A/N:
Hey, sorry this is a little later in the day. There's still an hour of Thursday left where I'm at, so does it still count?
Over much deliberation, I've decided to change Taylor's age back to canon. I admit it was a poorly thought-out adjustment simply because it held no importance on the plot and I only changed it to reflect how I originally saw her. After publishing this I'm going to edit chapter one's notes. Sorry for the trouble.
In other news, thanks for all of your support! It's overwhelmingly cool to see how those numbers have risen since posting this story. Your support means a lot.
The wind was cold, biting, and it ripped past my ears as I tore through the forest. Any other time I'd connect the sensation to flight, perhaps enjoy the rush of freedom that followed with the air, but not now.
Along with the wind came fists of leaves and branches. I was not made for the forest. Twigs snapped under my feet and scraped against my arms and legs, whacking my torso when I didn't dodge gracefully enough. But I pushed forward.
As soon as I'd shouted, I had already been halfway to the tree line. Now I was running towards something that had Miss Militia turning tail, and it was unsurprisingly deft at carving its own path through the forest. Whatever it was, it was fast. Unbelievably so.
I had only been able to get a handful of bugs to stay on its skin. It wasn't so much its speed as it was its grace. Despite its cumbersome size it moved with a fluidity that dancers would kill for.
Hell, I'd kill for it. Forests were a bitch to run through.
From what I gathered it had four legs, was the size of a van and bare as a babe. No fur, only skin. I hurled masses of insects in front of it to block its vision, but it only reacted by barreling through. The bugs that managed to stick couldn't break skin.
My spiders were working double time, caterpillars working their own silk in as well with fliers lugging them above ground. The creature was too fast for me to tie it while it ran, so I worked on setting a trap for it a hundred yards away and approaching.
I directed a handful of fliers to Miss Militia's costume and had all of them crawl to her right side, save for one dragonfly in the middle of her forehead. It had to be uncomfortable, but to her credit she didn't swipe it away.
Back at the camp, Kid Win and Vista were currently running alongside the river. For having been dead asleep not moments before, they were as alert as if they'd been up for hours.
Remaining just where I'd left him, Clockblocker stood at the ready just outside the tree line. Ahead of him Weld ran, and I left him arrows in case he couldn't read my path of destruction. He cut through the forest in the way only a brute could do: effortlessly. I wasn't sure why I'd thought he'd need the safest path, so I corrected my arrows to a plain straight-shot. He adjusted accordingly, and I slid to a stop, nearly catapulting myself into my own trap.
I had my silk sleeves in my hands, both arms about an inch in length combined, and I added them to the rapidly growing barrier of spider silk tied between a pair of boulders. I reinforced the strings through roots underground, pulling them up into tree tops and branches. Then I retreated. It was silent, safe for my panting breaths and the light crackle of thousands of insects as they weaved under the moonlight.
A hard edge dug into my side. I belatedly unattached my mask from where it was latched on my lanyard, donned it, and waited.
Thankfully, I didn't have to wait for long.
The ground rumbled as they came into view, though I didn't risk peeking my head out of where I was hiding, baton at the ready. While I doubted I'd be able to use the baton better than Miss Militia could apply her entire arsenal, it was better than nothing. Not for the first time I wished I had my gun.
For all the gravity of the situation, I had expected something more dramatic, louder, but the only sound added to the area was Miss Militia's huffing and the pound of feet against ground.
I had the dragonfly on Miss Militia's forehead scurry to her right eyebrow, and she turned accordingly. They were only ten yards away, and I tensed.
Now!
The dragonfly zipped from her face and took a sharp left. She reacted by literally throwing herself to the side and recovering in a somersault, made more impressive by the mounted gun already formed in her grasp upon rise.
I had no time to appreciate it, though, as her pursuer collided with my wall of silk. While there wasn't much in the way of the wall, the creature's weight propelled my trap to the next stage and the hundreds of thousands of tiny silk strings placed in specific intervals counteracted the added force and adjusted by swinging forward, flipping into a hammock for a split second.
