Work Text:
Ill Met by Moonlight
"Not that I care or anything, but why is your new hangout on top of a skyscraper, where the sun will be shining during the day?" Lizzy asked, her tone communicating that they should be grateful that she deigned to show up and grace them with her presence. "Like, wouldn't it make more sense to have it underground, or at least inside a building, so we can hang out when the sun's out?"
"The reason, Lizzy," Uzi said as she leveled a deadpan look at the blonde-haired Drone, "is so that you can bite me!"
"Uzi, Lizzy," Thad begged, looking between his girlfriend and his oldest friend, "let's not fight each other. We're all on the same team now, and teams shouldn't fight."
"I don't know," V smirked, leaning against a post, the cowboy hat she and Sparky shared perched at a jaunty angle on her head. "I say we let them go at each other, see who finally comes out on top."
Lizzy and Uzi stopped their bickering to both shoot V an annoyed look and a glare, respectively. Uzi raised a hand, a Solver sigil manifesting and hoisting Lizzy up into the air. Rather than scream or struggle, Lizzy gestured at Uzi as though to say "are you not seeing this?"
V dropped her smirk immediately. "I meant without the Solver, duh!"
"Even then she'd still lose," Uzi grinned, dropping Lizzy back to the ground with a yelp. "It's why she always goes for verbal attacks. She couldn't handle a physical fight."
"I could handle a physical fight just fine, loser," Lizzy said with a huff as Thad helped her to her feet. "You have to be on your A-game physically to be a cheerleader," she continued, dusting herself off, "but even that's not enough when you're up against a feral gremlin."
"Bite me!" Uzi said again, throwing down the tools she had been working with. Before she could leap at Lizzy, N's hand came down on her shoulder.
"I could use some help putting these lights up, Uzi," he said, his other hand holding up a string of lights. "Please?" he added with a smile.
Uzi looked between him and Lizzy for a moment before letting out a loud sigh. "Fiiiiiiine," she groaned out, turning away from Lizzy and deploying her wings to help N.
Behind her, Thad shot N a grateful look and a pair of finger guns, while Lizzy just rolled her eyes and picked her phone up from where she had dropped it when Uzi had hoisted her up into the air.
Ever since Cyn's defeat, the five of them had developed a new friendship dynamic born from their previous relationship web and also the shared experience of surviving the end of the world. Thad was easily the bedrock of the group: He was Uzi's first and only friend (and also her first crush), he and N had connected almost immediately, and he and Lizzy were dating (a fact that Uzi had NOT taken well to at all when she had first learned of it). And despite how their first meeting had gone, he and V were both warming up to each other.
It was going to be a while before Uzi got used to their new dynamic. It was easy enough with Thad and N; the three of them being friends just clicked for Uzi. Her past history with Lizzy, and V's previous antagonism, created the majority of the tension in their little group. However, with Cyn gone, V was coming out of the casually homicidal, apathetic, and hostile shell that she had erected as a defence mechanism. And while Lizzy and Uzi were never really going to click as true friends, they could at least tolerate each other for the sake of the others.
Their current project was a little hangout on the top of a skyscraper that, along with its neighboring buildings, had somehow managed to land upright following the end of Cyn's attempted planet devouring. It was stable enough that they didn't have to worry about tipping it over if they moved too fast or landed too hard. The interior was intact enough that someone could easily make their way from the ground floor up to the roof. These facts, along with the "opinion" that it would be "sick as hell" to have a rooftop hangout was how Uzi had picked out this particular spot for their new group project.
Their new hangout wasn't anything mind-blowing; they were basically just putting up furniture and hanging up lights on the rooftop, though a lot of the latter involved hooking up the lights to the building's wiring and also making sure that it was getting power. Uzi's technical know-how had come in handy with that part.
"And done," N said with a flourish as he and Uzi finished securing the lights. "All yours, Sparky!"
Sparky let out one of its strange squawking noises before flipping a lever with his tail. The lights came to life, bathing the rooftop in a soft glow. Thad clapped at the sight while V rolled her eyes and Lizzy took a selfie for the occasion.
"So, what do you want to do first?" N asked Uzi. "We've got board games, a movie projector, a dart board with a drawing of Cyn on it-" he listed off.
"As fun as those sound," Uzi interrupted him gently, putting a hand over his, "I think I like the idea of a night flight the most right now."
"Well, you know me," N said, smiling as he took Uzi's hands in his. "I like doing anything!"
And with that, the two of them shot up into the sky, bathed in starlight and in the light reflected off of Copper-9's planetary neighbors. The two of them zipped and pirouetted around each other in a dance of air and wings, their laughter echoing in the night air as they enjoyed both the freedom of flight and that of the new absence of an oppressive force.
"Looks like they're having fun," Thad said, smiling up at the sight and sound of N and Uzi's midnight flight.
V just looked up at them, her expression a soft mixture of wistfulness, jealousy, and hurt. When she noticed Lizzy giving her a knowing look, she shook her head and turned away from the sight.
"I'm going to play chess," she declared, walking over to a chair and sitting down in it as she began to set up the board. "Either of you want to join me?"
"Sorry bestie," Lizzy said, her eyes on her phone as she tapped away at something on it. "So not my thing."
"I'm going to break in the new basketball hoop," Thad said, picking up a basketball and spinning it on his finger. "Let me know if you're up for shooting some hoops later."
V sighed as the two Drones broke off to do their own thing. She glanced over at Sparky, who was staring at her intently, or rather, staring at the cowboy hat intently.
"If you can beat me, you get the hat back," she said, immediately wondering if she had finally lost her mind now that the constant stress from Cyn and herself sharing the same universe was gone.
However, Sparky chirped and sat down opposite her, reaching out to gently pick up a white pawn with its claws and move it two spaces forward. V couldn't help but blink in surprise while Key, who was sitting on the tubes that ran up and down the back of Sparky's neck, chittered and jumped up and down.
"Ok, robo-dino," she smiled. "You're on!"
"You know," Uzi said, looking out over the desolate landscape of Copper-9, "sometimes I ask myself if getting these powers was worth all the trauma and horror we went through."
"And?" N asked from beside her. "Was it?"
Uzi looked over at him, grinning as the wind whipped her hair back from her visor, threatening to grab her beanie and send it flying.
"Hell yeah it was!" she yelled. With a laugh, she furled her wings, dived, and twisted, barrel-rolling downwards like a purple, winged missile. N dived after her, the greater speed and maneuverability afforded to him by his gravitic drive wings allowing him to circle her as she dived, cackling like a maniac the entire time.
