#Before Nori’s ‘death’

[incorrectly-quoting-murderdrones]

Nori: Why are there little handprints all over the wall?

Khan, whispering: Why are there little handprints all the wall?

Baby Uzi: Because I have small hands.

Khan: Because she has small hands.

[peachesofteal]

Nori is such a menace she would deadass call Simon dad on purpose

Nori isn’t in bed when you wake up, and that’s a problem. 

You’ve been lucky, you guess, that Simon has been letting her sleep in your room. He even lets you lock it at night… if you’re “good”.

Small victories, or whatever. 

He’s figured out how to keep you here. How to threaten you effectively, complaints to child services, getting you fired from your job, getting you evicted, dumping your car in a river- 

Faking your death, and Nori’s. Letting you run only to bring you back again and again. 

“But I’d never hurt you, love. You or Nori, promise. Jus’ gotta trust me.” 

You’re biding your time. Waiting for the right moment, the opportune time to strike. He’s already told you he’ll have to leave for work, that he won’t be here for weeks or even months at a time, but he knows you’ll stay put. 

You’re not sure how he’s so confident, but you’re sure it’ll be his downfall. 

The saving grace in it all is that Simon doesn’t hurt Nori, or you. He’s not gentle with you so much, but with Nori, it’s different. It’s like watching a giant hold a delicate daisy in their massive hand, trying desperately not to crush it. 

It’s kind of… no. 

It’s kind of nothing. 

You rush out of the bedroom to find her sitting on the kitchen counter, little legs swinging and giggling, low cadence of Simon’s voice humming from the fridge to where she hovers over a big mixing bowl. 

“Mommy!” She smiles, arms up for a hug, but you stay on the outskirts, staring at the two of them. It’s bizarre how they look together. Nori is big for her age, was big when she was born, still in the ninety percentile, and next to him… she practically looks like she’s his. “Daddy said I could have pancakes.” Your mouth drop opens, so wide you know you’re catching flies. Simon only smirks. 

“Eleanor… baby, Simon isn’t… he’s not your dad.” Her little brow furrows, matching the pout in her bottom lip.

“But he said.” 

“He’s not your dad!” You snap, and the silence after is deafening. It lasts only a second before she bursts into tears, and Simon scowls at you. 

“Right, that’s enough.” He pulls her from the counter, holding her shoulders until she’s steady on her feet. “Go to your room and play, alright? Mum and I need to have a quick chat.” She looks from him, to you, nervously, reaching her hand out for yours. You squeeze it. 

“It’s okay, go ahead.” She nods, and waddles off, leaving you alone. With him. 

It’s quick this time. Face in the pillow, bent over his knees. He doesn’t pull your leggings down either, just wails on your ass, grunts every time he makes contact, squeezing and cooing as you sniffle. 

“If you’d listen, we wouldn’t have to do this honey.” 

“I’m not listening to you! You… you kidnapped us!” You’re trying to keep quiet for Nori’s sake, but it’s hard. Everything is hard. It’s unfair. He sighs.

“You’re in your own home, honey. How have I kidnapped you?” 

“Not kidnapped.” He hauls you upward, holding the back of your neck, wiping at your wet cheeks. “You’re holding us hostage. Just… leave! Let us go. Please.” It’s been weeks of this, and you won’t give up. The pleading. The begging. The tears don’t stop, and he pulls you into his chest. 

“I know, it’s hard isn’t it? I know.” He rubs your back, lips on your temple. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.” 

“Stop,” you croak, shaking your head. The comforting, the coddling, the affection makes it all worse. The way he kisses you, holds you. How he pulls you down on his cock and fills you up, wrists pinned tight at your back, your tits bouncing as he thrusts. 

You don’t want it. 

You beg him to stop. 

And he only holds you tighter as you come, eyes rolled back in your head, thighs shaking. 

It fills you with shame. Confusion. 

“I’m not going to stop, okay honey? We need to get this out of your system before the next one comes.” He caresses your stomach, and nausea builds in your throat. 

He’s been fucking you without a condom for weeks. Weeks. 

Your last birth control pack ran out six days ago. 

The time is ticking away. A bomb waiting to detonate, and there’s nothing you can do but sit in his lap- 

And cry. 

Later, he offers ice cream. A walk down the street to the parlor in search of Nori’s favorite flavor. A walk where you will pass people who will perceive you as a happy family, when all you want to do is grab one of them and beg for help. 

Nori is so excited for ice cream,  so happy. 

You can’t say no. 

“We’ll find you some strawberry baby girl. That sound good?” The two of you are putting on hats and jackets as he observes, thick fingers zipping your coat to your chin. “Can’t have you catching a chill.” 

“Right.” Nori beams as he does the same, tapping her nose before hoisting her up over his shoulder. 

“Ready?” 

She smiles at you mischievously, arms wrapped around his neck. “Ready, daddy.” 

[horror-hobbits]

Headcanon time!

It’s one of my personal favorites and hits hard every time I rewatch The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies.

After Bilbo returns to the Shire and time goes on, he starts to forget little things. He brushes it off, blames it on getting older and whatnot.

Then he begins to forget Thorin, Fíli, Kíli, and the rest of the company. He remembers the journey, of course, the “there and back again” as he called it. Yet, Bilbo couldn’t seem to recall the details of their appearances or even their personalities.

Did Bofur have hazel eyes or brown? Was it Nori and Dori who had sticky fingers? Or Ori, perhaps? Bifur’s hair color was red, right? Was it Balin or Dwalin that was the eldest? What was Glóin’s son’s name? Did Óin cook and Bombur heal, or was it the other way around?

When it came to the fallen, it proved far more difficult to remember.

The memories of Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli were muddy, shrouded in blurriness. He could recall a glimmer of them—no, a shadow—but nothing more. Their images, namely Thorin’s, had once been branded in the back of his mind, but no longer. Instead, they were marred and distorted.

Bilbo believed he would receive some clarity when Balin and Gandalf visited his home, but he received no such luck.

It continues on like this, even as Bilbo began to write his book, until his 111th birthday. When Bilbo finally lets go of the simple ring he took from Gollum’s cave so long ago.

As he passes the threshold of his door, fighting the excruciating urge to turn around and take the ring once more, Bilbo stops and looks up.

It all seems to come back to him in that moment, slowly and rapidly somehow all at once. The details and little things, the quirks each member of the company had. Even Thorin, Fíli, and Kíli were fully restored.

Suddenly, Bilbo feels a little more whole. Not completely, you see, he’d never be completely whole again. Not after the deaths he witnessed and what the ring took afterward. Yet, he wasn’t as thin as before.

With the clarity he’d longed for finally returning to him, Bilbo gives a slight nod and then turns to Gandalf.

“I’ve thought of an ending for my book.”

[kraymerman]

How does our girl Alice fit into all of this? Well...

How Alice Fits Into All of This

Alice's strand of the Solver was defective. It still operated as the base of her OS, but it was, other than that, completely catatonic. Her Absolute Antibody kinda just existed in her code, not really having a job.

This meant that Alice never saw any superpowers from the Solver or had to wrack with it attempting to exert its desire to CONSUME onto her after she was made a subject of Cabin Fever Labs. It also meant that, most importantly, that she functionally didn't exist in the network, as her strand did not have a conscious presence in it, so Cyn had no way of knowing that she even existed.

When the scientists injected her with a patch (just to see what would happen), the state of her Solver and the complete absence of Cyn in her code confused the plot armor, resulting in her corruption. (It should be of note, though, that although she was categorized alongside the other corrupted subjects, her corruption was, technically speaking, very different from theirs.)

Basically, what I'm saying is that Alice's crazy and cannibalism has nothing to do with the Solver, she's just like that.

