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V's entire life, as far as she could tell, had been a catastrophe with very few good moments in her existence.
She was a work drone, a slave, created to serve her human masters without question. Although V did her best, she was still thrown out for dismantling and ended up in a junkyard seemingly filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of her kind.
It was a true nightmare.
She survived only because she was found and rescued by a sheltered girl.
Tessa was able to repair V and help her with various physical and emotional problems. The little drone found something unexpected in this terrible mansion, which was cruelly ruled by Tessa's tyrannical parents: love.
She met a very special drone, also rescued by Tessa, known in the series as N, or N for short. V enjoyed spending time with him, was always amazed by his positive attitude, and found him wonderful overall. The two other rescued drones besides her and N were J and Cyn; V was never particularly close to them.
Unfortunately, it wasn't just people who caused them pain on the estate. J treated N terribly. And what did V do about it? Nothing; she was too cowardly.
V was too afraid to say anything, even if it meant incurring J's anger, and she hated herself for it.
V knew she was a coward, and even after she became a dismantling drone, that didn't change.
After Cyn revealed her true nature and wiped out humanity, she transformed all the worker drones into dismantling drones and sent them out to continue the hunt.
J, V, and N form a team and were sent to Copper-9. Unlike the other drones, their personalities were not erased; only N's memories were wiped.
Cyn did this because she genuinely loves N as her big brother.
For V, it was as if the N, with whom she had landed on the exoplanet, was a completely different drone to her. He didn't remember her, not the love they had felt for each other, and not even the beautiful moments they had shared. V, on the other hand, knew him well enough to know that if he regained his memories, he would immediately refuse to perform his duties.
To protect N, V pretended not to know him and kept her distance. Her heart ached constantly, especially when she saw him, but she had no choice, at least not as far as she knew. She didn't want N to remember. So she stayed away, allowing him to live in blissful ignorance.
V acted as if she were self-assured, indifferent, yet possessed an insatiable bloodlust. She ignored the abuse JN inflicted as punishment for his poor performance. Both V and J knew, however, that JN did this for fun, because even when N met or exceeded his quota, she punished him.
N was brutally beaten almost regularly and suffered severe wounds that would have been fatal without his regenerative abilities. J humiliated him, punched him, stabbed him, cut him, and much more. And V did nothing to stop it, no matter how much she wanted to, because it was better that way.
And yet, despite their situation, N was still the same positive and enthusiastic guy who constantly tried to talk to them both. It didn't seem to matter that he couldn't remember anything from before he arrived at Copper-9, except for the few times he'd tried to ask them about it, at which point V had fled and J had beaten him up instead.
N was still as kind-hearted as ever, regularly sparing a worker drone, something V would never say to J. This only strengthened her resolve to protect N, no matter how much it would hurt her. He would make it; he was strong. His spirit was far too resilient to break or fail.
However, a tiny voice in the back of her mind tells her that everyone has their limits and that N will reach his sooner or later.
V, however, shakes off this thought; N would never break.
-----
It took V considerably longer than she would have liked for her to notice the changes in N's behavior. His smiles became increasingly forced, rarely reaching his eyes before disappearing altogether. His attempts to talk to J and V also diminished, as if he were giving up on ever being able to speak to them again. Even his enthusiasm for his discoveries became less and less frequent, until it finally stopped.
The last part wasn't so bad after all, because J constantly destroyed his discovery and called it garbage.
V also saw N happily talking to a pile of stones to which he had glued googly eyes. Stones! He was so lonely that he was literally befriending stones, since none of his companions had the basic courtesy to speak to him. This deeply disturbed V and made her realize how dire N's condition had become.
The worst part was that she only realized this when N fell silent and she could see how sad and broken he was. She was deeply ashamed of having abandoned him like that.
V began to think about what she should do better so that N could be happy again.
-----
V came to several conclusions as she racked her brains over how she could do better and what she had done wrong, and she didn't particularly like any of them, or rather, she hated them.
First, she was a complete coward. Second, N's mental health was damaged far more than she had anticipated. How could she have been so careless? All she wanted to do was protect him.
V really needed to change her methods. This was a complete disaster. She had to be very careful about what she said. Continuing as before would only inevitably cause N to break down. However, that would change the following night. She would work hard to complete her quota faster and think of something nice for N.
V also had to figure out how to get J to finally stop her bullshit, damn it! No matter what it took! The best approach would be something more formal, like saying that gentler methods were more effective, but V didn't think that would work with J. She'd probably say something like N deserved it or some other crap like that. Instead, she should tell her that hitting a subordinate was extremely unprofessional. Yes, that would work; it would attack J's pride.
Satisfied with her plan, V wrapped her wings tighter around herself as she hung from one of the beams inside the pile of corpses, trying to fall asleep while ignoring the terrible feeling of a strange, inexplicable fear that permeated every fiber of her being. As if it were all too late, but surely she still had time to put everything right.
