Armature Noir: Sigma BLACK

"What do you mean you can't let it through customs? Don't you know who I am?"

The Ithacan Transorbital Control SysAdmin's eyebrows wavered. "Uh, yes? I have your passport details in front of me. Mistiare Blue Matthews."

"The Sapphire Knight." the red haired woman said, putting her hand on the officer's desk and leaning forward.

The SysAdmin paused, then looked up from Miss Matthews' deep, creamy cleavage. "It doesn't say that in your passport."

Misty paused, drew away from the desk and lapped the office. When she returned she slapped the desk four times, which the SysAdmin felt was totally unnecessary. "I realise that they train you to be literally as unhelpful as possible but come the fuck on. I have merchandise! I'm on the front cover of Vogue!" the SysAdmin gave her a bland, mindless smile. It was unbelievable: she actually couldn't believe it. The man was a trashy stereotype of robots. "This month! There's a billboard in the foodcourt!"

"Miss Matthews, please, that isn't relevant to ... anything. The fact remains that you simply cannot transport a custom, military grade Armature into Ithaca."

Misty narrowed her one visible sapphire blue eye, and fingered the pendant on her choker. The SysAdmin wasn't sure, but it seemed like she was mentally wrestling with something. "Do you have ... do you have any idea who I'm ... I can't believe I'm going to say this ..."

"Yes ...?"

"Do you have any idea who I'm working for?"

"Yes!" the SysAdmin replied brightly, and Misty felt hope tugging faintly at her heart. "Mister Aleksander von Panzerborn, ah, pardon me, Domoto Daisuke-sama. Yes, I know who you're working for. Also I do not give a shit. Also get out of my office."

-v-

Stepping out onto the concourse, Misty took a deep breath, settled her Dantian, recalibrated all seven Chakra and all that other Zen bullshit and was radiant once more. Literally radiant, as sunlight hit the crystals in her (perfectly applied) make-up. Heads turned. As she circled her sapphire pendant with her thumb, misty mentally weighed up the options. She should have known better than to try a charm offensive with an aerospace port official, but when all you have is a hammer ...

"So I can either call my new boss to get a bribe or I can steal my own giant robot." Misty put her hands on her golden ratio hips and laughed incredulously. "Steal my own giant robot. What is this job?"

Seven hundred meters further down the concourse, two more women were crying their sorrows into boxes of spicy noodles. The one of the left was a statuesque young woman with dark purple hair cascading over her breathtaking rack and pooling onto the bar. The other was straight-backed, green-haired and extremely pretty in that 'obviously does charity work; doesn't date' kind of way. "I realise that strictly speaking the Armatures belong to us, but that doesn't mean it's not stealing, Miss Lina."

"Fairy, baby-"

"Faryn."

"-, I realise you get off on this whole chivalrous warrior code of honour thing, but beggars can't be choosers." Lina said as she wrapped fried noodles around her inexpertly wielded chopsticks. "You can't be the last of the Pilgrim Knights without a suit of armour."

Faryn frowned. "Yes, but the man said-"

"The man lied, baby." Lina said, pointing her chopsticks at her fellow mercenary.

"Yes, but the man said we could submit a request to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and they would consider allowing us our Armatures." Impossibly, Faryn straightened proudly. "After all, he considered a representative of the Pilgrim Knight Foundation to be a net gain to Argo-3!"

Lina gave the green-haired woman a flat, incredulous look. "Did you ... believe him?" Faryn blinked slowly in response. "Well, let's not go there. Anyway doing it legally got us into this mess in the first place, and we need to be at Domoto's place in about four hours. We'll pay lip service to the bureaucracy later."

-v-

With her ST&T Tonberry hooked up to a public broadcast terminal, Juliana Margrange was able to frown at her boyfriend, Michael Arbuela, despite the fact he was metaphorically a million miles away (literally hundreds of trillions). His simulation, only slightly more handsome than the real thing, squirmed a little in the abstract art which served as his seat.

"I'm sorry minha vida, but there's nothing the company can do."

Juliana let her tiny body slump further into the interface couch. Michael looked apologetic in the AR hallucination, and Juliana was reminded of why she was even a condottiero in the first place: the only thing Arbuela Intastella Shipping was good for was cheap shipping. Emphasis: cheap. The family business broke even every month, but that just ensured a continual cycle of corporate mediocrity. "I'm on my own then." Juliana sighed. "I can't do my job without Conquista."

"You'll manage, Juli." Michael cracked a smile. "More than manage, I'm sure."

They exchanged sappy, chaste pleasantries, and Juliana disconnected. After taking a moment to rub her eyes, she swung herself off the interface couch, pushed up the gullwing door and climbed back out into the all-day nightclub. She got a pile of strange looks as she left, but she ignored them as best she could without hurting her situational awareness.

Juli clicked her fingers and her suitcase undocked itself from the wall and rolled after her. In her head she mapped out the path to the aerospace administration wing, but every passing second left her teeth clenched tighter and tighter. Covering her face with her tiny hands, Juliana let out a quiet cry of total anguish. She was being punished for some minor act of impiety in her previous life. At best, this place was Purgatory. You could practically smell the sulphur in the food court.

Taking a deep, rattling breath, Juli looked up, stepped forward and buried her face between a pair of warm, pillowy breasts. A slim hand smoothed back her chocolate brown hair and gently extracted Juli from the squishy prison. "You look a little lost, sweetie."

"Mãe do Cristo." Juliana breathed as the woman's boobs settled back in place like mountains of jelly in a slow-motion earthquake. The weight of injustice almost made her knees buckle, so she did the only safe thing and looked up into Lina Linear's Cheshire cat grin. They stared at each other for what seemed like a very long time. Juliana fumbled her dice and cracked. "Is there a problem? Can I ... help you?"

Combing her fingers further through Juliana's hair, Lina's smile found a little more face to expand into. "You know, it's a funny thing, but there is. And you can."

-v-

Away from the bureaucratic, narrative molasses in Ithaca, a small robot was trundling down the boardwalk in the tropical sunshine. It's flattened, pastel blue eggshell body bobbed between the legs of scantily clad water balloons: four little wheels on chubby legs determinedly spinning away. This was a robot on a mission. This was the RYO-K-01.

The mission was procrastination.

Debt is powerful, and it can make people do strange things. The RYO-K-01's debt was very, very large.