"JB-BU7CH, please, think about what you're doing here. You can't possibly walk out on us now of all times! Where will you and your little 'gang' even go, hmm?"

Despite the wide, cheery grin painted on my faceplate, I furrowed my mechanical eyebrows at the JackBot unit in front of me, threatening to split apart from the Spicer Federation with a handful of his close friends. While the other bots were getting restless without our master to give them any real guidance, my emergency admin protocols have been at least semi-successful in convincing them to stay and remain calm. Of course, being built as Jack's personal yes-man, I've always been leveled with a certain amount of scrutiny from some of my brothers. It was only a natural side effect of being gifted with emotion chips, thus free thought. So it never truly bothered me.

What did bother me, however, was the more unruly bots who continuously disregarded my efforts to keep the peace whilst doing nothing to contribute. And now here were those very same bots, along with their "leader", making a big show about leaving while Jack's parents were still upstairs planning his funeral.

"We'll go wherever there's a need for us, Y35. We're waiting for someone to come back who doesn't appear to be rushing to do so," Butch replied, his tone bordering on agitated...or as close as his vocabulator could attempt to make it sound. "Our master is gone. We have no reason to stay here any longer, do we?"

"But you really couldn't wait to make this announcement until after the funeral?" I hotly retorted, crossing my arms as I did so. "Seems just a tad tasteless if you ask me…"

"Well I didn't ask you, now did I?" Butch shot back snidely, bristling slightly at me with a disdain I would never have expected from one of my brothers, even given my position. "Jack is dead, YesBot. There's no good reason for us to stick around and rust away waiting for a dead man to come home, or indulging in pleasantries with his family."

"So that's just it then?" I challenged. "After all that we've been through, after all the times Jack has painstakingly put you back together whenever you get destroyed, you're going to turn your back on both his and your family when we need you the most? I…well, I honestly don't know what to say except…what would Jack think of you right now?"

For the briefest of moments, Butch remained quiet, as if considering just what my words meant...but, as quickly as it lasted, the moment ended with my fellow JackBot turning away and starting towards the door. His parting words cut me right to my mechanical core.

"Sorry, YB, but why should I care for the sentiments of a dead man?"

I tried to come up with something to retort with, some parting words of my own to scorn the retreating bots as they abandoned our home, all that we had left of our master. And yet, no words were required on my part, for the moment Butch reached the main door, it swung open to reveal the white and gold chassis of none other than ChameleonBot, who turned his gaze down at my traitorous brother and addressed him with an irritated tone.

"Now where do you think you're going, scrap heap?"

Butch and his goons positively glitched out for a moment, not expecting to run into the master's most skilled and versatile bot. Ever since Chameleon's aid in Jack's first ever successful raid on the Shen Gong Wu vault, the humanoid construct had obtained an almost legendary status amongst the other units. This "deification" only grew when, upon being reassembled after said raid, CB made a personal request to carve out his own path as a villain. Jack was reluctant but, being the advocate for robot rights, ultimately agreed. He even came to assist the master not long after, being hired as an agent-for-hire on the dark web, which he still does to this day.

Needless to say, Butch and the others were more than a little intimidated when he decided to make an unannounced visit today.

"ChameleonBot! Wonderful to see you again!" I greeted pleasantly, or as pleasantly as I could muster within proximity of Butch and his followers. "I trust you received the signal as well. It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that our creator, Jack Spicer, is no longer with us."

"Yeah…I'm aware," CB answered evenly while staring off into space, as though he were talking to someone else. "I was on a mission when I got the distress call. That's why I ran a little late, so to speak..."

He shook his head slightly before regarding Butch and his supporters again. "And I came just in time to overhear a couple of little bolts deciding to ditch their own brothers. You were always the worst one, Butch, but then I've come to expect nothing less from you at this point. Do I need to remind you of your place again?"

Butch didn't waste time with words, but the idle threat was enough to make both him and his group move back slightly, all shaking slightly more than usual. I couldn't particularly blame them, considering Chameleon's reputation. Still, it did give me the briefest flair of satisfaction to see them momentarily cowed before I turned my attention back to the shape-shifting robot.

"Well, supposed tardiness aside, I'm certainly glad that you're back now. As you can imagine, things have been a touch...difficult, with Jack out of the picture."

