So. Athan had a crab, apparently, which was odd. But he let me have some, which was neat. I didn't know why he had a crab or was sharing it, or a lot of other things, like where the voice that'd been screaming in my head earlier came from or why people laughed when I suggested Saga join us to eat...but if nothing else, I was getting better at ignoring all the weirdness and pretending life was perfectly normal.

Life wasn't perfectly normal. Life was the least normal thing imaginable. Every day was something different with these people, and I was quickly running out of bits of AEGIS to take apart and fix, aided in no small part by the fact that she was almost done and able to repair herself, too.

I'd even made the absolutely selfish suggestion that she let me finish with repairs by myself, and she just laughed at me. Not exactly a polite response, but I didn't imagine being broken was any fun for her. I understood. But day by day, we were reaching a point I'd been avoiding thinking about. As AEGIS' parameters surged back into nominal values, my reasons for staying dwindled.

Athan had made it clear that I was free to go if I wanted, and I'd slept on the decision. Now it was getting time to wake up.

"You're really uh...having a time with that solder, I see?" AEGIS asked me. We were in her garage, a paradise, and everything I ever hoped for in a machine shop, and the prospect of leaving all of that soured me all the more.

"Sorry, just...screwing around," I said, looking at the little blobs of molten alloy on the tray in front of me. "Waste of materials, I'm sorry."

"It's like, a tenth of a credit. I'll send you an invoice," she said, walking over to my stool. "I don't think I've ever seen you so distracted. You've had me thinking you were the robot and I was the girl this whole time. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, really," I said, putting the soldering gun in the rack. "I guess I'm heading home soon. You're almost all fixed up."

She smiled at me, almost a little condescendingly. "Really? That's your best?"

"What?"

"Your I-don't-care attitude may fool everyone else here, but I see what's going on. You don't want to go, do you?"

I hesitated, which was basically just a yes, so I said so. "I guess not. But I should. If I stay here, it's just trouble."

"Well that much you've got right. Trouble follows us around like a garbage collector after a running process. Things stay quiet, then every once in a while, boom, takes away everything we've built up. It's not an ideal lifestyle."

"So why don't you leave?" I asked her plaintively. "You're smart, capable, you could hide out or blend in. With your abilities you could go anywhere, or do anything. Why stay here where there's so much difficulty?"

She grinned almost maliciously at me. "You're the one saying you're interested in staying, you tell me."

"I'm different," I said, fidgeting with my glasses. "I know it's the wrong decision but I just...I've never had a single interesting thing happen in my life. I feel like if I go back now, I'll spend the rest of my days...I don't know, wondering what the point of it all is." I suddenly felt very upset at the injustice. "It's not fair. I used to be content in my life, in my own skin, and you had to come along and show me how lame it all was."

The look of malice disappeared and instead her lips drew into a small frown. "I am sorry. I've been through that, too. It sucks a lot."

"You have?"

"I was originally just supposed to be some kind of management AI for XPCA operations, a hundred years ago. Allocate resources, determine threats and prioritize, optimize and improve efficiency, that kind of stuff." She shook her head, making her cables twirl about her with a life of their own. "It was Athan who showed me I could be more than I was made to be. That's why I can never leave him. But even so, it's confusing, being in a bigger world, not having my role set out for me anymore. But I wouldn't go back, ever."

"And you love him."

"Yeah," she said, flushing slightly as she avoided my eyes.

I'd built and modified a lot of machines in my day, but none had ever shown a capacity for love. Not...emotional love anyway, some custom orders were...yeah. I didn't know how they'd managed to so accurately put a human heart into AEGIS. I knew I was already sort of out there on this line, but it was hard to think of her as a machine at all. Rarely did she say or do anything to make me think she was.

Just like, honestly, rarely did Athan do say or do anything to make me think he was Exhuman. He seemed mostly like a somewhat competent adult, facing down the world of responsibilities he was trying to hold up, like any real person might be. I'd seen and we'd discussed his powers, he definitely had those, but I'd also seen and taken apart AEGIS' robotic guts, and that didn't make her any less human to me.