During its momentary capacitation I let loose the flurry of bugs I'd been hoarding, and every nook and cranny of the… thing was explored. Within a split second I had mapped every inch of its body, and with my own eyes I roamed its dark form by the scattered light through the treetops.
Seeing is believing, or so they say.
It was a cliché that I had nonetheless found much reliability in over the past few months. After all, there was a truth in every saying, one that formed a base sturdy enough to uphold the phrase as long as it remained in use.
Let it mean something that I believed less now than I did before.
Its skin was a marbled black streaked with the color of dried blood under streams of pulsing violets. There was no telling which way was up or down, its body shaped like an irregular, lumpy heart.
Its back legs were frog-like, jutting out of its sides like a crab's but having the characteristic adhesive disks that enabled tree frogs to climb vertical surfaces. The front legs were grotesque in their spindly points, with forearms so thin I had to wonder how they didn't break under the effort of stopping.
And upon everything else, I didn't find a single characteristic that resembled a nose or a mouth, ears or eyes or genital. For all intents and purposes, this creature had no weakness.
There was a word for beings like this. Monster.
As soon as the word entered my mind, the silk snapped along with the trees holding it in place. It dropped to the ground, hard.
Nevertheless, I carried on with my assault, backing away towards Miss Militia while my bugs ravaged it. Tried to, at least.
"Ears!" Miss Militia shouted, and then the forest ignited into a war zone. Shot after shot was fired, a jarring cacophony of fireless explosions that left my chest feeling like it was about to crush under. My hands did nothing to muffle the sound.
She switched between a number of weapons in a dizzying rotation of green, alternating between bullet and arrow, steel and filed points of stone. I could only keep track of a portion of her arsenal, but I noted she avoided anything that would give off fire.
The monster's back rippled, and then it stomped its legs about in what I'd describe as a child's tantrum. It froze, and a sense of blinding horror flooded me.
Hysteria. Despair. Ruin.
I gaped soundlessly, trying to regain my senses as pure fury rolled from it in waves. Then as sudden as the feeling grabbed hold of me, it left
In a spin, the monster neatly adjusted its grip on the standing trees till it stood 'upright', toes wrapped firmly around the trunks and front legs drooping out before its body, and faced me.
Well, shit.
This time it was Miss Militia who shot off like a rocket, a small dagger forming at her hip while I followed. I scattered my swarm into several clones and had them run off in pairs, but the monster paid them no mind. Its target was us.
A rope-like tendril, fleshy and warm wrapped around my ankle and jerked me off my feet. I must have made some sort of noise above the ringing in my ears because Miss Militia whipped out a shotgun and aimed past my leg, letting off several rounds until the grip on my leg loosened.
I scrambled to put some space between me and it, and she grabbed me by the arm and dragged till I got my feet under me. We ran wildly through the night air. I sputtered as something warm trickled from my nose, down my lips and chin. Faintly, I realized I'd broken it.
She held out her left arm before darting to the left, and I barely avoiding kissing the dirt a second time when I tried the same. I was fit, toned from months of activity, but I hadn't had the chance to practice much in the way of obstacle courses and it was showing now.
The monster followed close behind. Over my pounding heartbeat I heard the slight bend of wood as its back legs pushed off of the trees. I hadn't noticed before, but despite its speed and size there was no destruction in its wake. It was almost gentle, the way it clasped each tree in its path to twist itself through tight spaces.
We were already using that to our advantage. The path we carved lead deeper into the woods, where the trees stood a little steeper and broader. Further back the monster slowed its gait. I wouldn't call it an act of hesitance as I had trouble believing it would feel something so human, but there was definitely a pause before it continued after us.
Weld was about a minute away, following my direction while I tried to follow Miss Militia's. Her movements were erratic. She changed directions at the last second to skid low beneath a branch, digging her heel into the dirt to right herself. I bypassed that maneuver entirely and had to swing over a fallen log, rejoining her side after a moment of blindness. The lack of vision was not on my part.
It was as though every star in the sky winked out of existence. A blanket of darkness shrouded us, thick and sedated. Blinding.
