Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

We tumble down the elevator shaft, screech to a halt. We are thrown out into the mineshaft, and I cough as I land. I can hear N get up in front of me, the light from the shaft going out as the last of the rocks fall down. I barely have time to react before I hear N firing rockets at the pile of stones.

He fires them off in a desperate panic, stopping only to rush forward and digs at the rocks with his claws. His knives-for-hands scrape in an unpleasant way against the rubble, making me want to cover my ears to block it out.

“UZI!” N screams out, grabbing my attention. “Help! Use your solver!”

I look up to respond, and see a large piece of the rock pile flying straight towards me. I react just in time, splitting it in half with my solver to avoid getting crushed. My solver blinks in and out from being purple or yellow.

“N! Watch it!” Tessa yells, reprimanding him as the rubble hits her as well. N turns around, as if remembering there are others here. I whimper in pain, clutching my visor as oil starts to leak from it.

“I… don’t think I sh-should…” I stutter out, gripping my wrist with my other hand. “I’m sorry, N.”

His face immediately turns to that of worry and guilt. “Oh, no, no… It’s okay…” He raises his arms in a placating way, slowly walking towards me. “Uzi I- I am so sorry-”

Tessa’s sword swings in front of my visor. I can see my hollow eyes and pained expression reflecting back at me.

“Enough, N.” Tessa says, voice full of annoyance, “We’ll save V after we finish here.” She stresses the word ‘after’ in a manner I find insensitive. I understand why N is so worried, and I don’t think there’s gonna be a V to save after we’re done down here.

Tessa pulls her sword away from my face, resting it on her shoulder. “Uzi~, let’s have you sit this one out, eh?” She says in a sweet, almost fake voice. “Box over there. Robots like boxes, right?”

I feel something sink in my core, and a sense of sickness spreads where it lands. “What? No, I-”

“N?” Tessa says coldly, turning to look at him. I turn to look at him as well, the sickness I was feeling turning ice-y hot, and my core thrums with a spike of adrenaline. Why would she ask him about my state?

He’s still looking at Tessa, and his hollow eyes only serve to freak me out more. I gulp.

“Uzi…” He starts in a soft, almost creepy voice. He turns his hollow eyes to me. It makes my oil run cold. “There, um… might be some stuff down here that you don’t want to see…”

Oh hell no.

I have a visceral, gut feeling that something is terribly wrong here.

“Ohhh… what the hell is going on?” my voice shakes as it exits my body. I put my hand onto one half of the broken rock and push myself up. I fall onto my arm as I go, but eventually I stand shakily on my two legs. I really don’t like this spike of fear attacking every sense I have.

“Nothing!” N yelps, not calming me at all. He raises flat palms towards me, as if he is talking to a wild animal. “We don’t know everything yet, but…”

He looks at Tessa. “We’re not going to hurt you!” He glares at her as his arm slices through the air as if to say ‘not happening’ to her.

“Okay…?” He looks back to me, starting to look freaked out as well. I have an instinctual, guttural feeling that I might die down here. I take a step back from my racing thoughts to actually process what he just said.

“Hurt me…?” My eyes go wide as I raise my arms defensively and step back. N’s eyes go wide as well, realizing what he said was probably not going to help me calm down.

“Oh wait… no… I-” He starts, taking a step towards me. A shiver runs up my spine. I want to throw up everywhere. I want to run away. But I can’t move. He takes another step towards me, slowly as if to not spook me. He steps devastatingly slowly, and everything inside me is screaming to run away. He finally reaches me, placing what I assume he thinks is a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

I freak out. “GET OFF ME!” I scream, swatting his hand and turning to run.

“UZI!” N yells after me. “WAIT!”

Yeah right. As if I’d willingly go along with those two now.

I sprint away, clutching my chest as my core starts to practically vibrate. A ringing starts in my ears, but even through it I can hear heavier footsteps behind me. I can feel tears well up in my visor. All I can think is to not let N catch me, as I know for a fact he will kill me.

“UZI! Please! Come back!” I hear him desperately call out behind me, his voice close to tears. I ran faster, trying to lose him. It doesn’t work. In fact, I can hear him growing closer. I don’t want to risk using my solver power, just in case.

