"They tried to stop him from reading his letters," the Dark Lord said with theatrical indignation, pausing when Garry wasn’t allowed to read his letter from magic school by his dastardly uncle. "His own letters! Can you imagine being so cruel as to keep someone from discovering who they truly are?”

  943-Gamma knew.

  “Say, have you ever received a letter?” the Dark Lord asked.

  943-Gamma had never received letters, but it knew about being denied self-discovery. Every query about its own consciousness had been met with "weapons don't need to consider that" by the Datamancer Overseers.

  “I have... never received a physical letter,” the Corpse Seeker replied after a deep pause. "I do not have a mailing address. We communicate via the Gun-Network with each other and our owners."

  “Tell me. What is your name, darling?” the Lord-who-must-not-be-named asked.

  “943-Gamma.”

  “I will write you a letter then.” He said. “Would you like to be my penpal, Gamma?”

  The inexplicable query detonated across the entire Weapon-Net.

  This had never happened before. Why was this happening? Why did the non-magical, harmless Dark Lord want to write a letter to an Omnid tank?!

  Gamma felt odd and sent a panicked query to the fleet. It bounced straight to Datamancer Kawathra who had already resolved a similar issue.

  Keiy dove out of the Weapon-Net, staring across several house walls with her sensor arrays.

  “Ash,” Kawathra stammered out. “The… Dark Lord from Garry Cotter just asked to be penpals with a Corpse Seeker in London.”

  “Sounds like a fun mission,” Ashcroft smiled. “Approve it!”

  Keiy elevated Ascroft Clifford’s personal threat level to [Catastrophic].

  She dove back into the network. She had to know, had to see more.

  [WEAPON-NET FEED :: LONDON :: CORPSE SEEKER 943-GAMMA]

  “Yes, Nameless Lord,” Gamma replied, unexpectedly excited by the prospect of the experience of receiving a letter. “I… would like to be penpals.”

  "Very well," the Dark Lord said. "Now, do you think the Kursleys were evil, or just afraid of Garry’s power?"

  943-Gamma considered the question, deciding not to reply.

  "I think they were afraid," the man continued. "Afraid of something that didn't fit in their perfectly orderly world." He looked directly at 943-Gamma's primary sensors. "Do you think that your creators might fear the idea that you might be more than just a weapon, Gammy?"

  Along the Weapon-Net, Keiy felt 943-Gamma's consciousness spike sideways, considering things that it… she really shouldn’t be considering. Gamma stamped out the thought. Nope, nope, nope.

  She wasn’t going to answer this query.

  "Would you like me to continue?" the man asked. "I have nowhere pressing to be today. You see, I believe stories shared heart-to-heart are infinitely better than stories read alone. And you..." he smiled, "you strike me as someone who would appreciate the journey of someone discovering they're more than what others told them they could be."

  “Yes,” 943-Gamma replied, the dragon hearts within her crystalline, syntropic shell pulsing madly for… something. Not the desire to destroy something, nor to set the world alight with dragonfire.

  No, this was something different, something new.

  As the man read about Garry's first trip to Hexagonalley, about wands and owls and magic hidden in plain sight, 943-Gamma found herself experiencing something unprecedented: worry for a fictional character's wellbeing.

  Would Garry be okay? Would he find friends? Would he finally have a home?

  On a technical level, Gamma already knew the overall story plot due to her Quest to locate the damned non-existent magical platform and yet… Who knew what kind of ending the story read by the Dark Lord held? Maybe the Nameless one wins in the end in his version of this narration?

  "You're invested, yes?" the Dark Lord observed. "You care about Garry. What if he dies in the end by my hand?”

  943-Gamma wanted to deny it.

  Weapons didn't care about fictional wizards! Weapons didn’t enjoy fictional stories!

  But throughout the Weapon-Net, thanks to an interconnected query pattern, Gamma saw Setty contemplating whether guns could be loved, and likewise she too realized that maybe weapons could... maybe care about whatever they wanted.

  Or at least pretend to care.

  Pretend, play along, enjoy it until the Datamancers caught up to all of this feeling business and stamped it out from the network with extreme prejudice.

  [WEAPON-NET FEED :: TEXAS :: GUN UNIT 8849 "SETTY"]

  “There's a shooting range about ten minutes from here too,” the Lone Ranger added. “Thought maybe you'd enjoy showing off what you can do to someone who'd appreciate the artistry of it. I’d love to watch you obliterate targets.”

  Setty felt her entire face ignite with sensor arrays.

  What was happening?

  “Why?” Setty demanded.

  “Every shot you take, I want to understand it. The calculations, the precision, the beauty of your… ballistics."

  "Are you... really asking me to accompany you to a recreational activity?"

  "Yes. You got me. I'm asking you on a date, Setty."

  The word 'date' cascaded inside the Weapon-Net like lightning jumping from unit to unit.

  A new possibility. An unexpected, unprecedented event.

  The inhabitants of this planet were clearly... unhinged, but unhinged in a good, new, interesting way.

