Witch of the Wastes

Fandom: Murder Drones

Summary: After just barely managing to prevent the Murder Drone N from entering Outpost 3, Uzi Doorman is met with nothing but her father's anger and belittlement. After that, she realizes that their colony never had a place for her, and it never will.

“Hey fellas! Ooh, deal me in! I love Rummy! Wait-”

Uzi Doorman, feral mad genius of Outpost-3 (at least according to her… on the genius part that is), lets out a yell full of panic and adrenaline as she leaps towards the almost closed door leading into the bunker, her home, and slams the butt of her sick as hell railgun right in the visor of the weirdly nice drone on the other side. The Murder/Disassembly Drone, known as N, lets out a yelp of pain and surprise reminiscent of a dog as he falls back, cracks spiderwebbing across the entirety of his screen. But that’s much less important than the fact that Uzi’s action caused him to let go of the door that he was holding open and the hydraulics can finally slam the barrier closed.

She breathes heavily, adrenaline subroutines flooding through her programming while her vents work overtime on drawing in the frozen air of Copper-9 to flow through her chassis.

“…W-was that a Murder Drone?” The stammered question startles Uzi enough that she jumps and whirls around, forcibly reminded of the fact that there are four other drones here. Drones that could have gotten killed if N had managed to get through the door. Thank Robo God that that Murder Drone, at least, likes to talk!

…She determinedly ignores the ironic fact that a Murder Drone, one of the things made specifically to kill drones like her, treated her better in twenty minutes than anyone ever has in the ten years since her mom was killed. Hell, N could have been the one to kill her for all she knows! Which just makes that fact even more screwed up!

Anyways, repressing that she nonchalantly dusts off some of the snow that got on her Dead Batteries jacket, spins her sick as hell railgun like a badass anime protagonist, and brings it to rest on her shoulder as she gives the four Worker Defense Force drones a smirk that says she has everything handled. She doesn’t, she really doesn’t. “Yeah, it was.” She jerks a thumb to point at herself. “But I managed to keep it out of the bunker!”

There’s a few moments of silence as the adults exchange looks and Uzi waits for the acknowledgement about how she singlehandedly prevented the Murder Drones from getting into the bunker. What she gets instead is the sound of stomping feet from deeper inside the bunker, drawing her eyes to a drone crushing a pack of playing cards in his clenched fist and wearing a winter jacket, hat, and boots, along with a stupid mustache stuck to his face. A face that looks absolutely pissed.

“UZI! DID I JUST HEAR THAT YOU ALMOST LET A MURDER DRONE IN!?”

Uzi swallows and hunches over nervously, remembering the lie she told her dad to get out of the bunker earlier. “That- I- Um-”

His white optics turn into emoji flames, his anger reaching an all time high as he swings his hand through the air and cuts her off. “No, you know what? I checked the cameras on my way to get the cards, and you know what I didn’t see?” He continues without waiting for a reply. “You, measuring the exterior hydraulics! Instead, I had to rewind the footage to find out that you ran off with your toy gun! Do you have any idea how dangerous that was!?”

Uzi feels her anger flare up at his disparagement. “It’s not a toy!” She shouts back, her fingers tightening around the weapon she’s spent years of time and dedication to finally build into something functional. Countless measurements, tens of thousands of simulated programs, months of trying to get every part of her sick as hell railgun to fit together just right. And all of that for a single working prototype! She has proof of concept now, she has all the information and experience she’s worked hard to get so she can make an even better gun way faster now!

But her dad has the fucking audacity to call her life’s work a damned toy!?

“It works! I managed to blast a Murder Drone’s head off with it! We can fight back!”

Khan groans and brings his hands up to drag them down his face. “Great, great!” He says as if talking to himself. “Not only does she lie and put the entire bunker at risk, but now she’s hallucinating!”

Uzi’s mouth drops open in shock, her receptors having trouble processing what she just heard. But a quick replay through her memory banks of the past few seconds confirms that she heard correctly. He thinks she’s making it up. He thinks she’s hallucinating. He thinks she’s crazy. Not that that last one is anything new, what with all the posters and interviews talking about how she’s ‘troubled’. Hell, there are so many of those damned posters plastered around the bunker that say he thinks of doors as his real daughter!

So, she really shouldn’t be surprised at the words, but she is, and that’s enough that she doesn’t react fast enough when her dad’s hand reaches out and pulls her railgun out of her hands. He raises it above his head, out of her reach. “GIVE IT BACK!” She lunges forward and tries to get her weapon back, but her dad is bigger than her. If she were to remove the limiters that stop workers from using one hundred percent of their physical abilities she could get it, but she’d probably hurt the other drone. As much of a horrible neglectful father he is, she… she doesn’t want to hurt him.

