Work Text:
The brave ranger sat in her hiding spot, perched patiently awaiting her quarry to arrive. The room was pitch black, unlit and uninhabited...for now. Any second now, a dangerous cog would enter and begin his devious work. Speak of the devil, there's the elevator door. Footsteps, click-clacking against the oil stained tiles. The poor thing didn't even know what was coming to him...
"I can hear you up there." The Derrick Man grumbled.
Poor, poor fool. Talking to himself, how sad! Anyway, he doesn't even know what the ranger has set up in store for him. Soon he will fall victim to her master plan, and all of Toon Town would know the name Resistance Ranger Rain!
Derrick groaned at the toon's hushed whispers, she was the one talking to herself. Setting down his papers, he spoke again "I'm sure whatever your plan is will interrupt my work, because of course it will."
"SHHH, I'm trying to set the scene!" She called down to him.
He raised an eyebrow, or whatever the equivalent on his goggles were, and trudged over to the light switch. Now ignoring her prattling from above, he flicked it on.
"AH, MY EYES!" Rain cried from the rafters.
He turned around just in time to watch the tiny purple fox face plant a few feet away. He crouched down in front of her unmoving form, picking her up by the back of the collar. Despite the serious height, she was all smiles.
"Hi Derrick!" She lit up immediately.
"Yes, hello." He mumbled as he dropped her back on her feet. Her smile grew wider as he thoughtlessly trudged back to his desk. "Now, what was that about a 'master plan' of yours?"
"Well, you see," She began giggling as he moved to sit down, "I thought you looked uncomfortable in that chair of yours-"
As soon as he sat, the chair split apart from underneath him, and he fell behind the desk with a short yelp.
"So I thought I would adjust it a bit!" She managed to spit out before bursting into a laughing fit.
He groaned, rubbing his joints as he stood back up. "For cog's sake, how am I supposed to work like this!?" He glared daggers at Rain, shaking so profusely she worried the oil in his head would start leaking again.
"I guess you'll just have to fix it!" She shrugged as she hopped up onto his desk, digging into her pocket and pulling out all the screws she removed from his chair. He scoffed as he took the screws.
"Typical, leaving me to clean up my office after your antics. One day you're gonna break something completely. Might even be me." He mumbled grumpily as he crouched to reassemble his chair.
"Well you can't just work without tools!" Rain held a screwdriver up to him. He reached out to take it with a muttered 'thank you' before she revealed a second screwdriver behind the first one. He fixed her with his permanent sneer before it curled upward slightly.
"I see you admit you're a tool, then?" He snickered at his jab before reaching up to cradle his chest, pain flaring up inside him.
"Hey, wow! You kind of made a joke!" She stretched her grin even wider and beamed at him, "I'm so proud of you!"
He pointedly ignored her as he grabbed a can of oil on his desk and opened it. He took a swig and sighed. "And that has to be a new record for you: getting me to drink about two minutes after I show up."
She gave him an apologetic smile as she helped put the chair back together, a look he groaned internally at.
"Don't look at me like that," Derrick said, narrowing his eyes at her, "If you were really sorry you wouldn't do it."
She snickered at his lecture, returning to the task of helping to fix his chair.
Minutes pass in comfortable silence, only broken by the creaking of the cog's joints as he bent down to take care of the chair's lower parts. A sound Rain duly noted.
Once the pair finished, Derrick took a hesitant seat on it, worried that Rain sabotaged it further. But as he relaxed into the back, he let out a contented sigh and closed his eyes. A few seconds pass before he opened them again, eyes meeting hers. She looked up at him expectantly, causing him to sigh.
"Thank you, Ms. Rain." He muttered, "You...helped."
"Awww, no problem Mr. Man!" She beamed proudly. Derrick tilted his head at the strange use of his title.
"...Bore."
She made a double-take, humming confusedly at him.
"I said Bore. As in not 'Mr. Man' but 'Mr. Bore.'" He explained as he leaned forward and spread out the paperwork he should've started on 15 minutes ago. He made a valiant attempt to focus on his work rather than the sudden silence from the toon beside him, but caved and turned to look at her.
