“So how did it go?” Mike asked with a grin while he leaned into my doorway.
“Good!” I responded cheerfully. “There were some awkward bits but I’m seeing her again on Saturday!”
“Congrats! Uh, I knew you were visiting her for a reason, but I wasn’t actually sure what that was.” He admitted.
“She’s into cosplaying and I’m going to go with her to a con at the end of next month, we were mostly doing planning for that.”
“Wait, you’re dressing up too? Who are you going as?” He asked a bit mystified.
“Myself, or at least a fictionalized version of what my plate says.” I said while tapping the back of my head.
“Wait, as like a maid?”
“Something like that, we were going to make a really big gun and like combat gear to go with it.” I said while pantomiming carrying a rifle.
“You’re cool with that?” He was looking a bit confused, then repeated his question more explicitly worded. “You are certain about being fine to be going to a convention full of people as a maid?”
“I mean honestly the pattern we selected for it is not that much different from the stuff I’ve already worn except turning it up to eleven.” I answered with a shrug.
“Sam, that’s not the bit I am worried about, you did kinda get freaked out when you learned what your body was made for.”
I paused to consider his point.
“Yeah, in some ways it feels better to treat it as something I can ham up for something like this.” I hesitated then admitted something that was probably biasing me a bit. “Plus, it was really cute to see Anna’s reaction to hearing I would.”
He stared at me for a second then started guffawing, and after a few moments River turned up curious as to what was going on.
“Hi Sam, what started this then?” They asked indicating the still chuckling Mike, who decided to answer before I could.
“She’s going as a maid to a con because her prospective girlfriend was excited for it.”
“Hey! Actual girlfriend, thank you.” I corrected. “We have a date on Saturday planned.”
River was looking between us confused for a second, then addressed me.
“I’m glad to hear it, she seems nice.” They said still a bit bewildered.
“Oh yes, she let me rest my face against hers, it was so wonderful.“ I said with a sigh closing my eyes and holding a hand on the relevant cheek while trying to keep the experience fresh in my mind.
“Holy shit buddy, you’re practically swooning!” Mike said incredulously.
“Is that particularly good for you?” River asked curiously.
“You have no idea.” I murmured.
“Think it’s something new since the change?” Mike asked.
“Pretty sure it is,” I admitted after opening my eyes again. “It’s awesome though, I’m not sure I’ve ever been that relaxed in my life.”
“Well, it’s good to hear you can have physically fulfilling relationships in at least one aspect.” River commented.
“Huh, I guess yeah.” Then I started steaming up as I considered a possible implication of what they said and started shaking my hands in front of me. “Like it’s very much not a sexual thing, but at the same time I can only experience that with someone else.”
“You sure it isn’t sexual, cause you liked the hell out of whatever it was.” Mike countered grinning.
“Mike please.” River chided.
“Alright, alright.” He conceded then stepped back into the hall to stretch. “Well as entertaining as this has been, I probably need to be at least a bit productive tonight.”
“Later!” He said while heading to his room.
River watched him go and then shook their head with a smile, before slipping into my room while pushing the door closed behind themselves quietly.
“He was actually quite worried about how it would go. He didn’t want another negative experience for you.” They said quietly. “Don’t let him know I told you.”
They then hesitated to look a little drawn before asking their next question. “Just to check, did you tell her about before you or is that still something you want to wait on?”
“She knows, she actually had a pretty good idea of who I was before without me saying anything.” They relaxed a bit, and then I continued. “I won’t say the evening wasn’t without drama, but in some ways, I think it’s better that we got it out before it might be an issue.”
“Anything you want to talk about?” They asked gently.
“Eh, nothing new really. Probably the weirdest thing is that the whole stuff around my lack of primary sexual characteristics, it accidentally came up today-“ River raised both eyebrows. “Not like that you perv, and like honestly I am way less bummed about it now than earlier.”
“Oh?”
