"Do you ever wonder about destiny?"
I looked up from what was left of my serving of salmon in cream sauce.
We'd finally browsed past the less mobbed parts of the promenade, ending up in a place that I wouldn't have set foot in not a few years prior. The place could be described as 'pleasantly posh', with a balcony overlooking that section of the promenade and offering a more or less encompassing view of the festivities.
Like I said, wouldn't have set foot in, if it weren't for the fact that I apparently owned a quarter of it. Or that was what my investment counselor told me.
We'd been having a pleasant silence between us for most of the meal, when she'd sprung that question on me.
"Sure. Doesn't everybody? Though I mostly think it's something we're here to defy. More often than not I just don't care. Shrug, move on."
She laughed softly, nodding, then sipped her coffee.
Coffee?
Eeek. Bitter.
I winced. Did somebody switch our orders?
Possibly, since she was doing something along those lines as well.
We switched cups.
"I've always tended to believe in it. A sort of ... grander destination we are all travelling towards."
I sipped as Maetel spoke. Odd. This one seemed too sweet. I didn't mind that too much, but ...
"It's not necessarily wrong," I shrugged, frowning a bit at the passing moonlight. "Maybe the scope is a little bigger than I've ever bothered with. I'd like to believe in free will and making one's own choices and all that."
"Free Will," she cocked her head, her voice sounding oddly ... out of synch. "The condition of a human soul is perplexing, don't you think? The balance of light contrasted with darkness."
There was _something_ wrong with this picture, I thought as constellations floated up above and the smell of saltwater tickled my nostrils.
"There's no such thing as an absolute, when you really come down to it, I think," what the hell was that ringing in my ears, anyway? "Or maybe I'm just playing Trigon's advocate."
"Indeed, mirror image. Picture perfect. Subtly different from before," the sheer emotionless candor of the statement momentarily floored me, and I could hear the faint sound of china shattering on the floor. "Was your hair always gray?"
"What?" I replied, blood draining from my face as the vastness spun for a moment and then ...
"Katz? Is everything alright?"
I looked up from what was left of my serving of salmon in cream sauce.
My head felt ... odd. The closest I could compare it to was the feeling you get right after you wake up from having passed out. Sort of ... cottony and tingling.
There was a vague, fading recollection of something that I had ... been trying to hold onto?
...
I blinked.
The panorama of the promenade to my left, Fen milling about below, the ceiling in its Saturn configuration again, and everything else perfectly normal.
Maetel was kneeling beside me, one hand on my shoulder, giving me a concerned look with the most brilliantly green pair of eyes I'd ever seen.
I have no idea why I did what I did next, but apparently I didn't mess it up too badly.
Next I knew, I was pulling back, the palm of my hand still cupping on of her cheeks, and the voice of a waiter excusing himself for interrupting sounding from somewhere doorabouts.
"That was ... very pleasant," Maetel blushed faintly. "But why ...?"
A number of insanely inappropriate comments were momentarily shot and buried within my mind, because there was a time and place for that sort of thing, and this were neither one nor the other.
"I ... don't know? No. That's not really true," I said slowly. "But there was a moment there I was insanely grateful that you were you."
"Who else would you think I was?" She said, not accusing, but genuinely curious.
I shook my head in puzzlement. Why did I say that?
I knew it was true, but other than that realization, there was nothing _there_.
Well, whatever it was, it could wait.
"You're right, though. It was very pleasant. Shall we leave it at that for the moment?"
Which was when I found myself on the receiving end.
And, hell, could the girl kiss.
So, I was dancing down the promenade, singing and clapping my heels ...
... no.
Though I was in a pretty good mood. I dare you not to be when you've just ... hmm ... yeah, okay. At this stage, most people would likely be asking themselves 'But does it mean anything, or was it just a spur of the moment kinda deal?'
Me?
Expectations and overplanning never got me anything, so these days I usually tend to just take things one step at a time.
At least in these matters.
We'd gone back down to the promenade - or was that, Maetel had to prod me into it - and yeah, I had to admit that I was having fun mingling.
I'm willing to consider it the exception to the rule.
Socializing is more or less Scales' thing, where our little instigator group at Hermes is concerned. Hell, ever since the guacamole incident he's been responsible for making the Lounge Lizard deal look cool. That takes serious skill. In fact, he was likely somewhere in this mess right now, rubbing elbows and taking names and what you will.
Still, things were going pretty well, everything else considered.
There was a brief moment of unease when I went past the Fenbucks franchise - any coffee, any tea, any time, now featuring the Loon season special (green tea frappucino and carrot) - but that was soon forgotten.
Though I felt as though I was missing something as we walked, her arm hooked around mine - I swear, the woman has some sort of Induce Manners Area Effect Ability - which crystallized into certainty and realization a moment after.
Then Maetel spotted an acquaintance of ours, which wasn't all that hard seeing as he was making like Batman in heading up to the Hidden Asteroid stand, and proposed we head over. Apparently, she'd made friends with his 'puppy' back when the Express had been pulling it into orbit and wanted to see how it was doing.
I begged off, then nudged my head to the side and watched. The only sign was a slight twitch around the eyes, and her expression never changed, but she nodded and made her way towards where Mr.Morden, or whatever he was calling himself here and now, was doing his thing.
Myself?
I used the attention she took with her as she went to fade back.
I'm good at fading back.
Back behind where most of the Fen stood, looking for all the world like nothing at all was wrong and I was perfectly meant to slip just past that barrier and slightly behind that stand.
"Katsu-dono."
"You mangle that on purpose," I groused, then blinked.
Okay.
No.
I was having a good day.
This was not going to ruin it.
Nope.
I wouldn't let it.
It was likely just another bit of random sneakery, maybe some minor trade - for some reason, they like me better than Scales when it comes to making deals. Maybe because I'm more of a recluse and not as profilic.
I would studiously ignore the fact that Maki was kneeling and doing the forehead-to-floor thing.
"The Village would request your assistance."
"I could likely cobble up another couple of gravs in a few weeks, and ..."
"Katsu-dono. The Village would request your assistance in the _other_ matter."
Damn.
Okay. Flashback time.
Remember when I said that, if it didn't have to do with force-fields or things going boom in a spectacular manner, I usually handed things off to someone else?
Yeah.
Sometimes, I mess around with random available parts and physical principles. One of those times involved a mess of coil springs and several charged capacitators, as well as a soild iron slug. I've since improved, most notably during my last bit of R&R which I spent mostly in the Village.
Discretion isn't just a word with them. I got my research done, they got to reap some of the results. It isn't talked about. At all.
Both sides - meaning myself and Trigon, who'd actually been decent about things for once in his life, as well as the Village - had agreed to close the case. Official record said I was shoving some grav kitbashes off on them, which I did actually do.
Now they were bringing it up.
It was a quarter of an hour later that Maki melted back into the background of the background, and I faded out into the crowd edges, pasting on a faintly amused look.
I leaned back against the stand, startling the Fan who was doing business on that end of it, and looked up to the Village's stand.
The Hidden Asteroid wanted to gear up, and had good reason to.
Losing three Little Sisters - or how they termed their light border patrols - with all hands, making that a total of around twenty Shinobi and Kunoichi. Literally. Losing. No trace of them where they'd been supposed to have gone through, nobody has seen anything, nada.
I'd seen the specs on those, too - they were personalized, yeah, but they were all built around roughly the same hull design of kitbashed aircraft parts. Good, solid, reliable designs, despite being reliant on goop rather than Solid State 'wavium.
And two of them had been carrying my coilguns.
I wondered about the conversation Morden was having.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm