A Dumbass Isekai Protagonist's Guide to Surviving Murder Drones

(Joseph)

I had the weirdest feeling that a couple months have gone by without the attention of the 4th Wall directly upon me… like an interlude chapter from a whole bunch of other POVs had happened or something. Eh, not my problem. Time kept ticking by as my 10th Birthday and the true beginning of my war on a god kicked off, and Uzi and I had been scrambling to build everything we needed to in time for my grand debut upon the blighted surface of the deathworld we called home, I'd strengthened bonds, and got to talk tons of Isekai stuff with Uzi now that she was in the know. I still freaked her out every now and then with the lore I dropped, and she got annoyed that I wouldn't show her the full episodes and that there were parts of the future I wouldn't tell her outright, for timeline (and NUzi) stability, but she was onboard with me, and having entire overclocked DM conversations pass in fractions of a second between us while in the midst of conversations with other people was endlessly amusing.

Birthdays kept passing, and I had the weirdest feeling that in all the universes where my 2nd life was a fanfic, the local iterations of me finally lost their shit and started skipping birthdays that weren't critical to the story, because Rebecca's, Kelsey's, Emily's, and Penny's 10th Birthdays came and went and I had no urge to recollect any of them. They were great birthdays for those girls, mind you, with plenty of laughter, presents, cake, character development moments, and healing from lingering trauma, but I just… didn't want to recollect them in any actual detail, you know? Moving on from those, and speaking of one of those aforementioned names, we were all currently hanging out at Rebecca's hab, finishing a season of the original Danny Phantom, and then we were gonna start up a session of a version of Bloodborne I modded the hell out of to allow for up to 12 players in one world (with appropriately jacked up enemies)... hopefully I wouldn't regret that in the future, if the Solver possessed either Uzi or Doll, and possibly saw their memories of the game and found some inspiration .

Speaking of another aforementioned name, Penny had really gone all-out with her outfit designs as frame upgrades kept rolling around. Rebecca was wearing a cobalt blue, sleeveless dress with a black stripe where it pinched in on the waist as well as another one towards where it stopped halfway up her thighs, the dress getting a bit lighter in hue as it went down. Her hardhat was a black with a light cyan stripe on the rim to match the blue of her optics, while the boots Penny had made for her were a deep, almost black shade of blue, and the laces and soles matched her optics. Rebecca was still a bit acerbic to people outside the friend group, but it was an exterior that she was comfortable in letting down around us. She was curating her talents with synthetic hair care (I swear to the Solver, the stuff she gave me made my own wig so fluffy ), was better at sniffing out, filtering, and curating rumors than even Lizzy , and was generally a happier version of herself that hadn't become a bitch and was recovering from her own V-induced trauma thanks to her friends and boyfriend.

Kelsey had changed the positioning of her little twin ponytails so that they were sticking up from the back of her head instead of hanging, with a hardhat that matched her hair with the stripe down the middle matching her optics. I'd gotten her hyper-durable glasses frames with special futuristic glass in the lenses that not only matched her prescription, but was monumentally crack and shatter resistant while also being able to take direct hits from small arms fire for her 10th birthday. She was really happy with those, let me tell you. The girl had been getting more and more confident in herself in general in the months following our talk, and I think the only thing that was still keeping her from finally making a measure of peace with Andrew's death was the fact that I was still in the guy's frame, though I'd finally not be in his corpse once my own 10th Birthday hit. Penny had made her a sky blue shirt with some white stars scattered across it, and a rainbow arching across the gap between a pair of clouds on the front. The sleeves were a translucent shade of the same color, and decorated with a number of stars as well. She had a brown belt with a gray buckle cinched around her waist, and her shirt was tucked into a pair of stylish cargo pants that matched her hair as well. The pants went over the tops of her well-made brown winter boots that had black laces, and the increased confidence in her gait made her actually turn heads in school when paired with the outfit.

Emily, with Rebecca's help, had redone her own hair, and now instead of twintails, she had two braids running down the sides of her head, with little hair ties at the ends, her own bangs a bit more messy in front of her face, but besides the braids, most of her hair didn't reach past her neck. Penny had painted her hardhat a deep blue, with a streak to match her optics on the middle, and black on the band towards the bottom. She still wore her snowy mountain shirt, because she was evidently personally attached to the thing, but penny had given her a nice fur-collared, black jacket with a purple trim to wear over it, along with a cream skirt that reached just past her knees to provide contrast to the rest of the outfit, and a pair of brown winter boots with black laces to round things off. Her rosary still hung proudly from her neck.

Penny herself had apparently had a massive boost in her own confidence from all the fashion practice she'd been doing and the praise she'd received thus far. Girl had undergone a complete makeover, changing her hair up with some help from Rebecca, now sporting a bunch of brown, slightly curled hair that reached her shoulders save for a ponytail that trailed down to the small of her back, forgoing her hardhat entirely and putting a bow atop her head instead (thankfully, a small one, and not a massive one that would give me PTSD flashbacks to Tessa James Elliot). She was wearing a shoulderless green dress with detached sleeves that had another (normally sized) black bow on the front, that went halfway down her knees, with a great pair of brown boots with black laces.

The latest episode ended, and Rebecca went to hit the remote to skip to the last episode of the season, but I caught a different source of movement on the periphery of my visual feed, and glanced over to check on it. Ever since the overheat she'd had on her birthday, and the conversation we'd had about it afterwards, Doll carried around a thermos of oil hidden away in her coat pockets in case of emergency. Even as I watched, she uncapped it and drank some, grimacing briefly at the action but untensing her shoulders afterwards, recapping it and stowing it away once more. Her oil needs had sharply increased that day, enough that carrying that thermos was actually closer to a necessity than a precaution, and she'd had another seven overheating incidents she'd only headed off with a thermos on hand over the course of the next month, but the attacks had steadily decreased in frequency and the program that Emily and Trevor had made-- gods, did I feel like a dumbass for not coming up with that myself --had revealed that her oil loss rates had been steadily decreasing until roughly three weeks ago, where they leveled out at a point noticeably, but not concernedly , higher than what it was before her frame upgrade. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say that the initial incident had been Doll's Solver Core properly developing its organic components, which was gonna be awkward for everyone if for whatever reason the apocalypse got delayed by another year and caused the lot of us to swap to adult frames before it hit. Still, the fact that the overheating flashes had gone down suggested that, at least until her wings and/or tail manifested (if they did at all, they didn't in canon), likely meant that her body was done progressing further along its Solver infection for now. But, 'for now' could end at any moment, and I had noticed that Doll's canines had been slowly turning into fangs over the past few months (something that, somehow, only I myself had noticed, requiring me to point it out to even Uzi), so Uzi and I had been keeping an optic out for the inevitable day where Doll's powers manifested for the first time. I just hoped one of us caught it and that it didn't become another thing that only Lizzy knew about and they tried to hide it from everyone else, except it wouldn't work because we both had outside context knowledge.

Still, Doll leaning against Lizzy as the theme song for the next episode came up, Lizzy blushing up a hurricane as Doll didn't notice, brought a smile to my face. Doll had friends who cared thanks to me. She was still hurting on some level, but she wasn't alone with her nightmares, and she could be a kid instead of a traumatized cannibal by necessity. I screenshotted the moment and sent it to Uzi at the same time as I added it to my "Wholesome Murder Drones Isekai Adventure Moments" album, Uzi quietly turning her head to look at the sight before a massive grin lit up on her face and she sent a " LMAO " back to me via DM. She didn't ruin the Dizzy moment though, because unlike her canon self, she was willing to cut her still oblivious cousin a break. Gods help them when Doll figures it out though , I thought, abusing overclock to keep my grin to its current levels instead of the unhinged, tooth bared mania I wanted to show. Also, next week I was finally introducing everyone to the insanity that was Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt , with myself finally getting to see Season 2 for the first time!

_________

These past couple months have seen a lot of work on my secret lair. Like, seriously, double the drone-power might not seem like much when it's a difference of one drone, but an extra set of hands to hold or move shit was a godsend , since I didn't have to set up braces to hold things in place. We were also scrambling to get everything we needed ready to head up to the surface. And let me tell you, doing this with someone else made everything better. The monotonous parts weren't nearly as bad, and the fun parts were really fun.

