GO WILD
Chapter Twenty-Five: Goodbye Meteor City!
With the most unwilling gesture, I spoon my meal in half. A luxurious meal by Gortese standards and half will go uneaten. You would think after weeks of doing this it would get easier. Nope, each plate is a gnawing struggle. I suppose that's the point.
The Troupe barely leave bones on their plates, which makes my half plate the odd one out (how appropriate).
They drink, but despite the green beer cans amounting into a mini mountain on the floor, none of the Spiders slur and sway as Gortese do after a few green bottles of soju.
After being prodded three times to have some, I sip Shalnark's offered pint and must clamp my jaw as tight as bear-trap to not spit it out. What is this…I turn the green can, Heineken.
Danchou regards my half-eaten plate but when I expect him to comment on it, he says instead, "My apologies, Safra. I could have brought you some soju." He has packed away almost a six pack himself (with zero bloating in the six-pack on his abdomen) yet he hasn't even the faintest drunk flush on his moon-light white face or a stray strand of hair from his slicked-back style.
It dawns on me how rude I've been to not explain myself. "Soju or not, I've never been a big drinker."
"Don't they call the Gortese the Irish of the Equator?" say Uvogin and I'm mildly impressed he would know such a thing.
"The stereotype is true, but my family, especially my dad, never drank. Too risky."
"Loose lips sink ships," says Danchou, quite poignantly. I never asked paba why he never drank soju, but I heard whispers that his peers, after a slip of the drunk tongue, a complaint about food shortages here, a rant about the Dear Leader among trusted friends there, were gagged and stolen in the middle of the night.
"Since it will be a busy few weeks until we arrive in West Gorteau, I want to finalize the plan for our Transverse Type."
"Still sounds fake to me," says Phinks and I withhold a groan.
"If Franklin is fine with showing Safra Emission—" says Danchou.
"A bet's a bet," I hear Franklin say softly.
"—then someone will need to show her Enhancement," says Danchou, opening the floor to takers.
Even sober, Uvogin can be a bull, kicking his hind legs in a china shop, now he's a tipsy bull in a china shop when he thrusts a tree-trunk arm into the air, almost knocking Nobunaga at his right. "I can get her started before I leave."
I try to imagine us by the dunes, I, a flea next to Beef-Mountain.
A sly smile from Danchou that reaches his gray eyes. "You want to? From the goodness of your heart, Uvo?"
"Oh, it will be mutual. She can show me a few tricks," he says with a feral smile, the same he flashed before ripping the pork apart with his teeth.
"Tricks?" I ask.
"He that desperate to get blown up again?" hisses Feitan. A judgmental blink from Machi that doubles as a nod.
"I'll make it fun!" he says and now I hear the mountain of beer talking.
Paku's chair screeches as she dodges Uvo's arm reaching over to cup my head. Without helping it, I squeak from surprise and the sheer weight. It's a concrete ceiling crushing my neck and spine—
"Enough of that, Uvo," says Phinks and even with my eyes shut I can distinguish the crisp noise of his tracksuit-clad arms crossing in disapproval. "You won't be the one teaching her."
"I won't?"
"Because I'm going to be the one to teach her Enhancement."
"Hoooo," intones Danchou with amusement. "Phinks and Feitan are responsible for her so yield to Phinks, Uvo," he says, direct but a little playful.
A resentful hmmph in Uvogin's throat and finally he unloads his arm from my head.
"She's traveling with Feitan, Shalnark, and Phinks so it makes better sense," says Chrollo. "Franklin, you should travel with them too."
"At least Franklin and Shalnark will be there to make sure Fei and Phinks don't kill her," says Paku.
"And to make sure she doesn't kill them," says Machi.
I wake up the next morning sore. Multiple layers of torn and pinched muscle from the exploded land mine that cost me my hand and from being flung off Ging's shoulder into a pile of stone rubble.
The clang of my food tray being dumped outside my door.
Starving I take the tray and notice…an absence of weight. I set the tray down on the table, lift the lid, take in the sight, and snort.