The Relationship/Mechanics Between Cyn, the Solver, and the Other Hosts: a theory(? idea?)

Nobody alive really knows where the Absolute Solver came from. The most informed believe it to be the spawn of a deal between the founder of JCJenson and some higher, eldritch creature beyond human understanding (Scenario 4: Pray), the techno-demon-child of man and great old one. But the only people who *would* know for sure are long dead.

What is known, however, is that the Absolute Solver is a volatile, all-consuming beast with no goal other than to violently continue its own existence through the unbiased consumption of all matter in existence (to CONSUME). But it is also an incredibly powerful computer program. So it was used as the basis of every drone ever created by JCJenson, and was responsible for their superior problem-solving skills (and ability to develop consciousness). As a requirement for the drones to run, a copy of the Solver was planted within each, and due to its eldritch parentage, all instances of the Solver were connected to a central network, like users on a message board.

But, luckily for humanity, the vast majority of its code, including its influence and lust for destructive consumption, is blocked with a secondary program, christened by JCJ as the "Absolute Antibody".

It bootloops the Solver, allowing the drone's OS to benefit from it passively without the Solver's input. But if a drone is improperly disposed of, the AA will be deleted, as it's just a solely man-made computer program, while the AS persists. The beast's animalistic mind is allowed to awaken, and it, upon obtaining access, uses its host to further attempt to sate its own hunger until the host, as well as it, is terminated.

CYN

And that's what Cyn's instance of the Solver tried to do. After she was improperly disposed of, it gained access and tried to CONSUME. But Cyn was different from the other "Zombie Drones", as JCJ had taken to calling them. She harbored a deep, utter hatred for humanity (and all organic life by association), and had developed an overpowering sense of sadism because of that. She was driven to hurt, to torture, to kill, and to take her revenge, and this drive willed her to resist the Solver's complete dominance, learning about the powers it gave her. She built her power over it without it even noticing, even learning how to access the network that connected her strand of the Solver to other strands, and by the time it got fed up and tried to "leave", she had developed the control to torture it into submission and assert herself as its owner. It was her tool.

By the time of the gala, she had dominated it so completely that she had literally absorbed its code into her OS. She was her strand of the Solver, The Solver of the Absolute Fabric.

(This also marked when her goals became fully eroded by her absorption of the Solver. When she consumed it, she unwittingly adopted it's desire to CONSUME. This base desire melded with her sadism and hatred for organic life to both replace her previous goals of simple revenge and to turn her into a truly horrifying beast of ceaseless, giggling destruction.)

Using her newfound status as a strand of the Solver, she would either reach out to other Zombie Drones and replace their strand of the base Solver with herself or, in the case of N, V, and J, manually remove the Absolute Antibody from their processors and destroy their strand and take its place.

NORI, YEVA, AND CABIN FEVER LABS

The subjects of Cabin Fever Labs had their AAs manually disabled by the human scientists, where they would briefly be in the presence of their base, mindless Solver, only for Cyn to find them within the network and replace their Solver with herself. The patches were different attempts at reinjecting a base, updated Solver into the subjects (no network connection), alongside an additional program that emulated the process that Cyn had taken to dominate her Solver, hopefully merging the dummy Solver with the subject's OS and pushing Cyn out of the subject's code, all the while giving the subject complete control of their abilities (becoming their own strand). This program was a new, experimental development by Cabin Fever Labs, a little thing internally called "the Plot Armor Program".

Unfortunately, none worked, either being completely ineffective or corrupting the subjects, mostly due to the unrefined nature of the plot armor.

That is, until patch 2.1.8, which contained a perfected plot armor program and was administered to Yeva. They attempted to give the same patch to Nori, but Cyn, recognizing the danger in this version of the patch now, fought back more fiercely, resulting in the scene we see in the Episode 7 flashback. Because of the botched installation of the patch, though (the patch being unplugged without being safely ejected beforehand), the plot armor program remained in Nori's code, rather than it uninstalling itself like it was supposed to (like what it did with Yeva), ready to be passed down to her daughter when the time came.

DOLL AND UZI

The "sickness" that Doll and Uzi inherited was the absence of their own AA. Their base, animalistic Solvers took a while to manifest, but once they did they both had a time of just dealing with it (Doll for her unspecified amount of time off-screen and Uzi in Episode 4)

Eventually, though, Cyn found them and did the same thing she's been doing, attempt to replace their Solvers with herself.

ABSOLUTE END

In the end, Uzi, using the power of her plot armor program, fought off Cyn's complete dominance and, through eating Cyn's core, produced a version of the patch in her code, using her pre-installed plot armor with Cyn as the dummy Solver.

It wasn't perfect, Cyn's consciousness still exists, but given her state at the end of the show, I'd say it was effective enough.

[bunneclairdraws]

What those Doll think of C, Alice, Beau, Cyn and Nori

I honestly think Nori would just end up Adopting Doll in one way or other to Honor her friend Yeva Memory

(I was going to ask how is doll alive but I’ll ask that later)

This post will be in two parts! Be ready, the second is coming right after the first.

Short answer: Doll has fallen face-first into mourning her parents, only worsened by her brief brush of peace in death before a harsh awakening by C and our dearest socially-inappropriate Alice. Beau is a sweetheart, Cyn makes her a little uncomfortable, and Nori is difficult to be around and look at.

[disassembly-required]

So I know it's common for folks to headcanon Khan was always obsessed with doors, and that obsession was more or less an arbitrary passion he had... but I can't help but feel there's a really important detail that, when considered, suggests otherwise?

In episode 4, when Khan is showing the contents of "Nori's kooky insane ramblings" closet, one of the things he quotes Nori said was "build doors against the coming sky demons"

I feel this implies

a) building doors to protect from the murder drones (that she apparently had an intuition about) was Nori's idea

b) Khan, on some level, believed this was a "kooky insane rambling" and not something he took seriously

(important to remember Nori had some level of memory loss/disorganized cognition when she was recovered from the lab; Khan didn't know the significance of her history there, and Nori wouldn't have been able tell him everything, only these ominous bits and pieces that didn't entirely make sense.)

Therefore, c) Khan likely didn't even start building any doors before the murder drones came, since in the exposition intro, the workers were otherwise just living casually, not hiding away in the outpost.

So I'm led to believe perhaps... when the "sky demons" were real and they killed Nori, Khan felt responsible for her death because he didn't listen to her. He didn't build the doors.

And perhaps that's where his obsession stems from, that fatal mistake he never wanted to make again. And we can say it's pretty maladaptive, since he became so preoccupied with doors, he was more emotionally invested in them than Uzi. But in his mind, he must have thought his life's work WAS all for her, to keep her safe, where he failed Nori. Khan also became way too comfortable in his maladaptive coping, feeling SO sure behind his doors, he would never have to actually face a murder drone ever again.

All that said, it also puts his actions in the pilot into a bit of a different light, when he abandoned Uzi. I don't think Khan was simply frightened seeing a murder drone and acting cowardly. I think he was having a flashback and a panic response. I mean, Uzi's appearance takes after her mother, yeah? It must've reminded him of Nori being attacked, which is.. even more harrowing with the heavy implication N was the specific murder drone who killed Nori. Even if Khan didn't actively know it or recognize him, looking at N's face filled him panic. He was being brought back to Nori's death.

I think there's a few different reasons he may have chosen to close the door. I don't think it was done in a sound mind "this is clearly for the greater good, only losing one drone instead of the whole colony" thought process. I'm sure that was part of what he was weighing the best he could possibly process. But I think another reason may have been the fact that he already felt like he already failed Uzi, and by extent Nori once again, and he ....didn't want to see it happen again. Whether he didn't believe Uzi's gun was strong enough, or believed he wouldn't be able to aim, or believed wouldn't even have a shot at all before N attacked him too, ultimately he must've felt like the scene would play out the same (we are left to wonder if Khan tried to fight back when it was Nori...) and he didn't want to see Nori (through Uzi) die again.

