On-Brand Loyalty

Month Six: Neutral Concord

At the roof of the Corpse Spire's spacious interior, V slept soundly while hanging from her usual upside down perch. The sun had only just started setting, but V often preferred to rest earlier so she'd have all the energy she needed to focus on her favorite pastime of hunting helpless workers.

Unfortunately, said rest wasn't nearly as easy to come by these days due to...

"So you said you wanted to show me something buddy?"

V's yellow eyes sprung open as they quickly spotted the source of what awoke her down on the ground, narrowing into a glare as a result. What else would it be other than her 2 male squadmates Dror and N. 'Cause apparently that stupid worker is officially part of the squad, ugh.

She could just make out their conversation in her barely awake state, something about N having previously requested something from the red-haired worker.

It'd been three months since her attempt to provoke a confession out of the little drone and needless to say her opinion of him had not improved. As much as she wanted to simply ignore his presence, her squadmates spending so much time with the twerp left a void in her own interactions with them, as limited as they already were. Outside of when they ran into each other on hunts, V was almost always by herself now, which bothered her way more than she thought it would.

N no longer randomly tried to approach and talk to her, as if he had gained some clarity regarding her repeated dismissals of him (Naturally she suspected that had to be Dror's doing) while J spent most of her free time with the worker. The more she spied on that pair in particular, the more V noticed just how much J seemed to practically shadow him around whenever she got the chance. V had never previously held any real value in the idea of having "friends", but boy did it feel off for everyone around her to suddenly be all friendly with each other while she remained practically isolated. Hell even J and N's relationship had improved, she almost never struck or insulted him anymore once he started actually being effective for once, and she knew exactly whom the culprit for that was...

V stewed in her spot on the corpse ceiling, angered at her newfound loneliness and annoyed at not being able to do something about it without drawing the ire of the rest of her squad. So instead she hanged and watched as the worker prepared with building suspense to present something to N, the pair having constructed some scrap into a standing target before themselves.

"Cheeeck this out!" Dror smirked as he pulled something out of his pocket. The current item of interest was revealed to be... a ninja star. N naturally looked on with his usual goofy grin.

V stared with disinterest as Dror tossed the star at the scrap-metal target. His form was terrible, missing the stationary construct and sailing way past it. She was tempted to give a mocking laugh when the star whirled around and perfectly boomerang'd back into Dror's hand.

N jumped in excitement. "Holy crumpets! See I knew you could do it Dror!"

Dror smugly smiled from the praise. "Yes, well. It was an awfully simple task." He held up the star, showing off the orange LED light in the center that matched his own eye color. "See, this shuriken here's got a built-in router. So by connecting my own CPU to it wirelessly, it'll always return to my hand if I will it to." As he spoke, the light dimmed and went blank as Dror disconnected from it. He handed it to N. "Now you give it a shot."

As N's own visor became starry-eyed in excitement, V stared in confusion. "That twerp...made something to help N on hunts?" After half a year of freeloading, the squad's resident moron was getting some kind of personal upgrade from that social leech of a Worker Drone? Seeing N so happy caused a fire of jealousy in her mind.
Why though? Since when did she care whether N was happy or not? V pushed the thoughts to the back of her mind as she watched on.