maskormenacelogs | ROBOT DATES GONE WILD

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ROBOT DATES GONE WILD

WHO: Doctor Venture and HOT HOT ROBOT DATES
WHERE: Venture Industries (probably)
WHEN: Beginning of May
WHAT: Helper has a crush. Rusty tries to set them up. Helper gets his heart broken. How dare you, Skeets.
WARNINGS: SAD ROBITS

Rusty Venture is, as usual, bored as shit. He works, more than he thinks he's ever worked in his life, but that's mostly because of the absence of anything else in his life. His interns both got ported out, the prospect of trying to hire new ones seems almost unspeakable, and even drinking and drugs seem to pale after a little while. He knows he's supposed to be working on a fun new bomb with spikes which he's actually considerably excited about, but he can't seem to focus.

Neither can Helper, it seems, who is horribly, horribly bored. He has his hands full with Rusty, of course, but he's used to the spirit and vim and vigor of the boys, and Rusty simply can't provide that anymore. The main problem being, of course, that Helper has a tendency to eat lab equipment and vomit acid when unhappy, and Rusty's starting to run out of chemicals.

As Helper drools acid on the floor again, Rusty stands up, slamming one hand on the counter. "Bad robot! That's it, we're getting you... god, I don't know. Something. A play date? Would that be acceptable?"

Helper looks up with a pitiful little beep.

"God knows who would want to spend time with a defective robot, though," he snaps, and then it dawns on him: a defective robot requires another defective robot as a friend. He rises to his feet, flips open his phone, and dials Skeets' number.

"He-llo, Skeets! Long time no see, hmm? How have you been?"

Skeets may correctly surmise that he wants something, but at least his motivations are as selfless as his motivations ever get.

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Skeets picks up, having just got out of class and assigned everyone a very long paper on Alexander I of Russia abolishing the serfdom and fielding quite a few questions about it. He's in a relatively good mood despite this, and picks up despite the name on the caller ID.

"I didn't realize we were on 'catching-up' terms, sir. Are you in mortal danger again?"

At this point, sans-Helper, Skeets assumes that's the only thing that would get him to bother speaking to Dr. Venture for longer than he can help. But then again, it's not like he has anything better to do.

Edited 2017-05-05 23:56 (UTC)

"What? No! Skeets, you insult me! And here I thought we were getting along swimmingly," Rusty says, which is, to be frank, a difficult thing to interpret, mostly because of the fact that everything he says sounds sarcastic whether it is or not. And he is, in fact, being halfway sarcastic now, but it's not a total lie. Of all the people he's met here, Skeets is, horrifyingly enough, the one that he's had the most pleasant experiences with. The little tin can usually doesn't outright insult him, after all.

"No, no, I'm calling to set up a little playdate. It seems that Helper's taken quite a shine to you, and, well... you wouldn't want to leave a brother out in the cold, hmm?"

He's not even going to try to interpret what Rusty means by 'swimmingly'. He isn't the biggest fan of Rusty but begrudgingly admits he's not the worst one here. Wait, did HK-47 get sent home? Maybe he is. Well, he's bearable, at least.

"You're... Setting up a play date? Sir, you do realize I'm a robot, not a child?"

That being said, Skeets pitied Helper and the poor thing can't choose its person. And setting up a playdate is admittedly more than Booster had ever done.

"Regardless, I'm sure I can make time to speak to Helper, sir."

"What, you're too grown-up? I'm calling you because he's too shy to call you himself! I can hardly blame the poor creature; it's not as though he grew up, so to speak, around anything quite like him."

It's true. The senior Venture, it seems, thought better of Helper almost immediately after creating him, and decided not to make anymore defective AIs to torment the citizens of the world. Rusty gathers that he simply didn't have the heart to pull the plug on him and used him as a glorified babysitter, mostly because he didn't give a damn whether or not young Rusty lived or died. And now that Helper's been passed down to him, it's Rusty's responsibility to make him happy when it's convenient or seems entertaining.

(Rusty is not, it must be said, a much better owner than Jonas was.)

"So! When can I pen you in?"

Again, Skeets is given pause. He sets aside his snarkiness briefly because Rusty has a point. Skeets isn't one to apologize if he doesn't feel it's necessary, but he also sees no reason to run it into the ground when the point is made.

"I'm free today, sir. Though if that's too soon I can email you my class schedule."

"No, no, today works. What, you think I'd be calling you for a playdate if I had anything better to do?" Rusty puts his hand over the speaker of his phone, which means that his voice is muffled, but still perfectly audible. "Yoo-hoooo! Helper? Helper! You owe me one, mister! Skeets is coming for a vi-siiiiit. No, don't vomit, don't - bad robot!"

He clears his throat, returning his attention to Skeets. "He's very excited, and says he's looking forward to your arrival. Shall we say... six? Seven?"