“She’s fine being in a relationship still, and while I don’t have a baseline to compare against, the contact thing feels good enough that maybe not being able to imagine sex isn’t a big deal.” I chuckled, then gave them a pointed look. “Still not a sexual thing by the way.”
They laughed.
“If anything, I guess it’s possible my remaining concern is that if it gets that far, I have something to offer her for the physical part of a relationship beyond the publicly appropriate part.” I said grimly, then gave them a lopsided grin. “That’s waaaaay overthinking it though, right now it’s like the joke about incels and excel.”
That got a good chuckle out of River.
“It might be a bit early in the relationship, but at least it shows your thinking beyond yourself.” River said while putting a hand on my shoulder. “I do have a question for you though.”
“Fire away.”
“Are you doing the cosplay part because she is into it?“ They asked seriously. “I don’t remember you expressing any interest before.”
I had an answer for this one already, although it was a recent one I came up with on the bus back from Anna’s place.
“I do think I genuinely have interest, some of it is just that I am getting caught in her hype for sure but um I do want to know what I would look like in some of the things she has shown me.” I admitted with my face heating up with embarrassment.
They laughed.
“Well, I won’t judge you for that. I mostly just didn’t want you doing it for the sake of a relationship, that’s not a healthy idea in my opinion.” They warned.
“I get what you mean, I did ham it up at the start, but I think I might have a lot of fun and I don’t want to say I shouldn’t just because I didn’t have an interest before.” I paused for a second before continuing. “If I went off that, well I don’t think I would have survived the last two weeks.”
“Oh, and don’t worry this doesn’t cause any question chain conflicts, I know that the opportunities for me are different now. Not necessarily better or worse, just different and I may as well explore them.” I gave them a somewhat unsteady grin. “I told Kat a while ago that I thought I could be happy in this body, and I know it now.”
“Oh Sam.” They said with a tearful smile before wrapping me in a hug.
“Yeah, life’s not so bad, eh?” I mumbled out around my own tears.
----------------------------------------
“Good morning, Sam!” Came a chipper greeting from behind me.
“Hi Anna, it’s nice to see you,” I said offering a hand as she caught up, which she took after a moments glance around.
“You know we spent all night talking about what I would go as, but what had you been planning for yourself?” I asked after a couple of minutes of quiet walking.
“I was going to do Alita, uh Gally I guess in the original, do you know them?” I nodded, I had read some of it off and on. “I’ve done them before, but I wanted to do one of her other outfits from later in the series. She’s got this cool one with a jumpsuit, jacket, and then this snake cannon on her shoulder!”
It was fun to watch her get excited.
“I know it’s way early to think about this given we haven’t even started yet, but is it weird that I thought of doing Hawkeye from FMA at some point?” I asked her sheepishly.
“Of course not, sometimes having the next project motivates you on the current!” She bubbled.
“I don’t know if I could make it work for me anyway with my joints and all.” I admitted.
“We can figure something out, she’s got a few different get-ups and stuff like her uniform are so starched we could cheat and use supports to hold them out of your joints.” She said thoughtfully.
“My brother apparently goes as Mustang to cons pretty often.” Jake mentioned, which made me realize that the other three had stayed with Anna and me this time. I guess they weren’t concerned about interfering with our relationship or something anymore.
“Really? Maybe I know him… wait are you Roger Teng’s brother?” Anna asked.
“Yep.”
“Wow, that guy has put a ton of effort into that. Has he shown you the pyrotechnics thing he did for a video?”
“Nah, he mostly gets embarrassed talking about it at my parents, and given he’s like a couple of hours away I don’t visit him that often.”
“Aw, I can send you the video though!”
“That would be great.” Jake said with a smile as we entered the brick.
----------------------------------------
“I’m expecting the first couple of things to be in tomorrow or the next day so we will have enough to at least start on Saturday.” Anna said excitedly while packing her laptop away.
“Nice, how did your inventory go? Is there anything I should be looking into ordering for the next time?” I asked while zipping up my bag.
