"5th District, Solis Novem," Western Theater
May 3rd, Stellar Year 2146
Grethe was going to be displeased with him.
Shin ran a concerned hand through his bleached-silver hair. He took stock of his situation and came to the conclusion that on the whole, things were pretty bad. He sat on a stiff cot on the wrong side of a set of bars, taunted by the blue sky through his too-narrow-to-fit-through window and by the voices of the campus policemen, audible to his sharpened ears even three rooms down. They were in the process of figuring out what to do with him.
"He's still an Alba though, isn't he? We can't just expel him, we'll get in trouble."
"But he's a Half. He's just as bad as a stain - at least they're honest about what they are. Actually, he might even be worse, sullying our silver with those freakish red specks."
"Well, sure, but his parents could be proper Alba. They'll raise a fuss."
"Hmm…"
In the briefing, Grethe had made it explicitly clear that his only objectives were to get a lay of the land: to figure out the state of the Republic, to get a feel for its internal politics and the kind of society it truly was. Unlike his role six years prior, this time there was no critical piece of intel he needed to hunt for or people to assassinate. Until they had some basic information, these kinds of objectives were beyond them in the first place. So he was told to take it easy. Told very emphatically to take it easy.
"This is long-term stuff here, Shin. You need a build a place for yourself. It's not like what the Nouzens had you do, bouncing from base to base like a hot potato and expecting you to blow stuff up at every step. You need to settle in for something long-term. So no theatrics, okay? No fights, no drama, no trouble."
So much for that.
When it came time to getting his paperwork settled, they'd worked with the Processors of Shiden's squadron (colorful characters, that lot. His favorite was their Captain, a small black-haired girl named Kaie, mostly because she was laid back and Not Insane; a welcome contrast to the majority of his acquaintances), as they had connections behind the Gran Mur. Grethe went so far as to enroll him in the Academy's social studies branch, known as Scroll, so he would have absolutely zero chance of being put into combat again.
And then less than two days into his time on campus, he'd gotten himself thrown into a jail cell.
"But if we don't do anything, the dean's gonna chew us out. He punched the star of the foot-ball team. That Nero kid's got a really prestigious family, too."
"I've got an idea. What if we made him transfer into Sword?"
"Oh, you brilliant man."
"Yeah, it should satisfy the dean, and if the Half's parents complain, we'll mention that the only other option was expulsion."
"It's fitting too. The freak's practically a stain himself. He'll be right at home with all the others."
Shin listened to their voices without expression, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, fingers curled together. Yeah. Grethe was definitely gonna be mad at him.
She would tell him he'd gotten himself involved when he shouldn't have. That the blond kid wasn't his responsibility, and if the kid wanted to pick a fight with an Alba and get himself expelled, it was his own prerogative.
But according to everything Shin had been told, expulsion didn't mean going home for Colorata; it meant death. They didn't have homes to go back to in the first place. Colorata who were enrolled in the Academy were already soldiers by default. If they then dropped out of it, or were expelled, their military requirements would remain, and they would be immediately deployed outside the Gran Mur to fight, and in all likelihood, die. Those still in the Academy could still be deployed, but he was told it was a rare event at best.
At least while there were still 'resistant' 86 outside the walls to do the fighting for them.
Shin had seen enough death in his day. Caused enough of it to never sleep another full night's rest ever again. Maybe killing was all he was good for, but if he could have the chance to save a life instead, no matter how poorly that suit fit on him, he'd do his best to take it. And so he had, at cost to the mission.
"Goddamn freak, making so much work for us. You'd think a lifetime of living with those disturbing eyes should have taught him his place by now."
"It's the pig blood in him. Makes him stubborn, slow to learn."
"Ha. True. Well, hopefully spending some time among his own kind will help him catch up."
Laughter followed.