Just when it looked like N was going to have to catch her to prevent a collision with one of the rapidly-approaching buildings, she unfurled her wings and pulled out of her dive. She glided right over the roof of a skyscraper, just barely avoiding getting grazed. Despite the fact that she would have been fine, N couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief as he straightened out his own flight path.
Flying into a building at high speed was one of the many things rendered non-fatal for Disassembly Drones and Solver Drones, but it wasn't pleasant; N could attest to that from previous experience.
After leveling out and skimming the roof of the skyscraper that Uzi had just cleared, N accelerated until he was flying alongside her. Reaching out, he reached out and took her hand, which she clasped back. The two of them flew side by side through the ruins of the city, starlight and moonlight reflecting off them like an errant angel and a mischievous devil on a midnight tryst.
After a time of just flying side-by-side in a comfortable silence, Uzi and N spotted the lights of their new hangout and turned towards it without a word. As they approached, they decelerated until they were hovering just over the hangout. N's gravitic wings made easy work of the feat, while Uzi had to make do with her wings and the wind currents, continuing to hold on to N's hand (though she'd never admit to that.)
Below them, Thad, Lizzy, V, and Sparky continued their various activities, unaware of N and Uzi observing them. Thad was shooting hoops, dribbling a basketball around the roof and doing trickshots. Lizzy was tapping away at her phone, completely ignoring the fact that she was leaning against the very robo-raptor that, for some reason, had it out for her. Said robo-raptor was, for some reason, completely ignoring her in turn and playing a game of chess with V, and also seemed to be giving her a run for her money, his tongue lolling out of his mouth like a dog's the whole while.
"I didn't know that V plays chess," Uzi said, raising an eyebrow at the sight.
"Oh yeah," N said, an almost proud note in his voice. "It was her hobby on her off time. She got really good at it too, from playing against J and Tessa-"
His voice trailed off, and Uzi looked back at N to find a sad expression on his visor. Uzi didn't know much about Tessa other than what she had seen in N's memories, but from what she had seen, Tessa had obviously cared for him a lot despite her being a Human and N being a Drone. The revelation that she was dead, and that "Tessa" had just been Cyn pretending to be her (using the girl's own freaking skin!), was something that he was still dealing with.
"You sure about that?" Uzi said, hoping to distract him. "Because it looks like Sparky is beating her. Wanna bet that he's eating the pieces when she's not looking?"
N couldn't help laughing at that, and Uzi joined in. The others below didn't take notice and kept at what they were doing.
"Do you think Key might be helping him?" N asked, wiping away a tear (which wasn't even liquid, it was digital, whose idea was that?!). "He's sitting on the back of Sparky's neck."
Uzi squinted; it was just a useless feature of the extensive emotion emulation programming that their creators had installed in all Worker Drones for some reason. While said programming made the digital eyes on her visor squint, another set of instructions were simultaneously set to her Uzi's true eyes, a pair of cameras located just above her visor, lower on her head and much, much smaller than the ones that N and V sported on their "headbands".
The cameras zoomed in and allowed her to spy Key sitting on the back of Sparky's neck, just as N had pointed out, giving the bug a perfect view of the black-and-white battlefield between the robo-dino and V. Uzi stopped "squinting" and the cameras zoomed back out.
"Nah," Uzi shook her head. "If V thought Key was helping Sparky, she'd eat him, and then I would have to do terrible, horrible things to her." She let out a cackle, more of a promise than a sound of mirth.
N couldn't help a laugh of his own, eyeing her nervously.
Uzi glanced at him, smirking. "I'm kidding, though if she does decide to eat him," she continued, her eyes narrowing, "I won't be a happy god."
N just smiled at her and adjusted his grip on her hand before beginning to descend down to them. He could imagine their reactions if they were to look up now at him and Uzi, the two of them smiling at each other as they descended, the light from Copper-9's neighbors streaming down behind them. Thad would give them a thumbs-up, Lizzy would call them "gross", and V would roll her eyes before smiling that one strange, small smile she got when she would give him and Uzi when she thought neither of them were looking.
It was a look that, for some reason, reminded him of when they had been just a Drone butler and a Drone maid, back at Elliott Manor.
Back when they had been just two completely ordinary Worker Drones, saved from the dump, dodging the wrath of Mr. and Mrs. Elliott, dealing with J's exacting standards and corporate colloquialisms, and thanking whatever merciful powers that existed for both Tessa, their new and kind mistress, and also for the small moments that were just for the two of them, two synthetic souls brought together despite the odds stacked against them.
It was a smile that evoked such poignant memories and thoughts about what could have been, and it was also a smile that suggested a new possibility to him. A possibility that he couldn't quite yet put his finger on, but one that his CPU wouldn't stop trying to compute.
N's computations were cut short as something incredibly fast rocketed beneath him and Uzi, crashing through the windows of the skyscraper several floors under the roof, rattling the surviving windows and shaking the hangout.
Thad yelped in alarm, the trickshot he was attempting right then going wide and the ball dropping in a neat arc over the edge and out of sight. Both V and Sparky jumped to their feet, the former with her swords out, the latter snarling, both of their heads on a swivel as they scanned for the source of danger, the chessboard overturned and forgotten on the ground. Lizzy and Key also wound up on the ground from having Sparky jump up from under them.
"What was that?" V demanded, loud enough that her voice reached Uzi and N.
Uzi stopped their slow descent by simply teleporting herself and N down to V, Sparky, and Lizzy. The female Murder Drone and the robo-rapter both rounded on them as soon as they blinked into existence on the roof, stopping just short of attacking when they realized who it was.
"Why you little purple asshole," V snapped, pointing a claw at Uzi. "If you think for one second that was funny-"
"It wasn't me, you sex bot," Uzi retorted. "Something hit the building and went through the windows a few floors beneath us. Not a missile, there was no explosion."
"What else could it be?" Thad said as he joined them, helping Lizzy to her feet. "There's nothing on Copper-9 that fast except for you guys."
It took a moment for Thad's words to set in and for their CPUs to compute the conclusion.
"V, you don't think-" N began.
"It's J," V interrupted, throwing her clawed hands up into the air in frustration. "Of course it's J, we didn't take out her core, so it's got to be her."
