Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Somewhere in the residential part of Outpost-3, a storm was brewing.

The young girl with a malicious smile on her face sat at the table, staring at the black-and-white photograph on it.

“После долгих лет планирования… я наконец-то готова. Пускай же все увидят… тварь я дрожащая или же право имею. (After years of planning… I’m finally ready. Let all see… whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right.)” she whispered while stroking the photograph in a creepy manner. “Я обещаю тебе, Ви… Ты заплатишь за то, что натворила. Очень, очень скоро… (I promise you, V… You’re going to pay for what you did. Very, very soon…)”

She let out a quiet chuckle. Another chuckle followed it, then another, and, soon enough, she was cackling like a madwoman, her upcoming revenge already sweet on her tongue.

Somebody knocked on the door of her room.

“Долл? У тебя там всё в порядке? (Doll? Is everything alright in there?)”

The cackling and the crazed smile vanished, replaced by a look of sheer mortification.

“О?! А! Д-да, всё в порядке! Я просто увидела кое-что смешное на телефоне! Не волнуйся, мама! (Oh?! Ah! Y-Yeah, everything is fine! I just saw something funny on my phone! Don’t worry about it, Mom!)”

“Хорошо, милая. Как скажешь. А теперь, пожалуйста, выходи. Ужин готов, и твой папа вот-вот вернётся домой. (Alright, sweetie. If you say so. Now, please come out. The dinner is ready, and your dad is going to be home any minute now.)”

“Хорошо! Я иду! (Okay! I’m coming!)” she got up and, after casting one last glance at the photo, walked out of her room to have a nice dinner with her family.

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Tonight was a great night to be Serial Designation N. No, scratch it; it was a great year to be him!

Not only did he finally confess to V and she accepted his feelings – the fact that made him giddy to this day – but he also improved his relationship with J by a lot. He was pretty sure they were bestest buddies now! Oh, and he got himself a real robot dog. That was super awesome too!

In fact, things were going so swell that some small part of him was worried that he had used up his entire life’s supply of luck and everything was going to go downhill from here. He hoped that V’s recent condition had nothing to do with this. It would be terribly unfair of Fate to punish V with daily evening sickness just because he was the one to anger it.

All he could do right now was to gather as much oil supplies as possible (by killing innocent workers for it) and hope that extra rations would help her feel better. Fortunately, he stumbled upon a big haul and was able to finish his task early, allowing him some spare time to play with his little furry daughter.

“Clarus! Catch!” the murder drone threw the wooden stick toward the landing pod, and a small black-and-white dog of undefined breed followed it.

She took it in her teeth and, with a proud look, strode over to her master.

“Good girl!” he took a stick from her mouth before fishing out a small coin battery from his pockets and giving it to her.

The little doggy chewed happily on her treat.

“Now, how about we try something more difficult…” his optics scanned the area inside the corpse spire in search of a worthy challenge for his majestic pet, his back turned toward the entrance while he was focused on his task.

He snapped his fingers, “I got it! Let’s-”

*Ploink!*

Something collided with the back of his head, and he fell like a sack of bricks. Much to the horror of the little dog next to him, his head fell right on the sharp piece of metal sticking out of the ground, piercing his visor and (temporarily) sending him into the cold embrace of death.

Two worker drones stepped out from behind the wall of corpses near the entrance.

“Ура! В яблочко! (Yes! Score!)” said one of them, “Я в него попала! Лиз, ты видела?! Я это сделала! (I got him! Liz, did you see it?! I did it!)”

She was a rather young worker drone with red eyelights and purple hair, inexplicably wearing a cheerleader uniform. In her hands she held a composite bow that fired a magnet-tipped arrow at N’s head a moment ago.

“Uh-huh. You sure did, babe. Very cool, I guess.” the second one nodded without much interest, her attention focused on the phone in her hand. She was a blond cheerleader with pink eyelights and a permanent unimpressed look on her face.

“…Значит ты не смотрела, хоть я тебя об этом просила. Я тебе это припомню. (…So you didn’t look, even though I asked you to earlier. I shall remember this.)” grumbled Doll, making a mental note to add this slight to her Book of Grudges.

“Uh-huh. Very nice, Dolly.” Lizzy said before finally deigning Doll with a glance, “Now, let’s grab this loser and get out of here before his loser friends show up to horribly murder both of us.”

“…Точно. (...Right.)”

