AN: Beta-read by
Carbohydratos,
Did I?,
Gaia,
Linedoffice,
Zephyrosis, and
Mizu.
Chapter 127: Valkyrie Business
"—and she says, 'Not a frakkin' chance'! The whole point was to make the nugget run the course 'til they realized they had to red-line the reactor, then chew them out for it."
"Why?" Zeke asked.
"To teach you how and when to use that extra bit of power, I guess."
"But if red-lining the reactor is the right answer, why punish you for doing it?"
"Again, guessing, but I think the other half of the lesson is that you better be damn sure you need it."
More than a week had passed since we'd gotten back. Zeke split his time between his new(er) friends, his old friends, and therapy; Anna split her time between Zeke, her own therapy, and wherever she disappeared to when she wanted to be alone. Neither had yet offered to explain what had gone so wrong in the closing years of the Jump.
Zero had suggested we check the Jump-reflecting out-of-universe wiki to see what the hell our two resident Valkyries had been through. I'd disagreed. "They'll tell us when they're good and ready," I'd told her. "I'm not going to pry. And for the love of god, don't fucking mention it around them unless they bring it up first."
I had no idea if she'd checked or not; if so, she hadn't mentioned it around me, either.
Speaking of Zero, she'd decided to kill time while she waited for Mordin to finish tinkering with the Valkyrie tech by randomly auditing my melee training. In contrast to the Rita Difficulty Slider, Zero had absolutely no intention of ever holding back, so I never sparred against her; rather, whenever she invited herself, she and I fought Rita two versus one. I'd wondered if Rita had some perk that allowed her to fight at the perfect level to train someone, and the fact that she could match Zero's speed and still move slowly enough for me to feel like I was contributing pretty much confirmed it.
Zero was many things, but she was not a team player on the battlefield, so I didn't feel like I learned much from her 'assistance' that I didn't from sparring with Rita alone. Her contribution to my training, if it could be called that, consisted of her doing her best to teach me a wide variety of ridiculous moves that she'd either learned from various video game Jumps or developed herself in imitation.
"I don't care how cool it looks! Stabbing myself through the chest isn't going to power up my attacks, it is going to
kill me."
Not that I didn't appreciate her input, of course; practicing ridiculous techniques would have been a lot of fun even if they were entirely useless, though I was at a loss to explain why they weren't. The things she taught me should get me destroyed by people with a more realistic grasp of sword-fighting—but then again, David had taught Taylor how to butterfly kick people in the head, so clearly anything was possible.
I still refused to stab myself, no matter how much she wanted to teach me how to make it 'work'.
So went the previous week; today, I'd happened across the Valkyries and company in the Workshop: Zeke leaning against the wall, tapping his foot impatiently; Anna sleeping on a couch someone had dragged in from elsewhere; and Mordin bustling about some seriously weird-looking machinery with his normal manic intensity.
"Odd place for a nap," I'd commented to Zeke.
"Upgrading core," Mordin had answered. "Unaccustomed to absence. Requested sedation."
"She wanted to get her core and frame upgraded to the specs Mordin's new ones have rather than replacing it," Zeke explained. "But she hasn't unsynced for five years, if not longer, and did not like how it felt when she did."
"Was she physically dependent on it?" I asked, more than a little worried both for Anna and everyone who'd use the Cores.
"Well, yes," Zeke said, "but not in the way you mean. She used her frame for everything. Breathing, circulation, digestion…"
"How?!"
"Extreme measures," Mordin answered. "Food enters storage, not stomach. Impeller handles oxygenation, circulation. No pulse, breathing, digestion; eliminates tremors, deviation."
I raised my eyebrows. "
Damn. What are the side effects of that?"
"One observed: normal biology discomforting."
"She's fine," Zeke translated. "Just a little grossed out by having a heartbeat."
Fucking hell.
