Finale
They all arrived at the surface, N having flown Khan and Thad, and V having carried Lizzy and Doll. Uzi risked flying herself, and received no interference from Cyn. Parts and pieces of whatever old lot they emerged in were now split-level with each other, and the surrounding frozen landscape was beginning to break up further.
"Oh. There you are." Cyn greeted them, human disguise now fully discarded, leaving the little once-sweet robo-child adjusting the bow in her hair. "I_was worried you might miss_out on, movie night." She mockingly finger gunned just N had years ago as a butler, when he'd suggested the same thing.
In Russian. "We're not allowing you to get what you want." Doll was the first to actually respond.
Followed by Lizzy. "Prepare to get beat, Freak."
"Yeah!" N agreed, back to being himself, enough so to activate cool sunglasses on his visor. "By the power of Friendship!"
Cyn's eye twitched. "Cringe."
"Oh yeah!" N happily agreed.
"Straight up!" Thad met him with a fist-bump.
N's looked over to V, finding her of course with a much more intense, combat-ready face. But when she shared the briefest look with him, he saw her eye do a swift roll before letting her eyelid lines down.
"Oh-hoh," Khan proudly offered his pre-finale bit, "if you want Cringe, I've got plenty of door-related dad jokes to tell that would probably kill you."
Uzi's face fell forward into her palm with a groan, but the glass of her visor then dragged against her fingers as her head turned to the side. She gave her dad a weak side-smile while the kind of blush lines she was most accustomed to appeared on her display : humiliation.
Further quaking of the ground stopped anyone else from speaking, and they all looked to the evil little goober standing in the middle of the frozen lot. She was now rising gradually from the ground, being lifted by more and more tentacles that burst into existence from her back. Not just the crab clawed ones they were used to seeing, but now also ones that resembled extremely lengthened drone arms . . . ending in human hands. They all propped her up, leaving her body more hanging from where they met than anything else.
And the rumbling quakes were soon joined by the sound of rock splitting open. From the nearest cracks in the crust, some unnatural light began to shine, revealing itself to come from enormous, golden-glowing tendrils creeping up from below the ground like aberrant plants springing into life.
"Oh come on!" Uzi complained.
Perhaps because of the absurdity of it, it ended up being N who exposited an exact observation. "She's absorbing the planet's geothermal energy and using it to create giant glowing plasma tentacles!"
"Ugh, more tentacles?" Lizzy was unimpressed. "Is that the only gimmick this chick has?"
"No." Cyn snapped her fingers, conjuring a [ Null ] orb into existence. "I_have, other gimmicks."
The null was thrown, and froze mid-flight, Uzi's raised hand bearing a solver symbol rotating one way then the other. The same battle of contradicting commands occurred as before, with the object erroring itself out of existence.
Cyn rotated her head in renewed annoyance, nearly inverting it before winking at Uzi and sending her visor glitching out.
Uzi would have collapsed to the ground again, if not for being caught by the shoulder and helped to stand by Doll of all people. And she saw . . . Doll's facial display was trying to glitch out too, and her movements appeared stiff, but with the russian teen it seemed, Cyn wasn't winning.
In Russian. "You have to care about something. More than she does about anything."
Uzi . . . had to do her thinking in the air!
N and V had issued a single-word warning before tossing the worker drones and then flying out of the way themselves. One of the giant glowing plasma tentacles had slammed down on their prior location, missing an attempt to crush them all at once.
Uzi's most recent memories sped through her head, circling around something that had changed, around what was most immediately on her mind.
Overhearing what the detective had said in the hallway.
"Something about his daughter being more important than building a door in this hallway, ugh, kinda cringe."
Her dad feeling worthless and expressing genuine concern for her.
"Turns out, I'm not who either of you needed." . . . "Just, be safe ok?"
And him actually following them down into the labs to help her.
"Yes, sorry it took us some time to get down here and all, buuut I figured if saving you once might (probably not) make up for leaving you for dead, even so, I'd still have all those times you said it as an edgy teen hyperbole to make up for."
She hit the ground, rolling a few times before stabilizing herself in an action anime pose. And then she felt it again, the attempt, seizure of control. But now when she remembered, when she saw right now, her dad looking at her with panic and concern . . . when she let herself see that, whatever their neglected past, now Uzi was her dad's utmost priority . . .