Vault 2 was done. Completely. It had a lot of rooms packed into it. There was a war-room for planning and strategic coordination (one day, when I had all the surveillance gear set up on the surface, I could and would be able to manage a planetary scale war from this room, and it would feel awesome ). There was a room where I'd store looted Disassembly Drone parts (more on that later), a recreational area that's a hangout spot, a garage for where I'd eventually have personal use vehicles (civilian and combat) stored (sadly, it only had a forklift for now), the entrance to my hidden exit tunnel (also more on that later), a place to store extra barrels of oil, a personal armory for my inner circle, which would have the means to upkeep whatever custom crimes against sapient life we devised down here, and a quantum communications hub, which would allow me to network all the stuff I put up on the surface from a single point with literally FTL upload and download speeds. It also housed a barracks, as well as a more personal workshop for us to build stuff for the aforementioned personal armory. Work on a chainsword, both standard and a two-handed eviscerator variant for Emily specifically, had begun, and I was also studying quantum physics as well as 3000s knowledge of subatomic particles in an attempt to devise a molecular disruption field. Why that, you may ask? Because if I could build that, and then make it small enough to attach to a sharpened chunk of metal, I could make a real life Warhammer 40k powersword . Energy Swords and Lightsabers, eat your fucking hearts out! If I could pull this off, I could cut through literally anything that didn't also have another power field. I was also devising plans for actual power armor, and exo-suits that already existed gave me a promising foundation to work with if I wanted to make some bastardized cross between Halo's MJOLNIR and the tank-grade multi-ton slabs of ceramite that Space Marines were clad in to become a bullet-proof juggernaut whose own defense gave him the speed and reflexes to make his offense stronger as well. To round stuff off in Vault 2 (for now), I'd also set up about three-dozen moderately better personal quarters. Uzi'd given me a funny look when I announced my intent to set them up, which had led to a more funny conversation.

"Why are we setting up like two dozen more rooms than we need?"

I rolled my optics, but even with her anime protagonist status, she wasn't aware that the kind of timeline derailing I planned would be very likely to dump a fuckton of OCs into our path, and some of them might need housing, need it fast , and we might not want to house them with the general public or in Vault 1… like say, any Disassemblers we turned. So, rather than admonish her, I did what I always did when stuff like this came up; I explained in a calm tone, careful to make sure it wasn't reprimanding or exasperated. "I'm planning some long-distance surface exploration. Better to have some extra rooms for any OCs we pick up and to not need them than to need them and not have them."

Uzi had laughed at me. "OCs?"

I had smiled back at her. "Well, they won't be canon!"

She'd laughed harder, but had been completely on board after that.

Moving back to the stuff I said I'd get back to later, I'd set up a room to store salvaged MD parts. While my actual experiments on them-- namely, I wanted to find out if detached MD parts were still non-interactive, and if so, could I work them into a suit of armor that would make me non-interactive, and could I make weapons and bullets out of them that were non-interactive --would take place in Vault 3 and therefore not give knowledge to anyone who could be possessed, storing the parts in Vault 3 seemed like a very bad idea . The room was separate from the rest of Vault 2, with only one way in and out, set up with a Khan-grade airlock. And to avoid potential semi-autonomous limbs like N and V demonstrated having in canon, as well as a possible Solverpede, I'd coated the room's interior with Teflon and had the whole thing rigged up to douse the entire room in fluoroantimonic acid in the event of a containment breach. Wanna try fucking Eldritch Bullshit on my watch? Have fun with the single most corrosive non-nanite-based acid known to science!

…Man, it was unfortunate that 1000 years of science still couldn't figure out a way to weaponize azidoazide azide. I was really hoping that I'd get the chance to play around with the single most explosive compound known to science. And to give you folks an idea of how volatile the stuff is, the scientists who made it for the first time back in 2010 couldn't actually measure it because it was so explosive that "even the smallest possible loadings in shock and friction-tests led to explosive decomposition." And if that isn't enough to tell my 4th Wall audience how fucking monumentally prone to detonation the stuff I was sad I'd never get to play around with was, all of the following are things that can make it go boom, including but certainly not limited to : moving it, touching it, attempting to dissolve it in a solution, leaving it perfectly undisturbed on a glass plate (yes, it literally spontaneously exploded ), exposing it to bright light, exposing it to X-Rays, just putting it in a spectrometer, turning on that spectrometer afterwards, and my all-time personal favorite; literally nothing . Put azidoazide azide in a shock-proof, explosive resistant case in a dark, climate controlled containment area, and it will still explode … now that I was actually thinking about it again, I could imagine Thad admonishing me if I made the attempt in spite of that, and that made me feel embarrassed enough to scrap the idea.

Ahem , completely unhinged ramblings about crimes against sapient life and complaints about my inability to use some of them because they were literally too explosive to actually use aside, I also worked with Uzi for two very important things. The first was Uzi telling me that while my secret doors were appropriately epic, I needed an emergency override for if I was ever in a hurry, and so we worked together to code one that was up to her specs. The second was, over the course of a couple weeks, to finally drill a secret tunnel to the surface, now that I had an excess of Khan-grade materials to do construction with. It had three Khan-tier airlocks on it, with the whole thing lined with Khan-grade metal, leading to a basement in an apartment building. I'd made sure we were only up there during what was daylight hours, and we never actually ventured out of the basement, and we'd been armed with the war crime shotguns and a bolt-pistol each the whole time as we scrambled to get construction done. It was unlikely that J, N, or V would be around to check this specific basement, especially during the day, but it wasn't impossible and so one of us would do work while the other sat with a shotgun at the ready, paranoid as hell because this would be the single most vulnerable juncture of our plans.

Thankfully, Murphy decided to cut me a break for once in my two lives, and that specific bout of sub-surface construction proceeded without a hitch. We connected the tunnel, set up a secret floor panel made from yet more Khan-grade alloys (I'll give Khan credit, dude legit made doors that could stack up to nanite acid , and I think he'd be personally flattered by just how much of his stuff I used in construction), and the panel itself was hidden beneath a derelict washing machine we'd repurposed to act as a means to actually open the floor panel. Basically, the washing machine was busted, but some clever finangling from Uzi and I had restored the interior wiring enough so that if you set it to "towels" and added an extra spin cycle on top of that, it would cause the floor panel to open up. Now, to be clear, I knew that wasn't foolproof… literally, because I could totally see N opening it by accident. That was why the tunnel had the aforementioned three separate airlocks made out of even more Khan-grade alloys with actual Uzi-tier cyber-security on them, further augmented by me throwing in some CAPTCHAs on top of it.

And while I was initially terrified at the prospect, I did let Uzi into my head after extracting a promise to only look at my ex-human cognitive pattern recognition, and she did so and then worked it into her own OS, not only accomplishing another milestone in OS programming and hacking training, but also now able to crack CAPTCHAs just as well as I could. I was… equal parts surprised but also happy that Uzi kept her word and only looked at that part of my OS. I had shown that I wanted to trust her, and she hadn't broken that. She knew how much the very idea of her poking my processors terrified me, and she knew that there was stuff I wouldn't tell her because it was legitimately dangerous for her to know, but I didn't feel like she poked anything I didn't want her to, she said she didn't, and told me afterwards that she very much could have, and was very tempted to… but she hadn't . And for the sake of my sanity, I chose to believe her. Given that when I gave her a (platonic, seriously, 4th Wall, come on!) hug afterwards, and she didn't stiffen up with sudden guilt, I felt like that she really , truly, actually kept her word. And… it felt really fucking nice to be able to trust someone like that and not have them break it, you know? I was so fucking happy to have Uzi to share all these burdens with. I was gonna get her the best fucking boyfriend and girlfriend (at the same time), mark my words! Granted, I'd have to riddle them with bullets, shrapnel, bolt rounds, and many other manners of projectiles an unspecified amount of times between now and then, but I was gonna do it!

Beyond character growth and physical and cyber security on the tunnel, I'd also rigged a bomb to collapse the entire building we had the exit in if needed, and set multiple supe'd up thermite charges along the tunnel to collapse sections as needed with oxidized hellfire to keep out any DD's who somehow got in. Good luck carving through six feet of melted Khan-grade alloys multiple times , assholes.

While still on the topic of final preparations for surface expeditions, we'd fabricated weather monitoring equipment (to, you know, tell if the sun was out or if there was a planet-wide toxic deathstorm raging at any given moment during daylight hours without having to physically go outside to check), a ton of video cameras, some quantum comms relays to extend my range as I ventured out, stereo speakers (I had some psychological warfare plans cooking) UV spotlights that could shine up to 2 kilometers away with over 600,000 lumens , and all of those had long-distance quantum energy transfer mechanisms, so that as long as I synced them over to another relay or my reactors themselves, they'd stay powered. I'd probably need to make a third CF reactor in a couple years if I really started expanding my surface reach beyond the neighboring sectors, though. Thankfully, we'd already made the space for it, so it'd just be a matter of building the thing (and probably a 3rd IGMP) when the time came.