Zeke proved a good friend and distracted me from
that by suggesting—possibly at the advice of his therapist—that he share some anecdotes from the start of his training, when everything was new and scary and nothing bad had happened yet. He'd then gone on to spin a yarn about the unwanted attention he'd had to deal with from the girls in the Academy—because there was apparently an entire after-school club dedicated to swooning over the one-in-several-hundred male Valkyries in attendance—and the increasingly unlikely lengths they'd gone through to find excuses to talk with him. That somehow segued into a second-hand story about how Anna's frame insisted everything in the simulators was a decoy rather than a real threat—a claim which, he pointed out, was technically correct. I reciprocated with a mix of anecdotes from Starfleet, Rita's recent training, and Kara's indelicate instruction, which brought us to the present.
"The instructors dressed me down the first time I disabled my frame's safeties in simulation," Zeke said, "but those are meant to keep the
pilot safe, not the equipment, and I dislocated both shoulders with that stunt."
"Ouch. What were you doing?"
"Accelerating too hard—in
pursuit, specifically. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have been so harsh if I'd been evading anti-aircraft fire instead. Better a dislocated shoulder than a smoking crater." He reconsidered his words, then snorted. "No, on second thought, they'd've told me off for putting myself in that position in the first place. The reason Valkyries work in Flights is so they don't get checked like that in the first place."
"Checked?"
"Like chess: you're boxed into a bad flightpath because it's the only flight-path that doesn't lead to immediate death. A mature Valkyrie frame has insane acceleration and more CIWS than a twenty-first century aircraft carrier, so the main threats to a Valk are unforced errors, check-and-mates, and straight up overwhelming force from high-tier Types."
I didn't miss the way his eyes flicked to Anna as he spoke—but that was a topic that strayed well away from 'happy training stories'.
"So," Zeke said, "are you going to sync a Valkyrie frame?"
"Of course. Assuming I can—"
"Compatibility issue solved," Mordin said.
"Okay, then. Yeah, I'll definitely take one."
"Great." Zeke grinned. "I was hoping to go flying with you sometime. I never realized how much I missed flying."
"Since coming back?"
"Since joining the 'chain."
"Oh."
"'Missed' might not be the right word," he continued. "We've talked about how my 'memories' of my pre-'chain self aren't exactly 'memories', but even if everything else about being dropped into that world was a nightmare, getting back in the air just felt
right. I loved it. Even in combat zones, CAPs were the best part of my day—as long as nothing happened, obviously."
"Caps?"
"Combat Air Patrol. Flying in circles just in case something shows up."
"Ah," I said. "I
can fly, you know."
"At mach 6?"
"Well, no."
Ever the gentleman, Zeke graciously moved on to another point rather than dwell on my deficiencies. "Speaking of flying, you learned how to fly shuttles in Starfleet, right? Was that any help?"
"With the Viper? Not a bit. Like riding a bike versus rowing a boat."
"Which is which?"
"Does it matter?"
He laughed and shrugged. "I guess not. I was just wondering if you had a specific assignment in mind."
"No, I hadn't thought that far ahead. If you want a detailed answer, the Viper is a hell of a lot more complicated. Starfleet shuttles are designed to be easy to use, while the Viper is more or less a 'modern' jet fighter 'in space'."
"Which is not easy to use."
"It's not 'simple', at least," I said. "Back to Valk frames, though, are you synced with yours now?"
"See for yourself." With those words, he expressed his frame.
The lowest layer appeared first: a dark maroon undersuit of bundled fibers, arranged in skinless imitation of the body below. Armored panels followed before the underlayer had finished forming: heavy white plates wrapped all the way around the fore- and upper-arms and the corresponding areas of his legs, while smaller segments interlocked to protect the outside of his knees and elbows, and the backs of his hands and fingers. The plates on his trunk were articulated to allow a full range of motion, and pauldrons protected the gap between the chest and back plates and those on the upper arm. No plates interfered with his neck before the undersuit disappeared into the bottom of his helmet; his visor was a narrow band of gray I judged barely large enough to cover his eyes without interfering with his peripheral vision.
