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“…T-Tessa?” N asked, taking a cautious step towards the human clad in what appeared to be a full suit of astronaut gear, an eyebrow quirked. “Ohmigosh, N!” She cried in response, lunging at him and grabbing the sides of his face, lifting him slightly off the ground. “You remember—!” She cut herself off with a sharp wheeze that devolved into hacking coughs, muttering out the words tall , beautiful as she struggled to catch her breath. “Uh, air’s t-toxic here.” She looked past him to Uzi, pointing out the shorter drone. “Aw, who’s this little— AH!” She reared back as Uzi snapped at her finger, hands clenched tightly into fists. “Uzi. Why are you here, human?” She spat out the word like a slur, silicone lips curled back in a cruel sneer, before noticing J hovering beside her, wings spread wide and imposing. “Oh, I’m getting real tired of killing this one.” J flipped one of her ponytails over her shoulder with a self-satisfied little mmm. “Effective drones are cloned more.” She replied coolly, smirking down at Uzi. “Ah, it is you.” N said with a nod. “Classic J!” V added.
”Well, a-after Cyn disappeared from Earth—“ Tessa began, her voice still wheezy, “Boss ran away.” J cut in. “We mutually disengaged.” Tessa retorted defensively, trying to quell the oddly corporate banter. “Her last known act was siccing you lot on the more human-populated exoplanets.” She said, gesturing to Uzi. “Why?” N asked, as J snapped in her wings and landed heavily on the ice. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out, bozo.” She hissed, snatching a keybug off Tessa’s JCJenson cap rather harshly, as it let out a sharp squeak of protest. “And, believe it or not, this insect is the answer.” She held it by its antennae, shaking it violently infront of Uzi’s optic feed. “J! That is not a toy, don’t shake it around like that.” Tessa scolded, holding out a hand. “These here critters have very delicate insides, tossing them around could d—!” Her little spiel was cut off by the keybug being seized mid-drop by a familiar red Solver glyph, one Uzi had been battling just minutes prior.
Before either woman could react, it was yanked across the ice plain and into Doll’s palm, of whom had been watching from the sidelines, entirely forgotten. The one-eyed drone glowered at them, warping a little closer. “Hey! We had a deal, Doll. You give me the keybug, and I take you down to the labs.” Tessa said, a gloved hand hovering over her pistol’s holster. J didn’t hesitate, equipping a missile shooter and pointing it at Doll. “Нет.” / “No.” She replied sharply, still frowning. “Когда я соглашался на это, я имел в виду нас, таких как ты, меня и Дж. Не... их.” / “When I agreed to this, I meant us, like you, me, and J. Not… them.” She gestured loosely to Uzi, N, & V. “Are you seriously betraying us right now? Leaving to make your own start-up?!” J yelled, flaring out her wings so fast it caused the thick mist that shrouded the plain to stir up. “Вы мне нужны были для защиты, не более того. Мне не нужно, чтобы вы все пятеро дышали мне в шею, пока я...” / “I needed you two for protection, nothing more. I don't need all five of you breathing down my neck while I...” She hesitated, suddenly looking nervous before gritting her teeth and clenching her plated fist against the keybug. “Я…Я…” / “I…I…” J raised the missile shooter. “Spit it out, you errant oil dispens—!” “Я иду один!” / “I’m going alone!” Doll snapped, before repeatedly using her Solver to warp towards the remnants of the lab. “Wait! Red-eyed… Uzi variant, no !” N yelled. “Oh no you don’t!” J snapped, flapping her wings heavily and shooting off a missile. “J! Stop, there’s… just don’t. She won’t get far without us.” Tessa said, seizing one of the female disassembly drone’s peg legs. “Besides, we haven’t explained the plan to these three yet, and it would help to have more hands on deck.”
