Heroic

by H D Forth

  With a yowl I dropped the box, cradling my entire arm to my body. “Beast blaze woman! What was that?” I asked.

  She let out another flurry of giggles. “I love it when they do that!”

  “Why does it hurt so bad?” I mumbled, quietly enough for her not to hear as I rubbed my arm.

  At least she thinks its funny. I thought grimly, looking at her out the corner of my eye. Shaking my arm. I kicked the toolbox angrily, before following her up the stairs. Hopefully, we were done now.

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  By the time we arrived at her workshop, I had cooled down severely. I now felt ashamed at me response, though I still couldn't get myself to tell her how much it hurt. Instead I turned it into the brisk energy of acting like nothing had happened.

  “Alright.” I said, forcing a cheerful tone as I entered behind her. “What’s the first thing we’ve gotta get?”

  She turned to look at me strangely, for a moment she almost looked me in the eye. Then she turned away, though I thought she didn't look as cold as she had when I had entered the car. Nothing like a few minutes to calm someone down.

  She pointed towards what looked to be a rather large and sturdy box. I walked over to it. “This one?” I asked her, she nodded. She even managed to look me, if not in the eye, then in the face. “That’ll be easy!” I told her, giving her my best winning smile, though the fake cheer felt weird.

  What I didn’t know was that this box contained all the unassembled and raw material that was needed for my new frame. Plus all the equipment necessary for her to shape it and put it together.

  Let me tell you one thing about metal, it can be quite heavy even for someone like me, who is objectively quite strong. I bend down grabbing the for the edges of the box, I didn’t think form mattered if you’re a robot. Half robot… half cyborg. Part man, part android. Mandroid. Whatever, didn't matter.

  I grunted heaved and pulled myself face down into the box.

  And with a great toll, a bang did sound…

  I had of course known that metal was heavy, without ever being to exact about the measurements. I my unbridled brilliance I had gone for the rather act too manly and throw the heavy metal box up and over my shoulder rather than slowly struggle to lift it off the ground. So sue me, I wanted to show off in front of the girl who was seemingly rejecting me.

  For a moment I started to feel a pang of fear, but I repressed it ruthlessly to let it fester for some other time where I felt it was more convenient to let one of my all consuming childhood fears overtake me. I didn’t want to have a break down in front of Kani.

  What I did instead was pull hard enough, with entirely the wrong leverage and ended up head butting the box with my face. What that did was leave a near exact facial imprint onto the box, make a huge racket and stun me for a moment as all my prediction for a moment went completely off course.

  I slowly gathered my wits sitting next to the box, my one camera having trouble focusing, until I strengthened my connection to the Nerve Module again. I blinked a few times making sure I hadn't damaged it. There was still a soft tingling in the air from my disaster of showmanship. Except it wasn't the sound of metal ringing, it was the sound of light female laughter.

  “Well I’m happy that my misery can give you something to laugh about,” I grumbled. I wanted to be angry that the woman who had rejected me was laughing at me, but her laughter was simply too sweet and too pure for me.

  “Need help there big guy?” She asked, mirth still clear in her voice. She had walked over to the box, I saw her press a button on the side. A handle sprouted from one end, and a pair of wheels I hadn't seen in my haste popped out of the corners on the other.

  I let out another loud groaned and let myself flop back on the hard concrete of her workshop. My face felt off, like something was wrong. I carefully reached up to find that I had completely flattened my nose against my face. Since it wasn't part of the permanent damage I hadn't even felt it. With a mental effort I connected with my mask and told it to restore my face, to my previous setting.

  Kani gaped, as I felt movements pull and shift under my skin. “That’s so cool!” She whispered excitedly, she almost reached out to touch my face before she caught herself and backed off.

  Just like that, all the emotions that I hoped had been under control, came rising unbidden. What little irritation and anger my Foundation could hold escaped, bulging and boiling a room that I should have had perfect control over. Desperately I tried to think of what Madam had told me of the Foundation.

  My floor, ceiling and walls would be the bedrock of my Foundation. This was where the emotions were invested, since my emotion were literally set in stone, it was meant to signify that I would be hard to move by my emotions, hard to affect and therefore always under my own control.

  I would form a bunker with my Foundation. In this bunker I would hang pictures and frames of the things I cared about the most. I should only do so carefully and with great consideration, because all the tools I had in my bunker would have much difficult carving into it, otherwise my Foundation would be unstable. Thus it would require a great effort for someone or something to be important to me.

  I still remember first ‘hanging’ a portrait of a hero up ion my bunker, I remembered it because of its absence. Then there was Tinkers, the orphanage cat from when I was young. His frame gilded and golden. I had ringed it with gems and inlaid it with precious metals. He was my first friend, he was also the first death I could really remember.

