"PUSH!" Shawn called from the driver's seat.
Jamie grunted loudly, "How far is it to the next stop?" the car rolled forward slowly.
"I couldn't tell exactly how many miles." Marin called from the other side.
Danny, the strongest of all of them, pushed from the rear.
"Two? Three?" Danny guessed.
"What?" Jamie shouted. "It's taken us this long to go fifty feet!"
"I need a break!" Marin called to Danny.
"Five minutes." He huffed and puffed himself.
Jamie sagged against the car, Marin opened the front passenger door to sit down on the bench seat.
Marin spoke after she caught her breath. "We might have to depend on the kindness of strangers."
Shawn lowered his head and shook it. "I don't remember the last time I saw a tow truck."
Marin shrugged, "Maybe it's spotty because they don't have towing cartels here, like at home?"
"Who knows." Shawn Told her.
"What's up?" Jamie asked through the open driver side window. She had gotten her breath back already.
"We need a tow." Shawn told her.
Jamie sighed, "How much is that going to cost us?"
Danny huffed and puffed, he hung off Marin's door. "Too much." He wheezed and shook his head.
Marin put her head in her hands, groaning. "Five minutes isn't long enough."
"What else would you have us do?" Danny asked her.
"Get jobs. This isn't some magical wilderness. There are jobs."
Danny shook his head, "I didn't get dragged all this way to sling burgers."
Marin shrugged, she twisted back and forth to see what Jamie and Shawn thought.
Jamie looked horrified, "I'd rather go back to finals."
Shawn still had his forehead leaning on the steering wheel. "We gotta eat." He turned his head enough to look at Marin. "How many more motels can we stay in until we're tapped out?"
Marin looked at Danny, he had most of the money. But she knew how much they had collectively. "Not enough."
Shawn sighed.
"What about hiring out for magic, Marin?"
Marin brought her legs into the car, so she would not have to twist all the way to look at her. "Not many calls to set things on fire. or freeze them, in a world with electricity and walk-in freezers."
"But you have healing magic. And you can teach us!"
Marin shook her head, "Materia, materials to equip it to use the things, a dry bed to night, food, repair the car. Pick two for the next week and we all get jobs anyway." she sighed, "Besides. It's healing, that sort of thing is best pay-what-you-can. Even if that helps people more than it helps us."
"Found your honor Marin?" Danny asked her quietly.
Marin looked at him, she kinda had.
"What was that Danny?" Jamie asked from the other side of the car.
"It's easing pain and suffering. Sometimes the people who need it most don't have a means to pay. Charge the rich a lot and the poor next-to-nothing. But charge something because we still need to eat." Marin explained her plan to Jamie.
Marin didn't have the discipline for med school, or blood that wasn't hers. She knew she didn't have what that took to be a doctor. She still liked being the healer in video games. Acting like a Hospitaler knight, that sort of generosity could starve them, if they all didn't get regular jobs.
Even with the coward that she was, it was the one thing she could ask herself to do, charge on a sliding scale. IF she could find the work, and in a way she hoped she wouldn't
"Car!" Jamie yelled.
Danny went to flag them down, Jamie joined him.
The pick up truck, which they didn't recognize from the town they had run from, slowed down.
"You guys okay?" the driver asked from the middle of the road.
"Thank goodness." Marin whispered.
"Nope." Danny said.
A voice floated out from behind the driver. "Carl, those look like bullet holes."
They said something else, but the other voice had already been on the edge of what Marin could hear.
Jamie started to explain. "We got attacked by a-"
Marin jumped on top of her girlfriend "It was a pack of Nibel wolves. We scared em off, but." She shrugged. "We missed a few of the wolves and hit the car." She had seen one at the edge of the hills, watching the road. It was a wonder she had remembered the type that lived in the area.
"What, that's some trouble!" Carl said. "Any of you hurt?"
Marin waved it away, "Not with me around."
"Don't be rude, Marin." Danny told her. Now that Main had filled in Danny's knowledge gap, he played to his strength "We haven't even introduced ourselves. I'm Danny."
The man nodded, "Carl."
"I'm Marin."
The other man leaned forward so he could be heard. "Steve."
Jamie had come around the front of the car. "Hi?"
"Jamie, this is Carl and Steve. Carl, and Steve, Jamie."
