[Suikoden III] "The Most Likely Outcome," Hugo/Belle
First of all: apparently I have not had comment notifications on for this journal, and didn't realize it. This has been rectified, so I will be much better at responding to comments than I have been for the past few months. My apologies to everyone who's commented without my seeing it!
Written for Roads Diverged's steampunk theme. The basic premise: Lilly is bratty and new-rich, Hugo is attending university in an attempt to "civilize" his barbarian Grasslander ways, and Belle is an engineer of delightful steampunk machines (if by "delightful" one actually means "Gadget ZX," that is). In short, what Team Hugo would be in a bad steampunk AU. 1800-ish words.
Belle had another invention to show them, and that could only end badly.
It wasn't that Hugo didn't like Belle. Quite to the contrary; he liked her a great deal. And even putting that aside, she was much better company than some of the other people he knew (Miss Lilly Pendragon being the best example), and sometimes her inventions even worked. Gadget ZX had been a success, even if- to hear him tell it, and Hugo wasn't sure how reliable the testimony of a steam-powered automaton was- her mother had done most of the work in that particular case. It was just that most of her plans tended to blow up spectacularly, and that made a person wary no matter how much he liked the girl blowing things into pieces.
"Well, let's see it, then," Lilly said impatiently, tapping her foot on the floor and adjusting her cravat. She was dressed like a man, which happened so often that the gossip columns had actually stopped reporting on it. Now they were more likely to have material for the papers if she appeared at a party in Vinay del Zexay or Tinto in a proper gown. "I've a meeting with Chris- you know, Chris Lightfellow, the heir to those Zexen holdings? Delightful girl, when she's not throwing tables at people- at the theater in an hour."
According to the gossip in the papers, Lilly had been the one throwing the table at Lady Chris Lightfellow- she was nouveau riche, after all, and less inclined to have proper manners than landed nobility like the Lightfellow family- but Hugo knew better than to argue with her if they wanted to get to Belle's invention tonight. He had plans of his own, though admittedly having less to do with a night at the theater and more to do with finishing the final draft of his thesis on the dramatic works of Schtolteheim Reinbach III. Islander literature was better than most, all poems about battles and epics that had probably been set to music centuries before, but that didn't mean the paper was going to be easy to finally finish.
"YOU WILL REGRET THIS," Gadget ZX said, mournful as only someone who knows what doom is about to fall upon him could be. "I CERTAINLY DO."
"I'm already regretting it." Lilly took off her ridiculously plumed hat, as if she were afraid the feathers would be damaged in the explosion that was sure to follow. "Belle, do hurry up over there."
"You can't regret anything!" Belle tapped Gadget ZX on the top of his copper-plated head as she emerged from behind the pile of machinery she was working on. She walked through a slick of grease without a thought for her long, harlequin-patterned skirts, and Lilly made a face. For all she claimed that her trousers and tailored coats meant she cared nothing for fashion, it seemed to offend her whenever Belle really didn't care anything for fashion. "Hugo, come over here and help me with this, would you?"
"Uh, sure." He would probably regret it, because helping Belle set up one of her contraptions inevitably led to something exploding, falling over, catching on fire, or doing all three at once. "What is it, anyway?"
"OUR DOOM," Gadget ZX informed him, and Belle hit it with the wrench in earnest. "I RUE THE DAY YOUR MOTHER CREATED ME FROM THE PARTS LEFT OVER WHEN HER ORIGINAL MODEL EXPLODED."
"You can't rue anything, either! Mom hadn't perfected the emotional engine algorithm when you were made." Belle was evidently done arguing with her automaton. The only upside to such an argument was that it was marginally more productive than arguing with Lilly but less so than arguing with Hugo, which was to say that while nothing was accomplished at least no one was injured. "Get the steam valve here, please!" Belle pointed to the valve in question with her wrench, and Hugo walked over to it- getting merely a raised eyebrow instead of a nasty look from Lilly when he stepped in the same oil slick Belle had, because evidently it was uncouth but expected of a Grasslander savage come to civilized lands for education to have no care for his clothing.
"I am going to be late if I don't leave soon. This had better be good." As if Lilly cared that she was going to be late any more than she cared about being anything other than the constant topic of society pages.
"Like this?" Hugo asked, turning the steam valve. Belle nodded, beaming.
"That's it! Now, I'll get this one, and with both of them on we should have enough power for-"
"What is that?" Lilly actually sounded marginally impressed, although that was likely just the dazing effect of seeing hundreds of lights flashing on whatever device it was Belle had in the center of the room. Or perhaps it was the rather ominous whistling noise coming from the pipes connecting it to the valves; they sounded rather like they were going to burst.
"DEATH FROM ABOVE."