Zeke turned around to give me a better view of the armor. In contrast to the techno-organic musculature below, the shiny metal plates were all crisp angles and ridges; rather than a suit of plate armor, it looked more like he was wearing a tank—a very
flashy tank, as the reflective white surfaces sported gold highlights to break up (or add to) their brightness. Two thruster points stuck out of the back of each of his calves, and another three much larger versions ran across his back, all vectoring this way and that as he moved. A closer look at the armor on his hands and feet showed that the plates combined their gold highlights with decorative geometry to make his fingers resemble claws, or perhaps talons; the helmet had its own set of carved angles and a set of swept-back mecha-style horns-slash-wings that made its otherwise utilitarian profile noticeably draconic.
Once he'd finished his slow spin, he started throwing out weapons. A cylinder anchored to his right vambrace about where one might hold a tonfa was likely his melee halberd, stowed for flight. Scary-looking ballistic cannons, each a lump of weirdly split, harshly angled armor with a trio of meter-and-a-half-long barrels wide enough to stick my fingers in jutting out like battleship guns, anchored themselves to either side of his hips in a way strangely reminiscent of shipgirl rigging. A massive bifurcated barrel even larger than the aforementioned ballistics sprouted from a articulated mount over his right shoulder; a smaller yet still impressively large barrel mirrored it on his left; and a pair of missile racks sporting two empty six-inch-diameter tubes each hovered behind his shoulders. The surface of his armor rippled with crimson light as he cycled something that looked a lot like Drive!Anna's LCIWS system (and probably
was 'a lot like' it), and a halo of seven energy cannons began a slow orbit behind his back.
Zeke held himself there for a moment before all the weapons disappeared; his helmet followed, though he kept the visor expressed across his eyes from temple to temple like a superhero mask.
"Feels weird to express all my weapons like that," he said. "Usually, you express only the muzzle, like this." The ends of the three barrels from one of the heavy cannons he'd shown off earlier appeared and disappeared from the back of his gauntlet. "Oh, and everything I just showed you is completely outclassed by stuff Mordin can make with nothing but a lump of iron, a loop of copper wire, and a hammer and tongs, but that's not really relevant."
"Tools unnecessary," Mordin objected.
"'Nothing' includes 'no magic'. Perks and skills only."
Mordin considered that restriction.
"
Tongs unnecessary," he decided.
"So you haven't upgraded your core yet?" I asked Zeke.
"Core? Yes. Frame? No."
"I'm not exactly sure of the difference, to be honest."
"The core is just the core," Zeke explained. "It provides your Storage and Impeller, and it's what does the integration and synchronization. The frame is everything else attached to it." He tapped the armor on one forearm for emphasis.
"Ah. So…"
"My Storage and Impeller are, to be brief,
absurd."
"Nice."
"I assume the time to integrate new components will be similarly ridiculous"—he paused to glance at Mordin, who nodded—"so I'll be able to upgrade the bits and pieces myself."
I nodded to show I was paying attention rather than to communicate any sort of agreement.
"Well," I said, having finally gathered my thoughts on Zeke's frame, "it's very… flashy. Does it have a name?"
"Anatashesha."
"Anatashesha," I repeated. "That's a mouthful."
"A lot of them are." Zeke raised a hand to look at the faux-talons he had on his fingers. "And 'flashy' is a far reaction. I think it was going for maximum contrast with Anna's."
"Do they do that?"
"That was a joke. Someone designed it like this for some godforsaken reason."
"Oh."
Zeke laughed and dismissed the armor, though he still kept the visor.
"I think I mentioned that I looked at the… series?" I began.
"You did."
"Right. There are different continuities, and in some of them, it was heavily implied that the frames had personalities to them."
"They can," he said. "Valkyrie Cores are adaptive systems, fundamentally, and the obvious part of being an 'adaptive system' is that they'll integrate and improve just about anything you give them, from a hammer to a railgun to the Valkyrie herself."
"I suspected that was how that worked."
