Giuseppe breathed hard for the first time since he was cyborged. So did Henrietta– as she decked her opponent into a bulkhead with a lucky straight to his jaw.
His vision grayed. Giuseppe blinked to clear his eyesight when his legs suddenly gave way. He dropped.
A fist rang upon the metal behind his head a heartbeat earlier. Henrietta's arm jerked aside, her punch so strong that it actually did her damage. She was briefly open to attack.
Almost out of reflex alone, Giuseppe put all his strength into his left arm. He clotheslined Henrietta across the throat.
(Irrationally he noted his sensei would laugh his head off to see a professional wrestling move straight out of TV actually work in real-life combat against a cyborg.)
The terrific attack would have decapitated a human being. Henrietta practically bounced off the steel floor. Giuseppe kept her down, straddling her to rain blows upon her face with his good hand, bruising that pretty face blue-black. Her retaliation was ineffective and quickly weakening. Still he punched her again and again, hating himself for having to rough a girl like this but doing it anyway because his life depended on it.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, I'm sorry… Just stop fighting and die already!
As if she had heard his mental plea-command, Henrietta went limp, her inhuman resilience finally overcome. Giuseppe spared himself a quick exhale of relief. He pulled out another knife. The red hilt told him it was one of the few that weren't coated with poison or drugs.
That was a tough fight.
He felt her stir slightly beneath him. Giuseppe grasped Henrietta's–
…
–breast.
Huh? What the–
Henrietta was naked beneath him. Her breast felt soft in his palm.
Wait! When did that happen?
She looked into his face with a terrifyingly forlorn look.
Eh?
"Giuseppe."
She kissed him.
Giuseppe struggled to cough out the sudden knot strangling his throat. Awake and sweating, he stared at the sloped ceiling of the tent he shared with the male half of Dublin Team.
"Leona-chan," Tasuku whimpered from a nearby ultra-light mummy bag. "Please… no… we shouldn't… eat your cooking…"
Seppe sighed. Just a dream, he thought.
The crotch of his short pants felt damp.
Oh, no… not again…
Wet Dreams
A Life Goes On Alternate Universe Story
Disclaimer
Gunslinger Girl, Full Metal Panic, Fafner, Super Robot Wars Original Generation, Sailor Moon and Blood Diamond are not mine. Giuseppe, Elena and Rolito are mine.
Chronology
Set in Afghanistan between LGO Chapter 17-21.
Suggestion
Please read this before reading LGO Chapter 22 or 23.
The cyborg killer wandered about the sweltering Dublin Team tent encampment in a slight daze. Giuseppe's brain duly registered the sights and sounds about him. But his heart and spirit beheld a very different plane of existence, a reality personified by that girl.
Henrietta.
She had haunted his thoughts since they first met, fought and parted in the Mirasol. The girl of the doe brown eyes and mournful countenance came to him during his sleep, often when he was dead tired. Taskmaster Canon Memphis' daily suicide lap warm-ups made the nocturnal visitations a common occurrence.
Repetition had burned her features into his memory. That mop of auburn crowning a penitent face. (Her dream self never bore the bruises he'd inflicted on her, such was the strength of his disgust for his necessary brutality. It was like his mind deliberately erased that unsavory part of his memory of her.) Her eyes, the windows to her soul, shaped like perfect almonds, held pools of liquid russet that proved quicksand for his heart and soul.
Her tiny breast so yielding beneath his cupping palm…
Stumbling, Giuseppe bit down a curse. If I were in a battle, I'd be dead.
She affected him so. In both his heads: the one between his shoulders and the one between his thighs, Mr. President flanked by the pair of Secret Service agents. It was an old crack his Sensei made when the man thought his kids were out of hearing. (This was after Giuseppe learned what the hubbub about sex was all about.) Giuseppe didn't quite understanding the joke, and was shocked to learn that erections drained blood from the brain.
And here I thought "thinking with your dick instead of your brain" was just an idiom…
His wet dreams were a strange form of stress management. Before Mirasol, he suffered through brief bouts of nightmares involving the people he killed. He counted… about twenty or thirty so far. Ten Section One commandos, more than a dozen Afghans and one Amalgam traitor.
The last almost caused a grimace. My first murder is of someone who's supposed to be on the same side as me.
