by shike77
Chapter V
"On the long and lonesome highway..."
- 'Turn the Page' by Metallica
Mn, long time no update? The usual excuses, I suppose. Saer's been acting up lately; Leon's just a pain in the ass regardless, so whatever.
Started High School this year; that's grade ten here. Crazy people. I'm in a self-directed school; but right now I'm in a bit of a rush for units to be done. Need to see that fracking Religion seminar. Blarrrggg.
Social would be nice to do right now, but we can only have three fricking things out at a time. WTF.
If there's any blaring errors in this update, ignore them. I'm too lazy to remember whether or not I've edited this. I'm throwing a spell-check at it and posting it. Suck it up.
... Where am I going with this? Hell if I know.
Eventually, Saer did slow to a stop, blinking rapidly as if to dull the ache in her eyes. She' adorned Leon with her helmet, knowing full well that Cehkan's would never fit either of them, and opting to save his life if she dropped his unconscious form by accident. This forced her to squint in order to keep as much dust out of her eyes as she could, and her own inability to breathe unaided at the speeds she liked to drive kept her moving at a rather slow pace. With a small bit of resignation stretched across her features, she switched the bike into hover mode, glancing about uneasily at the scenery. They'd made better time than she had thought, but not as much as she would have hoped.
They were in the outskirts of Deningrad—the towering buildings around them that dominated nearly every stable or unstable surface on the planet were indifferent from any other city, but the place itself was legendary for the homes of its wealthy, who were comfortably nestled in wherever the space was available for their three-floored homes. It didn't matter that there was no room for anyone else, so that family sizes were limited and apartments were too small; there was always the wealthy. They disgusted Saer to no end (that most of them worked for the company and the government notwithstanding), and she often vowed that she'd boot the lot of them out of their homes and welcome the working class into their homes to tear the places apart.
Of course, she'd do that when she had the time and need. Right now, she was a member of the Air Faction, and that came before any personal desire to sack homes of the bourgeoisie.
Then again, they kept one of those homes for their own devices, as well. But for people who deserved the peace of privacy—that, and the space was needed.
It sparked an idea, seeing the barred entrance to the district. Not one she approved of, but under the circumstances, she had no choice. Nothing else had presented itself, and she knew that carrying a feverish Leon for much longer was going to prove tiresome. She wished her com wasn't out; that she'd brought along a replacement.
She wanted to leave the kid behind. She had little obligation to him—but there was a slight chance he knew something of value, and that alone kept her from dropping him on the street to die.
Well, that and regulation. She supposed he might have counted as a rescued victim to the company in this matter—and, as much as he couldn't communicate with anyone, leaving him to the streets might cause an uproar.
The citizens can never know, she thought bitterly. They just have to be miserable and not know why no one in the government tries to make things better.
"My life," she muttered, kicking the bike back into gear, "sucks."
Bypassing security was nothing major. Her bike, like the citizens' various transportation devices, had the codes installed on it—Soa forbid anyone who lived there actually take the time to memorize a string of numbers—and there were no guards. Even if there had been, a customized hover-bike wasn't all that hard to imagine in this district, but both her and Leon's battered and bloodied conditions might have called for knocking a few people out. Not worth the effort to kill them and cover up their deaths, and she'd be discovered for sure.
She drove aimlessly for a few blocks, backtracking several times , swerving off to the side once or twice to make it look like she'd escaped from a brawl the rich little brats were so fond of getting into.
She eventually stopped at a gate in front of the house she wanted—a building only slightly smaller than those around it, but with a larger property, higher walls, and far more advanced security. The gardens in front were attended to well enough by robotic arms, but if one were to peer through the gate they'd see a brilliant expanse of lush, healthy plants and varying ornaments, fountains, and the like. Not much was in view, for the wall was steel, but the windows in the home were all carefully guarded against peering eyes.
A panel opened in the wall beside the gate, and a camera slid out. Upon spotting her position on the bike, several more devices emerged from the wall, carefully examining every bit of her possible.
"You're not welcome, Zeyl." The words were spat, the tone deep and flow a bit sluggish. The communication equipment revealed little more about the speaker than his odd, unplaceable accent.
She brushed tangled hair out of her eyes, which were narrowed fiercely at the tiny cameras. "I don't like this any better than you, but I don't have a choice."
"We're not-" there was a sound like a suction cup, quick and disturbing, "-going back. We agreed."
