Archive of Our Own ^beta

The biggest worry Pomni had on her mind that day was whether she was going to drown (again). It was already bad enough that Caine decided to make this day "aquatic week", but they hadn't been to the beach once, either! In preparation for her inevitable swimming session, Pomni grabbed a snorkeling set from a big chest set to the side of her room. The set matched her colors perfectly, with it being red, blue, and yellow. Taking a deep breath, Pomni stepped outside...

And her face was nearly blasted off by a stray rocket. "Holy s&@^!" she exclaimed as she jumped backwards, her head smacking against the wall. She looked down the hall to see Jax (of course it was Jax) sprinting towards her. Behind him was some weird kind of robot that looked human, but wasn't really.

The robot in question had a weird visor with purple eye-light things dancing across the screen. Pomni initially thought it was a new kind of headset Caine had given to one of the Circus residents, but she quickly dashed that thought when she saw the visor was attached to the metal head of the robot.

As the robot was sprinting after Jax, she (the voice sounded feminine to Pomni) screamed, "Give me back my mom!" Pomni looked back towards Jax and saw that he was holding some disgusting spider thing. It struggled in his arms while pulsating, just like a heartbeat.

"How did this thing make you?!" Jax asked tauntingly.

"Um, Jax..." Pomni started shrinking away, not wanting to respawn this early in the morning. "Maybe you shouldn't insult the NPC with rocket launchers." No one heard her though, as both Jax and the robot girl sped past her without acknowledging her presence.

Pomni took a second to realize the weight of her statement. Caine had let in another NPC. Pomni immediately got flashbacks to Gummigoo, the first (and only) NPC she befriended. She learned the hard way soon after that NPCs and players don't mix.

"Um... Caine?" Pomni started walking down the hall in the opposite direction of Jax, hoping to find her crazy AI overlord. "Another NPC escaped..." Just as she was about to round the corner, something slammed into her full-force. Both Pomni and the mysterious person fell to the ground.

"Oh my gosh, I'm sorry about that!" Pomni took the outstretched hand placed in front of her, rising to her feet with a grunt. However, when she finally looked at the guy, she realized he looked exactly like that other robot, but with wings.

It's safe to say Pomni freaked out.

Pomni dashed down the hall, leaving the male robot confused and calling after her. As this was the Circus, every other step Pomni was sliding and glitching all over the place. At some point she ended up hanging from a ceiling light (don't ask her how, she still doesn't know), calling for help.

"Hello there, my auspicious adventurer! What seems to be the problem?" Caine materialized out of thin air beside Pomni, scaring her off the light and sending her crashing to the floor (once again). However, she hit the ground at an odd angle, making her clip through the floor halfway. When she tried to get out, she was stuck.

"Caine... Help, please!" Pomni continued pushing against the floor, becoming increasingly more desperate for help. Her fear only increased when she saw Jax running towards her down the hall, both robots now in pursuit. Somehow the pulsing spider-thing had latched onto his right ear, and was now swinging around while holding on for dear life. "CAINE! F@*&%*^ HELP ME!"

"Now, what do we have going on here?" Caine drifted towards Jax and the two robots, completing ignoring Pomni (who was still stuck in the floor). He suddenly gasped in a dramatic fashion, saying, "NEW VISITORS!"

As if by magic, everyone was in the main hall, and the purple female drone was carrying the spider. Pomni sighed in relief as she found herself freed from the floor, and shrieked in terror when she realized she was standing right beside one of the robots.

"What the heck! I'm not that scary!" The purple drone leaned towards Pomni, her eye-lights flickering menacingly. "I should be asking you all why you look so messed-up."

"Messed up?!" Jax leaned out from where he was standing in the line, only to be forcefully dragged back by Ragatha, who appeared strangely calm in this entire situation. Then again, Pomni guessed new visitors weren't going to look normal either way. She took a deep breath and forced herself to act normal.

"Welcome, our three new-" Caine was cut off as he was body-slammed into the ground by yet another robot. This one also looked female, with short hair held back by what looked like a headband.

"OH MY GOD, THEY'RE GOING TO KILL US!" Pomni started screaming and running around, completely disregarding her friends, who were trying to calm her down.

"V! Stop beating that guy up. Not only does it look weird, it's going to get us nowhere." The purple drone flew up (she had wings?!) and pulled her fellow female drone away, both of them settling on the ground. Caine immediately popped up from where he was a puddle on the floor.

"Well, that was an interesting introdu-" He was immediately knocked over by Pomni, who was still running around like crazy and screaming her head off.

"Hey! Jester girl!" The purple robot grabbed Pomni by the arms, which only made them stretch out to unrealistic proportions as she continued running. "What the-"

"Can we please calm down?" Ragatha was attempting to chase after Pomni, but it was like Pomni had some sort of speed booster on. No one was able to catch her on foot. Eventually, the male drone flew over and picked her up, effectively stopping her frenzied rampage.

"Let go of me!" Pomni kicked against the male drone's body to no avail. He settled down on the floor, continuing to hold Pomni.

"Anyways..." Caine picked himself up off the floor for the last time (hopefully). "It's time to welcome our new players!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." The other female drone with yellow eye-light things walked towards Caine, looking dangerous. "What do you mean players? This isn't some weird video game that Uzi likes, is it?"

"I have know clue who this Oo-zee is, but I can say that you are the new players at..." A drum roll came out of nowhere, adding "tension" to the room. "The Amazing Digital Circus!"

The three robots (and the spider, it seemed) gave Caine blank stares. It was the male drone who spoke up. "We're in a circus?" It took a second, but his yellow eye-lights lit up in glee, a smile spreading across his face as he rocked on his heels in excitement.

"The bad kind." Jax somehow appeared right behind the male drone, scaring him slightly but doing nothing to damage his cheerful demeanor.

"Ugh. N, I don't want to be in some stupid circus right now," the purple drone groaned. The spider started fidgeting in her arms, making weird noises that suspiciously sounded like human grunts.

"Come on, Uzi! Please?" N gave Uzi (Pomni decided these were their names) a sad look, not too different to that of a puppy dog. Uzi groaned and tried to look away, but eventually caved in.

"Fine. But the second this gets boring, we leave."

"HAH! Funny joke!" Caine flew down in front of the robots (whom Pomni were now calling N, Uzi, and V respectively). "You can't leave, though."

Once again, Caine got a blank stare from all three of the robots. V was the one who spoke up this time. "We can't leave?"

It was the robots' turn to start panicking. N's look of excitement immediately transformed into one of dread, and he started asking questions rapid-fire without pausing for answers. Uzi started arguing with the spider in her hands (THE THING COULD TALK?!), and V began to threaten Caine with a sword that just popped out of her arm.

"Slow down there, my robotic ruffians! We don't have time for arguments. We need to get on with today's adventure!" Pomni remembered the theme of "adventures" over the past week, and suddenly started worrying that everyone was going to get electrocuted. To be fair, she had valid reasons for worrying; there was no way the robots weren't going to get wet (unless they flew the entire time, which seemed unlikely).

"Slow down there! I'm not going to listen to some stumpy ringmaster who sounds like some primitive robot! I'm leaving!" Uzi's wings appeared once again, and she took off through the ceiling of the tent, phasing through it (as there were no actual wall collisions for the roof yet).

"That's going to be a problem." Caine disappeared and reappeared almost an instant later with Uzi, here eye-lights hollowed.

"What did you do to her?!" V pulled out her hand-sword thing again and pointed it at Caine.

"It's her fault for going out into the void without the proper safety information! Besides, she'll be fine soon enough. Anyways, on to adventure!" With a snap of his fingers, Caine sent all the robots and players through a brightly-colored portal.

Thankfully, they weren't anywhere aquatic. Unfortunately, they were right next to a smoking volcano. Caine's voice played through a set of speakers. "Hello there, everybody! Today's adventure is Vacant Volcanic Vacation!" Pomni was starting to wonder whether Caine was running out of ideas for the names of the adventures; they had been pretty bland or just plain weird lately. "Your objective is to escape the exploding volcano! Be the first to reach the finish line to receive a special reward. Ready?" Pomni was not ready. "Set?" Oh God, oh God, oh God. "Go!"

The volcano erupted, sending molten fluid flying through the air directly at the group of players. All of the robots took off immediately, with Uzi carrying the talking spider in her arms. Everyone else (everyone who wasn't a robot) start running for their lives.

It turned out that Caine built this adventure much like many racing games Pomni had played throughout her life. This gave her a boost of confidence seconds before she was slapped in the face by a plastic ball. Then again, she was never really good at those kinds of things.

When Pomni regained her senses, she saw Jax chucking plastic balls over his shoulder at an alarmingly fast speed, hitting whatever happened to be behind him. To her right was Ragatha, holding an umbrella to shield herself from the plastic balls, and to her left was Gangle, whose Comedy Mask miraculously hadn't broken. Ah, wait... There we go. Pomni was wondering where Kinger was when she saw him running across the tops of the trees. How he managed to do that, Pomni didn't know, but he certainly was making progress.

The robots, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen. Pomni knew she shouldn't be scared of the new visitors, but they hadn't exactly made the best impression. They also appeared to be very dangerous (one could turn her hand into a sword!), which further added to Pomni's unease.

Pomni looked behind her to see that the lava was moving faster and faster, almost as if it was actively trying to catch up to her. She was pretty sure Caine intended for this chasing mechanic, and she hated him for that. Why couldn't she just be placed in a calm environment for once?! Seriously, was it that hard to ask for-

Pomni hadn't noticed that the lava had almost caught up to her until N picked her up from where she was running. Naturally, Pomni started resisting the robot's help, but immediately stopped when she realized N was the only thing between her and being melted.

"Looks like you calmed down, clown buddy!" The robot seemed very cheerful considering the situation he had just been thrown in, but Ragatha was overly positive too, so Pomni couldn't really judge.

"How are you not terrified or freaking out right now?" Seriously, Pomni could not understand how one person could take so much at one time. She had nearly broken down when she first entered the Circus, and she didn't even have to be plopped in a random environment to do so!

"Oh, I've had plenty of adventures. Compared to them, this is tame!" Again with the overly-cheerful demeanor. Pomni hated to say it, but it was already started to grate at her. At least he'd get along with Ragatha.

"Tame? How the heck have you experienced anything wilder than this?"

"Oh, that's an easy question. Where do I begin..." Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at the situation), N didn't have the time to finish his though process as a big glob of lava fell out of the sky and right onto his back.

"OH MY ROBO-GOD! THIS FEELS BAD! THIS FEELS SO SO SO BAD!" N started spiraling out of the air, his wings slowly falling off his body. "HANG ON, CLOWN BUDDY!"

"At least say my na-" They crashed into a thicket of trees, Pomni flying out of the robot's hands and slapping into a particularly hard trunk. Just as she was regaining her senses, she saw Uzi leering in front of her.

"What did you do to my friend?!" She gestured at N, who was attempting to put out the remnants of the fire the lava had started. "Last I checked, he had functioning wings."

"Well... The volcano erupted, and I guess that caused lava to fall out of the sky... Although I'm not sure how accurate that is to real life. Anyways, one of those globs hit..." Pomni paused for a second, trying to remember the male robot's name. "N? Yeah, N. And, well, now we're here." She glanced over at where N was frantically batting at flames. "Trying not to cause a forest fire, by the looks of it."

"I feel like I should believe you, but I also like to be an annoying skeptic, so I'm just going to ask you random questions for the fun of it." Uzi laughed to herself, as if she found her own joke funny. Pomni didn't really get it, but didn't dare voice her opinion.

"Um... Guys? A little-OH DEAR ROBO-GOD, A DEER'S ON FIRE!" N gestured at the burning form of the forest animal. Pomni nearly vomited rainbows at the sight.

"Huh. Cool. You think we can eat that?" Uzi didn't seem fazed by the situation whatsoever, which only added to Pomni's confusion and panic.

"Why do you want to eat a burning deer?! Help it! It's going to-" She paused for a second. "Wait. Can animals die in this place?" From the way the deer was now laying on the floor, wheezing, she guessed the answer was yes.

"We're in a simulation, right? It should be fine." She walked over to the deer's now-dead body and kicked it. "Oh... Welp. Too bad." She sprouted wings and took off, leaving N and Pomni frozen on the ground.

Pomni regained her senses when she smelled burning trees. She looked over to see the lava heading straight towards her and N. "N... N, we need to get out of here!"

N's eye-lights snapped back into focus. He grabbed Pomni in his arms and attempted to fly, not remembering that his wings were completely destroyed. This left the two to start running for their lives, skipping over rocks and vaulting over fallen trees.

Pomni didn't think things could get any worse until she was once again bombarded by little plastic balls. She looked up to see Jax on a floating platform, shooting the balls out of a gigantic machine gun. "Take this, suckers!" He seemed to be aiming directly at Pomni, but that was probably because she was the easier target out of her and N.

"Hey! That's not very nice!" Pomni expected N to stop there, but he raised his arm and sprouted a little tube. She was confused at first, but fell back in shock when a flying bomb erupted from hit. It hit the platform Jax was standing on, exploding it and sending the purple rabbit falling to the ground. Pomni stared at N, not really scared, but more surprised.

"What the heck! I finished first, and now I have to get there all over again?! Screw yo-" His words garbled into screams as Uzi picked him up and started flying him over the trees. "WHATHEPUTMEDOWN!"

N looked at Pomni. "Is it just me, or has there been a lot of screaming today?"

"You're telling me." The finish line was finally in Pomni's line of sight, which spurred her on to run faster. N matched her pace, seeing the finish line as well. Pomni could also see Uzi flying Jax in from the side, Jax still thrashing and kicking against the robot's attempts to help him.

Finally, Pomni and N made it to the platform. The flowing lava somehow arced around the platform, leaving a circle of safe land around it. Soon after, Jax and Uzi landed down. Jax immediately ran away from the purple robot, screaming, "LET ME GO! YOU STUPID THINGS DON'T KNOW BOUNDARIES!" Pomni so wanted to call Jax out on his statement, but she let in go to prevent the creation of more drama.

Pomni turned to N. "You know, you guys can be really nice for robots."

"Oh!" N looked at Pomni. "Technically, we're worker/murder drones."

Pomni's mind immediately started whirring. "Murder... drones?" If her newfound friends were somehow murderers-Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait.

"You guys are human, right?"

"What about your views on politics?"

"Up until recently, our entire colony had been governed by three doors and a bunch of killing machines, so I wouldn't really say we had a political system. More like... A duck and hide sort of thing? I can't really find a name for it."

Uzi was still trying to come to terms with the fact that she and her friends (and her mother) had somehow managed to become trapped inside some psychedelic nightmare run by an unsophisticated AI and inhabited by a bunch of humans. Uzi doubted they were actually humans, considering most of them (if not all of them, really) had died out a long time ago.

She also didn't want to be interrogated by a small clown child, but here she was.

"What about... Abortion, Jax, really?!" Pomni (that was her name, apparently) turned towards the purple bunny with overalls. He evidently was the troublemaker of the group. Uzi didn't yet know whether she was going to like or absolutely detest that.

"Me and N had to do that once..." Pomni whipped her head towards Uzi.

"What the- You sound like you're only a teenager!"

"Hey! It was necessary! The baby was trying to kill me!"

"I don't think babies actively try to kill their mothers, but... Well, who knows?" Uzi got the feeling that she and Pomni were talking about two completely different situations.

"Um... I have a feeling you don't understand what I'm talking about. We kinda had to shoot at a baby drone so that we wouldn't get mauled by some weird psycho in an abandoned lab." Pomni looked at Uzi as if she was crazy. Funny, Uzi had been getting that look all week. She didn't really understand why, she was acting like herself. Then again...

Caine appeared out of nowhere, startling Uzi and her multicolored companions. Unlike them, however, Uzi didn't start lapsing into spasms randomly. "Um... Guys? Are you all right?"

"Yeah... Caine's still trying to work out this bug thing..." Somehow Jax managed to start floating off the floor, which looked seriously weird combined with the jerking of his body. "Any way to get me back down?"

"Just be glad we're not slinging all over the place." Pomni somehow managed to stop her body from moving erratically, standing shakily on her legs. Jax, on the other hand, continued to rise slowly into the air.

"Should we help him?" Uzi sprouted her wings preemptively, anticipating Jax rising further up the hall.

"Nah... He'll fall down eventually. Come on, let's make sure the others haven't killed each other yet." Pomni started walking away, and Uzi followed, leaving Jax struggling in the air.

In the main room, Caine was exuberantly explaining that day's adventure to N, V, Nori (who was still a spider-heart thing, unfortunately), and the rest of the Circus crew. While Uzi was of the opinion that something was wrong with all of them, she decided to keep her comments to herself for once.

"...for an amazing day of wonder and whimsy!" Caine noticed Uzi and Pomni walking into the room. "Hello there, my straggling superstars! You almost missed out on my wonderful introduction to today's adventure..." Yet another drum roll. "The Mystifying Maze of Mirrors!"

"This does not sound fun." Uzi had already done her thing with mirrors (used them as a stair case and all that, and those had been very painful to walk on).

"It rarely is." Pomni's face fell, and she looked resigned to her fate of playing random games for the rest of eternity.

"Aw, don't be like that, Pomni and Oonzee! You just have to look at the fun in everything! For example-" He was cut off by N, who genuinely looked curious about the situation.

"Why is the maze made of mirrors? I mean, I get it's for directional disorientation, but surely there are other ways to achieve the same goal?" Everyone just gave N blank stares. Uzi knew for a fact that N had just started spouting random stuff ever since she'd swallowed... Well, she still wasn't sure exactly what she had swallowed, really. Thankfully, the little Cyn companion on her tail hadn't come out to play yet. Maybe it was asleep.

"Anyways!" Caine broke the silence with an unnatural loudness. "It looks like we're still missing someone... Where's Jax?"

"Right... here." He was in the archway leading to the room hall, his leg still on the fritz. "Caine, please fix the body glitch. I don't want to fall again, especially if I start to rise back up again to continue the cycle."

"I can fix that while you all are on your adventure! Unfortunately, I've run out of time to continue explaining everything, so you call can learn for yourselves!" With a snap of his fingers, Caine sent everyone in the room spiraling through yet another multicolored portal.

Uzi had the sense to use her wings to slow her fall down to the ground. V and N did the same thing, with Nori sitting (standing? It was hard to tell when she didn't actually have a body) on top of N's head. Everyone who didn't have wings (essentially everyone who wasn't a drone) unceremoniously fell to the ground.

They appeared to be in a dark room lit by a single candle. Uzi's visor couldn't cut through the darkness, which was unusual, considering the solver allowed her to see most if not all signatures in a given room. She made her way towards the candle, dragging N (and by association Nori) along with her.

"Do you think we're ever going to escape this weird cycle?" Uzi crossed her arms as she stared at the male drone, who was still stupidly excited. In fact, he didn't even hear her. "Hey!" She snapped her fingers. "Get your processor in gear! I'm talking to you!"

"Oh!" N snapped to attention. "Sorry about that, Uzi. It's just... Don't you find this fun?"

Uzi stared at N in disbelief. "Fun? We've been stuck here for a week doing wacko side jobs with a bunch of cosplaying weirdos. I don't know about you, but I want to go home."

"But Caine said-"

"I don't care what the denture set said! Evidently we're special cases in this place, otherwise we would look weird too! That means that we might actually have a chance of escaping."

"I wouldn't try that." Ragatha appeared Uzi, scaring her and nearly making her tip the candle over.

"Robo-Jesus! Don't do that!"

"Oh! Sorry! Didn't mean to scare you! But..." Her face softened, almost as if she pitied the drones standing in front of her. "No one's escaped from here. Ever. They either remain as they are or abstract."

"Um..." Uzi narrowed her eyes. "Abstract? I'm pretty sure that's not how you use that word."

"Well, we can't exactly call... Frankly, I'm not quite sure how to describe it to you guys without sounding crazy."

The conversation didn't have the chance to continue, as they heard Pomni scream from what appeared to be the next room over. The four of them (yes, Nori was being included in this) ran over and found themselves slamming into a wall.

"Pomni?! Are you all right in there?" Ragatha started pressing against the wall, testing for hidden buttons or a secret lever.

"H-Help! It's disgusting! Everything's on fire!" N backed away from the wall, still traumatized by the burning deer incident when he first got here.

"Ugh. Rags, step back." Uzi flew a few meters away from the wall and summoned her solver, a purple and yellow stylized triangle of energy. Ragatha started backing away from the wall, allowing Uzi to summon a small NULL in her hand.

"Um... Uzi? I don't think that's the best idea..." N had also started backing away, familiar with the destructive power of the NULLs.

"Seriously, relax! It's not like I'm going to throw it." To prove her point, Uzi started walking towards the wall. When she got there, she held the NULL up to the wall, causing it to distort and finally be absorbed into the little black hole. Behind the wall was... Well, Uzi wasn't exactly sure what to think of the situation Pomni was in.

It appeared as if the room used to be a movie set, but somebody had set a fire to a prop tree at some point. Naturally, the fire was in the act of consuming everything in sight, turning the room into a melting mess. Pomni was in the middle, miraculously untouched by the fire. Not wasting a second, Uzi dashed into the room, using her Solver to move flaming objects out of her path. However, just as she was about to reach Pomni, she fell over in pain.

N, having run after Uzi, immediately picked her up and slung her back into the safe room. Somehow the flames hadn't yet spread there, but it was only a matter of time. N waded through the fire, making sure not to disturb anything, and picked Pomni up. He then flew back into the dark room.

"Um... How are we going to stop the fire from spreading?" Ragatha was backing across the room, always facing the fire in case it got out of hand.

"We don't do anything." Uzi had managed to get a hold of herself, although she was still in pain. "WE RUN LIKE HECK!"

It was an interesting sight, two drones, a spider-looking robot that had somehow mothered one of the drones, and a small jester running through a hall of (slowly melting) mirrors. It was also interesting to see the small rainbow wonderland they had left on fire in the burning room.

After quite a while of going through the maze, N made the astute observation, "We're lost."

It was true. Everywhere they went looked exactly the same, and the mirrors made it hard to determine what was a hallway and what wasn't. In fact, they had almost gotten separated on numerous occasions.

"Wait... This mirror feels weird..." Ragatha started walking towards one of the mirrors. It looked identical to all the others, which caused Uzi to ignore the rag doll and continue down the hall. However, before she could become completely out of earshot, she heard Ragatha say, "It's a door, guys! Come on!"

Uzi sped back to where Ragatha had been standing and saw that the mirror had been fake. How Ragatha had managed to discern between the two kinds of mirrors, she didn't know, but she was happy for a change of scenery. The room the mirror led to was essentially a jungle, with gigantic trees and greenery everywhere.

"Wow! So much nature!" N, having lived on a glorified hunk of rock most of his life, stared in wonder at the plants around him. Uzi couldn't help but smile; N could be so cute at times.

Uzi was snapped out of her trance when she heard a hissing sound coming from a patch of tall grass. "Guys, pay attention. I don't think we're alone in here." Her solver flashed to life in her hand.

"Wh-What's that?" Pomni pointed at the solver in Uzi's hand, clearly unfamiliar with the symbol.

"This thing?" Uzi thought for a second. "That is way too long a story to tell right now. Right now, I can give you three words: HELLA COOL POWERS!" With that, Uzi summoned a pickax, which she sent flying towards where she initially heard the hissing sound. The small spatter of red signaled that she had hit something. However, before she could see what she impaled, Uzi fell to the ground, in pain once again.

N started to make his way over to Uzi, worried for her. However, before he could close the distance, Caine's voice rang out through the room. "HEY! I SPENT A LONG TIME MODELING THAT SNAKE! AS PUNISHMENT..." There was a pause while Caine thought up an appropriate punishment for wildlife endangerment. "YOU ALL SHALL BE SEPARATED!" Before Uzi or anyone else could protest, the room went dark.

"Guys?" Uzi's eye-lights started glitching, swapping between yellow and purple. She tried to concentrate on keeping them a solid purple, but her processor was in too much pain. She fell to the floor with a gasp, clutching her abdomen.

"Small laugh." Uzi's tail appeared, the Absolute Solver's head appearing on the end. "You do not look well. Concerned face."

"Ugh! Do you have to be here now?" Uzi tried to stand up, but fell back down in her pain. Seriously, what was going on with her?

"Host is malfunctioning. Initiating safety protocols."

"What?" Before Uzi knew what was happening, everything fell away. It was a weird sensation, almost as if she was a passenger in her body instead of its owner. However, it only lasted for a second before she burst back out. "Get out of me, you... you... I don't even know what mean name to call you! I'm perfectly fine on my own!"

"Sad sigh."

"Oh, just shut up for once." Uzi, with a great amount of effort, managed to put away her tail. Her eye-lights, from what she could tell, were still glitching between yellow and purple, but she decided she would deal with that problem later. First, she had to find everyone. Turning the brightness of her eye-lights up to the maximum, she started walking.

It wasn't long before she heard N's voice. "Oh, jeez! Get away from me, you creep!"

"N!" Uzi couldn't help but smile at the sound of his voice. Finally, someone she could talk to without getting weird looks. She rounded the bend, wrapping her arms around... something strangely fluffy. Uzi looked up to find she was hugging Jax, whose face was currently twisted in disgust.

"What the heck!" He pushed Uzi off, clearly not wanting to be tackle-hugged. "I don't need to be ambushed by yet another weird thing." Uzi raised an eyebrow at him, to which he pointed at the disfigured dog panting behind him. Uzi jumped back in surprise, which only set the dog into a fit of barking and running in circles.

"What is that thing?"

"I'd assume one of Caine's NPCs. Although it looks like this one could use some work..." Uzi had to agree. While it did resemble a dog, its six legs and three eyes (not to mention the hot pink color) was certainly not natural. At least, that's what she assumed. She couldn't remember seeing a real dog before.

"Wait. I thought you were N. Have you seen him?"

"You mean that robot guy you arrived here with? Haven't seen him this entire time. Probably for the best, too. He's way too positive." Jax started walking away, the hot-pink dog following close behind him.

"Wait, where are you going?!" Uzi walked after him, not wanting to be left alone again with the Absolute Solver.

"To escape this stupid place. You really think any of us want to be here?" Jax picked up his pace, which Uzi easily matched.

"Well, then, we're going to have to work together!" Uzi was completely ignored by Jax, who started walking faster. "Seriously? You're being extremely rude, even for my standards."

"That's the point." Jax rounded a bend, and when Uzi looked, he was completely gone. Great. Now what was she supposed to do?

"I can activate GPS. Inquiring tone." The tail had come back.

"What part of shut up don't you get, you stupid thing!" Uzi batted at her tail, but it just dodged away from her hands.

"Puppy eyes. I haven't done anything wrong. Sniffle."

"You know, you don't have to vocalize every single action that you perform, huh?" Uzi walked and talked, hoping to avoid another out-of-body incident.

"Are you positive you do not want my assistance?"

"Absolutely."

With another sigh, the Absolute Solver put itself away. Uzi continued searching, feeling her way through the hallways with what little light she had from her eye-lights. She immediately turned around when she smelled something burning (she did not want to go back to that fiery chaos), and was relieved when she heard Jax's voice come around the corner once again.

"Oh, my robo-Jesus, finally another person." The Solver tail popped up. "No, you don't count." The tail went back down.

Uzi cautiously rounded the bend, not wanting to tick Jax off more than he probably already was, but was greeted with the sight of N talking with the weird mask-ribbon person (she remembered her name was Gangle). "N!" Without warning, Uzi tackle-hugged N across the middle. Thankfully, this did not send them sprawling across the floor.

"Uzi! I thought we had lost you! We all ended up in different rooms, I think, but I was lucky enough to be transported to Gangle!" He referred to his theater-theme friend with a quick wave of his hand.

"Nice to meet you!" Gangle looked suspiciously happy, considering that yesterday she had literally been sobbing half the time. Although, Uzi wasn't one to judge, as she also had the tendency to go through random mood swings just for the fun of it.

Deciding not to touch on the personality subject, Uzi suggested, "Let's go look for a way out of this place."

"Great idea! Do any of you have flashlights?" Gangle was obviously hoping that, considering the only other two people with her were robots, they would have some sort of light fixture built into them.

"Give me a second..." N fiddled with his visor for a second, and a small beam of light erupted from slightly above in between his eye-lights. "There we go! Now we aren't trekking through the darkness!"

With that situation figured out, Uzi, N, and Gangle started walking through the maze for the third time (of hopefully not many). Eventually, they found themselves in a lit room with probably one of the largest doors that Uzi had seen intact. In the middle of the door was a small dog-shaped hole. Uzi had a sneaking suspicion that she knew what was supposed to go in the hole, and shuddered at the thought of touching it.

Just before they decided to continue searching for everyone else, two groups walked into the room at the same time. Jax, Ragatha, and V came in from a center hallway, and Pomni, Kinger, and Nori came through the right hallway.

"Everyone's here!" Yeah, Gangle was way too happy. Seriously, it was creeping Uzi out.

"Wow, that's a big door. And... A big locking mechanism? That looks like a dog?" Ragatha walked towards the door, passing Uzi and N. "Where would we find a dog in this place?"

Uzi expectantly looked towards Jax, but he was strangely averting his eyes at her gaze. Wait a minute...

"Jax?"

"Hm?" Jax pretended to have just noticed Uzi's attention on him. "What do you want, robo-head?"

"Where's the pink dog thing?"

Jax immediately started beating around the bush. "Well... You can't really say I have it..."

"Jax..." Ragatha looked ready to rip his digital head off. "What did you do with the pink-Pink? Really?" She looked at Uzi, who simply nodded her head. "Fine, then. Pink dog?"

"It... may be at the bottom of a cliff terribly injured..." This resulted in an outburst of angry yelling, most of it aimed at Jax.

"You kicked the only way out of here off of a CLIFF?! How are we supposed to get out now?!" Pomni was actively banging on the door as she said this, as if brute force would help them get out of this place.

V, who had been standing in the middle of the room for some time now, raised her arm at the closed doors. Said arm in question morphed into one of the biggest bazookas Uzi had ever seen, and it launched a ROCKET at the door. Safe to say, there was suddenly a way out of the room.

Huh. Brute force did work.

Everyone ignored Caine's voice calling out that they were cheating and rushed to get back into the Circus, grateful for the reprieve.

That night, Uzi couldn't help but toss and turn in her new room. The Solver kept on bugging her, pecking at her head and speaking in her mind. This went on all through the night, Uzi barely able to stay in control of herself. By the morning, her eyes were more yellow than purple.

"SURRENDER NOW BEFORE WE OBLITERATE YOU!"

V had to admit. She was enjoying this.

It had been about two weeks since she, Uzi, and N had been transported to this weird circus-themed place, but she honestly had been having fun. Sure, every other day she nearly died in strangely unique ways (she'd never even heard of a land shark before, so how was she supposed to prepare?!), but that was part of the allure.

Caine had been on a bit of a competitive streak, as a lot of his adventures had pitted two teams against one another. Today was no different, with everyone simulating siege warfare. Of course, Caine had separated the drones so that one side wouldn't completely dominate the other, meaning that V was currently going hand-to-hand with Uzi. Now, if it had been N she was fighting, she might've held back, but she knew she could go all out with Uzi. Hey, if she survived eating the Absolute Solver, she could survive anything.

The big chess piece (she was later told his name was Kinger) was just screaming randomly from the highest tower of their base, which didn't really help the situation but was entertaining to watch from afar. On the ground, Jax and Gangle were going at it against N and Pomni. V hadn't seen Nori or Ragatha at all the entire battle.

"Take this!" Uzi spawned a pickax with her solver and shot it at V, which she narrowly managed to avoid.

"Can't you think of anything else to use other than pickaxes?" V charged at Uzi once again, slicing at her with her retractable arm blade.

"Well, I'm sorry if they're so dang cool!" To prove her point, Uzi started slinging pickaxes like mad, hitting pretty much everything in the area that couldn't move of its own accord. "That... might not have been the best idea, thinking back on it..."

"Well... Yeah." Both drones looked at each other for a second before continuing to fight. While V was confident with her abilities, she was still surprised that she had lasted this long against Uzi's solver. She wondered whether Uzi was holding back.

"By the way, have you seen my mom?" Uzi paired this with a sort of dive bomb from the trees, using the branches as a backboard for her feet.

V deflected Uzi off of her before replying, "No, actually. Ragatha's been missing for a while as well. Where do you think they went?"

"I'm hoping for some big final battle." Using her wings, Uzi once again launched herself at V, her claws outstretched.

"With those two? Very unlikely." V dodged out of the way, hovering off the ground with her own pair of wings. "They're more likely to talk things out."

"But that's boring!"

"Which is why you would probably dive-bomb the entire thing and start international war." It had seemed as if the battle between them had reached a calm, so V took a second to check her surroundings. She raised an eyebrow in surprise when she saw N running into the base. "Give me a second, Uzi..."

"Hey!" Uzi rushed after V, who flew over to the castle. She saw Gangle to her left, cradling the broken pieces of her comedy mask. Jax and Pomni were still going at it against one another to the right. V was about to go help Jax when Uzi tackled her into the base.

"What the heck, Uzi!" V managed to wrestle herself from Uzi's grip, now a good distance inside the base. It wasn't anything special, more like a glorified pillow fort than anything. The only things that weren't made of fabric were the doors.

"Never turn your back on the enemy! You know that!" V groaned and started trudging towards where she could hear talking. From the excitement she could hear in N's voice, something must have happened.

"What's going on... Oh." In the main room of the base, Ragatha and Nori were having tea at a small coffee table. They had evidently invited N to join them, as he was happily sitting down in the remaining seat. "This is what you two have been doing this entire time?"

"Oh, your friend's mom is a great conversationalist!" Ragatha hadn't noticed that Uzi was standing right beyond the door. Frankly, no one noticed her, slowly becoming more horrified as she eavesdropped on the conversation.

"Please, call me Nori." Nori waved her spider claws about as if she were waving the thought of her being referred to as "Uzi's mom" away.

The giggling is what sent Uzi over the edge. Without warning, she started shooting gigantic beams of energy throughout the base, essentially ripping it to shreds. When V looked back, she saw that somehow Uzi had gotten hold of her old railgun.

"Uzi!" V scrambled back from a stray beam of green light. "I thought that thing had been destroyed!"

"IT'S BACK BABY, AND IT HATES TEA!" With that, Uzi exploded the coffee table, leaving Ragatha, Nori, and N drenched in the flavored beverage.

"UZI DOORMAN! IS THIS HOW YOU TREAT YOUR MOTHER?!" Nori started scuttling across the floor towards her daughter. However, Uzi lost control of the railgun and accidentally blasted Nori through the wall. Everyone stood still for a moment, looking at Uzi in horror.

"Um... it was an accident?" Evidently Nori didn't think so. Without warning, boulders started crashing through the ceiling of the base. V managed to toss Ragatha out of the way, slicing through any sizeable chunks of debris that got in her way. V looked up to see Nori hovering in the air, her heart pulsating like crazy.

"UZI DOORMAN, YOU ARE IN SO MUCH TROUBLE YOUNG LADY!" She started sending rocks at Uzi. Thankfully, Uzi was able to whisk them out of the way with her solver. However, she was also redirecting them towards everyone else who was in the room, causing extra chaos.

Jax popped his head into the room to see what was going on and immediately ducked back out, saying, "Oh man! What happened here?!"

"SHUT UP, N! YOU'RE NOT INVOLVED IN THIS!" Nori hadn't yet met Jax formally, meaning that she still thought N was going through some sort of double-personality phase. Why Uzi hadn't explained this to her, V didn't know.

Before things could get ugly, Caine popped into existence. "It looks like things are getting out of ha-" He was blasted out of the air by a boulder, preventing him from finishing his sentence. Thankfully, he popped back up from where he was pancaked on the floor, continuing, "Maybe we should call this thing a draw. How about that?" Without asking for anyone's opinions, the scenery melted away, and everyone was back in the Circus. Unfortunately, Nori started throwing the over-sized building blocks around, still enraged.

"Mom! You're going to flatten someone!" Uzi started holding the blocks in the air with her solver, effectively stopping Nori from causing a plastic avalanche.

Nori was about to retort when Caine interrupted, screaming, "HOW ABOUT WE TAKE A LITTLE BREAK?!" Suddenly, he, Nori, and Uzi were teleported out of the room. After a few seconds of tense silence, everyone sighed in relief. Then, of course, they tensed back up when they heard crashing and screaming coming from a few doors down.

Robo-God, that was a long day.

Finally, everyone was instructed to go to sleep, Nori and Uzi having safely been locked in rooms separate from one another. How effective that would be against the solver, V didn't know.

V was still trying to get used to her new bedroom. Apparently the Circus tailored to its inhabitants, as V's bedroom looked just like her old bedroom from Copper 9. It helped ease the ache of wanting to go home.

Mind you, V, Nori, N, and Uzi had all been searching for ways to get home. However, there didn't appear to be any way off the island that didn't involve flying recklessly into the Void. So, they were stuck there until further notice.

V didn't really have much of a bedtime routine; she'd been trained to kill, eat, and sleep (in that order, most of the time). She'd tried to do something before turning off for the night, but nothing really interested her. And, if it did interest her, it would keep her up until the early hours of the morning.

V was worried about Uzi. Sure, she'd been acting like her normal self, but her eyes were almost completely yellow at this point. V wasn't sure whether that was just a side effect of eating the Absolute Solver or an indicator of something more dangerous stewing beneath the surface. V made a mental note to ask Uzi about her seemingly deteriorating condition the next morning, and settled into her bed.

It was good that V was a light sleeper, otherwise she wouldn't have heard the screams in the middle of the night. V immediately aimed a gun at the door, slowly rising out of her bed at the same time.

With a prolonged creak, V inched her door open, glancing down the hallway for any signs of a threat. Initially, there was nothing, so V felt safe enough to step outside. Another scream resonated throughout the hall, followed by what sounded like the rending of metal. V cringed, hoping that the respawn mechanic Caine had implemented would work inside the Circus.

Running down the hall, V saw the circus members opening their doors, having heard the commotion as well. She signalled at them to go back inside their rooms, but still managed to get Pomni and Ragatha following her.

Turning the corner, V saw that the hallway was completely decimated. Claw marks ran through the walls, chandeliers and ceiling beams were pulled down, and a fluid that looked suspiciously like oil was dragged across the floor. Could this mean... No. V shook that thought of her head, believing beyond hope that Uzi was somehow not involved in this.

A third scream set the small group of three in motion once again, all three of them practically running down the hall to find out what was going on. V signalled for them to stop when she saw a mix of purple and yellow light flashing from around the corner. V slowly inched forward, ready to shoot. She slowly rounded the corner...

...And saw dark fluid. Everywhere. V was still unsure as to whether the fluid was oil or something else (she was pretty sure Pomni and the others didn't really bleed), but she made sure not to touch it just in case. In the middle of a particularly large puddle was Uzi. But... something wasn't right.

V immediately got the answer to her question when Uzi launched herself at her, her visor a simple yellow X. V managed to dodge out of the way, causing Uzi to hurtle directly into Ragatha and Pomni. Uzi immediately rose, completely ignoring the people she had practically crushed, and looked towards V.

"Uzi..." V started backing away, not sure whether she was talking to her friend or the Absolute Solver.

Uzi's head jerkily cocked itself to the side, saying, "Manic giggle. Can't stop me now." She then charged at V.

Normally, V would have been able to defend herself quite well, but the darkness and the slipperiness of the floor made it so that she was quite incapable of using her weapons. Still, she somehow managed to dodge Uzi (the Absolute Solver? She still wasn't sure) once again.

Uzi was evidently already tired of playing cat-and-mouse, as she used the solver to pick V up by the waist and bring her to her fangs.

"Uzi! Snap out of it!" V tried to wrestle out of the possessed drone's arms, but to no avail. With pure malice in her eye-lights, Uzi's jaws slowly started to close...

...And she saw dark fluid. Everywhere in the hall. Wait a second... V felt a strange sense of deja-vu, almost as if she had been in this situation before. V shook the feeling off before she could get too engrossed in it, and barely noticed Uzi launching herself before dodging.

"Uzi!" V was definitely feeling weird. Had this happened before? V didn't have time to dwell on what was happening as she opened fire on Uzi's form. Her wings had extended to full capacity, here eye lights merged into a single X, and she was salivating at the mouth. Nothing seemed to be damaging her, but that didn't stop V from continuing to shoot.

Just as Uzi was ready to pounce on V, she was picked up by Nori's solver. Uzi thrashed and managed to break the solver's hold, but it gave V the opportunity to shoot a sleeping dart at Uzi. Once again, this didn't seem to have an effect on the transformed drone.

"Why is everyone-WHOA!" Caine appeared mid-air and narrowly avoided being torn to smithereens by Uzi's claws. "Looks like someone's in a bad mood." Uzi just growled in response, the Absolute Solver evidently still controlling her actions.

"Caine, get back! You don't know what she's capable of when she's like this." Nori attempted to clamber up a pole to get a better vantage point of the situation, but Uzi batted her off and rounded on Ragatha and Pomni, who were standing in the corner trying not to draw attention.

"Oh, that's not going to be a problem! I have methods for residents like these!" With a snap of his fingers, Uzi disappeared in a multicolored flash of light. However, she simply appeared once again, her solver flickering for a fraction of a second. "Oh... That's not normal..."

"Uzi herself isn't normal. Get back!" V launched a rocket at Uzi, who was attempting to sneak behind Caine. This finally appeared to have some effect, as Uzi was launched into the wall, nearly creating a hole.

"Hm... Now how am I to contain you?" Caine scratched his gums, lost in thought. Uzi, having lost most of her patience, sprinted towards Ragatha and Pomni.

"CAINE! DO SOMETHING! NOW!" V grabbed Uzi's tail, but was simply whipped around and slammed into a wall.

"Oh! I've got it!" With another snap of his fingers, a portal opened up beneath Uzi, and she tumbled into a black abyss.

"Caine." V turned towards the ringmaster. "What the heck did you just do to her?" She gestured at Pomni and Ragatha's horrified faces, which gave away the fact that Caine evidently did something he shouldn't have done (or at least hadn't done before).

"What do you mean? Haven't I explained to you what abstraction is yet?" V's blank stare gave him enough of an answer, as he continued, "Well, when the glory of the Circus becomes... too much for some people, they... How do I put this nicely..."

Pomni butted in, saying, "They f$@*ing lose their minds."

"That's... one way of putting it..." Caine readjusted himself before continuing. "These players are considerably dangerous to those who haven't yet abstracted, so I keep them in a special place in the Circus."

"AND YOU PUT MY DAUGHTER THERE?!" Nori, having recovered from being knocked off the pole, launched herself at Caine's head. However, she paused mid-air, Caine having stopped her momentum. "TAKE HER OUT RIGHT NOW!"

"No can do until she stops attempting to kill everyone." Caine let Nori down, and Nori grumbled something about AI that Caine pretended to have not heard.

"But... she'll get out, right? N would be devastated... Wait. Where is N?" V looked around, but there was no sight of the final drone. V started worrying, despite the fact she knew N could take care of himself. Besides, Uzi hadn't been anywhere near him.

"Don't worry! I can sense he's still resting in his chamber. Now, if you excuse me, I'm back off to sleep. Seriously, I can't keep waking everyone up, or they'll get cranky." With that, Caine popped out of existence.

V and Nori shared a look with each other, and they both headed their separate ways, with Pomni and Ragatha trailing behind V.

"Um... What was that?" Pomni's eyes looked weirdly hollow, and her pupils darted all over the place, as if Uzi might pop out at any moment.

"That was Uzi if she can't control the other being inside of her." This earned her a bunch of weird stares from Pomni and Ragatha, so V continued, "A few months ago, we were fighting against this really powerful being that was threatening to eat out planet. Uzi ate the thing's... heart? I still don't know what it's called. Anyways, now she has that thing inside of her, and it appears as if she's starting to lose control over her own body."

"And I thought this couldn't get any weirder." Pomni rubbed the back of her neck, her face attempting to stay calm but still betraying hints of terror and apprehension. "Can that happen to you or Nori, or..."

"Thankfully, no."

"What do you think's going to happen to Uzi?" It was Ragatha's turn to speak. She appeared to be strangely calm, but she had been in the Circus for far longer than Pomni, so she was evidently more used to crazy things going on.

V tensed slightly before replying, "I honestly don't know."

The next week went by without a word about Uzi. Caine wouldn't talk about her, but still refused to shut up about his "wondrous adventures". Seriously, half of his descriptions could be summarized in one sentence and still make perfect sense. V and N (he had not taken the news well, by the way) searched around the Circus for any sign of where Uzi was being held, but the lack of angry screams and solver explosions suggested that she wasn't anywhere near the physical circus.

One day, after a particularly interesting adventure (V never thought she would use a bunch of animal carcasses as a staircase to an apartment complex), V saw Caine nervously pacing back and forth. Nori was berating him from the stage, dramatically waving her claws around as her heart pulsated rapidly.

"I am her MOTHER! Seriously, you can't say something bad happened and then refuse to elaborate!" Nori noticed V and N walking into the room. "V! N! Could you help me talk some sense into this guy?"

"Relax! I'm just trying to... Figure out the best way to tell you this..." V felt her heart sink. She glanced over at N and saw that he was feeling the exact same way.

"Just tell us, then!"

Caine took a deep breath, his eyes doing a weird spinning thing that settled when he let the breath out.

"Uzi's been abstracted."

Jax was getting kind of sick of all the mourning. Sure, someone's daughter and friend had become abstracted. But did he dwell on Kaufmo's abstraction? No! He just continued on with life, as that was what he had to do if he didn't want to become abstracted himself.

Also, it was getting weird passing by a crying robot spider every single day. She didn't even have tear ducts! (Then again, he was pretty sure he didn't either, but who knows?)

Anyways, approximately one week after Uzi's abstraction, Caine came up to Jax. "Hey there, Jax! Do you mind if I talk to you for a moment?"

"Yes." Jax continued to walk down the hall, trying his best to ignore Caine's constant pestering. However, that ringmaster was a persistent one, and soon enough Jax was forced to listen to what he had to say.

"So... I know that it's been a while since Uzi abstracted, and I don't want her friends to dwell too much on that. I mean... What if their sadness makes them become abstracted too? So-"

"Wait." Jax held up a finger to Caine's mouth (head?). "You don't actually know what makes people become abstracted?"

"Well..." Caine thought for a second. "Most often it's the result of a loss of sanity... Then again, you can get infected by touching someone who's abstracted. But that's just temporary..." Caine trailed off, lost in thought. Suddenly, his head snapped back in the direction of Jax. "What were we talking about again?"

"Ugh." Jax facepalmed, clearly annoyed by this conversation. "You were asking me about something to do with the robots' sadness?"

"Oh! Yes! Thank you for reminding me! I don't want them to be sad for the rest of the time they're here, so I was wondering if you could think of something that would cheer them up! Of course, it has to be within the respectful boundaries, so no jokes about death..." Caine was rambling again, so Jax decided to continue walking down the hall. Surprisingly, this time worked, Caine not noticing Jax's absence until too late.

Of course, that was when he was ambushed by Ragatha. God, couldn't he get a break every once in a while?!

"Jax! You know how to make people happy, right?" Evidently no one paid attention to him, otherwise they would never have asked him for this. Ragatha seemed to catch onto this discrepancy, as she quickly changed her statement. "You know how to divert people's attention, right?" Without waiting for a proper response, she grabbed Jax by the wrist and started dragging him into the main room.

"What do you want me for?" Jax wrested his arm out of Ragatha's grip (which was surprisingly strong for a doll). "Also, I can walk on my own. You don't have to drag me like an upset child."

"It's just... Uzi's abstraction hasn't been the best for the drones." She gestured towards where N and V were comforting Nori, who was blowing her nonexistent nose with a handkerchief. "You see? It has Nori defying nature. Since you know a lot about distractions and pranks and things like that..." She looked at Jax expectantly.

"Are you seriously suggested I host a cheer-up party for them? No, that's DEFINITELY not my style." Jax started to walk away, but was met with Caine's toothy face. "F&$@! Don't do that, Caine!"

"I think Ragatha has an amazing idea! Something to cheer them up would definitely go a long way! Remember what you guys did for Pomni after Gummigoo had to leave?" Caine was practically shaking with excitement, which both amused and worried Jax at the same time.

"Didn't you blow that guy up?"

"BESIDES THE POINT!" Caine coughed into his fist. "Anyways... I've already planned an adventure for today, but I was hoping you could string our mechanical maestros along for the ride?"

"So... a chaperone?" Jax was liking this less and less as the conversation dragged on.

"OF FUN!" Caine then glanced at his "invisible" watch (he didn't want to admit that he didn't actually know what the time was). "WOW! Would you look at the time! Looks like we got some adventuring to do!"

N had overheard the last part of the conversation (Caine had been screaming, how could she not have), and flew over to the little group. "Guys, now's not really the best time for another adventure."

"NONSENSE!" Once again, everyone teleported into the main room, scaring V and Nori off of the stage and onto the floor. "Today's a day for fun stuff! No more cry-"

"SHE WAS MY DAUGHTER! LET ME GRIEVE IN PEACE YOU SICK CREEP!" Nori started scuttling away, sobbing all the while, until Caine picked her up the same way he did before when Uzi was tearing up the halls.

"Now, now! This will help with the grieving process! I don't know just how, yet, but it will!"

"JHTYIOAEBGIUOPENGUIWRGBWIPBHGUWIRBGLO!!!!" Nori continued struggling in Caine's hand, muttering unintelligent nonsense.

"Enough of that! Time for adventure!" Instead of snapping his fingers, Caine did a weird heel-click dance that opened up a portal beneath everyone's feet. Without warning, he also threw Nori into the portal alongside everyone else.

"Well, this is just great." When Jax got to his feet, he saw that he was in an enclosed room without any windows or a door. On the floor were a bunch of random objects, none of which would be useful anyways.

"Welcome to Think Time! (Name is still in the works.)" Caine's voice rang out of nowhere, scaring Jax and sending him skidding across whatever junk happened be in his path. "For today's adventure, you have to figure out how to escape each of your enclosed rooms! No help from others today! In fact, for some of the puzzles, you will have to COMPLETELY SET YOUR MIND ON THEM WITHOUT DISTRACTIONS." Caine made it evident he was aiming this at the drones, which, fair enough. He was trying to take their minds off the situation. "You may begin!"

Jax stood there staring at the objects on the floor for what felt like an eternity but what was probably only a few minutes. There were a few utility items (like a flashlight and grappling hook), but there were also items that made no sense. Seriously, who in their right mind has a double-sided mirror?

At a loss for what to do, Jax started to feel his way along the walls, searching for some kind of secret panel or doorway. He frantically sped up his search as he started to feel grooves in the wall. However, they gave way to nothing, leave Jax feeling even more stuck than before. He took a step back to look at the wall with the grooves, being able to make them out slightly but never all at once.

Jax looked down at the items at his feet once again, hoping for inspiration. "Ah, what the heck do I have to lose?" Jax bent down with a sigh and picked up the flashlight, switching it on and pointing it at the grooved wall. The shadows the flashlight projected allowed Jax to see what exactly the grooves made up: a message on the wall.

"WHAT HAS A SPINE BUT IS NOT ALIVE?"

Jax squinted at the hint before the answer clicked in his mind. He bent down once again and picked up the textbook from earlier. Sure, he hated math, but he would tolerate it so long as it helped him out of this place.

Opening the book, Jax saw that the pages were actually replaced by some weird portal into another room. Jax couldn't make out the second room all that well, so he placed the book on the floor and squirmed his way in. Just as he thought he was stuck, he slipped through the portal and into the next room.

"Oh, dear God. Caine, what have you done?" In front of Jax was an insane obstacle course, the kind you see on those "impossible challenge" YouTube videos but boosted by one hundred percent. There were rotating bars of literal fire (what was Caine's obsession with fire?), thin ropes swinging over pits of lava, and spiked walls that slammed together constantly.

Safe to say, this wasn't going to be easy.

Looking around the platform he was standing on, Jax saw a small button labelled, "Press here to set respawn." He did so, still doubtful that any kind of spawn point made by Caine would function properly (he had VERY bad experiences when he first arrived at the Circus).

38 tries. 38 long, hard, painful, and frankly just annoying tries. He'd tried so many different strategies; hanging onto ropes for dear life, ripping off a piece of the obstacle course to use as a weapon (Caine wasn't very happy with that), and even just running through and hoping for the best. After he had died for the umpteenth time, Jax took a seat on the floor.

"You couldn't have made this any harder?" Caine was still spiteful about Jax vandalising his obstacle course, meaning that a gigantic saw blade spawned in the middle of everything. "Aw, what the f@*$ Caine!?"

"Pst!" Jax looked up to see where the whispering was coming from and saw Kinger looking through the ceiling through a square-shaped hole.

"What the-" Jax stood up, straining to see exactly where Kinger was standing. "How did you manage to do that?"

"Caine accidentally ripped the floor a bit when he was adding that saw blade to your obstacle course." He gestured at the saw blade, which was currently ripping at the wall with a sickening crunching sound. "I think I might be able to..." Kinger stretched his disembodied hands downwards, allowing Jax to grab hold of them. With as much precision as he could manage, Kinger zipped Jax through the obstacle course, not leaving as much as a scratch on the purple rabbit.

"Wow! Thanks, ya dusty old chess piece. I guess you can do some things without going insane..." Jax dusted off his overalls, halfheartedly waved goodbye to Kinger, and stepped through the next door.

Immediately he was almost flattened by a bar of metal. Thankfully, Caine liked adding weird sound effects to everything, so Jax was able to dodge out of the way before he became a pancake.

"What the..." Jax looked around to see that he was in some sort of construction site-themed room, complete with heavy machinery and everything. "Caine really went all out with this, huh?" However, he didn't have time to enjoy the scenery (could one enjoy the scenery of a construction site?), as he was almost crushed by another beam.

"Oi!" A blob-like NPC screamed from where she was sitting inside a bulldozer. "Watch where you're going, bub! You could get hurt!" The blob proceeded to continue driving the bulldozer, seemingly forgetting Jax even existed.

"Stop driving like a maniac, then!" Jax started to make his way through the construction site, avoiding stray bits of metal and other material and silently cursing at anyone who almost crushed him with a vehicle.

Eventually, he came to a weirdly-coloured wall that read, "HEAVY DEMOLITION REQUIRED". Jax immediately knew what he needed to get, and internally groaned at the thought of walking his way back through that mess. Thankfully, that trip was immediately made unnecessary as he saw the bulldozer pull up and come to a stop a few hundred yards from where he was standing.

As the driver blob wasn't looking, Jax snuck into the driver's seat and hit the ignition. Ignoring everyone's screams for him to stop (and potentially hitting more than a few NPCs with the machinery he was now badly operating), he smashed through the demolition-ready wall.

The bulldozer immediately disappeared from underneath Jax, sending him crashing down towards the floor. As he slowly got back up, he saw he was in yet another small room. The only decoration was a small fish tank, filled with multicoloured species of the aquatic animal. Jax looked around to see if Caine left any clues, but nothing adorned the walls and the floors were practically barren.

"What have you hatched up this time..." Jax walked towards the fish tank, inspecting its sides and watching the fish swim. He was peaceful for a moment when a yellow triangle flashed inside the fish tank, making it explode. Jax was thrown back, forcefully slamming into the wall before slumping to the ground in a daze. When he regained his senses, Jax saw a gigantic hole in the wall, steaming with yellow smoke.

Jax peered through the hole, seeing only darkness. He was about to duck back inside the room when he saw a small flash of light somewhere in the distance. "Hey!" he called out. "Who's there?!" There was no answer.

(DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME KIDS!) Without anything better to do (and no other leads), Jax jumped into the blackness. Surprisingly, walking through this weird void (not to be confused with the Void) wasn't all that hard to traverse, with it being much like walking through a pitch-black room more than anything.

The light (which turned out to be yellow) continued to get brighter and brighter as Jax made his way towards it. It almost came to the point where he was completely blinded by it.

When he was close enough, Jax was able to make out a large, floating orb. It was... weird, to say the least. It seemed to exist without a real purpose. Jax wondered whether this was a scrapped asset, but immediately put those thoughts to rest when he saw something floating inside the orb. It was...

Uzi.

"What the..." Jax stepped closer to the orb, trying to make sure that he wasn't hallucinating or simply not seeing things correctly. However, he was right; Uzi was somehow trapped in a gigantic glowing orb out of bounds. She didn't look abstracted whatsoever, just a bit... Jax couldn't really describe it. Like she wasn't herself?

Steeling his nerves, Jax took a deep breath and reached out to touch the orb. Hey, he couldn't die, so what was the harm? He immediately regretted his decision as he burned his hand on the orb's surface. In reaction to his touch, the orb started pulsating strangely, almost as if it was a beating heart rather than a manifestation of energy or code.

