Chapter 158: Book 3 Chapter 11.1: A Head of the Situation

Kim was far from anti-social, but she still didn’t text the rest of the group very much. That made it all the more interesting when she texted two things to the group chat, the first being “Come to my dorm” and the second being “Shut up”.

“So, what are we feeling as far as ‘what did Kim do’?” Harley asked. “She definitely broke something. Or someone. Hopefully herself.”

“I sure hope it was herself,” Hawke said. He didn’t like the thought of Kim being broken in any way shape or form, but her robot body being broken was much better—and less sticky–than a human body getting broken. It was the first loop either way, so any damage would be temporary, but Hawke didn’t want to have to look at any messes if he could avoid it.

“Hawke’s down for herself, I tend to agree, the rest of you are too cowardly to speak up,” Harley continued. They arrived at the door to Kim’s dorm, and Harley took the lead. “Let’s see what’s behind door number one!”

Harley threw the door open and took the first bold step through. She tried, and failed, to stifle her laughter.

Kim’s dorm was sparse by even the most extreme definitions of the word. It was bare of decorations aside from a long shelf on the wall bearing mementos from apocalypses she had thwarted, and she had no furniture aside from a single table and four chairs, which were generally used only when she had guests. The usually bare table now had a new decoration on it: Kim’s severed, immobile, yet still active head.

“Kim. Why are you a head?”

“My legs hurt,” Kim said. “This felt like a rational reaction.”

“Ha ha,” Vell said. They all knew Kim didn’t feel pain anymore. She’d ditched the fake nervous system along with her human appearance. “What happened?”

“Ugh. Fine. I’ve been working on making my body semi-autonomous,” Kim said. “That way I can just leave my head here while my body goes and does dumb shit like chores, or if I ever get decapitated in a fight my body can keep going. That kind of thing.”

“Good plan, seems like possibly poor execution,” Harley said.

“It was going great,” Kim insisted defiantly, before deflating. “Until it wasn’t. I sent it to pick up a book from the library and not long after that, it lost contact.”

“Is it autonomous enough to get home without contact?”

“Yes, but we’re well past the time it should’ve gotten back,” Kim said. She had, of course, put off calling for help for as long as possible, to avoid the current giggling aimed in her direction.

“Any location tracking?”

“Yes, but it went down with everything else.”

“Well, looks like we’re doing this the old fashioned way,” Harley said, before pointing at her own face. “With our eyeballs. Or optical scanners, in Kim’s case.”

“You are coming with us, yes dear?”

“So long as Hawke’s willing to carry me,” Kim said. She didn’t exactly want to be paraded around campus as a severe head, but any shame she felt would be erased by the time loops.

“I got you,” Hawke said. He grabbed Kim’s head by the side and hefted it off the table, which took surprising effort. “Ho boy, maybe I don’t got you. You are surprisingly heavy.”

“Got all my essential systems tucked up in here for the separation,” Kim said. She briefly opened a hatch on her “neck” and deployed most of the hardware that kept her running—along with the rune, usually located in her chest, that made her truly alive.

“Oh yeah, that reminds me, You mind if I stick a feather rune on you, Kim?”

She attempted to nod before remembering she had no neck, and opted to say “Go for it” instead. Vell summoned a rune with his phone and stuck it to the top of Kim’s severed head, making it much easier to carry.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Hawke said. He hefted Kim’s cranium in one hand and lifted it above his own head. “I can definitely handle this.”

“Good to know,” Kim said. “Now hold me normally. You start tossing me around I’m dropping a rock on your Pathfinder character.”

“Sorry.”

“You guys play Pathfinder?”

“Yeah. A guy from our bocce club got us involved in a campaign,” Kim said. “I’m the DM, since I can always remember all the rules and never forget any important notes.”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Damn. You two have developed startlingly rich social lives.”

“Bocce club is surprisingly well connected,” Kim said. “Can we look for my body now?”

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“Alright, this is my body’s last known location,” Kim said. “Hawke, point me at the ground. I want to scan for clues.”

Hawke dutifully obeyed and pointed Kim’s face down towards the grass. They were on the quad, midway between Kim’s dorm and the school’s library, with nothing particularly conspicuous visible in any direction. It looked like a perfectly ordinary day at the Einstein-Odison College, except for the gaggle of students walking around with a severed robot head. But even that wasn’t too weird by EOC standards.

“Speaking of scanning, Vell, you got your glasses?”

“I’ve got a pair in my desk, but no need,” Vell said. “I integrated all the same functions into Kim’s head a while back.”

“And those functions are turning up jack and shit, my friends,” Kim said. “No traces of any spells or anything else major going on here. Whoever or whatever disabled my body did it pretty cleanly.”

