Chapter 9: Chips
New software installed, program synchronization 30% complete.
New hardware accepted. Skin grafting 76% complete.
Stand by for program synchronization. 35% complete.
Subaru was glad that her amplified Bluetooth upgrade made it unnecessary now for her to be physically plugged into Amy’s mess of hardware and cords that made up her Beowulf-computer cluster. She reclined on the couch in Amy’s workroom, her eyes closed but her breathing rapid to provide the necessary air flow for her CPU fan as her systems worked overtime to install and integrate her updates. Her Bluetooth connection with Amy’s Beowulf wasn’t as fast as plug-in would have been, but Subaru preferred it this way.
Subaru would do anything to avoid a repeat incident of being walked in on while she was plugged like a piece of hardware into Amy’s computer.
Synchronization 43% complete.
She knew that Tea was taking a nap, which was why Subaru was also installing the new arm she had built over the last week. She had to settle for her temporary repair hand since that last battle with Alicia, and she didn’t have quite the same amount of strength in it. Twice now Subaru gave up using her artillery gun for bare fists when she found herself lacking the fine precision she needed to avoid hitting her own teammates.
“Should have asked Amy’s help,” Subaru muttered to herself, keeping her eyes averted from her right arm. She had felt nauseous cutting into her own synthetic skin, even after turning off her pain receptors and disconnecting the external system from her central one. But despite how much easier it would have been to have Amy disconnect her arm and help her screw in and attach the wiring, Subaru would rather have no audience at all.
Even she didn’t want to look on her own cybernetics—she doubted that anyone else wanted to.
Synchronization 50% complete. Skin grafting 88% complete.
Tea was the first person to know. It had been hard for her to miss—they had met when Subaru had saved Tea from a car bomb. The blast had destroyed most of Subaru’s lower body and shredded her synthetic skin, giving her a Terminator-like appearance that had put a shocked, horrified expression on the grateful Teana’s face. The two of them barely managed to escape the scene before the police showed up. Subaru chuckled to herself, smiling at the memory.
Tea had tried to carry her, but Subaru weighed like a bodybuilder then (she’s even heavier now, with all the new armouring she had integrated into her frame), and they ended up doing an awkward wheelbarrow walk to get out of there together. After Subaru had heard Tea’s first brief explanation of why she had been targeted and what her goals were, Subaru had already decided to help her.
This preceded her falling in love with Tea.
Synchronization 67% complete. Skin grafting 100% complete—confirm sensory testing.
N.S.-ADMIN—CONFIRM.
Sensory testing commenced.
Subaru winced as tingles shot through her arm, the mild pins-and-needles feeling increasing to hot blurs and outright pain as her neural network connected with her newly integrated circuits. She tried to put it out of mind, but the pain made her jerk, her breaths coming even faster.
“Subaru?”
“Amy!” Subaru flinched and opened her eyes, seeing Amy crouched next to her and looking at the haphazardly placed tools and the running computer screens.
“Why didn’t you ask for some help?” Amy asked as she put a hand on Subaru’s twitching right arm. “I could have—” She frowned. “Subaru, you’re really warm.”
“S—sensory testing,” Subaru hissed, trying to smile to reassure her. “And I’m synching some new software, so my CPUs are working overtime.”
“New updates? On what?”
“Reflex response mostly, and also better trajectory calculations.” Subaru laughed softly. “That’s three times now that Signum showed me up, and I’m getting tired of being too slow to react to unexpected things.”
Nodding, Amy placed her palm on Subaru’s forehead. “I heard that they have a new Black Angel now, one who looks exactly like Alicia.” Worried, she said, “Are your cooling systems working? I don’t like how warm you’re getting.” Amy rummaged in the closet and pulled out an electric fan, plugging it in nearby and turning a cool current onto Subaru’s prone form.
“She freaked the crap out of us. Chrono’s face went totally white! At first we thought that maybe it
was Alicia and Reinforce’s attack had made her blind, but soon it became really obvious that they weren’t the same person. Then Nanoha called her “Fate” and that pretty much confirmed it. And my cooling systems are working fine, as well as they can.” Subaru shrugged. “I can’t do any better with the internal heating unless I install some external fans or something.”
“That would look weird,” Amy smiled with some strain, as she always did whenever full-on robotic instead of cyborg issues were discussed between them. “Too bad you can’t release the heat through your skin like you can with your external pieces, huh?”
“I looked into it,” Subaru admitted. “But then there would be no point for me to breathe anymore, and…I didn’t want to give that up. It’s silly, I know, since that’s a large weakness that I’m stupid to ign—”
“Subaru,” Amy interrupted gently, her eyes understanding. “It’s not silly at all.”