"I can imagine," Chameleon stated simply, briefly acknowledging the small crowd of JackBots that were currently huddling behind me at the arrival of the prestigious machine. "Still, other than certain scrap piles giving you a hard time, I can see you've done a commendable job of keeping things from completely falling apart. You may be a literal yes-man, but I think I see now why Jack selected you with admin protocols. You've done good, YB, I'm proud of you."

"Oh! Why, thank you, CB! It's nice to be appreciated once in a while," I replied earnestly, feeling particularly chipper given the praise. "However, things are certainly far from perfect. Recently, we've had a few bugs in the local systems; some data files have been disappearing left and right. I still have quite a few firewalls that need to be set up, and I wouldn't say no to some help."

Chameleon tilted his head curiously and crossed his arms in contemplation. "Missing data files? Puzzling, as well as concerning. What files were they?"

"Attack Squad Sigma's backup memory files, oddly enough. We attempted several recovery and tracking methods, but came up empty handed," I admitted, some of my enthusiasm leached away with the reminder. It always sucked to lose one of our brothers, let alone our most experienced squadron. "As you can imagine, it has me fairly concerned that someone was able to infiltrate our systems and reach them without ever leaving a trace."

After a moment to literally process the information I presented, Chameleon strode over to Jack's main computer, the JackBots parting away from him as though he were Robo Moses himself. Once he turned it on, he switched out his right index finger for a USB stick and inserted it into one of the corresponding slots, promptly slumping over for approximately ten seconds. I already knew what he was doing by the time he powered back up and removed his finger from the USB slot.

"You weren't kidding. Not the slightest trace of any irregularities regarding their removal...definitely curious," He hummed in apparent apprehension, though it was tempered by the stoic confidence that usually radiated from him. "Alright, this is something worth looking into, even if only for the sense of security. Do you know anyone who could manage this, anyone who could fake Jack's credentials or a similar method of deception?"

"Well, there was that one time Chase Young hacked into the network with help from Katnappé," I answered dutifully, keeping my excitement over the prospect of the one and only ChameleonBot assisting us down to a minimum. "But I wouldn't know what either of them would want with JackBot memory files. They're not exactly robo-enthusiasts by any stretch of the imagination. Another possible suspect would be Kimiko, but that'd be unlikely since she and the other monks seemed extremely distraught over news of Jack's passing. I don't see why she would logically do that. My personal best guess would be Pandabubba – you know how that crime lord is when it comes to controlling Asia's electronic market. That, and he's always had a personal vendetta against our creator. But then again, who hasn't, right?"

"Hmm. Sounds like our best bet is to find Pandabubba then," Chameleon replied with a short nod, moving over towards one of the other nearby computers and scanning the displayed statistics. "Do you have any information on what kind of places he frequents, the type of security he has with him? Anything of that nature?"

"But of course!" I supplied a chipper tone. "We have the schematics for his secret passageways, the names of all his bodyguards – heck, we even managed to secure a couple of photos of him in the bath that we were planning to use as blackmail! Only reason we never got around to it was due to certain…complications on the home front. I'm referring to you, Butch."

"Oh, go frag yourself, Y35," The bot scoffed, before making an alarmed, shrill beep when Chameleon's head briefly snapped in his direction, shooting backwards in fright and nearly toppling over into his cronies.

"Regardless, I think I can work with what you have. Give me a few minutes to transfer the data, then I'll get out there." Chem assured me after a few more beats of glaring at Butch, turning back to the console in front of him. "If we're lucky, I'll get us some answers by sunrise. If not, then Panda ends up with a few more holes in him than normal and we move on to the next lead."

"Oh, that's wonderful! I - !"

My vocabulator froze up for a second once my processors fully registered Chameleon's specific choice of words. A quick reboot later and I found my voice, this time with my optimism settings purposefully dialed back a bit.

"Uh…I apologize, CB, but what was that about putting 'holes' in Pandabubba again?"

"Bullet holes, YB. Or plasma, depending on what I have on hand when I finally reach him," Chameleon replied without pause, momentarily unphased before he noticed the silence that followed, leaning back from the computer and turning to both myself and the other JackBots that had suddenly rallied behind me in equal fear. "...I didn't tell you about what I've been up to while I was out in the world, did I?"

