AN: This one was hard to figure out what to do for! I could have gone a more silly way like previous chapters, but I do want to have some more serious moments in this flick. Thanks again for all the reviews from last chapter! :D

A Drone Named Jeffrey

Chapter Four

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For the past month, I've really been able to priorities straight. It's amazing how not having to worry about dying every nano-klik would free up your mind to do that. So, in that time I've been able to figure out who I really was: what I like, what I don't like, what I want, how I feel about things, and a whole bunch of other important stuff.

"No! Rodrigo, how could you choose Selena over her twin? She's not the one having your baby!"

Like how I liked to watch what Riley calls "mind-melting, poorly scripted teenage angst for adults." I like to call them by their proper name: Spanish soap operas. And they are addictive.

Much to Riley's disgust.

"Jeffrey!" I barely turned my head, optics still trained on the television I was watching through the window of her house. I heard my human huff and a clatter of metal followed. She must have kicked over another box. "Are you going to help at all?"

"Just a klik."

"You said that five minutes ago!"

I wave my hand towards Riley while leaning closer to the open window. "Shh! Rodrigo's about to propose to the wrong girl."

"Oh, no. And then her sister will run in and see it all!"

I gasped as just that happened and turned to glare at Riley. "Way to spoil it for me, you…spoiler!"

"Jeffrey, my dad's been watching those things since I was born. I know every plot twist, couple, and set of siblings that will ever appear in one of those. Now help me go through these boxes before my dad has another silent fit."

A static filled huff escaped me (I was picking up way to many habits from Riley), and I finally turned away from the TV to poke at a box. They were the same ones that Riley had pulled out of the garage when I first moved in, and they had been sitting outside beside it ever since then. From what I had heard last night from my cozy abode, Riley's dad had finally gone full parent and told her she couldn't do anything until the boxes had been cleared out.

I thought it was a little harsh to order your kid to do that by herself, but apparently half the hoard was Riley's junk anyway. Which was why she could take one look at a box and immediately send it to the trash pile without a second glance. So, I guess the manual labor wasn't that bad.

"Trash." I picked up the box she pointed at and tossed it over the fence to sit in the alley behind the house. Riley poked her head into another box and pointed at it next. "This one too."

"Can't we just toss it all over?" I waited until she pointed out another destined for the trash pile. "You're throwing most of it away anyway."

"Some stuff in here is important. Trash."

I tossed the next one and poked inside a box without a lid. "What's so important about paper and cloth? Especially old paper and cloth."

"Don't touch that!"

I snatched my arm at the screech. Riley abandoned the box she had been looking through and snatched up the faded blue cloth with white five-pointed symbols. She smoothed out the little indent my poking had created and carefully put it back among the black and white pictures of a solemn male human. "What's the big deal?"

Riley ignored me and shuffled things around in the box, pulling out some of the paper to stare at before placing it back. She snatched up the lid that was sitting next to the container and snapped it back on. "It was my grandpa's."

"Grandpa?"

"My mom's dad." I silently tilted my head, and Riley sighed. "I really don't wanna explain human families right now, Jeffrey."

My head tilted to the other side, watching the slump in my human's shoulders and how she was rubbing her eyes a lot now. "Was he important?"

"We were really close before..." I leaned back a little at the weird snort Riley made. "He used to tell me all about his time as a marine. Mom hated it. I thought she threw all this way when she left."

"Why did she leave?"

Riley suddenly shook herself. She did one more weird snort and reached up to adjust her cap. I automatically bent forward when I saw that her eyes had turned red and glassy looking. "Put that on the porch, Jeff."

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Just put that on the porch so we can get the rest of this done."

I sat still for a moment before shrugging and picking up the box. Riley had her back to me while I carefully placed it beside the door of the house. After doing that, I glanced through the window and gasped. "Rodrigo is dead!"

"The mailman did it."

"Nuh uh!"

"Yeah huh."

"Nuh uh. It was Selena's side lover, Fredrick. Get your soap plots straight Riley."

My spark lightened a bit at the laugh that came from Riley.