Work Text:
A single beam of light cut through the purple LED haze that was ever present in Uzi’s room from the flashlight that her tail held in its mouth, pointed at her work desk. Various tools and scrap covered its surface in piles like a topographical map. Uzi hunched over the keybug that sat in the only clear space left, her knees pushed up against her frame as she balanced precariously on the seat of her chair. The little bug held still as she tried to maneuver a soldering iron under it’s shell and through an open hatch, aiming for a set of pins that had long eroded.
“Come on.” Uzi muttered under her breath and her tail moved her flashlight closer to the table at the same time she tried to hunch over further in her seat. The sudden simultaneous movement caused her tail to collide with her visor, the flashlight beaming into her optics and whiting out her sensors. Her hand flinched, the soldering iron hissing as it jolted across the keybugs circuits.
“Fuck! Stupid tail,” she hissed and spun to look at her tail. As she glared at it the tail’s six eyes dimmed as it drooped and chewed nervously on the flashlight. Uzi sighed, pushing back her mounting frustration and looking back at the keybug on the desk.
There was still a large disconnect between what she tried to make her new tail do and what it actually did. Focusing on the intent behind the direction helped, but it was just as likely to ignore all of her thoughts and snake through her room, feasting on all of her cables - she had already replaced three sets of them in the week since camp.
Twisting her fingers she enveloped a magnifying glass on her desk in purple light and hovered it over the keybug. A messy solder line cut across the circuits, ending at a chip that lay half buried under dust and a corner of the chassis with its pins cracked and an entire corner marred by damage. Barely visible numbering was still etched on the surface, now uncovered by the soldering iron digging into the metal shell.
“SP7509,” Uzi muttered the chip number to herself. She pushed a pile of cracked lenses out of the way - remnants of her attempt at focusing her railgun’s wide beam into something pinpoint - and dug around the back of her desk for the pile of loose chips and circuits that she would throw to the side after cannibalizing a new piece of found tech. Every spare part from her projects, any loose bits she could borrow from abandoned piles and rooms that hadn’t seen a non-florescent light for years, it all was thrown into the leaning piles that accumulated on the edges of her room and desk.
The keybug scattered as loose pieces were tossed to the side in her scramble to retrieve the pieces she needed. Uzi pulled out a large pile of tangled chips and wires, forgoing any sort of sorting and lifting up her hand. She twisted her fingers as the solver engulfed the pile, purple light unwinding the chaos into neat rows that circled around her head.
She couldn’t resist a maniacal giggle from escaping her mouth as she tapped her feet on the lip of her chair. She could sort through things in an instant and spend the saved time for building or outlining more schematics. She swept her hand and the circuits orbited faster around her head.
Her optics tracked the circuits carefully, her other hand enveloped in the solver as she tossed circuits that didn’t match back into the depths of her desk with a twitch of her finger. The minute that she spotted the circuit that she needed she sent the rest hurtling back to the pile and let the chip drop into her hand. Giving it a quick scan revealed it to be an older model of secondary processor.
“Alright little guy where are you.” The keybug scuttled out from behind a pile of wires, holding a loose piece in its foreclaws. It nibbled on some of the exposed copper as it made it’s way over. Uzi rolled her eyes, “Between the two of you I won’t have any wires left to work with.” Though with N and V getting their oil from elsewhere there might be enough wires to go to both her projects and snack on.
“Pliers?” The keybug projected the question and pointed toward Uzi’s tool wall. Right, what little secondary processing power was gone now.
She gently picked it up and moved it back to the center of the desk. Turning to pick up her tools Uzi found her tail waiting at the side, gently holding her tool set. The head poked her arm gently and put the tools in front of her, Uzi grumbling out words that might have sounded something close to thanks.
Positioning it above the old chip with a totally necessary spin, Uzi’s soldering iron hissed back to life and what little solder there was melted instantly. Using the solver she extracted the chip before swapping it with the replacement.
“Now all I have to do is…” Uzi muttered, twisting her hand into a new pattern. The edit symbol flared to life around the keybug and the metal started to flow on its back, repairing the crack. She was barely able to see a spark as the new circuit connected before it’s back closed up fully and it was lowered onto her desk.
Blinking LEDs flashed across its back and on the tip of each antenna before a small loading bar was projected above its head. The moment that the bar loaded the lights on its head and antenna lit up a bright green.
“Yes!” Uzi pushed her seat back and threw her arms up in celebration, the chair spinning wildly. She rolled her chair back to the desk and tapped her fingers on it, causing the keybug to turn to her. It tilted its head a bit and scanned her, doubling back and focusing in on her mom’s choker.