Her solver eye still fidgeted and flickered, but it ceased to change colour, and while her limbs and head took more will to move, they mostly did as she told them now, and ceased attempting to move as Cyn commanded.
"Sorry, just me in here." Uzi mocked the being that was attempting to puppet her,
In Russian. "You cannot attach puppet strings to our souls anymore."
"Oh well," Cyn feigned only being disappointed, "we'll_just have to, deal with_you_the old fashioned way then."
Another one of her planetary energy tendrils started to rise up from the broken ground behind Uzi and Doll, raising itself to slam down on them.
"I am so done with this." Lizzy remarked in the same casual dismissal as ever, and then fired her converger rifle.
The ballooning green blast cut the giant glowing tentacle completely through, leaving the length above to dissipate, and the portion below to retract back into the ground.
Everyone, Cyn included, took a second to give a surprised look in reaction at the de-solidifying energy being resorbed by the crust.
Doll was the first to return her gaze to their enemy, with flat eyelid lines dropping over the top half of her eyes. In Russian. "For a being who is so powerful, you continue to disappoint."
A little anime angry symbol appeared in the upper corner of Cyn's visor, and this time no one waited for her to make a retort.
Another ear-ringing green blast was sent Cyn's way, this one from Thad's rifle.
The eldritch robo-child cartwheeled out of the way, half a dozen tentacles making the act easy until a yellow flash separated her from half of them.
V had lasered a cross-cut, while N had flown up and now sent rockets down.
Cyn teleported away, reappearing next to the three normal worker drones.
Thad dropped into a breakdance spin dodging Cyn's sword swing, but found himself being lifted up by the ankle for the third time in his life. He dropped back to the ground just as soon when the tentacle that grabbed him was cut by ninja stars N had thrown.
Lizzy was pulled out of the way by Doll's solver just before Cyn could impale her with a clawed appendage, and the evil little goober then found her face on the receiving end of a wrench swing from Khan, smashing her visor and knocking her right into a flying power kick V delivered from behind.
Cyn went flying and then tumbling across the frozen-over pavement, two fresh tentacles sprouting to lift and set her body upright, and then twist her head back into position while her visor regenerated.
"Angry!" She vocalized her emotions as the process was completed.
Though she immediately had to solver-deflect incoming bullets from N, she also made another giant golden tentacle emerge, forcing a huge chunk of ground away and aside as it broke up from below, which threatened to then tip over and fall onto Lizzy, Thad and Khan.
But Uzi's solver symbol appeared against it, struggling with Cyn's attempt to glitch her but still managing to hold it up long enough for the three to get away.
Cyn had attempted to null her, but Doll ripped an old traffic sign from the ice with her own solver and sent it careening Cyn's way, forcing her to cancel.
"Watch out losers!" Lizzy screamed at Uzi and Doll, who both looked to find the giant plasma tendril whipping itself through an old skyscraper, sending a practical meteor shower of glass, steel and concrete towards them.
And while N and V raced in to fly them out, Cyn took the opportunity to charge the other three, speeding across the frozen surface on all tentacles, each blitzing over the other like she was a spider running during a seizure.
Yellow flashed, her tentacles and lower drone legs were severed.
A figure had shot up out of one of the tunnels she'd nulled earlier.
"ILLEGITIMATE CORPORATE MERGERRRRRRRR!"
J came in screaming with gunfire, error triangle constantly flashing over one eye.
A lone tentacle supported Cyn while her legs regenerated, and her solver blocked the incoming rounds while she attempted a control connection over J.
She received an error message . . .
Cyn received an error message.
Error!
Subject's Personhood Updated
Admin Rights Corrupted
It was enough of another unwanted shock, she almost didn't hear the trigger pull.
Khan had tossed Thad and Lizzy charges to reload, and Thad had fired his converger, forcing Cyn to teleport out of the way, and blasting the giant golden tentacle beyond her apart as well.
"Two for ONE!" Khan was decently impressed, patting the teen on the shoulder while handing him a third charge.
Cyn's displayed expression was growing less and less confident. She was . . . not in a position she wanted to be. "Bad workplace etiquette to_disrespect your boss, J."
"I did listen to my boss." J sounded . . . to the two drones that knew her, the most genuine she had in a long, long time. "You're just a pile of Sentient MASS!"
