Yay, I'm finally posting this, and we're at chapter 10! I want to apologize for how long this took, and believe me, I have a VERY wide range of stupid but true excuses, including but not limited to: writer's block, busy schedule, discovering Mob Psycho 100, and being purely lazy. Late updates will probably keep happening from now on, but I WILL keep updating!
I have completed one flipnote for Ex Machina, and it's on our Sudomemo JTwins. It's the one with the Scoutbot, obviously. If you watch it from anything that isn't a DSi, though, there's a high chance of the video delaying or skipping, so keep in mind that the timing may seem off. Also, the song is "I Got No Time." It's a FNAF song, so if that triggers you, then I understand.
Since school is starting soon, I don't know if I'll have time to work on a serious animation (on Flash or Poser, I mean). So instead, for the time being, I'm going to do art requests! I'll only do ones related to the fic, so no OCs or anything like that. Sorry! But, I'll make a DeviantArt and put my drawings there, and PM you when your request is done. I want to know what you guys would like to see!
Thank you all for the support. It makes me really happy to see what you all think, and what I should fix or keep doing.
To Guest, since the MVM mode allows six players, in this universe, there are three teams of six mercenaries. Heavy, Demoman, and Spy aren't here. I hope that clears up some confusion.
That night, the mercenaries got only a few hours of sleep before they were once again called into action. Most of them were still groggy, but they were all angry enough to quickly prepare for the battle, although Scout ate a Dalokoh's Bar, of all things, to wake himself up. As usual, Engineer instructed the Scoutbot to stay in the workshop before leaving. And, like always, the Scoutbot would watch the team set up for a few minutes before heading inside, idling.
A couple days later, the robot awoke from its rest to find that its orders, once again, were temporarily disabled. Everyone would be coming inside soon. It wondered if there were any more eggs in the fridge. It doubted at this point that Engineer would get upset with it for leaving the workshop, so long as it made itself useful.
A quick look in the fridge showed that there was only one egg left in the carton. It went ahead and cooked it anyway, figuring that the mercs could share it. It was a bit disappointed, frankly, when they started bickering over who would get to eat the whole thing.
"I saw it first, and therefore it is mine, maggots!" Soldier shouted.
"Fuck off, I'm freakin' starvin' ova here!" Scout wailed.
"I haven't had a decent meal in nearly a veek!" Medic argued. "Some days I svear you do nozhing but eat und drink!"
The most disappointing thing was that the only one not fighting over the egg, the Scoutbot noticed, was Engineer. The Texan glanced around the kitchen before making to leave, back the way he came. Before he could, though, the Scoutbot approached him, head tilted in curiosity. "Hardhat... Yo whassup?" it asked, blinking.
To its surprise, Engineer jumped a bit, startled. "Oh, Scoutbot. Didn't notice ya standin' there."
The Scoutbot's eyes flickered, then dimmed. It hadn't been just standing there; it had only just gotten there. So why did he think that it was? "Egg," it said simply, pointing in the general direction of the table. It loved picking words up from Scout.
"Oh. Well, that's awful nice of you, Scoutbot," Engineer replied, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head, "but the thing is, I got a lotta work I need to do. Maybe another time?" When the robot let out a static hiss, he added, "In the meantime, why don't ya go and play with Py? I remember him sayin' he'd teach you some games."
The Scoutbot's eyes dimmed further. It knew perfectly well what shifty behavior looked like, and Engineer was exhibiting a lot of very shifty behavior. But, the Texan had been more than trustworthy so far, and the chance to learn new things was way too tempting to pass up. Its eyes brightened, and it jogged over to Pyro, who was just about to head down the hallway with the egg.
"Yo... Pyro's!" the robot called. Pyro froze, then turned. The other mercenaries were still bickering, not noticing that the egg had disappeared.
After a pause, Pyro asked, "...Yrrph?"
"Hardhat... said someth-said... play... widdit... widd... me..." the Scoutbot said, tilting its head in an attempt to convey that it was meant as a question. It couldn't find a "please" in any of its files.