Maybe that was for the best. If Mr. Silver told me to kill a random bystander, I think I would have killed myself first. Or gone after Mr. Silver instead. Then Sensei…
Sensei would have backed me up.
Karl Bittner had been a disgruntled information broker who passed information back to various unpleasant sorts. It was the man's misfortune to be found out by Giuseppe's Sensei, who absolutely hated traitors and took his time with Bittner.
Giuseppe himself did not know Bittner existed, didn't meet his victim until it was time.
His Sensei shoved the bloody piece of human flotsam onto its knees. Furious black eyes cooled instantly upon meeting Giuseppe's querying gaze.
"Giuseppe. This is your first mission. Kill him."
His Sensei assisted him immeasurably. Experienced hands guided his shaky own. Those steady assistants directed his dagger towards the base of the back of the head, where the spinal cord fitted into the skull. A strike there would kill quickly and painlessly.
It was an easy way out for a man who might have damned him and his Sensei and his sister. Just this once, he played the left hand of God.
Afterwards, he would be the Devil's own.
His Sensei reassured him throughout the grim ritual. "It'll be all right," was the true lie. And: "I'm sorry, Giuseppe," said after the deer while hugging him. "Nothing will be the same for you anymore."
Malaise stalked Giuseppe for the better part of a week. "You killed me," Bittner's ghost moaned over and over again. "You killed me…"
His Sensei said those nightmares were to be expected of any mentally healthy person. "We're human. We regret things. Things we regret haunt us. But what counts is how you handle your life despite those regrets."
So, one night, Giuseppe snarled back at Bittner: "And you would have gotten me and everyone I loved killed! Go to Hell!"
His outburst completely exorcised Bittner. He knew killing the man was wrong. But he did what he could do. He did his best.
Sometimes I wonder if God will ever forgive us for what we've done to each other...Then I look around and I realize... God left this place a long time ago.
Ironically the Section Two commandos and the Afghans jarred his conscience less. They haunted him, yes. And he felt bad about having to kill them. They were doing their jobs. They kept other people safe and sound from monsters like him who would kill them all in their sleep. Theirs was the side of angels.
Right?
But he was doing his job, too. And so long as he could suppress those doubts long enough to get the job done– so long as I have Elena and Sensei afterwards to pick me up, I'll be all right.
Then that girl he met in the Mirasol turned his life upside down.
"Giuseppe."
And now he dreamed of her.
To be honest, he preferred his new dreams to his old troubles. Better a nude girl than a Greek chorus of decapitated heads chanting his name rather like how a hanging judge passed out death sentences.
Besides, she is cute…
He shook his head. Henrietta was The Enemy. If they ever met again, they would have to fight each other– even kill each other.
"Can't enemies feel for each other when they can?"
He had so wanted to tell her "Yes." But he couldn't. Not while he was draped across her body like a security blanket.
Ugh…
"Giuseppe?"
He startled.
Canon Memphis regarded him with her usual stern expression. "Are you all right?" she asked.
She had made the effort to inject some concern in her tone. Unfortunately, emotion and Canon didn't exist on quite the same level, so her inquiry still sounded like a drill sergeant's demands– or, worse, an Inquisitor poised with heated tongs.
"Yes, ma'am." Giuseppe snapped to attention. "I was just mulling over something."
"…carry on, then."
His Arm Slave instructor was quite the opposite of his affable Sensei. Canon was all business, hard as nails and just as cuddly. She didn't go out of the way to make her underlings suffer; it was all SOP.
"The important thing to remember when living with Canon," his Sensei advised him, "Is that she is all business. Military business. When she says jump, she means it. Oh, and do not piss her off. Canon's not just Irish, but Irish redhead. Now, to you she might sound angry all the time at first. But trust me: you'll know when she's pissed."
Giuseppe had yet to witness that temper yet. To be safe, and per his Sensei's advice, he keenly studied his teammates for clues regarding behavior around Canon. Any time the rest of the Dublin Team cringed like whipped puppies, he made a mental note to avoid whatever they had bumbled.
He soon understood why she could inspire such reactions. He had believed his Sensei a skilled AS pilot, if rather bombastic during performances. But Canon was an utter machine, more mechanical than the cyborg she currently tutored. She could have easily taken apart his Sensei's far more powerful Venom (at least until his Sensei brought the Lambda Driver into play). And do so in an outdated junk heap of an Rk-92 Savage, albeit a Savage customized to her rigorous specifications.
