---Talk---
---Victor’s Perspective---
Pain… Everything is pain… Every inch of me aches…
I really thrashed myself to death, yesterday! Perhaps I should have made the case, to Cap, that her injunction against frivolous regens, should take effect after I’d bought one last recovery!
I open my eyes to see my arms wrapped around Tuun’s back, between her upper and lower sets of arms. Her upper arms are wrapped around the back of my neck, her lowers are against the side of my chest, her sleeping face is angled toward mine, over my left shoulder.
I trace down the gulley, created by her spine, with the fingertips of my right hand, my left reaches up to stroke her ear.
In my peripheral vision, I see her glowing eyes open.
“Hey…” I smile.
“Hey, yourself…” she smiles back.
“Sorry again for waking you up last night… and for bein’ an arse these last few weeks…”
“It’s fine, baby, I’m just glad you’re back with us… I’m sorry it wasn’t me who came to talk sense into you… As to waking me up, you know that evolving on an eyeballworld means sleep is something I can basically just do whenever I feel like it… none of the crankiness of a lightworlder when waking up, either(!)” she chuckles.
“Some people get all the blessin’s(!)” I smirk back.
“Yes… and I’m definitely one of them… though, it is interesting that my biggest blessing was happy to let me sleep with two gorgeous men and five gorgeous women, without him, for two weeks(!)”
“Babes…” I start, wryly “…what is rule one of the Cuddle Puddle?”
She rolls her luminous irides “The Cuddle Puddle isn’t sexual, no sex jokes about the Cuddle Puddle.”
“Yep; it runs the risk of people gettin’ self-conscious and weirded out… Fliss, Thran an’ Emi still ain’t interested then?”
She shakes her head “Felicity is still doing her tsuntsun thing… Emiko still says she wants to keep a professional distance… but I think that’s what she’s saying because she can see how uncomfortable Thran was with the idea and didn’t want her to feel like she had to…”
I shrug “That’s fair enough… Thran would probably feel like she weren’t doin’ her bodyguardin’ if she let her sleep in a room with all of us and wasn’t there to protect her… in case one of us was a long con assassin, or somethin’(!)… Good of Emi to recognise that, though!”
She nods in agreement.
“Speakin’ of Thran, I gotta go clear the air with her… you mind lettin’ me up?”
She nods and rolls off me and I sit up.
Muscles still screaming reproach at me for having annihilated them without fixing them in regen, I reach for the breakfast of meal solution I had the foresight to make up last night.
Tuun makes a pretend gagging sound as I chug it down.
“I’ll never understand how you can drink that stuff, baby(!)” she quips, with a shake of her head.
“I just need calories and protein to fix myself up, right now, the palette and dinin’ experience ain’t a priority(!)” I answer, amused.
“I truly do not envy you persistence hunters for the things you have to do for that stamina! Stealth ambush niche, for the win(!)” she smiles.
I finish chugging down my breakfast and give her a kiss.
“You’re sure you don’t want me to come with?” she asks as I dress.
I shake my head “I feel like I owe it to her to go alone… if she says she doesn’t wanna talk to me alone I might ask you and/or Xon to sit in but I feel like, if we go together, she might feel ganged up on…”
She nods “OK, good luck…”
I make to leave then turn back for one last kiss…
Tuun smirks “You… *kiss*… gonna go… *kiss*… or… *kiss*… stay here… *kiss*… kissing me… *kiss*… all day(?)”
“I’m gonna go… *kiss*… I just need a bit… *kiss*… of Tuunpower(!)… *kiss*”
She giggles and my heart swoops… I love her so goddamn much!
Having got enough kisses to recharge my, very depleted, reserves of Tuunpower, I bid her goodbye and leave to have what promises to be an awkward conversation.
I walk to her door… and ring…
There are some moments of silence… she has the privacy field up…
Then the door opens and reveals the strongest woman in the galaxy, in a brown tank top and seamless shorts, her coarse explosion of wavy orange hair is tied into a simple ponytail and she’s covered in sweat… she was working out in her room… I feel guilt kick me in the gut. Her eyes are initially at my midriff but widen and shoot up, almost meeting mine before they avert to look away.
