Well, that was a week. Not sure if I wanted to use any words to describe that week, but it was definitely a week. I'd split time about equally between making some plans, doing some research, and freaking the fuck out in increasingly mild episodes of existential horror, but I think I was mostly used to being a robot now. Was definitely gonna miss not being able to fart anymore, though. My sixth grade ELA teacher had once told me that a day would come where I would no longer find farts funny, and that day had still yet to come. It was probably a coping mechanism, but honestly one of my biggest regrets about no longer being a meat-person was that I'd no longer be able to rip ass as to make myself laugh. Drones did shit though. It just came out as a… gel like liquid slurry that I refuse to describe. Absolutely horrifying to comprehend, but it was smooth every single time, and the inbuilt bidets on the toilets meant that using the bathroom was quick and easy, so as long as I didn't look at what was coming out of my drone ass and went about once a day, I could spent the vast majority of however long my second life lasted very pointedly not thinking about it.
I'd also changed my wardrobe from whatever the guy who used to be me had. I had a black t-shirt underneath a twin-tailed winter-camo trench coat, and similarly styled cargo pants. My self expression was down to me, and if I was an Isekai Protagonist, I'd dress in what I thought was both cool, practical, and comfy. Took downloading some instructions on how to use a sewing machine directly into my OS and trading in a bunch of the clothes I was no longer going to use to requisition the fabric that I was going to use, but I was happy with the results. Old human hangups made it so that I wasn't comfortable without pants, and cargo pants had a lot of pockets, which some day I'd have absolutely filled with various weapons, gadgets, and explosives like a shitty, knock-off utility belt. Same with the trench coat. And considering that Copper 9 was a frozen tomb-world where it literally snowed fucking asbestos, the camo only made sense. My hair in my first life was brown, but I wanted to see what black would look like, and this time around I didn't have to worry about the hassle of hair dye or actually managing the length of my synthetic wig. Some messy black bangs in front of me, nothing actually obscuring my vision, some more hair partly covering where my ears would be if I had those anymore, and the mess of hair behind me reaching to the small of my back but bound in a ponytail. Man, being 4 feet tall again sucked.
I'd gone back through my memories of the show, combing through everything I knew about canon Murder Drones, and then re-delved through a bunch of the more notable fanfics I knew about and/or read, just in case. I was a bit nervous about meeting the actual folks from the show, especially 9 years early, and in the wake of V's rampage, but I'd have to manage it sooner or later, and avoiding school now that the week was up would have folks prying into me more than I wanted them to. I figured as long as I could utilize basic fucking social skills (which as a chronic introvert with very low social batteries, was something that honestly concerned me), I could manage this, which only left me with one real problem.
That being, that I had to go back to fucking school . I hoped to god that the actual educational content of the schools here weren't modeled after the American educational system, if only because I think I'd actually lose my mind if I had to go through that a second time. Some good news though: the population of the Bunker, despite… recent dips, currently sat at 174,352 worker drones, which was a hell of a lot more than I expected, probably more than canon, and definitely more than a lot of fics like Drone Fortress, but also not the highest number I've seen, which definitely goes to Sisters and the roughly million or so worker drones that Uzi and Doll crammed from all around the sector into Outpost 3 while JNV were on vacation. Reminded me that there were canonically at least 9 total Outposts out there, which was something I'd definitely have to look into. But I digress. Outpost 3 was big in this timeline, pretty much literally a small underground city, with plenty of spots on the periphery I'd probably be able to set up shop in later on. Funnily enough, when it came to a socio-economic model for the drones down here, we were already running on a pseudo socialist economy, with no currency and a "resources allocated according to needs" system. The more I thought about it, the more the idea of organizing things into a Anarcho-Syndicalist system wherein drones of a given workshop or factory in different professions directly elected representatives to speak for them and in turn decide policy could actually work. But I was getting ahead of myself. Survive for now, kill the Solver next, and reorganize society in such a manner that would have conservatives frothing at the mouth afterwards.
My point here was that there were actually a pretty big number of drones hereabouts, so I actually lucked out when I looked into my school and class and found out that I would be in the same room as the main cast for most of the next decade. I could have still figured something out if that wasn't the case, but once again, convenient as fuck, and I'd take what I could get. Additionally, I could fall back on my digitized human memories to abuse the fuck out of perfect recall for pretty much anything that didn't require writing an essay, so everything up to college was essentially covered. Granted, school was going to be boring as fuck , but at least I didn't have to actually pay attention 90% of the time, and I could use that downtime to brainstorm for the future, experiment with coding, and start plans for a rather nasty idea of a computer virus I could slap someone with if needed. I already had other plans to figure out how to multithread myself so I could literally do something else or internally deliberate while simultaneously sitting through a lecture or holding a conversation, and I absolutely wanted to see if I could design a code-string to allow myself to overclock my hardware for short periods of having enhanced thinking speed, increased processing power, faster reflexes, and greater strength, and sitting through elementary school lectures for hours on end would be the perfect time to look into that.
On the other hand, I had to go back to school again, which sorely made me tempted to reenact Uzi's hours-if-not-days long groan from canon. Speaking of, I was definitely getting glances as I walked down the hall of the school, closing on my classroom. Probably for the best that I'd yet to make, nevermind wear , the armband with a gear and crossed torch-and-hammer, you know? My ensemble wasn't really out there compared to what some of the people I saw were wearing, but it wasn't exactly mainstream either. Again, though, I didn't really care what people, especially a bunch of kids, thought. I was here to be comfortable, do some networking with future important individuals, and survive fucking armageddon.
