Work Text:
Putting the Pieces Back Together
"Khan, just how in the Hell did you manage to lose my body?"
Uzi let out a groan in agreement as she sent a shovel-full of snow flying. "That's exactly what I was thinking," she said, letting her shovel drop to the ground from where it had been floating in the air with a Solver sigil. "I'm getting real tired of shoveling snow and rubble here."
"First off, you and your mother can use your Solvers to hold your shovels, while I'm stuck with just my hands," Khan said, holding up his shovel to make his point, "so no complaining on that front please.
"Second, I did my best to forget where it had happened. Between that and the hardgrade, that was a success. And that was before Cyn blew the place up, so everything's been moved around." Khan sighed heavily. "Let's just be glad that everything came down in this general area so we at least have an educated guess about where it is."
It had been a few days since Nori's unexpected return and the Doorman family had been working on a new pet project: The recovery and repair of Nori's body. The day after their first movie night as a family again, Nori had stated that she wanted to find her body and repair it. While Khan's love and attraction for her hadn't abated and she didn't care what others (besides Khan and Uzi) thought of her, she was adamant that with the threat of Cyn now gone, she wasn't going to spend the rest of her life as a Crab-Core-Creature.
And so here they were, a few hours after sundown, looking for Nori's corpse in the ruins of Outpost-3 (the original settlement, not the bunker), armed with shovels and also the Solver in Uzi and Nori's cases. This was the third night of searching, and they had yet to find it.
"Would there even be anything left of it?" Uzi asked, picking her shovel back up. "That nanite acid is some nasty stuff. When N and I first met, I got a little bit on my hand and it was going to eat right through it."
"How did you stop it?" Nori asked, narrowing her eye as she no doubt calculated what to do to N for getting nanite acid on her daughter.
"Disassembly Drones have a built-in counter-agent to their nanite acid," Uzi replied, not skirting on the fact that the delivery system was their saliva and what she had to do to stop the acid.
"I still think that we should just take a new Worker Drone body, remove its core, and replace it with Nori," Khan stated, hefting another shovel-ful of snow. Uzi let out a sigh of relief as Nori turned her attention to him, allowing her to avoid any more awkward questions.
"Khan, we don't know if that would work with a normal Drone, let alone one with the Solver," Nori said. "Besides, it wouldn't have my hair."
"We could get you another wig, Nori," Khan sighed, before his head shot up. "Wait a moment, your hair was longer when you, uh, died, than when we met. Was it growing?"
"Oh yeah," Nori said, sending snow flying with a flip of her shovel. "The Solver makes its hosts part-organic, so a wig becomes real hair and starts growing. Try pulling a strand, Uzi."
A little aghast, Uzi reached up and separated a single strand of her hair from the rest and gave it a yank.
"Ow!" She jumped from the jolt of pain, holding her other hand to her head while she looked at the strand of hair clutched in the other. At the end of the hair was a follicle; Nori was right, it had been growing out of her scalp. "Holy crap."
"Yeah, that's a thing now, kiddo," Nori said. "Welcome to the realities of biomechanical horror."
"Whoa," Khan said, staring at the hair. "How in the Hell does that even work? I remember some old horror movie where a Human was turned into a robot through nanites, but I can't picture how the reverse would happen."
"That's the Solver for you, hun; unnatural and inexplicable," Nori explained.
"Huh," Khan muttered, reaching up and feeling his mustache. "So if I had the Solver, my mustache would become part of my actual face?"
"Yup," Nori popped the 'p'. "You'd also bleed blood, grow ribs, get weird superpowers, need to drink Worker Drone oil, and if your body is killed, your core can survive and crawl out of your chest. I don't recommend it."
"Did you know that it would be passed down to me?" Uzi asked, giving her mother the side-eye. "Because that really clashes with 'I don't recommend it'."
"Of course I didn't," Nori snapped. "Even back when I was full of myself, I wouldn't have passed the Solver on to a kid. Hell, I wouldn't give it to my worst enemy."