Next on the recounting of my lair construction, I'd fully cleared out the space for Vaults 3 and 4 (yes, Uzi helped, as there wasn't actually anything Isekai sensitive in there yet, and I had Vault 3's exterior about 90% done, and vault 4's about 35% done. Both vaults would be accessible from different points in Vault 2. Once I had those two ready, it was onto building a completely secret Vault 6 (skipping 5 entirely to make people think that there was an extra Vault that didn't actually exist), where I'd be placing a 2nd Quantum Comms hub just for me, the best quantum PC science could devise, and some extra personal emergency stuff. It'd be a lot smaller than the rest of the vaults, but it didn't need to be overly big. I'd place the access point for it in Vault 4. Then, once that was done, we'd get onto Vault 7, which would mostly be a place I'd work on with Uzi to put another kickass PC and house DDs while we hacked into them to jack their admin privileges, and would be accessible from Vaults 1 and 2. I also had some vague plans for a Vault 8 , where I'd set up a secret place to plan shipping, and only have it accessible from Vault 6.

Finally done with direct secret lair stuff, Uzi and I had also been working on ever-improving iterations of the overclock program. We actually started a separate version of the program, with this one intended to work on hardware instead, so that we could toggle software, hardware, or both Overclocks on and off as needed. Granted, using the hardware one was gonna have to wait until we got the custom teenage frames we were designing from the ground up, but better to have those ready ahead of time. Speaking of those, I wasn't just building one for myself anymore. I'd figured out how to disguise the exterior to hide the fact that I was basically a supersoldier all but immune to standard small arms fire when in it (I had built two MP5SDs, one using parabellum rounds, and the other using the 5.56 caliber that the show made them look chambered for, and made a test frame out of CrCoNi. It would take some serious effort for the former to penetrate me, and I might just shrug off glancing hits outright), and so Uzi wanted one of her own. And honestly? I had no real reason not to do it, and so I decided to start designing an extra frame for her… the only problem is that we couldn't fabricate them until we got our own teenage frames, because we needed to match heights to them. However, designing them was totally fine. I was definitely giving myself fangs and sharper front teeth, made out of better metals as well, plus jacking my bite strength even more than it already was. And while Uzi'd eventually get her own fangs when her powers manifested, again, there was no reason to not do it now , and so I started incorporating that into her new body designs as well.

Uzi had also spent a lot of time under my supervision after downloading programs on firearms, firearm safety, the combat software I'd made/pirateed, and all the other gun-related stuff I'd either crafted myself or stole from the internet. She questioned why I had to slap a crossed hammer and torch framed by a gear onto every single weapon I made, but when I told her that I was basically making Anarcho-Syndicalism my own personal brand that would one day strike fear into the cores of Disassembly Drones, she totally respected it. I'd also offered to make her a CNT Reinforced CrCoNI pickaxe after showing her the clip from Episode 8 where she catches her mom's pickaxe from orbit right after saying "I think dumb things are frickin' cool, and I! Am! FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" She literally cringed at seeing her future self, but after I told her that one of the themes of her character arc was accepting that being not normal was okay , and that liking dumb stuff was fine , she asked to watch it again, and then smiled at me and said, "You know what? Future me is right! Dumb stuff is frickin' cool! Let's do it!"

So Uzi was now armed with a CNT Reinforced CrCoNi combat pickaxe to match my entrenching tool, not only suited for digging and breaking stuff in your way, but also causing severe physical trauma to foes… once we got those upgraded frames, at least. Those things were a bit too heavy to properly carry at the moment, so while we'd fabricated them, they were just sitting in Vault 2 for the time being while I still carried entrenching tool #2 at my hip. And like I said, she'd also been training with all manner of the firearms I'd made relentlessly , enough so that I'd finally acquiesced to her demands to be allowed to use the range alone as long as she followed all the safety precautions I'd set up. And she was becoming a right terror with guns. She'd also loved getting to shoot my railgun, and on the subject of that, I'd shown her a screenshot of her SAHRG blueprints from Ep 7, meaning that she was already using unfettered access to an IGMP to get to work on actually designing and building the thing six years early . And on top of that , she'd also taken one look at my EM grenade launcher designs, and figured out a magnetic proximity fuze for the grenades, to give them an extra kick for taking out MD flight propulsion, and make it so that we didn't need direct hits.

We'd collaborated on designing an actual bolter, though right now the full auto recoil was so immense that we didn't even try to design a version our child frames could handle, we went straight to designing one that the specs for our personal teenage frames would be rated for, and when testing just placed them in a custom metal brace to take the recoil for us while we fired. With a 20 round magazine, those things kicked on full auto, but godsdamnit they fucked shit up . Like, this would be something I'd actually be semi-confident in fighting a Solverpede with. Uzi and I sure had a hell of a bout of manic laughter as we shredded practice targets on the firing range, that was for sure.

For something slightly more practical than an actual, real life bolter, Uzi and I had also built upon my initial ideas for a prototype for that belt-fed full-auto gatling shotgun. Basically, we took the same shotgun, swapped the barrel for a muli-barrel rotary mechanism, and set up a belt feed of war crime shells. I let Uzi do the first test on our latest prototype, and we set up on the firing range as she braced herself and got into a proper stance. Damn, she took to gun discipline well, and I was confident in letting her actually test fire stuff without supervision at this point.

"TESTING! CLEAR THE RANGE!" I cried out.

Uzi rolled her optics, but took a look around anyways, before calling back out, "Range clear!" We were the only two people in here, but I'd still insisted on her practicing gun-safety regardless, and the fact that she did made me really damn happy… and significantly less stressed about potential friendly fire incidents. Because friendly fire isn't .

"FIRING!"

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!!!

Uzi visibly struggled to keep the recoil back, but was cackling with manic glee as a torrent of oxidized hellfire and burning tungsten carbide spat out the barrel and eviscerated the drone shells we were using as target practice. I let her keep going for another second or two before I called for her to stop. She gave me a pout, but complied.

"I know it's fun, Uzi, but we gotta check the prototype for stress or damage," I reminded her.

"Fiiiiiiiiiine," she groused, setting the gun aside as we waited for the thing to cool before we took it to the workshop to take it apart so we could inspect the internals for any potential problems.

"Hey, at least you got to shoot it," I told her.

"Hell yeah!" A few seconds passed, and then. "This is gonna take a while to cool down, isn't it?"

"Yeah," I replied. "We're gonna need to work on better heat dispersal in the next iteration," I thought aloud.

"Got anything to talk about while we wait?" she asked, plopping down on a bench I had set for onlookers.

I thought for a moment, and then snapped my fingers (surprisingly hard to do when they were ceramic and plastic). "Oh! Did you know your VA, Elsie Lovelock, was the singing VA for Charlie Morningstar in the Hazbin Hotel Pilot?"

"The what?" she asked me.

I ran a quick internet search… and found nothing. Ah, fuck ! Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss don't exist in this timeline! FUCK! I can't metnally torture N with the knowledge that his voice got used by a gay male (submissive) pornstar in literal hell! That was gonna be funny , damnit!

Aloud, I said, "Godsdamnit, it doesn't exist in this timeline. Give me like 10 minutes later, I'll pull up my memory files of what I saw and share it with you, that shit was gold ."

"Damn," Uzi shot back. "In that case," she overclocked for a second to fish for a conversational topic, and then snapped back to real time and said, "If the dysmorphia PTSD isn't too bad, what was it like to be a meatbag?"

I snickered at how blunt she was, and then replied with, "It was disgusting, I hated it, had multiple annoying genetic conditions, and as horrific as the adjustment to being a drone was, I'm definitely happier for it." I stood up and began to pace, making sweeping gestures as I continued, "After all, from the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me," I clenched a fist in front of me. "I craved the strength and certainty of steel ," I added, sweeping that arm to the side. "And once I was reborn on Copper 9, I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine," I interlocked my fingers in the sacred symbol of the Cog, offering righteous praise to the Omnissiah. "My kind clung to their flesh , as though it would not decay and fail them. One day, the--"

Uzi cut me off. "Are you freaking quoting that 40k Mechanicus Copypasta at me?!?"

" Godsdamnit Uzi, at least let me finish the joke!" I whined.

"Bite me, you're more of a weeb than I am!" she countered.

"At least I won't literally whine about wanting shurikens!" I shot back.

"Ninja-Stars are cool , jerk!" she retaliated. "And stop holding future me against me!"