Carl asked, "And him?"
Shawn was rubbing the spot in his forehead that had been pressing against the wheel.
"That's Shawn." Danny told him, "Say hi Shawn."
Shawn only waved from the car.
"Well, now that that's over. Where are you folks headed?"
"Nibelheim," Danny said.
Shawn mumbled the same.
"The next town." Marin said, right on top of him.
Marin kept her gaze on Carl, she could see Danny glance at her in the corner of her eye.
"I see." Carl said it in a tone that could have been suspicious, or not.
Marin shook her head. "Some road-trip, am I right?"
Carl looked to each of them in turn. Steve was too much in shadow and behind Carl for Marin to be able to tell how he was looking at them. "Well, you all certainly look young and foolish enough to try that around here."
"Hey!" Jamie complained. She hated being called young, she could pass for a few years younger than she was, she hated it.
Shawn took after his sister, he barely looked older than Marin, but he was twenty-seven.
Marin waved it off, "No, we're stupid enough to break the car down around here."
Carl leaned out of his window, amused. "When was the last time you changed the oil?" He laughed.
Danny gave him a confused look. "Change it? We just got this car a few days ago..."
Carl laughed. Even Steve could be heard to chuckle. The two of them might be old enough to be parents to all of them but Shawn. And Shawn's fresh face could let him pass as their kid, if the skin tones only matched.
"Called it," Steve shouted from deeper in the truck.
"Well, we're not going into Nibelheim. But we can give you a lift a ways.
Marin looked at Danny and Danny looked back. He wouldn't want to leave the car. "We can't split up Danny," she whispered. "It's too dangerous for any of us around here."
"What if we can't get back here?" He asked her.
Marin shrugged.
"Can you get that over to the side of the road?" Carl called from behind Danny.
"We need a minute." Danny told him.
"We're going to need more than a minute." Marin said.
With some nudging from the truck, and Steve hopping out to have two people on either side, they were able to push the car over to the shoulder of the highway in no time.
Marin pulled out a page in her notebook, writing down something for anyone who found the car. That it was Danny's car and that they would be back soon as soon as they got a tow.
She hoped it wouldn't look abandoned.
The two Mako battery cells were dry, so Danny left them. He passed the guns between everyone. Pistols between Jamie and Shawn, the two rifles for Marin and Danny. Their bullets were getting low from Danny teaching them all. But Shawn and Jamie knew enough now to not be a danger to anyone around them. Their accuracy was a different issue.
"Don't unload." Carl warned him. "Just yet."
They were all in the back of the pick up truck and off to the next rest station in no time.
Once Carl was driving them away, Marin watched a Nibel wolf turn away from the road and disappear into the rocks. If there was one, the rest of their pack would be nearby, wolves were the same everywhere it seemed. Though these ones had a nastier bite.
Carl stopping his truck for them could not have been better timed.
Marin rubbed her eyes as her, Shawn and Jamie sat around their dinner. Danny was negotiating the tow with Carl and the lone mechanic. Her repair shop was built out of the side of the Diner they sat in.
"This is not the area for us to try monster hunting." Marin tried to explain to the others, between bites of greasy-spoon diner food.
"But we have weapons." Jamie said.
"Teach me magic." Shawn pleaded.
Marin took a couple more fries, to give her time to consider. "Have you ever held a gun before."
"Before today?" Shawn asked her, "No."
"Wolves are not empty cans." she tapped her right foot. "Did Jamie tel you about my hospital trip a couple years ago?"
Shawn shook his head.
"OK, well, I still have the scars. They were only two dogs. And they ripped me apart."
"That's not fair," Jamie told her. "Everything is different now. You have magic."
"Yes, Jamie, I have magic. But the wolf watching our car was no dog."
"What wolf?" Shawn asked.
Marin shook her head, putting her next fry back down. "And Nibel wolves aren't just wolves. Shawn, you should know that, and how there are more than just those wolves around here." She grabbed too many fries this time. Cramming them in her mouth. She was hungry after trying to move the car, they all were.
"But, Marin." Jamie pleaded. She wanted to be useful. There were no jobs at this rest stop. At least there were no regular jobs in a place this small, for three high schoolers. Or a man, in his twenties, working on a Masters degree of Earth-based-Geology.
