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Chapter 5 – Rumble in Rimba
Dusk was a distant promise on the horizon of Rimba, though from the thick industrial smoke billowing up from the multitude of distance stacks, Seeal had to wonder if they could tell some days. She hadn't been to Rimba before, though she had heard of it plenty. It was an industrial centre, teeming with life, but in truth, it was mostly known by those on Dreamstation as a location for Alliance criminals to exchange their 'goods' and then enjoy some playtime in the evenings. Located close to the edge of a quiet section of the Alliance border, it wasn't all that interesting to anyone except those looking for a planet with work that had decent pay and a healthy night life.
You could pretty much find any kind of poison here – hidden gambling establishments, alcohol aplenty, drugs if you knew who to ask, which included Quantum, and performance enhancing specialties that were more widely known. It was the kind of backwater "always pays their Alliance taxes on time and in full kind" of planet that didn't get all that much attention, but did have a small Alliance enforcement presence that ensured that everyone felt safe from any potential Wraith invasions this close to the border.
Rimba was also home to some seriously rich industrialists who had helped create the smog problem and who had taken full advantage of the planet's playtime addiction once work hours were over.
One such industrialist was soon to have a visit from a rather grumpy Elite warrior.
It was their fourth trip of the day, and from what she had heard, would hopefully be the eleventh arrest of the fifteen who had tried to cover their asses by sneaking back their money from Hlrolfu's personal banking account. The rest of the required evidence to convict Hlrolfu, and any associated with him, had been rather pathetically concealed in his home database. The man had his hand in a multitude of underhand political influences, blackmailing, extortion, and good old simple theft. No wonder Iketani had used him.
The trick was to catch these next fifteen who had been paying Hlrolfu, before they realised they were being hunted and fled Alliance territory, though Seeal suspected a couple would already have been smart enough to notice something was up and had left for Dreamstation.
It was strange being on the other side of that equation. Normally she had encountered such characters when they had arrived on Dreamstation, at which point she had threatened them to behave and kept a close eye on them. Now here she was helping to catching such people before they managed to escape to somewhere like Dreamstation. She had to admit, it felt like the better side.
However, the problem with the rich and powerful in the Alliance was that they were rather attached to their power and gathered personal trinkets. Toshka's home, for example, had had evidence enough of that lifestyle. The small mansion that she and Oneakka had 'visited' had held thick rich carpets, and an entire wall of gold leafed detailing overlooking a massive hand carved hardwood desk in Toshka's personal office. The desk alone would have cost a fortune.
It wasn't now though, not after she and Oneakka had hidden behind it after he had 'liberated' Toshka's computer core from the wall behind the gold leaf.
The man certainly was determined.
She shifted her gaze to him now, stood in his dark brown armour, the metal fastenings on the side the only shining aspect, well oiled and cared for. Against his back he wore several short scabbards holding varying knives and one short sword. On each hip he wore a stunner, and strapped to one thigh was a fully loaded lethal projectile gun that she had seen shoot a rather neat hole through one of Toshka's perfectly painted interior walls to take out some of the security who had been firing at them. He had followed up that attack with some of the small throwing knives hidden in a boot.
Keeping up with him had been a very focusing mission in itself, as she had done for the four other missions today. Madesh was looking slightly worse for wear, as were the two Division men who were still with them.
She glanced round at Madesh, his arms and shoulders were thick with muscle that made proven to make him slower than her today. He was good though, clearly having picked up much of Oneakka's unique fighting skills, which included throwing whatever was to hand at the enemy. She appreciated that kind of fighting style, having been of the same mind during her own real life street fights and pit fighting in the past.
All that was going to be needed for the next mission though.
Madesh glanced at her, having sensed her attention, and smiled faintly. He was tired, but he was a fighter. Surprising considering he was supposed to be a human lie detector.
He rather reminded her of a young kid she had lived alongside on the streets at one point, though that boy had fallen to the hands of the Wraith.
She looked away from Madesh and returned her attention to the building just below the rise on which they stood.
Plenty of people were pouring across the flat space surrounding the large open sided building. The building stood on the edge of the largest of Rimba's rivers, but it wasn't water Seeal would want to take a dip in. Rimba's heavily industrial buildings and factories that lined all the rivers and its off shoots, no doubt flushed their contaminated and dirty waste out into the rivers' flowing mess.
