Trinity Blood Fan Fiction ❯ Binary ❯ Chapter 1

“Binary”
By Viridian5
1/28/10

RATING: PG.
SPOILERS: for volumes X and XI.
SUMMARY: Tres is/isn’t self-aware.
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com.
DISCLAIMERS: All things Trinity Blood belong to Sunao Yoshida, Thores Shibamoto, and Kiyo Kyujyo. No infringement intended.

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“Binary”
By Viridian5
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Tres couldn’t see the reasoning behind some of his lady’s recent decisions and strategies lately, where usually he felt secure.

Since they’d reached Istvan he’d noticed the AX being manipulated and pushed into corners. Usually Lady Caterina thrived under such circumstances.

It might be that she had plans she hadn’t shared with Tres. After all, she frequently lied to and misled Father Nightroad for his own good. She just rarely did that to him because she usually appreciated his strategies and mission planning. He could provide neither without all the available data.

It made sense that she didn’t want Father Nightroad possibly skirmishing with the Inquisition and military police while looking for Sister Esther Blanchett. He could be a loose cannon and often needed his excesses reined in. Lying to and reassigning him worked well enough.

Tres saw strategic advantages in the Duchess of Milan sending him to retrieve Sister Esther Blanchett. He lacked Father Nightroad’s emotional attachments and could carry out orders more efficiently. Esther Blanchett, as the target not simply of the vampire but also of public relations manipulation, surely held important data. 

That made sense, but that was not what Lady Caterina ordered. Choosing the volatile, homicidal, sadistic Sister Monica Argento for the mission all but guaranteed Sister Esther Blanchett’s termination and possibly her dismemberment as well. Deleting Sister Esther would delete all data she could have provided. Also, Sister Monica lacked any sense of subtlety, so Father Nightroad would inevitably discover that Sister Esther had been executed by an AX operative and thus at the Duchess of Milan’s order. It could strain his loyalty. Tres could minimize Father Nightroad’s excesses and make him more efficient, but nothing stopped Sister Monica from wasting time and lives on her love of bullying, torture, and murder. Giving her permission to maim and kill as she pleased within the city might well make any citizenry who saw her in action--and many would--remember the days of Gyula’s reign more fondly. None of this served his lady’s usual purposes.

How could Tres protect her life and interests when she undermined herself?

He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised to find Father Nightroad in Esther Blanchett’s company, despite Father Nightroad’s orders to be elsewhere. It did surprise him to see the single-mindedly devoted Brother Petros aiding them. How had they convinced him to go against his usual inclinations and the aims of the Department of Inquisition? This data blackout should not continue.

The spirit of Tres’ orders from the Duchess of Milan would have him shoot to disable Father Nightroad immediately and refuse to let him speak of things that should be immaterial. Yet Tres let his shots go a millimeter off or a second late, giving Father Nightroad chances to convince him to go against those orders. A human might say that Tres trusted him, but in actuality he simply observed and calculated probabilities. Father Nightroad had a talent for getting into the middle of dangerous events and finding a way out of them. Tres’ calculations proved correct again this time, as Father Nightroad revealed conspiracies and plotting that directly endangered the Duchess of Milan’s life. That data allowed Tres to reprioritize his orders to allow him to rescue and protect his lady instead of hunt Esther Blanchett, and Father Nightroad and Brother Petros fighting at his side would help him achieve it faster. Destroying the military police and any other obstacles in front of them made a better use of Tres’ time and resources than passively standing by as Sister Monica terrorized some more people.

Tres usually found stability and rationality in the Duchess of Milan’s plans and presence and faith in her strength, while Father Nightroad could be chaos itself in the many people and things he was, unpredictable, emotional, and sometimes frivolous. She had reasons, while he had feelings. Current events and behaviors upset all usual expectations. She was Tres’ master, the reason for his continued existence, and he her gun. She aimed him, so her judgment had to be impeccable. If he thought about it, it would worry him deeply and possibly destabilize his foundations.

Fortunately, unnecessary thinking was the province of humans. He was a machine. Worry wasted time and was counter-productive. Once he identified the source of his lady’s problem he would resolve it and return matters to normal. He had no doubts.

  ***********************THE END**********************

  More Viridian5 stories can be found in The Green Room version 3.0 at http://viridian.shriftweb.org/ No-frames but no-frills access available at http://viridian.shriftweb.org/index2.htm