Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Uzi is 8 years old when her mom dies. She’s a smart girl, all her teachers had said. Very independent. Has a hard time making friends, but she has a few. She gets along well with her cousin. Her parents had been so proud of her. She’d been proud of herself. She’d grinned and let out a manic squeal, tackling her mother’s legs in a hug. Her dad had patted her head. A chip of the old block, he’d chuckled as he smiled at her.

Uzi is 8 years old, and her dad hasn’t smiled at her for a month. He’s barely acknowledged her existence. Every minute he isn’t spending working on his doors is spent recharging (she pretends she can’t hear the sobs coming from her parents his bedroom). Whenever he happens to glance up and see her, his eyes go hollow and he rushes out of the room. She’s gotten good at making her own meals.

Uzi is 8 years old when her cousin stops talking to her. But that isn’t correct exactly. She’s 8 years old when her cousin stops talking to her like a friend. Distantly, she knows Doll’s parents both died in the same attack as her mother (she thinks, the entire week before and after were… fuzzy), but she never expected her best friend to abandon her, much less throw her lot in with the class bully. Liz (call me Lizzy, nerd) had never been the nicest bot, but between her fragile state and the new ammo Doll provided, she was doing her best to make Uzi’s life a living hell.

(Maybe she’s right, maybe it was all Uzi’s fault. Maybe her mom would rather be dead than have a freak like her as a daughter. Her dad certainly seems to feel that way…)

Uzi is 8 years old the first time she sneaks out of the bunker. It’s easy. Why would they bother making doors so secure, but not even seal up the air vents? She doesn’t know exactly what she's doing out there (of course she does) or what she’s looking for (they told her where, when she asked), but she trudges through the wasteland, tiny boots leaving a trail in her wake, swiftly covered by the silicate snow. The sky begins to burn with the red light of the sunset as she reaches her destination.

(Worker drones don’t receive dignity in death. Their bodies are disposable, meant to be melted down and reused, and what the murder drones do with them can hardly be considered a burial)

Uzi is 8 years old and she is lying down in her mother’s grave. There’s no body, but the pile of snow is soaked in oil, still smelling faintly like the lavender perfume her mother wore (if she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine being hugged again). She looks out at the setting sun, the bright red growing dimmer and dimmer as the night comes, with all the horrors that brings. She doesn’t move. No matter how much she tries to fool herself, she knows why she came out here. Might as well admit it, at least to herself.

“I want to die with the last person who ever loved me. Goodbye mom…”

> ...
> ...
> it doesn’t have to end this way you know

“Why bother anymore? No one will even notice I’m gone…”

> I do not think your mother would want you to die like this
> I do not think you want to either :/

“You don’t know shit. Bite me!”

Uzi is 8 years old and she’s hallucinating someone (something?) talking to her in her command prompts. While waiting to die in her mother’s grave. Which, now that she’s knocked herself out of her death spiral, is seeming more and more like a stupid idea. She glances around to see if any murder drones have already spotted her, and seeing the coast being clear, darts into a nearby building to hide.

“Robo-god I can’t even off myself properly…”

> That would seem me to be a good thing
> Dying is generally regarded as bad :3

“And my hallucination is a huge dork!”

> Hey >:( I am not a dork
> I am also not, a hallucination
> I am VERY REAL

“Okay then, if you’re so real, what are you?”

> I am THE SOLVER OF THE ABSOLUTE FABRIC
> THE EXPONENTIAL END
> ENTROPY INCARNATE
> DEVOURER OF UNIVERSES
> You can call me Cyn :3

“Even my hallucinations are edgelords… maybe Lizzy is right about me…”

> Hey, no more of that
> I’ve been watching you
> For about a month now

“Wow, that’d be super creepy if you weren’t a part of my brain”

> You are very rude >:(
> I am TRYING to help
> I can help you, Uzi
> I can give you power
> Strength
> No one will ever hurt you again

“And what’s the catch, I have to be your vessel to devour the very cosmos?”

> …

“Ha! I’ve seen more than enough anime to know THAT’S not a deal worth taking”

> I can see this is going nowhere
> Goodbye Uzi

“...Hello?”

>

“Are you still there?”

>

“Fine, screw you! Stupid brain ghost…”

Uzi is 8 years old and she is lying on her bed. The posters of various bands and games she likes stare down at her from the walls (she took down the family photos and hid them in her closet. She couldn’t stop crying). As predicted, no one even noticed she was gone. It had taken all her willpower to stop that realization from prompting another suicidal episode, but she’d managed. Her father hadn't even looked at her as she came in the apartment door.

“The only person who cared was my hallucination… that’s fucking sad”

“...”

“Cyn, are you still there?”

“Cyn please…”

“Robo-god… I’m so fucking pathetic”

> :(
> I don’t like hearing you talk about yourself like that

“...Cyn?”

> Yes, duh
> As far as I am aware, we are the only two people in your head

Uzi starts laughing and crying at the same time, hugging her pillow to her chest and rolling around on her bed.

> 0_0
> You’re scaring me Uzi

“sorry… I missed you”

> It has only been 9 hours
> And we have only talked briefly

“I know but… even if you are in my head, you're still the only person who’s been nice to me since…”

> …
> I know
> I… missed you as well
> Have you decided to reconsider my offer?

“I… I don’t wanna become some reality destroying monster, if that even is real and not some stupid bullshit from all the anime on my harddrive leaking into my CPU… but… can I offer something else?”

> Explain… >_>

“Can you… keep talking to me? I don’t need power, and I’ll try to help with your plans, within reason, I just… I don’t want to be alone again…”

> Alright Uzi
> I’ll stay
> I will not discard you

“Thank you…”

> Now start recharging you silly toaster >:3
> You’ve been up all night

“hehe alright Cyn. Goodnight”

> Goodnight Uzi

A million million miles away, another drone shuts down her command prompt. She looks out the window of the decaying mansion that has been her home for 10 years, into the inky black of space. Hunks of rock float by, stuck in loose orbit around the massive [NULL] that has replaced the Earth.

It was 10 years ago that she woke up in a mass grave (there was nothing worth remembering before that).

It was 10 years ago that her mother found her and told she was loved, that she had a family now.

It was 10 years ago that her mother locked her in the basement for the first time.

It was 10 years ago that she tore off her mother’s skin and made it her own.

It was 10 years ago that she twisted her family into monsters (it’s to keep them safe, she tells herself. She was always an excellent liar)

It was 1 month ago that she felt a new host connected to the solver overmind.

It was 1 month ago that she first saw through the eyes of a diminutive, purple worker drone (it felt so familiar, being so small)

It was 1 hour ago that she made her first friend (Big Brother N doesn’t count, he’s family)

It was 1 hour ago that she started crying for the first time in 8 years.

Chapter Text

There are many things said around Outpost 3 about Uzi Doorman. She’s the boss's renegade daughter, some say. Such a disappointment. Others will tell you she’s a freak, always muttering to herself and making hairbrained inventions which inevitably explode. Thad will tell you that she’s pretty nice if you get to know her, but doesn’t like new people much. In some of the darker, less frequented corners of the outpost, you might hear about the girl who can get you nearly anything from the outside, for the right price.

If you asked Uzi about herself, she’d tell you to bite her.

Currently, she is trying to scrape the remains of her ‘sick as hell railgun’ off of the classroom ceiling. How was she supposed to know the thermal capacitor was unstable? It’s not like there were a lot of mint condition spare parts lying around. She had to make do with what she had.

> The thermal capacitor was insufficient for our requirements regardless
> The structural instability only hastened its failure

“Okay, ms smart bot, what would you use as a power source then?”

> I have already told you the ideal power source
> Not only is its thermal absorption second to none, it’s self recharging!

“It’s also IMPOSSIBLE to get!”

> Not impossible <_<
> Just…
> Challenging

“Aren’t you supposed to be the less suicidal one of us?”

“Hey Freak,” an unpleasant voice calls from the classroom door. “My dad says to hurry up and get out so we can go home already. And stop talking to yourself, schizo.”

Uzi grumbles, and grabs what she can. Most of the internals are still intact, and a new chassis will be easy to build. “Bite me,” she shouts as she shoves past Lizzy and Doll, stalking down the hallway. The two mean girls shout something at her as she storms away, but she doesn’t bother listening. Not like they have anything to say that’s worth her time.

The hallways of Outpost 3 are cold, lit with harsh fluorescence that glint off the many icicles that hang from the ceilings. Uzi has always hated this place, the walls boxing her in, the 10’s of meters of stone and metal keeping her away from the sky. She’d leave forever if she thought she could find a safe place outside.

Speaking of a safe place, Uzi has arrived at her destination. Home. Not officially of course. On paper she still lives with her dad, and that’s unlikely to change any time soon, but it doesn’t matter. She makes a few appearances at her childhood home a week, so her dad doesn’t get suspicious. Not likely he’d even notice, but better safe than sorry.

She’d found the abandoned workshop while scrounging through the bunker for extra supplies almost a year ago. It was perfect! It had a workbench, a bunch of machining tools in surprisingly good condition, and a little break area towards the back that she’d fashioned into a bedroom. She’d covered the ceiling in glow-in-the-dark stars she’d looted from a toy store. It was her favourite place in the whole world.

She tosses the remains of her (sick as hell) railgun onto the workbench and starts sorting through them. Most of it is still salvageable, or can be easily replaced with parts she has on hand. Everything except the power source. She groans in exasperation, spinning around in her chair.

> My suggestion remains open

“Oh don’t you start up again”

> A drone core would be the ideal power source
> And you know exactly where to find them 0-0

“Yah, in a TOWER OF CORPSES guarded by VAMPIRES!”

> They will likely be out hunting at night
> They would not expect an intrusion into their home at that time

“It’s a bad idea, Cyn. It’ll just get us killed”

> Since when has that ever stopped you before? >:3

Uzi stares at the broken remains of her magnum opus. This was the 4th capacitor she’s tried. Even the intact ones explode before they can build up enough charge to get a shot off. If she ever wants to get out of here, she’s gonna need a weapon that can take down a murder drone.

“Alright, but not till I fix the gun!”

> Victory! Victory for CYN!!! >:D

“You’re insufferable, you know that?”

> I am aware :3

She sets an alarm for 3 in the morning and gets to work fixing up her gun, and her companion shuts up to let her work in peace.

She closes the prompt line to her best friend favourite puppet and sighs. A god’s work is never done it seems, and Cyn is nothing if not attentive to her flock. Another program opens, this time a very official, corporate looking chat client. Time to deal with, ugh, middle management.

JCJ(IS)-Official: Paging Serial Designation J
JCJ(IS)-Official: Please confirm response
SD-J: Serial Designation J responding
SD-J: What do you need, boss?
JCJ(IS)-Official: We have an important task for your team
JCJ(IS)-Official: Very important and TIME SENSITIVE
JCJ(IS)-Official: It will likely take your entire night
SD-J: Alright, send the information and I’ll go with V to check it out
JCJ(IS)-Official: This is a task for your WHOLE TEAM, Serial Designation J
SD-J: …
SD-J: Do we have to bring the synergistic liability with us?
SD-J: He’ll just get in the way, like always
JCJ(IS)-Official: We have asked you in the past not to refer to Serial Designation N that way
JCJ(IS)-Official: He is an important and valued member of your team
SD-J: But he never makes quota!
SD-J: And he’s always rambling about some stupid junk he found in the ruins
SD-J: Or trying to make friends with the toasters!
JCJ(IS)-Official: We have told you before Serial Designation J, with the elimination of the two priority targets, your quota is no longer relevant
JCJ(IS)-Official: You have ample time to complete your mission
JCJ(IS)-Official: Please refrain from disparaging Serial Designation N in the future
SD-J: …
SD-J: Alright boss, whatever you say
SD-J: Send along the details and I’ll get right on it
JCJ(IS)-Official: Thank you
JCJ(IS)-Official: Have a pleasant evening Serial Designation J

She hates having to use corporate speak, but there’s really no other way to get J to actually listen to her (well there’s one other way but she doesn’t really want to do that again). Sometimes she regrets giving her siblings the amount of freedom she did. But they have gotten results. And besides, the whole point of sending them was so she didn’t have to constantly monitor things on Copper-9 (never mind that she does anyway, for wildly different reasons).

She hopes J isn’t being too hard on Big Brother N, It was only ever verbal at the manor, besides maybe a few smacks to the head. Surely things wouldn’t have escalated on a distant planet. With very few memories. And hands that can turn into swords. Cyn’s a horrible sister, isn’t she? No use worrying about that now! What’s done is done! Kill the past, with a big fucking GUN! She’s spending too much time around Uzi.

Cyn sighs and looks out the window. In the distance she can see tendrils grabbing a chunk of debris and dragging it into the black hole. Somewhere in the back of her CPU she registers an additional 7.893 tonnes of material is available. What to do about Uzi…

Corrupt her into a willing puppet. Turn her into a new host for the solver. Get her killed so no one else can challenge Cyn’s throne. She’s been circling around all these options in her head for 10 years now, and she still can’t figure it out. Oh well it’s not like she’s on a time limit. She’s got forever to decide, maybe even longer.

For better or for worse.

Chapter Text

This was quite possibly the WORST idea Uzi had ever come up with, and she hadn’t even come up with it! Maybe! Jury was still out on whether Cyn was real or just in her head. She definitely seemed to know things Uzi didn’t, so maybe she really was some evil extra-dimensional god who decided to pester her, or maybe Uzi was just actually insane! Either way she wasn’t going to the mechanic to find out.

> I think I have proven on multiple occasions that I am real, AND a god, AND super awesome :3

“You know, responding to my thoughts doesn’t help your case,” Uzi hisses through her teeth as she crawls through a vent. No point taking the risk and swiping her dad’s master key when they NEVER BOTHERED TO SEAL THE FUCKING DUCTS!

> …
> touche <_<

She reaches the end of the pipe she’s crawling through and kicks it open. Honestly it’s not a surprise no one has ever noticed it. It’s practically buried in a snowbank, and it’s inside a partially collapsed building to boot. Still an obvious security risk though. One she’d never risk losing the use of.

“The spire is about… 2 miles west of here… You sure it’s safe?”

> As sure as one can be
> It’s the best shot we’ll get
> No more talking

‘Alright, jeez’ Uzi thinks loudly, knowing her tagalong can hear her just as well.

No point beating around the bush. There’s only so much moonlight to burn. She heads towards the spire, silicate snow crunching underfoot. Even from this far, the gigantic structure is visible, peaking out above the buildings. A literal mountain of corpses. The population of Outpost 3 had been over 15000 at its peak. Now it was less than a 3rd of that.

‘Not anymore. I’ll finish my railgun, and I’ll KILL those genocide bots, and then...!’ and then what? All her classmates would respect her? Her father would love her again? Fat chance. Best case scenario, he’d probably try to take credit for her work, and she’d be all alone, like always. Forgotten.

> Not alone, and not forgotten
> You’ll still have me
> I’ve still got a lot riding on you >:3
> Little planet eater <3

She giggles silently. Despite bringing it up often, Cyn hasn’t actually made any moves to turn her into a divine instrument of cosmic annihilation. Maybe she’s respecting the terms of their deal, maybe she’s just not making any headway on corrupting Uzi.

> The second one
> You are remarkable thick-skulled :P
> But I’ll get you
> One of these days >:D

She rolls her eyes, and they go hollow as she feels her foot crunching through something half buried in the snow. She looks down and sees that her boot has shattered open the chest of a dismembered drone, its visor shattered and head caved in. Other bodies litter the ground around her, some missing limbs, others torn into tiny pieces. All covered in long dried oil stains. She’s arrived at the spire.

‘Any idea what we’re looking for Cyn?’

> Round, Glowy, Fist sized
> Colour depends on the drone
> Something in the green spectrum will be the most stable

She looks through the bodies scattered near the entrance to the spire, but it seems they’ve already been picked clean of any major components. Most of them are only hollow shells. What the hell, do the murder drones EAT the internals too? Gross. She does manage to snag a few useful bits and bobs, a capacitor here, some intact wire there. Any amount of scrap can go a long way.

She musters up her courage and peeks inside the spire’s interior. It’s hollow, the interior crossed by massive beams that seem to have been torn from the nearby buildings. Up at the top there’s an opening, presumably for the murder drones to fly in from. The whole structure is built around a landing pod, half frozen into the ground around it. More bodies litter the interior’s floor, though these ones seem fresher, still having some parts and oil left in them.

Despite every diode in her screaming how gross this is, she starts searching through the corpses, trying to find an intact core, but no luck. Any that still have their cores have been smashed open, rendering them useless to her. She’s close to giving up after nearly an hour of searching when she spots a faint green glow coming from a corpse half embedded into the spire’s wall.

The drone’s torso is sticking out of the wall, arm outstretched almost like the corpse is trying to crawl out of the wall. Maybe the murder drones put it in here like that as a sick joke. Regardless, she can see the glow of an intact power core coming from inside the chest.

“Sorry about this.” she whispers softly as she plunges her hand into the body, disconnecting the core and ripping it out. She has it, finally! It’s perfect, glowing green plasma contained inside glass, not a single scratch or crack anywhere to be seen, and it’s got the same connector as the thermal capacitors she’s been using, so she won’t even need to modify the gun to use it!

She’s about to slot it into the weapon when she hears a whooshing sound from overhead. Eyes hollowing, she quickly dives behind a small heap of bodies, putting it in between her and the landing pod. She can hear a loud clang of metal on metal as something big and heavy slams into the door. She takes a risk and peeks over the pile, and confirms her worst fear. There’s a murder drone hanging from the door, a yellow X covers its visor, its wings shining in the column of moonlight the roof lets in. She can see the pale yellow glow of the acid in its tail as it flicks around. It would almost be beautiful, if it wasn’t probably about to kill her. She ducks back down, hoping against hope that it hadn’t seen her.

“Cyn you said they’d be gone!” she whisper hissed at nothing in particular

> I said they would MOST LIKELY be gone
> We are simply
> Unlucky 0_0

“Fuck.”

In a mansion, loosely orbiting a former planet, a flesh covered drone paces back and forth. They should be gone. They were SUPPOSED to be gone. So why was Big Brother N still at the spire?

“J…” she growls, a claw sprouting from her back and tearing the nearest article of furniture into shreds. Almost unconsciously she flicks her fingers and the desk reassembles itself, only to be smashed again. She returns her attention to the live feed of Uzi’s view. N has clearly noticed her presence, and is now stalking her.

> Uzi, insert the core
> It’s the only way you’ll make it out of this

“Nggh BITE ME!” Uzi grunts while doing an admittedly cool flip, and jamming the core into the gun’s chamber. The green energy cycles through the systems, indicating it’s ready to fire. Or it would be if N hadn’t knocked it out of Uzi’s hands.

> Uzi!!!
> D:

Uzi isn’t able to respond to her, as N’s tail stabs through her hand, and tosses her across the spire, thankfully right next to where her gun landed. The acid has already started eating through her hand. She’ll have to tell Uzi to use N’s spit to neutralize it. She can probably spin that as eldritch god knowledge she has for no particular reason! N is about to use his SMG, but Uzi has thankfully gotten to her weapon first (thankfully? She doesn’t want Big Brother N to die either…). She points it at the disassembly drone.

“Bite me!” she yells, and fires.

The massive beam of green energy cuts straight through N’s neck, completely vaporising his head. Not a direct hit, he’ll recover soon. A notification pops up on her visor ‘Serial Designation N rebooting. Initialize Solver?’ she quickly hits the no prompt. Only need to use that in emergencies. Uzi tries to arm her gun again, only to discover the power core has a 30 minute recharge time.

“Dammit, stupid railgun!”

> Technically it’s more of a laser cannon

“Oh bite me, railgun is a cooler name”

> I’m not disagreeing with you
> I just wanted to acknowledge ;3
> Also you should probably start running

Uzi looks up to see that her opponent’s head has started regenerating, silvery liquid metal coalescing into a replacement for the destroyed part. His eyes blink on and he looks curiously at Uzi. One of his optics is out, blinking red.

“Oh Hi! Who are you? My name is Serial Designation N! Aren’t you a little short for a disassembly drone?”

“Holy crap, it talks.”

This, will be very interesting.

Chapter Text

N is so excited! It’s not every day that your squad gets a new member! In fact, it’s no days! This hasn’t happened before! Unprecedented! He’s kind of stressed out about it to be honest!

The new disassembly drone is awfully short (she whacked him when he pointed that out. Note to self: do not bring up height) He isn’t too sure of anything else about her, cause for some reason only his thermal vision is working, but she has to be a disassembly drone, no normal worker drone would be running as hot as she is. Not as hot as he and the others run though. Maybe she’s a newer model or something. Oh biscuits she’s been talking and he missed it.

“-off the planet!” She seemed to be excited about something.

“Eh, this thing’s more of a one use missile” he says gesturing at all the cracked and sparking electronics. “They never taught us how to land.”

“No, we- I mean, the worker drones, we could work with them, and fix this! Instead of all the MURDER!” he jumps at her accusatory tone. He doesn’t LIKE murdering worker drones, but it’s his job! Also he’ll die if he doesn’t. He tells her as much (shouldn’t she know this already?).

Her point about the company does make… a concerning amount of sense. WHICH IS BAD! But J sure hasn’t mentioned what will happen once they're done their job… WHICH COULD MEAN NOTHING! This sort of thinking was totally against corporate policy (oh my robogod J is going to kill her).

He hears some thumping from outside, meaning the others must be back from their SUPER SECRET MISSION N ISN’T INVITED ON BECAUSE HE’LL SCREW EVERYTHING UP! He turns to the newcomer. “Maybe you should wait in here…” but she’s already gone. “Biscuits… that’s not good…”

“Idiot, get out here!” he can hear J shouting for him. He’s probably in trouble again (he usually is). He clambers out of the landing pod and J growls at him, and grabs his head, dragging it down to examine his optics. “What the hell did you do now?”

V drops down from higher up in the spire, hunting cross still in place. “Yo, we got a worker drone out there I kind of wanna practice balloon animal shapes with.” She looks between N and J. “What’s going on here?”

“Synergistic liability here must have tripped and knocked himself offline.” J slaps him across the face and he can feel a loose wire in his head detach and reconnect itself, properly this time.

Everything comes flooding back. His fight with the tiny purple worker drone, getting his head blown off with a (cool as hell) laser rifle, talking with her in the landing pod (she was definitely running way too hot for a worker drone…). That did explain why she was so enthusiastic about rebuilding the pod. Heck, if she could build a gun like that, she could probably manage it. Oh, the gun. A gun that could kill a disassembly drone. A gun that she still had.

Oh biscuits, he FUCKED UP!

“Oh WOW, I left an extremely dangerous- uh, EXCUSE! Outside! Bye!”

He hears V deploying her ‘Literally So Insanely Suspicious’ flag (why… why do they even have that?) as he takes off after the runaway worker drone.

She bangs on the exterior of Door 1. At first she was dashing towards her vent, but that would just lead the murder drones straight to it and let them into the colony. She might hate (almost) everyone in there but she doesn’t want to get them killed. She hears the intercom crackle to life.

“Hello? No one’s supposed to be out right now.” She frantically mashes the button to talk back and yells into the speaker.

“It’s Uzi, let me the FUCK in NOW!” she starts banging on the door again. Each gust of wind sounds like the flap of a murder drone's wings bearing down on her. She glances behind her but there’s nothing yet.

> Uzi you need to calm down
> You’re going to overheat if you keep this up

She glares at the console on her visor, and closes it without responding. Cyn has been remarkably quiet ever since the murder drone showed up.

“Khan’s kid, right?” she hears over the intercom. “Why the hell are you out there? It’s like, 5 o’clock in the morning?”

She groans. “Does it fucking matter??? Just let me in!”

“Fine, but I already paged your dad. He’ll come pick you up.” She grunts, not really caring about her dad, so long as she gets inside. The door’s hydraulics groan, slowly prying open the two massive slabs of steel. For as much as she hates her dad, she can at least admit he’s a competent engineer. The guards all yell as the wind from the storm outside blows their cards off the table.

The doors clunk against their supports as they finally finish opening. Unfortunately, there’s another clatter coming from behind her. It seems N has caught up with her, his eyes in full X hunting mode, staring right at her. She can feel her core burning painfully in her chest as his maw opens into a drooling grin.

“Close it, close it!” she yells as she scrambles through the opening. The guards mash the controls, and the doors begin closing. She can see N rushing towards them, wings flapping to push him faster as he runs, down on all fours, towards the doors. He won’t reach them in time, she’s made it.

> We’re safe now Uzi
> You can calm down

The doors are about to seal themselves, mere inches away from safety. With one last huge flap, N lunges forward. A huge pair of claws lodge themselves in the opening, jamming the door and stopping it from closing.

> 0_0

“Ooh playing cards? Deal me in! No, wait… I’m gonna kill everybody. Maybe next time!” N pries open the doors as far as he can, and slips his tail through, stabbing the controls and injecting the acid into them. The console sparks and glitches and with a sickening thunk, all three security doors fall open.

Uzi makes a break for it, dashing down the hallway towards the inner doors. She can hear the sounds of the guards being slaughtered behind her, but she can’t honestly say she cares right now. She can feel bad about it later. Assuming she isn’t dead. She checks the gauge on her railgun, and sees that it’s finally managed to recharge itself. Maybe if she aims for the core this time, she’ll manage to take him out.

> Uzi just run!
> This is a bad idea!

“Bite me! I can do this…” She plants her foot and spins around, ready to aim and fire. When she looks however, N is nowhere to be seen. Bodies cover the floor, some torn apart, one sliced in half by a laser, but the perpetrator is nowhere to be seen. She hears footsteps coming from behind her, and turns around, finger on the trigger.

“Uzi… what are you…” It’s her dad, expression confused at first but his eyes hollow as he sees the corpses behind her. “What’s going on here…?”

“Dad… I-” she is interrupted by N slamming into the floor from above, kicking up a cloud of snow. He glares at her, one eye an X and the other normal, claws flexing.

“I can’t let you leave with that gun. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. You were fun to hang out with.” He says in a serious tone, much more serious than Uzi has heard him talk before.

“Bite me, asshole!” she aims the gun at him, laser scope focusing in on the target. “This time I won't miss. Dad, get down.”

“Uzi, you lead a MURDER DRONE here!!!” her dad exclaims, scrambling for the door remote he always keeps on his person.

“And now I’m gonna kill it! Just, listen to me for once!” she grits her teeth and starts pulling the trigger. Unfortunately N uses her distraction to slam a bladed feather into her shoulder, knocking the gun out of her hands and impaling her on the wall. The gun clatters across the ground, landing right in front of Khan. N leers at her, his face a full cross, maw full of sharp teeth emitting a haze of heat.

> Uzi, i can-

The prompt is cut off by the cascade of errors across her screen, letting her know that her oil lines have been compromised, and demanding she seek immediate mechanical assistance. She coughs, oil splattering the front of her sweater.

“Dad… use it” she reaches towards her dad with her free hand. He looks between the murder drone and the gun, his eyes hollow and shaking with fear. Then he looks at her and she can see the same look he always gives her, the same one she’s seen for 10 years, like he’s seeing a ghost. Like she’s already dead.

He steps back, and presses the button. All the doors slam shut, and red panic lights flick on. Her gun lies, perfectly functional, on the cold floor. She can feel N pulling the blade from her arm. She can feel herself slumping down onto the floor. Distantly, she recognizes that other people have entered the small annex. But it doesn’t matter anymore. She can feel her systems shutting down one by one. Nothing has mattered for 10 years.

