Awake in the Afternoon

"Ow! What the hell was that for?" Elsword held his hand to his cheek and glared sharply at Eve.

"Idiot!" Aisha turned and admonished him with a fierce stare, "What did you expect? You just went into a lady's room while she was asleep and stood there staring at her, so obviously she'd react that way."

An accusatory finger interrupted their squabble as Eve gazed down at them harshly. "Who are you!? Answer me at once!"

"Why should we tell you?" Elsword scowled, sliding his hand away from the bright red blemish on the side of his face.

"Elsword!" Aisha jumped in just in time to save him from another painful reprimand. Turning to Eve, she clasped her hands together and apologized. "We're really, really sorry! We got trapped in here after the ship we were on crashed into the mountainside and we're just looking for a way out."

Eve glared at her coldly, "Where are the guards? What have you done to the nasod here?"

"What are you talking about?" Elsword scowled at her. "There's nobody here but you and us."

Eve shifted her eyes around the room and confirmed their isolation. She searched her memory and found no errors; she had indeed ordered the Core to post sentries outside of its control room, and yet there was no sign of anyone ever having entered the control room after Eve sealed herself in her capsule. Distressed, she raised her hands before her and the glowing outline of a keyboard and console spread out beneath her fingers. As her hands danced across the keys, a jarring buzz rang through the air and a stream of bright letters flashed through the air. Frowning, Eve repeated her commands and received the same results.

"...I cannot access the Core..." She hid her anxiety and turned back to Aisha and Elsword, her gaze scathing and suspicious. "What have you done to the Core?"

Elsword glared back at her, his face flush with frustration. "Nothing! This place was already trashy when we got here."

"You could say it more gently than that..." Aisha glared at him, aggravated by his persistent lack of tact. Though they had both braced themselves against another contemptuous glower, Eve's mind was elsewhere. Neither of the humans before her seemed to be lying and the unkempt state of her surroundings gave credence to their claims... and yet, she could not accept the thought that she had failed. Her stoic gaze faltered as her fingers raced across her console, her every attempt resulting in a complete failure. No access. No information. No answer. By now, her frustration and distress were plain upon her face as her doubtful whispers escaped into the air.

"...no, but the Core... it had to have started..." Her mouth hung open and panic crept into the corners of her eyes.

"Um..." Aisha approached cautiously, "Is everything alright? Are you okay?"

"I-I am fine!" Eve startled at the sound of her voice and nearly fell over backwards. Gathering herself, she stepped out of her capsule and floated gracefully to the floor below, regaining her stern, regal bearing as she stood before Aisha and Elsword. I must find out what has happened to the Core... but the presence of these humans... perhaps... it is a cause for concern...

Eve crossed her arms as she addressed her audience. "Tell me how you have come here."

"We told you, we crashed into a mountain." Irritated and exhausted, Elsword was fast approaching the end of his patience. Eve answered with a relentless barrage.

"Where was your destination? When did you depart? What was your ship's cargo? Why were you flying over Altera?"

"Alright, fine!" Elsword scowled and Aisha glared at him as they prepared to recount their travels to Eve. Bickering all along the way, they traced the trail of the past month for Eve and she listened intently. With every passing battle and every mention of the nasod, she felt her head swim and her thoughts plunged into a bittersweet agony. She had not programmed the Core to make nasod for battle. She had not told the Core to create mere machines without souls for humans to use as pack mules or soldiers. Her countenance sank into the sea of her memory and the dull pang of doubt ached in her chest. By the time Aisha had finished her recollection of the fighting on board the Black Crow, Eve was glancing uncomfortably across the room and muttering incoherent anxieties to herself. Sensing her distraction, Elsword and Aisha paused.

"Are you okay?" Aisha spoke as softly as she could, but Eve did not answer. She turned aside to Elsword and lowered her voice, "We need to get back to Rena, and this room is obviously a dead end but..." She looked over to Eve, "Would she be alright on her own?"

"Maybe, but it'd feel wrong leaving a kid alone in a place like this..." Elsword glanced over at Eve, an unsteady mixture of concern and frustration stirring in his eyes. Aisha sighed, exasperated.

"You keep calling her a kid... you realize she's a Nasod, right? She could be a thousand years old."

Elsword glanced off into the corner, hurrying to conceal his surprise. "I knew that."

"...You're probably right anyway, even if she doesn't need help, it feels wrong to leave her here when she's so worked up..." Aisha listened carefully as the even staccato of Eve's anxious breaths spilled out across the room. "She doesn't seem like a bad person either."

"Yeah..." Elsword tilted his head back and then nodded. "We should ask her anyway. She might know the way out too..." His eyes narrowed. "...or she might just try to hit me again."

"Why are you so hung up on that?" Aisha glowered. "Was it really that bad?"

Grumbling, Elsword surrendered and walked over to Eve. "Hey. What's your name?"

Wrenched free of her solitary contemplations, Eve blinked and turned from Elsword to Aisha, blushing lightly as she realized that she hadn't bothered to introduce herself. "I-I am Eve, Queen of the Nasod..."

