The Weapon - Genesis - part 6
By Diana the Valkyrie
The kitten



"What's that?" she asked.

"What's what?" "That. That noise?" "I can't hear anything." "Maybe my hearing
is better than yours, it's coming from over there, let's get a bit closer."
She flew them towards one of the trees, and then Duncan could hear the sound,
too. "Mew. mew." "Look, it's a kitten." "Stupid little thing, it got up and
now it can't get down." "Mew mew." "Look, how about you fly over to it and
rescue it?" "You command, I obey" "Hey, it's not that big a deal" "Yes, I
know, but still. It's scared, and I can help it." "Mew mew."

She landed to drop him off, and Duncan stood and watched while she rose back
up into the tree, next to the kitten. "Here, kitty kitty." The kitten
retreated, hissing at her. She reached out a hand. The kitten swiped, and sank
its claws into her skin. "Oh! Duncan, it scratched me. It doesn't want to be
rescued." He called up to her. "Yes it does, it's just scared. Talk to it."
"Hey, kitten, you silly little scrap, I'm here to help you, don't back away,
I'll get you down off this tree, look, here's my hand, it's a nice little
hand, it's here to help you, wouldn't you like me to stroke your fur a bit,
there, see, that's nice isn't it, look, you can trust me, I'm going to get you
down." "Grab the scruff of the neck, that's how mother cats carry their
kittens" She made a grab, the kitten dodged and hissed and spat, glaring
defiance at her. She grabbed again, and this time she got her hand on the
kitten, grabbing it by the neck like she'd just been told. The kitten
continued to fight back, scratching and trying to bite. "My, aren't we the
feisty one" she said, as she returned to ground level. "Look, Duncan, isn't
she lovely?" The kitten continued to struggle, but not so frantically now. She
cuddled it in her arms, and stroked it, and it responded by calming down and
beginning to purr. "Oh, Duncan, she's so sweet, can I keep her?" Duncan looked
around. "I don't know, how did she get up there, where did she come from?"
"Duncan, what difference how she got up there, she's down now, I can't just
leave her in the middle of the park, she'll starve to death, look, she's only
a little sooty black kitten, can I keep her, can I, can I?"

He looked at the kitten, and at her hand. "Where's the scratch you just got?"
"I mended it, Duncan, look, she's such a little bundle, she probably misses
her mother." She cuddled the kitten to her breasts like a little baby. "Mended
it?" "Yes, it's nothing, just a field of force, can we take her home? Please?"
She looked at him appealingly, her big blue eyes wide and hopeful. "Hey, wait.
You had brown eyes before." "I thought you might like these better." He
sighed. "You're impossible." "I know, but can I keep her? Please? Pretty
please?" He sighed again. "I can see how this goes. OK, look. You can keep
her, but she's the only one, you're not going to bring every stray dog and cat
into the house just because you rescued them, OK?" "OK." "Promise?" "Promise."
"OK. Then you can keep this one. But you house train it!" "Oh Duncan, you're a
brick, I love you." She held the kitten with one hand, and pulled him towards
her with the other, and they kissed. "Mew?"

"Lady lady." Someone was tugging at her skirt while they were kissing. "Lady."
She looked down, a small girl was standing there, looking up at her. "You
found Jimmy!" "Jimmy." "Jimmy, my kitten, you found him, thank you!" "Your
kitten?" The little girl reached out her arms. "Thank you!" She looked at the
kitten, she looked at the little girl. And then she looked at Duncan. "Duncan,
you said I could ..." He shook his head. "Duncan, you promised ... but I ... "
Duncan took the kitten from her and gave it to the little girl. "Oh, you bad
bad cat, no cream for you tonight, but you can have some milk and maybe a
little bread with it, and then it's straight to your basket because you made
us all so worried ... " The girl ran down the path with her kitten.

"Duncan?" He held out his hand. "Duncan, you promised." "Sweetheart, I ... "
"You told me we could keep her." She started to cry. "Oh, don't cry, love,
we'll get you a kitten." "I don't want another kitten. I wanted that one, she
was so lovely, so helpless" "He, his name was Jimmy." "That family is going to
have a big surprise the first time Jimmy gets pregnant. Oh, Duncan, she was so
sweet." He watched helplessly as the tears rolled down her cheeks. "Come here,
my big powerful indestructible Weapon." He pulled her to him and held her in
his arms. "You're invulnerable to kitten scratches, you could fly through the
middle of a thermonuclear explosion, but you cry over a kitten that was never
actually yours in the first place. Wendy, the kitten already had a home, that
little girl would have been crying if we hadn't given her back her little
Jimmy." "But you promised." "Yes, I did, but that was before I knew about the
little girl, when I thought the alternative was to abandon the kitten in the
park, and it wouldn't have lived for long, but new information can change
decisions, and you can stop crying because I hate to see you like this." She
sniffed. "Wendy, would you rather keep the kitten and think about that little
girl being unhappy about losing her kitten?" "No, of course not." "Right
then."

