#SOMETHING I SAID! IN THE GROUNDWATER! THAT IS SO COOL!
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so you might be wondering, what the heck is a water conservation district and what does it have to do with Castelia??
well strap in because I'm gonna tell you exactly what a water conservation district is AND what it has to do with Castelia AND why you YES YOU should care about it
SO. first of all. if you've ever looked at a map of Unova or been anywhere vaguely in the vicinity of Castelia City any time in the last, uhh, few centuries or so
you might have noticed the GIANT HECKING DESERT between it and the entire rest of the landmass. you know, the one that takes up like a full quarter of the peninsula?
yeah that one.
has it ever struck you as KINDA WEIRD that there's a big fuckoff desert right at the tip of an otherwise VERY GREEN peninsula? smack in between two rivers?
because it KINDA IS. and it's also kinda a problem!
because that desert is very very difficult to be in. or to get across. yeah, they managed to get some construction up along that route, and that definitely makes it easier... for humans
but what about pokemon?
now, don't get me wrong, the desert has been there for hundreds if not THOUSANDS of years and has become an important Pokemon habitat in its own right. nobody's gonna be summoning Kyogre about it or anything (and if anyone tries I will hit you with my rake do not fucking test me). but Castelia has grown dramatically in modern times, and eaten up a lot of what was historically lush seaside habitat for Pokemon that don't like living in deserts. so where did those Pokemon go?
unfortunately, a lot of them just... didn't. the descendants of those pokemon, at least the ones that couldn't make it upriver or across, are just making do with the fringes we've left them, their populations drastically decreased from historical levels. and it's getting worse: big modern cities like Castelia, with lots of pavement and tall buildings made of metal and glass, reflect a LOT of heat, and also take up a LOT of water and resources. if we're not careful, a city like Castelia can make everything around it - those last green fringes - into barren desert.
hey Lennox that's sad and all but what about the water conservation thing
I am SO GLAD YOU ASKED, inquisitive hypothetical reader
bare basics: a conservation district is a local government unit that carries out and oversees resource conservation activities in its jurisdiction. so, the Castelia Water Conservation District is basically the governing body that does stuff to conserve water in Castelia. simple.
as I've said, I work as a groundskeeper for the district. and my specific workplace is actually Extremely Cool and is a place I think everyone in or around Castelia should visit!
the official name is something like Castelia Riparian Preserve at Water Ranch or something like that, but we mostly just call it Castelia Riparian or the Preserve. and what it is, is a water treatment and groundwater recharge facility that doubles as manmade pokemon habitat!
basically, there's a series of lakes that we fill up periodically with reclaimed water. which, well, you wouldn't want to drink the stuff, but the tiny fish and aquatic bugs and plants? they can live in it just fine! and the plants purify it over time! and in turn those tiny plants and things serve as food for wild Pokemon, who also do just fine on this water. and the lakes make it possible for bigger plants, bushes and trees, to grow around them - and THAT makes homes for lots and lots of wild non-desert pokemon, baybeeee! and eventually the water in the lakes rejoins the water cycle by either evaporating into the air or percolating down into the groundwater, and either way that makes for a happier, healthier ecosystem - and once the lakes are empty, well, we've got plenty more to pump right back in!
since this park was established, population numbers for non-desert-adapted Pokemon in the Castelia area have been consistently rising. and it's not just the locals, either - since it gives migratory pokemon passing through the region an extra place to stop off and rest, we've been seeing those numbers rise as well. even better, we've seen a decrease in extreme high temperatures near the preserve, thanks to the natural cooling effect of the lakes and tree cover - even the desert areas immediately nearby the park have been starting to support more greenery and healthy Pokemon populations! if we keep this up, then over enough time, we might be able to significantly reduce the size of the Unovan desert, make the remaining desert area significantly more hospitable both for the Pokemon that live there and other species that have historically lived on the peninsula, and almost totally offset Castelia's adverse impact on the climate!
damn, that DOES sound cool, Lennox!
IT SURE DOES, DOESN'T IT
and you can even come visit and spend the day here! there's walking trails built right into the park and everything! and it's free! you can't beat free!
however, if you do come to visit, be warned: you are NOT allowed to capture or battle pokemon here. no, we don't care if they jumped out at you in the tall grass, you shouldn't have been in the tall grass in the first place. there are trails. you stay on them. enjoy the trees, enjoy the pokemon from afar, and everyone will have a nice chill time.
(okay, yes - we will make an exception if you were in fact minding your own business and a Swanna decided it didn't like your face or something. we can't hold you accountable for some pokemon just being assholes.)
#pokeblog rp#fun fact this is largely based off an actual water recharge site near me#I go there a lot for birdwatching and it's very nice#i even also live in a desert#and on warm days the temperature under the trees can be a LOT lower just from the shade and plant respiration#the large-scale ecological restoration stuff is a bit out of scope for the real park#but it IS loosely inspired by real regreening efforts in sub-saharan Africa
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hey I used to work with a fair amount of environmental types and sort of still do (I'm in mechanical engineering but I'm interested in environment-adjacent stuff and ended up working at a GIS mapping company for a bit) and I think the ecosystems and disaster recovery stuff is really interesting! animals are cool and all, but something about seeing the way a thing bounces back or changes in response to stressors or big imbalances is a lot cooler to me than just learning how something works on its own. Hope your job and/or program is going well!
HI SHADE <333 oooh i think i remember you working there, or talking about it, since I took GIS back in 2020 and definitely talked about it! honestly i wish i went for an environmental engineering degree but no place nearby offered it, so i just have the BS in environmental science instead. lots of my coworkers have the engineering degree though, although we don't do actual engineering work where i work. that said, i sort of plan to get a masters eventually, so i might end up more specialized (not in engineering though)
also yeah!! i loved loved my hydrology class in school, which was mostly about groundwater contamination. we learned how to draw groundwater maps and identify groundwater contamination plumes, and then do the math to find out how fast they were traveling and what direction. our final exam was just a map with some houses marked out and a story--we had to identify the water table, determine soil porosity, construct a drilling well, calculate well draw down, calculate the contamination plume, the distance it would have gone in 5 years, and predict how long it'd take to reach another house's well. so cool!!!
anyway i just get weirdly excited over toxic chemical spills/disasters. obviously in a "oh this is awful i want to know exactly how this is fixed" sort of way--i'm not happy that it exists i just think fixing it is interesting and rewarding. you ever think about how to clean up chemicals in an aquifer? something that is below the ground and not even visible to you? to the point where people can drink it and be fine? it's pretty cool
that said it can be extremely depressing? especially since these sites will remain contaminated for years since there's just not enough money to get them cleaned up faster? and people suffer and die because of it? i think i've learned to block it out a bit--i still feel the sadness and it's important that i do, but i've learned to engage on a different scientific/problem solving level that spares me some of the despair, i think. like how a doctor/nurse/emt has to just get down to business. i think you need to have some of that to work in environmental science too because genuinely there's so much depressing news all the time
anyway i'll leave this off with an ongoing superfund (the name used to refer to the most hazardous sites in the U.S.) site that i find absolutely horrifying:
this is a very long article that i think i read last year. it is also very depressing as a warning
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Watching Strange New Worlds, I'm seeing dead people
If I'm honest, I can't stand Strange New Worlds. Spoilers abound in this post, this is your only warning.
Look, I watched the first season. I enjoyed most of it. It's delightful. It has a cast of colorful characters, the old planet-of-the-week plot, and Anson Mount's aw-shucks Captain Pike. I enjoyed it, but something kept nagging at me the entire time.
That nagging kept with me for the first 8 episodes, and I still couldn't figure out what was bothering me and why. Then comes "All Those Who Wander," and suddenly things started to fall into place.
The thing that carried Star Trek for the first 40 years was always characters, because when you have an episodic/monster-of-the-week type show, that's where your main source of continuity is. Watching characters change and grow, but within a predicable envelope such that you can say, regardless of where in the show syndication takes you, "yeah, i can see Riker/Troi/Geordi doing that."
Disco and Picard shifted the focus of the show from character-driven continuity to story-driven, and a lot of people weren't terribly happy with that. I actually liked Disco, though in hindsight it is pretty disappointing.
But getting back to Strange New Worlds, "All Those Who Wander" flopped really, really hard for me. To start, the Alien pastiche was so tonally jarring compared to the previous 8 episodes that it already felt like writing for shock value. So when it gets to the cool blind guy doing his heroic sacrifice, it felt part and parcel of writing for shock value.
Said cool blind guy, Hemmer, has, at this point, gotten I think 4 episodes with an actual role to play. His actor, Bruce Horak, is in the opening credits for the entire show to this point. Hemmer is the chief engineer of the Enterprise! Traditionally, that's a big role on a Star Trek show. Geordi, O'Brien, B'Ellana, Trip, and, of course, Scotty.
Scotty, of course, is the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise in TOS. At this point he's also been very conspicuously absent from Pike's Enterprise, and therein lies the one thing that just absolutely kills Strange New Worlds for me. It's a prequel.
Ever since Discovery came out, I've made do with the reality that Paramount would rather do prequels and interquels and follow-ups than stick a flag in the early 25th or 26th centuries and continue on the way that TNG did with the 24th.
Canon is always going to be a millstone around the neck of a writer. This is true of any work in an established property. The Star Wars prequels were not only bad because George Lucas is a dogshit writer, they were bad because the story they wanted to tell had to fit into the world established by events that take place after them and that were written long before they were.
Back in 1986 when TNG was in the planning stages, Roddenberry was very insistent that no direct references be made to the original series. Eventually the producers persuaded him to have a cameo by Bones. But after that, for years, TNG only made vague reference to the original series. This started to change after Roddenberry's death, eventually bringing in James Doohan and Leonard Nimoy to reprise Scotty and Spock in one-offs.
During TNG and most of the rest of the 90s, when faced with a conflict between canon and doing something interesting which contradicted it, the writers of Star Trek chose the latter, both for better and for worse.
But as the frachise has expanded, aged, and sunk into the groundwater of pop culture, fans who are now second or third generation raised on Trek have become increasingly demanding of writers. Star Trek and universes like it are no longer a basis for telling stories, they are a core component of identity. To call it religious may be slightly facetious but not as much as you might think.
All of which loops me right back around to Scotty's notable absence in Strange New Worlds, Hemmer's death, and the unbearable burden of canon.
There is not a single story that has been told in Strange New Worlds that could not be told in a sequel series set in the 25th or 26th centuries. Pike's struggle with his certain fate does not need Pike to be an interesting story, it could easily be any other Captain, because the interesting part of a story like that is not the end result, it is the journey to that end result. But because canon is law, Pike's fate is assuredly sealed, as the season finale, "A Quality of Mercy," lays bare.
Canon is law, and so when I watch Strange New World, I see, as the line goes, dead people. I see Lieutenant Na'an dead fighting the Gorn. I see Oretegas transfered to the Saratoga or the Faragut or the New Jersey. I see Dr. M'Benga leaving to remain on some distant world to help erradicate a disease that reminds him of his daughter's plight.
I see all of these characters that in the course of 10 episodes I have already come to know and love be swept away in order to make room for more familiar faces. It has been 57 years since Star Trek first aired in syndication on NBC, but as it was written, so it shall be that James Tiberius Kirk will be captain, that Spock will be his first officer, that Leonard "Bones" McCoy will become the Ships Doctor, and that Montgomery Scott will give it all she's got, captain.
I'm probably in the minority here, as Strange New Worlds appears to be by far the most popular of the new Star Trek series, at least the live action ones. But honestly? I'll take Discovery instead, any day of the week.
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A Town of rain long shoes: What is water? (5) (5/6)
↑Graduation certificate To car driver's license
85.04.27 (Saturday)
Never again, in front of me
Your vow not to show up
I admit
Rei Morishita
(6 episodes in all, I will post an article I wrote in a minicomi magazine from 1984 to 1985. It's old, but I still admit that it has a certain value. My writing is an article about training: Episode 5. This blog is annoying to people who need a car in their daily lives, so please forgive me.)
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Cars are interesting, aren't they? Is it walking if you compare it to a living thing? Or is it running? ――― I think I'm walking. The reason is that "running" means "the moment when both feet are raised in the air", but the car just puts four feet on the ground. Close to walking. Yeah, rather, it's more accurate to say "he is creeping " A car that turns around. A well-paved road is essential for him. A uniform road that has been smoothed out.
Furthermore, pipes are laid inside the car and inside him. It's the same with the human body, but in his case, blood doesn't ooze into the cells. Ｇａｓｏｌｉｎｅ never goes out of the pipe.
By the way, water and automobiles have something in common. Imagine a European town surrounded by stones and bricks. When garbage or sewage comes out, if you throw it through the window, it will naturally fall on the stone road and rot (unlike the soil road) and give off a foul odor, so it is irresistible. Therefore, it is carried along the pipe to the downstream part of the nearby river (as seen from the town) and discharged. This is the beginning of today's sewerage technology. ――― Pavement and pipes! This is what water and automobiles have in common.
Here is another example. Why is nitric acid contamination so much in the spring water of Nukui Benten(the goddess of water and music), Koganei City that I drink? (See the first episode)――― Previously, the people who had been expelled from Setagaya Ward due to the construction work of Kannana-Dori Avenue had been excluded from the designation of the scenic area (just then), the “Kokubunji Cliff Line” (created by the Tama River). It is said that rhey moved to the top of the terrace and threw various filth into wells. Moreover, as the pavement progresses, rainwater cannot penetrate underground, reducing the amount of spring water. "Shimobenten", which is located downstream of Nukui Benten, used to have spring water, but now it has only a dent. Poor Benzaiten somehow. In addition, huge sewer pipes are buried underground, which can cut off groundwater veins. (This is not limited to Nukui.)
Blessing of heaven --- rainwater. Today's cities seem to have a period that hates this grace. Let's wash away the rain as soon as possible! With this, there is no room for a puddle. Even if it rains, there is no water --- there will be a "dam". In the sense of "no water", it is exactly the same as the desert. "Tokyo Desert". (Hiroshi Uchiyamada and Cool Five) What an arrogant thing.
Effective use of rainwater is considered as one of the "water saving" measures. For example, when building a new elementary school, the idea is to create a rainwater storage tank underground and store it for a "flush toilet." Of course, it's a step forward. However, "flush toilet" is a very imaginative technology in terms of dealing with sewage, and I hate it. (For this, please refer to the 4th series "Water and Soil".) --- I don't think there is any fundamental change in the physiology of cities.