I squeeze my eyes shut, turning down another corridor. Big mistake. I accidentally miss the turn, slamming into the wall next to the entrance, falling backwards. I scramble around, flipping onto my knees to try and stand back up. Just as I finished turning myself over, however, I feel hot breath on the back of my neck. I shriek, trying to crawl out from under N. He responds by grabbing my shoulder and flipping me back over.

“Calm down Uzi!” He calls out, straddling my legs and raising his hands to try and calm me. I respond by clenching my hands into fists and hitting his chest.

“LET ME GO!” I scream out, full on pushing him now. He doesn’t budge. “PLEASE!”

He grabs my wrists, stopping me from my continued assault. He slams me into the wall, my wrists on either side of my head. His legs tighten around mine. He leans forward, trying to get me to look at him. I squeeze my eyes closed and try to squirm out of his iron grip.

“Uzi…” He sounds genuinely hurt.

“I’M SCARED, N!” I cry out, tears flowing freely from my visor. This seems to shock him. I bite my lip. I don’t want to hurt his feelings, but he and Tessa really are scaring me.

“I am too, Uzi… trust me, I am.” He sighs out, leaning closer to my face. “But trust me when I say, I promise to help you find a cure. I would never purposefully hurt you.”

I realise our proximity, and N seems to realise it as well. He immediately pulls back, sitting back on his haunches to quietly observe me. I pull myself up to my knees, and he reaches his hand out to offer me help up.

As I go to grab his hand, I notice yellow electricity encapsulating my palm. I pull my hand back, scared of what’s happening. N looks at me and notices what made me pull back, jumping to cut my hand off again.

He’s too late, and all of a sudden my hand lets off an explosion. N reaches his hand out to me, but a rock wall tumbles into place in between us. I can faintly hear N cry my name out. I cry out for him too, but it gets swallowed by the crashing and I lose sight of him.

I furrow my brow and promise myself that we’ll find each other later.

Hopefully…

Chapter Text

“Uzi, don’t you dare!” I beg, voice cracking as I feel her grip tighten on my hand. I don’t have time to react, though, as she tosses me the rest of the way up from the mysterious pit with writhing tentacles dragging us down.

Uzi leaps forward, using her powers to grab onto the spaceship keys and throw them at me. She throws them hard, lodging them into my shoulder while she throws another solver that cuts off my leg that is being dragged down by a tentacle.

I stand and unfold my wings as fast as I can, hoping to save her. I feel her summon another solver at my chest, throwing me out of the church's doors. The last thing I see is her visor, reading “stay mad,” before she is pulled down by the tentacles.

I scream, running back to the doors, but I feel the need to pause.

I am more than justifyingly freaking out, and I want to rush back in and dive after her. But the keys she tossed into me give me a better idea. I turn and fly as fast as I can out of the underground lab, finding the spaceship the keys belonged to outside of the large building.

I notice Lizzy, Thad and Khan fighting J, giving me the perfect distraction to steal her spaceship. Part of me feels bad for just stealing it, so I quickly make a card for J to tell her I’d give it back after I was done saving Uzi.

In my opinion, the drawing turns out pretty cute.

On the other hand, however, there is a slight problem. The thing is… I have absolutely no clue how to pilot the spacecraft. Hopefully it isn’t that big a deal… hopefully.

After a rough start, I finally learned what each button does. I launch myself into space, going to Saturn’s rings. I scour the floating rocks, looking for a glimpse of purple. I can’t see much, as I am forced to focus on dodging and weaving in between the rocks, but after a while of searching, I see flashes of pink and purple in the far distance. Kicking the spaceship into a higher gear, I speed towards the purple.

I can’t see much, but I hear a couple bumps on the outside of the ship. The bump stops at the ladder, so I reach my tail out and fish for a drone-shaped object. Feeling a person, I hook and wrap my tail around it, squeezing it and pulling it in.

Uzi lands on the floor of the spacecraft, and I close the hatch behind her. Not wanting to freak her out, I turn around.

“Spaceship pilot!” Trying to hide the tremor in my voice, I giggle, smile and salute at her. Something hits me and the spacecraft goes haywire. I freak out and start hitting buttons. I can vaguely hear Uzi shouting at me.

“N! My mom was back there!”

