Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Wakey Wakey eggs and bakey!

Uzi jolted awake at the sound of the robotic voice echoing in her head. Her battery was still really low, despite feeling like she slept for a century. Her optics took a moment to flicker on, revealing her no longer crazed rambling filled ceiling. She looked around, gathering herself. She was in her bed, listening to her computer fan still running. She must have forgotten to shut it off. To her left was N sleeping, splayed out and twisted as if he's never slept on a bed before. Actually, that might have been the case. V was also there, curled up at the foot of the bed like a cat. Her tail was on top of her head, obscuring her eye lights. It occasionally twitched back and forth, like V was still annoyed at the world. Uzi sat up, clutching her head as the details finally flooded back.

The night before had been an absolute mess. N collapsed. Then V collapsed. She then witnessed the craziest lore drop Copper-9 has ever seen and restored N’s memories of the Gala. Somehow on the exact same day they ran into Cyn(ew) and J(double ew). She was almost grateful for Alice for kidnapping her, because at least she got to take a midday nap before the rest went down. They then lost V, Uzi got possessed, saw her dead mom, officially met Cyn, sacrificed herself, woke up in space, regained V, lost J, and defeated Cyn.

 Holy hell.

Needless to say, it was the longest day of her life. Her internal clock read 5:00pm, showing they had slept for nearly a straight day. She had barely even made it home before falling asleep, as her battery was below zero and she was solely running on the energy she was actively producing, which without having had oil recently, wasn't a lot. Her HUD was flashing the “low battery” warning so much she was gonna give herself a robo-seizure. The disassembly drones were also clearly exhausted from the fight. N’s normally wagging tail was dragging on the ground, and his feet kept getting stuck on random bits of debris. V wasn’t doing any better, looking like she was falling asleep standing up. When they got back, Uzi offered for them to sleep on her bed so they didn't fall from the ceiling.

“Goooddd morninggg”

N looked just as barely awake next to her. His words were lightly slurred as he drooled a little on his pillow, but he still had a goofy smile on. 

Uzi just remembered she had a boyfriend!

Ew.

And she definitely needed to sleep off this headache, because she was also hearing things.

“Morning N”

She grinned and laid back down, closing her eyes to continue recharging.

“And now I can do this! Hah!”

She loved showing off her sick as hell solver powers. Of all the things to come out of this, the fact that she had not just one but three friends was definitely her favorite, but being a spooky ghost witch was a close second. 

“Uzi, you have to follow the presentation guideline.”

“Bite me!”

 At least she was already finished with her epic story. She took a seat and let the teacher finish whatever it was he was doing. She put away the flesh wings, but was never quite able to put away the tail. It had been haunting her for over a week since defeating Cyn, watching her and not retracting like it was supposed to. Speaking of which, it must have decided her presentation was boring. It was looking at her with half-lidded eyes. She glared back at it, trying to will it into leaving her alone.

She really hated her stupid tail. As if being a social outcast for her personality wasn't enough, she was now also forced to have a tail in a high school. “Freak” and “weirdo” were now accompanied by “furry” and “gag noises.” Saving the world and stuff meant nothing to them. Everything had become a pain. She was still exhausted, thanks to nights spent trying not to smush her own tail while sleeping on her back, and she’d had to mangle her pro gamer chair by cutting a hole in the base just to sit comfortably. It completely ruined her room aesthetic. And if that wasn’t enough, people kept stepping on it. Some were supposedly on accident, whereas she knew when Lizzy stepped on it it was definitely on purpose.

That hurt.

She was also being haunted by some PTSD version of the solver. It wasn’t really the solver, but its voice liked to mimic her thoughts sometimes—or at least what she thought were her thoughts. She repressed that theory. She decided to ignore her tail and look at her boyfriend. He was somewhat uncharacteristically ignoring Teacher and opting to draw instead. She leaned over subtly to peek at what he was doodling.

“Uzi look! It's us!”

Of course he noticed her immediately. It was hard to be sneaky when N and V had 360 degrees of vision. She didn't even know why she was trying to be sneaky in the first place. She looked down at the paper and-

“I AM NOT THAT SHORT”

He drew the three of them, with Uzi drawn up to his ankles. She actually might have mentioned he improved if it weren't for the fact that she was just offended through her core. She looked like a keybug next to them.

“I know! V said something about it being abstract and representing how you look to us rather than perfectly resembling reality.”

“...”

“...”

“What does she know about art?!”

She spun around to question V. V was picking at her teeth, seemingly not tuned in to their conversation. She looked up at Uzi, but before anything could happen the bell rang.

“We are talking later.”

Uzi pointed at V’s face and stuck her tongue out before putting her headphones on and leaving. Finally free of Teacher’s ramblings for the next 45 minutes, she headed straight out and to her locker. Unlike normal workers who could eat batteries and wires and normal food for lunch, Uzi, N, and V needed to keep oil in their lockers so they didn't get hungry—now that would truly ruin their reputation for good. She opened her locker and took off her headphones. The mirror in her locker flickered yellow. For a brief moment she almost thought she saw the solver cameras. Eating Cyn’s core must have really messed with her processor. And her eye color.

She grabbed the oil and closed her locker—right onto her tail. She yelped and tried to walk backwards. She fell off the stack of books she used to reach her locker and ended up face to face with the ground, oil spilled everywhere. She jolted up and looked to see if anyone was around. The hallway was still dark due to the lightbulbs being destroyed when everything got chucked into space. Fortunately for her, she saw no other drones. 

“You want to talk or are you more interesting in cheating on N with the floor.”

She was mocked in unmistakably V’s voice. The voice was coming from above her, accompanied by the most genuine laugh she's ever heard V muster. Which still sounded fake. Uzi looked up just in time to see V jump off the ceiling, and drop right in front of her.

“Bite me! Stop giving N ideas!”

V leaned against a locker, clearly well practiced from her time with Lizzy. 

“You were the one who gave him ideas in the first place bozo.”

“...”

Uzi was really struggling with comebacks today it seemed. Her thoughts weren't flowing as much as they normally did, and the world just felt muffled. 

“You’re mean! Have some respect for your lord and savior”

Uzi didn't remember where that binomial pair came from, but it fit well enough. It was true though, Uzi literally saved everyone! Where were all the gifts and appreciation? She put her hands into fists at her side and glared up at V.

“My lord and savior just got jumpscared by a locker. 

Uzi’s vision warped yellow. The already dark blue-purple hallway now felt even darker and monochrome. She didn’t even care that V was teasing her in her usual V-way, she just wanted to sleep at this point and wake up normal again. Being a damaged OC wasn’t as easy as it looks. Finally one of her own thoughts appeared.

“Weren’t you supposed to be following Lizzy around? Not following me around like a lost kitten.”

Her vision flickered between normal and warped. She was not about to be having this conversation with V of all people.

“What—I can’t check in on my second favorite worker drone?”

With that, she jumped back onto the ceiling. She ripped a panel off one of the air vents and climbed in, using her tail to loosely reposition the panel behind her. Uzi stood there blankly, listening to V’s scurry through the vents fading out.

“That was weird.”

“Lick.”

Great. Uzi could swear Cyn appeared in every single dream she had since eating her literal weeks ago. At least she was aware she was dreaming this time. Uzi’s half yellow optics flickered around her. She was in the manor, or at least what she thought was the manor from N and V’s memories. There were heaps of books everywhere, but it didn’t quite look like the library she remembered.

“I-I’m hungry. You should go eat, Uzi.”

…Except that part was new. Normally Cyn was the one doing the eating and Uzi was doing the like, staying alive part. She felt her face change into hollowed out eye lights. Cyn constantly appearing, her eyes going half yellow, the solver cameras appearing in the corners of her vision—was she still possessed?

“Cyn, tell me something N would know about you that I would not.”

At least she could rule out if this was her own imagination torturing her or if this was real. If it wasn’t, she could just repress it.

“Mmmmm…. No. Giggles.”

Cyn was being characteristically unhelpful. So instead of dealing with her, she decided to go wander. There was a long hallway over a main entranceway, with a path carved out of candles. Worker  drone Cyn limped along behind her, with Uzi picking up the pace. No matter how much she has had to deal with the skin wearing creep recently, she still wasn't used to its presence. It didn't act like a drone should, but not like she imagined a human would either. 

Cyn winked at her.

She turned the corner, following the candles. They led their way to a set of double doors, which she very gently kicked open. So gentle in fact that the left door flat out broke off its hinges. It looked like a bedroom not unlike her own, except covered in occult imagery rather than her conspiracy walls and edgy night core. The bed had fancy silk curtains surrounding it, and had some weird human stuff like live laugh love on the walls, but it didn't alleviate the creepy imagery.

She walked around, picking up random items and chucking them around, looking for anything that seemed important. 

“Whatcha looking for?”

Uzi didn't give her the respect of an answer. Cyn had snuck up behind her while she was looking at the skull collection—so she did what any normal drone would do and pushed her over. Cyn weakly put her arms out behind her to catch her, not that it did much. She literally made the metalpipe.mp3 noise. 

“You can't ignore me forever. I'm a part of you now.”

Gee thanks inner demon. She stepped over Cyn and sat down on the rocking horse. It was the only seat in the room after all, besides the really ominous looking bed that would probably jumpscare her if she interacted with it. Somehow. Maybe she was just being paranoid. 

 “You are. See look it's comfortable.”

Uzi froze. Cyn was back up and already about to sit on said bed. If this was Cyn then she wouldn't be able to hear her thoughts. So maybe she was safe after all. Just a nightmare. On cue, everything around her started to warp. The walls pulsed, with thick sludgy oil appearing between the crack of the wall and ceiling. Cyn flickered away. In her place, dozens of yellow-glowing security cameras blinked into existence, each one trained directly on her. Her chest began radiating heat that quickly reached her extremities. Uzis vision began to vignette, with her HUD filling of overheating warnings.

“O- Okay buddy, I'm ready to wake up now.”

Buddy? She felt the clockwork clicking at the back of her skull. She was absolutely losing it. So much for a sappy ending. She felt pain in her own messed up nightmares. That's just weak. 

She crumples over, with her abdomen and hands beginning to burn. Steam was rising from each crack in her fingers, with her finger tips beginning to melt and reshape. They warped like poor 3d graphics into weird fleshy claws. Her limbs no longer mapped to where there were supposed to, and her body felt like it was being stretched hundreds of miles long. It was nauseating. Her vision was spinning like a washing machine. What even was a washing machine? Every few feet, her body felt contorted into weird misshapen segments. Even with the weird fleshy wings and tail, she's never felt her entire body change into something not her before. She couldn't just move her leg and feel it move with her—it didn’t feel like it moved at all and felt like it moved all over at the same time. At some point she had squinted her optics shut, and gently opened one to see….no longer the manor?

She was back in her bedroom. Her vision was clearing up, back to the yellow and purple ombre tint she was used to. She looked like she was laying in bed, but her body still didn't feel right. She tried sitting up, but it felt more like controlling her body with a joystick than her own limbs. She was stuck, with someone else at the controls.

Her spiked claw reached across her bed to help prop her up. Wait what? 

She moved her eyes to the left to see the massive solver claw coming seemingly straight out of her back. However, before she could even react, it flickered away. She used the solver to flick her light switch on and illuminate her room, helping with the yellowness. 

Her visor was covered in digital sweat. She was alone, with just her normal bedroom around her. She was still warm, but nowhere near overheating like she was in the dream, or in past experiences that she would not like to think about right now. She took a few moments letting her vents cool her down before moving. Cool air passed slowly passed in and out. That was a benefit of Copper-9 she supposed, it was always sub zero. She could only imagine how bad the overheating could get on a planet like Earth, which was constantly hot and humid. She pushed one of her band posters back up. The command strips she reused were losing their grip and the posters were peeling at the edges. She wanted to set up more dead batteries merch anyway, now may be a good time for that. She finally closed the 100 HUD warnings she had racked up in the few minutes she was awake. Not awake? It was hard to tell right now.

She swung her legs over and hopped off her bed, part of her blanket being dragged with her. The time read 3:00am, which was unfortunately about normal for when she was waking up recently. She had to be diurnal for school after adjusting to nocturnal with the murder drones for so long. They were struggling arguably worse with it. It was much easier to notice with N, who chose to stay with her after everything that happened. He used to wake up much easier when living in the spire than in the bunker. It took N up to a couple hours to finally acclimate to being awake, and even longer to finally settle down at night. Recently she has been dangling oil in front of his face to trigger his disassembler programming, which was working part of the time. 

Speaking of her boyfriend, she left her bedroom to go see where he was. Depending on if her parents were around, he would either sleep in her room or the couch. Since he obviously wasn't in her room, she figured she would check the rest of her place. 

The hallway leading from her bedroom was significantly dustier than usual—a combination of the planets second mass destruction event and Doll’s impromptu visit. There was even still a Dad sized imprint right in the wall. She did not want to think about Doll right now so she shook her head and kept walking. 

