(Franko)
About 30 minutes before sunrise, my alarm began to play Octavia by Evening Star/Marcus Werner on my internal speakers. I enjoyed the cello for a few moments, before I shut it off. I might give it a listen later in the day. I got up, got dressed, and fixed my hair up, and set my sunglasses onto my face. Was it still dark out? Yes. Were sunglasses stupidly impractical since we had all the lights off too because of the Murder Drones? Also yes. But they were my sunglasses, so practicality could un-screw off. I got up, and started getting some batteries and two small blocks of copper and zinc out for both myself and Aly, who was still asleep. Knowing her, I'd have to wake her up, considering how much she liked to sleep in. I could already picture her in her bedroom, snuggled under a pile of blankets while clutching a body pillow-- with nothing on it, thank robo-god --because she got really clingy when she was sleepy. I wondered how it would feel if she… if she was cuddling me instead. I'd been dealing with the realization that I liked Aly for a while now, and I think I was about ready to try and work up the nerve to address it. And… I was pretty sure she liked me back. Sometime today, I think I was gonna do it. Maybe after we ate breakfast?
Still, I had to wake her up first. So, with a relatively simple yet hearty breakfast ready in the apartment, I went to one of the three other bedrooms in it. Well technically, the place was a two bedroom apartment, but since the humans were dead, Aly and I had spent a day smashing a wall in and then raiding a hardware store for some caulking and plaster to smooth everything down and we took over the apartment next door as well. Regardless of semantics, I cracked the door open, and Aly was curled up around that body pillow like a koala, visor displaying [Sleep Mode] as she smiled gently. Man… I really wanted to tell her I liked her.
Still, I walked in, and gave her shoulder a gentle shake. "C'mon, Aly. Time to get up." The [Sleep Mode] text blinked out to closed eyemotes, and she mumbled as she snuggled deeper into her pillow. "Nope, none of that," I told her, and gave a second shake.
"Frankiiiiiiieeeee, 'm 'eeeeepy!" she murmured.
"I made breakfast~" I sing-songed.
Her eyemotes blinked open. "Breakfast?" she asked.
"Yep, so get outta bed."
"Okiiiiiiiieee!" she said, giving me a grin. I rolled my eyemotes and gave her a smile back, and then walked back out the room.
Three minutes later, she walked into the kitchen and saw the food set up, and then jogged in and gave me a hug. I didn't hesitate to hug her back. "Morning sleepyhead," I told her.
"Good morning Frankie," she said, tightening the hug. Man, I felt like an idiot for missing this for so long.
I waited about 20 seconds while she kept hugging me, and then finally teased her with, "Sooooooo… do you wanna eat, or do you just wanna keep hugging me for the next twenty-odd minutes?"
She pulled back, and a sound came out of her vocalizers that could be charitably described as, "Akdjksjdkdkdjekdjjsjdnfkekfnjebejfnebdn!" I started chuckling, and she let out a strangled scream as she pulled her beanie down over her face. "Frankieeeeeeeeeee!"
"So," I showed mercy and changed the subject as I started eating. "You got any art ideas recently?"
Aly pulled her beanie back up and tried to fix her messed up hair, suddenly looking right at me. She gave a big grin. "Lemme show you!" She shot up, took two steps away, stopped, turned around, and then grabbed a bunch of food to stuff her mouth with, before sprinting back off to her room. I waited a moment, and then she started to come back in with two sheets of paper. "I finished these last night," she said, smiling as she turned the papers around, one in each hand, to show me.
My optics widened. Those were the full color pieces of our "human-sonas" as Aly called them… and they looked amazing . I mean, I didn't get the appeal myself, but the art itself was beautifully done, and a stunning example of Aly's talent at drawing in general. I just stared at it for a moment, mesmerized. "Aly," I said, "This is just stunning ," I told her.
She blushed and looked away, and damn if it wasn't cute. "I… you really think so?"
I put a hand on her shoulder. "I know so," I told her. "You're the best artist I've ever met, and the best person I've ever met, too."
Aly set the papers onto the table and then she grabbed onto my sleeve. "Y-you mean that?" she asked, still looking down and to the side.