“Hey… I wanted to talk to you… I can come back… if now ain’t a good time?… If you want Xon or anyone else to be here… that’s fine with me…”
She doesn’t meet my eyes as she says “We can talk… I don’t care… I don’t need her to see…”
There’s a moment of hesitation before I ask “Alright… can I come in?”
Still not making eyecontact, she screws up her face for a fifth of a second, apparently embarrassed of having missed the social cue to invite me in, before standing aside and saying “Come in. Sit down.”
I walk into the immaculately kept room… she moved in a few weeks ago but, other than the mannequin holding her ludicrously heavy fantasy armour and plasmawarpick, the exercise equipment in the corner of the room and the heavybag hung from the ceiling in the centre, there’s precisely zero sign that anyone lives here. No dirty laundry, no glasses of water on the bedside table, no scraps of paper on the desk… nothing.
I make for the armchairs by the coffeetable and sit.
She’s not followed me, instead she’s towelling off her sweat… fair enough… I did catch her in the middle of a set, it seems. I’ll wait for her to dry herself off.
When she finishes, rather than coming to sit opposite me, she walks to the mannequin… and relieves it of her bec de corbin, releases the power-source that makes it a plasmaweapon and, only then, walks over to where I’m sitting.
This is… odd behaviour but… well it doesn’t read as threatening, despite the weapon in her hands, so I don’t react… just observe.
Reaching me, she places the bec on the table in front of me.
Without looking at me, she takes a few steps back, turns to show me her right side profile and raises her right arm to place the wrist at the top of her scalp.
“At least five across at least three…” she says, not looking at me.
Utterly lost, I respond “Erm… sorry? At least five whats across at least three whats?”
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“Break my ribs at least five times across at least three ribs… like I did to you…” she says, as if asking me to pass her the salt.
“I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to use the hammerhead side not the beak or the spike… I’m sure you also know that if you hit me full force you could, very likely, kill me so, please, just hit me hard enough to break some ribs and no harder…”
I stare, agog, at her for several seconds, trying to work out if she’s joking.
I, eventually, come to the conclusion that she’s serious and feel a rising wave of anger well up.
I’m about to ask her what the hell she thinks she’s playing at when I regain control, remember that I’m here to apologise and, calmly, start “I won’t be doing that… that’s not why I’m here… I’m here to talk to you, like I said… I ain’t here for revenge, I ain’t here to corporally punish you.”
She rounds on me, eyes now fixed on mine, prominent brow twisted in a pained expression “I hurt you! The only way to make…”
“Not happenin’!” I interrupt, still fighting to keep the anger out of my voice “Please, put that away, sit with me and listen.”
She stares at me with that wounded expression for several long moments… then picks up the nasty weapon and takes it to place it back with the mannequin.
Coming back, she slumps into the seat opposite me and doesn’t meet my eyes.
“OK, first things first, may I call you Thran? I know we all started callin’ you Thran and you didn’t object but, if you’d prefer ‘Hunter’, ‘Ms. Hunter’ or ‘Gimli’, please let me know.” I say, calmly.
I don’t offer to call her by her other name. Given that the whole point is to put her at ease, now is not the time to bring up things I only know ’cause of my parasocial relationship with her(!)
“Thran’s fine…” she mutters, quiet enough that I almost don’t catch it.
“Alright, Thran, I have an apology to make…”
She whips her head to me, glaring, and opens her mouth but I hold up my hand to stop her “Please, let me finish.”
She hesitates, then nods, surlily.
“I have an apology to make… yes, you hurt me… however, I didn’t begrudge it even a moment! You beat me and it was a fantastic fight!… My apology comes ’cause of what happened next… I should’ve found you, should’ve congratulated you and should’ve made clear there was no ill will… I got distracted with my own shit, assumed that the fact that I had no hard feelin’s was obvious and let you think I was bitter and plottin’ revenge… I’m sorry… I should’ve thought about how you’d feel… should’ve realised that you don’t know me well enough to know that that ain’t what I’m like!”