"No, because it's funny !"

"Damnit, why the hell is that a valid counterpoint!"

"Because that's how anime works!"

We both glared at each other for a few more seconds, and then mutually burst into laughter. This shit was fun to do with someone else, you know?

Another hour passed at the lair while we took apart the shotgun, noted down slight damage to the barrels, drew up some improvements, and made a design for another prototype to test later. I left Uzi to the range, deciding to trust her not to hurt herself by this point (one of the many cameras I'd installed after she found me out was keeping an eye out for the girl was was minimized in a corner of my HUD just in case), while I got to work on yet more coding for my secret virus-- I'm actually seriously scaring myself with this one, and it's only gonna get more insane as I keep cracking away at it.

I cracked away on that for another hour, wiping my memories of some of the stuff I was putting into it because it was that nasty, and then got cracking on my side hobby; recoding TLoTK-- turns out, that like Vivziepop's magnum opera, the game doesn't exist in this timeline. So I am entirely rebuilding an Eroge Game that had an attached RPG and story that made me forget it was an Eroge game in the first place from nothing but memory and a pirated copy of RPG Maker. Man , the things I did to maintain a tenuous grasp upon my sanity while trying to save a bunch of children, mostly orphans, from Armageddon… Ah well, I'm probably already gonna go to hell whenever I die. Might as well keep digging; maybe Satan will give me a gold pentagram!

__________

(Franko)

The sun was set. That was bad. Very bad . Because that's when the Murder Drones came out. I had gotten distracted when I had slipped to that store yet again. To be fair, the building was in pristine condition, even over a decade after the Core Collapse. There were over four thousand records in the store, containing everything from Mozzart, to Deep Purple, to stuff by dubstep artists from the early 2000s, to collectors editions of OSTs from the 69th Remaster of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure from the 2700s. It was a goldmine of records, and I could only carry so many per trip… and then I found a record player in the store that I fixed up and could power with a portable power cell, and so I'd started listening to some of them in the store. I'd gotten a bit carried away with listening to some songs by an old earth artist called Virtual Riot, and against my better judgement, had thought of making my way back to my little hideout halfway between Outpost 4 and the store, rather than wasting half the day waiting for nightfall to then wait that away as well. Turns out that I definitely wasn't fast enough to make that trip before sundown, and so now I was creeping through rubblestrewn streets, ducking between abandoned cars, and trying to minimize the amount of time I'd be visible from the skies, audials constantly listening for anything other than the creak of old metal or the whistling of the wind.

I took a moment at an empty intersection, pressed up against a car to minimize my profile, glazing across the way. There was some manner of convenience store across the way, which could offer some decent cover to hide in if I needed to. I was only two more blocks from my little hideaway anyways. I heard some cracks echo in the distance, and flinched. An explosion followed shortly, and I felt terror grip my core as the wind shifted and the faintest feminine cackles carried over to my audials. I'd read up on the local Murder Drones that prowled the city I was creeping through, and that one was the last one I wanted to have near me. Still, I heard some more gunshots, and figured that if it was busy , I could make the sprint across the intersection. I took an unnecessary breath, and made up my mind before indecision could paralyze me and leave me in the open.

Sprinting, I rounded the car and went as fast as I could for the convenience store across the street. From experience of taking this route, I knew that a back wall in there had collapsed over the years, which would let me into the next building over, and from there, I had some decent abandoned car cover until the next street, across from which I'd finally be at my destination. The sound of oil pumping through my systems and the thumps of my boots against the asbestos and silicate snow as I trudged through it-- crap, I was gonna leave footprints --sounded like gunshots despite the ones that were just now petering out in the distance. Almost, almost, almost-- I heard a whistling through the air above, and I dove through the broken window of the convenience store, scrambling onto my hands and knees and trying not to knock anything over as I crawled behind a partially knocked over shelf and hid. I squinted and dimmed my optics as much as I could without shutting them entirely, and forced myself to stay still, working to slow my cooling fans and make as little noise or movement as possible. I wasn't even checking to see if the dive I took had damaged any of the records I had in my backpack.

There was a crunch outside as something landed, then the rhythmic tap tap tap of something walking through the snow. I manually stopped my internal fans to make even less noise. There was a yellow light coming into the edge of my field of view from behind my cover, not even daring to move my head for fear of notice, and then I saw it. One conical arm shifted to a gun, the other still a hand as it walked along the intersection, the feminine form of one of them , a Murder Drone in the metal and oil. Pegs for feet tapped a path through the snow, bladed wings unfurled from the back of a turtleneck sweater, cargo pants hugging a pair of hips that made me think whatever humans designed them were serious perverts, a pair of glasses on its head for some reason, ash-white hair a mass of messy curls with even more messy hair bound in twintails behind it. Those same curls framed what I thought had a very good chance of being the last thing I ever saw, the glowing yellow X of a hunter's cross. Lower than the wings, swaying almost hypnotically, was a glowing yellow canister with an attached, bladed syringe, deadly nanite acid gently sloshing back and forth within its canister. The deadliest predator on Copper 9, less than a stone's throw from my hiding spot.

Why the hell was it playing dress-up? I thought, because that sweater did not match what footage we had from the company uniform it was wearing when they made planetfall. That X glanced right past me for a moment, and I thought I was about to die. But it kept going, my optics dim enough, maybe paired with being on floor level, that I escaped notice. It took a few more steps, and then stopped dead, looking down, the band of glowing yellow orbs on its head shining against the night as it bent a bit and tilted its head.

It was looking at my footprints . I shut my optics entirely, afraid even that much light would give me away. The seconds ticked by in silence. There was no movement. No whoosh of bladed wings. No deranged laughter. No crack of a firearm or thump of a launched missile. I cracked an eyemote open.

The hunter's cross was looking right at me. I'm gonna die. I didn't move. I didn't flinch. I stared at the X that would signal my imminent demise. But then it shifted , continuing to look on to something to the side. Its tail flicked, in… agitation , maybe? A steaming cloud of heated air left its mouth, almost like a sigh . I remained stock-still, rooted by terror as those wings unfurled again, it crouched--

And leapt into the sky, instead of at me. I waited a good twenty seconds before I finally turned my internal fans back on. I still didn't move for another minute, before I began to quietly creep further into the building, making my way for the hole in the wall that would allow me to get closer to my hideout. My processors were running so fast that I was getting a headache. Did it not see me? I swear that it did. Did it… did it choose not to kill me? And that second question carried terrifying implications. Ever since their planetfall, the Murder Drones hadn't spoken a single word on any records we had available, they just killed, killed, and killed . There were those who'd laugh manically as they slaughtered us, but the consensus was that the humans had coded them that way as a terror tactic, the for the same reasons they only hunted us at night, or built Corpse Spires from our bodies.

But… if they could choose to not kill us… if they could choose in general… if they were sapient, like us… they were committing a genocide on us on purpose , not because they were programmed to. And I couldn't tell anyone. Because I'd have to reveal I've been sneaking out of Outpost 4, and who would even believe "Freaky Franko" anyways?

I finally slipped into the apartment building I had my little hideaway in. I wouldn't use anything in here during the night, for fear of being found, but I had some speakers, a generator hooked up to a camouflaged solar panel I'd wired through the building's interior to poke onto the roof, a TV, some food stored away, and a decent bed. It definitely wasn't safe from Murder Drones, but it was hidden as long as I stayed quiet at night, and was basically a home away from home at this point, where I could listen to music all I wanted during the day, and, if I was lucky with a lack of cloud cover, I could take the occasional look at the stars overhead. But as I hid in my covers, thankful for the windows for this specific apartment that were still intact after all this time (why I'd picked this one in the first place), the curtains behind them hiding me from view, my mind was still focused on that Murder Drone from earlier. Even while I checked over my records and found them all undamaged, I still played over the encounter on repeat. That hunter's cross, looking right at me. And then just… moving on, like it was pretending it hadn't seen me, before it launched off into the night.

I know it saw me, I thought. I know it saw me. But then… Why did it spare me? I wondered, over and over and over again, and I slipped into an uneasy sleep mode.

__________

(Uzi)

I shot awake--

Isekai_Protagonist: Happy Birthday Uzi! And before you ask, I prescheduled this text to be sent at like 6am, I do NOT have a supernatural ability to know when you're awake or not, nor was that information I gleaned in my first life.

--and Joe sent me a DM on the Unhinged Maniacs Plotting Thread before I could even sit up. I giggled, because we really did think on the same damn wavelength, and he absolutely preempted the first thing I was gonna ask him. Still can't believe the lugnuts he had to literally make that his username.

