Chapter 4 - Pressure
A/N: Slight edits were made to last chapter to make timeline stuff more clear. More details in chapter three itself, but basically: Lora and Rex's parts are taking place at the same time currently. Lora's is about a week ahead.
Enjoy!
Lora chanced a quick glance over her shoulder past Pyra, confirming what she already knew. No other exit besides the open archway that led into the kitchen area. She'd seen Malos' flaming artifice sink beneath the cloud sea, heard his agonized scream as he died from Mythra's last attack.
So how was he standing there now?
Her hands clenched, and her eyes searched for another makeshift weapon. Maybe her soup bowl? No, that was stupid. Malos' growing smirk on his face told her he knew exactly how much he was making her panic, and the effect he had on the small room.
She gritted her teeth. "What are you doing here?"
She tensed as Malos lightly pushed off of the wall. She turned her body, careful to keep him fully in view, eyes closely following him as he…grabbed a bowl, walked over to the stove where the pot of still slightly steaming stew in its pot on the stove and ladled himself a helping into his bowl.
"What does it look like?"
It was such an innocent action, but the way he did it, like he was…taunting her, set her instincts aflame. The spot near her sternum thrummed and she felt something…funny. A tickling of fire in her head, connecting to a whisper of darkness.
Was that coming from Pyra's affinity link? Or…
From atop the fridge where Obrona was perched, a wave of red ether spread outwards through the kitchen, and Lora stumbled as the affinity link between her and Pyra abruptly cut. It felt like Haze's power, but the sensation of the ether manipulation, it felt a little like she was choking.
"Much obliged, Obrona." Obrona cut off the field and Ahkos turned to her. "Now I know you're still new, Lora, but please, no fighting in my kitchen. We've lost enough seats in the past as it is." He sighed, turning in his seat to glare at Malos. "I thought I specifically told you to stay away until I had a chance to fully explain the situation."
"Wait," Lora took an angry step forward towards Ahkos, eyes narrowed, "you knew Malos was here?"
Ahkos raised an eyebrow. "Of course. This is his home as well after all."
"He…lives here?"
"Same as the rest of Torna."
"Torna?" she muttered. Torna's people were still alive? Even after Spessia? Something about that didn't add up, but she also really needed to focus because Malos was still in the room right now. She lightly shook her head, dispelling the thought. "But you know what he is, what he's done, right?"
Ahkos adjusted his lenses, and gave an unconcerned shrug. "Malos, one of the Aegises, colloquially known as 'the endbringer.' Responsible for sinking at least three Titans during the Aegis war and causing havoc and mayhem throughout the whole of Alrest."
He said it like he was commenting on the weather.
"Don't forget Noodler's Delight's new favorite customer!" Obrona had gone back nonchalantly dangling her legs over the edge of the fridge, swinging them back and forth in an uneven pattern. "Malos wouldn't shut up about their argentum noodle soup after we first went. Too bad we won't be able to go back to Argentum there after they figure out what you did, hmm?"
"Shut up, you cocky little brat."
"Yes, yes, we're all aware of how disappointed you are they don't do take-out. Thank you, Malos." Ahkos turned back to her. "As you can see, I am quite aware of his resume of past…misdeeds."
"Don't worry." Malos aggressively slurped down a bite of the stew, not bothering with a spoon. "I have no intention of harming Jin's precious Driver. Should've seen the look he gave me when I even joked about it." He took another slurp, making a satisfied sound. "Yeah, no point messing with that, especially in my condition. All I'm doing is taking a lunch break." He gave a nod to Ahkos. "It's good, better than usual, even."
"Actually, it was Pyra who made it, not me."
Malos' eyebrows shot up. "Really now? Well, compliments to the chef. I didn't know you had it in you."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Pyra's hand clench, the material of her fingerless gloves creaking as her hand clutched her dormant sword tighter.
Lora flinched as Malos turned his attention back to her. "So, the new Driver of the Aegis, fully awake at last. Honestly, I never thought it'd be you of all people, but maybe I shouldn't be surprised with eyes like that. Intentional or not, I can admire someone who cheats death."
Lora simply glared at him. This was more the Malos she was used to seeing. "I don't need your compliments."
Malos shrugged, taking another sip of stew. It felt ridiculously rude. "So, do you really understand the consequences of what you've done, making yourself her Driver?"
"No, but I don't really care what you think."
"Hmph. Fair enough. So what are you planning on doing? Follow Jin around while we prepare to go to Elysium?"
Her eyes narrowed. "You're going to Elysium?" Why did he want to go there, too?
"Why so interested? Planning on going there yourself?" He knew. She didn't know how, but he knew. "Well, since we're headed that way too, maybe we could give you a lift?"
Pyra stepped forward, moving past Lora, as if protecting her. "And why would we ever accept that, after everything you've done? Why would Jin even think about associating with you after that?"
