[@CLIW]
[@shylarah]
“Where are we going~?” Tachi’s voice came in a slightly mechanical chirp, and the drone adjusted its grip on the young man’s bag so it could look over his shoulder.  They’d been together just shy of three years, and in that time the little robot had become very fond of Derek, accompanying him everywhere unless expressly forbidden, and sometimes even then.

“We’re gonna visit Adrian,” Derek responded. It had only been recently that he’d started holding conversations with the man, hoping to find some kind of inspiration or further knowledge from him. Adrian seemed like a person that was absolutely nuts, but at the same time, wise. Derek couldn’t quite tell, between observing him from afar and speaking with him only a few times.

They were already leaving later than Derek had hoped. Although he’d asked his slave, Anna, to wake him earlier than she did, it seemed that both of them overslept. Anna had apologized repeatedly, obviously expecting some kind of mistreatment from him. Derek only reassured her that she was human, and made mistakes too. Anna was a gift to him on his 20th birthday two years ago, the same year he’d acquired his own, personal home. While Derek considered being gifted a live human being rather appalling, he thought not only would it be rude to reject the gift, but if he accepted, he could give Anna a better life. He felt like he had done a decent job at providing her with comfort and emotional stability, unlike what other slaves received.

“I am not familiar with him.”  The drone’s three working eyes swept the area, but it only had passing familiarity with the majority of the Diesel folk, mostly because the ones it got close to on its own tended to try to take it apart.  Forcibly.  It played with a bit of shiny metal, using three of its manipulation arms to turn the piece over and over, catching the light.

“Oh, sure,” Derek insisted. “You’ve been with me while I’ve talked to him before. You just might not remember.” He turned his head slightly to look at the little bot while it toyed with a piece of scrap metal. “What’cha got there?”

“I hate forgetting.  I’m not supposed to forget.”  Since the disastrous crash that had brought it to its new friend, Tachi had problems with corrupted memory files on a regular basis.  “Unidentified metal.  It’s shiny!”  The bot extended the larger arm holding the item a few inches, offering it to Derek.  Upon closer inspection, the piece proved to be a spark plug, something that someone was probably going to miss. Derek plucked the object out of Tachi’s metallic pincers and turned it over in his fingers himself.  “Where’d you get it from?” he asked, not sure if it was something that he’d stowed away in his own bag or not.
“Found it.”

Derek raised an eyebrow and looked again at the small bot. “Tachi, where did you find it?” He stopped walking and stuck the spark plug in his pocket, then reached back and pulled Tachi in front of him.  For something with no facial expressions, the little drone looked incredibly guilty.  “Near the lot...am I in trouble now?”

Sighing, he helped push Tachi back to rest on his backpack. “No,” he said, though sounding just a bit irritated. “But, we have to return it, and you need to be careful about what you pick up. That little piece of metal is important. Okay?” Again, he started walking, figuring that he could talk to Adrian about returning the spark plug

“Okay!”  As long as it wasn’t in trouble, the small drone was happy, especially since it had found something important.  Collecting samples was part of its mission, and learning one it found was important made it feel accomplished.

“Good,” Derek said, withdrawing the spark plug from his pocket and holding it up so that Tachi could see it. “Like I said. This is a spark plug. They’re important. We don’t take them from anywhere. Got it?”

“Not a good sample?”  Tachi asked, sounding disappointed.  “Not useful?”  It often had trouble understanding ideas that went counter to its original mission, but Derek was making it clear that taking this particular not-a-sample was wrong.  Like a child, it sought approval from its designated parent, and scolding tended to be the most effective way to keep it in line.

“Not a good sample, not useful,” he repeated her words in the affirmative, shaking his head. Then, he considered future circumstances for a moment and added, “...Unless I tell you that we need one.”
“I will remember.  No spark plugs, unless we need one.”

“Yes, good,” he said. Adrian’s house was now in sight, but not for long before a large, and loud, jeep-like vehicle skidded to a halt in front of it, blowing dust and dirt all over the place, including toward Derek and Tachi.  The robot ducked farther behind Derek to avoid the worst of it, making an irritated whirring noise.  “Inconsiderate!”

“Shush, Tachi,” Derek hissed. The vehicle was unfamiliar. Not that there weren’t several vehicles scattered around the particular Diesel territory where he resided, but most of them were identifiable by other Diesels. This one, however, was not, and from it emerged a man with clothing that was a bit too filthy even for modern standards. The man also had a rifle strapped to his back, and was carrying a crudely built crate. It seemed that he and Derek were heading to the exact same place.

Derek scoffed, completely accidentally, at the fact that this man took it upon himself to just cut in front of him and Tachi. The man, in return, looked at him and grinned.

“What’s up?” He shouted.

“You’re not a Diesel,” Derek replied calmly, shuffling the bag on his back so that Tachi was just a little bit less visible. The drone stayed wisely silent, for once, and didn’t move.

“Nope,” the man nodded. “Just making a delivery. I’ll be out of your way here soon.” As the man turned his back and began walking toward the house, Derek trotted over and called after him, “Hey, wait!” Then, again, the man faced Derek with an increasingly irritated expression on his sunken-in face.

“What is it, man?”

“What are you delivering? Chems, right?”

The stranger’s mouth fell open just slightly, expressing his shock, before a lazy grin spread over his face once again. “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t suspect you’ll go around telling people that, right? ‘Cause, you know, if you did...it could cause a serious problem.”

“We won’t!”  The bright voice didn’t come from Derek, but from Tachi, who in its eagerness to assure the newcomer that things would be fine forgot to stay quiet. A light seemed to ignite in the stranger’s eyes, one of curiosity. “Oops…” the drone muttered, pulling its limbs in tight to make a slightly smaller target.  The man turned and sat the crate carefully on the hood of the vehicle, and started toward Derek and Tachi.

“What’s that, huh?” he asked, his lazy grin turning to one of menacing excitement.

“A little robot,” Derek choked out honestly, mostly out of fear. “She can’t hurt anything. It’s not like she’s a threat to you.”

“Yeah? Let me see it.”

“No!”  A faint humming sound indicated that Tachi’s rotors now had power, something it couldn’t maintain for long, but necessary should it need to gain elevation to escape.

“Nope,” Derek shook his head, reaching for his switchblade. “She doesn’t like for other people to touch her.”

“Give it to me or I’ll blow your brains out,” the man snarled, grabbing the rifle from his back and aiming .

“Uh, A-Adrian! Adrian!” Derek yelled in desperation, drawing his switchblade even though it was definitely no match for a rifle.  The drone added its voice to his, emitting a shrill whistle, the piercing sound designed to help warn off enemies, and aid in drawing attention from others at a distance.