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crowtrobotx · 1 year

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Okay I really do promise that I have an actual cohesive story I want to tell via a multi chapter fic but I was seized by this idea last night and I needed to get it out lest it drive me mad. This one’s for all my fellow Heisendad/Dadsenberg maniacs.

🦋⚙️

This is Not a Drill

Character: Karl Heisenberg, original character (daughter)

Warnings: None, unless you are uncomfortable with swearing.

Word count: 1974

Summary: Karl loses track of his kid and finds her up to something very near and dear to his heart.

Karl was in a rare mood.

Rare, meaning that he wasn’t stalking around the dark corridors of his factory, shouting obscenities at the reanimated corpses going about their assigned duties and simmering over all of this week’s “family” nonsense.

The sunshine and for once not abysmally cold weather had him working with the factory doors wide open, enjoying the warm breeze and natural light that cast the entry room in a warm, amber glow. Of course, nothing about his activities beneath the surface was apparent to any prying eyes. As far as anyone would think, he was working on repairing a tractor for one of the farmers in the village - not out of the goodness of his heart, of course, but because Mommy dearest periodically made him perform these acts of charity to encourage the peons to keep the faith. Annoying, pointless, but he’d grown used to the humiliation as the decades slipped by.

Used to it, but not at peace with it.

The radio on his workbench emitted a staticky jazz ballad, one that had him swaying subconsciously while he toiled. He never sang along, having been reminded loudly and frequently that he was completely tone deaf, but here in the relative privacy of his home he could at least dance a little. His hat and coat discarded and his hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail, Heisenberg tried not to think about how in another life he might have been just like this - tightening the same bolt, listening to the same tune.

Only in that world, he wouldn’t have had so much - his dignity, his pride, his love - taken from him.

Karl stepped back from the machine, wiping his brow on the back of his hand. The music began to fade out, leaving him briefly alone with his precarious thoughts. In the moments between the end of the song and the next, he caught a rather suspicious noise coming from the junkyard out front.

A loud clang followed by a dull thud, like two metallic objects colliding and falling to the ground.

“Lottie?”

No response. He glanced over his shoulder, looking for any sign of the tiny human he was supposed to be keeping alive. Heisenberg knit his brows and gently rolled the cigar between his lips. She knew she was supposed to stay where he could keep an eye on her, but there was no one and nothing to be seen. Of course, it wasn’t like he hadn’t been completely preoccupied with this job for the last hour - so much so that a certain someone could have easily slipped away.

Dammit.

He straightened himself with a groan before haphazardly tossing down his wrench and striding outside, squinting in discomfort against the bright sunlight that he was by no means used to enduring. Maybe living like a hermit underground wasn’t the healthiest thing in the world, but that was a bridge he would cross another time. Right now he had to find his feral offspring.

It was possible that she was still inside somewhere, but doubtful. Unless a varcolac had dug a hole under the fence again, he couldn’t think of who might be causing the ruckus aside from Lottie. No one got in or out of his domain without him noticing, and there were select few individuals capable of forcing their way through his gates against his will - but, God, he did not want to deal with that today.

Karl scanned his property, hands akimbo. Everything looked normal - or, as normal as it could possibly be in an isolated cult town. He could hear the rush of water from the nearby river over the cacophony of noises coming from inside, and nothing looked out of place—

Except for the conspicuously placed pile of scrap sitting separate from the rest of his collection.

A thin sheet of metal levitated shakily from nearby in the yard, only to be tossed by an unseen force in the general direction of the rest of the items. Karl snorted, relaxing his shoulders. Thank goodness. This had to have a good explanation.

“Hard at work, Butterfly?” he called into the mayhem.

The very top of Lottie’s head popped up from behind the rusted out corpse of a motorcycle. He could just see her surprised little eyes underneath her dusty goggles. Her presumably guilty expression quickly gave way to one of smug determination, even managing to throw in an audible little huff of annoyance at having been interrupted.

“Yes.” She did not elaborate.

“Uh huh,” Karl walked casually closer, the smoke from the end of his cigar obscuring his already less than perfect vision. “Anything I can help with?”

“No!”

He paused. Oh, she was definitely up to something. His thoughts fractured into a million possible schemes of how to pry it out of her, before deciding that a good old fashioned guilt trip should do the trick.

“Aww, don’t be like that. I thought we were pals! We have a secret handshake and everything,” he did his best to play up the sorrow in his voice. “You wouldn’t keep a secret from your best buddy Papa, would you?”

This time there was a loud sigh. For a moment, he thought she was going to leave him in the dark - something she had never done but a fear that gnawed on his brain stem on some particularly lonely nights nonetheless. He didn’t notice himself holding his breath, bracing for a blow that never came.

“I’m making a hammer,” she explained at last, reappearing closer to his position at the side of an old tank. “You know… like yours. I’m trying to find stuff to use for it. I was gonna surprise you.”

