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“I’ll be going that way, okay? Don’t wander too far!”
March waved at Stelle as the pink-haired girl walked towards the right, disappearing into shelves of model kits and action figures. Across the floor, she caught the sight of Mr. Yang, standing once more before the grand centerpiece display: an incomplete, towering mecha rendered in gold and black. Stelle smiled a little at the sight, seeing the normally calm and collected Mr. Yang get excited at something like a child brought some joy to her.
Still, something else had already caught her attention the moment she stepped into the building.
She turned on her heel and headed in the opposite direction from March.
Pearluxe Tower was certainly not what Stelle expected. When she heard the phrase “headquarters of Pearluxe Corp”, she expected some kind of sterile, office-like, bureaucratic environment full of employees running back and forth all over the place. The typical image that one would conjure up after thinking of the IPC.
What she’d gotten instead was a hobby shop. A very well-funded, aggressively merchandised hobby shop full of Pearluxe’s IP, but a hobby shop nonetheless. Which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, by any means—the robots on display were definitely cool, and she could already see herself walking out of here with a few model kits tucked under her arm. Souvenirs for herself, maybe a few for others. The kids over in Belobog would lose their minds over something like this the next time she found herself back there. Clara, at least, would love it. Hook and the rest of the Moles, however… probably aren’t mature enough to handle delicate model kits yet.
All that aside, though—
She hadn’t expected to find such a familiar sight here.
“Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on our company’s latest masterpiece: the Stellaron Hunter SAM’s statue!”
The tour guide’s voice carried across the small crowd with professional, practiced enthusiasm. And yes, just as advertised, there it was—standing on a raised pedestal, surrounded by a small audience of curious and interested people.
A statue of Stellaron Hunter SAM.
The pose was ironically heroic given the IPC’s intended portrayal of them—body low and crouched, weight shifted forward, right fist extended towards the ground for balance as if she just struck a very impressive landing.
The helmet’s golden crest had been sculpted open, revealing the teal visor beneath, and several of the armor plates along the back and limbs were opened that would have been accompanied by surges of brilliant light. Here, though, the ports were empty and inert. A decent attempt—no, scratch that, a shoddy recreation, Stelle thought.
However, with her memories of Penacony fully intact now, the sight made Stelle’s heart ache uncomfortably. The statue was cold, lifeless. It lacked the warmth of Firefly’s flames, the overwhelming sense of power Stelle felt as she tapped into the Propagation, the same power that had saved Stelle’s life at the cost of risking Firefly’s own.
“Faithfully recreated at 1:1 scale from HD footage,” the tour guide continued, “it’s guaranteed to be a hundred times more sinister than SAM themself!”
…Faithfully recreated, Stelle’s butt! Setting aside the missing energy effects entirely, the proportions were definitely wrong! 1:1? This thing was at least 1.5 times bigger than SAM actually stood!
Still, the mention of “HD footage” stirred something uneasy in Stelle’s thoughts. If that claim held any truth, then the IPC had seen Firefly using her real power—which meant she’d been fighting something serious enough that she had no choice but to go that far. What had it been? But more importantly, how had she felt afterwards? Was she okay?
“Cool!” one of the visitors shouted, breaking Stelle’s train of thought. “But why does it have a battle-worn finish?!”
“Why, of course!” The tour guide practically glowed. “It’s obviously because the Stellaron Hunters stand no chance against the crushing might of the Strategic Investment Department’s righteous iron fist!”
What a load of bull! The most obvious IPC propaganda Stelle had ever heard, and she’d heard a lot! Most of the IPC’s mechas are weak to Fire anyway, and even without a sustain or Stelle prancing around on the battlefield, Firefly could easily Break through them like nothing!
Stelle bit down on the inside of her cheek. She understood, on some level, the romance of battle damage—even she looked better with a few tasteful rips at the hem of her coat or a scuff across the shoulder. And SAM did look striking here, standing tall despite the scorch marks across her armor, the dents and scrapes that suggested she'd tanked something big but refused to fall.
Yet the sight still left her uncomfortable in a way she couldn't fully articulate. Firefly wouldn't have struggled this much against the IPC. This was just unfaithful and inaccurate!
Or maybe, she simply hated seeing Firefly hurt.
The tour guide prattled on and on despite her complaints. More biased commentary, vague allusions to legal protections, the careful loopholes around intellectual property. Stelle couldn't even sue them on the Hunters' behalf, because the legal framework required the actual individual to file, which was obviously a trap designed to get said individual arrested the moment they stepped forward! The whole thing was infuriating!
This is stupid. She couldn’t stand even one more second of this slander against her favorite person. Against all of the Praise of High Morals that she had rightfully earned prior to this point, a thought popped into her head.
…Mayybe she should just steal this statue! If anything, if anyone deserves a statue of SAM in their room, it’s her!
The question now, of course, was whether she could actually pull it off. Anyone from the Astral Express would (rightfully) tell her to let it go, and as for her other allies in Planarcadia… Well, Sparxie would absolutely turn it into content, which would be disastrous for her public image in the Phantasmoon Games. She could ask the Hunters for help, though, surely they had experience staging a heist…
“As for this model,” the tour guide continued, regardless of Stelle’s thoughts. ”We've commissioned the renowned prototype artist, Naemhor Postpone, to produce a scale collectible. It is now available for pre-order.”
Oh, a miniature SAM model? Stelle should definitely place her pre-orde quickly. After all, the Premium Pearluxe Tamashii site was notorious for getting swarmed by scalpers within minutes of anything going live—
Stelle shook her head. Now wasn’t the time for this, and standing around here with the statue in her sight would just make her feel worse anyway. She forced herself to step back and turn around, the action almost as hard as if she was leaving the real Firefly behind, and headed back towards the center of the tower.
