After the Battle/On the Road
So Olivia had grown a spine. That was good, it was progress for sure. It seemed to Emily, though, that unless that spine was composed of practicalities as well as Olivia's defensiveness when it came to her friends, it wouldn't be much help. The fight had been short, and relatively brutal. That wasn't surprising to Emily. Raptors were dangerous, sure, but they were no match for highly trained soldiers.
And that was what they were now. Soldiers. Whether they were ready for it or not. Aaron certainly didn't seem to be.
The remainder of the walk to Doral was conducted mostly in silence, and Emily was perfectly okay with that. She was consumed with her own thoughts on the fight. Killing that raptor hadn't just been relatively easy, it had felt good. Viscerally good, instinctively satisfying. That scared her a little. She didn't feel upset she'd had to do it - honestly, she wished she'd fought more of them - and she wondered what that meant. It was a dark line of thinking
After a couple more hours of walking, the skies imitated Emily's grim mood. By the time Doral had appeared on the horizon, it was drizzling, and once they'd reached the city, the rain was coming down in torrential sheets. From what she could see of the town as they walked through it, it looked like it needed the rain to wash away all the grime. And a new coat of paint. And street-sweepers. She was glad they wouldn't be staying very long.
Doral - A Bar on the Marina
"This is piss," Emily said.
She gazed balefully into a bottle of beer. It had no label. It was the cheapest thing the bar had, and probably the lightest, too. Emily didn't drink much, but the bartender had told them to buy something or leave, so they'd bought. It was better than being outside. She wondered idly why he'd been so curt, but in a town like this, she imagined soldiers in uniform were more unsettling than anything.
The rain had gotten so bad that Thael had long since resorted to pulling on his helmet and sealing the his armored combat suit, which was currently set to a mottled blue/grey urban camouflage pattern. Olivia had been no more than 20 meters away, speaking to the harbormaster under the awning of a warehouse, but she was barely visible through the torrential downpour. The group had been disappointed to learn they wouldn't be leaving for a while, so while the others went off to do useful errands, Emily had pulled Thael into the nearest bar just to get out of the rain.
As his own beer arrived, Thael pulled off his helmet, blinking to adjust his eyes to the bar's dim lighting. Somehow his hair emerged perfectly coiffed, even after all that time crammed into the helmet. He popped open the beer on a plated portion of his wrist, and took a swig. "You'll get no argument from me," he agreed, making a face. The bartender scowled at them, but didn't say anything.
Emily had shed her own helmet the moment they'd walked in. Her hair fell back against her neck in a short, tight braid. It wasn't the most flattering style, but it kept it out of her face and safely tucked inside the helmet when she needed it. She reached back and undid the braid automatically, shaking the blonde and black hair free. After a day of walking, she thought she ought to be sore, but they hadn't been stationary long enough for her to feel anything. She still felt energized, hyper-awake. Too active to rest. Maybe the beer would help with that. She half-raised the bottle in mock salute.
"We brave soldiers," she said. "Marching on to victory behind our fearless leader. Lucky us."
She took another sip. It was still piss.
"Come on Em, don't be like that," Thael said, his tone slightly reproachful. "It was that bad. And Olivia did a good job. She kept her head and made the right decisions." He took a small sip of the thin beer. It was probably brewed somewhere in the back of the bar. Thael would've killed for just a pint of Kolsch, but the state of global supply chains meant that imported beer was even harder to get than ammo. Ah well, he didn't plan on finishing it anyways; they were technically on duty.
"Yeah." Emily nodded. "Yeah, she did."
She was quiet for a minute, staring around the bar.
"Honestly. Why did they pick her? What do you think?"
Emily's question touched a bit of a sore spot. "She's the best for the job," he replied noncommitally. Deep down, Thael was still sore about the decision, but he didn't want to undermine her authority, or the team's faith in her.
"You don't believe that," Emily said. "It's been too long, Thael. You can't hide it from me."
Thael shifted in his seat. "I just...I can't help but feel that, if not Sam-
"It should have been you," Emily said. "Or me."
Thael nodded. He was suddenly relieved to have a chance to talk this over. "Yeah. It just bothered me, the way ol' Cid said it. He didn't even announce it, he just sort of glossed over it, like we should have already known. It was like he never even considered anyone else. And after all the work I put in, that just stings, you know what I mean?"
"I know exactly. And I was thinking about it the whole walk. Like... I love Olivia. I mean, not like, you know - but you know what I mean. If it were you, I'd be-- I'd understand. I wouldn't be disappointed in myself. Now I feel like, what was I missing?"
"I know the feeling. I can't help but feel like I fucked up, somehow, sometime long ago, and Cid sort of dismissed me then. Like he's ignored everything I've done since then, just because of that one thing." Thael sighed and took another sip of beer. It was really quite terrible, and wasn't getting any better. "This stays between us, right?"
Emily took a long sip, and watched Thael for a minute, unblinking. She looked away before she spoke again.
"That's what I wanted to talk about," Emily said. "I mean, what could we even do? We can complain to Cid when we get back, sure. We can ask why it wasn't us. I was thinking about it on the road today."