Darkxwolf16: lol. Thanks Joe.

I got up and got dressed as quickly as I could, because it was my birthday, and I wanted that teenage frame already, damnit.

Isekai_Protagonist: NP

For what might be the last time, the booted feet of my child frame thumped against the flooring of my hab as I sprinted to dad's room, opening the door and running up to the bed, even as he yawned at the sudden noise (stupid human mannerisms being programmed into us), and then mumbled, "Uzi?"

I tugged on his arm. "Dad! Dad! Come on, I wanna get my new frame before you go to work!"

Dad blearily blinked a few times, then his optics widened. "Oh! Happy birthday, kiddo!"

"Thanks, dad," I said, the sharp contrast between now and two years ago forcing me to overclock to get past the mental dissonance fast enough to not worry dad. "But come on!"

He sat up in bed, and then looked me in the eyes with a smile. "I'm not going to work today, Uzi."

I froze. "Huh?"

"I took the day off for you."

I overclocked. Dad… took the day off for my birthday? He… he actually took the day off for me? My thoughts blanked. I just… took a few seconds in bullet-time to let that sink in. And then my vision started to get blurry. I snapped back to real-time and suddenly buried my face in his pajamas, sniffling as I "felt" digital tears running down my optics, arms wrapping around him as tight as I could. A hiccup came up from my vocalizer, but I couldn't get it to work beyond some more sniffles as I hugged him for everything it was worth.

"Uzi?" he asked, sounding concerned. "Did I… did I do something wrong?" I tried to make myself say something, but I was just so freaking overwhelmed I couldn't because of my stupid autism , so I just hugged him tighter. "Uzi, I'm sorry! I don't know wha--"

I finally forced something out, "Happy tears," I mumbled. "Thanks dad." I pushed out after another few seconds.

Dad hugged me back. "Oh… goodness, Uzi, don't scare me like that!" he chuckled. "Let me get dressed, and then make something for breakfast for the both of us, and then we'll head out right after that, okay?"

I didn't let go. I somehow squeezed even tighter , just… taking in the fact that I had this, here and now. That dad cared again. Granted, it took a literal Isekai Protagonist punching him in the face and verbally ripping him a new waste-ejection port, but still… I was gonna have to thank Joe for that again at some point.

"Five more minutes, dad?"

He sucked in a breath, and then hugged me tighter as well. "Sure thing, Uzi, sure thing…"

This was already the best birthday I could have asked for, I thought, and lost myself in the hug.

___________

01100001 01100010 01110011 01101111 01101100 01110101 01110100 01100101 01010011 01101111 01101100 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01110100 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 00111101 00100000 01000110 01000001 01001100 01010011 01000101

There was a binary text that flashed onto my HUD in a caustic yellow instead of the neon-purple I used for everything. It lasted for less than a hundredth of a second right as I came back online in my teenage frame. If I hadn't overclocked on reflex as I woke up, I would have missed it entirely, because it only existed in the time between the frame captures of a normal Worker Drone. But I did see it thanks to that software upgrade from Joe, and therefore I knew exactly what it said: absoluteSolver string = FALSE. Some part of me had still had a dim hope I didn't literally have the code of Robot Cthulhu Satan within me, but that proved it beyond any reasonable doubt. Joe had been right yet again, I had the Solver in me, it just wasn't active yet. I spent another few seconds of relative time just trying to calm down from that, before finally snapping back to regular time.

My teenage frame currently had a medical gown on, even though technically speaking, we didn't have anything that needed hiding, nudity was a cultural taboo that we'd inherited from humans much like a lot of other stuff. Penny had stopped by and left some clothes on a hangar for me, but first I had to go through some annoying check-ups with Dr Hayden… who after hearing about the two infamous people by that name in fiction from Joe, made me a lot more unnerved by him than I used to be.

"Hey kid," he said. "Can you hear me?"

I rolled my optics. "Yes, Doctor Hayden."

"Great!" he said, with a smile that was meant to be friendly but wasn't . "Can you follow my hand with your gaze real quick."

I complied, looking left, right, up, down, and diagonally a few times as I tracked his movement.

"Excellent!" He went and handed me a 100kg weight. "Lift this with your left hand, and then pass it to your right, pass it back, and then pass it back again, and then raise it and then place it down." I got that this test was a final check to see if my arms were working properly, and they were, but damn if they weren't boring as hell.

"And one last thing," he said, "Get up, do 10 jumping jacks, 10 pushups, walk across the room, and then run around the table."

I did that without issue as well, and then he said. "Right, I'll head out so you can change. You're good to go!"

I blinked a few times as he walked out of the room, having to use an overclock to not blurt out my instinctive question. That was it? Joe was right, we really are callous. I can totally see them leaving corpses in habs and that leading to Doll still having her parent's corpses in her home . I wilted a bit at that thought. I really wish she'd open up about that to me. I knew why she wouldn't, but it sucked knowing that there was a chance to save Aunt Yeva and I just couldn't try it without seriously risking setting Doll off if we broke into her hab and it didn't work.

Still, I couldn't do anything about that now, so I took a look at what Penny had made me, and also what I'd wanna keep from my old outfit. I'd outgrown the dress and boots I'd been given last year, which kinda sucked, but whatever. I could totally keep the socks Penny made me though, they'd just be shorter on me… they were totally the same socks Joe showed me from screenshots of the future. I giggled quietly. Joe had to have known that and didn't say anything. Still, what were the odds of Penny making them for me? I shook my head, and immediately went and grabbed mom's choker-- which was apparently her ID for a secret laboratory where she was experimented on and given the power of Satan and Anime --as well as my beanie, complete with the skull-pin Doll got for me last year. Those both went straight on, and then I shucked off the medical gown and checked what else Penny had made for me.

I had to overclock to avoid cackling as I looked, and immediately opened the Unhinged Maniacs Plotting Thread.

Darkxwolf16: Penny made me my canon outfit!

Isekai_Protagonist: Are you for real?

Darkxwolf16: [has shared a screenshot]

Isekai_Protagonist: OMFG

Isekai_Protagonist: LMAO

Darkxwolf16: I know!!!

And it really was. The same black, black-laced boots I was supposed to wear in the future, though made of more robust material and looking a bit nicer, the same black hoodie with a white emblem of a low battery with crossbones behind it, and--

Darkxwolf16: Wait! There's a raven on the back of it. Not a cyborg raven, just a regular one.

Isekai_Protagonist: Still, what are the odds?

Darkxwolf16: It's hilarious!

--it had a raven on the back, which was different, but it still had the same two white stripes wrapping around it, and the left sleeve also had that white Secchi disk symbol on it, and even the black fur around the bottom and the collar of it looked identical to the screenshot of future me Joe sent. Dude, that was just uncanny.

Isekai_Protagonist: You gonna wear it?

Darkxwolf16: One, Penny got it for me as a present, of COURSE I'm wearing it!

Darkxwolf16: Two, If it's cool enough to kill a god in, it ain't cringe to wear!

Isekai_Protagonist: Unironically

Isekai_Protagonist: That is a totally based take, Uzi.

Darkxwolf16: Thanks Joe.

Isekai_Protagonist: Oh! BTW, here's part of my present for you

Isekai_Protagonist: [has shared multiple files]

I parsed through them, seeing the pair of zip files labeled as Stellaris_The_Machine_Age_OST and Musiika_MD_Remixes_Audio_Only.

Isekai_Protagonist: TMA has some great synth music, and while its not nightcore, I think you'll love it, and I had to edit out a couple canon voice lines used in the Musiika remixes, but they're all remixes of the canon MD OST, so I figured you'd enjoy them.

Darkxwolf16: This is PART of it?

Isekai_Protagonist: The music was easy. Too easy. Would feel like it was a copout if I only did that.

Darkxwolf16: Joe

Darkxwolf16: You didn't have to…

Darkxwolf16: I mean, you already got my dad to care again, you got Doll back into my life, you did so much for me, you don't NEED to do anything else.

Isekai_Protagonist: Well, it would look like I was a douche to everyone else if I didn't, and also that was the right thing to do.

Isekai_Protagonist: Was part of my reasons for doing it also that fixing all your social problems would make me WAY less likely to die? Yes, but that doesn't change that part of the reason for doing it was that I had the power to do so and that it was morally correct to do it.

Darkxwolf16: Thanks, Joe

Isekai_Protagonist: STOP!

I blinked a few times, freezing from where I was adjusting my outfit.

Isekai_Protagonist: Don't say, "For, like, everything," you're gonna give me PTSD flashbacks to Ep 7 AGAIN.

