Title: Patchwork Girl

Author: Elessar-4-TnT

Disclaimer: I don't own Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles.

Summary: It might be a few days after this before the next installment. I'm still hashing out the details of Riley and Jesse's involvement in the story and I'm taking a day trip tomorrow to watch a meteor shower. Enjoy

Chapter 6: Lookin' For Love in All the Right Autonomous Emotional Subroutines

"What's this about getting new weapons?" Sarah asked, her eyes lifting under a lock of raven hair as she poured John a glass of orange juice.

"Mom, what are you doing up?" John chastised her. "You should be resting. You have a hole in your leg," John snorted.

"Its fine," she discarded the subject. "This headache hurts worse than my leg," she said, sending a disapproving glare in Derek's direction.

"What?" he said, holding his hands up defensively, toast in one of them. He sat across the room, away from the metal. "Your screaming would have kept half the block up all night."

Sarah rolled her eyes, limping across the kitchen as John dug into a stack of pancakes. Sarah looked questioningly at Cameron, who sat motionless at the table, opposite John. The combination of perfect posture, nonexistent appetite, and super-strong cybernetic implants in the pseudo-daughter sitting at the breakfast table was an odd one to grow accustomed to. Cameron sensed a critical eye and answered her.

"We should cash in one of the diamonds to buy more guns."

Sarah eased herself back into a chair to rest her leg. She looked doubtfully at the Terminator but resisted shaking her head, for Cameron usually knew best in these situations. "We don't have much left. Maybe two hundred grand."

"Our weapons are nearly useless against the T-888. If Cromartie were to catch John off guard, there is less than a 1% chance that John would be able to deter him long enough for me to save him," her eyes met John's as his fork full of pancake paused mid-bite.

"For once, I agree with the metal," Derek added from the corner, sipping something from a white mug.

Cameron turned back to Sarah, "It is likely we could sufficiently rearm for approximately $10,000. But we'll have to go to Arizona."

"Arizona?" Sarah frowned.

"Most semiautomatic weapons and all automatic weapons are illegal in California."

Derek interrupted, looking at Sarah. "You still won't be able to get automatics in Arizona. Sarah, don't you still know a few gun runners?"

She gave a short shake of her head. "Most of them ended up in jail or dead. The ones that might be still around… I only knew them through Enrique."

Cameron's chin lifted somewhat proudly as she leveled a careful stare at Derek. "I can modify many semiautomatic rifles and sub-machineguns to make them fully automatic."

"How?" Derek shot back over his mug.

"I have detailed files."

"You're just telling us this now?" John asked. "We could have used that before." The irritation in his voice caused Cameron's CPU to repeat several hundred thousand lines of code in the span of three microseconds, but her reaction appeared unfettered.

"It doesn't work on pistols or shotguns. It only works on weapons that were originally automatic and modified for legal sale to civilians. They're sold at gun shows all the time."

"So, where are we going to find a gun show?" John asked, looking across the table at her with a small smile. Cameron resisted the urge to reciprocate, rejecting input from her emotional subroutines. It came as a surprise to her higher functions that the attempt succeeded.

"I did some research on your computer this morning," Cameron announced. It looked like news to John. "There is a gun show in Buckeye, Arizona tomorrow. We should be able to acquire what we need there."

"That's five hours away, what do we need?" Sarah asked. She took two steps towards Cameron as she watched her retrieve something from a pocket.

"I made a list," Cameron said proudly. Sarah lifted an eyebrow when Cameron handed it across the table to John, who smirked and took it from her.

John read it aloud. "HK 91, or similar assault rifle in .308 caliber, several HK .45ACP pistols, AR-15 in .450 Bushmaster, HK 51, or…"

"I think I get the picture," Sarah stopped him.

"What's with all the HK gear?" Derek folded his arms. To him the acronym would always mean hunter-killer.

"For more than 50 years, Heckler & Koch has provided small arms systems that have met the strict demands of security, police, special and military forces, within NATO and NATO allied countries," she replied, citing the company website verbatim.

John returned the list to Cameron, who folded it up and returned it to her pocket. "I also recommend John carry a concealed weapon to school. An HK .45ACP subcompact would be suitable for his size and stature." That came out of nowhere, John thought, almost laughing as he hid his face in the OJ glass.

"That's not happening," Sarah insisted, shaking her head.

To her surprise, John objected.

"Well, why not? Cameron does all the time," he said, looking at his faux-sister. He wasn't particularly gun-happy, but he was curious to see how his mother would react. Maybe, he thought, things were crazy enough for her to agree. Cameron turned a "Yeah, see?" almost child-like response on her face towards Sarah, who furrowed her brow at them.

"You're just not. That's asking for trouble."

