They know too much. And, yes, that's the point of flaunting things like their own jokes about turnip-men in their faces, but it never stops the liquid panic when it hits. They know too much and it's time to go.
Hazel had a timetable for this. She was supposed to get a Phase 3 out of the tubermen: play the joke all the way to the hilt, turnip-trooper Pilot Princess stans, squealing for autographs and then — then something. The self-destruct enzyme is a starting point, but not enough of a bang; what's the point of getting a whole crowd of tubermen that close unless they do something funnier than gently falling over, roasted from the inside?
Maybe a small shaped charge could make them burst in a wet beige shower of mashed turnip—
Focus. It's time to run.
She's jamming her clothes into a suitcase when there's a knock at the door. She starts violently, but it's a gentle knock; not a cop knock. The neighbours? Did she order pizza and lose time? Anxiously chewing a fingernail, she opens the door—
"Hi," says Pilot Princess Soul Defender Moonstone.
She's not even in uniform. She's wearing cargo pants and a tshirt and a leather jacket and she has little round reading glasses and she looks incredible. Hazel's shoulders slump in a way that feels so decisive that for a second she imagines just continuing to collapse into a puddle of ooze.
"Oh," she says.
"Yeah," Moonstone says. "Can we talk inside?"
"I guess?" Hazel says. She's never actually been apprehended before. She is...was...very successful. And she knows people get through this all the time, but still, it's new and it's frightening. She shuffles away from the door, doing her best to look harmless. She feels harmless. She feels...very vulnerable. "Can I — can I get the Professor?"
"The duck?" Moonstone closes the door behind her — Pilot Princess Soul Defender Moonstone, in Hazel's own apartment. "Sure," so Hazel shuffles into the living room and takes him out of the mousetrap he's trapped in and then she feels so sick she has to sit down on the couch for a second.
Moonstone doesn't seem to be in any hurry to slap cuffs on her, at least. Hazel can do this, she can totally do this.
"Gotta hand it to you," Moonstone says. "The Robo Grandmaster stuff threw everyone off. It's embarrassing how well that worked. I mean — sorry, I don't mean to be an asshole, here, but I got your pal Dangerous to talk, a bit. I am right that it was a disguise, not — you're not a trans guy? No?"
"No," Hazel says in a tiny voice. "Is Wolfgang okay?"
Moonstone cocks her head. "He backstabbed the hell out of you," she says, and Hazel shrugs, looking at the floor.
"We're all one too many coffees and a fluorescent light headache away from doing the same," she says glumly. "I don't want him hurt."
"Yeah," Moonstone says. "About that. I've been putting the pieces together, but I'm hoping — I'd like you to fill in some stuff for me."
Hazel shrugs again, holding the Professor very tight.
"So I've got school records here for a Hazel Richmond," Moonstone says gently, then pauses. "Can I sit down? I feel bad, looming at you like this."
Hazel darts a glances up at her, then back down to the floor. "Sure," she says, then squeaks when Moonstone perches on the arm of the couch, right next to her. She smells like leather jacket and coffee and honeysuckle.
"I would ask if I have the right Hazel, but I saw photos of you from engineering college," Moonstone says. "It was all there once Dangerous ran his mouth and I figured I was looking for a woman. Remembered where I'd talked about turnip people. And you gave me your age."
"Shit," Hazel says.
"I dug up some more bits and pieces." Moonstone burrows her hands into her pockets. "You were on the rolls for disability accommodations; you'd flagged up as a preteen and you were on meds for it. Your campus got attacked by another HSF guy. I've got a medical test under a fake name? But really, I'd like to hear from you how that turns into faking your death, and then—" she gestures loosely.
"Meds," Hazel says, and laughs hollowly. "Do you know anything about meds for this? There are tailored anticonvulsants for the fugues, but they're hard to get a prescription for and they're expensive as hell."
"Google said most people are on suppressors."
"No such thing," Hazel says. "You know what that is? Mostly off-label Valium. I wanted — I really wanted blockers. I wanted to not be—"
She holds the Professor even tighter, and he makes the faint leading edge of a squeak.
"I have the g116 mutation," Hazel says, looking at her rubber duck. "Can't have the real meds. Won't do anything. The fugues started breaking through, even on the Valium, and I was building things, and the only thing to do was more Valium but it didn't stop it, it just meant I built shit that didn't work. I was on so much I started failing classes. I wanted to die."
"Then what?" Moonstone says softly.
"I started tapering myself off the Valium without telling anyone. If I had to be — at least I could build things." She sags around the memory. "So many robots," she says wistfully. "And then the other guy having an episode hit the campus, and I got, I was hurt a little bit, collateral damage—" and she has to hurry over that, gloss past it as quickly as possible, because that's a memory like a sucking whirlpool, and she doesn't need to spiral right now, right now would be particularly bad — "and my robots were. They weren't for anything. But they tried to protect me."
"They went fucking apeshit," Moonstone says, in a non-judgemental tone. "You figured that was your out?"
"I knew I was going the same way, but it didn't — it didn't have to be Hazel. My parents didn't have to look at the TV and...." She looks up at Moonstone. "I'll come quietly," she says, shaking. "I will. Just — don't take the Professor away? The cops will, but then it's their problem what happens—"
Moonstone is staring at the opposite wall. She looks like she wants a cigarette. "I've got a problem here," she says. "I've got a problem to do with collateral damage, actually."
"I don't hurt people on purpose—" Hazel starts, high and panicky.
"Yeah, that's the fucking — I've been over casualty figues, and by a conservative estimate, I do more collateral damage than you do." Moonstone looks round, meets her eyes. "I've turned the numbers over every fucking way I can and you just...you don't fucking get numbers like this. This is on purpose. And I saw your fucking turnip cheerleader guys get out of the way for an ambulance."
Hazel whimpers.
"Everyone's always 'oh if they're so smart why don't they just fix themselves'," Moonstone says, and curls her lip. "But you actually fucking did it, didn't you? You caught yourself at exactly the right stage and you programmed yourself to be harmless."
"You can't program people," Hazel says, starting to cry.
"But you did it, though. Didn't you."
"I just— I imprinted habits, that's all it is, everyone knows the, the, the shape it takes, the grandiosity and the ranting and I just, I just, I aligned the psychological reward mechanisms with the dramatic intangibles instead of concrete goals...."
"You'd have a real fucking bad time in custody," Moonstone says darkly. "That gives me an ethics problem. Because what you did to yourself probably makes you a genius and a work of art. Fuck, I want a smoke. Grab your suitcase."
"What?"
"Dunno how long it'll take anyone else to put enough together to find this place. Grab your suitcase."
Hazel stares at her. Shoots a blank, head-buzzing glance down at the Professor. Stares some more. "You're not...here to arrest me?"
"If I call you 'Robo Grandmaster', will you grab the fucking suitcase and hustle before someone else show up to do that?" Moonstone grates.
Hazel stands, makes her distinctly wobbly way across the apartment, and grabs the suitcase. "Hazel," she mutters, not sure she's audible, not sure she wants to be, and lets herself be herded out of her apartment, out of the building, into a shitty busted Toyota, and driven away.
"Oh no," she says suddenly, nearly twenty minutes later, suddenly latching onto a detail, any detail, in any way that makes any sense. "You're not going to dissect me, are you?"
"I'm going to start fucking chain-smoking, is what I am," Moonstone says. "No. I'm going to put you up on my couch until I figure out — something else. You'll probably fucking wish I dissected you."
"I'd let you," Hazel says bravely, and Moonstone's knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.
"Give me fucking strength," she says under her breath.