He also, it must be said, ignores Helper vomiting out of pure nervousness in the background. There's no helping that now.

Skeets's newfound hesitant goodwill towards Rusty is immediately halted by wondering what kind of robot is capable of vomiting and who made them that way. Or didn't fix them, since that definitely seems like a bug and not s feature.

"...Six should work fine, sir."

It will be said that he actually believes Rusty's calling for the stated reason and not some sort of weird trap.

He arrives exactly at six, because he's nothing if not punctual. Precision with time is important, he's learned. And rings the doorbell, because he's polite.

When Skeets arrives, mood music is being played in the form of a slow, synthetic soft rock drumbeat being blared from Helper's body. It's a distinctly tinny sound - the Ventures never bothered giving him great speakers, on account of the fact that he's not meant for that - and Rusty's expression when he opens the door is downright sly.

"Hello, Skeets! Thank you for coming. I have motor oil available for you two if that's the sort of thing you... drink. Otherwise, I'll leave the two of you to it. I've got plenty of work to do in the back, so you kids have fun. Toodles!"

And when Rusty steps aside to move into the back of lab, Skeets gets a rather sorry sight. Helper has donned a flimsy plastic bowtie and is holding a boquet of sharp metallic objects wrapped in tin foil. He then lets out a nervous squawk, then holds it out towards Skeets as a gift.

He beeps, as if to say, for you. It is a singularly hopeful sound.

Skeets floats in the air in the doorway feeling frozen in time. He'd seen the meme before but until now he really, truly didn't understand "[internal screaming]" which he now does in spades. He doesn't even know where to start. Everything is happening too much and this is...

Every single thing happening in this scene is honestly something that would literally never occur to him as a thing that would ever happen to him. The music. Rusty's look. Helper's bouquet. When Rusty said this was a playdate he assumed more play than date.

After a moment a hatch opens and Skeets' little robot arms come out and he finally takes the bouquet. What is happening. Why is it happening.

"You really didn't have to."

While Skeets navigates this fun, brand new social territory, Rusty moves to the back of the lab, apparently oblivious to Skeets' discomfort while he helps himself to his minibar, mixing together an undoubtedly horrifying concoction to savour (and then to, almost immediately after, drink until he passes out, but he'll be doing so after Skeets leaves).

On the other hand, Helper beeps in delight once Skeets accepts his sad, sorry little bouquet, wiggling his arms in mid-air as he's prone to doing. Arms still waving in the air, he wheels over to the nearest work surface, grabs a plastic solo cup and fills it with motor oil. He waves Skeets over.

It's his finest vintage.

Skeets follows, flying over cautiously but stopping and staring at the cup for a moment.

"I'm sure it's delicious but I'm incapable of ingesting it." He says that as gently as possible -- it should be obvious he doesn't have a mouth, but it's also Helper.

(He could turn into human form to drink it but then he'd be drinking motor oil and while Skeets isn't super practiced at being a human he's pretty sure that would be a bad idea.)

He doesn't really want to focus on the motor oil so he tries to change the subject. "How have you been doing, Helper?"

Helper stares at Skeets in incomprehension. He points at the motor oil again and burbles, unable to understand why Skeets cannot drink motor oil. Helper can drink motor oil. Why can't Skeets? After a while, he finally seems to get the picture, although he seems a bit put off that that part of his plan has not gone, shall we say, according to plan, and drinks half of it himself before wheeling around Skeets, as though looking for a mouth on his ass.

He doesn't find one. He wonders about pouring motor oil on top of Skeets. That might work. Skeets will smell very nice, if either of them had the ability to smell. When Skeetsa sks him how he's been doing, he beeps in a friendly sort of way, as if to say, better now that you're here.

This circling is decidedly uncomfortable, as is the general vibe in the air. Skeets idly wonders if there's a way to prevent this Getting Weird, although it may be far too late.

"If you want, I can introduce you to some of the other AI and robots I've met here. I'm sure it would be nice for you to have lots of friends."

And then maybe he wouldn't have all of Helper's attention laser-focused on him.

Helper beeps as if to say, But I like you, which he feels is fair enough. Is he being friendzoned right now? He's absolutely being friendzoned! Now he knows how Rusty feels, except for most of the women Rusty says are friendzoning him do not, in fact, want to be friends - they just don't want to bone either.

With all of the finesse of his owner, Helper burbles a bumbling query: do you like me too?

The amount of experience Skeets has with people admitting romantic feelings towards him can be counted on his fingers -- with full knowledge that he doesn't have any. It's a situation in which Skeets has never found himself in, but has read about on forums and advice blogs and such.

From what he understands, he should be clear and concise with his answer in a way that isn't ambiguous but not in a blunt, aggressive way. If Booster was here, if he managed to stop laughing enough to actually suggest anything, he'd say to flirt but say no and then wink before leaving or something along those lines.

That's why Skeets gives Booster advice and not the other way around.

