Aggregate of Fireflies

"What do you want here?" The tall student tilted his chin up defiantly. He was surrounded by a group of flunkies, blocking the screens. There were five of them, three boys and two girls. They looked very angry and very young.

Vaz sighed. It would be wrong to rip the boy's throat out, and he knew it would be wrong. So he refrained for the time being and bowed instead. "I'm looking for my test scores and those of my friends who could not make it to the board today. Please move aside so I may find them."

The tall boy sneered but moved. Vaz surveyed the screens, picking out his number and Asha's; once again, they'd both scored at the top of the class, but their scores were segregated from the humans' along with the other Aggregati.

"Whatcha lookin' at that screen for, geshu?" The friendly term was spat like an insult. "You an Ag-lover?"

Vaz looked at the tall boy with carefully blank eyes. "Should it matter? Or should I ask what you scored? It seems the Aggregati students, as a whole, did better than the humans."

"We just don't want our air dirtied by some Ag-loving piece of trash." A shorter girl spat on the sidewalk; her face would have been pretty if not for the ugly sneer on it.

Vaz shifted his bag against his shoulder so the buttons on the strap showed more prominently. If they were as clueless as they seemed, it might help to hit them with a clue-by-four.

"Sst! Lookit the buttons- he is an Ag-lover!" The taller boy narrowed his eyes at the subordinate who spoke but then turned his glare on Vaz.

"I've seen you hanging out with that new trash, the girl-freak. We don't want your filth here." He stepped into Vaz's bubble of personal space, and Vaz could see the energy in him tremble, barely contained.

"That girl-freak is my fiance, Hanabi Asha." Vaz let his own expression turn slightly contemptous. "Do you know the sort of prejudice the Aggregati community suffers on this campus? I'm sure you do, since you're probably responsible for part of it. People like you spread ignorance and hate and force people like Asha into the very situations you hate them for."

"Fuck you, pig fucker!" The tall boy shoved him, and Vaz let himself be shoved. "You can't marry one of those freaks- they're animals. Deviants like you shouldn't be allowed to walk around. You shouldn't be allowed to breathe our air."

"The right of marriage is one of the things we are fighting for, to help ease the stigma of such relationships. The Aggregati are people, no different from you. They never asked to be commissioned, just as you never asked to be born. And, once created, they cannot be uncreated without the same sort of trauma needed to murder a human." Vaz let himself be pushed again, hating himself for bowing into the phsyical intimidation and feeling more than a little silly to be preaching. Asha was better at this than him.

"Ah, my students! How pleasant- I hope you're all pleased with your test scores."

The gang immediately backed away from Vaz and nodded their respect to the professor. Vaz turned and gave the man a full bow. "Professor Savasena. It is an honor."

The wrinkled old man smiled and bowed lower. "Really, your grace, that's not necessary. I was hoping to catch you here before sunset; I wanted to congratulate you on yet another perfect test." The smile in his eyes was a little too sharp as he turned to his other students. "And it's so good to see you getting to know your classmates."

Vaz could have kissed the little man for his understanding. "Indeed. We were just introducing ourselves." He bowed to the little group of ingrates, touching the seal on his forehead. "Aburame Vazani."

The twelve-point mark blossomed outward from his forehead, trailing down his temples and across his face in delicate lotus flower patterns. The seal itself burned a little as it materialized. Vaz resolutely did not smirk when they all realized what, exactly, his seal signified. It was difficult to misinterpret a crown with wings on someone's forehead, after all.

"Your grace." They all bowed as low as possible without kow-towing. Vaz could smell their fear. It was delicious.

"Please, that is unnecessary." He managed a smile that didn't use teeth when they looked up. "You see, you were somewhat innacurate in calling me a lover of Aggregati; such a delineation is redundant when one is already an Aggregate."

"His grace honors our class with his presence and his excellent grades for the duration of his stay on the east coast." Savasena sounded friendly enough, but the reprimand was clear. "Of course, it's natural for one so highly ranked as the Lord of the Eastern Skies' personal assistant to want to keep a low profile, so I'm sure I needn't tell any of you students to be careful of what you say."

"Of course not, professor." The tall one was pale but not cowed.

Savasena smiled again. "Indeed. Have a good evening, children, Your Grace."

Vaz bowed to his professor and smiled at the students with too many teeth when he was gone. "I am not normally the sort to proselytize and picket- I'm not an activist by nature, and politics disinterest me. But you must understand that even being who I am, I cannot marry my fiance. Aggregati are not even allowed to marry each other. So it's a bit of a sore point when someone insults my people and the woman I love in the same breath." He retracted his seal slowly, with more control than most humans would ever manage over their one-point seals. "Some day more than just the Lords will be able to fight back when idiots like you choose to voice your prejudices."

He didn't bow to them in farewell; none of them had showed him their seals, and he outranked them all anyway. He technically didn't have to show respect to anyone on campus; he was beholden to his master and no one else.

It was nearing sunset as he neared the on-campus apartment he shared with Asha. She would be glad to see him; she always was. With any luck, she'd have dinner ready; activating his seal had drained him more than it should have. He still hadn't quite recovered from dealing with Vayesh.

"Hey! Wait a minute! Your Grace!" The voice caught up to him just as he was keying the door. Vaz didn't turn around to tear out the throat of the speaker, though at this point he wanted nothing more than the slick, hot feel of blood between his fingers.

"Can I help you?" It was one of the girls from before, the one who hadn't spoken.

"Your Grace..." She was panting from running. "Your Grace, I just wanted to apologize. Sasha and Lena were out of line from the beginning."

"If you thought so, why were you with them?" He kept his voice mild, though his fingers itched.

