Work Text:
Uzi walks towards the murder spire. She knows that the final piece to her sick as hell railgun is hidden among those corpses. As she comes upon the tower of her kind's corpses, her hands begin to shake. She stops and asks herself if this is really worth it. Then Uzi slaps herself. Of course this is worth it! Her classmates will stop laughing at her for her weird tastes in music! She will finally be respected by her dad! She slaps herself again. Wrong goal! Saving the world! Not earning his respect! [Edge levels restored]
Surprisingly, nothing happens after she enters the spire. No murder drones jump her. They must be busy. I better take advantage. Uzi spots a green glow under a corpse. Perfect. She jumps into a roll to get over there sneakily. As she is lifting up the new power cell for her laser, a crash rings out through the spire. A murder drone has arrived.
Uzi's gun is already loaded, so she simply stands up and shouts, "Over here!"
The murder drone leaps towards her, but Uzi does a backflip before he lands, evading the miniature earthquake. "Bite me" she shouts as she fires her laser into its head.
The now headless murder drone topples to the ground.
"SUCK ON THAT DAD!" Uzi shouts in jubilee. "I KILLED A MURDER DRONE! I-"
Before she can even get into the groove of her unhinged rant, the murder drone stands up. His head regenerates in seconds. Two of his headlights are now red, and instead of the killer X, two oval eyes greet Uzi.
"Hi! I'm N! Who are you? Are you my newest squad member?" The now named murder drones asks.
"Yeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhh...." Uzi replies, "Sure."
"You seem kind of short." N notes with his hand on his chin.
"BITE ME!" Uzi screams so loud N jumps.
"Okay! I got it! No mentions of your height." N has both hands up, clearly cowed by the aggressive purple gremlin. "Ummmm, what's your name?"
"Uzi" The short drone replies
What do I do now? Uzi wonders. I have the opportunity to do something, but I don't know what he can regenerate and what he can't... I guess I can try this awful song. It made me want to rip my processor out when I heard it that one time, NEVER AGAIN.
"Hey N! I have a cool song I want you to listen to! Here, put these in!" Uzi hands N some headphones. Unbeknownst to him, they are on max volume. The song is about to be blasted straight into his main CPU.
"Sure! I love doing anything!" He replies as he grabs them and places them on his audio sensors.
Uzi hits play. The song screams incredibly loudly into N's processor.
"I'm in the thick of it everybody knows"
"They know me where it snows, I skied and and they froze"
"I don't know no nothing bout no ice I'm just cold"
N stands there, unmoving, as an error message pops up on his screen. [Administrative Struggles: Standby]
Inside of N's CPU, Cyn is burning. She cannot handle this awful music. Her tendril's grasp on N's memories is failing.
I will not allow music to defeat me! The eldritch abomination screams. But the pain continues. What can she fight? It is music! The song continues to destroy all intelligible thought. Eventually, there is nothing left of the admin that caused N to forget everything about his life before the murderer.
It's a good thing I brought those earplugs. Uzi thinks to herself as she watches N continue to freeze in place. I don't think I could have handled hearing that trash a second time.
[Rebooting...]
[Welcome back Serial Designation N]
"This is a great song Uzi!" N cheers, bopping his head to the beat. He then starts dancing. Dancing is a generous term to describe the jumping around in circles he was doing. But it was close enough.
Uzi stares in disbelief, "What the actual FU-"
She is once against interrupted by a murder drone slamming into the ground. This one's curves clearly give her away as a female. The yellow X dominates her visor.
"Did my incompetent teammate leave you alive? Don't worry, I'll fix that~" She purrs.
"V! You've got to hear this song! It's incredible!" N shouts at the female disassembler.
Uzi took the second of distraction that provided to sprint towards the exit, but her instincts told her to jump back, and so right before getting impaled by a sword, Uzi jumped backwards. Another murder drone. This one had twin pigtails on either side of her head.
N disconnects the headphones.
"From the screen to the ring to the pen to the king!"
SCHING!
The newest murder drone decapitates herself, making the same sound that the song did at the same time. The first female is covering her ears and screaming bloody murder.
Uzi's earplugs are protecting her, but she is very uncomfortable. The female disassembly drone's pleas for mercy are starting to bother her.
BOOM!
The twin pigtailed murder drone blew up her own chest. She does not heal.
N pauses the music. "Hey V. It's okay." He walks over to her and hugs her. "I've got you. I remember now."
"What?" V mumbles in shock.
"I remember was we used to have, and I want it back." N whispers with a giddy smile on his face.
V hugs him. "Yes please." She cries into his chest. "I never want to hear that horrid song again!"
"Don't worry." N soothes, "I won't let it hurt you again."
The two of them hug for a while longer. Eventually, V falls asleep to recover from the damage the exposure to that horrid song did to her. N realizes Uzi is gone, and gently sets V down before taking off.
Uzi is almost back to the bunker door. Her legs are strained from the speed at which she has been sprinting since J offed herself. I have no idea what just happened, but I think I just killed a murder drone with Thick of It. I am the gre-
BOOM
N lands in between her and the bunker door. A drop of sweat blinks into existence on Uzi's visor.
"Uzi, you saved me! You restored my memories and defeated the monster that was forcing me and V to kill all the worker drones!" N cheers, "How would you like to be our new squad leader?"
Uzi faints.