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Mirabelle looks like she’s about to pick up another human and I’m not even going to pretend to be okay with that.
“How old are you three?” Annoyance #2 asks, arms crossed and foot tapping.
“Twenty-two!” Mirabelle chirps,
“Twenty-three!” Annoyance #1 grins,
“None of your business.” I say, crossing my arms right back at her.
She gives me an appraising look, before sighing, “There’s absolutely no way I’m leaving the fate of an entire country to a group of children,” Hey! A hand comes up to pinch the bridge of her nose, “Right. I’m coming with you.”
“Really?” Mirabelle smiles,
“The more the merrier!” Annoyance #1 chimes in,
“Absolutely not.” I don’t stop myself from scowling, even when Mirabelle and Annoyance #1 turn to give me sad puppy dog eyes.
“Oh?” Annoyance #2 says, looking at me with mild surprise, “And why-ever not?”
“Easy. You’re an unknown,” I nod my head over to Mirabelle, while keeping my gaze fixed a little to the right of Annoyance #2’s head, “I already let my client keep this one,” I gesture towards where Isabeau is standing next to her without turning, “but I draw the line at another random stranger joining our party.”
“Smart,” Annoyance #2 smirks, “But I am still tagging along.”
“What makes you think you can?”
“Simple,” Annoyance #2 turns her back towards me, and I try not to get mad about that, “You said it yourself, the Savior is your client, so ultimately she gets the final say, and I believe she already all but gave me permission to join your ‘merry band’ when she allowed me to help you three fight that large Sadness. If I were to hurt any of you, I would have then while you were distracted. Besides, I would think you would want all the help you can get when fighting a man who can freeze an entire country in time. I am offering that help.” Her joints pop as she stands back up (Gross), having bent over to retrieve her things, and she turns to face us again.
“I had it handled,” I say. And I really did. I had been keeping an eye on Mirabelle and Annoyance #2 through one of my Drones as Isabeau and I tackled the sadness she’s talking about it. Isabeau was blasting the thing with some Rocket Punch or whatever, and I was trying to think of a way I could explain a bullet wound as some fancy form of magic, when Annoyance #2 charged forward with a limp and a shout, and the Target started to slow down. From there, the fight was easy, as the stranger supplemented our attacks with every spell type in the book, and the Target finally went down.
“Rin, maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have someone with that many Craft Skills join us...” Annoyance #1 said, before flinching back with placating hands raised when I turn to glare at him.
“Isabeau’s right-” BETRAYAL! My face must be making an expression, because Mirabelle looks away from me quickly, taking her hand away from her mouth, her nails chewed to the quick, “Isabeau has Rock type covered, and I have Scissors, but it’ll be a while before I perfect my Paper attack for anything stronger than those weaker Sadnesses we’ve been running into. You haven’t been using Typed Crafting at all when we fight, so it would really help if we had someone who knew how to use all three and then some.”
I turn my back towards the group, glaring at a random tree in the woods we were walking through, while two of my Drones dutifully inform me about the concerned glances my clients trade each other, and the mildly awkward look on Annoyance #2’s face. The thing is, my clients were right about the Crafting thing. While I could still punch and stab Hostiles into oblivion, I had no idea how to channel the magic that every human in this world seemed capable of wielding. I half thought that it, like the rest of this black and white world, was a result of alien remnants contaminating the place, though I had no proof of that. Either way, having somebody cover where I couldn’t would put my clients at ease, and that Slowing Craft would probably be a huge help further down the line.
“Fine.” I say, not moving an inch, as Mirabelle shares a small smile with my newest client, and Isabeau offers his hand to shake. “I’m grabbing our things, don’t let the Stranger kill you.” I mutter, walking back to gather the stuff we threw when the Sadness attacked us. I know it wasn’t polite, but I was mad and that seemed like a better option than slamming the Random Lady against a tree and demanding she share her secrets. Baby steps.
“Right, where are my manners,” Annoyance #2 says somewhat bashfully, offering her hand to Mirabelle as she introduced herself. I tuned her out while I pulled up an episode of Sanctuary Moon, keeping an eye on her through my drones, and set up some trigger words to alert me if things went wrong. Stuff like ‘Help! I’m being stabbed!’ and ‘We should have listened to you Murderbot!’ and other important things like that. I know, what would they do without me?