Tessa crossed her arms over her chest. “Since you guys didn’t just warp over here like little miss contrary, how about you guys show me to the landing pod?” J frowned, looking agitated. “Boss, do you even know where she got those keybugs? There’s no telling how long it’ll be until-” “She’s got a whole bunch skittering around her house.” N said, before he heard the crunch of metal and plastic twisting together tightly. “What did you call Doll? And also, don’t tell her that!” Uzi asked, glaring up at him, her combat boot crushing the tip of his foot. “…I mean, you do look the same…?” He offered weakly (he wasn’t wrong, both drones did sport the same shade of dark purple hair). “A disciple in all things sad and edgy.” V cut in, earning herself a glare from Uzi, before J landed again. “How do you know of this, N? Have you and V made another… excursion into the colony?” She asked. N and V shared a nervous look, glowing optics wide, messages passing through their private servers. “Uh … oh… yeah, we just broke through those doors and started hunting them like- like crazy!” N blurted, an awkward grin stretching his synthetic skin. J gave the three of them an unamused sneer. “And you saved this dimwitted hunk of servos and damaged wiring as overstock?” Uzi practically snarled, taking a step towards J. “Listen here, you little diva in plastic plating—!” Tessa quickly stepped between the two drones. “Alright, alright, that’s enough.” She wheezed, her voice sounding strained. “The air’s still just as toxic as it was five minutes ago, and I’d really like to get down to the spire for some fresh air.” V frowned. “We… didn’t mention the spire, Tessa.”
The human girl froze briefly before letting out a sharp, clipped laugh. “Word at the company spreads fast about Copper-9’s most successful squad. I thought you guys would construct it near your pod to really look at your achievement.” J was practically beaming with pride. “You said you didn’t know where—?” “Lead the way!” Tessa said, effectively silencing Uzi. The goth scowled, a hand reaching up to brush against her 002 choker briefly. “Yeah,” She muttered finally, glancing away, “Let’s go.”
—
The five of them walked in silence towards the death spire, the tension in the air near palpable. Uzi, N, and V led the group, with Tessa and J bringing up the rear. While fighting the urge to look back at them (not out of paranoia, Uzi told herself) the worker drone got a sudden notification on her screen.
SD-N-0X0010010 HAS PINGED YOU USING @admin.ping
DISPLAYING ACCOMPANYING MSG. . .
LOOK UP
Uzi looked up and saw N’s visor was displaying a message.
[N] YOU GOOD?
The smaller drone hesitated before replying with a text display of her own.
[UZI] IM FINE ITS NOTHING
[N] YOU SURE?
[UZI] YES
[N] YOU SAW MY MEMORIES
[N] TESSA’S ONE OF THE GOOD ONES
[N] HUMANS, I MEAN
[UZI] …
[UZI] I KNOW.
//end.transcript02.20.3071
Uzi switched the messaging feature on her visor off, adding the conversation to her message logs, and looked down, opting to lean against N as they walked closer to the spire, their boots crunching the snow in sync as they neared the spire. Uzi shuddered (very) briefly as it began to loom over them in all its twisted, gorey, glory. The distant red FATAL_ERRORs flashing on cracked screens, punctured for the sweet slick that ran beneath it, had still not ceased to make the young drone a little uneasy. “Well, here we are, Boss. A culmination of our profession.” J bragged, tail swishing dangerously as she strolled up behind Uzi, pushing past her, causing the smaller drone to stumble. V caught Uzi’s wrist before she fell ass-first into the snow, and both of them shot the pigtailed D.D. a glare.
“It’s… very nice, J.” Tessa said after a pause, helmet swiveling slightly as she looked it up and down. “I’d expect nothing less from you and your squad, little miss overachiever.” She said, whilst pulling out a thin tablet from somewhere behind her back. “Uh, the company also expects me to note any drones who’s cores may be salvageable for a full wipe and reuse. It’s not cheap to make all of those intricate parts, you know.” Tessa said as she procured a stylus branded with a JCJIS!!! logo. “I thought you left the comp—?” Tessa cut Uzi off yet again, which was becoming quite annoying. “N, V? Come with me, please. I’d like your help with this.” Uzi was pleased to see J’s shocked expression. “B-boss, you can’t be seriously taking the synergistic liability to do this, right?” Tessa placed a hand on her hip. “I haven’t seen these two in a long time, J. I just want to have some quality time with them, alright? N’s a lot more capable than you think.” J scowled, crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ll believe it when I see it.” She muttered under the steady sound of her vents, before deploying her wings and flying towards the entrance of the spire. “I’m going out hunting, Boss. It’s such a shame how far I’ll have to go, all while there’s some fresh reserves right here, you know- W - w …?” She said, her vocalsynth stuttering in time with her visor’s optics, claws snapping out. Tessa pivoted to face her, saluting as she did so. “Right then, if you’re going out, mind the ship too. And don’t go too far. We’ll need you.” She chirped, either not picking up on or choosing to ignore J’s snarky tone as she casually tossed a pair of keys toward the drone. “Oh,” J rasped as she pocketed, “Trust me, theY- y - y won’t.” She giggled, her visor flashing that trademark ><, vocalsynth shutting off before taking flight, an angel of death on the hunt.