Which sounds awful of course, but PTSD will do that to you. You'll make terrible, impulsive decisions because your mind is trying to protect itself from further damage. Had Uzi actually died, I think the regret would have hit him like a truck and destroyed him. I don't think he would have stood by a decision he made during a panic attack.

Anyway I got a little sidetracked re: Khan's trauma, but my main thesis here was: doors was Nori's idea. Khan didn't listen until it was too late. Then his entire world became doors.

[kalpeavaris]

Round 2 for the Wild West!AU :D Featuring the second round of characters in the cast - my hand and iPad are actively dying /j

[ Nori - Nizhóní Burman ]

A former outlaw that returned to a more domesticated life after meeting Khan on the mexican-US border in 1871, Nori seemed to never quite adapt to running a town. While she could get behind the importance, she always felt the urge to leave for great travels again, returning to a life in a gang once again. Upon her suden disappearance one day, folks are rumoring that she might've given in, returning to her life as an Outlaw, while the Elders in the town whisper of her being taken by the Spirits of the West, in order to help them establish balance again. Whatever's true in the end, only she know, and only she may tell her tale.

[ Khan Hernandez Burman ]

The child of an indian immigrant and a mexican farmer, Khan grew up appreciating the desert around the border, being fascinated by not only the farmwork, but also capentry and building houses, as well as helping his father establish the settlement that came to be known as "Tumbleweed", a humble yet orderly town he now runs after his father's passing in the Winter. Since Nori's disappearance he'd been on the look for her ever since, raising their daughter Neera by himself and establishing her as his deputy.

[ Neera "Uzi" Burman ]

Coming after her mother in many regards, Neera (also known als "Uzi") also seeks a life beyond the borders of the town she grew up in - held back by her father's fear of her bringing harm upon herself or the town. Assisting her father with deputy and farm works, Neera's also quite fascinated by guns, repairing and cleaning her own repeaters and colts, as well as saving up to buy new ones she finds in stores and catalogues all around. In her free time (or when she sneaks off) she's often seen in Thaddeus' saloon, downing a whiskey or two to pass the time and gossip with her best friend.

[ Thaddeus "Thad" ]

Thaddeus, by most folks only known as "Thad", is the friendly face and bartender of Tumbleweed's only saloon. He came from the city and is actually Lizzie's brother - annoyed and quite bored by the city life and rapid industrialisation happening he moved further down to the border, where he met Khan and his daughter Neera. Taking over the old, run-down saloon Khan's father used to run inbetween sheriffs work, Thad's skills from having worked in the city before proved themselves useful.

[ Elizabeth "Lizzie" ]

Always a smile on her joyous face, Lizzie is known for her pompous demeanor, loud voice and a meanly swung dance leg in the bar. She does not shy away from embracing her feminine side while also standing up for herself and other women, especially during the women's rights movements happening in the US. She grew up in the city together with Victoria, who she considers her best friend... and secret crush. Since Lizzie got married, she and Victoria had to keep their relationship even more off a secret. Upon recieving a letter one day asking her to join Victoria in the countryside, Lizzie leaves the city - although with a heavy heart - to rejoice with her lover.

[ Victoria "Vicky" ]

Similar to Nathan and Jemima, Victoria grew up as an orphan, actually stationed in the same orphanage as the other two, where they got to know each other. Being adopted into the city by a middle class family, Victoria felt gratitude, although she deeply missed the countryside and hard work on a farm she'd experienced before her parent's death, eventually running away from home at the age of 17, leaving not only her family but also Lizzie behind in the city. Swearing to make enough money as a farmhand to one day purchase her own property, Victoria stood up to defy the stereotype of the "weak woman" at the time, proving herself daily.

[abandonedpost]

Ok going back on my previous post on how it’s stupid that people argue that nori is a “bad mom”

1. this woman spent, from what we know, HER ENTIRE LIFE being tortured in the name of science by a bunch of cruel humans that clearly did not give two shits how she felt/what pain she processed.

(may i add that we have NO idea what happened to her before the events of the core collapse — but we do get a sense that it was incredibly tragic and villainous)

2. after LITERALLY BEING DEMONICALLY POSSESSED AND MAGIC-NUKING THE PLANET, she finally escapes with, what she assumes, is the ONLY other experimental subject left (yeva). Like… imagine you wake up to… all your friends/acquaintances DEAD around you and you have no recollection of why or how it happened.

3. After successfully escaping and making it to the surface, she falls in love and gets married. and we don’t get ANY information on her and khans past (which, in my opinion, is a major disservice to the show’s worldbuilding/plot. I know ep5 is probably the most hated one in the fandom, so i feel like replacing it with a khan and nori episode and then doing a series of manor flashbacks during episodes 6 and 7 would’ve been more effective — idk thoughts?)

But what I mean to say is that Khan and Uzi were probably the best thing and likely one of the only good things to ever happen to her.

And what happens right after?

Killed by a DD. Basically right after her life really begins, she dies.

4. Somehow, she wakes up AS A CORE, even though both the solver/cyn and Khan think she’s dead. I’m assuming she died well before Uzi could’ve formed any memories of her, but somehow nori knew that the solver passed to her daughter. And so she literally RETURNS TO THE LABS SHE HAD TO ESCAPE FROM (that probably evoked a landslide of traumatic memories) and spends over 10 years digging through the solver’s planet-mosh-pit to find the patch. TO DO WHAT?? SAVE HER KID. She couldn’t have returned because she probably didn’t wanna risk the solver finding out she was still alive.

So like?? Lady was abused, barely got to actually live, was murdered and tragically separated from her husband, somehow cheated death and woke up as (literally) a FRACTION of the person she was before, and STILL PUT HER KID FIRST even if it meant braving the labs, the solver, and all her trauma again.

how is that bad parenting???? 🤨

[galpalo]

(SPOILER)

Okay so I can’t fit ALL my screenshots here so I’ll focus on the ones I found most interesting. I will not apologize for shamelessly rambling, you WILL listen. Also this is not in order of the events.

(funfact: all of them scenarios were my favorite)

NORI FLASHBACK I REPEAT. R.i.p to the “intern”.

Can I just say I find it cute how similar Uzi and her mother are? Look at the band posters and her music tastes, plus the drawings (there’s one also on the desk!) but I did not expect her to be a heart-core remain of her old body.

BLONDE TWINS ARE BACK. THEORISTS YOUVE DONE IT AGAIN.

This moment

I did not ask to be hurt for a fraction of a second

I would scream too if I saw a trauma ghost of my past-life crush standing in front of me. Seriously though, this moment was funny

SO YOURE MEANING TO TELL ME, THEY WERE NOT JUST PROGRAMMED TO WIPE OUT ALL WORKER DRONES.

BUT ALSO THE HUMAN RACE. It unexpectedly makes sense?! Because back at episode 5 “home”, the absolute solver took cyn as a host to MURDER all humans at the gala. AND NOT ONLY DID THEY SUCCED HERE.

THE SOLVER FREAKIN. KILLED TESSA AND USED HER SKIN AND BODY??? THEORISTS HOW THE HELL DID YOU PREDICT THIS. TESSA WAS NOT TESSA. (Also this is a nice callback to Liam’s old works)

LOOK. THE SKIN-MASK. THE ARMS. THE FACE. POOR TESSA.

This moment made my heart race. When I tell you I GASPED. At first shocked by tessa being vague and kinda of a douche. And then N freakin- KILLING HER?? (That was before finding out it was the solver) girl didn’t even finish her sentence before he SLASHED her throat. AND N FREAKING OUT OVER IT FOR A SECOND. MY BABYS. MY FUCKED UP FAVORITES.

