The One who Nerds over Link and N

The ticking multitudes of spindly legs gave a constant background noise to Uzi’s room, which was currently inhabited mostly by a large, shifting mass of blood, oil and meat.

Although that sounds grotesque, and to a degree it was, this strange beast had a much more gentle mission on its mind. In fact, it wasn’t really a beast at all, but rather Uzi herself, who was currently tending to her mate, N, who had been dealing with a nasty virus for the past few days.

Normally, worker drones only had to deal with software viruses, usually after accidentally installing and/or sharing malware. This typically resulted in glitchy vision, annoying headaches, and slight nausea that adults could usually power through (the humans who designed drones this way were a particular kind of insane).

N was different, however.

He was a disassembly drone, meaning his body was an unholy mishmash of metal and flesh. Muscles where servos would typically be, ribs in his already-cramped chest, and a strange, beating heart for a drone core.

It shouldn’t have worked in the slightest, but it did, though not without its own set of problems.

“Uuuhhhhh…” N groaned as he lay on the purple-blanketed bed, clutching his stomach as he felt and heard his insides protest in discomfort.

Uzi didn’t turn around to see him upon hearing him, as she was currently pouring a portion of special liquid medicine from a container she had brought to her desk. Her core still hurt all the same.

“Oh, I know, dude.” Uzi tried to console him as she carefully measured the amount of remedy that she poured into the small ladle she held. “Just hold on a bit longer. Nearly done with this.”

N shifted his head on his chin, trying to move as little as possible to avoid flexing the flesh within his shell. It had become incredibly sensitive to temperature and general sensation, as if he was extremely cold, which as a disassembly drone, absolutely should not have been the case for him.

“Wha- What’s that?” N inquired as got a decent look at the weird, green substance Uzi was bringing over to him.

“This,” Uzi presented, “is a very recent invention I made in collaboration with the medics of the bunker. We looked at some old books left behind by the humans on how to deal with fever and stuff, cause your symptoms seem to be more in-line with that.”

“I guess... that makes sense.” N nodded his head as his mouth wrinkled as he started smelling the goop, “Doesn’t seem very pleasant though.”

“Well, we specifically engineered it so that should relieve your headache, stomach pain and sore flesh-parts all at once, so I wouldn’t be complaining too much about whether it tastes like oil or not.”

“Fair point.”

Uzi carefully lifted N’s chin up as she tilted the ladle over his mouth. “Say ahh, ya goober.”

N weakly obliged, the substance pouring down his throat. Immediately, his eyes went hollow and he froze, but he kept his mouth open until Uzi was finished, upon which he quickly slammed his jaw shut, almost catching Uzi’s hands.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, “Watch it!”

N moved his head away from Uzi, turning away and making a small gulping sound. Uzi raised an eyebrow.

“You got it down?”

She received a shaky thumbs-up in response.

“Nice.” Uzi gave a nod and a smile as she turned her back to N, only to suddenly hear the repeated sound of dribbling liquid. She whirled around just in time to see N making a chewing face as a mixture of medicine and slobber started dribbling down his chin.

“Oh no you don’t!!” Uzi hissed as multiple fleshy arms with strange, rubber-hose hands sprung forth from her centipede body.

They swiftly reached for N and took hold of his face, tilting it fully upward while the rest of the limbs carefully held his body. N was soon face-to-face with a cranky-looking Uzi, arms folded as she looked down at him from atop the start of the body.

“How could you trick me like that!?” she chided, “This will help you! I’m only trying to help!”

N’s upset eyes were replaced by text, “Sorry Uzi, but I couldn’t help it. There is no way something that tastes like ten rusty corpses is good for me.”

“Oh robo-Jesus, it can’t be that bad.”

“It’s survival instinct, Uzi. If we ate something like that, it could potentially kill us. We don’t have great immune systems.”

Uzi palmed her visor as she acknowledged the logic in that.

“I swear it won’t kill you. We’ve run multiple tests. Hell, we even gave V some when she was sick, and she turned out fine.”

She looked back to N in exasperation, only to focus and truly notice his body language. There was a slight tremble in his frame, and his eyes had returned, staring at her with a silent plea.

It was at this moment where Uzi clocked that, rather than just being fussy, there was something deeper going on with N.

“But either way, he’s gotta drink this.” she thought to herself, “It’s only way he’ll feel properly better right now.”

Uzi slithered down until she was at N’s eye level, before cupping his large head with her proper hands.

“C’mon, please just swallow it.” her pleading voice had a much more caring tone that she still wasn’t fully used to using, but then again, she’d always try her best for N. “You’re going to feel so much better afterwards, and I promise I’ll make it worth it.”

The two stared at each other for a few seconds, before a soft exhaust of air could be heard coming from the disassembly drone, who then closed his eyes before a more audible gulp could be heard.

He wasn’t finished yet, but his lips wrinkled into an expression of clear fear and disgust. Uzi tried to soothe him by rubbing circles into the silver hair on the sides of his head.

“You’re nearly there. Just a bit more.”

N swallowed about two more times, before his eyes shot open wide, along with his mouth as he panted raggedly.

“Ay! You did it!” Uzi cheered as she did a quick check of his mouth, which had been emptied of the medicine. N’s expression unfortunately didn’t share the same enthusiasm as Uzi.

“Oh yeah,” Uzi recalled, and brought forth a juice box of oil from her desk with the longer flesh limbs. “almost forgot about this. Should clear out any aftertast-”

Uzi barely finished her sentence before N snatched the box. He didn’t even bother to sip it, deciding to chuck the whole thing into his mouth. It quickly burst, and filled his tastebuds with a much more familiar and welcome flavour.

