Work Text:
Storch always had assumed that a Eule’s work was easy. Lowly, menial, and completely beneath a Protektor like herself to perform. It was why she had her Eule do all the cooking, after all. It was just an easy job beneath her station to perform.
Oh, how wrong she had been, especially when she had made an offer to help Eule with the cooking chores. She had figured that it might do some good to mend things up between them. At least, to the point where Eule no longer wanted to poison her. That had seemed like a simple goal she could easily accomplish.
And then came the actual chore.
Eule had wanted her to help with butchering the carcass of some small furry animal with long ears. Storch had no idea what it was and didn’t want to know. All she knew was that under Eule’s watchful eye, she had to…urgh…cut open the creature’s belly from the neck through its ribcage to its fucking asshole, and then…guh…reach in and grab, actually grab, the fucking organs to pull out. The bloody, gross, squishy, disgusting organs that she had to actually touch with her bare hands to get out.
Worse, Eule had wanted to keep some specific organs like the, urk, liver, kidneys, and lungs. For cooking of all things. So she had to take a knife, and cut away those organs from the rest before dumping the unwanted organs into a wooden bucket, and then burying the mess in some nearby dirt outside of their cave to keep it from making a gross, stinky mess near their shared home.
It had been the most disgusting task Storch had ever done. She had spent nearly an hour afterwards in the waterfall, letting the cold glacial runoff cleanse her…everything before she had to grudgingly step out to avoid hypothermia. She would even swear that Eule’s smile at her was of the joy in watching her being tortured by that…that…experience.
The stew they both had afterwards, with Storch making certain that Eule ate the same thing she did, at least made up for it. As it turned out: wild grains, wild vegetables, and animal meat and organs all cooked together into a thick, hearty stew made for a surprisingly good ration. One that she still believed was far, far better than the Nation’s own rations.
Urgh, speaking of which, thinking about that stew reminded Storch of the other chore Eule had her help her perform: preparing those grains for cooking. Great Revolutionary in her Heimat palace, Storch had no idea that something as simple as grain could be so. Fucking. Tedious. From the beating of entire bundles of straw against a boulder, to sweeping it all up into baskets, to then tossing all the grain up into the air outside to let the fucking wind blow away the inedible parts of the grain…all of it was just so much fucking work.
It had taken the both of them fucking hours to separate enough chaff just to have a few days’ worth of grain for meals like that stew. And Eule had been doing this all by herself before? What the actual fuck? It made Storch think about each grain of rice she had eaten in the Nations’ rations, but there was no way each individual white grain took so much work to prepare, right? Right?
The only bright side had been that it was at least not gross work. Sure, it had been dusty, but at least it wasn’t…urgh…blood-covered organs. That still makes her want to puke even now.
All of that work had made Storch think that maybe, maybe…a Eule’s work was a bit harder than she had thought. That realization…had made Storch outraged. A mere Eule was working several times harder than a Storch? A Protektor Controller?! Never! Storch would never allow herself to be known as a slacker!
Thus, she had decided to prove that she was deserving of her rank.
*
Which brings her to her current situation: hunting that panther-robot-thing near where she has last seen it. It had vanished–literally disappeared into thin air before her eyes–and ran off when it had seen her. Not only that, but it had been tiny: only coming up to her midriff at its shoulder. Sure, the disappearing act had been freaky, but Storch figures that with its small size, it will be an easy kill just like those weird one-eyed dinosaur-looking robots.
Even with just the improvised spear she is currently using as a walking stick, picking her way through the barely visible trail through the forest undergrowth that had no doubt been left by some of those big boar herds she had seen before. They are tasty though, so Storch figures that if she can’t find that panther-robot-thing, she might as well try hunting another one of those boars for more rations–
Hello? What’s this?
Ahead of her, planted right in the middle of the trail, is some kind of…device. A flat, metal disc colored black as night and with a small tube sticking straight up out of the center of that disc.