"Were John to carry a concealed firearm of sufficient power it would increase his chances of survival in an encounter with Cromartie by approxi—"

"I said 'no'," Sarah interrupted, her voice peaking louder. "That's what we have you around for," she narrowed her eyes at Cameron, who almost appeared to sulk. Cameron looked at John, who simply chuckled, a conspiratorial glint in his eye that an obscure pattern-matching algorithm in Cameron's neural net detected and processed, identifying as a silent agreement to circumvent his mother's decision. Cameron's lips produced the slightest smile back at him. She reallocated system processing priority to running training simulations in which she would instruct John Connor on tactical exercises of a concealed weapon. Somehow, this mechanical pseudo-fantasy made her smile. She broke to her typical stone-faced mien when Derek chimed in.

He was already out of his seat with an uncharacteristically chipper smile. "What are we waiting for?"

Dead silence followed in which nobody spoke but all eyes fell on Sarah's gunshot wound.

"Oh, yeah," Derek said, turning around, hiding his dejected sadness.

"We'll go in a couple days," John decided aloud.

"The gun show is only two days long," Cameron added.

"So we'll go Tuesday," John amended. "Mom, think you could make it down there then?"

"What about school?" Sarah challenged him. He had forgotten, tomorrow was Monday.

"What about school?" he muttered.

"You're not missing school to go gun shopping," his mother warned.

"I'm pretty sure Derek would write me a note," John said chuckling as he pushed a piece of pancake soppy with syrup around his plate. Derek and Sarah shared a look as Derek shrugged, trying not to laugh.

"You can go tomorrow, but only if Cameron picks up your homework from school," Sarah said on her way out of the kitchen.

John panicked. He had hoped for more time to talk to Cameron about her emotional simulator…thing… issue. "Wait, Cameron needs to go," John interrupted. Sarah turned around, adding her doubting face to the one Derek had aimed at John. "I mean she knows what we're lookin' for…" he trailed off.

"John," Derek said, stepping towards him. "I don't need metal to find my way around a weapon. I know what we need."

Cameron spied the look of defeat on John's face and quickly stepped in.

"No, you don't," Cameron deadpanned at Derek.

Whether she knew John wanted her to go or simply agreed with his actual point (which was equally likely, given her stringent unwillingness to leave his side or accede to Derek's expertise in the matter of his protection), she argued the position.

"John's right. Our endoskeleton is most susceptible to specific kinds of ammunition. Many things must be taken into account... muzzle velocity, impact energy, rate of fire… Besides," she looked at Sarah, pressing 'the John button'. "It is too dangerous for John to travel so far without me. My mission is to protect him," she said, batting an eye in John's direction.

Derek wasn't sold. "Ammo's ammo. So what works better? Hollow points, FMJs, frangible?"

Cameron leveled an evil eye on him. "It's complicated." She stiffened as was her customary indication that she was absolutely unwilling to compromise on this issue.

Sarah huffed an exhausted sigh, leaning against the counter to take the weight off her ankle. "Fine. Cameron can go too. I'll stay here," she said, looking down at her leg. "But," she said, looking referentially at Derek. After a pause, she began to smile. "Don't let her spend too much money. A Terminator and a resistance fighter at a gun show…" she shook her head casually. "That must be a little like two kids in a candy store."

"Yeah," Derek agreed sardonically. "Too bad candycanes can't unload double-aught buck into their metal skulls," he said, pushing past Cameron. "We'd all have a good ole' time!"

As Derek left the room, Sarah looked at her son. "I'm gonna' go rest," she said, sharing a look with Cameron. John nodded, his eyes flickering down to her bloody leg with a wince as she hobbled away. Cameron studied him for the next several seconds until he noticed and looked at her.

Analyzing: Probability John Connor wishes to speak of emotional simulator in transit to Arizona: 100%

Cameron had never calculated a probability of unity before. She devoted processing time to investigating the calculations, to ensure her emotional simulation subroutines were not corrupting her computational software.

"Why didn't you tell me you used my computer this morning?" John asked.

Cameron tilted her head slightly. "I don't know…" she said honestly. Her eyes lit up with something similar to the day her chip broke.

"I'm sorry. Are you mad?"

John was caught off guard by that question. "No," he said quickly. "No but… You've never… apologized before," he said, looking at her as if she were a broken computer component that needed a diagnostic. She sensed his concern and John tensed as her expression suddenly became pale and emotive.

"Am I broken?" she asked, the unstable waver of a scared child inching its way into her inflection. John shook his head, his eyes falling to the floor.

"I don't know." He met hers with encouragement. "But we'll find out."

Somehow, Cameron realized, the frailties of the protector now required the tending of the protected.