RavensDagger

  Interlude he Silly Meic

  Twenty-Six was as nervous as someone doing their first core t decoupling on a live reactor, but she was w hard not to let it show.

  It was... actually not too hard to just keep smiling, mostly because despite the fact that she felt like her insides were a turbine filled with loose washers, she was also happy. The smile wasn't forced. If anything, she had to keep a tight leash on that smile because there was a very real possibility that she'd start giggling and that would be mortifying.

  Her hand was ed around Evelyn's, and she couldn't help but worry that the taller, hotter, cooler woman would notice how badly she was sweating.

  "H-have you ever been to an arcade before?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "I have not," Evelyn replied. She tilted her head very slightly to one side. "I've heard of them, and of course I've seen a few in shows and movies and they've e up in books before."

  "Do you read a lot?" Twenty-Six asked. She wasn't sure if they'd had this exact versation before or not, but she was grasping at anything she could to make sure that versation didn't stall out.

  That would be the worst, having nothing to say, the air being filled with a long, awkward silence. But no, Evelyn was way too cool for that, and she kept things engaged and would ask Twenty-Six some smart questions every so often. "I've read my fair share. Do you read anything other than teical manuals?"

  Erotica. But Twenty-Six would rather stick her head in a turbihan admit that aloud. "N-nope. Just nonfi and teical stuff for me. I know it's a little b..."

  "Nonsense," Evelyn said. "Don't let aell you that you're not iing."

  "Well, I'm really not," Twenty-Six said.

  Evelyn sniffed. "I think you're very iing, and I'm the objective judge of these sorts of things. If I say so, then it is so."

  Twenty-Six ughed. She felt her cheeks reddening a little at the pliment, and it certainly didn't help all of the loose nuts and bolts in her chest from boung around, but it had sounded entirely ear aain, so much so that she couldn't find it io deny it.

  "Thanks," she said. "How did you end up so fident anyway?"

  Evelyn frowned a little in thought. Twenty-Six wasn't going to tell her, but the taller women's eyebrows were very expressive. They gave away a lot about what she was thinking at any given time. "I'm afraid that I don't have a helpful answer for that one. I've been very fident from a young age, as far back as I remember. Time and experieurned what robably unearned fideo something sharper and harder to bend."

  "Huh, I guess. So little Evelyn was a hot head?"

  "You could say that," Evelyn said. "I was an orphan, taken in by the army. There were hundreds of us back then."

  "Back then?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "This would be some time before the sed intersystem war," Evelyn said. "There were some pretty high tensions at the time. Lots of growing pains for Mars. Anyway, we were trained from a young age to be the elite of Mars. I took to it like a fish to water."

  "Is that why you're s?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "I suppose. It was a good start. Eventually the program fell apart, but being wildly overfident, and feelirayed, I decided to take everything I thought was owed to me. I succeeded, somehow. Part luck, part brazen disregard for any issues I might run into, and a rge part... my oppos at the time made the scious decision to uimate me. It was one of the st times that happened." She looked up and at the ceiling, but Twenty-Six had the impression she was looking bato her own past.

  "You're too young to be this nostalgic!" Twenty-Six said as she pulled Evelyn ahead some more. The arcade was just up ahead, and judging by how loud it was, and the number of fshing colours ing from within, it seemed like a good pce to allow one's self to be distracted.

  She looked back to see Evelyn smiling fondly as she easily kept up with Twenty-Six's tugging. They ehe are arcade and were directed to a booth where tickets were being sold. Twenty-Six reached into one of the pockets of her cargo pants, but Evelyn touched her shoulder. "I'll pay," she said.

  "No, you won't," Twenty-Six said. "I'll pay." She smiled at the young guy behind the ter even as she pulled out her wallet.

  "Oh, will you now?" Evelyn asked.

  "I will. Didn't you just talk big about fidence? Well, I'm fident that I pay, so I will."

  "Having fidence is wonderful. It even looks good on you. But being fident that you beat me at something? Now that's just presumptuous."

  Twenty-Six ughed. "Too te!" she said as she pulled out her card. She g the prices on the wall and made an effort not to wince. She could afford this! She had mostly been keeping her pay to herself, only buying the... occasional tool. pared to that, a few tokens at the arcade was nothing.

  The food was super-overpriced though. That wasn't even her unwillio splurge talking, that was just on sense.

  "So, what do we start with?" Evelyn asked.

  "Uh," Twenty-Six said as she sed the arcade. It retty busy, almost every mae had someohere, but there were a few unoccupied, and there weren't really any real lines behind any of them. "What kind of games are you good at?"

  "Hmm, I'd rather think I'll be good at anything requiring good reflexes," Evelyn said. "Ah... are those the prizes?"

  Twenty-Six followed the taller woman's gaze to a far wall where toys and plush animals and a few small boxes with eleics sat. "I think so. Oh, should we aim for something to get first? That way we know how many tickets to collect?"

  "That seems reasonable," Evelyn said.

  They walked over, and Twenty-Six instantly foutention snapping over to a box in one er. It had collected a fine sheen of dust over the top edge. No one was trying to get that as a prize. But...

  "Something familiar?" Evelyn asked.

  "Ah, it's a snap-together kit," Twenty-Six said. She smiled fondly. "They're pretty popur around Saturn." The box had some exaggeratedly a-y art of a space ship on the front, shooting away from a rge explosion.

  The ship was a Bck Mixball 106. A fairly unon light freighter from Luna, desig the tail end of the sed intersystem war all the way until retively retly. They were frequently verted to tackle other tasks and were all over the rings of Saturn.

  "My parents used to have a small colle of those. The kits, I mean. We had a small et in our hab. I think we had about seventy of them? My dad used to assemble them, and my mom loved painting them. They used tue about realism versus making them look good all the time."

  "That's cute."

  "Nah, it's a on hobby," Twenty-Six dismissed. "I never really kept up with it, but I have fond memories. Ah, what about you, does anything jump out to you?"

  Evelyn hummed, then smiled and poio a plushie. It was about thirty timetres tall, of a woman in a dark suit with red eyes and with sharp teeth. The plushie osed so that the character was mung on a small, soft ship. Ah Alliance cruiser, if Twenty-Six were to guess, though it was so chibified that really identifying it was impossible.

  "Ah, is that the Empress of Mars?" Twenty-Six asked.

  "Of course not, see, the tag says 'Queen of Red P' on it. And it was made oh. It's bootleg."

  "Of course," Twenty-Six said. "But everyone knows who it is, no? Aren't you a little insulted?"

  "Why would I be?" Evelyn asked.

  Twenty-Six froze up for a moment, her heart skipping a beat. "Uh, because... uh, aren't you Martian?"

  "I suppose it is a little rude to depict the Martian Empress that way," Evelyn said. She g Twenty-Six, and there was nothing but amusement in her eyes.

  She knew. She khat Twenty-Six knew... probably, and she khat Twenty-Six khat she knew. Anymore than that and they'll be twisting themselves up in logical knots, so Twenty-Six didn't push it.

  If Evelyn wao be Evelyn, then that was okay too. "Look! They have pinball! I bet I use my core to cheat a little," Twenty-Six said with a grin.

  "Oh? That level of mastery already?" Evelyn asked.

  "Well, I'm getting there. If not, it'll be good practice, right?"

  "Yeah, good practice," Evelyn agreed.

  Sometimes she was just a silly meic, but that didn't mean she was stupid or unobservant.

  ***

  RavensDagger

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