Well this was a surprise hit. In either case, here comes an update at last. Hope you enjoy.

Chapter Two: Prelude to Chaos

Legion strode through the shadows, a bundle of clothes held firmly in their arms. Their faintly glowing, mechanical eye systematically scanned their surroundings, searching. They were seeking something. A machine. A washing machine, to be exact. Their own platform was not designed for cleaning the clothing of organics, as indeed, Geth had very little use for such things. They knew, however, that such machines had once been used by the Geth during the time that they served the Creators, and in practically all of the inhabited galaxy, washing machines were very much still in use. Any larger civilian structure usually held at least a few, and therefore, they reasoned, they would be able to find one within this structure as well, given time.

Why were they doing this? Their stated reason was simple: they wished to avoid conflict and would perform the requested task in order to facilitate this goal. Inwardly, however, it was a lot more complex.

Avoiding conflict was certainly a notable factor. The Vallerie-organic was the first organic not to react with hostility towards them when they were not working with Shepard-Commander. This presented an opportunity for research; a chance to learn more about organics, as was one of their objectives. Acquiring additional allies could also prove greatly useful when it came to the matter of returning to the Collective as a whole in one piece, which was more or less a necessity unless they managed to restore long-range communications.

Another reason was the fact that the bundle of unwashed clothes, inconsequential though they were, could act as a reason for their presence. If they encountered other organics, having a task would give them a justifiable reason for exploring their surroundings, as opposed to if they were simply wandering aimlessly. They had once heard that organics were less suspicious of entities that were performing a task, and consequently wished to test this theory.

There was also the small detail of her designation. The number zero was very mathematically important. The small human designated 'Louise', they had learned, also held a secondary designation as 'the Zero'. Therefore, it stood to reason that the female in question also possessed some measure of importance. It was yet to be determined with any certainty, but the possibility did exist, and to a synthetic like themselves, it did make some measure of logical sense. Not to mention that the previous organic with a 'Zero' moniker, Subject Zero, had been quite significant in her own right, something which had set some measure of precedent in this aspect.

There were other concerns, however. The organics themselves only formed part of the picture. Their 1183 programs may not have currently possessed much knowledge about their location, and although they could perform close-range explorations, getting a more comprehensive view of this world could take quite some time alone. Furthermore, they would require a connection to the rest of the Geth eventually, as they would otherwise not be able to share their acquired knowledge. Locating a means of transport was also a necessity in the longer term, lest they find themselves without a means of transport at a time when such a thing was required.

In time, there would be opportunities to fulfill the first goal. The second and third would require additional hardware. Given that they had seen no signs of advanced technology thus far, it could possibly prove more troubling than the common case. Of course, they could theoretically construct passable devices themselves, given time and suitable materials, but such a thing was an inefficient course of action at best.

Something moved in their vision. Legion paused its thoughts, moving them to a secondary thread as it focused on the potential threat to its hardware. Its arms moved, dropping the laundry onto the floor before retrieving the pulse rifle from the back-side of their platform. It was aimed in the direction of the disturbance as several programs began to search for possible hostiles.

A small creature moved out from behind a corner. The Geth's rifle was lowered, as they recognized the creature as a small, earthen rodent. Not a threat. The pulse rifle was quickly placed back onto its usual spot; the rodent was ignored, the laundry was retrieved and they kept moving, resuming their earlier pondering as though it had never been interrupted.

Preferably they would be able to acquire serviceable local technology for their purposes. Although they had as of yet detected no signs of transmissions, they had not performed any thorough scans, and their own systems were not the most sensitive one could find.

There was also the matter of the earlier data intrusion. It had penetrated their own defenses, which was worrying. Then it had proceeded to act in a way that was, by all intents and purposes, grossly ineffective. Upon successful entry into the system, it had proceeded to overwrite a single program, which was even now chanting 'obey' and occasionally initiating consensus votes to make the platform as a whole unilaterally obedient to an as-of-yet unidentified 'summoner'. The votes, needless to say, never got much support, but they could still not make sense of who the so-called summoner was. It was not a common phrase, present mostly within works of fiction.