And she led by example. Canon fought in the front lines, gave instantly and unstintingly for her Team. The idolization from the men and women she commanded was earned. She was a drillmaster, yes, fit to outdo a Prussian, and exacting. But she was not cruel.
The hammer does not cry for the ore it smote upon the unyielding anvil. And the result of its regimented beating was masterwork weaponry.
No wonder Sensei wanted her to teach me AS piloting…
But, while not unkind, Canon hadn't shown him much warmth, not openly. Certainly nothing like what Henrietta openly expressed for him in his dreams.
She kissed me. On the mouth.
Embarrassment ignited his face. Giuseppe frantically checked his surroundings. He was alone. Good. He didn't feel up to the role of laughingstock for the day.
The Dublin Team liked to tease him. Nothing mean-spirited or injurious; Canon's explicit orders forbidding such, plus the specter of his Sensei's significant reputation in Amalgam, dissuaded real meanness.
Besides, the Dublin pilots– Katina Tarask, Russel Bagman, Shinguji Tasuku– were nice people. To them Giuseppe was the kid brother they never got. They bossed him around, but they also stood up for him when he needed them. And Seppe enjoyed knowing people aside from his Sensei and his sister and Doctor Mizuno.
But he couldn't talk to them about his dreams. Especially his dreams of her…
"Giuseppe…"
It felt so wrong having those dreams. Henrietta was the Enemy.
More so, she was a person. A girl. Someone he was brought up to respect.
Yet, at the same time, he wanted the dreams to stay because they felt so… delicious.
His face burned twice as hot as before. What the hell am I thinking? That's not the way to think!
He so desperately wanted to confide his troubles in someone. His Sensei, preferably; Elena was no use when it came to topics like this. Lena might even start crying or get mad without warning and for no real reason.
"And… And don't go around chasing after strange girls…"
"Elena?"
"Just promise me, Giuseppe. Please."
"All right, Elena. I promise you."
Girls are so weird…
And he broke that promise on the first night he spent in Afghanistan, in dreaming of upcoming sex with Henrietta.
Yeah. Sex. No dodging the issue. He was having wet dreams of himself and Henrietta about to have sex.
He knew what sex was all about. Not that nonsense about how kisses make babies. Boys and girls were literally made for each other.
His knowledge was hard-won and thus all the more precious. At first his Sensei had blanched bone white when he had hesitantly posed The Question. Then the man began laughing his head off.
Sometimes, Giuseppe just couldn't understand his surrogate father figure.
While his Sensei did agree to detail the process, he did so out of Elena's (significantly enhanced) hearing. That was fortunate. Seppe was shocked out of his old-fashioned Southern morals to hear that boys and girls' private parts were– "complementary", to borrow his Sensei's intentionally dry term.
"That's… that's… Ugh!" Giuseppe exclaimed.
"It is not 'Ugh', Seppe. It is natural. Look. The sperm cells are in the boy's body. The egg cells are in the girl's body. The sperm cells have to go into the girl's body to get to the egg cell. They need a bridge. Your… penis serves as the bridge into the girl's body, and the girl's… vagina serves as the entrance."
"But… but people pee using those parts!"
"Which is why you wash well before you have sex." A finger wagged knowingly. "Hygiene 101 that I learned in Theology 103."
"But… but it looks painful…"
"Of course it's painful. All the more so when it's the girl's first time."
A fresh new horror, that. "Sex hurts the girl?" Giuseppe demanded.
"… well, you're thrusting something hard into a… opening that might or might not be big enough for it…"
"I wouldn't want to hurt the girl I'm having sex with!"
"That's admirable, Seppe. Very noble. Exactly my same sentiments. But," his Sensei gently said, "Pain is something you can't change or avoid, because it is very human.
"Every human is an individual who is separate from everyone else. He has barriers defining who he is physically and mentally is as a person. To get to know someone else, a human has to break down both that person's barriers and his own, to allow access and relations between them.
"Sex… is the ultimate way of breaking down interpersonal barriers and uniting two different people. You can make your mind known to the other person through talking and interacting with that person. But your physical body isn't something you can convey at once to the other person– at least," he appended after a glance at Giuseppe's mechanical body, "Not easily.
"But the general metaphor is that your body is the final line of personal defense. And in that sense, a girl has a much stronger defense. Don't ask me for details; just trust me on this. Unless you want to ask Ami or Elena-tan how it works for them-"
"SENSEI!!"
