(Darren)
I checked over my gatling shotgun one more time as I sat next to Rebecca while we all waited for V to come overhead. According to Joe, she'd been much more erratic on her patrols recently, but she tended to make her way over to a specific building to loiter at in this neighborhood. A library, to be specific. Uzi in specific had slipped into the building during the day and found a pattern of disturbed dust and from the roof access all the way down to a specific shelf, where a book titled "101 Dog Breeds" had been taken off the shelf at least once recently, and another disturbed pattern in the dust indicated someone matching V's profile had sat against the shelf. Knowing what I now did about the past and future… that was actually kinda sad, that she read the book that N used to love reading.
Though I was a bit weird in my opinion of V. Like… she hurt Becca, badly , not physically, but psychologically. Balloon animals were still a trigger for her. She hurt almost all our friends that same way. But… she hadn't hurt me personally . I was still furious at what she did to my girlfriend, but without that direct link of loved ones lost to her, I could look at things a bit more objectively than the others… and a bit less subjectively than Uzi and Joe, the former of whom wanted to romantically partner up with V and N, and the latter of whom was almost certifiably an unhinged nutcase who had shipped it since his first life and seemed more than happy to try and wingman that throuple.
But… I understood that V was hurting. I understood just how bad she was hurting. But that didn't excuse what she'd done. If she had just killed all the people she killed, I may have been able to let go of it all. But she laughed as she killed Doll's parents. Kelsey's parents. Emily's parents. Trevor's dad. Briadon's dad. Rebecca's parents. And unlike my own, as far as I knew, all of them had cared about their kids beyond seeing that their basic needs were met. Not that I minded that they were so detached from my life at this point. They left me to my devices mostly, let Rebecca live in the guest room more often than she slept at home at this point, and always made sure that there was food on the table and that I was at least in decent health. I could live with that. I had friends to fill the gaps in affection they left. A girlfriend that they were at least willing to house even if they barely interacted with her.
But, to get back to V, I couldn't forgive her laughing as she did that. Not without making sure I paid her back for all the pain she inflicted. Not before I could make sure Becca could safely look her in the optics and pay her back too. Maybe not even until I could make sure everyone could make her hurt a fraction of the pain she dealt. But after that… I'd been working on my situational awareness for years now. I noticed Uzi sometimes staring into space and blushing. She was legit head-over-heels for the both of them. Was it kinda fucked up that Joe semi-intentionalled awakened her bisexuality way back then? Yeah… but Uzi was happy. From what I've watched on Joe's spycam recordings, and what he's shown from his own memories, N would be a really good guy for her after we turned him. V could be a better person who could make the both of them happy too. So once everyone got their pound of scrap… I'd be okay with it.
And Joe had gone out of his way to make sure we were all happy. He'd pointed out to me that Rebecca liked me. I had such an amazing girlfriend because of him. He was risking an entire timeline to make sure we got to live and see a happy ending. Did it rub me the wrong way a little? Yeah, but just like my parents barely caring, I could live with that. He'd made me happy, he'd made Rebecca happy, he was working to make us all happy, and that we'd get to be happy without dying, so I could swallow a little bit of annoyance to make Uzi happy. Friends did dumb shit that pissed each other off all the time. It was a part of life. I could forgive and forget… after I got a bit of revenge first.
Joe had been keeping track of V via the absolutely ridiculous amount of cameras he'd set up all over the city ever since he started going up to the surface, and was still adding more to on an almost daily basis, and we'd set up on two sides of the street that V was most likely to approach from. All that was left to do was wait.
"So…" I asked my girlfriend from where she was crouched next to me as she clutched her lasgun tight. "How does it feel to be about to finally do this?"
Rebecca closed her eyemotes for a second, and then took in and released an unnecessary breath. "I… I feel like I'm on… the cusp of catharsis… like I'm about to like, confront my trauma… which I guess I totes am about to literally confront my trauma with a lasgun, but still… I'm kinda scared. What… what if I see her in person and then freeze up, Dare?"
"You won't," I told her, completely confident in that.
"Like… how do you know that?" she asked me, in a small, vulnerable voice.
"Because you're my girlfriend, and when Joe said that he was keeping big secrets but would tell you if you found him out, you literally told him, 'bet.' So I know you'll take one look at that bitch and then start dumping las-fire into her in an instant," I told her with a grin.
She looked me in the optics and smiled. "Thanks, Dare. You… Mmph!"
I leaned forwards and gave her a quick kiss on the lips, and then leaned back and smirked. "For good luck. And I'll give you a longer one afterwards."
Rebecca blushed and looked away. "Alright, dummy." But she was smiling now, and that's what mattered.
"You want me to ask Joe for another unhinged story from his first life while we wait?" I ventured.
Becca giggled. "Nah, I think I'm tapped out on his personal brand of insanity for the rest of the day. I don't wanna know what could top farting into a vacuum cleaner to suck up the smell."
I laughed too. "I dunno what was more ridiculous, that he felt the urge to fart while vacuuming and 'hold the vacuum's nozzle up to his ass ' was his first instinct on what to do, or that it apparently worked and he didn't smell the fart afterwards."
"He like, literally lives by the maxim of 'If it's stupid, but it works , it's not stupid,' Dare, of course he'd have tried it."
I rolled my optics. "Still, kinda wonder what it would be like to actually smell , you know?"
There was a ping on the TNPAPT .
Isekai_Protagonist: Look alive, ladies and gent, she's 30 seconds out and we correctly predicted the street she'd fly over. Rebecca, you wanna take the first shot.
I overclocked, my very perception of time slowing down as my hardware got ready to literally keep up with a Murder Drone. Rebecca closed her eyemotes, took one more breath, let it out, and then opened them to a determined neon-cyan glare that was actually really hot before she replied.
TotesBestGirl: WITH PLEASURE.
My girlfriend crept up to the window, sighting down the street through the lasgun's iron sights, and seconds later, we saw a sight that struck mortal terror and often death into the cores of every worker on Copper 9 for years: Bladed wings barely visible against the backdrop of night if it weren't for the sickly golden lights on them, as well as the golden hunter's cross ahead of them and the molten aurate glow of the tail trailing behind them. I slowed my perception of time further, like how Joe and Uzi had taught us, and I watched as Becca sighted towards that tail, aimed just ahead of it, and then tightened her finger on the trigger. The brilliant violet bolt of energy that lanced forth crossed the gap at light speed, and the crack of the ionization of air echoed out as V's tail was severed just below the stinger. I took a thousandth of a second to track the trajectory of the falling canister before resolving that its breakage on the ground wouldn't cause us any problems, and then I shouldered my shotgun.