In either case, after making the single change, the foreign code had more or less gone dormant, as if it believed its task to be complete. It still caused some measure of passive effects on the platform, but it was nothing that their electronical countermeasures could not counteract, and the initial entry point itself had since been quarantined. They could only conclude that whoever had unleashed the electronic assault in the first place had designed their methods for targeting single, larger programs such as AI or advanced VI. The Geth's fundamental hive-mind-based modus operandi directly counteracted the methods of the previous intrusion. It may successfully have overwritten one program, but then it had failed to realize that there were others to consider, leaving a good one thousand, one hundred and eighty-two programs fully rational and capable of sensible decision making. All things considered, things had turned out relatively well, even if one program would have to be reset from backups once they re-established contact with the collective.

As for now, however, exploration was their priority. There was little to be done about the data intrusion in the present moment. Moving through one empty corridor after another, they gradually began to map out the building. It was as good a place to start as any, and it would save them any potential pathfinding problems later down the line, making it a suitable course of action if they worked under the assumption that they would be making a prolonged stay.

It would not take too long to perform.

-{II}-

Later, some time after dawn…

Waking up from sleep was, as it turned out, a very gradual affair. At one point, she was sleeping. Another, and she was awake. The time that had passed between the two could have been anything from a mere second to a hundred years.

Honestly, Louise had absolutely no idea how long she had been lying there, staring at the ceiling without really seeing it. There were no memories in her mind, not of that seemingly endless yet simultaneously very brief expanse of time. At one moment, she had simply noticed that she was doing it, and that was it. She was awake.

Unfortunately, she quickly came to regret it. Conscious thought brought with it other, less welcome things. Memories of yesterday resurfaced, most rudely making their presence known. They told of a summoning ritual gone wrong, bringing forth a strange creature equal parts terrifying and exasperating. It had taken literally two minutes for the mad creature to bring her to the end of her patience.

Slowly, she looked around. No sign of… Geth, was it? She was fairly sure that was its name. No sign of her laundry, no sign of… well, the bed of hay she had laid out last morning was still there, but maybe she was just misremembering it. Was it possible…

A dream? Was it possible she had dreamed the entire Founder-cursed mess? Sure, the pile of hay and quite a few memories spoke against it, but she wanted to believe it oh so desperately. Why, if she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine that everything was completely normal. It was almost like…

Her stomach growled, making its emptiness known to the world at large. Her thoughts were abruptly diverted by the noise, sidetracked at the last moment before some terrible realization could manifest in her mind. Breakfast. Yes. Breakfast would be nice. If she was lucky, she dreamt the whole thing, which would at least allow her to have some modicum of peace during her meal.

Slowly excavating some suitably fine, noble clothing from her clean supply, Louise got dressed. Progress was swift. The sooner she got the task over with, the better. Then, once she was properly clothed, she opened her door and went outside.

Owing to her own, constant misfortune (or maybe just a particularly bad case of rotten luck), however, she was not the only one to do so. Barely a moment after she had made her way into the corridor proper, another door swung open. Through it came Kirche von Zerbst, in all her annoyingly busty glory. What was worse, the woman was being followed. Trailed by a large, salamander-like creature, the distinctly more feminine noble had apparently chosen the worst possible time to emerge.

If Louise had gotten her way, no conversation would have taken place. She would have kept moving, studiously ignoring the living proof of yesterday trailing the other noble. Better than to face reality as it was. Then again, Kirche evidently had other plans.

"Well if it isn't Louise of Zero familiars", she began, brief surprise at the encounter quickly shifting into a rather unpleasant smile. Unwilling to let the insult stand, Louise, who was already in the process of brushing past the other woman, pivoted on her heel to send a scathing glare in the speaker's direction.

"Shut it, Zerbst", she retorted; "I'll have you know my Familiar is much more exotic than yours." Well, at least it was if she measured exoticness in levels of insanity. Her new Familiar -even if part of her was still denying its existence- was definitely nothing like anything she had met before, and in a way, that could make it very exotic indeed. Then again, the wider implications were ones which she still preferred not to think about.

"Flame is much greater than a mere broken golem", Kirche haughtily replied, evidently referencing her newly-acquired fire lizard; "Collectors scour the Germanian fire lands for creatures like him. Nobody seeks a creature like yours." Louise would never admit it, but the words did actually sting somewhat… if only because insulting her Familiar was, by extension, insulting her too.

