The Words We Want Heard
LoreleiFlowers
Getting sticky.
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This side story follows the events of Chapter 21: The Trial
München, Germania - September, 1954
Due to the timing of Calamity Amb becoming available again, saving Mary Canary would have to wait until after my lesson at a München community center. A group of about two hundred men and women sat before me. They had come to learn how to prepare for the very likely escalation of occupation as every country dogpiled on Germania to 'help' us decide the future of our country. We all remembered or had heard stories of what had happened after the Great War, so I didn't have to persuade them how important it was to make sure people knew how to protect themselves before we had another occupation.
"Okay, we will end with a quick summary before we adjourn this meeting," I declared from the podium in the modestly sized meeting room. "First, stick with your group when traveling through the city as much as possible, and check in with each other regularly. By sticking to your group, you are less likely to be taken captive or mistreated by the occupying forces. Remember that their Rule-Resembling Order protects them but not you from them. Second, if you are alone, avoid the occupied areas and don't let soldiers lure you in food and supplies. If you are desperate for food, check with your neighbors or seek out a member of the Angel Corps for what you need. Thirdly and finally, if you see something, say something. Interpol officers will be around to help protect you under international law, but we can only intervene if we know something is happening."
After my wrap-up, I answered their questions and let them know what the next meetings would be about and their dates. We would be doing firearms training, drills, and best practices for hiding and organizing one's group. Interpol could not protect everyone alone. Soldiers were notorious for raping and torturing the dehumanized local populations in occupied territories, and the imperial powers had definitely demonized both Germanians as a whole and anti-imperialists in particular after the Great War.
I had rushed into my lesson this time, but I was a bit distracted. My cramps were extra painful this time, and while I usually would go on menstrual leave when in these situations, it was hard not to feel obligated to work through the pain during the preparation for a potential civil war. Unfortunately, we typically suffered such distracting cramps whenever our stress was exceptionally high, like now.
"I miss being a full homunculus," Sonnetto groaned. "How did you ever manage, dear?"
"Pain relief and mental clarity spells," the war vet claimed without looking her partner in the eyes.
"She magically doped herself," I explained frankly. "Which we are not going to do. We have over-the-counter pain suppressants that will have to suffice. I don't care if we miss work days when this happens. I don't want to build a habit of using that spell every time we are in pain."
Part of why Tanya became a sobbing mess during her captivity in the Russy Federation during the war was her inability to magically dope herself whenever she felt sad without a computation orb. She stopped using the spell after Visha and Matheus insisted that it wasn't worth bottling it in anymore. The spell didn't just adjust one's mood, though. It also allowed someone to defer processing emotions. Each deferral just incentivized the next use of the spell more because the feelings became more intense, creating a vicious loop.
While we commiserated between ourselves, one of the Interpol officers assisting with the meeting walked up to me while I packed my things.
"Hey, Captain Weiss, did you read the new article on Agent Canary's trial?" he inquired, beaming. "I got the recent Francois newspaper if you are interested."
Because I didn't trust what I would say, I used a new trick. If I put a bit of mana on my voice box, people would hear what they wanted to hear. Everyone but me would hear the same thing as my intended audience did. The great thing was I didn't have to use the tedious thought-to-speech spell.
"I am beyond done with the nonsense in the Francois press," I replied. "One journalist had the chutzpah to ask my sister after she mentioned wanting to read a novel in Albish if there were any bookstores in her country. At least two articles this week depicted Calamity and all Americans in Abya Yala as violent, barely literate, ultra-religious gun-nuts. The main liberal Francois newspaper keeps contrasting the Yalans with the so-called 'good, civilized, more European' Americans on the East Coast. I swear if I read another Francois news article dragging Calamity Amb's name through the mud, I will lose it."
My two halves gave me the side eye for using this spell. Tanya thought I was avoiding responsibility, and Sonnetto disliked not just directly telling people the truth. Regardless, it was my choice at the end of the day. I did what I could to help my two halves participate in conversations with others, but I was not going to let them treat me like some chauffeur or messenger all the time.
"Thank you, ma'am," he replied, beaming. "It is great to have another person who likes to stay informed. I will be sure to get you more articles so you can integrate them into your lectures. It is great we both have the same interests. Oh, you might like this one."
