Chapter Text
First thing the next morning I went straight to the campus with Relaire. If getting her examined was all I had to do to convince Claire I could keep her, then I wasn’t about to waste any time. The halls were quiet this early in the morning. There weren’t too many windows in the school so not a lot of natural light was being let in. This meant the only illumination in the whole building was just the dull, moody LEDs. Somehow the darkness in the halls now seemed less oppressive than during the day when the lights were all on. Maybe it was the calmness of everything. Or maybe it was just the lack of snobby corpo rats scurrying about the halls, but I digress.
Relaire currently had her cloaking device activated. The school may have been empty, sure, but the security cameras were still up and running. Plus, there may have been janitors or staff about. So, it was safer to have Relaire be invisible until we got to the workshop, lest people see military grade equipment wandering the halls. See, we considered going to the ripperdoc clinic where Torrid interrogated me regarding my mental soundness, but typically those are reserved for human use. Little Relaire here was an AI operated drone. As such, the robotics lab was a much better choice.
“Not much further now, Relaire,” I said to my companion who beeped cheerfully in response.
The robotics lab is where cybernetic implants were finetuned and built before being implanted into students. It also doubled as the place where any robots or other mechanical devices could be built or repaired. So yeah, this was undoubtedly our best bet. What was still up in the air, however, was whether or not someone would even be there. I may have come a bit too early. But I did wait for several hours outside the François estate on my first day as housekeeper, so this was child’s play to me. With my fingers crossed, I approached the door to the lab. I heard music coming from inside, faintly playing on a radio. It sounded like Afterlife from what I could hear. A song about two lovers forbidden from being together due to being members of rival gangs. A sort of modern-day Romeo and Juliet in a way. I had heard this song a few times on 89.3 – The Loop. It wasn’t my favorite in their catalogue, that honor had to go to a different tragic love song. But that wasn’t to say Afterlife wasn’t preem as hell! Just that the station has better to offer and… wait, what am I doing? No one cares about my gonkbrained rants! Either way, music implied someone was inside. I went ahead and knocked on the door.
“Huh? Uh… Come in?” a confused voice called from inside.
I opened the door and stepped into the lab. There were shelves of loose wires and metal, half finished projects, and blueprints strewn just about anywhere there was a flat surface. Off to the side there was a massive tarp covering something, probably another abandoned project. There was a desk that had a cup of coffee, a radio, and… wouldn’t you know it? More junk. Damn, I knew workshops could be messy. Hell, mine was too. But this? This was honestly impressive. But not to be outdone was the guy who made this kingdom of trash. There, knelt down working on something under a smaller tarp, was a flaxen-haired boy. The previously introduced Lambert Aurousseau.
“Oh! Rae!” he exclaimed. “C’mon in! I’m just working on a little something.”
Lambert had these big goggles on rimmed with what appeared to be either bronze or copper. He had a black apron on over his white shirt and black pants from his Academy uniform. He was holding a blowtorch in one hand and had a ripperdoc glove on the other. Honestly his whole look struck me as more steampunk than cyberpunk but maybe that’s just his style.
“What is it you need?” he asked.
“Oh, I need you to examine my friend here!”
“Your friend? I don’t see a—” Lambert was cut off by Relaire becoming visible again. “Oh, a… military grade EMP drone?”
“Yes, indeed!” I replied. “It’s an Aurousseau model, so I figured you’d probably be the expert on this. I need her checked up.”
“Ah, sure thing, choom!” Lambert stood up and brushed himself off. “What am I looking at?”
“Well, Miss Claire asked me to have her checked for ‘residual cyberpsychosis’ since she used to belong to that psycho that attacked yesterday.”
“Residual… what?” Lambert clearly was just as baffled by the term as I was, and he was an expert. “I’ll see what I can do.”
I had Relaire crawl up onto the desk so she could be examined. Lambert plugged her into the systems and the computer screens whirred to life, displaying all sorts of diagnostic information on her including model number, charge level, and system status. I watched as the flaxen-haired mechanic flipped through various pages, testing everything he could to get a satisfactory result. However, I was getting quite bored just standing here, so I decided to try and make idle conversation.
“So… what were you working on?” I asked awkwardly. Seriously, how do you talk to people?
“Huh? Ah! Just a project Miss Claire asked of me,” he explained. “I was just putting the finishing touches on it when you came in! She should be here soon to pick it up actually.”
“Maybe I should stick around then?” I said, smirking.
“Maybe you should!” he laughed. “You’re her housekeeper now, aren’t you?”
“As a matter of fact, I am! I get to dote on her every single day!”
“Aha! I’m sure you love that, don’tcha?” clearly word of my love for Claire travels far and wide. “Say hi to my sister for me when you get a chance!”
“Mm? Oh, right, yeah. I can,” I said absent mindedly
As I mentioned before, Lambert was Lene’s twin brother and the similarity was apparent. The two were practically identical, just Lambert had shorter hair and lacked that generous bust his sister sported. I’m sure it didn’t help that this boy had such a feminine air to him. But even then, their personalities were quite different. Lene had a very professional yet chaos loving energy whereas her brother seemed to be a bit of a scatterbrained but brilliant inventor. They both clearly yearned for more in life, though. But hell, who doesn’t?
“Does she… like it there?” Lambert inquired.
“Seems like it!” I replied. “I just don’t get why the François’s, a political family, even have a maid…”
“It’s not like she had much of a choice…” Lambert grumbled
“Mm?”
“Huh? Oh, nothing!” he said, trying to change the subject. “Anyway, your little bot is all clear of whatever nonsense Miss Claire was talking about!”
