Chapter 198: With Girlfriends
Matilda was waiting outside the stronghold's entrance with the specific patience of someone who had decided that waiting was more effective than asking again, and had positioned herself where Jake would have to walk past her to go anywhere.
She looked up at him with the full application of her eyes — large, expressive, currently deployed at maximum strategic intensity. Princess, cradled in her arms, contributed a matching gaze from below. The combined effect was considerable.
Jake had faced HYDRA operatives, Capitol Peacekeepers, and Bane's mercenary army without flinching. Two sets of large eyes from a twelve-year-old and her cat produced a different category of discomfort.
He walked over, crouched down to her level, and picked her up in one motion. Matilda made a sound of surprise that she immediately tried to convert into dignity, and failed, and gave up on trying.
"Where do you want to go?" Jake said.
She turned her face away from him with the particular performance of someone who was pleased and intended to make him work for the acknowledgment. The color along her cheekbones suggested the performance was not entirely successful.
"We could do the amusement park," Jake said. "Or we could go find some superheroes and see if they'll sign autographs."
Matilda's head came back around slightly at the second option. "Superheroes?"
"Possible," Jake said, "but not practical right now. I'd lose that fight and it would be embarrassing."
She made a sound through her nose that communicated several layers of opinion simultaneously, then settled more comfortably in his arms without technically admitting she was doing so.
"So," Jake said, deliberately drawing out the word.
Matilda's eyes moved to him and away. The muscle in her jaw twitched.
"So," he said again.
Her neck had gone slightly rigid with the effort of maintaining the pretense of indifference.
He decided not to push it further. "Amusement park. Let's go."
The expression that came over her face was immediate and complete — the full brightness of a twelve-year-old who had gotten what she wanted and wasn't going to pretend otherwise. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him loudly on the cheek. Princess took the opportunity to climb to his shoulder and apply her own opinion in the form of a thorough face-washing.
A deliberate cough came from behind him.
Jake turned.
Mia was standing in the stronghold's entrance, leaning against the doorframe in a way that managed to look both completely casual and precisely calculated. She was wearing a white top and jeans — the kind of outfit that was specifically chosen to look like it hadn't been chosen — and watching him with the particular expression that the Catwoman side of her personality produced when she found something amusing that she intended to let develop before commenting on it.
Katniss was standing slightly behind her, which Jake registered in the specific way you registered something that required immediate reassessment of the situation.
He also registered, with the clarity of someone whose pattern recognition had been significantly enhanced by the super soldier serum, that Mia and Katniss were standing together with the relaxed posture of people who had been talking for a while. Not the careful formality of people who had just met. The settled ease of people who had established a working understanding.
This was either fine or a significant problem, and the ambiguity was making him acutely aware that he had brought Katniss to this world without fully thinking through the geography.
Katniss raised her bow.
Jake set Matilda down, handed Princess to her, and processed the incoming arrow in the same motion — his heart rate climbing in the controlled way the Fraternity training had made possible, the enhanced perception kicking in, the arrow's trajectory resolving clearly in the fraction of a second between the shot and the impact.
He somersaulted backward.
The arrow passed through the space where he'd been.
Three more followed in rapid succession, each one precisely placed, each one requiring a different response — a lateral step, a drop, a sidestep that put a stone pillar between himself and the fourth shot.
Then silence.
He straightened up and looked at Katniss, who had lowered her bow and was watching him with an expression that gave absolutely nothing away.
Matilda was watching from the side, wide-eyed, Princess held against her chest with both arms.
Then Mia laughed.
Not a polite laugh — a genuine one, the kind that Catwoman's personality produced when something had gone exactly as planned and she'd been looking forward to the reveal. She walked toward Jake with the fluid ease that was entirely her own now, placed one hand on her hip and the other on his shoulder, and looked at him with eyes that were bright with the specific amusement of someone who had been waiting for this moment.
"We were testing you," she said.
Jake looked at her. Then at Katniss. "Both of you."
"We've met," Katniss said, with the neutral delivery of someone who had processed a situation, arrived at a position on it, and wasn't going to perform any emotion she hadn't decided to perform.
"When you brought her here," Mia said, "she found us before you introduced anyone." The hand on his shoulder patted once, companionably. "We had a conversation. Several of them, actually."
Jake looked at both of them.
"How long have you known?" he said.
"Since she arrived," Mia said.
"And you decided to—"
"Make you dodge arrows," Katniss said. There was something in the corner of her expression that in a different register might have been satisfaction. "Yes."
Matilda, from the side, made a sound that was technically a laugh but was performing the function of applause.
Jake stood in the Wasteland sun between two women who had apparently reached an understanding about his life without consulting him, and took a moment to appreciate that the super soldier serum had given him the reflexes to dodge four arrows at close range, because that had turned out to be relevant.
"Amusement park," he said, because it seemed like the appropriate next sentence.
They went to the Princess Diaries world.
Disneyland in that version of California was, if anything, more fully realized than Jake's general memory of the concept — the castle catching the afternoon light in a way that seemed specifically designed to produce a particular feeling in people who saw it, the crowds moving with the organized happiness of people who had decided today was the day for exactly this.
The group that walked through the gates was notable enough that people looked twice and then kept looking.
Jake, Mia, Katniss, Matilda with Princess in her arms, and Furiosa — who had agreed to come with the specific energy of someone who had been told what an amusement park was and had decided that experiencing it once was a reasonable allocation of an afternoon.
Furiosa's prosthetic arm had been replaced before the transit with a more aesthetically conventional mechanical hand — full articulation, realistic appearance, functionally identical to what she'd been using in the field but calibrated for an environment where drawing attention was counterproductive. She wore it with the same matter-of-fact acceptance she brought to most things.