"Your worst enemy already had it though," Khan pointed out, only to take a snowball to the visor.
"Technicality," Nori sniffed.
"Even if Cyn didn't already have the Solver, giving it to your worst enemy would be dumb," Uzi threw in her two cents. "You're literally giving them eldritch superpowers."
She ducked the snowball thrown her way, laughing. "Ha, missed!" Only to get beaned by a second one.
"Bite me. When did you two get so pedantic?" Nori groused as Uzi and Khan wiped the snow off their visors.
Uzi finished wiping the snow off her visor and was about to snark back when she spied a bug crawling on her hand. She let out a yelp and shook the bug off onto the ground. She was about to smack it with her shovel when she realized it wasn't any old bug, but a gold one with green lights.
"Key?!" she said, pulling back on the shovel before it could hit the bug and flatten it.
Upon not being squished, the bug looked up from where it had been cowering on the ground. Realizing that Uzi recognized it, it hopped up and down in celebration before jumping onto the shovel and crawling up the handle. She let it climb onto her hand this time, where it hopped up and down again before projecting a text holo.
"HELLO 002. GOOD TO SEE YOU ALIVE."
"Good to see ya too, Key," Uzi said, smiling. "I thought we lost you back there."
"Holy crap," Nori said, staring at Key. "That bug is still around?"
"Guess the Humans were on to something when they designed these little guys after cockroaches," Uzi said, running a finger along Key's back. "Though why they decided to make one into a key for a not-so-secret elevator to their Solver research lab is beyond me."
"That's Humans for ya," Nori muttered.
"So that's why you brought that little guy back from Camp and why Doll wanted him so much," Khan said. "I was meaning to ask about that, but then you left to chase after her, and then gravity started turning off and on, so I forgot."
"HEY DAD. HELLO NEW USER," the next text holo read.
"New user?" Nori said, sounding both puzzled and annoyed. "Hey bug, it's me, Nori. Remember, 002?"
"INVALID. YOU ARE NOT 002." Key jumped out of Uzi's hand and onto her head, hopping once. "THIS IS 002."
"Oh great, my first friend in the Cabin Fever Labs doesn't even recognize me anymore," Nori groaned before turning back to her shoveling. "I cannot wait to get my body back."
Key perked up and then jumped back down into Uzi's hands. "BODY?" it asked.
"Yeah, we're trying to find my mom's old body," Uzi explained. "It got melted by nanite acid, so her Core grew legs and crawled away. Now we're trying to find it so we can fix it."
Key looked as surprised as a bug could. "DIDN'T KNOW DRONES COULD DO THAT."
"We really can't, but she's a special case, same as me." Uzi said.
Key looked like it was thinking very hard for a moment, then it perked up and jumped off Uzi's hand to land on the ground. It skittered away for a few yards before stopping and looking back at her, projecting another holo text.
"FOLLOW ME."
"Hey kiddo, what are you doing?" Khan called after her, noticing that she hadn't joined him and Nori in searching again. In fact, she had dropped her shovel to the ground.
"Key wants us to follow him," Uzi replied, pointing at the bug and its message. "I don't know about you guys, but I'd rather follow a bug than do any more shoveling."
As Uzi began walking after Key, Nori and Khan looked at each other. A moment of silent communication later, Nori dropped her shovel and jumped up onto Khan's head, wrapping her legs around his helmet to become a new hat. Khan followed their daughter, pausing only to pick up their shovels.
"Two years go, if someone told me that I'd be a Core Crab Creature with psychic powers, a husband, and a daughter, and that we'd be following a sentient bug named Key through a post-apocalyptic landscape, I'd have reported them as majorly defective," Nori muttered. "What kind of a name even is 'Key' anyway?"
"What did you name him, then?" Khan asked, precariously balancing the shovels across his shoulders.
"Bug," Nori spit out without another thought, only to freeze as a realization was made.
Khan held it in a moment before letting out a snicker.
"Bite me!" Nori burst out. In response, Khan's snicker became a full belly laugh.
