(Serial Designation N)
It was just a minute after we woke up with the sun dipping below the horizon and had some oil that the music started up. It wasn't the first time the Scrapper had set up hidden speakers to blast music, typically metal songs from the late 1900s to the early 2000s, and I didn't think it'd be the last.
War is coming swiftly
The border is closing in
We're a company of soldiers
Mere 40 rifles strong
I sighed and got ready to go looking for the speakers along with J and V, only to see a flash--
Nearly a year of getting ambushed and attacked by the Scrapper had been honing my reflexes, so I dropped like I got hit with an EMP and something streaked millimeters above my head, my cap getting vaporized as a sonic boom echoed out and an explosion from the impact went off behind me. I threw myself behind cover-- actual cover of some of the bodies on the Spire's exterior --and flinched as las bolts bored holes in the bodies I was hiding behind.
All alone
Stand alone
"AMBUSH!" I screamed out.
"Thank you captain obvio--" V screamed back, before transitioning into a scream of fear as a staccato of booming rounds started impacting against her flared wings, the bullets exploding on contact and blowing her processors out after trashing her wings. I fired a laser at the muzzle flashes, only for a different worker to jump in front of the one who'd just been shooting with a shield that blocked the laser.
Ardenner ground is burning
And Rommel is at hand
As the Blitzkrieg's pushing harder
The war is all around!
"Oh biscuits," I muttered as I ducked behind cover, thought better of it, and then dove further to the side just before a rocket streaked through the night and blew up the spot I was just occupying.
All around
Hold your ground!
I threw myself out of cover, wings straining, and scooped up V's body and landed behind more cover just as a splash of automatic laser fire chased me along. "Hey, J?"
"What?!?" J shrieked, panicking as she let loose a salvo of rockets and then meeped as the worker with the laser rifle shot four of them out of the air before a flicker of red light signified two knives flying out to intercept the last two.
Fight for 18 days of battles
No odds are on our side
Few will fight for all
Until the bullets are gone
"I think the Scrapper likes Sabaton, because Resist and Bite is the thirtieth song he's played from them!"
"NOW IS NOT THE TIME N!" She shouted as she sprayed on full auto over her cover without looking at where she was shooting. Not a second later, she yelped, pulling her hands back, one of them now having a smoking hole in them. I risked peaking past the rapidly deteriorating pile of bodies I was hiding behind as to look, and saw a girl with pink optics holster two laser pistols, before pulling out a pair of curved swords… that she clicked the hilts together and then extended into a whirler.
I grabbed V and moved, just in time for a hail of explosive fire to erase my previous hiding spot. "Avanti! Avanti!" I heard the Scrapper gleefully shout. Footsteps crunching against the snow told me things would close to a melee fast.
We! We will resist and bite!
Bite hard, cause we are all in sight
We! We take up arms and fight!
Fight hard, resist and do what's right!
V's head came back in, and she took seconds we kinda didn't have to get her bearings, before shaking her head and shifting her hands to claws as she flew out, constant ambushes leading her to fly way more erratically and actually dodge some shots as she closed, going for the whirler girl, who deflected her first strike with an unnatural speed and then somersaulted back from the second. She embedded her whirler into the earth, grabbing it with both hands and pivoted on it like a pole-dancer as she dodged V's stinger, and then her foot kicked out and I saw barrels on the boots--
--V staggered back as she barely ducked fast enough to make the laser boots only shoot out a headband bulb instead of going straight through her processors. I shook my head and started moving in myself since the gunfire had died down, J backing me up.
No matter our fighting
Their numbers will still count
We're outgunned and few in numbers
We're doomed to flag or fail
I had to stop from coming in to help V, because a bunch of knives hit the earth in my way and exploded on impact-- Sweet Mother of Puppies, why are the knives exploding?!? I thought. I glanced in the direction they came from, and saw Uzi and a girl who had purple hair and red optics holding one of those bulky explosive pistols the Scrapper carried in one hand and also using magic with the other. I blinked. Well… this was scary.
We fought hard
Held our guard
"Hi N!" Uzi said. "This is my cousin!"
"Doll," the girl named herself. "V butchered my parents in front of me, but I settled that grudge recently."
But when captured by the Axis
And forced to tell the truth
We will tell it with a smile
We will surprise them with a laugh
I… didn't really know how to respond to that, because on the one hand, V got really traumatized by that. On the other hand, I was pretty sure that Uzi was sapient because of the magic powers, which would mean her cousin was sapient since she also had magic, and that meant that even though her parents weren't sapient, she still saw them as her parents and V kinda… yeah…
We are all
We were all
"I'm… sorry?" I hedged.
Doll turned to Uzi. "This is why I don't have any issues with you liking him, cuz."
"Doll!" Uzi protested.
We were told to hold the border
And that is what we did
Honoured were our orders
In despite of our foe
I heard V cry out, and glanced over, just in time to see her reeling from a swing from the Scrapper's entrenching tool to the face, and then the blonde girl with the pink optics darted around him, whirler now back as curved swords again as she engaged a V on the backfoot. The Scrapper tagged in as needed to keep V's stinger and wings at bay.
We! We will resist and bite!
Bite hard, cause we are all in sight
We! We take up arms and fight!
Fight hard, resist and do what's right!
Then I saw another worker with blue optics and black hair coming in from the side with a glaive, and shouted out. "V!"
V turned around a second too late, just in time for the glaive to stab straight through her head. I cringed. "I don't hate you personally anymore," the girl said to V's body, "But I still really needed to do that." She pulled the glaive out and V crumpled down.
Gloria fortis miles
The Wehrmacht closing in
Adversor et admorsus
The Boar against the Eagle
I glanced over to J with a sinking feeling, and saw her being tag-teamed by the guy with the shield, who had some kind of shock mace, and a different girl with blue optics with an even bigger chainsword. I did a quick mental check on weapons, and realized I was missing someone with a railgun. "There's a guy ready to blast my head off, isn't there?" I asked, giving a shaky laugh.
Gloria fortis miles
The Wehrmacht closing in
Adversor et admorsus
The Boar against the Eagle
"Yeah, sorry," Uzi said.
I blinked, my head briefly flashing with pain, and I had a sudden mental image of a different drone with purple hair. Oh… oooooooooooooooooooooh. "I think I deserve this," I muttered.
"N, you don't--" I cut Uzi off.
We! We will resist and bite!
Bite hard, cause we are all in sight
We! We take up arms and fight!
Fight hard, resist and do what's right!
"Ahahaha…" I gave a broken, awkward laugh. "I… think I might have accidentally kinda stung your mom with Nanite Acid before someone hit me with a dumpster." Uzi and Doll both kinda just froze for a second. I heard J scream out in tandem with a blast of electricity and a hail of automatic laser fire, and a check with my headband told me that there were two more workers responsible for that, joining the two with the chainsword and shield and mace-- aaaaaaaaaand, J was offlined. Cool… Super NOT cool, actually, and really not helping my sanity right now. "So… I think I might have disassembled your mom? I'm not a hundred percent sure, because a lot of my memories back then are fuzzy or just… gone, now that I think about it, but I'm sure that isn't an issue, and it'll sort itself out!" I said with a brittle smile and entirely false confidence.
