Deadlocked & Thrashing

; foreword : Although this was the first Corrupt Combustion post, the overview should make for a better introduction. Alright, let's do this. I hope no one is reading this without knowing the context --- it's there on the discord --- but for the sake of self-containedness, lately I've been consumed by brainworms for a particular Murder Drones alternate universe: what if solver magic copied Jujutsu Kaisen's homework? A simple find and replace is oddly compelling. Instead of a Domain Expansion with a sure-hit effect, you have a Sandboxed Execution with an autorun program. Instead of Binding Vows, you have Assertions. Veils are firewalls, revealing your technique is commenting your code, and so on. I call this the Corrupt Combustion AU. I'm gonna talk about the backstory of an important character in this world --- and it is not who you think. We'll start with broad background and slowly get more detailed. This will be pretty a sketchy summary, treat it as an outline or incomplete notes. - - - Not only are solver drones significantly more powerful, there's also a lot more of them, and not all of them come from Cabin Fever Labs. Much more happens outside of the colonies as a result.^[An important detail that won't figure in heavily here is that Nori & Yeva have figured out a way to 'patch' drones infected with a solver, essentially giving them an antivirus.] But because of this, Nori and Yeva go on to create the Wheel Group, a semi-secret society of solver users focused on training their abilities, containing the AbsoluteSolver, and keeping most of what's going on secret from normal drones.^[Civilians know the Wheel Group exists and fights off threats, but they don't know what or how.] Wheel members don't just fight murder drones, by the way. The wastelands of Copper-9 are haunted by zombie processes, entities akin to cursed spirits that form when too many errors and corruption accumulate in one place. Once Outpost-3 is secured and the Wheel Group ascend in power and promenience, Nori and Yeva mount an operation to rescue Alice from Cabin Fever Labs --- and they succeed. So Alice is still unhinged and spite-filled, but spending fewer years trapped in hell leaves her with a modicum of chill. She's not infected with the Solver, but on account of her self-modifications, cunning and sheer fuck you attitude, she's able to hold her own against zombie drones. Back at the outpost, she seizes power in an increasingly militarized Worker Defense Force, training them to fight disassembly drones. With Alice & Nori working together, they create tech that lets a well-prepared squad of workers hold them off with surprisingly few casualties. Most importantly for this prequel: Beau finally gets uploaded into an older body --- except he keeps the murder drone arm. You see, Beau is special. Because after Alice & Nori take down a few more murder drones, they try to repeat the trick. But grafting disassembly drone parts onto workers always fails; they simply can't control it and die. Beau can control his just fine. Emphasis on can. Because this is all the backplot still. The story proper begins with Alice "sparring" with Beau. She berates him and doesn't pull her punches in the slightest. it becomes clear that this is such a common occurrence that Beau has grown adept at dodging her hits and enduring the pain. Beau never fights back in these spars, not initially, but Alice always yells at him until he does. Alice's frustration only mounts. Because yes, he punches, kicks, grapples, everything she instructs the other WDF recruits to do --- but he never transforms his arm into one of the murder drone's weapons. "What good was giving you that arm if you ain't gonna use it?" Alice seemingly gives up. She decides to take Beau on a trip. Maybe Beau's uncertain, but he can't say no. Maybe Alice promises the trip is to show or give him something, her assurance being enough to get him a little excited They go somewhere outside the outpost. A derelict building Alice has turned into a secret base. When they finally arrive, it's a trap: Alice has kept corrupted Anti-Drone Sentinels locked up in the basement. She releases one and locks Beau down there at its mercy while she watches. It'll kill him if he doesn't use the arm, so his hand is forced. All this is accompanied with flashbacks to the hell he endured --- and inflicted --- in Cabin Fever. Alice doesn't let him go after one Sentinel. Maybe she releases more, ups the challenge, but eventually through cleverness or corrupted strength, the sentinels break themselves free, all of them. That wasn't what she planned --- she wanted to teach him a lesson, not kill him. Here, when it counts, Alice tries to save Beau (he's her son, after all) but she's just a worker drone, and she can't. Beau tells her to leave, save herself, and she does while Beau gives a last stand fending them all off with only a disassembly drone arm and determination. He manages to break