Chương 198: Book 3 Chapter 34.1: Art Lovers

"You know, I have very few regrets," Lee said.

"But if I'd known I would be cutting them off, I would've spent much more of my parents money this year." She'd been relatively frugal, all things considered. Lee had flung a hundred thousand dollars or so at various charities, as she always did, and then spent a few thousand more on meals, apocalypse prevention supplies, and other miscellaneous costs. Had she known that funding would be cut off, she would've thrown quite a bit more money at charities, and a bit more at her own needs as well.

"It's a shame," Kanya said.

"I never worked up the courage to ask for a new grappling hook."

"We have a spare, if you want one," Vell said, all too casually.

"I'll check it out and see if it passes muster," Kanya said. Though she had not flexed her skills in a while, Kanya loved heists and infiltrations, which grappling hooks were great for.

"Maybe tomorrow. I should get going for now." The loopers and their friends were trying to squeeze in more group dinners before the end of the year testing schedules overwhelmed them all. They still had some time before the countdown started in earnest, but the pressure was sinking in, especially among the seniors. Vell started to help Harley and Lee clean up as everyone else went their separate ways -though not entirely separate.

"Hey, Kim, wait- wait up!" Kim paused in her tracks long enough for Himiko to catch up.

"Sorry, robot legs," Kim said. She never got tired, so when Kim wasn't walking with other people, she was usually moving at a rapid pace.

"What's up?"

"Just wanted to talk for a bit," Himiko said. She looked red in the face already, and sounded out of breath.

"See what's up. Ask what you're doing tomorrow night."

"Not much, hopefully," Kim said. There was always a chance apocalypse prevention could take all day.

"Why, you trying to put together another dinner?"

"Sort of," Himiko said.

"Less of a group thing, more of a you and me thing."

"Got another arm idea?" Though Harley was Kim's usual contact for any improvements to her robotic body, she occasionally let other robotics-savvy friends do some poking around. Himiko sighed and shook her head, as the metallic fingers of her prosthetic tensed nervously.

"Let me just suck it up and make this clear," Himiko said.

"I'm asking you on a date." Kim's facial screen went blue for a second, and then shifted into a completely blank, dead screen.

"Uh, really? Is that, uh, I mean, I don't really have, you know-" Kim knocked on her metallic chest, making a ringing sound. She had noticed a few wayward glances and some blushing from Himiko last year, when she'd had a meatier body, but Kim had assumed all of that would stop after going fully robotic.

"I kind of figured nobody's really interested in heavy metal," Kim said.

"I can't say it's not... odd, in the physical sense," Himiko said.

"I liked the way you used to look, yeah, but I like you too. And I didn't want to graduate without at least saying so." Kim turned her entire supercomputer brain towards the concept of a date. She hadn't been particularly inclined towards romance before (barring her partially magically influenced fling with Vell), and had almost entirely given up on them after embracing robotic existence.

As she had quickly learned, there was no shortage of people who wanted to fuck a robot, but that attraction was mostly on a fetishistic level. Himiko, on the other hand, Kim trusted enough to acknowledge that the attraction was genuine. That left the question of how Kim felt about her, along with some other minor issues.

"Uh, how do I put this... Himiko, you're attractive, and very charming," Kim said.

"But…"

"Not interested?"

"No, I mean, sort of, maybe," Kim said.

"It's just that I'm functionally immortal, never eat, never sleep, never get sick, think one-hundred times faster than you, and just on a purely logistical level, I don't have lips. Or genitals."

"Those last two things are optional," Himiko said.

"I'm not-""I know," Kim said, before they got any deeper into genitalia discussion.

"I'm not saying no. Just that this is a lot to think about, and I haven't really done the thinking."

"Yeah. Yeah, I get it," Himiko said.

"Take your time. No pressure. I just had to get this off my chest, mostly."

"Cool. I'll get back to you," Kim said.

"Also, I have no idea how to end this conversation casually, so I'm going to sprint away at top speed."

"Please do." She did. Himiko saw the barest glimpse of a metallic blur as Kim sprinted away as fast as her mechanical body would allow.

"Damn it, that's hot too," Himiko mumbled to herself. The fact that Kim did not need to eat reared its ugly head first thing in the morning, as she sat with the other loopers for breakfast. While they ate and drank, she sat on the sidelines wondering what to do with her hands. The mismatch of conversational conventions didn't bother her, exactly, but she felt it created an imbalance that might be unhealthy for a relationship, and she expressed as much to her friends.

"I think you've definitely got a point," Vell agreed.

"But it doesn't have to be a big deal."

"It's not really a big deal," Kim said.