“Sorry! I didn’t kno-” I start to apologize, but it gets caught in my throat when Uzi hugs me very aggressively. “w…”

I press a final button, and the spaceship stops freaking out. I push the autopilot button just in case I get distracted again.

“You were supposed to get away…” Uzi mumbles into my shoulder, clearly upset. It sets something in my core off.

“Yeah… I’m kind of, like, actually mad about what you did.” I glare and look away from her and cross my arms.

Uzi pulls back from me.

“I had to save at least one of us, N! You would have done the same. You have done the same, actually!” Uzi yells out, furrowing her brow in defiance.

“You could have let me fly us both out of there!” I yell back, annoyed that she was so willing to sacrifice her life for me.

“If you had tried that, we would’ve both been dragged down, and we’d both be stuck in outer space!" Uzi defends her actions, grabbing her hair and yanking. Not wanting her to hurt herself, I grab both her wrists, pressing my thumbs into her palms to force her fists open.

“UZI!” I stand up, towering over her. I now realize just how tiny she is in comparison to me. How fragile she might be.

“WHAT! Do you want an apology for saving your life? ‘Cause I won’t give you one!” Uzi tries to back up, but my grip is too tight. “Even if I had died, we both know it would be for the greater good! One less drone for the solver to control!”

I feel my mouth go dry.

“Are you saying… you would purposefully KILL YOURSELF to save me?!” I scream out, pushing her against one of the spaceship’s walls. My desperation to understand her boils over.

“OF COURSE I WOULD!” Uzi screams back. “UNLIKE YOU, NO ONE CARES ABOUT ME! WE BOTH KNOW I- I’d be better off…” she stammers to a stop, her eyes going hollow.

“Better off what?” I lean down into her face, dangerously calm. She’s suddenly looking a lot less defiant, her hollowed eyes darting everywhere but my face. When she still hasn’t answered, I grow annoyed, so I put one of my hands under her chin and pull her face back towards mine.

“Better off what, Uzi?” I glare and grit my teeth. She visibly shrinks away, so I tighten my grip on her face despite her trembling in my hands.

“I- um…” she sighs and puffs her cheek. “I’d be better off… dead…” She mutters out the last word, so quiet I almost can’t hear it. She swallows and looks at me with hollowed eyes. The air seems to chill around us as my eyes go hollow as well. She gulps and scrunches her eyes shut.

I can feel her shaking under my grip, but I can’t be bothered to soothe her fear just yet.

“Excuse me?” My voice is cold, almost devoid of emotion. Uzi takes a big breath of air, obviously trying to calm her nerves. It doesn’t seem to work. “Uzi… what, exactly, do you mean by that?” I practically hiss out.

She flinches at my words.

“I… um… well…” She stammers out, very freaked out by my demeanor.

I lean forward and whisper into her ear sharply, “Get to the point before I lose my control.” She jolts and shivers, gulping again.

“So… you know how… I’m a social reject right?” Uzi starts, looking away. “Well… maybe… um…” My hand cups her chin, slightly squeezing her cheeks to turn her face back to mine again.

“Yes?” I say, no emotion in my tone.

“Well… I’m just saying that… no one would miss me, right?” She laughs nervously, using her one free hand to rest on my arm holding her chin. As if to soften the blow. Whatever she thinks she’s doing doesn’t work however, as I fully squeeze her face.

“I would miss you…” I glare at her. She looks shocked, but then she becomes sheepish. I raise an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah, but we didn’t know each other when…” Uzi slaps a hand over her mouth. I freeze, not liking where her sentence was seemingly headed.

“When what…?” I ask, trying not to freak out on her again.

“When I uh…” She starts, but softly whispers something I can’t pick up on.

“Spit it out, Uzi.” I bite my tongue. “C’mon, use your words.”

“When I first tried to…” She grips the hand on her chin, obviously expecting me to explode again. “Kill… myself…”

My hollow eyes go wider, as a ringing starts in my ears. The high pitched noise almost drowns out everything else.

“... N! N!” I hear, and I blink out of my stupor.

“WHEN.” I practically growl. My hand is gripping her face, shoving her into the wall behind her so hard tears start popping up on her visor.

“N! That hurts!” Uzi squirms in my grasp to no avail.

