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Since there was always a short shuttle ride from the moon to the orbital elevator, parting couples said goodbye at the large and draughty spaceport. The hangar full of asteroids and box-laden pallets had much less air than the pressurised moon domes behind it, but it still had enough to carry sound when the airlock up front was closed. The moon was beginning to edge behind the Earth, casting long shadows from the beams and structural wires criss-crossing the transverse until they created the elongated mottle of the moon-side jungle canopy.
Roll was already waiting in the shuttle, and she had the entire trip planned. Plant Man and Wood Man walked by happily with their home made backpacks, but had to stop at the airlock doors. They looked back expectantly at the group of three still dallying at the concourse end of the hangar. The mission couldn't leave without Rock. Rock hadn't realised he was holding things up yet because he was busy doing what he'd learned to do best in the past several years: fret over his husbands.
"Be good while I'm gone," Rock admonished Bass. Bass gave a scoffing click and rolled his eyes in their plum-lined sockets. "I don't want you getting accidentally hurt."
"Tch, Rock, the strongest robot in the world doesn't get accidentally hurt," Bass said with bravado. Rock shot him a moping look, complete with hunched shoulders. "But yeah, fine, I won't go out of my way."
Rock instantly brightened. "And Lumine, are you sure you can run the office without me?"
"As much as I cherish you as my assistant," Lumine said fondly, "Roll has requested you, and I am loathe to deny her the company of her own brother. That would be far more dangerous than loosing Bass in a glassworks. You're going to the old Light Labs. I regret only that I will be unable to empty out a century of detritus from the ash pit with you."
Rock laughed, remembering the fun times they'd had doing that chore in the past. Bass felt like hacking up a wet cough but decided against it. Rock's smiles had that effect when they hit him the right way. Plant man coughed politely instead. Rock turned around, and his mouth formed an apologetic O.
"I have to go now, for real. Goodbye, Bass. Goodbye, Lumine."
Rock placed a kiss on both of his husbands. Bass tried to hold roughly onto Rock's waist, but the older robot drew his own hands onto Bass' strong shoulders and pushed away from longing red eyes and snapping shark teeth. Lumine accepted a closed mouth kiss, their eyes closed as long as they could hold their artificial and unneeded breaths. Bass growled softly to see it, arms already crossing. Kiss complete, Rock looked over to him and giggled.
"Shh, you'll make me want to stay," he warned playfully. "I love you both! Goodbye! Goodbye, goodbye!" Rock walked backward, waving his right arm as frantically as the happiest dog's tail. At the very last moment, he turned and disappeared through the airlock with Plant and Wood Man. Within seconds, the shuttle rumbled out of the dock.
Bass dispersed his armour with a powerful swipe of his arm, then headed for the smaller single person airlock to the East. He didn't even bother to look back when saying, "Rock's not here to keep us together any more, so bye."
"I'll enjoy our time alone," Lumine said, unimpressed. The twist on the phrase's usual meaning was a cleverness aimed only at himself. Bass was halfway across the hangar, and gave only a middle finger as his response. The exchange had gone wonderfully civilly, Lumine thought.
When he reached the apex of the Jakob administrative building, Lumine found Ice and Freeze Man waiting for him as per his summons. The two ice-type robots straightened in attention. Ice took it a step farther with a salute and a tiny chirp of "Director!" Lumine nodded, pleased.
"We still have a backlog of paperwork from the reconstruction and political establishment following the terrorist attack. Because you both have experience at research facilities, and the ice samples from the Jovian drone won't be back for months, I called you in to help in Rock's absence," Lumine explained, float-walking past the pair as he bobbed in the air. The long train of his gown followed him until it had fully painted a white stripe across the deep blue carpeted room. Only then when its end had passed through the automatic doors did they close.
In this time of peace with Earth when he was not required to travel down to any diplomatic meetings on Earth, nor to engage in some woefully inappropriate and tiresome battles, Lumine found it to his taste to shed his armour. Unlike Bass, he then wore clothes like a civilised person. He drifted across the room in an elongated and silver-woven sarafan and cape like a comet's tail turned into a Russian princess. It was entirely indulgent, he knew, but Bass rushing off to mope and punch rocks in the wilderness was equally so. Thus he refused to judge himself. He took his seat in his eggshell director's throne, swivelled it around from the gigantic panes of the floor to ceiling window, and waited for the ice robots to respond.
Ice and Freeze were more than happy to help. Ice considered it his duty. Freeze was happy to do anything that Ice was doing. Both of them were still nursing a bit of chagrin from being denied yet another trip with Roll to Earth. It had been a century, and they were both very eager to measure first-hand the effect of human expansion on glaciation and cold-adapted lifeforms. Lumine allowed them to talk about their field of expertise and the long-suffering Earth-love that called them to snowy shores where they hoped they could find the remains of their research stations. Their stories of penguins, seals, and even cryobacteria were entertaining and a welcome postponement of Lumine's own problems. While they digitised files and tossed the paper copies down either the recycling or the furnace-energy chutes, Rock's absence was forgotten.
Miles away in the Maré Fecunditatis, Bass punched moon rocks. He could have punched the trapped asteroids back in the hangar or in one of the water trapper quarries. That was his job after all: with no one to punch or fight, his station in society was repurposed as just another quarrier like Guts and Bomb and Concrete, but without any construction qualifications. When Rock was around, he'd shirk his job in favour of pestering the older bot during off-hours. With Rock gone he didn't want to be around anyone else at the quarry. He'd just want to punch heads instead, and he couldn't put up with Rock's disappointment once one of them tattled. He didn't feel like being useful. He felt like simply feeling, losing himself in the sensation of knuckles wracking bone dry basalt. When fists became anvil strikes, the regularity set into him a heartbeat.