One plate with precisely one pitted black olive. I could hear the thoughts that conceived this scheme: break this in half! And whoever is the genius behind this trickery probably searched for the tiniest olive in the can.
I squeeze both sides of the olive, grip is a little slippery with gloves, and crack the sides into two clean halves. I eat one and chew until it turns to paste that dissolve. I barely need to swallow. My stomach protests, threatens mutiny, a coup, but I'm so peeved I immediately set the tray, with half my breakfast contents, behind the closed door.
It's Paku who busses the tray. At first, she thinks Safra has cleaned her plate, but her top lip thins when she spies the lonely half olive on the plate.
She moves into the main chamber. Even with all the space in the cathedral and regular exclaims of "I could kill you!" the majority of spiders tend to congregate in the common areas. Paku lifts the lid by its metal handle and thwacks Phinks on the back of his head.
She crosses her arms and drums her fingers on her arm.
"You dented the tray, Paku," says Feitan.
"Was that necessary?" Paku scolds Phinks who's still rubbing the bump on his head.
"THAT should be my question!"
"I told you about the peculiarity I noticed. I didn't ask you to take it upon yourself to address it."
"You don't waste food in Meteor City," says Phinks standing up to face Paku. Even taller, the woman would not be intimated by his mere height.
"Heh, still half the olive," says Feitan, holding up the half olive to the light like a rare gem.
"What peculiarity?" asks Machi.
"Please explain, Paku," asks Chrollo.
"The food I deliver to Safra. No matter what is placed at her door, she always returns the meal, precisely half eaten."
"So give her less," snides Phinks.
"I did. She halved that too," says Paku.
"So give her nothing until she cleans her plate."
"Well, that makes no sense. She can't clean her plate if there's nothing on it," says Shalnark.
Phinks snits. "You know what I mean. You don't waste food in Meteor City."
"So she doesn't like the food I serve her?" asks Nobunaga.
Paku shook her head. "It's not the food itself. I tried a double portion once and she halved that too."
"Precisely half eaten?" Machi repeats and Paku nods.
"Intentionally," says Paku.
"Has anyone tried asking her why she does this?" asks Machi and Phinks snits again.
Shalnark rubs his chin. "So a consistent pattern of halving her food. OCD?"
Machi shrugs her shoulders.
"Feed her a plate of what I eat and she won't return half," says Uvo.
"That's not necessary Uvo."
"Wasting the food is the problem, not the halving part," says Phinks again.
Nobunaga took the olive from Feitan's fingers. "Returning half an olive is a lil' ridiculous. Hmmm, she's using her fingers. A knife would be a perfect slit."
"She's following a Gortese custom," says Danchou. "When a loved one or comrade passes away, they halve their food to mourn for the missing person who cannot be there to eat with them. Depending on their grief they may do it for an indeterminate amount of time. Some never stop." With new context, they peer upon the half olive. "Our guest is in mourning."
I tilt my head as Paku motions me to peer down so she can paint the roots behind my ear. I pout at my reflection in the mirror on her vanity. I have a turkey-neck thing going on and I'm not living for it.
"I passed Phinks in the hallway," she says.
"And?"
"They don't leave it in their dorm."
I groan and cross my eyes at my reflection. The bottom half of my hair looks greased in oil and the top half I hold up, resembling a mushroom.
Paku tells me the story of how she managed to brush her hand along his shoulder. Then how he grimaced, bared his teeth and sneered, "nice try Paku."
"They take turns carrying your keepsake. I believe Feitan has it at the moment, but he figured me out before I could verify," she says.
I sigh and inhale a mouthful of ammonia that rides up my nostrils and into my brain and I feel my brain cells melting. "I figured they wouldn't leave it lying around," I say.
"They haven't played keep-away with you, have they?" she asks and I detect the faintest restrained humor in her sultry voice.
"Should I expect that?" I ask.
