No More Tricks, No More Excuses

What You Know

She had her chainsaw out and running, but never lunged, she only stood up into a threatening stance, breathing her anger in and out as she fed oxygen to her power cell.

"V?" N placed a hand on her other arm.

V looked back at him, and although it took a second, looking at N's face instead of Uzi's made her retract her weapon. Not like she wasn't going to anyway. She went from gritting her teeth and showing narrowed eyes on her display visor, to worried open-circle eyes for the briefest instant, the back to narrowed eyes now accompanied by simulated blush lines as she looked away.

"Uh, that–"

"Leave me alone!" V didn't even allow N to ask whatever he might have, jerking her arm away from his hand and storming out of the room.

Both N and Uzi's stares lingered on the door afterward, both with some mix of guilt and concern, and N visibly displayed much more of each.

They turned to each other soon enough, N raising one hand with a lifted finger and motion toward the door with the thumb of his other. "I uh, I should probably go see . . ."

Uzi gave him a weak smile and thumbs up in response. She couldn't really find enough angst or edge to speak, so she displayed Sorry :( on her visor instead.

N raised and wiggled a hand with a reassuring smile, switching his display to a Don't Worry for a second, before switching back to a more uncertain smile and heading out.

Uzi spun her chair around to face her computer desk, and proceeded to let her face drop onto it. Aaand then she had to pick her head right back up when her dad intruded for the third time that night. "Ugggghhhh, what is it now, dad?"

"Hey, Uzi, sorry for poking my head in again but it looks like your sleepover pals just left, so I wanted to let you know your friend Doll came a little while ago and, uh, said you all needed to talk, about something important."

***

Plenty of drones still cringed or were briefly frightened by N's presence, but they were all mostly willing to talk to him now, and thus he was able to find out were V had gone. Of course, he was pointed towards the colony bunker doors, as she had expectably gone outside. They both had been spending decent amounts of time outside already, V of course usually doing so alone, as prolonged hours in the perpetual extreme cold was the only way to keep themselves cool without needing more cooling oil. He'd been so giddy and proud of her when he learned she'd been doing so willingly since the camp. Of course V had insisted she was just going outside more to get away from everyone, but N refused to believe her and had been happy anyway.

He found the usual count of WDF workers playing cards at the table just inside door one, along with Lizzy unexpectedly leaning against a wall nearby.

"Fight with your girlfriend?" Ron, the very same drone who'd hung N's drawing on the bunker door asked.

N's expression display flipped from confusion, to blush lines, and then to blush lines alongside a pair of regretful eyes.

Lizzy pointed him outside without ever looking up from her phone. "V went like, outside to pout or whatever."

"I gotcha buddy." Ron hit the remote to open the door.

N partly raised a finger as if to speak as he passed by, but only managed to call back after actually stepping outside the threshold. "Oh, ah, she's . . . V's not really my girlfriend. I kind of used to want her to be, but she pretended she didn't like me, and also kind of acted like she never even remembered who I was but I was always sorta fine with it cause, ya know, I am pretty forgettable." His two pointer fingers twiddled around each other throughout his words, but one did semi-lift itself up a second later. "Oh! But we did kinda both like each other in the haunted mansion we worked in before our memories got wiped!" The briefly excited, self-cheering up smile couldn't last, however, and he ended up looking down and away while he put a hand to his arm. "So I guess you could say it was just coworkers after that," and then the realization that he was rambling off backstory information to robots who hadn't asked triggered his occasional habit of sped-up word delivery, "but ah anywaythanksforthehelpyouguys bye!"