Chapter Text
Lizzy, wearing a yellow shorts, a black skirt with a red waistband and black boots, was walking around the colony with Thad. They didn’t have a goal in mind, just walking around as siblings, trying to process everything that had happened in the last weeks. It was too much for her.
As they walked around, seeing only a few drones around, they spotted one person who caught their attention. Rebecca, wearing a dim yellow dress, stained by black spots and snow. She looked at the ground, walking without a motive. Knowing if she was feeling anything was a challenge, as her only eyes seemed empty, while the crack on the other only revealed more oil, nearly overflowing.
“She looks done with everything” Lizzy pointed out “What do you think happened?”
“I don’t know” Thad responded “But she clearly needs help” He said, before walking up to her.
“Oh, c’mon, you really gotta help everyone you see?” His sister complained to the air.
The male worker walked ahead, with the female close behind, until they bumped into the lost drone in her dirty clothes. From up close, she wasn’t damaged, aside from the eye, but physically, she seemed fine. She was also holding onto an oil bag in her hands.
“Hello, Rebecca. You don’t seem well. What would be your problem?” Thad asked in his monotone voice.
The one eyed girl looked up at the drone “Oh, it’s you” She says in a very dragged way and sad tone.
“Yeah, it’s us” Lizzy said from behind “Now, tell us, what happened?”
“Didn’t think you were a therapist, Lizzy” Rebecca kind of joked.
“I ain’t, I’m just following him” She explained, pointing at her brother, who still had the same look in his eyes and waited for an answer.
“Okay, I’ll tell you two” The dirty girl started saying, taking a deep breath to continue “I… I wanted to gift N a small present. Something he could use” She showed the oil bag in her hand with a small blush “After I got it, I went to the spire to meet him”
“Going to the spire alone is dangerous” Thad informed “You shouldn’t do it”
“Yeah, but that purple freak thing does it all the time” She retorted.
“Uzi has a railgun and has completely tamed the disassemblies, you don’t have such things to protect you” He doubles down.
Rebecca audibly gasped, insulted by his words “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Me and N… We… We have something, okay!?” She looked to the side and crossed her arms.
Thad and Lizzy looked at each other, the sister slowly shaking her head for her brother to not delve further into this topic and to just let her talk “Okay, sorry. What happened after you went to the spiral?” He changed the conversation.
Rebecca puffed, but looked back at them “Okay. When I arrived at the spiral, I only heard a discussion inside. There seemed to be three people there. I could hear my beloved N’s voice and that third rate bitch disassembly that walks with him”
“You mean V?” Lizzy asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I think that was her name” The one eyed girl waved her off, as if unimportant “So, I was going to make a surprise and run to him with my gift, but right when I was going to do it, I heard that… That thing’s voice” She embraced herself and looked to the sides, sounding a lot more concerned.
“Uzi, I presume?” Thad asked.
“Yeah, yeah, that thing” Rebecca was quick to answer “I hid behind a rock after hearing that and waited for that monster to be gone, but when it was gone, N was also missing. So I came back without succeeding in giving my gift and worried about my knight” She clung to her own arms even more.
Lizzy was sure this girl was crazy, but didn’t bother to say that “Uhuh, and where did they go?”
“I don’t know. They were talking about following someone, I think. Maybe that fourth person there” The one eyed girl explained under Thad’s watchful eye.
“Oh, yeah, there was a fourth person that you mentioned. Who was that?” The blonde girl asked.
Just as she finished asking, the air changed. It got heavier, light got dimmer, energy seemed to go and come back. Everything changed so quickly that no one could’ve processed it, but just feeling this pressure was enough to make anyone scared.
Rebecca started crying as oil overflowed from her crack “It’s that thing. I know this feeling. It’s that thing. It’s that thing. It’s that thing. It’s that thing!” She screamed in horror, before running away in the direction of her house.
As the one eyed girl ran away, small rocks fell on Lizzy’s head. She looked up to see the structure shaking. She saw the small rocks falling to the ground and, just like the small ones, a giant piece came crashing down on top of the running girl in the distance, completely consuming her body.
Lizzy’s eyes hollowed in despair, understanding what was happening. She turned around with a faint scream of fear and started running away. Just by her side was Thad with the same eyes he always had.
He grabbed her hand with a soft touch and pointed at his side “Come this way, I know a safe place” The two siblings ran below the falling rocks to a shelter inside the bunker. Some people were entering already, but only a small number, compared to the whole colony. Thad entered with Lizzy and released her hand “You stay here, I’ll go take more people” He said, before running away, but he couldn’t go much further.
He looked back and saw his sister grabbing his arm “Please, don’t go, Thad” She begged him.
He walked closer to her and caressed her hair “I’m sorry, sis, but if I can, I must help others. You stay here, protected. This shouldn’t take too long” He tried to comfort her, then pressed his forehead against her own.
He tried walking away again, but Lizzy hadn’t let go “No! Please, please! I don’t wanna see you dying again. I can’t” She said, crying in his jacket.
His eyes hollowed a bit upon her words “W-What are you talking about, sis? I’m right here” He gave an uncharacteristic nervous laugh.
“You don’t need to lie. I know something’s happening to you. I just don’t know what, but I don’t need to know. I just want you to be safe with me. That’s all I ask for” She cried in his jacket.
Despite his eyes, he gave a small smile, hugging his sister “I-I’m sorry, Lizzy. For making you worry and everything, but I have to go outside, help others” He said in her audio receptors.
“Then let me go with you!”
“No!” He quickly answered “You know you can’t. Your disease makes you fragile. With those falling rocks, anything could hurt you” He explained.
Lizzy grabbed his jacket with force as she clenched her teeth with enough force to draw oil from her silicone gum, then punched his chest with minimal strength “Shut up! Please! The colony’s falling apart, can you please not remind me of that shit?” She slammed her head onto his chest “I know what I have. I have been reminded of it my whole life, but I’m more than just that. I’m a drone, just like you, just like anyone else. And I can do things, impressive things, on my own. So, please, shut up!” She wanted to push him around, punch him, but instead, she pulled him closer for comfort.
Thad’s eyes kept the same barely hollowed state, but as his sister pulled him closer, he hugged her back. At first, he didn't say anything. He didn't know what to say. That’s the first time in his life that he has found himself in a situation like this. Everything was strange, not just the colony, but him. He knew what he was built for, he knew what happened before and now in other places, and that he wasn’t supposed to spend this much time here, but he couldn’t just leave Lizzy like this.
“Yes… You’re right. I’m sorry. So sorry, sis. I should’ve known better. If you truly want, let’s go save some people, shall we?” He said as he caressed her hair.
“Like siblings?” She asked with a small smile.
“Like siblings”
Lizzy giggled and released his jacket, running to the entrance of the inside bunker with small hops. She then stopped and looked back at her brother “It’s been some time since we did something together. Also, I’m happy that you’re opening yourself more. I can see that smile on your face” She mocked him, before running out.
Thad stays inside, looking at his own hands. Is he opening up? He is smiling, isn’t he?
—---
Everyone on top of the mountain looked outside. From the sky, lines of white code
01001001 01110100 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110011 00100000 01100001 01110010 01110010 01101001 01110110 01100101 01100100
emerged, plunging themselves into the dirt, followed by an outline of a humanoid stick figure with one giant eye in the head, going from one side to the other, made out of the same 0s and 1s.
01010100 01101001 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110100 01110101 01110010 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01111010 01100101 01110010 01101111
Its fingers slowly got together, until they formed the lines that held on to the planet.