The humor drained from Malos' face. "And you couldn't be bothered to ask him yourself? Coward. You actually think you still know Jin?"
"And you think you do?"
"Yes."
Lora hadn't felt the familiar icy tug of his affinity link since she'd passed out, which was strange. He'd always send a cold nudge if he was near her, his way of reassuring her when she'd been little, fresh out of that horror. She'd never asked him to stop and over the years it had become his own little way of reassuring her that he was always there for her.
Lora cut in. "Where is he?"
"Out." Ahkos answered. "After two days of brooding and generally getting in the way while I was caring for you during your recovery, we sent him to raid an Ardainian Battleship for core crystals."
Lora's eyes widened. "What?! But Jin would never do something like that." She knew he didn't particularly like fighting, so then why…
"Is that what you really think?" Malos crossed one arm finishing off the last of the stew in his bowl. "You think a man wouldn't change in five-hundred years? You should be ashamed, especially since you're the one who broke him."
"What are you talking about? I would never do anything to harm-"
She cut off as Malos slammed his bowl to the floor, shattering it. Ahkos' hand pinched the bridge of his nose.
"You're so selfish, both of you!" Malos glared at her. "You just couldn't bear the thought of being forgotten, not even thinking about what it would do to him, the agony that he would go through. And now you have the gall to think that you think you can just pick back up where you left off when you last saw him and have nothing be different?"
She…didn't know how to respond to that. The silence, heavy in the air, was telling.
After another moment, he turned to Pyra. "And you. You left the world to rot after you couldn't handle the consequences of your own power!"
Lora shook off the guilt enough to focus and cut in, jumping to defend her. "That was only after you provoked her."
"Yes."
She was slightly taken aback, not expecting for him to actually agree with her so readily.
"I had a part in that. But that doesn't excuse her letting that bastard Tornan prince seal her away so she could hide from her problems. You still are, aren't you, Mythra?"
Ahkos rose from his seat. "As much as I'd like to see how this drama develops, we're getting off top-"
"Shut up, and sit down, Ahkos. I'm not finished."
After a moment, Ahkos wisely complied. Obrona giggled from atop the fridge.
Malos took a deep breath and got quieter. "After our battle and after I reconstructed myself, do you want to know how Jin was when I found him? Broken. A husk of a man. I barely recognized him. He kept his promise to never let you go, but in the end all it did was break him. I gave him new direction, purpose, a reason to live. But now that you're alive, I…" He broke off with an exasperated grunt, slamming his fist into the side of the wall.
He almost sounded… jealous? But that couldn't be right. This was Malos.
"Maybe so, but that still doesn't explain why Jin would do something like raid a battleship. Why he would even listen to you in the first place."
Malos let out a long breath, rubbing a hand over a piece of armor covering his core crystal. "These things were so much easier to explain when I had access to up-to-date information."
"Huh?"
"Let's start with something easy. You ever heard of core crystal cleansing?"
"I doubt she'll agree, Jin. You can't have both. Sooner or later, you're going to have to choose."
An ardainian soldier slumped to the ground, not even given enough time to cry out before their life ended.
Live for her.
Fulfill Malos' ambition.
The two contradicting promises raged in a blizzard, swirling around in a storm in his head.
Jin flicked his nodachi to the side and continued to walk steadily forward, even as other soldiers noticed him, raised the alarm, shouting orders, shooting. The ship's alarm began blaring, the sounds warped because of his speed. The incoming soldiers movements were slow, almost comically so, or so it seemed to him.
Of course, nothing about this raid was humorous. He blocked out the noise, the screams, all while moving out of the way and blocking their bullets more on instinct rather than truly paying any real attention to it.
The actions moment by moment were empty.
His body was moving, slicing through the guards on the core crystal shipment ship faster than they could see him move his weapon. But his mind is already back on the Marsanes.
Live for her.
Fulfill Malos' ambition.
His weapon carved through the thick metal bulkhead in front of him, slicing through with ridiculous ease. The ardainian soldiers behind it stood shocked to stillness for a moment until one of them barked an order over the still blaring alarm. The soldiers shot.
It made no difference. He kept walking, moving around and his weapon through.
A hatch opened and out poured Drivers and their Blades. The added challenge took only a little more effort to overcome, and within moments the Blades clattered to the floor, returned to core crystals after their Drivers slumped to the floor, dead.
Live for her.
Fulfill Malos' ambition.
He knows he can't do both. He's seen the world for what it is. But seeing Lora again. That smile.
He touched his horned white mask.
After so long living with the grief, the want, he thought he'd moved on, or at least with Malos, found a new sense of purpose. He thought he'd found a reason for his existence.
