Chapter Text
To say that Uzi's world had been flipped upside down would be a colossal freaking understatement. Like, holy crap, mom was a test subject and gave her dark witch powers from Robo-Satan. And no one told her any of this.
Suddenly, all of the stuff about J and the murder drones seemed normal by comparison. They had to come from somewhere, after all; if not from the company, why not an insane, homicidal rogue worker drone? It was a fairly standard twist that perfectly led into the enemies-to-allies thing she and J had going on. But all of this Absolute Solver stuff...it took her straightforward Hero's Journey to save the colony and turned it on its head.
So yeah, safe to say, she wasn't doing great.
Which meant that when she heard her dad's voice, wailing about one of his precious doors instead of, y'know, his frickin' daughter who just almost died...something inside her snapped.
Clenching her hands into fists, Uzi shoved her way past Doll and J, ignoring the startled "Uzi, what—" from the latter as she batted the disassembly drone's outstretched arm aside.
Seeing the furious look on the goth's screen, Lizzy raised a pink eyebrow and stepped aside, getting out of the shorter drone's way. As soon as the cheerleader was no longer blocking her view, Uzi's optics honed in on the sight of her father and a small gaggle of WDF members staring in shock at the mangled door. Her visual feed flickered, tinting red as her internal temperature spiked.
She was distantly aware of the dull metallic thuds of J's peg-like feet on the floor, following behind her, as well as her name being called out again. Uzi ignored it, hurrying her pace as she made a beeline towards her father, towards answers.
"Dad!" she shouted, more as an instinctive outburst than a genuine attempt to communicate.
Khan's head snapped towards her approaching form. His eyes, which had been hollow as he stared at the remains of his murdered door, filled in.
"Uzi! Thank goodness, you're alright!" he exclaimed. "Oh, I should have known something like this would happen. I never should have let you go off with that murder drone!"
The assumption that J was to blame for everything, however sensible and valid it may have been from her dad's perspective, only served to enrage Uzi further. "J protected me, Dad," she snapped, stomping straight up to him and jabbing him in the chest with a finger. "She saved my life after Doll went nuts and tried to kill us!"
Khan blinked. "Wh—Yeva's daughter? Why would she do something like that? Your mothers were such good friends!"
That...was news to Uzi. And only served to make Doll's treatment of her over the years even more infuriating.
"Yeah, well, she saw J and went completely postal," Uzi grumbled.
"E-Even if that's true, blowing up a corridor is...a bit much, don't you think?" Khan asked, wincing. "Doll is just one teenager—"
Uzi's right eye flickered. "One teenager with magic powers from Robo-Satan! She caused most of this damage!"
"Er...come again?" Khan said, brows furrowing on his screen.
"The magic powers that she and I apparently inherited from our moms," Uzi continued, giving her father another angry poke. "Something that you never told me about!"
His expression grew even more confused. "Magic powers? Is, ah, this one of your 'Japanime' references?" He gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Your old man isn't quite up-to-date with the—"
"Agh, why does everyone keep saying that?!" Uzi yelled.
Her eye flickered again, before resolving itself into the three-pronged symbol of the Absolute Solver. She raised her hand, and with a jerk of her wrist and the screech of tearing metal, she repeated Doll's earlier feat. A locker was ripped free from the wall, coming to hover behind her. The WDF members who had accompanied Khan backed away, eyes wide.
"Does this look like a reference, Dad—" she snapped, before a sharp, simulated pain shot through her processor. She hissed and instinctively clutched at her face, her palm covering the Solver symbol on her display. It fizzled out, replaced by an eye clenched into a wince. "Ah!"
Khan froze, staring in shock at the display. His eyes lingered on the locker for a few moments, before he shook himself out of his daze, and looked at Uzi in concern. "U-Uzi, are you o—"
"Stop," she ground out, silencing him. Her left eye glared at him, not with her usual teenage anger and angst, but something more tired. Hurt. "Just stop. Why didn't you tell me? About Mom, and the lab, and...all of this?"
Her father's eyes wavered on his screen. "About your mother? I, er, may have seen her draw that symbol you just displayed, but I don't—"
"It is alright, Mister Doorman," Doll's voice cut in from behind Uzi. Casting a glance back over her shoulder, the goth saw the Russian approaching. A few paces behind her, J stood next to the fallen locker, watching the scene with a deep frown etched onto her face. "You do not need to play dumb. I already told her about Mama and Nori being test subjects for the humans."
There was a long pause, as Doll's words hung in the air. Then, finally:
"My wife was a what?!" Khan blurted out, looking utterly gobsmacked.
Uzi blinked. Slowly, she lowered her hand from her face.
Behind her, both Doll and J stared in steadily increasing disbelief. Even Lizzy and Thad looked over, the conversation that they had fallen into in the background screeching to an abrupt halt.
