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"Have you considered a-a bow?"
Uzi decided that, from that point forward, she did not like bows.
Not anymore, anyway. If she ever even liked them to begin with. Before this whole thing with the Solver and N and the big end-of-the-world plot, Uzi never even had anyone who truly enjoyed talking to her. But now, she had a boyfriend; an awesome boyfriend, she might add.
And a sentient murder-tail that used to be the big bad guy before she straight-up ate its heart and consumed its being.
Tessa liked bows. The murder-tail liked bows. So, to put it simply, Uzi did not like bows.
"Not wearing that," she muttered to herself, tiredly waving off the tail before swatting away the bow it put on her. The tail quickly moved to catch it, putting it aside before returning to look in the mirror alongside Uzi.
"O-Oh." Not a stutter. A glitch. It couldn't speak clearly, not like she could. It had a bit of a monotonous distortion that was always uneasy, no matter how hard it tried to convince her it was friendly. "Is it the color?"
Uzi rolled her eyes, shutting the locker door with a slight slam. Thad gave her a concerned glance before shrugging and going back to whatever he was doing. The tail stayed silent.
Out loud, at least.
[We are exhausted.]
"I know," Uzi muttered in reply, shaking away the little notification in her vision. Having another heart inside you meant having a little internal chat system with yourself. Sort of. It gave her a headache to think about it too much.
[We need rest.]
"I have class," she bit back. As much as she hated to admit it, she started to like going to class. Class meant sitting next to N, and sitting next to N meant a distraction from her stupid tail.
[Hey. I heard that.]
"Bite me."
The tail did not reply.
"Hey, Uzi!" N called, waving at her from his desk. "Saved you a spot."
V rolled her eyes, scrubbing her hand down her face. She was sitting in the row directly next to them, Lizzy at her side. "He's been waiting for you like some dog. Thank robo-god, you finally decided to show up."
Uzi took a turn to roll her eyes with a tired smile, taking her spot beside N at their desks. "Thanks, N." Her tail gave a soft "ow" as it tried to adjust with the chair.
N looked her over. He frowned for a moment. "Hey, why were you late? Everything okay?"
"Huh? Yeah, yeah, I'm- I'm fine," Uzi brushed it off.
[You're lying,] it crooned in her head.
"Bite me."
"What?"
"Huh?"
N looked over at V, sharing a concerned glance. "Are you sure you're okay? We can skip if you want, you know. It's not like we even do anything here, anyway."
He gestured to the teacher's desk, which was currently empty, with a note on the board that read: "Teach urself. I'm taking a break." The others that did bother showing up were either talking amongst themselves or sleeping.
She hated to admit it, but N and her creepy tail were right - she needed rest. Maybe getting some sleep would make her tail actually cooperate with her. Yeah, maybe that was it. Maybe, like her, it was just cranky. Since they shared a body, that had to be it. A nap would surely do them both good.
She was wrong.
So, yes, Uzi listened to her boyfriend and went to her room, locked herself in, and finally got in a couple hours' worth of a nap. And yes, it did take a little longer than usual, but eventually, she got both of those stubborn little sides of her to fall into rest mode.
But when she woke up, her tail was not calmed down and civilized.
"Rustle. Rustle, rustle." It rummaged through her closet, pulling out black hoodie after black hoodie. At some point, it stopped at her Promening dress, but threw it right down to the floor with the other skirts and hoodies and continued scavenging.
"Hey! What the heck?!" Uzi snapped out of her drowsiness with a shake of her head and tried pulling her tail away, but it was stuck nose first into that closet, emptying it faster and faster. "That's my clothes, you idiot! What're you even doing?!"
It stopped for a second, looking down at the mess it made. "Sigh. I a-am looking for a bow."
Of course. Because that's all this thing ever wanted to wear. "What- I don't have any bows," she tried to explain. But her tail wouldn't listen.
"You nee-e-eed more bows. I think they look... nice." And it went right back to pilfering through her things.
"Hey, no! Stop that!" She jumped for her tail, hands stretched out to grab it like a cat chasing a mouse. Her tail anticipated the move (stupid sharing a CPU) and dodged, leaving Uzi to faceplant on the floor, her tail innocently above her. "Oh, stupid-"
A surging pain washed over her, winding through her circuits and paralyzing her to the ground. She saw errors, blue- no, yellow- no, purple- no-
[Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow-]
She was getting warmer. The air was getting tighter. Could the air get tighter? She felt herself clawing at something, but she couldn't tell what. It hurt. Oil, and metal, and blue, and purple, and oil, and oil, and heat, and yellow-
[Stop moving. You will hurt yourself.]
"Bite me!" Uzi bitterly managed to scream back, but her voice glitched, distorting like an old nightcore track.
To her surprise, she felt another sharp, stinging pain on her arm, sinking deeper and deeper and cracking her sensors until they went numb.
And then there was nothing at all.
"...poke, poke. Can... ...ere me? Testing, testing. Poke. Poke. Poke. Po-"
Uzi's hand shot up and grabbed her tail by the cord, fully catching it off guard. Its mouth opened like it was choking, but it was clearly faking it for the bit.
"Uzi," it said, looking down at her, still too monotone to be considered well meaning by normal standards. "I totally overpowered you. Ha, ha, ha. Ha. I am the ultimate boss."
The cost of pirating anime: your tail thinks it's a series finale final boss. (Though, considering what happened to get them like this, that belief wasn't entirely wrong.)