“Off to a great start, as always,” Harley said. “

“Hold a moment,” Lee said. “Kim, does your body have its own power source, or does it run off auxiliary power from your rune?”

“It’s got its own battery. I try not to store too much rune-juice at a time,” Kim said. “That could end badly. But it hasn’t been all that long, might still be some trace amounts running through the system.”

“If that is the case, I may be able to track the residual power,” Lee said. “Going to burn my damned fingertips again though, always does…”

The amount of divine power stored in Vell and Kim’s matching runes always found a way to flow upstream and scorch Lee’s fingers, no matter how hard she tried to prevent it. With that in mind, she took a few extra precautions and tried again. Her fingertips traced magical symbols in the air to complete the tracking spell and, as she finished up the gestures, she braced herself for a burning sensation. She prodded one more time to complete the spell, then winced in advance.

The pain she was expecting never came. Lee held the wince for a few seconds just in case.

“Huh. I guess I’m getting better at that,” Lee said. “There’s a trail leading this way. Come along then.”

The tracking spell had illuminated a vague trail leading across the campus. While indistinct and hard to follow, the loopers own familiarity with the campus made it easy to guess where the trail was leading soon enough.

“Towards the robotics lab,” Harley said. “Of course. Probably picking up spare parts for the body they jacked.”

“You keep a lot of spares lying around your workshop?” Kim asked. “I try to keep all my parts in my dorm.”

“Not a lot, but there’s always something we’re working on,” Harley said. Kim’s body was a collaborative work-in-progress, so there was always some part or another lying around. “I try to keep them locked down, but anyone who can steal your body can probably crack a safe.”

The group hustled towards the lab a little faster. Harley popped the door open and they found nothing immediately out of the ordinary, except for Sarah, who was suspicious and alien for reasons entirely unrelated to their ongoing dilemma. She was just like that.

“Hello Harley and friends of Harley,” Sarah said. She stared at them impassively from behind the thick-lensed sunglasses she always wore, even indoors and at night.

“Hey Sarah. Kim’s body got stolen and we’ve been tracking down leads, and we were wondering if you’d seen anything suspicious.”

Sarah never answered anything phrased as a question, which was normally very frustrating, but Harley had managed to invent a few workarounds.

“I have seen no things deserving being suspicious,” Sarah said. “But not all things are seen by me.”

“Is there a reason she talks like that?” Samson whispered to Vell.

“If there is, we don’t know it, just roll with it,” Vell whispered back. “Thank you, Sarah, please let us know if you see anything out of the ordinary.”

“Is that including seeing a mirror reflecting myself?”

“No, no, we’re used to you by now, you’re part of the landscape,” Harley said. “A part of the landscape we occasionally trip over, yeah, but still.”

“Okay. Apologies from me about your body, Kim. There are difficulties to having no limbs.”

“Are...are you speaking from experience?”

Sarah did not answer. Kim had been expecting that, but she’d had to try, at least.

“Come on, let’s have a look around then.”

The looper squad started to scan the workshop as Sarah got back to her work. Vell tried not to get too distracted by her work, which appeared to be a robot replica of a cassowary. Vell had been mauled by a cassowary and had no desire to repeat the experience, especially not in robot form. Distracted or not, his long search turned up nothing at all.

“Well, completely fruitless on my end,” Vell said aloud.

“My time has been fruitful,” Sarah said.

“Oh, did you find some-”

Vell turned around and froze in place to find Sarah holding a literal fruit. An orange, to be specific, which she had taken a bite out of, peel and all, as if it were an apple.

“Oh, that’s—I’m not going to comment on that,” Vell said.

“Commenting of your not commenting is commenting in different form,” Sarah said. “Also, something suspicious has been found.”

Sarah took another bite of her orange before continuing, which distressed Vell to no end. There were little teeth-shaped marks in the orange peel.

“There are empty spaces that should have weapons in them. Exactly seven guns, for precision,” Sarah said. “Precision of counting, not precision of the guns.”

“Well don’t sound so fucking worried about it, Sarah!”

“Worries are pointless,” Sarah said. “I have more than enough intelligence to not keep guns loaded.”

A handful of bullets clattered on the ground as Sarah emphasized her point by dumping them out of her purse. Vell kicked aside a worryingly large caliber bullet and watched it roll away.

“Alright, so we’ve got someone smart enough to heist a body, commit an elaborate theft to weaponize it, but not realize that all of its shiny new weapons are entirely harmless,” Vell said.

“Oh for fucks sake,” Harley grunted.

The scattered bullets Sarah had dropped on the floor made way for Harley as she stomped across the room. She grumbled something under her breath, entirely inaudible to everyone else in the room until she reached the doors, threw them open, and stepped out into the quad to deliver a shout a single word.

“Undedison!”