"...You didn't know?" Uzi whispered.
Khan put his fingers to the sides of his head, looking down. He looked, well...like how she felt. Confused. Shocked. Like he was reevaluating his entire life.
"She...never told me anything like that," he muttered, his voice low. "I mean, sure, she had her episodes, like when she talked me into building doors to keep out sky demons—awfully prescient, come to think of it—but, test subjects? Magic powers?"
Uzi felt her anger begin to gutter out, as she gaped at her father. "You...but then, why did you get rid of all of Mom's stuff, if you weren't trying to hide this from me?!"
Khan looked back up at her, letting his hands fall. He began to wring his hands together, an awkward look on his face. "E-Er, well, it seemed like the right thing to do, to help with...the healing process. I mean, a lot of the things your mother wrote were a little...morbid?" He winced. "Sky demons, planet-destroying black holes...cannibalism...kooky stuff!"
That feeling of betrayal resurfaced within Uzi, though this time, it wasn't directed at her father. Well, not entirely. Mom...why didn't you tell us?
Doll chose that moment to speak up again, a note of incredulity in her voice. "How did you not know? Mama and Nori continued wearing their identification collars! They had their subject numbers printed on them and everything!"
Khan squinted and put his thumb and forefinger to his chin, visibly thinking. "Is that what that was? I never paid it much mind—beyond noticing how well it brought out her beautiful eyes, of course!"
There was a clink as J dropped her head into her hands. Doll mirrored the sentiment, letting out an exasperated "Good grief."
Uzi, for her part, gagged. "Ugh, Dad! Gross."
Suddenly, Khan's gaze snapped towards Doll, and his hands dropped to his hips. "By the way, young lady, what's this I hear about you trying to kill my daughter?" he asked, a hint of genuine anger entering his tone.
The scarlet-eyed worker straightened up, scowling. "I did no such thing. I was simply trying to stop the murder drone before it could conduct a massacre."
Uzi turned to glare at her. "Oh, yeah, sure, those missiles you threw at us were real discriminating!"
"Not my fault you chose to cling to its side like a limpet," Doll shot back.
"Enough."
All optics turned to J, who slowly pried her hands from her face. She had a deeply, profoundly annoyed look in her digital eyes.
"This squabbling accomplishes nothing," she stated, casting an imperious gaze over the assembled worker drones in front of her. Finally, her optics landed on Khan. "We have a narrow window to act before Cyn realizes that one of her troubleshooters has gone rogue. If you want your colony to survive, then we need to act."
She turned to Doll, her yellow eyes narrowing on her display.
"You clearly have some sort of plan," J surmised, her tone clipped, but kept carefully non-hostile. "And maybe you can even pull it off. But you don't just want to be safe from this Absolute Solver. You want revenge on V as well. I can assure you that you won't succeed. Not without my help."
Fury and contempt flashed across the Russian drone's face in equal measure. "I am more than capable of killing one of your kind. Uzi is the only reason you are not dead."
"We have backups," J rebutted, flatly.
A brief silence fell as the statement, delivered completely without embellishment, hung in the air. That little fun fact wasn't news to Uzi, but it still triggered a surge of simulated nausea in her systems. The idea that Doll could have unwittingly sent J back to Cyn, or the Solver, or whoever...yeah, she didn't even want to think about it. Not after seeing J break down like that.
"Define 'backups'," Doll said, and Uzi thought she saw a slight crack in her composure.
"Bluntly: we can't die," was J's answer. It was clear from the look on her face that she didn't appreciate that particular feature, but her tone remained offensively bland, like she was giving a boardroom presentation on paperclips. "The only way to disable a disassembly drone permanently is to destroy their core. And the moment that happens? We wake up in a spare body, ready for Cyn to send us right back to work."
J paused, and Uzi definitely saw the way that the servomotors in her hand seized up. It was both brief enough and subtle enough that the goth doubted anyone but her caught it, what with how distracted they were by the implications of the twin-tailed drone's words. But Uzi had spent enough time checking her out—er, assessing her—by now to figure out some of her tells.
Robo-Jesus, what did Cyn do to you? Uzi couldn't help but wonder, even though she was pretty sure that she didn't want to know the answer.
Oblivious to the fact that her small show of weakness had been noticed, J continued. "If you 'kill' V now, all you're doing is giving her a chance to blow the whistle. And even if you somehow deal with Cyn first, there's a very real chance that you're just gifting V an express ticket off this rock."
The silence that followed J's eerily calm explanation was far longer and heavier than the last. From the looks on Khan and the WDF members' faces, it was clear that the notion that the murder drone threat was effectively endless had them rattled. Honestly, Uzi found the reactions more than a little annoying; having to defeat the Big Bad before you could get rid of their infinite army for good was standard stuff!
