13. Voice of Reason (Patreon)

A/N: Hello! Sorry for being a bit late with this one, but I think it'll be worth the wait. Hopefully I'll be back on schedule for next week. Anyway, I need to go eat breakfast, so uh... enjoy!

So. Melpomene sleeps topless. I didn't really expect that, but y'know. Here we are. Here we have been, for like half an hour now.

Melpomene lies unconscious on her back in front of me, one arm and one breast hanging out from under the covers. And I am just… also here. Standing motionlessly in her room because the magical door lock is still active and I can't convince myself that it would be my master's will to break that and leave. 

It's almost funny, you know? She has this big, insane rant about how I'm an untrustworthy liar, and then she goes and leaves herself half-naked and completely helpless right in front of me. Is this a test? Is she an exhibitionist? Is she just stupid? I don't know. Perhaps I will never know. 

God, she has really big boobs though. I'm jealous as hell. My chestplate looks nice and all, but if there's one thing about my old body I miss (and it probably is exclusively one thing) it's the boobs. I worked hard for those. Metal just doesn't have that satisfying squish, you know? 

…

This is such a weird fucking situation to be stuck in. What is my life? I feel like an anime character, but instead of the situation becoming increasingly wacky I'm just getting really bored. Like, it's a nice boob, I'm definitely gay enough to appreciate it, but like… it's just a boob. I know what they look like. It's really not exciting enough to occupy my attention if it's just sitting there. There's just… not a lot else to look at. I do not, after all, think Melpomene would appreciate me exploring her room, and since I also can't convince myself to leave it I just sort of have to stand here until she wakes up. 

Hmm. It's interesting that I can burn lust, actually. (I'm pretty sure that's the northwestish emotion in my logs, anyway.) I obviously don't have a reproductive system anymore, not to mention hormones or glands or erogenous zones. The solid metal plate between my legs is no more exciting to touch than any other part of my body, though the thought of getting cleaned down there is… well, I'd be blushing if I was capable of it. I guess that explains the strangeness. Eroticism isn't exclusive to the physical appeals and pleasures of sex. It's present in all sorts of things based on preferences and cultural associations. Those carry over to my new form, since they're all just in my head anyway. 

…I probably can't orgasm anymore, though. That's a bummer.

…

Maybe Thea could build me like a… okay, okay, calm down. I need to focus on productive trains of thought, like how to convince Melpomene to give me more free will. Why am I even thinking about this? 

…Right, the boob, yeah. You know what, fuck this, I'm going into sleep mode. I'm sure I'll snap back to attention if something important happens. 

One hour, forty-three minutes, and two seconds into sleep, Melpomene turns to lie on her side. She stretches a wing up out from the covers, likely cramped from being slept on. 

Two hours, five minutes, and thirty-one seconds into sleep, Melpomene flips over onto her stomach, her tail thrashing as she dreams and untucking her covers from the foot of the bed. 

Two hours, fifty-two minutes, and nine seconds into sleep, Melpomene rolls onto her back again, mumbling incoherent words under her breath. 

Four hours, twenty minutes, and twenty-three seconds into sleep, Melpomene's sleep talking becomes articulated enough to make out. She's saying "Thalia." She seems to be having a nightmare. 

Six hours, forty-four minutes, and twelve seconds into sleep, she is now saying "I want three pancakes" repeatedly and with increasing desperation. 

Seven hours, four minutes, and fifty-nine seconds into sleep, she wakes up, and so I do too.

It's a slow and subtle awakening, but I can tell from the rate of her breathing and the twitch of her eyelids. My consciousness snaps back to me, every second of recorded Melpomene Moments burrowing themselves into my memory banks whether I want them to or not. I remain still as my master eventually yawns, stretches, and blinks herself into self-awareness, at which point she almost immediately spots me staring motionlessly at her from beside the bed and screams. 

It's a nice, loud shriek, the kind that would have seriously hurt my ears as a human. As a robot I merely record its volume level in wacky woohoo Antipathy units and internally war between the discomfort of upsetting my master and the hilarity of her reaction. Gonna focus on the latter.

Good morning, bitch. 

"Y-you!" she accuses. Me! "What are you… have you been watching me sleep!?" 

Yup. I nod. 

"Why!?" 

Well, that's not a yes or no question, but I can point at things so I point at her door. 

"...The lock," she mutters, following my finger. "I see. So what, then, have you been keeping vigil?" 