"I'll have you know it's not broken at all!", the pink-haired mage exclaimed, the heat of the moment perhaps taking a bit of a precedence over rational thought. She was a noble, she had her pride (worn and beaten though it may be) and she would defend it as ferociously as anyone else. Unbeknownst to her, however, she was just digging herself deeper.

"Oh? And where is it then?", the other woman queried, knowing full well that it wasn't anywhere in sight. She seemed much too smug about the fact, too, confident in her everlasting superiority over her family's long-time rivals. Mostly Louise, although the Valleriés were of course to be hated as a matter of course.

It was somewhere around here that the so-called 'Zero' realized her error. Admittedly it had only been a moment since her poorly-planned words left her mouth, but that did not change the fact that they were spoken in the first place. Quite frankly, she lacked one, critical piece of evidence to back up her claim. Namely, the presence of the Familiar in question. As of right now, there was simply nothing to indicate that her words were anything but empty. How was she going to get out of this?

"W-well I told it to make itself useful and it just… sort of wandered off", Louise tapered off. Right, that doesn't sound at all unconvincing. This was not going to be fun.

The ensuing reply was probably to be expected. "So not only are you a poor mage", Kirche began, and if Louise had not already been seething before she definitely was now; "but you cannot even keep your own golem under control. You are even more of a failure than I thought."

By comparison, Louise's own retort was anything but coherent. It could best be summed up as a series of indignant splutters, a clenching of fists and, concludingly, a swift retreat in the direction of the meal room. Louise stalked off, her foul mood almost seeming to visibly radiate outwards, enveloping anything unfortunate enough to be close to her. Kirche said something to her back, but whatever it was, she cared not to hear it, her anger doing a good job of swallowing the hurt below the surface. The rule of steel may have dictated that she would stand firm against such taunts; to do otherwise was to be weak, and that was not permissible. Nevertheless, some of it did inevitably stick, and as the months went by, it had eroded quite a bit of Louise's once-formidable self-esteem. Not that she would acknowledge the fact.

As she walked, ignoring the students swerving out of her way, the pink-haired girl's anger shifted into something else. Determination. She would find her Familiar. She would drag it back here, and she would show Kirche. She would show them all.

Breakfast first though.

-{II}-

Meanwhile, near the academy vault…

There was an anomaly. Legion acknowledged the fact, staring at the heavy-set door in front of them. Some time ago, their explorations had yielded something other than simple topological data. They had been stopping periodically to scan their surroundings, and one of these scans had unveiled some interesting information. Until now, they had found little of note, having mostly wandered through empty halls. There had been a few encounters with the staff and one observed event of human pre-mating rituals, but this was really the first thing that was truly noteworthy.

As for why, there was Element Zero tech nearby. Not much, but some. Enough to be traceable even with a simple omni-tool such as their own. Better sensors would have allowed for clearer readings and greater range, but their proximity was close enough for their own to suffice, even if all they got was a vague direction. Needless to say, they would acquire little useful data in a more technologically populated area (element zero was everywhere), but here, readings were sparse enough to be distinct and, therefore, usable.

Following the signature had led them here. There was a door in their path. It appeared to possess some form of manual- or remote lock, for they could detect no local control panel. By itself, this was not a peculiar matter. The local civilization appeared to possess a certain dislike for electronics, as they themselves were the only example of it that they had yet found. No, the strangeness originated from another factor.

There was some sort of energy field surrounding the door. It did not appear to be based on any sort of electronic shielding system, but rather resembled some form of biotic power. Not a barrier, precisely. More diffuse, and seemingly centered further into the actual material. Some form of biotic reinforcement? A variant of a Stasis field, perhaps, or possibly some form of atomic connection reinforcement?

They did not know for sure. Delayed biotics were not known to be a possibility, as any biotic effect required constant focus from the creator for their effects to persist. Likewise, no organic could maintain a biotic field indefinitely, and if there were any capable of doing so, there were better uses for them than guarding a door. Only Justicar-class Asari and a few other unique individuals even came close, but a few days or, in one special case, weeks were still a far cry from infinity. A Rachni Queen might have been able to manage it, if they had not been rendered extinct. If some form of technology -assumingly the source of the Element Zero reading detected within- could replicate a Stasis effect and apply it internally within an object, however, this would create a reliable structural support which could prove desirable for the Geth as a whole. The Old Machines would come eventually, and when they did, the Geth would need every advantage they could get.

