Drone Swap-Murder Drones

Blizzard

They started making their way back home in silence. The crunching of snow and the whistling wind being the loudest noises out there. Every now and then U could hear Nexten mumbling to himself which she immediately thought was him talking about her. She couldn't exactly blame him for it either. It went like this for a few minutes until eventually U spoke.

"Look I'm sorry. I was ju-" Nexten cut her off as she faced him. U's eyes hollowed as she looked at her worker drone companion's eyes. They lost their vibrant green look and gained a yellow gradient. She knew of his eyes changing colors due to extreme emotions but it was only ever glimpses of it, and never has his anger been pointed solely on her.

"Nah,nah,nah, I don't wanna hear it, I've been on an emotional rollercoaster for the past like 3 days because of your little group and frankly, carrying a dissasembly drone body ain't helping my mood!" U shook off her worry and fear.

"Hey, my days haven't been much better,  I've almost died three separate times and had my world flipped upside down, if you haven't realized, dissasembly drones aren't exactly meant to play nice to workers."  Nexten and U had locked eyes, the tension rising until a small indicator popped up on U's visor. U's expressions changed from anger to a fearful surprise and quickly she took Nexten by the arm who tried to shake her off. "We need to go Nexten." Nexten stood his ground, too angered to notice the genuine worry in U's voice.

"Why, you want to take me somewhere just to kill me like you did my Dad? I'm not coming al-" Nexten stopped as U extended her claws and raised them, her other hand locking him in place. "What are you doing!?" He closed his eyes as the claws began swinging down, bracing for the feeling of being cut. His fear quickly became confusion as he didn't feel any pain. "Am I dead?" He slowly opened his eyes to see U still holding onto him, her clawed hand back to normal and on his other arm. He also noticed the strap for the bag with the metal supply was cut and on the floor

"Your about to be if we don't go!" U pulled Nexten along, who was still hesitant and slightly terrified. Suddenly a gust of extremely strong wind caused snow to fog the area, making it nearly impossible to see. Nexten struggled to keep on his feet from the harsh winds and lost U in the snow fog. He felt his body temperature drop down to dangerous levels and, if he didn't find shelter, his oil would harden. U looked around in the snow fog using all her sensor, her regular vision covered in snow and her heat sensors hardly seeing the color differences that would point out were a worker would be.

"U!!" Nexten yelled as he held his arms next to him and shivered, feeling ice form on some of his joints. Fear started growing as no response came back. He walked around aimlessly to see if he could find something like shelter until the strap of his railgun fell of his shoulder and hit his elbow. Nexten took his railgun and hesitated, thinking about how he treated U and asking if she would genuinely help him, at least until an alarm flared saying 'Hurry up, you are LITTERALY DYING'. With that he took a breath and aimed the railgun upwards "God, I wish this works."

U kept looking for the boy, panicking as her sensors picked up nothing until the sound of Nexten's railgun blared nearby by and turning her head, a beacon of light appeared. "Well, that's one way of doing it." She ran in that direction and found Nexten, quickly taking his arm and looking at him. "You ok?"

"Well, besides the freezing death storm, I'd say so." He weakly chuckled before short circuiting and shutting down. U didn't waste time and looked for suitable shelter with the limited vision, finding what seemed like a simple run down home filled with skeletons. She set Nexten down on a couch and paced across the room, thinking of some way of warming him up before her own warning interrupted 'Rapid heating detected, get away from the heat source'. "What, nothing near me would be hot, I was literally in a blizzard. Wait, if I'm warming up maybe I can..." She looked at Nexten, thinking on how to help him before picking him up from the couch and laying herself down on it, putting Nexten on top of herself, she was overheating and while usually it was detrimental to them, now it came into benefit. U layed there looking at Nexten as pieces of frost and ice slowly melted and his visor lit up as he slowly booted back up, eventually eyes appeared, still closed. U laid there relieved over Nexten waking up when she heard what she could swear was giggling but different. They had no joy in it, no humor, Nexten was still sad which was made evident when she heard him holding back tears. But before she could ask, Nexten spoke up.

"You know, life has a sick sense of humor." He stood up from the couch and walked over to his railgun which sat on the wall. "I made this so I could keep a promise to myself, a promise that I would get revenge to the drone that killed my dad. I wanted to hurt them, I wanted to see the fear they cast to workers on their visor." He essentially shouted the next part as the yellow coloring of his eyes increased in intensity, "AND YET HERE I AM, doing NONE of that." Nexten dropped down in defeat, his eye's yellow coloring losing the intensity it gained from before.

"You must really miss him huh." U tried to comfort him.

"Is it THAT obvious." Nexten sniffled. U stayed quiet, deciding to look into Samuel's file. Then an unknown voice spoke out. This one older and Male

"Happy birthday Nexten, who's dad's big boy." Nexten looked in surprise towards U who's visor acted like a monitor, showing memories of him. Nexten looked at himself in the memory, a small pill baby with vibrant green eyes, wildly giggling as he was picked up. His own eyes losing the yellow gradient and going back to their vibrant green look. He gave a small chuckle at watching his younger self.

"That was a cheap trick. Thought you said you weren't gonna use the files against me." U eyes came back as she gave a smug smile.

"I said that about your file, not anything about close ones." Nexten looked down with a bittersweet smile.

"Thank you for that."

They spent the rest of the night cooped up watching memories with U teasing him on how he acted as a child. Nexten looked outside the building to see the blizzard still raging on, noting that it got brighter. "Looks like the sun is rising, so I guess we're staying here for the day." Nexten rubbed one of his arm, the house may be significantly warmer than the outside, but it still didn't have that great of insulation. "Well I'm gonna go find some blankets, hopefully a warm one." He started walking to the other rooms, paying particular attention to one that looked like it belonged to a child, complete with a frame of the child sitting next to his mother and father. He took the photo and looked at it before sighing and putting it back down. "Alright I get it, my family is broken, no need to show me a happy one."

After a bit, he returned to the living room. U was comfortably laying down the couch. "Any luck?"

"Nope, looks like other workers got here before us." Nexten sat down on the other side of the couch. "Gonna be uncomfortable but it'll be fine." Nexten dozed off as showed by the green lights going off, replaced by small Zs. U stayed awake a little longer, contemplating the few days that passed and her own emotions.

"No U, you definitely aren't falling for the only robotic soul that has shown you any sort of affection or care despite being quite literally programmed to kill his kind." She looked down at Nexten, who was huddled up, shivering from time to time. She used her tail to pull him closer before laying him down against her overheating chest, watching as the shivering stopped and a slow smile spread across his sleeping face. She looked at him with a smile. "You already have." U soon went to sleep herself after that.