We still don't have much action going on here. But hey, that will come.
She took a cautious step over a slim fallen tree, hoping that her foot wouldn't get caught in the vines that were tightened around it. The foot was about to successfully make it over the edge when something flew past her head and lodged itself into the bark of the tree. The object was large enough for her to trip over it at the last second. She fell onto her back, foot trapped. An irritated grunt escaped her mouth as she fought with the tall grass and plants around herself to get up. She heard footsteps approaching and stopped moving abruptly, arresting the flow of oxygen to make less noise.
"What are you doing?" the calm voice asked. Emily glanced to the side and saw the odd flat, smooth looking shoes that covered Ten's feet. They were a metallic looking green, taking in the most prominent colour surrounding them, slightly camouflaging her from any other pair of eyes that would wander through the wood. Emily's eyes traced up the now green suit until she was looking at the girl's head, obscured slightly by the sun peeking through the heavy foliage of the forest. "I thought we silently agreed that you wouldn't wander off while I was away." she continued, bending slightly to free Emily's foot.
Emily stood up quickly after her foot flopped down from it's entrapment, "I didn't agree to anything. I don't even know where we are."
"I brought you here because you requested somewhere more suitable. I brought you here because you wanted a place to recuperate."
"Whatever." Emily stood up and brushed the dirt off the already filthy clothing. "This is disgusting…" she muttered, trying to scrape away the caked in mud on the edge of her shirt.
"Are you ready to leave?" Ten asked.
Emily nodded and walked back in the direction she came from. When they reached the pond again, Emily bent down to gather all of their belongings and put her armour back on, except for her helmet. She held it in her hand.
"Follow me." Ten ordered the second Emily was done. She hardly had time to comprehend what Ten meant when the girl was suddenly lifting herself into a tree.
"How the fuck do you expect me to follow you up there when I'm wearing all of this shit?"
"You follow from the ground. I cover above and you cover below. I can see what's ahead this way." With that, she jumped swiftly from branch to branch and left Emily to mutter obscenities to herself.
She ran as fast as she could through the dense forest, trying to keep up with the speedy being. She failed miserably as Ten had to constantly stop and wait for her to catch up.
The sun was stronger now, beating through the leaves of the trees above her head. She bent down and put her hands on her knees and took a few deep breaths before looking up to see Ten swerving her head. A chuckle bubbled up from Emily's throat as she continued watching the seemingly ridiculous feline-like movements being displayed. Suddenly, Ten looked straight at her and said roughly from the tree, "Get down."
Emily dropped onto her stomach as quickly as possible but not at all quietly. Her helmet landed with a loud thud beside her. She saw the one eye belonging to the other girl roll back into its socket in annoyance. She raised her eyebrow at the emotion as it was the only expression she'd ever seen displayed other than indifference on the other girl's face.
Voices were heard getting nearer. Emily could make out that they were from two men. Their footsteps snapped twigs and mangled dead leaves as they got closer and closer. She held her breath and glanced upward once again. Ten was still looking at her, from what Emily could tell, with a slightly panicked expression. She watched the girl reach silently for the tree that stretched directly above herself. She jumped recklessly to grab hold of a branch that hovered above Emily's body. She hung for a few moments, making no movement, before dropping down on top of the brunette.
Emily almost cried out, but was forced into silence by Ten's hand covering her mouth forcibly. The more agile girl stretched her body to cover as much space as possible, completely hiding Emily's body under her own.
When the hand was removed from her mouth, Emily was surprised to see four buttons underneath each finger in the girl's palm. One finger curled to press down on a red one. She wasn't entirely sure what that just did, but it seemed to calm the frantic girl now on top of her.
The men passed a few feet away from them, looking straight at them, but not actually seeing them. The girls didn't move from their position until they couldn't hear even the slightest noise from the men.
"Those were guards. That means we're near a village. Do you need anything?" Ten whispered into Emily's ear, the sounded echoing a bit louder than it should have because of her helmet.
"Some clean clothes and actual food would be nice and could you please get off of me, you're almost suffocating me."
Ten lifted herself off of Emily, then stretched her arm out to help the brunette up.
"Were we invisible?" Emily asked, picking up her barbute.
"No." the girl looked around, paranoid "I made the suit blend better with our surroundings. Those guys never notice a thing. I don't even know why they bother positioning them outside."
Emily nodded and began walking in the direction the guards came from. Ten climbed back up to her higher position.
They finally emerged from the forest an hour later to come face to face with a thick stone wall.
"Well…" Emily flattened her hand against the wall, "It's going to be fun getting over this."
"You don't need to. You don't look suspicious. I, on the other hand, do have to find a way over." Ten dragged her hand along the rough surface while walking away from Emily. "Just meet me in the back of the market."
Emily agreed and walked in the opposite direction until she located the main entrance.
Four guards were lined up in front of the entrance. Her hands got clammy as she took them in, feeling nervous, even though they shouldn't really try coming after her since she looked pretty harmless minus her sword. But either way she felt her heart rate speed up as she walked towards them.