"It's a permutational engine!" Belle ignored Gadget ZX in favor of looking expectantly at her friends. "It can calculate all possible aspects of a problem and tell you the most likely outcome!"
"I'll be, I think you actually made something useful." Lilly put her hat down on the workbench and stepped forward, careful to avoid the grease on the floor even in her astonishment. "How does it work? I want to ask it something!"
"You don't ask it questions, you tell it your problems." Belle looked up at it, obviously proud of her work. She had reason to be; even if it didn't work, Hugo was pretty sure it was the most extraneous blinking lights she'd ever managed to get onto one machine. And Belle really, really like extraneous blinking lights. "And Hugo gets to go first, because he helped."
"I, er." What in the world did one ask a machine? It wasn't like asking his mother or Jimba for advice, or even asking the spirits for guidance (which Hugo, as a modern and educated young man, knew wasn't something that modern and educated young men should hold with no matter where they spent their childhoods); it was just a machine, albeit a very much flashing one. "I haven't finished my Reinbach thesis yet, but I came here to help Belle anyway."
"YOU WILL STAY UP ALL NIGHT AND WRITE A SUBPAR PAPER, BUT YOUR PROFESSOR IS AFRAID THAT YOUR PEOPLE WILL SCALP HIM IF HE FAILS YOU."
"Belle!" Hugo crossed his arms in front of him. "How could you program it to think like that? You know we don't scalp people." They didn't do anything of the sort in the Grasslands, and he didn't have any idea where the stories had gotten started. Probably with the Lizard Clan; they always were more worried about seeming intimidating to foreigners than giving the region a reputation for something other than shameless violence. Bad enough they were all already thought barbaric and in need of civilized education, and that Hugo had to leave and get an education for the supposed betterment of Karaya.
"It's based on Mom's algorithms, and you know how she is. Southerner." Belle's mother was from Gregminster, which meant she'd probably never met a Grasslander in her entire life. Belle was constantly apologetic about this fact, since it tended to crop up in Gadget ZX's personality. "But it's probably true your professor thinks that!"
"I'm going to be late because of you." Lilly picked up her hat again and put it on her head with a flourish. It wasn't immediately clear whether she was talking to Belle and Hugo or to the permutational engine.
"CHRIS LIGHTFELLOW WILL GO TO DINNER WITH COUNT REDRUM AND MASTER FRAULEIN. YOU WILL HAVE TO ATTEND THE SHOW WITH REED AND SAMUS."
"Couldn't you have given it a different voice from the other one?" Lilly asked, gesturing towards Gadget ZX. "It's going to get confusing, especially since they're both so rude. And I do hope you've made a bad invention this time, because I do not want to see the show with Reed and Samus. They're boring, and always reporting back to my father."
Hugo didn't say anything; he was still rather put out about the scalping comment.
"Then go before you're late," Belle said, in a tone that clearly said Lilly should have thought of that in the first place. "You said you were going to be late, not that you already are late."
"MISS PENDRAGON REQUIRES LESSONS IN REMEDIAL VERB CONJUGATION."
"Hmph! Fine, then, I'll leave you two to your permutations and your conjugations." Lilly left the workshop with all the hauteur of the scorned new money, which was to say that it was twice as overdone as the hauteur of the scorned old money. The permutational engine was silent, evidently not considering Lilly's leaving to be a problem in need of analysis.
Maybe Belle's newest invention was intelligent, then.
"I'll try to alter the main processes and make them less, um… well, less mean. To you." Belle flushed a little, obviously still embarrassed by the fact that she'd inadvertently made an extraordinarily offensive machine. "It'll take some time, though, because I'll have to write to Mom and get the base calculations she used. And- ooh, they're shutting down the steam to the lab for the night already! I hate it when they do that."
The lights on the engine were already dimming, although it did analyze Belle's statement ("YOU WILL NOT OVERTAX THE BOILERS OVERNIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE YOU CAME HERE") before shutting down with a hiss.
"Thanks. It's okay, I know you didn't make that part. Your mother probably didn't either- it was probably just telling me what the professor will actually think." Hugo shrugged, because getting irritated with Belle for something that really wasn't her fault and that she was very clearly upset about anyway wasn't going to solve anything. "And it's just as well we go, since everyone will talk if the two of us are here without Lilly. Improper, and all." That made Belle laugh again, and the two of them closed the steam valves so that the engine wouldn't start again as soon as the boiler to the workshops came on again in the morning.
"I could help you with your Reinbach thesis, if you want," Belle suggested. "I'm not great at composition, either, but the permutational engine did say you wouldn't fail no matter what you wrote."
"True," Hugo conceded as Belle herded Gadget ZX out of the workshop and locked the door behind them.
"MUST I COME ALONG FOR YOUR ROMANTIC EVENING?" Gadget ZX, ever the long-suffering, asked.