Uzi glanced at her parents, her dad laughing and her mother giving him a look, before rolling her eyes and focusing on following Key.
After fifteen minutes of walking, Uzi, Khan, and Nori found themselves by a semi-collapsed wall, surrounding Key as it jumped up and down on a pile of…something. At first glance, it looked like a rock or a chunk of ice topped with a Worker Drone helmet, but an analysis of its composition would have revealed it to consist of various metals, polymers, ceramics, plastics, and oil. In short, it was the result of a Worker Drone having been completely broken down by Disassembly Drone nanite acid into a slurry, the helmet surviving only because the reaction had run out of nanite acid.
The only clue as to who this body had been or formerly belonged to was the violet hair that peeked out from under the helmet, fluttering in the breeze.
Uzi, Khan, and Nori were silent as they looked down upon the remnants of the latter's original body, words escaping them all for once. Key was plucked out of the air mid-hop by a Solver sigil and placed into Uzi's hand. She patted its head gently in thanks.
It was Nori who finally broke the silence.
"Hey Khan, I know I give you a lot of crap for how you put me out of my misery," Nori began, her voice subdued for once, "but if you hadn't, I would have stayed alive long enough for the acid to reach my core and kill me for good. So, you know, thanks, for mercy-killing me."
Khan reached up and patted her. "You're welcome hun," he replied before looking back down at the pile of Nori.
"So, uh, I don't see how we're going to repair…this," he said, pointing at Nori's remains. "If it was like most bodies the Murder Drones leave behind, a little elbow grease would do the trick, but this is just…melted. Completely beyond my capabilities."
"But thankfully for us, it's not beyond my capabilities," Uzi said, grinning.
She raised a hand and the Solver sigil appeared in it, another one appearing around the Nori-pile, lifting it into the air. Uzi shifted her sigil from its default form "Move" to the more circular "Create". Line of computer code appeared in the air around the pile as it shifted, turning back into its original form like a rewound time-lapse video. A few moments later, Uzi put a Worker Drone body sporting a full head of violet hair back on the ground.
"Thank you, thank you," Uzi said, pretending to bow to a cheering crowd. Khan started out of staring in amazement and bewilderment to begin clapping. Nori rolled an eye at Uzi's antics, but applauded as well at her daughter's feat.
"Now there's a trick that neither I or Yeva had," she mused.
"As Cyn told N, the Solver mutates in damaged AI, and let me tell you," she grinned, striking the same pose as she had in front of N and V, "I'm a damaged OC."
Khan blinked in confusion, while Nori rolled her eye in exasperation.
"I wouldn't have thought that my death would have rattled you that much," she said, jumping off Khan's head to land on her body and begin inspecting it.
"No offense, Mom, but it wasn't your death that traumatized me," Uzi said, narrowing her eyes in thought. "If I had to pick out one incident, it would have to be when Dad left me to be killed and eaten by N."
"What."
"Oh yeah," Uzi continued, not noticing Khan desperately trying to get her attention, "after you 'died', Dad focused entirely on the doors, building two more to make sure that the Murder Drones couldn't get in, and kinda neglecting me, so I went and built this sick-as-hell railgun to kill the Murder Drones, only to learn that they could regenerate.
"Right after that, N made it past the first two doors and was about to kill me to protect V, and instead of shooting him with my gun, Dad closed the last one, leaving me with N to go off and evacuate the colony. Most of them didn't even show up to the evacuation point."
The entire time that Uzi had been speaking, Nori's head had slowly been swiveling around to look at Khan, her single eye not blinking while Khan tried unsuccessfully to shush his daughter. At the conclusion of Uzi's explanation, Khan slowly turned to face Nori, who was just staring at him.
"Yeah, that was probably where it started, 'cause the Solver started showing up after that and breaking every mirror I looked at," Uzi concluded. She glanced over at her parents, only then registering the unblinking stare Nori was fixing upon Khan, who looked about ready to bolt.