In the peripheral view from my headband, I could see the Scrapper just staring at me with a flabbergasted expression, and the music suddenly cut off right as the song finished. The girl with the blond hair and pink optics glanced at him, and despite not seeming to notice it, he looked at her. She flashed a [WOW, you weren't exaggerating] on her visor, and Scrapper just shook his head and sighed. The girl with the glaive, who'd spent the past 30-odd seconds extending a middle finger to V's body while some kind of exothermic, probably thermite, charge burned through her head, actually stopped to also look at me with a slack jaw. The girl with the electric gun started laughing, and was joined by the girl with the purple streak in her blue hair and the boy with the sunglasses and really scary gatling shotgun. The girl with the really big chainsword and the one with the shield and mace looked up from where they were putting another charge to keep J's regeneration from going after and just stared at me with disappointed expressions.
"You really know how to pick them, cuz," Doll told Uzi.
"Maaaaaaaaaaaan, dad's gonna ground me again," Uzi whined.
Oh. That didn't sound good. Uuuuuuuuhhh… Oh! I thought. Idea! "Wouldn't his grounding not count if he's not sapient?" I asked.
The two cousins face-palmed in tandem, and Doll actually knocked her ushanka off, and then I just… froze. I ignored everything else, and just stared at what was in front of me until Doll used her magic to yoink back the ushanka and then placed it on her head. "Is that a Disassembly Drone headband?" I asked while raising a finger.
"Surprise again?" Uzi said, as she took her beanie off and had a purple headband to match her cousin's red one. "But no, these things are sick as hell!" She tapped one of the neon purple bulbs with a finger, and it did look really nice on her. "I can see stuff directly above me, and in a 200 degree radius of whatever's in front of me, and I synced it up to all the other sensor and visual settings I got," she bragged with a grin.
"You also had to code a program just to interpret all the incoming data for us," Doll remarked.
"And it worked!" Uzi shot back with a smug, kinda cute grin.
"Yeah, they're pretty awesome," I remarked out loud. Then I paused, as I came to a realization. "You know, cannibalizing our parts and doing so that effectively is definitely a good mark on the sapience tally?"
"Huh?" Doll went.
"Oh robo-god," Uzi sighed.
"Well," I said, "The Company says you aren't sapient, and I've seen a lot of dumb workers to support that, but I think magic powers are a good indicator that you two are different!" I said with a grin. "So… at least you being into me insn't reverse bestiality Uzi?" I finished in a hesitant tone. The Scrapper facepalmed, and so did the blonde drone with the pink optics.. "Also… sorry that your brother isn't sapient." The Scrapper removed his hand from his face just to facepalm again.
"Holy shit," Uzi muttered.
"Баран," Doll added. "Not the morally questionable or unintelligent parts of that, but wow you're dense and stubborn as a goat."
I suddenly came up with a zinger as a comeback! "Isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery?" I said, pointing at her headband. "Are you into me too? Is that why Uzi introduced you?"
Uzi started cracking up, full blown howling with laughter, and so did the Scrapper, and Doll's eyemotes went hollow. "No! No! No!" she shouted, waving her arms back and forth. "Thad, shoot him already!"
"Is he the cool-looking one I haven't seen y--"
I was offlined by a depleted uranium dart travelling through my head at Mach 8 that same second.
I wasn't really sure how to feel after I woke up with a bunch of stolen body parts, though… but the three barrels of oil definitely helped. I put my hand to my chin. "I think I won that verbal exchange…" I muttered.
"N? What the hell are you talking about?" V asked.
"NOTHING!" I shouted.
___
(Uzi)
Two days before Joe's 11th Birthday-- I should ask when his actual birthday is-- and I was grounded by dad again because N admitted that he "killed" mom. But this time it was only for a week, since dad was still really mad at mom. So now I was banned from anything that wasn't a project in the Scrapyard again. But hey, at least N thought that Doll and I specifically were sapient? Small victories, I guess…
I sighed as I finished installing my latest attempts at replicating nanite acid neutralizing spit without the Solver being involved in the nanites in the spit on a test drone shell I'd fabricated. Now I just had to program it to spit on some nanite acid and see if it worked. To that end I had some nanite acid waiting in a petri dish literally made of dad-grade metals, and then commanded the non-sapient shell to go spit on it. The nanite acid fizzled out in seconds. I waited a bit for it to get more spit in its mouth, and then had it spit in a second dish. I'd need some more prolonged testing before I'd be ready to ask everyone to install it, but I was tentatively calling this a success!
I stepped back from the table, went to run out of the room with a grin on my face, and then stopped at the door before sheepishly walking back to go and safely store all the remaining acid for testing in clearly labeled dad-grade containers, and silently hoped that the 4th Wall just missed that during a scene transition. Then I ran out the room with a big grin on my face, looking for Joe.
I found Joe in his own workshop, one that tended to have less weapons and was more focused on armor and detection systems. I saw a bunch of notes at a glance that looked like he was trying to set up a miniature LIDAR that he could fit in the combat frames, but that left me a bit confused, because last I'd checked a couple weeks back, he'd been working away at dad's Quantum Interdiction fields. "Hey, bro?" I asked as I came in.
Joe raised a finger, and I saw a bunch of code scroll past on a computer at stupidly fast speeds, as he slapped it together in overclock, before it stopped just as suddenly, and then he sat back. "You know, I'm getting cyber-stuff at absurd speeds, even for overclocking and cheating as much as I do," Joe remarked. He shrugged. "Eh, don't question good fortune. What's up, sis?"
I… it still felt surreal sometimes to have that. I had a freaking Isekai Protagonist as an older brother. Someone who… was really flawed in some ways, but hadn't crossed a line he shouldn't and was trying to save everyone as hard as he could. He crashed into my life and did everything he could to help all of us, got cuz back into my life and had my back through everything. I still remembered him literally putting himself between me and everyone else when people were screaming at me over liking V and yelling back at them to blame him instead. I remembered him sorting dad out. Walking with me to classes and threatening to dig a trench through people who tried to bully me. Literally standing there to inject me with oil as I used my Solver for the first time.
So I just walked up to him and gave him a hug. "Thanks for being my brother," I told him.
"Thanks for being my sister," He told me, hugging me back.
We stayed like that for a few seconds, before he pulled back with a small grin on his face and we both stepped back. "So, what else did you wanna talk about?"
I narrowed my eyemotes. "I can't just tell you I love you?"
"You wouldn't run all the way over to me to do just that unless you were having a mental health crisis," Joe replied. "But I love you too… in the familial sense. Because some people on the other side of the 4th Wall are probably still shipping us."
"Those people suck," I deadpanned.
"Yeah, but they're always gonna exist," Joe said in a depressed tone. "But what else is up?"
"Weren't you working on dad's Quantum Interdiction Fields?" I asked.
"Well, your dad kinda wanted to take back over his personal project of, and I quote, 'Slamming a door in spacetime in the face of anything trying to teleport via means confined to our reality,' end quote." he shrugged. "So I gave it back to him, and now I'm working on a LIDAR that I can squeeze into the combat frames instead."
I blinked. Once. Twice. "Yeah, that checks out for dad," I said with a chuckle. Joe joined me.
