Chapter Twenty-Four: Berries and Convalescence
After throwing back the deep hood of his borrowed leather jacket, Casey grabbed a fistful of yellow berries off the bush before him and popped them into his mouth. Taevon had teleported him to a weird, pointed moss-covered stone that he called "The Old Anchor" in a mostly normal forest before leading the way through the edge of the trees to a huge batch of berry bushes. In the distance, across some fields, he'd seen the edge of a village. A few navy-clad villagers, with about the same complexion as Taevon, had just been leaving the berries when they approached.
"I dunno what you were so worried about, man. Dose guys looked at you funny, but the one dey really stared at was me." Man, that village was weird. I felt like I was walking past palm leaf huts on a tropical island—except their houses were wood and stone, and the forest is mostly normal, not like palm trees and whatever. I guess it's just that all the people I saw looked like Hawaiians. Well, they were all wearing that same dark blue outfit instead of flower shirts, but still.
Taevon's shaking hands, meanwhile, plucked as fast as they could; he kept dropping berries in his haste. "Among the Jior, everybody knows everybody." He spoke fast and low. "I'm eccentric and haven't been around for a while, but they've never seen you before. I'm breaking so many laws by bringing you here and feeding you the berries. If they start approaching, I'm gonna have to flee and take you with me, and hope they don't feel like trying to follow us."
Casey glanced over his shoulder in the general direction of the rustic village. "Your people don't seem violent or anything, dude."
"Keep eating the berries!" Taevon thrust his half-full basket at Casey, and scooped up another from the wooden box at their feet. "No, the Jior are not violent. But the Jior have laws, and those who break High Laws are punished with The Technology." He spoke the last two words with a hushed, horrified awe.
Casey glanced sideways at him and noticed for the first time the sheen of sweat on his companion's forehead. "What's the Technology? Some kinda torture machine?" He reached into the basket and shoved a handful of berries into his mouth, followed by another. The small sunshine-colored fruits looked a bit like tiny grapes and tasted like a mix between raspberries and blueberries.
Taevon shook his head. "I have no idea, but it's big, and only the elders, the council, are allowed to touch it. It administers whatever punishment it pleases. The last Jior who broke a High Law got turned into a human. And exiled, of course."
Rolling his eyes, Casey swallowed. "Being a human's not all that bad, bro."
"It is for her. Besides, she was too young for such harsh punishment." Taevon abruptly stopped talking, his mouth set in an unhappy line, and his fingers flew over bushes.
"How much of dis do I need to eat? I like food an' all, but this is a lot of fruit. Way more than what April usually makes me have." Casey lifted his now-heavy basket a bit.
"I don't know, so keep picking. Once both of these are full, we'll take them with us and we'll hope that's enough. If—" Taevon stiffened, then rushed over to shove Casey around the bushes.
At that moment, Casey's ears, sharpened from years of hanging out with ninjas, picked up footsteps from the path behind them. The Jior.
The pair crept toward the woods, watching through the screen of green leaves and yellow berries, but before they got there, the footsteps arrived.
"Taevon Yue'lah? Is that you? And who's that with you? Is that Myxrio?"
Taevon, his golden eyes huge, gestured to Casey to hang tight onto his basket. Then he grabbed Casey's hand, and, as the world exploded into nothing, Taevon's clammy, sweaty hand dragged Casey out of it.
Saturday, early afternoon
Raph woke as slowly as the dawn. He'd been dreaming about running down a long, long hallway that never seemed to end. As he became more conscious, he realized that there had been another dream before that: he'd been trying to find his brothers in a vast warehouse, but Foot kept jumping in front of him, picking a fight. And all of them, Raph remembered, had been wearing animal masks. Huh. Dreams are weird. I could keep reliving it for a while, but I really should try to wake up.
A while later, Raph had woken up enough to realize that he lay on a bed, that several uncomfortable things were attached to him, and that he was as weak as a toddler. Am I sick? I must've had the flu. This sure isn't my hammock. Am I in the medbay?
He gathered his strength and tried to sit up. This resulted in nothing more than a weak flop, and all the armies of dizziness swarmed into his brain. Whoa. Yep, this feels like the flu. Wow. I guess I was down for the count... I don't even remember getting sick. Raph tried to think back, but this mental exertion was a bit much effort at the moment; all he could remember was the fading dreams. He could feel their pull, so he fought more sleep by forcing himself to flip over onto his left side. It stole all his strength.