Jax didn't know why he tried to touch the orb again, as he just burned himself further and sent the orb into even more of a frenzy. Jax thought he could hear overlapping murmurs coming from the orb, but he just attributed it to the pain coursing through and up his arm.

Jax really started freaking out when Uzi opened her eyes and started shaking violently. "Whoa! Uzi! You alright in there?!" Uzi didn't respond, jerking around in her little bubble. Jax continued to stress out about what was happening, even getting to the point where he was literally burning himself trying to shake Uzi out of her current state. He was so distracted he didn't notice abstracted players sneaking up behind him. When he turned around, it was too late...

In a flash of bright yellow, Jax found himself back in the room with the fish tank. Everything was still intact, with the fish moving in eerily similar patterns. Jax felt all over himself, laughing in relief at the fact he was still alive.

"God, Caine needs to slow down with the scares. Halloween already ended!" Jax stood up and made his way back over to the fishbowl, slightly wary about it exploding again. However, nothing happened. "Now, what the heck am I supposed to do here?" Once again, Jax felt around the fish tank, looking for a button or switch. However, without warning, his armed jerked up, a yellow triangle flashing in his palm. Suddenly, words started appearing on the wall next to him.

"TAKE THE ODD ONE OUT."

"What the..." Jax pushed his arm back down to its original state, looking at the words now on the wall. "Caine really had weird ways of doing things..." As he was instructed, Jax took the only fish that wasn't brightly coloured (brown and gray, for those of you detail freaks), setting something off and opening up one final door. Stepping through, he saw everybody else chatting in the lobby (or at least what looked like one). Aside from a few waves hello, he wasn't reacted to.

Nori was still sobbing her heart out in the corner, N watching over her and V standing guard. Evidently, this thing hadn't helped the Uzi situation whatsoever. Speaking of Uzi, Jax thought about talking to the drones about what he had seen in the void. However, he thought better of doing so, not wanting to be on the receiving end of Nori's paternal wrath.

That night was a weird one. Jax kept on having visions about colourful triangles dancing around his hands and objects moving around the room by themselves. He also thought he heard a weird AI voice once in a while, but attributed it to Caine testing out new features and forgetting to turn off player interaction. A bit uneasy, Jax settled into bed.

Maybe he should have told Nori about what happened.

For the first time in quite a while, Zooble had company that wasn't capable of being diagnosed as clinically insane. Well... that could've been debated, but they didn't want to dwell on that too much.

For the past week, Jax had been acting strangely. He rarely came out of his room, and when he did, he looked extremely distraught and like he hadn't slept in ages. If Zooble happened to pass by his room in the middle of the night, they could occasionally hear banging and crashing, almost as if things were being thrown around. Zooble didn't want to check what was going on, so they kept their distance.

This was the first time Jax had refused to go on an adventure. The morning of, he'd seemed especially weird, muttering to himself and staring off into the distance. Sure, Kinger did that half the time as well, but this was new for Jax. Frankly, it worried Zooble.

That was why, when Caine launched everyone into the portal (and threw Nori, who was still trying to grieve properly and failing to do so, into a separate portal when she tried to escape), Zooble ran after Jax, who had managed to go unnoticed.

Immediately, Zooble lost track of Jax in the numerous halls of the Circus. Why Caine made this place so big, they didn't know; the population never grew to more than ten people at one time.

They tried Jax's room-nothing. Although, something had definitely happened in here, something close to a tornado. Things were haphazardly strewn everywhere, books were torn open, desks and sinks were cracked and completely shattered, and the floor was pockmarked by small burn holes. The only thing that had miraculously stayed intact was Jax's bed, which had a small rectangle of untouched ground surrounding it. While that was odd, Zooble didn't have much time to dwell on the state of the room, as they heard someone scream from down the hall.

At the end of the hall was Jax... or, at least, something that looked like Jax. Zooble didn't know what, but he seemed extremely wrong. They definitely knew something was wrong when fake-Jax started scrambling backwards on all fours towards them. Zooble locked themselves in the nearest room, which turned out to be some sort of spare parts room.

Zooble tried to ignore the constant banging on the door as they looked around for something to defend themselves with. The best they could muster was a broom with the head torn off (essentially a jagged piece of thin wood). Steeling their nerves, Zooble opened the door once again. However, the weird Jax monster was gone.

"Jax, I swear to God, if this is another one of your pranks, you will wish you stayed in your room!" Zooble made their way down the hall once again, on edge from the previous encounter. What was going on? Caine hadn't seemed like he was glitching out. Maybe he was trying to force Zooble into an impromptu at-home adventure? No, the last time he'd tried that, Ragatha almost burned into nothing. He wouldn't try that again for a long time.

The hall just around the corner was also a mess, similar to the state Jax's room was in. Anything and everything in the hall was strewn about. Even doors had been ripped off their hinges and tossed aside.

"Jax...?" Zooble readied their makeshift weapon, hoping that they wouldn't end up having to use it. They treaded carefully, avoiding anything that looked like it might hurt. Occasionally, they heard a thud coming from somewhere off in the distance, but they were in no hurry to figure out what was making them.

Yep. Something was definitely wrong.

In the centre of a small atrium (which served as a sort of convergence point for a series of hallways) was a big, painted circle. Glyphs were carved into the floor surrounding the circle, all of which were glowing with a weird yellow energy. Floating in the middle of the circle was Jax, all of the orifices in his face emitting the same yellow energy.

"Holy s#*%!" Zooble scrambled backwards and out of sight of whatever... that... was. Had Jax tried to summon a weird demon entity without Caine's knowledge? Even he wasn't too dumb for that. Besides, demons couldn't exist in a world that was literally bent to Caine's will.

Slowly peeking out from behind the wall, Zooble called, "Jax? What the f*#$ is going on?" There was no response. Jax continued to float there, motionless. "You can't hear me, can you?" This was mainly a remark to themselves, but Zooble was surprised when Jax actually started facing in their direction.

Immediately Zooble started to step back, just in case whatever was happening to Jax was dangerous (or worse, contagious). This seemed to anger Jax, as a wrathful scream erupted from his throat. The lights emitting from the glyphs surrounding the circle and Jax turned a violent red, and floating triangles started appearing in the air.

"Ah, s*$^." The triangles started whizzing towards Zooble, giving them barely enough time to dodge successfully. Zooble started running in circles along the outskirts of the room, avoiding a constant stream of magical triangles. They tried calling for help, but for some reason they couldn't emit sound. Of course now was the one time Caine performed maintenance on the quality controls.

Zooble stumbled, and a red triangle finally managed to capture them around the waist. Funnily enough, the triangle didn't hurt Zooble, but instead lifted them up to face Jax at eye level.

"How are you doing this, Jax? Did Caine accidentally give you moderator powers again?" Zooble struggled against the red triangle, but to no avail. Their hands just seemed to pass right through it. "Put me down!"

Jax, in response, screamed in Zooble's face. The triangle started squeezing Zooble's abdomen, making them balloon into a weird, cone-like shape. With a final bit of resistance, all of Zooble's body parts flew away, leaving Zooble's main torso and head to crash to the floor.

Before Zooble could even think about what happened, Jax (and the weird demon seance stuff) disappeared in a flash of reddish-yellow light.

"Um... help?" Caine didn't appear out of nowhere, so he was evidently off doing something at the moment. This left Zooble to use their head to drag their body over to their scattered body parts, replacing them one by one. Eventually, Zooble was back to the state they were in before, if not slightly rattled.

Another scream that resounded through the halls made Zooble flinch. However, instead of going to investigate it, this time Zooble ran right towards their room. They had seen what was happening before, and they certainly weren't ready for another run at it.

After a while, the screaming started to get louder and louder, despite still sounding like it was coming from the same place. Zooble tried to ignore the sounds as they went about their business, but eventually the screams became too loud to ignore. Arming themselves with a proper weapon this time (a sword that Caine somehow thought would make for a good arm), Zooble ventured out into the main area of the Circus.

The seance had become bigger. Red triangles were plastered all over the place, spinning, shining, or doing both at the same time in a blindingly bright dance of craziness. Jax's floating body was in the middle, still emitting weird beams of light. Zooble looked around for signs of anyone else, but no one was to be found. They were truly alone in this.

Zooble snuck their way closer to Jax by hiding behind large blocks. They had come within throwing distance when Caine appeared out of nowhere.

"Hello the-OH DEAR, WHAT IS GOING ON?!" Caine's eyes pretty much bugged out of his head as he saw what was going on. "I LEAVE YOU GUYS FOR HALF AN HOUR AND THIS HAPPENS?!"

Jax slowly turned towards Caine, still screaming. Red triangles started to appear all around the ringmaster, effectively trapping him in. Caine attempted to teleport away, but he was immediately surrounded by new triangles. He was stuck.

Of course, now was when everyone else appeared, having just gotten back from the adventure. Initially, they stood there in shock at the state of the Circus, and then they started screaming in unison at the sight of Jax floating in the middle of a death circle.

"Does this happen normally?!" N attempted to fly up to get a better view of the situation, but was caught by a red triangle. Try as he might, he couldn't get out, either. "What the- Nori, what the heck?"

"It isn't me!" To prove her point, Nori summoned her own solver, which had previously been inactive.

"Then..." V glanced at Jax. "Who's doing all of this?"

"And how the heck are they summoning so many at once?!" Nori managed to dodge a triangle Jax suddenly sent her way, her legs skittering across the burnt ground.

"A little help here?" N was growing increasingly uncomfortable, the triangle slowly constricting around his waist. "Don't want to be sawed in half today!"

"Got you!" Nori spawned a pickax (interesting choice of weapon, but whatever) and threw it at Jax, distracting him temporarily. This caused all the triangles in the room to disappear, sending everyone who had been previously trapped sprawling to the ground.

Jax aimed his hand at Nori, but nothing happened. It was almost as if whatever he was doing didn't work on her... But how was that possible?

Unfortunately, Jax was a pretty good problem solver, as he simply took control of a particularly large box and started smashing Nori into the ground like a whack-a-mole game.

"OH GOD!" N flew over to the box and smashed it into smithereens. He then flew down and picked up Nori, who had been surrounded by some kind of force field. "Thank robo-God you're all right."

"What the heck makes you think I'm all right?" N couldn't answer Nori, instead choosing to focus on Jax, who started throwing boxes in his general direction. Thanks to his flying skills, N was able to dodge them all effectively. However, this left the Circus members scrambling to not get smashed into the ground.

"Jax, what has gotten into you?!" Caine, being the master of the Circus, was able to teleport around to avoid being attacked. Any reasoning, however, went in one of Jax's ears and out the other.

"I don't think Jax is Jax right now!" Nori started launching a barrage of pickaxes at Jax, most of which he was able to deflect (one actually managed to go way off target and pin Ragatha to the wall, but no one talks about that anymore).

"How did we defeat this thing last time?" V started shooting at Jax with a mini machine gun, but Jax seemed completely unfazed.

"Well, Uzi ate it..." N immediately covered his mouth when he realised Nori was right beside him.

"N, I'm not fragile. I..." Contrary to what she was saying, Nori started sobbing on the spot. "I... can... I DON'T WANT TO DEAL WITH THIS ANYMORE!" Nori jumped out of N's hands and landed on Jax's head, clinging to one of his ears. Zooble was immediately reminded of when Nori first arrived at the Circus, and how she was holding onto Jax quite similarly when he kidnapped her.

"TAKE THIS, YOU B*#&$!" Nori launched a pickax from close range, impaling Jax right through the head (and causing half the Circus members to scream in fright). Immediately, all the triangles disappeared, and Jax fell to the floor. "NO DEATH TODAY! WHOO!"

"Great. She's in her tiger mom stage of denial." V walked over and picked Nori up, avoiding the claw she was pumping up and down in a sign of victory.

"I feel like we should be extremely worried about Jax..." Pomni pointed at Jax's head, which hadn't started bleeding but still didn't look any less weird with a pickax straight through it. "Like, extremely."

"He should be fine in a few minutes, right? Respawning and that kind of stuff." Nori continued off on her own little victory dance, pumping her spider body up and down to a beat only she could hear.

"Well, this place certainly looks like a mess. Time to clean up!" With a snap of his fingers, Caine started to magically repair the floor and put everything back into their places. "Who would like to help?" N, bless his heart, was the only one who raised his hand. Of course, this meant that everybody but him was put on cleaning duty.

"Not what I expected to be doing today, but alright." Zooble dragged a big block behind them, struggling to keep their grip on its sides. "Seriously, what was that thing?"

V turned towards Zooble, her expression a mask of resignation. "That is what we call the Solver." She continued to elaborate in response to Zooble's confused stare. "So, back in our home world, there was a weird mutation in the body of an old friend of mine." V grimaced, obviously thinking back to what happened. "She became the host of the Absolute Solver. In subsequent tests made by our version of humans, some drones were directly infected with the Solver. In Uzi's case, however, she used to be the Solver's host."

"I'm assuming that's where the eating bit came from during the fight?"

"Yeah, a bit unconventional, but it works. But... It still doesn't explain why the heck Jax seems to have the Solver now." Deep in thought, V launched a box up onto a balcony, the box itself just barely settling in place.

"Could it be, without a proper host, the Solver had to find someone else to infect?" Zooble continued to try and drag the box, barely making any progress in their endeavour.

"I refuse to believe Uzi did that abstraction thing without an iota of resistance. Something else must have happened..." V glanced around the room, seeing that everyone else was practically done with their own tasks. She and Zooble started to walk over to their friends when they heard a commotion come from the centre of the room. In the middle of the circle, which no one had scrubbed away at that point, Jax's body started floating upwards once again. The pickax was still embedded in his head, but that didn't seem to be hindering him whatsoever.

"Of course he gets natural regeneration. Why not?" V picked herself off the ground with her wings and launched at Jax, her hand blades out and ready to strike. However, she was immediately grabbed by the Solver and launched to the side, creating a big crack in the wall.

Utter pandemonium ensued.

Zooble went over to check on V as N and Nori fended off Jax once again. Like before, it seemed as if Jax couldn't affect Nori with the Solver at all-maybe Solver hosts couldn't damage each other, or something like that. This meant that all of Jax's attacks were focused on N. Thankfully, N was able to take care of himself pretty well, only taking hits every once in a while and always recovering quickly for a counterattack.

Pomni and the rest of the Circus gang tried to help as best as they could, but most of the time their attempts at attacking Jax did next to nothing. The only person (well, AI, but whatever) who managed to contribute something useful was Caine. He was able to distract Jax long enough to allow Nori to launch pickax after pickax at Jax. A few minutes into the battle, and Jax's body looked like a weird, miner's version of a porcupine.

Caine wasn't able to keep it up for forever, though, and he was eventually caught by the Solver around his waist. Immediately Jax started squeezing, causing Caine to balloon similarly to how Zooble looked when they were in the same situation.

Zooble finally got to V, kneeling down beside her. V immediately threw Zooble to the side as she was picked up by the solver, being squeezed alongside Caine. They both groaned in pain, the messed-up physics of the Circus being the only thing keeping them alive. No matter what Jax tried, they would not break apart. The only reason why the same strategy worked for Zooble was because they were naturally able to break into pieces.

"Let go of them!" Nori attempted the same tactic of launching herself at Jax's head, but she was swatted away by Jax's hand, which moved with lighting-fast reflexes. "Hey! No fair!"

With Nori unable to do much to distract Jax, everyone started getting picked up by the Solver, including Zooble. Soon enough, everyone except Nori was struggling in the air, slowly being subjected to more and more pain.

When Kinger moaned in pain particularly loudly, something appeared to snap inside Caine's mind. He immediately burst the Solver into pieces, his previously sunny demeanour immediately changed to be the opposite.

"Get your stupid little symbols OFF OF MY FRIENDS!" Caine launched himself at Jax, knocking him out of the circle and to the ground. Unfortunately, this didn't seem to stop Jax's rampage, as everyone continued to be strangled by the numerous Solvers. Caine started throwing punches and launching Jax into the air, desperate to stop anyone from permanently dying. Zooble was sure he knew that they could never actually die, but was simply too blinded by his own rage to fully understand the situation.

Eventually, Jax was able to get the upper hand and threw Caine right off him and into the wall, sending him crashing through it and into the sunny display outside. The Sun and the Moon both gasped in shock (Zooble never actually cared to remember their names), but stayed in place, as they were technically just fixtures in a backdrop.

"Caine!" Nori started scuttling towards the hole in the wall, but then realised something else she could do. Mustering all her willpower, Nori started spinning the debris from the wall into a dust tornado, sending it towards Jax. While this was a good idea on paper, Jax was immediately able to disperse the tornado and send it back towards Nori, sending her flying off into the Void. Caine immediately teleported her back into the Circus, standing beside her.

"Oi, you stupid rabbit! No one thinks this looks cool!" Without warning, a lion launched itself at Jax, sending him spiralling out the hole in the wall and into the Void. Unlike with Nori, Caine left Jax in there, potentially in an attempt at waiting for him to calm down.

"Wait a second..." Zooble took a second to realise what had just happened. "When has there been lions in the Circus?" Turning towards where the lion had come from, Zooble saw a figure that made the Circus members gasp in shock and the drones laugh and sob in happiness.

"Uzi is back in the game, baby!"

"YOU F*$^ING LIED TO ME!" Oh, how Uzi loved it when her mother did this. Nori launched herself at Caine's head, grappling on and repeatedly beating him with the handle of a pickax (like mother, like daughter). "HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO A GRIEVING MOTHER?! I EXPECT AN APOLOGY RIGHT NOW, YOUNG MAN!"

While Nori did her thing, N embraced Uzi. Uzi, being Uzi, immediately pushed N away, her visor showing slight blush marks. V stood a small distance away, smiling but not being as physical as N. Uzi gave V a small wave, which was returned in likeness.

The Circus members, on the other hand, were all freaking out at the lion that was currently sizing them up as snacks.

"Uzi..." Ragatha chuckled, wringing her hands out nervously as she backed away from the oversized cat (seriously, it was much larger than it would be, even in real life). "Who's your friend?"

"Oh, she's harmless!" Uzi waved the comment away as if she were talking about a simple house cat and not an actual predator. "She's the loudest growler I've heard, but she wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Uzi, SHE JUST SHOVED JAX INTO THE VOID!"

"That's only because I've told her to. She wouldn't actually do that on her own."

Nori, leaving Caine glitching violently on the ground, scuttled over to Uzi and launched herself at Uzi's face. "HOW COULD YOU JUST LEAVE YOUR MOTHER LIKE THAT WITHOUT AN EXPLANATION WHATSOEVER?!" Nori spawned yet another pickax and started beating Uzi over the head with it as well.

"Hey! Mom! Stop! OW!" Uzi picked Nori off her head with her hand, holding her an arm's length in front of her. "It wasn't like I had much of a choice! One second I'm infected and feral, the next I wake up in the dark!"

"YOU STILL COULD HAVE WRITTEN!" Ah, mom logic. Somehow they always think their children are able to contact them immediately. Uzi had been subjected to this specific situation more times than she'd like to recall.

Caine slowly rose off the floor, his teeth still dented from the pickax. "You certainly got a good pickax..."

"Also..." Nori used the pickax to gesture towards the lion. "I don't recall giving you permission to have a feral lion as a pet, Uzi. In fact, you shouldn't even have a pet at all! Especially one that can kill whatever it wants!"

"Yeah, we shouldn't have NPCs wandering around the place. It'd get WAY too confusing!" With that, Caine poised his fingers to snap, ready to explode the lion into fun confetti.

Fortunately for the lion, Nori whirled around on the ringmaster, her heart beating with malice. "You touch my daughter's pet and I will f#*%ing END YOU." Caine slowly lowered his fingers.

There was an awkward beat of silence, only broken when Uzi spoke up. "By the way, what the heck was going on?"

N walked over to the hole in the wall, looking down at Jax, who was still falling through the Void. "Last I checked, that guy had been infected."

Uzi blinked, her eye-lights hollowing slightly. "Like, infected-infected? I mean, me-infected?" Her eye-lights hollowed even further at N's nod of confirmation. "Oh, robo-Jesus. That cannot be good. I mean, I thought I was under control for the most part..."

V walked over to Uzi, putting a (mildly) comforting hand on her shoulder. "Hey, whatever the heck was going on five minutes ago, it couldn't have been your fault. You've been... Wait, where have you been?"

Uzi looked over to Caine accusingly. "That's what I would like to know."

Caine started fidgeting his cane, oversized beads of sweat dripping down the sides of his gums. "Well, I- I wasn't completely sure whether..."

"Give her a straight answer otherwise I'm gonna give you an artificial cavity in each and every one of your teeth." Nori used her Solver to aim a pickax at Caine's teeth, waving it back and forth.

"Well... I genuinely thought you were abstracted at first... I mean, who wouldn't?!" Caine looked at the Circus gang for backup, but they were all still eyeing the lion suspiciously.

Only Pomni looked away long enough to respond, saying, "Well, you weren't really acting normal, Uzi. There were scratch marks and spilt fluid everywhere."

"Well, I can't exactly attribute that to me..." Almost as if on cue, Uzi's Solver tail sprouted up, it's bow bouncing up and down on it's tiny head (Uzi wasn't even sure whether it could be clinically referred to as a head). "What the- Now you decide to make an appearance? Where were you when I was all the way down in the void Caine put me in?!"

"I don't recall. Giggle. Although you sounded weird. Like a boy. But that's silly. Giggle." Everyone gave Uzi horrified stares except for her fellow drones, evidently not familiar with the fact she technically had a separate being inside of her.

"That's..." Uzi gave her tail a weird stare. "What am I even supposed to call you? I assume you're no longer Cyn."

"Call me what you want. My care factor is zero. Giggle." The tail suddenly zoomed towards the Circus members, dragging Uzi along with it. "Excited gasp. New specimens." Cue the shrieking and pandemonium, all tied off with Kinger somehow finding his way in the ceiling rafters.

"Calm down, everybody. CALM DOWN!" Everybody stopped in their tracks, even the Solver tail. "Surely we can-"

"Oh, shut up, you big liar!" A pickax thrown by Nori clanged off Caine's teeth, setting the chaos back in motion. Caine desperately tried to get everyone to stop screaming and running everywhere, but none of his attempts seemed to be working. Eventually, he resorted to what he had usually been doing the past few days, namely to Nori.

Picking each and every member of the Circus up, Caine threw them into a multicoloured portal, followed by all the drones. The Solver tail attempted to snap at Caine, but he simply forced her mouth shut with some weird AI command and unceremoniously tossed it and Uzi in.

"Ooh. A hospital. Tasty." Uzi immediately tried to edge away from her own tail, forgetting that it was literally attached to her. Thankfully, nobody else heard that... less than savoury remark.

"This is new..." Gangle started walking down the aisle of beds, all of which appeared to be empty. "When was the last time we've been in a workplace?"

"Gosh, I can't remember! But I'm pretty sure there should be at least one person in these beds, or maybe some staff." Ragatha walked past Gangle, searching for any sign of NPCs that might be roaming the hallways waiting to be talked to.

Everyone was jump-scared (a pickax ended up in the ceiling) when an NPC literally spawned in right behind everyone, his booming voice reverberating throughout the otherwise empty hall. "Hello everyone! Welcome to our humble little hospital. You must be the new interns!"

Ragatha, keeping up her role of always being the first to interact with NPCs, said, "Um... Yes! That's right! What do you need us to help with?"

The NPC opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The NPC also jerked slightly, almost as if it were buffering. Suddenly, it continued, as if nothing had even happened. "We need you to help admit, station, and care for the patients that come into this place!" With that, the NPC dashed away, leaving everyone slightly confused.

"This is Caine's idea of a fun adventure?" Uzi groaned as hospital garments appeared before her and everyone else in the room. The designs differed depending on what role a person got; those who were to admit people into the hospital were given blue nursing scrubs, those who were to escort people to the operating rooms were given stereotypical nurse outfits, and those who were to check up on people were given oversized coats and play stethoscopes. Uzi doubted this is what actual humans who worked at hospitals looked like, but she decided to play along. Looking down at her attire, Uzi realised she was one of three who were actually performing the checkups. She internally fist-pumped (guts were cool, okay?) and walked over to the other two "doctors": N and Kinger.

"Uzi! You're with us!" N excitedly waved Uzi over as Kinger looked between the two of them, confused. "We can catch up over... Whatever we're going to do, I guess." The three of them walked over to the big set of double-doors labelled "Doctors", Kinger looking at Uzi funnily but decidedly letting his lack of remembrance for her go.

Uzi's Solver tail shrieked in delight when N pushed open the doors to the doctor's room, which was filled with a number of different surgical tools that evidently it could see causing damage. Uzi quickly patted the tail down, but it refused to go back into temporary hibernation.

"Even more interesting! Excited giggle. Which one to use..." The tail started dragging Uzi around the room, taking stock of the inventory and making note of which ones would be the most dangerous.

"What are we going to call this, anyways?" N walked over to Uzi, keeping her in place with a surprisingly firm hand. "As you said before, I'm pretty sure Cyn isn't the Absolute Solver."

"Hm..." Uzi was just starting to think about N's question when the Solver tail started making a weird clicking sound.

Uzi was about to start seriously worrying about whether she was going to blow someone up when the tail said, "Random name generation finished. I shall now be called Susan."

"I am definitely not calling you-" Uzi was cut off by Susan (apparently that was her name now) dragging her towards a particularly large syringe.

"That is my name now. Deal." Susan started to admire the syringe, pecking it every which way. Uzi slowly turned towards N, her eyes crying for help. Picking up the message, he pulled her (and Susan, sure) away from the wall of potentially-deadly things. Before Susan could protest (God this was going to get confusing), Ragatha ushered a green-coloured NPC into the room, not even managing to get a word in when she was tackled by another guest, thrown to her by V.

"Um... Good luck!" N closed the door, leaving Ragatha to deal with the now-screaming patient. Was Caine running out of ideas or something?

"So, what's the matter with you?" Kinger sat down next to the green NPC, taking on the role of gathering information.

Before Uzi could protest that you probably shouldn't say that to a sick person, the NPC replied, "I've been feeling sick all week, and lately everything I see is starting to turn green." Kinger started to take notes in a small notebook (Uzi had no idea where he got that from), writing much quicker than Uzi expected.

When the NPC finished talking about what they had been experiencing, a screen at the back of the room dinged to life. On it were three colourful boxes; one contained a syringe full of neon blue fluid, another contained a band-aid, and the third contained a pair of sharp scissors.

"I suggest the third option." Susan started jabbing at the third box, as if she could peck out the scissors right then and there.

"Those would be useful for something..." Uzi glared at Susan until she stopped pecking at the screen. "But I'm pretty sure that's not what we need right now."

"And a band-aid is normally used for when humans have physical wounds, no?" N gestured at the second box, eliminating that option as well.

"So... we're supposed to give this guy something that looks like it's radioactive?" Uzi glanced at the NPC, who was coughing into his fist. "Fun."

"Agreement has been made." Susan, apparently taking Uzi's interest towards... whatever was happening as permission to pick up a syringe filled with a similar liquid and plunge it in the arm of the NPC. Naturally, the NPC screamed in pain, but Susan just pushed the plunger, entering whatever the liquid inside the syringe was into the NPC's virtual bloodstream.

"I'm not sure whether that was the right thing..." Kinger walked over to where Susan had picked up the syringe, holding up a second syringe with a liquid more like the one that had been shown on screen. Uzi stared accusingly at Susan, really fighting the urge to just take the scissors next to her and snipping the entire tail off.

"Oops. My mistake." Susan didn't sound remorseful whatsoever. Drawing attention away from herself, Susan pointed towards the NPC. "Ooh, death! Excited squeal."

"What do you mean, Su- OH ROBO GOD!" Writhing on the floor was the NPC, his mouth frothing and his limbs flying all over the place. "WHAT DID YOU DO!" Uzi started shaking Susan by where the head of the tail met with the base.

"Guys, another-Whoa. This doesn't look good..." Ragatha had opened the double doors to introduce another patient, who currently looked on in horror at the scene that was unfolding. "Do you need any help?" Before anyone could get a work in, the double doors closed once again, leaving the new NPC in the room as the old one continued to seize up.

"Um... I'll take good old Greenie here, and you guys can get this one?" At both Uzi and Kinger's nods of approval, N hoisted the green NPC up by his arms and dragged him to the corner of the room, where he promptly started clipping into the wall.

"So, how can we help you today?" Uzi started walking towards the new NPC, but she immediately started backing away. "Oh, come on, it's not like I can control this thing!" The NPC simply shook her head, her hand slowly making its way towards the knob of one of the doors.

"Um... I don't think we're allowed to let her out of the room before we've finished." Kinger and Uzi shared a look, and then they lunged towards the new NPC, her scream of terror cut of short by a gag that was placed in her mouth.

Thankfully, it didn't seem as if the NPC needed to give their explanation for the medical options to appear on the screen, as three new coloured boxes took the place of the old ones. Uzi, not really caring whether she did this correctly or not, just took the nearest possible thing and slapped it on the NPC. Unfortunately, the "cure" was a knife, which had enough of an impact to send this NPC writhing across the floor as well.

"Guys, what the heck! We're supposed to be helping people!" N had just managed to calm the green NPC down when the gagged NPC smashed into them, sending them both sprawling (and subsequently causing yet another seizure in the green NPC). "WHAT THE HECK?!"

"Guys, there are more coming in-OH DEAR GOD!" Ragatha had to duck her head to avoid being knocked over by the gagged NPC, who had somehow managed to slingshot by abusing the physics of a rolling chair. "Seriously, if you need help, JUST ASK!" Almost as if on cue, the double doors slammed in Ragatha's face. Thankfully, that meant that Uzi, N, and Kinger only had to deal with one malfunctioning NPC this time.

Eventually, everything had calmed down and all the NPCs had left the "building". Strangely, though, the screen next to the acceptance station said that there was one more patient waiting to be treated, even thought there was no one there whatsoever. Uzi just chalked it up to yet another malfunction as she walked over to the rest of the group.

"How's everything going on your end?" Everyone gave Uzi a death stare, even though she had NOTHING (okay, maybe something) to do with what had gone down in the room. "Can we please just let that go? Seriously, it's not as if something bad's going to happen to us. It's a game!"

Oh, bad things happened. First, all the lights shut off except for the occasional red strobe light, painting everything in dancing shadows that really messed with Uzi's CPU. Immediately Uzi could hear Pomni scream, probably from the suddenness of the situation, before it was cut off short.

"Pomni?" Uzi could make out Gangle stepping forward slightly before getting dragged away by an unseen force. Like before, Uzi could initially hear Gangle's scream clearly before it got cut off abruptly.

"Everyone stick together!" Uzi used her tail to light up the room, the numerous holes emitting their own beams of light. This allowed her to gather everyone she possibly could, noting the absence of V along the way.

"Why is this Caine's idea of a fun time?!" Despite all the time N had spent at the Circus, he still hadn't really gotten why every adventure had some sort of horror aspect to it. "Hospitals aren't supposed to be this kind of scary!"

"Sensing imminent danger. Setting up safety protocols." Susan started beeping very loudly, the lights in her head flickering on and off sporadically. Uzi could feel herself slipping away once again, but she knew she would just get sent back to that weird void if she Solvered-out again. She was able to regain some semblance of control when she slapped Susan upside the head, stopping the screeching.

"Stop with the safety protocols! Look where they got us last time!" This seemed to make Susan stop-even she didn't want to go through that experience again.

"Guys... what's up ahead?" Kinger slowly started inching back, seeing something in the distance.

"That... doesn't look normal, at least." N activated his guns, pointing them at the figure in the darkness. "Do you want me to shoot at it?"

"So you would shoot at a baby quicker than you would shoot at this thing?" Uzi felt the need to explain her statement from the horrified stares she and N got from everyone else, but she shelved that thought when the figure started becoming bigger and bigger. There was no doubt about it-it was getting closer.

"So..."

"SHOOT IT!"

N followed Uzi's urging, letting loose hundreds of bullets at the figure in the hallway. Strangely enough, they were all deflected by what looked like Solver marks... But that couldn't be right. The only two people who had the Solver were her and her mother, and they were both in each other's presence at the moment.

Without warning, everyone around Uzi started getting dragged away, until only she, Nori, and Ragatha were left. They all huddled close together, Nori holding a pickax with her Solver and Uzi ready to shift into her Solver form.

"What the-Jax?" It was true. The purple rabbit had somehow found his way out of the Void and into Caine's adventure. Now, he was floating with surprising speed towards the group, Solver marks flying every which way.

"Time to fight!" Nori launched herself at Jax, only to be thrown away immediately by a red Solver. Wait, that wasn't right. She wasn't affected when Uzi saw the fighting. The same happened to Ragatha, her form being thrown away by another red Solver mark.

"Jax, what the heck happened to you?" Anything and everything Uzi said appeared to go in one ear and right out the other, as Jax just continued advancing without a reaction. Eventually, Uzi was backed up against the wall, almost ready to transform. For some reason it was taking longer, but she just attributed it to her time in the abstracteds' section.

Without warning, the lion jumped out and plowed into Jax, just like she had before. Uzi internally pumped her fist before running off, the lion following close behind her. Jax, after using a second to recover, went after Uzi and her pet at double the speed he was moving at before. Uzi tried to summon her Solver, but...

Nothing happened.

What was going on? Uzi rounded the corner, flicking her hand any way she could remember, trying to summon the Solver. She even resorted to asking Susan what she was doing wrong, but her tail appeared to have gone dormant. Of course, now of all times was when she decided to shut up.

Uzi and the lion dashed into a nearby room, and were immediately found by Jax. The lion tried to attack Jax again, but was simply thrown to the side by the Solver. Uzi tried again and again to summon her Solver, but nothing was working.

Uzi had lost her ability to use the Solver.

N had to admit: riding on medical carts while gallivanting through warped hallways was kind of fun (in a weird, Eldritch demon lord way).

Rewinding to before Uzi was about to get absolutely destroyed by Jax, N had managed to find Pomni curled up on the floor, numerous Solvers forming a barrier between her and the rest of the building. Fortunately, the Solvers didn't cover the full height of the corridor, allowing N to fly up through the gap and down to where Pomni was.

"Hey, Pomni! Are you alright?" She looked as if she was on the brink of hysteria (although, she probably had been for most of the time). Her pupils were strangely small, and she was rocking back and forth while giggling to herself. "I'm... going to take that as a no." Not wanting to leave her alone, N picked Pomni up and dragged her with him. Where they were going, he didn't know, but he had to find everyone else before something even worse happened to all of them.

That plan was put to an immediate halt when things started flying all over the place. N couldn't even see the Solver symbol, which either meant Jax had somehow found a way to mask when he used his powers, or something else was going on.

N was generally able to avoid most projectiles thrown at him and Pomni, but he really needed to find somewhere to escape when entire beds started getting thrown out of the rooms and into his path. He threw Pomni into the nearest open room that didn't appear to be going through wacky feng shui and dashed in right afterwards, slamming the door behind him.

"What is going on?!" Pomni was holding her head in her hands, continuing to rock back and forth on the ground as she slowly tried to ease herself out of a state of complete panic.

"I'm going to assume it's something to do with the Absolute Solver, considering the things floating around Jax..." N looked towards the door he had just closed, nervously eyeing it as if something might crash through at any second. "I don't really understand what's going on at the moment."

"Well, we're going to have to!" Pomni scrambled up onto her feet and pointed at the medical equipment on a nearby table that was slowly floating upwards. "Unless you want to get impromptu surgery, of course."

"NOT on my to do list!" N raised his arm at the floating supplies and launched a small bomb at them, breaking them down into tiny bits of ashes. "Phew... Oh, there's more." At the edge of the room, a pair of carts holding vials and containers of medicine started moving towards N and Pomni.

"Why can't we just get something useful for once?! Caine?! Can you hear us?" Caine could not hear them.

"Wait..." N slowly edged towards the medicine carts, wary about his surroundings but hoping that his gut instinct turned out to be right. "I have an idea."

And that brings us to the present, with N riding one medicine cart like one would with a surfboard, and Pomni clinging on to the other for dear life, screaming all the way. They were surprisingly easy to manoeuvre, with them being able to turn around sharp corners and jump small obstacles in the way. Of course, everything became much harder when the Eldritch tentacles started bursting out of the walls and grabbing at everything in sight.

Oh, how N hated his life sometimes.

Pomni almost immediately crashed her cart, a tentacle tripping it from underneath. Thankfully, Pomni was able to grab on to N's tail (which surprised him and nearly sent him tumbling off his own cart) and pull herself up onto the remaining cart.

"N, we're in really big trouble!" Pomni pointed behind the cart, indicating the increasing number of tentacles infesting the hallways. "We need to get out of here right now!"

"Not without everyone else!" N jumped off an impromptu ramp made out of a fallen door and hunk of concrete, narrowly avoiding yet another attempt for the tentacles to trip him up. "Uzi! Nori! V! Where are you?!"

"Why do you want them?"

"Because they're the ones who can massacre pretty much anything given enough time." Pomni gave him a blank stare, choosing not to say anything else about the topic. N continued staring forward, searching for any sign of his friends. Oh, robo-God, what if something-

Before N could delve too deep into his intrusive thoughts, he saw a red flash erupt from a room just up ahead. He could also hear Uzi screaming random insults, which both made his eye-lights flash brighter and made a dark feeling settle into the pit of his stomach. Uzi was in danger!"

N turned the cart into the doorway without a second thought, crashing into Jax's form and sending him, N, and Pomni sprawling all over the room.

"N?" Uzi helped pick N up off the floor while warily eyeing Jax's now-still body. "What the heck happened? Where's my mom? And why is that medicine cart whinnying?" True to her statement, the medicine cart started nudging N's leg and making sounds not that different from those a horse would make. N had her of personification in old human poems, but he wasn't sure about applying animalistic characteristics to an inanimate object.

"No time! We need to get everyone else!" N practically threw Uzi onto the cart (much to her audible dismay) and picked Pomni up, thrusting the cart/horse into motion with a slap of his tail. He flew alongside Uzi, who also quickly picked up how to steer her new ride.

There were a few times when they needed to dodge out of the way of falling debris or maniac tentacles, but overall their trip through the next hallway went without a hitch. N found it strange that Uzi wasn't using her Solver to help out, but he didn't have the mental bandwidth to dwell on that for too long.

They finally entered the auditorium where they had started this adventure. However, in the place of the welcoming entrance doors was a gigantic Solver symbol, presumably placed to prevent entry or exit to the augmented hospital.

"Ah, great, we can't get out." Uzi jumped off her cart and kicked at the door, jumping up and down and holding her foot in pain when it bounced off with a loud clang. "ROBO-JESUS! I get out of limbo for two hours and I'm already in a new Hell!"

"Guys... Jax is back up." Pomni started backing away from the hallway Jax was slowly advancing down. The tentacles cleared the way for him, eventually revealing that he was floating slightly off the ground. "You don't happen to know how to deal with this situation, do you?"

"I don't know! Have you ever floated off the ground before while you were Solvered-out, Uzi?"

"Normally I just fly!" Uzi grabbed the nearest sharp object (a weirdly-placed knife) and brandished it in front of her, ready to slice and dice some rabbit for dinner if necessary. "I've never done something like this before!"

"Well, that's great. I love that. Perfect." Pomni hid behind N, who brandished both of his hand guns at Jax. He didn't want to hurt his new (and strangely similar-sounding) friend, but he had to do something to protect those who still had their wits about them.

"GET AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER AND HER BOYFRIEND!" Nori suddenly appeared out of nowhere, slinging yet another barrage of pickaxes at Jax. Unlike before, where this attack had been somewhat effective, all the pickaxes were either thrown to the floor or chucked back at Nori. Thankfully, Nori was able to get out of the way before getting chopped to bits, but it was scary to think about how Jax was getting stronger by the minute.

"MOM! WHAT THE HECK?!" Uzi was evidently uncomfortable about the "boyfriend" remark, but Nori simply giggled mischievously before summoning another pickax.

"I'm your mom, you get to deal with this for the rest of your life. Now, come on and fight already!" Uzi's eye-lights hollowed, her hand instinctively flexing but nothing happening. "Uzi? What's wrong?" Nori turned towards Uzi for a fraction of a second, allowing an Eldritch tentacle to grab the heart and squeeze her into a mess of juices and sparks.

"MO-" Suddenly everything started to shift and warp, N not being able to make out anything that was happening at all. Before he knew it, Nori was scuttling over to him, Uzi, and Pomni as if nothing happened.

"What the- You're- He- WHAT IS GOING ON?!" N gripped his head in his hands, unable to comprehend how Nori wasn't a puddle of fluids and guts.

"MOM! WHAT THE HECK?!" N flicked his eyes over in Uzi's direction, getting a sickening sense of deja vu. Why did what N saw just cease to exist? And why was everyone repeating what they had said only seconds before? This was all so confusing!

"I'm your mom, you get to deal with this for the rest of your life." N's eye-lights widened, and he stepped forward to stop what was about to happen next. "Now, come on and-WHOA!" N swiped Nori off the ground, preventing her from being picked up by the sneaky tentacle that had taken her before.

"Not this time, you stupid... thing!" N held Nori close to his chest.

"Go easy on him, N." Uzi narrowed her eyes at N, evidently thinking about how N had known what was going to happen and had the foresight to save Nori.

"Put me down! Just because my daughter likes you doesn't mean you can just pick me up willy-nilly!" N was just about to set Nori down when a tentacle swiped from the right, nearly knocking N off balance. Thankfully he was able to fly generally out of reach before the tentacle could get a good hold on him. "On second thought, DON'T LET GO!" Nori dug her claws into N's chest, making him wince but not giving him enough pain to drop her (besides, Uzi would kill N if he inadvertently killed Nori).

"Uzi, you're technically the Absolute Solver, right? Can you try to control this somehow?" N had limited time to speak as he continually dodged the Solver tentacles, Nori digging deeper and deeper into his body.

"Yeah, that's going to be a problem!" Uzi jumped over yet another tentacle before continuing, "I'm kinda malfunctioning, so-" Before she could finish her sentence, Susan popped out from wherever she was hiding, scaring Uzi and allowing her to get swept off her feet by another of Jax's tentacles.

"SUSAN! WHAT THE HECK!" Uzi struggled against the grip-hold she was in, Susan's head miraculously having not been squashed.

"I am sorry about the inconvenience. Sad violin." Susan opened her mouth, and simple violin music started echoing throughout the room. Uzi gave Susan a death stare, making her close her mouth and therefore stopping the music.

"Can you at least help me with this? Somehow I infected Jax, and-"

"One minute." Susan looked away from Uzi and leaned (can a tail lean?) towards Jax, her eyes narrowing. "Corruption. Data not stable."

"That... doesn't sound good." N had stopped to float next to Uzi, the tentacles having stopped chasing after him for the time being. "I mean, I didn't know they would take the corrupted CPU thing literally, right?"

"Susan, please just explain things properly." Uzi grabbed her tail and pulled the Solver head up to face level, glaring.

"Frustrated grunt. No need for violence. Give me a second." Susan managed to wrestle herself free from Uzi's grip (being a tail, she was quite slippery) and look back towards Jax. "Something does not feel correct."

Without warning, a new tail similar to Susan, but with red lights instead of yellow, popped out from behind Jax. Even Jax, who was still in his weird Solver-possessed form, was surprised, flinching away from the new entity in the room. Oh, robo-God, if this was one sentient, too...

"Hello inferior beings." F*$#! (Seriously, the narration too?)

"Great, a new thing we have to be worried about. At this point, we need a list." Uzi shot a glare at N, who had started to pull a notebook out of his pocket. Evidently she had wanted the statement to remain rhetorical.

"Who are you?" Susan started whipping her head around the other tail, examining every possible point. "Why do you look identical to my molecular structure? Intimidating glare." Susan looked at the other Solver head face-to-face. "Are you even worthy of a name?"

"Technically you name your-" Uzi was cut off by the other Solver head speaking for the first time since the start of the conversation, which shouldn't really have been a shock but still warranted some kind of surprised reaction, considering the situation.

"Karen." Oh, robo-God.

"What kind of a name is that?" Pomni, whom everyone had lost track of, somehow, was standing on a floating desk, desperately trying not to fall off.

"Does my wonderful name have implications with you?" Karen (N feared for what might happen next, considering both of the Solvers were named... well, you can fill the dots) stared at Pomni, Jax menacingly summoning a Solver in his hand.

"Nope! No, it's a wonderful name! Really! Don't hurt me..." Pomni tried to edge farther away from the new Solver tail, but couldn't really go anywhere on her little platform above the ground. She settled on making herself as small as possible while still white-knuckling the edge of the desk.

"Respect. A necessary trait. And what about you?" Karen turned her head towards Susan, eyeing her similarly to how Susan had been eyeing Karen not a few seconds before. "Why is a knock-off of me here?"

"Excuse me?" Without warning, Susan slapped Karen across the face with... her own face? This was going to get weird. "You are a cheap knock off of me."

"Oh, please, wannabe." Karen slapped Susan back, starting a chain of insults and physical damage from both Solver heads. Uzi looked up to Jax, who simply shrugged.

"Fine then. Attack." Susan stayed in place for a second, evidently waiting for something to happen, and then whipped around to face Uzi. "Attack." Uzi looked around and then pointed at herself, to which Susan nodded approvingly. Uzi internally (and externally, based on witness reports) cringed.

"That's... going to be a problem..." Uzi fingered the knife she had miraculously still kept a hold of, wondering whether it would even be able to do actual damage. She decidedly to keep it at her side for the time being, not wanting to waste something that could be useful for a situation later down the line.

"Silly inferior copy. Maniacal laugh. You do not realise I have shut off your host!" Everyone whipped their heads around to stare at Karen, who continued to laugh maniacally through the means of repeating the action over and over in the hopes of it having some effect. Frankly, this was creepier.

"Wait, I'm sorry. You SHUT ME OFF?!" Uzi reared her arm back to throw the knife, but N grabbed it and tucked it into one of his many pockets (he had been quite obsessed with pockets for a while now, no one knew why). "N!"

"Sorry, Uz, we do NOT want this thing to get even angrier at us." N turned towards Karen, plastering the friendliest smile he could muster on his face. "So, Karen... Would you like to explain to us what you mean by 'shutting Uzi off'?"

"It will not matter either way. So fine. I will tell you. Maniacal laugh." N and Uzi shared a look, both exceedingly exasperated at the way this conversation was just getting out of control. "I, as you all SHOULD," Karen side-eyed everyone in the room, "know, am a superior version of the little Solver your friend has."

"Oh, robo-God, there's another Solver..." Uzi had meant to mutter this under her breath, but apparently Karen had excellent hearing (all the better to call your manager, dear). She immediately sped up to Uzi's face, scaring her back a few steps.

"Yes, little girl!" Rude. "I am the superior to whatever you used to be. And with that power comes..." She paused for dramatic effect. "The ability to control other Solvers." Everyone gave Karen a blank stare, processing the information dump they had just been drowned in. The first person who broke the silence was Uzi (naturally).

"OH MY F&$^ING ROBO-GOD, WHY CAN'T WE GET A CALM DAY FOR ONCE?!" Uzi had enough of this chaos, chucking her knife at Karen and hitting her square in an orifice. Before Karen could react, Uzi had her by the neck, continuing, "SERIOUSLY. I HAD TO GO THROUGH WHAT WAS ESSENTIALLY AN EARLY-LIFE CRISIS, WHICH SHOULDN'T EVEN HAPPEN, EAT THE THING THAT WAS TRYING TO KILL ME, AND NOW I'VE BEEN STUCK IN THIS PLACE FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG JUST TRYING TO SURVIVE, AND YOU TELL ME THAT YOU CAN JUST TAKE EVERYTHING I'VE EARNED AWAY BECAUSE YOU JUST HAPPEN TO EXIST?! I CALL BULL!" Throughout her entire monologue, Uzi shook Karen by the neck, bobbing her head back and forth and completely ignoring her pleas for her to stop. The only reason why Uzi didn't completely rip Karen's head off was because N pulled her away at the last moment.

"Uzi, maybe-" He was cut off by Uzi pushing him away.

"That is NOT a sufficient explanation. Show me EXACTLY what happened, or I'm going to have N slice and dice you into Solver sashimi." She gestured at N, who helpfully whipped out his blades.

Karen, who still had the knife in her head, stuttered, "I-I can. J-Just stop the femin-inine rage." Karen raised herself off where she laid on the ground, Jax using the new Solver to take the knife out, and started chanting.

"Oh, robo-God, I am not falling for-"

Suddenly Uzi was back with the abstracteds.

"F&$% YOU, B$&%^!" Uzi immediately started throwing punches in any direction she could, not hitting anything but still getting the majority of her frustration out. When she finally stopped seeing red, Uzi took a second to take in her surroundings and establish where she actually was.

Wherever the heck she was in the Circus at the moment, it was eerily similar to the time she had spent with the players who had "abstracted" over the years. Thankfully none of them were present at the moment, but Uzi kept her guard up just in case one of them decided to sneak attack her out of the blue.

"Um... is anyone there?" Uzi whipped her head around, her eye-lights slowly hollowing at the thought of being completely alone again. No one responded, not even Susan, who had conveniently decided to take a nap. Just before she was about to go into full panic-attack mode, Uzi saw someone in the distance.

"Hey! You over there! Can you hear me?!" Based on the lack of a reaction she got from the figure in the distance, Uzi assumed she was way too far out of earshot to be heard by anyone. "Wait a second, I'm coming over..." Uzi knew she was talking to herself, but she needed something to do while walking through the inky abyss Caine thought was a suitable place for storing those who had lost their sanity.

As Uzi got closer and closer to the figure, she was able to make out features and attributes distinctly drone-related (absolutely no one in the Circus could pull off a full-head visor, anyways). Uzi quickened her pace, assuming that whoever was in front of her was either N or V. Robo-God, it had been a while since she'd talked to V. To be honest, Uzi wasn't sure whether to consider that a blessing or a curse.

"Hey! N? V?" Still no response. Uzi slowed her pace, suddenly becoming suspicious of whoever was standing in front of her. Their back was still facing Uzi, but then again, drone faces weren't that distinguishable anyways aside from multicoloured eye-lights. However... their hair and clothes looked peculiarly similar to Uzi's.

"Um... can you even hear me?" Without warning, Uzi was thrown back by a golden light. She landed on what she assumed must be the ground (unless Caine was messing around with the gravity again, which... yeah, that could've just as likely been the case), her eyes momentarily blinded by the bright light. When her eyes cleared up, the figure was enveloped in a golden sphere of energy.

"Oh, dear robo-God." Uzi rushed up to the figure in the sphere, finally able to see the person inside it. It was...

Her?

"Karen, this is NOT funny!" Uzi looked around for some sign of the supposedly superior Solver tail, but there was no one to be found. "You know what..." Uzi stepped up to the fake Uzi. "I bet this is just a stupid hologram. Take this!" With that, Uzi kicked at the golden sphere. True to her suspicions, her foot passed right through.

Uzi was about to laugh and mock Karen triumphantly when the sphere burst forth with yet another blinding light. This time, Uzi's eye-lights, which were still sensitive from the previous flash bang, took much longer to readjust. When she finally got a hold of her senses, she saw Jax standing in front of fake Uzi. But... that couldn't be right. Jax was supposed to still be in his Solver form, wasn't he?

Uzi tried calling out to Jax, but like with fake Uzi, Jax didn't appear to hear her whatsoever. This further contributed to Uzi's theory of this all being a hallucination/Solver hologram, but something still didn't feel right in Uzi's gut.

Of course, fake Uzi started having a seizure almost two seconds later. Both Jax and Uzi started panicking, Uzi's distress going completely unnoticed. Uzi immediately started backing away, glad that she had kept the knife on her from the fight she had been in just a few seconds ago. She drew it, raising it at fake Uzi.

Jax, on the other hand, started scrambling around Uzi, not appearing as if he knew what he was doing at all. Eventually, he settled on touching the orb (a really, REALLY bad mistake). This caused yet another bright flash of light. However, this one took a much shorter amount of time to recover from, probably because of the golden orb that was currently (and aggressively) flashing in time to fake Uzi's rapid movements. Jax didn't seem affected that much, either.

"Oh, s&$^." Standing right behind Jax was an abstracted player, in all their glitchy, multi-eyed glory. Jax hadn't noticed what was behind him yet, much to Uzi's dismay. This allowed the abstracted to slowly edge closer to Jax's form, rippling with each and every movement. Before Jax had the time to react, he was slammed into. Fake Uzi's sphere was also knocked out of the way, sending fake Uzi with it.

As Uzi tried to dodge the sphere, forgetting that she couldn't be touched, she saw Jax writhing on the floor, his body slowly becoming more and more abstracted as the seconds wore on. Uzi tried to think of anything she could do to help, but with her apparent intangibility, she couldn't do anything.

Just before Jax's entire body was engulfed, a yellow-red light erupted from every orifice possible. Jax's entire body started floating off the ground, like a demented version of a cheap magician's show. Thankfully, he didn't start seizing up.

Meanwhile, fake Uzi off in the corner was lying on the floor, the sphere around her gone. Whether this meant something important, Uzi didn't know. She also didn't have time to dwell on it, as Jax's lights started to get even brighter than they were before.

The parts of Jax's body that had been abstracted slowly started to revert back to normal, some abstraction simply disappearing and other parts being absorbed into Jax's body. Before long, everything appeared to be back to normal (that is, if you ignored the horror movie sequence). Jax's body stopped levitating, and he hit the floor.

Uzi was about to go over to him when she felt a sickening sense of vertigo. Everything around her started shifting randomly, like wet paints mixing together. Before she knew it, she was back in the ruined hospital room, with everyone around her looking slightly dazed.

"What the heck just happened?" Uzi threw her arms out in front of her to stop herself from toppling over, barely grabbing onto a nearby wall. "Because... that's new..." Uzi glanced over at N, getting no sign of reassurance from him as he continued to stare at Jax and Karen. Farther off in the distance was Pomni, who was currently barfing some weird black liquid that Uzi did NOT want to touch ever.

"Time manipulation. A new, better feature." Karen threw the last comment directly at Susan, who turned her head with a sharp gasp. Before a new argument could spark up, however, Uzi slapped her hand over Susan's mouth. Susan just bit the hand away, but she got the message and kept quiet, seething.

"Wait a second... THAT'S WHAT HAPPENED?!" N looked like he was on the verge of a mental breakdown. His body language indicated that he had just come to a revelation, but whatever it was Uzi wasn't sure of. "You were messing with time?"

"Whatever do you mean?" Karen cocked her head, her red lights flashing curiously. "I have not used it on you as of yet. In fact..." Karen looked around the room, staring at everyone for a good second before continuing. "This is the first time I've used it." N continued to break down further and further, grasping his head in his hands.

"Wait, how are you able to control time in this place? I don't think there's even a semblance of time in the Circus." Pomni appeared right behind Uzi, scaring both her and Susan up the wall. Literally. Evidently Karen wasn't focusing on disabling Uzi anymore, as she was able to sprout her wings and fly up to a wall lamp.

"Silly little human. Silly little time. Silly laugh." Karen twirled around, the tail making little loops in the air as she creepily laughed to herself. "Just because time might not exist here doesn't mean that I can't rewind past events." Everyone continued to stare blankly at Karen, who sighed in exasperation. "Do you need a simpler explanation?"

"With the Sparknotes, preferably." Karen glared at Pomni before clearing her throat.

"Since I am merged with what you all call 'abstracteds', I have certain abilities. One of those is time manipulation. Better?" Karen didn't wait for a response as she summoned a red Solver, using Jax as a conduit of sorts. "Now, unless someone else wants to distract me-"

"WHAT ABOUT ME?!" Nori came flying out of nowhere, holding a pickax with her Solver. Before Karen could react, Nori bashed her head to the side, skidding across the floor. "YOU FORGOT ABOUT THE MOM, DIDN'T YOU?!"

"Should we be worried that there are now three angry middle-aged women in the same room?" Uzi just shrugged at Pomni's question. She wished she could say this wouldn't get any weirder, but based on the plan that was slowly forming in her mind, they would. A lot.

"Pomni, go with N and help my mom. I've got something I'd like to share with Karen." After both N and Pomni nodded in recognition, Uzi sped off down a side corridor. Thankfully, it fed back into the room, letting her in behind all the commotion. Nobody had noticed Uzi's presence in the room just yet, allowing her to get in position.

As Uzi clambered up the wall (you'll see), Nori swung her pickax around like a nunchuck, smacking anything and everything she deemed to be a threat. At one point, she smacked a bucket (no idea how that got there) right into Karen's face, sending Karen crashing into a ceiling light. Nori was about to continue attacking, but all of a sudden her Solver disappeared. Great, Karen was using her off switch.

Before Nori could get squashed by a Solver tentacle (yes, those were back), N flew in and swooped her up to a higher level. N narrowed his eyes at Uzi's current situation, but he let her be as Karen started attacking more viciously.

