Solis Novem Military Academy, Republic of San Magnolia
May 3rd, Stellar Year 2146
Lena began the day as she always did. One minute before the clock struck five, her eyes fluttered open. She canceled the alarm before it could blare. There would be no harm if it did - as a student of the Accelerated Academics program she had her own room, so there was no risk of disrupting anyone else's sleep - but purely as a matter of course, she preferred not to cause more commotion than necessary.
Before traitorous thoughts of falling back asleep could settle in, she pushed herself out of bed. There was a vase of white lilies on her dresser by the window, which she never failed to give a nod to, to acknowledge the dead man they honored. She collected a towel and stepping into the bathroom.
Lena always started her showers cold, so that the first shock of freezing water would annihilate any lingering remnants of sleepiness. By the time the water heated, her limbs would be tingling and her heart would pound like a drum, but her breathing was always strong in and strong out, regulated by force of will. She had to. Otherwise, beneath the cold, they'd go shallow, chaotic, weak.
She ended her showers cold as well. By the time she turned the valve and stepped out, the mirror above her sink was crystal clear, free of steam. Today she regarded her reflection. She didn't always. She looked over her features and saw her father in them, in the long silver of her hair going down to her waist, in the glint of resolve that shone through her cerulean eyes. Would he be proud of her, she wondered, if he knew of everything she had helped accomplish in the years since he died.
It was Rei who truly took the credit, of course. It was only because he'd spoken up, that the Republic had changed so much in such a short time. Colorata walked the streets side-by-side with Alba. They attended school and worked steady jobs. All those pseudo-scientific theories that called them subhuman pigs, and all the technical manuals that referred to Juggernauts as 'unmanned' drones and their operators as Processors, each and every one, had been struck down, recalled, and revised to reflect the truth.
It was Rei who'd done all this of course, but Lena was proud to know that she was the one who set up his first meeting with uncle Jerome.
She knew Rei was proud of her, and she was sure her father would be too. She hoped the same of Alice and Kaie. But a sad, forlorn part of her gave a reminder that she didn't know for sure. That maybe she never would. It had been so long since she'd spoken to them.
Lena donned her uniform, a Prussian-blue blazer over a white dress shirt, skirt and stockings and garter-belt, a prim officer's hat pushing her silver bangs down over her eyes. She saluted the vase of white lilies when she finished dressing.
She was fourteen now. She would turn fifteen in July. It had been two years and seven months since she enrolled in Solis Novem, fresh off the summer program with her training and her new friends. There hadn't been much time to rest. It wasn't even a month between the program's end and the semester's start, but for Lena (if not her classmates, some of whom had been hoping for a vacation), it was a blessing. Her country stood as a mockery of its own ideals, and if she truly wished to change its rotten foundation then there wasn't a single day to waste.
Solis Novem boasted the single most varied curriculum of all the military academies in the Republic. There were many courses ranging from technical engineering to history of warfare, but ultimately Lena's choice had come between a final two: Sword, and Scepter. Sword was a four-year program, meant to train those who would be fighting on the frontlines as field officers or mechanized infantry. Scepter, by contrast, was an eight-year program meant for strategists, tacticians, and Handlers.
Some of her friends chose Sword. Lucius, with a shark-tooth grin overtaking his usual frown, had proclaimed loudly that fighting sounded like a lot more fun than shouting orders from the rear. Cedric did the same, saying quietly, almost regretfully that he'd be more useful out there.
For awhile Lena wondered if she should follow after them. She was certain the Republic would have to make improvements on their combat doctrine, given all the changes Rei had caused, but the reality of war against the Legion could not change so easily. No matter how much better the Republic became, the fighting would always be brutal. She wanted desperately to be there with her friends, to make sure they'd stay safe. But eventually she chose Scepter. It was the only branch that could support her overarching goal.
The average Scepter student began their schooling at sixteen. At twenty-four, assuming good conduct, they would graduate immediately into the rank of 2nd Lieutenant.
Lena had begun at twelve, and she aimed for much higher than a junior officer's position.
Her morning preparations complete, she stepped out her dorm-room into an austere hallway of silvered stone and smooth granite tiles. She passed by benches on the sides of the corridor, a few of them occupied by disheveled Alba students snoring loudly, passed out with bottles at their feet. Despite the fact that the majority of them were underage, and in the Accelerated program to boot, this was an unfortunately common sight. Other academies were even worse, plagued with students who only saw the military as a steady paycheck and a place to laze around.