"The queen?" Aisha stared in shock, shaking her head out and calmed herself. "Um... So, Eve, do you want to come with us and look for a way out of here?"

Eve composed herself and entered a series of strokes into her console. In the space of a second, her console vanished and a bright, iridescent stream of lights spread throughout the hallway, twisting around corners and rushing headlong into the darkness. Turning back to Aisha, she nodded softly. "I have marked the exit. Once we leave, I will need to go to the Core, but first... I would like to see the human with the metal arm."

"Feeling any better?" Rena smiled faintly as Raven raised his head and shook the sleep from his right arm. Just waking from his reluctant rest, he propped himself up against a pile of rubble and slid his hand back across his forehead.

"Yeah..."

"Good!" Rena beamed brightly in the dim, dusty glow of sparks. "I was starting to think you'd be out for days."

Resting his right elbow on his knee, Raven hung his head and cast his gaze at the ground. "You should have left me on my ship. There was no need to save me."

Rena giggled lightly. "Are you still thinking like that? You know that suicidal thoughts are really unattractive."

Raven hesitated, taken aback as he looked up at her "Why would you take the risk of keeping me alive though? I've already proven that I'm a threat to you."

"Oh, you mean on the ship when you pretended to fight us so that we'd feel pressured and kill you to escape?" Rena grinned slyly and Raven recoiled, unaware that he had been so obvious. "It's one thing to be cautious, but someone like you should be able to at least get a few solid hits if you were really trying. And~" Rena tilted her head to the side and closed her eyes cheerfully, "If that really was you fighting seriously, we've got nothing to worry about anyway."

Raven chuckled bitterly. "I suppose that's true..."

"Although, I have conditions." Rena held her hand out and pointed a single finger toward the sky. Raven stared at her, confounded.

"Conditions?"

"Yes. First off, no more trying to throw your life away. I'm not going to tell you what to do, but you have to stay alive, alright?" She raised a second finger. "Next, you've got to at least help us get back the El. If you're trying to make up for the things you've done, this should be at least a start on that."

Raven sat quietly for a moment, his thoughts in conflict as he considered Rena's conditions. He felt miserable in every waking moment, his left arm tormented him constantly with pain and filled his head with the worst memories of his life, and he held firmly onto his spite and rage... but at the same time, he knew that wallowing in self-loathing and bitterness would do nothing to diminish the suffering of the people he had hurt. Abandoning his pride to the wastes of memory, he looked up to Rena and nodded.

"Alright, I'll do it." He winced as his left arm tensed and trembled. "At least, for as long as I can."

"Great~" The air lit up as Rena smiled at him. "I know it's difficult, but I'm sure you'll be able to make up for everything you've done if you keep at it."

"No..." Raven stared darkly into the distance. "It's too much to expect that I could atone for my crimes, but... you may have been right when you said it was possible to overshadow them."

Rena's smile softened and her eyes slipped into a haze of reminiscence. "That's right... there are some things you can't expect to ever be forgiven for, but that doesn't mean you've got permission to stop living either."

Raven poured over her words, weighing her tone and sensing the strife that lay beneath it. "When you talk like that, it sounds like you've been through even more than I have."

"Well, I am a lot older than you after all." Rena perked up and winked at him. "Though I couldn't say if I've been through more or not since I don't know very much about you."

"I suppose not..." Raven lowered his face as he sorted through his memories, reluctant to revisit any part of his past for fear of waking his left arm. Ignoring his tacit refusal, Rena hopped over on her good leg and planted herself on a bare patch of steel next to Raven, gazing at him inquisitively.

"So, what happened? I know there are probably things you don't want to talk about, but I'd at least like to know how you got ahold of a giant airship, or maybe how you lost your arm?"

"That-" A sudden emptiness halted Raven's recollection. A moment ago, he was drowning in his regrets. Now, he stood in the midst of a great void. "I don't know... I can't remember... any of it." A bead of cold sweat rolled onto his brow and his heart pounded in his chest.

"Are you okay?" Rena reached out and placed a hand on his right shoulder. "Sorry, you don't need to-"

"No, I'm fine..." Raven shut his eyes tightly and then breathed in deeply. "There are a few gaps in my memory. Probably because of this." He held out his left arm and shroud of fierce disdain fell over his face. Withdrawing her hand and easing back, Rena studied the jagged steel claw at the end of Raven's arm.

"What is that arm, really? It's not just armor, and it's not a normal prosthetic either."

A harsh discord grated against Rena's ears as the claw closed into a fist. "It's from the nasod." Raven's voice was cold and low as his shadow danced across the wall, flitting about as the faint electric glow of artificial lights raced around the room. "The airship as well. I don't know how or when, but they definitely came from the nasod."

"You mean that there are still nasod alive somewhere in the world?" Rena's voice carried an ounce of uncertainty, though she could find no better explanation herself.

"I was saved by one of them three years ago, when I was on the run from the Velder garrison. I don't know what happened after that, but soon after that I was learning to pilot the Black Crow..."

"Wait a second..." Rena paused, the soft blue radiance around them casting a fluid, coursing shadow across her face. "I think you should start from further back than that. Why were you running from Velder's knights?"

