Capítulo 14: Wake-up Call – Chapter 13.5 – Miss Militia’s Night Drive
Once again, Colin's irritatingly superior bike allows him to get to the crisis before I can be there to offer him proper support.
Given that a fight typically ends before I even manage to arrive, I sometimes question why I bother getting out of bed (yes, I have one—books aren't going to read themselves) if the overachieving, infuriating man is just going to make me feel useless time and again. I mean, I am the child soldier; shouldn't I be the one obsessively preparing for any contingency and forgetting how to live like a proper human being?
These are the kind of thoughts that tend to run through my mind when I am pushing myself to catch up to him because, apparently, having been comrades in arms for years does not mean I can stop feeling petty when I am disfavorably compared to someone who puts a factory robot's work ethic to shame. So, turning the corner of the street faster than an unenhanced human on a regular vehicle should, clenching the handlebars with the eerily glowing malachite of my power manifested as leather sap gloves, it is no big surprise to find him standing tall over a defeated Lung.
Seeing him poke the twitching thug with his weird spear thingy? (That I refuse to call a halberd since Assault's unfortunate moniker of 'Halbeard' started circulating and put my professionality in jeopardy.) That… that may be slightly more irregular.
"Colin? Is everything all right?" At my probing question, he momentarily stops his meticulous poking and turns his head to face me.
"You know we should use codenames on the battlefield, Hannah."
… I swear, sometimes it's far too tempting to just slug him a left cross right on his chiseled jawline.
"Right. We should. Now that we have acknowledged that piece of protocol, why are you breaking said protocol with an injured prisoner?"
"He pisses me off," he says, right as he pokes a spot on Lung's (disgustingly) exposed thigh that makes the whole limb twitch and something else (ugh, tinkertech brain bleach [when]) jiggle.
"… What?"
"He pisses me off, he regenerates, and he's going to the Birdcage. Also, he's currently unable to feel pain."
"… And?"
"Catharsis."
"That… What are you even talking about, Colin?"
Thankfully, it seems my question is enough to forestall any further disturbing jiggling. Something for which I will be forever grateful.
"How many years?" he asks in turn.
"What?" I swear I usually am a better conversationalist than this. Monosyllabic questions aren't my bread and butter.
"You are the one with the perfect memory, Hannah, so, how many years? How many kidnapped girls forced into prostitution? How many businesses ruined while paying his protection tax? How many lives destroyed by the drugs he peddled? How much [evil] have we allowed in our home?"
Ah. Colin's angry. That explains the past few days.
He's not quick to anger. To any emotion, actually. Not… superficially. He may feel a flash of something, anything, but he will always take time, sometimes to process, sometimes to fester, before he acts on it.
"Would you have had me shoot him with an antimaterial rifle?"
"God damn it, after the past week? Yes! Yes, Hannah, I would have you round up every single one of these… these [monsters] and put them all out of our collective misery!"
"You don't mean that." It's the automatic response. What we always tell ourselves when faced with one atrocity too many. Sometimes, it's even true.
"And what if I did? What if [ordered] you to stop holding back for the sake of, of—[them!"] And he turns around, in a grand, dramatic, overblown gesture that only lacks a flaring cape for effect as he [stabs] Lung in his abdomen, causing the unconscious man to let out a grunt that makes it hard to believe he isn't feeling any pain at the moment.
I stare as blood wells out of the wound around Colin's blade. Slowly, more seeping than rushing, the pool of red overflows and falls to the pavement in thick rivulets.
My power isn't a pair of gloves. It's a shield. A riot shield. I don't know if it would do anything, but it is the shape it has taken.
A shield against one of my oldest friends and my direct superior officer.
Laughable.
Or it would be if I wasn't feeling the rush of adrenalin thundering up my neck and straight into my ears.
"Colin. Stand down. Please."
He looks at me, rage clear in his clenched jaw, and I know his visor is hiding pupils that will be pinprick black on azure pools the color of the summer sky in…
Not the time for eidetic memory lapses, Hannah.
I look into the reflective surface, searching for what hides beneath glassy shimmer, for the eyes of the man in the machine.
And he takes two steps before leaning on his bike, his weapon held by something likely far more complicated than a magnetic clasp.
I approach him then, willing my power to become a tactical flashlight, as inoffensive and innocuous as I can make it as I stand in front of him while he refuses to meet my gaze.
"What brought this on?" And I know it's a stupid question before I make it, but he doesn't need me to be clever right now.
He barks a single syllable of something that can be charitably described as a laugh.
