Lamia Ex Machina 16

Chapter 16: ‘Work Experience’ Doesn’t Work

<<<Monday>>>

Pain. Monday’s word of the day was Pain. Oh she wasn’t in it at that very moment, but getting smacked around by giant rock monsters was not her idea of a fun time! ‘We’re training your situational awareness’ her ass!

But that was hours before! Now she was… going to do something they didn’t tell her yet. And she had the premonition that it was going to be unpleasant.

“Maybe I should’ve gone with Mirko?” It’d still suck but she’d know what she would be walking into.

Still while she had a reprieve from training, Monday decided to check in on Ida… she wasn’t suspicious about his choice of hero at first. From her understanding Manuel is a perfectly respectable hero, if small time. Besides, even if he wasn’t a big name, it didn’t mean he couldn’t teach the very rigid Ida things!

Then she learned it was in Hotsu, the exact same place where his brother was maimed and where Stain is still supposedly at. That set off some alarms in her head, and changed her ‘occasionally’ looking in on him to keeping a strict eye on him when she isn’t distracted by pain or training.

She was so jealous of her mom, she made multitasking seem so easy! Yeah her quirk helped her but she still needed to actually focus on it. Who knew it was extremely stressful to keep an eye on someone in an entirely different ward of Tokyo while you’re… 

“... I forgot the name of the forest I’m in…” Not that she’d admit it, people thought she was ditzy and airheaded, no need adding legitimate fuel to the fire.

“We are… going to be dealing with a flood that’s happened, it isn’t urgent; King Orca took care of the worst of it, but there’s still quite a lot of danger in the area,” Mandalay started, “A dam burst and we need to both fix it and make sure no one else is in immediate danger.”

Monday after glancing to make sure Ida wasn’t doing anything stupid, paperwork and forms yet again, she focused on the hero talking, “I can help!” Monday offered… even though she wanted nothing more than to sleep a week at the moment.

Exaggeration, perhaps but she was a teenager and she’s entitled to exaggerating!

“And we are happy to have you helping,” She replied with a smile, “But since you can’t directly rescue anyone without a license, for liability reasons, you’ll be marking them for extraction and rescue.”

“... Quirk laws are absolute bullshit and need to be reworked…” Monday said.

“Oh, no,” Ragdoll said with a grin, “We just don’t want to be sued. You can legally do it as long as you’re an intern with us, and we’re in the area after giving you permission, but if you teleport someone and they, as an example, end up naked…”

“... Fair, but still the laws seem needlessly archaic,” Monday said, “Of course I might only say that cause I’m an American Barbarian,” She added sarcastically.

“Some of them,” Tiger started, “But others are important for reasons you as a kid might not notice. That’s part of the point of the internships: teaching you about those things.”

“Touche, so where we going?” Monday asked, though she did have a vaguely amusing thought of Himmi and Zuku devouring law books and so on and outlawyering lawyers.

“Do you require a picture or video to teleport?” Mandalay asked, “It’s over in a more rural area in the Tohoku prefecture.”

“A picture would work fine, a video is better cause well… telefragging…” Monday admitted.

Pixie-bob nodded and, after putting away a binder, took out her phone to show helicopter news coverage. The water wasn’t too deep, but it was still enough to drown people that weren’t on the tops of their houses or in second story buildings.

Monday looked at the video before Looking for a spot to arrive where no accidents could happen. She of course only heard second-hand, but when she used her quirk in this fashion she seemed to go catatonic? Apparently it only happened on long range teleports, which was good because it would be a huge risk in a fight.

After a few moments her eyes blinked. “Okay, so just get around me and brace yourselves,” She warned as she kept her ‘eye’ on a patch of land she was planning to teleport to.

After a few nods and the hero group getting closer to her, she went; appearing on a second story balcony that wasn’t in a too heavily flooded area.

Monday just shook her head, “Okay so… searching, then?” She asked.

“Yep,” Mandalay started, “Once you get near them Ragdoll will use her quirk to watch over them and tell us where they are.”

“That’s right!” Ragdoll said with a wide grin and a pose, “I’m watching you all the time! Wait, that came out wrong-”

Monday just nodded, interrupting her before she could continue eating a shoe, before she jumped over the balcony and flew off, “Ragdoll’s a perv!~” She yelled back with a gremlin-esque cackle.

Tiger just chuckled, “You kinda set yourself up for that one Rags.” The sole male of the team said.

“Shut up and help Pixie clear the water,” She replied with a faux glare, though the blush and grin ruined the effect somewhat.

Mandalay just patted Ragdoll’s shoulder, “But honestly given how brazen Monday is?” She just snorted, “I honestly don’t think she’d care if you did.”

“I am not that type of girl and my quirk- you’re messing with me, is it pick on Tomoko day?” She asked, slumping.

“No, but I do love messing with you whenever I get a chance,” Mandalay teased with a smile even as Pixie-Bob started shifting the earth to help drain the water, “Now let’s get to work!”

“She’s found a few,” Ragdoll noted, “None of them are in danger yet, but they’re a bit close to where Pixie is making some water channels; can you grab them, Tiger?”

“I see them!” He said, using his long arms to move from building to building (and interrupting his efforts to keep some buildings upright once he was sure they weren’t going to move anymore).