Fifty thousand heartbeats rang through the dark stone of the maré. Bass aimed so many of them wrong that white and black scratches broke up the back of his hand like a powdered spider web. Bass only noticed this when he stopped noticing the beautiful flash of grey on his right fourth finger. That finger's armour was crumpled. Angry and panicking, Bass skittered along the large volcanic basin, bent fingers scrabbling across rubble and pockmarked rock. When he finally found the tungsten ring, he clutched it to his chest and closed his eyes and cursed himself. The ring that had been designed to put up with his aggression was finally beaten up to the point of breaking.
Bass slunk into a cave he'd carved into the side of the giant crater long ago. Repairing the ring required high temperature welding, which required the resources of the moon colony proper. He didn't want to deal with any of them still. He pulled a big metal plate over the entrance, then settled down in the bed of Soviet space program debris he'd scavenged. His power core needed some time to replenish his tanks. He didn't need or want any time to think. He could look at his beat up hands in the sputtering light of Luna-16's repurposed electronics, or he could sleep. He stopped looking at the unbroken ring still on his left hand. He swallowed the broken one to keep it safe in his crop for later. He slept.
Shutters of night closed over the flourishing moon domes for the fourth time since Rock left. The waterfall of black hexagons chittered, and dim external safety lights turned on. The administrative tower that rose above the dull twilight moonscape shut off its lights floor by floor, trailing up the helices that blanketed the central shaft.
At the top, Lumine quit his office, letting the vast window blacken completely with the swirls of ink dropped in a glass. He was exhausted more emotionally than physically. He'd been built to run the complex himself without any help, so that was a task for which he above all others was eminently prepared. Yet he'd grown to rely on Rock's presence as a creative counterpoint to his own decisions and a bright companion to his quietest hours. The quietest of all stretched before him, and he now apprehensively greeted another night when he could spread his limbs fully over the silver silk-sheeted bed. To recharge his energy reserves without company only now seemed like the chore that it truly had always been.
Soft algae lit up the corners of the floor green, and the window at the end of the room spiralled around its Art Nouveau panes with dim ice blue earthlight. Shifting and floating as if it were borne on water, Lumine's richly embroidered robes slipped off of him onto the floor. He drew his nightgown off of the end of the bed, and as he pulled it over his head, his processor finally registered that the nearby couch had been disturbed by a large lump. Sure enough, there was a body sitting there on the lefthand side next to the door. Bass wasn't asleep, and moon dust clung to him like pollen. Lumine quashed his surprise before it could widen his eyes.
"Lumine," Bass said roughly as a greeting.
Lumine tilted his head up and thinned his eyes characteristically. He didn't respond until he had inserted himself between the covers on his rightful side of the bed nearer the window and bookcase.
"What are you doing here? I thought you'd be weathering the night in that dismal little haunt of yours at the edge of the maré."
"It's my couch too. I moved it up here with Rock. I'm allowed to sit here." Bass brought a couch pillow up to his face. He sniffed it with boorish exaggeration.
"You've returned here to smell Rock on the couch we share, you horrid thing," Lumine goaded.
"You're not any better. You could sleep in your stupid big office."
"Hm. It's my bed, in my room. Good night." Lumine turned on his side so that his front would face the window and his back would face things he didn't particularly want to see. Then he heard Bass lay back on the couch. "Please remain on the couch."
"Yeah I get it, you don't want me close."
"You've said the same repeatedly. Don't construct a high throne to judge me from."
"It's a high horse," Bass corrected his English with a great amount of satisfaction.
"Good night, Bass."
Long hours passed in silence. Bass couldn't take it any more because Wily had programmed him to have such a keen sense of smell, just like Treble. Rock's smell was once again near him, and it shook his spine. It was a sweet and light cinnamon mixed with peanut oil and a set of oxidising components that only Rock made. It drove Bass crazy, and welled up the oil behind his eyes like river rapids. He could see and feel Rock clearly in the ripples of memory: fighting him for fun, hugging him close, watching soap bubbles dance around him as he did the dishes, and his beautiful enormous blue eyes when Bass had first admitted that he liked the Light-bot. Bass had come back to the tower to relieve the stress of wandering a moon without reminders of the blue bomber, but seeing Rock's little decorating touches in everything around the Jakob Tower wasn't helping his separation melancholy. He breathed deeply anyway, snorting up the faint cinnamon and the possibility of his own tears.
"That's almost disgusting." Lumine said into the starry blackness, body still turned on its side to face the pale blue window.
"You talk a lot for an asleep person." Bass deliberately sniffed a pillow loudly, then threw it at the bed, hitting the back of Lumine's still head. "Too bad you got your stink on the couch too."
Bass waited for a snide comeback. The sleeping act continued from the earthlit side of the bed.
"Is it any worse than smelling him when he's here?" Bass said loudly. He was about to throw out another aggravation when Lumine spoke.
"He's not here."
"I can't do anything about that. Shoot, I shoulda gone with him. Maybe I still will, and I'll leave you all alone up here how you like it."
"Myself and eighty robot masters."
"Feh. 'Old Robots' don't count as people to you. Rock told me all about you saying that."