The 'human improvement' element would have put me off if I'd had to deal with it years earlier, and for many of the same reasons
Star Trek's Federation steered clear of such technologies, but the very first perks I'd taken had already put me past peak human in constitution, mental fortitude, and recall. Hemming and hawing over it at this point was drawing distinctions without difference… and in the end, wasn't this sort of thing half the reason I'd longed for Jumpchain-style vapid wish fulfillment in the first place? Even setting aside how much I'd hated my appearance, my original body barely worked
as a body.
"The less obvious part," Zeke continued, "by which I really mean the less discussed part, since I think it's still fairly obvious, is that they adapt to changing needs and situations, and one of the ways they can fill a Valkyrie's needs is to develop 'personalities' of varying sophistication and temperament. Anna operated solo for years, with no one to watch her back or analyze enemy patterns and only an instinctive understanding of the frame's capabilities, and so her frame developed a 'personality' that filled in some of those gaps using her own neurology as a basis for its functions."
"Huh."
"That kind of adaptation is why cores develop 'quirks': if your frame has a quirk, it's because the core found some past adaptation to something or another and decided to keep it around."
"So 'personalities' are just another quirk," I said. "An adaptation a core decides is too good to let go."
"I presume some—perhaps even most—
are 'let go', but in cases where the 'personality' is passed on to future users, yes, that's right."
"What other kinds of quirks are there?"
"Oh, all sorts." Zeke started ticking points off on his fingers. "Frames that have a tendency to express a certain weapon system even when you want a different one, frames that are particularly happy to mingle Impellers, frames that very much do not want to mingle Impellers, frames that tend to fire missiles off before they finish acquiring a lock…"
"Most of those sound like disadvantages."
He shrugged. "Yeah, the ones you notice tend to be the annoying ones."
"Does yours have any quirks?"
"Probably. I can't think of any, but I'm sure I'd notice their absence in a heartbeat if I synced a different core."
"Personality?" I asked.
"No, but those are pretty rare. I was curious myself and tried to do a study while I was at the Academy, but there were only four frames that fit the bill—far too few for even the slightest bit of experimental rigor—and exactly one Valkyrie who'd had her frame during said personality's development."
"Anna?"
Zeke grinned and nodded. "Right in one. In the end, all I got is a list of commonalities in their histories, things that
probably make personalities more likely to occur: synchronizing at a young age, prolonged synchronization with the same core, low contact with other Valkyries, low levels of training relative to live combat experience, and anthropomorphization of the frame in question by the synced Valkyrie herself."
"Huh." I ran through the list again in my head. "I don't know about the last one, but Anna fits the other four almost perfectly."
"Well, yes, but is that because she was in a situation tailor-made to create that kind of adaptation, or because she was the only case study I could do and thus primed me to look for those things?"
"Science is hard."
"Yeah."
We watched Mordin putter about for a moment before I offered another question. "So, what's with the visor?"
"The—oh, whoops!" The visor vanished in a shimmer of light. "Sorry. Habit I picked up at the Academy."
"Why?"
He sighed. "It made me less approachable to my… I hate to use the word, but 'fangirls' is probably the most accurate descriptor as far as connotations go."
"I guess it would."
The Protectorate always was pushy about letting people see your eyes.
"I guess frames aren't the only things that develop quirks, huh?" I quipped.
"Apparently not."
The term 'fans' reminded me of another question. "Did you show Anna, uh, 'my' show?"
Zeke frowned at being called out. "She asked what I'd been streaming from PrIMA."
"Prima?"
"The UN
Pre-
Impact
Media
Archives."
"Mm-
hm?"
"Hey, I missed you, okay? It wasn't easy to find, either, so take that as a compliment."
That was the point at which Mordin interrupted us. "Upgrades complete," he announced. "Major Sanchez?"
The Valkyrie groaned and stirred into wakefulness before holding out a hand blindly in his direction. Zeke did the honors of transferring the glowing tennis ball-sized sphere from Mordin's hand to hers, where it disappeared.