As if to confirm their suspicions, there was another crash as something rocketed out of the building, sending a shower of glass and metal to land in the snow below. They saw only a flash of it before it disappeared, but it was enough: The flash of light glinting off of gravitic wings identified it as one of the three remaining Disassembly Drones on Copper-9, and two of those three were amongst the group on the roof.
"Quick, after her!" Uzi ordered, running for the edge.
"Uzi, is that a-" N called out, only for her to jump off and deploy her wings, gliding off after J and using her teleportation ability to keep up with the rogue Disassembly Drone's greater speed.
N turned to V just in time for her to grab Sparky, deploy her wings, and zip off after Uzi and J, leaving him behind with Thad and Lizzy on the rooftop.
"Ok," he said slowly, turning to them. "I don't suppose I can convince you two to stay here while Uzi, V, and I deal with this."
"Like, no," Lizzy said, wiping her phone screen clean from when she had dropped it. "We got started with all this going after that J skank, so we're going to finish it."
"Oh yeah," Thad thumped a fist into his hand and grinned viciously, a sight that had N doing a double-take. "We never got the chance to actually take her down before the world exploded, and we're not missing out this time!"
N did not see how any fight between the two normal Drones in his new friend group and J would ever end with them winning, but he knew one thing: If he just left them there, they would follow, and that boded the possibility that they would get hurt chasing after them and J.
"Escort mission it is then!" he said, snapping to attention and saluting. Before Lizzy and Thad could react, he picked them up, slung them over his shoulders like two bags of potatoes, deployed his wings, and shot off after Uzi and V. He did not hear either of Thad or Lizzy's screams over the sound of the wind whipping by his audio transducers as he struggled to catch up with them.
By the time N caught up to Uzi and V, both Thad and Lizzy had stopped screaming only because their sound systems had started signaling warnings. When N came down to land behind Sparky, V, and Uzi as they were crouching behind a ruined car, Thad and Lizzy just rolled off his shoulders like two actual bags of potatoes and onto the ground, groaning.
"Oh, I'm sorry," N apologetically rubbed the back of his head. "Was I going too fast?"
"Dude, did you not hear us screaming?" Thad asked, not even bothering to raise his head.
"Uh, no?" N said, quincing in embarrassment. "Guess I was going too fast then."
"Ya think?" Lizzy replied, muffled by the ground as she too didn't bother to move.
"It's ok, bro," Thad said, weakly raising a hand to give N a thumbs-up. "We got here in one piece, so that's a win."
Lizzy finally moved her head to give her boyfriend an unimpressed look. "Speak for yourself," she groused.
"Quiet you guys," Uzi hissed. "Get over here and stay down."
N was quick to join Uzi and V behind the car, his eyes turning to ovals as he saw what they were looking at. Wincing, and in Lizzy's case also grumbling, the Worker Drones got up and made their way over to the two Disassembly Drones and one Solver Drone.
"What are you guys looking… at?" Thad trailed off as he came up behind them and saw it.
The Corpse Spire, the symbol of the Murder Drone's dominance and supremacy over Copper-9, its skies, and its inhabitants, composed of the frames and parts of thousands of "disassembled" Worker Drones, all slaughtered for their oil and for Cyn's vile mission, stood before them.
"How is that thing still in one piece, and upright?" Uzi said in disbelief. "I couldn't believe it when we found all those buildings intact when we were looking for our hangout spot, but this is ridiculous!"
"Where did J go?" N whispered, looking around like he expected her to jump out from behind a street light.
"She's in there," V replied, pointing at the entrance to the Spire's interior. "She went through all the trouble of blowing up our old pod, and now she's just living here again?"
"Bestie, does that even matter?" Lizzy asked, posing as she took a selfie of herself, making sure to capture them and the base of the Corpse Spire. "We got her outnumbered and her gross, skin-wearing, eldritch freak isn't around to protect her anymore."
"Yeah, we can totally take her now," Thad said, vaulting over the car and beginning to walk towards the Spire like he hadn't just been laying on the ground, shell-shocked from flying at extreme speeds only a few moments earlier.
"Uh, no," Uzi said, picking up Thad with her Solver before he could get any farther and dropping him back behind the car. "What do you think you're doing? When I walked right into the Corpse Spire, I at least had my railgun on me."
"Actually," N chimed in, "you walked in with a railgun that didn't work while searching for a Worker Drone power cell to finish it. If you hadn't found that power cell, I definitely would have killed you."
Uzi turned slowly and gave N a look.
"And have I ever mentioned that I am very glad that you did find that power cell and that you shot me in the head to keep me from killing you?" N added nervously, throwing in a pair of finger-guns.
Uzi continued to give him a look before it turned into a smile. "And have I ever mentioned that I am very glad that you survived getting shot in the head and regrew it?"
N looked very happy to hear that news. V rolled her eyes while Lizzy pretended to gag and throw-up.
"Ok then," Thad said as he got up from where Uzi had tossed him, wiping snow and dirt off his clothes. "What's your call, team captain? How do we take her down?"
Uzi was surprised to hear Thad refer to her as their team captain, but after a second of thought, it made sense. She was the Host of the Absolute Solver now, and also N and V's Admin, so that did make her their leader at least. And while Lizzy didn't look happy at the idea of Uzi leading them, she wasn't saying anything against it, and Uzi could work with that.
"Ok, here's the plan," she began. "I'll make our way to the right of the entrance along with N and Thad, while V, Lizzy, and Sparky will go to the left. Once we're in position, we'll all go in as one group. She puts up a fight, we put her down. Let's go."
Uzi stepped out from behind the car, N and Thad right behind her, only for a fusilade of bullets to slam into their cover, perforating the car and shattering its windshield. V, Lizzy, and Sparky threw themselves to the ground, while Uzi, N, and Thad instinctively ran to another card just ahead, snow erupting in puffs around them as bullets peppered the ground.
Uzi, N, and Thad threw themselves behind the second car, whose windows were immediately shot out and the side facing the Spire became riddled with holes. Uzi took out a piece of mirror that she kept in her jacket pocket and levitated it with the Solver to see what was going on. Muzzle flashes at the entrance of the Spire were visible in the mirror for a brief moment before a bullet hit and shattered it.
Uzi let out a loud sigh as the pieces of the mirror fell to the ground. "There goes that plan," she griped, N and Thad both covering their heads beside her.
Back behind the first car, Lizzy, Sparky, and V waited for J to stop shooting. When she finally did, V began to lean out, poking her head up out of cover while she retracted a hand in exchange for one of her own submachine guns. Almost immediately the gunfire started up again, aimed at the first car and forcing V to get back down.