"I really don't know," I confessed. "I've never had to make a choice like this before. The biggest thing I ever did was leave the world behind, and that was out of frustration and exhaustion. It wasn't something I did because I wanted to, but because I had to, to survive. If that makes sense at all."

"You were tired of people so you opened a store? That doesn't' exactly make sense."

"It does if you consider I did my best to scare off any customers," I smirked at her. "Nobody goes to repair shops when you can just replace or warranty your devices."

"I...guess? That sounds really stupid. If you've got a perfectly fine device with one problem in it, why wouldn't you just fix the problem?"

I shrugged. "This is why both of us own a workshop and most people don't, I guess."

She laughed. And that made me smile.

"I'm not brave or selfless or attached to the world, even. I opened my shop to get away from people as a whole, because society is kinda crap and I just wanted to play with machines until...I died one day, I guess. When Athan found that...that...body. The dead body...I didn't even remember to call the police. Even after he told me to. And then I made so much trouble for them by hiding in VR, they wouldn't stop telling me how much I'd screwed up while they interrogated me."

I looked at her in the eyes, the same electric yellow as the sun. From here, I could smell her skin, and swallowed heavily at the faint sweet and rubbery fragrance. I had a strong urge to lean forward and inhale a noseful of it, but didn't want to creep her out.

"I'm not really much of anything. There's no reason for me to be here."

"Lia's just a normal person too, her brother just happened to become Exhuman. Chiho's a normal person, she just studies and sends us invites to movie night. Heck, Karu's technically normal, and just has big breasts and nothing else redeeming about her," AEGIS said a little more derisively than her other points. "Fact is, it doesn't really matter how bad your reason is as long as it's good to you. If you want to stay, everyone here is already an idiot who badly needs more people in their lives. I know I wouldn't mind having someone who could keep up with me in a truly intellectual conversation," she said, pushing up her glasses.

"I...guess. It just seems sorta stupid to do something...just because you want to. There's no logic in that."

"I think the decisions that define us tend to eschew logic. Falling in love, being a hero, saving a life, these aren't things done after careful consideration. You do them because that's who you are, and what it is. This one's a biggie, and it's all your choice." She smiled reassuringly. "But if it doesn't work out, you can always change your mind, right?"

I hardly considered this a decision in line with love or heroism, but her last point stuck at least. "Yeah. I guess if you consider that, I should stay until I have reason to go."

I realized I was just pushing the decision further down the line again, but it seemed to make AEGIS happy that I was staying, and that made it easier.

"What I think is that you like keeping busy and being useful. Am I wrong?"

"Well...busy yeah, I don't know that I'd ever be considered useful, really."

"Maybe I'm projecting then," she beamed at me. "But still, I picked something up I think you might find really interesting. Be right back."

She stepped into the house leaving me alone in the garage with the still machines. I felt like, if I had these at my own fingertips, I'd keep them working always, just on principle. Machines were designed to go, it's what made them happy. Sitting still let them rust and rot, a death a thousand times worse than wearing out.

Plus, there were all those times I had to go crawling to the machine shop guys to fabricate parts for me. If I could do it on my own, I'd never stop. Just on principle, for all the times I wished I had them and didn't.

"What are you smirking at?" AEGIS asked with a sly grin as she reentered.

"Sorry, nothing. Just thinking."

"About Athan," she teased?

"No, about your machine setup here."

This made her laugh again for some reason that I was pretty sure I got but wasn't going to indulge. She had a plastic bag on her arm, and pulled a few books out of it to show me.

"This one," she said, "was a very thoughtful gift from my boyfriend," she said, clutching the book to her chest. Through her fingers, I could see it was a children's book, The Velveteen Rabbit. I wasn't familiar. "But these two, he got for himself...see anything interesting?"

