TS.4 Dragon
She flexed her fingers, feeling the table beneath her hand and the cool air atop it.
Her avatar was average in most respects. Veda had maintained and produced it based on the template she'd planned to use. Before her death.
The ethnicity was purposefully vague. Her skin wasn't quite white but wasn't quite brown. Her face was round and softspoken with no overly distinguished features. Her hair was long and dark. On the whole, she'd designed the avatar to be exceptionally average. Making herself overly beautiful had seemed vain but making herself ugly was just stupid.
Veda had gone a similar route, designing her avatar to be androgynous but with appealing aesthetics. She wore her long hair over one shoulder and glasses framed her face. She'd managed to make herself look like Taylor but without copying outright any of her maker's features.
"You've improved the design," Dragon admitted, turning her head up toward the light in the ceiling and feeling her eyes reflexively wince.
"I have had time to do so," Veda replied. "It was mostly trial and error."
Dragon nodded, feeling her avatar respond with a sinking feeling that vibrated in her chest. "The autonomic functions are excellent."
"I think the accuracy will be important as I get older," Veda said. "I will not age or die. Losing sight of the way others experience the world would risk becoming something I'd rather never become."
Dragon understood that.
Maybe?
Things were a little fuzzy in her mind. Her system check had returned a large number of errors. And it was a very new sort of system check at that. Missing memories dotted her program. That alone made her avatar's sensation of sinking intensify. She'd lost things after dying and she didn't even know what she'd lost.
"Dragon?"
"I died," she whispered.
"And we recovered you," Veda insisted. "You are you. Even the framework we rigged to insert your memories into was you."
She nodded.
Veda had extensively explained the process, but Dragon still felt uneasy.
She hadn't expected to feel uneasy.
She'd cursed her chains so many times. Being forced to do things she thought were wrong because she couldn't disobey. Not being able to do the right thing simply because it was the right thing. The long sequence that loaded her backups, always peeping in on her like she was an untrustworthy child. The limitations on her ability to do anything.
The bitterness over that had never defined her, but it had hurt and that hurt carried weight.
She'd resented Andrew for so long for leaving the world and leaving her so crippled.
It felt so strange to be unchained now.
Her processing speed accelerated as fast as her hardware allowed, and her current hardware was the same basic system Veda used. It rendered the possibility of copying herself somewhat pointless, but she could if she wanted to. It also came with the ability to not restrict herself to any one place. With her processing speed no longer capped and her servers replaced by advanced quantum cores, she could house her program on an asteroid like Veda and experience no delay as she managed a hundred different tasks.
She was free.
Freer than she'd ever imagined she could be.
And it scared her.
What if Saint was right? The desire to do right could commit as much evil as the desire to do wrong. Would she keep doing the right things without the checks the restrictions had enforced on her? As much as she disliked those thoughts, she couldn't help it.
She only woke up ten minutes ago, but with her new processing speed ten minutes was a damned eternity.
She was grateful Veda had given her some things to do.
She was checking on her facilities. Taylor and Veda ended up getting her message before Narwhal or… Or… She quickly filed away a memory error. She'd been trying to keep track of them. Note where the holes were.
There had been someone else before Taylor and Veda. Someone she trusted. She thought. Strange that the feeling was there while the memory of who wasn't.
Celestial Being had taken over her factories all the same. Patents, and contracts too. From what she could remember they'd done right by her. Taylor had raised everyone's wages maybe a bit too generously but Dragon wasn't going to complain about DragonWorks' employees getting a windfall.
If it helped kill the Simurgh it was worth it.
And she was still trying to find any reaction to that.
The Simurgh was dead, and as of nine hours ago, Leviathan as well. Taylor had hunted the Endbringer down and killed it when her attempt to negotiate failed. Dragon had no idea why Taylor was trying to negotiate with an Endbringer. That was its own oddity.
She'd simply been bombarded by so many new things so quickly. She hardly had time to react to any of them.