"Ooooh, forgot you didn't already know about that," Uzi winced.
"Let me get this straight," Nori said, her voice steady and paced, "you not only gave Uzi daddy issues, but you left her to die at the hands of a Murder Drone."
To his credit, Khan didn't try to weasel out of it. He let out a nervous and uncomfortable laugh. "Um…yes?" he finally managed to say.
A Solver sigil immediately picked him up and slammed him into the wall. Nori leapt up onto his chest, one appendage maintaining the Solver sigil holding him in place. Holding onto him with a second appendage, she raised the third and slapped him across the face twice, once on each cheek.
Before she could get any more in, Uzi grabbed her and pulled him off. Khan fell to the ground, coughing, while Uzi wrestled her mother to the ground. Key leapt up and down, spamming "STP!" on its chat.
"Uzi, let me go!" Nori struggled and wriggled under Uzi's grip. "I'm going to kill him!"
"No you're not!" Uzi grabbed two of Nori's appendages and tied them into a knot, cutting off her mobility. "I already forgave him for that, and besides, you sure weren't pulling your punches when you and N were fighting me-I mean, fighting Cyn when she was possessing me. Same diff!"
"A pickaxe through your CPU wasn't going to kill you," Nori protested. "He knew that leaving you with a Murder Drone would get you killed and he still did it, the bastard!"
"Yeah, well," Uzi struggled mentally for words just as she struggled physically with her mother, "maybe if you had been there instead of hiding in a hole in the ground looking for a dumb Patch, he wouldn't have! You both ran away and left me!"
Nori froze as she computed Uzi's words, and then went limp in her grasp. Once Uzi was sure that Nori wasn't going to start attacking Khan again, she let go and sat back in the snow, venting air in and out. A glance at Khan showed that he was alright, albeit rubbing his face where Nori had hit him.
The three of them were still for a few long moments, just venting air in and out, before Khan broke the silence.
"Uzi, I've forgiven your mother for leaving us, and you've forgiven me for leaving you," he said, pushing him up into a kneeling position with a groan. "I thought you had forgiven her the other night, when I did."
Uzi let out a humorless laugh. "I thought I had too. I know it makes no sense, but her leaving us hurts more than when you left me, and I have no idea why. Maybe it's because Eldritch J made it look like she killed you, or that I thought you were disappointed in me, so leaving me behind didn't hurt as much as it should have?" Uzi sighed and laid down on the ground. "I don't frickin' know, this emotion stuff is such bull."
Any response from Khan or Nori was cut off by a small explosion in front of them, sending a burst of loose snow flying to obscure their view. It soon cleared to reveal N and V retracting their wings.
"To be fair to Mr. Doorman, if he had gone for Uzi's railgun," N said, "I definitely would have killed him, and he wouldn't be here with us right now. So I'd say it's a…good-bad thing he ran away?" N winced. "That didn't come out right, let me try again."
Uzi interrupted him by teleporting from where she lay to hugging him around the middle. N responded by hugging her back, while V just rolled her eyes and started picking her teeth with a talon.
"It's fine, N," Khan said, getting to his feet. "The whole situation was messed up, so I try not to think about the various 'what-ifs' and all that. These days, I just try to make up for being a bad father, it's-" he paused before continuing. "It's all I can do."
Nori got up and sighed. "I suck at apologies, so I'm going to make this quick. "Khan," she pointed at him, "I'm sorry for attacking you just now. I let my temper get the best of me."
"It's fine, hon," Khan said. "Honestly, I think I had it coming. Karma and all that."
"Karma is just stupid Human stuff," Nori sniffed before turning her attention to Uzi. "And I'm sorry for leaving you and your father. I hurt you both and ensured that you'd get daddy-issues."
"I don't have-ugh, fine!" Uzi disengaged from hugging N to throw up her hands in the air. "I forgive you, now can we put you back in your body?"
"Best thing I've heard all day," Nori said, turning back to her original body and turning it over with her Solver. "Help me with the maintenance hatch, Khan?"