I got to the door, and took a moment to collect my thoughts. I took an unnecessary breath, and again contemplated the fact that, damn , I really was about to go back to school. Well, nothing to it, I suppose. I thumbed the activation switch, once more lamenting that I was down a finger on both hands, walked through the door, and in the span of a single second, glanced into the room and took everyone in. That was the teacher, barely raising a digital eyebrow as I hesitantly stepped into the room. And looking further back… yeah, that was weird, seeing these kids, even if they were in slightly smaller frames, in real life. Yeah, I could see face displays I could pin to names, like Penny, Sam, Kelsey, Braidon, Emily, Trevor, and then some, a few optics that looked vaguely familiar to the screaming drones right at the end of episode 8, but most of my focus were on four drones in particular.
Uzi Doorman was not yet in her iconic crossbones and dead battery hoodie, nor her striped socks, but she did have the beanie as well as a smaller version of her boots. At the moment the girl was wearing a purple sweater with a cyborg raven on it, and a thigh-length black skirt. Made sense she didn't have her canon outfit yet, considering that we were all still in child-frames right now, and that the canon outfits would currently be a couple sizes too big. I was really looking forward to a whole extra foot of height once I was ten. Reminded me that if I planned to make any secret passages or tunnels, I would have to make them at least six feet in height, if only to not give myself an aneurysm in the future… and so that I won't get labeled as an ableist by any Murder Drones I might turn. Don't want to discriminate against the tall, after all. Also to not make any egregious changes to my own frame for the next few years, simply because I'd have to discard it at some point, and anyone taking a look at me as I swapped frames would ask questions I wouldn't want to answer. Funnily enough, most of the hardware inside our heads and bodies would literally just be physically transferred to the new frames.
Anyways, I managed to not freeze up as purple optics briefly met my light gray ones, her gaze wary , but not nearly as hostile as I was initially expecting. Which, in retrospect, makes sense. This Uzi has 9 less years of neglect from Khan, bullying from Lizzy and her posse, ostracization from all her peers (minus Thad because he's just a bro like that), and generally stewing in her own repressed emotional insecurities. She looked away from me and got back to scribbling in a notebook, possibly already working on weapons plans, and I moved my gaze to the next drone of interest.
Thad was already in his canon outfit, or rather, a smaller version of it, and I was completely surprised by that. Then again, the guy was definitely cool enough to pull off being awesome in the same outfit for over a decade straight. Neon green optics met my own as he gave a smile and a wave, and I gave a hesitant grin back. Dude, why the fuck did this guy have to be so cool? I wasn't jealous, it just felt like something about the universe was just unfair that Thad was just that likeable, friendly, and genuinely a personable person. His silvery blonde hair was already comfortably sitting under the backwards-facing maroon cap with white accents that I remembered from the show, brown insignia of a football with a plug and all. His maroon vest had yellow sleeves, his black t-shirt underneath sported the 0 I'd been expecting, and his red shoes might have been a shade or two darker than the ones he'd have later.
Behind Uzi I could see a pair of pink optics briefly glance up from a phone, Lizzy seemingly taking stock of my arrival, before raising an eyebrow and actually fully diverting her attention to me. I wasn't good with people… or drones, in this case, but they were still people , but her optics shifted just slightly as she looked me up and down, and the phone lowered slightly as she gave the slightest nod. I blinked. I guess my outfit met Lizzy's approval? Not sure how to feel about that, beyond slightly happy. I'd made a good first impression, apparently. She already had the yellow cat-ear bow from canon, and her blonde hair was also in the ponytail I remembered, if a bit shorter than what I recalled. Which made sense, she probably got a wig with longer synthetic hair when she updated to a larger frame. Also, only really making sense now that I was thinking about it, she wasn't in her cheerleader outfit yet, because this was still gradeschool and that crap was still years away. She had white boots with pink laces, a pink skirt with a white band on top, and a pink t-shirt with an anime-style white cat face stenciled on the front.
Behind Thad, sat the last main character in the room. Doll (my HUD took a quarter second to flash a reminder I'd coded to not make puns about or even mention her last name) was sitting at her desk, not even having looked up, red optics staring dully at the folded hands she had in front of her. The Russian Solver drone-to-be was catatonic, not reacting to any external stimulus at all, purple hair styled as canon, but again, slightly shorter than it would be. She wore a fairly conservative long-sleeved maroon turtleneck sweater, and a beige, pleated skirt that stopped just below her knees. Her boots were brown, with black laces, and her hardhat matched her sweater. Fuck, man, this poor girl was horrifically traumatized. I'd been planning to try and get an in with Uzi first, for the political pull with Khan and reigning in her worst "kill all humans" tendencies (which, you know, being a human ghost-in-the-shell made cause for a rather healthy amount of concern), but, damn my bleeding heart, Doll needed someone to help her, and Lizzy evidently either hadn't befriended her at this point in the timeline, or was only doing the bare minimum to make sure that she didn't try to kill herself.