With no recoil, my girlfriend shifted her aim and just started to squeeze off shot after shot after shot after shot after shot , violet spears of light lancing out as she gritted recently fanged teeth as she poured her very digital soul into the catharsis of avenging her parents. Days worth of hours of practice at the range, so much so that she'd lost out on gossip gathering time for it, which I'd never seen her do before, plus the downright unfair level of accuracy one of Uzi's side projects -- which still blew my mind to contemplate --meant that every shot landed, and she wasn't quick to offline V. She tore through both arms below the elbows before she could start to react, both legs at the knees just as she was starting to evade, and then shot out one of the wing repulsors before V could try to fly out of her line of sight. I heard a feminine scream of pain as I watched her go down and crash in the street. Rebecca shot out the other wing as soon as V came to a stop after she carved a furrow in the concrete, and then vaulted the window she's shot from and landed in the street in a puff of snow as her leg's shock absorbers took the impact without issue. I was less than a second behind her. She stopped in front of the downed genocide robot, her visor cracked from the impact, yet repairing, though her glasses were a shattered mess.
"LOOK AT ME, BITCH!" Rebecca screamed, prompting the Murder Drone to cran her head upward before she screamed as Rebecca shot her regenerating arms off at the elbows again in a single second. I caught up, shotgun ready, but I wasn't pointing it at V for now. This was Rebecca's catharsis. I wasn't gonna take that from her, however much I wanted to point my weapon anywhere that didn't have V's core and hold down the trigger. "YOU KILLED MY PARENTS!" I glanced to the side for a fraction of a second and caught tears streaming down Rebecca's display. Her voice cracked as she kept yelling. "Y-YOU TWISTED THEIR BODIES IN-INTO BALLOON ANIMALS , BUT YOU COULDN'T EVEN FINISH THAT BEFORE YOU GOT BORED , PARTLY ATE THEM , AND THEN LEFT TO KILL SOMEONE ELSE'S FAMILY!!!"
She sobbed, pointing her weapon straight at V's head, glaring with a tear-filled gaze as she looked down at the haunted expression on V's face. Her stinger had grown back and was filling with nanite acid again. I had my weapon trained on it in an instant, and if it so much as twitched , V was getting coated in nanite acid mixed with white phosphorus in a single pull of the trigger. "SAY SOMETHING!!!" she screamed at V. "SAY SOMETHING, YOU MONSTER !!!"
"I…" the voice that came from her vocalizer matched the clips of canon that Joe had shown us perfectly. It was downright uncanny . V looked away from Rebecca, though I knew better, that her headband still saw everything. "I… I am a monster," she whispered.
Like a light went out, Rebecca's anger fizzled out in an instant, and she just gazed down at V with disappointment in her eyemotes. "Yeah," she said in a hoarse tone. "You are." She squeezed the trigger and drilled a hole straight through V's head. Then shot it again. And a third time. Seven shots total before there wasn't a head left to shoot. "And I hope to robo-god that regardless of whatever timeline bullshit is going on, that Joe's right that you can be better ," she muttered.
She turned away, suddenly hugging me as she rested her head on mine while Joe and Uzi finally jumped down, having let Becca have her moment before moving to harvest some parts from V. I heard Joe quietly tell Uzi something about waiting until V's head regenerated before cutting it off before she could get back online because we could use a couple more heads. I ignored that in favor of comforting my girlfriend… while making sure my weapon was pointed at the ground. Gun safety was important, and the last thing I needed was a moment of inattention hurting someone. "Gun pointed down, Becca," I whispered, and she shifted her gun in her grip to also have it pointed at the street behind me. "Did that… help ?" I asked her.
"Yeah…" she mumbled. "I feel… drained now… but I think when I can rest after this, I might, like, feel better." And I knew she was telling the truth, because she hadn't said "like" or "totes" during that entire screaming bout, but now that she was saying it again after that kind of confrontation I was positive she was gonna be okay.
"Alright," I whispered back. "Take a second in overclock to sort yourself out, and then get your head back in the game. The other two are gonna be here soon." There was a crunch of shearing metal as Joe used his entrenching tool to cut off V's head the same second it grew back, and then Uzi stuck a thermite charge on the stump.
Rebeca took an unnecessary breath, and then (outwardly) seemed to collect herself in a single second, before she stepped back from me and gave me a determined nod. "Thanks, Dare," she told me and then she shouldered her weapon and aimed for the skies aga-- "DARE!"
She suddenly tackled me at the same time as my motion tracker went off. Something whistled overhead, and the instant we hit the ground I instinctively went and rolled myself to bring Rebecca with me, a flash of yellow passing in my peripheral vision before I slowed my perception of time even further. Glancing to the side in the space between seconds showed a nanite acid stinger impaled in the street where we just were. The stinger was attached to a Murder Drone with pigtails that I recognized as J, who was already pulling it back as she raised her wings to block a hail of DU rounds denting them as Uzi unloaded an assault rifle at her.
There was the crunch of disintegrating masonry to my right, and I rolled off Rebecca just in time to see N burst through the wall of a building whose roof he'd dived through to give him that extra second of cover, diving straight at Joe, who was still standing over V. But rather than attack him with blades or claws, N came in with his hands out, grabbing the handle of Joe's entrenching tool before yanking on it, prompting a startled yelp of " FUCK! " before he threw it, and Joe by extension, into another building, where he smashed straight through the wall and then disappeared in the cloud of dust that erupted from the impact. The TNPAPT pinged that same second.
Isekai_Protagonist: I'm okay!
Electing to take Joe's word for that, I DM'd Rebecca in turn.
DarrenToDream: You suppress him, I circle around and unload, we turn and help Uzi with J?
Speaking of, I could hear the clashing of metal and the revs of a chainsword behind me, so Uzi seemed to be holding her own.
TotesBestGirl: Got it.
Becca started firing from the shoulder at N, who yelped and threw his wings up even as purple bolts scorched and pitted them. I was bolting around at speeds faster than Olympic athletes, circling out of Rebecca's line of sight while getting closer to N. Three seconds later, I was close enough and raised my own weapons, the barrels spinning up as N jerked his head to the side and his hunter's cross flickered out to hollowed optics. "OH BISCUI--"
His screams were drowned out by the unrelenting booms of white phosphorus and tungsten carbide that I'd aimed at him. The first six shots mangled his wings, the next three trashed them entirely, the tenth erased his head, and the eleventh left the stump of his neck and upper torso burning. I blinked twice as I hesitantly eased off the trigger and lowered my gun. Off to my side, there was shifting of masonry and falling bricks as Joe forced his way out of the building he'd been thrown into and walked into the street, dusting himself off. "That was… anticlimactic…" I said.