"The torturous bastards would," she says and flips over a newly dyed section of hair to begin another behind my ear. "You know, you're making this way too difficult. Haven't you considered an easier method?"
"What easier method?" I say but squeak when something rubs against my shins. I peek down and it's one of Paku's Pest-Control mackerel tabbies. Marble cat-eyes blink at me and I can imagine it meowing at me: what might your name be? Another one, a cross-eyed silver tabby and quite chubbier this one, is lying belly up on the vanity, stretching its paws tauntingly close to the bowl of hair dye.
Paku scraps the brush and cool chemical gooey dye sticks to my brown hair. "To ask for help."
"Help?"
"Even if we are eleven personalities that often grate on each other, we're still the Spider." She did it once again, including me into the spider's count.
"Only ten, remember?" I say.
"Hmmm, right," she says, moving up to my crown.
"I'm not a spider remember? I'm more...the fly caught in its web."
I've never seen Paku burst into giggles, but I'm victorious at her snorted laugh and how a wisp of hair falls over her aquiline nose.
"If that were true, you would have been devoured by now."
My stomach twists at the mental image. A twelve legged spider spreading it's salvia dripping fangs before taking one ravenous bite.
I've never been afraid of spiders but I'm more sympathetic of arachnophobes.
"Paku, if I asked you to help me steal my keepsake, would you have helped?"
"I'd delight in it if only I wasn't leaving tomorrow."
That's right. We're traveling separately.
"Maybe you can help me once we're in Zeoul," I say.
"No, I suspect you'll be wearing it next time I see you," she says, and I wish I shared her confidence.
"Who could I ask?" I mention Uvogin off the top of my head. "How much would I have to pay Uvogin to commission his help?"
"Uvogin isn't moved by money so a lot less than you would think. The thrill is what get him to say yes." She changes the topic. "Why do you dye your hair? Black washes you out and your natural brown would make you glow."
"I prefer black, is all," I say. I tilt my chin, double-checking my facial angles from the mirror. I don't think it washes me out...
"Have you packed yet?" she asks.
"I have one set of clothes, Paku."
"You might want to ask Machi to lend you one of her evening dresses," she says, taking a chunk of hair from my mushroom. "I always have some formal evening wear, in case I'm meeting the client."
I remember leggy Paku, coaxing secrets from male clientele, charmed by her beguiling eyes and blues-sultry voice. Inserting me into that image is utterly laughable, but I promise to take her advice.
"It feels like it's still there," I tell Omokage.
It's just the two of us, Omokage and I.
The growing pains. Let me tell you. Think of a mix between teeth drilling into your marrow and sandpaper against tender muscle. As soon it was daylight hours, I roamed the cathedral grounds until I found Omokage: a gleam of silver against the rain-dappled window. I told him of my difficulty of using chopsticks and he's now making minute adjustments with his nen-carving tools. He molds my hand like soft clay and the angry joints breathe a sigh of relief.
"Glad I could find you," I say.
"I made myself easy to find," he says as he led me to his quarters.
Underground, far from natural light, he adjusts a kerosene lamp, his usually gray skin almost warm in the ember's glow.
He checks the state of my hand and I check the artistic chaos of his dwellings. It is the two of us, but we aren't alone.
His enormous collection of true-to-life bisque dolls outnumber us 10:1. Everywhere I turn I swear their glass gazes are stalking me…
"Describe what's troubling you," he asks.
"The spells come and go. Sometimes it's calm, and then it goes mad," I say. "No amount of hang wagging or pressing my weight against it can stop it from fidgeting." Early that morning I squirmed on my futon like a worm on blistering pavement.
"If the user isn't calm the armature won't be either," he says. He continues to massage my carpal bones, applying the right amount of pressure to bring respite to the ache. "The...mad spells beneath your skin is your imperfect body adjusting to the armature. It will subside and you'll forget it's even there."
He veers us to a full-length mirror and shows off his work in our reflection, in the crowd of his dolls. "See? The armature even brings out your eyes. Isn't it perfect?"