Jin blinked, coming to his senses. The sight of the shipments of core crystals from Mor Ardain to Indol made Lora's heart thump angrily in his chest.
Or at least at one point, that's what he'd convinced himself it was. Her anger at seeing the cores treated like bottles on a shelf, tools of war, not beings. A sign she agreed with his actions, if only slightly.
He wasn't so sure anymore.
At one point, centuries ago he'd thought words might reach the people of Alrest, convince them logically of what the core crystal cleansing process was really doing, how unnatural it was. How it was both driven by lust for power, for extra tools to wage warfare while ignoring the treatment of Blades along with the broader ramifications.
If you reset Blades, they couldn't grow into Titans. And without Titans, you'd have no place to live.
The book he'd once written explaining its importance was buried, forgotten like so many of old Torna's teachings. The people he'd once convinced of its importance were long dead by the Praetorium.
After centuries of trying, he'd shrunk into himself and from the sidelines, he'd watched Alrest's steady decline.
Yet now that by some blessing – or maybe it was a curse? – of the Architect, he doesn't know what to think. Lora is only alive because of the Aegis. But he despises her for what she left to rot.
But she also brought Lora back.
An impossibility.
A contradiction.
Live for her.
He'd tried for centuries, until he couldn't do it anymore. Until Malos had come along, he hadn't cared enough to do anything.
Fulfill Malos' ambition.
He promised to get revenge on the ones who were at the root of it. Amalthus and the Architect. He, Malos and the rest of Torna, his new family, would make that a reality. He'd convinced himself that Lora would agree. Maybe she would still.
He glanced behind him at the carnage he'd caused.
Or, maybe she wouldn't.
The blizzard in his mind raged on.
"Malos sure is taking his bloody sweet time. Slacking off when he's part of the reason we have to do this in the first place."
"Patience is a virtue, my lady."
"Yeah, and so is being punctual." Another minute passed. Nia handed Mikhail another tool for the section of wiring he was fixing when he asked for it. She let out an irritated sigh. "You mind going down and seeing what's going on, Dromarch?"
Dromarch, bless 'im, just bobbed his head, and with an 'Of course, my lady,' padded off further into the Marsanes towards the kitchen. Beast-type Blade as he was, he unfortunately wasn't too useful for things that required fingers.
As the newest member of Torna, she was often stuck being the one who just helped out everyone with whatever needed doing. Even things she basically knew nothing about.
She looked back to Mikhail, who was now leaning casually against the wall with what he probably thought was a suave smile stuck on his face. "So, now that we're alone, Nia, how about you and me go find a little place to-"
"Shut your mouth Mik, or I'll shove it so far up your arse that you'll never find it."
A loud clanging noise across the deck made her jump and Cressidus looked over from where he'd dropped a stack of paneling near where she and Mikhail were working.
"My bad." The Blade rubbed the back of his head sheepishly.
"Try to be a little more careful with those, buddy. They're delicate." Mikhail called as Cressidus went to back deeper into the Marsanes.
"Mik, it's just wall panels. It's not like they're gonna snap if you just look at them funny."
"Show's what you know. You bend or dent these guys and the whole wall will look wrong."
"Ah, whatever. Why can't that Pyra girl help out too, eh? She's one of the ones who did this and Aegis or not, she's a fire Blade. So why can't she help us weld or something?"
His demeanor shifted. "Yeah, uh…no thanks."
A cheeky grin lit her face. "What, did you try to ask her out and she rejected you or something? Embarrassed, much?"
He sighed, running a hand through his blond hair. "No it's…complicated."
"Well, it's not like we've got much else to talk about. Go on."
"Pass."
Her grin faded. And she huffed in annoyance. Another long minute or two passed in miserable silence. "Ugh. They're taking a while. How have you put up with Malos for so long?"
Mikhail paused, the tool she'd handed him poised to connect a couple of electrical wires.
"Eh, why'd you stop?"
"You know, there was a time when I couldn't stand Malos."
"You mean every day then?"
"I'm being serious, Nia." He started twisting the new wires together, and though she wasn't an electrician or whatever they were called, it felt like to her that he kept going for longer than was necessary.
He capped off the wire and moved along to the next damaged panel while she heaved a fresh one from the pile Cressidus had brought in into place, and started screwing it in. Malos and Sever would weld them in place whenever they got back.
"Long before you were awakened, I had something like a family. We weren't related by blood, and honestly we traveled more than I liked, but I came to love them like I hadn't anyone before. My childhood before they took me in was hell, but so were a lot of kids. You know why?"
It wasn't hard to guess. "Malos?"
"Yeah, Malos. One of the Titans he helped sink was my home. Mythra, or Pyra as she's calling herself, took major part in that. Then after Indol mopped up the surviving Tornans, I was left alone."
