Chapter Text
“Yo!” V called down to her squad. “We’ve got a Worker out here I kinda wanna practice balloon animal shapes with.” Then she noticed the situation with N. “What happened here?”
“Synergistic liability here must’ve tripped and knocked himself offline,” J sneered. “And on today of all days…” she muttered to herself. She glanced up at the Disassembly Drone beside her. Said drone was extremely tall, to the point that N, the tallest drone on their squad, only came up to her chest. Her silver hair was tied in twintails and topped with a large black bow, which paired well with her fancy, beribboned black dress. This was Lady T, the matriarch of the Disassembly Drones. Lady T strode forward until she stood directly before N, staring down at him impassively.
“Oh, my poor baby,” she suddenly cooed. “Did you get an ouchie? Here, Mommy will make it better.” Lady T gently kissed N’s malfunctioning headlight, repairing it while his visor displayed a message of [MATERNAL AFFECTION ACCEPTED]. The kiss not only fixed his vision, but restored his memories, too.
“Do you really think the company won’t dispose of you once all the Workers are dead?!”
“Bite me!” [YOU’RE DEAD (IDIOT)]
“Oh.” That other drone wasn’t a new member of their squad; it was the trespassing Worker Drone he’d been fighting! And he’d let her escape with a dangerous weapon! “OHHHHHH!” He turned to his squad and their matriarch. “You know, I left an extremely dangerous weapo-–uh, an excuse, outside!” he babbled frantically before making a hasty exit. The female Disassemblers stared after him in confusion and suspicion, with V even deploying a flag that read, ‘Literally So Insanely Suspicious’.
As Uzi frantically ran back to the bunker with her completed railgun, N landed behind her, ready to pursue.
“I am out boys,” one of the WDF members said cheerfully. The other members laughed and spoke over each other, saying things that ranged from calling the others their best friends to looking forward to telling their loving wife and kids about this. Their jolly mood was cut short when Uzi suddenly threw open the door, causing a strong gust of wind to blow in and scatter their cards.
“Bite me!” Uzi shouted in response to their complaining before frantically smacking the master door key against the lock. “Close it! Close it!” She heard the hydraulics of the door hiss as it began to close, only to be interrupted by a metallic thunk! Uzi turned around and her eyelights hollowed as she saw the claws of a Murder Drone prying the doors apart. The WDF watched in frozen horror as the doors were pried apart, revealing that dreaded yellow X.
“Hey, fellas!” N greeted cheerfully. “Ooooh, deal me in! I love rummy!”Then he remembered his mission. “Wait, no, I’m going to murder everyone. Rain check!” N stuck his tail through the gap he’d created, stabbing the lock and disabling it, which opened the doors. Uzi and the WDF ran away in a panic, save for one.
“Um, actually, it’s gin rummy,” he corrected. “So…” N responded by stabbing the drone in the chest with his tail and decapitating him with a single claw swipe. He then took aim with his rocket launcher and fired at the retreating drones. He managed to hit one, blowing him to pieces. N used the resulting smoke as a cover to pounce on another.
“Hey, Uzi,” the remaining member panted as he caught up with her. “I just realized no one has said my name aloud so far, so I’m just letting you know, I’m–-” He was silenced by a laser splitting him in two. After N finished draining the previous Worker Drone of his oil, he stared after the retreating Uzi and climbed into an overhead vent. Finally, Uzi’s railgun had finished charging. She spun around and aimed it, only to find that N was nowhere to be seen.
“Pretty nice hydraulics, huh?” her father’s voice came from behind her. His smile fell and his eyelights hollowed in horror as he took in the scene in front of him: an entire WDF squad dead, and his daughter holding a gun. “W-What have you done?” Uzi’s eyelights hollowed at the accusation. Before either drone could say anything more, N dropped from the ceiling, landing between them with enough force to blow them off their feet. Uzi quickly corrected herself and took aim with her railgun.
“This time, I won’t miss,” she growled. N chuckled darkly in response.
“I’m sorry,” he said, one of his eyes shifting back to normal while the other remained an X. “I really enjoyed our time together. But I can’t have you shooting V with that thing!”
“Bite me!” Uzi snapped. “Dad, get down.”
“Uzi, you let a Murder Drone in here?!” Khan yelped in disbelief. “My beautiful doors!”
“Now is so not the time!” Uzi yelled frantically. “I messed up! In the same way I’m about to fix it! Move, Dad!” N took advantage of their distraction to pin Uzi to the wall with his wing. Uzi coughed up a mouthful of oil and tried to aim her gun at N, only for him to knock it out of her hands, where it landed at Khan’s feet.
