“That’s primarily due to the lack of incidents which require my presence. While I could come out for common robbers, we’ve found that causes things to get worse rather than better, most of the time,” Archon explained, shutting the door behind them. “As long as there aren’t any major attacks going on, I typically spend most of my time here.”
“That seems lonely,” Lilith said, frowning slightly, and unslinging her purse. “Does it ever get to you? Being alone like that, I mean. I find that staying inside makes me rather… unhappy, on the whole.”
“Ah, but I’m not alone. Both Decarin and Spark live here, too,” Archon replied, smiling and gesturing around the room. “Take a seat if you’d like to. I spent some time cleaning up this morning.”
Lilith smiled, considering for a moment, then approached the divan, depositing her purse next to it as she sat down. She looked at Archon for a moment more before asking, “Do you have any other friends?”
Archon paused, halfway to her narrow-backed chair, and looked at Lilith in return. The question didn’t have any malice to it, she thought. No, it was more of an honest question, which meant she should consider it a little more than she normally would. Archon continued forward and took a seat, settling back as she thought.
“I’m not sure that you could call them friends. There are a few heroes who helped me early on, like Destiny, for instance. She helped me come to terms with my power after I fled my grandfather’s abduction attempt,” Archon said, watching Lilith’s eyes widen as she spoke. “We occasionally exchange emails or call one another, but little more than that. The world of Class S heroes is smaller than you might think. She isn’t the only one, of course, but for the most part my contact with outsiders is relatively rare.”
“I… well, if you were trying to shock me, you certainly managed it,” Lilith replied, shaking her head slowly. “You’ve met Destiny, and been trained by her? I can hardly believe it! It’s almost as startling as when Apollo said that Eris was interested in me.”
“You’ve met Apollo?” Archon demanded, her poise cracking as astonishment coursed through her.
“Met? No, of course not!” Lilith protested, shaking her head quickly. “No, it’s Ra. When I was in Sekhet-Aaru, he was playing a video game, which was fun, so I bought a console. When I created my account, I found a friend request from him, and he asked me to team up with him when playing games with other sun deities. I’ve only heard Apollo’s voice.”
Archon reached up and pinched the bridge of her nose, considering the furor that would erupt if anyone knew that there were deities playing games on the internet. She’d heard enough things about Zeus cruising along the beaches of Greece and the problems that had caused, particularly with tourists trying for their own demi-god children, that she could hardly imagine what would happen if people around the world thought that they might be able to woo a deity online.
“I think that you’ll want to keep that information to yourself if at all possible. I don’t even want to think about what might happen if the internet learned that deities were online,” Archon said at last, growing suddenly aware that maybe, just maybe, Lilith would make her already interesting life even more complicated. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
“Oh, I had no intention of telling anyone, other than you and Emily, maybe. It isn’t something I want to spread all over,” Lilith quickly assured her. “I was mostly in shock because he used it as a distraction so his partner could shoot me with a rocket launcher.”
Archon paused, looking at Lilith like she’d grown another head. Eventually she managed to speak in bemusement. “A rocket launcher?”
“I was going for the tank,” Lilith said, and grinned. “Anyway, since it doesn’t look like you play those sort of games, what do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know, this sounds rather fascinating to me,” Archon said after a moment, leaning forward. “What sort of game were you even playing?”
“One of the first-person shooters, since Apollo insisted he’d be better at something that required shooting. Unfortunately for him, he forgot that it also requires spotting the opponents and dodging as well. He’s not quite as good at those,” Lilith explained, her smile widening. “Honestly, most of them aren’t great at games. They’re getting better, but I think how long they were away from the world has made them slightly slower to pick it up, for whatever reason. Some of them are better than others, but most of them seem more… relaxed than in their legends. Amaterasu said that being stuck outside of the mortal world helped most of them gain a better sense of restraint.”
“Huh. That’s an interesting way to put it,” Archon murmured, musing over the idea, though it still boggled her mind that Lilith was playing games with deities.
“That’s what I thought,” Lilith agreed, looking around. “So… I seem to remember hearing that you do various crafts and the like in your spare time, don’t you? What sort of things are you working on these days?”
Archon tried to push down her impulse to blush, but she didn’t quite manage it, as she glanced at the cabinets where she’d stowed her things and spoke, a little embarrassed. “Ah… crocheting and beadwork, mostly. The second is a lot easier, since I can just thread the beads onto wire.”
“It certainly sounds easier than what I’ve been up to,” Lilith said, laughing softly, then shook her head as she grinned. “I’ve been trying to sew, and, well… you’d think that following a pattern wouldn’t take that much effort, but I’ve managed to bungle it several times already. Maybe I just decided on something too complicated for my first try?”
“I wouldn’t know. What are you making?” Archon asked, looking at Lilith curiously.
The other woman pulled out her phone, then started hunting through what Archon thought was probably her email. A minute later, she turned her phone around, and gave a lopsided smile as she said, “This.”