Once again, Doll was the one to break the quiet. "So, what, you wish for me to...leave her be? After what she did?"
"Hardly," J scoffed. "I'm saying that if you actually want vengeance, then you need Uzi and I. Not only do I now remember where our backups are kept thanks to my administrator privileges, but we're the ones with a ship and the expertise needed to repair it."
The logic was an effective weapon, visibly taking the wind out of Doll's sails. She spent a few more moments glaring at J in impotent anger, before she slumped slightly, her scarlet eyes taking on a more analytical sheen.
"You would betray your former comrade so easily?" she asked.
Uzi caught another small spasm from J even as the disassembly drone scoffed dismissively. "Setting aside her questionable mental state...as I said, she already tried to kill me. And with Cyn still registered as her administrator, she's a threat. Nothing more, nothing less."
To Uzi's astonishment, it actually looked like Doll was considering J's words. Sure, she had a look on her face like she'd just swallowed industrial solvent, but compared to the immediate homicidal rage that she had displayed just a few minutes ago, it was a Hell of a turnaround.
Honestly, a part of her was a little angry seeing it. Doll had willingly aided Lizzy in harassing her over the years, had been willing to write her off as collateral damage just to kill J, and now here her "partner" was extending an olive branch. Uzi wasn't stupid, she knew that their relationship was entirely transactional. But at the same time, J had claimed to be on her side. Had come here explicitly to threaten her classmates into leaving her the heck alone.
And, well, she'd hugged the stupid corpo in a poorly thought out attempt to help her through a mental breakdown. Of course she was gonna be pissed seeing J immediately turn around and try to make nice with her bully.
The larger part of her however, understood. She wasn't an idiot; Doll clearly knew a bunch of crap that they didn't, including about how to use these freaky-but-also-kinda-sick-as-hell powers that she apparently had. If they could get her to stop being a freakin' edgelord for five seconds, then maybe they could work together and deal with this eldritch god that was apparently trying to kill them.
So with that in mind, Uzi chose to speak up.
"J's right," she began, her purple eyes drifting from Doll to Khan. "I don't know what's really going on here. With Mom, or the Solver, or...any of this. But I know that I don't want to deal with it alone."
Doll crossed her arms. "And I am supposed to care, why, exactly?" she asked, but her contempt had faded to a petulant irritation.
"Because we're all in the same boat here!" Uzi insisted, gesturing wildly around her. "Look, I'm not asking you to like me, or J. Just...trust that we don't want to end up as slaves to Robot Satan any more than you do."
J glanced at her, hands clenched, a frown tugging at her lips. She looked back at Doll. "...Uzi is correct. I will not go back to that thing."
Then, before Doll could respond, Uzi turned her attention towards her father. She had a pleading look on her display. "Dad, just this once, please trust me. We can't keep hiding from all of our problems."
Khan wilted under the look, turning his head away. He went back to wringing his hands, clearly conflicted. The sheer number of optics on him, waiting for his response, seemed to weigh heavily on him.
"...What can we even do?" he managed, his digital eyes downcast. "My doors couldn't even protect your mother."
The admission, of both his own failure and that of his doors, caught Uzi off-guard. Her own expression wavered, a pang of actual empathy piercing through the years of neglect-driven resentment, before she steeled herself.
"Doll and J actually know what we're up against," she began. As she spoke, she slowly swept her gaze over the assembled drones; her father, Doll, J, the WDF members, even Thad and Lizzy, who silently made their way over. "And according to Doll, the humans managed to come up with some kind of counter to the Absolute Solver, right here on Copper-9. We just need to find it, which will be a lot easier if we work together."
The school entrance was silent as everyone absorbed Uzi's words. As the quiet dragged on, she couldn't help but glance at J, seeking...something. She wasn't sure what.
Whatever it was that she wanted, what Uzi received was the disassembly drone meeting her gaze and offering her a small nod and a tired almost-smile. Despite the understated nature of the gesture, it felt unusually genuine compared to what Uzi had seen of J so far; it wasn't smug or teasing, and it didn't feel like empty flattery. It just felt like J was grateful that she was talking sense.
Unconsciously, the corners of Uzi's mouth curved upwards, and she returned the taller drone's expression with a tiny smile of her own.
With her optics focused on J, Uzi didn't notice her father's eyes peering at her from the edge of his screen, or the complicated look that flashed across his face as he noticed the exchange between her and J.
After a few final moments of indecision, Khan's eyes closed into silver lines on his display, and he straightened up. The WDF leader took a large intake of stale bunker air, before his eyes snapped open.
