Chapter 13

How long had this meeting gone on? At times they seemed to talk in circles, negotiating this for that and such. Perhaps in their line of work, this was high-stakes negotiations and might've been really interesting to watch from a technical perspective. But for HK... it was kinda boring.

 A flashing message indicator appeared in the corner of HK’s vision, it was a message from Mariposa depicting a small image of a bored-looking animal that she’d never seen before.

“Sorry, for your first assignment, this is probably boring.”

“It’s fine. Um, how are you doing, after what happened?”

Mariposa didn’t write anything back, but she looked crestfallen from where HK was standing. She’d apparently taken the stranger’s demise harder than expected.

“The Enlightened-9 say that all stories come to an end sooner or later, it was just his time, that’s all. Still… I suppose I don’t really like violence all that much, odd that my manufacturer would create me with such a personality defect given my job. Maybe there’s something broken about me or is it a residual memory echo?”

“Sorry. For the record, I don’t think you did anything wrong, Cassius was way out of line. Are all Soluna Military leaders like that?”

“...I wish I could say no… but there are certainly some… well, I better stop here. In case someone audits these logs. In his case, according to his record he was the distant relative to a 1st-Class Paragon. Basically, the founders of the Soluna Consortium and one of the earliest humans to come back from the Anomaly Warp with powers. I can’t tell you more than that though, a lot of his past is sealed, but from what I can tell it seems that his military career has been sandbagged by someone else, but I can’t say for sure without higher clearance, Sofia would probably know.”

“Do you think that’s why he seems so unhinged?”

“...No. I think he’s a bully and a thug that someone handed a gun and an army. I’d tear him limb from limb if I wasn’t programmed to be unable to harm members of his rank and status. Though, the Enlightened-9 would certainly disapprove of my actions.”

HK can’t say she disagreed with the assessment, but she was a little unnerved by Mariposa’s contradictory views on the preservation of life and her complete willingness to murder Cassius. Maybe she did have a glitch in her system after all?

“Speaking of Sofia, she’s just been standing there for a while. What’s up with her?”

“Oh… she went into standby mode the moment the meeting started.”

“...Is that proper? Shouldn’t we be listening?”

“She said, and I quote: “The only purpose for us being here is to look intimidating so they’re more likely to be agreeable to our terms. Basically, we’re just a cheap scare tactic who happened to be here. This is honestly not our problem.” Is what she said. She said to wake her if something happened though. If you want, you can go on standby mode too.“

“Are you sure? I’d feel bad if you’re the only one who’s paying attention.”

“Don’t worry, like Sofia said, we’re just here for intimidation not to talk. So as long as we’re just visible, we should be fine. Besides… by the time they’d have drawn their weapons, I could’ve killed them three times over.”

“. . . . .”

“Sorry, was that too much? I tried to sound like Kumoko.”

She just sent an image of a small animal laughing nervously. “Right, well, if you’re sure, I guess I’ll go into standby mode as well.”