Archon took one look at the picture and almost burst out laughing. Depicted on it was a woman in a complicated, elven-style costume that could have come out of a movie, and the model even had high-quality prosthetic elven ears on. She practically looked like a princess, and the sight of the gossamer-like fabric that hung from her arms… it would be a nightmare to work with, based on Archon’s experience with sewing. She’d certainly had enough trouble when trying to figure out how to make clothing herself shortly after she grew wings and had grown very fond of halter tops.
“Ah… Lilith, I’m afraid that you may have chosen something excessively complex for your first project. In school, they had me start with a pillowcase, then a drawstring bag,” Archon said, doing everything she possibly could to hold in her mirth. It wouldn’t be nice to laugh too much at Lilith, since it wasn’t as though she had any idea of what she’d been getting into. “The fabric also looks rather delicate, so I wouldn’t be surprised if you damaged it in the process.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Lilith said, looking resigned, and it was all Archon could do not to go over and give her a hug. “I just wanted something… pretty?”
“There are plenty of pretty costumes, and I guarantee that you’d fit a lot of them. Better than some of their models, even,” Archon told her, looking Lilith over speculatively. “Or, if you don’t want something off the shelf, you could always have someone make it for you.”
“Yes… but…” Lilith began, then fell silent, looking embarrassed.
“But…?” Archon inquired after a few seconds, gently pushing her to speak.
“I want to make it myself,” Lilith explained, looking down at her phone, mixed emotions evident on her face. “I’ve benefited so much from things I’ve been given already. Sure, I made tons of money off investments, but without the money that Amber set up for me to ‘inherit’, I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it. I would have been lucky to have a few hundred dollars to my name, and that would be after pawning some of the jewelry she’d left for me. Almost everything I have is something which someone else gave me.
; “That’s why I was so happy to team up with Whisper, you know? He took a design that I built myself, even if the base technology is things that I learned from other people and helped me improve it to where it would actually be useable. It didn’t take a lot, he just pointed out a few spots where things were more complicated than they needed to be, and other pitfalls he’d run into, but we did it.” Lilith continued, slipping her phone back into her pocket as she sighed. “That’s why I wanted to make it myself. I wanted to… I don’t know, make myself pretty with my own effort, not the work someone else put into it. It’d make me feel better.”
Archon didn’t speak as Lilith finished, staring at the other woman, her thoughts churning. It would be so easy for her to blow off Lilith’s concerns, Archon realized. It wasn’t as if she’d reached where she was in life without the help of others, even if she’d disowned her family by this point. Without Destiny, it was possible that Archon would have gone down a much darker path, and that didn’t even mention Decarin’s quiet support, when he asked her to test a new design for a chair he’d come up with, or when Spark brought back one of her favorite foods every so often. But that wouldn’t be fair.
Lilith hadn’t had the benefit of a childhood or achieving the same sort of victories or failures that most people had. She was so different from Archon in that regard that she could hardly fathom the difference between them, which was why she didn’t dare take Lilith’s desire to prove herself lightly.
“If that’s what you want, I don’t see any reason that you shouldn’t try. My point is more that you’re trying something too hard to begin with,” Archon said at last, and smiled a little as she asked. “So… if you’re going to keep trying, why don’t you make something simpler first for practice, which you can wear if you don’t manage to make that dress? That way you have a backup plan if it doesn’t work out.”
“Well… that is a thought, but what should I choose? I don’t want to dress up as a hero, and most of the costumes I’ve seen don’t feel right,” Lilith said, and Archon considered for a few seconds.
“Would you like to look at designs together? I can tell you which ones I think you’d look good in,” Archon suggested, smiling slightly as she added. “I also have some experience with sewing, like I told you. I’m not great, but I think that I can help a little.”
“That would be wonderful!” Lilith said, her eyes brightening with enthusiasm.
“In that case, why don’t we go to the computer? We can start on dinner in a little while.” Archon said, standing up and wondering just what she’d gotten herself into.
Chapter 34
Monday, September 29th, 2031
South Paragon City
“Why does this always happen to me?” Lilith demanded, ducking behind a dumpster, and winced as she heard an energy bolt slam into it. “Why?”
The narc pistol didn’t answer her, and neither did the dumpster, except for the dull ringing sound it was making, which made Lilith both pleased and annoyed. It must have been emptied not long before, since that indicated it was mostly empty, and that meant that it wouldn’t block much fire. Which was just lovely, with her not in her armor.
One minute Lilith had been driving toward Leisure’s business, and the next second some jerk threw explosive caltrops onto the road in front of her. Lilith was fairly sure that the car had been totaled after the damage to the underside, but the attackers had decided to add insult to injury by unloading with at least ten energy rifles into the side of her car, and Lilith made a note to thank Osmar for recommending that she install armored panels and reinforced windows in her car after the incident that spring. It wouldn’t help with her insurance, though, which was going to go up. Again.
“That’s it, I’m building a tank. A flying tank,” Lilith muttered balefully, peering out from behind the dumpster. “Maybe they’ll leave me alone when I have enough firepower to level a city block.”
