Chapter 16: — Mission Start —

A girl spun around in the mirror before me, tightly-fitted coat flipping this way and that. There was a radiant, impish smile on her face, crinkling the edges of her softly-glowing eyes, and her hair floated around almost as if underwater.

I stopped spinning and glared at the hair. I'd been trying to work out all the kinks with my hologram system, and minor bugs like this were starting to become major issues. Which was weird, because a few days ago it was working totally fine! Like, dang. What's my luck coefficient been, the last few weeks? Four? Uh, out of ten?

Meh, whatever. I'd work out all of the details later. For now, I was honestly just reveling in the fact that I liked how I looked — which, damn. I looked good. The pink hair, black suit, and halo look totally could have been my own sexual awakening if I didn't already know I was straight. Which I was. Obviously.

I sent a pic of myself to Valor just for fun, and she responded with a thumbs up but nothing more. Got her too, I bet — can't blame em'. Speaking of the halo on my back, I'd certainly need a way to disguise it for the party. The utility of having a weapon belt was just too strong to deny on a mission like this, so I was kind of either stuck with a massive fuckoff ring around me giving ominous rimlights and highlighting my glowing eyes or I'd be stuck with... not immediately intimidating everyone I fucking turned to look at. The answer was clear: as much as I loved the look, the halo did have to go.

(When I asked Alice about how I would do this, she just told me to turn it off. To be fair, I'd glossed over a lot of my HUD stuff in the past few days — sue me, it's complicated being a robot!)

It was the day of the ball-dance-party thing, and additional searching had revealed very little beyond the vague implication that there was going to be a new prototype unveiled there. Given that it was a drone-defense company, neither me or Alice really expected much. Thus, we'd be going in our dresswear but not much more: standard secret-agent affairs, which me and Valor giggled a bit about on a late-night voice chat with the pals. Speaking of, it'd been a little difficult to figure out what to say to my other friends — Lavie primarily, as I'd agreed to meet up with her. Needless to say, it'd been a little strenuous on our relationship trying to explain my sudden disappearance in a way that didn't feel like lying. On both my end and Valor's end, which I kind of felt guilty about. I mean, this was technically my thing to deal with. I dragged her into this.

Then again, she accepted the offer to come with me on this adventure of... corporate subversion, mostly. So. Half and half, we'll say. In any case, I'd still been able to hang out with my friends over voice — heading out into the forest and doing a vague impression of my old voice was fairly simple, and my lack of need for rest was extremely helpful in coordinating things over dimensional timezones. I mean, it was bad already — a lot of my friends were in Europe, which complicated things, and then there was Ander, who lived in Australia. According to my timezone, I was somewhere in Greenland? Maybe? Whatever passed for Greenland around here. All the maps I could find online told me that Greenland was part of North America. They built a goddamn land bridge for more housing, apparently, which was fucking wild. Just colonize Mars or something, or Venus. Jeez.

Actually, given that we couldn't see the sky, it was... kind of strange to see so little online about space travel. Like, I would have expected corporations to immediately go in for capitalizing off of all that? Yet there was jack fuck on orbital mechanics everywhere I looked. Also, all the social media returned very little even searching generally for space — had nobody made it their aesthetic? Or?

Fuck, I dunno. Maybe it just wasn't as romantic without most of the stars. It was also entirely possible that this was some sort of conspiracy? But I didn't really wanna deal with the obvious implications of that, and that also sounded really stupid for them to do. Whoever "they" were — the pathetic excuse for a world government they had, or the corporations, or... I dunno, fuckin' Mr. Chance or something — they'd have to be denser than tungsten to think that suppressing a love of space from the human fucking species would be possible forever.

Agh! I was getting distracted again, as evidenced by the blaring virtual alarm in my ears notifying me that I needed to get going. As I rushed to put the finishing touches on my holographic designs (which had, somehow, spontaneously fixed themselves while I wasn't looking — dammit!) and almost-slid down the stairs, I ran directly into Alice's waiting arms.

She handled herself comically well considering my literal density — at least two hundred pounds of metal — but as she spun me around to bleed speed I could note a bit of redness in the face. Also, she was holding a physical suit and tie, which were my size, and which she also immediately shoved into my arms before turning to go get on our hovercycle.

"Wait!" I called. "Alice? What am I supposed to do with this???"

Alice turned and stood in the doorway, soft light of the blue moon shining in a halo around her snow-white hair. The sight would have taken my breath away, if I had breath to take, and my chest felt like it hitched anyways. She had a dismal look on her face, and sighed. Simply stating "Put it fucking on," she left.

Okay. Well. Ignoring everything else about the situation, I guess this was an emergency backup? I tentatively put it on underneath my hologram. I now looked like I was about to pull a power pose with an ironic comedy caption over my head, which was... I didn't know how to feel about it, actually.. It kind of felt weird to have clothes on without feeling them.

