The Difference
Chapter 10 -Alay Returns
(Marco)
She hit, I blocked. Left, high, low, right - block block block block.
My name is Marco. Marco-who-has-gotten-more-bruises-in-two-weeks-then-he-has-in-his-life. Marco-who-can't-sit-without-wincing. Marco-who-has-taken-more-hits-from-one-person-then-anyone-ever.
She dropped into a crouch and whipped the secoh around in a low arch, an attempt to knock me off my feet. This was her favorite move, her Final Strike, as Tobias called it. She preferred to end all bouts and battles with it. But it wasn't over yet. In two weeks of spending seven hours every god damned day with her, I had learned not only how to dodge and counter this attack, but also that she left herself open to being pushed over.
Oh the joys of meditation.
She fell back and hit the dirt hard, feeling the blow of my secoh in her shoulder. I, unfortunately, had misjudged the block and still got knocked over by her swipe. I landed hard on my butt, feeling one more bruise added onto multiple others.
Silence. A tie. After countless attempts, I have finally "grounded" her. But she had gotten me too. Almost one for me, but not quite there…
"Marco?"
"I wanted to attack, not defend. I wiped sweat from my forehead and took in a slow breath. "Since you fell first, can I win?" There was silence again, then she started giggling. Hard to believe Sarah can giggle, but it's actually a really nice sound….
"Fine, you win." She rolled onto her stomach, then pushed herself up on her hands. "Ugh. Lost to a novice. Please, do not tell Tobi'as. He will not let me "live it down", I believe is the phrase."
"Yeah, that sounds right - and he wouldn't let you live it down, so I won't tell Tobias." Tobias, no. Everyone else, probably. Except… I still couldn't tell Jake. That was the worst part. I had to keep all of this a secret from my best friend. I wasn't alone, of course - Cassie couldn't tell her best friend, Tobias couldn't tell his girlfriend, and Ax couldn't tell his Prince. We had all sworn to keep it a secret as long as possible, to save the added stress. But it was adding stress to our lives to have to lie for Sarah…
She stood carefully and rotated her shoulder to check for damage. That a little bit more to my triumph. She had never checked for damage the other five (count 'em, five) times I had managed to land a hit.
"So," I asked casually. "Another round? It's only 2 'o' clock." Everyday, for seven hours, we had done this. Meet around 10, go at it 'till lunch at 12:30 (Sarah always brought something - apparently, she can cook too), relaxed and hung out for about another half hour after that, then back to it until 6. We had started later then usual, though, because of a mission the night before. Sarah, who avoided morphing at all costs, chose instead to add another list to the growing fights between her and Alay. She held off the Controller while we got what we needed - "Held off" being used lightly. I have never seen a battle change possible winners so often. Sarah managed to kick ass and still be losing for part of it, before it was pretty well declared a draw just as we were getting ready to leave.
"No," she answered simply, brushing her ponytail over her shoulder. In the mottled sunlight of the clearing, something glinted at her neck and it took me a minute to realize what it was - her data disk. The whole point of the mission had been to retrieve six data disks that Erek had warned us contained information that would be useless to us, but incredibly valuable to the Yeerks. There were three that contained the actual data and then three that were backups of the first set. Personally, we had no idea what went with what set. Every disk was marked with a different colored shape. Mine, for instance, was a blue triangle looking thing while Sarah was a green asterisk. Around her neck, though, you couldn't see the symbol, because she had turned it over so the symbol was against her neck - now it looked like a costume piece from a futuristic sci-fi movie, which suited her fine.
"No?" I repeated.
"No," she said again. "We will try something else for today." She didn't say it, but I knew she was still hurting from the night before. She and Alay had really laid into each other and then, just as we were making a quick and hasty getaway, we, Sarah more specifically, had taken the full brunt of a double Caster blow. Those of us that were morphed had managed to get rid of most the damage, with the exception of the creepy feeling of burning fur, but Sarah had refused to morph (again), choosing instead to stick with the pain. I hadn't figured out yet what she had against morphing, but I knew someone who would know…
Done already? Speak of the devil-bird. Tobias landed on the branch where Sarah's duffel bag hung and shifted his weight to get comfortable. Feeling better, itala?
"Jai, veraha," she snapped irritably as she climbed onto a stump to reach her bag. We had learned that even if we had eaten all that she has brought for lunch, small creatures still liked to climb inside to find the source of the food smells. And Sarah, apparently, had a deep dislike of rats and chipmunks. The rats I could understand, but chipmunks…? Another question to ask Tobias…
"Since I am in no mood to continue fighting today…" She began to pull items out of the bag - Alay's dagger, a strange crystal, and a familiar small black box - then closed the bag up and pulled it off its branch. "We will move on. Marco, pick up the secoh and follow me." I opened my mouth to ask what the heck we were going to do next, but she didn't even wait for that as she disappeared into the forest. I grabbed her secoh, which she had dropped, and followed after her. I felt a light breeze as her guard came down and then a natural wind that came up behind. I could never understand why she waited until she was out of the clearing to remove the guard but… I'm sure there was a reason.
And, of course, she was limping, still. She had been limping the night before, she had been limping that morning, and she was limping now as she trekked the forest - it wasn't a prominent limp, but if you were used to seeing her walk a certain way, you could definitely see it now. It was like… watching a wounded stray dog hobble around after a fight. It still felt it could do anything, but it knew its limits now…
And you can't get her to morph it off? I asked Tobias. I would think…
I've tried Marco, all morning and beyond that, he answered. She's just too stubborn. Stubborn and scared. Scared? Sarah? Of what? There was nothing in morphing be afraid of… at least, if you ignored the whole aliens-threatening-the-world-aspect, but that hadn't phased Sarah in the slightest.