"I've said many things which I regret," Lumine said tetchily.
Bass threw a couch cushion at the other robot's head. It hit with a solid thwack.
"Stop pretending to be asleep, Broom Goblin."
Lumine quickly sat up and propelled the pillow into Bass' face with force.
"Don't call me that."
"You want me to call you 'Director' like all your favourite little servants do?"
"I do not have servants and I have no favourites other than my new 'family' —at Rock's express request— so if you would stop treating me with disrespect, I would highly appreciate that."
"Oh yeah, you have to be forced to care about any of us. You say newgens are supposed to be more full of those squishy feelings. More human, but more than human. Citation. Needed."
"And you're so considerate."
"Hey, I love Rock with all my heart, fuel pump, myself! I'm gonna fight him forever, just him and me. You say you love him too, but I think that's all you have in you. Not a centimetre more of love in any of your struts."
"Shut up." Lumine clutched at the bedsheets.
"Ohhhh, rude. What, Creepy-Face don't like hearing this?"
"What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do? What do any of you want me to do?"
"Stop treating me like garbage!"
"I don't!" Lumine's head snapped around, mouth pulled down and eyelids pulled open in genuine shocked displeasure. His chest puffed in and out with the carefully programmed mimicry of human distress. And he was sitting there in a carefully mimicked human dress. Just a tiny ball of a joke that would never really be a person, that's what every scientist and supervisor said.
Why'd you make it with such a creepy face? Oh, it's just a spare we found in storage; no time to build one unique because Jakob needs to start in two weeks. Red eyes use cheaper materials. We had lavender leftover from the Spring line.
Haha, is it a boy or a girl? Doesn't matter. It just has to be a construction foreman, doesn't it, with the blueprints programmed in. Post-Dev and Habilitation says it's doing well in architectural training.
Isn't it short? Why does it keep staring at us like that? Get its hair out of its face; that's not how Marketing wants it. We went public with Jakob and it's still in school? It must be dumb. Well, you know, you can't program being a human into things. Okay, who keeps putting its hair in its face? Remember, Lumine, be kind, be courteous, use the proper forms of speech with humans and Maverick Hunters. Don't stare, don't frown. Get your work done on time, be ahead of schedule, don't waste any time or resources, and keep your reports up to date. And get your hair out of your face.
It's funny when reploids really try to be human, isn't it? I mean, lots of them are great coworkers, but, you know, it's uncanny valley everywhere. Uncanny valley relationships, right? They're not really people. It's too bad we can't reprogram them like mechaniloids, or there wouldn't be the problem of what to do with the waste from melting down mavericks. Oh, come in, Lumine. You see, no one will confuse this one with a human.
This one's really, really funny, you know. It's so sweet that they gave the elevator program a face. Yeah, but shame about the face. Laughing, laughing, incessant mockery, eternal diminutives, potential smothered like a newborn baby...
"I do not try to treat you badly." Lumine's face shifted closer to neutral. Was it training, or programming, or his choice? He wouldn't ever be sure.
"You're really bad at it." Bass wrinkled up his hawkish nose. Face flat, Lumine turned back to the tinny blue light of the window. Bass made a growl in the back of his throat, then threw himself back down onto the couch. He bounced once. His growl grew lower and warbled, but he was thinking hard, and trying to do what Rock would want him too. "Okay, fine, we can truce for a few weeks, right? I'll stick to the couch. And I'll shut up. I know I'm your least favourite robot."
"You're not." The reply came so quickly and clearly that Bass almost imagined he'd... imagined it.
"Who couldja hate more than the robot stealing Rock away? And winning."
"Bass..." That tone of voice was about to resignedly take the bait, but the name drifted off into the weary dark room. "I hate Axl the most."
Bass crossed his arms behind his head. This was mildly curious. "Why?"
"I won't make a story of it. I'd worked very hard on the Jakob Project. It's what I was built for, like you were built for Rock—"
"Then why don't you marry the moon and leave Rock to me?"
"Don't assume I haven't." Lumine cast a slit-eyes glance over his shoulder to punctuate the sardonic statement. "But we share Rock; that's his decision. As for Axl: I did not want a war over the moon, so when the Maverick Hunters arrived, I tried to reason with them. Then Axl shot me before I could... twice. Despicable."
"I always figured those three were the ones that jacked up your place before you went back. When you were back in time, you coulda destroyed him before he was onlined."
"Had I done so, I would not have gone back in time to meet Rock in the first place. Axl was the one who helped finally destroy my primary body to trigger the backup and whose shots misaligned my recall switches." There was a sudden rush of material when Lumine raised his hand to his neck. "Or rather, without Axl, I would not have been created. That is the logical train of thought."
"Right, so you couldn't kill him or you'd make a darn time paradox. What a drag. I woulda helped you kick his butt, broom feud or no broom feud." Considering this brought quite happily devious battle plans to Bass' head.
"No, no, it wasn't that," Lumine stammered, still shocked by his own internal revelations. "I honestly, at the time, considered Rock first. Foremost among my paradox avoidance consideration : to have met my true love."
"Oh, jeez, don't call him that," Bass said on the line of true and fake disgust.
Lumine shifted his entire body around, pivoting over his left side with the loud crinkle of his pressed cotton skirts. His eye was still slit, but it sparkled with a dangerous mirth. "To have met your true love. Is that more amenable?"
