Chapter 47

[I've had a nice break from writing anything at all this week, but everything seems to still be working, so I'll get back into this now.]

Enough was enough. Lilly still had very little idea what to do, but she had to do something. The person the Doctor had been traveling with died in the maze. Pride and those two traveling with him were still okay (so far as she could tell, she couldn't hear them on the screens), but they seemed no closer to getting out than when they'd started. And they'd just been chased around by robots. Lilly was pretty sure that wasn't the kind of thing you outthought.

Aqua stood by the screens, looking entirely too calm, maybe a little smug. She said she let people go if they beat this thing. She wouldn't have made that easy to do.

"Aqua? I have to go to the bathroom."

"Oh." Aqua spun around and stared at her for a moment. "Well shoot. Guess I better let you do that then." She pressed a button and a robot, like the ones that attacked Pride's group, came out of the floor. "This guy'll take you there. Just go. Don't go making a mess on my spaceship."

She let the robot drag her to her feet and push her along out of the room. Good. She was out. It wasn't exactly a long walk after that. Lilly was fairly sure they were in the middle of the spaceship. They crossed a room that seemed like some sort of kitchen and storage area and then were there.

The robot stopped, standing still and waiting. The robot was shaped mostly like a human, but big, and made of metal plates. So, Lilly lifted her hands and began slicing through the ropes by rubbing them against the edge of the metal on the robot's arm. It sliced easily, even if it hurt Lilly's wrists a bit.

The robot, who had been still before, suddenly burst to life and took a swing at her. Lilly had expected that. She jumped forward, standing near the bathroom sink and out of reach. Hopefully the robot wouldn't just take a step closer. There wasn't a lot of room to move in here.

Luckily, it just fired its arm weapon at her. Lilly ducked, knees hitting the hard floor. She screamed, but the sound was muffled by the sound of the robot firing. The blast hit the mirror, bounced off, and went through the robot. The top half blew up.

Lilly sat on the floor a little longer, breathing heavily. But it had worked. She was free and Aqua didn't know. She could save the others now. But first, she'd been telling the truth. She really did need to use the bathroom.

"I'm a glass person."

"You mean like, what the Testimony Foundation makes?" Tourmaline asked. Pride turned to her in confusion. That was as unclear as 'glass person'. "Sorry. I shouldn't have been listening."

"You shouldn't have," Pride agreed. "But you two are going to have to be more specific."

"The glass people are, sort of, people who have been brought back to life," Tourmaline began slowly. She didn't seem entirely sure of what to say. "All their memories are extracted at their time of death, and then the glass people are able to replicate their appearance. So they are, for all intents and purposes, the same person."

Pride frowned. He wasn't too sure about that. It wasn't that he didn't want this to be Greed. He did. And it was certainly a good replica. But Greed had still been Greed without his memories, and in a different body, so surely that wasn't what made the person. And souls were rather tangible last he checked, since they were used in Philosopher's Stones. If the memories were extracted right before death, something still died, making this Greed a copy, not the exact same thing.

Then again, if it was an exact copy, minus those last five minutes or so, would calling him Greed still be accurate? There were just two Greeds now?

If Greed noticed how hard he was thinking, he didn't comment on it. "Yeah, apparently I did die, I just know how that happened as well as you." Which was to say, not at all. "I used to stay on this planet in the future, where there were other glass people. But I ran away when I thought the situation through a little more. Turns out I've been in some pretty interesting, if less life threatening, situations myself since then."

Greed was speaking in his usual, casual way, but it sounded a little forced.

"If they knew your memories, that shouldn't have surprised them in the slightest," Pride said.

Greed looked like he was going to argue, only to switch to a smile. Weird. Pride couldn't remember the last time Greed had smiled at him. "Yeah, I guess that's true. So, now what?"

"I guess we go back to trying to escape," Pride said.

"What? That's it? You were the one so concerned about who I was."

"Yes, because I had to make sure you weren't some imitation alien trying to kill us. Or technology trying to kill us. The same end result." Pride stood up. Greed wasn't here to kill them. Tourmaline's story cleared that up, and the fact Greed's story lined up with hers made it unlikely they were lying. Whether he was 'really' Greed or not didn't change much about the situation. "I wanted to know. Now I do. So we can keep going."

"And you don't care?" Greed asked.

"It doesn't matter right now."

"Thanks," Greed said.

He sounded a little choked up. Strange, Pride though he'd been fairly dismissive. Now this was awkward. Not even Lust got that kind of reaction from her siblings.

Pride looked away. "What are you thanking me for? You're the one who finally did what I asked."

"Of course that's what you'd care about," Greed said. At least he sounded annoyed again. "Well, I've got some good news." He got up, stretching and making his neck crack. "If I'm a Testimony, I can just travel through space. I can get to the controls of this ship and get us out of here."

"Really?" That was a surprise, though it explained how he got on this ship in the first place.

"Yep. Greed's about to save the day. Wait what?"

Greed looked at his own hand. It was fizzling out. And he wasn't the only one. Tourmaline and Pride were starting to disappear as well. Prided stared down at himself, feeling afraid, and then he was gone from the room.

[I really wanted to bring one of the homunculi back since early in this series, but I didn't want them to really be back from the dead. It was amazing how long it took to think of this very obvious solution.]