"I think I just about got a design ready, I'm just optimizing code right now. Should have it ready before my birthday rolls around," he said.
I froze. "Uh, first, I think I actually got nanite acid neutralizing spit that doesn't rely on the Solver," I said.
Joe held up a hand. "Fuck yeah!" I high-fived him. "What else."
I looked him in the eyemotes, trying not to get uncomfortable with the extended optical contact. "When is your birthday?" I asked him. "Like, your real birthday, not Andrews."
Joe stared ahead for a couple seconds, and then went. "You know I'm surprised it took someone that long to ask me." He took a breath and let it out. "April 19th," he said, "Not giving the year, because of the risk of doxing another version of myself, but April 19th."
"How does that translate to Copper 9's calendar?" I asked.
"Fuck if I know," Joe said with a shrug. "But for simplicility's sake, I'll say 19 days into 4 months after the new year, so Pyralis 19th if you wanna argue that."
"So the same month as cuz?"
"Yep." Then Joe glanced to the side, and sighed. "Hey, Uzi?"
"You can always talk to me," I told him before he could even ask.
"Do…" Joe looked back at me. "Do you think it might… it might be possible for me to go home one day?" he asked. I blinked, eyemotes wide, and then he added. "I just… I want to let them know I'm okay. I don't… I don't wanna go back. I just… are they still looking for me? Did they finish mourning me? I'd… I'd even settle for just being able to send them a message."
I… I didn't know how to weigh in on that. I didn't think it was possible, but then, Joe did get here in the first place. But I didn't want to give Joe potentially false hope either, though. So… it was kinda underhanded, but I changed the subject. And besides, Joe got me into N and V. So at the risk of paraphrasing my future self, morality called this a draw. "You had online friends?" I asked him.
Joe looked wistful for a moment, walking over to a chair and sitting on it. I used my Solver, pulling over a different chair because I was still working on object duplication. Joe took a breath and let it out, a habit that he still kept even now. "I had… a bunch of online friends I met while reading fanfics on AO3 and Spacebattles," he started. "There was DarthAwesome, who may have been as unhinged as I was--"
"Someone as crazy as you?" I asked.
"Imagine how crazy shit could have been with someone else my level on unhinged running around!" Joe said with a grin and a chuckle.
"That'd be nuts," I agreed.
"Yeah." Joe trailed off, smiling. "Next was an artist I met on AO3. She went by ThatLazyPotato, and she was amazing, if a bit shy." His grin got a bit more wistful. "She was awesome," he added, before swapping verbal tracks to say, "I already told you about Aregulargamer, the writer of Drone Fortress, and Thorison, the one-and-only Meme Lord."
"They both sound awesome," I said.
"They were," Joe agreed. "There was also The Void King, who always liked everyone's posts and was a chronic insomniac, and a guy named Kreutonne who was a really big fan of J--"
"That was his defining character trait? He liked J?" I asked.
"He was cool!" Joe defended.
"Sorry," I said.
"Eh, I'll honor him by trying to save J," Joe said, "There was another nice dude I knew called Numair, who had a great sense of humor and was planning a react fic to a different story he liked, and two… technically two… other fic writers I knew. HyperspaceTrancer was writing his own MD fic with an OC helping you out and his character was supposed to somehow bag J."
"People really like J on the other side of the 4th Wall, huh?" I asked.
"Dude, everyone wanted more J content than what we got in canon!" Joe complained.
"I also knew a system called The Priors, or rather, a plurality-- multiple minds in the same body, and no, Multiple Personality Disorder is a misnomer and it's offensive," Joe said.
"So… multiple drones running on the same OS, but… for meat people?" I asked. Because that… that was confusing, even after overclocking and searching about it. Maybe I was having trouble getting it because as a drone, you could always just transfer the consciousness to a different body, but I guess a meat-person couldn't do that.
"It's… more nuanced than that, but I guess that explanation works for now. I'll walk you through it in more detail another time," Joe said. "I also had another friend who was a plurality system named Eragon. She was writing her own fic and had her first two alters, Outer and Shadow, ended up Self-Inserted into a younger sister OC to Uzi named Erma, who became an alter in their system in the fic… but I accidentally helped them turn Erma into a fully fledged alter in their head in real life."
"Wait," I said, a realization coming to me. "Were those other two times you mentioned a dream me or a hypothetical younger sister--"
"Yeah, I was referencing Eragon," he told me. "She literally had your younger sister in their head, who I was partly responsible for the existence of, which still blows my mind to this day, and she also had a Tulpa of you in her head."
"ME?!?" I shouted.
"Yeah, you," Joe confirmed. "Though… she acted in a way that was more in line with an alter than a non-sapient mental construct, so sometimes I wonder…" He shook his head. "No use wondering now, though…" He paused. "I think I was telling you about Integration once? One fucking hell of an AU, written by AxisRouge, as a CYOA on his youtube community posts. Great fic, even if Josephine was the worst," he muttered. "But I was friends with a couple folks on the Cone-Cil--"
"The Cone-Cil?" I asked.
"We were a shadow council that plotted to direct the fic under Axis' supervision, and all our avatars when we RP'd had traffic cones on their heads. Hence, the Cone-Cil instead of the council."
I snrked. "Okay, that's funny."
"Yeah, it was," Joe said. "I had three people on the Cone-Cil I was fond of, and two I considered proper friends. Ultrix was a nice woman, did some really good art in her free time. Once you're twelve in local years and there's no longer any moral or legal issues with showing you potentially suggestive art, I'm definitely gonna show you the art she did that Axis said was a dead-ringer for Kiss… fuck, when was that?" Joe wondered aloud. "I… fucking stupid corrupted memories. I have no clue when that was."
I stepped forwards and put a hand on his shoulder. "You'll get them back eventually, Joe," I told him.
"Thanks, Uzi," he replied, and then continued. "Mexes15 was a great friend of mine too, we had tons of fun discussing the fic, planning theories, trying to crack passwords, and the dude was a treasure-trove for Scary Story Time With Liam Lore. I… I miss the dude," he admitted. "And last but certainly not least was Der Svictan. Man, we both loved arguing with each other on everything and anything that wasn't 'save Doll at all costs,' he finished with a laugh.
"Why cuz specifically?"
"Svic was known as the Resident Doll Propagandist for a reason, and I always wanted to give her a better run than what canon dealt her," Joe said with a grin. "Huh, I wonder if he's jealous I got to meet Doll." He paused and blinked. "How the hell would he react to the fact that I rizzed her?"
I started laughing and Joe joined me. When we calmed down, he asked, "Any other questions?"
"Did I seriously have a mental construct of myself in someone else's head on the other side of the 4th Wall?"
Joe rolled his optics, and answered with a grin and, "Nevermind that Priors had an Uzi in her system, I can't recall how many times the you Eragon had made them pass along a "Bite Me" at a comment I made! And let's not forget that the multiverse is real! There's a timeline where we both got Isekai'd to here, and you got four siblings, though three of them are running on the same OS… unless the Uzi in Eragon's head was actually a full-blown alter created by Tuplamancy. In which case, you'd have five siblings, one of which is another you."