“Stelle! There you are!”
March excitedly waved at her from a distance to mark her position, even though Stelle could perfectly see where she was already—there weren't that many people here.
“...Are you okay?” A frown crossed March’s face as their eyes met—Stelle must not be hiding her feelings as well as she thought. March’s gaze flicked behind Stelle, up towards where the back of the SAM statue was slightly visible, and a look of understanding filled her eyes.
“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” Stelle forced a smile into place and waved the concern away. “Let’s go meet up with Mr. Yang before he gets carried away.”
After a proper tour conducted by someone who turned out not to be their actual assigned guide, three consecutive sessions of Interplanar Jump, and the assembly of one Huge! Giant! Robot! later, the trio found themselves standing in Pearl's office.
As expected, the whole thing was her attempt to get in the Express’s good graces, all culminating in an offer to join forces against the Herald of Death.
The Nameless, of course, ended up accepting the terms after some negotiation. March and Welt certainly seemed on board, but as for Stelle…
After the two left, Stelle decided to linger behind just for a minute to have a private conversation.
“You know, I’m the real Supplicant in this whole thing, right?” Stelle raised her voice now that they were alone. “I feel like I should get the final say here, and I haven’t exactly agreed just yet.”
Welt and March probably would have looked at her funny if they were here, but her little declaration caught Pearl’s attention at least. The Intellitron tilted her head.
“...Query: Is there a reason why you’re objecting to our cooperation?”
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really objecting to it,” she clarified. Stopping the Herald of Death was something she wanted to do too, after all. “I just would like… something more to gain from it. On a personal level.”
“I understand,” Pearl replied, quick on the uptake as expected of the IPC. “You may state your terms.”
“The Stellaron Hunter SAM statue. The one on display outside? I want to have it.”
The statement made Pearl freeze for a minute—Stelle could practically see the gears figuratively and literally turning in her head. She must not have expected it such a demand.
“I… see,” Pearl’s voice returned after a moment. “You want the statue that was specifically commissioned and created by the renowned model kit prototype artist Naemhor Postpone for long-term display in the Tower.”
“...Yep.”
Pearl’s eyes flashed blue for a minute, and Stelle was grateful that she seemed to be considering this absurd request of hers seriously instead of immediately dismissing it entirely.
“Concession: The legal terms regarding the commission states that the artwork must be displayed in Pearluxe-owned properties until at least the next Amber Era…” she paused, recalculating. “However, if you insist, I might be able to… pull some strings..”
“Well, I fully insist.”
“Very well, then. For the second time today, I cannot even begin to extrapolate the reasoning behind your thoughts… but for the sake of our cooperation, consider your request granted.”
“...So that’s why you have a statue of me in your bedroom,” Firefly’s hologram said, perched on the edge of Stelle’s bed. Sadly, her condition still made it impossible for her to visit Planarcadia herself, but luckily Silver Wolf was there and discretely helped setting this up.
“Yeah… Thinking about it, I might have gone a bit overboard?” Stelle scratched the back of her head, glancing at the direction of the statue. “Do you think it’s creepy?”
“No, not at all!” Firefly assured her girlfriend—the less said about her own Baseball Raccoon collection, the better. “Did you clean it up too? You said there was weathering, but it looks spotless..”
“Yeah, I did!” Stelle beamed. “Mr. Yang taught me how, since he always builds those model kits. Apparently the same techniques work just fine on full-scale statues. It was kind of therapeutic working on it, actually.”
“Mhm, I see…” Firefly’s gaze drifted, then stopped on the statue itself. “So, why is it posed like that?”
“Like what?” Stelle asked innocently.
“Like that!” Firefly emphasized, pointing to the statue of her armored self arranged on the opposite site of the bed that was impossible to misinterpret. “SAM” laid on her side, facing inward toward where Stelle would sleep, one arm extended along the mattress. The other arm was bent at the elbow, hand resting near where the helmet would meet the pillow. Her legs were positioned with the lower one stretched out, upper one drawn slightly forward, knee angled in a way that created a natural space if another person were to fit against her.
…In other words, it was the perfect pose for cuddling!
“Oh, well, turns out it had fully movable joints to replicate a wide array of poses so they didn’t have to commission a whole new statue every time…. Can you imagine how I felt when I found out?”
Firefly only kept staring into Stelle’s eyes, a patient smile on her face that made clear she was waiting for an actual answer and would continue waiting until she got one.
"Okay, okay." Stelle relented, and her voice softened just slightly. "Well, I thought... it'd be nice if I could hug it. When I miss you."
“Oh, Stelle,” Firefly’s holographic hand reached out to grab the other girl’s. “We’ll have to meet up for real if I get better.”
“When you get better, you mean.”
“You’re right,” Firefly chuckled. “When I get better.”
FURBOBO WEEKLY
Furbobo Web Portal > Furbobo Gossip
BREAKING NEWS: Stellaron Hunter Statue Gone Overnight?! Rumors of Backroom Dealings!
Just this week, a life-size statue of Stellaron Hunter: SAM was installed in the reception area of Pearluxe Tower. The statue was commissioned from renowned artist Naemhor Postpone as part of a long-term display agreement with Pearluxe Corp. However, within twenty-four hours of installation, the statue vanished from the building with seemingly no trace. The Department of Aberration Defense is currently pursuing an investigation. Both the CEO of Pearluxe Corp. and Stelle of the Astral Express have declined to comment on the matter..
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