  Now my bunker was roiling, in upheaval. My floor was shifting, cracking and seemingly transparent at places. All I could do to try and control it was keep my balance, hold steady, then brace myself for the long run.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying sound cheerful. I didn’t. Then I grabbed the handle and pulled hard on the box. It was big, not big enough for me to lie down in, hence why I knew that she hadn't finished with my frame work yet, but it was at least as big as my upper torso. Getting it up the stairs and into the car was a beast blazed nightmare.

  Not because it was too heavy for me to lift, it wasn't, but due to its center of gravity. I had literally no training in lifting heavy things, and now I was saddled with a heavy thing that I had to move. I probably made it more difficult that it had to be. I definitely did.

  In a blinding flash of sudden wisdom, I also took a few minutes to calm down once more. It was really unsettling how easily she had unseated my emotional control. My bunker had remain mostly solid, even when faced with Val. The fact that Kani could so easily shatter my Foundation, my control like that. It terrified me.

  Once I was more certain that my emotions were under my control, I stepped back down into the workshop.

  I found Kani, reaching for something on a tall shelf. She was obviously at her edge just to reach the shelf. I’d noticed a pad of paper when I’d entered the workshop. I took one, mashed it together, aimed and fired.

  Boom! Headshot!

  It was silly, and petty, but it felt good in a preschooler kind of way.

  “Heey!” She growled, turning around to glare at me. I simply shot her my best smug smirk as I sidled up to her, reached up and pulled down the doodad that she had tried to grab.

  “Is this what you wanted?” I asked.

  “I almost had it.” She said, sourly. “If you’re so big and strong can you grab those.” She pointed over at a what seemed like a toolbox.

  I was just about to reply with appropriate amounts of arrogance, then I remembered the box. “Is it like The Box?” I asked her instead, approaching carefully.

  “The box?” She asked innocently. “What ever do you mean?”

  “The Dreaded Box of Head Banging.” I told her blithely. Another unwomanly snort escaped her mouth, as she tried to hold in laughter.

  “Ahh, that box. No this is different.” She said, “It’s just a tool box.”

  Well then. I thought reaching down to grab it.

  “Or is it my sparker toolbox, that I put out so my
coworker cant grab my actual tools and get shocked instead?” She mumbled just quietly enough for my ears to catch it, and just late enough for it not to matter.

  With a yowl I dropped the box, cradling my entire arm to my body. “Beast blaze woman! What was that?” I asked.

  She let out another flurry of giggles. “I love it when they do that!”

  “Why does it hurt so bad?” I mumbled, quietly enough for her not to hear as I rubbed my arm.

  At least she thinks its funny. I thought grimly, looking at her out the corner of my eye. Shaking my arm. I kicked the toolbox angrily, before following her up the stairs. Hopefully we were done now.

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  Turns out we were, and we got back to headquarters in short order. The previous ordeal that day, with her rejecting me and then her deliberately hurting my arm, viciously hurting it, really put me in a foul mood.

  There was complete silence in the car as the car drove back. By the end of the ride, I was pretty sure that even to someone as daft as her could tell the tension in the air wasn’t friendly.

  I got out of the car and had the boot open before she managed to get out of her side. With my good hand, I grabbed the handle of the box, lifting it up from the bottom of the pile of random junk she had brought along.

  I caught a glimpse at her as I walked away holding the box by the handle in one hand.

  Once I entered headquarters, I simply threw the heavy box down in the middle of the room. I saw some of the actual floorboards crack and break from the impact. I also heard a certain someone startle at the sound. She was downstairs before Kani had entered with her first box.

  I had gone over to the sink, to get some better light at my arm. Small patches of blackened material had started showing up all along my arm. Up to around mid-bicep area, matching the area that stung.

  Instructions form the Nerve Module told me I had to remove them. The best way of doing that was with a scouring pad and a rough hand, it couldn't install new nerves until the old ones had been removed.

  "What happened?" Val asked as she entered the work floor.

  "Someone thought she was funny, but apparently she can only be so when she's hurting others," I growled. Anger and frustration evident in my voice, as attacked my arm with a heavy-duty scouring pad.

  I heard Kani gasp as she saw entered the room. I had hidden my bad arm from her, as we had been sitting in the car and I had pulled the box in. I clenched my jaw as I heard her.

  Obviously, Val noticed my reaction because she walked off from behind me, and I heard her say to Kani. “Give him some space.”

  Val and Kani didn't go upstairs but out the main door. There was a locked side door, but it made a loud noise when it was unlocked so I couldn't sneak away, nor try to listen in without Val noticing.

  They were outside talking for a long time, long enough me to start cooling down and relaxing some of the tension in me, as my arm started regaining sensation.

  Which I started to realize probably was on purpose. Keeping us separate long enough for us to calm down, without giving either the excuse to leave. Me because I would have to step around them, and Kani because she was caught in the personal space of Val and you didn't do that without permission from her.