Finite Ecology (有限の生態学)
Mr. Yasushi Kurihara (Ecology), an assistant professor at Tohoku University, has an interesting book. "Finite Ecology" (Iwanami Shinsho). In the latter half of this book, there is a story about whether humans and chlorella can exchange what they need and what they don't need in a spaceship using pipes. Oxygen required by humans is not required by chlorella, and nutrients and carbon dioxide required by chlorella are waste products for humans. (Nutrition is stool.) Will it work? His conclusion is that such ecosystems will sooner or later collapse. He says, "There is no" pavement and pipe "in the natural world." (*) --- I agree.
When thinking this way, the current destinations of waterworks, sewerage, and the automobile society are also visible.
(*) This statement seems to have been in a newspaper interview rather than in "finite ecology." In addition, animals have blood vessels, plants have conduits and tubes, and it can be said that there are pipes in nature. However, there is "bleeding".
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Before, when it rained, the road became muddy. I miss long shoes. I think the pavement that is convenient for cars is very difficult for us to walk. (In my poor experience.) Moreover, it would be a problem for both water and soil. No one is so crazy as to sow seeds on the pavement. (It would be great if you could. I would love to meet you.)
Recently, I started to grow a field in the front yard of the old project G (Kokubunnji city). Bring the waste vegetables from "Greengrocer P" and use them as compost. Also, store rainwater in a bucket and water the vegetables when it doesn't rain. At this time, I don't want to use tap water as it is. This is because the current tap water, which is harmful to humans, is naturally harmful to plants. (However, domestic wastewater can be stored for a while, stabilized, and then used as a slow-acting fertilizer.) Water should not be excluded. Do not eliminate the soil. "Doronko" --- I think this is important. Oh, I miss long shoes!
When thinking this way, the fun ideas are endless. "Yeah, can this garden itself be a greengrocer?" --- A greengrocer without a store. A greengrocer that doesn't even need a rear car. Of course, "self-utilization" is the basis, and the surplus vegetables can be sold or divided. "Consumer" is a dead language!
It will be possible to cultivate the town. If the shops on one street agree, why not turn over the concrete pavement in that area? If it rains Grass will grow too. Is the road pavement rate 100%? Is the penetration rate of water and sewage 100%? ――― I don't feel proud of anything. Rather, it's sad.
Finally. What can concrete and gasoline be made from? ――― Oil (using itself and it for energy). By the way, why are mineral resources such as petroleum deep underground? Because it's unnecessary. However, I feel good and am happy to dig it out. I think this is the current oil civilization. Concrete is by no means natural. I think it's artificial. We humans do not have to rely on what we say we don't need nature, and if we do, we will be naturally abandoned and destroyed. Those who love concrete die in the wild on concrete.
(Supplement: "Shale gas" and "shale oil", which USA is currently working on, are just bad luck to survive the oil civilization.)
#car#pipe#gasoline#Pavement#groundwater veins#flush toilet#Finite Ecology#muddy#long shoes#sewage#concrete
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20 questions for writers
Was tagged by @jaguarys. Thanks for the tag!
How many works do you have on AO3?
14 so far. technically more because I have some orphaned works too
2. What's your total AO3 wordcount?
415,200 0.o
3. What fandoms do you write for?
Primarily Star Wars rn (the brainrot is strong). I have some Harry Potter fics that I put a lot of love and work into, but I haven't been able to engage with that fandom for... obvious reasons. I've also written for Bleach, Persona 5, Venom (the movie), Our Flag Means Death, and X-Men
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
Enoument (Harry Potter)
Empiricist (Harry Potter)
Cytokinesis (Star Wars)
Star-Birth (Star Wars)
Ouroboros (Harry Potter)
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
I try to. Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to it, and when the comment is just something like "I loved it" or "great fic" I usually won't because saying thank you over and over again is, idk, kinda weird. Usually when someone writes a really in-depth comment or theorizes or asks questions I'll respond almost immediately. It's a lot easier to reply when it feels like there's a conversation, ya know?
6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
This is hard to answer since most of my fics are still wips lol. I'd say as of right now it'd probably be For a Son.
7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
Again, same problem lmao. Also I don't tend to write happy fics.
8. Do you get hate on your fic?
Not really. I've gotten a few where people would complain about not liking some of the things I did but I wouldn't really call that hate. Just entitlement.
9. Do you write smut?
I've dabbled but I haven't published anything.
10. Do you write crossovers?
Nah. I'd be open to it if the inspiration ever struck me though
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not that I know of
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Nope
13. Have you ever co-written a fic?
I've tried it a few times with some friends but we never got far enough to publish anything.
14. What's your all-time favorite ship?
I don't think I have one. I'm open to basically any and every ship as long as I think they way the characters play off each other is interesting and compelling.
15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
Sigh. Empiricist. I really do love that fic and had so much fun working on it. But it is... massive. 200k words and I'm only about 1/4 the way through the plot I had. Plus the huge difficulty I have with writing Harry Potter now... I just don't think I'll be able to go back to it any time soon.
16. What are your writing strengths?
Honestly I have no idea. Apparently I am very good at delivering gut punches? (if anyone wants to tell me what they think my writing strengths are, I'd love to hear it.)
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
Action. I don't think I'm very good at writing action at all. Also getting to the plot. I tend to get distracted by introspection and character studies and forget to the big plot points lol
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
I think it works really well when used right. I really like it when you have a pov character who doesn't know the language, and you don't give the reader any translation for what is being said so that they are just as in the dark as the character.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
Guardians of Ga-Hoole, back before I even knew what fanfic was. (I actually emailed the author to tell her about my silly little story that I had written myself inspired by her books. Apparently Kathryn Lasky didn't know what fanfic was either and was very confused by my email. I was like... 10 maybe?)
20. Favorite fic you've ever written?
It changes. Star-Birth is up there because of all the cool things I've done with it and plan to do. Groundwater is probably going to be a close contender though
I can't think of anyone to tag atm but I'd love for any of yall to play and tag me. I wanna see what you're all writing
#ask game#doing this made me realize i should probably try to stop writing 100k word epics that i can never seem to finish and try to write smaller#fics instead#tragically all my ideas call for really really long fics T-T#i've got some shorter ones in the works at least#around the 5k-20k range i think#with any luck#maybe#fingers crossed
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Gah, I just can't get over the group I had for a discussion
"I was under the impression pharmacies get the pills in large amounts and then count them out into the pill bottles" after I mentioned that glass pill bottles would require more packaging... like yeah but the pill bottles don't spawn in the pharmacy, they have to get them somehow. And "how many people are recycling their pill bottles" I hope everybody? It takes two seconds and you don't even have to rinse them or anything? Just take your sticker off? I get being concerned about pill bottle waste and medical waste in general but like. That Is Not the biggest problem by a long shot.
"Yeah but then that takes a lot of water" about rinsing out laundry detergent jugs....... like maybe it's just a me thing but given I live in the midwest water is not my principle concern? I'd rather everything that's perfectly recyclable that goes through my house goes into the recycling bin, and that I do my best to make sure it will actually be recyclable and won't ruin the "batch" of recycling? Not that water conservation isn't important to me but I guess at some level I still don't really understand. Like I understand intellectually how water can be a finite resource despite the water cycle and I understand the concept of depleted groundwater being permanent because the pockets the air was in condense, but at some level I'm like "but the water cycle...." Also detergent sheets are expensive (at least i think?) and Also Also how is a bag of detergent pods better than the big container? is it just less plastic? Okay fine I get it, but is said bag of plastic more readily recyclable? Also I swear I like this person but it reeked of trying to sell us something....
Also that from the same person that said stopping use of cars altogether isn't practical like. Car use is a way bigger problem than any of those because even electric cars have all the same road problems. But like yeah obviously it's not practical and I don't think we'll ever "get rid" of cars (at least not anytime soon) but still, as a goal?
And Maybe I got a little bit too opinionated and Maybe I shouldn't have suggested cars when my opinion on them is so out there in offline spaces but when I started getting too adventurous with what our goal for our group exit ticket should be the pill bottle person suggested washing hands??? like my guy, this is an environmental science/geoscience course, our goal should be environmental?
Also we know disincentives don't work for reducing car use and there was an example of that IN SOMETHING WE READ FOR THAT CLASS because either people find a way around it that makes things worse or you just make them really mad, you have to make alternative methods of transportation attractive!!!! Also why THE FUCK did we go for tolls instead of taxes? Like yeah the money was (in this hypothetical) going to making public transit cheaper (just busses though, since that's all my city has), but tolls? When I ranted about this on a discord the following was enjoyed: are you dumb or stupid?
Oh yeah. and then when I was walking back to my dorm already Pissed The Fuck Off or at least Wired in that way and worried because I respect at least one of those people and I didn't want to be seen as The Weirdo (I hate when people get too opinionated in class discussions) and also I felt like I was being laughed at? idk man. some asshole was fucking riding his moped in a way that made it unclear where I was safe to go and some people came out of one of the buildings and told this guy on a motorcycle to "hit it" and revved it super loudly? that shit hurted by ears also youre not cool bro pretty sure that's bad for the engine
Also I probably won't get over it any time soon since I'm still annoyed about the thing that happened last weekend so whomst knows.
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language geek moment: the way ofmd fandom on tumblr is building our own vocabulary to talk about this show in realtime is wild and so very cool.
like obviously i love the muppet thing more than life itself, but “intricate rituals” in particular is never going to leave my izzy vocabulary now!!! ever!!!!
(and yes. he should be pickled.)
#somebody TITLED THEIR FIC AFTER A LINE FROM MY META????#i almost commented like 'hello hi you've made my life' but what if That Makes It Weird#so instead from afar i just made ed-esque heart-eyes and felt fancy and special#SOMETHING I SAID! IN THE GROUNDWATER! THAT IS SO COOL!#the fact that somebody LINKED to it was like what#why? thank you i love you what why how#THIS FANDOM IS DEEPLY COOL#also: since i'm only BARELY pretending i didn't do it#'i never saw a wild thing sorry for itself' is the most izzy shit alive#its funny because yes yes he has#izzy is ALWAYS FEELING SORRY FOR HIMSELF AND NEVER GOING TO THERAPY#pickle that motherfucker tbqh#also i saw someone calling jim and olu the orange halves in the wild away from my post#i almost DIED
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ok so im making a long ass post about Abzu (the game) within the context of mesopotamian mythology because I'm insane. It's gonna be a doozy and likely incomprehensible so <3 below the cut it goes! There's gonna be TONS of spoilers for the game, and, like, I guess for the mesopotamian creation epic, so. Play Abzu if you haven't and if you wanna read the Enuma Elish that's also cool. Good for u
(a note from afterwards: it's long. like, REALLY fucking long, holy shit. if you actually want to read the whole thing, be. prepared or something idk take breaks! the last two paragraphs (i know they're walls of text pls bear with me) contain most of the important information. like, the final hurrah of my brain after working on this for multiple hours! So if u wanna save time and avoid some of the redundancy, just skip to those last two <3)
So "Abzu" referred to two things; the fresh water people got from underground aquifers (also as the void-sea which was underneath the Sumerian underworld, Kur), and the deity; he only appeared in the creation story, Enuma Elish, because a big part of that whole thing was that oh no! He dies! And that's also a thing I'm gonna touch on (sorry about the lack of accent marks in advance, it's not available on my current keyboard^ ^;)
I'm gonna start off with a brief tale of what happened with Abzu the deity, and then move onto how both the deity and the concept relate to the game!
So like I mentioned, Abzu the deity only really appears in the creation myth. The story goes that the Primordial Soup divided into two beings, with Abzu representing the freshwater and Tiamat being the saltwater. They were married, and together birthed some of the first formative gods! Some of these gods, jealous of Abzu's power convinced Tiamat to kill him (or, I thought it was started by Tiamat growing resentful of the younger gods, one of those). Either way, Abzu was killed, and Tiamat ended up lashing out, creating the first "dragons", or perhaps becoming one herself; with "poison instead of blood". She is killed by Marduk, the god of storms and the child of Enki (one of the first gods created by Abzu and Tiamat), and from her body the heavens and the earth are formed. Imagine getting killed by ur grandson lol cringe /j
Now! The waters itself! This also brings Enki into the equation, who kinda took over as god of the waters in place of his dead father. He's also the god of creation, intelligence, crafts, mischief, and more! Very important guy.
Abzu refers to both the groundwater reservoirs that people depended on for both accessible clean water and for some agricultural work, and also to the void-sea beneath the underworld, where it is said that Enki rests. He had a temple at Eridu, a now-ruined city, and I remember hearing somewhere that he lived in a temple in an underground aquifer? But I can't find wherever I read that anymore so don't take my word for it. Anyway, the basics of Enki as a deity is: child of Tiamat and Abzu, widely worshipped in his time, god of the waters, generally a cool and important dude.
And now. Finally. We move onto the game. My head hurts.
So, for a quick (post-writing: lol it's not quick) overview of the game; you play as a funny little diver, who woke up in the middle of the ocean and, as the player, are given no clues as to who or what you are. You explore through the ocean levels peacefully at first, and with the guidance of a scarred shark (painted as a bit of an antagonist at first with the audio cues) you make your way to wells at the bottom-center of each level that revitalize the space around them; as they progress, many levels start out as barren, empty landscapes that give you a foreboding, nervous feeling going in, before using an energy from yourself to rekindle the life. Huge coral growths, seaweed, and a myriad of ocean animals spring to life. The player character can also ride on the sides of the bigger ones! The game also puts a big stress on unity between yourself and the environment; there's not a whole lot you can physically interact with, but you can play with the animals there and, like I said before, ride on some of the larger animals. There are also "meditation spots", statues where you can sit and explore the wildlife from more of their point of view, able to follow them seamlessly and see what the different kinds of fish and such are called. It's a calming experience, and really the most interaction you get with some of the more timid animals, letting you still see them up close even if you can't get there as the player character.
The story of the game is told via writings on the walls, which you can light up and access by solving small puzzles regarding connecting reservoirs of glowing waters, similar to that of the almost cosmic area you go to between levels; one thing I read described it as a kind of "rebirth area", which I can definitely see hehe!
At the end of the game, you've held the shark in its dying moments, you've discovered a strange factory that builds the weird triangular prisms that deliver anything that touches them a shock, the little flashlight dudes that you've found over the levels, and little divers that uncannily resemble yourself, and you've seen yourself disassembled to your funny little mechanical skeleton, weak and slow as you try to walk on land, before you are rebirthed from the void-cosmic-water area once again, fully yourself. There's a wonderful ending sequence where you swim through all these rivers, bringing life with you as you go, with the shark once again by your side. The whole game, you saw no land when you poked your head above water, just miles and miles of water, but you've travelled far enough to reach a reservoir. You cut the chains to a central triangular prism, and it grows over with moss. It gives me goosebumps just thinking about it, really, it feels like such a... grand gesture as you play through it. It feels personal.