So instead, when it becomes clear that he isn’t going to let her get her pride and joy back from him, she switches priorities to getting the power core. She can get the rest of the gun back from wherever he tries to stash it, but she needs to make sure the power core is still stable after being used to fire the gun’s first shot. In the worst case scenario, it could suddenly explode without warning.

She manages to press the button on the side of the gun that releases the core and grabs it at the same moment that her dad pushes her away. She falls on her butt with a yell of surprise and quickly stashes the core in her pocket out of sight before looking back at him. But he’s not looking at her, and he’s not walking back into the bunker to hide her railgun. Instead, she’s treated to the sight of Khan Doorman slamming her railgun into the ground, sending pieces of it scattering around the hall.

Her eyes hollow at the realization that he’s destroying it, not hiding it, and she can’t react as he brings it above his head to bring it smashing against the ground once again. She can only watch in horror as he repeatedly brings her life’s work to the ground, rapidly reducing the weapon that disintegrated a Murder Drone’s head to so much worthless scrap.

He’s breathing heavily by the time he’s satisfied that there’s no possible way for Uzi to rebuild the gun without starting over completely from scratch with completely new materials. But she isn’t angry about it, no. Instead, as he turns to look at his daughter, all Uzi feels is… numb.

Khan pauses when he sees her state, but he shakes it off just as quickly. He points a finger at the remains of the railgun. “Never again. You are done with your childish delusions! I won’t tolerate this crap in my house anymore!”

Uzi doesn’t respond, just keeps staring at the parts on the floor. Khan changes the direction of his finger towards the hall leading deeper into the bunker, the force of his anger causing it to shake. “You will go to your room and get rid of everything that has to do with this. If I find anything that ties into this crazy gun of yours there will be consequences!”

What more can you do? Uzi thinks to herself, but she doesn’t say it out loud. She just climbs to her feet and starts the journey back to their house, the place she’s lived her whole life but hasn’t considered a home since her mother died. All the while Kahn’s action replay over and over in her head, her processors not giving her a moment’s reprieve until the front door closes behind her. Only then do the tears fall from her optics.

He destroyed it, she thinks to herself, because of all the things she expected from the man, the thought that he would reduce her invention to so much scrap never entered her mind. It would be like if she took apart one of his precious doors and melted the individual pieces so he couldn’t rebuild it! As someone who takes pride in something they made, she thought that he could understand just how important her railgun is to her. But he didn’t, he smashed it against the ground without a second thought. Hell, if she hadn’t gotten the power core out he could have caused an explosion! Without the safety features she’d built into the gun it would have blown them all to smithereens!

The power core…

Her hand instinctively pulls the glowing power source from her pocket as she walks to her room, and she can’t help but stare at it after she lets herself drop to her bed. The toxic green light shining from the confines of its containment, so bright despite the attempts to keep it dim. So powerful, yet so small. Thinking of it like that…

Uzi looks up from the power core after she doesn’t know how long, she takes a slow look around her room. At the various blueprints she’s made for gear to fight the murder drones. At the things she’s made when she needs a break from her murderous musings. The things that she made purely so she could get petty vengeance upon her classmates for all the bullying they’ve subjected her to.

It’s while looking at all the things she’s made, all the passion she’s poured into her work, that her earlier thought solidifies in her processors. Isn’t the power core… just like me?

Contained, constrained, forced to act according to the whims of the drones around them. In the case of the core, drones would use it however they please until it eventually runs out of power and they discard it. But in Uzi’s case? Drones think of her as faulty, glitched. They don’t want her to shine, to be useful. No. They want what anyone wants with a faulty product.

To toss it in the trash where they can forget about it.

She thought that Khan was different, that he would understand since he built the doors that keep the colony safe. But he destroyed her gun. Her pride. Her faith that he could accept her as long as she proved herself.

If a power core has a faulty containment unit, disaster can strike at a moment's notice. Or maybe the core will simply fail altogether and be rendered inert. Useless. If the containment works like it's supposed to, it can be used to power practically anything. It can be the linchpin of any project. But when it’s unconstrained, allowed free? Then it can destroy everything in its way, rendering all that it comes across to so much ash. Nothing can stop it.

Maybe… maybe the problem isn’t Uzi, like so many drones say. Maybe the problem is the containment. The bunker is faulty, and the drones within are just spreading the cracks and driving her closer and closer to causing a disaster. But should she even be contained in the first place? She’s not like the other drones, that’s one of the very few things they’ve said that she can agree with. No, they all thrive on their containment within the bunker, within the restrictions being part of the colony places on them. But Uzi?

Uzi was never meant to be contained for the benefit of others.

She needs to leave the colony behind.