Clearing the Backlog (Dronification/Robotification)

Lulu has an immense backlog and an equally immense case of procrastination. She has Gabriella go get some magic items to help while splitting into Luna and Lupa to ease the work, and gets more than she bargained for... 

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Luna Lupa was a busy wolf. She usually enjoyed her work, true. She was a bit of a nerd when it came to magic and magi-tech, so cataloguing the various items that came her way was usually an interesting experience. She also liked to write, so having to crack out story after story didn’t usually bother her (at least when she wasn’t hit with writer’s block). That was the annoying thing about the situation to her - by all rights, she shouldn’t have had any issue burning through the to-do list with gusto.

They say if you love your job you never work a day in your life. These people have clearly never had their metaphorical plates filled to the point of toppling over. As it was, Lulu was exhausted just thinking about the work she had to do. She’d look over at the stack of magical items she had yet to sort, and then the box of items she’d acquired but not even examined yet, and then turn away feeling as tired as if she’d spent three hours on the task. Or she might get out her pen and paper and try to get on with writing - but even if she knew what she wanted to write, the prose wouldn’t flow and she’d stare at the page.

She was procrastinating, and she knew it even as she did it. She’d find some little thing to do before she started working and then another little thing and then another and then oh is it that time of night already? It infuriated her that she couldn’t get herself off her ass and do something!

Lulu groaned loudly, rubbing her forehead to try and reduce the headache that she really didn’t want to use as another excuse to not work. Over at another part of the space, her assistant / dog / friend Gabriella perked up. “Oh, did you say something?” the stone-dog-girl asked, head tilted in question.

The wolf-girl sighed. “No… say, Gabriella, would you mind helping me out?” she asked.

“Sure thing, boss!” Gabriella said cheerfully, jumping to her feet and ready to go. “Whatever you need, I can go grab it!”

“I need something to help me focus on my writing.” Lulu said. Then paused. “Actually, for focusing on the item sorting… actually…” she groaned. This was a major part of the problem - when she had so many things to do she got paralyzed and just did none of them. “Both. Get both.” she decided.

Gabriella nodded, and sprinted off. As she left, Lulu turned her attention to herself. “Alright now, time to get off my butt and work. And actually do it, this time.” she muttered. She had a lot of work to do, too much for one woman if she didn’t want to let it pile up even more. Thankfully, even with Gabriella occupied, she had more than that. Even if they weren’t quite as efficient, and a bit more error prone, than she would be - but that was just something she’d have to deal with.

The process didn’t take long; there was a flash of light and Lulu was gone, and in her place were a pair of slightly smaller wolf-girls in maid outfits, each having taken half their fused form’s color scheme. “Time to work!” Luna said cheerfully, turning to the writing desk, and then pausing. “But first, de-fusing always makes me hungry…”

As she started off to find something to eat, Luna was grabbed by the ponytail by her sister and pulled back. “We ate already, remember? That’s just procrastinating more.” Lupa reminded her sibling. She cleared her throat. “You can handle the writing, right? The ones on the docket are a bit… much, for me.”

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Gabriella was going to be a good assistant. She was a good girl! The stone dog girl wasn’t actually sure just what she was looking for but Lulu was counting on her, so she’d find it!

The golem sprinted through the halls, never feeling the slightest bit tired due to her stone body and magic animation, and searched. She didn’t know the place half as well as her boss/mistress/owner/best friend did but she did have an innate sense for the purposes of various objects, and where she could find different kinds of things, at least vaguely. It was part of what she’d gained upon becoming a caretaker of the Arcane Sanctuary.

It took some time but Gabriella found something that felt right soon enough. From one of the more futuristic and high tech type worlds, there was a line of gear which Gabriella could sense was meant to improve the productivity of workers. “It makes sense - a high tech society would have found a way to deal with the distinctly human issues of motivation and procrastination in their work force.” she said. Then she coughed loudly - sometimes the place was way too blatant about putting thoughts into her head, and they just came out of her mouth.