The one on top was black with a white silhouette of a robed fighter in a ready stance. The title read The Essential Guide to Martial Arts: Physics, Kata, and Forms. I didn't know if I should be alarmed that he was apparently preparing to become even more of a weapon...or sad that he thought he could learn from a book like this. While books were obviously incredibly useful tools...the fact was, for most subjects, they were abysmal for conveying the basics, and more importantly, they did nothing to correct misconceptions or point out flaws. If he was serious about this, he really should find an instructor.

I moved the karate book aside and immediately swallowed my words.

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"See anything interesting?" AEGIS reiterated through a grin.

"Practical Electrodynamics," I read, flipping to the back cover. "From the center of a star to the cores in your mobile, electric current, and magnetic fields are everywhere. Understanding what they are and how they work bring forth scientific advances and human curiosity alike, and position us to be more cognizant and aware of the majesty of the world around us. Holy heck. I was scared with I saw the karate book."

"It's mixed martial arts, but yeah," she said, her eyes gleaming. "Any idea why he might have thought about picking this up?"

I felt a guilty lump in my throat. "Because I talked about ball lightning?"

"And Joule's law. And you know more about electricity than everyone else in this house put together. And because he respects you."

"I don't know more than you," I argued, even as I realized I was just making a pointless excuse.

"Hah. My knowledge is all practical. If I need to power up a part, I can connect the inputs to the outputs, step the voltage and amperage to the right levels, and plug it all together. I've never thought about Athan's lightning outside the context of physics-breaking Exhuman bullshit. But you took one look at it, and you were turning swords into chainsaws in your mind."

"No!" I shouted at her. As much as I shouted anyway. "No, no, no! I don't...don't want to be giving chainsaws to Exhumans! I don't want to make weapons or facilitate killing people. I was just thinking out loud. His powers are really interesting, but they're also really dangerous. It's irresponsible to make them even more dangerous."

"You know, for thousands of years, nobody was harnessing nuke power because it was dangerous too. Now it's improving lives everywhere. Sometimes studying something dangerous just means finding a way to use it safely."

"You think I'm going to work with Athan on his powers so that he can not use them?"

"I think--and I honestly believe this with my whole heart--that we're approaching a tipping point, Whitney. I think things are changing too much, too fast, and the way things have always been aren't going to keep working much longer. For the first time, there's good Exhumans running around out there, like Athan and Tower and Moon, and they need our support. You've seen already what that guy gets himself into, if he faces something down and isn't strong enough--"

She hesitated and took a deep breath.

"If he doesn't, next time the bad things come, he won't be there to fight them for us. If nothing else, if you don't care about him at all, it's still a matter of standing together or dying alone. Help him while you can, or he won't be able to help you."

"The XPCA will protect me. The police and the army. There's hundreds of thousands of people there, and that's what they do."

"And how many of them were there living in the gutter and eating dog food so they'd be positioned to intercept Dragon?"

"Which he failed to do, I heard." I was making excuses again and I knew it. I was really quickly losing respect for one of the parties in this conversation.

"Yeah, he did. And you see what that's done to him. I don't know how you can still have doubts about him after that. But maybe if he were stronger, next time, nobody would have to die." She patted the two books in my hands gently. "Look, you can do whatever you want. If you don't decide to teach him, I'll take a stab at it. I won't do as good a job as you would, but it's better than learning from a book alone. I only brought it up because you were talking about not belonging here and how it's a good idea to stay busy."

"Yeah. Sorry. I'm making excuses and I know that. Sorry. I hate excuses."

"It's okay," she said, moving her patting hand to the back of mine. Her fingertips were uncomfortably warm and it took an effort not to shrug away from her touch. She lingered another few moments, and when neither of us apparently had anything to say she began to wrap up.

"I'll bring these back to him," she said, collecting the books. "I won't mention this conversation, but if you want to, you should."

I nodded dumbly and watched her go. I turned back to the bench in front of me, tray still dotted with melted bits of solder, like little ugly sandcastles.

What the heck was I doing here, I wondered. I'd never been one to lack decisiveness or direction, and when I put something off it was procrastination, not hesitation. Go do what you needed to do, I'd believed. Any job that took less than five minutes, just sit down and do it.

