"'We're going to be here awhile, trainees,'" Arin repeated in a vicious
caricature of Instructor Dobbs' voice. "'Failing that, report back to the
beach at midnight, trainees.' And oh, while you're in there, if you could
pick me up a pound of sugar and loaf of bread, trainees, that would be oh-
so helpful."
"Dude, give it a rest," Eiada suggested. "I don't think she assigned us extra work 'cause she was feeling like being evil."
"Did you hear the way she said 'defensive forces will remain to clean up'?" Roen asked, nearly tripping over a sand-colored rock. "It sounded like she wanted to add 'the mess the offensive squads made'."
"Okay, yeah, but you'd think they'd leave the solo work to the real live SeeDs, you know?" Arin groaned. "Seriously, I'm beat."
"No one covered for Roen and I when that Galbadian scout ship landed." Eiada pointed out. "What, did they have a full SeeD holding your hand every time you healed someone?"
"No," Arin pouted. "but I did a lot of tandem work. You know, group operations? What do you mean, holding my ha-"
"AT packs." Roen pointed to yet another pile of identical crates. "One each."
As Eiada bent to shoulder a waterproof brown All Terrain pack, Roen caught her gaze across the crate. Very deliberately, he shook his head.
(What?) She raised an eyebrow back.
Roen glanced at Arin.
The other eyebrow shot up. (He doesn't want me to mention full SeeDs holding his hand.)
Unofficial Garden protocol flew into her head. It was very unusual to see someone as young as Arin on the SeeD exam. Fifteen, his age, was the minimum. It was also typical to see SeeD groups with an older veteran as the leader. Someone under eighteen was rarely assigned to command, and people younger than seventeen were almost never assigned to political hotspots like Deling City or occupied territories. On a mission as deeply political as this one, someone as inexperienced and, well, young as Arin would be watched very closely.
In effect, Eiada's speculation had been dead on. But for the sake of pride, and the maintenance of Arin's behavior, no one would tell him.
(Whoops.) She nodded back at Roen, mouthed 'sorry'.
"Come on, folks!" Arin exclaimed impatiently, finally wriggling into his straps. "Let's go!"
"Sorry, sorry, coming." Eiada muttered, falling into step with the others. Together, the three of them walked towards the city.
Given the added weight of the pack in the fading light and the treacherous footing, Eiada tripped over herself twice before she learned to walk looking at her toes. Maybe it was because she was so tired, but the simple rhythm of step, check, step was pretty calming. The ocean whispered to itself, glancing shots of green out of the corner of her eye, and she smiled. She'd always been an ocean person. Her uncle Wage lived in a tiny coastal village and he had a boat. she liked boats, too.
After about ten minutes of walking, they reached the imposing charcoal stone and steel of the seawall. Still reminiscing about her uncle's fishing business, she nearly tripped over the mincing cobbled stairs that lead up to the Dollet town proper.
They walked up the steps silently, listening to the sounds of distant gunfire and battle. It sounded like the Galbadians were reluctant to give up the radio tower. For the umpteenth time, Eiada wondered why they had invaded Dollet in the first place.
Squad D crossed under a much larger wall through an arched opening that lead into the city- (Tsunami control,) Eiada thought automatically- and onto the main street. Houses and storefronts lined the sidewalk, all silent and dark save for a few determined lights in the upper stories. The air smelled like gunpowder, sea salt, and sweat.
"I don't see any bodies here." Arin murmured to his squad mates. "Don't feel any injuries either."
Eiada glanced back at him. "What do you mean, feel any injuries?"
Arin stared innocently back. "It's a healer thing. If you work long enough with curative magic, you kinda get a sense of who needs it, and where they are. Like empathy or something, I dunno. It's like pain radar."
(Spooky,) Eiada thought automatically. (-but maybe kind of helpful, too.)
"What, don't you use spells like Cure and Esuna?" Arin asked from behind them.
"Not that much." Eiada smiled back. "I prefer my GF, or my knives."
"GF, singular?"
"Yeah, I've had him for a long time. Leviathan. I junctioned him before I came to Garden."
"With no classes or anything?" Arin sounded amazed. "Just stuck it raw in your head?"