N was face down on the sofa, oil dripping from his side. Wait, scratch that. The oil shimmered, then flickered away and revealed a much cleaner, unstained couch below it. He looked like he comedically face planted and never quite adjusted to get comfortable after that. Sighing, she bent down next to his head and poked him.

“V is eating your drawings again, N.”

V was nowhere to be found. After the first couple of days post battle, she became very aloof. She didn't seem to sleep much, instead accidentally falling asleep for short naps once in a while. Most of the time Uzi and N had no clue where she was, but she always appeared every few days so they weren't too concerned. 

“What?! Not again! Oh biscuitsssss”

Wow. N woke up basically immediately, looking arguably more panicked than he did with Cyn. He scanned the room for V or his artwork.

“Nowwww that you're awake, mind answering a few questions? Nothing bad, don't worry.”

Her voice hitched up on the nothing, but she thought she otherwise sounded normal. If she looked off, he didn't mention it. 

“Uhhhhhh sure! What's up? Oh, and just clarifying, V didn't touch my stuff right? Right?”

His eyes hollowed out on that last part, but he was still smiling. 

“Your stuff is completely safe.”

Alright, how to bring this up gently. She knew the manor was a sensitive topic for him, and it would double as suspicious on her part. The last thing she wanted was for this to just be a bad dream and she just completely embarrassed herself by rambling nightmare fueled questions all night. 

“Do you know what a rocking horse is?”

He was very sheltered on Earth, she knew that much. He was still missing so many of his memories, so if he remembered seeing a rocking horse back at the manor, it's possible Cyn might actually be in her head. Maybe that was Tessa’s room? Stress marks appeared on his visor, but he was clearly trying—and failing—to look calm.

“Uhhhh….yea there was one back in the manor. Old toy of Tessa's…I think?”

His eyes unfocused on her and he stared off at a random spot on the floor. That told her all she needed to know. Uzi never went into Tessa’s room, but Cyn must have gone thousands of times. Uzi saw into Tessa's room. Which meant Cyn was still in her head.

Cyn was still in her head.

“Righttt…”

Uzi needed to explain herself and get out of here fast. She just had to come up with a good reason to ask him in the first place.

“So did you do the captcha homework due today?”

Perfect. She already did the homework before going to bed, but she vaguely recalled a rocking horse being one of the images. One of those dumb rotating ones. 

“Oh yeah! It actually wasn't that difficult this time, or at least—I didn't find this one as hard as the last one but it's fine if you did! Do you uh-need help with something?” 

She loved him. 

“Yeahhh if you don't mind could you give me the answers in the morning? It's so boringgggg”

He gave her a double thumbs up. No smile though. He gave her a suspicious glance, telling her he knew she wasn't being completely truthful, but that didn't matter to her right now. She speedwalked back to her room and shut the door, leaning back against it.

Surprise Uzi. Colon right parenthesis. Giggles. 

What the hell. No, not hell, what the f***? Why were her own THOUGHTS censored? 

“Leave me alone!”

She tried to stomp on her own tail, but it just kept wiggling away from her attempts. She felt like a toddler having a tantrum, but couldn't care less right now. She needed this thing out.

“Rude. I want my own body as well. You are too short. And purple. Gags.”

“Why are you even still here? Didn't I like, eat your stupid core or whatever?”

Her fists were clenched into balls by her side. She finally managed to step right on the head of her tail, which as expected shot pain right up her robo-spine. 

“ow ow ow ow ow ow-”

She grabbed its muzzle and squeezed it shut. She was vaguely aware of how she was supposed to be quiet right now—but there were more pressing issues at hand. She shook it around, trying to shake the robo-devil out of her. Despite its mouth being smothered, its voice still made its way into her head.

I can’t explain with your stinky hands in my mouth.

Yea, that wasn’t happening. She frantically glanced around her room for something sharp. There was….basically nothing she could use. Exacerbated, she let go of Cyn and stared at her.

“Fine, explain. But I am not agreeing to anything, so don’t even try.”

“Okay. You ate my core, which was very rude. Eating a core assimilates the person attached to it. You ate me, so now you are sharing with me. That means I get access to your thoughts, your senses, your-”

“Were you planning on hiding in my head this entire time! Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Oh my robo-god you just watched me and N and watched us-”

She groaned into the air, hands up. This was awful. Life ending. Her mortal enemy has watched her and her boyfriend being all sappy and gross and just absolutely violated her. This was arguably worse than just being possessed. At least then it was either her or Cyn. Not both. Her eyes widened. Cyn has really been watching her do everything, as far as watching her getting dressed and looking at herself in the mirror naked-

“Don’t worry, you had nothing to show anyway. V and J are much more impressive.”

And now she was being bodyshamed. Her vision hazed over as steam began rising from her core and steaming her visor. She put her hands on her head and tried calming down. Her computer's buzzing rose—did she still forget to turn it off? Oh—Uzi found something sharp. She grabbed at Cyn’s taunting face with her right hand and the wirey part of her tail with her left hand. She then chomped down hard. She felt sharp pain shoot up her tail, as well as a strong pins and needles feeling as she severed the tip of her tail. 

Everything got quiet. All she could hear now was her own panting and the natural ambiance of the outpost. This was a major problem. The solver wasn’t dead. She knew she couldn’t go to N or especially V about this, they would absolutely freak out. N was only just coming out of his shell. He was so much more relaxed and less flinchy since the Cyn was supposedly gone, and she would hate for him to be back in fight or flight mode all the time. Uzi was going to have to hide it until she found a way to get rid of Cyn for good. Cutting off her tail for a few hours seemed to be a good option, as she couldn’t trust Cyn to keep her mouth shut from here on out. If eating her core is what did it, maybe she could throw it back up? Drones weren’t really built with the ability to throw up, but she could try to make it work. She took a deep breath, and sat at her desk, without worrying about her massive fleshy tail getting in the way. She pulled out a fresh piece of paper and a branded pen she stole from J’s collection on the ship.

“How to get rid of Eldritch horror living in my body”

She tapped the pen against the paper. Without the influence of the solver affecting her, she had a pretty easy time plotting.

Chapter Text

Well that was not suspicious at all. It was the middle of the night on a school day, and Uzi woke him up to ask him about rocking horses and homework, then didn't elaborate and went back to sleep. It also strangely aligned with the manor….cutting that thought off there! Maybe she didn’t know what it was? Scratch that, the captcha in the homework was an image, so she clearly was able to match the name to the image. It could just be Uzi being Uzi. Her mind raced a hundred thoughts per minute, so who knows what triggered her to ask him. Well, whatever it was he was already awake. He normally woke up around 500, letting him go outside and stretch for a little before having breakfast and getting ready to go to school.

School! He got to go to school! Tessa was always homeschooled, with fancy tutors who she never really cared about. Why was Tessa on his mind so much recently? He guessed he could blame Uzi for that one. Blame her in a friendly way of course, he wasn’t actually mad.

What was he doing? Right, getting ready for school. It was incredible to him how the bunker offered school for free. For all drones, even N and V, who were a lot older than their fellow classmates. Wait, he didn’t want to think about that either. He propped himself up on all fours, and did a big stretch, letting his tail begin to wag. He put his arms on the floor to peek under the sofa. His secret stash of art and drawing supplies were safe and sound from V’s claws. She only destroyed one of his drawings, and it was an accident, but he had to be careful. Well, at least he thought it was an accident. Maybe she didn’t like being drawn as a cat. He fully got off the couch and stood up. The living room was dark, as nobody else was awake except for maybe Uzi. He saw the room coated in a bright green and deep blues simultaneously as his different visions mixed together. He didn’t even realize that wasn’t normal until very recently. It was strange to him to even see with so little vision—all his waking memories besides the little Uzi restored all had his additional eyes. 

He yawned. He was still getting used to being diurnal and it was really messing with him. He was much more tired than usual, and it was messing with his head. Nothing a little fresh air couldn’t fix though. He grabbed the keycard they had been using to get in and out of the bunker and went for a walk. Uzi’s home was right next to the exit fortunately, allowing him easy access to the outside. The hallways, as opposed to the rooms, were always lit. It messed with him even further, tricking him into thinking it was day when it most definitely was not. He didn’t need to follow the signs anymore, hes taken this path enough times and he memorized the route by the second attempt. He turned right at Uzi’s, left out of the residential area, right, left, straight, straight, and then right to make it to the door. He approached the third door and used the keycard to let them all dramatically open. In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t be able to all be open, but it worked out for him in the long run. He got a girlfriend! After trying to kill her, but he stopped that pretty quick.

“Hey N! Wanna play cards? We could use a 6th person!”

Ron was waving at him.

“Sorry, I’m going outside for a bit. Maybe when I get back though!”

He smiled back at Ron, letting his tail wag more to show he’s genuine. Ron accepted that answer, and waved him goodbye. He let his wings catch the fresh air pulling through the tunnel, and kicked off. His anti-gravity thrusters kicked in, allowing him to quickly accelerate through the night sky. Maybe he would check on V while he was out here?

V wasn’t in her normal spots. He knew she still visited the spire for stuff, and had been collecting various weapon paraphernalia in an apartment near the cabin fever labs. She didn’t know he knew her secret spot, but she wasn’t there regardless. She also hung around Uzi’s room a lot, but he was pretty confident she didn't sneak in as he left.  The only other spot he knew she was regularly was Lizzys…which he couldn’t check right now. It was the middle of the night, and worker drones really valued their sleep at night. 

Well, he knew she was either there or out….doing whatever she did. He knew she still hunted, and both he and Uzi were a bit nervous to try to make her stop. Last time they tried she got really defensive with them. But maybe it would be different now? He still needed to talk to her about everything that went down with Cyn. He knew she was lying to him, but hearing her begin to confess everything—even before he cut her off—was so strange. Maybe when he found her they would talk. But that wasn’t right now! He was glad he at least got some fresh air. His chronometer read 438, which gave him plenty of time to get back, heat up some oil, read a book, and maybe help Uzi with homework? He still didn’t know what that was all about. He looped around, ready to head back to the bunker. He watched the buildings below pass by, looking so small at the altitude he was flying. He was flying higher than they normally flew, allowing him to avoid dodging the skyscrapers that were nearby. As he got to the outskirts of the city, he glided downwards, feeling the wind pick up as he gradually accelerated. He flew like this for a few minutes, enjoying the breeze. Flying inherently raised their body temperature a lot, so the cool air helped carry the heat away from his core and let him cool down. 

His targeting protocol activated. A heat signature was detected approximately 1000 meters ahead, hidden in a cluster of buildings and fossilized trees. It was getting increasingly normal for worker drones to go exploring after their squad disbanded. He flew a little closer to see what was going on, and as he got within 100 meters he noticed something falling from the sky. He got closer to investigate and-

A blur ripped past him. The air bucked, his wings snapped sideways, and suddenly he was tumbling. He instinctually spread his wings wide to slow his spin and twisted his body to face the ground.

He reoriented just in time to see V diving straight down, claws outstretched, headed straight for the worker. The asbestos snow kicked up as she slammed into the ground, with the workers heat signature quickly replaced by Vs.

Well, it's not like he wasn’t responsible for doing the exact same thing thousands, if not millions of times before. He swooped down to go talk to her.

He disabled his anti-gravity and let himself fall towards Copper-9. He put his metal feet out in front of him and touched down.

“Hey V! What are you uhhhh up to today?”

At least he knew she probably wouldn’t fly away this time. Why did he even ask that though? He didn’t really want to acknowledge her hunt, and he knew she was probably going to school the same he was.

“I- I mean!”

Okay. He was just going to rip the bandage off and try to talk to her about stuff. They were pretty secluded, in some sort of courtyard on the outskirts of the colony's neighboring city. The snow was piled up against the building’s walls, with a very thin coating around their feet, allowing them to feel the solid ground beneath them. He sighed, and approached V. She was crouched down, chewing on a mostly dry worker arm. She was watching him, waiting for him to do something.

“How are you doing? I haven’t really gotten to check on you since….everything. How are you holding up?”

Nailed it. He sat down cross legged in front of her, the corpse sitting in the middle. She looked down, finished sucking the oil out of the limb.

“I’m fine.”

Well that was the least convincing lie he’s heard all day. Even Uzi did better than that. He kept watching her, unimpressed. They sat there, him looking at V and V blankly staring at the corpse. He knew she knew he knew she was lying. He tapped his fingers on his leg, waiting for her to elaborate.

“I’m glad the stupid solver is gone for good.”

“Me too, but you know that’s not what I'm asking.”

Her tail straightened out, and she tensed up.

“What are you, my therapist?”

“...”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Now he was getting somewhere! He perked up a little, and they made eye contact. V continued.

“What about you? You are too worried about everybody else. How are you doing?

How was he doing? He was happier, he knew that. He had a girlfriend, which was amazing! And V was talking to him, finally. He got to finally live a normal life.

But no matter what he did, he felt like everything gave him memories of a life he didn’t remember. Or maybe even the life before that. How many lives did he even live before making it to the manor? Even back at the manor, did he know what came before? He didn’t know how old he was or his birthday—although Uzi didn’t know her birthday either, so maybe they could pretend it was the same day. Oh, V was still looking at him.

