[A/N: huhh, i have no ideas for new prompts, so I'll just do RJ meeting Auto's family, which are also all FCs. Sorry that it makes this OC-centric / i don't really like the parents, esp the dad. There are definitely implications w all of them, and i hope that you can see it in what i wrote of them. Cy is the smidgenest bit ooc, but that's okay here. (He's like an emo teen kind of thing.)
TW/CW: nerves/nervous/anxiety, meeting people, parental-type conversation, frustration, arguing (on behalf of someone), emotionally shutting down, hiding, comforting a friend, goodbyes]
"Are you sure you want to do this, RJ??? You know you don't have to…" Auto walked around him a few times as they made their way to Auto's house. The android was incredibly nervous to introduce his best friend to his family, as they were neither like a normal human family, nor like the entirely artificial family that Robot had.
Robot chuckled. "Yeah, I know I don't have to. But I want to, so I'm going to." He smiled. "It's going to be fine, Auto. You should try to relax a little bit."
Auto knew that wasn't going to happen. There were so many things for him to worry about, and being asked to calm down was just another item on the list. "I'm just worried that they won't live up to your expectations. I'm the only one like me in my family: even my siblings are a lot more… put together than I am."
"That's okay, Auto! I'm doing this so that I can meet them all! If nothing else, it'll help me understand you even better, and then we'll be better friends."
Auto fidgeted. "B-but what if they push you away? O-or they show you that I'm not someone that you would want to interact with anymore?? What if this is the end of our friendship because I let you meet my family??!" Auto's voice went high pitched and whiny.
Robot stepped in front of him to look him in the eye. "There's nothing that they can do that's going to make me stop being your friend, Auto." He touched his arm. "You know that you and me are best friends, and anything that happens with them is not going to change that."
Auto dropped his vision to the ground, almost ashamed that he made Robot have to reassure him like that to no avail. He thought. "But what if it does, though???"
Robot rolled his eyes and pivoted around on one foot to continue walking forward. "Oh, Auto…" He shook his head. Auto trotted along after him.
When the two made it to Auto's house, they stood on the sidewalk staring at it for a moment. Auto's circuits were firing off with all kinds of terrible situations that could happen when they walked through the door, and he was paralyzed by the sight of the building. Robot looked over at him. "Should we go in now???"
Auto woke up. "Huh??" His chassis whirred hard. "Oh, right… Um, I'm going to go ahead and let them know that we're here so they can all come and introduce themselves. One moment." Auto zipped up and snaked inside, pressing himself up against the inside of the door. He respired and looked around.
His parents were sitting in the living room, reading the newspaper and a book. Auto heard his sister roll into the room from somewhere deeper in the house. "Auto's here!!! Where's your friend, Auto???"
He nervously smiled at her. "He's right outside, Annie. I, uuhh… wanted everyone to know so that you can meet him now."
"I think we're all prepared for that." His father looked at his mother.
"Yes, you can invite him in." She marked her page and placed her book on the end table. She turned to Auto.
"I'll go get Cy! He was helping me with my homework." Annie sped off to wherever it was that she was in the house before Auto got there.
Seeing Annie leave the room filled Auto with incredible dread for the next while. There was no longer a chance to think of the possibilities that this could go wrong: now was the time for all of it to either come true, or go even more horribly wrong. He could almost melt into the floor from the pressure. He found it extremely difficult to move.
He turned around and opened the door to sneak out and get Robot. He jumped in surprise that Robot was waiting at the doorstep and not back on the sidewalk. Those fleeting seconds were gone before he had a chance to appreciate them. "Aah!!" He blushes and dodged his eyes. "Um.. th-they're ready to meet you now, RJ…"
"Great!" He smiled and stepped forward. Auto started to open the door for him, but before he could, Robot reached for his hand. "It's going to be fine, Auto."
He smiled in response, but didn't feel at all better. He opened the door for the two of them to enter, letting Robot go in first.
The house looked like a normal human abode. There were glass windows and wooden furniture covered in various fabrics. There were lamps and a TV set and a few sparce framed photos on the walls. There were two people standing in the room, both seemingly dressed for work, as if they had gotten home only a short while ago. "Hello, I'm Mr. Martinez. You're Robot Jones??"