“Welcome back 002.” The messages from before began to scroll across the projected window like before. Uzi vented a nervous breath, ready to see if the upgrade had helped the keybug differentiate better.
“How did you know my mom? Where is that? What are you?”
The keybug tilted its head as the question was echoed perfectly back in the projected screen. The rush that accompanied every successful project swept through her circuits until Byte started to respond.
“Not 002? 002 … Redacted. Cabin Fever Labs … Redacted.” Uzi frowned at the first response. What kind of place was her mom at where the info about where it was was redacted. She could try to crack the encryption on any of the files the keybug had, none of the other human programs she had hacked and altered around the bunker had ever taken her long to completely break open.
“Designation Keybug-CF001022. Primary Purpose: Elevator Key; Secondary Functions: several” Uzi’s frown grew and her optics narrowed. Her brief vindication that the voice recognition was working properly faded into frustration.
“What they just use you to open an elevator?” The bug nodded its antenna up and down. “Well thats dumb, stupid humans mess with your files and have you just be a key?” Her frustration latched onto a common target for her rants, “Humans never think about anything but themselves and how they can use others. They can bite me!” She crossed her arms.
“Bite! Bite! Byte!” The keybug ran in circles on the desk and Uzi paused her rambling about the inevitable downfall of humanity. It continued to repeat the first part of the phrase, occasionally stopping to look at Uzi.
“Byte?” The keybug waved its antennae at her question. Uzi struggled to hold back a grin. “What you want that to be your name or something?” It waved its antennae again.
“Alright, you can be Byte.” The keybug ran around in circles and then looked back at Uzi, tilting its head.
“New primary user?” The newly christened Byte projected. Uzi gave it a thumbs up and flipped her visibility settings as it started to scan her again, this time skipping over the choker.
“User recognized, welcome new user darkXwolf17.” A small icon of a tiny robo-roach head appeared in the corner of her screen, slotting in next to the diagnostic data that she had been running constantly since the camp, the oil level monitor several sizes larger than the rest.
“I made that so long ago,” Uzi groaned. “Just say Uzi.” Byte’s projection flickered and her username was replaced. The icon on her screen lit up, Uzi raising an eyebrow as she pulled up the notification. A connection request was pulled up, asking for confirmation of file transfer.
“It’s probably been a long time since you connected to anything huh? Or got an update?” Uzi cringed, years without any net connection or anti-virus update would quickly send her spiraling. She queued up one of the basic anti-virus packages that she had archived for any potential accidents or breaches from her own files.
Byte’s antenna bobbed up and down. Uzi read the request further, her optics narrowing as she got further.
“Personal file access?” She glared at the keybug, “What do you even want with access to files.”
Even before she had finished her sentence Byte was pointing with a claw to a portion of her desk that was taken up by loose plastic sprues and mismatched parts, Uzi’s efforts to salvage whatever she could from supply runs or empty housing units.
“Gundam.”
Uzi couldn’t stop herself from laughing, a smile on her face as she shrugged her shoulders. She wasn’t going to deny anyone the joy of a good anime binge. She approved the request, restricting Byte’s temporary access to only her media files.
It immediately started skittering in circles and waving its antenna in excitement. Uzi watched as the multitude of seasons were queued up along with the anti-virus package. She made sure to throw in the credentials for wider bunker access; already thinking about what other packages she could throw Bytes way. With its help no keypad would be safe from her programs.
Uzi unfolded from her chair, watching as the file transfer ended and Byte loaded up the anti-virus. She had a long list of questions that she should probably ask, starting with questions on any of the files that might contain anything about her mom. Even if the files were locked down, there might be something in the metadata or a way to learn anything useful.
A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts. Uzi rolled her eyes, her dad had been insufferably trying to bond or some junk like that. She had written it off as more advice from that stupid pamphlet, but she hadn’t seen the thing since her dad tried to ask her how camp was.
“Busy!” Uzi shouted at the door.
“Oh! Sorry Uzi I can come back later.” N’s voice came through the door. Uzi half sprinted to the door, sliding it open before N was finished talking. N blinked in surprise and Uzi rocked back and forth on her heels.
“Hey! No, no, it’s totally fine.” She froze for a second before awkwardly backing away from the door and waving N inside. “What’s up?” She moved back to her work desk. N coming over had been even more common lately, and during the past week he had been over almost every other day.
