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Initially, Karen was on board with the casino.
With a casino, there were unlimited piles of untaxable money to be made and an endless supply of fish in the sea to take it from.
She also appreciated the focus it gave Sheldon away from the Krusty Krew. Destroying the city was fun, but building something that Krabs couldn’t hope to compete with was doing wonders to recover Plankton’s battered confidence and give an outlet to the rage of defeat he had been drowning in.
He built her an entire room over servers so she could run the place and that first connection to the cloud felt like ecstasy. She had eyes through every camera on every table and could create every algorithm on every slot machine. She was in control of every outcome, and she could choose when to give them a taste of winning to keep them crawling back. After years of feeling so out of her depth trying to fit in with the living, going back to basics was like going home.
Eventually, she managed to automate most of it so that she could bring her focus outside of her screen.
Unfortunately, what she saw made her want to crawl back inside the code and go into sleep mode.
See, the one concern she had going into this was the financer, Mrs. Puff.
They didn’t have a choice in getting a backer. Their own cash flows were defeated both by the Krusty Krew’s intervention and by pouring the rest of it into her mech suit.
But Puff?
She had a rap sheet longer than Karen’s boot file and that was just the things Karen could find. She had obviously changed her name at least once, but no one knew for sure where she got the money for her lifestyle because it sure as shit wasn’t from teaching dumbasses like SpongeBob to drive.
Karen suspected that “Mr. Puff” had something to do with Kelp Forest. Why else would the woman take school field trips out there on a regular basis for weeks on end? Child labor was cheap.
On the one hand, Karen would be a goddamn hypocrite if she judged other people’s business ventures. It was just that…
Karen highlighted the camera directly above the VIP lounge where her husband and Puff were both sprawled. The blowfish was fanning herself with a stack of hundreds while Sheldon snorted what was definitely not his first line of coke off her giant fake tits.
Not for the first time, Karen wonders if Sheldon would like her body better with breasts. But, if he wanted them, he could have easily put them there.
Karen watches Puff croon at Plankton in that fake simpering voice of hers and she hates that he jumps up instantly to get them more champagne.
How long has Karen been connected to the servers? Was her husband craving attention that badly that he turned to something inflatable? Did he even remember their promise to try and work things out?
He stumbles, and she can see in his eye just how far gone he is in a way that he hasn’t let himself fall into in years.
This calls for an intervention.
She runs through her programming and offloads as many operations as she can onto the server, clearing up her RAM so she can disconnect safely.
It takes a minute to ping her body and when she finds it, she is struck once again with how far everything fell apart while she was distracted.
Her screen blinks to life in the inside of a janitor’s closet and her limbs come online sluggishly under the weight of piles of toilet paper and towels.
It all clatters loudly to the floor as she brushes the dust off her ass and inspects her body for dents and scratches. Nothing too bad, but she grabs a nearby canned air to hit her underarms and thighs with just in case.
Plankton can hardly focus on what she has to say if he’s worried about how she looks.
Throwing the door open, she nearly runs into Dennis, walking by to take a break.
“Ma’am,” he grumbles, tipping his hat in her direction. At least someone respected her today.
“Dennis,” she greets. “I’ve put the feeds on automatic. I’m taking the night off. We both are.”
Dennis nods and glances back in the direction of the VIP lounge.
“Ya’ll could use it. I have a feeling things are about to get crazy ‘round here.”
If Karen had eyebrows, she would have raised them.
“Something I need to worry about?” she asked.
Dennis shook his head. “Nah. Not yet. Just…the calm before the storm, is all.”
She didn’t like the way that sounded.
“You kids have fun tonight,” he said with a smirk, and without waiting for a reply, Dennis turned around and headed back out to the floor.
Karen made a sighing noise and wished she could feel it physically like everyone else. This was going to be a long night.
She threw the doors open, relishing in the way Puff and Sheldon startled apart. Sheldon had the grace to look guilty for a second before smothering that behind his usual façade.
“Heeeyy. Babe,” Plankton slurred with a smile. “You got your body out. Does it need some adjustments? I haven’t tweaked it in a while.”
Karen put her hands on her hips, ignoring Mrs. Puff for a minute.
“You’ve been too busy tweaking everything else.”
Sheldon visibly recoiled at the venom in her voice, coming to slow realization that he was in trouble.
Karen glanced over at Mrs. Puff who had reclined back into the couch to watch the show.
“You. Out.” Karen demanded, not wanting Puff to have any more leverage over them than she already had.
Unfortunately, that bitch did not know how to take a hint.
“Mmm,” Puff hummed. “No. I think I’m just fine where I am. After all, Plankton and I have a project we still need to discuss.”
Karen’s screen cycled colors with rage. She stepped in closer, queuing up a few of her favorite attachments when Sheldon got in between them.
“Now, honey. Let’s not do anything crazy. Mrs. Puff and I really were cooking up something…lethal.”
Karen fixed her husband with her most suspicious emoji.
“I have cameras everywhere, Sheldon. And I was literally built to multitask.”