"Uh- yeah." Eiada didn't see what the big deal was. "It wasn't so bad, just. funny. You know, like the first time you junctioned a tame GF- all crazy and time-distorty and stuff-"
"Quiet." From ahead of them, Roen held up a hand, held very still.
Eiada stopped walking, if only to avoid running into his back. "Sorry. Did I say some-"
"No, Eiada, listen." There was an intensity in Roen's voice that stopped her cold and had her knives out before she thought about it. His longsword shimmered silver and black in the streetlights. "Do you hear that?" he whispered.
Eiada listened. A gentle breeze slid down between the buildings, made the skin between her shoulderblades prickle.
"What?" she whispered back.
"I don't hear anything," Arin agreed.
"That's it. Listen- the fighting's stopped."
He was right. And it was damned spooky. All of a sudden, Eiada wondered if they were stupid for just standing blithely in the middle of the street, waiting for whoever wanted to attack them to come attack them. Somewhere far off, something metallic pounded rhythmically against stone. "I wonder who won."
Roen stared up the street for a minute, then turned to face the others as the pounding got louder. "I don't know, maybe I'm just being alarmist-"
"GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!"
Eiada jumped about six feet in the air and skittered off to the side of the road as a blond young man ran by at top speed, followed closely by a tiny brown-haired girl. She waved a flustered apology at Eiada, Roen, and Arin. Just as Eiada was adjusting to the sudden adrenaline rush, she was nearly mowed over by a tall, brown-haired young man carrying a gunblade and running like his life depended on it.
Which it probably did. Hot on the heels of the brown-haired guy was a huge four-legged spiderlike machine. It was maybe four times as long as Eiada, and two feet taller, and it looked perfectly capable of squashing whatever disagreed with it. There was a moment of terrified clarity when she saw every pointed foot come down, splintering cobblestones, throwing up such an intense noise she had to close her eyes and bit her lip to keep from screaming. As an all-too-close footfall threw her down, she heard a barked "Holy shit!" from Arin, Roen's wordless exclamation. She then lost all track of sound or voice as the spiderlike thing followed the three runners through the seawall. Literally.
Eiada crouched against some garbage cans, hands clamped over her ears, coughing as hard as she could in hopes of expelling all the dust from the wall out of her lungs. When her vision cleared, she searched for her squadmates, saw them crouched against a wall across the street. They were coughing as well.
Eiada rose shakily from her crouch, still coughing, and teetered across the street. Neither of the boys looked hurt, although both of them were dusted a very unflattering shade of chalky gray-white from head to foot.
"You- okay?" Roen wheezed, shaking dust out of his hair.
Still coughing too hard to speak, Eiada nodded vigorously, offered him a hand up.
Arin pulled himself up on a rain gutter. "What- the hell- was that?"
"I- don't know." She managed. "Maybe a new- Galbadian- weapon?"
With a final cough that sounded like it seriously jeopardized the position of his lungs, Roen nodded. "Not new. Every Galbadian Army platoon has an AMV- Armored Military Vehicle. That was the X-ATM092 model."
"That was crazy," Arin said clearly. "That thing sucked."
Roen nodded tiredly. "Everyone sure they're alright?"
Eiada and Arin nodded back.
"Okay. Keep going?" Roen gestured vaguely up the street.
"Yeah." Arin sighed, and as they started to walk, added: "Damn, if I were a full SeeD I'd want a bonus for that kind of shit."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Here," the selfsame healer said half an hour later. "Stop here."
Squad D drifted to a stop in the middle of a mostly demolished square. The surrounding buildings had been torn open and left raw- likely by the legs and sides of the X-ATM092. Arin gravitated towards a pile of rubble that had fallen from a corner apartment building. Distantly, Eiada could hear someone groaning.
"Yeah-" Arin whispered, more to himself than anyone else. "There you are."
"Anything we can do to help?" Roen asked pointedly.
"No- No, s'okay, just." Arin waved a hand off in the direction of the rest of the world. "go over there."