"Okay, you're weirder than usual." Bass unfolded his arms from behind his head, wary.
"I love him, Bass."
"Yeah, I do too."
"Good night, Bass. I forgive you." Lumine settled down into his side of the bed, front facing Bass. His face peeked up barely over the silver lamée down comforter.
"Excuse you?"
Lumine's orange eye still twinkled. "We've all said stupid things, haven't we? I have many thing to think about tonight: I am going to sleep now."
That terrible eye closed.
Bass found it impossible to sleep. He knew he'd acted rudely toward Lumine, but that was really the comfortable extent of their relationship and to be expected from both sides. To be forgiven implied that he'd truly done something wrong, but no replay of the nights events could place any blame onto him. He felt blameless and confused. He was at least surrounded by the scent of Rock. Not that that helped with the loneliness.
His technical second husband slept like a wierdo. For all the younger robot talked of the pseudoörganic perfection of the newgen reploids, he chose to sleep like stone, with barely any movement beyond the faintest mandatory pumping of his internal systems. Bass didn't know how he himself slept, other than lightly.
There was probably more to Lumine than he knew, Bass thought. Yet he'd never felt it in himself to care. In all his years of wandering the changing earth after the disappearance of the Robot Masters, he'd only heard the word Jakob once, when he'd asked the frightened crew about the weird new tower he could see from the cargo ship he'd stowed away on. The director of a moon project was so far outside of Bass' sphere of consideration that it was laughable. So he'd never connected the two figures: the orbital elevator, and the weird future robot that had appeared in the Chronos Institute. Bass hadn't liked the lavender haired robot that infested Light Labs back then, and he really hadn't liked how Rock had taken a shine to the new lab janitor, and he'd detested the terrifying day that he realised Lumine would come after him with a broom when he tried to spar with Mega Man because the future creep liked Rock back. That's why Lumine's name would always be Broom Goblin to him.
Why did Rock have to have room in his heart for two people? Bass was supposed to be the only one. It was natural that he'd resent the other. So why did doing that have to sadden Rock so much? It wasn't supposed to be like this. And the Moon Goblin had the gall to act like he was a victim too. No.
He wouldn't go out of his way to be nasty and accuse the other of seducing Rock, mostly because Bass was certain that the eerie body and affectations (and superiority complex) of the other were absolutely incapable of seducing anything, but Bass wouldn't forgive the moon bot for letting Rock's affections grow. Not that his attempts to fight with and push Rock away ever did any good back when they first met. Inside, he knew Rock chose this, and that made it worse. But why couldn't Lumine have relinquished his hold when Bass reëmerged in the future? He could have acquiesced to the righteous holder of Rock's heart. Yeah, why didn't he give up his own happiness in the face of the victor's claim?
Numerous tiny clacking sounds woke up the tower and cleared the shade from the domes below. Morning had come too fast, and Bass hardly felt refreshed. Lumine seemed no better when he rose from his side of the bed like from a coffin. In the half-light of the waxing moon's morning, he took stock of Bass openly.
"You're not wearing my ring," Lumine commented. "I should tell Rock when he comes back."
"Hey, don't try to guilt me!" Bass pointed with his ringless right finger. "I was tearing up the lava basin and it broke off, okay? It has nothing to do with feelings."
"Where is it?"
Instead of talking, Bass made a bug eyed face and began to hack. After three spasms and one spit, the broken tungsten ring oozed into Bass' palm. He presented it. Lumine looked at it plainly, eye slowly narrowing.
"I need to get it fixed."
"You do."
"Yeah well I think Heat can handle it, so I'll head over to the smelter today and then go back to the holes." Bass exited bed, stretched to prime all of his servos, then ambled to the small bar set into the wall opposite the window. "I'm taking some E-tanks."
"And you'll do it all naked?"
"Whatchu talking about? I'm a robot. I'm covered in metal. It doesn't matter if I'm naked. No one cares about clothes but you and the fop squad."
"Technically Elec's cadre has more in common with the Dandy Æstheticism movement."
"Yeah, I bet Rock loves that you know that." Bass opened the fridge under the bar then put a few cans of the counter.
"He does. He also likes it when you wear clothes."
"He's not here. Let's look at the upsides." Bass nabbed one of Rock's cloth bags from the bedroom closet. He placed the broken ring back in his mouth, the cans in the bag, and the bag over his shoulder.
"I like it when you wear clothes too."
Bass looked over to Lumine, unbelieving. The other android was still sitting primly on the bed in his voluminous pleats of layered cotton. Worse, he was trying to look innocent.
"Are you trying to start something this morning? Is all you're good for complaining when things doesn't meet your standard?" Instead of waiting for an answer, Bass walked to the door.
"No, you're being unfair."
That was it. Bass turned on his heel and yelled, "He liked me first! He loved me first!"
Lumine looked away from Bass' envious accusing gaze. He rose from the bed, and made a soft hum as if replying to his own thoughts.
"Won't admit it?" Bass continued. Lumine finally looked back into the other's eyes. There was an uncomfortably direct connection between them. Then Lumine smiled with the wide slit of a smile that accompanied him knowing everything.
"I know," Lumine said.
"And: I kissed him first." Bass crossed his arms and drew his body up tall. He was sure this was the lynch-pin of his superiority, and he was sure that Lumine's face was going to fall to disbelieving pieces. Any day now. When that smile went away.
"I know that too."
"You... do?"