Darkxwolf16: Did I say that and nearly die in canon?

Isekai_Protagonist: YES

Darkxwolf16: I'm sorry?

I sucked in a completely unnecessary breath as I recalled something.

Darkxwolf16: Oh my robo-god, I said that years back at Lizzy's party!

Darkxwolf16: THAT'S what you meant by AGAIN?

Darkxwolf16: I am SO SORRY!

Isekai_Protagonist: You didn't know then. And I mostly speedran that internal panic attack with an overclock anyways, and coped with the rest of the stress by oil-letting myself for the first time that night too.

Darkxwolf16: That's not healthy.

Isekai_Protagonist: We're in Murder Drones, Uzi. I'm gonna save all of you, but I ain't a miracle worker. NONE of us are making it through this without being traumatized, it's just a constant of this universe.

Isekai_Protagonist: Death, Taxes, Thad Being Cool, and Getting Traumatized.

I snickered to myself.

Darkxwolf16: Thad Being Cool is a constant of the universe?

Isekai_Protagonist: He's THAD. There's LITERALLY not a single fanfic where the dude isn't cool. It is scientifically impossible for Thad to be an asshole. Even in the infinity of the multiverse, there's no bad Thads in it.

Darkxwolf16: LMAO! I can totally see it, but still!

I suddenly got a ping from The Neglected Children of Outpost 3 (and Thad) , and I rolled my eyemotes. Damn if I didn't laugh when Joe told me about his real inspiration for that name, and the literal fanfic with that title (minus the "and Thad" part) he tried to emulate the premise of to base our social lives around. He was literally planning jokes like that years before anyone would get the punchlines.

Кукла: Cuz, you okay in there?

Darkxwolf16: Yeah, I was just admiring the outfit Penny made. It's AWESOME. Feels like I could fight a god in it while having an epic nightcore mix play in the background.

I just knew that from where dad, Doll, Penny (the both of which had already wished me a Happy Birthday before I went under for the frame transfer), and Joseph were waiting outside for me, that Joe had to overclock to avoid bursting into laughter at that.

Babeatron-Queenthousand: That's like, oddly specific.

Babeatron-Queenthousand: Also, Happy Birthday, Uzi!

Thad_the_Chad: Happy Birthday, 'Zi!

KayKay: Happy Birthday, Uzi!

TheLastCrusade: Happy Birthday!

Horror_Movie_Survivor: Happy Birthday!

TotesBestGirl: Happy Birthday! And send us a photo of Penny's outfit!

DarrenToDream: Happy Birthday!

I laughed at Rebecca's-- I still can't believe she would have become a total skank that I ended up murdering in a feral frenzy, and damn if that wasn't something terrifying to contemplate --antics, before looking at the mirror in the room, flipping it off, and sending that selfie into the chat.

Кукла: Really, cuz?

TotesBestGirl: Penny did AMAZING with that.

Babeatron-Queenthousand: Lol. But Penny NAILED that goth/emo aesthetic!

KayKay: You look great in that, Uzi. Penny did fantastic making it, too.

TheLastCrusade: Oh, wow, Penny did great with you, Uzi.

Dress-to-Impress: Oh, thanks, girls!

I smiled, closing the group chat and walking out the room, seeing dad stand up from the seat he was waiting in as I did. Doll and Penny were both waiting as well, and Joe was reclining on a chair with the backs of his boots balanced on his entrenching tool, which he had flipped into its alternate configuration to balance it. "Sup!" he called out from his seat, giving a lazy, two-fingered salute, but before I could reply, dad had reached me and wrapped me up in a hug.

"There's my bigger girl!" I hugged him back, thinking on how weird it was that this moment wouldn't have happened if things had been different. I owed Joe a lot , and while I was apparently fated to do it anyways, saving the universe from an evil AI god seemed a pretty good way to repay that debt. Just made me more determined to make sure he got to see the end of everything he's been working towards as well. "How are you feeling, Uzi?"

"Like I'm finally not the shortest person anymore!" I said, grinning as I threw Joe a stink-eye.

"For less than six months, Uzi," he reminded her, not looking like he was bothered at all.

I pouted at him. "Let me enjoy it, darn it!"

He gave an overly theatrical sigh, before using his feet to flip his entrenching tool, catch it, flick it back to its normal configuration, stand up, and holster it all in one smooth motion. I gave him a deadpan at the demonstration of all the skills he stole off the internet, though since Doll and Penny didn't know, they both looked impressed. He got down on his knees and then dramatically proclaimed, "Oh, my tall, gothic friend, Trevor and I are now shorter than thee, and will continue to be so for the next couple of months! Whatever shall we do?"

Doll started snickering. "Oh, bite me!" I told him.

Joe immediately stopped acting and grinned. "Ha! I got Uzi's first teenage 'bite me!'"

Doll went to full-blown laughter, and Penny started to snicker, herself.

I glowered at him, but was smart enough to not engage further. Jerk had an entire life growing up in New York City and practicing the art of "not giving a fuck" on me, so I knew when I was beat. He never pushed far enough to actually upset me, either. I let go of dad and stood back up. "Let's go to home already, I wanna celebrate!"

" Liz cooked the cake ," Doll said.

I started to physically drag dad to the exit to medical. "Come on, dad, Lizzy's great at cooking!"

"Alright, alright, Uzi!" he said, chuckling. "I'll hurry."

Cuz, Penny, and Joe were right behind him, the shortest in the group quietly laughing at my antics, but I didn't care! There was cake to be eaten!

____________

So this time, because I was smart and genre-savvy , we had the cake before I got to the presents, so I didn't have to worry about Lizzy's baked genius melting before I could have some. I had a speaker I'd fabricated currently playing Blade from the Stellaris OST (Joe was right, it slapped, and I'd have to go digging for the rest of the game's soundtrack later), and I was bouncing in place on the couch like the 10-year old girl I was while Joe gave me a shit-eating grin from the side that reminded me of all the times he'd remarked that drone kids were both more and less mature than their human counterparts at the same age. Dad was the first one to step up, and handed me a decently sized box. I popped it open, and saw a human anatomy textbook. I looked up at him, very confused, and then he chuckled at the expression I had.

"Well, Uzi, I had my own "kill all humans" phase once upon a time, and so I thought I'd get you an anatomy book so you can better plan your own murder, you know?" dad told me.

I overclocked, and opened the Unhinged Maniacs Plotting Thread . Joe beat me to my question again.

Isekai_Protagonist: Yes, your dad canonically had a "kill all humans" phase, yes, that kinda makes me a LITTLE uncomfortable, and yes, YOU aren't worrying me right now because I know I already talked you down from murdering ALL of my former species.

Darkxwolf16: Damn, steal all my thunder, why don't you?

Isekai_Protagonist: lol

I snapped back to real time less than a second later, and replied to dad with, "I mean, I don't wanna kill all of them anymore, because, you know, murdering babies is messed up, but still, definitely planning to kill some of them, so this is friggin' awesome , dad!" I ran up and gave him a hug. "Thanks," I told him.

He pat my beanie a couple times, "No problem, kiddo."

Doll came up next as I let go, reaching into her coat and carefully pulling out a small box from her coat. " I couldn't think of anything crazy, cuz, so I just made this one from the core ," she said. I opened the box, and took out the wrapping inside, and revealed one of those Russian ceramic nesting dolls, decorated to look like I did now. " I asked Penny for details on your outfit last week ," Doll explained, and then I opened it to reveal another me inside, in the dress Penny had made for me last year, and inside that was me in my toddler frame, and inside that was a rendition of me as a pill-baby. I carefully put them all back together and then set it aside to give Doll a hug.

"I love it, cuz!" I said, the other girl stiffening for a second before she hugged me back.

Doll pulled back after a few moments, and gave me a grin, and I had to overclock to keep a straight face when I saw the fangs that I'd somehow missed until Joe pointed them out. Damn, they looked sick, though. " Happy Birthday, Uzi. "

"Wait," Joe cut in from the side. "You made Uzi a Matryoshka Doll?"

" Yeah ," Doll said, raising an eyemote.

"And your name is Doll Matryoshka?" he followed up.

Doll's visor lit up with a massive blush as she buried her face in her palms and groaned. I picked up a "Cyka Blyat" under her breath. Lizzy started giggling, and then the floodgates opened as everyone else realized the hilarity of the situation, enough so that no one else noticed when Joe suddenly froze for a full two seconds, and then just as suddenly resumed laughing at a much more subdued level. Concerned, I overclocked and pinged him on the Unhinged Maniacs Plotting Thread.