"I don't know if we should. He's a sharp guy, he knows what he's doing. He must've had a good reason for picking Olivia," Thael said stubbornly.
Emily was just as stubborn, of course. "I'm gonna, when we get back. But until then - I guess we have to decide how to deal with it. And I mean, I know how that sounds. I'm not suggesting anything dramatic. We have to support Olivia. I don't know how."
Thael shrugged. "Follow her orders, maintain the chain of command, all that. It'll work out, I know it will."
"How do you know that'll be enough?"
Thael smiled. "Because I have faith in her, like I have faith in you."
Emily rolled her eyes. "Does that line usually work?"
She was blushing, just a little. She was sure he couldn't tell in the low light.
"Never." Thael said with a laugh.
"That's my seat," a gruff voice said from behind them. Thael and Emily turned to see a group of rough looking men, just in from the rain, glaring at them. They looked angry.
"There's plenty of other seats open," Thael replied coldly. These looked to be the kind of men who weren't fond of soldiers, and Thael had no time for such men. Better to take a stand now, to make life a little easier for every soldier who passed through Doral.
"Yeah, you're sitting in mine, pretty boy," the first speaker said with a sneer.
Thael and Emily exchanged a quick glance, perfectly understanding each other in that moment. Thael slowly stood up and turned around, straightening his back to emphasize his height. He crossed his arms across his chest. "You know, if you'd just asked nicely, I would've been happy to move. But since you didn't, I think you'd better step off, before someone gets hurt."
Emily stayed seated. She stared past the man but not at anything, like she was trying to look between the walls at some aether beyond sight. The room was a little darker then it had been a moment before, the shadows longer. What light there was seemed to flicker and bounce in strange patterns, dancing along the walls in unnatural forms. Thael could hear whispers, just out of comprehensible range. He'd seen Emily do this before, and knew what to expect, but that didn't make it any less unnerving. He just had to stall.
The speaker looked momentarily intimidated by the big man in front of him, but a quick look at his friends restored his confidence. "You trying to start something, asshole?" he said, taking a step forward.
The whispers were louder now. The floor felt unsteady beneath them; it felt like Thael was standing on sand. Even the air felt thicker. It was like the life had been sucked from the room, replaced by something foul, something objectively less real than what had been there before. The air had no smell to it. The only sound was the whispering. What little light remained was dull and gray. Even the wooden tables and chairs just looked like so much ash and cardboard.
"I'm trying to do the opposite, asshole. Now, one last chance: Back. Off." Stimulated by the sudden activity in the bar, Thael's own spirits began to act up, emitting their usual glow. It was the only source of light in the room, but it somehow seemed to fade to nothing just inches from Thael's skin. The locals were were looking confused and uneasy, but evidently their leader felt they'd gone too far to back down. He defiantly spat in Thael's face.
Things bubbled up from the ground. Arms with dozens of tiny hands, tentacles, claws and talons. They scratched at the floorboards and seized the antagonistic patrons' legs. They folded down from the ceiling and grasped at their heads and necks. The hands hissed and blubbered from mouths that burst from their palms, feathery wings filled with tiny claws scraped along the furniture. The places they emerged from pulsed with malign energy; pus frothed from these new orifices in the building and spilled across the ground. The whispers were more like shouts now, chanting at a frantic pace as the remaining light twisted and warped into symbols, forming words in languages too complex and esoteric to ever be read by human eyes, parsed by human ears or spoken by human mouths. Above it all, the spirits screeched and writhed, and soon a black cloud of ashy nothingness bore down on the Thael's opponents.
The leader of the angry group screamed and clawed at his face and hair, trying to pull away the unholy appendages. He tried to step back, tripped over himself on the unsteady ground and fell to the floor, where he crabwalked backwards and crashed head-first into the bar. The others didn't fair any better; they flailed their arms and legs aimlessly, trying to avoid the things' grasp, but there was no escape. Soon, they too had fallen to the floor, little more than writhing hulks of pain and terror. They bled profusely from their eyes and noses, from their mouths, from their pores, but the blood was lapped up by the eldritch mouths that now sprung up all around them, even as those mouths blabbered grotesque nonsense with their many-pronged tongues.
Thael managed to stay standing through all of this, though he was sure he felt the hands and claws scrape past him, and heard the voices chanting in his ears. As it started to get to be too much, as the horror filled his head and all he could think or feel was the newfound madness of these men, Emily stood. She took his hand, firmly, and pulled him from the bar, stepping over the men on the floor.
As they left, the lights flickered back on. The men inside would open there eyes in a few minutes to find themselves unharmed - except for the wounds they had self-inflicted, scraping their faces, arms and legs into a bloody mess. The other patrons had seen nothing. They had been spared most of the effects. Some would have nightmares; some might remember the feelings of dread they had in the moments before those men had lost their minds, but none would make the connection. None of it had been real, and yet...
Thael shuddered as they left. There was no getting used to something like that. "Remind me to stay on your good side," he remarked to Emily as they stepped back out into the rain.
She just glanced at him back at him, and said nothing. Her eyes looked pale and tired.
