Chapter Text
What had started as a bright summer day had been quickly replaced by dark clouds and the incessant pounding of rain, killing any chance of outdoor activities. N was heartborken about it. Uzi was not-so secretely relieved.
Her parents had left earlier to go furniture shopping or whatever old people did for fun, leaving Uzi and her friends free to crowd the living room.
She was seating on the carpet in front of the TV, smashing the buttons of her controller with all her might. N was lying on the couch behind her, his face muffled by a pillow, moping.
Next to her, Cyn - N's terror of a little sister, sat cross-legged, maneoureving her own controller with more hability than any twelve years old had the right to.
"There's no way you aren't cheating right now!" Uzi exclaimed when Cyn sniped her from across the map for the sixth time in a row.
"Don't be a sore loser, Uzi." Cyn said, tone vaguely reproachful. Uzi could see the twinlke in her eyes though. The little shit.
"Yeah, purple. Where's your sense of sportmanship?" V said, without taking her eyes from her book. She was seating on a chair, on the left of the couch, close to the window. The curtains were withdrawn, and you could barely make out the outside world with all of the rain pouring down.
"Oh, bite me." Uzi said, pausing the game in frustation. "I wanna see you try."
V glanced at her sharply and raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?"
"Gasp. A challenge has been issued." Cyn said. She reached up and poked N on his side. "Big brother N, did you hear that?"
N mumbled something in response. Cyn nodded as if that had made perfect sense to her. "I'll go get Tessa and J."
She stood up and skidded across the room, disappearing into the kitchen's entrance and leaving Uzi and V to glare at each other.
"Are you sure you wanna do this, Uzi?" V continued, her voice viciously pleasant.
"Why? Are you that scared of losing, V?" Uzi retorted.
V smirked at her the same way a snake might smirk at a baby mice. "Just don't cry when I kick your ass onto the stratosphere, okay?"
Uzi narrowed her eyes, refusing to back down.
"What's this about a challenge?" Tessa said, walking to them with long strides. Her apron was covered in flour, just as her hands, arms and even her face, and she was holding an old wooden spoon that Uzi was pretty sure had belonged to Grandma Doorman once upon time.
Trailing behind her were Cyn and a disgruntled looking J. Or maybe it was a normal looking J. It was hard to tell with her.
"One Uzi Doorman has issued a challenge of skill to V, who has yet to accept or deny it." Cyn said, primly.
"I hear that right, girls?" Tessa said, turning to them with amusement dancing on her eyes.
"Yeah, I dare this ugly-ass loser to a match of Murder Drones." Uzi said.
"You always say the nicest things~" V said, batting her eyelashes in her direction. Uzi flipped her off.
Tessa snorted, "Alright. I take ya accept it, then?"
"Yep."
J scoffed. "Are we really wasting time with this? Some of us are busy, you know?"
V gave her an flat look. "Busy? You two are making cupcakes."
"Baking is an extremely difficult and rewarding skill to master." J said. Different from Tessa, her apron was spotless, without so much as a speck of flour on it.
"Only J can make cupcakes seem condescending." Uzi muttered.
For the first time in the entire afternoon, N perked up. "Did someone say cupcakes?"
"Sorry, mate. We've just put them in the oven." Tessa said. "You'll have to wait a little bit more."
N slumped right back into the couch with a groan. Cyn walked over to him and patted his head. "Pat. Pat."
"Dramatic much?" Uzi said, smirking at him. He gave her a thumbs-up without looking up.
"I feel like we lost the thread here." V said.
Tessa clapped her hands, making a small cloud of flour puff away. "Right! Let's get this challenge started, kids."
It took no time to organize everything. N opted to slid from the couch and sit on the floor, so Uzi and V settled on opposites sides of the couch. Cyn stayed in the middle as, in her words, the "neutral arbirter of divine justice".
Tessa quickly went to the bathroom to wash up, and J, ever the gentleman, let her take the reading chair. She then proceeded to drag one of the chairs from the kitchen for herself, loudly complaining the entire time.
The words Murder Drones: Mass Desctruction appeared on the TV's screen. Uzi selected Local Match and each of them chose their characters.
"Prepare to go down," Uzi told V while they waited for the game to load. V only hummed in response, eyes locked to the screen.
The level was set in an underground bunker, which in the game's lore was the last bastion of civilization in a post-apocalyptic setting. Which was good because it negated V's character ability to fly.