The student commons had even more like these, nearly a dozen passed out on the luxurious, curled-foot sofas, surrounded by the leavings of last night's party. Quite a few were in a state of undress, covered only with blankets or piled clothing. Lena hurried past these with eyes averted. The air stung with a smell like sweat and musk and salt that she didn't recognize, but found uncomfortable.
There was only one person who was awake, a girl with long bluish-silver hair (too blue to pass as Alba), wearing a uniform similar to Lena's own, but without the officer's hat and dyed black instead of blue - the Sword uniform. The girl was crouched down, hands adorned in large yellow rubber gloves as she collected empty bottles in a plastic bag.
"Emma-san!" Lena said, hurrying over to the girl, crouching down to pick up bottles beside her. "You're at our dorm again. Did someone put you up to this?"
Emma-san turned her head at the sudden outburst, a sweet smile on her face. Her pale Celesta-blue eyes held an icy inner light as they swept across the slumbering students.
"Good morning, Milize-san," she said. "Don't worry, no one put me up to this, I just felt as if someone should clean up after these… layabouts, since no one else will."
Lena smiled, both at the restraint in her words and the kindness of her actions. She got the feeling Emma-san would have used a much less polite word than 'layabout' if she was in private.
"Other than you, I suppose," Emma-san added. "I think you may be the only Scepter student who actually does any work."
"Oh, that's not true at all. Caritas-san is quite the hard worker as well!" Lena said it brightly, not realizing that in this case an exception only served to prove the rule.
"Ah, yes, she went to boot camp with you, didn't she?"
"She did!"
Though nearly three years had passed since then, Lena's memories from that time were still very clear. After Lucius and Cedric, Emily Caritas had been the first to stand up for Lena when Iron Mike was about to expel her. She would always be grateful for that. Emily was a serious, stern person who valued discipline above all else. Even more than Lena, who was simply disappointed, Emily had been appalled to realize the sorry state of the student body when she first arrived in Solis Novem. She had taken Lena's hand and pulled it close, and made her swear up and down that the two of them wouldn't end up like the rest of the 'lazy garbage littering this beautiful campus.'
"Still," Lena added. "None of us could match up to the effort the Sword students put in. Even if I feel like I've worked hard for the day, when I see Shuga-san come back from the Juggernaut courses bruised all black and blue, or Kukumila-san at the range with hundreds of bullet casings at her feet, I feel lazy all over again!"
Emma-san laughed at that. A soft, musical laugh that would have fit a noblewoman. She covered the sound with her gloved hand, and the bright yellow of the rubber drew Lena's attention back to the Sword student's current task.
"Let me help you with that," Lena said.
"It looks like you're already doing that though? Unless there happens to be another reason why you're throwing bottles into my bag."
"Eh?"
"You know, Milize-san, that's rather rude of you. You should always ask permission before using other people's belongings!"
As far as verbal jabs went, most would say this was far and away on the gentle side of the spectrum, but it was more than enough to take Lena off balance. When she was on the training yard, Lena always felt in control, but when she was off it, it never took much at all to fluster her. She had no idea how to change that.
"Uh- um, I-" she stammered. "I'm so sorry, Emma-san, I didn't even-"
Emma-san laughed again, just as gently before. "Oh don't worry, I'm just teasing you. Thank you very much for your help, I appreciate it."
Lena was conflicted at first. For a couple seconds, she wasn't sure if she was supposed to smile or pout. She settled on pout.
For the better part of an hour they went up and down the whole student commons, gathering every empty bottle and plastic cup into large plastic contractor bags, mopping up spills of alcohol (and urine, and other bodily fluids Lena didn't even want to try and identify) and sweeping aside piles of trash. It wasn't every day that the students threw parties like these. Today was a particularly bad day, on account of it being Sunday morning, but that didn't mean clean-ups weren't a common and troublesome affair.
And Lena found it uncomfortable that it was almost always Sword students who were pressed into custodian duty. This was because unlike all the other branches in Solis Novem, Sword's student body was almost entirely composed of Colorata.
"They made getting into my branch a real pain in the ass, you know," Lucius had grumbled, as he often did. "I swear they asked me two dozen times if I was sure about it. And they kept throwing fliers in my face for all the other branches, telling me how much more they would pay, about all the benefits, the jobs they would land me after my service ended and other garbage like that. I told my career counselor about a hundred times that I don't give a fuck about money. I'm a Du Frencia, I have plenty already. I'm just in it for the entertainment."