Synchronization 80% complete. Sensory testing complete—GREEN.
“How was dinner?”
“Didn’t go that well,” Amy said sheepishly but with a trace of annoyance. “Chrono was being an idiot.”
“Ah, did he find out who’s been sending the food?” Subaru asked sympathetically.
Amy sighed. “He was much more trusting when we were younger. Actually, I’m surprised he took this long to ask about it. I’ve been feeding them for two years with real food, and he only just notices?”
Subaru chuckled. “People are kind of blind to things around here.”
Synchronization 94% complete.
“Oh, Teana wasn’t at dinner, is she alright?”
“She’s taking a nap. She, uh, hasn’t been sleeping well recently.”
“Nightmares again?”
“She doesn’t tell me.”
Amy gave her a look. “You’d be the last one she’d tell. She cares about what you think of her.”
Subaru laughed, her tone low and self-mocking. “Right.”
Frowning, Amy insisted, “Teana really does l—”
Synchronization 100% complete.
“Thanks for letting me use your computers,” Subaru said quickly, leaping off the couch and zooming past Amy before the older woman could finish. “Have a good night and bye.” She shut the door behind her and walked off briskly.
She knew already, what Amy thought that she didn’t know. Subaru
did know, and she knew more than Amy. The problem with having a computer brain was that whatever her human mind might wish to forget, her RAM encoded a perfect copy of that memory.
Subaru can never forget every instance that Tea’s face changed to horror when she saw and remembered what Subaru really was.
Stopping by the kitchen to scrape together some leftovers of dinner, Subaru tried to arrange it somewhat appetizingly on a tray and carried it to their room. She entered softly and put the tray down next to Tea’s nightstand, pausing to look at her best friend sleeping peacefully. Automatically she scanned Tea for any abnormalities, assured when her sensors all blinked green. Softly, Subaru tucked the edges of the blanket in and brushed her hand so lightly on Tea’s cheek that her heightened sensors barely registered the touch.
“In the new world,” Subaru whispered, leaning in. “I wish…” Her breath stopped, and she brushed a kiss over Tea’s lips, agonizing in the pleasant shock that ran from her nervous system into her circuits and back. She pulled away, putting her hands into her pockets and leaving just as quietly as she had come in.
No matter how resigned to her fate she was, Subaru still found her cybernetic body a curse. She couldn’t help that her eye sensors had told her, before she had closed them and kissed Tea, that her friend had been awake.
***
Fate woke, disoriented and cold. She touched her watch, flipping the glass covering and touching the hands and numbers. Only four in the morning. What had woken her up? Checking Arf revealed that her partner was still sleeping peacefully, and Fate didn’t hear anything from where Hayate dozed in her chair despite Fate trying to convince her to go to bed. Zafira would have warned her anyways if it was Hayate.
Getting up stiffly, Fate picked up her cane and found the door, cocking her head in the hallway. The soft sounds were from upstairs, and she tapped her way over, climbing the stairs and following the sound. This didn’t feel right, as by now she was sure that it was coming from someone’s bedroom, and Fate didn’t want to intrude…That was Nanoha’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” Fate heard Nanoha whimper, and bed springs creaked in a wave-like sound, giving Fate a mental picture of Nanoha lashing back and forth. She found herself entering, carefully making her way over in concern.
“No…not them…stop!”
“Nanoha?” Fate reached out and touched the moving blanket, then followed the violent movements until she found Nanoha’s shoulder. Shaking her, Fate murmured, “It’s just a dream, Nanoha, wake up.”
A stifled gasp sounded, and Fate felt the intention flash through Nanoha’s muscles in time to lean back quickly as Nanoha sat bolt upright, saving both of them from a painful head collision. Feeling the tremble of fear and confusion where her hand rested on Nanoha’s shoulder, Fate smiled, opening her mouth to speak.
“Alicia?” whispered Nanoha, her tone haunted with emotion.
Fate’s hand dropped and she got up, her hand clenched on her white cane. “No,” she said simply, burying her own emotions and trusting in the dark to hide her expression. And she walked out, making it to the staircase before tears burned at her eyes, slipping down her face in agonizing trails.
Wait, Nanoha wanted to say.
I’m sorry. Fate. But she was too slow, and by the time her tongue untangled itself Fate had already left, her shoulders slumped and her footsteps shuffling. The heavy stone of guilt in her stomach grew heavier, and Nanoha dropped her head to her knees.
“Fuck,” she muttered, pulling at her chaffing pajama collar. She tossed off her blankets and crept to the bathroom at the end of the hall, splashing some water on her face and wiping the residue off with her sleeve. Clearly, she was done with sleep for the night.