Only a few seconds later, Anna stood up, still looking a little nauseous from her brief encounter with biology. Without a word, she expressed and retracted her own black-with-green-emissions
Durga several times before leaving it in storage. It really did have 'maximum contrast' with Zeke's
Anatashesha; sleek where his was bulky, smooth and organic where his was angled and mechanical, and almost entirely devoid of color or detail where his was flashy.
"Everything appears to be in order," she informed Mordin. "The upgrades are… significant."
Mordin shook his head. "Hardly. Performance limited — plus twelve percent previous. Acclimation required. Raise carefully."
Anna's eyebrows shot into her hairline only to return to their normal position just as quickly. "I will, sir."
"Never passed captain,
Major," he corrected her. "Deference unnecessary."
Mordin stopped and cocked his head.
"Overruled Colonel's authority once," he recalled. "Court-martialed upon return. Acquitted. Given commendation. Still, unpleasant."
"Maybe you can tell me the story another time," Anna offered. "I would like to test the improvements in the simulators."
"Naturally. Always here."
"We're going to go exercise," Zeke told me. "Want to grab a frame and try to keep up?" He jabbed a thumb at a row of more than a dozen Cores of varying sizes, each labeled—absurdly, given the contrast in sophistication—with a hand-written 3x5" notecard describing the frame in question in blue ballpoint pen.
I'd barely read through the first card when Mordin spoke up. "Fourth from left, Miss Rolins. Suitable training equipment: fast intercept configuration, moderate weapon load."
"Fast enough to keep up with
these two?" I asked.
His answer was a blunt, "No," not that it really mattered. I knew third-wheeling when I saw it, no matter what was or was not going on between them.
I turned back to the Valkyries. "Sorry," I said. "I've got plenty of 'training' planned already. Maybe another time, after I look over the manuals?"
Zeke looked disappointed, but I'd read the room right: Anna looked relieved.
———X==X==X———
From: Rolins, Cassandra
To: Solus, Mordin
> Are we sure there are no adverse effects from Valkyrie cores? Some of the documentation Zeke brought back could be generously described as 'concerning', particularly the reported mental issues associated with longterm use.
From: Solus, Mordin
To: Rolins, Cassandra
> You don't need to worry: you should be well below the neuroplasticity threshold for issues like LDS, which is, as I'm sure you read, associated with combat and thus likely an expression of PTSD by augmented neurology rather than a condition stemming from the cores themselves. Even were you at risk for any core-related issues, mental wellness perks should prevent or reverse any harm done. I believe you have at least one such perk?
From: Rolins, Cassandra
To: Solus, Mordin
> Is that really you, Mordin? You write completely differently to how you speak and text.
From: Solus, Mordin
To: Rolins, Cassandra
> I wouldn't have made it very far in the STG if I cut corners on my written reports! Having five fingers on each hand makes typing even faster and more convenient than it was back then, although now that I'm thinking about it, it's been a very long time since I've had reason to type on an actual keyboard. I would hook one up for the nostalgia, but it would be so inefficient to use I doubt I would ever do so.
> As for text, I use the same grammar there that everyone else does. It's not my fault you only decided to properly compress your language after it became inconvenient for electronic communication.
———X==X==X———
My excuse was exactly that, so I ended up synching a Valkyrie core the next day. Part of it was that I wasn't any less eager to play with the new toys than anyone else; the rest was Zero being… predictable, in her own way.
"Cass! Mordin's got all his cores all set for pickup!"
There was no disguising the fact that I jumped backwards into my room, but in my defense, I'd not encountered anyone waiting directly outside my hotel room door to ambush me the moment my door opened before.
"How long have you been standing there?!" I yelped.
Zero shrugged. "About ten minutes? You've got a pretty regular schedule. I already got my frame, but I figured I'd wait for you 'cause Anna likes you a hell of a lot more than she likes me."
I glanced at my watch—7:13. "When's her class start?"
