Besties.

We get to see what V is up to, also Lizzy is here.

V sighed as she stretched out on the bonnet of the burned out car, a few weeks ago N had started letting her have ‘supervised’ walks around the spire to keep her from going even more crazy than she already was. ‘Supervised’ meaning he had a GPS tag stuck on her that sent an alert when she moved a certain distance away, so as long as she didn't try to bolt or kill the purple thing, she was mostly left alone.

She looked over the decrepit city, her vision just as fuzzy as her mind, ever since she landed on Copper-9 it was like her memory drive had been stuffed with cotton.

V could hardly remember anything about her life before being briefed on their mission to Copper-9 by their technician, Tessa (something buried deep in V’s mind recoiled at the thought of her) and the small glimpses she could get were muddled and confusing, the V that lived in those memories felt so much smaller than she was. Colder too, the V that lived in her memories was never once assaulted by the burning sting in her insides that spurned her ever onwards to the next source of oil.

V ran her fingers along a crack in the car's windshield, every time she thought about those memories it felt like she was standing on a precipice, staring down into the dark unknown of her forgotten history. All it would take was one small slip, and she would be sent hurtling into the inky depths, never to be seen again.

She didn’t know exactly how long she lay there, watching the hazy clouds drift by, but eventually the sound of boots of snow broke the silence that enveloped her.

She turned her head and saw a blurry outline of pink standing out against the grey landscape, the burnt-sugar sweetness of fresh oil perfuming the surrounding air, her systems automatically tracking the source to a large duffel bag. Her toaster was here, good, she was just starting to feel peckish.

Lizzy grinned at her as she came closer. “Hi bestie, hope you weren't getting too bored while I was gone” she tossed the duffel bag next to V, its contents squelching as it impacted.

V snorted. “Bitch, it’s been three days since we last hung out, and I'm not the one making the trek out here each time. If anyone's getting bored, it sure ain't me” she used one of her claws to peel apart the zipper, revealing the smorgasbord of various drone parts within, she grabbed out a finger and started chewing, savouring the little ‘pop’ of the ball joints between her teeth.

Lizzy ‘hmph’d and flopped down on a pile of snow next to the car, pulling her phone out and tapping on the screen as she told V all the latest petty drama that had happened at school and showing her other drone’s outfits for the two of them to mock. V would never be caught dead admitting this out loud, but it was actually kind of nice having Lizzy around, it wasn't often that she could be so unapologetically catty with someone else.

J had a stick so far up her butt that you could probably see it in the back of her mouth, N was too much of a sweetheart for gossip, and talking to the angsty purple limpet attached to his side was about as fun as drinking her own nanite acid.

Lizzy was the only one she could talk to like this. It made her almost want to not eat her when she eventually made her way back into the bunker.

V couldn't describe it, but it felt like whenever she heard N and the purple thing talk about their ‘plan’ to go to earth, two parts of her code started screeching at her, one of them told her to run , to get as far away from whatever they were doing as she could. And the other begged her to stay , to make sure N stayed safe and stayed out of whatever that genocidal gremlin had planned.

So V compromised with herself, instead of running away from the problem or staying and getting caught in the crossfire, she would just stop the problem before it happened. By killing all the worker drones here and hauling N off to some other colony. It was a win-win situation! She got to gorge herself on as many workers as she could stomach, and N could stop putting himself in unnecessary danger by questioning things he wasn't supposed to.

Lizzy tapped her thigh, she looked down into her pink optics with a raised eyebrow, Lizzy’s face was lit by the harsh brightness of her phone, her expression was unreadable.

“...so we’ve been hanging out for a while now” Lizzy began, slowly, like she was worried V might bolt mid-conversion. “And Prom is coming up in a little while…”

“Do you wanna, like, come with me or whatever?” 

V blinked. “What's Prom?”

Lizzy baulked at her. “Oh my Robo-God, are you serious! Do you live under a rock or something?”

She jumped up to her feet and came around to the front of the car V was sat on. “Prom is the most important event in a young drone’s life! Literally EVERYONE from school will be there, and they all pick someone to be Prom Queen, which is the best thing that can happen to you, by the way-”

V started to tune out Lizzy’s voice, everyone would be there? All in one spot?

She broke out into a grin, oh this was just too perfect . “I’ll do it” she answered gleefully, cutting off whatever Lizzy was about to say. “I’ll go to your prom thing” her tail started thrashing in excitement.

Lizzy smiled before tossing her a cheap looking burner phone. “Cool, I’ll text you the deets, see you there” she turned around and started heading back to the bunker.

V looked down at the burner phone, all it had was Lizzy’s number, which made sense. Not like V had anyone else who she would want to talk to that didn't live in the spire with her. V’s claws tensed around the phone, disassembly drones were fitted with algorithmically fed subroutines that allowed them to notice and understand even the most minute of microexpressions, both for analysing prey behaviour and to minimise miscommunication between squadmates. So she had been able to pick up on Lizzy's emotions easily, she was scared, but not of V herself. 

No, she only started to feel afraid when she brought up prom, was she scared of what V was going to do? But then why would she tell her in the first place?

Whatever, it didn't matter what Lizzy felt, the emotions of a deviant toaster weren't going to make V stray from the path she put herself on, that ship had sailed a long time ago.

She looked back to the spire looming in the distance, where N and his little purple leech were no doubt wasting precious hunting time tinkering away at the drop pod. She sighed. She wouldn't have to worry about that for much longer, she just had to tough it out until then.

She stood up, fanned out her wings, and took off towards the spire. Comforted by the fact that soon, things would be back to how they were before, and she could stop worrying about questions and space travel and dreams of a body that didn’t burn.

End notes

*slaps the top of V* this bad girl can fit so much trauma in her.

Also, uh. 627 hits as of now, holy fuck that is more than double the numbers on chapter two, I'm incredibly happy and grateful but also where did you all come from. See you all in two weeks!