“WHEN DID YOU…” I gulp air into my core, trying not to hyperventilate. “When did you try to do that? Are you insane?!”

“It was a while ago! Maybe when I was 17 or 18!” She squeaks out. That doesn’t help me feel reassured. It feels too soon. “I was lonely and no one cared about me! Not even my dumb dad! What was I supposed to do?!”

That makes my anger stop for a second. I still feel sick to my stomach.

“I… I don’t feel that way anymore… for the most part…” Uzi yet again tries to mutter the last part, but I can still hear her.

Something inside me shatters. I don’t want to blame her for feeling that way, so instead I just wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tightly. I notice just how hard she is trembling and a guilt creeps up in my mind.

“If you ever feel like that again, you come to me, okay?” I whisper hoarsely in her ear. “Always.” I can feel her nod. I calm down a bit, sighing and leaning my head back but not loosening my grip.

I go to say something else, but all of a sudden a loud crash is heard. We both turn our heads to the noise, and I squeeze Uzi tighter. One of the solver's tentacles breached our ship. It tumbles around, as if looking for something. It breaches another wall, going out and coming back in again, on top of where it came in the first time. It goes out on more time, this time carrying a message.

All the message says is “Stop :).”

A shiver runs down both our spines.

The tentacles then rip out from where they are, breaking apart the ship. I gulp, thinking about how mad J is going to be when she sees it’s condition.

The ship explodes, sending Uzi and I tumbling towards Saturn. Uzi and I roll around, freaking out. We try to reach out to each other, grabbing each other's hands and pulling ourselves towards the other. After falling for a couple seconds, noise returns to the world. We look down at the horrifying display made by the solver.

“Well that’s a serious issue…” Uzi winces out. “Um… before… that… whole thing, we’re, like, dating, right?” She looks away sheepishly.

I turn to look at her again. “Oh.. Y-yeah!” I blush and also look away. “That was the plan, yeah-”

“Just ‘cause I can’t always… I can’t always read-” she stutters out, tumbling over her words. We talk over each other in a rush to assure the other.

“Like, y-yeah?” I grin at her awkwardly and tilt my eyebrows up.

She goes quiet for a couple seconds, blush decorating her visor. Tears well up in her eyes and I fear I said something wrong.

“Yay,” she giggles out nervously. I sigh in relief as we spin faster and faster.

I then pull her into a hug, catching her off guard. She goes to protest, but I silence it by pressing my mouth to hers. She’s surprised, but quickly melts into the kiss. I cup her cheek and wrap my other arm around her waist. She wraps her arms around my neck, holding on as the currents threaten to tear us apart. She quickly gets flustered again, pulling back very fast. I don’t want to let her go, but she pushes away from me and catches me off guard.

“Gross! Get away!” She stammers out, very flustered. I chuckle, noticing her very obvious blush. She quickly looks back down to where we are plummeting.

“Time to murder a planet!” She yells excitedly, raising her arms. This causes her to cartwheel in midair. I raise my arms too, diving down with her circling around me as we go. I smile at just how cute she is. She spirals around me, cackling in pure joy, and I can’t help but join her laughter.

Any fear we might have had washes away, leaving behind only adrenaline and confidence. Confidence that we’ll win this fight, together.

Because we love each other.

Wait… is that cringe? Oh well.

Chapter Text

I scramble down the long corridor, dragging an unconscious N behind me. I pant, trying to gulp down air into my racing core. I can hear Tessa- no, Cyn… the solver clambering after me. My eyes dart around, looking for a place to hide. I’ve long since given up on trying to run, not with N weighing us down. His face is steaming, a sign of him regenerating.

I can hear the solver growing closer, but I find the perfect spot just in time. I escape just as she rounds the corner. I can hear her pause and I see her scanning light sweep the hallway.

“Lick” she strings out monotonously. I scrunch my face, wondering what the solver could possibly be doing to justify the word. I don’t know if I want to find out.

All of a sudden, I hear thudding on every surface of the corridor. The solver calls out, eerily.

“Callback ping” I hear echo out, followed by eerie crawling noises. I can see hands clambering down the pipes, and I clap my hands over my mouth in fear of screaming out. I hear mechanical whirring, and a faint flapping. Something thuds on the roof, then the whirring and flapping starts again. I hear a thud a distance away and look over to the hand that just gripped the pipes in horror.