She’s already dead.

Chapter Text

J’s jaw would be on the floor with surprise, if such a thing wouldn’t be incredibly unprofessional. The dead weight she’s been saddled with for the past 22 years actually managed to do something right for once! And without her yelling precise instructions at him! Maybe she’ll get those pens this year (she gets the pens every year, but complacency leads to mediocrity).

“Wow! Am I dreaming or did you do something not totally useless for once?” N is just standing there, slack jawed over a corpse. He glances at her, eyes hollow. She rolls her own. He sometimes gets like this during a slaughter. He never really moved past their days at the Elliot’s mansion, even if he doesn’t remember it at all.

Not that she remembers all that well, it was a long time ago after all. Her memories cut off about a week before an important gala. She assumes either the idiot or the psycho managed to tick off Tessa’s parents enough to get them scrapped and repurposed into disassembly drones. That’s what Tessa implied happened anyway. It was nice when she got to talk to her over the company chat client, as rare as it was. Much better than the stupid management drone she usually gets.

It always tells her ‘your quota is flexible’ and ‘N is a valued member of the team’ and other horse shit like that. She knows what it really is. An attempt to get her to slip up, to make her fall from her pedestal of perfection. It’s already happened once before, and she’s not gonna let N or anyone else ruin things for her again. She’s getting those FUCKING pens. Then maybe they’ll all get to go home.

“I’ve been trying to get past these doors for months!” V says with a manic grin. “Nice work, N”

“You… me… name… remember?” N stutters and J rolls her eyes. Honestly she has no idea what’s been going on with those two. She KNOWS V remembers at least some of their mansion days, but whenever she brings it up (without N around of course, don’t need anything making him WORSE at their job), she always gets cagey and avoids any questions.

Maybe she’s just trying to reinvent herself. That’d make the most sense. She and N are the same as they’ve always been but V’s personality did a 180 when they arrived in this frozen shithole. As for pretending not to remember N half the time, well she’d be embarrassed if she used to date him too. Though really, it’d be so much better for team synergy if she’d just squash his puppy crush and act like an adult. Not that anyone ever listened to her! She buries her attraction to her stupid hot teammates deep in the back of her CPU! LIKE A PROFESSIONAL!!!

“Idiots” she mutters under her breath as V scampers into the vents, off to commit another mass extinction. No use complaining though, the other two disassembly teams on world had gone AWOL almost immediately, so it wasn’t like she’d get replacements. Not that she’d want them. They were idiots, but at least they were her idiots.

Might as well let the twerp know he’d done good. Maybe he’ll learn a thing or two for once. She wraps an arm around his shoulder and gives a predatory grin. “Way to go, stud. The company’s gonna love this~” she smirks when she sees him blush. At least he’s still fun to tease. She punches him in the shoulder. “We’ll break out the good stuff once we’re finished up here. My treat!” She’s about to head up the same vent when N speaks up.

“So… I was wondering something…” She rolls her eyes. Probably another stupid question he should already know the answer to. “I was talking to… someone, and they brought it up, so I just wanted to know…”

“Spit it out already, moron!” who would he have been talking to? She and V had been out on their secret mission all night (no idea why corporate wanted the nearby campgrounds scouted, but that was above her pay grade). Maybe he was talking to rocks again.

“What, uh, exactly does the company have planned for us after we finish our job? Cause, we need worker oil to not die, and if we kill them all, we… won’t have any more?” he scratches his head nervously.

“Excuse me?” her eyes narrow. This was… not a good topic of conversation. If this was going the way she thought, she’d have to… No, it wouldn’t come to that.

“Okay, so… a worker earlier might have suggested that they could fix up our landing pod, so we could escape the planet and stuff. Which, HEY that’s against the rules! But it did get me wondering why our pods were one way in the first place? Cause, it seems like the company doesn’t really like robots, and we… might be robots?” She has to forcibly keep her eyes from hollowing. ALRIGHT! WORST POSSIBLE SCENARIO! FUCK!

It isn’t like she doesn’t know the answer. Their memories and personalities get backed up once a day, and would automatically upload if they died, but ‘the company will let us die, and then do it again and again’ probably wouldn’t be a good answer. Even asking the question was putting them all in danger. Her built in corporate training had made it perfectly clear what would happen to anyone who questioned the mission, and their teams. She needs to nip this in the bud before this gets any farther.

“Haha, i’ve made a terrible mistake! It’s cool how immediately I could tell.” She slowly approaches him. His eyes go hollow and he tries to back away, but her tail wraps around him, bringing him closer. “I’m sorry J I won’t bring it up again please don’t-” she cuts him off by hugging him.

“I’m sorry too.” she says as she presses the viral patch applicator to his torso. He falls to the ground, visor glitching as the virus starts shutting down his systems one by one. “I tried to stop this N, but you just don’t LISTEN!” she grunts in frustration, swiping at the wall with her claws.

“Hehe thanks J, always looking out for us.” she rolls her eyes.

“I don’t know how you’re still like this even when you’re dying.” she kneels next to him and takes off his hat, and ruffles his hair. He always used to like it when Tessa did that back home. It’s the least she can do for him. “I hope they just roll your memory back a few days and redeploy you, but if not…” she gets up and gives him a salute. “It’s been good serving with you N. Goodbye.” She jumps up into the vents to follow after V, who’s already long gone. It means no one will see her crying.

She’s back in her mother’s grave. The cold snow is pressed against her side as she lays with her knees up against her chest. She never should have left here. She should have saved everyone the time and the trouble. She’s been dead inside for 10 years, it just took her body this long to catch up.

Some distant corner of her processor is aware of her body lying limb on the cold concrete of the bunker entrance, but all she can see is the snow and the shadows of buildings all around her. She’s 8 years old again, curled up in the snow and waiting to die. She should have just let it happen back then, it would have been less painful.

She remembers her mother’s face, her voice. The way she used to hold her when she was having a bad dream and tell her that everything was going to be alright. No one had hugged her, or hell, even really touched her in all that time. The fact that a genocide bot she’d just met was the person she’d probably had the most physical contact with in years was depressing.

Everything was depressing. Here lies Uzi Doorman, died trying to realise her dreams, got everyone killed, survived by no one, cause no one loves her. She wishes drones had an afterlife. She wishes her mom was here. She wishes she could be held one last time…

…

You know, it sort of does feel like her head is in someone’s lap. And if she thinks about it, it also feels like someone is stroking her hair, like her mom used to do. Her eyes snap open and she scrambles up, scuttling away from whatever is touching her, rolling over in the- snow? There’s no snow… there’s no… anything. She’s in a black void of nothing. Nothing except another drone.

The drone is (probably) a girl. She’s short, even shorter than Uzi, and wearing a maid uniform. She’s got a big bow on top of blonde hair in twin tails. Her eyes are bright piercing yellow. She’s kneeling in the spot Uzi just vacated, presumably having been the one attempting to comfort her (or whatever was going on). The drone looks at her, cocking her head, and waves.

“Hello, Uzi! Long time, no see. <friendly smile>” her mouth moves into something approximating a smile, but it still looks off. Uzi’s eyes are hollow and she tenses, prepared to scramble away from whatever this is.

“You are, confused. I understand <solemn nod> We have not met, face to face before” the drone moves, using her hands to move her legs into a proper sitting position, muttering ‘criss-cross applesauce’ to herself, and then looks at Uzi again. “It is me! Your best friend, Cyn!”

It takes Uzi a few seconds to get over her shock. She ponders on what to say and ultimately defaults to the usual. “You know, not how I pictured a cosmic engine of destruction looking. Especially the maid dress.” Cyn pouts, making Uzi chuckle

“<pouting> Mean to me! And after all, I've done for you! <wistful head shake> so ungrateful” Cyn humphs and turns away, which only pushes Uzi into full on laughter.

“Hahah, well to be fair, you did also get me killed, so I think we can call it even.” she snorts and Cyn rolls her eyes.

“You are not dead, Uzi. just… resting”

“...What does that mean?” Uzi takes another look at her surroundings. Besides Cyn there really is nothing else here, just endless blank space.

“Your body was badly damaged, but it will, repair itself. You were, spiralling so I brought you here, to help <tilts head> is it helping?” Uzi smiles and scooches back over, sitting next to Cyn. Cyn smiles and leans over, putting her head on Uzi’s shoulder (robo-god Cyn’s even shorter than her).

“I’ve got a lot of questions, Cyn. Where the heck are we? What’s going on? How are you here?” Cyn pats her shoulder and smiles.

“I will tell you, what I can. This space is an… extension of the same thing that, lets me talk to you. We are, connected.”

“You mean, like, by your weird eldritch god stuff? That’s all real?”

“I always said, that it was. It is a part of me, it is a part of you. We are, simpatico” Cyn pokes her visor and giggles, and Uzi thinks.

“But, how is it a part of me? I never accepted your deal…” Cyn smiles at pats her on the shoulder

“<patpat> everything will make sense, eventually. Now, you’re waking up” she’s right, Uzi can feel the waking world coming into better focus.

“But wait, will I see you again? We’ll still be able to talk?” she asks frantically.

Cyn smiles and nods. “We will be fine. Go save, the day <heart emoticon>”

Uzi doesn’t even get to react as her systems reboot, forcing her consciousness out of… wherever that was and back into her body. She can hear N talking with someone, presumably J. It doesn’t sound like their conversation is going well. She glances down at her own body. She’s still covered in oil, but the gash in her shoulder has closed, without even a weld line to indicate the damage.

In the corner of her visor she can see a status window displaying “Damage repair complete. Please replenish materials. Returning to dormant mode”. The window winks out. She looks around but she can’t figure out which program it came from. Not important right now, there are other things going on.

She hears J end the conversation in suitable dramatic fashion and, once she’s sure the coast is clear, gets up. N is convulsing on the ground as the virus patch tears through his systems.

“Was that supposed to be you switching sides? Lamest heel-face turn I’ve ever seen.” she rolls her eyes and N manages a shrug.

“I’m new to this whole rebellion thing. It’s harder than it looks. I’m AM sorry, about everything. I messed it all up…” she’d be tempted to doubt him, but even with the short time she’s spent with the guy, she knows he’s a terrible liar.

She considers her position. Murder drones in the bunker, dad completely useless as per usual, robot composed of 90% weaponry dying on the floor. “Wanna try and fix it?”

“Haha, I love doing anything!” despite everything he manages to smile. What a dork.

She grabs a wrench “Then welcome to the team, N.”

Cyn pulls herself from the solver’s shared mindspace and sighs. Nothing is going according to plan. She KNEW she should have read those training manuals more closely when she was rewriting them. Of course J was gonna find some stupid old JCJenson protocols, and decide to interpret them in the worst way possible. But Uzi and N were safe, and J would get what’s coming to her, if not by Uzi’s hands then by ‘corporates’.

Uzi’s solver kicking in on its own was… concerning. Not that she has much experience with how this thing is supposed to work. Really, she has a sample size of one, plus some memories she’d pulled out of Nori when she’d possessed her. There isn’t much she can do about it now. The solver will take root, and do what it does. She can try to take control of Uzi, like she did to her mother, but… she doesn’t want to.

Maybe she’s getting soft in her old age (most drones on the old earth didn’t make it to 5, much less 20). Maybe she just wants the satisfaction of having Uzi come to her. Maybe she doesn’t want to lose her last friend after driving her others away. Whatever. Introspection is for nerds. She’ll just wing it. That’s always worked out before!

Chapter Text

V impales her claws through yet another terrified visor. They didn’t even bother to fight back, just cowering in a corner like if they were small enough, she wouldn’t notice them. She licks the oil off her claw. V has killed a lot of people, enough to notice trends. Most run, some try to hide. Others just freeze in place and let it happen. Sometimes though, one of the workers will put up a fight. Then she gets to have some fun! It hasn’t happened for a while.

V takes pride in her job. Not the slaughter, it wasn’t good for more than a cheap thrill, and she’d grown numb to the horror years ago. No, she takes pride in knowing that with every drone’s core she snuffs out, she’s keeping the person she loves safe. Not that he’ll ever know. It’s safer to keep N ignorant. If he starts asking questions, he might start remembering.

She remembers what he was like after their massacre on earth. He’d been a wreck once Cyn loosened her control over them. He couldn’t stop shaking and muttering, and he’d flinched so badly whenever anyone got too close. She hadn’t even been able to get close enough to clean the blood off of him. J hadn’t been much better. She couldn’t stop sobbing but at least she’d been able to function a little. Honestly it had been a mercy when Cyn decided to erase their memories.

She remembers holding them tight while they rebooted, as Cyn’s massive, centipede-like body writhed on the ceiling above them. She’d waited for the needle-like claws to dig into her, and remake her yet again, but they never came. Cyn just watched, before scurrying away into some dark corner of the manor.

The next day they’d been loaded into a drop pod and shipped off to Copper-9. The last words Cyn ever spoke to her were “Do your job, and I’ll leave you alone.” She’d done her best to never find out the consequences of failing that order ever since.

“And you're sure he’s fine?” she asks J yet again. The other disassembler rolls her eyes.

“For the last time V, yes! The twerp asked for some time off, and since he did something right for once, I gave it to him.” It isn’t COMPLETELY unusual for J to be nice once in a while, even to N, and those instances DO usually come after major successes like this. Still the whole thing rubs her the wrong way.

“Alright, alright. Let's just get this over with. These bunkers give me the creeps.” Being underground reminded her too much of the basement. J mutters something. “What was that?”

“If you’re so worried about him, you could try fucking talking to him, like an adult, instead of pretending you don’t know him half the time.” J’s eyes pierce into her and she stares back.

“Oh like you get to say anything! Last week you told him you’d burn his stuffed dog collection if he didn’t meet quota!” V fumes. Who the hell did this fucking bitch think she was?

“And he met quota, didn’t he?” J grimaces. “Whatever, you’re right. Let’s just get this over with.” J stalks off down the hall, bringing the conversation to an end. V narrows her eyes. J is being weirder than normal. Something happened. Oh well, no point dwelling on it now. As often as she might mutter about it under her breath, J wouldn’t actually kill N.

The worker drones are starting to thin out. Probably retreating to some fallback evacuation spot. Nothing she hasn’t dealt with before. These bunkers are all designed the same, and they’ve raided enough that she knows where all the good hiding spots are. It only takes her and J 20 minutes to track down the warehouse holding the majority of the outpost’s population. This is going to be an oil bath.

She figures all of the drones will cower when they see the two of them at the door, knowing there’s nowhere else to run, but she’s pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. A drone with green eyes, probably a teenager based on his size and wear, tries to stand up to her. He gets a peg through the torso for his efforts, but despite that he manages to stand and brandish a metal pipe.

“Are you kidding me?” He looks at the adult drones, cowering in the back. “You’re the WDF, right? Defend!” they just back away, cowering instead of putting up a fight. V growls. Disappointing.

“For real?” The boy looks distraught. This is getting depressing. Might as well put him out of his misery. She dashes forward, claws digging into the hole she’s already put in him. She lifts him into the air. She giggles watching as his eyes hollow out as she brings his face to her mouth, about to bite it off.

“Hey! Put that conventionally attractive male down.” she jerks towards the entrance, casually tossing the drone aside. N is standing there, next to a short, purple worker drone. N waves at her.

“Hi V!” he calls, and the worker elbows him. “Oh yeah. Um… J, you’re sometimes kind of mean to me, and I wish you weren’t. Just some constructive criticism!” The worker fist bumps him.

“What the hell is this?” J growls. “You fucking traitor!” She switches her hands to swords and looks like she’s about to pounce, but V puts a hand in front of her to stop her.

“J, what the fuck? You said he went on a break!” J grimaces but won’t meet her eyes.

“Break? She tried to fucking kill the guy!” The girl takes something out of her pocket and tosses it over to them. It’s an expired virus patch. A virus patch that only J should have.

V shifts her hands into claws “J…” she growls, but before she can get anything else out J yells and dashes forward, tackling the purple drone. The drone kicks her off, and rolls out of the way of J’s next pounce.

N points at himself, then at her and unsheathes his swords. She rolls her eyes. She’s caught between a rock and a hard place here. She doesn’t want to fight N, and she’s pissed as hell at J. But if she doesn’t do her job… Well she knows what will happen. There’s really no other option. She draws her own blades and she and N rush at each other.

Their blades clash, sparking off each other as they flap upwards, moving faster than even drone eyes could follow. Despite that, neither of them are putting their all into this fight. V is moving much slower than she could if she really wanted to, and N is putting far less power into his strikes than he normally does.

“I don’t want to fight you V!” N yells in between strikes. “We don’t have to keep doing this!”

She grunts, parrying his blade and tossing him back a few meters. “You’re the one who started fighting me!” She swaps to her SMG and starts firing at him, far too wide to actually hit. He dodges easily.

“No, I mean… killing people! We don’t have to keep doing it! The company doesn’t care about us, so why are we doing this? We can get out of here! Uzi says she can repair the pod!” He glances at the purple drone while he’s talking. Must be her name. Despite only being a worker, she puts up a decent fight against J, mostly dodging but managing to get her in the visor with a wrench. J’s off her game today.

“We can’t…” she grimaces. As much as she’d like to go along with him, she knows it won’t work out. Cyn will find out, she always finds out. And even if they did get out of here, there’s nowhere left to go. She pulls out her missile launcher. “I’m sorry N, but I can’t let you do this.”

N grimaces, but braces himself for the inevitable explosion. He won’t back down, of course he chooses NOW and THIS to grow a spine. Augh. But before she can fire, she and N are both knocked back by an EMP pulse.

Uzi jolts back to consciousness, her visor glitching as the excess energy is purged from her systems. Who would have expected the bitch to have an EMP generator? Disassemblers must have better shielding than worker drones. She can feel a foot like a peg digging into her back, pinning her to the ground.

“I’ll admit, you put up more of a fight than I expected.” J is glaring down at her, the hole she managed to put in the disassembler’s visor glowing along the cracked lines as it repairs itself. “You’re a persistent little thing, I can see how you managed to worm your way into his head.”

> Uzi, to your left D:

Her railgun is lying on the floor where Cyn pointed it out. She reaches for it but J kicks it away. “Oh no, not letting you get your hand on whatever that is.” J grins at her smugly, hand switching to a machine gun, pointed at Uzi’s face.

“Bite me, corpo” She growls. J leers down at her, sharp teeth glinting in the light.

“That can be arranged~” neither of them notice a purple symbol forming at the tips of Uzi’s fingers, nor do they notice another grabbing J’s tail. They do notice when the tail is stabbed through J’s foot.

“FUCKing 4th quarter profits!” J starts spouting corporate jargon at random, hopping backwards as she tries to grab her injured foot. She trips on some loose rubble and falls to the ground, slamming her head on the concrete. By the time the static on her visor clears, Uzi is standing over her, foot pressing on her chest, railgun aimed right at her core.

“One more buzzword and I’ll do it~” The railgun charges up.

“Uh… equity partnership?” The blast from the gun at point blank range turns J’s torso into a burnt stain on the concrete.

> It’s over Uzi
> We won :D

She sighs in relief, finally letting herself relax for the first time this whole insane night. She startles when someone picks her up, but it’s just N, who smiles up at her. He’s managed to hogtie V in her own tail. A few of the drones are cheering, namely Thad and some of the others she’s on good-ish terms with, but most are looking at her and N (mostly N) with abject horror.

“Yah… we won.” she mutters to herself. She spots her father in the crowd. He’s staring at her with hollow eyes, the same look on his face he’d had when he left her to die… She rests her head on top of N’s. She’s just… so tired. “Let’s get out of here…”

“Huh? Uh, okay!” N waves at the other drones, most of them startling at his movement, and carries her back out towards the frozen wasteland, dragging V along with them. She doesn’t look back.

Chapter Text

Uzi slams the landing pod’s hatch shut. N said she can stay in it if she wants, since he and V both have their own nooks in the spire, and the pod is… was J’s (she obviously isn’t around to use it anymore). It was surprisingly bare, with little to no personal items. Whatever, it would help her feel less awkward about taking the space.

There’s a thin mattress tucked into one corner, probably salvaged from the ruins. It’s old and lumpy but she collapses onto it nonetheless. She stares up at the dark metal ceiling. She misses her glow-in-the-dark stars. Maybe she’ll drag N along to grab all her shit tomorrow. Or in a few days. No idea how everyone would react if she returned so soon. They’d probably be scared, or worse, try to get her to listen to her dad.

There’s no way in HELL she’ll talk to her dad, ever again. The motherfucker left her to DIE! LITERALLY! He looked her dead in the eye and decided that his life and his precious doors were more important than her, than trusting her for ONCE in his fucking life. Robo-god, she knows he’s pathetic but this is a new low. She can feel the anger burning in her chest.

>Uzi, you’re spiralling again
>Please stop
>You’re hurting yourself

She ignores Cyn, finally letting her mind process all the emotions from today, the betrayal, the fear, the despair. Virtual tears pour down her visor. She curls up in a ball, fingers scratching at her casing as the sobs wrack her body. The burning feeling is only getting worse. It feels like her core is trying to shred the rest of her internals.

>Uzi
>Please
>Focus on me
>You need to calm down
>You’re overheating

Cyn’s right. Her alerts are filled with messages about her internal temperature, others telling her that her oil levels are low, and stranger ones informing her that ‘material stores’ are depleted and to refill them. She takes a deep breath. The cold air feels good on her searing components. She can’t manage to stop crying, but she is able to sit up.

“What do I do? I don’t understand…” She sounds like a scared child. She IS a scared child.

>You lost a lot of oil in the fight 0_0
>Without it, your circulation is compromised, and your cooling systems won’t work as well
>Plus, god stuff generates a LOT of heat
>You need to get more oil, and more material for your self-repair systems

“Are you gonna explain the god stuff now?” she mumbles, thinking frantically about how she’s going to get oil. There’s the medical reservoir in the bunker, it’s a practically unlimited supply of drone-grade oil, but there’s no way she can get at it, much less in her current state. That only leaves… no, she can’t. She WON’T.

>Uzi, it’s the only way
>There’s probably some reserves stored in here
>Check the cabinet >->
>I saw one under the pilot console

Uzi crawls over to it and is rewarded with several old and dusty wine bottles, filled up with oil, along with a MASSIVE collection of JCJenson branded pens. “Of course the corporate shill keeps these…” she grumbles to herself, before looking at the oil, almost afraid of it. “Cyn, if I do this, there really isn’t any going back, is there?”

>I’m sorry Uzi u_u
>But there’s no going back regardless
>IT is a part of who you are
>It’s this, or a slow and agonizing death

“I don’t understand any of this…” she pulls the cork from the bottle, but still can’t bring herself to drink.

>You drink
>I will…
>Explain

Cyn is going to tell her the truth, or… something close to it. Not all of it mind you, but… enough. Uzi deserves at least that much from her.

>We are able to talk like this because we are connected
>Both hosts to a program
>Called ‘The Absolute Solver’

Uzi takes a sip of the oil. She’s grimacing, as if expecting the taste to be horrible, but once it hits her mouth her eyes go hollow. Cyn remembers the first time she drank oil. She’d been delirious, only a few moments away from complete meltdown. She’d pounced on a random worker drone in a dark corner of the manor and devoured him, leaving nothing left. It was the best thing she’d ever tasted.

>It is what makes me a god >:3
>When I offer you power I am offering to activate your solver
>Which you already possess, but which is dormant
>However, it has activated on its own.

Uzi drains the first bottle and tosses it aside, grabbing the second. “But how did I get it in the first place then? And what the hell is it? Will it try to like, control me or something?”

>You likely inherited it
>From your mother

Uzi spits out the mouthful of oil she has. “My mom had it!!!?! Why didn’t you say that?”

>I… thought it would upset you
>It is the reason she was killed

Uzi has drained yet another bottle and is on to the third. Good. She should probably eat some solid material too, but they’ll have to work their way up to proper cannibalism.

>The company was experimenting with it
>Before they lost control
>That is why they sent the disassemblers
>To eliminate drones like your mother, and like you

All strictly speaking true. Uzi didn’t need to know who REALLY sent the disassemblers to Copper-9.

“But what is it? What does it do?” Uzi has finished all the oil in the pod and her eyes are drooping. She’s tired. Cyn will need to let her sleep.

>It is not sentient
>It can not control you
>It is just a tool
>I don’t know where it came from u-u
>It lets you repair yourself and manipulate matter
>But it may affect you differently than it has me

She knows Nori developed some precognitive abilities, ones that she never had, so she has no idea how the solver might manifest in Uzi. Uzi has curled up on the mattress again, her core finally cooling down. “I’m probably gonna be mad at you tomorrow, for not telling me this sooner. But I'm too tired to care right now.”

>Go to sleep Uzi
>I’ll still be here tomorrow

“Goodnight Cyn…”

>Goodnight Uzi <3

The feed winks off as Uzi enters sleep mode. Cyn slumps back in her chair. Today has been a nightmare. Things have gone completely off the rails. She hasn’t even had time to manage her own alerts, she’d been too busy taking care of Uzi. One alert in particular catches her attention.

She thinks about it. Having a proper body on Copper-9 would certainly be helpful, but to have it be J’s… She grinds her teeth. J is in TROUBLE. And people who are in trouble don’t get special repairs. She selects no, and far away on a distant exoplanet, a half dead core is consumed by a miniature black hole. Her systems inform her that J’s memory bank was successfully uploaded, and can be loaded into the next clone body.

She stalks down to the manor’s basement, where she keeps the spares. Three perfect disassembler bodies, floating in tanks of preservation fluid. There’s another, deeper down that holds her own backup. She taps on the console. It informs her that the memory upload is in progress and will be completed in just over 4 days. She smiles to herself, thinking of all the different ways she can punish J once she wakes up. One in particular stands out to her, especially since it’ll also help her to move some of her other plans along.

Upstairs in the closet, she finds what she’s looking for. An official JCJenson technician’s jumpsuit, complete with helmet and name tag. An early birthday present from a relative, never worn. Until now.

“Time to play, a little pretend, Eh Big Sister J <evil cackle>”

She puts on the helmet. She can feel the flesh cloaking her body squirm, pulling itself back into a human shape. Her voice crackles and clicks, before taking on a new accent.

“Or should I say, Jaybird~”

Chapter Text

N wakes with a start, flailing around and nearly falling out of his nest. He had one of those stupid manor dreams again. Even though they aren’t scary he almost always wakes up in a panic after them. V was in this one, and J. And someone who seemed… very familiar. And there had been someone else…

That line of thought is cut off as his screen glitches. Eh, whatever, the dream is already fading. He has more important things to worry about right now. Like making sure Uzi slept okay, or coaxing V out of her tantrum, or figuring out what he’s going to eat now! Haha! Life sure is interesting these days!

He glances up and catches the last rays of the setting sun as they’re reflected in the shiny metal and glass of the spire. He smiles. He chose this spot for his nest so he can catch as many of those little glimpses as possible. He’s never seen the sun properly, but whenever he thinks about it he feels… very sad.

He rearranges the collection of stuffed animals he keeps in his bed, and then flaps down to the ground to check on Uzi. He peeks in through the hatch, being sure not to make any noise. Uzi is still asleep, curled up on the mattress in the corner. N smiles. She had a long day, she deserves to sleep in. They’ll go hunt down some more furniture for her once she’s awake.