Pomni... well, what could she do, really? Occasionally she tossed something at Karen, but most of the time she platformed over the tentacles with surprising speed, especially for someone who spent most of the time having an existential crisis in the corner of a dark room. Yes that description was specific, but Uzi had seen that situation way too many times for them to be simply coincidences.

Finally, Uzi was in position. The Ultimate Distraction (For Her Mom to Absolutely Obliterate Karen the Tail). Taking a deep breath, Uzi swung onto the big chandelier in the middle of the room and started playing music from a weird human song Gangle had shown her earlier (Caine had given them music players to "remind them of the outside world"). Karen turned around only to see Uzi swinging back and forth on the chandelier, singing,

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHM GUUUUUUUNNNNNNNNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAA SWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGG FRUUUUUUUMMMMMMMM THA CHANDAAAAAAAAAAAALAAAAAAAAAAHEEEEEEEEERE, FRUUUUUUUUUUMMMMMMMMMMMM THA CHANDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALAAAAAAAAAAAAAHEEEEEEEEERE!" Safe to say, it was distracting. Distracting enough for Karen to lose her hold on Nori's powers, allowing Nori to pick up the pickax once again and spear it through Karen's head. Karen fell to the ground, limp, and Uzi dropped from the chandelier, a satisfied grin on her face.

No one started celebrating except for Pomni, however. All the robots had experience with the Solver, and they could all agree on one without without a single comment: these things don't stay dead, even if you completely obliterate them with a nuke (Uzi had tried).

True to their suspicions, Karen's head started slowly rejecting the pickax, inch after inch of metal slowly being removed. Uzi and Nori readied their Solvers while N pointed both guns at Karen. Pomni cheered from the side.

Just as Karen was capable of forming a complete sentence (not that she cared enough to form one, anyways), V flew out of nowhere and body-checked Jax into the wall. She then started repeatedly punching his limp form, obviously not noticing the fact that he was technically unconscious in this state.

"V! Wait! Stop!" N tried to wrench V away from Jax's slowly deteriorating form, but V just knocked him out of the way and started punching again with renewed vigour. Thankfully, gore didn't exist in the Circus, otherwise this would have been much messier. Instead, Jax's face was just turning into a purple dome with ears.

"V!" Uzi picked V up with her Solver, leaving her thrashing in the air. Karen had apparently passed out from the shared pain she got from the pummelling, and both her and Jax were limp on the floor. Slowly, the room started morphing back to normal, tentacles disappearing and walls repairing themselves. Finally, Karen retreated back into Jax's body, which had stopped producing that ethereal glow.

"That... Let's not do that again." Everyone nodded in agreement. Uzi then looked down at Jax's limp body, groaning at the prospect of having to drag him back to the entrance to get out of this cursed place. However, N pacified her by slinging Jax over his shoulder like a sack. Sure, it was crude, but it worked for the time being. Now, only to find everyone else...

It turned out that pretty much everywhere in Caine's hospital was chaos. Ragatha had managed to get speared through the chest (she explained that it happened often, which... weird) and was bleeding stuffing on the floor, Kinger was hiding under a mountain of demolished desks and other appliances, Gangle (who had broken her happy mask once again) was sobbing while running aimlessly through the halls, and Zooble was nowhere to be seen. N was about to start freaking out when he was reminded by Pomni that Zooble was never on these kinds of adventures, but he still looked worried.

Eventually, everyone congregated back into the main room of the hospital, the doors leading out of it to the far right. Jax was still unconscious, and Karen had yet to appear, so everyone took a minute to sit down and exhale long-awaited deep breaths. Ragatha was still spilling her insides all over the floor, but everyone decided to ignore it, as Ragatha stated that she really didn't feel anything.

"Does this kind of thing happen all the time with you guys?" Pomni was slumped over the receptionist's desk, fiddling with a cup full of pencils. "I mean, the whole Eldritch demon fighting stuff? Or have you saved that for us?"

"No, we've done this kind of thing before..." Uzi rested her head on N's shoulder, who continued talking. "It's kind of confusing how this all started in the first place, but I assume that we're going to figure that out eventually. I mean, hopefully. Potentially?" N stopped talking.

"But please, next time, maybe try to stop them before they sprout tentacles and kidnap everything in sight?" Gangle was trying to keep herself together (her lack of a happy mask made this task particularly hard), but she definitely had not liked being manhandled by ethereal protrusions.

"By the way... doesn't Caine have control over what happens during these things? Why wasn't he helping?" V made a point, but none of the Circus members made an attempt at answering. They knew that Caine rarely interfered with the adventures, despite being able to check in at any point in time. Maybe he was off doing something important?

"Great talk, guys!" Uzi stood up abruptly, shocking N. "Now, I think we need to get our good ol' rabbit pal back to the Circus before he wakes up and tries to massacre everyone once again. Then we can figure out what the heck is going on with this place's code, fix it, and send us back home. Does that sound good?!" Before waiting for an answer, Uzi walked over to Jax. She tried to pick him up triumphantly, but he was surprisingly heavy for how thin he looked. N eventually had to help her, holding him by the head while she took the "brunt" of the rest of the body.

"Do you think Caine might know something about this?"

"Asking an AI about a problem in its code...?" Uzi thought for a second. On the one hand, she might get actual answers by simply asking her questions, but on the other hand, she didn't want to break the one thing that might give her a chance to escape. Eventually, she decided to throw caution to the wind and said, "Screw it! Let's go ask the ringmaster!" Uzi turned towards the double doors, which swung open dramatically. Uzi stood there in shock, not expecting what just happened.

Standing in the middle of the doors was Caine, dressed as if he was ready to go to literal war. He had shell straps all over his torso and was holding a comically big gun that looked like to took effort to hold properly. Random smears of black paint were all over his gums, which Uzi guessed made him look intimidating (if you were standing a few hundred meters away). Everyone stared at Caine, and Caine stared back for a good minute, no one saying anything. Then...

"WHERE THE F&$^ DID YOU GO?!"

"Come on, I'm not THAT dangerously lethal."

"You tried to kill literally every person currently in this room multiple times."

Strangely enough, after the entire hospital debacle, Jax had managed to regain control of his consciousness. Of course, that didn't mean that anyone trusted him, which was why he was currently tied to a chair with particularly thick rope in the middle of a dark room. While it might have been overkill, no one was willing to chance the risk of Jax losing control and going on another rampage. Twice in one month was plenty enough.

"Okay, what can I do exactly?"

Ragatha, who was chosen to guard Jax for the time being, pulled down a pie chart from who knows where. On the pie chart was a series of images, drawn by Uzi herself, obviously depicting everything she had witness Jax (and Karen, by extension) perform. First was just a cartoon clock, with the words "TIME WARP SHENANIGANS" next to it. Next was a bunch of tentacles rising from a line that was supposed to be the ground, which was self-explanatory. Third was something that resembled an off button. Jax still didn't understand what the heck that meant, as no one had explained anything to him ever since he woke up on the floor of a hospital. Finally, in the middle of everything was a big symbol like the ones Uzi and Nori summoned whenever they did their weird power thing. Jax still refused to believe that he had that freakish thing, so he simply ignored the chart altogether.

"Does this give you a good enough image?" Without waiting for an answer, Ragatha pulled down on the bottom of the chart, sending it back up to wherever it came from initially. "Look, Jax..." Ragatha gave Jax a sad look, confusing Jax even further. "You're way too dangerous to be around other people right now. In fact, I'm not even sure why I'm here right now!"

"Can you at least let me try something safe?" Jax leaned closer towards Ragatha. "I mean, come on, it's not like I'm going to turn every single scenario into something dangerous."

"Jax, you do that even without the weird powers."

Jax had to think for a moment, momentarily defeated. "Okay, you have a point, but if I promise to be on my best behaviour..." Jax tilted his head, attempting to put on the Cutest Little Bunny Rabbit (TM) face he had previously used to convince Gangle to let him out. That... had not gone well.

Without warning, Karen appeared out of nowhere, attempting to mimic Jax's facial orientation. "Yes. Please? Sad whine." Unfortunately, Jax hadn't had the opportunity to meet his Solver friend outside of being possessed, which caused him to scream and recoil in horror. This didn't really do much to help Jax, however, as he was tied to the chair, and the chair was bolted to the floor.

"WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?!" Jax looked over to Ragatha, who appeared strangely calm about this whole situation. Wait... "This is one of the things that happened while I was asleep, isn't it?"

"Excuse me, inferior being, but I," Karen waved her head about dramatically as if that made her entrance any more extravagant that it was already (it wasn't). "Am the thing that will give you absolute power over every single being in this entire place! Evil laugh!"

Jax stared at Karen before looking back to Ragatha, who raised an eyebrow at him. Jax let out a sigh. "Okay, so this isn't the most ideal situation for me. But... If I promise to keep her under control-"

"NO ONE CAN KEEP ME UNDER CONTRO-"

"AS LONG AS I can keep her under control..." Jax whipped his head around to glare at his new companion. Karen shied away. "Will you allow me to do the simplest of things? Heck, I'd be content with a freaking board game, if that's what it's going to take."

Karen butted in, saying, "Alright. I shall comply with your silly demands. But you will learn to fear the name Karen!"

Jax stared at Ragatha. "Please tell me she's joking." Ragatha just shook her head, which made Jax groan in frustration. "Of course that's her name... UGH!"

"Jax..." Ragatha squirmed from where she was standing. She seemed to be conflicted on whether to keep Jax in here for the sake of the other Circus members and allowing Jax to see the outside world for the first time in a while. "You promise?"

Both Jax and Karen nodded enthusiastically, Karen keeping her mouth shut so as to not ruin the opportunity.

"Fine then... I'll ask Caine. Be back in a second!" What was supposed to be a second turned into a 30-minute shouting match between Ragatha and the rest of the Circus. Pretty much everyone was opposed to Jax being let out of his room except for Ragatha and N. Guess who won.

"Wow, it's bright out here!" Jax shielded his eyes from the overhead lights in the hallway. He looked around to check out his surroundings before turning around to see where he had come from. "Wait, you put me in a storage closet?"

"I don't think this place really has a dungeon..." Uzi narrowed her eyes at Jax. "Although, that would have been useful right about now."

"Uzi..." N looked apologetically at Jax, who simply brushed the teenage drone's comments off as if they were nothing. He was used to being the butt of jokes and threats because of how he acted, why should they start bothering him now?

"So... what are we doing today?"

Before Jax could even finish his sentence, Caine appeared behind him, practically shouting, "FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK!" Everybody jumped back varying distances, with Pomni managing to hit the floor in just the right way to send her rocketing across the hallway and into the main entrance of the Circus. Caine took this as a sign of enthusiasm, and said, "Come on, slowpokes! Pomni's ready for this!" He then flew ahead, leaving everyone to run after him.

Once everyone was in the main room of the Circus (sans Zooble, of course), Caine opened up a new portal. Thankfully, this one was placed like a doorway, making sure that no one fell through the floor. "So, I had to put this together in a rush thanks to Ragatha's handy solution! There might be a few kinks in the works, but I'm sure you guys are going to have fun! Time for adventure!" This time, Caine let everyone walk through the portal of their own accord, although he had to carefully make sure that Jax entered last so that he had less of a chance to pick someone off.

Everyone emptied out in the middle of a forest with an abnormally large stump smack-dab in the centre. Before anyone could react, the stump emitted a weird blue light, and multicoloured cards started flying out. Each one was labelled with either a number or a unique symbol, reminding Jax of a game he used to play...

"Please don't tell me you just ripped off Uno." Jax didn't get any response from Caine, which was to be expected. Apparently everyone knew what was going on (except for the drones, of course) and defeatedly started picking up cards. Eventually Uzi, N, V, and Nori got the gist of what was happening and started picking up cards themselves until everyone had a hand of approximately seven.

"So..." V waved her hand of cards around. "What are we supposed to do with these?" It took a couple minutes' explanation from Ragatha and Pomni for everyone to understand what was supposed to be happening. Everyone gathered around the tree stump, which they had dubbed the game board for this adventure.

"I'm going first!" Without waiting for any argument (there were MANY), Jax slapped down his first card: a red three. The stump flashed like it did before, and a flamethrower appeared in front of Jax. Jax initially jumped back in surprise, but his shock was quickly replaced with excitement. He grabbed the flamethrower and shot a bar of fire up into the sky. "This is going to be fun!"

"Wait-Caine turned Uno into WARFARE?!" Pomni, who was next in turn, put down a green three and got a mace in return. "Why do we have to fight each other in these kinds of things?!" With a small scream, Pomni ducked under Jax's flames. Jax in question was laughing manically and waving his new weapon this way and that, setting more than a few digital trees on digital fire.

"Jax! You're going to burn this entire place down!" Ragatha put down a green nine and was gifted a metal shield. She was able to use it just in time to deflect yet another of Jax's flame streams. "JAX!"

Even though it was N's turn next, Uzi slapped down a red six and got... nothing. Caine's voice rang out through the burning forest, saying, "Those of you who are already war machines will not get benefits directly granted by the cards." This resulted in a lot of moaning.

"You know, this reminds me a lot of our first time here, huh Uzi?" N tried to cheer Uzi up, but the image of a burning deer was decidedly not cheerful. As such, Uzi continued groaning about unfairness. Of course, that was when she remembered she could throw people.

Jax was caught of guard when a Solver symbol appeared around his waist, picking him up. He tried squirming around to get out, but to no avail. He looked down to see Uzi grinning with her hand outstretched, N and Nori looking at each other confused in the background. Jax tried to aim the flamethrower at Uzi (she would respawn anyways, what was the harm?), but Uzi flicked it out of the way.

"Uzi, honey..." Nori tried scuttling closer to Uzi, but Susan appeared out of nowhere to confront Nori.

"Uzi is busy at the moment. Stay quiet, grandma." Nori gasped the gasp to end all gasps and slapped Susan across the face. Evidently, Susan was prone to getting slapped (her personality wasn't the bubbliest, after all).

"I am YOUNG and SPRIGHTLY, thank you very much!" Nori walked around Susan to the front of Uzi, looking up at her daughter. "Uzi, how are you doing that? Isn't Jax technically a Solver host right now?"

"I don't really care, it's just fun to mess with people!" To prove her point, Uzi started jostling Jax around this way and that, occasionally making him smack into trees. At some point, Jax had dropped his flamethrower, which proceeded to spout more flames that quickly caught on to whatever greenery was around it.

"Uzi! That! Is! Enough!" Jax couldn't string more than one word into a sentence at a time, due to his rapid movements. "Please!" All the commotion had woken Karen up, who had decided to take a quick nap earlier on in the game. Immediately Uzi's hold on Jax stopped, sending him crashing to the ground.

"What the-" Uzi noticed that Karen was finally out of her slumber. "Oh, come on, I was finally getting to have fun!"

"Uzi, don't mess with the scary lady." Nori took her daughter by the hand and dragged her away, which looked quite awkward due to the obvious height difference between the two. Somehow, Karen didn't take offence to this remark, and instead turned towards the tree stump. Everybody else was still peacefully playing the game of Uno, number card after number card being stacked in a neat little pile. Off to the side was one of the biggest pile of weapons anyone had ever seen, more and more being magically added every single turn.

"Ooh. Weapons. Fun." Without Jax's permission (or knowledge, really), Karen summoned a Solver, picking up a weapon that strangely resembled Uzi's railgun from a few weeks ago. "Let's see what damage this can do. Evil laugh."

Jax slapped the top of Karen's head. "I thought we agreed we weren't going to cause deadly chaos." Ragatha glared at Jax, who simply responded, "I agreed to no DEADLY chaos. Fire isn't immediately deadly if you aren't a plant!" Ragatha continued to glare at him.

"I don't care." Somehow Karen was dexterous enough to use the Solver to turn on the railgun, the weapon in question glowing a neon blue light. Jax tried shaking the base of his tail, but Karen refused to break her concentration. Jax started to hear a clicking sound coming from the railgun, akin to a trigger being pulled. Out of desperation, Jax threw his hands out in front of him. Yet another solver wrapped around the railgun, immediately turning it off. Karen glared at Jax, saying, "You are no fun."

Once again, Karen tried to turn the railgun on, but Jax swiftly turned it off again. This gave way to a ten-minute back-and-forth interaction between Jax and Karen, each person becoming progressively more annoyed at the other. Eventually, Karen snapped, pulling the railgun far out of reach with the Solver. Before anyone could react, the railgun shot off a big blue beam of energy, blasting the stump to smithereens.

"Guys!" Jax ran over to find everyone in varying levels of damage. Kinger appeared to be alright, albeit shell-shocked, but Ragatha had essentially exploded all over the place. Pomni just looked plain traumatised, and Gangle was sobbing her mask off behind a yet-to-be-burned tree. Karen started readying the railgun a second time. Jax tried to stop her, but Karen kept on moving the gun around. Once again, the clicking sound started.

Jax tried to get everyone away from the general vicinity of the tree stump, but Karen let off another beam of energy before anyone could get anywhere. Jax threw himself in front of whoever wasn't already irreversibly damaged, his unfortunate feelings for his friends taking over his survival instincts. Just as the energy was about to hit him, everything stopped.

"What the heck..." Jax walked around, the beam of energy halted in the sky. Everyone seemed to be stuck in place, even as Jax tried to make them move. Even the drones were stopped in time, N trying to hold Uzi back while V shielded Nori with her wings. "How is this happening..." Jax reached out to touch Uzi when he realised there was a Solver symbol in his hand. He tried shaking it out, but it was stuck like glue.

"No fair." Karen, the only being not affected by the weird time warp thing, slumped over Jax's shoulder, disappointed that her bout of maniacal fun was over. "Stopping time is cheating."

Jax looked over to Karen. "Stopping time? What the...?" Jax wave his hand around a bit more, causing aspects of the world around him to shift ever so slightly. Jax raised and eyebrow and moved his hand again. Once again, more things moved, almost as if they were stuck in slow motion.

"Such an amateur. Here." Karen used her mouth to straighten out Jax's arm, making him hold the Solver straight outwards. "Turn."

Cautiously following Karen's orders, Jax turned his hand like one would turn a doorknob. Everyone and everything around him started to move in reverse slow motion, things that had already happened replaying in front of his for a second time.

"Oh, wow! This is going to be fun..." Jax couldn't help the thoughts that went through his mind while he continued to mess with time. How many pranks could be pull with this?! He had the ultimate power!

"Could you release it, now? I'm getting bored." Karen once again slumped against Jax's shoulder, an exasperated huff escaping her. Jax raised an eyebrow at his new friend (he guessed) and started rewinding time further. He had to admit, it was kind of weird to see Ragatha's stuffing fly back into her as she was un-exploded. Eventually, Jax stopped at the point before everything had gone to the dogs.

"Maybe we could hold back on the complete massacre aspect of your personality? You and I both don't want to be sent down the abyss." Jax waited for Karen's reluctant nod before attempting to release his hold on time. Thankfully he was able to do so on the first try, setting everything back in motion. The flamethrower lay on the ground beside him, but Jax decidedly didn't pick it up out of ear that he would start the same chain of events over again.

"You know, with all the weapons around, I would've expected at least one person to start blowing things up..." Uzi looked over at Jax, who just started whistling and walking away. N stared at Jax suspiciously, even though Jax had no idea why. Everybody else seemed relatively normal.

Everything continued on like normal from that point onwards, with everyone playing cards in turn (aside from the occasional rage play), weapons were tossed into the ever-growing pile, and only a few guns were set off. So, basically, a normal Uno game. In fact, it was so normal, even Caine was surprised that nothing had been burned down (or just completely obliterated) throughout the course of the adventure. Well, if you counted whatever happened with the time thing... but that was in the past (get it?). s so normal, even Caine was surprised that nothing had been burned down (or just completely obliterated) throughout the course of the adventure. Well, if you counted whatever happened with the time thing... but that was in the past (get it?).

Conversations went on throughout the rest of the day, almost allowing Jax to forget anything had ever happened during the adventure. However, there was always N, staring at Jax suspiciously. Did he know something? No, of course not. Karen had specifically stated that the time travel could only be observed by those who conjured it. But why did it feel like N knew exactly what had gone down? Jax tried to shake these thoughts off, but they stuck with him throughout the rest of the day.

By the time he climbed into bed, the anxiety was almost unbearable.

Nori had essentially been going through an emotional roller coaster ever since she had arrived at the Circus with everyone else. She had been told her daughter had died (Caine was still in her bad books for that), found out days later that she was, in fact, not dead, and then had to deal with more Eldritch horrors in one hour than she had had to deal with throughout her entire time as a heart. Sure, she was technically still a heart, but Uzi was working on a new body! Hopefully it would get finished... if she and everyone else found a way to somehow get out of the Circus.

Over the past week that Jax had supposedly "been himself", Nori eyed him with suspicion and a heavy dose of caution. She did NOT need him going out of control right next to her. Besides, there was something off about how he used his Solver... First of all, he could affect her and Uzi, even though that normally didn't work between Solver hosts, and second, he could TURN THE SOLVER OFF?!

Nori had been contemplating this for a few hours when she finally decided she needed to step out of her room. Flicking down the door handle with her Solver, Nori scuttled outside, slightly tense just in case a flying object came out of nowhere. Thankfully, it didn't seem like there would be an aerial assault today.

In the main atrium, Caine was humming and zipping all over the ceiling. Nori wasn't exactly sure of what he was doing, as he appeared to be seemingly interacting with thin air, but she knew better than to question Caine's life choices.

Off to the side were Ragatha, Pomni, and N, who were all talking in hushed voices. Nori was immediately suspicious and secretly scuttled over behind them. However, before she could hear any juicy details, N (robo-god bless his kind heart) noticed her and waved enthusiastically. Despite her best attempts at waving him away, she was noticed by everyone else in the room.

"Oh! Nori! Where have you been?" Ragatha knelt down to get a closer look at Nori. "You haven't been out of your room all morning."

"Well, you know..." Nori tried to avert her gaze. "Having an existential crisis in my bedroom because there is too much random s$&% going on to keep track of. You know, I'm probably not missing out on too much of the bad mental state. I'd probably break down while trying to manage Uzi's chaos, to be completely honest."

A flash of concern crossed Ragatha's face, but Nori didn't have too much time to think about it as everyone else suddenly barged into the atrium, screaming at each other. Throughout the hubbub Nori could make out the words "time" and "Jax". Oh, dear.

"Jax, you little a^$&%*e." Zooble narrowed their eyes at their purple companion, evidently mad at something he had done. "How did you manage to get all my stuff scattered across the hallway?" They were completely ignored by Jax, who was currently engaged in a fiery argument with V.

"Seriously, what do I have to do to convince you to NOT sneak around my room in the middle of the night!" Nori had to raise a metaphorical eyebrow at this, wondering exactly what had gone down while she was stewing.

"Come on, it's not like you have a hand-" Before Jax could finish his sentence, he was slapped in the face by a small pamphlet of paper that read: "V's Basic Boundaries". The fact that she had needed to create that thing in the first place spoke wonders about the kind of environment everyone was currently living in.

"Can you read? Or were you too busy goofing off in school to learn basic life skills?" Not waiting for a response, V took off down the hallway. Much to her (very visible) dismay, V was dragged back by Caine, who was evidently ready with whatever adventure he had prepared for that day. Seriously, this man was giggling.

"Come on, everyone, I'm sure Jax isn't any worse than how he used to be." Jax glared at Caine while everyone else attempted to argue that, in fact, Jax had been much, MUCH worse than before. Him getting the Solver was probably one of the worst mistakes life had made in the past decade.

"Okay, okay! We get it. WE GET IT!" Caine's head ballooned to an unnatural size as he shouted his final remark. This got everyone to shut up. Caine took a deep breath, dropped V, and turned off the lights in the atrium. There was a dramatic sting of music, and Caine started speaking as if he was an announcer at some sort of sports game.

"You've all wanted to do this. You've all failed at some point in your lives. You've all begged to have proper food to eat that isn't 'a mess of disgusting pixels', as you have frustratingly called it numerous times. Get ready to..." A drum roll resounded throughout the room, vibrating Nori to the core. "MAKE! SOME! FOOD!" A gigantic spotlight shone down on Caine, who was now standing in front of a big, flashing sign that read "MAKE! SOME! FOOD!" (creative much?). With a big rumble, four sets of kitchen appliances and stationary jumped out of the floor. Unfortunately, Nori was standing on one of those stations, launching her high into the sky. Thankfully, Uzi was able to grab her before she splatted on the ground.

"Wait..." Jax narrowed his eyes, staring at the new furniture scattered throughout the room. "Are you forcing us to participate in a baking show?" Jax groaned at Caine's enthusiastic nodding. He initially tried to turn around and leave, but Caine put a sign in front of the only remaining way out that read "Zoobles only". Seeing the sign, Zooble flashed a peace sign at everyone else and walked away, eventually becoming enveloped in the darkness.

"Well..." Everyone stood still in awkward silence. "Time to start cooking!" Caine whipped up to the ceiling and dragged down a big digital screen for everyone to look at. "This is what you all are going to try to replicate!" On the screen was an image of a fairly simple cake, decorated with mostly white alongside a few accent colours. Unfortunately for Nori, she had no clue about what to do in order to replicate such a thing (she was a robot, she had no need to make a cake).

"One other thing..." Caine tapped a button on the side of the screen, pulling up an image of a big wheel with everyone's faces on it. "You will all randomly be put into teams of two to three!" Caine then looked around the room, counting with this fingers. "Yeah... that works..." Caine then seemed to notice that everyone was staring at him and slapped the screen, setting the wheel in motion.

The first team was V and Jax, which... Well, Nori wouldn't be surprised if they had to pry a few kitchen appliances out of the ceiling. N and Gangle were put together, so the only harm that could come out of that is if Gangle startled N into setting off a bomb. The third team was Kinger and Uzi, which Uzi definitely showed her distaste for. This left Nori, Ragatha, and Pomni. Almost everyone who was dissatisfied with their teams started arguing with Caine about why there was only one team of three when everyone else could simply be put into teams of three as well. Caine just disappeared, instructing everyone to start cooking to the best of their abilities.

Frankly, Nori couldn't have been happier with her group selection. Sure, she barely knew Pomni outside of her constant mental breakdowns during the adventures, but both her and Ragatha used to be human. Evidently, they should know how to make a cake, right?

"So..." Ragatha put her hands together, taking in a deep breath. "Please tell me at least one of you knows how to make a cake." Nori gestured to the fact that she was, in fact, a robot, and Pomni just shook her head. "Oh gosh... Well, that's not going to be a problem! You can still help!" With that, Ragatha led the group towards their designated station.

Almost immediately something went wrong. Ragatha had asked Nori to get some water from the sink (Nori was against doing so, but technically she couldn't die, so...), which she did. Her Solver came in handy preventing the water from spilling all over the place, though. With her measuring cup in hand, Nori scuttled back over to Ragatha, who picked it up.

"Okay, so we're going to need to... heat the water? Caine, what the heck?!" Caine did not respond to Ragatha's comment, which gave Nori the impression that you did not, in fact, have to heat up water in order to make a cake. You learn something new every day, she supposed.

With a groan, Ragatha turned over to the stove and turned it on, multicoloured flames bursting to life from the burner. Pomni grabbed a pot from the oversized pantry/kitchen supply section that had just spawned in when Caine disappeared and set it on the flames. However, when Ragatha put the water in the pot, it immediately started burning with passion.

"OH MY GOD! FIRE EXTINGUISHER! GET ME A FIRE EXTINGUISHER!" Ragatha started scrambling all over the place, nearly knocking over pretty much everything in sight. Eventually she managed to get a hold of what she was looking for, but she accidentally swung the base of the fire extinguisher too hard and threw the rest of the water into the blaze. This, naturally, made the fire even worse.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING SITTING THERE?! PUT IT OUT!" Nori grabbed the fire extinguisher from Ragatha with her Solver and immediately started spraying the white stuff that no one knows the name for all over the fire. Thankfully, everything was put out, but everyone was now staring at the group with weird (and slightly horrified) expressions.

"What the heck happened?" Ragatha turned towards Nori, who raised her claws up in defence. "Hey, I know it wasn't you, you got the water from the tap. But... how the heck did water catch on fire?"

"Probably Caine messing around with the physics too much again," Jax called out, mixing something in a bowl. Ragatha reluctantly agreed to Jax's assumption, as that probably was the most likely reason for what had just happened. She went over to the pantry and picked up a bottle of not-tampered-with water. This time, when she put it on the stove (both Pomni and Nori stood a good distance away from the potential blast zone), the water started bubbling normally. Everyone let out a sigh of relief.

The baking process went on normally for the next few minutes. Ingredients were mixed, inedible objects were occasionally burned (because Caine could never figure out how to properly gravitate things towards the ground), and the icing was made. For a while, it seemed as if nothing else would go wrong. However, Nori should have known that nothing ever goes right for too long.

Pomni was icing the cake in a similar fashion to the cake still prominently displayed on the screen. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but Nori was sure it would cut it for Caine. Well... the better words would have been "might have". This is because, just as Pomni was finishing a ribbon of icing, the entire cake just started levitating out of nowhere. Nori was initially worried things were going to start flying around again when she saw Jax focusing a weird amount on the cake.

"Oh no you don't." Nori snuck away from Pomni and Ragatha, who were desperately trying to make the cake come back down to the ground, and made her way behind Jax. Without warning, she slapped him in the face with a spoon using her Solver. This released Jax's hold on the cake, symbolised by a flash of red light escaping from it. Unfortunately, this also caused the cake to come crashing down back on the platter it had risen from. It... certainly was flatter, but didn't look HORRIBLE, per-se.

Jax whirled around to see what happened, finding Nori standing behind him with what she hoped was a smug expression in her eye. Jax certainly looked annoyed, but he simply turned around and got back to annoying V for no reason. Nori, very suspicious of Jax now, scuttled back to her own work station.

Ragatha assessed the damage to the cake, saying, "Okay. We can fix this! Pomni, how much time do we have left?"

"Um..." Pomni squinted at the clock on the screen, which was supposed to be ticking down from one hour. "Well... How do I put this... It looks like it's glitching?" Pomni just shrugged when questioned further, prompting Nori and Ragatha to look at the clock themselves.

"I don't think human clocks are supposed to jump time like that." Nori gestured at the digital clock face, which was consistently changing numbers to the highest extremes. Under no circumstances had Nori seen a ninety-nine o' clock before.

Nori glanced over at Jax once again, but he had disappeared from his work station. V was looking around the place, confused, which probably meant that he had abandoned her and was now goofing off with the digital clock somewhere he couldn't be seen.

"Let's just... ignore that." Ragatha turned back to the cake, picking up a tube of purple icing. "Purple on top, right?" She turned towards the screen, where the cake started swapping colours like a psychedelic nightmare. "OH GOD, MY EYES!"

Everyone continued to suffer through the impromptu light show that was the screen at the moment as they tried to finish their cakes to varying levels of success. N had managed to make something that actually resembled a cake, which was surprising considering the fact that Gangle was sobbing while unnecessarily mixing icing in a bowl. N tried to comfort her, but apparently a death robot wasn't the most welcoming thing. Who knew?

V had just given up and continued making the cake by herself. Since she was a robot, though, she had absolutely no clue where to start and ended up with something that barely looked cooked. Could one get salmonella in a digital universe? Knowing Caine, one probably could.

Uzi and Kinger had somehow managed to make a masterpiece of the cake, adding little flairs of icing and a decadent sugar centrepiece on the top. Either Kinger knew how to bake, or Uzi had used her Solver way too much in the baking process. Frankly, Nori was ready to believe either possibility if the question came up.

A cracking sound coming from the ceiling brought everyone's attention upwards. Sitting up there, holding Uzi's railgun like a madman, was Jax. He started laughing manically, launching N into action. He flew up and tried to wrestle the railgun out of Jax's hands, but Jax simply threw the disassembly drone away with his Solver. "Let me have some fun for once!" Jax called in the general direction where he threw N's body. With another laugh, he turned towards Uzi's station and pointed the railgun towards their cake.

"DON'T YOU DARE DESTROY MY BABY'S CAKE!" Nori launched herself at Jax, ignoring Uzi's protests against being called "baby". Jax immediately pointed the railgun towards Nori, but Uzi flew up out of nowhere to punch him in the face. Miraculously, Jax managed to keep his balance, teetering on one foot for a second.

"What the heck?!" Jax tried to turn around, but was immediately smacked in the face by a thrown stand mixer. "OW!" Nori looked down to see Uzi throwing things at Jax, her eyes a mask of rage.

"No one gets to punch my mom but me!" Uzi threw a metal bowl at Jax's head. "And the one time I did that, it was an ACCIDENT!" Uzi tore a cupboard off the makeshift wall of her station and threw it at the railgun, knocking it out of Jax's hands. "SO YOU CAN JUST MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS AND SHOVE OFF!" Uzi threw Kinger. Wait. KINGER?!

Nori managed to catch the falling chess piece before he could shatter into wood chips on the ground with her Solver. Nori turned around just in time to notice Uzi having at it with Jax, throwing punches and clawing at him. Jax managed to dance out of the way of most of Uzi's attacks, using his Solver to push her back occasionally.

Something seemed to click in Jax's mind right that moment, as a smile curled across his lips as he snapped his fingers. All of a sudden, Uzi seemed a lot less menacing. Her claws simply disappeared, and her glitching eyes that came with intense feelings of anger reverted back to normal. Before Uzi could figure out what had happened, Jax threw her off the side of the roof beam they were both standing on with his own Solver.

"DON'T YOU DARE!" Nori ricocheted off the wall using a well-placed bowl (you can imagine was a skateboarder would do if they were amplified by the intense power of the Solver) and landed smack-dab on Jax's head. She tried to summon a pickax with her Solver, but the second Jax saw the Solver symbol, he shut it off. Unbeknown to Jax, doing so freed up Uzi's Solver, allowing her to ram into him full force.

"Guys! Can we stop fighting?" Ragatha's pleas for peace were consistently ignored as Jax, Nori, and Uzi all fought each other. Any time Jax tried to turn off Nori's Solver, Uzi was there to break his concentration (and vice versa). Jax didn't seem able to turn off both Solvers at once, which proved to be a big bonus for Uzi and Nori for beating him up.

Nori was worried that they might have gone too far when Jax teleported from where he was standing to a corner of the room, sobbing into his hands. Uzi and Nori looked at each other with confused expressions before turning back to Jax. However, he was now running into the hallway, screaming, "DON'T GO!" He immediately teleported back into the centre of the atrium, hugging himself while sobbing once again. At this point, Uzi and Nori had completely forgotten their anger and were now worried for Jax and his current state of physical and mental well being.

"Hey, Jax, are you..." Ragatha tried to reach out to touch Jax, but he just disappeared and reappeared in another one of the halls, banging on a nonexistent door. Ragatha's eyes seemed to hollow slightly before she tried to run after Jax. However, this just started a chain of Ragatha chasing after Jax's teleporting form.

"Um..." N edged over to where Uzi was standing. "Has this ever happened before with you guys?" Both Nori and Uzi both shook their heads. Sure, there were times where Nori bawled her eye out because the Solver was just that annoying, but it never got to the point where she was teleporting all over the place in her grief. In fact, she didn't think she had seen a Solver host who could teleport after Yeva's death.

With a final, strangely loud cry, Jax teleported back to the centre of the atrium and collapsed to the floor, a puddle of tears and moans. When it finally seemed as if he had stopped his teleporting shenanigans, Ragatha stepped closer and knelt down to look at his face.

"Hey, Jax... What's wrong?" Ragatha, instead of getting an answer, got a scream in the face by Jax. Jax then teleported away, not reappearing anywhere else in the room. "What the- Is he okay?" Nobody knew.

Of course, this was when Caine decided to pop into the room in a burst of streamers and sparkles. "HOW ARE MY BUSTLING BAKERS DOING?!" Read the room, dude.

Caine took a second to look around the atrium, taking into account the scattered kitchen appliances (and occasional kitchen fixtures), smashed cakes, melted icing, and faint crying coming from one of the hallways. "Oh..." Caine looked down at his feet, clearly wondering what he should do next. "Well... I guess we aren't doing the judging portion, are we?" Everyone stayed silent, not wanting to be the one to break the silence. Eventually, everyone went off to their own rooms, not even bothering to bid each other goodbye.

Once back in her room, Nori tore open her closet door and raced to the back. What Caine didn't know was that she had created a murder wall of sorts at the back of her closet depicting everything going on with Jax. She had little carved pictures and everything!

Not once had Nori seen the Solver do something on this level to a host. It might have just been the fact that Jax's Solver had been infected by an abstracted user, but Nori knew that had affected Jax's Solver on a much deeper level than just a little bit of glitching. Not knowing what to do, Nori strung a few red pieces of twine between a couple of pins, attempting to make sense of the situation. An hour later, and she had gotten nowhere.

"Well, this isn't going to go over well the next morning..." With a groan, Nori scuttled towards the ground-level bed she had been forced to make, as she simply could not rise from the floor without weird Solver shenanigans that were way too complicated to carry out efficiently.

Nori settled down with a sigh, determined to figure out what had just happened the next morning.

Too bad she would cease to exist.

"Oh Kinger~ Where are you~?"

Footsteps echoed throughout Kinger's room thud after thud on the wooden floor. It was already known where Kinger was hiding, but who would pass up the opportunity to make the situation better? Getting closer and closer to the singular closet in the room, the rustling of clothes could be heard coming from inside. Almost as if someone was trying to hide...

"GOT YOU!" The door of the closet was flung open, and Kinger landed on top of his wife, giggling. Queenie, slightly shocked by her husband's sudden burst from the closet, wrestled with him on the floor after catching her breath for a slight second. Soon enough, both of them were tangled in each other (well, as much as two chess pieces could be), laughing together.

"Don't ram into me like that, King," said Queenie, unable to keep giggles from being interspersed in her speech. Kinger didn't respond, standing up and taking Queenie by the hand. Queenie accepted Kinger's hand, using it to hoist herself up. Just as she was about to say something, however, she heard a big bang come from down the hallway. With a heavy sigh, she removed her hand from Kinger's and opened the door.

Yep. Jax and Kaufmo were at it again.

Kinger was about to say something, but Queenie simply held up three fingers to stop him. "Three... two... one..."

"JAX! KAUFMO! WHAT THE HECK?!" Ragatha stormed across the hall, her hair a twisted, soapy mess. Jax and Kaufmo were hiding behind a door at the end of the hallway, snickering to each other. Queenie sighed again and made her way towards Ragatha, who was angrily whipping her head around to find the soapy-haired perpetrators.

"Ragatha, honey, what happened?" Kinger followed closely behind Queenie, assessing the situation for himself and eventually coming to the same conclusion Queenie did a minute before.

"Those two," Ragatha pointed an accusing finger at Jax and Kaufmo, who had come out of their hiding spot to assess the damage they had made, "decided it would be a fun idea to dump soap on my head and then use a VACUUM on it!" Queenie looked at Jax and Kaufmo, who tried to look nonchalant but where also failing miserably.

"Boys, why would you go and do something like that?" Queenie was sometimes considered to be the mother of the group, considering she was the only one with the ability to not get mad whenever something went horrendously wrong. And, at the Circus, that was quite often. Frankly, it was quite a miracle Queenie hadn't lost her sanity yet.

"Well, we were planning on helping good ol' Rags here get cleaned up." True to his word, Kaufmo pulled a towel out of nowhere and gave it to Ragatha, who angrily snatched it out of his hand and started using it on her hair.

"I still think you should've done something to the towel, Kauf." Ragatha immediately took the towel away from her head, worried that it might stain her hair blue or something. Both Jax and Kaufmo laughed at her reaction, much to her annoyance.

"Everyone, calm down. Sure, a harmless prank was pulled, but our avatars get reset before entering the adventures anyways." Queenie then thought for a second, remembering that one time Gangle's room was accidentally set on fire. "That is... if Caine's even able to repair the damage." At this, she cast an accusatory glare at Jax and Kaufmo. Jax and Kaufmo just smiled, Jax out of arrogance and Kaufmo out of embarrassment.

"Speaking of good old me..." Like usual, Caine appeared out of nowhere, scaring Kinger back into his room. Caine waited for a second to allow Queenie to drag Kinger back out before continuing. "Hello everybody! How are we doing today!"

Ragatha narrowed her eyes, not even bothering to gesture to the state her hair was still in. "Caine, is there any way you could revert this back to normal?"

"Why of course!" With a snap of his fingers, Ragatha's hair glitched for a second and then settled back into its normal state, soap-free. With that situation taken care of, Caine decided to herd everyone into the atrium, ready with that day's adventure.

"So, I know you all have been wanting to get a taste of what your lives were like before coming to the Circus..." With a big flourish of his hands, 3-D letters appeared behind Caine. "Today, you get to live normal lives!" The words were spelt out behind him, somehow making regular life sound extravagant.

"Now, of course, there will be a few mistakes, as... Well, you know. I'm not 'human', or whatever you all call yourselves." No one really seemed to care. Caine had done something similar to this before, and... well, let's just say that incident is no longer talked about.

"Can you just get on with it?" Jax crossed his arms, his smile downturned in frustration. "Or are you going to spend another hour explaining everything that's going to happen today?"

Caine side-eyed Jax but didn't say anything, choosing to open a vertical portal. Jax scoffed and walked inside, clearly expecting something poor-quality. Queenie couldn't help but feel bad for Caine, but she knew if she didn't get in there soon, Jax was bound to break physics and learn how to carry buildings. And, frankly, she didn't want to deal with that today.

It was strangely disorienting stepping from the Circus and into the adventure, which Queenie was later able to attribute to the fact that Caine sent everyone to separate parts of the map. She and Kinger were placed in a flat, apartment-looking structure with just a bed and two table-side lamps. Looking outside, Queenie could see what vaguely looked like a city, but all the buildings were weird shapes and the sun was way too big in the distance.

"Well... It's close enough, I guess..." Queenie glanced over at Kinger, who was looking out of the other window in the apartment. "See anything from where you are, King?"

"Um... A purple blob in a gigantic truck chasing after Gangle." Queenie raised an eyebrow and glanced through Kinger's window, looking at the situation for herself. Somehow, Jax had managed to get a hold of a gigantic monster truck (probably from the store named 'Monster Trucks') and was now trying to mow down Gangle, who was running for her life. Kaufmo was sitting on the top, obliviously hollering in ecstasy. How he managed to stay on top of the truck, Queenie had no idea. Probably something to do with broken physics.

"Pretty sure we should do something about that..." Kinger nodded at Queenie's suggestion, and together they stepped outside. Looking back at the apartment, Queenie realised that Caine hadn't put that much thought into making it look nice. Apart from a few details, the apartment was essentially a basic white block of wood.

"Um... honey, they're coming right towards us." Queenie whipped around to see Jax barrelling down the grass that separated the city from the apartment, Gangle barely able to keep in front of it.

"Jax! What are you doing?!" Queenie couldn't hear whatever answer she was given, as she had to dive out of the way of the truck so that she wouldn't get run over. "JAX!"

"Aw, calm down! We're just having a bit of fun!" Finished with his so-called "explanation", Jax continued with his business of trying to run into Gangle, who had barely a second to rest before she was back to sprinting for her life. Queenie tried to make Jax stop, but either he was driving too fast to hear her, or he was just ignoring common sense.

"Wait..." Kinger narrowed his eyes and started pointing at everyone, as if he was doing a head count. "And if Gangle's there..." He turned towards Queenie. "Where did Ragatha go?"

That question was soon answered by Ragatha barrelling down the grass in her own monster truck, stopping just before she hit anyone. "Hey! Need some help over there?" Ragatha reached her hands down to allow Queenie and Kinger inside of the truck. "Let's go do some ramming!" She stepped on the ignition, setting the truck into motion right towards Jax and Kaufmo.

"Whoa! Jax, incoming!" Right before the two trucks collided, as Jax had no clue as to what was happening, Kaufmo jumped off rolling a good distance away. Gangle, thankfully, had also managed to get away from the two trucks, sitting on the branch of a tree while watching the entire situation unfold.

When the two trucks collided, they both immediately reared up on one another, forming a sort of triangle. Jax hit his own ignition, trying to get away from Ragatha's truck, but only succeeded in clipping his front wheels into the ground and his back wheels into the front end of the other truck. Ragatha, in turn, stepped on her own ignition even further, sending both trucks tumbling around each other. It was a miracle how everyone was able to stay inside their respective vehicles as the trucks engaged in a dance of deadly ballet.

Eventually, the trucks hit each other wrong, and Ragatha, Kinger, and Queenie were sent flying into the forest behind them in opposite directions. Jax, however, sunk into the ground, not being able to get out of his truck before disappearing with a loud thunk.

Queenie was lucky enough to land in a soft bush, the leaves and moss cushioning her fall for the most part. She chuckled to herself while standing up, brushing any stray pieces of plant off her coat. Sure, she was now alone in the middle of the woods, but it was fun to be chaotic with everyone else once in a while.

"Kinger? Ragatha? Can any of you hear me?" Queenie took the lack of a reply as a "no" and started walking in the direction she came from. It was relatively peaceful, as Caine tended to reserve the scary aspects of his adventures for adventures that were actually meant to be scary. Then again, real life was scary in its own right, so anything could happen, really.

Queenie picked up her pace as she started to see more and more light burst through the trees, indicating that she was nearing the edge of the forest. However, just as she was about to break free, she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. In fact, if she hadn't been enjoying her surroundings as much, she might not have noticed the movement at all.

Queenie whirled around, looking for whatever had moved. It could have been Kinger or Ragatha, but why would they be trying to hide from one of their friends? Maybe it was some sort of animal-looking NPC that Caine was trying out. Yeah, that had to be it. Either way, Queenie kept looking around her as she slowly made her way towards the edge of the forest.

Thankfully, everyone had managed to find their way back to the apartment by the time Queenie exited the forest. Jax was obviously the target of a few choice (and occasionally censored) words from Ragatha, which was a shock to hear when Queenie finally got within earshot of everyone else.

"...why can't you just let us have a single adventure where you aren't trying to kill everyone else? Huh? What's so hard about doing that, Jax?" Jax, on the other hand, was completely ignoring Ragatha's yelling and instead inspecting his monster truck, which looked an absolute mess (and that was putting it nicely).

"Well, that was certainly interesting..." Everyone turned around at the sound of Queenie's voice, and Kinger ran up to hug her. Queenie reciprocated the hug while looking at everyone else. "Why don't we all go and do something that's a bit more... tame? How about it?" Everyone nodded their heads (although Jax did so reluctantly), and together they started to make their way towards the main city.

"So, Kinger and I haven't really been outside of that one area we all were in. How has Caine's city been like?" Ragatha and Gangle both gave their versions of what happened to them while Jax and Kaufmo whispered to each other about God knows what. It turns out that Caine didn't do that bad a job simulating real life in the city. There was traffic, grocery stores, apartment buildings, and people who were absolute menaces to society. It looks like Caine had did his research.

"Eh, it could do with a bit more violence." With that, Jax turned down the road and made his way towards the monster truck shop again, evidently hoping to continue the chaos that he had started before. Everyone immediately grabbed him by whatever part of his body he could hold and started dragging him away, much to his dismay and frequent kicking.

"Honey, how about over there?" Kinger pointed towards a shop called 'Rent A Cafe', which looked like the stock image photo of a cosy coffee shop. It certainly looked calm, which is why a near-unanimous agreement was made to give the shop a visit. You can guess who was against the decision.

Inside were a few cheery NPCs talking with each other while fake-drinking from cups of coffee. Everything was decorated with warm colours, reminding Queenie of those fall aesthetic videos Kinger said he liked to watch when he was in the human world. Everyone was obviously entranced by the ambience, even Jax, despite his best efforts to look indifferent about the whole situation.

The clerk NPC at the front waved the group over and asked, "So, how can I help you all today?"

Ragatha, being her socially positive self, responded, "Is there anything that we can get here? Like, a drink or a snack?"

"Of course!" The NPC gestured at the board behind him, pointing at a variety of different, delicious-looking items. "Our cafe offers the best selection of drinks, snacks, and books you can find! As well, everything is priced reasonably! However..." The clerk leaned closer, as if he was going to share some big secret. "You can have the whole place to yourself for an hour with the special package." The clerk immediately returned back to normal, as if he was shrugging off a conversation about attempted murder. Caine really needed to work on when to add drama to his NPC interactions.

"Oh, wow! So, it looks like we can have this whole place to ourselves..." Ragatha looked around before patting her nonexistent pockets. "Too bad we don't have any money to buy anything with... Bummer." Just as Ragatha turned around to walk out the door, an NPC burst through, carrying a huge stack of money.

"Who want's this gigantic stack of definitely-legal money?!" Jax immediately took it without a second thought, and the man dashed out of the coffee shop. Everything seemed to return to normal, with conversations resuming and smells becoming more pronounced than they were before.

"Will you take this for two hours?" Jax slapped the wad of money down in front of the clerk. The clerk looked at the money questioningly before finally putting it in the cash register.

"Alright, everyone! The special package has been bought! You know what that means!" Before anyone could respond, the clerk pressed a button on his cash register, sending any and all NPCs through holes in the floor. The holes closed up soon after they opened, cutting off the screams of terror. The clerk happily waved goodbye and skipped off into the back room, leaving everyone partially shocked.

"Well, I'm gonna go see if I can trash this place's basement. See you losers later." Jax opened a door labelled "Basement" and started thumping down the revealed set of stairs. No one decided to go after him, hoping that he wouldn't end up breaking physics again.

"Well, this place seems nice." Kinger walked over behind the display case, taking out a cupcake with red frosting. "At least they have sweets!" Kinger promptly started to eat the cupcake, an anomaly due to his apparent lack of a mouth. Thankfully, everyone had gotten used to the fact that mouths weren't necessary to carry out tasks normally done with a mouth in the Circus, meaning that this action was not met with (too much) surprise.

"It has a nice feel to it. Makes me even happier!" Gangle, who had miraculously managed to keep her happy mask on throughout that entire situation, walked over to the coffee machine. After a bit of a struggle to turn it on, she brought out a few cups and turned towards everyone else. "Who wants a drink?"

And so, for the next few hours, everyone just sat, drank coffee, and talk with one another about life outside of the Circus. Sure, it was sometimes saddening to think about the life you were ripped from, but having someone to share that pain with made it so much better. In fact, it was almost sunset by the time the last conversation had died out.

"Well, I guess we should go try to find a way out of this place..." Ragatha got up and started walking towards the door, before stopping in her tracks. "Wait... Where's Jax?" Everyone else looked around, finally realising that Jax had never returned from the basement.

"Is he alright?" Queenie walked over to the basement door, calling out, "Jax? Are you all right down there? Do you need any help?" Initially, Queenie was met with no response. However, she jumped right up into the air when she heard and extremely loud bang come from the basement.

"Jax! Do you need help?!" Ragatha tried to rush down the stairs, but was stopped by Queenie. "We have to help him!"

"One at a time. I'll go first. Kinger, watch over everyone else." Without waiting for her husband to protest her decision, Queenie made her way down the stars, cautiously eyeing her surroundings just in case she was about to get attacked by something.

It appeared as if everything was normal in the basement. Cooking and cleaning supplies were organised neatly, aside from the occasional object on the floor. However, another bang coming from the other end of the basement set Queenie into motion, dashing between overturned boxes and spilt ingredients. Something was here. Something dangerous.

Finally, Queenie entered the most-wrecked part of the basement. Entire shelving units were lying on the floor, scratches marked the walls and ceiling, and Jax was still nowhere to be found.

"JAX! If you're playing a prank, it isn't funny!" Queenie was only responded with another loud bang, making her back up against the wall. "Jax..."

Queenie saw something move in the shadows out of the corner of her vision. She immediately whipped around to face the moving being, but she saw it again on the other side of the room. Soon it became a game of Queenie desperately trying to find out what was stalking her while the thing in question zipped around the room, barely stopping before moving. Eventually, Queenie got dizzy and had to settle on the ground in order to regain her bearings.

"Whoever you are, come out!" Queenie stood up once again to see a dark figure emerge from the shadows. Initially, she couldn't make out any features, but as the figure made its way closer and closer, she could see that it was vaguely robot-like. Although it had some human-like features, such as a human-shaped body and the right facial features, Queenie knew that something was desperately wrong. Which was why she was confused when the figure saluted her and proclaimed cheerfully,

"Hi! I'm Serial Designation N!"

"Jax, where the heck did you get a robot suit?" Queenie started walking towards the robot in front of her, relieved to finally understand that all of the commotion was just Jax playing another one of his pranks.

"Ah..." The robot stepped back, an apologetic look on his face. "That- that isn't right, actually..." Queenie stopped in her tracks. Was Jax messing with her again? Her brain wrestled with the two possibilities, struggling to figure out which one was correct. On one hand, Jax could just be controlling the robot in the hopes of scaring Queenie to death. On the other hand, she could be talking to a literal robot who just happened to sound exactly like Jax.

"How can I be sure you're not just trying to trick me...?" Queenie continued to edge closer, completely forgetting to think about survival in favour of figuring out what was going on. If this robot wasn't Jax, then who was he? Surely not another player...

"Um... well, I guess I can't really prove your theory wrong..." The robot wrung his hands out nervously, looking around as if he could find the answer to Queenie's question written on the wall. "But I promise you, I am not your friend."

Queenie narrowed her eyes, slowly making her way around the robot in a lazy circle. Just as she was about to ask another question, she slid over something that felt like a cord of wire. She looked down to see what it was, but only saw a flash of refracted light before something slithered away. Naturally, Queenie jumped in the opposite direction, grabbing for anything that she could use to defend herself.

"What was that?!" Queenie wrapped her hands around a stray whisk, holding it out in front of her like a sword. Hey, this was a dang cafe, what was she supposed to find, a hammer? Queenie slowly started to walk away from the robot, facing him the entire time. The robot didn't look particularly fazed.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. That's just my friend!"

"Wait, what? There are more of... well, whatever you are?"

"Of course! You didn't think I'd be down here in this creepy basement alone, did you?" He certainly made a point, but it still didn't explain what the heck was going on.

"Why hasn't your friend revealed themselves yet?"

"Well, if you just turn around..." A female voice spoke out from behind Queenie. Queenie turned around to see another robot hanging from the ceiling by what appeared to be a tail. Her head was cocked to the side, giving her an unsettling air of danger. Queenie, going into fight-or-flight mode, smacked the robot across the face with the whisk.

"OW!" The female robot fell to the ground, her voice glitching out for a second before re-stabilising. "You didn't have to do that! I wasn't going to kill you or anything..." The robot crossed her arms in frustration, glaring at Queenie.

"To be fair, Uzi, you did appear behind her out of nowhere like a spider demon." The female robot (Uzi, from how the male robot called her) didn't have a response to this, simply rolling her eyes and sighing exasperatedly.

"Well, it's not my fault she reacted by weaponizing cooking equipment!"

"That was just in self defence."

"Oh, self defence my processor! She was probably going to do that even if I appeared behind her holding flowers and a nice card for her!"

"Uzi-"

"WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?!" Queenie broke into the conversation, terribly confused by the two robots. Their bickering immediately stopped as they both turned to look at Queenie. "Seriously, the only information that I have gotten out of you two is one of your names."

"Ah... Well..." The male robot (Queenie was just going to call him N-that's how he introduced himself, anyways) wrung his hand out again, obviously looking for an answer to that question. "That's a funny story..."

"Well, we appeared in some weird kind of circus, without any clue about what was happening." N was about to say something, but Uzi clapped a hand over his mouth to prevent him from doing so. "A guy with teeth for a head appeared out of nowhere calling us 'new arrivals' or something, I couldn't really make sense of the guy. Before I knew it, I was being sent through a weird psychedelic portal and landed in the middle of a street. Thankfully, I wasn't run over, but I still didn't know where I was. So, I walked around for a bit, met up with this guy, and we started searching around together. Eventually we went through the back door of this place and have been sitting in this basement doing nothing for the past twenty minutes as someone got us locked inside." Uzi looked accusingly at N, who simply hung his mouth open in surprise and shock.

Queenie stood still for a second, processing the story. Finally, she started laughing, a small giggle that eventually evolved in full-bellied laughter, digital tears falling down her wood. Both Uzi and N looked at Queenie weirdly, but Queenie didn't care. "HAH! I'm sorry, you two... It's just... For a second I thought something bad was happening..." Queenie finally managed to calm herself down enough to form a complete sentence. "You're both just new arrivals! We need to tell the others about this."

Without waiting for their permission, Queenie grabbed N by the arm and started dragging him up the stairs. N didn't struggle against Queenie's grip, following along behind her up the stairs. Uzi grumbled something under her breath and followed behind, making sure that N didn't lose his balance and send everyone tumbling down the stairs.

"Hey, everyone!" Queenie started walking into the main room of the cafe, finding that everyone was where she had left them. "Look what I found!" With that, Queenie dragged N out of the basement door and into the light of the cafe.