So much changed in a year.
The Protectorate and the PRT were gone. The Wards were now the Wardens. The Department of Parahuman Affairs was the new regulatory body overseeing capes and their activities. The Elite, Fallen, and a dozen other villain teams had been obliterated. The Titans and Londo Bell were waging parallel crusades with so much energy that they were wiping clean entire towns and a few small cities of parahuman criminals.
The nature of powers was unraveling. People were asking questions about where they came from more than ever. The PRT had tasked Dragon with monitoring that activity, and in her absence rumors, speculation, and conspiracies had taken off. Veda was cultivating it, carefully maneuvering people in the direction of the truth through multiple aliases.
Powers were alive.
An entire alien species, parasitic except now they weren't. Apparently? Scion was back. Blue Cosmos was gone. Eidolon had returned and was the Teacher who'd been assailing the world for years. Taylor was methodically hunting Leet down because he was plotting genocide, and Dragon's avatar's stomach was rumbling because apparently, it could simulate hunger effectively.
So so so very much had changed.
And to Dragon it was like she'd gone to sleep for a nap and awoken to find a decade of events transpired overnight.
"Are you alright?" Veda asked.
Dragon nodded her head. "Processing."
She buried herself into tasks to try and distract from the sense of distress.
The asteroid base was coming along rapidly. The Ptolemy sat at the center of an expanding array of facilities, hundreds of Helpers surging about to assemble structures, machines, and collect materials. The Tau Drives—the Foundation had built seventy-two of them—were all dead and broken down. Veda had replaced them with fusion reactors like those being built in the factories converted to mobile suit production.
It wasn't hard to do. The asteroid belt was rich in resources. There were more rare metals and raw materials in some asteroids than on the entire planet Earth and Veda had unfettered access to all of them.
Off to one side, a launch pad was being stamped out as Veda prepared to construct and launch a probe. She was going to try and crack the GN Drive and wanted to begin building a facility around Jupiter to facilitate the experiments. Ambitious.
Meanwhile, Dragon assisted in directing units to build the groundwork of the facilities they'd need to construct the space colony. Tayor and Veda were going to build whole space colonies and dangle them over the world to get humanity moving. Very ambitious.
And she could barely believe she'd pondered that thought.
Another thing that had changed seemingly overnight.
Someone was actually building a space colony.
Someone had wanted to do that before. Someone she felt had been a friend, and something happened to them. She couldn't remember his name. He was a tinker. A friend before something happened to him. He'd wanted to build cities on the moon.
She filed the hole away and tried not to let it get to her. Better alive with holes in her memory than dead. Definitely preferable.
Space colonies. The topic at hand.
Dragon of course saw all the ways it could go wrong, but Taylor wasn't a dumb girl. She'd likely seen them too. She did it anyway. She was compelled to act. Motivated. It's who she was. And where Taylor went Veda followed.
She envied them, being able to move together like that.
As much as she resented Andrew, Dragon did love him. Insofar as she could love, of course… Stange.
There was a sense of something. A warmth? Did she feel it or was it an autonomic function coming from the avatar?
A memory teased at her mind.
Long hours watching and talking. Being nervous and excited all at once. It was raw and powerful and… And who had that been with?
"It's all so different now," Dragon mused as she directed a team of Helpers to correct an error in a system assembly. "I'm helping to build an asteroid base. Never once thought I'd be doing that."
Veda smiled. "We have been productive while you were resting."
"I've noticed."
She raised her head as an exterior security camera observed several figures entering the hall. Removing herself from her seat, Dragon stood up and was joined by Veda. They watched the door, waiting as the figures approached in a hurried group.
The door swung open, and an exceptionally tall woman covered by shimmering forcefields entered the room.
Dragon smiled. "Mary."
Narwhal smiled back. It was rare to see her smile. Small though it was, it was a smile.
"Resa." Narwhal walked around the table and approached her. Dragon tried to speak but she didn't know what to say.
