Chapter 97

"K9, speak," Lucifer commands.

The metal dog is still, earning and frustrated groan.

"Whatever. I give up."

Lucifer pushes the hunk of metal over on the table and attempts to storm out of the room, only to realize Jack is still standing in the doorway. Lucifer rolls his eyes and tries to push him out of the way, but Jack just walks past him, approaching the robot on the table.

"It's not gonna do anything," Lucifer tells him. "You might as well leave it alone now."

Jack stands the dog up on its feet again, then takes a step back and looks at it. As much as Lucifer would like to walk away, he can't help but stay and watch what the boy is doing, because it almost seems like he has a plan.

"Almost" would be the keyword, it seems, because after a minute or so, Jack looks over at him and asks, "Why can't it move?"

"Because human technology sucks," Lucifer replies. "Doesn't matter. It's a piece of trash."

Jack tilts his head in confusion. "Why use human technology? You're not human."

"No, thank Dad about that," Lucifer mutters. He can't imagine being that limited in his powers for the entirety of his existence as some measly little human. "But sometimes it's nice to see what humans have to put up with to remind me how inferior they are."

"If a human couldn't do this, could you?" Jack asks.

Lucifer scoffs. "Of course I could make a robot talk. I'm a freaking archangel. That's like taking candy from a dead baby's corpse."

"Then do it." He doesn't say it as a challenge, but more just curious, hoping to see it happen.

Lucifer hesitates, then sighs. He doesn't care about pleasing the kid, but he does enjoy showing off. He walks over to the table and points back at the doorway. "Fine. Go stand over there so if it blows up, you're out of the blast range."

"In case it " Jack repeats.

"Yeah, if I overshoot how much life it needs, the metal might not hold. Screws are nothing against my power." Lucifer shrugs. "Live and learn, ya know? Now go, shoo, over there." He pushes Jack away, and the boy obediently stands in the doorway.

If Lucifer has been an actual scientist doing an experiment like this, he would probably be wearing safety goggles, if not a full face shield. But he's too confident in himself for that, and instead does it barefaced. Any scratches he may get could be healed easily, anyway.

He puts a hand on the robot's back, and it begins to glow. The light spreads throughout the entire metal body, until finally, he's glowing entirely. Lucifer takes his hand away, and the dog returns to its original gray coloring.

"K9, speak," Lucifer commands.

The dog looks up at him, a slight whirring sound from the gears in his neck, soft enough that it probably couldn't be heard by a human's ears.

"Hello!" He may look like a robot, but his voice is very much humanlike. He sounds almost like a kid, with his high pitched, squeaky voice.

Lucifer grins proudly and looks back at Jack. "See? I can do anything."

Jack tilts his head to the side slightly as he looks at the dog. Finally, he says, "So its name is K9?"

"Yes, it is. Do you have a problem with that?"

"No, no problem," Jack replies, and unlike the majority of people he speaks to, he doesn't say it as one would if they were rushing the defend themselves. He just answers it like any other question. "Is it a boy or a girl?"

"What?"

"K9," Jack specifies. "He's a dog. Sam — my Sam — told me that dogs have genders, much like humans. Is K9 a boy or a girl?"

"Um... neither?" Lucifer says uncertainly.

"What do you mean?" Jack asks. "It has to have a gender."

The dog itself speaks up, saying, "I am a nonbinary member of your society."

Lucifer scoffs. "You're a ?"

"I am a nonbinary member of your society," K9 repeats. "I defy this artificial two-gender system your society has created."

Lucifer looks over at Jack, expecting him to find that just as stupid, but the kid seemed to accept it easily, so Lucifer decides to just roll with it.

"So do I just call you 'it,' or...?" Lucifer asks. Pronouns are too gendered for a nonbinary metal box.

"You may call me 'he,' 'she,' 'they,' or by my name," K9 replies. "I do not care which."

Lucifer nods. "Okay, well, I'm just gonna call you 'it.'"

"I said —"

"I know," Lucifer interrupts. "And I'm gonna call you 'it' anyway, capiche?"

"But —"

"Call then by their preferred pronouns or just call them K9," Jack scolds him. "You don't need to make a big deal out of it."

K9 looks over at him, and if they could smile, they probably would. "Thank you, human."

"Oh, no, I'm not a human," Jack tells them. "I'm a nephilim."

K9 doesn't respond at first, finally saying, "That word is not familiar to me."

"Yes, my world's Dean once told me most people would say that," he replies, but doesn't elaborate.

"Oh, hey, Jack!"

The voice is unmistakably Sam's, and he seems to be coming down the hallway towards them. Part of Lucifer wants to leave before he gets here so he doesn't have to explain how he ditched the hunter last night to build a robotic pet, but he knows that it would come off as weird to Jack, and he has no filter, so he would probably tell Sam that Lucifer just left, anyway.

At least it's Sam, though, because anyone else in the bunker would be pissed to see him with young, impressionable Jack, especially after the kid claimed he couldn't care less about his biological father. At least Sam knows Lucifer is more than just pure evil — although that's debatable, seeing as "evil" is his pride and joy. But Sam has at least a little faith in him, so he wouldn't be upset.

"Oh, hi!" Jack says with a friendly smile, looking down the hallway.

"Jack, what are you doing?" Sam asks.

Jack doesn't have time to answer before Sam enters the room and sees the answer himself. Lucifer gives him a small smile, which disappears immediately when Dean enter the room after him.

"What the hell is going on?" Dean demands.

"I —" Lucifer begins, but Dean cuts him off.

"Not you," he snaps, then looks over at Jack. "Kid, talk."

"I found Lucifer and now we're here," Jack replies.

"You him," Dean repeats skeptically. "You just, what, happened to be stumbling around the library and poof, there he was?"

Jack nods. "Yes."

Den scoffs. "You're expecting me to believe the son of Satan just to have spent the night with Lucifer himself, and it was all an Bullshit. What's your game, kid?"