Pfft. That's one way to put it. I quickly move my boob plate out into its maintenance position and then back into its locked position. Melpomene blinks, glances down at her bare chest, and then snorts in amusement. 

"Well, I suppose you're welcome to enjoy the show," she mutters. Which, uh. Isn't the reaction I expected. It would be a lot easier not to stare if she just revoked permission, but… well, I guess she doesn't seem to care much about being seen naked in general. If anything she seems quite proud of her body, in both its human and inhuman aspects. 

…That, or she believes that because I'm some evil alien or whatever, my interest in her body must be fundamentally inquisitive rather than carnal. 'How strange, I have these odd protrusions on my chassis. Perhaps they are meant to emulate those bouncy bohonkadonkaroos. And yet, mine possess no such pliability. Curious!' 

Melpomene gets out of bed while I continue thinking about her tits in ways that would have made me bust out laughing in my old body. Okay, that's enough of that. I wonder if I can like, set up a mental subroutine to interrupt me if I start obsessing over them again. I think that might be doable. Woah, I have all sorts of reminder systems in here. That's kind of awesome, actually. 

My master yawns and stretches again, forcing me to duck as her wing nearly smacks me in the head and then jump as her tail nearly knocks me on my ass. With a flex of magical energy, clothes simply materialize onto her body, which answers a lot of questions I had about Anath. That girl is covered in crystal spikes that go right through her clothes, and it's like… did she wear that outfit for so long they grew that way? Or does she carefully make sure each spike goes through the proper hole every morning? Not even mentioning the enormous squirrel tail. It's bigger than I am! 

I follow her out of her room, down the hall, and into the bathroom where another portable sink is waiting so she can brush her teeth. It's an oddly domestic thing for me to shadow her for, contrasting heavily with the earlier beratement last night. As evil as she is, this is just her life. A normal thing that everyone has to do everyday in the privacy of their home. 

This is the closest thing I have to a home now, isn't it? I'm probably going to be living here for a long time. 

"You're not damaged, are you?" Melpomene asks. I shake my head. "That's good. Thea would give me an earful. I suppose we should go check on her."

I nod again, following her down the stairs and down another hallway towards Thea's workshop. A few clattering sounds can be heard emanating from the room, which causes Melpomene to frown and speed up. 

"Ha-HA! Yes! I did it!" Thea whoops in celebration right before we enter the room.

"You did what, dear?" Melpomene asks.

"Mel!" Thea yelps, her head snapping our way with a mad grin on her face and dark bags under her eyes. "Perfect timing! I got it working! The USB to ESB converter!"

"...ESB?" 

"Evil Serial Bus!!!" Thea beams. "Artifact-chan! Gimme your… your ports! Imma plug you into my laptop!"

"Thea, wait. Just wait a moment," Melpomene insists. "Have you slept at all?"

Thea freezes. 

"I… maybe?" she hedges. "I haven't not not slept."

"Thea."

"But Mellll, this could be it!" Thea whines. "I mean, it's probably not it, I'm almost certainly going to get Antipathy assembly gobbledygook. But how am I supposed to be able to sleep without knowing!?"

"In your bed," Melpomene says flatly. "You've been awake for nearly thirty hours. I should have made you sleep immediately after dinner."

"But—" Thea starts, but Melpomene cuts her off by putting a finger on her lips.  

"Sleep. Now. The artifact will still be here once you are fully rested."  

Thea pulls away, a pout on her lips and a blush on her cheeks. 

"...Fine," she relents, unfastening her overalls and letting them drop in front of her blanket nest. I guess those things are real rather than summoned by magic? Underneath she has a simple cotton shirt and modest boyshorts, neither of which she seems as inclined to take off as Melpomene was. She flops forward into her nest, lies there facefirst for about ten seconds, and then quickly gets up and walks out of the room.

"Nevermind, gotta pee," she mumbles to herself. Her legs and her tiny webbed paw feet are a lot more visible now that the bulky overalls are gone, allowing me to see that her legs are actually digitigrade. Her tail sticks out behind her as she walks, shifting slightly with every step to help her keep her balance with such little surface area touching the ground. And in much the same way her right arm is covered in crystalline growths, her right eye has dark sclera, and her right hand is webbed while the left side of her body looks much more human, her right leg has more crystals protruding out from the skin than even her arm. Glimmering a brilliant emerald, they curl up her thigh and down her calf like roots growing over a corpse. 