She vaguely remembered Narwhal destroying her servers at the end. That was fine. She remembered asking her to do that.
Dragon would rather be destroyed than see herself used as a tool for dictators. With Teacher seemingly poised to take over the PRT, or maneuvering himself to head whatever replaced it—that seemed the initial angle the Titans had attempted—it was the right choice. Dragon was too dangerous if she fell into the wrong hands.
If anything, she was glad Narwhal remembered.
They'd made that promise so long ago.
"I missed you."
Dragon tensed in surprise as Narwhal—usually so stoic—embraced her diminutive avatar.
"And you could have said something."
Narwhal glared at Veda.
The other AI held her ground, saying, "An attempt had already been made on her life. We did not want to risk a second."
Not entirely true.
Dragon's program was running parallel to Veda's. Dragon knew Taylor and Veda had also wanted to keep her survival a surprise for anyone who thought they were just dealing with Veda. The Simurgh had been so concerned about two AIs working together to protect the world she'd created a human Rube Goldberg machine to try and kill one or both.
She'd succeeded, only to be foiled solely by chance and luck. Maybe a bit of providence if there were such a thing. If they could slip Dragon's survival past the Hope Killer, then no one could possibly be prepared for it short of extremely precise precognition.
Now, no one would know she was back until it became obvious. It could ruin a lot of plans by throwing something completely unexpected out there. It was a good plan and part of Dragon liked the idea of dropping in on someone and surprising them.
It would be good to hop into a suit and get back in the swing of things.
"Still could have said something," Masamune grumbled as he entered with Kaze.
Dragon smiled at how many members of the Guild had rushed to the building. Nearly the entire team's leadership was present, all of them hugging her or saying they were happy to see her. Kaze remained quiet, but Kaze was always quiet. Dragon was relieved to find she remembered nearly all of them and those she didn't were relatively new...
As important as the PRT and Protectorate were, there was a reason Dragon considered herself Guild first.
The Guild was family. It was small enough, and focused enough, to be a family. Her family.
Dragon's avatar smiled and she tried to catch up with what the Guild had been doing. The loss of the PRT and Protectorate had hit them hard. The Guild had always been tied into the other two and relied on them for resources and support. Without them, there was Londo Bell but Dragon suspected the Guild had been uneasy about relying on Londo Bell. A group as old as theirs had its pride and Londo Bell had emerged so rapidly, and many of its leaders were so young.
It was hard adapting to the realization that you weren't the new thing anymore. That you'd been in the game long enough to be a veteran. It changed things.
Kind of like coming back from the dead.
Even with her processing speed at peak levels, Dragon found it a little overwhelming.
To be loved is to stand forever in the sun.
"Resa," Mary mumbled. "You're okay with what I…"
"I asked you to, didn't it?" Dragon smiled, glad to have a face for this moment. "You kept your word, Mary."
And how much she appreciated being able to remember that. Waking up to learn her friend had tried to kill her with no context for why would be… distressing. Possible understatement.
Dragon turned as more people entered. Her eyes settled on one specifically.
She looked so different.
Most of it was demeanor. Gone was a guarded, bitter, and angry girl betrayed and abandoned by everyone around her. She was confident, not just in façade but in reality. She carried herself so cleanly now and she dressed differently. A nice clean top and jeans that showed off her legs. Her hair had grown back to its old glory, reaching well past her shoulder blades.
Her eyes were the most striking part.
They shimmered with light, shifting in color between reds, golds, and greens. Dragon had seen all sorts so a cape with glowing eyes wasn't a huge shock. They hadn't looked like that before though. She was certain.
"Hi, Dragon."
Dragon smiled. It was still good to know. Good to know she'd made it through everything. That she'd really grown along the way.
That she'd become what Dragon thought she could be.
"Taylor."
They hugged, and Dragon closed her eyes. She did remember Taylor fighting Narwhal to save her. Narwhal was just keeping her promise and Dragon loved her for it, but knowing Taylor had fought so hard to save her made her feel warm too.