The alarm blared again in my head, and I winced. I really should have disabled it after the first ring, but I had the time to do that while throwing on the last coat sleeve, running out the door, and re-enabling my holograms. Alice was already waiting on the hovercycle; she looked just at home sitting in the saddle, even with a skirt on. Which, uh. How the hell she planned on riding a motorcycle with a skirt on was beyond me, but I wasn't the expert in this situation.

I climbed onto the back of the hoverbike, just a touch taller than the tips of Alice's ears, and took the opportunity to get myself solidly anchored. With a nod of the head into Alice's shoulder, we were off like a flash: zipping between trees and tearing up the mud and dirt of the forest floor, the hoverbike purred like... uh, I guess like Alice did when she was when she was happy and passing by my room or something?

Though we were moving at a blistering pace, Alice seemed to have an uncanny proficiency with the bike's weird warping belt-wheels; we slipped around corners and trees with no more than a foot's length between speed and oblivion, with the soft light of the moon and blue readouts on our dashboard the only things lighting our way. Alice's way, moreso. I was mostly holding on tight to her waist and clenching with my legs to keep myself on the damn thing. Thank fuck for hardlight holograms — my legs didn't slip, which they definitely would have if they were currently made of the same smooth composites as my under-body. Nope: all synthetic flesh for right now!

As the searing lights of cityscape in the horizon edged into view, Alice slowed us down before taking us to a stop at the fringest alleyway she could find. She motioned for me to get off the bike, which I did do — albeit I did it very confused. This was our fastest form of transportation; we could get up to a brisk 50 meters per second on it in practically any direction. So when she dematerialized it back into the rod we'd first printed it from, I was questioning how we'd be getting to the party.

I mean, I was assuming it wasn't within walking distance. This felt like suburbs, which as we all know had and have shit public transportation.

Alice pulled a small datapad from a pocket of her jacket. Well... more like a phone, honestly. If you excused the see-through display, it'd definitely be just a smartphone. Maybe a rideshare app or something? Or she was calling to pretend like we'd been stranded.

Apparently it was too clear to Alice that I was confused, because she rolled her eyes and beckoned me closer. "As far as I'm aware, they don't know I have transportation. The invite gave a time and place to get taken there in an autocab," she whispered. "It is probably a better idea for us to err on the side of caution."

I nodded. "Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Um, you're gonna be able to get out using the bike if things get hairy, right?"

Alice shrugged. After a few seconds, I realized that was my response, which kind of annoyed me. "No, seriously. We're gonna be in potentially mortal danger. I gotta know that if we start shit you'll be able to like, jump out a window or something and pull it out on the way down. We're beyond the stealing-by-the-seat-of-our-pants stage now, give me some info."

"Fine, yeah. I'll probably be alright, but I can stick by windows if that makes you feel safer. Okay?" Alice's ears twitched. "I'm just saying, if we don't both make it out, this whole operation is kind of kaput."

"Guess so. Just... take care of yourself." There was a rush of engines and gravitic thrusters from outside our alleyway, and Alice tilted her head towards the sound. Our sign to go, I suppose.

Alice and I crammed into the back seat of a slinky black hovercar, with tinted windows and everything. There was no front seat, and I immediately flashed back to the late 2020s — god, we hadn't even invented flying cars yet and our AI car driving software was about as reliable as a dollar-store 747. Thankfully, our trip seemed to be relatively safe — no other cars were in the air, and I could sort of sense some kind of... maybe radio waves, or something? Some kind of communication device was in the car and broadcasting very strongly. Probably anti-collision measures. I hoped. It could also be transmitting cryptocurrency or some shit.

Anyways, it wasn't a good idea to talk in here. We'd decided early on that whenever we were in public we'd try not to talk about that kind of thing — I could vividly remember how, as a kid, I'd never understood why people around the spy in spy movies didn't find talk of activated nuclear weapons kind of weird. Or like, how they didn't freak out. Alice was a little more concerned about people spying on her and reporting back to Keizen HQ, which I guess was probably more realistic than my fears of having to try and save face. All that didn't necessarily stop me from making idle conversation, though...

Well, it did. Kind of. I felt too awkward to talk for a good like, ten minutes. Still! I'd built up my courage eventually and nudged Alice to break the silence.

"Um," I said, weakly, "I was actually wondering what you're looking forward to tonight?"

Alice's ears flicked again. Annoyance, maybe? "Oh, I'm so excited to chat up guys and answer questions about my tail and make idle conversation when it's entirely unnecessary. Definitely going to be the highlight of my week — no, my month. Or year. Something like that."