Something like Brian's power? I frowned. It wasn't a cloud of shadow like his own- that would imply an additional factor. Rather, it was an absence.
The world sapped of light.
It didn't bother me in the slightest; I never thought I'd be thankful for those days spent blind, but they'd given me a full crash-course on fights in the dark. But for all of Miss Militia's experience, there wasn't much you could do to prepare for a full-fledged flight through a pitch black forest.
Without considering the potential ramifications, I grabbed her by the wrist and took lead. Heat radiated off her tense body, but she followed along, and I tugged her through the best paths I could find that would hamper the monster but allow her to keep her footing.
I wasn't sure I was doing a great job. More than once she fumbled in her steps, and if it weren't for her quick reflexes the two of us would be sprawled on the ground.
The monster remained in hot pursuit. Not as fast as before, but at the speed we were going it would catch up soon.
Absurdly, what bothered me the most was its silence. There was none of Crawler's roaring challenge or Lung's furious bellows, both of whom I could comfortably call monsters at their worst.
My foot slid on loose dirt and I hissed. The terrain was growing increasingly rough, and I had to adjust my footing several times to avoid tripping. The insects on the ground guided me, but it was a maze of turns and twists made all the more difficult by an essentially blind partner. I could lead us in the direction of Weld… But that would involve backtracking.
I was about to do just that, lose our cover but gain footing, when I registered a small burrow not far away. I redoubled my efforts, tugging Miss Militia along till we reached the mouth.
She fidgeted as if aching to run. If our positions were switched, I'd be dying to know what was going on as well. But though the monster didn't have ears and was tracking us just as well as if it did, it felt wrong to speak. Instead, I pushed her towards the hole and guided her in with my bugs and squeezed in beside her. It was a tight fit, and I wasn't certain it would work, but I shifted my swarm over us to cover the opening.
I was banking on its demonstrated care with the plants to hide from its reach. It wasn't the greatest idea I'd ever had, but our avenues were limited and our distraction was in preparation.
There was an abundance of spider nests and worms, and I covered us in them in hopes their tiny bodies would help mask whatever the monster was using to track us. Miss Militia tensed, and I suspected she was burying the instinct to shoot me in the face.
The lack of space didn't hamper the monster as much as I had hoped, but as I followed it its strides gradually died down until it stopped completely at the edge of the slope. I waited with stale air in my lungs.
The thin ropes of silk I'd placed near the dip in ground were attached to branches at least twenty yards away. Some broken trees would have to distract it going by its earlier show.
Go, go, go, I chanted.
My stomach plummeted when it simply forewent the ground, its front legs tucking beneath its belly while the back ones carried its weight through the tree tops. It climbed through the trees with the same skill it demonstrated on ground, but its distended body belied its seamless grace.
Now that I wasn't running, the smaller details were filtering in. Flesh jiggled with every step, though it didn't feel like fat. The best way I could describe it was a bowl of water, no solid matter and yet missing the liquid part. Unable to be punctured, but not fluid.
And as I took in its form, its dance through the treetops to where we were hidden away, my bugs crawled over a new shape forming from its hide.
A human face.
Buried under skin pulled tight as plastic wrap, its mouth hung ajar in a silent scream. The face rotated slightly as if it were floating in a cup of soup, and with that shift a half dozen other faces rose to the surface.
Men, women. Children. At the rise of an infant's I pulled back, breathed deep and set my swarm on them. Though the skin was tight as though fit to burst, its hide was as impenetrable as before.
Did it eat them?
I gripped my baton white-knuckled, and a large, cold metal object formed into existence between Miss Militia and I.
The monster climbed down the hill. Leaves fell like raindrops, and the creaking protests of wood carried through the trees. It was as though the world had been reduced to our small burrow and the darkness around us, the sound of wind replaced by the husks of our breath.
The creaking stopped, and the indomitable gut-reaction at something other rose.
It was above us.
A bead of sweat rolled along my spine, and I prepared to rise and launch myself when the monster recoiled. It climbed back the way it came, disappearing up the hill.
