doll's been losing oil for over a year now. Lizzy was giving her her own, but Doll keeps needing more and more. Lizzy's gonna get hurt if she keeps doing it alone. I'm willing to help, but I thought that if you could manage what you did when we first met, you might be able to come up with a better situation."
Joe sighed and slumped a bit, in relief ? Before he blinked and snapped back to normal so fast that I had to wonder if my memories glitched for a second. "You'd be right," he said, with a sudden grin.
" What ." Doll stated.
" Seguimi, " he said in Italian. I rolled my optics that he kept insisting on using it randomly, but we all did, as he lead us to… the bedroom of his dead parents? Doll and I looked at eachother with sudden alarm. Oh robo-god, not him too! He gently opened the door--
The room was pristine, and the bed made, and Uzi gave us both a confused look at our synchronized sigh, though Joe only raised an eye-mote and gave a small grin. He pushed the bed to the side, pulled out his shovel--
"It's an entrenching tool," he said, cutting off my thoughts. "I know you're thinking shovel." He pushed it into a gap in the floor plating under where the bed was, and gently pried the panel off, revealing a hidden space where a safe was.
"When the hell did you set this up?!?" Uzi asked.
"About a month back," he drawled, as he started turning the dial on the safe.
" Why do you need a safe under a floor panel under a bed ?" Doll asked.
"Because people would ask questions if they knew what I had in it," he said, opening it up and pulling out a thermos. He uncapped it, and passed it to Doll, who took it on reflex, looking down, before her optics immediately hollowed.
" Why do you have a safe with oil in it?!? "
"What?" I asked.
"The hell?!?" Uzi followed up.
Completely unphased by the literal thermos of oil he just handed Doll, he reached into the safe again and pulled out another thermos . "I have more if you need it."
" Where did this come from? " Doll asked, staring at him with increasing alarm.
Joe blinked a few times. And then straightened up. "Oh! Oh! Uh, totally ethically sourced oil! I did not kill or mutilate anyone for this! Sorry if I gave that misconception. All my own oil!"
"Your own oil?" I shouted.
"Not all at once," he said, sounding mildly incredulous. "I did my research! A pint every two weeks is perfectly safe!"
"But why are you oil-letting yourself?" Uzi blurted out. " How long have you been doing it?!?"
"Oh, that!" Joe said, and the nutcase had the lugnuts to laugh , "With a knife, and painting over the spot that I sliced on my hand to hide the cut, for about a year and a half now, and just in case one of my friends spontaneously became a robot vampire."
"WHO THE FUCK PLANS FOR THAT?!?" Uzi echoed my own sentiments.
He rolled his optics. "I do, apparently. And I was also right to do so, apparently," he said with a smug grin. He handed the second thermos to Doll. "Two pints. Should be enough for you the next time you need it. After that, track how long until you need more, so we can try to establish a rate at which you burn through oil." I suddenly got pinged with a file sent from Joe. "Liz, there's a list of stuff you can eat that will help you with oil production. Come back over here in…" his visor flickered as he went onto his own internal calendar-- this guy regularly scheduled it?!? --"12 days, and we can start syncing our oil letting so we can safely and regularly slit our palms to exude our vitae in ritualistic offerings for our adorable vampiric friend."
All 3 of us paused for a good five seconds at the sheer fucking absurdity of that statement.
" A-Adorable ?!?" half of Doll's screen was just red hash marks from her blush.
"I call it as I see it," he drawled. "And at the risk of Uzi kicking me in the shin, all three of you are adorable."
"Bite me!" Joe started laughing in response to that, and only laughed harder when Uzi actually kicked his shin, even as he winced.
Wait, did that mean he thought I was adorable?
"Anyways," he changed the subject, briefly reaching down to rub his shin, earning a satisfied "Nyeh!" from Uzi, "Kinda wish you came to me earlier with this, but I got a stockpile. We can keep up with this, though, no problem, especially as we keep adding more from ourselves. We could totally bring in the others too."
"Wait, what?" I asked.
" No! " Doll shouted.
Joe sighed. "You really gonna tell me to my face that if you explained this to Thad and asked him to donate on a regular schedule, he'd say no or snitch?"
Doll froze. So did Uzi. I almost did… but Thad was Thad. "No, he definitely would help."
"And so would the others," Joe said. "Just… trust them, okay?"
Doll looked down, at the two oil thermoses she held in each hand, and then back up to Joe. " Are… are you sure ?"
"Totally," he said with a warm grin. I couldn't help but smile myself.
"Alright!" Uzi suddenly cut in. "When do I slit my own palms for satanic rituals?!?"
Joe froze completely. For a good three seconds. "Uh… before I get to that, can we take a quick detour to try and guess why Doll has this problem?"
"We have no idea," I said.
"She had to have gotten it from somewhere !" Joe argued, and then added, "Wait!" He snapped his gaze to Doll. "You said your mom was afraid of 'it' manifesting in Uzi." His optics widened as if he came to a realization, and he snapped his fingers. "She was worried you could get whatever 'it' was… you could actually have 'it,' but Uzi didn't get 'it.' And that's what the oil-loss is a symptom of!" He started pacing, and we watched, transfixed, because he suddenly seemed possessed by a manic energy. "Whatever's going on, you could have got it from your mom! And if Uzi's mom knew your mom before they met Khan, Uzi's mom could have had the same thing! Which means Uzi might have it! But it isn't active, for whatever reason… So… we probably shouldn't risk if Uzi could turn it on, because we don't know if Doll's own oil needs are going to stop increasing, so we shouldn't chance a second case of this until we know more!"
"Holy crap that's ridiculous but it actually makes sense ," Uzi blurted out.
Joe smiled to himself for some reason. "I'm on a fucking roll today," he mumbled aloud, and then turned. "So! We get everyone else to donate their own oil for Doll except Uzi, right?"
I blinked a few times, and played everything back in my head. "Yeah… that's actually a good plan."
" How the hell were you actually ready for this and able to plan everything else on the fly ?" Doll asked, as flabbergasted as I was.
"I'm just that fucking awesome," Joe bragged.
Uzi gave him a deadpan look, but had a raised eye-mote. She went to open her mouth, but then Joe spoke again.
"Hey, remember that time where I said there was some kinda conspiracy revolving around your moms? I fucking told you so ," he said with a grin.
"Robo-goddamnit, you're gonna be so damn smug about that, jerk," Uzi groused.
"Oh, totally ," he agreed, and Uzi groaned.
I just looked over at Doll, and she met my gaze. I gave her a smile while Uzi and Joe bickered. She smiled back. Yeah, this was weird, and concerning, and a little scary, but Doll was gonna be fine. She had her cousin, she had our friends to watch out for her, Joe and his crazy paranoia to save the day, she had me, and I had her . And that's what mattered