trans_9 | Shore Leave Part 3: The Return Of Stacy

"Good," she said, all smiles again. "What are you looking forward to most as part of Rogue Squadron?" For Arha, it was all about the flying and the work they would be doing as a strike team. These thing she was good at doing and enjoyed best.

"Learning to fly sounds like it's gonna be pretty awesome. I've used some ground-based stuff back home, but nothing as fast as those X-Wings. Most of the mechs I used with the Hunters are pretty powerful, but they're slower than I am on my own, and the mobility was just awful." Speed had always been Axl's thing. For all that he knew his way around practically every firearm his world had bothered to invent, he knew he traded off a lot of power to be as fast as he was, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

"The X-Wings are very fast, but not faster than the A-Wings," Arha said with a nod. "You will enjoy flying with us. They handle very well and are not clumsy. I feel as if I am part of it when I fly and it is a good feeling." She smiled once more, remembering. "I had never flown before I got into the cockpit of an X-Wing, but I took to it intuitively and through great amounts of mechanical study. In my universe, machines are not something wonderful, especially intelligent ones as they tried to wipe humanity out. But I am Jed-Eye, now, and must adapt to a universe where such things are common. I leave behind my preconceptions and embrace those of my new home. It has been enlightening."

Oh, he liked the sound of those A-Wings. Even faster than the X-Wings? Maybe he could learn how to fly those on the side or something.

When she mentioned what machines had done in her own world, though, his smile dropped, replaced by a more thoughtful look. "Did all of them try and wipe humanity out? None of them disagreeing, or doing anything different? That's...really weird to me. We can't all agree on anything where I'm from." The closest he'd ever seen to a total consensus among reploids was the revolt by the newgen series, and even that itself wasn't unanimous because Axl himself hadn't gone along with it.

"They all did," Arha said with a nod. "The war was barely won and humans did away with all artificial intelligence. They were replaced by breeding humans in a way that they replaced machines and the edict that no machine could be made that replicates the human mind has stayed in place for thousands of years now. We still use machines, but they do not think, at least such it is at the point in time that I come from."

"That...sucks." It was kind of a lame way to sum it up, but Axl had never claimed to be particularly articulate.

"Humans in your world get points for fighting for their own lives instead of expecting other machines to do it for them, though." His tone wasn't quite strong enough to qualify as bitter, but there was a hint of disapproval there. Axl didn't particularly have a grudge against the humans in his world, but he also wasn't really inclined to ignore the disparity between the races, either.

"In your home, they do not, then?" Arha asked, her expression curious. "It is sad to think that one would not contribute to one's own defense. Such a thing should be instinctive."

"Most of them just wait for the Hunters to do everything." Axl shrugged. "X says we can fight better than they can anyway and I shouldn't hold it against them. And, I mean, I don't really hold it against them most of the time, but you'd think they could at least treat the people keeping them alive a little better. I dunno, I...didn't really know that many humans, until I got here." Generalizations were just that -- generalizations -- but he didn't have a lot of experience with anything else to work from.

"It can be difficult for people to treat others with respect if they do not see you as anything but tools for survival," Arha said thoughtfully. "That you are fully functioning with minds of your own seems to be something that they do not see, yes?" She folded her hands loosely in her lap. Her Mothers-Within, the Bene Gesserit ones especially, were loud with outcry. Arha silenced them. This was not their own home and the universe this one came from was different.

"You will be treated as family in this place," Arha said, despite the uproar in her mind. "After all, your universe is one we are fighting for as well as every other being on this ship. We are all a strange sort of family, adopted and cobbled together as survivors."

"At least surviving's something I'm already good at," he joked. It was kind of a relief, even if he wasn't the type to say so upfront -- so far most of the people he'd talked to had been pretty cool about what he was; granted, they weren't coming at it with the same kind of baggage that anyone in his world would, but it sounded like Arha at least had even more reason to distrust a machine.

But she was right. They were all in this together, strange a group as they might be. They couldn't really afford to hold onto old prejudice.

"I am, as well, good at surviving," Arha said, smiling. "I was near ten years in the deep desert, for the most part, alone. After such a thing, it no long matters where I am, so long as I have my new family with me. I am most grateful to Rogue Squadron and to my Jed-Eye for welcoming me. So, I welcome all those that join us."

"Ten years alone in the desert?" Axl asked, impressed.

That was something to write home about.

"I am Fremen and was trained in desert survival from the time I was small," Arha said, thinking back to those quiet years spent with Kalim in the simulated desert with the young and dying Shai-Hulud. "There is much to survive upon if one knows where to look. But, I had my moments where I found myself near death. The point is that despite such slim odds, I survived, and was hardened by my home planet. I have seen war, fought and killed for my people, and I have been a healer as well. It was necessary and it has brought me to where I am today, in this moment."

Bad things that were necessary to bring you to where you were now.

Something close to a wince crossed Axl's face for a split-second, before he smothered it. "Yeah, I can understand that."

"One cannot be who they are without first having the past shape them," Arha said firmly. "Kalim, the woman who raised me, always told me that whining about the hardships you have endured lessens their meaning. You must embrace all things and examine how they have changed you. It is then that you truly know who you are."

"Sounds about like what Red used to tell me. Only his version didn't sound as...philosophical."

Red's version had been something more like shut up and suck it up, I'm not raising a wimp.

"My Order was bent in such a manner," Arha said with a bright laugh. "Not every individual is as philosophic, as you put it so well. Honestly, everything from the mouths of the Bene Gesserit is much like that. It sometimes requires thought before interpretation."

"I was raised by bounty hunters. Talking was just for what you couldn't say better with a gun." There had been a couple of exceptions, even in Red Alert, but for the most part, nobody thought too hard about anything but the mission in front of them.

Arha nodded.

"Such is the way of some people," she murmured. There were many different types of cultures in the universes, this she knew. Hunting for bounty was just one of them. Such a thing was not conducive to 'warm and nuturing'. But then, Arha had never had the luxury of such an example herself.

Shore Leave Part 3: The Return Of Stacy

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