For a second I thought I'd blacked out in some stress-induced fantasy and was about to be crushed by the nightmare fodder hanging over our heads, but it had truly left. Gone, as if we had been a passing fancy that was replaced by more interesting pursuits.
We remained in the burrow long after it passed the fifty-yard mark, and only when Miss Militia shifted did I remember she was there. I exited slowly, as if the monster could form out of thin air while my bugs marked it travelling along the forest floor, and then turned to direct her out of the burrow.
She accepted my hand as long as it took for her to gain footing, then released it in favor of shouldering the bazooka she had formed while we were under. Neither of us spoke. I think we were a little beyond words at the moment.
Weld barreled his way into our neck of the forest and I relaxed, something I never thought I'd do at the arrival of another hero. He stopped at the edge of the hill, silent and assessing as his head rotated on his neck.
I almost called up to him using my voice. "We're down here," I said through a gathering of insects instead.
He tensed, and it occurred to me he probably didn't have much in the way of vision either. Nevertheless, he stepped forward as if to climb down, and I stopped him. "Wait there."
A drop of sweat slid down my brow and dropped to my collarbone, tracing the curved skin down past the jutted edge of chitin armor.
I spoke for Miss Militia's benefit, "Weld is up the hill." My voice came out nasally, clogged.
She nodded and didn't argue when I took her by the arm and lead her up the hill, carefully now that we weren't running for our lives.
I remained silent as the monster stalked out of my range. We had a lot to discuss.
The thing with adrenaline was though it gave you faster reflexes and allowed you to do what you normally couldn't, it also blurred the reality of the moment. It made situations seem more dangerous than they were, made the body tense and heart thrum in a heady argument until the person dropped or moved.
So it wasn't much of a surprise to find the return back to camp smoother than the escape from it. The ground was hardly as tangled as it felt before, and we made it back with relative ease.
Weld had refrained from speaking as we walked. There was undoubtedly a group meeting in the immediate future, so there wasn't a need to ask for the details. Still, his patience was commendable.
I occupied myself with collecting the torn shreds of my silk, noting in slight dismay that it would take me a good part of the day to weave it back into something usable. But really, I didn't have much to complain about. It was more than I had before.
The moon was a welcome sight once we finally exited the forest, and the rest of the group stirred at our arrival. Vista and Kid Win were shined in sweat, shimmering in the low light. Clockblocker sat cross-legged on the pebbled shore, muttering low to them. I could only assume he'd stayed behind as a last defense for the two invalids of the group.
He straightened as we joined them. "What happened?"
I looked to Miss Militia in turn with everyone else. Her hair was plastered to her forehead, a sheen of sweat visible on every inch of skin, and she stank of exertion. Her eyes blazed with energy withstanding.
"We're not alone out here," she said.
Kid Win shifted, his armor providing a dull clack against the pebbled ground.
"I was on patrol about half a mile out when it appeared. There was no warning, sound. Only a feeling."
"A feeling?" Weld asked. Like the rest of us he leaned forward.
"That I was being watched," she said after a moment, and continued. "It came from above, and immediately tried to pin me. It has… for lack of a better word, tendrils from all over its body as far as I can tell."
"And they're warm," I added. The group turned to me, and in the darkness I couldn't make out their faces. "Like human skin."
Miss Militia nodded. "Except it's as durable as any brute. I'd rate it an 8, at least. None of my munition penetrated it hide, barring explosives."
"So we're up against tentacles?" Clockblocker asked.
"No," Miss Militia and I answered as one. We paused a moment at the other, and a second passed where no one spoke.
"Not just tentacles," Miss Militia said. "It has legs as well. The body looked to be the size of…"
She described it in full detail to the rest while I added my own bits. I'd finally drawn a rough image out of my bugs and depicted it crawling through the trees, but I failed it recreate its graceful stride.
A snake of dreary red trailed over the horizon by the time we finished. Red sky in morning, sailor's warning, I recited. The night had fled, and though dawn approached comfort alluded me.
"There's been cases like this before," Miss Militia finished. "A trigger event gone awry, or…" It was clear whom she was referring to.
