69 - No Cheese On The Moon
"Moo."
"C'mon man."
"
Moo."
"No!"
The cow was not responsive to my requests. This vexed me.
It wasn't even hard to just fly over Texas and suck one up into ship, the benefits of Ancient teleportation technology melded with the Asgard version that had been modified for less 'advanced' beings made it is. Well, that and the fact that cow herds are huge as all get out. One disappearing from the middle of it all probably wasn't going to be that noticeable unless the cowherd and what not were able to pick out that something was wrong out of that giant morass of mooing. I wouldn't be surprised to be honest given how crazy this version of Earth was.
Speaking of mooing…
"
Mooooooo."
"No, man, c'mon. I gotta do it."
There was something that just felt kind of wrong standing in front of the cow with a cleaver while it was still alive. How can I tear a galaxy apart but not be able to just butcher an animal? Wait should it be tranquilized? Or something? I have the manuals that I downloaded, the books I bought out of the shops around the world…I can check those but haven't yet. It wouldn't be impossible for me to just outright build a butcher's shop on the ship, I've got plenty of empty space left, but
still.
"Stop looking at me with them big ol' eyes and just…ah fuck it. I can't do it."
I let the cleaver dissolve into nothingness back into my metal reserves and ended the staring contest. Are cows supposed to have such soulful eyes or am I just projecting or something? She's a big one, that's why I grabbed her. Not pregnant, not even that fat, just kind of big. Didn't that mean she would be good for eating or something? Or milk and cheese? I don't even know. I just…stole a dude's cow. Well. Not
a dude. More like some greater farm group owned by a corporation but that wasn't important right now.
Then it came closer and just kind of sniffed at me before bumping its head into my hand.
"
Moo."
What, like a cat or something? They don't…I mean yeah I'll scratch it behind the ears but that's it. Besides, cats are carnivorous and cows are vegetarian. I think. Mostly? They eat grass, right? Ah, fuck, that's right, I don't have any grass.
Damn it I already stole the cow I'm not just going to give it back!
"Fine.
Fine. But I still like hamburgers and steaks. Looking you in the eye isn't going to change that."
"Moo?"
I would have continued my conversation with a
fucking cow what am I doing but other things distracted me right around that point. Specifically Yuriko-13 finally having her vaguely scheduled freakout somewhere on the third deck. I'd put her there because there wasn't much to throw around except for my original Theta body but that was about it. I mean yeah she can lift entire carriers out of the ocean but unless she was planning on throwing it into the windowed parts of the sphere part of my ship then it was probably fine. Let's see…
"
AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Sounds about right.
"Moo."
"Now now, cow," I pushed its head away for a bit. "I gotta go make sure she doesn't destroy part of my ship. I mean…I don't really think she can, she's not more destructive than a beam from a Death Star or the sun but…yeah."
I was a bit harder to leave after it forlornly moo'd again as I teleported down. I made a note to put in a bunch of grass or whatever on the top deck of the sphere. It shouldn't have to live in a flat metal plane. But it would
not be allowed on the middle deck. That's
mine, that's the pillow pile and all my other tinkering and projects. Of the three decks, I can separate it like that if I have to. Top one is the cows, second is mine, and I guess that means I'll have to move my Theta body up there so that the third one can be Yurikos if she plans on staying.
"Hey Y-," my greeting got cut off as my current body got slammed into one of the walls of the bottom…third…
bottom deck.
Not because she hit me with the Theta body though that was swirling around too but rather because there was just a large openly visible telekinetic whirlwind filling up the entire deck. See
that is why I didn't put in stairs or fireman's poles all over the place. I'm the one who teleports around, and everyone else can suck it. Of course at the
moment she was flinging my current body around with wild abandon at speeds more than powerful enough to snap a human neck and tear off more than a little bit of the skin layer of my body to reveal the artificial musculature beneath.
Hopefully she wouldn't get down to the underlayer. I don't wanna go through the whole 'Oh no I'm actually a robot sort of kinda' thing.
"Hey
Yuriko!!"
Still no response. She was making winds out of
nothing though so that's not that surprising that she couldn't hear me through her little mini-hurricane thing. At least now she's moved on from the single word screaming and has moved onto ranting.
Which means that she held it together since we left Russia for about…forty-two minutes. Good for her I guess though I'm certainly no expert on mental trauma and issues. On the other hand, wouldn't it be cool if she
wasn't ranting about the Emperor, duty, honor, and
woah hey no
"Yuriko!"
In the second it took me to say her name I'd already turned on the freeze fields. It's a good thing that Ancient time dilator technology worked on command or it might have been too late! She didn't see me march over through a corridor of real-time but she definitely saw my scowling face when I dropped it all and pulled her hand away from her stomach.
"What the hell dude!?! Seppuku!?"
It took a second for the psionic knife thing she'd made to dissipate into nothingness but holy hell was it a long second.
Then...she started crying.
Damn it.
Oh.
Now she's hitting me. Fists mainly but I caught a good shot to the quantum-crystalline bits which made her hop back and hiss a little before starting in again. I let her, though I pretty easily could have stopped her barring another tornado forming out of her brain.
"Listen, Yuriko, I know it's kind of crazy right mldjl," I moved her fist from where it had lodged in my left cheek, "But that's no reason to kill yourself."