Hopping onto the banister, Nanoha slid down the railing, dropping off the rail into a brisk walk towards the kitchen. She opened the fridge, and hesitated at the bottles of wine in the door. There were more than she felt comfortable with—someone was drinking too much. Nanoha paused, her hand hovering above one of the open bottles, but slammed the door shut instead.
“Nanoha?”
The brunette jumped, knocking over a pair of cups and catching them both before they hit the ground. “What—Carim? Why are you up so—” Nanoha gave her a look-over. “Did you not go to sleep at all?”
Carim looked at her, and went over to the cupboard, pulling out a tea packet and taking one of the cups from Nanoha. “No,” she said, rubbing her bruised-looking eyes. Carim didn’t bother lying to them about that anymore.
Nanoha wished that she didn’t bother to care about it anymore. But unfortunately, she did. “Look, its fine if you go to sleep, Carim. You don’t have to search for Jewel Seeds all day by yourself—we’re not asking that of you or Hayate. If you make yourself sick it won’t help us at all.” Had Carim been crying?
“Time’s ticking,” Carim said grimly, pouring herself some hot water.
“We just got the Jewel yesterday,” Nanoha protested.
Carim shook her head sharply. “The time gap between the Jewels activating doesn’t matter anymore. Haven’t you noticed?”
“Huh?”
“Things are changing.” Carim swirled her tea, watching the leaves continue to spiral around in the bottom of her cup after she stopped. “I could tell, after taking that last Seed reading with Hayate. I don’t know if it’s her, or if it’s Fate…but it’s all different now.”
“Different how?”
Abruptly, Carim asked a question of her own. “How long did it take Alicia to learn how to teleport?”
Nanoha blinked, then thought a bit. “I can’t remember exactly…but half a year? Something like that. We were fourteen or so when she finally mastered it.”
“Fate didn’t have Bardiche for more than two days before she was able to teleport herself
and you.”
Nanoha frowned, then was stunned. So Carim hadn’t changed the topic after all. She hadn’t noticed then, but Fate had only made the one error in teleporting before, and even so, unlike Alicia she couldn’t see the glyphs to double-check them. Yet she’s hit nearly all her destinations without being told the coordinates by someone else. Nanoha’s only seen Signum and Shamal be that good at teleporting, and the two of them had been doing teleportations for a long, long time.
“Yes,” Carim said, staring into her cup. “And Hayate’s the same way. Yuuno was one of the most talented scryers I’ve ever met. He could do so much with the Tome, we were always first on the scene, remember?” Laughing lowly, Carim drained her tea and put the cup on the counter hard, nearly breaking the fine china. “Yuuno could make the premonitions come in high-definition, but Hayate does it in IMAX 3D from all angles. The rules have changed on us, but I won’t fail us again.” Carim reached inside her pocket and pulled out her deck of tarot cards, spreading them across the counter in an arc, the backs all blank. Nanoha watched her, silent.
Carim swept the cards back into a pile, and scattered them again, this time into a circle around herself, the cards glowing lightly golden. “Every time,” Carim whispered, her fingers shaking as a card floated over to her hand. “Every time I do this, I see tragedy.” Her face fell as she just proved herself right, again.
“I hope that’s not a reading for me,” Nanoha tried to joke, but it didn’t lighten the mood at all.
“It is,” Carim admitted sheepishly. Then the anguish entered her eyes again. “I don’t know why I keep doing it. You’d all be better off if I didn’t. Anything I read will always be bad.”
Nanoha leaned on the counter, doing push-ups to ease her tension by moving. She didn’t want to think too hard on what Carim saw in her future. “I’m guessing you did a reading for Hayate?”
“…Yes, I…” Carim paused, her cheeks growing red. “Um, Nanoha…why do you say that?”
Nanoha raised an eyebrow. “You two seem to be getting pretty close. You always do readings for your friends. What did you see for her?”
“Hospital. White everywhere.” Carim’s eyes grew bright, and her voice choked up briefly. “Flatline.” She buried her face in her hands, the cards losing their light and fluttering to the ground around her. “I’ve done the reading a hundred times now, and its never changed.” And as if mocking her, one of the cards retained its alien writing a moment longer before fading away.
“Maybe you’re wrong this time,” Nanoha suggested awkwardly, but she knew that her tone wasn’t convincing at all.
“Maybe I’ve always been right,” Carim murmured, wiping her face with a hand and kneeling to pick up all her cards. “There’s nothing good in the future.”
Nanoha couldn’t argue with that, but she made an effort. “From the way things are going, it looks like you and Hayate are getting into something. Isn’t that a good thing?”
“A thing?” Carim asked, seemingly baffled.
