Chapter 62: Moral Whiplash
Once again, I woke up the morning after the jump feeling decidedly ill-at-ease, though for very different reasons than the end of the previous jump. If every jump ended like this, I was going to need a lot more therapy.
My general malaise made staying in and ordering room service very tempting, but I squared my shoulders and headed down to the restaurant anyway. Everyone was chatting away amicably; Max was sitting with Garrus, Hoss, and three others I didn't know, eating and laughing without a care in the world. The sight sent something unpleasant churning in my gut.
I grabbed myself some pancakes and eggs and hid away in a corner, safely outside the general bustle of camaraderie—and the line of fire, if another food fight broke out—where I was still picking at my 'meal' ten minutes later when Ace and Zero found me. "You look like you didn't get much sleep," Ace said as the pair seated themselves on either side of me at the table of four. "Everything all right?"
"No?" I said sharply. "I just saw Max kill someone in cold blood, so I'm a
little off, thanks."
"He did warn her not to sneak aboard."
"And that makes it okay?"
Zero shrugged. "If someone jumps the alligator fence, you don't blame the zookeeper."
"That analogy isn't even close to what happened and you know it."
"Fine," she huffed. "If someone ignores a dozen 'trespassers will be shot' signs and a warning played over megaphone, I'm gonna point and laugh at the idiot rather than blaming the shooter."
"She didn't look nervous about being shot," I pointed out.
"Of course not," Ace said. "She's a consummate actor who's never found trouble she couldn't charm her way out of. She probably thought Max would lecture her long enough for her to weasel some sort of compromise out of him."
"'Course, Max isn't gonna put up with that shit," Zero added.
"Apparently," I grumbled.
"Before you get angry at Max, at least ask Management if she's actually dead," Ace told me. "After all, they're perfectly capable of bringing
us back to life."
I'd gotten out of the habit of carrying a cell phone over the last decade. "You have a phone handy?" He did, thanks to some sort of hammerspace inventory, so I borrowed it and dialed 000.
Riiii— "I'm busy, what is it?"
That was an unusual greeting. "I was wondering if Vash survived her… uh… murder."
"Haven't decided yet. Is that all?"
"What? Why not?"
"Because I. Am. Busy."
Click.
That was… brusque. I frowned at the phone, then handed it back to Ace, who vanished it into hammerspace again.
"Well?" he asked.
"They haven't decided yet. Whatever that means."
"Well, we always come back to the same point in time we leave," he said, "so maybe they're waiting for time to start flowing before doing anything in that universe."
"At least you know it's not permanent," Zero said. "They
can bring her back, so it's not like she's
dead dead."
"I guess?" I said uncertainly. "Why the killing curse, though?"
"Fast, quick, clean," Ace answered.
"But isn't it seriously black magic?"
"Only because of what it does. Like I said, it's nice and quick—it's just that killing is the
only thing it's good for, so it gets a really bad rap."
"And the fact that you have to really hate the target to cast it?"
"It's more 'want them to die' than 'hate'—though evil wizards being who they are, there's not a lot of difference as far as they're concerned—and that's actually a
good thing to have in an unblockable killing spell." He grinned at my expression of disbelief. "You've had a gun safety course at some point, so you know you should never point a gun at something you aren't willing to destroy. Well, with the killing curse, you'll never accidentally cast it unless you
truly want whatever you're aiming at to die. That's the sort of thing that makes me think whoever designed the spell was actually concerned about safety, which is pretty damn rare in the Wizarding World."
I wasn't sure I bought that, but I wasn't about to get into an argument about magic with someone who had hundreds of years of experience to lord over me. If I'd been in a better mood, I'd have probably asked about the 'designed' part, because I'd always wondered how spells came to be… but I didn't really want a lesson in Potterverse metaphysics right now, so I let it pass without comment.
"Don't forget that the bitch just spent
ten years stalking him," Zero chimed in, pointing her chopsticks across the table at me. "Of
course he wanted her dead."
"And she's not," Ace added. "Dead, I mean."
"She's still dead," I said, "she's just
reversibly dead. Max could have just stunned her or something, instead of going straight to murder."
"If she was still alive when the Jump 'officially' ended, we might have ended up with another stowaway," Ace argued. "Just playing devil's advocate," he added when I scowled at him.
"Then have Maeve toss her under the ice rink or something. I know
that's not permanent."
"Neither is killing her. Look at it this way: if Max
did freeze her, or petrify her, or use some other 'long-term storage' technique… would he ever let her out?"
My argument stalled in its tracks. "I… I guess not."
"Then it's not really much different from death, is it?" he asked. "At least this way, Management might toss her back into
Trek rather than leaving her frozen outside of time for eternity."
"Yeah, I get it." I sighed. "Let's talk about something else."
"Shipping," Zero said.
"
No."
———X==X==X———
The conversation over breakfast had made me…
less uncomfortable with how the night had ended, but I still needed to deal with how the night had
started—namely, by apologizing to Homura for putting my foot in my mouth and chewing. I was about halfway to the cherry tree hill when Dragon's voice popped up around me. "Excuse me, Cass. A moment?"
"What's up, Dragon?"
"Message for you from Miss Akemi. She'd like to talk to you, when you have time."