"Hrr phrrb yrr phrr?" Pyro asked, looking and sounding like he should be quirking a brow. "Krrnb hrr brr rrph? Rrm hrrnbrr."
The Scoutbot did actually find a perfect answer for that. "...Engie was busy."
Pyro scanned the room for the Texan, but he was already gone. The other mercenaries had by now noticed the missing egg and moved on to find more ready-made food. After a moment of thought, the firebug sighed. "Rrkrr. Rrph prr rr brrm." After all, who could resist a good game? Eating could wait; maintaining a high level of fun was far more important.
The Scoutbot hopped and clapped its hands, and Pyro shared its enthusiasm. The firebug all but tossed the egg, plate and all, back onto the table. The sound made the other four mercs freeze, slowly turning their heads. Then the frenzy began all over again. Soldier was the one who finally claimed it, grabbing a large ham from the fridge and running off with both food items.
"Rrkrr, yrr wrrb hrrphrrb," Pyro told the Scoutbot, backing out of the kitchen. "Rr brrb rr phrr phrrnph rrb mrrb yrr rrb brr." The masked man skipped off, while the robot darted off in the opposite direction, and waited outside like it had been asked.
(...)
"Where in tarnation could those two have gone...?"
It was a little over an hour later, and Engineer had finished his task, whatever that was. Naturally, his first thought was to check up on the Scoutbot, maybe talk with it for a bit, before finding something to eat and turning in for the night. But he couldn't find the darned robot anywhere. There were only so many rooms in the base, and even fewer that the robot had access to. Engineer's eventual conclusion was that it and Pyro were most likely outside. The firebug did love tag, after all.
The Texan headed outside, turning his head every which way and taking in his surroundings. He still didn't trust the provided "ceasefires."
He soon found the pair in the clearing, quite a ways past the makeshift diamond. Pyro was cheering the Scoutbot on as it hefted a large, bulky flamethrower, trembling under its weight and looking nearly as frantic as Engineer was in that moment.
"What in Sam Hill are ya doin'?! Put that thing down!"
The Scoutbot, completely unaware of his presence until then, screeched and unceremoniously threw the heavy weapon to the ground, backing away and looking as if the man had slapped it. "Don't dism-"
"Don't give me that," Engineer waved it off, storming straight past it and up to Pyro. "What were ya thinkin', givin' it a dang flamethrower?"
"Rrph nrrb rr phrrmphrrhrr," the firebug whined. "Rrph rr Rrmbrrhrr. Rr wrrph phrrphrrn hrrm phr mrrk sphrrkrrph."
Engineer sighed. Sometimes he forgot that the BLU Pyro's grasp of reality wasn't quite as firm as the rest. "Either way, don't you think it's a mite heavy for the Scoutbot to be carryin'? It was designed to carry lighter... toys, after all."
That made Pyro think for a moment. "Hrr. Rr brrph yrr rrb. Rr, brrb wrr phrr hrrb rrph rrb phrrn!"
"Yeah?"
"Rr hrr! Wrr prrb phrrb, hrrb rrm phrrk, brrbrrbrrm brrbrrbrrm, Phrrmrrn phrrph..."
"That sounds like a lotta fun," Engineer said, smiling. "Well, ya mind if I take the Scoutbot off your hands for ya? I've got somethin' I'd like to talk with it about."
"Rr brrn mrrb," Pyro answered. "Rr phrr nrrb phr rrb, rrnrrwrr."
"Thanks, Py. C'mon, Scoutbot. This is important." He beckoned to the robot as he walked off, and it happily followed him, like always.
Soon, the two were inside the base, walking down the empty hallway. The Scoutbot tried to walk into the workshop, but Engineer stopped it.
"No, we ain't goin' in there," he said. "That's the first place people'd think to look."
Quite suddenly, the Scoutbot remembered how strangely the Texan had been acting earlier. From the sound of it, he had something, or he had done something, that he didn't want anyone else to know about. But what, and why? If cold metal could bend and twist, the robot was sure it would feel something like this, even if it couldn't, in such a sense, "feel." This was a sensation it had felt many times before; it wasn't fear, but it often accompanied fear.
