The Digital Plague (A Murder Drones AU)

Chapter 4

Uzi ground her teeth, standing, railgun ready, in front of the abomination. J's freaky face shot toward her, several pincer talons and a few camera-like appendages with them.

Uzi dodged one of the pincers and jumped over another.

"What are you?" She yelled.

"Already told you. Too complicated for such a simple drone."

Uzi growled, dodging another pincer while trying to find a good angle to shoot. She guessed that the best place to hit it would be its head; there was not another obvious place, but J's monster's head was keeping its distance.

"Who are you, then?" she yelled back.

"You should know; you met us when you were just a droneling."

Uzi puzzled over that one for the tiniest of seconds before someone new walked through the carnage: an all too familiar worker. One who haunted Uzi's dreams, one she'd lost long ago, one she took after in all aspects, good and bad.

Her mother.

A muffled sob escaped her.

But it isn't her. Uzi reminded herself. Just a hologram, move on. But some part of her wanted it to be real.

"Mother?" She questioned the being, the massive monster, the world.

Her mother smiled, holding out her arms as if she were gesturing for Uzi to hug her.

Pfft, she thought, halfheartedly, as if I were that stupid.

The stupid, lovey-dovey, sentimental part of her urged her to walk forward and accept that embrace. But she held back as her father came walking through and stood next to her mother.

"Nori?" He asked, a full-blown sob escaping him. He rushed forward to embrace her, but just before he reached her, a particularly large pincer grabbed him around the midsection. Nori watched as Khan was flung up into the air and caught by another pincer.

Uzi gasped and ran forward a few stumbling steps, disoriented by the confusing things happening in front of her. "Dad, wait-"

Her mother was suddenly in front of her, the familiar symbol Uzi had realized symbolized this 'absoluteSolver' replacing one of her empty purple eyes.

"Uzi, wait," She said, her voice exactly how Uzi remembered it, "join us, and we can be a family again."

Uzi froze as Nori reached forward and placed a firm hand on her wrist. A firm hand. What- how?

"Just submit to the Solver," she said, grinning. Uzi glanced warily at the murder-drone-like fangs that resided there. "Or else Khan gets it." Her tone darkened, just the smallest bit as she gestured to her father's struggling form, still dangling as the pincer held his head.

Her resolve strengthened. "No. I won't," she said, stepping back from her mother's hologram. Hologram, she reminded herself, shakily. Solid hologram. "My real mother wouldn't have just left him to die. She loved him!" Not Like I should, she thought, guiltily.

Nori's hologram snarled at her, feral, before disappearing in a flash of computerized light.

"Well, now we will have to do something... shocking." The computerized voice was back, lilting and almost sing-song-like.

Khan let out and yell and Uzi staggered back, eyes wide as she watched her father get ripped in two.

"Wh-what? No-" she gasped, stumbling forward. "Dad,"

Completely disoriented, Uzi didn't notice the huge talon-like appendage that wrapped itself around her head until it was too late.

She yelped as it squeezed her head and lifted her up.

"Lucky for you, it's snack time. No time for grief, time to go into my mouth now," It almost-laughed, lifting a pincer claw dangerously close to Uzi's midsection.

Uzi shut her eyes and prepared to meet her mother- her real mother.

A whirring sounded from somewhere below her, followed by the sound of J's monster growling.

"Please don't," it pleaded, "I was using that."

The limb holding Uzi must have been severed, because it dropped, still clutching Uzi's head. She quickly shoved it off of her, scrambling to her feet and searching for her railgun. Who saved me?
Recovering relatively quickly, Uzi positioned her railgun and pulled the trigger. Forget aiming for the head, if she hit anything it would do.

With a blast of green light, the railgun blew off a good chunk of J's monster. It recoiled. "How rude." It cracked.

"Oh, shut it." Someone snapped. What the hell-

N jumped down from the ceiling, hands replaced by the whirring blades of chainsaws. He shot her a coy grin before jumping back into the fray, bladed hands swinging and chopping at limbs.

Uzi just watched, slightly concerned, as she watched J's monster get absolutely destroyed by the naive fluffbrain Uzi had met not a day earlier... and left to die not three hours ago.

It's not like she had anything better to do, with her railgun recharging and no weapon other than her superior wit and edgy teen hyperboles, so she kind of stood there awkwardly and watched N work, trying not to think about her (dead?) dad, who may have been a very realistic hologram, or the fact that someone (who was actually a terrifying mutated murder robot) knew what her mother looked like and what she sounded like who wasn't her dad.

Hell, I have to sit down.