“Thanks, choom!” I said.
“She’s an older model, sure. But I went ahead and outfitted her with the latest software updates!” Lambert explained. “Peep the LED screen. She can emote now! Show her.”
Relaire’s screen depicted a blue background, upon which there was a bright green emoticon:
^.^
“Oh! Adorable!” I exclaimed. “Miss Claire is sure to love this!”
“That screen is typically used for more militaristic purposes, but I figured you’d enjoy a series of emoticons much more than that!” Lambert exclaimed. “Other than that, there was just a few basic quality of life improvements. Better connection with the parent figure, improved camera and video quality, heightened response times, etcetera.”
“Hm…” I wanted to test this out a bit. “Relaire, sit!”
Relaire sat her rear legs down.
“Relaire, lay down!”
She belly flopped on the ground.
“Spin around!”
Relaire did a spin in place, beeping excitedly.
>.<
“She’s perfect! Thank you so much, Lambert.”
“Anytime, Rae! Any friend of Lene’s is a friend of mine!”
Lambert and I sat playing with Relaire for a bit, making her do little tricks, watching her run around the lab, that kind of thing. We had gotten lost in the silly adorable nature of this little robotic sweetheart that we almost didn’t realize a certain golden-haired goddess had entered the room.
“Ahem!”
“Oh! Miss Claire, sorry about that!” Lambert scrambled to his feet. He invents new robots like Relaire so often you’d forget he can be so scatterbrained. “Rae and I were just—”
“Nevermind what you were doing,” Claire snapped. “Is my commission completed?”
“Oh! Yes!” Lambert walked over to the object he was working on when I had walked in. “You’re gonna deliver this to your choom personally?”
“…Nah I’m right heeeeere!”
Suddenly, there was a shimmer of light next to Claire. Where before there was no one, there now stood a sleepy young girl around our age, whose appearance startled both Lambert and me. This was Catherine Achard. Daughter of NCC Deputy Mayor Clément Achard and, apparently, Claire’s choom. She had messy blonde hair and shining blue eyes that so closely resembled Claire’s one may assume that they were sisters. She wore the typical Academy uniform, but hers was much more unkempt than most. However, the most noticeable detail about her, besides her evident optical camo implant, was that she was missing her left leg and she walked on crutches. This struck me as particularly odd. As the daughter of a prominent corporate family and living in a world where cybernetic enhancements are abundant, why did Catherine not have a prosthetic? I was sure there was a reason and… well, we’ll get there, won’t we?
“Ah! Miss Catherine!” Lambert exclaimed. “I’ve got your chair right here!”
Lambert pulled the tarp off his project to reveal… a wheelchair. I was certain you could buy these at any Spiritual Health center around the world, so I wondered why Claire had gone out of her way to custom commission one for her. What was so special about this design that warranted the request? I didn’t have to wonder for long, because Lambert answered that question for me.
“Check it!” Lambert went straight into corpo press conference mode. “There’s a port here in the arm! Jack your personal into that and the chair will move telepathically, for lack of a better term! And, as requested, a direct connection to the Net and the ability to send and receive wide-range signals! So long as you’ve got the hardware, you can netrun from this chair no problem! Pretty preem, huh?”
“What do you think, Cath?” Claire was unusually soft with Catherine. Nope. Not jealous. Not one bit.
“…It’s…” Catherine limped over to the chair and took a seat. “Perfect! Thank you, Lambert.”
“Not a problem!” Lambert smiled.
“Now, your payment…” Claire said. “I’ll just go ahead and wire this to your account, and—”
“Nah, Miss Claire,” Lambert said, putting his hand up. “This one’s on the house.”
“Are you… certain?” I was shocked to see Claire so taken aback at this.
“Of course! I’m just glad to be of help!”
This also was surprising. A chair like this, with the specs he described, should’ve run him a good number of eddies to design, and that’s ignoring the cost of materials or the hours put in to make it. Seeing him flat out refuse the payment he would’ve received was… shocking to me. Like I said, he seemed to want more with his life than what NCC could offer him, and that payment could’ve been exactly the start he needed. But it seemed he was just too generous for his own good and far too kind for this world, to say the least.
“Say…” he said. “Any of you plannin’ on signing up for the Academy’s Cavalier program? Tryouts are this week and we’d be happy to have the help!”
“Hard pass,” I said bluntly. “I’m not into the whole ‘sell your soul to be corp security’ thing.”
“Well, I will be joining,” Claire said, proudly placing her hand on her chest. “I believe it will be a good bullet point on my long list of achievements! Ohohohoho~!”
“Lambert, I will 100% be joining your little club,” I said happily. “If it means getting more time with Miss Claire, I’d sell my soul to the highest bidder!”
“Why do you have to make it sound so weird?!” Claire exclaimed.
“…Claire, is that the streetkid you’re always talkin’ about?” Catherine giggled.
“Oh, Miss Claire! You’ve been talking about me~?”
“Never!” Claire shot.
“…All the time!” Catherine shot back, shaking her head.
As I continued to tease Claire with Catherine, I thought about the Cavalier program. I knew that they were some sort of campus security or student council or something, but that was the extent of my knowledge. Whatever else was awaiting me was something I’d have to learn on the fly. But this wouldn’t be the first time I leapt into the unknown for Claire, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be the last. There was nothing I wouldn’t do, nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice for that woman. She was my everything, and if that meant becoming volunteer corp security for the Academy, then so be it. My life as a corpo slave, here I come!