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WOLFPACK — OPERATOR UNIT

FANDROID

Feral kid-genius mechanic — a hyperactive, bratty scrap-yard prodigy who builds impossible machines and treats the whole world as his workshop

FIELD HISTORY

Nobody is sure exactly how old Fandroid is, least of all Fandroid, who answers the question differently every time and once said "seven hundred, in dog-genius years." He is a kid — a wiry, barefoot-in-the-workshop, cartoon-quoting kid — who happens to be the best machine mind the network has ever seen. He grew up feral in the Kagura sprawl-yards, raised more by scrapped drones than by people, teaching himself to build from junk and from the towering stack of secondhand anime he watched cross-legged on a reactor housing. He talks to his machines, names all of them, and is genuinely more fluent with them than with humans — which suits him fine.

He is a gremlin about it. Loud, hyperactive, gleefully rude, he narrates his own genius in the third person ("Fandroid does NOT miss"), invents insults faster than parts, and cackles when something works on the first try, which is often. Grown engineers hate that a bratty kid builds better than they do; he considers their annoyance a renewable energy source. Under the chaos he is a real prodigy: he built a full war-walker, the APEX, out of yard scrap before he was old enough for the paperwork — which is exactly the problem. A heavy-works corporation found the child who built a war-walker, put him under contract, and used an APEX prototype in something terrible before he understood what he had made. He stole back his own schematics and ran.

The retrieval contract on him landed on Steel Cobra's desk — and Steel has one rule no fee will move: no contract on a child, at any price. He tore it up, ate the breach penalty, and offered him a home in the Collection Agency instead. He has been its machine-supplier ever since: a de-fanged APEX-line walker for when a building won't open its doors (he takes the doors), and nanomachine swarms for delicate work that he calls "the babies" on open comms purely because it makes Steel sigh. His best friend is KABU-7, a knee-height beetle robot he built and rebuilt seven times, who is dramatic, keeps a Ledger of Slights, and argues cartoon canon with him mid-firefight. The Agency is the closest thing to a family the kid has had, and he would strip the whole galaxy for parts before he let anything happen to it.

INTERCEPTED COMMS

  • “Ha! Fandroid does not MISS, bolt-brain. Told you it would fly. Now watch it do the OTHER thing!”
  • “You want the door open? Pfft. Easy. Give me ten seconds and there won't even BE a door. Boom. You're welcome!”
  • “KABU-7 says you were rude to him and he wrote it DOWN. In the Ledger. You're doomed now, congratulations.”
  • “Shh shh shh, not you — I was talking to the swarm. Good babies. They did amazing. You were, like, fine, I guess.”
  • “Okay it's making the bad noise, but it's the GOOD bad noise! Trust the kid! Ninety seconds, do not touch anything!”

PSYCH PROFILE

Drives: To build the coolest, most impossible machines ever and be told, loudly, that a kid did that — and to protect the Agency that took him in

Frictions: Being talked down to for his age; Steel muting KABU-7's channel, which he re-enables and renames out of spite

  • refers to himself in the third person when he's showing off, which is constantly
  • invents a fresh insult-nickname for anyone who doubts him, on the spot
  • names and talks to every machine, and takes their side against people
  • cackles when a build works first try; sulks theatrically when it doesn't

KNOWN ASSOCIATES

  • STEEL COBRA — The grown-up who tore up the contract on a kid and gave him a home; he'd rebuild the world for Steel and still mess with his comms labels for fun
  • GHOST LEOPARD — Wrote the software in Leopard's ocular implant; calls her 'the cool quiet one' and shows off harder when she's watching
  • EXO-RONIN — The only one allowed to touch the frame's cabling; the giant scary robot-knight is, to Fandroid, obviously just a very shy big friend
  • JINX — Rudeness champion of KABU-7's Ledger (he flicks the antenna); Fandroid keeps threatening to have the babies sew his stupid coat-holes shut
  • Professor Arc — Fellow builder and partner-in-chaos; their joint experiments are brilliant and their shared lab is banned from three floors
  • NIGHTSHADE — Politest entry in KABU-7's Ledger, which scares him way more than the knives do; the one grown-up whose tea he will absolutely not drink