N was initially met with a bunch of confused looks, the silence only broken by Jax calling out from behind, "What the heck is that thing?" Wait, where had Jax come from? There was only supposed to be one entrance to the basement, right?

Queenie's thought process was interrupted by Uzi crashing through the door, knocking N to the ground. This garnered a bit more surprise from everyone, but not enough to actually start a commotion. "Why are you all staring at me like that?" Ragatha immediately averted her eyes towards the ground while everyone else pretended to be very interested with whatever random thing happened to be in their line of sight.

"Let me rephrase my question," Jax said as he pushed his way towards the front of the crowd. "Who the heck are you two? And how did I not notice you in the basement?" So Jax had been in the basement this entire time. Maybe Queenie just didn't notice when he left (she had ample reason to be distracted, anyways).

"Oh! I'm Serial Designation N, but you can just call me N. And this is my friend, Uzi!" N wrapped his arm around Uzi's shoulders, an act of affection that Uzi immediately recoiled from. Completely ignoring N's expression, Uzi walked forward, inspecting everyone in front of her. Her face slowly became more and more confused as she walked past everyone and their less-than-normal bodies.

"What happened to you guys?" She pointed a finger at Kinger. "I mean, this one's a chess piece, and you're a sentient doll. Either I've finally fallen off the deep end, or something weird's going on here."

"Well, um..." Ragatha looked around as she tried to find the right words to explain the situation. "It's kind of hard to talk about without getting into a bunch of weird details... Hey! I know!" She turned around to talk with everyone else. "Why don't we take these guys to Caine! He'll know what to do, surely!" Her statement was met with a few approving grumbles, no one daring to form actual words out of the fear of angering the robots in their midst.

"Oh, he's going to have a field day. Two new people? It might as well be his birthday." With that, Jax walked out of the cafe, Kaufmo following behind him. Everyone soon filed out as well, N and Uzi walked a ways behind while talking to each other. About what, Queenie was too far away to know.

"Hey! Caine! We're done here!" Jax cupped his hands to the sky, his voice reverberating throughout the buildings surrounding the cafe. It was a bit unsettling, having there be an echo in a place normally so crowded. But, Caine could only do so much before even he started to expend too much energy.

Thankfully, there wasn't too long of a wait before Caine opened a portal for everyone to re-enter the Circus. Once again, N and Uzi entered last, still deep in conversation.

"How was your adventure today, my friends?!" Caine, being Caine, was currently using Bubble as some form of hacky sack. He immediately stopped when he caught sight of Uzi and N, Bubble dropping to the ground, forgotten. "Wait a second... I've never seen you two around here before!" He zoomed up to Uzi and N, inspecting them with his too-big eyes. "You must be new players!"

"Wait, what do you mean by-" Uzi was cut off by Caine flying up to the centre of the stage at one end of the main atrium. "Hey! Where are you-" She was once again cut off as loud music started playing, Caine screaming over it like a madman.

"Welcome to..." Cue dramatic drum roll. "The Amazing. Digital. Circus!" Cue party poppers and excessive amounts of confetti. "A magical place where almost anything can happen! All thanks to your gracious host, me!" Even more confetti. "First things first, let's get about to naming you two!"

The gambling machine ever-so-discreetly called the "Naming Machine" slid out from the side of the stage, coming to a rest in the centre. The wheels with letters on them started spinning frantically as Caine pressed down on the lever. Eventually, they came to a stop.

"So, which one of you wants to be 'XZPTN'?" Caine immediately pressed down on the letters again in response to Uzi and N's confused expressions. "How about 'FUYYQ'?" Once again, Caine's suggestion was met with confused stares from the robots.

"Um... We already have names." N turned the last part of the sentence upwards, phrasing it more like a question than a statement. Evidently he was confused by Caine, as everyone else was when they first met him. "I'm N, and this is Uzi!" N tried to wrap his arm around Uzi again, but decided against doing so when she shot him a glare.

"Alright, N, Oo-zee! Welcome to the Circus! Now, I would introduce you a bit more properly, but it's right around dinner time for everyone else. So, if you could settle down for a quick second, I'll have all your questions answered in no time!" Without waiting for anyone's approval, Caine snapped his fingers, a banquet table appearing in the middle of the atrium. Various foods were lain across the top the table, all of them looking way too saturated to be real food. Still, Queenie enjoyed the small semblance of the life she had before the Circus.

"Oh, wow! Food! Yay..." N made his way towards the table, awkwardly sitting down. Uzi sat next to him, raising an eyebrow at the food. Queenie just chuckled to herself-she was the exact same the first time she "ate" at the Circus. It was nice to see herself reflect somewhat in new arrivals, no matter how fleeting those moments or qualities may be.

"Wait, do we even need to eat here?" Uzi picked up a leg of chicken, another leg replacing the empty spot it left on the platter. "I mean, it makes more sense that we don't need to eat in a place where we don't have stomachs."

"While eating isn't exactly necessary, it does help provide structure to our days here." Ragatha picked up a banana and started peeling it. "Besides, I don't think any of us would want to live here without something to remind us of real life."

"Yeah... Real life..." N looked down at his still-empty plate, Uzi jabbing him in the side to no effect. "Well, guess it's time to eat." He awkwardly picked up a carrot, inspecting it as if it was some sort of murder weapon. Deciding that he wasn't going to die via carrot poisoning, N slowly started to wrap his mouth around it, struggling to position the carrot properly. Finally, he managed to bite down, chewing the carrot excruciatingly slowly. If Queenie didn't know better, she might have guessed that N hadn't actually eaten before. But of course, that was silly.

Uzi didn't seem to have the same problem, ripping into whatever she could find as if she had been starving for a week. Once again, kind of strange behaviour, but Queenie just brushed it off as first-day jitters.

Eventually, everyone finished eating with varying degrees of success. Caine didn't appear out of nowhere to continue the conversation from earlier, so everyone took that as a sign to make their way towards their own rooms. N and Uzi followed Queenie, as they hadn't been assigned rooms yet.

"Oh! There we are!" Queenie made her way towards a set of two doors, both of which were decorated with an image of either N or Uzi's face. "Well, these are your rooms, you two. Make sure to get a good night's rest!" With that, Queenie walked off, leaving Uzi and N to their own devices.

{-}

"Now?"

"Now."

N slowly edged his way out of his bedroom, trying not to make a sound. It was nearly pitch dark in the hallway, but that didn't really matter when you had built-in night vision. N looked towards Uzi's door, watching Uzi slowly make her way out of her room as well. He still couldn't believe what was happening at the moment.

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Uzi?" N walked towards the other drone, making sure to keep his voice low just in case anyone hadn't yet fallen asleep. "I mean, sure, some extremely weird things are going down, but do you really want to anger an offshoot of the Solver that can bend time?"

Uzi scoffed at his statement. "Oh, please! We've dealt with worse, haven't we? Another Solver monster is nothing!" Despite her confident posture, N couldn't help but notice the small lines of worry lit up on Uzi's visor. Even Uzi, emo queen supreme, was scared about what was to come.

"But what if he finds us walking the halls in the middle of the night? I'm pretty sure that's not allowed, even for this place." N looked over his shoulder, worried that he might accidentally summon the reason he was here in the first place simply by mentioning him. "Also, what are we going to do if he stops you from using the Solver?"

"Well, you just need to keep him distracted for long enough so that he won't do that." Uzi patted N on the back, as if what she just said was a foolproof plan. Of course, with any plan, there were so many ways this could go wrong that N couldn't keep track of them all.

"So, where are we going?"

"Well, I'd assume back to the main room. It seems to branch off to all the other parts of the Circus." With that, Uzi started making her way down the hall, N following close behind her. Both of them were ready to slash anything that might pose a threat to them to bits, N with his retractable swords and Uzi with her eldritch claws.

"Is it just me, or is this place bigger than before?" N looked around, the darkness making the ceiling seem higher than normal and making the floor stretch on for far longer than it should. "I mean, it didn't take that long for us to find our rooms earlier, right?"

"SHH!" Uzi waved her hand in front of N's face, signalling for him to remain quiet. She continued to a hushed whisper, "We'll be fine. You're a literal killing machine, you shouldn't be scared of most things."

"And yet I still am, Uzi."

"UGH!" Uzi grabbed N by the hand (N immediately started blushing against his will) and dragged him down the hallway, never pausing, not even for a small conversation. Eventually, her rushed pace brought her and N back to the atrium. Everything was eerily quiet, not a single movement in sight.

"Uzi, this feels like one of those horror movies that you like to watch." N leaned closer. "You know, with the scary monsters and people who seem to lose all common sense right when they need it most?" He was shushed by Uzi again, who was examining the other hallways that led out of the atrium.

"I don't know which one Jax went down last night, so we're just going to have to guess."

"What happens if we're wrong?"

"Then we just backtrack and try another hallway."

"What if we get caught?"

"Nuke 'em."

With those words of wisdom, N and Uzi made their way down the first hallway. N jumped at pretty much every sound, even ones made by himself. Uzi, on the other hand, squinted in the dark to look at the placards on the fronts of the doors. While she didn't have the best vision in the middle of the night (she still didn't understand how robots didn't have that simple ability), she was still able to make out which doors belonged to who, and which doors simply led to nowhere.

It was with this method that N and Uzi made their way through a number of different hallways, occasionally coming across another person's bedroom. Most of the rooms, however, seemed to be unmarked. What lay beyond those doors, Uzi didn't know, and she didn't plan to find out in the near future (or distant future, for that matter).

Finally, they were walking down the last hallway, their search growing more and more desperate as they slowly lost hope of ever finding that stupid purple bunny. N had been helping Uzi look with his night vision, but even he couldn't find a single trace of Jax. He couldn't have disappeared from the Circus, everyone was trapped. So, where was he?

"Uzi..." As usual, N was shushed by Uzi, who was still inspecting door after door, getting as close to them as possible without touching them.

"Uzi." N tugged at Uzi's arm, but still Uzi ignored him, focusing more intently on the doors just to spite her friend.

"Uzi!" N pulled Uzi away from the doors, forcing her to listen to what he was hearing: small footsteps, coming closer and closer to them. The drones shared a panicked look before Uzi sprouted her wings and flew up to the rafters of the hallway ceiling. N did the same, landing clumsily next to Uzi.

It was Jax, walking down the hallway. "What is he doing up in the middle of the night?" N didn't get a response, as Uzi watched Jax intently. She slowly leaned closer and closer, trying to get a better look at him and completely forgetting the fact that she was supposed to be hiding.

Eventually, as Jax passed under the rafters, Uzi lost her balance, slowly slipping off the rafter. Just before she fell off completely, N grabbed her by the tail, which had come to life at some point during that whole espionage sequence. Susan, thankfully, didn't try to speak, mainly because she was being choked by N's iron grip.

Uzi hung there, swinging like a pendulum from the rafters for a few minutes while Jax walked down the hallway. No one dared to make voluntary movement out of the fear that they would be noticed and subsequently attacked. Eventually, Jax entered a room, allowing Uzi to right herself and slowly fall to the floor. N followed right behind.

"Well, now we know where he is..." N glanced towards the door nervously, still not ready to face whatever was inside.

"Well, I don't know about-" Susan was immediately cut off by Uzi, who clamped her mouth closed with her hand while shooting her a death stare. Safe to say, when the hand was removed, Susan remained quiet.

"Come on, we need to put everything back to normal. Or do you want Mom and V to be trapped in Void limbo forever?" Uzi took N and Susan's silence as collective yeses and made her way towards Jax's bedroom door, mentally preparing for the worst. All she needed to do was sufficiently use her element of surprise to defeat Jax. And, if that didn't work, sarcasm. A boatload of sarcasm.

"Let's do this..." Uzi braced herself and edged the door open, revealing...

...Well, Uzi didn't know how to describe it using just one word. Instead of a bedroom, pieces of the Circus were flying everywhere in a magical red-green soup. There wasn't even a defined floor, forcing Uzi and N to preemptively ready their wings for some aerial action. In the middle of the vortex was Jax, who was in the same t-pose beam-of-light position he was in when he first when haywire. Ah, memories.

"What the heck is this?" Uzi slowly started hovering, doing her best not to disturb the vortex or anything in it. Susan continued to remain silent out of the fear of being suffocated by either of her companions. N, despite himself, gazed at the vortex in a trance, enraptured by the colours and lights.

"Um..." Susan looked at Uzi. "May I add an interjection?" Uzi gave her a stiff not, still not trusting her Solver manifestation to keep her cool. "It seems like we need to stop this to stop the time vortex. So, who wants to start shooting?" Uzi grinned at Susan, finally finding something that she could agree with her upon.

Uzi readied her Solver, prepared for the worst. N swapped one of his swords for a gun, keeping the remaining sword raised high. Susan provided background support, and Jax floated in the middle of the vortex, still doing his demon-light up thing.

"Um... do we just go?" Uzi rushed forward at N's urging, grabbing the nearest throwable object with her solver and chucking it as hard as she could. Unfortunately, she accidentally grabbed a ball without looking, meaning that it simply recoiled off of Jax's head and started bouncing around the room, slowly picking up speed.

"You guys?!" Jax looked incredulous, despite the fact that he had seen Uzi and N not even a few hours beforehand. "Seriously, can I have one night without someone sneaking up on me and ruining my mood?"

"Well, I'm sorry, buddy, but you're going to have to revert whatever this is back to normal." Uzi picked up a building block, brandishing it in front of her. "Seriously, you practically erased four people from existence."

"I didn't erase them, they're just... um... sleeping! Yeah, they're sleeping!" Both Uzi and N narrowed their eyes at Jax, Susan trying to do her best limitation despite not having eyelids. "Oh, come on, it's not that bad."

"You disappeared MY MOM!"

"You know what, I don't need to listen to this. Karen!" Jax's Solver tail appeared from behind him, a pink bow on her head. Susan gasped, jealous that Karen was allowed to wear something so stylish while she was stuck being bald. She started to make a comment, but Uzi once again clamped her hand over Susan's mouth.

"What do you need?"

"Could you please help me do the time thing again so that they don't interfere with my happiness?" Karen nodded enthusiastically, a bright red light slowly being emitted from her orifices. Uzi and N tried to back away, but soon they were enveloped in the light, losing all sense of direction.

When the light faded, Uzi and N were back where they started, standing in front of their bedroom doors. It took a second for both of them to completely remember what had just happened, and when that second had passed, Uzi punched the wall.

"SERIOUSLY?!" She punched the wall again, creating a sizeable dent. "Ugh, we need to do all of THAT over again?" She went to punch the wall a third time, but N stopped her from doing so.

"Uzi, I don't think we can go about hanging from ceiling rafters again. We're going to need to find a different solution."

"Like what?"

"I don't know! Like... some way to make the people we already know remember us?"

Uzi stopped in place for a second, her processor silently whirring as a plan slowly started to form itself. Eventually, a smile formed on her face, her eyes slightly manic.

"Um, Uzi...?" N had seen this face before, and had learned to associate it with a weird Uzi plan. And, boy, was this going to be a weird Uzi plan.

"I have an idea."

"Of course I had to end up in a void. What else is new?" V grumbled as she slowly floated through a dark space. Jax had sent her there, obviously, as she was probably way to weaponized to deal with. She wasn't sure about anyone else, however. Knowing them, Uzi was probably screaming into the nothingness, N was freaking out, and Nori was trying to "have a conversation", as she would put it. Either that or pickaxes. Always pickaxes.

V wasn't sure about how long she had been there, but it was safe to say that she had been there long enough for a noticeable absence. Would everyone else be looking for her? Maybe. Or they might be too scared to do so. Jax was going on a rampage, after all.

"Ugh, this is boring..." Once again, V swivelled her head from side to side, looking for anything out of place in the monotony. Nothing. Pitch black as far as she could see. "Uzi? Now would be a great time for you to break the laws of physics and time!"

Almost as if on cue, a gigantic, white rift appeared right behind V, bathing her in light. She whipped around as quickly as she could (which, in zero gravity, wasn't very fast) to look at the new source of light. Standing in it was Uzi, who was holding some sort of weird gun. "Who's ready to cook some purple rabbit?" she said with a devious smile, gripping the gun with both hands.

{-}

Earlier that day, Uzi had walked out of her room to the sight of Jax standing right in front of it. Evidently he hadn't forgotten what had happened last night, as he regarded her with a look of malice and (justified) suspicion.

"What are you looking at?" Uzi asked, attempting to feign ignorance. Thankfully, her time romping around her own planet and breaking more than a few dozen rules built up her lying skills over time. Unfortunately, considering Jax was involved in the situation last night, there was no fooling him.

"Don't try anything. You know what I can do to you and your friends." Uzi glared at him, keeping eye contact until he started walking away. Just as he rounded the corner, N walked out of his own room.

"So... last night was interesting..." N wrung his hands out nervously, as if Jax could appear out of nowhere. And, from what Uzi had seen from the Solver before, he probably could if he wanted to. She decided not to tell N about that.

"What are we going to do about that time travel thing? I know we remain aware of everything that goes on before a time jump, but what do we do to stop the time jump from happening in the first place?" When N didn't respond to her question, Uzi turned around, thinking about what she could do. Sure, a surprise nuke attack would work, but that would leave V and Nori stranded wherever they were. And a simple confrontation could be reverted almost immediately.

"May I suggest a method?" Susan came to life, coming to a rest beside Uzi's face. Uzi didn't even bother swatting Susan off, giving a half-hearted nod signalling for Susan to continue. "From what I have been able to gather, Karen aids the purple rabbit whose name I don't care to remember with the time manipulation. If we can distract her for long enough, either you or N could use the opportunity to attack Jax."

"But that doesn't solve the problem of getting everyone back." N walked closer to Uzi and Susan.

"Hm... Thinking face..." Susan paused for a minute, thinking. "Give me a second." With that, she disappeared.

"So... What now?" N asked.

"I guess we'll wait for one of Caine's adventures. I mean, what else are we going to do?" Uzi turned her back to N and started walking towards the main atrium, N following close behind. It didn't seem as if anyone else had awoken, though, as it was completely empty. Without anything else to keep them occupied, Uzi and N just idled for a while, taking in for the umpteenth time just how bizarre the Circus really was.

Eventually, everyone started filing into the room, having woken up and performed whatever semblance of a morning routine they had established for themselves. Caine, however, was still not present.

"Don't you think it's a bit weird that Caine hasn't shown up at all yet?" N leaned towards Uzi, whispering so that only she could hear the conversation. "And Susan hasn't come back with her solution, either."

"I don't really think whatever she's coming up with is going to be a 'solution', per-se. Probably more like a 'let's go and nuke anything and everything in sight until we find them' sort of thing."

"It is not that kind of plan," Susan said as she popped up behind Uzi and N, scaring them.

"How many times are you going to do that?!" Uzi clutched her hand to her chest in shock, as she had expected Susan to take more time to finish whatever she had been plotting for the past half hour. "You do realise that if you scare me to death, you die too, right?"

"Your threats do not matter to me." Susan paused for a second before realising she was supposed to be giving a plan. "Anyways, I have manipulated some code so that we can access the locations of your mother and friend."

Uzi was about to ask more questions when Caine appeared out of nowhere, as he normally did. "Hello there, everyone! It seems like you're all ready to embark on today's adventure! It's going to be a fun one!" The lack of a response spurred Caine to continue with his introduction. "So, I have been looking into what kinds of games you humans like to play, and I found one that looks pretty interesting..." A drum roll that Caine probably had on standby at this point resounded throughout the room and he jiggled his hands enthusiastically. Finally, he said, "Portal!"

Uzi narrowed her eyes at Caine, slowly connecting the dots in her head. She looked at Susan, asking, "Have you influenced this in any way?" Susan just lifted her head in pride, as if manipulating an AI was some sort of astronomical feat. Sure, it helped Uzi's plan tremendously, but that help depended on whether the portals actually worked like intended. Also, who the heck would name a game Portal? Humans are weird.

"Wait... If that's a human game, how did you know about its existence?" N turned towards Susan, a mental map of his own slowly forming.

"It was easy. That AI's database is connected to real life events, so it wasn't that hard to look at the internet and find something suitable for your needs."

"Cool."

"Now, who's ready to rumble?!" Caine opened his own portal in the middle of the atrium, and everyone filed in one-by-one. Uzi and N hung back so that they were the last to enter, giving both of them suspicious looks from Jax. However, he didn't try to stop them, and soon enough, everyone was in the adventure.

Almost immediately a weird gun-like contraption was thrust into Uzi's arms by an invisible force. It was very white and rough around the edges, meaning that either humans had no creative imagination, or Caine wasn't good at replicating objects. Either one was plausible, really.

"So, just to explain the rules quickly..." Caine pulled down a paper chart from the ceiling, kind of like a physical version of lesson boards occasionally used in Uzi's classes. On it was a weird, colourful diagram with a bunch of different circles surrounding a little stick man. "You can use the portal gun to create two different portals at once. Walking through one portal while it is active will send you through to the second one. Each of you will have a separate obstacle course to traverse using said portals. Get going!"

Caine really needed to work on his explanations.

Before Uzi knew it, she was standing in the middle of a small room, only the portal gun left in her hands. She once again turned towards Susan, who had remained active this entire time. "You know, you might actually have some good ideas."

"Some? I have all the good ideas."

Uzi groaned and rolled her eyes before inspecting the portal gun once again. It took a while due to the convoluted design of the gun, but Uzi was able to eventually find the buttons to shoot and deactivate the portals. Now, all that was left to do was find a way out of here without Caine noticing.

"Hey, Susan, are you good at scanning things?"

"Only the best." Susan started making a humming sound while staring around the room, almost as if she were imitating a loud security camera. Once she had finished a single circle, she stopped humming and stated, "There is a single security camera in the corner of this room." Susan used her head to point Uzi in the right direction, allowing Uzi to see a small black box hooked up to the wall.

"Only that? That's easy." Uzi held out her hand, and her Solver crumpled the camera into a small hunk of black metal. "Nothing else?"

"Not that my superior senses are aware of."

Uzi got around to messing with the portal gun, first testing it out to see if it actually worked. Turns out, the only problems with the thing were aesthetic. Uzi was able to jump around the room wherever she wanted without too many glitches.

"Now, how to get out of here..." Uzi opened up a portal on the wall, the centre of it a myriad of purple swirling light. The portals only worked if both of them were active, and Uzi didn't want to test what would happen if she tried to go through a portal without it being linked to anything.

"Maybe try testing the limits of the map..." Susan was... well, not exactly helping, but more like shouting words of encouragement and occasionally commenting on how superior she was to other beings (evidently she still had beef with Karen).

"Oh, robo-God, if this goes wrong..." Uzi shoved the tip of the gun straight into a corner of the room, only hesitating for a second before she pulled the trigger. When she lifted the gun, she couldn't see the second portal. "What the-Where did it go?"

"Over there." Susan gently nudged Uzi's head towards the first portal, which was still stationed on the wall. Instead of the centre being purple light, however, it now revealed the interior of the Circus.

"Aw, hell yeah!" Uzi pumped her fist in the air, nearly punching Susan in the face, and ran towards the portal. What she didn't take into account, however, was the fact that the portal opened up into a twenty foot drop. It was quite comedic, really, watching Uzi appear seemingly out of nowhere and immediately crash to the ground, a shocked look on her face.

"What do they say? Look before you leap?" Uzi smacked Karen in the face, on purpose this time, and got up, inspecting her body for any damage. Thankfully, she hadn't landed on anything sharp or hard, so at most she would need to buff out a few pieces of metal.

"Now, how to find where everyone else is being hidden..." Uzi hefted the portal gun again, opening a portal on the side of a spare building block. "Do you think we should try to do the corner thing again?"

"Oh, trying to use my amazing idea again, are you?" Uzi rolled her eyes once again before walking to the nearest corner she could find in the main atrium. Surely if she could break physics once, she could do it again?

Twenty minutes of failed attempts later, Uzi groaned, "Oh, my robo-God! The one time I can't break something, it's something I actually want to break!" Uzi was tempted to throw the gun across the room, but doing so would ultimately prevent her from carrying out her plan, so she refrained from turning the atrium into her own personal rage room.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't the edgy robot." Uzi whipped around to see Jax sauntering towards her, somehow having escaped from the adventure without being noticed by Caine. Then again, he did technically control the reality everyone was in, so...

"Oh! Jax, um..." Uzi stood still for a second, like a child just caught doing something bad. "I'M NOT HERE!" She threw a building block at Jax with her Solver and made a dash for it, clutching the portal gun to her chest. Jax simply crumpled the block into nothing with his own Solver and began going after Uzi.

"Do you need assistance?" Susan peered over Uzi's shoulder as she ran.

"Just do something useful!"

"Fine, pushy." Susan turned around and summoned the Solver, knocking Jax back with yet another building block. However, just like the first, Jax was able to crumble it into a small ball of material before continuing his pursuit. "Um... formulating new plan..." Susan started making that annoying humming sound from earlier, which did not help Uzi at all in trying to get away.

"Can't we just, I don't know, talk about this?" Uzi got the impression that, in fact, Jax did not want to talk about this, as she had to fly over a barrage of broken doors thrown by the rabbit himself. "Okay, no talk, got it."

"Idea!" Susan's lights all flashed a brighter shade of yellow like a light bulb before returning to their normal intensity level.

"What is it?" Uzi had managed to go around a corner from which she could see whether Jax was advancing or not. Not the best hiding spot, but it was what she could get access to at the moment.

"I wonder what would happen if..." Without finishing her sentence, Susan picked up the portal gun with their shared Solver, holding it out horizontally from her. "Giggle. This is going to be fun."

Uzi gave Susan a quizzical look but didn't argue. If it worked, by all means, go ahead. She looked down the hall as Susan readied the gun, pointing it to where Jax would eventually appear. It took a few extremely long moments for Jax to actually appear, but when he did, Susan put her "plan" into motion.

Susan shot the portal gun twice in quick succession, once at the floor underneath Jax, and once at the ceiling. Jax fell through the portal at his feet, a startled yelp escaping him before he jumped to the other portal. From there, he fell straight back into the first portal, creating a cycle of falling interspersed by his sporadic screaming.

"WHY-"

"DID-"

"YOU-"

"DO-"

"THIS-"

"I'M-"

"GOING-"

"TO-"

"BE-"

"SICK-"

Uzi just watched on in amusement. "Cool," she said, reclaiming the portal gun from Susan.

"I know."

Uzi rolled her eyes (how many times has it been?) and tentatively walked past Jax. Once she was sure he wasn't coming after her any time soon, she dashed back to the atrium to try her luck once again. She then realised that, if she wanted to continue trying to break the Circus, she had to free Jax from his portal prison.

"What do we do now? We've done everything we could with this hunk of junk." Uzi smacked the portal gun with the back of her hand for emphasis.

"What about going into the portal while it's in stasis?"

"And if I get absorbed into nothingness?"

"We'll be fine."

Uzi took another minute to contemplate the pros and cons of doing something that could get her killed before hefting the portal gun up. Taking a deep breath, she pulled the trigger to disable the portals. Off in the distance, a loud thud could be heard, along with Jax screaming, "UZI, I SWEAR TO GOD I AM GOING TO GET YOU-"

Uzi pressed the portal trigger and jumped.

{-}

N, on the other hand, didn't really understand why he should even be using the portal gun when he had wings to take him wherever he wanted to go. Caine had probably designed the levels for the less-capable Circus members, but still.

He hoped that Uzi was doing alright. What if something went wrong, or she accidentally used the portals wrong and was now stuck in digital limbo? N shook his head, determined to not think too negatively as he advanced through the progressively more challenging (and yet still stupidly simple) levels.

Eventually, he made it to the final level, which was intended to make the player use the portal gun to transfer a load of boxes to make a staircase. N just flew up to the platform, keeping the gun tucked underneath one arm. He opened the door at the edge of the platform, stepped through, and suddenly he was back in the Circus.

It was... Well, the Circus had seen better days, to put it nicely. Blocks were thrown about everywhere, a number of doors down one hallway were completely missing from their hinges, and if N looked down that same hallway, there was a Jax-sized purple splat on the floor that was slowly starting to fade away.

"What did you do, Uzi..." N shook his head in worry and made his way back to the atrium, eventually catching sight of a portal attached to the far wall. N looked at it before glancing at his portal gun. Could Uzi have...?

He made his way over to the portal and tried inspecting it. However, he wasn't able to see much other than swirling purple lights inside the orange border. Maybe this was where Uzi went? Taking a deep breath, N jumped inside the portal.

"What in the world?!" N immediately recoiled as he appeared right next to a weird black monster with hundreds of multicoloured eyes. It hadn't noticed him yet, due to the surroundings being little more than a dark, soupy void, giving N the time to sneak around behind it. "Who are you...?" N was doing his best to talk quietly, as he didn't want to anger whatever was in front of him.

A loud bang drew both the monster and N's attention towards something off in the distance. Flashing yellow and purple lights danced in the blackness, reminding N of a certain drone who didn't know how to keep herself out of trouble.

Forgetting about the monster right beside him, N flew towards the lights, calling out Uzi's name. It soon became clear that it was Uzi off in the distance, who was fighting with another one of the black monsters. It was differently-shaped, but similar enough characteristically to the first monster for N to classify them as the same kind of thing.

"N! A little help here?!" N nodded cheerfully as he readied his guns, pointing both of them at the new monster. Before it could make another move, N opened fire, black matter splashing everywhere. Eventually, N put away his guns, and the monster slumped down to what appeared to be the ground.

"So, this is where you've been?" N looked towards Uzi, who had immediately transitioned from fighting to bickering with Susan.

"One sec, N." Uzi held up her palm to N. "Really? You brought me back to this place?" The last two questions were aimed directly at Susan, who gasped in disbelief.

"I was not aware that we would be sent here. Therefore I cannot be blamed."

"Oh, I will."

"Guys!" N snapped his fingers, bringing both Uzi and Susan to his attention. "Have you found them yet?"

"No, thinks to this thing." Uzi batted Susan in the face, and Susan bit down on Uzi's finger in retaliation. This would have resulted in yet another fight between the two if it weren't for the fact that they weren't pulled out by some invisible force back into the atrium.

"What the-" Uzi looked around, expecting Caine to be there to berate them for being down in the abstracted pit again, but he was nowhere to be found. Had he gotten them out of there? "What the heck just happened?"

"I don't know, but we need to hurry up. There are too many people in danger." N hefted his portal gun. "Do you think a second gun thingy would help us?"

Uzi just shrugged, but hefted her own gun with a smile. "Let's get to it!"

The pair spent the next half hour attempting various different combinations of portals: putting them inside one another, attempting to link more than two portals up to each other, spawning a portal inside of N (that did not go well). No matter what, they didn't get the desired result.

"Hey, Uzi?" N called out after the latest failed attempt. "What was that plan you were talking about last night after we got time warped back to our rooms?"

"Well, it's kind of a stupid idea, but I was just planning on breaking into Jax's bedroom while he wasn't there and raiding it for any clues."

"Wait, why were you all suspiciously smiley when you were talking about it last night, then?"

"I just like screwing with people."

"Do you think it would be a good idea to check his room for further clues?"

Uzi seemed to contemplate this for a second. "Yeah, that could be helpful." With that, she and N began walking down the hallway towards Jax's room. N looked around, on edge due to the fear of being caught by Jax. Uzi, on the other hand, was thinking of a million ways she could mess up his day. Either way, both of their thought processes were cut short when they finally reached Jax's room.

"You ready?" N nodded at Uzi, and Uzi opened the door to Jax's room, revealing a gigantic black space where the room should have been. "Oh, dang, that's weird. Can the Solver normally create things like this?" Uzi turned this question towards Susan, who simply cocked her head in confusion.

"I do not understand how this is possible. It could be due to Jax being infected by his abstracted peers, but that is simply speculation."

"Well, that doesn't bode well." Uzi squinted into the darkness, barely able to see a small flash of silver in the distance. "Wait... Is that who I think it is?"

N squinted beside Uzi. "Is that V?! V! We're over here!" The murder drone didn't respond to N's calls, even as he progressively got louder and louder in volume.

"N? Don't think she can hear us." Uzi raised her portal gun. "Do you think this thing would do the trick?"

"There is nothing solid for it to land on." Susan peered into the darkness, contemplating. "Unless..." With a swift shake of her head, a yellow Solver symbol appeared in the darkness. "You can use that as a sufficient platform."

"All right!" Uzi pointed her portal gun at the wall behind her and created a portal before turning back towards V. "Let's do this!" She pulled the trigger again and, like Susan had stated, the portal appeared on the Solver without problem. V finally noticed the light and started to turn around, giving Uzi her cue to pop through the portal in the wall.

"Who's ready to cook some purple rabbit?" Uzi called through the portal, unable to keep a smile off of her face. However, that smile immediately disappeared when she heard Jax's voice from behind her.

"Hah. You're clever. But I win." Uzi felt hands on her back, and before she knew it, she was in the black void, floating close to where V was. Uzi tried to make her way back to the portal with her wings, but just as she was about to reach it, it closed.

"What the-OH, COME ON!" Uzi clawed at thin air, frustrated that she was once again stuck in a dark void with no realistic way to get out.

"Seriously? This was your master escape plan?" V called from behind Uzi. Uzi whirled around, her face heavily betraying her deep annoyance.

"It would have worked if Jax didn't have eyes pretty much everywhere!" Uzi tried kicking at thin air again, but soon realised that doing so was doing absolutely nothing. She settled on giving a death stare at the spot where the portal disappeared.

"Wait, where's N?" V had seen a glimpse of N before the portal had closed, so she knew he was involved in the situation at some level.

"Oh, robo-God."

{-}

When the portal closed, N went ballistic.

"You do NOT trap my friends in your little pocket dimension thing without getting a thing or two from ME!" N whipped out his swords swinging them around himself before charging straight at Jax. Jax stood in place, choosing to block N with a ripped-off door via his Solver. N just tore straight through that and continued advancing.

"Oh, s&$^, you're actually strong." Jax picked N up using his Solver, the red light painting everything in the same hue. "Well, not anymore, I guess."

N growled in rage and aimed his arm at Jax, bullets shooting out of a newly-formed gun. Jax simply blocked them all with the Solver, barely even reacting to the onslaught. "You do realise that that's not going to damage me, right?"

"No, but this might!" Jax barely had time to turn around before a gigantic section of the floor was thrown at his face. He was smashed into the ground, freeing N from the Solver. N looked in the direction the floor was thrown from to see Uzi and V standing side-by-side, Uzi holding a Solver symbol in her hand.

"Wha-Guys!" N wrapped both of them in a hug. "How did you get out of there?"

Uzi pointed towards Jax's bedroom door. "He forgot to close the main way out of the place. Seriously, he's orchestrating this whole thing, you think he'd remember one of the most crucial parts of his evil plan."

The pleasantries ended when Jax burst up from the rubble on the floor, his face once again a mask of rage. "Okay. You have hit my last-" He was immediately cut off when yet another gigantic hunk of floor crashed into him, sandwiching him in between two pieces of ground.

"Who did that?" Uzi looked up to see Caine, with Nori perched on his shoulder. "Mom!"

"A little spider told me that Jax was up to no good again. So, naturally, I had to come down to help. Although, I didn't expect something of this calibre..." Caine gestured around himself, referencing the absolute mess the hallway was in. "Anyways, I think Jax needs a little time to himself. So-" Before Caine could snap his fingers to whisk Jax away to wherever naughty bunnies did their self-reflection, he was picked up by a blood red Solver symbol.

"That. Is. ENOUGH!" Caine was sent flying across the room, eventually crashing into a pole and sending the whole thing to the ground. The ringmaster didn't get up.

"Caine!" Ragatha rushed out of one of the hallways, having finally finished her part of the adventure. A look of worry crossed Jax's face momentarily before it reset once again. He turned to face the drones, now including Nori since she had jumped off Caine at the last second and scurried over to her daughter.

"Why do you have to ruin everything!" Red sparks started circling around Jax, which was definitely not a good sign. "Couldn't you just let me be happy for ONCE?! Seriously, I recreate the world in which the people I actually like stay alive, and what do you have to do? Ruin it all. You do realise that I have friends who, if not for me, would be stuck down in the pit?" Jax stared at the drones before closing his eyes. "Fine. I can just undo all of this. Karen?" Jax's Solver tail popped up from behind him, ready to help. "We're doing it again."

"Wait! Jax!" Nori tried scuttling forward to stop him, but it was too late. He had already started the process, the light surrounding him slowly becoming brighter and brighter. Uzi groaned in frustration, not wanting to have to go through the entire portal gun scenario all over again. However, she was distracted from her self-pity when she noticed the light changing colour. Normally, the colour would be red, but now there were also yellow undertones. She might have just been reading too much into the situation, but it certainly seemed weird.

Eventually, the light became too much to bear, and Uzi braced herself to be sent backwards in time. However, when she opened her eyes, she was still there.

The time travel hadn't worked.

"HAH! TAKE THAT, B&$^%!" Uzi screamed at Jax. His failed attempt at performing time travel, while raising many important questions about what he could actually do as a Solver host, also appeared to be quite hilarious. Of course, Uzi immediately stopped after getting death glares for nearly everyone in the room (aside from Caine, who was still unconscious).

"I-" Jax stared down at his hands in disbelief. "What happened? Karen?" He turned towards his companion, who simply nodded her head up and down as a form of shrug.

"I was not aware that the time travel would not work."

"Well, that's just splendid." Jax turned back towards Uzi and the rest of the drones. "Never mind that. I guess I can just turn you all into scrap metal instead." With that, he lunged forward, Solver in hand. He wasn't holding anything with it, but he would find something lethal eventually.

"Guys, get ready for a fight!" N drew his swords while V settled on summoning the bazooka that Uzi had frankly forgotten existed. Then again, at that point she was a few hours away from going full Solver mode and being thrown into an abyss with monsters galore, so at least she had an explanation.

Jax stopped short of the four drones, hoisting the Solver high above his head. The Solver started spinning around like mad, and before Uzi had time to register what was going on, the entire Circus around her began shifting. She tried to grab onto N, but he was quickly spun out of the way. The spinning continued to get more intense, until Uzi was completely incapable of seeing anything in front of her.

Finally, just as quickly as it had begun, it stopped, leaving Uzi in pitch darkness.

{-}

"Caine! Wake up, please!" Ragatha frantically shook at Caine, who had refused to make so much as a tiny movement ever since Jax threw him into the wall. How was he able to do that, anyways? He was able to do mean things, but he was never able to get as far as completely rewriting the code of the Circus.

As she tried to wake up the ringmaster, Ragatha looked over to see Jax doing some weird kind of manipulation to the Circus to trap the newcomers and two new faces in a vortex. Eventually, it stopped, and everyone except for Jax disappeared. Jax laughed to himself triumphantly before turning around to face Ragatha. Ragatha, despite herself, flinched backwards.

A betrayed look crossed over Jax's face, only partially covered by his perpetual smile. "Hey, Rags, I'm not going to hurt you. They," Jax pointed behind himself with his thumb, "were just making things way too complicated. Everything's fine."

"Fine?! Really? Fine?! You threw Caine into a wall, and now he won't wake up! How do you call that fine?!" Ragatha, forgetting her initial fear of Jax, rose up and stormed over to stand in front of him. "I don't know what you're doing or what you did to be able to do so, but this is not funny. You've hurt people!"

"Oh, please, Caine's AI."

"And what about Uzi and N? They certainly weren't AI."

"They were causing different problems."

"What do you-UGH! You know, this is why everyone doesn't like you!" There was that betrayed look on his face, this time mixed with... sadness? No, that wasn't right. Was it?

"All I'm doing is trying to help you!"

"You want to help everyone! Bring Caine and everyone else back. Now." Ragatha stared Jax in the eye, not backing down for a second. She wasn't going to let Jax run over everyone just because he felt like it, even if standing up to him meant risking getting blown away by Jax's powers.

Something shifted in Jax's eyes and his smile fell ever so slightly. "Give me a second. Karen?" A tail appeared behind Jax (much to Ragatha's shock), it's head floating beside Jax's.

"Yes?" Ragatha gave out a small yelp, not expecting it to talk.

"You know how to fix AI?"

Karen scoffed in disbelief. "Do I know how to fix AI? Is that a serious question?" Jax glared at Karen. "Fine. Yes, I do know how to fix many different forms of advanced artificial intelligence."

"Well, fix it." Jax gestured at Caine, and Karen moved over to him with a dissatisfied sigh. Karen looked at the ringmaster's body up and down for a second before shining a bright red light out of her eyes. Caine immediately shot up (knocking over Ragatha and Jax in the process), just as energetic as before.

"Good morning, everyone! Wait..." Caine stared at Jax. "I feel like there was something I needed to do with you... But what was it?" Caine stared off into the distance, a grey buffering symbol appearing over his head. Eventually, he popped back into reality, saying, "Oh, well, I don't think it was anything important. Who's ready for adventure!"

"Eh. Might as well." With a final glance at Ragatha, Jax took off after Caine, Karen disappearing behind him. Where she went, Ragatha didn't know. What she did know, however, was that Jax was definitely up to no good. And she was determined to figure out what he was planning on doing.

{-}

"Hello?! Anyone out there?!" Uzi crossed her arms in frustration, having been floating in the darkness for what felt like hours (but was probably only, like, ten minutes at most). "Now I know what V felt like."

"Could I perhaps be of assistance?" Susan rested her head on Uzi's shoulder, yellow lights ablaze in the darkness.

"Unless you know how to get us out of this place, no." Susan remained silent for a minute, giving Uzi the impression that her Solver companion did not, in fact, know an escape route from wherever they were. She turned away only to be bothered by Susan once again.

"Have you ever tried using your Solver's teleportation abilities?"

Uzi groaned. "I'm pretty sure you and I both know that I have both tried and failed to teleport with the Solver. The closest thing I've come to actually teleporting were the portal guns, and those were lost quite a while ago."

"Were they?" Susan summoned the Solver, and with it came a teleportation gun, as blocky and blindingly white as when Uzi first saw them.

"What the-How the heck did you get these?" Uzi grabbed the gun with both of her hands, her processor formulating plans on how to get out.

"Well, I was the one who created them, after all. I just used that inferior AI to give them a physical and functioning form."

Uzi giggled menacingly, inspecting the portal gun from all sides. It still wasn't anything special-a button to create a portal and a button to recall all portals. Nothing new, from what Uzi could see.

"Wait, how are we supposed to use this thing? Don't the portals need something solid to manifest themselves on?"

"Giggle. Not anymore." Susan summoned the Solver once again and ran it over the portal gun. It didn't change physically, but suddenly it weighed a ton more than it had before, so much so that Uzi nearly dropped it. "Hey. Do not lose my inventions."

"What the heck did you do to this thing?"

"Modifications so that it could create portals wherever. No need to thank me."

Uzi rolled her eyes (she was slowly becoming a master at doing so) and tested out the portal gun. True to Susan's word, all of the portals she created she could place wherever she wanted, no matter if there was something physical for them to rest on. Still, she didn't get how she was supposed to use the portal to get herself out of the situation.

When Uzi voiced her concerns, Susan simply let out a sigh of frustration and took the gun from Uzi using the Solver. "You really need to keep up with me. It's embarrassing to have a tail beat you intellectually. Hush, now." Susan ignored Uzi's incredulous look as she aimed the portal gun off into the distance. Soft beeping sounds could be heard coming from her mouth, almost as if she were honing in onto something. Finally, the trigger was pulled, and a portal was shot off into the distance.

"Cool. Now what?" Uzi was once again shushed by Susan as the portal gun was used to create a second portal, this one much closer to Uzi. When it fully materialised, Uzi could see N on the other side, floating in his own part of the abyss. He was holding some sort of tablet in his hands and... tapping at it frantically?

"Please. Just. Work. I. Need. To. Get. Out." Each word was accented with another tap on the screen, each tap becoming more and more desperate than the last. Uzi popped her head through the portal to see what was going on and immediately narrowed her eyes in disbelief.

"You have got to be kidding me." Apparently, Jax had had the bright idea of giving N a reCaptcha asking him to pick all the images with a truck in them. N was just smacking the screen over and over again, causing the security program to reset every time he got too many wrong answers. It made Uzi genuinely worried that N could be incapacitated by something as simple as that.

"JUST WORK!" Fed up, N launched the tablet off into the distance, the small device quickly becoming lost in the darkness. N watched it fade away before turning around, finally becoming aware of Uzi's presence. "Oh! Uzi! Um... How much of that did you see?"

Uzi was tempted to be malicious, but she simply said, "Not too much." She managed to get herself all the way through the portal via a movement that looked a lot like how a human would swim in mid-air and pressed the recall button on the portal gun. The portal disappeared behind her.

"How did you get the portal gun back?" N asked, drifting closer to Uzi.

Before Uzi could respond, Susan burst upwards, saying, "All thanks to my wonderful expertise!" Both N and Uzi gave Susan blank stares before continuing on with their conversation.

"I'm assuming we can do the same thing to get V and Mom back?" Susan simply nodded in response. "Okay, then! Here we go!" Thankfully, the portal gun worked as intended (a miracle, really), allowing Uzi and N to teleport to the different parts of the void where Nori and V were being held. Nori had just been floating there contemplating her life choices, and V had been incapacitated by the deadly reCaptcha.

"It really worries me that a security system made by humans stumps you." Both N and V looked away from Uzi's comment, N in embarrassment, and V in both external and internal rage.

"Can we just finally get out of here?" V grumbled.

"Yeah! Um... How do we do that, exactly?" Uzi turned towards Susan again.

"Amateurs." Susan retook the portal gun from Uzi's hands with the Solver and started shaking it around. Uzi was about to comment when Susan stopped shaking the device and started pressing a variety of different buttons that hadn't been on the interface before. Finally, Susan pointed the gun right in front of her and shot. When the portal appeared, it showed the inside of the Circus.

"How did you do that?" N poked his head through the portal in wonder, confirming that the portal was in fact functional.

"It is child's play to reprogram the gun to remember it's last portal and summon it again."

"Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Let's kill someone!" Uzi pushed N through the portal before jumping through herself, V and Nori following close behind. Once everyone was through, Susan closed the portal and gave the portal gun back to Uzi.

"Okay, we're going to need to be careful. We don't know when Jax is going to pop up out of nowhere. The best we can hope for is that Caine has dragged him on another adventure." Nori advanced towards one of the hallways branching out of the atrium as she spoke, peeking her head around the corner before scuttling down it.

"Don't you find it a bit weird he can just create a small pocket dimension to trap us away in?" V had a point. Just how damaged was his Solver? At this point, it might as well be a completely different thing with how it behaved.

"And why didn't the time travel work the last time he tried to use it?" Yet another good point, this time from Uzi herself. It almost felt as if the time travel was interrupted somehow. But by what?

"Well, he is simply a branch of me, so naturally I was able to control a few aspects of the situation." Uzi narrowed her eyes at Susan.

"You mean to tell me that you were just able to stop time travel, and didn't think to use that power for any of the other ten times he's used it?!" Susan simply gave Uzi a blank stare, not a single word coming from her mouth for the first time in what felt like forever.

"Can we not argue with each other?" Nori had scuttled back to the main group, having surveyed the hallway as much as she could without losing sight of anyone.

"Oh, this doesn't count! It's like fighting with myself! Now you," Uzi turned back towards Susan. "Why the heck did you think it would be a good idea to allow Jax to just MANIPULATE TIME?! You could have stopped this entire situation from happening!"

"It takes time and effort to learn new skills."

"Oh, new skills my processor! You knew exactly what you were doing, didn't you?! Just letting the chaos play out for the sake of it-Oh my robo-God, is this what you guys have to put up with for me?" No one wanted to agree to that statement, despite it being proven to be true in certain situations.

"Now what is with all of this ruckus over here?!" Caine appeared right above the drone's heads, jump-scaring all of them. Even Susan let out a small robotic trill in surprise. "I can't have people just sitting out of my adventures!"

"That wasn't what we were doing..." Caine didn't appear to hear Uzi's protests as he raised his fingers to snap. "WAIT! NO-" And everyone was teleported into a Roman coliseum, where V was almost promptly ran over by a chariot.

"Where the-WHOA!" V was able to fly out of the way just in time, letting the NPC drive past without collision. "Where the heck are we?"

"According to my history teacher... Somewhere historically important to humans." Nori turned to glance at Uzi, undoubtedly raising one of her metaphorical eyebrows, but didn't say anything. School, while pretty important, wasn't the biggest priority at the moment. That title belonged to the purple rabbit currently having a conniption fit from where he was riding his own chariot on the other side of the arena.

"Oh my gosh! How did you guys get back?!" Ragatha, who had been sitting in the stands, jumped down the three-foot wall separating the bleachers from the action with ease.

"Um..." Uzi glanced at N, but he was too busy marvelling at the horses drawing the chariots. "A... complicated process. Yeah. That." Susan glared at Uzi, not satisfied with the lack of recognition she had been given, but was distracted by Jax screaming from the other side of the arena.

"HAVEN'T I DEALT WITH YOU GUYS ENOUGH ALREADY?!" He whipped his reins and turned on the little group, barrelling at them full speed. Due to the initial distance between him and his targets, however, everyone was able to dash out of the way in time. Jax, on the other hand, crashed right into the partition, sending the horses scattering and breaking the chariot.

"Yeah, you see, the thing is you can never get rid of us no matter how hard you try." Uzi came to land beside Nori, who had already readied her Solver. "So, you're just going to have to continue fighting us if you want to win. And we're," Uzi readied her own Solver, "not going to make it easy for you."

"Karen?" Jax's Solver tail popped up at his command. "We're going to try the time travel again."

"But it did not-"

"JUST DO IT!" Karen stared Jax in the eye before relenting, the red lights of her eyes glowing brighter as Jax began the process of turning back time.

"Susan, do the thing!" Susan, unlike Karen, helped Uzi without hesitation, her own yellow light mixing in with Karen's red light. When the time travel came to its closing moments and the light disappeared, everything was still the same. "YEAH! WE STOPPED YOU!" Uzi didn't have time for celebration, as Jax threw a chariot at her head with his Solver. Uzi stopped said chariot with her own Solver before she was turned off by Jax.

"Hey! Do not attempt to stop my daughter from defending herself!" Nori picked up the chariot, which had fallen to the floor, with a third Solver and flung it at Jax, who barely had time to get out of the way.

Uzi flew up to the bleachers and N followed her. "Okay, so we're going to-WAH!" Suddenly, Uzi was pulled away by Susan, who apparently had found enough strength to drag an entire person behind her. When Uzi looked to see what she was being dragged towards, she groaned. Was Susan being serious?

"Mine!" Susan snapped up Karen's bow, which had fallen off when Jax had jumped out of the way, and threw it on top of her own head. She then started laughing manically, or, well, her own version of laughing (that being just saying the word "laugh" over and over again). Meanwhile, Karen finally noticed what was happening.

"Oh, don't you dare." Like with Susan, Karen managed to find the strength to drag Jax along with her. She zoomed all the way to Susan and smacked the bow off of her head. "That is mine."

"Finders keepers." Susan lunged towards the bow again, only to grab it at the same time as Karen. Both of them tugged at each other, forming a weird, messed-up game of tug-of-war. As they went about their bow business, Uzi looked at Jax.

"Should we just let them..." She pointed at the struggling tails.

"Probably for the best."

Susan and Karen continued tugging at the bow until, with a loud ripping sound, the bow tore into two pieces. Both tails let go of their pieces of the bow and stared at the remnants as they swayed to the floor. The silence was only broken by Susan saying, "It wasn't mine anyways."

Karen stared at Uzi and Susan for one second, then two.

"Um, Jax, do you think she's-"

"REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-"

The ground started shaking as Karen let out an ungodly sound that only the most entitled of people could appreciate. Pieces of ground, walls, and even NPCs all started flying at Uzi. Uzi did the reasonable thing and flew for her life, dodging in and out of bits of wood and person.

V decided to take that opportunity to body-check Jax to the ground, holding a sword to his neck. Karen continued screaming, not even pausing to catch her breath (did the tails need to breathe?). V gave Karen a glare before deciding that attempting to threaten a tail was probably not the smartest idea. She settled on pressing her blade further into Jax's neck, not yet slicing the data that made up his body.

"Great job, V!" N flew down to stand beside his murdering companion, ever cheerful even in the face of danger. "Now, what do you think we should do with this guy?"

Uzi flew down to stand beside N and V as well, standing a safe distance away from Karen, who still found the energy to continue screaming at the top of her lungs. "Well, first of all, we need to revert this place back to how it was before... When did all of this start, anyways?"

"Probably when you went on a rampage in the middle of the night for no reason, prompting Caine to put you into an abyss filled with corrupted people for weeks." Uzi glared at V, not making a comment due to the fact that what she said was, regrettably, true.

"You do realise that I'm not going to turn back time, right?" Everyone turned their attention to Jax, who was able to be heard quite clearly over Karen's incessant screaming. "By body will always respawn. You don't hold any real power over me!" That... was definitely a new problem. One that, frankly, Uzi didn't want to deal with.

Uzi turned towards N, who looked deep in thought. He opened his eyes slowly and said, "Hey, Karen, you do know that if you rewind time, you can find a few of Pomni's bows in her bedroom?" Karen immediately stopped screaming and stared at N, hope practically radiating off of her.

"Is your statement correct?"

"Yes," N said.

"No!" Jax screamed at the same time. However, Karen was more inclined to listen to the person who made her the promise of head bows, and so she began to start the process of time manipulation-this time, rewinding time all the way back to before everything first began.

"Finally! We can go back to our relatively normal lives of trying to figure out how to escape a psychedelic, colourful prison!" Uzi thrust her hands up into the air in celebration. Of course, as with all celebrations surrounding Uzi's life, it was cut short when the light connected to the time travel started flickering violently.

"You. Are. Not. Undoing. Everything. I. Have. Done. For. A. F^$&%*# BOW!" It appeared as if Jax was actively fighting against Karen, creating some sort of swirling vortex in front of him with varying shades and tints of red. The ball of light started to grow bigger and bigger, until finally, it exploded. When Uzi's eyes cleared, everyone was standing in a white void.

"What in the world..." It seemed as if Uzi was standing on solid ground, but when she looked down, all she could see was blinding white. Uzi looked around herself, finding everyone standing around her. Even Caine, Pomni, Zooble, Queenie, and Kaufmo were there, just as confused as she was.

"Wha-What the heck just happened?" It took Uzi a second to remember that Pomni had been trapped in time travel limbo as well. It definitely showed who Uzi's priorities were, at least.

Even Jax looked confused, looking around the place as if he didn't understand what was going on. What did he and Karen do?

"Honey? What's happening?" Uzi turned her attention towards Kinger, who was standing beside Queenie. But... there was something wrong with Queenie. It looked as if she were... dispersing? Little particles started separating from her body until there was nothing left. Kinger continued pawing at the air where Queenie had just been, confused as to what had just happened. "Queenie? Where did you go?!" He started searching more frantically, leading him to not notice everyone else slowly starting to fade away.

"Oh, boy. This doesn't look good." N looked down at himself to see that he, too was being dispersed into particles. Uzi raced over to him, but was too late. N was gone.

Uzi couldn't believe her eyes. Her processor seemed to stop in place, her eyes boring a hole through where N had been standing only seconds before. No. This couldn't be happening. Not N. Not after all they had been through.

"You." Uzi wheeled around on Jax, who was standing in front of a disappearing Kaufmo. Jax... was crying? But he was also smiling at the same time as he tried to comfort a distressed Kaufmo. Eventually, Kaufmo disappeared, too, leaving only Jax and Uzi left standing in the white void.

"I'm-" Uzi didn't even leave Jax room to speak as she punched him in the face, digital tears filling her visor. Jax didn't even react, simply stepping back from the blow. He looked defeated. Like a man who had lost everything.

"WHY DID YOU DO THIS?! WHY?!" Uzi went to throw another punch, but stopped short. She felt her eyes well up again, and she fell to the ground, her face in her hands. Jax stood where he was, looking down at Uzi. He didn't even care that he was fading away. He just let it happen. As such, when Uzi opened her eyes, she saw that she was the last remaining person in the white void. All alone.

Uzi sat there, crying for what felt like an eternity over the loss of her friends. Of her mom. Of N. Why couldn't she have tried harder? She should've done something, anything to make sure they would stay alive. Something to let them know she cared for them. Loved them, despite how much she despised that word under most circumstances.

Eventually, Uzi stood back up, her eye-lights hollow. She looked down at herself to see that she was slowly starting to fade away. Even the last one standing had to go sometime, she guessed. She let it happen, her particles slowly floating upwards into nowhere, until there was noting left.

Uzi was gone.

{-}

Uzi's eyes snapped open and she jolted up in bed, almost as if she had woken up from a nightmare. She immediately started thrashing about, knocking herself off of the bed in the process. The shock of the impact made her jolt back to reality, her processor finally registering where she was.

"I'm... in my room?" Uzi hesitantly stood up, almost immediately falling down again as her legs trembled and crumbled beneath her. The only thing that stopped her from falling to the ground again was a well-placed bedside desk.

