Uzi had her chance, and it blew up in her face. It was Doll who traipsed into the murder drones’ fortress of death, and Lizzy who seduced two of them to the side of good.

If you thought their clique was popular before, wait until you see a power couple with literal superpowers. Now, the student body gets to ooh and ahh at the cute new murder drones attending their classes, and the Worker Defense Force gets to boast having the company’s cutting edge firepower at their command.

This is a proofread and lightly edited version of the first draft of Hostile Takeover[Hostile Takeover] which was completed in a single day: 31 October, 2023. It started out as an outline, and still resembles one in the beginning, but my typical outlining format is all lowercase, with every scene squeezed into a single paragraph.

Once it got to the later chapters, those “paragraphs” are all hundreds of words long — and the climatic sequence in particular was 1164 words without a single line-break. Most of the scenes involved long exchanges of dialogue written side-by-side (sometimes without even quotation marks).

Uzi’s been living with J’s team for a while now. They’ve settled into a comfortable routine. A very comfortable routine — she hopes no one’s noticed the bite marks. She’d kill J for that, but it’s not like that worked out last time.

Worth it, though, to cement their mutually beneficial partnership. Even if it meant acting as a glorified oilcan whenever J got hungry. Uzi isn’t sure what’s the worse embarrassment: that she kind of likes it, or that J really likes it.

No, the worst embarrassment is that they’ve been doing this long enough that J wants to spice things up.

Uzi was pretty frickin good at her job. Her sick as a hell railgun totally works, and she has the body count to prove it! With a trail of dead murder drones behind her, she’s finally secured her place in the frozen wasteland.

Okay, maybe she had a little help. But she didn’t need J’s protection or anything. She could handle herself just fine!

Tonight, she needs to repair her railgun. Maybe tweak a few things while she’s at it. And sure, she’s staying up a little late to do it. (Don’t tell J.)

The railgun’s what kept her alive, after all. She needs to hone it to perfection — what else did she have?

J couldn’t get that worker off her mind. Those violet eyes gloating with triumph, that gun roaring with power that made her coils quake. How could she lose to this? She was going to die. Unless—

But it wasn’t enough that a worker had left her about to offer surrender. It had left her speechless.

What if J and Uzi swapped places? Okay, that doesn’t work — you couldn’t try to find two drones more inseparable from their identities as disassembler and worker. But if you swapped some other things around? How close could you get?

Would they still fall in love? Obviously. But how?

I have a few ideas, so here’s a quick lil write-up.

I had planned to post an edited version of this to AO³ for its first anniversary, back in May 2025. They fell through, and I didn’t even finish editing the first chapter.

If you read what’s present here, you may notice where the edits stop. Only a few typos beyond that have been fixed. I have notes on changes and improvements I’d want to make to the story, but it doesn’t seem like it’s in the cards.

From a dark sky that nursed only faint embers of the setting sun, snow descended on two drones. In the deepening chill, one of them slid closer, her smaller frame scraping against concrete rooftop.

At once the larger, slender drone stiffened, head snapping around (silver hair whirling) and narrowed eyes focused on the worker drone. That smaller one flinched, purple eyes hollowing in a blink, and her lips stuttered through some words, “I was just — it’s not — don’t act like —”

I hate Serial Designation: J. She’s gonna be the first one I kill for sure. Now, I’m not gonna make it hurt or anything — I’m the good guy! — but you can’t tell me hearing her scream wouldn’t be really satisfying and totally deserved.

Err, maybe I started this in the wrong place. Maybe it’s a bad look to open admitting to a torture fantasies — but that’s not what this is, I’m planning my heroic triumph — but maybe it sounds like that out of context. But I have very good reasons for hating J! She’s the actual worst!

“Do you remember the first time you flew, J?”

“I… no. It must’ve been in product testing… Off-planet. I can—I don’t remember it.”

“Oh. That sucks.” Uzi’s eyes fell, shoulders sagging. “So… this. The murder drone stuff. Is all you’ve known?”

