It took four different "blips", as Lizzy started calling them, to get the girls where they needed to go. It wasn't until that last one that Uzi considered if anyone else would already be there, or what their reaction would be to three drones appearing out of thin air. But by the time it occurred to her, it was too late.
So when they appeared out of thin air, in an attention-grabbing flash of red light no less, she wasn't too surprised to find herself on the business end of several guns.
"Friendlies, friendlies!" she yelled with her hands in the air.
"What the fu...Uzi?" Erik breathed a sigh of relief as he lowered his shotgun.
"Damn right! Glad to see someone I won't have to babysit," Uzi replied, hoping that if she pretended everything was normal he would just roll with it.
"Same, actually. But what the hell was that?"
"What was what?"
"...Are we really doin' this?" Erik deadpanned.
"...Look, you're gonna have to get in line, because I guarantee I have even more questions than you," Uzi said with an exasperated sigh as she glanced at Doll.
"Right. You know what? It's probably better for my peace of mind if I don't know. Just tell me when to get out of the way," Erik said as he turned around and went back to helping set up barricades around the machine gun nests.
Uzi let out a deep sigh of relief, practically deflating as the other Workers around them took the tall drone's example and returned to their tasks.
Maybe being THE weirdo had its perks.
"Doll!" Uzi whipped around at the sound of Lizzy's startled scream and saw that Doll had collapsed to her knees, clutching at her head like she'd just been hit.
"What happened?!"
"I don't know!" Lizzy replied frantically. "One second she was fine, then this!" she put her hand on Doll's shoulder and a set of stress rings appeared around her hollowed eyelights. "God, you're running hot, and not in the usual way!"
"N said- what?" Uzi did a double-take and paused to stare at the head cheerleader for a moment, then shook her head and continued. "N said teleporting takes a lot out of her."
Doll grimaced as she struggled to think over the system warnings. She hadn't been bluffing when she told N she felt fine even after all the "blipping" she'd done, and transporting Lizzy had never been so draining before. Did adding another person to the mix really make that big of a difference?
Or was it something about Uzi specifically?
After all, their mothers came from the same place...
"Doll, can you get to your apartment?" Lizzy asked, jolting her out of her dark thoughts.
"I'm not leaving," Doll replied firmly as she struggled to stand, "they will be here any minute now."
"Then stop wasting time by being stubborn!" Lizzy snapped back. "What would you do if they came through that door right now?"
"I would fight," Doll replied with a defiant glare.
"I'm over here," Lizzy said, somehow sounding unimpressed and worried all at once.
"..."
"We need you in fighting shape, Doll," Uzi said. "If there's something at your place that can help with that, go for it. We got this," she flashed a thumbs-up. She then caught sight of someone setting up two sentry turrets in front of the door and ran off shouting, "Hey, get those in front of the generator, max out the motors and set 'em for thermal; that's our anti-missile defense!"