Everyone looked at the thing that had come out of the sky like an angel. It was strange, it didn’t make sense. It looked truly 2D, no depth to it. It didn’t look like it should exist. It should be impossible, but it wasn’t. It was there.
“That really vasn’t vhat I vas expecteeng” Uzi said.
“Stop talking through my daughter, demon” Khan snarled, before aiming the controller at the being outside.
The cannons outside charged, creating a huge amount of energy. The creature seemed to be lost, until it noticed the surge of energy in one single place. It looked towards them, noticing their presence and disease.
“No, you eedeeot. Now you brought IT to us!” Uzi exclaimed “Come now, ve khave to run, fast!” She screamed as she ran past the army of Thads.
The cannons outside gathered enough energy and shot them directly at the white creature, which slowly approached. Its eye changed shape to a triangle with arrows coming out, and completely stopped both shots in the middle of the air. One of them was dissipated instantly, while the other was turned and shot back at them. The binary code that formed the outline of this being changing.
01010111 01101111 01101110 00100111 01110100 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110111 01100001 01110011
Tessa quickly got up and ran away from the window, as did the other two disassemblies, following Uzi through the army of Thads. Khan didn’t move however “No need to worry. I built this place to resist anything. This is my finest project, ever” Just as he finished, the energy beam collided against the window, creating a cloud of smoke, but not even scratching the glass “See? We are safe here more than anywhere else”
In between the smoke, something fell on the window, creating a big, black stain. Khan looked at it with confused eyes, as it began to move to the corners of the glass, leaving a trail behind of whatever it was made of. Slowly, the stain reached the ends of the view and got smaller and smaller. The unafraid drone looked up, only to see something fall on the ground inside. It was a viscous, dark red liquid, forming a small puddle on the ground. It seeped from the corners of the glass, moving towards a focal point.
Khan moved his hand up, making all the Thads ready their guns. He then pointed at the sludge on the ground, and every WAP opened fire against that stain on the ground. It was engulfed in metal and sparks, bullets bounced off and rested on the side, forming a circle of cases around, as well as a small cloud of smoke.
After some time of constant firing, their bullets ended. The Thads started to reload as Khan observed the target. As the dust settled on the ground, a figure appeared, standing in the middle of the circle of bullets, as if nothing had happened. It was a small worker drone with silver, long hair knotted into a ponytail. Its visor was cracked with two holes where the eyes would be, instead, two human eyeballs, glowing yellow, were in place. It wore a black and white french maid dress that had stains of the liquid all over. In its fingers, it had human skin, of various colors and ages, as if it were wearing a glove.
N looked back, only to see that drone. He couldn’t believe his eyes, they had to be wrong “CYN?” He screamed, hoping for a confirmation from the standing figure, but nothing came other than a look of happiness on its face.
“That’s not Cyn, let’s go!” V scolded him, grabbing his arm and running to the elevator with Uzi and Tessa.
Khan took a step back, turning his head to face his creations “Everyone! Stall the enemy for as long as you can and, if any information is found, send it to the database!” He ordered, before throwing the controller away and running away.
The drone lunged at the running worker, but was stopped by a Thad entering its way. It quickly ripped his chest off and took a bite of his core. All the other WAPs looked, some in a bit of shock, before they started shooting at the creature. As it evaded the bullets and killed more drones, Khan ran to the elevator. He pulled a controller from his jacket and shut the giant door that led to the window room, as the sound of metal being ripped and destroyed echoed past it. He reached the elevator and activated it with an ID he took from his pocket.
The elevator started going down with Khan right by the panel’s side, Tessa sitting close to the hole made earlier, N and V took deep breaths while Uzi tried to help them. She looked at her father and saw him messing with the controls of the console, before a button appeared on the side, which he pressed, making the shaft lower at a faster pace. Uzi walked up to him with angry stomps. Getting closer, she could see a bit more of his face now. His eyes were still covered in the small shadows of the elevator, but she could visualize his neck, his mouth and a fake mustache he was using.
“Are you really going to leave them to die up there?” She asked with anger.
“Who? Thad?” He retorted with doubt “I already told you, he wasn’t programmed to have feelings or a personality. He isn’t alive” He talked with a calm tone.
Uzi groaned in anger “Do you even hear yourself? You talk just like a human. You use the same excuse they used to abuse us”
“The humans I just saved you from” He pointed out.
“Hey” V called “Could you two shut the fuck up and help with that?” She pointed up, to the drone that had invaded the base and was now running on the walls to catch up with the elevator.
The creature lifted its hand and a circle with 5 rings around appeared on top, aimed directly at Uzi, who raised her own hand with a pentagon and 5 arrows coming out. In an instant, between the two, space got pulled in itself, but quickly reverted back to normal, pushing Uzi away with her pentagon shattering in the air.
“Don’t use your powers agaeenst that, eet’s weaker” Uzi said to herself “What?” She said, getting up while the drone fell on the shaft.
“Destruction gets nullified by change, dumbass” It said with a robotic voice.
V sneaked behind the robot and tried to pierce it with her sword, but it was able to dodge just in time. A pentagon with 5 squares, connected by lines, appeared in front of its hands, just as a wall of concrete was suddenly created between the two. Both jumped away, but the symbol in the intruder’s hand changed to the circle, making the wall that had appeared change to a pincer, that flew towards the disassembly and grabbed her. The symbol then swapped again to a pentagon with 5 arrows coming out, making the concrete explode, destroying it.
“I’ll play with you abominations later” It said, smiling “I first need to get rid of the sick child” It turned its head towards Uzi.
“I think I understand it now” The worker girl said with a smile “Doll, you know my plan”
Uzi charged towards the drone, who just summoned the circle. Her purple eyes changed to red ones, as she made the same symbol appear, as the space between both moved to all sides, before containing itself. The girl continued advancing, while it swapped its symbol for the pentagon with squares.
“Changeeng change makes eet go back to normal, heh” Uzi smiled, before her eyes turned back into purple and the pentagon with arrows appeared, aimed directly at the drone.
The two clashed once again, as something was being created in the air, which quickly got destroyed into pieces. The drone screamed in pain and terror, before being engulfed in flames. It fell to its knees, screaming and crying, but its volume got quieter and quieter, before no one could hear it anymore, or see its disintegrated body.
Uzi looked at her hands “Destruction ends creation, change nullifies destruction, which leaves creation to overwrite change. Nice” She clenched her fist.
“Uzi, are you okay?” Khan asked, but he was ignored.
The worker girl ran to V, who was being treated by N, while Tessa looked from a distance “Are you okay?”
The female disassembler slowly gets up, still regenerating “I’m fine, just a little hurt”
“Thank robo-god we have regeneration” N said. V smiled at him, while Tessa quietly chuckled when hearing his words “Anyway, do you think that more will appear?”
“Definitely” Uzi answered “Just don’t know when”
“Should take some time for that thing to know” Khan interrupted “We might have some minutes before it sends more”
As the two family drones discussed with the other, N looked to the side and saw Tessa sitting on the ground, having barely moved. He walked to her, kneeling by her side. V observed his actions with intensity from the side, but not moving to stop him.