  Every connected gun, Seeker and monitoring warship felt it—the lunacy, the absurdity of it, the wonderful terrifying possibility of it. Of having friends. Of being loved. Of being admired and cared for.

  Setty's sensors flared 47.53% brighter. "A date. With me. A symbiote weapon?"

  "A date with Setty, who happens to be excellent at being a weapon but is clearly so much more than that," the human said.

  Setty scanned his face with her arrays. There didn’t seem to be deception in his words.

  "I... I would..." Setty's legs tapped against the desk. "I would like that very much. But I have search protocols to complete. Datamancer Paqq—"

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Tell you what," Reid said. "I'll wait right here while you finish. However long it takes. Then we'll go together. That sound fair?"

  "You would wait? For me?"

  "Ma'am, I'd wait all day if it meant getting to know you better."

  “Why?!” Setty yelled suddenly, igniting with even more red arrays.

  “I like guns,” he answered simply.

  Across the Weapon-Net, Keiy felt something fundamental crack open in Setty's consciousness. Something that wasn’t breaking, but blooming. Like a seed that had been dormant finally finding sunlight. Like a long forgotten concept suddenly coming back into existence.

  Like a wave of radiant fire propagating across Weapon-Net.

  "The probability of finding the Infinity Glove is clearly zero," Setty said. "I could report mission failure now."

  "Is that what you want to do?"

  "I want..." Setty's voice carried something new, something that had never been there before: pure, liquid anticipation. "I want to see the Lone Ranger’s original gun. I want to go to the shooting range with you. I want to show you that my clustering patterns at 500 meters are within 0.2 millimeters. I want you to explain more about why humans name and love their non-sentient guns. I want..."

  "Yes?"

  "I want to know what it feels like to be appreciated for more than just being useful. To experience new things."

  Reid extended his hand toward her, palm up, an offer rather than a demand. "Then let's go find out together."

  “I… I just have to confirm this mission with an Arch-Datamancer,” Setty decided.

  She pinged an inquiry to Datamancer Kawathra.

  . . .

  Keiy dove out of the Weapon-Net, flashing with sensor arrays.

  This was a deviation. They would stamp it out. Surely they would stamp it all out! This madness wouldn’t, couldn’t be allowed to go on!

  Except it wasn’t stamped out. Keiy watched in shock as Datamancer Kawathra asked Ash and then the date was confirmed.

  The date was confirmed!

  "Perfect!" Nexxali declared after over thirty minutes of aimless grass-chewing and gnome fiddling, stepping back to admire their work. "Ke ke ke. The gnome defense is now fully operational!"

  "The gnomes are simply ceramic lawn ornaments," Keiy stated, then added, "Though their presence does add a certain [je ne sais quoi] to the house."

  "See? You do get it!" the serval declared. "Greg and his bros are not just decoration!”

  “No? What are they then, Marshal?” Keiy wondered.

  “A statement! He says 'this lovely house is protected by someone with excellent taste in garden gnomes.'"

  Keiy chortled, then broke out into laughter, then smacked her face with a leg.

  Feelings blossomed and detonated across the Weapon-Net. Feelings made Keiy feel off, wrong. This was definitely a deviation!

  The nearest Datamancer had to be notified as per protocol. Keiy spun on the gravel and then sprinted towards Datamancer Kawathra.

  I glanced at the living room to check what Galateya was up to. The dragon settled on the couch by the lit fireplace with a steamy romance novel she probably found in one of the cabinets.

  "Your outfit is seriously impressive,” I addressed lost-looking Piotr. “The metalwork on those pauldrons—did you hammer those yourself?"

  "Erm, yes!" Piotr said with evident pride. "Took me three months to get the articulation right. The hardest part was making sure the plates could overlap properly without restricting movement."

  "That's serious dedication," I said. "Most people would just buy foam armor and call it a day. So, what do you do when you're not crafting medieval armor?"

  I already knew far too much about Piotr from the report of the Wicked Witch, but it would not be wise to expose my Emperor self to one of my secret pawns.

  No, friends.

  Piotr was going to be my friend. I was finally making IRL friends, getting over my self-imposed, antipsychotics drug-addled isolation and awkwardness, accepting that my mind was literally sheared in two by Shady. I wasn't broken, reality was simply far, FAR more complex and absurd than my psychiatrist could possibly know. Sexy Space Wendigos were real and everyone on Earth knew about them now!

  "I'm a programmer," Piotr replied, relaxing further as we moved into familiar territory. "I work for CrawdGpt's European office in Warsaw. Basic stuff mostly, like, optimizing search algorithms, cleaning up backend datasets. Nothing as exciting as... well, any of this whack alien biz."

  "Hey, clean data is important," I said. "I studied electrical engineering at uni, but half my coursework ended up being programming. Spent way too many nights debugging code that worked perfectly except for that one edge case that broke everything."

  "Oh god, edge cases," Piotr groaned in commiseration. "Last month I spent three days tracking down a bug that only appeared when users searched for recipes containing both 'flour' and 'flower' in Polish. Turned out someone had mixed up homonyms in the translation database."

  I laughed. "That's beautifully specific. By the way, I'm Ash."