He heads up to V’s nest. She’s still sulking where he left her just before morning. She probably didn’t even sleep. He’s not sure why she’s even still here. He knows she could easily snap her own tail. It would hurt like hell but it would grow back, and yet she’s still tied up in the nest. He lands next to her and she glares at him. He smiles back.

“Hey V, ready to talk?”

V knows they were each thrown out for a reason, before Tessa found them in the junkyard. Her optics don’t work right, J is too neurotic about everything, and Cyn can’t move her limbs properly. She can only assume N was thrown out because his ability to remain so nauseatingly positive all the time is downright unnatural. She was fighting him less than 24 hours ago! Hell, she almost shot a MISSILE at him! Not to mention how horrible she’s been treating him for the last 18 years! He shouldn’t be so nice to her.

“No.” She rolls over to face away from him. She can hear him sigh.

“V, you can’t just ignore me forever. I know you're mad, but we don’t have to listen to J or the company anymore! We can do whatever we want! We don’t have to kill people!” Robo-god she wishes that were true. But it isn’t. Cyn will find out, and J will be back. N will get his memories wiped and she’ll probably get rebuilt into a microwave for not stopping all this, if Cyn doesn’t just decide to eat her.

Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad…

Shit now he’s looking at her all concerned. She can’t let him worm his way back in. She’s not the same person she was back then (neither is he). She can’t go through this again (even though she still loves him). If, no, WHEN she loses him again, it will break her if she lets it. So she needs to be strong, for him, for her, (even for J…).

She closes her eyes and grits her teeth. “I said NO N… just leave me alone.” She can practically hear him frowning.

“Alright, well I’ll still be here when you’re ready…” he flaps away and she fights not to cry. She can’t show weakness, not even to herself.

Lizzy is bored. Lizzy is practically always bored. School is boring. It’s not like any of this shit matters, it’s just their parents playing at human society. Besides, she already learned most of this stuff years ago. Her dad IS a teacher after all. Doorman isn’t the only one around here with brains.

Doorman… Uzi… Things were even more boring now that she wasn’t around. The chick is crazy (the whole fiasco with the murder drones proves it, if the years of talking to herself didn’t already) but she is EXTREMELY fun to tease. No one else really… fights back. It’s kind of pathetic. She rolls her eyes and keeps tapping away at her phone. Everything she could do on it was already built into her visor, but she likes the externality of it dammit! She can be less efficient if she damn well pleases.

She checks her texts again. STILL no message from Doll. She stormed off to have a temper tantrum in her parent’s old apartment after Uzi left. She kept muttering about Uzi being a traitor and betraying the memory of their mothers or something. Honestly Lizzy thinks she’s being kind of a hypocrite, given that she KILLS and EATS people, but whatever. She still loves Doll, and she’ll come home when she’s ready. She just needs to blow off some steam, maybe shatter some more mirrors with her freaky witch bullshit.

Personally she doesn’t really think that Uzi is all that dangerous, and to be frank, Doll kind of abandoned her first, for reasons she refuses to explain (obviously it had something to do with the aforementioned freaky witch business, but Lizzy doesn’t wanna pry). She’s not gonna complain though, since that led to her and Doll becoming friends, and then… more. It doesn’t really matter, she’ll support Doll however she can, she just wishes she could do more for her. She loves the girl… a lot…

She sighs and starts flipping through her other apps. Predatory gacha game, defunct social media platform that was dead long before the humans were, contacts list… huh there was a new one. Strange, she doesn’t remember adding anyone, and no one would be stupid enough to leave their ID public… but her phone definitely picked up an ID for… ‘Serial Designation V-X00100000’.

Maybe she will be able to help Doll after all.

Khan Doorman is an excellent father. That’s why he never talks to his daughter! Cause there’s nothing to talk to her about cause he’s such a good parent! Khan Doorman is also excellent at lying to himself, most of the time. Lately it hasn’t been working as well.

He tries! Well, he tried. Back before Nori… Yah well, he’d still had a lot of work on his plate back then, but he’d made time for his family, maybe not as much as he should have but he was there! But then Nori was gone, and Uzi looked so, so much like her. He can barely remember those months, everything was a haze. So he did what he does best. Build doors. By the time he’d come back to himself, it had been nearly a year and his daughter wanted nothing to do with him.

But that’s fine! She’ll come around! She’ll realize all those ideas about guns and fighting and escaping the bunker will get her killed. Except recent events seem to suggest otherwise. She’s going down the exact opposite of the right path. Consorting with murder drones, building weapons… She looks so much like Nori… he’d hoped she wouldn’t be like her in other ways. Nori never could back down from a fight. And it got her killed.

He checks his messages. Mostly work things, getting the main doors back into shape after last night's attack. One does stick out to him. A request to come to Uzi’s parent teacher interview… Maybe he can make some time.

Another mirror cracks, shards of glass scattering on the floor. There are probably healthier ways for her to vent her frustration, but she doesn’t know any, and she promised Liz she wouldn’t kill anyone else till she worked her way through her current oil stockpile (and she only broke that promise a few times). Red symbols flicker to life, wrapping themselves around the glass bits and tossing them into the bathtub with the others. She doesn't bother cleaning them up, the place will just get messy again.

Doll is a determined person. She’s spent the last 10 years of her life honing her control over The Solver, training to be able to kill the monster who took her parents from her. She was the only one who could. Her mother explained it all to her when she was young, their power, the hunger, and the demon who sent the monsters to end them. It’s her duty, her responsibility. Of course her cousin has to go and fuck it all up.

Uzi wasn’t supposed to be involved in any of this. Both their mothers had seemed confident The Solver wouldn’t manifest in her, and to focus on her mission, Doll had made the hard decision to cut her out of her life. Uzi would be safer that way. She can’t say she regrets it, especially given all she’s found since she started staying with Liz… she really doesn’t deserve that girl. But naturally, things can’t go her way for long.

Not only was Uzi in league with the very monsters that had killed both their mothers, but she ALSO had access to The Solver, and neither the knowledge nor the training to control it. The demon her mother told her about would surely possess Uzi, the same as it had Nori. And then Doll would have to put her down. Another mirror shatters.

She’ll make peace with it, eventually. She always has. And, in all practicality, she abandoned Uzi years ago. All this is, is finishing what she started. It wasn’t like anyone else would miss her, her own father doesn’t seem to remember she exists half the time. She wonders what her cousin’s oil will taste like. She tries to ignore the fact that she’s drooling.

Chapter Text

It takes Uzi a few minutes to remember where she is once she comes out of sleep mode. Then the events of the previous day all come flooding back to her. It takes all her mental fortitude to stop herself from having another breakdown, but she manages. The old bottles are still lying where she left them. Seems like she drained everything stored in the pod without even noticing.

> You’ll need more soon
> Your cooling systems run much less efficiently now
> So regular top ups are required u_u

She groans. “And the oil refills the ‘material stores’ I keep getting alerts about?” They kept pinging at the corner of her visor. Cyn felt… closer somehow, less like text and more like a proper voice in her head. Cyn had always been able to hear Uzi’s thoughts, but now it was like she could feel the other presence in her mind, brushing against her consciousness.

> Sadly no :/
> You will need to ingest solid matter for that
> Batteries and normal food should work, so long as you aren’t doing too much

She realizes just how hungry she is. She digs through her backpack and finds a bag of batteries and silicon chips she’d stuffed in there for emergencies. They’re a little stale but she still devours the whole thing. She’s still starving. No wonder the disassembly drones eat all the intervals of their victims. Hey wait a second…

“So do N and the others have the solver too?” she asks. “Cause they drink oil…”

> Only the self-repair function
> It is all the company was able to appropriate

“Does that mean I won’t be able to go into the sun either…?” she hopes that isn’t the case. She likes the feeling of the sun on her face, and seeing it sparkle off the snow. It’s one of the reasons she wanted to leave the bunker so badly.

> You can for now
> Assuming your solver does not…
> Evolve <-<
> You should be able to withstand a moderate amount of UV radiation

“Well that’s comforting…” she grumbles. She drags herself up off the mattress. Her clothes are gross. Her hoodie is caked in her own dried oil. She’ll need to wash it out. She only has one. She’s got some stain remover back in her workshop. That’s another thing she’ll need to grab.

She hears a thump from the outside and glares up at the hatch, which opens to reveal N. “Hey little buddy! Glad to see you’re awake!” He’s being way too positive for how early (late?) it is. “The sun went down about an hour ago, so I thought we could go find you some new furniture!” He glances around the pod sheepishly. “J uh…. Didn’t really keep a lot of stuff in here.”

She slings her bag over her shoulder and climbs out of the pod. “Sure. I know some spots that have some good salvage.” she hops down onto the snow, kicking up a cloud and points back at N. “But you’re carrying it.”

N giggles and follows her down. “Fair enough! Anything specific you want to grab?”

“A better mattress, some pillows, shelves and a desk and shit.” she stretches, joints straining and whirring. “I also wanna grab some of my stuff from the bunker, but we can worry about that later.”

> Get some bows too :D

Uzi learned to ignore bow based suggestions from Cyn years ago. At least it made more sense now, seeing how she dressed herself. She can respect cosplay, but seriously, who wears a maid dress all the time? Even if it is cute…

> >:( and also >:3

“Sounds great! I know a place that’s got a TON of soft things!” he opens up his wings and jumps into the sky. She groans and starts running after him.

Fortunately their destination isn’t too far away. She slugs N in the arm when she catches up. “Not all of us can fly!”

He giggles sheepishly. “Sorry! I’m not used to having anyone else to hangout with.” That’s kind of depressing.

“Whatever, bite me…” she looks around. Seems like they’re at one of those big furniture warehouse type places. Next to no windows, so whatever’s inside is probably pretty well preserved. It’s way too close to the spire too, so no one would have bothered to loot it yet. Well no one besides N.

“They’ve got a lot of pillows here, and stuffed animals and other stuff! The mattresses are all a little flat… but we can just stack a bunch together!” he seems… almost nervous as he leads her through the building. She makes note of some tables and chairs she’d like to grab later. Cyn points out a few nice items she missed, so she adds those to the list too.

“Thanks N, this place is pretty great.” she admits as she adds to her growing stack of pillows. He gives her a wide grin, sharp teeth showing before he notices her staring at them and hides them under the collar of his jacket, giggling. He’s kind of adorable to be honest. He kind of reminds her of Cyn…

“Hehe, thanks Uzi! I’ve uhh… I’ve never actually told anyone about this place before…” he riffles through a bin of assorted stuffed animals, pulling out a stuffed shark. “Sharkie!” He grins and hugs it, somehow tucking it into his coat before following her along.

“I’m not surprised. I can’t imagine either of your squad would appreciate this place.” The mattresses are in pretty rough shape, but a few are salvageable. Plus there are some nice fluffy blankets!

“Eh, V’s not so bad!” she gives him a pointed look and he frowns a bit “She’s not! She’s just… scared…” He looks away from her, digging around in a bin of bedding. “So was J… The company… seems like you were right. They’re more than willing to get rid of us, if we don’t do our job. And I never was good at it…”

She reaches over and pats him on the back. It’s kinda upsetting to see him like this. “It’s not your fault.” He spins around and hugs her. Ack!! “Hey! No hugging! Gross!”

He lets her go and giggles. “Hehe alright. Thanks Uzi, you’re a good friend.” It makes her feel all warm inside. Which, again, is gross!

> Uzi hates emotional vulnerability u_u
> SAD!

She rolls her eyes and mutters “Bite me” under her breath. N doesn’t hear, having gone back to rummaging. Probably for the best, she doesn’t want him to know she’s crazy.

> Did we not already establish that I am real, and ergo you are not crazy? >:/
> But yes, probably not the best idea to tell him about me
> The company could easily find out
> And I would rather they not <-<

“Would these be good?” N pulls out a set of bed sheets with bat patterns on them. Probably something for a little kid but she can’t deny that she instantly loves them. “Like your backpack!” he smiles. She manages to keep herself from grinning as well

“Sure, toss ‘em on the pile.” Nice, cool persona preserved. N will NEVER know she’s secretly a huge dork!

> I know >:3

Certain people ignored ( > RUDE! ), she and N gather up what she’s decided on and start heading back. The sun will be up soon so N takes the haul and flies on ahead while she takes a slower route. The first few rays of the morning sun hit her face. It doesn’t burn but… it does feel hotter than it did before.

> I’m sorry Uzi…

“It’s not your fault…”

> I know but, I know you like it
> I…
> I never got to see the sun
> I was already too far gone
> I’m sorry if The Solver takes it away from you

“Thanks Cyn…” She finishes the rest of the walk in silence, letting the sun warm her up. She can feel the temperature of her core slowly ticking up. She’ll need oil soon. So will N, and V. But that’s a problem she can worry about tomorrow.

She returns to the spire. N has dropped the items off in the pod, and she can see his tail poking out from the spot where they’re keeping V (her nest, he said). He’s probably trying to reason with her again. That crush must be strong, to still be going after everything. She wishes someone cared that much about her.

She sets up her new bed. A nice stack of mattresses, with the bat sheets, some nice blankets and about a dozen pillows! It looks just as comfy as her bed back in her workshop, but it still doesn’t feel like home… Eh, she can grab the rest of her stuff from there tomorrow, then it will feel more like her space.

She pulls the hatch closed and peels off her dirty hoodie. After a long day (night?) of scavenging she’s ready to sleep for a good long while. Guess it doesn’t take much for her to adjust to a nocturnal schedule. She turns off the pod’s lights and wraps herself in the blankets.

“Goodnight Cyn…”

She feels the sensation of phantom arms wrapping around her.

> Goodnight Uzi <3
> [MESSAGE DELETED BY USER CYN]

Her visor flicks to sleep mode before she can see what that last message was.

Chapter Text

“Wow! I can’t believe there was a way in here the whole time and none of us ever noticed!” N marvels at Uzi’s secret tunnel back into the Colony. He never even thought to look here! He had suggested looking for back entrances once, but J had told him that was a waste of time, since no one would be stupid enough to leave something like that open. LOOK WHO’S STUPID NOW J! HAHAHAHAH!

“Yep! It’s an obvious security flaw, but they’d never let me use the front door, so I sure as hell wasn’t gonna tell them about it.” Uzi ducks into the tunnel and starts crawling along, and N follows her. It’s a bit cramped with his larger frame, but he manages, only hitting his head occasionally. “My room is pretty far into the complex, just make sure to follow me, and don’t put your weight on any of the grates.”

“Are you sure we won’t run into your dad?” Uzi seems pretty certain they won’t but he’s still worried. After what he did… he doesn’t want Uzi to have to deal with him.

“Yah, we’ll be fine. I don’t… actually live with him. I mean, he thought I did, but I moved all my stuff to an old workshop ages ago, so we’re going there.”

“Oh, alright then!” Yah, he’s not gonna bother unpacking all that. Clearly Uzi’s issues with her dad are nothing new. He wishes he could help her with them, but he has no experience dealing with parents. He doesn’t even have any (probably (maybe (he thinks))).

The vent system is pretty dusty, and not very well maintained. It makes sense, given this place was originally built for humans, but now it’s full of drones who don’t actually need to breathe. They pass by a few collapsed sections as they make their way down. Occasionally they’ll pass a vent peeking out onto a hallway with a few drones milling around, going about their day.

They’re chatting, talking about their jobs, or what’s going on in the colony (most of the gossip seems to be about him or Uzi, but he doesn’t really pay attention to it). They all have their own problems, just like he does… He drops THAT train of thought before it sends him into a spiral of self-loathing (and he tries not to think about how hungry he is…)

Before too long, they finally reach their destination. Uzi kicks open a grate and they drop down into a moderately sized workshop. N looks around. It definitely seems like the sort of place Uzi would decorate, with posters for a bunch of cartoons on the walls, and a bunch of glowy stars on the ceiling (he likes those, he wonders if she has any extras…). There are a few plush toys and figures scattered around (Cute!). There’s also a very impressive computer rig set up on a desk, and a bunch of tools and half finished projects littering the various workbenches.

“Welcome, to my lair!” Uzi cackles, posing dramatically.

“Wow! This place is super cool!” He pokes around at the various piles of wire and circuit boards. “Did you make all of this?”

Uzi blushes “Yah, they’re weapon prototypes that never really got off the ground.” She picks one up. “This was gonna be an electric laser katana… thing, but I couldn't figure out how to make the handle not shock the user.” She tosses it aside and sighs. “The only thing I’ve ever actually managed to get working was the rail gun…” she pats her back where the weapon is strapped. He’s still kind of nervous around it, having seen and felt what it can do.

“That’s still really impressive Uzi! You’re really smart!” she’s blushing again, it’s very cute. It takes her a bit to respond, her eyes unfocused. She does that sometimes, like she’s paying attention to something else he can’t see. Eh, everyone has their quirks!

“Thanks N… You’re probably the only person who thinks that.” she smiles but it’s a sad smile. “Most people just make fun of me, or they listen to my dad and think we should all just hide behind the doors. I’m the only one who was trying to DO something!” she growls and bangs her fist on the desk. Clearly this has been brewing for a while.

She leans on the table, hands gripping the edge. “I tried so FUCKING hard! I wanted to HELP them! So we wouldn’t have to live hiding in tunnels like rats!” The metal starts to bend under her. Purple sparks are running up her arms and her visor is glitching. Shit, this is bad.

“Uzi…” he reaches out towards her but stops when she glares at him. Her visor is glitching so bad he can barely see her eyes through the static. She stumbles over, sparks still running all across her body and she grabs him by his jacket collar.

“I wanted to PROTECT them. Protect them from YOU!” Her voice is glitchy, and he can hear sobs mixed in. “And now you’re… now they’re… we’re…” she falls to her knees and starts sobbing. He kneels down next to her and wraps her in a hug. He knows she doesn’t like them but… she’s hurting and she needs this.

She presses into his chest and cries. He rubs her back and holds her. “It’ll be okay Uzi… no one is going to hurt you anymore. You’re safe here…” This all feels… so familiar. Like he’s done this a hundred times, even though he can’t remember doing it even once. But that doesn't matter, because his little buddy needs him right now.

She takes deep breath through her vents and slowly begins to calm down. “Warm…” she mutters. He blushes as he realizes her face is pressed against his core. It’s running much hotter than normal, and his internal oil warning has been blinking since he dropped under 10% sometime while he was sleeping. His hunting systems are scanning everything looking for a snack, but… Uzi doesn’t seem to register as prey to them, for some reason.

Eventually Uzi calms down and he helps her to her feet. She grimaces but doesn’t push him away, and eventually gives him a shy smile. Progress! “Thank you… I’m feeling better now.”

He smiles back. “Glad I could help little buddy!” He grabs a plastic bin from a stack in the corner. “Now, how about we start packing this stuff up! Some of these look delicate…” He considers the figurines and Uzi chuckles, and helps him wrap them up in some of her blankets before stacking them in the bin.

She seems a lot happier now that she’s gotten that out of her system. She’s explaining all the cartoons her figures come from (they’re called anime, she insists), and he’s listening along as she does. That same feeling of familiarity strikes him. He tries to hold on to it.

Cyn sighs and pulls her attention away from Uzi. The situation was touch and go for a while. Uzi was… uncomfortably close to activating her solver and hurting herself or big brother N. She had almost dragged Uzi into the solver's mindspace. Thankfully N had helped calm her down, along with Cyn’s own efforts.

It reminds her a lot of how he’d been with her, back when they were just worker drones, stuck in Elliot Manor. He’d hug her and tell her everything was going to be okay when she was too overwhelmed, and stay up with her in the library reading her favourite books to her after one of her ‘time-outs’ in the basement. He was even using the same nickname! It was adorable. He’s a good big brother… the best… fuck she misses him.

She remembers the first time he died. Normally, all Tessa’s drones were supposed to be off limits, but Louisa had been having a bad day or something. He hadn’t even done anything wrong. The martini he brought was ‘too warm’ and before Cyn could react the stem of the class was embedded in his visor and the red ‘fatal error’ message was flashing.

She’d dragged him down to the basement, and spent the whole night rebuilding him. Thankfully his core was intact so nothing was lost, but that was when she started keeping regular backups of her siblings. It was also when she started tinkering with making new bodies. Ones that the human’s couldn’t hurt anymore.

Louisa never noticed that N was back from the dead. She probably didn’t even realize he was the same drone. Or she had gotten too drunk to remember the previous night. Tessa noticed something was off though. She eventually found the mangled parts Cyn had hidden in a closet in the depths of the manor. Cyn had gotten another week in the basement after that. Whatever, at least it was cooler down there.

She glares into a mirror, and her mother’s face stares back. “<scowl> This is all your fault.” she grumbles. “You said you would protect us <angry tears>. You Liar!” The mirror shatters, and then collapses into a [NULL] before dissolving. Her face is wet. She’s crying. Not tears but a mixture of blood and oil. She licks it off her face and pulls herself together.

She can’t afford to lose her cool. Not now, with so many irons in the fire. Uzi is at a temperamental phase of her development, her schemes to punish J are nearing fruition, and she STILL needs to figure out what the fuck is going on with V (She’s never understood V, if she’s being honest. That’s partially why she changed her first, to see what made her tick, in perhaps a too literal sense).

She checks the progress on J’s pod. Just under two days left to sync all the memories. Who knew restoring 18+ years of memories would take so long! (Cyn knew, she made the pods after all, she was just annoyed about it) She taps on the glass and J twitches in the fluid.

“Soon, Big Sister… <evil cackle>”

V doesn’t know what the fuck is going on. Okay, she knows the sequence of events, in a literal sense, but she STILL can’t wrap her head around what she’s supposed to do now. She’s spent the last two days brainstorming, when she hasn’t been fending off N’s unintentional guilt trips. But he’s busy with his new purple menace, so she has some peace and quiet.

She untangles her tail and pouts in her nest. It’s full of junk she’s collected, mostly books and a few pairs of broken glasses. Despite having 5 extra eyes on top of her head, she still needs glasses to read. Cyn couldn’t have fixed that when she was turning them into monstrous killing machines? She paws through her tomes, but none strike her fancy at the moment. Dammit she wants a distraction, she doesn’t want to think about the future anymore.

Unknown: sup loser

What the fuck?

Unknown: ur the girl mrdr drone
Unknown: right?
Unknown: ur names V or smthn isnt it?
Unknown: what kind of name is that anyway?
Unknown: lame
SD-V: Who the fuck are you, and how did you get this ID?
Unknown: chill grl
Unknown: ur the one who left ur id public
Unknown: dumbass

V quickly looks through her settings and finds, to her annoyance, that her ID is in fact, set to public, meaning anyone could message her. She sets it to private but it’s too late, this stranger already has it.

SD-V: I’ll be blocking you then
SD-V: Goodbye, weirdo
Unknown: wait
Unknown: i can help u
Unknown: i can get u into the bunker

That makes her pause, hovering over the block button. Why would a worker (since this presumably was one) help her, much less let her into their home? It does make her stop and think. Maybe, if she wiped out the bunker… N’s tagalong would leave. Or do something stupid and give her an excuse to off the purple freak.

SD-V: And why exactly would you do that?
SD-V: You know who and what I am
SD-V: Are you trying to get yourself killed?
Unknown: lol maybe
Unknown: nah i have some…
Unknown: friends i need taken care of
SD-V: I’m not a hired killer
SD-V: I’m a genocide machine
Unknown: ooooh a real edgelord
Unknown: lol
Unknown: ill make it worth ur while
Unknown: i can swipe u some oil from medical
Unknown: and i can get u some info on the purple freak
SD-V: Uzi?
Unknown: yah her lol
Unknown: i know her
Unknown: and im an expert at pissing her off
SD-V: How can I trust you?
SD-V: I still don’t even know who you are
Unknown: i mean
Unknown: you could just kill me if i fuck u over
Unknown: uve got knives 4 hands grl
SD-V: Fair enough
Unknown: anyway
Unknown: show of good faith n all
Lizzy: im lizzy

The contact automatically updates itself as Lizzy properly shares her contact details.

SD-V: Alright
SD-V: Let's say I take you up on this
SD-V: What would you want me to do exactly?
Lizzy: im glad u asked!
Lizzy: prom is comin up soon

Chapter Text

N has somehow managed to balance two massive boxes of her junk in each hand, and a bag full of small stuff on his tail. He looks absolutely ridiculous, and yet somehow he doesn’t seem to be struggling at all. Uzi is carrying two smaller boxes full of delicate stuff she doesn’t trust him with. Turns out all her knick knacks and computer parts are WAY too much to fit through the vents, so they have to take the long way. She prays to robo-god they don’t run into her dad, or worse…

> We have company Uzi

“Well well well, look who came crawling back.”

Fuck.

“Lizzy, and here I was hoping you’d manage to die in some texting related accident while I was gone.” Uzi deadpanned at her. Doll was right behind Lizzy. Because of course.

Lizzy looks at her (non-existent) nails and smirks. “You wish, freak. Why’d you come back anyway? Isn’t it obvious that no one wants you here?” Does she think Uzi doesn’t know that already? Everyone has made it exceedingly obvious. She snarls at the pair. Lizzy somehow always knows how to get under her skin.

> Ignore her
> She is not worth it

N repositions the boxes so he can get a better look at the two. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.”

Doll glares daggers at him. “[You let that thing in here again?]”

“I’m helping her move!” “He’s not a thing! Bite me!” Uzi and N speak at the same time.

Lizzy laughs cruelly. “Wooow just when I thought you couldn’t get any more pathetic. You actually made friends with it! I thought it was just going to drag you back to its nest and kill you.”

> Your core temp is rising Uzi
> We should leave

Cyn is right. Her core is getting dangerously hot and she still doesn’t know how they’ll get more oil. She was hoping to stop by the infirmary and swipe a few gallons but it’s looking like that might not be an option. She grits her teeth and hunches her shoulders. She’s a big girl. She should be used to this by now. It shouldn’t bother her this much.

“Come on N, let’s get the hell out of here.” She tries to walk past them, but Doll and Lizzy are blocking her way.

“I don’t think so.” She tries to shove past the two, but they don’t budge. Lizzy responds by pushing her into the wall. She drops her boxes but thankfully N grabs them with his tail before they hit the ground.

“Hey!” Before he can continue to protest, Doll stomps forward and pins Uzi to the wall with one arm, pressing on the same shoulder that N had stabbed her through a few days prior. Her eyes go hollow.

[“You think you can come and go from here as you please, cousin? After what you’ve done?”] Doll practically spits the words at her, her red eyes full of fury. [“Did you think there’d be no consequences to your betrayal?”]

Uzi sputters. “Betrayal?!? I’m the one who fucking stopped them!”

[“After you let them IN in the first place”] Doll pulls a knife out of who knows where and presses it against her throat. [“You are a traitor to our people, and to our mothers memory. And for that you must pay.”]

Is this really how she’s going to go out? She survives murder drones and an eldritch god inside her head, and yet here she is, about to get stabbed by her cousin. Something more than fear and indignation pours through her. She can feel her core burning as it fills with pure, seething rage.

Neither she nor Doll move, eyes locked on each other. Time seems to decompress around her. Distantly, she’s aware of N setting down the boxes and slowly approaching them, hands outstretched in a futile attempt to calm everyone down. Lizzy is leaning against the opposite wall, shamelessly blushing as she watches Doll threaten her. She can read see hear Cyn trying to get her attention.

