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Liam Kinney was standing against the wall while Queen Selene was in a meeting with the earthen leaders, part of the duties of being her personal guard. He doesn't particularly like this part, it's so boring. It's even worse when he's scheduled to guard her at night. During her Reign, Queen Levana had trained the guards to keep their minds open and empty, which he was pretty good at, but with everything going on lately it's getting harder and harder. There's one thing he keeps thinking about, even though he has no idea why. The Queen's new head thaumaturge. She's a complete mystery to him, but he still doesn't know why he can't stop trying to figure her out. He knows she isn't real, she's just metal and wires fused together. But sometimes she just seems so.. real. So human. She would smile and laugh and dance and be sarcastic and it was so hard for him to remember that she wasn't human. She was quite attractive... Snap out of it, Kinney. You're being ridiculous. She's just an android. The thing is, he's starting to forget why he dislikes androids in the first place. Sure, the thought of it is slightly unnerving, but now that he's spent some time with one, maybe they're not all that bad...
~~~
The meeting ended shortly before dinner, he and the other guard on duty stood outside of the Queen's chambers as she dressed for dinner.
Iko walked past them on the way to her room, which was right next to Selene's (Why the queen insisted to giving the android one of the royal chambers he couldn't quite understand, but she seemed to enjoy it.)
Seeing Kinney, she glared at him, he glared right back. Although it didn't feel quite as real as it did when they first met, now it was more like their greeting.
He heard a scream, for a moment he was about to rush into The Queen's room, when he realized that's not where it came from.
Drawing his weapon, he kicked down the door to the Iko's room. When he walked in he saw Iko, her back against the wall, (looking surprisingly calm, he had to admit). And in front of her stood a tall man pointing a gun at her.
"Princess Selene has no right to the throne, she doesn't deserve it. We had a way of life here on Luna, she can't just come and change it." It was another angry aristocrat, many of them has not been happy about the changes, but none of them had gone so far as to threaten anyone.
"And on top of everything else, her head Thaumaturge is an android" He sneered at Iko, looking disgusted "Let's see how she does without you." He squeezed the trigger
Iko screamed as Kinney dove in front of her, taking the bullet in his chest, though it looked like it missed his heart.
Iko charged forward as the man fired another shot, hitting her in the stomach and exposing wires, but doing nothing to slow her down.
"Hey! You idiot! I'm an android, bullets won't kill me, genius, as far as assassination attempts go, this one was pretty pathetic. And now you've hurt someone that I don't entirely hate and made me very angry!"
The gunman kept firing at her, missing sometimes, hitting her others, while she yelled at him. He looked terrified.
"And, you know, Selene is actually a really awesome Queen. She's trying to make it so that ALL of Luna prospers. Not just the cruel, stuck up, rich part of it." he hit her again in the arm.
"Okay, that's enough of that." she grabbed the gun out of his hand and hit him over the head. He slumped to the ground.
~~~
Kinney slowly stirred as he was taken out of the suspension tank. He carefully opened his eyes and found himself looking up at soft blue hair and gray eyes (He knew her eye color changed with her moods. What did grey mean? Was she worried about him?)
"Hey. Good to see you awake."
"What are you doing here?" his throat felt scratchy and sore.
"I wanted to take sure you were okay, after all, I'm the reason you ended up in this thing."
The doctor handed him a cup of the orange liquid that he was all too familiar with.
"That was a pretty stupid thing to do, you know. You know from experience that bullets really don't harm me. They do, on the other hand, harm you. I would've felt kind of bad if you died taking a bullet for me. You need to be alive to protect Cinder."
"I guess I kinda panicked. It is my job to protect people-Er, and androids, apparently, in this palace." he was surprised that he wasn't annoyed by her lecturing him on how to do his job, he actually found himself kind of glad to see her when he woke up, to see that she was alright. He told himself that it was just because she was Selene's friend, but something told him that wasn't entirely true.
"Well, it was actually pretty nice of you." She bent over and kissed his forehead, he felt his beath hitch, although he didn't know why.
When she straightened up her eyes were magenta, what he suspected was her version of a blush. They actually looked pretty like that, he thought.
"You should get some rest." She said, and then she left.
He let out a frustrated sigh. what was wrong with him? Was he actually starting to care about a piece of machine? All he knew was that her lips were surprisingly warm and tender and he couldn't quite stop thinking about them.