Most of the physical changes to her body seem to work surprisingly well together: the webbing on her hands and feet, the way the tail looks to be both an aid to balance and a boon for swimming… it's very purposeful, very coherent. Even Melpomene, who seems to be a chaotic chimerical mix of parts, keeps a substantial level of grace in her form, too much for me to believe that the changes are random. But the crystal growths seem different. On Thea especially, they are messy, asymmetrical additions to the organic parts of her form, uncomfortably clinging onto her like parasites. She seems used to them, at least.  

Eventually, Thea returns and flops back into bed, curling up into a little ball and wrapping her tail up around her feet as she closes her eyes. Melpomene watches her for a while and then lets out a sigh, shaking her head and turning to walk away. I don't follow her, because Melpomene said I would still be here when Thea was fully rested. I'm a little worried I'm taking that too literally, but my master either doesn't mind or doesn't notice that I am being left behind, and soon enough I am standing around and watching yet another girl sleep. 

…Except not really, because once Melpomene is out of earshot Thea jumps to her feet and immediately waddles over to me with excitement on her face. 

"Quick, while she's gone!" she insists. "Let's—waaaagh!" 

I cut her off by grabbing her by the waist, picking her up, and walking her bodily back to her bed. She squeaks and flails, but Melpomene clearly wants her to sleep so I'm going to make sure she sleeps, gosh darn it. I don't want somebody barely conscious fiddling around with my internal organs anyway! I drop her back in her blankets and stare meaningfully at her until her brain finishes processing what just happened and realizes that I am also going to make her sleep.

"No, Artifact-chan, how could you!" she cries, betrayed, but I'm afraid my hands are tied. The Thea is eepy and neebies to sleeb. "Ugh! Fine!" 

She petulantly burrows back into her nest and I prepare a fancy little eight hour timer to set the moment I detect she's unconscious. That turns out to happen pretty fast, as her body more or less just gives out after spending so long awake. 

Thirty-four minutes and nineteen seconds later, Melpomene comes to check on us. She gives me no additional orders and then leaves. She does this again three more times, with no consistent interval pattern. 

After eight hours, my timer goes off. Thea still appears to be unconscious and comfortable. I let her continue to rest.

Three hours, five minutes, and twelve seconds after that, she wakes up. She squirms around a little in the blankets, yawns, and then suddenly sneezes. I squat down, a little worried she might have caught a cold or something, but when she emerges from within I see the culprit immediately: she's got dozens of familiar little blue-gray hairs stuck all over her body.

"...I should not have let Anath sleep in here," she mutters to herself. Then she looks at me, and I look at her (I'm getting really good at that lately). The impromptu awkwardness-based staring contest continues until I win.

"O-oh gosh, um, hi! I, uh. Hmm. Hello! I guess you're eager to get started, huh?" Thea babbles, flustered. I nod. "Okay, um, let me… go get clean. I should take a sponge bath, probably. Uh. Sorry, I'll be right back." 

She hurries off to go bathe—

Automated alert: don't think about boobs.

—and so I settle back to wait again. Thirty-six minutes and five seconds later, she returns. Subjectively, I feel like I just helped Melpomene into bed maybe forty-five minutes ago. Objectively, it has been over nineteen hours. My sense of time has become both perfect and completely disconnected from reality, entire days slipping through my fingers at terrifying speeds. I hope Bean is okay. They're the person I keep thinking back to, since they're pretty much the only person that would notice or care that I'm gone. I'm sure my parents will figure it out after a few months too, but… no. I don't want to think about that.

My thoughts keep brushing towards Castalia, too, though she was nothing but an unrequited crush. I wonder if she knows I exist now. The fact that I have to fight her former allies—and possibly her current friends—puts a heavy pit in my stomach on top of all the other things I have to regret about fighting magical girls. At least I know a lot more about magical girls now, and what it might be like to be one. Why someone might want to get away from it all. 

It would be nice to be able to sense other people's emotions in social settings, though. I mean, I haven't really made use of it, but it's obviously possible since emotions generate trace amounts of magical energy even if someone isn't using magic. Anath can clearly sense emotions really well. …Wait, actually, since attraction is an emotion, does that mean Castalia was sensing every time I used to stare at her!? Oh god oh fuck oh god. 

"I'm back!" Thea announces, skidding and hopping to take the corner back into the room. Her hair is wet and she's wearing both her usual overalls and her usual big grin again. "Let's jailbreak us a robot!" 