Uzi huffed, releasing her tail and examining her surroundings. She was still on the floor, albeit propped up against the closet door. Her arm spiked with pain, and when she looked at it, she noticed a familiar sharp crescent dent in the metal.
"...did you bite my arm?"
The tail blinked. "You to-old me to bite you."
Uzi stared incredulously at this thing she shared a CPU with. "I- I didn't mean- You seriously took it like-" she stammered, sentences flying through her head and right back out the metal. She grunted in frustration. "Agh! Stupid tail, stupid, stupid, stupid-!"
She glitched again, sparking with blue holographics and error warnings. She clutched her chest, gasping as the air got tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and-
[Uzi.]
Get away.
[Uzi.]
Leave me alone.
[Uzi.]
She wished she could just rip it off, sever the hole, and be on her merry way, but nope! No, she just had to eat the frickin' zombie-Tessa-Cyn-Solver-drone's heart void thing and get sick heterochromia at the cost of a murder tail.
[Uzi.]
"Just STOP!"
"Uzi?!"
In an instant, the errors on her HUD were replaced with audio recognition software pop-ups regarding the speaker with hearts and paw prints. Like a golden retriever.
He was kneeling in front of her, taking his hands in hers, looking into her eyes with those loving, beautiful, yellow circles. He was even blushing.
Heck, now Uzi herself was blushing.
"Try to calm down," he instructed, rubbing soothing circles on the backs of her hands. "Breathe in... and out. Just like I'm doing. Okay?"
"Okay," Uzi gasped, taking in another breath. In and out. Easy. Slow and steady. "Like that?"
"Just like that," he reassured. "In and out."
Slowly, but surely, she calmed down, the errors and warnings disappearing to clear her vision.
Her hands felt cold.
"The-e-ere we go. That wasn't so hard. Was i-it?"
Of course.
Of frickin' course.
They didn't even do their secret handshake. Oh, robo-god, she should've known!
Uzi looked up to find her stupid tail staring back at her. "Why did you impersonate my boyfriend?"
"I figured out that if you and I get into a heated disagreeme-ent, we both glitch." If her tail had a face, she could've sworn it would be smiling. Smirking, even. "S-So, in order to avoid... that, we mu-ust be friends."
"What even are you, anyway?" Uzi found herself questioning, pointing an accusatory finger at her tail. "Huh? Some sort of- of weird robo fusion? A zombie-zombie drone?"
It took longer than usual to answer. It blinked. Its LEDs flickered. "I'm-" Its hologram glitched, causing the word to warble. "I'm Cy-" It distorted again, lowering the pitch below the usual monotone. "...Cy-yn- Solver-" The pitch got higher, higher, higher, glitching beyond the soundscape and well into nightcore territory. "Absolute- Abso-Absolute Solv-"
The more it tried to reason with itself, the more Uzi realized that she was just as confused about what it was as it was itself. She didn't know what this tail of hers was; she just knew she ate Tessa-Cyn-Zombie's heart and gained a new friend. This strange amalgamation of her Solver and Cyn and whatever else it may be had no idea what to call itself.
"Cyn- Solv-? Absolu- Cyn- Sol-"
But even though it might not have known who it was, they both at least knew one thing.
Uzi turned around to search her closet for something, anything, reminiscent of what she needed. Her body was starting to seize with the tightening stress of Solver's anxiety, yellow glitches burning into her vision.
Eventually, she found an old skirt buried all the way in the back, faded pink with roses dotting the trim. There were tiny pink bows along the waistline. She ripped one off the old thread, quickly hurrying to her desk and opening her art drawer with old pins and paperclips. She grabbed a clip - almost dropping it with a glitch - and hot glued it to the bow.
"Solver- Nor- Cyn-? Cyn-? Tessa-"
"Look!" Uzi turned back around, practically shoving the bow into her hair. "I found one! It's pink, see?" Her voice started dipping into that monotone, but she didn't care. It hurt. "It's a bow. A real one. Pink and all."
It looked at it. Really, truly looked at it.
And all at once, the glitches seized.
"...It's like Tessa's." It blinked. "Soft smile."
Uzi let out a sigh of relief, chuckling at the simplicity of the statement. "Yeah. Yeah, it's... I'll wear it from now on. For you."
"Head tilt. You will wear it... f-fo-or me?" Solver asked, and for the first time, there was no mistaking the genuineness of it.
"Yeah, I will. That way, your host can have a bow, or whatever, and I can have... some peace, maybe?" Uzi shrugged.
"Nod. You have a deal. I'm glad you considered the bow. It looks gre-e-at on you." It wrapped around her body, coiling to finally rest on her shoulder. "Smile."
For some reason, she didn't regret the decision. Sure, it made her feel weird at first, and she was sure V and Lizzy were giving her weird looks in class, but she was used to it. What was more surprising was that N actually liked the change.
"What's with the bow?" He asked her one day, playfully flicking the little pink ribbon that pushed away the right side of her bangs from her face.
"Oh! I, uh... Found it in my desk drawer," she lied, but N didn't notice at all. "Thought it would be fun to try it out. What, you don't like it?"
"Huh? No, no, I- I love it!" N quickly defended, raising his hands as a placating gesture. "I think it's, uh... cute."
Uzi found herself becoming a blushing mess again. One look at N showed he was the same.
[I told you,] Solver prompted in her head. [You look better with a bow.]
Uzi sent back an annoyed emoticon. [Bite me.]
Solver replied with an emoticon of its own. [XD]