What in the entire robo-jesus.

I hear N stir next to me, waking up at the worst possible time. He also looks over at the hand in horror.

“Callback ping.” rings out through the hallway again. I gulp down the vomit I feel building up in my core. It rings out again as another fluttering hand flies in front of my face. It falls back and slams right next to my face. I shrink back in horror.

The monotonous voice echoes out again, but I can’t hear it clearly. I can hear panicked breaths next to me and look over to see N shaking. The creepy voice of the solver rings out more and more, growing aggressive. The hands crawling everywhere grow closer. If I was a human I probably would’ve pissed my pants. Luckily I’m not, but I still feel sick.

N’s sharp breaths grow faster and shallower. I reach my hand out to try and hold him, but my core starts aching. It feels as though I’ve been stabbed. I grunt and clutch my chest.

“CALLBACK PING.” The two words are almost screamed out, the solver’s light swinging right where we are hiding.

I feel a sharper pain in my chest and put a hand over my mouth to muffle my cries of pain. I take my other hand off my chest to see my core slightly breaking out of my chest. My hand is still raised, but as I go to put it back down, N grabs it and squeezes. He looks over at me in shock, as if he didn’t realise what he was doing. We make eye contact, both our eyes hollow. The voice retreats, going further down the hallway.

I slightly relax, smiling at N. He returns my smile. I also notice the hands fading away. I think we might be in the clear, but all of a sudden there is a loud crash. The hands return with vengeance, white knuckling the pipes around us. We can hear a coughing, N seemingly recognizing it.

All of a sudden, a normal voice rings out.

“N?”

It’s V… but that’s impossible! I thought she died! N and I look at each other.

“N?” ‘V’ shakily calls out. “You’re okay?”

She sounds very scared.

“I wasn’t- Tessa is Cyn! She’s here…” V calls out, getting desperate. N goes to call out but I slap a hand over his mouth. “N, I don’t know how much you remember, but J tricked us. Or it tricked J too!”

I flash a message to N on my visor reading “Trap?” N looks scared, almost hopeless.

“N?” we hear clacking on the floor. “I’m so sorry.”

It’s like V can see him.

“I- I should have been honest with you… I was just so scared for us- for you!” It’s like V sees N and is talking to him directly. A weird feeling sets into the pit of my core.

N furrows his brows. “V, STOP!” He screams out.

Everything goes quiet for a couple seconds. It seems the world is holding its breath. All of a sudden, a hand rips through N’s chest in a disgusting squelch. I have no time to react as he’s dragged back through the piping.

I hear a loud ringing in my ear, my breath growing shallow. It’s my fault he called out, I should have stopped him. He’s going to die and it’s all my fault. Tears pop up on my visor, threatening to never stop. I try to stay as quiet as I can, but I can’t stifle all of my sobs.

When I finally start to calm down, I realise the hallway is quiet. I pop my head out, stumbling into the empty corridor. I clutch my chest, not knowing what to do. I walk slowly, just in case the solver is waiting to pop out at any second. I make my way back outside, but I notice the door just in time to hear the solver cheerfully laugh. The door closes and I can hear the solver say something in surprise, but I can’t make out what.

“Go-d fu-ki- d–mit” I can hear the solver glitch out. It’s almost funny to hear the eldritch horror being swear. I’m glad something bad happened to her however, but I now have the problem of being trapped in the building. I walk backwards for a couple seconds, not knowing what to do. All of a sudden, the solver’s big yellow tendrils of electricity grab onto the walls of the building and pull down.

I notice a gap starting to form in the ceiling, so I unfold my wings and zoom up. As I approach the hole, I scrunch my wings close to me, spinning as I exit from the dark building. I notice the solver stalking towards N and V, and I grit my teeth.

Not on my watch you don’t.

All of a sudden, the solver lunges forward, preparing to slice V up. V flinches as I land in front of the two, protecting her from the solvers' weird scythe-thingy. It rips through my wing, causing a burning pain. I hiss, putting my body into a defensive position.

“Hands off!” I yell out. I pull my wings up to block more potential attacks. “No one traumatizes these weirdly hot robots but me!”

I swing my arms back, wincing as I do so.