"Oh, that's easy. I was already heading over."
"Her room is in the opposite direction," Dragon said. "Do you need directions?"
"She's in her room?" That was a little odd. "Did she say
when I should visit?"
"She left the invitation open, but I got the feeling that she wanted to see you sooner rather than later."
"All right, I'll head there, then."
———X==X==X———
I'd declined Dragon's directions because I'd been to Homura's apartment before, so it took half an hour longer than it should have to find the building. The fact that the town rearranged itself every jump kept slipping my mind.
My map got me to her door eventually, where I hesitated at the last second with my fist raised to knock. The last time we'd spoken had been only a day ago, when I'd managed to make two
faux pax in a single conversation. Why had she called me? And why
here?
Overthinking much, Cass? Why worry about it when you're going to find out in a minute?
I gave the door three crisp knocks. The Warehouse's doors and walls were near-perfectly soundproof, so I had no indication that she'd heard until the door swung inward a few inches to reveal Homura's face. "Oh, Cass," she murmured. "You're here already."
"Nearly an hour after you paged me," I joked.
"I didn't expect you to head over immediately," she said. I stood there for a moment before she remembered herself and opened the door properly. "Come in?" she offered.
"Sure, thanks."
The apartment looked exactly like it had ten years ago, weird pendulum and all. Homura didn't seem eager to start, and I didn't want to rush her, so we just sat across from each other on the circular couch for a minute or so before she finally worked up the courage to explain herself.
"Cass…" she began, "I… I want to ask a favor of you." She held up a hand before I could answer. "It's… not something I'm comfortable asking. Of anyone.
Especially the people I'm friendly with, like Rita. I thought about asking her, but…" She trailed off and averted her eyes. She'd dropped her hand, but I continued holding my tongue and gave her time to work through her thoughts.
She left that thought unfinished. "You asked if I had a 'wishlist' for perks."
"I shouldn't have used that term—"
"It's not the
word," she interrupted. "I don't need you to tiptoe around me. There are wishes, and there are Wishes, and I knew which one you meant."
I said, "Okay," because I didn't know how else to respond.
"I… do have one thing I want," Homura said meekly. "You probably already know what I think about the people who have become magical girls. All of us are doomed from the moment we make our wish. We can't be saved." One finger rubbed her Soul Gem ring absentmindedly as she spoke. "But… maybe, somehow…"
You want to find a way to break the contract, I thought. I almost said it out loud, but she didn't need to hear me parrot her own train of thought back at her.
"What's the favor?" I asked instead.
"It's about one of the perks I picked up in
Worm," Homura said, staring into her lap. "
Shard Administration. It's supposed to let me gift any of my abilities or powers to other people."
I nodded. That was the ability she'd used to give me the anti-thinker power I'd borrowed to counter Lisa's power, which had been a massive mistake for reasons that weren't relevant to this conversation.
"I lose whatever I give away," she added, and the puzzle pieces clicked, sending a shiver running down my spine. If she could give away what it meant to be a magical girl, then she'd be free. Free from her contract, free from the need to fight to survive, free from the clutches of the Incubator and his twisted system.
At the cost of someone else.
Me.
Was I willing to do that? To take on that burden in the hopes of giving Homura a happy ending? A
life?
God help me, I might be…
…but I wasn't sure. I
needed to be sure, or… or things would go disastrously wrong.
I realized I'd stopped breathing, and began to take slow, calming breaths as I waited for Homura to continue. She could have meant something else. I don't know what that would be, but I needed to hear her out before I started reacting.
"I'm not asking you to take my place," she said. "That's not… that would be wrong. I would never ask someone else to become a magical girl just for my own selfish desires. I just… I need to know if it works. If I
can."
It was what I'd thought, yet also not. Just a test, to see if it was
possible? That was hardly a burden at all.
"Just… just for a minute," Homura continued. "Not now, but—"
"Why not now?"
She froze mid-word, mouth open.
"If you're not ready, I can wait, but we could do it now if you want."
"You… you would…" Homura swallowed. "It's not safe…"
Max had warned me about the dangers of 'soul- and corruption-related effects', but for magical girls, that was a
long-term danger. "Just for a minute, right?" I asked. "You wouldn't have asked if you thought something would go wrong."
"Just for a minute," she repeated. "I won't leave you like that, Cass, I promise."
It hadn't crossed my mind that she would; I trusted her far more than that. "All right, then. Actually, hold on…" I got up and crossed over to her couch, taking her hand in mind. "Ready?"
"It doesn't require contact," she said flatly.
"I know." For such an important moment, I wanted to be
with her, not separated by a yawning expanse of weird interior decorating decisions. I smiled and said, "I'm ready."
Homura took a deep breath. Nodded. Her hand tightened on mine, and I became intensely aware of the feel of her ring against my fingers. I kept my eyes on hers, smiling encouragingly. And then…
Her lip quivered.
I pulled her into a hug without thinking about it, holding her close as she wept quietly into my shoulder. "I'm sorry," I said.