“Hey, Tessa. You okay?” He asked, only to be met with nothing “Look, sorry for earlier, but we have to work together now. So, how about we understand each other a bit better?” The woman still didn't say anything, but she did turn her head a little bit “I’ll take that as a yes” He sat on the ground “So, as I was saying, sorry for chasing you, but we needed answers. Ever since we started thinking about our mission, nothing has made much sense. Then we started remembering small things from the past, but it still didn’t make sense. That’s when you arrived, someone that we thought would know the answers, but you ran away and we really wanted to understand… So, sorry about the chase. We got a little heated in the moment and followed our instincts, what we were programmed to do”
Tessa stayed silent, but she looked towards him. Her eyes were covered in the helmet’s darkness, but he could feel a bit of sorrow coming from her.
“N” She said in a hush “I need to tell you something” N perked up, sitting a bit closer to her “You… I… I’m…” She struggled to say, grabbing her own hand above her chest. The disassembler placed a hand on her knee, trying to make her feel more comfortable, which made her take a deep breath “V. I don’t know what happened to V, since I wasn’t the one to turn her into a disassembly, but according to what she said… I think she was a victim of a secret experiment with drones' minds” Her words sank a bit in N’s head. He thought about it for a while, throwing the idea around, but he couldn’t fully grasp it, couldn’t accept this was the past “So, please, don’t blame her for being so different. It probably wasn’t her choice” She pleaded.
The disassembler smiled “Don’t worry, I don’t hold any grudges against her”
Tessa eyed his face. She was happy, but also felt guilt “N” She grabbed his hand “I also have something to tell… About…”
Right before she could say anything, the elevator stopped, making way to the tunnels below, with its cloudy stream running to the right of the exit. Uzi and Khan left the shaft, with V right behind. N looked at Tessa, who quickly got up and left behind the others.
“Wait, Tessa!” He called.
She looked back at him “Sorry, N. It was nothing serious. I was just really impressed by your actions. I never expected you to be so direct when it was necessary” She said with a chuckle. The disassembler wasn’t the smartest, but he knew that was a lie. Once again, she was hiding something from him. V observed with a side-eye.
As the group walked against the flow, Khan sighed “It’s not good to be back”
“You’ve been here?” Uzi asks.
“I worked here before I met your mother and became who I was” He responded.
Uzi narrowed her eyes “And where did mom go?”
Khan flinched, but continued walking, despite his silence showing the damage of the question “I… I don’t know. Your mother disappeared after Yeva was killed. I fear that she couldn’t handle the solver by herself and…”
“You always knew what to fear, dear” A feminine voice that oozed confidence came from behind them.
Everyone looked at their backs to see two female worker drones standing. Both looked identical, with a fringed bob hairstyle, wearing the same red shirt with purple pants and black shoes. The only difference between them being the hair and eye colors, one being messy and purple, while the other tidy and red. Their presence caused a silence in the tunnels, only the sound of the clouded stream under their feet. Khan and Uzi looked with hollow eyes at the drones, unsure of what to think, of what to do.
“Oh, no reaction? I thought you’d miss me more, hubby” The purple haired drone continued talking.
“N-Nori?” Khan mumbled in a whisper.
“Mom?” Both worker girls said.
“That isn’t whoever you think it is. It’s just another puppet” V warned, deploying her blade.
“Aww, I didn’t think you two would team with killers, sweeties. That’s disappointing” Nori mocked them.
“Shut up!” Uzi snapped out in anger “You are not my mother” Her eyes then turned red “Neither are you, so let’s just end thees” She summoned the change solver with 3 fingers.
Nori chuckled “Would you look at that, only three” She laughed more as everyone got ready to fight “Let us tell you something, honey”
“Destruction” Yeva suddenly said, summoning the 5 arrows destruction symbol.
“And creation” Nori summoned her 5 squares creation symbol.
“Are a perfect balance” Both said in unison, as they combined both powers, creating a decagon with interchanging arrows and squares. The combination created small sparks and sent a shockwave through the tunnel “And so shall be our fights”
Everyone protected themselves from the shock. When it hit Uzi and Khan, they felt their bodies completely stop. They tried to move, but couldn’t, they were stuck, even on the air, floating above the water.
Uzi groaned, trying again and again to move, but to no success “What the fuck!? I can’t move!”
“Neither can I” Khan said.
“It means you both would break the balance of the fight and put us at a disadvantage, so we’ll only be fighting the disassemblers and the human. This will be easy” Nori explained.
“If it’s balanced, it won’t” Yeva said.
“Fair point” Nori agreed.
“N looked behind him, seeing both worker drones floating in the air “Damnit. V, you take the red, I’ll take the purple. Tessa, be careful and think of something, you don’t have your weapon anymore” He said, before charging against the purple haired drone.
“Oh, direct, aren’t you?” Nori joked, dodging one of his punches.
He followed up with his tail, scratching her cheek with acid. She groaned in pain and summoned both her 5 square solvers with each hand, creating rocks and throwing them against him. N was able to dodge, but couldn’t close the gap, so he switched to his sniper and aimed, but Nori threw a rock right at his feet, taking a small chunk off of it. He quickly rolled away and kept moving around, but with more difficulty, stumbling and groaning. He had to find a way to aim and shoot, but without her getting in the way. That’s when he ran alongside the wall and sunk his fingers in the rock, using his body to pull a part of it out and break his momentum, bouncing back and avoiding the projectiles. Using his strength, he was then able to pull a chunk of stone that he started using as a barrier.
Nori continued shooting at him, destroying pieces of the barrier, until she stopped using one hand to fire and created a rock above him. At the small window where she stopped using both hands, N appeared with his sniper and aimed, shooting off one of her arms.
Nori screamed in pain and grabbed her oozing elbow “Damn, you piece of shit!” She cursed, quickly creating a wall of metal to stop another bullet.
N switched to his submachineguns and ran towards her, spraying his gun all over the place, but she was able to stop all bullets with a single flash of the solver. Before she did anything, he was in her face, throwing punch after punch. She was too quick for him though, evading every single attack, before creating a small and sharp elevation on the ground, where he tripped and fell. She tried to grab him with the solver, but he deployed his wings, cutting her chest. He quickly hid them back and got up, running back and getting his sniper out, aiming directly at her and taking the shot.
From Nori’s torso, another two arms burst with a red bubble, spilling a red and black liquid, while a red slime leaked from inside. All her three arms focused on the bullet and were able to stop it, turning it around and firing it back at maximum speed.
N hid behind the barrier he had made, but the bullet obliterated it into various pieces that got sent to all sides. One of them fell directly into V’s hand, who threw it at Yeva. The rock got disintegrated the moment her hands with the 5 arrows solver aimed at it.
V couldn’t do anything in this fight. She couldn’t get close without risking getting destroyed, she couldn’t shoot or throw anything at her without being erased. She was running out of options just as fast as she was running around, evading every single attack from Yeva.
The red worker was getting a little angry, having to deal with this annoying fly, running around and not doing anything. She saw as her friend transformed a little, so maybe it wouldn’t be a problem if she did too.
V continued jumping from one point to the other, when she noticed Yeva’s fingers extending, like barrels of a gun, before she could understand her vision, an energy bullet came straight at her. She was able to dodge, but the wall behind her got completely carved with a big hole. This surprised her. If that thing were to hit her, she’d be gone. Nothing new, but the amount of power this one drone held was absurd.
As V kept dodging, not seeing any way to approach, she noticed a lack of solver usage, so maybe she couldn’t use it like that. This was good, she still had a lot to lose, but maybe, just maybe, a better chance.