A mess was also a good description of the large building ahead of them. It was clearly one of the older factories and had probably originally just held harvest grain brought in on the boats from the more agricultural areas of Rimba, traded in to feed the growing population of New City.
Seeal wondered if the people of Rimba actually knew what 'new' meant, because this building, and the others stretching along this part of the river's edge, looked to be at least a hundred years old. She would bet that the particular building ahead them had never been designed to hold as many people as were pouring into it right now. If it had once held grain, now it clearly held barrels of the fermented version. Music blared out through the brick archways that led inside, the music excessively heavy on the beat and on the shouted, likely abusive, lyrics mixed in with the odd electronic whine that was probably supposed to be musical.
The place had archway entrances around all the sides, had at least two levels to it, the top supporting a surrounding open balcony, and it looked like it was probably only held up by sheer hope and blind ignorance of basic building maintenance.
From a raiding point of view, the place had more exits than a sieve.
It had to be the worst place to storm with the intention of catching someone, but raiding was what Oneakka had in mind.
The club's owner, a man called Douro, had had a considerable share in Hlrolfu's account. Douro had a lot of power here on Rimba, and from the limited profile she had read on the way here, he was not the type to run away from anything he had greedily gained. He would still be here, and the Alliance enforcement who had met Oneakka at the Portal had reported that the industrialist hadn't left the planet and had been seen only an hour beforehand.
Apparently he was here in the club, as he was every night, so much so that he practically lived here.
Which said to her that Douro had established himself a powerful little nest on this world, and he probably thought he was safe here.
Clearly he hadn't met Oneakka.
"What's your plan?" She asked the silent Oneakka. If he was tired from the day's raids, he didn't show it at all. She wondered if he ever got tired.
"We go in there," he replied succinctly.
Seeal rolled her eyes. "Wow, I'm so glad I have this opportunity to learn from such inspiring Elite wisdom."
He turned his head enough to give her a glare over his shoulder with one sharp blue eye shining out from the non-tattooed side of his face. In the lowering light, his overly pale complexion made him seem not too unlike the stories of ghosts and demons that had so often been spread between street kids. He wasn't a demon of course, but he could be said to have the terrifying determination of one, which he had set course to run down those linked to Iketani.
"There are hundreds of exits from that place, he could run in any direction and get away easily," she explained the obvious. "He'll have his own security in there too. They'll have orders to stop anything that kicks off in there, and if they happen to accidently shoot some of us it'll be brushed off later as simply a case of not being able to identify us in a "darkened environment". They'll fight because they're paid to and he'll have picked thick-headed morons to be his security, ones who don't think too readily."
"They can fight if they want to," Oneakka replied simply as he looked back to the building. "He'll be central, second level."
She nodded her agreement to that blunt assessment.
"You want us to go in quietly first?" Madesh offered, eager to please Oneakka as always.
However, offering to go in first and leave Oneakka behind was not the way to impress the man. If anything impressed him.
"We go in, head for the centre of the building, stop anyone in our way," Oneakka ordered before moving down the rise towards the building.
Seeal hurried down the sandy bank behind him, Madesh to her right and the two Division men to her left.
"There are innocent civilians in there, right?" She asked as she slid down the last foot to reach the solid flat ground behind Oneakka. "Aren't you supposed to care about people like that?"
"I didn't say kill anyone," Oneakka clarified.
"Then I need a stunner," she pointed out.
"No," he replied immediately, as he had every time she had asked for a weapon over the last two days.
"I've needed one twice today already," she objected. "I took one off you yesterday at Toshka's. Why can't I have one of my own?"
"No," Oneakka replied simply.
"Afraid I'm going to shoot you by accident?" She asked.
They were among the club attendees now, who were moving swiftly away as soon as they spotted Oneakka and his aggressive pace in towards the central brick archway at the front of the building. The music was growing louder and had to be all but deafening inside.
"Not by accident," Oneakka replied to her as he pulled out a stunner from a hip holster.
She shook her head at his back, though she could feel her adrenaline rising like a rising nervous thrill through her veins, readying her for the fight to come inside the club.
She hadn't been in this much combat in years, and it was bringing back to life so many memories from her pit fighting days, the drive to keep going, despite the growing tiredness in her limbs and the faint ache to her eyes. Or was that ache from the strange coloured light show that was dancing over the crowd and the brick columns and ceiling as she followed Oneakka into the club?
As soon as Oneakka was through the entrance he began pushing people aside. Though, in his defence he wasn't shooting at anyone.