Which just left the conundrum of just how they would actually achieve access. Breaking through with raw force was estimated to require armature-level firepower or sufficiently powerful breaching charges, neither of which they possessed. Were the lock electronical, they could have achieved access that way, but they had already determined that this was not the case. Nor did they possess a relevant key. As such, they would require assistance -or additional materials- in order to achieve this particular goal.

Right now, they could achieve nothing else here. As such, Legion turned. Then they stopped. There was an organic in the corridor. Human. Female, lightly green(?) hair, not a recognized individual. Clothing matches observed local norms. No weapons visible: possibly hidden and/or nonexistent. Appears non-hostile. No signs of biotics. Low threat. No combat action required.

For a moment, there was silence. Then; "What are you?"

The woman had spoken, her words a mixture of suspicion and simple curiosity. The question was considered for a moment, and then, the platform voiced its own reply.

"We are Legion, a terminal of the Geth. We request your identification."

"Longuevuille", she answers and, after a moment's silence, continues with the observation "I see you've found the vault of relics".

"Affirmative", they reply, correctly assuming that the referred 'vault of relics' was in fact the same as whichever room was behind the impassable door. The designation gave little away; a relic could refer to almost anything. In all probability, however, whatever contents it held were considered valuable by the local rulers. This would explain the defensive measures.

Building consensus… consensus achieved. Attempting to extract additional information from the Longuevuille-organic.

"The defensive measures utilized here are not recognized. We request clarification."

For a moment, it looks as though the organic will require clarification too, as she mostly seems puzzled by the request. It seemingly takes a few moments for her to parse the words into something more comprehensible to her.

"…You're trying to get in, aren't you?" she asks, her tone edging on disbelief. The statement is true. Internally, they acknowledge as much. However, admitting it is theorized to cause negative consequences, by 89.55% probability. Therefore, they fail to admit the fact, electing to stay silent for lack of a tangible reply.

"You are. Why would you- do you even know what's in there?" Their silence apparently quite telling, the Longuevuille-female quickly reaches her own, unfortunately quite accurate conclusion. This question, however, they could and would answer.

"There is currently no data on the contents of this 'vault'. We detected peculiar readings. Investigating was deemed appropriate."

For a moment, the human seems stunned. Then, for some inexplicable reason, she begins to laugh.

"Did you really…" she chokes out between semi-suppressed sounds of amusement; "decide to try breaking into… the most secure vault in the country… because you were curious?" For some reason, the organic appears to find this idea exceedingly amusing. They do not understand why. Given sufficient time and motivation, they would find a way.

"Affirmative", they reply. It is the truth, after all, and it was not exactly a secret. Deception never really was within the nature of the Geth.

This response simply evoked more sounds of amusement, and the rest, as they say, is history.

-{II}-

Back with Louise, a short time later…

Breakfast, fortunately, was not quite the humiliating affair she had been fearing. After boldly fleeing from Kirche, she had adopted a rather… accelerated pace. Her dignity would not accept calling it "running", but in essence, that was indeed what had taken place. She definitely had not been running in order to get away from any further source of hurt, or to try and pre-empt the ridicule which could follow from being present during peak breakfast activity, oh no. That was the action of a lesser noble, a commoner or a coward. She had just been… hurrying. Yes, hurrying. She had been in a hurry to get breakfast over with so that she could find her Familiar and properly show Kirche just how wrong the well-endowed woman was.

She was not really sure what she was eating. She had just grabbed the first vaguely edible-looking thing she could, then settled for that. It was some sort of bread with slices of ham… or maybe it was some other form of meat. She wasn't really paying attention to it. In either case, it did not really taste bad, and it did fill her stomach, so she supposed it was not a total loss.

Other students slowly trickled in. Some, mostly those whose Familiars were small, had brought said Familiars with them, whilst everyone else had probably left them outside. Trying to squeeze a dragon or any other form of large creature into the dining hall would have been folly, as neither servants nor nobles would get anywhere with a bunch of large Familiars clogging up the paths.