It hadn't been anyone's choice for Shin's silver color-contacts to let traces of his natural red shine through. It was his Pyrope blood, Grethe had explained. It ran strong in his veins, as it had in his mother and brother, to the point that his irises weren't merely colored crimson, but carried their own faint inner glow. Enough that the red would shine through his contacts at certain places.
That had nearly been enough to derail the mission then and there, until Kaie had remembered a fact someone shared with her a long time ago.
"I think there's a certain amount of tolerance for that sort of thing. Less than half a percent of color, or something like that… we used to have a friend in the Republic who would share that kinda stuff with us."
"Used to?" Grethe asked.
"Yeah. A good kid. Believed really strongly in doing the right thing. But she sided with Rei when everything went down, so we had to cut her loose. Hope she's doing okay, though."
"What's her name? An inside contact could work wonders for us, and we don't have to connect her back to you if you don't-"
Kaie shook her head firmly, cutting her off. "I'm afraid I don't really know you all that well yet, Wenzel-san. And I like that girl a lot, even if we're on opposite sides now. So until I know you won't hurt her or interrogate her or something, I can't tell you."
A momentary pause was all Grethe gave to show her disappointment.
"I understand."
Footsteps echoed from down the hall, the heavy, stomping clobber of men with too much weight and too little balance. The two campus policemen stepped into view. One took the opportunity to wrap his hands around the bars of Shin's cell and lean up against it, almost pressing his face through the gap to leer at him. The other glowered from a healthy distance.
"William Lowell?" the latter asked. His buddy seemed intent on communicating with facial expressions only, to great comedic effect.
"Call me Will, please," Shin said.
"William, we have a very strict no-violence policy on campus, and given that you've injured a student to the point of hospitalization, that means we are forced to enact stern disciplinary measures both for the sake of the injured party, as well as your own, because unpunished misdemeanors are a breeding ground for future…"
What followed was a lecture whose length and monotony would have made even Kiriya balk, covering all the great buzzwords and key phrases such as 'stability,' 'tradition,' 'maintaining peace and order,' and so on. In the end it came down to what Shin had already heard from their conversation earlier: a final choice between expulsion, or immediate transfer into the Sword branch.
Given that the first would mean an instant end to the mission - and probably being humiliated by Kiriya and Grethe for doing so - he was left with little choice.
—
"So this here's your barracks - er, dorm, I guess I should call it. It's not great, I know, and you're probably used to having your own room, but this is all they'll give us."
Shin's guide was a tall Eisen boy with iron-colored hair and dark green eyes, distinct scars crossing his left cheek and right eyebrow. His name was Raiden, and he reminded Shin of a younger, less uptight Kiriya. His barracks was a tight room that looked like it should have fit two people at most, but was somehow packed stem-to-stern with six cheap pipe-frame beds.
"Don't worry," Shin said. "I'm used to sleeping rough. This is nothing."
Raiden glanced at him from the corner of his eye, to the bleached silver of his hair and then his eyes, red-speckled silver. "That so?" he said, and not disbelievingly.
Raiden carried on, bringing him to the Squadron's common room, a space about the size of a modest cafeteria, furnished mainly with couches and coffee tables that would have sat perfectly at home in the living room of a long-abandoned house. There was an old billiards table that looked to have been either passed down second-hand or scavenged from a derelict somewhere, a darts board and a three-shelf library, and a home-theater put together from a great roll of canvas sitting opposite a huge, decades-old projector.
Shin, who'd had exactly one day to acquaint himself with the student commons of Sagacity Hall, the home of Solis Novem's Scroll branch, had been expecting something much more modern. The chairs alone in Sagacity had been downright futuristic.
"There's actually a pretty huge flat-screen TV behind that canvas. They swapped out all our fancy furniture and whatnot for these old secondhand things nobody else wanted, but they left us the TV."
Another student on one of the couches, a boy about his age with straw-yellow hair and clear blue eyes, chimed in. "We learned pretty quick that the only reason they left it for us was so they could blast rhetoric at us whenever we were waiting around between drills. 'Glory to the five-colored flag' and all that nonsense."