“…s ’lwuhs h’ppuns…” she mumbles.
“I’m sorry? I didn’t catch that…”
“This always happens!” she says, fiercely now “I do something stupid, then think something stupid, then it’s someone else’s job to come and explain it to me, like I’m a child! I HATE it! I hate that there’s so much I just don’t understand about how to… be, around people! I sometimes think that Neanderthals just weren’t meant for the Space Age! We had our time and it ended… 30,000 years ago! We had our little niche, living in tiny groups, sprinting down animals in Ice Age Europe and, then, we died off because you were just better than us… your niche let you do what we couldn’t… sure, a single digit percentage of your DNA might be from my people but, the fact is, my people only exist today because of your people’s survivors’ guilt! You brought us back, to a world that had left us behind, to a world we don't deserve! You saw that, by your standards, nearly half of us had a social disorder and, instead of quietly forgetting that you’d ever cloned us back and letting those that you had just disappear into your population, you declared the disorder a ‘condition’ and kept going! Kept dragging us, kicking and screaming, back from oblivion! Forcing us to exist in a world we just don’t belong in! Among people who can be expected to just know things like ‘there are no hard feelings’ or ‘offering ribs for ribs is not OK’! I’ve hurt someone I idolise and the only thing I could think to do was offer to let you hurt me back… and it was just the wrong thing to do, wasn’t it!!!”
Wow… I think the number of words I’ve ever heard her speak, in person, has just doubled in the last thirty seconds! And it was all baggage, every bit as bad as what I spilled to Cap, last night!… The phrase ‘burst dam’ comes to mind!
Did she say she ‘idolises’ me? OK, Victor, not about you… ask about that after everything else is sorted, if at all.
“I wanna start, Thran, by sayin’ I’m thirty years old… not thirty thousand… I wasn’t there when the last natural Neanderthals died out… I don’t know how it went down. I do know that when you were sharpenin’ spears to hunt mammoths, we were doin’ the same… it ain’t exactly like we’re anymore cut out for space ships than you(!)… I wasn’t there when we decided to bring you back and, while that is within recorded history, I can’t give a full accountin’ of the reasonin’ that went into it… I’m sure that no one can… (though there’ll be people who’d do better’n me, for sure!) Maybe you’re right… maybe it was, in part, a kinda survivors' guilt, us feelin’ like we didn’t deserve to be the only ones who made it when we had to step over so many others, to get there… I don’t know. What I do know is that the galaxy is better with you in it! Richer! Stronger! Sweeter! I know that you deserve the second chance you got!… When it comes to ‘ASD’ vs. ‘ASC’; I think there were people sayin’ it should be ‘ASC’ since the 20th Century! It ain’t just ’causa Neanderthals that we changed it! We changed it ’cause ‘disorder’ implies it’s inherently a problem… which it ain’t! It’s the way some folk are and it don’t make ’em any lesser!… I had a Neanderthal in my orphanage… she was also in my class at school… she was tubeborn, not naturalborn like you… she was meant to be fostered out but… after the War… fosterin’ prospects were a little thin on the ground… She and I were good friends… she said similar stuff to what you’ve just said… ‘Not meant to’s and ‘don’t deserve's… our classmates didn’t help… there were slurs… nasty, meanspirited stuff… the fact is, she was the brightest in the class and they were jealous… she’s a doctor now and married to a man she loves dearly… the point I’m trying to make is… I suppose… does it matter? Does it matter if some arbitrary deity or fate decided your lineage wasn’t gonna survive the Ice Age? You’re here now… what are you gonna do about it? ’Cause… well you’re both the strongest woman in the galaxy and its best bodyguard… at least accordin’ to the ODR… you ain’t doin’ too badly, I’d say!”