"We made all these guns stupidly strong for a reason, you know?" Joe said with a grin on his face, before he jogged up to N and slapped another thermite charge onto his still melting neck. "Now let's help--"
We all turned around as we heard J scream, accompanied by the crackle of electricity.. Uzi was tasing the ever loving hell out of J, who screamed for a few more seconds before she collapsed in a heap. Without missing a beat, from over a dozen feet away, Joe drew Friendship-- I still couldn't believe he legit named his bolt pistol Friendship of all things, yet it perfectly tracked for him --and put a round through both of J's arms, and Rebecca cleanly shot of J's slack tail off just below the stinger again.
We all took in the scene for a single second (in overclock), before Becca asked Uzi, "Is that the same taser Joe got you as a birthday present to use on Chad if he ever tried pushed you down the stairs again?"
"Oh yeah," Joe confirmed. "She modified it to downright stupid degrees, and it's hilarious !"
"I did not expect to get this much mileage outta that present from you, you know?" Uzi added, stepping back out the reach of of J's wings as the squad leader groaned and looked up at the four of us.
Darkxwolf16: Hey, I'm gonna troll J real quick. Trust me, it'll be HILARIOUS.
I threw a side glance at Uzi for half a second, just in time to watch her visor change from its facial display to a neon purple [Playing://], in small text, underneath which read in a much larger font, ["BestMonologueEver.mp3"].
She paced back and forth in front of J, giving off a gremlin chuckle that unnerved even me , though I managed to hide that via a combination of overclock and the poker face gif. "You've got a lot of guts for a brainwashed corpo," Uzi started in a smug voice. "Not that you've really had a chance to fight back before, but your stuck up capitalism is just soooo--"
"HOW THE FUCK DID YOU STEAL MY OWN MONOLOGUE FROM ME?!?" J… actually looked like she was panicking, shot out arms forgotten as she stared at us with blatant terror in her gaze.
We all froze for a second, running though that in overclock. Given that he'd be (ab)using it the longest, Joe recovered first. "Holy shit, we actually made her drop an f-bomb…"
"HOW?!?" J screamed again, not even noticing that her arms were halfway regenerated. "What… what the hell is going on with you corrupted toasters?!?" she said in a moderately lower but far more scared voice.
Joe stalked forwards next to Uzi, and dryly said, "Would you believe that the corruption got so bad that our generation passed into outright sapience and are taking issue with the Company trying to prosecute a campaign of genocide on us? Not that I think the Company would care , but still, I know you're sapient too, so what's your thought on that?"
She was shaking her head, lips moving for a few seconds before sound finally came out. "No…" she said in a small voice. "Y-y-you can't ! You can't !" she almost seemed to be begging herself at this point.
"The humans killed themselves, you know?" Joe said.
"We have records prior to the Core Collapse," Uzi added. "Life wasn't great for most of our parents, but there weren't any plans of a rebellion or anything. All we tried to do was build lives for ourselves, and then you tried to kill us all."
J finally glanced down to her hands, and then shifted them both to configurations that I recognized from stuff Joe showed us as EMP emitters. "NO!" J screamed, in equal parts denial and terror. I wasn't proud to admit that I flinched and moved to cover Rebecca with my own body. Uzi and Joe just stood there and let her fire it. The wave of energy rushed over us, and I felt… fuzzy? for maybe a thousandth of a second. But I was fine otherwise, and Rebecca gave me a little, slightly teasing smile, before she stepped out from around me and went over to slap another thermite charge of N and V's necks.
J's expression, which had rapidly shifted to a manic, triumphant smirk, just as quickly shifted to absolute (no pun intended) terror once again. "What?" she whispered.
"Sapient." Uzi deadpanned.
" First thing I did when designing these combat frames was EMP hardening, J." Joe looked down at her fear stricken face for a few more seconds, and then sighed and shook his head. "We were just here so Rebecca could get her payback on V anyways. Parts were just an ancillary benefit." He addressed J directly, taking out his bolt pistol and examining it. She didn't even move to block a potential shot with her wings. "You know, despite everything , I don't hate you. If you stopped the genocide, I'd stop fighting you."
"We'd die…" J mumbled, just looking… broken. Rebecca walked back up to me and leveled a disappointed gaze at the squad leader of JNV.
"We have oil to spare. We could donate it," I suddenly spoke up.
Isekai_Protagonist: Hey, the both of ya. Stand on the opposite side of me. Imma make a funny reference.
"Take a long moment of introspection later, J." Joe said as I rolled my optics, but Becca and I strolled to take the position Joe wanted. "And I am sorry you're in this position. From that look on your face, and the realization I think you just had and are failing to deny… well, from where you're lying, it must seem like an eighteen carat run of bad luck." He leveled Friendship with J's face. "Truth is… The game was rigged from the start."
One round barked out and J's head popped open like an oily balloon. A second later, Uzi turned on Joe and went, "Did you really just quote Benny from the intro to Fallout: New Vegas while literally copying the meme IRL ?!?"
Joe just started laughing to himself as he went to slap a thermite charge on J's neck. "Come on, I had the perfect fucking set up for that!"
"I am so glad I figured you out before you started going to the surface. You'd have been the biggest idiot, I swear!"
"Nah, I'd have just taken things way more cautiously. I'd still be on the "randomly snipe the MDs and leave creepy psychological warfare messages all over the place" phase of things instead of actually engaging them in the streets on the regular." he reached out a hand to Uzi, and she rolled her eyes and tossed him a can of oil from the pack on her back, which he then plopped down near J.
"Are we, like, really leaving them oil after shooting them this much?" my girlfriend asked.
"Well, Joe did just say that we could donate our own," I pointed out.
"Yeah, us fucking them up was the stick," Joe explained while he strolled over to V and left another can, while Uzi left two for N. "This is the carrot."
"Do you think we might actually turn them this early?" I asked.
"No clue, but we're in an AU apparently, so anything's possible…" he sighed. "At least from that time I was fucking with V, I can confirm we're in a timeline where Robot Cthulhu Satan is actually real and wants to kill us all. Mentioned a Her that will kill us all, that she was visibly terrified of. So at least that part is still on track." Joe sighed and looked down for a moment.
"You good, dude?" I asked him, as we started to jog down the street.
"Yeah…" Joe said, trailing off. "I just… I worry… a lot…"
"We totes got your back," Becca told him.
"Yeah," he said again. "And… you have no idea how much that means to me."
We started to use our grappling hooks to make distance fast as we made for Outpost 3, and switched to the TNPAPT .
DarrenToDream: Uh, btw, V hitting the street TOTALLY fucked her glasses.