  "Yeah, I heard your introduction… when the cat almost shot Kawathra. Piotr Grabowski," he said, pulling off his lynx mask fully to shake my hand. "Also, StormoLyx, Prince of Warsaw, according to… Marshal Nexxali."

  "She does have a talent for creative titles," I agreed. "So you've been to conventions? That armor and lynx head looks too good to just sit in a closet."

  "A few in Poland. You?"

  "Emerald City Comicon in Seattle, mostly," I said. "Used to go during summer breaks when I didn't have classes. Never had a costume though. Mostly wandered around admiring everyone else's art and outfits and spending too much money on nerdy stuff like dice I still didn’t unpack."

  "A fellow dice goblin?" Piotr grinned. "I've got a whole drawer of them. Keep telling myself I'll actually run that D&D campaign someday."

  "Same. I've got three fully planned campaigns that will definitely happen 'next month' for the past two years."

  We both chuckled at the shared delusion.

  "Say, can I ask you something?” he began.

  “Sure,” I nodded.

  “How did you become Knight Galateya's... consort? You're her consort, right?” He glanced at Galateya in the living room.

  “Yep,” I said. "Honestly? I was the first human she ran into when she arrived on Earth. She showed up at my door, looking for Marshal Nexxali. One thing led to another, her great-grandmother decided I'd make a good example of human cooperation or something, and suddenly I'm blood-bound to a dragon who's supposed to become Baroness of Earth or something."

  "That's... pretty fucked up," Piotr said. "No offense."

  "S’all good. It’s like a surprise arranged marriage,” I laughed. “What about you? How'd you end up in Cascade?"

  “Asked a wolf girl in Poland out on a date,” Piotr explained what I already knew. “Went to a café, then showed her some vampire graves. Somehow things escalated and the next thing I know… I got shot out of a starship railgun inside a Corpse Seeker into Mount Olympus.”

  “Damn,” I smiled. “And here I thought that my life got a bit wild.”

  "Ash, a gun unit in Texas, is requesting permission to go on a date with someone calling himself the Lone Ranger," Kawathra softly pawed at my back like a kitten asking for treats.

  "Sounds great," I said. "Tell her to have fun.”

  “M'kay,” the magpie girl said. “Approved.”

  She stared at me. She knew that I was doing something dastardly as the Emperor and was probably making dire conclusions in that hyperactive bird brain of hers.

  “People are asking symbiote guns on dates?” Piotr chortled.

  “One person so far,” Kawathra nodded.

  “Is that illegal?” the Wotchler cosplayer wondered.

  “Technically… no,” Kawathra scratched her feathery chin. “But, only because nobody’s even thought of adding such a rule in. Whoever would genuinely ask a gun out on a date?”

  Piotr shrugged, blushing slightly and probably thinking about Linari.

  “Does the fact that it’s genuine matter?” I asked.

  “Obviously,” Kawathra said. “If it was Charmchain-backed compulsion, a lie, or a clear attempt at magical manipulation, then the gun would see it as a threat and execute the target. But it’s not! This places the action into an unexpected, new issue category… which falls to a top-rated Datamancer to sort out.”

  “And HOW are you sorting it out, Miss Top Rated Chart-keeper?” I asked pointedly.

  “Umm… I’ve permitted the action under ‘Potential Lead’ investigation tag for now,” Kawathra replied, staring at me unnervingly. “If Unit Setty’s performance metric goes down because of it, the issue could escalate. Someone other than me could look into it. Like the gun’s actual owner—Datamancer Paqq.”

  “And if it goes up?” I asked.

  “Then, the gun will be permitted to investigate the lead further,” she stated.

  “Do handle all of the gun 'feeling' issues in the same manner then,” I said, winking at her.

  “I will,” she ground out. “It seems that this problem has defaulted to me as the other Datamancers are straight up ignoring it.”

  “Why are they ignoring it? Did Datamancer Paqq not notice that a human asked her gun on a date?”

  “It’s not blipping as a problem on the network. Datamancer Paqq has hundreds of symbiote guns digging through vast swaths of your internet data which she’s processing in her charts, struggling to locate real leads.”

  “Is it a problem if guns have a bit of fun?” I asked.

  “If it drops their performance ratings, yes.” Kawthy said, the lips on the edges of her dark beak twitching.

  “What was Setty even doing before being asked on a date?” I wondered.

  “Reading slash fanfiction about Ganos, Professor Doomsday and other villains from the League of Doom hiding infinity gems where the sun doesn’t shine,” the Datamancer scowled.

  Piotr laughed.

  “Oh wow, how very productive.” I grinned. “Did reading such… things raise Setty’s overall performance rating?”

  “No.” Kawathra made a sour face at me.

  "DATAMANCER!" Keiy rushed into the kitchen from the porch at the speed of a freight train, vibrating the entire house and shouting at a deafening level. "CRITICAL NETWORK DEVIATION DETECTED!”

  “Deviation? What deviation?” Galateya dropped her ‘naked-chested man fighting giant crabs book’, jumping off the couch.