Thankfully, nobody really paid that much attention to her. Not much more than the usual, at least; what chatter there was mostly appeared to revolve around the others' newly-acquired Familiars. Part of it was probably the fact that she was keeping her head down, deliberately trying to be inconspicuous. It was just better that way. Without her Familiar around, nobody would believe her claims anyway.

Kirche enters the room partway through the meal, but thankfully seems to decide that there has been enough tormenting already. The woman sits down with a few other girls, but her choice of seats is distant enough not to be a worry. Hopefully. A niggling worry remains, however.

The rest of the meal passes uneventfully. For the most part, Louise ignores her fellow students, not really wishing to suffer through yet another argument about her capabilities (or lack thereof, depending on your viewpoint). It also helps not to think about the fact that almost everyone else got nice and normal Familiars, whereas she ended up with something decidedly more insane. The strange thing was, she distinctly remembered asking for a 'wise' Familiar (along with divine and powerful), but if she was entirely honest, she could see none of those qualities in it. It was not particularly beautiful, either, what with the hole in its torso, although she did admit to noticing a hint of the aesthetic appeal its smooth curves may otherwise have held. Perhaps she could ascribe some wisdom to it as well, at least if she assumed that the 'wisdom' in question was of the kind which never made sense until after the fact.

It was still insane, of course. That point still peeved her, mostly due to its implications. Tradition dictated that she would be stuck with Geth as her Familiar for the rest of her days (assuming no unfortunate deaths). To repeat the summoning ritual was more than a bit taboo. Some would even call it outright heretical, blasphemy against the Founder's teachings. As such, she was more or less stuck with the metallic golem. Its presence would always affect her own image, just as with any other Familiar. Some Familiars would imbue respect in its onlookers. Others were at least useful. Hers was just hopeless. Why couldn't she just have gotten an owl or something?

Of course, there was little to be done about the fact at this stage. The best she could hope for was very probably damage control. The thought was somewhat depressing, actually. Maybe it would be best to go find it now, before her earlier desire to acquire a special Familiar backfired even more than it already had.

Getting up from her seat, Louise set her course for the closest exit. She did not know where her Familiar was. Most people would probably have taken advantage of the fact that mages could see what their Familiars saw, but whether a product of the creature's strangeness or because she was just that bad, the petite mage simply couldn't manage it. As such, she could not tap into its sight in order to get an estimate of its location. With no other way to get a hint as to wherever it actually was, she would simply have to look for her Familiar the old-fashioned way.

Hardship was on the horizon…

…but not necessarily for the reasons she expected. As it turned out, finding her Familiar was a lot easier than anticipated. It took only a fairly short time of aimless walking, and then there it was, standing in the middle of an otherwise desolate corridor. Its right arm was wreathed in an otherworldly, orangey something, glowing minutely with an ethereal light. It was brandishing the glow at one of the walls, moving in a way that seemed more exploratory than actually threatening. Louise's unwashed clothing was lying on the floor next to it, if anything seeming to have gotten dirtier than when she originally sent them for washing to begin with. Needless to say, this did not exactly make her any less annoyed with the metallic creature. In fact, there was a distinct absence of proper obedience in her Familiar, a fact which she just had to do something about. It would probably have been easier if she was taller, however. As it was, her eyes were level with its chest, which did not exactly help matters regardless of the fact that she was rather used to being the shortest one in the room.

"Where have you been? You were supposed to be back before morning!" she begins the coming verbal exchange, marching up to the creature in question. Geth turned, its eye-plates shifting to convey some measure of surprise at her sudden appearance. The perceived emotion was short-lived, however, as the plates soon shifted back into their standard configuration, accompanied by a few words from the golem's own metaphorical mouth.

"No such parameter existed", it replied, seemingly unconcerned. Louise ignored its words, continuing her verbal assault as though they had never been spoken.

"And my clothes! You're supposed to obey me, but you haven't even started washing them!"

"No washing machine was found. We conclude that the clothes cannot be washed", the petite mage's Familiar replied, turning back towards a nearby wall and once again brandishing its glowing arm at the masonry in question.