"I do like you, Helper but... I'm afraid not in the way that you want me too. I'm sure you'll make some robot very happy someday --" Which is questionable at best but not out of the realm of possibility, no matter how slim said possibility is. "But that robot is not me. I'm sorry I cannot return your feelings."

There is a long silence. It's not a very comfortable silence, particularly due to the fact that Helper, for all of his idiosyncracies, rarely remains quiet; he only seems quiet on the basis that nobody but the Venture family and other robots can understand his incessant beeping. The slow jam skids to a stop. There is tragedy upon his face, or at least there would be if he could show more than a maximum of five expressions according to how much his mouth opens. In fairness, Helper's default face is an unintentionally tragic one, so the tragedy of the whole situation manages to permeate that pathetic blue face.

He wails in such a way to say, there are no other robots (and indeed there are not, at least none that Helper has met that have such a bounty of personality), and then wails simply for the sake of wailing. He tosses his arms up in the air, then hangs his head. There is the impression that should he be capable of it, there would be some gnawing and gnashing of teeth.

That, at least, gets Rusty's attention. He stomps over, looking peeved and says, voice as nasal and irritating as ever, "What the devil is going on here?" He looks between Helper and Skeets, looking equally accusatory towards the both of them. "I was gone for like five minutes!"

Helper flings his arms around Rusty, who looks decidedly uncomfortable with this arrangement, but does not do anything to dissuade him from doing so for now.

"Oh, come on, what now? Skeets! Explain!"

Skeets waits for Helper to respond, not quite liking the feeling of anxiety. Who lets a robot develop anxiety? He really needs to get these emotions under control, he's not supposed to be having them.

When Helper finally does react, however, Skeets would have gladly taken the silence again.

"I did not mean to upset you --"

Skeets looks at Rusty who's very accusatory and he lowers himself in shame."I'm sorry, sir, I believe I've made things worse."

"No kidding! I invite you over to entertain him for an hour or so, and this is what happens? I was better off before you arrived! Okay, Helper, that's - that's enough, Helper, get off of me!"

Finally, he pushes Helper off and dusts off his sleeves, looking deeply soured about the whole thing. He lets out a huff of a sigh, and glares between Helper and Skeets. "What did he say to you, huh?"

Helper makes a despondent sound. He doesn't like me.

Rusty levels an accusing glare at Skeets. "What did you tell him that for?!"

"I thought it would be best to be up front and honest about my feelings, Dr. Venture."

Skeets sounds deeply uncomfortable by this entire thing, and somewhat ashamed, but a part of him resents Rusty shoving Helper away like that, so he can't help make a suggestion.

This may be a bad plan.

"I believe when one is given a romantic rejection, the affection and empathy of those close to them can help mend the wound. Helper needs you, sir, not me."

"No, what I'm seeing here is you trying to evade responsibility for your actions! You don't break someone's heart and then scold someone else for it. Oh, for the love of God, the first robot he meets he actually likes and this happens? No wonder he's all broken up."

Rusty rolls his eyes and reaches out, tapping Helper lightly on the head. He does this twice. He's a very reassuring man. "There, there. Do you want me to kick him out, hmm? Would that make you feel better?"

Helper makes a low, pathetic sound that doesn't mean much at all. Rusty sighs again and plants his hands on his hips, exasperated. "You couldn't even give him a chance? Look, he got... things for you. He must have made them himself, because I sure as hell didn't do it."

Skeets hovers midair for a moment, literally impossible to read. Sometimes having no visible face or expression works in his advantage as it gives him time to think.

"You're right, this isn't your fault. It was my error in mishandling this."

He knows he should say something else. Tell Helper he's a very sweet robot and compliment the... bouquet. Say something about how he's not programmed to love -- which may have been true once but now he's not so sure.

He does know he doesn't feel that way about Helper. And he realizes for one of the first times in his life: he doesn't have any advise to give himself. His own resources have run dry.

"I'm sorry sir, I'll go."

You know when a car backs out of a spot hurriedly and does a u-turn? Skeets does that mid-air before fleeing the scene in disgrace. He really wishes that guilt wasn't one of the emotions he was developing.

"You're just leaving?! You little yellow cowa-- ahh, he's gone."

Rusty looks over at helper. He's not one for showing weakness in front of others, but... hell, Helper's all he's got. He doesn't have any friends here, and certainly no family, not even anyone who's close to him by virtue of the fact that they don't have any other choice the way Brock was. Hell, he'd even take Hatred right now, and he's as vile a person as he's ever met.

Ah, well. At least he's got Helper. "There, there," he tells him, still grumbling a little under his breath about the whole thing. "He's not worth your time. Now, let's build a nice sexbot or something for you, hm?"

And so it goes.

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ROBOT DATES GONE WILD

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i hope you're ready for a thread of 'he beeps'

a scintillating conversation v_v

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