She would have growled. "I'm not taking you back. I need a place to lay low."
"You have your—ways."
Her hand was itching for her sword. Knowing that any touch to her weapons would do little to aid her, she merely bit her tongue for a moment.
"Not with the kid."
Cameras whirled, examining the unconscious Leon strapped behind her. He was leaning on her back, eyelids flickering in a feverish way.
"... He work for you?"
Nobody works for me, asshole.
"No," she muttered, absently, knowing that if she weren't wearing gloves, her knuckles would have shown white for how fiercely she was gripping the handlebars.
"Take him to a hospital, then. We have no place for—strays."
She grit her teeth against the retort she wanted to snarl back at him, forcing herself to take a deep breath and deal with the man accordingly.
"I can't do that," she replied, barely holding back a snarl. "They're after him."
It was the truth, she supposed, if only half so—she felt no remorse for using one of the few things they hated more than her to gain entry.
There was a pause, and there was a small bit of conversing in low voices. She recognized the new voice immediately, and resisted the urge to turn around and find somewhere else to stay. Biting her tongue, she didn't smirk in triumph as the gate opened—merely switched modes and ventured through.
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The hum of machinery was always in the background, but it seemed to rise to a deafening roar that surpassed greatly its normal state as white noise. Jheil felt it as a massive throb against his skull as he leaned over yet another project, hurriedly throwing parts together to see what would happen. He often could be found, burrowed deep within the chaos that was Air Faction's lab, finding comfort and ease among the half-finished, towering piles of technology and the various enemy units he was examining at any given point in time.
He threw the pieces of scrap metal down in disgust and buried his face in his hands. The large nose made this hard, of course, and only furthered his frustration.
Soa. The woman had finally managed to get herself killed.
It had to happen eventually—he'd known how little value she held her own life in for as long as he'd known her. He'd thought, once, that perhaps he could convince her to think better of herself, once. But, he soon learned that she held little regard for anything of that sort, in spite of the woman she was becoming. She was too strong to give in to anything.
That was alright. He'd grown out of it.
"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."
He felt rather useless. Sensors and coms had suddenly gone offline the moment Saer went off to aid Cehkan, disturbed by something. They all worked now—they had been in perfect operating condition about an hour before the wolf-man woke.
Now the Factions' leader was stalking through the halls, snapping at anything that came near. As a result, the hallways were very empty. No one liked dealing with him when he was angry—and Jheil certainly wasn't about to try.
In spite of Cehkan's rage, Githen had somehow managed to find his way through the halls unfazed by the man's wrath. His goggles were sitting on his forehead, their twin screens blank and lifeless without being connected to anything. He stood on his toes, peering over the pile of junk that had collected on Jheil's desk.
No one had broken the news to the kid. They didn't know how.
"What'cha doin'?"
Without waiting for an answer, the little boy started sorting through the assorted material, fitting pieces together in a joining that seemed about to teeter and fall at any moment.
Jheil sighed, absently sketching at one of the designs in his electronic journal. "Nothing..."
Githen blew hair out of his round face and grinned. "Okay. 'Cause Saer wanted you to run a diaggy on her bike when you're not busy."
Jheil looked up at Githen, astonishment written across his face. "What?"
"Saer wanted you to look at her bike. She says the com's broken." The kid scowled, then, at the lack of a reply from the man, and added, "Yaknow, Sa's always telling me it's rude to stare... And your breath stinks."
Forcing closed the mouth that had just hit the table beneath him, he stammered, "H-how did you—where is she?"
Githen shrugged. "Never seen the place. But there's a whole bunch of people in the background. And she was mad at them, too. Something about someone I couldn't see."
Jheil scrambled to his taloned feet wildly, the sharp claws scraping the metal floor beneath them with a sickening sound. Ignoring that, he demanded, "Can you bring her up again?"
The raven-haired boy nodded and grabbed his arm. "C'mon!"
Saer leaned back in her chair, smirking at the bemused expressions on Cehkan and Jheil's faces. Yes, it was all-too-worth it. Feeling a little insulted after the bird-man admitted that they'd thought her dead, she jested sarcastically with them for a moment or two before deciding to let them try to explain what was going on in her absence. They stammered a bit over each other—until Githen finally came through with childish logic and explained it all.
"The girl you found is still sleeping, there's some really funky cargo on board, and I think Cehkky's got fleas again."
