Family Business

Family Business is a story that mainly follows Victor and Rook, as well as their home dimension.

## Background

Family Business is written by Techno Tinker and Capriccio, with brief appearances from Prince. The story follows the lives of Rook, Victor, Admiral, and Emerald both before and after they came to their current dimension. Victor, having grown up in the green matter mines owned by Rook's family, the Antiochs, re-encounters Rook at Walter Manor, spawning a chronicle of revenge, mercy, revolution, and forgiveness.

## Plot

### Hyde

Hyde introduces Becile Worker Hyde, the Becile Worker that had saved Victor from the mines and brought him to the Academy for training. She, with the company of an Antioch boss, travels down into the mine on a mission to find hidden talent. Eventually she spots Victor and Admiral, then takes them with her to be assessed and brought into the Becile workforce. Hyde has a short interview with Victor, and then officially prepares him for the Academy.

### Banquet

In Banquet, Victor is by now a well-known Becile Worker, and is invited to dinner by the Antiochs alongside Admiral. The Antiochs, Priscilla and Tarquin, talk about how they want to bribe Victor into looking the other way when it came to their business practices. However, Victor refuses, standing up and walking out of their manor with Admiral.

Due to this, the Antiochs secretly plan for Victor and Admiral to be pushed through the first Dimensionaut portal test, leading them to disappear and to Admiral losing his legs, soon being rebuilt with a snake's tail in their place.

### Checkmate

Victor, after deciding to finally move into Walter Manor with Admiral, returns to Becile Industries to grab his belongings and his robot, who had been staying there after their failed mission to retrieve all Becile-built robots from the Walters. There, he encounters Rook, who was destroying forged documents ordering for experimentation on Koutali, who had been kidnapped and intended originally for ransom during the retrieval mission. Victor questions Rook on the papers, but Rook refuses to answer, claiming he was ordered by a higher-ranking Becile worker than Victor and that the order was confidential. Admiral soon comes into the room, questioning Rook as well. Admiral then attacks Rook, and Victor begins cutting off his fingers to get an answer. However, Rook refuses to budge and goes on to comment on Victor entering a coughing fit, which angers Admiral further. He gives Rook a concussion and eventually shoots his tail gun, killing Rook for the first time.

### Seeds of Doubt

After Rook had been revived and taken back to Walter Manor by Alabaster, Victor and Admiral go into the basement to maintain one of the breaker boxes. Upon seeing Rook, Admiral gets angry, even going so far as to throw the coin of scrip he kept around his neck at him. Eventually, Victor orders Admiral to use his illusory powers, conjuring up an image of the Antioch mines. There, Victor talks to Rook about the work he and Admiral did there, showing him the conditions they operated under. In the illusion, Rook experiences burning hunger for the first time, and is forced to work for a while. Victor shows Rook the company scrip, eventually showing him that he had to eat dirt in place of food on occasion. Rook begins to doubt what his parents had told him, but eventually the illusion fades away as Victor has another coughing fit. Rook comments on it again, and goes on to say Victor had achieved his success through pity.

Victor asks Rook if he pities him, and Rook denies. Victor kneels down in front of Rook and tells him to kill him, but Rook refuses, citing how Victor is his superior and that Antiochs don't kill their own workers. Victor, however, argues back, telling him he would be disobeying a superior. Rook puts a hand on Victor's neck, ready to kill him, but he cannot bring himself to do it. Victor tells Rook to think, and he and Admiral leave him alone.

### Ouroboros

Later on, Alabaster brings Emerald to Walter Manor, and Rook provokes Admiral into coming into the basement to attack him. Rook tries to convince Admiral that it was the Antiochs that had hurt him and Victor, causing Admiral to hesitate instead of hurt him. Rook then kisses up to Admiral a little bit, even so far as inviting him to kill him, which makes Admiral think he is being tricked. He tries to crush Rook in his coils, but Rook is made of stronger material, and Admiral's tail cracks and breaks. Surprised, Admiral lets go of him and acts defensively, becoming more and more terrified. However, Rook talks about how in school he was bullied, likening it to the abuses Victor and Admiral had experienced in the mines, and Admiral starts to laugh at him. He pokes fun at Rook losing his legs, which strikes a nerve, and Rook attacks his eyes, rendering him blinded.