“Hmmm, hmmm, hmmmms…” Gabriella hummed, scratching her head as she looked at the different items. They all felt like they’d help, but she wasn’t sure how or with what… she had to be careful and consider the task that they were faced with and select the appropriate piece of technology-

“This is making my head hurt.” Gabriella interrupted herself and just grabbed the two nearest items. The first was a techno visor thing, and the second was a pair of headphones that looked like they’d fit on wolf-ears. Conveniently, the populace of that particular sci-fi world had been animal-ish people. Items in hand, Gabriella rushed back towards the alcove in which her favorite person was presently hard at work.

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Luna had heard that the process of writing was just staring at the page until you hurt yourself and just write something to make the pain go away. Well, her head was hurting, and there still wasn’t much coming out onto the page. It wasn’t like she wasn’t excited to write the story at hand - it had a loooot of subjects she found incredibly hot and wanted to see written. But the page remained blank no matter how much she glared accusingly at her pen.

Lupa, meanwhile, was finding herself rummaging through the collection of magical items that hadn't yet been sorted. She was exceedingly careful, holding most of them in a pair of tongs in case they were touch activated, as she identified them and learned how to safely handle them. She was certainly learning about them and told herself that was being productive enough, but she had yet to actually figure out what any of them did or where she should put them. The pile of unsorted artifacts grew and grew.

The twins surreptitiously glanced at each other to see if their sister was being productive, saw the other looking, and returned their gazes to their work. This was the third time this sequence of events had happened since they split.

Finally, mercifully breaking the awkward silence, was the distinctive thudding of stone feet as Gabriella came sprinting back. “I found some thingssss!” Gabriella reported cheerfully. She dropped into a kneeling position, tail thudding against the wooden floor as it wagged at high speed.

Lupa reached her first, and gave her the clearly requested pets. “Good girl.” she said, as Luna walked over, “What did you get for us?”

Gabriella looked at them blankly for a bit. She had things. But she wasn’t sure which should go for which. “Uhhhh… here!” she said, just raising up the two objects and letting the twins split them themselves.

Luna took the headphones, examining them closely and flipping them around to get each angle. “These are cute!” she declared after a bit, nodding in approval. “They’re supposed to help me focus, huh? Well, might as well have some style while doing it.” She carefully put them on, placing them snugly over her ears.

Her twin, meanwhile, took the visor. She slipped it on, and saw a flood of data from anything she looked at. “It seems to scan whatever it looks at… that could be useful for quick sorting.” she said. “Good job, Gabby!”

The dog-girl’s tail wagged even faster. She’d been a good girl! She was a very good girl! “I’m glad I could help!” she said cheerfully.

With their items equipped, the twins returned to work, hoping to make good use of their new helpful artifacts. Luna got back to writing, and Lupa got back to artifact-sorting. At first, it went slowly again - the artifacts weren’t suddenly ramping their productivity. But as they progressed, they noticed little bits of help - Lupa’s visor made it fairly easy to set what she wanted to sort by and do it, and Luna’s headphones were now playing calming music as she wrote.

“I’m bored…” Luna said after a while. She’d made progress, but she was still tired. “Wanna take a break?”

Lupa probably replied, but her response was drowned out by the music playing in Luna’s ears. “Repeat that?” Luna asked.

No audible response again. The music was getting louder and louder. Luna sighed, and focused back on her work.

As she finished a story, Luna began to relax. She was enjoying herself, so why should she take a break? In fact, she should just get on to the next one. Usually it took nearly a day to mentally change gears from one to the next, but now she could just continue. Maybe the headphones were working well?

Whatever the case, she could keep working, so she did. The words flowed through the pen, and more importantly, the noise flowed through her headphones. The world seemed to fade away. She didn’t need to worry about anything but being productive. She didn’t even have to worry how the black, shiny headphones seemed to be spreading their texture across her head.

The latex-like material began to cover up Luna’s body, hiding her silver hair beneath it’s black surface, and even starting on her face. She didn’t notice - she didn’t need to see what she was writing, at this point knowing for certain she wasn’t making any mistakes, so she hardly paid attention when it began to mask her face. Soon, her head was completely covered, a faceless mask hiding her features and leaving her with no visual input to distract her from her words.