She tried looking inconspicuous as she trotted through the space between two of the four guards blocking the way. She nodded at one of them, feeling four pairs of eyes practically stabbing her with their glare. Legs upped their pace as much as they could without looking suspicious and eyes looked away from the intimidating man. When she figured she was far enough, she ducked behind a tiny house as quickly as possible to get away from their prying eyes. She leaned her head back against the stone and looked up at the sky while catching her breath.
Clouds now obscured the sun, hinting at rain. She recognised the humidity in the air and she cursed herself for noticing it because she had been ignoring the hot temperature since being in the forest. Now that she wasn't distracted, she felt it full on.
She figured instead of complaining to herself she should find her ally again.
She walked out from her hiding place and was immediately swept up by the flow of people in the narrow streets. She was jostled and pushed from all directions as everyone attempted to reach their own destination. Her hand, out of habit, shot for her thigh to hold her weapon against her leg so it wouldn't bump anyone.
She sighed in relief when she reached the part of the flood of people that bottle-necked, indicating that she had reached the border between the market and the normal part of the town. People pushed their way past her even more as they were trying to exit the shopping area. Finally tired of being trampled, she began to walk with more purpose, bumping people out of her way if they were blocking her path.
Breaking away from the suffocating crowd, she was able to study the layout of the marketplace. Lined up all on one side were stands that sold bread, fruit, meat, fish and whatever else the population could make or harvest. Her mouth watered just from getting a glimpse of proper food, but she was soon distracted when she saw a bird made of parchment fly past her head. It looked innocent enough to other people, but to her it was a signal. She followed the direction it came from and turned down a mostly unoccupied road. Turning another corner into a secluded area between two small houses, she looked up just in time to see Ten carefully let herself down from a low roof.
"You know if you're not going to wear that helmet, might as well sell it and buy one that fits or suits you better." she commented the moment her light feet hit the ground.
Emily lifted the hunk of metal to examine it, "You're right. We'll find a blacksmith after we get some proper food."
Ten raised her eyebrow.
"Please?" Emily pleaded, smiling to try and look as cute as possible. "Pleeeaase?"
Ten just grunted and said, "Follow my lead, then." she got back onto the roof by climbing a pipe that stuck out of a nearby wall. She looked down and motioned for Emily to walk back to the busy part of the street.
Emily obeyed and she soon found herself standing in front of a man selling bread. She ignored the sign that had the price jotted down and asked him how much it would cost to purchase a loaf. A string of useless, irritating questions spilt from her mouth and in the corner of her eye she saw Ten's hand emerge over the edge of the roof of a structure that was behind the man. She continued purposely annoying the merchant as something was thrown to hook onto a few loaves of bread. People around them did not notice as they were to absorbed in their own errands to actualy observe what was around them. The temptation to laugh was almost overwhelming in the back of her throat as Ten pulled the wire and the bread flipped off the makeshift table instead of effortlessly gliding through the air like it was supposed to. Eventually, it was pulled up to the higher level properly and Emily bid farewell to the now flustered man.
They did this over and over to every kind of food stand they could locate.
They met once again behind a set of houses and they sat down facing each other on the floor. Emily grabbed the bag that previously hadn't been in Ten's possession to pull out and eat some of the provisions.
"Don't eat all of it now. We just spent over an hour stealing that." Ten said, a scowl on her face.
"Whatever." Emily replied, mouth full. She swallowed and continued, "Hey, why don't you ever eat?"
"I do eat."
"I never see you."
"That's because I do it when you're not looking or when I'm not with you."
"Do it now."
"No."
"Why?"
"Can you leave me alone? Christ."
"So you can talk like a normal person." Emily smirked.
"Shut up."
Emily reached out in an attempt to rid the other girl of her helmet. Her hand was swatted away.
"Can you stop? You're really annoying."
"I just want to see your face."
"You can…you can see my eye…and eyebrow…and my cheeks, sort of." Ten laughed when Emily huffed.
"Also, Ten is a stupid name. I'm going to find something else to call you."
"Great." was the taller girl's unenthusiastic response.
"Moody bitch? No…" Emily feigned being deep in thought, "Person who is always annoyed when not acting alarmingly serene in every situation?"
Ten sighed, holding her head in her hands as Emily fired out insulting names in quick succession.
"Oh, I know. I'll call you Freak."
"Jesus."
"Freakaaaay." Emily continued, trying to get a rise out of the other girl.
"Fucking hell, can you just shut the fuck up?"
Emily mouth snapped shut in surprise before her lips curled up into an amused smile.
"I don't care what you call me, just please be quiet." the girl now had her hands over her ears.
"Okay…Freak."
"Fuck…" Ten muttered. "I don't remember you being this annoying."
Emily's brow furrowed, "What?"
Ten shrugged off the comment, "Dunno, you annoying little shit."
Emily simply grinned in response before stuffing her face some more.
Vangoghgurrl, looooool I knooow. I just really couldn't do anything with Fortress...yet. This idea popped in and was already more fleshed out than Fortress had been in the first place. I had absolutely no idea how to move Fortress along, but this one I did. So I decided to just stick with it. Hopefully this is the beginning of a path you'll like :)
CrashKill, Thanks for dropping a few words of encouragement. It's always greatly appreciated!
Peace.
lol for anyone who read this before I realised there were some pretty wonky spelling errors (that made me laugh a lot), I apologise. I looked over it a hundred times and have no idea how I missed them.