Uzi took a moment to look around. Her room appeared to be exactly as she had left it; posters on the wall, her setup untouched, even her lights were still on. For a single, blissful moment, Uzi believed that everything had simply been a dream. Then, of course, she had to take a closer look at her desk setup.

On the screen of the main monitor was some weird sort of website that was way too colourful for its own good. Uzi sat down to take a closer look at it, believing that it was just the result of some weird search she had done before... whatever had happened.

The theme of the website, however... All the reds and yellows, a cartoon background, and way too much information about AI generation. It reminded Uzi way too much of the Circus. Besides why would Uzi even be researching something as overly-peppy as the Circus? It totally didn't fit her theme!

Uzi decided to do a bit more digging, but there wasn't much to find from the website itself. Just more information about some weird virtual AI world whose description was getting uncomfortably close to what the Circus was like. Finally, Uzi reached the bottom of the page, where a big, colourful download button lay. Uzi momentarily weighed the pros and cons of downloading something off of a shifty website, but eventually got the nerve to hover her cursor over the button. However, just as she was about to press it...

"What'cha looking at?"

Uzi immediately whirled around in her chair to see that she was still the only one in her room. She narrowed her eyes, summoning her Solver just in case she had to fight her way out of a messy situation. Still, there was no one there. Had she been hallucinating? Surely-

"I'm up here, you know."

Uzi whipped her gaze across the room again before finally noticing something in her periphery. It took a second, but she was able to focus on it. It was... oh, robo-God, no.

"How you doing, Oo-zee?" Caine called from the corner of her visor, a digital image of his body dancing around in time with his words. Uzi stood still for a moment, staring at the corner of her vision for way too long. Everything was completely silent. In fact, you could almost call it peac-

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

"OH MY GOOD ROBO-GOD, WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT UP?!" Uzi screamed, knocking over her desk and causing every single eye in the classroom to look over at her. The teacher at the front of the room gave her an offended look despite still managing to look as apathetic as possible. Small blush lines appeared across Uzi's visor as she fixed her desk and sat back down.

It had been a little while since the entire Circus fiasco, a fever dream which Uzi could barely remember. In fact, the only reason why she wasn't writing the entire situation off as an actual dream was the fact that Caine was quite literally inside her head.

Yeah, that's right. Uzi had finally gotten to the point where she was technically screaming at herself. She didn't know how the heck Caine managed to get into her visor, but it meant that he could talk to her all day and she could do nothing about it (it was generally hard to escape from yourself).

"Well, if I didn't know better, I'd think that you were aiming that at me, Oo-zee," Caine said, drawing out Uzi's name for far longer than he should. "But of course, you wouldn't do that! You love me!" Thankfully, Uzi still had her thoughts to herself, allowing her to swear up a storm in her processor. Oh, robo-God, if Caine was able to read her mind...

Before Uzi knew it, the bell signalling the end of class rang. Uzi got out of the classroom as fast as possible, a dirty glare from her teacher boring its way into her back. For a fleeting moment, she felt like saying sorry to the teacher, but she almost immediately stamped that thought down. School was dumb, anyways.

Uzi was nearly home free (well, as home free as one could be in what was essentially a closed box on a remote planet) when Thad, one of her classmates, spun her around. Curse him and his weirdly fast legs.

"Hey, Uzi, what was going on back there?" Thad had a genuine look of concern in his eyes, which made it even harder for Uzi to brush him off with a half-baked lie.

"Yeah, it's just-You know, I haven't really been getting much sleep lately. The processor's getting all fried." Uzi whirled a finger around the side of her head to add emphasis, which must have been some sort of Lizzy spawning technique because, two seconds later, Lizzy appeared behind Uzi.

"Yeah, crazy does run in the family, doesn't it?" Uzi turned around with quite an undignified yelp, nearly knocking over Thad. She immediately tried regaining her composure, standing up straighter than she normally did.

"Well, at least I'm not an annoying demo-I mean cheerleader!" Uzi hid her "mistake" with a fake, lighthearted giggle not too much unlike the giggle Lizzy gave whenever she ruined the lives of any drones who wronged her. Uzi walked away from the little group that had formed, leaving Lizzy glaring at her and Thad giving her an even more concerned look (if that was even possible).

Now, after school, Uzi would normally go to visit N and V where they were staying inside the bunker. It had taken quite a bit of convincing in the first place to even get N and V inside the bunker at all, but once they had shown that they weren't going to start going on a murder rampage without good reason, they were given their own area to live in. However, in a recent turn of events...

"Ugh. N, your stupid girlfriend's here!" J called as she opened the door to find Uzi. Uzi could practically hear N knocking over something heavy as he rushed to the door in a panic, heavy blush lines on his visor. J chuckled to herself as she let N take control of the door, sauntering deeper into the room. Uzi looked N in the eye, not amused.

"Do we really have to let her stay here?" she said, earning her a glare from J. Uzi returned it in likeness.

"Uzi, you know she's our friend... Even if she, you know, well..." N searched for the right words to say so that he wouldn't be impaled while he slept. "She can be slightly difficult in certain, VERY OCCASIONAL, situations." N screamed that part, making sure to keep J as calm as possible. He didn't need the worker drones looking at him like a murderer again.

"She literally tried to kill each and every person inside this room except for herself." Uzi thought she had made a wonderful point, but it only proved to make N seem even more uncomfortable than he was before.

"She's improving! She even helped a drone fix a part of the ceiling earlier today!"

"Did she break said ceiling?"

N looked back at J. "Um..."

"That doesn't count, N!" Uzi pointed at J. "She still hasn't earned my trust, and until she does, we're just going to have to meet elsewhere."

"Uzi, come on..." N looked torn between his former boss/kinda-friend and Uzi, his nature not wanting to pick between the two of them. With a groan, Uzi finally caved, walking inside the room without a word. She made sure to keep a fair distance between her and J, settling on leaning against the far wall.

"It seems to me like you don't like this J girl, do you, Oo-zee?" Caine asked. Uzi internally groaned, having forgotten that Caine even existed for a second. Of course, nothing gold could stay. Or, at least, that was how Uzi thought the poem went. School was hard, okay?

Uzi didn't realistically have any way for communicating with Caine without sounding as if she were talking to herself, so she settled on ignoring the voice in her processor and instead focusing on whatever N was talking about. Of course, Caine wouldn't shut up, making the focusing a bit hard to perform.

"You know, I'm sure with the right about of fun, you two would get along swell! Would you like me to do that?" Don't answer. Don't answer. "Oh, come on, Oo-zee, don't ignore me." Don't you DARE answer, Uzi Doorman. "Oh, so we're going to play that game now, are we? Fine then. I'll just continue talking until you give me an answer." DO NOT ANSWER HIM! "For example, did you know that most of the drones in your class-"

"SHUT THE [BLEEP] UP, YOU LITTLE BRAIN WORM!" Uzi didn't even register the hurt look on N's face as she stormed out of the room, brainstorming ways how she could safely invade her processor by herself without causing any permanent damage. By the time she got back to her room, absolutely nothing.

"Okay, now I know that was targeted at me," Caine said, his cheery tone definitely revealing that he sucked at reading the room. Well, he was artificial intelligence, so there was only so much one could ask for.

"Oh, it was. And with malice." Uzi began rummaging through her drawers, not really looking for anything but hoping it was convincing enough to sell it when she said, "Now, to find something to carve you out of my visor with."

"Whoa there, Uzi!" Caine said, finally pronouncing her name correctly. "I don't think we need to resort to that just yet..."

"Oh yeah?" Uzi stood up straighter. "Then how do you expect me to just tolerate you screaming inside my mind day in, day out without wanting some kind of a break? Because, if you didn't know, most drones don't have to deal with annoying little voices in their minds commenting on everything they do."

"Well, if that's what you want, then I can turn the volume down."

"How about just muting the volume entirely?"

Caine made an offended gasp. "How dare you suggest I turn my voice off! Surely you can't want to do that?"

Fortunately, Uzi was saved from having to scream once again at her visor as her dad, Khan, walked into the room. Like pretty much everyone else around her, he had a concerned expression on his face.

"Uzi...?" he asked, glancing around the room as if expecting someone else to be in there. "I thought I heard you talking to someone. Please tell me you aren't getting voices in your head. I don't think I can handle what was going on with your mom again." Faintly, Uzi could hear Nori sneeze in the background.

"Oh, don't worry, there's nothing wrong with me." Uzi walked closer to her father, ignoring Caine's protests regarding being ignored. "Was there something you needed me for, or...?"

There was an awkward silence between the two drones as Khan processed Uzi's question. Finally, his head jerked upwards, saying, "Oh, yes! I was wondering if you could help me with something down in the boiler room? All of the other workers are saying that it's been broken, and we don't need another fiasco like last year."

Uzi shuddered, remembering the poor worker drone who had managed to get themselves warped into the very side of the boiler. He was wedged in there, and when he was finally pried out, he never looked the same. Lizzy affectionately called him the pancake man (or unaffectionately, whichever one worked better for that description).

"Um, yeah. I can go with you right now, actually!" Uzi ignored Caine's protests, him stating that he was not done having the conversation from before. Hey, it was Uzi's mind, she could do whatever she wanted with it.

"Oh, that's great! Is N going to tag along with us later?" Khan said as he cautiously opened the door out of Uzi's home. Despite the danger having finally been dealt with, Khan had still never gotten over his fear of being attacked by something when he opened a door. While that fear was quite valid, he did need some time to work on it.

"Oh..." Uzi remembered what had happened during their little interaction earlier. She hoped she hadn't hurt his feelings (oh, robo-God, what kind of sap was she turning into?). "Hopefully? I mean, he might be busy, but I can check with him before we go down."

"Of course, honey, just don't be gone too long. The boiler may be strong, but it also needs quite a bit of maintenance." With that, Khan made his way down the hall as Uzi dashed back to the murder drones' home, terrified about what might have happened in between her storming out and now.

Confirming her suspicions, Uzi opened the door to find N a sobbing mess on the floor. J was standing in the corner, not really caring, and V was kneeling next to N, making an effort to figure out what was going on. The first person who caught sight of Uzi was N. He immediately started bawling harder at the sight of her, curling into a little ball. V looked up and narrowed her eyes at Uzi.

"What in robo-Hell did you do?" V stood up, made sure that N wouldn't topple over, and walked over to Uzi. "The only thing that I've been able to get out of him was that you," V poked Uzi in the chest, "said something, and now he's depressed. So, you're going to fix this. Right now." Uzi didn't even have the energy or heart to argue for her side, simply sitting down beside N and putting a hand on his back as a form of comfort.

"Hey, N?" Uzi tilted her head so that she made eye contact with the other drone. "Do you want to talk about why you're currently sobbing on the floor?" Uzi internally cringed. Robo-God, she was bad at emotions. Thankfully, N seemed to understand where Uzi was coming from and began explaining.

"Well, you kinda just started screaming at me and stormed out the door, which... Wasn't the nicest, to be honest." Uzi immediately felt a pang of guilt. How was she supposed to tell N that she was screaming at a voice inside her brain? She wasn't even sure whether anyone else remembered the events of the Circus!

"N, I didn't really mean that. You see..." Uzi tried to think of a plausible explanation, doing as best as she could to root it in the truth. "Today hasn't exactly been the best, really. I know, it's just an excuse, but I seriously have not been in the best mood for such a long time. Just know that none of this is your fault."

N sniffled and looked up at Uzi. "Really?"

"Really." N smiled at Uzi and wrapped his arms around her, quite ready to forgive her. J gagged in the background and immediately yelped in pain when V slapped her across the back of the head. J could always complain about the sappiness of Uzi and N's relationship later.

"Now, if you're up for it..." Uzi gestured at the door. "My dad has something that he needs you and I's help with." Uzi ended with an inquisitive look at N, silently asking the question. N simply nodded in agreement, standing up and dragging Uzi along with him by the hand.

"Well, if your dad needs help, who are we to say no?" Uzi smiled at N before leading him out of the room, leaving J and V to their own devices. Whether that was a good idea, Uzi didn't know, but N needed to get out and about every once in a while. Throughout his entire time in the bunker, he had only really interacted with the other drones a few times.

Eventually, Uzi and N met with Khan at the door leading down to the boiler room. Pleasantries were exchanged, doors were opened, and Khan was saved from falling to his death down the stairs by N. In his defence, the lighting for the staircase was really horrendous, with a singular, extremely low-wattage light bulb every few dozen meters. Uzi led the way down the stairs, doing her best to keep stable footing. Khan and N followed close behind, N making sure that Khan didn't fall forward and send both him and Uzi tumbling down into the dark abyss.

Eventually, everyone was on solid ground, the lights above them painting the room a dull red. In the centre of the room was a gigantic boiler, steam rolling off of it in waves as it heated up water. It was almost unbearably hot in the room, note the almost. If robots could sweat, Uzi would be producing water by the litre.

"So... What exactly is the problem down here, Khan?" N asked as he walked closer to the boiler, flying around to look at it from all sides. "The boiler itself seems fine. Is it something regarding the peripherals?"

"Kind of." Khan pointed at the ceiling, where one of the pipes leading out of the top of the boiler looked nearly broken. "You see, if that thing breaks, a lot of things in the bunker are going to shut down. That, realistically, can be avoided if one of you can get up there and repair the pipe. Both of you have wings, right?" Uzi and N nodded in unison. "Okay, then. Uzi, you know how to do this better than anyone, so you're going up there and fixing it. N, you're going to help turn the valve off so that Uzi doesn't get sprayed in the face by boiling water. You both understand?" Uzi and N nodded once again, and the group broke off.

Uzi floated up to the partially broken pipe with what appeared to be a multi-tool attached to a wrench. She settled on the part of the pipe that wasn't broken but still close to the broken part, making sure not to put too much pressure on the pipe. N went over to the wheel controlling the valve and turned it, shutting the flow of water off. As Uzi and N were doing this, Khan made an announcement over the intercom that the electricity in the bunker would be turning off for a few minutes.

When Uzi finally got the go-ahead, she began working on the pipe. It turns out that it wasn't that hard of a job, and she was finished within five minutes. She gave Khan her own version of a go-ahead signal, and Khan in turn signalled for N to turn the valve back on. He did so, causing Uzi to feel a weird sort of rumbling from where she sat. She initially waved it off as the water simply running through the pipe, but that theory was immediately disproved when she was knocking off the pipe via a forceful blast of steaming hot water.

Uzi tried to grab onto something to prevent her from falling, but all she managed to do was rip a gigantic chunk of ceiling off. Uzi fell to the ground with a gigantic clank that resounded throughout the room. Dazed, Uzi looked up, seeing that one of the metal rafters in the roof had fallen out of place. With a creak, it broke free, sending it falling right toward where Uzi lay on the ground. Uzi was still in quite a daze, barely able to move without feeling completely disoriented.

"UZI!" Uzi couldn't discern who screamed her name, but they certainly sounded distressed. Uzi looked up once again to see the rafter was nearly upon her, its shadow casting her in blackness.

Uzi braced for the impact of the rafter, but she couldn't feel anything hit her. Tentatively, she opened her eyes, seeing that the rafter was... floating above her? Wait, no, not floating. It was being held by what looked like a green version of the Solver. But that couldn't be right, no one alive or dead could summon a Solver that was green.

"Uzi, please get out from under the falling piece of ceiling before I have to let it go." Uzi looked over to see N with his arm outstretched, his facial features scrunched in concentration. In his hand was... a green Solver symbol? "UZI!"

Uzi finally registered that she was in imminent danger and, with a swift roll, got herself out of the crash zone. With a grunt, N sent the rafter tumbling down the final few meters to the ground, making it smash into bits and pieces. Uzi slowly turned towards N, who was panting from exertion. It took N a second before registering Uzi's gaze, and when he did, he could barely look her in the eye.

"...Surprise?"

"I'm not sure whether this is you actually trying to figure out what is going on with me or you trying to enact on revenge on Lizzy." N walked tentatively behind Uzi as she led him towards where Lizzy was supposedly hanging out with her friends. The two drones had been going on a little bunker-wide adventure testing out what N could do with the Solver. N still wasn't sure why he had access to the Solver, but the presence of Jax in the corner of his visor certainly presented a useful clue.

"Of course not!" Uzi turned around, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand. "I'm just trying to see whether you're capable of teleportation. Scaring Lizzy and her glitch-headed friends is just a happy little coincidence!"

"You know, I'm really starting to like her," Jax said from his corner. Supposedly, Uzi had Caine in the corner of her visor as well, which really didn't help the allegations that she had voices in her head. Caine could potentially be the reason why Uzi was acting... differently, but it could also just be Uzi reacting to having another entity in her processor.

Uzi rounded a corner and immediately dragged N into the nearest supply closet. She shoved her hand over his mouth and closed the door most of the way, leaving a small sliver so that she could see outside. N raised an eyebrow at Uzi and followed her gaze to where she was looking at. Standing in the middle of the hall, talking to a bunch of teenage drones, was Lizzy.

The drone in question was just as pink and blonde as ever. She seemed to be talking about one of her classmates, but N wasn't able to follow along due to the fact that most drones were too scared of him to even introduce themselves. Come on, he had saved the freaking PLANET! Surely that would garner less screaming and running away in terror, right?

Anyways, N was losing focus. He turned his attention back to Uzi, who was quietly signalling for him to do something. N looked back towards Lizzy and her group, silently weighing the pros and cons of jump-scaring the colony's pettiest drone. Eventually, his internal need to not have Uzi mad at him won out.

Even still, he didn't know how to do the teleportation thing Doll used to do. He doubted that it came easily, so N just started concentrating on appearing right behind the group of girls. He wasn't really expecting anything to happen, but before he knew it, a green Solver symbol appeared in his hand, and he was suddenly in the centre of the group. N stared at the drones, and the drones stared back.

"Hi..." N gave a shy wave, which sent the most squeamish of the drones screaming and running in the other direction. This gave way to similar scream-and-run (and, in Lizzy's case, censored swear) situations until N was the last person standing in the hall.

"THAT WAS AMAZING!" Uzi burst out from the closet and latched herself onto N in a hug. She immediately got embarrassed, however, and pulled away. She settled on patting him on the shoulder. "I mean, seriously, the looks on their faces?! PRICELESS! Oh, I'm going to remember that for many years to come."

Uzi continued to rant for a few minutes more before she finally ran out of things about Lizzy to make fun of. She seemed to notice that N was still beside her, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him towards the next target of her plan.

"Uzi? Don't you think we should take a little break?" N asked as he was dragged through the halls once more. "I know this situation is weird and all, but it's also getting tiring getting everyone on your hit list."

"I do NOT have a hit list, N!" Uzi whirled around, stopping both of the drones in their tracks. "I'm simply choosing innocent bystanders to terrorise. Speaking of which..." Uzi turned around and pointed towards J, who was absentmindedly clawing little gashes in the wall. Unlike N, J seemed like a literal worker drone repellent. Whenever she attempted to go to a public place, a gigantic circle would make way around her.

"Uzi, are you being serious?" N asked in a hushed whisper. "Sure, I might do something to worker drones I'm never going to see again, but J? You do realise that I have to live with her for the time being." Uzi seemed to ignore N, giggling and rubbing her hands together as she thought up what N could do to his former boss.

"Come on, she tried to murder both of us multiple times. The least we can do is give her a taste of her own medicine. N, go and-"

"I'm not going to murder her."

"You're no fun." Uzi pouted at N before turning back to J, who was starting to walk away. "Shoot! After her!" Uzi began speed-walking after J, N forcing himself to follow behind her to ensure that nothing bad happened. Frankly, his presence probably wouldn't have made a difference for what was going to happen next.

J had made her way to the bunker's library, which was filled with a bunch of new and old books regarding a variety of different subjects. It was quite obvious that Uzi had never been here often as she marvelled at the high ceilings and towering bookshelves. However, the dazzling effect didn't last as she quickly regained sight of J and stalked her.

"Why does Uzi have a grudge against this friend of yours, again?" Jax asked from the corner of N's visor. N looked around carefully before responding out of the fear of sounding insane. Uzi was already on that list, he didn't need to the be next addition.

"J might have tried to kill us before. Multiple times. For probably one of the worst reasons ever."

"Ooh, I like her." Of course Jax did.

"N! Over here!" Uzi called from behind a bookshelf at the far edge of the room. N begrudgingly made his way over to Uzi, Jax remaining silent as he watched the scene unfold. When he finally stood beside Uzi, Uzi said, "So, when she comes over here, you're going to tip this book thingy over onto her. It's not going to kill her, obviously, but it's sure going to be funny!"

"Uzi, I'm not sure that's a good idea. You know how J can get when she's mad, and no one wants to deal with that right now." N thought for a second. "Realistically, no one wants to deal with that ever."

"Don't be such a buzzkill, man." Jax had somehow managed to spawn a bucket of popcorn and was now watching Uzi with malicious intent. "We both know it's going to be funny watching her get crushed by that thing. Besides, Uzi's probably going to push the thing over if you won't, so why waste everyone's time an energy?"

N decided to ignore his unwanted companion for the time being as J walked past the bookshelf. Uzi looked at N expectantly, but he made it painfully obvious that he did not want to do anything to hurt J. "Seriously? Fine." Uzi began walking dejectedly back where she had come from before rushing shoulder-first into the bookshelf, all the while screaming, "TAKE THIS YOU STUCK-UP [BLEEP]!"

The bookshelf, despite looking quite sturdy, fell over like a house of cards. J was enveloped in an avalanche of metal and books. When the dust finally settled, where J had once stood was a mound of paper, book bindings, and slightly-rusted metal. Uzi looked at her creation and whooped in excitement and triumph. However, that excitement did not live for long as J burst out from the mound of books, a metaphoric raging fire in her eye-lights.

"WHY IN THE GOOD WORLD OF COPPER-9 WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" J didn't wait for an answer, aiming some sort of gun directly at Uzi's face. It took N a second to recognise it as a flamethrower. "YOU ARE GOING TO DIE! DIE!" With that final word, J blasted a bar of flame directly at Uzi's face. Thankfully, Uzi was able to dodge out of the way. Unfortunately, the flames latched on to the nearest flammable thing they could touch: the books.

N didn't know why he was still friends with these people.

The fire immediately started eating its way through the entire library, burning anything flammable to a crisp and melting any piece of metal that dared to stand in its way. J, N, and Uzi rushed out of the library, smouldering pieces of material falling all around them like someone had set fire to rain. When they were moderately safe in the hallway, Uzi turned around to look at the damage she had inadvertently caused to the bunker.

"Oh, I am so dead."

{-}

"You are SO dead, Uzi Doorman!" Nori paced in front of her daughter in a rage only a stressed-out mother could achieve. News of the burning library had reached everyone quite quickly, much to Uzi's dismay. She had hoped that she could contain the fire to just the library, but of course life never let her catch a break.

"Mom, it's not technically my fault! J was the one who shot-"

"I don't want to hear any excuses. You were the one who attacked J, and you know that she's the most unhinged out of everyone here. You should have predicted that she would try to start a fire in the only flammable room in the bunker." Uzi tried to wrap her head around that logic, but was saved the struggle when Khan walked into the room. Nori immediately scuttled over to him.

"What's going on here?" Khan got an anxious look on his face as he slowly began to back out of the room, but Nori grabbed him with her Solver and dragged him back inside. "Hey! Honey, do you have to do that?"

"Don't honey ME, you little... UGH!" Nori pointed Khan towards Uzi, nearly knocking him into her. "Listen here. Since I somehow was the present parent in Uzi's life despite the fact that I was gone for who knows how long, YOU'RE going to determine her punishment."

"Mom, are you serious?" Uzi leaned around Khan to look at her mother. "I know you're trying to get Dad to become a semi-involved parent who doesn't cherish a door more than his only child, but is now really the best moment to be doing this?"

"YES! Both of you need to learn how to live like normal drones. So, honey~" Uzi could practically hear the malice dripping off of Nori's tongue. "PUNISH YOUR FREAKING DAUGHTER!"

"Room! Now! Go! Please!" Khan could only muster one-word sentences (mainly due to the fact that he was actively and aggressively being squeezed by his wife), but it appeared to be enough to satisfy Nori. He was dropped to the ground without a word, and Nori scuttled behind Uzi.

"You heard your father. Go to your room. Now." Nori didn't leave any room for argument as she ushered Uzi into her room, forcefully shutting the door closed (as forcefully as an automatic door could be closed-the mood mainly came from an evil glare) and leaving Uzi in her room. Uzi immediately groaned to no one in particular, flopping face-first onto her bed.

"Well, that wasn't very good." Uzi could've made a grandmother die in fright with the glare she gave Caine. Well, she wasn't able to actually look at him, but she glared really hard at the computer monitor Caine's avatar was situated in front of. It worked. Kind of.

"You know, have you ever thought of not commenting on every single thing that happens in my life? It's getting really annoying and, frankly, I just don't really like your voice all that much." Caine gasped in over-exaggerated shock, his eyes bugging out of his teeth like a children's cartoon character.

"Whatever do you mean? I've been told that my voice is quite nice to listen to, thank you very much!" Caine crossed his arms with a huff and turned away from Uzi, only his back showing on her visor. Uzi thought for one hopeful second that this would mean that Caine would stop talking, but it turned out to be quite the contrary.

"If anything, you're the one who's voice is annoying. Do you have to complain about everything bad that happens to you? Character growth is important, you know." If Uzi could virtually strangle an AI, she would. Unfortunately, she was restricted to carrying out that fantasy in her head.

"You're the one invading my life. I'm sorry if you're not enjoying it, but you're stuck here, so you might as well stop complaining."

"Oh, I'm the one complaining? You're the one who joined the Circus in the first place!"

"What do you mean, I joined the Circus? I just appeared there with everyone else one day, it's not like I just decided to get trapped in a psychedelic hellhole."

"Oh, please. The link is loud and clear on the website. I'd be surprised if you clicked it accidentally."

Uzi's processor stopped working momentarily as she took in this new information. What link was Caine talking about? Why would something like that even exist on the internet if it was known to send drones into comas that no one really cared about or commented on despite the fact that said drones were out for months at a time.

"Caine..." Uzi slowly stood up from her bed and made her way over to her monitor, settling in her chair. "Do you think you could show me this website of yours?"

"I don't know. You're probably just going to-"

"Show. Me. The. [BLEEP]. Website." Caine made a nervous little squeal, which Uzi took as confirmation that he was in fact going to show her the website he had been talking about. However, when Uzi turned on her computer, Caine immediately pointed at the website that popped up in the browser.

"Right there! See, I told you you clicked on that earlier!" Caine had a triumphant look on his face, which Uzi completely ignored as she looked at the website, perplexed. She had completely no idea what the heck the site was. She didn't even remember opening it-it had just been there on her monitor when she woke up.

Uzi squinted at the colourful words on her monitor as she inspected the website, the colours making her vision swim occasionally. Seriously, what was wrong with going monochrome every once in a while? Or just black and white, that worked too.

"It doesn't say anything about participants being trapped in the virtual space, Caine." Uzi had completely forgotten her previous beef with the virtual ringmaster as she grew more and more concerned about why the Circus happened to have a website with a handy lose-your-life-for-who-knows-how-long button.

"Well, that feature hasn't exactly been implemented yet..." Caine seemed to lean closer towards the monitor, his back arching. "Although I do find it confusing as to why the website doesn't make that clear."

"Wait a second... There's one other thing." Uzi tried glancing up at Caine, forgetting that she couldn't technically look at him directly. "How the heck did the original members of the Circus get access to these? They said they were humans, so..." Then again, they might have just been confused about their backgrounds. Kinger certainly might have forgotten aspects of his past. Even so...

Uzi literally flew out of her chair when Nori opened the door. Her foot knocked the plug to the computer out its socket, causing the monitor to shut off before Nori could see what Uzi had been looking at. Thankfully, Nori wasn't paying attention as she made her way over to her daughter.

"Uzi, I know we just grounded you, but you're un-grounded for the time being until you get your father to learn how to function properly as a drone." Nori brought Uzi to the main room of their living quarters, revealing Khan, who had managed to get the flat end of a hammer lodged in the wall. Uzi didn't bother asking what had happened as she pulled the hammer out with her Solver.

Even with the distraction, Uzi couldn't help but wonder what happened to the Circus.

"Mom, I swear to robo-God, I'm not a freaking convict!" Uzi shouted from her location high atop a ladder. Nori was standing at the bottom of the ladder, inspecting her daughter's handiwork for the upcoming school dance. Considering the fact that Uzi would probably learn nothing from just sitting in her room all day (she would probably find a way to escape, too), Nori had put her to a number of different tasks that ranged from simple, helpful things to literal passion projects that made Uzi wonder if she was being lived through vicariously.

"Oh, don't be that dramatic. It's going to build character!" Nori called up to Uzi. Uzi glared at her mother, but didn't say anything. Last time she talked back, she had to... Uzi shuddered at the thought of being sociable and nice to the people around her. It was bad enough that she was the freak show, she didn't need to be the freak show who also happened to a mommy's girl.

N walked into the school auditorium, weaving in and out of mismatched chairs that Uzi had placed haphazardly. They didn't even match each other, but Uzi didn't really care enough to do a better job. At least Nori wasn't getting on her case about it.

"Hey Uzi! Nori! What are you guys doing here?" N waved up to Uzi, who almost lost her balance while trying to look down at him.

"Oh, we're just helping set up for Uzi's high school dance. Considering the... fiasco the last time we tried to have a dance, the school board thought it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the people who had destroyed the event in the first place." Nori scuttled up N's body and onto his shoulder. "Besides, it gives Uzi and excuse to do something productive with her time."

"I am-WHOA!" Uzi nearly tumbled from the ladder again. "I was being productive, mom! You're the one who decided I needed more arts and crafts in my life."

"I'm sorry, do I hear COMPLAINING?!" Nori called up to her daughter. Uzi narrowed her eyes at Nori before turning back to the banner she was failing at pinning up. She eventually gave in and just stabbed a pin through it using her Solver.

"I guess that's a good idea..." N looked around the half-decorated room once again. "Although... Shouldn't you have more people working on this?"

Nori gasped from her place on N's shoulder before hopping down, immediately scuttling towards the exit the second she hit the ground. "That's an AMAZING idea, N! We can get the whole family together helping out! KHAN, GET YOUR LAZY BEHIND OVER HERE!" Nori opened the exit and slammed it behind her once she was out of the room, leaving N and Uzi alone. Uzi hopped off the ladder, slowing her descent with her wings.

"Well, now that she's gone for a few minutes..." Uzi stretched her arms and cracked her knuckles (N didn't really know how that was possible, but sure), quietly groaning. "You won't believe how long we've been doing this for. Seriously, I think we're going to redecorate the entire bunker by the time we're done."

"At least you're getting to spend some time together?" N still wasn't exactly sure how to tackle the topic of Nori technically being absent from Uzi's life for... well, her entire life, really. Uzi hadn't really shown any signs of bother, but he didn't want to be the one to push her over the edge. That was a job for some other unfortunate soul.

"Yeah, I guess that's fine, but it would be better if she wasn't being passive-aggressive because of the library fire."

"I'm sure she'll get over it in time." N scratched the back of his neck. "Nori doesn't feel like the type of hold a gru-"

"She remembers the time Dad forgot their anniversary. From TWENTY-FIVE years ago. She remembers everything." Ah, yes, Uzi's father. He was somehow still a work-in-progress despite having been Uzi's only present parent for just shy of two decades. N didn't want to be mean, but it was kind of easy to be so when Khan was the literal definition of "deadbeat".

"Is there a family that isn't dysfunctional around here?" Jax called from the corner of N's visor. N jumped a little, having forgotten that Jax was there in the first place. "Seriously. Uzi's dad sucks, you don't even have a family, and all the other drones are too scared to even go near you. I like weird things, but this is just getting depressing."

N didn't really want to completely ignore Jax, but he also didn't want to cut off a conversation short so that he could start a new conversation with the voice in his head. Yes, Uzi knew about Jax and N knew about Caine, but it was still awkward (and plain weird, if N was being completely honest) to talk about. Thankfully, N didn't have to go through the turmoil of either as Khan and Nori burst through the entrance doors. Well, it was more like Nori dragging Khan across the floor with her Solver, but still.

"GREAT! We have the whole family here. Now, let's get to decorating!" Without missing a beat, Nori picked up a box of decorations with her Solver and began whipping them at the walls. She must have been doing some weird technology magic to them, as they all popped right into place. Now if only N could learn how to do that...

Uzi and Khan looked at each other before resigning to their fate of being on decoration-duty. They each picked up a box and began placing the odd piece of ribbon and sign here and there, with Uzi taking the higher parts of the wall via the usage of her Solver. N helped here and there, but he was still a bit shaky with his Solver usage, and he also constantly ripped things apart by accident. Claws were great for murder. DIY projects? Not really.

Eventually, after what felt like a century to Uzi (but was probably only a few hours), the entire room was more or less decorated. Sure, there were a few questionable design choices, and the stage was completely devoid of any colour or happiness, but it actually kind of worked. Nori happily released Uzi and Khan from their work before scuttling off, no doubt thinking about what the family might do next.

"Well, that was fun!" N walked over to Uzi, who was putting away a box of streamers into a closet at the back of the room. "This place looks amazing!"

"Yeah, I guess it does." Uzi closed the closet door before making her way towards the exit. "Now, if you excuse me, I need to go sleep away the memory of doing work and actually partially enjoying it. See you."

"Wait!" Uzi stopped in the middle of stepping across the threshold before turning back to N, who had cried out in sudden realisation. "When even is this thing?" Uzi shrugged before walking off, mumbling something about how she would check the date for him later. N smiled to himself before making his way to his own sleeping quarters as well.

The only moment he was interrupted in his sleep was when he heard a scream in the distance.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-"

{-}

Uzi managed to force herself into the dress she had worn for the last school dance, looking at herself in the mirror. It was the night after she had finished putting up the decorations with her mom, dad, and N, but already felt like an eternity. Dang, time moved really slow as a teenager. Or maybe that was just because she had been dreading the dance.

Uzi had decided to check when the dance actually was for N's sake and found the horrifying news that it was going to be the next day. Almost immediately Uzi began thinking of ways to escape from the dance without being caught by anyone, but any ideas that she managed to think of were immediately smashed when Uzi remembered that Nori existed. If Uzi left, Nori would find out. Nori always found out.

Uzi had hoped that she would get at least some down time before having to go to the dance, mainly because she wanted to hold it off for as long as possible, but of course life never worked out for her that way. Which is why she was begrudgingly staring at the mirror, not because she didn't like the way she looked, but because she just wanted something to be mad at.

"Well, doesn't this look nice!" Caine called. He always started speaking right when Uzi had been lulled into the false sense of hope that he had finally disappeared. At least Uzi had something tangible to be mad at. Well, not exactly tangible, per se, but Caine was close enough.

"I don't get why you have to be so cheerful all the time." Uzi inspected the corner of her mirror, which appeared to be cracked slightly. She sighed, making a mental note to fix it later. "I mean, you've been stuck in my head for the past few weeks without being able to do anything to get yourself out. I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't be in a good mood."

"Oh, don't worry about me. Let's just think of this as a nice little excursion so that I can better understand this 'real life' that everyone keeps talking about." Uzi considered telling him about the fact that her life was almost never normal, but she decided to let him continue on for the time being. Might as well have a happy entity taking up space in her head.

"Uzi! Are you almost done in there?" Nori called from the other side of Uzi's bedroom door. "If you don't hurry up, we're going to be late for the start of the event!"

"Oh, no! How would we ever recover?!" Uzi called back sarcastically. If she was going to be forced into attending this thing either way, she was going to make it crystal clear that she would rather be literally anywhere else. Well, maybe not ANYWHERE, but most places.

"Do children normally act this way towards their mothers?" Caine asked. Shoot, Uzi was about to forget about his existence again.

"Um... Maybe? To be honest, I'm not really around any drones who have conventional mothers." Uzi didn't even know if the murder drones had some sort of parent figure in their lives. Cyn didn't really count, considering she was both dead and a complete psychopath, and the people who originally made the worker drones couldn't count, either.

"Uzi! Two minutes!" Nori called, her voice louder and slightly more urgent.

"Ugh, I'm coming! And you," Uzi directed her eyes at Caine. "Please don't talk too much during this thing. People already think I'm crazy, they don't need extra proof."

"I'll remain as silent as possible!" A zipper appeared over Caine's mouth, joining the edges of his gums together. Uzi couldn't help but shudder as she walked through her bedroom door, imaging what that might feel like.

"Uzi! You're finally ready, honey?" Uzi cringed, both at being called "honey" and also at what Nori was presumably forcing Khan to wear. Somehow she had managed to convince him to wear a suit, which looked slightly too big on his frame. He also had an awkwardly-situated bow tie at the nape of his neck, the entire thing angled wrong. Small beads of sweat rolled down Khan's visor.

"Yeah, sure." Uzi walked past both of her parents and through the main door, both of them walking behind her. Nori had to resist glaring at her daughter, keeping in mind that this was a normal teenager reaction. Yep. Just a teenager. No need to go ballistic.

When the family finally entered the dance, Uzi saw that there were already a few people there. It was mainly just a bunch of teachers and one or two students who looked extremely bored. Up on the main stage was a microphone stand as well as a single, lonely spotlight. Everywhere else was quite dimly lit, which did not bode well. But Uzi was probably just being paranoid.

"Uzi! You're here!" Uzi turned around and was immediately tackle-hugged by N, who had also dressed up for the occasion. When he finally let go of her, she saw that he was wearing a similar outfit to what he had worn at the first disaster of a dance. Uzi didn't want to admit it, but... he looked quite good.

Uzi realised that she had been staring at N and looked away, saying, "Yeah! Well, you know, with a bit of forceful coercion." She hoped that N didn't see the blush marks that were almost definitely appearing on her visor. Curse her stupid adolescent hormones! Wait, did drones even have hormones? Uzi stopped that train of thought before it could develop into something weird.

"Ooh, do I see what I think I'm seeing?" Caine called. "It looks like our little drone friend here has a crush!" Uzi was tempted to smash her visor in with a hammer, especially considering she couldn't tell Caine to shut up due to her being in public. How did he even know what a crush was, anyways? He probably learned the word from Kinger and Queenie.

Over on N's end of the conversation, Jax was eyeing Uzi up and down with moderate disinterest. "Yeah, this conversation's dead. Where's the fun stuff at?" N also couldn't talk to Jax at the moment (for similar reasons to Uzi's) and just settled on smiling nervously, hoping that he wasn't too awkward.

Before the silent awkwardness could stretch on for too long, V and J burst through the double-doors, both in black dresses. For some reason J thought it would be a good idea to enter the room with both of her guns primed and out. While it did up the coolness factor, it also sent pretty much everyone in the room who wasn't used to murder weapons screaming and running around. Jax called from N's visor, "YES! Ask and you shall receive!" He also silently pumped his virtual hands into the air.

"WHO'S READY TO PAR-TAY?!" Lizzy screamed as she pushed her way through the two murder drones. J looked like she wanted to kill the worker drone for ruining her entrance, but V kept her from mauling being her first interaction of the night. It would still probably happen later, but then V could just blame it on someone sneaking magnets in or something.

Worker drones, both students and parents, filed in throughout the night. Uzi did her best to not interact with anyone, mainly sticking beside N, V, and J. To her (probably unnecessary) surprise, people stayed away from her. It was probably the mix of danger and weirdness that kept normal drones at bay. The only people who actually came up to them were Lizzy and Thad, who were already experienced in how to handle relationships with people who could kill you in an instant.

Eventually, about half an hour before midnight, Lizzy dragged the group of serial murderers behind the stage. It was a modest little backstage area, with the normal equipment for plays and other events.

"Why are you dragging us back here, Lizzy?" Uzi knew from past experience that whenever Lizzy tried to do something on the stage, it ended in disaster.

"Well..." Lizzy walked in front of the group before turning back to them, a smile on her face. "Considering the fact that the last time we tried to host an awards ceremony it ended in mass murder and weird... shenanigans, let's call it, I thought it would be a good idea to try doing them again! And, considering you all were the ones who saved the planet from mass destruction, I thought it would be nice if you were the ones going up for winning!" Uzi was immediately taken aback. Lizzy, being nice? It was unheard of. Through her shock, she was barely able to notice Lizzy looking towards V, who gave her a subtle nod. Oh, robo-God, she was actually trying to be nicer. WHAT WAS HAPPENING?!

"Here we go~" Lizzy burst through the curtains and walked up to the microphone, drawing the attention of most people in the room. "Hello, everyone! Who's ready to do something fun?!" You could practically hear crickets singing in the background. Not even Lizzy could completely wash away total boredom.

"If you don't have fun I have three friends who can kill you." Suddenly the entire audience erupted in cheers, more than half of the drones having sweat pouring down their visors. If hyping-up didn't work, just threaten with death. It always worked.

"Okay, so, since the last election we had was a complete and utter failure, how about we host a new one for the people we owe our lives to: the Murder Drones! And Uzi!" Uzi took this as her cue to step out onto the stage, which she did with everyone following behind her. Caine, meanwhile, was practically exploding with excitement. Actually, scratch that, he was exploding (and reforming to explode again).

"So, if any of you remember, I gave you all little pieces of paper when you entered the dance. Bring them out!" There was a shuffling of clothes as every drone in the room brought out small pieces of cue card. "All of you are going to put your ballots on those little things and then give them to me. You can pick out of these four options!" Lizzy enthusiastically waved her hands to indicate the drones beside her. "And, if you don't know their names, then just describe them. I can work it out."

And so, for the next five minutes, Lizzy walked around gathering pieces of paper. They were all put into a box which Lizzy then brought backstage so that she could count. Finally, after what felt like forever, Lizzy re-emerged, her smile only slightly nervous.

"Well, folks! Looks like we have ourselves a winner! Give it up for..." J practically burst forth as she interrupted Lizzy's dramatic pause. Uzi almost immediately understood what was going on-somehow, in that insane glitch's head, J thought that she had won the competition. She shouldn't even be a part of this thing in the first place!

"Thank you, thank you all so much!" Uzi had to admit, J was good at faking gratitude and tears as she look out to the audience. "You don't know how much this all-"

Lizzy nervously tapped J's shoulder. "Um... J? You didn't win." J's face immediately turned into one of pure rage. She slowly turned towards Lizzy, her head making an ear-splitting screeching sound.

"I didn't win?" J laughed. "Please. Who could possibly be better than me?"

Lizzy whispered, "Uzi...?" Wait. UZI HAD WON?!

Somehow J managed to look even angrier than she was before, whipping around to face Uzi. "I'M SORRY?! HOW IN THE [BLEEP] WORLD DID THIS STUPID TEENAGER WIN?!" J completely ignored V and N as she stalked towards Uzi. "I swear to robo-God, if this is true..."

"Um... Is now too late to lie about who won the ballot?" Lizzy's quiet statement sent J over the edge. She sprouted her wings and began racing after Uzi, who was barely able to dodge the first attempt at first-degree murder. This initiated a sort of cat-and-mouse game, with Uzi running through the crowd for her life and J tearing through anything and everything that happened to be in her way.

The final straw was broken when Thad, who was attempting to herd everyone out of the dance, was impaled. He gasped for a moment before he was thrown into the back wall, crumpling to the ground. Both Uzi and Nori screamed in outrage at the same time, with Nori literally throwing people out of the room with her Solver. Uzi, on the other hand, went full Solver mode. Her wing's sprouted, her eyes began warping, and her claws erupted from her hands like knives.

However, just as the two were about to fly into each other, N picked up the nearest heavy object he could find: a discarded ladder. He threw the thing with his Solver, making it slam into J and force her out of the room. He then continued to bar the doors with the ladder until J calmed down and was taken away by V.

Uzi and N stood still, panting and looking at each other. Then, Uzi remembered that Thad was still struggling for his life at the end of the room. She rushed over to her friend, N remaining close behind.

Thad wasn't looking too good. Somehow, he was still conscious, but just barely. His breathing was coming in ragged gasps, and there was a sizeable gash running through his side. Uzi knelt down beside him, her eyes nervously running over every graze and nick on his body. She couldn't lose anyone. Not again.

Uzi turned towards N. "Do something!" she cried before turning back to Thad. She ripped off a piece of her dress to try and staunch the oil that was bleeding out of his side before realising that that probably wasn't going to help in this situation. She threw the rag away and settled on conversing with Thad about where he was hurt.

N wracked his processor for anything that he could do to help ease or completely stop Thad's death. He turned his attention to Jax and, completely disregarding the fact that Uzi was the only person aware of Jax's presence, asked, "Do you think you could show me how to do the time travel?"

Jax responded by saying, "Well, I don't really think there's a method, really. Whenever I did the time thing back in the Circus, I just thought really hard about what I wanted to change. Simple as that."

Without anything else to go off of, N raised his hand in front of him, thinking about the state of the room at the start of the party. Everything was fine then, no one was hurt, no one was scared of him. Wait, why that last thing? Oh, never mind.

A green Solver symbol appeared in N's hand, bringing with it the hope that something might actually happen to help Thad. However, as soon as it appeared, it was gone, and nothing had happened. No. No, no, no, no, no-

"He's gone." Uzi stood up, her face expressionless. N had never seen her so... defeated. Like she had just lost her mother all over again. Weren't drones supposed to be indifferent to death?

"Uzi, I'm-" N tried to reach out towards Uzi, but she smacked his hand away. Without even meeting his eyes, she walked towards the exit, stepping over the ladder without a word. Within a second, N was all alone.

N's eyes flicked around the room, trying to think about where he went wrong. He did what Jax asked him to, didn't he? But then again, he still wasn't sure if he had all of Jax's powers. Oh, [bleep], had he messed up? Uzi didn't even want to talk to him. What if she hated him? N's body filled with dread. He just ruined his entire relationship with Uzi.

"Uzi! Uzi, please come back!" N ran out of the room, leaving it empty save from the ruined decorations and Thad's body. Everything was silent for a moment. And, suddenly... Bits and pieces of metal started moving. Wires and electronic panels began piecing themselves back together, until everything electronic that had been knocked over or destroyed was as good as new.

At the far end of the room, the oil began retreating back into Thad's body, almost as if it were being sucked up by some internal vacuum. With a jolt, Thad stood up, his eye-lights ablaze with life.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-" Wait, context is probably necessary before dropping the D-bomb on y'all. Rewinding to a few hours before this wonderful little scream fest (a lot of those had been happening lately), N had been attempting to get Uzi to talk to him. Uzi, being her wonderful self, decided to irrationally blame N for Thad's death, despite the fact that he had done nothing but try and help. Her thought process might have gone down the lane of "N should have tried harder to make Thad come back alive", but either way, the two drones weren't talking.

Uzi hadn't been to school for days, much to Nori's dismay, but not much could be done. Besides, if anyone other than the murder drones or Solver hosts tried to interact with Uzi, they would most likely immediately die. In other words, Uzi wasn't exactly the most approachable at the moment.

N, on the other hand, had been searching all over the bunker, not knowing that Uzi hadn't seen the space outside of her room for days. This resulted in a mental spiral of him thinking that he completely ruined his relationship with Uzi and that she never wanted to see him again. Yes, an overreaction, but also an understandable one.

Anyways, N was stalking the halls of Uzi's high school, even though he knew that was probably the last place she would want to go to in the bunker. Still, it was worth a shot. Worst-case scenario, his presence would only give a few worker drones panic attacks.

"Uzi?" N called out, his hands cupped around his mouth like an impromptu megaphone. "Uzi, please come out. I just want to talk to you!"

"THAT'S WHAT THEY SAY BEFORE THEY MURDER!" N heard a faint scream from off in the distance. He turned around to see a group of teenage drones sprinting down the hallway away from N. Rude. N just rolled his eyes and turned back to his quest to find his friend-potentially-turned-enemy-for-the-time-being.

"You do realise that, even if she does see you, she isn't going to talk to you?" Jax asked from the corner of N's visor.

"Not helping..." N grumbled, peering around the corner of the hallway before rounding it completely.

"Hey, I'm just being practical. From my experience, when you do something to upset one of your friends, they aren't going to talk to you. It's what I do whenever I find Caine's voice too annoying." N continued to ignore his purple companion, looking through windows and peeking into classrooms for his other purple companion.

A small clatter made N snap his attention to what appeared to be a storage closet. Initially, N just wrote it off as the bunker settling or something mundane like that, but when the clatter happened again N knew that something was in the closet. Jax made the appropriate "I wonder if the thing in there can kill you" comments as N silently made his way towards the closet. It was highly unlikely anything that popped out of there could kill him, but he still replaced one of his hands with a gun.

N gripped the handle of the door and thrust it open, revealing a scared Thad scrabbling to get to the far end of the closet. Which, after two seconds of movement, still wasn't that far from N. Considering their close proximity, it took N and Thad a second to recognise each other. And when they did... hoo boy, Thad might as well have been crushed by N's bear hug.

"Oh, robo-God! Thad! How the-" N held Thad out at an arm's length, inspecting Thad's body that was, surprisingly, in good condition. "Wait a second. Weren't you completely destroyed after getting punched into that wall by J?"

Thad took a second to catch his breath before answering. "To be honest, I don't really know what happened that night. All I remember is getting attacked, and then suddenly I woke up sitting in the middle of the ruined party room. Somehow I didn't have any injuries, thank robo-God, but I also didn't remember how the injuries were healed in the first place." Thad looked up to N. "Any ideas?"

"One second." N shoved Thad into the closet, closed the door, and focused his attention on Jax. While Thad was banging on the door to be let out, N asked, "I thought the time travel wasn't working for me. What gives?"

"Do you seriously expect me to know how you managed to bring pretty boy over here back to life? Just, like, try to do the time travel again. That's the best advice I can give you." N narrowed his eyes at Jax and let Thad back out of the storage closet.

"What the heck?! Are you actually trying to kill me now?" Thad asked, both angry and panicked after being forcefully shoved into a small room that, frankly, smelled like complete and utter garbage.

"Long story. Stay still for a second." N held his hand out in front of him, and a green Solver symbol appeared in it. Thad immediately tried to run away, but N kindly (read: forcefully) goaded Thad back into standing in front of him using his tail syringe. With the other drone firmly in place (freely or against his will, it didn't matter that much), N focused as hard as he could on turning back time. Nothing that hard, just to shove Thad back into the storage closet. N didn't really feel good about manhandling one of Uzi's friends, but he needed to figure out what was going on. Apology baskets could be sent en masse later.

After a few minutes of concentration, Thad started to get bored. After half an hour, N began to get bored as well. Absolutely nothing was happening, despite the presence of the Solver in N's hand.

"Well, that doesn't make sense..." N made the Solver disappear and held his hand up to his face. "If the time travel still doesn't work for me, how is it that you're still here?" N wracked his brain for any memories of that night, attempting to look past Uzi's hurt, emotionless face. N couldn't even begin to talk about how much he hated when Uzi looked like that. To know that he was the one who caused such a reaction.

From what he could recall, nobody had even attempted to check the room of the dance ever since that night. Either they were too scared or too deep into the grieving process to even entertain the thought for more than a minute. If he was able to get there quickly enough, he might be able to see something that would help him.

"It's nice seeing you! You are going to have to explain all of this to Uzi, but I'm sure you're going to do fine! See you in a bit!" Without waiting for Thad's response, N began flying down the halls, wings beating way too fast for the enclosed space they were in. It was a miracle that N didn't completely crash and total himself, but determination can do wonderful things.

With quite the dramatic entrance, N kicked the doors to the dance room open, sending bits and pieces of metal and wiring flying all over the place. After everything had settled down, N finally took a good look around the room. The room itself, for the most part, was a complete and utter mess. The floor and walls were torn up, tables were turned over or completely tossed from their original positions (some poor soul would have to get one wedged in the ceiling), and decorations were strewn all over the ground.

The strange thing was that anything powered by electricity or meant to function as some sort of electronic device was completely untouched. Speakers stood upright, cameras lay on the floor shiny and like new, and the projector on the ceiling looked as if it had just been bought. While N might have brushed off something as small as a camera or the ceiling projector remaining intact, every single electronic thing he could find being intact? Now that was suspicious.

N walked up to one of the speakers and tried to inspect it for any imperfections, but aside from a knock-off brand name, nothing was amiss. Finally, N went to his last resort and chucked the thing across the room. The speaker smashed into another speaker, breaking both into jagged bits and pieces immediately.

N stood there breathing raggedly for a second before straightening up and putting his hand in front of him. A green Solver symbol appeared in his hand, and he did his best to try and imagine the speakers putting themselves back together. After a few seconds of delay, bits and pieces of smashed speaker began to put themselves back together. Before he knew it, N had two completely fine stand-up speakers right in front of him. N's Solver disappeared, and he put his hand down.

N wanted to celebrate this achievement, but he knew that there was a big difference between a sentient drone and a simply piece of machinery. He needed to be able to test his powers on a corpse. Unfortunately, N knew exactly where to find one.

N still didn't remember how someone managed to find Doll's mangled corpse through all the wreckage and chaos that was attempting to survive eldritch demon Cyn. But still, the corpse was found, cleaned up as good as possible, and a funeral was held. Now, N was laying if he said he felt completely sorry for Doll. Yes, she probably didn't deserve to die, but her entire fake-buffering act meant that V had to sacrifice herself to save everyone else. So yeah, there were hard feelings.

Why N was planning on reviving the girl, he didn't know. He didn't even know if his plan was going to work in the first place, but if he was going to deface a grave, he might as well do it with the intention of bringing said buried person back to life.

With those worries out of the way, N entered the room that had been set aside for Doll's memorial. He couldn't tell whether anyone had actually visited her (potentially Lizzy), but he hoped that no one planned on visiting her today. Still, N closed the door behind him and dimmed the lights before attempting anything.

The casket in the centre of the room supposedly held Doll's body, but N hadn't actually seen Doll be put in there, so he couldn't be entirely sure. After taking a deep breath, N wrapped his hands around the lip of the casket and ripped it open. True to his suspicions, Doll's slowly decaying body was in the casket, somehow still dripping fluids and attracting bugs.

N stopped for a moment to marvel (and gag) at the state of Doll's body. Yes, worker drones didn't exactly decompose, but Doll's body was miraculously in a better state than he thought it would be. It might have been the Solver in her system attempting to keep her form disappearing entirely, or it could have just been sheer luck that she didn't look like a hunk of rusted metal after all these months.

N slowly wrapped his hands around Doll's waist, trying to not disturb any of her less-than-connected body parts too much. Once her corpse was fully out of the casket, N laid Doll down on the ground. N rose back up and took a few seconds back, once again ignoring Jax, who was gagging and looking on with interest at the same time.

N took a deep breath. He was finally going to do it. Uzi had always been interested in dark things like necromancy, maybe this would make her like him more? Or would this just creep her out? Why was N even thinking about Uzi? He was trying to revive Doll, not get admiration from a friend! Girlfriend? HE DIDN'T KNOW! N stopped that embarrassing train of thought and held his hand out in front of him, imagining Doll just as she was when he last saw her.

Like before, the green Solver symbol appeared in N's hand, slowly spinning and making a weird gurgling sound. In the centre was a weird, yellow-white orb that hadn't been there before. Maybe that was the difference between repairing and object and bringing a drone back to life? Or maybe N had just not noticed the yellow before.

N nearly jumped right into the wall when he heard a bang on the door of the memorial room. Without warning, the banging continued in rapid succession, almost as if someone was trying to break through the door with a hammer. N contemplated attempting to attack an intruder while still doing the healing process on Doll, but multitasking a process as delicate as re-animation was decidedly too dangerous to multitask. So, N stopped his Solver and slammed the door open, knocking Uzi into the far wall of the hallway.

Naturally, N began panicking immediately. "Oh, robo-Jesus! Uzi! Are you okay?" N rushed over to Uzi as she slowly sat up in a daze. Oh, robo-God, if N managed to actually hurt Uzi for real this time-

"I guess I'm fine..." Uzi looked over N's shoulder and peered into the memorial room. "What the-What the heck are you doing in there?!" N immediately started spluttering, attempting to find an explanation that didn't make him look clinically insane. Thankfully, Uzi just said, "Eh. I'm too bored to question the morals of this. Let's deface a grave!" With that, Uzi stood up and made her way over to the room. N followed close behind, eyeing Doll's corpse as if she might come back to life at any moment and attack the both of them.

"How the heck did she get here in the first place?" While Jax had a good point, N didn't really want to annoy Uzi any further just in case she was still touchy. Baby steps.

"So... what the heck are you trying to do to Doll's corpse?" Uzi knelt down beside the corpse while looking up at N, who was nervously fidgeting with the collar of his shirt.

"Um... Well..."

"Are you seriously scared of sounding insane? To me?!" Uzi had a point. N finally took a deep breath and mustered up the courage to say:

"I may or may not be trying to revive the body of our dead friend/enemy because I just saw Thad alive and I'm pretty sure I'm not hallucinating oh my robo-God what if I'm hallucinating then this would all be for nothing I'm so sorry I'm probably rambling please just ignore me oh robo-God WHY?!"

