On-Brand Loyalty

Week Two: Stress Relief

Dror sat quietly at his table, fiddling with the modified drone head he'd been working on since he started living in the spire. It'd been about a week since N asked for his help to get with V and the Worker Drone had drawn a blank. He'd been debating for days on what to say to N and he could tell the Disassembly Drone was getting anxious waiting for him. The problem was that Dror had very little understanding or knowledge of how to get a girl's attention, let alone a psychopath like V.

N was his friend now though, so he wasn't going to give up that easily, he'd try his best to help him.

Dror suddenly heard a knock at his door, which confused him to the point of raising a digital eyebrow. It was still about an hour until sunrise, so he guessed either N or the entire squad came back early for whatever reason. The Worker got up and walked over to the door while rubbing his screen, realizing he was starting to get tired.

"You're pretty early N. Did something happen or did you get on the bad side of y-" When Dror opened the door, he was surprised to see not N but rather his new 'squad leader'. Her hands were on her hips as she waited for him to answer. "Oh, J! Uh wha-what brings you here?" He stuttered out.

J said nothing as she invited herself inside, silently walking past Dror over to his bed. She sat down on the mattress before lying on her back and staring at the ceiling. Dror raised an eyebrow in confusion as she took a deep breath.

"I need to rant." She finally spoke, still staring off into space. "I just had a really annoying night and you're the only drone here who'll actually listen to me."

Dror stared for a moment but just shrugged. "I guess I can't disobey an order from my boss." He grabbed a chair and brought it next to the bed, taking a seat. "Go on."

She barely acknowledged his response as she lay her head back and her eyes vanished, replaced by a loading bar and the message: "PLAYING// RepressedRant.mp3"

Dror muttered. "Oh boy..."

Once the bar finished loading and J's eyes returned, she began. "First of all, do you realize how hard it is to keep a consistent work ethic when you're the only competent person in the room?" Dror opened his mouth to reply but she just continued anyway. "It's insufferable! I've always done the best I can for JCJenson while N and V clearly just do NOT care!"

"I don't think that's really-..."

"It's like it's all just one big joke to them while I'm the one stuck putting in actual effort!"

"Actually N takes your orders pretty seriousl-..."

"It drives me nuts! I swear if V wasn't actually good at her job we wouldn't be getting nearly the amount of recognition we do now and I don't know if I could handle that..."

At this point, Dror stopped trying to get a word in. Either this was all pre-recorded or she was so focused on letting her rage out that she couldn't notice anything else. He felt a bit tempted to see if he could walk away or get back to his own work, but decided against it. If she noticed, she might take it as a sign of insubordination and thus a likely cause to terminate him or something.

...Okay, that wasn't the reason. He could notice J seemed legitimately stressed (he could swear he heard her voice break slightly at that last part) and Dror felt like he should at least try to help her calm down, so if that meant listening to what she had to say and maybe providing some advice than he might as well try his best. That's something a friend would do, right? 

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Earlier that night...