"Just one of many smaller deals that add up, and are also added on to the very, very big deal of me presumably watching Himiko and everyone else grow old and die."

"Yeah, yeah, the curse of immortality," Harley said.

"We're all aware of your impending existential nightmare, do you have to drop that kind of bummer at breakfast? I want to contemplate my pancakes, not the nature of my mortality."

"It's relevant," Kim protested.

"But maybe I just need to suck it up. It could be decades before I've got other AI to interact with. I need some kind of relationships in the meantime."

"If you'd like a lower pressure environment to experiment, I did have a date with Chrissy planned later today," Lee said.

"We could do a double date."

"That doesn't end well, historically," Kim said, with a pointed glance at Vell.

"Everything was going fairly well until the ghost army showed up," Lee said, in defense of her and Vell's disastrous double-date attempt last year.

"And that wasn't even our fault."

"That said, I will now be bowing out," Vell said. He had a complicated history with any form of relationship drama.

"I'm going to go lock myself in my room for the rest of the day. Let me know when the dates are done or if I need to do some apocalypse stuff."

"Will do," Lee said.

"Have a nice day, Vell."

"You too," Vell said, as he started to walk away at a brisk pace. He turned around and paused for one second before retreating.

"Also, Lee, hate to say it, I don't really think the haircut is working for you." Like many loopers before her, Lee had made use of the first loop to try out a new look. She had cropped her long black hair into a short pixie cut. She nervously brushed a hand along her head, but did not have time to respond before Vell fled entirely. Though not quite as fast as Kim, Vell could still book it when he wanted to. Lee frowned slightly and then got back to business.

"I'll ask Chrissy if she's open to a double date, just in case," Lee said.

"But do take your time to think about it. These are big questions you're dealing with, even absent that whole looming specter of immortality situation" She turned to leave, and instinctively brushed her hand by her shoulders, to correct the position of long hair she no longer had. Lee rubbed her short hair and turned back to the group.

"Is the haircut really that bad?"

"It's not bad," Hawke said.

"It's just…"

"You're not butch, Lee," Harley said flatly.

"Give it time, it might grow on us." As Lee and her ill-fitting hairstyle retreated, Kim got back to business. Samson was having breakfast with his brother, so that Hawke and Harley as her advisors, which she didn't mind at all. Hawke knew her better than anyone, and Harley knew relationships better than anyone.

"What do you guys think?"

"I think you need more time to think about this," Hawke said.

"This is a big ask-""Fuck it," Harley said.

"What?"

"Fuck it," Harley repeated.

"You have literally nothing to lose. You go on a date on the first loop, the whole thing'll be erased from the timeline. You keep dating and things go sideways later, Himiko's graduating in a few weeks anyway. You stick it out longer than that and things still go bad, good news! You're going to outlive the entire population of currently living humans. You can literally fuck this up as badly as possible and you'll live to see the day no one alive will even remember it."

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. Harley took a very dramatic bite out of her waffles and slammed her fork down.

"Fuck it."

"That's... a good point, actually," Hawke said.

"I guess," Kim said.

"Might as well give it a try."

"I think I have to agree," Himiko said.

"You can't pull off the butch look."

"I'm not even trying to," Lee said. While her new haircut was not pulling its weight as a fashion choice, it was making a good conversation starter.

"It's just short." She nervously toyed with what little hair she had left and turned to her date.

"Chrissy, what do you think?" The gorgon already never made direct eye contact with anyone, but she still averted her gaze.

"I don't think I'm qualified to answer that," she mumbled.

"I can't exactly get a haircut." The snakes on her head hissed at the very suggestion. Chrissy technically could get a haircut, but it would be a rather more permanent arrangement, in her case. And a bitier one.

"Me neither," Kim said, tapping her perfectly smooth metal head.

"You've got interchangeable parts, though," Chrissy said.

'That counts for something."

"True. Anyone want a coffee, by the way?"

"Not from the machine in your chest," Lee said.

"I don't even have that installed today," Kim said.

"I was just offering. I'm just sitting around watching you guys eat, figure I could make myself useful and grab some drinks or something." Kim had gotten used to sitting on the sidelines with the loopers morning chats and friendly dinners, but the more intimate environment of the date was making her much more self-conscious about the lack of activity on her part.

"Ah. Well, I'm good on coffee either way."

"Alright. The line looks pretty long anywa- uh oh." Lee rolled her eyes, while their two non-looper dates just looked alarmed. Seconds later, they started to look even more alarmed as a twenty-story tall goliath clutching a bloody corpse dove through the dining hall windows. With a roar of grief and fury, the titan lumbered through the dining hall as students began to scatter, and then took a bite of the corpse in its hands.