"I-" she blushed and shrugged. She wasn't pretty, but she wasn't ugly; she was a little on the plump side and moved with the awkwardness of one who thought she was ugly. "They're my friends."

"You are a flunky and they care nothing for you. Your apology is accepted." Vaz turned back to the door, rekeying it.

"Your Grace, I also wanted to say...I'm sorry about Asha." Her words came out in a rush. "I mean, I thought she was a bitch at first, because she was an Ag and all the boys wanted to fuck her, and then when I saw her hanging around with you, everyone else said she had to be a slut, too, because nobody knew you were...you know...and all the girls wanted to fuck you because they all just thought you were really hot and I guess I kind of suspected because you were too perfect to be real and the professor always treated you better than everyone else, but that doesn't excuse any of this really, does it?"

Vaz rested his forehead against the doorframe and viciously keyed the door. "What's your name?"

"Ashkenazi Talia, Your Grace."

"Major?"

"Aggregate engineering, Your Grace."

"Ah. Please call me Aburame-san." The door opened and he stuck his foot in it to keep it that way. "I was commissioned in Japan, and I still find myself prefering the culture and habits of my birth country, you see. Would you like to join Asha and myself for dinner, Ms Ashkenazi?"

Her eyes were wide. "I- I wouldn't dare presume-"

"Believe me, Ms. Ashkenazi, you already have. And if you intend to become a mother to my people, I would dearly like to relieve you of some of your misconceptions. Please, come in. Asha doesn't get out much aside from classes, and it worries me that she doesn't know more people."

She nodded, eyes still wide, and followed him up to his apartment. Vaz could smell dinner on the stairs, and the faint undertone of steel and sex that was uniquely Asha. The door opened before he touched it; the sight of his lover all but erased Vaz's aching bloodlust, replacing it with an entirely different sort of passion. "Asha."

"Your Grace." Deep emerald eyes blinked coquettishly up at him through long, dark lashes. The boy who opened the door (not really a boy, but too smooth around the edges to quite be considered a man) was breathtakingly lovely in the exotic, ethereal way most Aggregati commissioned for use in brothels were. Unlike Vaz, who had a twelve-point seal and could do more things with his body than most people could dream of, Asha had only a three-point seal and was something of a one-trick pony. She could change her sex and coloration at will, and had remarkable regenerative powers. She could not change her face or body beyond color or reproductive organs.

Aggregati like Asha were the reason activists picketed; they were toys, parodies of real people. Vaz had spent too long enjoying the luxury of his own lifestyle to give a damn, honestly. But he made an effort to care for her sake, because she cared. Her empathy was proof that they weren't just dolls, her personality the very counter to all the things prejudiced idiots threw in their faces. Only the most twisted Aggregate programmer would have given empathy and compassion to a brothel model, and programmers were tested for that sort of thing before they were given the job. Yet, she'd become a person anyway, and he loved her for it.

Asha straightened out of her sultry slouch in the doorway when she saw Talia. "Company! Vaz, you should have let me know, the place is a mess!" She immediately shifted into her "student" form with a swirl of colors- female, with blue eyes and dark blond hair. "Come in, please, both of you, sit down. I'll make some tea."

Vaz's apartment was small but built so as to seem larger, with high ceilings and large windows. "Asha, this is Ashkenazi Talia, from our Asian Studies class. She wants to be an Aggregate engineer."

The smile that lit up Asha's face as she bustled around their home almost made the humans' stupidity worthwhile. "That's lovely! I never got a chance to meet my little mother. Vaz knew his, but he was in processing much longer than I- Aggregati commissioned by the Azhdekhai are always better constructed." She stopped cheerfully rearranging the furniture when she got a good look at the girl he'd invited into their home. "Oh. You. I've seen you, with Lena and that boy..."

Talia nodded. "I'm sorry. I know it doesn't mean much, but they shouldn't...well, some people can't help being what they are, but they're still asses sometimes. Most of the time. I'm sorry." She was staring at her shoes as though they held the secret to life in their laces.

If anything, Asha's smile increased in radiance, and Vaz had to remind himself that tearing her clothes off in front of human company was even less socially acceptable than tearing said company's throat out. This had been his idea, after all.

"It means more than you'll ever know, I think." Asha pressed her hands to Talia's forehead, keenly unaware of the concept of personal space. "Little human, if you are willing to apologize, it places you a thousand miles ahead of half your race."

The look on the girl's face was a mix of breathless, stunned, and enraptured. Vaz smiled. Asha tended to have that effect on people when she was happy.
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Um. So. Don't ask me what the fuck this is, because I don't know. I like Vaz, he's an asshole. Asha...eh. I think I like her better as a boy, but she's still female regardless of her outward sex. Vaz just likes her, doesn't really care what she looks like.

Futuristic society, with apocalyptic aliens. The Azhdekhai are almost like figures out of myth; they're godlike in their intelligence. Interacting directly with them is impossible for a human intellect; since the Azhdekhai are actually peaceful creatures, they created the Aggregati to interface with lesser races. Humans, being the resourceful buggers they are, adapted Aggregati technology to their own, and began creating their own Aggregate creations. (I'll eventually figure out the proper grammar for Aggregati and Aggregate; I'm having issues with the adjectival form.)

Humans now create the Aggregati for a multitude of tasks, while the Azhdekhai sort of chill in their crazy pleasure palaces, leading lives of benign omniscience. They don't interfere with humanity much aside from keeping the peace- and they do this remarkably well, since you don't argue with something that is not only smarter than god, but larger, too. There are about a dozen of them, and they're rather badass.

Ugh, more when I'm not so tired. I'm not sure where it came from, but this idea pleases me.