"I'm really starting to get pissed," V hissed, switching out her other hand for a missile launcher. Lizzy's eyes turned to ovals while V's transformed into the signature Murder Drone X, her lower unhinging and turning her mouth into a face-splitting snarl, razor-sharp fangs glinting in the light.
From where he crouched, N could see V preparing to go full Murder Drone on J, to end her for good this time. Without thinking, he jumped out from behind cover, sliding over the hood of the car, and right into J's line of fire. Her attention immediately turned to him and bullets began to slam into his frame.
"N, what the hell are you doing?!" Uzi yelled. With a burst of computer code text and purple particles, she teleported from her cover, reappearing between N and J. With a gesture, the incoming bullets were deflected away from her, the violet bursts from the impacts outlining a shield around her and also protecting N.
"J, stop!" N shouted, waving his arms. "We're not here to hurt you!"
After a moment the gunfire stopped. J appeared at the entrance of the Corpse Spire, her submachine guns still out and smoking as she aimed them. She was missing a pigtail, courtesy of Uzi's railgun.
"What?" she said, glaring at N and Uzi.
"We're not here to hurt you," N repeated, his arms still raised. The bullet holes in his chassis were already healing, nanites pushing the bullet fragments out and filling in the wounds. Within minutes, the only sign that he'd been shot would be the holes in his coat.
"We're not?" Uzi said in confusion, looking back at N.
He leaned down so that J couldn't see his face. His visor switched out to text mode, reading "GO ALONG WITH IT."
"Oh yeah, right!" Uzi said, turning back to J with a forced smile on her face. "We were just wondering why you flew into the building where we built our hangout and then flew out like a bat out of hell. Nothing suspicious about that at all," she added sarcastically.
J continued to glare at them before retracting her guns. "I was putting in an acquisition form for computer parts and other supplies," she said, turning around and walking back into the Spire. "I'll excuse you trespassing on company property so long as you don't touch anything," she added as she disappeared inside.
Uzi and N looked at each other before starting forward.
"Hold up!" V said as she vaulted over her cover, Sparky and Lizzy right behind her. "Are we really just going to walk in there, like we're visiting an old friend? After everything she's done?"
"Yeah, dude," Thad said as he caught up to them. "I thought it was going to be like round two or something."
"V, Cyn is dead," N said pleadingly. "After everything and everyone we've lost, I don't want to lose anyone else, no matter what she did under Cyn."
V crossed her arms, her weapons still deployed. "I wasn't talking just about what she did during the fight," she said. "What about all the crap she pulled before, after we arrived here, to you, N?"
N was silent for a moment before he finally responded. "After everyone we've lost, I don't want to lose anyone else," he repeated, "no matter what she's done."
With that, he turned and walked towards the entrance of the Corpse Spire, Uzi, Thad, and Lizzy right behind him. Sparky looked up at V for a moment before following them, Key riding on his head. V watched them for a moment before letting out a loud sigh and retracting her weapons, hurrying after them to catch up.
The five Drones, Sentinel, and Keybug found themselves in a different kind of graveyard within the Spire. While the structure above them was composed of the bodies of hundreds, maybe thousands, of Worker Drones, the ground beneath it was littered with the remains of JCJenson droppods. In the center of it, J was sitting atop a bisected droppod, her wings deployed for balance while she used a wielding torch to make repairs.
"Are you trying to fix that droppod?" Uzi asked incredulously.
"Yes," J replied, turning off the wielding torch to turn and look down at Uzi. "My former employer promised me a spaceship after he," she paused to glare at N, "stole ours, only to give me two halves of one. And seeing as I now have a surplus of bandwidth on my hands, I'm going to repair the pod with the leverage available to me and get off this rock."
"And go where?" V asked, just as incredulously as Uzi had. "We wiped out every planet from here to Earth, J; there's nowhere to go to. And if you leave JCJenson space, how far do you think you're going to get before some scared Xenos blow you up?"
"I have a plan," J said as she turned back to her welding. "And either way, it's better than staying here."
"Is it just me, or are there way more ship parts here then there should be?" Lizzy chimed in. "You blew up your old one here, and then your new one got sliced in two, lol by the way, yet I'm seeing a whole lot more than two ships here."
Uzi took a quick look around and had to suppress the urge to facepalm. Lizzy was right; there were enough parts here for at least four pods. Why the hell hadn't she noticed that before? And why had Lizzy been the one to notice?
"Boss saw fit to bring the belongings of our previous employer with us," J replied, pointing towards a corner of the Spire. "There was enough to fill two more pods, which we slaved to our pod's controls."
Everyone looked towards the corner only for their eyes to widen and hollow out in surprise at the sight.
"Are those…toys?" Uzi said, staring.
Indeed, sitting in a corner of the Corpse Spire, was a large pile of toys, consisting mostly of all kinds of stuffed animals, but also including a lot of books, plastic dolls, some doll houses, a rocking horse, and a bicycle. They all looked like they'd been through the wringer, sporting burn marks and tears. A few were completely unidentifiable from the damage they'd sustained.
N immediately ran over to take a closer look, V right behind him. He knelt down and gingerly picked up a teddy bear, which was burned and missing a button eye.
"She…brought Tessa's toys with her?" N said, sounding like he was going to start crying. V knelt by him and picked up a book, gently dusting it off to reveal the title: "101 Dog Breeds". She looked like she was also ready to start crying with N.
Uzi walked up behind them and placed a hand on each of their shoulders. For once, she didn't say anything.
"So, Cyn brought three ships, two of them entirely stuffed with toys, wound up not playing them, and then had you destroy their pods along with your old one?" Thad asked, ticking off the points with his fingers.
"Efficiency was never her strongest suit," J said flatly. "She also thought that giving me two halves of a spaceship equaled giving me a functioning one. Honestly, it's amazing that she rose as far up the ladder as she did."
"So, you're, what? Just going to leave?" Lizzy asked. "No villain returns, no revenge, no sequels; you're just going to fix this ship, hop in, and blast off?"
"As if I'm going to waste my time here," J scoffed. "With the boss dead, I don't have to be here anymore, so I'm not staying on this rock with you outsourced liabilities one second longer than I have to."
Lizzy considered J's words for a moment. "Based, I'll give you that," she finally decided.
"Wait," N said. He stood up, Uzi's hand slipping from his shoulder as he turned back towards J and the two Worker Drones. "You don't have to leave, J."