He flipped through the paper until he found an article about Lavarians and Prussens being 'victims' of the 'barbaric' socialist faction that 'tortured their children' — a kind of blood libel. Essentially, the article flattered the court by defaulting to the Prussen and Lavarian perspectives and extolling their exceptionalism.
Cultural exceptionalism served as an excuse for why the conquerer ethnic groups should continue to possess disproportional power over the country as a whole. Prussens notably dominated the military leadership. For example, both President Ropen and Tanya von Weiss were Prussen veterans who had gained considerable rank during the Great War. As for Lavaria, Rudolph Himmler and his party attempted to 'revitalize' Germiania's culture by making the country more monoculturally Lavarian. One of Himmler's initiatives required young women to wear Lavarian-style dresses in his millionaire-backed youth groups.
This assimilation of some minorities into Lavarian or Prussen identity came with the implicit acceptance of how the Unification of Germania transferred much of the wealth and land into the hands of the current Post-Unification ethnic duopoly. Tellingly, many people among the Prussen and Lavarian middle class had rallied under the NSP banner for the cause of 'purifying' Germania of so-called 'unfit' populations and 'degenerate' culture, which challenged their duopoly over culture, wealth, and governance.
In other words, a pro-imperialist framing dominated my coworker's article. It depicted the ethnic duopoly as the victims of irrational and monstrous Others, and those Others were basically told just to put down their red banners and return to the Prussen Enlightenment "Question but Obey" model popularized by Woltaire. That might have seemed progressive a century ago. People know that questions alone would not put bread on the table.
In fact, it was the journalist herself who should have asked more questions from those in power; however, it was understandable that she didn't. The Francois Republic had shifted well into siege capitalism by this point. Siege capitalism (or proto-fascism) was the bad cop to liberal capitalism's good cop. When the ordinary people got too revolutionary or resistant to imperialist wars, the bad cop would come out to crack down on dissent and manipulate the press's coverage related to domestic and foreign policy. The journalist could just be a victim of the action politique (ACPO) handling that crackdown on the freedom of the press in the Republic.
"What do you think?" the officer asked me after I skimmed it. "I think those who like the NSP should read articles like this to get our country back on track and tone down the deplorable rhetoric."
"What do you mean?" I wondered in utter bewilderment. Did we not read the same article?
"Look here how the article takes the NSP to task for their racist language," he replied while pointing at a small paragraph halfway through the article.
"I appreciate that you want to fight racism," I stated tersely, "but this article won't help for a lot of reasons. Namely, you don't fix oppression by making it more polite, especially if you plan on still arresting and killing people to put them back in their place."
It was at this point that I realized that I still had left my 'make people hear what they want to hear' spell active because the man thanked me for agreeing with him while encouraging him to expand his project. In a way, I was happy the spell prevented my bitter, frustrated, and pedantic monologue from being overheard, but I was worried about what he and others may have thought I said.
While Tanya and Sonnetto chastised me, Rex stowed away the last of his special inks and brushes and joined me. He had been working on some glove with a sigil on it with his Immortal homunculi guards during my talk.
Matheus and Calamity were good with us adopting Alexander "Rex" Magnus II. It did make me anxious that once we got to the safehouse this evening, we would potentially be meeting his father and Roxanne's husband again.
The sniper Ramona Mercer would join us for the walk home. Hilary Brecht, who led the United Front in Germania, ordered Ramona to guard my son for some reason, and Elya encouraged me to go along with it for now. I didn't blame Ramona for trying to kill Victoria Truman, but I could not help but be on edge.
"Moms, are we ready to go?" He signed me in Esharani, the Persian sign language.
"Yeah, get your…friends, and we will go."
He was lucky I had this uncanny polyglot ability, and sign language had a lot of intuitive elements that had made it a lingua franca in some regions at one point.
"I am happy you let me keep them," my son celebrated with a smile, referring to his guards. "I was so sure you wouldn't."
"Honestly, what else are we supposed to do? They could potentially get sentient at any moment, and leaving them somewhere is very irresponsible. Just promise to take care of them until then, Rex. Your other moms, grandpa, and I are very busy, so we won't be able to be there to help consistently."