"I'm not an idiot, Bass." Lumine broke off their eye contact to float past Bass and behind his lacquer-panelled changing screen. His sticklike aubergine body poked out of the pure white folds in an uncomfortable way before he threw the cloth over the screen. He reëmerged in a sarafan, under-dress, cloak and belt. The cloth was dancing around his black heels in a seafoam of white and silver-lavender flecked with the bright green and blue of Lumine's favoured colour scheme.
"But how'd you... know?"
Lumine giggled. His smile had grown, his eyes too thin with satisfaction. "Your face made no secret about how mind-blowing that one 'fight' with Rock was. You stared into the yawning vastness of indescribable and rapturously divine space for days. You worried Dr. Light, don't you remember?"
"That doesn't mean anything. For all any of you knew, I fought him!"
"Such a lovely euphemism. Assessing your affect after that altercation in the Spring, and the peculiar lack of scratch and dent injuries from it, along with certain smudges of purple on Rock's nose, it was rather obvious that you two were kissing. So long as the assessors were not Dr. Light and Roll, who did not connect the evidence whatsoever." Lumine paused to gauge Bass' reaction: furious. Lumine softened, and reached out a hand toward Bass' face. "I'm glad he did what he did."
Bass slapped the slim arm away. "He told me not to tell any one! No one was supposed to know!"
"I wondered then why he fancied you. He even married you. He didn't fancy me that much."
"Are you mad about that?" Bass spat, ready to be disgusted by Lumine's jealousy.
"No, because you are right: he loved you first."
And then that answer took Bass completely off guard.
"He loves you, Bass," Lumine repeated. "And when he was separated from you for a minute, all he wanted to do was go back to your arms. I can't compete with that, and I won't try to. But he loves me too, in his own way. So I don't want to fight about it with you. You came first, I came second. Being second isn't a consolation prize to me ; I cherish it for what it is."
Bass uncrossed his arms, tension leaving. He kept his eyes on Lumine as the reploid sat down next to him on the couch. The cushions dipped under both of them, and Lumine's soft nightgown splashed up to touch Bass' leg like surf on black sea rock.
"Just tell me..." Bass leaned over. His breath came out hot against Lumine's cheek and blew at the fall of hair there. It wasn't a seduction. It was a closeness. With lips at his chin, Lumine felt Bass' voice trembling. "What was his first kiss like?"
"It was wonderful. He was very, very happy." Lumine squeezed their hands to steady himself in the memory despite the whisper spinning cobwebs in his voice. "He kissed me very softly, but I loved him so much I felt I was going to shake apart."
"Heh. You're both pansies..." Bass trailed off, lips settling wet and open on Lumine's chin line.
"Mmm, I know."
Lumine dipped his head down to kiss Bass properly. It lasted a long time, soft and sweet like those he shared with Rock. He could feel Bass' core spin tightly. Work wouldn't start for a while today, Lumine decided. Ice and Freeze man could sleep in. The director's body relaxed. He covered Bass' hands with his own, drawing the bot's loose right hand to his shoulder and entwining their fingers there.
"...This is not how I would have imagined this would go," Lumine said when the kiss ended.
"Yeah. Me neither."
"I have to start work soon," Lumine said with laughable surprise, just remembering what the time was and what situation he was in. He hopped off the couch to wash his face and fic his hair at the bar's small sink. Bass was highly amused.
"You're not so bad, Moon Goblin," Bass said. He heard water running at the bar. A wet towel hit his head. He probably deserved it after hitting Lumine with two pillows, or rather he was feeling too mellow to get angry. "Gotta go get the ring fixed now."
"Could you please dress yourself," Lumine asked sweetly.
"C'mon, Lumine, one kiss won't change me."
Lumine let out what sounded to Bass like an exasperated gurgle. So he laughed. Finally he'd riled up his husband. Things were back to normal.
Turbo Man didn't ask any questions when Bass turned up at his workshop without armour or clothes. He was just glad that Bass didn't interfere while he welded the broken ring back together. Bass had been keeping the ring in his crop or cheek pocket, and that was yuck enough. Bass didn't even ask for a terribly good job repair job either, and would have snatched it back when still red hot had Turbo not stopped him. Turbo took the ring, turned to his cooling trough, and plunged the metal in. He'd have to tell the rest of the shop about the job when they came in for the second shift. The ring still smarted in the best way when Bass walked out with it still glowing on his finger.
"Yo, I'm here to break stuff," Bass announced over radio when he entered the requisition quarry.
Trucker Joes were carting in new asteroids to mine while little mets hopped around happily extracting water and metals. One team held nylon cords in their tiny beaks, pulling backward on the gigantic meteor that they'd captured in a net. A trucker Joe clapped his hands and stamped his feet in a steady beat that carried through the solid mafic rock below the workers' feet. The mets pulled in time, and soon the meteor tumbled out of the pick-up truck's bed and landed right in the curved plinth the mets had carved below. The group of hauler mets jumped up and squealed on the radio in their victory. Then the pickaxes came out.
Bomb Man looked up from the mouth of his deep olivine quarry. While it's true that this was Bass' assigned workplace, no one had expected him to drop by, least of all Bomb Man. At first, he was happily surprised, and clicked his beak in greeting, but then he saw the state Bass was in.
"What, too lazy to snap on your armour?" Bomb accused.
Bass snorted, then got the most mockingly disdainful look. "I'm a strong enough robot without it, Bomb. Don't prrrresume me—" he rolled his R in mockery of Lumine's vocabulary choices that he was parroting, "to be such a, um, dang it, don't got a fancy word for it. No one cares, Bomb."