Okay. Theory time. Finally, we're getting into the meat of it. Fucking hell.
So, imagine that you are this being. You're wandering an oceanic wonderland, observing and caring for what you need to, doing as any good little diver should. After a bit of poking around, you discover the start of the engravings on the walls; they tell the story of the people that were here before you, who built these temples and halls and used, or at least stored, the strange blue glowing "water" that you connect and move. It's a water of life, of sorts, one that they truly valued. You come to an impasse between areas, and this massive, scarred-up shark cuts in front of you. You're gonna stay hidden, that thing is terrifying! You try not to move. It doesn't spot you, or at least doesn't move to attack you. However, once it's safely out of view, you do follow it, and it leads you to a dark, desolate, empty chamber. This is wrong, you think to yourself. This isn't how it should be. There's a well, towards the bottom, and you approach it, taking... a fragment of light, from your chest, and imbuing that spark of life into the well. And, lo and behold, that intuition proved helpful, because the world around you springs back to life. Congratulations! You did it! And you continue to, as you work past puzzles and challenges and the appearance of these strange triangular mechanisms, that shock you when you get too close. These people worshipped a shark, as well, likely the same as the one you saw; the guide, now old and scarred, that brings you to where that spark is needed. Even later in the game, you see depictions of the triangular mechanisms, at first heralded as a positive, before these things are found to be the reason for this society's collapse. As if that wasn't perplexing enough, you see a depiction of a being that appears suspiciously similar to yourself, once again treated with reverence from the past civilization. In their hand is a ball of light, similar to the one shown when you revitalize the oceanic chambers. Well, that's certainly odd, you think to yourself. Perhaps this was a being that postponed the death of the civilization, or first allowed for those small chambers of life to exist in captivity instead of the open, natural landscapes you explored at the start. Regardless, it's now a relic of something long gone; but it still gives you something to think about. Later on, that strange coincidence of your similarities to that person are explained; you find a manufacturing plant, full of the vicious triangular mechanisms in each tight hallway, and right at the center of it all... multiple iterations of yourself, running down an assembly line, a spark not unlike what you saw before imbued into each of them. My, look at that; you've been responsible for part of this destruction all along, haven't you? Borne from that same ill that has been forcibly removing that spark from each of the places you've gone to. A bit inconsiderate of you, no? And yet... look at all the good you've done. You've rebirthed, revitalized, purified these ocean fragments, is that not enough? You are the keeper of these waters, regardless of the evil you had come from, despite the terrifying empty things may have reverted to. You, who trusted and followed the shark that seemed so scary at first. You, who followed it as it tried to attack a source of the evil, of the thing that was draining the oceans of their life. You, who held and comforted that shark as it lay dying, despite any fear you may have had. You, who attempted to traverse a minefield of those triangular machines, shocked over and over again and at the final moment, unable to make it to the finish line. You, who was rebirthed in full regardless by the oceans you'd cared for, by the void-sea you always returned to, to rest. You, who traversed a now-ruined citadel, temple, all of which had been flooded and had been dedicated to you. You, who brought life with you.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. You're serving as a figure not unlike Enki, god and guardian of the waters. In the wake of Abzu, the avatar of the fresh waters, now confined to irrigation canals so as not to kill the younger gods, Tiamat lashes out. Her husband is dead, as far as she is concerned, and she goes to those younger gods to seek her revenge. The dragon, that which sucked the life from the seas and poisoned the waters. That which Marduk killed, to carve new life from. I would say that the shark is Marduk, even; given how the shark is the only one who is openly on the offense to those mechanisms, and who comes in at the endgame to finish them off, bringing new life with it. Even in how it all shapes up with the civilization before, in connection to the constructs; Tiamat was the mother of all in existence at that time. She was surely loved; but she turned hostile and violent. She could no longer be safely loved. And Abzu, both the glowing water we use to open doors and the light that we hold and the deep void-sea we enter between levels and father to all in existence, he was confined to small canals and reservoirs and put in a deep sleep so that he would not kill his own children. And by you, no less. Enki put him there. That is why you can use that water from the start; you lived in the Abzu, you came from it, and each time, that is where you return. That temple, now submerged and decrepit, is Eridu; the place where Enki was most worshipped. The other diver clones are the other gods, or perhaps the "dragons", now, that Tiamat had mothered. The smaller prisms definitely count in that "dragon" category; purely harmful beings that seek to destroy life. And in the end, indeed, you restore life; you and your son, upon killing Tiamat, return life to the world from her body. Perhaps you could not save those who once worshipped you, perhaps those structures will forever be in ruin. But there is no more danger, now; there is space to build and replenish. There is space to grow.
Fuck ok that was long as hell. Hi if u made it this far i love u. god fucking damn im never writing anything again after this. it took about as long as a full playthrough of the game, coincidentally!!
#my writing#abzû#abzu#giant squid studios#ancient history#the moss mumbles#im not joking this is horrible. like it's all just word vomit about sumerian legend -> the game -> the game again (but in second person)#and THEN we get to The Point. god christ
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Hello fellow Mayalexer. I’d like to know what you think the long term consequences of the Ashland Volcano erupting would be? Sincerely, definitely not someone chronicling Jorvik.
Hello fellow Mayalex person who is definitely not a friend in real life to whom I hinted at that I wanted to answer this very question!
Something that is pretty interesting about large-scale volcanic eruptions is that they cause a lasting effect on the climate for the years to come.
"Little ice-ages" is a phenomenon that can be caused partially by volcanic eruptions, as the ashes linger in the stratosphere and block solar radiation. This leads to worldwide global cooling, which has resulted in harsh winters and poor harvests in the past.
In this post, I will compare a theoretical eruption of Garnok’s Fury with the eruption of an Icelandic volcano in 536, which had devastating consequences globally.
Warning: This might get pretty dark.
The year 536, volcanic eruptions were likely to be - or at the very least a major contributor to - the cause of a "darkening of the sky" where volcanic sulfur and particles coated the skies of the entire northern hemisphere and led to a major drop in temperatures for the next decade.
Catastrophic for the people alive by that time, and in the Mediterranean area a terrible plague named the Plague of Justinian* followed in the wake of the harsh conditions, killing millions.
“During this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness … and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear.”
- Procopius, Byzantine historian, regarding the disastrous year 536.
Volcanic eruptions pose a danger stretching far beyond the initial eruption. Garnok's Fury would indeed have consequences of global reach!
So what would that mean for Jorvik? Well, if we consider that the consequences of the eruptions of 536 have been speculated by religious scholars to potentially be the source of myths such as the Fimbulvinter**, I think we can say that Jorvik is in for their very own ice age.
However, it's difficult to predict climate change directly in Jorvik, since the climate on the island is influenced not only by volcanic energy but very much by the inherent magic that exists on the island.
For this reason, while I believe that Jorvik wouldn't be covered in ice that would make the island completely uninhabitable, the people of Jorvik would be in for a harsh time.
The most immediate effect, as I mentioned in my previous post, would be the destruction of the dam in the Great Reservoir, which is said to provide most of the electricity and drinking water in Jorvik.
While we don't know the exact size or volume of the Great Reservoir, we know that Lisa describes it as more of an ocean than a dam, and old Jorvegian tales have said that it is bottomless. "Bottomless" is a bit difficult to calculate though, so to find a real-life Jorvik comparison, I'm going to look at a pretty big dam instead.
Karahnjukavirkjun in Iceland is capable of generating 4600 GWh of power annually, which according to the US Bureau of Reclamation is enough to provide electricity to about 1.5 million people. Since the population of Jorvik is likely below a million as Jorvik is supposed to be a relatively small and overlooked island nation on the world stage (only about 350.000 people live on Iceland) this one generator should cover most of Jorvik’s needs.
However, Karahnjukavirkjun is meant to generate power to the Icelandic aluminum industry. Aluminum production requires a ridiculous amount of energy... but Jorvik has no such industry. In fact – Jorvik doesn’t seem to host much of an industry at all!
I asked @jorvegian-chronicler for a second opinion on the industries of Jorvik, and besides raising horses and manufacturing equipment for equestrian needs, it seems like the largest industries on Jorvik would likely be the drilling/mining of natural resources such as oil/gas and fishing/farming second. These industries would have far less need of energy than aluminum production, and thus, the Great Reservoir may be the only source of hydroelectric power production on Jorvik.
However, hydroelectric power is not the only power source on Jorvik. Just like Iceland, Jorvik is likely to have access to a great amount of geothermal power and may use that to provide central heating - which the Jorvegians will likely need once the sky goes dark. There are also the aforementioned great reserves of oil and gas around the island, but it seems like these resources are mainly mined by private companies and not used by the state to provide additional electricity (which they wouldn’t need anyway), so most of the fossil fuels produced on Jorvik might be export only.
Aside from electricity, Linda states in Darkness Falling that most of the drinking water in Jorvik comes from the Great Reservoir. The only canonical area we know that has its own water supply is Dundull and with no more information available we must assume that it is indeed the only local source of drinking water, and all larger settlements such as Jorvik City and Jarlaheim are completely dependent on the Great Reservoir.
We can also make the fairly safe assumption that any farmers on Jorvik rely on an irrigation system powered by freshwater from the Great Reservoir.
Armed with this knowledge (read: qualified guesswork) we can now start speculating what will happen in Jorvik’s own day after tomorrow.
When the dam breaches, it will release an enormous flood of water that will crush everything in its way, eliminating any settlements in the direction of the tidal wave of water that will mercilessly flow out of the broken dam. Canonical locations affected would be Meander Village and Pine Hill Manor. They would likely have some time available for evacuation, but so much for Mr. Sands.
The second effect would be the failure of most of the Jorvegian power grid. While central heating might be covered by geothermal power plants, light, household apparatuses, computers, and various entertainment systems would be shut down. There might be enough emergency power to provide power for an emergency broadcast or low-level lighting, but this emergency power wouldn’t last forever.
If Jorvik has any coal or oil-powered plants, they’d need to start working overtime to fill the power vacuum. However, with Jorvik being very environmentally conscious I believe they would have decommissioned most of the fossil-fueled power plants.
The third effect would be the loss of clean drinking water. You never realize how much water you use until the tap dries up. Mistfall lake seems to be an independent water source, and Silversong River could likely be fueled by meltwater from Dino Valley, but the largest cities in Jorvik – Jorvik City and Jarlaheim – would be without clean water.
There are wells placed around Jorvik that still would be fine to use, but those wells are mainly intended to provide water for the horses in Jorvik, not to provide water for the humans in the cities.
It seems odd to place all the eggs in a single basket by relying so much on this one dam, but I’m not one to question Linda on her knowledge of Jorvegian infrastructure.
A likely consequence is that the Jorvegians that can do so should seek their way to the countryside and smaller settlements. Any village with wells present has a source of groundwater which Jorvik City does not.
The Jorvegian government will have to arrange for water to be transported from other sources, and since Jorvik City is close to Dundull, giant tank trucks would likely be sent into the Mistfall national park in order to transport some of that water back to Jorvik City. . Perhaps GED can make a fortune here by selling Go! Energy Drinks?
Local wells wouldn’t be enough to support large-scale irrigation of agriculture, however, and it would be likely that harvests would fail all around Jorvik that year, as there wouldn’t be enough water available to provide enough for an agricultural industry.
This would be a huge hit to Jorvik’s economy, which relies on the fertile land for a large number of crops, and we all know that it doesn’t seem to rain nearly enough on Jorvik to make up for the loss of irrigation water.
If the harvests would be bad the first year, the subsequent years will be even worse, as the sun will be blocked out by volcanic particles which will lead to a cooldown over the entire northern hemisphere. Reports from the year 536 speak about crop failures and a “failure in bread”, implying that the large amounts of grain grown on Jorvik may not survive the colder climate.
Failing crops and poor harvests will lead to a huge economic deficit not only for the agricultural industry but for the equestrian industry as well. Much of the crops grown on Jorvik are not meant for the human population to consume, but rather to feed Jorvik’s obsession with the equestrian industry.
With an agricultural industry in decline over the next few years, it follows that the equestrian industry can no longer be supported to the same extent.
Several of the horse breeds imported to Jorvik over time may not have the build to survive the colder climate at this time and would need to be transported away from the island. Indigenous and cold-resistant breeds may have better luck, but with no agricultural industry to support them, it’s likely that the equestrian industry as a whole would need to downsize.
This would indirectly impact Jorvik’s tourism industry, as fewer young people would be spending their summer vacation in Jorvik for several years. In fact, Jorvik would likely not experience another summer for years to come!***
On the upside, Jorvik’s glue industry has a bright future ahead.
Fortunately, the fishing and fossil fuel industries wouldn’t be nearly as badly affected by the disaster. With crops failing, the fishing industry would be even more paramount for domestic food production, and Cape West might grow from a small fishing village to a large harbor to support the increased needs for fishing and shipping.
The fossil fuel industries would have to be relied on to provide domestic energy production until the dam can be rebuilt, as well as powering the boats used by the fishing industry.
This increased need for domestic use of fossil fuels would likely hurt Jorvik’s ability to export said fossil fuels, which may have far-reaching consequences globally, as peace never tends to be an option once oil is on the table. It’s unlikely that Jorvik makes up a major part of the global fossil fuel production, but such a sudden change in the worldwide fossil fuel distribution would likely have some consequences on the global market.
With the equestrian and agricultural industries failing, and the fishing and fossil fuel industries taking on more importance, more of Jorvik’s workforce would likely move to work in the industries that can offer them jobs. Carl Peterson is an experienced oil rig worker and would likely be forced to accept a job in the fossil fuel industry, leading to the Starshine Ranch falling into ruin.
Other people may be forced to leave Jorvik entirely, as the failure of the equestrian industry would mean the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the whole country.
The construction industry would likely be staying strong. There would be a need to rebuild the dam around the Great Reservoir. Construction on the Kárahnjúkar Dam took five years to complete, so we may be looking at a similar timeframe. Hopefully, they will build it to be sturdier this time as to not break as soon as some Sun Circle teenager opens a portal to Pandoria, and also construct some backup plans in the other lakes around Jorvik.
All in all, there would doubtlessly be many years of hardship to face on Jorvik. Hardships that I’m not sure that druidic magic could help with as we’re assuming a completely natural eruption not caused by Garnok and the Hell Portal.
Linda may still be able to foresee the eruption, but if she’d try to warn anyone, she’d likely get the Cassandra**** treatment. Of course, perhaps there is something that the Soul Riders could do to stop it. We don’t know all of the magic that runs through Jorvik, and honestly, I’m sure Linda can find some ritual to banish the initial volcanic eruption to the moon. Moon Circle OP.