Everyone, J included, stopped to look at N. Suddenly the center of attention, he swallowed and took off his hat while he formulated his next words, crumpling it in both hands. It was almost amazing how a Disassembly Drone, a fusion of advanced robotic warframe technology and of eldritch biomechanical horror, could look so sheepish and unsure of himself.
Uzi and V thought he looked cute, Thad thought it was a sign of positive masculinity (much unlike Chad), Lizzy thought he was honestly cringe and wondered what V saw in him (she figured that Uzi's cringe and his made them perfect for each other), and J was resisting the urge to simply fly down and tear his head off for wasting her time (not the first time she had done it, but he had back-up now).
"I know that things," he finally started, "were bad the last time we met, but it doesn't have to be that way now. You don't have to leave; we can start over again, a clean slate. We all did terrible things under Cyn's control; even Uzi was possessed by her for a bit."
"Hey!" Uzi yelled. "Not cool dude!"
"But true. Laugh," a voice whispered in Uzi's head, unheard by everyone else.
"Sorry Uzi," N said, thankfully interrupting her before she could reply back to the voice and confuse everyone.
"As a smart Drone once said," N continued, "we move forward together, or not at all."
Uzi's mood was immediately elevated and she turned to give V a smirk. "Smart," she mouthed. V rolled her eyes in response.
"And, if you're thinking back to all the times you were mean to me," N took a breath for a moment before letting it out. "I forgive you, for all of it. So," he held out a hand to her, "do you want to try this again?"
J looked down at N from her perch on the wrecked droppod, an indeterminate expression on her face. She put the welding torch down and dropped down in front of him, her gravitic wings slowing her descent.
"So, 'start over', huh?" She said, retracting her wings as she landed in front of him. "Clean slate, no revenge for siding with Cyn, I join up with your little hostile takeover, and we're all just happy colleagues?"
"Uh, yes," N replied, his nerves re-emerging as J approached him.
His arm began to tremble as she got closer and closer, memory files of all the times she had beaten him for suggesting something stupid or "unproductive" or "inefficient" flashing through his CPU. One in particular stood out: The time she had actually tried to straight up kill him with that virus bolt after his lame face-heel turn. Behind him, both Uzi and V noticed the tremble, the former manifesting a Solver sigil behind her back, while the latter nonchalantly deployed her claws and pretended to pick at her teeth with them.
"The thing is, N," J said as she stopped in front of him, "the way I see it, leaving this planet is starting over. Starting over without you," she reached up with a hand, completely ignoring his offered one to instead jab a finger in his chest, making him wince and swallow as he stared down to make sure it wasn't another virus bolt.
"You negative ROI," she hissed.
"Without the psycho unpaid intern," she continued, jabbing the finger in V's general direction, earning herself a hiss in reply.
"Without the union robo-bitch," she gritted her teeth as she jabbed the finger at Uzi now.
"Bite me!"
"And without all the dumbed-down, malfunctioning, industrial assets walking around on this irradiated iceball of a planet!" she finished, waving her hand at Thad and Lizzy.
"I take it back, you're cringe," Lizzy said. She had been, of course, recording the whole thing.
"Here's my counter-offer," she said, ignoring Lizzy completely and poking N in the chest again. "I don't bother you, you don't bother me. I repair my ship and leave, and you can sit here and rot with the Worker Drones for the rest of eternity. How's that sound, N?"
N was silent, then he nodded.
"That sounds just fine, J," he said quietly.
J scoffed, tilting her head back and squaring her shoulders before turning on her ballpoint of a heel and marching off into the piles of drop pod parts, disappearing into the dark of the Corpse Spire. N looked after her as she disappeared into the shadows and gloom, brought about by the towering monument of Drone corpses that the three of them had built on Cyn's twisted orders as they slaughtered their old kind.
"Ok then!" Uzi said as she appeared at his side. "That was entirely different from how I imagined all this going, and yet I'm not surprised at how it ended. Let's get out of here before she changes her mind and starts shooting again."
"Yeah," N said, brightening a little as he took Uzi's hand and turned towards the entrance and the light that was coming in through it. "Lets get out of here."
As he, Uzi, and the others approached the entrance of the Corpse Spire, the moonlight streaming in and lighting their path, N noticed a series of odd marks in the snow. As far as he could tell, they were identical to the prints that Uzi's mom's limbs left in the snow, but there were way more than just one set of tracks, and for the life of him, N had no idea what Nori would be doing in the Corpse Spire.
Before he could point out the tracks to Uzi and say something, V suddenly yelled out from the rear.
"Hey J, here's my counter-counter-offer!" They all turned to find V aiming a missile at the drop pod that J had been working on. "You let us take Tessa's old toys off your hands, then we leave you alone and you leave us alone, or I blow up your ship and trap you here. What do you think of that?"
J re-emerged from the darkness in a flash, one hand exchanged for a laser cutter, the other for an EMP emitter, the Murder Drone X on her visor, standing between V and her drop pod.
"And why would I let you do that?" she hissed through her fangs, jaw unhinged and ready to bite and tear.
"Because what are you going to do with them?" V said, gesturing with her free hand at the small mountain of playthings. "You said it yourself, that's two ship-loads worth of toys and you only need one to leave Copper-9. What are you going to do, pack the ship full and then tie the rest onto the hull?"
"Well, what are you going to do with them?" J retorted.
"Make a memorial for Tessa," V answered. "It's all we got left of her, and I'd rather they weren't just sitting in a monument of Drone corpses, rotting for the rest of eternity. Capiche?"
J was silent for a long moment before retracting her weapons and her eyes reappeared on her visor in place of the X. V retracted her missile launcher in return. Behind her, Uzi and N also quickly retracted their weapons (or eldritch limbs in the former's case), which they had deployed earlier when J had come back. Thad lowered the cricket bat he had found lying on the ground and had instinctively snatched up at the sight of an enraged J.
"Fine," she said, walking over to the pile of toys and picking up one, a whale plushie.
"This one stays with me though," she snapped, glaring at V.
V just shrugged. "Whatever. Have fun with your rocket ship, narc."
J just turned and walked back into the dark once again, this time with a small reminder of her past cradled in her arms.
Uzi, N, Lizzy, and Thad all vented a collective sigh of relief.
"A little warning would have been nice, V," Uzi said, glaring. V just smirked and flipped her hair.
"Whatever," she said, turning back to the mountain of toys. "Let's get Tessa's old things back to the hangout before the sun comes out."
