Lena
Well.
Boy.
Did that happen.
No, seriously, it's eleven-thirty in the morning and I still haven't my apartment. He's over in the kitchen cooking up a stir-fry, and I'm just getting my clothes out of the wash so I can eat and (finally) run.
We didn't actually do it last night. I was very, very drunk, and he just brought me home, got me to vomit into the toilet once or twice, and put me to bed. Slept on the tatami because I insisted upon it. We still haven't done it.
Honestly, I'd very much like to. Priss's written the good officer off as a bit of a sleaze, but the truth of the manner is that he's just a fanboy. Six-foot-two, big broad shoulders, muscles on top of muscles, and there's just something so… goofy about the guy. He's the most American man in all of Megatokyo, is what Nene tells me.
I slip into some athleisure wear, straighten out my bowl haircut, and smell the soy sauce from across the apartment. Straighten up. Hangover's almost dissipated, thank goodness. Every time I swear off alcohol, and then I don't drink at all for a few weeks, and then comes another breakup and its Sochu Fucking City. Priss is sick of driving me home and listening to me complain at this point, obviously, especially because then she has to get Sylvie to pick her up, drive back, and get her bike. Says she loses three hours of vital sleep every time I get plastered.
Hence the plan. So far, it seems to be working. Obviously Leon knows what's going on, but it's not like he minds cooking brunch for a beautiful girl with a fighter's physique, hmm?
I move into the other room, where he's just about finished up, turn on the kotatsu and shove my legs underneath it.
"Hey," he says, monotone. Ooh, he's lost in his work, barely notices – or maybe he's trying not to notice? Hee hee hee. I feel like a high school girl again.
"Hey yourself. Does the mix work? I bought it at one of those instant-only markets, the mid-budget ones."
"Yeah, I noticed. Money's tight, then?"
I sigh. What a mood killer, this guy! "Well, yeah. Clients are getting rarer. Lot of them are spooked and are heading out of Megatokyo."
"What is it you do again? Sorry, I never asked Priss."
"Comprehensive Wellness Instructor. It's like… look, do we really have to talk about work?"
Leon turns around, bowls in hand, grins. "Can't really think about any other topic. Except for, well, the other job?"
I roll my eyes. "Why am I not surprised that you know about that?"
"Because among Priss's crowd, you stick out as much as I do. And 'cause Nene acts too familiar with you to be a coincidence. And because I saw Priss's face after her helmet got smashed in during the Nosferatu fight. And then I just put things together-"
"Yeah yeah yeah. Priss told us after she got out of the coma. Our boss insisted she wasn't going to kill you, though. Too much suspicion."
He nods. "Okay. I will – not pry any further. I haven't even told my partner, for what it's worth. I can keep secrets."
"I never said you couldn't – oh, look, what is it you want to know so badly?" Damn! I'm almost peeved. This isn't going the way I thought it would. Leon's more businesslike than I thought he'd be.
"Nothing! Nothing. Well. Eh."
"Well, eh?"
He passes a very nutritious-looking, if a little overcooked, bowl to me. Sits down on the opposite end of the kotatsu. "Largo. What the hell was up with him? He was the one who had control over the killsats, right?"
"Well, yes?"
He nibbles on the food. "You seem really non-rattled by that thing. I – something like that shouldn't be allowed to exist, whatever he was. GENOM didn't even let the JSDF look at the remains of the body of the guy who pulverized half their towers in under a minute."
"They're not scared? Quincy isn't scared of someone like that?"
"Of course they're fucking scared." Leon's voice gets louder. "Look, completely wild guess: SuperBoomer with old codes. The old operational codes that GENOM stole back when Mason was Special Assistant to the Chairman. But the US Space Force doesn't dare admit they fucked up even more than they already have, right? They're already swapping out all their top-level personnel in the wake of the killsat attacks. If it came to light that the guys who provide them with all their kit, orbital combat Boomers and what not, except for the Lockheed-build killsats, stole their shit, there'd be pressure to break off relations with a company the military-industrial complex of the US, Japan, et cetera, are all dependent on. They can't break that bond, so they just have to let GENOM do whatever. And GENOM – I dunno."
I blink a few times. "You've been thinking about this for awhile, haven't you? I mean, it's not like I haven't, but…"
He sighs. "Yeah. Okay. Sorry. You guys can do something about all this bullshit and I can't. Priss said I should quit if I didn't like being a cop, but… Yeah."
"Do you like being a cop?"
He shrugs. "What happened to not talking about work?" Then he stops. "I guess I got that out of my system or something. Maybe that's what just happened. Thanks, Lena."