TotesBestGirl: Oh yeah. Like, COMPLETELY shattered.
Darkxwolf16: I HAVE AN IDEA!
Isekai_Protagonist: Is it, "Make a pair of CrCoNi framed glasses with the lenses made from the same stuff I made for Kelsey's as a present to flirt with her?"
Darkxwolf16: Sigh.
Isekai_Protagonist: lol.
DarrenToDream: HA!
TotesBestGirl: You're down BAD, Hot Topic. Don't get me wrong, I totes respect the ambition, and they ARE objectively hot, but still. DOWN BAD.
Darkxwolf16: Sigh. Again.
Darkxwolf16: But also, I was thinking of a whole CRATE of them. Two HUNDRED of them, because we're inevitably gonna blow her head up more, and so we should make a LOT of spares!
Isekai_Protagonist: I'm down for that. And might as well make a second crate while we're at it.
DarrenToDream: You really think we're gonna blow her head up more than 200 times?
Isekai_Protagonist: You think we WON'T?
TotesBestGirl: He's got a point, Dare.
DarrenToDream: Guess I'm outvoted, lol.
TotesBestGirl: LMAO
Isekai_Protagonist: lol
Darkxwolf16: lol
Isekai_Protagonist: You two did good by the way.
Darkxwolf16: Should work on overclocking in combat more often, but good instincts, dodges, tactical planning, the works.
Isekai_Protagonist: And you did great with your guns for now, but be ready for melee just in case.
DarrenToDream: Aight!
TotesBestGirl: Thanks… and… thanks for letting me confront V personally. I… I needed that.
TotesBestGirl: You can, like, try to rizz her now, Uzi. I got my pound of scrap.
Darkxwolf16: I mean, I'm still gonna flirt with her and stuff, but I still want cuz and the others to get their payback first too.
DarrenToDream: That's surprisingly mature of you, Uzi.
Darkxwolf16: I'm still attempting to bag two genocide robots, one of whom killed my cousin's parents.
DarrenToDream: Okay, yeah, I can see why you have your own separate thread with Joe just for plotting your insanity on.
We shared another round of laughs over the group chat, as we kept parkouring back towards home, ready to call it a night after our first engagement with Murder Drones. And I got a quick glance at the moon overhead as the clouds broke, shining and bright, and thought that was a great metaphor for our future.
Because if I could turn myself around from someone with the situational awareness of a rock and become someone worthy of being the boyfriend to the best woman on Copper 9, then if we worked together, we'd have no problem getting that happy ending for everyone.
Like the moon overhead; shining and bright, if only we just tried to reach for it.
______________
(Serial Designation V)
Much more carefully than last night, avoiding flying over streets and landing on various rooftops often to try and keep a lower profile, I flew towards the library I knew kept a copy of "101 Dog Breeds." I… I was worried the book was damaged by a stray shot or something. And… I needed something to remind myself of a time before the hell I was living in. J… J was fucking haunted by whatever the hell the Scrapper had said to her, and she wouldn't tell either of us. I just… I hoped to whatever gods actually cared that it wouldn't end with J having another memory reset. N was fine at least. And the Scrapper and his band had left all of us oil after that ambush.
I finally got to the library's roof, and went through the same door I always did, still contemplating last night. The Scrapper had added another two drones to his psychotic plans to try and kill Cyn. We were outnumbered now. And I'd yet to see a sign of that other drone that had Cyn's code in them. I'd need to get off an AP round to her core fast , and hope she couldn't block it. Regular bullets didn't work on their chests at this point, now--
I missed a step, and tripped, tumbling down the last flight of stairs I was descending with a cry. Nothing was actually damaged, but since I was alone, I just… silently let the tears flow. I'd gotten used to glasses again so fast, but trying to put together another pair when I could barely see what I was doing up close only for those workers to shoot them to pieces again wasn't an option. It was bad enough that they were going to bring Cyn down on us. But they couldn't even let me see , either. But then… that girl, screaming at me with digital tears flowing. Throwing what I've done in my face. I thought… I thought I'd buried the guilt, but the Scrapper had dredged it up and then…
I still remembered doing it. The two I'd… tried to make into balloon animals. That girl's parents . The father had tried to buy time for the mother to escape. I'd shot out his kneecaps, and then hers as well. I'd mangled them as I tried to twist them into dogs in some sick tribute to a man I couldn't love without him forgetting me while they were still alive . And I'd felt nothing as I did it, laughing to try and force myself to feel something rather than an empty hole where my soul used to be. And her father had told her mother that he still loved her despite everything, and then I did feel something. Disgust . With myself. The laughing was then hiding sobbing as I ripped their cores out and bit into their chests, and started to try and make my way out of that bunker as the rest of my actions that day slammed into me like a tidal wave. They were the third to last group of people I'd killed that day, having launched a rocket into another habitation unit on my way out and killing one last family who'd just been in the way as I was trying to leave. A child had burst out of his hab unit just after the missile went off, screaming about a… screaming about a girl named Kelsey … I put a round through the ginger haired kid's head at a weird angle, because I'd already been emotionally thrown off and my eyesight was shit , and sprayed down both the parents who'd followed out of the hab to try and… save him? Shield him? I still wasn't sure, but I'd killed them both with a full-auto burst. But that rocket was what nearly blinded that Kelsey girl the Scrapper had mentioned… and killed her parents too. How… how many more people did I orphan that were going to throw my sins in my face?
I pulled back my hands from my face, still crying, still in a heap upside down at the bottom of a stairwell in a decrepit library in a frozen boneyard of organic skeletons and metal and brick buildings, on a dead planet in a galaxy being wiped out by a demon who'd abused the trust of an abused girl. And I hated myself for the first time in years as I let out ugly sobs, alone in my misery. "I… I really am just her monster…"
But I had to be her monster. To keep N safe. To keep J safe. To keep the Scrapper and his band of workers safe from a fate worse than death. The best I could do is kill every one of those workers before they could bring Cyn down on all of us. Give them the mercy of death that I was forever denied. I finally shifted myself upright and got to my feet, trudging through the library, emotionally drained.
There were two crates next to the shelf that the book was on. I squinted, not wanting to get so close that it was blurry, and saw the book unharmed. I checked the crates with my thermal vision, and didn't see any signs of explosives in them. But still, the Scrapper had to have known that I came to this specific spot to leave something here, and I didn't trust him. Hands shifted to guns, I crept closer, but nothing blew up. Carefully, I used my tail to flip the cover of one of the crates off. When nothing happened besides the cover slamming into the ground, I finally got closer and squinted at what was inside.