Khan laughed and took his wrench off his toolbelt. "Can do," he said, walking over to the body.
"How long is this going to take?" V asked, retracting her talons. "Thad and Lizzy are heading to the new spot, and I don't trust Sparky to leave them alone once they arrive."
"Only a few moments," Uzi replied before noticing Key hopping up and down around her feet. "And speaking of pets, I've got a surprise for you, N."
"Ooh, is it a dog?" N said excitedly. V gave him a "are you serious" look.
"Not quite, buddy," Uzi laughed, kneeling down to let Key jump into her hands. "Ta-da," she sang out, turning and holding out her hands so that N could see Key. "Key survived!"
"I LIVED, BITCHES!" Key's holo read out.
"Hey there, buddy!" N said, smiling. "Good to see you're still alive."
In response, Key jumped up onto N and ran all over him, much to the Murder Drone's delight. When it looked like it was going to do the same to V, she hissed, prompting Key to instead jump up onto N's hat and sit down, waving its antenna at her mockingly. She just rolled her eyes and looked away, a barely-visible smile on her face.
Uzi herself smiled at the sight before a loading symbol appeared in her visor. When it finished, Uzi's eyes widened as she remembered something that had been on the backburner of her CPU.
"Hey mom," she called out, "do you remember who it was who killed you? We've got two of the three suspects right here."
Both N and V gave Uzi the classic "WTF" look; not possessing a visor or emotion emulation programming, Key substituted with a text holo: "WTF?!"
Nori turned from where she had been surveying Khan as he went through the onerous procedure of opening her original body's maintenance hatch. Despite how fragile the Humans had made their chassis, they had also made opening up a Drone for maintenance a real bitch, which only made throwing them away over minor issues more attractive than going through the trouble of actually repairing them. Damn Humans.
Nori's eye narrowed as she scrutinized both N and V, comparing them to her memory files of her death and of her killer. After a moment, she shook her head-well, her body.
"Nah, it wasn't either of these two," she said. "The one that killed me had stupid pigtails, and she wouldn't stop monologuing or using corpo slang. Ugh, of all the things I could have listened to while getting murdered, that just sucked."
Uzi and N both breathed a sigh of relief. "So it was J then," N said. "I was a little worried because back when we first met, Nori said I looked familiar."
"Eh, you Murder Drones all look alike," Nori waved him off.
"The Hell we do!" V snapped, pointing at her and N's legs. "N and the other guys got those, while I, J, and the other female Disassembly Drones get these stilts."
"Fine, you and J look alike," Nori waved V off, much to the Murder Drone's chagrin. She deployed her talons and prepared to pounce upon the Crab Core, only to stop when N put a hand on her shoulder and shook his head. V retracted her claws and crossed her arms, fuming.
Uzi glanced at both N and V, an eyebrow raised. Logically, she knew that their differences in hardware extended beyond just their legs, that much was obvious from the times she had hugged N and from just looking at V. The only way she'd be able to see exactly how they differed physically would be to see them both naked-
Uzi quickly forced her CPU off that line of thought, blush marks appearing on her visor. What was with her?!
"Gross. Gag. You pervert."
Uzi could only smack the side of her head in frustration at the unwanted and unhelpful voice. N noticed and was about to ask what was wrong, but was interrupted by Khan's cry of triumph.
"Finally!" He put his wrench back on his belt and opened the back of Nori's body, only for the expression on his visor to fall as he looked inside. "Nori, we've got a problem."
"What now?" Nori turned and jumped up and onto Khan's head, peering down into her own bowels. "What the hell? Oh, that's just great!"
"What is it?" Uzi asked, hurrying over. Khan moved aside to let her take a look at the problem, and Uzi's mouth fell open in confusion.
Nori's body was missing vital parts and components. They weren't still melted, they were just gone. And it wasn't like someone had gone in and removed them by taking out the screws and bolts; it was more like someone had gone in and cut them out with super poor quality tools, leaving the remnants rough and shoddy in an almost-organic way. The most noticeable instance of this were the rows of missing material in the interior of the body's casing, like someone had taken a spoon and carved our rows of material along the inside.