"I could practically feel my English teacher screaming at you." Uzi stood up gave N a small laugh. "Wait, you saw Thad?" N nodded. "Like, alive?" N nodded again. "Oh. Cool." N nod-Wait, WHAT?

"Wait, so you're not surprised?" N was seriously getting confused.

"Well, weirder things have happened around here. This is just another point to the list." N hated how everyone was making good points today.

"Are you going to watch me do this or not?" Uzi nodded enthusiastically, a smile that made N worry for her sanity spread across her face. While Uzi watched in the corner, N nervously raised his hand and began the revival process all over again. Green Solver? Check. Little yellow thing with undisclosed purpose? Check. Semi-sane Uzi who is no longer mad at N? Check. Dang, the day's to-do list was becoming smaller and smaller by the second.

After a few minutes of nothing happening, Uzi started to get up to leave. "If anything happens, I'm just going to be walking ar-HURK!" Her sentence was cut off as Uzi bent over as if she were about to throw up. N immediately started worrying, even more so when Uzi also began rising off the floor without the use of her wings.

"Uzi? If you're getting possessed, please say something!" Uzi couldn't respond as she was still trying to keep in her lunch. Being midair certainly didn't help. N tried to stop the ritual again so that he could help Uzi, but this time the Solver refused to stop working. N shook his hand one, then twice before shaking it frantically.

"Don't feel so good..." Uzi's visor was now tinted with green, and she looked like she was ready to hurl. N, on the other hand, was practically slapping himself in the face trying to get the Solver off his hand. So far, he was extremely unsuccessful.

Without warning, something popped out of Uzi's mouth: a core. N immediately recoiled form disgust before realising just what exactly Uzi threw up. Was that... No, it couldn't be. Yet, despite N's doubts, the heart slowly floated towards Doll's corpse. When it touched it... a blinding light filled the room, blinding both N and Uzi, who was now on the floor and decidedly no longer nauseous.

When the light finally died down, the first thing N saw was Doll standing up, looking terrified. The Russian drone looked back and forth between Uzi and N before rushing past them both out into the school. N tried to stop her, but his eyesight still wasn't the best, causing him to run directly into a wall. Uzi, on the other hand, was on the floor, dazed.

It took both drones a hot second to recover their senses, and when they did, the finally realised what they had done.

"Oh, [BLEEP]." That was Uzi.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA..." That was N.

Either one would have been appropriate, really. Once both were done with their vastly different reactions, they both looked at each other before sprinting out of the memorial room, searching for their recently-revived companion.

V wasn't sure if drones could genuinely become sleep-deprived, but if they could, N would definitely be so. She wasn't sure exactly what he had been doing for the past five nights, but it was definitely suspicious when she saw him sneaking out after thinking that both her and J had fallen asleep. V knew that it was probably nothing (N was not the kind of drone to intentionally get into trouble), but she still couldn't help feeling as if something had gone horribly wrong. Seriously, sometimes it looked as if N had been seeing dead people.

N, on the other hand, definitely felt sleep-deprived. Ever since Uzi and thrown up Doll's core (he still had no idea how that happened, or how the core even managed to end up in Uzi's body in the first place) and Doll had been revived, N and Uzi had been searching the entire bunker up and down every single night. They couldn't do it during the day out of the fear of being caught, even though they realistically couldn't be stopped even if they were found out.

On the sixth night of Doll's impromptu search party, it was revealed to N that Uzi was going to try and dig up information about the Circus. "This search has gone absolutely nowhere," she said, small lines of guilt underneath her eye-lights. Or more sleep deprivation. "Besides, it's about time that we find out why Caine and Jax have been living in our visors for the past few weeks."

"So I'm going to have to try to find Doll all on my own?" Uzi nodded, her guilt now evident.

"I know, I know. Don't try to give me any looks. It's just... You have no idea how freaking annoying Caine can be sometimes. He-" Uzi took a shuddering deep breath, evidently trying to not react to whatever Caine was responding to her insult with. "You get the idea. And, if I'm successful, we can find everyone else. Hopefully."

"But how are you going to do that? Your mom isn't exactly in the 'let's leave Uzi alone for extended periods of time' territory at the moment."

"I'll figure out something... We always have, haven't we?" N returned Uzi's weak smile before the two drones went on their separate paths, Uzi towards finding answers, and N towards making sure that the drone that he recently revived didn't cause permanent damage to the bunker. Fun times!

N could almost immediately hear the chaos the second Uzi rounded the corner of the hallway. He internally groaned and started making his way over to whatever was causing the screaming, banging, and... Was that a baby? Oh dear robo-God, please let there not be baby shenanigans. N didn't think he could handle anything like that, especially with his last interaction with an infant drone.

N externally groaned when he realised that the source of all the commotion was coming from inside the elementary school. "Here I go, I guess..." N started turning the handle of the door, the hinges creaking creepily as the door swung open.

"Dang, this place is creepy," Jax said from the corner of N's visor. "I both want to explore this place and want you to run away from here as fast as possible."

"A shame there's no way I can take the second option, huh?" N turned his attention away from Jax, having heard yet another child scream. He steeled his nerves and stepped over the threshold of the school, walking a few metres in. Everything seemed relatively normal. Or, at least, as normal as the place could be with screaming perpetually echoing throughout the halls. All of the lights were off, but that wasn't really a problem for N. What was a problem, however, was the red flashing coming from the nursery section.

"Are you sure we can't just run the heck out of here?" Jax asked again, visibly nervous despite the fact that he wasn't even physically present in the room. Then again, if N managed to die, then Jax would probably die as well, so he had a valid reason to be worried about N's survival.

"Unfortunately, no." N made his way towards the nursery, Jax voicing his reservations against going inside the entire time. Thankfully, N had mastered the art of ignoring Jax, allowing him to take a deep breath and open the door.

Almost immediately a baby was drop-kicked at his head.

N managed to dodge out of the way in time, making the baby skid across the floor while giggling. At least the child wasn't harmed. N turned back around to find the source of the flying baby, only to have to dodge another one. The second baby knocking into the first, sending them flying in opposite directions down the hall. When a third baby was thrown at him, N snapped.

"Do NOT just throw children like they're freaking PROJECTILES!" N stopped the baby in midair with his Solver, the green triangle symbol letting the baby down gently. It was then that N got a good look at the baby railgunner: Doll. Of course it had to be Doll. At least it meant that he didn't have to start his search all over again.

Doll began to cower away from N in fright, realising that her only method of defence against N was now most likely useless to her. N could see her eyes flicking around the room, attempting to find something to distract N with long enough to escape.

"Hey, I'm not trying to hurt-" N was cut short as another baby was thrown in his face. This time, Doll hit her mark, making N splutter as he attempted to catch the baby. As he fiddled around, Doll took the opportunity to burst out of the nursery and make her way towards the entrance of the elementary school. N only realised too late that Doll had gone when he finally set the baby back in its metal crib.

"Oh, no..." N immediately raced out of the elementary school, but he had lost all sight of Doll. This wasn't going to end well.

As N was chasing Doll, Uzi had to come up with a plan to make sure that Nori didn't find out about her investigating the Amazing Digital Circus. Sure, Nori might have actually remembered everything and was doing a good job of hiding that fact, but even then Uzi wasn't sure Nori would want her investigating a shady website so that she could find out about her former prison's origins. When was Uzi ever going to have a normal thing her mom would be mad at her about?

Uzi managed to sneak into her room without being noticed, shutting and locking the door behind her before turning towards her PC. The website for the Circus was still up and running, the yellows and reds burning into her eyes the second they appeared on the monitor's screen.

"Ooh, we're investigating home again? What are we doing today?" Caine leaned in, excited and completely forgetting about the fact that he was still supposed to be mad at Uzi for insulting his frequency of speech. "Maybe you've been thinking about going back? OH, how about we try and say hello to everyone else?"

"No, and no." Uzi started opening up a series of different programs on her computer, connecting them all to the website. "We're going to do a bit of espionage."

"Ooh, that sounds fun! What are we searching for?"

"Whoever stuck us in the Circus." Uzi went on to promptly ignore Caine's rant about something completely off-topic (she didn't really care enough to focus on whatever he was talking about, anyways) and began looking through the code of the website. At a first glance, everything seemed to be normal. There was basic visual and functional code, as one would see on any normal website. The only thing that stood out to Uzi was a weird bit of code attached to the "Download" button. It seemed to be connected to... somewhere. Uzi didn't know where, but she definitely planned on finding out.

What turned from Uzi saying, "This is going to be easy!" to a half-hour long dredge through loading screens and basic code changes was tedious, to say the least. On top of that, she had to glance towards her bedroom door every few seconds to make sure that Nori wasn't going to burst through randomly. Not that Uzi could have done anything if Nori did decide to do so, but looking gave her a false sense of security.

Eventually, the little beeping bar that tracked the progress of the final lines of code Uzi had implemented filled all the way, causing it to disappear and give way to what appeared to be coordinates on a map. Almost immediately Uzi tried connecting the location on the monitor to its equivalent on a regular map, eventually coming to a stop at somewhere that appeared to be in the middle of a forest.

"Do you think that's where the Circus' server is being hosted?" Uzi could only nod in agreement to Caine's question, fumbling with the surface of her desk before her hand came across a USB stick. She immediately jammed the thing into whatever outlet she could find and exported the marked map, immediately taking the stick out and running towards her bedroom door the second the upload finished.

Of course, this was when Uzi happened to run into Nori.

"Oh, hi honey! I was just wondering if you could-Uzi." Shoot. She caught sight of the monitor. "What were you doing a second ago?"

Uzi refused to meet her mother's singular eye, small beads of sweat running involuntarily down her visor. "Um... Mapping?" Technically not a lie. Still, it wasn't enough to deter her mother form further investigation. However, just as Nori was about to interact with the web of code that Uzi had set up over the past hour or so, a big bang could be heard coming from outside. Uzi immediately took this as an opportunity to sprint the heck out of her room, ignoring her mother's protests the entire time.

Outside was an absolute mess. Random objects were strewn all over the place, and there were gash marks all over the walls. Uzi almost immediately attributed the damage to a disassembly drone outrage, but was it V or J (Uzi already knew that N wasn't going to do anything that might get him kicked out of the bunker) who was causing the damage? Uzi didn't have time to think about that as she followed the next loud thumping noise.

Eventually, Uzi found herself outside the library J had torched not so long ago. Memories of the event sent shivers up Uzi's spine, even though she knew she got out of that situation unscathed (physically, at least). Even without the immediate presence of danger, Uzi stepped cautiously. An angry killing machine could pop out at any minute.

Thankfully the commotion didn't originate from the library, but instead from the elementary school. Uzi didn't really remember her time as a grade schooler, mainly because it had been four years since she had last seen the inside of the building. Still, it was time for a good old memory refresh as Uzi opened the doors to the school and stepped inside.

Uzi was almost immediately hit in the face by a drop-kicked baby.

Uzi could hear N's voice scream, "STOP THROWING THE CHILDREN!" as she attempted to dodge the flying child. Note the word "attempted". In the end, Uzi wasn't fast enough and got clocked straight in the face, sending her tumbling towards the ground in an ungraceful heap. Uzi glared at the giggling baby before picking herself up off the ground.

Uzi had to stop herself from groaning in frustration the second she saw Doll hoisting another baby, this time with her Solver. N was at the other end of the room, holding his hands out in a calm manner as he attempted to negotiate with the formerly-dead teenager. Evidently whatever he had been doing for the past who knows how long wasn't working, as Doll chucked the baby at his head before whirling around to face Uzi.

"Hey there, Doll! Long time no see, huh?" Doll simply stared at Uzi with a blank expression. Uzi could see her hand slowly positioning itself to aim at another baby, who was sleeping in their crib. Why there were cribs and babies in the middle of an elementary school, a building solely designed to teach small children who had no idea how to take care of themselves, Uzi didn't know.

"Doll, don't." N had managed to catch the baby Doll had thrown at him and set them down on a side table. Uzi saw him walking closer to Doll out of the corner of her eye. Uzi also began advancing, mainly in an attempt at trapping Doll in one room of the school. However, that plan was immediately foiled when Doll hoisted yet another baby.

"Take another step, and this one becomes a pancake." A small, distressed squeak escaped N's mouth as he held his hands out even further.

"Okay, we don't need to resort to violence, guys." Uzi glanced between Doll and N, trying to decide the best course of action. "Wait, Doll, how did you even managed to get to the babies without anyone noticing you?"

"A field trip combined with lazy school faculty."

"You know what, that checks out." Uzi had to mentally shake herself out of agreeing with Doll. The girl was threatening to kill a baby, for robo-God's sake! "Wait. No. Doll, put the baby down. We just want to talk to you."

"I want answers." Doll held the baby even higher, her Solver as bright red as ever. It kind of reminded Uzi of Jax's old Solver, but it had been a darker red than Doll's.

"Perfect! You put the baby down, and we'll give you all the answers you want!" N looked seriously distressed for the baby, constantly making quick glances towards it to make sure that it was still happy and not dead.

Doll looked between Uzi and N, trying to figure out whether she could trust the two drones. However, just as she was about to put the baby down, Nori and V blasted through the elementary school doors. Curse Uzi's mother and her horrible timing!

"Uzi Doorman, get back here and explai-OW!" Nori was knocked off of V's shoulder by a flying baby, much to N's dismay. Another child was thrown at V, but V simply dodged out of the way. It was then that she recognised Doll standing behind Uzi and N. Her face morphed from one of confusion to one of accusation.

"What the heck did you guys do?" she asked, replacing one of her hands with a gun.

"What do you mean?! We're not the one's throwing children!" Uzi protested.

"You and I both know that's not what I meant when I asked-Where did she go?" True to V's sudden change of sentence topic, Doll had disappeared from behind Uzi and N. Almost immediately everyone began searching for Doll, with V picking up Nori's unconscious form and bringing it along with her.

The first person to spot doll running clear out of the bunker itself was Uzi, who immediately started chasing after Doll while screaming for backup. N was by her side immediately, with V keeping her distance so that she could snipe Doll should the situation prove such means necessary. Doll, on the other hand, was frantically trying to fry the control panel that controlled the massive doors that kept the inside of the bunker separate from the outside world.

"We need to stop her!" Uzi didn't need to be told twice as she picked up a stray lead pipe with her Solver. Sure, she could directly interact with Doll and, say, simply throw her away from the control panel, but beating her with a stick was a solid alternative. Just as Uzi was about to go to town on Doll's head, however, she was hit by something in the back of the head. Uzi fell to the ground, stunned, and felt the back of her head for injuries. Wait a second...

"V, DID YOU [BLEEP] SHOOT ME?!" Uzi turned towards the disassembly drone, the rage in her eyes evident and clearly visible.

"You were in the way!" V responded before looking back up. "Shoot, she's gone." Uzi turned around to find the doors to the bunker open, Doll's form running off into the distance.

"We need to get to her! We still don't know whether she's stable after..." N looked up at V, decidedly not finishing his sentence. He didn't need her thinking that he was insane, no thank you. Thankfully, V didn't question N about anything as she flew down and set Nori's body gently to the side.

"We chase after her now, I'll ask questions later. Deal?" N and Uzi both nodded in agreement. Together, the three of them ran out of the bunker, Caine and Jax watching on in varying levels of amusement and horror. The last thing that Uzi heard before the bunker was completely out of sight was Nori coming to and screaming at her. Ah, good times.

"Wait, so are we going to find Doll or are we going to wherever your little GPS thing is leading us to?" V peered over Uzi's shoulder, looking at the little navigation device in Uzi's hand. The small group of Uzi, N, and V had been travelling by foot (and occasionally by air) for the past few hours, following the blinking dot on Uzi's device. It had just suddenly clicked in V's mind that there was probably no way for Uzi to have planted some sort of tracking device on Doll's body at any point during their last interaction.

"Oh, Doll's going to be fine. She has the Solver. Right now, we're..." Uzi cringed, giving V the impression that something was being hidden from her.

"Uzi. What did you do?" V narrowed her eyes at the other drone.

"Why do you automatically assume that I've done something wrong?"

"Ask yourself why people might make that assumption."

Uzi paused for a second, her eyes focusing on something in the distance as she thought about it. "That doesn't matter right now. Anyways... We might be looking for the Amazing Digital Circus?" Uzi's voice got quieter and more high pitched at the same time as she progressed through the sentence. Still, that didn't stop V from understanding and therefore getting extremely confused and mad.

"The Circus? Robo-God, why couldn't you let me live in the reality where it was all a fever dream?!" V turned towards N, who had been walking ahead of the rest of the group for some time now. "Don't tell me that you knew about this, too!"

N turned around sheepishly. "Surprise?"

"Well, this is just great!" V looked around the forest that they had wandered into. All of the trees were dead, but pretty much everything that was made out of organic matter on the planet withered away into nothingness the second the core collapsed. That was why V now realised that she was pretty sure the group was very lost. "You lead me out here with false pretences-"

"Technically you never asked," Uzi butted in.

"Shut up. And now we're lost in the middle of nowhere, with only a stupid gadget designed to lead us even further away from home!"

"Oh, come on, it's not like anything's going to come out and try to kill us. Right, N?" Uzi turned around to try and get N on her side of the argument, but when she looked around, she realised that N was completely gone. "N?" Uzi turned towards V. "Great. You scared him off."

"I scared him off?! YOU'RE the one who decided it would be fun to experiment around with N's weird Solver abilities and revive a person who probably should have stayed dead!"

"I THREW UP THE CORE! It's not like I had much choice in the matter."

"Oh, please, you-" V stopped mid-sentence, hearing something off in the distance. "Do you hear that?"

"If it's the sound of you being an inconsiderate gli-"

"Seriously. Listen." Uzi finally took a second to pause, allowing her to finally hear what sounded like metal being dragged across the ground. Uzi's mind immediately flicked to the worst possible scenarios, her eye-lights hollowing at the thought of N being the source of said dragging sound. Uzi turned towards V, whose eye-lights were just as hollow.

"We're not alone," Uzi whispered, scared to break eye contact with the drone who, two seconds before, she had been arguing passionately with.

"Stay here. I'm going to check it out." Uzi didn't have the courage to protest as she watched V bring herself close to the ground and inch her way towards where she thought the sound was coming from. V squeezed herself between two trees, and suddenly she was out of Uzi's sight.

Uzi, for the most part, did her best to remain calm. What kind of drone would be all the way out here, miles away from home? And whatever was out there couldn't be truly living, otherwise they would die almost immediately. The only possibility was... No, that wasn't right. The last thing she would do would be to come back... Right?

A sharp snap from deep within the forest brought Uzi back to attention. The sound itself came from the direction that V left in, which did not bode well for Uzi. She began inching backwards, doing so at an even faster pace when she heard rustling in the trees. Her eyes darted around, shadows morphing into monsters and back again in the blink of an eye. Uzi knew that she was being irrational, but irrationality tends to take over the mind.

With one, final crack, V burst out of the trees, dishevelled and obviously injured. "RU-" She screamed before getting dragged back by what looked like a flying rope. Uzi contemplated for a second whether she should run after V or instead run like heck away from the situation and maybe come back in a day with a bazooka. As it turns out, the second that Uzi took to deliberate was too long. She was smacked in the back of the head by something heavy, knocking her out.

When Uzi finally came to, she initially wasn't able to see anything two feet in front of her. She struggled against what felt like rope, her eyes straining to find something in the darkness. What she was looking for, she didn't no. Hopefully a handy knife to cut through whatever was holding her down.

It took Uzi a second to realise that she could just use her Solver to get the rope off of her. She did so and promptly dropped to the ground, her legs refusing to work. "Ugh! This isn't supposed to happen to robots! We were literally made to spontaneously work!" Still, her faulty legs took a minute to get used to walking again, allowing Uzi to sit and then stand up.

When her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness of the room, she was reminded heavily of... well, less pleasant times. She appeared to be in a small, wooden room, not that much unlike what you would find in a camp cabin. There weren't any windows, explaining the initial pitch-darkness of the room, and the floorboards creaked no matter how softly Uzi tried to step on them.

"What the-" Uzi felt her way through and around the walls of the room she was in, but she wasn't able to find a door. "How the heck did I even get in here?" She continued pawing at the walls, her vision becoming clearer and clearer by the second. True to what her hands told her, there weren't any doors leading into or out of the room.

"Well, this is just great." Uzi walked back from the walls and stood in the centre of the room, taking the room in in its entirety. Yep. Definitely giving her creepy cabin vibes. Uzi shuddered at the memory of what had happened the last time she was in a cabin, chills racing up her mechanical spine.

It took Uzi a second to hear the sound of wind coming from above her. When she did, however, she noticed the tiny, drone-sized hole in the ceiling. Maybe that was how she managed to get into the room. Uzi walked closer to the hole, which was situated where two of the walls met. It was definitely big enough for her body to get through. The only question was what Uzi would see when she popped her head out the other side.

Uzi took a deep breath, wrung out her fingers, and steeled her nerves before jumping up and promptly missing the hole by a good few feet. She crashed back down, landing on her behind with a hollow thud. Uzi winced and looked back up at the hole in the ceiling, reevaluating her life choices.

Uzi brought herself back up to her feet and tried jumping up to the hole a second time, managing to grab hold of the lip and letting herself dangle. With her free hand, Uzi used her Solver to move a spare box in the room underneath her feet, just in case she wasn't able to pull herself up before her arms gave out. Then, with a grunt, Uzi pulled herself through the hole and into what appeared to be a ventilation system.

"Oh, modern cabin. That makes it so much better." Uzi did in fact mean this comment. If the cabin had any form of modernity implemented in its design, the pipe she was in would eventually lead to another room. Then again, humans did stupid things all the time, so...

Uzi began crawling through the ventilation shaft, her head barely able to twist around and look behind her to make sure that she wasn't being followed. It was definitely and arduous process, crawling through the shaft like a toddler who had just gotten their first arms and legs installed, but the effort paid off when Uzi managed to find herself above what appeared to be the main room of the cabin.

In the centre of the room was N, who was being held underneath what appeared to be an entire house's worth of metal, wood, and Styrofoam. Only his head peeked through at the top. Dotted all over the surface of the prison mound were small red Solver symbols, indicating that Doll was keeping the entire contraption together. It was a smart decision, considering that N was still quite green when it came to his Solver (Uzi only realised the pun she had made, like, two hours after the entire debacle).

Uzi waited for a few seconds for Doll to come into view, and lo and behold, she did. Although she physically looked tired (anyone would be after using the Solver for such a task), her red eyes burned with what appeared to be anger. Uzi mentally ran through her list of people mad at her, but she couldn't think of any reason as to why Doll would be a part of that. Seriously, they'd had no interaction aside from the baby-slinging incident (no babies ended up being harmed).

"How am I here?" Doll stared down N, who looked away uncomfortably, digital sweat beads running down his visor.

"Um... What are you... Talking about?" Robo-God, N needed to get better at bluffing his way out of situations. Surely he would have caught on at some point after spending so much time with Uzi, but nope. Still the truth-seeking, goody-two-shoes drone that Uzi had grown to love. (WHERE THE [BLEEP] DID THAT COME FROM?! UGH, EMOTIONS!)

Doll narrowed her eyes at N, her voice only understandable due to the handy translator installed in Uzi's processor. "You suck at lying. How did I end up back here? And why were you and that purple girl standing over me?" Uzi so desperately wanted to scream her name out, but decided against doing so. She had to keep the element of surprise for something useful, after all.

"Um... Well..." N looked around the room, most likely to find some excuse to get out of answering that question. However, he eventually gave up and began explaining. "I might be able to revive dead drones, and I might have tested that power on your dead corpse..."

"Then why was purple girl standing over me?"

"Oh, she just had to throw up your core." Doll stared at N, a mix of disgust and confusion on her face.

"I'm going to forget you ever said that..." Doll and N continued talking with each other, Doll asking random questions that N managed to answer without going complete freak-out mode. Uzi watched from above intently, her eyes scanning around the room below her to see if there was anything she could use to her advantage. However, unless she could use a broken broom as a lethal weapon, she was out of luck.

Just as the conversation arrived at the topic of where the heck everyone was, Uzi heard a voice in her ear. "Well, isn't this just fun?!"

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-" Uzi immediately screamed as her body jerked involuntarily and her eyes darted around the ventilation shaft for whoever just spoke to her. It was only as she broke the shaft that she realised that it was just Caine choosing a very bad time to make a comment. Welp. At least she was surprising! As a bonus, Uzi also fell right on top of doll, forcing Doll to break her concentration on N's prison. As Uzi picked herself back up, N burst out of the metal mound, hovering slightly in the air with his wings.

"You..." Doll narrowed her eyes at Uzi as she, too, picked herself up off the floor. "I thought I trapped you at the back of the cabin."

"Nothing can keep this drone down!" Uzi glanced around the room and brought the broken broom over to her via her Solver. Hey, if she had to beat Doll to a pulp using a stick, she was going to. N came to land beside Uzi, a gun pointed at Doll. Doll immediately began backing away, but was stopped as V appeared out of nowhere behind her.

"Going somewhere?" V smiled menacingly, forcing Doll to make her way back to the enter of the room. She was looking visibly more and more nervous, her eyes darting between Uzi, N, and V. Against her better judgement, Uzi started to feel bad for Doll. Sure, she had kidnapped everyone in a place that gave Uzi minor PTSD, but she was also a scared teenager who had thought they died.

N also appeared to be taking mercy on Doll, as he lowered his gun and took a cautious step towards her. "Hey, look. We don't want to hurt you, and I'm sure you don't want to hurt us. Why don't we all just take a moment and tal-" N didn't get to finish his sentence as J burst through the singular window of the room, hands literally blazing. Seriously, somebody should've taken that flamethrower away from her long ago.

"LET GO OF MY SUBORDINATES!" Pretty much everything flammable inside the cabin was set on fire, casting yellows, oranges, and reds all over the walls in a weird sort of sunset effect. Well, if the sun was powerful enough to set anything and everything on fire.

"I'm sorry, SUBORDINATE?!" V flew up to stare J down, her malice evident. Uzi, on the other hand, noticed Doll sprinting towards the front door of the cabin. Uzi sprinted after Doll in an attempt at catching up, but Doll brought a heavy wooden beam down upon Uzi with her Solver. By the time Uzi managed to get the thing off of her, Doll was gone. The fire, on the other hand, was still burning with a passion.

"We need to get out of here!" N raced past Uzi and burst through the doors, holding them open so that Uzi could run through herself. V and J both agreed to put their differences aside and blasted their way through the roof (the roof was going to burn to the ground, anyways, so what was the harm?).

"Oh, this is bad. This is really bad!" Uzi turned around to find N staring at the wildfire. Turns out they were still in the woods. Although, they might not be in the woods for much longer, as tree after tree was catching on fire and promptly turning to dust.

"Are we going to try and put this out, or are we just going to run?" N seemed torn. On the one hand, thousands of trees were being destroyed. On the other hand, all of the trees were technically carcasses, so nothing was technically dying. Eventually, N decided that it wasn't going to be worth the effort and ran up to Uzi. The two of them, flagged on either side by J and V, ran as fast as they could away from the fire, only stopping the second that they could no longer smell smoke or see red light.

"Where the heck have you guys been?" J landed right in front of Uzi and N, accusation in her eyes. "You can't just up and leave the bunker without permission, you know!"

"Yeah, because you're such a great leader." Uzi walked past J as she tried to argue, pulling out her GPS. "Wait a second..." Uzi tapped at the screen of the GPS. "It says that we're here... But that's impossible. We just started running in a random direction, didn't we?"

"We did..." N glanced over Uzi's shoulder. "Wait... Why is the dot moving? It looks like it's... coming closer?"

Uzi didn't have the chance to discuss with N what was happening as she was knocked out by something behind her. The last thing she saw was V and J falling out of the sky.

"Extracting..."

"Extracting..."

"Extraction failed."

N struggled to make his eyes open when he first heard something talking. He felt drained, strangely so. His blurry eyes eventually adjusted to the dim light of the room he was in, but it still took him a good second of processing to finally understand what exactly was happening.

First of all, he was suspended mid-air. It didn't seem as if anything was holding on to him, but then why couldn't N move his arms and legs? Heck, even his tail was immobilised. Second of all, and probably more alarming, he was inside of a glass case, on the outside of which were what appeared to be worker drones. It was hard to tell who was who, however, as they were all wearing the same getup: white lab coats and long, black undergarments.

N flicked his eyes around the room, searching for anything to signify that Uzi, V, or J were with him. Nope. Just him and the lab coats.

"It appears as if the drone has awakened." One person in a lab coat walked closer to N, picking up a clipboard along the way. "Shall we proceed to the testing stage?" Wait a second, testing sta-

N could barely think as what felt like lightning coursing all throughout his body. Now, normally disassembly drones like him could take quite large amounts of electricity. How else were they supposed to kill left and right if they didn't have enough power to do so? But this... This was much different. Much more painful.

N couldn't do anything but float there in silence, his immobilised limbs preventing him from recoiling in pain. N stared at the lab coat in front of him, fearful. Whatever he was facing, they certainly weren't going to hold themselves back.

The only thing that N could do was wait for someone to come help him.

V, on the other hand, was brawling with J. Because why not?

"I swear to robo-God, J," V said as he deflected a bullet with one of her swords. "If you end up killing me because these creeps offered to give you a position of power, I am going to HAUNT YOU UNTIL YOU RUST!"

"Please, as if this perfect body could ever rust." J motioned at herself from the other side of her and V's enclosure, prompting V to angrily ram into the other drone at full force.

Funny how it had only been ten minutes earlier that J and V were attempting to get out of the enclosure together. When the two first woke up, they appeared to be in some sort of test chamber with simulated plant life. Bordering the area were four solid-metal walls, all of which were virtually indestructible. Even's J's attempts at exploding them into nothing didn't work.

After about five minutes of futile searching, J and V were met with a voice booming over hidden loudspeakers. They were instructed to fight against each other to the death, something that V was very much against. J, on the other hand... Oh, robo-God, J. She just had to go and bargain with the loudspeaker person over what she would get if she killed V, therefore giving her incentive to do just that.

And now here we were.

"Haven't we already been through this, J?" V hid behind a tree as J tried to launch a bomb at her. "You know that whenever you're offered something like this, you're going to either end up killed multiple times or following a random creep who wears the corpse of your former best friend."

"Don't you DARE mention Tessa!" J quite literally sliced the tree in two, tumbling into V and forcing them to roll uncontrollably down a small hill. When both finally came to a stop, V recovered first and took the second that J needed to use to get up to run away. She was almost immediately followed by yet another one of J's bombs. This time, V wasn't able to get out of the way in time, and was launched right into the metal wall with the impact.

V slowly turned around, wincing as she felt oil leak out of various gashes on her body. J was slowly advancing towards her, her sword drawn. V attempted to get away again, but every time she tried to move her body screamed in pain. By the time J's sword plunged downwards, it was too late.

N had fallen unconscious once again, the pain from the electric shock too much for him to handle. When he finally came to once again, he found himself in a completely different room. While he was still suspended in some sort of weird magnetic field, this time he was able to see what appeared to be a forest encased within glass walls.

Off in the distance, N could hear the people in lab coats talking with each other. He could only make out every other word or so, but even then N still had no clue what was going on.

That was, until he saw V and J.

His eyes immediately lit up in hope. Maybe if they were safe, they could break out and get out of this freaky place. He tried calling out, but to no avail. His mouth simply wouldn't work, refusing to move much like how his legs and arms were immobilised.

Something seemed to catch both J and V's attention, causing them to look upwards. N did the same, but couldn't see anything but the dim lights casting shadows all over the room. Whatever they were seeing or hearing could only be observed by them. Both V and J began to move their mouths, presumably talking back to whatever was talking to them. Could they be negotiating? Then again, J was in the room, so that probably was never going to happen.

After another couple of minutes, J and V looked at each other. Maybe they had figured out something they could do to-

J drew a sword. V backed away, suddenly frightened. N floated there, in shock.

No... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, please no.

J lunged after V, who began running in the opposite direction. N's eyes followed their ensuing tussle, his muddled processor barely able to keep up with the fight. However, he knew it was over the second that V was launched into one of the walls by one of J's explosives.

J began to walk over to V's prone body, both drones looking at each other. N tried desperately to do something, to call out to them, anything to make it stop. But he was helpless. Worthless.

J stood over V's body, staring down at V as she tried to crawl away. N could see the gashes laced all over V's body, the oil staining the grass beneath her. The wicked gleam in J's eyes as she took one final look at her prey, her former subordinate.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no-

J plunged the sword downwards, straight into V's core. V's eye-lights almost immediately shut off, all life leaving her body. J twisted her sword, making sure that the job was finished, before pulling it out of V's corpse.

N couldn't think. He could barely see. This couldn't have been happening, everything was going so well. J was doing good, she was actually being nice, but that could have just been an act. N needed something, anything, to make sense of what just happened. V couldn't be dead. He could help her! Yes! But he was still trapped. Did that limit Solver usage? No, it couldn't, the Solver didn't require movement. But N was so tired, so very tired... Could he even do something like that if he wasn't at his best? No, he had to try. He couldn't fail V. He couldn't let her die, not after everything. Robo-God, why-

"Hey! Hey, calm down!" N barely registered Jax's words as his mind raced, mentally beating himself up as his mind raced to find a solution to everything that just happened. N continued to ignore Jax the second time, the third time, the fourth time, the fifth...

The only thing that prevented N from thinking further was the electricity. At this point, he welcomed it.

J internally cringed as she drove her sword directly into V's core. Not externally, though. She had to keep it up. The facade. The one thing that might actually get her and everyone else out of this robo-hell hole.

If it meant that N would never trust her ever again, that was fine. He could just revive his best friend anyways (N wasn't very discreet about the necromancy thing, like, ever).

J hoped that she looked malicious as she twisted her sword deeper into V's core, internally apologising to V all the while. Robo-God, she was never going to be trusted by anyone ever again after this. Not that she deserved the trust of anyone to begin with. Same old, same old.

Once J made sure she had finished V off, she retracted her sword and looked around the enclosure. It only took a minute before J heard the sound of a mechanised door opening. She made her way towards the sound and, lo and behold, there was a door leading outside of the enclosure. J carefully inched her way out, keeping an eye out for any signs of danger.

J slowly started to make her way down the hallway, the only things marking her progress being the small light fixtures hanging from the ceiling. At the end of the hallway was yet another door, which J opened with quite a loud creak.

The door in question gave way to reveal a small bedroom. It wasn't anything special: bed, desk, door to the bathroom, light, and nothing else. Frankly, with how J had just murdered the only person who might have remotely trusted her, she was surprised that she even got anything. Then again, whoever she was now "working" with had to be ruthless.

The second J stepped over the threshold, the door slammed closed behind her. J immediately tried to open the door again, but she appeared to be locked in. J considered torching the door or blowing it up, but that wouldn't have given a good first impression. J groaned as she realised she would probably have to hold off on all violent tendencies for the time being. Hey, if it was for everyone else... she could struggle through it.

There was no voice over the intercom. No instructions. No nothing. Without anything else to do or anyone else to torture, J sat down on her provided bed, buried her face in her hands, and finally allowed herself to silently cry.

"Extracting..."

"Extracting..."

"Extracting process complete."

Uzi almost immediately shot upwards in bed, almost as if waking up from a nightmare. A nightmare about weird drones in lab coats, being hauled away in a tacky truck, being forced inside a small room with only Caine as company...

Oh, wait. It wasn't a nightmare. Shoot.

The only thing was... Caine wasn't there. At all. Normally, even when he wasn't talking, Uzi could see Caine in the top right corner of her visor. No matter what he was doing, he was always visible. With him gone... Well, it certainly didn't bode well.

"Caine? You better not be trying to jump-scare me!" The last time Caine did that, Uzi nearly impaled her visor on a particularly sharp bit of wood. Thankfully, Doll was there to break her fall. Well, thankfully for Uzi. For Doll, it probably wasn't the most pleasant of experiences.

Uzi waited for a few seconds to see if Caine was going to respond to her, but nothing happened. Either Caine was really waiting for the right moment to send Uzi off the edge of Mount I'm-Going-To-Kill-This-AI, or he was actually gone. Uzi didn't know which one she hated more.

When Uzi finally got about to looking around her room, she realised that she was definitely in some sort of trouble. Threadbare bed, no windows, walls and floors in various shades of grey... Either Uzi was in a prison, or she had been kidnapped by a drone with very poor taste in decorating. As with the last decision, Uzi didn't know which one she hated more.

The only door leading out of the room (aside from the door which gave way to a disgusting bathroom) appeared to be locked shut. The material seemed impervious to anything physical that Uzi attempted to do, and Uzi knew better than to chuck a NULL in an enclosed space. Sure, she was a bit screwy, but not that screwy.

So, all Uzi could do was wait. And wait. And wait some more. Sprinkle some anxiety-inducing thoughts in between ("What if everyone was dead?" for example), and suddenly you had a recipe for a near full-on panic attack.

Robo-God, Uzi wished Caine would come back. Sure, he was insane, but insane was better than completely nothing... Maybe. Uzi still hadn't gotten to that front just yet.

Uzi nearly jumped off the bed when she heard her door open. She immediately readied her Solver, prepared to chuck the person opening the door if she couldn't find any weapons. And, before you ask, no, the bed was way too big to fit through the door, and Uzi was scared that throwing the toilet would accidentally coat her in whatever nastiness it had suffered through throughout its lifetime.

The drone that opened the door looked familiar... A bit too familiar, if you asked Uzi. The drone also didn't say anything, simply walking to the middle of Uzi's room and standing there. Uzi blinked once, then twice at the drone before making a break towards the open door. However, just as she was about to escape, the door slammed in her face.

"OW! WHAT THE [BLEEP]?!" Uzi held the front of her face, testing to see if her visor had been cracked by the impact. Thankfully, no damaged appeared to have been sustained.

"Come on now, Uzi. Swearing isn't the answer!" an admonishing voice called out. Uzi almost immediately recognised the voice as Caine, and looked up to the corner of visor, hoping to find the familiar ringmaster in his regular spot. But he still hadn't returned. Oh, robo-God, was she going insane?

For the next few hours (thank goodness for Uzi's internal clock), Uzi just walked around the room, keeping an eye on the new drone. They hadn't moved an inch since they first entered, looking more like a metal statue than a functioning being. They were dressed in what appeared to be a red coat and a hat, almost as if they were a ringmaster themselves. Uzi could almost make a connection between them and Caine, but that was too far of a stretch. Caine, inside of a drone body? Impossible. Uzi wasn't even sure if drone bodies could even have those kinds of personalities transferred.

Eventually, Uzi grew tired enough to crawl into the bed and attempt to get some sleep. As was natural, Uzi was haunted by images of her friends getting killed in gruesome ways, all of which climaxed when Uzi shot up in bed, breaking out into a cold sweat.

That was when Uzi noticed the drone in the middle of the room beeping and jerking around. Uzi carefully got out of bed, ducked under a stray arm, and walked around the drone to face them visor-to-visor. There appeared to be some sort of error message on the drone's visor, but it wasn't there long enough for Uzi to read through it. Instead, it was replaced by a set of eye-lights, one of which was tinted red and the other of which was tinted blue.

"Dang. You're alive." Uzi squinted at her new acquaintance, inspecting his hetero-chromatic eyes. She hadn't seen anything like that on a drone before, but then again, this probably wasn't a normal drone. If that was the case, however, then who was this?

Still, the drone didn't respond. Even as Uzi tried a variety of different tactics to make the drone respond (slapping them across the face was her favourite), every time she tried anything, the drone in front of her didn't respond. It was almost as if they were catatonic or going through some kind of update. Uzi knew how rough some updates could be, having had to literally carry Khan to bed on some nights where he had to go through a system refresh.

After about an hour of inspection/physical abuse, Uzi realised that she was tired again. She contemplated staying up and trying to make the drone respond to her action, but she soon came to the conclusion that nothing was going to happen. As a result, Uzi settled herself in bed, barely bothering to look at the drone as she closed her eyes. Eventually, Uzi drifted off to sleep...

"Good night, Oo-zee."

"Extracting..."

"Extracting..."

"Extraction failed."

"HOLY ROBO-JESUS CHRIST!" Uzi scrambled off of her bed, landing in a quite undignified manner on the floor. She stared at the drone in front of her, who somehow sounded exactly like Caine and looked exactly like Caine (if he were to be in drone form). And had it just called her... something similar to her name? Wait, but that was what Caine always called her...

"Well, there's no need for you to start screaming like that. I thought we were friends!" The drone began walking towards Uzi, causing Uzi to almost immediately scramble away. Sure, he sounded like he was Caine, but it could also just be a ploy for Uzi to let down her guard.

"Just-Just stay back for a second!" Uzi raised her hand in front of her, summoning her Solver. She wasn't actually planning on doing anything with it, considering that the only weapon was a fairly rickety bed, but it was nice to have the illusion of violence and control. Now, if only there was a way for her to change it from an illusion to reality.

Robo-Caine stared at Uzi's solver, his eye-lights turning downwards in a hurt manner. "Oo-zee..." He looked back up at Uzi. "You surely know that I'm the real deal, right?"

Trying to ignore her stupid feelings of guilt, Uzi edged farther and farther away from Robo-Caine, finally coming to a stop when she felt her back press against the cool metal of a wall. Uzi contemplated chucking a NULL at the door of the bedroom, but she didn't want to accidentally get pulled apart by the magnetic force.

"Look, I just need a second to... Gather my thoughts... Yeah." Uzi stared at Robo-Caine, and Robo-Caine did the same back. His red and blue eyes were certainly unnerving, considering Uzi hadn't seen any other hetero-chromatic drones in her entire life. Also, didn't Caine have blue and green eyes?

When asked this question, Robo-Caine simply chuckled to himself. "I guess you're right! Just a sec..." He appeared to be deep in thought for a second before his red eye glitched and turned green. "Is that better?" Yep, this was getting weirder by the second. Forget heterochromia, this thing could change parts of its code?

Uzi didn't really know what to think. On the one hand, she considered ignoring the fact that she was probably interacting with some sort of planted spy and finally having a pseudo-ally on her side. On the other hand, she also wanted to get her and everyone else out of her alive, preferably after finding the rest of the Circus members. And, on Susan's hand...

Wait a second.

"WHAT THE-" Uzi jerked away from Susan's head, forgetting that Susan was attached to her. She promptly began attempting to run away before realising that Susan was quite literally a tail and stopped, blush lines appearing across her visor for a fraction of a second.

"Missed me?" The same monotone, robotic voice echoed out of what Uzi assumed was Susan's mouth.

"Where the heck have you been?" It was true, Susan had been absent from the party's misadventures for quite some time. "I mean, yes, you're kind of useless aside from occasionally providing me a second Solver, but I would at least have had some kind of company aside from... This..." Uzi gestured at Robo-Caine, still unsure of what to think of him.

"If you really want to know, annoyed harrumph, that little artificial intelligence in your processor was acting as a firewall. I couldn't activate even if you wanted me to." Susan ended with a glare towards Robo-Caine.

"Wait a second, you could control what was going on INSIDE of me?!" Uzi turned back towards Caine. The craziness of this situation was just going up and up.

"Well, of course I could! I am an AI after all. I refrained from directly interacting with your processing and code, of course." Somehow, that did not ease Uzi's new nervousness. She did not want anyone flitting around inside her processor, just looking at all her memories like some weird, half-baked museum. Especially if that person didn't know how to understand social cues on any level.

"So... You're Caine?" Uzi stared expectantly at the other drone, scepticism laced throughout her voice.

"The one and only!"

Uzi didn't have time to mull over the situation any further, as yet another drone burst into the bedroom at that exact moment. It took Uzi a second to recognise the drone, mainly because the light from outside of the room was glaringly bright. However, Uzi knew it was J when she brought out the flamethrower.

"Okay! Listen up! I don't have time for games, so if any one of you steps out of line, you're gonna melt." J brandished the flamethrower as if to emphasise her affinity for pyromania. "Uzi is to come with me, and Caine is to stay in this room until we return. Do you got that?"

"Whoa, rewind for a second. What do you mean I have to come with you? You don't mean..." Uzi groaned. "Please don't tell me they managed to persuade you with some sort of position with little to no real importance."

"EXCUSE ME?!" J pointed her flamethrower right at Uzi's face. "If you must know, I am currently in a position of great power, especially considering that I've been given the responsibility of making sure that you arrive to where you need to go safely." J turned towards Caine. "I've also been given the responsibility of guarding this piece of artificial intelligence."

"Ooh, I've never been guarded before!" Not the right time for excitement, Caine.

"What do we say we try to obliterate her?" Susan whispered in Uzi's ear. Ever the little destruction mongrel, apparently.

Uzi seriously contemplated just letting loose on J, but she knew that N and V probably wouldn't like her hacking into their buddy like a block of soft metal. So, Uzi begrudgingly ignored Susan's urging and walked up to J, attempting to keep her face neutral.

"You better not have hurt the others." Uzi glared at J before stomping past her and out of the room. J struggled to catch up (Uzi was a fast speed walker, and there wasn't enough room to fly in the hallways), closing the door on Caine as he attempted to follow the two of them. Caine simply frowned in disappointment and laid down on the bed, left out.

"HEY! I'm supposed to be the one leading, not you!" J finally managed to get in front of Uzi, stopping both of them in their tracks as they turned to face one another. "Seriously, when will you learn to respect those who have authority around you?"

"Sure, 'cause I'm definitely going to respect the person who's actively betraying the people who consider her a friend." Uzi stepped closer to J, crossing her arms. "When are YOU going to learn that no one's ever going to respect you if all you do is change sides and attack your supposed friends?" J looked Uzi in the eye for a split second before walking in front of her, cutting the conversation short. Uzi scoffed in disbelief and walked behind the disassembly drone, somehow managing to ignore her urges to snap J's neck.

After a number of different halls and turns, J led Uzi inside of what appeared to be a gigantic computer lab. Dozens of drones all sat at computers, typing away on old computers. Like, the one's you could knock someone out with if you threw them hard enough. At the back of the room was a large screen which... showed the inside of the Circus?

"What in the world..." Uzi ignored J's demands to return to her side as she made her way over to the screen. The screen in question appeared to be showing an exact replica of the Amazing Digital Circus, down to the eye-blinding colours and all. It was quite amazing, really, especially considering the complexity of some of the assets.

What was even more amazing was the fact that Ragatha chased Jax across the screen, both of them screaming for quite different reasons. Ragatha appeared to be upset about something, and also somehow managed to find a comically oversized spoon to chase after the latter with. Either Jax was up to something again, or Ragatha was both really hungry and really angry.

"Uzi! Ugh, fine. Worker drones, please grab her." Within ten seconds, Uzi was being held down on all sides by the worker drones who were previously at the computers. None of them said anything, barely even making sound as they struggled to keep control of Uzi's thrashing body and Susan's head.

"Seriously?! You have an army of worker drones at your disposal? How is that fair?" Uzi tried to pull her limbs away from the worker drones, but to no avail. They were surprisingly strong for drones who spent most of the time cowering inside a bomb shelter. Maybe they had a gym?

"Life isn't fair, Uzi. Worker drones?" All the drones holding Uzi snapped to attention in unison, giving off an unsettling air that they might not be as sentient as Uzi might have thought. "Please bring Uzi over to the extraction station."

"The extraction what now?" No one answered Uzi's question as she was brought over to an oversized chair equipped with hundreds of little multicoloured wires. At the top of the chair was a small cord that looked like it inserted into the joint where a drone's head met their body. That joint, in turn, led to a drone's processor. That wasn't a good sign.

"Uzi, you're only going to make this harder for yourself if you struggle against me." Uzi, not liking being told what to do, struggled even harder. "Uzi..." J warned, which did absolutely nothing to stop Uzi's struggling. "Uzi!" Nope. "Ugh, fine. Just strap her in."

At almost impossible speeds, the worker drones shoved Uzi into the chair and secured her in with a bunch of leather straps, against which Uzi continued to struggle. However, with her hands free, Uzi now had free usage of her Solver. She instantly picked up one of the worker drone's computers, but before she could weaponize it, J melted it with her flamethrower.

"Uzi, I'm going to have to ask you again to stop struggling. You're not going to be able to do anything to stop this, so please stop trying to avoid the inevitable."

"YOU CAN NEVER TAKE ME!" Uzi began chucking computer after computer at J, all of which J was able to cut in half or melt into a puddle. Eventually, all that was left was a gigantic mess of metallic slop and a few dozen confused and lost worker drones.

"Fine. You leave me no choice." V walked over to some sort of intercom and pressed on a button. "Please bring in the remaining experiment." Remaining experiment? Who could that be?

It didn't take long for dread to fill Uzi's entire body as she saw N being wheeled into the room. Or, rather, N's body which was being suspended in some kind of clear fluid. He appeared comatose, and Uzi really hoped that he was just asleep and not... Well, you know, dead. That would have been absolutely horrendous.

"You see this?" J tapped the glass encasing N and his fluid. "High-voltage electric shocks can be sent through this thing every single minute. This means that, every single minute that you don't cooperate, our little friend over here gets a little jump-start to his system." To make clear her intentions, J snapped her fingers, which sent one of the worker drones to a panel on the back of the case. True to J's word, after a few button presses, blinding yellow light filled the glass case. When the light disappeared, Uzi could visibly see N's body slightly blackening.

"WAIT! Please, don't do this!" Uzi struggled against her bonds, everything suddenly closing in. Robo-God, she never should have trusted J. Of freaking course she went back to the other side the second she found any sort of power she could influence and therefore make a trip out of. Of freaking course she'd use the only thing stopping Uzi from completely kamikaze-ing this place off the face of the planet.

"You don't want him to get hurt? Then stop resisting." J didn't look as if she were going to change her mind anytime soon, forcing Uzi to contemplate only for a second before settling, defeated, into the back of the seat. A smile crossed J's face at Uzi's silent relent. A smile that, unbeknown to Uzi, concealed and entire processor's worth of pain and guilt.

Keep up the act. Keep up the act. Keep up the act. KEEP UP THE [BLEEP]ING-

J slowly walked over to Uzi, her smile becoming wider and wider the closer she got to the chair's panel. Finally, she reached over Uzi's shoulder, grabbed the cord in the chair, and shoved it into Uzi's joint. Uzi could feel a slight twinge of pain where the cord was inserted into her body, but overall she didn't feel anything.

"What are you going to do to me?" Uzi stared at J, expecting an answer, but none was given. Instead, J began tapping on the control panel, pressing a variety of buttons and switching a few levers on and off. Just as Uzi was about to ask her question again, everything went black.

Two seconds went by of momentary panic before the Circus materialised around Uzi once again. Everything was the exact same, just as Uzi had seen on the screen earlier. Uzi was about to call out when she noticed Ragatha and Jax running down the hall towards her. Ragatha was still holding the spoon, and Jax looked like he had been caught more than a few times.

"Ragatha! Jax! I'm back!" Uzi ran towards her digital friends, but they simply ran right on past her. Scratch that, right on through her. Uzi immediately felt her body as she was passed through, feeling solid metal and the inner workings of a regular drone. "What the robo-hell...?"

"They won't be able to see, hear, or touch you." J's voice ran throughout Uzi's processor, giving her quite a fright. Initially, Uzi thought that J was in her processor the same way that Caine had been a few days earlier, but no one was in the corner of her visor this time around. Maybe this had to do with the cord inside her neck.

"What the heck is going on?" Uzi looked up towards the ceiling, despite knowing that she would most likely find nothing of importance there.

"We're just carrying out a little experiment, the success of which is dependent on you." This was getting more suspicious by the second. "We have set up-"

"Who the heck is we?" Uzi asked.

"Shut up." Uzi rolled her eyes, J infuriating her as ever. "As I was saying, we have already set up a connection between you and the friend you call Pomni. What we need you to do is find Pomni and touch her. This will hopefully transfer her to your processor."

"Great, more random people in my brain..." Despite her protests, Uzi could practically feel J's expectant gaze watching her. Keeping in mind she controlled the safety of N, she made her way down the halls of the Circus, slowly re-familiarising herself with the poorly thought-out layout. Eventually, Uzi found herself in the main atrium of the Circus, in which was Pomni.

"Hey! Pomni?" Like with Ragatha and Jax, Pomni could neither see nor hear Uzi, no matter how hard Uzi tried to grab the jester's attention.

"Go on. Touch her." Uzi ignored the weird implications of J's instructions and reached out towards Pomni. Sure, Uzi had doubts about whether she would ever have her processor back to herself, but she was willing to share head space with an anxious clown if that meant N remained safe. With that, Uzi touched Pomni. They truly locked eyes for a second before everything went to black once more.

N had faded in and out of consciousness for what felt like days. After witnessing... something that he preferred to not think about, he had barely been able to keep it together. Sure, the goo that he had recently discovered the presence of around him prevented him from moving his arms and legs more than a centimetre a minute, but it didn't stop him from roiling around internally. Jax tried his best to calm N down, but nothing much could be done.

Eventually, N came to a point where he began falling asleep for long periods of time. Apparently, although N was able to sleep, Jax was forced to remain awake, meaning that N always knew what was going on around him. Not that much happened, however. Most of the time, N just floated there, occasionally getting shocked or hooked up to some machine through the goo. However, no experiment seemed to last for more than an hour.

And, almost always, N could hear the same mantra, over and over again:

"Extracting..."

"Extracting..."

"Extraction failed."

N didn't know what exactly the drones who were testing on him were trying to extract, but he had a feeling that he didn't want whatever was to be extracted removed from his body. Thankfully, everything seemed to fail, so there was that small relief. Now, if only N could escape.

One time, after what Jax explained was a particularly horrendously-timed nap, N found himself listening to a conversation between two drones in lab coats. They appeared to be talking about what Jax explained was an "extraction process". According to Jax, the drones were trying to find a way to remove the Circus members from Uzi and N's processors and place them back in the Circus. They had been successful with Uzi, but not with N.

"Now that we've established that normal drones are capable of hosting digital consciousnesses inside of their own processors, what are we going to do with this one?" One of the drones in lab coats gestured towards N, as if N was just an object instead of a drone that was capable of hearing everything around him. Yes, everything was muffled, but not incomprehensible.

"We'll continue experimenting. The damaged code does appear to be problematic, but we can circumvent it eventually."

"What shall we do with the worker drone and Pomni in the meantime?"

"We no longer have any use for them. Store them in the meantime, but know that they are eventually going to be scrapped." Both of the drones nodded in agreement and walked out of the room, leaving N motionlessly in shock.

"Damn. That doesn't sound good." Jax with the ever-astute observations.

They were going to kill Uzi. No. They couldn't, could they? Uzi was too strong. But... She might be holding back for everyone else. N couldn't let anything happen to her, not now, not ever. Although N couldn't say anything out loud, Jax could tell what N wanted to do.

"Come on, you know you don't have enough energy for that." N's eyes took on a sheen of defiance as he concentrated as hard as he could. "N, seriously, you're heavily damaged. You don't know what doing something like this might do to-"

With an explosion, the glass shattered, spilling the goo onto the floor. N also tumbled onto the floor, rising up after taking a few seconds to metaphorically catch his breath.

"Well. That's one way to break free." Jax took a second to look around the room. "What are planning on doing now?"

"Free Uzi."

"Revive V."

"And make sure that every other drone in this place [BLEEP]ing pays."

"Extraction failed."

"Conclusion reached."

"Subject corrupt."

"OH, WOULD YOU JUST STOP BLUBBERING ABOUT!" J screamed at herself in the mirror, having been pacing from wall to wall in her room for the past half hour. Technically, she was supposed to be transporting N to the disposal area, but she didn't know exactly why something so extreme (she assumed) was being ordered of her. She definitely wasn't going to throw N into the trash, hence her nervously pacing as if she were about to be blown up. Which, considering the nature of the captors, could actually be a possibility.

J banged her head against the mirror once again, an exasperated groan escaping her mouth. If only she hadn't developed... she hated to think about it... feelings for her friends. Seriously, how was she supposed to be menacing and intimidating if all she could do was save the people who probably hated her guts?! Sure, maybe her relationship with a certain drone was getting quite strained, but she could navigate around that. Surely.

Still, that didn't help her answer her problem: how the heck was she going to smuggle N out of what was probably a compound in the middle of nowhere? Unlike TV shows with no real plot, she couldn't just stuff him into a box and wheel him out discreetly. No, the drones around this place were uncannily good at spotting things out of place.

Of course, she could also always try to convince Uzi to help the process of escaping this place along, but she wasn't sure where she stood with the drone after the incident. J probably could have handled the situation with a bit more care, but Uzi was becoming difficult to manage and she needed something to make sure that Uzi cooperated. The guilt afterwards was absolutely crippling.

And so, J had two options: attempt to sneak out a most likely half-dead drone in the midst of dozens of hyper-aware worker drones, or join forces with her former enemy to burn this place to the ground.