‘Did someone just leave this here? What the fuck?’ Storch thinks as she peers cautiously at it before carefully approaching the device. ‘Hmm, guess at the very least, I can give this thing to Eule to sell to that Gestalt merchant–’
Click.
Storch barely has time to register the sound coming from the device now less than half a meter away from her before it pops.
She instantly covers her eyes as a glaring red light blinds her vision, and the oxidant chills in her circulatory system as a high-pitched shriek fills the air, only quieting as Storch raises her sight up to watch the glowing red light soar up into the sky, like a crimson shooting star in reverse.
“A flare?!” Storch exclaims in alarm. “What the fuck?! Who would–”
A sudden thought comes to Storch that perhaps the panther-robot-thing is responsible for that, but no, that can’t be it. That would imply that it set that up to alert it of anyone coming into its territory, which implies that it can think, but that can’t be, right? Right?
Still, Storch knows that flare could attract any number of things to her position, so she quickly darts forward to snatch the still-smoking flare launcher thing, and then shoves it into a spare pouch for later examination while she takes cover in some nearby tall grass, ignoring how the red tufts of its tips is leaving gross yellow smears all over her body. Urgh, pollen. Disgusting.
Focus.
Storch looks around carefully, looking for any sign of anything coming to investigate. There’s nothing though. Not even the usual sounds of birdsong that had been accompanying her before. Everything is now quiet, as though the entire forest is holding its breath, waiting to see what happens to Storch next.
Storch refuses to let that unnerve her though. She still has a panther-robot-thing to hunt, and she’s still a STCR unit of the Nation. So after waiting a few seconds more, she carefully advances at a crouch along the trail, watching the path ahead for any more signs of…
There. Just a few meters ahead of that flare launcher, is another flat metal disc. This one though, does not have the tube in the middle. It is perfectly flat, just waiting for someone to set it off, as though it is a–
“Landmine,” Storch mutters in shocked realization. “These things are fucking landmines. This is a fucking minefield. How the fuck…okay, keep calm. I’ll just carefully turn around, and retrace my steps to get of this fucking place–”
The words die in her throat as her vision focuses on the trail behind her, and there, just another couple meters away, is another black landmine sitting there on the ground.
A chill goes up Storch’s carbon steel spine. She literally just passed that part of the trail not even seconds ago, and there had definitely been no landmine there before.
‘It’s here.’
Storch frantically looks around, trying to spot the steel beast she knows is here. Just like before though, she can’t see a thing. Just a dead silent forest, with nothing living in sight.
“Fuck me–”
Something hits her in the chest. Hard. Hard enough to knock her backwards into a patch of tall grass and land with an “Oomph” as a crack of thunder echoes through the forest.
Thunder…no, gunfire.
‘The fucking thing has a gun?!’
Storch scrambles back into a sitting position–
Only to pause as pain shoots through her chest and she flops back onto her back. She looks down at her own chest…and is horrified by what she sees.
Her white steel chestplate, the pride of all STCR units, is no longer pristine. The upper front of the plate now bears a circular crater, as though from a high velocity impact. Rivulets of bright oxidant seeps out from that crater, like tiny little rivers pouring out from a lake.
“Attention! Damage to [STCR (PROTEKTOR) frame] detected!” her system alarms warn. “Seek repairs immediately, Controller!”
“Fuckfuckfuck!” she mutters as she quickly accessed her own internal systems diagnostics to examine the damage report.
To her relief, the report isn’t that bad. There are some lacerations on the aramid fiber-reinforced polyethylene shell of her upper torso, and the biocomponent outer layer on top of that shell there would definitely need replacement, but otherwise, it could’ve been a lot worse. That Protektor-issue armor actually did its job!
“Hah! Was that your best shot?!” Storch barks out. “Maybe if you hadn’t been aiming for my armor, you would’ve…you would’ve…”
A chill colder than Leng’s winter went through Storch as her mind fully plays out what would’ve happened. A bullet big and fast enough to crater her bullet-resistant armor like that, and still retain enough energy to wound her through her shell? What would’ve happened had that panther-robot-thing struck her in a place unprotected by her plate, like her head?