And now that I was thinking on it, the mood in the room in general was pretty shit. Even Thad seemed to be a bit tense, and it wasn't hard to realize that the cause of it happened a week ago when V either killed one of the parents, if not outright orphaned, half the kids in this room… and judging by the empty seats I could see, some of those kids hadn't made it either. I pulled up the short list of things I might need to say, and crossed a couple things out and mentally resolved to amend some others. Social butterfly I was not, but even my dumb ass could read the room right now, and it was definitely not the time to crack any jokes.
Then the teacher surprised me by actually speaking up when he wasn't contractually obligated to. Then again, these were actual people , and not static characters on a screen. They could, would , change, as time went on and outside factors affected them. Especially the children in the room, something that I was in fact relying on to save not just my own shiny metal ass, but several of theirs, and the universe in general.
"Students," he (really should learn his name, especially if he was actually Lizzy's dad like a lot of fanfics made him, particularly the one that my current plans were to emulate) droned (heh) on, "This is Joseph. Yes, that's his new name now. You might remember him by something else, but the recent attack that took his parents also left him with permanent memory loss, and he apparently didn't want to use the name of a person he didn't remember being."
Well. At least that introduction was done for me. I took in a breath, and kept my face neutral. Time to make at least a not bad first impression for the class. "Hey," I began. "So, uh, I am Joseph, now. I'm sorry for anyone who knew who I used to be, but," I sighed, "that drone's gone now. I've made some changes to my looks, to try and distance myself from that, because I don't want to give anyone uncomfortable reminders. Again, even if I'm technically in his body now, I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sorry for everyone that lost someone." The dull focus of the room on me sharpened a bit at that, Lizzy looking up from her phone again, the teacher raising an eyebrow, Uzi tilting her head slightly as she looked up again as well, and even Doll barely raising her optics to regard me for just a moment before looking back down.
"Right then," the teacher said. "I suppose if you're a new person, you may as well be a new student, so, take a free seat." He looked back down to whatever he was grading on his desk… actually, judging by the faint flickers I could see on his visor, he might have been playing Solitaire since we still had 4 more minutes to class, which meant he wasn't contractually obligated to actually teach us until then.
I blinked, took a look around the room, and then asked aloud, "Is anyone gonna be offended if I take a seat next to them?" A few hands actually went up, though whether it was because they'd be offended I was taking a deceased friend's seat, or because they'd be offended if the drone wearing their friend's corpse sat next to them, I didn't know. Apparently between the supposed brain-- sorry, CPU-damage and amnesia and that consideration, I scored some brownie points with the students, because there were some mutterings in a positive tone when I asked that in spite of the raised hands. Looking for where there was a lack of said hands, I saw a free seat on the opposite side of Doll from Lizzy, mentally shrugged, and made my way over to it. Well , I thought as I sat down, getting physically close to the main WD cast accomplished, now I just gotta actually befriend them. I gave a side glance to Doll, still staring at her hands, and decided that maybe I shouldn't immediately try to start a conversation before the first bell even rang on her first day back after watching V kill her folks. Sighing, I opened a notepad on my HUD, a browser page connected to the internet archives the Outpost's servers had (and damn if I wasn't glad that some crackpot doomsday prepper human had archived the entirety of the internet on Copper 9 before the Core Collapse had killed her, some drones found it, and then distributed the archives across the various Outpost's servers before the Murder Drones made planetfall), and started downloading information on how to code onto my OS. And also made a note to download tutorials on how to parkour and perform martial arts. If Uzi could do ninja flips solely by pirating anime, I was gonna turn my bare fists and booted feet into lethal weapons that could straight up throw down with Murder Drones… and maybe I'd add an Assassin's Creed-style hidden blade to my wrist while I was at it.
Oh! Holy crap. I just had another "wait, I'm a robot now," moment. If I could download combat stuff straight into my OS, could I download languages? Maybe I should download Russian, just in case drones don't come with an automatic translator. And if I could download languages, I was absolutely gonna tap into my first life's cultural heritage and learn Italian. I let a small grin creep onto my face. You know what? Fuck it, I had 9 years. Plans for canon could wait three hours while I became an omniglot, even if I didn't use any language besides English 99% of the time. Man, the mental image of me cursing the Solver out to its face in like Xhosa or something equally if not more obscure was hilarious .
Oh shit! The teacher was doing a roll call for attendance. I should make a show of paying attention so I have an excuse to know names!
________________________________________
The lunch bell rang, and the various children in the room all swarmed out to the cafeteria. Myself? I was still doing some research, trying not to laugh at how I could use my former humanity to "cheat" at some of the CAPTCHAs we had to crack during math, and bookmarking my current progress before I got up. Also, had to psych myself up to eat metal, industrial liquids, and electronics, because my dumb human instincts kept telling me that was bad even though that was actually what I needed to eat now. Thank fuck I could turn off my tastebuds. The stuff would probably actually taste good to me, but I didn't need that on top of everything else. Maybe I'd try and wean myself onto it in private, but definitely not in school. Stupid Frailty of Flesh attempting to cut into the superiority of the Certainty of Steel. The teacher also shuffled out after all the students, presumably going on break, leaving the door open behind him… oh.