Rook further incapacitates Admiral using the release mechanism on the back of his neck. Rook uses brute force combined with Admiral's broken cyanide capsules to damage the mechanisms in his face, eventually tearing Admiral's head off. Knowing Victor would be coming home soon from running errands, he quickly hides Admiral's body under a tarp. Victor gets a hint from Hiram that Admiral is in the basement and goes down to investigate. After a short, fruitless search, Victor is ready to give up when he stumbles upon Admiral's body on the way out. Angered, Victor pulls his knife on Rook and attacks. Rook manages to pin him down, but in his gloating, Victor pries Rook's faceplate from his head with the knife, escaping him. Victor, knowing he can't win in a fight against Rook alone, uses the Checkmate override, stabs Rook through the throat, then takes Admiral upstairs and leaves.

### An Ending (Of Sorts)

Victor goes down into the basement once more to retrieve Admiral's hat after fixing him. At first, he doesn't notice Rook, but eventually spots him watching from the corner. Rook comments on how Victor had become soft, but Victor responds with how working at Walter Manor had changed how he saw the world. The pair talk for a while, and Rook soon grows impatient. He eventually grabs Victor by the neck and holds him above the ground. Victor jams a thumb into Rook's eye and almost escapes when he is grabbed again. Rook pins Victor down onto the floor, pressing on his chest and taunting him with the keychain he'd stolen years prior. He also breaks one of Victor's ribs, continuing to taunt him more, before Victor stabs him in the jaw with his knife. Rook backs off of Victor, who gets up and makes a break for the door before realizing he cannot outrun Rook. Rook pins him down once more, this time driving his hand into Victor's sternum, cracking the rest of his ribs. Victor's lungs collapse and he perishes.

### Gates of Hell

Admiral, having learned of Rook murdering Victor, comes down into the basement to retrieve him, extremely upset upon seeing his corpse. He finds Rook, who lies to him about Victor begging for mercy, which only angers Admiral more. Admiral uses his illusory powers once again to get a jump on Rook. He starts to fire bullets into Rook's spine, slowly beginning to paralyze him. Rook manages to distract Admiral by detaching his hands, but Admiral fends them off and bites Rook in the shoulder, leading him to rip his own arm off. After taunting from Rook, Admiral coils his tail around him and rips his other arm off. Eventually, he fires a bullet into Rook's neck, killing him. After doing so, he retrieves Victor's corpse. Alabaster would go on to resurrect Rook once more.

### Southern Hospitality

Following Victor's death, Admiral is extremely upset and saddened and had sprung a leak in his coolant and green matter lines, and Sprint comes in to see if he can help. Sprint does his best to comfort Admiral as he works. Admiral believes he has nothing left to do now that Victor is gone, and Sprint tells him to try to remain positive. This, however, angers Admiral, leading him to attack Sprint. Admiral coils around him, biting into his shoulder, but he doesn't have enough cyanide for a lethal dose. Due to the leak in green matter, Admiral shuts down by mistake and lets Sprint free.

### Midas Touch

Tempest had taken Victor to her ex, Geraldine, following his death. In the basement of her casino, she'd used alchemy to revive him, which leaves him with golden scars. Victor is surprised to be alive again, and asks Geraldine many questions about the circumstances. He learns Admiral and Tempest are no longer hostile toward each other. Geraldine allows him to stay with her until he makes a recovery.

### Pitch Black

Pitch Black is a nightmare sequence experienced by Victor about a mine cave-in he'd experienced around the time he first began work at the Antioch Mining Company. Near the end of the dream, Rook appears with the keychain they'd played metaphorical tug-of-war with, and Victor wakes up. Admiral comforts him and they return to bed.