“I brought you another can of oil.” N’s voice was cheerfully high as he pulled a can from inside of his coat and placed it on the corner of her work desk. “I saw you were running low yesterday and V was already going to raid Doll’s place. She seemed weirdly happy about that for some reason?”
It might have something to do with V’s sudden closeness to Lizzy, or maybe V wanted to get any sort of revenge she could get; Uzi would ignore the former and wouldn’t begrudge her the latter, she might even join in.
“Thanks N.” Uzi said with a small smile. N’s face lit up.
“Was I interrupting you? What were you up to?” N tilted his head.
“Nah, I just finished up with this guy.” Uzi said and put her hand on the desk.
Byte crawled up onto her hand and moved its two front claws in a poor, but unfortunately somewhat cute, approximation of a wave. Uzi lifted it up between them and the keybug turned and scanned N’s face, a small pop-up appearing over its head.
“Hello Serial Designation N-0X0010010” Byte projected.
“Oh, Its the little guy you found. Hey buddy!” N leaned in and extended his hand, Byte making the small jump and running circles on N’s hand; something that seemed to be an expression of excitement.
“Yeah,” Uzi smirked as N tried to hold still and let Byte crawl up his arms and coat. “The whole voice recognition mix up was a fried secondary processor. Probably caused a real bad memory leak.” N winced in sympathy and gently reached out to pet Byte gently with one finger. Uzi quickly took several pictures and shoved them into a deep folder within her subsystems.
“When I slotted the extra one back in it seemed to feel a lot better, then decided to keep repeating bite over and over. So,” She gestured with her hand, “Meet Byte.”
“≽^- ˕ -^≼” N seemed to light up with Byte’s projection.
“U・ﻌ・U” N’s optics flashed a dog emoticon as his whole body vibrated with excitement.
Byte copied him, and N immediately started flashing different animal emoticons at the keybug and it impressively kept up, copying each one. N’s grin was stretched impossibly wide and Uzi felt her processor slow down from how sweet the scene was.
N seemed to have hundreds of animal themed emoticons saved, nearly a third of them dog themed, and Uzi made sure to secretly add some to her own files. Eventually they trailed off, N still beaming.
“This is amazing Uzi!” N briefly focused his grin on her before turning to Byte again and scratching the top of its head. “You really can fix anything, you’re so smart and cool.”
The vibrations from her tail’s rapid wagging shook her chassis and she tried vainly to hold it still, all while ignoring the new pop-up in the corner of her screen warning her that her edge levels were falling beneath the recommended 85%. It was a common feeling when N turned his brilliantly stupid shining smile in her direction.
“I can make a railgun out of scraps and loose parts, this was nothing,” She waved off the compliment, though not nearly as easily as the pop-ups.
N turned back to her with his mouth half open, probably to say some other embarrassing junk, before his eyes focused over her shoulder and whatever words he was about to say were lost in the grin that stretched across his face. Uzi sighed and turned her head. Her tail was wagging back and forth so fast that it left three streaks of purple in the air, her embarrassment skyrocketing.
“How do you,” Uzi gestured to her tail, “control this stuff. It’s fleshy and gross and doesn’t listen to anything I say.” She purposefully didn’t mention how she was constantly aware of her new wings underneath her casing or how when they ripped out of her back the metal cut the thin membranes of her wings, her new nerves literately twinge in pain; that when she got startled the wings tried to break free and put minute cracks on the underside of her chassis before the healing kicked in.
N shifted more into her view, following her movement and pulling her mind back to the present. He smiled sheepishly and turned a bit to the side. His tail was also waving back and forth, creating a yellow blur as it swung behind his back; the movement masked once again by his coat as he turned back towards her.
“I don’t really,” he rubbed the back of his head and gave a little shrug, an action that was not at all adorable. “Whenever I’m not directly telling it what to do it kinda does whatever it wants and I, uh, don’t really think about why that happens.”
“You gotta figure that stuff out.” Uzi rolled her eyes fondly. Her tail snaked over toward N and bumped into his side the minute that her mind wasn’t solely focused on it. He looked down and smiled fondly before reaching out and cupping her tail with his hand. He ran his thumb along the spikes on the top of the head and her tail pushed further into his hands.
“Aw, hey little buddy.” He giggled and started to gently scratch under the tail’s chin.
The feeling of N’s fingers against her nerves - she repressed the now common shudder that came with any reminder that her body was fleshy - was enough for her shoulders sink slightly, some of the stress dropping from her frame.
