Week 63: To the Great North

It had been fourty five minutes since Hugo had seen another car, or anything on the road but snow. With a sigh, he gave a little nod to the back seat. "You're safe to come out now, hermana. We shouldn't find any more security until we get closer to the town. Got hours yet."

Hugo hadn't seemed himself the whole trip, and he only seemed to be getting more... strange as time went on. He was quieter, a little paler, more harried. His hand kept going to his back or side to check for Una, forgetting she was at home until he touched the strange new holster. The new galvanic cannon was beautiful in its own way. It still smelled of clean gun oil without the hint of ozone. Its presence didn't seem like a comfort, though. He hadn't slept on the way, either. "Got a box of nutribars back there, too."

Shinobu popped out from under the seat and took a gasp of air. "Not the tightest fit in there, but it's damn nice to be able to actually move and all that," she said as she stretched out, her WF accent pretty good for not using her voice synth. She straightened out her long dark hair which had been messed up while she was hiding, and brushed dirt off her unremarkable dull blue jacket and trousers, the type of affordable clothing that you might see any citizen wearing most anywhere in the world.

She looked at Hugo driving, just as distant from his usual cheer as from his gun Una. For some people, Shinobu might have just assumed it was the tension of being back in the territory of the corp you betrayed, but that wasn't Hugo's style. "So, J. What's eating ya?" Shinobu asked as she munched on a nutribar. She leant forward, closer to Hugo. "Even I can tell something big's wrong. Spill your guts, I want to help and they say talking about things makes them not so bad."

Hugo grimly tightened his grip on the wheel, though there was the little hint of amusement in his voice that he always had when talking to Shinobu. "Don't think it's one of those kind of problems, hermana. Gimmie one of the conana creeem filled ones, would ya?"

His attempt to change the conversation was poor at best, and he extended a hand behind him to get the bar. He wasn't making eye contact, keeping his eyes ahead of him on the very straight, very cold, very empty road in front of him.

"Then we have all the more reason to talk about it," Shinobu said, dangling the bar just out of Hugo's reach. "You tell me, you get the nutribar. This isn't anything like you, man, being so down. If you don't tell me I'm gonna be worrying all week." Shinobu's face was visible in the rear mirror, clearly concerned about him.

A few seconds passed in silence, the only sound the faint noise of the car's engine as what felt like the same yard of snowy road passed by again and again. "We're agents, fucked up shit happens to us. Keeping it all in your head is just going to end with a crazy Hugo and nobody wants that."

Hugo sighed and stuck his hand out, wiggling his fingers slightly. He sounded a little darkly pleased. "Sorry hermana, Hugo's always been crazy." He began to grope into the space behind him, looking for the food. He seemed kind of exasperated, going from amused to annoyed much much faster than he normally did. "C'mon, I haven't eaten since we got into the car."

Shinobu sighed and handed the nutribar over. "Fine, I guess I won't nag at you or anything. I just wanna be there for you, you know? We're friends and all. I wouldn't judge you for anything you said, but if you don't want to tell me that's fine..." she said, trailing off in the kind of way that made it clear it wasn't really fine, but she didn't want to argue over it.

Shinobu sat back down and stared out the window in silence.

The silence dragged on. Shinobu may have been "fine" to sit silently, but Hugo was not. He figdeted. his hand reached back a few times for Una. He sighed. He looked nervously around the road. His hands traced around the wheel. He turned the radio up, changed the channel to BRUTAL, Seoul's Metal Station, and then turned it off. He sighed again. He stared hard at the road, frowning to himself. His face went blank.

A long minute later, Hugo's spoke. Well, he tried to speak. He had to swallow to contain his emotions, his words strangled and choked with.. frustration and grief. "What the fuck, Shinobu? I don't even know why she's fucking upset with me."

"Who, Silvia?" Shinobu had been concerned about what effect that night out would have on them, but hadn't had a chance to see anything between them with her own eyes. Hugo could have been talking about someone else, but Shinobu would have bet plenty on her guess being right.

"...Que?" Hugo blinked hard, momentarily shocked enough to calm down a little. He cleared his throat, moving his hand dismissively. "No no, UNA. Una. Silvia, she.. she has plenty of reasons to fucking hate me." He gritted his teeth with an angry sigh. "No, no, Una, she.. She's pissed at me. Something.. happened.. I don't even know why. She's the, the only thing in the past year that hasn't changed, and now something's.. something's changed. Different." His voice dropped, sad and full of palpable self-loathing. "I just can't help but know I did something to deserve it, but what? What?"

"Oh." Shinobu was at a loss for words. Sure, she knew Hugo was... close to his gun, treated it like a person and all that... but how could a gun be angry? "Well... How do you know she's angry at you?" Shinobu asked, trying to get to the heart of the issue without dismissing Hugo as being totally mad. "I mean, miscommunications happen in relationships all the time."

"I.. she..." Hugo exhaled before continuing, trying to calm himself down. It was obvious to Shinobu he hated acting like this around.. well, anyone. His fingers fidgeted with the wheel. "When we met, she was just.. She was a prototype. An idea held together with capacitors and solder. Even then, she only gave me little love bites. Little.. zaps." He made a fast fffwpt! noise to indicate, gesturing with a hand that had a very fine network of scars on it. "Alessandro, he knows how to pre-empt a gun that jams, see? Can read and feel the energy as it charges. Amazing, and he showed me how to do it, but I didn't feel it with Una. I shot her over and over and over and she never jammed. Never stuck. And then, on the mission.." He swallowed again, voice getting heavier. "On the mission, I needed her as badly as I ever had. This thing, all.. tent-tentacles and tumors, it was trying to fight me, and... and the first time I went to fire her, she locked up. Just.. hit me with her whole charge. Through my hands and..." He trailed off, upset by even mentioning this. His hands were shaking, and had been since the mention of the tentacles. "I h-had to go in bare, without her working, didn't have time to unjam her..." He stopped there, staring ahead.