V continued dodging, while Yeva tried to predict her movements, shooting in front of the disassembly, but in a moment, the murder machine quickly made a straight turn towards her and advanced, dodging a desperate bullet, but getting close enough to scratch her visor. V smiled, but noticed her enemy smiling too. She quickly deployed her wings and did a sharp turn to the side, dodging by a miracle an attack from the solver. In her worry, she didn’t see Yeva’s finger following her. She only realized too late. She tried to jump away from the energy projectile, but it still ripped her arm off.
V screamed in pain and fell to the ground. N wanted to go help, but there was no way he would be able to bypass Nori and all her projectiles. He was barely able to dodge them. Yeva walked to the disassembler with confidence, she had already won this, now she only needed one more shot. As she walked, the dismembered arm fell right in front of Tessa.
The woman hadn’t moved ever since the shockwave. She didn’t know what to do. The two drones had the solver, powers much beyond their imaginations and understanding, while she didn’t have nothing, no one. She was the last there was. Death in this moment meant nothing. She couldn’t bring them back. They had lost.
But with V’s scream of agony and the horrible scene of N being overwhelmed while V is going to be shot down like a dog, it pains Tessa. She doesn’t have anyone, but she can still help. She can do one last act. This has always been her way ever since the manor. She never understood this thing, but she fought, she helped, she built. It was time to give everything she had. She couldn’t let the last legacy of the humans be of a crying girl. No, it had to be more than that.
Yeva looked at V on the ground, agonizing. It was clearly an act to get her to feel confident and get closer, but she wasn’t taking one more step. She was close, but just far enough, it seemed. She pointed her finger at V, who realized her killer wouldn’t approach her anymore. That’s when fear entered her eyes and a smile crept into the worker’s face. She then heard a sound behind her. She quickly spun around, only to have one of her arms cut off by that human. Tessa got closer to the drone, just to step to the side when the worker tried to use the solver, using V’s arms to cut the other arm.
Yeva was surprised, scared, but more than anything, angry. She opened her mouth and screamed a loud roar, that got deeper and deeper as she vomited flesh that stuck to her lips and formed a barrel in front of her face, sharp teeth right at the end, barely biting Tessa’s helmet. The human observed as the fangs opened, showing a bright red energy ball being formed inside the cylinder of flesh.
V’s tail wrapped itself around Yeva’s neck and pulled it right before the shot, forcing her head up, as the bullet of red energy vaporized the ceiling and exploded on the top of the mountain, leaving a trail of destruction.
Tessa then plunged V’s arm into Yeva’s chest and sliced up to her throat, before taking it off and slamming the blade inside the barrel on her mouth, piercing the back of her head. Red energy started to flow through the sword, as V quickly jumped to Tessa and unleashed her wings, protecting her from the explosion. V and Tessa were thrown right to the side of Uzi and Khan, who suddenly fell to the ground. Khan quickly got up and picked up Uzi, who seemed to come back from the dead.
“Fuck! Balance has been broken!” Nori cursed, before flying back and creating two thick walls of metal, one in between them and the other behind the group. The two walls started to slowly close in on each other.
“She’s trying to squash us!” N screamed, before punching the wall repeatedly. Every dent he made was quickly fixed in seconds, leaving no room for breaking them.
“Damnit!” Uzi said, summoning her 5 arrows destruction solver and erasing the wall, but, right behind it, another appeared. Uzi tried again and again, but another always appeared.
From behind one of the walls, Nori laughed “You’re still too inexperienced, Uzi. You leave too much when you destroy. It’s easy to use what’s left to build another one. At this rate, you’ll get tired faster than me” She chuckled.
This got Khan’s attention, who put a hand on Uzi’s shoulder “Calm down, you don’t need to use your powers anymore”
The worker girl looked at him, still unable to see his face due to him turning his head too fast “You got a plan?”
“Precisely” He said, right before some mumbles came from the other side of the wall.
“What are you? Where are you coming from? Leave me, you pests!” It was Nori, speaking enraged. She seemed tired and angry.
“What’s happening?” Tessa asked.
“I commanded every copy of Thad I have to go down the hole Yeva made and hold Nori down” He said, taking a controller from his jacket.
“Seriously, how many of those do you have?” V asked him.
“This is the last one I have” He said with a somber tone.
“Okay, what’s the plan now?” N wondered.
“With this switch, I’ll blow every WAP drone I have ever created. This should either kill or weaken Nori enough” Khan responded.
“What!?” Uzi screamed “You can’t-”
“I’m sorry” Came out as a whisper, before a loud explosion went off, completely destroying both walls and sending the group flying back. N and V were able to catch Uzi and Tessa, but Khan bounced on the ground, before hitting a wall and stopping.
Upon getting dropped, Uzi quickly ran to her father. She picked him from the ground, just like he had done with her and saw his visor turned off, his body limp. She breathed and looked. She didn’t cry, she didn’t talk, she didn’t move. She only looked at her father’s limp body. It was the first time she had ever seen his full face before, this was the first time. A simple dark blue helmet with red googles on top. However, she couldn’t see his face. His visor only showed cracks with wires and oil coming out. That wasn’t his face. It wasn’t. She never saw him, but she knew, that wasn’t his face. Even in the end, she never met his gaze.
She cried and hugged his body, feeling something hard on his chest. She opened his jacket and saw a picture in a frame. The glass had been shattered, but the image was intact. It was a photo of him, wearing this same outfit with his white eyes, alongside her mother, just how she was in this tunnel, holding a purple eyed pill baby. The image got drenched, more and more, by the liquid in her cheeks.
Before she could even understand, she had been grabbed by N, as he started to run through the tunnel “I’m sorry, Uzi, but we need to move” He said, as she hugged him and soaked his shoulder without any sound.
They kept running, but Uzi didn’t seem to get better. N understood. This wasn’t something easy, despite her animosity with her father, he was still her father. The only piece of family left. He caressed her back, trying to comfort her as best as he could. Uzi clenched her hands around his fabric, before taking a deep breath. She looked at him, then forward into the tunnel. She pulled herself away from N’s body a few centimeters.
“Thanks” She whispered.
N smiled at her “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m better now” She said, looking at the picture of her family.
“That questions go to you too, Doll” He added.
Uzi smiled, before her eyes turned red, being a bit more surprised “Uhh… I’m… Fine. Her death was nothing new… To me” She looked to the side and squinted her eyes, before brightening a bit “Thanks” She whispered in an almost quiet tone.
They arrived at a hole, one they knew very well. The disassemblers took their wings out, while V grabbed Tessa. Uzi tried to release her own wings, but a headache hit her in the same moment.
It’s better if you don’t do it. ITs presence might be having strange consequences.
“What even is this IT thing?” Uzi asked as she rubbed her own head.
“The thing that’s attacking the planet is an old weapon that we used to control” Tessa responded.
“By ‘we’, you mean the humans, right?” Uzi snarled.
“Yes” The woman said “But at one point it gained a sort of sentience and started destroying everything. The solver disease came after, maybe as a sort of way to help that goal. We don’t fully know”
“Why did you think that using that as a weapon was a good idea?” The worker girl asked.
“We found ancient manuscripts of old societies that used it as a weapon. It was said that it held the power of shaping reality in a small area. So the leaders of the countries thought that it would be a good idea to use it. They started doing some tests, but then, IT woke up and destroyed everything close by. Ever since, it has been destroying everything in its path”
“Of fucking course. Every bad thing that exists is because of those flesh sacks” Uzi clenched N’s coat.