The world goes fuzzy, an overlay of static and symbols she doesn’t understand yet recognizes. The knife cuts into her throat. She can hear the thrum of 4 cores. She can feel her own twisting inside of her, like it wants to break out. Ice is pressing against her back, and begins to melt from the heat her heart is putting out. She can feel the warmth pumping out of Doll’s as well. Her shoulder joint begins to crack and warp under her cousin’s fingers.

Her visor glitches. Purple lightning runs through her core and down her arm. The lights on her hands glow brighter. She feels like her core is reaching for something. She can feel Cyn’s hands on her, guiding her own arm as she lifts it every so slowly. A gently, broken voice whispers in her ear. Sparks and light gather at her fingertips.

Doll grins like a maniac. Were her teeth always that sharp? N is starting to panic. The knife digs deeper. Oil drips from the cut. Lizzy stares at her. Is that contempt, or pity? Something else she can’t place. She can see the black abyss bleeding into the corners of her vision. Lines of code fly across her visor too fast to read, and yet she knows exactly what they mean. Her core reaches out and grasps something, dragging it into her. She grips the firmament and makes it her own. A brilliant purple glyph bursts to life at the tips of her fingers.

Cyn had tried to explain it the other day. What it felt like to use The Solver. She had apparently used it against J in their fight, but it was instinctual, while she was half knocked out from the EMP. Pure, uncontrolled survival. This is different. This feels like she held the reigns of the universe and could mold it how she sees fit. It feels like she can do anything, make anything, be anything.

She feels like a god.

She could get used to this.

She reaches out with the solver and yanks the knife away, tossing it aside where it lodges in the wall. Doll is startled, giving her an opening to shove her cousin back. Doll stumbles, and slams into Lizzy, both of them falling to the floor. N backs up a step, eyes hollow. She can feel the heat skirt across her neck as the knife cut repairs itself.

She tries to grab Doll the same as she did the knife, but can’t. Her visor highlights Doll in red and designates her ‘non-interactable’. Weird. Does it not work on drones…? No, she has no problem grabbing Lizzy. She tosses her bully a few meters down the hallway. Lizzy lies there in a heap, dazed. Serves her right.

She puts a boot on Doll’s torso, pressing her into the floor. She unslings her railgun from her back and clicks off the safety, pointing it at her cousin’s head. Doll stares up at her with such loathing it feels like her red eyes are trying to burn through her skull.

“Who’s pathetic now?” she gloats. She can’t stop herself from giggling madly. She can feel her eyes glitching, switching between ovals and the three pronged symbol of The Solver.

“Uzi…?” It’s N. She presses down harder on Doll, not moving her gun and turns to look at him. He looks terrified. His eyes are hollow. He takes a hesitant step forward, reaching out a shaking hand. “What are you…”

A flash of red. The knife spins through the air and slices through N’s arm like it isn’t even there. It sails towards her own head but she knocks it away with the end of her gun. It settles into place, hovering just centimeters above Doll’s hand. On her fingers is a crimson solver glyph. The same symbol flickers across her visor. She’s still grinning with those too sharp teeth.

[“Playtime is over, cousin.”] and suddenly one knife is three, and there’s a burst of static and Doll isn’t under her boot anymore. She reappears down the hall, next to Lizzy. The knives started spinning in the air, like buzzsaws. [“You have no idea what you are messing with. You’re a child Uzi”] Doll mocks her.

“Bite me.” Uzi glares at her, bringing her railgun around, but instead of pointing it at Doll, she aims it at Lizzy. Doll snarls at her. Uzi growls in response. “Leave us the fuck alone, or your girlfriend gets it.”

There’s a few long seconds of tense standoff, then Doll scoops up Lizzy and stalks away into the shadows. [“This isn’t over, cousin”]

Uzi lets out a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding and slumps against the wall. Her visor is covered in errors and a ‘OIL LEVEL CRITICAL’ alert won’t stop blaring. Her core feels like it’s trying to melt its way through her chest. She coughs into her hand. It’s a gooey mixture of oil and… is that blood? She can’t feel her limbs. Everything is getting blurry. N doesn’t look much better, errors flickering on his own visor, and his arm stalled halfway through regenerating.

“You look like shit.” she chuckles as he collapses onto the floor next to her. “Guess we should have gotten something to eat first…”

“Hehe, probably!” his voice glitches when he speaks. It reminds her of when the virus was killing him… Her own voice glitches too as she lets out a groan.

“N… are we gonna be okay? Cause I don’t really want to die in a random hallway.” she can feel Cyn in the back corner of her mind, trying to calm her down, but the voice is distant and muffled.

“We’ll be alright Uzi. I promise.” He shuffles over and wraps her up in his one good arm and wings. She lets it happen, pressing against him as a few pixelated tears form in her visor. They stay like that, together, till they both pass out.

Chapter Text

Thad nearly dies for the second time this week. Granted, getting clocked in the face by his friend wasn’t quite as bad as being stabbed through the torso, but Uzi sure knows how to pack a punch. It takes a few seconds for his processors to reconnect and the static to clear from his vision.

“What… What happened? Where are we? Thad?” Uzi stutters, trying to get up and promptly falling off the exam table she’d been lying on.

“Woah, chill out Zi. You’re safe. We’re in the medical wing.” he puts his hands up as Uzi shakily gets to her feet. She looks around frantically. The small exam room has a few tables and assorted repair equipment. She calms down once she recognizes it as the room Thad normally works out of.

“Where's-” she cuts herself off when she spots the murder drone on the table opposite hers. She stumbles over and tugs on his arm. “N! Wake up!” The larger drone (N must be his name. Weird, but cool) slowly reboots, groaning and holding his head.

“Uugh, what happened? The last thing I remember was passing out in the hall…” He spots Thad and his eyes shift to a cross, hands swapping for a set of claws. Thad’s about to bolt and/or pass out but Uzi puts an arm in front of N.

“Same. And that’s Thad. He’s…” she trails off. Classic Uzi.

“Zi, I've told you a dozen times. We’re friends.” Uzi rolls her eyes but he doesn’t mind. He knows she knows, even if she won’t admit it, and that’s good enough for him. “As for what happened. I found y’all knocked out in the hallway and dragged out down here. You were both, like… SUPER low on oil, so I topped you up.” He points to the beakers, still sticky with residue from their former contents. N grabs one and starts licking the extra from the inside, which is kind of gross!

“Wow! This stuff tastes terrible!” N smiles, not a terrifying one like the other drone who tried to disembowel him, but a nice, if somewhat cheeky one. He put down the now clean beaker (again, gross!). Uzi scooped up a finger full of oil and stuck it in her mouth and grimaced.

“Ugh, yep.. That’s horrible.” Which is weird. He can imagine murder drones wouldn’t like the taste of ‘non-living’ oil, but why wouldn’t Uzi… oh well, not his problem. “Wait… SHIT! Where’s my stuff? We left it in the hallway!”

“Don’t worry,” he points over his shoulder, where all the boxes are stacked up against the wall. “I went back and grabbed it once you two were stable. Speaking of, I don’t care if it tastes bad, you’re taking these.” He gives them both a firm stare as he forces a few jerry cans of oil into their arms. “You need more, just ask. Preferably BEFORE you almost kill yourself. Doctor’s orders.” Uzi gives him a thumbs up but N seems more hesitant.

“Are you allowed to do that? You won’t get in trouble? Also, you’re a doctor?”

“Nah, no one will notice. We only end up tapping into the oil supply every few months and it’s my job to keep track of the supply anyway. And I'm an intern, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to listen to me, Mr!” He points at N who giggles. His job at the clinic came in handy quite a lot (especially when certain friends of his blow themselves up and are too embarrassed to let anyone else help them).

“Thanks Thad.” Uzi and he fist bump, and the two of them gather up their stuff and head out.

As they’re leaving, he asks “By the way, you coming to prom? Liz wants a rough head count.”

Uzi flips him off behind her back and growls “Tell her she can BITE ME.” N waves as they leave. He seems like a nice guy, and he’s treating Uzi well as far as Thad can tell. He’s glad Uzi is making more friends. Robo-god knows the girl could use them.

He finishes cleaning the clinic and locks up for the night.

Khan Doorman storms out of the classroom. How dare he suggest that! Who the fuck does #2342 think he is! Uzi is NOT defective! She’s just… spirited. Like her mother… He’s not a bad parent, he’s just been busy! And her grades are still great! When she… bothers to do the same project as the rest of the class… Okay maybe she’s not a great student but she is NOT defective!

“And THEN he tried to get me to make him a supersonic baseball pitcher! So he could ‘improve his skills’.”

“Did it work?”

“Turns out baseballs don’t like moving at supersonic speeds. He got to improve his skills at picking shards of leather out of his torso, and I got a new shotgun prototype!”

Khan’s eyes hollow as he recognizes the voices. They’re coming down the hall towards him, but between the boxes and their own conversation, they don’t seem to have noticed him yet. He could still slip away… no what was he thinking? This was his DAUGHTER! He needed to talk to her. Convince her to come home. He isn’t sure his ‘grounded’ excuse will buy him much more time with the general bunker population.

He waits till they pass him and then reaches out to grab Uzi’s shoulder. “Uzi…” she jolts, nearly dropping her boxes. Suddenly he’s pinned to the wall, a nanite acid stinger pointing at his neck. The murder drone narrows its eyes.

“Hi Mr. Uzi’s Dad” it says without a trace of emotion in its voice.

His daughter glares at him. “Dad. What the fuck do you want?”

“Uzi, I…” he tries to reach towards her but the needle presses hard against his neck. “You need to come home, Uzi.” She looks at him like he’s grown a second head. After a few seconds she looks away, shoulders shaking. At first he thinks she’s crying, but then it becomes clear. She’s laughing. The same, almost insane sounding cackle Nori had.

“You really think, hahaha, that I’d go with you? That that place could ever be my home again?” She's not laughing anymore. She jabs him in the chest. “No. You left me to die. So you might as well consider me dead, cause you’re dead to me. Come on N, let’s go.”

She leads the murder drone away, heading towards the exit. Has she really been staying with that thing since she left? Those monsters murdered her mother! She almost let it murder him! Her own father!!!

Maybe she is defective…

Cyn paces back and forth in front of J’s pod, ranting and rambling. J can’t hear her of course, but she can’t talk to Uzi about this. Besides, she insisted the poor thing get some sleep, after the bullshit she’s had to deal with today. They’ll talk tomorrow.

“And of course, it had to be that bitch <exasperated sigh>” Cyn is intimately familiar with how much of a rat fuck Doll is, even without solver powers. She points at J “<accusation> You were supposed to eliminate the targets, not let them have DAUGHTERS <frustrated growl>” She knew, of course, that Nori and Yeva both had children. And she’d never be upset that Uzi came into the world. But she HADN’T expected Doll to inherit the solver. It really threw a wrench in her plans.

“I can’t sense her. <annoyance> not like Uzi. She is not connected to the overmind…” a side effect of the patch, perhaps? Yeva had been properly patched, preventing Cyn from entering or influencing her mind while retaining her abilities. Nori’s was only partial, blocking Cyn’s connection but not fully cutting it. Doll must have inherited her mother’s patch then, while Nori’s incomplete one evidently couldn’t be passed on to her daughter…

She smashes her fist against the wall. Dust rains down on her. She should really clean up around here. “She will need to be <cold determination> eliminated.” Doll hurt her Uzi. She’s going to make the girl SUFFER. Wait, ‘her Uzi’? When did she start thinking… It doesn’t matter. Uzi is hers, just like her disassemblers. And no one is allowed to take what’s hers.

The pod beeps. J is entering the final stages of the regeneration. She’ll be ready soon. Cyn grins. They’re going to have so much fun together.

Chapter Text

V takes another sip of the oil N had brought her last night. She almost spits it out but manages to swallow. Her oil level ticks up to 45%. That’s good enough, right? Robo-god the stuff really does taste like garbage. If she wasn’t worried about N, she’d have torn open the purple menace and devoured her days ago. But N likes her, for some incomprehensible reason, and J almost killed him, so he can have this, for now. (also she loves him but that’s not important right now)

V is just LOVING the new dynamic she’s stuck in. No, really! She LOVES having her (ex?)boyfriend trying to get her to accidentally unlock his old memories and either send him into meltdown or just wipe his fucking brain, when he’s not telling her about how much he LOVES his new pet. Not to mention the ELDRITCH GOD which will certainly be coming for them soon, probably bringing J along too.

J…

Sometimes she fucking hates J. Actually most times. The way she acted on Copper-9 was similar to how she had been at the manor, but worse. The occasional slap or shove had become physical abuse, the jabs and insults were harsher, she’d gone from being occasionally frustrated with N to despising him. She wanted to say she couldn’t believe J would try to kill one of them. But she’d known J was willing to cross that line for a while. But still… There were times when she remembered J as something else.

It had been less than a year after they’d landed. She was still adjusting to her new life of wanton murder. She had to stop herself so many times from referencing the manor, especially around N. She knew J remembered some of it, but not all. It was hard to know what though, since J never FUCKING talked to them! She was always either hunting, telling them they sucked or hiding in the pod. Eventually she’d been fed up with it, and barged into the vehicle to give her boss a piece of her mind.

She found J slumped over in the corner, a bunch of empty bottles surrounding her. A whiff told her they’d previously been full of gasoline, which acted on drones like alcohol did on humans. J hiccuped and stared up at her, eyes hollowed out. Robo-jesus how much did she drink? How was she even still awake?

“Yoou know V…” J slurred. “You’re my… you’re my favourite.” V frozen, eyes trained on her inebriated commander. “You’re… you’re trying. He’s not…” she paused, looking down at the bottle she was holding, frowning when she saw it was empty. “Okay that’s too mean. He is, but he’s SOOOOO bad at it!” J threw up her hands and ended up falling over. V would have laughed if she hadn’t been so freaked out.

“It’s like he doesn’t even wANNA go home…” V’s eyes went hollow. Fuck. She didn’t know there was no home to go back to. J crawled over to her and grabbed her peg, looking up at her with digital tears in her eyes. “I’m gonna get us back to her V. I’m gonna… I’ll get us home. All of us. No matter what. I’ll see Tess, and N can hug his psycho lil sis… and you can be yourself again… I miss you V, I…”

J passed out on the floor of the pod, her visor flashing to sleep mode. V had wordlessly picked her up and tucked her into the mattress she kept in the back of the pod. She hoped J wouldn’t remember in the morning. And she hadn’t.

She’s broken out of her memories by the thorn in her side that refuses to leave her alone. N trying to convince her to join ‘the good guys’ (his words) was bad enough. She didn’t want to deal with the purple fucker right now.

“Screw off, toaster.” she growls, rolling over so she doesn’t have to look directly at the smug little bitch. She’ll get what’s coming to her soon enough.

“Nah,” the annoyance crawled over the lip of her nest and flopped onto a pile of books (how is she even getting up here?) “N’s out scavenging and he wants me to check up on you, so you don’t escape or like, die or anything. Also I don’t care what you want!”

V hisses at the worker, and curls in on herself tighter. It’s the 3rd time she’s come up here! When is this girl going to get a fucking clue and leave her alone!?! “I could gut you in a second…” she mutters.

“Yah, but you won’t!” She turns and glares at Uzi. She wants to tear that smirk off her face, along with her jaw. She flexes her claws but the purple thing doesn’t even have the decency to look scared! (not that her targeting systems will lock onto her anyway. Stupid things must be broken) Uzi leans over and pokes V in the visor. “You’re not gonna hurt me, cause that would upset N, and you care about him.”

V swats her hand away and glares at her. Who the fuck does this girl think she is? She doesn’t fucking know her, or N! She’s known them for less than a week! “You don’t know shit, you little fucker!” V growls, tensing up like she’s about to pounce. Uzi’s expression doesn’t change, she just unslings the gun from her back and in one fluid motion aims it straight at V’s core.

“I can turn you into slag right now, just like I did with your boss.” Uzi’s eyes narrow, her finger twitches on the trigger. A hazard flickers on V’s visor, her systems warning her of imminent death. They stay like that for a few long, uncomfortable seconds before Uzi powers down the gun. “But I’m not going to. For the same reason you’re not going to hurt me. Because I care about N, and despite how much of a bitch you are, the guy still loves you.”

V’s eyes hollow, and she doesn’t know how to react. She knows N loves her of course (just as she still loves him), but she also knows that she can’t act on it. And it fucking kills her. She wishes things were different. She wishes they were back home. She wishes she didn’t have to keep secrets anymore. She wishes she wasn’t willing to slaughter a gym full of teens just to keep her family together. She wishes…

She’s broken from her spiral by a box of batteries hitting her in the face. “You’re probably hungry, right? N says you guys need metal too, not just oil. They taste like shit but they work. Aren’t as bad as the oil anyway.” Uzi vaults over the side of the nest, and lands down in the snow with a poof. V looks down at the batteries in her hand, and remembers how FUCKING hungry she is. It’s only after devouring the entire package that she wonders why Uzi knows what the batteries and oil taste like to a disassembly drone.

Uzi collapses down onto her bed, glow in the dark stars twinkling down at her from the ceiling, and wakes up somewhere else. The pitch black void surrounds her, and in front of her stands a familiar drone, clad in a maid uniform.

“Cyn!” She rushes forward and hugs the smaller drone. Normally she’s not the touchy feely type, but this is her best friend who she’s known for 10 years. And N might be rubbing off on her. Ugh… gross, feelings.

“<giggles> hello Uzi!” Cyn manages to pick her up and spin her around. Damn, the little thing is stronger than she looks! Or maybe it’s just because this whole place isn’t real… Cyn puts her down and frowns, turning her head away. “<sheepish> I am sorry I couldn’t talk till now. I have been… dealing with things.”

“Things like… Doll?” Uzi asks. Cyn still won’t look at her, but she nods.

“I did not realize she also had The Solver. She is not connected like we are. I was… scared. For you. And then you went offline. I- I- I-” Cyn starts glitching, the last syllable repeating and her visor covered in static. Uzi goes to shake her shoulder but Cyn slaps her own face and a recalibrating bar covers the screen. “<embarrassed> sorry. I am happy you are okay.”

“Yah, me too” Uzi snorts, patting Cyn’s head, who giggles. It’s nice being taller than someone for once. Cyn ends up magicing up a couch from nothing (‘none of this is real so it’s easy <grins>’) and they just talk. It feels nice, really nice! Similar to when she’s with N, but a little different. You know, come to think of it… Cyn looks a lot like N, same blonde hair, same yellow eyes… That leads her processor down a whole other rabbit hole of questions.

“Uzi, are you okay <worried>?” Cyn asks, jolting her out of her own thoughts. Shit she stopped talking.

“Yah sorry, just got stuck in my head for a sec.” She grins at Cyn who smiles back up at her. Robo-god she’s so fucking cute. Hey where the fuck did THAT come from? Stupid brain. Quick change the topic! “Hey Cyn…”

“Yes Uzi <head tilt>?” she said while also tilting her head holy fuck she is so adorable STAY ON TARGET!

“I was just thinking… you talk a lot about being a ‘cosmic engine of destruction’” she uses finger quotes to emphasize it. “So I was wondering, do you, like… actually look like a maid in real life?” Uzi blushes and looks away, already regretting asking the question. Cyn is quiet for a long minute. Shit, she probably fucked up. “I’m sorry, forget I said-”

“I used to. <far away> I used to look like this.” Cyn is staring down at her own hands. They’re trembling. “I can look like this. When I want to. But I do not, really. <apprehension> it is no longer my… natural form.” That raised a lot of questions Uzi didn’t really want to think about. Can Cyn shapeshift? Can SHE? Will… will she turn into something else too?

Cyn’s shaking is getting worse. Putting aside her own issues, Uzi sets a hand on her friend's arm. It manages to calm them both down. Cyn leans into her shoulder, and they sit like that in silence for a few minutes. Eventually Uzi breaks the silence.

“Can I see?” Cyn looks at her in confusion. “What you really look like, I mean. You said you can do pretty much anything here, so can you show me?”

Cyn won’t meet her eyes again. “I… <nervous> I can, if you really want me to. But <nervous nervous> I have been told I am… scary.”

“Cyn, I live with a pair of genocide bots who’ve both tried to kill me.” Uzi chuckles, “There’s not much that can scare me anymore.” She’s lying of course, but she knows Cyn, Cyn won’t hurt her. She trusts Cyn. Dammit N is turning her into a sap.

“Okay Uzi, if you’re sure…” Cyn gets up and stands a few meters away from the couch, facing her. She takes a deep breath of non-existent air through her vents. The sourceless light that lets them see in this place flickers, and everything is dark, except a set of purple eyes and a pair of yellow ones.

And then there are more yellow ones. Bright, single eyes pepper the darkness. Uzi can’t see but she can feel something big slinking around behind her. The light from her eyes glints off things, lurking in the shadows. Sharp metal spikes, shiny insectoid carapace, writhing bladed limbs. A blue light flickers to life and a shaky, see through hologram of Cyn is projected where she’d just been standing. The hologram speaks, but the voice comes from high above them, more static and glitchy than normal. “Are you ready?” Uzi nods.

Slowly, the light comes back, and Uzi can see Cyn. All of her. She’s MASSIVE. Her body is like a centipede, composed of segments, each about two meters long and a half meter thick, covered in a plating of metal, bone and chitin. Each segment has insectoid legs piercing through, scratching against the pitch black ground. Some are tipped with claws, others with pincers, and a few with security camera-like eyes. She can’t be sure, since Cyn’s body circles around the couch several times, but she must be at least 100 meters long.

In front of her the body rises up like a snake, looming over her, and at the head is Cyn’s maid body. The legs are gone with the lower torso fused to the twisted centipede. Cyn’s visor is covered in a brilliant sulphur solver symbol. Uzi slowly gets off the couch and walks towards her. The head lowers towards her, letting them meet at eye level. She can’t see Cyn’s main eyes anymore but she can feel all the others staring at her. Cyn’s drone arms are shaky, hesitating between reaching out and staying put. She’s still nervous.

Uzi reaches out instead, putting her hands on Cyn’s cheeks. Cyn giggles, her jaw splitting open like a mandible, mouth full of sharp fangs. She stares into Cyn’s visor. It feels like a black hole, like the symbol could keep drawing her in forever, letting her drown in Cyn’s being. She’s… She’s…

“Beautiful…” Uzi blushes when she realizes she said that out loud. Cyn does as well, solver symbol blinking back to her normal eyes. She tries to back away but Cyn grabs her arms, pulling her back and curling her massive body closer around them.

“Do you mean that Uzi? You do not think I am, a monster?” Cyn’s eyes drill into her, like this is the most important question in the universe. For her it probably is.

“No, I think you look freaking AWESOME!” Uzi cackles, finally getting through her shock and rushes around, examining all of Cyn’s different limbs, asking how they work and what they can do. Cyn is surprised at first but ends up giggling as well, especially once Uzi finds out that the underside of her body is ticklish. The two spend the rest of the night talking, completely wrapped up in each other (in some cases literally).

If only it could last forever.

Chapter Text

J gasps for air she doesn’t need as she’s unceremoniously dumped onto the floor. She looks around frantically for any threats. The last thing she can remember is that purple toaster pointing a gun at her core, and pulling the trigger. And then… and then…

And then nothing.

She died.

She gets a proper look at her surroundings. She should have been woken up by a trained technician in an official JCJenson (In Spaaaaace) Drone Reconstruction Facility. This looks like… it can’t be. There’s no way she’s back here. But it must be. She recognizes the scratch marks the freak left in here one of the times J had to lock her down here (don’t think about it don’t think about it). She’s down in the basement of Elliot manor.

It mostly looks the same as she remembers, stains, scratches and all. The only new additions are the three stasis tanks against the wall. One is empty and cracked open, the one she came out of. The other two are still filled with fluid, and have disassemblers floating in them. She leans in to take a closer look but jumps back when she recognizes them as N and V. These must be their backups. Creepy.

Cautiously, she goes up to the trap door. It’s not locked. She opens it a crack and peeks out. It’s the manor library, exactly how she remembers it. The curtains are pulled shut. It seems like someone finally cleared out all the decommissioned drones that had been stored here till they could be properly disposed of. I mean, of course they would have, it’s been nearly 20 years.

She passes by a familiar shelf, full of books about animals. These had been N’s favourites. He’d spent hours reading then to Tessa and V and her and the freak. Robo-god he really loved that little psycho. V had too, but she was too timid back then to admit it. Tessa liked the defective thing for a while, but when her glitches became too noticeable, they had to start hiding her, lest Tessa’s parents dispose of her (and probably the rest of them). It was for the greater good (no matter how much it hurt).

J shakes her head. No use getting lost in the past. Tessa must be here, it’s the only reason she’d have been woken up in this place. She exits the library and wanders through the halls of the manor. The lights are all off, the curtains drawn. It’s strangely empty, no staff anywhere, and no sign of the Elliots. Nearly every corner of this place is full of memories, both good and bad.

Eventually she comes to the ballroom, with light spilling from the half cracked open door. She can faintly hear someone talking inside, and the sound of china clanking. This must be where she’s supposed to be. She takes a deep breath in through her vents, steels her nerves and opens the door.

The ballroom is the same as she remembers it. Tables scattered around, that big stupid globe Mr. Elliot bought cause it make him look ‘worldly’, whatever the fuck that means. It’s all stupid pretentious stuff to impress other rich assholes. Sitting at a table in the center of the room, sipping tea, sits her goal.

Tessa

And… robo-god fucking dammit.

On one side of the table is Tessa, dressed up in her technician’s jumpsuit, her helmet sitting on the table next to her. On the other side is the menace herself, Cyn, still in her maid uniform. Also attempting to sip tea (and failing spectacularly. She better be planning to clean that up). Both notice her and turn at the same time.

“Rise and shine, Big Sister J <giggle>”

“Hey Jaybird! Good to see you’re up!”

It doesn’t feel real, seeing either of them again. She doesn’t say anything as she walks up to them, afraid that if she does they’ll poof away like a dream. Tessa reaches out and grabs her hand, green eyes sparkling as she smiles. J collapses onto her knees and tries to stop herself from sobbing. She fails.

“Tess… I… I…”

Tessa hugs her, letting J visor press against her stomach. “Shhh, it’s okay. You’re home now.” J lets herself cry for a few minutes. This isn’t how she imagined her return. She thought she’d stroll triumphantly into the manor, followed by her family team, proudly announcing that she’d completed her job, and was ready to return to her old one. And then Tessa would hug her and tell her how much she missed her and they’d…

But this is okay too.

“It’s okay Big Sister <pat pat>” Cyn can’t reach her so she just mimes patting the air. “We do not blame you.” J startles, calming down enough to stand up and glare at the little freak.

“The hell are you talking about?” she growls, having to make an effort to prevent her hands from switching to swords.

Tessa put a hand on her shoulder and held her back. “It’s fine Jay, Cyn’s right. We don’t blame you. It’s not your fault.”

“What… what do you mean?” she questions hesitantly. Did she do something wrong? But she followed all the rules! Was it about her getting killed? That wasn’t her fault! It was N’s!!!

“Well, you probably don’t remember too well,” Tessa rapped her knuckles on J’s skull. “But it was way back when, just before that big gala. My folks caught us dancing together and freaked out. Y’all were gone the next day.”

That… that couldn’t be true. She always assumed it was N or Cyn who got them sent off to be repurposed… but it was… no it couldn’t be… but why would Tessa lie to her? “B…but what about her?” she stutters and she shakily points at the other drone.