"Grandpa doesn't have a job, though," the young homunculi countered.
"He is going to Uni. I want him focused on his studies when he isn't helping us avert war."
"You make it sound like he's also your son."
"It's complicated. Tanya was his superior for a decade. It is hard not to see him as someone to cultivate."
"Well, he is an adult and no longer her subordinate. Why are you managing his life?"
I froze.
"You look afraid," Ramona commented in Albish from her corner of the meeting room.
"Afraid of what?" Rex inquired, using his notepad again.
"I know that look very well. She is afraid of losing someone."
"She can't just control her family like this because she is afraid."
"Okay, that is enough, you two," I muttered. "I am tired of being psychoanalyzed. It never ends well for us."
We walked to our shelter location, continuing our banter. It was a barber shop in a back alley in München.
I waved at the barber, who smiled at us as we moved the small coffee table out of the way. I put my fingers on the checkered tile and found a groove in which I could get my nails. It was a bit hard, but quickly got the camouflage lid out of the way. The entrance could barely fit Matheus, who had to really squeeze in his shoulders. Luckily, I could get in and out of places with my mandate powers, no matter how much I changed my appearance.
Inside, there were hammocks, a small table, and pretty good ventilation. If you were going to be part of the resistance or protecting their rights, one was wise to get the best hiding places set up early. We had a stockpile of supplies and computation orbs designed for long-range communication. It was a bit barren, but if worst came to worst, it might be home for a while, depending on what happened.
Germania had built several basements and tunnels like this during the Great War and previous occupation. As Interpol Officers, my two halves had gotten entirely acquainted with these secret locations because the crime bosses and sex traffickers had taken advantage of them. The United Front forces would conduct their resistance activities from these tunnels when the Allied Forces arrived en masse.
Once Matheus came back, I could do my operation to rescue Mary Canary. Technically, nothing was stopping me from doing it before my adoptive father got back, but that would leave Ramona and Rex alone while Sonata went dormant. Neither of them knew Germanian. The Abya Yalan sniper also had a very understandable permanent chip (or several) on her shoulder with the world. Still, it put people off because of how uncompromising she was in fighting anything less than her definition of 'the right way'. I was tired of all the pushback I got because I knew pure workplace democracies didn't work.
My mind wandered as laid down and let the homunculi guards handle some tasks for us.
I wondered if Valve ever finished Half-Life 3 in Tanya's old world. I doubted it. Their no-hierarchy worker democracy had made the employees at that company so siloed to their personal creative projects that they barely completed anything anymore. The Soviet Union had a similar problem—a lot of impractical scientific inventions and rampant inefficiency. Everyone wanted to be a creative, and no one wanted to do labor.
Perhaps in a high-tech world where robots handled all the life-enabling labor, like food production, we could have such a relaxed lifestyle. We still were far from such a world.
One of the homunculi guards handed me a coffee and my lunch.
"Thank you," I said before chomping down on the turkey sandwich that had been made for me.
I sat down and got out a deck of playing cards and called on Rex and Ramona if they wanted to play some Old Maid to pass the time before I started my mission.
"So what is the glove about?" I inquired, gesturing to the object my son had been working on so long. I had my hands filled between eating and playing cards. Rex only looked at his cards once before placing them aside.
"It is an alchemist glove," Rex answered with pride. "All the young alchemists are making them."
"What is wrong with using Mehndi?"
"Mehndi are girly and take so much time to prepare."
"Men can do Mehndi too, Rex. There is no shame in it. Your uncle used them, too, and why is spending more time getting ready in the morning a bad thing?"
"Because I just want to jump out of bed and do stuff. Plus, alchemist gloves are cooler, though, and so much more high-tech. See this."
He pulled out a comic book called 'The Trials of Farhad and Shirin' with a depiction of an alchemist snapping his fingers and creating a torrent of flame.
Great, he has fallen for product placement.
"Is this glove safe?" I inquired, worried.
The young man twiddled his thumbs.
I guess that is a debatable question. Well, he is an adult. My son better not make me arrest him.
