We need to talk.

Khan and Uzi have a long overdue conversation about some very important topics, also N is there.

Uzi had been pacing back and forth at the back of the spire for the past half an hour, with N standing worriedly off to the side near the entrance.

Yesterday Thad had come by the spire with alarming news, apparently J didn’t know when to call it quits, and she had eaten a few people and ran, when Thad heard about this he immediately went to get Uzi’s railgun and bring it to her. But by the time he got to the warehouse, her fucking DAD had emerged from cryostorage covered in oil and carrying her totalled railgun.

When Thad and a few members of the WDF went to investigate, they found a pile of disassembly drone parts and meat , actual ORGANIC MEAT, which they had thankfully dissolved in acid to make sure she stayed dead this time. 

Because J had also apparently turned into a frickin’ monster! BECAUSE OF COURSE THAT WAS SOMETHING SHE COULD JUST DO!

And then Thad had drawn a symbol in the snow, which N had ‘helpfully’ identified as her special eye and Thad then explained that it had been carved into the walls of the warehouse, with two words printed next to it.

Absolute Solver.

Uzi didn't know how or from where, but she recognised those words, she felt a shiver wrack its way down her mechanical spine as they burrowed their way into her mind. Neither N nor Thad noticed, thank Robo-God for that.

The only good thing that came from the entire interaction is that after showing Thad the mostly-fixed Drop pod, he had invited them to a party he was throwing, but said V couldn't come because it was ‘cool kids only’ and he was still peeved about her almost killing him back in the bunker.

And then to top it all off, as she and N were calmly accepting Thad calling them cool (and DEFINITELY not jumping around and squealing like little kids, anyone who said otherwise could bite her). V just HAD to drop in and scatter all of Uzi’s tools with her wings. So then she and N had to spend the rest of the night cleaning up instead of doing anything useful.

So now here they were, waiting for the sun to set so they could both go scavenging. Uzi could have gone out by herself, but without her railgun, she was pretty much defenceless without N nearby to cover her.

Uzi kicked at a pile of snow, her frustration growing, she HATED feeling defenceless. That was partially why she made her railgun in the first place.

The crunch of boots on snow interrupted her spiral, N’s head snapped to the source of the noise faster than Uzi could blink. She felt her body tense as N crept closer to the entrance, his wings mantling at his back, a set of wicked claws replacing one of his hands.

Uzi waited with bated breath as N stood stock still in the entryway, his claws immediately retracting back into his normal hand, Uzi crept closer to the entrance, her curiosity overriding her self-preservation.

Any words she might have said died in Uzi’s throat as the form of her father emerged from the snow. He looked different, his jaw set in a determined line, a confidence to him that Uzi hadn’t seen since she was just a pill. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw the box held under one of his arms, ‘Nori’s kooky insane stuff’ scrawled in permanent marker, loose bits of paper peeking out from under the lid. His other arm held rolled up blueprints, the handle to a large rolling toolbox clenched tightly in his hand, the faded red metal still peppered with drawings from when her dad would let her play in his workshop when she was little.

Her optics met his, he gave her a tight smile. “Hi sweetie” he gulped and averted his optics for a moment before regaining his composure. “I know your old man is probably the last person you want to see right now, but can we…talk?” he nodded to the cardboard box under his arm. “It’s kind of important”

Uzi looked at the cardboard box, she felt synthetic bile rise up in the back of her throat, her dad never talked about the stuff in mom’s closet. Never, and now he had a whole box of stuff from it? And he was initiating a conversation with Uzi about the contents? WILLINGLY?!

…what the hell happened when he was dealing with J?

Uzi balled up her fists. “Sure, come on in” she started making her way towards the drop pod, waving her dad inside as she walked, N bounding over to her side and falling into lock step with her as they entered the drop pod. Uzi sat in the pilot's chair, while N hopped up onto the still useless console, her dad pulling the toolbox to rest against one of the walls.

Uzi settled against the leather of the chair, steepling her fingers as she levelled her father with the most stern glare she could muster. “Alright, dad ” she emphasised ‘dad’ with a lazy drawl. “Lets talk”.

--⚠️--

N watched Uzi’s dad the way a recently fed lion watched a gazelle, not actively hunting, but still acutely aware of every move it made.

His hands shook slightly as he laid his late wife’s drawings out on the floor, like he was afraid their contents would come to life and attack him, his shoulders hunched inwards ever so slightly as he pulled out an old photo of him, Uzi’s mom and a handful of their friends.

N continued to catalogue Khan’s movements as he listened to him spill what he knew about Uzi’s mom, who N now knew was called Nori.

Khan told them both about pulling Nori and a small handful of others from the wreckage of a large building after the planet's core collapsed, about what Nori told him about the humans working there doing something to their code, and about a code string called The Solver.

He went on to tell them about how the drones they had rescued were ‘off’, being snappy and aggressive, overheating rapidly no matter how many times their fans were cleaned, and a constant craving for oil.

Khan sat back and let Uzi and N absorb the information. Uzi looked closely at one of her mother's drawings that she held in her hand, deep in thought, it depicted a swirling vortex with the Solver's symbol in the centre.

“So, let me just make sure I’ve got this right,” Uzi began. “Mom and a bunch of other drones had the Solver uploaded into them by humans, and it made them into Disassembly drones but without all the cool weapons and crazy healing factor?”

Khan nodded. “Something like that, yeah, but I don’t think that was the result the humans wanted though” he rubbed his thumb across Nori’s pictured face. Khan shook his head. He stared longingly at the photo. “I think they were trying to study it”.