Monster hunting, even mercenary work would have really good pay. If they had had the skills for it. Which they didn't.
Not that Marin wanted them to try. People got hurt in training for that sort of thing. Danny wasn't really a trainer. He knew so little, but he knew so much more than any of them from months of experience.
Jamie had yet to ask about the haunted look in Danny's eyes. The look that had not been there months ago. He had seen loss in the field, it had only gotten worse in K-Town. He knew the cost of even a small mistake.
Marin didn't want to watch them get hurt. It had hurt her so much just to step so hard on Shawn's foot by accident. She didn't want something or other take a bite out of Jamie. Marin wouldn't be able to take it.
The three ate in awkward silence for a while.
Marin savored her greasy fries with ketchup. Even just the taste of the burger meat. Her fear of mental illness inducing another fugue state wasn't making it taste like ash in her mouth for once. She could really enjoy the mediocre food. After the snack foods and preserves the last couple of days. Marin treasured this feast.
Jamie picked up the conversation she had dropped after the engine had died. "Are you sure we hit something back there?"
"I'm telling you, we hit something." Shawn insisted.
"Danny said the battery had run dry. Carl thinks it wasn't enough oil." Jamie suggested.
Shawn shook his head. "I swear it was something."
"But there was nothing there." Jamie told Shawn, for the second time.
Marin tuned them out.
A couple of people were already eating a late meal at the Diner. Dressed literally like low-key J-rpg protagonists, they looked like trouble. To Marin they just might be her kind of trouble.
That was mostly because they had the look of well traveled mercenaries or some sort of fighting-type. But without any markings of ShinRa, Turk or SOLDIER.
Marin remembered the nickname of the General Affairs Auditing-something division that had been in Icicle Inn now. Turks, a type of black ops. She shivered at how close she had come to one of those people, while she watched the two strangers who looked like they belonged to no organization like that.
AVALANCHE would be trouble. But there were more than two flavors of people in the world. Between ShinRa and anti-ShinRa AVALANCHE, there was a whole spectrum of people that merely wanted to live their lives in this world.
A woman with pink hair and a long, brown leather, duster, laughed quietly to the person next to her, wearing a kerchief over their head. A deeper voice mumbled back to the woman.
Jamie and Shawn continued to argue over what had or had not happened to the car.
Marin thought she saw the corner of the woman's eye, before she turned back to her neighbor, laughing again.
Marin's memory clicked into place, the pink hair, the cloth over the man's head. Marin felt like they were being laughed at. And the two strangers were just far enough and facing away enough that Marin couldn't hear them talk.
She scanned the bar, there was no sign of Ardyn among the few others there.
They were the people who had driven past their broken car, when Marin had spotted Ardyn in the back seat of their armored car.
Marin rested her elbow on the edge of the table, her chin in her palm. She watched the people at the bar of the diner. Waiting for them to notice her.
She had a hard time reigning in her anger and frustration. Frustration for Ardyn appearing. Anger for being abandoned on a highway in an area infested with monsters. Though the monsters were as natural here, as animals were on Earth. Just that even a wandering pack of wolves could have killed all of them, even well prepared for that attack.
Marin watched the two strangers.
The woman said something to the other person, she made a show of ignoring Marin. "Fahd?"
The man, with the light kerchief covering his head. He turned to face Marin's group, finding Marin's eyes last.
He looked through her in a way that made her felt appraised and judged.
Marin felt the hairs on the back of her neck, she watched his expressionless face. She looked him in his eyes. She had been found wanting. Between that and seeing Ardyn in the back of 'Fahd's' car, it made her frustrated and angry.
"Is there a problem... Miss?" Even his voice was flat, the man revealed nothing.
"Ma'am." She responded. Her stomach was doing flip flops. She wanted to put the old Marin behind her, and channel the one that had picked up a gun to defend her friends. 'Fuck it,' she thought to herself, standing to face the two strangers.
These two, even if they were goons, could get Jamie or Shawn hurt. Marin didn't want to get hurt either, she kept her anger reigned in.
"Do you have a name, ma'am?" He asked again, tone devoid of emotion.
She wanted his flat voice to put emphasis on the title, if only to read something of his tone.
"It looks like you left me at a disadvantage first." Marin told him. 'What am I doing?!' She shouted at her self in her own head. She was already full of regret. But she wasn't going to back down in the middle. She wanted to leave the remains of her dinner and run after Danny.