There would be a light at the end of the tunnel, as the sun would gradually grow stronger as the particles fade away, and warm, pleasant summers with plentiful harvests would return to Jorvik.
...
Whew, that was pretty dark.
These kinds of events tend to have far-reaching consequences, and I barely even touched on how the political, cultural, and social development could turn out following the eruption, destruction of the dam, and the long winter.
The forces of nature can be great and terrible, and I don’t think most of us tend to reflect on the awesome power of volcanoes nearly often enough. We are but specks of dust in comparison to the movement of the continental plates and the forces of the Earth. Hopefully, we will learn how to master them yet.
Thanks for reading – now please get some water, have a snack, and read something more lighthearted.
*Poor Justinian. For all he did as a Roman Emperor, his name lives on in a plague. Constantine got a city named after him. Julius and Augustus Ceasar each got a month. Justinian got the plague. That's rough, buddy.
**Fimbulvinter is the harsh winter that ends almost all life on Midgård and is the harbinger of Ragnarok in Norse mythology. It has been theorized that this myth was based on stories of harsh winters without any summers in between, that were passed down in oral tradition as tales of the future. Winter is coming, anyone?
***On the other hand, many might be happy that snow in Jorvik is finally back. Why let a little hemispherical disaster get in the way of enjoying the year-long winter?
****Cassandra was a seer and priestess of Apollo in the Illiad myth, cursed with the power to utter completely true prophesies but never be believed. I think Linda relates to her a lot on a personal level.
#sso#starstable#star stable online#volcanoes#long post#volcanic winters#jorvik#Nadia I hope you are happy :P
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The Breeding Kings, pt. 17
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"What are you doing here?" Came a low voice, speaking in a foreign language.
Both of you whipped around, wide eyes meeting the stern gaze of a muscular man. His bare waist was toned and dark, covered partially by a long, curly beard of black hair that came down in a straight cylinder from his chin. He crossed his arms.
"We... clean," you tried slowly, glancing to Ahk for any help or assurance. Ahk, unfortunately, had none to offer.
"Your supplies are over there," he said gruffly in Akkadian. Neither of you understood that sentence, but the man pointed back to where you'd came from, and you both silently agreed it'd be best to just go wherever he told you to.
The man, who you now noticed had a sword on his hip, followed you to the back of the temple.
"Do you know when you said you do.. keep me safe, in my travel," you whispered in Egyptian.
"I remember, yes," he muttered, glancing back at the guard.
"Well???"
"... are you saying you want me to stab this man?"
"In safe place," you whispered with a nod.
Ahkmen sucked in a breath, his hand tightening over the dagger's hilt sheathed beneath his longer robes. He had never directly killed anyone––perhaps by careless decisions and ignorance, yes, but never with a knife in his hand.
"I thought we agreed we're just coming to see what it is then leaving," he whispered, leaning down to you partway.
"We see it, now we go! We will get food and leave this city," you hissed.
Before you knew it, rags and sweeping brooms were set out in front of you, and you found yourself returning to what you did best, according to the Egyptian priests––cleaning.
The guard only left you alone when you were both on your knees, cleaning the feet of a statue you were not allowed to look at. You kept your head down, breathing roughly as you dusted and polished the stone, sparing glances only to Ahk. As expected, he wasn't quite as thorough as you were and required a couple whispered instructions.
Speaking Egyptian was not the best idea, but speaking in a language those around you understood would've been more detrimental. So it was only in whispered breaths that you spoke. Behind you, the old man continued to speak in a half-dead voice, reciting indecipherable scripture. Every now and then he'd turn the page––the first time he did it, you were at the knees of the statue, polishing the smooth stone, and the second time the page turned, you were washing the statue's hips and skirt.
Once you finished, you both darted away, grabbing the rags and water as the old man approached. He'd moved from his spot for the first time, appearing from behind a curved wall of stone and wood that he preached in front of. The two of you still managed to peek out from behind the arches, overshadowed beneath evening light still flowing dimly in.
Citizens eventually made their way out of the temple, leaving the old man alone with a couple guards––one of which was the one who originally caught you––before the soldiers relented to the coming night.
The harder you squinted, the more you could see, and Ahkmen managed to catch the old man's mouth still moving in unspoken murmurs. He then knelt upon a cushion sat in front of the statue, his hands clasped together. You watched in silence for a moment more, until the old man slowly turned to face you, an empty, kind smile in his expression.
"Come here, children," he rasped out, beckoning you forward with bony fingers.
You glanced to Ahk, subconsciously pressing yourself tighter to him. He swallowed his fears best he could, took your hand, and stepped quietly forward.
"Are you thirsty?" He asked, but in Akkadian, and you couldn't understand him.
"I... what?" You said ever so hesitantly.
"Mm..," the preacher glanced between you, "what language do you speak?"
Egyptians weren't all that well liked in this region. The Sumerian language, though, might fare better.
"I speak Sumerian," he said in his chosen language, keeping his voice nonetheless quiet.
"Harappan," you added for yourself.
"I am Namluh," the man said with as much of a bow as his frail, aching body could do. He stood and turned to Ahk, speaking in Sumerian, "come drink the Holy water."
Namluh, now that you were close to him, was only a little bit taller than you, and shorter than Ahk, though he wasn't aided by the kinked hump on his back. In short, almost shaky steps he led you to where he'd been preaching. Now, a well stood before you, whose bottom dug so deep into the earth you couldn't see the water that would usually reflect even dim light. You tried to peer down further, but Ahk pulled you back before you could.
Using a rope, Namluh lowered a water-tight reed basket into the stone well. It took nearly a whole minute till you heard the splashing of water, and another couple minutes while Namluh carefully pulled the basket back to the surface. Ahkmen was tempted to help, but far too scared of the man to say anything out of line, and instead watched with his hand encircling yours.
At last the rope rose to its end, bringing with it a basket of crystal clear water sloshing in its' unsteady borders. Namluh took up two flasks from the chest behind him, dipping them into the water, and handing them to you when they no longer bubbled beneath the water's surface.
"Drink, children," he said with a slow nod.
Your hand tightened around his fingers, pressing your racing heartbeat against his. He glanced to you with a knotted brow, and realized something faster than he could truly think––and he was sipping from the flask, swallowing a gulp of freezing cold water.
Ahkmen could hear your breath catch in his throat. He rubbed the bank of your hand softly, allowing you a small comfort before you, too, drank the groundwater. It appeared, after a moment, to be nothing more than water, unlaced and clean.
"You are new here," Namluh said when you both began to shuffle awkwardly.
"Yes," Ahkmen admitted softly.
"Where do you come from?"
"Jericho."
The preacher paused, looking them up and down before he asked, "have you drunk the water of the Euphrates?"
You and Ahk shared a confused look.
"Well, yes," he answered with a slow nod.
"I see... come with me," Namluh rasped, turning and walking towards the main entrance to the temple.
Although uncertain, you followed him, squeezing one another's hands whenever your heartbeat picked up.
Cool, gentle winds blew about the city, tossing Ahk's mangled hair about his dusty face. A refresh of petrichor hit both of you, a stark difference from the incense that poisoned the air of the temple. Houses that were previously abandoned were now filled with sparse lights, the families inside usually very large, numbering around 6 to 10 on average, and all looking starving.
You nudged Ahk with your elbow.
"Ask him, what it is with the water," you whispered in Egyptian. He nodded.
"Uh, Namluh –" Ahk tapped the man's shoulder, startling him. Ahk quickly apologized. "What is wrong with the water?"
"In the winter, disease breeds off the malnourished masses," he said, a form of speaking that reminded Ahkmen heavily of the way his teacher spoke. "In this last year, the disease arrived by the water, and our city has suffered greatly."
Ahkmen whispered slow, clunky translations into your ear, arising an expression of confused alarm.
"That must answer a question I'm sure you have," Namluh said with a dry chuckle. "I have saved this city through the water I pull from the ground."
"Wait – wait. We did drink from the river. What does that mean for us?" Ahk asked, a growing panic rising in his chest.
"I do not know, truthfully," he said as he stopped in front of a building, turning to face you. "No one has drunk from the river for a long time now. Until then you must be watched."
"Watched?"
Namluh knocked on the door and near instantaneously soldiers, though not as tall or muscled as the ones in the temple, appeared through the tall doorway. Both of you froze up, making their job easy––they dragged you into the tall, mud building, shoving you inside and closing the door behind you before you could even think to protest. A large, metal clanging could be heard as they locked you inside.
Your mouth fell open from what Ahk could only presume to be shock.
"What has happened?" You asked in a loud, flat voice.
"I think... we're being quarantined," he said, his wide eyes staring blankly forward.
"What in time?"
"Quarantined," he repeated as he looked to you. "They've locked us up so that illness can't spread to anyone else."
"But we do not... we are not sick," you said.
"They think the river's what's making them sick, and I told him that we drank from it, so..."
"... fucked," you finished for him.
He snorted.
"Yeah, I guess so."
The room, while unlit, could be seen through the couple windows that allowed moonlight in. As scarce as it was, you could still see till the end of a hall lined with beds, some empty, and some occupied. You sucked in a sharp breath at the realization you were not alone, stepping so your side was pressed to Ahk.
Victims.
Or, the already dead. Most of the beds didn't move––not even to breathe, the leaf-thin sheets covered in the dust left by incense burned hours ago. Sitting at the wall opposite the door was another altar not unlike the one you found in the temple. There was no well of water, but there was a plate piled with ash from incense in front of a small statue, seemingly another god that neither of you recognized. Your footsteps that echoed in the tall ceiling eventually earned you a harsh 'shh!' from one of the beds, and while you couldn't tell who had shut you up you dutifully stayed silent.
Ahkmen tried to say something to you, but he was speaking too quietly. Since if he spoke louder he would be heard by others, he leaned in, his lips brushing your ear as they moved.
"Should we sleep?"
"It is night," you said, almost reluctant to agree.
The beds had no frame, but they did have a good amount of cushioning that Ahk enjoyed immensely after sleeping on the ground for weeks on end. He wandered a little while before he found the largest, most comfortable bed, and jogged back over to you on the other side of the room.
"I found the best one," he said, grabbing your wrist.
"Good for you," you said as you continued to scan the beds in front of you.
"No," he tugged on you, causing you to face him, "come join me."
Your mouth opened into an 'oh' shape despite not making any sound, and followed after him.
To the right of the bed was the entrance of the hall, as well as a few more empty beds, and to the left was a bed with a suspiciously unmoving body within the sheets. You both tried to ignore that, sidling into the bed beside one another. It was a little small for two people, but you were equally small, and Ahk could easily pull you against him so your back was pressed tight to his chest. The sheet was tossed aside, useless with your combined heat warming each other.
His breath tickled the top of your head, and though the eerie silence still surrounded you in pitch black night, you giggled and scratched at your hair. He chuckled, his hold on you tightening ever so slightly.
"Go to sleep, Yogasundari," he murmured, his words partially blurred with his lips on your head.
"You go sleep, malam," you retorted as you shifted your body.
Your bags were still in the strange temple. Ahkmen nearly forgot where you were, along the route of the river, and along the traipse of your trek to Harappa. He thought a moment, his eyes staring at the lump in the bed next to you.
Rapiqum. Rapiqum was apparently home to some cult-like figures, and not the kind that Ahk generally enjoyed or knew. Disease and the struggle for water; the same battles fought since the beginning of time almost 5,000 years ago. Ahk held you tighter yet, hoping––or praying––you would never struggle for such things again. There was a certain doubt that preyed on the edge of his mind, whispering that the symptoms would've started a while ago, especially after continuous days of drinking from the Euphrates.
Piye would know, a sudden thought that brought a pang of guilt through his chest like a lightning bolt. He could see them again, he reasoned––he could return to Egypt after you no longer needed him, or Piye could alternatively visit him. They didn't like travelling all that much, but enjoyed learning about other people just as he did.
He would see them again.
A dry, empty feeling trickled down his throat.
He had to see them again.
He gripped you tighter, curling himself around your sleeping body as he closed his eyes at last.
Ahkmen awoke to empty arms and a sense of morning chill creeping in from the high-up vents in the ceiling. He opened his dry, red eyes, finding the bed next to him empty as well. That woke him up a little better, and he blearily made his way to his feet, blinking at the haze-filled room thick with the scent of kyphi incense. He could only tell as he'd encountered it quite a lot––it was a favorite of Egyptians, and most common there. This was clearly not Egypt, and he soon recalled he was in Mesopotamia with quite a lot of distaste for himself.
A short line of children anywhere from the ages of 6 to 20 stood down the middle of the hallway, leading up to the altar from which the incense burned. The priest who had locked you and him inside was at the head of the room, passing out something he once again couldn't see, hidden behind the tallest boys' head.
You were standing near the end of the line. Once he caught sight of you, he jogged over.
"What's going on?" He asked in a hushed voice.
"He is giving bread," you murmured. "Beer. No water."
"Okay.. just to make sure, the plan is still to get out of here, right?"
"Yes," you said, the corners of your lips quirking up. "Food is good, we need to eat."
"I suppose so," he said quietly.
Ahk's gaze shifted from you to Namluh, who stood at a table handing out bits of bread and small cups of beer. The two of you were the oldest of all the kids staying in the hall, which meant that as Ahkmen approached the table, he was quick to notice the portion sizes were smaller than the palm of his hand. He frowned, but took what he was given anyway.
You found a seat back on the makeshift bed you'd slept on, crossing your legs and eating in silence. On your last couple bites you offered Ahk the rest of your bread.
"No, don't do that," he said, pushing your hand away. "Eat it. You need it just as much as I do."
"A fly does not eat what a bird does," you said, and offered the food again.
He sighed as he took it. You grinned, but a quiet fluster overcame you when he split it in half, and handed one of the halves to you.
Mother of Gods, he thought as he watched you eat. I'm whipped.
Throughout the day, there were no other visitors except the priest who checked in sparsely. The chaos Ahkmen had been expecting never came, and instead he spent the day watching sick children sit around, picking at the dusty floors, too tired to move. A handful were in a genuinely sick position––clutching their heads or stomachs, features twisted with pain and nausea.
His sandal scraped against the floor as he drew his knee closer to his chest, eyeing the tired children warily. As pathetic as they were, Ahkmen didn't want to take chances, even with a disease he didn't trust the origins of. You, on the other hand, tried a couple times to go speak to a few of the kids, but were stopped by Ahk tugging you back down.
"We should try and stay away from the sickness," he said, watching you slowly move back to your knees. "Or whatever this is."
"Fine," you said with a huff, crossing your arms as you sat down next to him.