I turn around to look at the two drones, looking for N to see if he’s okay. Once I see that he is, I then look back to V.

“Glad you’re not dead or whatever…” I mumble out, rolling my eyes. I look back at the solver and J.

I look back at V one more time, making sure she is also okay. I offer her a smile, however small it may be.

She returns it, scrunching her face in… an emotion. I don’t know what one, but she doesn’t seem to be mad at me. That’s good at least.

I turn around one more time.

This’ll be the biggest fight yet.

I hope everyone's ready…

Chapter Text

I groan as I get up, noticing the colours draining from the world. I look at V, then I look to where she’s looking. A mini black hole is covering the area where Uzi and the solver were standing.

I drag in a deep breath.

Oh please no. No no no…

Everything is frozen as I run forward. I summon my claws, going to rip apart the black orb surrounding them. I bounce back from an invisible forcefield, thrown a good couple feet backwards.

“UZI!” I scream out, feeling a lump build up in my throat. I swallow it down. V rushes over to me.

“She’ll be okay N… hopefully…” V sighs, trying to reassure me. She places a hand on my shoulder, swirling her thumb in a circle on my back. I inhale, breathing out while I relax my shoulders. There’s nothing I can do right now. She’s inaccessible. I feel tears well up in my visor, and I go to rub them away with my palms.

As soon as the black bubble came, it went. It seemed to… absorb itself into Uzi’s chest.

Wait… “UZ?I!” I shriek out. “UZI!”

She turns towards V and I, falling to her knees. This spurs me to run towards her as the world collapses underneath us. I lose sight of her as she falls away. I frantically deploy my wings, tumbling over myself in a desperate attempt to find her.

Something hits the back of my head, causing me to power down.

I wake up, tangled in a tree. I can see V on the ground, also waking up. In the distance, I can see the bus. I drop down from the tree, offering V my hand. We then run towards the bus, hopping on top of it.

The bus seems to understand the urgency, as it rears to life. I look at the large cliff in front of us, hoping the bus can get up it. All of a sudden, I hear metallic screeching. I turn towards the noise, gulping. In the distance, I can see that stupid raptor scraping stomping its feet against the ground, rearing up to run.

“V! Get down!” I yelp, grabbing her wrist.

“Calm down N, that’s a friendly one! He helped me get back to the others.” V laughs, patting my arm. I breathe a sigh of relief. The raptor speeds towards us, jumping onto the bus and swirling into the driver's seat like it was born to be there. He grabs the reins in his mouth, flicking them to start the bus forward.

The bus speeds right towards the cliff.

“Uhhhh…. Veeeee?!?!” I shriek out, ducking down and gripping the roof.

She looks a lot less confident in the raptor.

“Oh boy…” She huffs out.

All of a sudden, we’re going straight up. V and I grip the front of the bus so as to not fall off. I notice Uzi’s teacher as we reach the top, and I offer him a wave. He doesn’t reciprocate. Instead he rolls his eyes and focuses on not falling down the cliff again.

The bus turns in a circle, halting in a way that throws V and I off of it. I flail in the air, orienting myself and unfolding my wings. Only one thought is consistent in my mind.

Where is Uzi?

Chapter Text

I wake up, my head spinning. Maybe eating the solver’s essence wasn’t a good idea. My core feels… weird. I can still hear a faint ringing in my ears, but I choose to ignore it. My visor hurts too, which is especially weird. I look at where I landed, glass scattered all around me. I pick up a shard to look for any damage to my visor, but what I see instead makes my oil run cold.

The top half of my eyes are… yellow…

Just like the solver. Oh crap, crap… CRAP! I really shouldn’t have eaten her… black hole thingy! I freak out, which seems very justified to me. I can’t let anyone see me like this. I’m an even bigger freak than I already was.

I can hear my name being called.

N.

Oh no… I don’t want him to see me like this. He’ll probably think I’m disgusting. V will probably try to kill me. I hear wings flapping from behind the overhang I crawled under. I whip my head around, looking for a hiding spot. I quickly spot a rocky cave, scrabbling over to it in an almost crazed state. I feel the same fear I felt when I was hiding from the solver with N. I cover my visor so no light is giving away my location.

I hear two drones running right next to where I was first lying. I gulp.