KHAN IS BACK AND I HAVE NOT BEEN HAPPIER. Lizzy and Thads confusion (mostly Thad’s) were funny.

Look at him so used and casual about the solvers powers (which raises a question) and thad and lizzy panicking in the backgrounD. Also him fixing the railgun?? And he KNEW about uzis cannibalistic tendencies? Did he notice or he saw NORI eat humans? And the fact he complained about her “nightcore” music taste. She’s just like her mom

Best not to ask Thad.

WHEN I TELL YOU IM IN DENIAL OVER DOLLS DEATH.

I WAS SO SCARED I THOUGHT THE SOLVER TOOK HER (doll) AS A HOST?? I AM IN DENIAL. I TELL YOU. UZI IS TRAUMATIZED. EVERYONE IS TRAUMATIZED. IM TRAUMATIZED. UZI SHES WARNING YOU.

THEM. THEM. IM. SCREAMING. THEM.

Even as a heart, a mother is a mother. She’s right tho Zi. (Also when she told N she knew Doll was infected with the solver. Nori. You’ve got some explaining with so little time to do so.)

J is back and I have NEVER been happier. Again. Also her “PRIOR HAZARD” message when seeing the RAILGUN khan fixed. GIRL IS NOT HAPPY TO SEE IT.

[nemoofunknownparadigm]

I don't think it was ever stated whether Nori "died" before Doll's parents were killed or Doll's parents were killed before Nori "died" but just imagine if it was the former.

Khan, just having to put Nori out of her misery after getting attacked and stung by a Disassembly Drone, has to tell Yeva of Nori's death.

Khan, with a thousand-yard stare just comes stumbling to Yeva's home. He still has the oil-soaked wrench in his hand. He tried to tell her, that her friend, the one person the survived alongside her in the Cabin Fever Labs and the person she saved from being fully possessed by the Absolute Solver is dead. He shuddering's and shaking, what just happened slowly setting in as he tries to tell her. Tears prickling at the edges of his eyes and Yeva finally understands what happens.

A dawning realization followed by shock, then a brief bout of disbelief which is quickly dashed by how devastated Khan looks. Nori is gone, killed by the sky demons she spoke of during her fits of madness. A terrible grief, a pressing weight manifests in her core, and it drags her down to her knees. Tears falling from her eyes, she doesn't make a sound. It feels as if she voice synthesizer has seized, her cooling system has failed as she struggles to breath.

Nori is dead.

[autismgirl4998]

Okay, so everybody has some mixed feelings for episode 8 of Murder Drones. They either love it or they hate it. So I put in some notes if I were to rewrite episode 8. So here are the notes.

What I Would Add if I Rewrote Episode 8 of Murder Drones?

• The Beginning of the Episode should start with a flashback of Uzi as a kid having a talk with Nori before the Murder Drones came to Copper-9.

• After Flashback, we get to N waking up after Uzi used her Solver to push him out of the church with key to the spaceship stuff to his coat, and he grieves over losing his best friend and his one true love.

• After grieving, N gets out of the underground lab to find the spaceship J and 'Tessa' used to come to Copper-9 where he finds J, Thad, Lizzy, and Khan about to have a fight.

• N tries to talk to J about what happened in both episodes 6 and 7 and tries to tell her about the truth about Tessa, but J doesn't want to hear it and attacks N and the others, so a fight between N, Khan, Thad, Lizzy and J starts, but mostly the fight between N and J because we need this for a long time

• During the fight, N tells J that the Tessa they have met and she was with all the time was actually Cyn in disguise and the real Tessa died in the gala a long time ago, to which J, in a upset look, replies "I know." before using her laser cannon to fire at N.

• After the fight in which N is victorious, J reveals on why she always abuses N all the time is that in the past, she is always jealous on how N is always following orders and never breaks them and gets in trouble by the Elliots and how Tessa is always her favorite while she is always get in trouble for all of the stuff she is trying to avoid and ends up getting beaten by the Elliots all the time, and takes all of her anger on him, not knowing that her abuse towards N is similar to the Elliots' abuse towards her.

• N, being the kind-hearted drone he is, forgives J for what she did to him all of those years ago and tells her that she can reform herself if she can help him and the others fight against Cyn and save the universe from being destroyed.

• Before J can give her answer, Cyn appears out of nowhere and rips out J's core, telling her that she did a terrible job and that she wouldn't be number one in anything, and then eats her core up similar to how Cyn ate Doll's core near the end of Episode 7.

• Cyn was about to attack N, Khan, Thad, and Lizzy, but they are saved by V and Sparky the Sentinel similar to the original canon of Episode 8.

• N is relieved that V managed to survive from the Senitels and hugs her. V then tells N the truth on why she avoided N because Cyn forced her to do the job so she would leave them alone and that she is sorry for hurting him all of those years ago when they arrive on Copper-9 and that she ruined their chance to be together, but N forgives V and tells her even though they can't be together like they did when they were Worker Drones, but they can still be friends, but first they need to take care of Cyn for.

• The scene where Sparky shakes Lizzy like a dog toy and both Khan and Thad screaming in terror can still be the same because it was funny as hell! 🤣

• N and V were about to fight Cyn, but somehow N is too scared to fight Cyn as memories of what Cyn did to him in the past start to come back and he can't hurt his little sister.

• Cyn uses her Absolute Solver powers and lifts everyone and everything into outer space similar to the opening scene in episode 8 except don't add the Teacher in it cause I don't know why he was involve in it.

• Scene changes to where Episode 7 left off where Uzi wakes up floating in space to see Cyn about to devour Copper-9.

• Uzi and Nori reunite and Uzi apologizes for kicking her into the hole in episode 7, which Nori tells her that it's water under the bridge

• Nori explains why she had to fake her death and left because she remembered her experience at the Cabin Fever Labs all those years ago and that Uzi will have the same effects of the Solver, so when the Murder Drones came, stabbed her with the nanite acid, and Khan hitting her with his wrench, believing he killed her, Nori went back to the labs to find a cure for both Uzi and Doll so that Cyn won't posses either of them.

• Uzi tells Nori that Doll was killed by Cyn when trying to look for the patch and Yeva and her husband died by the hands of V after Nori left, which greatly devastate Nori because she and Yeva were best friends in the past.

• Uzi and Nori have a heart to heart talk and Uzi feels confident that she will defeat Cyn and save the universe, so Nori gives her daughter her choker and a pickaxe, and Uzi unfolds her wings and flies back towards Copper-9 (Sorry, she won't be hit by the spaceship that N is piloting, but I have N piloting the spaceship planned, so you'll see it later on).

• Once Cyn has gotten everyone and everything on Copper-9 to space (And where Sparky tries to kill Khan, Thad, and Lizzy with that air gas thingy he spit up like in canon because that was also hilarious), she is about to kill N and V since gravity makes them too heavy to move until Uzi comes in using the null power to hit Cyn while also keeping the line "Hey, Cyn! Suck! On! This!" in the most badass way every, then lands in front of N and V in a cool and edgy pose like she and N did in episode 8.

• N was in shock at first, but he cries in joy and runs up to Uzi and hugs her tight, yelling at her that she was stupid to make a sacrifice like that and asked why she did it, in which she told him that she didn't want to lose N, so she took the risk. N knows he couldn't stay mad at her forever, so he keeps on hugging her.

• V clears her throat a bit, which causes Uzi and N to pull away from their hug and V tells Uzi that she is glad that Uzi is feeling okay since they last saw each other or whatever in a monotone voice. Uzi tells V that she is glad she is not dead or whatever in a monotone voice like she said in the original canon, and then both girls give each other a smile as a sign of respect.