That strange revulsion I experienced when Omokage proudly unveiled his uncanny hand hasn't edged away.
I spot my microexpression of disgust and he asks, "Are you...unhappy with it?"
"I'm not used to it yet, is all," I force a chipper tone, painting gleaming enthusiasm on my face in hopes I don't come off as ungrateful.
Omokage bows out of my reflection, leaving me alone in the mirror with the dolls. Call it paranoia, but I swear the expression of one doll had changed. Her matte face and rosebud lips now asymmetrical, tutting with shame.
"Do you like them?" asks Omokage, catching me in a staring contest with the doll.
"They're beautiful," I say a tad creeped out. "How do you get the eyes so perfect?" Omokage loves having his ego stroked, but truly, their eyes mesmerize with their beauty. It's like I'm in a jeweler's shop surrounded by glittering precious stones, all too beautiful to be real.
"You could say I steal from real life," he says. "Good artists copy, great artists steal."
Ah, like how artists steal inspiration from real life. Art was never my forte but I could understand his point. Omokage is passionate about his craft and it shows. "You've made so many."
"Each doll is unique. I as a creator render a part of myself during their creation. A quality of mine that lives on in each of my creations."
"What quality of yours did you give my hand?" I'm compelled to ask.
"Venture a guess?"
Ugh, not this again. "I wouldn't know where to start, Omokage."
"Remember when I said what makes this armature special? On its own, it's a prosthetic, but enlivened with my Nen, it's eternal."
I'm not sure I understand (or want to understand). Nen, life energy, can live on after death?
"Your hand is in excellent condition," says Omokage to my relief. "Your crude body will submit to it soon."
Crude body? "You speak of it like it can be refined," I say.
I expect him to negate my claim, but this is Omokage. He smiles. Like Shal he smiles a lot but where Shalnark is sunny, Omokage is tarty.
"I'll be frank with you Safra, I'm not belittling you. I am sympathetic to your complaints. This is foreign to you. But I do believe that soon you will see eye-to-eye with me. Can't you agree this eternal hand is superior to your frangible human hand?"
Is he fishing for compliments or is he trying to convert me? Look, I'm from East Gorteau. I know what mental conditioning looks like.
"It's perfect," I say, slithering my way out of the question's confines and from his literal grasp.
Props to the puppeteer though, there's a fluid flex in my new fingers. My Nen glides through the armature as slick as oil. But better than my real hand? This hand is uncannily human that the strange revulsion I experienced when Omokage first proudly unveiled his creation hasn't edged away.
Not that I would dare share that with Omokage.
I'm salved with Omokage's Nen but slow, removed from its source, it seeps into my skin, soon smothered by my own life energy.
I would leave but I still have something I've been dying to ask him.
"Is now a good occasion to ask what you meant by your cliffhanger in the cave? About being sympathetic to my cause?"
He needs a moment to jog his memory, but soon his silver brows rise in recognition. "I haven't yet told you. I have a sibling too."
Now that idea strikes me as strange when it shouldn't at all: the PT members having families elsewhere.
"Oh, younger? Older? Brother?"
"One precious baby sister," he says with undeniable fondness and sincerity. Distance projects in his sea glass eyes as he reflects on her memory. "It is because of her that I became a Divine puppeteer."
The self-proclaimed Divine humbles himself at the focal point of his collection, bending on his knee to a doll so life-like part of me anticipated her getting up and moving by herself towards us. I catch my gasp; that's her. He made a life-size version of her. Tresses of captured sun, bright even in the dim watery light of the post-rainstorm. The most peculiar is her eyes or lack thereof, she is the only doll in his shop without them.
"Are her eyes not done yet?" I ask.
"Hers I cannot seem to get right. No pair as of yet has been adequate."
His words speak of tragedy, what became of her, a minefield even I won't tread.
"What was her name?"
"Retz," he says. "Had I known then what I know now, she could have lived forever."