"Yeah," Raiden agreed. "Couldn't even turn the thing off. It was extremely annoying. But when we realized the staff didn't do inspections - ever - we just cut the damn thing's cables. Eventually we found this old projector on one of our missions, and we've never looked back."
A third student, red-haired, brown-eyed, and warm-featured, flashed a cheerful grin from his place by the window, reading what was very clearly a racy manga with a half-naked schoolgirl on the cover.
"The projector's way better than anything the Repubic could have given us anyway. It's got a disc drive that takes DVDs, and we've got more of those than we'll ever live long enough to watch. Rambo 3 beats government propaganda any day of the week."
The other student laughed, and Raiden grinned.
"Daiya, and Haruto," Raiden said, pointing to both. Daiya smiled and Haruto gave a thumbs up.
"I'm Will," Shin said. "Nice to meet you."
"Likewise, Will," said Daiya.
"Yep," said Haruto. "Hey, is it true that they sent you here 'cause you punched that asshole foot-ball player in the face?"
Not even a day had passed since he was taken in by the campus police. News traveled fast, apparently. Shin wondered for a moment if he should tell the truth or not, if doing so might somehow implicate the green-eyed blond boy and get him in trouble again.
Raiden evidently took his silence for hesitation and stepped in on his behalf. He really was like Kiriya. "Hey now, lay off the questions for the time being. Let the newbie get his bearings before you interrogate him six ways til Sunday."
"Sure, sure," Haruto said amiably. "Your wish is my command, Captain Shuga."
"Smartass."
"You're a Captain?" Shin asked. "Aren't all students Privates until they graduate?"
"Yeah, no, I'm not actually any kind of officer. We're all the same rank. But the Republic doesn't organize us in any way. They put us in Squadrons, but don't tell us what that's actually supposed to mean. And things get chaotic if there's no one to keep these idiots in line-"
From behind Raiden's back, Haruto pointed enthusiastically at himself with both thumbs, mouthing out, 'he means me!' with great happiness. Daiya also pointed at Haruto.
"-so we elect our own leaders, form our own squads, that sort of thing. I lead Spearhead Squadron. There's some Alba guy who leads Glaive, and Longsword gets run by committee."
"Most of us chose to stick with the same squadmates we knew before we came here," Daiya explained. "Most Squadrons in the 86th District make the choice together. Either everyone goes to the wall, or no one does, you know? And since we can choose the schools we wanna go to, we tend to stick together."
"I should have run away," Haruto said. "I hate all of you."
"Love you too Haru," Raiden replied, grinning. "Anyway, that's enough of this place. C'mon, lemme show you the cool stuff."
—
Theo hadn't meant to stalk the new guy on his introductory tour.
Honest.
People just weren't interesting enough for him to waste his time on something that trivial. Even people who did inexplicable things for inexplicable reasons, like getting in his way when he was finally about to show a particularly shitty asshole a piece of his mind, then getting into an argument with said asshole seemingly on Theo's behalf, and then taking the blame for a punch (or rock, in this case) he didn't throw.
The new guy was just an Alba like any other, of course. Maybe one with a little more self-righteousness than normal, and probably a lot less common sense, but still an Alba. Maybe he had eyes that set him apart from the other white pigs, and maybe the other white pigs treated him like he wasn't one of their kind because of it, but a pig was still a pig, right?
That was a rhetorical question. Of course it was. The answer was a foregone conclusion, no thought needed whatsoever. A pig was a pig was a pig, and a pig with red in the eyes gave the exact same oink. And all the times he'd found himself in the same rooms as William Lowell while he followed along with Raiden's tour (which Raiden did for every new recruit, so definitely nothing special there), well, those were pure coincidence.