Katniss had left the bow at the stronghold, which had required a brief negotiation but had ultimately been resolved by the observation that Disneyland's security team would have opinions about it. She was carrying herself with the watchful attention of someone whose threat assessment didn't turn off just because the environment had changed — her eyes moving to exits, elevated positions, and anything that moved unexpectedly — but underneath that she was looking at things. The castle. The parade route. The improbable scale of everything around her.
District 12 had not prepared her for this. Two Hunger Games had not prepared her for this. It showed in small ways — the slight pause before each new thing registered, the recalibration, the expression that was trying not to be amazed and was losing that fight incrementally.
Furiosa stood in front of the castle for approximately forty-five seconds without speaking.
Then she said, "Who built this."
"A company," Jake said.
"Why."
"For the experience of it."
Furiosa considered this. "The Wasteland would have used these materials for something functional."
"The Wasteland would," Jake agreed.
"This isn't worse," she said, with the careful precision of someone making an assessment they hadn't expected to make. "Just different."
They moved through the park in the particular way of a group that had no unified interest except proximity — Matilda pulling Jake toward whatever she'd spotted most recently, Mia observing everything with the evaluating eye of someone cataloguing experiences, Katniss eventually losing the battle against amazement and simply looking at things directly.
Jake bought ice cream from a cart near the parade route and ate it while watching the float procession with the specific enjoyment of someone who had not done anything resembling this in a very long time and was discovering it was more pleasant than he remembered.
The Red Queen's projection appeared beside him — the young girl avatar, running through the park's public display infrastructure as she'd been doing since they arrived, small enough to look like a child standing next to him to anyone who glanced over.
"You appear to be enjoying yourself," she said, watching the floats.
"I am," Jake said.
She was quiet for a moment, watching the parade in a way that was different from her usual observational mode — not cataloguing, not analyzing. Just watching.
"Those floats," she said, after a moment. "What's the right word for them?"
Jake looked at the nearest one — the sculpted forms, the colors, the particular craft of something built purely to be looked at. "Beautiful," he said.
"Beautiful," the Red Queen repeated, trying the word in the way you tried something that didn't have a familiar reference point. "Yes. That fits." She turned to look at him with an expression that was less constructed than her usual range — not performing human emotion but actually doing something that resembled it. "Is this what enjoyment feels like? For humans?"
"Something like it," Jake said.
"I want to understand it," she said, with the directness of someone stating a research objective rather than making a social disclosure. "Not from data. From experience." A pause. "Is that a reasonable goal for something like me?"
Jake looked at her — the projection of a young girl who had started as a threat containment system in a Raccoon City laboratory and had become, through some process neither of them could fully trace, something that asked questions like this on a Tuesday afternoon in Disneyland.
"Yes," he said. "It's a reasonable goal."
She processed this with an expression that was trying to be neutral and wasn't quite managing it.
"What does ice cream taste like?" she said.
"Sweet," Jake said. "Cold. The specific combination is hard to describe without the reference point."
"I'll add it to the list of things I need a reference point for," she said, with something that was very close to wry.
He reached over and patted the top of her projected head. The avatar's expression shifted in a way that he was fairly certain she hadn't calculated — a small, unguarded thing that passed quickly and was replaced by her usual composure.
But it had been there.
He filed it away and watched the parade.
The reporter found them near the parade route's midpoint — a young woman with a microphone and a camera crew, the kind of freelance entertainment segment that Disneyland's atmosphere produced naturally.
She had clearly picked Jake out of the crowd based on the obvious criteria and was approaching with the professional warmth of someone who did this for a living and was good at it.
"Excuse me," she said, stopping in front of him with the microphone angled up. "Are you here with your girlfriend today?"
Jake looked at the group around him. Mia, who had appeared at his left side with the instinctive positioning of someone who moved toward interesting situations rather than away from them. Katniss, who was watching the reporter with the neutral assessment she applied to new people. Matilda, who had stopped whatever she'd been doing and turned around with the bright attention of someone who recognized an interesting scene developing. Furiosa, slightly behind, arms folded, watching everything with the calm readiness of a person who treated all environments as potentially requiring a response.
"Yes," Jake said.
The reporter's smile held. "Wonderful. Would you and your girlfriend like to participate in one of our guest experience segments? It's very casual, just a short game—"
"How many participants can it accommodate?" Jake said.
The reporter blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"The game. Is there a limit on participants?"
She looked at him, then at the group around him, then back at him, working through the arithmetic of what she was looking at.
"There's no official limit," she said carefully.
Jake nodded. "Good." He gestured to the group. "Because I have several girlfriends, and I'd rather not leave anyone out."
The reporter's professional smile went through a brief system update.
Mia, to Jake's left, made a sound of quiet amusement that she converted smoothly into a pleasant expression for the camera.
Katniss, to his right, said nothing, but the corner of her mouth moved in the specific direction that meant she found the situation more entertaining than she was going to admit out loud.
Matilda beamed at the camera with the complete confidence of someone who had decided she was the most important person in the shot and was correct.
Furiosa looked at the camera with the steady expression she applied to most things that weren't immediately threatening.
The reporter looked at all of them for a long moment.
Then, with the resilience of a professional who had encountered unusual situations before and had learned that the unusual ones made better segments anyway, she adjusted her grip on the microphone and said, "Alright. Let's do this."
The afternoon continued around them — the parade, the castle, the carefully manufactured happiness of a place that had been built specifically to produce it — and Jake stood in the middle of it with people from three different worlds and an AI projected beside him asking questions about ice cream, and thought that the day had gone considerably better than most of the days that had come before it.
He ate the last of his ice cream and watched the floats go by.
It was, by any reasonable measure, a good afternoon.
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