AN: Beta-read by
Carbohydratos,
Did I?,
Gaia,
Linedoffice,
Zephyrosis, and
Mizu.
Chapter 123: The Warrior and the Monster
"You have to at
least watch the first episode!"
I'd imagined a lot of possible reactions to the news that I was, in fact, Cassandra Rolins. Some of them had even been accurate.
"I get why you were so nervous about telling me," Luke had said once he'd regained his wits, helped along by pacing back and forth across the living room a few times. "Like, I'm still totally mad, but also I get it. It's… it's hard to get my head around, you know? Especially after all the things I'd just taken to ignoring."
"Things?"
"You look like her, you sound like her, you talk like her—I thought I was just being weird! Like, projecting or something! Confirmation bias? Like I spent too much time thinking about the show and was just making up connections!" He wiped a hand down his face in exasperation. "Man, as if these last few years weren't weird enough, now I have to deal with the fact that my rescuer and adoptive mom really is the actual literal hero from my favorite show! I wasn't imagining the similarities after all! I'm gonna need to process that for a while."
I'd also done my best to explain why I'd been so reluctant to come clean.
"Maybe it'd bother me less if I was who you're thinking of," I'd explained, "or at least 'closer to who you're thinking of', but the thing is, I'm not Cassandra Rolins, veteran of a giant robot war; I'm Cassandra Rolins, listless college drop-out who would have one day
been involved in a giant robot war in the natural course of history."
It had taken him a second to figure out what I meant.
"So none of the show actually happened for you?" Luke had asked.
"No," I'd confirmed. "To be honest, I'm not even sure what I avoided other than that it was bad."
That admission had led to the reaction I had
not expected: namely, Luke approaching me after dinner to insist that I
watch the freaking show. Which brought us to now.
"Why?" I asked.
"Why not?" Luke countered. "You said none of this happened to you, right? You can treat it like one of those 'flash forward to the bad future' plots and be relieved it was all averted."
"
Why?" I repeated.
"So that you know why I care!"
That was honestly a pretty good argument.
"One episode," I insisted.
"At
least one episode."
"Just take your victory."
Luke did so; he already had the streaming app on our TV turned to the first episode, so all he had to do was hit 'play'. I sat down and steeled myself for whatever may come.
The experience was, in a word,
fucking bizarre. The cartoon style meant it wasn't like seeing 'myself', exactly, in that it wasn't like seeing someone running around in my body. (Playing around with transformation spells meant I had a benchmark for that.) No, the truly weird part was seeing my personality come through. My habits. My mannerisms.
Me.
I hadn't thought much of my habit of responding to people's observations with "Well… yes," before I saw a cartoon caricature of myself keep dropping it into conversation.
The other weird part was that while the characters were passably written—if excessively trope-y—the plot was decidedly not.
"Hold on," I said a few minutes into the second episode, and not just because Luke had hit 'next' before I had a chance to assert my 'only one episode' stipulation. "After a bunch of thugs show up at his school, necessitating a rescue from me, followed by a car chase, followed by a giant robot battle just outside the city…
he goes back to school the next day?"
Luke nodded. "Yup. Gotta have that 'juggle homework and saving the world' trope."
"But it makes no sense!"
"It's a
cartoon," he grumbled, clearly used to people nitpicking his favorite show. "It's just early installment weirdness."
"It was almost my fucking life!"
This time, Luke did not have a good answer to my complaint.
We made it through less than half the first season before I'd had my fill of the surreal contrapositional self-insert experience, but I had to admit, 'knowing why Luke cared' made dealing with the fact that he
did just a little less weird.
———X==X==X———
Megan stormed into my apartment one Sunday in February, dragging Chloe and Kaitlyn along in her wake. "Cassandra!" she yelled, the name echoing through down the hall and into my soul.
Man, if Megan ever has kids, they are going to be the best-behaved little brats on the face of the planet.
I called, "Please, come in," from my seat at the kitchen table purely to draw attention to the fact that they had already let themselves in. The girls arrived in line of sight a moment later, Megan looking vengeful and the other two alternating between confusion and amusement.
