It’s been about a week and a half since my run in with the combat demon, and my shoulder is just about healed. I considered getting Penny to speed the process up a bit after I finished bandaging it up, but after a little bit of thought I realized there wasn’t much point. Alice is gonna be laid up a while, even with the boost that Penny and her dolls gave her, she just doesn’t have the inborn fortitude to be back on her feet any time soon. I can’t leave the house now that my new combat demon friend has seen my face, so there’s not really much I can do until Alice can get out of bed and start training. I already heal faster than the average person, why speed it up further when it’ll just give me more time to wait for Alice to catch up?
Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I was in this position, with nothing to do but wait. Ever since I got my first halo, I’ve been rushing around, barely keeping ahead of my pursuers. The new one is a bit of an improvement on that front, I’m no longer expected to take part in wars at least. Still, it’s not exactly easy to make it in this world as a self-sufficient angel, bound to no one and blazing my own trail. There’s always someone after me, always a bill bearing down, always some reason to keep moving. My steel wings have turned me into a ballistic missile, without a chance to slow down.
But here I am, trapped in Penny’s home, no sky to blast through, no target to bear down on. I’ve just gotta stay here, and wait, until I get something else to take care of. I suppose I should try to get some relaxation in while I can.
I don’t think I know how to do that.
There’s a reason my eyes point in all directions, it’s because otherwise I’d have no way to tell which route is safe to retreat down. Hypervigilance, my instructors called it. Awareness of the entire space around me, constant assessment of threats, up to the second modeling of the space around me and where to place myself in it. If there’s no threat to manage, it just runs itself in circles. I’m not built for relaxation, I’m built for danger, I’m built for violence, I’m built for war. What does a missile need rest for? What would it even do with it? Can a guidance system sleep, can an afterburner decompress? Does an explosive payload on a hair trigger get anything out of candles and a warm bath? I don’t know if I’m capable of rest, and I suspect that if I try to force it, I’ll simply combust and take the whole house with me.
I think that’s enough sitting still. I can’t go out and fly, but I can at least stand up and walk. It’s better than sitting.
I wander off down the hallway, making no effort to guide myself in any particular direction. I know there are dangerous things in this house, but nothing I can’t handle. I don’t often run across something that poses a real threat to me, not without going out of my way for it. That combat demon the other day was the first time I’d say I was really caught off guard by something I’d consider truly dangerous in quite a while, probably years. I mean, I suppose I went out of my wy in a sense to end up in her sights, but it wasn’t intentional.
Still, it’s unusual. I can’t remember the last time I did something like this for reasons other than self-preservation. I suppose if you take a broad enough view, that’s still what this is. It would certainly be bad for me if the world were suddenly flooded with combat dolls and a handful of gods managed to use them to upset the balance of power. Upheavals create uncertainty, and uncertainty is dangerous. But even beyond that, there’s a degree to which I’m working for the benefit of many others here. I can’t honestly say that the thought of hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of people potentially dying in a holy war, struggling for the benefit of someone else’s power, doesn’t motivate me. I already spend too much time endangering myself for someone else’s benefit, but at least I chose this. From the sound of things, those combat dolls would be conscripts, and I have no doubt that all the gods who don’t have a mass-produced army of heavily armed automatons would start getting unscrupulous about raising their own forces, fast. This war would have nothing to do with any of the people fighting in it, and that wouldn’t matter. It’d kill them just the same. I don’t have the luxury of living my life for the protection of the weak or the innocent, but I’m not completely heartless.
I wish I was, sometimes. There’s no real reason I should be expending as much effort to help Alice get her feet under her as I have, I’m not really gaining anything from it. Sure, I don’t have anything better to do while Penny works on her research and the rest of us hide from the mob, but that doesn’t mean training someone who’s lived her whole life in comfortable domesticity is worth my time. I don’t expect her to be able to repay that kindness.
I guess it just bothers me to see someone so needlessly helpless. She can make her own way in this world, I can tell. She’s spent a long time telling herself she can’t, and of course everyone in her life has been more than happy to reinforce that, but I saw that girl rip apart her own halo with her bare hands. The circumstances may not have exactly been normal, but there’s something there. I’m kind of desperate to find out what, to really put her to the test, grind her down to that tiny iron core and really see what she can do. I don’t think I have a better way of doing that than just putting her through the wringer of combat training. It’s how I found my own white-hot ball of defiance down in my core that let me chip away at my halo until it finally gave up on me. That same white-hot ball of defiance that I would later stretch and shape into my current halo. I have no idea what Alice’s is going to end up looking like, but it’s bound to be interesting. Besides, I am kind of responsible for where she’s at now.