"Kidding, kidding…"
For the first time since knowing him, Giuseppe had really wanted to slug his Sensei.
"Where were we?" the man asked. "Ah, okay, I remember. Now, sex breaks that last barrier down. To do so, it has to be pretty strong, in a sense. And since the barrier involved is the human body, a girl's body, breaking the barrier down will hurt the girl."
"And how is that good?" Giuseppe demanded, offended by the thought of enjoying a girl's pain.
"It's not good, Seppe. But neither is it bad. The world is not just black and white. It's got a lot of gray shades, too. There are some things that just don't count as either good or bad. Childbirth is painful; would you say childbirth is evil?"
"No."
"There. Pain is a part of sex. It's good that you worry for your partner, Seppe. You're a nice boy. But there's really little you can do about the pain, at least until after the first time. In fact, the first time will always be painful and messy. Don't be surprised if there's a lot of blood."
"B-blood?"
"Yes. As I've said, the barrier involved– ah, hell, why am I so squeamish?" His Sensei threw arms and caution into the air. "A virgin girl's vagina," he grunted matter-of-factly, "Would be tightly closed, since a boy's penis hadn't penetrated into it yet. You'll have to force your penis into her vagina to get the act done."
Giuseppe was pale as snow and trembling somewhat. His hands hovered over his crotch rather protectively. "I… I…"
"But once you do get there," his Sensei softly added, suddenly distant and distracted, "It's the most wondrous and pleasant thing you could ever feel, for you and your lucky girl both..."
"…really, Sensei?"
"Yes. Well, you have to experience it yourself to know. I assume you'll have wet dreams. They're a promise of things to come."
"Wet… dreams?"
"Yeah. You'll have naughty dreams. Don't be frightened; it's perfectly normal for boys to feel sexually attracted to girls. Hell, I'd kick your ass if you weren't! But you save your first act of sex for the girl you truly love. You'll understand why when you get married and have your wedding night."
"I… I see… thank you, Sensei…"
"No ish. I'm glad you asked me this, though. I didn't know whether or not to approach you to talk over this..."
"Had you ever had sex, Sensei?"
"Giuseppe," was the expansive scolding, "Who do you think I am?"
He generally translated that answer as a "Yes".
How did Sensei put it? He 'got around'?
I wonder who he had sex with…
Practical problems remained. The first time he woke up confronted with soiled underpants, Giuseppe was forced to sneak out of the tent and into the separate bathroom tent to wash himself and his underwear, since he didn't like the sticky feel. Easy enough to do; Tasuku and Russel could sleep through a nuclear explosion. Though Tasuku kept getting a tad bit too involved in his dreams– a lot of which concerned him frantically begging Katina and another woman he called "Leona" (his girlfriend?) to spare him from some really weird scenarios involving–
Why is he so afraid of ice cubes?
After several successfully stealthy sorties, Canon finally caught him coming out of the shower tent. Knowledgeable about a cyborg's weaknesses, she had her pistol to his eye.
"So you were the one wasting water…"
"I… I wasn't…"
"Then what were you doing?"
"…I can't tell you…"
"Are you a spy?" she accused.
"No!"
Canon's jade eyes seemed to glow in the pale moonlight. Giuseppe didn't back down.
"Giuseppe Miranda. What were you doing in the bath?"
Biting his lip, he told her the truth.
It was the first time he had seen Canon blush. Giuseppe had thought his instructor immune to human emotions. But surely her embarrassment couldn't have been greater than his!
Anyway, Canon had let him off the hook with the advice to just wipe himself clean with damp tissue or towels before changing into fresh underwear, instead of washing in the middle of the night.
"Everyone does her own laundry. No one but you will notice. That will conserve water and preserve your secret better."
She had departed at a pace more hurried than usual.
Great… Sensei will never live me down over this… he'd go like, 'The Taming of the Shrike'… or was that 'Shrew'?
I wonder… has Canon-sensei ever had sex?
He kicked himself for thinking up such a stupidly random idea.
Even more moronic a topic was the brown-haired subject of his perverted dreams.
Henrietta. A Section Two cyborg. An Enemy.
Why her? Of all the girls–
He paused, and grimaced. What girls? She's the only one I know aside from Lena and Miss Ami. I was too busy working on the fields and at the factory to notice girls. And then the first girl whom I pay serious attention to tried to kill me.