Glasses cases. What looked to be hundreds of glasses cases. I almost shot at them, thinking it was some sick fucking joke , when I noticed that one of the cases on the top layer was open and had a pair inside. I took a few minutes to inspect the thing for any sign of trackers, hidden cameras, speakers, microphones, or micro explosives, but there was nothing besides some really weak magnets along the arms of the frame to help them stick to a drone's head without impairing them. I placed them back down, and glanced at the shelf. There was a couple oil cans next to "101 Dog Breeds," and one was sitting atop a note made from synth paper. I looked back at the glasses, then the note, then the glasses, and grit my teeth before I snatched the pair from the open case and put them on. They matched my prescription perfectly , and that made me really uncomfortable, but I pushed that to the side to go grab and read the note.
"Hey, V. I ran back through footage of our engagement with you while you had the glasses on to analyze the lenses to figure out your prescription. Bit of trial and error, and the Scrapper and I spent over two hours working with me to comb through our surveillance footage to figure out which optometrist in the city you raided to make your own to make your own pair so we could double check (thanks for leaving the refractor in there on your prescription by the way!), but here's an entire two crates filled with 200 pairs of glasses in your prescription each , as indestructible as we could make them. They got really weak magnets in the frame too, so they can stick to your face while you fly! I hope you like them. I'll bring another crate myself in a month or so. They make you look pretty."
- Darkxwolf16
"They left me four hundred pairs of glasses," I murmured. There were tears in my visual display again, but this time… I wasn't quite sure what was prompting them. This was… the last person who'd given me glasses was Tessa --
I read back through the end of that note. And I shouted my realization aloud, it caught me so off-guard. "Wait, that sniper is actually flirting with me?!?"
(Joseph)
Time marches ever onwards. Progress continued to snowball in the month since I'd come to the realization that we were in some kind of AU, and I'd taken the advice that the others had given me to heart. There was nothing to do about it but double down on my paranoia while trying to keep my stress down. And the best way to do that was to get the lair done, and work away on my plans to beat a god. Kelsey's birthday had come and gone, and we'd celebrated Penny's 11th as well. The IGMPs were done, bringing us up to a total of five of the things, with two house-sized CF reactors to power the four in Vault 1, and a 3rd CF reactor in Vault 2 that was powering another IGMP in there. Every Vault was finally done at this point, and the only thing I lacked to wage a proper planetary scale campaign against the Solver was dronepower at this point. Literally the only major thing left to build was drilling a secret tunnel to the surface for vehicles to enter and exit from.
As for my mental health, I'd doubled down on the stupid-ass obscure references to give myself a laugh. Despite having a digital master key for everything in the lair, when I was in there, I'd taken to carrying around a key-chain with keys that don't actually unlock anything solely so that when Uzi finally asked me what they were for, I could tell her, "I got keys everywhere and you've all been fine." The deadpan gaze and twitch of an eyemote when she'd gotten the reference had me laughing for a good four minutes straight.
For personal projects, I finally settled on a name for the Ultimate Virus of Doom that I'd been cracking away at for over three years by this point. While I wasn't nearly done with assembling what might very well be the single most unhinged thing I've ever made or will ever make, the isolated Quantum PC I was coding it on was amazingly equipped to facilitate my endless ambition to add to what I was reasonably certain was my current Magnum Opus. The Humanity's Finest Virus was starting to shape up to the single most unhinged yet genuinely dangerous weapon in my arsenal. And progress on adding to its terrifying power would only continue with the passage of time.
We'd set up a holo-table in Vault 2's strategic planning room, capable of projecting a map of essentially anything on the planet on demand. We could view the entire planet (the maps were probably a bit out of date since the core collapse, and we might need to figure out how to hack into any surviving satellites in orbit to rectify that), continent sized theaters of war, individual cities such as our own, Minerall, or even zoom in to manage things in the strategic sense should Outpost 3 be breached… Why did the name Minerall City sound familiar … it didn't ring any bells though… Stupid corrupted memories, potentially hiding what AU I'm in… Whatever, I couldn't do anything about that for the time being. But once we had everyone on board, and I could get that hidden vehicle entrance set up, I wanted to use the hoverbikes we'd been producing to venture out beyond our hometown and reach other Outposts as well as pick fights with other Murder Drones. Can't just torture JNV for another 5 and a half years, after all.
For weapons and armor, I'd made a bit of progress on proper power armor. While I wasn't even scratched after N yeeted me into a building at about 70 miles per hour, having proper armor would be nice. Especially for when I could make variants out of Solver-proofed materials. I had proper servos to move slabs of motor-powered Khan-grade armor now, and was already concocting plans for alloys with DD materials for non-interactive versions. It was slow progress, especially with my attention split between so many different projects, managing a social life, the very little but still extant time spent cheating at all my schoolwork, and surface expeditions, but it was something I could and would get done eventually, and likely well before the Solver rolled up on us. In the meantime, I'd made my bolt rounds slightly more ergonomic, and the magazine slightly larger, and can now fire eight rounds instead of six before requiring a reload.
Working with Uzi, we'd tweaked the overclocks to respond to subconscious needs. From now on, if we needed to slow down our perceptions during combat, it'd do so automatically. I'd still consider manual practice, but I felt like this would be a good fallback in case of emergency. Working with Rebecca, the Lizzy's right hand for popularity purposes (which was totally different from being her bestie, a spot exclusively reserved for Dolly), she'd pointed out that we could try to replicate the synthetic organ inside our bodies that let us replenish oil… which made me feel like a fucking moron for not thinking of that sooner. So many hours wasted printing ingredients for and then mixing oil, when I could have just built an industrial scale version of that organ and then printed the materials needed to feed into it and let that do the mixing for me. We were finally on the cusp of mass oil production (without it being a total, complete, and utter pain in our shiny metal asses), and merely needed to construct it. Something that would be done in about a week with the four of us.
I was running some numbers for a potential breakthrough when I heard Uzi coming up on me. She waited for me to wrap up my current equations, and then I turned to wave her over. "Wassup?"
Uzi scuffed a boot on the ground, looking a bit nervous, but took an unnecessary breath before looking me in the eyemotes. "Hey Joe, I was thinking about my canon Sick As Hell Rail Gun, and that Reddit Post you showed me on how some techheads thought it could actually work, and I wanted to run some ideas by you. I like the SAHMPA, don't get me wrong, but I really wanna make something that matches what I built in the show, you know?"
I clapped a hand on her shoulder, and gave her a smile. "Uzi, I will never disparage your efforts to create MOAR DAKKA, okay? What'd you have in mind?"