"Of course," Hugo said, which made Belle blush. "It just wouldn't do not to have a chaperone."
"I WISH I WOULD RUN OUT OF POWER."
Written for Roads Diverged's steampunk theme. The basic premise: Lilly is bratty and new-rich, Hugo is attending university in an attempt to "civilize" his barbarian Grasslander ways, and Belle is an engineer of delightful steampunk machines (if by "delightful" one actually means "Gadget ZX," that is). In short, what Team Hugo would be in a bad steampunk AU. 1800-ish words.
Belle had another invention to show them, and that could only end badly.
It wasn't that Hugo didn't like Belle. Quite to the contrary; he liked her a great deal. And even putting that aside, she was much better company than some of the other people he knew (Miss Lilly Pendragon being the best example), and sometimes her inventions even worked. Gadget ZX had been a success, even if- to hear him tell it, and Hugo wasn't sure how reliable the testimony of a steam-powered automaton was- her mother had done most of the work in that particular case. It was just that most of her plans tended to blow up spectacularly, and that made a person wary no matter how much he liked the girl blowing things into pieces.
"Well, let's see it, then," Lilly said impatiently, tapping her foot on the floor and adjusting her cravat. She was dressed like a man, which happened so often that the gossip columns had actually stopped reporting on it. Now they were more likely to have material for the papers if she appeared at a party in Vinay del Zexay or Tinto in a proper gown. "I've a meeting with Chris- you know, Chris Lightfellow, the heir to those Zexen holdings? Delightful girl, when she's not throwing tables at people- at the theater in an hour."
According to the gossip in the papers, Lilly had been the one throwing the table at Lady Chris Lightfellow- she was nouveau riche, after all, and less inclined to have proper manners than landed nobility like the Lightfellow family- but Hugo knew better than to argue with her if they wanted to get to Belle's invention tonight. He had plans of his own, though admittedly having less to do with a night at the theater and more to do with finishing the final draft of his thesis on the dramatic works of Schtolteheim Reinbach III. Islander literature was better than most, all poems about battles and epics that had probably been set to music centuries before, but that didn't mean the paper was going to be easy to finally finish.
"YOU WILL REGRET THIS," Gadget ZX said, mournful as only someone who knows what doom is about to fall upon him could be. "I CERTAINLY DO."
"I'm already regretting it." Lilly took off her ridiculously plumed hat, as if she were afraid the feathers would be damaged in the explosion that was sure to follow. "Belle, do hurry up over there."
"You can't regret anything!" Belle tapped Gadget ZX on the top of his copper-plated head as she emerged from behind the pile of machinery she was working on. She walked through a slick of grease without a thought for her long, harlequin-patterned skirts, and Lilly made a face. For all she claimed that her trousers and tailored coats meant she cared nothing for fashion, it seemed to offend her whenever Belle really didn't care anything for fashion. "Hugo, come over here and help me with this, would you?"
"Uh, sure." He would probably regret it, because helping Belle set up one of her contraptions inevitably led to something exploding, falling over, catching on fire, or doing all three at once. "What is it, anyway?"
"OUR DOOM," Gadget ZX informed him, and Belle hit it with the wrench in earnest. "I RUE THE DAY YOUR MOTHER CREATED ME FROM THE PARTS LEFT OVER WHEN HER ORIGINAL MODEL EXPLODED."
"You can't rue anything, either! Mom hadn't perfected the emotional engine algorithm when you were made." Belle was evidently done arguing with her automaton. The only upside to such an argument was that it was marginally more productive than arguing with Lilly but less so than arguing with Hugo, which was to say that while nothing was accomplished at least no one was injured. "Get the steam valve here, please!" Belle pointed to the valve in question with her wrench, and Hugo walked over to it- getting merely a raised eyebrow instead of a nasty look from Lilly when he stepped in the same oil slick Belle had, because evidently it was uncouth but expected of a Grasslander savage come to civilized lands for education to have no care for his clothing.
"I am going to be late if I don't leave soon. This had better be good." As if Lilly cared that she was going to be late any more than she cared about being anything other than the constant topic of society pages.
"Like this?" Hugo asked, turning the steam valve. Belle nodded, beaming.
"That's it! Now, I'll get this one, and with both of them on we should have enough power for-"
"What is that?" Lilly actually sounded marginally impressed, although that was likely just the dazing effect of seeing hundreds of lights flashing on whatever device it was Belle had in the center of the room. Or perhaps it was the rather ominous whistling noise coming from the pipes connecting it to the valves; they sounded rather like they were going to burst.
"DEATH FROM ABOVE."
"It's a permutational engine!" Belle ignored Gadget ZX in favor of looking expectantly at her friends. "It can calculate all possible aspects of a problem and tell you the most likely outcome!"