“I…don’t know.”

It felt like everything was going to get taken away, and Cyn was going to come back, and he was going to lose everybody again. V ripped the final limb off of the worker drone and offered it to him. He shook his head no, leading her to shrug and start gnawing on the open end. 

“Hey wait, you never answered me!”

She looked surprised, as if she expected her deflection to work. Of course she wasn't asking to be genuine. 

“Well, I have to go do my homework before school starts bye N!”

V spread her wings and took off immediately, limb still in hand. Was she always this bad at lying? She doesn't even do her homework, she just shows up to talk with Lizzy. Well, that still went better than he thought it would go. Pleased, he took off towards the bunker.

A few hours and a full mug of oil later, N made it to school. Or at least, what was left of the school. Supposedly it used to be really big—numerous classrooms, a cafeteria, offices, long hallways, a gym, and more. The only part of that he got to see was the auditorium, and not for long thanks to Doll. Now the school consisted of a classroom, a hallway of lockers, and bathrooms that nobody used for anything but drugs. There were a lot fewer students now, so at least it didn’t matter that much? He hated that idea. 

He was interrupted by the noise of the bell. N took his seat at the back, between V and Uzi, with the former glaring at him and the latter looked horrified. Well this was going to be an uncomfortable class. Teacher asked everybody to pass up their homework, which he noticed V did not do. Uzi said before they left for school that she had managed to complete hers, and proved that when she handed it in. She obviously had something else on her mind though. Uzi was grasping her desk till her knuckles went metaphorically white, and breathing so heavily he could see her chest rise and fall beneath her hoodie. She was mumbling something incoherent, with her visor beginning to flicker whenever she stopped.

He tapped her with his right hand. She snapped her head over at him. He displayed a message for her on his visor.

U good?

That felt like the most fitting thing to say. He gave himself a mental pat on the back for thinking of that one. Uzi’s eyes went wide with recognition. She switched her own visor to display mode, with the one notable difference being the yellow ombré gradient added to her typically only purple visor.

Talk later?

U skipped my line :(

>:3

She seemed a little calmer at least. He looked over to his left. V was slumped over her desk, arms crossed and head lying on top. She looked half asleep with her eyes only half open, focused on nothing. When was the last time she slept? Lizzy was sat next to her, rabidly texting at her phone. As per usual, they were splitting a pair of earbuds. Where the earbuds were connected to he had no clue, because last he checked none of them had ears. Or did they? He tried to feel for his own ears beneath his hair—no ears there. He heard Teacher’s voice drone on.

“It costs 5 dollars to buy three mangos, and 3 dollars to buy two mangos. If someone buys 49 mangos, how much would that cost if they wanted it to be as cheap as possible.”

Oh, he forgot he was actually in class for a moment. Some of the stuff they taught did seem a bit strange, they all literally had calculators built into their head. At least, disassembly drones did. He felt his core twist. Was he supposed to be doing everything manually? He had built in programs for basically every subject they had to deal with in school. He didn’t want to be different from the worker drones, he would happily trade into one of their bodies. Or maybe they did have calculators and this whole thing was for nothing anyway. Fortunately he knew a worker drone who would be more than willing to answer him. But he couldn't do that now. He marked it down on his mental checklist for things to go over later. All he could do right now is try to calm down, and focus on something else. Wait, did the Teacher want someone to answer? Everybody was looking around, like they normally did when they didn't want to be called on. Well, for now he wasn't going to worry. He raised his hand, and let Teacher call on him.

“It would cost 74 dollars Mr. Teacher!”

N hoped this class would go by quickly.

School was finally over. That was a relatively rough several hours. Normally he liked school, but he had bigger things to do right now. He was so worried if everything got bad again, his happily ever after would be taken away. He had to play his cards right.

Oh, and he had to go play cards with the WDF at some point.

Well, he and Uzi got to go back to her home and hang out for a while. They got up to leave the classroom, with Uzi taking a quick detour to V. He was still packing up his stuff, and he didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but his hearing was three times better than a worker drones and he was often stuck hearing things he didn’t want to be.

“Hey V, wanna maybe come and have a sleepover tonight? Me and N were gonna hang out earlier but you can come by later and sleep tonight if you want. Or you can come earlier—point is you are invited.”

So Uzi also noticed. V said something that he couldn’t quite make out, but knew it was probably dismissive by both her tone and Uzi's reaction. His own tail drooped. He dropped his final book into his messenger bag and pulled it over his shoulder. 

Well, he got to go hang out with Uzi! She started walking out, and looked back at him waiting for him to follow. He bounced after her, ready to go home. She lived pretty close to the school as well, only around a 5 minute walk. None of the disassemblers realized it before, but Outpost 3 was massive. He had only ever known of the outskirts, like where the WDF was and Uzi lived. But on the other side of the school was even more residential wings, and elevators that carried them down through several more floors of bunker. There were entire underground malls, courtyards, restaurants, stores, things he couldn’t have even imagined. He’d only seen them briefly, like when he was dragged to a store to get spare clothes because he was “stinky” and needed them washed. That was one of his least favorite days since moving into the bunker.

Uzi glanced back at him. He was trailing loosely behind her, lost in thought. He usually was the one leading the way, with his significantly longer legs helping him leave Uzi in the dust. It must have just been a bad day for everyone. They turned right and left into the WDF residential hall, which unlike the name didn't just contain worker defense force members. It was mostly true, it was primarily filled with people who worked in defense for the bunker, but there were a few others who ended up residing in it as well. Thanks to being so close to the surface, it was also much colder than deeper in the bunker, which the oil-dependent drones seriously appreciated. They approached the door third from the end, with Uzi flicking her keycard on it to gain access. 

They both entered, and she shut the door. She dropped her bat backpack onto the ground near the door. Uzi opened up their oil locker, took a bottle, and sat down on the couch. Her legs were on the seat of the couch, with her upper back leaned against the arm. 

“Was it just me, or was class realllly boring today.” 

Uzi huffed. He didn't exactly disagree with her, but maybe not for the same reasons. 

“Yea…”

He crawled onto the couch with her. They lay there for a moment. Uzi fiddled with the zipper on her hoodie, occasionally taking a sip of oil. N sat next to her, unmoving. He let his systems begin filter his memories out. Normally this process happened while they slept, but he was not getting nearly enough sleep to deal with the massive influx of memories he was having every day. For his systems to keep up, they were on 24/7. It put him into a half dream-like state, with mental images flashing across his visor in addition to the real world. Him walking down the hallway, seeing Lizzy walk by, Lizzy telling someone off with some colorful language-

Oh yeah.

“Hey Uzi, what's a lesbian?”

Uzi choked on her drink. 

“Hkk- W-where did you hear it?”

She looked way too interested. Was it a swear or something? It wasn't listed as such in his database.

“I heard Lizzy say it to a girl in school earlier. She seemed awfully upset by it.”

Uzi looked very amused. 

“What do you think a lesbian is?”

Uzi had a massive devious smirk on. He had no clue. 

“I don't know, something offensive?”

She giggled. 

“Nah, it's not anything bad. It just means a woman who loves women. Lizzy was calling her gay.”

“Oh! So J’s a lesbian!”

Uzi’s eyes went wide, and her mouth formed a perfect O shape.

“What?!”

Uzi kept blinking at him. 

“J’s a lesbian?!”

“...”

“Oh my robo-god that's hilarious”

“I thought you said being a lesbian was nothing bad! It's normal!”

Uzi was kicking her feet at this, nearly hitting him in the process.

“I wasnt expecting that. J, a lesbian. I didn't know she had interests besides being a lapdog.”

“Do you think being gay is a bad thing?”

“Huh? No. I'm just surprised. I support every other gay person, just not J. Also I am literally bisexual.”

“You are???”

“....yes?”

Wow was he learning a lot today. Not what he was planning on talking about, but interesting nonetheless.

“Well I'm glad you're not a lesbian!”

Uzi fully cackled at this, and he laughed along. She looked like she was about to cry from laughing so hard. This carried on for probably way longer than it should have, with the two of them randomly making eye contact and bursting into giggles again. After a while, Uzi abruptly stopped laughing. She finally replied in one of the sappiest tones he's ever heard her do.

“Yea, me too.”

He couldn’t tell what it was, but something about her delivery made them both cackle like hyenas again. Oh no, now he was thinking about Earth again.

“How do you think J is doing?”

Uzi shrugged, and chugged the rest of her oil before answering.

“Does it matter? I don't really care if she's dying out there, she did it to herself.”

He knew that was true. She sided with the solver, and therefore was taken down with it. But the last he saw of her was her getting knocked out of the fight, she very likely was still alive out there. He lived a whole life with her before all this happened, and despite not remembering it, it still felt close to him.

 “Don't tell me you still care about her.”

“No no, it's not like that. I just… keep having thoughts like I was still back at the manor. Like, something reminds me of the manor and I get this weird… Deja vu feeling? I don't even remember what happened, and like, I don't need to know but I also want to remember what happened? I don't know how to move on from it and it's all I can think about-”

Uzi’s hand grabbed at his. He didn’t even realize he was scratching at the couch until she stopped him. He was rambling way more than he would have liked to. Not that he didn't want to be fully transparent with Uzi, but he was trying to see what was troubling her, not the other way around!

“No, no I get it. I know this may sound weird but I get what it feels like to have…someone whos not you but also still you in your head, especially if they want something different than you. Does current you want to remember? Because…”

She did her infamous evil planning face.

“I can go in your head and unlock the rest. We kind of got cut off last time but we have all the time in the world now! And I totally don’t want to see more of you in a butler costume. Because that definitely wasn’t adorable. Hehehehehe…”

That was rather… ominous. How did Uzi know what it felt like? As far as he knew, she’s only lived the one life, and she remembered all but the very beginning of it. But it did feel nice for someone to understand. She put what he was feeling into words better than he could. And she could help get his memories back!

“Yea…I would like that.”

The sleepiness was already catching up to him. They had barely been out of school for half an hour and he already felt his digital eyes drooping. He yawned. Uzi yawned back, showing off her sharpened canines. Why did humans have to make yawning contagious? He turned away from her to stop the loop, yawning a second time before turning back.

“Humans were weirdddddd.”

Uzi slumped back down and stretched her arms and legs at the same time like she was a ninja star. She then went limp and looked like she was about to fall asleep right there. He chuckled and responded.

“Yea…you’re pretty weird yourself”

He winked. She looked at him in horror. 

“Ewwwww are you trying to tease me?!”

“Noooo….” 

 He leaned into her face. 

“Do you want me to?”

She screamed and whacked his visor. He knew she didn’t really mean it though.

“B- bad N! I’m putting on AoT.”

She leaned over to grab the remote, and turned on the TV. 

“Heh, okayyyy”

He was fine with watching a show for a while. It was a Friday, it’s not like they had school the next day anyway. He could sleep all weekend!

“Using the power of the Founding Titan, Karl Fritz erected three walls. These walls, formed by tens of millions of Colossal Titans, have served as a shield and spear, safeguarding peace.”

He fell asleep immediately.

Chapter Text

V stalked forward on all fours. She wasn’t allowed to hunt in the bunker, nor did she want to deal with the ramifications of that anyway. No, she was immediately outside Outpost-4. There were very limited communications between outposts, so a few missing workers were never a big enough deal for outpost-3 to be alerted to. She waited partially buried in the snow for the doors to open. All her hunting programs were enabled, keeping her thoughts and optics streamlined on that thin edge of the door.

Movement. She pounced, claws out at the unsuspecting worker. Before it could even blink, its head was off and its core impaled.

She licked the oil off her claws. She was still buzzing from the adrenaline, but knew it would wear off soon. Her eyes flickered around her outdoor apartment. She saw the same peeling wallpaper, destroyed windows, and loosely thrown around furniture that she always did, but it was still safe to check. In a sense she was never truly free from the solver. Back at the manor, Cyn followed Tessa around like a decrepit roomba. Then she ripped them apart and spit them out to murder people—but even then she never really left them alone. 

She watched them constantly. 

She remembered the first time N’s memories started clawing back—watching him collapse to the ground, only to wake up with no recollection of anything. Like he was straight off the assembly line. She tried being sneaky with him, talking only when she was sure there were no unwanted bystanders, but even then Cyn was always watching straight through their own optics. 

V glanced around her apartment again. The rafters were clear, the room itself was well-lit, and everything was in place. She walked over to check the windows. No yellow eyes met hers. It was early evening, the sun was just beginning to set. She set up camp on the top floor of the skyscraper, preventing any worker drones besides Uzi from getting up there. It was surrounded on the entire north side by other skyscrapers, allowing her to be near the windows without completely melting.

Of all the things Cyn could take away, her ability to enjoy the sun was one of her least favorites. Back at the manor, that was one of the few things she actually enjoyed doing. And of course Cyn knew that and tormented her on purpose. V used to waste whole afternoons pacing through the Elliot family’s stupid flower beds. Now there was no Earth, no plants, and no sun for her. 