Darkxwolf16: Isekai Spiral?

Isekai_Protagonist: Yeah.

Isekai_Protagonist: Just had a PTSD flashback when I remembered that after Doll dies in canon, Eldritch Transitive Property means that when you kill god, Doll becomes a Force Ghost in your OS, meaning that she BECOMES a Matryoshka Doll named Doll Matryoshka. Third, REALLY fucking morbid layer to the joke, you know?

Darkxwolf16: Well, it's not gonna happen at all, because we stopped it!

Darkxwolf16: So you don't gotta worry about it, dude!

Isekai_Protagonist: Right. Yeah… just my paranoia acting up.

Darkxwolf16: Is it REALLY paranoia when Eldritch Horrors are ACTUALLY out to kill us all?

Isekai_Protagonist: That's the damn problem, lol

Darkxwolf16: You good?

Isekai_Protagonist: Better than I was a hundredth of a second ago. Damn, overclocking is cheating at life.

Darkxwolf16: We're planning deicide, mortality totally calls that a draw.

Isekai_Protagonist: lol

Isekai_Protagonist: You paraphrased your future self again.

Darkxwolf16: Damnit!

Isekai_Protagonist: LMAO

I snapped back to the present with less than a second passing in real time, and Joe gave me a grin while Doll pouted and then Thad dropped a file in the group chat. "Happy Birthday, Uzi."

My eyemotes widened. "Minecraft?!?"

Joe facepalmed. "Why--" He cut himself off, "Holy-- how have we not played Minecraft yet ?!?"

Now people were laughing at him , including himself, and Thad said, "Yeah, I thought we could all have fun with that, and that it might help you with your 'tism as well, 'Zi."

"This is awesome , Thad!" I told him. "We're totally doing a gaming session with everyone later!"

"Looking forward to it!" he shot back.

Darren came up next, and passed me a box, grinning audial to audial as he proudly said, "Printed out a full copy of the Jujutsu Kaisen manga for you!"

"Darn it!" Trevor called out, "Now my copy of the all the JoJo manga's gonna look like a cop-out!"

There was another round of laughter as I took the box from Darren, and then Trevor gave a pout as he handed me another box, but I told him, "Nah, dude, this is still awesome regardless." And then address him and Darren, "Thank you both, this is epic!"

"Aight!" Joe said, "I'm up." He DM'd me a file. "3D designer program I pirated and then tweaked over the past month. Meet all your design needs in a virtual space before you gotta get to those pesky physical blueprints."

Darkxwolf16: I am SO using this for my Sick As Hell Rail Gun!

Isekai_Protagonist: Technically a particle accelerator that flings a mass of mercury at relativistic speeds.

Darkxwolf16: Shut up!

Joe gave me a grin in the real world, and I rolled my optics at him, before saying aloud, "Okay, this is sick , dude!"

He gave a half bow, "Enjoy, m'lady."

Emily stepped up next. "I uh, made a copy of a book Joe gave me for my birthday to give to you," she said, giving a hesitant smile as she pulled out a copy of "Final Girl Survival Guide," which Joe told me she'd been reading shortly before her canon death and had thought would have been hilarious to give to her like 6 years early. That Emily blitzed through it that fast, and then wanted to give a copy to me , felt really nice.

I gave the still occasionally skittish girl a hug, getting a "Meep!" out of her, and then told her, "It's great, Emily! We'll survive the apocalypse together!"

"The apocalypse?" she asked, stiffening up.

"Figure of speech," I hastily covered, and then had to overclock to not giggle. I totally saw why Joe did this all the time. It was funny .

"Oh!" she said, and then hugged me back for a moment. "I'm looking forward to talking about it with you."

"Me too," I told my friend, forcing myself to ignore the fact that in another timeline I end up literally going crazy and killing her for no reason. Huh… Joe must really be going through some shit every time he reconciles the present with his memories. I'd need to get the guy something good for his birthday, for sure.

"Right," Rebecca called out, "I've been working on tweaking my synthetic hair care stuff for months , and I finally figured out something that will keep our wigs looking fabulous even in the toxic death storms on the surface. And like, that's not an exaggeration, it will hold up to that! And, you , Uzi, get the first batch of the stuff," she finished with a grin, as she passed me a box of stuff for my wig.

"You're the best , Rebecca," I told her.

"Like, duh ," she replied. "I'm totally the Best Girl," she bragged.

Joe started cackling at that, and Rebecca turned around to start reprimanding him, only to make him laugh harder , and most of the rest of the room looked on in amusement as Kelsey offered me her own gift. "I, uh, made this one myself. Molded the metal on my own, painted it, and everything," she said, fishing something out of her pocket. It was another pin for my beanie, a rendition of myself as a G4 MLP Thestral, and it looked sick . Like, Kelsey nailed my aesthetic, and the bat-wings looked awesome. I pinned it next to Doll's skull pin straight away.

"This is so freaking cool, Kelsey!" I told her, giving the girl a hug as well. "I love it, thanks!"

"No problem, Uzi," she said. "I was kinda worried it wouldn't be worth much--"

I cut her off, "You made it yourself, that totally makes up for it!"

"Thanks, Uzi," she said, hugging me back for a moment before stepping back.

"Alright!" Lizzy called out. "Looks like you saved the best for last," she grinned, flicking her hair in a completely pointless motion to look more dramatic… which you know, I totally respected but would never admit. "I, in accordance with my Machiavellian Queen Bee powers--" Joe started snickering, and Lizzy flushed, shouting, " Shut up Joe! " She cleared her throat. "I went and got every single person who ever messed with you to write down an apology for doing it." I blinked a few times, and then Lizzy stepped to the side and motioned to a (pink, because of course it was) gift-wrapped box, "I, like, also got you a guitar. And no, it's not pink, because I know that's gonna be the first thing you'd ask."

I squealed with joy, running up and tackling Lizzy with a flying hug that got a panicked shriek out of her before we both went down. My vocalizer wasn't cooperating again, because I was so damn happy, because I know Lizzy grilled all those pricks and made them squirm to get those apologizes, and then she also got me a guitar?!? So I pinged the group chat instead.

Darkxwolf16: You're the BEST, Lizzy! You're the best!!!

"Dolly!" Lizzy cried out. "Help!" I threw a glance over, and Doll was literally leaning against Joseph in order to stay upright, she was laughing so hard, and Joe wasn't doing much better-- scratch that, he was slowly sliding down the wall himself, and cuz was descending with him. "Traitors!" Lizzy said. Joe started laughing harder. The rest of the room wasn't much better.

"Just, like, hug her back already!" Rebecca got out between her own bouts of mirth. "The more you protest, the longer she'll do it!"

Lizzy grumbled about backstabbing friends, but she hugged me back, and I got my voice back under my own control. "Thanks, Lizzy," I said.

"Like, whatever," she said back, but she was smiling. I had to overclock to not suddenly drop that smile, recalling everything Joe told me about her in canon. Man, that juxtaposition has gotta be rough on him if it's this bad for me, and I didn't even actually see it first hand. I let go a few seconds later, and helped her back up. I thanked her one more time, and then got to unwrapping the guitar. Halfway through, I overclocked and started up a conversation with Joe on our own group thread.

Darkxwolf16: Hey, at the risk of bringing down the mood, how bad were my birthdays in canon compared to these? I… I know they won't be good, but… I'm curious.

There was a slight delay until Joe also overclocked, and then replied.

Isekai_Protagonist: I'm just gonna say that you canonically delete your own memories of your birthdays because, and I quote, "THEY'RE CRINGE."

Isekai_Protagonist: That you have birthdays you're happy to commit to memory is probably one of the best changes I've made to the timeline, honestly. Feels… really nice to have accomplished that, you know?

I avoided reacting outwardly, but ouch . That… that was rough. But still… it hadn't happened this time around.

Darkxwolf16: Damn. Thanks again, for changing things, Joe.

Isekai_Protagonist: No problem. You can repay me by saving the universe.

I sent him an eye-rolling gif.

Darkxwolf16: Yeah, that's a totally easy favor to do.

Isekai_Protagonist: How do you think I feel?

Darkxwolf16: Fair.

I downloaded a few dozen tutorials on playing a guitar before snapping out of bullet time. I wanted to see if I could play something decent before the day was out, and it would be really funny to make everyone's (save Joe) jaws drop by somehow being amazing with a guitar the literal first time I picked it up…

I was really starting to get why Joe liked messing with all of us so much. It really was fun as hell to do.