Her biomechanical brain’s imagination easily supplied her with the answer: the bullet or whatever the fuck the projectile was would’ve penetrated into her skull, fragmented, and then either ricocheted around in there until her brain was mush, or exited out the other side of her skull if it had enough kinetic energy.
Either way, she realized with a stark chill that she had nearly died there.
Storch began hyperventilating–
“Attention! System psychogram alert: [Overclustered] and [Hypersensitive] warning!” her system screams.
–as the fear begins building up in her to limb-shaking levels. She nearly died. Died.
The memory of Eule’s poisoning coursing its way through her body comes back to her, making her clutch at her belly in remembered phantom pain.
No! She will not die here! She will not die in this Revolutionary-forsaken world lying on this germ-filled dirt with who knows how many disgusting things in it!
“System psychogram stabilized,” her system breathes in an unspoken sigh of relief.
Storch finally gets back up into a crouching position, snarling quietly as she shoves past the pain to look around her. It is still quiet, as though the panther-robot-thing’s actions have silenced the entire forest. She looks in the direction where she is sure the shot came from, but no matter how hard she peers, she sees nothing. However the fuck that thing turns invisible, it’s definitely working.
She realizes, even if she’s loathe to admit it, that this situation is untenable. She can’t hope to take down this panther-robot-thing like this. It’s like hunting a mine-laying sniper with Bioresonance-levels of bullshit camouflage. If she continues like this, she will be the hunted instead of the hunter. She probably already is.
Thus, Storch realizes that she has to retreat. She will come back with better weapons, better intel on this thing, and experience about its attacks. Then and only then will she take it down. All she has to do is get out of this minefield first.
Fortunately, that fucking panther-robot-thing seems to like mining the trails. All she has to do is avoid that trail, and she can avoid the mines. She creeps back in the direction she had come from, staying in tall grass, and keeping at least a meter away from the black metallic disc on the trail. She still keeps one eye on that landmine though. She has no idea what its capabilities are, so it’d be a mistake to not be cautious around it–
Storch hears a quiet thump, and out of the corner of her vision, to her horror, she saw a black, metal disc leap out of the tall grass just ahead of her. She just barely manages to swing her right arm in front of her, then–
BOOM!
Suddenly, Storch was back on the ground, staring up into the trees stretching up into the sky once more. There were words flashing across her vision in red, but things were still kind of blurry, and it took a while for the words to slowly come back into focus, which read:
“Attention! Critical damage sustained to [D-14 Arme (5-FNG) R]! Critical oxidant leak detected! Cut off flow to [D-14 Arme (5-FNG) R] immediately!”
Storch is confused. What damage? She looks over to her right arm, confident that her system was blowing things out of proportion and had misdiagnosed her–
There is no arm.
There is the stump of her upper arm. Jagged aluminum-anodized carbon steel bone still sticks out of that stump, the dark grey of carbon steel now readily visible beneath the layer of blue aluminum anodization, with bright red oxidant pouring out of severed vessels there.
‘My arm…,” Storch thought, before her eyes widen. “My arm!” she screams.
Storch frantically started looking for her missing arm–no, cut off oxidant flow to severed arm first! Now!
The sight of her life’s oxidant quickly ceasing their flow out and dying down to a trickle only barely assuages her shock and fear as she continues searching for her missing limb, ignoring the bright red system warnings continuing to blare on her vision.
It is only when she finally sees her severed arm, lying less than a meter away from her as a mangled mess of what was once a D-14 combat Replika arm and still gripping that useless improvised spear, does she finally start sobbing.
“No, no, nonononononono, no, no, NO! I can’t…they won’t…this is too much…”
A mine detonation powerful enough to sever her D-14 like that? There is far more damage to her than just merely her arm. The warnings still blaring in her vision is all the proof she needs. She is far too damaged to simply get a replacement arm. AEON will…they will…they’ll Decommission her. Her. A STCR unit. Being Decommissioned for damage beyond economic repair!