Lee had seen a handful of cannibalistic giants in her time, but this one was unique in how grim it looked. It had odd, misshapen anatomy, and was built from broad strokes of dark grey and fleshy brown, with a smattering of blood red.

"What the hell is that?" Chrissy was taking cover behind the table while the other three examined their quarry.

"I believe that is Saturn Devouring His Son, by Francisco Goya," Lee said. She'd gotten acquainted with the painting, among other works of art, during her time dating Adele last year.

"It's a classic painting."

"Why is it alive and wrecking shit?"

"Excellent question," Lee said.

"And one we will answer later. First things first: Kim, if you wouldn't mind taking the lead?" Kim demonstrated her incredible speed yet again by dashing across the dining hall and clocking Saturn in the kneecap. The grim goliath buckled and let out a groan of pain as Kim brought it down, a groan that ended when Kim cracked it across the skull as well.

"Ugh. It's smearing," Kim said. She had paint all over her knuckles. In spite of the colorful splatter, Kim delivered one kick to the neck of the fallen titan, just to make sure it stayed down. The painted titan twitched a few times, but stayed on the ground. Lee knew better than to think that was the end of the disasters. She stood up and looked out the window, and saw more people running across campus in the distance.

"I believe we have an ongoing problem," Lee said.

"Kim, would you mind going on patrol?"

"Got it," Kim said, with a sharp salute.

"Himiko, going to have to take a rain check for now."

"Fuck you are," Himiko said.

"I want to punch a painting too." Kim looked back at the dead titan, and then at the significantly smaller Himiko.

"Okay, probably a smaller painting than that one," Himiko said.

"But still."

"Alright, you've got dibs on anything shorter than me," Kim said.

"Come on, let's go." The two sprinted off, metal fists at the ready, while Lee examined the carnage left behind. She started through the first few motions of a spell before remembering to look over her shoulder.

"Chrissy, are you alright?" Her only answer was silence.

"Chrissy?" Lee turned around, and found only an empty room behind her.

"I know it's lethal and all, but I can't believe she just ran off without saying anything," Lee said.

"We can't expect everybody to put up with this stuff," Harley said.

"More Bosch, on your left." Lee turned sharply and blasted a few skittering creatures. The campus was close to overrun by paintings that had come to life, and while most of them were simply very confused medieval to renaissance humans, a small portion were highly disruptive, destructive, or just plain upsetting. Lee had seen some animated H. R. Giger art that would be haunting her for weeks to come.

"I didn't expect her to suddenly be willing to fight for the death or anything, but a quick shout, at least," Lee said.

"What if this was an actual disaster and she'd just left me to my death?"

"Well don't be too hard on her," Harley said.

"Chrissy does know you're super good at this kind of stuff."

"Still, a basic courtesy goodbye," Lee said.

"Alright, alright, I can tell you're not budging about this," Harley said.

"But you might want to take a deep breath and cool down."

"I'll be fine."

"Will you?" Harley stopped and popped open the door to the art department's central gallery. A few blank canvases and a single magical sphere sat at the center of the room, watched over by Adele. Lee's ex.

"Oh, right."

"Did you seriously forget?" With an art-centric apocalypse, Adele had been the first thing on Harley's mind, and she wasn't the one who'd dated her.

"I think it's less that I forgot and more that I actively repressed it, dear," Lee said. She'd even thought of Adele earlier and not made the connection, somehow.

"Would you be mad at me if I left?"

"Yes." Lee nodded and stepped forward into the lab. Since Adele was still quite deaf, she did not hear them approach until Harley announced their presence, letting the glasses Adele wore turn the words to text. Once she'd read the hello, Adele turned to face them both with a smile on her face.

"Hello, Lee," she signed.

"I was wondering when you'd show up."

"Ah, yes, I suppose I do owe you something of an explanation," Lee said.

"I know, that, I haven't been, uh-" The very loud smack of Harley's hand across Lee's ass interrupted her, as did the resulting jump Lee did as a result of the spank.

"Ow! What the fuck, Harley?"

"Lee, I think she was wondering when you'd show up about the giant killer paintings," Harley said. She was grimacing almost as hard as Adele, and Lee went red in the face.

"Right. Let's focus entirely on that, shall we?"

"Let's," Adele agreed. She gestured towards the center of the room, towards a levitating orb of green light.