Ahkmen fiddled with his hands as he thought about your bags, locked into the temple in a dark corner. All of your potions, your weapons, and his belongings were now missing, but what he found he missed the most was carving into that shitty block of wood he found in the middle of the desert. It kept his hands busy,and creating something tangible––rather than ordering the work of servants and builders––satisfied him, a feeling that only grew when he fantasized giving you a wonderful thing.
He closed his eyes, his head thunking on the wall when he leant back. What had he gifted you throughout your friendship?
Was it even a friendship anymore?
It felt like more than that. Or less than that, but either way it felt strange to call you his friend.
Other half, he thought. That didn't sound right either.
Companion?.. no.
Your bodyguard. Your protector.
Your secret admirer.
His cheeks lit up a bright red at even the thought of that, and he pulled his legs to his chest, hiding his face in crossed arms that leant on his knees. A hand on his shoulder brought him quickly away from that.
"You are okay?" You asked.
"Yes, sorry," he said with a heavy sigh. "I just want to get our belongings back."
"We will do that this night," you assured him.
"Right... we should probably think about how we're going to do that," he said, glancing to you till your gaze brought that blush back to him and he had to turn away.
"It can not open," you said as you pointed to the door. "That is Namluh's home."
Over the top of your head, Ahk could spy another, much smaller door on the opposite side of the room, near the altar.
"I hate doors," Ahkmen said, frowning.
"Why??" You chuckled.
"Can't see past them," he said.
"You are funny, Aganu."
He frowned again. That usually meant you thought he was 'kind of' stupid.
In the eveningtime, Namluh returned with bread and beer, the common staple of––Ahk assumed––the whole world. He stood at the altar in view of the whole room, his hunched back leaning over the table, upon which the small rations of food were spread out. Children and teenagers soon lined up, their shoulders sagging and eyes darkened with restless sleep.
Ahk watched on with a brow he wasn't aware was furrowed. You eventually stood as well, and Ahk followed dutifully, without thought, to join you in the line.
Namluh muttered prayers and blessings as he handed out the food, the proportions equal to or smaller than what you'd gotten in the morning. Neither of you fully understood what the priest was saying in his Akkadian language, but neither of you cared much earlier, returning to your seats to discuss your escape plan in subdued, hushed voices.
One major problem you had to contend with was the presence of the sick children. At first you wanted to bring them along, or at least the ones who were unjustly locked in the hospital, but Ahk reminded you that all the children lived in Rapiqum. You couldn't take a horde of children all the way down to Babylon and leave them there to suffer the strains of poverty, homelessness, and prejudice.
In that case, staying quiet was a necessity. That ruled out much of the brute-force method Ahkmen suggested, and instead you wondered if, by stacking everything you could find, you could reach the vents built into the roof to allow fresh air in. You were certainly small enough to fit, but Ahk was doubtful that he could.
"How would we get out if I can't fit, though?" He asked, leaning in. "If it doesn't work, then we have a massive pile of things that we need to put back, that could take a while."
You thought for a moment, your brow furrowed as you played with the skin of your chin.
"I have a think," you said slowly, "but we will be very fast to have this done right."
"Well we still have to get our bags. Can we do that in time?"
"... get rope and yes, we can do," you said with a growing, mischievous grin.
"Rope..." his eyes raced around the chamber, searching for anything resembling a long rope.
The door to Namluh's home––or at least his bedroom––swung open as the priest finished with the food and revelations, and fell shut behind his slow steps. It gave Ahkmen ample time to note the decorations in the priest's room, including a beautiful chart of pulleys, the system Rapiqum was now using to hydrate its' citizens. The essential tool. Examples of the system were displayed hanging around Namluh's room, as well, meaning that long, thick, and sturdy rope was much closer than either of you thought.
"No problem," he said, his eyes never leaving the swinging door as he tapped for your attention.
You peered over his tall shoulder, sounding a quiet 'oh,' as you caught sight of it, as well.
Light was already dim in the ceiling vents, as the sun set nearly all the way down over the mountains and plains. Neither of you could see the single, blazing piece of sun remaining, nor the orange and purple dusk that it soon left behind. Now only the incense at the altar burned, glowing like burning embers whose smoke still filled the room, settling low near the floor.
You and Ahk were still awake and obviously so, sat up against the wall with your sides pressed together. The other children slowly made their ways back to their beds, but many stayed awake unwillingly, wracked with coughs and ragged breaths. Conversation between you died off as you both became more preoccupied with scanning the beds, attempting to gauge who was asleep and who wasn't. But your hand creeped down between you, a touch that nearly had Ahk jumping, before his smallest finger linked with yours.
Soon, even the tolls of bells from outside were silenced, and all that existed was the hazy, black room, whose loneliness was broken only by coughs and sniffs. The hall wasn't that big, Ahk reasoned––the ceiling was technically less than twice his height, though only a little––but the overwhelming darkness hiding even his hands from view left him alone. A consciousness suddenly disconnected from its' body, and from reality.
You shifted closer to him and he immediately returned to kiss the top of your head.
"Soon," he murmured.
It must've taken hours for everyone to fall into their uneasy dreams, at which point you were both growing quite tired yourselves. But there was something important to be done, and despite your needs, sleep would be no friend of yours throughout the entirety of the coming night.
Ahkmen slipped his leather and reed sandals off, and the two of you finally stood, him barefoot and you with soft, fabric shoes. You padded down the middle of the room in silence, your slow steps allowing you to look at every child you passed. In the heat of dreams, some had tossed their blankets aside, and others were shivering. You almost paused with your breath caught in your throat, but Ahkmen was quick to pull you along.
The wooden door was rather short, now that you both stood in front of it. It was also locked, but that was only the third thing you noticed, the former being the first, and the second being it had a strange looking handle. Neither of you had ever seen one before.
"What..." you tried to say before Ahk's hand whipped up to your mouth.
He held his finger in front of his lips and you nodded.
While you tried to figure out how the lock and handle worked, Ahk stood guard near the altar, watching to make sure no one would wake up. Metal still rattled against itself no matter how careful you were, and every time it did both of you seized up.
A small click signalled the releasing lock, and Ahk hurried over to your side as you slowly opened the swinging door. It creaked for a half-second, stifling your breath till it opened the rest of the way silently, revealing the inside of Namluh's still-lit room.
Long, black shadows descended across the floor from a rushlight burning at Namluh's beside, where a small counter supported both the light and a wax statue wrapped in linen. His bed was little more than a wooden frame and a neck holder to keep his head up. Across the room from Namluh were bookcases, most of which were filled to the brim with scraps of incomprehensible papyrus and clay. Some shelves contained artifacts of worship and ingredients Ahkmen assumed to be for potions.
Rustling of sheets in the hospital sent you both jumping into the room, shutting the door as delicately and as quickly as you possibly could. Your backs pressed against it, heavy breaths filling your chests as you scanned the room, from the desk, to the bed, and the displays.
On the wall directly to the left of the door, buckets and one long, sturdy rope hung along the frame of an innovative concept. None of the notes and scribbles were written in any language either of you knew, but the illustrations sufficed in their explanations. Still, as nicely set up as the decorations were, your needs were more important, and the two of you picked the rope off the nails and into your eager hands.
You looked up with a wide grin, nearing a laugh you knew you couldn't lease. He chuckled silently as well, and with that you left, opening and closing the door with just as much care as ever.
"Now what?" He whispered beneath his breath, standing at the altar beside you with the heavy rope's weight shared between you.
"I must be on your shoulders," you whispered, looking up at him while he short-circuited.
"What?" He said after a moment of silence.
"I am on your shoulders!" You hissed in a whisper.
"Okay, okay," he said quickly, kneeling down.
You climbed up over the bend of his back, settling your thighs on his shoulders. He screwed up his face into a frown to avoid blushing or stuttering too profusely.
With the rope in hand, you set to figuring out the true distance between yourself and the air vents. You squinted, throwing up one flayed end of the rope that circled around the thick wall separating the different, horizontal vents from each other. When it caught, you pumped your fist with a massive grin before tapping for Ahkmen to let you down.
He knelt again and you climbed off. While you brushed your clothes of wrinkles, Ahkmen reached up on his tip toes, just barely grasping the other end of the rope to pull it down and equalize the sides. There was a special knot he was taught in the house of life––it made a loop that could be secured at the top of the rope by pulling on the other side, meaning you could easily climb the rope. That was what he assumed you wanted, at least––he'd feel rather silly if it wasn't.
Consequently, you began your first attempt of climbing the rope, restrained grunts of effort still sounding behind lips shut tight. He tried to help you up a little further, but he couldn't get you high enough to grasp the vents, so you couldn't make it. As you tried to reach forward, your grip on the rope slipped, and you fell with a muted gasp, landing with a fwhoosh in Ahkmen's open arms.
The two of you stared wide-eyed at each other as you waited for someone to stir, for someone to notice, but no one did. You both sighed in relief, returning to scaling the rope.
This time you kept your grip much tighter, your knuckles paling with the force of it, while your uncut nails dug into your palm. You ignored the feeling to the best of your ability and, using your knees and Ahk's help till you finally grasped the vent wall. Your other hand whipped up to stabilize yourself. The strain of lifting yourself up burned your tired muscles, but you managed it nonetheless and scrambled onto the roof of the hospital.
It took several minutes before Ahkmen followed after you, his head popping out of the vent but not much else.
"Told you it wouldn't fit," he muttered, feeling slightly safer to speak at a more comprehensible volume.
"Do not be a child, Ahkmen," you said with a quiet giggle. "That is my work."
"Yes, you're adorable, I get it," he grumbled as you scooted closer, digging into your pockets. "Are you going to help me or not?"
"No, I will leave you here, for all time," you said, banging a hammer against the dried mud building that began to shatter like shale.
The sound immediately echoed in the mostly vacant hospital, sending numbing shivers all throughout his kicking legs, attempting to find some sort of surface to push him through the vent.
"Yogi I swear to God –"
"Which God?" You said, grunting as you once more slammed down the hammer, breaking the vent further yet.
The missing stone allowed a much bigger entrance, through which Ahk pushed himself desperately through as the sound of footsteps sounded from far below the roof. You grabbed his arms, pulling as hard as you could till he popped out and you both tumbled down the slanted roof, the rough rock burning your cheek when you skidded against it. Even now neither of you dared to make a sound, and you drew blood trying to keep your mouth shut with your teeth.
When you didn't collide with the far off ground, you opened your eyes that had been screwed shut, only to find yourself dangling by a single hand. Your gaze darted up to see Ahk grasping your wrist tighter than a snake's coil, his teeth gritted and eyes burning as they watched you. A darkness overtook his iris––one that didn't fit the usual grey color.
You wound your fingers around his arm, and with that he pulled you up, aided by your kicking feet.
"Get the rope," you said, panting from the exertion. He nodded and rushed over, zipping up the long rope, the end of it disappearing into your grasp the moment the doors splintered open and guards burst through.
Ahkmen peered over the edge, revealing just his eyes that scanned the room below. There were only three men who'd come to check on the noise, and with the rope gone, there was little hint to what had happened. All of the children were in their beds, most of them passed out entirely. Ahk grinned as he slinked away from the vent.
"Smart little thing, aren't you?" He said, sitting down beside you and pinching your cheek. You pushed him away, giggling.
"You say it like I do not know."
Shouts from below signified the arrival of Namluh, who awoke from the clutter only when guards came to shake him from his bed. You both jumped to your feet, but you were quicker to cast the rope down to the earth, as the other end of it was still tethered to the vents and, with that resistance, could hold your weight as you climbed carefully down.
Ahk followed your example as soon as he could, landing both of you with a low puff of dirt around your feet.
You started off in a sprint up the city paths leading towards the temple. Much of your invisibility could be credited to the nighttime, as well as the shadows casted by city homes, making you no more than silhouettes to any passerbys. Still, you both attempted to muffle your heavy pants from running.
Once you made it through the wall borders and into the complex, you found that the front entrance to the temple was blocked off by a large, metal gate, the ends of which were made into pikes that pierced the earth below. There was obviously no fitting either of you through that, so you ran round to the other side to where you'd first entered the temple. The back door, never guarded or closed––mostly because it didn't have a door––had three steps that Ahkmen skipped over entirely. You scaled them with quick feet.
"Alright, where did we put the bags?" Ahkmen asked, his chest still keeping a heavy up and down as he looked around the room.
"I think.. when we had the cleans, we had them off," you said slowly, frowning as you tried to concentrate.
"Right," he said, chewing his lip before he set off again, you trailing behind as you entered the next room.
Somehow, it had gotten even harder to see; the weak light of stars and the moon partially illuminated the entrance room, but was, beyond that, useless. It took a minute or so, but eventually he could see the vague outlines of objects, including a closet that had the designs of Hathor on the edges.
"I can't believe those bastards got a hold of something from Egypt," he tsked, stopping to appreciate the handiwork.
"Shut up, Aganu," you said, and pulled him along.
Someone took your bags away from where you dropped them, making it several grueling, anxiety-filled minutes until you found them stacked in the corner, some of their flaps open and loose. You let out a gasp, falling to your knees as you set to finding your stock of potions. Ahk knelt down beside you.
"Everything there?" He asked, going over his own bags as well as looking over your shoulder.
"I think..," you mumbled as you dug into your belongings. "Sephys!"
"What?"
Ahk, who had only looked away momentarily, was abruptly returned to your shoulder to find Sephys still curled up and sleeping in one of your pack's pockets.
"Holy shit," Ahk said with wide eyes. "She was in there the whole time?"
"What, you want me asking her? I do not know, we must go now," you said, pulling the flap back over Sephys and hauling the bag onto your back. Ahkmen nearly laughed, but was pulled to his feet by his shirt before he could.
The straps weighed down on your shoulders once more, the bruising weight more of a comfort than it had ever been before. Tools and bits of metal, glass, and stone clanked against each other in your packs, making your steps much smaller and more calculated.
From the small hill upon which the temple had been built, and the descending sides that housed the rest of the city, you and Ahkmen could see to the edge of the city––which had really become more of a town in the past century––and the winding, tangled streets that led to the end of the buildings. One particular road led from round back of the temple complex out into the south, opposite from the city's main entrance sitting on the northwestern edge.
Ahk tapped your shoulder, silently directing your attention to the path. You nodded, and the two of you set out, ever remaining in the shadows.
Halfway to the end Sephys popped out from your bag. You nearly let out a call for her name, but Sephys appeared to follow your path anyway. Ahk shrugged and the three of you continued.
It appeared after a while that most everyone was busy searching the hospital or temple for what had made the noise. That was the conclusion Ahk decided to draw; whether or not it was right didn't matter. All that mattered was that the townspeople and the priest were preoccupied, and it was mere minutes until you'd be gone from the city. Surely they wouldn't chase after you. Actually, they might be happy to have you gone, since you were 'infected' in Rapiqum's eyes.