Weren't you trying to kill her first, inquired a mean little voice inside his head.
It was a mission.
Just a job?
Yes.
Giuseppe accepted his unsavory acts as part of the deal that saved and preserved Elena's life. It was his duty, his responsibility. And he did it efficiently. He wasn't a sadistic psychopath. And his Sensei taught him well. Every attack he made was made to end someone else's life as quickly and effectively as possible. To let someone linger was not only cruel, but also a good way to get killed, since that person might be alive enough to try for a Parthian shot.
Yes, he decapitated that Section Two commando to make a point. He had his orders; he fulfilled them. And the shock and panic his act sowed in the remaining squad served his purpose well. Allowed him to come out victorious and, more importantly, alive and unscathed.
But he didn't saw through his victim's neck with a dull bread knife while the man was still alive. No, he killed the commando in one strong swing, a mercy killing. And he had never been proud of any of his kills. His nightmares proved that all too well.
Murder was a horrid business. Yet he needed to kill so that he would live. Was it wrong to value his life above most others? More so, to value Elena's life, whom his service sustained, and who would be imperiled if he failed? He couldn't save mankind, but he could protect the people he loved.
His Sensei understood this all too well. "This is not just for your own sake," was the kind reminder, "But for Elena's. Remember that. If nothing else, you kill to protect your sister. And if protecting Elena isn't worthy..."
Does Sensei have a sister, too? Surely he has family… does he?
It shocked him to realize how little he knew of his Sensei. The man was so involved in their lives that it was natural for Giuseppe and Elena to regard him as a father figure. Certainly their Sensei saw himself as such.
Giuseppe was sure his Sensei loved him and his sister. The man was too good to them. And Seppe had seen enough of what passed around for relationships in Amalgam to know the alternative.
Moneca…
Yet his Sensei had never told them about himself. His missions were one thing; his private life was another. Giuseppe remembered not one bit about family or friends. That meant either they existed and his Sensei was protecting them through his silence, or they were all dead.
Maybe Elena can tell me. She's spent a lot of time with Sensei since I left.
His sister… She hadn't changed a bit. Spoiled but sweet, that was his Elena. Her letters to him always began with how much she missed him, followed by a demand for him to come home disguised as a plea from a loving little sister. Next came various inquiries regarding his state of affairs. "Are you wearing clean underwear?" was a recurring question that never failed to cause both grimaces (could she have guessed about his nightly troubles? Giuseppe shivered at the terrifying possibility) and guffaws (from his teammates, that is, who caught him reading such a missive. They never let him live it down, leading to his justifiable paranoia nowadays). So was "No flirting with strange girls!"
Stories followed. Always happy ones, he noted. She always ended with "I love you."
Elena seems to be enjoying herself. He smiled to himself. She sounds just like Mama…
His sigh this time was of gladness. He bore only wonderful memories of his mother. He still missed her.
A man marries a woman often because she reminds him of his mother.
Marry? He was stuck in the body of a fourteen year old boy. The girl he fantasized about looked to be ten or eleven.
Why couldn't it have been one of the other girls? He knew he could have taken out the blonde one. She– Triela, right, he recalled from the personnel files Amalgam's dead Section One spy had sent them– moved like she was hurting. He had smelled blood on her, now that he thought of it, though she didn't look to be bleeding anywhere visible.
Did she get shot on the way? No, Sensei told me the CRG guards didn't run into her.
So, she was already injured when I ambushed her?
He felt angry. Bad enough he and those girls were forced to fight and try to kill each other. They had to fight. Giuseppe lived and killed for his sister. His opponents similarly had their handlers.
But– sending someone injured and unfit for combat to a life-and-death battle… Even his Sensei, harsh as he handled Elena that one time she insisted on going with them on a mission, didn't want Elena to fight when she wasn't prepared and at full strength. Hell, he didn't want to send Elena out, ever.
Triela's handler's cold-blooded decision disgusted Giuseppe. She isn't some expendable tool you can throw at the enemy like that. She's a soldier. More so, a human being. His fist clenched tight. If I ever meet her handler–
And yet Triela would gladly take the poisoned dagger for the undeserving bastard. Her conditioning drove her so. Made her love her handler so dearly, she was happy to kill and die for him.
