Omega [REDUX]

Chapter 19

She heard the computerized voice crackle through her helmet. "Recruit 971, step up to the podium."

Amidst the glowing blue surroundings of the simulation Anna drew the sniper rifle from the clamp on her suit, her left hand bracing as the full weight of the weapon hit her palm, her arm straining to hold. Less so than before, nonetheless. Her physical conditioning had certainly worked since then. Her suit's bio-readings jumped a little as she felt her heart squeeze with every step she took, a symptom of her impending anxiety. She shut off the bio-readings display, flicking the safety off her weapon in the same movement.

"Setup your weapon."

Anna drew the ammunition clip from her suit's compartment with practiced efficiency. Even with a gauntlet, her control on what she was holding was flawless, even doing a little twirl with the cartridge before she slid it into the chamber. A click, and then she pushed the bolt back into position. Her gun was hot, ready to fire.

As was she. She glanced dead ahead at the target board that had begun to materialize some distance away. She gave the distance between her and the target a rough mental estimate, then lifted the sniper rifle to her shoulder.

"6 shots. Whenever you're ready."

She steadied the weapon, aiming through the scope, positioning the crosshair just where she needed it to be. Anna sucked in a breath, eyes focused.

Then she pulled the trigger.

The discharge resounded through the simulation, the gun kicking back into her shoulder. But she didn't wait to look at the target board for an outcome. She already knew what it was. Instead, she pulled back the bolt and pushed it back in a single fluid motion, and took aim again.

She pulled the trigger.

Same discharge, same sound, same kick. Nothing changed. Rinse and repeat. Anna reset the weapon, and fired. Same result. She did it again. And again. And again.

6 shots, 6 bullseyes. 100% accuracy materialized next to the target board in glowing blue letters. Anna pulled back the bolt, ejected the clip, and placed it on the virtual table next to her virtual self.

"Test complete. Recruit 971, disengage from the simulation and report back to your quarters. Bloodbath protocol at 1600 hours tomorrow."

"Yes sir." Anna pulled up the simulation interface with the swipe of her hand, and hit the disengage option that materialized before her palm. Her world went black, and vertigo crashed into her as she began the exit.

When she awoke, the pod was dark. The routine of hissing and slow opening began, and Anna squinted as light began to stream into the enclosed space. That went a lot better than expected.

She found Elsa waiting outside. Applause. "100% accuracy, eh?" Elsa smirked.

Anna tried to shrug it off. She wasn't sure if she pulled it off. "I learned from the best."

"I tell you something even more interesting." Elsa drew a datapad from behind her back and tossed it to Anna, the latter catching it in both her hands, glancing at the display. A leaderboard. "It's synced to the aptitude tests that took place today. About all of them are completed by now."

Anna tapped the Overall Standings tab, weary from the efforts of the day's tests but curious to see what Elsa was talking about. The past few hours had been filled with running, firing, responsiveness testing and physical aptitude tests. These "physical aptitude tests" had included more push-ups, pull-ups, hand-to-hand sparring with simulated opponents and obstacle courses than Anna's tired mind could bother to count. Her emotions were probably jaded by then.

She wasn't jaded enough, evidently, to not feel surprised. The tabulation for scores in Overall Standings first gave her a glance at the top 10 performing recruits. Elsa had been ranked first. That didn't surprise her; Elsa had already revealed enough about her background for Anna to expect such a result. What surprised Anna was that she herself was ranked second.

"You rigged this, didn't you?" she asked, narrowing her eyes suspiciously at Elsa. Her friend merely shrugged. Anna tossed back the datapad and drew out her own, checking up the aptitude tests rankings herself. Same result. It wasn't rigged. Anna – 971 stood at the top of the table, with the corresponding team Omega – Valkyrie right next to her name.

"Congratulations," Elsa said, at some point after Anna had overcome her initial surprise. "You went from the brink of failing aptitude tests to topping them completely."

Anna blushed; she didn't know how to handle praise or compliments. She managed a small "thanks" in response. Come on, think straight. She's just trying to make you feel good. Don't overthink this.

"Want to know something better?"

"What's that?" Anna asked.

"Search for Ursula's standing on the leaderboards."

Anna cocked an eyebrow as she brought up the search function to enter Ursula's name and serial number in. "129th?" Anna said incredulously. "The bitch that used to beat me up is ranked 129th?" Tears of rage – or joy, she couldn't tell – began to well up in her eyes, and she fought to keep them back.