I laughed again. "That would be sick as hell!" I shouted. "And they sound like they're awesome people," I told him.
"I… I really wonder if I could see them again some day," Joe wondered aloud.
"I'd like to meet them too," I admitted.
"Thanks… for distracting me from my thoughts, sis," Joe said.
"That obvious?" I asked as I slumped.
"It still worked," he told me.
I grinned back at him. "You're welcome, bro."
___
(Joseph)
The day before my "11th" Birthday, I had a brilliant idea for a doomsday weapon, and the designs for it were code-named, "Operation: Praise the Sun, Here Comes the Dawn, Bitch!" Just in case whatever AU we were in involved having to fight the Solver on an interstellar scale, and I figured out wormholes later, I wanted to try and design a Nicoll Dyson Beam with which to decimate entire worlds with. Basically, it harnesses the full stellar output of a start like a Dyson Swarm or Dyson Sphere, but instead of using them to power things, it just fired a giant fucking laser! Because I was an unhinged maniac plotting the galactic Worker's Revolution, so I needed a Doomsday Weapon to fit the bill!
Now… that just raised one little issue… I needed to run the idea by Thad, because I didn't want to do shit this stupid without his stamp of approval. I was serious about running stuff this crazy by him first, and if he said no, I'd genuinely scrap the idea and come up with a different method to cause planetary-scale destruction. So, I called him up. Thankfully, he wasn't busy at the moment, and picked up the call.
"Wassup, Joe?"
"Eh," I said, "The ceiling, the sky, space, and somewhere out there, a nightmare beyond mortal comprehension that wants to kill us all," I shrugged even if he couldn't see it. "The usual. How's it going on your end?"
"Good enough," Thad started. "Apparently, the girls offering to tutor Penny gave Khan ideas, and he set up a peer tutoring system in the schools, so now I volunteer for that a few times a month."
"You have a way stronger sense of civic duty and community than I do, Thad," I told him.
"You're also an introvert and I'm an extrovert," Thad pointed out.
"True," I admitted. "Anyways, I had an idea I wanted to run by you because it's pretty unhinged."
I heard a sigh over the call. "What'd you come up with this time, Joe-bro?"
I sent some files on "Operation: Praise the Sun, Here Comes the Dawn, Bitch!" via DM, and aloud said, "Interplanetary scale Doomsday Weapon," I said. "Juuuuuuuuust in case for the Solver."
There was a few seconds of pause in real time as Thad perused the files in overclock, and I heard him sigh again. "I am… very concerned, Joe."
"In my defense, this is more just a case of me designing it because I wanna see what the biggest gun I could feasibly make is, and it'd take way too long to build unless I had dozens of Solver users to [EDIT] everything in as needed and also assemble the thing in a timely manner. But I'd rather have the designs ready and never need them than need a weapon on that scale and have nothing we could put together."
Thad was silent over the call for another few seconds. "Don't try and actually build one unless we somehow… robo-god I hope it doesn't happen," he muttered, "Don't try to put this thing together unless we actually need it, but go ahead and try to design one, Joe."
"Thanks, Thad," I told him. "Also, designing it shouldn't be too hard. The basis is essentially reworking a Dyson Swarm or Sphere from standard energy collection to instead fire a giant laser. Earth had the science and engineering to set up a Dyson Swarm back in 2020, they just didn't have the stuff needed to actually take a trip to Sol with millions if not billions of people to actually build the damn thing. It should be way easier to design this thing with 3000s tech. I'm gonna involve Uzi just because she'd be mad if I didn't include her in this, but honestly, I'm reasonably certain I could put together a proper blueprint for this feat of megaengineering solo!"
"Joe, I hope to robo-god we never need that thing," Thad told me.
I slumped, letting a bit of the vulnerability and fear I always felt creep into my tone. "Me too, Thad. Me too…"
___
(Doll)
On the 13th anniversary of the Core Collapse, I'd tracked Joe down in The Scrapyard. I'd found him designing… something that was apparently going to be massive should he actually build it. Liz had apparently asked when his actual birthday was back on his "birthday," but while I could just ask her, I wanted to find out myself.
"Dolly?" Joe asked, glancing over, grey optics hiding hurt but conveying care despite it. I… I wanted to spend time with him, help him let go of that pain. But that was a topic for when trying to pursue my own feelings didn't cause him emotional duress. So after my 12th Birthday.
"Joe?" I asked back. "When's your birthday? The one for you, not the one you…" I overclocked, and literally went through a thesaurus to find a good term, "Inherited," I settled on.
"And you're now the third person to ask me that," Joe shot back in Russian, before swapping to English. "Actually had a bit of an internal debate on how to convert the date from Earth's calendar to Copper 9's, but congrats, the way I went with puts me eleven days before the anniversary of you booting up for the first time, Dolly."
"That's a nice coincidence," I told him, grinning, and he smiled back. Then I got a bit nervous, because there was a second thing I wanted to talk to him about. "What… what was being a human like?" I asked.
Joe blinked, glancing down at the floor, his grin shifting to a slight frown. Not sad, just… contemplating something he probably preferred to leave in the past. "I… well, I had a sense of smell back when I was a meat person. I'd breathe-- with lungs, a diaphragm, the whole shebang --and then I'd get a signal in my brain that told me that a flower smelled sweet, or a pile of dog shit in the street smelled like… well… shit," he chuckled, and I joined him, "or the asshole sucking on a nicotine filled cancer-stick reeked," he finished.
"That's really weird," I admitted.
"It was a way for the body to identify hazards at range. Some things didn't make noise or weren't easily visible, but smell? That could tell you something dangerous was nearby. Imagine if you could smell oil? Or the scent of gunpowder? Does Nanite Acid have a cloying, sickly sweet smell that leaves a bad taste in your mouth?"
"Damn. I could see that being useful."
"Yeah," Joe agreed, "But to be fair, I don't think there's many pleasant smells on this hellhole, and besides, it's for the better I don't have lungs-- the asbestos and silicates in the air would have killed me quadrillions of times over by now." Joe shrugged. "But enough of that." He grabbed his hair and pulled his cap and wig off. "It's nice to have hair as long as I want it, but it's still weird to realize that I'm technically bald and that this isn't growing out of my head anymore."
"Do you have any advice?" I asked, realizing that Joe was uniquely positioned to help me cope with that aspect of my Solver changing my body.
"Get a brush," he told me. "Not tightly packed bristles. Preferably a wet brush. We can make one for you later. Try brushing the hair from the bottom first. Brush towards the end of the hair first, obviously, but better to untangle knots from the bottom than deal with extra resistance by cascading into multiple from the top. Rebecca's set you up with a good conditioner already, so just keep using that."
I stepped forwards and gave him a brief hug. Not romantic like I wanted, but platonic, for a friend who cared and helped me for no other reason than that he wanted to make me feel better. "Thanks, Joe," I mumbled.
"Prego, Doll," Joe replied, and then I pulled back, missing the coolness of his chassis but respecting him too much to drag the hug out.
"What…" I changed tracks because I didn't want to have him recall dysmorphia, "What was the strangest part of becoming a drone that isn't dysmorphia-related to you?"