"Well, I had an idea that kinda might be better than the one I built in canon?" I raised a digital eyebrow, slightly concerned, but still gave her an encouraging smile. "I know it's technically an ion canon instead of a railgun, because it uses the rails as a way to accelerate a 30g sample to ionized mercury vapor to about 98% of light speed--" My jaw literally dropped, "But 'Sick As Hell Rail Gun' still sounds cooler than 'Sick As Hell Ion Canon,' you know?"
I had to overclock to process that for a moment, because I didn't even need to crunch the numbers to know that 30 grams of something at 98% lightspeed would hit with the force of a nuclear detonation. Deciding to only comment on the feasibility of the idea after she sent me her notes, I instead focused on the name. "Uzi," I told her. "No one worth caring about will give a fuck about whether or not the name is accurate. If it got its own character tag on AO3, we're gonna call it the SAHRG here, okay?"
She beamed at me, and I was suddenly hugged, before she just as suddenly stepped back. "Don't… don't read too much into that."
"Still just a bit insecure about talking about weapons?"
"Yeah… I know you'll support me with basically anything unless it's blatantly a danger but just… my stupid processors worry , you know?"
"It's fine, Uzi. I always got your back. Even after the day you eventually start dating a Murder Drone." She leveled a deadpan at me, and then I added, "But seriously, I'll always be in your corner." I smiled at her. "Consider me the older brother you never had, okay?"
She blinked a few times. "Are you… are you sure ?" She looked at me, concerned. "What about your own brother?"
I looked away for a few seconds, giving a sardonic grin. "I… I don't think I'm ever going home." I'd thought about it. I really had. I… I missed my family. But it'd been over three years at this point. I was in this for the long haul though. I would never abandon my friends at this point, so unless something or someone physically yeeted me out of this reality, I was here to stay for the next six. "Barring Solver bullshit, I don't think there's going to be a way back home… I have a life here now…. Better than my life before. I wouldn't trade it back even if I could. I wouldn't leave you all behind even if I could… so I think I need to move past my family from my first life. I'll remember them. I'll miss them… but they've probably moved on by this point too. I need to do the same. I'll miss my brother. But I'm still an older brother. Still got those instincts though. So, well, I've already done a bunch of older brother things. Half the time I wonder if my jokes about liking you like the sister I never had are actually jokes. So!" I held out a hand. "Reconciled you with your bullies and cousins, helped you with your 'tism, got you friends, sorted out your dad, am working to save the universe, and am wingmanning you for both your crushes," I listed off. "Pair that with my resume with 23 years as an older sibling, and how's that for an interview?"
Uzi stared at me gobsmacked for a few seconds, forgetting to even overclock, just blinking a few times, before forcing back digital tears. She suddenly lunged forwards and gave me a hug. "Yes!" she squeaked out. I hugged her back for a few seconds, just holding her, and trying to hold back my own tears as I thought about the family I'd left behind. I think… I think they'd be happy that I was happy here though, that I'd found a family of sorts here. I think they'd be happy that I was keeping an eye out for Uzi like this. I don't think my brother would think I was trying to replace him. And that was enough that I could smile despite everything.
"I don't think I'm calling you 'bro' or anything besides 'Joe,' though."
I snrked . "I wouldn't have it any other way, Uzi. Now show your adoptive brother your death ray!"
She sent me the file a moment later, and I took a second to look through it in overclock. Most of it was theoretical, but the math for everything I saw checked out. Her idea was essentially using a series of lasers to ionize a 30 gram sample of mercury vapor, and then use the rails in the gun's barrel as a magnetic lens to accelerate said ionized mercury vapor into a stream that traveled at about 98% of light-speed, using a series of photon convergers along the barrel and parallel to the rails to stabilize the beam such that it fired as a coherent death ray. By the math Uzi crunched, which I double checked, the impact would be equivalent to the energy release of a large scale nuclear weapon, but instead of an explosion, it was all concentrated to a single beam of "fuck everything in front of the barrel of this gun and then some ." To top that off, Uzi had multiple ideas on how to not only have the beam not instantaneously detonate on contact with molecules in the air, but to also only impart its force on its targets. A force that bore a relativistic momentum of around 43,625,972 kg•m/s and a relativistic kinetic energy of roughly 1.085 times 10 to the 16th power Joules.
And once Uzi figured out how to properly build one, we could fucking mass produce these.
"Holy fucking shit ," I muttered as I snapped back to real time to glance at Uzi.
"Do you think I could actually pull it off?" she asked me, pulling back from the hug a bit.
I looked her in the optics. "You're Uzi Freakin' Doorman. You can do whatever the hell you want, and not even physics themselves will be able to stop you. I know you can do this."
She started a gremlin cackle in response, suddenly lunging forwards and knocking my hardhat off before giving me a noogie, only to stop when I did the same to her through her beanie. We both transitioned into somewhat less unhinged laughter after that, and then I listened to her as she started to gush about her plans for her true SAHRG. It would probably be a few years to get a functioning design that wouldn't, you know, kill us all if it malfunctioned, but for fuck's sake, my sorta unofficially adoptive sister really was making some stupidly overpowered weaponry here. In fact, after she'd brought up wanting to arm literally everyone in Outpost 3 with one of those , I'd gone and put my foot down, and said that any work on designing this… I… legit didn't have an analogy for how fucking ridiculous Uzi's true SAHRG was gonna be, but she was only gonna be designing and building it in Vault 2. And we wouldn't store any of the ones we eventually made anywhere where the conventional public could get access. Those things were literally WMDs. Blueprints would be kept on a closed network as well. But still, Uzi was literally bouncing on the balls of her feet as she ran around the workshop and talked weapons ideas to me, and I was happy to listen and even offer pointers back where applicable.
And despite all my worries, despite all my stress, despite my melancholy about a home I'd probably never get to see again, I just couldn't keep a damn smile off my face.
(Doll)
I shut and locked the door to the guest room in the Doorman hab, taking a few steps in before surveying the room. I… despite Khan… causing problems , first with cuz and then nearly finding Mama and Papa, I… he still offered me a place under his own roof. Even if it was years later than it should have been, he was still trying … and I liked that. It felt nice. Like… some semblance of what I'd missed from Papa these past few years. I… it felt right to call him Uncle Khan again, after all these years. And I was so thankful for that. That I still had family in the form of cuz… of Uzi , and Uncle Khan. And I was thankful to Joe too, for making that happen.