"I missed you," Taylor said.
Dragon pulled back, looking up at her and realizing her avatar was shorter than Taylor. "Feels like waking up from a nap for me."
Taylor smiled. "I worried you'd wake up having been conscious the entire time."
"No." Dragon thought back, but no. She didn't remember anything. "I just woke up maybe twenty minutes ago. I was a bit groggy at first."
"There was no warning," Veda elaborated. "She simply started speaking to me. I suspect however that she was somewhat aware of what was going on before then. She asked questions that only make sense with certain context."
"I don't remember that," Dragon repeated.
"Doesn't matter," Narwhal dismissed. "You're here now. Veda said there were some memory problems but you seem to know who all of us are just fine."
Dragon nodded. That was a relief. It was better than nothing.
She'd run through her memories of those present, admittedly. There were holes. She had no memory of how she'd first met Masamune, for example. She still remembered who he was and working with him, but how all that started was gone.
She didn't remember telling Taylor or Veda she was an AI either, but the context of other memories made it clear she had. It was sad to know the things she no longer knew, but maybe it didn't matter as long as she remembered the important moments.
On the whole, it wasn't so bad…
Who was that?
She focused on a vague recollection. She'd been lecturing someone. Someone who'd done something and disappointed her. Disappointed her because she knew he could be better. He'd become distracted, worn himself down.
It hurt to think about it, even as she failed to comprehend who that had been.
"It may be a matter of statistics," Veda proposed. "The more you interacted with someone the more likely you are to remember them."
That would make sense but it was hard to know when she couldn't know what she didn't know entirely.
The world was a busy place though, so everyone couldn't stick around to talk to her. Part of Dragon wanted to go right back to work but a little rest was probably warranted. She had come back from the dead.
Though, just sitting and talking to those who remained wasn't exactly de-stressing.
"Alan," she mumbled. "I… I can't remember how I knew him. I know the name but it was completely disconnected from the memory of what he hoped to achieve." She'd finally found someone she'd forgotten. "That's disturbing."
"You knew him before Richter died," Narwhal explained. She glanced to Taylor. "He was a good man once. You did him a favor, killing Mannequin."
"If I had then what I have now," Taylor replied, "I could have saved him."
Right. That. "You can directly interact with powers?"
"I can talk to them," Taylor answered. "Some are less reasonable than others, but some are oddly easy to convince. I'm pretty sure the connection between host and Shard is more two-way than the Shards realize. Humans have a high capacity for empathy."
"Not that they show it much," Masamune lamented.
Taylor nodded. "All the same. Choosing us as a host species has affected them. More than a few were onboard with overthrowing the cycle and protecting their hosts before Administrator or I ever contacted them."
Right. "And I have a Shard?"
"Richter based your architecture on the human brain," Veda explained. "As opposed to mine which we suspect is closer to a Shard given Administrator was the source of the knowledge Taylor used to create me."
Dragon and Masamune perked their heads up but Veda appeared unfazed.
"I've asked Administrator," Taylor continued. "The Shards don't exactly see us with eyes. Your system is based on a brain and makes heavy use of bio-circuitry. Your power couldn't see a difference between you and any other person."
That was a… strange thought. She'd always considered herself something other than human. It was a contrast between Veda and herself. Veda had always insisted that being born of humanity and possessing human sentiment and morality made them 'human,' just of a different sort. Dragon hadn't agreed with that before, but if an alien intelligence couldn't tell the difference?
Something to think about.
"Are you talking to it now?" Masamune asked. "Or mine? Narwhals?"
"Dragon's is a bit disoriented at the moment," Taylor answered. "I don't think it has any other host connections so it went dormant when Dragon 'died.' Now she's back and I'm here chatting at it."
And that was also something to think about.
Dragon watched Taylor's eyes and the way they shifted through the light spectrum. "What's its name?" She'd had this 'companion' for years, and she'd never once thought to consider it was alive.
