Chapter Text
The murder drone's curved blade fell silently through the air, effortlessly severing the over-large, helmeted head of the human girl standing over her daughter as Nori watched the strange interaction from the shadows behind a large gothic column. Her initial relief at her daughter being saved was quickly turned to furious confusion as the pair interlocked their fingers; deciding this would be the ideal time to make her presence know, Nori scuttled out from the darkness. She caught snippets of their conversation as she approached but was suddenly cut off as Uzi's eyes flickered to a golden yellow matching with the murder drone in front of her. He screamed, reminding Nori of a mountain goat, and stabbed her in her visor with the crucifix shaped USB.
Uzi crumpled into N's arms and powered down.
Nori jumped onto the murder drone's shoulder and gave him a wet slap to stop him from screaming so they could talk: "Are you always this loud?" she asked, not waiting for a response, "And what in robo-God's name are you doing with my daughter?"
N nearly simulated choking as he stammered in response, "I... I... Uzi-"
"Yeah, I know her name dumbass, not important right now. What is, is getting her awake and getting us out of here"
Before she could plan any further, a sliver streak impacted the ground behind the slumped body of Uzi, accompanied by the crack of a sonic boom. Nori gripped N's hair tightly as he sprung upon this second murder drone, "V!" He shouted, pulling her into a tight embrace.
"Great, now there are two murder machines who know my daughter." Nori grumbled, unconcerned with the other drones hearing her.
"Who the hell are you?" V asked the purple core.
"Nori Doorman"
"Who?"
"Uzi's mom dipshit."
"Oh, so you're the dead mom she angsts about so much." V quips back, "Also you can let go now N."
The male drone quickly released their crushing grip, "Sorry V... wait, how are you alive? I was so sure that I lost you there."
"So good to hear that you're concerned, but I had some help-"
On cue, another drone burst through the large wooden doors of the underground church; wearing a heavy ski jacket and goggles over a blue hard hat, Khan entered
panting with digital sweat loosening his plastic moustache. "Am I too late?" He asks, not noticing the chaos in front of him. As he begins to take in the murder drones, the giant hole lined in flesh, the dead human, the dead drone, and most importantly, the seemingly dead daughter: he backs away in fear, shouting to the universe, "What in the name of doors happened here!?"
"Are you still on the lame-ass doors thing?"
"Heya Mr. Uzi, we found Uzi's mom!" N called excitedly, hoisting Nori above his head.
"Nori?"
"Is there anyone else who's her mom? Get over here doofus." Nori responds.
When Khan finished his overly cautious trek towards them, Nori jumped from N's head to Khan's and gave him a wet slap across his face. "Khan fricking Doorman, you killed me! I would have been fine in like, 30 minutes, but no, you have to be all like: don't worry, we'll always be together, I'll help you. And then you hit me with a fucking wrench? Why do you even carry a wrench with you? And why is that your first response to me getting stabbed? Just beat me to death!?"
"Um, well at least you're alive now..."
"God, you have, just, no empathy sometimes." Nori resolved to grumble to herself while gripping Khan's head into a strange hug. "I love you."
"I love you too Nori, it's good to have you back."
"Right, while you two get to your gross marriage thing, what are we doing with the freak?" V asked, mostly questioning N.
"Umm... we could, take out the patch?" N responded, unconvinced.
"Right, what's that?"
,"The cross thing... I think."
"Sure, so we just, pull it out?"
"Yeah?"
V grabbed the cross embedded in Uzi's visor and effortlessly removed it, satisfied when she sees steam rising from the unconscious drone as grey goo began to reform the large crack spread across her face.
As each of the drones were distracted by each other, they did not notice the unzipping sounds or the corpse of Doll being dragged towards the hole into the centre of the planet. V only looked up when her advanced hearing picked up the loud crushing and slurping noise of a drone being cannibalised. When she did, she saw a small drone with long black hair and the skin of a human child stretched over her body, thin tentacles swirled around her. "Ha h-h-ha, oh yes... get snuck up on." she giggled.
"Shit" Nori exclaimed.
"Who's that?" asked Khan.
"Cyn," responded N, V, and Nori in unison.
