Chapter Text
Uzi flew side by side with N, the wind catching her wings. She laughed, reveling in the freedom of soaring through the sky with her boyfriend. N glanced at her, a :D across his visor.
“I’ll race you to the spire!” He said, and zipped forward.
“You’re on!” She sped up. But his head start, larger body, and longer time with wings gave him the advantage. When she reached the spire, he’d already alighted on top of it. Not one to accept defeat, she barreled into him. They collapsed together. N chuckled. She giggled. Giggled. He’d made her, an edgy, emo, goth girl, giggle. She didn’t even hate it. That’s how much she loved him.
“I win!” He said. A thumbs up crossed his visor.
Part of her wanted to contest it, to say that his head start gave him an unfair advantage, but she couldn’t ruin that goofy grin. “Yeah, I guess you do.”
He wrapped an arm around her and she rested her head on his shoulder. They gazed up at the sky, a portrait of indigo speckled with millions of stars burning just for them. N must be rubbing off on me–that was annoyingly cheesy, Uzi thought. She didn’t mind, though.
“Isn’t it amazing how far we’ve come?” N murmured. He smiled, lost in the nostalgia. “I mean, you blew my head off around here.”
“And you tried to kill me,” Uzi replied, but there was no anger in her tone. She was almost teasing. “Our lives are insane.” No one else would look back on murder attempts fondly. But Uzi didn’t care how unconventional their love story was. Heck, she’d rather it be unconventional! Sure, she could do without the trauma of the Absolute Solver and all it brought, but she liked the place she was in now.
“Almost as insane as I am for you.” N stated with a bashful smile. Clearly he was aware of how ridiculous the line was.
“You did not just say that,” Uzi said, but she was laughing. Unfortunately, the moment was ruined by an interloper.
“Cringe. You should not be a pickup artist, big brother N,” Cyn spoke up. Uzi’s tail chomped on N’s shoulder.
He removed the tail from his shoulder, sucking in a breath. “I’d kind of forgotten you could hear us,” he admitted sheepishly.
Ugh, Cyn! Uzi was having a nice date with N. Cyn did not have to interrupt like that. This was one thing Uzi would change if she could–no privacy, not anymore, what with the former drone/eldritch abomination living in her tail.
“Flat stare. I am betrayed by my own brethren. Your pickup lines are dumb,” Cyn declared.
“Did you seriously just say ‘brethren’?” Uzi asked. “Who says that?”
“Buddy, I think you’re the one who betrayed us first,” N said at the same time.
Cyn shrugged as much as she could when she was Uzi’s tail. “Concedes. You have a point there.” Her tail slithered onto N’s lap. “You know I did not wish you harm.”
“But you wished everyone else harm,” N replied. He stroked the part of Uzi’s tail that held Cyn. A light vibrating emanated from it—her?
“Are you purring?” Uzi questioned.
“Yes. You can do it too. Next question,” Cyn said.
“I can do what–is this like, a Solver thing? Or is it a you thing? Do I even want to know?” Purring was a thing that cats did. Cats were probably extinct with the rest of humanity; after all, she hadn’t seen anything about them becoming immortal like dogs. Why would she be able to purr?
“It’s . . . a Solver thing, yes,” Cyn replied hesitantly. “Big brother N can do it too, as can all disassembly drones. I do not know why. It is just part of having the Absolute Solver.”
“Great. Anything else–”
“Wait, are you lying, Cyn?” N interjected. “Because I remember you used to go on Tessa’s tablet when no one was around and look at art of humanoid animals and humans with animal traits like cat ears and stuff.”
“Sheepish giggle . . . Maybe?” Cyn shook herself back and forth. “I may have had some influence on how you ended up . . . nervous giggle . . .”
Was Cyn embarrassed? It was a strange look on her, that was for sure. Uzi sighed. “So you turned us into cats.”
“N is dog-coded.”
“What’s that supposed to mean–you know what? I don’t care. I don’t care. We were having a perfectly good date before you interrupted, and I’d like to get back to it.”
“Silly Uzi, you can never escape me.”
Uzi groaned.
“I mean, if she wants to third wheel our date, she can third wheel our date. We can’t exactly stop her,” N pointed out.
“No, I suppose not,” Uzi conceded reluctantly. Internally, she cursed the downsides of sharing a body.
“But hey, we can still have fun!”
“Can you, big brother? Can you?” Cyn said.
“Shh, Cyn, shhh.”
“You can never silence me. I am in your walls. Your tail. Your mind. I will always be with you. Watching you–”
“Aaaaarghhh!” Uzi exclaimed. Cyn just wouldn’t leave them alone.
“You chose this when you ate me, big sister Uzi.”
“I’m gonna go home and have an existential crisis over Cyn calling me her sister,” Uzi grumbled. “Sorry, N.”
“No worries! We can always do this another day!” N replied chipperly.
Guilt churned in Uzi’s stomach. This was supposed to be her time with N, and she was leaving it. But Cyn kept on getting on her nerves, and apparently she could purr, and for some reason Cyn called her big sister which gave rise to a lot of emotions in Uzi and none of them were simple. She didn’t want to be Cyn’s sister. Cyn was accomplice to turning N into the murder drones. Part of humanity’s destruction. Part of every bad thing that had happened to her. Cyn also had told them that she hadn’t realized how big, how bad, the Absolute Solver’s plans were. She had never wanted to hurt N. She’d mourned Tessa, sure, but she also was responsible for her death, and she was the one human who loved the drones. Cyn was stuck in Uzi’s tail. She could barely move and was restricted to going where Uzi went. Neither Uzi nor Cyn chose this. They had to make the best of it somehow–and if Cyn chose to do that by considering Uzi a sister along with N . . . Well, she may not like it, but she wasn’t going to rebuke Cyn for it either. Still, she wanted to go home to process her newfound crisis.