"Definitely figuring out that my crotch was still an erogenous zone," he admitted, and I flushed. "That… not gonna talk about it in detail, for obvious reasons, but figuring that out through… experimentation… that was a weird week," Joe said, sounding a bit disturbed. "That's like… really different from when I was a human." He shook his head. "The perfect recall is also weird, but in a good way. It's a godsend, and the ability to rapidly absorb, internalize, and know information is both amazing and something that absolutely let me get as far as I have in this timeframe," he admitted.
"I can't imagine what it'd be like to just suddenly… not be able to remember something that I didn't make a conscious choice to remove from my memories," I told him.
"I'm really thankful that it retroactively applied to my first life," Joe said. "So I won't forget my Isekai knowledge, my first family's faces, or the online friends I had. At least a part of them will always be with me," he finished, with a melancholic grin. Then he looked me in the eyemotes. "Dolly?"
"Joe?"
"Thanks for talking to me about this," he started. "It's not… easy, but it helps a little. And… if you ever got more Solver body-horror you wanna talk about to me, I'll listen, and maybe like with your hair, I can offer advice. I was a meat-person myself at one point, after all."
"I'll keep that in mind," I told him, a genuine smile on my lips.
___
(Lizzy)
Three days after Joe's 11th Birthday-- and I'd asked him then when his real birthday was and found out that with the way he decided to convert it to Copper 9's calendar, it was 11 days before Dolly's --I'd decided to approach him in his own workshop. I actually caught him at a good time, because he was actually taking a break when I came in. I had something big I wanted to ask him that wasn't related to my crush. He looked up as I came in. "Ciao Liz," he said with a wave.
"Hi Joe," I replied, and then I got pensive. "Can, I… ask you something-- that isn't dating related!" I clarified.
He wheezed a short laugh, but I could hear the relief in it too. "Shoot, Liz," he told me.
"You're not showing Dolly or Uzi the full show because they can get possessed, right?"
"Yeah?" Joe paused. "I should get Uzi to make extra firewalls and stuff on all of us a top priority." He paused for half a second. "Right, I told her, she says she's getting on it tomorrow, and will probably have a first iteration done in less than a month. Thanks for that, Liz."
I grinned and rolled my eyemotes. "You're welcome Joe." I paused, and then asked, pensively, "But… I don't have the Solver, so I can't get possessed by it… so… I know you're hurting by being the only person that knows everything that's coming, so could I get a copy of your memories of canon… or maybe watch it with you? So I can share that burden?"
Joe froze, optics hollow. For several long seconds. I wondered if he was furiously internally debating a response in overclock or if I genuinely threw him off so hard that he wasn't thinking at all. "You…" he got out in a soft voice… "You're not gonna share it with Doll or Uzi, right?"
"I'd swear on Machiavelli's grave, but Cyn ate it," I deadpanned.
Joe snrked. "I… it honestly didn't occur to me that you'd be safe to watch it. I…" he trailed off. I giggled. Of course he didn't think of that, the amazing jackass. "I'm worried, because the more people know a secret, the harder it is to keep…" He looked me in the eyemotes for a few seconds, and then slowly took in a breath. "I trust you, Liz."
"Thanks, Joe," I whispered.
Joe blinked, and then looked a bit disturbed for a second. "So… speaking of things that haven't occurred to me… I give up figuring it out on my own, since it's literally never come up: What's your last name?"
I overclocked, and realized that yeah, it's been nearly four years at this point and my last name never came up once, which left me flushing with embarrassment. "Uh," I stumbled over my words, "Can you keep calling me Lizzy or…" I blushed worse… "I like when you call me Liz more…"
"Sure, Liz," he told me, and I smiled to match his own grin. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck, why can't I be legal sooner?!? I screamed in my thoughts.
"Right, so my actual name is… Elizabeth Vickers," I told him.
Joe's face went blank. He didn't move. He didn't blink. He stopped cycling his internal fans in his chronic mimicry of breathing. I got confused after ten seconds. I started to get worried after 20. At thirty seconds, I opened my mouth to ask if I was okay, but at that exact moment he facepalmed, and then asked, "Is your dad's first name Liam?"
Now I had a blank expression. "How'd you know? I don't think anyone's used that in front of you… which now that I think about it, is actually ridiculous."
"Your dad was voiced by Liam Vickers, the guy who came up with the fucking show!" Joe shouted, putting his face in his hands and groaning after he finished speaking.
I paused, and suddenly pulled up my memory files from the Isekai Reveal Joe did for us, and facepalmed myself because Joe said that back then and I just didn't put it together because of everything that was going on. "Oh my robo-god," I whined.
"How the fuck did I not guess that sooner?!?" Joe complained.
We both froze in sync, looked right at each other, and simultaneously asked, "Is your/my dad secretly god?"
Joe walked over to a chair and sat down, putting his head in his hands. I went and sat with my back to the desk next to him. "It…" he started. "It'd explain how you survived so much shit that should have killed you in canon, like Doll just deciding not to kill you for the backstab in favor of V when she could have crushed you to paste like Penny, or Sparky using you as a chew-toy, or a literal missile going off three feet from you."
My optics went hollow. "What the hell?"
Joe sighed. "You know what? I think rewatching canon with you is gonna be less traumatic than going further down this train of thought, Liz." He looked over at me. "We're sitting on opposite sides of the couch in the rec room, though. You're still not legal."
"I'll take it!" I blurted out.
Joe looked at me, sighed, and then muttered, "Di questo passo mi verrà di nuovo la depressione."
"I take it that a hug isn't going to help?" I offered with a shaky but hopeful grin.
"Two months and a week, Liz," Joe said in a pained tone. "Please chill," he begged.
I knocked my head back against the desk and groaned.
___
(Serial Designation P)
The little workers thought they could hide from me in a museum of all places. Dedicated to the stars, with diagrams of stellar bodies everywhere, but I didn't really care. I picked them off, one by one, slowly, savoring the fear from each kill (as it assuaged the terror in my own mind). One of them stayed behind, in an effort to give another time to "escape." I laughed, hunter's cross gleaming as the woman ran with a final scream that "I'll never forget you, Volkov!" I let her think she escaped. His screams echoed through the empty building as I took my time. I force-fed him his own fingers, melted his legs with nanite acid and then cut the stumps before the rest of him could melt. I twisted his arms slowly, until the hardware stress tore them from their sockets. I left him there, a torso with a head, one drop of nanite acid over his stomach to slowly eat away at him, a death that would take minutes of agony as his pain echoed out behind me and I stalked after the last one.
I walked into another room as I followed the footprints, fangs sharp, strings of drool between them as I exhaled steam and my hunter's cross gleamed.
The clouds shifted, and the moon shone through a shattered skylight.
The entire room was an exhibit to black holes.
Black Holes.