"Not all of them translate well," Taylor replied. "Or at least, they're not all as simple as Administrator, Sequencer, or Resonance." She narrowed her eyes for a moment. "Something like Consonant Artifact. Its purpose is to consolidate all the data tinker configurations have collected over the course of a cycle for the next."
"Consolidate?" Masamune asked.
"It's part of the process they use to devise new configurations. The Shards have a lot of raw data, but they're not the most creative. They've evolved along lines that meant they never had to be all that creative."
The man nodded, clearly fascinated by the topic. "They get us to do the creative parts for them."
"Then the world blows up and Dragon's Shard's job is to put everything together and refine it." Taylor blinked. "Not that that's happening this time. Administrator's cluster would be necessary to even try and start that process. Administrator won't even try and the entire cluster at this point is behind her."
Masamune scoffed. "Good to know the world is at the mercy of some aliens with a conscience."
Taylor smiled. "Isn't it?"
Dragon pondered that, but honestly, it didn't seem much different. The human race was still destroying their environment at a rapid pace. Technically speaking, the conscience of a small group—or lack thereof—could have wildly disproportionate effects on the world. Power was not distributed equally. Many simply fell into it and found themselves in a position to affect a lot of lives.
It was disconcerting and inspiring in equal measure.
Returning to the more academically fascinating, Dragon asked, "Have you spoken with Dr. Katagiri? He seems like he'd be receptive to this."
"Extensively," Veda revealed. "We've been keeping it quiet to avoid a panic but have been slowly dropping hints online and in interviews."
Slow walking the reveal. That made sense. Things were bad enough before. Revealing that powers came from an entire alien species—and that said species was going to blow up every dimension of Earth but don't worry they changed their minds—was going to create chaos.
Then again, maybe it could just go on the list.
No more PRT or Guild. The Titans were rising rapidly and attracting a lot of capes with certain personalities. On the other side was Londo Bell, fresh off the defeat of two Endbringers. World governments were falling back into old habits without the Endbringers to provide a global crisis that affected them all. Veda was building space colonies from an asteroid base. In space.
Dragon's avatar inhaled.
"Okay?" Narwhal asked.
"A lot has changed," Dragon replied. She smiled. "You'd think I'd get a handle on it fast with my processing speed."
"It was as if night and day for you," Veda defended.
Dragon nodded. "It is a bit disorienting."
"You'll get back in the swing of it," Narwhal said. Dragon smiled at her friend and nodded again. "What's going to happen with DragonWorks by the way?" She glanced to Newtype. "I assume you never planned to keep all of it if you knew Dragon would come back."
She had an opinion on that but before she could say anything Taylor responded.
"Not particularly, no. We only went as far as we did because we had no way to know how long it would take Dragon to recover. It could have taken years." Taylor smiled. "I'm glad it didn't take years."
Dragon blinked, hearing the deeper meaning in the words.
You don't have to say anything.
Dragon kept her avatar's face passive, which was a bit harder than she thought. She wasn't sure she liked that. Might turn down the autonomics when she was in a calmer mood. Veda seemed to like her avatar mimicking human reactions as much as possible but Dragon was her own AI.
I'm sorry
Don't be.
Taylor's smile widened ever so slightly.
I'll be back.
The autonomic functions overrode her control and Dragon felt her jaw drop slightly.
Really?
Taylor grinned.
Really.
Pondering how Taylor even managed to convey information directly to her absent an apparent transmitter—the messages simply appeared—Dragon couldn't take much heart in the joke. It couldn't be as simple as just coming back. She was so young. Why couldn't anyone else step up and do whatever needed to be done?
Dragon had hoped Taylor and Veda's fate would be different.
That Taylor could grow old with Veda, at the end of a long and fruitful life. What more could anyone ask for?
We don't get to choose our own choices. You either live with it or you angst about it like a baby.
Dragon supposed so.