"I'll be, I think you actually made something useful." Lilly put her hat down on the workbench and stepped forward, careful to avoid the grease on the floor even in her astonishment. "How does it work? I want to ask it something!"
"You don't ask it questions, you tell it your problems." Belle looked up at it, obviously proud of her work. She had reason to be; even if it didn't work, Hugo was pretty sure it was the most extraneous blinking lights she'd ever managed to get onto one machine. And Belle really, really like extraneous blinking lights. "And Hugo gets to go first, because he helped."
"I, er." What in the world did one ask a machine? It wasn't like asking his mother or Jimba for advice, or even asking the spirits for guidance (which Hugo, as a modern and educated young man, knew wasn't something that modern and educated young men should hold with no matter where they spent their childhoods); it was just a machine, albeit a very much flashing one. "I haven't finished my Reinbach thesis yet, but I came here to help Belle anyway."
"YOU WILL STAY UP ALL NIGHT AND WRITE A SUBPAR PAPER, BUT YOUR PROFESSOR IS AFRAID THAT YOUR PEOPLE WILL SCALP HIM IF HE FAILS YOU."
"Belle!" Hugo crossed his arms in front of him. "How could you program it to think like that? You know we don't scalp people." They didn't do anything of the sort in the Grasslands, and he didn't have any idea where the stories had gotten started. Probably with the Lizard Clan; they always were more worried about seeming intimidating to foreigners than giving the region a reputation for something other than shameless violence. Bad enough they were all already thought barbaric and in need of civilized education, and that Hugo had to leave and get an education for the supposed betterment of Karaya.
"It's based on Mom's algorithms, and you know how she is. Southerner." Belle's mother was from Gregminster, which meant she'd probably never met a Grasslander in her entire life. Belle was constantly apologetic about this fact, since it tended to crop up in Gadget ZX's personality. "But it's probably true your professor thinks that!"
"I'm going to be late because of you." Lilly picked up her hat again and put it on her head with a flourish. It wasn't immediately clear whether she was talking to Belle and Hugo or to the permutational engine.
"CHRIS LIGHTFELLOW WILL GO TO DINNER WITH COUNT REDRUM AND MASTER FRAULEIN. YOU WILL HAVE TO ATTEND THE SHOW WITH REED AND SAMUS."
"Couldn't you have given it a different voice from the other one?" Lilly asked, gesturing towards Gadget ZX. "It's going to get confusing, especially since they're both so rude. And I do hope you've made a bad invention this time, because I do not want to see the show with Reed and Samus. They're boring, and always reporting back to my father."
Hugo didn't say anything; he was still rather put out about the scalping comment.
"Then go before you're late," Belle said, in a tone that clearly said Lilly should have thought of that in the first place. "You said you were going to be late, not that you already are late."
"MISS PENDRAGON REQUIRES LESSONS IN REMEDIAL VERB CONJUGATION."
"Hmph! Fine, then, I'll leave you two to your permutations and your conjugations." Lilly left the workshop with all the hauteur of the scorned new money, which was to say that it was twice as overdone as the hauteur of the scorned old money. The permutational engine was silent, evidently not considering Lilly's leaving to be a problem in need of analysis.
Maybe Belle's newest invention was intelligent, then.
"I'll try to alter the main processes and make them less, um… well, less mean. To you." Belle flushed a little, obviously still embarrassed by the fact that she'd inadvertently made an extraordinarily offensive machine. "It'll take some time, though, because I'll have to write to Mom and get the base calculations she used. And- ooh, they're shutting down the steam to the lab for the night already! I hate it when they do that."
The lights on the engine were already dimming, although it did analyze Belle's statement ("YOU WILL NOT OVERTAX THE BOILERS OVERNIGHT FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE YOU CAME HERE") before shutting down with a hiss.
"Thanks. It's okay, I know you didn't make that part. Your mother probably didn't either- it was probably just telling me what the professor will actually think." Hugo shrugged, because getting irritated with Belle for something that really wasn't her fault and that she was very clearly upset about anyway wasn't going to solve anything. "And it's just as well we go, since everyone will talk if the two of us are here without Lilly. Improper, and all." That made Belle laugh again, and the two of them closed the steam valves so that the engine wouldn't start again as soon as the boiler to the workshops came on again in the morning.
"I could help you with your Reinbach thesis, if you want," Belle suggested. "I'm not great at composition, either, but the permutational engine did say you wouldn't fail no matter what you wrote."
"True," Hugo conceded as Belle herded Gadget ZX out of the workshop and locked the door behind them.
"MUST I COME ALONG FOR YOUR ROMANTIC EVENING?" Gadget ZX, ever the long-suffering, asked.
"Of course," Hugo said, which made Belle blush. "It just wouldn't do not to have a chaperone."
"I WISH I WOULD RUN OUT OF POWER."