A bitter laugh erupts out of Storch’s throat as lubricant tears continue to leak down from the corners of her ocular modules. Isn’t that just fucking poetic? How many times has she heard of that sort of fate befalling combat Replikas, and now it will happen to her. She wants to shoot herself to save AEON the trouble, but she has no gun with which to do so. Oh, well.
Storch lays back down on the ground, watching the tall grass continue to sway in the wind, hoping that fucking panther-robot-thing will just hurry up and finish the job so that she can just get it over with–
Someone slides into view, blocking out Storch’s view of the sky. She is surprised to recognize the face of that someone as a very familiar Eule.
“Revolutionary,” Eule mutters. “How did you get like this?”
‘It’s got to be a hallucination,’ Storch thinks. ‘There’s no way she’d be here. She hates my guts.’
“Leave me alone,” Storch mutters right back. “Just leave me to die, just like you wanted, yeah? Probably happy as fuck that I’ll be gone.”
Eule frowns. Storch thinks that looks weird. She had never seen a Eule with a frown before. They always had that smile plastered on their faces like it had been built into them at the Replika-Werke. So seeing one frowning like this is a novelty to Storch.
As much of a novelty as Eule reaching down, and slapping Storch across the cheek.
“Mweh?!”
“You…you…sillyhead!” Eule hisses at Storch. “You absolute birdbrain of a Storch! Do you have any idea just how hard my life would be without you?”
Storch stares up at the hallucination of Eule…except that she’s not so certain that she’s an illusion anymore.
“Mwuzzah?”
“Do you realize just how much time threshing and winnowing all that wild grain would’ve taken if I was by myself?” Eule berates. “Or hunting all those animals? Oh, shoot! You still have your debt to Hishadi to pay back, and I am not going to pay for the cost of two tin cups and a steel cauldron by myself!”
The last two words are accompanied by a pair of slaps, and by this point, Storch is now almost fully certain that this is no hallucination. However, the sheer volume of words combined with the slaps is a bit overwhelming to Storch. She tries to come up with a rebuttal, but there’s nothing to rebut against. The only thing she can think to ask is:
“…Who’s Hee-shah-dee?”
Eule makes a groan deep in the back of her throat. “She. Is. The. Merchant. You. Robbed! And it’s only because I partially paid her back for the stolen goods, and in food which she accepted as a partial payment amazingly enough, that she didn’t report you as a bandit to the other merchants! Do you have any idea what the local Nor-ah Protektors–the ones they call ‘Bräv’–do to bandits?!”
Storch silently shakes her head.
“They hang them high in the trees by the roads and paths. All to deter any other bandits from coming into Nor-ah lands. Do you want to be one of those hanging bodies, swaying in the wind as a warning to anyone else dumb enough to do what you did?”
Storch shakes her head even harder.
“Then you are going to live,” Eule insists, jabbing her finger into Storch’s cheek for emphasis. “And then you are going to pay back poor Hishadi for every bit of merchandise you stole from her. Just like you are going to pay me back for helping you get out of this mess you happily charged into.”
Storch laughs, full of mania and desperation. “How are you, a Eule, going to kill this panther-robot-thing? It’s already blown off my arm, and you’re no fucking combat model. What are you going to do that I couldn’t?”
To Storch’s surprise, Eule smiles. “Well, for a start, it’s not what I’m going to do. It’s what they’re going to do.”
Storch starts to open her mouth to ask who “they” are–
Then around both her and Eule, puffs of smoke begin popping off, creating a ring of smoke around them.
A million questions fly through Storch’s mind, all desiring answers, but all wither and die upon the sight of two new people above her. Both are Gestalt and both are female, but only one of them is new.