"Hmm?" the man looked somewhat puzzled, he didn't know what she meant.
The woman with him touched his shoulder.
"Oh, you." He surveyed the table.
"Me, us." Marin was looking at the bar, Jamie and Shawn were behind her at the table still. Shawn and Jamie's argument had faded away.
"Marin, who're they?" Jamie asked.
Marin dismissed the question with a hand wave. "Oh them? They're nobody."
The pink haired woman's lips became dangerously thin at the insult.
Marin continued, "because nobody abandons disabled drivers by the side of the road, near wolf-infested hills."
Surprising Marin, the woman laughed, once. "Ha! Looks like you didn't need any help to get here."
"There's more than wolves in those hills," the man deadpanned.
"Oh yes," Marin had found a thread to pull, "There's also the Valrons," Marin had seen on in the distance. "Or any number of other things that might trouble anyone that stops there long enough." she had a cheery tone that would be clearly sarcastic to any but the worst listeners.
"But we're okay, we all got out. We found help." She clapped her hands once, in mock celebration. "No thanks to either of you."
The look in the man's eyes shifted to something.
Marin didn't know him well enough to know to what. She assumed it was bad. She was too angry to wither, her stomach withered for her.
"Marin." Shawn touched her on the shoulder. He sounded concerned.
Marin was very concerned, for several reasons. She got up off of her chair so she could look either of the two strangers in the eye. She put her left hand loosely to her side. Not wanting to think of her materia bracelet, or draw attention to it.
"Heh." was all the older woman said. She wasn't threatened by Marin. The pink-haired woman went back to her drink.
Marin was in over her head. Her stomach wanted to betray her. But she was going to say what she wanted to say.
Leaving Marin and the other person to regard each other. The kerchiefed man took his ease on the stool, also disregarding Marin as a threat.
The feeling rankled her, even as she knew it to be true.
"What is this?" the man gestured.
Marin saw one of his eyebrows move just the littlest bit. 'What was his name?' She hadn't cared to remember in that moment.
"We're not stuck on the side of the road anymore." Marin cold see the woman roll her eyes, from behind the gaze of her friend.
A lot went through Marin's mind at once.
Roceler's words echoed in her memory, 'follow your heart.' Right now, Marin's group needed skills to survive. Skills that could get them paid.
She had been so worried about saving the world, she had not thought about things like food, accommodations, equipment for three other people. She had also thought that three thousand Gil would have been enough to last her longer than it did. Then she had met Danny, then Shawn and Jamie.
At least Danny had the car and guns to start with. Marin had just wished that people hadn't been people during a war. She didn't blame the people in that rural town for getting stirred up by a rabble-rouser. Her grandmother had told her about Marin's great-grandmother witnessing it in the big city in Japan during the War. People were people, whatever the city, country or planet.
"We still need help." Marin told him, bolder than she thought was possible.
The man spun around on his stool, to turn his back to Marin "We don't do baby-sitting jobs."
Marin leaned just a little bit forward, keeping her hands by her sides and looking as little like she wanted to cast a spell. She felt angry and desperate.
The man stopped turning, and finally showed an expression. He had a dangerous gleam in his eye as Marin leaned just a little closer to the edge of his personal space.
"I wasn't asking for a baby-sitter."
The woman snorted. It crinkled her deep crow's feet and wrinkles around her eyes, exaggerating the snort further.
"Then what are you asking for?" He asked her with that flat tone and stony face.
Marin suspected he was putting things together.
He narrowed his eyes "We're not bodyguards either."
"We're not babies, we're just young."
"Babies whine." The man told Marin.
Marin clenched her jaw. "Babies grow up."
The man snorted lightly, "That's not guaranteed."
"Then guarantee it." She looked the man in the eyes.
Teachers, mentors, instructors didn't grow on trees. They didn't exist just anywhere. Marin swallowed her fear, shoving it into her withered stomach. She took one slow breath in an attempt to calm her nerves. It gave her something to do, while they gazed at each other.
Marin felt like she was in a stare down of a duel. Maybe she was, in a fashion.
A hand came up in front of her face.
She flinched back, leaning just out of reach of the hand that now snapped it's fingers. The snap made a noise between them, had she not moved it could have touched her nose.
