As I was coming to the end of writing Divine Blood's first book, and discussing the actions of Mao Semezou, the mother of three of the main characters, with one of my pre-readers, it hit me.
Mao seems to be rather firmly influenced by the Dresden Files...I've especially seen bits of three particular characters: Dresden(snark), Murphy(attitude) and Charity(mama-bear)
though can't really show the Mama-Bearness without major spoilers
the fact that she's a "sensitive" mercenary is pretty much revealed first chapter to show a fragment of her character
I find she has a decent amount of Dresden's snark, Murphy's attitude and Charity's Mama-bear
any of you have similar instances and examples you can show?
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“I’ve got the background check on Mao Semezou,” Eowyn said. “They were a bit resistant about giving it to me, but given the cover and I was there in front of the civilian administration, they had to hand it over.”
“The Captain sent us one too,” Whelan said. “And if the file at Bravura is anything like this one, they should be keeping a better eye on her.”
“Really. What they show me is a commercial feng shui shih.”
“What’s that?” the other soldier asked.
“Moving stuff around to make ‘energies’ flow better. Basically a glorified interior decorator. They make quite a bit of money if they’re good.” Eowyn picked up the first few pages of the printed file while setting down the file she’d gotten from the school. “What do we have here?”
“Freelance sensitive,” Whelan said.
“Are we sure this is the same person?” Eowyn asked, noting that this Mao Semezou had been an independent contractor on at least three Avalon missions in Europe according to what the Captain had sent them.
“There’s a message for you with the file,” Whelan said. “You have one solid password by the way.”
“Sergeant that had better be a joke,” the Indian-American woman warned darkly. “Move aside.”
“Of course, Sergeant Major. I’d never try to crack your or the Captain’s files.” The Irishman smiled as he pushed his chair out of Eowyn’s way so that she could open the file coded to her access level. “Now, Intelligence’s on the other hand.”
“Instructions are to confirm whether or not this is the Mao from the file she gave us and figure out what she’s doing here if it is her. Keeping it to ourselves for now.”
“Well that should be easy,” Connor said. “Let me get cleaned up and we’ll stake out her PO Box.”
“Are you planning what I think you’re planning?” Eowyn asked, crossing her arms.
“She’s a single mother in her thirties. Like putty in my hands.”
“Uh huh.” Eowyn sighed and shook her head as she considered the option. “In all honesty, having someone come up out of nowhere to hit on her is probably the least suspicious way we can approach her. If we choose to approach her at all. She’s a sensitive according to this, and there isn’t much more than that.”
“I am very capable of keeping all my thoughts on the business of attending to her whim and pleasure, thank you,” Connor said.
“I just bet you are.”
“Sergeant Major Desai, I’m well aware that you subscribe to the philosophy that the best language school is between the sheets. So you can hardly be lecturing me on chastity.”
Eowyn stood up and frowned at him.
“Okay, too familiar, got it.” He waited until she backed off, leaning against the computer desk again, before continuing to put forth his case. “Still, the only address we have is that PO Box from the school. And if this is her, trying to get to her place without being seen is going to rise all sorts of hackles.”
“And we’re supposed to keep Intelligence out of it for now,” Eowyn said. “No sense raising their hackles if it’s just some lady with a similar name.”
“And psychic kids.”
“All right,” Eowyn said. “We’ll do it your way.”
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“Lesbian. Go away.”
Connor stared in uncomprehending shock as the small red-head woman who’d seemed so feminine and had three children simply cut him off mid-introduction and walked on past with an irritated expression on her face. The sound of laughter echoed through his ear-bud as his team leader gave in to the urge to chortle at his predicament.
“Smooth, really smooth, Sergeant.”
“Laugh all you want,” he responded. “Who does this leave to get her to open up and talk now?”
Eowyn’s laughter cut short with a choking gasp.
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The redhead had been sitting for ten minutes before the young Indian woman started making nervous looks her way. She was attractive, and Mao couldn’t help but noticed the flustered way that she was working herself up to approach. It wasn’t terribly obvious, the girl was better than average at controlling her emotions. She was probably, in fact, better than Mao herself was. It was obvious that she was athletic to a degree, and Mao thought she detected a hint of awareness that spoke of someone who had served at some point. Indian resistance, perhaps, driven out by Burma to safe ground.