"What"—
did I do? I almost asked—"can I do for you?"
"Is any of what you told Luke actually true?" she demanded.
Ah.
"I take it you're referring to the thing we specifically asked him not to share?" Homura asked from the couch.
Megan folded her arms and turned her glare Homura's way. "He said if you really meant it you wouldn't have phrased it as a request."
Damn it, I knew exactly what I'd said to give him precedent for that.
"And you told them?" I asked Megan, glancing at the girls behind her.
"No,
you're going to tell them," she insisted.
"Am I now?"
"Yes."
"Why them?"
Megan shrugged. "I dragged Chloe out here because…
you know why." She emphasized her words with another pointed look at Homura. "Kaitlyn tagged along because I can't separate these two for even a moment, apparently."
"It's Valentine's Day Weekend," Kaitlyn told her. Megan rolled her eyes and raised one arm to present to me the source of her exasperation.
"I still have no idea what's going on," Chloe complained. "Can we get to the exposition, please?"
"That's it?" I asked Megan. "You're not going to drag Ashley in for another round?"
She gave me a
look.
I rolled my eyes. "All right, sit down. Ah, Akemi, do we have an extra chair?"
Homura conjured one for herself on her way in from the living room.
"That works," I said as the four of them took their seats around the kitchen table. "What are you three doing in town, anyway?"
"I learned to teleport," Megan said. "Now stop changing the subject."
"Right." I exchanged a glance with Homura, then told the other two girls, "I believe the reason Megan is… 'unhappy' is that I admitted to Luke that we are, from your perspective, characters from fiction."
Kaitlyn opted for a logical long-jump. "The way you phrased that makes me think
we're the characters from fiction from
your perspective."
"That is correct," Homura agreed while I was busy thinking,
Huh, she stuck the landing.
"Ha!" Kaitlyn nudged Chloe with an elbow. "Told you we were side characters in Megan's urban fantasy."
"Or I'm the weird background event in your queer coming-of-age story," Megan countered. "But that isn't the point!"
"So then what is the point?" Chloe asked. "You still haven't explained why you came and got
me in particular."
"Because according to Luke,
she"—an accusing finger levied Homura's way—"is an anime character, and I think I know which one!"
Chloe stared at Megan for a moment before facepalming hard.
"What?"
"I was
so cringe," Chloe moaned.
"Uh…?"
Megan looked at Kaitlyn, who shrugged. "Sorry, no context here."
"I think she's having a 'remember that really embarrassing thing you did once that everyone else has long since forgotten about?' moment," I said.
"Ash hasn't forgotten about it," Chloe grumbled.
"Oooh," Megan said.
"Oooh," Kaitlyn agreed.
Oooh, I thought.
"
Anyway," Megan declared. "Cassandra, want to tell us who the cosplayer we ran into at OtakCon was? Remember that?" she added to her friends.
Chloe did not, apparently, remember, nor did Kaitlyn.
"Homura," Megan reminded them. "Natalie couldn't come, so we were missing one member?"
"Oooh. Right!" Chloe agreed. "The one who did the magic trick with the tripod."
"Who was it?" Megan repeated.
Homura let out an uncharacteristic sigh of concession as she stood up. "It was me."
"No it wasn't," Chloe said. "You were dressed up as Megumin."
"No, I mean it was
me." A glint of light passed over her body, and when it left, she was left standing in her Magical Girl outfit, shield on her arm. "As Megan has no doubt guessed, my given name is
Homura Akemi."
Chloe stared at her for a good ten seconds.
"Huh," she said.
Megan rounded on her friend with a huff. "What do you mean, 'huh'?" she all-but yelled. "That is the largest under-reaction you have ever had to anything,
ever!"
"Well excuse me for not going starry-eyed over somebody's personal tragedy!"
"What about you?" Kaitlyn asked me.
I sighed. "Cassandra
Rolins."
"Huh," she echoed. "Now I feel kind of left out."
"In what way?"
"I dunno, I was hoping for a video game character, I guess."
"Uh, sorry."
