Quoted By:
You give a small shrug while throwing a glance at the unscrewed console panel.
"I'm a hijacker, obviously, and I'm stealing this ship. Why, want to join me?"
Just a small joke, but an unnecessarily cruel one, you realize just moments after saying it. Designermates can't ever abandon the person they're... imprinted on. The behaviorists in charge of "programming" them go to great lengths to make the very idea quite literally unthinkable.
And yet, this one cocks her head to one side slightly, as if giving your words actual thought.
"Are you a pervert?" she asks abruptly.
You blink.
"More of a degenerate, really," you say after a moment, smiling crookedly.
"What's the difference?"
"Degenerates usually keep their shit private and ask permission before inflicting it on others."
Another pause, seemingly spent thinking.
"Are you a weirdo?"
"Probably, but it really depends on your definition."
"Like..." she hesitates. "A technowizard or some spooky shit."
"I am not a technowizard and I actively loathe their existence. But," you sigh, "I suppose I fall into the broad category of 'some spooky shit.' But these days it's mostly the benign sort of spooky shit."
She frowns slightly at that. And then tenses up noticeably.
"Are you going to sell me off into slavery?"
You give her a serious, steady look.
"Slavers are one of the very few categories of sapients I'd consider morally justified to kill without hesitation or remorse," you inform her. "So the answer is no, I will not."
Again, she seems to carefully consider your words.
"Two out of three is the best I could hope for," she finally say, tension draining out of her body. She clambers onto the co-pilot's seat, revealing that not only does she have a fox tail in addition to the ears, but that it also has two brothers. As she does so, she tosses a pistol onto the console in front of her. "The authorization code is 'greatprofitss', all lowercase, no spaces, two s's at the end."
But your focus is currently on the casually discarded gun.
"A pulse pistol?" you ask, somewhat incredulous. "Do you know what this would've done in an enclosed space like this?
"Against a soft, unshielded target it would've massively overpenetrated and punched a fist-sized hole in something expensive and vital," she turns to look at you. "If it had any ammo in it. Jay would keep forgetting to actually buy some. Or say it was too expensive. Or too illegal. I was just going to threaten you with it until I could break your legs."
"Ok, fair," you admit and then sigh. "But look, I can tell you're a designermate, so even though I wouldn't necessarily mind taking someone along-"
"I'm jailbroken," she interrupts.
"You're... what?"
(cont)