"N-not particularly, no…" I answered as calmly as I could, my mechanical eyebrows creasing in worry, inadvertently making my painted-on smile look incredibly forced. "Given your shape-shifting, nanobot fiber plating, I'd assume many contractors would hire you for stealth related missions. Internal sabotage, corporate espionage, that sort of thing. Jack did design you to be an infiltration unit, after all…"

"Oh, I've had my fair share of infiltration work alright. But after a while the market for that gets...repetitive. Boring," Cham responded with an inkling of disdain entering his voice as he stepped away from the computer entirely, facing me and the other bots now. "Y'know, when I set my scope on my first target, I almost couldn't bring myself to do it out of sheer habit. I'm glad I convinced myself otherwise. I now find bounty hunting to be much more engaging, as well as assassinations."

The dead (damn my poor wording) silence that followed didn't last long as all the JackBots behind me quietly whirred and clicked at one another in obvious discomfort and fear. I could feel my own core heating up slightly after receiving such a bombshell of a news flash.

"ChameleonBot…" I started slowly and carefully. "If what you're saying is true, then…then that makes you the first of Jack's creations to ever have real, human blood on their hands…"

"I'm well aware of that, YB. You seem alarmed by the news, but I assure you that I vet my targets before I accept any job offers," Chameleon replied, crossing his arms and holding my gaze, his tone bordering on defensive. "It's not as if I travel around the world killing families left and right just for the hell of it. No, I kill people who deserve what's coming. Scum and villainy...the real kind. Not like Jack."

I was about to say something in regards to that small attack on Jack's character, but I held my non-existent tongue. Because deep down in my power cells…I may have kind of/sort of understood what he meant by that to a degree...as uncomfortable as it was for me to confess.

Sure, I'd agree with Jack as per my usual yes-man subroutines, and I've always legitimately supported the kid in whatever he set his brilliant mind to…but I always worried about him as well. We all did. We'd worry about what would ever become of his mental state if he ever actually killed someone, be it through us or by his own hands. In all likelihood, it'd probably mess him up just as much as it would mess us up. Jack was always a sensitive young man like that, whether he'd cared to admit it or not.

So to have the esteemed ChameleonBot himself – the Metal Sonic to Jack's Robotnik if you will – freely admit to killing humans…let's just say it took a lot of effort on our part to keep our emotion chips from short-circuiting.

"So, uh, I assume the part about telling Jack you wanted to pursue your own 'evil career' was a bit of a white lie then?" I asked, partially to stall from addressing the elephant in the room and partially out of genuine curiosity. "What about that one gig Jack hired you for a few months after you left? You know, the one with multiple Shen Gong Wu going off at once?"

"Evil isn't a one way street, YB. It has a lot of paths, and just as many offramps," Chameleon replied, before tilting his head slightly in possible consideration before properly answering my question. "As for that last job, the one with Shen Gong Wu, that was a few months before I had taken my first bounty. I wasn't in that stage of business yet, didn't see the worst the world had to offer...now I have, and I've adjusted my parameters accordingly."

"But… but I thought we all had this unspoken rule about…holding back on human targets?" I said tentatively. "You agreed to it on the day you were built, CB, before you posed as one of the monks three years ago. It's always been a 'misfire' here and a 'delayed reaction' there, all to keep Jack from being scarred. Defending our creator from monsters and demons isn't the same as being ordered to attack people, even ones with inhuman abilities. I mean – what could be worse than a triumvirate of immortals who already succeeded in conquering the Earth at some point or another for you to resort to this!?"

ChameleonBot stared at all of us, long and hard. He couldn't physically display emotions to the extent a human could in his base form, even with all his upgrades. But I could feel the sadness in his gaze, nevertheless. Soon enough, he put those hidden emotions to words.

"You don't get it, YesBot. None of you do...and honestly, I don't think I want you to," He admitted scornfully, though the anger didn't seem to be aimed at us, but at something else. "Believe it or not, there are things more insidious than demons and world-conquering immortals. There are depraved monsters out there, ones that take on a human form. Truly evil people, in the realist sense of the word. People who have killed far more than me and for far less. At the end of the day, Jack never knew the true darkness that hides in the cracks of this world. I work to make sure people like him never have to see that ugly side...because it changes people. Even a robot like me."

I swiveled my head around to look back at the other JackBots. Their photoreceptors all dimmed with a sense of sadness…and perhaps realization at Chameleon's words.