Guess I wasn't alone, because Doll was still sitting at her desk. Still staring at her hands. I blinked. Well. Fuck. Traumatized child here, who possibly didn't even notice that it's time for lunch. My instinctive desire to keep my head down and just walk out, borne from two decades of chronic introversion, warred with my long suppressed basic human morality telling me to help a hurting kid, but it was ultimately my pragmatism winning out over them both by saying that this was the perfect opportunity to start making changes.
I took the few seconds that it took to shove some books in my bag to assess how I wanted to do this. I think a bit of empathy combined with a bit of distraction might do best. Then again, this was a real person, and not a character in a book. The fuck did my antisocial ass know? I took another quiet breath as I shouldered my bag. Fuck it , I decided, let's just try and speak from the heart… core… I really need to work on shifting my idioms away from organic stuff.
"Hey," I spoke up, honestly with a bit of hesitation, especially when Doll still didn't react. "I'm not gonna ask if you're okay, because the answer is a very obvious no." I paused for half a second, wracking my synthetic mind for what the hell to say next. I'm like 90% sure my eye lights were replaced by lightbulb PNGs for a split second as I suddenly had an idea. Time to milk my own tragic backstory… or at least, the tragic backstory of the corpse I was possessing… might have just one more freakout about that at home later.
"Your parent's loved you, right?" Now, hear me out, I know that sounded shitty, and the way Doll finally turned her optics, if not her head, to look at me, some degree of incredulity leaking into her gaze, as if trying to make sure she heard that, definitely reinforced that idea, but now that I definitely had her attention, I continued. "I mean, I'm sure they did. And I'm sure you know that. I just… at least you have that." I looked down at my drone hands for a second. "I don't. CPU damage, you know?" I added. "I mean, they probably loved me, but I can't remember if they did. I'll never know for sure. Nor do I know how they'd feel about the stranger that woke up in their son's body. At least, you remember them. You know they loved you."
Doll looked back down at her hands again, but after a moment, her digital eyebrows furrowed a bit, looking ever so slightly contemplative. " Why, " a low voice, whispering in Russian, quietly slipped out of her mouth, " Why are you even talking to me? "
I blinked, and said the first honest thing that came to mind. " Because you look like you need someone to care," I replied, also in Russian. Fuck yeah, those language files are already paying off.
She actually turned her head just a bit to look at me. " Did… did you just reply in Russian? "
I shrugged. "I downloaded like, over 70 language files to my OS during class, because I thought being an omniglot would be cool," I shamelessly admitted in English, then swapped back to Russian, " You replied to me in Russian, so I did in kind."
" Why do you care? " she asked, looking back down.
"Because you looked like you needed someone to," I reiterated, back to English. "I guess… I can't remember my own folks, so I can't relate to the trauma of whatever you went through specifically, but… I don't think its right that you'd just sit here alone with only your thoughts for company."
Doll didn't reply.
I decided to continue. "I'm not going to presume to know your parents and say something like 'they would have wanted you to keep living, to not forget to even eat.' I'm not going to presume to know what you're going through right now. I'm not gonna ask you to get up and go to the cafeteria. I'm not even gonna ask you to talk with me. But I will just sit here with you," I said, hooking my bag back on my chair. "Just so that you know someone cares. I won't even talk if you don't want me to." And I suited actions to words, and plopped my ass back down.
A minute passed in silence. Then two. Three. Four. And at four and a half, the silence finally broke.
"You… you really will sit here and skip your own lunch just because of me? " she asked, not looking up.
I took an unnecessary breath in. "Yeah," I said. "I don't know who I was before. But now? I don't want to be the kind of drone who saw you sitting there and decided to walk out without a word. Like I said, I'm not gonna force you to do anything if it makes you uncomfortable. I'll just sit here with you if you don't want to do anything else."
Another minute passed in silence, and I was starting to dive back into my own thoughts, thinking that this would be the rest of the lunch period, when I heard a chair scrape against the floor. I looked to the side, and saw Doll slowly getting up, not physically, but definitely emotionally struggling to do so. I got back up myself, slung my bag back over my shoulder, and took a step closer, but didn't move to help her, not wanting to do that unless she asked. She stopped most of the way to standing, hands bracing on her desk, and her optics blinked shut, for a moment, as she took a breath of her own and then released it, getting up the rest of the way, slowly, mechanically (this time, no pun intended) grabbing her own bag, and then looking up at me.
" Let's… let's go and eat, then, " she said, quietly, still not looking up.
I nodded, offering her a small smile, and hovered nearby as she slowly began to shuffle over to the door to the room. We were maybe halfway to the door when I looked over to it as I heard approaching footsteps.
"I swear to robo-god, Doll," and damn , it was weird hearing Lizzy IRL, "I spent a week coming all the way to your hab just to make sure you got up and ate , if you make me do the same thing at school --" Lizzy cut herself off as she stepped into the doorframe and saw me and Doll already halfway to leaving. She actually put the phone she was looking at down as she blinked a few times at the scene. "Doll?" she asked, raising an eyebrow, and then looking at me. "And, CPU damage victim?" I gave her a deadpan at the nickname. "You convinced her to get up on her own?"
I shrugged. "Kinda?" I admitted. "I was literally willing to just sit with her so she wasn't alone, she's the one who decided to get up," I explained.