"Wait, who did you say you were?" Megan asked me.
"Cassandra Rolins."
"Shit," she mumbled. "I was
way off."
"Luke didn't mention that?"
She shrugged one shoulder. "He said you
had told him, but not
what you'd told him."
"What were you expecting, then?" I asked.
"Someone from
Worm, to be honest."
"Why?" Homura asked before I could.
Megan shrugged. "Something she said years ago."
Oooh, I thought again.
"Retired supervillain vibe!" Chloe exclaimed.
"Among other things," Megan agreed.
"Do I want to know which character you thought I was?" I asked.
She shrugged again. "I dunno, some minor villain from New York or something? I don't remember any 'Cassandra's or 'Casie's."
"Why a villain?" Kaitlyn asked.
"'Cause she totally channels that 'relaxed but will absolutely throw hands if something calls for it' vibe," Chloe said.
Kaitlyn squinted at me for a moment.
"I dunno," she said. "I can barely imagine her raising her voice."
"She threated to break into my house and rescue me if my parents flipped out about me being gay."
"That's not villainous, that's
awesome."
Chloe reached over and mussed her girlfriend's hair. "You're a little biased, Kat."
"She copped to it, anyway," Megan said. "Being a villain, I mean."
"If it
matters," I grumbled, "I lasted less than a year as a supervillain before catching the Tattletale special and exiling myself to another city to contemplate my life choices in abject sorrow."
Megan turned back to me with suspicion in her eyes. "When you say 'Tattletale special'—"
"Sorry," Kaitlyn butted in. "I have no idea what you two are referencing but 'Tattletale special' sounds like something you'd hear on a playground full of fourth graders."
"Yeah," Chloe agreed. "'You told the teachers! Now you're gonna get the
Tattletale Special!'"
"Fourth graders are vicious."
"Oooh yeah."
Megan raised her voice over the other girls' to ask me, "When you say 'Tattletale special', are you talking, like, metaphorically, or…"
I shook my head. "Unfortunately, no."
"So you
have met her?"
"Yes."
Megan opened her mouth, closed it, blinked, opened it again, closed it, looked at Chloe, and finally said, "Okay, yeah, I get it."
"What?" Kaitlyn asked.
"Not going starry-eyed over someone's personal tragedy. Uh, are you going to sit back down?"
The last was directed at Homura, who everyone suddenly remembered had been standing stock-still for the past couple minutes of conversation.
"It's unnerving how you manage to do that," I told her as she de-transformed and took her seat.
"It's called patience," she replied. "You should show Megan your trophy."
"My—oh. Shit, right, I forgot I had that."
Megan raised an eyebrow. "Are we talking the 'award' kind of trophy or the 'loot' kind of trophy?"
"She tore Leviathan's tail off," Homura said.
"A
bit of it," I clarified, holding up my hands to demonstrate. "Like, a couple feet at most."
"Holy shit," Megan said.
Kaitlyn looked between us and asked, "Context?"
"She arm-wrestled with Godzilla and
won."
"Wouldn't that be more like a thumb war?" Chloe asked. "For Godzilla, I mean, with the scale and all."
"Can I see it?" Megan almost begged me.
I affected a look of offense. "What happened to not going starry-eyed over someone's personal tragedy?"
"This isn't a tragedy, it's a triumph!"
Kaitlyn failed to make the expected
Portal reference. "Now I
really feel left out," she complained instead. "Unless you've got some totally awesome souvenirs from
Dragon Quest or something…?"
I started to shrug—and then stopped.
"
Wedding photos," I announced to the room, then stood up and headed to the nearest door.
Megan poked and prodded at the Endbringer chunk with something between reverence and horror. Kaitlyn declared the pictures of Ryu and Nina's wedding 'the epilogue she didn't know she needed'. Chloe and Homura wandered into the living room to have a quiet discussion of their own.
It was nice enough that I resolved to only give Luke a little bit of a hard time for blabbing.
———X==X==X———
The Jump ended with a wedding: Andrew and Lizzie decided on a Springtime wedding, and serendipity put it just before the end of our final year. I, in particular, got to have some fun.