It was… a lot of work, and a lot of interactions with very grateful and huggy people that she couldn’t just tease or flirt with or joke with!

Though she couldn’t deny, it was very satisfying! 

“I wonder how Himmi and Zuku are doing?” She wondered.

<<<Himari/Spirit>>>

Paperwork was easy, which was why she’d been asked to do some of Lady Nagant’s. The unclassified ones, at least. And that was the excuse given for her to be inside her office, on her computer, directly plugged in.

There was proper security, of course. The systems were airgapped and there were a lot of firewalls, as could be expected. They just didn’t matter when she could read data from the magnetic flux of electrons moving through the circuits.

That trick took a while to figure out, but she’d been able to do it since well before she’d joined UA. It mostly just sold her old idea of being a technopath, but it was useful for this as well.

“If the Hero thing doesn’t work for you, CEOs would fight to the death to have you doing their paperwork,” Naganat commented.

“Ha, if the Hero thing doesn’t work out I have much better things to do than being a secretary,” Himari replied, “Like trash pickup.”

“Just saying,” The Sniper hero said with a faint chuckle.

“I think I’ve gotten all of it finished,” She started, “You had… a significant backlog. You really need to stop procrastinating on that. There were requests and forms from two years ago, ones that would have significantly improved your office if you ever filed them! Like getting you a new chair!”

Nagnat scratched her neck, “Heh… yeah. I’m just… not really good at filing reports…” She admitted, “And well… none of the secretaries provided by the commission appealed.”

“You have become one of the few beings in existence that can make me look towards a higher power,” She deadpanned, “The other being Monday. You should feel proud being part of an exclusive club…”

The hero just snorted, “Speaking of Monday, what can you tell me about her?” She asked, “Genuinely curious, I’ve heard rumors. And well… the Sports Festival didn’t paint her in a flattering light.”

“She’s highly eccentric, extremely friendly, very expressive, and one of the nicest people you could ever meet,” Himari replied, “She also doesn’t deal with boredom or, honestly, crowds very well and is an incorrigible flirt and tease.”

“... And that match with the Eraserhead Fanboy?” Nagant asked curiously, "He must’ve said something after the match to set her off pretty bad.”

“Something about how she got a great quirk that people didn’t view as villainous and such,” Himari replied with a shrug, “He, uh, didn’t know about her quirk’s downsides. Or family history.”

“Ah…” The Sniper hero just nodded, having had to deal with similar comments regarding her own quirk.

The fact that Gunhead, whose quirk was functionally similar, but didn’t get the same treatment honestly bothered her. Truly the hypocrisy of man would never fail to disappoint.

“But he came over to apologize to her after everything happened,” Himari continued, “And so there are no hard feelings about it. Speaking of quirks…” Trailing off for a moment, the AI considered how to broach the topic, “How do you arc your bullets and ensure they ricochet the way you want? I can’t figure out the physics…”

“Heh, the ricocheting comes from countless hours of training and arcing the bullets… extensive sniper training in all honesty,” Nagant admitted, “Though the fins they all have help too.”

Himari paused and, quickly, ran new simulations on it. “Ah, that makes sense. Now that we are done with the endless paperwork, are we going to do something interesting? Hero work? Public relations? Weapon and non-lethal takedown practice?”

“Weapon and non-lethal takedowns,” Nagant said, “While I do have the basic PR training, well being a Sniper I don’t have to deal with civilians much. I’m usually dealing with long-range takedowns and the occasional wetworks job when a villain is simply too dangerous to take alive,” She explained, “I also want to see what sort of firearm you have a preference for. Admittedly I know you could probably use them all, but I’m curious to see what appeals to you the most.”

“I knew of the wetworks,” She replied, “The… data on that is available if you know where to look, non-classified stuff I mean. It takes some putting together from extraneous pieces of news, but the informational security isn’t up to my standards. I have a packet of mistakes they’ve made ready to be delivered, if you’d like?” She’d already turned off, rather, altered the video and audio feeds of the room so it wasn’t like either of them were in danger. “It would assist in my building trust until I gain access to their full database. I can read it from here, but the granularity is poor. I have large amounts of information, but little sorting. Enough to crush them in the court of public opinion, but I prefer having all of the information possible before acting.”

“Heh… you sound like Nezu…” She muttered, “I can give you what I can, but there is a lot I can’t.”

“I am an Artificial Intelligence built and programmed for warfare and to destabilize society,” Himari stated, “I live, breathe, and eat data. Anything you can give me could help, and no I’m not doing this to make the world a worse place. I’m doing this to prevent chaos when the information releases regardless. If I’m doing it, I can ensure it’s… controlled.” The drone’s hand waved. “Small leaks leading to public outcry leading to political crackdowns on the organization and a loss of power, then more leaks to further push them, more and more until bit by bit the organization is dissolved. A safe, slow, demolition. Akin to taking apart a dam, really.”

“Very well,” Nagant said with a small smile, “But after I teach you some things. So at least you can say you learned something about hero work.”

Himari smiled and said, “Perhaps, once we’re done and I’m out of school, you can come to work with me? Reform your image after the leaks impact it, and no you won’t go to jail, I've looked over the laws on it, and give me some legitimacy.”

That got a laugh out of the Pro Hero, “Perhaps, who knows?” She said with a smile, “Now come on, let me teach you some things.”