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!!

Video

[notzubats]

[Wow don't yell at him you roobma murderer!]

Then close the door!

I was training them to leave the rats alone, Zurg's just a little slow okay!

Video

[sylphystia]

[As Sora continues to argue with an empty feed:]

W-why does it matter? It isn't even alive! And it sure as hell isn't alive now.

Video

[notzubats]

Alive or not, I'm sure he still had a heart!

[What does that even mean?!? Sora's not even sure, it just sounded like a good comeback!]

C'mon! Could you at least apologize?!

[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!

Video

[sylphystia]

Oh, really? I didn't see one when I destroyed it.

[DEZEL.]

Is that what you want?

[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.]

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

[notzubats]

[An annoyed sound]

Yes. When you destroy someone's stuff, you apologize.

[privatizes]

Was your droid. Now it's in pieces.

[ tough shit kid ]

[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?

[notzubats]

Well maybe he can be fixed!

[privatizes]

Uh, yeah. That's what I want to do.

[ and keep him ]

You obviously can't be trusted to be a decent robot parent, better leave this up to the professionals, kid. He'll go to a good home, promise.

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!

[notzubats]

What?! You can't just steal Zurg!

[sylphystia]

I should really return it to the kid. He's throwing a fit. Practically crying. It's pathetic.

[Oh my god Tony you can't just ask people why they're invisible????]

What? Spiders only bite if they feel threatened.

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

[sylphystia]

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

What?

Video

[sylphystia]

[He lets out a long, drawn-out sigh. When Sora puts it like that, then yeah, it makes Dezel sound childish.

Sora's really bent out of shape about it though, he's assigned it a gender and a name and everything.]

... Sorry.

[He's very sorey, you just can't see his sincere expression of annoyance.]

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

[notzubats]

[Yeah well, when you're a kid with very few friends, you end up getting overly attached to the roombas!]

[But hey, there's an apology. That's something]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

[He does really. Even if he's pretty sure Dezel's not sorry.]

Can I come get Zurg back? Before that other guy tries to steal 'im.