“Dad, point and shoot,” Uzi gasped desperately. “Trust me!” Khan looked from the railgun at his feet to the face of the Murder Drone pinning his daughter to the wall. The same drooling, smiling face that had taken his wife from him. His hands shook as he backed away. “Dad…?” Uzi whimpered. Khan took out a remote and shamefacedly closed the door between himself and his doomed daughter. Uzi stared at the closed door in disbelief, her hand letting go of N’s wing and weakly dropping to her side. N also stared at the door before turning back to Uzi, the X in his visor shifting back to his normal eyes, staring at his victim in pity.
“Whoa, N!” he heard a familiar voice from down the hall. He turned to see J, V, and Lady T crawling on the ceiling towards him before dropping to the floor. N quickly tossed Uzi behind a large box. “Am I dreaming or did you do something not useless for once?” J said. Lady T gave J a disapproving look at the backhanded compliment but said nothing.
“I’ve been trying to get past those doors for months! Nice work, N,” V complimented with a wink.
“You–me–name–remember–?” a flustered N babbled.
“These ventilation shafts can easily get us around this last door,” V observed “Lowest body count eats a missile!” V flew into the ventilation shaft, cackling all the while.
“Way to go, stud,” J said, giving N a congratulatory pat on the back that made him wince. "The company’s gonna love this.” J smiled giddily. “With this colony wiped, we’ll make top team this quarter for sure! You know what that means~” she singsonged before pulling out a pen, clicking it in N’s face. “Branded pens~”
“Ooooh,” N said, mesmerized by the pen. J tossed it to N before flying into the ventilation shaft herself.
“Ah, J and her pens,” Lady T said, smiling fondly. She stood below the ventilation shaft, gesturing for N to go through. “After you, dear.” N’s smile dropped as he looked from his mother to the pen in his hands to the large box he’d thrown Uzi behind.
“You know, not that I can’t wait to keep murdering all these…maybe-not-so-actually-different-from-us Worker Drones, but, just out of curiosity, do we actually…know what the company plans to do with us after?” N asked awkwardly. Lady T raised a digital eyebrow at her son before giving him a reproving look.
“N, that is not something you need to concern yourself with,” she said, her tone severe.
“R-Right, it’s just that a Worker earlier might have suggested that they could fix up our landing pod to, uh, escape the planet and stuff, which, whoa, hey, that’s against the rules! But it is kind of making me question why our pods were only one-way in the first place,” N fumbled through an explanation. “‘Cause, you know, I get the feeling that the company doesn’t actually love robots, and, like, we might be robots?” N finally took notice of Lady T’s worsening glare. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. It’s cool how immediately I could tell.”
“I’ll say,” Lady T said as she strode up to N. “N, did you just admit to fraternizing with a Worker Drone?”
“Well, I-I didn’t know she was a Worker at the time, but…” N was cut off when Lady T unsheathed her blade-like claws, using one of them to tip N’s head up to force him to look her in the visor.
“N,” she began severely, “do you know why you were sent to this planet?”
“To…kill Worker Drones?” N guessed.
“Exactly,” Lady T confirmed. “And do you know why you were sent here to kill Worker Drones?”
“Uh, um…” N floundered for an answer.
“It’s because the Worker Drones are corrupted, N,” Lady T answered for him. “And you and your siblings were sent here to put a stop to that corruption before it can spread. Though, judging from the way you were speaking just now, perhaps it already has.”
“N-No! No, it hasn’t!” N shouted frantically, trying to shake his head, but was ultimately unable to do so due to his mother’s claw digging into his chin.
“Good. Because I’d hate to have to decommission you,” Lady T said. “Now, I will hear no more about you speaking with the Workers and allowing them to poison your mind. You are my son. Act like it.” At that, Lady T’s claw, which had slowly been pressing into N’s plating as she spoke, finally pierced it just enough to draw a single drop of oil, which slid slowly down her claw.
“Y-Yes, Mother,” N stammered. “Sorry, Mother.” Lady T disengaged her claw from N’s chin and turned back toward the vent.
“I hope you got your fill of oil from your little hunt earlier,” she added. “Because you are allowed no more until tomorrow evening.” And with that, she disappeared into the vents. N stared up after her as if debating if he should follow her, only to sigh and walk away to face the opposite wall with a dejected expression.
Uzi cautiously peeked out from behind the box she was hidden behind before carefully sneaking toward her railgun and picking it up. N didn’t seem to notice her. If she could just get to the ventilation shaft without drawing his attention–-
“Ah, biscuits,” N suddenly sighed, startling her. “I’m sorry. I ruined your card game. Then made you have an awkward moment with your dad.”