“Don’t pity me. I recall my first flight on Copper-9, if that’s what you mean.” J’s lips curled upward over sharp teeth—but there was something faltering in what once was a leer. “The roaring gunfire, the screams, the oil…”

J heard the footsteps first. Heavy, clanking things. Only two drones in the spire lacked the silent precision of proper disassembly drone legs—and N did his best to shrink from notice. No, there was only one drone here who had the temerity to stomp.

Was that grounds enough for writing her up? If J tried it, there was sure to be an argument. J didn’t fear conflict, but she assessed the tactical positioning—no doubt the first line of defense would be that it’s so minor, not worth notice let alone punishment. Ultimately, it was J’s call, but her authority wasn’t beyond question.

Three drones sat on a couch. A recent acquisition—back when V tried to decorate on that first naïve year after landing, J had shredded her furnishings, lectured her on distractions from their mission; disassembly drones had no time for softness.

Then last month, when that purple thing complained about having nowhere to sit, J gave the order to find and drag seating arrangements all the back to the spire. She’d rattled off criterion V barely understood—deep seat, double chaise, microfiber upholstery—and then refused the first one they found, forcing her and N to double back again for another one.

Okay, parkour is a little bit harder than the videos made it look, Uzi thought. Maybe it was all the ice, maybe it was the cloudy night sky making it hard to see, or maybe it was that Uzi was a bit—

Haha, no. Of course not!

Uzi bounced with an arm outstretched, fingers straining to grasp a shattered bit of masonry, just out of her reach. The abandoned storefront, otherwise featureless, just a few a handholds up there, barely out of reach. She’d been searching for way up to the rooftops. Plenty of things to climb on this street, but you’d scampered up atop a doorway or awning, and then what?

imagine if J gets to take her time with Uzi.

she can tell, just from the clothes that aren’t grimy rags, from the chassis that isn’t textured with innumerable scratches and thermal expansion-contraction stress, that this drone is sheltered. she must be from one of the colonies her team can’t crack open. it means those colonies can be opened — did she have a key? does she know the way in?

Someone above you
Always knows better than you
There’s something comforting
In the stranglehold of a shepherd’s crook
— Subrosa, “The Wound of The Warden”

J narrowed her eyes, eyeing the two disassembly drones in the pod. N and V leaned against the wall, white sheets of A2 paper in their hands. V rolled her eyes, but N raised a finger, as if requesting permission to ask a question. What a waste of time — just ask.

“Hey captain, what’s this?”

“It’s your schedule for the next week. Memorize it, or keep it safe. I won’t be printing out another.”

Make no mistake: Uzi was a disruption. Unlike Lizzy, the goth was never one to text during class. Was. Now, Uzi seems to spend all day glued to her phone. It’s obvious: she’s made a new friend — or something more? No amount of rumor or gossip can’t figure out who.

Uzi certainly isn’t telling.

Storm-veiled stars, frozen city ruins, knives in the sky.

Railgun finished early, Uzi hunts.

Doors. Frickin’ doors. Remember when all your problems were as simple as shut the hatch and lock it twice? No, you don’t. You’re too young. Outpost-3 only stood secure for what, a year?

Then Saint Nori and Brother Khan went and faced down the robo-vampires and the very harbinger of the company. Saved them all with power of truth, justice and the Doorman way. Tragically stepped through the door to robo-Heaven in the process — classic martyrdom stuff.

the brainworms are getting out of hand yall

was relistening to a scifi concept album (Vektor - Terminal Redux) and was like

what if you crossed this over with murder drones tho

i kept thinking about this and it would kind of WORK tho.

here’s a good page to read Terminal Redux, since i dont think i can to it justice with a quick summary. it’s basically a short story, length-wise?

Binary black. The pointer at 0x0 — null and void.

Yet in the darkness, you still hear it.

let j = {hate = 0, love = 0}

let tree = DialogueTree{}

Drip, drip, drip.

Sound is fuzzy and space is fuzzier. Shifting, wavering, convoluted. All parts blurry and echoing strangely—but is that something wrong with your hearing or the space itself?

Do you dream?

Around you yawns a ( plain. -> vast grassy plain on which a great beast bleeds out, dead from a spear-launcher of your own devising. )