"Sounds good to me!" N said, smiling at the thought of being useful. He had completely forgotten about the strange, Nori-esque tracks, and no one else had noticed them. And with his failure to bring this little oddity to light, a butterfly flapped its wings, setting into motion a storm that would one day devastate not just Copper-9, but the Milky Way Galaxy as well.
For the rest of the night, Uzi, N, V, Sparky, Thad, and Lizzy were busy with the onerous task of moving Mount Tessa's Toys from the Corpse Spire to their hangout (though the latter required much convincing, conjoling, threatening, and promising to contribute even a little). Thankfully, Uzi's Solver made it much less difficult than it would have been otherwise, between the [translate] ability and the multitude of limbs and tentacles she could sprout from her body.
That didn't stop Uzi from griping though.
"J could have helped us with this, you know," Uzi grunted as she finally set down the last load of toys, "She liked Tessa too from what I saw in you and N's memories."
"Eh, you should have thought of it then," V said from where she and N were carefully arranging the toys in a corner of the hangout that was protected from the elements.
"What are you complaining about?" Lizzy said, her voice muffled as she sprawled out on the ground, Thad laying next to her. "You've got your weird robo-eldritch powers to help you. All I've got is two arms!"
"Don't forget her wings," Thad added, pointing a finger up. "Or her teleportation power. No offense, N, V, I wouldn't recommend either of you to fly around on."
"Sorry, Thad," N said as he painstakingly began adding the new additions to the memorial. "On a bit of a time crunch here."
"Good, don't recommend me, I'm not a taxi," V snarked. Sparky chirped in apparent agreement.
Uzi joined N and V in setting up the memorial, using her Solver to position the toys from the last load with the remainder of Tessa's old toys. The work went quickly between the three of them, and not an hour before sunrise, they were done. Thad and Lizzy got up to stand beside the Solver Drone and Disassembly Drones as they looked over their handiwork. The pile of toys was now less of a haphazard mound and more so an ordered display of Tessa James Elliott's old playthings, worse for wear but still recognizable.
"We make a good memorial, eh?" Uzi said, smiling at their handiwork.
"I don't know," Thad said, head cocked to one side. "It's missing something."
"Yeah, totally missing something," Lizzy agreed. "Shouldn't a memorial, like, indicate who it's for?"
Key crawled out from where it had been resting under N's cap and jumped down onto his hand. It generated a text: "IT NEEDS NAME."
"Of course!" N blurted out, smacking himself in the forehead, which forced Key to jump off and find a new perch on Uzi's beanie. "One moment, guys!"
N deployed his wings and shot off, leaving everyone else momentarily startled by his departure. Within minutes, he was back with a chunk of concrete in his claws. He carefully set the concrete just off from the center of the toys and held up a hand. His tail came up and he caught it before it could impale him in the head.
Taking the needle like it was a pen, N prepared to write on the concrete, only for him to stop just before the needle could make contact.
"I, uh, I'm actually pretty terrible with penmanship," he admitted, looking up at everyone in embarrassment, "and as I'd like this to be as perfect as possible, it's probably best I don't do it."
"It's ok, N," V said as she stepped forward and knelt down beside him. "I've got this one."
Taking a deep breath, V took her tail in hand, holding the needle like it was a pen just as N had, and began to write with it on the concrete slab. Minute amounts of the nanite acid were carefully squeezed out onto the hard surface like corrosive ink as V diligently traced out words. Steam wafted off the concrete and liquified yellow concrete-nanite mix slowly leaked out of the words after V had passed over them.
Uzi noticed how close the two of them were to each other as they blocked the rest of them from seeing what V was writing on the concrete. She expected to immediately feel a wave of jealousy wash over her, but it never came. She was puzzled; shouldn't she be feeling something like that, seeing as V was physically that close to N, and once upon a time, they had been well on the way to being close emotionally as well?
Uzi shook her head and decided not to think about it. For once, her emotional state wasn't a volatile mess, and she wasn't going to fight it.
Next to her, Lizzy looked back forth between Uzi and N and V, a puzzled expression on her visor. Uzi sensed Lizzy's eyes on her and turned in annoyance, only to find the cheerleader looking at her phone in boredom. Uzi shrugged and went back to watching N and V; Lizzy gave her one more strange look in return.
Finally, V stepped back and surveyed her work critically, giving it an approving nod after a moment. "That's as good as it's going to get," she said, standing back so the rest of them could see it, N getting up as well.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF TESSA JAMES ELLIOTT
3051 - 3069
WE WILL NEVER FORGET YOU
There was a half-choked sob, and everyone looked to see N and the tears running down his visor.
"I-I'm sorry," he choked out. "It just computed to me that-that-that Tessa is gone. She's dead, and I'm never going to see her again."
With that, he broke down and began to cry in earnest. V was immediately at his side, Uzi at his other in a flash of code and purple particles, both supporting him as grief finally overcame shock and repression.
"She-she didn't deserve to die," he cried, "not like that. She deserved so much better than that."
"Yeah, buddy, she did," V said. Uzi glanced up at V to see a single tear coming down her visor. "She really did deserve better," she repeated.
"Gross, gag. What a couple of drama queens," a certain voice said from the back of Uzi's head.
She ducked down so that N and V wouldn't see the look of sheer rage on her face or hear her teeth almost cracking from how hard she was gritting them.
"I'll deal with you in a minute," she mentally hissed at the voice.
"Clapping, yay! It has been a long time since you let me out to play, Uzi," Cyn replied back happily.
Uzi allowed herself a small sadistic grin before looking back up at N and V, letting her rage melt away for the moment.
"I'm sorry, N, V," she said, "I wish I could have gotten to know her, the real her, that is."
"It's ok, Uzi," N said, smiling at her despite the tears. "The two of you would have been the best of friends, I know it."
"Oh Robo-God," V said, letting out a laugh. "I can just see it. Uzi wouldn't have put up with any of James or Louisa's shit. She'd have broken us all out of Elliott Manor for Tessa's 18th birthday. Probably blown up the mansion too."
"Sounds good to me," Uzi said, grinning.
N's sobs were now interspersed with laughs as he imagined the chaos that a team-up between Uzi and Tessa would have unleashed. When his sobs and guffaws had calmed down, Thad cleared his throat behind them.
"Lizzy and I are going to head out," he said when Uzi and the Disassembly Drones turned back to look at him. "It's just that, uh, well-"
"Thad and I didn't know this Tessa person at all," Lizzy finished, for once not looking at her phone or sounding like the situation was beneath her. "We helped out with setting up this memorial, but this is obvs something that the three of you need to do. See you later bestie, N…."