And yet when she asked Emma-san about her enrollment, she said that she wasn't offered anything but the Sword branch. Lena wasn't stupid. She could guess why an Alba noble and a former 86 were treated so differently. Her country had changed a lot in the last three years. Just opening the academies to Colorata students was far more than she could have imagined when she was younger, and Lena was proud to see it happen. Yet the roots that had caused the Republic to commit its original crimes were still very much alive; Rei's work had not ended, and would not for quite some time. Neither would hers, for that matter.
They both had their mops in hand, psyching themselves up to tackle a particularly large yellow-brown spill from a cracked beer keg when one of the students groaned themselves awake, stirring from their place on a soiled sofa. An Alba, of course, tawny silver hair stained at one side with splashes of red wine, his eyes baggy and bloodshot.
"Hey, now, whuthahell is this?" he slurred, words mushing together. Judging by the redolent wall of stench wafting off him, he'd probably been drinking well into the morning. It was possible he was still drunk. "Whuthafuck are you doin?"
Lena turned to face him, unamused. Emma-san averted her eyes.
"You better… hic… put that thing down, Princess," he sneered at Lena, leering at her mop like it had offended him somehow and spitting out her moniker in a way she found intolerable. The nickname embarrassed her sometimes, but her boot-camp comrades had given it to her, so she wore it with pride. "Let that pig take care o' it. 'S all she's good for."
She clenched her fist. "Those theories were proved false three years ago, as we all know. You have no right to call Emma-san that."
"False my ass," he slurred. "Nothin' but cowards, this new goverment. 'Fraid to tell the truth. That," he growled, pointing at Emma-san with hatred eminent in his bloodshot eyes. "Isn't a person. It's a person-shaped pig, and any one who says diffren-"
"Shut up!" Lena seethed. "Don't you dare talk about my friend like that! Don't you dare!"
The Scepter student was taken aback a moment. Then his eyes hardened and he staggered himself upright, standing with a noticeable sway in his posture. He staggered forward.
"You're friends with that pig? That's disgusting."
"If you call her a pig one more time I will-"
Two strong but slender hands took hers, and Lena turned to see Emma-san holding her back, pale blue eyes burdened with the weight of a sad smile.
"It's alright, Milize-san. Don't worry about him."
"But he said-"
"It's alright," she repeated. "Please, leave him be. I'll take it from here."
"But-"
Emma-san leaned in close, speaking at a whisper. "I appreciate it, Milize-san. I really do. But if you take it too far, he and his friends will make things a lot worse for me, so please leave him be."
"What, you two gonna kiss or something? Gross…" the bigot muttered. Lena clenched her fist even tighter, but heeded Emma-san's words.
"Alright," she whispered back, though the thought of merely accepting what that bastard said made her feel sick to her stomach. "I'm sorry."
Emma-san quirked her head at that, smiling gently now rather than sadly. "Has anyone ever told you you apologize too much, Milize-san?"
She didn't wait for a reply before she stepped away, took the mop, and began to wipe diligently at the spill. Lena watched her for a moment. Briefly, she wanted to help anyway - Emma-san struck such a lonely figure when she was the only one trying to clean up this huge space - but Lena didn't want to make things worse for her. She gave a final, wordless bow to the Sword student before turning and walking toward the exit, not sparing the bigoted Alba a second glance.
When he laughed as if the whole thing were some victory for him, it took every ounce of willpower she had not to turn around and punch his doughy face in.
—
"Sorry I'm late, Annette!"
Annette stood leaning on the trunk of a spring-budding tree, one hand at the Para-RAID on her cheek as she chatted with someone on the other line.
"Oh yep, gotta go, sorry, talk to you later!" she said, before sweeping her hand over the metallic curve of the device, darkening the lights. She turned to regard Lena's arrival, silver eyes glancing coolly from behind the glint of her glasses, framed by shoulder-length locks of argent hair.
"Let me guess," she said, quirking a one-sided smirk. "Your saint complex got the better of you again."
"Huh?"