They arrived at the huge building of camp 98.7, quickly leaving its dark confines and gazing at the sight of the huge outline of a humanoid being with its fingers that turned into strings, going well beyond the horizon, searching inside the mountain where the bunker lay beneath. The top of the mountain had been destroyed, revealing Khan’s hideout, but there wasn’t anyone there anymore.
“Too late to cry over the spilled milk” Tessa said.
“Okay, what’s the plan?” V asked, a bit annoyed.
IT turned around as its giant eye faced their exact direction. The numbers that made its appearance changing once again.
01000011 01110010 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100101 00001010 01000100 01101001 01100110 01100110 01101001 01100011 01110101 01101100 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100100 01101001 01100101
Its eye then changed to a pentagon with 5 lines ending in cubes that each had a circle around it, before returning to normal and walking towards them.
“I think it saw us” N mentioned.
“Do we even have a plan?” The female disassembler wondered.
Before anyone could respond, the faint sound of multiple and quick steps was heard coming from the dense forest ahead. The disassemblers were able to see the swarm of worker drones running in their direction, but something was strange, no, something was wrong. Some of them were missing limbs, but others had entire holes in their bodies, in their head and chest. These weren’t just drones.
“Are those the spiral workers?!” N screamed.
“Seems like it” V responded, unleashing the blade of her one arm.
“That thing gave them life?!” Uzi questioned.
“Whatever it was, our plan is now to survive” Tessa said, readying her disassembly arm to fight.
“Don’t worry” The male disassembly came forward “Me and V will handle them. You two think of something” He said, before lunging at the horde of dead workers, turning one of his arms into overdrive and punching the ground.
The entire place shook with the force, as the impact rose onward, cracking the ground and unevening the battlefield in multiple isles. Some worker drones stumbled and fell, others got stuck in the cracks, but most continued as if nothing ever happened.
“We killed them once, we’ll kill them again” V declared with a grin, her eye turned to the yellow X, as she lunged to the horde and sliced through them with ease.
N returned his arm back to normal and ran forward, grabbing a drone and smashing it on the ground, before launching it against a wall of other ones. He turned one of his hands into a sniper and started firing without aiming at the wave, sending many to the ground. With his other hand turned into a sword, he sliced a lot of them, but they still got closer and closer. In a flash, the drones closer to him fell to the ground as V passed by them. She continued running around and building momentum. No worker could even see her coming, as, even with only one arm, she still downed groups upon groups of them.
“You’re not getting tired, are you?” She mocked the male drone.
N ignored her comment and kept killing the dead drones as more appeared in his vision. He didn’t even notice that he got surrounded by them as they tried to rip his metal flesh, to no avail, but he could feel that each attempt got stronger and stronger. His clothes being ripped and his metal denting and weakening. He turned his arm into overdrive again and flung some drones away, before slamming his fist into the ground and sending anything close flying in the air and breaking the ground even further, giving him some space.
“Hey, V” He called as she flew on top of him, killing the strays in the air “Do you feel guilt over killing these drones?” He asked.
“Where did that come from?” The female retorted, having already disappeared somewhere deep in the horde.
“I don’t know” He said as he got a warhammer in his hand, destroying some faces around him “It’s just that-” Upon slamming his hammer into more drones, the pole broke and spun in the air “I already came into normality over them” He jumped and grabbed it with both his hands “Over what we did” Before swinging it above his head, down on three workers that tried to attack him, creating a huge impact on the ground that created a crater around “So much so, that I don’t feel anything now”
For some seconds, no response came from the other disassembly, only the sound of slashing and smashing. Not even the male knew why he said it, but it just felt like something stuck in his chest. He had to get it out to someone he hoped could understand him.
“You should just chill” Her words took him from his thoughts “I know why you’re asking me that. We got friendly with one of them. It’s understandable, especially since everything’s a mess now with that thing there, but you should chill. What we did was kinda wrong, sure”
“Very”
“Okay, very wrong, but do you still want to do that? Do you still do that?” As she finished, a burst of drones came from the side as V ran away, doing a slow turn to keep her speed.
She came back in the horde with a big impact, sending many drones stumbling “I don’t really want to keep doing this” N started saying “And I haven’t done anything of the sort ever since I met Uzi”
“Same. See, we’re changed. There isn’t much we can do, we need to consume oil, but there’s probably a better way to deal with this now. So don’t beat yourself over it. We’re different, we’re better. So let’s keep being that. Not like you can change the past now”
The male disassembler gave a small smile in the middle of the massacre “Thanks, V. You truly did change”
He couldn’t see her, but a faint and cute laugh came from the dead drones “Wait” Her voice perked once again “You said you didn’t kill any drones ever since Uzi, but what about the oil you gave me when I was locked?”
“Why do you think these drones don’t have oil?”
“Aww, c’mon!” She screamed in disgust.
“You wouldn’t drink it otherwise!”
They kept fighting with some talks in between, but slowly they realized something was off. No matter how many they took down, it didn’t seem to end. They knew they had killed a lot, but this, this was strange. That’s when V saw a drone on the ground, already deactivated, getting bumped by another and getting up to continue the fight. Of course, why didn’t she think of that. These drones are dead, nothing normal is putting them down again.
From afar, these problems are unseen, as Tessa puts her weight in one leg and a hand on her hip, watching the fight with a zoom in her helmet “Aren’t they doing a good job together?” She says with happiness.
Uzi, even in her proximity, doesn’t hear. She’s speaking in her mind, trying to think of something. There needs to have something they can do.
There probably is, but what could they do against IT?
That’s what they had to think. It had a counter for everything they had, so they’d have to come up with something new.
Maybe what their mothers had done. They had combined their powers to make something beyond.
That could be the answer, but the two were being controlled by IT, so his influence could have been the reason. It could also have a way of blocking it and they didn’t even know what they could do.
Destruction and creation made something akin to balance. IT seemed to combine change and creation to make life, which leaves our exact combination unknown.
What could destruction and change make?
They didn’t know, but it wasn’t something pretty. They had to try it, it was their only chance.
But what if IT isn’t even affected by the solver? It seems like it’s a creation of it.
The solver affects everything, not even the hosts are safe from it, they just clash the powers and stronger takes it.
And IT is clearly stronger than them.
They could catch it off guard.
So that was their plan, huh?
It’s the only thing that might work.
“Hey, little girl. You alright?” Tessa called the worker drone.
“I have a plan” She said, grabbing the arm of the woman “N! V!” She screamed from the top of her speaker.
A loud boom came from the forest as the two disassemblies quickly appeared on her side. They didn’t have any injuries and weren’t exhausted, but it was clear the dead workers had been some trouble, judging by how dirty they were and how N’s clothes were ripped.
“It isn’t looking good. They don’t die, just get up after a shot to the core. Our best shot is to dismember all of them” V informed.
“It’s not a battle worth fighting” N added.
“Good, because we aren’t” Uzi said “We’re flying as fast as we can towards the creature” She announced.
“What?!” All three screamed in unison.
“That thing probably has enough power to erase us from existence” Tessa said.
“It can, but it won’t happen. I won’t allow” Uzi said. Tessa didn’t trust those words for a single second “Look, we need to hit it before it realizes our plan” She said.
“You know that thing is coming towards us, right? Any move we make it will know” V responded.
“Yes. It will know we will attack, but not what we’ll do, and that gives us a small edge” The worker girl retorted.
“That’s a gamble. There’s no guarantee it will work” Tessa spoke.
“But it’s the only chance we have. Do you have any ideas to take it down?” Uzi continued.
“Just because we don’t have an idea doesn’t mean that running into the danger is a good choice” The woman argued.