"She's not giving a class. Well, yet. I hope. Max set up some sick-ass simulators, and last I checked, people were in there with all the fuckin' manuals Zeke brought back trying to work things out on their own."
Meanwhile, Zero had come to get me because Anna 'liked me more'.
"So you headed up here to piggyback off my friendship with
her best friend," I said.
"Uh… yes?"
My disapproving glare had just as little effect as ever, so I had little choice but to relent. "Fine. You can follow me around until I run into her, but if she doesn't want to deal with you, I'm not going to argue."
Zero gave me two exuberant thumbs up. "Best behavior! Promise."
"Good." Promise extracted, I turned and led us down the hall towards the elevator.
"How much've you practiced with your core?" I asked.
"It's more 'practiced with the frame'," Zero corrected me. "You don't fly an engine, you fly a plane."
"I stand corrected."
"They're totally sweet, though. Makes up for missing out on getting a Warframe."
I knew she hadn't been around for that Jump, but I'd figured the 'chain was 'late-game' enough that that wouldn't matter too much. "They don't have any spares you can use?"
She sighed. "Unfortunately not. I think that was pretty early on, so Max didn't get to loot the place as hard as he'd've liked, and getting all the space-magic mumbo-jumbo sorted is a pain in the ass, too."
"Ah."
Zero bounced right back to her new favorite topic. "Anyway, Valkyrie frames? Totally sweet. I hope Management doesn't embargo them like vehicles."
"Embargo?"
"Yeah, there are a whole bunch of bullshit restrictions on what works in what setting. No tanks in medieval settings, no-you-can't-glass-the-Blight-from-orbit, shit like that."
"You know you've jinxed it now, right?"
She rolled her eyes. "Eh, worst case scenario we just have to wait 'til we hit
Macross or whatever. Oh, maybe they'd work somewhere like
Hawx or
Ace Combat. That'd be fucking hilarious."
"Would it even be a contest?"
"Not even close."
As I'd suspected.
"Did playing the game help you learn the frame at all?" I asked.
Zero laughed. "Not a fucking chance—you might as well try learning to skateboard with one of those finger-toy thingies." She held up one hand, thumb tucking her ring finger and pinkie in while she wiggled the other two in pantomime. "I did get a few pointers from Anna, but they were all either fuckin' obvious or vague as hell."
"I'm not sure what you expected. She's kind of a 'fly by feel' person."
The elevator opened without either of us pressing a button, then closed and began to descend with an equally nonexistent amount of input.
"Are you using your frame to control the elevator?" I asked.
"
Duh. If I want to get on her level, I gotta
think like her, right?"
"I don't think that's right, no."
Zero huffed and crossed her arms.
"You know," I told her, "it's kinda weird to see you fangirling over someone."
"I am not 'fangirling'!"
"How would you describe it, then?"
"Fine!" she whined, throwing her arms up. "I'm fangirling. What of it?"
"It's cute."
"
Cute?"
"Yeah, cute," I repeated. "Deal with it."
"Deal with
thith."
"Very mature, Zee. Now stop it before you lick something by accident."
The elevator dinged, and we walked through the lobby to the restaurant entrance, where Zero pulled ahead to make a beeline for Zeke. He was alone this morning: one hand propping his head up on his elbow, the other stirring a half-empty fruit smoothie with a straw while he stared into the glass like it held the answer to life itself. She at least had the restraint to hover a few feet away and wait for me to make the initial approach.
"Zeke?" I asked.
"Cass," he replied without looking up. "Zero. I see you got a core. Close combat, I'm assuming."
"Damn straight," Zero said. "Where's your—"
I elbowed her.
"—friend? Fuck's sake, Cass, gimme a little credit."
"Sorry."
Zeke remained intent on his stirring. "Still in her room."
Zero shot me a questioning look, but I didn't know any more than she did.
"Mind if we join you?" I asked. He waved a hand at the other chairs, and we sat; I took the seat across from his, while Zero sat between us, to my right.