"I… I shouldn't have hoped…" she murmured. "I thought… maybe…"
"It's okay," I whispered. "There are millions of perks out there, right? There's
something out there that can fix this, I'm sure of it." She clung to me harder, her shoulders shaking. "Don't give up on yourself, Homura—"
"I won't!" she yelled into my shirt. "I won't give up. I
can't give up. I just thought… I thought I might have found it. I've been searching for so long…"
"I know." I rubbed her back as she continued crying. "I know, Homura, but it's not over. We've got all the time in the world to find the answer, and we
will find it." She nodded, inadvertently rubbing her tears into my collar.
It took a minute for her to cry herself out, and another minute before she pulled away. "Thank you," she whispered. "For being willing to try, and…" she looked away, ashamed of her tears.
I gave her an encouraging smile. "I'll help however I can, Homura. All you need to do is ask."
Homura didn't reply. She busied herself pulling the clear seed out of hammerspace and transforming her Soul Gem into its egg form. The seed pulled less Grief than I'd expected out of her gem, leaving the amethyst shining and untarnished—and whole; the crack she'd had during the
Worm jump had fully 'healed' over her year of vacation.
"I think… I need to be alone for a bit," she said, once she'd returned her ring to her finger and the seed to her shield.
"Are you sure?"
"I am. I need to… to think. To accept this." She straightened slightly as she spoke. "It's not the end, just a… setback. A disappointment."
"I understand," I said. "Don't keep to yourself too long, though, okay? You don't have to go through this alone. I'll be here whenever you're ready to talk."
"I know. Thank you, Cassandra."
"Any time."
I gave her shoulder one last squeeze, then got up and let myself out.
———X==X==X———
It was still midmorning, but it already felt like I'd experienced a whole day. Without really thinking about it, I wandered back to the arcade's net-cafe room and sat down in front of a computer. It was only after scrolling through games for five minutes that I realized that avoiding my problems wasn't how I wanted to spend the rest of the day.
I turned the computer back off and called Deanna.
———X==X==X———
We met in her office again, which was now 'deep' in the town, several streets away from the square. The first thing I did, once the pleasantries were out of the way and we settled down to actually
talk, was go through the day's encounter with Homura. I wasn't looking for advice or comfort, necessarily; just a sympathetic ear while I worked through my feelings of uselessness in the face of her problems. I needed to talk about it with
someone, and I could trust Deanna not to share what I told her… I hoped.
It was only a matter of time before we got to the problem I
did need help with.
"Did you hear what happened last night?" I asked.
"No. What happened?"
"Q snuck Vash into the Warehouse and Max killed her."
"Oh." Deanna frowned. "I never met Vash myself, but I can understand why he'd go that far."
"Yeah, Ace made some good arguments for it, but… okay, another tangent, but as a kid I was always really nervous around people with knives—you know, kitchen knives, not switchblades or whatever; being nervous around
those is a bit more reasonable, I think. Maybe my anxiety meant I didn't fully trust the social contract of 'not stabbing people for no reason'? Uh, anyway, the point is that I was always… iffy around people who I recognized as 'capable of hurting me' regardless of whether or not they had any reason to do it, and now Max is very much in that category at all times. I mean, I guess he always was, but now I'm aware of it in a way I never was before."
"Do you honestly think he would hurt you?"
"No, I don't… but I recognize that he
could—he could kill me pretty much effortlessly—and that makes me uncomfortable. It reminds me of the PTSD I had in
Worm, remember? Having people 'suddenly ended'?"
Deanna nodded. "I remember."
"Yeah…" I let out a long, weary sigh. "I came down for breakfast this morning, and when I saw Max, I had this weird jolt of 'alertness'. Not even a 'startle' like I'd seen a spider, but a sort of… anxious vigilance? My last therapist would have called it 'arousal', I think; you know, emotionally primed for fight-or-flight. Not quite hyper-vigilance, but getting there… oh, goddamn it,
that's why this feels so familiar. I saw Max as a friend and peer before, even if he
was in charge, but now he's more of a father figure."
"I take it you don't mean that in the traditional sense."
I laughed bitterly. "Haha, yeah…
no. I don't think it's come up in here before, but as a young kid, the primary emotion I associated with 'Dad' was 'fear'—no, that's too strong a word. 'Anxiety', maybe?—because if parenting takes tough love, I got all the Love from my mom and all the Tough from my dad. He was the disciplinarian, the person you
did not want to anger. Err, to be clear, he wasn't abusive—unless you consider a somewhat tepid quantity of affection 'abuse', I guess—but he was In Charge Of Punishments, so we associated him with all the bad things in life: losing television privileges, extra chores, all those little penalties parents use to express their displeasure.
"I don't know much about
his childhood beyond the fact that it was bad enough that he was worried about screwing up
his kids in the same way, but that became a self-fulfilling prophecy when he kept himself distant and unapproachable except for the times he felt obligated to try to bond with his 'son'—which were precious to me, because I wanted his approval
so badly, but also… stilted, I guess? Like, looking back on it, I can't help but feel that neither of us really enjoyed playing catch with a baseball at the park, but that was How American Fathers Raised Their Boys, so that's what we did.
"I mean, he also shared his love of computers with me, and I can trust
that was heartfelt… and he nurtured my love of Legos and building kits… and introduced me to
Star Trek and Science Fiction in general… so I guess he
did connect with me when it came to the things he cared about—oh,
fuck."
"Cass?" Deanna asked.