Eiada and Roen walked obediently 'over there' and sat on the crumbling rim of a fountain. Eiada watched as Arin begin to remove rocks from the pile of rubble carefully, one at a time, as though he was able to tell exactly which ones were injuring and which ones were holding the person in place. When he finally unearthed a man of about thirty, he sat back and began to talk to him. When he'd gotten the man fully awake and lucid, and able to answer all Arin's questions, Arin began to set bones and Cure.
Eiada watched, mesmerized, as all the boyhood melted out of Arin's face and he became. not a man, but no longer a child. He was a healer, doing what he did best. An hour passed.
Finally, Arin sat back on his heels. "Better?" he asked quietly. The man said something Eiada couldn't hear. Arin asked another question and, upon hearing the response, stood up. "Hey." He called to Eiada and Roen. "His wife lives a block down the street. I'm going to go get her."
"I'll come with." Eiada replied automatically. That was her SeeD exam objective- guard the healer.
"Okay. Roen, will you stay and watch him?" Arin jerked his chin at the man.
Roen nodded, and Arin and Eiada set off. Eiada waited silently as Arin knocked on a door, explained the situation to a teary would-be widow, helped her make a stretcher out of a old coat, a hat rack, and a length of plywood, and carried it back to her husband. She and Arin accepted tear- filled thanks (Arin more genuinely then Eiada), and waved the happy couple on their way.
"Well," Arin said cheerfully, pulling off his gore-stained rubber gloves. "that was fun."
(Not really,) Eiada thought, but knew better than to say. All that gratitude made her uncomfortable. She hadn't even done anything.
Roen stood up from the chipped fountain basin where he had waited silently for an hour and a half. "Feeling anything else?" he asked.
Arin shrugged. "No, not really, but I can only feel things within a few hundred feet-"
"Squad D!" someone shouted down the street. "YO! Squad D!"
Feet clattered on cobblestone and a broad-shouldered, slim-waisted figure skidded into the square. It was a young man, about Eiada's age, with an angular face and leaf green eyes. His hair poked up naturally about two inches off his scalp in brick-red tendrils. His face looked malleable, accustomed to both frequent laughter and frequent frowns. A short sword and round shield were belted to his back over his cadet uniform.
He slid to a stop in front of the three teenagers. Sweat gleamed on his brow, pearly and translucent in the dying light. "Squad D?"
Roen stepped forward. "Yes. I'm Squad Leader."
The trainee came to attention, but neglected the customary salute. "Iyan Raines from Squad C. They sent me to tell you that we've been told to withdraw."
Eiada took a deep breath, released it. (Thank Hyne.) She felt her muscles begin to loosen just thinking of going home. Her fellow trainees must have felt the same way she did. Arin took her silent enthusiasm a step farther- he jumped in the air with a thrilled "WOO-HOO!" Even Roen looked relieved.
Iyan smiled back at them. "Yeah, I kinda thought it would be good news." Turning around, he gestured mockingly down the street towards the bay. "Shall we?"
"Let's go," Eiada sighed, shouldering her AT pack and starting forward. Roen fell into step beside her, while Iyan led the way until Arin swept past him in an enthusiastic sprint.
It was with light feet Squad D and the messenger made it to the seawall- light enough that Eiada barely thought about the gaping arch they passed under, barely wondered about crumbling masonry and concrete.
As they crested the stairs, Eiada saw the tiny figures in SeeD and trainees uniforms at the edge of the beach, loading the last crates and stretchers into the fleet of squad boats beached ashore.
"Whoa!" Iyan exclaimed from the very edge of the stairway. When Eiada and Roen caught up, she saw the crumpled corpse of the X-ATM092 sprawled at the base of the wall. It looked like someone very angry had taken a machine gun to it. Or a stiletto, but Eiada thought it was probably the former, stilettos not generally being the weapon of choice when it came to battling killer attack spiders.
"Dude, somebody wailed on that thing!"
"Yeah," Eiada breathed. It was unnerving to see something that had moved with such power and purpose lying discarded on the beach. She thought, briefly, of a broken toy, then discarded the metaphor as too cliché.
Beside her, Roen raised an arm in a neat wave to the figures on the beach. One of them paused, waved back. Given build and efficiency of movement, it was Instructor Dobbs. "SQUAD D! REPORT IN!" drifted over the sand.