Bass elbowed Bomb in the gut. Bomb was not amused. "Go suit up. If you get moon dust in your circuits, no one'll be happy."
Bass smirked and swaggered over to the quarry while actually following orders for once. "Sure thing, Boss~ Jus'sayin' though: the director loves getting moon dust all over his apartment. He told me himself. Married the moon. Jussayin."
Bomb Man had to chase Bass to work. The rest of the ten hour day, Bass worked like he was supposed to, cracking open rocks and pounding gravel. He even gave a sharp karate chop to a dull stone in front of a "baby" met to reveal the geode inside. The tiny met was overjoyed. The entire quarry was flummoxed at Bass' continued mellowness that day, but no one was complaining. It was dangerous to question the rare upswing of Bass' capriciousness.
Freeze Man hadn't expected to see Bass walking up the administrative tower's stairs. Even if he'd expected to see Bass at all that day, even at the tower, he would have pinned his money on the bot scaling the edifice's rocky skin, digging his fingers into bare stone. Instead, Bass passed Freeze and Ice on the stairs and gave the taller droid a high five. It was rather embarrassing : the two ice bots bad been kissing, and Freeze had one large hand cradling Ice's head. They'd thought no one would pass by the stained glass windows of the stairwell's inter-floor annex, then up stomped trouble in a bat helmet. Without the bat helmet.
"Great use of your off-shift," Bass said, smirking.
"I-it's just our— we were on our way home—" Ice Man stammered, shuffling himself closer into Freeze's protective hold. Freeze's massive magenta brows lowered.
"Yeah, go get 'im. Where's the boss?" Bass pointed upwards hopefully.
"It's go home time, but the director said he'd work overtime. I th-think he's still in his office."
"Thanks, Ice."
Freeze and Ice watched Bass go up the gently spiralling stairs. They pushed out of the colour-dashed alcove, then down the stairs where arrow shaped earthlight from the gothic windows led them down with white footprints.
"We'd better get home," Freeze said, "before a fight comes back down the stairs."
"You're right." Ice sighed. "I'm just sad that my neat idea didn't work out."
Freeze chuckled. "Don't worry, sempai. We'll have plenty of opportunities to make kiss under the rose window."
"And to see the colours reflected through your head..." Ice mused softly, reaching up to link hands with Freeze. They held hands all the way home. Tiny snowflakes fell in their wake.
Upstairs, Bass hunted Lumine. The royal blue carpeting made his footfalls laughably quiet : it was too easy to stalk a person in the personal quarters of the tower. Lower amid the hexagonal columnar basalt stepping stones, polished pegmatite causeways, gemstone guard crystals, and solid echoing gabbro halls... a sound! A tiny sigh. Lumine had a small reading room around here, tucked into a tiny turret with thin slices of moon-shorn peridot for windows. Bass crept forward, feasting on the tiny sounds that were getting closer and closer. He peeked his head into the ever so thin archway, wild black mane hidden behind the lovingly carved angel wing column heads.
Lumine was stretching both arms far up to the top of his righthand bookshelf, while his prized Absolom Roché chair in custom gold plate gryphon carved molding and forest green velvet lay in broken legged pieces on the floor, and the lefthand bookshelf lay directly atop his crumpled body with all of its antique tomes tumbled out and wrapped in the director's diaphanous white train. Oh. Bass remembered setting up that sabotage. It was still funny as all get out, but now he felt just a bit bad about it.
Lumine spotted him in an instant. "You," he growled, pointing with malice. The dappled green light from the window glinted off of his fierce eyes, the gold-streaked spines of vintage bound books, and 1990's holographic Marvel comics covers.
Bass stepped fully into the hip-wide archway. He could barely fit through. And he wasn't sure he wanted to since he was in fact one hundred percent guilty as charged. Still, by instinct his only answer was a grin-borne "Me."
"You did this! Why. Why would you do this, Bass?"
"It seemed funny at the time. But look, I fixed your ring." Bass held up his right hand. Lumine was not in the mood to be impressed. His growl returned. "Why don't you just blow that all off of you?"
"That would ruin the room! Some of these books are older than you; the glass case is Swiss from 1820; the wallpaper itself is 1974 Etsa Behang damask. I can't. I just have to crawl out, slowly..." Lumine moaned again, pulling himself out another inch with his fingertips gripping the sacrificial antique above him. His dress was catching on something below, tugging the fabric tight. He'd probably been at it half an hour. Bass walked forward to help. "Stop! That's an 1861 Kuniyoshi Hyakunin Isshu! Step on anything else, just..." Lumine let out a small whimper. His fingers slipped. "I am in pain, Bass. Please lift the bookcase."
"I might step on some—" Bass began to mock Lumine but thought better of it when he saw all hatred washed from the reploid's mournful eye and trembling arms. Still not caring about what he stepped on with his three hundred pounds of metal, ceramic, silicon, and oil, Bass walked up Lumine's tangled dress train to help. Easily he lifted the wooden shelves back to the wall, and unhooked the wires he'd installed to create this literary carnage. Lumine fell from his half-suspended position, moaning again. Bass looked down on him with the most aggravating sense of guilt. One wire had left a dark purple line across the left of Lumine's face, cutting through the lavender hair. Bass thought it was a bit pretty, matching the tiny reploid's aubergine base-plates, but the look of loss as Lumine picked up his books was... okay, also pretty.