He was right, we didn't get it, and neither did Jack. It was only now, through retrospect, that I was beginning to see how warped his perception of morality really was. Did he ever truly know what real evil entailed and simply choose willful ignorance? Or did he earnestly believe things were that black and white? Guess we'll never know now…

"…I guess being exclusively raised on cartoons and video games screwed him up more than we thought, huh?" I numbly stated, allowing the stray oil tears to run down my faceplate. "Then again, we only ever really knew what he knew, so I guess we were all in the same boat to a certain extent. Were you ever going to tell him?"

"No. I considered it briefly, last time we were in contact. I couldn't bring myself to do it," Chameleon admitted softly, bowing his head ever so slightly in apparent shame. "Our creator was young, and as skewed as his worldview was, there was so much time for it to change. He could have grown, seen another path for himself just as I did. A better one, not based upon his notion of 'villainy'. Truly...I do regret that he'll never get the chance to make that decision himself."

At this point, some of the JackBots behind me quickly hovered away to shed oily tears in private. Most let out a low hum to express their sorrows. I even noticed Butch tip the rim of his helmet over his photoreceptors to hide them.

Yes, it would seem we had finally woken up from the game we had all been unknowingly playing with our master, only too little too late. Now Jack would never get to open his eyes along with us. And even if he could…? Well, I honestly can't say how he would've handled it. For all I know, he would've just denied it to high heaven and dig himself further into his fantasy, unable or unwilling to cope with the reality that he was never truly evil like he wanted to believe.

After a moment of hesitation, I spoke, "Are you aware of how Jack died, CB?"

"No, I can't say that I am. Truthfully, I didn't want to know when the message first reached me." Chameleon answered, lifting his head to face me, tone somber but still holding the slightest edge of curiosity. "How did it happen?"

"He pushed a girl out of the way of a speeding truck," I answered evenly. "It wasn't even someone that he knew, just a random future subject as far as he would've been concerned. He must've seen that she was about to get run over and…acted without thinking. Took his own life to save another's."

Chameleon fell quiet after that, once more tilting his head in silent consideration. I could only guess where his thoughts dwelled, what conclusions he drew about Jack's final moments. In the end, he settled on a silent nod to himself before he started to walk away, elaborating as he did so.

"I'll be back with whatever answers I get from Pandabubba. Try to keep the place from burning down till I get back," He instructed, pausing slightly as he reached the front door and sparing me one last look of consideration. "Jack would be proud of you, YB. Remember that going forward."

And with that, the shape-shifting robot closed the door to the basement, leaving us to our own devices once again (both figuratively and literally). Though the smile on my face may have been painted on, I felt the urge to form a small but genuine one at that moment in time.

Jack may not have been the nicest or most humble person on the planet, but I think it's clear to me now that he really did care for his fellow organics in his own strange way, even if he himself was oblivious to it. Besides, he was more comfortable being vulnerable around us anyway, like the bright, sensitive soul that he was. I only hope he finds peace in wherever it is that humans go when they deactivate.

However, as I turned away to try and find Butch and the rest of the JackBots to hammer out some sort of agreement for the time being, I caught a glimpse of a black bird peeking in from one of the nearby windows high up on the basement wall. A particularly familiar one, at that, with a red head crest that stuck out like a sore thumb.

It flew away as soon as it noticed me noticing it. I let out a heavily digitized sigh shortly afterwards. We really did need to up our security…

Before I go any further with this story, I suppose I should explain to you all what I want out of this fanfic without spoiling any future ideas I have in mind.

So basically, I'm thinking of having this fic be akin to something like, say, a serialized cartoon if that makes sense. Generally lighthearted, goofy, and episodic at its core (Adventure/Humor) while also gradually building upon its continuity, drama, and character development. A bit ambitious coming from an amateur writer such as myself, I know, but this is a learning experience for me and one has to start somewhere, right? That's why I appreciate your reviews as I want to try and implement those constructive criticisms into my writing to hopefully make it even better. One particular advice I will DEFINITELY take to heart is to break free from the Konosuba script and do more original stuff. Season 1 was primarily a springboard to test things out, but now I'm aiming to make Season 2 to be more of its own thing (with only a few borrowed plot elements here and there).

I'll keep planning ahead as I go along with this and if something desperately needs a re-write or a rescript, I'll do what I can. I strive to make this the best that it can be after all. And you can help out by leaving reviews for me to digest. Thank you all so much for the support and thanks once again to Megapanda25 for his assistance in writing this chapter.