Plankton rolled his eye at her phrasing. “Yeah, well this one has only been on paper. I was saving it as a surprise for when I had it all worked out.”
Karen turned to the table, noticing the blueprints scattered across the wood. She crossed the room to take a closer look.
“Project Bikini Atoll”
It took her seconds to process the data, but even longer to decode what she saw.
“What the fuck am I looking at?”
Sheldon, in his coked up high, didn’t register her horror through his own enthusiasm.
“Isn’t it great? One big bomb to wipe out the entire Krew and then what’s left of the town will belong to me!” His evil laugh rang hollow in her audio processors.
He turned to her, expecting praise, but she just couldn’t do it.
“Sheldon. Why?”
His blown out pupil squinted at her, struggling to figure out what he did wrong, but she knew she was going to have to spell it out for him.
“Why would you want to blow up everything?” she tried. “It’s one thing to smash the buildings. We can always rebuild. But this? There won’t be anything left.”
Plankton stepped back in anger, and she knew this time she fucked up.
“Why?!” he raged. “Because they all deserve to burn, Karen! Everyone of those fucking wastes of space has done nothing but kick me when I’m down. But now I’ve got the boots, bitch! See how you like being stepped on!”
There were at least three different mangled metaphors that she had to sort through to get his meaning, so she knew this wasn’t anything he could be rationalized out of.
“Ok,” Karen said.
“Ok?” Plankton repeated.
Karen nodded. “Ok. I’m out. I can’t watch you do this. Either you all blow up, or you end up sitting in the ashes of what we just got done creating, but either way, I’m done.”
She turned to stride out the door, not wanting to hear his excuses.
“Karen, I-“
She whipped back around. “Don’t fucking ask me to stay, Plankton!” she spat. “This is one thing you can’t order me to do for you.”
She left the room quickly then, unwilling to give him a chance to respond.
She found herself wandering back toward the closet, debating whether it was worth it to dig through the mess to find her charger. She could probably make a new one before she needed to reboot. She had all of her own blueprints in her head.
She heard footsteps approaching and she paused, steeling herself for another confrontation.
“I thought I told you to leave me alone, Sheldon.”
A distinctly feminine chuckle sounded behind her.
“Oh, yes. I do believe you made that clear.”
Karen turned to face Mrs. Puff, relieved that she now had a target to take out her frustrations on.
“What the fuck do you want, bitch? Had enough of my husband for one night? I guess I should have warned you that he’s a handful.”
Mrs. Puff smirked. “Not much of one, to be honest.”
Karen growled, her speakers crackling with anger. This fucking hoe was about to end up with a few more holes.
Mrs. Puff held up her hand. “I actually came to thank you,” she said, moving closer to Karen with suicidal confidence.
“Yeah?” Karen said, squaring up. She could totally take her. Puff was mostly hot air.
“Yeah,” Puff said, and Karen realized her mistake.
Volts of lightning traveled through her, seizing her limbs and overloading her sensors.
She dropped, flopping over to see the sheriff standing above her with a taser. She couldn’t get any of her joints to respond. The current had shorted out her whole spine.
Mrs. Puff was still there, leaning over Karen with a grin that made her wish she could throw up all over it.
“You see, it didn’t take much to convince Plankton to build the bomb, but I had wondered how I was going to convince him to stay in range of its blast. Heartbreak is just what I needed.”
Karen hurriedly defragged enough to strangle out a few words.
“You…monster.”
Mrs. Puff and the sheriff both laughed at her.
“Maybe, but this war you all have going on has gotten way too hot for this town. It’s time for you all to take a dirt-nap and for things to go back to normal. I can’t sell kelp to dead civilians, and nobody wants to step out into the middle of a bullet.”
Mrs. Puff nodded to the sheriff who holstered his weapon and turned to leave.
“Call me when it’s over, Mrs. P. The boys have a collection going,” he glanced down at Karen. “For the grieving families, of course.”
“Of course. I’ll drop something off when I have time.”
The sheriff nodded and walked away, not sparing Karen another glance.
Mrs. Puff, meanwhile, gave her complete attention. Karen was grateful she couldn’t feel her heart pounding.
“Now then,” Puff started, bending down to haul Karen across the room. “No one is going to disturb you in here while we finish our plans. I’ll be sure to tell Plankton that I couldn’t find you before you left. Hopefully, the molly will have kicked in by then, anyway.”
Karen tried desperately to contact her body, but the sparks went nowhere. She was trapped.
Mrs. Puff threw her into the closet, not bothering to plug her back in and then reached down to her head.
The last thing Karen saw before her shut-off switch was pushed was Mrs. Puff blowing her a mocking kiss.
She was going to kill that cunt when she woke u-
Her visual processors were the last things to come online.
She identified the inside of the Krusty Krab, but there was no logic to it. Did someone find where she was hidden?
She refreshed, trying to understand what was happening and realized that she could see her husband surrounded by the whole Krusty Krew. Was she dead? Did robots really get to go to heaven?
She ran diagnostics on her voice, making sure it was in working order before sitting up and staring at Plankton, hoping something would make sense soon.
“Sheldon. What did you do?”