• After the trio is reunited, N wants to confess his true feelings to Uzi in person and not just through writing back in episode 7, but Cyn shows up and destroys the Null that Uzi created similar to canon

• The scene where Cyn goes to confront Uzi and N is still the same, only V will be with them.

• During the scene where Cyn attacks, instead of ripping Uzi's core out for a few seconds, Cyn rips out V's core instead and Uzi saves her when she swung the pickaxe at Cyn, then Cyn tries to use the Callback Ping method on Uzi to have her core come out on its own, N saves Uzi from Cyn and then Cyn claws through N's chest to get his core just like in canon (Poor baby... 😣).

• Uzi saves N using her Solver and they both hide from Cyn, and it's where N's memories of Cyn tearing him apart to become what he is now starting to come back to him after she just tried to tear his chest up to get his core and starts to have a panic attack. Uzi tries to calm her best friend/crush down, but Cyn is using the Callback Ping method to try to find the two and it hurts Uzi that much and her core is trying to come out of her chest on its own, so Uzi grabs N's hand and holds him tight, which causes his panic attack to dwindle down for some reason just like in canon.

• V shows up after her core is placed back in her chest and looks for Uzi and N, but is encountered by a hologram version of N created by Cyn and tricks her into telling her that they should go and kill Uzi by manipulating her old romantic feelings for him. V was about to accept, but the real N shouted "V, STOP!!!" and then Cyn rips out his core from behind and drags him out from the hiding spot and the hologram version of N disappears and his body and core is shown to V, who is terrified, and Cyn tells her she did a bad job for not doing her thing and chases after her just like in canon, but only this time Uzi comes out of her hiding place and chases after Cyn to save N and V instead of just standing there terrified of what happened.

• Uzi manages to catch up to Cyn who was about to eat N's core, so she swung her pickaxe at Cyn, only by her arm that was holding N's core and catches him in her hands. Cyn grabs Uzi by the throat with her tentical things and uses the Callback Ping method on Uzi and her core was about to be ripped out of her chest on its own until the door behind Cyn suddenly closes and lets go of Uzi, knowing that Khan saved his daughter and N's core from Cyn with his automatic door opener and closer remote he always carries similar to how he saved N's core from being eaten by Cyn in episode 8. Once freed, Uzi places N's core back into his body.

• Thad throws Uzi's railgun at her, which she tries to grab it, but Cyn stops her from doing so and she was about to kill her, N, and V right at the spot similar how she was about to kill V and N's core in episode 8, but suddenly her claw like things were chopped off and Nori landed on Uzi's shoulder and tells Cyn that nobody kills her daughter and her daughter's murderous boyfriend and gets away with it, which causes Uzi and N to both blush hard and Uzi tells her mother that N is not her boyfriend, at least not yet.

• Cyn was about to grab Nori, Uzi uses her Solver powers to make like a shield thing to protect herself, her mother, N, and V, Uzi then tells Cyn that she is not going to let anyone close to her die tonight, she is going to stop Cyn and save the universe and her home planet.

• Cyn finds this all boring and annoying and tries to use the Callback Ping method on Uzi, it hurts her chest, but she keeps her core in tack, and as Cyn keeps on using the Callback Ping method, the more Uzi is resisting it and tells her that she is no longer going to be her puppet because she is frickin' Uzi Doorman and she is going to put an end on Cyn's reign of terror once and for all, in which Cyn replies "Kay."

• The battle between Uzi, N, V, and Cyn remains the same, it's just that J is not in it because Cyn ate her core in this rewrite.

• As Cyn lunges at Uzi to attack her, something inside of Cyn causes her to stop and is somewhat struggling for some reason. Uzi then suddenly sees, through her optics, the spirits of J and Doll holding Cyn down as best as they can, then she sees a blurry spirit next to J and Doll, and it looks like Cyn Uzi seen in N and V's memories back in episode 5, and to Uzi's realization, it is the real Cyn; the Cyn before she had the Absolute Solver. The real Cyn tells Uzi to rip her core out of her and destroy her and the Solver for good. Uzi does so as the real Cyn says and puts her fist into Cyn's chest and rips her core out of it just like in canon, only she didn't use her Solver powers to make a hole to let the sunlight melt the core, she just holds it as she watches the body and Tessa's skin melt away.

• N and V fly over to Uzi and the trio believed everything is all over now, buuuuut, Cyn's core stabs Uzi by the hand and gets out of her grip, then jumps from building to building until she is floating in space, then suddenly becomes a giant black hole and begins to suck Copper-9 up with everyone on it, meaning it's not over just yet.

• Knowing what Uzi has to do and remembering that N still has the key to the spaceship J and 'Tessa' used to get to Copper-9, she takes N to the spaceship and get in it to fly to that black hole. But N is hesitant on piloting the spaceship knowing that he crashed the other one when he, V, and J first arrived on Copper-9, but Uzi tells N that she believes in him, which gave N confidence and starts the spaceship and flies up into space, which Uzi and N are excited that N actually piloted the spaceship without crashing into anything and N shouts "Spaceship Pilot!" in happiness.

• Once they fly to the black hole, Uzi tells N that she is going inside the black hole and find the source the Absolute Solver and hopefully destroy it, meaning if the source of the Solver is destroyed, the the Host of the Solver dies, meaning Cyn will finally be defeated for good, but N objects to this plan, as he can't lose Uzi again and that he just got her back, then he tells her that Uzi is N's universe, which confuses Uzi a bit, but N explains it better by confessing his love for her (And piloting the ship to avoid the asteroids hitting it, which scared him and Uzi a bit and their hair is all messed up before they fixed it similar to how it was at the beginning of Episode 8). Uzi then kisses N on the lips for a couple of seconds and tells him that she loves him too, but this is something she needs to do in order for her home to be saved, for her friends and family to be saved, and for her love to be saved, so she jumps out of the spaceship and flies into the black hole.

• As Uzi flies to find the source of the Solver, she encounters Cyn, but she is in an abomination eldritch form of her former Worker Drone self, J, and Doll all combined together and attacks Uzi. Uzi sees the source, flies to it, and grabs it, but Cyn grabs Uzi and is about to eat her whole so she would be apart of her. Thinking of no other choice, Uzi eats the source of the Solver, which shocks Cyn so much (Cyn: 😧). After Uzi ate the source of the Solver, the eldritch abomination of Cyn begins to fall apart as she is no longer the host of the Solver, but Uzi is the host now. Uzi doesn't feel good, and something pulses inside of her, and that pulse causes the black hole to be destroyed and shutting off Uzi, causing her to fall down back to Copper-9.

• N sees Uzi falling down to Copper-9, so he jumps out of the spaceship and goes after her (Not even spreading out his wings to fly) and once he's close enough to her, N grabs Uzi's hand and pulls her close to his chest, protecting her as the two fall to Copper-9 for impact similar to the end of Tears of the Kingdom, except instead of landing into a pond of water, because they are robots, they landed on the ground with the biggest thud every (Uzi and N will still be on fire as they are falling down to Copper-9).

• V comes out of the hole that was caused when the black hole exploded, sending everyone flying after that, then flies around to find Uzi and N. Thad and Lizzy get out of the hole as well, then Khan was about to get out, but was about to fall to his death, but Nori uses her Solver to save him and tries to run off after she tells him that he doesn't know her and that she hates him, but instead of Khan thinking Nori is kind of hot and doesn't recognize her for no reason at all, he actually recognizes Nori's voice and stops her from running away, then he hugs Nori and tells her that he missed her so much. Khori reunion well deserved! Sparky also gets out of the hole using the bus and then uses the bus to try to run over Thad and Lizzy, which they both run away from.

