Though recent experiences should have conditioned him to expect the unexpected by now, Khan could say with absolute certainty that 1-v-1-ing a Murder Drone was NOT on his bingo card. But here he was, fighting one right after having killed another and finding that it wasn't nearly as impossible as he thought. Or rather, as impossible as he had been told.
He hadn't always been the coward his daughter knew and...tolerated. There was a reason so many Workers had followed him without question for so long. There was a reason a woman as incredible as Nori had chosen him.
Uzi didn't get all of her recklessness and "fight me or bite me" attitude from her mother.
On that first morning when he had finally cornered and confronted his wife after a solid week of sleepless nights, he looked her right in the optics and said that if her nightmares ever became reality, he would make them regret ever setting foot on their planet. And by whatever gods were out there, he meant it. But to this day he didn't know if that was the right thing to say, because from that moment on Nori didn't hesitate to give him both barrels when she had another "vision".
She told him of teeth in the darkness and talons in the night. She told him of demons that would get back up no matter how many times they were struck down. She told him of monsters with the power to level cities and decimate armies. She told him of forces of nature given will and desire, driven by hunger and hate.
She told him of world-enders, and while it rattled him enough to make him build the greatest doors known to dronekind, as per Nori's demand, he mostly took it in stride.
Because he didn't believe it. Oh, he had no doubt that JCJenson, with their infinite resources and manpower, could create something like what Nori described and drew. But the odds of them sending THAT to a backwater exo-planet that they had blown up in the first place? Not even worth thinking about.
Then they showed up, every bit as terrifying as Nori said. They turned everything the Workers had made for themselves to rubble and scrap in a matter of hours, and all thoughts of fighting were abandoned. After all, how do you fight a tsunami? How do you fight a hurricane?
How do you fight the apocalypse?
As it turned out, having a mech suit helped a lot.
Yes, the Murder Drone was weakened, but that just meant they COULD be weakened. They weren't invincible. He would never speak ill about his late wife, but Khan would be lying if he said he didn't wish she had been just a tad less dramatic with her descriptions. Then maybe things could have been different. Maybe HE could have been different.
"Are you sad? Are you upset? Are you furious?" Khan taunted, long-suppressed anger finally bubbling freely to the surface as he really started to get a handle on the suit. "I would offer the services of our grief counselor, but he retired about a decade ago; couldn't keep up with the demand!"
For her part, R was sad, she was upset and when she saw B's life end, truly end, right before her eyes, she had indeed been furious. But as she engaged the tin can in a tin can the part of her that howled for retribution steadily got quieter and quieter, until a different voice started to take its place. A voice that told her there was an opportunity here and she was fucking it up.
She tried to shake it off, but it refused to be ignored any longer. Not when everything she wanted, everything she desperately wanted but just knew was impossible, was finally, miraculously, within reach. All she had to do was stop.
But she couldn't stop. Things had gone too far for that. She couldn't let B and G's ignoble ends go unanswered, just like the Workers couldn't let her actions go unpunished.