"It's… nevermind." I'd had the sudden and extremely intrusive thought that my childhood relationship with my dad was entirely built around preparing me for my destiny as the creator of a giant super-robot.
What the fuck, writers, seriously.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, just… nothing, it's not important. This is all way off topic, anyway." I straightened and leaned back into the couch with a groan. "The point is that I'm suddenly tip-toeing around Max just like I used to do around my dad when I was little, because I'm… jumpy. I'm not quite
scared of him, but I am… wary, I guess, and that's what's so damnably
familiar about the whole thing."
Deanna paused to make sure I was done before she spoke. "I have some advice, but I'm not sure you're going to like it."
"Talk to Max?"
"Talk to Max."
Wasn't hard to see
that coming. It might be good advice, but the situation here was a
little on the 'extreme' side. "Yeah, that's not going to be awkward at all. 'Hey, I wanted to discuss that woman you killed right in front of me.'"
Deanna gave me a stern look. "It doesn't have to be about Vash—although that would probably help. It doesn't have to be
about anything. Talking will help you remember that Max is still the same person you befriended years ago."
"Fine, I get it. I'll… I'll get around to it."
The look on her face made it clear she wasn't fooled by my half-hearted 'promise'. "You can do it in here, if you want."
"
No," I said, far more harshly than I intended. "No," I repeated more calmly, "I'm not… that's too… it's mixing relationships too much. You're my therapist in here."
"That's exactly what I was offering—"
"I
know, but… you're also his friend, and his employee, sorta, and I'm… that's not a good foundation for anything."
Deanna looked hurt. "I'm your therapist, Cass, like you said, and that means I have responsibilities to you that I am
not going to ignore regardless of any other relationships I may have."
I shook my head. "I know, but… well, I've been burned before."
———X==X==X———
The second day of 'break' was a lot better than the first, at least for me; in no small part because I started getting back into my normal routine. That meant the day started with a trip to the gym—I would
not let my new body fall into the state I'd been in before meeting Max—where I ran into two familiar faces on my way out. "Hi, guys!"
"Hi, Cass!" Karl called. "What're you up to?"
"Oh, you know, the usual," I said. "Making sure I stay fit and all that good stuff. What're
you two up to?"
"Just finished sparring," Bob said. "Heya, Cass."
"Hey yourself. Have fun?"
"Yup."
"You gonna join in the LARP group again this break?" Karl asked.
"I might," I said. "Any idea who's running it this time?"
"Joe was talking about wanting to do something
Shadowrun-themed, but I'm not sure if he's actually gonna run it. Oh, if he ever tries to convince you to join a
Paranoia game,
decline."
I filed that tidbit away under 'noodle incidents'.
Bob grunted. "More games with too much scheming and politics."
"If it was up to you," Karl said, "we'd just stand around hitting each other with boffer swords for two hours a night!"
"I was having a great time with the political stuff," I said.
"You like boring stuff," Bob joked. "Classes, politics…"
"Bob," Karl added.
"'Ey now!" Bob yelled, cuffing Karl about the head.
"You set yourself up for that one!" Karl said as he rubbed his new lump with one hand. "Say, Cass, we're heading over to the games room next. Wanna come?"
I'd finished my workout, but I still had one more task.
"After I shower? Sure."
———X==X==X———
"What's your favorite anecdote from the 'chain, thus far?" I asked.
"Oh, that's easy," Bob said. "We were in some anime… what was the name of that one? Fantasy kingdom, with the mages."
"'With the mages' doesn't narrow down 'fantasy kingdom' at all," Karl said as he studied the miniature forces arrayed on the table. "But if this is the story I think it is, it was
Zero no Tsukaima."
Karl wasn't playing this round. Bob claimed he and I were a closer match, despite the fact that I'd only played a handful of games on my own; I think he just wanted to play someone he could reliably beat.
"Unpronounceable. Whatever. Point is, pretty typical kingdom, 'cept that mages ran everything. Well, I wasn't interested in running around in a dress chanting gibberish all day, so I went in with as many
anti-magic items as I could borrow. 'Course, I eventually made enough of a ruckus that people took offense and got myself hauled in front of the local count, and I asked him on what authority he was gonna judge me. Obviously he starts going off about how mages achieve nobility through magic, blah blah blah, and I ask him to prove it. And he says, prove what? And I say, prove you're a mage. And he sneers at me like I'm a damn fool, pulls out this big fancy wand that was honest-to-gods more feather than wood, probably planning to burn my eyebrows right off my smug face… but I've got so many anti-magic widgets on me, he can't!"
By this point, Bob was laughing so hard he could barely finish his story. "He can't cast a damn thing! The commoners start getting rowdy, wondering why their big scary count can't put his money where his mouth is, so some of the other mages try to restore order… and then they realize that they can't cast either!
Nobody can! They start going crazy, running around trying to figure out what the problem is, people are yelling… I just wandered off in the confusion without anyone noticing a thing!"
"They burned down the city hall the moment he was out of range," Karl added.
I asked the obvious question. "Why were they using fire spells as a test?"
"The local magocracy weren't exactly the sharpest bulbs in the drawer," he said with a shrug.
"Well, that's my story," Bob said. He turned to Karl and added, "Your turn."