  Finally, Val and Kani stepped inside. Kani slowly made it for the upper floor, while Val made it briskly for me.

  The very first thing she did was slap me, then point towards the floor under the box I had thrown. “That’s Wild Wood you fucking birdbrain! Do you have any idea how expensive it is to get genuine Wild Wood? And now you’ve broken two boards and cracked three other.” For some reason, that I couldn't quite deduce she seemed angry. She knocked her knuckles against my forehead. “Knock, knock. Nobody’s home!”

  I lowed my self into a chair, next to the dinner table. “I’m sorry,” I said. My best repentant out to play.

  "You damn well better be!" She said. "Now let's talk about something else." I cringed as she changed the subject. Her voice softened, and warmth bled into it. "I get it. It hurts." She didn't gesture towards my arm.

  "You come from two wildly different paths, you grew up as an orphan, she didn't. You're not the same, but you've got to try and understand each other better." I tried to swallow, but it felt like my throat was stuck.

  "The first thing I want you to understand was that you didn't initially do anything wrong. Initially." As she repeated the word, a little steel crept into her voice, before fading again. "She has never been with another man. If there's one thing that I am sure about you, it's that you don't do half measures.

  "You don't take a job that you don't like, then only show up when you feel like it. Either you're there every day working hard, even though it's shit, you do it you're fuck outta your mind depressed, nothing matters, and you won't leave your bed for days. Sound familiar?"

  I nodded.

  "She wasn't ready for it. You don't actually know her, instead of letting her come to you at her own rate, you plow onwards until her hackles are up and she's in defensive mode." Val gave me an emphatic look. "Then she starts running from any conversation that is too serious, and you feel even further rejected and angry. Sounds familiar?"

  She let her words sit in the room for a second. I wanted to object, but I couldn't. "She, on the other hand, has an excellent reason to be reluctant, and you need to give her some space. Don't try to force her into the relationship you want. Relationships are about teamwork, compromises and being happy together. You're letting none of that happens."

  I wanted to defend myself, to tell her that Kani was just as guilty as I was, but I understood that this conversation wasn’t about Kani. It was about me, and how I could improve.

  She reached out and grabbed my red and slightly sore hand, were new white patches were slowly growing in. "Oh, and she hadn't realized this would happen. She's really sorry that you got this hurt, she didn't know that electricity would have such an adverse effect on your model.

  “The MagAI are virtually immune to electricity so she assumed you would feel little more than a sting from it. She had forgotten that while they’re motorcycles, you’re still a pedal bike.”

  I felt slightly offended at her comment, but couldn't really fault her since it was precise enough. “Yeah,” I mumbled.

  “I’m going to bring her down now, and you’re both going to say that you’re sorry and hug it out.”

  “What!” I cried out, “Come on! Were not third graders here! We’re no-” She stopped the words cold in my mouth with a simple glare, then left the room for a few seconds, before returning with Kani in a row.

  We said our sorries and hugged it out. It was surprisingly nice. I might even have teared up a little bit, probably not though since I’m a Mandroid.

  Chapter Ninety

  Turns out we were, and we got back to headquarters in short order. The previous ordeal that day, with her rejecting me and then her deliberately hurting my arm, viciously hurting it, really put me in a foul mood.

  There was complete silence in the car as the car drove back. By the end of the ride I was pretty sure that even to someone as daft as her could tell the tension in the air wasn’t friendly.

  I got out of the car and had the boot open, before she managed to get out of her side. With my good hand I grabbed the handle of the box, lifting it up from the bottom of the pile of random junk she had brought along.

  I caught a glimpse at her as I walked away holding the box by the handle in one hand.

  Once I entered headquarters, I simply threw the heavy box down in the middle of the room. I saw the some of the actual floorboards crack and break from the impact. I also heard a certain someone startle at the sound. She was downstairs before Kani had entered with her first box.

  I had gone over to the sink, to get some better light at my arm. Small patches of blackened material had started showing up all along my arm. Up to around mid bicep area, matching the area that stung.

  Instructions form the Nerve Module told me I had to
remove them. The best way of doing that was with a scouring pad and a rough hand, it couldn't install new nerves until the old ones had been removed.

  “What happened?” Val asked, as she entered the work floor.

  “Someone thought she was being funny, but apparently she can only be so when she’s hurting others.” I growled. Anger and frustration clear in my voice, as attacked my arm with a heavy duty scouring pad.

  I heard Kani gasp as she saw entered the room. I had hidden my bad arm from her, as we had been sitting in the car and I had pulled the box in. I clenched my jaw as I heard her. Obviously Val noticed my reaction, because she walked off from behind me, and I heard her say to Kani. “Give him some space.”