He grinned. "Indeed I am, sir! I am very glad to meet you!!" He held his claw out to shake his hand.
Auto felt what he imagined sweating was like. "You seem like a very interesting model, Robot Jones." That made it worse. He saw Robot shake his mother's hand.
"Thank you, ma'am! I'm actually one of the first of the KX8 models that JNZ Robotics has developed for in-depth human interaction." Auto would feel bad if his parents hadn't remembered him saying that, because he talked about it several times.
"JNZ does fine robots. A lot of practical use stuff. It's very nice to see that they're expanding into research units." Auto hoped he wouldn't bring it up. "Had they done that back when I got into the field, I probably would have stayed with them."
"Oh, you worked for JNZ Robotics???" Robot didn't know that about Mr. Martinez.
"I did for only a short time. The stuff that they were doing at the time was fine, but I was interested in more personal integration of robotic technology than of making automated construction equipment."
"We knew that there were broader horizons for artificial intelligence than just replacing people in factories and the like." Mrs. Martinez expounded.
"I see. Yes, JNZ has been developing more functional robotics in the past few years. Perhaps you should consider looking back into the company, judging by your magnificent work with Auto." Robot kept smiling at the Martinez couple, giving Auto a chance to shake off the embarrassing blush.
"Well, thank you. You should meet our other two…" She looked around. "Where are they, anyway?"
Auto was frowning. "Should I go look for them???" He stepped to go on ahead.
"We're here!!!" The tiny robot rolled back into the room, glancing back for a second to make sure that she was followed. "Hi there!!! My name is Annie Droid!! Are you Robot Jones???" She waved and spoke in a cute, childish voice.
"Hello Annie! Yes, I am Robot Jones. You can call me 'Robot' if you like!" He waved back with a big smile.
"Auto calls you 'RJ!' Can I call you that???" She was much shorter than he was, with only one leg that ended in a single wheel on a pivoting coaster. She wore a ruffled pink skirt at her middle, and had a pigtailed wig on her head with her antennae sticking out of the ends on either side.
"Sure! I like that nickname." He didn't know a lot of other robots, especially one that were so outwardly eccentric with fashion, but he figured that it probably was a little odd for one robot to call another by what they were.
"I'll call you that, too." He looked up to see who was talking. The robot extended his hand to shake. "I'm Cy Borg." He was shaped very similarly to Auto, but had two antennae and a wig like Annie did. He flipped the bangs so that he could see better.
"Hello Cy. Yes, you can call me that, too." He nodded and smiled. "I'm glad that I can finally meet you two!"
Annie giggled. "Auto talks about you all the time! It's like we're already friends!"
Auto grimaced, but he figured that it wasn't exactly a secret. "I feel like that, too." Robot turned to the humans. "These designs seem like they are really appealing to their respective age groups!"
Most of the family smiled at that. "Thank you, Robot. We're not proper designers, but I appreciate the compliment." Auto felt a little better after seeing that everyone liked the comment.
"I see that you know that all of our robots are researchers like you."
"I do! Of course I only personally know Auto, but he's told me that his siblings are also research units. I know that Cy studies high school students, and that Annie studies elementary school students."
The man put on a thoughtful face. "Yes, we wanted to cover all of the baseline educational institutions for children. We think it's important to research all levels for integration."
"You go to a different school than Auto Maton does, correct???" Auto had told her that he did.
"Yes, I attend Polyneux Middle School."
"How is your integration at that school?"
Robot dodged his eyes away. "Oh. It's going okay." He looked at the man. "I have friends there, but they still do see me as a robot…"
He still looked thoughtful. The woman spoke. "I understand. It seems like that is a recurring theme in what we see from the recordings. I suppose it's silly to think that any of you would be accepted with wide open arms."
Auto's circuits buzzed when she said that. It was something he had always thought, but he didn't know that his mother felt the same way. It made him frustrated.
"I have lots of friends!" Annie piped up.
"Yeah, I have friends too." Cy spoke somewhat accusatorily at her.
"Oh!" Robot made an apologetic face and tapped his cheek. "I also have human friends. Not the entire school, but I am very close with a few of them."