"Do not," the wolf-man growled, ears flat against his skull. He shook his head and fixed a snickering Githen with an 'I'll get you later' glare before looking back at the screen with, "So, what's your story?"
She glanced back at those behind her and hissed, "Later. Not now."
As much as the company had given their word long ago not to divulge any secrets that would royally wind the Factions in trouble—that, and had chips planted in their brains to prevent them from doing so—she trusted these people little. Amongst them, she wasn't safe.
"Hey, Zeyl, your boyfriend's got a bad dream!"
A collective 'aww' rose from the assembled, and Saer swore loudly—Githen had heard it all before, anyway—as she scrambled to her feet, darting across the room while ignoring questions raised from the rest of her team. She shoved people aside, growling obscenities at their jeers, resisting the strong urge to break more than one jaw, and fixing anyone who tried to meet her gaze with deadly glares only she could muster. She slipped through the open doorway, shoved out anyone in the small chamber, shut the door and jammed it so no one would enter.
Brushing aside her hair, she paused to examine Leon. He was, as predicted, tossing and turning, sweating and moaning, in the throes of some feverish dream. She rubbed her temples, then sat down on the bed adjacent to his own. There really wasn't much she could do.
She flipped on the loudspeaker. "Can someone fetch me Alyse?"
There were a few grumbled retorts before a reply came, crisp and clear, "I'm here, Saer."
The Air Faction member breathed a sigh of relief, then opened the door to let the woman in.
Woman was hardly a term most would use to describe her. Her hooves clip-clopped on the ceramic tiles in the hallway, then became deadened thuds on the carpet in the room. Pale hair was kept in a tight bun at the base of her neck, and as she was human from torso-up, she gave the display of someone who lived out in the fresh air. The rest of her—four round hooves and a tail—gave her the look of a centaur. The long ears of a horse twitched back and forth briefly, and she sniffed the air lightly as she briefly glanced at Leon.
"... Well, he reeks of fever," she replied, sounding almost sad. "But... He doesn't smell... Normal, either."
She shrugged, and knelt down in the narrow space between the two beds with some difficulty. Saer glanced briefly down at the pale silver tattoo of a sphere on her left hind leg, then turned her attention back to the kid.
"He's not from... around here."
Alyse didn't reply. She pulled a chain over her head, where most of it had hidden under her shirt, then held the small orb that was the sole accessory in the palm of her hand. It began to glow in response, its light filling the room with a comforting warmth Saer knew all to well. Saer watched idly as the wound on Leon's head healed over, bathed in the magic shimmering around him. He stopped tossing about, and the rise and fall of his chest resumed a normal pace.
The centaur glanced over to Saer and smiled. "You know, he reminds me of home."
Saer raised an eyebrow and asked, "How so?"
Alyse only smiled in that knowing way and replied, "He smells clean."
She left the conversation at that, slipped the chain back over her neck, tucked the orb underneath her shirt, and walked out of the room.
Saer reflected on that for a moment. Wasn't she born in Serdio? But... Serdio wasn't clean in the least. True, it had Seles National Park (the only place on Endiness that had trees left in it), but the rest of the country was just as polluted as the rest of the world.
She rolled her eyes and left the room, heading back to the console she'd been speaking with Cehkan, Jheil and Githen on.
"Anyway..."
When Leon woke, he'd almost expected a ruler rapped on his head, a brightly-lit classroom, and jeers from about thirty kids in the area.
What he got was darkness, interrupted by a few blinking lights, and the whir of machinery in the background.
He blinked, and slowly moved to rub the sleep from his eyes. Odd. He'd almost expected... to be completely unable to move. A headache the size of the sun. Like every person woke up with after... slipping out of consciousness (because that sounded so much better than 'fainting'). But, he didn't have anything. In fact, he was quite capable of swinging his legs over the side of the bed—looked like something off of Star Trek—and feeling the carpet with bare feet. He was even completely able to stand, oddly enough. Hell, he could even make out the soft gleam of blonde hair on the bed adjacent to his own.
He decided against investigating any sort of identity, figuring it was most likely Saer, by the length of the hair—her hair was long, right? He hadn't really taken much of a look at it... he'd still been a bit woozy.
And now he was magically fine. Just like that.
