"I thought you said it'd take a while." When Knockout made it back to the repair ward, he was greeted with a small form covered by a tarp, which was on a flatbed of sorts. Tony was still picking up pieces of the plane, putting them on the flatbed as well. He looked almost numb, more than anything else. It was to be expected of an earth AI, though.
"It is taking a while. Look at all the stuff I still have on the floor."
"No… shutting it down."
"She wanted to be dead when she heard that you were coming back."
He rolled his eyes. "Well, was there anything else you needed help with?"
"If you can stand getting a little bit dirty, these pieces need to be picked up and put on the cart. Just don't move the tarp. It's not pretty."
He sighed, annoyed. "Fine." He went over to one part, pushing it over to the cart with his tire before picking it up with his teeth and putting it on the cart. Out of curiosity and suspicion, he proceeded to pull the tarp off of the corpse.
He deeply regretted it. It looked like scrap one would find on a battlefield. Yuck.
"I told you not to look under there."
"It looks so much worse when it's not active."
"Yeah. Look, if you're not gonna help, I can do this by myself. It doesn't matter."
"Rose wanted me to make sure you were okay, too, though."
"As in?"
"You deactivated your only project."
"Other than a burning dislike of you and the new head of the base, I'm fine."
"There were a lot of unused aircraft in that hangar. You could use one to make another."
"Only to be demanded to deactivate it again, I assume."
Knockout practically growled, grabbing another piece of the aircraft and moving it. "For an AI, you're particularly disagreeable." As soon as he said it, however, he immediately realized what it was he said… he wished he could take it back.
He shot a glare at him. "You know, put it this way. My directive was essentially to build Tera. You come in here and start saying how worthless she is, and then you proceeded to convince the head of the base that she needed to be deactivated, and look. I did what you said. I think I can be as disagreeable as I want, because you'd probably rather this to a malfunctioning medic. I could make myself glitch if you'd like. You've given me more than enough reason to. Oops, I forgot... I'm not supposed to know I'm AI, am I?"
The car was silent, unable to counter. He just continued to move pieces over to the flatbed, one by one, taking care not to scratch his paint in the process. Why exactly They allowed this base to continue to function was beyond him, and they were somehow continuing to expand the number of aircraft housed there. How?