"Oh my god, Lizzie! It's like you have an actual fairy godmother!"
Yes, of course, I was doing the dresses with magic—and thanks to a past upgrade to my old clothes-morphing spell, I could do it to clothes a willing target was wearing. I think a lot of women would have wanted their wedding dress to remain a wedding dress after the ceremony, utility be damned; Lizzie, on the other hand, took mischievous pleasure in the fact that what looked like an absolutely gorgeous gown of incalculable cost would revert to a plain white t-shirt at midnight. None of the bridesmaids were complaining about not having to pay for their dresses, either, and her cousin Kristina was
loving her current role as the model—the prior comment was hers.
"Do you like this style?" I asked Lizzie as I adjusted the pattern on her cousin's dress. "Or would you prefer something like this?"
Lizzie nodded. "Oooh, I like that. Not sure if I like it
more…"
"Maybe a mix?"
"Hmm. No, I think the one you had before was better. I like the puffy sleeves, though."
"Like this?"
"Ooooooh!"
The wedding itself took place an hour into the countryside beyond Strawfield, on an old ranch its current owners rented out for exactly these sorts of events. There was to be no priest involved, and I congratulated Lizzie on discarding the religious trappings only to learn that it was, in fact, the only acceptable compromise between her own Extremely Catholic grandparents and Andrew's stubbornly Protestant extended family.
It was, however, an excellent excuse to discard everything Lizzie didn't want to bother with, religious trappings included.
The actual ceremony was a brief affair in a wide open field at the edge of the property, headed by a licensed Agnostic Marriage Officiate, and then we headed into a converted farmhouse for a big ol' party. First came the speeches—
"I've known Elisabeth for nearly a decade," I began, "but I'm pretty sure Lizzie hasn't matured a day the whole time—" The crowd laughed and cheered, while the bride found herself split between glaring daggers at me and hiding her face in her hands. "Seriously, though, Lizzie's the kind of friend everyone needs: the kind who knows what you need before you do, and'll send you home and cover your shift just because you're having a bad day. You're a treat, Liz!"
—and then came the dancing. I hadn't done actual ballroom dancing since the last wedding I'd attended more than ten years earlier, so I might have stolen the show a little in my enthusiasm to dust off old skills. Then the music changed to something more suited for a nightclub than a classical wedding, and I gave the youngsters the floor.
As one would expect, Andrew's whole massive family showed up for the event, which meant, among other things, I got to meet Nate as 'Nate'. He looked damn smart in his rented suit, and his hair—drawn into a topknot to show off an undercut that was perfectly hidden with his hair down—was a clever and stylish solution to using the same haircut to present as either gender.
"Thanks!" he said when I commented as much. "I'm really happy with it."
"You should be; it looks great." I toasted him with a champaign glass full of sparkling apple juice—Lizzie had gone out of her way to accommodate my teetotaling, bless her—then ventured, "Still no interest in magical solutions?"
Nate shook his head. "Thanks, but I don't really need it. It doesn't need to be perfect as long as it expresses how I feel inside, you know?"
"Awesome."
If only we could all be so confident.
I also saw a couple faces I hadn't seen in a long time.
"Should have known I'd run into you here," Robert said. "Cassandra, right? How have you been?"
"Better than you, by the look of things," I quipped.
"That's fair." He and Alexis looked like hell warmed over; they'd just had their second kid, and it showed.
"At least we got one good night's sleep out of this trip," Lexi said, stifling a yawn.
Robert nodded and rubbed sleepy eyes. "Mhm. Wonder if there's some magic cure for not sleeping."
While not a replacement for sleeping by any means, I knew a spell that was a lot better than no sleep
and no help, and I didn't see any reason not to use it. The couple's eyes went wide as saucers as the magic took hold; Lexi looked like she wanted to kiss me, while Robert burst into heaving laughter. "Oh, no, don't tell me!" he choked out. "Jim's freak out at that boardgame night was because you're a wizard?"
"Kitsune, actually," Homura chimed in from behind me.
"What, real—?"