Flipping through the book, I saw that this Farhad wasn't all battles. There was a romance subplot here. On one page, for example, he did some pretty old-fashioned blood alchemy to create a field of red tulips for his love, Princess Shirin, which was sweat in a way. Apparently, it got derailed with a lot of geopolitical commentary at one point. It was probably a reflection of the turmoil happening in Persia right now.
Back to the game, we were getting to the last few cards.
I think the left card is the Old Maid, I thought.
I picked the right card out of Rex's hand on the table. It was the queen — the Old Mad.
Rex giggled silently.
"Did you really just use the Solidarity connection to mess with me?"
"Sonata, you have to take every advantage you can," Romona commented. She picked the last card she needed from Rex, who clearly didn't have the Old Maid after our exchange.
How often had they been messing with me this game, and I hadn't noticed? Next time, three can play at that game of throwing fake thoughts into their heads.
My other halves agreed.
Then, the secret entrance opened, and Matheus squirmed his way down.
He laid down his things.
"How are you doing, Sonata?"
I didn't really feel like telling him 'like shit', so I used the spell that would let him hear what he wanted to hear.
The tall Germanian man blinked and got teary-eyed. "I am so happy to hear that. You have no idea how long I have been waiting to hear that."
"Rex, what did I say?" I discreetly asked, shocked by this.
"You said that he was doing a great job, and you appreciated all the hard work he puts into being a good father for you."
My stomach sank.
"Tanya, you actually tell him that," Sonnetto instructed, her Empress's voice having slipped out by accident.
"I am already on it, honey," Tanya replied before sending her thoughts to Matheus. "Sonata, would you give him a hug for me."
I had my orders and gave him a 'tactical' hug he sorely needed.
The guy definitely put in a lot of hours trying to support and understand us. I cannot fathom what would have happened to Tanya if she hadn't had his help right after the war, so we really needed to check in on him and show appreciation. How much did Matheus think he was failing at being a good family member because we didn't regularly give him feedback?
I think there are a few morally ambiguous perks to this new spell.
"Sonata, please don't abuse it," Tanya chastised as she got ready for her mission with Sonnetto to rescue Mary Canary. "You could really cause a lot of problems for us if you don't know what you are saying."
"But this is so much easier than figuring out what people expect me to say," I pouted mentally.
München, Germania - September, 1954
Due to the timing of Calamity Amb becoming available again, saving Mary Canary would have to wait until after my lesson at a München community center. A group of about two hundred men and women sat before me. They had come to learn how to prepare for the very likely escalation of occupation as every country dogpiled on Germania to 'help' us decide the future of our country. We all remembered or had heard stories of what had happened after the Great War, so I didn't have to persuade them how important it was to make sure people knew how to protect themselves before we had another occupation.
"Okay, we will end with a quick summary before we adjourn this meeting," I declared from the podium in the modestly sized meeting room. "First, stick with your group when traveling through the city as much as possible, and check in with each other regularly. By sticking to your group, you are less likely to be taken captive or mistreated by the occupying forces. Remember that their Rule-Resembling Order protects them but not you from them. Second, if you are alone, avoid the occupied areas and don't let soldiers lure you in food and supplies. If you are desperate for food, check with your neighbors or seek out a member of the Angel Corps for what you need. Thirdly and finally, if you see something, say something. Interpol officers will be around to help protect you under international law, but we can only intervene if we know something is happening."
After my wrap-up, I answered their questions and let them know what the next meetings would be about and their dates. We would be doing firearms training, drills, and best practices for hiding and organizing one's group. Interpol could not protect everyone alone. Soldiers were notorious for raping and torturing the dehumanized local populations in occupied territories, and the imperial powers had definitely demonized both Germanians as a whole and anti-imperialists in particular after the Great War.
I had rushed into my lesson this time, but I was a bit distracted. My cramps were extra painful this time, and while I usually would go on menstrual leave when in these situations, it was hard not to feel obligated to work through the pain during the preparation for a potential civil war. Unfortunately, we typically suffered such distracting cramps whenever our stress was exceptionally high, like now.
"I miss being a full homunculus," Sonnetto groaned. "How did you ever manage, dear?"
"Pain relief and mental clarity spells," the war vet claimed without looking her partner in the eyes.