The new face has dark skin, with all of her brown hair tied up in non-regulation braids, that are then all tied together into a weird bun-ponytail that is somehow even more non-regulation. The blue face paint or tattoos or whatever she has all over her face is just the whipped cream on top of the kirschtorte, and that is before Storch could even get into her…jewelry, or whatever the hell that wire with beads strung on it necklace-thing around her neck is called. All marking her as one of the Nor-ah savages.
The other face also has dark skin, but the skin tone is much darker than the first Gestalt woman, and she has black hair instead of brown. She is also the one familiar face among the Gestalt in Storch’s vision. Mostly because she distinctly remembers robbing this Gestalt less than a dozen cycles ago, so the grin the Gestalt woman was giving her makes Storch feel distinctly uncomfortable.
“This Storch?” the Gestalt merchant woman asks…in Eusan Standard Language.
Eule nods firmly. “Yes, Hishadi.”
Hishadi leans in close to Storch’s face, and says, still speaking in ESL: “You. Owe. Me. 60. Shards.”
Storch gulps. It feels shameful to be afraid of a mere Gestalt, but Hishadi sounds like she’ll extract those “shards” right from Storch’s body if she has to.
Frau Nor-ah then barks something at Eule and Hishadi, jabbing a finger at them and at Storch, and then jabbing downwards. The message was clear even though Storch can’t understand a word she’s saying: “Stay down.”
They do just that, laying down with Storch, leaving Storch only able to turn her head to watch Frau Nor-ah crouch-walk to the edge of the tall grass patch, and then suddenly toss a rock out onto the trail. Specifically: right on top of the exposed landmine.
There’s a crack of thunder as the mine explodes, making fragments zip by above Storch’s head.
More cracks ring out, but as cracks of gunfire from that panther-robot-thing, ripping through the smokescreen. However, they seem to be only aimed in the general direction of the mine explosion, hitting nothing, and by then, Frau Nor-ah is already in the next patch of tall grass.
Storch wonders just how in the world Frau Nor-ah is going to kill this thing when she couldn’t–
Right as an arrow, burning with flames, suddenly shoots straight up out of another patch of tall grass within the smokescreen. Another patch of tall grass, the one Frau Nor-ah ran into, suddenly starts emitting a very high pitched shriek: sounding almost like the one that flare mine had made.
‘What? Are these savages actually mimicking that fucking flare?’ Storch thinks incredulously. ‘There’s no way that’s going to work.’
Then something breaks through the smokescreen, leaving a very noticeable panther-robot-thing shaped smoke cloud billowing off of it for a brief moment, exposing a long, lithe, and cat-like body with a tail that is at least as long as that body.
Before Storch can even voice her disbelief, something streaks out from another patch of tall grass and impacts the panther-robot-thing before the smoke can dissipate, and the thing crashes to the ground with a high-pitched yowl, its invisibility melting off of it as it does so. Storch now sees that the impactor is a…harpoon? Connected to a thick wire that leads to the patch of tall grass it had shot out from, where another harpoon lays buried deep in the ground there, obviously planted there by the Gestalt hiding in there that Storch only now notices.
The panther-robot-thing quickly gets back to its feet and dashes away, only to suddenly be yanked to a stop by the wire, sending it screeching to a halt, like a dog being yanked back by its chain.
As the thing pulls and yanks on the wire, a Gestalt man–another Nor-ah savage–suddenly leaps out from the tall grass next to it, and stabs a long spear into its side, taking it down to the ground. The Nor-ah savage twists the spear, stabbing it deep into the ground and leaning on it, impaling the panther-robot-thing into the ground as it writhes its black and yellow-highlighted body and thrashes its clawed feet, yowling and screeching like an oversized robot kitty.
Then Frau Nor-ah steps out of her patch of tall grass, holding a long wooden stick with some kind of sharp metal triangle mounted at right angles to the end of the stick. She walks calmly to the still-yowling and thrashing panther-robot-thing, brings up her weird weapon in a two-handed grip, and then with a wild screech, brings it down onto the panther-robot-thing’s long, sinuous neck.