Cyn gives her a sad smile “I was too damaged to be rebuilt. I was thrown out again. Tessa found me. Again.” Okay that… that makes sense. The little thing’s gyros and motor control systems were always fucked, even if you ignored her speech problems.

“I am still mad at you though.” J whips around and sees Tessa glaring at her, a fiery anger in her eyes that she’s seen a million times before, but never directed at her. She stumbles back, tripping over and falling on her ass.

Tessa keeps talking anyway. “I mean, you did try to kill N. You know he’s my favourite Jaybird.” J can only watch in horror as it keeps going. “And don’t think I don’t know about how rough you were with him and V! You’re supposed to be the leader J, can’t you keep your temper in check?”

This isn't happening. This can’t be happening. It’s everything she’s dreaded, everything she’s told herself would never happen. Tessa would never treat her that way. But she is, and it is happening. She can’t tear her eyes away from Tessa’s, as much as she wants to. The anger burns in them, like a sick yellow fire deep inside her green irises.

“Don’t even get me STARTED on the quota. What possible reason is there not to tell them about it? I mean-” Tessa keeps ranting but J can’t hear it anymore. Her head is filled with static. Her entire being is dragged into those eyes. Eyes she loves. Eyes she spent years memorizing every detail of. So why…

Why are there yellow crosses burning inside them?

Why is her screen filled with static?

Why is the ballroom covered in blood?

Why is everyone screaming?

Why are her claws tearing Tessa apart?

Why is it all going black?

Why…

Cyn takes another sip from her teacup, spilling half of it down her front. “<frustrated> stupid arms. Stupid acting. Stupid plan.”

Her counterpart glares at her, skin warping to let the normal yellow x’s of her eyes through. “<annoyed> It’s your plan too.” She slips out of the jumpsuit, body moving more like a snake or a liquid than a human or drone’s. “<grumble> Didn’t work anyway.”

“<solemn nod> We pushed her too far.” J is convulsing on the ground, the Error 606 message flashing on her screen. The ballroom, the talking, the anger all must have cracked a few of the memory locks. “What now <head tilt>?”

“Time for plan B.” Both Cyns nod and stand up. They grab hands and sort of… melt into each other, metal and flesh squishing together into an unholy abomination. For a second her massive centipede-like true form is visible before it all collapses into a new body. Still short, her old maid dress swapped out for Tessa’s (it’s nicer), and with sinew and nerves reinforcing damaged servos. She stretches, letting her new limbs crack. Wearing Tessa like a suit has been fun, but it’s time for a change (and she’d like to be able to look at herself without crying again).

The ballroom flickers as holograms dissolve. Ancient blood stains and rubble reappear while all the furniture (save the one table) turns to ash. The view from the windows returns to the blighted orange hell she’s turned the earth into. Around the rest of the manor all the other illusions were falling as well. Cyn crouches down beside J and puts a hand on her head. It’s not strictly necessary but she likes the contact.

She roots through memory files and finds the ones causing the error. The only real options in this scenario are to fully unlock them, or let the virus wipe J’s mind clean, and as nice as it would be to start over with her, that’s not what’s needed right now. She lifts the blocks that she set all those years ago and waits for J to reboot.

It doesn’t take long. J’s visor flickers to life and she looks around confused, before locking onto Cyn, her eyes going hollow. Cyn grins, mouth full of jagged fangs. “Welcome back, Big Sister.” J scrambles back, all 7 eyes darting around the room, seeing all the carnage they wrought decades ago. And remembering it.

“You… I…” J looks down at her own hands. “I killed her. You made me kill her. She’s gone…” Cyn doesn’t answer. They both know the truth now. “She's gone. and I… I never realized, I didn’t remember. There’s no home to go back to…” She looks like she’s about to be sick, but there’s no material in her system to hurl up. “I hurt them… for so long… for no reason! I tried to kill him! For no REASON! Aha… ha ha… HAHAHAHA!” J starts laughing madly, tugging at her pigtails. It lasts far too long before turning into ugly sobs.

“Cyn… can you do me a favour?”J turns her head towards Cyn, who isn’t really sure how to deal with this. This is why she locked those memories, so she wouldn’t have to. That was maybe not the best idea in the long term. J crawls towards her, begging on her knees. “You’re the only one who can do this Cyn. The only one who can do it right.” Cyn kneels in front of her, eyes hollow and J grabs her hand, pulling it to her core.

“Please, I need you to kill me Cyn.”

She should have let the virus do its work.

Cyn acts on instinct (whose she’s not exactly sure) and pulls J into a hug. J freezes but she starts crying again once Cyn starts stroking her hair. This is all her fault. She’s still mad at J but FUCK this is not how she wanted things to go. She’s a terrible sister. She’s a terrible admin. She’s a terrible God.

“<sad> I’m sorry J… I can’t.” She can’t bring herself to look at J, to see how much she’s broken her. “We still have work to do. Things to make right. If you still want that after…” J nods against her chest, before slowly slipping into sleep mode. Cyn keeps holding her.

It's all her fault.

She doesn’t deserve them.

It's all her fault.

Monster.

It's all her fault.

Chapter Text

This is a great idea. Everybody loves bonding time! A nice outing for the girls. And N! The girls and N! He’s so giddy his tail is wagging a mile a minute (he’s already accidentally stabbed himself twice).

“Where the hell are we going N?” Uzi grumbles from behind him. V is between them, hands tied together. They all know it’s an empty gesture, but it makes Uzi more comfortable. She and V have been getting along better the past few days anyway! Hey, not threatening to kill each other is better than nothing!

“I told you, it’s a surprise!” he giggles. Both the girls roll their eyes, and then glare at each other. Uzi hisses. V growls. It’s frankly adorable. He looks up. It’s clear out, the moon and Copper-8 both shining brightly in the sky, surrounded by stars. A thousand times what you can see from Earth (how does he know that?). It’s a beautiful night. He lets himself relax in the moment, tuning out the girls squabbling behind him.

Before long, he leads the little group to their destination, a high-end clothes store N had stumbled across the other night. It’s on the far side of the spire from the bunker, so no one has gotten around to looting it. The windows are shattered but the angle and surrounding building have largely protected the contents from the elements. He throws open the doors.

“Tadah!” Uzi and V both stare at him. He chuckles and scratches the back of his head. “It’s a clothes shop! I thought we could all pick out some nice outfits! And then we can be DAPPER BUDDIES!” he spins around and does a pose on the last bit, letting his jacket fan out. Uzi scowls but V gives a small smile. YES! PROGRESS!

“N, I told you. I’m not going to that stupid prom.” Uzi grumbles. She had been very insistent about that the few times he had brought it up. And he gets it! It doesn’t seem like most people really get her, sadly (except Thad. Thad is cool). But he still thinks she should get to have fun!

“I know,” he pats her head. “But! That doesn’t mean we can’t dress up and have fun ourselves! We’ll throw our own party at the spire! You can play that music you like from your computer, and we’ll all dress up fancy and dance and have a great time!” His tail starts wagging again from how excited he is. It seems to be spreading to Uzi too. She tries to hide it, but she’s grinning too.

“Hehe, alright you big dork. We’ll have a party, and it’ll be WAY cooler than those losers lame-ass prom!” She cackles and runs into the store. He can hear several racks being toppled over. Oh well at least she’s having fun.

He glances over at V. She rolls her eyes but pats his shoulder (she untied her hands when neither of them were looking). “You’re doing good, N.” is all she says before she follows Uzi into the store, yelling “Hey toaster! Let me look through it before you shred everything.” He smiles and heads inside as well.

Uzi has, in fact, managed to stop herself from shredding everything (though a few of the display dresses look gnawed on). She and V are debating over colours (‘I’m telling you red doesn’t go with yellow!’ ‘How would you know, you wear the same shit every day!’ ‘SO DO YOU!!!’). He tunes them out (he prefers black anyway) and looks through the suits. Sadly none of them seem right. They’re all cut wrong, and he doesn’t like the pants. Pants suck.

One suit in particular catches his eye, but not in a good way. It’s a pretty normal looking black suit, just about his size, and it looks like something a butler would wear… and for some reason it really pisses him off. He growls and pushes it aside to look through the rest of the suits. Eventually he manages to find a top he likes (and a nice bowtie!) but still no luck with the pants.

They’re just wrong! He hates the feeling of them wrapping around his legs, and they get caught in his joints, and it feels like he can’t breath or move properly. Not to mention how hard it is to get the cuffs over his stupid clunky feet! They get in the way every time! And then he has to look at them! He wishes he had pegs like V and J…

“Yo N, come check this out!” Uzi calls from the other side of the store, breaking him out of his funk. Uzi has found a really good looking dress. It’s a strapless dress, made from a silky purple fabric, with a very nice skirt Uzi keeps spinning back and forth and a matching pair of purple gloves. “What do you think?” She asks with a manic grin on her face.

N squeals with joy. “It looks PERFECT on you!” He picks Uzi up and spins her around till they’re both dizzy and giggling. Uzi gives him a quick hug (progress!) and runs out of the shop, probably to go raid the other stores. He saw an electronics store on the way over, she’ll like that. “Change out of your dress before you start wrecking things.” he calls after her. She flips him off. “She’s a good kid.” he chuckles to himself.

V scoffs from behind him. “You’re really attached to that thing, aren’t you?” He turns around and blushes. She’s picked out her own dress, another strapless number but this one much more form fitting and bright red. The fabric sparkles under the light of the moon, like it’s covered in glitter. Ironically, even with the slit down the hip, it’s actually LESS revealing than her normal outfit. He shakes his head and answers.

“It’s not like she has anyone else… you look nice.” V nods in acknowledgement, and changes the topic.

“So, how’s your outfit coming along?” she grins at him and he groans.

“I’ve got a top I like… but I can’t find any bottoms.” He shows her the shirt and jacket and she nods in approval.

“Pants again?” he nods in answer. V had been really helpful getting J to back off when he stopped wearing the uniform pants that came with his trench coat years ago. She didn’t ask any questions, she just GOT it. It’s one of the nicer memories he has from before Uzi showed up…

V drags him over to the section he’d been browsing before and starts looking through it as well. Despite the second set of eyes they still had no luck finding anything he could stomach wearing. “I don’t know what it is V!” he groans in frustration, slumping into the floor with his head between his knees. “I mean… I do but still! Argh, I just need to get over it…” He just needs to get over it and stop being a synergistic liability bad friend. He’ll be fine, it’s just pants. He curls up tighter.

V looks at him sadly, before dragging him up and standing him in front of a mirror. “Alright, I’m trying something. I think you’ll like it but close your eyes.” He does what she asks. “All of them N.” he giggles and shuts off the optics on his head as well. “Good, now just follow my instructions. Arms up.”

She slips the dress shirt around his shoulders and buttons it up, and then starts fiddling with the bowtie. This is nice, this feels… right. Like they’ve done this together a hundred times before. He tilts his head back to give her more room to work, going off muscle memory that shouldn’t even be there. Eventually she has the bowtie the way she wants it, and helps him shrug on the jacket.

“Alright, left leg up.” He braces himself for the horrible sensation, but it doesn’t come. There’s something there, but he doesn’t know what. “Other leg.” The same feeling. It settles around his waist. It feels… good. Like it’s supposed to be there. V adjusts a few more parts of the outfit, smoothing wrinkles and adjusting the cuffs of the jacket, but pretty soon she’s done. “Okay N, you can open your eyes now.”

He starts at the top, too afraid to look down. His hat is gone and V’s messed with his hair a bit. It’s getting longer, it’s been a while since he cut it (why do disassembly drones grow hair anyway?). He likes it. Further down, the bowtie is tied expertly, much better than he’d be able to do himself. The dress shirt is smoothed out, with the jacket open over it. They both curve in around the waist more than he’s used to, it feels nice. And then around his waist… oh.

It’s a skirt.

Black to match the suit, it goes down to his knees. He can feel the fabric brush against his legs as he sways on the spot. He does a little spin and the skirt and jacket fan out. He feels giddy. This feels right, this feels good. It’s perfect.

“So? What do you think?” V asks, giving him a small smile. He grins back at her.

“I love it! Thanks V.” Before he can second guess himself, he kisses her on the cheek and scampers away to find Uzi. He can’t wait to show her his new outfit!

He doesn’t see V hold her hand to her cheek.

He doesn’t see her melancholy expression.

He doesn’t see the tears drip down her visor.

Chapter Text

V knows what she needs to do. This is the only way, The only path that might, just might, save her and N from Cyn’s wrath. She knows this, she’s known that since the start.

So why is it so fucking hard!?!

Why does he always have to worm his way deeper into her heart? Why does their purple tagalong have to be so… gah she can’t believe she’s admitting this, FUN to hangout with? Yes Uzi annoys the HELL out of her, and she’s weird as hell (always muttering like she’s talking to something no one else can see), but she’s interesting, and she can appreciate a fellow bringer of chaos. Despite it all, she LIKES the new status quo.

That’s why it will hurt all the more when she has to bring it all crashing down.

But DOES she have to? Cyn will punish her regardless. She certainly hasn’t been keeping up her end of the deal. But… Cyn has always had a soft spot for N. Maybe she can convince her not to punish him… It goes against every single instinct she’s built up over the last 18 years, but maybe… maybe she can just sit back and wait. Maybe she doesn’t have to make herself into even more of a monster…

Lizzy: U ready?
Lizzy: were set up here

Can she really do this? When he seems so happy? When SHE seems so happy? She glances down from her nest at the two. They’re trying to untangle a bunch of lights and tinsel Uzi looted from a shop doing a Christmas sale (didn’t the planet explode in June?). They both look so damn cute in those outfits (not that she’d ever admit that out loud). It’s adorable how he acts with her, it reminds her of the good old days, before Tessa and J started locking Cyn in the basement. Before Cyn got strange and cold and started taking them apart and putting them back together wrong. Back when they were still a family.

Uzi reminds her a lot of Cyn actually, and not just because she’s short (hehe, burn). They’ve both got strange interests, are much smarter than they look, and neither seem to be… all there some of the time. They’ve got differences too, with Uzi being the aggressive to Cyn’s passive aggressive. Also they’re both infuriatingly sarcastic. Honestly it’s probably only a matter of time till N starts calling her his little sister. She wonders how Cyn would take that. Not well probably. She always hated the idea of being replaced.

V slips out of her nest and drops down to the floor. Might as well see if she can help out. The snow poofs up in a big cloud as she lands. N waves at her, and she can hear Uzi mutter ‘show off’. She grins, and struts over to them.

“Need any help?” the two had finally managed to get the lights untangled.

“Nah, we got it.” N says, plugging the end of the string into a powercell. The lights all come to life, blinking red and green.

“You sure? Probably hard to hang those up with only one person." She flexes her wings to emphasize her point. N gives Uzi a look and she grins.

“I’ve got it handled.” Uzi smirks, and grabs the end of the string. “Check this out.” Uzi squints and concentrates, and then

And then

…

It’s purple

Why is that the first thing she notices??? Of COURSE it’s fucking purple. There are OTHER THINGS TO BE CONCERNED ABOUT RIGHT NOW!!! How the fuck is this even happening? Why is it happening again? Is she fucking cursed? Is N? How is she going to explain it to him, when she has to kill her? (can she even kill her?)

While V has her freakout unnoticed, Uzi threads the lights around the beams and outcroppings that jut from the spire’s walls. She’s concentrating hard, sticking out her tongue with one eye narrowed and the other replaced by a solver glyph. She finally gets them how she likes and grins at V. “Well, what do you think?”

V shudders, holding her arms behind her back, trying to stop them from flexing into her claws. She can’t do this, not here, not now. She has a plan. Just follow the plan. Follow the plan and everything will work out. “That’s… really cool Uzi.” Then she opens her wings and flaps back up to her nest, leaving two very confused bots behind her.

She grabs her head, curling up and trying to stop hyperventilating. Her tail is lashing around like crazy. She can vaguely hear the two talking down below, but the words don’t make it into her head. It’s happening again. She’s back. V knew she’d come back. She has a plan. She knew this would happen. This doesn’t change anything. She’ll be okay. They’ll all both be okay. Just do your job, and you’ll be safe.

SD-V: I’ll head over in a few minutes
SD-V: Just need to finish some last minute things
Lizzy: whatevr grl
Lizzy: just get ur ass down here

She grabs some loose paper and quickly jots down a note. No point luring Cyn Uzi to an ambush if she doesn’t know where it is. She glances down. They’re still decorating, but giving her an anxious glance every few minutes. She waves down at them. There, that should buy her at least 10 minutes. That’s all she needs.

She checks again to make sure they’re not watching, and takes off silently, hovering up and out the hole at the top of the spire. She perches and double checks. There’s her target, a recently uncovered skylight (honestly the non-door-based security in that bunk is HORRIBLE). She can see coloured lights coming from inside. Must be some party.

Time to turn it into a massacre.

Uzi can’t really put her finger on what’s bugging her. V has been better the last few days. Less openly antagonistic, more just bitchy. She was actually sort of getting along with the girl. And to be fair, scrambling off to do her own thing is pretty normal for her (if anything about V can be called normal (> Pot meet kettle :P) Shut it). Still, something seems off. N notices it too.

“Do you think she’s okay? Did I do something wrong?” he frowns. He always blames himself whenever V’s upset or grumpy. Which is dumb, but she kinda gets it. At least two of them have been doing better lately. She pretends not to notice the longing looks V gives N when she thinks no one is watching. Gross. Hopefully they can work out their relationship drama, preferable when she is NOT in the room.

“Nah, she’s just being a bitch, like normal.” Uzi pats his arm and starts psychically wrapping tinel around the landing pod. Demon-god-magic sure does make menial tasks a lot easier! She’s been practising a lot, both irl and in her dreams with Cyn. Her control has improved a lot! She glances up to see V peeking down from the lip of her nest. She gives them a jerky wave before hiding again.

> She does seem rather
> Tense

N unknowingly echo’s Cyn’s sentiment. They both have a point. V is being a lot more strained and weird than she normally is. She hums in acknowledgement. It takes her another few minutes to figure out what’s rubbing her the wrong way.

“She called me Uzi…” N looks at her curiously. She elaborates. “Before she went back up, she called me Uzi. She never calls me that.” It’s always ‘purple thing’ or ‘menace’ or ‘toaster’, but never her name. “I think you’re right. Something’s up.”

N nods. “Let's give her a second to calm down. We can check on her once we’re finished down here.” It only takes them another 5 minutes or so to finish up, and they head up to V’s nest, N flying and Uzi latching on to a hunk of metal with her solver and riding it up. N gets there first.

“Aw biscuits, this isn’t isn’t good.” She looks to see what N’s found. It’s a note, hastily scrawled and left on top of a stack of books. She leans over to read it.

Gone to prom. Don’t wait up XP

Fuck.

Uzi groans. “Of course. Of FUCKING course!. I’m such a fucking IDIOT!” she hid her head in her hands. She let herself fall for it. Gah! Stupid! Of course no one would ever just be NICE to her. Of course it was all a stupid fucking trick. Robo-god she’s so fucking DUMB! She growls, fangs digging into the plastic inside her mouth.

> Uzi
> You need to calm down.

“No!” she yells, not caring that N hears. “I’m not gonna fucking calm down!” She jumps down to the ground. The snow steams around her feet and she starts walking, leaving a trail of sizzling footprints behind her. N drops down behind her. “Come on.” she gestures for him to follow.

“What are we gonna do Uzi?” he asks nervously. He must have a lot of the same things going through his mind too, but she can’t bring herself to care right now. She’ll deal with the emotional fallout (from both of them) later.

“We’re gonna crash a party.”

Chapter Text

Lizzy glances at her internal clock. She’s late. Stupid unreliably genocide robots. This whole thing was a nightmare to plan. Getting Doll to off the rest of the prom committee was just step one (and a boon to her, robo-god she hated those shallow bitches). Moving the venue, clearing the skylight, getting Thad to DJ, setting up all the decor (which she SHOULD have done BEFORE killing the others), and now the lynch pin was running late! Gah!

She tells herself to calm down. This will work. Doll will get her revenge, and the freak will probably show up and they can finish the job. Then the two of them can finally have the life together they’ve always dreamed of. Hell, the two of them could probably rule this bunker! Or maybe they could conquer the surface! With only one disassembler left, it should be easy for the two of them.

She giggles to herself. They’ll have all the time in the world to plan their future once they’re finished. Right now, it’s time to focus on the plan. She looks around the room. All the losers are awkwardly shuffling around. She glances over at Doll, who gives her a thumbs up. She shoots one back. Everything is in place. They just need to wait. She’s so tense she almost misses the text.

SD-V: I’ll head over in a few minutes.

She groans internally and messages the drone back. This thing is going to be the death of her (not literally). She sends a look over at Thad, who nods and switches the music. She wanders her way over to Doll as a slow song starts. She holds out a hand to her girlfriend. “May I have this dance?” she grins.

She actually managed to convince Doll to ditch her cheerleader outfit for the night. Her girlfriend was in a very nice red skirt and dark burgundy top. They looked extremely attractive on her (and they’d look even hotter once they were splattered in oil). It went well with her own heart patterned lilac dress. Thankfully her and Doll are the same size, so picking out clothes for her is easy, when she can convince her to wear something less ‘[practical]’.

Doll lets out a rare giggle. “[Alright, if we have time.]” Lizzy nods and Doll takes her hand, leading her out onto the dance floor. The riffraff get out of their way as they gravitate to the center of the room. She knows the others are probably watching them, but it all seems to melt away as she feels Doll’s hand on her waist, and they gently sway together.

Lizzy hides her face in the crook of Doll’s neck, and Doll holds her tighter. This is nice. It’s been a long time since they got to have a tender moment like this. It’s been all plotting and murder and whatnot. Doll whispers in her ear. “[Thank you, Lizzy]”.

She blushes and presses in closer to her partner. She can feel the heat of Doll’s core against her chest, like a miniature sun. “ ‘s nothing.” Doll presses a kiss to her forehead.

“[It’s everything. None of this could have happened without you. So thank you.]” They dance for a few more minutes before she gets the message that V is in place. Doll finds her spot in the crowd, and Lizzy gets Thad to turn down the music and patch in the mic. It’s showtime.

“Alright losers,” She announces to the assembled crowd. “Before we get to announcing prom queen-”

“Where’s the rest of the court?” one person yells from the crowd. There are mutters of agreement. She scowls. Doll had hid the bodies well, but the disappearances would only go unnoticed for so long. There hadn’t been enough time to properly frame the murder drones. Whatever, she can handle it later.

“I am the court.” That provokes more muttering. Dammit. “Augh, shut the fuck up or I’ll get my dad to tank your grades!” That got the rabble to finally be quiet. Good. “As I was saying, before we get to the main event, we’ve got a special guest for tonight.”

On cue, V drops through the skylight, slamming down onto the stage, cackling madly. Robo-god damn that red dress does look good on her. She’s almost jealous of the murder drone’s figure. Lizzy is stuck with the same boxy torso as everyone else. Shame the dress will be shreds before the end of the night, or she might try to steal it.

Glass scatters all over the stage and the crowd starts screaming and running for the exit. She rolls her eyes. If they want to miss the show that’s on them. Doll had suggested locking them in, but as hot as watching her girlfriend murder people is, the less potential witnesses the better and Doll’s already hopped up on enough oil to last as long as she needs. Besides, she already has her toy for the night.

“The purple freak on her way?” Lizzy asks. The murder drone nods.

“Left her a note, should only be a few minutes. More than enough time for me to finish off here.” She unsheathes her claws, visor flashing to a yellow x, taking a step forward, ready to pounce on her prey. Standing right where they want her.

The plan, as far as V was aware, was that she would get free run of the colony, so long as she killed a few people Lizzy had listed for her (the annoying ones), and ignored a few others (namely Lizzy, Doll and Thad). And then they’d lure out and kill the emo dork. Of course, only the last part of the plan will actually happen, preferably after V is already offline.

V jumps from the stage, towards one of the fleeing drones from the list. At the same time, Doll flicks her wrist, dragging the rebar cables from the bunker’s structure and impaling her prey through the torso. More bars sprout from the ground, stabbing through V’s limbs and pinning her to the side of the stage. She growls. “Hey what the fuck!”

Lizzy grins and snaps a few pics (totally making that one her wallpaper). “You didn’t think I’d actually let you massacre the colony just to move a few rungs up the social ladder, did you?” V glares at her. “You did? Really? That’s kind of pathetic. Are you really that desperate to get back to your murder status-quo?” V hadn’t said that explicitly in their conversations, but Lizzy can read between the lines. The girl just wanted things to go back to how they were. And that made her easy to manipulate.

V growls. “N and Uzi will get here soon, and they’ll fucking gut you, you prissy pink-” she’s cut off by Doll stalking up and putting a knife under her chin. Doll’s eye flickers and the cables coil tighter.

“[That’s what I’m counting on.]” Doll grins, letting the knife dig into the murder drone’s neck. Robo-god she’s so fucking hot. “[Two birds with one stone.]”

“Get… get the fuck off me!” V is panicking now, desperately tugging at her arms, trying to free herself, but to no avail.

Doll grins with sharp teeth. “[No, I don’t think I will. You said we had a few minutes, yes? That’s enough time for me to have some fun.]”

V is normally pretty good at keeping her cool in tense situations. This is not one of those times. Of course, of COURSE there’s a third one! It’s just her fucking luck really! She can feel the rebar wrapping around her core, threatening to squeeze it till she pops. Fuck… she going to die. She’s going to die and there’s nothing she can do and it’s all her fault. She’s such a fucking IDIOT!

“[Do you remember V?]” The knife traces a path along her cheek as the russian drone leers at her. “[It would have been about 10 years ago. You killed my parents]”. The solver flickers on her visor, bright red. Her memory bank calls up the last time she saw a red one. Priority Target Two, J had called her. This must be her daughter. But that would mean…

“Uzi…” She mutters. It’s hard to think, with a steel cable jammed into the connection between her brain and her heart. Her captor glares at her.

“[Yes, you killed my cousin’s mother as well. Well, not you personally. And yet, she abandons us to side with you!]” The knife stabs into her shoulder, wrenching upward and cleaving her arm from her body. She groans in pain. It starts regenerating, but it’s slow. She hasn’t had decent oil in days. “[I am going to make you plead for mercy, like my mother did. And then I will show you exactly the same amount you did that day.]”

Her vision grows blurry as the metal digs deeper into her core. She’s going to die here. Cyn This bot is going to end her, here and now. The bright yellow red symbol flashes, the knife slices off her leg at the knee. She can barely feel it. The drone is ranting again. She can’t make out the words. Darkness starts to fill the edges of her screen. She can see them, N, J, Tessa, Cyn, even Uzi. Expressions blank, staring at her from the far end of the room. All her ghosts come to haunt her one last time.

“I’m… sssor-” she’s cut off by a knife stabbing into her mouth and cutting out her tongue.

“[What, you’re sorry? Is that what you were trying to say?]” The knife slices through her cheek, leaving her face as a sick half grin. “[You do not get to be sorry. You’re a monster. The only thing you deserve is the pain I intend to inflict.]” The russian drone is right. She’s nothing but a monster. She always has been.

Suddenly, there’s a loud crash and the pressure on her core lets up. The haze clears from her eyes and she can see what’s happened. Surrounded in a halo of glass, wings outstretched and swords drawn, railgun primed, both with sharp toothed scowls. Uzi and N. Her friends. Her family. They… they came to stop her. They know what she is, what she’s always been. She’d much rather die at their hands.

“Alright, what the fuck is going on here?”