"I do," I told her. I gently grabbed her chin, and lifted her head up so I could look her in the optics. She was blushing up a storm, her red mirrored by my own. Alright Franko , I told myself, just gotta give a good one-liner, and then lean in and ki--
There was a thump on the roof . We both froze. The mood was forgotten as we both listened. There was a few seconds of silence before we heard the roof access door bang open. There were the taps of something walking down the stairs from the roof . The roof that something would have had to have flown to get on top of without us hearing it earlier. The roof that the thump had occurred on. That thump being the sound of something landing on it.
Aly clung onto me suddenly. "Frankie?" she whispered in a scared voice.
"Stay quiet, Aly," I told her. We both listened, and I held her close as she shook with terror in my grip. "I'll keep you safe," I said, even if I had no idea how I'd do that from a Murder Drone.
The taps of the footsteps were clearer. I was pretty sure they were on our floor , and the tapping sounded sharp enough that my experience of listening to all kinds of music let me intuit that it was a more narrow appendage tapping on the floor. Maybe pegs? Definitely a Murder Drone then. The footsteps got closer, and Aly started shaking worse as she buried her face in my shoulder, and then the footsteps stopped in front of the front door .
"Fr-Frankie--" Aly's whisper was cut off as the doorknob jiggled. It jiggled harder . Two seconds passed in silence, and then a sword punched through the lock.
The door creaked open.
I saw yellow.
Aly screamed.
I pried her off of me and put myself in front of her.
I took in details. Cargo pants, a turtleneck'd sweater, bushy twintails, a pair of glasses and--
Golden eyemotes met my own.
___
(Serial Designation G)
I fought down my nausea as I drank a corpse dry of its oil. The sun would be up in a few minutes. It was the fifth worker I'd killed tonight, and the guilt was roiling inside me, threatening to come up, but I was going to lose my mind if I had to spend another night listening to L and M fuck like animals again. They'd been going especially loud over the past few weeks, and M had bragged about planning to use tasers she looted from a police station come the morning. I… I couldn't. I hated myself. I hated myself so much , but I couldn't listen to that, so I killed, and I killed, and I killed, and I killed , five people dead so that I'd have oil just so I could sleep somewhere quiet today, praying ( that Tessa would forgive me ) that I could find somewhere safe from the sun in the next few minutes. I leapt into the skies and shot off faster than a bullet to desperately find somewhere I could spend the day.
Three minutes later, I sighted in on an apartment building I was flying overhead. I hadn't even realized I was flying over the general area I'd seen signs of those two workers periodically, but I was. Two of the apartments, side by side had windows that looked to have been boarded in. The sky was brightening. This was good enough. I angled myself down, and flipped my spatial orientation at the last moment to touch down to the roof with a thump . My chassis was starting to warm up, so I kicked the roof door open with a bang , and started making my way down out of the killing light of the sun and into the cool, dark interior of the building, my peg feet tapping their way down the stairs. I ran back through a memory file to go and make sure I descended the correct amount of flights of stairs to find the boarded up apartments.
I walked onto the correct floor, going down a hall as I used a reference image from my memory files to make sure I was heading the correct number of apartments down. The last thing I wanted to do was open the wrong door and get hit by the burning sunlight. I started to relax now that I had a place to sleep without listening to L and M fuck for six hours while using TASERS , but that just meant the guilt was starting to surge up. I… I hoped I was wrong. I so, so, so desperately hoped I was wrong and that it was just a string of unlikely coincidences that the workers were displaying and they weren't really sophont and I didn't just kill five innocent people just so I could sleep in peace and quiet.
I got to the right door, and turned the knob to open it. It didn't budge. Maybe it was jammed from disuse? I twisted harder. It twisted a bit but then the door itself wasn't budging. It must have been locked. I shifted my hand to a sword, and punched it through, right above the knob. I shifted my hand back as I pushed the door open with a creak--
I saw red.
A worker drone girl with red optics, brown hair, and a beanie screamed.
The same worker I'd seen and chosen not to kill all those nights ago pried the girl off of him and then placed himself in front of her.
My eyemotes met his red ones.
There was defiance in that gaze. He was willing to die for the girl behind him…
He was willing to die for someone else …
He was sapient.
They were all sapient.
I've been committing a genocide.
I was a monster.
I was a monster.
I was a MONSTER .