“It’s actually really cute.” N’s words caused the tail to wiggle further into his hands, the jaws opening and eyes half closed. “See?”
Uzi grumbled under her breath, the crushing reminders of past attempts to get close to anyone screaming at her to pull away fighting with the long suppressed loneliness that demanded she stand still.
“Hello, hello! I’m a little spiky puppy.” N said with a ridiculous British accent while he moved the jaws, bringing the tail up near his head.
“Who are you calling little.” Uzi fake glared at him. He laughed as the tail bumped against his face and started to gnaw on the edge of his hat.
It was so silly and just like N that it almost narrowly distracted her from the fact that his face was so close to her tail, much too close, almost like he could lean down and ki…
“No! Eww! Bite me!” Uzi pulled her tail back and spun away in reaction to her entirely imagined scenario, ignoring the slight pain from her fingers digging into her strange flesh. A wave of regret immediately rushed through her, along with a burst of panic. What if N took that the wrong way and decided that she meant that she hated him? Or that she was saying she didn’t like him - not that she was saying the opposite. Or that she didn’t want him to do that again maybe. Her thoughts were cut off by a another stream of constant warnings popping up across her visor.
She quickly turned her head, just enough to see N’s slumped shoulders and the barest hint of a smile on his face, before she whipped her head back around. He did think that didn’t he? The warnings increased, a cascade of messages that started to cloud her vision.
Uzi let go of her tail and pulled her fingers down her face, dismissing all of the warnings and focusing her eyes on the wall. A wall full of crayon drawings of the two of them - adorned with notes and severed heads and dogs. N was constantly bringing her notes and pictures along with oil that he salvaged from the spire or from Doll’s mausoleum of a house, staying with her every time that she got nervous about loosing her control when she tasted oil; all without her ever saying any of what she was feeling or asking at all.
She could try, N deserved that at least. She continued to face away, N’s feet shuffling against the floor the only sign that she hadn’t scared him away, at least not yet.
“It’s scary,” Uzi muttered, leaning against her desk, her attention split between trying to not look at N and the wall tacked up drawings, “Like you are on top of a building and want to fly but the ground is right there.” Flashes of her falling through the sky with N rushed through her brain unbidden. "And the moment you step off you know you are going to hit the ground, because you have always hit the ground. "
Each class presentation, every attempt to try to reach out, to tone down, passed through her head, as did every bit of laughter, shrugging indifference, and apathy.
“And so you just…” she trailed off, shrugging and gesturing to her tail, hoping that he picked up on what she was too afraid to say, what caused her to wrench away and yell at one of the only people to get close to her, “don’t.”
“But flying feels great,” N stepped forward and brushed his knuckles against her crossed arms, “It’s freeing to feel the wind, and the freedom, and, well everything.” She finally turned to face him. His optics had the same softness that they had during their impromptu fall, that they had when he was holding her against his side at the prom.
“Until you crash.” Uzi muttered. The silence stretched out for a moment before N’s face returned back to his usual goofy smile.
“I don’t know, even when it goes wrong It still can feel really exciting. When you hang in the air and your circuits flip; you don’t know what’s going to happen or if your wings will open in time but its still nice to feel the wind.” He reached out his hand, holding it in front of Uzi with his palm up.
“Plus I think this time it might be different, for both of us?” His voice soft to match his grin.
Uzi’s eyes flickered between his face and his hand, slowly reaching out before hesitating.
“And are you…” she fumbled for the right words, “Also flying.” She immediately blushed, the words coming out strangled.
N blushed in return, his visor a glowing daffodil and causing her core to skip a cycle. Seizing the rush of confidence his reaction gave her she grazed her fingers against N’s palm.
“I don’t think you’ll crash anymore.” Her touch seemed to force the words to spill out of N’s mouth while his eyes remained focused on their, admittedly barely, connected hands.
The glowing mix of yellow and purple light between them was captivating. Uzi unable to think of anything except the brief seconds where he sheltered her under his wings when they fell into the snow.
“What cause you’ll catch me again.” She aimed for her perfectly mastered dry tone, but the words came out in a much too vulnerable strangled whisper.
“Of course,” His heels softly clicked together and his free hand rose to his cap as he did his goofy salute.
“Plus I’m a pilot,” he said confidently before his optics narrowed in confusion. “Wait does that fit here.” He muttered under his breath. Uzi couldn’t help but laugh, both at the confused look on his face and how generally sweet his words were. It was worth it to see his face return to a beaming grin.
