I've been in recovery for a couple weeks, and I'm finally starting to feel better. I'm still not fully back in shape, but it's no longer tiring just walking from the bedroom to the kitchen. It's been a good few days since I last saw Victoria, from what I've heard she's been spending a lot of time on the lower floors. What she could possibly be doing down there is utterly beyond me.
It's about 10 am, and the routine of the past few weeks has taught me that if I get up and go to the kitchen soon, I'll find Jackie in there, cooking breakfast. I've seen more of him than of anyone else during my recovery. Penny’s busy researching whatever the gods are up to, and Victoria’s doing whatever the hell she’s doing down below. Jackie’s been busy too, learning about magic and mechanisms, but he’s at least made a more consistent effort to be around for meals and such. He’s not bad company, all considered. Victoria always rubs me the wrong way, and she’s so intense. Jackie feels a lot easier to handle and I honestly admire the way that he’s thrown himself into learning about magic.
Part of me wonders why he didn’t start earlier, considering he’s known Penny a lot longer than any of the rest of us. I guess I don’t really know the circumstances he was in before we all got trapped here. Regardless, it’s neat to see him making so much progress now. Sometimes, when I’m feeling restless, I’ll go downstairs and watch him work on his projects. It’s all way over my head, but even a layman like me can see that he’s making fast progress. The first time I sat in with him he was disassembling spare parts just to see how they fit together and work. Nowadays he’s doing serious repair work, adjusting and replacing faulty components, redrawing cosma conduits, rebuilding entire limbs.
As expected, Jackie is in the kitchen when I arrive. It looks like he's just about finished cooking breakfast, biscuits and gravy. Looks like he's planning on staying downstairs most of the day, he always cooks a heavy breakfast when he's not planning on coming upstairs for lunch. “Looking to hole up again all day, huh Jackie?”
He nods curtly and dishes up a plate for me. “I don’t think I’m gonna wanna come upstairs. The dolls will handle lunch. Hell, they could handle breakfast just fine if I didn’t feel like cooking it.”
“Well, I’m glad you usually come up and eat with me anyway. It’d get pretty lonely without you.”
He blushes a bit at that, and nods again. He looks a little lost for a moment, before sitting down and saying, “Victoria was looking for you. I think she expects you to be recovered enough to start training.”
“Already? I mean, I'm on my feet now, but I'm nowhere near back to where I was before all this shit happened.”
“Exactly,” replies a cold voice from behind me. “This is the perfect time to build you into something better than you were before. The iron’s hot, it's time to strike.”
I turn around to see Victoria walking into the room. Her shoulder seems to be fully healed, probably has been for a while. “Oh, there you are. What have you been doing all this time?”
“Waiting, for today,” she replies nonchalantly. “Jackie’s not entirely correct though, we’re not gonna start training today. What I’ve got in mind for today is more like physical therapy.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, don’t get too excited, I still haven’t decided whether I want to go through with all this.”
“If the people who are looking for you manage to find you, you’re going to regret not doing it,” she replies with a raised eyebrow. “And frankly, that’s more of a when than an if.”
“At least let me recover a little more before I decide, Victoria. I’m not up for it right now.”
“I don’t think you’re going to recover much more without intervention.”
“What?”
“You’ve recovered as much as you’re going to while laying down. If you keep at it now, your legs are just going to atrophy.”
“Oh for- That’s ridiculous!”
“Do you want Penny to take a look? She’ll back me up on this.”
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I sigh and close my eyes. If she’s seriously suggesting we bring Penny into it, then she’s probably not bullshitting. “Alright, fine. Physical therapy, then. I reserve the right to make my own decision about combat training, once I’m back on my feet.”
“I don’t know why you’re so resistant to-”
“Because I don’t want any part in this, Victoria! I never wanted to be involved in the first place, you dragged me into it!”
She rolls her eyes and sits down. “I’m not relitigating this. Eat your breakfast, and we’ll get started.”
I turn toward Jackie, exasperated, but he just shrugs with a look of resignation. “It’s not worth trying to budge her. I’ve spent plenty of time arguing with her over the past couple weeks and I don’t think I’ve moved her an inch. Also you should probably eat before it gets cold.”
I grit my teeth and nod, silently fuming until I’ve finished eating. After I swallow the last bite, a doll appears next to me as if from nowhere and takes my dishes to the sink, and I turn toward Victoria. “So what did you have in mind?”
“Well, fortunately, you haven’t outright lost the use of your legs, so we can start with walking. It’s going to be a long one, though, much longer than you’d like.”
“Where are we going that’s such a long walk?”
“Nowhere. There’s plenty of space in here, you can walk in a straight line more or less indefinitely.”
“So that’s the plan? Just walk in a straight line?”
“It doesn’t have to be, but it can be.” As she says this, she begins walking down the hallway, and I reluctantly follow. We go for a while in silence, Victoria leading the way through the unnaturally large house while I follow a short way behind her. As we travel further in, the light gets dimmer. It seems only a small portion of the house is designed to be presentable. Victoria’s gray skin looks sickly at the best of times, and under these harsher conditions it’s taking on a stone-like quality. I can’t say it isn’t fitting.
It doesn’t take long for the walk to become exhausting. She’s right, my leg muscles have fallen into disrepair during my bedrest. They quickly begin to ache, and then to burn. I don’t bother complaining, I know it won’t get me anywhere. Instead I ask, “Why are you so invested in getting me into fighting shape, anyway?”
She doesn’t answer for a moment, long enough that I’m not sure she heard me. Or that she cares to respond if she did. Eventually, however, she does reply. “I suppose I feel responsible. I didn’t really have much of a choice, but it’s still ultimately my fault that you got involved in all this. The result of my negligence, if nothing else. I wouldn’t want to see you end up dead because of me.”
The lack of flippancy in her response catches me off guard, puts me on the back foot. I would’ve expected her to be at least a little dismissive of the question, based on past experience. But that sounded fully sincere, and I don’t really know how to respond to it.
It also makes it harder for me to dismiss her concerns. “You really think that it’s the best way to avoid that?”
“Yeah, I do. These aren’t the kind of people you can hide from forever. You’re gonna have to stand your ground sooner or later, and if you’re gonna do that, you need to make yourself a hard target.”
“And you mean a hard target to someone like a combat demon. Or, hell, someone like you.”
“Yeah. I don’t think flesh and bone is gonna cut it. You’re gonna want steel and flame, at the very least.”
I sigh. “You understand why that’s… A difficult prospect for me, right?”
“I suppose I do. I think it’ll be less difficult once you’re actually doing it.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because you’ll see how different it is. From your old halo, I mean. You’ll get to feel firsthand that this one will be yours, not theirs.”
“It won’t feel the same?”
“Not at all. As soon as you take the first step in making it, you’ll be able to tell. It may look the same from the outside, but inside, it really will be whatever you make of it.”
I fall silent for a while, quietly struggling to keep pace with the combat angel. I still can’t say I’m super comfortable with the idea of another halo. Not after everything I went through with the last one. It’s hard to argue with her reasoning, though. I’ve seen what combat angels can do, a regular human doesn’t stand a chance.
I guess I don’t have to make a final decision just yet. It’ll be a while before I’m in a position to actually start in on that. For now, I suppose I can at least accept her help in keeping my body working, and her instruction in how to hold my own in a fight. I really don’t think she’s bullshitting me about the danger I’m in. Why would she? She’s only making more work for herself by committing to teaching me.
The further we walk the more winded I get, but I still don’t complain. Not just because I wouldn’t expect much of a response, but because I know that I really do need this.