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Doll sneaked across the desolate city, stalking for prey from the shadows. The night was cold, dark and desolate. One of the longest in the year too… At a first glance, one could assume that a Drone cursed by the curse of the Solver cooking them from the inside would love these conditions. She herself once thought so as well…
Until she actually had to survive this time of the year outside of her home colony that is.
The frost was seeping through her metal exterior, biting at her usually very durable partially fleshy insides. Her metal parts were not faring well under the onslaught either… Both of these problems were managed by her robust regeneration working constantly but that just consolidated two issues into one; the constant regeneration was eating away at her oil reserves.
She saw her oil levels drop at a horrific pace, faster even than they usually did back at her comparatively warmer home colony of Outpost-3. She wanted to spend as little time as possible on the outside but she had to get oil anyway, even while hiding in her hideout she was slowly losing the coolant and had to hunt down someone.
She so far had no luck however. Somehow there were not many people wandering about in the worst time of the year to be outside…
She now felt resigned to just teleport inside of Outpost-3 and once again bring death to some of her old classmates… What a cheerful reunion, she thought, even if she didn't care much for most of them…
Then she heard it. A sound of steps coming from somewhere ahead. With a burst of enthusiasm, she started rapidly teleporting over to the source, not caring about her usual element of subtlety.
Then this rush ended as soon as it began when her optics met the person who made these sounds. She stopped still right in front of her.
“[Doorman.]” She let out with a voice laden with disappointment.
“Alekseyevna.” Uzi deadpanned in response. She was carrying a rather large backpack visibly filled to the brim.
“[What do you want?]” They have not seen each other in the months since the Cabin Fever Labs debacle, where the Solver was thwarted from taking either of them or the planet but not stopped for good.
“I have been pressured to be your one-day-late Santa. Ho Ho Ho or something.” The purple-eyed Drone responded as she took off the backpack.
“[What?]” She didn’t even remember until now that Christmas Eve was yesterday…
“Just because you tried to kill most of us once or twice doesn’t mean we all forgot about you.” Uzi rolled her eyes. “You probably noticed it’s not actually that big of a deal nowadays among the people we know.”
“[If it’s not V’s beating core for me to crush in my hands, I am not interested.]”
Uzi glared at her, unimpressed. Then she shrugged and started putting the backpack back on with visibly deliberate slowness. “Well, since you’re not interested I guess I’ll simply keep the oil…”
“[Wait, I’ll take the oil!]”
Uzi smirked. “Everything or nothing, cousin dearest. You may throw out everything else if you feel like it but at least take a look first.”
Doll nodded in resignation. Uzi then took off the bag again and unzipped it and reached inside.
“That one is from Lizzy…” She said as she took out a decently sized circular package wrapped in a shiny red paper wrapped with a fine pink ribbon. Dool took the package to see that a note was attached to it; ‘Stay beautiful out there girl.’. She sat down on a remaining piece of an old wall next to them and unwrapped it. Inside there was a makeup set, and a small cleaning set put within a… matte plastic bowl with a flat bottom?
She gave Doorman a questioning look. Uzi responded quickly.
“The bowl was apparently originally for humans to keep their feet in or something equally disgusting. It has built-in electric heaters to keep the water warm.” She tapped the small set of control buttons on the side that Doll didn’t notice before.
“Pinkie figured that it can unfreeze snow and then keep it liquid so you can have a reflective surface our little friend can’t mess up.” Uzi pointed to her Solver eye and chuckled grimly before continuing. “We tested it and it actually worked! Turns out that maybe her passing grade from Science wasn’t entirely thanks to nepotism for once…”
Doll contemplated the present while Uzi reached again into the backpack. She was still very much bitter towards Lizzy over her betrayal and she assumed her former best friend thought similarly little of her with how quickly she was fully replaced with V. Because of that she was rather puzzled by the present and even more so by the weird combination of Lizzy’s… Lizzyness and an almost untypical level of thoughtfulness it displayed. Maybe she should check up on her sometime…
“This one is from Thad.” Uzi broke her out of her musings as she reached out with another package in her hand. Unlike Lizzy’s it was a square in shape. It was of a similar size however. Inside there was a portable box screen with a built-in video player and a set of compatible disks in its back compartment. The sight threw her back to the movie nights Thad organised for his close friends. She mostly just tagged along with Lizzy but he always took care to make her feel included… They used a similar device to watch the movies ‘for the atmosphere’.