out of the basement, crawl out of the building, but he's leaking out all his oil. As his processors spin down, he hears the always steady beat of leathery wings descending. From the heavens comes Nori Doorman, the savior drone. The last thing Beau sees is her reaching down a hand with a smile that seems radiant. - - - Beau wakes up in the hospital being treated by Nori. Yeva is in the room, yelling at Alice, and Alice is sneering back. It takes him a while to piece together what's happening --- because Beau has passed Alice's 'test', she's recommending he be recruited to the soldier drone corps. "Or even the wheel group." Yeva's outraged, because he's just a kid (he's Doll's age), and her test nearly killed him. Meanwhile, presently ignoring them, Nori is nonchalant and teasing Beau. Not the most sensitive bedside manner, but it still takes the edge off his anxiety. (At least until he remembers that he's being treated by Nori Doorman.) Maybe a stray comment sends Beau into another flashback, but Nori pulls him back with a touch. She offhandedly suggests she could suppress away his bad memories, and he's like yes please. Anyway, the argument between Alice & Yeva proceeds in the background, going in circles, and Nori rolls her eyes, and she's just like, how about we let Beau decide? If he doesn't want to, he won't. If it does, he will. (After all, she's Nori Doorman; she can just say the word and it'll happen; nobody would overrule her.) So what does Beau decide? He wants to make Alice happy, so he says yeah. But he wants to be like Nori, too. So maybe he could be a field technician, repairing soldiers damaged in combat? It's a choice that makes both Alice and Yeva unhappy, but Nori gives a cocky smile. Yeva accepts it, but Alice argues back. And then, finally looking at Alice, all of Nori's carefree swagger vanishes. "I said Beau decides. That's final." "He's my son." "And you're here out of my better nature. I pulled you out of Cabin Fever. It'd be just as easy to put you back in the ground." Nori frowns in momentary thought, then raises a glyph, igniting the solver gryph. Purple force engulfs Alice, lifting her as she cries out. "Honestly, give me one reason I shouldn't kill you right now." Yeva starts, "Nori, don't---" "Not in the mood, Yev." The light in Nori's hand turns red for a moment, then Yeva's red eyes are replaced by a loading circle. Turning back to Alice, she continues, "You think I don't recognize your handiwork? You tried to kill Beau. Why should I let that slide?" For all that Alice keeps her cocky smile, there's something strained in her voice. "I just wanted to make 'im stronger. Thought you'd appreciate the will to power. Or do you only respect for what you're born with?" Nori's face wrinkles in disgust, and her fist closes, Alice's frame is crushed. Before, Beau had been torned between not questioning Nori and not questioning Alice, but this pushes him over the edge. He begs for Nori to stop. "I thought you saved people?" Nori speaks without glancing at him. "The power to save people means knowing when people can't be saved." But when she finally looks back, her face softens, and so does her grip, and Alice slacks in her telekinetic hold. "But I did say it's your choice, didn't I? Say the word, and I'll destroy her." "Please don't." "After everything she's done to you?" "She does it because she loves me." "Whatever." Nori drops her hand, and her victim slumps. "Never forget that your clock ticks because I let it, Alice. You get to live because Beau says so, and for only as long as he says." - - - Working as a field tech sucks. Beau sees a lot of drones die, and trying to do repair work edges into making his memories of torturing people for Alice resurface. Still, Beau does good work. Better work anyone else save Doorman herself, actually --- despite being a kid, he's got way more experience operating on drone internals. But he's not just a field tech. He spars with Wheel Group members, getting trained to defend himself. He's terrified by the prospect, after everything Alice had inflicted on him in their "spars", but his training partner is Thad, and he's gentle. Of all the Wheel Group, Thad has the most to teach him. With some practice and technical fiddling from Nori, the special arm lets Beau use augmentation commands like a murder drone, but without an ignited core, Beau can't use proper solver commands. Thad is an outlier; he punches and kicks, and that's about it. He meets other solvers-in-training too, including Sam and Emily, the only two he really gets along with. He has lunch with them, or hangs out after school, and they play games and complain about their classmates having no chill or being gross and immoral. He's a nice splash of normality, when Beau spends his days with the dead and dying. Over time, they see a pattern to the deaths --- murder drones are getting bolder in their raids on worker settlements. Solvers left to guard them are torn apart, even R1 rank