"So…" I began, stretching the word out indelicately. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah."
"What's up with Anna?" Zero asked, already bored of tact.
Zeke blew out a long sigh.
"Max built us a proper simulator," he said. "Holodecks are made to fool organic senses, not high-grade military sensor equipment, so we needed a Valkyrie-compatible simulator to test new frames and components in. He built four of them, actually, since they're pretty much
only good for Valkyrie training, unlike the holodeck—sorry. Like I was saying, he built four simulators, and he built them right: two hundred-klick POSDIF, full Higgs simulation and containment, spacefolding and noise suppression that don't trigger Valk countermeasures, attack signatures that
do trigger countermeasures, the works. The things can model a class-S Zero at full combat performance—ordinance
and tactics—and still cushion the blows enough to make it safe for a cadet."
"They go up to
S class?" Zero asked in a tone that brought to mind a kid learning about an amazing new ice cream flavor.
I, however, was still focused on the 'Anna problem', and I saw where things were going. "Don't tell me Anna decided to fight a Zero—"
Zeke interrupted me with an exasperated, "She did."
"It kicked her ass, then," Zero said.
He barked out a bitter laugh. "No. She tore through it like tissue paper."
"You said the simulator could—"
"It can. It did! One of Mordin's new Cores at full power let a single Elite Valkyrie tear apart a Class-S Type Zero with the same ease she'd curbstomp a Five before the upgrade."
"She was using a new core?" Zero asked, missing the point entirely.
"Zero…" I began.
"Yeah, off topic, whatever. Why was winning bad?"
Zeke just glowered into his drink, so I fielded that question. "Because she wanted a
rematch. She wanted to overcome it, not ludicrously overpower it. Am I right?"
He nodded.
"So she wanted a cage match and got a curbstomp," Zero summarized. "That's disappointing, sure, but—"
"It was
trivial," he snapped, finally looking up from his drink to glare at her. "Can you imagine what the war would've looked like if we had access to just
one of the Cores Mordin's been making? To one only a
tenth that strong? How would you feel if you learned the threat you'd spent your whole life trying to stop could've been made
completely irrelevant if only you'd had a relatively tiny bit of help?"
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. The people at nearby tables stopped talking as well, just long enough to give Zeke a curious glance and consider whether or not they should say something before he waved their concern away.
"Oh," Zero said. "Fuck."
"Thinking about your own world?" I asked her.
"Yeah. Max helped, sure, but it wasn't like it was easy. Fuck, if he'd just waved a hand and one-shot the thing, I'd've lost my shit."
"Point made," Zeke muttered snippishly.
"Yeah, I gotcha. Is she gonna be okay?"
He shrugged one shoulder. "She's just sulking. She'd argue the terminology, but she is."
"Good. I think?" Zero frowned and performed a more expressive shrug of her own. "Let me know when she's feeling better? I was hoping she'd give me some lessons."
"And you're dragging Cass around because she made a better impression," Zeke observed, lingering annoyance coloring his voice. "Is she even going to claim a core? I can tell she's not synced."
"We're heading to the Workshop next, right, Cass?"
"Yup," I agreed.
Zeke raised an eyebrow in my direction. "Change your mind?"
"I said I'd pick one up eventually."
"You also said you were too busy to pick one up now."
"Because Anna didn't want me intruding on your simulator time together," I countered.
"Ah, yeah." He sighed and sagged in his chair. "I was hoping you'd tag along anyway and give her something to do besides brawl with Zeros. There was no chance that was going to end well."
Ah.
"Well, I'll leave you be," I told him. "Hope Anna feels better soon."
Zeke straightened up and shook his head. "No, I'll come with you. I can get you started. Probably better off asking me than Anna anyway; she's many things, but she's not a teacher." He pushed his chair back from the table, abandoned his smoothie to whatever magical wait-staff ran the place, and asked, "Shall we?"
I hadn't eaten breakfast yet, but I didn't actually need to.
"Sure."
———X==X==X———