My stomach roiled. I twisted to the side. There was an alcove for shoes for the humans. It was empty at the moment. I felt oil surge up my throat and I didn't bother fighting it. I puked. It splattered on the floor. The lifeblood of innocents I murdered . I threw up a second time. That puke was lives I snuffed out . I threw up a third time, and then staggered back and collapsed against the wall opposite the shoe alcove. I slid down, sobbing hysterically as the truth hit me like my own rocket launchers. I was a monster committing a genocide on the innocent. The Company sent us to kill millions, if not billions.
"I'm a monster," I hoarsely choked out, breath stinking of oil.
"I'm a monster," I sobbed, lost in my own thoughts as digital tears poured down my visor.
"I'm a monster ," I cried out, curling up on myself as my tail limply sat on the floor while I pulled my knees in and wrapped my arms around them, still sobbing.
"Aly, what the hell are you--"
The male voice cut off as I felt a second pair of arms wrap around me. I froze completely still, and looked up to meet another pair of red optics staring into my own.
"Hi! My name's Alyke, and you're my friend now, so you can call me Aly!"
___
A/N: I wanna start out that J has no idea how close she was constantly getting to tripping another reset. And not even a partial one, this could have been a total wipe like N has gotten more than once. J didn't outright consciously resolve to fight her boss or the Company directly. That, and throwing the name she recalled before she could consciously finish recalling it into the repression folder from N were the only things that saved her here. She's fucking lucky she stumbled through that correctly. J was quite literally a second off from a reset more than once there. I actually rolled a dice to see if she'd trip a partial or total reset here, with a 1 or a 2 being a total reset, and a 3 to 5 being a partial. She rolled a fucking SIX . Fucking guardian angel (cough cough Kreutonne praying for her from beyond the 4th Wall cough cough) saved her here… that's only half a joke, I'm seriously convinced Kreutonne unconsciously invoked divine intervention on J's behalf here.
Aly's POV at the start here was fun to write. Poor girl doesn't know Franko's into her, lol.
And yes, Joe's the one posting late 1900s and early 2000s music all on the 'net.
And according to TLP, I'm still nailing her OC at every turn, so I got that going for me too!
Fun fact: TLP has a habit of randomly mashing her keyboard when she gets flustered. I've taken to copy/pasting those strings of letters onto a list that I intend to use for Aly when she gets flustered or embarrassed. I have a lot of entries to use, but every time you lot see that in this fic, it's straight from her, lol! Also, NO , you're not allowed to try and deliberately fluster her on the Discord or any other platform she's on to try and farm more keyboard mashing. I have like 40 entries on the list already, so I don't need more, and I do not tolerate Potato bullying.
Joe's holding off the original Forever for a victory celebration. Will he get to play it, I wonder? At least he's looking out for other versions of himself in react fics though. But… maybe he should focus on his own trauma first. Joe… Joe's not doing good, each and every time he reminds himself of the deaths he needs to prevent. And seeing his friends die? That hurts the dude. It hurts him a lot , actually. At least he has an unofficial sister to care for him. Though they've both agreed that referring to each other as siblings is way too fucking awkward. Still, though, Uzi has a Joe to look out for her, and Joe has an Uzi to tell him when he's being too aware of the 4th Wall and needs to focus back on his own issues.
Still though… really fucking traumatized by canon…
Joe realized he's discovered a ripple, but hasn't realized the true significance of that, and still remains blissfully ignorant of the AU he's in. For now…
And then Doll finally starts calling everyone together.
Poor Joe man. Dude just wants to try and move past his trauma and go into Mechromancy, but making sure Doll doesn't do another stupid is more important.
Doll getting chewed out was a fun scene to write, lol. Uzi screaming, Joe doing the "I'm mad and disappointed" speech, and Lizzy just going for the threat to Doll's Tetris scores.
Also, you know, Joe finally planning to drop the Isekai Reveal on the back of Mechromancy and also saying he's into Lizzy and that if she doesn't hate him by the end of the day he'd be willing to date her (once she's legal, but she doesn't get that bit just yet) because yeah, he actually like her back. And that he's also okay with her dating Doll at the same time. That scene was fucking adorable to write from Lizzy's POV (It would have been angsty as FUCK from Joe's).