I nod. Start eating. It's pretty good, maybe a little too sauce-y for my taste. Hm.
Well, what is there to talk about? I think both Priss and I figured Leon's pants would be off by now, so to speak. But this isn't so unpleasant, in its own way. Maybe I need to move slower in my relationships. Stop pursuing people who like to move fast, like the last guy. Whoo.
"Oh man," I say. "I actually can't think of anything to talk about that we have in common except for work."
He laughs. This isn't going well. "Comprehensive Wellness Instructor. What's that like? Work that isn't the judicious application of violence."
I tilt my head up, and focus on the ceiling. "Imagine a dietary coach, a personal trainer, and pseudo-therapist who does in-studio work for cheap, and house calls for expensive. There's a lot of bored housewives trying to get cellulite out of their system, and then I have to sell them health products that I've been assigned to sell without them knowing that I think they're mostly bullshit." Ugh. "Like, you have to just go for a fucking run once in awhile, is what I want to tell these people."
"Oh!" He nods fiercely. "Yeah. I'm kinda lucky 'cause the ADP thing got me a discount for an apartment near an actual park. So you just loop it a couple of times, lift some weights, and that's it. Daley's a little more into that stuff."
"He's Chinese, right? So he's into traditional medicine?"
"Not really. His family fled from Hong Kong to London when the war broke out, so he tries to avoid reminders of Mainland stuff. We were busting this one ring smuggling rhino horn, actually, and he actually got really pissed at the ringleader when he said it was, you know, a legitimate operation."
"They can't just grow keratin in a stackfarm and pass that off?"
"Nope!" Leon grins, clicks his chopsticks. "Otherwise the horn-is-penis metaphor falls apart, is what Daley said. Man. Those were the days, back when things weren't so – crazy in this city." He looks wistful, then shakes his head. "Okay, your turn. Give me a funny story about comprehensive wellness."
"Well, it's usually the same sort of people, same I-don't-have-to-work-for-money-what-do-I-do-with-myself kinda stuff…" I stop. "Actually, funny story. That was how I met Vision."
He gapes. "Get the fuck out."
"I'm not," I titter. "After all, this is my apartment."
"Did this have anything to do with McLaren?" He stops. "'Cause you and Nene were in those cutesy blue maid outfits to watch him as Sabers, right?"
"Yeah. Because I knew her little sister, and made friends with her as her instructor." I tell him the story. It was simple, really. Reika wanted to know Irene's best friend, even as she planned to avenge her death in the messiest way possible. When Kou and her team nabbed me, it was unpleasant. Kou was convinced I was a spy who had gotten Irene killed, Reika didn't want to believe it but all the evidence did point to that. As much as she insisted that Quincy had to die, that her honor as a member of both an ancient Triad and one of the clans that run the CCP's state-owned megacorps was at stake – she didn't want to do what she was doing.
His jaw continues to drop as I tell the story. I gloss over what happened with Irene, of course, the cult and the big farming arcology and all that insanity, but telling the story feels good actually. In the end, I told her what I felt: that her grandfather had set her up as a deniable asset, a way to kill Quincy without starting World War 4. The look in her eyes then, in that moment before she started to cry harder than anyone I'd ever seen, before Leon and Daley showed up to drag McLaren off… I miss her, even though I didn't really know her. I didn't realize that. She's still touring as Vision, but Celia says she spent a good month in a Chang compound on an artificial island in the flooded parts of Shanghai. Doing what, I have no idea. I don't want to thik of her as an enemy.
By the time I'm done, Leon is just nodding like a bobblehead. I poke him on the forehead. He snaps out of it. He's so cute!
"Man," he says. "Funny thing is, McLaren got sent to prison, but they had to fend off a few assassination attempts on him. Light sentence, all assets seized, but he's in solitary for his own safety. I'm not sure if it was the Chinese or GENOM that was after him."
"Probably both."
"Yeah." He eats some more. "Nene pulled some data on the whole Triad connection from an FBI database, but that was all suspicions and maybes. No hard evidence." He stops mid-bite. "Do you think you'd ever take help from the Chinese SOE conglomerate, what's it called-"
"China World Prosperity Corporation? No. My boss refused to even entertain the idea. She's not interested in trading one corporate tyrant for another."
"Good point."
Good point? God and Buddha, what are we doing, talking about the geopolitical nonsense we both keep ending up involved in? I laugh. Time to go for the kill, however awkwardly. "Listen, if you ever want to hook up-"
"Later?" His face falls. "Alright. Can I get your-"
Shit! I scramble up, slam my hands on the kotatsu. "Wait, don't leave! Don't actually just ditch me! Either we date now or we make specific plans to date later!"