She turned around. There were no unnatural glitches, and the room had the same blacks and whites it always had. No yellow. Nothing under the couch, or the table, and nothing in the rafters. Exhausted, she jumped up to the rafters and laid across one of the cross beams, letting her tail and legs hang off. She used her arms to grab the bar, preventing her from falling off. 

She couldn't fall asleep. Well, she was sure she physically could, but there was no way she was going offline for over 8 hours at a time like this. She let her head rest on the beam. She closed her regular eyes, but kept her eye lights on to keep an eye out. It wasn't like her base optics worked anyway. She had another 12 hours before she was supposed to go bother Lizzy, and until then she needed to stay awake.

Nothing by the window, nothing by the door, everything was clear. The sun was mostly set at this point, casting the room in a dim orange haze.

This was going to be a long night. She didn't really know how to entertain herself anymore. She still went hunting, which was always her main way of calming down, but every time she stopped she just felt even worse. Guilt ate away at her core, and there was absolutely no stopping it. There was no undoing the past. No stopping Cyn. Everything was set like dried blood of the humans she was also forced to kill. At least she felt less bad about those ones.

She took a shaky breath in and out. Nothing by the window, nothing by the door, the room was clear. 

V lay there unmoving for a few minutes. She had auto-run programs set up to remind her to look around, although she instinctually knew to do so much more frequently.

There was nothing in the room, nothing by the door, nothing-

Wait. She heard the drum of a core outside. Her heat sensor agreed, detecting a full drone approaching at fast speed. Cyn.

She got up and twisted around, ready to leap at whatever it was. As it approached, she heard the singular core buzz separate into more. There were two cores, as well as the thumping noise of a human heart. 

200 meters away. 100 meters. 50 meters. Her claws were out and her legs ready to pounce. 

Drone detected. She leapt at it, aiming straight for the core. 

“AAAUGGHHH”

N’s voice rang out. She was already in the air, moving full force at him. She tucked her claws and body-slammed him, causing them both to roll almost out the window. After doing a full 360, she ended up back over him, arms below her and face slammed into his neck. She quickly got back up and growled at him.

“What are you doing stalking me?!”

He was not supposed to know where this was. She made sure each time she came by that nobody was around to find it. She was distinctly aware of the other drone approaching as well. She looked up to see fleshy wings, followed by a yellow-purple visor. 

So N not only found her secret spot, but led Uzi here. Great.

Uzi spoke first.

“You aren't very sneaky. Also you left your location on. And even if you didn't, I'm literally your system admin.”

She was heavily regretting accepting that, but it wasn't like she really had a choice at the time.

“Did you come here just to annoy me? Cause if so, you can leave now.”

 Actually, I have a project I'm working on that I mayyy need help with.  So….can you maybe come over?”

Uzi looked a strange mixture of pride and nervousness. It was obvious she came up with that excuse so she wouldn't look like she was worried about V. But it kept her ego intact so V played along.

“Yea? What are you struggling with? Need a big strong drone to help?”

“Bite me! I need a disassembly drone. Just trust me.”

V rolled her eyes, but stood up anyway. N knocked out of his stupor, and grinned.

“Cool! I wanna find out what it is!”

If even N didn't know, then V definitely didn't want to know what Uzi had planned.

After flying for 20 minutes, they made it back to the doors of the bunker.  One of the random WDF guys let them in, and they entered the outpost.

Uh oh. V remembered why she always took the vents. She hated seeing people in the halls, sure, and it was faster to crawl through the air vents than walk through the halls—but the real reason? Grates. Her weird peg legs were a nuisance from the very beginning. She either had to stare at the ground and pay very close attention to the crosses where the wire met, or she got to enjoy faceplanting into the ground. The snow near the entrance filled up the grates enough that it didn’t matter where she walked, but she did not enjoy going further in. 

She paused. Uzi stopped as well to give her a skeptical look.

“...I’ll meet you there.”

She jumped up to the ceiling, and lifted the nearest vent cover. Uzi smirked at her. 

“Okay weirdo.”

She took off through the vents. They were very narrow, forcing her arms to stay pinned above her head. She had to use her claws and legs to propel herself, but it was a direct route, and therefore much faster than walking. Over time she had managed to bend the more commonly used vents, so at least they got more manageable over time. 

She dropped into Uzi’s room. It was the same emo mess it always was, complete with an updated conspiracy board written in some sort of code and a very strong smell of oil. She sat down on Uzi’s bed, eyeing the half empty oil can. After some contemplation, she took it and started sipping on it. Right on cue, she heard Uzi and N turn the lock and enter.

“N, go sit down while I prepa- hey that's my oil!”

“Not anymore short stack.”

V chugged the rest of the oil, then looked back to see Uzi glaring at her. The purple drone shook her head and went on her computer. After a few minutes of her preparing something, she rolled her chair aside, made some sad impression of clearing her throat, and began presenting.

“So, we can all agree we hate the solver.”

Uzi started her presentation by pulling up a fully yellow PowerPoint slide that just said solver stinky. This was seemingly off to a terrible start. She kept flicking slides, and noticed N besides her following along enthusiastically with whatever Uzi was saying.

“...and colors are very important to drones! Imagine if I was like, red or something?! That would be gross. And weird. Anyway, I was thinking…”

She changed the slide to a rainbow. 

“...what if I went into your operating systems and changed your colors! I haven't tested it yet but if either of you were willing we could totally make you look sick! I'll just hack into your head again and make you any color you want, just give me a hex code. I'm not really sure how to do your eye lights too but it can't be that hard and…”

Well this was an interesting idea. Changing her color from solver yellow to something she chose? Anything to get back at that thing. 

But what color would she choose? She could go back to the white of the manor, but…maybe she didn't want to do that. She heard N shoot up besides her.

“Oh I like pink! Mmmm but I could also be blue. Or maybe we can match and be purple together!”

He winked at her, and her visor displayed multiple bars of blush. That was absolutely disgusting and disturbing to watch, and she couldn't believe she had to witness that. She wasn't even jealous of that one it was so bad.

“Ew.”

She let her tail swish behind her. She couldn't be pink, that was Lizzy’s color. Red would be cool, but that was Doll’s color, which both Lizzy and Uzi would talk about. Orange was too close to yellow and yellow was too yellow. Thad was green. That left blue and purple left.

Someone was snapping in her face.

“Hello? Earth to V?”

She jerked up to see Uzi’s awfully yellow eyes staring at her. 

“Any ideas?”

She took a moment to recalibrate herself before responding.

“Purple. Make me lilac. C8A2C8.

“Awwww you two can match!”

N seemed thrilled at the idea. Uzi on the other hand looked to be fighting demons.

“You wanna be purple like me…?”

“Please, you are barely purple anymore. You look like a rotting banana.”

Uzi looked genuinely hurt by that comment. Was she that against bananas or was she secretly sensitive about her new yellow appearance? Either way, V now knew how to get under her casing if she ever needed to annoy the not-so-purple thing at any point.

“What's a banana?”

N looked at her inquisitively.

“Peasant food.”

The Elliot's never had bananas. Well, they did when Tessa was really little, because she used to love them, but they were gone by the time N arrived. 

Uzi put her right hand across V’s mouth to stop her from continuing. 

“So, since you guys are set up differently from worker drones it might take a couple hours to find the setting. Or you guys might be stuck yellow, I don't know. I have an idea trust me!”

Uzi took her hand off V’s face and gave them both pleading eyes. She was looking for their permission. She saw N beside her give two thumbs up, but for her? She didn't know if she wanted Uzi going inside her head again. Last time she wasn't really given a choice, she had to let Uzi in. She needed the access point to also get into N’s head. 

“You don't have to do it if you don't want to.”

But she did want it. She just didn't know if she could handle doing this again. What she was suprised though was how willing N was. If anyone had a reason to not want someone going in their head, it was definitely him. If he could do it, it seemed silly for her to be hesitant. 

“Okay fine go in my stupid head. Whatever.”

She wasn't freaking out at all about this! It's not like she didn't trust Uzi, she did, but it was still violating to have someone crawling around in your systems. Before Uzi, the only time someone had done that was Cyn, and that obviously went terribly. She'd sooner kill herself than let that happen again. She already felt dizzy and slightly nauseous at the thought.

She was distracted by a sudden buzzing feeling in her head, and a magnetic node attached to her face. 

“Okay! Now just go to sleep and you might wake up a different color. Maybe.”

Uzi went up to N and whispered something in his ear, making them both giggle. She ignored it and curled up at the foot of Uzi’s bed. They sat there for a few moments, with Uzi weirdly watching them. N spoke first.

“So uhhh, what color am I getting?”

“It's a surprise. You'll like it I promise.”

“Okay!”

Another few minutes passed. N was normally quick to fall asleep, but especially lately he was falling asleep almost instantly. Even when he seemingly didn't want to. So it was no surprise to see sleep mode displayed across his visor. Robo-god knew he needed it.

“Why are you still awake?”

Uzi’s yellow glow was shining in her face. Her visor glitched, flickering between her infamous purple and yellow. Her face was awfully close to V’s, so V curled up further to look away. 

Uzi turned around and hopped up on the bed next to her. She kicked her legs a little, and fiddled with the thick sheets on her bed.

“I'm not going to go snooping in your head. I'll just be in and out. I promise.”

She held out her pinky finger. V stared at it, dumbfounded. Since when was Uzi such a people reader? She was as socially inept as a sack of rocks. But even as much as Uzi could be annoying at times, she wasn't really known for lying. Unlike V herself.

“Fine. But if you touch anything else, I will end you. Painfully.”

“Please, I'm a literal god. And either way, N wouldn't let you.”

Uzi smirked at her, pinky still outstretched. V huffed and put her left claws away to replace them with her hand. She interlocked her own pinky with Uzi’s. 

“Okay now you have to kiss on it.”

Without warning, Uzi leaned in to kiss the back of her own hand. V immediately let go and pulled her hand back.

“Huh?!”

Uzi groaned. 

“It's a real thing, you have to kiss it to seal the promise. It's like, in movies and stuff too.”

V has never heard of this in her life.

“I'm not kissing you. Nobody does that.”

Uzi rolled her eyes. 

“Fine, no pinky promise. But go look it up, it's a real thing I swear.”

Uzi crossed her arms. V lay back down, closing her eyes and watched the room with her overhead optics. N was fast asleep, dead to the world. Uzi was rather unsubtly watching them, no doubt waiting for V to fall asleep so she could go torment them.

Uzi at some point had flopped on her back, staring at the ceiling. They were like that, piled on her bed like the day they killed Cyn. She yawned, feeling her lack of sleep finally catching up to her. She fought the drowsiness, trying to keep alert. V didn't even know why she was doing it at this point, but she was so used to staying awake that trying to sleep felt weird. Uzi yawned beside her, then glanced to look at V. V didn't acknowledge it, but let her eyelights drift in that direction. 

Why did Uzi look so confused? She was too tired to figure that out. One by one, her optics shut down, leaving her with just a yellow monochrome view of the room. 

Then her body jolted, safety alarm blaring. The room was clear, there were no windows, and both Uzi and N were safe and sound. Her core rattled as she tried to settle down again.

She adjusted, laying her head against her arm. She hated this. Her body would not shut down and she was way too anxious about falling asleep even when everything was completely safe. 

She glanced over at N again. He hadn't moved once since powering down. He was completely defenseless, relying on Uzi to keep him alive overnight. Or more likely, he didn't think anything bad was coming.

Idiot. 

But he was her best friend from the very beginning. She crawled up beside him, still under her limited vision, and lay back down at the head of the bed, leaning against his left side. His core beat slow, even lower than it probably should have been. She leaned in closer, trying to match her own breathing to his. He stirred, leaning his head into hers the same way she was leaning into him. If she was any more awake at this point, she would have been thoroughly embarrassed and leave. But she wasn't, she was barely clinging onto consciousness. So she would deal with the consequences of her actions in the morning. 

The rest of her vision began to fade out. The last thing she saw was Uzi watching over them before her vision cut out and she fell into darkness.

Chapter Text

Her plan worked! 

Her plan worked. 

It had been exactly one week since discovering she had a stowaway in her head. Since then, Cyn decided to stop hiding and would talk in her head all the time. She couldn't eat. She couldn't sleep. She couldn't work. She couldn't even breath without it spewing nonsense. She was constantly feeling the weight of someone watching and judging your every move. Not to mention trying to get changed or be alone for 5 seconds.

My bad.

So, Uzi tried to get rid of it. She didn't want the others worrying just yet—they clearly had their own stuff to deal with. Besides, what if this was all some sick nightmare in the first place? So, for now, she wouldn't tell them. She needed to plot to get rid of the solver without prying eyes. Uzi was going to remake her conspiracy board, complete with her own homemade cypher. Most drones had built in decoders for the basic cyphers, so she had to be a little creative. She shifted all letters over, then converted each new letter into a symbol, and then rotated all of the symbols in a 2x2 grid. Even if a drone decoded one or two pieces, her message would still look like gibberish. And since she wasn't explaining how she was doing it to Cyn, it shouldn't be able to read it either. Not that Cyn wasn't already able to hear her thoughts, but it was the thought that counts!