Also, kudos to Lizzy for being the first person to realize that Joe cheated some extra height into his frame. That's gonna be hilarious when it rolls around in Numair's react fic.
Also this line in particular:
Now… now I just needed to work up the nerve to confess to Dolly. Robo-god, I'm so fucked.
Made me laugh a lot when I wrote it, man.
Thad's simple "not cool" to Doll was fucking hilarious , and entirely spur-of-the-moment.
Then we finally segue into the Mechromancy you've all been waiting for… well, the topic of it, at least. A lot of relatively predictable reactions, but Emily in particular was awesome, and Lizzy kept her crushes down well enough to be mentally present for Doll when Doll needed her.
Also, Joe admitting to literally being the kind of friend who would help someone hide bodies was really funny.
And finally, we truly get to what you've all been waiting for.
I just wanna say, Doll talking to Mikhail's body actually made me cry IRL. I legit had to set aside my laptop and take a break because I was crying. I literally brought myself to tears writing that. I've gotten teary eyed plenty of times when writing. I've never actually had tears roll down my face before. Holy fuck , the feels from that. And that scene was fucking spontaneous!!! It wasn't in the outline at all!
Fucking shit, Mikhail was a gigachad. Dude tackled V off his wife, punched her in the face hard enough to crack one of her headband bulbs and make her bleed, pitied her in the moment of his death, and then saw that he hadn't made me cry when I wrote that in the side-story, so he decided to come back and finish the job post-mortem. I fucking salute you, dude.
Also, poor Doll with all the body horror of seeing her mother's opened corpse and realizing all that jazz is going on inside her right at that moment . Poor girl.
So…
Joe's amazingly stupid idea that works, thereby making it not stupid…
Those of you with a keen memory who are from Drone Fortress will recall that I was the one who suggested that exact idea months before I even started writing this fic. The first draft of the scene, from Joe grabbing Yeva's core up until everyone left the room, was written back in April, when it came to me in the shower of all places. Thank frak for Google Docs on your phone, lol.
I actually posted that scene draft on Drone Fortress, when The Void King guessed it, a while back. Though… a part 5 for a DF Xover omake is now kinda on hold until I get around to doing a full remaster of the first 4 parts, lol. That's gonna be a while, though, because I wanna get a good deal further into the fic.
Anyways, Joe brought back Yeva on the first fucking try in a manner so downright MORONIC yet canon-plausible that I'm sure that there's people screaming at their screens as they're reading that scene.
Also, you know, Joe has memories being blocked, and SOMETHING SAW WHAT HE DID there, commenting on it…
And red static… hmmmmmmmmmm… I wonder what that's about…
This line though:
"Do you think we should… refill the bowl?" Uzi asked.
That was in the original draft, and still makes me chuckle each time I read it.
Welcome back to the land of the living, Yeva. The gray pawn has uprighted a tipped over piece on the board. It joined his side that same night. So has a second piece; the first's progeny. A third piece merely needs to unlock her own potential to join the game as well.
Doll… Doll breaking down when she realized her Mama was back was gut-wrenching to write in all the right ways. I'm so fucking happy with this scene, everyone. So glad that I finally got to upload it with a proper story surrounding it.
Yeva refers to Doll as "Kukolka" which is Russian for "Little Doll" IIRC, and she has nicknames for Nori both. Just as a heads up to clear confusion.
Another reminder: Yeva is a gamer. She's more quiet and reserved than Nori, and handles trauma poorly, but she's friendly and personable to those she trusts. I'd like to think I'd done a good job capturing her personality as established by AxisRouge for the AU Joe's in.
Joe finally decided on a name for the lair though: The Scrapyard!
Man really do be collecting titles tho. Joseph "Scrapper," bonafide Mechromancer.
Dropped a little prep-work to make the imminent Isekai Reveal a bit less painful in revealing that the MDs are sapient slaves to the Solver.
Also, Penny is fucking based, and is rapidly becoming one of my favorite background characters elevated to actual character status.
The conversation Joe listened into between Yeva, Lizzy, and Doll was entirely spur of the moment. I really liked it though.
Then the real meat of the Chapter. The Doll POV.
Doll has her Mama back and is struggling to wrap her mind around that. Everyone gets some context straight from yeva that she was going to try and fix things but then V broke in.
