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

Despite the wide, cheery grin painted on my faceplate, I furrowed my mechanical eyebrows at the JackBot unit threatening to split apart from the Spicer Federation with a handful of his close friends. While the other JackBots were getting restless without our master to give them guidance, my emergency admin protocols have been 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 a natural side effect of being gifted with emotion chips, thus free thought. 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, Y-35. All we've been doing is waiting for someone to come back who isn't exactly in a hurry," 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..."

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

"Well, I never asked you, now did I!?" Butch shot back, his photoreceptors glowing red with a disdain I never would've expected from one of my brothers. "Face the facts, YesBot! Jack is dead! There's no reason for us to stick around and rust away waiting for a dead man to come home. Or indulge in pointless pleasantries with his parents. You know they never cared about us anyway."

"Maybe so, but Jack still cared about us!" I challenged. "After all that we've been through, after all the times he's painstakingly repaired you, you're just going to turn your back on us 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 moment, Butch remained silent, as if truly considering what my words meant...

But, as quickly as it started, the moment ended with my fellow JackBot turning away and hovering towards the exit. His parting words cut me right to my mechanical core.

"Sorry Y-35...but why should I be restrained by the sentiments of a dead man?"

I tried to come up with something to retort with, perhaps some parting words of my own to scorn the retreating robots as they tried to abandon their home. 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! Their faceplate gazed at my traitorous brother and addressed him with an irritated tone.

"Where do you think you're going, bucket of bolts?"

Butch and his goons briefly rebooted out of panic, obviously 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 their own path as a villain. Jack was reluctant but, being the advocate for robot rights, ultimately agreed. They even came to assist the master not too long after, being brought in as an agent-for-hire on the dark web, which they still are to this day.

Needless to say, Butch and the others were more than a little intimidated when they 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 they were talking to someone else. "Was on a mission when I got the distress call. That's why I ran a little late, so to speak."

They shook their head slightly before regarding Butch and his supporters again. "And I came just in time to overhear a couple of little glitches deciding to ditch their fellow bots. You were always the worst, 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. The idle threat was enough to make both him and his group move away and back into the lair, all shaking more than usual. I couldn't particularly blame them considering Chameleon's reputation. Still, it did give me a brief moment of satisfaction to see them scared straight before I turned my attention back to the shapeshifting robot.

"Well, tardiness aside, I'm certainly glad to see you. 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. "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 our networks; 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 their head curiously and crossed their 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 fading upon being reminded of my failure. It always sucked to lose the very essence of our brothers, let alone our most experienced squadron. "It has me concerned that someone was able to infiltrate our systems and reach them without 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 them as though they were Robo Moses himself. Once they turned the computer on, they switched out their right index finger for a USB stick and inserted it into one of the corresponding slots, promptly slumping over for ten seconds. I already knew what they were doing by the time they powered back up and removed their finger from the USB slot.

"You're right, not the slightest trace of any irregularities regarding the files' removal. Curious..." CB hummed in apparent apprehension, though it was tempered by the stoic confidence that usually radiated from them. "Alright, this is worth looking into, if only for the sense of security. Do you know anyone who could manage this? Someone who could fake Jack's credentials or use a similar method of decryption?"

"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 rather distraught over news of Jack's passing. I can't think of any logical reason for her to do that. My best guess would be Pandabubba – you know how that mob boss is when it comes to controlling Asia's criminal underworld. Plus, 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 like that?"

"But of course!" I supplied cheerfully. "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."

"Go offline, Y-35," The rude robot scoffed, before making an alarmed beep when Chameleon's head snapped in his direction.

"Regardless, I think I can work with what you have. Give me a few minutes to transfer the data, then I'll get out here" CB assured me after a few more seconds of glaring at Butch, turning back to the console in front of them. "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 and we move on to the next lead."

"Oh, that's wonderful! I knew you would -"

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 '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 unfazed before they noticed the silence that followed. Leaning back from the computer, they turned to face both myself and the other JackBots that had suddenly rallied behind me in mild fear and concern.