—
Boots, feet, and pegs crushed and crunched the powdery snow of Copper-9 to dust. On one side of the spire, Tessa was busy at work, scanning the dead drones she thought had “potential”. Uzi was on the other side of the spire, totally not spying on the human. If she had really left the company to hunt down Cyn, why was she still doing something directly related to it? Why examine these drones for the company she had disengaged from? This story didn’t make sense. Why wait while Doll was doing… whatever with that key-thing? Something wasn’t adding up, and if Uzi’s dad (thanks, Khan!) hadn’t taken down her theory board right before prom she’d have something to work with. She glared down at a drone wedged into the spire and then winced. A decent chunk of their visor had been shattered and pulled off, their synthetic skin ripped open, delicate insides exposed, mechanical gore spilling out in entrails of copper wire and cracked motherboards. Uzi couldn’t help but admire how their jaw was set in a tight grimace (twisted by injury); they had gone down fighting, hard, no doubt. If my railgun hadn’t worked that night— Uzi shook her head briefly to run an auto-clearing program on her thoughts. She reached out hesitantly and tapped the drone’s visor, generating a short prayer, only for the screen to power on briefly, displaying a glitched textlog tinted yellow, before flashing an infamously familiar sigil. Uzi’s eyelights hollowed out, but as quickly as the visor had powered on, it was off again. She tapped the visor multiple times, but it remained black and empty. She clicked into her memory files, but the file was thoroughly scrambled and unviewable. Uzi ran multiple debugging programs on it, but it didn’t change in the slightest. Maybe it was J, she tried to rationalize, she could be setting off EMP blasts to bootloop workers and it… affected me, somehow. A few of her memories from that fight were a little wonky, anyway. Why would the AbsoluteSolver be trying to take over a broken drone, any— “So, Uzi, was it?”
She flinched, turning around to see Tessa casually leaning over her, N just a few feet away. “I see you’ve made good friends with my bots, especially N.” Uzi chose to ignore the way her tone had changed when she had said ‘especially N’. “Um, yeah, I guess. They haven’t torn me apart for oil reserves yet, so you know.” Tessa shrugged. “All I’m saying is that she seems to really like you.” Uzi frowned. “She? N isn’t a gi…” Uzi trailed off, noticing that his eyelights had hollowed out and stress lines had appeared under them. “…rl… N?” He froze, digital drops of sweat appearing and sliding down his visor. “Uzi… I…” Tessa just sighed, placing a hand against her helmet. “Oh no, not this again…” She muttered. Uzi glanced between the two of them, Tessa remaining nonchalant, almost annoyed, and N becoming increasingly more nervous. “Uzi, I can explain-…” He started, only for Tessa to cut him off with a wave of her gloved hand and another sigh. “What the hell’s going on?!” Uzi snapped, “What do you mean, ‘not this again’?!”
“Well,” Tessa started, “N is a girl.”
—
N felt his servos lock up briefly, his code auto-running a ‘fight-or-flight’ program that hadn’t been used since — Oh robo-god, Tessa was still talking.
“That’s what her programming says.” Stop it. “But for a while now, she’s been insisting that—” Please. “She’s a boy.” I am. Don’t you remember that night in the manor?
I trusted you.
—
//running.FLASHBACK.exe
No!