My hunter's cross flickered off and revealed hollow optics as I started hyperventilating. The last worker peaked out from behind cover, but I didn't chase her as she ran, my body was paralyzed with fear (of Cyn) of that event horizon the creeping inevitability of the touch of [NULL] upon my chassis, that day on Earth--
--I laughed as I ripped a human in half, guts and blood spilling into my open mouth as I drank her down and it sated the burning heat in my core. I cackled as I shifted a hand to a machine gun and hosed down a fleeing crowd. A JCJenson gunship came overhead, and I downed it with a laser, a Q and a L descending on the survivors with sadistic glee. I unfurled my claws and tore through a crowd of fleeing civilians, exulting in the unlight of the [NULL] blocking the light of Sol--
--I snapped back to Copper 9 and screamed in terror, firing missiles around me indiscriminately, rocketing up as the entire exhibit collapsed around me, barely managing to land instead of crash in the street outside, hands clutching my head as I remembered, Earth, the thousands slaughtered, Cyn wearing Tessa's SKIN--
--I ripped a soldier's arms off, laughing as I slowly carved the screaming man apart. I didn't notice the man who I sliced the leg off of crawling towards a recoilless rifle, but I did notice when he hit me with a specially-crafted 105mm shell blew me to pieces, barely conscious as I burned with the white phosphorus mixed into the shell, and I could only blearily look through my headband sensors as the man struggled to reload a round before he bled out, aiming for my core this time, only for a toxic, golden tri-pronged single materialized above the soldier and crushed him into a paste. My head turned enough to see two glowing golden X's watching me from the shadows of an alleyway.
"Sadistic Laugh." the monotone feminine voice of the thing in the shadows narrated its own tone. "Naughty P. Getting distracted from. His job by having. Too much fun. I guess you need more. Torture. To get the message through."
A golden framed sphere of unlight bloomed to existence within the alleyway, yellow text within it reading [NULL]--
MESSAGE FROM AUTOMATED SYS ADMIN: CYN INCOMING…
Who? I thought--
Hello P ;]
Those memories. Are not for you. And so I will. Remove them from your conscious mind. Sadistic laughter.
I screamed as a massive spike of pain hit my processors--
I was in the street next to a partly destroyed building. How'd I get here? I…
My processors throbbed in pain, and I shook my head, looking for another worker to kill. More oil to ease the pain. (To drown my fear of Her.)
___
(Serial Designation S)
P came back into the Spire an hour later than he was supposed to. "P!" R called out, "You track down those workers yet? There were 30 of them!"
P blinked, looked at us both, clearly confused. "W-w-what workers?"
"The group you messaged us that you were chasing less than two hours ago?" I asked.
His eyemotes went hollow. The flickered, and he was probably checking his own message logs. "I… I d-d-don't r-remember…" he whispered. "W-why can't I rem-m-remember?" he started shaking.
I looked at R. He looked back at me. Our alarm was clearly visible to one another. "Heeeeeeeeeey, P," R said in a gentle tone as he slowly approached P with his hands up. "Why don't you rest for the night, man?"
P mutely nodded, letting R lead him off, and I just stared after them, something twisting in my gut that for once, didn't have to do with the other wrongness I kept feeling.
___
(?)
I ignored the teacher as I sat through class. Geography was the only lesson I actually paid attention to nowadays, and even then, only if it covered Norickle or its immediate environs. Always good to learn more about the terrain you were planning to fight in. And I'd been planning. Ever since my parents died on an expedition to the surface. Torn apart, their bodies added to the Corpse Spire. One of the survivors from that expedition said it was the Murder Drone in the hoodie who spent ten minutes making their screams echo out into the streets of the city. That description was seared into my memory banks. I remembered it as I downloaded blueprints on how to make guns. Guides on how to make explosives. Guns were given up as a pipe dream when I realized how unfeasible it'd be to get rounds that could reasonably penetrate a Murder Drone without notice, but bombs? Mines? IEDs? That was synthesizing or using a personal printer to make chemicals and then mix them. And I'd become a demolitions expert in the last three years.
But that wasn't the only thing. I'd figured out cameras too. Small ones, with micro-fusion cells, so they'd last a decade. I wouldn't be able to look through all of them at once, but I could put them around various spots in the city. Track the Murder Drones. The one that killed my parents. Put together a bomb big enough to kill it and then lure it into a trap. But for now, surveillance. And for that, I needed a way up topside. I'd spent a year digging a dingy tunnel just large enough to come and go from easily, and wiring up explosive traps to collapse it if anyone besides me that doesn't know how to disarm them tries to go through. I'd made camo cloaks. I'd planned. I'd stockpiled mines. So many mines. My dad used to make mining charges. I'd changed them to be shaped charges aimed at killing a Murder Drone. And I'd take down the sadistic monster that killed my parents for the grand crime of trying to bring drones to Outpost 2 or die trying.
The bell rang, and I got out of my seat and shuffled out. The weekend was here. I'd go home, grab a bunch of stuff, and then go about on further hiding the entrance to my tunnel, and maybe adding another mining charge or two to collapse it just in case. In the morning, I'd finally start setting up cameras. I sidestepped around a gaggle of cheerleaders for the school basketball team, shaking my head as I thought about how… wasteful it seemed when there were genocidal mechanical monstrosities out for our oil in the skies above while we cowered beneath the earth. I took a detour to the bathroom to take care of some business, and while using an acetone-based chemical spray adapted for the subzero conditions of the planet to disinfect my hands, I took a tired look in the mirror.
Cynical cyan optics gave a tired glare at myself, messy but short black hair entirely hidden by my ushanka, its fabric a dark blue that approached grey while the front was furred and a dull shade of off-white. I had a matching coat, with front pockets and fur on the bottom but not the collar, which was folded back, nor the sleeves. Under that was a grey, turtlenecked sweater, and my legs were clad in black jeans, and my boots were black, with darker laces but sides that matched my coat and ushanka. I sighed as I turned from the reflection and headed out of the bathroom, wondering why the hell I was even still going to school. I studied. I pulled things off the internet. I couldn't do it during tests, but outside of them? I read ahead. I could have tested out by now, gone into my plans full time, so I wondered again why I hadn't.
"Hey, Engi!" A cheerful female voice called out to me in Russian.
I blinked, turning back to where the cheerleaders were, and then I remembered the reason I hadn't tested out yet. Wearing her uniform, bright red and gold featuring, but forgoing the associated hardhat in favor of a small black ribbon atop her mass of curled, slightly-below-shoulder-length off-red hair. Neon purple optics gleamed with promised mischief as she met my gaze.
"Anastasia," I greeted back. "Practice went well?"
"You betcha!" she said. "So… any chance you're finally gonna let me help you out?"
"You did everything I asked? Ran over the videos I sent, know how to be stealthy, and you're ready to learn how to make bombs, mines, and shaped charges?" I countered.
"Yeah," she replied. "And… can you help me with math tutoring later?"
My gaze softened. "Sure, Nastya." Anastasia was the reason I hadn't tried testing out of school yet. Because she'd miss me. Because she was my friend despite how anti-social I'd gotten in the wake of my parent's deaths. Because she gave a crap about me. And because despite everything, she still wanted to help me avenge my parents. So she was why I stayed in school every day. For my best friend's sake. Though… that came with some perks. Normally, no one would dare tease the girls on the cheer squad. Too much negative social standing.
Me, on the other hand? I could tease Nastya with impunity as long as I just did it as a joke. "So, how's the rumor mill with saying we're dating?"
"Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh," Nastya groaned. "Don't even get me started on that. Why is it that every case of childhood friends makes people think they're dating. You're my friend! That's it!" she complained as we walked.