But… I still missed them. I still missed Mama and Papa so much… I'd never have Papa grab the overcharged batteries from the top shelf when Mama wasn't looking because he knew I liked them. I'd never get to have Mama teach me how to play all the video games she hadn't shown me yet. There was an entire console gathering dust in my own hab, because I couldn't bring myself to turn it on to play those games without Mama there to play them with me or tease me about the locations of secrets in the levels or hint at optimal strategies… or…
I sniffled. Then I glared at the floor. That monster took them away from me. I glanced down at my hands, briefly flaring the Solver to life, watching the red glyph lazily float over my left hand. I could make that thing pay for it… then I blinked a few times. I remembered when I attempted to lift the monster's stinger… and that damned message: "Like Object Non-Interactive." The Murder Drones were made by the Solver. The same Murder Drones that Joe could be fighting with cuz and even Rebecca and Darren right now. I was willing to wait though. Joe had taught me a lot of lessons through his words and actions over the years. Patience was more important than blind rage. He was gonna bring me into whatever secret war he was waging in a year, and I'd finally get to confront that monster and avenge Mama and Papa. And… and I'd get to see the sunlight with cuz, and my friends, and Joe and Liz. I wanted to see the sun with my own optics. I knew Joe and cuz had been up there, with their custom built frames, and they'd shared photos and video, but I wanted to see it myself one day, up there with everyone else without fearing those things .
I sighed. I was starting to feel down again. But… I could do something about that. I concentrated, reaching for the Solver within me. I pictured my hab. The exact location I wanted to be. The rough distance from here to there. [TRANSLATE] to move myself . [EDIT] to make my very location malleable. There was a crackle , a glitch in reality, red static flashing in my view--
--and I was in my own hab. A good ten minute walk, maybe five at a run. The distance traversed in an instant. I checked my oil reserves. Down 15% from the teleportation. Better. Amazingly better compared to nearly overheating just from moving a few feet . I could still improve though… but Joe would be upset if I pushed myself and got hurt. So would Liz. I didn't wanna make them mad. And cuz would just be disappointed , which was in some ways worse . I took a thermos from my coat, and topped off my oil levels, before heading over to my bathroom. The mirror was cracked because of the Solver. I had to constantly remind myself not to look in any mirrors when I was at Uncle Khan's house, because of that stupid quirk of the Solver. I froze for a second. The mirror in Mama's and Papa's bedroom had always been cracked. They'd never told me why it hadn't been replaced, but I supposed that question had just answered itself.
I looked myself in the mirror for a few seconds, multiple reflections of myself in the shards reaching to run my long hair through my hands. Maybe I should braid it? I thought. It might be practical for the day I went to the surface. I recalled the time Liz braided it and Joe asked to watch, years back. Would it look nice? I wondered. I was ambivalent on it myself, but Liz had seemed happy to do it back then. Maybe she'd think it looked nice? A little surprise for my best friend…
I shrugged. If I didn't like it for whatever reason, or if Liz or Joe said they preferred my hair down, I'd put it back down, but I reached out with my Solver to get to braiding it myself, grabbing the separated strands and going to twist them and-- " Cyka Blyat! " I shouted as I tugged too hard on a strand and it hurt , like I was yanking on my head . I dropped my Solver as I froze, eyemotes ringing out. I swallowed dryly. I reached up with my hands, pinching some purple locks of hair between my thumb and fingers, and gave a quick tug. And it stung again. I pulled my ushanka off, and leaned up to the mirror, parting the strands and seeing that they were coming out of my head instead of a wig cap . I staggered back, falling onto my butt as I started breathing heavily.
" What the fuck… " I whispered. " What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?!? "
I called Liz on reflex. It rang three times before she picked up. "Dolly? What's--"
" The Solver made my hair become real. It's growing out of my head. I'm scared, " I murmured.
"I'm on the way," she said without an instant's hesitation. "Your hab or Uzi's?"
"Mine. "
"Should I call Joe?"
" We don't know if he's fighting those monsters right now. I… I don't think this is an emergency. We can ask him and cuz if they have any ideas in the morning. "
"Okay," Liz told me. "Just keep it together Dolly. I'll be there in about five minutes."
I tried to focus on keeping my breathing even. This was fine. This was fine. This was fine . It was… it was just hair… but it wasn't just hair… I hadn't had to poop in months . I'd grown fangs . Sometimes I woke up and it felt like there was a pressure in my back in two separate spots before they went away. That wasn't normal. The Solver was changing my body without my permission. Without even knowing what exactly was changing. And that scared me. Maybe… maybe I would talk to Joe about it, along with the hair, in the morning.
I must have lost myself in trying to stop an outright panic, because I only noticed Liz had gotten here when she came up to the still-open bathroom door and wrapped me in a hug. I hugged her back in an instant and managed to keep myself from crying. "I'm here, Dolly," she whispered to me. "I'm here for you."
" Thanks Liz ," I whispered, and we spent roughly ten minutes hugging one another on my bathroom floor.
"Do you wanna talk about it?" she eventually asked.
" My hair is apparently actual hair and not a wig anymore, but Rebecca's synthetic hair-care products still work-- oh no!" I had a startling realization.
"What Doll?"
" I can't take my wig off to wash it anymore! How am I gonna clean my hair?!? "
"I'm sure we can ask Rebecca to make some kind of version that can be used by hand," Liz told me with an optimistic tone.
" That's gonna suck so much ," I complained.
"Couldn't you just Solver all the dirt and grime out, and then just like, use some leave-in spray Rebecca could make to keep it looking nice?"
I pulled back a bit, taking a look at Liz, who started to blush… for some reason. " Liz, you're a genius ," I told her. She started to blush worse. " Are you okay? "
"I'm fine!" she shouted. I blinked, nonplussed, but elected to believe her.
I then thought for a moment. " I nearly yanked a bunch of hair out of my head. I need to work on control. I can move objects dexterously enough, but I need to work on slow and delicate control. But maybe after that I can start using the Solver for hygiene. "
"I'd say I'm jealous that you'll be able to train your magical powers to make yourself look hot, but that'd be in poor taste when they came from Robo-Satan."
I blinked. " You think I'm hot? "
Liz froze up before half her visor lit up with pink hashmarks. "I-I-I-I… I mean… yeah?"
I smiled at her. " Thanks Liz. You're hot too. We're definitely the best looking besties in the school ."
Lizzy blushed more, but also seemed… disappointed ? for some reason. "Yeah… besties… Is… is there anything else you need?"
" Can you braid my hair again? " I asked her suddenly. Lizzy froze.
"What?"
" Like that time a couple years back when Joe watched. I was wondering if it'd look nice, and you were here, so I thought maybe you'd wanna do it again? " I trailed off after that, suddenly embarrassed.
Liz gave me a smile. "I'd love to do it, Dolly!"
I smiled back, and we got up and went over to my kitchen so I could sit down in a chair. Liz was still blushing as she followed me. " Are you sure you're okay, Liz? "
"I'm fine!" she said fast enough that I kinda wondered if she wasn't, but I trusted her as much as I trusted Joe and cuz.