As expected, her mouth hung wide open, as if he just told her the secrets of the universe. He groaned at the headache he knew was coming with her tidal wave of questions. She leapt up onto the arm of his chair and hung on, her lower body hanging limply above the ground.
"WAIT, so your name's Derrick Bore? Why do they call you Derrick Man, then? Do other cogs not like you that much?" She threw out rapid fire questions right in his face, cog she could be annoying sometimes, "And why do your joints creak so much? Don't you have oil for that? Oh, and how come you're so grumpy all the time?" He felt his temples begin to ache as his motherboard began to overheat, the cog equivalent of a headache, "And why do you-"
"Would you be QUIET!?" He rubbed his face in exasperation, immediately regretting the harsh tone he took. He sighed, and resigned himself to give her a few answers. "My name is William Bore, not Derrick Bore. Derrick Man is just my job title. Same way yours is Resistance Ranger. No, not many cogs enjoy my company, and I don't enjoy theirs. It's a mutual dislike. My joints creak because of a...factory defect, not because they're rusted. Satisfied?"
Rain pursed her lips, mulling over her questions and his answers. "Uh, you didn't answer my other question, why are you so grumpy?"
His eyes narrowed down at her and he returned to his paperwork in silence. The toon looked down dejectedly and hopped back up onto his desk, passing curious glances over to his work. She tried not to show it, but Derrick could tell from her sudden lack of smiles that something was wrong, and it was by fault of his outburst. He sighed as he hyped himself up for something he really didn't want to do, nor ever did for anybody else. He stifled a groan and glanced back to her.
"Sorry." He mumbled to her, half-hoping she wouldn't hear.
She turned her head back to him in surprise, confusion, and a little bit of worry. Her face eventually twisted into a smile again, and her legs began to idly kick as they hung off of his desk.
A more comfortable silence passed as he worked, Derrick was thankful that he chose to apologize, otherwise the silence would've been unbearable. He wondered briefly why he thought that. Why should he care whether or not she felt bad about being yelled at. She was a toon, she got what was coming to her. She did.
His thoughts were interrupted by the recognizable ring of the elevator bell. He jumped out of his seat, picked Rain up and threw her into the cage behind his desk, slamming the door shut just as soon as the doors to the elevator slid open. He spun back around, expecting anything from other toons to his bosses, only to meet eyes with a bumbling flunky subordinate.
He let out a subtle sigh of relief as he fixed his posture, standing as tall as he could. "What is it?"
The flunky handed him a manila folder packed with papers. "This was dropped off for you, sir. Possible points of interest for scouting out oil deposits."
"Yes, yes, good." He nodded along as he set the folder aside, "You may go now, I'm sure you have plenty of work to be doing."
The flunky turned and left back towards the elevator, Derrick watching him the whole time, only letting his guard down once the elevator returned to the first floor. He turned to where Rain was, only to find the cage empty.
Glancing around the room in sudden fear, he found her once again on his desk, pacing back and forth across it in thought as she read through the folder.
"Wowie, there sure is a lot of oil around here. You must have a lot of work to do!" She said idly.
"Yes, I do, now if you could please-"
"SURE would be nice if there was some way to cut off all that boring old paperwork!" She interrupted him, "Ah well, that seems impossible though." She made an exaggerated shrug and let the folder slip from her fingers.
It flew across the room and landed face down in a puddle of oil, immediately soaked in the black ichor.
"Whoops! Oh well." She grinned down at him, watching as his face contorted once again into a tight knot of anger.
"Do you really think you're that slick?" He muttered as his teeth began to grind.
Rain's eyes widened and she burst out laughing, turning Derrick's rage into confusion. "Slick! Ha! Like an oil slick! I didn't think you had it in you!" She giggled at his accidental pun, leaving him in silence.
He sighed and turned away from her, trying to hide the way his frown was curving into a grin. Sure, it wasn't at all as funny as Rain made it out to be, but there was something about her company that made him...happy?
Derrick shook the thought from his processor. Must have been some kind of glitch in his system. He was obviously just amused at his own accidental humor.
What more could it have been? What kind of cog would want to be friends with a toon?