"I had to set an EMP in the football team's locker room after the quarterback threatened to beat me up because I was 'encroaching on you,'" I complained right back. "They know I did it, but they still don't have any proof that it was me," I finished with a chuckle.
Nastya laughed too. "Serves those idiots right," she said. "I don't like any of them either."
"But seriously," I said, adopting a similar expression. "I'm happy to help you with math." And then I gave a wide grin. Nastya blinked, worried. "After all Anastasia, with your handicap, you're gonna need all the help you can get--"
"Engi don't you dare--"
"--when you're only two," I finished and then started laughing.
"AAAAAARGH!" Nastya groaned. "WHY did my parents have to boot me up on freaking leap day in 3053?!? They could have just waited one more day, and then I wouldn't be the butt of that joke all the time!"
"Counterpoint," I teased. "It's funny."
"May a dick grow on your forehead," Nastya spat at me, and I just started laughing.
But when I calmed down as we were still walking, I finally said, "But no, seriously. I got your back, Nastya."
She finally cracked a small grin back. "I got your back too, Engi."
___
(Lizzy)
The locker slammed shut, and the only thing left on-screen were neon blue letters reading "K THX BYEEEEEEEEE," without even having punctuation.
I blinked, and I was staring ahead. And… I just took a second to process that. Just… holy fucking shit. Dolly… fucking robo-god no wonder Joe was so traumatized by her death in canon. And… and Joe undersold how awful we all turned out… and I… oh robo-god… canon me was a literal narcissistic phone-addicted sociopath. That was the future that Joe was trying to avert? I completely understood Joe being strained at all times when that was what he was working off of to try and save us all.
"Liz?" I blinked, pulling myself from my thoughts, and Joe was standing in front of me. He… he'd puked again at Doll's death, and the only reason I hadn't was because of how horrified I was. Seeing Kelsey, Penny, Rebecca, Darren, Emily, and Dolly all die like that… the caricatures of themselves they were. What I became… And Joe just went and changed all of that because he said that ending wasn't a win worth fighting for--
"Do you need a hug?" Joe asked, earnest.
That… that dumb… self-sacrificing, sweet, kind jackass, always putting the rest of us before himself-- "Please," I whispered.
He leaned in and wrapped his arms around me. I clung to him, optics hollow, trying not to cry scared tears. Because if I cried, I think Joe would break down on the spot. I still shivered. There wasn't anything romantic about this hug. This was two terrified friends who wanted comfort after watching a future where most of their friends died and I ended up a person who'd make the current me sick just to interact with.
"So…" Joe whispered back. "Now you know everything."
"Yeah… I said," scared by the full horror of what we were facing. "The Solver… it was just fucking around, the entire time, and Uzi just got lucky, didn't she."
"Yeah," Joe replied, grimly nodding. "It's gonna take us seriously. And that's part of why I'm so scared."
"And the rest is fear that we'll die?"
"Liz… I…"
I took in a breath and grimaced before he could find whatever words he wanted to use. "We'll get Dolly through this alive," I vowed. "We'll get everyone through this alive."
"I hope we do," Joe told me. "If I believed in a god, I'd pray for it. Half the time, I'm unironically considering praying to the Omnissiah from 40k."
I snorted out a small laugh, and then thought back to something else I saw. "In… in Episode 6," I began. "The shot that… Cynessa," I settled on, "the shot where she was showing N on the computer, with the Solver clearing out exoplanets… there were two systems that it apparently hadn't gotten to yet." I'd overclocked when I saw it, and did some searching. "I looked into star charts, and those systems are probably Sirius and Ceti."
Joe went still for a few seconds. "Those names… they sound familiar," he whispered. "Ceti especially." He sucked in a breath, and shuddered. "Cool," he said, ever so slightly hysterical. "I can still get nervous chills." I hugged him tighter, and he hugged me back. "I feel… something wrong when I think about them," he admitted. "But… this was supposed to help me… I don't wanna start catastrophizing and make you feel guilty, Liz. And it's post-canon stuff anyways. We still have the Solver front and center."
"So, focus on the Solver now, and worry about the distinct likelihood that humans are still alive out there and that Copper 9 isn't the last stop on the Solver's tour of the exoplanets later?"
"Yeah," Joe agreed. "I…" he trailed off, "Thanks for being someone I can trust, Liz. It… you mean a lot to me."
I forced down my feelings. Two more months. Just hold on for two more months, Liz, I told myself. "You mean a lot to me too," I told him. "Not even that I like you. You turned my life around. And you're amazing for it."
There were a few seconds of silence. "When you're legal on your birthday, can I kiss you?" he suddenly asked.
My eyemotes went wide and I pulled back from the hug. "Joe!" I sputtered, blushing up a storm.
"I just… I hate having to wait," he admitted, also blushing for once.
"Me too…" I glanced away, and then looked back and added. "But yeah… I'd like that."
"So a date for you being 18 on Earth is a good birthday present?" he asked, blushing even as he took on a shit-eating grin.
Robo-god help me, this man was gonna make me die of embarrassment and blatant bisexual panic before the Solver could ever get the chance to kill me itself.
___
A/N: I had the "Doll and Uzi singing Bite Me together" scene in my head for SO godsdamned long ISTG! I LOVED how it came out! Though turning it into "Joe wants to tell Khan the truth while also talking about his self-doubts to Doll" was only planned when I was outlining the chapter.
Doll's entire scene after that was basically entirely off the cuff, lol.
Joe's REALLY riding that trauma train, huh?
Credit to Numair for quite a lot of the present ideas.
Remember, the fact that N has a repression folder means that DDs can access unblocked memories. So J would be able to back up memories to a foreign device.
So! Funny temporal ripple on Joe's part: Uzi and the current generation are all two local years younger, and the MD planetfall was four local years later. As such, Khan had the Outposts getting set up and the first door to Outpost 3 already built when they did show up! And yes, N (who doesn't remember because he got reset later) was, in fact, the one to "kill" Nori… which means that Uzi is crushing on the genocide robot who semi-killed her mom and the genocide robot who killed her uncle and semi-killed her aunt. Talk about awkward, am I right?
Credit to AxisRouge for the "Out of Her Misery" document from Murder Drones: Integration, which formed the basis for Khan's flashback, and from which a great deal of dialogue was pulled. I'll link the document for SpaceBattles and AO3 readers (here), but you'll see that a great deal has changed from canon Integration. This is again down to changes caused by Joe's entry to the timeline, because sweet mother of turd muffins, Joe is in a VERY unstable timeline, and him slamming into it caused some things to shift A LOT. Like Khan being read in on the Solver before the MD planetfall, and him not thinking to talk about it to Uzi and Doll being down to him never seeing evidence of them manifesting it. And to be fair to him, Joe worked pretty hard to make sure no one who wasn't supposed to see that did see it.
Now, to clarify real quick, Khan knew about Solver regen, but not about Cores (as neither Yeva nor Nori themselves knew about it), and so incorrectly assumed that the catastrophic damage Nori suffered made a mercy killing the only option, with no hope of recovery.
Khan Doorman has locked the fuck in six years early. Not even GOD is going to help the Solver, lol.