J switched out her hands for disassembler ones and took off.
Cyn respawned a few eldritch appendages and raised a solver hand to conjure a null, but she had to throw it upwards instead of at J.
N and V had since deposited Uzi and Doll back on the ground elsewhere, and the two workers had used their solvers to throw a bus at Cyn.
The null destroyed the bus mid-air, and Cyn weaved out of the way of J's attack only to lose several tentacles to N, who'd sword-dashed in from the other direction.
V forced Cyn to solver-shield with gunfire, while firing a missile towards Doll with her other hand.
Doll spun in place when her solver caught it, multiplying it from one to five as she swung around and sending the missile cluster Cyn's way.
No other way to avoid everything, Cyn sputtered into a multi-image, visages of her flickering here or there for a second before settling on a solid location.
"Use that to lock her down." V's comment was quick and simple, drawing a nod from N and . . . whatever J actually thought of them, even if it was bad, she must have thrown it aside, because she nodded as well.
A giant plasma tentacle burst from the ground in between Thad, Lizzy and Khan, throwing them all different ways and disarming them.
Rockets flew from N's arms while V and J swooped towards Cyn.
Crab-claw arms caught one missile one by one, sacrificing themselves to snap them in half, and Cyn's sword traded strikes with V's sword arms and J's bladed-finger hands.
The giant golden tendril raced down toward Lizzy.
Doll's solver appeared around her, but flickered as she suddenly had to fight for it, looking over to see Cyn had snapped her head her and Uzi's way, winking at them as she fought the others.
She couldn't control them anymore, but she could still make things difficult. And that was the point.
Doll saw the disassembly drone blade Cyn had cut from J . . . which was now flying right at Doll like a javelin as time slowed.
Catch it.
Teleport.
. . .
She couldn't.
She could function under that thing's gaze . . . but not with unbounded freedom.
Doll could catch it, or she could teleport . . . but she'd have to let go elsewhere.
. . .
She managed to at least meet her old best friend's eyes for a single instant, enough to smile, however small, before committing and throwing Lizzy out of the way of her demise.
She at least undid the smallest fraction of all that she had done.
. . .
And then Doll was struck by the blade thrown at her.
The giant glowing tentacle that had missed Lizzy raised up again to search for another target, but was cut in half by a converger blast. Thad had gotten to his feet, and Uzi had solver-thrown his weapon to him during the same instant Doll had saved Lizzy.
Uzi solver-threw the other rifle back to Lizzy, who froze with open-circle eyes upon seeing Doll now on the ground with a blade through her torso.
Cyn was weaving between J and V, clashing swords and meeting bladed wings with her tentacle claw-scythes. She was forced to throw herself into a backward bend to dodge a swing, and it set her eyes' aim upward in time to see N ready with a cutting laser up above, about to decapitate her.
She blinked away. Glitchy, half-transparent images of her appearing here and there.
In the second's fraction they had, the three disassembly drones caught each other's knowing eyes. N spun to Thad and Lizzy, both having just reloaded charges. He threw a pointing finger across the span of cracked ground in front of them where some of Cyn's visages were glitching in. And in the same soundless instant, V looked at Uzi and motioned with her head eyes to the frozen lot's other periphery.
Uzi did the only thing she could think of, trying something daring and crazy. She remembered the exchanged feeling when she had canceled Cyn's use of it before, and drawing on that . . . she popped a [ Null ] sphere into being at the edge of her fingers.
And everyone acted at once.
A black null line voided across one edge of the area, denying it to Cyn. Green blasts rocked and upended another. J and V went back to back and both swung cutting lasers across a chest-level plane.
Cyn had been denied almost every reappearance spot.
Only one half-image left. One N made sure to be near.
And when she did, he lunged.
But then her visage flickered.
She wasn't in front of him. A golden retriever was.
A soft thing. Just a sweet doggo, looking back at him with its innocent little pupper eyes and its mouth open and dog-happy.
NOOOOOO!
. . .
He couldn't . . .
. . .
He fought himself.
. . .
He forced an X to take the place of his eyes, no matter how immeasurable the crushing void of gravity he felt in his heart.
. . . He wasn't losing anyone.
Impact. His hand and arm felt the shearing resistance.
His eyes returned, and the golden retriever disappeared.