I take a deep breath but she doesn’t make to speak so I keep talking “Thran… last night… I realised that I had a tonne of issues that I hadn’t been dealin’ with properly… I asked… to see a therapist… don’t take this the wrong way but… I think… if we can get a therapist… it might be a good idea for you to see ’em, too… I’m happy to listen to you but… I ain’t an expert on the Human mind and there’s a good chance I might do more harm than good if I try and sort out your problems… this ain’t an instruction… it’s a suggestion… if we get a therapist, I think you should see ’em…”
She nods, a nod of consideration more than agreement… she doesn’t say anything…
I don’t really have anything else to say about any of that so I decide to satisfy my curiosity about the other thing she said… “What did you mean: ‘someone you idolise’?” I ask, interested.
She shifts… I think uncomfortably, and answers “You… you’re someone I idolise…”
That is consistent with how it sounded but no less surprising “We met eachother, for the first time, less than two months ago… we ain’t really spoken much in that time… how’d you end up ‘idolisin’’ me?” I ask.
She shakes her head “You were a childhood hero… I was 12 when I first saw your face and heard about the new SO position… I thought you were just the coolest! I took up Shaolin, to be like you. I wanted to be an SO, like you… but no course would have me… social intelligence too low… couldn’t intuit things a gardenworlder wouldn’t know, questions I should ask, meaning of nonexplicit gestures etc. etc… I had to give up on it, eventually, and became a bodyguard instead… scraped in because the social intelligence demands were just lower enough…”
That’s… very unexpected… I knew they’d used my image to promote the new SO course but… I didn’t think I had fans! I knew she had a black sash, same as me, (even if I hadn’t read it, it’d’ve been obvious from fighting her, using her Southern ‘Boxing’ style) but to think I inspired it!
“I don’t know if I ever made it explicit, Thran, but I’m a huge fan of your bodybuildin’… I’d just about given up on readin’ interviews with bodybuilders when I first read yours… so much of it was just preenin’ and posturin’… so much of the advice was factually wrong… sometimes irresponsibly so… then I read yours and it was… so insightful! I learned something every time I read or watched you be interviewed… you had a really unique perspective on bodybuildin’ and I incorporated a lot of your stuff into my own regimen!”
She narrows her eyes suspiciously “You’re just saying that…”
I shake my head “True! Every word! I’m a huge fan and it’s… interestin’ to learn that you’re also a fan of me… never met a fan before(!)”
She ponders that.
I stand and say “Thran… it’s been wonderful havin’ this heart-to-heart but… I’ve got stuff to do today and… well, I don’t wanna make either of our girlfriends suspicious(!)… It… really ain’t an option for me today but… when I’m recovered… what d’you say to a workout sesh together… in the gym…?”
She smiles and nods.
I hold out my hand and, hesitantly, she takes it for a handshake.
“Congrats on that well earned victory!” I wink.
“Thank you…” she says, nervously.
I make to leave but she says “Victor…?”
I turn back “Yes, Thran?”
“You’re in Shí Dǎo Yuán’s lineage?” she asks, making it sound more like a statement.
“Err… yeah… never met him but he’s the man who trained the woman who trained the man who trained me… so yeah, 3 generations above me.” I don’t bother asking how she knew that, given that she’s just confessed to being a fan… though it is a little disconcerting that she just had such a trivial detail in her mind, she was more sure about that than I was!
“Why do you ask…?” I question.
“I… am as well… and I thought you’d like to know that we’re picking him up on Xīn de Qín… he will be the ships fitness instructor and… Mistress Miyazaki felt that… we could perhaps study under him… improve our CQC… it’s not mandatory…”
“Wow! I’d be thrilled! That sounds amazin’!” I say excitedly “I didn’t know we shared Shaolin lineage… I guess that makes us cousins… of a sort other than ‘evolutionary’(!)” I quip.
This time she’s the one to extend her hand.
“I look forward to studying with you, Shí Rǔ Míng.” she says, using my Dharmic name.
I grasp her hand and answer “You as well, Shí Rǔ Fāng!”
We shake and smile… I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!