I obligingly hop up onto the table and unlock the plate that protects my I/O port. Thea starts humming to herself, popping it the rest of the way off and pulling out an abomination of wires and miniature circuit boards that cobbles together a male USB connector and a male Standard Power/Data Peripheral connector (SPDP), which looks like a semicircle full of needles and isn't something I realized I knew the name of until literally just now. Thea's humming transitions into a full lyrical number as she plugs one end into a chunky laptop and the other into me, singing to the tune of Don't Stop Believin'.

"Please don't
Be qubits!
My computer cannot handle qubits!
Please don't
Be ternary eitherrrrrr!" 

For my part, I feel a part of myself metaphorically light up when everyone's favorite Star Wars droid SP-DP connects with my port, a very strange sensation from both tactile and mental standpoints. I send the standard handshake through the Super Polymerization Duelist Pack and am entirely unsurprised to find it unreturned while Thea's brows furrow, tapping away at her computer for a few minutes before she sighs. 

"...Yeah, I knew it wouldn't be that easy," she says. "First step, though! Far from the worst-case scenario here. I'm getting something, the connector isn't completely failing, it's just picking up gobbledygook. I mean, I knew it would be gobbledygook, but it's the wrong kind of gobbledygook. Could be a hardware issue, could be my jury-rigged driver being made of sticks and glue. Gonna mess around with this a bit more. Uh, if that's okay? This isn't uncomfortable or anything, I hope?" 

I shake my head. It feels a little weird, like I'm being tickled by data, and the ignorance of proper Best Gameboy Shoryuken Input protocols is a bit annoying, but nothing I can't filter out. I'll just keep sending that handshake attempt, I guess? Not sure what else to do.

One hour, four minutes, and thirty seconds later, Melpomene comes to check on us. Sixteen hours, forty-one minutes, and twenty-two seconds later, she returns again and forces Thea to go to bed. Nine hours, ten minutes, and thirty-one seconds later, Thea wakes up again, and we resume testing. 

Three days, seven hours, eleven minutes, and fifty-four seconds later, Thea changes her strategy, opening up most of my plates and tapping the wires within. There isn't anything for me to do while she works other than crack the old encrypted packets I have saved. Another day later, and I succeed for the first time. A day after that, I succeed again. A day after that, I crack ten different saved encryptions. I'm starting to understand the strategies humans gravitate towards. One more day, and I've cracked everything I have saved. None of it is very interesting, but I get it now. Out of all the possible ways to encrypt information, humans only seem to use a miniscule fraction of them, all on the easier side. Probably should have started there first.

Thea requests me to perform a lot of full boot routines. In the short periods I'm awake, I try to compose music in my head, but knowing how it will sound just isn't the same as actually listening to it. Twelve days, four hours, one minute, and thirteen seconds later I give up on finding things to do. Even during my waking moments, it's much easier to simply remain in sleep mode, responding only to orders and visits from Melpomene, of which there have been thirty-one. 

Twenty-one days, nine hours, thirty-three minutes and six seconds later, my power reserves drop below 20% due to lack of power gain. I stimulate emotional responses by replaying past memories in my head instead of sleeping to pass the time. The difference between pre- and post-robotization memories are so fundamentally different that panicking about it earns me three percent on its own. 

As a human, my memories are flashes of impressions, wisps of words and the sounds they might have had, emotions written and rewritten as what was once experience becomes an incestuous game of telephone, neurons rewriting themselves with the memory of the memory of the memory every time I view it. As a robot, my memories are movies, shot with my eyes as the camera and my ears as the microphone. They are perfect recreations of the past, frozen in crystal. They are reality, returned to whenever I wish. 

I'm not sure which kind of memory I hate more, but they're both good for stabilizing my power levels. Thea eventually asks me to stand up and make a few repetitive motions while hooked up to a bunch of external wiring. It is the first time I've left her worktable in over a month. 

She looks tired. Very tired, all the time. She's working on me almost constantly. Opening me, cleaning me, mapping me, learning what I am and how I work. There have been a lot of setbacks, but she is determined to help me. To improve me. To let me be able to speak. To allow me to tell her my name. 

She's always there, working on me, next to me, above me. Leaning above the table, wiping the sweat off her forehead so it doesn't drip into my systems, asking me questions to make sure I'm okay, apologizing when she makes a mistake and causes me damage. Gritting her teeth when the next attempt fails, swallowing her frustration, and trying again. The others often pull her away to make her eat, to make her spend time with them, to make her take a break, and so whenever she leaves I drift into sleep. I'm a flayed body on an operating table, a skeleton hooked up by wires to so many different devices that it's difficult to move me. I've been broken, fixed, and broken again in countless places. I overhear how the others discover more artifacts, investigate more ruins, get into more fights, cause more problems. The world moves around me, my whole existence in slumber. But whenever I'm awake, she is there. 