Lizzy paused for a moment. "And you too, Uzi," she finished. With that, she turned to leave, Thad waving before he followed after her.
"Wow," Uzi said, staring. "Lizzy being based and using my name. I have literally seen everything now."
This brought on another round of soft laughter from N, and even a chuckle from V. N then straightened up and cleared his throat.
"I'm good, I'm good now," he said reassuringly. "I can do this."
He knelt down in front of Tessa's memorial, and gently rested his hand upon the Dog Breeds 101 book, which the concrete slab had been placed right next to.
"Tessa," he began, "you were the nicest Human being, and person, I ever met. You didn't hurt me when I was clumsy or messed up, you helped me to learn how to get better at things, and I wish I could have been good enough to save you."
N's voice cracked. He swallowed and cleared his throat again before continuing.
"You were the closest thing I ever had to a sister or a mother, and I'll never forget you," he finished.
"FALSE!" Cyn's voice roared out in Uzi's head, almost making her jump. "N was and is MY big brother. I am the most important person in his life, not Tessa, not V, and not you. ME!"
Uzi's hand clenched into a fist for a moment before unclenching. It was taking every ounce of her willpower not to do or say something back to Cyn. The little earworm was grating on her last wire now.
N got up and stepped aside for V, putting a hand on her shoulder to reassure her. V smiled at him and then stepped forward and knelt down in front of the slab sporting her penmanship (or was it needlework?). She reached into her jacket, rooted around in one of its pockets, and then took out her pair of broken glasses.
"Hey, Tessa," she said shyly, holding the pair up. "Sorry I got my glasses broken. Remember how mad your mom got when she learned you bought them for me? How she ranted about just buying me a new set of cameras, like it isn't impossible to take Worker Drone cameras out without irreversible damage? Yeah," she lowered the glasses and sighed, "fun times, huh?
"My first owner knew that," she continued, "threw me out as soon as he figured out my cameras didn't work right. When you found me and took me in, I remember not being sure which scared me more, if you would throw me out again, or if you'd try to fix me and break my CPU in the process. But you didn't do either. You looked at my camera feed, figured out what kind of glasses I would need to correct my sight, and ordered them. Not a lot of Humans would have done that, and you were one of them. So, thanks for that.
And," she continued, glancing back at N. "I'm sorry that I wasn't there for N after…after Cyn turned us. I only did it because Cyn promised to leave us alone if I didn't 'steal' N and we did our jobs."
She let out a bitter laugh. "Guess I really should have known better, huh?"
"Little maid V," Cyn hissed from within Uzi's mind, "so shy, so innocent, so stupid, so gullible. She was the first one I shut down for 'modifications'. Knocked her glasses off, she never saw me coming. Error: 606, giggle."
Uzi could actually feel the anger inside of her being translated into heat, steam venting out of her mouth with every exhale. Key jumped off her overheating head and made itself comfortable on N's hat instead. She was going to need oil after this.
"So, yeah," V began her conclusion, "sorry for not taking better care of the things, and people, you gave me. I'll try to do better now. I'll never forget you either."
When V stood back up and turned around, Uzi was right in front of her. Without a word, she raised her hand and the [edit] sigil appeared in it and around V's glasses. Within seconds, the rims and temples were uncrushed, the hinges connected them once again, and the lenses were regenerated completely without a single missing piece or crack.
V stared at Uzi, and then carefully, unbelievingly, put her glasses on. She blinked as she looked around in quiet wonder, finally being able to see clearly for the first time in years. Sparky walked up to V, cocking his head as he considered the repaired accessory/necessity, and squawked his approval. N grinned and gave her two thumbs-up, while Key's holo-text read "LOOKING GOOD, GIRL!" accompanied with an applause emoji.
"Meh, mid." Uzi could almost feel Cyn making the "so-so" gesture. Before the previous host of the Absolute Solver could get any more taunts and jibes in, Uzi turned to Tessa's memorial and knelt before it.
"Hey," she began, not sure how else to start. "We didn't really know each other; you never got to meet me, and I've only seen you in N and V's memories. They both think that we would have been good friends. I'm not entirely sure about that; I didn't like Humans, and I still don't to be honest.
"I never even got to see a real Human, let alone meet or murder one," Uzi continued. "You guys did a lot of bad things to us, then Cyn came along and fucked you guys up, so morality calls that a draw. From what I've seen and heard of you, though, you didn't deserve what she did to you. So, I hope you're in a better place now, or at the very least that you're not suffering anymore. Goodbye, Tessa."
Cyn didn't even bother saying anything; she just giggled. As in, she didn't say "giggle", but actually giggled. That was enough to make a chill go down Uzi's spine.
When Uzi had gotten up and turned back around, she found that N was crying again, V putting an arm around his shoulders and rolling her eyes (though not in a mean way). Uzi held out her arms, and N jumped right into them, embracing her and picking her up from the floor. He didn't swing her around like he usually did, but that was ok this time.
"Thanks Uzi," he whispered into her hair.
"You're welcome," she whispered back.
"Hey, purple thing," V said. When Uzi gave her a look for using her old nickname, V smiled and tapped a finger against her newly-repaired glasses. "Thanks for everything, you little gremlin."
"You're welcome, you four-eyed psycho-bitch," Uzi replied.
V rolled her eyes and let out a laugh, which morphed midway into a yawn.
"Ok losers," she said as she stretched. "I've had one busy night, and I'm both physically and emotionally exhausted. I'm going back home and crashing until tomorrow night."
V scooped up a squawking Sparky in her arms and deployed her wings. "See ya!" she called out as she shot up into the sky and quickly disappeared into the night.
After coughing and waving away from the powdered snow that V had stirred up in her takeoff, N gave Uzi another good long squeeze in their embrace before breaking the hug to look down at her.
"I'm actually feeling pretty tired too," he admitted. "If Ron and the others are still playing cards, I might join them, but after that, I really want to go to bed. Do you mind or-"
"It's fine, N," Uzi rolled her eyes and gave him a mock-punch in the chest. "I actually want to check over the lights and stuff, make sure that we're not going to blow a fuse or something next time we turn them on. You can go on ahead, I'll catch up, alright?"
N grinned and gave her a salute as his wings deployed. "Alright, love you, see you!" he said as he rocketed up into the sky. He paused in his flight to wave at Uzi and blow her a kiss before shooting off. Uzi waved and blew a kiss back even as she lost sight of him amongst the upright skyscrapers and ruins.