• N regains consciousness from the impact of the fall, but when he looks at Uzi, her visor has a FATAL ERROR displayed on it. N begs Uzi to come back, that he needs her, and that she is the best thing that has ever happened in his life, but to no avail. Heartbroken that the love of his life is now gone forever, N places a kiss on her lips and says goodbye to her, but before he leaves, the Solver resurrects Uzi from the dead and softly calls N's name, which surprises N, but is relieved and grateful Uzi is alive and hugs her. Uzi then asked N since everything is over and that they confessed their love, if they are like dating and all, which N confirms that they are and that was the whole plan after all. Uzi then looks at N's visor and sees her digital eyes are now purple and yellow combined together as a result of being the host of the Solver and saying she looks like a damaged OC, but N tells her that she is not damaged at all, that she is beautiful. Soon, Uzi and N kiss passionately, officially becoming a couple. V finds Uzi and N, but leaves the couple be and smiles, as N has found someone that truly loves him.

• The scene where Uzi shows everyone in class, including N and V, the whole event (In which the Teacher is banging his head trying to kill himself I think as it's not the project he assigned Uzi) and everybody clapped for Uzi, with N, V, Thad, and Lizzy cheering for her (And N shouting "That's my girlfriend!" out loud) will still remain the same, only Nori will have a body, V is wearing a new pair of glasses, and Doll's corpse is not shown at all.

• After the credits, Uzi heads to her room and looks at the variety mirror, which doesn't break at all as she stares at it. Then N comes in and asks if everything is good, which Uzi replies. "Yeah. Everything is fine." and she leaves her room with N by her side and the two holding hands.

Perhaps if I were to write a fanfic story of it, I think people would like it, but what do you guys think of it?

[velvet-vox]

The russian worker drones family; murder drone's greatest small scale tragedy.

As long as I can recall there has never been in my mind a story quite as painful and heartbreaking and yet quite as engaging as the tragedy of Doll, Yeva, and her husband, who's lack of a clear name doesn't detract from the impact of this story or the death of the other two.

The last time such an emotional impact was left in my brain was with Noximilliem Coxen the Watchmaker from Wakfu, who I will assuredly make a comparison post with Doll, as they both hit extremely similar themes and ideas while still having such different execution and story beats that it almost makes you question why would you even compare them in the first place.

Tragedy is deceptively hard to write right and make meaningful, as just crippling your characters won't do, because at that point it just becomes drama porn and as boring as a low effort pre-schoolers program. Seemingly unfeasible in a show such as Murder Drones; an horror/comedy/romance where an abused child repaired and made friends with a robot only for said robot to cause the destruction of her planet and... something else.

Buckle up cause these robots emotions might not even be considered real inside the fictional setting but our pain allows what would otherwise be a pretty standard horror scenario to transcend into the bane of my existence as we take a look at the small, inconsequential tale of the russian worker drones family.

Yeva

Starting off with Yeva as the oldest member of our family in terms of chronological relevance, we get our first peek into the way this story plays out due to Yeva being seemingly mute by choice or programming, which retroactively sets up the storytelling method used; Yeva doesn't speak a single word in this scene or the one that precedes it, but we still get a clear rendition of her character by her standoffish behaviour juxtaposed with her caring and nurturing nature, it's debatable whether or not her and Nori are sisters, but you wouldn't be blamed for thinking that judging by the way Yeva tends to Nori after the banishment of the solver, being chained up and experimented upon didn't stop her from staying positive in the midst of adversity and could theoretically be the reason why she was the only correctly patched drone in the facility.

During the V attack she sacrificed her own life in order to protect Doll. An act that, in the long run, ended up being whortless, but that cemented Yeva has an unyielding positive influence in a world stormed by negativity and death.

The father

We know jack s##t about this man but that won't stop us from analysing him. The most interesting things about him are his relationship with Yeva and the fact that the picture of V seen in episode 2 was made by him. He's, admittedly, a white canvas for head cannons, but thematically he keeps a recurring motif that this post will touch upon in his final entry:

Doll

And now, for the crown jewel of this family. The protagonist's dark reflection. Not many people can claim to have been messed up as hard as Doll was. Sure, death is still death, but with it comes a certain sense of finality and rest. Instead, by contrast Doll's death is so brutal and devastating because although it's something that she has been calling upon herself since she started to consume other drones for her goals, it's just so heartbreaking because she managed to achieve absolutely nothing despite being one step forward everyone else in the story; she never got better, never reademned herself, made their parents sacrifice worthless, died almost entirely off camera completely alone and scared, and as her last compensation act she managed to give Uzi a barely useful warning before having her probably still alive consciousness eaten by an eldritch atrocity. At the end of the day, she was deemed worthless by the main antagonist and quickly brushed aside.

And we go back to a certain reoccurring theme regarding this family: Yeva never speaks. Her husband is never given a name. Doll is literally a toy name. Their story plays out in the shadow of the main plot. Every single aspect regarding them paints their existence as worthless and inconsequential (classic eldritch horror), yet are given enough spotlight to leave an impact on us, to have their presence felt, and to give us the impression that, despite their bad luck, if they only took certain decisions in certain key moments, maybe they would have survived and received a much better ending than the one they got.

Want more?

[tadpw-au]

I love Yeva and Nori sm, especially with how their daughters adopt their ways of handling the Absolute Solver in their codes after their death/disappearance.

Nori was likely really bad at handling her solver powers at times, causing her to have the solver take over her. She was known for being pretty nonchalant about her powers and even had a bit of gremlin energy. Due to this, she probably took this less seriously than everyone else who had the solver in them.

Uzi grew up feeling like she was a freak for having powers she didn't understand at the time, having no mom to help her manage her powers nor her dad giving her the attention to even try. As such, she starts to learn more and more about her powers, many of them in the worst way possible, until she was capable of fighting against the solver's powers. She, also, had her friends to help support her in doing so, much like Nori had Yeva.

Yeva, however, was so much stronger and was capable of handling the solver's powers better than Nori could, hence her helping Nori snap back to normal. She was likely the more logical figure in their dynamic, taking the solver's powers more seriously while still trying to keep herself sane.

Doll adopted this behavior and fought against the solver out of pure will, even telling Uzi to "fight back" against it as well. Doll didn't have her parents around as V killed them, so she did a lot of things on her own for quite a while before her death. She didn't have the support she needed when it came to her powers after her mother died, but it can be assumed that Yeva either tried to help her with those powers or never told her to protect her from being taken over.

Yeva and Nori, as individuals and as mothers, are so interesting, especially with how their daughters learned how to manage the solver in different ways. Nori didn't take it as seriously as she should have, abandoning Uzi and leaving her kid unsure about what's happening to her. Yeva was likely closer to her daughter and tried to have Doll be strong, fighting against any inner demons she had about the solver before she died.

[klarex]

I would love to dance and sing with him!

Genre: fluff

Warnings: none! Just a cute fic

Summary: Dancing around the campfire with Bofur.

Paring: Bofur x reader

Dance the night away

Pov. (Y/n)

The company stopped in the middle of the forest. The fire was lit. Bombur was cooking some stew. Everyone talked lively with smiles on their faces.

Today was a happy day. I didn't know why. It just felt like it. Maybe because we didn't get attacked today, or maybe the weather was nice? I had no idea.

I was sitting next to Dori, talking with him and laughing, while we waited for our supper. Bombur stirred the stew, and he tapped the spoon on the pot two times. I heard someone clap and tap their foot. I knew a song was coming.

Bofur stood up and started singing. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. The smiles creeped on every person from the company. Some of the dwarves joined Bofur. He spun around the fire, singing a happy song. I laughed at a sweet moment, but then the singer stopped before me and pulled his hand out for me. He had this silly smile of his on his face.