"She magically doped herself," I explained frankly. "Which we are not going to do. We have over-the-counter pain suppressants that will have to suffice. I don't care if we miss work days when this happens. I don't want to build a habit of using that spell every time we are in pain."
Part of why Tanya became a sobbing mess during her captivity in the Russy Federation during the war was her inability to magically dope herself whenever she felt sad without a computation orb. She stopped using the spell after Visha and Matheus insisted that it wasn't worth bottling it in anymore. The spell didn't just adjust one's mood, though. It also allowed someone to defer processing emotions. Each deferral just incentivized the next use of the spell more because the feelings became more intense, creating a vicious loop.
While we commiserated between ourselves, one of the Interpol officers assisting with the meeting walked up to me while I packed my things.
"Hey, Captain Weiss, did you read the new article on Agent Canary's trial?" he inquired, beaming. "I got the recent Francois newspaper if you are interested."
Because I didn't trust what I would say, I used a new trick. If I put a bit of mana on my voice box, people would hear what they wanted to hear. Everyone but me would hear the same thing as my intended audience did. The great thing was I didn't have to use the tedious thought-to-speech spell.
"I am beyond done with the nonsense in the Francois press," I replied. "One journalist had the chutzpah to ask my sister after she mentioned wanting to read a novel in Albish if there were any bookstores in her country. At least two articles this week depicted Calamity and all Americans in Abya Yala as violent, barely literate, ultra-religious gun-nuts. The main liberal Francois newspaper keeps contrasting the Yalans with the so-called 'good, civilized, more European' Americans on the East Coast. I swear if I read another Francois news article dragging Calamity Amb's name through the mud, I will lose it."
My two halves gave me the side eye for using this spell. Tanya thought I was avoiding responsibility, and Sonnetto disliked not just directly telling people the truth. Regardless, it was my choice at the end of the day. I did what I could to help my two halves participate in conversations with others, but I was not going to let them treat me like some chauffeur or messenger all the time.
"Thank you, ma'am," he replied, beaming. "It is great to have another person who likes to stay informed. I will be sure to get you more articles so you can integrate them into your lectures. It is great we both have the same interests. Oh, you might like this one."
He flipped through the paper until he found an article about Lavarians and Prussens being 'victims' of the 'barbaric' socialist faction that 'tortured their children' — a kind of blood libel. Essentially, the article flattered the court by defaulting to the Prussen and Lavarian perspectives and extolling their exceptionalism.
Cultural exceptionalism served as an excuse for why the conquerer ethnic groups should continue to possess disproportional power over the country as a whole. Prussens notably dominated the military leadership. For example, both President Ropen and Tanya von Weiss were Prussen veterans who had gained considerable rank during the Great War. As for Lavaria, Rudolph Himmler and his party attempted to 'revitalize' Germiania's culture by making the country more monoculturally Lavarian. One of Himmler's initiatives required young women to wear Lavarian-style dresses in his millionaire-backed youth groups.
This assimilation of some minorities into Lavarian or Prussen identity came with the implicit acceptance of how the Unification of Germania transferred much of the wealth and land into the hands of the current Post-Unification ethnic duopoly. Tellingly, many people among the Prussen and Lavarian middle class had rallied under the NSP banner for the cause of 'purifying' Germania of so-called 'unfit' populations and 'degenerate' culture, which challenged their duopoly over culture, wealth, and governance.
In other words, a pro-imperialist framing dominated my coworker's article. It depicted the ethnic duopoly as the victims of irrational and monstrous Others, and those Others were basically told just to put down their red banners and return to the Prussen Enlightenment "Question but Obey" model popularized by Woltaire. That might have seemed progressive a century ago. People know that questions alone would not put bread on the table.
In fact, it was the journalist herself who should have asked more questions from those in power; however, it was understandable that she didn't. The Francois Republic had shifted well into siege capitalism by this point. Siege capitalism (or proto-fascism) was the bad cop to liberal capitalism's good cop. When the ordinary people got too revolutionary or resistant to imperialist wars, the bad cop would come out to crack down on dissent and manipulate the press's coverage related to domestic and foreign policy. The journalist could just be a victim of the action politique (ACPO) handling that crackdown on the freedom of the press in the Republic.