N walked down the gilded hallway of the Elliott Manor, carrying a hamper of laundry in his arms while Cyn trailed after him, expression blank and movements stiff as always. It was a path he knew by core, though his footsteps slowed as he neared the carved oak double doors at the end of the hallway. “Reassuring hand squeeze.” A cold hand took his own, their hand plating clicking together, and he looked down to see Cyn hunched at his side. “Gentle smile. You have.. got this, big brother N. I will be.. waiting for you. Outside.” The smaller drone shuffled back and knelt down against the wall, shifting into a comfortable position. “Kneeling. Sitting.. comfortably. Um. Criss-cross applesauce. You are.. wanted, N. Do not forget.” The sudden, yet brief inflection of emotion in her vocalsynth (however imperceptible) was a push enough to get N moving toward the door. Cyn was right, after all. He was wanted. Tessa pulled him out of that scrapheap of drones dying, dead, decaying, exoskeletons exposed, oil fermenting. She gave him a home, protected him from her mother— The door swung open. Tessa was knelt near the massive fireplace in her room, trying to reattach a visor to a drone with a tiny screwdriver. “Tessa?” Her shadowy form flinched, and she dropped the screwdriver on the drone’s visor, cracking it. “Oh dear.. Uh, N! Hey..” N could tell by the faint wobble in her voice and the way she’d been huddled up her mother had… done something. “Tessa.. can I talk to you? It’s important.” N said, crossing his arms over his chest. The white glow of Tessa’s eyes crinkled slightly, a sign she was smiling. “Sure, N! What’s up, bud?” She stood up, brushing off her dress, her arms dipping into her shadowy figure. “I want.. this, please.” He procured a thin piece of paper he’d cut from an old magazine. It had been folded tight and small— the Elliotts would have chained him up if they discovered he had it. They seemed to hate the drones possessing anything they took themselves, however small.
”Oh,” Tessa said, already holding a pair of scissors in her hand, “Sure! But, uh,” She leaned down a little, tugging the paper from his grasp and giving it a closer look. “This is a boy’s haircut, N. Are you sure you want it?” Well, the opportunity was laid out for him. “T-Tessa, I don’t think I-..” He vented out some air. “I don’t- I’m not a girl.” He winced. Too blunt. “Not anymore, at least!” He tacked on, looking up into her ‘face’. Darn JCJenson, coding him to see humans like this…! “What I’m saying is I.. feel better as a boy? And I kindofreallywanttobeonerightnow!” Tessa took a step back, then sighed. “C’mon in front of the mirror.” She directed N to a large mirror hanging on her wall above her vanity. “I think I get where you’re coming from, but…” She readied her scissors and the picture. “I don’t mind cutting your hair, but I’m not sure about the whole gender thing.” N wilted at her words. “It’s just not possible.”
Snip.
The first lock of silver-white hair fell to the carpeted floor beneath. “You robots are AI. All code.”
Snip.
Two locks this time, longer, thicker.
“Mix-ups don’t happen with you guys.” She stated casually, “Not like they do with human genders.”
Snip.
Snip.
Snip.
After a few more well-placed cuts, Tessa examined the paper, then N’s hair. The carpet beneath his feet was draped in silver locks, a fallen halo. “…There.” N glanced up into the mirror, and was met with a nice crop of silvery hair that seemed to perfectly frame his head. His past feelings fell away like his locks of hair as he hesitantly reached up to brush against his fresh silver halo, in awe.
“…Is that better?” Tessa asked, head tilted.
“Yeah…” N whispered, half to himself, “It’s perfect.” Tessa seemed pleased enough.
//end.FLASHBACK.exe
—
N jolted out of his mind for the second time that night, noting barely a minute had passed in real-time. Uzi and V were glaring at Tessa, and Uzi was yelling. N’s audio processors to a moment to jumpstart, then— “You psycho! Frickin’ bootlooped him for what?!” Uzi yelled, her tail scoring deep marks into the snow. Tessa said nothing to her, her helmet twisting to face N. “Oh, N. Good to see you back online, buddy.” Oh, robo-god, he couldn’t be here for another nanosecond. Uzi glowered at Tessa, angry marks appearing on her visor. “Oh don’t you dare…!” N’s optics hollowed out, and he stumbled back, snapping open his wings so fast it hurt, multiple warnings popping up on his visor. He flexed the joints of his knees slightly, then flapped his wings hard, soaring out of the spire, catching a strong updraft and randomly selecting a direction to fly in. The icy, asbestos-filled air whipped against his face and wings, trying to drive him back. Another warning popped up on his screen— his flightspeed was consuming oil, fast. He began to slip into a nosedive, his bladed wings closing tightly around his body, shielding him from the ine. He was due for a crash landing, and a neat 5.23 seconds later, snow exploded around him, rendering his headband of eyes and visor useless. His regeneration kicked in, reforming his shattered visor. He pulled up his flight logs — 28.52 miles in 2 minutes and 48.05 seconds. Not record-breaking by any means, but still incredibly fast. (It wasn’t like he wanted to break any records with speed.) He examined the small crater he’d made on impact, still a little dazed from a harsh landing.