Mrs. Martinez sighed. "Yes. But I'm sorry that you have to be in such circumstances. I know that it's hard to be an outlier in your schooling environments. I wish there were an easier way for all of you to do this."
Auto felt like he had to apologize. "It's fine…"
She looked at him as a mom would when they're not all too concerned with their child's problems. "Oh." She turned to Robot. "Auto is the only one that seems to have such a bad problem with human companionship. It seems like they're just not as capable at integrating as Annie and Cy are."
Robot nodded and glanced at him. "Yeah, he tells me that. I feel really bad about it. I wish the people at his school were nicer to him."
Auto looked away. "I have human friends…"
"Yes, but they're not from your school, Auto. The goal was to have integration with your own classmates."
"It doesn't matter what school they go to, Mama." Annie tugged at her sleeve. "Auto can interface with people. And they go to middle school too! That should count, right Mama???"
She looked at Annie as she spoke. "It does count, Annie. But it would be better if Auto had friends from the school that they go to, so that we can see how kids such as your friends learn best in school."
"It makes sense that they don't accept Auto." They looked at Cy, who had his arms crossed. "The kids that I talk to say that they didn't grow into themselves until they were in high school. Middle schoolers barely have themselves figured out enough to make other human friends. Throwing a robot into that is just unfair."
"Kids in my school are very nice to me." Annie nodded at them.
"That too. Annie's around little kids all day. They still believe it's wrong to judge others for being different because they're little kids! You two just gave Auto the short end of the stick for that kind of thing."
Auto felt depressed. "There are three of you for a reason. One of you gets elementary school, one of you gets high school, and one of you gets middle school. It was going to happen that way in one configuration or another." His dad spoke more sternly than he needed to.
"All three of you should be properly coded and equipped to make human companions at school. Auto HAS friends, so they're not incapable of human integration. They need to do it with their own classmates so that we can collect the proper information."
"But Cy and me are more advanced."
"You're all made specifically for your age range. Auto was made first, but that doesn't mean that you two are more advanced than they are."
"We've seen the specs! We have upgraded chips and coding that Auto never got. You gave him the hardest job with the weakest materials out of all of us!" Auto stared at Cy, and everybody else that spoke.
"Middle school is not that hard to deal with. Robot Jones, you agree that it's no different than other schools, yes???" Why did they have to drag him into this???
He was surprised that they did. "Oh! Oh, i'm sorry sir, but i don't have any information to give an honest opinion of either argument. JNZ only has a few research models like me, and the ones that i know of only go to middle school. I don't mean to disagree with you, but the people that i go to school with all say that it is more difficult than elementary school. I think it has its difficulties, but i cannot judge it as a human would be able to." Auto's screen dimmed.
"See? Even he says it's hard, and he has friends!"
"Exactly, Robot Jones has human companions! We can't tell whether their programming is any more or less advanced than any of you, and they have success in that goal."
"We've seen all his friends in Auto's copies of his data. He's got friends just like i do, which isn't an entire school. And you can see that they treat him differently than people treat Auto!"
"Robot still has integration with his own classmates, Cy. That's what we need from Auto, but we're not getting it."
"But their friends are really nice to both of them."
"But they're not part of Auto's school. We need that kind of integration with people from his school."
It was all just noise to Auto by that point. He stopped trying to process the argument and slouched where he stood. "I'm going to go somewhere else now." He dragged himself out of the room.
"Auto! Don't you have anything to say for yourself about this?" His father spoke to get Auto to agree with him.
Auto looked at him. "I don't care…" He skulked somewhere deep in the house.
"You see what you did, Cy? You made them upset!"
"Me?! You made them inadequate for the job you gave him!"
"We did not make them inadequate! They're unable to do what they're programmed to."
"Then why can't he make any friends that you're satisfied with?!"
"Because he's not trying hard enough, Cy."
"He's trying as hard as he can every day!!! That's clear in the recordings!!! There's nothing more that he can do with what you gave him!"
Annie and Robot watched with concern as Auto left. Annie tried to follow with her eyes where he went, but she lost track of him. They glanced at each other. "Should we go find him???"