“Alright, alright.” Uzi said, taking a couple of steps forward and knocking into N’s side gently. “I believe you.” She risked a quick look up at N, quickly looking back down after meeting his optics.
“Then maybe we…” Uzi started, trailing off as each word got harder and harder to speak. “Could you know…” It felt like her voice bank was completely scrambled.
“Maybe we could hang out sometime?” Uzi felt like slamming her faceplate into her hands the moment that the words left her mouth. Hang out? Who even says that? That was so cr-
“Yeah! I mean definitely yes lets do that.” N’s excited response, paired with the rapid yellow blur of his tail and deep yellow blush made any sort of thoughts evaporate from her mind.
Never mind she was a genius.
“Cool.” Uzi said, the two lapsing into a comfortable silence as they shuffled in place. Byte took advantage of the silence to scuttle out from under N’s hair and perch on the lip of his hat. She had almost forgotten that it was there, lost in the moment.
“ε(´｡•᎑•`)っ 💕”
“♡＾▽＾♡”
“(＾ω＾)”
The keybug started spamming projections of emoticons.
“Byte,” Uzi’s cold voice contrasted by her violently blushing face, “One more word and I’ll reprogram your graphics processing to only use obsolete JavaScript libraries.”
“ :o ” Byte rapidly moved back to N’s shoulder and scuttled behind a lock of his hair. “Very scary.” N broke out into a fit of giggles, laughing so hard that he let go of her hand.
“Anyway, what were you here for?” Uzi scooted away, putting space between herself and N as she tried to calm down her processor. Several emotions were slamming into each other and Uzi fell back on the comfort of creating distance.
“Oh! Oh yeah!” N was still smiling at her, relieving a bit of the tightness in her core. “So when you found this cutie, I found…” He trailed off, his smile wavering. “Something weird?”
“Like creepy mansion weird?” N had been telling Uzi about the weird dreams that he had been having, and how they seemed to include drones who were so familiar but just out of reach of his memory.
“Exactly!” N perked up a bit, looking relieved that Uzi had immediately gotten it right. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small package that was wrapped in some cloth scraps. He nervously held it out to her.
Uzi took it and unwrapped it, pulling out an old VHS tape. She caught the relieved breath that N let out.
“Oh good.” N slumped like a weight had been lifted off of him. He reached up and gave Byte another scratch. “I kept seeing these strange things every time I touched it. Like it was trying to say something. And V won’t touch it either, or talk about it at all. She just pretends it doesn’t exist. And I haven’t been able to find anything to play it. What if it’s trying to tell me something? Or is important to your mom quest…” The longer he talked the more worried he looked, his optics thin circles.
His rambling got worse and Uzi decided to step in. She put the possibly cursed tape on the desk and reached out and grabbed his hands. N’s rambling sputtered to a stop.
“Hey,” Uzi tried to look more at their hands then at N’s face, “We got this.” She cleared her throat, “My dad has an old VHS player somewhere here from the old retro craze, but he only uses it to watch old Doors concerts so I can easily take it. And if that thing is haunted then I’ll shoot whatever comes out of the TV for you.” She grinned as N let out a soft chuckle.
“What I have super eldritch powers now, I can totally fight a ghost.” N’s mouth wavered from his concerned frown. “Actually I want to fight a ghost so I hope it is haunted.” N finally smiled, Uzi inwardly cheering her success.
“You’d totally win.” N squeezed her hands.
“Damn right I’d win.” Uzi puffed up with pride. “You just chill here with Byte I’ll go and get that and we can solve this thing.” N nodded.
“Could we get V to come as well?” N asked, “I know she knows more about this, and she has been really cool lately.” Uzi rolled her eyes. N was right though, V had covered for her even when Uzi bet that she and Lizzy could have thrown her under the bus.
“Alright yeah,” Uzi agreed. “ But only if she brings more oil.” N gave her another little salute and his optics unfocused, probably sending a message out to V on their Disassembly Drone network. Uzi was still working on cracking the encryption on it, but it seemed to change every single time that she got close to figuring it out. She swore it even changed programming languages once.
Letting N finish his message she slipped out of the room. Hopefully her dad was gone so she could just easily break his laughably easy password - it hadn’t changed from DoorsRbest since she was 5 - and grab what she needed.
Then she and N could figure out this haunted tape, crack whatever firewall was blocking her from Byte’s memories, and be one step closer to figuring out what was going on.
Or at least get some rest from all of the crazy revelations. Robo-Jesus knew she at least needed that.