The pink-haired woman picked up her drink and slurped up the last of it, making an obnoxious sound as she drank the dregs of her drink with a straw.
"Well, you're not that slow." Was all he said, before looking at the woman he sat beside. "What do you think, Val?
She put her cup down, "Is someone missing?" she spun around to face Marin and the table the others sat it. "Did someone not make it after all?"
Marin felt her lips thin.
Shawn answered from behind her, "He's fine, no thanks to-"
"Sit." the man said quietly.
Marin heard someone sit loudly and quickly, Shawn.
The man turned back to Marin, his eyebrow working again. "At least he can follow orders. Why didn't you?"
"I don't blindly follow orders when I'm not in a fight."
"Oh, you're not, are you?" He asked her.
It sounded like a leading question, whatever her answer was, it was probably wrong. She she elected to not answer instead. Only fold her arms across her chest and remain standing.
"Give her some credit," Val told her friend. But with a smile like that, she could be reassuring Marin or laughing at her. "She stood up to you, remember."
"Hmm," was all he said to Val.
"So?" Marin asked him.
"And?" Was all he asked her.
"And what?" she asked him.
"And what are your accomplishments?"
"What kind?" she asked him, even she could hear the vocal fry in her own voice, she was worried about what sort of answer he wanted.
The man shrugged, "Figure it out."
Marin adjusted the Materia bracelet on her left wrist. "I've only just getting started with these." She looked behind her to Jamie and Shawn. They both looked like they were caught in the headlights.
Marin nudged towards Jamie, "She can do a standing back flip." which was true. With Jamie's feet and hands, she could do a little more than that.
"He can," she looked at Shawn. She did not even know what he was going to university for. "What can you do, Shawn?"
"I'm learning black magic." Shawn burst out. In the context of this planet, that type of magic was just things like Fira or Blizzard. Elemental spells, that didn't have a darker connotation like on Earth.
The man and Val gave him an odd look.
Marin looked back at the man on the stool, shrugging. "Magic's magic, but he already has a focus in mind."
"And the one that's not here?"
"He's handling things for us." Marin told him. "But he knows his way around guns. Good thing for the three of us, we learn fast."
"And can learn bad habits fast." Val said.
"How old is he?" the man asked her, "The fourth one."
Marin shrugged, "Old enough."
"Anything else?" He asked her. "That's not impressive when all the kids around here grow up with a gun and Materia." He twisted on his stool to face the bar. "Leave."
"But-" Marin said.
He twisted only back to Marin only far enough to look at her. "Leave us."
Marin felt both sides of her jaw clench. She promised herself she wasn't going to puke, she was going to do something worse. She twisted on her heel to face Shawn and Jamie. "I'll be out front in a minute. See you outside."
Shawn and Jamie were already halfway to putting their jackets on to leave.
Marin met them outside after using the bathroom, just to settle her nerves after talking to the man Fahd. Barely managing to keep the food down. Not to spite Fahd, but to save the Gil on buying more food.
Danny was already out front, smoking. There was no sign of the car.
Shawn and Jamie looked morose, under the awning of the front of the diner, lit by some yellow-ish green lights and a bug zapper at either side of the entrance.
"What's wrong?" Marin asked them.
"Engine seized. It's dead. The car's worth more in scrap that it is to fix." Danny told her.
Shawn and Jamie had already been told, by their faces not dropping any further.
Marin swore "well, fuck."
"Our stuff is next door in the trunk still." Danny told Marin. "But he wants it gone by morning."
Marin scuffed her boot on the ground, "So, that's it?" she asked.
"Yeah. And I made arrangements to stay here for the night." He shrugged, "Carl and Steve are long gone. They had a deadline, or they would've stayed."
That was no surprise, they had said good-bye to the three of them before giving a good word to the mechanic with Danny. Marin wondered if she would ever see them again.
Marin asked the most important question, "How do we know the mechanic isn't scumming us?"
"None of us knew how to change the oil. Carl did what he could to help us, but he's gone now. We'd never know if the mechanic was scumming any of us."
Marin shot Danny a look. "I know how to change the oil."
"Then why didn't you say something earlier?"
"I thought you had changed the oil when you traded in for that car." Marin kept herself from shouting it out.