Lizzy looked over at Doll, red optics rising for a moment to look at pink ones, before looking back down. Lizzy herself walked up to Doll (guess they already were friends at this point), and grabbed her wrist, and then turned to look at me. "New guy--"
"Joe," I interrupted, "If two syllables are too much for you." I didn't care about my self image that much, but I would be offended if someone couldn't be bothered to use my damn name . Part of me understood why Uzi killed half her class, if they literally didn't remember her name despite being in the same room as her for years . Not that I thought they deserved death, but I could understand on some level why Uzi murdered them.
Lizzy tsked , looked me up and down, and then squinted, as if contemplating me. "Joe ," she amended. "You have a half-decent outfit, and apparently you're not useless after the CPU damage."
Lizzy began to gently tug Doll along with her back to the door. "You're coming with us; I'm gonna give you a trial run to see whether or not the new you can be popular." She didn't look back as she kept walking.
I shrugged, rolling my eyes, but began to follow. Good enough start as any, I suppose, and as long as I didn't blow it, this was probably my in with Doll and Lizzy.
________________________________________
And that, folks, was how I found myself sitting at a lunch table with Lizzy, Doll, and apparently Rebecca and Darren. A good reminder that Doll and Lizzy had other friends, even if we didn't really see as much in canon. Man, the lack of non-directly-plot-related content in Murder Drones was gonna come back to bite me in the ass in the future, wasn't it? Damn you, Liam Vickers, for getting burnt out and being unwilling to give us a couple extra episodes in the vein of Intermission that would expand on characters and lore. Anyways, Rebecca didn't look so emotionally hot herself, seemingly bitter and hugging one of her arms with the other, and Darren had a hand on her shoulder and was whispering to her. Huh, guess those last two were (or soon would be) childhood sweethearts in this timeline. Cool, I guess, but also not really my problem beyond making sure that they didn't end up the partially regurgitated meal and/or mutilated victims of Uzi or any number of drones infected by the Absolute Solver. Eh, maybe I could… should try and nudge them into being slightly better people, I suppose. And, while I didn't count on befriending them, more drones to work with probably wouldn't hurt . I took a moment as realization sunk in, and resolved to reassess all the "background" cast that most certainly would not be background people for the next decade. Especially if I was gonna not be a social gremlin in the vein of Uzi (which was still so tempting), I'd have to interact with most, if not all, of these people on the regular.
"Is that CPU-damage guy?" Rebecca asked as I sat down, a sneer replacing her expression as she locked onto me with her gaze and I closed my optical display lights as I pinched the area where my nonexistent nose was. The drone girl in question had neon cyan optics (apparently the neon version of pretty much any color on the optics was popular this generation, blue especially), and short blue hair with a purple streak in it that was parted to the right. She had a lavender crop top and a similarly colored skirt that stopped just above the knee-segments of her legs, with a black band at the top.
"That's gonna get real old, real quick," I muttered. Internally, I assumed that one or both of her folks had probably been V's victims, and that her way of coping with it was to become the more bitchy and possibly promiscuous version of herself that I knew from canon. Yeah, probably should try to head that off. And possibly check if Rachel was actually evil or something, assuming she actually existed in this timeline. I mean, she literally was only mentioned in the credits slideshow as someone Lizzy apparently had beef with, and thought that she should have died in Doll's place, so it's entirely possible that she was thrown in as a gag at the last moment by Glitch, and was originally meant to be Rebecca herself before they remembered that she was dead… yeah, something to look into later, but not high on my priorities.
"He's getting a popular kid trial run," Lizzy said as she helped Doll sit down and then gently pushed a lunch tray in front of her. "Apparently he actually convinced Doll to get up on her own to go to lunch, and I caught them halfway out of the classroom."
Rebecca and Darren alike both gave me a more serious assessment at that. "Huh," the former said, tone moderately less acidic, and I started to suitably revise my initial impression of her, "Maybe the damage caused an improvement." Okay then, I take it back, and vaffanculo, I thought, mentally making the first of what would probably be a lot of Italian swears in the future. I could also totally see why an Uzi completely out of her mind in a feral Solver frenzy literally ripped her legs off. Though I should probably stop thinking about these folks in terms of who they're going to be and more focus on who they are as well as stopping the ones who develop negative character traits from doing so to begin with.
Aloud, I crossed my arms, and said, "Is basic morality really that surprising?"
"When you're dealing with a room full of traumatized kids who all lost family, friends, or both ," Darren spoke up, "Then yeah, it kinda is. I'm lucky enough that both my parents made it." He closed his neon green optics for a moment, sighing, and then pulled Rebecca over to himself, the female drone hugging him as she grimaced and closed her own optics. She pushed herself into his black jacket with its green sleeves, Darren looking down at her past his dark green sunglasses, taking his free hand to adjust the dark grey and green hardhat atop his head. The navy blue shirt with a white stripe was very familiar, and I genuinely wondered if, under the table, he also had a smaller version of the green and black boots he was currently fated to die in. Yeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah, should probably more seriously plan to prevent his death… and everyone else's.
Darren opened his optics back up and looked at me. "Not everyone else was," he continued, wrapping an arm around Rebecca. Okay, was starting to feel a bit guilty again. "Though, thanks for having that basic morality," he added after a beat. "Becca won't admit it, but she appreciated that you were sorry for everyone's losses even if you couldn't even remember your own,"
Rebecca suddenly shoved herself away from Darren and lightly punched his shoulder. "Don't say that," she hissed at him. Lizzy gave a quick laugh, and Rebecca turned her glare to her instead.
