Lilly couldn't help feeling nervous as the principal led her through the school halls, but Miss Violet's firm hand was comforting; she had thought the lady was going to be scary, and it was kinda weird for her to see such a firm, professional attitude from such a pretty younger lady, but there was a hidden warmth that made it okay after all. She liked the way Miss Violet smiled at her; it was almost like she understood the little squirrel-girl.
She was led down the hall into one of the classrooms. Unlike the district's public school, this institution had about the same student population as before, and hadn't had to combine grades, so the kids here were all around her age. She spotted the girl Miss Violet had mentioned; human in shape, unclothed save for a hand-dyed headband, with small oak leaves and acorns studding her green hair. Jenny was there too, grinning excitedly as she saw her friend; she hadn't expected to see Lilly at her school!
"Sorry, we're not interrupting anything, are we?" the principal asked the teacher. The wolf-woman smiled and shook her head. "Not at all, we were just finishing up for the day."
Miss Violet nodded and led Lilly to the front of the class. "Boys and girls," she said, "this is Lilly Gordon. She's going to be a member of your class, starting tomorrow. Please treat her nicely, I know you can do that. Lilly?"
She hadn't expected to get called on, but she tried to do her best; she wanted to do a good job here, so she could stay with her friend. "Um, hi," she said, tails swishing a bit nervously. "I'm Lilly. It's nice t' meet you guys. I...I hope we can be friends." She put on the best smile she could, and she felt good when some of the students smiled back at her.
Hiro and Hitomi stared in surprise as their mother stepped inside, revealing another figure behind him. It was a petitre young woman, Japanese but with warm red hair with a slight metallic sheen, which hung down to the base of her head. She seemed dressed strangely; she wore a white T-shirt over what appeared to be a glossy, bright red metal bikini top, boxy and angular in shape but still hinting at the shape of her bust. The matching bottom was uncovered, and was smoothly conformed to the shape of her pelvis rather than being angular.
She had a red band over her head which connected into what looked like headphone ear-cups with small antennas angled back out of them, except that there were holes in the middle where what looked like some kind of microphone lay. Her shoulders were metal-covered, but had holes where glimpses of mechanical joints could be seen. Her lower right arm had an ellipsoid metal covering, and the hand appeared to be mechanical with a flexible metal-mesh covering. Suddenly it dawned on Hiro that this red armor wasn't clothing at all, but part of her body.
Her legs had similar joint-coverings at the hips, which went partway down her thigh and made it look almost like she was wearing short shorts, except for the seams of skin which could be seen between them and her bikini bottom. She had weird coverings on her lower legs; the feet were contained in what looked like a metal slipper, open at the back exposing the balls of her feet, her ankles had covered mechanical joints, and her shins had metal coverings which went from just above her ankles to just below her knees. Overall it resembled boots in the same patchwork way her waist-coverings resembled shorts.
"Hiro?" she said, her voice soft and high. "Oh my...here, let me see..." She approached him and took his head in her hands. He could feel that her left hand was real flesh; it didn't have the same feel as the artificial skin human-like robots had. Suddenly he pieced it together; she looked like the anime depiction of... "M-Dad!" he gasped. "You're a...a..."
"Cyborg?" she said. "And so are you, apparently. You're...what, half and half?"
"Uh, 61% electromechanical," he said.
She smiled. "I was close. I'm 80% electromechanical by mass, but only about 50% of that is in bodily replacement, mostly internal. The rest is in stuff like this." She held up her right arm; as Hiro watched, her hand retracted inside the covering, and what looked like a gun barrel popped out.
He gaped, and she chuckled. "I...I can't do anything like that," he said. "I just kind of got...well, nothing. Analytics systems, I guess, but I can't even leave them in control or I start acting weird..." He glanced at Hitomi, feeling guilty.
A look of sympathy came over his father's face. "I know," she said. "It's not all it's cracked up to be. I suppose some of this stuff would be great if I'd ever have a use for it, but what's a technical writer going to do with a built-in gun? At least most of the armor is retractable... Even so, son, you shouldn't undervalue yourself. You have something, even if it's not as obviously handy as other people have."
Hiro smiled, slightly. He still wasn't convinced, but it was nice of her to say...and it meant a lot to have someone who understood how he felt. "Th-thanks, Dad."
Robert sighed as she sat in the kitchen. This whole situation was such a mess, and as much as the angel-girl was right, as much as these men really were responsible for their own actions, she wasn't innocent either. Not the primarily guilty party, and she did know that God would forgive her, but all the same she wasn't blameless.
Which left her wondering, what should she do? It was a comfort at the very least that this state didn't have the death penalty, she didn't want to be responsible for taking a man's life, even if indirectly. And she knew that...that if they were like this, it probably would be better for them to go to prison, to keep them out of society and out of a position to harm any other devil-changed until they saw the error of their ways; they were blindly doing evil and thinking it was good, and whatever responsibility she did or didn't bear for that, it wouldn't be safe for them to be free to continue these acts.