"Sweet baby Robo-Jesus, what is this?" Uzi said, staring in a mixture of confusion and disgust. Both N and V came up behind her and peered over her shoulders. Key jumped down onto Uzi's head to take a look; the resulting text holo read: "WHAT THE F***?!"
"Ok, I've seen, and done, some weird stuff in my time, but nothing like this," V commented. N just looked concerned and confused.
"I don't get it," Uzi said, scratching her head. "The Create function should have fixed everything."
"If I had to hazard a guess," Khan said as he stroked his moustache in thought, "the Create function might only be able to repair inorganic material. Nori's organic parts wouldn't have been repaired, and so we're left with a Nori body that's completely inorganic but missing parts."
Uzi, N, and V stared at Khan in response. Key projected a new text: "WHOA."
"Hey, my man is no dummy," Nori spoke up proudly. "Fixated on doors, absolutely, but that's why you Murder Drones couldn't get past them. Where do you think Uzi gets it? I'm smart, but not like that."
"Ok, ok, dad's a genius when it comes to engineering and technical stuff," Uzi waved it off. "But now what? We can't just stick you back into your body when all the parts you'd mount the core on are gone. We'd be basically sticking you into a glorified canister where you'd rattle around like a maraca."
V burst out laughing at that. N let out a snicker, but stifled it after a look from Nori.
"Actually, I think I'll be able to fix this up at home," Khan said, peering inside thoughtfully. "All I'll need is a few parts, some materials to replace the missing mounts, borrow a tool or two from Ron, he owes me anyway, then we'll just pop Nori in, and she'll turn it back into an eldritch biomechanical horror from the inside out. Done and done."
"Will you be needing Uzi for any of that, Mr. Doorman?" N asked sheepishly. "We were hoping that she would join the rest of us in setting up our new hang out, but this feels more important."
Khan gave N a look and a raised eyebrow which turned into a small smile after a moment.
"Actually," he said, "I think that Nori and I can handle this next part by ourselves. Go have fun with your friends, Uzi."
"Oh!" The surprise was evident in both Uzi's face and in her voice. "Ok, uh, thanks Dad. See ya and Mom later!"
Her wings deployed and she shot up into the sky with a single flap. N and V quickly followed suit.
"See you, Mr. and Mrs. Doorman," N called out, saluting as he shot after Uzi.
Nori watched them as they disappeared into the night, her eye narrowing before she turned back to Khan.
"So, that's it?" she said. "We're just going to let our daughter hang out with a couple of Murder Drones, not to mention date one?"
"From what Uzi's told me, she's replaced Cyn as their Admin," Khan grunted from where he'd been trying to pick up Nori's body. "If they were to try something, and I doubt they would for a couple of reasons, she'd shut them down faster than you could blink."
"That's not the point, Khan!" Nori snapped, jabbing two of her appendages into the ground. "After everything they did, everyone they killed, that's it? They just get to walk in and out of the colony as they please, hang out with our kids, date OUR kid, and no one has a problem with this?!"
"What would you have us do then?" Khan asked, exasperated. "Kill them? Because even if we made more copies of Uzi's railgun, which actually isn't a railgun, it's a magnetically-amplified photon converger which makes it a laser gun, but she insists on calling it a railgun because it's 'cooler'-"
"It is," Nori interrupted.
"Even if we made more 'railguns'," Khan continued, rolling his eyes, "between their thirty minute cooldown and the fact that killing a Murder Drone means hitting it right in the core, they'd kill a lot of us before we'd get them."
"You could fix that problem with an EMP discharge," Nori replied, "but I'm not talking about killing them. At the very least, we should let Uzi cure them of their oilthirst, and then banish them, preferably to the other side of the planet, where they can sit and stew in their miserable existence for the rest of their lives."
"And what about you and Uzi?" Khan asked quietly.