Finally, the woman picked up her tray and walked over to Mao’s table.
“Hey, do you mind if I sit here?”
Mao adjusted her guess about the woman from Indian irregular to United States military. The Indian continent was several generations removed from her voice, but California was well and truly making itself known.
The exorcist’s normal answer would have been rather terse and perhaps rude, but she was in a rather sentimental state of mind. And, just like she was sure that she should come to this restaurant, she felt sure she had to talk to this woman.
“Fine with me,” Mao said. “Go ahead and sit down.”
“Thanks,” the woman said, sliding into the seat and scanning about.
Mao recognized the uncomfortable defaulting to tactical considerations. She did it, Eija did it, Deimosu did it, and Naiki had turned it into a game so that she could turn her own developing paranoia inside out. The woman’s eyes showed that she wasn’t successfully setting aside her discomfort with the situation as she talked again and made an attempt to visibly appreciate Mao’s body.
“I was wondering…”
“You’re straight,” Mao said firmly before turning back to her food and sampling some of the french fries there.
“Excuse me?” the Indian woman snapped, so flabbergasted she wasn’t sure exactly how to respond to that statement. “How did…I mean…what are you talking about?”
“You’re trying to put out signs that you’re interested, but they’re very obvious. Trust me, I tried the other way on this a little bit when I was younger.”
Mao glanced around the small fast food place, seeing if anybody else was watching.
“Did you lose a bet or something? Someone in your unit put you up to this?”
“My uni…yeah…that’s pretty much the case.”
“So, being straight,” Mao noted, sipping from her soda. “What were you planning on doing if I agreed to go out with you?”
“I don’t think we planned it out that far,” the other woman said, chagrinned. “Would you have said yes?”
“Probably not,” Mao said. “I don’t do flings and I’m not looking for anybody right now.”
The other woman took a bite out of her burger, chewed and swallowed it before continuing the conversation. Definitely not one of the sacred cow set, Mao noted with a smile.
“Busy life?”
“That’s a way to put it. Just setting down roots and already getting jobs left and right.”
“Wow, you’re that good a feng shui shih?” the younger woman asked.
Immediately, Mao’s demeanor changed, her eyes narrowing and the relaxation she’d started feeling drifting away from her face in a clearly visible manner. “Say that again?”
“You’re a feng shui shih, aren’t you?” the Indian-American woman asked.
Mao gestured to herself and her belongings, which showed no outward sign as to what her occupation was to anybody else. Her right eyebrow arched up into her bangs and she crossed her arms with a casually suspicious expression on her face.
“Okay, I slipped a bit there.”
“Just a little bit,” Mao confirmed. “Are you with soldier-boy from the school?”
“Damir, yeah,” the woman said.
“I should have known this was coming,” Mao sighed.
“Do you speak Mandarin? Your file is vague.”
“No, unfortunately. French?”
“Thank goodness, no. I’ll bet you speak Japanese though.”
“As do a lot of the people around here. How’s your Italian?”
“Oh that’s good, actually.” Eowyn smiled a little bit as she switched over to that language.
“Really?” Mao said. “That’s an odd choice for someone that operates in the South Pacific.” She thought for a moment, considering that little piece of information. “I’ve heard rumors that Avalon has a real top notch commander in this part of the world who is Italian. I guess that explains why you know a little bit about me. I’ve worked with you people a couple of times.”
“We’d like to know what you’re doing here,” Eowyn said without confirming her source of employ, though the smug look on Mao’s face said that the other woman had already read a confirmation in her body language. The mercenary reminded herself that the woman was a sensitive of unknown type, sensing emotions and outright reading thoughts was not impossible.
Mao herself considered briefly how to answer that question. Usually, she’d be quite a bit cryptic and vague, but speaking to Sergeant Major Eowyn Desai was somehow relaxing, even after it had been revealed the woman was an agent of some sort. Besides, she respected Avalon’s work, and she was almost positive that’s who she was dealing with given the way Eowyn’s chi was shifting about her.
“I just moved here,” she said finally. “I used to live back this way before….things happened. Felt it was finally time to come home.”
“And your kids?” Eowyn asked, making note of that admission.
