If I have to be bad I want to be blowed up.

  Marcia’s smile dimmed into a slight frown, pursing together as she furrowed her brow in thought. Unlike him, she had met various others of “their kind”… some she regretted making acquaintance with, some she dreaded, and others she didn’t much so mind. And may have even come to genuinely love. But the mention of a brother and sister in teens… was he referring to Seventeen and Eighteen?

  “I believe that is old news, Eighter.” She assured him, quirking her lips back into a grin. “At least in regards to Eighteen. I heard she married and had a kid… but her brother, I know nothing of.”

  Hopefully, not doing something stupid like world domination or mass genocide. She was getting particularly tired of the other androids – or cyborgs, in her and the two siblings case – choosing to act like blood-thirsty megalomaniacs every time they came about. Surely, there were other things to do besides killing people?

  … not that she was entirely innocent of that herself.

  “I suppose I did too… though, I’m not afraid to dirty my hands if it means protecting myself and those dearest to me,” Marcia admitted with a shrug, crossing her arms as she turned her head away, glancing off at the horizon. “Plus, I do enjoy a good fight. Gets the blood pumping – though, you’re not much for one, are you Eighter?”

 Marcia momentarily bit her lower lip, preventing herself from responding scathingly to the kindly android, who was truly undeserving of any scorn she might have felt for the familial greeting she was given. Perhaps she had expected him to forget her, to forget their connection – it had been over twenty years since she had last seen him after all – but no. Her number was still imprinted in his database, and as he was fully mechanical, he didn’t have the ageing memory of the human mind. He would probably always remember her, and what she was.

  But perhaps he couldn’t remember the moment all those years ago, where his kindness and open arms drove her away from her attempts to slay Flappe, shocking and angering her at how forgiving he was to the man that weaponized them. Where she had fled as she suffered through an emotional breakdown, screaming at him in a fit of rage and misery, that they werenot family. That they would never be family.

  Or maybe he did, and still chose to see her as such, because his mechanical heart was more human than her organic one. Something she thought of as both annoying and endearing.

  “Eighter,” Marcia responded calmly, giving him a small half-smile. Though she didn’t return the familial sentiment, that didn’t mean she wasn’t happy to see him. He was a very easy person to like. “It has been, hmm? What have you been up to these days? Are you still living in Jingle Village?”