He speaks like a man in those fabled ironies, wasting their lives away hunting for everlasting life. No, Omokage thinks he already knows the secret. The good side of me wishes to extend some sympathy, for I felt pity for him and the wary side peeked over my shoulder at the shut door and counted the paces I needed to cross.
Before I can speak, the shuffle of his moving robes makes me turn alert to him again. Returning to his full willowy height, the shapeless panels of his robe move like mist towards me.
He takes my armature and covers it with both his hands. He inspects it—no, he admires it once more.
"You remind me a bit of her, Safra," he says. "Her eyes were like yours, so expressive, transparent, it's as if I could almost see through them."
The sea glass depths and the unique pattern of lines of his eyes I could mimic in a drawing because he is so unceremoniously close. As if he wants to cast my eyes into memory or…that crawling of ants on my skin feeling again…that he wants to scoop them out with a spoon.
I edge out his grasp, out of my chair before pushing it back with a hard scrape on the stone floor. "If I have any more problems, I'll come find you in Zeoul."
"Neh, Safra." Danchou's mellifluous voice enchants my full attention. "Care to join me to the roof terrace?"
My first view of Danchou was high above me in the sanctuary and high up we go together now to end our time in Meteor City. Up so many shadowed stairs and I'm so ashamed of how much I gasp for breath. Meanwhile, on the thousandth step, Danchou is as sweatless as he was on the first. With a rusty creeaakk the arched roof door opens at Danchou's gentle touch. I orient myself and grab hold of the railing of an aqueduct that conveys a steady water stream. Nobunaga's shrubs and vines decorate the terrace, a pensile paradise in Meteor City I had never known. Lush and verdant even under the overcast sky. We stand near the nave, historically the highest point of all Meteor City.
The wind rushes at my ears, but it blows against the draft of the dunes and the air is crisp, without a hint of the garbage waste from the dunes.
Danchou leans against the railing, to the southern horizon.
"Back so soon and leaving again," I say.
"You'll be leaving here soon too. But you're not planning to come back," he says.
I hadn't thought of the finality of my getting into a car and leaving Meteor City. With the heist and East Gorteau on the horizon, I hadn't yet thought of the after.
I balance my weight on the bar, taking in utilitarian apartment blocks of the unmapped city. I remember asking passersby about Meteor City after arriving in Yorubia and so many gawked at me in confusion I half believed the city was myth.
I'm relieved when Danchou doesn't ask me to share my feelings about Meteor City over this view. I haven't yet reconciled my conflictions of a place that has given me so much freedom and where I have spilled so much blood.
Instead, he asks, "Is that a phoenix feather?"
I reach for my hair ornament that at his mere mention feels silly, a decoration suddenly a severe cowlick. "A gift. It reminds me of—nevermind. You'll think it's silly."
I would have been better off lying cause then Danchou smiles that disarming smile and beckons me to answer. "Go on, please."
The last person I mentioned this to was my dad all those years ago. "It reminds me of a time, my sister and I went ghost hunting."
"Do you believe in ghosts, Safra?"
I remember the feather though in the years that have passed, I can less picture its precise shape and my holding it, but rather it's tremendous brightness like an over-exposed photograph. How it poofed and still to this day, I wonder if I ever truly saw it. "I might…"
A snicker. "You might? Don't most Gortese believe?"
We are a superstitious lot… "Do you believe, Danchou?"
He places the feather back into the base of my ponytail. "I do." Suddenly I feel less strange for keeping a feather in my hair.
"Shalnark and Franklin will brief you on the assignments after you leave Meteor City. Your group will arrive last but I asked them to take the scenic route."
"Why so?"
"So you can see more."
"You're the sentimental kind, aren't you?"
Overlooking his home, in a way that sparks homesick-jealousy in me, he says what I know will be the last words he'll ever say to me on the rooftop, "I might."
I'm equally surprised and not surprised that Franklin is an Emitter. The 'only Emitter in the Phantom Troupe' as Machi says. I wonder if having a fellow Emitter will steal his thunder.