Hey, she didn't have a flamethrower for nothing.

"Robo-Jesus Christ! Would you please stop screaming for one second?!" Uzi, in a strange parallel with J, banged her head against the wall. However, instead of having to deal with quite a big moral dilemma, Uzi had to deal with a small, digital jester who was currently screaming in the corner of her visor. The jury was still out on which was more headache-inducing.

"How can I not?! I'M IN YOUR &$*%&#^ BRAIN!" Ah, yes, somehow the censorship for the Circus members stuck with their avatars no matter where they went or where their data was being stored. It would have been tolerable if Pomni hadn't been shouting blotted-out profanities every other sentence.

"So?! Caine handled it perfectly well!" Uzi pointed directly at Caine, who was standing in the corner of the room. His eyes today were purple and yellow, a little change that the ringmaster had made a little morning routine. Once again, something that would have been tolerable if Caine's eyes didn't shine brighter than the sun every single time they changed colour.

"HE'S AN AI!" Pomni screamed back.

"UGH!" Uzi banged her head on the wall once again, turning around and sliding down to the floor as pain shot through her processor. "Why can't I catch a break for a minute..." Uzi whined, her head lolling to the side as she squeezed her eyes shut. "I do all I can for this stupid freaking world, and what do I get? Placed in this robo-hell hole."

"Hey, it's not so bad!" Caine called out from the other side of the room, attempting to cheer the teenage drone up. Evidently he wasn't used to Uzi's "let me brood" moments, as he continued talking even after being completely ignored. "You have a bed, you have two friends to keep you company..." Caine started counting off on his fingers. "You're still able to walk and communicate, you still have that weird triangle that you use to do magic tricks, you-"

"SHUT UP, CAINE!" Uzi and Pomni called out at the same time. Finally, something they could find common ground upon. Well, only momentarily, as Pomni proceeded to continue panicking, muttering to herself and occasionally having a nervous outburst. Was there such a thing as aspirin for robots?

"Rude!" Caine crossed his arms and looked away, attempting to look offended. Considering he hadn't yet mastered facial expressions using his new drone body, all he could really muster was a slight frown.

"AH, *%&^, IT'S THE BRAIN DRONE SCIENTIST THINGY!" Pomni screamed, noticing a drone slowly opening the door to Uzi's bedroom. Uzi, breaking through her momentary head pain, shot up and summoned her Solver. Susan, finally no longer being blocked by Caine's AI powers, also popped up behind Uzi, ready to use the weapons of sass and brutal observations should they prove to be necessary.

"Uzi...?" a familiar voice whispered. Uzi immediately narrowed her eyes, inching towards the door as the voice continued to call out for her. This had all the makings of a poorly thought-out trap. Sure, none of the worker drones technically knew how the Solver really worked, so Uzi could blast through them in a matter of seconds, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before she got caught again.

"HAH!" Finally getting close enough to reach the door, Uzi thrust it open and launched the bed inside the room directly at whoever was whispering through the door. The bed barely slipped through the constraints of the door frame, launching right into J and sending her flying straight down the hallway. Uzi, noticing J's momentary weakness and disorientation, took the opportunity to sprint past the murder drone and further down the hall, Caine following close behind.

"Wait! Uzi!" Uzi didn't wait to hear what J wanted to say. She couldn't even if she wanted to, considering that she was immediately tackled to the ground by one of those possessed worker drones. He was thrown off with ease, but by the time Uzi picked herself up off the ground, there were a dozen more to take his place.

"Which ones do you want to take?" Susan asked, her head whipping around to take in every single drone in quick succession.

"Why are you even asking? You can't exactly fight." Uzi received a light bonk on the head as a response, which, fair. But Uzi was also right in the sense that Caine was the only other person even capable of fighting alongside Uzi. If anything, he would manage to get Uzi killed before any of the worker drones even laid hands on her.

"Gasp! Rude. I shall have you know that I am perfectly capable of-"

"Okay, shut up." Uzi cut off Susan and ripped a ceiling light out of its fixture. It was one of those big, rectangular ceiling lights that one often sees in schools and the such, which meant that Uzi could use it quite effectively as a mallet. With her new weapon in hand, Uzi began methodically bringing the light up and smashing it down on the ground, breaking a few of the worker drones and disorienting dozens more. Wait... dozens?

As Uzi was fixated on one side of the hallway, smashing and bashing galore, another slew of worker drones inched behind her, somehow managing to avoid being noticed. When Susan finally noticed and alerted Uzi to the new threat, it was too late. They had covered every possible escape route that Uzi might have accounted for, meaning that Uzi was completely trapped.

"Um... Uzi? A little help here?!" Caine called out from where he was being lifted off into the darkness of a strangely dimly-lit hallway. Uzi whipped around and attempted to race after Caine, but stopped when she realised that she probably wasn't going to be able to barrel through what was probably a hundred worker drones. Unless...

"Caine, hang on!" Uzi summoned a NULL with her Solver, wrenching her arm back to prepare herself to sling the tiny black hole. "Three, two... huh?" Just as Uzi was about to unleash even more havoc, she saw a disassembly drone rise up in the dim lighting and start mowing down worker drones with twin machine guns. Was it N? Actually, it was more likely V. She had less of an aversion to mass murder nowadays.

"Looks like we are getting some help. Not that we needed it of course," Susan said, her head leaning closer to the silhouette off in the distance to see if it would come into a better focus. Uzi rolled her eyes at her companion's comment before picking up the broken shards of the ceiling light up off the ground.

"Let's see what these things' tolerance to glass is like..." With a flick of her hand, Uzi started a mini-hurricane of glass shards all around her, a-la-Jax. Turns out, these worker drones were made of quite solid metal. Still, that didn't stop the glass from forming notches and gashes in the drones' visors, rendering most of them incapable of sight. Soon enough, they were all stumbling around in the glass maelstrom, knocking each other over or running into the disassembly drone's line of fire.

"HEY! GACK! STOP IT! I AM NOT TRYING TO KILL YOU!" Caine screamed, scrambling down the hallway as the unknown helper (who was still at the end of the hallway, for some reason) started shooting at him as well. Uzi began waving her hands frantically.

"Hey! Don't kill this guy! N! Or are you V? Ah, who cares?! Don't-STOP SHOOTING, ROBO-GODDAMMIT!" Uzi screamed towards the drone at the end of the hall, who finally took heed and followed her orders. "Thanks. Anyways..." Uzi began walking towards the other drone, and vice versa. Of course, until Uzi realised that the person supposedly helping her was J. Then she started backing away. Quickly. Like, she almost fell over a dead carcass, she was going so fast.

"Wait! Uzi!" Uzi didn't want to hear J's excuses, she already knew where her former frenemy stood. She began sprinting in the opposite direction, Caine following right behind her. Once again, this only lasted for a second until Caine tripped over the dead carcass of yet another worker drone (seriously, you could barely see the floor through the bodies), landing flat on his face. Curse Caine and his poorly-timed moments of weaponized incompetence!

Uzi reluctantly turned around, cringing as she saw J slowly walking closer towards her. Sure, J looked as if she had been fighting the demon of depression for much longer than four days, but that could all just be an act to draw them all back into the trap. As such, Uzi slowly started inching closer to Caine, who was groggily sitting up in the spot where he fell.

"Uzi, please, you just have to listen to me-" J began.

"Do you seriously expect me to hear you out? Who knows what else you've done to us in here?! And besides, it's not like you haven't done things like this before..." Uzi crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes at J, making the latter squirm uncomfortably on the spot. Susan did the same, although without eyelids it just looked like she was staring at J as opposed to silently judging her and her poor decisions.

"Look, I get it, I'm probably not the most trustworthy drone in this room right now..." J made a quick glance towards Caine, but she was pretty sure that Uzi would still probably pick him over her any day of the week. "But you have to understand. We need to help N, and V, and... You know, just get all of us back home!" J threw her arms out, exasperated. "I swear to robo-God, I've spent the past four days quite literally killing the only people who trust me-"

"Wait, what?" Uzi cut in.

"Later. All so that we can find a way out of this together! I know, injecting Pomni into your brain probably wasn't the greatest idea I've ever had, but I was hoping that she would have some sort of map or memory of this place? Then again, she doesn't have any physical manifestation, so-"

"Hey, can be backtrack to the whole you killing someone?"

"No. Look, maybe Caine has some memory of this place! I mean, he's quite literally hooked up to the main computer's source code, and he's not just going to up and kill us for no reason. And then maybe we can find N with, like, some sort of mind map created by Caine, and then he can lead us to V so N can..." J trailed off at the last sentence, the look of guilt on her face intensifying tenfold.

"J..." Uzi said, voice tense. "What do you need N to do with V?" J didn't respond. "J?" Still no response, but J began to shift uncomfortably on the spot once again. "J?!" J couldn't even look Uzi in the eye. It took Uzi a second, but she finally got the hint. "What the actual [BLEEP] did you do?" The calm tone of her voice was unnerving, even unsettling. However, before J could even think about responding to the question (and robo-God knows what she would even say as an answer), a ground-shaking explosion could be felt coming from somewhere off in the distance.

"Hey, look! Something completely dangerous to distract everyone from the fact that this J character probably killed one of your best friends! Let's go investigate!" Caine started bounding off merrily in the direction of the explosion, momentarily distracting both Uzi and J from the tough conversation that they both knew they were going to have to have sometime in the future. Uzi narrowed her eyes at J before running off after Caine, J following close behind.

In the middle of the room that the hallway opened up into was what looked like a gigantic terrarium or zoo enclosure. Trees of all shapes and sizes formed some sort of mismatched forest, and the ground was covered in a carpet of neon-green grass. Evidently, this attempt at nature wasn't exactly natural.

The entire ceiling appeared to be a light source, white light beaming down upon the ground and reflecting off of it in turn, creating a sort of kaleidoscope effect. Except, of course, if you wanted to look directly down this kaleidoscope, you would completely burn your retinas and lose any semblance of eyesight you might've had before. Thankfully, drones weren't really concerned with retina maintenance. They didn't have any.

The only thing disturbing this way-too-bright artificial nature was a gigantic plume of smoke coming from one of the doors leading into the room. Wait, someone had set something on fire other than J? Great, she was starting to rub off on the friend group. Uzi could only hope that this wasn't going to escalate to complete arson. Then again, the only burnable things in the bunker (those being books) had already been burned to a crisp, so...

Uzi might have had slight ADHD.

"What in the world is that...?" Pomni asked from her corner in Uzi's visor, squinting at the smoke similarly to how Susan did so before (of course, with the use of eyelids). There appeared to be another drone emerging out of the smoke, causing Uzi to preemptively ready her Solver. Was she really going to have to deal with another onslaught of zombie drones?

Thankfully, Uzi did not have to deal with zombie drones, as N emerged out of the smoke. Except he was... glitching out? Uzi couldn't really find the right words to describe N's condition at the moment. Physically, he looked fine, but he also looked... frazzled? Depressed? A mix of the two? Either way, one of N's eye-lights kept on glitching out to the Solver symbol, and he was walking all staggered as if he were in a stop-motion video.

Still, despite all the glitches and potential radioactivity from the electricity from the lighting situation, Uzi tackle-hugged N. N's one working eye immediately lit up at the sight of Uzi and hugged her back, even tighter than normal. Uzi could survive for N just this once. Her ribs were strong. Oop, maybe not that strong, she needed to be put down.

N chuckled as he put a struggling Uzi back down on the ground, nuzzling his nose into her beanie. "It's great to see you safe," he muttered.

"It's good to see you safe, too..." Uzi slowly pulled away from N, becoming concerned when she saw his happiness turn into a complete mask of total range. Then Uzi remembered who she had entered the room with. Knowing N, he probably wasn't going to go after a random worker drone. Had something transpired between the two? Uzi had a sudden feeling of dread that she already knew what was going on.

"What are you doing here?!" N pushed Uzi behind him, standing in front of her like a shield. Uzi called out in protest, but was completely ignored. "Do you realise that I'm never going to forgive you?" Oh, robo-God... Uzi's stomach continued to grow heavier and heavier... Well, she had a pit where her stomach would probably go, so close enough.

"N, you have to understand-" J began. Once again, she was cut off by angry ranting.

"NO! What is there to understand about this? YOU KILLED V!" Uzi took a step back. She had been expecting this kind of outcome, but it still shocked her nonetheless. One of her best friends, dead. Uzi normally didn't react like this when someone died. But... this was different. They'd gone through so much. V had literally sacrificed herself for the survival of everyone else. Like... What was Uzi supposed to do? She dropped to her knees, eye-lights hollow.

"I HAD TO!" J screamed back, digital tears streaming from her eyes. "DO YOU REALLY THINK I WOULD DO SOMETHING LIKE THAT IF I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WOULD BE ABLE TO FIX IT?!" J started breathing heavier and heavier, becoming more and more panicked with each passing second. "DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT I WOULD BE SO SHALLOW AND PETTY AS TO TAKE UP THE EQUIVALENT OF A SLAVE JOB JUST FOR A SMIDGEN OF STATUS?! SURE, I'M A [BLEEP] JERK, CALL ME THAT ALL YOU WANT! BUT DO NOT THINK, FOR A DAMN SECOND, THAT I WANT ANY OF YOU GUYS DEAD!"

J appeared as if she was going to say more, but N started breaking down on the spot. "Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! ShUt Up! JuSt ShUt ThE [BLEEP] Up!" N gripped his head in his hands, his glitchy eye glitching out more and more the more distressed he became. Even J was brought out of her pain-induced rant as she noticed N on the brink of collapse.

"Hey... N...? You-" J tried.

"NO! I DoN't WaNt YoU! DoN't YoU GeT It? I [BLEEP] HATE YOU!" Uzi couldn't see or hear the explosion, just knew that, a second after finally regaining her senses, the entire glass terrarium was little more than dust. Had N done that? No, the Solver wasn't that powerful... What was going on?

Somehow, N, J, and Caine hadn't been so much as touched by the explosion, all of them standing there looking slightly ruffled. N was glaring at J with absolute malice, J was looking at N as if she were a lost puppy looking for forgiveness, and Caine was just plain confused. Uzi finally regained control of her limbs, standing up and assessing the damage that had just been caused around her. However, she was only able to take in the fact that everything appeared to be glitching like bad assets in a game when an entire flood of zombie drones filled the room.

"Hey! HEY! I AM NOT A TOY!" Caine screamed as he was promptly picked up by five different drones. They did the same with Uzi, making sure to restrain Susan's head as well. Couldn't be too careful. N and J both took off into the air, their wings separating from the land-locked drones. However, they didn't seem to care as they began to carry Caine and Uzi back to Uzi's bedroom. Without so much as a second glance back towards the disassembly drones, the zombie drones went back to business. Robo-God, if Uzi had to suffer through that again-

"DON'T. YOU. DARE." Almost immediately, all of the drones carrying Uzi and Caine dropped to the floor, their visors ageing from one to hundred within the blink of an eye. Pretty soon, at least ten drones completely lost function, becoming metal husks taking up room on the floor.

"What in the world..." Uzi looked towards the corpses then back up towards N. Just was exactly was he capable of doing?

"Uzi! Get up here!" J began to make her way towards Uzi, intent on helping, but N grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her against the wall.

"DO NOT TOUCH HER!" N screamed, his voice starting to glitch out as well.

"Hey, I'm just trying to-" J protested. Like a gag in a bad action movie, J was cut off once again.

"I SaId DO Not ToucH HeR-" N's voice cut out with a small click, and he floated in the air for a second, motionless. And then...

Bang.

When Uzi's optical sensors recovered from the complete white-out explosion that N somehow managed to cause, the entire facility around her had crumbled and been reduced to rubble. All of the worker drones had also vanished into thin air, almost as if they had never existed. The only drone that Uzi could see was N, who was standing on solid ground. Conscious, thankfully.

"N!" Uzi stumbled towards the disassembly drone, who flew towards her in return and wrapped her in his arms. However, the moment of love and appreciation (wait, LOVE?! NOOOOOOOOOOO-) soon ended as N let go of Uzi, his head whipping this way and that as if searching for something. And searching for something he was.

"V?! V!" N began diving into piles of rubble, presumably searching for V's dead corpse. Uzi could now assume at this point that V had been killed, either directly or indirectly by J. Uzi joined the search as well, helping N until the sun had finished setting. V was nowhere to be found. N was inconsolable, and it was another few hours before Uzi managed to convince him to turn back around and start making their way back towards the bunker. There was nothing left for them here, even Caine was aware of that. At least, that was what Uzi thought, before she heard J's quiet cry:

"I've got her."

She had her.

They were all going to survive.

It was pretty much update central in the following weeks after the institution incident. Aside from N managing to revive V, which Uzi thankfully didn't have to throw up a core for, Caine also somehow still had a connection to the rest of the Circus. Uzi wasn't exactly sure how Caine still had this connection, but she had been through enough to not question certain absurdities. This was both amazing (well, frankly, avoiding death of any kind was amazing) and also suspicious at the same time. Theoretically, once the computers holding the data for the Circus members were destroyed, the Circus in and of itself should have disappeared. Could the Circus still be alive in some other computer?

Of course, Uzi had no time to answer these questions, as she had to make sure that Caine didn't end up flooding the entire left side of the bunker.

For context, the second Caine returned to the bunker, he had been trying out the functions of his new drone body. Aside from spending way too much time staring at Uzi while she was sleeping (did he do this to the Circus members?), he had also had oil for the first time and narrowly escaped being burned to death. Hey, at least that time it wasn't J's fault.

In terms of N, however... He was still coming to terms with the fact that J had technically been trying to save everyone the entire time they were in the institution. Sure, both Uzi and V were initially sceptical that J was actually being genuine, but this paired with the fact that J had suddenly become much less violent had eased them into this new state of "normal". This left N all on his own, giving J the occasional wary glance as he passed by her in the bunker.

Which brings us to an event that has since been dubbed: Why The Robo-Hell Did We Decide Caine Would Be Great At Teaching Children?

Once again for context, Caine had also been attempting to help around the bunker as a sort of thanks for the other drones letting him stay there. No one really trusted him with anything industrial, and any and all art that he made looked like it was just a mangled copy of the artwork of others around him. The only thing he could do that didn't really involve a lot of effort was teach at the bunker's high school. The current teacher was more than happy to change jobs.

"And this, Caine, is going to be your classroom for the next few weeks," Uzi said, gesturing outwards towards the interior of the classroom she had brought Caine to. N lurked behind the two, glancing up and down the hallway.

Oh, yeah, N had also developed massive paranoia. How fun!

"Oh, wow!" Caine exclaimed as he passed the threshold and stepped onto the dusty floor of the room. His eyes slid from one end of the room to the next, looking in bewilderment as if the classroom wasn't nearly abandoned and falling apart. To each their own. "You mean that I'm going to be able to teach the youth of tomorrow the basic things the need to functions as best as possible in society?!"

Uzi stared at Caine blankly for a second. "Um... Sure." She gave him a quick pat on the shoulder before inching back towards the entrance of the classroom. "So... I'm just going to leave you in this hellho-I MEAN WONDERFUL NEW JOB! Classes should start in about fifteen minutes, so go and get prepa-"

"Wait, aren't you going to help me on my first day?" Caine asked, his cheerful tone still present but laced with uncertainty. Oh, robo-God, was he actually expecting her to help him teach a classroom full of teenagers? Wait, wasn't she a teenager? Even better! As a teenager, she knew all the horrors that high school contained!

"Well... um..." Uzi twiddled her thumbs before looking towards N, who just gave her an apologetic shrug. Uzi turned back towards Caine, who was waiting expectantly. "You see, I wasn't exactly planning on doing so..." She smiled nervously.

"Oh, don't be silly!" Caine reached out, grabbed Uzi by the arm, and dragged her back into the classroom. "I mean, with all the trouble you say I've been causing, surely you would want to make sure that I don't mess this up as well on my first day! Right?" Caine wrapped his arm around Uzi's shoulders, making his request more like a statement or demand. Yeah, Uzi wasn't going to get out of this one.

"Ugh, fine, I guess I can help you. Just for today, though! N?" Uzi turned towards N, who did the same. "Do you think you can go continue doing research on the Circus? You know, maybe try to find any foreign websites that we might have missed?"

"You got it, Uzi!" N gave her a small salute before walking off determinedly. Well, at least he was starting to go back to normal. Now, if only Uzi could find a way to sneak out of the classroom and do better things with her day. However, the apparent lack of windows in the classroom dashed any hopes of escape.

"Oh, splendid! So, what exactly are we going to teach these youngsters today?" Caine asked, his voice bubbling as he made his way towards the head of the classroom. The screens located there acted as the main source of note broadcasting. Of course, it was only used if the teacher was capable of internet searching good enough notes.

"Please don't say youngsters, it makes me feel older than I actually am." Uzi flopped into her usual desk at the back of the classroom, assuming the usual slump position that usually allowed her to avoid any potential attention from the teacher. "I'm just going to sit back here and let you do your thing. If you need me, don't."

"Well, that's not very positive of you!" Caine began walking towards Uzi's desk. "You're going to have to help me in thi-WHOA!" Caine jumped back in fright as the school bell rang overhead, signalling that there were five minutes remaining before classes formally started. Not that anyone except people who wanted to learn actually paid attention to the bell. If anything, it was more like a signal of freedom at the end of the day for the teachers and students.

Caine had just recovered from his initial shock when both he and Uzi felt the floor underneath them rumble. Uzi narrowed her eyes in suspicion. Normally the ground only rumbled as drones sprinted their way towards the cafeteria. Wait, V wasn't actually being serious when she said... Oh, robo-God, no.

The doors to the classroom opened with a loud bang, and twenty-five kids all scrambled into the classroom, fear etched across all of their visors. At the back of the mob was V, who was currently pointing her guns directly at any drone who happened to fall behind the main crowd. Supposedly, this was all a part of a "make worker drones actually smart" plan that V had been cooking up for long before she died temporarily. This mainly stemmed from the fact that V didn't want to have to protect everyone the second something slightly wrong happened. Uzi wasn't sure what word problems about watermelons (seriously, this school had way too many of those things) would do to help increase the collective IQ of the colony, but at list it facilitated some sort of productivity. And fear. Fear was also a big factor.

"Okay, kids! I know that you've all gotten used to dilly-dallying all over the place while at school instead of, I don't know, learning, but I'm here to make sure that you're capable of functioning like adults when you grow up! From now on, you're going to pay attention in classrooms and generally not be degenerate delinquents. You all have the list of rules I've kindly written out for every single student in the school, so if you break any of them... Well, you don't have any excuses. Have fun!" With a cheerful little wave, V closed the doors in front of her and hopped off happily, a new group of teenagers off in the distance screaming in fear as she came closer. Scratch that, fear was a massive factor.

Caine and Uzi blinked at each other for a few seconds before Caine regained his happy demeanour and began talking to the worker drones in the classroom. "Why, hello there, everyone! Who's ready to go on an adventure?!" Uzi could already tell the next few hours were going to be painful.

And so started four hours straight of Caine attempting to teach teenagers how to perform simple mathematics equations. You know, addition, subtraction, parabolas, that kind of thing. Like, sure, most teenage worker drones probably had some kind of processor deficiency, but they wouldn't even be able to function if they didn't know how to perform math.

Of course, then there was English, where Caine somehow managed to turn Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (still as timeless as ever) into some weird story about bombs and a gay love triangle. How Caine managed to turn Juliet into a Julian was beyond Uzi, but at least it was slightly more entertaining than parabolas. Well, less entertaining and more stressful, especially when Caine started to rant on and on about... well, let's just say some of the references were no longer implied.

Yeah, that had to be stopped. How the heck did Caine even manage to remove his censorship setting? Must've been turned off during the transition from digital AI to drone.

Next up was Science, a subject that thankfully couldn't be gay-ified in any way possible. Of course, in the absence of doomed yaoi, Caine had to find some other way to entertain the people he was still calling "youngsters". Elephant toothpaste? Too safe. Creating chloroform? Drones didn't really have senses to destroy. Caine settled on attempting to combine a bunch of different elements from the science locker and hoping for the best.

To this day, that class is still referred to as, "The Reason Why We Do Not Try To Drink Green Bubbling Liquid." Or, of course, the abbreviated version: "Torso go Boom Boom." The crazy thing is, Caine wasn't even the drone who drank the thing. It was some kid who really wanted an excuse to get out of class (not that he could be blamed, really).

Thank goodness Uzi's school only had four classes per day, otherwise she might have gone insane.

"Well, today has been productive, hasn't it?" Caine said as he waved off the drone who had drunk the green liquid, moving the halls via stretcher. Couldn't exactly walk if your upper half wasn't attached to your lower half, now could you? Caine turned towards Uzi, who was attempting to clean up the residual oil and green goo that was left from the initial explosion.

"Sure. I mean, at least I have a new way of killing people." Uzi held up the mop that she was using to clean up the goo. The head of the mop was half-melted off, which wasn't exactly a good sign. "Why, exactly, did you think making something like this was going to be a good idea?"

"Aw, come on, you can't exactly live without a bit of excitement!" Caine said, somehow completely ignoring the fact that he nearly killed one student and traumatised another twenty-four (and potentially awakened a few of them). "Didn't you enjoy the games that I set up while you were at the Circus?"

The first thing that popped into Uzi's mind was that one hospital adventure in which Jax first got possessed by the corrupted Solver, summoning tentacles and overall making life miserable. Speaking of which, it was the first mission Uzi went on after...

"Hey, why the heck did you dump me in that place anyways?" Uzi asked/demanded, glaring at Caine. She was forced to reiterate her question when Caine tilted his head in confusion. "That place where you dumped those weird eye monster things. Did I look like a weird eye monster thing?"

"Well, you have to understand, I didn't exactly know what was going on at the moment..." Caine nervously rubbed the back of his neck, averting his eyes from Uzi's glare. "I needed to make sure that everyone else wasn't going to get hurt, and-"

"In the process forced me to fight against a few dozen of those things."

"Okay, so maybe I made one mistake, but aside from that, wasn't everything good?" Uzi had to think for a moment, but only a moment.

"What about that one baking show that essentially started the chain of events that got us into that weird time loop thing?" Caine cowered backwards even further, and Uzi started to realise that she might have been going a bit too far on the AI. Sure, he hadn't made the best of decisions, but he also didn't really know better. He was just an inferior AI, after all.

Caine glanced down towards his hands, which were intertwined. "Was I actually good at anything?" Before Uzi could respond, the bell rang, and a new bunch of terrified students flooded into the classroom, V's face cheerfully bidding everyone good luck before turning towards the next group of lucky children.

Ah, gym, that one subject that didn't really work considering the gymnasium was still kind of trashed. You'd think that within the span of about a month, the gym would be repaired to some extent, but tables were still strewn all over the place and walls were pockmarked with gashes and deep grooves. The only things that appeared untouched were the speakers, which was probably N's weird technology necromancy doing its magic.

That still didn't stop Caine from attempting to turn the ruined gymnasium into yet another fun adventure.

"Well, considering that the gymnasium is still in a bit of disarray at the moment..." Caine scratched his chin for a moment before coming up with an idea. "Why don't we gamify cleaning?! Everyone is going to be split up into teams, each with a specific task that they need to complete! Whoever finishes first wins?" Caine glanced towards Uzi, who gave him a tense thumbs-up. Not that cleaning wasn't fun... Wait, cleaning actually sucked. The only reason why the drones didn't rebel immediately was because V's smiling face was peering at them through one of the gym door's windows. A constant reminder that they could all be killed within the span of ten seconds if V so pleased. A comforting thought, for sure.

The students all started to perform their tasks slowly, Caine watching over like some sort of game master on the stage at the end of the gymnasium. Uzi stood next to him, deemed the assistant supervisor for the "adventure". Hey, she wasn't going to argue against something that was going to get her out of doing work.

Everything was going quite smoothly, until N rushed into the gymnasium, sweeping past V in a flurry of excitement and what appeared to be glitchy cheering. V decided to follow her fellow disassembly drone inside the gymnasium, magically causing all the other drones to increase the speed of their work tenfold. V was great that way.

"Uzi! Uzi! Uzi!" N began hopping up and down on the spot like an excited chihuahua. It surprised Uzi that he was back to normal, especially considering how he was acting only a week before when he realised that J had killed V and was planning on killing her himself. The only reason why Uzi knew the latter was because he told her in a state of temporary guilt and confusion.

"What is it?" Uzi hopped down from the stage and made her way over to N and V, but stopped in her tracks when she heard static ringing through the air. Everyone else seemed to hear it, too, and stopped what they were doing to try and find the location the sound was coming from. After a few minutes of searching, the sound appeared to be coming from... N?

"What the heck is going-WHOA! GET DOWN! GET DOWN!" Uzi started screaming the second everything within thirty meters of N burst into flames. This had to be another of his weird outbursts, right? It was becoming concerning how often N did random things all because he still didn't have complete control over his Solver.

Caine, naturally, panicked much louder than everyone else, bordering on sounding like a cliche cartoon. He made a massive gasp for air (even though he didn't technically need to breathe) and then spotted a fire extinguisher nestled in a nook placed in a wall behind the stage.

"I'M GOING TO SAVE YOU ALL!" Caine raced towards the fire extinguisher, grabbed it, and... turned it on himself? Before Uzi could even understand the stupidity that was going on, Caine began shoving fire extinguisher fluid down his throat, a decision that would definitely come to haunt him later when the time came to remove excess fuel from his system.

"CAINE! WHAT THE [BLEEP] ARE YOU DOING?!" Uzi screamed, still flat against the floor as she tried to get everyone else out of the gymnasium.

"AREN'T YOU SUPPOSED TO EAT THIS TO BECOME FLAME RETARDANT?!" Caine screamed back, his voice becoming muffled as he tried to consume more fire extinguisher fluid than his system could handle. Small puffs of white began to escape from his mouth as he spoke.

"NO! THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO! WHY THE [BLEEP] WOULD THAT EVEN BE THE FIRST THING TO COME TO MIN-" Uzi was just about to finish when N accidentally set off another explosion, this one sending the room into complete darkness as smoke filled the air. More chaos ensued as the remaining students within the gymnasium fled, leaving Uzi, V, and N to clean up the wreckage. Thankfully, the fire was all bark and no bite, being snuffed out with quite little effort.

"Robo-God, that was chaotic," Uzi said, waving her hand in front of her to clear the last of the smoke. "N, are you okay?"

"Yeah... Sorry about that... Guess I can't get too excited, can I?" N chuckled guiltily, rubbing his neck with his hand. Hey, maybe that was where Caine got it from! Speaking of Caine...

"Hey, does anyone know where Caine went?" Uzi asked, looking around to see that she, N, and V were the only people left in the room. "He was eating the stuff out of a fire extinguisher a few minutes ago..." Uzi and the others began searching the gymnasium, but no luck. Even when the tried the rest of the school, none of them could find the whereabouts of the Circus ringmaster. When they finally reconvened at the entrance of the school, there was only one question to be had:

Where the robo-hell was Caine?

Good thing drones didn't really need to worry about oil pooling in a single part of their bodies, otherwise Caine would've been long dead from too much pressure in his head. Yes, he had been kidnapped after the fire in the gym (how was he supposed to know you were supposed to put the foam on the fire itself?). Yes, he was actively hanging upside down by a rope tied around his ankles. And yes, he had no freaking clue as to where he was at the moment. Wasn't this going to turn out to be a fun mystery?!

Caine had tried multiple times to call out to anyone who might be able to hear him, but nothing really happened. Sure, he continued trying anyways, expecting some kind of response, but at least he hadn't gone insane. Well... That was a bit debatable.

The passage of time wasn't exactly clear wherever Caine was being held, because: one, considering the fact that he was strung upside down, he wasn't able to make out much aside from the floor. Two, the room was pitch dark most of the time, so even if he could see something other than the floor, he would still be completely lost.

Note that the room wasn't cast in darkness all of the time. Occasionally, the outline of a door could be made out through sparse flashing lights. Not that the lights ever led to anything, but at least they proved that Caine hadn't travelled to yet another dimension, therefore further breaking the laws of physics and reality. Well, maybe the possibility wasn't ruled out entirely.

Speaking of the lights, Caine's head perked up as the outline of the door shone red once again. He braced himself for the light to go away once more, but this time, it remained on. Caine's eyes had barely adjusted when the door to his room opened, casting red all across the room. And forming a drone-shaped shadow in the light...

A long-haired drone with a Solver tail.

"Are you sure he's not just hiding away forever from the fact that he turned half a class of teenagers horny?" V asked as she followed Uzi down yet another hallway that looked like it had been abandoned decades beforehand. Grime was stuck almost anywhere, and V was pretty sure she'd seen a number of new, unnamed lifeforms.

"First, they were going to find something to be horny about anyways. That's nothing new for teenagers," Uzi said as she rounded a corner, wary despite the fact that she was probably the most deadly thing in the bunker. "Second, I don't think Caine's the type to just up and disappear for extended periods of time. I mean, he practically lives for affection and validation."

"That still doesn't mean he's hiding out... wherever this place is." V eyed a suspicious stain on the wall, hoping that it was just an oil stain. A... bubbling oil stain. Yeah, she was definitely going to catch some kind of virus down here, wasn't she?

"Well, we've checked most other places by now. N's checked outside the bunker, at least when he's not exploding himself out of the air..." Uzi trailed off, her concern for N once again rising up to the surface. Ever since the gym incident (Uzi still couldn't get Caine chugging fire extinguisher foam out of the dispenser out of her processor), N had been struggling to keep his Solver in check while experiencing intense emotions. At least it only happened when N felt extreme anything, but it was still quite worrying.

"We're also going to have to deal with that sometime in the future," V said, gazing out at the same time down the hall. "Hey, I'm pretty sure we're hitting another dead end." The duo continued down for a few dozen more metres, confirming V's suspicions: yet another hallway leading to absolutely nothing.

"Well, this sucks." Uzi kicked a stray can, her foot making a metallic clang as the can remained stuck to the floor. She hopped on one foot, wincing, before settling back down again. "Are there any other branches in this place?"

"Don't think so..." V did a quick mental check, going back on all the paths that she and Uzi had gone through. "Yeah, I've got nothing."

"Pomni?" Uzi asked to herself. "You remember anything?"

"Aside from, like, twenty potentially deadly substances just chilling on the floors and wall of this place? Nothing." Pomni had been trying to help with the search, but considering the fact that she was indefinitely bound to Uzi's processor, she could do little more than be some sort of personal receptionist. That is, when she wasn't having a complete mental breakdown. She'd been having a lot of those recently.

"I still don't understand what J meant when she said you'd have a connection to the Circus or something. I mean, it's not like you're attached to it anymore..." Uzi had also been thinking about that little piece of information, despite the fact that she had literally no way of figuring out whether Pomni had any connection to the Circus. And even if she did, she probably couldn't be used like a Caine GPS.

"Look, Uzi..." V clasped her hands together. "I understand that you're worried about Caine and all that, but what if he just got distracted by something else and is perfectly fine?" Even V didn't seem to believe her words, the relative levels of danger in their history quite prevalent to everyone. Nine times out of ten, if a person goes missing for a few days, they were either kidnapped or killed. Or both. Not necessarily in that order!

"We have to keep looking for him, though. He's supposed to be the key to figuring out what's going on, whatever that's supposed to mean..." Uzi began muttering to herself as she headed back the way she and V had initially came, retracting her steps and memories at the same time.

"Hey... speaking of missing people..." V walked faster to catch up with Uzi. "Does anyone know what happened to Doll after the cabin incident?" This seemed to capture Uzi's attention.

"I'm... Actually, I don't know. Where the heck is she?"

"Right here." Almost as if they were in a horror movie, Doll appeared behind Uzi and V, the lighting of the hallway making her much more imposing and scary than normal. It took Uzi all of her mental restraint to not launch something directly at Doll's face right then and there.

"GAH! WHAT THE [BLEEP]?" V jumped backwards, pointing a gun directly at Doll's head. "WHY THE HECK WERE YOU JUST SPYING ON US?!" Doll, however, didn't seem to be fazed by V's reaction at all. Figures. The person who's technically the zombie is the only one not completely on edge. Seriously, how did she manage to keep a straight face most of the time?

"Better question, how did you get back into the bunker?" Uzi narrowed her eyes at the other drone.

"Teleportation combined with cripplingly incompetent guards."

"That actually makes a concerning amount of sense..." Uzi had to gather her thoughts for a second before getting back on track with the conversation. "I'm assuming you heard us before, but just to reiterate: where the robo-Hell have you been?"

"Well, I was planning on returning to the bunker after getting answers from the four of you, but thanks to J and her trigger-happy flamethrower..." Doll shuddered slightly. "Well, I first had to ensure that I wasn't going to melt into a puddle."

"Surely that doesn't take two weeks, though..." V raised her gun once again, despite Uzi's stage-whispered protests against doing so. No need to scare off one of the only two pieces of proof that whatever was going on with N wasn't exactly natural.

"It doesn't. I've been trying to get anyone's attention for quite some time, but you all are royally masterful at completely ignoring people when they're trying to talk to you." Uzi had a quick flashback to the class that Caine taught. Now that she was thinking about it, had Doll been there? Her memories of that day mainly consisted of Caine chugging from the fire extinguisher, so she couldn't be one hundred-percent sure.

"Heh..." Uzi averted her eyes before realising she was getting distracted once again and bringing them back to stare Doll in the face. "Okay, so we might have been ignoring you for who knows how long, but do you think we can ask you for a favour?" Doll raised an eyebrow, which didn't necessarily mean that she was against the idea of helping. "So, I'm not sure if you know all that much about Caine, but he's kind of disappeared from the bunker. We've been trying to look for him, and... Maybe you could help us?" Not enough detail? Probably. But, apparently, it was enough for Doll to agree.

"Great. Now, let's get out of this place before we get infected." V led the charge out of the abandoned hallway, Doll trailing behind Uzi. Why? You see, she had to deal with... a little tail who for some reason would not shut up. It was a miracle that she hadn't come out to say something during the conversation everyone had just had.

A good thing, too, because Uzi would almost certainly have recognised its voice. Or, more accurately, her voice.

"Okay! Group meeting! Everyone please converge at the corner of the room, please!" It was the day after Doll had magically reappeared, and Uzi was desperate to see if anyone had made any progress. Hence why she was calling out to the entirety of the cafeteria as if social repercussions didn't exist for sudden outbursts. Then again, she was already known for being a bit vocal about pretty much anything, so this was the norm.

There were five people at the table: Uzi, N, V, Thad, and Doll (J wasn't allowed anywhere near anything flammable or melt-able, which probably should have ejected her from the bunker entirely, but the sight of seeing N sad was too much to bear). N and Thad had gone on their own separate searching mission at the same time as Uzi and V, which hopefully meant that they would have some kind of information to share.

"So, how's everyone doing with their Caine searching?" Uzi asked, maintaining a relatively positive demeanour despite the fact that there was probably going to be nothing. And, true to her suspicions...

"There's absolutely nothing," Thad responded. A bit of an odd addition to the group, considering he was the only one who wasn't an active safety hazard to everyone else, but considering the fact that he was the first one revived, he definitely had some part to play in this as well. Besides, missing people were infinitely more interesting than high school. "It's almost as if he just vanished from the bunker."

"Is there a chance that N accidentally blew him up while he was trying to keep himself under control?" V suggested. One could practically see N shrivel up slightly on the inside. The idea of him wiping Caine from existence because of his awry Solver had crossed his mind, but he wasn't willing to accept the fact that he might actually be the culprit in all of this.

"No, I think Caine disappeared after N's last explosion." Uzi recalled the events of the prior day. "I still remember his foam-filled voice attempting to give instructions to the other students. It stopped abruptly, but I thought it was just because he had managed to get out of the gym as well..." Uzi remained silent for another few seconds before raising her head again. "Is everyone sure that they found nothing?" Everyone nodded, even Doll, whom Uzi decided to make a part of the group considering she was also quite closely tied to the entire situation.

"Wait a second..." Thad squinted at Doll, making the other drone squirm in her seat. "Aren't you supposed to be dead?" Right. Not too many people actually knew that Doll had come back to life.

Doll looked from side to side before resting her eyes on Uzi, looking at her to come up with a plausible answer. Uzi, panicking, simply told the truth. "So... Things have been a bit crazy, and one of the main reasons why everyone's getting so stressed out is because N had weird powers that he barely knows how to control. One of those powers is some sort of necromancy skill, like what he used to bring you back to life. And Doll..." Uzi gestured at Doll, allowing Thad to connect the dots himself.

"You revived another drone?! How did you even manage to find her body?"

"Well, it wasn't exactly hidden..." Uzi still remembered watching N perform the ritual, lights erupting all over the place, her... Doing things that she would rather forget about, if that was ever to be possible for her processor. There was a really good chance that she might actually be scarred for life.

"I guess you are just capable of reviving whoever you want, aren't you?" Thad reached out his finger, most likely going to poke Doll to confirm her existence, but Doll pulled away before he could try. "How does the process even work, anyways?"

The conversation shift provided a great way for N to momentarily forget his guilt about potentially vaporising Caine as he explained (to the best of his abilities, at least) how he thought his powers worked.

"So, when I first did the thing with you, Thad, I didn't really know what was going on. Fluids kind of just... seeped back into your body? That feels wrong to say. Anyways, your core, heart thingy also reattached itself to your body. Supposedly, that's what caused you to revive. I wasn't there when you woke up." N added the last part in response to Thad's questioning eyebrow. "Now, with Doll, Uzi can actually corroborate with me. It was pretty much the same process, except this time..." N glanced towards Uzi. "Well, Uzi kind of had to regurgitate Doll's core in order for the thing to work. At least it proves that the core needs to be near the drone for the drone to revive!" Everyone paused for a second, the conversation now partially dead.

"So... What the heck are we supposed to do now?" V asked, not liking the dead end that the group was running into. "Continue searching? Or do we want to ask Pomni if she's figured anything about that magical connection you say J kept on talking about in the institution?" Thad's confused stare at Pomni's name made Uzi realise she needed to do a much better job at explaining things. He'd probably been lost throughout the entire conversation. Doll, too, now that Uzi was really thinking about it.

"I keep telling you, I have no idea what this connection thing is! You yourself said that it was probably just J speculating!" Pomni said, annoyed. And also distressed. But maybe that was just how she sounded normally.

"Yeah, nothing up there." Uzi tapped her head with her finger to add emphasis. "I think we should just take a break for a bit. Not for a while, though!" Uzi raised up her hands as N looked at her incredulously. He, too, wanted to figure out why there were Circus members just milling about in his and Uzi's brains. "Just enough for us to gather our thoughts and potentially find a new angle to approach this situation from."

And so ended the conversation, the lunch bell breaking apart the group as they all went to attend their regular classes. Uzi, being so mentally occupied from the mess of a situation she was in, slogged through the remaining three hours without really paying attention to anything. By the end of the day, she was so exhausted that she made a beeline towards her room and flopped on her bed, unconscious. You could tell it was bad, considering that drones don't normally feel "tired".

Uzi's near-dead sleep was broken when she heard something creak outside her bedroom door. Initially, she thought it was just her dad passing by her bedroom, but the creaking continued to persist. Now, Khan was a lot of things, but he definitely was not a bad repairman. It was quite rare to hear anything out of the ordinary in the house aside from floorboards settling and the occasional noise through the walls. Uzi, knowing this about her father, sprung up and readied herself to be attacked.

Uzi debated whether she should call out to whoever was standing in front of her door as she slowly inched her way towards it, but she decided against doing so in favour of the element of surprise. She waited one second...

Two seconds...

Three.

With a quick flick of her hand, Uzi used her Solver to wrench the door to her bedroom open, picking up a nearby lamp in her other hand. To her confusion, there was no one standing in front of her door. Heck, the floorboards barely looked disturbed. Uzi was just about to call everything up to exhaustion and conk out for the rest of the night when she saw something on the front of her door.

A note.

"Great. Let's see what creepy things this thing wants...," Uzi muttered to herself as she ripped the note off the door. She held it up to her face, the glow from her eye lights illuminating the words enough to make them legible.

"Three days time. Bring the male disassembly drone. Make sure no one else comes with you. If you succeed, you will get back who is lost."

"HELLO-MPH!" Uzi looked at N accusingly as he clamped his hand over her mouth.

"Are you insane?" he stage-whispered back. "We have no idea what's waiting for us here. The last thing we need right now is to give away our location and get surprised." N gave Uzi a warning look before removing his hand from her mouth. Uzi was tempted to try screaming again, just out of spite, but that wasn't going to help get anyone un-kidnapped (if that was even a saying).

It's kind of strange just how long time can feel sometimes. Uzi, for example, had just woken up N an hour ago to try and find traces of the mysterious letter sender, yet it felt like she had been awake for much more than that. Probably because whatever N was doing to trace the sender was boring to watch.

"Are you sure the guy was just here?" N asked, turning around to face Uzi.

"I quite literally heard the note being put onto the door. I don't think you can get any fresher than that, aside from capturing the guy." Uzi gestured back towards her family's living quarters. "You yourself said my front door's new peephole was new."

"Well, either way, this investigation's going nowhere." N leaned against the wall, in true American fashion. "You against going back to sleep and talking about this with everyone else in the morning?"

"Just you and V, though," Uzi warned, pointing at N and then in the general direction of the lovingly-named disassembly drone carnage corner-for all your destructive needs! "I don't like the idea that I might be getting stalked. Better to reduce the chances of us accidentally collaborating with the person doing... Well, whatever it is they're planning on doing."

"You sure you'll be okay?" N glanced towards the hallway behind Uzi, averting his eyes the second his mind began to wander. "I mean, we don't know exactly what this person can do..."

"Please, I'll be fine. Worst case scenario, I'll be fighting a worker drone with a wrench in the middle of the night. Remember, just you and V." Uzi gave a small wave goodbye before turning around and walking back, taking one last look at N before closing the door behind her. N chuckled to himself, waved goodbye to nothing, and walked back to his own bed. He was definitely going to need the sleep.

The first day of waiting is always the easiest in terms of actually waiting for something to happen. You haven't yet succumbed to boredom thinking about what might happen, and anxiety hasn't overtaken your mind yet either. This was good, especially when Uzi was put on teaching duty in place of Caine.

Yeah, so Caine had somehow managed to completely replace the previous teacher as a member of the high school staff and was supposed to have been teaching classes of students for the past few days. However, he had also been completely gone for the past few days, which was both a good thing and a bad thing. Sure, it meant that he couldn't go off on another Shakespeare sex crusade, but it also meant that Uzi was the only candidate left to teach. Why did she ever let N sign her up to be an emergency teaching aide?

The day started as usual, with screaming kids sprinting inside a classroom in order to get away from a murderous V. Guess nothing could put out that murderous glint in her eyes, not even death followed up with resurrection, like, a week later. This girl was dead for a week, and yet somehow she was the least mentally affected out of everyone! WHY?!

Once everyone had sat down and V gave her "I won't kill you today" seal of approval, Uzi put on the only thing that she knew would keep the students occupied for long enough to fill out the school day: a good ol' handy re-Captcha. If N could be stumped by these things, the students would be stumped. And, true to Uzi's suspicions, the re-Captcha remained unsolved for the entire seven-hour school day. Point, Uzi. Bonus point, as it also allowed her to formulate some sort of game plan outside of walking about looking for anything suspicious.

"Why is it just the three of us looking again?" V asked not even a minute after beginning her search with Uzi and N. "At least three other people know about Caine, why not include them?"

"We don't exactly know who sent Uzi the note in the middle of the night..." V raised an eyebrow at N.

"Uzi?" V turned towards the purple-eyed drone. "You do realise that everyone here right now is capable of killing any and everyone in this bunker in a variety of different ways, right? And don't try to hit me with any of that 'murder is wrong' lesson, as I've seen you do it. And with glee." Dang, Uzi was planning on using the murder is wrong scapegoat. Also, had she murdered with glee before? She hadn't really taken time out of her day to inspect what she looked like while disembowelling.

"It could also be those weird zombie robots, you know!" Uzi's suggestion sent an immediate shiver down her spine the second she took a second to really think about the implications of something like that happening. The prospect of what appeared to be an entire army of zombie drones breaking into the bunker looking solely for her, N, J, and V was terrifying. Especially after the whole death incident. That one was still quite fresh in a few minds.

"Let's hope that we don't have to deal with those things. It was weird enough to wake up and see you guys searching through the rubble of a building, I don't need a further description of whatever forced J to run a sword through me." V continued walking down the hall, occasionally breaking down a door and scaring the drone family inside. Not that it was intentional, of course. Maybe...

"But you need to be able to defend yourself if you see those things." Unlike V, who had miraculously been taking her death and revival quite well, N was still hard-set into protector mode, even when it wasn't particularly needed. Yes, Uzi knew that fire was dangerous! (She could practically hear the irony in her words.)

"Bunch of worker drones with weird, far-off looks in their eyes and synchronous movement, right? Simple." V happily skipped ahead, jump-scaring yet another drone family as she thrust open another unmarked door. Uzi and N shared a look, Uzi shrugging her shoulders in resignation before following V to make sure that no one died from fright. She had seen it happen before, it was a real problem. N looked at the other two drones for a second before catching up with them, shaking his head worriedly.

"Guys, I don't think we're going to find any-WHAT THE?!" V jumped back immediately after opening the umpteenth door of that hallway. She pointed a gun at what appeared to be a worker drone corpse hanging from the ceiling, a rope the only thing keeping it from tumbling to the ground. The body appeared to have been dead for quite some time, rust forming small patches of brown and orange around joints.

"V, I think you can put the gun down. It isn't going to come back to life." Uzi slowly used her palm to push the nozzle of V's gun downwards, slowly walking closer to the dead body. While the presence of the body itself wasn't unnerving (Uzi practically killed for a living at one point), the state of the room around it was. All the shelves appeared to have been pushed to the back of the room, creating as much room as possible for slowly-melting bags of ice. If the purpose was for preservation, they weren't going to do the best job, per se.

"Did someone accidentally murder someone else and is now trying to keep the body from going bad by freezing it?" V pushed past Uzi and stared closer at the body's joints and parts. "I get that humans had to put their bodies in cold places so that they wouldn't rot immediately, but I don't see the purpose of drone's doing the same thing..."

"Um... Maybe we should take the body back? You know, for research purposes." N rubbed the back of his neck, keeping a considerable distance away from the corpse. It was kind of like with animal meat: N couldn't bear the sight of a corpse, but he happily slurped up dead body parts if they were prepared right. Paradoxes all around. Including the meat analogy...

"Yeah, sure. How are we going to move this thing around without alerting anyone...?" Uzi turned towards the other two, at a loss for ideas. N didn't look like he wanted to touch the corpse at all, leaving V to hoist it over her shoulder. Just as Uzi was accepting the weirdness of having V lug a dead body back to her bedroom, V shouted:

"LUNCH COMING THROUGH! TOUCH IT AND DIE!" N stared at her incredulously. "So they don't question it." It was certainly one method of informing and clearing a crowd at the same time. Before Uzi knew it, they were all standing in her bedroom, the corpse just as dead as before. Come to think of it, it was starting to look familiar...

Turns out parents have a thing against being out for countless hours trying to search for the whereabouts of a missing friend, as both Nori and Khan (with Nori's encouragement) flat-out stopped Uzi from missing her curfew. Uzi reluctantly had to turn in for the night, leaving the dead body to rot in a corner of her closet while she slept. How she managed to do so without worrying every other second that something might happen to the body, no one knows. Probably a mix of trauma and too much pirated horror anime.

"OH ROBO-JESUS!" The second day began with a bang (quite literally) as Uzi fell off the far-right side of her bed. Why would she do such a thing, you ask? Well, the dead body somehow managed to flop out of the closet and lean right at the foot of Uzi's bed. As a result, when Uzi woke up, she was greeted with the smiling face of Ms. Rust and Decay. Fun times all around!

"Uzi?! What the heck are you doing?!" Nori called out from wherever she was in the house. Uzi could hear her mother scuttling closer to her bedroom door, and the last thing she needed was Nori mom-ing all over the secret operation she had going on. Hence why Uzi slammed the door shut in Nori's face the second she came into sight. Well, she slammed it after Nori tried to open it, which may or may not have sent Nori sailing across the hall.

"I'M CHANGING!" Uzi could feel the frailty of her words, as technically she had no reason to either change or be embarrassed about changing. There was nothing really... underneath for Nori to see. They were drones meant for public use, couldn't exactly be rocking anything childhood trauma-inducing.

Still, despite the obvious signs that Uzi was up to something morally suspicious, Nori left her alone, mumbling something about hormones as she made her way back to the kitchen. Uzi let out a sigh of relief and glared at the dead body, which innocently stared off into the distance as it slowly scraped its way down the foot of Uzi's bed.

"You are so lucky we need to figure out whatever's going on with you." Uzi thought for a second. "Wait... why the heck are we even focusing on this at the moment?! Ice?! Robo-Jesus, we really need to get out priorities straight..." Uzi buried a groan in her hand before slowly getting prepared for the day, tiptoeing around the body so as to not disturb it.

Uzi once again had school duty that day, and V put a stop to just occupying the children with re-Captchas. Something about educational value and how teenage drones are the future of the colony? Uzi just tuned her out for most of her angry rant.

Cue seven hours of math, science, and moderately SFW Romeo and Juliet...

"Where the robo-hell did you put the body?!" V whisper-yelled, trying not to become the focus of Nori's wrath. Potentially the worst thing of all bad things regarding the dead body had happened: it had somehow managed to disappear. IT COULDN'T EVEN MOVE! Uzi groaned as she checked her closet a third time, as if she would find some sort of special shadow that would contain the dead body.

"I swear it was propped up in my room right there..." Uzi pointed behind her towards the foot of her bed, which still had skid marks from the morning. "I know N didn't revive the thing, so where the heck did it go?!"

"Well, we have three hours to search..." N looked up towards a clock, noting the time as well as the point at which Uzi would be forced to return home. "Not a great amount of time... And we really should be looking for Caine."

"Well, yeah, but my Mom's also going to kill me if she finds out I'd been sleeping with a dead body-" Uzi realised her mistake the second she saw the weirded-out faces from both V and N. "Sleeping NEXT TO a dead body, me in THE BED, the dead body IN MY CLOSET. Also the fact that I've been interacting with a dead body in the first place."

"So, we're going after the dead body?" N asked. Once all three of them nodded in agreement, they set off, all going as a single group. They kept themselves on guard because, as their mere existences have proven numerous times, if a dead body was romping around the bunker, something bigger was going to happen.

Such as oil trails. Oil trails weren't generally a good sign, no matter how one looked at it. Especially oil trails that led farther and farther away from the centre of the bunker.

Of course, that meant it had to be investigated. Because murder investigations could never appear safe, could they?

Uzi hadn't even realised that it became night-time (and WAY past whatever curfew had been set up for her beforehand) as she, N, and V continued following the oil trail. Uzi wasn't even sure whether the oil trail was from the body of the dead drone or from another unfortunate accident, but according to V, the trail of oil was getting fresher and fresher. Uzi wasn't sure whether to take that as a good sign or a bad sign. Probably a bad sign, considering that dead bodies didn't generally bleed fresh oil. At all.

"It feels like we've been doing this for hours..." V complained, leaning down to take in another whiff of the oil. "Are we sure the body was dead when we first found it? Because I'm pretty sure this oil is coming from a living drone."

"Nearly positive," Uzi replied. "I mean, that thing was hanging and blacked-out. I would've been surprised if there was any life left in that thing."

"Then this may or may not be from the body." Once again, the prospect of that was unsettling, to say the least. Uzi did not need to deal with literal zombies alongside N's revival thing and the figurative zombies from the institution. Enough zombies!

"Hang on..." V began to pick up the pace, leaning downward and resembling what elementary-school kids used to call a Naruto run (whatever the heck a Naruto was). Uzi and N followed close behind, nearly running into V when she stopped abruptly in front of a door. Uzi was about to question V's sudden dog-like behaviour when she saw red light flash from underneath the door. Yeah, that was way too suspicious to ignore. And it appeared as if the oil trail went underneath the door, so even more suspicious! Yay!

V mimed breaking the door open with her hands, which Uzi could only nod to. What was a better way to get the jump on a target aside from smashing down their living room door? V counted down from three before running back, gaining momentum, and drop-kicking the door. N charged in, guns ablaze, while Uzi rushed inside behind him.

N stopped shooting willy-nilly immediately after noticing who he was shooting at: Doll. She had barely managed to erect some sort of force field to stop the bullets from tearing into her metal. Uzi, skimming over Doll and barely registering her presence, noticed the dead body from before on the ground. It appeared to be in some kind of summoning circle, which didn't exactly bode well for Uzi. And behind Doll...

"Caine?" Uzi asked, noticing the ringmaster for the first time cowering behind Doll. Caine appeared as if he was about to say something, but Doll cut him off.