People looked round defensively, some angry, but almost all of the them backed away immediately upon seeing Oneakka - and her and the others backing him up. Sure because they were just as scary as Oneakka.
One security man nicely demonstrated her previous description of the type of men Douro had hired, as he stepped in front of them, one hand out. Whatever order he thought would work against an Elite was lost in the loud volume of the music blaring out from further inside the building behind him.
Seeal almost felt sorry for the man, who clearly felt he had some position of respectability and power in the club.
Oneakka's stunner took him down before his mouth stopped moving with this order.
As Seeal stepped over the stunned body, she quickly retrieved the gun at the man's belt. She held it up for inspection in the flashing spinning lights as she following Oneakka through what was now an increasingly widening path ahead of them.
Oneakka's stunner went off again as another couple of would-be security tried to intercept him.
Confident that she held a stunner and not a lethal weapon, Seeal fired off to the left where another man was fast pushing his way through the drugged up confused looking club attendees.
Her shot had taken out a couple of the clubbers as well, but they would be okay.
The inside of the club building looked pretty much the same as the outside. It appeared to be constructed entirely of bricks, small, dark red bricks that formed square columns in long lines, forming archways ahead of her and the others. She ran her eye up one column as she passed it, noting the crumbling edges that ran up to a small vaulted ceiling. The place was built rather like a honeycomb of small vaulted spaces, which resulted in a strange affect on the vibrating sound waves hitting the ceilings, archways, and columns. As she followed Oneakka through another vaulted space the music seemed to be coming from above her, growing louder, and then fading as they matched out, stunning where necessary and frightening the clubbers out of the way like a predatory fish through a school of tiny flipper fish.
Abruptly they reached the centre of the building, the archways finally giving way to a large central space. Oneakka walked under the last archway and stepped out into the main club dance floor. Seeal followed him into the open space, looking up to see that the ceiling here was at the full height of the building, two levels up.
The large dance floor was packed with dancing clubbers, and the source of the offensive music was revealed. A stage across the large space was surrounded by various sizes of electronic speakers which pounded out the noise made by the band playing on the stage. The singer was a woman, barely dressed in strips of black fabric which only just covered her bare essentials, who undulated and screamed into her microphone, appearing as drug-filled as those she was singing for. Behind her, two men slammed manically away on a series of drums, and another two attacked various instruments that were played with equal high abandon.
Seeal frowned at the group, dismissing them as important, and turned round, scanning the rest of the large dance floor.
Behind her, above the archways through which she had followed Oneakka, there was a mezzanine level, from which a packed group of revellers were watching the dance floor below.
In the centre of the viewing platform, a throne stood among the other simple chairs, upon which was sat Douro, coated in more of the barely dressed women.
Douro hadn't noticed he had a new audience until this moment. Seeal lifted her unfamiliar stunner, sighting along the scope on top, at the precise moment that Douro finally realised something was happening below his throne.
He looked round and down to the widening space on the floor that she, Oneakka, Madesh and the Division were creating.
Seeal squeezed the trigger. Her shot blasted out, but Douro was already reacting, throwing one of his decorative women between him and the blast. The woman went down instantly, and the club seemed to explode with screams, stunner fire, and chaos.
Seeal kept her eyes on the throne, but Douro had thrown himself to the floor. The others up there were trying to run, but the Division men and Oneakka's own stunner fire lit up the mezzanine level. Revellers dropped over chairs and decorative women were screaming and flaying their arms around as they struggled to escape.
Oneakka had used the same 'stun first sort out the mess later' technique several times today. The problem was that Douro was up and running behind those still upright, using them as shields.
Seeal kept firing, though was aware of movement ahead of her through the archways. Security back-up was on its way.
She looked back up to the mezzanine level to see a shot from Oneakka clip Douro and the man tumbled to the floor, out of sight.
But, she didn't have any more time. Thick-headed security were running at her through the archways. Stunner fire blasted over her body, dissipated by Elite technology. It still tickled though.
She fired at the two coming right at her, and ran at them. At the front of the attacking force, the two men weren't expecting her to run at them and they hesitated, which resulted in others ploughing into their backs.
Stunner fire poured past Seeal from her support as she smacked the butt of her stunner into the jaw of one security man, which took her fully bodily into the next. He caught her, surprised at her sudden arrival. She slammed her elbow into his cheek, dropping them to the ground.