"...I never told you what I've been up to while I was out in the world, did I?"

"Not really, 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 shapeshifting nanobot fiber plating, I'd assume many contractors would hire you for stealth 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," Chameleon explained with noticeable disdain as they stepped away from the computer entirely, directly facing me and the other bots. "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. Assassinations are a much more engaging and lucrative business."

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. I could feel my own core heating up slightly after receiving such a news flash.

"ChameleonBot…" I started slowly and carefully. "If what you're saying is true…then that makes you the first of Jack's creations to 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 screen my targets before I accept any job offers," Chameleon replied, crossing their arms and meeting my gaze, tone bordering on the 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 admit.

Sure, I'd agree with Jack as per my usual yes-man programming, and I've always legitimately supported him 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 – 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? 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 their head slightly in consideration before properly answering my question. "As for that last job, that was months before I had taken my first bounty. I wasn't in that stage of business yet, hadn't seen the worst the world had to offer. Now that I have, I've adjusted my parameters accordingly."

"But…what about our unspoken rule of holding back on human targets unless absolutely necessary?" I asked tentatively. "You agreed to it 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 traumatized. Defending our creator from monsters and demons isn't the same as being ordered to attack people, even ones with inhuman abilities. What could be worse than a trio of immortals who conquered the Earth for you to resort to this!?"

ChameleonBot stared at all of us, long and hard. They couldn't physically display emotions to the extent a human could in their base form, even with all the upgrades. But I could still feel the sadness in their gaze. Soon enough, they 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," They admitted scornfully, though the anger didn't seem to be aimed at us. "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. 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 sadness…and perhaps realization at Chameleon's words.

He was right. We didn't get it, and neither did Jack himself. 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 really 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're all in the same boat here. Were you ever going to tell him?"

"No. But I did consider it the last time we were in contact. Couldn't bring myself to do it though," Chameleon admitted softly, bowing their head slightly in apparent shame. "Our creator was still young, and as skewed as his worldview was, there was so much time for it to grow. Perhaps he could've seen another path for himself just as I did. A better path, not based upon his notion of 'villainy'. I truly regret how he'll never get the chance to make that decision for himself now."

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. Butch even tipped the rim of his helmet over his photoreceptors to hide them. I knew he wasn't truly apathetic of Jack (unlike certain other unruly bots in the past).

Yes, it would seem we had finally woken up from the game we had all been unknowingly playing with our master. 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 and dug himself further into his own little world, unable (or unwilling) to cope with the reality that he was never truly evil like he wanted.

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

"Can't say that I am, no. Truthfully, I didn't want to know when the message first reached me," Chameleon admitted, lifting their head to face me. Their tone was still somber but it also held the slightest edge of curiosity. "How did it happen?"

"He pushed a girl out of the way of a hijacked 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. Must've seen that she was about to get run over and…acted without thinking. He took his own life to save another's."

Chameleon fell quiet after that, once more tilting their head in silent consideration. I could only guess where their thoughts dwelled, what conclusions they drew about Jack's final moments. In the end, they settled on a silent nod before heading towards the stairs leading up the first floor of the mansion.

"I'll be back with whatever answers I get from Pandabubba. Try to keep the place from burning down till I get back," They instructed, pausing as they reached the door to spare one last look. "Jack would be proud of you, YB. Remember that going forward."

With that, the shapeshifting android closed the door to the basement, leaving us to our own devices (figuratively and literally). Though the smile on my face may be painted on, I felt the urge to form a small but genuine one at that moment.

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. Besides, he was more comfortable being vulnerable around us anyway, like the bright and sensitive young soul that he was. I only hope he finds peace in wherever it is that humans go when they deactivate permanently.

As I turned away to find Butch and hopefully work out some sort of agreement, I caught a glimpse of a black bird peeking in from one of the windows high up on the basement wall. And a 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…