Weld sat still and straight, his face carefully blank when he answered our looks. "There are some Case 53's unfit for the field. Some are kept in captivity for their own safety and other's."
"That didn't sound like a Case 53 to me," Clockblocker interjected. His body had taken a stilted hold, as if all he was balanced on the point of a blade.
It didn't strike me as one, either. If anything, it was most similar to Echidna- Noelle. But she had had the remnants of humanity left in her. That thing-
A mural of faces pressing against flesh.
-wasn't human. Never had been.
But then where did that bring us? The Endbringers? It hadn't displayed their insatiable bloodthirst, had left when it could have pursued.
A frown tugged at my lips.
"We're not on Earth Bet anymore, are we?" It was Kid Win who broke our silence. There was no telling who the question was directed to. It might as well have been all of us, or none.
My suspicions from yesterday held nothing against the cold truth. I'd suspected it, we all had, but to hear it said out loud? Nothing could have prepared me for it.
Clockblocker placed a hand on Kid Win's shoulder.
"Let's not rule anything out until there's definitive proof," Miss Militia assured.
"What's the plan?" I cut in. We were tearing apart. The true weight of our predicament had just settled in and we needed something to ground us. "It's morning, the-"
Monster.
"-creature is out of my range, and we have ground to cover. What's the next move?"
Miss Militia fixed me with assessing eyes. "Fixing your nose."
Oh. That's right, my nose was broken. In its own twisted revenge, the pain returned full-force upon recognition and I winced, crackling dried blood.
Removing my mask was a bit surreal. I'd walked around- for how many days now? Two?- without one already, and it wasn't like they didn't already know my identity. But the act of it along with witnesses who didn't bother hiding their stares made the gesture hold a certain weight.
Miss Militia placed both hands over my nose, and without warning pressed. A hiss escaped my teeth and I saw stars. Could've warned me, I longed to say, but I bit my tongue. The surprise had helped in a way.
Turning to the rest of the group, she said, "We rest, then move."
With that, she stood, brushed herself off and left for the river. The air was still chilled with dregs of night, but she looked beyond bother. Weld didn't budge.
"How the hell are we supposed to sleep?" Clockblocker muttered under his breath. He stood and left us with the crunch of his footsteps.
Kid Win was grabbed by Vista before he could fold out his tool kit, and they left in the direction of Clockblocker to gather in a semi-huddle against the morning light. Vista passed out before any of them.
Her face nuzzled into the crook of her arm, small body curling smaller, and for just a moment I contemplated the world we lived in, came from, where a girl so young could be torn from her family and thrown into a war started before she was ever a thought. How fitting it was, that she'd be thrown into another world, too.
I rubbed my face. Damn. Exhaustion created poets.
Miss Militia finished up at the river and kept her patrol around the edges of camp. A strand of akebia was held in her hand, and she slipped bites in under her scarf with her back facing me.
As for me, I found my discarded bowlsket by the remains of our fire, laid myself in the same spot I'd woken in, and thought of another sky.
Against my mind's best efforts, my body eventually succumbed to exhaustion.
I woke with the same feel a washed t-shirt might have. Refreshed, but with the added sensation of being tossed around in a dryer with someone's old sneakers thrown in the mix. The sun hung high in mid-noon.
Vista and Miss Militia bathed down the river out of eyesight, and Clockblocker sluggishly moved through the final knots of his water filter up the bank. I didn't need my bugs to know what Kid Win was doing.
I sat up and stretched, popping my lower spine. A wade through the river was in order.
Weld stood in the middle of it, staring intently at the water below. He suddenly thrust an arm into the water, emerging with a fish speared on his sharpened finger. It joined its drying brethren on the bank where Weld began to descale them, the little flecks of silvers setting off his skin like freckles.
He nodded as I approached.
"Good morning," he greeted.
"Morning," I said. "No trouble while we were out?"
He shook his head, finishing up a fish. Its scale-less body hugged the sunlight, and I felt oddly repelled despite having seen worse. Weld whacked its head off with a deciding blow.
"None. It may be the daylight, though. I'm keeping my eyes peeled." He looked up. "Do you sense anything?"