N piped up from where he was sitting. “But why? It’s a program they made for Disassembly drones to repair themselves, they already know everything about it”

Khan merely shook his head again. “That's what I thought too at first, until Nori started having her dreams”

“Just a little while after we got married, she started having these random dreams, which were fine, until they started happening for real” He sat up straighter, the shake in his hands worsening. “She had a dream about me stubbing my foot on the coffee table? It happened. She has a dream about a group of scouts getting lost in a snowstorm? We go out searching, and they're exactly where she said they would be. She has a dream about our neighbour's house getting destroyed in a quake? We convince them to have dinner with us and barely two hours later everything they own was covered in rubble”

He turned to look at N. “She has recurring nightmares about demons falling from the sky to eat us all? Not two weeks after we finished the bunker, you dropped right on our doorstep”.

“We realised early on that no one would believe her if she told them she could see the future, so it was a fight to convince the others that we werent wasting everyone's time when I started building the bunker. Hell, if it hadn’t been for Yeva and Sasha backing us up, I'm still pretty sure we would have been sitting ducks when you guys dropped”

“If it weren't for the fact that she would have melted trying, and that she would never want to, Nori probably could have been able to predict our entire lives down to the millisecond, the only thing holding her back was the amount of oil she had access to. And it wasn’t just her either, every other drone that had the Solver in them could do things that normal workers just couldn’t, they hid it from the rest of us because they were scared. But every now and again something would slip through, like how Yeva always seemed to pull whatever you needed at the moment out of thin air.”

Uzi gaped at khan, momentarily lost for words, what are you supposed to say when your dad reveals that your mom could see the future?

“Dad…” Uzi’s voice rattled in her throat. “Not... not that I don’t want to talk about mom, but, why tell me this now? What does any of this have to do with me and N going to earth?”

Khan looked at his daughter before heaving a sigh, tucking the photo away into his jacket. He grabbed a rolled up blueprint from the small stack of them he had left next to the toolbox. 

“I guess seeing what the Solver did to the Disassembly drone you killed put some things into perspective for me, made me realise that what I want and what you want aren't really all that different”

Uzi furrowed her brow. “And what exactly do you want, dad?”

“Simple, all I’ve ever wanted was to keep the people I love safe, and now that I know JCJenson and whatever other megacorps are out there with the ability to make more of those eldritch monsters, and they're trying to use whatever nightmare code the Solver is to grant themselves omniscience and whatever other powers it has? It's clear to me that as long as humanity has that kind of power, we’ll never be safe. And ever since I saw what happened to the other one, it’s impossible for me to ignore the similarities between Nori and your murd- uh i mean Disassembly drone friend there” he turned to look at N, who straightened under his gaze. 

“You never knew that you could turn into that monster thing, did you?”

N shook his head.

“And I'm just taking a wild guess that JCJ doesn't give a rats ass about what happens to you as long as you do your job, and I'm also going to make another guess while I'm at it that they never briefed your squad on any kind of extraction plan”

N shook his head again.

“So They saddled you with this eldritch nightmare code then dumped you here instead of fixing their mess, just like they did with Nori and the others”

Khan turned back to Uzi.

“So that's why I'm here Uzi, because as much as I love them, not even doors will be able to stop what's coming. And also because I know that if your mother were here right now, she would never forgive me if I stood back and did nothing while you took the fight right to them.” 

Khan unfolded the blueprint, revealing the design etched onto it for all to see. 

Uzi stared at the blueprint in awe, it was her railgun, but different. Slight adjustments to the measurements, and a different stock and barrel, but still recognisably hers. She felt N’s hair tickling the side of her faceplate as he leaned in to get a better look, having dismounted from his perch at some point. Her optics flicked back up to her father.

Khan reached forward and laid his hand over hers. “I know I haven't been the father you needed me to be after your mother left us, and I can never apologise enough for that. But I just wanted you to know that if you wanted my help with all of this, I'm here now, and I'm done running away”

A pregnant pause filled the air. N’s optics flicked back and forth between the two Doormans, debating if he should exit the pod and give them some semblance of privacy, before suddenly Uzi lurched forward and caught her father in a hug, one he was quick to return.

N decided to quietly exit the pod while they had their moment, fanning out his wings and flying to one of the walls of the spire, he leaned over to an exposed hand and bit into it, mashing and shredding the alloy into a paste with his teeth and the papillae on his tongue. Before making his way over to one of the many holes dotting the wall and ( very carefully) plugging them with the paste. 

He could hear Uzi and her father talking in the pod, his hearing was sensitive enough that he would have to leave the spire entirely in order to not hear them, but he made a conscious effort to block them out. This was clearly private, and if it was important for him to know, Uzi would tell him about it later.

That was one of the thing he liked about Uzi, she was the only squadmate he knew that wouldn’t hide things from him if they were actually important, like when J would lie about how much oil they had saved up so he would hunt more and pad out their numbers, even though it was only two hours till sunrise and his oil levels were at 30%. Or when V would hide his things around the spire because she thought it was funny to make him go looking for them.

Even though N felt bad admitting it, even if it was only in his head, he was honestly glad J wasn’t around anymore, and that he and Uzi were going to go to earth to fight the humans. N wasn’t normally enthusiastic about violence like V was, but there was a tiny part of him that agreed with Uzi about their treatment that was getting louder by the day. For the first time in his life, he wanted to speak up for himself instead of just deciding to grin and bear it for the sake of the group, if only Tessa could see him now.

N took another bite out of a nearby worker's head and flew over to the adjacent spire wall, he had a feeling that Uzi and her dad were going to be talking for a while, which meant he was probably going to be spending the foreseeable future plugging holes.

Good thing N had never minded busywork.