“Well, I would probably want us to finish the gun design first, but we will always encounter things we missed once we get into it.” She admitted, then she paused and got a mischievous grin as I was about to get up. “Hold there a sec.”
“What’s up?” I asked confused but stayed where I was.
Then she leaned forward and rubbed her face on mine while draping her arms around my shoulders.
Oh, that’s nice…
All too soon she releases me, a big smile plastered on her face.
“I gotta run, see you Saturday!” She said putting actions to words and darting away into the crowd at the doors.
“Wow, she straight up turns your brain off by doing that.“ Mike said with a grin as he stood up. “You weren’t kidding last night.”
“Mmm, yeah…” I murmured back, taking a try or two to get up so I could follow.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
River giggled at my attempts and patted my head once I caught up, any potential ire I might have had was smothered by the afterglow I still felt.
“it’s really good to see you happy like that, and you didn’t get to see her expression either.” They said grinning broadly. “Let’s just say I don’t think it’s a one-way street to do that.”
“Oh, that’s good.” I said a bit more back into it and started to follow after them for lunch.
Once I finally made it home after the remaining classes I was greeted by Mike’s frustrated complaints and a peal of feminine laughter over the sounds of what I am pretty sure is a different fighting game.
I guess Leah is by again.
“Hello!” I said while taking my shoes off and getting a chorus of greetings back.
One of them was pretty uncertain, and I think it sounded like Jason, one of River and Leah’s mutual friends.
Ah dang, probably time for another awkward meet people again moment. Trying not to let it bother me, I went into the front room and leaned on the back of the couch to see what was up.
“Taking it seriously are we.” I asked speaking of the arcade-style stick in Leah’s lap.
“Yep, got a tournament this weekend and while I don’t know that this counts as practice-“ Mike made a series of complaints at this, which she ignored other than widening her grin. “It is fun.”
“Nice, big one?”
“Nah just a local thing, it usually gets decent turn out though.” She said without looking away from the screen. “Jason was going to go too.”
“Uh, yeah.” He said and I looked up at him not really having an excuse to avoid it.
He looked distinctly uncertain at the moment.
“How’s it going Jason, sorry if it’s a bit confusing to see me again. It’s Sam if you hadn’t guessed.” I said while giving a wave.
“Um, yeah I kinda had an idea of what happened, but it’s one thing to know academically...” he admitted guiltily.
“What are your pronouns now?” he asked and then quickly appended to it. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s fine.” I said waving away his concerns. “She her is my preference.”
“OK, cool.” He seemed to be relaxing a bit, I think he had been almost as worried about my reaction to his as anything else. Further conversation was interrupted by an explosion of noise from Mike, and I took a glance up to see what was happening.
Dual Swords armed women in air, scythe armed man swinging toward them, Rifle armed man leaning on car, dog with sword in mouth sitting on porch, … +10
“Ergh.” I grunted and looked away.
“Sorry Sam.” Mike apologized with audible guilt. “We’ll change the stage in a moment.”
“Don’t worry about it, I think more the issue is that my brain can’t figure out what I can do about them.”
“Oh, when did you figure that out?” Mike asked curiously.
Ah shit, now I gotta without saying ‘when I was kidnapped’.
“After Friday.”
Smooth, totally impossible to figure out great going Sam.
“Ah, yeah makes sense.” He said with only the slightest hesitation.
Jason was looking at me confused, and Leah was glancing at me intermittently too.
“Ah, my brain tries to track weapons, it gets really confused with games and that doesn't feel great.” I explained.
“Um, ok? That’s a bit odd...” Jason said confused, I was pretty sure he was fishing for more.
“You can say that again.” I agreed, not really wanting to explain anything more.
While most of Friday wasn’t really covered by my NDA, I really didn’t feel like going into it when I hadn’t even been comfortable with telling Anna yet.
He seemed willing to drop it at least, so that’s something.
I was in the middle of Leah showing me how to make use of a combo probably like an hour later when Jason suddenly jumped up, startling me into looking at him.