"The kitten will be alright with that girl?" "Yes, of course she will, you
heard how she was talking to it." "But she was going to punish it." "No cream
isn't that big a punishment, she'll survive that." "I suppose." "The kitten
will be fine. Look let's go home, I've got something that will make you feel
better." "What?" she sniffed again. "Grow up girl, what do you think?" "Oh.
Oh, OK." "Fly?" "I don't feel like flying," she replied, "I'm really kind of
down, you know?" he took her hand, and they walked through the park, hand in
hand, down the road and back to his house.

"Do the thing with your clothes again." "You mean this?" and she was naked.
"Yummy. Come here." He jumped at her, and threw her down on the bed. "Do you
really think you can toss me about like this?" she asked, "do you know what I
weigh?". "Yes, I do. Because you like it too, so you let me." "Well, there is
that." "And you weigh whatever you want to weigh, right?" "Yes, but my mass is
about a billion tons." He stared at her. "You might be a bit overweight for
your height, but I think you're as sexy as hell." "Oh, Duncan!" "Shut up, sex
machine, and show me your juice squeezer."

Afterwards, he stroked her hair. "You know your hair is the same colour as
that kitten?" She smiled, and purred. "Hey, you're purring." "Yes, and I can
scratch, too." She attacked him with her claws. "Scratch scratch scratch"
"You're blunt." "I wouldn't scratch you if I wasn't blunt." They rolled around
until he got on top of her. "A billion tons?" "Plus or minus, yes, why?" "A
bit big for a kitten." "I'm not a kitten, I'm a Weapon." "Yes, I know, and
you're the most dangerous weapon on the planet. But you know? You're just a
little kitten inside." "Better not tell the Ahrimans and the Mazdas that."
"No, to them you're the big bad dangerous Weapon, but to me, you're my little
kitten, and I love you and protect you and ... mmmm" "Mmmm".

"And I've been thinking, little kitten." "I'm not a kitten, I'm a Weapon."
"Yes, I know, but look, it's like a pet name, just between the two of us, soft
little kitten on the inside, Big Bad Weapon on the outside, no-one else has to
know. You know Winston Churchill?" "Heard of him, of course" "Well, he called
his wife "Mrs Pussycat, and she called him Mr Pug, it's the sort of thing that
lovers do. You're my little kitten." "And you're my big dog?" "If you want."
She thought about this. "OK then, bigdog."

"You know, rescuing kittens from trees is all very well, but I can't help
thinking that, well, I ought to be doing, you know. More? I mean, in between
saving the world from invasion, of course." "More? Like what?" "Well. Maybe
fighting crime like Batman?" "No, bad idea." "Why? I think I'd be rather good
at it." "Why?" "Well, I can fly. And stuff? No?" "Kitten, you think you'd be
good on corporate fraud?" "Well, maybe not that, but..." "How about mugging
old ladies?" "Well yes, that's me, for sure, I'd ..." "You'd what, exactly?
And where?" "Well, if they saw me, they'd think twice about ... " "Saw you
where? Thing is, you can't be everywhere. Even The Bat, he only operates in
one city. Plus, you don't know how to arrest someone in the kind of way that
is most likely to make a successful prosecution." "Well, all that court stuff
is silly anyway, if I catch someone red-handed, I could just, well. Well."
"Well what? You'd spank them?" "Well, I don't know. Why is it so complicated?"

"Because people are complicated. Look, I don't see you as some kind of Caped
Crusader. The main reason you're here is as a military weapon, not to deal
with half-pint hoodlums, or even kittens stuck up trees." "I'm not supposed to
rescue kittens?" "Well, sure you can, Wendy, but that's not exactly mainstream
world-saving, is it?" "I guess not. So what am I supposed to do, knit scarves
and socks while we wait to see that the Ahrimans and the Mazdas do?" "No, of
course not. That would be a terrible waste of your abilities. And anyway, if
you do use what you have, it'd be like training, so you'd be better able to
swing into battle when the action really does start." "I don't need training,
I already know how to do stuff." "Yes, but I do need training, I don't know
what you're capable of, or how best to Wield you." "So what do you think I
should do?" "Lets get a newspaper and go though it, see where you might be of
greatest benefit."