"What do you think?" the officer asked me after I skimmed it. "I think those who like the NSP should read articles like this to get our country back on track and tone down the deplorable rhetoric."
"What do you mean?" I wondered in utter bewilderment. Did we not read the same article?
"Look here how the article takes the NSP to task for their racist language," he replied while pointing at a small paragraph halfway through the article.
"I appreciate that you want to fight racism," I stated tersely, "but this article won't help for a lot of reasons. Namely, you don't fix oppression by making it more polite, especially if you plan on still arresting and killing people to put them back in their place."
It was at this point that I realized that I still had left my 'make people hear what they want to hear' spell active because the man thanked me for agreeing with him while encouraging him to expand his project. In a way, I was happy the spell prevented my bitter, frustrated, and pedantic monologue from being overheard, but I was worried about what he and others may have thought I said.
While Tanya and Sonnetto chastised me, Rex stowed away the last of his special inks and brushes and joined me. He had been working on some glove with a sigil on it with his Immortal homunculi guards during my talk.
Matheus and Calamity were good with us adopting Alexander "Rex" Magnus II. It did make me anxious that once we got to the safehouse this evening, we would potentially be meeting his father and Roxanne's husband again.
The sniper Ramona Mercer would join us for the walk home. Hilary Brecht, who led the United Front in Germania, ordered Ramona to guard my son for some reason, and Elya encouraged me to go along with it for now. I didn't blame Ramona for trying to kill Victoria Truman, but I could not help but be on edge.
"Moms, are we ready to go?" He signed me in Esharani, the Persian sign language.
"Yeah, get your…friends, and we will go."
He was lucky I had this uncanny polyglot ability, and sign language had a lot of intuitive elements that had made it a lingua franca in some regions at one point.
"I am happy you let me keep them," my son celebrated with a smile, referring to his guards. "I was so sure you wouldn't."
"Honestly, what else are we supposed to do? They could potentially get sentient at any moment, and leaving them somewhere is very irresponsible. Just promise to take care of them until then, Rex. Your other moms, grandpa, and I are very busy, so we won't be able to be there to help consistently."
"Grandpa doesn't have a job, though," the young homunculi countered.
"He is going to Uni. I want him focused on his studies when he isn't helping us avert war."
"You make it sound like he's also your son."
"It's complicated. Tanya was his superior for a decade. It is hard not to see him as someone to cultivate."
"Well, he is an adult and no longer her subordinate. Why are you managing his life?"
I froze.
"You look afraid," Ramona commented in Albish from her corner of the meeting room.
"Afraid of what?" Rex inquired, using his notepad again.
"I know that look very well. She is afraid of losing someone."
"She can't just control her family like this because she is afraid."
"Okay, that is enough, you two," I muttered. "I am tired of being psychoanalyzed. It never ends well for us."
We walked to our shelter location, continuing our banter. It was a barber shop in a back alley in München.
I waved at the barber, who smiled at us as we moved the small coffee table out of the way. I put my fingers on the checkered tile and found a groove in which I could get my nails. It was a bit hard, but quickly got the camouflage lid out of the way. The entrance could barely fit Matheus, who had to really squeeze in his shoulders. Luckily, I could get in and out of places with my mandate powers, no matter how much I changed my appearance.
Inside, there were hammocks, a small table, and pretty good ventilation. If you were going to be part of the resistance or protecting their rights, one was wise to get the best hiding places set up early. We had a stockpile of supplies and computation orbs designed for long-range communication. It was a bit barren, but if worst came to worst, it might be home for a while, depending on what happened.
Germania had built several basements and tunnels like this during the Great War and previous occupation. As Interpol Officers, my two halves had gotten entirely acquainted with these secret locations because the crime bosses and sex traffickers had taken advantage of them. The United Front forces would conduct their resistance activities from these tunnels when the Allied Forces arrived en masse.
Once Matheus came back, I could do my operation to rescue Mary Canary. Technically, nothing was stopping me from doing it before my adoptive father got back, but that would leave Ramona and Rex alone while Sonata went dormant. Neither of them knew Germanian. The Abya Yalan sniper also had a very understandable permanent chip (or several) on her shoulder with the world. Still, it put people off because of how uncompromising she was in fighting anything less than her definition of 'the right way'. I was tired of all the pushback I got because I knew pure workplace democracies didn't work.