While Will was being shown the dorms, Theo had been in the hallway just outside to do some last-minute cleaning. You know, to make up for that time he had to ask Anju to do it for him. And who didn't like to spend time in the common room every now and then, sketching quietly in a corner, hidden conveniently by some bookshelves? Privacy was a good thing, wasn't it?
And when Raiden and the new guy went off to the shooting range, Theo had also just so happened to feel the urge to put some lead downrange, despite the headache he tended to develop every time he had to deal with the Alba requisition officers in charge of the armory.
But there was a hidden blessing in that: the four cruel-eyed, sour-voiced, silver-haired officers never failed to demand as much as they possibly could from him before they would hand him so much as a single box of 9mm. ("-sign this form here, and this, and this, and… this. Now I need to perform a sobriety test to make sure you're in able condition. Also, we will be patting you down as you leave-") This provided a much-needed reminder that yes, every Alba was the same. It was just a matter of time before the new recruit would show his true colors.
The fact that he didn't seem to do so when Kurena shouted him down in the middle of the range was only slightly worrying.
"Really, Raiden? You're gonna let him join our Squadron!? Why don't you send him to Glaive. There's already a few of his kind there, he'll fit right in."
"Kurena!"
"What! You know I'm right! It's bad enough having to share the same Hall as the same bastards who-" she bit her tongue to cut off whatever she was about to say, then stomped her foot to fill silence.
She was a short-statured girl, round-faced and doe-eyed, so it was hard not to see the gesture as childish. But her anger definitely wasn't. That was rage born from experience. Theo would know.
"It's bad enough to have to share the Hall with those white pigs in the other Squadron. But now you want us to work together? Fight together?"
"Yes, I do," Raiden said firmly. His scarred face was set with a hard frown. Theo recognized it as his Captain Face. "If the Republic is going to make an effort to balance things out with us, then we have to do the same. Or at least meet them halfway."
Kurena's jaw dropped. Her face flushed scarlet with fury, almost matching the shade of her chestnut hair. "You can't actually believe that, Raiden. It's a sham! A fake! The Republic doesn't care about us. The white pigs will just send us to die like they always have!"
She shot an accusing glance at Will as she said it, Topaz-yellow eyes narrowed to venomous slits. The newbie seemed to pretend not to have heard anything, inspecting his 9mm pistol with a kind of detached curiosity. The Alba requisition officer who'd given it to him had a habit of looking over people's shoulders while he talked to them rather than looking them in the eye, and Theo had not missed how much less trouble Will was given compared to all the rest of them.
"Give him a chance, Kurena."
"Why should I?" she shot back stubbornly.
The characteristic rat-tat-click of a magazine locking into place drew both their eyes back to the new recruit. He had loaded his pistol. Theo, standing in his own lane at just the right angle to see but not be seen, pretended not to watch.
"What if I prove it to you? That I can be useful in a fight." Will said, glancing back to meet her eyes for the first time. "Raiden says you're a pretty good shot. How about a contest?"
Kurena seemed taken aback for a moment. Then she hissed. Like a cat.
"It won't prove anything. You'll still be a white pig."
"Does that mean you won't?"
"I don't do pointless things."
Will shrugged. "Well, if you're afraid to lose, then it can't be helped."
"I'm not afraid!" she shouted, because Kurena was very easy to manipulate in situations like these. "Fine! If you want to get beaten so badly!"
So they set up targets at ten yards, and said whoever got the most hits closest to center would win. When they took their shots, both fired so quickly it sounded like they had machine-guns in their hands instead of semi-auto pistols, and when the smoke cleared Theo saw that both paper targets had been punched clear through the center with a thumb-sized group, fifteen bullet holes all touching one another.
"Hmph! Doesn't mean anything!" Kurena huffed.
So they set up at fifteen yards instead, about the distance where the bullseye on the paper got completely blotted out by the pistol's front sight, and when the whole target could be blocked from sight just by sticking out a hand. And they fired again, no slower than before despite the increased distance, and when they reeled the targets back to their lanes, they saw the exact same result: two pinpoint accurate fifteen-round groups.