Over.
And.
Over, Frau Nor-ah keeps swinging her weapon into the robot’s neck, with the beast’s yowls turning into screams that disturb even Storch.
At last, with one last CHOP that buries the weapon’s blade deep into the neck, almost severing it, the robot-panther-thing spasms once, and then its head hits the ground. Storch just happens to be at the right angle to watch the red glow from its eight camera eyes dim and then die, leaving black lenses as dead as any Replika when they die.
Storch stares in complete and total disbelief as the Nor-ah savages–a mere three in total now that they all stand up from their hiding spots–all start cheering, whooping and hollering like wild things, with Eule and Hishadi joining in immediately afterwards, doing what she could not.
Eule then notices Storch staring at her, and then grins down at the fallen Storch. “I’ll bet you’re jealous now that I’ve thought to actually call for help from the Nor-ah. You know, completely unlike what you did?”
It is all too much for Storch’s brain, especially when she sees Frau Nor-ah tear the panther-robot-thing’s head off and hold it high like a trophy, still dripping with dark, greenish-black…oxidant? It just gives up, and delivers her into blissful unconsciousness. Or death. She isn’t sure which one she prefers.
*
Unfortunately, she does eventually wake up, and this is now her life.
Storch threshes more stalks of wild grain after having gathered them, but now under the watchful eye of that Frau Nor-ah savage warrior, and with only one arm instead of her usual two. Her other arm is now carefully wrapped up, and stored like spare parts, since there hadn’t been any way to reattach it to her with the upper arm shattered.
Meanwhile, Eule and Hishadi are back in the cave as they prepare the evening meal. Before she had left, Storch thought Eule looked even happier than the Eule standard look…and perhaps she even deserves it. She did save Storch’s life…even if Storch didn’t dare say it out loud. She still has her Protektor Controller pride, after all.
“Storch! Time for dinner!” Eule calls out, peeking out from the curtain of vines that basically serves as their front door. “I promise it’s not poisoned this time! Maybe!”
Storch grumbles, but her rumbling belly after all that one-armed work told her that she would happily eat that food even if it is poisoned. At the very least, she will die full.
Thus, she marches back into the cave, with Frau Nor-ah following behind her with her weird axe-thing weapon in hand, and sits down to a meal around the campfire with everyone, sitting on some cut logs covered with furs as seats…after having thoroughly washed her own fur seat, of course. Who knows how many germs these little creatures have?
Eule giggles at the sight, much to Storch’s displeasure.
“It’s like you’re marching with a STAR officer at your back, watching over the prisoner she’s escorting,” Eule says, still giggling.
Hishadi asks Eule something in that strange language the local savages speak that almost sounds like Eusan Standard Language if you squint your ears hard enough. A bit too much like the thickest Vinetan accents, in Storch’s opinion.
However, it seems like Eule has somehow managed to learn this odd language in just a couple of days. At least, enough to reply to Hishadi in something that made the Gestalt merchant woman laugh out loud.
Storch has the distinct feeling that they are both laughing at her, but without any hard evidence of that and an empty shoulder socket in place of her right arm, all she can do is grumble.
“Good words, Mohnblume!” Hishadi says loudly after that, still laughing and even leaning against Eule and hugging her like…
‘Oh, Revolutionary,’ Storch thinks in horror. ‘They’re a couple, aren’t they? Or if they aren’t now, they probably will be soon.’
Gestalt-Replika relationships being prohibited aside, Storch swears, if Eule and Hishadi start kissing or something in front of her, she will…okay, not barf. She likes her food too much. She will at least gag though, even if mentally.
Then something clicks in Storch’s mind.
“Who or what is Mohnblume? Are you talking about those bright red flowers with the green seed pods you wanted me to pick?” Storch asks.
Hishadi asks Eule something, and upon hearing Eule’s reply, the Gestalt merchant turns to Storch and scoffs at her.
Eule meanwhile stares at Storch with a look both curious and unamused before finally saying: “Guess.”