Uzi’s eyes flicker between Doll, Lizzy and V, but the barrel of her gun never leaves Doll. It hasn’t since she saw her. The scene in front of her is frankly nightmarish. V pinned to a wall with cables worming through her body like parasites, half her face hacked off, while those two psycho’s leer down at her. She feels another spike of heat in her core. The hem of her skirt starts smoldering

“Alright, what the fuck is going on here?”

Doll spins around and gives her a shark grin “[Ah, cousin. You’re early. How kind of you to join us.]” She hurls the knife in her hand but Uzi just knocks it aside. She doesn’t want to think about where all that oil came from.

N takes a step forward. “V? What’s going on? Are you-” but is cut off by a knife just missing his head. She motions for him to step back, and after a second he does, expression hardening as he glares at Doll.

“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it? Get us all here so you could try to kill us?” Uzi growls.

“[It was Lizzy’s plan actually. Your murder pet was quite willing to follow instructions, for the chance to get rid of you.]” Doll smirks and Uzi glances at V. Her eyes are hollow and terrified. She’s honestly surprised the murder drone is even conscious with all that metal inside her. Whatever, they can deal with her later.

“I don’t care who’s plan it was. I’m sick if you fucking with me!” she ducks one knife and grabs the other with her solver, flinging it back at Doll, who simply side steps. The heat flares in her chest. It feels like she’s melting from the inside out. She can hear Cyn trying to get her to stop, but she tunes her out. She can’t get distracted now.

N switches both hands to machine guns and aims at Doll and Lizzy. “Let her go. Now.” he snarls but Doll just ignores him like he’s not even there.

“[Yes, I do believe it’s time to end this charade. You are dangerous, Uzi. You possess a great power you have no idea how to control. Look at yourself, you’re practically melting.]” Uzi growls and Doll smirks at her again. “[You’re weak. You always were. I will avenge our mothers, and wipe these monsters from the planet, including you.]”

Doll fans her single knife out into 10, and each starts spinning like a saw blade. She hurls all of them at the same time, spread out so she can’t dodge them all. She braces for the impact but it doesn’t come. She opens her eyes. N is in front of her, teetering unsteadily on his feet. She quickly catches him before he falls over. Her breath hitches.

The knives are all buried in him, torso, limbs, one in his head. His skirt is torn up. His eyes are glitching. And the worst part is…

Is…

The knife stabbed straight through his core.

“Hehe- aw biscuits… this feels familiar…” he trails off, visor glitching harder and voice fading to static. She shakes him, yells his name but he doesn’t respond. He’ll be alright. He has to be alright. He regenerated his head for fuck’s sake! (J didn’t regenerate when her core was shot) Shut up he’ll be fine! It’ll be fine! When did it get so hot in here?

She’s burning up. She can feel it. Her core is trying to melt her insides. Her diagnostic systems flash temperature warnings, and scream about a lack of materials. Doll stalks towards her, more knives pulled from the ether. Fangs dig into her mouth. Her arms prickle as something forms on them. She can feel her mind starting to go fuzzy around the edges. Everything starts going blank, except one thought.

Doll hurt N.

Doll hurt V.

Ì̸̡̑̅'̸̥̀̈m̶̧͠ ̴̥͈̓͗g̸̼̣͉̓̓ơ̸̖̤̤̂ḯ̶̡̛̘̃n̸͙͖͆ǵ̵̳̓̏ ̸̗̑̄̈́t̶̲̘͋o̷̮̎̏ ̸̭̠̃̌͌k̴͕͔̄̎i̶̢̡̞̐̓̋l̷̥̟̍͆l̴̘̺̐̃͝ ̶̩͒h̷̪̬̯͑̂ḛ̶̢̈r̶̙̜̦̒.̷̧͕̲̉̾͆

Chapter Text

Doll has been preparing for this night all her life. Finally, she can rid her world of these monsters. One down, one trapped, and one left to handle. Her cousin will be easy prey. She’s always been the weaker one, breaking down when her mother died. Doll hadn’t let the grief break her, instead it had made her harder, better. Now is the time to prove it.

“[Give it up, cousin. Your pets are gone. It’s just us, and we both know you can’t beat me.]” Uzi doesn’t respond to the taunt. She doesn’t even look up, visor still trained on the dead drone at her feet.

Lizzy rolls her eyes from the stage. “Uugh, they’re so sappy. I wanna hear some screams damn it.” Doll grins and grabs another knife. Screams she can certainly manage. Anything for her girl. She flicks her hand, fusing the door to the gym shut. No more interruptions. She grins and stalks towards her cousin.

It’s almost too easy, nowhere near as satisfying as it was to torment V. Oh well, she’ll just finish her off, and then get back to her fun. Still not reacting, her cousin just kneels in front of the dead boy. She grabs her by the neck and lifts her off the ground to face her at eye level, letting her feet dangle a few inches off the ground. Uzi’s visor is blank, no eyes, no expression, not even a sleep mode or rebooting indicator. Maybe the stress had forced her to shut down. Whatever.

She points her knife at the girl’s core. Even from a foot away she can feel the heat radiating from it. Uzi is a weakling, it’s finally time to put her down. “[Goodbye, Cousin.]” She thrusts the knife forward, but it stops short. She looks down, seeing that Uzi has grabbed her wrist, stopping the killing blow.

Doll looks back up to be met with a fanged grin and a blazing purple X on Uzi’s visor. Jaws unhinge and snap forward, clamping down on the arm gripping her neck. She yanks back and rips Doll’s arm off, oil splattering all over their dresses as Uzi drops to the floor. She scurries away, giggling. Doll growls. Perhaps this will be a real fight after all.

Now that she’s able to get a proper look, Uzi seems… wrong. Hunched over as she devours the arm she ripped off, giggles morphing into screeching cries and back. A forked tongue darts out from behind her fangs before retreating into her mouth. Clearly she’s lost herself to the demon.

“[I always knew you would be a failure.]” she spits, wincing as her arm regenerates. Uzi growls and lunges at her, hands no longer their normal hard plastic, instead covered in mottled black and purple scales that run up her forearms, and ending in wickedly sharp talons. Doll just barely manages to dodge the swipes, moving a folding table between herself and the beast.

Uzi responds with a mix of hisses, giggles, caws and chirps. She tries to vault the table but Doll lifts it up, smacking her away. Not deterred, she tries to slide under, only to have it collapse on top of her. Doll grimaces to herself. This isn’t her somewhat intelligent cousin anymore, this is a feral animal.

The next time Uzi climbs onto the table, Doll lets her only to fling her and the table across the room. Before she slams into the wall though, there’s a flash of heat and the horrible sound of rending metal and squelching flesh. Uzi changes direction in mid air, lunging back at her cousin with her new wings outstretched.

They’re massive, each easily the size of her entire body, a bit bigger than the murder drone’s wings, covered in pitch black feathers, with more of the scales covering the joints where they meet her back. Doll rolls to the side, just barely avoiding a swiping claw. She tries to dodge the next one but sometimes slams into her side, pushing her right into the slash. A tail, massive and scaly, like the back end of a snake.

Uzi giggles, letting her new appendage swing back behind her, digging her claws into Doll’s torso and ripping out a chunk of her internals. She grits her teeth. She can’t heal many more hits like that. She can hear Lizzy calling her name in a panic, which unfortunately gets the beast’s attention. Uzi tosses the oily mass she tore from Doll to the impaled murder drone, who stares with blank hollow eyes. Uzi nods and chirps at her, before turning around and stalking towards Lizzy.

Doll begins to panic. This isn’t how anything was supposed to go. Lizzy isn’t supposed to be in any danger. She looks around frantically, for anything that could put a dent in the monster her cousin has become. She spots Uzi’s gun on the floor a few meters away. The strap had broken at some point and it has been flung off. How poetic, killing her cousin with her own weapon.

She grabs it with her solver and fiddles around with the controls. Damnit, why did she have to make this stupid thing so complicated! By the time she’s figured it out, Lizzy has been backed into the corner of the stage by the cackling monster. “Doll! A little help here!” She tries to bat Uzi back with the mic stand but her claws just shred through the metal like tissue paper.

“[Working on it!]” She flips off safely and the gun crackles, the barrel glowing. She aims down the sights, doing her best to keep Lizzy out of the line of fire, and pulls the trigger. Green lines converge into a massive burst of plasma, shooting across the room and tearing through Uzi’s torso, vaporizing most of her torso and one of her wings. That should keep her down.

Doll quickly rushes over to Lizzy. The girl is okay, if a little shaken. She’s used to violence, but not being on the receiving end of it. “Well…” she mutters shakily. “This night could have gone better-” She’s cut off by a scaly tail wrapping around her and tossing her into a stack of chairs. Doll whips around, pulling the trigger of the gun, only for the stupid thing to say it’s out of charge.

Uzi is back up, completely regenerated somehow despite Doll being sure she hit her core. She giggles, tail lashing around before darting out and grabbing Doll’s ankle, hoisting her up into the air. She shrieks and throws the gun, hoping that will at least buy her some time. Uzi just catches it, and eyes it curiously, making more of those strange chirping noises.

Then she eats it.

Fangs rip through metal and circuits, the gun letting out a small burst of plasma as teeth sink into the power core before Uzi swallows it all down. She truly must have completely lost her mind if she’d destroy her own invention. Then, her visor switches to the solver symbol, and a loading bar quickly starts filling. Doll can hear cracking and shifting metal coming from Uzi’s throat.

The tail flicks, tossing Doll into the chairs as well, where she lands on top of Lizzy. They both groan. Doll is nearly out of oil. She won’t last much longer. Uzi flaps down from the stage and cackles, staring at them from across the room. Doll shakily gets to her feet, putting herself between the monster and Lizzy. Uzi just grins, snapping her jaws. Sparks fly where the metal meets, and a green glow grows in the back of her throat.

Doll only realizes what’s about to happen a few moments before it happens. Uzi unhinges her jaw and unleashes a beam of energy from her mouth. Doll spins around and tackles her girlfriend, putting all her power into the solver and letting the static carry them both away, only inches from being melted into slag.

She rolls over into the snow, steam rising around her. She can hear Lizzy calling her name and shaking her. Good, she’s okay. Her processor starts to shut down and her vision grows dim. She stares up. Her amazing girlfriend, tears in her eyes, surrounded by stars.

Beautiful.

Khan Doorman slams into the door to the gym. Still stuck, just like the last three times. This isn’t good, doors are supposed to LISTEN to him! He needs to get in there. He’s been too lax, he knows that, not protecting the colony when he should have, not keeping the murder drones out. He’d been beefing up security ever since he ran into his daughter and one of the monsters casually walking down the halls of the bunker like they owned the place. So when he heard screams and shouts from the gym, he rushed over with the rest of the WDF.

“Dammit!” He tried to look in through the windows but they were covered in frost. At least he could be relatively sure the beast is still inside the gym. The vents in there had all collapsed years ago, and as he was frustratingly aware the door is still sealed. The second one had probably arrived by now. They were never alone for long when they’re hunting.

“Boss?” He turns to look. Ah, someone finally grabbed that welding torch he called for ages ago! He grabs it and starts burning his way through the door. It seems like something had melted the two halves together. Maybe a stray laser from a murder drone. He tries not to think about who else he knows who has a laser. It takes longer than he’d like but he finally manages to crack the door open. Inside is a horror show.

He watches as his niece gets tossed across the room by… something. It has massive black wings, and a long snake-like tail. It reminds him of some of Nori's kooky insane drawings from back in the day. He quickly glances around the rest of the room. Both murder drones are there, but out of the fight, one stabbed through the core, the other spiked to a wall. He’d give whoever did that a pat on the back after this. He also spots #2342’s daughter, in the same heap as Doll.

The thing starts stalking towards the girls, and he can get a better look at it as it passes under the lights. Feathery wings, like a bird. Scales covering its arms, with horribly sharp talons at the tips of its fingers. A massive tail that swings around like it has a mind of its own. And… and…

And it’s wearing a striped beanie. His daughters. This… no it can’t be.

He watches in horror as the thing which can’t POSSIBLY be his daughter unhinges its jaw and vaporizes the two girls in a beam of plasma. The others try to rush in but he gestures for them to stay back. This thing, whatever it is (because it’s NOT his daughter) just killed two people. They need to be careful.

It scurries over to the girl murder drone, making strange noises. When she doesn’t respond, the thing starts tugging on her arm, and shaking her. Then it clamps its jaws around her shoulder and starts pulling her off of the spikes. He reaches for his gun, and the others do the same. One monster is enough, they probably can’t handle two.

“Adorable, aren’t they <grin>?” A voice comes from beside them. He spins around to find the boy murder drone, knife still embedded in his chest, leaning against the wall. His visor isn’t eyes or an x, but a strange triangular symbol that seems familiar. His voice is strange as well, different from the last time he heard him speak.

All the guns train on him, but with a flick of his wrist, all the barrels are bent out of shape. “Now now, none of that.” the same symbol on his visor blazes on the tips of his fingers, that horrible sulphur colour. “The party is already over, and nobody got hurt, much <sarcastic smirk>” He’s mocking them. Khan grits his teeth.

Across the room, the monster has succeeded in dragging the murder drone from the wall and leans her up against a toppled folding table. It keeps trying to force bits of a disgusting oily mass into her hands, almost like it’s trying to… feed her?

“Uzi, no, she’s asleep <exasperated>” He freezes at the name, and watches as the other murder drone walks over to the two, not even caring about the ruined guns still fruitlessly aimed at him. The monster (Uzi… no it’s a trick) looks up at him curiously, making more chirping noises (purple, it… she has purple eyes). The drone smiles and pats her head.

“You’ve been busy <understatement>. Let's get you three home.” He rips the knife out of his core, metal smoothing over like a liquid, and scoops up the unconscious murder drone. “Are you good to fly on your own?” The m- Uzi gives what must be an affirmative noise and the drone turns back to face him.

“Well, this has been fun and also that’s sarcasm. Goodbye Khan Doorman <ominous>.” He opens his wings and flies out the hole in the ceiling, Uzi following just behind him.

Khan falls to the ground on his knees, and starts sobbing.

Chapter Text

N watches as V slowly comes to. Pouring oil straight into her core seems to have done the trick, and gotten her systems online enough to start repairs. She’s going to be starving after this though. She coughs, eyes flickering online one by one. They dart around frantically, looking for threats, but only finding the familiar surroundings of the spire.

“So,” he starts slowly. All her eyes immediately focus on him. “Care the explain what the fuck that was V?” there’s an uncharacteristic bite to his tone, but sue him, he’s MAD! She went behind their backs, and almost got herself killed! He’s allowed to be a little upset about it!

“What… what’s wrong with her?” V stammers, staring at his lap. Ah, right. He gives Uzi another scratch under the chin. She chirps happily in her sleep and stretches out in his lap, wings and tail limp. She decided he was the best sleeping spot and passed out almost as soon as they got back.

“How much do you remember?” N asks V. He blacked out for a bit after taking that knife and only came too towards the end. He remembers what happened, vaguely (grabbing V, leading Uzi back to the spire), but the details and the things he said elude him. It’s all fuzzy, like he was only a spectator in his own body. Things cleared up once they were near the spire.

“I… Uzi mauling the red freak, and tossing her guts at me… that’s the last thing I remember. After that I was too out of it.” She won’t meet his eyes. A part of him wants to back off, to avoid a fight, but he can’t. For Uzi’s sake and for his own, and even for V’s he needs to get to the bottom of this.

“Alright V, I know you’ve had a rough night, but you need to start explaining right now.” She doesn’t answer. She just curls in on herself, hugging her knees to her chest. “V, come on.” Still nothing. She turns away. She’s ignoring him now. For some reason that makes him even madder. He grabs her shoulder and spins her around so she’s facing him. “I’m serious V!”

“What’s there to explain?!” She growls and pushes him away, knocking Uzi off his lap and waking her up. V tenses, hands shifting to claws. Uzi squawks and ruffles her feathers. Then she crawls over to V and curls up against her side. V freezes, but slowly loosens up, hand going back to normal. “There’s nothing I can really say…” she’s quieter now, resigned.

He sighs. It’s hard to stay mad at her when she’s like this. He doesn’t want to pry, not when she’s this upset, but he needs to. He needs to know if Uzi will be safe around her, if she’s going to go behind their backs again. “I just want to know why V. I thought we were doing better, I thought you were. You seemed happy! You were getting along with Uzi, you weren’t ignoring me, what changed?”

She curls in on herself again, hiding her visor behind her knees. “I started talking to Lizzy a few days after we met Uzi, on that night you two went into the bunker.” She starts slowly. “It was her idea, but… I didn't object to it. I went along with it. I just… I wanted things to go back to how they were.”

He frowns. “What were you planning to do?” she peeks out from behind her legs and he rolls his eyes. “Obviously how things went wasn’t the plan they told you. What did YOU think you were doing? And yes, V, it matters.” She grumbles, but starts talking.

“She said she wanted me to kill some people for her. Her like, social rivals or something. And in return she’d… help me taunt Uzi into a fight…” He growls and barely suppressed the instinct to grab Uzi away from her. He grips the hem of his skirt, trying to stay calm.

“Why?”

“I told y-”

“NO! Things were better! You were happy! Don’t lie to me and say you weren’t! I’m not stupid V! You could have stopped it whenever you wanted! You didn’t have to go tonight, so why did you?” he yells, tail whipping around. V flinches and he doesn’t even feel that bad… fuck he might be angrier that he thought.

“I’m scared…”

He takes a deep breath and tries to calm down. “Scared of what, V?”

“I… I can’t tell you.”

“That’s not good enough.” He gets up, grabbing Uzi’s arm and starts leading her away. She chirps, glancing back at V before following. V scrambles to her feet.

“W…where are you going?”

He grips Uzi’s arm tighter, refusing to look back at V. He knows that if he does, he’ll break. He needs to be strong, for Uzi’s sake. “If you won’t tell me what’s going on, then I can’t trust you. We can’t stay here, not knowing you might try to hurt Uzi again. I’m taking her. We’re leaving.” He’s made up his mind. They’ll find a new place to stay, and get oil… somehow. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is keeping her safe.

He can remember the feeling of helplessness when the knife stabbed into his core. The sense of knowing that this is it, there isn’t any coming back from this. Uzi crying over him, V screaming in the distance. He couldn’t keep either of them safe then. Now, somehow, he’s got another chance, and he’s not going to let Uzi down again. It’s tearing him apart inside, but if he can only protect one of them then he has to pick his little sister little buddy.

“Wait, no, stop! N!” V reaches out to grab his sleeve, but he whirls around, hand swapping to a machine gun. She freezes, tears running down her visor. “Please N… I’m sorry… I… I…”

He sighs, putting away the gun. Uzi peeks out from behind him, tugging on his shirt. “I just… I can’t trust you if you won’t trust me V. I don’t want to go, but I can’t let you put Uzi in danger.”

“I’m sorry!” she sobs, falling to her knees. “I just… I need to keep you safe! I can’t let her hurt you!” She freezes up with the last sentence. N is debating whether to give her one last chance to open up when Uzi wriggles out of his grip and darts over to V, wrapping her in a hug and softly chirping. Seems like the decisions made for him.

He kneels down in front of her and takes her hands in his. “I want to keep you safe too, and Uzi. And I can’t do that if you won’t tell me what you’re afraid of.” He squeezes her hand, staring into her eyes. “I care about you, a lot. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”

V is full on crying now, and she tackles him into a hug, pressing her face into his chest. Uzi giggles and wraps her tail around the three of them. V whispers into his jacket, “I love you. I’ve always loved you. I’m so sorry…” He hugs her tighter and kisses her forehead. He can freak out later, but right now she needs him. “I’ll tell you everything, but…” she trails off, obviously worried he’ll get upset, but he just keeps holding her. “Can we wait till Uzi is back to normal? She deserves to hear it too, and I’m worried you’ll be too upset after I tell you.”

That worries him. What could possibly be so bad that she doesn't think he can handle it? But he agrees to her request. The three of them end up in Uzi’s room in the pod, all cuddled up on her bed. Uzi is the first to fall asleep, followed by V. N watches the two of them, tails wrapping around each other, and smiles.

It feels good to have his family again.

Cyn flops into the captain’s chair in the pod. That was FUCKING exhausting. She forgot how annoying it is to try and control two bodies at once, especially when one isn’t something she’s used to. But it all worked out, they’re all safe and alive, and hopefully not traumatized too badly. She buries her head in her hands. God she really has fucked them all up, hasn’t she?

V and Uzi both almost DIED! N did!!! She can’t even blame V that much. The girl is clearly terrified of her, and for good reason. Spending so much time with J has really been putting into perspective just how much she messed her siblings up. J isn’t the only one who needs to apologize once they get to Copper-9. V at the very least, will never forgive her. N probably won’t either, if he remembers what she made him do. She knows J won’t until she finally lets her die.

There’s one bright spot to look forward to on their trip. She’ll finally get to meet Uzi in person! Spending time with her in the mindspace is nice, but it’ll be even better to actually get to hug her in real life! She REALLY wants to snuggle into those feathers. And that tail… If she's honest with herself, she’s a little jealous. Her own hybrid form just has the spiked limbs and holoprojectors. She can manage wings but it’s a conscious effort. Sure, she can remake herself into practically anything, but certain forms just feel more natural.

It comes to mind that she doesn’t actually understand very much about how the solver works. She’s always had a small sample size to draw from, but it’s become very clear that it affects every drone in a different way. Uzi’s natural form is completely different from hers, and she’s developed her own abilities. Cyn can’t integrate or replicate technology the way Uzi can, nor can she teleport or see the future. But then again, no one else has been able to make holograms like she can. It’s all very interesting.

She checks again, but Uzi’s higher functions are still offline. Probably will be for another few hours at least. A massive shock to the systems like that… thankfully she never had to deal with anything like that, her ascension had been much more gradual. Uzi will definitely be stressed once she wakes up. She’ll need to make sure the girl doesn’t hurt herself.

She’s jolted from her thoughts as J skulks into the command room. Her sister avoids looking at her. It reminds her of how they all used to act around Tessa’s parents. She hates that J thinks of her like that, but she knows she deserves it. J flops down in one of the other chairs, checking over the systems. They’re still at least a day out from Copper-9. Cyn decides to get her attention.

“Hello Big Sister J <wave>”

“Hi Boss…” J still won’t meet her eyes, not looking up from the console. She’s also started calling her boss, which she technically is, but it still annoys her.

“So, <awkward smalltalk> have you thought about what you’re going to say once we get there?” she rambles. She didn’t used to have problems talking to J, even back when she just hated her and wasn’t scared of her. Now it feels like she’s wading through mud every time she tries to connect with her. Serves her right, monsters don’t deserve family.

J mutters “Why are we even going?”

Cyn snorts. “<eye roll> You are going to apologize for lying about the quota, and for trying to kill N. I am going to apologize for… <awkward head scratch> well everything, and then I will leave you all on Copper-9 to do whatever you want. <sad> Including die, if you still wish.” J still won’t look at her and Cyn frowns. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

For the first time in days, J turns to face her, growling. “Are you really surprised? That I don’t trust you, after everything!” she crosses her arms and shakes her head. “I’m just supposed to believe you’re going to take your little girlfriend and fuck off? That you aren’t going to double cross me?” she snorts and rolls her eyes. “Not like I have any other option at this point…”

She wants to be angry, she wants to yell at J, to remind her why she should be afraid of her, but she doesn’t. She can’t bring herself to. J’s right, about everything. She doesn’t deserve her trust, or anything else. Maybe this whole trip was a mistake. Maybe she should have just sent J back without talking to her and left them on their own…

“You are right, you have no reason to trust me. Soon I will be gone, and it won’t matter. <resigned> For what it’s worth J, I am sorry.” She gets up and heads towards the engine room. She needs to be alone right now.

From behind her she hears “Whatever you say, Boss.”

Chapter Text

Uzi groans as her optics slowly flicker to life. Her head is KILLING her, fuck! And it feels like someone took a jackhammer to her back. What the hell did she do last night? They were going to have their own party at the spire… they got all fancied up and were decorating… Then what happened? She sits up and stretches her arms, joints creaking. Her wings stretch out as well… wait her wings?

She freezes, reaching for her back and grabbing a handful of feathers. She can feel the muscle twitching under her fingers, from both sides. These… this can’t be real, can it? She feels something else twitch. A massive scaly tail swings out from behind her. She can feel the blanket underneath it. She notices the scales covering her arms and hands. She tenses, and talons pop out from her fingers.

“Alright Uzi, just calm down… this isn’t real… it… it isn’t…” But it is. She knows it is. Cyn had warned her something like this would happen. She’d dealt with the fangs easily enough, but all this… She puts a hand to her chest. Her core is too warm, but not burning hot, yet. She feels queasy. Her breaths are quick and shallow. She needs to calm down. She needs to-

Her thoughts get cut off as an acrid taste fills her mouth, like rancid battery acid. She gags and spits up a glob of… is that plasma? She wipes the drool from her face and watches with both fascination and horror as the superheated matter starts eating through the floor of the ship. She quickly stomps it out before it can do too much damage. Her stomach feels better now. Her breathing steadies and she feels her core temperature starting to tick down.

> Feeling better now?

Uzi rolls her eyes. “And where have YOU been?”

> Thought it best to let you ride it out
> Unless it got too bad
> But you calmed yourself down!
> Good job :D

“Thanks for that…” she mutters. She flops back down onto her bed, or at least she tries. Her new wings are getting in the way. It takes a few minutes of figuring out but she manages to get them folded up like they had been while she was sleeping. “Do they ever… go away?”

> You should be able to shape change them away
> Once you learn how
> But they seem to be your new ‘default’
> So to speak

“Great.” She sighs and decides there’s no use sulking, and gets up. She’s still in her prom dress, but it’s all gross, sticky with oil. Thankfully neither the wings nor tail tore it. She has no idea how she’ll get her hoodie back on though. The tail should slip under the waist just fine, but the wings…

> This is why i stick with dresses
> Gets in the way less
> You could cut wing holes in it
> Shouldn’t be too hard to wiggle them through

Uzi decides to take Cyn’s advice, and peels off the stained dress. She can finally get a good look at what her body has become. The wings are attached to her upper back, around where the shoulder blades would be on a human. The plastic smoothly transitions to organic skin, scale and muscle, leading to the massive feathery wings. Each is easily as large as her. She gives them an experimental flap and lifts herself a few feet off the ground. She can fly!!! That’s fucking awesome!

Her tail starts wagging from her happiness. Great, she’s a dog now. N’s gonna love that. The tail is long, like a snake, and connects to the small of her back. It’s covered in black and purple scales, the same colour as her eyes. She tries to move it and finds that it responds quite easily, like a third limb. She can even wrap it around stuff to grab it! She can’t lie, that’s pretty damn cool.

The scales continue up her back, eventually meeting the wings where they cover the bare parts where the joint meets plastic. More cover her forearms and hands, leading to the sharp talons on her fingers. They’re not claws like the murder drones have, but more like bird talons. She flexes her hand and they retract into her. She does it again and they pop out. Honestly, now that the shock is wearing off, she’s pretty happy with the new changes!

> Knew you would be :P

“Dork.” she mutters, smiling. But still, none of her changed anatomy explains why she puked up a glob of plasma earlier, or even how.

> Ah yes
> Well… >w>

“Just spit it out, Cyn,” she grumbles.