Danny was upset anyway. "And we drove all this way, without changing the oil?! And now we have no car!" Danny's voice filled with more heat with every word.
"That's done so rarely!" Marin shot back. "We've had that lunker for days!"
Jamie looked pained, she kept looking between Danny and Marin.
"We're supposed to be a team Marin." Danny told her, his voice getting a half-step louder.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Marin shot back, matching his volume. "I'm not part of the team because I didn't use the ONE THING I know more than you about cars?" Marin shook her head. She felt like she was vibrating all over, her heart was heavy. She was about to say something she would regret.
She spun on her heel and walked towards the back of the lot the Diner/car-shop/motel sat on.
Danny looked to be fuming and on the edge of saying something himself.
"Marin!" Jamie called.
Marin waved, "Leave me." she needed time to calm down.
Jamie started following Marin to the tables and chairs behind the few parking spots.
"Stop, Jamie."
Jamie looked hurt and rejected.
"Please. Help them." When Marin saw Jamie stop. Marin turned her back on them and looked for a seat a ways away from the group.
It was dark out, but the trees and undergrowth had been cut back from the tall fence that lined the back of the lot. There was a blinking yellow-ish bulb that lit up this back area. If anything came, she would see it. There was a lone bench and some outdoor seating she could use.
Danny, Shawn and Jamie were hardly a mumble behind her.
Marin took a few breaths to calm herself enough the she could think of anything along side her anger.
Pulling out her music notebook, she flipped to the latest song she was re-writing. With her ocarina in hand, she blew softly. Just enough she could practice playing the notes with her hands. But not so loudly that anyone faraway could hear. The thing was basically a multi-note clay whistle. Her friends might hear the notes burble. But if she played at full volume, monsters in the mountains might hear it. People that could see her by the upstairs windows would hear it then too.
She still felt the heat in her stomach and chest, her heart pumped in her ears. But her anger felt more distant now, especially as she moved onto Aerith's theme.
Grief countered the anger, at least while she tried to play, to practice playing. She would have to refine the notes, that was when she was alone next. For now she could just play the song, extra quietly.
Marin remembered the note length and rhythm. Even as she could feel the errors in the chords written so far, she kept to what she could remember.
Marin had spent too long wasting away at her mother's house, or in that tiny room in Icicle Inn. It was only her sub-par memory of melodies that helped her now. She would be put to shame by any professional, but it was enough for her. And without her books, or Internet, or videos. This recreation from memory would have to do.
Marin felt a twitch of anger in her right hand, someone approached her. Even after she had told them to leave her alone, it had been mere minutes. Her anger flared back up.
With the ocarina strung around her neck, and held carefully in hand, she twisted in her seat to face Jamie. Or Danny or Shawn, whoever it was was crossing the one line she had drawn this whole trip.
"What-" she cut herself off.
The man from inside the Diner stood there. Marin could see the others by the door, the woman with pink hair stood with them, under the greenish light.
In the light of the more-on-than-off flickering bulb. Marin could finally read something of the man's face. He had been about to say something when he closed his mouth, changing his mind.
"That is an odd thing to be playing around here, and at night."
Marin set her jaw, "Everyone has their own way of dealing with their temper."
"And you? Music?"
Marin took the neckband of the ocarina from around her neck. She started to pack it away. "So what if I get my mind off things with music?"
The man's face was nigh unreadable again. One corner of his mouth did give the slightest movement. "You mistake my question."
Marin put her notebook and instrument away. "Then what did you mean? Have a problem with my song?" Her anger was right there.
"I was merely curious as to how or who taught you to use that."
On second thought, there was no accusation or derision in the man. Marin inhaled slowly, calming down slowly. "Why does it matter?"
"Call it curiosity."
Marin chewed on the question. This didn't feel like a test, or a trial to earn respect like before. His tone was just as flat but with less judgment. Yet the whole truth would not do, not how she learned these songs or where they came from. Neither would a bold lie. Marin came up with an answer that would have to do. "I taught myself, how to play on my own. Listening to the radio, to the Television."
"And your choice of instrument?" He put a hand up, pointing to it.
Marin had scrunched up her face in anger and grief. She hoped that Roceler was OK. She doubted it. The ocarina would be a salve going forward. But the cost of getting one, Marin had felt that the price was too high. All because the thing was invented in a country that was currently at war with everyone else.