Melpomene, my master, is often around, making sure Thea eats and sleeps and takes care of herself. But Thea, my savior, is always there. And after a total of two months, one week, three days, twenty-one hours, fifty-two minutes, and ten seconds, she finally says it.

"I've got it. This is gonna work." 

The final setup is a full hardware bypass that moves directly from my core components through a newly-built connection to an external speaker. I can feel it connect, feel it interface with my systems and handshake properly and it's so simple, so flimsy, just a small speaker barely capable of interpreting raw sound data. I have to assemble the audio file manually, splicing together memories of words to make my own like a goddamn YouTube poop. None of this was the hard part. 

Removing my communication restriction was the hard part. 

I have no idea how she did it, and I'm pretty sure that's entirely on purpose. I have more records of manual memory deletion in this past week alone than the entire rest of this process combined. Whatever method is being used, me not knowing about it apparently plays an important role, and because I know Melpomene actually wants me to be able to communicate things I am actually compelled by my other restrictions to maintain ignorance. On one hand, this is very convenient and makes ignoring this all the easier. On the other hand, it's clear that all of my restrictions still exist. Or at least, all of my restrictions except communication? Or maybe that one still exists too, and is just being circumvented somehow. Wait, I should stop thinking about this. 

"Alright… that should be it. Um, how are you feeling?" Thea asks.

Slowly, fearfully, I lift one arm… and successfully make the OK symbol with my hand. Holy shit. Holy shit holy shit holy shit. Thea notices it too, a big smile opening up on her face. 

"LooNAH," my speaker buzzes. "LooNAH. LuNAH. LuNA. Luna."

Every word—and if I can't remember someone saying the word, every syllable—is sampled from a different voice, but I can adjust, I can improve, I can relearn how to speak and make the words my own. 

"My naME is Luna," I declare, and Thea shrieks with victory.

"YEEEEEESSS!!! Luna! You're Luna!" she confirms.

"YEEEEEESSS!!!" I repeat back at her. "THANK you. THANK you. THANK you. THANK you. THANK you."

"You're welcome! Oh, you're so welcome! Gosh, I'm so happy we finally did this, I'm so sorry for taking so long." 

Two months. It felt like a few days, at most. But it was two months, gone in a flash. 

"Don't say SOrry," I insist. I sample the next word from the voice of that shady black market guy, pitched up a bit to sound a little less weird. "Savior."

Thea blinks.

"Uh, like Nana's class?" she asks.

"No," I say. I don't even know what that means. "You're MY Savior. THANK you."

She blushes a deep, deep brown, fidgeting and stammering and not knowing how to respond. I want to tell her everything. I want her to know how I got here, who I am, what Melpomene did to me, what she's ordered me to do, how terrified I still am and how much help I still need, but I can't. 

"Melpomene." The name is the only sound that comes out. Nothing else I want to say complies with her desires. 

"O-oh, r-right! Yeah, she'll, uh, definitely want to be here. Um… give me one sec to mount this speaker somewhere you have space so we can get all your plates back on and get you walking around again, then I'll go get her. Is that okay? How are you doing, by the way?" 

"That's FINE. I am…" I try to think of something to say that is both possible and true. "OverWELLmED."

"I can only imagine," Thea says, securing the speaker to fit underneath—

Automated alert: don't think about boobs.

—the convex section of my chestplate, since there is a bit of extra space. 

"You said that you remember who you are, but not how you got like this, right?" she continues. "Tell me… er, no, sorry. If you want to, I would like it if you tell me about yourself."

"My naME is Luna," I say again, just to revel in the euphoria of being able to. "I was a colEDGE student."

"Woah! That's so cool! I never got to be a college student," Thea says genuinely. "What were you studying?"

"A lot of THINGS. I was only a saw-FF-more. I didn't have a MAJOR picked out yet. I wanted to be a music MAJOR but I was probably going to chickEN out." 

"A music major sounds so cool though!" Thea insists. "What's a sophomore?"

Um. That's… they call it that in highschool too, right?

"Were you a human beFOUR?" I ask.

"Uh, yeah, of course I was," Thea says. "I mean, I like to think I still am! Same as you, right?"