Cyn leapt and crawled like a wild animal before vanishing into a cloud of yellow pixels and reappearing amid the group of drones. She narrated the fight as it began with her clamping down on N's neck and dragging him screaming out of the crowd. Recovering from the shock of seeing Cyn alive again, V charged forward, clawed hands swiping at the solver host but being effortlessly neutralised by a STAB from an organic tendril ending in a razor-sharp crab claw. Nori flung her pickaxe at Cyn's drone body only to have it be stopped mid-air and turn around to sever Khan's leg causing the pair to topple to the ground.
"It's been fun... and also that's sarca-"
A ringing explosion shook the ancient church as all eyes turned to see an arm having exploded out of Uzi's chest, hand replaced with a rifle and wrist marked with purple and black stripes. It fired again, this time finding its mark in a shocked Cyn. She vanished and quickly reformed, giving just enough time for N and V to slip away.
"How, you were not chosen," Cyn asked aloud, "You do not deserve Us."
In the moment of confusion, V managed to reach a stone column and launch herself at Cyn, slashing off each of the eldritch limbs and slicing into Tessa's skin to reach the small drone beneath. Her head snapped backwards as Cyn lazily flicked her wrist, V fell in two pieces as she began to regenerate the severed head.
N screamed and ran at the recovering Cyn being met with a SLAP, narrated by the solver. Nori, with one limb pressing into the stump of her husband's leg to stop the bleeding, formed the ground beneath Cyn into a sharp spike and shot it through her abdomen. Ignoring the pain, she leapt up from the pillar and appeared above Khan and Nori, preparing to deliver a, "Double stab." Khan levelled the reconstruction of Uzi's railgun and did what he couldn't many months ago when he had first met N, he pulled the trigger and a beam of green light shot through the centre of the drone above him. Just before the light faded, Khan felt the slight kick of a beam of alpha particles travelling nearly the speed of light obliterate anything the laser didn't vaporise instantly.
Cyn split in half as it began to rain aluminium dust rapidly cooling after being evaporated by the railgun. A red pop-up announced the beginning of the weapon's massive 30-minute recharge phase. N and V had healed their wounds and returned to look over Cyn's bisected body. It did not move, however leaving it there was not a risk either were willing to take. V reached her hand inside the melted hole leading into Cyn's chest cavity and pulled out a flesh-covered core glowing white.
It sprouted limbs and the light flicked to yellow but before a solver symbol could appear and knock the two back, the patch was speared into its underside by Nori with her own solver.
The core flickered off and V dropped it unceremoniously on the ground.
A scraping noise of metal claws on robotic skin drew their attention back to Uzi, the murder drone arm protruding from her chest had begun to pull apart her casing. N jumped to action, grabbing the arm and pulling it off his friend. Uzi's voice called out from inside her body, mouth unmoving, "Don't frickin' touch me!" then after a brief pause, "Where am I? Why is it so frickin' small in here?"
N reacted slowly, realising that Uzi was somehow stuck in her own chassis, he swapped his hands for claws and ripped the small drone's body open. He then realised what he had done and rapidly tried to fix his mistake only for the arm to spray healing goo in the shape of a body and begin to reform. Uzi's core was quickly assimilated into this new body as it took shape: in front of the horrified group, Khan still on the ground, a murder drone grew with purple hair and lights, and a black hoodie embroidered with a drained battery logo; alarm blaring as it finished its formation. It stumbled forwards for a moment before lighting up in deep purple, the nanite acid in its tail shifting colour to match the eyes.
Uzi blinked her eyes a few times, taking a moment to wake up. She then looked at her arms with all seven eyes and said rather calmly, "What the **** is going on," her internal censors preventing her from swearing: she repeated herself, more panicked this time, "What the **** is going on!? What happened to me? Where am I? Why can't I feel my feet? Why am I still short!?"
Miles above, on the wind-swept, white surface, a landing pod touched down near to the hole leading down into the imploded core of the planet. Gracefully launching herself from the pod before it even touched the ground, Serial Designation J (who most would agree would have been a much better pilot than N) swapped a hand for a walkie-talkie and spoke into it, “Ride’s good to go boss, just say-“ She was cut off by a basketball being rapidly flung towards her from an assailant in the fog, knocking her off-guard and sending her into a backflip assisted by her bladed wings. The silhouette of two worker drones stood back-to-back came into view, “Who are you idiots?” J asked.
Lizzy and Thad were beginning to regret coming out to fight a murder drone entirely unarmed except for the single basketball, which had already been expended.