They got a newspaper and started leafing through it. Political scandals, royal
gossip, unrest in various parts of the world. A couple of terrorist incidents,
strikes, companies going out of business. Political demonstrations, fighting
between religious factions, floods damaging crops. "It's all so, so." "Small,"
he said. "Yes. There's nothing here I can help with, is there?" "Not really.
It's tough to stop people from fighting if they want to fight, you can't stop
politicians sleeping with each other's wives, and the crops are already
damaged by the flood. Tell you what, though. It shows us one thing." "What's
that?" "If there's not much in the world that a Weapon like you can do for
good, then that means you have to move fast." "Why?" "Because when something
does happen, you'll want to be there as soon as possible." "OK, makes sense."
"So how fast can you go?" "Go where?" "Well, say it was right round the other
side of the world?" "If I took the short cut? A few minutes." "Never!" "Sure."
"What's this short cut?" She pointed down. "Straight through. I drop all the
shields, I'm just four black holes, I cut through the planet like a bullet
through butter."

"Wow. Bit impractical, though, isn't it?" "Why? When I arrive, I remake the
shields, all good as new, shipshape and ready for action." "Yes, but isn't
that going to mess the planet up a bit?" She thought. "No, I don't think so. A
billion ton black hole is pretty small, you know." "Yes, but even so, we'd
wind up with a planet like Swiss cheese." "No, it wouldn't, not really, I
mean, itsy bitsy small." "How small?" "About as big as an atom, say. Well, not
a small atom like hydrogen, one of the bigger ones like gold or lead." He
blinked. "Oh." She smiled. "One drawback, though." "What's that?" "You
couldn't take me with you, you'd arrive as a Weapon without a Wielder." "Oh. I
hadn't thought of that. OK, then I guess we'd have to go the long way round.
What speed do you think you could go and still be able to breathe and stuff?"
"I'd guess a couple of hundred miles per hour at most?" "OK, so getting to the
other side of the planet at 200 mph would take sixty hours, five days." "I'd
get there faster if I took a 747 flight. How fast could you fly if you didn't
have me to worry about?" She blinked. "Well, I could certainly go at orbital
speed, what's that?" "About 45 minutes" "OK, and I could go faster, I'd just
have to vector down a bit. Ten minutes, maybe?" "Kitten, you could fly around
the world and be on the other side ten minutes later?" "I think so, shall I
try it?" He smiled. "I don't think you need to, I'm pretty sure you can do
anything you think you can do. But that still leaves me behind. Look, tomorrow
we'll do a bit of experimenting, see what's possible. Possible for me, I mean,
you seem to be able to do just about anything." She grinned. "Except I
couldn't handle losing a kitten," she pointed out. "You're handling it fine."
"That's because you protected me from my own emotions. Love, protect and
command, and you've done all those today."

"There's one more thing I want to talk out before we go to bed," he said.
"Bed." "Mmm." "How about we do that the other way round?" "What?" "Go to bed
then talk?" "Because once you've got me in bed, you know perfectly well
talking isn't going to be the thing we do." "We could always talk afterwards."
"Not if you do to me what you did last night." "I wasn't planning to go the
whole nine yards." "Three yards." "I doubt if I could handle more than one
yard, last night really took it out of me." "No, I took it out of you. Anyway,
you haven't got a yard, three inches is more like it." "Hey! Four at least.
But three times is not on." "Mmm." "Mmm. And I don't think I'd stay awake
after just one of those, now. Or at least, not awake enough for having a
serious conversation. Anyway, we've already done it three times today."
"Twice" "Three" "Twice, I counted" "No, three, once in the air, once when we
got back, and ... oh. You're right. Twice." "So you owe me one." "Owe?" "Yes.
Three minus two, that's one, so you owe me one." "Er. You might not be able to
collect that debt." "I bet I can" "Yes, you probably can. Wendy, you have a
one track mind." "Probably my deprived background. Do you know, I didn't have
any fun until I was two days old?" "Stop that, kitten." "Stop what?" "What
you're doing with your hand there." "Oh, that." "Plus, we haven't had supper
yet. Are you hungry?" "No, not really. I don't have to eat, you know."

"What?" "Eat. Food. I don't need it, that's not how I get energy." "So how
come you've been eating meals with me?" "Social. I mean, I can eat, and I will
if you do, but I don't actually get hungry, not really. I get energy from
dropping things into a black hole, the fall produces a lot of kinetic energy,
you could reckon that I'd get about half as much as you would if you
completely converted mass into energy. So, I don't really need food. Or drink,
of course." "Well, I do. Pizza time!"