A bloom of warmth that the sun couldn't bring spread throughout his chest as the last of the homes disappeared, making way for an open desert and the river that flowed on the mud-soaked shores of the Euphrates. Reeds grew taller than even him, spreading out from the water to every crevice it could survive in.
The day had yet to come, but the two of you were up on the high of the chase, and thus greatly energized for the long walk you now resumed after the short intermission. You grinned when you met his eye by chance.
"No problem, yes?" You said with a quiet giggle.
"Say that once we get to Babylon," he said, turning from you to the path ahead. "Then we won't have any problems at all."
"Really?"
"I hope so," he said with a nod.
"We can stay, for a long time," you suggested.
"What do you mean by that?"
"We can... you can take your bath, I can see the city, you know. Stay for.. many days. Not for all time, but a good time," you said, glancing between the ground and him.
"... that'd be nice," he said, matching your smile.
#ahkmenrah x reader#Ahkmenrah#Night at the Museum#rami malek#rami malek character#ahkmenrah x male reader#ahkmenrah x female reader
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Violet Evergarden Gaiden: Chapter 6
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The Postal Company and the Auto-Memories Doll
The current times were labeled as the era of postal business flood.
Within a continent that congregated small countries, the people who operated in the mail industry competed ruthlessly against one another. Putting it very simply, the situation of postal companies throughout the continent was of stealing each other’s customers.
Clients chose their mail agency of use and requested deliveries on their own. The reasons for the choices would be fees, deliverable areas, and of course, even the postmen’s degree of courtesy was a subject of deliberation. Taking all of those into account, they would pick one postal company from somewhere.
At present, as the management structure of postal corporations was becoming devoted to carrying the side-business of amanuensis “Auto-Memories Dolls” rather than only delivering mailed items, others were unable to establish a position in the market if their work leaned towards the latter. The more the competition increased, the more obvious the differences in services would become, and, as the superior and inferior ones would grow evident, the losing side would inevitably close down their company.
Within such harsh rivalry, in a certain country named Leidenschaftlich, located in the continent’s southern coast, there was a postal agency so-called CH Postal Service had boomed its name throughout the industry. Although it was a newly introduced company that had but a few years since being founded, its reputation was exceptional. The degree of customer satisfaction was high, and there was abundance of re-users.
On a general view, there were two motives behind its good results.
The first one was that the CH Postal Service had no restrictions to its areas of delivery. Should a client desire, it would deliver to any part of the globe. Of course, fees were imposed for remote places, yet that was the first attempt in the industry of pulling such a feat. Even existing postal agencies disputing for a leading position in the industry had determined delivery areas. The CH Postal Service delivered even to regions of conflict, therefore being a great help for customers whose family members or lovers found themselves in battlegrounds. Its patrons increasing in numbers was something logical. However, succeeding in doing such a thing as though it were extremely natural was terribly difficult for ordinary companies. The CH Postal Service was in condition to go anywhere for a client’s sake, as it had assembled the personnel and system capable of making it possible – therefore, it had managed to do so.
The second reason was that there existed a top star in CH Postal Service, who had come into sight in the Auto-Memories Doll business like a comet. Seeing her walk around the city would cause people to do double takes at her looks, and hearing her voice would paint their cheeks red out of fascination. She was a perfect beauty that seemed to have come out of a mythological legend. As of late, a play that the famous dramatist Oscar had written using her image had been announced and gained popularity, making her renowned even outside of the industry as per synergy.
People probably envisioned just what type of woman she was. Mostly, their expectations were betrayed in good ways. She was a woman that surpassed the categorical components of imagination.
Her name was Violet Evergarden.
The largest trading place of the continent was a port that served as a gate from and to the sea. It was a national interest of Leidenschaftlich’s, as well as a trigger for wars. Countless other countries had attempted to invade it, seeking its abundant resources and a privileged location.
Although the city was at financial ease with the prosperity of its economy, scars of old battles remained in some places. The symbols of long military service from the past had not been etched solely in protection walls or stone-paved roads. It could be said that the fountain built in the capital Leiden during the celebration of Leidenschaftlich’s hundredth anniversary was its most well-known marking.
Consisting of a total of nine goddess statues holding water vases on their shoulders, it worked in a way that groundwater poured out them. Despite it being a gem made by a nationally employed artist, the goddesses had their necks chopped off. It remained unfixed, for the sake of not letting anyone forget Leidenschaftlich’s disgrace in authorizing the invasion of another country’s castle town.
In spite of being a major commercial nation, it was a military state. There were armed soldiers amidst the lively cityscapes even during times of peace.
The members of the CH Postal Company had such country as their home.
“Oh, what’cha doing?”
“My.”
“It has been a while.”
Under a beautiful autumn sky, a group that rarely gathered met in front of the headless goddesses’ fountain. They were two women and one man.
“If it isn’t Cattleya and V. Have you come out to welcome the great me, unable to wait for my return?”
Leaving his motorcycle parked by the roadside and heartily eating grilled chicken was a postman clad in a glass-green shirt. His slender boots of cross-shaped heels gave out a devious sex appeal. Hidden behind sandy-blond hair, his light blue eyes were provocative. His unmanly, soft facial features were not gentle. It was Benedict Blue, who worked at the CH Postal Company.
“What’re you saying? I’m gonna ask again: what’re you saying? T-There’s no way I’d come pick you up! I just went out shopping as an errand for my beloved President. Violet, say something too. To this platform shoes man. Nobody called for you.”
The one who spoke as if to smooth things over with a moody voice was a beautiful woman of gracefully wavy dark hair. She had amethyst eyes and an hourglass shape. Brimming with enough sensuality to enslave the opposite sex, her body was enveloped in a carmine dress-coat with a waist ribbon, yet was about to burst out of it. She was Cattleya Baudelaire, who also worked at the CH Postal Company.
“You two, you are being too loud out in the street.”
Reproaching the duo with a voice of silver bells was an elegantly beautiful girl dressed up like a porcelain doll. Said person had a hairband made of embroidery lace sitting on her hair as it spread out in waves and was wearing a one-piece with plenty of such lace sewn to it, along with a chiffon trench coat.
“V.”
“Violet.”
She was Violet Evergarden, the top Auto-Memories Doll of the CH Postal Company, whose blue eyes enthralled those who looked at them, as did the emerald-green brooch sitting on her chest.
Benedict and Cattleya turned toward Violet, changing the addressee of their impressions in unison.
“What’s up with you?”
“Really, Violet, you’re pretty fired-up. You’re letting your hair down? Are you on a date?”
Pressed on by the two, the Auto-Memories Doll that the CH Postal Company had pride in, Violet Evergarden, cast her gaze to the ground. “Lady Tiffany... someone from my home arranged everything, but is it that strange?” Her voice sounded slightly embarrassed.
Cattleya observed Violet with a gentle look. “It’s not strange. You’re cute enough not to lose to me. Are you going to see the major?”
“Yes. It is still early for the meeting time, so I was going to buy a book for me to bring along.”
“That’s great; you’re looking forward to it, huh! Hey, she doesn’t look weird, right, Benedict?” Cattleya rejoiced without restraint.
“Tch,” Benedict clicked his tongue.
It had truly been a long while since the three of them had last gathered. That was only natural. At the CH Postal Company, everyone worked industriously every day. There were sporadic occasions in which they would be grouped on duty, but that was only when they managed to miraculously coordinate their schedules. They were mates who had been hired by their president at about the same time, so to say.
Benedict threw away the bones of the meat he had just eaten onto the road, peeking at Violet’s face while licking off the oil remaining on his hand. “Hu~n, well, isn’t it fine? Nice work.”
Although their faces were close, Violet stared back at him with her huge orbs without bending backwards.
Benedict flatly thrust a fingertip at her forehead in-between one big eye and another. “But the one who gets to walk you around gotta be me. As your older brother part, I can’t accept my little sister part getting eaten down by an old man. I’m better. ‘Cause I’m young and cool.”
It could be said that someone who had the nerve to say such a thing so imposingly was quite a rare type even amongst humanity.
With an aspect of irritation, Cattleya interjected, “A third party is gonna be telling you this, but Mr. Gilbert is super wonderful, is an adult man and I know Violet’s head-over-heels for him, so you’re the one who’s uncalled-for here!”
“What does ‘head-over-heels’ mean?” Violet immediately reacted to the term she was unused to hearing.
“It’s like being obsessed. Didn’t you say that the major was the only one for you?”
“I did say that, indeed.” Her brows furrowed as if she were troubled, her blue eyes slightly moist. She was most likely “embarrassed”. Perhaps becoming unable to say anything else, Violet wound up turning her face away.
The feeling of affection for that awkward girl, the envy towards her happiness and the complicated emotions from having a friend taken away by a man traveled across Benedict and Cattleya’s minds. Therefore, in order to dismiss it all, the two silently decided to ball their fists, pushing and kicking Violet left and right.
“Shit. Don’t go acting cute. You’re just a battlefield maniac.”
“Really, it pisses me off. You’re as strong as a bear! But you’re adorable.”
Perhaps not feeling any pain, or perhaps trying to figure out how to deal with such a situation, she resigned quietly and accepted the unwarranted violence. As seen from the sidelines, it looked like something close to bullying, but Violet was actually the one with highest combat capacity amongst them. When the physical strength of the three was put together, that sort of thing was no more than playing around.
“Listen, don’t let him touch you carelessly, all right? This is amazing, though. You’re like a fluffy dog. Cattleya, you try touching too.”
“Hey, don’t you go carelessly touching her with those hands either! Even the insolence of getting meat juices on a maiden’s hair has a limit! Stop it!”
“It’s fine, ain’t it? It’s not like I just got outta the toilet.”
“Eh, does that mean... you never wash your hands!? Right? That’s what it is, right? No waaay! Violet, hey, come here. Benedict, don’t you get near us! It’s my turf from beyond this point! I’ll beat the hell out of you for territory violation if you come over!”
As Cattleya swung her legs, enveloped in Suède boots, to draw a line on the ground, Benedict opposed to it in a level as low as the next person, not losing to her. He picked a dead branch from the root of a roadside tree and did the same as she had. “Haah~? Then I’ll make everything beyond this point into my turf! Speaking of which, the way to your beloved president’s head office is behind me, so don’t you go back to it either!”
“Ah~, that’s unfair! It’s. Not. Fair!”
“It’s not unfair~! You’re the one who came up with it first~!”
It was a child-like action for members of society to take. Violet, the youngest one, regarded them with interest as if she were watching a dispute between animals of a new species.
That was a short-lived period of peace before an uproar occurred.
At the same moment, in the same country, within the same city, time flowed peacefully inside the head office of the CH Postal Company, nobody aware of the nightmare that would approach them a few minutes later.
The business firm was erected in an alley away from the main street, projecting itself in the very sense of the word over rows of small shops. It consisted of a spire with a light green, dome-shaped roof and a weathercock on display, a deep green roof that spread out as if to surround said spire, and outer walls made of red bricks that had been sunburned into a tasteful color. The iron plate on the arch-shaped front gate made known the name of the company with letters printed in gold.
Should one open the door, a cheerful-sounding bell would announce the arrival of a customer. Upon coming in, one would soon find the counter, which was the sector where the reception of postal items took place. The building had three floors, with the first being the reception desk, the second being the office and the spire in the third one being the president’s residence.
No matter how far it was from the main street, the building was quite expensive. Its owner – an individual referred by the members of the CH Postal Company as “President” and “Old Man” – was drinking black tea with brandy at a balcony that had an unbroken view of the city.
“I’m so brilliant that it’s scary.”
He was a lady-killer good-looking enough to display self-indulgent behavior. His age was around the thirties. He had droopy grayish blue eyes, red hair grown slightly long, a manly build, and although he was not young, he had soft facial traits that exuded sophisticated simplicity. His appearance seemed to earn the envy and jealousy from other men of the same generation as him. His leather boots shone lustrously without a single stain, polished perhaps out of obsession.
“President Hodgins!”
The one who had yelled into the room was a girl of innocent features. She was the possessor of velvety, evenly cut lavender-gray hair that stopped above her shoulders. She had large eyes, a small head and a petite body. It was still the physique of a young child, but the heterochromatic orbs from behind the glasses she wore bore a stunning suspiciousness that was mysterious even. She was a person who the word “lovely” fit perfectly.
“Please say so after you’ve finished work!”
However, her conduct had presence as the secretary of a self-centered chairman.
Hodgins retorted mildly, “Little Lux, what I need right now isn’t brutal working hours but relaxation time feeling the gentle autumn air and drinking tea.”
“Even if you say that with a nice voice, it sounds like nothing but running away from reality! Please; if you at least put the stamps, I’ll bring you as many cups of tea as you want! Tomorrow is the deadline! We have to clear up most papers today and submit to the concerned parties in lots of places tomorrow! It’s the Flying Letters all over again!”
“You’re already my Miss Secretary through and through. I’m so happy. You used to look like a scared little rabbit when you arrived here, but aren’t you a fine working lady now? This feeling that I was the one who raised you is exceptional, huh?”
“President Hodgins! Please! Take the stamp! If you hold it, I can move you to stamping it... I’ll also read out the documents to you...”
“Then, Little Lux, doesn’t it make no difference if you’re the one doing the stamping?”
“I’d do it if I could! All that’s left is the stuff that demands the president’s confirmation, so just get on with it!”
“That ordering tone with formal language coming from a teenage girl is giving me unbearable creeps... Hm, Little Lux, hey. You don’t look bad with a shirt-blouse and a long flared skirt, but why don’t you try changing your outfit? I think I’d recommend a black apron dress over a puffed sleeve shirt, black tights and red enamel shoes.”
“Please listen to what I say!” The figure that had once been worshiped as a demigoddess at the headquarters of a cultist organization was absent in Lux Sibyl – what was there instead was the figure of a half-crying subordinate attempting to convince her vain superior.
Lux had been working serious and untiringly ever since being brought over by Violet and hired into the CH Postal Company. Perhaps having incorporated a methodical personality, she was now entrusted with even the duty of president’s secretary, yet she always had a hard time with said easygoing president.
The competence that the man named Hodgins had for business was unquestionable, yet his self-amusement principles were extreme and he would not stop fooling around even when having piles of work to do. Keeping his day-by-day in check was Lux’s role. In worse times, she would have to search for him and pick him up at brothels in red-light districts.
“If you don’t put the stamps, the one who will die isn’t you, President, but myself.”
Lux was tired of it.
“No way. I’ll put the stamps. I’ll put them, I’ll put them. Don’t make such a depressed face. Little Lux, you’re too pessimistic. Also, you take everything too literally. I told you that eighty percent of the things I say are random, right? Poise yourself more at ease. Let’s enjoy everything. Even the troublesome stuff.”