"Okay, Uzi," he said, simply, causing her eyes to widen. "While I'm still upset that you lied about your reasons for going outside...I will trust your judgment in regards to the—in regards to J," he corrected himself, turning his attention towards the drone in question. "If what my daughter says is true, and you truly were an unwilling participant in the genocide against us...then on behalf of Outpost 3, I'm willing to offer you amnesty, in exchange for your cooperation against the, erm, culprit behind all of this."
Holy crap, Uzi thought. Dad actually listened to me. And all it took was Doll dropping a tragic Mom-related backstory complete with superpowers on them.
"Deal," J said, tersely. "Just make sure that your outpost's residents treat me with respect. I reserve the right to resolve any HR complaints I end up having personally."
Khan winced. "I'll...make sure that everyone is aware."
He glanced past J, at the pile of wreckage filling the collapsed corridor. Taking a moment to smooth out his mustache and pull together some semblance of an authoritative demeanor, he turned to one of the nearby WDF members: a jacket-wearing female with a brown ponytail and—inexplicably—sunglasses.
"Mia, I'm leaving you in charge here," he ordered. "Do a damage assessment and get people working on clearing the hallway."
"Uh...yes, sir," she replied, adjusting her aviators. Even with her eyes hidden by the dark lenses, she was clearly still eying J nervously.
Khan's gaze returned to the disassembly drone, before shifting back and forth between her and Uzi.
"Since classes are quite obviously cancelled for the time being," he sighed, casting another forlorn glance up at the ruined door above him. "Uzi, why don't you and...J...come with me? We should probably discuss just what can even be done about all of this."
Uzi shrugged, still stunned at the fact that she'd actually gotten through to him. "Fine by me."
J, meanwhile, rolled her eyes. "That was my hope from the start."
Khan smiled weakly, before he looked over at Doll. The scarlet-eyed worker was silent, simply observing the turn of events with a guarded expression.
"And as for you, Doll," he continued, visibly uncomfortable. "I would very much appreciate if you came as well. I can't force you to, of course, given that you seem to have magic powers beyond my comprehension," a nervous chuckle escaped him, "but...it seems like I may have not known as much about Nori as I thought I did. I would very much appreciate it if you shared what you know."
Doll frowned. She opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, he continued, almost forcing the words out.
"And, if you could help keep Uzi safe from whatever it is you two are wrapped up in..." he said, hesitating. "You don't seem to be on the best terms. But I don't think Yeva would have wanted either of you to get hurt."
At the mention of her mother, Doll's eyes narrowed, and for a brief moment Uzi thought she was about to react violently.
Then, her shoulders slumped. "Oh, for the love of...! Fine!" she huffed, before shooting a sharp, pointed look at J. "You. Do you swear to assist me in avenging the murder of my parents?"
J hesitated for only a moment, before replying. "As long as you assist us in retrieving that countermeasure you mentioned."
Doll turned back to Khan. "Very well, but I reserve the right to deal with the murder drone the minute it tries anything."
"Likewise," J muttered, seemingly unable to stop herself despite her earlier attempts at being diplomatic. Not that Uzi could blame her, given Doll's...everything.
"Great!" Khan said, putting on what might very well have been the fakest, most forced smile that Uzi had ever seen. He raised a hand, striking a pose that was probably meant to look confident and inspiring, but was let down by the tightness of his smile and the pitch of his voice. "Then let's get going, shall we?"
"I'm coming too," a voice interjected.
As the WDF members were fanning out to inspect the corridor, four sets of optics turned towards the speaker. Lizzy stood there with a hand on her hip and a bored expression on her face.
Khan blinked. "Er...what?"
The pink-eyed cheerleader rolled her eyes. "What, you think I'm going to let my bestie ditch me to hang out with the class weirdo and babe-a-tron J-thousand over there?"
J made a strangled noise, an error message briefly replacing her eyes. [OOPS! SOMETHING WENT WRONG :(]
Doll and Uzi, meanwhile, perked up like angry cats. "I am not hanging out with them!"/"What did you just call her?!"
Thad chose that moment to chime in.
"So, uh, can I come too?" he asked, shooting a glance back over his shoulder at the collapsed hallway. "I can't exactly go back to class..."
Khan stared at the scene in front of him; J, who abruptly stiffened as the error message on her screen vanished, her yellow eyes squinting slightly in utter confusion. Uzi and Doll, who were glaring daggers at each other. And Thad and Lizzy, who were distressingly unphased by everything.
His shoulders slumped. "I suppose you are both technically witnesses...? Hah...alright. You both can come."
Uzi's head whirled towards her father, eyes wide. "Wh—seriously?!" she asked, before turning back to stare at Lizzy.
The blonde just smirked at her, practically radiating an aura of smug superiority.
...Maybe J could be allowed to murder one person...?