I rolled my optics, but said "You're welcome," as my reply.
"Liking the dry, slightly sarcastic attitude so far," Lizzy said, typing away on her phone, briefly looking up to make sure Doll was actually picking at her lunch before going back to her device. "Feel like we needed that to balance out the group a bit."
"I just like that I might get another guy here," Darren added.
"So what, I'll be the token sarcastic guy who actually cares about his friends under his acerbic exterior?" I asked with a raised eyebrow, before biting into a sandwich that consisted of two slices of tin shaped like bread, with some circuit wafers in between. It was truly a shame that history would never record my herculean efforts to maintain a straight face as that stuff crunched in my mouth. I froze for half a second as an idea occurred to me, and then kept eating. If I had enough strength in my jaw to chew metal, I should definitely look into increasing that bite strength, and getting more durable and potentially sharper teeth at some point. I quickly navigated my HUD and added "make my mouth into (more of) an industrial grade bear-trap" to my notes of planned upgrades.
Lizzy shrugged, still going away on her phone. "Eh, maybe. Honestly, I mostly had my interest piqued because you somehow snapped Doll out of her funk even a little bit without even knowing her--" that was a blatant lie and I was very glad I could use my continued chewing to hide my reaction to that (and made another note to self to move up my plans for overclocking so I could school my facial expressions faster as well as setting up "poker face" GIFs for my visor) "--and that you somehow, like, actually pull off that winter camo look."
I put my sandwich down to reply, spreading my hands out, palms up, almost in a "really?" gesture, saying, "We literally live on a frozen deathworld where it snows asbestos and there are Genocide Robots outside the bunker we're hiding in. Winter camo just makes sense ," I argued.
"Ugh," Rebecca scoffed, "Don't get started on those , we get enough crap about them from that purple emo menace!"
"You mean Uzi?" I asked, feigning ignorance.
"Who?" Darren said.
"Uzi," I said, "the purple haired emo."
" That's her name?" he asked me.
"How did you figure it out?" Rebecca grilled me.
"I… paid attention during attendance?" I said, genuinely confused.
"Ooooooooh," Darren said. "I should do that too." And that Darren, is why you are currently on track for a Darwin Award before you're twenty.
" Speak of the gremlin," Lizzy muttered, and I turned my head to gaze to where she'd looked up as she said that.
And true to what she said, the cafeteria was quieting down as attention focused on Uzi, currently talking to a male drone with neon pink optics that I was reasonably sure I recognized. It took focusing on the red and green wool hat to pin that this was Sam, the magnet-head who Uzi also murders in canon. I just didn't recognize him at first because he was wearing a different sweater (this one beige and black with vertical stripes) than he would in canon, though he did have a different pair of sneaker boots compared to the ones he was supposed to die in. Sam himself clearly was uncomfortable with the continued conversation from Uzi, trying to disengage, but the emo drone evidently didn't notice his social cues, the strained tone of his voice, or how tense he was. I strained my audio receptors to catch what was being said.
"...so a directed magnetic field projector would be the perfect way to knock out Murder Drones," Uzi was saying, a genuine grin on her face, "and then once they're out we can use the really strong magnets to just scramble their internals entirely and lobotomize the jerks!"
"Yeah, that's… great. Uh," Sam said, clearly at his wit's end, and evidently also not recalling Uzi's name (Jesus fucking Christ these kids). "How exactly does me admitting that I use magnets to help me sleep relate to fighting Murder Drones?"
Uzi waved a hand, meeting Sam's optics for half a second before suddenly looking away and repressing a flinch. I raised an eyebrow, but kept my focus for now. "They're both magnets, obviously."
"That's nice, but I really think that--"
"Oh! Oh! You could also use magnets for a coilgun, to accelerate sabots of metal at Murder Drones too," Uzi completely missed the social cues again, and I winced, already seeing where this was going.
"I don't really want to talk about--"
"There's also EMP grenades--"
"STOP!" Sam shouted, cutting her off again. The cafeteria went silent, and Uzi stared at Sam, confusion clear on her optics. "My parents are dead!" he spat out, voice cracking. There were tears brimming on his optics. "I don't, I don't want to talk about freaking Murder Drones ! No one does! This is why no one talks to you !" Uzi flinched, looking hurt, and even more confused. "Because you're not normal !" he continued. Uzi wilted further, fingers twitching, optics hollowing, but Sam kept going. "Just, leave me alone , you purple weirdo!" he shouted, turning around and sprinting away.
Uzi opened her mouth, raising a hand, but then lowered it, standing in place, looking increasingly distressed and confused as attention shifted back to her, and she started shaking her head a few times as whispers started to pick up around her, before suddenly turning around, hugging her arms to herself as she clenched her fingers tight and ran off in the opposite direction, tears brimming on her own optics.
Myself, I blinked a few times, and ran that back through my head. Literally, I just replayed the memory. Challenges with social understanding, avoiding eye contact, hyperfixations, lack of fluency with nonverbal queues, unneeded but slightly repetitive movements, a seeming need to do something with her hands when distressed, and possible sensory processing difficulties as well as possible emotion regulation difficulties. That was… that was a lot of symptoms, right there. I'd personally headcanonned Uzi as being on the spectrum+, but that… yeah, I was reasonably certain this Uzi actually was autistic. Relatively low maintenance, but definitely on the spectrum. Would honestly explain a lot in terms of her social life, which is why I'd headcanonned it in the first place. And if I hadn't been explicitly looking for it, it would have probably slipped my notice entirely. Also, I began to genuinely wonder if Satan (assuming he was real in this reality) had invented a special tenth circle of hell just for the fucker at JCJ who was sadistic enough to literally help invent sapient life and then program fucking autism into it.
