the chosen one
there are handlers that went to officer school and supposedly know what the fuck they're doing, all swagger with the authority of the Service behind them, uniforms like slices of space, voices like knives, their lethal charges trailing docile behind them.
they're the ones that show up in the porn sketches and the short clips of grainy video that circulate in the Fleet network. they're the ones that have pages and pages of fan fiction written about them.
then there's you. you didn't go to officer school. your entire signup process was this:
"hey, Cooper, you were in its old unit, weren't you? before it went to the lab? remember anything that'd distract it from biting at its own link sockets and screaming at techs?"
"uh, shit, sir, i can tryâŚ"
"great, it wandered into the rec room. go nuts."
you called your last conversation to mind. there'd been two major rec time activities in your last squad, and the alert that kicked off Paloma 17 had interrupted something.
you sat down next to the thing that had once been your squadmate, not meeting its weird red eyes. you already knew it didn't like that; looking it in the face was how MuĂąoz got their arm broken yesterday.
the augment whiffed of human sweat, the fake citrus of type-2 interface gel, something musty and unpleasant. its fatigues probably hadn't been washed ever.
"hey, asshole," you said, "you still owe me a Kinetic Princess match. best of five, remember? we were two and one when the hammer came down for P-17."
you put a gamepad on the floor next to it.
"ch. ch. ch."
was it laughing?
it swatted the gamepad away.
and then player 2's character select screen came up. without moving a muscle, it picked Valkyrie, switched her outfit to red, and handed you your ass, twice in a row, with no apparent exertion.
"ch. ch. ch."
yeah, it was laughing.
it kept laughing as it used its onboard hardware to disconnect your gamepad, choose the princess you'd just been playing, and win three matches against itself, beating Valkyrie with Marjoram.
again.
three-one.
three-zero.
three-one.
"well," someone said behind you, "that's kinda freaky. but better than tearing up the couch. guess you're on augment duty."
it was going all out. maybe trying to prove some sort of point. to itself? to you?
you got up.
it immediately paused the game.
"hey," you told it, "i gotta piss."
it followed you down the hall into the restroom. it tried to follow you into the stall.
"hah, you find a friend, Acey?" someone laughed.
"shut the fuck up, Lima." you tried to finish your business as best you could. it wasn't easy. the thing really did reek and it was not giving you a lot of space.
fuck it. you rose, didn't bother to wipe. you grabbed the augment and hauled it into the shower, spun the dial to hot, drenched the both of you, fatigues and all.
"wooooo! take it off!"
always a fucking audience in this place.
you found the zippers to strip the thing, flung wet clothing out of the shower at a spectator, pumped all-purpose soap into your hands.
"if you're gonna follow me around," you told the augment, "you gotta smell better."
this had to get done. you soaped it. all over. the generic floral smell of all-purpose soap was definitely an improvement already. felt human enough under your hands, except where it wasn't, the occasional beveled edge of a link socket. between its legs⌠human standard.
more hooting and hollering from the onlookers.
you remembered too late not to meet its eyes, but it just stared back at you, tilting its head a bit. no sign of aggression. was it smiling?
you never got around to the second major rec time activity with your old squadmate. you had no idea if she was ever interested. you also had no idea if sexual preferences survived augmentation.
fuck it. audentes fortuna iuvat, right? said so on your shoulder patch.
you slid a finger in.
shut the audience right up.
the thing kept staring at you.
you slipped a second finger in and stared back right up until you finished it off. it shivered visibly, made a sort of low whine.
nobody said shit after that. when you finally shut off the water, silence like a library.
you walked out. it trailed behind you. you grabbed a towel off the stack by the shower exit, wrapped the thing in it. it didn't protest. wearing nothing but your own towel, you stalked back to your bunk, hoping you still had a few clean uniforms, your expression daring anyone to mention that a single thing was out of the ordinary.
"heyyyyyy Acey, you get luâ"
someone always dared. this fucking unit.
the augment hissed. an unmodified human throat wouldn't have been able to make that noise; it sounded like a fire extinguisher. there was reverb in that hiss. there were teeth.
"oh, gods, just don't," you said wearily, looking back over your shoulder. it let Chroma, who had a tiny bit of sense in her head, back away slowly, in one piece.
anyway, that's how you became a handler. the pay bump is nice, your CO says you've been fast-tracked for officer school someday, and more to the point, the augment has already saved your whole squad at least three times.
but you have not once showered alone since that day, and you know it'd be a really, really bad idea to ever refuse a game of Kinetic Princess. that's just how it is when your real MOS is "weapon's favorite person". âĄ
this one is astonished by how hard Bravern is running with this concept




