She caught herself before she landed on the man, rolled away and rose up, now back under the archways to find more idiots coming at her. Stunner fire tickled over her again. They didn't learn very quickly.
"Yes, that's it," she muttered as she kicked out hard and fast at one knee, punching out and round at another. "Just keep firing, maybe it'll work eventually. Idiots." She punched another stomach, thrusting her shoulder into his middle a second later, pushing him backwards into another guy. Unfortunately, someone had gotten hold of her sleeve, so she went partway down with them.
Stunner fire blasted up past her, the man's trigger finger spasming with the fall, and she heard the energy fire hit the small section of vaulted ceiling above them.
The music had stopped, but the new chorus of shouting, stunner fire, and screaming was almost as loud.
Hitting the floor, with two men under her to cushion her fall, Seeal twisted and thrust the heel of her palm against the underside of the uppermost man's chin. He went limp under her.
She scrambled up, darting aside as more stunner fire whistled right past her head. She pressed her back against a brick column, letting the rapid stunner blasts fire past on either side. Dust was falling down through the air, and she brushed it off her face.
A glance round into the dance floor showed her only Madesh and one Division man in view. They were in the thick of fighting.
The stunner fire paused and she took her moment, spinning quickly round it and fired her own borrowed stunner at the five men advancing on her. Two dropped, but one was almost to her.
The glint of light over the small knife in his hand ramped up the stakes. She threw her stunner at this face. He ducked aside at the last second, but it still caught the side of his temple.
She was on him a split second later. The bony point of her elbow connected nicely into the soft space under his ear, and as he crumbled to her left, she caught his descending head in her other hand and shoved him backwards hard. He stumbled back and away, hitting the ground, and his head, hard. Random stunner fire shot past her from somewhere back on the dance floor, taking down one of her opponents for her. However, the rest of the energy hits impacted against a nearby brick column shattering pieces of brick.
More dust was falling over her as she turned towards the last man coming at her. He was using her own technique of swinging his gun at her. She ducked down, one knee falling onto an unconscious security man and she punched up hard into the groin of the man attacking her. She heard his breath groan out from him, but he was still fighting. He twisted, trying to trap her under him as he fell forward to protect his tender balls. Unfortunately, he was pressing the stunner's trigger and at this close range it would probably hurt to be hit so close, even with the Elite tech. She went down the floor with him, grabbing at his arm, directing his fire up and away.
In an expanded moment, she watched the energy discharge hit the vaulted ceiling above them, and suddenly the source of the dust was all too apparent.
It was brick dust, falling from the ceiling...
She watched in a horrified moment as the energy lightshow showed the crumbling, cracking ceiling above her. The ceiling that was supporting the level above, including the mezzanine level.
The man against her was groaned and pushing at her still.
A swift elbow to his ribs and another punch to his cheek quietened him as she struggled out of the tangle of limbs to get up from the floor.
Her eyes locked on the ceiling, she watched the cracks spreading. Looking down and around, she saw that several more brick columns were crumbling. Her earlier assessment of this old building had turned out to be far too accurate.
They had to get out of here.
She ran for the open space of the dance floor again.
Madesh was in the centre of it, exchanging blows with an overly large man who was putting up good fight. Beyond Madesh, one Division man was up on the stage wrestling with the barely dressed female singer who was trying to put him in a headlock as she screamed obscenities at him, and the other last Division man was fending off one of the drummers.
"We need to get out of here," Seeal shouted to them as she could as she arrived in the open and mostly empty dance floor. There was still some shouting and screaming though...from above.
She turned to look up at the mezzanine level. There was no movement up there, but she could now see that there was an open doorway off the balcony up there, and through it she could see the dancing colour of some stunner fire across a corridor wall. Which meant that Oneakka was no doubt up there.
She looked back to Madesh and the others. "The building is unstable!" She saw Madesh hear her and look round worriedly, which almost lost him his fight, as a meaty punch skimmed his cheekbone.
Seeal trusted him to sort that out, so she turned back to the mezzanine level above. Where was Oneakka? Didn't he have Douro?
She needed to get up there. Only there wasn't an obvious way up to that balcony from the dance floor. Well, she's just have to find a way.
She ran towards one end of the balcony above, leapt up and got a good grip on a piece of decorative moulding halfway up the wall. A decent foothold on another piece was all she needed to fling herself up further, getting both her hands up on the edge of the mezzanine's balustrade above her.