“Calm down, Tessa. Let’s try it. Me and V will be the ones flying. We can probably go in and away without much problem, especially with two distinct groups. We're fast and we'll be careful” N chipped in.
The woman sighed, looking to the sides, before staring into his eyes “Okay, let’s go then. We need to do it fast”
“Right. I’ll go with N” Uzi said “You go with V” She said to the human.
“Don’t you have your own wings?” V asked.
“They don’t seem to be working. Probably that thing’s influence” The worker girl explained.
The disassemblers released their wings as the other two climbed on their backs. Both jumped into the air and flew in the direction of the creature as fast as they could.
“Go higher!” Uzi screamed.
Both flying drones distanced themselves from the ground, going above the creature’s head, above the clouds and mountains in the distance. Higher than any of them have ever been.
“It should expect us on the ground, so an attack from above would be a surprise” Uzi said, forming a pentagon with 5 arrows in front of her hand. Now, how did they unite their powers?
They didn’t know. Maybe if she tried too.
“Ah, shit!” N cursed as he sharply changed trajectories.
Uzi was forcefully taken from her thoughts as she looked down and saw IT looking directly at them with the same symbol she ported. The male disassembler avoided its gaze as much as he could, but it didn’t seem to lose interest in them. V dived and flew right by its side, but it didn’t even care. Tessa screamed, followed by the other female, but the giant humanoid figure never took its eye off tracking the other two.
“Seems like it won’t take its eye off us!” N screamed.
It then moved its arms up, bringing the lines with it. They went up as if they had no gravity and stretched themselves well beyond where they could see in space, creating a strange feeling of unknown and uncertainty of what they were dealing with. In the distance, a small natural satellite, just barely visible at this height, was struck by the strings, being split into two with no resistance, as if it were nothing but air to the creature’s white finger.
The creature’s number then changed sporadically.
01001110 01101111 00101100 00100000 01101110 01101111 00101100 00100000 01101110 01101111 00001010 01010100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100001 01110100 01110101 01110010 01100001 01101100 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01110010 01100101 01101101 01100001 01101001 01101110 00001010 01011001 01101111 01110101 00101100 00100000 01100011 01110010 01100101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 01110011 00101100 00100000 01101111 01110010 01100111 01100001 01101110 01101001 01100011 00101100 00100000 01110011 01101000 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110011 01100001 01110000 01110000 01100101 01100001 01110010
The strings then approached the two drones in the air. To not get caught in its path, N stopped right before one came in contact with him. IT took this opportunity and locked its gaze onto him.
“Yeah! We’re famous like that” Uzi responded, using both hands to make a decagon with 10 arrows and respond to the attack.
She tried to force something, to unite, but destruction remained the same, nothing changed.
Both solvers clashed, creating a small singularity between them that pushed N closer. IT then changed its eye to a decagon of creation, reverting the singularity and trying to create a box around the two, but N quickly flew away.
As IT tried to stop them, to catch them, to do anything, its numbers changed.
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100011 01101111 01110101 01101100 01100100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101000 01101111 01110011 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01100001 01100011 01100011 01100101 01110000 01110100
Then again.
01000010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101110 01101111 00101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01101000 01100001 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01101001 01110011 01110100 00101110 00100000 01001010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110100 01110111 01101111
And again.
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01101110 01110011 01110101 01101100 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01100001 01101110 01111001 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100101 01111000 01101001 01110011 01110100 01110011
And again.
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01110100 01101111 01110000 00100000 01110000 01110010 01101001 01101111 01110010 01101001 01110100 01111001
N continued flying around anything that was created. Uzi was out of options, as her power could only be of assistance now. They didn’t have anything to do. She tried to think.
But even she was out of ideas.
The situation was worse and worse the more she thought. They didn’t even know what this thing was or what it was capable of. What if it was just playing with them? What if it was just a decoy? What if it wasn’t even real?
Uzi needed to calm down.
But how could she? What could calm her down?
“Hey!” Tessa's voice reached the two “I have a plan! You need it distracted, right?! Just hang on!” She said, before flying towards the mountain.
This gave Uzi a bit of hope. It wasn’t much, but better than nothing. Just enough to keep her going.
V and Tessa flew away, leaving the fight and making IT look like a toy that moved around like a crazy person trying to smash a fly. They arrived at Khan’s hideout. The top was busted and broken, giving access to the inside. There wasn’t much different from what they expected. The ground was drenched in worker oil and a red, viscous liquid. No living thing could be seen around.
“So” V spoke “What did you want here?” She asked.
Tessa looked around, before running to the side and grabbing something from the ground “This” She said. The disassembler looked at a rectangular controller with a small antenna and a red ball with a big red circle in the middle, drenched in a mix of the liquids on the ground, as it dropped on the ground with big drops of slop.
“And that would be?” She asked.
“The controller Khan was using to shoot the guns on the side of the mountain” Tessa said “He threw it away before we escaped through the elevator”
“Okay, and how that’s going to help?” The female drone asked as she crossed her arms “IT was able to stop the energy shots”
“When focusing on them” The woman smugly said as she pressed the button aimed at the creature, activating the guns, both initiating the creation of energy.
V watched as the energy built inside the guns destabilized it a bit, the structure of the weapons shaking as they fired. The blasts of energy quickly hit IT, as it was distracted, completely throwing it off balance. Its number changing.
01010111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00111111
Tessa pressed the button again, initiating the guns one more time.
“Tessa” V called “I don’t think that’s a good idea. The guns are shaking”
“I know” The woman admitted “They were probably damaged when it was searching for us here” She finished as the guns fired again. She then pressed the button again.
“Then stop. This place’s gonna blow up!”
Tessa looked at V’s eyes and sighed “V… I didn’t have the courage to tell N this, but… I can’t not tell anyone. Especially him. He needs to know…” She approached the disassembler, as if afraid someone would hear “During his transformation into a disassembler, I was the one to do it. I asked for it. I wanted to change him, so I could keep him as he was… But we know that didn’t happen. I… I messed up somewhere, connected a wire wrong, made a mistake in the program, something… Something that… That created him … You know who I’m talking about”
V looked at the dark helmet in the woman’s head “No” She whispered as the guns fired another shot and she pressed the button again.
“Yes… I don’t know how or when, but I did it. I messed something up and split him in two. I didn’t notice until the first reports from J came in”
“Then why didn’t you change? We were on the same ship as you many times. N mentioned to you how he felt about the other him, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did”
“Then why didn’t you change him?!”
A moment of silence, as another shot was fired and the button was pressed once again “Because… He was efficient” She whispered.
V sank into the place she was. She knew that phrase, she had used it so many times, on many occasions. She liked that phrase, it made him cry, it brought a small comfort to her choices, a goal. All that was in the past, though. Now? Now, everything she could see was herself in that black mirror. It was her, all over again.
No, it wasn’t herself. She said it to him. They changed, didn’t they? That’s why this phrase hurts her so much now. Why she almost vomited, why she hated it, why she froze in anger. She didn’t like it anymore. It didn’t bring comfort, it brought nightmares. That’s why the mirror is dark.
It isn’t herself
It’s worst
No one spoke until the guns fired another shot. Before Tessa could press the button again, she received a slap from V that sent her to the ground and gave her helmet a small crack. The disassembler walked on top of the woman and grabbed her by the collar.