"You got caught up helping someone and ended up losing track of the time. I swear it happens three times a week with you." She heaved a sigh, fondly exasperated despite her words. "You're lucky Shourei-san is always willing to chat around this time, or I'd have bored myself to death by now, waiting for you. Which would make you a murderer. Then you'd have to go to court, and your mother would cry, and all your friends would be so disappointed, and-"
Lena laughed. "Yes, yes, rub it in some more why don't you? How I'm the worst best friend you could ever ask for, and you'd be so much better off with someone who didn't-"
"-get themselves into trouble every other day and force me to squander all my precious free time, not to mention rack up favors for Shourei-san just to keep you from getting yourself expelled, because you think it's such a great idea to report on everyone who harasses the Sword students, even though the campus police, the administration, and the dean are all in on it too."
"Don't forget that I eat all your best sweets as well."
Annette nodded sagely. "Yes, that too. I swear you eat more of my cooking than my fiancée does…" Trailing voice. A pause, deceptively short. When she spoke again, it was with an edge of melancholy that only Lena could have noticed.
"Although I think I'm the only one who feels bitter about that, to be honest," Annette murmured.
Just then, her best friend took on a look of subtle but unmistakable sadness. Like a veil had dropped, her eyes downcast and hands fallen to her sides, shoulders drawn ever-so-slightly together. Her whole frame looked suddenly smaller somehow, as if her body had withered beneath the layers of her aquamarine uniform. Lena took Annette's hand in a gentle hold, squeezing once.
"There's still another year before the marriage. Nouzen-san will come around," Lena said.
"It's already been two, and he still loves her. What if he always will?"
There was a thoroughly unhelpful part of Lena's mind that reminded her of how Annette had once talked about her eventual arranged marriage as if it were a matter of business. In fact, it dredged up her exact words - that her goal was to marry someone who could support her ambitions, and how love was selfish compared to that.
Annette had the first now, betrothed to a man who brought with him the miracle technology of the Para-RAID. The device had already found an unshakable niche in the military sectors as a means of communication the Legion couldn't jam. Once it found its way into the civilian market, it would bolster the prodigious Pennrose fortune even further.
And yet now that she couldn't have the second, Rei's affection denied by a woman from his past Annette didn't and couldn't know, it seemed to be all she cared about. But of course, it was unkind for Lena to even have these thoughts. It would be unimaginably cruel to express them out loud.
At the extended pause, Annette smiled again. A light, easy, airy smile that dispelled her sadness as if it had never been there at all. Or at least it appeared to.
"Never mind. Just silliness on my part. How have your classes been, Lena?"
It frustrated her that Annette was forced to change the subject. Lena knew she lacked the experience needed to help her friend. Before boot-camp, she hadn't even interacted with male classmates, having attended an all-girls academy. And after it, she continued to have no experience with relationships whatsoever. She was already well-aware of that. That Annette recognized it too only made her feel even more useless.
Nevertheless, because she was so useless on the subject of love, she was grateful to be able to talk about something she at least understood.
"My classes have been going very well, actually!"
They walked and talked for awhile, touring the campus grounds on the scenic route to the cafe they visited together every Sunday. The caliber of its student body aside, Solis Novem was an incredibly beautiful academy. Its five Halls were built predominantly from marble and austere brickwork, each linked to the other by beautifully paved white walkways all lined at the sides with soon-to-bloom cherry blossom trees.
"What're you up to at this point, anyway? The fifth year curriculum?" Annette asked after a lull in the conversation.
"For now. But I plan to take my exams early and move up to the sixth as soon as I can. Sixth year students get hands-on experience. They get to command training exercises, drills, even field missions."
"Sounds exciting."
"It is! I can't wait. What about you?"
"What, my classes? Easy. Way too easy."
"Easy?"
"Yeah. You know, I was so excited to come to this school, since you hyped it up so much. I studied so hard for the entrance exam. I mean bleeding out the eyes level studying. But when I took it, it was basically all stuff I learned when I was still in diapers. Talk about disappointment."
Lena laughed softly, covering the sound with her closed hand. "Well, you were raised by a scientist."
"Seriously. My dad and I bonded over lab-work, so I could do these equations in my sleep. I think I'm gonna graduate early just so I don't die of boredom. Maybe we could even graduate together."
"Isn't Sigil a six year course? You only just enrolled this fall, won't that be… intense?"
"Uh, hello, pot calling kettle black over here? Aren't you the one who's planning to graduate from this school at the same age most people start here?"
Their favorite cafe stood at the edge of the campus grounds, a cute place with warm wooden walls and paned windows stenciled with little silhouettes of giraffes and butterflies and such. At this time on Sundays, it was always at the perfect sweet spot of busy-ness, a few people drinking coffee or typing away at their laptops, enough to lend a pleasant atmosphere without crowding anyone out.