The purple-haired cheerleader turned around and began to walk toward her victim, only to be stopped by a small, weak canine that put herself between her fallen master and those who wished him harm.

“GRRRRR!” snarled Clarus.

“ИИИИИИИ! (EEEEEE!)” Doll squealed. “СОБАЧКА! Смотри, Лиззи, смотри! Это настоящая, живая собака! Не могу в это поверить! Я думала, что он просто с ума сошел, но он играл с настоящей собакой! Как так?! (DOGGY! Look, Lizzy, look! It’s an actual, living dog! I can’t believe it! From back there, I thought he was just being delusional, but he was actually playing with a real dog! How?!)”

Lizzy did not respond to the Doll’s excited rant. Instead, her optics were focused on the little dog. The phone fell from her weakened fingers, and she raised both of her arms into the air.

“DOGGY!” she screamed with pure, unrestrained glee that nobody had witnessed since she was ten. Her eyelights changed, morphing into two pink hearts.

Doll cringed away from her, visibly put off by this out-of-character display.

“…Лиз?(…Liz?)” she hesitantly called out. “Ты в порядке? (Are you okay?)”

In response, a blonde blur collided with her, tackling the Russian drone to the ground.

“Ах! Лиззи?! Что с тобой не так?! (Gah! Lizzy?! What is wrong with you?!)” Doll asked her assailant in bewilderment, staring at the pink heart-shaped eyelights looming above her.

“Doggy hates you, so I hate you too!” Lizzy’s reply was as unhesitant as it was deranged.

“Чего?! (What?!)”

In the moment, a fist collided with Doll’s face and she screamed.

“ААААА! Почему?! Я думала, ты меня любишь! (AAAAH! Why?! I thought you loved me!)”

Lizzy punched her in the face again, this time cracking the right side of her visor in the process.

“ГЯАХ! (GYAAH!)”

“So what?! Doggy is way hotter than you are!” she said as she again raised her fist before abruptly coming to a stop. “…Uh, wait. That came out wrong. I was using “hot” as a measure for how generally worthy somebody is, not to express that I’m literally- Ack!”

Taking advantage of Lizzy’s foot-in-mouth moment, Doll reached out behind her back, grasped a magnet-tipped arrow in her quiver, and, in a single motion, pulled it out before jamming it into Lizzy’s head.

The blonde-haired cheerleader swayed for a moment, a confused, magnetically distorted expression on her face, before collapsing face-first into the snow.

For a moment, Doll remained still while lying on the ground. She was trying to understand how something like this could happen – how on Copper-9 her sweet (sometimes) and loving (in her own way) girlfriend that loyally followed her into the murder drone den suddenly and inexplicably decided to betray her for a dog she just met. It just didn’t make any sense.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a black-and-white blur jumping over her body, its teeth aimed right at the magnetic arrow sticking out of Lizzy’s head.

Fueled by pure virtual adrenaline, Doll grabbed the small dog by its rear leg just before it could snatch the arrow off the paralyzed blonde’s head.

“Нет! Плохая собака! Плохая! (No! Bad dog! Bad!)” she yelled another set of words she never thought she would say in her entire life.

In response, the dog wiggled in her grasp and bit her arm with its small yet surprisingly sharp teeth, making Doll yelp in pain. Nevertheless, she endured and kept her grip on the dog.

Trying to ignore the small beast savaging her arm, she reached into one of the pockets on the tool belt she wore on her waist and took out a small burlap sack. Seeing it, the canine began to wiggle and bite with increased frenzy but was unable to get away before she shoved it inside the sack and tied it closed.

“И оставайся там, мерзкое ты чудовище! (And stay there, you foul beast!)” she spat in disgust, watching the burlap sack squirm on the ground, the angry growling quickly replaced by pitiful whining.

She absolutely adored dogs and would have loved to adopt one, but this spawn of Hell itself was an exception. She may not have the will to kill it, but she no longer had any desire to take it with her either.

With all her enemies finally disabled, Doll collapsed on her knees, venting heavily.

This was… so much harder than she imagined. When she was planning this venture, she expected to either succeed completely or fail and die without anything in between. She could never anticipate Lizzy turning on her the moment she laid her optics on this evil, dog-shaped creature. Seriously, what was up with that? Just one look and she… instantly… switched sides…

…

…

…

Oh. It was not an ordinary dog-shaped demon. It was a mind-controlling dog-shaped demon. Silly her for never expecting such bullcrap.

…

Was Lizzy ever going to be okay?

