the escaped logician (cadence) wrote in ironman7, @ 2007-09-14 23:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | cadence, final fantasy xii, week 4: prompt 7 |
Final Fantasy XII (Balthier/Fran) [week 4 - prompt 7]
Title: Nanosecond Blink
Author: Cadence
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Summary: "Any luck?" she hears on her audio input, though it’s early for Balthier to be awake.
Author's Notes: ...In the not-too-distant future?
Fran strikes out in fourteen different hacker forums at once. She waits impatiently through the few seconds until someone new shows.
She’d have a better luck with a gender-neutral handle, she thinks, and not for the first time. It’s ridiculous to use this one when she knows in her bones just how much less efficient it is to get anything useful done. She uses it anyway; she has for months.
That was one of the first signs of her consciousness, or whatever it is that she has. Acknowledging the action as irrational and still continuing it. Perhaps it’s why she’s so attached to this identity. It makes more sense than an attachment to being female, being Fran.
She’s been building enough of a reputation under this name that it soon won’t be worth it to change, anyway.
"Any luck?" she hears on her audio input, though it’s early for Balthier to be awake.
"No," she says in her favorite voice, modulated and not-quite-human. "And much more of this will have me pulling my hair out. We may have to go in alone."
"You don’t have hair," he teases automatically. So many idioms should make no sense to her, with no physical body, and yet she uses them. "And we’re not doing that. I know Mjrn made you worry, but it’s too dangerous, even for you."
A few weeks ago was the first time Fran had run into something else on the net that was like her. It had called herself Mjrn. But she had been broken—crazy, disintegrating as she slid through the wires. But Fran had managed to get backtrace info from her, and it looked like some hacker had pulled her out of the global military mainframe and torn her apart to see how she worked. That meant there could be more like her, inside.
She thinks all this in a nanosecond blink, but she stays silent another sprawling second for Balthier’s sake.
He sighs. "I can get a different kind of help, at least. Ashe and Basch are the best at physical infiltration ops, and they’ve been aching for a shot at the military. We can cause a distraction."
Anything in human-time wouldn’t be much of a distraction for something like her, but she doesn’t want to say that outright. "Perhaps." And suddenly again she’s searching for justification for something she knows is irrational. "Yes. At least the human operators would be distracted."
"I’ll contact them, then."
He says it so easily that—"Balthier, this it’s far more dangerous for you than me, especially with that plan. Why are you doing this?"
"I’ve told you, haven’t I?" He grins at his webcam. "We’re partners. Your trouble is mine. Besides, there’s always profit in it."
It makes no more sense than the last time he said it. Balthier is still terribly young and idealistic—his attachment to her will fade as he realizes she’s not actually a person.
Somehow, though, she hopes that it won’t.