“Wait were you one of the changees kidnapped on Friday?” He asked with an expression of shock.
“Sorry?” I asked trying not to confirm Jason’s guess, I am pretty sure I would be sweating bullets if I could sweat at all.
“They said one of the victims was from our school, and you implied something happened on Friday.” He explained.
“Well, I know a decent number of changees on campus, and it is something that happened in our community such as it is.” I said trying to deflect without making an outright lie, he didn’t bite though.
“Yeah, but you said the weapons thing is mostly an issue with games, that would imply you know how your brain reacts otherwise.” He said looking increasingly confident in his belief.
“Can you drop it, please?” I asked getting annoyed at his persistence and not really having anything great to head him off. I tried to go back to the game, but Leah had stopped playing already and was looking at me wide-eyed.
Frustrated I dropped the controller beside me.
“Ok, fine what do you want?” I asked him tersely with a glare. “I haven’t exactly been shouting about it from the rooftops for a reason.”
He visibly deflated and dropped into the chair again.
“I didn’t think that far honestly…”
“Yeah, no shit.” I said angrily.
“Was it scary?” Leah asked quietly from beside me on the couch.
“Mostly not for myself, but my friend was in bad shape.” I answered reluctantly.
“Do you know why they grabbed you? The article I read didn’t know.” Jason asked.
“I can’t say.” I said feeling the contract hover at the edge of my mind even if it wasn’t technically applicable to what I saw.
“Ah.” He said not pressing this time.
“Before you blab this across the entire campus can you at least wait until after the weekend, there’s someone who should know without them having heard it in the gossip.” I said looking at Jason and standing up to leave.
“I wouldn’t-“ Jason started with a hurt expression.
“Sure whatever.” I said not really having the patience to hear the rest and already on my way to the stairs, on the way I saw Mike looking at me in pain and guilt.
I tried to be productive for a while, but it wasn’t really working, my brain kept on making error noises as I worked on my math assignment. Eventually, I heard a knock at my door which I reluctantly opened to see Mike standing awkwardly.
“Would you mind coming down?” He asked after a long moment of trying to decide what to say.
I kinda wanted to tell him to fuck off.
I sighed instead.
“Alright.”
As I came into the front room, I saw that River had joined the others. They were looking over their shoulder from the couch beside Leah with a carefully neutral expression.
“Hello Sam.”
I nodded back not quite trusting my words, something literally smoldering in my firebox for a few moments.
Jason looked upon hearing their voice and turned to me with red-rimmed eyes.
“Sorry.” He started a bit hoarsely. “I should have dropped it when you started getting upset, it was just fitting together, and I didn’t consider your feelings.”
He then looked at me pleadingly.
“You know I can keep a secret Sam.” He got out choking on the words.
Fuck.
His transition started in recent memory, and he had known for a very long time.
I felt my burners cut out for a few moments then reignite unsteadily. Not quite feeling stable I moved to the unoccupied chair and sat down a bit harder than usual, accompanied by a creak from the chair.
“Sorry, you’re right,” I admitted dropping my head in my hands. “I shouldn’t have been so harsh, if nothing else I kinda gave it away.”
“Well, I did kinda put you on a spot.” Mike added a bit gruffly.
I waved him off.
“Nah, there’s any number of ambiguous answers I could have done, It’s on me.” I sighed and looked up. “I’m sorry Jason, you didn’t deserve what I did.”
Jason nodded stiffly, then tried to smile.
“I can’t imagine getting kidnapped was a great experience and that was Friday.”
“Ha, you can say that again,” I said, electing not to explain how it might be for different reasons than he might expect. “Don’t worry about it, I will be fine.”
“It’s getting pretty late, and I don’t think you’ve had anything to eat, I’ll cover for pizza as an apology.” I offered after checking the time on my phone.
“That’s ok Sam you don’t-“ Jason started.
“Don’t turn down free pizza!” Leah interjected.
----------------------------------------
Jason was staring at me while I was chewing my dinner.