### Interrogation

Weeks later, the power goes out in the manor due to a nasty storm, and Rook and Emerald take the opportunity to kidnap Victor. They take him down to a sublevel of the basement, where they demand to know how to build a portal to return to their home dimension. Rook uses Emerald's whip to attempt beating him into submission. Victor, however, refuses to break, even after Emerald shoots him in the leg and the shoulder with one of her revolvers. Rook once again taunts Victor with the keychain. Then, Rook and Emerald leave Victor alone in the basement.

### The Delta Plot

Rook and Emerald return to the room in which they'd left Victor after seeing he'd found an old computer and used it to communicate to other residents of the Manor that he desperately needed food and water. Rook and Emerald taunt him, offering a decoy water bottle to him, promising they'd let him have it if he talked. However, Rook decides to give Victor the bottle anyway, but Victor finds that the bottle was full of cleaning vinegar and vomits into a trash can. Victor finally agrees to help them. Rook and Emerald eventually find him water and he struggles to tell them the information they seek due to sleep deprivation, thirst, and hunger. After begrudgingly finding him something to eat, Rook and Emerald watch him work on a notepad. Eventually, he snaps at Rook and Emerald, but they quickly defeat him, and he continues helping them. The pair talk about life back home, and eventually they leave Victor back in the room once more.

### Wormhole

Rook and Emerald use Delta to rig up something to be used as a portal. Meanwhile, Tempest, Admiral, Beo, and Rife come down into the basement to find Victor. Rook and Emerald make the decision to take Victor with them to their home dimension, and soon, the other four robots meet them in the portal room. After a short battle, Rook and Emerald manage to jump through the portal with Victor. Admiral, angered, chases after them, narrowly making it through the portal before it closes.

### Hell's Coming With Me, Part I

After traveling through the portal and successfully making it to their home dimension, Victor and Admiral split apart from Rook and Emerald. Victor and Admiral return to the Antioch mining village, where they encounter one of the bosses. Admiral punches him. Victor steps up in front of one of the Antioch stores and delivers a speech to the workers, then shoots and kills the Antioch boss with his own shotgun. Then, the workers riot.

### Hell's Coming With Me, Part II

While Victor and Admiral are rioting at the mines, Rook and Emerald make their way home to the Antioch mansion, There, Tarquin and Priscilla Antioch are delighted to see the two of them, but say they came at a bad time and that something was happening at the mines. Then, Victor and Admiral appear at the door, and Emerald takes Rook to hide. They both watch as Victor and Admiral kill the Antiochs, then run and make an escape. Victor tells Admiral that they would deal with Rook and Emerald later.

### Finito

A few days after escaping Antioch mansion, Rook and Emerald wander the city for a while, eventually being found by Ghost. Ghost takes Rook and Emerald to a darker part of the city, where they are forced into another basement, this time being Toad's workshop. Toad incapacitates both of them, strapping Rook down onto a table and starting to play with his internals, stating how he and Ghost planned to sell him and Emerald for scrap. Toadtakes the keychain from Rook's arm and hangs it on the light fixture. Eventually, he and Ghost leave to go to dinner, and after a while of laying there, Admiral and Victor appear to help him and Emerald, having had history with Toad in the past and assuming he was behind their capture.

Victor takes the keychain and unbelts Rook from the table, with Admiral taking Emerald with him. They load into Victor's motorcycle, as he had spent the past few days at his and Admiral's old home, and take off toward Becile Industries. Once inside, they slip past security and into the Dimensionaut portal room, where Victor gets to work on one of the computers to activate the portal and get home. Victor gives the keychain back to Rook, and the four of them go through the portal, returning to their new home.

## Trivia

* Parts of this story were written out of chronological order.
* Originally, Rook and Emerald had just built a brand new portal from scratch, but this was later changed into using Delta's black hole core.
* Rook had taken the keychain from Victor when they were both children. The keychain had been given to Victor by his mother.