My mind wandered as laid down and let the homunculi guards handle some tasks for us.
I wondered if Valve ever finished Half-Life 3 in Tanya's old world. I doubted it. Their no-hierarchy worker democracy had made the employees at that company so siloed to their personal creative projects that they barely completed anything anymore. The Soviet Union had a similar problem—a lot of impractical scientific inventions and rampant inefficiency. Everyone wanted to be a creative, and no one wanted to do labor.
Perhaps in a high-tech world where robots handled all the life-enabling labor, like food production, we could have such a relaxed lifestyle. We still were far from such a world.
One of the homunculi guards handed me a coffee and my lunch.
"Thank you," I said before chomping down on the turkey sandwich that had been made for me.
I sat down and got out a deck of playing cards and called on Rex and Ramona if they wanted to play some Old Maid to pass the time before I started my mission.
"So what is the glove about?" I inquired, gesturing to the object my son had been working on so long. I had my hands filled between eating and playing cards. Rex only looked at his cards once before placing them aside.
"It is an alchemist glove," Rex answered with pride. "All the young alchemists are making them."
"What is wrong with using Mehndi?"
"Mehndi are girly and take so much time to prepare."
"Men can do Mehndi too, Rex. There is no shame in it. Your uncle used them, too, and why is spending more time getting ready in the morning a bad thing?"
"Because I just want to jump out of bed and do stuff. Plus, alchemist gloves are cooler, though, and so much more high-tech. See this."
He pulled out a comic book called 'The Trials of Farhad and Shirin' with a depiction of an alchemist snapping his fingers and creating a torrent of flame.
Great, he has fallen for product placement.
"Is this glove safe?" I inquired, worried.
The young man twiddled his thumbs.
I guess that is a debatable question. Well, he is an adult. My son better not make me arrest him.
Flipping through the book, I saw that this Farhad wasn't all battles. There was a romance subplot here. On one page, for example, he did some pretty old-fashioned blood alchemy to create a field of red tulips for his love, Princess Shirin, which was sweat in a way. Apparently, it got derailed with a lot of geopolitical commentary at one point. It was probably a reflection of the turmoil happening in Persia right now.
Back to the game, we were getting to the last few cards.
I think the left card is the Old Maid, I thought.
I picked the right card out of Rex's hand on the table. It was the queen — the Old Mad.
Rex giggled silently.
"Did you really just use the Solidarity connection to mess with me?"
"Sonata, you have to take every advantage you can," Romona commented. She picked the last card she needed from Rex, who clearly didn't have the Old Maid after our exchange.
How often had they been messing with me this game, and I hadn't noticed? Next time, three can play at that game of throwing fake thoughts into their heads.
My other halves agreed.
Then, the secret entrance opened, and Matheus squirmed his way down.
He laid down his things.
"How are you doing, Sonata?"
I didn't really feel like telling him 'like shit', so I used the spell that would let him hear what he wanted to hear.
The tall Germanian man blinked and got teary-eyed. "I am so happy to hear that. You have no idea how long I have been waiting to hear that."
"Rex, what did I say?" I discreetly asked, shocked by this.
"You said that he was doing a great job, and you appreciated all the hard work he puts into being a good father for you."
My stomach sank.
"Tanya, you actually tell him that," Sonnetto instructed, her Empress's voice having slipped out by accident.
"I am already on it, honey," Tanya replied before sending her thoughts to Matheus. "Sonata, would you give him a hug for me."
I had my orders and gave him a 'tactical' hug he sorely needed.
The guy definitely put in a lot of hours trying to support and understand us. I cannot fathom what would have happened to Tanya if she hadn't had his help right after the war, so we really needed to check in on him and show appreciation. How much did Matheus think he was failing at being a good family member because we didn't regularly give him feedback?
I think there are a few morally ambiguous perks to this new spell.
"Sonata, please don't abuse it," Tanya chastised as she got ready for her mission with Sonnetto to rescue Mary Canary. "You could really cause a lot of problems for us if you don't know what you are saying."
"But this is so much easier than figuring out what people expect me to say," I pouted mentally.
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