"
No," I interrupted. "Akemi, no, you can't make that joke to him! He's an actual folklorist!"
———X==X==X———
Homura finished her virtue gem project a couple weeks before the wedding and got it through the MSA within the month, and then it was time to pack up our things, sign over the shop to its new owners, hand Luke the key to the apartment, and say our goodbyes for good. The apartment didn't look much different for our packing; we were leaving all the amenities: the furniture, the appliances, the dishes, the linens and towels. I'd spent the previous day making copies of all the photographs, so Luke could keep those, too.
The timing sucked, though; our departure was smack in the middle of Luke's exams.
"It's time, isn't it?" Luke asked.
"Yeah," I said. "I wanted to say goodbye in person."
"I'm glad."
We'd come all the way to Baltimore, though it wasn't that long a trip when you could teleport. Homura had led me straight to Luke, and now here we were. It was just over twenty-four hours until our departure, but Luke would be busy all the following day, so we were saying our goodbyes now.
The three of us spent the day exploring both the university campus and the nicer parts of the city, complete with an early dinner at a nice restaurant. Now, at the end of the still-lengthening spring day, it was time to say goodbye for real.
The scene was almost too perfect. Homura and I, side by side; Luke facing us across a foot or two of well-manicured lawn; each side looking at the other, knowing it would be the last time we met. The sun was shining, a light breeze ruffling our hair and stirring the grass, no unnecessary text bubbles breaking up the composition. It really was the perfect framing for the closing moments, the 'goodbye' epilogue after all was said and done.
Our place in Luke's story had come to an end.
Luke was the one to break the silence. "Can't believe I have my exams tomorrow, of all days."
"We can probably find time to stop by," I said. "We have until seven in the evening."
He made a face. "Thanks, but saying goodbye once is bad enough. I don't want to say it twice."
"We can save the goodbye for later."
"We already said it—or good as." Luke grunted and toed at the grass. "I… I hate long goodbyes."
I agreed with him there. "Same. Feels like you're just lingering and spinning your wheels."
"Like peeling off a band-aid as slowly as possible."
"And you'd rather just get it over with so you're not stuck in the moment."
"You've had to say goodbye a lot, huh?" he asked.
"Yeah. Leaving is always hard."
"Always?"
"Always," I confirmed. "It doesn't help that it really doesn't feel like it's been four years since you showed up."
"You mean it feels shorter than four years or longer than four years?"
"Both. Feels like we've known you since forever
and like we only just met you."
"I sorta know what you mean." Luke cleared his throat. "Still, I wish we had just one more year. Like, I know you don't have a say in it, but I wish things had lined up so you'd be here next year, for… you know."
"I know. I'm sorry I can't be there."
Well, there's no better time to tell him. "Uh, I was kind of planning this to be a surprise when I set it up, but it doesn't feel right to leave you in the dark: I've been talking to Vince and Jamie, and they'll be flying out for your graduation, so you'll have some parental figures there for you. They're looking forward to seeing you again."
Luke's mouth flapped like a fish for a second before he found his voice. "Thanks. No, wait, like,
thank you. You set that all up for me?"
"It was the least I could do." Yeah, we'd paid for the trip, but money was no object and once I'd extended the invitation I was pretty sure Vince and Jamie would've bought their own tickets if we hadn't. I hadn't been lying about them looking forward to seeing him again.
I broke eye contact for a moment as I admitted, "It sort of feels like I'm orphaning you."
Luke startled and began to wave his hands frantically as he babbled, "No, that's not—you don't need to worry about me. Really! I'm already old enough to drink!" His laugh was only slightly forced. "Besides, I have friends, and the apartment, and… and just, like,
so much more than I could have ever asked for."
"Are you going to be okay going back to Strawfield?"
"I already did the hard work of coming out to the whole freaking town, and I can go back to working at the shop while I figure out what a history degree is actually
good for, assuming they'll have me—"
"The whole shop loves you," I interrupted. "They'll be happy to have you back!"
"See?" Luke said. "It'll be fine!"
"Good."
He nodded, but had to stop and swallow down a lump in his throat.