Roen winced. "That woman can yell." Eiada nodded in commiseration.
Hair made solid gold in the sun, Arin danced elaborately down the steps, singing an extremely dirty drinking song. Obscene as it was, it was catchy, and Eiada found herself humming along. She felt buoyant, light, literally high on something- (probably endorphins,) the more logical part of her brain said, although the rest of her was willing to accept relief. The exam was nearly over, and it hadn't been that bad.
Still singing at the top of his boyishly-high voice, Arin leaped down the last few stairs, landed in a swirl of sand, and danced in a lopsided circle over to the mostly-intact carcass of the attack spider. With a resounding final chorus, he hefted a booted foot and kicked it sharply in the 'face', which was about level with his thighs.
Eiada laughed aloud, taking the stairs at a fairly upbeat gait herself. "Arin, don't tease the spider," she chided.
It was the gait that lead her up next to the spider, the laughter that let her ignore the sound of abused machinery activating in a high ascending whine, and the shock that froze her to the ground as the red running lights on the X-ATM092's faceplate flickered back on. She saw Arin actually spring backwards, a move that would have been funny if it hadn't been so sincere, saw Roen and Iyan mimic him out of the corner of her eye, and heard, more than anything, the groan of steel and gears as the spider heaved itself out of the sand and settled itself on it's single-clawed feet. Nearly in slow motion, it rocked gently to disgorge any extra sand, and angled its body to face Arin- who had also frozen to the sand.
"RUN!" Eiada heard herself screaming as her body scrambled backwards over the sand. Arin's face snapped over to hers and he did, pulling his long legs over to her as the X-ATM092 took a step forward. She didn't know if it was impact or her own watery knees, but she felt the ground shake. Then she didn't stop to think anymore, she just ran; ran across the sand, ran up the stairs, ran as fast as she could. She heard Arin whimpering behind her, and, worse, the crunch of the stairs under spidery feet.
"Shit shit shit," Iyan was breathing with the cadence of a prayer as she sprinted past him. She wasted a moment grabbing the strap of his AT pack and dragging him after her as she ran. Roen swore agreeably and followed.
"Dude, give it a rest," Eiada suggested. "I don't think she assigned us extra work 'cause she was feeling like being evil."
"Did you hear the way she said 'defensive forces will remain to clean up'?" Roen asked, nearly tripping over a sand-colored rock. "It sounded like she wanted to add 'the mess the offensive squads made'."
"Okay, yeah, but you'd think they'd leave the solo work to the real live SeeDs, you know?" Arin groaned. "Seriously, I'm beat."
"No one covered for Roen and I when that Galbadian scout ship landed." Eiada pointed out. "What, did they have a full SeeD holding your hand every time you healed someone?"
"No," Arin pouted. "but I did a lot of tandem work. You know, group operations? What do you mean, holding my ha-"
"AT packs." Roen pointed to yet another pile of identical crates. "One each."
As Eiada bent to shoulder a waterproof brown All Terrain pack, Roen caught her gaze across the crate. Very deliberately, he shook his head.
(What?) She raised an eyebrow back.
Roen glanced at Arin.
The other eyebrow shot up. (He doesn't want me to mention full SeeDs holding his hand.)
Unofficial Garden protocol flew into her head. It was very unusual to see someone as young as Arin on the SeeD exam. Fifteen, his age, was the minimum. It was also typical to see SeeD groups with an older veteran as the leader. Someone under eighteen was rarely assigned to command, and people younger than seventeen were almost never assigned to political hotspots like Deling City or occupied territories. On a mission as deeply political as this one, someone as inexperienced and, well, young as Arin would be watched very closely.
In effect, Eiada's speculation had been dead on. But for the sake of pride, and the maintenance of Arin's behavior, no one would tell him.
(Whoops.) She nodded back at Roen, mouthed 'sorry'.
"Come on, folks!" Arin exclaimed impatiently, finally wriggling into his straps. "Let's go!"
"Sorry, sorry, coming." Eiada muttered, falling into step with the others. Together, the three of them walked towards the city.