In the silence that followed, the air darkened and the flickering lights retreated from the room, leaving Rena and Raven enveloped within the gentle darkness. "It was my foolishness that got me to that point. I'd always tried to be a knight, but I'm a commoner by birth and the nobles of Velder would never accept me into their ranks. So I started a company of mercenaries and fought for the crown every chance that I got. I thought that I could prove myself and that we'd all be knighted someday, and I was stupid for believing it."

Rena sat attentively as Raven steadied his breath, the air swelling with a chill gravity as he spoke of his early youth. "My comrades from those days were the real Crow mercenaries... the men you saw on my ship were just thugs I hired from side streets and saloons. All of the original Crows were killed because I naively thought that a sword could actually change an entire country. I started pushing our company harder and harder and we became more capable and experienced than even the royal guard. In some battles, we were the only ones on the field fighting for Velder. I thought that would be enough to prove our worth to the crown, but the nobles still spat in our faces. There was a young knight commander, Alexander, who insulted us openly and rallied the crown to have us disbanded. He was bitter and ambitious and wanted to make a hero of himself in battle, but with the Crows on every front line, he never even had a chance to draw his sword. Stupidly, I challenged him to a duel to defend the honor of my company and I won." Raven scoffed sharply. "A week later, I was arrested for assaulting a noble and thrown into prison."

Rena gave a wry smile. "I guess not much has changed since the last time I was there then..." Raven turned and blinked at her quizzically, waiting for her to continue. "Ah, well, the same thing happened to me a long time ago, although I skipped out of town before they could catch me. I suppose that wasn't really an option for you though."

"No, it wasn't." Raven scowled, clenching his fist tightly as he stifled his boiling spite. "After I was captured, my fiance led the rest of the Crows into the dungeon and they broke me out. After that-"

"Wait, your fiance..." Rena cut him off and tilted her head in toward him. "Was that Seris?"

Raven's voice caught in his throat and his mouth wrinkled up uncomfortably. "Yes..."

"So, she's the one you mistook me for when we were on the ship then, right?"

"...She looked a lot like you." Raven's face fell to the floor and his voice sank even further. "The guards had all left their posts and the outer gates were unlocked. We had no idea at the time that it was a trap, but we found out as soon as we got outside. A full company of knights surrounded us once we were in the street. We fought our way through them, but there were already guards posted at our barracks and at every gate out of the city. We scaled the walls and made it into the forest just outside the city before Alex and his men caught up with us." By now, Raven's voice had gained a coarse edge and his eyes filled with fire as he remembered the death of the Crow mercenaries. "When we tried to surrender, he lashed me to a tree and made me watch while he executed everyone else..."

His voice cracked as he said 'everyone' and Rena knew that he was only thinking of one particular comrade's death. Though she expected his gloom to persist, he quickly raised his head and his shoulders relaxed.

"After that, Alex left me for dead and pulled his men out of the woods. Just a few hours after that, that's when a group of nasod found me and carried me off. I can't say what happened after that, but the next thing I remember is being on the deck of the Black Crow..." Raven's head dropped back on his shoulders and he stared up at the ceiling.

"I see. That's how you ended up so grouchy and morbid." Rena jabbed Raven lightly with her elbow and he glared at her, somewhere between shock and guilt as he struggled for a reply. He looked as though he had just realized his error after a good scolding and he answered meekly.

"Yeah..."

Rena laughed softly and gave Raven a warm smile. "You've gone through a lot of pain though, and I won't tell you to forget it... but is it really doing you any good to keep torturing yourself over your past?"

Caught off guard, Raven found himself completely at a loss. He ran his right hand over his head and tried to organize the mess of his memory, finally leaning back and showing a small, subtle smile. "When you say it like that, it sounds like it would be easy to stop."

"I wouldn't say it'll be easy, but it is pretty simple." Rena grabbed a bundle of wire and pulled herself up, slipping on her way and nearly falling on her back. Immediately, Raven rose to his feet and offered her his right hand. "Ah, thanks. My leg's healed all the way yet, and I'm a bit worried about Aisha and Elsword." She closed her hand around his and pulled herself up to her feet as Raven nodded firmly.

"Alright. Here." He held his arm out and Rena leaned over onto his shoulder, wrapping her hand around his neck for support. Raven was suddenly highly conscious of the fact that he hadn't showered in the past four days and instantly grimaced, though Rena gave no indication of any unease. Rather, she grinned happily at him and pointed at the nearby corridor.

"Okay, let's go! If we hurry, maybe we can sneak up on them and catch them getting along or maybe even holding hands." Her grin quickly became a devious smirk and Raven drew back slightly. He had just been pulled violently from a life of endless vengeance and into something he still couldn't quite fathom. Still, he felt a vague sense of calm wash over him as he helped Rena over the mess of rubble and wires all around. It had been ages since he allowed himself to grieve and even longer since he considered the possibility of having a future. Speaking to Rena had been... Cathartic. Although he had no idea where he was headed, for the first time in years, Raven felt his feet moving forward.