But...she herself had been granted undue leniency, hadn't she? After all, she had...she had set fire to her own church out of the same wrongheaded convictions. And while she hadn't been actively intending to murder the devil-girl or her companion, she very well might have, if they hadn't found some other way out. Legally that might be argued to be negligent homicide, but either way they'd have been dead...yet here she was, a free m...woman. She should show mercy, having been shown mercy...
...but then what would happen? Would they go on to terrorize and threaten other devil-changed, or any others they deemed evil? Could she talk them out of this? She didn't know, but she wasn't especially confident that she could...
She sighed. She needed a drink. She didn't make a habit out of this, but she really needed a drink.
The sergeant sighed. "You've got to be kidding me..."
The leader of the "Purifiers" nodded sharply. "I want her in prison too. She tried to kill me! You can't just let her go, hypocrite!"
The bear-man rolled his eyes. "Okay, let's say we pursue this option. First and foremost, we've reviewed the video recording Marina gave us. It shows that they first attempted to dissuade you verbally and only escalated to physical conflict when you made to attack the victim, and we have a knife with your fingerprints on it recovered from the scene. So it's going to be very hard to argue that they were committing assault and not acting in defense of Robert, which is covered under the right to self-defense."
"Second," he said, "they took off shortly after leaving us the recording, and they don't seem to be anywhere in the area. You said they said they're from Brazil, but we only have their first names. Assault isn't even covered under our extradition treaty with Brazil, to my knowledge, and I don't think they're going to be particularily amenable to a request for the identities of all the angel-girls in the country with a few specific given names on account of an attempted murderer wanting to take a jab at the people who prevented his stupid ass from becoming an actual murderer. If you weren't so caught up in your sour grapes, you should be thanking them."
The prisoner gritted his teeth and stared sullenly at him. "Well, you still have to protect the protesters!" one of the other men said, as if this was some killer counter-argument.
The sergeant snorted in a very ursine way. "So?" he said. "We have to protect everybody. It's part of the job. We had to be on hand for a neo-Nazi rally once, back in 1980 when I was just a rookie. We'll be there, we'll handle things if anything goes wrong. You know what, though? I don't think it will, unless your people start something. Most people just tend to ignore people like you, because really what you're looking for is attention." He turned and left.
Andy was just finishing drying the dishes when the phone rang; their dishwasher had been on the fritz since the sun changed, and while she knew Sue didn't want her trying to re-mold herself into some meek domestic out of guilt, she still felt that she at least owed it to her to help out a bit when she could. So they'd done them together, Sue washing and Andy drying. (Alex and Sally certainly didn't mind, as it meant neither of them were tapped for dish duty.)
The rabbit-woman set down the last of the plates and picked up the phone from its cradle, then realized that the standard phone handset was going to be a bit of a pain from now on, as her ears were located atop her head, a good three inches from where the phone's speaker was. She ended up positioning it about halfway between her ear and her mouth and holding it out from her head a bit, in hopes that that wouldn't muffle things. "Hello?" she asked.
"Hi," said an older man's voice. "Is there an Andy Thompson there?"
She frowned. Who was this guy, and why would he be calling her? "Uh, speaking," she said.
"Oh, hello," the caller said, sounding mildly surprised. "Mr. - uh, Andy, my name is Abe Jusczak. Sorry to be calling you this late in the evening. I'm the general supervisor at Spruce Heat & Septic...I'm calling because I'm in a bit of a bind. See, my main metal-worker suffered a heart attack Saturday night..."
Andy gasped softly. "Is he all right?"
"Too early to say at the moment, but he's a stubborn old sumbitch, I think he'll pull through. It's not a big surprise, he's in his 70s, but however he comes out of this, I doubt the doctor's going to let him go back to work. The real problem is, we're smack in the middle of a major project and we need a replacement. I asked around and one of my guys said you're pretty handy with a lathe?"
"Ten years' experience in machining, yes," she said. "But I have to be honest with you, I've been out of work and out of practice for four years now..."
"Lot of that going around." The man's voice was sympathetic, if gruff. "It doesn't matter, I'd like to have you in anyway. I don't have any internal candidates, all my other metal guys are welders. If it's possible, could you come out for an interview on Wednesday?"
That was the phrase she'd been hoping to hear, and she had to work to contain herself. "Yeah, absolutely," she said. "What time? And where?"
"On-site," Mr. Jusczak said. "I'd like to see you in action. We can lend you safety gear. As for the time...say 12:00?"
"I'll be there," Andy grinned. "On-site" was their plant, a little ways outside the city proper. It was a bit further of a commute than she really liked, but nothing too terrible. And just the prospect of having a job again made her giddy. To actually be doing meaningful work that she enjoyed...it was enough to make her forget, for the moment, about the little day-to-day inconveniences of employment. Of course, she knew intellectually that an interview was just an interview and not a guarantee, but still...she hadn't even got this far in a good eight months.
Andy said goodbye and hung up the phone, then turned to her husband. "Who was that?" Sue asked. "What were they calling about? It sounded like you got a-"
The naga-man was cut short by a tackle-kiss from his bunny-girl wife.