He boggles. "Oh. I mean, this whole thing has been a little weird, I don't usually do girls who I've just watched vomit under a twelve-hour period, so…"
Realization dawns on him. "Ah. So Priss wasn't joking when she said you wanted to score." He breathes through his teeth. "Alright. I am an idiot. Tell you what, let me pull up my holofeed calendar, and you do the same."
I bring mine up fast – too fast? Too enthusiastically? Hard to say – and soon we've got a shared holochannel between us, an AR sharing space. His schedule's pretty packed compared to mine, but it's easy enough to goad him into dropping a Replicants show in favor of doing something a little more interesting, namely a judo match I've had my eye on watching live for a hot minute.
It works. Holy shit this is actually working.
I never thought I'd say this outside of a hardsuit, but thank you very much, Priss Asagiri.
Nene
I'm gloriously naked, sitting in bed, swiping through social media feeds on a shared holofeed with Mackie, also naked. Life is pretty good. I got out of work early today because of a system crash that isn't my job to fix. I worked with the Deep IT guys, who are convinced it's a coolant leak that fried a neural circuit, for a few hours and now here I am. Sitting around. It's a lazy weekend day, for once. I went home, spooned with my boyfriend for a little who got off of helping Doc Raven early too, and now here I am. Doing what youngsters of every twenty-first century generation do too much of: browsing memes.
Okay, so maybe flatscreen memes are a little old-hat. I know people who have gotten AI's to build them entire meme games on shared VR metaverses and fediverses, an hour of dicking around in low-quality assets just for one stupid punchline. Against the point of memes, if you ask me. Memes are like sushi. You eat them in one bite, raw.
Except… hang on. Mackie just pulled up something in my peripheral vision. Well, his main vision, but that's the beauty of AR shared holofeeds, you see what the other guy sees as they see it. I peek over and…
"Is that Celia's winter catalog?"
He goes white in nanoseconds. "Uh… um… ah… er… ah… fuck. Yeah. It's not because I'm looking at Sis, I swear! I don't do that anymore!"
I snuggle up to him; he's three years younger than me and just slightly taller. "Ah? What are you looking at, then?"
He tries to swipe the feed away. Too late, I can see, it's… winter wear? "No such thing as cold weather – just cold hearts" goes the little motto on the page.
"I, ah, we never got each other anything for Christmas after the whole Largo thing, so I thought I'd surprise you, or something."
What? I can't help but giggle. "Oh my god you are so cute."
"I'm not cute, Nene? I'm cool! I'm a total badass! I-" Yeah I don't even give him a chance to finish, just wriggle up to him tighter so my one boob is pressing up against his arm.
After a moment, he continues. "I mean, we could pick something out for you together. I know you don't really do fashion, no matter how much Sis thinks all of you should be buying her clothes…"
I giggle again. Mackie's surprisingly warm. "It'd get suspicious if I got other-job discounts, and she's way outside a civil servant's price range. The fanciest I get is SuperDry or Uniqlo."
"Fair." He sighs. "Yeah, I guess we can't really do this. I barely exist in the public eye, but if word got out I was dating you someone would start asking questions. But I do want to give you something."
"Is simple." I break into the Russian accent my mother used to have before a few good years in Megatokyo pounded it out of her. "Geev mee your peeeenis, putchik. Zen ve vill be all good, ya?"
"You make Russian sound incredibly unsexy, Nene. Just so you know." He says this completely deadpan. We have very different senses of humor, I think. I go for memes and silly voices and he's more, uh, British in his delivery. "A Bond Girl you ain't."
I wrack my brain for the reference. "Didn't they stop doing James Bond when the war broke out?"
"I think so, yeah." He inches away from me, his eyes still fixated on the catalog. He flips through model after model, casual to holocloth to Harajuku-lolita to eveningwear to Sinostyle. Stops. Sighs again.
"Okay," I whisper. "What's the matter?"
He says it so bluntly I'm almost caught off guard. "Sis has been acting weird lately."
"Oh?"
"I mean, she's kind of a weird person? I guess? Doing what she does, what we do, you have to be a little – you know."
"She's got stuff wired into her brain, right? By your dad?"
He freezes. "You knew?"
"I never told you I knew?"
"No! And Sis said to never tell anyone or else she'd disown me!"
"It wasn't hard to figure out. Never mind the fact that she seems to be good at, like, everything, there's just something about her. Plus the whole thing where she said her father left her instructions in her brain. You need wetware for that kind of thing, even if she said otherwise."
"Yeah, and most people don't get wetware jammed in their skull at like eight or whenever she got it. When I got it, too." He curls up a little. "I'm sorry. I should have said something. Should have hinted at it."