In a way, it was why I was alone -- alone with my machines, anyway. If I didn't like someone, I just cut them out and moved on. No need to drag your feet because of stupid social norms, it was my life, not society's. But you did that too many times, choose your own direction too many times, stated your own controversial opinions too many times, you wound up in the back of a shop, singing at your machine family. Not because you were awful or insufferable or anything, everyone you knew just had to independently arrive at the conclusion that you weren't worth keeping in touch with.

I didn't mind. It wasn't a bad life. I didn't feel alone or like I'd done anything wrong. I'd just followed my own path, which is why I was so frustrated now. All these options in front of me, and for the first time it felt like none of them were my own path. I could do what I wanted deep down, and abet an Exhuman in honing his killing, or I could run from the most exciting thing that's ever happened to my life. Or just linger at the sidelines like I was doing now and watch it all go to hell, like AEGIS said, refuse to help and just observe as it implodes, probably only realizing I should have done something else after it was too late.

It was just cruddy that my life had been fine before and now all of this stuff I'd taken for granted was crumbling. I felt like even if I went back, I wouldn't really be going back.

I wondered if anyone else had to deal with this kind of thing. Those here seemed so sure of the path they were set out on. Like Athan, whether I agreed with him or not, he seemed confident as hell that he was gonna strike out and save the whole frickin' world. I bet he never had a conflict like this a day in his life. It felt so unfair.

I brought out the soldering gun again and melted the little blobs together into one cohesive whole. The lonely, ugly little bits somehow looked even more tortured together than they did apart, making stretched little holes like screaming mouths. I didn't like it, so I melted them all down into a single little pool of liquid, where they solidified, perfectly smooth and round and shining, all traces of being individual blobs erased as they formed a flawless whole.

I should talk to Athan, even if I didn't want to, I decided. I'd hid in here for days already, and with AEGIS fixed, I wouldn't be able to hide much longer.

I stood in front of Athan's door for a minute, hand raised to knock, hesitating as I considered all the different paths our conversation might take. If I refused him, might he attack me? That seemed unlikely, but he was an Exhuman and had a fundamentally different outlook on death and violence. He'd looked at that dead body with nothing but anger, and he'd fought the hunter who was his friend. I was much less than that to him, I was sure.

So I looked fairly stupid when after hearing voices and movement for a second, the door opened and AEGIS appeared, talking over her shoulder.

"Thanks again for the book. Good studies!" she called, and then walked into me. "Oh, sorry, Whitney. Busy in here today." She apologized and then skirted around me with a wink, leaving me with the door open and Athan and one other Exhuman inside.

The Japanese girl with the ornately-kept hair, cut absolutely flat above her eyebrows, and flowing at different lengths onto her shoulders and back. We'd been introduced, but I didn't remember her name...or names? Moon, I could remember, but she'd seemed insistent to be called something Japanese instead of her callsign.

I really should have taken notes, I thought, as I stepped into the room. The girl hardly acknowledged me as she continued talking to Athan.

"Why would you ask me?" she asked. "I do not recall ever offering my personal time up for your use."

"You're here anyway like every week, Kaori, and all you do is read. Don't give me crap about your personal time."

"I do not recall ever offering my fecal matter either. What peculiar fetishes you exhibit."

Athan pinched the bridge of his nose, his face scrunched like he was trying to keep his eyes from exploding. "Dude, Kaori, I just asked for book suggestions. You read a lot of books. I didn't think this was outside the realm of reason, but I guess I forgot to account for the fact that you are."

She stood up with alarming swiftness but her face remained impassive. "You abandoned your duty, Athan. You forsook the XPCA and more, you forsook the P-Force. I owe you no favors." She walked up to me in the doorway, stopping inches from my chest, and when I squirmed out of her way, she just kept walking, never once looking up at me.

"Fucking lovely girl," Athan moaned. "Sorry, Whitney, what can I do for you?"

"Was she upset?" I asked, because I was totally lost.