"I'm gonna miss you," he said.
"Me too."
"The offer to join us is still open," Homura reminded him.
Luke chewed on his lip for a second.
"Thanks," he said, "but, uh, no thanks. I've heard the stories you tell; even Meg's not crazy enough for that."
"The term is 'ringlorn'," I corrected him.
"Then we have each made our choice," Homura said, ignoring my commentary, "and there is no need to be sorry about saying goodbye."
"If only it were that easy," Luke muttered, staring at the grass underfoot.
"If only," I agreed.
He glanced my way and forced a smile. "Still, I wouldn't trade the last few years for anything. I'm so, so lucky to have met you, in so many ways."
"We had some good times together," Homura observed.
"And some bad times," Luke added, the smile on his face making it clear the objection was born of pedantry, not disagreement. "And some"—a pause made the lack of an adjective clear—"times. And they were all worth it. You were everything I needed that my parents never gave me, and it being
you in particular is just so… so hilariously perfect in hindsight, you know?"
I found myself smiling back despite the occasion. "Forgiven me for keeping that secret close to my chest for so long?"
"Oh, I'm still mad!" he insisted. "But it's exactly what I'd have expected you to do if I'd known, so it's hard to hold it against you."
"Some things never change, huh?"
"Apparently," Homura said.
I rolled my eyes at her, then turned back to Luke. "Say, do you remember back when we were arguing about whether you could change your gender identity, and I said you'd look back on my saying no and think, 'Yeah, that was the right call'?"
He put on an exaggerated pout. "Oh, is this the 'I told you so' I've been expecting for the past four years?"
"Depends. Was I right?"
Luke laughed well and hard. "Yeah. Yeah, you called it. Happy?"
"Happy that
you're happy."
We said goodbye. Hugged a few times. Homura shook Luke's hand and patted him on the shoulder. We hugged some more and said goodbye again.
And then Homura and I… left.
———X==X==X———
After one more night in the apartment, Homura and I headed into the Warehouse at the stroke of eleven. We'd only just stepped into the Park when Max and Garrus walked in through another door, both already back to their normal bodies. Max was carrying Abby the cat, who looked none the worse for the intervening years; maybe she was immortal now, too.
"Well, that's done with," Max said.
No one had anything to add, so we waited in silence.
And then another door opened thirty feet away and Zeke stepped through, looking haggard in a way I'd never him before. It wasn't anything obvious, like bags under his eyes or a beard of sorrow; he appeared in perfect health, clean-shaven and neatly groomed, his military dress uniform likewise pristine. His jacket displayed the Valkyrie Corps sword-and-wing emblem proudly on the sleeves and breast, the latter almost hidden under a wall of medals and service ribbons.
No, Zeke's haggardness was in his
presence. Over the years I'd known him, he'd developed an aura of, if not 'confidence', then at least 'assurance'—an almost confrontational belief in the absurdity of the world and the rightness of his opinions on it. It was gone now, and he looked smaller in some nebulous way without it, as though he took up less space than he should have.
Abby leapt free of Max's arms with a yowl of '
Zeeeeeeeeeke' and raced across the grass to hit Zeke's ankles hard enough to bounce off. Zeke didn't waste any time sweeping the cat into his arms, cooing to it as he took a long, slow look around the Warehouse he hadn't seen since his abduction, breathing deep of its preternaturally fresh air.
Eventually, he set the cat down and walked over to us; Abby trailed after him with a litany of complaints about his absence, none of which he could understand but whose nature was obvious regardless.
Max forced a smile.
"Hey, Zeke."
"Hi," Zeke said. "Max. Garrus." He nodded to each in turn, then turned to address Homura and I.
"Welcome back, Zeke," I said.
"Welcome back," Homura echoed.
Zeke said nothing.
An awkward moment passed—
—and then he lunged forward to grab both of us in a crushing hug. Something hit me from behind, knocking the wind out of me as it pressed me into the embrace more thoroughly than Zeke's arms ever could.
"I missed you guys," he whispered.