As she looked, Lilith saw a handful of men in startlingly casual clothing rushing forward, darting out of cover, and she wasn’t about to let them get away with murdering her car, so she took the shot while she had it.
The man in front was out of line of sight before she could get a bead on him, but the second was just a little too slow, and Lilith pulled the trigger. The next moment the man’s eyes rolled back in his head, he lurched, and then collapsed onto the ground, skidding across the sidewalk as he did so. That likely would leave a hell of a scrape when he got up, but Lilith wasn’t going to feel that bad. He’d tried to kill her, after all.
Amber’s voice in her head made her heart lurch, then Lilith’s eyes narrowed angrily. The cheerful tone to her voice and the timing couldn’t have been worse, particularly since Lilith had been wondering why her comm hadn’t worked over the last couple of minutes.
“If you’re trying to make me regret telling you no, you chose the worst possible way to do it,” Lilith snapped at Amber, taking another shot and dropping a thug as he was leaning out to shoot at her. She ducked before the others could open fire and wished that the various civilians she could see in the distance behind them would take a hint and get out of the line of fire. At least her gun wouldn’t kill them, but they had no way of knowing that.
“Of course I am. You based my brain structure on your own,” Lilith retorted, taking advantage of a pause in the enemy fire to duck around a corner. “You’d probably have been better off with just about anyone else’s.”
“What made you think that I was trying to be subtle?” Lilith demanded, taking a shot at another thug as he poked his head around the corner, then ducked behind a trash can as he ate pavement as well. “If you’re trying to be useful, you could actually help!”
Lilith growled under her breath, wishing she had her undersuit. Oh, she could use the one Ra had gifted her, as Amber hadn’t dared take that, but it was just too ostentatious for Lilith’s taste, especially when she was going to a massage. Ra hadn’t commented about the suit, and Lilith was not going to bring it up. It wasn’t worth the risk of annoying him.
Her distraction nearly went poorly for Lilith, as a bolt of energy came within inches of her head, and she yelped, rolling to a nearby doorway, then took another shot. The next moment Lilith heard a faint scrape of shoes on concrete, and a pair of the attackers lunged at her from up close.
“We’ve got her!” the woman exclaimed, and Lilith almost couldn’t believe what they were doing, with how slow they were. And she… well, she just reacted.
The next moment the woman was yelping as her arm popped out of its socket, then had the breath blasted from her lungs as she hit the ground. The man, Lilith turned into a human shield as she planted a foot in the middle of the woman’s back, aiming her pistol down the alley and taking four precise shots. She only hit two of the attackers, the last of them fled before she could knock him out, and then Lilith was left with the two who’d thought she was vulnerable up close.
“You know, I thought it was common knowledge that baseline humans weren’t up to taking me on in melee. Are you really that stupid?” Lilith asked, honestly a little startled at how quickly the deadly situation had ended.
“Urk,” The man gasped, causing Lilith to loosen her grip on his shirt ever so slightly, then he managed. “I’m… I’m not baseline… human…”
Lilith blinked, then noticed that he did seem somewhat stronger than she’d thought initially, then she shrugged.
&nbs
p; “So you are. Not enough above that, but I’ll admit I was wrong,” Lilith said, and smiled. “Now, why don’t you tell me why you jerks murdered my car, hm?”
“…very sorry, but there’s nothing to be done about it. My car’s dead, and I think the police want to ask a few more questions. Is there any chance I could reschedule?” Lilith asked, mostly thankful that the police had found the jammer and deactivated it. Not that she was happy about having to cancel her appointment.
“It’s fine, Ms. Carpenter. Emergencies happen with someone in your position,” the secretary replied briskly, a man who seemed to be far more pleasant to Lilith than the last woman she’d dealt with. “Looking at the schedule, would Wednesday at one PM work for you?”
“That should work fine,” Lilith assured him. “Please convey my apologies to Tory for me? I hate to miss my appointment.”
“I’ll do that, ma’am,” he assured her. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, thank you for your help,” Lilith said, and let out a sigh of relief as he gave his farewells and hung up. Then she lowered her phone and turned to look at the scene wearily.
Her car was slowly being moved onto a tow truck as she watched, now that the fire department had ensured that it wasn’t about to catch fire or explode, and she sighed as she saw how many fragments it left in its wake. Fortunately, her car’s armored paneling had kept her from being injured by any of the explosions, but they’d still wrecked the entire underside of the car, and it was a small miracle the brakes had still functioned enough to bring it to a stop.
It gave Lilith a dark sort of amusement that the attackers had come out of the fight in better shape than her car. Oh, one man had ended up with a broken nose, and the woman she’s slammed into the ground had a dislocated shoulder and the first responders suspected she might have bruised or cracked ribs, but otherwise the police seemed impressed that Lilith had been able to take down all but one of her attackers without doing more damage than she had. It didn’t feel like she’d done that much to Lilith, but a large part of being able to deal with them efficiently had been the pair making the mistake of coming in close. That had been plain stupid of them.
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