Today there was a slender Jade boy wearing the black Sword uniform, with green eyes and longish blond hair sitting at a corner table, examining the austere form of an oak tree as its spring leaves caught the morning sun, drawing in a sketchbook.
They got their coffees and took a seat on the patio, enjoying the wind and warmth as they chatted.
"So the other day Shourei-san and I went for a walk, and I managed to ask him about his time as a soldier - I told you how guarded he is about his past, didn't I? But he actually answered this time, and he told me he's been fighting since he was seventeen. Seventeen! Can you believe that, Lena? How cruel is that?"
"I can't imagine what he must have been through," Lena said. "How is Nouzen-san doing these days? I haven't been able to talk with him all that much since the last time."
Lena found it distinctly odd to refer to Rei in such a formal way, but talking about him like she always did would have seemed far too familiar. As far as Annette knew, Rei was just an acquaintance Lena had met through her.
She felt more than a little guilty for being secretive toward her best friend of all people, but it was a necessary evil. Uncle Jerome was the only other person who knew the truth of her connection to him - how they'd met and everything Lena had done to help him both before and after his separation from the 86. He had stressed to her just how big a secret this really was. That anyone else who knew could be put in enormous danger. At all costs, she had to keep quiet.
She understood that. But that didn't make it any easier to look her friend in the eye and pretend she hadn't known her fiancée for years before they'd met.
"Oh, busy as always," Annette answered. "Meetings with generals, meetings with politicians, meetings with scientists. All that and more." She gave a little half-chuckle that Lena wished didn't sound so sad. "He's so passionate about his work. He really wants to make this country better, and I love that about him."
"But?"
Any time anyone starts with a compliment like that, it's always followed by a but straight after.
Out of all the pieces of advice Alice had given her, this one had stuck with her more firmly than most for whatever reason.
Annette smiled quickly. "I just wish we could spend more time together. We're going to be husband and wife eventually, after all."
Once again the uncharitable thought crossed Lena's mind of how Annette had treated the concept of marriage before meeting Rei. Business-like almost to point of coldness. And then the the Imperial exile had appeared at one of her father's tech seminars with his wonder-technology in hand: a well-worn, battle-tested, and thoroughly functional set of Para-RAID devices.
And yet he'd also possessed a staggeringly complete insight on their construction and development, far more than could be expected from a mere foot soldier. It didn't take long for her friend to become smitten with his noble appearance and surprising intellect, not to mention the gentle kindness Lena had already become familiar with over the years.
Annette would say the betrothal was still strictly business, and indeed, it was a beneficial arrangement for both parties. Rei needed ties to the Republic in order to keep his place and maintain his influence, and being married to the heiress of the biggest tech corporation behind the Gran Mur was about as strong a tie as any non-noble could hope for.
Meanwhile Annette's company (her father's company technically, but both father and daughter openly acknowledged to whose hands the deed would inevitably pass) had broken its development deadlock thanks to Rei, once again given the opportunity to reverse-engineer a piece of advanced Imperial technology and make enormous scientific leaps in the process.
Annette would say the betrothal was strictly business, but if Rei ever openly agreed with her she would fall into tears.
Lena didn't know why her thoughts kept defaulting to this track. It was of no use to her, or to anyone, for her to point out the inconsistencies in her friend's attitude toward love. It was simply unkind, and that was that.
"Hey! You!"
A deep shout drew their attention away from their conversation.
It came from a tall, powerfully-built Alba with hair shaved to a silver dusting on the top of his pale scalp. He was dressed in a uniform of dull maroon, the color of the Scroll branch - the course for historians, performers, and chroniclers. Lena recognized him after a moment. His name was Nero. He was a star player for the academy's foot-ball league, who had gone into Scroll solely because it was the easiest course available, and thus least likely to impede on his sports career.
"You know you're not supposed to be here," Nero said.
His voice was directed toward the younger Jade boy sitting in the corner, sketching on his pad. He glanced from the corner of his eye at the distraction, clicked his tongue, then glanced away again. At that show of evident disrespect, Nero stomped toward him until they were within a few feet of each other.
"I recognize that yellow mop on the top of your head, so I know this isn't the first time I've had to tell you this. You have your places, and we have ours. You can't be here."
The boy laid his sketchpad on the table. Casually, as if he were putting it down to answer a question about the time or how his weekend had gone. He turned to address the much bigger student, and stood to his unimposing height, looking up at him with a placid, slightly frowning expression that spoke more to distaste than dislike.
