"If she can make one by then it seems like a good idea."

Iomedae does not try to find Alfirin until their workday is done, and it is totally unremarkable that she'd try to find her at that time.

"Hey, you. How are the crank-guns coming along?"

"Overheating at half the rate of fire that is supposedly obtainable. Though that's still 200 rounds a minute, so I wouldn't say they're useless in the field as is. You can take a look tomorrow, see if I'm missing something obvious. Shall we get dinner?"

"Sure." Neither of them need to eat, but Alfirin mostly appreciates this for the ability to get absorbed in work and skip lunch with no consequences. It feels weird to skip every meal just because they can. "Company mess or should we have them bring us something?"

"We should have them bring us something, I have another engineering project I maybe wanted to throw at you when we're in more private."

"Okay." They go mention it to their secretary and then head back to their suite.

And Iomedae takes a deep breath. "Apparently Cheliax is planning to try to kidnap me with a Wish during the broadcast tomorrow. Probably just as - Freedom - because I was mean to them on the radio, they probably don't know any of the rest, but -"

Alfirin throws her arms around Iomedae. "They can do that? No, it's not - it's not fair."

Iomedae bursts into tears. "It's not fair. It's really scary. I didn't know magic could - without even knowing where you are, or who you are - I wasn't even sure wishes were a real thing -"

"Is Lastwall going to - can they stop it? They're going to stop it, right?"

"They seemed to think they could probably stop it. …but also they thought that if we did have time to make an explosive vest it'd be a good idea."

"No no no no - I mean - I can do it, probably. I just -"

"I know. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry I didn't - I don't think I'm sorry I said the things I said but I should've - known first what might happen - they can raise me right away, if I do die -"

"Okay. We can get you back. If anything goes wrong which it probably won't. We'll get you back. We will."

"I love you," Iomedae says, which is not a thing they've said to each other before but comes out of her mouth ahead of all the things she meant to say.

"I love you. I'm really scared. I can't - I can't lose you. I don't know what I'd do."

"You're not going to lose me. Lastwall can protect me, and worst case, I'll explode on them and Lastwall will raise me. And absolute worst case the goddess Iomedae will probably intervene, because She can't afford to have Cheliax capture me either. It's going to fail, and it's going to make Cheliax look stupid and weak, and it's going to make them actually weaker since they can't use the Wish to do anything else. …but I'm scared too. Because - because I didn't know this was possible at all, and -"

"And there could be another dozen things like it, that we don't know about yet and won't until -"

"Yeah. I don't know how they found out this time. But they're probably not perfect at it. I can wear an explosive vest all the time, though it makes stupid workplace accidents a lot likelier and stupider. …they're also going to try to protect you tomorrow, just in case, though we don't think Cheliax knows it might want to target you."

"...Okay." The prospect of being kidnapped herself is not that much scarier on top of the prospect of Iomedae being taken. "So… two explosive vests? Or are there more?"

"There are other targets. I don't know how many, or if - gods. The explosive vests show our hand to Cheliax to some degree. I'm not sure if that's worth it for all of the targets. I guess that's Cansellarion's decision. Let's figure out how many we can make tonight and then he can figure out how to allocate them."

"I mean. I don't have C4. They're going to be some stupid jerry-rigged sack of gunpowder and greek fire…no wearing one all the time. Can do three or four maybe." Except that she'd have to let go of Iomedae to do those and that feels terrifying right now.

Hughughug. "I don't know if that gives Cheliax ideas or not. Probably not to an important degree. Glad it's not my decision. I wish I was the kind of paladin who isn't scared, it's really distracting being this scared - I'm going to need to do something so I don't sound scared on the show tomorrow -"

"Might be a spell for that. While Lastwall's putting spells on you anyways."