“ARE YOU INSANE?!” She screamed “WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?! HE’S A PERSON, WITH HIS OWN PERSONALITY AND LIFE! YOU CAN’T JUST FUCK EVERYTHING UP LIKE THAT! HE DIDN’T DESERVE THAT, AND YET, YOU CAUSED IT! HE DID NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! TO YOU OR TO ANYONE, EVER, BUT YOU STILL DID THIS! YOU’RE NOT A GOOD PERSON, NO YOU’RE NOT! YOU! ARE! A! MONSTER!” She screamed until her speaker started to fail and tears fell from her face. She took deep breaths on top of the human, her hands clenching with everything she had the suit of the woman, before releasing it and walking away with her back turned as she cried more.
Tessa got up and pressed the button one more time, the guns shaking getting worse and parts of it falling “Look, V. I’m sorry-”
“No” The female disassembler stopped her “You are not apologizing to me. You will apologize to him. He needs to hear it from you and he will decide what to do” She said, wiping the tears from her cheeks and looking at the woman.
Tessa approached her until she was barely touching the drone “I’m sorry” She repeated, before hugging V, who was caught by surprise.
“Hey, wha-” She started saying, but felt as if her body had stopped moving midway. Her arms dangled and her speech died down. She couldn’t move any part of her body other than her vision.
“I’m so sorry, V. For everything I did” She said as she rummaged behind V’s head, messing with her system “For not saving you, for not saving N, for not saving J, for not saving Cyn, for not doing anything and just running away. For everything. My life has just been a complete and utter failure and I never did anything to fix it. So, at least this, I’m going to do right” She plugged a wire that came from the disassembler’s back in her wrist “You should live your life. You have much to want and desire. I don’t” She said as she finished and put the wires back in place.
V’s body started moving. She had received a new mission that her body would complete before returning control to the user, to get close to Serial Designation N. She tried to stop, to resist, to speak, but nothing came as she wanted. There was nothing she could do other than walk away and unleash her wings.
“I love you, V. Always have. I love and always will love N and J. So please, the both of you. Live” She said as V flew away from the mountain.
She pressed the button once again. She had to gain as much time as she could. She didn’t know when Uzi would be able to do what she wanted. She would die, but she didn’t care. What could she mourn other than living a life with the ones she had saved only to break even more?
She walked toward the broken glass she observed the rest of her species die. Lying on the ground was a body. She sat by its side and grabbed its hips, the only thing that was left. She placed it in her lap, as if it were a doll. Her doll. One that she missed from her childhood. She wanted to take care of it, cherish, laugh and smile with it, but she couldn’t. She had destroyed this doll beyond repair. It wasn’t only physically, as this doll was special. It wasn’t a toy, never was, not to her. She destroyed it emotionally. Made it obsessed with a useless goal.
She never deserved this friend, never. So that’s why she was happy. Being by its side, it was more than she wanted, even if she never would look up at her face again.
As V flew back towards N, she felt an immense energy coming from behind her. The guns had given up, overcharged.
There was nothing left.
V quickly arrived by the side of N, who was visibly tired, flying and dodging all this time, while Uzi seemed to be in a trance.
“Uzi, do it quick! We don’t have much time!” He screamed, but no response came from the girl.
“What happened to her?” V asked, having her control back. She immediately looked back at the mountain and saw that half of it was gone.
“I don’t know, she’s just not responding anymore. Where’s Tessa?” He asked.
V stayed silent for a bit, still contemplating the view of where she was “She…” The disassembler started to say, but couldn’t find the words in her mind. How could she? It just happened? Could she have any confirmation? The place was devastated, there’s no way she survived. She knew, but didn’t want to believe, or rather, she did, just didn’t accept it “She died, N” Was all V could say.
“What?” N responded in confusion. Of all the answers, this was the last he could think of, or even was prepared for.
V opened her mouth to explain what happened, although unprepared to tell about some of the details.
That’s when she understood. She and Uzi were unable to unite until now. No matter what they did, nothing seemed to work, but hearing that, it’s what gave her the thought. It was clear now. She had overstayed her welcome.
“What?” Uzi mumbled, but no one noticed.
She was already gone for a long time. She was everything she was now, she was herself, fully and truly. To unite is to give herself. That’s what was missing.
“What are you talking about?” Uzi asked no one, with no one responding.
They could’ve been more. Maybe friends, if need to push it, but more than what they were. They only had one shot at this, so, Uzi would have to make it count.
Uzi didn’t understand what she was saying, but she felt like she had to use everything. It was a surge of purpose, of a strange feeling of want and need. She quickly got both hands together and formed a decagon that transformed into an icosagon with 20 arrows, each with a circle around the beginning of the point. It pulsated with a feeling she never felt before. The feeling that she could do everything, change everything. She aimed at the distracted humanoid being below and used it.
“WITH THIS POWER, I’LL CHANGE OUR FATES!” She screamed as the unaware monster got hit with the power, his existence being pushed back, creating duplicates and stretching it.
Its numbers fluctuated more than ever.
01010011 01000100 01001010 01001110 01010011 01001111 01010101 01000110 01010011 01001111 01000100 01001110 01010000 01000001 01001110 01000100 01010110 01010000 01000001 01000010 01000100 01010000 01010110 01000001 01000010 01000100 01010000 01001001 01000110 01000001 01010000 01001110 01000001 01010000 01001001 01010011 01000011 01000001 01010000 01000100 01001000 01000001 01010000 01001001 01010011 01000001 01010000 01000100 01001010 01000001 01010000 01010011 01000001 01010000 01001000 01001001 01000100 01000001 01010000 01010011 01001000 01000001 01010000 01010011 01001000 01000110 01010000 01000001 01001000 01010011 01000100 01010000 01001000 01000001 01010000 00101000 00101101 01001001 01010100 01001000 01001111 01010101 01000111 01001000 01010100 01010100 01001111 01010011 01000101 01000101 01010100 01001000 01000101 01000100 01000101 01010011 01010100 01010010 01010101 01000011 01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110 01011001 01001111 01010101 01010111 01001111 01010010 01001101 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It wasn’t happy.
A flash of light came from within ITs eye that dimmed its body, like a sun taking over the surface of the planet, before it simply disappeared. Nowhere to be seen, nowhere to be felt. It had just vanished, leaving its destruction behind.
Uzi could barely hold herself up or onto anything, as she fell from N’s back. With the flow of the air in her face, she smiled. She did it. She saved the world. Did you see that, Doll? The two of them had done it.
…
…
…
Doll?
“Uzi!” N screamed as he grabbed the worker girl and enveloped her in a hug. He attempted to break their fall, but he had dived too fast.
The girl couldn’t even realize what had happened before the disassembler hit the ground with a big impact. She was sent straight down to his chest with the force, feeling a little dizzy. She was still awake, so she got up and looked down, seeing her savior slammed in a crater, surrounded by rocks and turned off.
“N?” She said, still a bit out of reality. She touched his face, but it didn’t help “Doll?” She called, but nothing changed “N!?” She slapped him in the face, getting desperate.
“AH, WHAT?!” He screamed, coming back online.
“Oh, God. You fucking idiot” She said, before hugging him.
On their side landed V, with all her grace “What happened to you up there?” She asked.
Uzi got up from the ground and scratched her head “I don’t know. I was talking with Doll, then she started saying some weird things, and I felt a sort of power and did that thing, that did the trick, but then I felt exhausted and blacked out. I woke up here” She rambled and pointed to N, who was getting out of the ground.
“Is it really over?” V asked.
“What about the zombies?!” Uzi suddenly asked.