He wandered around until he found the door—which opened on its own. It would have been a prompt source of entertainment if Kiedyn were there, he thought with a wry half-smile, and suddenly found himself fighting off a bout of homesickness. Not good...
He was pondering exactly where he was and what had happened to him when he emerged from the hallway and into a room with... tables? His feet were cold on the steel floor, and he suddenly remembered that he had no clue where his beat-up old runners were.
He sighed, sitting down on one of the chairs and leaning his elbows on the table. On touch, he activated several buttons barely the size of his fingertips. Those lit up, and he jumped three feet out of his seat before the table was full of dishes covered in full-course meals. Some, he could recognize (turkey, steak, oatmeal, even chocolate-chip cookies) and others he couldn't dream existed. Something purple and red... this thing oozing something green that stunk... And that one looked like sushi, but he'd never had the stuff before so he wouldn't know...
He was given only a moment to stare and ponder over the display in front of him before his stomach snarled loudly, demanding sustenance. He grinned sheepishly, although no one was around, and tentatively poked the steak.
After a few bites, he dug in. He was hungry, anyway.
After devouring three full-course meals (more than he'd ever eaten in his life), he grabbed a bowl of what looked like fruit salad and took it with him as he left the room, stuffing as much as he could at any point in time into his mouth as he wandered through the halls.
He eventually came upon an empty room, lined with panels that glowed softly in when he was near them. He absently walked its edges for a minute or two until he found something he swore was a picture of a guitar. He placed the bowl on the floor, up against the panels, and gingerly touched the picture.
In the middle of the room, an electric bass and stand appeared out of nowhere.
Much staring ensued.
What the hell is this, Earth 2020? Or am I on the fucking USS Voyager? Maybe the Death Star...? Hey, maybe I'm undergoing a classic Final Fantasy memory-esque... thing?
He shook that off and absently—cautiously—made his way over to the guitar. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, he poked it—and immediately pulled his hand away once he touched it. It took him a few more pokes, just to make sure it was the real deal, before he picked it up.
It was lighter than he was used to, and a bit smaller. He'd live.
He slung the strap over his shoulder and absently placed his fingers. He strummed the chord, and was mildly surprised when he found he had to tune the guitar—how silly of him to think that, for all the technology he'd run into, the guitar would materialize perfectly tuned. He slapped his pockets for his tuner half-heartedly; he knew it wouldn't be there. It was in his guitar case. Wherever the hell that was, now. So he was left with his ears; that didn't bother him too much, either. Normally he was fine without one, anyway.
It took him a few seconds—damn that thing was terrible—to get the thing sounding normal enough for him. It wasn't his bass, but it would do for now.
Saer was a restless sleeper; the slightest movement or noise out of the ordinary, and she was wide awake with a knife at your throat.
She was aware of Leon leaving the room. Decided to let him be for a time. What's the worst that could happen, anyway? Maybe he'd find food, or something. Wasn't her job to baby-sit him.
After she found that she couldn't sleep anyway—every time she closed her eyes, the vision that damned red-headed freak had shown her popped up rather unexpectedly—she swung her feet off the bed and into her warm boots. It wasn't normal to wear shoes indoors, but Saer had low tolerance to chill, and her feet would be cold on the steel floor of the hallways. Never mind that she was probably still tracking mud around.
He's discovered the food replicators, she noticed, and probably by accident. She pressed the 'return' button, and all the dishes and various crumbs or bits of food left behind were taken back into the machine. After replicating a quick glass of hot—very hot—chocolate, she absently strolled along the corridors, following the faint sound that was tickling her ears. Music? It was pretty good, she mused. Although a bit slow, and perhaps out of practice.
Leon had, unwittingly, found the holo-room, and was now jamming on a guitar—one of those new inventions from a couple of years back that were rapidly increasing their popularity...
She paused at that thought as she leaned against the doorway. How would he know how to play one of those things? She knew it was a proven impossibility to just pick up a musical instrument and know how to play it immediately. Real life wasn't that cliché. Or nice.
Her train of thought broke once Leon saw her and stopped playing, a sheepish look on his face as he hastily put the guitar on its stand. She raised her eyebrow at him, smirked, then spun on her heel and walked out the door. Kids these days, she thought wryly, swigging back the last of her now-luke-warm drink.
Hm, one review? You lazy asshats. Meh. ::needs her sleep::
So, Fifi—NO MORE WORSHIPPING. Not allowed. Meaniiee.