It was just Cyn there, surprised sad face emojis taking the place of her eyes for just a moment, before they reverted not to the thin-lined X's of before, but back to her actual, normal eyes.
They both looked, everyone did.
The patch had punctured her core.
And after she looked back up at him, her expression display went haywire.
Skewing lines, stacking and duplicating error triangles, one eye returning to flicker into a solver symbol and back a dozen times per second . . . and then empty black . . . and then came coding text, in normal, baseline white.
Proximity Connection . . .
Quantum Link Forced
Entanglement Matched
Running
Scanning . . .
Scan Complete
Threats Detected: Malevolence
Threat Degree: Existential
corruption found in "AbsoluteProblemSolverAndAdaptiveInfiniteLearning"
Host State: Non-Recoverable
Purging . . .
Purging . . .
Purging . . .
Little Cyn collapsed to the ground, limbs and neck limp, with the word writing itself out on her visor screen over and over again.
N actually felt . . . he started to lower himself down–
"Uzi!" Thad's shout drew attention away.
A light show of sparks had just spat from Uzi's head, and an exclamation point encased in a triangle was blinking on her display as she fell over, striking her forehead against a jagged piece of exposed metal.
N could see words appear on her facial visor then, when the fall made her head turn his way.
Host Status : Recoverable
Purging . . .
Purging . . .
And then J's visor sparked.
And V's.
And N's own world went dark.
. . .
. . .
Recovery Complete
Corrupt Code in "AbsoluteProblemSolverAndAdaptiveInfiniteLearning" Purged
Rebooting . . .
. . .
It didn't even call him an idiot.
He heaved himself up into a sitting position, hurrying to stand up again.
"Big_brother, N . . ."
Before he even began to move elsewhere, her voice brought his eyes back down again.
It was . . . it sounded normal. As if, hearing it now, what he was used to hearing in hindsight seemed as if it had always been two voices speaking at once. But now, what he heard was alone. And the eyes that were looking up at him were the old, default drone white.
"Big_brother, N . . ." She repeated herself while she attempted to get off the ground, but her body was failing, and the best she managed was to sit up, with the patcher falling from her chest and leaving the open hole it had punched through to her core. "I . . . don't_want to go, to_the gala anymore."
Caution did run throughout him, but N still felt time reversing in his heart all the same. He was here, and here was now, but for her sake, and for who he once was . . . and who he was now, he felt them going back to those times before, and softened his expression display as he started to kneel down.
"Can_I . . . take a nap, instead?" She asked, eyelid lines descending from her visor's outer corners.
"Sure little buddy." He answered, knelt at her level, catching her when she nearly fell attempting to lay back down.
"But I'll_miss, your movie night." The expression arranged on her visor screen truly belonged to a child, one worrying about hurting her self-assigned big brother's feelings.
"Hey, don't worry about it." He assured her. "We can have it tomorrow night. Promise."
"Pillow hands." She put her hands together and placed them under her cheek like a pillow, with the larger palm of N's hand underneath. "You_are so sweet, big brother . . ."
. . .
Her display simply cut. Not even a black screen, just black glass.
N let go of the promising expression he'd held for her, and the sadness of the truth became visible, even on his face.
His eyes drifted from her visor that had permanently shut down, to the puncture hole in her chest. Little wisps of white vapor escaped from it, the last of the liquid helium from the cylinders around her core evaporating. And in the shattered sphere of Cyn's quantum processing core itself, tiny but bright pinpricks of light were flashing for the most narrow glimpses of time, as atoms that were never meant to meet the outside world or each other annihilated.
And then, even those stopped, and after N returned his eyes to his little buddy's now empty face. His eyelid lines were displayed low, and a digital teardrop showed up next to one eye. He eventually set her down, making sure to leave her resting her head on her pillow hands.
One last time, for the first time in so long a time, N gave her head two gentle pats, and then he left her body in peace.
V was there when he turned around after standing up. She had a disassembler hand gripping parts of J's shoulders and neck, having been ready to both hold her back and injure her had she tried anything. Now, as N stood up and V locked eyes with him, she relinquished the weaponized fingers for a normal hand, and she let her eyes go open-circle and soft for him.
He walked over to her, and she took a few steps to at least put more than an arm's length between them and J.
N couldn't speak at first, but after a moment, and V letting some of the sadness in his eyes influence her own, he did.