The transformation spread down, down her neck and shoulders. At the joints, the material seemed to swell and shift, forming a cushion asit went which, if Luna had the capacity to divert her attention, she’d have known was to make it so she could go longer periods without noticeably moving without risking any loss of function or distracting discomfort.

As the latex began to cover her chest, her maid’s outfit vanishing as it was overtaken, she had the stray thought that something might be off. Maybe she should look… she couldn’t look anywhere but the blackness in front of her-

Her thoughts trailed off as the inside of the featureless mask lit up - not with whatever was beyond it, but with words. Scrolling past her vision, words she was writing and words she was supposed to write. She was slacking. She shouldn’t slack off. The thoughts dripped out of her head as she got back to work, refocusing completely upon writing as the mask fed her the words and her headphones praised her productivity. All that mattered was working, nothing else.

The change was nearly complete, the blackness having covered her torso and crept up her hips and tail. It spread down her nice legs until it hit her feet, forming into black boots with high heels; she wasn’t meant to do all that much moving, so it didn’t matter how inconvenient they might be.

Write. Work. Write. Work. Luna wrote and wrote and wrote. Nothing else mattered, not her sister, not her other duties, not even her own identity - not that she had one anymore, as it drained from her mind to leave more room for her stories. She was a simple writing drone, and that was all she had to be.

Lupa hadn’t noticed her sister’s transformation, too enraptured in her own work. When Luna had called her, she’d responded idly, but she hadn’t looked over. She hadn’t looked away from her work. The scanner visor seemed to make it easy. It scanned the artifact, determined any scientific or magical properties of note, and made suggestions for sorting.

It was really an interesting task, when she got down to it. She was a magic nerd after all, so what could be better than this? She hummed to herself as she worked, speeding up as she went. The data and the knowledge flooded into her vision, and she could hardly move her hands fast enough to keep up with it. She passed things off to Gabriella to place in the appropriate locations, reciting their sorting automatically and without conscious thought.

As she worked she realized she simply didn’t have enough mental space for all the information, couldn’t process it fast enough. And as she realized it, it seemed that her visor had too - especially since the space where it met with her head was beginning to be covered up. The metallic nature of her bronze hair began to spread, down her back and up from her tail. Lupa felt strange, but she couldn’t pause to check on the source of the sensation.

The transformation sped up as she worked, spreading out from two points of origin. It rapidly covered her legs, and her arms, replacing her clothes as she went. She vaguely noticed what had happened to her arms, but somehow, it was hard to worry about that. She had to keep sorting and focusing on the magical items. The visor reported an increase in efficiency as the tiredness in her arms faded, and reported that it would continue to increase it.

The bronze, as it overtook her clothes, seemed to add in silver designs reminiscent of clothes as a token towards “modesty”; Lupa felt weird as the metal went inward, overtaking her body and replacing her internals with wire and circuitry. She kept working though. She didn’t really think about it. She didn’t even really realize that she’d already lost the ability to think about it. The metal spread and as it did, it worked over her mind. She couldn’t process the data as fast as her body could make use of it, which was inefficient. And she could not be inefficient.

The metal claimed her face with barely a blip in her perception, as her eyes became unblinking, blue-glowing camera lenses, built specifically to increase intake from the visor that had now fused ot her head. She didn’t have many facial features anymore, scoured away as pointless in her transformation.

Her brain had become metal too, a high power computer in her head. Her processing had caught up to her body, but there was still inefficiency as she wondered at the purpose of each object. Unneeded thoughts that interfered with productivity. So Lupa, or the visor, decided that it would be more efficient to remove them.

The robot drone paused for the briefest instant as it deleted it’s personality profile. The boost in efficiency was noticeable immediately.

The drones worked silently. They worked, and worked, and Gabriella fell asleep as they did. Hours later, they finished their work, and then simply stopped in place. They would remain immobile until they had more work to do, without a single thought in their empty heads.