"You read the letter. You give me what I want, I give you what you want." Uzi raised an eyebrow, prompting Doll to gesture downwards towards the corpse. "My mother. Revive her." Ah... that's why Uzi found the corpse so familiar. It was Yeva!

WAIT, IT WAS YEVA?!

As Uzi tried to process the fact that she had slept near the dead body of her... well, she wouldn't exactly say friend (but whatever), she saw something emerge from behind Doll. Wait, that was nothing to worry about, it was just a Solver head.

"Come on, slave, listen to her!"

OH, ROBO-GOD, IT WAS KAREN.

N and V both just stood there, attempting to take in the scene for themselves. It was certainly something to behold. Uzi was surprised she was able to keep herself together. Like, on the outside, she just went, "Uh..." Whereas, on the inside...

WHAT THE ACTUAL ROBO-HELL IS GOING ON?! WHY THE HECK HAS DOLL SPROUTED KAREN?! WHAT IS SHE DOING WITH THE DEAD BODY OF HER MOTHER?! WHY HAD EVERYONE JUST SPENT THREE DAYS TRYING TO FIND THE LOCATION OF SAID DEAD MOTHER?! HOW DID SHE EVEN MANAGE TO FIND THE DEAD BODY?! WHY IS CAINE HIDING BEHIND HER (Doll, not the dead body)?! WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE THE ENTIRE EXSITENCE OF SANITY'S SLOWLY FADING?! WHY IS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-

"You don't happen to have an abridged version of whatever the heck you want us to do, do you?" Uzi asked, glancing between Doll's battle-ready stance, Karen's head floating beside her, and Yeva's dead body splayed across the floor. An interesting sight, to say the least.

Doll raised an eyebrow before sighing. "Your disassembly drone," she started, pointing towards N, "is capable of reviving deceased drones, yes?" Doll paused, expecting an answer. N, not really understanding what was going on, just nodded in agreement. "I am simply asking you to bring back my mother. Do so, and I'll give you back your... Very creative friend." Creative might have been a little bit of an understatement.

"And what happens if we don't?" Uzi asked, more a declaration of defiance than a genuine question. Sure, being contrarian probably wasn't the best move to make, but she needed to see what exactly she was playing with here. Knowing Doll, this situation could very quickly devolve into a strangely well-thought-out war zone.

"Simple." Doll summoned her Solver and picked Caine up off the ground by the neck, holding him in midair while he struggled against his restraint. "I snap his body in half. And then again. And then again. Like a piece of origami." Strange yet effective image. Uzi immediately began wracking her processor for anything she could do to try and not turn Caine into a metal crane.

"Okay, so refusing isn't the best option at the moment..." Uzi side-eyed N, who appeared to be doing some thinking of his own. "You know, now would be a really great time for someone to but in, don't you think?"

N took the hint and stepped forward, summoning his own Solver. Doll contracted her Solver in a warning, but that didn't stop N from grabbing Caine by the feet and tugging him away from Doll. Doll immediately tried pulling Caine back, starting a reasonably demented (that's a new word combo) session of tug-of-war. The price of losing? Either one side losing Caine or both sides accidentally ripping him into his torso and legs respectively. Frankly, Uzi wasn't in the mood for gluing Caine back together.

While Doll struggled against N's pulling, Uzi sneaked up behind her. However, what was supposed to be an epic take-down turned into a one-sided screaming match as Karen threw herself right in front of Uzi.

"HEY! Back attacks are not in good sportsmanship!" the Solver head cried, her tone of voice bringing back memories that made Uzi shudder involuntarily.

"Wait a sec-KIDNAPPING isn't good sportsmanship!" Karen didn't have a response to that, so she settled on bonking Uzi on the head, missing most of the time but occasionally hitting her mark. Uzi, knowing that she wouldn't be able to stop Karen from hitting her via her Solver, settled on slapping Karen every time she missed.

Hence the scene that was set: N at one side of the room, Doll, Karen, and Uzi at the other, and Caine hanging in midair from two Solvers. A scene that, according to Nori, looked more like it belonged in an animated series rather than real life.

Why would Nori have an opinion on this, you ask? Well...

"WHAT IN ROBO-GOD'S NAME IS GOING ON HERE?!" Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked in the direction of the voice. They were forced to turn their heads down when the realised that said voice was coming from a heart scuttling across the floor towards them. Somehow the commotion had managed to attract Nori, both confusing and mildly concerning her.

"Uh..." Uzi glanced towards N, who couldn't give her much more than a shrug. Uzi turned back towards her mom, cringing slightly. "So... What exactly does this look like? To you?"

"That you managed to let Caine get kidnapped and are now tugging him all across the room in an attempt at freeing him," Nori replied.

"Okay, so it's exactly what it looks like. Is there any chance-"

"COULD SOMEONE PLEASE LET ME DOWN FROM HERE?!" In the shock of being found out, everyone forgot that Caine was still hovering above the ground, slightly stretched out from all the tugging and pulling that had been going on earlier. Caine tried to struggle out of the Solvers again to no avail. The best he could muster was a little dance that looked similar to how a worm moved.

"Caine?! How did you..." Nori did her best attempt at a glare at Uzi. "What the robo-hell did you do?" Uzi finally remembered that Nori didn't technically know about Caine's presence in the colony (in spite of all the shenanigans he'd gotten up to within the span of a week). The story that she had been given was that Doll had returned to the bunker shortly after Uzi and everyone else had gone out looking for them (a complete lie), and that everything was absolutely fine (yet another complete lie). Yeah, Uzi had dug her grave deep.

"Technically? Nothing in relation to Caine being in a drone body. Everything else...?" Uzi didn't finish her sentence, partially because she didn't really have a good way to shorten "oh, I've just been helping Caine around the colony and figuring out why he's being kidnapped". The main reason, though, was that N accidentally let go of Caine, his attention directed towards Nori. In other words, the perfect moment for Doll to start sprinting past Nori and down the nearest hall she could find, flying Caine in tow.

"DON'T LET HER GET AWAY!" Uzi completely disregarded her mom's protests against running away as she sprinted after Doll, N following close behind while drawing a gun. Nori, being a glorified mechanical spider, was forced to scuttle after them at a drastically reduced pace. It was safe to say that Uzi and N were soon out of sight, leaving Nori fuming and thinking of ways to punish Uzi after the entire predicament blew over.

Now, Uzi wasn't very fond of referencing old TV shows and movies from the human era (pirating anime was COMPLETELY different, and you couldn't tell her otherwise) of the planet, but if someone compared the ensuing chase scene to a scene from Scooby Doo, then she would have to reluctantly agree. You know, because it was exactly like a chase scene from Scooby Doo.

Aside from the fact that Doll had the ability to teleport literally anywhere in her line of sight, she had also dragged Uzi and N into the bunker's main storage room, which was notorious for being like a maze. Well, now it was a moving maze, as Doll was able to use her Solver to randomly move shelves, boxes, and other potential obstacles.

At one point Uzi was pretty sure she and N were accidentally running away from an advancing Doll, and there was another point where they came across a drone that was presumed dead for ten years after going missing. Uzi decided not to mention her husband remarrying.

And, because there weren't enough things to annoy and distract Uzi from her ultimate goal of keeping Caine alive, Pomni also began screaming somewhere in the middle of the chase. Unlike Caine, Pomni decided to follow a self-implemented sleep schedule, which allowed Uzi a few precious hours of being alone in her head. However, Pomni had the tendency to get startled by any and everything when waking up, such as with this situation.

Could you blame Uzi for quite literally picking up N and chucking him into the sky, screaming, "KILL HER! KILL HER NOW!" N, thankfully, knew when Uzi was being serious about murder (which was disconcertingly most of the time), so he ignored her orders and simply tried to keep and eye on Doll and Karen as they made their way through the storage room.

"Uzi! They're about to leave!" N called out, watching as Doll tried brute-forcing her way through the secondary entrance to the storage room. Something must have been in front of it, though, as Doll found herself struggling to open the door.

"What direction?!" Uzi called back.

"Ah..." N took a second to orient himself in terms of how Uzi was standing. "Northeast!"

"Get ready, glitch!" Uzi whipped her hand out in front of her, throwing a NULL that ate any and everything in its path for a twenty metre line. When the NULL finally disappeared, Uzi had a relatively unobstructed path directly to Doll. "Wait, that actually worked?" Uzi had been half-expecting to blow up half of the storage room, but this was a much better outcome. Especially if it meant she wouldn't have yet another thing to talk with her mom about.

Uzi began sprinting after Doll, who continued beating herself against the door while Karen frantically tried ways to distract Uzi. The best she could come up with was using the Solver to sideswipe Uzi with one of the remaining storage shelves in the room. Uzi managed to stop herself before she became a pancake, but the delay between Uzi getting her bearings and shoving the shelf out of the way with her Solver was enough for Doll to break through the door.

After another ten minutes of more Scooby Doo shenanigans (efficiency evidently wasn't a necessity for whoever mapped out the bunker), Uzi found herself in front of a building that was all too familiar. N seemed to remember where they were as well, narrowing his eyes and lowering his stance closer to the ground.

Doll had gone back to the babies. Anyone remember the elementary school?

Uzi sighed, a good idea of what was going to happen coursing through her processor. She didn't really want to deal with another round of baby-slinging, but she kind of needed to if she ever wanted to find Doll again. Making as little noise as possible, Uzi stepped over the threshold of the elementary school entrance, N following close behind.

"Do we call out for her or try to surprise her?" N asked, eyeing any and all corridors within his line of sight.

"Calling out will probably just get us pelted..." Uzi looked around for any sign indicating where Doll might have gone before looking up. "Let's see if we can get the drop on her. Literally." Uzi sprouted her wings for a second, propelling herself upwards and onto one of the ceiling rafters. "I'll be our eyes in the sky." Uzi stage-whispered to N, who nodded in agreement and started towards one of the main hallways. Uzi followed him, crawling along the beam.

Somehow, Uzi actually managed to get bored hanging from the ceiling rafter like a demented monkey. The elementary school was already deserted, and N wasn't helping with his hesitance to walk forward. Still, Uzi toughed it out, matching N's snail pace as she looked out for Doll, Karen, or Caine. Preferably Caine, but she would take what she could get.

Due to her alertness, Uzi was also the first one to hear the babies giggling. No, it wasn't like a baby being tickled and having fun kind of giggling. It was like the giggling the protagonist hears in horror movies before almost being slaughtered by whatever titular murderer is chasing after her. Why the babies in the daycare were giggling, Uzi didn't know, but the abrupt stop in giggling made the situation even more concerning. Especially when the same thing happened another nine times: baby starts giggling, creepiness sets in, baby stops giggling abruptly, horror sets in.

"If you see a baby, shoot," Uzi whispered to N, drawing upon her ultimate knowledge on how to deal with babies. "I don't care if it looks cute, you turn that thing into Swiss cheese. Extra holey." N looked reasonably horrified at Uzi's request, but he would thankfully not have to focus on the psychotic tendencies of his best friend (girlfriend? It was still confusing to the both of them) as something scuttled out from the darkness of the hallway. Uzi initially took the sound as Doll accidentally missing a baby throw, but somehow this situation was much worse.

Uzi had flashbacks to N and V going full-on murder mode, X-crossed visors and everything. The baby that was barrelling towards N looked quite similar. Scuttling around on spider legs like Nori, a baby appeared out of the darkness and started making its way towards N. Its entire visor was a bright yellow, essentially making it a flashlight in the darkness. A very scary, arachnophobia-inducing flashlight.

"N. N!" Uzi tried to call out to N on the ground, but he was having none of the "shoot the baby" plan. His inherent kindness was infuriating at times, especially considering he was literally built for murdering things. He shouldn't have been giving babies a pass!

"I'm not shooting this thing. It's probably just distressed..." N turned away from Uzi's spot hanging from the rafter and knelt down in front of the baby, which was rapidly getting closer to him. "Hey there, buddy! What are you doing out of-GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!" The baby, having finally gotten within jumping distance of N, launched itself at the disassembly drone's face. It immediately started trying to make dents in N's head and break his visor, latching on for dear life whenever N tried to rip it off.

"N, I swear to robo-God..." Uzi left her sentence unfinished as she dropped to the ground. She took a bit longer than usual to ready her Solver (hey, she wasn't going to waste good entertainment), but she was eventually able to launch the baby off of N's face and back into the corridor it came from. She was about to reprimand N for not blasting the baby into smithereens when multiple sets of clacking came out of the hall.

"You don't think..." N said, the recent trauma still fresh in his mind.

"Knowing that Doll has Karen, I'm pretty sure I know." The clacking got closer and closer, and eventually nine yellow lights could be seen emanating from nine spider-like baby bodies. More giggling could be heard coming from deeper within the elementary school, which didn't bode well. Doll had, regrettably, become one with the babies.

"Are we going to have to kill them?" N asked, attempting to manifest a "no" as an answer.

"Probably." N's shoulder's slumped. With a sigh, he swapped his hand for a gun.

"I am going to be in so much trouble..." N muttered to himself as he let hellfire rain down upon the babies, bullets pinging off of the floor and the babies' bodies. They, naturally, cried out in pain, creating a cacophony of what sounded like children screaming. Any babies that were capable of making it past N's spray of bullets got an idea of what Uzi's soccer ball felt like when she was a hyperactive nine-year-old. In other words, they were punted. Hard. Most of the time into the nearest wall.

"You know, if we weren't trying to save Caine, this could actually be a pretty good stress-relief exercise," Uzi commented shortly after punting yet another baby back into N's bullet stream. "I mean, obviously we wouldn't be trying to kill babies, but it would be nice to let out some inner frustration."

"Can't you just, I don't know, scream into a pillow or something?" N asked, using his Solver to stop a baby crawling on the ceiling from dive-bombing Uzi. Back with the others it went. "I'm sure stress has outlets other than physical violence."

"Eh, not really for me." Punt. "I mean, the last time I got really stressed I became an eldritch demon, so... Yeah, violence checks out for me."

"Yeah, but that first transformation wasn't really under your control." N Solver-ed a broken rafter, using it like a baseball bat to smack around the babies a few times. "You've gotten better at managing your emotions so that you don't accidentally become a threat to the entire colony, but sometimes... Well, you need to find a healthier way to deal with negative emotions."

"And how do you think I should-Wait, are there more of these things?" It almost seemed as if the number of babies Uzi and N were holding back had been quadrupled, numerous yellow lights dancing across the walls and ceiling as babies were thrown around, picked up, and slammed into each other. It was a miracle that N hadn't run out of bullets yet.

"What is she doing back there..." N contemplated something in his head for a second before coming to a conclusion with obvious reluctance. "We're getting nowhere with this. How about we just blast these things to the sides and sprint like mad?"

"I like the way you think!" Uzi launched one final baby back into the fray and gave N a thumbs-up. N stopped shooting at the babies, reverting his gun back into a hand. Just as the babies were about to team up and launch themselves at Uzi and N, N's visor flashed completely yellow for a split second. Without warning, dozens of green Solver symbols picked up the babies and held them against the walls, floor, and ceiling.

"Let's go!" Uzi ignored the fact that N was currently using much more Solver power than she had ever mustered and ran after N, who had sprinted ahead of her. Presumably, the Solver symbols were keeping the babies in place, as Uzi couldn't hear the sound of clacking on the floors anymore. Uzi was about to ask N whether he was overextending himself when they finally came across the room in which Doll appeared to be performing demonic rituals on the babies.

Towards the far end of the room, Doll was picking up each baby in the nursery one by one. Some sort of yellow-red light emanated out of the baby before the baby took on a form exactly like the spider-babies from before. Almost all of the babies had already been turned, and Doll was working on converting the last three or four. She hadn't yet noticed her company.

Uzi brought a finger to her lips before crouching down behind one of the baby cots, N doing the same after registering the implication of the hand motion. Moving as stealthily as possible, they darted to and from baby cots, slowly getting closer and closer to Doll. The plan would have worked, too, if a meddling spider-baby didn't tackle Uzi from the side.

"Uzi!" N cried out, clapping a hand over his mouth a second too late. Doll had noticed N and Uzi, who both stood up in their respective "battle" stances (Uzi only doing so after launching the spider-baby attacking her clear across the room). Doll (and Karen by relation/attachment) immediately began backing away towards the nearest exist, which coincidentally has a couple dozen spider-babies waiting to attack.

"You ready for this?" Uzi asked, flicking her eyes momentarily towards N before readying her Solver.

"Ready as I'll ever be." N summoned his own Solver as well, but it fizzled out into yellow light within a second. N tried it again, but it was like trying to light a faulty lighter-it turned on for a brief second before fizzling out. N continued to whip his hand back and forth, trying to summon his Solver, while everyone else watched on in a mixture of boredom and confusion.

"Um... N? Maybe you should be-" Uzi was cut off by N suddenly collapsing to the ground. Frantically, she knelt down to check on N, but jerked backwards when he started jerking and seizing up on the ground. "N? N?! What the heck are you doing?!" Uzi tried reaching out to help N, but she was thrown across the room by...

a green Solver?

As Uzi recovered from being smashed against the wall, she saw N slowly rising, his back facing her. She tried calling out to him again, but stopped herself after noticing the eerie way N was holding himself. Turned out remaining quiet was the way to go, as N bent over backwards, joints and metal audibly cracking and breaking. Uzi barely had time to scream as N lunged at her, yellow light blaring from his visor.

"What in the world...?" Jax muttered to himself as yellow light started to cloud the corners of his vision. N had been doing some sort of weird snapping thing with his Solver, and it looked like it just broke in the middle of everything. Jax was about to ask something directly to N, but judging from the way N's vision was jerking all over the place, N wasn't going to respond. Still, he could try.

"N? N, what the heck are you- And we're on the ground. Great." N collapsed to the ground, body going limp almost as if it were dead. Yellow light continued to cloud the corners of Jax's vision, getting brighter and thicker the longer it remained. As such, it was with yellow-clouded vision that Jax saw N jerk up from off the floor and somehow bend over backwards to stare at Uzi.

Yeah, that was definitely natural and not something nightmare-inducing, for sure!

"N! What's going on?!" N didn't seem to have control over his own mind, and neither Jax over his. His thoughts started to get fuzzier and his vision more yellow as he watched the scene in front of him unfold. The last thing he saw before being completely taken over by yellow (strange description, yes, but it served its purpose) was N lunging toward Uzi, Uzi's form recoiling in fear.

Jax's last thought?

"Is this me?"

"N!" Uzi managed to jump out of the way just in time, narrowly avoiding getting shredded into little pieces by N's claws. Wait, claws? Warily taking a closer inspection at N's contorted body, Uzi noticed that his features were becoming more and more like how she got when she first did her demon transformation. Just, you know, sharper. Much, much sharper. Why couldn't she grow claws? Unfair.

Doll watched in horror at the other end of the room as Uzi narrowly dodged N time and time again, his claws only ever grazing her metal once. Still, the amount of damage that Uzi suffered from just a touch was all Doll needed to know that N's new form was not something to be messed with. She tried to make a break for the door, but a green Solver closed it almost immediately. When she tried to open it with her own Solver, nothing happened.

"Please don't tell me you choose now to malfunction," Doll said, looking towards Karen with a warning glare. Karen, completely ignoring the tone of the room, huffed in disbelief and turned away from Doll. She didn't even need to speak, she made her offence at such a statement so obvious. Doll just rolled her eyes before turning back to the fighting forms of Uzi and N. It wasn't looking the best.

"N, I swear to robo-God, if you end up accidentally killing me because you've lost control again..." Uzi muttered, holding her scratched arm with her free arm. It was almost like Uzi was made of paper, with how deep the scratches could go with just the lightest of touches. They must've also been painful, as Uzi was barely able to get out of the way of N's next lunge, wincing every time she was forced to move her arm.

After another few seconds of this anxiety dance, N finally managed to latch on to Uzi, biting her directly on the forearm. Doll winced, closing her eyes. She was reluctant to look at what was happening, but then again, she'd been toting around her dead mother's mangled corpse for who knew how long. Reluctantly, Doll opened her eyes.

Wait...

Why was she blushing?

Why. The. [BLEEP]. Was. Uzi. Blushing?

WHY THE-

Now Doll had a legitimate reason to look away (as if the last reason hadn't been legitimate in and of itself). It was then that she finally noticed that Caine was still floating in the air, suspended by Doll's Solver. Yes, he looked half-traumatised, but other than that, he was completely fine! Now, what kind of plan could Doll come up with to-

She started beating N with Caine. Like, literally using Caine like a human-sized baseball bat to smack N across the room. Doll knew she probably could've summoned another Solver to use a desk in Caine's place, but that would've taken too much time and concentration. She needed to stop whatever was happening right at that moment. For everyone's sake... And also to stop whatever was happening in front of her.

While N was busy being the ball in Doll's solo game of tennis, Uzi managed to crawl her way over to Doll, her arm barely hanging on by a thread. She quickly nodded as a form of thanks before turning back towards N, who was slowly becoming harder and harder to hit for Doll. Turns out being able to contort one's body into unnatural shapes could have its benefits, such as ducking underneath flying worker drones.

"You are a sick and twisted individual," Doll said, not even deigning to look at Uzi's offended face as it turned into one of extreme embarrassment. Uzi began to ask Doll to bury this information deep inside the recesses of her processor and never let it see the light of day as long as either drone lived, but Doll interrupted, saying, "We need to get out of here before we're all killed. Let's go." With that, Doll unceremoniously smashed N through a window with a well-timed Caine smack. She then smashed through another window leading into a separate room and vaulted through, dragging Caine (who was more than half-traumatised at this point) with her. Uzi limped behind Doll, pushing herself through the window as well before speed-walking after Doll.

"Why are you helping me?" Uzi said, barely keeping up with Doll's surprisingly fast pace. "I mean, weren't you trying to attack us a few seconds ago?"

Doll glanced backwards before turning around a corner. "It'll do me no good if the only drone in this place that can revive the dead is glitched. We're finding a way to stop this, and then you're going to help me." Uzi began to protest, but Doll waved Caine (who was still suspended in mid-air for some reason) as a reminder of what would happen if Uzi didn't cooperate.

"So, this entire predicament is because you want your mom back?" Uzi asked.

"Exactly. Unfortunately, N has stopped performing that function out of fear of blowing up again. A crossroads that I had to get past some way or another. Hence..." Doll let Uzi finish the sentence in her mind. The intentions were clear enough.

"You do realise that there were plenty other options for letting us know you wanted N to revive Yeva?"

"Would you have said yes?" Uzi didn't really have an answer to that. Yes, N probably would have helped Doll out of pity at some point or another, but no one really knew how far the bounds of N's powers could go before he went haywire again. Based on what was happening at the moment, N probably would've gone feral even if he'd decided to help Doll.

"Also, one more thing... Karen?" The Solver head sprouting from Doll's new tail turned towards Uzi. "What the heck are you doing here?"

"Putting it simply? Infection." Uzi had really hoped that maybe she'd just been hearing voices weirdly and Doll had produced her own Solver entity (which would be an entirely other problem), but Karen speaking really put the nail in the coffin. "Every time N revives a drone, a little bit of me is added to them as well. Hence why I'm able to move between drones."

"Wait, what about-" Uzi was interrupted by N crashing through the door at the end of the hallway. Uzi immediately panicked and used her good arm to summon her Solver. Doll did the same, her hue of red flashing yellow for a quick second before settling back to normal. "As I was saying..." Uzi said, slowly starting to inch backwards. "What about the glitched powers? Do you have them as well?"

"Glitched? What are you talking about?" As the conversation went on, Uzi started to become worried by the fact that N wasn't advancing whatsoever. Stock still, he just watched the other drones in the room talk. "If you're referring to the random explosions that N would sometimes create, then no, I haven't done anything like that."

"Why haven't you tried-" Seems the world really didn't want Uzi asking the important questions, as a bunch of spider-demon babies crashed through the door behind N, forming a line like they were trained warriors instead of, you know, children. "Doll?" Uzi asked, her voice becoming more frantic. "Please tell me you're controlling these things and planning on ambushing N?"

Doll's furrowed eyebrows said it all. As Doll started snapping her hand back and forth (her Solver glowing yellow each time she did so), Karen began making weird noises. With a final beep, she declared, "It appears as if all glitched individuals have gone haywire." Wait, wasn't Doll a glitched individual?

Uzi didn't even wait to check if Doll was okay as she started cracking and bending over backwards, sprinting like heck in the other direction as she heard the sounds of transformation happening behind her. As she continued sprinting down the hall, Uzi made a mental list of all the drones revived by N. Thankfully, it was quite short: V and Thad. Just avoid those two, gather up as many other people as possible (who could fight, of course), and rain damaging-but-not-deadly hell upon N and company.

It had been a while since Uzi had mentioned she hated her life, but now seemed like a good time.

The metallic scuttling across the walls and ceiling were the first indicators that Uzi was about to be attacked. The second indicator was her getting smashed into a wall by a feral Doll, the yellow light from her visor momentarily blinding Uzi. Wait, could the second thing be counted as an indicator if it was an attack? Wait, why was Uzi even thinking about this?! SHE WAS GETTING KILLED!

Scratch hate. Uzi loathed her life.

"Doll! Do you really have to do-" Uzi screamed in pain as Doll bit (yes, bit) through the remaining pieces of metal and strands of wire holding Uzi's arm together. Tossing the remnants of the appendage aside, Doll stared right at Uzi, visors merely inches apart. Doll remained completely silent as Uzi panted in pain, the stump of her arm leaking oil onto the ground.

"Doll..." Uzi tried shimmying out of Doll's grip, but that only made the drone grab onto her tighter. Just when Uzi thought she was going to become food...

"¡SUELTA A MI HIJA, PERRA!" Wait, why the heck was Nori speaking in Spanish? How did she even manage to bypass Uzi's translators? Then again, considering all that Uzi had just gone through within the span of approximately five minutes, a bit of processor damage was likely. Either way, Nori launched a bowling ball right at Doll's head, throwing her to the side and leaving a sizeable dent.

"Mom!" Uzi grunted out, sinking against the wall down to the floor. Nori scuttled over to her, keeping her eye on Doll's motionless form on the ground. "Why are you speaking in Spanish...?"

"I needed something to do, and made the mistake of downloading Duolingo. Now I'm stuck getting little green birds dancing across my visor if I miss a day of lessons. On the bright side, I'm semi-bilingual now!" Nori seemed to forget Uzi's half-dead state on the floor, evident by her sudden change in tone as she stopped talking about the Duolingo owl. "We need to get out out of here..."

Nori began building a sort of stretcher system out of a discarded blanket and two metal beams that hopefully weren't keeping the ceiling up. Once the makeshift contraption was finished, Uzi slowly climbed on, barely finding a comfortable position before Nori began lifting her towards the exit door.

"Do you remember... the Crucifix Patch...?" Uzi asked, mentally begging for Nori to speed up in the case the demon-babies or demon-N returned.

"How could I not? The thing was chucked at my face and messed around with my processor." Nori gently pushed Uzi through the doors feet-first, barely keeping them propped open enough to get Uzi all the way through.

"Do you remember how to create it...?" Nori stopped for a split second before continuing down the hall.

"I mean... Maybe? It was a long time ago, you have to remember."

"No, YOU have to remember..." Uzi could slowly start to feel herself slip into unconsciousness, as characterised by her suddenly having the emotional intelligence of a five-year-old.

"Look, if I can remember anything, I'll tell you. But in the meantime-" A crash sounded out from behind Uzi, but Uzi couldn't crane her neck far enough to see what was happening. However, she could safely assume that it was either Doll waking up or N/the demon babies coming to her rescue. Nori doubled her speed, barely making sure that Uzi could fit through the next set of doors before crashing through them. Metallic clangs sounded out all around the mother and daughter, giving Uzi the unnerving feeling that she was little more than prey at the moment.

Even still, she didn't have time to think over what was going to happen to her if Nori couldn't get to a safe space in time, as the pain in her arm combined with the exhaustion as a result of the near-constant Solver use caused her to slip into unconsciousness. The last thing she could hear appeared to be some sort of shrieking battle cry...

"CRUCIFIX!" Uzi shot up from where she was sleeping on the floor, a meagre blanket the only thing between her and the cold ground. She couldn't really remember what she had been dreaming about... Biting, maybe? And also a chase with a gigantic, green owl holding a axe covered in oil.

"Uzi, I already told you, I'm working on it!" Nori called out. Uzi squinted her eyes as she adjusted to the darkness of the room. In the corner was Nori, working at a laptop sitting on the ground. Nori must have been doing something particularly intensive on the computer's processing system, as it was whirring loud enough to be mistaken as a jet plane. Sometimes Uzi wondered why the technology humans left behind was so inefficient at self-cooling. Thank goodness the planet was the equivalent of a gigantic freezer, or pretty much anything electronic would have been fried at this point.

At the other end of the room was J, who wasn't really doing anything aside from taking the occasional glance through a slightly-cracked-open door. Uzi stared at the disassembly drone for a few seconds before catching her attention. Although Uzi expected to see a face with some level of anger to it, all Uzi could really see was exhaustion.

"What happened...?" Uzi asked, reluctantly deciding to know how she'd gone from a scene in a horror movie to what appeared to be a storage closet.

"Well, N was about to snatch you out of the air..." Nori began.

"When I crashed in and shot him straight between the eyes," J added. Nori seemed content with J taking control of the story from here on out, as she turned her attention back to her laptop, which Uzi could swear was hovering slightly off the ground. Wait, that was probably just the massive ache in her processor. "Didn't really do much, but it shocked him long enough for your mom to float you out of there. By the way? You're not discreet at all. The entire colony could hear screaming." Uzi felt blush lines rising on her visor. "Anyways, I tried to refrain from using the flamethrower, because we all know how that's ended, but then a bunch of weird spider baby things began attacking me. So... Yeah. Aside from N and Doll, they're all puddles on the floor."

"Why does that feel so in character for you?" Uzi cringed away from J's withering stare. "Sorry. Bad timing. Just... Why are you helping us, exactly? I mean, we haven't really been trusting of you lately... Actually, we haven't been trusting of you ever."

"I swear, N must have done something to my processor when I was asleep..." J groaned into her hand before continuing. "While you have all acted as if I'm a mass murderer-"

"Which you are." Yet another withering stare.

"ANYWAYS. N was missing, V was beginning to act strangely, and when I tried to find you, the centre of all bad things in this place, you were nowhere to be seen as well. It wasn't hard to put two and two together, especially considering the circumstances." Better deduction then what Uzi probably would have been able to do in that situation.

"And so... Mom's now trying to build the crucifix patch again?" Uzi turned towards Nori, who grunted similarly to how a person would say yes. At least, that's what Uzi was able to gather. Uzi raised her arms above her head to stretch when she realised that she had arms to stretch. As in, more than one arm. She quickly brought her previously-severed arm in front of her face, making sure that she wasn't hallucinating (a very real possibility).

"You can thank the excess amount of body parts you guys just have laying around," J said. "Wasn't too hard to weld that back together with a few well-timed lasers." Uzi was too excited to even worry about the fact that J had been waving lasers around her for who knows how long. She jumped up, suddenly full of energy.

"That's great! Now, all we need to do is-" Another crashing sound cut Uzi off (it was starting to become a trend at this point), and a feral Doll jammed herself into the barely-open door. J's quick reflexes were the only thing preventing Doll from crashing in completely, the door being held closed by a single hand. A single hand paired with another hand that, if nothing was done soon, were going to give in.

Was there a word harsher than loathe?

"THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU!"

Admittedly, not the words that Uzi had expected to come out of her mouth when she grabbed the presumably-finished crucifix patch and launched it at Doll's writhing form. Well, it did fit the situation at hand...

Uzi's thought process was immediately dashed when the patch clinked off of Doll's visor and clattered to the ground. Everyone just stopped for a second, staring at Uzi. Heck, even Doll looked like she was silently judging Uzi, through all her zombie-ness and stuff.

"Um... Oops?" The break in the awkward silence brought Doll's wrath back in tenfold as she thrust herself against the door, doing her best to break through past J and get to Uzi. Nori quickly scuttled over to the crucifix patch and picked it up with her Solver, whirling it around while she inspected it. Uzi knelt down within earshot of Nori to hear whatever she was mumbling under her breath.

"That's odd... Getting smacked in the face worked for me last time..." Nori narrowed her eye before dashing back over to her laptop, which had barely started cooling down before the fans turned on with gusto. "Maybe, considering the virus-like qualities of this mutated Solver, I need to make a few adjustments..."

"Why weren't you able to make it work the first time?" Uzi asked, gesturing towards J's struggling form. Doll had managed to punch a hole through the door right next to J's head, through which Doll was now trying to grab something for leverage. Not the best situation for J to be in, to say the least. At least Doll hadn't thought of using the Solver just yet.

"Uzi. Honey." Nori gestured for Uzi to get closer, which she did. "You were asleep for an hour and a half. Thirty minutes of which were spent trying to make sure you weren't going to be armless, which, in hindsight, was probably a waste of time, but whatever. I ONLY HAD ONE HOUR!" Uzi flinched back, Nori's voice suddenly rising in volume drastically. "Next time you try building one of the most complicated pieces of machinery you've ever seen based on a hazy twenty-year-old memory. A ver qué te parece entonces." Ending with something that still somehow managed to get past Uzi's language translators, Nori turned back to her laptop and began writing something that looked suspiciously like the green lines of code used in cheap hacker scenes. Well, if it worked...

"Nori? We're probably going to have to pack up and go!" J tried pushing backwards with all the force she could muster, successfully pushing Doll back a few inches before she shoved herself at the door again, this time creating quite the sizeable dent. J gestured at this new piece of evidence to provide emphasis. "Not going to be able to hold this much longer!"

"Good thing this is portable..." Nori used her Solver to pick up the computer, somehow using it at the same time to hit the keyboard. She then nodded at J, signalling the disassembly drone to bust out of the closet

And so she did.

Literally. There's still a Doll-shaped hole in the wall directly opposite from where the door of the closet was, slightly blackened around the edges because of the massive explosion J set off. Unfortunately for J, this also set everyone inside the closet (i.e. the only sane people left in the bunker) rocketing in the opposite direction, creating their own holes in the wall. The worker drones now use the site as a memorial/reminder to never blow things up in confined spaces. Good thing Uzi never felt the need to follow rules.

Anyways, where were we? Oh, right. Turns out, the closet that J and Nori had brought Uzi to was located right at the edge of the bunker. So, when J set off the bomb, she inadvertently blasted everyone outside. Good thing it was still the middle of the night, otherwise Doll would've had a nice cooked meal to recover to.

"Ugh... J, was that really the only way to get rid of Doll?" Uzi groaned, sitting up as she got used to her surroundings (which were definitely not swirling around in an alarming manner). "Couldn't you have just... I don't know... Punched her in the face? Shot her? Heck, I would've taken the flamethrower."

"Well, excuse me for not having enough time to come up with a solid plan. Would you have rathered I get torn to shreds by that... thing?" A pregnant pause. "You know what, don't answer that."

"You're lucky you didn't fry the computer..." Nori called from where she was furiously walking over the keyboard, using her legs and impromptu fingers. "Then we would have really been in trouble..." Uzi squinted at the screen, her recovered vision showing that Nori was still vigorously typing some sort of kill code. "Anyways, we need to get to a place that can physically create a vessel for the patch. The closet, thankfully, had a 3d-printer, but both that and the first patch were vaporised."

"Why do you need to print out an entire port? Can't you just delete the data off an old USB-C and replace it with the code?" Uzi asked.

"Unfortunately, humans decided to make everything have some sort of superficial element while they were still the dominant species. Hence, the thing can only work if it's in the shape of an actual crucifix. Don't ask me how, I guess humans were just stupid." Strange thing to say about was what supposedly one of the smartest organic species to travel through the universe, but whatever.

"How are we going to find a place that has something like that? And, even if we do, who's to say we don't get caught while trying to get there?" As J and Nori were deliberating what the next course of action would be (preferably without constant explosions), Uzi started to get the sneaking suspicion that she knew exactly where they needed to go. Unfortunately, it was also a place that Uzi had hoped not to visit multiple times in a single day. While, multiple in terms of a very specific technicality. Still, Uzi preferred having to trudge through yet another school to getting ripped apart by feral drones.

"Guys?" Nori and J turned towards Uzi, stopping their conversation about the logistics of carving small holes into the ceiling of the bunker to see inside. "I think I know where we need to go."

Uzi felt like she could safely promote schools to the list of places that she'd rather crack her visor than go to. And not just one school in particular, all of them. Because if, you thought about it, Caine got kidnapped in a school, N and Doll got infected in a school, and Uzi was subjected to the horrors of the teenage population every day at school.

Dramatic? Yes. Incorrect? Potentially. Did Uzi care? Absolutely not.

While Uzi was leading Nori and J towards the "computer lab" towards the back end of the school, she got a good look at the current state of the bunker. Well, it was called a computer lab, but it was mainly a place for students who had nothing better to do to pass the time. The computers were rarely used anyways-what was the point if drones were essentially big, walking computers?

Getting back on track, Doll and N had been making quick work of the rest of the colony, turning most of the worker drones into feral monstrosities. They were pretty easy to avoid (once an idiot, always an idiot, as a wise person probably said), although that was mainly due to the fact that any drones who happened to notice the small group of survivors were eliminated immediately.

The gigantic and rather thick steel door provided Uzi with some sense of comfort as J pushed it closed, sealing them and Nori inside the computer lab. At the back of said lab was a 3d-printer, similar to the one that Nori had been using to create the first crucifix patch. The only difference was that it was hot pink. Only one word of explanation was needed there: Lizzie.

"Not what I would personally use to create a live-saving device, but it's going to have to do..." Nori hooked up her laptop to the printer using a built-in wire before finishing the last few lines of code in the virus add-on. With a final click of the enter key, the code was relayed to the 3d-printer, which started rumbling and dispensing a variety of multi-coloured fluids. Reminded Uzi of a liquid rainbow, if she was being honest.

"So... do we just have to wait?" J asked, frantically pacing back and forth in front of the door as if it was going to get broken down any second.

"I guess so-" Nori was interrupted by a loud bang that came from the far wall of the room. When Uzi looked, she saw a fist-sized hole. Then another, and another. Eventually, when the holes in the wall became enough to form a pretty good picture, Uzi was able to see Doll on the other side of the wall, scratching and punching her way through.

"OH MY GOD, WHAT THE &$*# IS GOING ON?!" Uzi had started to forget that Pomni even existed. It kind of sucked that she had to wake up in the middle of a crisis, but not much Uzi could do about that. "WHAT DID YOU DO? WHERE IS EVERYONE ELSE? WE'RE ALL GONNA DIEEEEE-"

"Girl, would you shut up for a SECOND?!" Uzi screamed, giving her strange looks from both J and Nori. Uzi held up a finger before concentrating back on Pomni. "We get it. You're scared. But you're just going to have to suck it up for a little bit, or we're all going to die. Do you want that?" Pomni frantically shook her head. "Great. Then give me some time to think."

"Pomni?" J asked, less a question toward Pomni and more an attempt at getting closure for Uzi's sudden and target-less screaming. Uzi just nodded, giving J indication that she wasn't insane (read: too insane) yet.

"Girls? You're going to have to hold her back for a bit. The screen's doing the ninety-nine percent blue screen thing, and I have the sneaking suspicion that the process isn't actually ninety-nine percent complete." Uzi internally groaned at the ability for machinery to just stop working properly as she positioned herself in front of where she assumed Doll was going to strike next.

"Come... join... us..." Doll screeched out, her voice sounding like she'd barely recovered from a massive period of sickness.

"Of course the virus gives them weird voices. Why wouldn't it?" Uzi largely meant this statement to be for herself, but J groaned in agreement as she tried to shoot through the slowly-widening holes at Doll. It provided a little sense of normalcy in the entire situation. You know, if Uzi ignored the fact that J could technically blow up on command.

"WORK, YOU STUPID THING!" Nori, frustrated that the loading screen refused to move past the literal end of its animation, began banging herself against the base of the printer, not really doing much other than filling the room with sounds of metal slowly collapsing in on itself.

"Mom? How about we avoid knocking ourselves out until later?" Uzi cringed as Doll ripped through more of the wall, utilising her Solver to block any projectiles J tried to shoot at her. Nori reluctantly stopped physically punishing the printer, instead settling on giving it a cold stare.

With a sickening crunch, Doll broke through the remainder of the wall and launched herself at Uzi, who barely managed to dodge out of the way. Not really in the mood to lose yet another appendage, Uzi picked up the nearest computer monitor and threw it at Doll, using as the physical force she could muster. Which, considering the computer landed approximately twenty inches in front of Uzi, was not that much force.

J rolled her eyes before dashing forward to body-check Doll towards the wall. Uzi assumed that J was planning on pinning Doll against it, but Doll decided she was going to be a spider for a day and began to climb up the wall and onto the ceiling. Uzi could tell that Pomni was trying her best to not freak out, the effort of doing so causing her face to become a multicoloured mess. At least it beat a voice in your head screaming 24/7.

"Mom? It would be really great if the machine finished up the dang patch approximately, like RIGHT NOW!" Uzi could hear her mother mutter something in Spanish (how long had she been using Duolingo for?) as she ducked inside the space between the back of the machine and the wall it faced. As blue sparks started to radiate from the machine's control panel, Doll dropped on top of Uzi, this time nailing her directly on the head.

"HEY! NOT NICE! BAD ZOMBIE!" Uzi struggled with Doll on the floor, throwing her off with a well-placed kick. J used the momentum from the kick to shoulder Doll into the nearest wall, both drones smashing through more than a few desks and computers in the process. J had Doll in a choke-hold with her forearm, using her free hand to bat away Doll's attempts at breaking free.

"Mom? Once again, it would be GREAT if the patch was finished now!" Uzi called out to Nori, who finally emerged from the back of the printer with what appeared to be soot on the face. Uzi raised an eyebrow as she asked, "What the heck did you do back there?"

"Turns out that thing was three generations behind on hardware," Nori began, looking up towards the panel of the printer. "Since all the information had already been transferred to the printer, I took apart the computer and used whatever was compatible." Uzi wanted to question the logistics of sticking parts of a computer into a printer, but she had no time as Doll used her Solver to hold J up in the air, choking her back.

"Yeah, that's great, Mom. FINISH IT!" Uzi could tell Nori wanted to respond to that in a less-than-child-friendly way, but considering their only real weapon was actively being killed in midair, she settled on seething while she opened the door of the printer. Inside was a replica of the first crucifix patch, down to the colours and weird design. Nothing to indicate it had been modified to accommodate N's unique situation.

Just as J was starting to lose consciousness (Doll was keeping her arms and legs pinned), Nori used her Solver to jab the patch into Doll's neck, causing the feral drone to collapse to the floor in a heap. J also began falling to the floor, but was able to stop her descent by extending her wings. As J leaned on a desk while she metaphorically caught her breath, she asked, "So, when is that thing going to come into effe-"

Doll immediately began writhing on the floor, interrupting J and making Pomni have a little bit more than a minor meltdown. Uzi couldn't really blame her, though. Doll didn't exactly look pretty. In fact, the entire spasming thing was downright atrocious to look at. Still, Uzi forced herself to look as she prepared herself to fight Doll once again. Thankfully, that moment never came.

As Doll sat up, Uzi could see that her normal eye-lights were back, not even a hint of yellow within them. Turns out Nori's second bout of trail-and-error worked. Doll squinted at Uzi, her vision blurry for a moment before becoming clearer. When she finally saw her fellow classmate, her face fell.

"Are you..." Doll struggled to find the right question to ask. "Did what I think happened happen?" Uzi could find no other way to answer but to nod. Doll's face somehow managed to look more distraught. "I've ruined everything..."

Uzi wasn't really sure what to do, but she didn't have to deliberate whether she should take on the role of the reluctant but forgiving kind of sister. Nori scuttled over to Doll, stopping on her knee and looking up to meet her in the eye. "Look. You did bad things. You're guilty. That's fine. But now's not the time for stuff like that. Because right now, because of you, there are so many people out there either fighting for their lives or having their lives being taken away by a virus. So, save the grief for later, and help us make sure that no one has to die."

Now, Uzi wasn't exactly a master with pep talks, so she couldn't really add her input. However, Doll seemed to receive Nori's words positively, seemingly steeling her emotions and standing up, making sure that Nori got off her leg before doing so. Standing at her full height, Doll looked Uzi directly in the eye.

"What are we waiting for? Let's go kill this thing."

Jax was in an... interesting predicament, to say the least. Even though N was one-hundred percent MIA on account of the whole virus thing, Jax had somehow managed to maintain his consciousness. Sure, the thinning of the yellow fog still meant that everything looked like it was being filtered through a pair of tinted glasses, but it also meant that Jax could see what was going on around N. And... Well, it wasn't pretty.

The first thing that N did after Doll and Uzi disappeared was go over to Yeva's dead body, opting to run over on all fours in a manner that really solidified in Jax's mind that something messed up was going on. Almost like a dog, N began sniffing around Yeva's body before looking directly at her chest. Or, rather, the gaping hole where her chest should have been. It almost looked like something had clawed its way inside...

Jax could instinctively feel N using the Solver before he actually saw it. Jax didn't even realise N could still use the Solver-what had launched Uzi at the start of the fight was more like an outburst of energy than anything else. And the way the Solver was being used... Oh, God, N was going to revive Yeva. And then kill her again to infect her. Dang, this girl was going to die twice.

"Hey! Someone, please stop- HURK! Why am I being dragged through the air? HEL- HURK!" Confusion set in as Jax heard what he thought was V's voice. It definitely sounded like her, but Jax was sceptical because: one, V couldn't technically float on her own, and two, she sounded like she was about to throw up. As far as Jax knew, drones didn't have any bodily fluids to traditionally throw up in the first place. But then again, who was he to assume the functions of the robots currently living in an even more screwed-up version of dystopia?

V crashed through the doors of the room, floating a few inches above the ground just like she had cried out earlier. She began floating toward Yeva, and before Jax could even remember what was going to happen, she threw up. Specifically, V threw up a heart (along with a small variety of other fluids that Jax didn't really want to take the time to name) that immediately shot towards the cavity in Yeva's chest.

Jax cringed as he saw Yeva's broken metal fix itself and the drone sit up for the first time in what he could only assume was years. He couldn't even look as N started attacking Yeva, whose confused screams were interrupted all too early. When Jax looked back at her, Yeva was infected.

V looked on in horror as N revived and cannibalised Yeva, and immediately tried to fly away. However, before she could even get a remotely moderate amount of distance between her and N, V was caught at the ankle by N's Solver. It was yet another quick process as N attacked V and eventually infected her as well.

Jax had expected N to do something afterwards, but both he and V just... sat there. Doing nothing. Almost as if they were waiting for something. What they were waiting for was something beyond Jax's comprehension, but he had a pretty good idea of what they were planning on doing next. Like any good disease, this virus needed to multiply to survive. The only things remaining in the way of the virus' reproduction was Nori, J, and Uzi. Knowing those three, they would try to scout out N to try and save him. It would only be a simple matter of catching them off guard, and suddenly the whole planet would be infected.

Guess Uzi had a friend in the "I Hate Life" club.

Jax hated to admit it, but he was actually starting to get bored waiting for something to happen. He was traumatised and hoping beyond hope that Uzi would find a way to get the jump on N, of course, but... Waiting was also extremely boring. And Jax hated when things were boring. Why else did he actively research ways to break the physics of Caine's games?

The silence was eventually broken by what Jax thought was a war cry of, "¡EL PODER DE CRISTO TE OBLIGA!" He didn't really have a good sense of Spanish, but it sounded like someone was screaming about... Jesus? Either way, Jax could feel N's body shake as something rammed into his back at full-force, sending him careening into V and, as a result, both drones into the wall.

Uzi had finally come, and she had brought her mother and her slightly-mentally-deranged friend. Frankly, Jax couldn't be happier. Sure, not the best group in most situations, but they were the most likely to cause chaos wherever they went. As exhibited by the preaching in Spanish. And the literal crucifix that Uzi was holding. And...

Jax stopped himself before he made an entire list.

As is great in the case of an omniscient narrator, Jax's confusion regarding the situation did not hinder the retelling of the fight scene at all. Not that it was that big of a fight scene at all. While Nori handled V (due to V still being affected by external Solvers, Nori was just able to hold her up in the air with her arms pinned down), J and Uzi went about trying to kill the virus at its source: N.

"Okay, buddy, we're just going to need you to sit still for a sec..." J inched closer, acting as if she were trying to reason with a dog trying to avoid a bath instead of a feral drone trying to kill everyone. However, J wasn't able to focus on N for much longer, and Yeva launched herself at J. Doll rushed over to help, both to make sure that J didn't get turned and so that her mother didn't get completely annihilated by J's short temper. As such, N and Uzi were left alone to face off with each other. Some that Uzi had been hoping to avoid, really.

"Hey, N..." Uzi wasn't really sure holding a one-sided conversation with N was the right move at the moment, but it was all she was capable of thinking of. "So... Bit of a weird place we're in right now, huh? You know, with you being a zombie and all that..." Robo-God, she sucked at this. "Anyways... Any chance that you might be willing to reject the virus altogether and save us the hassle of sticking you with the crucifix patch?"

N apparently did not like the idea of getting stabbed with a USB-C, as he started growling at Uzi and backing away. Uzi groaned, both at the slowly-increasing difficulty of the situation and the parallels this had with a human trying to give a dog a shot (Science project she could barely remember). She tried advancing closer to N, but N shot out his Solver, intent on either slicing Uzi in half or picking her up off the ground. Uzi recoiled, her own Solver summoning itself and interlocking with N's Solver.

Wait a second, that wasn't supposed to happen. Well, she hadn't really tried tossing two Solvers together, so, realistically, anything could happen. Anyways, it appeared as if Uzi and N were locked in a stalemate. Both drones were incapable of moving without risking losing focus and making their respective Solvers disappear, so they stood where they were, waiting for the other to lose stamina.

Through the edges of Uzi's vision, she could see Doll finally managing to knock her mother out, looking extremely guilty while doing so. Nori, on the other hand, had managed to get the crucifix patch into the side of V's neck, who was now going through the purification process (hence the violent writhing on the ground). Now that Uzi thought about it, a lot of the "cures" that she and everyone else had come up with required a lot of spasming.

It was only N and Uzi left. Nori tried to get close enough to put the crucifix patch into N's neck, but N snapped at the patch as soon as it got within five metres of him. There was no way to get the patch to N without risking it being destroyed. And, with J and Doll having to keep watch over an unconscious Yeva who had a habit of waking up every other second, Uzi and N were still forced to deal with each other.

Uzi could feel herself faltering first, the purple light of her Solver faintly flickering as the yellowish-green of N's Solver only grew brighter. She wasn't going to be able to hold out for long. But still, she had to go on as long as possible. She needed to see N one more time. She needed to see him smile one more time. Heck, she just needed him. Uzi was both disgusted and happy with her revelation.

Just as Uzi was about to let the Solver disappear, N dropped to the floor, his visor immediately going dark. Yeva went dark as well, falling to the floor unconscious. As Doll knelt over her mother, Uzi immediately dashed over to N's motionless form, completely disregarding any notion that N might still be dangerous to be around.

N remained dark for a while. Nori suggested that they bring N somewhere else, where he might not be able to escape should he still remain infected. Uzi refused. All she could do was wait. And wait. And wait some more. She wasn't sure whether she was waiting to make sure N was okay or if she was waiting to provide some sort of closure for herself.

Nearly an hour later, a single message appeared on N's visor: BOOTING.

CLEANSE INITIATING. BEGINNING PROCEDURES...

Big red text appeared directly in front of Jax's eyes, making him recoil in the inky blackness that made up the rest of N's mind. Jax wasn't really sure what happened to N. All he could see was N's vision slowly going dark before finally collapsing to be parallel to the ground. For the next twenty minutes, Jax couldn't see anything. He didn't really want to be seeing this message, either. Especially considering that he was the one infecting N.

Small bits of Jax began to fade away, glitching blue slightly before just being... gone. Not invisible. Just small blocks of space where flesh and clothing should be. Jax began clawing at his form frantically, trying to stop whatever was going on from happening. He had way too much to live for. He needed to go home. He needed to see his friends, his family.

He needed to tell him... Bah, that was never going to happen, anyways.

But, if he was messing everything up...

If no one else would be able to get home if N remained infected...

If he ruined everyone else's lives just for the sake of his own...

Maybe he could live with something like this. He'd lived long enough, anyways. Nothing was really going on for him. He'd been a dick for the past few years, anyways. He was just going to drive everyone away. Again. Besides, he... He wasn't going to sacrifice a bunch of kids just for his own selfish desires. He promised himself he was never going to cross that line. Ever.

Maybe this was going to be for the better.

With a sigh, Jax closed his eyes.

"You know, I never thought I'd say this about a place like the Circus, but this is absolutely boring." Even Ragatha herself was shocked at this statement, her normally cheerful demeanour having worn away after what felt like months on end without a single clue as to where Caine went or whether he was going to come back.

It was an... interesting experience being snapped back and forth between time periods, to say the least. With the entire fight thing and the momentary disintegration, Ragatha initially thought she would just become one with the void. Unfortunately, sadistic dreams like that never really seem to come true, do they? No, Ragatha simply woke up the next morning in a Circus that was suddenly drone-, Jax- and Caine-less.

The first few days, nothing really happened. Without Caine actively making new adventures to send the Circus members on every day, there wasn't much to do in the Circus. It became increasingly clear over time that the main tent was meant to be a hub from which adventures would start. As a result of this intention, there was nearly nothing to do. Like, at all. Ragatha was even starting to miss Jax's constant annoying presence.

There was a sentence she never thought she would ever say.

Then, approximately one week after everyone reappeared within the Circus, Pomni disappeared as well. There wasn't any warning at all, either. Ragatha vaguely remembered chasing Jax down the hallways of the Circus for doing... something (she couldn't really remember) and running past Pomni while doing so. When she came back the other way (still chasing Jax), Pomni was gone. Of course, Ragatha didn't initially think anything of it. Of course, that was until Pomni didn't show up in the Circus the next day.

And the next.

Days turned into weeks.

And still no Pomni.

Wait a minute... That couldn't be right. Jax was already gone by the time Pomni disappeared... But Ragatha could remember so clearly her chasing Jax down that hall... Could it have just been a glitch in the system? That could've been the answer, especially considering that Caine wasn't there to focus on the maintenance of the Circus. But it had seemed so real...

Ragatha continued mumbling to herself as she made her way towards her room, completely lost within her own thoughts. With how inattentive she was being to her surroundings, it was a miracle that Ragatha didn't fall into the void in the middle of the hall.

Oh, right.

The void was also breaking into the Circus. Yet another mystery that Ragatha had yet to solve (and, frankly, would probably never be able to solve), bits and pieces of what looked like the void surrounding the Circus started appearing within the tent. Initially Ragatha was able to write them off as simple tricks of the light or textures not loading in properly, but the rips started to get bigger and bigger. It was kind of hard to attribute a bed disappearing into nothingness as a graphical failure.

None of the survivors (a strangely fitting name for the current situation) had dared to touch or even interact with the white gashes in their surroundings. With everything that had happened with the drones and the "Solver", they could quite literally be anything and everything conceivable to one's imagination. It was much better to be safe than sorry.

Ragatha warily stepped around the hole in the floor, the light rising out of it casting ominous shadows in the already dimly-lit corridor. The last thing she wanted was to fall in. Wait... Was it the last thing she- NO. She immediately banished that thought from her head. A lonely life in the Circus was infinitely better than floating in limbo the rest of her existence. Besides, she still had Zooble, Kinger, Gangle...

Everything was going to be fine.

With that placebo for happiness in her head, Ragatha marched herself towards her bedroom. Even with Caine gone, she still tried to maintain a semblance of a regular schedule. Provided the little bit of structure that she need to keep going. And, with the fall of the sun and the rise of the moon, Ragatha was able to lull herself into thinking that everything was normal.

Ragatha quickly settled herself into bed, ready to embrace the fleeting nothingness of sleep. Wait, why was she thinking about that-

Ragatha shook her head. Now was not the time for thoughts like that. Instead, she decided to think about fun memories. Memories of her times with her friends. Memories of the Circus before the disaster. Memories even before the Circus...

Ragatha eventually fell into a steady rhythm of breathing, her consciousness momentarily resting. A rest that, unbeknown to her, would last much longer than she had anticipated.

One hour in, everything was fine.

Two hours in, small cracks of white light started to form underneath her bed.

Three hours in, the cracks started to widen, spilling more light into the room.

Four hours in, Ragatha awoke.

Four hours and one minute in, and the room was lost to whiteness.

Five hours in, and weeping eyes opened.

Six hours in, a rejoice that could barely be heard.

Seven hours in, a person in white giving meaningless diagnoses and congratulations.

Eight hours in, being piled inside a vehicle.

Nine hours in, driving past a myriad of multicoloured buildings.

Ten hours in, a return back home.

Back home.