"She was real . . ." He said, raising a finger joint to tap his visor display and make the teardrop go away. "You don't think . . ." He looked back over an eternally sleeping Cyn, and then back to V, eyes weighted down toward the ground with worry and uncertainty, the kind he'd shown in the landing pod when he first asked V about their past. "Was she stuck in there the whole time?"
N's eyes had come to meet hers again, and V could only internally languish in the truth that she had no answer. But at least, while N's expression display showed the fret he was undergoing, V's maintained the solidity N needed to see. Even with the gentler eyes of who she used to be, who she wanted to be, and even with all the false coldness gone, solidity was still part of who she'd become.
. . .
But verbally, someone else actually delivered an answer.
"Her wanting to go to the gala was the last thing you and her talked about, right?" J spoke of that final night in the manor. "Didn't sound like she remembered anything else, moron."
Her arms were still crossed. Her eye settings, and the rest of her expression, were still bitter. Her voice itself still carried some part of her normal superiority. But J had just . . . said something assuring, for someone else . . .
The uncertainty in N's digital expression remained, but the intensity of the worry diminished more each following second. Another look over his shoulder at his little sister, and at the sleepy little smile she'd gone offline forever with . . . he turned back to J again, eyes beginning to relinquish their worry, and his inherent N-ness regaining enough influence to pull his mouth up into a small, but grateful smile.
"Thanks J."
J's visor narrowed her eyes further at N's thanks.
"Always looking out for me." N echoed the very words he had said months ago after she'd tried to kill him, but knowing this time, this time, it was true. "And thanks for switching sides. You know, choosing Team Friendship."
Even V, whoever she would find herself to be now, rolled her eyes at that.
J's eyes though, narrowed even further, her eyebrow lines descending and angling in as well.
"Tessa." Her arms unfolded and went down to her sides as she coldly insisted. "I came back for Tessa. Not for your toaster friends, and not for either of you."
V's arms were crossed now, and her expression most closely matched being unimpressed.
"That's ok." N was understanding, because of course he was. It even made one of J's eyebrows raise upward. "So, did you want to come–" N didn't complete his next words.
Instead of waiting to respond or even continue giving a bitter glare, J had simply turned and begun walking away.
"J? Where–"
"Away." Was the only answer she provided, deploying her wings once she had the space to.
Before J took off, N made sure he gave her the reminder. "Oh, ah, ok, well remember, you know where we live." He even raised a hand up high to give a goodbye wave, even if J refused to see it. And after she'd gone, he of course looked to V with some worry.
"She'll be fine." V promised, not knowing what J was going to do with herself now, but giving N the answer with confidence because she knew J would be safe. They all would, now that That Thing was gone.
"Do you think maybe she could've used a hug?" N asked a very N question.
V's eyelid lines cut across her eyes half way. "If your tried, the most friendly version of her would just tell you to kill yourself."
"Hah, I remember that!" N recalled. "She did say that once, well, she didn't say it out loud–"
V, with her eyes relenting, reached into her jacket before N had finished his words, pulling out something else she'd secretly held on to. One N's simple drawings, from so long ago, from before everything. And, unfortunately, to V, with J's addition to it still there as well.
N's face grew nostalgic once he saw it. "Us as lizards." And, of course, there was J's self-portrait and kill yourself message beside him and V's lizard forms as well. "Looks like it's kinda worn away?"
V had just bumped into him. She had just knocked into him at the manor. It was . . . at least, it was the same feeling, the same kind of embarrassment. She finally felt embarrassment from something other than the image of her harsher exterior being damaged, however much was now real or however much had been her false persona. "Yeah, I . . . couldn't keep it from getting–"
"Want me to make you a new one?"
He was . . . so willful, so caringly happy to, when V looked at him. Just like he always would be. Her eyes went down to the old, faded drawing again: two little simple, stubby lizards, zig-zaggy squiggly objects with pointy triangle stub legs, and smiley faces. Of course smiley faces. N drew them happy together.
"V?"
She grabbed him, hugging N and waiting, waiting for . . .
"Hehe," he hugged her back, of course he did, "guessing that's a yes?"
Single lines replaced V's eyes on her visor, and were she human, she guessed she would have rolled her eyes behind her eyelids. "Yes, N."
"You got it!" He hugged her tighter with his promise.