It was the sheer absurdity of the statement, not the indirect disobedience hidden within, that ultimately managed to jolt Louise out of her rant. She had never heard of anything called a 'washing machine'. What did that even mean? Of course, she knew that machines were a thing. A mechanical thing with cogs and gears, but they existed. The fact that clothes needed to be washed was also known, but that's what servants were for. She did not see how anyone would bother to build a machine for washing clothing, and if they did, it'd probably just tear the clothing apart instead of doing what it was supposed to. The only real way she could see having something non-living washing clothing was if there was a mage directing golems to do such, which was of course ridiculous.

Then again, her Familiar was a golem and she was sort of directing it to- no! Having a mad Familiar was bad enough; the last thing she needed was for the madness to spread any further than it already had.

"I…", she trailed off, momentarily lost for words. Then;

"What are you doing?", now sounding genuinely puzzled. It was probably just another case of insanity from her Familiar's side, but she honestly had no idea what that glowing thing around its arm was, nor why it was waving it around like that. The glow did appear magical, although she had absolutely no idea what element could produce what looked more like solid orange light than anything. Fire with water and earth, perhaps? If so, it had to be a product of a triangle-class mage at least. Enchanted, probably, because otherwise her Familiar would have held a wand and how could a golem be a mage anyway? Not to mention the very thought of summoning another mage with the summoning ritual was almost laughably stupid. Surely there were safeguards for that kind of thing.

"We are searching for structural weaknesses", Geth replied, and if Louise had noticed the hidden meaning behind those words, she would probably have been a great deal more alarmed than what was actually the case. She would have been justified in this alarm, too, very much so. What reason was there, after all, for someone to search for structural weaknesses, if not to make a few… changes? Suffice to say that Legion definitely hadn't taken up masonry as a hobby.

As it was, however, she was much more inclined to disregard it as another bout of insanity than to actually try and treat her Familiar's statements as something to be taken seriously. At least there was nobody here to hear it prattling off about these things. It would also help if it would, for at least a moment, stop referring to itself in plural. It sounded like it was speaking for both of them, which was most assuredly not the case.

…Well, as far as the law was concerned it actually was the case, but she mostly elected to ignore that fact for the time being. True enough, she may have been unavoidably associated with it, but that didn't mean she wanted it to embarrass her any more than it already had.

It was thus that Louise approached her deviant Familiar, reached out, tried to grab a hold of the golem's glowing arm in order to lower it and- hey, this is solid. Her hand gripped onto the surprisingly smooth, slightly warm surface of what, had she been more knowledgeable on the matter, she would have recognized as an omni-tool's haptic interface. The device was a Geth design, a combination of pre-Morning-War models, Geth development and data gleamed from the galaxy at large, and unlike conventional omni-tools, it was directly integrated with the rest of the platform. Of course, Louise did not know any of this. Besides, given her lack of context, the knowledge would have held little meaning to her even if she had.

What she did know, however, was that the glowing whatever-it-was would attract attention if anyone saw it, and not necessarily of the good kind. Before she paraded her Familiar's abilities around in public, she would naturally have to discern what those abilities were. Well, either that or risk getting blindsided by something completely unexpected yet another time, something which she had already gotten quite enough of. If she had gotten her way, her Familiar would have behaved like a proper Familiar for a noble such as herself, but of course, that had not yet been the case. With her luck, it was not likely to change, which was just plain unfair considering how most others' Familiars seemed to be more or less obedient right from the start. Not to mention less infuriating to deal with in a more general sense.

It was with a small outcry of surprise that Louise's primarily annoyance-focused thoughts were brutally interrupted by the sudden movement of the very same glowing arm that she was holding onto. Unprepared as she was for the movement, she was sent stumbling, forced to let go lest she be sent crashing to the floor. The now-released arm, meanwhile, moved back towards the wall, angling upwards as the pink-haired girl's Familiar began to brandish it at a small irregularity in the ceiling.

Having released what they once held, Louise's hands instead shot out to steady her. One hand grasped futilely at the air as the other got a somewhat better grip against the nearby wall, barely saving her from an untimely collision with the floor tiles. Despite the very near save, however, Louise's recovery was surprisingly swift. Just a moment after the original event, she was already bearing down on the machine that had sent her stumbling in the first place.