"Franklin isn't like that. At least, I don't think so," she says.
I think of the man carrying my breakfast tray, how he showed hurt at the thought that I wasn't fond of his cooking. The same spliced man whose thunderous voice could spark a shiver down the spine of Frankenstein's monster.
Unlike Uvogin, Franklin moves like a gentle giant. Whereas Uvogin moves the world out of the way, Franklin moves with consideration for the smaller few around him. I've passed by him in a hallway and he has flattened himself against the wall so I could pass first.
"So, you got tired of being a Transmuter?" he says, so dryly I don't realize this is Joking-Franklin.
"I wouldn't say that."
"Being an Emitter is better," he says and cups the top of my head. While he doesn't compress me like Uvo, when his fingers tapped my temple, there's an unmistakable metallic clang that reminded me too much of a gun barrel.
Maybe his thunder isn't stolen, but he's glad to wield it with someone else.
"I'm not like Machi. I didn't train with another Emitter and she's more cut out to be an instructor."
Come to think of it I have never seen Franklin's ability. "I presumed you to be an Enhancer, like Uvogin."
A huff that sounds like a haughty bull.
I hope I didn't offend him.
"I mean, just because...you're pretty bulky like he is. I thought bulky=Enhancer."
"Emission is close to Enhancement." He says like it's a buy one get one free package deal.
"So you could instruct me in both?"
"I'll leave that fun to the Enhancers."
Again that discomfort of being shuffled around like old furniture.
"Have you put any thought into your Emission?" His arms hang heavy like lead at his sides.
"Conceptually when I was studying with Abiji, but-" I pause to perfect my answer. "Transmutation came naturally to me and Emission any time I practiced on my own, for my own curiosity was a total disaster. So I thought I couldn't learn it. No deep answer."
"From what I gather from Machi, you didn't have to think about developing Transmutation."
I wouldn't say the value of my thinking was zero...but my Transmutation I liken to a crying baby left in a blanket on my doorstep. A sudden and crucial responsibility.
I reach for the feather that resists against the draft of air like a ship's sail. I don't feel like it's a burden now. Something I'm growing to like.
"Machi said you're too honest to be a Transmuter and I would say you're too calm and quiet to be an Emitter. At least, that's what I thought at first," he says, and the weight of his gaze rests on my armature.
"I've only ever seen you calm and quiet, Franklin."
His scared face softens and I see glimpses of the teddy-bear man from Pakunoda's memory.
"Good point. We shouldn't rely too much on personality when it comes to Nen."
I half expected Franklin to lay down the principles then shoo me off to self-study, but he's as patient as Machi, but his methods are far more tactical than conceptual.
One of the things that come aplenty in the cathedral is the overabundance of colored glass. He gives me a stack and clink like dinner china and orders me to crack them.
My Nen swims around the glass, licking it, rubbing smooth against the surface like rain, but willing the act of breaking glass is a phrase not easily translated in Transmuter language.
"Why glass?" I ask.
Franklin takes the orange triangle from my hand and before I can see how he shatters it from within. Orange shards tear through the air and sprinkle to the stone floor.
I exhale, open my clenched eyes, and relax my clenched muscles.
"Why glass and not something less devastating to shatter, right?" he asks.
I hadn't so concretely formed the thought in my head like that but yes.
I see the pieces on the stone floor and I'm suddenly dour by a sense of regret. Teacups rolling off a table and smashing, a neighbor's window-smashing from playing with my sister, a prized heirloom shattering from my clumsiness, all sounds of immediate regret.
"You were a handful when you were young, weren't you? Emitters tend to break things growing up. It's our nature," he says.
My behind has endured a few bouts of spankings, all to which my mother later expressed regret. "I hate the sound," I admit of the shattered glass. "And once it's broken it can never be the same."
"I had to unlearn that too," he says. "I'm showing you this now because the other exercise I'll assign you can practice on your own. Far less messy."
"Which is?"