"Elite are not worth this," she groaned as she pulled herself up by sheer upper body strength, up and over onto the mezzanine level. "Wraith shitting Iketani," she tumbled down among stunned people and fallen chairs.
She saw immediately why Oneakka had come up here – Douro wasn't where he had fallen earlier, apparently stunned. Great.
Shouts through the doorway off the balcony led her towards the way out. She ran for the corridor beyond it bouncing off one wall in her hurry.
The sound of stunner fire continued somewhere ahead of her, and the corridor abruptly ended outside. She pulled up quick in the dusky sunset on Rimba. She was on the balcony encircling the outside of the club. She noticed immediately that there were hands on the far edge of the balustrade. She stepped closer and peered over and down to see that there were several people hanging off the side, metres from the ground below.
She understood what had happened. Oneakka had arrived and the only place to go to get away from him, and whoever he was battling, was to get over the balcony's edge.
"Better drop," she shouted to them.
It was probably fear and surprise that made them do as she ordered. She watched them drop to the sandy ground below. Beyond them, the mass of clubbers were still running from the building. A glance further along the balcony, revealed more dropping from the balcony onto the sand. See what Oneakka did to people.
Oneakka. She hurried along the balcony, stepping over two stunned bodies to the first corner. She moved round the corner quickly and carefully to a clear view down the entire side of the building. Oneakka was ahead of her, about halfway down the length of the building. He was stunning with one hand and following through with a swinging punch with his other hand. People were trying to get out of his way whilst simultaneously trying to stop him. Stunner fire danced over his pale body, the armour almost glowing with it. She ran after him, only to feel a sudden rumble of a shudder under her boots. She stopped and looked down worriedly at the bricks under her feet.
That didn't feel good. She could have sworn she felt a shift.
She grabbed for the closest stunned man and hauled him up over the balcony's edge to drop him to the sandy rise below. She repeated the same for the next and the next. Tidying up in Oneakka's wake.
"The building's unstable!" She shouted towards Oneakka. "The archways were coming down below." She triggered the tiny Elite link set on her collar, recalling that she was wearing it, and she repeated the warning for those downstairs. "Madesh, get out."
Two clubbers were huddled against the wall ahead of her, both looking up at her with terror in their eyes. "Jump!" She ordered pointing to the edge of the balcony. "NOW!"
They ran for it and threw themselves over the balcony wall without even looking at what was below.
She didn't think she was that scary.
"Oneakka!" She shouted. "The building!"
"I heard you," he shouted back without pausing in his fighting. A knife was out, unsheathed from his back now and she saw blood splatter across the wall to his right. They had stopped trying to stop him with stunner fire. She ran faster, though almost certain that he could look after himself.
This time she felt a definite shift in the floor under her boots, but she had almost caught up with Oneakka and he was at the far end of the building's balcony.
She saw another flash of light on a blade, saw Oneakka duck, grab the offending man and then the Elite warrior stepped forward and threw the man off the far end of the building on one rushing fast movement.
Seeal rushed up behind him as Oneakka turned round the back of the building. She ran to the end of the balcony and looked out to see what had befallen the man throw so hard and fast from such a height. Except she had forgotten this side of the building stood up against the riverbank. She arrived in time to see the thrown security man be engulfed by a massive splash of water as he disappeared into the river.
She turned away, snatched up a gun that was by her foot, and quickly followed Oneakka.
She arrived to the final scene of the raid. There was only one security man left and he looked terrified for his life. Behind him, Douro was cowering into the bottom corner of the balcony. One of his arms and one side of his face were slack, telling of a partial stunning earlier.
Oneakka stalked towards the remaining guard that stood in his way.
The young man held up his single weapon – a small knife – and was visibly shaking.
"Douro of Rimba," Oneakka intoned, ignoring the guard. "You are under arrest by order of Alliance Enforcement and the full weight of the Elite."
The security man glanced down and round at his former boss and then back to Oneakka, wild panic in his eyes. His eyes flickered to Seeal behind Oneakka.
She pointed to the river beyond the edge of the balcony and gestured with her head, suggesting his best option.
The man considered it for a second, whimpered and then ran for the balcony edge. He scrambled up on the balustrade and threw himself off down into the water below with another loud falling whimper.
Left with only Douro now, Oneakka slid away his knife and stood over his prey. "You and I are going to have talk, Douro," he intoned. The floor seemed to shift under Seeal's boots again.
