Vaskya and Porsche took a second to untangle themselves, “So Porsche, I see you’ve added a fe—”

“DUCK” Porsche pushed Vaska to the ground and ripped a few braids out of her head. The ends magnetically connected and she whipped a shadowy figure which had appeared behind the room-dividing flag. The hair wrapped around the body and then locked in place.

“Don’t fucking move, asshole. I have 50,000 volts ready to go if you don’t tell us who the fuck you are right now.”

“Porsche,” Vaskya rose unsteadily to their feet, “jEEbus it’s just my food.”

They walked up to the curtain and pulled it back to reveal a human-esc drone. It had a patchwork of rubber, plastic, and metal parts all whirring and clicking. The face was just one slanting piece of wood with a drawn-on mouth—permanently in a grimace—and a small LCD screen showing a set of very annoyed eyes.

A gloomy nasally voice came out of speakers somewhere, “You better be careful, or you’ll lose the security deposit on me.”

“Oh be quiet Raj. You didn’t even get shocked.”

“Oh I’d say I was quite scared Mrs. Rockatansky, I’ll have to report it to the Maalik—”

“I SAID,” Vaska started to get in Raj’s face, “DON’T YOU START,” Vaska’s eyes peered around to Raj’s insulated backpack, “Look, LOOK, my food isn’t even steaming! You certainly took your sweet time didn’tcha?”

Raj rolled his head and his eyes, still fully bound by Porsche’s hair and unable to emote otherwise, “I don’t even have the coding capacity to take more time than necessary Mrs. Rockatansky, so how would I be able to take—”

“I’m sorry,” Porsche cut in, “How do you know this bot?”

“His Name is Raj,” Vaskya gestured to Raj’s chest where someone had carved those three letters into the metal chassis, “And the Great Wall charges security deposits for bots to deliver your food, but they still only send Raj to the highest danger customers.”

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“So they know about you”

Raj cut in, “The maalik figured after the first five bots were destroyed Vaska wasn’t the mild mannered ‘monk’ they claimed to be.”

Vaska used their forefinger and thumb to stroke their chin while they smiled, “Listen! I tooooooold them I was a rather…”

Porsche offered up a word, “action-prone?”

“action-prone, yes, monk.”

Raj threw his head back in annoyance, “The first order you told us you might be in a dodgy area maybe”

Vaska crossed their arms, “I don’t see how this story is relevant”

“YOU WERE SITTING ON A THRONE OF DEAD BODIES”

Porsche’s eyes flared, “Vaska?!”

Vaskya looked up and bit their lip, “It wasn’t a throne, it was more of a…a recliner I’d say.”

“The distinction of it being a throne or a recliner is NOT what I was concerned about!”

“Can you untie me please?”

“Oh, shit sorry,” Porsche made an almost unprecieveable finger movement, and the braids loosened. She reeled them back in and unlinked them, plugging them back into her skull at the various points she’d pulled them from.

“Yeah so that’s new too Porsche, what is that?” Vaska practically flew over to Porsche and started to tug at different parts of her head, trying to see which ones were real and which weren’t.

“Ow! Quit it,” Porsche shoved Vaskya, “I had them installed a while ago. At the very least it’s another way to fuck with people who wanna touch my hair.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Eh, I just took some sedation and was fine.”

There was a pause as everyone mentally traced how the conversation had meandered.

“You owe me money,” Raj said.

“You still use money? I gave that shit up eons ago,” replied Porsche.

“THEY use money, so I use money too. You still take Cell Coin?”

“Yerp.”

“Amazin,” Vaska fiddled with around on for a second, finding the payment app in their net.

“The fuck is Cell Coin?”

“It’s a crypto that you can farm with turbines in your blood stream.”

“Doesn’t that fuck with your body heat?”

“Oh yeah I am always running a low to medium fever.”

Porsche looked concerned.

“Don’t worry abboutit! I’m still the same ol’ Vaskya you know.”

Raj pipped up, “Can you please pay me so I can go back to getting harassed, pissed on, and pushed around walking back to HQ.”

“You got it Raj.”