Given the added weight of the pack in the fading light and the treacherous footing, Eiada tripped over herself twice before she learned to walk looking at her toes. Maybe it was because she was so tired, but the simple rhythm of step, check, step was pretty calming. The ocean whispered to itself, glancing shots of green out of the corner of her eye, and she smiled. She'd always been an ocean person. Her uncle Wage lived in a tiny coastal village and he had a boat. she liked boats, too.
After about ten minutes of walking, they reached the imposing charcoal stone and steel of the seawall. Still reminiscing about her uncle's fishing business, she nearly tripped over the mincing cobbled stairs that lead up to the Dollet town proper.
They walked up the steps silently, listening to the sounds of distant gunfire and battle. It sounded like the Galbadians were reluctant to give up the radio tower. For the umpteenth time, Eiada wondered why they had invaded Dollet in the first place.
Squad D crossed under a much larger wall through an arched opening that lead into the city- (Tsunami control,) Eiada thought automatically- and onto the main street. Houses and storefronts lined the sidewalk, all silent and dark save for a few determined lights in the upper stories. The air smelled like gunpowder, sea salt, and sweat.
"I don't see any bodies here." Arin murmured to his squad mates. "Don't feel any injuries either."
Eiada glanced back at him. "What do you mean, feel any injuries?"
Arin stared innocently back. "It's a healer thing. If you work long enough with curative magic, you kinda get a sense of who needs it, and where they are. Like empathy or something, I dunno. It's like pain radar."
(Spooky,) Eiada thought automatically. (-but maybe kind of helpful, too.)
"What, don't you use spells like Cure and Esuna?" Arin asked from behind them.
"Not that much." Eiada smiled back. "I prefer my GF, or my knives."
"GF, singular?"
"Yeah, I've had him for a long time. Leviathan. I junctioned him before I came to Garden."
"With no classes or anything?" Arin sounded amazed. "Just stuck it raw in your head?"
"Uh- yeah." Eiada didn't see what the big deal was. "It wasn't so bad, just. funny. You know, like the first time you junctioned a tame GF- all crazy and time-distorty and stuff-"
"Quiet." From ahead of them, Roen held up a hand, held very still.
Eiada stopped walking, if only to avoid running into his back. "Sorry. Did I say some-"
"No, Eiada, listen." There was an intensity in Roen's voice that stopped her cold and had her knives out before she thought about it. His longsword shimmered silver and black in the streetlights. "Do you hear that?" he whispered.
Eiada listened. A gentle breeze slid down between the buildings, made the skin between her shoulderblades prickle.
"What?" she whispered back.
"I don't hear anything," Arin agreed.
"That's it. Listen- the fighting's stopped."
He was right. And it was damned spooky. All of a sudden, Eiada wondered if they were stupid for just standing blithely in the middle of the street, waiting for whoever wanted to attack them to come attack them. Somewhere far off, something metallic pounded rhythmically against stone. "I wonder who won."
Roen stared up the street for a minute, then turned to face the others as the pounding got louder. "I don't know, maybe I'm just being alarmist-"
"GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY!"
Eiada jumped about six feet in the air and skittered off to the side of the road as a blond young man ran by at top speed, followed closely by a tiny brown-haired girl. She waved a flustered apology at Eiada, Roen, and Arin. Just as Eiada was adjusting to the sudden adrenaline rush, she was nearly mowed over by a tall, brown-haired young man carrying a gunblade and running like his life depended on it.
Which it probably did. Hot on the heels of the brown-haired guy was a huge four-legged spiderlike machine. It was maybe four times as long as Eiada, and two feet taller, and it looked perfectly capable of squashing whatever disagreed with it. There was a moment of terrified clarity when she saw every pointed foot come down, splintering cobblestones, throwing up such an intense noise she had to close her eyes and bit her lip to keep from screaming. As an all-too-close footfall threw her down, she heard a barked "Holy shit!" from Arin, Roen's wordless exclamation. She then lost all track of sound or voice as the spiderlike thing followed the three runners through the seawall. Literally.