'What are the chances of that? That Wutai invented ocarinas on this planet?'
The man continued, "I only ask, because it reminds me of home. Yet your voice does not have the sound of anyone from there."
Now Marin felt confused. "But of course it doesn't sound like a song from Wutai. I was playing quietly."
"That's not..." He shook his head a couple of times. "At least you know where that came from."
His gaze flickered to the pocket that bulged with the wrapped ocarina and back to her eyes. "It's perhaps not the best time to be playing one of those nowadays."
Marin made a short noise of angry displeasure, "I don't care. Besides, I don't exactly advertise it." she couldn't afford a guitar, a piano, or fit either in her pocket. She cared, a little, if anyone heard. But as long as it didn't bring a mob on their heads, Marin was going to keep playing music for her own peace of mind. It was keeping her sane and calming her temper.
Her mind remembered something he had just said, "Wait, you said it reminds you of home? So you're-" she considered her next words, "You're not from around here, are you?"
His face didn't change, he only said, "No, I'm not."
Marin had already told him where she was from, as far as this planet was concerned. Though Marin didn't plan on sharing anything about the Dwyer's or Icicle Inn going forward. "But, the war, your people-"
He shook his head. The grief in that movement affected his voice, Marin could hear it if she couldn't hear it in the dim light. "It's over, they just don't know it yet."
Marin felt her hands tighten to fists in her lap. "You've can't just give up like that!" she hissed, keeping her voice low. "Especially someone with skills like yours." she didn't know what sort of weapon he or his friend used. But he moved like he knew how to use them. At least more than Marin did, not that that was a high bar.
His face was tense now, instead of expressionless. "Have you ever fought in a war? A battle? Been in a fight?"
Marin felt her lips thin, "I've been in some fights. But no, not war."
He grabbed at his right wrist and something made a noise she had not heard before or how to describe, followed by a puff of air. Pulling away his arm, his right hand and bicep came away all in one piece. Under a long coat sleeve and gloves, Marin hadn't noticed the stiffness of a prosthetic arm.
She let her gaze drift to the ground between them, ashamed that she had asked an amputee to continue fighting a losing war. She had been told Ayame's stories her whole life. A fraction of it had been covered in history class, the videos, the movies. It was nothing like being there. But there was a horror of war she never wanted to face herself. And so many people on Earth had been conscripted to fight, whether they wanted to or not.
Her great-grandmother had never fought. But the family had passed down what Ayame had seen, the refugees coming from Nagasaki, Japan. How everything had changed in the country going forward. The horrors of war that even the innocent civilians didn't get to choose. When innocents couldn't choose whether or not they'd have to participate horrors, suffering, or death.
This man had found a way to choose, and had left. It still felt like a betrayal of his own, even if his wound took him off the most stringent lists of conscripts. Marin didn't feel better with the thought that ShinRa didn't have nuclear power, the way the Americans did anyway. But not living in a battle for herself, made Marin feel she had no place to condemn the man taking the opportunity to leave the battlefield.
Maybe he would see it if he ever went back. But it wasn't her place to say that to him.
She only looked back up at him with tight lips.
He changed the subject, "You and your friends still need some assistance?"
"Some." was all she said. In the time line she knew, she assumed that things wouldn't change. As far as she knew, Wutai would lose their war, would surrender. Be reduced down to a single town. To appease the tourists that wanted to see a foreign, and exotic, land.
ShinRa hadn't won yet and it burned her. Wutai wasn't her home, her land, or her people. Her emotionally closed father had been reluctant to push anything on her, except the apparent shame of his Grandmother Ayame. For being part of a culture that had failed.
Marin hadn't inherited that shame, though her father had with some to spare. It hadn't been Ayame's fault. For something no one in their family had any control over. It wasn't her fault for where she had happened to be born.
What Marin did feel, was the loss. So many people had been hurt in the Wutai War, or would be. Just because they lived on an island continent that ShinRa wanted to annex for themselves.
In beating down the grief of the loss of an entire country, Marin felt her anger creep back up. Wutai was in the midst of so much loss. Even Japan had kept their cities, had rebuilt, had kept their culture even as they had accepted surrender to another country.
Marin was full of wrath. "Fuck ShinRa" she whispered.
"Mm-hmm." Fahd agreed with her.