“Hold on, V!” I hear N call out. I feel like sobbing. “I see something over here!”

I can hear footsteps slowly walking towards my hiding spot. Oh please no.

“Uzi? UZI~!” N calls out. I feel whatever hope I had crumbling away. “What’re you doing, hiding? It’s me, N!”

His voice is so joyous. I don’t know what to do. I want to give in and hug him, but there’s a guttural feeling that stops me. N… might kill me.

“N- STOP! D-don’t get any closer!” I shriek out in desperation. He stops in his tracks.

“U- Uzi…?” He asks. This feels similar to what happened in the tunnel. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“N- no! Just… um…” My mind goes blank. Great. I get the same instincts I did in the tunnel, the urge to run from this murder machine.

I shakily stand up from my spot, my hands still over my visor. I gulp as I hear N walking toward me.

Nope nope nope nope…

I push past him and unfurl my wings, dodging as he goes to grab my shoulder. I can hear him call for V then unfurl his wings as well. I aim for the clouds, hoping he’ll lose sight of me through the thick fog. I weave through the twisting, rocky spires. I can’t hear anything following me, so I duck down into the valley below.

I hear swooshing coming from above, so I press myself against the cliff side to make my presence less obvious. The flapping fades away, and I release my breath. Bad choice. The flapping returns, this time much closer to the ground. I feel like crying. Why wasn’t he just leaving me alone?!

“Uzi… I can see you…” He sighs, walking towards me slowly. “Why are you running away from me?”

I hear V land behind him. My eyes hollow, and this time I do sob. “Please…”

“Please what?” N crouches down, and it’s now I realise I’ve sunk down to a sitting position. I look away, hoping he doesn’t notice my eyes. I hear V walk forward, and I flinch. I raise an arm over my visor, turning my entire head away.

“Go… please just leave me alone…” I sob out, feeling tears fall in my visor. N rests his hand on my arm, pulling it down. I stiffen, trying to scramble away from him. He grabs my shoulder with his other hand to stop my attempt.

“V… could you give us a minute?” I hear N ask softly, not taking his eyes off of me. I hear V huff, release her wings and fly away in a swoosh.

“What’s wrong, Uzi?” N asks, releasing my shoulder and putting it under my chin to lift it to face him. I squeeze my eyes shut. “Uzi…”

“I’m scared you’ll find me disgusting…” I whimper out, opening one eye to look at him. He looks down at me with a pitying expression filling his visor. “And… you’ll… hate me.”

“I would never hate you!” N cries out, using both his hands to cup my cheeks. I blink, and all of a sudden all I can see N. I feel his lips against mine, and my face lights up with purple blush. I protest against his lips, but he doesn’t seem to care. I slowly raise my arms to wrap around his neck, melting into the kiss.

He pulls away, and I almost cry again.

“So, Uzi, why did you run away?” He asks, patting my head and then scooping me up. I flail for a second, then cross my arms.

“It’s just… look at me!” I cry out. I wave my hands around my visor. He furrows his brows as he looks at the ombre of my eyes. His eyes widen, hollow, and then he blinks. He smiles at me.

“Well, that’s probably only a side effect of whatever you did to the solver… what did you do exactly?” N purses his lips. I bite mine.

“Umm… so… I kinda… atehercore?” I rush out, covering my visor with my hands. Now that I’ve said it aloud, I realise how stupid I was.

“You WHAT?!” N freaks out, tightening his arms around me. I wince. “Uzi! That could’ve killed you!”

“I know, I know! It was stupid! But I didn’t have any other choice! She was going to take it back!” I defend myself. N sighs.

“Well… I guess you’re okay now…” He smiles at me. “That’s the most important thing.”

I relax. “Yeah! I’m kinda like a… damaged OC!” I smirk, crossing my arms. N chuckles.

“Yeah you are!” He laughs, hugging me tighter.

“Okay, can you put me down now?” I ask, realising I’m still in a bridal style carry. N seems to mull it over, swaying me like a child.

“Nah.” He smiles, tossing me up and catching me again. “This is much better.”

“N!” I screech, disorientated. “I don’t want the others to see me… being carried around like a baby!”

“That seems like a good punishment for running away, doesn’t it?” He chuckles down at me. My visor lights up in a blush.

This is going to kill my edgy persona.