"I... betrayed...the Emperor!"
"Well...,"
"I slew my commander, abandoned my comrades, I cast myself away from his divine will!"
She's crying less, which is good. She's also getting mad and glaring at me which is...less good.
"This is all your fault!"
I should have mag-locked my feet to the ground but instead I went flying.
"I was happy, serving Him and His empire! I was!"
Thankfully she didn't catch my muttered 'I don't think you were' or else she might have thrown my body around some more. I mean...if things got too bad I could technically space her. Of the two units within my cap, the ship is the second one after all.
"But then you show up, and...and you ruined it!"
I dusted myself off as I spoke.
"Oh thank you, Guy, for saving me from being totes lobotomized. You're so cool, you gave me hot chocolate and clothes that weren't a schoolgirl uniform which was all I'd had since being born four months ago in a freaking tube because Tatsu sees all Yurikos as weapons and nothing else."
"He made us what we are!"
"And what is that, precisely?"
We shouldn't be having this conversation with her in a snuggie and me dressed...well like I normally am. It's way too serious.
"A weapon to be feared? A girl who never got to grow up before she was taken from her home? A dehumanized resource to be put into a machine built solely for war?"
I can tell she's till angry, the hormones and heartbeat on the scans tell me so, but she's also calming down. Also she's sad but it's not like that is news at this point.
"
We were respected."
"Tanks are respected. Battleships are respected. Weapons in general are respected. But, god Yuriko, how fucked up is it that the best commando in the Empire comes from a
sanitarium!?"
Normally, she floats off the ground. A few seconds ago she was as well. But now she's on the ground again doing that slowly collapsing onto sprawled leg things that I've seen her do.
"I don't know what I'm supposed do. I was
made to aid the Empire, to fulfill the Emperor's will on the battlefield..."
I have to sit down next to her to be face to face. All that power and yet the general shortness of Asians holds true.
"Yeah, well, Viagra was made for heart disease or something."
She blinks, but doesn't move towards trying to fucking disembowel herself again.
"Turned out, it was way better for ED. Dynamite was for mining but got used in combat cause explosives are good in a fight. Guy who made potato chips was trying to spite a crappy customer. Just cause something was made for something doesn't mean that it has to be like that. Also, like, fuck dude, you're a person. You can make your own decisions and whatever."
"You don't understand."
"Ah c'mon, don't look away from me. Just... okay, look. You want to go back to Japan?"
Well, at least she's not looking away from me anymore.
"I can drop you off at the doors to the sanitarium if you want. We can be there in like five minutes and you can get all lobotomized and whatever within the hour."
...ah, yes. Silence, my old conversational friend, you have returned to me. And while we've been here the cow pooped on my clean metal deck several hundred feet above where Yuriko and I now sit.
What to do, what to do...
"You know what I think we need? Food. When's the last time you ate?"
"...I don't eat. We have a calorie rich drink that reduces waste and provides all our nutrition needs."
Goddamn, that is some horrid shit. That is fucked up!
"That is some
evil shit!"
"It is efficient!"
On a very detached level I guess it makes sense. Reduce waste, reduce time wasted. For one of the most sophisticated and technologically advanced members of the war it doesn't seem that far out of place. After all, they've got nanomachine clouds and shit. US Marines get MREs, Soviets get vodka and borscht rations, and the Empire gives out...nutrient paste.
Even discussing it is kind of saddening but keeping her distracted and vaguely mad is better than fucking suicide.
"Does...does it at least taste good?"
"It is tasteless and odorless to keep the enemy from tracking us in the field."
That...is awful. That is terrible. That is some horribadble shit! I...I just...
Note to self: Do Not Let Empire Win!
Yeah no! Nope! They are
off the list of who gets to win this war!
"Yuriko."
I have to shake her by the shoulders a bit to get her out of her own head again.
"I promised to save you earlier."
"And I am beginning to think I should not have accepted."
"No, no," I shake my head, "You don't get it. I haven't
saved you yet."
"What?"
It takes no effort for me to bring her to her feet.
"Here, put these clothes on. We have to go somewhere."
They're basic jeans and whatever but she's not going around with me in a school uniform. I ain't no sugar daddy.
"Wh-where are we going?"
Ah, to hell with it, I'll be dramatic. I retract the protective metal shutters away from the windows and point down at the Earth from high above its atmosphere. Behind me she gasps at the sight....oh right I never told her we weren't on-planet anymore. Or ever.
"I have to take you to EVERY FIVE STAR RESTAURANT ON EARTH!!! Also some local delicacies...in most countries on Earth. Well," I check the news and all three proto-nets, "Some of the restaurants are uh, gone cause of the fighting...but a lot are still open!"
Instead of remarking on anything I just said, she kind of makes a weird choking noise.
"You...you...we're in...
"Space, yes. Lunar orbit if you want to be particular. But that's not important right now."
"It's extremely important!"
Wow that is a new high pitch from her.
"No, it's not! You know why? Because I am straight channeling my inner grandma so you young lady are going to be spending your time at my house gettin' FED!!"
"I...I've gone insane. This - this isn't real!"
"SET COURSE FOR SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY!!"
And we dove towards Georgia.