Scared? She told you that? She started walking faster and the limp became less noticeable, but it was still there - whether the new speed was to hide the limp or not remained to be seen.
She didn't have to. I saw it on her face last night, when she watched you and the others morph. Beside that, we don't even know if she can morph. She may not have been given it… There was a tone to his voice that made me stop and look up at him. Was it possible he had reached the same conclusion I had, that Sarah's presence wasn't an accident?
You think…
I think it's possible, he replied. She's a pawn, like the rest of us. The only question is a pawn for who? Sarah plunged through a line of bushes and stopped, looking around. Assuming we had reached our destination, I followed right after her - and tripped, then slid, then finally stopped at the bottom of a small hill, waist deep in water.
"There are many things you need to learn before I teach you to cast," came Sarah's voice from above me. "Just because you can center your power does not mean it is controlled. Much like the creek you sit in, everything runs in a straight line, but nothing except nature can control the water's path." I looked back up her, angry that I had been tricked, and really cold beside that, and saw she stood a few inches above the slope of the hill, watching me with a calm look in her eyes.
That was philosophical, commented Tobias. And really amusing. You look like your enjoying yourself, Marco.
"Smart ass bird…" I pulled myself out of the water and stood, instantly feeling the chill of the wind. Sarah raised an eyebrow, then tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. She stepped off of whatever platform of Caster power she had been standing on and the tree branches above her head shook with the lack of weight - what did that mean? That to create such a platform, you needed to hook it onto something overhead?
"Water is the easiest Caster element to control." Sarah slid down the hill on her feet, leaving both of the bags and the crystal on the ground, and stopped in the water next to me. "Even the slightest bit can go a long way. It is easily manipulated and is not picky about who controls it."
"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Are you telling me it can tell the difference between one Caster and another?" She blinked at me, then shook her head.
"No, not like that. All of the elements are overseen by forces we cannot see - my people call them seharai nenda - that is, "sleeping eyes". They watch who casts and decides if that person should be granted full strength of the element or less then what is needed. They can be very fickle, like in the case of the fire sehar nenda or very forgiving, like the water. Air and earth judge more evenly, but are usually very little trouble."
"That's… kinda hokey, ain't it?" She gave me a weird look.
"Ho… key? Aent?" she repeated. "What is… ho-key and aehnt??" The look on her face when she tried to pronounce the word was classic and I couldn't help but laugh.
"Hokey is something that is hard to believe. And 'ain't' is really bad grammar. Don't repeat it - Tobias will kill me for teaching you bad English," I answered, grinning.
"Ho… key," she said again. "I will remember that. Ho-key." She shook her head, then tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. "English is a strange language. I will never understand all of it."
"Sarah, I don't think even the native speakers understand it," I said, making her laugh.
"They say the same of my people back home," she answered, smiling - whoo, what a smile. I tried to keep my thoughts in line so I didn't come off as an idiot, but it was just so… brilliant. Beautiful. Amazing. Glorious.
"You know," commented a cold voice at my shoulder. "It's really a pity I have to kill you too. You have an interesting sense of humor." I went cold at the world "kill" and at the voice - I had heard it before. It sounded like.
"Alay, inda!" Three things happened at once - I ducked without even thinking about ducking, simply because Sarah enstowed upon me a sense of what to do in danger, Sarah herself scooped up one of the secoh I had dropped in my fall, and Alay attempted to take off my head with a single swipe of her sword. Staff and blade met over my head in a deep, resounding thunk that echoed along the creek bed.
"Were your kind not taught manners?" asked Sarah darkly, forcing Alay back with a hard shove. She placed herself between me and the blade wielding crazy-woman and stood there, one hand on her hip and murder in her eyes. You've never seen murder as an emotion until you've seen Sarah pissed. "You should know better then to ambush people."
"If you weren't such a stubborn thorn in my side, I would have killed you by now and I wouldn't have to ambush you," Alay shot back. Sarah growled low in her throat and pulled me up by my elbow as she lifted her secoh into what I had come to think of as a "fight" position, then shoved me behind her.
"How did you get past Tobi'as?" Was she planning on protecting me, by pushing me behind her? It certainly felt like she was - but maybe she was just used to protecting people. From what she had told me of Weapons, that was pretty well what they did, protect. I couldn't be mad at her for doing what she had been taught to do… could I? I don't like being protected, and call me chauvinisitic, but I especially don't like being protected by members of the opposite sex.
"The bird?" asked Alay. "Oh, I left him for dead in the forest. Can't have anyone warning your friends, now can I?" Sarah's hand tightened on the secoh and I couldn't see, but I knew the murder had become Murder, with a capital 'M', in her eyes. Alay had crossed a line.
"Marco." She glanced back over her shoulder at me and I saw what I had guessed - pure hatred shown darkly in her usually happy blue eyes. "Veraha, find Tobi'as and get him to demorph… then come back." She looked back at Alay and shifted her grip on her secoh. "No one warning the others, remember? Nin li na des li vebna."
"Na li murai mi."
"We will see about that, reca!" Sarah lunged and they were at again - but it was different. This whole thing was somehow different. This was to be the last time, period. Whoever won, someone would lose. No ties…
I couldn't stay to watch. Even if I wanted to, I had to find Tobias and we somehow had to warn… no, we weren't going to warn the others. It was just Alay, no one else. Sarah could handle Alay and if it came to it, Tobias and I could help her/save her. We had all the help we needed… given, of course, Tobias was still alive.
Bird boy, if you die, you're really gonna get it from Sarah…