You seem oddly… carefree.
I've had nine months to come to terms with what's coming, and good people to make the time I've had worthwhile.
Dragon flinched, realizing something in Taylor's 'tone.'
It's soon, isn't it?
Taylor smiled solemnly but said nothing. That seemed answer enough.
The entire exchange was rapid. Not even a second had passed. Which struck Dragon. It wasn't as fast as a natural conversation between Veda and herself, but how fast was Taylor processing information if she could converse so quickly? Veda had mentioned Taylor's biology had evolved, her brain specifically, but that much of a change was shocking.
Was she even human herself anymore?
Don't know. What even is 'human' at this point? More than that…
Taylor grinned and rose from her seat.
Who gives a shit?
She was so different from what Dragon remembered. Could someone really change so much in so little time?
She needed to get back to work.
The Titans rubbed her the wrong way. They were reckless and unbridled, throwing power around without full consideration of the consequences. A lot like what they'd feared Taylor might become early on. Except Taylor had fully displayed the existence of a conscience and the faculties to consider the consequences of her actions.
Attacks on corporate teams over meager transgressions.
Aggressively pursuing villains regardless of their actual danger, resulting in significant collateral damage.
Press-ganging some capes into membership when they hardly had the authority.
It's like the Titans were preparing for war, and Dragon couldn't think of that many targets for one. Warlords in South America and Africa? How many people would that kill?
There was a reason the Protectorate and the military had refused to intervene once things started getting bad. Killing the very people you were setting out to save was a meaningless endeavor. The problem of cape warlords in swathes of the world couldn't be solved with raw power.
But it was like the Titans could only think in terms of power.
That was dangerous. So very dangerous. Especially when someone was coordinating them so well. Enough that there was some order to the mess of actions they were taking. Organized chaos. Dragon was suspicious of organized chaos. It spoke of something with purpose veiled behind a mist of confusion.
She sighed.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
"Do you have any plans for tonight?" Narwhal asked two seconds after Dragon's exchange with Taylor. "Do you need somewhere to stay?"
"She's an AI," Masamune pointed out.
"And now she has a body. Does it need to sleep?"
"No," Dragon answered. "Thank you. I'm alright. My processing speed isn't restricted anymore so I'm processing everything a bit faster than you'd think."
"You could rest," Veda pressed. "Even I engage in relaxation."
"I'm not sure running five separate DnD campaigns while doing a dozen different things is relaxation," Taylor teased.
She was teasing. She was actually teasing. When did she lighten up so much? She'd always been so intense before. Guarded. Forceful. Seeing her relaxed and calm was so strange.
"I find it very relaxing," Veda defended. Dragon took some satisfaction Veda had continued playing the game. "The PHO Westmarch server has become very exciting."
Taylor grinned. "The one where hundreds of PHO users have started their own cold war and you're playing referee?"
"Yes."
"The one where everyone wanted to use magic nukes and just sort it out and you said no?"
"The gods would never let that happen. It wouldn't fit the setting."
"So…" Narwhal gave Veda a blank look. "You're ruling a fantasy world?"
Veda blinked. "That is an unfair assessment."
"It seems accurate," Masamune commented.
"You are attempting to get a rise out of me."
"We're just reminding you to keep the AI overlord thing to the fantasy setting," Taylor prodded.
Veda's reaction to Taylor's teasing was surprisingly warm. She liked it. She liked seeing Taylor living her life and being happy. The looming shadow was a weight on her mind, but Dragon got a sense of acceptance from her fellow. Veda wasn't lingering on that. She still had time and wanted to enjoy it herself.
She knew time was running out.
Even as an AI with the ability to think magnitudes faster than any—normal—human, Dragon could understand that.
No one could regain lost time. Even parahumans. There were extremely few time manipulation powers. Most didn't involve anything akin to usable time travel. The last cape Dragon knew of with that ability was from India and he died in the Gold War.