"A close and personal talk, about Iketani," Oneakka continued and Douro's face slackened and paled further.
"Um," Seeal interrupted. "I don't want to hurry you with your big dramatic moment, but-"
This time the building definitely moved. Seeal looked back round down the length of the encircling balcony and watched in shock as a hole started to appear in the floor, bricks and balcony disappearing down into it. A clattering, collapsing, kind of sound was echoing from below them and the floor shifted again.
She looked back round to Oneakka, who was looking at her with what looked like accusation.
"I didn't shot the columns out, they did!" She objected loudly over the rising crashing sound of the building collapsing from the inside out.
There was only one thing to do now.
Moving alongside Oneakka, they followed the recent path of the last remaining defender of Douro and his corrupted club. She got one boot up on the balcony's balustrade and threw herself out and off the building's edge.
She fell in a nice, worryingly slow arch down towards the waiting, likely cold water, of Rimba's river. She heard Douro's scream to her right as he fell ahead of her and Oneakka.
She hit the water a second later, the freezing temperature rushing up over her, stealing her breath and forcing water up her nose as she dropped down into the suffocating embrace of the river.
She kicked and swung her hands round quickly, twisting and pushing her body back up towards the water's surface in the fast desperate need for oxygen. She burst up into the warmer air of Rimba's sunset, spitting and sneezing out water in what had to be a very attractive splutter and retch. It tasted awful!
"Raven?" Oneakka's voice called to her.
"I'm okay," she replied as she plastered her hair back off her face that had somehow gotten free during her dunking.
She heard loud spluttering and complaining to her left. She swung herself round in the water to see Oneakka moving through the water, one pale hand holding the struggling Douro by his collar. The guy probably couldn't swim all that well with half his upper body still stunned.
"Honoured Elite!" Madesh's worried voice called out from the bank and Seeal turned round to see that Madesh and the Division men were stood on the river's edge. She kicked off in their direction on the shored up riverbank.
A few good strokes of her arms and she was first at the water's edge, only it was a good metre up to the ground above.
Oneakka reached her side, shoving Douro up towards Madesh and the Division men. The three men hauled Douro up onto dry land again amidst complaints and professions of innocence. Everyone ignored him.
Douro out the way, Madesh reached down to help her up next. She grasped his offered hand in hers, and tried to get a decent purchase on the wet walls of the river bank with her boots. It wasn't working and she kept slipping. Her arms were tired from her long day of fighting and her recent clamber up through the club, and her muscles were exhausted.
Only the problem was abruptly solved by a hand gripping the back of her waistband and she was suddenly being assisted further up towards Madesh by Oneakka beside her in the water. Feeling a little annoyed at needing the help, she tried to help herself by grabbing at the top of the edge of the bank, but began slipping again.
Oneakka's support arrived again, but this time by way of his hand pressed against her backside. His push was less than dignified and clearly far too forceful, as it sent her up and over the edge of the bank's edge in a rush, that almost knocked over Madesh and resulted in her arriving back on land slumped face first in the dirt.
She turned over quickly, recovering hurriedly, to glare accusingly at Oneakka as he annoyingly pulled himself up out of the water easily, Madesh's attempts to help him unnecessary and too late.
She was almost certain she had seen an amused smile cross Oneakka's face as he stood up, but he simply focused on brushing himself down as if he were removing a few specs of dirt from his armour not half the river's contents. Water drained out from his moulded armour and holsters, but he didn't seem to care as he stepped forward.
Seeal struggled up, only slightly slipping on the wet ground as she did so. Pushing wet, sticking hair from her face, she righted her clothing as she stood upright. Back in control.
Oneakka was already striding away, the Division men dragging the crying Douro between them, as they followed close behind him.
Seeal sighed, hating Oneakka in that moment. How did he always look so in control, so powerful through all that?
She glanced at Madesh next to her so see that he too was watching Oneakka, though with obvious admiration and open hero worship.
She rolled her eyes and shook out her wet sleeves she quickly followed, moving around the massive mountain of destroyed club building and people standing around with wide shocked eyes. While Oneakka simply strode through them all as if nothing was out of place, as if nothing unusual or surprising had just happened.
Perhaps this was all in a day's work for the Elite.
As Seeal followed, her boots squelching with water and the eager Madesh hurrying ahead of her, she realised she hadn't had this much fun in a very, very long time.
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TBC