At a businesslike pace, Lumine was stacking then ordering books by language, then title. Or perhaps author. Bass couldn't read all the languages on the covers, but Lumine was taking great pains to quickly shuffle the books around into a precise order. His dark purple fingers moved like grasshoppers between book spines, pulling down and setting up each title in quick hops. His tangled skirts dotted with books looked like cake frosting with sprinkles. Probably on St. Patrick's day, Bass thought, thanks to the green light in the tiny hole of a library. Nobody celebrated that holiday anymore, and Bass had only seen it a few times in America. It was a fading memory for humanity, but a clear night to him, written on his hard drive ...like a book. Lumine really didn't have a sense of the past beyond his boring books and dumb collectibles. Bass always thought it was the stupidest hobby for a future-obsessed reploid to have, but for a moment he got a glimpse of the feeling behind it. It was gut deep, unnameable, but he grokked Lumine's collection in that tiny green room.
"What should I do next?" Bass asked. Lumine looked up at him, and milled over the answer obviously. He stopped ordering the books.
"...I can sequentialise them later. Here, put these stacks back on the shelves." Lumine handed up one stack, still seated.
Together, they reshelved the books and comics in no particular order but size. Bass put the big hardbacks on the bottom, lined the short novels and manga up in the middle, then slipped the comics up on top of the other books. Lumine had tried to assemble all of the pieces of his destroyed baroque chair, crawling around on the floor. Finally, the chair was in a sad pile by the door, and there was one space left on the top of the bookshelf. Lumine scanned the book spines, then thought to check what books were still visibly caught in his dress. He pulled the last one out but Bass slipped it into place on the top shelf.
Lumine settled back on his elbows and brought up his knees. His sea of white cotton shifted, revealing yet torn book covers, boxes, and metallic threads. Bass crawled forward like a prowling panther, picking out the lost items one by one, then throwing them to the side without a care. He was halfway to the other robot when his eager fingers finally grasped around Lumine's ankles which laid slim outside of their armour. Bass pulled hard. The sea of Lumine's dress folded on itself and built up in the crook of Bass' arms. Crashing quietly in one gasping breath, Lumine's chest hit Bass'. Paper fragments and pink dusted his cheeks.
Suddenly Bass slammed his arm around Lumine's back and drew him into a vice grip hug against his strong black protoform plates. He crashed them both right into the floor and a heavy kiss. When his lips let go, Bass rested his left cheek against Lumine's trapped and nervous right. Bass inhaled deeply; exhaled worshipfully. His sensitive nose took in Lumine's soft yet distant scent, the trace of silver and freesia drifting over the musk of old books.
"Bass, I..." Lumine's body squirmed and trembled, but Bass' arm held fast and his burning lips met Lumine's again. The director kissed back, moving his lips over and over, then apart until he could feel the slight moistness from Bass' teeth on his lower lip. Still, Bass squeezed harder, ready to devour Lumine alive as the kiss continued.
"No..." Lumine's voice was soft and gravelly, much like the words of a being in love. Bass remembered the tone from when they'd kissed that morning, so he ran his tongue along Lumine's lips and dug his fingers into the director's waist and neck seams. "That hurts!"
There was a blinding light. There was the sound of splintering wood, shattered glass, and screeching bent metal. Bass felt himself fall forward, which was not a good feeling to get while kissing by a window, and then he felt the wind whistling through his hair, which was an even worse feeling to get while kissing by a window. Bass looked down at hundreds of feet of nothingness between him and moon rock, realised the air rushing by was decompressing from the tower, and held on for dear life. Lumine grunted in frustration below him. Bass looked down to see new claws on Lumine's hands set deep into the stone of the tower. Those new arms flexed, the pair started to swing backward, and that's when Bass noticed the weird flat arms moving under him. In just a tiny bit of justified panic, he looked to the side to see gigantic wings also pushing from where they were fully trapped inside the tiny library.
Well dang. Second form triggered.
As Lumine backed up, more books fell to the floor, a few making it past the wings and out the window. Quickly as he could, Lumine turned to the side and fluffed up his right wing's feathers so that the thankfully tiny entrance to the room became completely blocked. The decompression ceased. Lumine sighed in relief, but it made no sound. Bass still hung on to him.
"I didn't mean for that to happen," Bass sent over radio. There was a very long pause. Bass let go and shuffled away a few footsteps. "I didn't think I was hurting you... that much."
Lumine's helmeted forehead hit a destroyed shelf. His left wings drooped. "You just needed to be gentler. A high task for you, I know. But I assumed it within your ability."
"So you're back to hating me."
"Bass, enter my wings."
"I knew it was too good to be true," Bass complained, backing up into the wings that sealed the damaged entranceway.
"Squeeze Bomb." Lumine aimed his palm at the gaping wound that was once a window. Gravity Antonion's sealing solvent covered the hole. Bass had no choice but to be muscled out of the room and into the tiny maintenance hallway outside. Lumine sealed the hall entrance next. Then he drew his wings in tight around himself as a seraph and finally turned to Bass, looking upset.
Air was flowing through the hallway loudly. The respiration system was working hard to re-pressurise the area. Bass spoke aloud.
"Look, I'm sorry."
"I am sure you are," Lumine responded.
"Tch, I mean it! Jeez."
"Again, I'm sure you do. Promise you'll never do it again."