Heh. Oh boy.
Mackie is a very enthusiastic Knight Saber – sometimes Priss calls him the 'mascot', as if we're a magical girl team (hey, she's not really wrong), but in private? Different kid entirely. Quiet. Driven. Like a more insecure version of his big sis. He wishes he could do more with his life besides infomongering and hardsuit design. He says he really should go to college some day, once the Sabering is all over.
I know my mother said never date sad men, because then you have to do all the emotional labor for them, like her first husband, and that's not what a modern girl should do with their life. And she's not… wrong? But it doesn't feel like that with Mackie. Whenever Priss gave me shit about being the deadweight on the team, before I really mastered EW suppression, he always stood up for me. And when he's happy, he's awesome. The trick is to just nudge him out of these funks he gets over living in his sister's shadow. Simple enough.
"So, relatively more weird than usual."
"Yeah. Sure. We'll go with that." He looks right at me. "Priss and Sylvie really threw her off, you know? She didn't anticipate that Priss's drummer of some months was a Sexaroid, much less someone Priss had feelings for. The whole security-breach factor with Largo scared the shit out of her. I mean, she's made her peace now that she uh, killed him-"
"And Mason by extension-"
"Right. But, it's like, she knew Priss wasn't going to like the pseudocortex idea, but I think she doesn't like that truth. Because what Dad put in her head has been there for so long she couldn't think of herself as herself without it."
"What about you?"
His hand works. Flexes. "It hasn't really kicked in for me yet. Dad activating it postmortem when she was fifteen was a contingency plan, is what she told me. She grew up in an instant, and uh, I guess it's supposed to take longer to grow into my brain. Work more naturally. Obviously now I can holistically design mecha in my sleep, but you get the idea."
"Okay, so you think she's just trying to – prove Priss wrong."
"Exactly!" He bolts upright. "Nene, that was the phrase I was looking for! Because her whole thing with Priss is just so…" here he winces - "maternal. Can't think of a better way to put it."
Well.
He's not wrong. I used to feel like Celia was a big sister or a mother to me. She taught me how to work my EW suite independently of my regular mad hacking skills. Or maybe he is wrong, because the way Priss and Celia bicker sometimes is… "more like lovers."
"Um."
Oh, did I just say that out loud? Well, nothing to do but double down on it, as my family is wont to do on stupid shit. Or maybe backpedal? Yeah, we'll go with the latter. "I mean, I don't think most people in Megatokyo have the bond we girls have. Getting shot at together to save the city from whatever shit-hot scheme some GENOM exec's cook up on a monthly basis makes you really understand another person. It's like friendship but really intense. That's probably part of it."
"Yeah." Mackie huffs. "Only, if Sis was in love with someone, that'd be how she'd fall in love with them. By saying to herself that she's just trying to protect or guide someone. She'd set out on some elaborate quest to prove that she knows how to help that person better than anyone else."
I think I know what's going on here. "Because that's how she treats her baby brother."
He snickers. "Yep. Exactly. You've seen it."
"So if we're assuming that your big sister is secretly tsundere for Priss, and Sylvie's collateral, what do we do about it?"
He laughs, full-body. Turns to look at me, I mean really look at me. The Stingrays have the deepest chocolate-colored eyes, like the real cacao kind you can only buy at a grocery store, the kind of darkness you can just watch swirling, pulsing, dilating.
"We," he says in a low voice, really intense, "Don't do a goddamn thing. Because no party involved in their weird little lesbian love triangle would believe outside observers. Because we're the kids of the group, the sidekicks to the real grown-ups. And because…" He lets that hang.
"Because?"
He puts his hands on my shoulders. I blush. Just a little. "Because I'd rather spend time having hot sex with you than playing therapist to my big sister. Which is what I think we should do for the rest of the day instead of doomscrolling."
Okay. I laugh. And then Mackie does, too. And somewhere in all that laughter, I grab him, pull him close, kiss him on the lips, wrap my arms around his broad back, and let him bring me gently down onto the bed.
I'm not showing you the rest. Why should I show you private time like that? I've got an idea; while I'm having a screamingly good time, close the browser tab and go outside for a walk or something. Lena keeps telling me I need to do that more often to work down to my 'natural' figure, but she has, like, no chill, so I'll just punt on that advice and send it your way, dear reader.
Heh. 'Dear reader.' I'm such a fuckin' nerd. What would Mama Romanova think? Oh, right, she thinks I need to get a 'real' job and marry a Boomer engineer, even though she did nothing of the sort. I guess punting on advice runs in the family.