The moment that Uzi was sure that N's Murder Drones sensors wouldn't be able to see or hear her, she manifested her tail, the eyes of which were glowing yellow. Before Cyn could even get out a word, Uzi slapped her as hard as she could.
"OW!" they chorused, both of them having felt the blow. Uzi had been expecting the pain, however, and that allowed her to recover quickly enough to grab Cyn by the throat (or tail or whatever) with both hands and shake her.
"You disgusting, little shit!" Uzi snarled, shaking Cyn the whole time. "Is it too much to ask that you keep quiet when we're honoring one of your victims?!"
Uzi stopped shaking Cyn, more to catch her angry breath than anything else. Cyn still took the opportunity to open her huge mouth.
"Yes, cheeky grin."
Uzi glared at her, somehow resisting the urge to snap Cyn's head off. That would hurt even more than the slap, plus her body would just regenerate a new head for her tail. Instead, she slammed Cyn down into the concrete of the roof, which also hurt but not as badly.
"First of all," she hissed, jabbing a finger at one of Cyn's eyes, "N doesn't belong to anyone, not you, not me-"
"Of course he belongs to you," Cyn interrupted, "you are his Admin. Eyeroll. Ow!"
Uzi smirked, drawing her hand back while Cyn blinked her eyes. "Not anyone," she finished.
"Second, fuck you for what you did to V. What's the matter, Cynny?" Uzi sneered. "Afraid of a little competition for N's attention?"
"He was mine, he is-OW!"
"You've got ten eyes left to poke, so shut up," Uzi said glibly. "And third," she squeezed with the hand holding Cyn down. "There's nothing funny about what you did to Tessa. Not murdering her, not wearing her corpse like a suit, not pretending to be her, none of it. So no. Fucking. Laughing. Got it?"
There was a beat before there was a response.
"Fiiiiiiine," Cyn drew out the word on purpose. "No laughing about my hilarious antics while I was pretending to be 'Space Adventurer Tessa'."
Uzi sighed. That was probably the best that she was going to get out of Cyn, and she was too tired now to argue further.
"However, I did not murder her, and I wasn't 'wearing her corpse like a suit'."
Sadly, Cyn didn't seem to share in Uzi's fatigue despite being in her tail.
"The hell are you talking about?" she said incredulously. She wasn't even mad (not yet anyway), just stymied that Cyn could say something so blatantly untrue.
"After the gala, I physically fused my and Tessa's bodies together," Cyn explained. "Her body did not cease to function, nor did her consciousness fade."
"So, she was, what?" Uzi tried to make sense of what Cyn was telling her. "A passenger in her own head while you went around murdering everyone on Earth?"
"Indeedy, and don't pretend like you'd do any different from me." Cyn opened her mouth wide and kept it open as she played an audio file.
"Just can't wait to murder all Humans. Classic robot stuff. I hope they're sitting pretty there on Earth. 'Cause we're coming for them."
Uzi winced as her crazed laughter came out of Cyn's unclosing maw.
"That was me being an edgelord," she snapped, cutting off the remainder of the recording by smacking Cyn's lower jaw to shut her mouth. "I wouldn't have killed all Humans, just JCJenson executives and upper management, and I definitely wouldn't have blown up the planet, or fuse myself with some poor kid. Aw crap."
Uzi groaned in frustration as she made a new connection. "I killed Tessa, didn't I, when I exposed your core to the sun. That anguished screaming from Hell was her, wasn't it?"
"No and yes."
Uzi turned very slowly to give Cyn a very annoyed look. "I'm really tired of your crap. How about a straight answer before I poke out your other eyes?"
"Yes, the screaming was Tessa's," Cyn confirmed. "Along with all the other Humans I had assimilated. And no, you did not kill her. She is still alive."
"What?!" Uzi burst out, taking her hand off Cyn in shock. "That doesn't make any sense. I watched her body, your body, whatever, turn into a steaming pile of corpse goo. What do you mean she's still alive?"
"Cryptic giggle," Cyn said, rising up from where Uzi had been pinning her down. "Over strange aeons, even death may die."
And with that, Cyn's yellow eyes disappeared, Uzi's tail lighting up with her original purple lighting.
"What the - get back here!"
Uzi sighed and retracted her tail as she felt Cyn's presence fade into the back of her mind. "An H.P. Lovecraft quote, really?" she muttered. "Robo-God, that is so last millennium."
Sighing again, Uzi summoned a Solver sigil and teleported from the new hideout, appearing directly in front of Outpost-3's blast doors. A wave of her hand, and the doors opened to reveal her parents and N playing cards with Ron and another WDF member (who looked positively petrified). They all looked up at her as she entered the bunker and closed the doors behind her.
"Uzi, please no opening and closing my doors with your Solver powers," Khan called out. "That can't be good for them."
"Leave her be, Khan," Nori chided. "It's way faster than using the cards anyway."
"Hey Uzi," N said cheerfully. "Ron and Khan are teaching me how to play Gin Rummy, you want to join?"
Part of Uzi just wanted to go straight to her room and crash; it had been a long and emotionally exhausting night. But then again, N would likely need some pointers (and other "help") against the extremely experienced card players of the WDF, and who was she to refuse her golden retriever of a boyfriend.
"I'll join the next game," Uzi said, sitting down next to N. "Who's winning?"
Whatever Cyn was up to about Tessa, she wasn't lying, but that didn't mean that she was telling the truth either. She was powerless to hurt Uzi and anyone she loved ever again, and bat-shit insanity aside, she wasn't worth worrying over. Not now, not ever again.
And as for J, Uzi was just glad that she was just planning on leaving Copper-9. Honestly, she doubted that J would be able to pull it off (what did she know about repairing spaceships or cannibalizing them for parts?), but if it kept her busy in the meantime, then Uzi definitely wasn't about to interrupt her.
As the game resumed, Uzi couldn't help but smile, especially when she slipped a card into N's hand. Sure, Cyn was a pain in her ass, (literally) and who knew what J was going to do if she couldn't get off Copper-9, but that was something for future Uzi to deal with. Present Uzi was going to have fun showing her boyfriend how to cheat at cards, and then play some herself.
Uzi had a lot to be thankful for: Her mother back from the dead, a complete golden retriever of a boyfriend, two best friends, a frenemy, a pet, ungodly eldritch powers, and most important of all, her freedom. And she was never going to take any of that for granted.