{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://serpentsquiggles.neocities.org//posts/fiction/corrupt-combustion/uzi-retcon",
  "path": "/posts/fiction/corrupt-combustion/uzi-retcon",
  "publishedAt": "2024-07-17T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ivoe7cntxuy6at7uzmxzs2ft/site.standard.publication/3mfk6cpprzt2t",
  "textContent": "First, we're ditching the existing DollZi breakup plot (the one\ndescribed in Compression & Extraction), way too sudden.\nAnd I'm finally settling on a premise where Doll & Uzi are these\nweirdly intense loners with no other friends; everyone's\nintimidated/freaked out by them.\n\nAt first, Doll igniting her core genuinely seems like it's not gonna\nchange anything between them, but Lizzy courting Doll is Doll's first\ntaste of popularity.\n\nMight end up going with some slice of lifey mini-arcs with the Wheel\nGroup cadets and their school-life, there's a lot of subtle changes I\nwant to convey.\n\nAt first, it just feels like there's a noticeable but small rift\nbetween Doll & Uzi.  There'll be some Charlie Brown football kicking\nwhere the mean girl clique gets Uzi to do stuff for them (maybe\nembarassing stuff, but definitely being their lackey, picking on other\ncadets for them), all the while dangling the carrot, the implication\nbeing that if Uzi sucks up to Lizzy and her clique long enough, she\ncan sit with them.\n\nIt never happens, of course, and she burns a bunch of bridges in\npursuing this.  Other cadets dont like her, teachers think she's\ntrouble, and there's also some bike-sticking where Uzi's\nimpulsive/angry/defensive reactions to how they're treating her get\nturned around into a justification for it — \"Just look at how she's\nacting.\"\n\n(Importantly, this is how Lizzy manages Doll's concerns, since Doll\ndef still cares about 'zi deep down.  But she cares about her new\nfriends, too, and she's anxious that Uzi will overshadow her one day,\nonce she ignites her core — an anxiety Lizzy first suggested and now\nreinforces.  So whenever Doll expresses her discomfort with Uzi's\ntreatment, Lizzy's assures her that's she's doing it to herself.  It's\nher life, not yours, gotta look out for you, babe.)\n\nAnyway, it gets even worse when all of her classmates start igniting\ndrivers and the ring 4→3 graduation happens and most of them get\npromoted, while Uzi gets left behind.\n\nUzi sulks about it, and when Nori finds out, she gets ticked off (and\nperhaps a little embarassed) at how they're treating her daughter.  So\nshe pulls some strings behind the scenes, and Uzi gets a special\npromotion.\n\nUzi doesn't thank her.  She didn't ask her mom to bail her out with\nnepotism, she can do just fine on her own.  The rift between Uzi and\nNori only grows.\n\nNori also gives her Khan's corrupted wrench (did I ever talk about\nthat?) and Uzi shores up her lack of corruption powers with this new\nperipheral device.\n\nOh but the kicker?  When the paperwork goes through, Uzi has been put\non a team with Lizzy and Doll.\n\nObviously, this creates a whole new axis for resentment (\"She's only\nhere because of nepotism,\" \"We're basically stuck babysitting her,\"\nand of course the most cutting \"Who would have thought the daughter of\nthe strongest drone would turn out the weakest?\"  Uzi's still ring 4,\nand they don't let her forget it)\n\nTo make it worse, knowing that Doll is going to be a lot closer to Uzi\nnow, Lizzy gets desperate enough to ask Doll to promise her she\nwon't let that loser come between them.  Intentionally or not, this\nbinds Doll as a runtime assertion.\n\nAnyway when they run missions, their supervisor is the detective\ndrone.  And like, I don't know if I can convey my vision here, but\nthere's a synergy to them, y'know?  Lizzy has information gathering\npowers, Doll has subtle manipulation/all according to keikaku/luck\npowers, and detective's whole thing is rooting out the complex thinky\nzombies.\n\nAnd Uzi of course doesn't read the room and always tries to run in\n(rail)guns blazing, loud and impulsive on a team that's supposed to be\nslick and calculated.\n\nSo of course the dizzy duo deliberately leave Uzi out of their plans.\n\nI think the detective might be legit good to Uzi though?  And there's\nsome interesting thematical fittingness if the detective doesn't have\nan innate function, so she can relate to Uzi's struggles a lot.\n\n(This might involve minor bit of a character arc, though — I thought\nabout it for a moment and there's a 110% chance this bitch is calling\nUzi cringe more than once)\n\nKind of cornered myself here because you already know if I weren't\nwriting this out of order, this just raised every flag for detective\nto get a gruesome death while Uzi watches — but (un)fortunately, I\nhave plans for her\n\nIt might be funny if the detective accidentally sets the villain\nspiral in motion, though.\n\nMaybe she gives some poorly timed, poorly worded advice where's she's\nlike: Look kid, I've had some bad breakups.  You can't keep holding\nonto that shit.  If people in your life are being awful to you, get\nout of there.  Stick with what actually makes you happy.\n\nUzi hears this and is like yeah... yeah!  