“I may not be able to see you, but I know you’re there. As I’m sure you are aware.”

His words were terse, and his voice even more so, echoing lightly but firmly off of the office’s walls and through the lacuna of its physical space. The message hung in the air for a good few moments without a response, and for those few seconds he considered the possibility that he might, for once, be wrong; that was, of course, until he heard the telltale shuffling of feet — the way they moved across the floor told him that they were, in fact, those of a Toon — and a deep, exaggerated sigh.

“You got me,” replied the Toon, its voice ever familiar, in a tone much smaller than his but no less stalwart, only the slightest inkling of unsureness creeping in at its edges. Despite this, however, he could not pick up any more movement on its end, no nervous shuffling nor fidgeting, merely the calm of self-assured breathing. He turned to… look at it, though look was perhaps a strong word. The previous fight had been far more of a struggle than he had expected, the invading Toons (or, at least, one in particular — the horse) far more aggressive and hardheaded than he was accustomed to and much more willing to play underhanded with their Gags. The most… well, the most violent out of all of them, Thundercrash as was apparently its moniker, had made comparatively quick work of the fight, constantly aiming for his eyes and eventually succeeding in destroying the things, swiftly putting him out of commission and sending him tumbling to the ground in suitably mortifying fashion. Broken glass shards and bits of camera littered the floor of the office, amongst various other little mechanical bits and pieces. How embarrassing.

If his optical sensors were, in fact, currently in operation, he doubted the thing in his room would be half as confident as it was right now, but then again… it had been sneaking into his office unprompted while he was away, as indicated by the uncharacteristically tidy place he had consistently been returning to in the mornings, an incredibly BOLD move for which he had to — begrudgingly, mind you — give it credit. Its ultimate intentions were still somewhat cloudy to him; the strategic advantage this strange course of action could provide their Resistance with was lost on him, if not entirely unfathomable — in fact aiding the enemy in such a fashion could only prove counterintuitive in every way. And, presumably, traitorous.

“…You’ve been around quite a bit.”

The Toon nodded, imperceptibly to him; not used to seeing him in such a state, it took them a moment to realize their error, before they answered with a shake of their head as if to clear their messy thoughts and subsequently a curt, over-compensatory ‘yes’.

“Hm,” he replied. “You were here before the fight even started, weren’t you?”

“Saw the whole thing, I’m afraid.”

“Mind explaining?”

“…Explaining what?”

“Your whole… thing.” he grumbled, trying to pull himself up into a sitting position but failing miserably (it was at this point, to his own horror and once again incredibly embarrassed vulnerability, he realized he couldn’t exactly control his own legs; he must have damaged something else during his fall, which was not the most controlled of falls he’d ever taken and also just as well) at which point he opted to instead stay balanced on his arms and instead turn his attention to face the direction of the intruding Toon, looking all too much like some sort of pathetic, wounded animal. He was, of course, painfully aware of this, but much like a wounded animal he wasn’t unwilling to fight back if this invader to his personal space decided to get a little too bold — which, he reckoned, was one of the scant few things he could respect about the way these meddlesome vermin conducted themselves.

“My… thing?”

He growled, aggravated enough now to rev up the chainsaw that was his face like an unspoken threat. The Toon seemed, in its composure, unfazed beyond a slight and imperceptible-to-him instinctive jolt, merely sighing once more. “Your thing! The thing you’re doing!”

“Oh, the thing?”

“Yes! Yes, the thing! This thing! Sneaking into my office? Playing with my things, organizing my stuff, being here right now — for what reason?”

“Well,” replied the stranger, “I thought it was obvious! And I’m not playing with your things, I’m organizing your space because it sucks, and obviously you’re too involved in your stupid work to do it yourself. And besides… it’s the right thing to do, anyway.”

If he could have, he would have rolled his eyes, but he had to settle for a scoff. “Pah, don’t give me that. I don’t need your platitudes or your help. To be perfectly honest, I don’t need anything from vermin like you.” the Bossbot spat.

“That’s not what I heard,” answered the bat coyly, with a small laugh. They quickly continued before he could interrupt. “Or, er, well. I suppose you don’t, if that’s what you say now. Because you can always trust what someone says, one-hundred percent, when they're lying flat out on the ground like a pound puppy... but I digress. Surely a Cog as smart as you can probably figure out that that’s not exactly going to stop me anyway.” The Toon seemed thoughtful for a moment, gingerly stepping forward to approach him even as the difference in stature between them grew comical. “And besides, you probably don’t know this… but I know a thing or two about Cog repair,” it said, a somewhat smug lilt to their voice, moving to sit, “And unless you want to sit here and wait for someone else to come find you in this, well, incredibly compromising sort of situation, you might be best advised to take me up on some of that help.”

Lowering himself to the ground slightly, he seemed to weigh his options over in his head, growling slightly under his breath. If he had to choose, he supposed the lesser of the two evils was letting this Toon do its thing, if only for the advantage of sparing him the humiliation of dealing with the lesser suits for repairs. As long as this stayed under wraps, of course. And if it did, the only real problem here was the looming threat of the override; while he wasn’t a big fan of Toons, persay, it wasn’t exactly like he, in his heart of hearts (or engine of engines, one might suppose), wanted to outright savage them or anything, no matter how irritating they proved to be. Dry, dragged out bureaucracy was a far better method anyway, at least for him.

“The override,” he blurted out, unable to contain for long the persistent thought of what was ultimately his biggest worry. Internally he found himself mentally kicking himself; his words had perhaps implied more of a care for this stranger than he’d intended, and the last thing he wanted was for them to find something like that to latch onto, to use against him.

“Okay. What of it?”

“Are you not afraid? Of it? Of me? I could— it could—"

The bat simply huffed and shrugged, though to no one in particular, tail swishing in an amused fashion. “It comes with the territory, big guy. Maybe I look it, but I'm no fool — and I wouldn’t be offering if I was that worried about it. Give me some credit, I trust myself enough to know when I’d be backing myself into any kind of corner I couldn’t get myself out of.”

If Chip could have narrowed his eyes, he would have; but, given the circumstances, he settled for a placid grunt. At this point, there wasn't much he could do about this whole thing either way, and best to have it be a Toon with little personal connection than someone he knew, and Cog-forbid one of his subordinates.

“…Fine. It’s your funeral.”