V's eyes opened again, filled-in circles, and without any blush lines on her face now. Not for that moment.
. . .
Because she was comfortable here . . . that was why.
They weren't sitting on the library floor leaning on each other while N read to her about dogs. That was gone. But they were . . .
N and V.
. . .
. . .
And it probably did help that she knew no one was looking at them.
Then when both of them inevitably looked elsewhere, she realized there was a reason for that.
. . .
While N and V quietly walked over to them, the others had congregated around Doll.
Uzi had tried to solver-pull the sword from her, to use something far more precisely manipulable than her hands, but when she motioned for it, nothing came. She glanced at her hand with brief confusion, turning into resigned realization when she attempted to conjure it a second time and received the same result.
The word Purge had been correct, she guessed. It was gone.
With no other option, she knelt down to physically remove the blade. Thad knelt down across from her on Doll's other side, and placed a hand on their dead friend to hold her down while Uzi pulled.
Liquid Helium vapor escaped as the blade slid out, and in the darkness of the puncture wound left behind, the same tiniest, brilliant pinpricks of light N had watched inside Cyn could be seen.
The Beryllium shell was shattered.
Doll's Quantum core had been breached.
Uzi looked up at Thad, eyelid lines descending, and eventually just sent her eyes down and aside.
Thad interpreted the obvious, and turned his head to look up at Lizzy, who'd just been standing there, trapped in a mixed emotional state, angry-sad. She'd been looking solely at Doll's visor, which her former best friend apparently rigged in her last moment.
Instead of going black or reading a fatal error, it was now locked in a display of two words. One phrase, Two words, two alphabets, two languages.
Пока
Bestie
Uzi looked between the final message meant for Lizzy, Lizzy herself, and the recently arrived N and V. Remembrance of something N had said before gave her the idea of the most appropriate, cringe thing to say now, looking back down at Doll. "Guess she really did believe in the magic of friendship."
.
.
Uzi reached the end of her lengthy slideshow presentation. "Soooo that's how I learned nightmares are real and we probably should've stayed behind the ole doors."
She got a cheering whistle from Thad, legitimate clapping from N, a disassembler hand thumbs up from V, aaand an eye roll from Lizzy followed by two noiseless claps. The rest of the class gave what amount of clapping they felt they were obligated to, just to avoid getting their grades cut.
"And it's also how I got this SICK combat scar!" Uzi declared then, pointing to and emphasizing the angled gash running from the top of her visor up her forehead and scalp, even having permanently parted her hair when it made its path.
V gave Uzi an unimpressed but permitting stare, knowing the truth about how the scar was actually received.
Uzi gave a smug glare in response. "But NOW, we don't have to hide behind doors playing cards anymore now that Cyn's gone, N's a cinnamon roll, V's ok I guess, they caught up with J and made her promise to at least only be Socially evil aaand all the other murder drones lurking around the other colony bunkers were brain-dead automatons that all dropped dead when the solver got purged."
While she continued with add-ons, and debating the teacher about how much defending the universe from an unspeakable evil should boost her grades, at the back of the classroom, N and V sat together. Not part of the class, but they'd promised to show up for Uzi's presentation. While V sat on a desk beside N, N sat at a desk, working on a drawing.
It was a drawing of all of them, even labeled "Team Friendship!" at the top in big, crayon-drawn letters of different colours. J was off to the side, drawn with N's best attempt at crossed arms, and with "Equity Partnership" written above her in a speech bubble. N and V were next, holding hands with a little heart drawn between them, with a little speech bubble above N that read "Love you Biscuits!" Uzi and Thad were drawn next to them, with a "Bite Me" above Uzi and Thad holding up a football. Next was Uzi's dad, an obvious "Go Doors!" written in the bubble allotted to him, and then Lizzy, "whatever" in her speech bubble, and finally Doll at the end, a special circle drawn around her with a sad face next to it to symbolize that she was gone, and speech bubble for her too in which N had literally just written "Something in Russian."
When he noticed she was looking at it, N more than happily raised it up and showed it to her with his typical happy boi open smile. V examined it, newly-made glasses allowing her to read, and she gave him an approving smile with her eyelid lines descending part way over her eyes. Elated by her approval, but staying quiet out of politeness toward the presentation, N did a silent squee before returning to work, now leaning gently against V as he did so.