"They… We… There were supposed to be [lines], weren't there? That's what we were taught. But the lines always got so much blurrier when one of them was too strong, and we had to keep playing by them, but if we hadn't, if I had realized sooner how much they… I have had men die, Hannah. People I saw every day, people I got angry at when they ate the last almond chocolate donut before I had a chance. People who would joke about my bike taking up two parking spots, and I—"
"Jenkins was a jerk. I still miss him too."
"But you couldn't have saved him."
And he stops dead. Because he just said something he shouldn't have. Because I am one of his oldest friends, and he isn't used to lying to me.
"… How could you have saved Jenkins, Colin?" I ask while I concentrate as hard as I can to keep my power as a flashlight.
"Blinding Oni Lee permanently as a first response," he replies in a monotone void of inflection.
"That isn't your idea. Somebody told you, and you refused." I am not asking. I know. I [know.]
"Protectorate Team Leader's discretion, Hannah."
"Your 'discretion' has had you questioning how much better things would be if you [broke the law]. What you are suggesting is a war crime."
He bites down his first answer. There's silence between us, and it's not companionable.
Finally, he lifts his visor and looks up at the sky.
"Segregation."
"That has nothing to do with—"
"You came to this country and believed it was a marvelous land of opportunity. I was born here. We have our failings."
Right there. On his exposed jawline. Just a tiny, [teensy,] quick jab. I won't even wear spiked knuckles.
"You aren't seriously comparing—"
"Of course I am not. But we still aren't perfect, and there have historically been laws that were worth fighting against. You can't tell me—"
"I don't know what I can tell you because you keep [interrupting."] I swear, only you, Colin, can make me feel so waspish while trying not to look at a grossly naked man.
"Ah, sorry, I…" And he is. And just like that, I relax my shoulders and lean on his bike right beside him.
The damn thing doesn't even shift with the added weight. So unfair.
He's looking at the ground, where Lung's blood has stopped flowing into a small puddle.
I nudge him with my elbow. Slowly and softly, because experience is a harsh teacher and power armor is, necessarily, not much softer.
"You know I trust you, right?"
And he looks at me, surprised, and I take a mental note to smack him over his dense head when his helmet isn't in the way.
At this point, I don't even think he needs it.
"Whatever it is that is eating at you… If you can't talk, you can't. But I won't rat you out, Colin. Not without a damn good reason. Do I have a damn good reason?"
He shakes his head, lips still soft with the slackening of his jaw.
"Well, there you have it." And I take down my scarf to flash him my best smile. Because eye-crinkling only goes so far, and the marketing department can kiss my sculpted, stars-and-stripes clad ass.
Something which I always struggle not to mention on my yearly review.
I offer him my fist, clad in a lantern shield that glows with no flame.
With a smile that mirrors my own, he bumps it.
And I know how bad of an idea all of this is. I know what a blue wall is, and how a code of silence is the very first step into turning LEO into something the populace can't trust, into enemies of those they should defend.
I know all of this.
I also know Colin once almost bled to death for trying to get between Kaiser and me. I know he's devoted more time to saving the world than anyone outside an old movie serial should. I know he's fiercely loyal, and that he has an adorable schoolboy crush on Dragon, and that he has fooled Assualt into thinking he doesn't have a sense of humor, and…
And laws are important, and I have sworn to uphold them, to live by them, and make sure others can. That mine is not the power to change, but to enforce while trusting others to make the right decisions in my name.
Laws are all that keep us away from the brink of madness. From children being forced to march at gunpoint through a minefield.
But friends… Friends who would bleed for you…
Maybe they are what laws should be made to protect.
So, I don't know whether a slippery slope is an actual thing.
But I will just have to hope it isn't.
Because it looks like I have just taken my first step.
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This work is a repost of my most popular fic on QQ (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/wake-up-call-worm.15638/), where it can be found up to date except for the latest two chapters that are currently only available on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true)—as an added perk, both those sites have italicized and bolded text. I'll be posting the chapters here twice weekly, on Wednesday and Friday, until we're caught up. Unless something drastic happens, it will be updated at a daily rate until it catches up to the currently written 81 chapters (or my brain is consumed by the overwhelming amounts of snark, whichever happens first).
Speaking of Italics, this story's original format relied on conveying Power's intrusions into Lisa's inner monologue through the use of italics. I'm using square brackets ([]) to portray that same effect, but the work is more than 300k words at the moment, so I have to resort to the use of macros to make that light edit and the process may not be perfect. My apologies in advance
Also, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Xalgeon, and aj0413. If you feel like maybe giving me a hand and helping me keep writing snarky, useless lesbians, consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!
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