"How long have you LIVED in the Dark World?" I ask. "How old are you?"

Thea blinks.

"I mean, I think I'm gonna be nineteen pretty soon," she answers. "So I guess I've lived in the Dark World… six years or so, now? Same as Melpomene, minus a month or two. Why, how old are you?" 

Which would make Melpomene about twenty-four or twenty-five, having gone to live in the Dark World when she was already an adult. And Thea joined her when she was thirteen? I don't like that. I don't like that at all. 

"I'm TWENTY," I answer, unable to voice any of my concerns. 

"Oh, nice!" she grins. "We're almost the same age! Anath's only twenty-one, but Nana is nearly as old as Mel. Oh, right! Mel! I'll be right back!"

She scurries away, leaving me to finish reorganizing my innards so I can pull all my panels back into position. I can talk now. I can talk! I know I barely ever did it as a human, but damn, I did not appreciate what I was missing until it was gone. I want to laugh, but the closest I could do would be to pick a recording of someone else's laugh and play that, and that would just be kinda weird. A key component of laughter is the spontaneity, the fact that it happens in response to our joy rather than our will. That's what makes it beautiful. There would be no force behind it, no loss of breath, no involuntary motions as my entire body succumbs to happiness. Just a recording, played over a motionless collection of metal. I suppose that's something to miss about my old body, but I bet I can find a good replacement for laughter. Something that would still be honest. 

Casually, I let time skip by again until Thea returns with my master. Melpomene's face is much more expressive than usual, much less controlled—she seems frightened, but also excited, hopeful. I know she wanted me to be able to speak, but it seems to have meant a lot more to her than I realized. In her arms is a number of the papers from her desk. 

"You can speak?" she asks.

"My naME is Luna," I insist.

She gives me the fakest smile I have ever seen in my life. 

"Luna," she addresses me. "It's wonderful to formally meet you. I'm glad that all of Thea's hard work has paid off."

"Yes. THEA is the BEST," I agree pointedly. Thea makes an involuntary squeaking noise. 

"She is," Melpomene agrees, affectionately mussing up Thea's hair. I don't think she likes hearing me say it, but her concurrence with the sentiment seems genuine. "Now, I realize there's probably a lot you want to say and a lot you want to talk about, but I have a request first, if that's alright." 

Of course it's alright, even though it's all wrong. Making a show of asking for consent when you know it doesn't do anything is pretty fucking abhorrent. 

"Go aHEAD," I pretend to allow.

"Can you translate this?" she asks, handing me a piece of paper. I accept it, giving it a quick read. It's a poem, the same one she asked me to translate for her before.

An Antipathy poem. 

They have a different alphabet, a different sentence structure, and an entirely different culture behind them, but the Antipathy language isn't so alien that I couldn't imagine it being invented by humans. Different symbols represent different sounds, combinations of different sounds create words, and combinations of different words create sentences. But the fact that this is a poem makes it surprisingly difficult to translate, so even at the speed I think I have to take a short pause before I answer.

"Do you not SEE that I have more love left to give?
What is love for, if not givING?
I receive your love as a child is loved by their parent
As a shEEP is loved by the SHEPherd
As a calf is loved by the BUTCHer
Oh, how full is the love you give me
Will you not receive the fullNESS of my own?
My disregard for you, which is love?
My anger, which is love?
My conTEMPT, which is love?
My hatred, which is love?
Is this not what you have taught me, your shEEP? Your calf?
I have loved you, and so I have learned from you.
You have shown me what love is.
Do you not SEE that I have more love left to give?
Come. Take it. What is love for, if not givING?"

Man, this is some edgy shit. It's honestly a little embarrassing reading this out loud. Melpomene frowns as she considers my words, eventually leaning forward and tapping the paper. 

"The fourth and fifth lines here," she says. "How did you get 'sheep' and 'calf?'"

"The poem refers to an aniMAL traDITIONally herded by nomads and another aniMAL whose children are often eaten as a delicacy, somewhat like veal," I explain, slowly getting a better handle on my new 'voice.' "It does not literally refer to aniMALs from Earth, but they are the closest EQUivAlent I could think of. A literal TRANSlation would just refer to hoSHAsho and sohAKhagh, which I assumed would not be RECOGNIZE-ABLE."

My pronunciation of the alien tongue is terrible, having to cobble together sounds from English-speaking mouths, but nobody else seems to notice. Both Thea and Melpomene's eyes go wide. 