Well, this was a difficult one to solve. Shinobu was - thank New God - not at all versed in the intricacies of romancing a gun, but Hugo treated it her like a person so it should work to approach things the same way, right? If you don't get too hung up on specifics...

"Now, I wasn't there, and sure, I don't know Una as well as you do, but that doesn't sound like being angry to me," she began, speaking calmly. "To me, it sounds like you freaked out, weren't sure what to do... and Una did the same as you, just kind of lost it in the panic of the moment. I mean, if it was that desperate, that rough a situation, then things like that happen to the best of us, right? Sometimes everything just goes wrong and you end up in a messed up place afterwards. But that's the kind of time you should stand by each other rather than worrying other what you did wrong."

Hugo gave Shinobu a "You just don't get it" kind of look... Though he only kept up eye contact for a brief moment. He turned his eye back on the road. "She's not like that, hermana. She's not like us, she doesn't feel afraid. Combat is what she lives for. She's a gun. It's her purpose. "

"...The charges, they are like.. Bites. Snaps. Hissing. I think it's hard for you to understand, but she's... She talks through combat. It's when she feels alive, it's when I feel closest. To her. And for her to jam, it's.. it's all wrong. Something's wrong, but I just.. I don't know what." On the last few words, his throat tightened a little. he coughed and blinked while looking away from Shinobu.

Shinobu gave Hugo an "I don't get it" look, visible through the rear mirror. "Okay then, enlighten me. How can a gun be angry? I don't mean to be demeaning or anything, but... she's a gun. Unexpected technical problems that cause jamming? A thing guns are known to do, even great special ones. Being angry? Not so much." Shinobu was trying not to be insulting, but at the same time everything Hugo was saying was a very special kind of stupid.

"Not Una. Not her. She doesn't jam. Not unless she means it." He was breathing harder, now. "With me, she never, I mean, she used to never jam. One of the other testers picked her up once and zzzmmp~, fried her eyebrows right off. She didn't like people besides me touching her. You know what the odds are that a new gun like that backfires on you? It's hard to channel galvanic energy, man, half the time I was getting jolted. With Una, nothing big like that. That's how I knew."

He gave a little shuddering sigh and continued. "A good gun, they're like ships. Like space ships. Like any piece of high end equipment. They have soul. A limited language but there is more to her than just parts. She.. she speaks to me. And she IS angry, Shinobu."

"I see," Shinobu lied. "Sorry, man, but I have no idea what you could have done to make her angry. I guess you just have to try to get along and be good to her. I mean, you've got to work together." It wasn't advice that was at all helpful or anything Hugo could really act on, but that was because the whole situation was built up around Hugo being nuts over a gun's feelings. She sighed, and decided to change the subject away from this. All they were doing was getting Hugo tense and Shinobu frustrated, and that wouldn't help one bit.

"You been around these parts before, J? I've no idea how much you travelled when you were with the Feds."

Hugo grunted in response to the first part, but shook his head no at the question about Canada. "My Tio is from up here, well, down there, really, Toronto. Never been this far north. Looks grim. No places to drink, fewer places to unwind... It's warmer down south. The people, the.. rules." He shrugged a little, relaxing as they moved onto easier topics. "I spent a lot of time in Florida, and I grew up mostly in the Border towns. Traveled a little for Basic and after I left AMS, but not too much."

It took Hugo a few moments to realize that he was in a conversation. "What about you? You liking the Fed territory?"

Shinobu shrugged. "Well, it could be worse? People seem way too satisfied with being oppressed. I suppose it might be worth it for the average citizen, but it kind of creeps me out... No offence intended?" she added quickly. "I mean, it's not Japan. That's a point in its favour."

She looked at Hugo, curious how he would take that kind of negative impression of WF territory. Sure, he'd turned on them, but Fed agents were trained to be very patriotic and all that nonsense. "Does it feel any different, being in here as an Federation Public Enemy Number... Something?"

"Well for one, you get more attention as an enemy." Hugo's eyes flicked behind them, at the window. "Tail finally showed up. But if you slap a stealth field on we'll be fine. We can think of some reason to stop outside of town." With a sigh, he thew the empty wrapper for his nutribar on the ground. "There's one in my bag back there."

His fingers tapped a rhythm against the wheel. "It is kind of creepy. But my home town was only officially WF for three, four years? They kept the schools running for a while, but it was all fighting and scrounging. This is familiar for me, been in the WF long enough, but it ain't my life. I like Seoul better, for the most part."

There was a momentary shimmer as the invisibility field warmed up, and then Shinobu was gone. "Yeah, Seoul's nice. Doesn't feel like people are expecting anything of you," said nobody lying down in the back. "I'd call it my kind of place, certainly way better than Japan was. Of course, it helps that you guys are around. When we aren't off travelling the world anyway."

"Yeah, you can just.. be yourself. The city is dirty and poor but it loves us, too." He shrugged, not bothering to look back at the empty place on the seat. "Yeah, they are already coming closer a bit, I'll just.." And with that the car sped up slightly, engine almost silent in the futuristic cabin.


"...I like being around agents like this. Being friends. It's nicer than having a boss." He shook his head. "It gets complicated, but people you're close to are complicated. So.. it's.. it's okay."