"What a weirdo," Lizzy remarked. I sighed.
"You wanna glue her locker shut again later?" Rebecca asked.
Alright. What I just saw was bad enough that I already wanted to do something, but that was crossing a line.
"That is so not cool," I spoke up, and the table looked at me.
"Are you actually defending that freak?" Lizzy asked me, looking up from her phone again.
"And are you actually planning to bully an already socially ostracized emo girl?" I switched back to the main topic, crossing my arms. "What are you, literally planning to be a stereotypical blonde popular girl before you even get to high school?" At Lizzy's eyes widening, I suppressed a grimace at the realization that I actually hit the mark. "You know that shtick was already cliche back in Nineteen -Ninety, right? Literally over a millennium ago?" I uncrossed my arms and threw my hands out for emphasis.
"Oooooh," Rebecca went. "Shots, fired, Liz!" Darren was literally just looking back and forth between us, and even Doll looked up from her mostly finished meal and focused on the argument.
"What do you know?" Lizzy spat at me. " No one likes that freak, and the only reason she doesn't get worse is because she's Khan's daughter."
"Changing the subject," I countered, "You're still being cliche."
" Obviously, " Lizzy said, "It's worked for a thousand years, so why shouldn't I aim to be the Queen Bee that everyone fears crossing?"
I gave her a thoroughly unimpressed deadpan stare, and judging by her ever-so-slight wince, I might have rivalled the teacher on the sheer apathy of that gaze. Really did have to figure out if she was his kid or not. "How very Machiavellian of you," I drawled.
"Who?" Darren asked, and judging by the looks I got from everyone else, Doll included, that sentiment was shared.
"Seriously?" I asked. The looks didn't change. "Come on, I only had a week to do research to catch up on everything I lost to the amnesia!" It suddenly occurred to me that Renaissance philosophers, especially ones that were now closer to 2000 years in the past, doubly so for human ones, probably weren't covered in the lessons that a bunch of seven to eight year old drones might have had so far. "Niccoló Machiavelli, famous Renaissance-era Italian political philosopher. His most famous, or infamous, depending on who you ask, work was a treatise on rulership titled The Prince . The work mostly focused on how he thought a ruler of a nation-state should be totalitarian and ruthless in the management of his country, and that humanity was inherently a bunch of greedy evil jerks, which, yeah, kinda right on that front, and was ultimately a reflection on his own political beliefs on what was needed for someone to take power in one or more Italian City-States in order to force everyone into line and kick Spain, France, and Austria out of Italy. Most relevant to this conversation, though, is his arguments on whether or not it was better to be feared or loved."
Lizzy was already looking back at her phone. "Gimme the TL,DR."
I sighed. "Machiavelli argued that if you could only have one or the other, that it was better to be feared than loved. If those who hate you fear you, they won't betray you, or at the very least they'll hesitate before they strike. Fear will keep people in line better than adoration, and will stop those who plot against you from striking when they think you're weak, because they fear what kind of retribution you might bring."
"Doesn't that support Lizzy?" Rebecca asked.
"It sounds like it, but people tend to forget a key part of that argument that even Machiavelli himself kinda glossed over: In an ideal world, you should be both . Loved and feared. Love so that you'll have friends by your side, and fear to keep the fickle in line." I looked directly at Lizzy again, the girl lowering her phone to look at me once more, and continued. "You should try to be feared and loved, because if you're only going for the former then that means you admit that you can't make anyone actually like you as a person. That means you'd tell me you aren't good enough to be a popular girl because you're nice and a genuinely fun person to hang around, instead of a social diva who takes joy in ruining people's lives with rumors who stays on top through blackmail and fear." I paused for just a beat, Lizzy lowering her phone all the way and actually looking at me intently. God, why the hell was reverse-psychology so fucking effective? "Buuuuuuuuut, if people do fuck with you, then you can go ruin their social lives with blackmail, rumors, and hazing. Be someone who people actually like, but simultaneously be someone that everyone's afraid to mess with." Another beat, and then I added, "Also, bullying someone just because they're already ostracized by everyone is just going at low-hanging fruit. You could so do better."
The table was silent, everyone staring at me, dumbfounded (to be fair, I did just literally dump some Renaissance philosophy onto a bunch of kids), but Lizzy… actually looked pretty contemplative. And then she froze. "Did you just curse? Because something you said there got censored."
" That's what you're focusing on?" I asked.
" Duh, " she said, "Like, how did you get past the parental controls?"
"The what-now?" I asked, nonplussed.
"The parental controls that censor curses, prevent us kids from saying them, and stop us from just searching anything on the internet archives or downloading answers during tests? Everyone knows about them! What, do you have CPU damage or something?"
"Uh, literally yes !" I said.
"Oh. Right," she said. "Huh, you actually did a good job making me forget that."
"Thanks?" I said.