"...what about us?" Nori said slowly.
"Correct me if I'm wrong," Khan said, facing his wife, "but both of you have the same need as the Murder Drones to drink oil or you'll overheat. And just like the Murder Drones, you both have oil on your hands, but unlike the Murder Drones, we don't know if your oilthirst can be turned off."
"That's not our fault!" Nori protested. "We didn't ask to drink oil to keep from dying of overheating!"
"And N and V didn't ask to be turned into Murder Drones," Khan said. "From what I've gathered, they were ordinary Worker Drones before…all this, and their Admin, that Cyn character, didn't strike me as someone you could say no to."
"She wasn't," Nori muttered. "It's just that, why am I the only one who seems to care? What about everyone they killed when they got here? They didn't ask to be murdered and their oil drank. We all suffered under the Humans' control, then we get a taste of freedom only to have them come down and start massacring us. It sounds like Uzi was the only one who cared while I was gone, and now I'm the only one who cares now!"
Khan was silent for a moment before he spoke again.
"I think that Yeva's daughter would have agreed with you," he said, "and here's what Uzi had to say about it."
His eyes disappeared from his visor, replaced moments later with a paused image and a triangular "Play" symbol. One of the advantages of being a Drone was that your face doubled as a screen for various forms of media, including pictures, memes, gifs, and also recordings of memories. Khan reached up and tapped the Play symbol, beginning the recording.
Drone students wearing suits and dresses streamed by Khan, screaming in panic while he grunted, fighting against the current. When they finally passed, Khan looked back into the school gymnasium, which sported all the trappings of a prom: Balloons, decorations, sound equipment, and party favors on the tables.
There were two things that didn't belong in the picture, however: The first was the oil staining the gym floor, and the second was the two Murder Drones, N wearing a suit and V in a little red dress. Both of them were up on the stage, with V sporting a prom queen tiara on her head and also some metal rebar sprouting out of her abdomen and one arm, the other one missing. Uzi, decked out in a cute black dress, stood with N on the stage, shielding V from a fourth Drone.
Nori's venting hitched as an image of Yeva, her best friend, superpositioned itself over that of Doll's on Khan's visor for a few microseconds before she spoke;
"[Uzi, you would really side with the Murder Drones?," she said, a note of hurt detectable in her words despite the different language, which morphed into a quiet anger. "[I'm not the only one who's lost family to them.]"
"Bite me! Whoever started this wants us to fight," Uzi snapped, pointing a finger at Doll. "I'm not dealing with anything well, but I'm done dealing with everything alone."
She looked over to N as she said this, earning a small and earnest smile from him. Uzi looked away in embarrassment before her face turned serious again.
"We move forward together or not at all," she declared.
The recording stopped and the circular line-and-arrow "Replay" symbol appeared. Khan ignored that and simply sent the recording back to his memory files.
"In all honesty," he began, "I think that most Drones aren't interested in high ideals. Between the torments that the Humans and JCJenson put us through, the shock when the core collapsed and they just went away, and then the mass murders that the Disassembly Drones committed, I think that most Drones are just tired or traumatized," he concluded. "At this point, they just want a break from the world they know ending and another beginning every other year, and if that means coexisting with their former hunters and murderers now that their master, who they turned upon, is gone, then they're good with it."
Nori was silent for a long moment as she computed all this before letting out a loud groan.
"Fuuuuck," she drew out the word. "How is it that I both love and hate it when you make sense?"
"Because you love me," Khan said smugly as he picked up her body and positioned it in a fireman's carry. "And sometimes, you want a break from being right all the time."
"Damn straight I'm right all the time," Nori muttered, picking up the shovels with her Solver and following after Khan. "And don't think that I'm going to be alright with Uzi being friends with Cyn's murder pets, let alone dating one! Sooner that ship sails, the better."
Khan sighed and smiled as the two of them began the trek back to Outpost-3. With any luck, they'd make it back in time to catch the WDF card game. It was high time he re-introduced Nori to the boys again.