“President... you seem like you’d say this even if you had a hole opened in your stomach... I’m jealous.”
“Thanks. I’m the type that grows through getting compliments.”
She had wanted to convey something that was no compliment, yet it did not turn into words as Lux wound up having her attention stolen by something else. Lux’s golden and reddish heterochromatic eyes caught a strange thing in the skies against the beautiful cityscape that was visible from the balcony.
“President Hodgins... Over there, something is...”
At the same time as she spoke, Hodgins forcefully dragged Lux’s body, held her up and jumped to the end of the room. Lux was squeezed tightly against Hodgins’s chest, not allowed to even scream or raise her voice in confusion.
A few seconds thereafter, the sound of an explosion ensued.
“Do you not hear some sort of noise?” Violet’s leveled voice eventually came between Benedict and Cattleya, who were having a scuffle fight. Her blue orbs were looking up at the sky, sighting a black object that passed by in a flash.
And it struck one of the classy buildings among the cityscape of Leiden.
“The head office is under attack!” No sooner than she said so, Violet bolted from the place. She slipped through people standing still with their mouths open, their attention taken away by the explosion sound that had reverberated through the idyllic early afternoon.
“No way, no way! Eeh?! What about the President!?”
“Get on, you idiot.”
Benedict had mounted on his bike before long. After whispering lowly, he swung a hand around Cattleya’s back, all too easily lifted her up, sat her on his knees and simultaneously turned on the engine, taking off.
“Wai—! Doing that all of a sudden is scary! It’s scaryyy!” Cattleya shouted, clinging to Benedict’s neck.
“Move! Move! Y’all are in the way!”
A young woman who was selling flower bouquets with a mobile catering fell on the spot, the horse of her carriage letting out a neigh. Ignoring the situation of the traffic in the street, Benedict rampantly chased after Violet. He gradually got closer to her figure, which had already become the size of a bean grain.
Benedict stretched out his hand. “V!”
Violet had been running at an astonishing speed, but upon hearing Benedict’s voice, she nimbly hopped onto his motorcycle. The two of them, who had a mutual understanding without the invitation of “get on”, exchanged words while paying no mind to the scandalized Cattleya.
“That sound was of Leidenschaftlich style artillery.”
“Did you see the cannonball’s firing position?”
“There is no mistake that it came flying from the west side of the city. Look, smoke is coming out of the head office’s third floor. If we suppose that it was shot from somewhere just as high, we can restrict the location, right?”
“It struck Old Man’s apartment, so there’s too many suspects.”
“How can you be so calm!? The President might’ve died!” Cattleya glared daggers at Benedict and Violet, yet the expressions that two had on were different from normal times. She quieted down without thinking.
“No way we wouldn’t be worried, right...!?” Benedict spoke even for Violet’s part.
The motorcycle that the three of them rode let out a roar while going up the slope.
Caught under a bookshelf, Hodgins was straddled over Lux with his hands so as not to squash her. Lux looked up at him, dumbfounded.
“Little Lux, you can... you can take it slow, but sneak off from under me.”
The glass of the windows had shattered and scattered all over the place. The president’s desk, which was an order-made one designed by a master craftsman, had been smashed to fragments. The carpet had turned into ember and the room was starting to envelope in flames.
“President Hodgins... I-I’m sorry!” Lux crawled out, attempting to somehow lift the shelf with her powerless arms. However, it did not even budge.
“I’m fine, I’m fine. Man~, I’d been skipping push-ups lately so this is taking a toll on me... Heave-ho.”
The instant he put on strength and lifted the bookshelf all at once, he rolled away and escaped from being crushed. He was the bearer of a considerable muscle strength.
Hodgins stood up and looked around the room. The look in his eyes was no longer the earlier one of a slacker chairman.
“Sorry; you okay?” Only the gentleness in his voice was the same as always.
“Why are you apologizing, President?”
“‘Cause this was an attack aimed at me, no matter how you think of it. If anything happened to you, I wouldn’t have any excuse to give your parents.”
“I don’t have parents.”
“That’s right. Then, I wouldn’t have any excuse to give you. Now, we gotta check if the other employees are all right...”
“Anyhow, let’s go downstairs; we’ll both burn to death if we stay like this!” Making a snap decision, Lux ran to the stairs that led to the lower floor.
Planning to go down through the balcony’s emergency stairs, Hodgins desperately called out to her, “Little Lux! Wait up!”
However, before Lux flew out the door, it opened automatically. Hodgins saw a brusque arm stretching before his eyes and taking ahold of Lux. She was dragged into the darkness and her frame disappeared.
“Little Lux...?”
By the moment that Lux reappeared before Hodgins, whose lips twitched, there was as a muzzle aimed at her temple. The one who pushed her forward while holding onto her shoulder was a man clad in a completely black suit. Six other men dressed the same way revealed themselves in succession. Hodgins’s gaze gradually became grimmer.
“How do you do, Claudia Hodgins?” The man referred to Hodgins by the name that he made sure not to call himself by. It was the name his parents had come up with while convinced that he was going to be born a girl.
Breaking into a distorted smile, Hodgins replied, “You’re truly one refreshing shitface, Salvatore Ridaudo.”
Salvatore smiled sarcastically as well. His hair was fixed with balm to the point there was not a single disheveled thread. He was the possessor of wood-brown droopy eyes, thick lips and skin as pale as wax.
“So, what is it you wanna do by shooting a cannonball into my office and thrusting a gun at my secretary?”
“My, good job figuring out that it was our doing.”
“I have a rough idea of it, but can’t you tell me… Mr. President of the Salvatore Postal Company? All that comes to me is that my academic background in the Military School was below yours.”
“How modest... What are you, an up-and-coming entrepreneur whose name everyone knows in the mail business nowadays, talking about? It’s very obvious what I’m after, right? The Salvatore Postal Company and the CH Postal Company. Two agencies competing for deployment in Leidenschaftlich. The fact that the other party is a nuisance certainly applies to you too, but I’m the one who’s been in this industry for the longest time. I can’t contain my frustration. Your way of doing things is... Anyway, I want you to obediently come with us. I wish to have a talk at a quiet place. If you do that, we’ll go home without inflicting a single injury on this cute lady and the rest of the employees.”
For someone running a postal firm, he was a disturbing individual. Calling him an underground chief would be more frankly agreeable. The men in all-black under his control did not seem to be respectful individuals either.
“Think you’ll get to live in peace after doing something like this? The military police’s coming over soon.”
“Seems like you have contacts in the military, but I myself have strong connections too. The military police monitoring this area won’t move an inch. I had them promise that they’d pretend not to hear anything the whole day, no matter how much noise we make. Claudia... Excuse me; is it okay to call you by your first name?”
Hodgins gritted his teeth to the point they let out a creak. “Go ahead. It’s the name that my beloved parents gave me.”
“Then, Claudia. If we keep talking so leisurely, we’ll both scorch. I want you to come along with us on your own feet.”
“Got it, I’ll go over there. But leave my secretary here.”
At those words, Salvatore went blank. He cast his gaze at Lux, who – perhaps from too much fear – had tears naturally welling up in her eyes, and broke into a smile that was rather merciful for an enemy.
And then suddenly punched her on the cheek.
His eyes open wide, Hodgins’s expression visibly dyed itself in rage. “You...! You laid your hand on a woman!!”
A man from the back gave her support as she seemed about to fall to her knees.
Side-glancing Hodgins as he shouted angrily, Salvatore wiped off the blood on his fist onto the sleeve of one of his subordinates’ suit. “I loathe women who think things will somehow work out if they cry. Sorry.”
His voice sounded as though he had not an ounce of pangs of conscience.
By the time that the trio had arrived, the people of the neighboring shops were helping put the flames down together with the firefighters.
Seeing that, Violet whispered quietly, “It is almost as if they knew there would be fire, isn’t it?”
Indeed, just as she said, the fire department’s performance was too well-executed. Thanks to it, only the third floor of the CH Postal Company received damage.
“You three! Over here!”
As they turned around upon being called, they found uniform-clad office workers of the CH Postal Company standing outside with burns showing and in a horrible state. A middle-aged man, presumably the oldest of that group, was waving his hand.
“Anthony, everyone, you okay? What’s all this?”
Anthony, the section manager of the reception desk at the CH Postal Company, had genteel facial features. He spoke with a demeanor and manner of talking that matched said features, “Every employee who attended work as of today is fine. However... the President and his secretary Lux have been taken away.”
“No way!” Cattleya let out a cry similar to a scream.
Benedict looked at Violet. She blinked several times. Her long eyelashes swaying widely displayed “shock” amongst her scarce emotions.
Her hand reached out to her brooch and gripped it tightly. “Who... and where... is the culprit...?” she asked in a low voice, still gripping it and not letting go, “Who... and... where?”
Her tone was an absolute zero.
It was so low and cold it went to the point of making whoever listened to it hallucinate that their temperature had dropped for a second. The air about her was bizarre, further enhanced by her usual robotic aspect.
Only one person moved within that freezing atmosphere. “V,” echoed the affectionate nickname by which Benedict alone called her.
Violet turned her head to the side.
“It’s okay.” That was a tone so gentle it was unimaginable coming from Benedict. “I’ll do something about this no matter what.”
Those words were almost like the ones that a true older brother would tell his younger sister.
Violet’s eyelashes once again flapped flutteringly. “I will do it.”
“You can’t. If we’re doing something, we’ll do it all together. Your plans for later gonna be okay?”
“The plans... No problem; Major will understand. Besides, Major would probably order me to rescue President Hodgins and Lux.”
Perhaps unamused by Violet’s attitude in demonstrating unwavering trust, Benedict ruffled her hair roughly. “Ah, that so?”
Her feathery, wavy streaks expanded even more. Unlike earlier, Violet protested with a “please stop” using her normal voice. The instability that had given a glimpse of her former self as a girl soldier was concealed and everyone in the surroundings exhaled relieved sighs.
“Hey, enough; I’m gonna ask about the rest. Anthony’s troubled, ain’t he?”
Having her shin kicked, Violet finally nodded.
Anthony resumed speaking, “The perpetrator is the Salvatore Postal Company. Its president who has the looks of a vampire and his followers dressed in black did this to the office… I tried to notify the military police with a detailed report of the circumstances, but they would not listen. It seems Salvatore has enormous support. I can’t think of anything other than information manipulation.”
Meaning that Hodgins and Lux had been taken by Salvatore and their whereabouts were unknown. It would seem that the employees left behind were first and foremost concentrating themselves on digesting the situation.
“When departing, President Hodgins told us, ‘I leave the rest to you’.”
“I’m so glad! They’re okay for now, huh!” Cattleya patted her own chest and welled up with tears.
“Salvatore’s the place that dispatches those postmen with black uniforms? If I’m not wrong, their head office was in Leiden, yeah? Those guys once went claiming a boundary to delivering territories, so I beat them into a pulp. Could it be… this was my fault?”
“Eh, what? The name sounds like a tongue-twist so I can’t remember just by hearing it one time. Salva… Sal… Salfa…”
“'Salvatore’, Cattleya.”
Imitating Violet, who pronounced it slowly, Cattleya uttered it as well, “'Salvatore’, 'Salvatore’… okay. Gotta be able to say it right. They’re the ones we’re knocking off into hell, after all. Well, when does the blood festival start? Of course, we’ll settle the accounts, right? We’ll go save the president and Lux, right?”
It was a crude statement, yet the people present nodded at Cattleya’s suggestion with an aspect that bore no sense of displacement whatsoever.
“Please pummel them.”
Benedict broke into a villainous smile at Anthony’s request. “Oh. We’ll do that. Old Man will be fine even on his own but we gotta save the midget.” Benedict vigorously hit his own chest with his fist.
Anthony let out a breath of relief at that attitude. “You three, what should we do, then? Should we call over the other employees? The Salvatore Postal Company owns countless branch offices, even abroad. Is this all right?”
Violet said after raising her hand, “We shall seize them simultaneously. In the national offices, there should be a spot by the windows with nothing but the reception desk. The three of us will take it over… However, the priority is to strike the head office first. Let us suppose that the location the two were kidnapped to is where the leader is. Depending on whether the people at work recruited as combatants are available, please notify them that we are seizing our neighbor agency, the Salvatore Postal Company. Hold a transmission for the combatant employees to grasp the entirety of the situation. We will entrust the information convergence… to you, Anthony.”
“Understood, Violet.”
She was the expected of a former warrior. With that, the chain of command was made clear.
Looking at Violet, Benedict asked, “V, ain’t you kinda coming back to being a soldier?”
Violet had on the same composed expression as always, yet the things she said were uncouth.
“I am not. However, counterattack for justifiable motives is permitted even during travels. We are merely going to resolve a quarrel between fellow post offices. The third floor is the one burning, right?”
Violet had a reason for confirming that.
The trio stood in front of a thick iron door inserted unnaturally in the red brick wall at the back of the building. As Benedict squatted on the spot and dug up the ground, a small box covered in dirt appeared within not even a few minutes’ time. Inside it was a bronze key. Once he reverently brought it into the keyhole, the door greeted the visitors while ringing out a rusty sound. They took a built-in lantern and went down the stairs in the thin darkness. Soon, they arrived to their destination.
The basement illuminated by the faint light stored equipment that should not possibly be gathered in an ordinary company. They were firearms, swords, spears, axes, bows, shields and other fighting tools of all kinds. Even if that were the president’s hobby, such assortment of goods was not something an amateur could attain.
“He saw something like this coming and was getting himself ready, huh. He’s got actual self-awareness that people have a grudge against him,” Benedict said as if in admiration.
“Ah~! President got the tonfa that I said I wanted! The whip too!”
“One fist’s more than enough for you, ain’t it? Don’t go taking any more dangerous weapons other than that. V, what’cha picking? We got this opportunity so I’m gonna take the ones I’ve never used.”
“I...” Looking around the hidden weapons of the CH Postal Company, Violet reached a hand out to something wrapped in a tattered rag set against the farthest wall. “I have decided that this will be my weapon. Benedict, Cattleya.” Violet raised the object that was as tall as her with hand movements that did not allow one to perceive its weight. “Let’s go as discreetly as possible.”
The three stared at each other in silence for a moment.
“Impossible, ain’t it? I’m pissed.”
“Impossible, isn’t it? With this group, that is.”
“So that is really the case.”
As the result of a discussion, they arrived at the conclusion that leaving the enemies half-dead without killing anyone was passable.
Salvatore Rinaudo stared down at Claudia Hodgins. The person he detested was currently on an imported bear leather carpet of his personal choice, feeble and with wrists tied.