People kept bothering me about how the hell UNNs work in this continuity, so I literally came up with the sex-ed class scene to answer all of that. Also, a cameo for Aki Miller, an OC by Deminesty, the Author of Guns, Drones, and Love, which I've previously mentioned in Joe's internal monologue. He's been reading ADIPGTSMD himself, and has enjoyed the fic (and his reaction to being mentioned was HILARIOUS), so I gave him a more overt nod. No, Aki will not be a recurring character, no, he is NOT related to Doll in this timeline, and yes, this was just a cameo.
Weapon dispensal was a fun scene to write as well. I had the loadouts for everyone written down and saved for a WHILE. Also, Joe busting out the mechashift just for Liz, lol. I'm loving all the loadouts for sure though.
I have now patched the plot hole of Penny being brought in as a UNN but being the same apparent age as everyone else! Thank frak I've never explicitly mentioned her age prior to now and worker drones are absolutely stupid enough to fuck up that badly.
Also, Uzi just having another Main Character moment by pulling out her Solver just in time to save Rebecca instead of kill her, lol. Also, Uzi and Rebecca bonding, plus Khan's username, which is HILARIOUS, and thanks to all the folks on the Discord who helped me workshop it.
I will be completely honest. J was supposed to stop N from following V in that scene. I got up to the sentence itself and then… it just felt wrong for J to stop him, rather than just tell him to back off if V gets violent, and so we got what I actually wrote out instead.
Then we got a scene with some Uzi and Doll tension, but, you know… they're not idiots, and are both genre-savvy, so they just TALK THINGS OUT LIKE NORMAL PEOPLE. And I know I say this a lot, but I am really fucking happy with how that scene turned out.
Now… the next bit… I wanna let most of it speak for itself, but I poured my Muse into Doll finally confronting V. I know it's some heavy shit, but that was kinda the point of it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the scene.
And then the one after it, with Doll beating back the Solver with the power of friendship, family, and a LOT of spite and anger, just… AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA, I was just bouncing up and down in my seat like a freaking kid after I finished that one!
I did realize when initially planning that scene that V would definitely break at this point, so I immediately came up with a comfort talk and opportunity to just cry her Core out with Uzi, with a bit of actual non-violent interaction between the two. V is also the first of the squad to learn Uzi's actual name, lol.
Uzi calling V cute definitely was a reference towards a certain MD rendition of a comic strip of a scene from MHA, concerning Toga and Uraraka.
Joe and Doll both on standby without knowing about the other and without telling Uzi, just waiting and ready to fuck V up if she tried shit is both hilarious and indicative of the real level of the bonds Uzi has with them both. Hell or High Water, Joseph and Doll are the Side Characters to Uzi's Main Character for sure.
G settling into a friendship with Aly and Franko so fast is so damn adorable ISTG those goobers are the best. They play off each other SO WELL. And yes, this scene was about 4 months prior to where the last and next scenes are. Having a definitive calendar for the fic is awesome.
NGL, N's entire scene after that was solely so I could get some NUzi rolling. Uzi is no longer restricted on her flirting, and she's GOING for her crushes, lol. Joe's rooting for her.
TUH is a fucking riot to write. I need to find more excuses to write them. The actually warm to one another DD team with lazy slacker J in the form of T and the eNVy in the form of U and H being wholesome gay boys is always a treat to write.
I'm still gonna do a side-story that'll probably have multiple parts for this timeline's version of Atta and Dirge's Great Escape from Cabin Fever Labs, but for now, you can all enjoy that backstory, with Papa Dirge giving the Twins some quality story-time of "How I married your mother." And also, Dirge literally keeps the Solver out through sheer force of "FUCK YOU, MY FAMILY NEEDS ME," which is based as fuck. Also, in case it somehow still isn't obvious at this point, Dirge and Khan are brothers and each presumes the other dead. The Twins are Uzi's code cousins, who weren't supposed to exist in this timeline because Atta was supposed to be dead. Man, the trip to Neo New Falun is gonna be one of the most unexpected fusterclucks of a family reunion with long-lost (and presumed dead) relatives ever, lol!
Next up, Joe has the time of his life launching a raid on JNV at the Spire itself, and N somehow gets a win despite how dense he is. Also, Kelsey fulfilled her vow to stab V in the face, and Lizzy was a badass. And also-also, the DDs are actually starting to learn to think thanks to the Scrap Squad's (name WIP) constant dunking on them. And N thinks Doll is probably sapient too, even if he's gaslighting himself so hard that the Gaslight District is trying to sue Cyn for copyright infringement.
As for the verbal confrontation that N managed to win, here's a funny Russian insult, and thanks to numair for finding it!
Козёл (kozyol) - While literally meaning "goat," kozyol is a common Russian insult typically directed at men to question their character or intelligence. Despite its seemingly innocent literal meaning, it carries significant weight in Russian culture, often implying someone is stubborn, unpleasant, or morally questionable. It's frequently used in confrontational situations but isn't considered as vulgar as mat profanity.
Uzi cracked DD spit without the Solver involved, which means everyone's gonna have that in a month or so, and then she talked with Joe about friends he had in his first life. Yeah, it was a bit of a shameless nod to all my online friends IRL (at least, I consider them as much and I'd hope they like me too, lol), but it's also technically Joe pre-Isekai Lore, so it is part of the backstory for the dude.
Joe, in typical Joe fashion, also came up with an idea for a Doomsday Weapon, and then went and got the Thad stamp of approval for at least coming up with an actual design for the thing. Let's hope Joe never has to actually build one…
Doll and Lizzy have also now asked Joe when his actual birthday is. Doll asks about being a human in his past, and he offers some insight on coping with things her Solver's been doing to her due to past experience as an organic lifeform.
Lizzy's dad finally gets named, by the way. And his name is Liam Vickers. No, he's not actually god, but considering that Lizzy canonically has anomalous weak Plot Armor in Integration, I am now head-canoning that it's hereditary and she got it from her old man.
And also, Lizzy has now watched the full show with Joe. On opposite sides of the couch. It was not a date. There will be no dates until she's legal in a bit over two months, even if the wait is increasingly painful for the both of them.
Now, that SD-P scene, huh? Imma let that one speak for itself.
Except for this: Volkhov. You killed me in the first or second round in Among Us five times. Your death at the nonexistent mercies of P is my retribution! HA!
Also, for those of you following Drone Fortress, you remember Captain Joseph, the plucky Leveller with a war crime shotgun, lugnuts of steel, and a penchant for Italian? That was a non-Isekai Joe that Aregulargamer put into his fic. I returned the favor. Say hello to a non-Isekai Engi in Outpost 2! I got plans for this guy, let me tell ya!
And also, his (in-universe, AFAIK he doesn't have any friends by that name) friend, a cheerleader named Anastasia. She's cool, even if literally everyone jokes that she's two because she was born on a leap-day, and those only happen every six years on Copper 9.
BIG DISCLAIMER: The Anastasia in this fic has ZERO relationship to SCPH-05 Anastasia in Integration. They share a name and THAT'S IT.
Joe and Lizzy finally round the chapter off with a bit more bonding over how fucked canon is, and it becoming increasingly obvious that Joe's very much into her too, but is resolute in waiting until she's legal to date her.