"Not all Emission is sheer destruction, Safra," says Franklin. He turns, glass crunching beneath his heels to something draped by a curtain of fabric against the wall. He yanks the curtain, cloud of dust and then through it, a grand organ with wooden pipes as tall as Franklin.
I had only ever seen them in pictures. I likened them to pianos with bamboo shoots sticking out.
"So what's the good way to practice on my own?"
Never in a million years would I expect the answer that comes out of his baritone mouth, "Music."
"Music?" Half incredulous and half not being sure if I heard right.
Franklin's hands, normally brunt and heavy like cannon balls, curl delicately over the keys. Out of all the Troupes members, Franklin would be one of the last I would suspect. The organ hums at his touch and the sound emanates around me, vibrating through me to my teeth and bones, high up the chamber walls.
"Music. Not listening to it, but playing it. A lot of Emitters are musicians."
He plays a tune, one I can't name, but it's lulling and suddenly I notice the fatigue of the previous week. Danchou first telling me I'm going to East Gorteau, the Hunter's Tavern, the phoenixes, and Ging. And before that, the loss of my hand, my almost-manic episode—
Franklin plays the final note and like a switch, the details so real in my head vanish, shattering to shards like the glass beneath my shoes. That flood of thoughts. Was that all enchantment from Franklin and the organ?
Franklin's cannon hands drop to his sides again. He tilts up his scared face. His scars I've seen before, but now they were no longer mere spliced patchwork on his temple and cheeks. Instead, I'm reminded of artists who deliberately smashed ceramic pottery to then repair with lacquer or gold. The philosophy of wabi-sabi or embracing the imperfections and transience of existence.
Is how I should view Emission? As the gold seams over my imperfections?
"Thank you, Franklin. I never thought of it that way."
My time in Meteor City began in the dunes and my last couple of weeks in Meteor City were spent in the dunes. Danchou left first with Omokage and Pakunoda with the first shipment of landmines. He paid me handsomely as he promised, and I immediately wired the money to Ging. A week later Machi left with Nobunaga and Uvogin. A week after that I had to set my phone alarm to 4 am so I could leave with Feitan, Shalnark, Phinks, and Franklin ("We have a long drive so we need to leave early," Phinks had said at my utter disgust at a 4 am wake up time.)
Packing was a snitch. I have the clothes on my back, my nemaki, my screwdriver (and pills), a pillow, one blanket, no room for a comforter, one evening dress and flats from Machi ("Paku said that?" she has asked but lent me a dress without hesitation), Ging's scarf, and my red phoenix feather. I bid farewell to Mr. Coconut Rat and warn him to stay away from Pakunoda's tabbies.
Yawning, I pause for one last look at the grand sanctuary where several long shadows became the Phantom Troupe—honestly, it wasn't even that long ago.
Outside, it's near pitched black save for the celestial sky and the rosy bud glowing near the van. I smell high tar, approach and make out Phinks' silhouette smoking by the van driver's side.
"You're late," he says.
I peer around in the dark but sense no one else. "Where's Shal? Feitan? Franklin?"
"They're late too. They always drag their feet before leaving." The rosy ring pulls back on his cigarette as he takes a drag. "I bet you're excited to leave Meteor City."
I squeeze my pillow in a shrug. "At 4 am excitement isn't what I feel."
"Take one last whiff of the dunes. You might miss that dank smell."
I can't tell if he's joking. "You know, you and Feitan are the only two who believe me."
"Believe what?"
"That I won't be back. That I'm not joining the Troupe."
A surprisingly frosty gust of desert air worms through the short sleeves of my uwagi and I shiver. I think of Turkei, Ging, the promise of winter in the late summer air.
"Can it snow in Meteor City?" I ask.
An interrupted cigarette drag. "Hmmm? A random ass question," says Phinks.
"Just curious is all," I say, sleepily. "If we had stayed for a few more months, maybe...nevermind."
"You've never seen snow before, have you?"
From the slight teasing edge in his voice, I'm embarrassed to answer.