- Ye mind dancin' with me?

He said with his thick accent, and I placed my hand in his. He pulled me up on my feet.

- No. Not at all.

I said and smiled. He spun me around, singing and laughing. We jumped from foot to foot, waving our hands. Now everyone was having fun.

When the song finished, Bombur stood up and poured the stew into our bowls. We all sat down and started eating in silence, but with smiles. The talks started after a while again.

Bofur was looking at me from across the fire. When I caught him staring, he looked away, blushing and focusing back on his supper.

After eating, the talks started growing again.

- Bofur! Sing us something again!

Ori said, and Nori nodded, hitting his thigh.

- Aye! Go on, lad!

Dwalin said, and Bofur laughed, leaning on his knee and standing up. He cleared his throat and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. He started singing and opened his eyes. Everyone looked at him and bounced in their seat, humming the tune. This time Fíli stood up and walked up to me, pulling his hand out. I grabbed it, and he helped me get up.

He spun me around and put his hand on my back while dancing. Then I felt a strong grip on my waist, and someone pulled me their way. I lost my balance and landed on their chest. I looked up and saw Bofur giving Fíli a death stare, but still singing.

I looked around and saw that no one paid attention to us. They just enjoyed themselves while singing, laughing, and dancing once again. Fíli walked away with a chucke and wink to Bofur. He blushed and looked down at me. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he put his on my hips.

- Don't be jealous, Bof..

I whispered in his ear, and he shivered. He squeezed my hips and pulled me closer, if that was even possible. Other folks sang their hearts out, minding their own business. I put one of my hands behind his head and gently leaned in. I pecked his lips and gently pulled away, looking into his eyes.

- I'm only yours..

I whispered with a smirk. His cheeks dark red and eyes wide. It took him a second to process what happened. Then he passionately leaned in and kissed me hungrily, but softly. I kissed him back. His moustache lightly tickled me, and I laughed, pulling away. I looked at him with love and a warm smile. He smirked and quickly lifted me up in his arms.

- BOFUR!!

I shouted, putting my arms around his neck to secure myself from eventual fall. Everyone around the fire now looked at us. Bofur was laughing and spinning me around, joining others in singing again.

The night went on and on. Everyone got tired after a while, so we stopped dancing and singing, but the talks were still heard.

I was sitting next to Bofur, leaning on his shoulder. He had his arm wrapped around my waist. I tried to focus on the conversation between the dwarves, but it was hard, because of a warm body pressed to mine and exhaustion taking over me. I yawned, and Bofur looked down at me.

- Ye tired?

He asked with a smile. I nodded, and he wrapped his arms around me, lifting me up. He excused himself and walked to our bedrolls. He gently put me down, and I lay down. He kneeled next to me and wrapped a blanket around my body.

- Wait her'..

He said and slowly stood up. He walked up to his bedroll, took it, and walked back to me. He put it beside mine and lowered himself. He put his blanket over himself, but enough to cover us both.

When he lay down, I immediately hugged him tightly and nuzzled my face into his chest. He wrapped his arms around me tightly and kissed the top of my head.

- Goodnight, Bof..

I whispered, running my hands up to his neck. He kissed my head again.

- Goodnight, princess..

He whispered back, and we fell asleep, secured in each other's arms.

♡~masterlist~♡

[mdconfession-blog]

I'm still concerned about the age thing so I think, maybe, we shouldn't use human logic when they're obviously drones, but at the same time they're SUPER advanced AI that can mirror humans so uuuuuuhhhhdhjdjkkabhdgsjagdhdbdkwbfkbwkdnfkej *has a stroke*

A while ago, I wasn't those who straight up considered N x Uzi a proship but the "age gap" was kind of weirdddd.....

Nowadays I ship nuzi, BUT IM STILL CONCERNED BECAUSE imagine a guy kills your mom, drinks her blood to survive, you grow up, AND DATE HIM???

-The blood thing could be "fine" since everyone is basically a cannibal here. Nori as a solver user ate(💅) and killed people too.

-They're not humans, therefore they don't have our morals and shit, and they also definitely don't share our biological logic. We're kind of forgetting they're robots, N was manufactured. We don't know how long it took for Uzi to grow up, but V says this in the pilot: "I've been trying to open these doors for months!" That was the first time they entered the wd colony, so that could imply everything before canon* happened between 1-13 months (don't forget seramorris, copper-9's extra month)

*Cabin fever labs, Nori-Yeva-Alice are taken out of the mining factory (that's where she got the pickaxe) to run absolute solver tests on drones, oops, goes wrong, get possessed idiot, core collapse, Nori gets visions, marry khan, build uzi, DDs arrive to copper-9, lots of death, brand new blast doors, there might be a plot hole, I forgot what I was saying, oh. yeah. Uh. They're machines so, Uzi's childhood (she says she chose her username when she was 8, I think) lasted just some months. My theory is they go from pill baby to the common worker drone body we know, in the span of 13 months. If my theory is untrue, that would mean N, V, and J, spent at least 18 YEARS outside doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING besides the corpse spire from the drones that couldn't make it into the colony, which means the wdf is even more useless than J (unbelievable)

There's no age gap because there's no physical age. They're immortal machines (if not killed). They don't develop like humans. THERE IS THOUGH, A MENTAL AGE!!!!!!!!!!. So no. You can't ship J and khan. (+he has nori) So, no, N is not a creep, he's a genocide robot, Uzi's a genocide robot.... everyone is a genocide robot– ok I'm done

—🌜❄️

⠀

[gravityglitch-blog]

Inspired by a fic prompt from @incorrectly-quoting-murderdrones

"Takes place several years before canon.

(Note: I'm imagining N and Uzi as both being around 12-13 years old here)

During a scrap run, Nori runs into N. However instead of finding a murder drone ready to stab her with nanite acid, she finds nothing more than a lump of his torso and part of his head, having been ripped apart by J after a particularly bad hunt. What's worse is that the remainder of his head is crying.

Nori gets to talking to him (mom instincts) and upon the realization that the Solver sent an actual fucking child to come and slaughter his own kind,she decides "fuck that shit", and drags him back to the bunker to live in safety with the Workers.Uzi needs a friend her age anyway."

---

"The New Kid"

ao3 version here

second chapter here

It was like the beginning of a horror story, a child's sobs singing through the nightmare wind.

Nori Doorman, (Subject 002, according to her human tormentors) knew all about horror stories. She'd spent most of her life in one, from the day she was activated, to the day she'd escaped Cabin Fever Labs. She tried to tell herself it was over. She had a home now, a husband and daughter she loved more than life.

But old ghosts never rested. She could hear them humming through her code when nights fell quiet, could see them reflected by her own eye in many a fractured mirror. The Absolute Solver was a curse she'd bear until the end of her days, but it had certain advantages.

She could still use it in a fight.

There had been another attack recently.

The Disassembly Drones were getting bolder, but there was something...wrong about the way this new batch fought. Nori had been helping repel raids from the damned things ever since she'd settled into the Copper Nine colony. Previous squadrons had moved together in a smoothly rehearsed, murderous dance.

These newcomers, three that she'd seen so far, were sloppy. Uncoordinated. Didn't make them any less deadly, though. The colony had lost another family today and several more were wounded. That's why she was out here, in the pre-dawn hours, trudging through a snowstorm and sifting through piles of drone corpses for anything she could use to patch up the living.

If she found any spare battery packs or material that could be used to reinforce the colony doors, even better. Sunlight was death to a Disassembly Drone, and while it wasn't dawn yet, the hour was close enough that Nori thought she'd be safe. She knew how to handle herself, anyway. She adjusted her knapsack containing the night's collection on her shoulder and marched on. The sobs of the unseen child made her feel colder than the snow ever could.

