Chương 26: Interlude: The Artist

There was someone knocking on the door. That was very odd, because Leah wasn't expecting anyone. She'd told all her friends and crèche-sisters that she needed some private time.

They had—not unreasonably—initially interpreted that as her trying to build karaoke equipment again, and she had to clarify that she would be experimenting with chemicals and she didn't want to have to keep getting in and out of safety gear to answer the door, or to answer the door in safety gear, or be distracted by the door when she was mixing something. It had been the first real lie she had ever told, and she didn't like how easily it had come to her.

Though there was some comfort in knowing that the stomach-churning guilt of deceiving those closest to her was perfectly normal. Kaede had felt the same way when she'd lied to her parents. The difference was Kaede had done so for a good reason, while Leah… well, she was doing so because she was engaging in nefarious, criminal activity.

For the first time in her life, she actually felt like the supervillain everyone said she was: a despicable and cowardly person For a moment, she considered ignoring the knocking and pretend she wasn't home. Then she sighed, carefully put down the cleaning equipment she was using—but kept her mask and apron on—and went to see who it was. Hunter was talking to friends on the internet at the moment, and she didn't want to interrupt them to ask them to do a ping.

Opening the door, she found herself looking at a familiar face. Of course, everyone was a familiar face. They all had the same one, after all. The clothes were completely unfamiliar, as was the hair.

"Hi! May I help you?" Leah said with a helpfulness that was only 89% sincere. She was becoming such a liar.

"Uh, hi. I'm Nora. A-are you Leah?" the girl asked, looking nervous and uncertain. She was wearing a beret on her dark-orange hair, which was gathered into a tail at the nape of her neck, and she wore a yellow shirt under a slightly oversized vest with many pockets. Her legs were covered by a what at first looked like a skirt, but on a second glance was a red umanori hakama, with some comfortable sneakers just visible under them.

At her hip was a holstered gun that on a second look wasn't the usual pistol, miniature railgun, laser weapon, or plasma blaster, but was actually a freeze ray. While the holster looked well-worn and long-used, the gun it was carrying was newer and looked like it had been recently fabricated. In her hands was a slightly beat up hardcase with spots of paint on it.

For some reason, there seemed to be a very thick growth of hair on her upper lip, thick enough to make what her memories from Kaede identified as a moustache.

"Meiko told me to come here and help you with restoring a piece of artwork?" Leah had done her best to not make any judgements based on the beret, because that would be close-minded stereotyping, and all that effort felt wasted as the girl in front of her just went and basically admitted she was an artistic type. Also, weren't they supposed to be keeping the fact they had a stolen statue in Leah's garage a secret?

"Did she tell you exactly what the artwork was?" Leah asked. The girl in front of her looked even more nervous, actually looking over her shoulder as if she expected Metro Rangers patrolling the street, before leaning forward and lowering her voice.

"She said it was a… a statue…" That last was almost inaudible. Leah hummed, a non-committal sound. She vaguely felt the minor shift in Hunter as her buddy pulled their attention away from online stuff and to the here and now as they and the girl's buddy exchanged pings.

"And you're here now… why? I mean, if you know what kind of statue it was, you know what Meiko did." Nora looked over her shoulder again, and Leah had to stop herself from yelling 'Stop looking suspicious!'. Then she reached down to pat the freeze ray at her hip.

"This is Glacial Maxima. He's one of the surviving Mass Production Models."" Hello…" a surprisingly soft voice said. It gave the impression of someone young and shy… and also male, as Kaede's memories supplied. Leah looked at the two and sighed.

"Come on in." Well, she supposed this was for the best. She could clean shit, but she really didn't have a lot of skill at painting. It just wasn't her artform. For all that she disliked being called a supervillain, Leah found some pride in the fact that she was called 'Songstress'. … now if only people would stop saying she sang badly! Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences." This is painful to look upon,"Glacial Maxima said, his voice quiet and just a little cold."

To think that the eldest sister would be forgotten like this…"

"Sorry," Leah said, feeling secondhand guilt." I don't blame you, little sister," the old buddy said." I am equally at fault for also forgetting her. If anything, you have my thanks for returning some of her dignity."

"Well, there's still a lot of dignity to return," Leah said.

"So until then, I don't think you can really do any… art… restoration… things."

"Really?" Nora said, peering closely at the statue.

"It already looks pretty clean."

