Chapter Text
Uzi slumped in her seat, mindlessly doodling on her desk as her dad droned on about the importance of doors. His voice was like a lullaby for the wrong baby, as calm as grating and annoying as nails on a chalkboard was to her.
“So, the doors are kept as they are ‘cause doors are great and I love doors very very much.” He looked straight at Uzi with a very judgmental stare. “And much more than you.”
Uzi let out a groan, her head falling onto the desk with a thud. She glanced at the empty desks around her; all the seats adjacent to hers were empty, and the seats next to those ones were empty.
After all, no one wanted to sit next to her or be near her at all.
She closed her eye-lights and wished she could be anywhere else, doing anything else. But the sound of her classmates chatting and her dad's ramblings about doors filled the microphones that served as her ears.
“Hey Uzi!” She heard a familiar voice say.
It was as if she was just recharged with how much better she felt right now.
"N!" she exclaimed, sitting up quickly with her eye-lights turning up in joy before she realized what she was doing. A grin spread across her face even after she tried to contain her joy. "Hey," she spoke in a calmer tone, but still with a hint of happiness. "This would be a nightmare without you."
N chuckled awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his head, “Heh, yeah. A nightmare.” The golden-eyed worker looked away from her for a second before he locked eye-lights with her with a smile. “Hey, you want to get out of here? Play some games or something?”N's offer hung in the air between them as Uzi looked at him, her visor reflecting his golden visor settings. She glanced at her dad, still engrossed in his lecture about doors, then back at N. A mischievous smirk spread across her face as she made up her mind.
"Hell yeah, let's go!" she replied enthusiastically.
With that they ran out of the school, ignoring the continued lecture and her asshole classmates. Their laughter as they escaped into the hall was the only sound that mattered.
In what felt like both too soon and far too long, they were back in Uzi's room.
N grinned at her, just a little too wide for a Worker Drone, “So, what do you want to watch first?” His eye-lights crinkled upwards in happiness. “Did you find an anime about dogs?” He asked excitedly.
Uzi couldn't contain her excitement. "Hell yeah I did!" she whooped. "Grab some batteries, we're about to binge-watch a whole season of 'Doggie Go'!"
Uzi woke up with a smile that quickly faded into a groan. She loved dreams like the one she just had, where she had a friend like N and they could escape together. But reality always came crashing back in, reminding her that she was alone.
She scowled at her subconscious for taunting her with these nightly reminders.
"Stupid N," she muttered to herself. "Not even real."
Her body relaxed as a blush appeared on her visor, “At least it was a good dream this time.”
N had become a prominent figure in her dreams, both the good where she had someone who liked her and the bad.
Pushing aside her feelings with a shake of her head and closing the file that was bringing memories of those dreams to the front of her mind, she got dressed and ready for another day at school, bracing herself for the sentient malware that were her classmates.
N's visor lit up with the words "Program terminated" as he snapped back to reality. He blinked twice, his eye-lights flickering on and off before settling into a steady glow. A sly grin spread across his face as he released his grip on the broken lamppost and gracefully landed on his feet.
He loved the Elm.exe program, a tool that allowed Disassembly Drones to hack into low-powered workers.
Each Disassembly Drone had their thoughts about it - J saw it as a waste of storage space, V saw it as a way to have some fun on nights she was really bored and couldn’t find any workers, and N had a more unique reason:
He used it to make friends.
Sure, they would think they were just imagining him if they even remembered him in their dreams, but that didn't matter to N. It still counted as a connection to another being for him.
But there was one worker whose dreams he kept returning to - Uzi Doorman.
He first heard about her in a student's dream where she was an outcast, and then he noticed her in a consistently similar role in other dreams. Intrigued, he started hopping from dream to dream instead of staying in whatever dream he landed in all in search of this mysterious outcast.
And when he finally found her dream, he discovered she didn't have any friends, not even in her dreams. He smiled sadly as the memory popped up, he just wanted to help her feel less alone, so he decided then to stay in her dreams just a bit longer than he would for the average worker.
