must it be shot with a gun

Being practically-minded isn't difficult. It isn't rare, either; even the most carefree (read: seemingly air-headed) BLADEs take pride, if that subdued, in their marks for efficiency and justice. You take your pacifism where you can get it, you notch another difficult decision in your miranium-infused teflon belt, and you move on to the next assignment.

And then, when the assignments are done, you skirt your sufficient self off to the commercial district (those aforementioned happy-go-lucky), the industrial district (work hard, play harder types), or the residential district (those with partners and then again those staunchly without).

If you're Elma, you probably don't go anywhere, and you stay right where you are lingering outside HQ, knowing that obviously this drop in efficiency is so much more than just bad for your record and rating, it's functionally depletionary, but not being able to help it, because you're too restless for anything else either more or less directed.

Eventually, someone else of the opposite type of keenly pratical mind comes along, knowing right where you'll be, and she cocks her head at you and holds out her hand, and her palm is just as warm as the stray freckles dotted among the fine, dark hair covering the back.

She'll probably remark something about how you're silly, but she's glad she does always know where to find you nevertheless, and you'll shrug your own mirthless chuckle without actually shrugging, because shrugging isn't in your nature unless you need to pretend it to be, and around Flora, Elma never needs to pretend.

"Just where are you taking me?" they question with a careful lightness, ever-conscious of the way Flora's pointedly measuring her steps in an attempt not to seem uptight herself.

"Just? Just to the park," Flora replies easily. "They don't call it Deliverance without a reason, you know."

It's a worthwhile remark. Everything in NLA has an affect of homage with a varnish of serendipity. They certainly don't call it Ishmael Hills for no reason, but such a place would only belong in a happenstance iteration of Los Angeles. So it's what you make of it, in other words. Deliverance if you like, kitsch if you don't. Elma stays in the administrative district because they don't like thinking about it.

"And you're delivering me from...what, exactly?" From what? Of whom?

"Your worries. We're not all meant to carry them with us all the time."

Their feet fall in standard-issue soles (Flora's more clop than clip, but the sound is overall flat and wide) in such a way that Elma is summoned with a jolt back to the actuality of the situation: two women, walking, hand in hand. Very simple. Very plain.

Very practical. Don't you think so?

"I don't think so, anyway. You can't exactly trade off shifts with me, because we're walking together now, but if you mentioned it to the commander I think he'd agree that he and Secretary Nagi meet the same issue."

"Sounds like gossip to me."

"Never gossip among friends - and we are friends, aren't we?"

Of course. Friendship. The most quaintly practically-minded way to term a not-so-romantic streetside walk in the moonlight.