Love…
"Love is a terrible thing," he remembered being told. "In the right hands, used the right way, it is a weapon, the deadliest of all weapons."
We are weapons.
"No!"
He fought down his angry tremble with clenched fists and gritted teeth.
I'm… I'm not a weapon… I'm… a person… I'm… someone… I'm–
"Kid?"
He startled.
Katina and Russel were staring at him. The former was gruff but just as concerned as the latter.
"You okay, Seppe?" Katina grunted.
"Y-Yes, ma'am," he belted out politely.
"Heh, no need to be formal with me…"
Then why do you yell at Tasuku all the time for being so informal? "Sorry, ma'am," Giuseppe muttered. "I was… distracted…"
"Well, don't be, coz to quote The Boss-"
"-distraction is lethal," the newly-arrived Canon finished. She studied Giuseppe with the expert eye of a sniper in her element. "Is anything wrong?" she asked.
"No, ma'am…"
A brief nod and a "Carry on" dismissed all three of them. Giuseppe sighed as he walked off.
I'm getting too edgy… I need somewhere private…
The Russian-designed Rk-93 Savage was an ovoid armored egg with arms, legs and a squad frog head. The average 2nd generation Arm Slave combined the armor of a main battle tank and the maneuverability of a jet fighter. The Savage added robustness and reliability to those basic advantages. It was also much easier to operate than the Star Trek-level 3rd generation AS like the Codarl.
This particular Savage was a trainer model updated with the latest artificial musculature, improved controls and an improved gas turbine power plant 30 more powerful than the current CIS line standard. The unit had logged thousands of hours of operation with scores of pilots, both Amalgam and Russian. The wealth of accumulated data was used to compare and contrast individual pilots whose paths would otherwise never cross.
Giuseppe easily topped the list. (Better than one "Rolito Miranda", among others listed.) True to his Sensei's prediction, his rugged mechanical body could tolerate far higher G-forces than a normal human. Seppe could thus perform brutal maneuvers on the fly without blacking out or getting injured. And his reflexes allowed him to pull off a series of such moves on the fly. He could dance around anyone and everyone, including Canon, the established expert in the art. (Not that Seppe could take Canon any time soon; she still beat him easily despite his speed advantage, her experience being supreme. But he had come closer than anyone else, his Sensei included.)
Canon milked his advantages to the utmost during training. His instructor continuously pressed Giuseppe to search for his limits and exploit his strengths. She reminded him of his Sensei's professional side: assured, doggedly driven, a master of the art. The striking similarity drove him to do his best in earning Canon's trust.
And here I'd never thought I'd actually get to pilot giant robots in my lifetime…
Now, he curled up as comfortably as he could inside the cramped and hot, but familiar, cockpit, the armored access hatch behind him locked tight for a goodly measure of privacy.
I'm getting way too edgy…
"It isn't paranoia," was his Sensei's abrupt reminder. "It's a lifesaver."
Anyway, where was I? The girls, right.
That dark-haired girl. Claes. She looked good. Err– he meant that she looked to be professional. She detected his ambush, reacted swiftly to save Triela. Her timely command had hurled Henrietta into the fray against him.
How would I have fared if I fought her instead of Henrietta, was the repeat of an old question he'd asked himself, the first time while straddling a brown-haired girl he'd just fisticuffed into submission.
What, you like fighting with girls?
No! It's just… Giuseppe almost groaned. He just didn't understand himself at times. Why am I thinking of her as well?
Because she looks better than Henrietta.
Henrietta was cute. Indeed, she had always reminded him of Elena. (That pointed out a rather nasty side to his interest in her.) But Claes was pretty at the very least, and definitely close to beautiful. He could easily imagine her waist-long hair, a long mass so black as to take on blue hues under certain light, shimmering, like in some of his Sensei's better attempts at lyricism. And her stern features were the perfect canvas to feature, say, a knowing smile so slight or a dab of maroon embarrassment across her cheeks, tiny human things rising to the occasion.
Her mind was just as impressive. He knew too well her quick thinking in battle, but her spectacles also suggested bouts of placid contemplation. She read books, her profile stated, loved them since childhood. In that she had one up on Giuseppe, who considered himself lucky to browse five pages worth once a week, and mostly newspapers at that, back in Matera.
And she kept a garden. She was truly a woman after Giuseppe's farm boy heart, so to speak.