Wait, was Alice bisexual? Or was that sarcasm? Or something? "I, uh. Yeah. I mean I was talking about things you actually wanted to do. Like, I wouldn't wanna do any of that either? But I am kind of looking forward to being all dressed up in public and seeing social stuff happen around me. Maybe hanging out near the back with someone? That sounds fun to me." Now was not the time to worry about my heist partner's sexuality!

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"Ugh. I dunno. I guess hanging out near the back sounds good, but we'll probably need to mingle at some point to get those juicy... social... points. Social points. Ignore the juicy part. I don't know why I said that."

"Juicy, gooey, melt-in-your-mouth social points?"

Alice shot me a death glare. "I will hit you on the head with your own arm. Don't test me."

I sniped right back with a look on my face that screamed 'Yeah, I want nothing more than to fully survey the bullshit you're willing to take right now' — raised eyebrow and everything — but quickly eased off the gas. "Gotcha. Still, you've gotta have at least one thing you've been wanting to do beyond what I talked about, right?"

"Nope," Alice said, immediately. "It's pretty much just the hanging out near the back thing."

"Aww, really? Are you sure you don't wanna like, screw around and make a soda fountain nightmare, or some kind of chocolate-covered bullshit? Test the limits of your host's willingness to put up with your bullshit? Willingly scar everyone who gazes upon your chocolate-covered meat-product for life?" She raised her goddamn eyebrow at me! The bastard. "Yeah, I stand by that phrasing. Coward."

Rolling her eyes, Alice turned to look out the window. "I'll figure it out when I get there. Whether I have fun or not doesn't really matter."

"Does it?" I ask.

"No," Alice says, resolutely.

"Dooeess it?" I drawl.

"No!" Alice says, again.

"Doooeeesss—"

Whipping around, Alice jabbed a finger into my chest. Wow, that feels weird! "No, it doesn't matter! Why don't you answer, since you have the burden of proof, why it matters that I have fun. Show me the big brain tactic that having fucking fun will bring to the table."

I shrugged, a grin on my face. "Dunno. My dick's small, leave me alone. But seriously, I think that this kind of work needs fun to really happen. If you're not happy, what's the point?"

"To improve standards of living!" Alice seethed. "That's the point!"

"Yeah," I said. "That... includes your own standards of living. Hence: fun."

"That's stupid! I don't have to have fun, this is a long process. Besides, why would I have fun anyways? It's not like we're playing pretend or house or whatever. All of this is serious."

I couldn't resist, and pulled a fake mirror out from behind me. "Okay. Repeat the last line you said."

"All of this is serious," the white-haired catgirl in a professional-looking suit and blazer said, while speeding at a hundred kilometers per hour high over the city, to the person-robot who'd been brought in from another dimension, who also had pink hair and honest-to-god hair vents.

I flickered my hologram. "Okay. Say it while looking at me and into the mirror. And think about the context of what's going on right now."

"All of this is—" A beat passed. "Oh. Okay you may be right. This does seem a little inherently ridiculous."

Snickering, I put away the mirror and stabilized my hologram. "Yeah. I mean. I don't wanna go into details, but a catgirl and a robot doing all this? Funny as balls. Fun as balls."

"What, do you have experience?" Alice tried to deadpan. She couldn't keep a really really tiny smile off her face for long, though. (I hoped I was reading the quirk at the corner of her mouth as a smile correctly, at least.)

In fact, I did. "About 20 years personal experience, actually. I could get a PhD in scrotology. A true doctor of the balls. In the scientific sense. I know everything there is to know, down to the molecular level. The hemispheres of my brain have turned directly into testicles, and my intelligence is all the better for it."

She snorted, smiling fully even as she turned her head away. "Ha. And your conclusions?"

I pondered that question for a moment, theatrically. "Hmm," I said, and then in a revelation of comedic absurdism I spoke once more: "Sucks."

Alice's laugh was really pretty. It carried for a while — we'd just about arrived, and it was until we were at the doors of the building that both our guffawing trickled down into snorts and giggles. The building itself was fairly fun, too! It seemed wide and tall all at once, with Art Deco and postmodernist styles combined into some mishmash of minimalism and maximalism that somehow worked alrightish in context to the drab squares of gray right next to it. Thoroughly beautiful (and thoroughly corporate; the building had facades of dull corporate logos and several signs outside proclaiming exactly whose territory we were stepping onto. If not minimalism, why not try gaudiness?) I could at least appreciate the thought of color being put on the building, even if "slightly-silver gray" wasn't really much to speak of.

As we neared the entrance, Alice seemed to slow. Her ears were pinned back on her head, expression otherwise unreadable. Now was the time for me to say something cool, fun — something to cheer her up—!

But no. I had nothing prepared. So I just squeezed her hand, gave her the biggest, most genuine smile I could, and opened the doors for her.