She took a closer look at the disks to see the labels on them. So many of her favourites! She smiled slightly as she checked over the titles and the memories associated with them surfaced.
“Heh, I see Thad had a good idea? He said that it must have sucked for you to be out there with little to no entertainment.”
“[Yes!]” While Doll had a lot of these movies in her own data bank, she was very much one of these people who did not like watching things on their own screen…
“I gotta tell him he nailed it…” Uzi grinned. “Well, I guess I can give mine too…” She took out a modest-sized package from the backpack and handed it to Doll. “I didn’t have a clear idea on what I wanted to give you so mine may be underwhelming a bit.” She added with a somewhat sheepish voice.
Inside the package she found a large, two hundred pack of AA batteries. Sunder brand. These were her favourite and also not the easiest to get your hands on… There was also another pack of ten larger batteries.
“So yes, originally it was just just the snacks but when Thad and Lizzy’s presents came up with technical matters I decided I could contribute to these… When testing the water mirror thingie we found out it needs a higher power setting to keep the water from refreezing in most comfortable temperatures. These usually burn through the batteries like hell so I decided to also get you a couple spares. That’s what the larger batteries are for. They also work for the box screen.”
Doll was now past the point of caring even that Uzi’s present was way better than she made it sound like. She just wanted to know.
“[Why are you doing this for me?]”
Uzi expression softened. “Were family dummy. Even if we have not seen eye to eye for many years… While N’s Human may attest to the value of sometimes cutting off shitty family but even if you really, really, pissed me off on a couple occasions I don’t think you ever got to that stage… So I guess I was up for doing at least this to look out for you… My mom’s ghost would be giving me insomnia anyway if I didn’t at least do something…”
Doll stood up and closed in on her cousin to give her a hug. “[Thank you!]” She exclaimed in an outburst of affection she herself did not expect.
Uzi was taken aback as well but she gathered herself rather quickly. “Hehe, hold your thank yous until after I give you everything I got here.
Ah… the Russophone Drone almost forgot about the thing that still was the most important out of these. “[You mean the oil you mentioned?]”
“Heh, I’ll have to take up your time for a bit more… the other stuff in here is kinda covering the oil…”
This weirded out Doll a bit. Who else could want to give her presents? All of her other old friends were dead by now… The culprit behind it was Uzi herself though because she was genuinely not in control of herself at that time she did not hold it against her cousin.
“Well, first there is this…” She pulled out a rolled up red winter jacket. It seemed to be in a good condition and also to be a rather thick garment. Maybe a bit rudely she grabbed it out of Uzi’s hands and put it on. For the first time in years since the Solver curse’s activation she truly felt the sensation of pleasant warmth.
“Huh you like it?”
Doll nodded.
“I can see why, I like mine too.” Uzi chuckled. Doll now realised that she had an identical one on herself. Realisation started creeping up her mind.
“N found a couple of these jackets in some old university. Apparently they were packed for shipment to some research station on the Southern Ice Sheets before… well before everything became an ice Sheet.”
“[These are way warmer than anything I could find around the shopping malls.]” Doll exclaimed. The jackets she found there were mostly shabby and barely did anything for thermoregulation, these places were picked clean of good clothes years ago…
“Tell me about it. You’d think the one positive of being stuck with Robo-Satan would be that we would never have to worry about too low of a temperature, yet here the Copper-9 winter came to remind us that no; we are just screwed all over.”
The two girls giggled for a moment, finding a moment of levity in their shared misfortune. Then Uzi spoke up again as she reached down to the backpack .
“I figured N, J and V got some stories to tell about dealing with the surface winter’s crap because… J’s present is also in the temperature control theme…” She said as she picked out a thick bundle of material sheets. “So these are, ugh… ‘JCJensen Quality-Assured Thermal Insulation Sheets’. She said that they use these in the worst days of the winter to keep the inflow of cold air under control. Since N and V nodded along I’m inclined to believe the walking company ad for once.”
“[Why would J want to give me a present?]” While she very much appreciated the practical gift she was at a complete loss as to why the aloof murder drone would ever want to give her anything. Their only interactions ever amounted to fighting each other and J glaring at her while she was negotiating with the human…
“Basically once Thad, Lizzy, N, me, Tessa and even V committed something to the initiative of sharing some Christmas cheer with you, she decided she didn’t want to be an odd one out in the group.”