“Woah, easy there! You don’t want to be sick again.”

N seemingly didn’t even register Uzi’s words, choosing to down the whole thing in a matter of seconds. Once he was finished, he then buried his head into Uzi’s chest, hugging her tightly.

She got the message.

“Okay, okay.” Uzi soothed him as she brought both of them back down onto her bed, making sure N was comfortable by setting the many limbs around them to pet him gently. She felt him relax after a few minutes of this, and he turned his head upwards so that he was properly looking at her. His eyes were laden with a guilty expression.

“I’m sorry Uzi.” he croaked as he rested on top of Uzi’s insectoid stomach, “I really should be more grateful for what you’re doing for me.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it.” she reassured him while rustling his hair, “I get that it didn’t taste great. But I bet you’re feeling at least somewhat better now, aren’t you?”

“Now that you mention it, that splitting headache has gone away now.”

Uzi grinned. “Heh, knew it would work.”

N wrapped his arms around Uzi’s torso, the insect legs on the lower half of her body further enveloping him, “This, is so, so much better to go through than what it used to be like whenever I got sick.”

“Wait, so this isn’t the first time this has happened to you?” Uzi questioned with surprise.

“Well, no.” N quietly explained, “When I said that our immune systems aren’t great, I was speaking from experience.”

Uzi pointed her full attention towards him, curious to learn what he had gone through that had caused these kinds of reactions in him.

N continued, “Sometimes, food got scarce. You guys were really great at hiding at certain points, hehe. So we turned our attention to older sources of food. Bodies we had accidentally left behind on previous hunts. They still had oil in them, but they often buried under a lot of snow and silicate. Lots of digging involved.”

Uzi nodded her head.

“We used half-baked ogic to just assume that this meant that the bodies would still be fresh. What we didn’t account for was the bacteria that, while slow, was still very much present. I know you can probably guess that the planet’s surface, isn’t a very sanitised environment.”

“Oh yeah.” Uzi agreed, “That stuff looks nasty sometimes.”

N nodded, “It always made this method of food a bit of a gamble, and one day, it didn’t turn out so well for me. I think it was a decapitated head. That neck wound must’ve made it very easy for germs to touch the oil.”

Uzi frowned, not liking the more sombre tone he was taking.

“I got sick, like, the next day. I felt woozy, sore all over. I wanted to just rest for the day, but I couldn’t because, y’know, I had to ‘pull my weight’.

Uzi’s face scrunched as she guessed exactly who might have said that to him.

“So I kept going, and it just got worse. When it got to the point of where I could barely stand, and was vomiting what must’ve been half my body-weight, J finally decided I could ‘take leave’. Was very rude about it though.”

N continued to recall these events, oblivious to the growing disdain Uzi felt towards his squad mate in that moment.

“It eventually got better after a few days of lying down, though those days were pretty rough. Honestly felt like I was burning up from the inside at points. Like, genuinely melting. Really not pleasant.”

Uzi placed a hand on one of his to comfort him.

“Luckily for me, V was kind enough to work extra hard to toss me some corpses, which kept me cool. And she also helped pick up my slack so that J didn’t give me too much of a row once I was back on my feet. Thinking back on it now, she tried to make it seem as if she was just doing it randomly, and not cause she actually cared about me. But I think I know better now.”

N tapped his head with his finger to accompany this, making Uzi giggle. His smile was broken when he went into a brief coughing fit, resting his head, turned to its side on Uzi’s stomach.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to make you too upset with this particular part of my past.” N stammered, fatigue setting in, “Just wanted to emphasise that this is so much better deal with than how it used to be, and I’m super grateful for all you’ve done for me.”

Uzi sighed and gently ran her hand through N’s hair, “Well, I’m super duper grateful for you, and I hate seeing you in pain, so, I felt that this was the least I could do.”

N hugged Uzi tighter, “Thank you.”

The two remained like that for about a minute before N spoke up again, although his voice was much more drowsy this time.

“I-I think I’m about to fall asleep ‘Zi. I’m not inconveniencing you with anything, am I? Don’t you have school today?”

“Well..” Uzi replied with a hint of mischief, “I’m ‘technically’ already at school. Just a holographic version of me. Plus, I got another of those weird eye cameras recording everything, so I’m not missing anything.”

“Huh. That’s… pretty cool actually.”

“Yeah, I’m super powerful now. So powerful that I can do these ‘important’ things, while ultimately doing what is much, much, much, muuuuuch higher on my list of priorities: taking care of my sick boyfriend.”

N could barely keep his eyes open at this point. “Wow… you’re so amazing… I have told you that right?”

Uzi brought a hand to her face while looking away, all in an effort to hide the neon blush that spreading across her face.

“Y-yeah. You’ve told me that a lot, dork. But I do enjoy hearing you say it, every single time.”

Uzi’s response was met with silence from N, causing her to lean over to see his face. As she suspected, in the place of his eyes were the words “SLEEP MODE”, accompanied by the smaller text of “DO NOT DISTURB: MAINTENANCE IN PROGRESS”.

Uzi’s face fell a little upon seeing this, and before she settled in to have a nap soon, she leaned forward and planted a soft kiss on N’s forehead.

“Please get better soon.” she whispered to him, almost as if hoping her words would spur his systems into stronger action. But she already knew they were hard at work.

With that, she used a long flesh limb to switch off the room lights, and lay back down while keeping a firm hold on N, happy to take any excuse she could to rest with her beloved.

—