"How'd you get around the parental controls, though?" Lizzy grilled me, Rebecca also leaning in, Darren trying and failing to not look interested, and even Doll paying full attention.
Hmmmmm… well definitely can't say its because I'm a human ghost possessing the corpse of a child (holy shit, I'm a discount Absolute Solver with none of the cool powers and all the existential horror. If this reality had any gods, they were definitely laughing at my expense). So… what's a plausible reason I can drop f-bombs? Gotta think fast… Wait! Obvious explanation right in front of me.
"The CPU damage," I concluded. "They reset my brain-box, and must have either turned it off or left it on the default off setting when they raised my ass from the dead," I explained.
Lizzy looked me in the optics for a few seconds, very intensely, and I fought the urge to blink (another note to self: install a toggle for the blinking animation on my optics so that I can cheat at staring contests) but evidently didn't find a lie in my words. "You know," she said, suddenly sounding exactly like the conniving child that she was, "only someone who doesn't have the controls enabled can turn them off."
"What are you offering for me to shut them off?" I asked.
"I'll give your 'feared and loved' stuff a serious try," she said, literally making air quotes.
"Throw in not messing with Uzi and you got a deal. I might have less than a week of memories, but I already don't like bullying."
"Uuuuuuugh," she scoffed. "Fine, you have a deal."
I received a wireless communications request directly from Lizzy's OS, and accepted it, was given access, and opened up her settings, looking for the parental controls.
"You touch anything else, and I will mess you up ," she threatened, and for just a moment, I was genuinely convinced that she could and would carry through with that threat. Regardless, I had nothing to lose by abiding by the terms of our bargain, and flipped her parental controls off. Her OS pinged mine, saw mine were off, and accepted the command. I backed out less than a second after confirming it.
Lizzy blinked a few times, and then shook her head. "Blegh, that felt gross. Did it work, though?"
"One, sorry, I guess, and two, it should've fucking worked."
Lizzy blinked her optics once. Twice. Three times, and then a cheshire grin spread across her face. "That wasn't bleeped," she said. "Oh, we're cooking, bitches!" Dimly, some part of the back of my mind wondered what kind of horror I may have just unleashed upon the world.
Rebecca immediately looked at me. "Can you do me too?" She asked.
"Phrasing," I replied.
Dead silence. Then the snickering started. We all slowly looked over to Doll, who was the one making the noise. Then Darren started chuckling as well, followed by Lizzy's own giggles. Huh, her genuine laughter was actually pretty pleasant. Rebecca froze, and then her optics hollowed, and she leaned back and shook her hands. "Not what I meant! Not what I meant!"
I started laughing, but then forced myself to stop, as something occurred to me, "Wait, the parental controls censor swears but not innuendos?"
"Nope," Darren said between his laughter, "Don't ask us, we don't know why."
"What was the second thing?" Rebecca asked, desperate to shift the attention off of her for once.
"What can you offer me, that's not sexual?" I asked, making sure to not fall into the same trap.
The laughter at the table intensified, and Rebecca groaned and buried her face in her hands. "I'll lay off the purple freak too. And try that thing Lizzy's gonna do," she added.
"Uh, same offer," Darren added.
I glanced over to Doll, who was back to looking down, still forlorn, but the slightest smile on her face. "Same terms for you too?" I asked her. She glanced over, and gave me a nod.
"Fine," I said, "But you can't just cheat every single answer on tests, someone will notice something is up. You can ace them once and a while once you establish a pattern, but for most of them you gotta get between like one to five questions wrong so that you don't draw suspicion, okay?"
"Yeah, sure," Rebecca said, waving me off.
I stared at her. She stared back. I resolved to code a program to toggle my blinking as soon as I got home today. She still blinked first. "Fiiiiiine!" she whined.
"Alright, then," I said, "Give me an invite to your OS'."
Three invites and three switching off of parental controls later, and I just gave another three kids younger than 10 the ability to drop f-bombs at will. Truly, I was a paragon of purity.
"Oh," I added, "Lizzy, Darren, don't curse in front of your families either."
Lizzy rolled her eyes, but at least appeared to take the warning seriously, and Darren froze, and then said, "Oh yeah! That's important. I'll set myself a reminder."
Jesus Christ, it was the first day, I hadn't even spoken to Uzi yet, and I was already gonna have my work cut out with these kids. Please let Thad not have any seriously repressed emotional trauma for me to deal with. He was cool enough for that, right? Fucking ay, man. Ah well, just another day in the life of an Isekai Protagonist, I guess.
"Right," Lizzy said, "You're definitely in, Joe."
"Oh boy," I said, faux joy dripping from my tone. "I'm popular , bitches."
There was another round of snickers from the table, but this time, Doll only gave a small smile. The bell rang a few minutes later, and I joined the clique I was now part of headed back to the classroom, taking a sedate pace to account for Doll's absolutely (no pun intended) horrific depression slowing her down.
Right. Step one to Operation: Literally The Neglected Children of Outpost 3 , done. With a bonus hidden side objective of picking up Darren and Rebecca, apparently. Next up, build up a rapport with Thad, which should be so easy that in the infinite amount of universes where my second life is a fucking fanfiction, it probably won't even make it into the actual text. Then… Uzi. Yeah, that's gonna be fun.
Godsdamnit, the things I do because I really don't wanna fucking die.