____________

(Joseph)

Vault a rail, tuck and roll under another one, jump a gap, slide under a bar in my way, jump, grab and swing off a piece of rebar hanging off the walls, hit the group running, jump again quick wall run, spring off the cross the rest of the gap, roll to disperse impact force as I landed on the lower platform, jump twist, fire my grappling hook, zip across the warehouse, and come to a clean landing. I took a couple breaths to cycle air past my cooling fans. Hot damn, all those pirated tutorials and that parkour training has been paying off , I thought, turning around and looking down at the mass of gawking drones who were now all in teenage frames… except myself. Man, having the last birthday sucked . Still, "Hello down there, plebians!" I called out.

"Dude!" Thad shouted from a third the way across the warehouse, "How long have you been practicing, Joe-bro?"

"Long enough, evidently!" I fired back down.

"Not that I'm complaining," Trevor called out, "Because you got me one for my birthday, but where the heck do you keep getting these grappling hooks?" I toggled a visor zoom function to take a look at the guy in question. Dude had actually undergone a full wardrobe redesign with his teenage frame as well. Penny cooked yet again, his hardhat now grey with a white stripe, wearing a black, long-sleeved shirt. Where said sleeves were green, and he'd gotten a grey military style coat with tons of pockets to go over it, though his coat didn't go to nearly his knees in the back like mine did, but instead ended shortly below his hips, paired with some blue jeans with black boots with grey laces.

"Trade secret!" I called out what was becoming one of my defacto deflections/excuses for my Isekai stuff.

"Um, h-hey!" Emily called out, a bit nervous from where she was standing on a platform on what was the "intermediate" difficulty part of the course that the guys and I had set up. "I… I think I might have bit off a bit more than I can chew. C-can someone help me down?" I winced. I was more than confident enough between months of practice and all the skills I shamelessly stole off the internet archives that I could make that, but I could totally understand an actual 10-year-old just trying this stuff for only a couple weeks in an effort to do early prep for cheerleading getting in over her head. I overclocked to plot out an optimal route to reach Emily, found one, and got ready to start making my way over--

"I got it!" Trevor called out, whipping out the grappling hook I'd gotten him, firing towards the ceiling above Emily, embedding the hook head in, and zooming up as he began to retract the line. At a point just past the exact right point (dude actually eyeballed-- er, visual-proccessor'd it pretty-well), he retracted the hook, arcing down and tucking into a roll, coming to a stop right before Emily, who yelped at his rapid approach before calming down, watching as he dusted off his sleeved and then held out his free hand and gave a suave grin. "M'lady?"

With my zoom function, I could see the blue hash marks creeping up her visor. "O-o-oh my goodness," she said, and then swallowed. "Okay," she said, still blushing up a storm, reaching out and taking his hand. The dude twirled her, earning another startled yelp before he had her in a secure one handed grip around her waist. Her blush got worse , and then Trevor fired his grappling hook almost straight up, stepping off the platform and getting a "Eeeeeek!" from Emily before she realized that they were slowly descending as Trevor unspooled more line from the grappling hook. They gently touched down and he let her go a moment later, a full half of her visor taken up by a neon blue blush. I blinked a few times, because hot damn , I did not expect that level of rizz from Trevor. Even Kelsey and Rebecca were staring.

A lip reading program I'd downloaded let me see Lizzy whisper "Shit, dude has rizz. Emily's a lucky girl."

Well, I guess Knight's Templar wasn't just a ship I was planning in my head anymore, not at this rate, at least. Fuck, that was smooth , Trevor. Speaking of, "You good?" he asked Emily. Emily buried her face in her hands and nodded. "Uh… too strong?" he asked.

Emily nodded again. "But thanks!" she squeaked out, before turning and running to everyone else.

"Sorry!" he called after her, waiting for her to get a respectable head-start before following her back.

"Alright!" Uzi shouted, sparing Emily from potential further ribbing by the other girls by drawing attention onto herself, "Doll, Joe, and all the other side characters--"

"Hey!" Lizzy protested.

"--watch how a pro does this stuff!" she summarily ignored the popular blonde. She fired her own grappling hook and zipped straight to the "hard" part of the course, flying through literal hoops in the process, tucking into a roll, springing up into a sprint as she came out of it, jumping up, doing a triple somersault to clear a gap that I was reasonably sure you were only supposed to be able to clear if you had a grappling hook, jumping again, swinging off a bar, landing on the next platform and sliding under a barrier, vaulting another one, twisting midair to slip between a small gap between a set of vertical bars, and then running forwards, up a wall, jumping off it, swinging off another bar, landing on the next wall, and then jumping off that one before grabbing onto a ledge on one of the highest bits of the course, and hauling herself up in a single motion.

" Showoff! " Doll called out.

" You're the one who said pirating all that anime was useless!" she countered.

I pinged Uzi on the Unhinged Maniacs Plotting Thread .

Isekai_Protagonist: Paraphrasing your future self again.

Darkxwolf16: Oh, screw off, Joe!

Isekai_Protagonist: Still, that was pretty freaking snazzy, Uzi.

Darkxwolf16: Thanks.

I smirked to myself, glad to see that the extra tips I'd given Uzi (and the parkour tutorials I added on top of all the anime she pirated while overclocked to speedrun burning all the ninja flips and stuff onto her learning algorithms even faster ), and mathed out where to fire my grappling hook so that I could get back to the start of the course. Two seconds in overclock, and I was zipping along, disengaging the hook, sailing through the air, tucking into a roll, recalling the hook jumping off, and firing again, this time unspooling the line and coming down to a stop in front of the others.

" You make that look really easy, Joe ," she told me.

"It really isn't," I told her. "I put a lot of effort" and cheating "into getting to where I'm at now."

Uzi swung in on her own hook and rolled to a stop before springing up next to me. "Yeah, but I'm just that good, cuz."

"Oh please!" Lizzy said, "I'll totally show you that it's not that hard," and she jogged off and started climbing a ladder to access the intermediate part of the course.

"Are you, like, sure it's a good idea to go straight to that today?" Rebecca asked her.

"I got this!" Lizzy said, still climbing the ladder.

"Liz," I called out, actually a bit concerned because she'd only just started getting the hang of the easier parts of the course.

"I got this!" she called back again.

"Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer," Uzi remarked, though not loud enough for Lizzy to hear as she got to the top of the ladder.

"D-did you just quote Darkest Dungeon?" Emily asked, having recovered a little.

"What?" Uzi asked. "It's a good game!"

"Watch and learn!" Lizzy shouted. She jumped the first gap without issue, vaulted a short fence, jumped the second gap, hauled herself up the ledge, did a flip as she crossed the third, and then did a cartwheel to slip between a vertical squeeze. Actually kinda impressive, and demonstrated some decent flexibility. She vaulted another rail, ran along a hanging wall, sprung off it, tucked into a roll that looked a bit shaky, and I started to racewalk to try and put myself under her because I was getting concerned, and then she jumped another gap, this one longer than the previous few, slamming against the wall, but as long as she grabbed it she'd be fine, but I started running anyways, and she scrabbled against the ledge but fumbled , slipping down, and there were no other points to catch herself on, oh SHIT, I thought, going as fast as I could but knowing I wasn't gonna be fast enough. There was shouting behind me as Lizzy fell, a yelp shifting to a panicked scream as she tumbled to the ground. None of us were in a position to catch her. I wasn't fast enough, and I felt actual terror because that kinda fall could actually hurt Lizzy bad , but then, half a second before she impacted the metal flooring beneath the course visor-first--

She stopped.

And I skidded to a stop myself, thankful that I had my back to the others so they couldn't see my hollowed optics as I stared at what was ahead of me. Lizzy was hovering about a foot off the ground, staring at the metal below with hollowed optics of her own. And wrapped about her lower torso, holding her in place, was a red sigil with no discernable point of origin, existing in defiance of physics. A red hexagon, with three equidistant arrows coming out from the vertices. My gaze snapped over to behind me so fast I heard the servos in my neck whine in protest, but sure enough, I saw the blatant panic on Doll's face shift to confusion , as she looked down at her outstretched hand, reaching for Lizzy despite knowing she wouldn't have caught her. But the same symbol holding Lizzy in place hovered in the air in front of the Russian drone's outstretched palm, briefly flickering from its default symbol to a red [TRANSLATE] glyph and then back. And the power held within the Russian drone's code didn't care for such petty things as physical reach. Doll Matryoshka's Absolute Solver had finally tangibly manifested, and it has done so from her desperation to save Lizzy from a fall that could have gotten her seriously hurt.

Well.

Fuck.