It's juzi time :3\n\nBut I'm leaving out something BIG.\n\nBecause one of the major missions the DetDizzyZi squad go in is an\ninvestigation that leads to the discovery of the trojan splice.\n\nBut first, some background.\n\nJ creates the jailbroken core splices under the guidance of \"Triss\".\nThe idea being to find a way to bypass the compile time assertion on\ndisassembly drones by frankensteining disassembler cores with\nsomething else.\n\nSquad RIP becomes splices #1-3, fused with captured workers to\nabortive results.  Squad HUG is fused other disassembly drones (squad\nFML, their corpses recovered from Alice's march on the corpse spire\nsolvers), becoming splices #4-6.\n\nJ gives the order for squad SEA to be recovered for a disciplary\nhearing, and J puts them to work as she makes arrangements for their\nsplicing.  S gets the mission to recruit the oil manipulation solver,\nand you know how that goes.\n\nThus, only E & A become splices 7 & 8.  with the help of Anonymous\nGroup benefactor Adam, they are spliced with Ring 0 zombies.\n\nSD-A is spliced with a special 'trojan virus' zombie, whose innate\nfunction allows it to disguise itself as any other drone, like a\nmechanical changeling.  You can see how the villains could do a lot of\nbad with a power like this.\n\nAnd it's exactly the sort of mystery thriller power that DetDizzy\nwould be equipped to root out.\n\nSo the detective reads the evidence and they go in expecting an\nordinary trojan virus.  Tricky, but the Wheel Group has encountered\nenough of them that they have a grasp on how to to handle it.\n\nBut their prep is for combatting trojan zombies.  They're totally\nunprepared for a disassembler with an innate function.  They get\nabsolutely cooked.  Detective, Doll, Lizzy, they're all on death's\ndoor, and Uzi's probably only spared because they had preemptively\ndiscounted her from their plans, sending her away from the actions\nwhile they got cracking to save the day.\n\n(Uzi thinks Detective talked such a big game about them being so\nsimilar, but when it matters most, she thinks Uzi is useless like\neveryone else.)\n\nStaring down the barrel of a shapeshifting disassembler, as her\nteacher, best friend, and greatest enemy bleed out in vain, Uzi\n~~awakens~~ refactors.\n\nShe grabs her father's wrench and charges at SD-A.  Did she stand a\nchance?  She simply had to.  She couldn't stay on the sidelines and be\nuseless forever.  She couldn't just be the loser everyone thinks she\nis.  SD-A gloats, but Uzi is undaunted.  They shoot her, but Uzi keeps\nrunning.  They laser off one of Uzi's arms, but she catches it in her\nother arm, then grabs the wrench with her teeth.  SD-A shoots her\nbetween the eyes, and she still. doesn't. stop.\n\nDid she stand a chance?  She simply had to.  She was going to become a\nsolver drone, she was going to save the day, and she would erase\nanything that stood in her way.\n\nDoll cries out, telling her to run you fool, to get away while she\ncan, that she'll just die.  Of course Uzi doesn't listen.  (Maybe the\nothers echo that sentiment, or maybe it's just Doll.  They're all\nwatching though, barely hanging on to consciousness.)\n\nUzi makes it to the disassembler.  She swings the wrench down with her\nteeth, growling a 'bite me'.  And in that moment, it's as if time\nstops, and every process hangs, and all the lights on Uzi's body flash\nblack.\n\nNULL SYNC!\n\nSD-A is nothing.  An empty file, an error swiftly corrected, anulled.\n\nUzi is tired.  Pushed well past her limits, missing limbs, a frickin\nbullet hole between her eyes, she falls and wonders if this is her\nblaze of glory.\n\nShe wakes up in the repair bay, of course; Yeva healed her, and she\nasks what happened.\n\nAgainst all the odds, Doll had done the impossible — she defeated an\naugmented disassembly drone.  It's too bad her driver's restriction\nprevents anyone from knowing what her genius plan had been.\n\nWhat?  What?  That's bullshit!  Uzi killed it!  They all ate shit!\nUzi saved the day!\n\nShe confronts them about it, and Lizzy laughs in her face.  You?  A\nnull sync?  Please, you can't even execute a command.  Still can't,\ncan you?  Can you be more of an attention whore, trying to steal\ncredit for this?\n\nDoll is more measured.  She doesn't know what happened — and her\nfunction is known to leave blanks in her memory.\n\nHer only hope is her teacher, the one person who seems to give a shit.\nAnd when Uzi asks?\n\nThe detective dodges answering.  It's an extraodinary theory, but the\nevidence is extraordinary.  Who can say?  Only honest answer she can\ngive is she doesn't know.\n\nAnd Uzi snaps.  How can you not know?  How can you lie to my face\nabout the one time I actually achieved something?  What the hell is\nwrong with all of you?\n\nNone of them remember anything.  They all watched her save the day\nwhen no one else could, and it's like nothing even happened.\n\nEven Uzi starts to doubt what happened.  Were they right?  Did Uzi\nhallucinate it?  Or had Doll's power acted through her, somehow?\nThe only thing she can really think is that she'd do anything for\npower like that again.",
  "title": "Fixing the Uzi Problem"
}