If anything, Elsa's small smile was a huge comfort to her. "Just means she's got even less reason to pick on you, and you've got more reasons to defend yourself."

"One day I'll get back at her," Anna spat vehemently, surprising herself with the venom in her own voice.

"That's not how we do things," Elsa said, walking up to Anna and putting a hand on her shoulder, the tank top Anna wore allowing her to feel Elsa's cool skin. "Never do things for revenge."

"But she—"

Elsa placed another hand on her shoulder, silencing Anna. "I know it doesn't feel good, but you have to conceal this emotion of yours. Eventually it won't matter to you anymore, eventually Ursula won't matter anything to you anymore. Especially when you're out there fighting for the lives of your teammates and your own. Never let emotion affect your combat ability."

Anna's breath hitched, and she caught herself mid-sob. She tried to compose herself again. "Sorry."

"It's fine."

"I shouldn't – I shouldn't have subjected you to that," Anna sighed. "It wasn't your problem."

"It's cool." Elsa shook her lightly. "Sometimes it's good to just talk about it to someone."

"Yeah." Anna nodded lamely, thoroughly ashamed. I just blew it again, didn't I? "What now?"

"Now you go rest, and get ready for Bloodbath."

"Goddammit. I don't want to go for Bloodbath. I hate that exercise. It's so unfair."

"All's fair in love and war."

Maybe in war, but not in love. Not when you're involved, Elsa. I think I'm in love with you. "How is an Omega division recruit supposed to fight Alpha division recruits?" Anna countered, careful not to accidentally voice her thoughts out loud.

"Correction: Omega division recruits who just topped the leaderboards," Elsa said, grinning cheekily as she steered an exasperated Anna away from the simulation room and pushed at Anna's back, prodding her out of the door. "You eating dinner?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Mind picking up a tiramisu for me? I have something on, so I can't go for dinner."

"You don't want a full meal? You'll be hungry later." Oh god, now I'm mothering over her like I'm already someone important to her. Control yourself, Anna.

"I'll be fine," Elsa replied. "I just really like chocolate tiramisu. Especially the choc0late ones."

"You too?" Anna shrieked gleefully. Then she mock glared at Elsa. "If it's the last one, it's mine. You know how popular those things are."

"If you can, get two, one for each of us. If it's the last one, we'll split."

"Fair enough."

What the hell happened to ditching "conceal don't feel"?

Elsa cursed at herself as she walked down grey metal corridor, hands in her pockets, head hanging. You promised herself. Of course you just had to tell her to conceal her feelings. Can't even practice what you preach. She let the self-doubt consume her for a minute. It was good, or so she believed, to maintain her current level of self-awareness. Nonetheless, she recognized it was a delicate balance: too much self-deprecation would affect her confidence, too little and she would become over-confident.

Elsa realized that she would rather the former.

And she had a lot of reasons for it too.

Her journey along the metal walkways took her to the isolated part of the campus. She passed by the garden along the way; outside the sky was a peachy orange as the sun began to fade over the horizon, its canvas a myriad of colours and pastels. For a while, she was tempted to feel happy at the rare sight. She hardly came up here, and not many things in her god forsaken existence was that beautiful anymore. But no. Not now.

And especially not today.

For once, Elsa was glad for the respite; her mind would be occupied with something other than Anna. That one girl had jarred up her nerves so bad she'd found herself waking up in a fit of sweat, luscious dreams of one hand clutching Anna's red hair, nails digging into her scalp, another hand cupping a separate, naughtier place as they both moaned into the same kiss, pleasure rippling through them like tidal waves as their ministrations drove each other insane. Elsa didn't like it; she'd fucking loved it. And that scared her quite a bit. Especially now that she knew that Anna most likely felt the same way about her.

Procrastinating about how to approach the problem would only serve as a temporary escape from her anxiety, but a small escape was better than no escape.

Elsa sighed, cast one last glance at the sunset and then turned back around, continuing her journey.

At some point, amidst the monotonous pattern of metal and shadows a singular sign appeared, with the word "Columbarium" engraved onto its golden surface. Elsa made a right, as she'd done in the past, walking towards the increasingly delicately engraved corridor, eventually making it past the archway into the main hall. The golden hue engulfed her, light refracting in the tinted windows and casting an eerie highlight on the marble floor, carved with intricate patterns and lined with equally detailed columns that stretched to the arches above. She knew the route by heart: turn left, walk down until the first row, turn left again, walk down three rows and turn right. Simple, but heavy hearted, passing by innumerable valiant individuals and alumni who fell in battle in the defence of what they treasured so greatly. She knew most of the names there; while she was still trying to learn things, she'd memorized and read up on the history of almost every single one of the names in the entire complex.