Eiada crouched against some garbage cans, hands clamped over her ears, coughing as hard as she could in hopes of expelling all the dust from the wall out of her lungs. When her vision cleared, she searched for her squadmates, saw them crouched against a wall across the street. They were coughing as well.
Eiada rose shakily from her crouch, still coughing, and teetered across the street. Neither of the boys looked hurt, although both of them were dusted a very unflattering shade of chalky gray-white from head to foot.
"You- okay?" Roen wheezed, shaking dust out of his hair.
Still coughing too hard to speak, Eiada nodded vigorously, offered him a hand up.
Arin pulled himself up on a rain gutter. "What- the hell- was that?"
"I- don't know." She managed. "Maybe a new- Galbadian- weapon?"
With a final cough that sounded like it seriously jeopardized the position of his lungs, Roen nodded. "Not new. Every Galbadian Army platoon has an AMV- Armored Military Vehicle. That was the X-ATM092 model."
"That was crazy," Arin said clearly. "That thing sucked."
Roen nodded tiredly. "Everyone sure they're alright?"
Eiada and Arin nodded back.
"Okay. Keep going?" Roen gestured vaguely up the street.
"Yeah." Arin sighed, and as they started to walk, added: "Damn, if I were a full SeeD I'd want a bonus for that kind of shit."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Here," the selfsame healer said half an hour later. "Stop here."
Squad D drifted to a stop in the middle of a mostly demolished square. The surrounding buildings had been torn open and left raw- likely by the legs and sides of the X-ATM092. Arin gravitated towards a pile of rubble that had fallen from a corner apartment building. Distantly, Eiada could hear someone groaning.
"Yeah-" Arin whispered, more to himself than anyone else. "There you are."
"Anything we can do to help?" Roen asked pointedly.
"No- No, s'okay, just." Arin waved a hand off in the direction of the rest of the world. "go over there."
Eiada and Roen walked obediently 'over there' and sat on the crumbling rim of a fountain. Eiada watched as Arin begin to remove rocks from the pile of rubble carefully, one at a time, as though he was able to tell exactly which ones were injuring and which ones were holding the person in place. When he finally unearthed a man of about thirty, he sat back and began to talk to him. When he'd gotten the man fully awake and lucid, and able to answer all Arin's questions, Arin began to set bones and Cure.
Eiada watched, mesmerized, as all the boyhood melted out of Arin's face and he became. not a man, but no longer a child. He was a healer, doing what he did best. An hour passed.
Finally, Arin sat back on his heels. "Better?" he asked quietly. The man said something Eiada couldn't hear. Arin asked another question and, upon hearing the response, stood up. "Hey." He called to Eiada and Roen. "His wife lives a block down the street. I'm going to go get her."
"I'll come with." Eiada replied automatically. That was her SeeD exam objective- guard the healer.
"Okay. Roen, will you stay and watch him?" Arin jerked his chin at the man.
Roen nodded, and Arin and Eiada set off. Eiada waited silently as Arin knocked on a door, explained the situation to a teary would-be widow, helped her make a stretcher out of a old coat, a hat rack, and a length of plywood, and carried it back to her husband. She and Arin accepted tear- filled thanks (Arin more genuinely then Eiada), and waved the happy couple on their way.
"Well," Arin said cheerfully, pulling off his gore-stained rubber gloves. "that was fun."
(Not really,) Eiada thought, but knew better than to say. All that gratitude made her uncomfortable. She hadn't even done anything.
Roen stood up from the chipped fountain basin where he had waited silently for an hour and a half. "Feeling anything else?" he asked.
Arin shrugged. "No, not really, but I can only feel things within a few hundred feet-"
"Squad D!" someone shouted down the street. "YO! Squad D!"
Feet clattered on cobblestone and a broad-shouldered, slim-waisted figure skidded into the square. It was a young man, about Eiada's age, with an angular face and leaf green eyes. His hair poked up naturally about two inches off his scalp in brick-red tendrils. His face looked malleable, accustomed to both frequent laughter and frequent frowns. A short sword and round shield were belted to his back over his cadet uniform.
He slid to a stop in front of the three teenagers. Sweat gleamed on his brow, pearly and translucent in the dying light. "Squad D?"