This weirdly made sense, Doll thought. Another part of what Uzi just said quickly came to her attention. “[What do you mean V 'commited something’?]”
“Well, big emphasis on ‘something’. Her ‘present’ for you is purely in the form of verbal promises.” Uzi rolled her eyes before making a theathric cough. “To quote, she promised to ‘not start a fight with you if she encounters you on neutral grounds for three months and let you take the first shot if you want to fight anyway’.” Doll scoffed at this while Uzi continued. “She also said she ‘officially cedes to you the southwestern quarter of your contested hunting ground.’. I don’t know if I really want context on what that second part means…”
Right to the first strike for three months and a promise to respect at least a part of her usual hunting area? The Christmas spirit must have really gotten into the murder drone…
“Ok, the last thing before we get to the grand finale…” Uzi once again reached into the backpack. “So our resident Human also wanted to join in on the initiative and for that goal she questioned Lizzy and Thad for your interests and she found out that you two apparently have something in common in this regard…” She pulled out a book-shaped package.
Doll was very curious now, she grabbed the package and unwrapped it to see it was indeed a book. ‘Xynthian Chronicles’ read on the cover. A fantasy book series Emily once got her into. She loved it, she could lose herself in the fictional world for hours thanks to these books… She then realised that the book cover also had number five written on it. She didn’t even know there were more than four of them…
“She said that the author apparently survived Earth going kaboom and published that one from whatever space habitat he is hanging out at… Supposedly basically everyone including Tessa liked it so when she learned you were a fellow fan she decided to get you a copy.”
“[Say thanks to Tessa for me!]” Doll brimmed with joy. “[Say thanks to everyone in fact, I am not really able to give back much else…]”
Uzi’s virtual eyebrows rose at this as she giggled. “You know you can say this to everyone yourself? We put together these presents under the idea of helping you out while you keep roughing it out there but you are very much welcome to come to hang out with us. Me and Tessa have been restoring an old building to use as a bonus base outside of the Spire and in a couple levels we got just that PERFECT temperature for slowing down the heat as much as possible without getting into the ‘too cold’ territory…”
Doll considered the invitation… It came so suddenly, she felt unsure how this would even go. She was just not ready to meet all of them at once. There was also a quiet voice at the end of her processor suggesting this is all an elaborate trap against her… Not to mention the wretched murder drone, no telling if V does see that base as a ‘neutral ground’… She sighed and responded. “[I… don’t think I feel ready. I am so grateful for the gift as well as the thought behind them and I’m sorry I can’t give anything back… I just… can’t.]”
Uzi’s face morphed into a sadder but earnest expression. “You remember what I told you back at Prom?”
“[We move forward together or not at all?]”
“Yea that’s it. I said I came looking for you because we are family but the reason why this pushed me to come out there was that I remembered that. I remembered how important it is to know you are not alone. We are all dealing with this mess and you don’t need to be doing it on your own. I am not asking you to become buddies with V, just to not cut out everyone…”
“[Your birdie is rubbing off on you.]” Doll allowed herself a jab at her cousin and then a giggle when Uzi’s screen lit up with blush lines.
“I give you a sincere response from my own heart and you talk back at me with mockery!” The purple-eyed Drone exclaimed before calming down somewhat. “Kinda yes though, N is half the reason why I think this is so important…”
The two looked at each other in silence for a moment until Uzi sighed and spoke again. “Well.. the offer still stands even if you feel not ready tonight. Just a heads up that no one removed you from their contacts…” She went quiet again with a thoughtful expression on her face for a second before it twitched into a grimace. “Aw crap, since you’ll be going back to your own place you have nothing to carry all this stuff in… You wanna take the backpack too? I had to scavenge a brand new specifically to fit all the stuff in and got really surprised with how well it did the job! Also…”
She pulled apart the flaps on the backpack to reveal a crate filled with six large synthetic oil canisters. “...the real goods are still in there! Lizzy and Thad swiped two from the colony stores, two are from some corpo supply Tessa and J tracked down and two are from me and N!” Uzi grinned.