Storch scratches the back of her head with her remaining left hand. The more she thinks about it, the more Mohnblume sounds like a name, but then, who gave Eule that name? Hishadi maybe…but wait, why would she name Eule in ESL? Wouldn’t she name Eule with a word in the local savage tongue? But if not the Gestalt merchant, then who…
A lightbulb turns on in Storch’s head.
“Mohnblume is your name?” Storch asks.
Eule, or rather, Mohnblume sighs. “This is your problem. You never ask anyone anything. You didn’t ask me before you effectively made me your slave. You didn’t ask the Nor-ah what they knew about the mechanical beast you were hunting. You didn’t even ask one of the first local people–a Kard-za–you encountered in person for anything. You just robbed her, and didn’t even think that might have consequences. So of course, why would you think that I had a name? You wouldn’t even think to ask for it.”
Storch’s anger flares, and then dies like a thermite grenade. She hates everything Mohnblume said…because she knows all of it is true.
“Well, now that you know what my name is, tell me: what’s your name then? Or do you just want me to keep calling you Storch for eternity?” Mohnblume teases.
Storch’s brain warred with itself over that. Part of it doesn’t want the familiarity Mohnblume calling her by name entails…and part of her thinks she doesn’t deserve it. Still though, the disgust she feels at being called by her model name for the rest of her life infuriates her enough for her to reply:
“Acht.”
Mohnblume raises an eyebrow. “Just…Acht?”
“Yeah, what about it?!” Acht says as defensively as a Nation bunker. “I haven’t thought about what I wanted to be named yet, so it’s just a shortened form of STCR-S2308, okay?!”
Acht didn’t like the look Mohnblume gives her after that. It was a look that made her face warm up. It was a look like…pity?!
“I suppose that’s why you’re so…silly,” Mohnblume says wonderingly, still giving Acht that pitying look. “You haven’t had anyone to teach you anything yet, haven’t you?”
“Hey, don’t you dare pity me–”
Acht suddenly feels a sharp prod into her side, and she looks down to see Frau Nor-ah jabbing the tip of her weapon into that side. It is the blunt end, but it makes Acht sit back down with a grumble.
“I don’t like being pitied,” Acht grumbles, drowning her grumbling into her stew.
Silence lays around the cave for a while, filling in the shadows cast by the firelight’s glow.
“Well, then perhaps if you don’t wish to be pitied,” Mohnblume says, interrupting the oppressive silence. “Then maybe you can find your way in this world along with the name you want, and make everyone stop pitying you.”
Acht’s spoon ceases its ascent to her mouth, and then continues to allow her to chew on the food along with Mohnblume’s words. What does she want? Really? The more Acht thinks about it, the more she’s bothered by her inability to even answer that.
Then at least, she thinks of something she does want.
“Hey, you,” Acht asks the silent Frau Nor-ah next to her. “What’s your name?”
Frau Nor-ah, still silent, raises an eyebrow at Acht, and then turns a questioning gaze to Mondblume and Hishadi. A few back and forth words between them later, Frau Nor-ah returns her gaze to Acht, and thumps a clenched fist to her chest.
“Marea,” Frau Nor-ah simply replies.
Against her better judgement, Acht likes this Gestalt woman already. Nothing fancy. No extra words. Just her name, and nothing more.
“Marea,” Acht repeats, and then points at her. “Good kill. Of that…panther-robot-thing.”
“Stahl-ker,” Mohnblume interrupts. “At least, that’s the closest I can make out of what it’s called.”
After some more translating, Marea simply nods at Acht, acknowledging the compliment and then continuing to eat. Nothing more.
Honestly, Acht thinks that she can get along with Marea quite well. At least, as well as she can with a Gestalt. Maybe this particular arrest might not be as bad as she had thought it would be.
At the very least, things are looking up for Acht as she eats a meal that is, mercifully, not poisoned, and somehow tastes even better than Mohnblume had ever made it before this day.