Engineer led the robot to his room, opening the door and allowing the robot inside. It was hesitant to enter, but it eventually poked its head inside.
At first nothing seemed amiss; aside from a few extra tools littering the desk, nothing had visibly changed. It went deeper inside, still scanning the room, and noticed something in the corner, hidden behind the inactive Sentry. It was a tall machine, its blue paint chipped but shiny. It hummed and vibrated, but didn't otherwise move. The Scoutbot jumped and shrieked when it realized what it was looking at.
It was another Scoutbot.
"You know how Medic's been buggin' me to try usin' one robot as a means of fendin' off the rest," Engineer explained. "He was hopin' I'd take you apart, but I couldn't possibly do that now. Luckily, I found this lil' guy all by itself after the wave was over, so I deactivated it and brought it inside when everyone else went to bed. I couldn't let the rest of the team know. They'd think I was tryin' to adopt the entire robot army, heh.
"What I need your help with," the Texan told the stunned Scoutbot, "is hopefully gettin' some information out of it. I'd do it myself, but Gray's got all kinds of failsafes on this thing. It's designed to overheat and melt down the CPU, programming chip, ports, everything if anyone tries to crack it. I know it'll try to attack me once I reactivate it, weapons or no, so I was hopin' you could reason with it."
Engineer didn't wait for a response; the Scoutbot watched in jittery silence as he pulled the inactive robot to the middle of the room. He pressed in the lower jaw, and it popped open to reveal a small mess of wires. He lightly rummaged through them until there was a quiet click, and the robot started to tremble. The Texan closed the jaw and took a few steps back, waiting for it to become fully aware.
The first thing the robot did was charge at Engineer, arm raised to brandish a bat it didn't have. It darted in and out, mindlessly swinging and missing by feet. It paused, then stood behind the stiff Scoutbot, recognizing it as a bomb carrier. It ran side to side, occasionally stopping to taunt, but as the human was no longer in its immediate range, it had stopped attacking.
"There anythin' ya think you can do, Scoutbot?" Engineer asked hopefully, misinterpreting the robot's stiff posture as its usual thoughtfulness. The hostile Scoutbot teased him three more times before he considered that something might be wrong. "...Scoutbot?"
As if it had been shot, the Scoutbot jerked back, sparks flying in all directions, and turned, staggering into the wall. It ran out the still-open door, and the other Scoutbot followed it. Stunned, Engineer ran after them. They were already out of sight, so he followed the thuds and slams past the tiny kitchen. He found himself in one of the Resupply Rooms, but there were no robots in sight. He ran outside, and saw only one robot thoughtlessly circling around the bomb hatch.
The Scoutbot was gone.
Dun dun duuun! Engineer done messed up. But what did he mess up with, exactly? The Scoutbot will make its feelings about the situation blatantly clear in the next chapter.
I knew exactly what I wanted to happen in this chapter, but I had no idea how to go about it. The hardest part, I think, was either figuring out how to get the Scoutbot to ask Pyro to play, or how the heck Engineer was going to deactivate a robot that would melt down if you messed with its insides. Scoutbots' jaws move a bit, so I thought maybe there could be a switch of some sort in there. Plus, it would be stupid to design a robot you couldn't turn off without it overheating, never mind making it run on money.
Pyro-ese:
"Yes?"
"He told you to? Can't it wait? I'm hungry."
"Okay. Let's play a game."
"Okay, you wait outside. I'll grab a few things and meet you out there."
"It's not a flamethrower. It's a Rainblower. I was teaching him to make sparkles."
"Huh. I guess you're right. Oh, but we still had lots of fun!"
"Uh huh! We played tag, hide and seek, bubblegum bubblegum, Simon says..."
"I don't mind. I still need to eat, anyway."
So, I hope you guys enjoyed! I'll let you know if I make another flipnote!