If Doll was softened until now by the group’s collective efforts she was now downright touched. She pulled Uzi into a tight hug and the two just stood here in serene quiet for a moment… After a while, Uzi helped Doll pack all the presents back into the backpack and the girls parted their ways after a heartfelt goodbye…
*An hour later, inside the ‘Squads’ base*
The evening after Christmas Eve was slow as hell. While the supplies gathered and other preparations made beforehand allowed them all to savour over a week of free time starting from yesterday. However Uzi’s absence prevented them from relaxing tonight… The discussion over who was going to deliver the gifts/peace offerings to Doll ended yesterday with her volunteering. Their uncertainty was replaced with anticipation only a few minutes ago when Uzi had sent them a radio ping with information that she is coming back.
N was nervously pacing around the room, with Tessa, V and Thad watching him. Lizzy was browsing her phone with a flat expression but she was nonetheless flashing quick glances towards the sealed entry doors. J similarly, in spite of her loud declaration that she merely followed Tessa there, was discreetly glancing towards the entrance.
Finally the doors half-opened as Uzi slipped in and quickly closed them before any more of the cold could come in. N ran up and embraced her tightly before she could utter a word.
“Wow, hold your horses! I’m fine, everything went well…” She let out after a moment.
“I was worried though. Why did you insist on coming out completely alone in this horrid weather?” Her boyfriend questioned.
“I told ya already, didn’t wanna make her paranoid that I’m preparing her for an ambush if she noticed you or the girls!” V and J humphed at the mention of them.
“Hey if it all went well then where is Doll!?” Lizzy shouted over from the couch.
“It went well but not well enough for her to accept the invitation.” Came the response from the purple-haired Drone.
Lizzy loudly groaned in disappointment. V gave her friend a look before asking a question herself. “Did she at least like the presents?”
“Yes she liked them. I don’t think there’s a risk she’ll throw out any.”
“Good… for her that is!” The disassembler proudly exclaimed before continuing. “If I found any of them in the trash I would assume she disposed of my present as well and I would harass her ruthlessly! Speaking of my ‘presents’...”
“Yes, yes, chill. I sold her the story about how everyone but you contributed to the oil crate. Your secret of having remorse is safe from Doll’s grasp.” Uzi reassured her with a chuckle.
“Why are you all making such a big deal out of this, huh!? I just wanted to make 100% sure that Ruskie wasn’t going to go all ‘Christmas Knife Massacre’ on us or on YOUR stinking hole in the ground. I wouldn’t care an inch if she wasn’t a threat.”
“You really looked like you cared a lot about Doll receiving them well though… With how far you went to disguise the cans as being from separate batches.” Thad butted in with a grin.
“Still pure pragmatism! I found a whole goddamn crate of perfectly fine high-quality oil and instead of adding it to our supplies I committed it to freaking Doll! She would never take oil from me and like hell I would risk her dumping this stuff!” V exclaimed with an offended tone. She finished with crossed arms and a grumpy face that forced a laugh out of everyone present.
*In Doll’s hideout*
The apartment she took for her dwelling was now much cosier than it was just earlier that night. The wind didn’t howl so loud with the windows now fully airtight under J’s sheets and with no more freezing outside air the temperature was close to the blissful equilibrium where she was not getting frostbite and her cooling oil was consumed at a minimum rate. Almost like her old hab back at the colony. She only needed a half of the six oil cans to fully replenish her internal reserves. Thanks to them it shouldn’t be until the New Year that she will have to go out on another hunt… As dull as Doll’s conscience was nowadays, it was quite happy she wasn’t adding to her tally of victims at least for a bit…
She was quite comfortable, with the ambiance of one of her old favourite movies bringing life to the room. The jacket from N was carefully put away in the drawer as she didn’t need it right now… Tessa’s book was lying on the nightstand, she was going to dig into it before recharge. Right now though she was cleaning herself up over Lizzy’s water mirror. She herself was never as big on physical appearance as her friend but she had her standards and when she saw her own reflection for the first time in many months she deemed that the shabby Drone looking back at her needed immediate attention…
Yet under this serene feeling Doll felt a new tension, even if it was much less draining than oil list… She needed to do something to give back at least some of the warmth she was given… She couldn’t just receive…
A commitment was formed as she poured the water out of the mirror bowl and turned it off after being satisfied with the effects of her self-care. Tomorrow night she will look for good overdue presents for her friends and cousin and maybe even for Tessa, N and J… She was very much on the fence about including V… It felt wrong alongside her plan to also find something that she could honour her parents with…
She was going to try to sneak into the colony on the night after, to visit mom and dad… Hopefully WDF hasn’t moved them… After that… she may check up on some friends before going back outside… she will figure what to do next then.