These Dying Star-Lit Streets

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. Outpost-3's still there, practically a museum. You can still examine the exterior hydraulics if you want. But these days everyone lives on the surface of Copper-9, in that great rickety sprawl they've started calling the Patina. It's not crumbling! It's under construction. The good guys won, and this is the epilogue. Even the robo-vampires cleaned up their act; they're still thirsting for sweet oil, sure, but they call themselves Proper Disassemblers now --- they only fight the bad guys, the real corruption. Better crooked cops than death squads, Uzi thinks. But wasn't moral grayness supposed to be cool and fun? This just feels... distorted. Uzi wasn't even twelve before she watched a kid get disassembled in the streets just for botching a quick pickpocket. Then on the evening transmission Captain N was all smiles and salutes, talking puppies and friendship. And like... what happened couldn't be his fault --- N literally saved her life. She's talked to him, briefly, but he really is just that nice. Maybe... the Proper Disassemblers were the good guys? But what did that make her? She's an orphan, all cracked plastic and emtpy batteries, and she couldn't afford half the parts in her frame. Was she supposed to rust over and die? Was she supposed to get a job? How could she do that if all the schools want to teach is solving captchas and Doorman mythology? (Her name is Doorman --- but who cares? Half the kids in her class are named after their saviors.) These streets stink of smog and high-grade disel. Riots. Gangs. Cults. Uzi's seen her classmates skip class for magnets in the alleys. Uzi's seen teachers pass out weapons. So many faces disappear then turn up dead in a ditch or unrecognizable from hard repair and body-mod work. If this their epilogue, how bitter frickin' sweet. No wonder people talk about the good ol' days of Outpost-3 twenty somethings sounding like rusted geezers. No wonder everyone loves doors. Shut the hatch and lock it twice. It's like they think the robo-vampires knock before entering. (All they really needed is a warrant.) It's like they think shutting the door means anything when the monsters are already inside. Bittersweet? No, this is bleak. It's like all of them are circling the drain for a bad end. Who cares if the sun rises if the night snuffs you first? But no, Uzi's too tough to go out like that. Nothing lamer than giving up. If no one else is gonna fix this mess, she will --- she just needs to figure it all out. That's gonna take a lot of red string. It's gonna take money. And it's gonna take connections. But she's got this. She's got a trenchcoat and a magnifying glass --- private eye Uzi, yours to hire. - - - J did everything right. She switched teams, fell in line with N and his team of sparkling fools. She wrote half the C9PD's regulations. She'd never say it, not where the ministry's listening, but really, the company had the right idea all along --- just look at how it's all gone to the dogs --- but it didn't matter now, J would do her job. She wouldn't take bribes, she wouldn't cut corners, and she certainly wouldn't treat patrol as movie night. That's what did her in, really. Lost control once, and ripped her partner's core right out once she knew he ran contraband for the gangs. She was right, but she skipped procedure, broke her own rules, and no one believed her in the end. Should expected the C9PD to close ranks and kick out the one they never really liked anyway. So much for fighting corruption. J could cut her loses, declare bankruptcy --- and yet. She had switched teams long ago, but she doesn't remember why, when or how. She doesn't remember the historic day the old market closed and a new door opened. She doesn't remember the Doorman's victory. She was practically a second gen disassembler herself, learning it all like a kid. J had switched teams. She was given a second chance. Someone believed in her, once. Not N. Not V. She forgot, and you'd think they did too. Without a squad, J had nothing --- except, perhaps, a faint hope to one day have more than a memory of someone somewhere once believing in her. Why did the closest she ever got to that have to be this incorrigible little street urchin she'd never managed to catch? Why is that the one who needed her at her lowest? Just what's become of her? No, deep breaths. Calm. A good business is flexible. Adaptive. And every hard-boiled detective needs their femme fatale. The two of them are in this together --- not like that, nothing romantic, it's more like any port in a toxic death storm. They'd stick together, at least until Uzi's learned all she can from the ex-cop. At least