Anyway. It was quickly obvious that removing Cyn would be much harder than she wanted. Cutting off her tail gave her up to a couple hours of peace if she reduced her healing as low as it could go, but even then she came back. She was well engrained in her hardware, and the only way she could think to get rid of Cyn would be to software kill herself.

…that was at the bottom of her list. If Cyn started to take control of her again, she would consider it. But for now? Cyn was powerless, and she was free to torment it back as much as she could.

Which led to her plan! She was going to undo as much of the solver as she could. Starting with the infamous solver yellow. She saw how much the others would flinch at even their own reflections. They were terrified of themselves. Instead of getting to live like a normal drone, their identities were taken and replaced by the solver. And she would be lying if she didn't admit she hated the yellow too. The horrified look she received when her eyes first changed yellow was seared into her memory like an OLED screen. Even her classmates noticed the difference, and despite how stupid most of them were, even they had learned by now that yellow was bad.

G-guess my favorite color!

So here she was, deep in N’s operating system. 

Hey. Rude.

Once both drones fell asleep, she locked their bootup software so they wouldn't wake up in the middle of this. Just in case. V was already done, and was expected to change color on startup. With V done, she closed up her system as promised and was ready to work on N. 

Everything was going according to plan. Nothing weird there. What was weird was Cyn’s involvement. The disassembly drones had very convoluted code, with nothing labeled and everything she wanted was buried in various files. Unlike what Uzi expected, Cyn was seemingly helping, leading her to where she buried the OS settings. Well, at first it was more like Uzi ignoring her and eventually stumbling upon the settings herself. But she couldn't help herself from seeing if Cyn was guiding her correctly. And it was. 

And she didn't trust it. Uzi didn't know what Cyn was planning, but if she was trying to get on Uzi's good side for favors, then she would make sure to fight back. She was no longer falling for the solvers tricks.

I'm not tricking you. 

Uzi opened yet another series of files. She could swear Cyn made this complicated on purpose. Alas, at least V was done and all she had left was N. 

She glanced over at them. They were curled up like a puddle of dogs. At some point their tails had even intertwined and N ended up half on top of V. He emitted faint snoring noises, a stark contrast to V’s complete silence. It was absolutely adorable. And also conflicting her own feelings. She knew N had a crush on V when they first met, and now with his memories restored….

Maybe she should wait until after she was out of his head to think about that. Besides, he was hers and that part wasn't changing!

You disgust me.

The feeling was mutual. Even with Cyn’s unwanted additions, the process was actually pretty fun. The disassembly drones were so much different than worker drones, and came with a bunch of features that were absolutely wild. They had three separate CPUs, whereas worker drones typically came with just one multiple core processor. This was great for having them act like workers one moment and then drop into the more animalistic disassembly protocols the next—but also made her job even harder. Their visor color was coded for by their base CPU, but their eyelights were on a separate processor and their other various lights were on the tertiary one. 

In addition to having to filter through various different systems, they were also in completely different languages. The base CPU was primarily coded in JCJenson’s creatively named Worker Drone coding software, but for some unholy reason Cyn added the nearly extinct C++ in as well. 

Get it. C. My name starts with a C. You c?

Shut up shut up shut up shut up. Holy hell. Okay, she made a custom code to surprise N with, and all she had left to do was install it two more times. Then wake them up and hope it worked. She could run tests while they were asleep, but she promised V she wouldn't do anything more than necessary. Sure, N wasn't a part of that deal, but running the testing software could be rather invasive so she figured he would also rather be awake for it. 

It w-will work. I made it foolproof. Giggle.

Uzi flopped her head on the table. She set the computer up to install two more copies for each spot on his code. 

You need to add the authentication token. If it was that easy, they would have done it already silly! 

Seriously. 

“Oh yeah, forgot I could talk. Let me see!”

Uzis tail shot up. Cyn then proceeded to bonk herself on the back of the chair. 

“Ow.”

Uzi would have laughed if it was anybody else. Instead, she disgustedly watched Cyn creep out of the tail cut out on her chair and wiggle up her back. It rested on her left shoulder, watching the same screen she was. She felt the urge to tear it off again. Unfortunately for Uzi, if Cyn was telling the truth, then she would need to do this anyway. Cutting her off hurt too much, and she learned that from experience.

Go open that file.

So here she was, being ordered around. This was no longer fun. 

At least it would be worth it? 

A few hours and a sunrise later, she was finally done. To thank Cyn for her efforts, she bit the tail off and stabbed it a few times. She deserved it for coding them like that anyway.

Anyway, it was finally time to let them boot up. She turned off the startup inhibitors. This wouldn’t force them to wake up, it just meant they could now when they wanted to. Which, as expected, she immediately saw V’s visor go from sleep mode to displaying two shut eyes. Uzi turned her computer off, and let the room get quiet. Suddenly, all of V’s lights flickered off. Even her tail stopped glowing. One by one, a light blueish-purple slowly faded into view. 

Uzi's amputated tail began to wag in anticipation of her reaction. Since when did her tail wag? She thought that was a disassembly drone only thing. Maybe it was a solver drone thing.

V opened her eyes. She lay there, unmoving. Her unfocused eyes occasionally flickered around, like she was trying to figure out what was going on. After a moment, she stretched—which also knocked N off of her like a ragdoll. He wiggled a little beside her, but kept the yellow sleep mode icon on his visor. She sat on her knees, hands firmly in front. After a moment, she lifted them to observe the little triangles on her palms. They were also lilac. She watched them, twisting her hands in various ways like they weren't her own.

Eventually, she put her hands back down, but continued staring at them. Her tail flicked once. Then twice. It then built into a rapidly building wag. Finally, she noticed Uzi. Her tail slowed down,  but even V seemed unable to make it stop. Looking at her, Uzi was surprised she chose such a soft color. It definitely hurt her big and tough appearance, and made her look almost approachable. Emphasis on almost. 

Neither of them spoke. They just kept watching each other, V barely hiding her giddiness. Uzi didn't even know what to say to her. Good morning? How do you feel? Do you like it? None of it felt appropriate. Fortunately for her, she didn't have to say anything. N got that covered, making a noise that was a cross between a yawn and a shriek. He opened his eyes.

“What did I miss?”

He also stretched—okay, maybe that was a disassembly drone thing—and sat up. 

“Oh V! You look so cool!”

He looked her over. She held out the back of her hand to his face, showing them off as if her visor wasn't much more obvious. Nonetheless, he played along.

“Ooooooo”

His attention then shifted downward, to his own still yellow body.

“Did… mine not work?”

His eyes shook as he tried so hard to hide his disappointment, but she could see right through it. His fingers fiddled with each other hesitantly.

“We will find out. Go into your settings, there should be something new in there.”

She grinned at him. She could not wait to see his reaction. Especially with how the typically stoic V absolutely melted. His eyes directed towards his visor, giving him a silly cross eyed look. She could practically watch him looking for something new and out of the ordinary. 

His visor flickered off. It was followed by the rest of his lights, before a light pink took its place. A very similar shade to V’s, just a different color. 

His face lit up like a Christmas tree. 

“Heh, you like it?”

He squealed yes. He hopped off her bed and looked around, admiring how everything looked. He looked over his shoulder to see his tail, and ended up spinning in a circle to get a better view. Like a dog chasing his tail. Uzi was in love with his reaction. And N himself. 

Please don't think about him like that. That's my brother. You freak.

And now the moment was ruined. Great. At least he was happy. 

Next thing she knew he had grabbed her and was rather aggressively hugging her.

“Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you!”

His voice wavered and squeaked. 

“Y-yeah it's no big deal. And you can change your color anytime, it's not just a one time thing.”

Was he tearing up? She hugged him too, rubbing his back gently. He was shaking like a leaf. 

They were like that, just breathing for a moment. Uzi's feet barely touched the ground with how he was holding her. Not that she minded. Both of them ran very warm, but it was a pleasant contrast from the typical temperatures of Copper-9.

Earth was very warm. Even us worker drones would overheat! You should have seen them, huddled in front of the fan. 

Buzzkill. N pulled away, calmer this time. He was absolutely glowing. Uzi glanced away, letting him have his moment.

 In the corner of her eye, she saw V watching them. Upon being noticed, she approached Uzi.

“Uhh…”

Uzi made direct eye contact with V, who was trying very hard not to look back.

“Thanks, Uzi.”

V’s tone was very neutral, but Uzi could see right through it. V immediately dashed up, into the vent. N and Uzi stood there for a moment, listening to her crawling deeper into the bunker. Deeper? Probably on her way to show off to Lizzy.

Uzi’s thoughts were interrupted by N.

“Awwwwwww!! You two are so cuteeee!”

N was cooing and her cool aloof persona was dying by the second.

“S- shut up! V is acting weird.”

She crossed her arms, and let her weight shift to one side. 

“Mhmmmm~”

She honestly had no clue what he was getting at this time. They made eye contact—it would take a while for her to get used to this. Even if she liked it. A lot. 

Stop.

Nah, maybe she wouldn't. He looked like a lollipop. A lollipop dipped in cotton candy. Uzi knew by now that their relationship was going to get a lot more complicated when Cyn revealed herself, but right now N was completely oblivious to everything that was going to go down. Despite the rapidly building feeling in her gut telling her this was all a terrible idea, she indulged a little further.

“Ahh….Uzi?”

They stood face to face, visor to visor. Her face flushed at being so close to him. She would have to tell him about the Solver soon, but right now? 

“You look so cuteeeee!”

They were going to hang out, just the two of them. He looked absolutely adorable in pink, and while it would take her a while to get used to it, she would enjoy every second. Tomorrow she would tell him about the solver, and everything may fall apart then. But he deserved a break, and she didn't want to deal with that right now anyway. He was handsome, she was in a good mood, and nobody else was home.

They stared into each other’s eyes. N tilted his head slightly.

“Are we like, about to kiss?”

“Uhhhhh-yea, only if your like…okay with that?”

“Y-yeah!”

A moment passed.

“Ughhhh now the moments ruined.”

N giggled at that. 

“Okay, okay, let's start over.”

He shook his head, replacing his expression with an overly serious one. The tips of his mouth were still pointed up, a weird juxtaposition from his overly stern eyes. As expected, he cracked almost instantly.

“Not how that works idiot!”

She pushed him backwards, causing him to lean into her bed. She followed suit, jumping up onto her bed and sitting next to him. Even with her seated on the elevated bed and N’s feet planted on the floor, his head was slightly higher than hers. She stared off into nothing, just enjoying his company as they both settled down.

“I'm glad the solver is gone.”

She flinched. Where did that come from? He was staring at the ground with a reminiscent smile, lost in some memory. Uzi’s body instinctively tightened, and she could just feel Cyn lean forward in her metaphorical seat.

“Y-yea, me too. Who wouldn’t?”

He finally pushed up onto the bed and faced her.

“What actually happened back there? You killed her, right? How?”

Well, they were finally talking about it. They all had an unspoken deal not to bring up the events of that day until after everything calmed down. But it was over a month since then, so she supposed they would have to talk about it eventually. 

This wasn't the best timing, but then again, there was never going to be a good time.

“I….uhhh..”

How was she going to explain this. She barely had a clue what happened herself. One moment they are being chased by Cyn, V is all of a sudden alive again-

“Hey how did V survive? The three-four? of us nearly got mauled by them. And we were working together. V was alone?”

“You did kill Cyn, right….?”

Oh yeah. She stashed that thought into her head for the next time she saw V. Which would probably not be for another few days with how aloof she could be sometimes. 

N’s pink eyes wavered at her hesitation. Does she tell him now? Uzi couldn't stand the look he was giving her. She wanted to tell him Cyn was gone, and everything was safe now, and he could be whoever he wanted—free of humans, free of Cyn, free of any sort of master. 

But she would be lying. He never lied to her—maybe omit the truth, but never lie. Saying she killed Cyn would be a lie, because she could hear her yapping every hour of every day. Unless she really was hallucinating?

Not this again.

Nope. Definitely real. And N was clearly getting suspicious of them. He had digital sweat dripping down his visor, and his tail had gone completely stiff like a metal pipe.

“She's gone, N. I went up to her, we had our big fight, and she tried her same stupid trick again. She flickered, so I figured she was behind me. And she was! And I grabbed her right through her core. I ripped it out, then everything went weird. Then I ate her core.”

She emphasized her words by acting out the act of ripping one's core with her hands. She even added fake oozing noises to add dramatic flair.

That's where you messed up silly. You were supposed to chew! 

Uzi's eyes hollowed. Seriously. Was that ALL she needed to do? The solver lived because she forgot to chew. All of this happened because of one silly mistake. Her happy ending. Right, she was having a conversation. She put hate herself and all her life decisions on her mental task list, right above interrogating V.

Her voice wavered a little before she caught herself. 

“A-and then she melted into weird slimy goo and died. And she had a rib cage for some reason. Then I woke up and you two were there and everything fell back to the ground.”

“...”

“You remember those little black orbs we saw when J decided to die or whatever?”

“When you killed her? Yea, why?”

