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It had been a while since that emo oddball banished herself from the colony. Everyone knew that her relationship with her father, their leader, was strained, but no one could have suspected that it was this bad. Leaving your daughter to die? Abandoning your force's good name when finally faced with true danger? Thad had suddenly felt awful for all the times he had joined his peers in poking fun at her.
He tried to distract himself by playing basketball with some friends. He'd been exercising almost every minute since he recovered from his near-fatal chest impalement. Occasionally, the wound would rip open again from the exertion, but he refused to take the advice of literally everyone warning him that his...coping machanisms were not a good idea.
He preferred football to basketball, but the teachers had recently banned the former because it was causing too many injuries. Thad silently mocked them. Typical adults, cowering away from anything that might make life worth living more instead of seeking out solutions to make those hobbies safer. It was only a matter of time before some moron cracked a visor with a basketball and that was banned as well. The young drone decided he would abuse his ability to play the sport while it lasted.
His wound tore open again somewhere in the middle of a game. He pretended to be fine, as usual, but he was getting good at ignoring the pain. But his peers were also getting good at spotting black splotches showing up on his shirt. He had opted to wear dark shirts for this reason, but his mother was smarter than to let him.
Thad's irritated friends all but forced him to go home. Lizzy offered to escort him; the drone had finally admitted he could barely walk without forcing himself to. But when he finally got home and followed his nighttime routine, which now included his mother embarrassingly fussing over his injury, he couldn't bring himself to sleep. He'd had a very deep gut feeling that something was about to go horribly wrong that grew with each passing day. He couldn't ignore it now, not when he heard very faint sounds of shouting from outside the house. The voices were familiar, a man's and a girl's. They were coming from the left of him, Thad observed, which was where Uzi's former house was.
Thad immediately bolted out of bed, not even bothering to stay quiet as he hurried out the door. His mom was a heavy sleeper anyway.
He got outside right as his neighbor's front door closed. He had caught a glimpse of a purple hand. Her voice was formerly purely angry, but was rising in fear. The voices were muffled, but Thad picked out a few words of stereotypical parental anger.
The door wasn't a problem; Thad had taught himself to pick locks a long time ago. He only ever did so to impress girls; he never thought the skill would come in genuinely useful. Slipping into the main hallway, he saw Khan locking Uzi's door from the outside. She screamed through tears and pounded on the door like her life depended on it.
Didn't doors lock from the inside? As Khan headed to his own room, thankfully not noticing Thad, the latter saw that Khan's door didn't have an outside lock.
Thad had to find out what was going on. He didn't think Uzi was in danger (at least not mortal danger), but the aforementioned lock placement was very suspicious and even cruel.
Thad slowly opened Khan's door, which he fortunately hadn't bothered to lock.
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Uzi did everything she could to break her door down, but all she really had were books, sticky notes, tiny spare parts, and furniture too heavy to lift. Sure, the door was made of wood, but it was amplified with bulletproof glass.
She felt an urge to curl up on the bed and weep, but denied it. The drone took a screw and began scraping hard against the bottom of the door, trying to carve out a hole in the bottom. Progress was pathetic, but existent, so Uzi forced herself to keep on going.
She paused upon hearing screams and beating noises from her father's room. Unable to make a thing out even after turning her audio receptors to the highest volume, she tried to ignore it and kept carving the hole.
Uzi still recognized both voices and couldn't keep herself distracted. What the hell was Thad doing here?
Abruptly, the noise stopped. Something clanged to the ground. Uzi couldn't help but freeze. She gradually started to panic at the potential thought of Thad having gotten seriously hurt or killed.
Footsteps approached her room. Uzi resisted the urge to scream as the door was unlocked. But there was her jock, bathed in oil.
Whose was it?
Before Uzi had time to process or consider anything, she tightly embraced the boy. Realizing what she'd just done by instinct, she instantly broke away and looked down, her blush so intense that it covered her eyes.
Thad waited a minute for her flustered mind to clear. Just before Uzi questioned him, he broke in.
"I know, I know. You have a shit ton of questions. Just...sit down, okay? You look like you're about to short circuit or something."
She spat a "bite me" at him but collapsed into her chair anyway. Thad sat under her, leaning against one of the seat's legs.
"Before I answer any of your questions, may I ask why you came crawling back here? You, uh, banished yourself, didn't you?"
Uzi repeatedly folded and unfolded a tiny paper airplane. "Yeah, but I left my anime and gun here. I wanted to try and sneak in without that bastard noticing me, but things happened, I guess."
Thad perked up. "Your dad was getting ready to destroy your gun, but Doll made out with it before he got to do anything. Hey, hey! Get that smirk off your face! I meant that in a stealing context! So, yeah. We can head over to her place and grab it after I explain...everything."
"Then just talk already!" Uzi flared. "Was there really a need to kill him?! Sure, he's an asshat, but--"
"He was getting ready to kill YOU."
That certainly got Uzi's attention. She could almost hear the snow pelting the outside of the bunker.
Thad drew a shaky breath. "I was in bed right next to your house when I heard all the screaming. I went into your dad's room and asked him what was going on. He didn't even seem bothered that I literally broke into his house. He just told me to get out of the way and that...he was going to take care of you. And he was holding that wrench he used to kill your mom."
Neon tears began to spill down Uzi's cheeks. Thad almost wondered if he should stop talking for now. But almost wasn't enough.
"I asked him what he meant by taking care of you. And he never outright answered, but he started trying to justify killing you! Saying you were a danger to the colony and that you were the reason his wife was dead…"
Uzi cried out and punched the table at this. Thad paused for a moment.
"I had just gotten my new body when your mom died. I saw everything. He tripped and dropped you when you were a baby. They were running from the murder drones. Your mom grabbed you and threw you at him before...she was stabbed."
Uzi desperately wished her mother was here more than ever upon hearing this.
Thad sighed. "Khan told me all that, and told me to get out of the way. He started being all rough with me when I tried to keep him from going to your room. We fought it out for a second, and then…that wrench. The one he used to kill your mom. He decapitated her, so I did the same to him."
Thad resisted the urge to take Uzi's hand. She had been crying this whole time. He flinched when Uzi started cackling bitterly.
"At least N gets some free food tonight."
Oh, yeah. She had left with that murder drone, huh? Thad tried not to freak out too much. He waited for the girl's insane laughter to die down before standing up.
"So. ...Wanna go get your sick as hell railgun?"
Uzi snorted. "Just let me pack all the stuff in here first."
She ruffled his hat before getting up and rooting through her disks. Thad refused to let her see him blush.