"I'll let you know if I do."
Silence fell between us, punctuated with the light sprinkle of fish parts. Group dynamics, a whole other species of battle.
I took my leave and strolled upstream, away from the bloody bits of brunch. I didn't bother removing anything besides my mask and lanyard and dunked my whole self in, lingering long enough for pressure to build in my head.
Once it had become unbearable, I emerged for a cleansing breath that curled my lungs into fists. Today was a new day, brand spanking new which meant that anything could happen.
Good or bad, facing the sun with a spine of steel was the only way to go about it.
That turned out to by my motto for the entire day and the next as Miss Militia had us travelling down the river. On the sixth day of our wandering, the steel in my spine had turned brittle. It was no less strong, but there was an edge to it now.
My new position at Miss Militia's side, monitoring our front and back did nothing to alleviate my nerves. For all we'd wandered, civilization eluded us. The forest served as a constant reminder of our predicament on all sides. If mountains had faces, I'd imagine they would be smirking at us from over the trees.
The only difference to our surroundings was the river. The current had grown strong and rough, enough that it warranted hesitation to go more than mid-calve deep, and that measurement was shrinking with every break.
We were breaking right now, and I already had my bowlsket at the ready. I'd reinforced it over the two days and had a twin atop my head. The rest produced their own copies, admittedly better than my own.
Arts and crafts were never my thing.
We took our turns placing our bowls at the mouth of our water filter, Weld holding it in place against the current threatened to carry it away.
Soon I wouldn't be able to even walk in the water, lest Weld was willing to hold my hand. I had a feeling he would enjoy that as much as I would.
I wiped a bead of sweat out of my eye. If there was one thing I could count as a blessing, it was having no identity to protect. I was free to unmask at any point, a perk being applied full-heartedly.
Above us, the sun hung high in the late morning. Clockblocker's hand strayed to his head as if he wanted to brush his hair back.
At least his teammates had their hair exposed, including Miss Militia who had it messily braided to the side. The idea of wearing a helmet in this heat, days-old sweat built up along its edges had me almost pitying him. Then I remembered his 'reaction test' and found that I could enjoy his misery a little longer.
The heat wasn't all bad. We had walked under the cover of the trees instead of the open view of the river. But the terrain had been growing rougher, which laid out a future of digging further into the forest or testing our chances by the river in plain sight.
When it came to Vista's turn, her hands shook to the point that I feared she'd lose her bowl. Weld reached out to steady her hand, and she flinched.
The camp froze. What had been general silence was now the kind that preceded a fight. It wasn't really my place to be, having no relations to either outside of fighting, so I awkwardly focused my attention on drinking.
I didn't have to wait long for someone to move. Weld slowly released Vista's hand, a hesitant smile on his face. She didn't return it. Bowl half-filled, she got to her feet and briskly walked to the tree line.
"Vista," Clockblocker said. She didn't turn, and he started after her. "Vista."
The two disappeared into the forest, leaving the rest of us in the same batch of quiet. Weld remained in the river, one hand curled around the water filter, the other hanging at his side. Our resident tinker had abandoned his work entirely to stare off in the direction of the trees.
Miss Militia cleared her throat. "Skitter, would you mind gathering some more herbs? We're running low."
I glanced down at the 'community' basket, a larger, rougher version of Miss Militia's own bowl. It was still being made, and through its gaps I could see our supplies were definitely not running low.
I swished the water in my mouth, focusing on its curl through my teeth. With a swallow I replied, "Not at all."
Of course, I mused as I strode in the opposite direction of where Clockblocker and Vista had run off to, this meant Weld had to leave as well.
The boy in question passed me on the way.
Turned out, having someone made of metal lead the way made travel incredibly easy. He wasn't wasting his time picking through the greenery but instead tore his way through, leaving a nice little path for me to follow from afar.
While I trailed after, jogging to keep up when he tore ahead a little too far, I kept note of our surroundings. It almost physically pained me to pass up the abundance of dandelions and ostrich ferns, but I didn't stop for fear of falling back. About the equivalent of three city blocks away sat Clockblocker and Vista, and I deliberately kept from concentrating on their words. While I was curious, it wasn't my place. The bugs stayed, though.