"Hold on," I interrupted. "I have more questions. What did you do to get dragged in front of the count?"
"Dalliances," Karl said.
"She told me she was a widow!" Bob protested.
"Which one? The tall blonde, the short blonde, the redhead, the—"
"Yes, yes, you've made your point! Now shut up and tell your story."
"I can't do both," Karl replied.
"The story, smartass."
He laughed. "My best moment was during the Clone Wars—"
"An
interesting story," Bob interrupted.
"Fine. How about the time I accidentally started a blood feud with the entire Jade Falcon clan because they don't explain the goddamn rules of engagement before they go dropping on someone?"
"Oh, yeah, that's a good one. Go on, then."
"Glad it meets your approval." Karl cleared his throat, then began, "So this was about six, maybe seven years into
Battletech. I was running a merc company out in the Periphery, and we got called to do some cleanup on a group of scavengers that had been harassing the local systems for 'tribute'. Well, turns out the 'scavengers' were a bunch of Clanner boys from the Occupation Zone cruising around looking for trouble, and when we rolled in, they figured they'd found it. Their leader, some asshole with more tattoos than sense, calls me up and offers me a nice formal duel to settle the matter, and I figure, sure, easy enough. I'll give the Clanners this much: proxy battles are a hell of a lot cleaner than the real thing. So, we set the time and place, and I drop in in my Mark II 'Cat ready to rumble.
"Now, this
was more than half-way through the Jump, but this was my first time having to deal with Clanner 'honor rules' personally rather than just taking a paycheck to shoot at them. Turns out when a Clanner says 'let's settle this between you and I', he's including your lances in that. So I'm there, alone against a goddamn assault star, thinking,
All right, Karl, you really screwed the pooch here. I yell at Ervin to get the rest of the lance in here even though I know damn well it's gonna take too long and get ready to go out guns blazing. I mean, I had some pretty nice 'Chain-tech on my 'Cat, but not 'five-on-one' nice."
"What did they field, again?" Bob asked.
"Two Summoners, a Hellbringer, and a Mad Dog supporting their commander's Onager."
He whistled. "That's a lot of firepower."
"Yeah, it was… but the Falcons didn't see some idiot who didn't understand what their stupid rules of combat were, they saw an absolute asshole who thought he was hot enough shit to solo their star, and they went
mad. And if normal Clanners fight stupid, mad Clanners fight
rabid. They don't maneuver, flank, or do much of anything but charge as fast as they can straight into my guns, getting in each others way more often than not and generally fucking their own combat width. They kept coming, I kept backpedaling. What should have been a five-on-one beatdown ended with me, sitting in
most of a mech, wondering how the hell I pulled off the stupidest underdog win I've ever seen.
"So, in essence, they
got the absolute asshole who was hot enough shit to solo their star, and they took that pretty personal. And to make it worse, I packed up and left the field before salvaging the mechs I blew up.
I just wanted to get the hell out of dodge—my 'Cat was missing almost half its weight in ordnance, armor, and other shot-off bits, and my dosimeter was clearly showing a reactor leak—but personally leaving before salvage was tantamount to saying their mechs weren't worth my time. After already humiliating them in a five-on-one, that was downright
contemptuous… to their way of thinking, anyway. The fact that the kid I humiliated was someone important was the icing on the cake. Less than a month later, an entire
cluster dropped on us in the middle of what should have been a glorified babysitting job and wiped us off the map in reprisal."
"How much is a cluster?" I asked.
"Five companies of three stars, roughly. A regiment, in other words."
"Shiiit," I said appreciatively. "They sent
five companies? How did you survive?"
"I guess they wanted to make a point about having a five-to-one advantage, and we didn't."
"Oh."
"Yeah. Anyway, the story ends with the Falcons having bitten off more than they could swallow. It really shouldn't have surprised them that dropping an entire regiment in someone else's space would start a goddamn war, but apparently it did, and they paid for it. The Inner Sphere banded together—as much as they ever do—and with a little help from the exiles of Clan Wolf, Clan Falcon was destroyed."
"You insulted an entire clan to death!" Bob said, laughing heartily at his own joke.
"Sure, let's go with that."
"What were the other clans doing during the war?" I asked. "Did they just stand by while the 'Sphere wiped out a whole clan?"
Karl shrugged. "Not sure, since I wasn't around, but my understanding is that they were still pointing and laughing at the Falcons over the original incident, and saw their defeat as the natural result of a bunch of worthless
dezgra picking a fight with real warriors. And the 'Sphere didn't finish the Falcons; the vultures in the neighboring clans did that themselves."
"Figures," I grumbled.
"Your turn, Cass," Bob said. "Favorite moment?"
"I've got two whole jumps to choose from," I protested.
"You picked the topic."
"Time to pay the piper," Karl added.
"Fine, fine, let's see." Many of my 'best moments' had been in
Worm, but that entire misadventure was tainted, as far as I was concerned. "My 'favorite moment' isn't a story at all," I decided. "It was when I got to see Earth from orbit for the first time."
"That doesn't count," Bob declared.
"Well, you did ask the question wrong," Karl told him. "Still, I have to agree. You owe us a story, Cass."