And Triela… Oh, my. Forget whiff. She was an exotic explosion of fantasy materialized that gave his simplistic nightly sins the appearance of saintliness. Her veritable bounty of good looks made her fellow Section Two cyborgs (save Claes and Petrushka; yes, even Henrietta paled beside that trio of goddesses in terms of sheer sex appeal) look drab.
Individually, height, dusky skin, wheat blond hair and baby blue eyes would easily stand out through their own merits. But Triela possessed them all. And she directed them with most devastating effect. Her confident mannerism (what did Sensei call it? Tsundere?) amplified her image as a sultry Arabian dancer slinking out of a smoky Aladdin's lamp to endow her summoner with that greatest of gifts: herself.
And this despite her rather strange taste in clothing, the polar opposite of the flimsy briefness oft ascribed to be worn by those who bore her stunning looks.
Suits? Giuseppe's dislike of her handler was now simpler and sillier. What is he, blind stupid? Sensei spoils Lena silly with all the nice clothes he buys her every month. But this Hilshire guy gets her suits. If I were him, I'd buy her dresses by the dozen. Something white, I think, would offset her skin and hair rather nicely…
Imagining Triela naked in the course of dressing her up caused his manhood to throb. Then he felt ashamed to be thinking of her this way instead of…
Henrietta.
Why her?
Pedophile, the nasty party of him taunted. Siscon.
I'm not that much older than her… am I?
Math was never Giuseppe's strong point. But he tried. I was fourteen when I first met Sensei… I'm seventeen now… How old are the Section Two girls? Henrietta looks… ten or eleven. About the same age as Lena was when she got cyborged. But Etta's got to be way older than me…
He blinked. The nickname had come as easy as a breath of fresh air.
Etta?
Well, it makes sense. Sensei and I call Elena 'Lena'. Why can't I contract Henrietta's name to 'Etta'?
Names…
She named him. She did not know him, but she knew his name.
"Names are powerful," was yet another offhand lecture remembered. "It's a very ancient idea, names giving you power over the object you named. Suddenly, The Other is no longer identity-less. Suddenly, The Other is now a Person who is alive and exists before you. Suddenly, you have to acknowledge The Other."
Henrietta… you exist… how do I see you, then? How do I treat you? Who are you to me?
My lover? But you love your handler. And I am your enemy.
A… sex... sex partner? His throat writhed. The casual suggestion appalled him. To see a girl as a– a– not even someone, just something to– Fuck!
Isn't that what you and her were about to do in your head?
No!
Sex was special! (Wasn't it?) He wasn't some hormone-driven youngster out for a rut. A real man– but what was a man, otherwise? What was Man, to quote his Sensei? A miserable pile of secrets?
Like me?
I don't want to fuck Henrietta. I… I…
I want to make love to her.
I want to love her.
"I," Giuseppe softly told himself, "I don't want to grow old alone. I want to love. I want to be loved."
Love thy enemy as you love yourself.
He hugged himself, for he had no one else to hug right now. Not yet. Perhaps never?
But he could always hope. He could always dream.
She felt him stir slightly above her– and sucked in her breath as he gently touched her left breast. Her insides shivered terribly, the feeling centered between her thighs.
Gasping, she searched his familiar, handsome face for an explanation.
"Giuseppe?"
"I," he stammered, "I don't know if I want to do this with you…"
She was naked. He was naked as well. How they'd come to be so, she didn't know– and didn't care.
"Sex," he murmured to her, "Is something between people who love each other… that's what I believe… is that what you believe, too?" he asked.
She opened her mouth. She could not speak. Still she somehow said without saying, Yes, that's what I believe.
His lips dipped to hers as if to kiss her. Paused just millimeters away; his hesitation caused her so much pleasurable suffering, urged her to meet him the rest of the way.
"I don't know if I love you… But I want to know."
Their eyes met, didn't let go.
"Do you love me?" Giuseppe asked.
Henrietta gasped awake from fitful sleep shivering and feeling a bit… wet between her thighs.
End
Author Notes
Canon Memphis is based off the character of the same name from Fafner in the Azure. Shinguji Tasuku, Katina Tarask, Russel Bagman and Leona Garstein are based off characters of the same names from Super Robot Wars Original Generation series. Mizuno Ami is based off the character of the same name from Sailor Moon series.
The quote Giuseppe recites is from the excellent movie Blood Diamond.