"I don't see any signs telling me I can't be here, baldie. None of those cute little pigs on the windows look crossed out to me."
"You don't need a sign. It's common sense. There's all the coffee-shops and libraries and whatever else you need over by Aegis Hall, special built for your kind. That's where you belong."
"Is that so?" the boy said evenly. "Nobody ever told me that."
"All the rest of you know where to be and what to do by now. But look," Nero said, and spread open his palms in a charitable gesture. "Maybe you really didn't know, and your skull's just too thick for stuff to get through it unless you're told a dozen times. Whatever. I'm not gonna get too bent about it if you just shuffle off now."
The boy plastered a smile on his face that twitched at the corners. His eyes were bright and burning.
"Oh how kind of you. I see the Republic's values aren't dead after all. Freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice, nobility… you're a paragon of all five, aren't you?"
Nero smiled proudly, evidently unaware of the sarcasm dripping off the boy's every word.
"Go on, kid. No one's gonna be mad at you for making a mistake if you fix it right after."
Only Lena, her eyes trained by Iron Mike's combat drills, seemed to notice the boy clench his hand into a fist. Annette stared at the space between the two, face and body frozen, made motionless by the unexpected conflict, as almost all untrained civilians became at such moments. Nero was too absorbed with his own arrogance to realize that his words weren't stoking obedience in the boy, but anger.
But it would only end poorly for the boy if they got into a fight. In all such altercations between Alba and Colorata, the punishment always landed squarely on the latter, and often in severe magnitude relative to the crime. She had to stop it, didn't she? That's what she thought. What she believed. But she didn't move. Unwanted questions pushed themselves into being. Who was she to get involved? What if it made things worse?
She shook her head furiously. She was being a coward.
"Wait!" she cried. Her voice barreled out of her of its own volition. She pushed out her chair and stood, tried to reach out and stop them, but her hesitation had cost her too much time.
She made two steps before the boy swung out a haymaker punch.
A blur of motion.
The smack of a striking fist and Lena stopped, eyes widening.
There, standing between the two was an Alba student who seemed to have appeared from nowhere, taller than the boy but shorter by half a head than Nero. He was wearing the same maroon uniform of the Scroll branch. His back was to the athlete, and thus to her as he stood facing the blond Jade boy, having caught his punch within his palm. He lowered the boy's fist softly, kindly, before letting it go, and the boy stared dumbstruck at his hand as if he couldn't believe what had happened.
Lena couldn't believe it either. He'd moved so fast.
Nero stepped back two seconds later. Lena couldn't see his face, but she could tell the shock and surprise radiating off his body language.
"Whoa! Good save bro, that little shit actually tried to hit me, huh?"
The other Alba paid Nero no mind, speaking to the boy as if he were the only one there.
"They'll expel you if you get into a fight. You need to be careful."
His words were kind too, and yet his voice was as cold as winter wind.
The boy was shocked for a moment before his face twisted, green eyes hot with anger.
"Think you're some kind of fucking saint, huh? Think you're doing me a favor? Saving us lowly 86 because we're too stupid to take care of ourselves, is that it!?"
Lena was as taken aback by this as the Alba's sudden appearance.
"Jesus," Nero said. "Piss-pot's got a mouth on him, huh? And you were so nice to him too. Someone should really teach him a lesson."
The athlete tried to step around the other Alba, but he thrust out an arm to hold him back.
"It's fine. Just leave him alone."
"What, are you defending him or something? You just saw him, that stain tried to hit me!"
He looked back over his shoulder to address the taller student, and Lena saw his face for the first time. Her first thought was of ice. The deep blue ice of a long-frozen lake or a mountainside in the dead of January. That was him, and not just in his appearance. It went deeper than that. Smooth skin hardened for his age, as if weatherworn. A sharp chin and cheekbones and a flat line of a mouth that seemed to have never once smiled, and frigid silver eyes speckled with dots of pure crimson at the corners, like splattered blood.
Nero jumped a step back in shock.
"You're a Half, aren't you?" he said. His gaze flickered to the other student's eyes before he turned to the air over his shoulder instead. He spoke without any warmth at all, any traces of camaraderie sliced from his voice in an instant. "No wonder you're protecting him. Freaks have to stick together, don't they?"