“N?” “N!!!” Two overlapping voicebanks echoed above him, one more panicked than the other. N pushed himself up, shaking the snow off his features and looking up to see Uzi and V circling above him like vultures, calling out to him. “Uzi! Use a location tracker on him!” N waved his arms until V glanced down and then dropped down, snapping shut her wings on impact and creating a tiny crater upon landing. “N! You’re okay! You- I thought- Tessa- she…” V glanced away. “I thought she would have changed since the manor.” He heard a whump as Uzi landed behind him, her fleshy wings snapping shut into her back. “N, what the hell was that human talking about? You’re not a-?” The unfinished question hung in the air, tungsten-heavy.
“Uzi, I… I was going to tell you, I just didn’t know how.” He said, glancing away. “If you don’t want to date anymore— or you’re mad—”
“Yeah, N. I’m a little mad.”
V gave Uzi a death glare and N’s eyes hollowed out. “After what you did to us during your less—” “Mad, that you didn’t TELL ME SOONER!” Uzi leaned forward and wrapped him in a tight hug. “That’s so cool!” A loading circle appeared on the side of her visor, and she looked down at N’s legs, then compared them to V’s. “Um, how did you…?” Based on the few Dissasembly Drone anatomy classes she’d had in school (they were cancelled after drones started getting nightmares), N appeared to have normal, unmodified male D.D. legs. “Oh,” He said, fiddling with the knee joints on his legs, “It was J’s idea, actually. She wanted us to hit our quotas better.” V scoffed. “Correction, she wanted you to hit your quotas better.” N scoffed, though the words that followed were set in a playful tone. “You were spending too much time mangling their corpses. Gave them ample time to flee.” “Seriously, how? I don’t…” Uzi trailed off, making a loose gesture with her hand. “Oh, yeah, J gave me her legs.” N said.
”WHAT THE FUCK?”
“Hey! You said you wanted to know how!” N shot back, and Uzi scowled. “Yeah, but seriously? J?” V scoffed. “I was just as shocked as you were, Goth Topic.” “That’s a really shitty insult.” “She thought it’d help my quota out, but you know…” N trailed off. “So you guys just pulled off your legs and swapped them out? Like dolls?” Uzi asked, incredulous. “Well, I tried, but she said she didn’t want ‘defective product’ and made her own legs, company standard or whatever.” He finished screwing with his legs and casually fucking popped them off. “N?! WHAT THE FU…” Uzi shrieked (for the second time in about 30 minutes). “She left the wiring in here, but I couldn’t figure how to hook it up to my own, so I just hollowed them out and sprayed the insides with some sealant to prevent rust and all that. He wiggled the leg underneath, very obviously a female Disassembly Drone’s leg. “It’s kind of like a matryoshka doll? You know.” Uzi admitted, brushing her hand against the sleek black metal. “Yeah.” N admitted. “I wouldn’t have minded.” She said flatly, withdrawing her hand slowly. “What?” N asked. “If you never told me you were… I wouldn’t have cared.” “Because you wouldn’t know, idiot.” V cut in. “V, shush! Uzi, I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself without telling you. Honest to robo-god.”
“Aw, N.”
V mimicked gagging, standing up and neatly folding her wings into her back. “Alright lovebirds, let’s get going.” V said, arms crossed over her cropped bomber jacket. “You seem to forget you’re dating us, too.” Uzi shot back as N helped her up out of the tiny crater. A blush icon appeared on V’s visor, but she crossed her arms tighter over herself, taking a step back. “That’s not- I’m not like you two, though.” She shot back, tail twitching. “So where are we going?” Uzi asked, dusting the powdery snow off her knees with her tail. V snapped in one of her hands to project a map of a laboratory. “Cabin Fever Labs. Tessa mentioned it while we were walking around the spire. It’s why we needed the keybug.” V replied, zooming in on a few spots of the map. “Alright then.” Uzi said, glancing in the general direction of the corpse spire. “Tessa’s not coming with, if you wanted to know.” V added, “It’s not like I interacted with her that much anyway even in the manor, and telling her I’d treat her like a worker was pretty freakin’ sweet.”
The three drones redeployed their wings, taking to the skies with a practiced ease towards the lab.