Bass considered this. Lumine did not look ready to attack, and he wasn't being as caustic as would be expected.
"You're not mad?"
"Tomorrow, you are going to find every speck of my collection that escaped. Otherwise, Rock hears about what happens. Obey, and it remains between us. Is that... okay?"
"Yyyyeah," Bass agreed warily.
"Then you may kiss me again. I was enjoying myself." The light from the hallway's gothic slit windows slid off of the green hexagon on his back when Lumine slid into the darkness between the next shot of light. His wings gave off only a faint golden glow that sparkled as constellations in his green halo. He smiled and tilted his head. "Would you stop if I asked you to?"
"I'm not a monster! ...not completely." Bass sniffed and crossed his arms.
"I understand. It's agreed then. When I say stop, aloud or on the radio, you'll stop."
"Only when kissing," Bass corrected. Lumine chuckled.
"I couldn't hope to stop you outside of it." Lumine leant over Bass, turned his chin with one finger, and took him into another kiss.
Gold feathers pressed into Bass' back when Lumine closed his wings around them, bathing his grey plating in tickling kisses of their own. The more he sank into the softly shifting mass, all while nibbling Lumine's lips above, the more at ease he felt. He usually felt skittish around Lumine's second form, but now that he felt in control of the situation and there was no Rock to make him jealous... There was nothing to be afraid of, and Lumine wasn't that creepy. Feeling the warm wings encircle him felt less like a trap than the invitation to soul-deep embrace.
The red jewel piercing Lumine's chest finally began to poke at Bass' back when the director tried to get more comfortable in the kiss. Bass shimmied his shoulders and kicked his legs to push Lumine out of their kiss.
"Your chest's annoying," Bass said. The wings swept away from his body, in a confusing flurry of feather and metal, back to their exaggerated perch directly behind Lumine. "What's that thing even for?"
"It is my power crystal, extended. There's nothing I can do about it in this form."
"Actually, you know, I wondered about that? Isn't your middle crystal blue?"
"The smaller green crystals are made of alexandrite. In this form, they exit my body and form a sheath to protect my core. Because of the incandescent light from my wings, the alexandrite turns red."
"The more you know, huh." Bass put his hands on either side of the crystal, then slapped it. "It's in the way though."
"Oh what a shame." Lumine's orange eyes looked bemusedly down at his partner.
Then the hall went completely dark. Bass couldn't even feel the heat of his forehead light where it would have fallen on the arc of his nose. Everything felt refreshingly new and pure when they lifted themselves soul-first out of the darkness. Bass first saw a pretty face ogling him from deep within its usual uncanny valley. Lumine was back to his original form. Still, there was something comforting about being creeped out by Lumine; it meant he hadn't changed. The room had changed though. Mostly because the only reason he could see Lumine at all was the glow from the feathers his wings had left behind.
"OKay, why was it dark?" Bass groaned, almost afraid to ask.
"Paradise Lost, the only way to release my second form," Lumine answered. Somehow the Moon Goblin had a ghost of love animating the blush on his face while his one wide eye innocently pierced Bass' only remaining defenses. "You're blushing."
Bass shook his head, back hair flying everywhere to cover his shame at getting caught staring. When he stopped, his red eyes were wide and wild, but not angry. "Yeah, cause you're not bad," Bass barked.
"Oh?"
"You looked... jeez, how do I say this?" He ran his left hand down his purple streaks, wiping off moisture and moon dust in its wake. He looked back at Lumine. There was only one word for it. "You look beautiful sometimes."
Actual red rose on Lumine's cheeks. Thankfully, a call came in abruptly over both bots' radio lines. Lumine levitated with legs crossed as on a chair, so Bass couldn't see his face. He took the call for both of them, setting his guard crystals to reverberate the call as speakers.
"This is Cedar's radio ping?" Lumine asked, to confirm. There was a crackle from the comm systems that usually accompanied long distance communications.
"It certainly is," Cedar said with dulled British passion. "I'm on for Alia today."
"Ah, that's right, she has an off day today," Lumine admonished himself out loud for being so distracted that he had forgotten the personnel switch. The reconstructed Cedar always took over for Alia's shifts in the communications centre.
"Alongside Rock's progress report, we recieved an actual message from X. We've a small data pad of rules concerning your next visit."
"Rules?"
"It's addressed to you, so I haven't pried."
"Thank you, Cedar. Can you save it for me until after this is over?"
"Naturally. Goodbye."
"Goodbye," Lumine answered, but found that the line was already dead. A shrug passed between himself and Bass. The room was still quite dark.
"Rules, really?" Bass kicked lightly at the tiny sliver of wall he could see while brushing debris and down off of his shoulder. "When'd Rock's little brother get so high and mighty?"
"I'm sure he has his reason," Lumine said, lowering his delicate purple feet back to the ground. "Anyway, this will be over in a few minutes. It's not the end of the world. You can tell Rock that you survived my final attack."
"Hey, I thought we weren't gonna tell him anything went wrong."
"That we fought is certainly a sign that things have continued as usual, not gone wrong." Lumine smirked until he throught of Rock's compassionate eyes. "But of course all he wants is for us to love each another."
"Are we there yet?" Bass stepped picked a feather out of Lumine's moon of hair. His knuckles trailed down the director's face, then his tattered arm.
"I think we're on the road." The darkness over the windows began to lift. Luine laced their fingers togther, then gave a horrible, evil smile. "You're not so bad, Earth Goblin."