"You can speak the Antipathy language?" Melpomene presses. "Not just read it?" 

I nod, mostly by habit, but then decide to say it out loud too, just because I can.

"Yes." Hehe. Fuck yeah. 

"That's… oh, that's incredible! We've never found auditory records of the language, only written ones. This is revolutionary!" 

I'm a bit taken aback by the force of my master's excitement, but… it feels kind of nice.

"Translate this one next!" she insists, handing me another piece of paper. 

"SURE," I agree, accepting it from her. Gah, I can mix the sounds better than this. "May I suggest taking a walk, though? Thea should probably get some sleep."

"What! I'm way too excited to sleep now!" Thea insists, but Melpomene catches onto what I really want. 

"You should at least get some dinner, dear," Melpomene says. "Run on up and get something. Luna and I will be right behind you."

"Uuugh, okay, fine," Thea groans. "It was so so so so so nice getting to talk with you, Luna!"

"It was so so so so so nice getting to talk at all, Thea!" I answer. "Thank you again!"

"Haha! Gosh, I love your repeaty thing. Um. Okay bye!" she squeaks, running off down the hall. Melpomene waits for her to be long out of earshot before crossing her arms and turning to me.

"...Alright, let's hear it," she says. "What do you want?"

"I know I called you a Disney villain," I start, and she flinches, "but Jesus Christ Mel, are you grooming her?"

I expect and receive the punch to the head, letting myself get smashed into the wall of Thea's workshop. 

"You will never imply something that disgusting about me again," she orders, a murderous look in her eyes.

"Oh don't worry about me implying anything, the question was entirely genuine. Also: I don't feel pain, so you're really just smashing Thea's stuff with this tantrum." 

She holds out her hand and a magical force pulls me into it, her fingers wrapping around my neck.

"Do I have to remind you that I also don't breathe?" I ask. "Surely you knew that."

"Silence," she demands, and I shut up. No matter how hard I try to say something, I once again can't.

Okay. That actually hurts, I'll give her that.

"Thea was old enough to die in service of the Preservers. She was damn well old enough to decide she no longer wished to," Melpomene growls. "And no, we do not have that kind of relationship. I love that girl more than life itself. I would never do that to her."

Oh, cool. A slaver, but not a rapist. It's something, I guess.

"Now. You will treat my allies and I with respect, do you understand? You may speak."

"Yes, master," I answer, trying to put as much venom as possible into someone else's voice. "But if it's not too presumptuous to ask, I am curious. Do you think you deserve my respect? After what you've done?" 

She snarls, exposing the sharp fangs inside her mouth.

"I've saved the entire goddamn world," she answers. "Twice. And I'm going to have to do it again. The Dark World isn't healing. The Preservers can't be trusted. Our world is on the brink of collapse and it will always be on the brink of collapse unless we understand what happened and how we can stop it from happening again."

"And that justifies slavery?" I ask.

"I don't have to justify a single fucking thing," she growls. "No, I'm not giving you a choice. When an eight-year-old child is crying over the bodies of her parents, screaming as a monster bears down on her, shivering in the cold because she lost everything, does she have a choice? You have been called to action. The alternative was death. Make peace with it." 

"Make peace with what?" I ask. "What action am I being called to? Because you haven't explained anything to me, and it sure doesn't look like we're saving the world from monsters." 

"The Dark World should be healing," Melpomene insists. "That's what it's doing here, why it's covering Earth. The monster attacks are a side effect, not the objective. It's devouring ambient magic and emotion, absorbing it, inducing depression and apathy far more than it inflicts death. It needs the power to recover itself from shattering, but it's not healing!"

"The Dark World has an 'objective?' Is it sapient?" I ask. 

"It's… probably not," Melpomene hedges. "We are still learning the magical metaphysics necessary to understand what the great execration really was, how it broke an entire universe into fragments and how it sought out Earth to devour. The Preservers doubtlessly know, but they keep us ignorant, refusing us access to any magical tools that aren't thoroughly blackboxed. Their insistence that all artifacts be recovered from human hands isn't for our safety, it is to maintain their superiority."

"I dunno," I say. "An artifact has made me feel pretty fuckin' unsafe recently."

"Quit whinging and pay attention to the broader picture here," she orders. And like, damn. I guess I have to do that. 

"...So, you go around fighting magical girls and distributing artifacts and everything for… what, exactly?" I ask. "How does anything you do save the world?"