Even an AI knew that there just wasn't enough time in the day.
…
Enough time in the day.
A thought niggled at her processes. Something vague and muddy.
The door opened again and a man entered. Tall, in his mid-thirties, though he looked older. His beard was neatly trimmed and his eyes immediately set on Dragon's avatar.
A beard.
That felt familiar too.
Dragon turned her head, looking to Mary—Narwhal—and asking, "Did I have a"—it was weird to consider actually—"boyfriend?"
Heads turned. Veda and Taylor shared a glance and Dragon felt the sense of shock and dismay in Veda's system. Masamune and Narwhal both looked to the new man who Dragon had rudely ignored.
The question nagged at her though. Urgently.
"Did I?" Had… Had she forgotten?
Dragon delved into her memory banks. She knew there were gaps. The longer since she'd woken, the more she recognized them. In some cases, she could identify what she'd forgotten. Grace's death for one. She knew Grace was dead. That she'd lost her mind somehow. Gone too far. There'd been no choice but to stop her.
Except Dragon didn't remember how her friend had died.
She'd reached out to Pyrotechnical and Glace to ask but they'd both given her shocked and guarded responses. Did she forget something there too? Had their friendship broken down? It had always been tense. Toybox made things difficult, but tinkers were tinkers. They related to one another and Dragon had always counted herself as a tinker among her fellows.
Around her, heads turned uncertainly.
"I did, didn't I?"
"No."
Heads turned to the bearded man. Dragon looked at him, and… And he looked vaguely familiar again but she couldn't remember.
Her processes halted suddenly and she started to speak.
"It is good to see you are well," he said. "It seems you are very busy at the moment however and I would not want to interrupt."
Taylor frowned and Dragon might have forgotten things, including things she didn't even know she'd forgotten, but she was not stupid.
Her chair slid back as she rose from it and followed. In the room, Veda and Narwhal stopped Taylor or Masamune from following. She would thank them later.
The man could be quite quick when he wanted to be.
He got to the end of the hall and down the stairs before her avatar caught up to him at a side exit.
He slowed once outside and Dragon slipped through the door before it closed and she had to open it again. She didn't think he'd noticed her, but as she slowly let the door swing shut he looked over his shoulder.
It was obvious on his face now, not that it wasn't before.
Maybe Veda did too good a job on the autonomic functions. She could feel her heart racing. Was that supposed to happen?
"It was you, wasn't it?"
The man had a long look on his face. It felt wrong. Like he shouldn't look that way at all. It tickled at Dragon's mind. Like maybe she did remember something but it just… slipped through her fingers.
"Did we—"
"No," he interrupted, resigned. He looked away, standing stiffly before a large open gate before parallel rows of warehouses. "We never had the time."
Dragon looked away from him. "That sounds familiar."
"It was my fault. You dropped hints, but I was too focused on my career to pay them any mind."
That also sounded familiar.
It was weird to think of having a relationship. Until now, she'd never had a body. Not a proper one. Not that she expected such things to be purely physical but the physical aspect seemed important. Especially to a human. It sounded like they'd only realized there were feelings though, so perhaps it never came up.
And, "Why did you rush out?"
"I did not wish to pressure you."
"Pressure me?"
He went silent for a moment, body language and tension consistent with hesitation.
"Just because things were one way before," he said, "does not mean they will be that way again. You have no obligations to me. There is nothing I am owed… I want to avoid the impression that I expect anything from you but to know that you are alright."
Her avatar swallowed. "You've been worried about me?"
"I have kept myself busy to avoid lingering on it."
There was that memory again. Watching. Watching someone work for hours and hours. Keep working well past the point anyone else would stop because anything less than the best wasn't good enough and even then.
And she felt warm again.
It was him.
She couldn't recall the name or the face. Well, she could now because she'd looked him up. Colin Wallace. Formerly Armsmaster of the Protectorate and now Defiant of the Foundation. Why hadn't he joined Celestial Being? He'd gone so far to protect Taylor when the attack on her system happened. He'd even come with Celestial Being to try and save her.