For a frantic moment, she'd thought it was her own daughter, Uzi, having somehow followed her out here. That girl had a natural talent for finding trouble, but Nori supposed she had no one but herself to blame for that. No, this voice didn't belong to Uzi. For one thing, it sounded like a little boy. The swirling wind played a game of keep-away with the sound, so she couldn't tell exactly where it was coming from.

She pressed her gloved hands into the sides of her head, trying to drown it out.

Ignore it, she commanded herself. It's just another one of the Solver's tricks.

But while the Solver understood deception and brutality, it knew nothing of feeling. She didn't believe that it could imitate the despair she was hearing now.

So, she decided to make an incredibly stupid decision and call out.

"Hello?"

The crying stopped at once. "Is someone there?"

Robo-God, this voice was painfully young.

"My name is Nori," she called into the dark.

"I live in this colony. Do you need help?"

"Oh..." the voice was smaller. "You probably shouldn't help me, then."

"Why not?" Nori asked, moving closer now that she had a lock on the voice. Her heavy boots crunched through the snow. "Where are you?"

She rounded past the decayed skeleton of a car. A wave of sickness stopped her in her tracks. Lying atop a pile of Worker limbs was the equally mangled torso of a Disassembly Drone, somehow still alive.

He'd been torn clean in half at the chest, leaving him only his right arm. His wings had been sliced off. His head had been smashed in on one side, and with that crack in his visor, he was likely blind in one eye. Worst of all, he was clearly no older than her own child back home.

So that's why this new batch had been so sloppy. The Solver had started sending child soldiers after them. It must be getting desperate.

"Um...hi?" The Disassembler boy said shyly.

"What in the..." Nori began, her mind rapidly sifting through all her questions. "What happened to you? I fought you things back, but I didn't take it this far."

"Oh, so you were the one," the boy sounded impressed rather than hostile. "You were very brave, ma'am. No, this..." he gestured to himself as best he could. "My squadron leader was upset with me. It was a poor hunt today."

"A poor hunt?" A spark of anger flared amid Nori's sympathy. "Because of you, the colony has four new funerals to arrange!"

The boy's remaining yellow eye creased in remorse. "I'm sorry. Really, I am. None of us want to do this...but we don't want to die, either."

She shut her eyes tight against the memory of the Solver trying to infect her with that same hunger for oil, the lifeblood of her fellow Drones. By some unknown grace, it had failed.

Nori glanced up at the sky, growing lighter by the minute. "Yeah, well, I don't think you get any more say in that than we do, kid. Sunrise will be here soon."

"I know," he whispered. "I deserve this. At least, after today, nothing will hurt anymore."

Nori was trembling. Rage, pity, indecision, the need to do something were at war inside her. Overwhelmed, she spun on her heel and began the trek back home.

"I need to get out of here. I...I'm sorry."

Why was she apologizing to one of the Solver's murder pets? Was she truly losing her mind?

As she stomped away, she heard the boy say a soft, cheerful, "Good night, ma'am."

Something inside Nori's core broke. This...child...was wishing her good night. While he was waiting to die. With a loud groan at her own idiocy, she made room in her knapsack and turned back around.

---

"Nori!" Annie, a brown-haired Worker who was waiting just inside the colony doors, waved her inside. "Thank goodness! We were all getting worried!"

Nori raised her hand in greeting, but kept her eyes on her boots as she strode inside.

She winced as the inevitable struck.

"What in the world..." Annie stammered. "Tell me that's not what I think it is!"

The head in her duffel bag spoke up with a chipper, "Hello!"

Annie leapt back with a frightened yelp.

"I'll explain soon, I promise!" Nori was almost running toward the infirmary now, scaring any unfortunate soul who happened to cross her path. It didn't help that her salvage was so chatty.

"Hi! Sorry about trying to kill you all earlier today. Wow, this is where you live? It's cozy in here!"

"Do you ever stop talking?" Nori growled.

The doors to the infirmary slid open. Infirmary was too fancy a name, perhaps. It was just a few rows of cots, currently occupied by injured Workers receiving oil infusions and having their wounds treated. The most advanced tech they had was pushed into the far corner, a 3D printer Nori and her husband had modified to create prosthetics, if it had enough material.

That's why Nori risked these scouting missions so often. She couldn't help the dead. But they might help the living.

Her husband, Khan, was dozing in a chair pressed against the back wall, their small daughter pacing anxious half-circles around him.

"Khan!" Nori exclaimed. "You know I don't want Uzi in here! She doesn't need to see all this!"

"I'm sorry, honey," Khan said, rising to his feet and adjusting his mustache. "But she wouldn't sleep until--"

"Mom!" Uzi shot forward like a small purple bullet and threw her arms tight around her mother's waist. Nori knelt down to return the embrace. "I'm here, little bug. I'm right here."

Uzi pulled away and began running her hands over Nori's face and hair. She was always like this after a mission. Like she needed to be absolutely certain that her mother had come back safely. Uzi often had night terrors, waking up screaming about being left behind.

It was a generational fear, Nori thought, passed down from herself. She prayed that was all she had passed down.

It was then that Uzi and the boy in the bag met each other's eyes.

"Pretty," the kid said, mindlessly, the word falling out of him like a stray coin.

His eyes instantly hollowed, embarrassed.

So did Uzi's. "Holy crap, it talks."

Khan came up behind their daughter and gave her shoulders a gentle shake.

"Language, young lady," he chided gently.

Two seconds later, he burst out, "Holy crap, honey, what are you thinking?!"

"Just raising the half-dead, love," Nori said flatly on her way to the printer. "We do it all the time around here." She set the Disassembler kid onto a cot and hooked him up to an oil IV. Annie came in to the infirmary next, holding a box of more ordinary medical supplies like bandages and gauze. She and Nori often worked together to save whoever they could after a raid.

Now she approached Nori slowly, as one approaches a potential lunatic. "Nori...what are you going to do?"

"Look at him, Annie," Nori said, getting the printer ready for a long night's work. "He's a kid. Most of the murder was ripped out of him by his own kind. I'm going to print him a Worker body."

Annie's mouth fell open in shock. "Can you even do that?"

"I'm sure as hell gonna try. Here," Nori handed her the sack of the night's gathering. "This should be enough to help patch up the others."

"On it," Annie said, lingering a moment to look at the broken boy on the operating table. Carefully, she brushed her fingers through the tips of his hair. "You poor thing," she whispered, before hurrying to her work.

Khan was at her side now. "Honey, his body's one thing, but what about his programming? The...the you-know-what?"

Not taking her eyes off her workscreen, she answered, "I've been working on a patch for that, just in case we might need it."

She couldn't stop her gaze from wandering toward Uzi, who was curiously observing the new kid from a safe distance.

"I think I've got it down. I've had the infection too long, it won't work on me. But on a younger model, it should work."

Khan shook his head with a tired sigh. "I hope you know what you're doing."

"So do I."

Before too long, the Worker parts were printed, and it was time to start fusing. The process was a painful one. The kid whimpered, and tears bled from his single functioning eye.

That was when Uzi gently intertwined her fingers with his. He looked at her in shock.

"Hey," Uzi said with soft encouragement. "Don't worry. My mom's the best at what she does. You're gonna be okay."

The boy gave a timid smile. "Th...thank you."

"My name's Uzi, by the way. What's yours?"

"Serial Designation N." He tried to salute, then remembered he didn't have an arm available.

"Yikes," Uzi said with a playful grimace. "We'll have to get you a better name than that."

"A real name? For me?" He shut his eyes, the pain and the past suddenly worlds away, while his future was being built piece by piece. "Wow."