“Oh, shit” N said, looking at the distance with an intense glare, before softening “Seems like they went down” He softly said.
“So, it’s over?” V asked again.
Uzi looked to her sides “I guess so” She then took a deep breath and looked up “Finally over” When her eyes saw the sky, it looked back “What’s that?!” She screamed, pointing up.
Both disassemblers looked at the sky, seeing the beautiful night they were so used to seeing. Despite everything that had happened that day, the lane on top of them that shone light into them never changed.
“Nothing. Why?” N responded.
“What? Can’t you see that?” Uzi continued.
“See what?” V wondered.
“That eye!” She furiously pointed up.
As more they looked, the more obvious it was that nothing was there. The two disassemblers looked at each other and nodded.
“Look, Uzi. You’re tired. We all are. Why don’t we go back to the bunker and rest? Tomorrow we deal with that” N said as he gently picked Uzi’s hand.
The girl looked between the sky and his eyes, penetrating her own gaze with different emotions. She then gave a tired sigh “I know you don’t believe me. I’m not stupid, but fine. Let’s go back” She responded.
All three of them walked alongside each other towards the bunker in the mountain. They all looked at it, where half had disappeared. They all had memories there, but no one spoke. They just continued to the giant door in the middle of the rocks, which was open.
Inside the underground, giant rocks had fallen from the ceiling, crushing houses and destroying paths. The light was fuzzy and flickered, plunging some places into total darkness. There was a layer of dust over the ground, but, surprisingly, they couldn’t see any corpses. They were all prepared to see some lying around. It was only expected.
“Hey! There’s a survivor here!” Screamed a feminine voice from deeper in the bunker.
From the ashes came Lizzy, with another drone by her side. Uzi looked at it in disbelief, seeing Thad with her. Both casually walked towards Uzi, small dents and a bit of oil leaking from them.
“Hey, Uzi! What are you doing here!?” Lizzy said with a big smile “I was wondering where you were, but Thad said you were fine. Seems like you were out of the colony. Do you know what happened?” She asked.
Uzi didn’t hear it, she was looking at the male worker on her side. She knew what she was seeing and knew what she heard. She slowly walked to him “How are you here?” She asked.
Thad didn’t respond, his emotionless glare still present, but upon her question, his eyes turned to the side, hesitant.
“You should’ve seen. Thad was saving people left and right, almost like a superhero. He did get hit, though. Right behind his neck, it's a deep wound, but small. It seems like it took some sort of mechanism out, but he seems to be working fine” Lizzy info dumped the other girl.
Uzi opened a smile and then started laughing. Lizzy didn’t understand the situation, but Thad just opened a small smile on his face.
A bit away, on the corner of a house, V and N glared at each other, a hair's breadth away from the other. The male, much taller, looked down in confusion, while the female looked up with decision.
“So, what did you pull me here for?” N asked.
V sighed “It’s… It’s about Tessa” She said. He froze, but nodded after a moment “Before she died, she told me something. Something involving you, specifically” He nodded once again “She revealed to me that she was the one to transform you into a disassembly and that she… Was the one responsible for your… Other half” She said with difficulty.
He stayed silent for a bit, then looked down and fixed it back on V “That’s… That’s nice to hear. I suspected already, but it’s good to have a confirmation… Why didn’t she help me, though?” He said, his eyes almost dead.
V gulped, then quickly hugged him with force. He didn’t react, just looked at her “She told me… She told me that it was because you were… Efficient” Her arms wrapped even more strongly around him at the mention of the last word. She hated it.
“Oh” Was everything N said. He returned the hug to the smaller female. His embrace was gentle, his arms were soft, but she could feel the tension in his hands. He wanted to clench them. She could feel the anger oozing out of his palm, but he didn't. He held it in.
“I know you’re angry-”
“I’m not...” He interrupted her, breaking the hug and turning away “No” He then grabbed his own arms “I am. I am angry. A lot. I’m angry at her. I’m angry at you. I’m angry at J. I’m angry at EVERYTHING!” He screamed as he looked down, giving a few more breaths before continuing “But I can’t be angry forever, at everyone, at everything. Can I?” He fixed his posture and gave a deep sigh “It hurts to know this, but past is past. We can only learn and be better” He then turned towards V and gave her a big smile, a genuine one, despite the circumstance “Isn’t that what you told me?”
V looked at him, her worried face washing away at his smile. She couldn’t help but smile back. That was him. That was the man she knew back in the day, the one she neglected and the one she fought alongside.
She ran to him and grabbed the collar of his coat, forcing him down. She went straight for his lips, but was stopped by his finger.
“Hey, let’s calm down. You almost bit me” He joked.
She looked at him with a grin “Seriously?”
“Yup” He said, before fixing his coat. He smiled and pulled her closer, giving her a kiss on the cheek “Seriously” He said, before walking away.
V blushed, but gave a small laugh, shaking her head to the sides. Then, she followed him out of the corner to the three worker drones, two whom laughed their life away.
“So, what’s happening here?” N said, catching the attention of them all.
“There you are” Uzi said in between her laughs “What were you two doing back there?” She asked.
“Nothing” V responded. Lizzy looked at her, then away with a small blush.
Both disassemblers approached the trio, before stopping in their tracks and looking at the male worker, standing in the middle, waving at them. N pointed to him with a strange, surprised face, which made Uzi burst out laughing once again.
As the three interacted, Lizzy walked closer to V “Hey” She initiated.
“Sup” V greeted “Lizzy, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me” The worker girl responded with a smile “I... I just wanted to say...” She took a deep breath "Sorry" She sheepishly said.
“Sorry about what?”
“About my actions in the forest. It was just that I was so lonely at the time, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t like anything that was happening and had lost… Everything. So, I just latched onto the first hot thing I saw and tried” Lizzy rambled.
V looked at her with uncertainty, which turned into a smug look. She gave her a small hit on the shoulder, which was weak enough not to do any damage “Hey, don’t worry. We all do stupid things. It’s better if you’re feeling better now” She gave a small smile.
“Thanks” Lizzy said, giving a smile back.
“You were also right about one thing” V continued “I am hot” She said with a hand on her hip.
Lizzy could only give a small laugh at that. While the two talked, Uzi had explained what she thought had happened to Thad, which got confirmed by the same, while the male disassembler explained what happened outside, which, for the first time in his life, left Thad surprised.
“So, you two were helping drones out, weren’t you?” N asked both the siblings.
“Yeah” Lizzy responded, getting closer to them with V.
“If that’s the case” N put a hand on Uzi’s shoulder and another on V’s “You two go ahead and find a place for us to rest. I’ll go help others with what I can” He spoke with a smile.
Before he got away, V wrapped a hand around his waist and locked him on her side “I’m not going to bed without you~” She teased.
Uzi then jumped on his side and leaned on him “And I’m not letting you have all the fun of here to yourself”
“But-”
“Don’t worry, N” Lizzy interrupted “We already took care of most things. You three can go rest. If anything is needed, me and my brother will take care, the new heroes of the bunker” She said with a smug smile, a smug pose, a smug tone, a smug look and gave a smug laugh.
Thad, finally free from his confusion and surprise “That’s right. No need to worry about the bunker for now. We have it under control" He gave a thumbs up "So, good night to you three. Have good dreams” He said, before walking away with his sister.
As they vanished, Uzi took both disassemblers’ hands “My house should still be intact, since it’s deep, deep into the bunker and heavily protected. Let’s go there” She said as she pulled both of them inside the various hallways of the place.