No More Tricks, No More Excuses

Sorry

V had to shut her eyes. She had to mode-switch, after she looked away from the absent elevator. When she turned her head to face the Cyn-puppetted Doll, she reopened her eyes, which were still unfilled circles on her display, though they were now compressed by descending eyebrow lines.

"Come on you little red-eyed freak!"

Another glitch on Doll's visor came, but it was still Cyn who answered. "You do_your job, and, I, leave_you and N alone."

V was afraid. She always had been. But she wasn't yielding to that now. "Seriously? After all your overpowered crap, Doll?"

"Right V?" Cyn continued, though another brief glitch came and went, solver symbol appearing in place of one eye for a second, flickering between yellow and red.

"What happened to your parents?" V ignored Cyn.

And Cyn ignored the fact she was talking past her. "Bad job, V."

"You're seriously so pathetic you can't even fight her long enough to kill me yourself!?"

A yellow solver appeared and whirled in Doll's hand.

And then it vanished.

One of her legs repeated the process of undertaking and then undoing the next step Cyn intended Doll to take.

"What–wha–at–is–"

Sparks burst from Doll's head and her visor cracked. A broken visage of the solver symbol sputtered in and out of existence in place of her right eye, jolting so violently between colours.

Red. Yellow. Red. Yellow. Red. Yellow. Red.

Red took hold, yellow flickering in and vanishing every half second.

Doll stood still and rigid, glaring ahead with all the intensity in the universe, and with her solver eye ever flickering. The thinnest lines of smoke rose from her expression visor, following the erasure of the cracks as the glass regenerated itself. Her head kept trying to initiate sudden, jerking motions, but she managed to hold it nearly still.

The symbol kept flickering, but as another few seconds passed, it ceased appearing yellow, not even for a single frame. Now instead it was just flickering in and out of existence, her display constantly reverting to showing her right eye.

Eventually she muttered with clenched fists. In Russian. "You can't pull someone into the void if they're already empty inside."

In what she presumed to be her dying moments, V was impressed with the little freak she'd despised previously. Doll . . . was actually willing to openly mock Cyn.

Whether Cyn gave up or not, Doll's eyes occupied her visor as they should, and their focus fell on V. More and more of her eyes' upper halves went dark, as steeply slanted lines descended down over them.

In Russian. "I hate you." In the end, digital eyes had a hard limit on what they could display, and Doll had absolutely pressed them to it. In Russian. "I hate you, I hate you more than anything!"

She threw her hand out, red solver appearing and spinning at her fingertips. The symbol that returned to her eye tried to flicker yellow again, but Doll would not allow it.

V's own display had narrowed her eyes as well . . . but she couldn't avoid her own eyebrow lines angling more gently, and even curving away.

. . .

"Better to die to you."

. . .

. . .

Cyn either truly gave up, or Doll had completely won. The solver symbol replacing her eye never flickered. No hint of yellow came.