Author's note: This is a scene that was intended to tie-into one of Jason's chapters back during the whole thing with Anna gaining citizenship and Vizh being an Ambassador. It was mostly complete, but apparently was left forgotten and unposted... I'm not sure why. In any event, I tacked on enough to call it finished and present it now... it's only slightly late in continuity.
"Why do you think they made you so cute?" a voice rumbled from behind her.
Anna swung around and looked up... and up... into the cast iron plate that made what passed for Joan Henry's head. The steam powered robot was focusing her headlight eyes on the tiny, sophisticated robot-girl speculatively. "What?" she asked, taken aback.
The big robot shrugged. "Yeah, I eavesdropped a bit there at the end of your conversation with Chiaki about you and your place in the mansion. Guard duty gets kinda dull." She swung a big thumb up over her shoulder, indicating the door behind her leading to the Mansion's administrative offices. "His Ambassadorness is meeting with Hatty and the suit patrol... Garrick, that Amber woman, some other state-department types. I'm supposed to keep them from being interrupted... which is usually the kind of talk that summons up an unrelated, full-scale crisis of some invasion or another, but so far it's just leaving me bored." She shifted her great iron bulk. "I'm Joan, by the way. Seen you around, don't believe we've formally met yet."
"I'm Anna. I've seen you too. You're hard to miss, in fact." Anna responded. "Usually" she added as an afterthought, considering the eavesdropping confession.
"Sometimes people mistake me for part of the plumbing" Joan noted. "But when the pipeworks start clanging their way across a room, people tend to sit up and take notice."
Anna smiled politely. "You're Visionary's body guard, correct?"
"I've got some fancier title, but in a nutshell, yeah."
"How did you two meet?"
The giant shrugged again. "Hallie arranged for me to be released into Legion custody following a big dust-up in prison recently, and the judge agreed since I had saved his robe-clad behind from the riots.
"You were in prison?"
"Yeah."
"As a prisoner?"
"Yeah."
"Recently?"
"Yeah."
"And now you're on the Earth Ambassador's security team?" Anna asked, surprised.
"Head of it, actually. That's the fancier title part." She noted the smaller robot's expression. "Hey, the guy needed a bodyguard, and I had to be under supervision as a term of my release. It kinda made sense... if you squint at it just right..."
Anna nodded slowly. "Can I ask what you were...?"
"Assault, property damage... depraved indifference was waved around a bit..." Joan ticked off, counting on her massive fingers. "There were a bunch of charges."
"...But now you're part of the Legion's diplomatic staff."
"Nutty, ain't it? Best not to question it too much." She looked down at the robot girl. "You're not upset that they didn't ask you, are you?"
"I..." Anna was caught off guard by the steam powered robot's directness. "I hadn't given it any thought, but since I do not know Visionary as well as some..."
"Psssssshhht" Joan snorted with a burst of steam. "I met him for the first time 5 minutes before he offered me the job. "That's not it. Hallie wouldn't have considered offering it to you because you're, well... way too cute to trust with the job."
"I'm...?! Hallie's not..." Anna blushed as she stammered. "I would never make inappropriate sexual advances towards Visionary!"
"How very good to know..." a voice dripping with sarcasm interjected from the doorway behind Joan. "Though I shudder to think what passes for appropriate ones around here" The huge robot shifted and turned to face Herbert P. Garrick, who had opened the door just enough to stick his head outside. "Foxglove is on the way back to the mansion... send the degenerate in as soon as he arrives" he ordered, crisply pulling his head back with a sneer of distaste and closing the door.
"What a charmer" Joan observed. "How's the fancy human-like programming doing with the embarrassment?" she asked Anna. "Can you be 'mortified'? That's one of those emotions that always sounded kind of interesting to me, but I'm not sure if it's within my range or not..."
Anna ignored all of this... She wasn't overly concerned about what Garrick thought anyway, having had enough contact with the man. "What did you mean, I'm too cute?" she asked intently.
"Well, you are" the iron robot explained, rubbing her head with an oversize hand. "I mean, look at you... Who's going to be afraid of you?"
"I don't like people being afraid of me..." Anna argued.
"Which is fine... but have you seen Vizh? The man is about as intimidating as dryer lint."
"His strengths can be deceiving" Anna insisted.
"Yeah, maybe" Joan Henry replied, not sounding very convinced. "But the point is, here's a guy who is going to go into intergalactic, political hot zones and represent all of big bad Earth. You want to know what happens when your reputation is that you're the toughest 'bot on the block? Everybody who covets the title wants to test that for themselves."
The small robotic girl chewed her lip as her eyes grew concerned. "You mean..."
"They'll be taking potshots at this guy galore" Joan assured her. "I mean, he's got a face that any drunk in a bar fight would just kind of want to punch anyway... and I hear the alcohol flows pretty freely at these intergalactic diplomatic functions. The trick is, we've got to dissuade anyone from giving it a try before they start swinging their fist. Or tentacle, I suppose... or whatever these space alien types use to clobber people. Flippers maybe?"
"And I'm... too cute."
"Right. Vizh looks like enough of a cream-puff... the last thing he needs is a bodyguard who looks like she'd be as hard to tear through as wet toilet paper. And really, that's the thing with this whole bodyguard gig... the best protection is the kind that discourages trouble from even starting, because no matter how good you are, when things get to a scrum there's always an element that remains a crapshoot. When things get there, somebody's going to be hurt that didn't need to be."
Anna nodded. "Chiaki told you that, didn't she?"
"She's been giving me pointers..." the huge steam-powered robot replied, "...so that I actually know more than how to stand around, look intimidating and punch things into a fine, lumpy jelly. Proactive bodyguard stuff. And Mahjong, just 'cause I was curious. She's also a tiny little cute thing, and like you could probably still take down half of the Unlimited Class in Robot Rumble anyway."
"The half that included you?" Anna asked innocently.
Joan snorted.
They were both silent for a while. "So do you know why they made you big and scary?" Anna asked, opting to ape Joan's own direct approach.
Joan regarded her with her headlamp eyes. "I made myself big and scary" the towering robot insisted. "I was once unassuming and cute too."
"What happened?"
The huge robot stared at her. "You never answered my original question. Why did they make you so cute to begin with?"
Anna knew the answer as much as she didn't like it. "So I could get close enough to betray and hurt people" she admitted.
"Yeah." Joan nodded her cast-iron head. "People don't try to get so close to me any more" she answered in kind.
|
|