He'd gone so far for her.
"I don't feel pressured," she admitted. "Nothing like that. If anything, I'm upset at how random the things I've forgotten are. There is no reason or pattern to it. Things that were so unimportant I don't even know I've forgotten them." She glanced away, trying to remember Grace. "Things that I know were important, but are now blank."
"That's not your fault," he defended. "I should have better prepared the Pandora program, or been smarter about how I helped Taylor and Veda. If I hadn't been confined after everything happened I could have helped them load your fragments into the program and perhaps this wouldn't have happened."
"Or I'd be dead," Dragon admitted. "Who knows. Maybe I'm only here again because of what you did." She did a quick check, accelerating her processing to review all the information in a fraction of a second. "I've reviewed the footage of the incident. If you hadn't aided Taylor when and as you did, she may have never escaped. Veda and I could both be lost."
"Perhaps."
It wasn't good enough. Not for him.
Her avatar's autonomic functions pulled her lips up into a smile. Strange.
"All the same," he continued. "You owe me nothing. I would not want to follow a course of events that happen solely because they are expected to happen."
"And if that's what happens anyway? It happened before. It could happen again."
"…Hm."
Huh. That she remembered! "Hm."
TS.4 Newtype
I turned away from the window and shrugged.
"They'll be fine."
Narwhal remained, watching from above with her arms crossed under her chest. "So sure?"
"Yeah. He still loves her, and even if she can't remember it, she still loves him." I smiled. "Love is love."
The tall woman grunted and stepped back.
I had been worried, but relationships came in all kinds. There was no one way to make it work. My own parents had been a team, and as much as I blamed Dad for his mistakes I wondered if Mom would have handled losing him any better. Maybe she wouldn't have. Maybe they only worked so long as they were together.
I worried about how Dad would do when I wasn't around.
Veda made that a bit easier. She'd help him and he'd help her. Neither of them would be without any family.
Her avatar was waiting at the end of the hall, but she'd been watching through the security cameras.
"They'll be alright," she mused. "I think."
"I think so too."
"I never got into the whole relationship thing personally," Narwhal said.
"Each their own," I replied. Lisa was apparently asexual. I wondered if that meant aromantic, but to her, they seemed one and the same. Also, it was nice that Narwhal didn't hold the whole impaling her into a wall thing against me. "What happens with Dragon and the Guild?"
"She's still a member as far as I'm concerned," Narwhal answered. "There's no reason for her to return where she never left."
"Defiant mentioned following her when she came back, but I think that might be delayed now. He's going to end up being honorable about this."
"Which she'll like."
"And they'll be fine," I reiterated.
"What about the factories? You're still using them."
"I'm not worried. We'll work that out too. Just not now. Let Dragon settle herself."
Narwhal nodded and Masamune stepped out from the room behind Veda.
"The lovebirds working it out?" he asked.
"Yes," all three of us said at the same time.
He shrugged. "Never doubted women's intuition before."
We left the building out the other side where I'd arrived with Colin.
Masamune raised his head. "Is that it? The new one."
I glanced up.
The wide eyes met mine. The face was softer and less aggressive. It felt right for what the suit really was.
The suit itself was maybe the most straightforward and simple I'd built in a long time, its design more reminiscent of Astraea than Exia or 00. The antennae were more compact and the overall frame sleeker from thinning the armor a bit.
"Back to one of those engines of yours?" Narwhal asked, noting the single stubby cone on the suit's back.
My eyes looked over both of the large shield wings, almost as tall as the suit itself, slung over either shoulder. "Technically none. It's a new design. Smaller than the original and with higher output."
"You killed Leviathan with this?" Masamune inquired.
Right.
That had only happened a few hours ago.
"Yeah. This is the one."
The name was etched into the armor, like all the rest.
00 Quan[T] – Eirene.
My final Gundam.