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At some point my wandering brought me into the workshops. I thought this was on the lower floor? I don’t remember descending any stairs. I know the layout of this place isn’t fixed, but I thought the floors were at least consistently separated.
I walk past various workstations where dolls are rushing around, and eventually find my way to a little out of the way nook where the kid, Jackie, is hunched over his desk, peering through an arm-mounted magnifying glass at a piece of mechanical equipment. I step closer and look over his shoulder at the components he’s focusing on so intently. My knowledge of cosma engineering is pretty limited, but it looks like he’s working on rewiring a microplate. To what end, I couldn’t say. I stand and watch for a few minutes before he glances to his right, reaches for a rag at the edge of the desk, and abruptly flinches when he sees me standing there.
“Wh- How long have you been standing there?” He glares daggers at me over his shoulder.
“Couple minutes.”
“Well you could have said something! What do you want?”
“Nothing, I’ve just been wandering. Not much to do until Alice recovers.”
He pushes the magnifying glass away from his workspace and turns his chair toward me. “Until Alice recovers? You’re not planning to drag her out into combat again, are you?”
“Not if I can help it, no.”
“So what do you need her for?”
“Other way around. We’ve got proof now that some very powerful, very unsavory people are after her, and I’d like to try and do what I can to make sure she doesn’t end up dead.”
He rolls his eyes exaggeratedly. “Right, right, because you’ve always shown so much concern for her up until now, of course.”
“What do you mean? I kept her alive during our mission didn’t I?”
“Barely!”
“I don’t think I can be held responsible for her decision to rip her halo in half.”
“You’re the one who dragged her out there and put her in a position to have to do that!”
“I didn’t have a better option.”
“Because you didn’t look for one! You’ve been playing fast and loose with her wellbeing, and mine for that matter, since I ran into you leaving that warehouse.”
“Yours? What have I done to you?”
“Staying in the same house as me with a Divinity after you, for one! Or hell, just stealing my delivery is more than enough. I know you've interacted with the mob enough to know that they aren't usually very understanding when a delivery boy fails to make a delivery. We're expendable, nobody's gonna miss us, and it's more useful to make an example than it is to keep us working.”
“I didn't exactly send you back to report the theft to your boss, did I? I seem to recall specifically taking steps to avoid that.”
“Because it would endanger you! If I hadn't been there to see you, you would never have even thought to do anything about me!”
“Or course not. I wouldn't even know you existed.”
“And you're alright with that?”
“I don't think I really have a choice.”
“What do you mean you don't have a choice? This is exactly what I'm talking about, Victoria, you don't even seem to care about the consequences of your actions.”
“Yes I do. If I didn't, I would've just delivered the cores. I would've finished the job and gotten paid. I would've killed you, rather than take you alive. None of us would have found out about any of this, and the train would keep chugging along.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but hesitates. After a few moments of thought, he replies, quieter, “So we're acceptable collateral, to you?”
“Yeah. Everyone's got a line, don't pretend you're any different.”
“What? I've never kidnapped anyone, or killed them for that matter.”
“No, but you've definitely run deliveries that have gotten people killed.”
“I- You think I don't know that? I don't have any other options, those jobs are my only way to put myself in a position where I can start to make things better around here!” His hands have balled into fists, but I don't think he's going to take a swing at me. Not that it would matter if he did, I don’t think he’s even capable of actually hurting me.
“I'm not disputing that. Like I said, everyone has their line. You're willing to endanger some of the people in your neighborhoods in the hope that you can help them in the long run. I endangered you and Alice for the purpose of trying to avoid something that would endanger many, many more. There are bigger things at play there than either of us.”
He stares at me for a few moments, then shakes his head and turns back toward his workdesk. “Can you leave me alone? I should really be focusing here.” He reaches across the desk, pulls the mounted magnifying glass back over the components he’s working on, and gets back to work.
I silently walk away and resume my aimless wander through the house.