Taking a deep breath in of the oceanic breeze in the humid air, Amerika held the salty warmth in her lungs for a brief moment— savoring its rejuvenating ions— before letting it all out, as the light of the morning sun cascaded down upon her and her six year-old companion. "God, I love coastal areas— it doesn't get much better than this love!" The goblin girl said enthusiastically with her bandages loosened up enough to partially reveal her toothy grin.
Dressed in a white hoodie and gray skirt that Amerika had purchased for her while they were out shopping for Ren, Juliet looked over her shoulder while standing behind the goblin girl— her blue eyes staring back at the shimmering sea tha glistened as the sunlight above danced on its gentle waves.
"Would you believe me, if I were to tell you that this is the first time I've actually seen the Adria Sea from outside of Floré's walls?" She asked with a cathartic smile across her lips, as she looked back over to where Amerika was turning back around to face her.
Sporting a jaded look across her partially concealed face, Amerika let out an exasperated sigh before replying with, "Unfortunately, I would— seeing how terrible those stupid cunts have been to yew… Pardon my vulgarity."
Knowing that Amerika's disdain of Heaven's Daybreak came from a benevolent place, Juliet smiled sweetly back at the mildly self-conscious goblin, and told her, "Don't worry about that, Miss Amerika! I grew up surrounded by bad-mouthed adults— swearing doesn't bother me a bit!"
Frowning at that, Amerika let out a small groan that was muffled in her throat. "Well… That shite's in the past now, lass; ain't no way in hell anyone's gonna be fockin' with yew, by the time I'm done teachin' yew," the goblin girl stated firmly, while nodding at the double-action revolver that the six year-old was holding with both hands.
Tracing the direction of where Amerika's pupils were focused, Juliet tilted her down with a nervous expression finding its way across her ivory-face. "... I'll certainly do my best to follow, Miss Amerika," Juliet said with an uncertain tone in her voice.
Sensing that there was something wrong with her, Amerika raised a brow from underneath her bandage-wrapped forehead. "Worried 'bout not gettin' it?" She asked curiously, to which Juliet paused momentarily before softly shaking her head at her. "Oh? Or are yew frightened of what'll happen if yew pull the trigger?"
"Yes, but… That's not the whole reason why I'm feeling worried," Juliet admitted truthfully, and let out a soft breath before lifting her chin up to stare directly into Amerika's tinted goggles.
"Ah, is that so then?" The goblin girl responded with a slightly uncomfortable tone in her understanding voice— her mind already making the connections, but yet she still withheld her assumptions as she asked, "Wot's the conundrum yew've got on yewr plate then, love?"
Curling her eyebrows upward to express a hint of sadness on her still anxious face, Juliet appeared apologetic as she slowly averted her half-closed gaze away from Amerika's hidden stare. "It's just that... I don't think I have it in me to hurt someone— just thinking about it makes me feel…"
"... Sick to yewr stomach?" Amerika finished for her, after Juliet's mumbled words trailed off into silence— her own soft spoken words ripe with empathy. Being met with more silence from the blond girl who was beginning to grow visibly ashamed of what she'd admitted, Amerika paused to contemplate an idea that was brewing in her mind.
"Y… Yes, Ma'am— it does," Juliet admitted while breaking the silence, as she felt as though she were disappointing the goblin girl before her. "… I'm sorry."
Taking in a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, the goblin girl took a double take at their surroundings— seeing nothing but the sparse redwood trees looming around them, without a single soul in sight. "Nah' don't worry 'bout it... That's nothin' to be ashamed of, love," Amerika said with sincerity in her voice, and turned to face the blond girl while reaching up to pull the hood of her cowl down.
Immediately snapping out of her feelings of self-conscious shame, Juliet's eyes widened as a quiet gasp escaped through her gaped mouth. "M-Miss Amerika?! W-What are you doing?!" The blond girl asked with a trembling voice, upon seeing the goblin girl pulling her white bandages from her face.
"Takin' me mask off; don't need it for wot I have to say," Amerika explained with a cathartic smile across her lips, as she pulled her tinted goggles up to rest them on top of her head full of brown hair.
"I… I don't understand," Juliet admitted with an utterly perplexed look in her blue eyes— taking one bewildered glance down at her revolver, before looking back up to ask, "Does this…?! D-Does this have anything to do with teaching me how to use this thing?!"
Letting out a soft chuckle from behind her closed lips, Amerika shrugged her shoulders softly in response to the baffled girl's attempt to make sense of her seemingly careless act. "Yes… But also no," Amerika replied with a hint of amusement in her somber voice, as Juliet cocked her head slightly toward her shoulder.
"Allow me to elaborate," Amerika said in a lully voice, while her golden-yellow eyes slowly turned to stare out to the glistening waters of the harbor city's shore down below, in the distance. "I grew up in an underground bunker; had me some lovin' parents, a brilliant cousin, and a whole community of well-mannered people who looked out for one another…"
"... We also isolated ourselves as much as we could from the outside world— both physically, and philosophically, as well," Amerika continued, before pausing as she looked back into the somewhat confused expression on Juliet's face. "Wot I'm tryin' to say is that we kept to ourselves; we related more to the people of the Old World, than we did to those who would gladly wipe us out, n' take our shite…"
"... Which is fockin' wot happened anyways, but I digress… Lookin' back on it now, the way it all happened, it was… P-Preventable— all so fockin' preventable…" Amerika lamented with a queasy look on her uncomfortable face— dwelling on the events that took place that early morning, while her gaze drifted away from Juliet's sympathetic stare.