…

Shaking her head, Doll got up from the ground. Either way, she couldn’t fix whatever was wrong with Lizzy in here. She had to get her beloved back to safety first.

Walking over to the fallen girl, Doll flipped her on her back.

“Bwah!” the blonde spat some snow from her mouth, “Where is the Doggy?!”

Doll sighed. Of course this would be her first question.

“Здесь, в мешке. (Here, in the sack.)” she pointed at the squirming, whining burlap sack.

Lizzy gasped, “Doggy! No! Don’t worry, Momma’s coming! …Hey! Doll! Get this arrow off me! Get- Hey! What are you doing?! Sto- MMMPH!” her words were interrupted by a patch of duct tape placed over her mouth.

Doll added a few more patches before putting duct tape back into her pocket. It was useless to reason with her right now, and she needed to move fast. Ignoring her brainwashed girlfriend for the moment, Doll turned around and walked to the fallen murder drone.

She flipped him over and immediately noticed a piece of metal jammed into his visor.

“Э-э... думаю, что с ним всё будет в порядке. (Errr… I’m sure he’ll be fine.)” she said uncertainly. Murder drones could regenerate, right? At least she thought she heard that somewhere.

After taking a few moments to leave a message and resisting the desire to take the puppy with her, the battered cheerleader grasped Lizzy by her left wrist while grabbing N by the dog collar on his neck and started to slowly drag them both through the snow.

Seeing that she was being taken away from her beloved ‘Doggy’, Lizzy began to wiggle in a futile attempt at resistance, “MMPH! MMMMPH! HRM HRRRM!”

Doll continued walking. It was going to take a miracle to survive tonight and get back home alive. She wished she had some sort of awesome superpowers to help her out – but, alas, she was just a normal worker drone. She had to somehow drag two drones back to the bunker, one of them extra heavy, with her own two hands.

“Ой, блин… (Oh, pancakes…)”

This was going to be a loooong trip.

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As the dawn was approaching, the two disassemblers neared the spire, each carrying a couple of corpses in their hands.

One of them, a short-haired woman wearing nothing but a jacket, called out toward the spire, “N, honeeeeey~! I’m hoooooome~!”

Flying next to her, J shuddered with disgust.

“Ugh, stop it. You’re completely overdoing it with your ‘loving girlfriend’ act. I’m getting second-hand embarrassment just from listening to you.”

“S-Shut up! I bet you would be super embarrassing with your special fella too – if you had one!”

J snorted, flipping her hair back arrogantly.

“Oh, please. I don’t need one.” she replied like the brainwashed halfwit she was. “When you have JC Jenson™, your special fella is… corporate.”

There was a brief stretch of grossed-out silence.

“…Anyway, where is N?” asked V, pretending that she didn’t hear her squad leader embarrass herself. “The sun is almost out. I hope he didn’t lose track of time while hunting again.”

“If he did, he would simply take shelter inside a random building, and you will have to cuddle air today. Not a big deal.”

“Oh, screw you!”

Bickering, the two disassemblers dropped off the bodies at their oil reserve stockpile. As they did so, they noticed that the stockpile already had quite a few fresh corpses in it.

“Well, would you look at that? N must have gotten lucky on his hunt tonight. I suppose he wanted to keep the momentum and returned to the hunt. How commendable.” J fantasized speculated. “And here I thought all he did those nights was playing with his two dogs.”

As V processed J’s sentence and the insult contained therein, her expression slowly morphed into an enraged one, and she opened her mouth to fire back.

“Moof! Moof! Woof!”

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“…Did… Did you just…?”

“N-No! It was clearly Clarus barking!” V hastily defended herself, a light blush on her face.

The two disassembly drones turned around toward the source of the barking.

Some distance away was lying a burlap sack. There was a gnawed-out hole in it and a familiar dog’s head was poking out of it. As she met their gazes, the dog whined pitifully.

“Clarus?!” gasped V, “Who did this to you?!”

The robo-dog turned her head, pointing toward a nearby piece of rebar sticking out of the ground. Perched on top of it was N’s pilot hat with a piece of paper taped to it.

With a growing sense of dread, the two drones cautiously approached the piece of paper.

Slowly, J shifted her gaze toward her comrade. 

V’s face was twitching as she went from fear to utter horror to an absolute, blindingly hot rage. Her mouth opened, her fangs glistening brightly in the moonlight.

Her scream of fury could be heard from anywhere in the city.