Uzi's character spawned in a classroom. Typical. She couldn't escape school even in video games.
She left the classroom and started to walk down the corridors warily, pickaxe on her hands. Her railgun was a way better weapon, but it was also heavier and slower, so she left it in her inventory for now.
The background music was quiet and tense as she made her way deeper into the bunker. It was hard to be scared however, because N kept audibly reacting to everything that happened on the screen.
Uzi lightly kicked him in the back. "N, I'm trying to concentrate here."
"Sorry!" N said, not sounding sorry at all.
Which was when V found her. A flash of yellow was her only warning before a rain of blades tore through the air in her direction. Uzi hit the dodge button just in time to avoid dying, but her health bar plummeted from green to red.
"Shit!" Uzi said. Her character ran to cover, another blade missing her by inches.
V's character was standing on top of a truck, an X lit up on her visor. A ring of silver-white blades floated omniously around her. Everytime Uzi tried to aproach her, she would throw one of the them with a surgeon's precision, and it was only Uzi's quick reflexes that saved her - either dodging or telekinetically grabbing one of the boxes or barrels that littered the area to block the attack.
Uzi glared at her. "Camping? You have no honor."
V fake-yawned. "I can do this all day."
"Please don't." J said.
Uzi eyed V's side of the split-screen, and saw that she only had a few blades left.
Uzi had a plan.
"When facing a stronger foe, retreat is a friend." Uzi said.
"Sun Tzu?" Tessa guessed.
"Joseph Joestar, actually." Uzi pressed the run button and her character bolted in the opposite direction. V's character immediately gave chase.
"Oh no, you don't." V said, almost gleefully.
Blades rushed forward. Uzi dodged a few but let herself get hit once or twice on purpose, letting V grow confident. There was only a sliver of her health left, but it was enough.
"Oh, I can't watch this!" N said, covering his eyes.
"Giggles. Uzi is dead." Cyn said.
"Can you two finish this already?" J said.
V was close enough now. Uzi stopped running and whirled around, activating her special attack. With a telekinetic blast, she threw her pickaxe like a purple comet.
There was a split second of surprise, and then V got hit right in the face. Her character staggered back, visor blacking out, and her health bar flickered to orange.
It was not a very powerful attack, and it had the downside of her losing her weapon, but it had a very neat stun effect.
V's character froze in place, a six seconds timer popping up the air next to her, enough time for Uzi to take out her railgun and start charging up her attack.
Her friends were roaring next to her, but Uzi barely heard them as she released the trigger button and a beam of baleful green energy charged through the bunker, slamming into V just a fraction of second after the timer gave out.
When the light died, the only thing left standing was a smoking pile of ashes. The words Player One Wins appeared on the screen in victorius gold.
"YES!" Uzi yelled, standing up on the couch and raising her controller up in the air." FATALITY! In your face!"
V rolled her eyes, putting her controller down. "Yeah, whatever. Congralutations."
"I WON, YOU LOST! MWAHAHAHAHA!"
"Very mature of you, Uzi." V said, her lips twitching.
"I never doubted you." Cyn said to Uzi, with so much sincerity that she almost believed her.
N clapped his hands, excitedly. "That was so cool!" He seemed to have completely forgotten his earlier gloominess, which was another win in Uzi's book.
"I don't understand what the point of this game was." J muttered to no one in particular. "Why were the robots fightinh each other anyway?"
"Good job, girls. That was one hell of a fight." Tessa said, smiling. "Now, how about some cupcakes? Because I'm starving."
"The only cupcake V is getting is the CUPCAKE OF BEING A LOSER."
"You're delusional, purple."
They gathered around the kitchen table, the air filled with a sweet and smoky scent. The cupcakes were warm and buttery, and Uzi ate ravenously - ignoring the smug look J threw her way. These were victory cupcakes. She had earned them, dammit.
The sound of rain had turned into a soft tapping on the window, almost imperceptible . The atmosphere inside on the kitchen was light and cozy, full of laughter and joy.
Uzi turned to N. "Not bad for a rainy day, right?"
N gave her a sheepish smile. "Yeah. Sorry for being a sad potato the entire time."
She bumped her shoulder with his. "It's fine, dude. I bet tomorrow will be sunny and shit and we'll be able to go out and do all of the things you wanted to do today."
N leaned against her, a smile on his face. "Thanks, Uzi."
Yeah. Not bad for a rainy day at all.