And Doll willing to physically restrain Yeva's core because she was threatening Joe with her Solver really hammers in how much she trusts him.
I'm gonna make a little callout here, based on everything I was reading on the SB thread while this chapter was in the works. If the attempt didn't work, yeah, Doll probably would have had a reaction like you were all predicting. But you all seriously underestimated just how heavy the impact of bringing her mother back from the dead would have on Doll. Especially that Joe technically literally did it with his own two hands in his typical jackass-manner by literally plopping her core into a bowl of oil. Doll saw her mother and father die in front of her. Joe spent three and a half years working to help her with her trauma, got her cousin back into her life, got her friends to help her and care for her, took care of her oil needs time and time again, helped her hide her parent's bodies in his own home with almost no questions asked beyond "how do you want to do this," and went and personally shot the fuck out of the woman responsible for the deaths of her parents before taking a trophy from her to give as a birthday present . He's always taken charge, always taken care of her, always looked out for her, literally bled for her unprompted and when doing so fed her his own vitae to help her with overheat, and that's not counting all the times he sliced his hand open to stockpile oil for her on his own well before everyone else started to contribute, and then he brought her mom back from the dead . Joe lied. But he said it himself. He could have done nothing. He could have ignored her from day one. But he didn't. He spent thousands of hours, his own health, his own piece of mind, going out of his way over and over and over and over again, to help her, to help all of them, even when he didn't have to. In Doll's mind, that Joe fucking cared at all, nevermind cared so much , vastly outweighs any falsehoods. She got her mom back. He withheld that information for a year and a half, but she got her mom back . He lied about who he really was, but she got her mom back . He's helping Uzi try to date two Murder Drones, including the one who still killed her father, but she has her mom back , her cousin is back in her life in the first place because of Joseph , and they both said that she can still fuck V up as much as she wants as long as she doesn't kill her. And Doll comes to the conclusion that yes , beating the shit out of V will be very satisfying , but Joe laid all his cards on the table. V has been suffering this whole time. If she killed her now, she wouldn't actually die. She'd go back to the Solver, and that would bring a worse threat down on them well before they're ready. And that monster is the one truly responsible for all their woes. And besides. Death is a mercy for V. Let her live , knowing every day that Doll Matryoshka wasn't broken by her, that she held her head high and still lived rather than survived in spite of her. Let V see that Doll can suffer the same kind of loss V did, but she still smiled, that V didn't break her. That's her revenge, that V has to live with that knowledge, live with the weight of her sins on her conscience, for the rest of time.
That trip down memory lane was a beautiful scene to write, showing the whole of Doll's development as a character throughout the fic, and culminated in her realizing that at the end of the day, she still trusts Joseph, and that she'll never hate him.
Doll might have said an Idea there, without realizing it…
Also, Lizzy's fucking reactions and focusing on wanting to date Joe and hating that she has to wait for it was honestly some of the funniest yet in-character moments of her I've ever written.
Also, you lot gotta realize: Joe's been influencing these folks for what's starting to close on four years now. His unhingedness has been rubbing off on them, bit by manic bit.
And yes, bringing Doll's mom back from the dead is literally the catalyst to let her start fully recovering from her trauma and realize that yes , what she feels for Lizzy and Joe actually goes beyond friendship, lol. Took her long enough.
Though in the grand scheme of things, she lasted less than an hour after she got her mom back, LMAO.
So, Yeva's username: Credit to nemo__curat on Discord for helping me out with the translation for Matryoshka_Gaming into Russian in the context I wanted it in, which was more like a YT channel name in line with "Matryoshka who plays games," or more specifically, "Matryoshka is gaming" or "Matryoshka is playing videogames." He gave me "Матрёшка_гамает," which for some reason turns to "Матрёшка_гамает" when italicized.
Though if there's any other Russian speakers reading this who wanna roast us both over that, feel free to take a shot, lol.
Then, after dealing with the topic of V, we transition into the next most painful topic of the conversation: Uzi is into N and V. There's a whole lot of stuff that went into that scene, and that would have gone way worse if it hadn't been for Darren and Rebecca backing Joe and Uzi up. And Doll was right, Joe really wasn't expecting that when he tried to shift all the blame onto himself.