So they went to twenty, then twenty-five, and then they went to the outdoor range to try their hand at forty, then fifty, and by then they'd gathered an audience of Sword students, all crowding around the two shooters.
"Get him Kurena! Show him you're not our Gunslinger for nothing!"
"You got this newbie!"
"Fifteen on the Alba!"
"Twenty on the shortstack!"
"Hey, that's rude!" Kurena shouted.
"Sorry."
By the time each had finished reloading their magazines the noise of the crowd had fallen to anticipatory silence. The sky was overcast today, and yet Theo could see a sheen of sweat on Kurena's forehead, the building pressure in her Topaz eyes as she regarded the target. At this point Theo had abandoned the hiding spot in his shooter's lane (his pistol had sat completely unused the entire time) to join the crowd, watching openly now. He could read the words Kurena mouthed beneath her breath. Don't panic. Don't choke. Don't panic. Don't choke.
Will's face, by contrast, was unreadable. Or maybe he always looked dead inside; through all his time spent not-stalking him today, Theo had yet to see him crack a smile or a sneer or really any expression other than a slightly placid, barely-there frown.
At fifty yards, the targets were only barely visible, just dots of white in the distance. If anyone could manage to hit the paper at all with a handgun it would be impressive, but Theo had a feeling neither shooter would settle for just that. Kurena held her pistol above her chest, muzzle angled down. She focused on that pinprick of a target and stared unblinkingly. Her muttered words fell silent, giving way to a gentle, unbroken rhythm of breaths in and breaths out, each so slight a sound it could barely be heard. A bead of sweat rolled down her forehead, curved around her eye, but she didn't wipe it away. She likely didn't notice in the first place. She was in the zone.
The newbie fired first.
One shot. A pause. Then another, and again, and again, the lengths between each thunderous crash so measured and precise Theo believed if he'd started a timer between each round the same number would appear each time, right down to the second decimal. And when fifteen rounds were fired, he put the pistol down and pressed the button on his console to reel back his target, sliding on a rail back to his lane.
Out of those fifteen shots, thirteen hit the center-circle. The bullet holes didn't touch - that would have been nearly impossible at this range, and the grouping was about the width of two hands side-by-side. Only two rounds had flown off even a little, one hole about five inches above the rest, another three below. All in all, it was incredibly impressive. Theo would have felt good to land a group that good at twenty yards, let alone fifty.
Kurena didn't so much as glance at her competitor. She didn't seem to mind the whoops and hollers of the crowd either, the excited shouts from everyone who'd placed their bets on the new recruit and the disappointed groans of those who hadn't. Kurena didn't seem to notice the noise at all. Her eyes were practically glazed over with the strength of her focus. She was dead to all the world except her gun, her hand, and her target.
Silence again. At last, Kurena raised her gun and took aim, and Theo swore he could hear the sound of two dozen eyeballs sliding over to watch. Kurena brought up the sights, adjusted her hand on the grip, finger settling on the trigger.
She fired. It was the same staccato rhythm as the newbie, one shot then a pause, then again until her gun was empty, slide locked back, curls of cordite smoke wisping off the barrel and chamber. Her eyes were still dead-focused on the target. She set her gun down without shifting her glance, hit the switch on her console without blinking, and waited for the target to reel back to her. And for ten long seconds there was no sound at all but the metal-mechanical slide of that steel rail.
Perfection.
Her work could be described as nothing less, fifteen holes within an inch of one another, all dead-center on the bullseye. Kurena stared at the paper for a moment. Then she grinned. Grinned so hard eyes squeezed closed, pushed upward from below by the force of it.
"YEAH!" she screamed. "HELL YEAH! HEY!" She whirled back on Will with that same radiant grin, eyes sparkling. "LOOK! LOOK HOW GOOD I DID! UP HIGH!" She raised her palm as high above her head as her short arms could bring them.