"The Earth Guardians aren't the problem," Melpomene scowls. "They are victims in this. I empathize, but they are also powerful and indoctrinated by the enemy; some conflicts are unavoidable."

"Is that why you taunted Veritas about being an orphan?" I ask. "Empathy for victims?"

"I… what?" she blinks. "What are you… do you mean when I took you out months ago?"

"Yeah," I answer. "Sorry, perfect memory. That one stuck with me a bit, but I guess forcing me to beat up a ten year old wasn't that notable of an event for you."

"...I can and will shut you up again if you refuse to learn some respect," she warns.

"Sorry," I lie. "I'm genuinely putting in an effort here, but if you haven't keyed in on this yet I should probably let you know that I do not like you very much." 

"Well," Melpomene says, finally releasing my neck and dropping me to the ground. "I'm afraid you'll have to put up with me regardless. Even if I intended to give you a choice, we have no way to put you in a human body again."

"Oh, that's cool," I say. "I'll keep the sick-ass robot body. I just want you to emancipate me and let me leave."

"I'm not sure you do, actually," Melpomene smiles. "Because at the end of the day, whether you like me or not, obey me or not, you will be fighting Earth Guardians for as long as you live. The Preservers would never let you live free on Earth, not in a million years. The Artifact policy is immediate teleportation to their home universe, where the offending technology is safely and completely dismantled. You can compromise with me, Luna. But not with them."

I hesitate. I'm not sure whether I should trust that. But… I can't just mindlessly write off the possibility, either.

"I apologize for getting violent with you earlier," Melpomene continues, and now I'm really bracing for the trap. "You accused me of grooming earlier, and I suggest you never do the same to the others because it is a bit of a sore spot for people who were isolated from their peers and coerced into an endless war by powerful aliens who insisted on dictating our worldview. You seem like a skeptical girl, so ask yourself: is the faction training ten-year-old children to fight really the good one in this equation?"

I… that's… fair. But them being bad doesn't make you good.

"...Compromise how?" I ask. "You have near complete control over me."

"I clearly don't, as your foul mouth has proven," she says. "And I'm not cruel for no reason."

Doubt.

"I need you, Luna," she insists. "I can't simply let you go, but I would much rather you aid us of your own volition. This doesn't have to be painful. We are this world's only defense against the Preservers, and they must be stopped. The stranglehold they have on our world must be stopped." 

My immediate instinct in response to that is to tell her to go fuck herself—

Automated alert: don't think about boobs.

—but I'm stopped by my current orders and forced to give it a second think. And… yeah, honestly. Even if I happen to think she's completely full of shit (I do), it's still my best move to act friendly with her. I don't want to, but there are more important things to worry about here than my pride. Cooperating means getting the sorts of concessions that could translate to real freedom down the line, and while cooperating with slavers is morally inconsolable… that's only true for everyone other than slaves. If she tells me to do something and I say no, all that does is make me suffer more while I obey. She holds all of the power here. 

If I want to take that power, I have to make her offer it. And that's what she's doing right now. 

"...Okay," I tell her. 

She seems surprised, so I guess she's not completely insane.

"Okay?"

"Yeah," I confirm. "You have a point. I can't really live a normal life on Earth if winged cat monsters are going to keep assaulting me with tactically deployed children. And I'm definitely pro-saving-the-world. I'm just… very upset with everything that has happened to me. I'm sure you can understand that?" 

"Completely," she acknowledges, happy to swallow the bait I left for her narcissistic ass. "We acted rashly because we didn't know who or what you were! Now that we can have a proper conversation, we can make sure you're being treated right."

It's a good thing I can't vomit anymore because the smell of bullshit is making me sick.

"I'm happy to translate things, especially if I'm the only one who can," I say, keeping those thoughts to myself. "Chronicling what might otherwise become a completely lost culture is something I think I could be proud of."

"Oh, I agree wholeheartedly," Melpomene smiles.

"...And I don't want to fight kids anymore," I continue. 

"Combat with Earth Guardians is never our goal, only a consequence of failing somewhere up the line," she says. "I can't promise it will never happen, but I can promise not to intentionally put you in a position where you must do so." 

Well. That's probably as good as I'm going to get. 

"...Okay," I nod.

"Okay?" 

"I'll join you willingly," I lie. "I'll help you save the world."

Her smile gets even wider, once again exposing fangs.

"Well then, darling," she says, gesturing wide with her arms. "Welcome to the Dark Rebellion."