I chuckled. "Fine. How about the time I reintroduced 'Lock Out Tag Out' to Starfleet?"
"This already sounds boring," Bob complained.
"Deal with it," Karl said. "
I'm interested—mostly in how you managed to get Starfleet to care about safety in the first place."
"It isn't that interesting, to be honest. I was digging around in the cargo teleporter—one of the secondary energizing coils was on the fritz and no one else had managed to figure out which one—when some stupid Ensign decided he wanted to use it to move his couch. It rematerialized with an extra severed arm." I held up my right hand and wiggled my fingers for emphasis.
Karl whistled, but Bob wasn't impressed. "If you lose one arm, you've lost them all."
The phrasing was weird, but he wasn't wrong; losing the arm a second time hadn't meant much to me, and they'd been able to reattach it without issue. That didn't mean it was
okay. "It could have been my head!"
"Aye, that would have been a shame, pretty little thing that it is!"
I flipped him off, which had him laughing uproariously.
"You know," Karl said, "just because LOTO isn't Starfleet policy doesn't mean you shouldn't have done it anyway."
"I
did! I put a software lockout on the system and physically disconnected the power conduits. The idiot overrode the first and fixed the second without stopping to wonder
why someone had done those things. Dumbass got reassigned to Pluto for that… and I can't say he didn't deserve it." I sighed. "I made sure to use a
physical lock next time."
"He probably would have just phasered the lock off," Karl said. "Can't fix stupid."
"But you can train them… hopefully. There was a big meeting about the incident, so I got to suggest a lot of 'common sense' regulations that no one had ever heard of before." The memory had me chuckling. "Captain Kim asked me to put together a presentation on my safety recommendations, so I threw together a slide show for the crew… and then he told me he wanted me to brief the superior officers first. Giving a lecture I'd
intended for my peers to the Captain, XO, and department heads was… awkward."
He shrugged. "Couldn't have gone that badly if you were still an LT afterward."
"I mean, it wasn't
bad, but it was a lot more informal than I'd have made it if I'd known that was coming. There were at least three different 'severed arm' puns in there."
'Mostly 'armless', 'cost an arm and a leg'… what was the third? 'Lend a hand' had been too obvious… oh, right, 'going out on a limb'.
"'Course you'd do something like that," Karl muttered. "Stay you, kid."
———X==X==X———
After another hour of wargaming in which Bob slowly crushed my soldiers under the weight of his army, I said my goodbyes and headed out the door straight into Max, which was a bit of a jumpscare.
"Ah, Cass," he said. "I was looking for you."
Fucking great. "Did Deanna send you?"
"No?" he said uncertainly. "Ace said you weren't happy with my, uh, 'solution' to Vash."
"He also made a decent case for why it was… acceptable," I said. "Uh… that said, I'd still like to hear it from you, though. He gave plenty of justifications for it after the fact, but I don't know what you were thinking when you
did it."
"That's fair." Max guided us a few paces away from the door to make sure we weren't blocking it for anyone else, then said, "Yes, there are other ways I could have handled it, but not at that moment. I was watching the doors so I could toss her back out if she tried to sneak in, but Q deliberately dropped her in the middle of the park with a timer set to go off the second the Jump ended… so even killing her wasn't fast enough, in the end. If Management didn't consider another ROB's meddling something they ought to deal with personally, I
would have been stuck with her.
"I meant what I said back when you first met her: I don't trust that she wouldn't stab me in the back for the slightest bit of power. I considered her being in the Warehouse a clear, immediate threat—by 'immediate', I mean the potential that she'd get 'recruited' automatically and have the opportunity to stick a knife in my back years down the road, not that she was about to do it then and there—and I reacted accordingly. Maybe it was an overreaction, but killing people isn't as permanent as you're used to."
"But you don't care if she stays dead," I pointed out.
"I don't necessarily
want her to stay dead, but if I wasn't okay with the possibility, then it
would be wrong to have killed her. Reckless, at the very least."
I couldn't argue with that logic.
"Why did you mention Deanna?" Max asked.
"I've been seeing her as a therapist, and she suggested I talk to you."
"And you thought she'd broken confidentiality?" he asked, clearly surprised.
I shrugged. "Wouldn't be the first time."
"Wait, what?" Max yelled. "
What? When?"
"This was… six or seven years before we met?"
"Oh," he said, relieved. "I thought you meant
Deanna had… not that that isn't really bad, of course. What happened? Err, sorry, you probably don't want to talk about it."
"No, it's okay," I reassured him. "I went through a lot of therapy to get over it."
"You had to go to therapy to get over the trauma you got
from therapy."
"Yeah. Ironic, isn't it? Took me
years before I felt… 'better', I guess, but I got there. Uh… long story short, one of my therapists went to my parents with something I
explicitly told him not to share—not the trans thing, by the way, this was years earlier and my parents were actually super understanding about that when I finally came out… sorry, getting off track."
I took a deep breath before I continued, "It wasn't just 'don't share this, please'; I straight up told him I didn't want him to tell them
during the act of him telling them, and he did it anyway
right in front of me. I just… stormed out and didn't come home for a few hours. And when I did…"
I didn't finish the thought. It would have been an unpleasant memory if I hadn't dissociated so hard I didn't
have a memory of that conversation.
