Avion Symphony, Chapter Two

The explosion scorched Villanelle’s fair hair out of existence, shredding her school uniform and knickers then blowing to fragments the flesh beneath. Smoke cleared to reveal a robot which 4-H-N this time did know. It would indeed have been difficult for her to forget, but as it had also tried to annihilate Chester that probably went double for him. Good thing he was here, or 4-H-N would never have been able to picture the look on her own face.

“Well, well, well,” Fuselage sneered. “It seems I have a little sister.”

“I’m your big sister,” the other corrected her. “Daddy built me first. Just before he lowered his design standards.”

Seeing them together it was clear enough they’d sprung from the same blueprint, for their large elliptical heads were the same and so too the talons and shoulder-guards and cylindrical limb-hinges. 4-H-N supposed she should have guessed right away who the world had to thank for Fuselage. It wasn’t so much this, as the occurrence of the word “Daddy” that knocked her for yet another loop.

Fluorescent green rendered lurid those black woodland hollows sunshine couldn’t touch as Villanelle, if the robot that had been beneath her schoolgirl semblance truly was she, extended a rod of solidified light from either side of her left wrist. Fuselage did likewise, only she had two. And she was twice Villanelle’s size.

There was no time for 4-H-N to even check whether Chester had taken the latter’s advice and made it out of this mess, for as the instrumental kicked in and electric guitars soared, so too did electric combatants. In the breath which neither of them had needed to take they were far above the treetops, their luminous shafts describing blurry hyperbole then locking together like axes. Next second wrists were revolving on perpetual three-sixty spins and giant circles replaced rods, these trailing huge tubes across the summer sky. Swinging their stupendous shields the robots proceeded to bash away at each other’s bolts, until a brutal blow from Fuselage parted the pair and propelled them groundward.

Villanelle alighted in the branches of a tree, retracting one weapon while her rocket-launcher flipped from its compartment and calibrated itself with her line of sight. Fuselage however had already gained the forest floor, landing splayed on both toecaps and a palm. The protuberance like an upside-down ponytail on the back of her head summarily spat a surface-to-air missile which blasted Villanelle’s vantage-point to splinters.

According to Kitty, Fuselage had always adapted that fast. It had been by far her most dangerous attribute. Villanelle, recovering, raised the miniature machine-gun on her forearm and let rip with plasma-pellets. 4-H-N however was already shaking her head. Personal experience had taught her well enough that those things stung human skin, but they weren’t intended to be armour-piercing.

It seemed to 4-H-N in fact that any robot would struggle, fighting a faster and larger later upgrade of itself. She didn’t see how Villanelle could win.

Only then did it dawn on her.

Villanelle knew she couldn’t.

That was when a merely bizarre dream became a downright bad one.

Fuselage moved in for the kill, and 4-H-N could barely watch as she went about her work. Here computerized efficiency was cousin to carnage. Chunks wrenched from Villanelle’s chassis began to fly, until Fuselage turned with elbow out-thrust as to dig her adversary in the ribs and deployed again her light-staff. Its blunt butt tore into Villanelle, opening a rent which disgorged what looked like half her essential wires and cables in a twisty jumbled mass.

Clenching Villanelle’s neck-assembly in her other talon Fuselage lifted her with one arm, that she dangled limp spilling oily flux and trailing severed cords. The second wrist-rod was all set to punch its way straight through her chromium skull.

Then Fuselage rotated her own head, pinning optic sensors on something behind 4-H-N.

All that’s left to do is run? Apparently Chester didn’t think so. For there he was, document-pouch in hand.

“You were ready to kill me for this information,” he said to Fuselage, his tone level. “Now how about we make a different deal? Spare her, and it’s yours.”

Wow. Villanelle wasn’t the only former classmate on whom 4-H-N was rapidly revising her opinions. Maybe half the girls she’d known back then had had a point.

“Fuselage is on a clock too,” Kitty whispered to her. “She needs that data bad, way more than she’s let on. Gotta be the only thing that saved them both.”

4-H-N guessed so. Even a machine as malevolent as Fuselage was programmed for expedience, if not mercy. Obligingly she relaxed her claw, dumping the tangled wreck of Villanelle by her feet. Chester handed her the pouch. Then in a fiery exhalation of boot-jets Fuselage was gone.

Only in a dream like this would the song still be playing. Chester hurried to where Villanelle lay and, as it were, knelt to the ground.

“Why did you come back?” she asked in a groan.

“Did you think I was going to let you lay down your life for me?” were his words.

“I’m not alive, Chester,” she told him weakly. “Don’t you see that’s why I showed you what I am? So you wouldn’t care?”

There were tears in Chester’s eyes.

“Don’t ever say that,” he begged. “Or at least, say it to someone who doesn’t know you like I do. Remember the can of Coke at the bus stop? Or when you saved my life in the flood? Maybe I can believe every other crazy thing I’ve seen and heard today, but you never having been alive? Not that. Because, Villanelle, in all this time we’ve been together, we’ve…we’ve…”

They’d grown closer. 4-H-N could see that, even without the words. Chester gripped her strange clawed hand tightly in both of his.

“Hang in there, Villanelle,” he implored her. “You’ll pull through. Then…then when you’re well again, I can…I mean, I’ll…”

Seriously, enough with the song. “I’ll talk to your Dad?” 4-H-N didn’t mind admitting that was a conversation she’d have liked to have seen.

Kitty’s college room was reasserting its claim on reality even while Chester continued to kneel by Villanelle’s side, telling her again and again to hold on. The only answers he received were white noise, for Villanelle’s vocal circuitry had by now failed, and for all that she strove after human speech these dying bursts of static were as much as she could muster.

Not that that mattered. It was no mystery to 4-H-N what Villanelle was trying to say.

I love you, and that’s all I really know.

Two hot chocolate cups stood empty. 4-H-N was resting her head on her fingertips.

“So this was just something you thought you’d save for a special occasion, Kitty?” she inquired. “Not only was Villanelle the robot we fought with our yo-yos that lunchtime, but she was also The Baron’s daughter?”

“And she totally had a crush on Chester,” Kitty added, wide-eyed.

“Yes, Kitty, because that’s the most important part,” said 4-H-N. “You’ve not changed.”

“It was, like, huge though,” Kitty declared. “We totally had to be supportive for Freckles, going through a whole tech war already when her brother, you know, sprang that. And of course it was toughest of all on poor Chie,” she finished genuinely.

4-H-N’s response was to reach across the table and take both her friend’s hands in hers.

“I liked Chie,” she told Kitty. “Now let me be heartless and say forget her a minute. What about poor you?”

The smile Kitty returned was not without gratitude, and nor did it fall short of bittersweet. There was however acceptance in it too.

“I was over him by then,” she affirmed. “Meeting his other self from your dimension was totally a help. I kinda like to think he came out of his coma and, you know, got with the alternate me. That way at least one edition of our story ends with us together.”

Not for an instant did 4-H-N doubt Kitty spoke in earnest. Nevertheless, all she could see was the furious little golden-haired girl between whom and Villanelle she’d once had to forcibly interpose her person, lest they come to blows over the latter’s cruelty and insinuations regarding you-know-who. She kept Kitty’s hands in hers.

“You’d have made him very happy,” said 4-H-N. “And we were all rooting for you. Even though we used to tell you there wasn’t a chance.”

When Kitty heard these words, 4-H-N thought the impossible achieved. She truly was more radiantly lovely than she had ever been.

Then, as they always did, they said their goodbyes until next time.

END OF CHAPTER TWO