Annie nodded. "I think i know where he is." She grabbed onto Robot's hand and walked with him down the hall. The others kept arguing, and the sound dampened the further away they got from the living room.
Annie led Robot to one of the messy labs in the house. There were a few desks in the room and robot parts everywhere. The light was off when they entered, so it was creepy to walk through, and not somewhere Robot thought Auto would be. He continued to follow Annie, though, because she knew the house and Auto much better than Robot did.
Annie stopped in front of a door in the room. She knocked on it, but opened it before she got an answer. "Auto??? Are you okay???"
The closet was also unlit. There were spools of more wires on the racks in the closet, with the ends hanging down. It seemed empty otherwise, but Robot saw Auto sitting with his head in his arms behind some loose strands.
"They don't mean what they say, Auto. Please come back out."
Auto spoke without moving. "I don't care, Annie. It doesn't matter if they do or not…"
"I'm sorry that this happened while i was here, Auto. I can't imagine how you must feel right now."
Auto lifted his head when he heard Robot. "Oh, RJ…" He started to tear up. "I-i'm sorry about…"
Robot moved the wires out of the way and knelt down beside him. "It's not your fault, Auto." He shook his head and touched his shoulder. "You tried to warn me, and i didn't listen. I'm sorry that this all blew up in your face because i was here."
"RJ, it's not your fault…" Auto couldn't look at him.
"We all like you, RJ!" He looked at Annie. "Even Cy likes you a lot, and he doesn't like many people."
He smiled softly. "Thank you, Annie. I like you all, too."
"I don't care what Mama and Papa say, i'm glad that you're Auto's friend. You're the very best friend he's ever had, and that makes me happy no matter who you are!"
"Auto is my very best friend too, Annie. I'm very very happy that we met." He smiled genuinely at Auto, who still couldn't bring himself to smile at all. Robot wiped away one of the coolant tears on Auto's face and caressed his cheek. He rubbed his back like a friend would. "It's gonna be okay, Auto."
One more tender gaze was all it took to get a delicate little smile out of Auto. He nodded and tried to stop crying. "Th-thank you, RJ." He looked up at his beloved little sister. "Thank you, Annie. You guys… you mean the world to me." Annie and Robot smiled with warmed hearts. "I'm… sorry that i shared your recordings without your permission, RJ."
He shook his head with an unworried smile. "That's okay, Auto."
The three of them made their way back to the living room, where the rest of the family had calmed down. Mrs. Martinez sighed when she saw them all. "We're sorry that you had to see that, Robot Jones. It was inappropriate of us to argue like that in front of a guest."
"That's okay, Mrs. Martinez. But i think i'm going to go now anyway. I don't want to overstay my welcome."
"You're always welcome to visit us, Robot Jones." She smiled.
"Thank you, ma'am. It was nice to meet you all."
"It was great to meet you too, Robot."
Mr. Martinez talked to someone else. "Cy, do you want to say anything to Robot Jones before he leaves???"
Cy rolled his eyes, but smiled at him. "I'm sorry that i started an argument, RJ. I hope you can forgive me."
Robot nodded. "Of course i forgive you! I just think that you all should apologize to Auto, too." They turned to Auto. He shyly glanced at the floor, and then appreciatively up at Robot. "Thank you so much for having me! It really was nice to meet you! I hope i can see you all again sometime!"
"We hope so too, Robot Jones! Please, don't be a stranger!" They all waved him goodbye as he walked down the driveway. He looked back and specifically smiled at Auto, who waved and smiled back, happy that the two of them were still best friends.
[Post a/n: ehm, whatever. I'm not the kind of person that gets embarrassed by their parents. I would sooner get embarrassed by one of my friends in front of my parents, but i could count the number of times that either of my parents met my friends, and the last time was when i was in 8th grade.
This came out a little more stressful than intended. Sorry about the savior complex thing going on w Cy there… i got that pretty darn bad ngl. And i would square tf up w ANYONE to defend my lil sib specifically, so there's that too.
Hope it was okay, lmk what you think of my charies, and PLEASE let me know if i wrote Robot okay, bc i feel like i may be twisting him a lil too far from canon in some of these, but idrk.]