“And I made you rebel like an angsty teen, which made you have an awkward moment with your mom,” Uzi replied. “So, let’s call this a draw.” Deciding that N was no longer a threat, Uzi dragged the box until it was directly under the ventilation shaft and climbed on top of it, only to discover that she still couldn’t reach it. She groaned as she realized she was going to need help; specifically N’s help. “For the record that was the lamest heel-face turn in history,” she said, turning to the Disassembly Drone. “Was that supposed to be you switching sides?”
“Being rebellious is a lot harder than it looks,” N admitted. He turned slightly so that he was looking at Uzi. “Thanks for showing me the ropes.”
“Nuh-uh! No bonding thing!” Uzi rebuffed him. “You just killed a bunch of people, idiot.”
“That’s super fair,” N conceded, turning back towards the wall with a sigh. “I screwed up…” Uzi rolled her eyelights and groaned. She couldn’t believe she was actually feeling sympathy right now. And for a Murder Drone, of all things!
“In the same way you’re about to fix it?” Uzi asked, pointing up to the ventilation shaft. N turned to her with a questioning look before laughing and giving a thumbs-up.
“I love doing anything.”
Thad grunted as he was thrown across the room, leaving a trail of oil in his wake. Lizzy and Doll immediately rushed to his side, looking up in fear as they heard the sinister chuckles of V and J, the former crawling up the wall onto the ceiling while the latter dragged the headless corpse of a Worker she’d killed.
“Mother, we bring you fresh prey,” J said, turning to the extremely tall Disassembly Drone walking slightly behind her whilst gesturing to the cornered and cowering Worker Drones.
“You are so kind to me, daughters,” Lady T purred, a sadistic smirk on her face.
“So, they found our evacuation spot,” Khan said nervously. “But if we build a quick door-–” Thad stood up, grabbing a metal pipe and spitting out a glob of oil.
“Are you kidding me?” he groaned. “You’re the WDF, right? Defend!” Khan and the other WDF members just backed away fearfully. “For real…?” Now Thad could understand why Uzi was so unimpressed with her father and the rest of his so-called “defense force”. His disappointment was short-lived, though, when V popped up behind him and speared him with her wing, throwing him to the ground before spearing him with her claws and pulling him close to her grinning, X-visored face, laughing all the while.
“Hey!” a voice called.
“Huh?” V said, surprised out of her oil-crazed frenzy by the call.
“Put that conventionally attractive male down!” Uzi demanded, her railgun resting on her shoulder. N stood beside her, smiling and waving at his squad. Uzi nudged him with her elbow.
“Oh, uh, J, you’re…sometimes kind of mean to me, and I wish you weren’t. Just some constructive criticism,” he said rather lamely. Uzi seemed to be satisfied with it though, declaring “Nice” while rewarding N with a fist bump. Thad screamed as V tossed him aside in annoyance.
“Noted, traitor,” J smirked. “We’ll circle back after I rightsize your existence.”
“N,” Lady T demanded, “what is the meaning of this?” N averted his gaze.
“Okay, which one do you want?” Uzi asked him.
“J, please,” N pleaded.
“Too bad,” Uzi smirked. “Good luck.” With that, she took out the pen J had given to N and tossed it at the pigtailed Disassembly Drone, piercing her headlight and causing her to scream in pain. As Uzi dashed forward towards her opponent, N turned to V, gesturing between the two of them and giving a weak thumbs up. V’s response was merely a chuckle as she swapped her hands for swords, her visor once again displaying a large X.
“Disobedient child!” Lady T shouted, her visor also shifting to an X as she deployed her wings. “When I’m through with you, you’re going to wish I had just injected a virus into your core!” N’s eyelights hollowed with dread.
As Uzi circled around the disoriented J and took aim with her railgun, J shifted one of her hands into a machine gun and fired wildly, just missing Uzi by mere fractions.
“Damn the well-made, quality assured durability of JCJenson products!” J swore as she yanked the pen out of her headlight. It was then that she noticed Uzi flipping through the air towards her. Fortunately for her, Lady T intercepted the attack and knocked Uzi to the ground. Uzi then had to duck out of the way as V shot with her photon slicer.
N grunted as he was thrown into a pile of boxes. V shot her photon slicer again, N just barely able to dodge in time. V chuckled sinisterly as she approached the male Disassembler menacingly. N took aim with his gun, only to have a few cartoonish hearts shoot out, causing him to scream in embarrassment.