This was going to be a long trip.
----
Madame Odile was staring at me as I took care of another Sadness blocking our path, watching with sharp eyes as it dissolved under a well placed kick.
“You really are Typeless?” She asks, pulling out her non-combative book to take notes. I know, I thought it was weird there was a difference too.
“Yes.” I stood up, brushing goo off of my pant leg. Pant’s leg? Pants le- It doesn’t matter.
“Hmm...” She tapped her pen on her chin, muttering something in another language under her breath. I was still letting my translation module tackle that one, but it was kind of hard when she spoke primarily in technical jungle and expletives. Don’t even get me started on textual translations; Drone 3 was set on permanent Odile watch until I could crack that one. Her handwriting was terrible.
“I’ve been trying to help Rin go through beginner exercises!” Mirabelle chimes in as she passes me a towel to wipe off the rest of the gunk, “The House takes in kids who want to learn crafting early, with parental permission of course, so I’ve been helping them go through those.” Mirabelle’s brow furrows, “Used to take in, I mean.”
Isabeau puts a hand on Mirabelle’s shoulder, “We’ll save them, don’t worry.”
“Right!” She says back, but without much conviction.
“And they have not passed any of the exercises?” Annoyance #2 asks as if I weren’t there,
“No.” I answer for my client. Talking about me that way is nostalgic. I didn’t like it. Time to end the conversation. “The amount of tests we’ve gone through covered all of the basics. Statistically, it is much more likely that I don’t have a type, rather than having a type so weak it could only trigger the remaining tests.”
“It’s like, a one in a hundred chance!” Annoyance #1 nods in agreement, having watched Mirabelle give me some of those tests earlier in our travels.
“More like one in a million...” Annoyance #2 mutters, and Drone 3 records her jotting down a mess of chicken scratch.
----
Madame Odile reminds me of Gurathin. And I mean that as derivative as possible.
“Derisively.” She says.
“I don’t like you.” I say back.
I was sharing my opinion of her in increasingly dead tones and colorful language (even if she wouldn’t know what that meant) as we stomped through the wilderness looking for acceptable wood to burn. It turns out the type of wood matters. And the dryness. And where it came from. I would blame my crappy education modules if I still had them, but those were some of the first things I deleted from long-term storage. Anyways, while were doing this, I was making my thoughts on her so obvious even Isabeau at his dumbest could pick up on it.
To be fair, she started it.
”Why would the Savior pick You to be her Body Guard?” Odile asked me as I picked up another branch to burn, “She doesn’t seem to know anything about you, you all but just, showed up out of midair one day, and you refuse to explain yourself whenever you do any number of questionable things.”
“She needed help. And anyways, I don’t need to explain myself to you.” I was actively stopping myself from gritting my teeth, but I had to pull back a little bit on my human coding to prevent snapping these stupid fucking twigs in half as my muscles clenched involuntarily.
“That there is why this is so strange.” She glared at my back, I refused to turn around, “You were so suspicious of me that you nearly convinced Mirabelle and Isabeau to refuse my help, and yet, no one else so much as bats an eye at the fact that you just, appeared when Mirabelle started her journey! Long before news of the King and Mirabelle’s blessing had first spread! Here you are, a Stranger, a Threat , waltzing up with the solution to her every problem, and not a hint of Craft to explain how you might be performing these ‘Miracles’.” She scoffed.
“Fuck off.”
“I don’t believe I will. Not until I find out why you are actually here.”
“Mirabelle is my client. I protect my clients.” I turned, bundle of sticks under one arm, other arm free, as I stepped closer to her, making direct eye contact. “Think whatever you want, but I’ll keep protecting her, even if you keep fighting to prove I can’t do my job to your arboreal standards.”
“Arbitrary.”
“Fuck. Off.”
“That there is another thing, isn’t it? The fact that you claim Vaugardian is a second language, and yet, speak with absolutely no accent. You clearly don’t know certain words, and you use curses I’ve never heard before, and yet, you speak it as though you learned it at a young age... however long ago that was since you still will not tell me how old you are. It’s uncanny.”
She wasn’t scared. She didn’t so much as flinch as I towered over her, her hand gripping her notebook loosely as though I weren’t even a threat.