"Good to see you," Homura replied, not sounding at all inconvenienced.
I couldn't say the same. "
Impeller," I squeaked.
"Oh! Sorry!" Zeke released us—arms and Impeller both—and shied back as though ashamed of his outburst. "It's been a while."
"A while," Homura agreed. "How long, for you?"
"Eight years. Three in training, four in active service, and one in…uh,
and one." His eyes widened as they fell on Max again. "Max! Sorry, I—"
"It's fine," Max interrupted, waving away the difference in greeting. "I know you see me more as a minder than a friend."
Zeke cringed and rubbed at his neck. "I'm still sorry because, uh, I have a favor to ask—but first, I got something for you." Something appeared in his hand in a sparkle of light. "This has everything there is to know about Valkyrie cores. There's also a bunch of other stuff, too: weapon technology, Higgs particles, physics studies on Breaches, Wave Force—"
"Zeke," Max interrupted, "are you attempting to bribe me for something?"
"No! Well, yes. A little." Zeke glanced over his shoulder at the doorway, which I only now noticed he'd propped open with a cinderblock of all things. "I was hoping I could, um, bring someone along."
Homura and I shared a look of surprise.
Had Zeke had a romance arc? That we missed?
"—to get all this stuff for me," Max was saying as he looked at what had to be some sort of solid state drive. "I'd say yes regardless. Bring her in."
"Thank you." Zeke didn't give any outward signal, but he must have sent a message, because a moment later—
Oh my god, how the hell did he find Anna's route?
Anna Sanchez, Valkyrie ace extraordinaire, stepped out of the door and took a long look around the Warehouse just as Zeke had. She did a double-take at Garrus, but after a quick glance at (and likely some private communication with) Zeke, she resumed her inspection of the park. I couldn't help but wonder what her frame's sensors made of the place, given how much space-bending was going on in here—come to think of it, that may have been the reason for Zeke's long look as well, if it hadn't been plain old homesickness.
Finally, she finished whatever analysis might have been taking place and walked over to join us. Zeke performed the traditional introductions, though I had little doubt
we all knew
her. Anna looked more or less as I'd expected: tall for a woman—which was to say, almost my height—with a triangular face, chin-length wavy red hair, and violet eyes locked into the middle distance. In contrast to Zeke's impeccable dress uniform, she wore a light zip-up hoodie, track pants, sneakers, and—when she eventually took her hands out of her jacket's pockets to shake Max's hand—fingerless gloves.
Anna nodded once to each of us as we were introduced, and again when she was introduced, but she was otherwise
still in a way that surpassed even Homura. It took me a moment to realize what it was that struck me as odd: the park's omnipresent fresh breeze wasn't affecting her clothes or hair in the slightest.
"Welcome," Max said once the formalities were complete. "I'm delighted to meet Zeke's girlfriend."
The reaction was immediate and explosive. "She/he's not my girl/boyfriend!" the two Valkyries yelled over each other, both flushing bright red at the suggestion.
"Sorry, sorry." Max held up his hands to stem the indignation. "I shouldn't have assumed. Anna, Zeke tells me you want to join our weird little group?"
Anna reset herself with an act of will.
"I would, sir."
"Then we'd be thrilled to have you." They shook hands. The door Zeke and Anna had emerged from slammed shut, crushing the cinderblock and sending a hail of fragments in every direction, a few of which traveled far enough to bounce off the pair's Impeller fields before they could endanger… well,
me, since no one else was likely to be so much as inconvenienced by the shrapnel.
"Well, I hope you're not having seconds thoughts," Max quipped.
"No," Anna said quickly. "I mean, I am sure."
"Good. Shall I give you the tour?"
Anna looked to Zeke to answer that, but Homura spoke first. "I have another suggestion," she said. "Unless Theresa and Jennifer have been unceremoniously dumped in their rooms without warning, our Jump should remain connected for the customary eight hours."
Zeke looked confused for half a second before he got the hint. "You think I could…?"
"I would assume so."
He looked at Max, who shrugged, then turned to Anna.
"Would you like to meet my old friends?"
———X==X==X———