"You… You shouldn't blame yourself for what happened, Miss Amerika; what those horrible men did to you and your poor family wasn't your fault," the blond girl argued politely, while trying her best to reassure the distracted goblin, who simply let out a humorless chuckle as she shook her head.
"Hmhph…! Don't yew think I've already tried tellin' myself that, sweetheart…?" Amerika asked rhetorically with a hint of gratitude in her sorrowful voice. "No— We've only got ourselves to blame; we'd gone our whole lives tryin' so hard to pretend that the outside world didn't exist, beyond mere make-believe— we were livin' so far in the past, that none of us were prepared for when the present finally caught up with us."
Still not convinced that Amerika's viewpoint was correct, Juliet lowered her head softly as she shook it. "... There was no way you could have prepared yourselves for something like that."
Appreciating what Juliet was trying to advocate for, Amerika offered the optimistic girl a half-cocked smirk, and paused before proclaiming, "That's the thing, love: we all had contingencies for it— we prepared ourselves for the day that trouble came knockin' on our door."
Tightening her grip on the handle of her own revolver, Amerika clicked her tongue on the inside of her cheek as she raised it up to present it to the six year-old— making sure that the barrel wasn't facing her, and that her finger was away from its trigger.
"... "God created men, Colt made them equal,"" Amerika recited from memory, while watching Juliet's eyes fixate on the side of her firearm's sleek cylinder. "This was our ultimate equalizer: these are wot were meant to give us a fightin' chance against those who we wouldn't have been able to normally defend ourselves from," the goblin girl mused, before letting out a sarcastic chuckle, as she added somewhat playfully, "Goblins aren't known for survivin' most dangerous encounters, love— especially when yewr kind is involved."
Flinching upon hearing the resentment in Amerika's cynical voice, Juliet looked up from the top of the revolver, where she saw the goblin's yellow eyes become fixated on the gleam of her own firearm. Expecting for her to continue on with her heartfelt lesson, the blond girl found the elongated silence worrying enough to speak up— so as to not only break it, but to break Amerika out of whatever spiraling dark thoughts she had.
"... They weren't enough though, were they ma'am?" Juliet said with a saddened voice, and felt her heart sink the moment she saw tears beginning to trickle out of Amerika's watery eyes.
Completely stone-faced as her eyes silently wept, Amerika let out a barely audible sigh before slowly looking up from the gun to meet Juliet's concerned gaze. "No… No they weren't," the goblin girl said in a sober voice. "I went me whole life thinkin' "that'll never happen to me", and always figured I'd be able to protect my loved ones and myself if it actually did happen… When it came time to actually needin' to pull the trigger though, I… I couldn't do it; we all couldn't do it— not until it was too late…"
It was after hearing Amerika say that did Juliet finally make the connection in her mind— her blue eyes widening softly in discomfort. "You poor thing—you didn't want to hurt anyone… None of you did," Juliet murmured with her own eyes growing watery, and lowered the revolver with her right hand as she raised her other arm to wipe her face on the sleeve of her new hoodie.
Recoiling internally from how sincerely saddened the blond girl's voice sounded, it took Amerika a few moments to fight off the urge to lose her composure. Taking a shaky breath into her lungs, the goblin girl silently saw flashes of how she and her family attempted to flee from their home— the predatory screams of their chasers, as they pursued them all the way to the outer rim of the forest they spent their entire lives within.
"I… I was so… So scared… More scared than I ever was before in me whole life; and they weaponized that fear against all of us," Amerika said with growing hatred in her voice, as her soft, hollow demeanor began to harden with resolve. "And it shouldn't be that way... Everything 'bout this focked-up world is wrong; yew've already seen first-hand wot happens when some with power above yew feels like they're above the consequences of their actions."
Growing exasperated for how Amerika was refusing to cut herself any slack, Juliet's face was growing a shade of red as she felt her blood beginning to boil. "I-If really that's so, then…?! T-Then if this failed you when you needed it most, then what makes you think that it'll help me?!" Juliet asked far more aggressively than she intended to— reeling back, and becoming visibly shocked at her own outburst, while the goblin girl merely stared back at her with an unphased expression.
"Yew're right— it won't help yew in yewr time of need," Amerika replied factually, and lamented quietly to herself before following her response with, "Knowin' how to aim at the thing that's 'bout to hurt yew is one thing— havin' the guts to pull the trigger in the face of adversity is somethin' else entirely."
Hearing the conviction in Amerika's voice sent chills down Juliet's spine; it was in that moment that the blond girl felt her defiance being replaced with the same stomach-churning dread as before. "W… What does that mean?"
"It means that I didn't just take yew out here to show how to use that thing, love; I took yew out here to teach yew a bloody important life lesson that I had to learn the hard-fockin' way," the goblin girl stated, without any of the warmth in her voice she had since speaking to Juliet. "Now come on; there's nothin' to shoot at whilst out here."
Being signaled to follow her deeper into the woods with a single curled-finger, Juliet felt her chest tightening as she forced her reluctant feet to begin following behind the hardened goblin. "M-Ma'am," Juliet spoke up in a nervous voice, "May I…? M-May I ask what that lesson is?"
Not immediately replying to Juliet's inquiry, Amerika remained stone-faced as she led the anxious six year-old deeper into the woods; her traumatized mind being split on the path she was wanting to lead the child down. Wondering if what she was about to do was meant to help Juliet, or herself, Amerika pressed on— her back turned to the beautiful waters that had brought her comfort, ever since stepping foot through Floré's Eastern gate with the trusting child in tow.
"... That it doesn't get much better than this, love" Amerika stated cynically— sniffing the coastal air one last time, before beginning to reapply the bandages to her face.