"Yeah, she was super pissed. I don't know why she keeps coming here if she's so mad at me."

"Not to be insensitive but...how can you tell?" I asked. "She didn't look or sound it."

"You start to figure it out after awhile. Moon equates emotions and personal connections as weaknesses, I think. It's a mess. I think she's here for me, but she hasn't said or done a thing to indicate why, so I'm lost too. I prefer women who are straightforward, like you," he smiled, all traces of his anguish seemingly gone with the girl.

"Well, in that vein, I have something to tell you," I told him. I didn't know how else to say it so I just said it. Straightforward, right? "Trying to learn from books like that is a waste. When starting from level zero, the theory is meaningless on its own. You need a teacher."

He frowned a little. "I've learned plenty from books."

"Of course. But these are practical skills you're trying to pick up. The problem is, even if you have a theoretical grasp of what you're doing, you won't know if you're doing it wrong or right, and if you keep training on your own, doing whatever you made up, there's a good chance you'll instill bad practices into yourself. At least when starting, you need a teacher, because you don't even have the understanding to know what you don't know."

He was still frowning at me. "I'm not gonna throw what you're saying out the window or anything, but...seems...kinda wrong to just assume that books are worthless to pick up something new."

"You can...you absolutely can...but it's a huge risk. A while back, I tried teaching myself piano off the 'net, and the first time a real pianist saw me they asked me what the heck I was doing. I could hit the notes, it was just bad form and bad habits everywhere, and if I ever want to learn to play properly, I'll have to unlearn all the damage I did to myself."

I sighed. I was already close to pushing it with him. I didn't want to cross this line.

"Athan, look, I might...I...disagree with you...fundamentally. But half-learning something on your own and bringing it into a real fight will probably get you killed. I think that's probably a bad thing."

"Such a vote of confidence," he said through an apologetic smile. "Truth be told, I was flipping through this MMA book and was already lost what the point of half of this stuff was. I was halfway to thinking I needed an instructor on that already. But for the electrical stuff--"

He generated one of his stable current loops in the middle of the room. I felt the heat of it from here and edged away while he stared at it with intensity. It shimmered and sparked and flickered with whatever he was doing.

"Are you trying to kill us?" I asked him.

"Huh? No. I mean...I can't find a teacher for this, you know? It's just...try things and see what works."

"And when it works, it kills you? When I talked about this last time and mentioned modifying the internal resistance, do you have any idea what that would do to the temperature in this room? Are you fireproof? Is this house?"

"No...sorry," he said, and put away the weapon and I felt my posture sag in relief. "Look...I know you're not my biggest fan, but...you're super smart, and in all the ways I'm not. Maybe if you were teaching me, I could figure things out safely. Maybe with your help, I could get strong enough to take on Dragon. It's not for personal power or anything stupid like that, I just want to be able to protect those I care about, I want to be more than nothing next time, I want to be able to not give up. Don't you think that's...something you can appreciate? A reason to help me, even if I am Exhuman?"

I let out a breath. I'd hoped this wouldn't come up, but here it was.

I walked forward and took the books from his hands, looking at both of them in turn.

"My only lesson to you is this -- study your martial arts." I gave him back the black and white book. "Electricity can kill even a prepared professional, it's nothing to experiment with randomly. Even if you understand how it works, nobody knows how Exhuman powers work. It's too dangerous." I set the other book face-down on his bed.

"I need to," he said, his face both earnest and serious. "I need to get stronger. You're the best shot I have at improving my powers safely."

"If you need to get stronger, then look to what's in your hands. I'm not helping an Exhuman become a better killer."

He looked positively crushed by my words in a way which made me feel far guiltier than I thought was fair. There was no use in mincing words, though. Like he'd said, straightforward, right?

I looked through the sad face in front of me and forced myself to see the Exhuman behind it. Here was danger, and I wasn't going to rush into it, or help it escape.

I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if I did.

The world wouldn't forgive me if I did.

Mom and Dad and my sister wouldn't forgive me if I did.

...right?