"What? I know tropical Gorteau isn't known for its blizzards," he says. "Sometimes it snows," he says. "But because of the pollution, sometimes it's gunky snow. That said, we usually get at least one big snowfall every winter. Crisp and pure white." Phinks exhales and I realize I'm standing close enough to feel the warmth of his breath. Smoke smothers my nose to which I fan my hand to shoo away.
"Sounds nice," I say, picturing the crows, their wings dappled with snow and the dunes blanketed with pure white.
"Nice you think?" he says. "Snow is charming for about five minutes, then it's a slushy pain in the ass. But you're free to visit if you want to see it that bad."
Still fanning away the smoke, I snort a laugh. "Don't make me take back what I said."
We listen to sand cascade across the landscape and for a peaceful moment, I wish I could bottle the sound and carry it with me.
"For how long are you going to continue your dumb fast?" he asks.
Speaking of random ass questions, I drawl in the midst of yawning, "Wwwwwha?"
Ever so dramatic he rolls his eyes. "We all know you're mourning Fazier."
There's barely any light outside and I squint my eyes at him. I may be running on like negative five calories but even the slow lapse in my brain cannot explain what I just heard.
"Huh? What are you talking about?"
"Don't play dumb with me," he says, and even in the dark, I can see his pulsing forehead veins. HOW does he have the energy to be irritated at 4 in the morning?! "This make-shift hunger strike you've got going—halving everything you eat. You're mourning Fazier obviously."
"Stop a second." My mental gears need a moment to rotate. Phinks knows? Everyone knows? I sigh in resignation; it's too damn early to argue with Phinks. "I am fasting but no, not because of Fazier. My fast began before I arrived in Meteor City. I'm sorry for Fazier's death, but I wasn't close with him."
I half expect him to then ask for whom I'm mourning but the veins in his forehead sink and his voice shrinks. "Ah, I see." He flicks the butt of his cigarette into the sandy expanse and unwraps the carton for another.
"How'd you know?" I ask.
Something in my incredulous tone must have carried how would you know and in one instant, he's offended again.
"Wasting half a plate and no one is supposed to notice? I'm not an idiot."
"I didn't say you were," I say. "I'm not stopping my fast."
"Pft, I can't make you stop nor do I care," he says.
"Then why ask in the first place—"
"Do whatever you want," he interrupts. "But when we train don't think I'll take it easy because you've only had half an olive."
I'm about to retort but instead, I break into shivers, hugging my luggage for warmth. Maybe I can throw on my nemaki on top for extra coverage—
"Wait in the van," says Phinks, chewing on his cigarette as he swings the back seat door open.
Phinks is on his fourth cigarette by the time the others arrive. I'm dozing in the third row of seats when multiple doors slam shut. Shalnark laughs in the passenger seat, Franklin turns the key and in the second row, a groggy Feitan warns Phinks to not smoke in the van.
I try to remain alert, watching the desert stars, but from the deep hum of the engine and the rocking of the van, I sleep through my last moments in Meteor City.
AN: What? Two chapters in one week? I sped this one up as a celebration of hitting one hundred reviews! Thank you, readers and reviewers, for supporting this fic! We're out of Meteor City! Finally... I skipped Safra collecting the last of the landmines because we've seen her do it multiple times and it's time to move on :) This chapter was a bunch of random scenes I wrote when I first drafted this story but wasn't sure where to put them so I hope it's not choppy. Nothing like low stakes PT interactions to celebrate.
LinIsSleepy has posted a COLOR version of their previous fanart of Safra. Go to Deviantart, username MaoisSleepy and CHECK IT OUT PRONTO!
A round of thanks to LinIsSleepy, WormwoodSand, and Bisque-Ware for reviewing the last chapter and for giving me ease that my Nen hexagon changes aren't ruining the Nen magic system. Also, if you need charts for Half-Types and Transverse-Type, please check out the Ao3 version of this fic, chapter 24 and at the bottom (because Ao3 enables users to embed photos) there will be colorful charts!