And Will smiled back, an unbelievably warm smile that flashed white teeth and took the ice from his silver eyes and the sharpness of his expression and made his face into something altogether different. And he hooked back his hand and slapped her palm in a high-five so crisp it echoed across the whole range.
"That was great," he said. "You won!"
Kurena said nothing for a moment. She was staring at his smile, a flush burning across her cheeks. Then she realized it and whipped her head sharply to the left. "Um, uh, yeah! Heh, h-hell yeah I did!" she blustered. "That uh, th-that'll show you!"
"Yeah," he agreed, and though his voice was as flat as could be, his smile showed unmistakable sincerity.
"You sure did."
—
It was like putting on an old glove.
The thought crossed Shin's mind as he took a seat in a small room furnished with a couple armchairs and a small table. He figured it was probably some kind of study space from before Aegis Hall was repurposed into a military base, albeit one that masqueraded as a college dorm. He chose the room because it was empty, and because he was tired. So tired that as soon as his back hit the plushness of the chair all his muscles unwound at once. It felt like he was sinking pleasantly into softness.
So pleasantly he might never want to surface again.
Maybe 'mask' would be a better word instead of glove. Either way, it still fit just fine.
William Lowell wasn't the same mask he'd worn when he was Shinei Nouzen the clan castaway, infiltrating rebel bases under the guise of a banished orphan, but it seemed like one mask felt the same as any other. It was a familiar feeling, to lie to people like this. In some ways a comforting one. In others, a disgusting one. He was sure he would get used to it, but all through the day he'd been unable to shake off the feeling of deception. Nor should he. Deception was exactly correct.
They liked him. He was sure enough of that now, and he was glad for it. It was important to be liked. It would make his job that much easier. In time, like became trust, and trust would allow him to ask many questions otherwise unavailable to him. He could only be useful in this role if he was liked. And yet he couldn't be happy about it. Because they liked William Lowell, but Will was just a puppet on Shinei Nouzen's strings. And Shin was a murderer.
At any moment, if needs must, he could do what he'd done before.
Shin buried his head in his hands.
"Maybe you don't know how to play fetch, Nouzen, but it looks like you're pretty good at dodgeball at least."
"If you won't jump on your own, I can give you a helping hand."
"You dummy. Now you're all cold. It's uncomfy."
"I'm sorry, Shin."
"I want us to be friends forever."
"Well, I love you."
It wasn't pain that stirred in his chest, prompted by memory. Pain would be too good for him. Pain would mean punishment, and punishment meant absolution. Forgiveness through flagellation. Shin deserved nothing of the sort.
You're a piece of shit. She loved you, and you killed her. The only thing she wanted was for you to be happy. Do you remember what she said?
("Please don't cry, Shin. Please. I hate it when you cry.")
And then you pulled the trigger.
You piece of shit.
Die.
Plot twist! it was Shin.
I wonder how many of you I got with that one... lol.
Two more days until my road trip. So stoked. I went to the karaoke bar last night to celebrate, and I met this 52 year old cougar named Tina, who was almost certainly on meth, because she was WIRED. Like seriously wired. Just came up to me while I was at the bar, enjoying my hot whiskey, then started rattling off her life's story to me. She was great. Kept giving me tips on my pick-up game. Also gave me her number.
And then I met this redneck, working class dude who was VERY drunk, and he said he was an empath. He said he could tell me things about myself I'd never even considered, and told me to put my palm on his. So I did, and he holds my hand for a bit, then he looks me dead in the eye, and says, "you're a good man." It was honestly a little bit touching.
For karaoke, I sang "Country Roads" (Tina put a cowboy hat on my head while I was singing, and I just wore it for the rest of the night), and "Rose Tattoo", and quite possibly broke my throat on the latter. Still feeling sore this morning. All in all, a great night.
- Verbosity