"This was when I was in my early twenties, so it wasn't like I was a minor. I wasn't breaking any laws, or a danger to myself or others, or anything like that… I mean, I
wasn't, but I came pretty close to suicide after the fact…" I sighed. "I try to practice forgiveness, but that's been my benchmark for 'unforgivable trespass' for a long time."
"I'll fucking say!" Max said heatedly. It was actually sort of comforting that he was getting this upset on my behalf. "Isn't that massively illegal?"
"Edge case," I grumbled. "I brought my parents in for family therapy, which was a disaster—in hindsight, if I'd been more emotionally aware, or a better advocate for myself, or something, I might have noticed that he treated
me as the source of all the problems in the relationship. That could have been my warning sign… anyway, I had to sign paperwork giving him permission to talk to them so I could have them in the room. Verbally revoking that permission should trump the paperwork—there's probably a line about 'you can revoke this permission at any time' somewhere on there—but, you know, good luck proving I did that. So, ethically, it's a huge violation, but
legally… well, edge case."
"Damn," he cursed. "I'm shocked you went back to therapy at all."
"That's what my next therapist said. That's not a joke, by the way."
There was a 'beat' in the conversation while I sighed again and Max calmed down from his indignation.
"Well," I said, "I did… and still do, which is why Deanna came up. She wanted me to talk to you… like, just in general, I guess. Get comfortable again after the Vash incident."
I had to admit, I
was already feeling a bit better, mostly from just seeing Max be himself. Was that 'normal', or the result of some social perk? 'Putting people at ease' was at the far low end of the 'Social Bullshit' scale when it came to perks and powers.
If it
was a perk thing, did that matter? Deanna's suggestion had been more for my peace of mind than anything else, after all.
"Comfortable?" he asked. "What do you… oh." Max closed his eyes and took a deep breath; when he opened them, his mood had gone somber. "Are you going somewhere?"
"Nowhere in particular. Why?"
It was his turn to shrug. "If you were, I'd suggest walking while we talked, but we can just grab a bench instead."
"Sounds good."
———X==X==X———
"So," Max said once we'd sat down, "First, I want to apologize for making you feel uncomfortable around me, and particularly for not realizing I'd done it."
That's a start, I guess. "I… I accept your apology—and I appreciate it, really—but that's not going to get me, uh, 'not-uncomfortable' on its own."
"I don't expect it to—not on its own, at least. That's what the conversation is for, right?"
"Sure," I agreed.
"Great. What do you want to talk about?"
That was a good question. "You, I guess, if you don't mind."
"Me?"
"Yeah.
If you don't mind."
"No, please, ask away," he said with a sweep of his hand. "It's not like I don't like talking about myself. What would you like to know?"
I thought for a moment, then asked, "Why do you keep jumping?"
Max frowned. "That's quite a question."
"You don't have to answer," I said quickly. The conversation I'd had with Homura had been on my mind again; she was looking not just for more power, but for a solution to a specific problem. It made me wonder what
Max was looking for.
"I know," he said, "but it's a good question. Well, two questions: 'Why don't I go home?' and 'Why don't I stay somewhere?'
"The first question is pretty easy to answer. There's nothing for me back home." Max grimaced slightly at his own words. "My dad had died a couple years earlier—heart problems—and my mom's a classic narcissist; cutting her out of my life was the only good decision I made in college. My brother and I were six years apart and never got along; I hadn't heard from him since he moved out when I was in middle school, and we liked it that way. Socially, I'd made the mistake of dating in my social circle, so when we broke up, all my friends went with my ex… which was probably fair, because I've got enough self-awareness now to know that whole shitshow was my fault.
"As for my 'career', I'd spent the last six years waiting tables at a trashy interstate-road-stop diner that was going to go out of business within the year while very concertedly
not writing my breakout novel, so when I saw an ad for an 'entry-level position with opportunity for growth, room and expenses paid, some travel required,' I decided it was worth a shot… and ended up here."
The job listing got a chuckle out of me. "That's one way to describe a 'chain, I guess. So they introduced themself as Management?"
"No, I started calling them that because I was annoyed with the way they were jerking me around. See, I called the number listed on the ad and spoke to someone—that would be Management, though they didn't introduce themself—who asked me a few 'personality questions', then told me I was what they were looking for, and that my training started immediately. Then,
poof, I woke up in the strangest place I'd ever been. I didn't get a proper explanation for a full year."
"They didn't let you even see the document, did they?" I asked.
"Nope. It wasn't even a 'real' Jump, by Management's way of thinking. I didn't get anything for it at all: no purchases, no slots,
nada."
"'Training', they called it."
"Yeah, precisely. I guess if I'd managed to get myself killed, I'd have flunked the course?" He chuckled bitterly. "I had no idea what a Jumpchain was at that point, much less that I was on one—or
would be on one, if this was just the orientation. I still had my wallet and all the out-of-place stuff in it, so I knew I hadn't had my brain scrambled by whatever gave me the lump I woke up with, but that was it."
I nodded along. "That's… well, it's not 'good', but it's better than nothing." If I woke up in another world with no memory of how or why I was there,
and nothing to back my story up, I'd be convinced
I was crazy. Hell, that wasn't far off my day-one experience in
Worm, come to think of it.