Abruptly, Weld stopped in his tracks. Nothing was in my range to have made him stop, so this was something else. Should I approach, or wait for his action?
At his side, his fingers twitched.
It wasn't a hard choice to make. This sort of Weld was uncharted territory. I diverted my attention between watching him and scouting for any edible plants I recognized.
Once I'd settled on ripping up random plants in the hopes that Miss Militia could identify them later, he moved. I tensed, swarm massing of their own accord thankfully out of sight, but all he did was move to the nearest tree and slice its bark in thin vertical strips.
I did a double take, then: "There's poison ivy on that."
He looked up as if just noticing me. "What?"
"Poison ivy. Once the urushiol oil touches something, it can stay on the surface for up to five years."
Freshman year I did a report on a cape in the Midwest who created a substance similar to the oil poison ivy secreted. Luckily, their version had nowhere near the lasting power. Out of every other useful bit of info I had gleamed, that was that one that had stuck.
Weld dropped the strips of bark after a moment of examination. "I'm covered in it now, aren't I?"
I nodded.
"And I'll have to wash off in the river before collecting anything else to avoid contamination."
It wasn't a question, but I nodded anyway.
An unreadable expression flitted past his face. His body remained perfectly still, fingers loose in the picture of absolute calm, but something told me it was a facade.
"If it's all the same to you, I'd prefer if we didn't head back just yet," I said, voice carefully neutral. "There's plenty else out here I can collect, if you'd be fine with keeping watch."
As if I needed him to be. I already had eyes and ears within three hundred yards. If anything out of the ordinary appeared, I'd be the first to know.
He knew what I was doing, and there was a moment where the light filtering through the trees danced across his face in hand splatters. His nod sent them scattering. "Sounds great," he replied.
Okay. For lack of conversational skills, I rose and passed him, careful not to brush against his skin or the tree. My lead was plainly slower than his own, but he didn't complain and the lag didn't bother me. Remaining with the group had built up some tension in my muscles that was only now releasing, which was, needless to say, relaxing. I was still ready to bolt at any sign of danger, but at the moment I could almost trick myself into believing this was simply a walk in the woods.
Back at camp, Miss Militia and Kid Win walked alongside the river. Sections of his armor had been removed and were laid out on the pebbled ground.
"So," Weld said after we'd been walking a good few minutes. I hadn't stopped for foraging once. At first I thought he was going to call me on it, but then he said, "Would you care for some conversation?"
I spared a look over my shoulder at him while stepping over a loose rock. Absently, I delivered a handful of pine needles to my bowlsket by dragonflies overhead. "Not at all. What did you have in mind?" I'd be damned if I were to start it.
"Did you like the ostrich fern fiddleheads?"
Safe topic. "A little, yeah. They were a little bitter, but I think with some butter they'd be really good."
Of course, when Clockblocker had learned that it wasn't by Miss Militia's instructions but Weld's when we'd first brought back the fiddleheads, he had replied, "I'll eat them, but if we die it's on you."
Deciding to go out on a limb, I asked, "Who told you about them, anyway?"
He mulled over his response while I stopped us at a patch of pineapple-weed. I was halfway through picking when he answered. "Director Armstrong from Boston. He's a nature enthusiast. For as long as I was stationed there, he'd take time out of his schedule to go on his weekend hike."
I nodded thoughtfully. Director Armstrong sounded like the polar opposite of Piggot. "Did you ever go with?" If he had, that would place his experience out here higher than mine.
I received a professional smile in response. "That's two questions. Who taught you how to cook?"
So we were playing that game? "My mom," I answered.
I hadn't really cooked; Miss Militia put me in charge of food because I didn't have to move to fetch it for the most part. Most of the time it was Miss Militia cooking or even Clockblocker turning the meat, but every so often I'd add a pine needle or dandelion leaf for better taste. A bit surprising that he'd gleamed my skill from something so small. That, or he was being presumptuous.