"Thankfully, this is pretty simple. We were dealing with some artwork restoration when someone got a little too big for their britches and tried a fancy magic ritual to clean them up." Museums the world over often borrowed Einstein-Odinson facilities for their restoration work, since their tools, and their students, were among the best in the world. This was the first time such a procedure had gone apocalyptically wrong, however. Lee examined the magical sphere for a second and nodded along.

It was a very sloppy attempt to integrate a revitalization effect into the spell, which had ended up "vitalizing" the subjects instead; infusing new life rather than refreshing their old state of being.

"I think I know how to fix it," Lee said.

"But it'll require some experimentation. I'll need try to it at least once before I'll be sure I can do it right."

"By 'fix' do you mean put the artwork back?" Adele signed.

"Because we've already irreparably damaged a few too many of the world's most priceless masterpieces."

"Why are there even this many masterpieces in one place to begin with? It feels like a bad idea."

"It's almost summertime so everybody wants their shit restored before school's out and tourists are in," Adele signed.

"I told them it was a bad idea, but nobody listens!"

"To be fair, it's not as if you listen to them," Lee said.

"I always-" Adele's rant stopped as she turned to Lee with a smile on her face and her middle finger extended.

"Oh I hate this guy," Kim said. A colossal cyclops was staring her down, its almost spherical painted head bare but for two ears, bright red lips, and one massive eye dominating the center of the face. It was as unsettling as it was threatening, and made all the worse by the fact the titanic head did not possess any lower body.

It slithered along the ground on its stump of a neck, staring at anything in its path just before crushing it"Blink, motherfucker," Himiko snapped, as she threw something towards the cyclops' eye. It did not blink.

"It's a painting, Himiko, not sure it has eyelids!" Kim sought to test that theory by running towards the cyclops and punching it in the neck. It continued to not blink, but as unsettling as that was, it was not entirely relevant.

"Himiko, I'm going to come down from above," Kim said, pointing to a nearby rooftop.

"You crack it across the chin coming the other way."

"Got it!" Kim dug her fingers into the masonry and climbed to the rooftop as Himiko took position. Though Himiko tightened the straps on her prosthetic before delivering the punch, the sheer impact still tore it from her shoulders. As she and the cyclops both reeled from the twin impacts, Kim jumped down and snatched Himiko out of the way before the cyclops head collapsed to the ground.

"You good?"

"I think I might be done punching for the day," Himiko said, as she rubbed a sore shoulder.

"I'm going to have to ask someone what the hell that one was. Who paints just the head of a cyclops?"

"Odilon Redon," Kim said.

"There was a hill in front of it in the original painting."

"Damn you're smart."

"Not really, I just have google in my brain."

"Oh, right." Himiko finished re-strapping her prosthetic and stood upright, flexing both arms. Her shoulder still hurt, but she was mobile.

"Good to go," she said.

"Go home, I mean. I really got to tap out."

"You've punched more than enough paintings for one day," Kim assured her.

"Let's get you somewhere safe."

"Pardon me." Kim went on alert, and Himiko flexed her metal hand, but they both relaxed when they saw a normal-sized human woman walking in their direction. She looked sheepish, confused, and very familiar.

"Mona Lisa?"

"So I've been told," she said. The gentle face and deep brown robes of the world's most famous painting were recognizable right away, no brain-googling required.

"I don't know why everyone here seems to know me."

"Let's put it this way: you're very famous and very not supposed to be here," Kim said.

"Did you, uh, need something?"

"I was also hoping to go somewhere safe," Mona Lisa said.

"There are all manner of strange beasts, and I do not know where I am, or what is going on. Or what anything is. It is all quite confusing."

"Yeah, don't worry lady, I've been there," Kim said. She had a lot of experience being an artificial life form thrust into a confusing world against her will.

"Come with me, I got you." Kim held out her hand, and Mona Lisa took it, following behind her as Kim took her and Himiko back to the lab.

"Apologies if I am rude, madam, but are there many like you?" Mona Lisa said, as she gripped Kim's hand.

"You are made of... metal, yes?"

"Yes to being made of metal, no to there being more like me."

"Ah. Well then I am glad to have found the only one of you." Kim laughed, Mona laughed, and Himiko very much did not laugh.

"Hey Mona, why do you have legs? That other painting guy didn't have legs, why do you?"

"I don't know. Should I not? Most everyone else seems to have legs, I thought it was normal."

"It's mostly normal," Kim said.

"Some people have no legs, some people have one arm, some people have a titanium exoskeleton. Everyone is different."

"Ooh, how delightful!" Mona Lisa started following a little closer behind Kim, and held her hand even tighter. Himiko was not a jealous person by nature, so feeling jealous now was strange, made even stranger by the fact she was jealous of a five-hundred year old sapient painting.