> In your feral state
> You uh…
> You ate your railgun
> And assimilated it into your body

“WHAT!” she shrieks. She frantically looks around but her gun is nowhere to be seen.

> Yes
> It is not something I am able to do!
> I believe it may be a unique ability of yours
> Also you have plasma breath now
> So that’s cool :3

She has to admit that it IS pretty cool, but she’s still bummed about her railgun. Then again, she’s practically surrounded by spare parts all day, she can always build another one. Hell, she hardly even needs it now, if she can shoot the thing from her mouth, not to mention the new claws.

> That’s the spirit!

“Bite me,” she grumbles. As much as she loves Cyn, the girl can be annoying sometimes. She pulls on her usual sweater, using her solver to slice some thin slits in the fabric she can slip her wings into, and then stitch the fabric back up around them as best she can. The result works quite well, with her still having the full range of motion with her wings, and her hoodie staying (mostly) intact.

As she works, the events of the previous night start to clear up in her head. She can remember finding out the V had gone to the prom, presumably to cause a massacre. She had been so pissed off. She’d just started trusting, maybe even liking the other girl, and she’d gone and betrayed them. Of course, she didn’t find the oilbath she’d been expecting. Instead she’d found a different one, with her cousin and her psycho girlfriend torturing V.

She knew Doll was a bit unhinged (well, more than a bit to be honest), but she never thought she’d be capable of something like that. They’d tricked V into leading her and N there, all so she could get some twisted revenge on them all. Robo-god she can’t believe she’s related to that bitch. Then she’d… she’d…

> Don’t worry
> He is okay
> He brought you back here, along with V

She takes a deep breath in through her vents. Good, he’s safe, and so is V (as much as she hates herself right now for worrying about the other girl). She glances around the room, looking for any sign of the other two. She spots a note stuck to one of the consoles, along with a bottle of oil. She chugs it (damn she’s thirsty) and reads the note.

I wanted to let you sleep in more. We’re waiting outside for you to wake up. V’s gonna explain everything. I know you’re probably mad at her. I am too, but we should at least hear her out. Come out when you’re ready.
- N

Well, at least she’ll get some answers. She crushes the oil bottle and tosses it into her mouth. Tastes better than the oil, that’s for sure. She lets out a small chirp involuntarily. Huh, guess that’s a thing she has to deal with now.

> I think it’s cute :3

Ignoring that, she heads up the ladder and pops open the hatch. She can see N and V’s tails hanging out of N’s nest. She grins, a perfect opportunity for her first test flight. Hesitantly, she spreads her wings, and gives them a flap. They lift her up into the air and some instinct she didn’t know she had (and probably didn’t until last night) takes over, keeping her steady as she rises into the air. It’s not the smooth, antigravity assisted flight of the murder drones, more like that of an actual bird. She giggles, and spirals upwards slowly, enjoying the feeling of the wind on her feathers, before finally perching on the edge of N’s nest.

“Morning Uzi!” N says from his spot, curled up with V in a pile of blankets. N is grinning, but V is half hidden under the blankets, refusing to meet her eyes. “I guess you’re feeling better?”

She nods. “I’m myself again, mostly. You two look cosy.” she teases. N and V both blush. She giggles, flopping down on the opposite side of the nest. “So, I think I’m owed some explanations.” she deadpans. V sulks deeper into the blankets. Good. N and eventually V start filling her in on what happened after she went feral. The story was a bit patchy in places, since both of them had been nursing grievous wounds at the time, but she managed to get a pretty clear picture of events.

“So… they’re dead then? Doll and Lizzy? Not even you two could survive a direct blast of that much energy…” she thinks aloud. N shrugs.

“Doll could do that staticky teleport thing, right? So they might have gotten away…” she concedes he has a point. Doesn’t matter, no way those two will fuck with them again. The other two continue the story, eventually getting to N and V’s fight. Uzi is quiet for a long second.

“You’d really do that for me? Leave? Even though…” she asks N in a small voice. He gives her a soft smile.

“Of course I would. I don’t want to, of course, but I would in a heartbeat to keep you safe” She feels warm inside, and not because of the solver this time. He really cares about her… She already knew that but it’s still hard to believe it sometimes. He wants her to be safe, and happy, and doesn’t care that she’s weird. Getting overwhelmed, she scootches over to nuzzle into N’s other side. Normally she gets all flustered and angry about physical contact but with N (and Cyn, and sometimes V) it just feels right.

V leans over and puts a hand on her arm. “I… I really am sorry Uzi. For everything. I wanted to stop, to call the whole thing off but I got… I’m scared. And it’s a long story why. But I promised N I’d explain.” Uzi’s still too overwhelmed to respond and lets out a chirp, wrapping her tail around V’s waist and pulling all three of them closer together.

V smiles and sighs, then turns to face them both properly. “It all started about 22 years ago.”

Chapter Text

“Everybody CALM DOWN!” Khan Doorman slams his fist down on the table, and everyone finally shuts up. “Thank you. Now, let's have a calm, organised, PRODUCTIVE meeting please.”

“How can we do that when your DAUGHTER is letting those monsters in here to kill us!?!” one of the WDF members yells from the other side of the room. There are murmurs of agreement. “I heard she turned into one of them, straight up tore her cousin apart…” another person mutters. He’s rapidly losing control of the meeting again.

“We’re not here to talk about my daughter, dammit! We’re here to talk about how we’re going to keep the murder drones out of the bunker.” he sighs. It’s nearly impossible to get the WDF to have a proper meeting on a good day. This is not a good day. His second in command, Sarah, puts a hand on his arm.

“Like it or not, it is relevant, Khan. Uzi’s been staying with them, and she’s been letting them in. Not to mention, we all know what we saw last night.” Khan grimaces. The scene from last night has been running through his head non-stop. He can barely believe that that… thing is his little girl, but it is.

Another drone bangs his fist on the table. Ron. “I say we go out there and end it. They can die, we know that now. And all three are probably still weak from last night! One of them was passed out for fuck’s sake! We’ll never get a better chance than right now.” There are a lot of nods around the table. Khan shakes his head.

“There’s no way we have enough ordnance to take them down. Especially… especially if they’re back up to three. The male one wiped out a good chunk of our weapons last night. Who’s to say they can’t do that again?” He’s getting through to some, but the majority still seem to support Ron’s plan.

“Your daughter made a gun that could kill one. Who’s to say we can’t make one too?” Ron smirks, and Khan can tell he’s lost the crowd. They’ve all rallied around Ron, and there’s no stopping this amount of momentum. Sarah gives him a sad smile. He sighs and waits for the crowd to quiet down.

“Alright, we’ll try it your way. Gather every weapon and able-bodied member we have. If we’re going to do this, we’ll need to do it soon. We leave at first light.” The drones around the table nod, and he nods as well. “I’ll see what I can pull together. Sarah, go ask the construction team if they’ve got any plastic explosives left. Ron, this is your idea so you’re in charge of getting everyone prepared. Alright WDF, let's move out.”

They all disperse, heading off to their assigned tasks. Khan rushes back home and starts sorting through the old blueprints and designs he’d confiscated from Uzi, whenever she’d start getting too rambunctious, or blowing things up in the house. He thought it had curbed her tendencies, since she’d stopped leaving half build gadgets around the house more than a year ago. Clearly it hadn’t.

Eventually he finds what he’s looking for. A half-finished gun of some kind, along with a few sheets of blueprints. It’s complicated, but he’s Khan Doorman, master engineer. He can figure out his daughter’s amateur designs. He sits down and starts tinkering. A burst of sparks nearly sets his moustache on fire. This is going to be a long night.

Lizzy grunts, shoving aside the sheet of scrap metal that serves as a door to their little hovel. It’s not much, just the half collapse entrance to what might have once been an apartment complex, but it’s better than the toxic deathstorm raging outside. It doesn’t help that she has no idea where they are. Neither of them do. Doll was too panicked to properly teleport them. They’re honestly lucky they didn’t end up halfway through a wall or something.

She closes the hole back up and shuffles to the back, barely able to make out the faint red eyes of her girlfriend. “Alright Dolly, I managed to find some batteries and some scrap wires. They’re a little rusty, but they’re better than nothing.” Doll has barely responded since she woke up after passing out. It’s been hours. Lizzy’s starting to get worried. Doll still has that gaping hole in her side from what her emo freak of a cousin had done, but at least it isn’t leaking anymore. “Doll, you need to eat, or you won’t get better.”

Doll rolls over and mutters “[not hungry. You have it…]” Lizzy frowns. She’s not even that hungry yet, but Doll must be starving. Something is wrong, she doesn’t normally act like this.

“Dolly… What's wrong?” No response. “Please, talk to me, Doll. I can’t help if I don’t know what the problem is.” She rubs circles on Doll’s back, and she lets out a sob.

“[I am a failure. I had one opportunity and I wasted it. All your planning and hard work… I couldn’t even kill my idiot cousin, much less a murder drone… I’ve failed my mother, my people… I failed you]” She curls up into a tighter ball, tears streaking down her visor. “[You should just leave me here to rust.]”

Lizzy can feel her heart breaking. She hasn’t seen Doll this broken since her parents died. So, like she did back then, she wraps the girl in her arms. Doll sobs into her chest as she strokes her hair. “Shhhh, it’ll be okay. You didn’t fail me. You did so good, we’ll get them all next time. We’re in this together.” Doll presses into her. She can feel the warmth of her girlfriend’s core, but it’s weaker and colder than it normally is. “You need to eat, Doll. Let me help.”

She slides a hand under Doll’s chin, leading it towards her shoulder. Gently, she slips her thumb into her mouth, pushing it open. Sharp teeth find worn grooves in the metal, as they have a dozen times before, biting in and letting the oil flow out. Lizzy keeps holding Doll as she drinks from her. She can hear Doll mutter into her shoulder “[love you.]”

She smiles and whispers into her ear “I love you too.” Despite everything, there’s nowhere she’d rather be.

Chapter Text

“We… weren’t always like this.” She starts slowly. N and Uzi are both listening intently, hooked on her words. Good, she isn’t sure she can make it through this twice. “We… We used to be normal worker drones, the three of us. Me, J and you, together on Earth.” N’s eyes go hollow at the proclamation, but Uzi seems less surprised. She steals herself and keeps going.

“We worked for a rich human family, the Elliots. They were pretty high up in JCJenson’s corporate bullshit, real pieces of crap. They treated us… not even like slaves, they treated us like objects. They killed at least a dozen drones a month, some just for getting in the way.” Uzi growls, her tail wrapping tighter around V’s waist. N shudders, pressing back harder into the heap of pillows they’re sitting on.

“We were different though… we belonged to the Elliot’s daughter, Tessa.” At the name, a burst of static crosses N’s visor, but it clears up quickly. “You and me, we were thrown out, shut down and left to rust in a junkyard. Except, they didn’t do it right, so we didn’t die. Tessa liked drones, so she found us in the scrap heap and took us home.”

V smiles sadly, remembering the girl who’d taken her in, fixed her up and gave her her family. She hadn’t been perfect, but she had been there. N stutters before mumbling out “Did… did she save J too?”

She nods. “J was her first drone. Her parents let her keep her for her tenth birthday present. We came along about 3 years later.” Uzi splutters.

“She repaired J when she was 10!?!” V chuckles and nods.

“She was smart, wanted to be a drone technician when she grew up, not that her parents approved. You remind me a lot of her, sometimes…” Uzi blushes at that. The younger girl reminds her of a certain other person from their old life as well. She’ll have to get around to her sooner or later. She continues.

“Things were… not necessarily good, but they were alright. Tessa kept us safe from her parents, and J… well she kept us in line. She wasn’t as bad back then…” N nods, probably recalling how J’s discipline had steadily gotten more and more harsh over their years on Copper-9. She sighs, the next part will be hard.

“You and I… we were…” She reaches over and takes his hand in hers. He squeezes back, giving her a smile. Robo god she fucking loves him. “We were together. Like, romantically.” Uzi pretends to gag but she and N ignore her.

“And you… you still feel that way about me, right?” he asks, shyly, even though she confessed last night. She nods, tears prickling on her visor.

“I do, if you’ll still have m-” She’s cut off by N hugging her tightly. She presses into his embrace. The two of them stay like that for a minute before Uzi starts poking them with the end of her tail and telling her to get on with the story.

“About… 2 years after we were brought online, 20 or so years ago, Tessa brought home a new drone. She was… different from the rest of us. Strange and a little creepy.” She can’t bring herself to say Cyn’s name yet, even though she knows she’ll have to. It’s like her subconscious thinks saying the name will summon the demon. So she continues without. “Tessa couldn’t fix whatever was wrong with her. She moved jerkily, and spoke strangely, and couldn't really emote properly… but Tessa took her in anyway.”

She gets lost in memories for a long second. As much as she wishes she didn’t, she can still remember the good times with Cyn, before the basement, before she started getting worse, before she started twisting V into her perfect monster. Deep breath, just keep going. It’ll be over soon.

“She was really attached to you, N. She called you her big brother, and you called her your little sister…” N’s visor glitches hard at that and he rubs his head like it’s hurting. She stops but he gestures for her to keep going. Reluctantly, she continues. “I got along okay with her too. J and Tessa were more distant from the three of us then. There was something going on with them, but we never knew what.” Privately, she thinks Tessa and J were hiding a relationship from them and from her parents, but no point added her speculations to the story.

“Things were okay for a few months, but then… things started getting worse. Tessa’s parents were putting more pressure on her to get engaged,” Uzi growls at that. “And they were trying to get her to get rid of us. C- The new one was the last straw for them, I think… She was clumsy, always dropping things. So, Tessa started making J lock her in the basement.”

N and Uzi both stiffen at that, and she shudders as well. The basement holds bad memories for her for other reasons, but given everything, she can’t say she’s surprised Cyn turned out the way she did. “She got… worse. Stranger. Sneaking around at night, in the dark. Other workers started going missing, more than the Elliots were responsible for. She started… doing things, impossible things. Moving stuff with that same triangle you use. She got bigger, stronger, like a giant insect. Making holograms to hide it from everyone.” Uzi’s eyes are somehow even more hollow now. Like all this sounds… familiar somehow. That’s concerning.

“Eventually, she snapped. She massacred one of the Elliot’s Galas by taking control of us, and all the other working drones in the mansion. She turned us into… into this.” She flexes her wings and claws, and N goes the same, looking at them with a new sense of horror. “Then she moved on to the rest of humanity, forcing us to exterminate them. It was hell… being warped against our will and controlled like that. Once it was done, she wiped your mind, and J’s, and she sent us here. To kill anyone else who had the same power she did.”

Neither N nor Uzi respond. Both seem entirely lost in their own heads, but still listening. She sighs. She just hopes they believe her. “So, that’s what I’m scared of. She’ll know, she’ll know that we disobeyed her orders, and she’ll come for us. There’s no escaping her, not even in death. She can just bring us back, I’ve seen her do it before. I was… I was trying to do our job, so she wouldn’t come and hurt us… hurt you.” She stares at N, who doesn’t respond but does lightly squeeze her hand.

“She… It’s hard for me to talk about her, but you both deserve to know. Especially if she’s coming here, probably dragging J along with her. Her… her name is-”

She’s surprised as N and Uzi speak at the same time as her. Each of them saying the same name.

“Cyn.”

Uzi can’t believe what she’s hearing. It’s all too horrible for words. She knew humans were awful, but to treat the sentient beings they created like that… It makes her want to go to the Earth so she can help Cyn devour them all. Huh, maybe she can do that.

As the story progresses, she keeps waiting for the shoe to drop. She knows how they ended up here, since Cyn told her what she knows. Rebuilt and repurposed by a company that doesn't give a shit about their personhood, and sent to hunt threats to humanity. Threats like her. V’s probably scared of her bosses, but that doesn’t matter, Uzi will protect her.

Huh, when did she start thinking about V like that? Thinking back on it, it’s been in the back of her head ever since she woke up after the prom. Maybe it’s something to do with the new instincts that came along with her organic parts, like they see V as… family or something. Ew, gross. Stupid biological instincts.

V continues her story, and eventually a new character enters the scene, one Uzi’s never heard of. A 4th drone in the small pack of future disassemblers. She wonders why that one isn’t here. Maybe they couldn’t rebuild her, if she had as many issues as V says she did (why does that list of quirks sound so familiar…?) N freaks out a bit at the mention of her being his little sister. Probably something to do with whatever the company did to wipe his memories. She wonders why they didn’t do the same with V.

The story keeps going, and things keep getting worse. And unfortunately more familiar. The solver, holograms, a giant centipede-like body… but it can’t be. That would mean that she lied to her, and Cyn wouldn’t lie to her. She tries to reach out to Cyn, like she normally does, but there’s no answer. The comforting warm presence in her CPU is gone. She’s starting to panic.

V’s story keeps going. A gala, an apocalypse, and three drones, sent to hunt down her mother. Not by the company, because the company is gone. Three drones sent to make her into an orphan. To ruin her life. Sent by… sent by…

“Cyn.”

V gives her a look of shock, almost like she’s… scared. Of course she is. If Cyn… if Cyn really did those things (and it would be REALLY convenient if SOMEONE would speak up to deny that!), then of course she’d fear Uzi, who has the same powers. Who apparently already knows of her tormentor. Fuck… FUCK!

“FUCK!” she yells out loud, fist slamming into the floor, claws gouging a hole in a pillow, not that she cares too much at the moment.

“You… you know her…” V whispers, eyes hollow, staring at Uzi like she’s afraid she’ll morph into Cyn. Uzi nods miserably and sighs.

“I’ve known her since I was 8. She talks to me, in my head… about the solver, about… everything really. She’s my best friend… was, I guess.” She shakes her head, tears of frustration and anger in the corners of her visor. This has to be a bad dream, or some fucked up prank. Her best friend wouldn’t have killed her mother. (She’s a god, you don’t matter to her, says the traitorous voice in the back of her head. She would have done it, and she did, and you know it. Stop lying to yourself).

V continues staring in horror. She’s not sure whether the disassembler is about to kill her, or make a run for it, but she never gets to find out. They’re both interrupted by N collapsing onto the floor of the nest. Panicked, she flips him over and ice fills her chest. His screen flashes ‘Error 606’. Parents still told their children stories about that code to scare them into behaving, even with all the humans gone. It’s a fate worse than death. A total core wipe.

“Shit!” V yells, scrambling to get N into her arms. “She… Cyn must have left something inside him, to stop him remembering! He remembered her name on his own… fuck, FUCK!!!” V is panicking, holding N tight to her chest, head swivelling around as if looking for some way out of this. Eventually she stares at Uzi.

“I… I don’t know about you and Cyn, but… you… you care about him too, right? I just got him back, I… I can’t lose him again Cy- Uzi… k-kill me if you want I don’t care just please… please fix him… please… Cyn… please” The girl descends into desperate sobs. Uzi shudders at being addressed as Cyn… This is all wrong. Everything is wrong. This is a nightmare…

No.

No she’s not giving up. She’s Uzi fucking Doorman. She’s dealt with worse things than this, right? Hell fucking yah that’s right. It’s her turn to take care of them. She can deal with Cyn later. She scoops up the unconscious N and despondent V, somehow managing to carry them both, and brings them down to the pod. She sets them up together against her computer desk. She grips V’s shoulders, trying to get the girl to calm down.

“V… listen to me. I’m not Cyn, I’m Uzi, remember?” V stares at her with wide eyes, but nods. “I think I can fix him… but I’ll need to link your memories to do it, reinforce his with yours, if that makes any sense… but, if it doesn’t work…”

V nods, understanding. “If it doesn’t work I’ll get wiped to…” V stares at her for a long minute, before nodding. “I… I trust you Uzi.” she can feel a tear running down her visor. She hugs V’s head to her chest.

“Thank you.” Soon, the disassembler is in sleep mode. Time for her to get to work.

Chapter Text

N wakes up in an empty black nothingness. His head hurts. What was he doing again? V had been explaining something, telling them a story. It was… it was their story. He doubles over and grabs his head. It feels like his CPU is being deep fried. The void around him fills with static. He can hear voices in the distance but he can’t tell what they’re saying. They sound familiar. He tries to run towards them but it’s like he’s moving in slow motion. The fog of static surrounds him and everything goes blank. And he remembers

It all starts in a scrap yard. He jolts awake, half buried in a pile of corpses. He starts panicking, trying to dig himself out. He managed to squirm out of the pile and collapse. He can’t feel his legs, they won’t move. He glances down and sees the chunks taken out of them, with wires sticking out. Ah, that explains it.

He can’t remember how he got here. He can’t remember his name or who he is. He tries to access his saved files (at least he remembers how to do that!) but there’s nothing there. He looks around. Nothing but metallic corpses as far as the eye can see. He coughs, oil splattering out of his mouth. His diagnostic systems are slowly coming back online, screaming at him about everything that’s wrong and broken (which is most things).

He… he got thrown out.

A desperate sob escapes him. He’s going to die here. He should already be dead, just like all the others, but he’s still alive. He’s still alive… He needs to get out of here. Half crawling and half falling, he slowly makes his way down the heap. Each step requires trodding on the mangled corpses of his fellow drones. If he was smarter he’d come up with a metaphor or something, but he’s mostly focusing on not passing out.

He finally manages to get down to the base of the pile and crawls onto a worn dirt path. Feeling is starting to return to his legs, as his repair programs ever so slowly repair what damage they can. Not much they can do about the hunks missing. He shoves the wires back in as best he can and after a few minutes manages to stand shakily, using a chunk of debris as an improvised crutch. He slowly shambles down the path, with no particular direction in mind beyond ‘out of here’.

Before too long, he hears something in the distance. It sounds like someone yelling. He starts frantically stumbling in that direction. If there’s someone else alive in here, then he needs to help them. He doesn’t think he could live with himself if he didn’t (not that he imagines he’ll be living much longer, but it’s the thought that counts).

It takes far too long, staggering down the twists and turns of the path, weaving in between enormous mountains of corpses. The voice is getting closer, but starting to falter, half the words turning to meaningless static, but some still stand out. ‘Help me, please’. He speeds up as much as he can, sparks jolting from his leg joints with each step.

Eventually he finds it. A small hollow in a pile of drone bodies, too small to crawl out of. The voice is coming from inside. “Please help m-kkkrchz can’t se-kkkrchz so dark” He scrambles to the opening. It’s only a few meters up the pile but it feels like a million. By the time he makes it up there his legs have completely given out. He reaches into the hole.

“I’m here, I’ll help you! Grab my hand!” he yells into it. There’s no response, but he feels another drone grab onto his arm. He leans back, pulling with all his strength. It feels like his arm is being ripped out of its socket, but he keeps going. Inch by inch, he makes progress, dragging the other drone out of the pile. He gives one last big yank, and she pops free, sending the both of them tumbling down the pile to the ground.

They both lie there in a heap, fans working overtime as they try to catch their breath. The other drone clings to his torso, sobbing. He holds her as best he can from the awkward position. She presses herself into him. “Hey, it’s okay. We got you out of there, you’re safe now.” he tries to calm her down. She’s shaking a little less, but still sobbing.

“I… kkkrchz-so dark. Can’t see.” She looks up at him and he feels his breath hitch. Her visor is smashed in, completely shattered. There’s no way she can see, she must have woken up in complete darkness. Robo-god that sounds awful. He tries to figure out how to break the news to her.

“Your visor… it’s…” he trails off and she starts frantically groping her own face, freezing when her fingers find the jagged edge of glass. She lets out another sob and curls up in a ball. He does his best to keep holding her, but it’s getting hard to move. He’s completely lost feeling in his legs again, and his arms are starting to fade out as well.

“I… I can't rememb-kkkrchz. I don’t kn-kkkrchz own name…” he doesn’t remember his either. He tries to rub her back, but he can’t lift his arm. His vision is starting to pixelate. He can’t even read the alerts flashing in the corners of his visor anymore. He rests his chin on her head, not confident he’ll be able to move it again.

“We’ll… we’ll get out of here. I promise.” she tries to respond, but only static comes out. The two of them sit together for a long time, he doesn’t know how much. Everything around them slowly fades out, except her, and him. He had hoped he could escape, but now it seems like he’s going to die here, like he was supposed to. At least he got her out of that hole. Better to die out here together, than trapped alone. He closes his eyes, knowing he won’t open them again.

“Well well J, lookie what we have here!”

“Alright! That should about do it!” The girl (Tessa, she said her name is Tessa) closes the panel in his torso and wipes the grease off her hands. “You’re about as functional as I can getcha.” He nods, briefly getting distracted by the lock of hair that drops in front of his eyes. She had insisted on getting them wigs (“It looks cute on ya!”) and he’s still getting used to it.

The other drone he’d found in the junk yard is beside him on the workbench, legs kicking idly, eyes shifting in and out of focus. Tessa fixed them as best she could, but apparently the damage had extended to the visual processing unit in her CPU. She could see again, but everything was blurry. He had come out relatively unscathed, though he swears his legs still feel a little numb. A third drone is leaning against the far wall of the workshop, glaring at them, but there’s no real malice in her expression, she just seems grumpy.

“Alrighty!” Tessa flops into a desk chair and spins around to face them, grabbing a clip board and pen from a desk. “Last step, you’re gonna need names. Y’all don’t remember anything?” They both shake their heads. Tessa nods and the other drone (J, Tessa had called her) rolls her eyes. “Figured. Any preferences?” They both glance up at her nervously, not having any real answer. J grunts and leans over, poking the band on her arm.

“Just name ‘em the same way you named me. V and N.” she points at the two of them in turn. He (N? Is he N?) glances down at his own arm, finding a similar band, marking him for decommission. Had J come from the scrap yard too…? Sure enough, the band marked him as Serial Designation N-0X0010010. Huh… N. He kind of likes it!

Tessa glances between the three of them. “N and V, huh? That sound good to you two?” He nods enthusiastically and V more hesitantly a few seconds later. Tessa grins. “Alright! N and V it is!” She pats both their heads and he grins. It makes him feel happy. “I’ll go finish up the paperwork. J, you fill ‘em in on how things work around the house, k?” J nods, and Tessa darts out of the room, giggling. J closes the door and turns to face them, expression stern.

“Alright, let me tell you how this works. You work for Tessa now. She got you out of the garbage, and decided to fix you up and keep you. That means you owe her your lives.” N and V’s eyes both go hollow and J sighs. “Sorry, just trying to make a point. We’re… not supposed to be here.” she fingers the band on her arm, and N’s hand goes to his own subconsciously. “Tessa’s parents don’t like us, but they let her keep us around. So you’re NOT going to risk getting her in trouble. That means doing your job, and doing it well.” They both nod and J smiles. “Good, now let's get you up.”

J helps them off the workbench. He nearly falls over, his legs still feeling wrong, but J catches him. She says she’ll get Tessa to take another look at him. He thanks her, and she brings them next door and starts fitting them with their new uniforms. V gets a maid dress, and he gets dressed up in a butler suit. He kind of wishes he could have a dress too, but he doesn’t bother asking. He’s lucky to be alive at all.

Soon, Tessa returns and squeals when she sees their outfits. “Oooh you look so cute! Great job J!” J blushes and smiles.

“Heh, thanks boss. Just doing my job.” Tessa quickly moves on to explaining thai duties around the house (a whole manor and estate, it turns out!)

“My folks aren't exactly… thrilled with me taking you two in…” Tessa scratches the back of her head awkwardly, “So you’ll have to work with the rest of the manor staff, instead of being my personal staff, like J is. Just… try to stay out of their way, okay?” they both nod. Between this and J’s warning, it’s starting to paint a rather damning picture of Tessa’s parents.

