i'm a goddess of vicious precision

[autokinetic]

Because there are so many fewer diversions on this station than on the previous one, Aegis takes to those that are offered with more of an open mind than she might have done before. For instance, she stays after personal combat sometimes, to watch Sue sparring with Howlett. Now and then she takes a turn herself. Today she's just supervising.

Comments

[autokinetic]

you don't think they'll ice you for this, do you?

[pythbox]

if i show them what happened, and they do, then i don't want to be here anyway.

[autokinetic]

they better not.

[pythbox]

He almost says he doesn't care that much, but... home is home.

yeah.

[autokinetic]

There's nothing else to say. I'm going to sleep.

[pythbox]

okay

[autokinetic]

They're released from the infirmary at about the same time.

They aren't called to any meetings, no one reacts beyond giving her missed lesson plans and homework assignments when Aegis goes back to class, Sue is not ordered to report to a shuttle to Earth.

It's like nothing happened.

They're hanging out in their room again when Aegis says, "So have you actually been to a million disciplinary hearings already when I haven't been looking and you just haven't mentioned or - are they doing exactly nothing?"

[pythbox]

"Nothing," says Sue. "I don't think they even told all the staff. Howlett doesn't act like he knows."

[autokinetic]

"That's weird," says Aegis.

And she pulls out her desk. Her old hack should work - pretty please can she have another backup of the files she's lost, look, she has this earlier save -

Sue's file is bigger now.

She reads.

It's a raging brawl, insofar as text can be. Sue's patron-champion-careerbooster is livid that -

that the higher-ups ordered that the teachers ignore what was happening so they could see what Sue would do. They didn't sic the older kid on him, but they did stand by; they did know what was going on all along - they did give him a chance to see a teacher using the master door-opening passcode.

You said we hadn't seen him under enough pressure, says one of said higher-ups. He doesn't respond to academic inducements, so we engineered a test he could not ignore.

This wasn't the right kind of pressure. You may well have destroyed our best chance in the name of testing, to say nothing of the moral atrocity! You will never make a soldier out of this child. You might, if you're lucky, still make him the commander that saves humanity. But you'd best hope to God he never finds out what you did.

"Sue," says Aegis quietly.

[pythbox]

"...What?"

[autokinetic]

"If I had just found out something that might make you very, very angry, and if at least one person thought that making you that angry might lead to humans going extinct, should I tell you that something anyway?"

[pythbox]

He snorts. "Yeah."

[autokinetic]

She turns her desk to face him and bows her head.

[pythbox]

Sue reads.





Slowly, quietly, carefully, he turns her desk around again.

[autokinetic]

She waits.

[pythbox]

"If I do save humanity," he says, far too lightly, "then they'll give me these guys' heads on a platter when I ask."

[autokinetic]

"You can pin them to your uniform with all your medals," agrees Aegis.

[pythbox]

He laughs.

[autokinetic]

Aegis sets her desk aside and hugs him tight.

[pythbox]

Somehow, his giggles metamorphose into sobs.

[autokinetic]

"You're okay, you're okay," she murmurs, "or you'll be okay, it'll be okay."

[pythbox]

Sue clings.

[autokinetic]

"You'll be okay," she repeats. "You're not as breakable as that guy thinks you are and you'll be okay."

[pythbox]

"I know," he says. "Hurts, though."

[autokinetic]

"Can I help?" she asks, hugging harder.