Once the dizziness and accompanying flutter of nausea had more or less settled, Raph tried to open his eyes. This too took effort. Blinding light rewarded his hard work; he closed them again. He couldn't help moaning. Ugh. I'm pathetic. I hate that.
He heard shifting and a mutter behind him. Is someone else sick too? Mikey or Leo? Oh, man, if it's Don, we're all sunk.
Rapid footsteps approached. It didn't sound like Don's gait, and it started from farther away than would fit in the Lair's small medbay.
Wait, where am I?
The footsteps stopped before him and shifting cloth indicated that the person crouched.
"Raphael?" A familiar voice spoke. "You're past the worst of it, if you managed to turn yourself over. Can you open your eyes?" The voice itself spoke in another language, but the translation came directly into Raph's left ear. 'Cause one of the techies switched the forgnathu translating thingy to earbuds instead of a speaker before our stealth mission, his brain explained. The right one must've fallen out.
That's Bren, Raph remembered. Bren the raccoon medic.
Raph forced open his eyes, and this time they stayed open long enough to adjust to the light and to focus on the masked face before him.
"There you are," Bren said, a small smile lighting his fuzzy face. "I'm so glad you pulled through, Raphael. It was a near thing—I've never seen an alemnea overdose so severe. Those Othila-"
He cut himself off, and his paws started checking over the medical equipment attached to his patient. He removed most of them, including the oxygen mask Raph hadn't even noticed. What did that drug do to me, that I had to be on oxygen? This, however, required Bren to lift Raph's head for a moment, and the process made Raph's eyes cross with dizziness for a moment.
Maybe I should be glad I'm stuck in a strange cartoon land with a civil war, and that my brothers aren't seeing me like this, Raph thought as the room spun in lazy circles around him.
When he had more or less recovered, he tried to ask a question, but it came out as a grunt.
Bren paused in putting away a dinged and mysterious medical tool. "Do you remember taking Ausla and Grek on a mission into the southeast Othila base? That was two nights ago. Ausla says they got most of the information they needed, but the Othila whose computer you used woke up and tried to make a break for it, and in the fight, the base's old fire alarm got bumped, and you had to evacuate. They said you saved them, but you got trapped inside. We don't know what happened after that, except that I'm sure you put up a good fight before you were caught. When you were caught, apparently the Othila were so angry at the damage you'd done that they gave you alemnea. A lot of alemnea. By how much was in your bloodstream—and still is—they didn't stop giving it to you."
Raph could tell that the medic strove to remain calm, but his fingers were clenched tight around the tool.
Apparently this drug is pretty bad stuff. And here I thought it just put the birds to sleep. He managed another grunt, this one a little louder.
Bren sighed. He relinquished the tool into the cupboard, pulled up a stool to sit on, and rubbed his paws on his face. "In small doses, it's not too bad," he said finally. "It does what the Othila want it to do—makes their enemies either relaxed and unaware or unconscious, depending on the amount and duration of exposure. Aftereffects aren't too bad in those cases, although there can be some withdrawal. But in large or extended doses, the body is already unconscious, so it continues to relax—including important things like breathing and pumping blood." He raised his face from his paws, his eyes flashing. "Ultimately, it can kill. And here we Deutsu like to think we're better than the humans."
Raph's heart skipped a beat. Oh. So, I almost died. Bren saved my life.
He tried to speak, and Bren jumped up. "Pause a moment." He helped Raph flip back onto his back, then pumped a crank under the head of the cot, which reluctantly tilted Raph's upper half up, squeaking and protesting. Shell, stop moving, room.
While Raph clung to the sheets underneath his hands and waited for the world to still again, Bren poured a glass of water.
Once Raph had recovered, the medic tilted the glass and let just a trickle slide down his patient's throat. It took a while to drink the whole glass, but Bren was nothing but patient.
Finally, Bren set the glass down and Raph tried again.
"Th-thank ya." His voice sounded he'd been gargling with sand. "For savin'…"
Bren's face lightened. "I'm just a humble medic. I did my best to save the ally of the Da'an… and a new friend," he added softly.
Well, I might be stuck here, but at least I've got a friend.
The raccoon stood. "Speaking of new, last night your brother's messenger arrived. She said she arrived the night your family was captured, and she came to bring you back to him."