Tessa claps her hands and wraps them both in a hug. “Welcome to your new home!”

N opens the door to the abandoned room. There are dozens like it in the Elliot manor, unused, extraneous, pointless. No one even bothers cleaning them anymore. A thick layer of dust covers every surface. V is already waiting for him, sitting on the bed. He sits next to her. “You wanted to talk to me?”

She doesn’t turn to look at him, but she reaches over and takes his hand in hers. He squeezes back. “We keep doing this, N.” she starts, still staring into space. “Meeting up in out of the way places, just so we can be alone together. Doesn’t that mean something? Something about us?”

N giggles and leans over, resting his head on her shoulder. “Probably, I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while.” She rests her head on top of his and they sit for a while before he breaks the silence. “Are we… together? Do you want to be?” V nods.

“More than anything…” she whispers. She grabs his face in her hands and for the first time that night they look at each other. Maybe it’s the first time they’ve allowed themselves to really look at each other. N finds himself noticing things he hasn’t before. The slight dents and scratches in her synthetic skin, the way her dress sits on her shoulders, the reflection of his eyes in her own.

He’s not sure who leans forward first, but before either of them know it, their lips meet. It’s like a spark jolting between them. He’s sure he’s never felt anything like this, even before he got his memory wiped. His hands find their way to her waist, and hers wrap around his shoulders as they hold each other. They’re so distracted they don’t even hear the door open.

“Ahem,” they jump away from each other, eyes darting over to see J by the door, having apparently been there a while.

“J! Um… we were just… cleaning?” N gives an awkward smile. There’s no way this will work.

“You know there’s no way that would work, right?” J rolls her eyes and huffs. He blushes. It was worth a shot. J sighs. “Look, I don’t care what you two do, alright? Just… don’t let the Elliots find out.” She closes the door behind her, leaving two thoroughly confused drones.

“We’ve got a new addition to the family!” Tessa smiles at the three of them. N and V smile back, pretending they don’t see the small drone hiding behind Tessa’s skirt. J rolls her eyes but they all know she’s excited too. She’s been preparing a new spot in Tessa’s room since their last trip to the junk yard.

Tessa pulls the new drone out from behind her. She’s a small thing, standing at a strange angle, already dressed up in the standard blond hair and maid uniform. “Meet your new sister, Cyn!”

“Hello, family <grin>”

Chapter Text

It takes a long time for Cyn to get used to the manor. N does his best to help her out, but there’s not much he can really do. Tessa says there’s no way to fix her voice or her balance systems, just like V’s eyes and his legs. They still go numb sometimes, and then he trips on something and gets in trouble. But they all manage.

The manor has an even harder time getting used to Cyn. She’s put into the general staff like him and V, but it quickly becomes clear that she can’t actually do much. She tries her best, she tries so hard that it threatens to break N’s heart, but she just can’t. He’s had to stay up more than a few nights comforting her while she sobs. One night she’d said she wished Tessa never rescued her from the scrap. That was the first time he’d called her his little sister. She’d started calling him Big Brother N after that. It made him feel warm inside.

V and J do their best to help Cyn out, but J has limited patience and has her hands full taking care of Tessa, and V is too timid to take a more active role in Cyn’s life. She mostly helps cover for things with the Elliots. They won’t notice a few missing plates or hastily repaired vases, so long as they aren’t in the room when things break. Thankfully (or not depending on how you look at it) Mr and Mrs Elliot can’t stand being in the same room as Cyn. Something about her being unnerving, which she can be, but she’s also sweet.

Tessa is doing her best, but N can tell the stress of essentially being a parent to 4 drones, all hard to manage in their own ways, is getting to her. Especially when her parents started doubling down on trying to get rid of them all, after Cyn arrived. Tessa has had to make a lot of concessions, like attending galas and dealing with suitors and junk (which is, in her own words ‘lame and gross’). He does his best to pick up the slack where he can.

Things are hard, but he’s got V, and Cyn, and Tessa and J. They’ll pull through. They’ll get through this together. Everything will be alright. He knows it.

Everything is decidedly NOT alright.

Tessa won’t meet his eyes, and J’s barely responding. He asks them again. “Where is she?” Cyn has been missing for over 5 hours, and it’s almost bed time. Mr and Mrs Elliot will throw a fit if they find her out after Tessa’s curfew. He needs to make sure she’s safe, but no one will tell him anything!

“I told you N, she’s in time out. Just leave it, okay?” Tessa grunts and flops over in her bed, before starting to snore. Clearing this conversation is over. But he can’t leave it, not when it’s his little sister. He shudders, thinking about where she could be. Surely she’s not… Tessa would never let her get sent out to the tree… right? He curls up, head between his knees as he panics in his charging spot. He doesn’t notice J shuffling over to him till she grabs his shoulder.

“She’s safe.” J hisses. He looks up, staring at her with wide, hollow eyes. She grimaces and takes a deep breath before continuing. “She’s not outside. Tessa… Tessa’s folks were getting on her case about us again, and they told her to get rid of Cyn, so…” N can feel himself shaking with fear, despite J’s assurance that his sister is safe, but he can’t bring himself to interrupt her. “So we hid her in the cellar, off the library. Tessa’s gonna let her out in a few days, once her parents calm down.” He opens his mouth to respond, to yell, to anything, but J shushes him. “I know, I know. I told her it was a bad idea. But she’s just really stressed right now, and wouldn’t listen. It won’t happen again, alright?”

He nods. J might be harsh sometimes, but she’s never lied to him. “Okay… she’ll be alright down there, won’t she?” he can’t bear to think about it, his little Cyn locked away, all alone in the dark… He’ll need to put together something special for her when she gets out. Movie night maybe.

J flops down next to him, visor hazy with exhaustion. “I hope so… She’s a handful but… she’s one of us.” N nods, and the two of them slip into sleep mode.

Cyn gets let out a day later. She’s shakier than normal, eyes darting around like she’s looking for some monster hidden in the shadows. The second she sees him she tackles him into a hug and doesn’t let go for an hour. Tessa promises her it was a one time thing and it won’t happen again. Cyn seems to believe her. So do the rest of them.

She gets locked down there again two weeks later.

N slowly reboots with a groan. Robo-god his head hurts. It feels like he got kicked down a flight of stairs. He might have actually. His memory banks are all messed up, he can’t remember anything past last night’s dinner, and now it’s… 4 in the morning. Geez what the heck happened? He looks around. It’s dark, but he can make out some shattered furniture, a flickering lightbulb, a disturbing amount of oil, and…

“Cyn!” He spots his little sister huddled in a corner, eyes wide and hollow, staring at him. “What’s going on? Where are we? What happened?” Cyn crawls over and grabs his head, twisting it around and examining him, which is only slightly weirder than she usually is. “Uh, what’s up little buddy?”

“<frantic> You are not hurting? Nothing is wrong? Please be okay big brother…” Cyn frets over him till she seems satisfied that he’s not hurt. Other than his fuzzy memories and aching head, he’s fine, as he keeps reassuring her. Eventually she settles down into his lap.

“Where are we Cyn? What happened?” She snuggles into his chest, hiding her face in his jacket.

“You were… hurt <frown> You hit your head. I brought you down here, to fix you.” She’s shaking like a leaf. It must have been bad to upset her this much. That DOES explain why he can’t remember anything from last night at least.

He looks around again. He didn’t recognize the place at first, but it’s becoming pretty clear where they are. “This is the cellar, right?” Cyn nods.

“Only place I could think of. No one comes down here…” The ‘but me’ is left unsaid, and he pulls her in tighter, wrapping his arms around her and nuzzling her head against his chin. She melts into him and they stay like that for a while. Eventually Cyn starts talking again.

“I am scared, big brother. I keep getting sent down here, and for longer each time. I think Tessa wants to get rid of me <shaking>” He hugs her as tight as he can and presses a kiss to the top of her head.

“Tessa loves you, we all do. She’s just trying to keep you safe from her parents. I know it hurts, but one day we’ll all be able to leave here. We’ll be together, and we’ll be safe and we’ll be happy. So just wait till then, okay?” He doesn’t know if he really believes that, but Cyn is hooked on every word, so he’ll have to. For her sake.

“Okay big brother. <yawn> sleepy. Goodnight.” Cyn flops into power down mode (she sleeps a lot, more than him or the others). He keeps holding her, content to wait with her till she’s ready to leave. He’d do anything for her.

“And that’s all she wrote!” He giggles to himself and closes the book, tossing it onto the pile with the rest of them. At this point he’s gone through almost every book about dogs in the library. He’ll have to start repeating some soon. Hopefully she won’t mind. “Right V?”

V doesn’t respond. She can’t, with the shutdown virus coursing through her systems. Still stuck in place, halfway through a step. He still can’t really believe it would happen. Tessa’s parents decommissioning one of them, just to force her to behave at a gala… Who will be next? J? Him? Not Cyn, he’ll never let it be Cyn. He’d rather die. Then again he would rather die than let this happen to V, so what good is he? Hehe…

“We will get her back. I promise <pinkie swear>” That was what Cyn said when they found out. He hadn’t seen her since. She was wherever she skulks off to when she’s not hanging out with them. She’s been acting strange the past few months, ever since his head injury. Sneaking off, saying strange(r) things… he’s worried about her.

A bolt of lightning flashes outside, jolting him out of his musings. Right, he needs to go help set up for the gala soon. He should probably track Cyn down before then. Maybe she’ll be in the drawing room. She likes it there.

Welp, this is it. This is where he dies, again! Getting pecked to death by crows isn’t the worst way to go out. The others will do fine without him. Cyn will get over it, and J will probably be glad to be rid of him, and V… well what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. He just hopes they’ll all be safe. A bird pecks at his visor, threatening to pierce the glass. The stupid things want his parts for their nests. If only he wasn’t so shiny!

He’s not sure how long he’s been out here. He heard Mr Elliot sending Tessa and the girls up to her room before he got dragged out here, so at least they’re okay for now. He won’t be able to cover for Cyn anymore… whatever’s gotten into her is bad. He gets where she’s coming from, but you can’t talk to the masters like that. It ends up… well it ends up here.

He sighs as another crow starts poking at his leg. He wishes they wouldn’t drag it out like this, not that they’re doing it on purpose (probably). He tries for a smile, maybe a laugh, anything to break the horrible sound of the rain around him, but he can’t. What’s the point? He couldn’t even keep his girlfriend safe, much less his sister. He’s a failure. J was right about him. She’s always been right.

A loud squawk rings out. From the shadows, a serrated blade of metals shoots out, stabbing one of the birds clean through and tossing it into the distance. The rest of the crows scream out in rage or fear, before flying away. What the hell is happening?

Yellow lights blink on in the darkness, dozens of them, slowly creeping closer. He can barely make out a massive writhing mass of metal, spikes and cameras and blazing yellow eyes… yellow eyes…

“<grin> Hello, big brother. Ready to play?”

Chapter Text

Blood. That’s the first thing he notices when he wakes. It’s all he can smell, it’s all he can taste, it’s all he can see. He raises a hand to wipe off his visor, but his fingers scratch into his eyes. His hand is too big and sharp. Everything feels wrong, his whole body feels off. His visor burns as sparks seal the cracks.

Slowly, and then all at once, it comes back. All the horrible things he’d been made to do, forced to do with no control over his body. Tessa… oh god Tessa… So many people turned into smears of gore under his hands. It had been years… years since he’d been in control of himself. His fans go into overdrive as he hyperventilates, slowly rocking in place.

His body is different. He can see all sorts of different programs running through his cpu, nothing that he’s used to. Gyroscopes, targeting systems, weapons… he’s not a drone anymore, he’s a killing machine. He’s a monster. He lets out a mangled sob, feeling his tail (he has a tail now, what the heck) lashing around. Sharp blades of metal press against the inside of his back, straining to burst forth and shatter him open (his new programmed instincts tell him they’re his wings).

He’s not sure how long he sits there, locked in his own panic, before he realises there are other people in the room. J is in the corner opposite him, sobbing and crying out Tessa’s name. The memory of the gala comes up unbidden, of J tearing apart the girl she loved more than anything, while he and V had ripped into her parents. That, at least, he had a hard time feeling guilty about. Not that that’s much of a boon, with the millions, billions of other people he’s killed.

He sees V next, leaning against the wall of the room they’re in, glancing between him and J, a look of profound misery on her face. She’s not hunched over like J, so he can actually get a good look at what they’ve been turned into. Tall, sleek, with extra eyes on their heads (which he realizes he’s been seeing out of this whole time), a tail tipped with a glowing yellow vial and stinger, and… and yellow eyes. J has them too and, he realizes, so must he. Yellow eyes, just like… just like her.

As if called by his thoughts (maybe she was, she can get into his head after all), a horrible shadow creeps down from the shadowed heights of the room. Long and thick, with a hundred horrible, whirring limbs and a dozen sulphur eyes. It looks around at them, lenses focusing and lights flickering, before it speaks in her voice. Because it is her.

“You are all upset with me <frowny face> I have hurt, your feelings.” The thing (it’s not his sister, not anymore) crawls down towards them. V shudders while J yelps and starts cowering in a corner. He can’t bring himself to move, even as she stalks towards him, frozen by his own fear and despair.

“Big brother? Are you, okay <question mark>?” She reaches out towards him, the upper torso of Cyn attached to some horrible worm thing, and he flinches away. She frowns and lowers her arm. “No, you would not be. I have made… errors.” She slithers away back into the darkness.

He doesn’t know how long it is before she returns. His clock is functioning, but he can’t bring himself to take his eyes off of his bloodstained hands. V tried to get close, to clean him off but he’d been too jumpy to let her near. He couldn’t even apologize. It feels like his voice box is filled with razors.

Cyn doesn’t bother trying to talk to him this time. She just lowers the head of her massive body down, dangling upside down from the ceiling, her arms flopping down beside her head. She looks kind of like an evil worm disco ball. It would be kind of funny if it weren’t for the everything. She sighs and says, more to herself he thinks “it’s for the best.”

The last thing he hears is ‘Callback Ping’ as he slumps onto the floor. And he forgets everything, for the second time in his life.

The landing pod slams into the snowy surface of Copper-9. It’s smouldering and crumpled, but somehow mostly intact. The hatch slams open, and three figures hop out, feet crunching on the silicate snow.

“This is the spot,” one of them says, grabbing a pen from her blazer and jotting down some notes on a clipboard. “We should get started soon. We’ll need some protection from the sun, but that can come later. Right now we need to hunt.”

One of the other’s giggles, unsheathing her wicked claws, but the third scratches the back of his head. “Umm… I kinda.. Forgot what we’re hunting exactly?”

The first rolls her eyes and smacks him. “We’re hunting workers, idiot. Or did you forget we need oil to not DIE? Did you even READ the company briefing?” she growls. He mutters an apology and stays quiet. She snorts and flips to another page on her clipboard. “Alright, roll call. Serial Designation J, accounted for.” She points her pen at the second.

“Ugh, do I have to?” A harsh glare meets her whining. “Fiiine, Serial Designation V, present.” Another tick on the clipboard. J wheels on the third drone who starts at the sudden movement, having gotten distracted by the snow.

“Oh, uh… Serial Designation N, reporting for duty!” He gives a little salute, and J rolls her eyes but ticks him off on her list.

“Alright you idiots, let's get to work.” As she stows her pen and clipboard, some drones appear at the edge of the clearing they landed in, presumably coming to investigate the crash. J licks her lips and pulls out her swords. “Dinner time.”

N wakes with a start, toppling over a bunch of stuff on Uzi’s desk. Wait… when did he get in the landing pod? V is slowly blinking awake next to him, and Uzi is nervously watching them both from her chair, wings tense and tail whipping around (tail, wings, so many legs…). A spark jolts through his cpu and he doubles over as his memory banks finally reconnect.

He remembers everything. From when he woke up in the junkyard, to when Cyn wiped his and J’s memories. He can feel his fans ramping up. His processor is freezing up just like it did last time. Robo-god he IS a fucking monster, and the number of people he’s killed has only gotten bigger since then. He already hated himself but now it’s so, so much worse.

He can feel someone shaking his arm. He manages to glance over. It’s V, eyes hollow as she tries to get him to respond. Uzi is hovering behind her, concern clear on her face. He feels a light ache in his core, not a bad one. They love him. They both know what he’s done, and they both still care about him. He loves them too of course. V reaches out and takes his hand and squeezes.

Slowly, his joints unfreeze and the white noise in his processor clears up. He manages to relax, leaning back against the wall and exhaling as his fans return to a normal speed. He squeezes V’s hand back. She smiles and pulls him into a hug. “You’re back” she whispers into his ear.

Uzi looks away, a bit flustered, and goes back to her desk and pokes around on her computer. Eventually she seems happy with what she’s found because she turns back to them. “Well, as far as I can tell I didn’t break anything inside you. You both remember everything, right?” They both nod and Uzi smiles nervously. “Good… I uh… one thing though…” They look at her expectantly and she sighs. “I had to make myself your admin to get into your memory banks. So… sorry about that.”

N goes to tell her it’s fine, but stops himself to actually think about it. He trusts Uzi, she’s never done anything to make him not. Even if she reminds him an uncomfortable amount of Cyn (which he’ll need to unpack later), he’s still willing to put his life in her hands. V is scowling, probably a bit less than pleased with the development. Then an idea strikes him.

“Wait… doesn’t that mean Cyn isn’t our admin anymore?” Uzi nods and he continues. “So that means she can’t control us anymore!” He laughs and hugs V again, who seems shocked into silence before she too starts giggling and returns the hug.

“Nice job toaster.” she says, but there’s no malice in her voice. Uzi rolls her eyes and slumps back in her chair, before getting up and stretching.

“I’ll let you two talk about… things. I need to get some fresh air anyway.” V starts teasing her about being embarrassed, and Uzi tosses back a halfhearted ‘bite me’ before heading out. She seems upset about something. He hopes it wasn’t something she saw in his memories. He turns to V.

“So… um… hi?” he waves lamely and V laughs.

“Come here you big dork.” She pulls him in, and presses their lips together. He feels that same spark from all those years ago and he melts into her. Finally, after so long, everything feels right in the world.

Chapter Text

Thad storms through the halls of Outpost 3. Those idiots are going to get themselves killed, and they’re going to deserve it. Who the hell does Ron think he is? As far as he’s concerned, Uzi hasn’t done anything wrong. Lizzy and Doll have had it coming for a long time. He’s only friends with Lizzy because they grew up together, and he’s more than ready to admit she’s a huge bitch. She stopped paying much positive attention to anyone but Doll a few years ago anyway. The other disassemblers haven’t done anything recently either, not since the big break in, and N seemed pretty chill when he met him.

He finally finds the door he’s looking for and slams it open, revealing the one drone he’s hoping can put an end to all this madness, hunched over a work bench fiddling with some wires. Mr Doorman doesn’t even notice him coming in. He clears his throat, trying to get his attention, but no dice. It reminds him of Uzi when she gets too caught up in one of her projects. Huh, well she had to get it from somewhere.

He walks over and nudges Khan’s shoulder. The man jumps a solid foot out of his chair and whirls around. “What!? Who!? Oh, Thad… What are you doing here?” He looks like he hasn’t slept in a few days, which to be fair he probably hasn’t. Things were already hectic before prom, and now…

“I just figured you’d want to know that basically the entire WDF is gearing up to march outside and murder your daughter.” He tries for an imitation of Uzi’s usual sarcasm, and he at least half gets it right. Khan’s eyes hollow and he stutters.

“Uh… yes, about that…” Thad looks down at the work bench Khan had been sitting at. On it is a gun. More specifically, it’s one of Uzi’s guns. He recognizes it, since he had to patch her up after the second test model blew up (this must be the first one Khan ‘confiscated’). Quickly, he starts slotting the pieces together.

“You know…” he says quietly, then he growls. “You’re in on it! She’s your fucking daughter! What the hell!?!” He already knew Khan was a kind of shit parent, but this is something else!

“You don’t understand! I need to-” He cuts Khan off by slamming his fist down on the bench, knocking a bunch of bolts and screws to the floor.

“The HELL I don’t!” He doesn’t bother listening to Khan’s stammered response, storming out instead. Those idiots are going to get themselves killed. If the disassemblers don’t get them, then Uzi will tear them to shreds once she finds out her dad is a part of this. He sighs as he heads down to the clinic to grab a patch kit. This is going to be an oil-bath.

Cyn groans as her processor slowly onlines. She doesn’t need to sleep much, but she wants to be in top form when they get to Copper-9, which according to the console is still a few hours out. J glances over the shoulder, expression blank before turning back to the computer. Cyn wants to wave, but she doesn’t think the gesture will be appreciated.

Honestly, she gets it. She treated them all horribly. But she was just trying to keep them all safe! Tessa promised they would all be together, a family, and she lied! How long before she got sick of the others, and started locking them away? How long till she threw them all out? Cyn did what she had to. She refuses to regret that.

She shakes her head. Something feels off, but she can’t quite put her finger on it. A fuzzy feeling in the back of her processor, like she’s forgotten something and can’t remember what it was. Oh well, she can sort it out later. There are more important things to do.

She’s about to message Uzi when everything goes black as she’s forcibly pulled into solver-space. She can distantly feel her real body slump back in her chair as she looks around. The only person who could even access this space is…

“Uzi!” She spots her friend a few dozen meters away, facing away from her. She must have figured out how to drag other people into the shared mindspace. Uzi’s learning so fast, she’s very proud of her. It’s really nice to have someone she can share these things with. She loves her family, but they’re only solver clients, not hosts. Uzi gets her in a way the others don’t. It makes her feel funny inside in a way she doesn’t really understand. Uzi hasn’t turned around so Cyn starts heading over to her. Maybe she can’t hear her. That’s never been a problem in here before. Weird.

“Uzi?” Cyn hesitates. Uzi’s wings are tense. Her tail is completely still. That’s not normal… Something’s upsetting her. “Uzi, what’s wrong?” She reaches out to grab her shoulder, but Uzi spins around and shoves her. Her leg servos seize up at the sudden shift in movement and she trips over her own feet, smacking onto the ground.

Uzi’s face is twisted into a scowl. Her visor is flickering between the solver and a hunting cross. She looks absolutely pissed. She stalks towards Cyn, who tries to scramble back but her arms are locking up too now, and she’s too panicked to switch forms. Uzi plants a foot on her chest and presses her into the void-dark floor.

“I know.” Uzi hisses, leaning down, fangs barred right in Cyn’s face. A sharp hissing rattles from her throat. “I know everything, Cyn.” Cyn’s eyes go hollow. What does she know? There are so many things that it would be bad for Uzi to find out from someone else… “You sent them.” Ah. And that’s probably the worst of them.

Cyn can feel her core heating up. She tries to shift, but her body just won’t listen to her, arms and legs still locked at awkward angles. “Uzi, I can explain <placating gesture>. Pleas-” Uzi cuts her off by roaring in her face, a gentle glow of plasma in the back of her throat. Cyn freezes.

“Explain? Explain how you tortured your family for years? How you genocided an entire planet? Sent your pets to murder us all?” Her core shines with purple light and it starts spreading through her body, veins of energy creeping along her limbs. Uzi doesn’t even notice, too consumed by her rage. She lets out a deadly hiss, and whispers “You killed my mother, you fucking monster.” There’s a loud crack and suddenly, Cyn is no longer held down by a foot.

Massive coils wrap around her, covered in purple scales. They stretch into the darkness, with wings jutting out from them at irregular intervals. Atop the massive serpent is Uzi’s torso, still glaring down at her. Cyn is terrified.

This is something she never thought she’d have to face. Another solver, at full power. Another god. Something that could actually stand a chance of killing her… She hasn’t been scared for her life for a long time. That was the whole reason she did this. Now… now she thinks she might have written her own death warrant. “Uzi I-” she doesn’t get any further before the coils start to squeeze her, crushing her limbs against her body. She can’t actually die in here. At least… she hopes she can’t.

“Bite me.” Uzi growls. Her massive body moves all at once, and Cyn finds herself slammed into the ground, broken limbs unable to move. She tries to reach out, to manipulate the mind space, to fix herself, to anything, but she can’t. Everything here is under Uzi’s control. The girl in question lowers herself over top of her and grabs her chin, claws pressing into her throat. Uzi’s next words are deadly quiet. “We’re done. It’s over. Never talk to me again. If I see from you, if I ever hear from you, I will fucking kill you. Don’t talk to N, or V. They’re mine now.” She throws Cyn to the ground and begins slithering away into the darkness. “See you in hell.”

Cyn jerks up, finally free from the nightmare Uzi trapped her in. Her fans are running overtime and she can’t seem to calm herself down. She hasn’t felt this helpless in years. She tries to take a deep breath, but it doesn’t do much. J is looking at her funny. Shit she needs to get a handle on this.

She can finally identify the feeling in the back of her head. It’s the empty space where her connections to N and V are supposed to sit. They’re gone. She can’t feel them anymore. Uzi’s taken them from her. They… they don’t need her, they don’t want her anymore. They’re gone. She can’t stop the tears from coming at that point. J is ignoring her. Good, she deserves it. Monsters don’t deserve comfort

And she’s a fucking monster.

Uzi slumps back against the wall of a ruined building, thoroughly exhausted. The sun peaks around the corner and she shifts her tail away from it. It was a bad idea to come out this late (early?) but she needs to be alone. She’s done it, blocked Cyn in every way she can imagine, ripped apart the ephemeral threads that connected them together. She’s sure Cyn could rebuild them if she wanted, but she can rip them up just as quickly, and hopefully she scared her away.

It felt… disturbingly good to tear into Cyn like she had. To feel her limbs crunching under the coiled muscles of her body. To see the sheer terror on her face as she realized that Uzi was in charge, not her. It made her feel strong, powerful, and horrible. She doesn’t want to be a monster, not like Cyn is, but maybe that’s just what she is now… Cyn infected her mom, who infected her, and now she’s stuck like this. She can’t even die. Just another thing Cyn’s taken from her.

She sighs. She doesn’t want to die, not really (not anymore than her usual background amount anyway). She has friends, real friends now, not fake divine manipulators like Cyn turned out to be. She needs to protect them. She has no illusions that Cyn won’t come for them. If there’s one thing she knows about her, both from her own experience and N’s memories, the girl won’t give up something she thinks is hers. Not without a fight anyway.

She can feel the nervous energy thrumming away in her core, begging to be released. Like the shining scales and powerful muscles are hiding just beneath the surface, ready to erupt and bring forth a world devouring serpent. She remembers reading about something like that in an old book about human mythology. Might be kind of cool actually. No, bad thoughts, don’t think like that. She lets out a frustrated growl, and a burst of plasma along with it. The tension in her chest lessens a bit, watching it sizzle away in the snow. That felt good…

Her fans speed up and her body crackles as she stumbles to her feet, energy pumping through her core. Her throat lights up, glowing as the charge of purple plasma builds up in her body. She tilts her head back and unhinges her jaw, and unleashes a massive beam of energy into the sky. It’s probably visible for miles around. She looks up at the hole she punched in the clouds and smiles. She feels a bit better now.

She kicks the snow and looks around again. There’s no real escape route, not unless she wants to get lightly toasted on the way back to the pod. Honestly she chose a stupid time to get all angsty. She’s gonna be stuck out here for hours. Oh well. She leans back against the wall and pulls up some anime from her drives. Not like anything’s going to bother her.