ᴠɪᴅᴇᴏ | rats are people too

[sylphystia]

Who: Dezel and you
Broadcast: Yes
Action: The Golden
When: Now

[video]

[A group of ship vermin are all sitting in a circle, waiting patiently for... something. A bowl full of scraps appears and seems to float in the air before it sits down in front of them. The rats make cute happy little noises as they dig into the food.

... And then, the greatest evil comes.

The roomba.

One of the tiny maintenance robots comes screaming around the corner at high speed. DIRT DETECTED. [...] PESTS DETECTED. It heads straight for the the poor rats. They all scatter save for one really fat one, who's too focused on the food to notice what's coming.

But what's this-- the droid is scooped up by someone invisible! Dezel's voice might be familiar to some; it's the "don't sleep in my room" guy.]

Leave. The animals. Alone.

[A thin wire appears. With a hard jerk, he shreds the cleaning droid into pieces. Imagine if that had been someone's neck.]

It's all right. You can come out now. [And then the rats come scurrying out of their little holes again. A couple of them crawl over Dezel's invisible shoes, then go back for the food.]

Comments

Video

[notzubats]

[D8 D8 D8]

Oh no! Zurg!

Video

[sylphystia]

[A pause.]

-- This thing is on?

[So much for getting away with murder. And now Sora is upset. This is not what he wanted.]

It was terrorizing the rats. [Poor Bubbs is just too fat to run away anymore.]

Video

[notzubats]

Dezel!!

[THAT'S RIGHT, YOU'RE IN TROUBLE MISTER!!]

Then you should've just put him outside the room! Not destroy him!

Video

[sylphystia]

[THIS IS THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF WHAT HE WANTED. ABORT ABORT ABORT

Of course, being yelled at just makes him yell back too, because he's great at social skills.]

It would have kept coming back!!

[privatizes]

[ . . . . ]

Hey. Invisible rat lover.

[ totally unbothered by that prospect ]

You gonna use those parts?

[ TONY STARK: OPPORTUNIST ]

[notzubats]

[A not so invisible kid responds]

Hey! That's my droid! Not his!

[privatizes]

Was your droid. Now it's in pieces.

[ tough shit kid ]

[notzubats]

Well maybe he can be fixed!

[sylphystia]

[Who is this chump, his voice isn't familiar.]

Is there even anything usable?

[He has no idea, he's not an engineer and he's also blind.]

[privatizes]

Won't know until I tear it apart and build something cooler. Rat-friendly, even.

[ pause ]

So I'm just going to get this part over with and ask what kind of radioactive spider bit you?

video;

[unbearablynaive]

[Unusually for him, the Vision sounds a little irritated. Robot murder is not what he likes to see on his screen.]

That was hardly necessary. It's a simple matter to reprogram the maintenance bots to capture and release the vermin, or to leave them alone altogether.

video;

[sylphystia]

[Even an irritated Vision is still very pleasant to listen to, if we're being honest.]

Apparently its programming failed.

[... yeah he doesn't feel bad about this at all.]

video;

[unbearablynaive]

[It's true.]

I rather doubt that additional programming had been added. It was simply following its directive, as any natural predator would.

Video

[cephalon]

[To see that anyone would be so malicious is deeply disturbing, and Ordis is beyond outraged at the blatent murder.]

How dare you!

Video

[sylphystia]

[go open a charity or something, ya robotfuckers.]

What?

[cephalon]

You know what!

[Real specific there Ordis.]

Let the filthy furry things die, but to lay a hand on a robot-

video;

[nerdeology]

[Well, someone's keeping busy.]

How many rats have you got over there, now?

video;

[sylphystia]

[A pause.]

Twelve.

video;

[nerdeology]

[Somehow that's actually less than he'd expected.]

Do you want the rats from the Huntress? I don't think anyone here knows how to program them not to hunt, and I imagine Koala will cry if any end up broken.

voice

[monolike]

Dezel! [dangit man]

...You didn't have to destroy it. It was just doing its job.

voice

[sylphystia]

... I was only thinking about the rats.

[Of course he was.]

I apologized to Sora. Happy?

voice

[monolike]

Well, it's nice that you apologized. [it's not like he's your mom, man] Did you save all the rats you wanted to?

video;

[firstrebel]

[ Oh, geez. Time to put on her Captain Voice. ]

Okay, so, couple of things.

First - please don't destroy any more droids. They're a necessary part of the ship. If you think they've been misprogrammed, let someone know so we can fix it.

Second - if you insist on having a pet - one pet - you need to keep it confined to your bunk and make sure it isn't chewing on any wires or eating our rations. Got it? The rest need to go.

video;

[sylphystia]

I'm not.

[While he recognizes that the captain has made a decision, given that it's a stupid fucking decision, he's elected to ignore it.]

The rats only chew because they're bored, and I play with them to keep that from happening. If you leave rations out they'll eat them before they go bad. It isn't their fault that people on this ship are messy.

I'm not getting rid of them.

video;

[firstrebel]

[ And to think, Hera's been pleasantly surprised by how little she's had to mom her crew since becoming captain. Spoke too soon. ]

You're getting them off my ship. I don't care what you do with them after that, but if they're bored, it's because they don't belong here. Try the Iskaulit.