And then we get to Thad's totally valid crash-out. For those of you who paid attention, there was a lot of build up to it as Thad kept getting repeatedly slammed by Joe's bullshit without stop. And unlike everyone else, Thad had a mostly normal, trauma-free life. Joe never did anything for him that would completely overshadow things.
And yes, it was the Dysentery Darts that finally made him boil over. If you people thought those weren't gonna stay plot-relevant, you thought WRONG!!!
I'll just direct you all back to Joe's own explanation and understanding of why it happened. And that Joe totally understands it, sees it as completely valid, and is trusting Thad to reign in his more stupid impulses going forward.
Though I will say that Joe was using overclocks a bit to not break down crying as everyone came to his defense.
Rebecca catching Thad out on his darkest fetish was fucking hilarious though. Only real way I could think of to completely derail that crash-out so effectively, and foreshadowed ever since the truth or dare game. Also, Thad's heteroromantic and asexual in this timeline, so there's that. No one asked him before, so that's literally why it hasn't come up yet. Bro just wants to kiss a Murder Drone gal.
Though, like he said, unlike Uzi, he can actually keep his desires down and not actively flirt with them as they try to murder us all.
But hey, Rebecca came in clutch with that there, and the whole group is finally on board.
Then we get to Nori… oh boy, Yeva was not happy to learn that. Neither was Doll, but it hit personally for her mother.
And then we go over telling Yeva Uzi's on the spectrum… and Joe literally uses overclock to become a qualified neurologist in thirty-seven seconds so he can officially diagnose Uzi and Khan with it.
Uzi's right though. Less surprising that he did it at all and more so that he didn't do it sooner.
The whole mutual unofficial sibling adoption thing gets revealed to the rest, blows over pretty well, the subject transitions to shipping, Doll panics over the fact that people will ship her with V of all people…
And then Thad , in the mother of all ironies, figures out Rule 34 of them exists on the other side of the 4th Wall and blurts that out.
Poor Uzi got traumatized by that realization twice , damn…
That entire scene was a fucking riot, man.
So we go over why Yeva can't just pass the Patch on, as well as a canon-compliant excuse for Alice to have pulled it from Beau in Integration.
Joe now has CF Labs on a map. Yeva remembers a lot more. And then Joe lays down plans for a raid on CF Labs to go get the Patch and Nori, but said plans have to stay on hold until Joe can get the whole of Outpost 3 in on fighting the Solver.
Also, Joe remembered the oven full of Cores. That's important.
The whole crew agrees to train and spend time gaining combat experience while they work to turning JNV before they go for CF Labs, as well as start ranging farther out once they get the secret vehicle tunnel built. Joe has his optics on the nearest Outposts, as well as Neo New Falun in particular…
Doll's scene hugging Yeva was entirely just because I wanted to write that little bit of fluff, and it made me feel really happy.
U's POV is short, but it sets stuff up for later.
N's POV was fun . Some platonic eNVy stuff, J being vulnerable and relying on N to save her from herself if she gets reset again, and then more stuff between N and V concerning Uzi.
The Yeva POV was actually a last-minute addition. Only came up with it about a week ago, but it fits great where it does. A glimpse into how she's coping with everything, the realization that she came back from the dead just in time to witness her daughter develop her first two crushes in real time, the none-to-subtle acknowledgement that if Joe hadn't inadvertently played his cards perfectly there, he'd be having problems right now.
And of course, going over stuff concerning the Solver that he can't tell Uzi or Doll, as well as plans to actually beat it, and finally confirming that Solver-Proof armor and weapons made from using DD parts are 100% viable, and can be alloyed with CrCoNi as long as the DD material makes up at least 66.6% of the product by mass.
And yes, Yeva internally referring to Joseph as Joe right at the end was intentional.
And then we round things off with some cute Aly and Franko fluff, where we were about to get to a smooth as hell confession, only for G to show up, horrifically ridden by guilt, and then she realizes without a shadow of a doubt that the workers are sapient and she has a nervous breakdown as the crushing guilt slams into her on the spot.
Good thing Aly is there to give her a hug though…
Lastly, enjoy the realization that after seventy- thousand fucking words, I just left you all on another cliffhanger, LMAO!!!