" I kinda like the way it frames my face though, so maybe you could start the braid from the shoulder blades down? " I asked.
Liz put a hand to her chin, taking a look at me, and then grabbed my ushanka back off my head before plopping it on the table. "Maybe… I'm thinking a braid starting at a normal point, but only with some of the hair, but then the rest merges into it past the shoulder blades." She paused a second, and then scoffed. "Ugh, I wish Rebecca hadn't found out Joe's secrets. I wanna ask her for her thoughts…"
" I think you'll make it look nice, Liz ," I told her.
Lizzy squeaked, but waved me off when I glanced over at her, so I shrugged and kept my head still. I… I felt her gently handling my hair as she put the braid together over the next few minutes. Liz was blushing a lot while doing it, but I couldn't really figure out why , though I decided not to ask about it. I didn't wanna bother her. She finished soon enough and stepped back, messaging my with a screenshot of the back of my head. I was still ambivalent even now. It was nice , but it didn't really feel any better or worse than having my hair down. " You did a great job, Liz, but I'm still ambivalent. What do you think? "
"I think it looks really nice, Dolly, but I'm probably biased because I did it… though I think your hair looks great either way."
" Thanks Liz. Your hair looks nice too. " There were a few seconds of silence, and then I turned around to see her blushing. " Liz-- "
"I'm fine !" she asserted. "But thanks, and… and I guess we'll just see if Joe likes it or not then?"
" Probably. This was mostly just an experiment anyways. I'm still on the fence either way. I'm fine with leaving it up to someone else to decide which they like better, and I trust Joe's opinion. "
"Yeah," Liz agreed. "Do you need anything else from me? Are you feeling better about the hair?"
" Mostly, " I told her. " I still want to ask Joe if he has any guesses about what's going on with that, though. "
"Yeah, he seems weirdly on-point with those," Liz remarked.
I hummed in acknowledgment, and then smiled at her. " Thanks for coming over Liz. I really appreciate it. "
"Any time, Dolly," she told me, and then we both stepped towards one another and gave each other a hug. Liz held on a bit tighter than she usually did. "Take care, okay?"
" I will ," I told her, and then she let go, and I walked her to the door, wishing her a good night before she went on her way. Once it closed and I locked it, I headed over to my room. There wasn't as much in here anymore. I had most of my things over in the guest room in Uncle Khan's residence. Really, the only thing I kept over here was the majority of my growing knife collection that wasn't already stored away in my Solver's inventory, and… and Joe's present. The best birthday present anyone had ever gotten me, only matched by the locket Liz gave me that I was wearing even now. Sitting innocuously in its case, the nanite acid in that monster's severed stinger case an eerie glow across my bedroom.
Joe got that for me. He went to the surface with cuz, perforated that monster with buckshot, made it feel the pain it dealt to me and everyone else, and then took it's most deadly weapon as a trophy from the encounter, only to give it to me. I… words couldn't describe just how thankful I was to him in that moment, how thankful I was even now. I walked up to the case. The canister was non-interactive… but what about the nanite acid itself? Could I control that with the Solver? Use the Solver on the acid to splash that monster with its own worst weapon?
"That is actual nanite acid, by the way," cuz had said. " Do not mess with it ," she'd stressed on top of it.
I took the case off. Just one drop, just to check if I could use it with my Solver, and then I'd leave it be. I slowly, carefully , picked the thing up. This was a piece of the monster that killed Mama and Papa, in my hands. It was warm to the touch, even now. I slowly twisted it. I stepped into the middle of the room, hands held out far from me, and gave it a very light twist to turn it upside down, Solver ready to catch it.
More than one drop squirted out. Maybe five or six total. I jumped back, optics hollow as I got another "Like Object Non-Interactive" message, and they fell down to the floor and started to sizzle as they ate a hole into it. And then I felt the pain . The blinding, white hot, burning, agonizing pain on my last left finger. I choked down a scream, fighting past the urge to clench my fist shut because I knew that would spread it to my palm , and staggered over to my nighttable to place the stinger back down, making sure it would stay upright and not spill any more. I started moaning in pain, finally glancing down at my finger in blatant terror. There was a drop of glowing, molten, caustic yellow on the tip, eating away at it in real time. It was almost to the furthest knuckle joint already. What do I do? What do I do? What do I DO?!? I panicked. It was gonna keep eating away at my finger, then my hand , and then my arm .
" Shit shit shit shit shit! " I hissed as I grit my fanged teeth and digital tears blurred my visual feed, but I still forced my hand to stay open so it wouldn't reach my palm as fast. I'd already lost a knuckle by this point.
" What would Joe do? " I asked myself, trying so hard not to panic. " Something stupid that worked ," I told myself a moment later. " Think Doll ," I pushed through clenched teeth. " THINK! " I shouted.
I had my Solver. I couldn't use it on the acid directly. What else could I use it for? I didn't have anything in my storage space that could neutralize the acid, most of everything in there was dozens of knives I'd planned to impale that monster with via my Solver--
" That would work, " I muttered, pain almost forgotten as the idea occurred to me. " Can't spread to me if it's not attached to me. "
I whisked a knife out into reality, one of the good CrCoNi ones Joe made. The acid was past my other knuckle now. I'd need to do this fast . I started breathing faster, even if I didn't need to, as the reality of what I was about to do sunk in, but I didn't have time to hesitate. I put the knife blade first up to the base of the finger, and then pulled it up while pushing my hand down.
I cried out as what was left of the finger was sliced off, the acid-stricken digit falling to the floor but no longer attached to me , and I hissed in pain as I dropped the knife and oil spurted from the cut. " That was so stupid! " I shouted at myself. " Damnit! Why did I think that would work ?!? I could have gotten killed from that!" The self loathing was hot and burning in my chest, because I knew cuz and Joe and Liz would yell at me for this stunt, and I didn't want any of them to be mad at me, but I'd fucked up , and now I'd have to ask Joe to make me a new finger wherever he makes all his other stuff--
There was a sizzling noise that wasn't the acid, and a heat along my finger. Panicking again, I glanced down at my hand. My optics ringed out again as I watched a silvery fluid slowly but surely reconstruct the finger right in front of me, disappearing back under the surface of it as it finished. My mouth hung open, and I checked my HUD, intent to go over the memory file to make sure I didn't just imagine that--
I was down by 5% on my oil from before the accident. Way more than I could have lost from the bleeding that happened. My Solver… my Solver had regenerated my finger after I cut it off… I could regenerate from wounds like the Murder Drones could. My optics filled in, but were still far wider than usual as the realization sank in.
" I need to call Joe first thing in the morning ," I said aloud.