"Yeah. Gaslighting is nasty."
"What sort of world was it?"
"I didn't recognize it at the time, but it was
VA-11 HALL-A."
That had me cocking my head in confusion. "The viking afterlife?"
"No, it's spelled with a bunch of numbers and stuff. 'Vee Ay Eleven, Hall A'. Cyber-weirdpunk world—pretty safe as such things go if you're smart and keep your head down, but incredibly disorienting. One minute I was sitting at home, holding a phone to my ear; the next, I was lying on my back with an uplifted dog shining a pen-light in my eyes to check my pupil reaction."
"An uplifted dog?" I echoed.
Max shrugged and repeated, "Cyber-weirdpunk," like that explained it… which it sort of did. "Anyway, after a year of washing dishes at the bar for room and board as the owner's Amnesiac Charity Case, I got 'poof-ed' out of there into the Warehouse—which was
literally just an empty Warehouse at that point—and was given the document for my first 'real' Jump."
"And that's when you got your proper explanation?"
"Well, yes," he said begrudgingly, "but only after I refused to fill out the document until they answered my questions. That's when I branded them 'Management'."
"Because you had to go on strike to get them to stop fucking with you."
"Exactly." Max paused for a moment as he considered his next words. "The other question is trickier. Why don't I just stay somewhere? The answer's kind of dumb, but I think it comes down to habit."
"So you jump not because you want to continue, but because you don't want to stop?"
He shrugged. "That's one way to put it. I don't lose anything by continuing; if I decide I want to stop somewhere after all, I can always go back."
"Unless you hit a 'fail condition'," I pointed out.
"That's a pretty big if," Max said easily. "I don't want to sound overconfident, but I'm powerful, careful, and surrounded by people who have my back. I even have a few 'extra lives' banked up for emergencies; if I start going through them, I might think again, but it's been thirty jumps since my last close call, and a lot longer since I've actually used one."
"Nice."
"Yeah. I complain a lot because Management goes out of their way to cause problems for me, but on the whole, I'm pretty happy living like this. It's only ever ten years in any given hellhole, at worst, and there are good moments even in the worst places.
"There's also that all-consuming desire to browse. Maybe the next world will be the one. I mean, it won't be, but
maybe it will, you know?"
"I know," I agreed.
———X==X==X———
I kept checking the cherry tree hill until I found Homura there on the fifth day back.
She smiled at me when she saw me coming, then went back to looking out over the town in silence. I stood a step to her left, just out of arms' reach, and joined her in staring at the buildings below for a bit before I spoke.
"How're you doing?" I asked.
"I am… well," she said.
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
"That's good."
I saw Homura nod to herself out of the corner of my eye. "I'm not terribly upset about
Shard Administration not working," she explained. "It wasn't a useful solution. Even if it had worked as I'd hoped, I couldn't simply hand my problems to someone else."
"Of course," I said. "That doesn't mean you didn't want it to work, though."
"It does not. Failure is… discouraging." She moved her hands together behind her back, fiddling with her ring unconsciously. "The more solutions I rule out…"
She didn't finish the thought.
I took half a step closer to her, intending to put my arm around her shoulders, then second-guessed myself. "Uh, Homura?"
"Yes?"
"Can I hug you?"
Homura turned her head to look at me, cocked at the standard 'what crap are you talking now' angle. After a moment, she sighed and stepped sideways so I could comfortably put my arm around her shoulders. She hesitated, then put her arm around me, as well.
"You haven't been asking before hugging me anywhere else," she said.
"I usually
offer hugs and wait for them to be accepted."
"True." She was a few inches shorter than my normal—er, that is, my 'Kasey' form, so standing like this let her comfortably lean her head into my shoulder. "Thank you."
"I'm here for you whenever you need me."
"I know." She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling under my arm. "I've heard that before. 'We're here for you.' Somehow, I never… accepted it."
"What do you mean?"
"I didn't let anyone in. I was only the fifth companion to join, and the others… I didn't like the way they treated me."
"They mistreated you?" I asked, more sharply than I'd intended.
"No, no, nothing like that," she said quickly. "The opposite… they treated me like a friend, and I didn't… I wasn't comfortable with that."
"Oh."
She nodded. "I didn't join to be part of a group of 'true companions'. I was here for a purpose, and everything else was a temptation."
"The 'Leave Your Quest Test' writ large," I said.
Homura hummed in agreement. "I spent nearly a thousand years carefully keeping myself free of connections… and then I made one by accident." I stiffened and started to pull away, but Homura used the arm she still had around me to keep me in place. "And I'm glad I did," she finished.
"Me too," I said. "Do you think you're going to want to… to be family again?"
"Not this jump," she said. "Wherever we end up going, I'm going to keep a close eye on Zion. I want to see what sort of person it ends up being."
"I hope you're not going to keep referring to him as 'it' to his face."
She sighed. "I will consider its feelings when it
has them."
Good enough. "Thank you."
"Either way, I'm going to be busy next jump. The one after that…" Homura shrugged. "It depends where we go."
"I won't get my hopes up," I joked.
"Good," she said, the ghost of a smirk in her tone. "I would hate to disappoint you."
———X==X==X———