“Are my kids, pure and simple.”
“That’s not a cover?” Eowyn asked, surprised.
Mao cocked her head to the side and gave the Marine a sidelong look. “Just because I play for the same team doesn’t mean that plumbing stops working.”
Eowyn smirked at the crass wording, delivered with a blunt, almost bored, tone of voice and sipped from her drink. She could really like this woman. That relaxation faded away somewhat then, however as she took in the discomfort behind the jaded exterior.
“Do you mind if we keep an eye on you and your kids?” she asked. “I mean we’ve already had at least one near thing between one of our team and your son.”
“Like I said, I should have expected it. Still, I had hoped I’d found a place away from the weirdness around my old neighborhood. And almost first thing I have a purple-haired girl giving me headaches.”
“Yeah, she’s an expressive thing, isn’t she? And I wonder why she bothers to dye the roots purple and nothing else.”
Mao’s brow furrowed and she turned to face Eowyn more straight on, a look of curiosity on her face.
“What is it?”
“Did they tell you why you’re guarding her?”
“It’s nothing. We’re being kept off the grid a bit because someone else screwed up a mission we were on. We get to supplement security here for a bit. Why?”
“First thing, the black hair is dyed, not the purple. Families with a long history of psychic ability get funky hair and eye colors eventually.” She indicated her own purple eyes and vibrant red hair. “Second….”
“Second, we’re babysitting an akira,” Eowyn said shaking her head. “Thanks for the heads up.”
“One of my daughters is in her class,” Mao said. “If I or she notice anything weird, we’ll send you a word. Don’t worry about charging it.”
“That’ll be appreciated. We’re getting little enough of that from our own people here.”
“It’s the way this world works, nobody wants to share information if they don’t think they have to.”
“Which makes me wonder about you here.”
“I know, this is strange,” Mao noted, sipping her own soda. “But I….I hate to say it. I have a hunch I should trust you.”
“Isn’t having hunches your thing?”
“No, observing and considering is my thing,” she responded. “Hunches have no rationale behind them. It’s annoying. I’ve never liked things I didn’t have an explanation for.”
“And yet you’re here, trusting a hunch and talking to me.” Eowyn was more than a little amused by the skeptical attitude coming out of the reported psychic’s mouth. “Come to think about it, I’m sort of doing the same thing.”
“Aggravating, isn’t it?”
“Hey, as an old veteran, you’ve got to understand the value of a good instinct.”
“Instinct is fallible and what’s that about ’old veteran’?” Mao asked leaning forward in an attempt to be grim, though the twitching of her mouth revealed bits of the humor behind it.
“You really don’t look like the sort of woman that would care much about that,” the mercenary noted to the psychic. “Hell you even look like you’re still younger than me. And I know you have to be at least ten years older.”
“Depends on how old I was when I had my kids, doesn’t it? And there’s a principle involved here. You should know enough about that yourself. I get enough commentary like that from my kids without them meaning to.”
“Feh, kids and subordinates. You’d think they’d listen to us after a while.”
“And not just hear the letter, really.” Mao nodded sagely and took a bite from her chicken sandwich.
“It’s like we’re the adults in that old cartoon show, the one with the bald kid…”
“Peanuts. Wah, wah, wah, wah.”
“Ah, see, told you that you were old.”
Mao rolled her eyes and then titled her head toward the other woman with an expression that tried to be unamused and failed. Idly, almost hesitantly, she checked her watch and then looked back across toward Eowyn.
“So we’re both a ways out from our current neighborhood,” she said. “I should be heading back. School is ending fairly soon.”
“Right,” Eowyn said. “Want to share a cab heading back?”
“I can stand to continue this conversation for a bit longer.” Mao noted as she finished off her fries.
“You’re not flirting with me are you?”
“I don’t flirt with straight women. Teasing, on the other hand.” The red-heads expression turned serious then as she looked away briefly. “By the way. Thank you. For not asking the question.”
“Well, I’ve got enough I think.” And she smiled in a smug manner. “I have a hunch I can trust you. I’ll get us a cab then.”
“Good, then we can get back to boring the person on the other end of the radio I’m sure you have on you somewhere.” She said that casually as she gathered up the trash and Eowyn walked away with something of a twitch.
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