Thankfully, he didn't comment. Enough people had given me condolences at the start, and people from my territory- enemies, too, if Miss Militia's words from a week ago were any sign- had started to look at me differently.
He'd probably read about her death in one of the many articles written about me. That, or read enough in my body language to read between the lines.
Impulsively I added, "But my dad knew his way around lasagna. Have you ever hiked before this?"
I finished up with the pineapple weeds and paused at the approach of an animal in my range. Long, slender legs with cloven hoofs and dewclaws. It was a deer. Assured, I turned towards Weld who hadn't answered my question.
His focus was beyond me. "With Director Armstrong, yes. During the summer he schedules a week off. We used to disappear into the woods while I was still stationed there. With our own pots and pans," he added.
Belatedly, I noticed I'd reverted into past tense. I wetted my chapped lips.
His eyes darted to mine. "Could you tell me about the monster once more?"
Thankful, I nodded and relayed what I had told the group before. I guess it was a little screwed up that I'd rather recount the details of a creature straight from a horror movie instead of my personal life, but whatever. We may be in a truce, but I meant it when I said we didn't need a group therapy session.
He nodded thoughtfully with a frown. I paused and added, "I didn't see a Cauldron mark on it from what I could make out."
He regarded me with silver eyes. At first I received no response, and for a second I thought I'd said the wrong thing. But as I lead us a little deeper into the woods, the berry bush I'd had my eye on since it appeared in my range made me push that worry to the side.
When it came into view, 'pleased' didn't cover what I felt. Huckleberries had been my mom's favorite. Growing up, dessert had usually consisted of pies, ice cream or biscuits and jam. It was her fix, medicine that left me with a purple mouth more often than not.
There had still been an unopen jar of huckleberry jam the last time I was home.
But now I was feeling sentimental in light of events, and we needed food. Especially something sweet and familiar. I kneeled and plucked them, mindful of the thorns.
Only when Weld said, "You like your berries?" did I realize my mouth was stretched in a small grin. I smoothed my features, but not before he added, "I'm fond of blueberries myself."
Mildly curious if only because as far as I knew he didn't need to eat, I inquired, "Oh?"
"Yeah," he said, surveying the area. "Did you ever see that Earth Aleph movie-"
Clockblocker and Vista were heading back to camp. From the way his arm clapped her on the back, I took it she was in a better mood.
"-with the little orange men in the chocolate factory? One of the characters, Violet, a girl, turned into a giant blueberry."
What the hell?
"I don't think so," I replied for loss of a better response. Violet splotches stained my hands, and I rubbed them off on my pants.
He shrugged. "It's not bad. Anyways, I like the color."
I was struck for a moment how boring this conversation was, yet it didn't bother me. For the first time in a long time, small talk wasn't a chore.
A comfortable silence fell over us as I finished up with the berries. I popped one in my mouth, satisfied.
Miss Militia and Kid Win returned from the river with something held between the two of them. It was solid wood, planks held together with nails and the surface covered in dirt and muck.
They rubbed away the grime coating the front until flakes of paint were exposed, and they pulled back, silent.
"…town nearby," Miss Militia spoke.
A/N:
Next chapter wraps up this arc, and that's when things are going to start heating up. Unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, my new job starts next week and my schedule looks insane. I have no idea how much time I'll be able to devote to this story, but I won't abandon it. I'm going to try my absolute best to keep pumping out chapters at the same rate I've been doing to keep myself accountable and you guys happy, but know that I might disappear for a while to crawl back to my former pace.
I'm moving this timeline to my profile page:
July 14th: Simurgh arrives that morning- Ch. 1, 2
July 15th: Taylor and Heroes wake up in forest (unconscious all of the 14th)- Ch. 3
July 16th: Taylor removes mask, landslide occurs- Ch. 4
July 17th: Follow second stream, awk questions are awk- Ch. 5 & 6
July 18th: Early morning chase. Travel through forest- Ch. 7
July 19th: Traveled all day (glossed over in story)- Ch. 7
July 20th: Group dynamics are changing, Taylor and Weld's small talk- Ch. 7