“My mind’s in a weird place!” he cried. “Don’t read into this!” V’s response was to shoot a missile at him. It landed next to him before exploding, causing N to let out a high-pitched shriek.
Meanwhile with Uzi, she quickly got up and took aim with her gun. J cackled as she activated her built-in EMP, causing Uzi to short out and collapse to the ground. Deciding that J had the Worker handled, Lady T went to help V with N. The two Disassemblers had taken to the air, slicing and parrying with their swords until V had N in an X-lock, his metal groaning in protest as he tried to hold V back. Neither of them noticed Lady T fly up behind N, ready to help her daughter deal with her wayward son. What N did notice, however, was J approaching an incapacitated Uzi with murderous intent.
“Uzi!” he cried. Then he turned to V. “I’m so, so sorry. Have fun repressing this. “And with that, he licked one of her swords.
“Ew! What the hell!” V exclaimed, pulling away in disgust. This gave N enough of an opening to fly up and deliver an ax kick that sent V crashing to the ground. As he was about to fly down himself to help Uzi, he heard a voice behind him that sent chills through his processors.
“That’s quite enough, N.” N turned around to see Lady T behind him, glaring. “I told you I didn’t want to do this, but it seems that little Worker has corrupted you after all.” Lady T transformed her hand into an injector. “Just remember, you forced my hand.” N backed away fearfully, his hands pressed over his core.
Meanwhile, Uzi tried to reach for her railgun, only for J to kick it away.
“You’ve got a lot of guts for a barely sentient toaster,” she smirked, playing [BestMonologueEver.mp3]. “I’ve had prey fight back before, but your edgy spirit is just so…” J’s monologue was interrupted by a stinging, burning sensation in her leg. “Painful?!” J looked down to see that Uzi had grabbed her tail and stabbed it through her leg. She screamed as she grabbed the injured limb, hopping on her other peg to stay upright. “Fourth quarter profits! Mother of company leadership retreats!” Distracted by her injury, J ended up tripping over some debris, causing her to topple to the ground. Uzi was on top of her immediately, sticking her railgun in the Disassembly Drones face.
“One more buzzword and I’ll do it,” Uzi warned.
“Equity partnersh-–” Uzi made good on her threat and blasted J, leaving only her limbs behind. Lady T, distracted by the bright light and loud blast of the railgun going off, turned in that direction, only to see Uzi spit on what was left of J’s corpse.
“No!” she cried, flying over to her daughter’s remains. “NO! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY DAUGHTER?!” Uzi’s eyes hollowed as Lady T drew herself up to her full height, a snarl on her face and an X in her visor. She deployed her claws, but before she could do anything, N decapitated her from behind with his sword.
The Worker Drones cheered as they emerged from their hiding spots. Uzi started to collapse due to the damage she’d taken from the fight. Fortunately, N caught her before she could hit the floor and put her on his shoulders.
“Holy hell, Uzi, that was insane!” Thad exclaimed in amazement. “And you, too, uh…”
“Huh? Oh! Uh, N,” N, surprised at being addressed, introduced himself as his eyelights became an image of sunglasses. “I’m an angsty, rebellious Disassembly Drone now.”
“A-he-hem.” The crowd parted to reveal a remorseful Khan. Before he could say anything, Uzi threw the oil-stained wrench to his feet.
“I brought the Murder Drones here accidentally,” she huffed. “You chose to leave me for dead instead of just frickin’ believing in me! And that’s not even an edgy teen hyperbole like when I said it last week!” Khan looked away shamefully. Uzi sniffled, as if she was about to cry, before she smacked herself to restore her edge levels. “I’ll save you the trouble, Dad. I banish myself!” she declared. All the other Worker Drones turned to stare at Khan in horror and disbelief. Khan opened his mouth to say something, but no words came. “Let’s go, N,” Uzi huffed. “Everyone here can bite me!”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Uzi!” N said as he turned to leave with Uzi on his shoulders and dragging V and Lady T’s (for the moment) headless body, both tied up with their own tails. Uzi smacked N.
“Shut it!” she hissed. N deployed his wings and flew through the ceiling, leaving a large hole behind. Khan sadly sipped from his #1 Dad mug. The irony was not lost on him.
Uzi sat on the roof of an abandoned car just outside of the corpse spire, watching the sunrise.
“I’d join you if the sun didn’t kill me!” N called from the entrance of the spire. “Hope you’re having important character growth or something, though!”
“Just can’t wait to murder all humans,” Uzi smirked as she stood up. “Classic robot stuff. I hope they’re sitting pretty there on Earth, ‘cause we’re coming for them.” Uzi cackled madly as a strange symbol flashed on her visor.