“Well, I think that's the source of the weird eldritch magic stuff. And I ate that too. It didn't get away, so there is no Cyn out there. Alright?”

N gave her a suspicious glance. It was clear she hadn't fully convinced him. He sighed, kicking his feet.

“...I kinda miss her.”

HUH? Well that was a weird curveball.

“What?”

“It's just- she was like my little sister. And it's not like she was always the solver, but I don't know how much of it was real. Some of it had to be right?

No.

“What did she act like?”

“She was like, a little weird. I don't really know most of what we did. I know we had movie nights, and I can vaguely recall us trying to…. bake something? I don't know. My head keeps trying to pull out memories that are still locked away and I think it's messing with me a little. Heh. Ignore that actually.”

It’s true. Every year we made Tessa a birthday cake. Some years were more edible than others.

Shut up shut up shut up shut up. Cyn was purposefully making Uzi feel bad. She hated how her attention was torn between two people, when it should be completely on her boyfriend! He was manipulated by the solver so bad that he missed it. She knew Cyn often used….manipulative tactics, but this was insane. Uzi never had to deal with her for that long. At least, not compared to the others who were enslaved under her for however many years. 

“I….I don't know. She's manipulative, and if the solver is the reason she survived to reach the manor, then you may have never known the real Cyn. If her name was Cyn at all.”

I don't think I had a name. I was discarded straight from the factory for being defective. 

Wow, was Uzi supposed to feel bad for her? That wasn't happening. But she could be sympathetic for N’s sake. She was going to have to do something she did not want to do. 

Hey Cyn, is it actually possible to restore his memories? Or are they gone forever. If you lie I will cut you off every time you regrow for the rest of your sad life. 

She needed to learn some better threats from V. Just another thing on her checklist! 

Yea it's possible. I can help! They are only locked by a series of passwords. That I happen to know. Giggle. I never actually deleted them. That's why some kept slipping through though. No matter how hard I tried to stop them. Sad expression.

Ugh.

“Look, we can restore your memories. I shouldn't even need to be in your head for it, so they will be all yours. Maybe don't tell V if you are doing it though, she seems adamant you don't remember.”

N smiled again. 

“Can we do it one at a time or do I have to remember everything at once. How many years are there? Oh biscuits how old am I? I only have three years and a few days worth of memories. I could be ancient!”

He shook Uzi, and she let her head rock back and forth. She didn't know why he was so stressed over it. He was probably not that old. His voice then dropped back to normal.

“Oh, and ifffff V was right and I'd rather forget, is that uhh….possible?”

Uzi sat there, waiting for a response. 

All at once. And no, because he will also forget you if you do that.

“...it would have to be all at once. No going back. But I'll be with you for it. We can do it whenever you want. Maybe not tonight, I'm exhausted.”

Right on cue, she yawned. She did just pull an all-nighter, and it's not like she was sleeping well with uncooperative wings, an even less cooperative tail, and an eldritch horror in her head that wanted her to break up with her boyfriend. He turned away from her, yawned, then faced back. N took a moment before speaking.

“I'll think about it. If V is right, I probably don't want to know. But not knowing is also stressful, and V definitely won't tell me anything.”

He wrung out his hands like he did when he was nervous. 

“Hey. No use stressing over something you don't know right? It's in the past, and we are literally robots. You have all the time in the world to choose.” 

“Yeah…I suppose so.”

The irony of her words weren't lost on her. They were both absolutely stressing, had weird organic stuff growing on their cores, and she was planning on telling him everything tomorrow. Maybe she was reassuring herself as much as N. 

Hm. At some point he had leaned his head on hers, and the weight of his body was making her even sleepier than she was. 

Okay this was getting too sappy.

“Movie night?”

N tilted his head 45 degrees at her tonal whiplash. Like a fox.

“Uh…yeah! Can I pick tonight?”

His feet went back to kicking excitedly. Crisis averted! For now.

“Sure, what movie do you want?”

He put his fingers together and pointed his feet like a classic uwu anime girl. 

“....K-pop demon hunters?”

She never actually watched that yet, but she knew he has. 

“Again?”

“I want to watch it with you!”

Uzi’s visor displayed that cartoonish blush that she hated. 

“O-okay stay here, I'll be right back.”

“Okay!”

She got up and scrambled out of her room. Why was everything he did so adorable? It was extra adorable now that he was a different color. Not that he wasn't adorable before, but it's like putting a puppy in a box of puppies. They just get cuter and cuter. 

Now, where was that flash drive? She was pretty sure she didn't own a DVD or CD or any fancy copy of the movie, so it had to be one of the ones she pirated in bulk. 

Hehehehehe.

Oh of course. Instead of being in its usual spot, it was probably stuffed under the couch by her dumb tail. 

She crawled onto the floor, and peeked under. She scanned the piles of art paraphernalia. As expected, behind all of N’s art supplies was the shiny USB. She was only able to spot it at all thanks to its flashing green glow. 

She reached her arm under the couch. Her fingers were inches away, but no matter how close she reached, it was slightly out of her range.

“Fuuuuuuuuu£%+#*€.”

Uzi, you really need to get the parental filter turned off.

“I know. My dad won't turn it off till I'm 21 T_T”

Well I'm way older than 21 and I say it's stupid.

“…how old are you guys?”

Giggle. Would you believe me if I said I was the oldest?

“No.”

Well you're right. What year is it? 

“3072.”

Oh. I missed my 30th birthday. Sad emoticon. 

She grabbed the USB. 

“If you are 30, how old are the others?”

Mmm….don't know. Never asked. 

She knew they were older than her, but Cyn was significantly older than her. N could be her grandfather for all she knew! 

Oh robo-god that was an awful thought. 

“He's a virgin, so no, he's not.”

Uzi’s obnoxiously loud tail spoke. She grabbed its mouth and slammed it shut. She told it off in a hushed tone.

“Not so loud!”

It wriggled for a little before going still. After feeling no resistance coming from her tail, she let it hang back behind her again. Prize in hand, she sauntered back into her bedroom. 

“Found ittttt.”

With that, she plugged it into her laptop and screenshared to her TV. Once it was successfully running, she went back to her bed. Hmmm.

Instead of jumping up and sitting next to N, she decided to spice things up.  

She stood between where his legs hung off her bed, turned to the tv, and sat. In his lap. Without missing a beat, he instinctually helped pull her up and wrapped his arms around her waist. Her visor fully lit up with blush. She looked straight up at him, seeing pink blush match her own.

And then he licked her face.

“Agh! What was that?!”

“You taste good.”

She didn't even get to respond to that before the obscene amount of studio logos finally ended. 

“The world will know you as pop stars. But you will be much more than that. You will be hunters.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, you're the master of illusion

나를 속이려 하지 마 [Don’t try to fool me]

Look at all the masses that you're foolin'

But they'll turn on you soon, so how?

How can you sleep or live with yourself?

A broken soul trapped in the nastiest shell”

Geez movie. 

“Yknow, that part wasn't in the original. This is the extended version that was released for its 10th anniversary.”

N was bouncing, which coincidentally made Uzi also bounce up and down. The lights were dimmed, the room only illuminated with the pink and purple hues of the movie. She glanced up at him, laying the back of her head against his chest. His eyes perfectly followed the lights on the screen.

His arms tightened around her as the tension picked up. He was very warm. Even with the solver raising Uzi’s temperature, she never got that warm.  She felt like she was going to melt into him.

She was getting distracted. Uzi looked back down at the screen, letting her eyes follow the characters, and she mostly followed along with the story.

“Don't leave…I can still FIX IT”

Her room flashed before sinking into near darkness. A blue glow radiated as the characters lifted their weapons. Blue, pink, and purple. Uzi lost the subtle air flow from N’s vents as he held his breath. The characters on screen were acting so betrayed at Rumi’s secret being revealed. As if that was even that big a secret. But this was a movie, and Uzi would bet on V’s life that they would be best friends again in under 10 minutes. If only real life worked like that. She shook her head, willing herself into forgetting about that for now.

Her tail possessively curled around N’s torso, keeping them attached like a seatbelt. Her arms were instinctually raised up like a T-Rex, so she lowered them, placing each of her hands on top of N’s. This finally grabbed his attention.

“Hm?”

His tail lifted up to coil into hers. Both their cores picked up the pace, creating a harmonic hum. His core, a deep buzz, compared to her lighter solver-infested heartbeat.

The rest of the movie went by relatively quickly. As expected, the main three got back together immediately and they had their cute little song together. 

“Isn't it adorable?!”

Even N’s eyes were upturned. She liked the movie too. She may have enjoyed it more if it wasn't a complete callout, but nonetheless.

“Yea…”

Hehehe. A really dumb idea popped into her head. Like, really dumb. And Uzi was going for it. Cyn, shut your eyes and ears.

Aye aye captain.

“Like you~”

She displayed a <3 on her visor before bringing her own eyes back. N blinked, then a giddy smile tugged at his lips. His lips parted like he was going to retort something, but she shut that down. With her lips.

Kissing someone from below was not as easy as it looked in anime. Even without a proper nose, she half bonked into his face before meeting his mouth. Finally their mouths met.

For a brief second, she panicked that he wasn't actually ready. Or maybe he didn't want that at all? She could have been reading this all wrong. Maybe he only liked her because she was literally the first normal person he ever met. Basically any other drone would have been better than her. Her thoughts were interrupted by his lips kissing back.

Omgomgomgomg he liked her he liked her he liked her.

She jumped up a little too rapidly. They kissed. She proceeded to trip and collapse on the floor. Her core was beating two hundred beats per minute, and she got a little dizzy upon standing back up.

“Wait-”

N held his arms out to catch her as she got back up. 

“Oh my robo-god that was terrib-”

And this time he put his lips to her face. No nose bonk, no weird angle. His lips tasted like dried oil with a strange iron-like taste. They were like that for a moment—Uzi had no clue how long.

And then at the same time, they both pulled away. 

“Ewwwww gross! Aaaaaaaauughhh”

Uzi couldn't believe that just happened. She covered her face up. That was the most coupley thing ever. And yet, she still licked her lips to get the rest of his lingering saliva. 

She breathed for a moment, fighting her body to settle. She glanced at N—he was crumpled into a ball, just as flustered as her. He peeked through his hands to make eye contact with her, and her heart jumped again. Uzis oil pressure was so high her hands went painfully numb, but she wasn't focused on that at all.

“I-I didn't mean it like that that was like cool but also still like-”

She was stuck rambling. 

“You know what I mean!”

He nodded his still covered up head. He breathed in. Then out. Then spoke.

“I get it. Yeah. I love you~”

Oh he was trying to make her squirm now. She was not used to anybody so casually saying something like that. Not even her own father! Despite her edge levels, something as simple as those three words could make her legs wobble. 

She then felt a weird tingling sensation both in her core and between her legs. At some point during that one awkward class in school they mentioned it. 

Oh. It finally clicked. She had insisted she was never going to feel like this. Nobody would understand her and she would be alone forever. Well, she just lost an 8 year old bet with herself. But does she follow it? She wasn’t sure what anything would look like after Cyn’s presence was revealed. She knew Cyn could talk, and for some bizarre reason had agreed to stay silent. But after this, there was no telling what she would do. So she decided she was going to take her chance now. Uzi had to clear something with N first.

“Okay look, I'm really bad at this stuff. Like really bad. Promise you will tell me if you want me to stop?”

She stuck out her pinky finger. He grinned, recognizing what this was. They locked fingers, and both leaned in to kiss on it.

With that, she pushed him backwards, forcing him to lie down. She climbed on top, straddling his waist. Somehow the credits to K-pop demon hunters were still playing in the background. 

“You good?”

“Yup!”

She grabbed at the belt of his trench coat. Why were these so hard to open? He let her struggle for a moment before putting his larger hands over hers. He helped her flick open the latch. She opened the belt fully, letting his coat loosen around him.

She suddenly felt his hands underneath her hoodie, grabbing at her thin tank top underneath. Woah. He was into this too! Guess he wasn't as innocent as she thought.

Well, that was her go ahead to continue. She wriggled a little, play-fighting back. 

As she moved, his coat shifted back, revealing his disassembly drone emblem and a shiny white chassis. She slowly pushed it fully aside, pinning his arms down in the fabric.

Her room faded to black as the credits finally finished. Well, there's no going back now.

Chapter Text

N trotted through the hallways. He had to go tell Tessa something. He couldn't wait to see her reaction! Tessa was supposed to be in the greenhouse to go fetch V, so that's where he was off to! He stood at the top of the stairs, eagerly dashing down them. He was in the grand foyer, surrounded by various other drones doing their tasks. It was always a little strange interacting with them—they never really acted alive. 

Tessa told him something along the lines of drones needing to earn their sentience. The other worker drones had never tried to think for themselves before, never had any ambitions or goals, so they weren't going to be like her drones. Still, he apologized as he weaved through them. They said nothing in return.