What started as a few nights turned into a nightly occurrence for about a month before he reluctantly moved on to someone else's dream. But no other dream could compare to the feeling of belonging he had with Uzi. Something was missing without her, and he missed her more than he expected.
So he came back to her dreams.
Night after night, her unknown to her friend would visit her and make her dreams better.
Sure, she sometimes had dreams about leaving the bunker and killing his kind, but that didn’t matter. She was still just a Worker Drone; it’s not like she could do any damage to them if she ever left and he’d be sure to keep an eye out just to scare her back and make sure she got the message just how out of her league she was.
‘Actually, now that I think about it,’ N thought to himself, ‘She has been dreaming about her railgun a lot more lately and being the colony’s hero. Maybe I should give her a few nightmares about us to make sure she stays in.’
Uzi panted, her eye-lights hollow as she ran from her pursuers.
“‘Zi! Run!” She turned her head to see Thad right next to her.
“<<This is your fault,>>” Doll’s usual monotone voice was broken by the clear panic in her voice.
Uzi shut her eye-lights even as she kept sprinting forward. She remembered now. She convinced her teacher to take the class outside the colony for a field trip to help her finish getting the parts for her railgun.
It was her fault the Murder Drones were after them now.
She heard more of her classmates call out to her - blaming her before they screamed.
It was her fault they were dying.
“Uzi!” N called out, a horrified cry swallowed by the familiar sound of a drone’s head being ripped off. Not even a few seconds later, a drone’s head was thrown right in front of her, a head with familiar silver hair.
“N!” She cried. He was dead now. And it was all her fault.
Tears immediately appeared on her visor and scrolled down her face as she screamed out his name. He was gone, and she couldn't forgive herself for what had happened. Guilt and regret crushed her as she tried to come to terms with the reality of his absence.
Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.
She stopped running. It was too much. Just too much.
But before she could take this in, before she could allow her familiar anger to rise up and bury everything else, she was tackled from behind, slammed to the ground, and pinned face-to-face with a murder drone grinning down at her. She noticed its silver hair, fangs, and the large, golden X readily displayed on its visor, its fingers, razor-sharp claws, dug into her shoulders, drawing thin lines of oil.
“Still think fighting us is a good idea?” It asked in a familiar voice that vibrated through her body.
Uzi scowled, “Bite me!”
The drone still loomed over her, its golden X visor flickering chaotically as it laughed at what she said. With a sickening crunch, it sank its fangs into Uzi's neck, tearing through metal and plastic. She felt warm oil gushing down her chest, staining her jacket as she coughed up some more oil.
She could feel the murder drone release its grip on her, only to move closer to her ear and whisper, "You're all going to die and it's all because of you."
And as her consciousness faded into nothing, a single line was being repeated in her head, over and over.
Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.Herfault.
Uzi jolted upright with a scream, panting heavily for a few seconds as she took in her surroundings.
“Urg…” She groaned while checking her battery, which had only charged up to 45% while she was sleeping. “Stupid nightmare.”
A quick glance at her internal clock, revealing it to be 2:45 AM, led to her groaning again.
“Great…” she cursed herself softly.
Uzi pushed herself up, her de-energized body protesting the movement. She glanced around her room, lit only by the soft glow of her unfinished railgun, and heaved herself out of her bed.
She scowled, her hands clenched into fists.
Her classmates, even if they did all suck…their faces and dying words flashed through her CPU, and so did N’s.
He may not have been real, but Uzi could admit she dreamed about him enough that he may as well have been real to her. All the good dreams and the bad, watching pirated anime with him and seeing him torn to pieces.
He may not have been real, but he was still the best friend she had…and ignoring how sad that was, more importantly, she had to do this. Save the colony, get her dad’s respect, maybe even make a friend like N in real life, live her anime main character life.
And as she took out her toolbox to work on her railgun, as she laughed maniacally, she thought of such a future and tried not to think too much about her dreams.