“Mph?” I made a vague questioning noise.
“You’re chewing on a rock.” He said flatly.
I shrugged and swallowed.
“I mean yeah, these are too big for my fuel throat.” I explained holding up another piece of coal before popping it into my mouth.
“So first that implies your jaw strength and teeth are insane, and second that you have multiple throats.” He listed, the pizza in his hand almost forgotten.
I held up a finger while I chewed.
“Probably, and yes,” I responded to the questions in turn once my mouth was free enough. “It would be bad for fuel to be in my feed water and vice versa for my fuel digestive system, so there’s a gate that switches between them. Then there is like another for carrying my voice, it’s worth mentioning as well that they are all small so stuff like drinking water takes forever.”
He stared at me for a moment.
“You kinda get used to things like that,” Jake said, having turned up suspiciously in time for the pizza, then pointed at me. “Do the math thing.”
“Sixty thousand times three hundred and sixty-four!” Mike shouted from the kitchen.
Klack, klack, cha chunk , veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
“Oh, come on that isn’t even an interesting one.” I said a bit exasperated.
Ding
“Twenty-one million, eight hundred and forty thousand.”
“Was that a ding?” Jason asked incredulously.
“Yes, and yes it happens in class.”
----------------------------------------
“Hello Sam, good to see you.” Summers said as I walked into his office the next day.
“Hi doctor summers, if I remember today was the physical test stuff, right?” I said as I sat down.
“Well normally, but I am going to strongly suggest you opt out so we don’t have to make an official record for the moment.” He said, then clarified from my confused look. “Whoever was behind the kidnapping attempt has access to files that should be private, we are operating under the assumption that there could be further attempts. Avoiding having anything concrete on your abilities protected you before and I would like to keep it that way until we know otherwise.”
“Uh, sure I guess, is there any consequences for me doing so?”
“No, and you can choose to do it later anyway.” He said while offering a form, and continued while I read through the forms. “We can also make use of the time to get started on the scans for looking into spare parts, although for the same security reasons as the physical we are going to do that using the CRD's equipment.”
It was a bit funny to be in the hospital for about five minutes total just for signing forms, I think Summers spent longer on the phone calling ahead than we spent talking in his office.
He offered to drive me since he had to be there for the start anyway and given it would cut like twenty minutes off the trip, I took him up on the offer. Once we arrived Summers offered me a thick RFID card with my details and picture printed on the front below a label declaring it the property of the Clash Resolution Department.
“This will get you into the facility and can be used as an ID for most work purposes.” He explained continuing to walk into the confusing mass of corridors before switching to giving a running commentary on the building. “Honestly, we really didn’t need an underground base, but this part of the building is a leftover from a budget cold war project of dubious value. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be an underground campus for Taylor University built by the government as a mixture of bomb paranoia and excessive funding. So far as I am aware, it never went into use, and we got it after we overgrew our floor In the last building.”
“It is very amusing to work in though.” He said with a smile. “It does give us good privacy from prying eyes though, we process a lot of artifacts as part of our duties and some of them are best not to be known of.”
“Like what?”
“Weapons are the big thing, some ability granters or boosters too as they often come with concerning side effects.”
“Ah.”
“That analysis work is why we have the equipment which will let us get a good idea of how to replicate your components, although I very much doubt we will have an understanding of how you work anytime soon.” He said while we descended a staircase.
I had started to notice that there were colored lines on the floor and that we had been following a blue one, presumably for where this analysis part of the facility was. After following the line down a few other seemingly arbitrary turns we arrived at a set of blue doors, which Summers went through without hesitation.
We arrived in a lobby area beside a chaotic open-concept office that seemed to have about a dozen oversize desks, each of which had at least one computer along with any of an assortment of things. One desk had a microscope with something like a cellphone under it along with an oscilloscope, and what I guessed were other electronics evaluation tools. Another seemed to have a partially disassembled engine on it, although this one seemed to have glowing crystals where the pistons should be. I didn’t really pause long enough to really figure out what was on any of the other desks, I guessed this was probably a low-risk stuff area given the lack of noticeable safety gear though. There was an equally mixed assortment of people working away at whatever they happened to have at their desk, and there seemed to be a pleasant hum of conversation that continued uninterrupted as we passed other than a few waves to Summers.