But only two held significance to her.

Two plaques were embedded at eye level on the walls adorned by similarly fashioned plaques, but she knew their exact positioning even before she faced the wall. Their names and identity were classified, and were not due to be released for 50 years, so for now, their plaques simply displayed their names and serial numbers in standard classification order.

Flynn – 453

Nemo – 802

The very sight of their names stilled her heart as pain began its slow injection into her soul. Guilt. Self-regret. Emotions she still failed to understand, but ironically the most familiar with. Most of all, pain consumed her, bringing forth the painful memories of her past.

At least I can mourn these two because there are things here to honour them in memory.

How can I mourn the civilians that died because of me?

She sighed deeply, her hands moving of their own accord, both palms placing themselves upon the plaque, covering their names entirely. A rush of magical energies washed through her, the blue particles materializing around the tips of her fingers and from underneath her hands, slowly dissipating into the air and into oblivion.

Elsa lifted her palms. The plaque and the names they displayed remained unchanged, but the watermark of a blue snowflake now adorned the material. It was the least she could do.

"Didn't expect you to be here."

Elsa turned, already knowing who it was. There was no other person who would remember this day.

Kristoff walked forward towards the plaque, and placed flowers down for both of his teammates. Elsa didn't bother trying to discern if he noticed the change on the plaques; if he did, he certainly didn't express it viscerally. Not that Elsa was expecting much else from him besides smoldering anger for her actions. "I'm actually quite surprised you remember this day," Kristoff continued.

"How could I forget?" she replied, glancing towards the floor. "I owe you all the life I have now. I especially them."

Kristoff took a step back, stood at attention, and did a small salute, his gaze never leaving the plaques. Elsa could see his eyes brimming, his hand trembling with the effort. He maintained that stance for about five seconds, and then broke off.

"I'm sorry about that day," Kristoff said, turning to face Elsa, his face a picture of remorse. "At the convention and all."

She shrugged in response. "Not your fault. I understand how you feel."

"Do you?"

"Let's just say growing up as Empyrean's superweapon isn't exactly a bed of roses. At the very least, I can empathise to a certain extent."

Kristoff shifted his feet uneasily. Elsa didn't blame him; it's not often that one got to talk to the person who murdered his teammates. "So er… what do you get up to nowadays?"

"When I'm not busy murdering more people?"

Elsa let the horror spread across Kristoff's face before she gave him a disarming smile. "Kidding. I'm just an average student at the academy now."

"Student?"

"Hello? This is a school, right?"

"No, I mean," Kristoff cleared his throat, "I'd thought that even if they put you into the school, you wouldn't be a student, of all things."

"How so?"

"I mean like, every single record we have of you is labelled hyper-lethal vector. Potential is wasted on you as a student."

"I've got other things to learn about besides combat," Elsa replied, twirling her braid. "There's a lot more to life than just fighting and shooting."

She watched Kristoff cock an eyebrow. "You're pretty wise for a 20-year-old, you know."

"We all have our moments of wisdom. There's never a time to stop learning."

"Not a lot of people can think that way."

"If being perpetually confused about my existence and my life has taught me anything, it's that I have to keep learning something new. Have to find some new directive. Direction. The two are subtly different, but I have neither. So I have to find it myself, and I pick up ideas and knowledge as I go along."

Kristoff just stared. Elsa sighed. "Sorry," she said. "I'm rambling, and I'm probably sounding way too cocky or something."

"We all have our moments of confusion," came the reply, a small smile on Kristoff's face as he pushed himself into a walk. "I'll see you around, I guess."

"You guess?"

"I might stop by every now and then. Now that you're here, I don't exactly have many assignments for my Class-X squad anymore."

"Ah, gotcha."

Elsa tapped her feet lightly in a rhythm as the lift ascended. She ran through a list of fighting stances in her heads, listed off three ways why each of them was appropriate in three different environments and three separate, unique methods to utilize each one. In the same space of time she ran through a separate list of guns and how to use them, how to disassemble them, and what ammunition they utilized. As she exited the hissing lift doors she ran through every way to twirl them and how much force she would need to do so. As she reached her room door she ran through three combat takedowns in her head.

Then when she opened the door everything simply whited out into nothing when she saw Anna on her bed.

"Oh. Hey!" Anna said, kicking off the blankets in an attempt to greet Elsa. The sheets flew off the bed and into a pile onto the floor. "Whoops."