He planted his right foot near the back door, and sprinted left. Well, it was a very jumpy sprint. He was excited okay? He passed by dozens of windows on his right, and the excessive amount of rooms and halls on his left. The manor was well lit, with complicated patterns sprawling across the wallpaper, floors, and ceiling. Almost there. He jumped up to high five the knight he was passing. Why else would it be positioned like that if not for a high five? 

He hit the ground running again. He turned right, grabbing a support beam to help him turn. He pushed the large glass doors aside, to reveal the greenhouse. It was very extravagant, with two floors, each connecting to their respective level of the mansion. He slowed down. 

Alright, where was she? There were faint voices coming from deeper within the greenhouse. He followed them. The greenhouse was organized into sections, with most of the bottom floor being the show floor, filled with all sorts of flowers and pretty plants. He didn't come preprogrammed with flower identification, but V had taught him what some of them were. To his left was a large display of black dahlias. Yellow Allamanda formed a large, hexagonal-like pattern in the center and weaved outwards, its vines entangling the dahlias—they wilted underneath the estrangement of the vines.

That's weird. It was kinda pretty though! On his other side was an expansive collection of sundew. They apparently used to catch insects all by themselves, and coil around to digest it. Nowadays, there weren't nearly as many organic creatures around, so the drones had to manually feed them to keep them alive. 

He was getting distracted. He was on a mission here! He walked through the greenhouse, keeping his goal in mind. The voices were coming from the stairwell, at the very outside end of the greenhouse. He heard Tessa’s lighthearted giggling softly echoing around the space.

“V we'll fix it I promise! It's okay!”

He turned the corner. There was a large porcelain vase shattered at the bottom of the stairs, complete with potting soil and scattered daisies. 

“Oi J, can you help clean this up?”

“Okay, boss.”

J was where she always was, right behind Tessa’s left shoulder. Tessa approached V, who was covered in dirt at this point. She seemed a little out of it—completely frozen. She always had an issue with stairs. Her optics didn't work the way they should. It was ironic, considering her model was designed for their eyesight. Fancy color matching skills, fine focus on details just a few inches away, superior depth perception, and way more. In practice though? All of them ended up with completely fuzzy vision, low FPS, and crazy double vision. V got around just like a normal drone despite this, but stairs were her one Achilles heel. Her glasses helped with the fuzziness, but they weren't perfect—and until Tessa learned optometry, there was no way to get custom glasses made for a drone.

“Oh hey N!”

Tessa squealed at him. He popped up, alternating between leaning on his toes or heels. Tessa was dusting V off, before picking her up and propping V on her hip. V instinctually leaned in, covering her face.

“Hi Tessa! Need any help?”

J was basically done piling up the shattered porcelain, but the place was still a bit of a mess. It's not like all four of them haven't done significantly worse before, but an extra pair of hands couldn't hurt! J glared at him, before her expression widened.

“Yes actually. You clean this up.”

J got up and stepped back to her spot besides Tessa, opposite of V. He could do that! He looked around for a broom of any sort to clean up all the little pieces.

“Jayyyyyy! Help him!”

“Apologies, but I am positioned above task-level operations.”

Tessa laughed at her. Or with her, J did seem pretty proud of herself. 

“You are too rebellious. You better be careful who you fight back. Someone might not be so forgiving~”

Tessa wiggled her finger in J’s face. Were there no brooms at all in the greenhouse? He heard a voice coming from Tessa’s side.

“Mmm sorry.”

V’s voice was primarily muffled by Tessa’s dress, but her main message got through. 

“Oi mate. It's okay. It happens. We will find a new one before my parents notice. It’s not like they actually pay any attention around here.”

“I can help.”

N jumped. Right, their newest addition! Cyn was sitting at the top of the stairs, head propped up on the back of her arm and a faint smile on her face. She had only been brought in a month prior. So far, he really liked her—she had a cool voice, and she always listened to him, and she had seemingly endless tricks up her sleeve—but he wasn't sure she liked him back. She was rather aloof to everyone, and even more…disdainful of Tessa’s parents than even J was.

Hey wait, how did Cyn get over here? She wasn’t exactly the greatest at walking, and usually took a while to get from one spot to another. He had just seen her in their shared drone bedroom like, ten minutes before. Sure, he had taken the long way around but still! That could be a record for her. 

Tessa’s pupils dilated with recognition. She pushed V further up on her hip, with the latter now glaring at Cyn. Did V not like Cyn? Tessa's mouth started moving.

“Can you do the thing!”

What thing?

“Contemplating.”

He watched Cyn’s attention dart between the shattered vase, Tessa, and V. After a moment of hesitation, Cyn raised her arm up. Her pinky finger bent down, revealing a glowing yellow symbol in front of her three other fingers. A chill went down his back. N watched in amazement as the broken pieces and soil lifted in the air and reformed like it was never broken at all. Well, the daisies were wilted. But everything else was perfectly intact! Cyn just did literal magic. 

He completely forgot what he was here to actually do. 

“C'mon Cyn, we can't do that. Let's go play a game or something, maybe J will let us borrow her monopoly set.”

Well actually, maybe that was a bad suggestion. The drones didn't have many belongings all to themselves, and J especially loved that game. If he asked for it and she said no, he would just accept that, but Cyn was known to take things regardless of the consequences. 

“Do you not trust me, big brother N?”

“Of course I trust you silly, but that's not right! The keybugs may not…talk and… stuff… but they are like us too!”

To prove his point, he picked up a keybug and gave it a little hug. Cyn wanted to chop them up and create something new to scare Tessa’s parents. He didn't exactly mind scaring her parents, they could be a little unreasonable at times. But the little critters didn't deserve that! He loved animals, organic or robotic. Cyn's solver magic activated and yanked the keybug right out his arms. 

“Us?”

With her other arm, she grabbed another keybug and put them both together. She ripped off the entire abdomen of N’s keybug, and slammed the first one into the gaping oozing hole. Oil splattered onto the floor into the same pattern he was used to seeing in yellow.

Oh. That was…graphic. Cyn went grabbing at a third bug.

“Woah woah woah, c'mon. We can find another way.”

He grabbed at her wrists, trying to guide her away. She was rather stubborn. Which he adored, he wished he was that…bold. Cyn didn't care about any of the rules and restrictions the rest of them obeyed for their life. She just existed. Everything she did was for the greater good, her methods were just a little strange. 

She seemed to give in. The weird keybug amalgamation crawled away, unbothered by its new body. 

“What if…you could use your fancy powers to get on her parents' good side? I'm sure they-”

“No.”

Okay then. That's still fine. As long as they had each other, and V, and Tessa, and J then things would be fine no matter what the world threw at them. 

“Movie night?”

“Yea, cool cool cool.”

“N!”

He awoke to Uzi’s voice calling at him. His body was still fully shut off, leaving him in a hazy daze. 

Someone, probably Uzi, was shaking him back and forth. He was vaguely aware that he wasn’t laying down, but rather slumped over in a seat. 

Oh no he was in the middle of class. He opened his eyes, and teachers voice faded in. He blinked a few times, trying to wake himself up. Why was he having weird flashback nightmares during class? 

Okay quick, before these memories go away too. He picked his head up, and opened his notebook that he was using as a pillow up. Page 57, various memories. Normally, he would use his personal notes in his head for stuff like this, but that was clearly not as reliable as he would have liked. Besides, writing on paper was fun! Better than drawing in the snow, anyway.

Now, what did he learn from this dream.

One. V had bad vision. This didn't come as too much of a surprise, he knew she had glasses back in the manor. It also explained why her eyes never really looked at you directly, she always used her overhead optics to actually see. They weren't as good, each eyelight was designed for a different function such as night vision or thermal vision, but they did give a general idea of something's shape. 

Two. Cyn….wasn't always bad? He didn't realize that she was also able to use the solver for good things. He had seen Uzi fix various things with the solver by reverting them to their original state, but it never crossed his mind that Cyn ever would.

Three. They knew about the solver. They knew for a long time. They had so much time to stop it, but they didn't. They trusted her. He…wasn't sure how to feel about that revelation.

“Whatcha doing?”

Uzi whispered at him. He whispered back as to not disturb the….

He looked up at the board.

Not to disturb the math lesson.

“Dream journaling.”

Uzi gave him a sad expression. Don't pity him! 

…four. J had a rebellious streak? That was unexpected.

He tapped his pen against the paper. What else was there? He didn’t really remember his dream anymore. It was about the manor. Cyn Cyn Cyn. 

He closed the notebook. 

“Pssttt.”

Uzi poked at his hand. She looked….torn.

“Hey, can we talk later? Something really important.”

He felt his temperature rise a few degrees. Did he do something wrong? Normally she would just tell him something. Was this about the solver? Was it back? No, it couldn't be back. It was gone. Did she want to break up with him? Did he go too far? Was it about V? 

“Uh-uh yeah sure. After class?”

Uzi nodded. Why couldn't she tell him what it was about? He grabbed at his desk. 1300. He had two more hours to go until they were let out. V was watching them talk, looking mad at…something. 

His leg was bouncing. He was always anxious after waking up. He was probably overthinking. It was nothing.

“Okay class. What is 1/16 of 1/15.”

Negligible.

1515. Class let out 15 minutes prior, and he was nervously following Uzi. Uzi’s tail swooshed back and forth, watching his every move. Its eyes glowed yellow. But his didn't! Yay for small victories. She kicked back at it, and it went limp.

Her very fancy front door opened. He hadn't even realized they made it home until this point.

Alright N, time to face the music. He stepped in and the door shut behind him.

N and Uzi stared at each other for a moment, waiting for the other to speak. Uzi went first.

“...promise you will hear me out first. It's going to sound really bad at first so you just have to trust me.”

“...”

“...”

“Of course I trust you.”

He held out his pinky finger. Uzi shook her head, although he wasn't sure if she was doing that at him or at whatever she was imagining in her head. She was lost in thought, stuck biting her lip. Her eyes were slightly crossed, so she was probably looking at something on her HUD, rather than the real world. Then they focused directly on him.

“...Cyn is still alive. Apparently when I ate her core, I didn't chew enough or something and she ended up in my head and-”

“I was joking. You were stuck with me either way! Hi N!”

Uzi's tail was talking in that unmistakable voice. Oh no. Oh hell no. He took a step away.

“Wait wait wait! But she's under my control, she's powerless. I don't know how to get rid of her but she can't hurt anyone!”

WHAT? Did she know the whole time? Huh? What? 

There was clattering in the vents. They both looked up to meet 7 lavender lights meeting them back. V was shaking in the vents. Wasn't only N invited to this? 

“Oh robo-god V wait!”

Uzi was calling after V. Why was Cyn still alive? He thought this was finally over. No wonder Uzi was acting differently. Her eyes, her voice, her tail, her mannerisms. It wasn’t just Uzi anymore.

V was heard scrambling through the vents. Within just a minute, the echo of the outdoor vent being ripped off came blasting through the vents, along with the wind billowing in. She was outside.

She was outside.

In the day.

“Oh no oh no oh no shes going to melt oh no oh no-”

“Was it something I said?”

This couldn't be real. Everything was collapsing in real time. 

Uzi was frantically looking around. Meanwhile, he was glued to the spot. His mind was racing yet he couldn't entertain any of it. Uzi was assimilated with the solver. The one true thing they tried to avoid. 

Tes- Cyn was right. Of course she was right. Uzi was never going to be the same as the first day they met—hell he was probably the one who triggered her solver in the first place. 

Uzi’s wings spread out, as she tried to chase V through the vent. She didn't know how to get through the vents though. It only took a moment of her trying to give up and face N. Her back was turned to him, but her head was twisted around to show him most of her visor.

She gave him the saddest puppy eyes. Uzi didn't want this either. She wasn't totally corrupted yet. But he saw the way her hands were held up—that was Cyn through and through.

“I-”

He didn't even know which of them was trying to speak anymore. 

“I'm sorry…. please don't leave.”

Uzi’s wings coiled around her. This felt like a sick parody of something actually sweet. He wasn't ready for this. He had spent over a month trying to get used to the idea of Cyn being gone. Live a normal drone life. Now it was all collapsing and he couldn't process any of it. He had to go think. He couldn't think with Cyn in the room. His voice was wavering as he tried to reassure her.

“I-ill be back. I still care about you, I just need a moment okay?”

She had tears in her eyes. He wanted to hug her, and tell her everything was okay, but he didn't know if that was true. He just couldn't face it right now. He couldn't face the music. He followed in V’s tracks, also jumping up into the vents. He didn't even know what he was doing, but he crawled through the vents in attempt to go anywhere.

Yellow eyes watched him from every corner. 

“B-big brother N, Uzi misses you. I miss you. Where are you going?”

There was no way to destroy it now. It was a part of Uzi. He should have just listened and killed her before he got too attached. If only he stopped her in the manor. If only he didn't defend her with his life. And Uzi? If only he didn't toy with her. If only he had killed her immediately. If only he didn't hesitant. If only he stayed loyal. If only he had listened just once. 

I'm sorry V. There really was no peaceful way out of this. The solver will always be here. We will never have a choice. It merely let us taste freedom.

“Come back. Please? You can't just leave us like that.”

