If there was one thing Pacifica was more acutely aware of than most other people, it was the value of a good friend. She often told people that in some ways, she felt fortunate to have been the Scrapped Princess; among other things, she knew that there was a fairly large number of persons who had proven themselves willing to put everything on the line, just to ensure her continued wellbeing, and if anything could teach a person humility, it was seeing other people risk their lives for you. Granted, these people, as a group, had very different reasons for supporting her: some, like Winia, Leo, and especially her siblings, had been motivated by their close personal relationship with her, while others, like Seness and her followers and the members of the Obstinate Arrow Task Force, had done so primarily for philosophical reasons, while Kidaf was almost a separate category unto himself, as the minstrel/bounty hunter’s support for Pacifica didn’t seem to have any logical motivation at all.
But these distinctions mattered little to Pacifica; quite frankly, they all qualified as friends by her definition: in some way or another, all had pledged their support to her, and that was enough. It was the support of all those people that allowed Pacifica to hold on when everyone else in the world had been opposed to her very existence. People capable of that level of dedication were rare enough, and she did not forget those that gave that dedication to her. They had more than earned her trust, and Pacifica saw no reason to deny them, especially now that most of the threats against her were gone.
Not all, of course. There were, it turned out, more than a few people who just didn’t like the idea of change, and these people leveled the blame squarely on Pacifica. And, she had to admit, they were right: if it weren’t for her, nothing would have changed. Mankind would still be imprisoned in a constant state of technological retardation, unaware of what they as a species were really capable of. However, most of those who disapproved of humanity’s new arrangements seemed content to deliver intoxicated diatribes to their local bartender, and glaring at the blue-eyed blonde who’d spoiled their wonderful lives by forcing the horrors of genuine free will upon them whenever she passed by. Pacifica didn’t worry about them; after all, the government of Leinwan was now actively discouraging its populace from attempting to kill her (a vast improvement over its previous position, in her opinion), though she still had to deal with the occasional angry nutcase who missed the “good old days” and apparently thought getting rid of her would bring back the old paradigm. Unfortunately for these people, Pacifica still lived with her siblings, and Shannon and Raquel were still more than willing to beat the everloving crap out of anyone who tried to mess with her.
Still, those few were the exceptions; most people were genuinely nice to Pacifica now that they had no reason to fear her. Many even apologized for previous actions taken against her (particularly Ms. Diana, who had been guilt-stricken for months after she’d first tried to betray the girl to the Church of Mauser). Pacifica accepted such apologies quite readily, reasoning that if someone else had been the Scrapped Princess, likely as not, she would have reacted the same way.
But in the end, Pacifica kept a close relationship with the select group of people who had supported her during the uncertainty surrounding her sixteenth birthday, when nobody had any idea whether or not she really would destroy the world. These people meant everything to her; she’d trusted them then, she trusted them now, and she saw no reason why she should ever stop trusting them, because these were people who would never do anything malicious to her.
It was ironic, then, that it was one of these people had the capacity make her life as chaotic as it had been before.
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(Posted Tue, 05 Dec 2006 22:19)
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