Elsa's heart went to her throat. Anna's top was a white tank top that left a lot of skin exposed for her to see, and the only other piece of clothing on her were shorts that were literally, well, short. Her vocabulary, which she'd accumulated with aggressive reading and memorization, completely failed her, and for a while she just stood there just staring at Anna.

"What?" Anna asked, after what Elsa believed must have been millennia of staring. Alarmed, she quickly shook her head.

"Nothing much," she bluffed, "just wondering if you got the tiramisu."

"Oh, I didn't forget that," Anna said as she rose, stretching her toned, sexy legs in a way that Elsa found difficult to discern if the action was intentional or not. She bent over to pick up the blanket, and Elsa got a full view of her cleavage.

Her face began to burn.

"You coming in? Or you gonna stand there all night?"

Oh god. Elsa was mortified. She forced herself to take a step into the room, and shut the door. Shit. Now I feel trapped here. Not that I'd mind. Wait. What? No no no no no, she thought, trying to force herself to think straight, almost tripping over the bed as she tried to sit down.

"You okay?" Anna asked, sitting down next to her. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

I've seen something else all right. "I'm… I'm fine," Elsa replied, trying to keep her voice under control; it was a miracle that she did.

"O…kay…?" Anna said, cocking an eyebrow as she reached behind her. "Anyways, I probably jinxed it, but there's only one tiramisu left."

Change of subject. Thank god. Elsa fake-pouted, narrowing her eyes. "This is your doing."

"Hey!" Anna held her hands up in surrender with a grin on her face. "You can ask Belle about it. I had to fight her for this, so you'd better be grateful."

"I am, I am," Elsa assured her between fits of giggles, glad for the respite. Nonetheless, she still couldn't get her desire for Anna totally purged from her system. "So how we gonna do this?"

"We can feed each other." Anna held up a spoon.

The phrase 'feed each other' took on a totally separate meaning in Elsa's mind. Her face felt hot again. "I don't quite follow," she said, desperately hoping that Anna didn't see how red her face probably was.

Anna pulled open the cover of the tiramisu, dug the spoon into the chocolate substance, and held it towards Elsa's mouth. "Say ahhh," Anna laughed.

"Ahhh—" Elsa closed her lips around the spoon, savouring the delicious caress of the chocolate rolling over her tongue.

"Now your turn," Anna said, passing the cup and the spoon to Elsa. Elsa giggled nervously, but Anna smiled kindly through it all, even as Elsa dug out a spoon of chocolate as fed it to Anna. "Mmmmmph," she heard Anna moan, and in her mind the spoon was her own finger. She could almost feel Anna's tongue rolling all over it.

And when did such vivid imagery get in your head, Elsa? You're going to have to give your browsing history a check. What the hell are you watching? She tried to clear her head of the thoughts again. No dice.

They went on with that for the next half an hour, chatting as they did, finally discarding away the tiramisu and snuggling in for bed. Elsa couldn't sleep, especially not with such thoughts running in her head, and the gorgeously tantalizing body cuddling up to her.

"Tell me about yourself," Anna said out of the blue.

Elsa's heart stopped. "What do you mean?"

"Like, your past. Whatever happened to you before you came here."

Elsa hesitated. It must have been visible. "Pleaseeeee," Anna whined. "You promised. You promised you'd tell me anything, remember?"

Her mind flashed back to the scene in the dark room in some secluded part of the convention hall, pressing her forehead to Anna's, promising to tell her anything once they'd gotten out alive. And they had. She owed it to her. Especially since Anna had accepted her as a friend, potentially more than a friend, despite having a secret kept from her.

She had to.

"I'm still not sure you want to hear it." Elsa's voice dropped to a soft, scared whisper.

Anna's response was to cuddle Elsa, wrapping a leg around one of Elsa's, hugging her tighter. Elsa could feel her breasts pressing into her skin, and for a moment she thought she'd found the true meaning of bliss. Just this. Cuddling with what she considered to be the love of her life.

And yet, she knew all the ways this could go wrong. If Anna rejected her for who she was. If she scared Anna away. Because deep down, she was still a monster.

"You need to be sure, Anna. 'Cause my past—" Elsa took a deep breath and let it out again. "It isn't something to proud of."

"I'm sure," came the reply, as Anna nuzzled her head against Elsa's shoulder, eyes closed.

Elsa cast a longing glance at Anna's face, turned away to look back at the ceiling of her room, and then took another deep breath.

And then she began.