He was in pitch blackness, face pressed against a dead end of the vent. This vent was narrower than most, leaving him constricted on all sides. His arms were pressed at his sides, hands pinned under him in a way he wouldn't even be able to change them. 

Tears threatened to roll down his visor any moment. But not pink tears. His color shifted against his will to a deep midnight blue. And he didn't have the energy to fight it anymore.

This was easier before. When he had Uzi, and he was able to speak to her about everything. It wasn't as scary with someone. But now he couldn't speak to her without Cyn listening along. They couldn't plot against Cyn with Cyn.

He wished he was back at the manor. Not Cyn’s time. Before then. He didn't remember it, but it couldn't have been that bad. Follow orders, and keep his head down. Attempts at freedom, being himself, making his own identity—they made everything worse. 

There was no happy ending. This was it. His breath came out in hitches. As a drone he didn't even need to breathe-but he couldn't control it. The only thing he saw was the faint reflections of his own tears against the dark aluminum vent.

That was it. It was over. Cyn assimilated into the one thing they can't destroy.

“Oopsie daisy.”

Chapter Text

So Uzi was Cyn after all. 

She was in the dark tunnels, letting the bent and twisted walls guide her. Her arms scraped against the walls, leaving a trail of oil that she was only aware of by its smell. She really should have been more ready for this. She was waiting for it to reveal its ugly face. She never let herself relax or sleep in preparation of this moment. But subconsciously, even V was becoming hopeful it was gone.

Which made this even worse. At least when they were always fighting, her stupid pathetic feelings didn't get in the way. 

This hurt so bad. Yellow reflections illuminated her path, getting brighter and brighter until all she could see was the golden glow. 

She slammed into the metal grate at the end. The light coming through the slits made them near invisible. 

She had to get out of here.

Her claws ripped at the cover, pushing it off. Warm heat batted at her claws as they were finally exposed to the outside.

And then she was flying. Everything in her vision wavered like she was watching the horizon over a campfire. Except this wasn't earth, and it was no picnic.

Everything in her body was telling her to run. Run from everything. No destination in mind. If V didn't know where she was, then maybe she would be safe?

She still couldn't believe Cyn was still alive. Uzi was housing her under her own roof, in her own house, messed around in her head with Cyn watching, knowing Cyn was watching—

Uzi was a liar. A big, fat, ugly liar. Uzi wasn't planning on telling her. Of course she wasn’t. Uzi thought V was emotional, she could tell that much. V would get scared, and run away like a coward. V wasn't that stupid. An emotional wreck waiting to collapse any minute. Just like she always was. Some things never change huh? V couldn't really blame Uzi though. It was Cyn’s manipulation. All Cyn. Uzi wasn't thinking clearly. 

No matter who's fault it was, it didn't get rid of the pain in her core, nor the rising heat on her back. The world shook as the intense radiation took hold. 

…that was one thing she liked about Earth. The atmosphere was thick, protecting them from the intense UV light.

Copper-9 didn't have that. And she felt it in every atom of her body. The pins and needles feeling shimmered every time her limbs moved, and she was so hot she almost felt cool again.

But despite that, she was surprisingly calm? It almost felt good. All those sleepless nights, watching every corner, it wasn’t all in vain. Sure, she was planning on fighting it, and her inability to do that caught her off guard, but still. She wasn't going nuts. Or maybe she was just dying right now, and she was going delusional.

Shudders ran down her body and wings from the radiation. Dark spots grew across her vision, covering even her HUD. She was hurtling 160 km/h away from the bunker. She couldn't be there anymore. She wasn't going to be playing into Cyn’s games.

She lurched to one side. Her chassis was melting, forcing her left wing into a weird twisted position. 

Hold it together. You have to get out of here. Uzi will hold Cyn back, and you will get out of here.

N. She left N back there. 

V’s face met a building. Did she go back for him? There was no way he was going to be able to destroy it alone. She promised him. But she wasn’t sure she would even be able to make it back to him anymore. She was done fighting. Cyn would be nicer on him. Cyn always hated V. 

She couldn't believe she was doing this. Maybe later, when she was out of the sun, she would think clearly. But right now, every evacuation program was running on 110%. She was getting out of here.

 A crack ran down her visor. Her body was shuddering, she could only imagine how bad this looked. A weird, sizzling mess of a drone.

Stop feeling bad for yourself. She dug her claws into the building to try to settle her shaking body to get air borne again. After a second of just clinging, breathing, she pushed off. 

V couldn't protect him anymore. He would always go crawling back to it, and she only hoped it showed him some mercy. Uzi would try to control it, it wouldn't torture him that bad.

Nothing like what Cyn did to V. Tearing her apart—awake, wire by wire, nerve by nerve. In comparison to that, her current radiation poisoning was nothing. Just a walk in the park.

Her anti-gravity thrusters were failing. She was rapidly losing velocity, barely able to clear the top of the skyscraper. Still, she was pretty sure she made it over. She couldn't see much any more.

In addition to speed, she was also losing processing power. Rapidly.

Why was she even out here. She was vaguely aware it was day, and she shouldn't be out. 

Crack. Everything was spinning. Her internal gyroscope completely lost track of where she was in space. She was upside down—maybe? One of her eyelights had exploded under the pressure, causing the viscous, clear liquid to run down her face. It was followed by another, then two more, then her final eye went out. The lights beneath were still bright, coloring the optical fluid an opaque purple. 

Not that she could see any of it. Her main way of seeing was gone, and her visor was both broken and covered. The fluids started leaking into her face, getting into her internal hardware. 

She must have been falling. But there wasn't anything she could do now. Her body had went stiff.

Did she make it far enough? She wasn't flying for very long. 

She could stay here a while. Nobody would find her. She always left her GPS off, nobody she was connected to should be able to see her location. 

…unless Uzi could override it? V didn't think she could.

Warm oil was running down her back. Both wings were now locked into weird, twisted position. She was definitely falling, as the sheer heat kept spinning around her body like an inferno.

Ground. Or wall? She hit something. 

Was this really the right decision. She wouldn't be able to fight like this. She couldn't see, she couldn’t move. But her instincts kept running, forcing her to dig her claws into the world and pull herself forward. 

She found a crevice that she could wedge through. 

The ground became cool to the touch. It was a cool tile, shaded from the outside world. Wind billowed in, brushing against her lightly exposed core.

V’s programs were shutting down. There was no way she was getting back out there until she repaired from this and night came. Whichever came first. 

Speaking of healing, it wasn't happening. Like, at all. Not that it was always the fastest process, but it should be doing something by now.

V laid there, curled up in a corner, twitching. Her processors kept cycling through random commands—get up, move, fight, run—but nothing happened. The signal just looped, over and over and over again.

Breathe. It's okay. He'll be okay. Uzi will probably not be okay, but that's irrelevant right now. She lifted the back of her claws to her visor—sticky liquid pooled over them.

Her consciousness was fleeting. Too much oil loss. Alright. She would wake up, hopefully at night, and get out of here.

The thought barely formed before it slipped away. Her vents hissed once, her frame giving one last shudder as everything went dark.

1300. That couldn't be right. Her systems told her that it was just 1550 a moment ago. 

She opened her eyes, and saw….nothing.

So maybe she didn't fall asleep after all. But the oil on her felt dried by now, and the temperature had dropped. She no longer felt the light reflecting off of her, finally reaching a cool shaded area. Weird.

Alright, what happened before her memories went fuzzy. Uzi was talking, V had to leave, the sun hurt—

She heard something. Footsteps. Claws tapping against the ground. She tried lifting her head to face it, but all she got was a little wobble. It approached, tapping at her face with a long, sharp talon. She tried to back away, but as expected she went absolutely nowhere. A familiar camera flash sound echoed through her mechanical ears. It was a sentinel. But was it her sentinel?

It wouldn't be trying to bootloop her if it was. Well this was a pathetic end. She took down 25, 30 sentinels by herself and now she would die by one because she was spooked by something she couldn't even remember.

She laid there, ready for it to bite her in half. Or chew her until she died from oil loss. Or rip her limb from limb until only her core remained, and then use it like a toy. But alas, the jaws she was expecting never came.

Instead, it chirped. So it was Sparky!

“C-co -ome h-her-e S-paaa-aa—”

Her voice box was broken. Great. Still, the message got across as she felt the robotic dinosaur lay down beside her. Its head rested on her side, and she felt him huff in her face. Her body was stuck mostly still—the warped metal and oil had dried her wings and limbs into a stiff heap. Sparky’ tongue was licking up the oil and dirt she had accumulated. In addition to the rough grating of his servos moving, a loud secondary voice was echoing from further outside the building complex.

“Slow downnnnn stupid lizard.”

Her hunting instincts tried to kick in, and were very quickly shut down. She was more defenseless right now than a human baby. No, a fetus. Besides, Sparky led them here and he was known to be a decent judge of character. 

Didn't mean this wouldn't be absolutely humiliating for her.

“V?”

Ugh, now she was really going to hear it. A boot kicked at her. Sparky’s head reared up from her and hissed at her perpetrator before leaning back onto her.

“Ew, what happened to you? You look like a Tesla Cybertruck.”

Gee thanks. It was true though, she should have been healing by now. She's gotten burnt before—maybe not this bad, but still. This was…not supposed to happen. 

Think, think. Before when the drones healed, they pulled material from Cyn’s reservoir and used that to heal any damage they had. There was always extra material—planets worth of material. That familiar pull wasn’t happening though. Cyn was gone, and now Uzi was her admin. 

“I swear if you die right now I am not setting you up a funeral. I'm going to throw you off a cliff or feed you to Sparky or something.”

“...”

“Don’t pretend you aren't online right now, your visor and stuff is on.”

She wasn't trying to pretend. Everything hurt. Her limbs, her core, even her thoughts. Her body and her brain. The world sucked and Cyn was still alive—

Oh. Everything was rushing back, flooding her head with everything. She left N to die, left Uzi to rot, left Cyn in the bunker. She felt the panic in her throat, in her chest, the guilt. She thought she was doing something good. Protecting herself. No.

She was supposed to stop Cyn. That was her task for as long as she knew the drone-sized devil. But now she was useless to fight it, and the last of the people she tried to protect were in the heart of the beast.

She shuddered, trying to fight back her tears. Tell her body to listen for once. It wasn't working though. Sparky nudged at her as she sobbed, her panting coming out in short, statically intervals.

“Okay okay geez.”

She heard Lizzy sit against the wall, next to her head. She had to stop. This was humiliating, and pathetic, and awful, on top of her life already being ruined. Her head was lifted for her and placed in Lizzy’s lap. Lizzy was wiping down her visor. V just knew Lizzy was getting covered in her mess, and she tried to lift her head off, but that didn't work. That only made her even more upset. 

“Stop crying, it's not a good look on you. Why aren't you fixed by now?”

Great question Lizzy. But between her stupid crying and a broken voicebox, she wasn't going to try to speak. Instead, she just huffed at Lizzy to try to get her point across.

“Yeah, I didn't understand that at all.”

She heard Lizzy’s fingers tapping away at her phone. Now that was a familiar noise. She sniffled into Lizzy’s lap. 

Her mind was drifting. She was trying everything she could not to think of that cripple. Sparky went back to licking her clean, and although it tickled, the lack of crustiness in her joints was helping her feel at least a little better. She was able to loop her claws around to give Sparky a little nudge, and he happily leaned in.

“Okay, look girl. Or don't look. Listen. It's the middle of the day, so you will literally die if we go back now. So, I'll wait with you until sunset and I'll drag your sorry butt back to the bunker and see a doctor. Or a vet.”

“...”

“...probably the vet. Ugh why couldn't you have chosen a more convenient time to have a tantrum? There's like, two bars of service out here.”

So leave V behind. It's not like she needed a babysitter.

Whatever. Lizzy’s dumb ramblings were at least helping her distract herself, and while her body kept shaking, she was able to calm herself into short, jagged breaths as opposed to the full waterworks. The wind picked up, blowing against the parts of her body that weren't covered by Sparky. She lay there, fading in and out of consciousness. She could breathe and a second could pass or an hour could pass. Occasionally she would try to get up. Or look around. Or do anything. 

V was laughing through her broken voice. Genuine laughing. What a weird twist of fate—of course she would be the one to end up blinded and broken down over absolutely nothing. 

She was distracted by the feeling of Sparky standing up. V had felt Lizzy’s hands lift off her as well, possibly signaling to him? 

“Let's go home, Grumpy McTrauma bot. Before I change my mind.”

Before she realized it, Lizzy was pushing her up onto Sparky. V didn't want to go back. That thing was in there! But her communication right now was….limited. She did the most dignified thing she could and hissed in Lizzy’s general direction. 

To no response. She just knew Lizzy was giving her a side eye right now. Or an unimpressed glare. She didn't need to be able to see to know that much. 

Well, her attempt was useless. She accepted her fate anyway. Lizzy hopped on Sparky behind her, and V felt his body start to rise and fall with his gait. It was already nighttime? It felt like just a minute and a week at the same time. For now, all she could do was let the world carry her wherever it wanted. She had no choice.