He led me to a door labeled ‘Imaging’ At the other end of the lobby, which turned out to be a room with a variety of large machines some of which were partially surrounded by glass or opaque walls, presumably for the same reason a tech at a hospital doesn’t stand next to an Xray machine directly all day.
I didn’t have long to look around as Peter along with a tall black woman and a guy in a wheelchair were waiting for us.
“Hey Sam, this is Alicia and Drew, they are going to be working with me to try and get as thorough a record of your current condition as we can.” Peter said cheerfully.
Then spent about ten minutes listing out machines they would work through depending on what would and wouldn’t work. Along with giving me a briefing on safety procedures and precautions, with the caveat that we weren’t sure of what was dangerous for me. Summers left partway through when his phone dinged, he apologized while admitting he had a meeting to run off to and we bid him farewell.
“I am pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be subjected to extreme magnetic fields.” I mentioned a few minutes later once they had wrapped up telling me their overall plans. “I am mostly not magnetic from messing around with small magnets, but they stuck to at least a few things”
“Yeah, we were assuming that,” Alicia commented unperturbed. “Don’t worry we do have to deal with a lot of stuff that’s a complete mystery as to makeup.”
“Any other concerns you might have?” Peter piped up.
“Uh well it’s not really a concern, but I imagine it will be hard to take images with everything moving inside me.”
“Yeah, we’re going to have to do high-speed slices and then do best guess reassembly later on,” Peter said before waving his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about it, it's not the first time.”
“I could just sleep for a while, that reduces the motion to just a timer and my repair bots.” I offered.
“Oh really? Summers mentioned you went dormant while sleeping but I wasn’t sure how much or if you could do it on command.” Peter said thoughtfully.
“I can drop off pretty much whenever and like I mentioned almost everything turns off, it does mean I am completely on a timer and I don’t feel like I could sleep any less than four hours,” I said with a frown. “That’s kind of a gut instinct though, I haven’t really explicitly tried to sleep for a length of time.”
“Either way I have a long time to get back to temperature, somewhere around twenty minutes, during which I am basically non-responsive.” I finished with a shrug.
“Would you be fine with being unconscious that long?” Peter asked concerned.
“I guess yeah, uh don’t be weird about it and it’s fine.”
He laughed, then paused.
“If Molly discovered we did anything, she would probably literally rip our heads off.” He said looking paler than usual.
“Fuck she’s scary when she’s mad.” Drew commented.
“I think she’s in the building somewhere, let me call her down.” Peter said while pulling out his phone.
“Are you fine with being in until I wake up? It is going to be around eight by then at the earliest.” I asked in awkward silence while we waited.
Drew laughed.
“I woke up like an hour ago, I was going to be here way past that.” He admitted.
“I am good for a while.” Alicia said with a shrug. “I may not have gotten up as recently as drew but I only got going recently”
“Huh, is that normal for here?” I asked.
“Sorta, we have a pretty varied work schedule here and we have at least some people here twenty-four hours, but it’s pretty quiet past like nine PM.” Alicia answered. “It’s partially a habit from when we just started getting artifacts where they could just randomly start doing stuff at hours when no one was around.”
“We lost a few too many artifacts to that, so we ended up with a really lax schedule.” She finished.
After a bit, Molly arrived and once she knew what we were doing she gave a go-ahead, I really don’t know what the personal structure is in this place but she seems to have a hell of a lot of authority for being a university student and a field agent.
“Watch out that I am pretty heavy so don’t injure yourselves.” I warned them while laying down on top of a trolley.
“We got it.” Peter said with a thumbs up.
“Alright, later.”
Then I closed my eyes.