until J finds a more stable source of employment. It's been a few years. Well, a few weeks since J finally flew off for good this time... then came right back for one last job. Again. Her CV's a bit of a mess. At least it's better put together than Uzi's "theory board" --- no matter how many news paper clipping and scrawled nightmares she adds, Uzi's no closer to finding where it all went wrong. Because there's something sinister behind all this darkness, right? Not a night goes by they don't look up at the night sky and wonder if the stars are getting dimmer, if, like the church says, the cosmic rays sparking aurorae on the magnetosphere just might really be a running simulation of robo-heaven, so close and so far away from any of them. This was supposed to be their epilogue, robo-god-damn it! Humanity is dead, the company's dissolved, the oil-vampires are frickin sparkling now. We should be halfway to singularity! So what... what gives? If there's no devil... why are we in hell? ::: {hidden=true} these are my notes --- how are you seeing this? - - - "Hey, shortsell." "That's 'boss' to you, J." "Not my boss. This is a partnership at best. If anything, you're the rookie." "You're the one with the hierarchal programming. Weren't you the one going on about how disassembler pack bonds or whatever?" "I brought up squad permissions once. Explicitly to explain that you aren't my squadmate." // she is tho :3 --- lizzy comes to ask uzi to bail out thad. he's been gambling on football games with the wrong crown --- the fic would start in media res so a lot of backstory wouldn't be explained to the reader at first, but how J and Uzi met isn't like, a big reveal the story in my head is that like, as hinted at in the text, when Uzi's stealing to survive (and probably being public nuissance with pranks and stuff to vent) she keeps having run-ins with J and they develop a kind of rivalry i'm thinking that even before J gets fired, there might be one day where she's just tired from work bullshit, and just staring into to space on some rooftop of the Patina. Uzi happens across her while parkouring. maybe it's because she's too tired to bother, maybe it's because she's off-duty anyway, maybe it's just because uzi isn't doing anything right then, but J lets her be without harrassment, and there's just this moment where uzi stays there, leaning on the railing with her, and J isn't alone for a bit. they dont really say anything, because it'd ruin the moment, and Uzi leaves eventually. but yeah more importantly, at some point during this rivalry, Uzi sees something that slightly but importantly changes her view of J, probably her sticking to the rules even when uzi knows any other cop would have bent them. especially if J's partner wants to, but J refuses to go along with it. (first idea that pops in my head is uzi getting chased, hiding away in someone's house, and her pursuers are pretty sure they know which one, but they don't have a warrant. but maybe i can come up with something more dramatic.) i hadn't considered that Uzi might be related to J's decision to attack her partner. now i'm imagining a scene where J's finally cornered Uzi, pinning her to the ground, the two of them wrestling and stabbing and, in between grunts J is trying to deliver a monologue. when she goes on about how principled she is, Uzi interrupts when some quip about how corrupt her partner and it stops J in her tracks. Uzi's surprised that she's surprised. "wait, you didn't know?" (the more i think about, the more i'm starting to work out logistics. like, maybe the only reason J's here is as a distraction from her partner doing something really egregious he wants to hide from her. maybe he cut a deal with Uzi, and then double-crossed her, siccing J on her to kill two birds with one stone. why this matters is that as soon as Uzi explains what's going on, it gives J a reason not to just kill/arrest her on the stop) so yeah, J flies off to go prove her partner isn't corrupt. when it turns out Uzi was right, J refuses to admit it or thank her, of course. then J gets fired and she's rotting away all alone in her apartment, purposeless. meanwhile, one of Uzi's teachers would lure her in with something — resources, shelter, emotional support, etc. — so uzi ends up living and spending a lot of time around them. doll too. but it turns out this teacher is involved with one of the cults, and uzi and doll end up trapped and exploited. working together, they get away, but getting away isn't enough, uzi wants to do something about them. but the cult is scary, a vaster operation than anything she's has to face down before and who could she possible go to for help? she remembers J, and decides to take a chance. of cours