A hammer? The bristles at the edge of Karl’s mustache twitched. A by now familiar warmth bloomed somewhere deep in his chest, although it was tempered by the fact that he knew he should be dissuading her from crawling around in the tetanus garden that was the outside of their home. Not because of the tetanus, of course - because despite what anyone said there was order in the chaos of the factory grounds and she was probably going to move something out of place. And then, when he got around to using it - which he would, totally, he did not have a problem - he would have to waste precious time trying to figure out where a six year old might stash something.

“A hammer, huh.” Karl scratched his beard, feigning disinterest. “I’m flattered, kid, but don’t you think you’re a little small to be carrying something that heavy?”

Lottie threw an old horseshoe toward her stockpile. It landed with a thump in the grass next to the other objects - most of which were unidentifiable, probably bits torn from bigger pieces. She was wearing a comically too large pair of his old gloves and her curls had begun to escape from their confinement in the buns atop her little head, making her look not unlike the world’s smallest mad scientist.

“I don’t have to carry it for real! I’ll just cheat, like you,” she said frankly.

Karl scoffed. “Cheat?”

“I know you use your powers to lift yours, Papa. Don’t be embarrassed. You’re old and tired, it happens.” Lottie disappeared again into the heaps of metal.

The cigar nearly fell out from between Karl’s lips. He gaped in her direction, unsure if he was feeling shame or offense or pride. It made sense that she’d have noticed - she could probably detect the disruptions in his magnetic field well enough, now. But that didn’t mean she had to call him out like this!

“Young lady,” he began, panicked, unsure of his next move. Chastise her for her bluntness? Point out that he had aged like a fine wine, thank you very much? Ground her for — wait, how did you ground a kid who didn’t leave the house anyway?

“D-don’t… don’t go spreading that around, okay? Okay?” He craned his neck, trying to figure out where she’d scurried off to. “Not because it’s true, but because it’s most certainly not true! Hey! Are you even listening to me?”

“Papa!” His daughter burst out from yet another location, making Karl wonder if he’d fathered a human or a little rat, weaving her way through the tight, sharp spaces with apparent ease.

She bolted up to him, looking up into his face with manic excitement. It was a contagious energy that made most of Karl’s angst over her prior observation dissipate instantly, finding it impossible to not be dragged along behind her enthusiastic pull. Lottie’s eyes were sparkling with mischief as she held up a tiny blowtorch, long since out of commission. “Do we have one of these but bigger?”

“Bigger? Like a damn flamethrower? Who do you think I am, of course I’ve got a few of those.” ‘Do I have a flamethrower,’ psh.

“Good. I want my hammer to shoot fire.” It was said as calmly as if she were simply pointing out the weather.

“Whoa! Hold your horses, Butterfly!” Karl snatched the tool from her hands and held it just out of reach. “Not only does that sound pretty unsafe for a little runt like you, but why would I help you out when you just insulted your dear old dad? This sounds like a you problem, sweetheart.”

Lottie pouted. She really pouted, her lower lip trembling and posture shrinking into that of a kicked kitten. Her chubby cheeks were dirtied with oil stains, no doubt from her rummaging, making her look not unlike some stereotypical street urchin from one of the old movies he kept locked away in his personal quarters.

“Because,” she whined, “if we both have hammers, then we can annoy your brother and sisters double!”

Karl let himself smile in earnest this time, unable to let himself keep acting like he wasn’t absolutely going to help her on her little project.

Damn, why didn’t I think of that? Kid’s going places. Still probably shouldn’t let her have something she could immolate herself with… then again, she’s a smart cookie. I got into worse at her age. Hmm. But would the flames come from the top or the sides…?

His head was suddenly swimming with visions of himself and Lottie sneaking out during one of Alcina’s god awful opera performances, using their makeshift weapons to smash those gaudy vases, torching the hideous curtains and stealing one of her unfathomably expensive lipsticks to put some real art on the walls.

“Okay. Deal. But we’re not putting fuel in it until you’re at least eight.” Heisenberg was a responsible parent, after all.

“Ugh, fine,” Lottie grumbled, apparently unhappy with the arrangement but able to recognize that it was the best she was going to get. “Help me carry this stuff inside, would ya?”

With a smirk and a flick of his hand, all of the junk levitated and obediently hovered gracefully around Karl like a metal cloud. He gestured her to follow him, unsurprised to watch her instead go tearing off faster than her short legs could carry her. The tractor could wait. It would be easy to throw the Duke under the bus if Miranda asked, claim he was waiting on a special part. Building a hilariously oversized murder device was much more important than being the bitch’s workhorse.

“Hurry up, Papa!”

Karl chuckled and made his way toward Lottie, the cogs in his brain already overheating with ideas of what else they could do with her hammer. Chainsaw? No, that might make it too unwieldy. A drill? Absolutely not, he needed those for the army.

“Hey!” he called suddenly, “what would you think about putting a propeller on it? Like—”

“Like what you did with Sturm?” Lottie finished his sentence before pausing in the doorway and looking back at him with a hint of exasperation.

“Please, Papa - I’m not crazy.”

#is the title a hammer pun? of course I would be a bad bi if it wasn’t #once again I am sorry for formatting nonsense bc I’m almost always on mobile #resident evil village #karl heisenberg

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