"Maybe it will come true if I just think about it hard enough," she murmured to herself before falling asleep.
-----
The next morning, J saw V had already flown away and turned mockingly to N, who looked at her expressionlessly.
"You could really learn something from her, you wasteful scrap metal. If you had the same work ethic, I wouldn't be constantly punishing you."
They both knew this was a lie; she loved to torment N.
"We should get going soon, hopefully your work today isn't nearly as bad as usual," J sneered as she turned away from him.
N slowly approached her.
J summoned her wings and was about to take off when N said something.
"I hate you so deeply, J."
Before J could react angrily and punish N for his insolence, he had already chopped off her head with his claws.
J's headless corpse falls to the ground, N immediately exchanges his claws for a sword and stabs J in the back, the tip emerging on the other side, piercing J's core and finally killing him.
N remained motionless for a few more seconds before pulling out his sword.
After a few more seconds, N bent down to J's corpse and began to eat it.
He will need this energy for V.
-----
After a successful hunt, V flew back to the corpse tower that the team called home; she had made a particularly good catch today and took two worker corpses with her so that N could eat them with her.
When V arrived, she was visibly surprised by the silence; usually N or J were there before her. N because he hated killing, and J because she was actually quite lazy.
Then V saw something behind the landing capsule; it looked like the leg of a female dismantling drone.
Strange, normally J sleeps inside the landing capsule and doesn't lie on the floor.
V walked around the landing capsule and was startled by the sight.
V saw J's mutilated bodies lying on the snow-covered ground and subconsciously noticed that the oil was completely empty.
One of V's sensors on her head detected movement, and that was the only thing that saved her life.
V immediately jumped aside and narrowly avoided being beheaded by N.
She looked at him with hollow eyes and asked in a trembling voice, "N? What... what are you doing?"
N glared at her with fury and took a step back. N began to speak contemptuously.
"Are you really that blind?! I'll kill you just like I killed that shitty excuse from a leader!"
N charged forward with his two claws and wildly attacked V, who desperately tried to fend off his attacks.
"N! Please!! We can talk about this!!!" cried V desperately, but this only made N angrier as he mocked.
"OH! Now you suddenly want to talk to me!? Does your life really have to be in danger before you consider me worthy of your time?!"
A rather powerful blow from N shattered V's sword and severed her arm. The force of the blow sent V flying.
N flew after her and tried to crush her head with a stomp as she landed, but V managed to dodge by rolling to the side.
N switched one of his arms to a rifle and shot at V, who tried to dodge but was hit by a few bullets.
V took cover behind a metal box as she tried to buy time for her regeneration to heal all the damage.
When her regeneration was halfway complete, the metal crate exploded, burning V's back. V quickly jumped to the side and avoided the rocket that N shot at her.
"You were always worth my time, N! I just didn't talk to you to protect you!"
N continued firing at V, with a rifle as his right hand and rockets as his left hand.
"Protect me!? As if!"
V summoned her wings and flew around the spheres, shooting down the rockets.
"I mean it! There's something terrible out there! You can't remember it, and I didn't want you to!"
N switched his weapons to swords and flew up to V as he unfolded his wings. He tried to divide them into four. V quickly switched her rifle to a sword and also transformed her newly regenerated arm into a sword.
V blocked N's attack as he screamed in her face.
"How stupid do you take me for?! Even if what you're saying is true, you still could have talked to me about literally anything else! You didn't have to ignore me like I never existed or like my existence is some kind of torture to be endured! You could have at least protected me from J, but instead you let her torture me! You simply didn't have to tell me this secret and put me through hell."
V opened her mouth but she didn't say a word, because N was right, she shouldn't have let him through under such terrible circumstances.
N took advantage of V's moment of weakness and severed both her arms with a double blow. Once V was overcome by the pain, N flew higher before hurling her to the ground with a powerful axe kick.
V lands hard on her back to the ground, where she cries out in pain, and before V can do anything, she is stabbed in the stomach by N, leaving her unable to move.
"Did you seriously expect me to believe such a stupid excuse? I know I'm not the smartest person, but I'm not that stupid either," N whispered softly.
V felt his whispers were even more sinister than his screams.
"I meant it, N, I wanted to protect you..."
N rolled his eyes in annoyance.
"Even at the very end, you stick to your lie... Even if it were true, there was no good reason for choosing this particular method; you had countless other options and you chose the worst one."
V said nothing because he was right. V was deeply ashamed of her actions.
N pulled one of his swords out of V and transformed it into a claw.
V didn't want to die, so she tried to stab him with her nanite canister in order to escape.
However, N's own nanite canister quickly sliced through V's tail, causing her nanite canister to fall uselessly to the ground.
"I hate you, V."
With one final blow, N destroyed her core, ending V's life.