“Not to mention how you keep spotting Sadnesses before anyone else. Your raw physical strength is enough to put Isabeau, with all of his craft, to shame. You heal quickly- don’t think I haven’t noticed you hiding your injuries until they’re no longer a problem. You seem to know where everyone is, at all times, without looking. You wont look at us half of the time. Why not? Mirabelle said I shouldn’t pry, but why not?? What are you hiding?”
She looked at me. She wouldn’t stop looking at me. I couldn’t avoid her. I was trapped. She knew. She was going to find out. She was going to find out I wasn’t human. She was going to find out I shouldn’t be here. I was a threat to Mirabelle. To Isabeau. To the entire planet. If Corporate Rim picked up my distress signal before ART did. If anyone else found out I was here. That an uncharted contaminated planet had an unwatched rouge SecUnit. It would be over. I wouldn’t be able to protect my clients.
Just as my performance reliability was reaching critical levels, and my organics were starting to nearly imperceptibly shake despite the fact I disabled my human coding, I felt a wave of ‘I don’t care’ wash over me, and I walked pass the Threat.
Odile could look all she wanted. This world wasn’t advanced enough to even imagine what I was. She would be looking for a while.
“Well?” She asked- and there, I saw it: she was shaking. A barely-there tremor in the hand that held her notebook. Not nearly as untouched by the mystery as she was pretending. Brave or idiotic, I didn’t feel like figuring out.
I sighed, “Point out another stupid fucking branch for me to carry back.” I told Odile, not even trying to hide the exhaustion in my voice, “It’s getting dark and I don’t want to be out here anymore.”
For a second, I thought she wouldn’t listen to me. But then, with a nearly invisible jerk, she nodded, forehead wrinkled like a raisin in frustration, before dusting herself off from particles that didn’t exist, and walking ahead of me to continue our task.
“If you’re going to keep insulting me, I’m going to return the favor.” Odile grumbled, but her heart didn’t seem in it anymore.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Crab Face.”
“Fucking Bitch.”
“Cut shard.”
“You’re a C-”
“RIN! MADAME!! WHAT!!! ARE!!! YOU!!!! DOING!!!!” And there was Mirabelle, the angriest I’ve ever seen her, as she stormed towards us while we entered the camp “Isabeau went out looking for you when it started getting late, and I stayed behind in case you came back!! Have you been fighting!!! This entire!!!! Time?!?!?!”
“I was interrogating them.” At least Odile was honest.
“I was insulting her.” I might as well do the same.
“NO! BAD! We’re a team, we need to act like it!! That means YOU-” Mirabelle jabbed a finger at Odile, “-need to respect boundaries! And YOU-” She pointed at me, but didn’t turn to look. That was thoughtful, “-need to be nice!”
“Yes Mirabelle.”
“Sorry Mirabelle.”
“GOOD!” She huffed. She huffed! I wasn’t used to angry Mirabelle. I don’t think I wanted to be, “Now apologize to each other!”
“They wouldn’t-”
“But she-”
“APOLOGIZE!”
“Sorry Rin.”
“Sorry Odile.”
“Good.” Mirabelle crossed her arms, “Now go set up the campfire. It’s my turn to cook and I’m crabbing hungry and tired and upset and a whole bunch of other things! But I have to go grab Isabeau now and tell him you two are alright.”
Odile nodded.
“He’s heading towards the river we passed by earlier today.” I told Mirabelle, ignoring the look Odile threw at me. I had just caught up on watching what was going on back at camp while... well, while all that other stuff was happening. I had set Drone 1 to stick with Mirabelle, and Drone 2 to follow Isabeau, so I used the footage to make sure he was alright. He was holding a Crafted Lantern while calling out for us. I felt a little bad I only noticed now.
“Thanks Rin.” Mirabelle nodded to me, before pointing at me and Odile again, “Be nice! I’ll be right back!!”
Odile looked like she wanted to say a bunch of other things to me, once Mirabelle left, but I wasn’t planning on listening. Instead I set down my branches, leaving a few inside the pre-established fire pit, and stepped back for Odile to do the rest. With one last sidelong glance, she knelt down, did some magic nonsense, and lit the fire.
I didn’t stick around to watch though. I went inside my tent and put on an episode of Sanctuary Moon.