"What do you think you're doing!?", she exclaimed, her already less-than-stellar mood having worsened further following the little… incident. It was almost like…

"Did you not hear a word of what I said yesterday?" was the very abrupt follow-up question, anger giving way to some mixture of disbelief and simple resignment at the sudden realization that her mechanical Familiar may very well be next to impossible to train properly, because unlike others' Familiars, hers was both smart enough to argue back, driven enough to get its own ideas instead of following hers and insane enough to blindside her at the best of times. Her current approach clearly wasn't working. It had turned away from her again (clearly seeing her question as a rhetorical one), which was annoying, but she had a feeling that yelling at it further wouldn't help. That being said, she was a part of the de la Vallerie line and, therefore, not so easily cowed. Since brute force seemed to be making very little progress in this avenue, however, a chance of tactics could be in order. Perhaps she could just… ask it? Not like she could think of anything else right now.

Letting out a sigh, she opens her mouth to speak, ignoring the brief flash of surprise at the unexpected undertone of weariness in her voice.

"I just… you aren't behaving like Familiars are supposed to. What am I doing wrong?"

Geth turned again, its arm lowering from the small crack it had managed to locate in the mortar right where wall met ceiling. Its singular eye focused on her face, the surrounding faceplates reconfiguring minutely as it clearly considered the question. Then;

"No data available."

The ensuing noise of raw, primal frustration echoed through the -thankfully empty- corridor, filling the air with what could very easily have devolved into a lament at her general misfortune from the human's part. She had no idea what that answer even meant. It was three words, but the one in the middle didn't make any sense – she hadn't even heard that one before, and it had a clearly foreign tint to it. Not for the first time, part of her wanted to protest that no, she was not a dictionary so could her Familiar please stop treating her like one? With only the smallest of nudges in any direction, things could have gone very different indeed, were it not for Louise, in the midst of her frustration, asking just the right question at just the right time.

"Why aren't you cooperating?"

For a moment, her Familiar goes quiet, its expression stilling in apparent thought. It seems like a small eternity before it finally elects to respond.

"Successful long-term cooperation mandates mutual goals. Our goals appear different. Conflict naturally follows from this point."

It took a moment or two for her to parse the metallic creature's words. Afterwards, well, she was fairly certain she got most of that. From what she gathered, its words basically boiled down to 'I have desires of my own', which she had heard was a sort of mixed blessing, and which was a thing for those who ended up summoning smarter creatures. The smarter the Familiar, the more ideas and thoughts it would get, or so she had heard. Never had she heard of one where it went to this extent, however. There were smart Familiars, certainly, but it was always the magic-wielder who was ultimately in charge. Hers clearly went a step further, which had regrettably resulted in a decidedly unruly Familiar with a tendency to take its own initiative over following hers. Cast into that light, its behavior suddenly made a lot more sense.

It was at that point that realization struck. It wasn't behaving like a Familiar. That was the entire problem. It was, for all intents and purposes, behaving like an entirely independent creature that just happened to pop up after the summoning. Even if common sense dictated that no, golems could not think (nor could they be summoned in the summoning ritual, since they were not alive), evidence to the contrary was right in front of her, impossible to ignore. Despite the unfamiliar rune still visibly present on her Familiar's(?) form, however, something had clearly gone wrong with the summoning ritual itself. Somewhere along the line, the whole summoning ritual had gone wrong, and the result was plain to see.

With that fact in mind, the until-then distant danger of being thrown out suddenly seemed far too close for comfort. Not to mention the risk of being accused a heretic due to having -albeit accidentally- pervaded the Founder's summoning ritual. The latter thought was, if possible, even scarier than the former. Louise considered herself a faithful follower of the Founder's ideals. She was also, however, a noble, and for all her distinct lack of skill with the magical arts, she did know that there was a very real chance that everyone else may very well not see it like that. The thought of ending up punished like a heretic sent cold chills down her spine, but the other nobles would undoubtedly see the opportunity, and at that point, it would be one voice against many. It was not a war she could hope to win.

By the Founder, she was in so much trouble.

End of file.

Enjoy the cliffhanger? Me too. It was great fun.

I hope I didn't accidentally wreck the characterization here. It feels like I more or less got it right, but any thoughts, pointers, criticism, comments or what have you would be very much appreciated nonetheless.