"You're talking about the Aegis War from five-hundred years ago." Nia looked away, crossing her arms. "But that doesn't explain how you can tolerate him. If anything, by the sound of it, you should hate his guts."
"It really doesn't, does it? To be honest, I'm not even sure I know anymore." He let out another big sigh. "There's another thing too. What do you do when suddenly someone you thought was dead comes back into your life?"
They both went silent.
He was talking about the woman in the icicle. The one everyone had refused to talk about until now. Ahkos had asked for her opinion on her health while she was recovering in one of Jin's medical tube things, clearly breathing. Her name was Laura, maybe?
"That's…not something I can really answer for you, Mik."
"Yeah, I guess. Sorry I asked."
Lora fiddled with one of her gloves, still refusing to sit, not quite making eye contact with Malos, but keeping him in sight. "If what you're saying is true, then yes. I agree that it absolutely needs to be stopped."
"You see what I mean?"
"If. I need proof."
"Why not wait for Jin to get back and confirm it? Or better yet, why not go to Indol and see for yourself? I bet the Praetor would just love to see you."
The tension in the small kitchen was still so thick it was almost choking. If she could, Lora would have left ages ago, but the Blade following Malos was still blocking the way out. Atop the fridge Obrona had started humming, ready in case someone tried something, but otherwise tuned out into her own little world.
Right now, Lora envied her.
A hand landed on her shoulder and Lora turned to see Pyra, eyes closed, face scrunched in concentration.
Another pulse from her sternum, another tickle of fire in her mind, followed by a distant jumble of so many things that her head started hurting. She clutched the side of her head with one hand, wincing.
"Pyra, what are you…?"
Pyra opened her eyes, and the uncomfortable sensation stopped. "Malos may be telling the truth. The data, the experiences that funnel back to me from core crystals over Alrest it's...there are so many blank slates. Far more than there should be. And some of the data I'm getting from the Blades." She shook her head sadly, taking her hand off of Lora's shoulder and putting it over her heart. "There are so few ready to become Titans. Compared to back then, it's…"
Lora didn't really understand how Pyra knew that, but she trusted her enough to know she probably knew what she was talking about.
Malos crossed his arms. "So, what are you going to do?"
She was silent. Did she really have to be the one who chose this?
"Lora?" Pyra asked.
Lora bit her lip, thinking. "It sounds like this ritual needs to stop, but I need to see the world for myself. Five-hundred years is a long time, but it can't be as bad as you're saying."
"You've been out of the loop for a while. So, go, and see for yourself all the awful things that humanity has done to the world. I think you'll come to the same conclusions I did."
A white beast-type Blade poked in past Malos' Blade. "Pardon the interruption, but my lady and Mikhail request your presence, master Malos."
Mikhail?
Her heart lurched at the name before she reminded herself of how he was separated from them in their speedy flight from the Tornan Refugee camp. He was human, like her, so it couldn't be the same Mikhail, could it? Her head hurt, trying to remember something that wouldn't come.
"Oh do they now?" The beast Blade stayed silent in the face of Malos' comment, simply sitting on his haunches and staring. "Well, if they insist." He turned back to Lora before he left. "See you around."
She let out a huge whoomph of air once the sound of his and the Blades' footsteps faded. She felt tired, even though she'd just woken up not too long ago. One of Pyra's hands, warm, clutching her hand supportively. "Are you alright, Lora?"
"I'll be fine. I just..." She shook her head. "I really need to get out of this room now." Out of this ship, and into fresh air if possible.
Ahkos stood. "Malos does have a flair for the dramatic when he wants too. Mixed in with the presence he brings into a room, it's quite something isn't it?" He adjusted his lenses, putting on a smug looking smirk. "Of course, it's nowhere near as refined as my own work."
Obrona flitted down from the fridge and began hovering around him. "I know a jealous tone when I hear one."
Ahkos rolled his eyes, ignoring her. "Well, I suppose we can call this a scene for now. I'll show you to the room Jin prepared for you, if you'd like."
"I don't suppose there's a balcony or deck on this ship I could go to? I need some air."
"Sadly we're submerged beneath the cloud sea right now, but once repairs are finished, we're heading near Mor Ardain to check out one of our ventures. That will likely be the soonest we'll breach."
"And Jin?"
"He'll be back soon."
"Alright." It wasn't fine, but she'd live. As she followed Ahkos out of the kitchen, she wished Jin was here.
A/N: Malos breaking dishes while delivering some hard mostly truths.
No Rex this chapter for two reasons. one, I felt it would take away from the impact of what was going on, and two well...
Unfortunately, I have to announce a hiatus for all my stories. I'll be back March 2021.
For those that stick around, 'Looks Like We're Out of Snacks' is far from out of snackage. Please don't let this deter you from commenting/reviewing the chapter. I love hearing from you all.
See you then.