"Cleaned, yes. Completely cleaned? Not yet. There's still staining on all the colors. If you're going to be repainting her, it's going to need to be scrubbed completely, or else whatever paint you use might just peel off. See here?" She pointed under the statue's chin.

"I scrapped off some of the paint with a knife there. That's the color it's supposed to be." Nora frowned before her eyes glowed slightly, and a ball of venn materialized from her hand and flew toward the statue and the indicated spot. Leah guessed some kind of vennwave clairvoyance spell.

"Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, there's still a lot to clean up, although not all of it is likely to be dirt. I'm pretty sure someone gave it a pass to make her skin look lifelike. If you cleaned too much, you might have rubbed that out." Oh. Now that she mentioned it, that made sense. Why wouldn't a life-sized statue be painted to look realistic instead of just having some base color?

"I supposed that means I'm going to need to do scans after every cleaning now to make sure I don't start rubbing off paint." Nora opened her mouth, then paused in that way everyone did when you and your buddy were having a private conversation. Leah waited patiently, using the moment to take stock of how much cleaning solution she still had left.

"No… no, losing a little out paint should be fine, so long as you don't get down all the way to the base color. The problem is the parts that lost all their paint and got the underlying rock exposed. You can't clean that chemically, the solutions might seep in and affect the paint around it." Ah.

"Um, I might have already cleaned there a bit…"

"Well, don't continue," Nora said, fingers stroking her fake moustache.

"We'll need to carefully sand it to get off the outer layer to expose new rock and then carefully repaint everything. Can you wait for a few hours? I can mix up a solution to go over the rock to keep cleaning solutions out so there isn't any further damage."

"I can move to cleaning other places," Leah said.

"There's a lot of statue still dirty." Nora pursed her lips, but nodded.

"All right… that should be fine as long as it's not more exposed rock." Then she flushed.

"S-sorry! I just realized I'm being very rude."

"Just a little bit," Leah agreed. After all, they'd just met today. Sisters or not, they were still practically strangers.

"H-how about I stop to get dinner too?" Nora suggested.

"As an apology? What do you like?"

"Menudo," Leah said instantly as her body reminded her that she seemed to have missed a meal at some point. Checking with Hunter, she was surprised to learn it was three in the afternoon. No wonder she was so hungry.

"Big sis Nayding at the public house near the maker labs is willing to cook it most days."

"Then I'll get some of that! And over dinner we can talk about…" She waved an embarrassed hand towards the statue.

"That sounds like a plan," Leah said. She paused, then held out her hand.

"Hi Nora. I'm Leah, and this is Hunter. People call me the criminally insane supervillain, the Songstress. It's very nice to meet you." Nora blinked, then hesitantly took the proffered hand. Her grip confident and strong, all the indicators of an honest person.

"Nice to meet you, Leah. Sorry for just… dropping in."

"It's fine. The little sister can be annoyingly persuasive." The artist looked at her, and seemed to come to a decision.

"People call me a criminally insane supervillain too," she quietly.

"They call me the Graffitist." Leah stared. In hindsight, the bizarre facial hair should have been a clue.

"The one who kept adding moustaches, beards and eyebrows to all those art emplacements?"" Improving art emplacements!" Nora insisted with all the dignity of someone who was absolutely sure in what she was saying, even if other people said differently.

"Most people are lazy cowards who can't be bothered to spend any effort on the portrayal of facial hair!"" Ahem," Glacial Maxima vocalized.

"Ah, not that I intend to make any changes to Nikaede's statue," Nora said hastily, awkwardly pulling back her hand and saving Leah the awkwardness of doing the same as she realized she'd been shaking hands with a crazy person.

"No, this is going to be a restoration! Although maybe just a little detail on her eyebrows…?"" Just paint, no gluing on fake hair,"her buddy declared with a tone of finality and fondness." Consider it a test of your skills in working with a limited medium."

"Yes, big brother." She turned her attention back to Leah.

"Well, I'll get going. Do you prefer rice or notrice?"

"Ah, either will do," Leah said. She resisted the urge to give her an awkward wave.

"I'll see you later, then…" Nora gave a hesitant smile.

"Sure! I look forward to working with you, sister!"" Thank you for this, little sister Leah. Nikaede would have been grateful that you're doing this for her sake," Glacial Maxima said.

"Even though this is basically criminal behavior?" Leah said skeptically. There was a vocalized chuckle." Kaede and Nikaede did a lot of criminal things in their time. Some of them are there in your head. They would say you come by it honestly." Leah… wasn't sure how to feel about that.