“Um…” Nanoha scratched her cheek and gave Carim a wry look. “The rampant flirting? The dates?” When Carim looked about to protest Nanoha spoke over her. “Please, there’s no way you’re not aware of it. You guys are always saying
I’m dense, and even
I’ve noticed the sparks between you two. So what’s up with that?”
Carim squared her cards against the counter edge and pocketed them again, walking and opening the sliding door to the patio, sitting down on the wooden deck and looping her arms loosely around her knees. Nanoha joined her, closing the door behind herself but remained standing, shivering slightly in the cold wind. She waited.
Then softly, almost like a confession, Carim whispered, “I don’t
want to love her.” Nanoha twitched at that—
love? Wow, this was worse than she thought…or better, depending on how she looked at it…
“What do you have to lose?” It was a stock question, but there was nothing else she could ask.
Carim exhaled, brushing her long hair behind her ear. Almost shamefully, she spoke, the words stumbling into each other as she blurted out, “I’m scared to die. I thought I was ready for death, but after Alicia, after all this…I’m nothing like Alicia. I’ll even be a coward, if that means that I can keep clinging on.” Her voice dropped even lower. “It’s so hard to keep doing this, Nanoha.”
“I know.” Nanoha trembled, and she put one arm against a wooden pillar, staring into the sky. Softly, she confided, “Some mornings, I wake up and think,
I should just walk away, this isn’t my fight anymore.”
“What stops you from doing it?”
Nanoha let her arm slide down. She let her gaze drop on her right so that she wouldn’t meet Carim’s eyes by accident and turned, opening the patio door and walking inside, letting the door slide firmly shut in her wake.
***
Teleporting here barely took a thought from Signum; she just willed it and her teleport triangle sprang up and sent her off practically automatically. Her boots crunched into the dead pine needles, and before the light from her teleport faded Signum saw that the place was still untouched.
When she walked into the clearing and saw a faint emerald glow of protective spells flare at her passing, and felt the familiar strong signature of the magic, Signum relaxed and took her hand off the hilt of her broadsword. She chose a random spot on the grass to sit, sweeping her longcoat aside and unbuckling her sword, laying it on the ground beside her with the hilt still in easy reach. Carefully, Signum lowered herself onto her back and put her hands behind her head, staring upwards lost in thought and memory.
Ten years sounded like a long time, but compared to the rest of Signum’s lifespan, it was barely a moment. Maybe that was why she hadn’t finished grieving.
Someone sat down next to her, and Signum didn’t have to look sideways to know who. Only one other person could have walked through those wards—since she was the one who had put them up in the first place.
A gentle hand touched her cheek. The sudden emotion that burst from Signum’s self-created stone heart made her shake, her body unused to the intensity of that level of desire. Desire for warmth, desire to know, solidly and irrefutably, that there was indeed something called love—Signum twitched, but she couldn’t quite say the words to ask for what she desperately needed.
But no words were needed. Warm arms wrapped around Signum until they were both in each other’s embrace, simply holding on.
“I’m sorry.”
Signum shook her head, letting her forehead rest against Shamal’s. She heard this every year, and every year her answer was still the same. “You weren’t the one who did it. And you saved her from him in the end.”
Shamal lay her face against Signum’s shoulder, her right hand coming up and cradling a shining red ball of light. Her throat full, Signum laced her left hand with Shamal’s, feeling all three of them connected again.
Once upon a time, they were powerful and honoured ancient knights. But time moved on, and like so many other old things they had been forgotten and replaced by a new generation of ideas and people.
None of that mattered to Signum. Old glory meant far less than old regrets.
“I wish I had begged you not to become his student.”
Stirring slightly, Shamal shifted until she could look Signum in the eyes, still curled in her embrace. The blonde swallowed, and her eyes held a level of grief that both drew Signum in and made her want to push Shamal away. Quietly, Shamal whispered, tormented tones seeping into her voice, “I wish I felt the same way. I’m disgusted by myself, Signum—because if I could make the choice over again…” Shamal fell silent, and Signum felt a drop of warmth splash onto her neck. “I wish I could have had you
and the knowledge that he gave me. I wish she had gone with you instead.”
“Me too.” Signum said, her words honestly simple. “If she had been with me, maybe Nanoha would still have a brother and sister.”
“And maybe,” Shamal said softly, her face full of longing and regret, “we would not have ended up on opposite sides in this heavenly war.”
Signum stiffened. “There’s nothing heavenly about this war.”
Shamal looked at her, both sadly and pityingly. “But Fate is an
Angel.”
2010-01-04, 14:47
Author
I never actually planned for her to grow any taller.
we must tell everybody!
. Can people please criticize my work? Thank you.
...