Half was a slur that referred to one of the old theories from before Rei came to the Republic. It was said that Alba who had half a percent of color in their genes were still considered human. Sometimes even pure-bred Alba possessed rogue strands of non-silver hair or flecks of it in the eyes, or were born with their skin a shade darker than it should have been. Lena had known a classmate with a half-percent of color when she was much younger. The poor girl became the school pariah, bullied relentlessly by almost everyone.
"Look," Nero said, and once again opened his palms in a gesture of magnanimity. "Little shit probably would have hit me and gotten his filthy colored mitts all over my uniform if you didn't stop him, so if you wanna go, I'll let you off. But I'm kinda pissed off right now, and I'm going to fuck that kid up. I'll do the same to you if you don't get out of my way."
The red-eyed Alba replied only with an even glare.
"I warned you."
Nero was a hightower stacked with sheafs of well-trained muscle from years on the foot-ball field. Lena caught a twitch in his shoulder. It was all the sign he gave before launching an explosive point-blank uppercut.
Which the red-eyed Alba dodged with one tilt of the head.
Nero swung out again with a haymaker cross. He ducked. He tried to grapple him, meaty hand closing on the leaner boy's forearm before he slipped out without trouble, weaving aside again when Nero whirled back on him. He swayed back from a flickering jab, one then another, casual as could be. If his face was ice, his movements were water; fluidity and grace and effortless ease. Lena had seen close-combat before. Iron Mike had made a point of teaching knife courses, and some of her comrades (Lucius) had taken to them with more zeal than was healthy. But none of them could have matched this show of pure dexterity.
Lena glanced around. A crowd had formed and Nero was thoroughly aware of it. His face already glowed cherry-red with embarrassment and flustered rage, but the shade only deepened with every strike he missed. The other boy didn't even look exerted.
And the Jade boy behind them was gone.
Had he just walked off? She didn't think so. He didn't seem the type to just walk away in a situation like this, so she scanned her surroundings, trying to pick out his blond hair from the silver of the crowd. He wasn't there, nor was he by the tree, or at any of the other tables. Then she heard the shrill cry of a whistle being blown and turned to see two campus police officers in white dress shirts sprinting toward the commotion.
When she turned back, she saw him. He had taken cover around the outside corner of the cafe, leaning out over the wall. There was a stone in his hand. He wound back his arm and threw it.
The rock slammed into the foot-ball player's temple with perfect accuracy. Nero gave a high, choked-off cry and staggered to the left, falling to one knee. He grabbed at the injury and his hand came away bloody. He looked between the red on his fingers and the red-eyed Alba, and lastly noticed the spattered rock lying at his feet, evidently having realized it was no punch that did that to him.
The campus police pushed through the crowd.
"Stop! Stop! Both of you!"
Nero, perhaps stunned into obedience, held still. The other student hadn't moved in the first place.
"Did you hit this student?" The officer demanded of the Alba, voice inflecting an octave higher when he noticed the red flecks in his eyes. "Did you?!"
The student glanced down at the rock the officers had apparently failed to notice. He looked back up again.
"Yes. I did," he lied.
Lena looked back at the Jade boy around the corner of the cafe. He had stepped halfway out, about to show himself, but stopped. Nero meanwhile, said nothing. Maybe it would be too shameful to admit he'd been taken down by a Colorata.
"Is this true?" the officer asked him.
Nero nodded.
It was all the confirmation they needed. The other officer took the red-eyed boy's hands roughly and twisted them behind his back, though his face didn't so much as flinch at what surely must have been a great deal of pain. He took the handcuffs off his belt and closed them around his wrists.
"You're coming with me," he said, and immediately pulled the boy behind him as he marched off. The other officer gave a nod to Nero, still fallen on his knee with a dumbstruck look on his face, before following after. The Jade boy watched from where he stood. Conflict showed clear in his expression, like he wanted to shout out and correct the lie despite the fact that it would make things far worse for him. Ultimately he did not.
A pregnant silence hung in the air for a long moment, the crowd a dozen-strong all saying nothing.
The only sounds were that of the officers dragging the boy to their patrol car.
Happy Wednesday!
Enjoy an extra chapter. I want to give a great big thank you to everyone who's been leaving reviews since the start. It always gives me a big ol' serotonin hit to see that number go up, and I absolutely love hearing y'alls thoughts and questions. If you have any, don't hesitate to ask. I like answering questions, although sometimes I have to give cagey answers for fear of spoilers.
Cya Saturday.
- Verbosity