The Boat
The bunk was tiny, and the whole ship was rocking back and forth subtly. Emily'd been on boats before, and they didn't make her terribly ill - but she was a little nauseated. She still felt a little jittery, like she should be moving around, like she couldn't sleep yet. She knew it was probably nerves, about what was to come. Or maybe what had happened back in the bar. Or something. It didn't matter. She hadn't enjoyed sleep in years, so though she knew she needed it, she didn't mind letting it wait a little. After twenty minutes or so of staring at the bulkhead, she got up and paced the tiny room. There was another bunk here - empty - and then a hatch leading to a long, thin corridor. She swung the hatch open and stepped out. The whole ship seemed to creak as she moved, her steps coinciding with the rocking water.
There was a light on at the far end of the corridor, near the exit to the outside deck. Emily headed for it, poking her head around the doorframe it came from. She saw Olivia, sitting in what looked like some kind of mess hall, facing away from the door. Emily rapped gently on the door.
"Liv?" She called, not wanting to be too loud for fear Olivia was asleep.
It could not have been more than few hours that Olivia had to endure the hardships of command, if one could call it as such. She reflected on whether the new position would enhance her already ill-rooted habit of introspective self-criticism—the conclusion was that it probably would and it already was. However, before the conclusion could settle into the impassable depths of her mind, where it could grow to infest her subconscious like a cancer, Olivia was interrupted by Emily. The brunette was not asleep, nor was she awake, which caused her first utterance to be slightly blunt and rough around the edges.
“Yes, Emily, what do you want?” Olivia said, identifying the girl by her voice.
Emily stepped into the room. "Hey. Did I wake you?"
“No… yes… or, I don’t know,” Olivia said and adjusted her seating to face Emily. “Is everything alright?” She continued.
"Yeah," Emily said. "Yeah, I'm fine, just can't sleep. Too much to think about, you know?"
That well-known, pearly white, smile of Olivia’s forced itself through her barricading lips. The thought hit her with blazing speed at that very moment: she had not smiled much since leaving the Academy, something which she used to do all the time around her beloved friends. “I know what you mean, more than you can imagine,” Olivia replied.
"I think I might be capable of imagining," Emily said. She slid into a chair across from Olivia. "You made some tough calls already and it's only your first day."
Olivia could tell, from the look in Emily’s eyes, that there was something bothering her. Olivia dared not to speculate as to what it was, but a straightforward approach usually worked, so the dark haired girl decided to go with that. “I guess it’s a matter of perspective… where some people see faults, other see success,” Olivia said. “You know, I can see whatever it is that is going on inside your mind, so why don’t you just tell me?” She continued.
"I mean, you know how I feel," Emily said. "We talked about it on the road. But... I dunno. Not that my opinion means anything, but I think you did good. Some of us aren't as ready."
“Of course your opinion matters, sweetie. Nothing has changed, really. I’m still that good old Olivia you’ve always known,” she said and smiled again. “And you’re ready, I know it. Why wouldn’t you be?”
"I... wasn't talking about me. I was talking about..." Emily sighed. "You saw Aaron. Does he seem like he's got any idea what we're all getting into?"
Olivia’s smile vanished like a breeze in a hurricane. “Do you, do I? I think Aaron knows that his impulsiveness will get the better of him one day. It’s my job to make sure that he doesn’t explode… prematurely,” She said with a slight doubt in her voice. “What do you want me to say, Emily? I already gave him what he deserved for that stunt. What else is there to do?” Olivia finished.
"I don't know. But I know that what happened on the road was a chance sighting, nothing really serious. Definitely nothing we couldn't handle. If that's how he responds to something so small, what's going to happen when we're in a serious fight?"
“Where is this coming from, Em? What do you have against Aaron?”
"Nothing. It's not like that. But I feel like this means there are circumstances were I - we - can't trust him."
“You shouldn’t be talking like this, Emily. Aaron is our friend, who was also the friend of someone that I shouldn’t have to remind you of, and we stand by his side no matter what, Olivia said. “Let me worry about what he does, and let me deal with it,… you just focus on what you are supposed to be doing,” she finished.
"You said it yourself - you don't want anything to happen to him. To us. I want the same thing."
“But… what? You think that Aaron is going to prevent that with how he is?”
"Not on purpose, but I think he could. If he gets mad, we have to rush in and save him. What choice would we have?"
“… It’s an interesting point, but what can we do about it other than support him and each other? When push comes to show, we are all going to crack at some point – even
you and me. Then we’re going to be grateful that he is there to take the heat.”
"I don't know," Emily said. "That's true. Nothing we can do now. We can't leave him behind."
“It baffles me that you would even imply that… we would consider leaving Aaron behind. I think you should get some sleep, Emily. I’m going to try to catch some myself.
Whatever problems we might run into in Norton City, we’ll deal with then, not now.”
Then will be too late. Emily thought, but didn't say. "Night, Olivia. Sorry to bother you with this crap - it was just something I was thinking about."
“It’s not crap… but, okay… sleep well, sweetie,” Olivia said, sounding almost apologetic.
JJ Doe