Roen stepped forward. "Yes. I'm Squad Leader."
The trainee came to attention, but neglected the customary salute. "Iyan Raines from Squad C. They sent me to tell you that we've been told to withdraw."
Eiada took a deep breath, released it. (Thank Hyne.) She felt her muscles begin to loosen just thinking of going home. Her fellow trainees must have felt the same way she did. Arin took her silent enthusiasm a step farther- he jumped in the air with a thrilled "WOO-HOO!" Even Roen looked relieved.
Iyan smiled back at them. "Yeah, I kinda thought it would be good news." Turning around, he gestured mockingly down the street towards the bay. "Shall we?"
"Let's go," Eiada sighed, shouldering her AT pack and starting forward. Roen fell into step beside her, while Iyan led the way until Arin swept past him in an enthusiastic sprint.
It was with light feet Squad D and the messenger made it to the seawall- light enough that Eiada barely thought about the gaping arch they passed under, barely wondered about crumbling masonry and concrete.
As they crested the stairs, Eiada saw the tiny figures in SeeD and trainees uniforms at the edge of the beach, loading the last crates and stretchers into the fleet of squad boats beached ashore.
"Whoa!" Iyan exclaimed from the very edge of the stairway. When Eiada and Roen caught up, she saw the crumpled corpse of the X-ATM092 sprawled at the base of the wall. It looked like someone very angry had taken a machine gun to it. Or a stiletto, but Eiada thought it was probably the former, stilettos not generally being the weapon of choice when it came to battling killer attack spiders.
"Dude, somebody wailed on that thing!"
"Yeah," Eiada breathed. It was unnerving to see something that had moved with such power and purpose lying discarded on the beach. She thought, briefly, of a broken toy, then discarded the metaphor as too cliché.
Beside her, Roen raised an arm in a neat wave to the figures on the beach. One of them paused, waved back. Given build and efficiency of movement, it was Instructor Dobbs. "SQUAD D! REPORT IN!" drifted over the sand.
Roen winced. "That woman can yell." Eiada nodded in commiseration.
Hair made solid gold in the sun, Arin danced elaborately down the steps, singing an extremely dirty drinking song. Obscene as it was, it was catchy, and Eiada found herself humming along. She felt buoyant, light, literally high on something- (probably endorphins,) the more logical part of her brain said, although the rest of her was willing to accept relief. The exam was nearly over, and it hadn't been that bad.
Still singing at the top of his boyishly-high voice, Arin leaped down the last few stairs, landed in a swirl of sand, and danced in a lopsided circle over to the mostly-intact carcass of the attack spider. With a resounding final chorus, he hefted a booted foot and kicked it sharply in the 'face', which was about level with his thighs.
Eiada laughed aloud, taking the stairs at a fairly upbeat gait herself. "Arin, don't tease the spider," she chided.
It was the gait that lead her up next to the spider, the laughter that let her ignore the sound of abused machinery activating in a high ascending whine, and the shock that froze her to the ground as the red running lights on the X-ATM092's faceplate flickered back on. She saw Arin actually spring backwards, a move that would have been funny if it hadn't been so sincere, saw Roen and Iyan mimic him out of the corner of her eye, and heard, more than anything, the groan of steel and gears as the spider heaved itself out of the sand and settled itself on it's single-clawed feet. Nearly in slow motion, it rocked gently to disgorge any extra sand, and angled its body to face Arin- who had also frozen to the sand.
"RUN!" Eiada heard herself screaming as her body scrambled backwards over the sand. Arin's face snapped over to hers and he did, pulling his long legs over to her as the X-ATM092 took a step forward. She didn't know if it was impact or her own watery knees, but she felt the ground shake. Then she didn't stop to think anymore, she just ran; ran across the sand, ran up the stairs, ran as fast as she could. She heard Arin whimpering behind her, and, worse, the crunch of the stairs under spidery feet.
"Shit shit shit," Iyan was breathing with the cadence of a prayer as she sprinted past him. She wasted a moment grabbing the strap of his AT pack and dragging him after her as she ran. Roen swore agreeably and followed.