They were in a room encircled with black furnishings. The fact that said room was decorated with the personality of its owner was apparent one way or another. There were portraits of himself and bookshelves with double glass doors that did not seem to be opened often. There were also butterfly specimens and vases filled to the brim with fresh white flowers. Quiet violin music was playing from a gramophone, but it did not relieve the restless atmosphere in the slightest. Having her cheek punched and swelled, Lux Sibyl was seated on a chair, but one of Salvatore’s underlings had a gun thrust at her head.
Lux was constantly concerned about the outdoors. From the balcony, she could see Hodgins’s office at just the same height in the far distance. Black smoke rising from it, the structure of the CH Postal Company’s headquarters and of that building were awfully similar.
There was one more thing to note about the balcony. It was the artillery that seemed unlikely to have been placed there as an antique.
“Shall I tell you the reason why I despise you?” He stretched his arm as though to embrace Lux, caressing her, who had her right cheek swollen, almost as though soothing a pet cat.
As the cheek that had been hit still throbbed, Lux shuddered as if in pain upon the touch.
“Above all, it’s you yourself. You were born to a well-off merchant family, and used to belong to Leidenschaftlich’s army. Even though you were promoted up to the rank of major, you quit the military immediately after the Great War ended and founded a post office next, succeeding splendidly at it. People like that do exist, huh? The kind that can carry out anything just fine no matter what they do. In most cases, they stomp over others’ efforts with the sole of their shoes. And with a nonchalant face, to boot. I may have all this, but I’m one of the people who face hardships, so I detest those like you.”
“If me being superior is a sin, then go complain to God.”
“My second reason for hating you is that you rebel against the principles and rules that our predecessors established. ‘The CH Postal Company delivers to anywhere’? You make me sick.”
Hodgins shot Salvatore’s hand a blazing glare. “High quality at a low price for the costumers... That’s the basics of business, isn’t it?”
“Won’t you just crush those who can’t do the same if you turn this into a standard?”
“You get tripped up because you sit on your hands like that. Y’know, I just happened to think back when I was a soldier that a post office like this would be great and am simply making it into a reality. Letters that can be sent to any sort of battlefield. Postmen who can deliver them. Auto-Memories Dolls who can come to you if you so wish, even if you live at the heart of a sea of trees. What’s so bad about doing something I like with my own money?”
“There are still other bad things... What’s that building? Isn’t it almost like claiming that you’re going to replace the Salvatore Postal Company? The fact that only the weather face stands high up is also irritating.”
Salvatore’s hand moved from her cheek to her silver hair, which emitted a glossy luster.
“Don’t touch my secretary... Yeah, that’s right, I declared war on you. I’ve known you before getting into the industry. You’re all over the country I protected, doing stuff that doesn’t favor it.”
“What, for example?”
A bundle of hair picked by Salvatore’s fingers flowed in-between them, producing a smooth sound.
“The fact that you’ve been selling weapons behind the face of post office... You were selling national weaponry abroad, weren’t you?”
“We’re a postal company that has gentleness and courtesy as our selling points, so we do deliver anything that people request. However, I don’t recall delivering anything to the North.”
“That’s not the issue. Even if you didn’t sell anything to them when battles were going on, it takes just a bit of thinking to figure that this kind of stuff makes rounds, right? It was so unbearably weird... How come the enemy had weapons made in Leidenschaftlich? How come my comrades were getting shot by the enemy with them and dying...? I finally got to investigate that mystery after the war.”
Lux’s had her hair forcefully pulled and her neck bent backwards. Her scarf was taken off, her collarbone peeking from underneath her blouse.
Salvatore took the gun from his underling and pointed it at her chest. “If you know this much, you also know that part of my proceedings went to the military, don’t you? It’s not something that I alone wished for. Some people from your country, which you’d devoted your life to, merely wanted to increase their retirement pay a little. Isn’t that a commonplace story? Can’t you drop the moralist act? It disgusts me.”
“I’m no moralist—hey... how many times do I have to tell you not to touch...”
“Claudia, it’s not like you have a respectable life style either, is it? You wagered your whole fortune on war gambles and earned a large sum, wasn’t that it? Funds gathered from gambling are a hotbed for underground organizations and black market groups. With those funds, they sell off weapons, drugs and abused women and children. Even if you’re on the side that just milked it out, from the moment you placed a bet, you also made rounds and became someone’s assailant.”
“That’s why I said... I’m no moralist! I did all of it because I wanted to. You and I are both pitch-black at heart. But y’know, my secretary over there is a respectable girl. Didn’t you hear when I told you not to touch my secretary?! If you get anxious unless you’re touching something, just hit me or whatever!”
Perhaps because such statements rubbed him the wrong way, Salvatore did as Hodgins proposed, leaving Lux and kicking Hodgins’s face with his shin. Crimson hair swaying, Hodgins collapsed onto the floor.
Regardless, he grinned. “Thanks; should I take my clothes off while we’re at it? It’d get you excited, right?”
Salvatore grabbed Hodgins’s collar with rage. “How filthy. Your company is your human nature itself. I’m a victim. I want you to give me back the clients, routes and everything that you’ve stolen from me. I think being a soldier suited you better than being a businessman. Lying on the ground like this is fitting of you. Why... I’m just going to have you write your name on a document. Promise not to trespass my routes... It’s hard to do stuff with you loitering around. Lots of stuff, you see.” He let go abruptly, Hodgins’s face banging onto the floor.
“President!” Lux’s tear-mixed voice leaked.
Hodgins immediately raised his head and smiled at Lux. He went as far as winking at her.
Salvatore harshly told his underling to call over the official scrivener who would bear witness to their contract. He most likely intended to crush Hodgins’s post office through leaving behind a legal document with unequal contents.
“Tepid; you’re tepid.” Hodgins’s tongue licked off the blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. “Compared to back in the battlefields, you really are dull...” As he coughed curt and subtly, his voice reached Salvatore. “My company isn’t just mine.” Hodgins looked out the window. He checked if something was coming and waited for it.
“Salvatore Postal Company identified ahead,” Violet whispered.
Benedict was driving his motorcycle, Cattleya behind him. Holding onto Cattleya’s shoulders, Violet was standing on the edge of the passenger seat. Running through the cityscape in the early afternoon, the motorcycle carried not only three people but also uncovered armament.
“Hey~, there’s a huge tacky cannon in the balcony~.”
“All~ right, I was thinking about forcing our way through the front gate but change of plans. V, go off on that balcony,” Benedict said with a lightheartedness that one would invite another to go shopping with.
“Understood. Cattleya, please give me support.” Violet took into her hands a thick, long cylindrical object that had been placed on the motorcycle’s luggage carrier. It was something that could be called both a rifle and a rocket launcher. She rested it on her shoulder atop the running vehicle and determined her target.
Once Cattleya clung to her legs as to secure her body, Violet shot without mercy. Explosion sounds echoed throughout the city of Leiden for the second time that day.
“Impact confirmed.”
Pigeons fled into the sky, the townspeople darting their eyes about in search for the source of the noise. Meanwhile, the motorcycle that the trio was riding on gradually drew closer to the Salvatore head office.
“Sca~ry! But ama~zing! I also wanna shoot tha~t!” Cattleya shouted in joy upon seeing the balcony destructed.
“Won’t let ya no matter what.”
“You cannot no matter what.”
Benedict and Violet shook their heads in sync. Both comprehended that it would be dangerous to let such a naïve woman hold onto firearm.
“What’s with that~?! I also wanna go wild big time~! Isn’t it okay?!”
“Then, let Cattleya be the first to charge in. Please be contented with that.”
“What’re you deciding on your own? The first at anything’s gotta be me.”
“You follow me from behind. ‘Cause the one who’ll save our captive princess of a president is going to be me. A~hn, wait for me, President! Where are you!?”
“You... As if such a huge dude could be a princess. What kinda princess is that?”
“If you were as tall as the President, you wouldn’t have to wear those heeled shoes, huh.”
“You’re wrong! That’s not why I wear them! It’s because they’re cool! You... Imma make you cry later! I’m dropping by your place today, so get ready for it!”
“Yo... Yo-Yo... You idiot! What’re you saying in front of Violet?!”
Silently listening to the exchange between the two, Violet slowly took from the luggage carrier the handle of the weapon jutting out of the tattered cloth. “Then, I shall take this opportunity and go.”
They had no idea what opportunity she was taking, yet Violet nimbly jumped midair after saying nothing but that. As she landed on the ground, the motorcycle also stopped right in front of the head office with good timing upon scoring an ostentatious drift.
“Here I go, Major.”
The one taken into Violet’s blue eyes was the Salvatore Postal Company – a building that looked exactly like the CH Postal Company. Although it was a weekday, a “closed” sign hung on the door and five postmen clad in black frock coats stood by the entrance smoking cigarettes.
The stunning woman, the man mounted on a motorcycle and the beauty behind him appeared before their eyes. Ashes fell down in lieu of their surprise at the mystery trio.
“Wh-Who’re you?!”
While the men froze on the spot at her exposed unpainted face and moonlight-colored hair, Violet swiftly tore off the tattered cloth wrapped around the weapon in her hands. A battle-axe of a size unfit for swinging around in a city road revealed itself.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance. I am an Auto-Memories Doll from the CH Postal Company; my name is Violet Evergarden.”
The name of the battle-axe wielded by that woman as ominously beautiful as a witch was Witchcraft. It had a silver blade, and the red rain that it dyed itself in from the number of people it had killed was a manifestation of its ill-omened existence.
“Apologies for you are in the middle of work, but could you allow us upstairs? Ever since our company’s president and secretary disappeared into your agency, we have not known of their whereabouts.”
As she held onto it, illuminated by the afternoon sunlight, her frame gave off quite a sense of misplacement.
“If you will not listen to our request, we shall exercise brute force based on the guiding precepts of our company.”
But as she wielded it, her figure looked appropriate. Rather, it was the contrary.
Raising the gigantic battle-axe blithely, Violet pointed the blade at the men. Instead of opening their mouths, the men took pistols out of their coats and pants and aimed them at Violet.
“The guys from the CH Postal Company are here! Don’t let them pass no matter what!”
“Violet!” Cattleya’s scream reverberated through the city roads.
However, the beautiful Auto-Memories Doll moved at the same time as the opponents readied themselves, dealing a preemptive strike in the blink of an eye. “Negotiations broken.”
A single blow from the battle-axe brushed away the postmen. It was an attack that did not cut them and merely struck their vitals using blunt weapon essentials, yet it caused three of the men to hit their heads against the outer wall of their company and collapse.
The remaining two men, who had dodged the appearance and disappearance of the axe, frantically aimed at Violet and pulled the triggers. Without any change in her facial expression, Violet twisted the battle-axe around and repelled the bullets with its blade. Switching hands, she pointed the tip of the handle at the opponents. It produced a ringing noise.
“Please forgive my rudeness.”
The flower bud ornament decorating the tip of the handle flew out together with a long chain. It knocked the two men’s pistols off their hands. She did not give the men, who held their hands down due to the collision, any opening to straighten their postures. This time, Violet rammed the battle-axe’s arm against the surface of the building’s wall and anchored it. While extending the chain and spinning midair, she dealt a flying kick to the face of one of them, made his face into her stepping stone and roundhouse-kicked the man next to him. There was no hesitation or mercy in her series of actions.
“Bu-But I was supposed to be the first one!”
“That was me!”
Indignant, Cattleya took a sack fastened to the luggage carrier, which contained her weapons. After thorough indecision between the tonfa, whip and other armory, the one she had chosen were iron knuckles.
Before anyone noticed, Benedict’s hands were gripping two pistols. He disabled the safety catch with practiced hand movements. “V! Don’t get too serious! If you’re angry, I can get angry for you!”
As if the people inside the Salvatore Postal Company had foreseen that someone would come raid it, postmen peeked out from the windows of the floors above with rifles in position. Bullets from Benedict’s pistols pierced their arms as he spoke, creating a rain of blood splashes.
“If this is the emotion called wrath, I want to rid myself of it quickly. Cattleya.” Violet pointed with her finger at the rocket launcher that had no more remaining ammo to Cattleya, who had put on her iron knuckles.
Agilely grabbing its handle with one hand, Cattleya threw it with heightened rotation speed after drawing it back once with much vigor. “One, two, the~re!”
Together with her adorable shout, the rocket launcher struck the postmen who had turned up in the upstairs floor, breaking through the window glass. Its destructive power was the same as a bullet shell.
The one who had flung it jumped up and down on the spot as if delighted. “Kyah~! I hit them~!”
It was not a deed that an average person, let alone a young woman, could normally manage. She was the possessor of tremendously strong arms.
“As expected of the Stupid Woman – or more like the Stupidly Strong Woman.”
“Shut up, Platform Shoes Man.”
“Ah, you on?”
“What, are you?”
The ringing of the chain on Violet’s battle-axe Witchcraft drowned out the duo’s little quarrel. One of the men screamed and threw himself out the window, falling onto a flowerbed in front of the company.
“Benedict, Cattleya. By the looks of it, the President and Lux are unmistakably inside this building. President Hodgins told me that he imitated Salvatore’s agency when our company’s office was under construction. If that is the case, then the highest position is probably the uppermost floor – the third floor. I am counting on you to follow the procedures.”
The two nodded in reply to Violet’s words.
“Let’s kick their asses at once and go celebrate.”
“We’re bothering the neighbors, after all.”
Before anyone realized, the city had gone quiet.
The Salvatore Postal Company was located in a completely ordinary shopping street in the city of Leiden. However, the passersby had fled within a few minutes, and the shopkeepers of the nearby buildings, as well as the buildings next to those, had closed their shops’ windows – the so-called display windows – and pulled down the iron shutters.
The fast action stemmed from their understanding that the city had become involved in the maelstrom of a fight. It was a particularity of citizens from a country that had long been shutting off invaders ever since its foundation. The people were silently waiting for the conflict to end.
“Well, then, let’s go in.” Violet’s figure as she gave the command with a clear voice was different from usual.
Inside the chairman’s room at the top floor of the Salvatore Postal Company, the scenery visible from the balcony – an autumn sky where cirrocumulus clouds drifted high up and Leiden’s cityscape – had looked like it was inserted in a picture frame. Yet such beauty was something of a few seconds before, and now the artillery enshrined in it had received great damage from a sudden explosion attack, smoke rising from it.
Once ornamented with delicate sculptures, the rails were crumbling, and the balcony was in a state where one could fall straight to the ground if they put a foot on it. If the artillery were loaded with ammo, it was most likely not the only thing that would have been destroyed.
In that situation of settled chaos, Salvatore Rinaudo’s pale face went even paler and his mouth fell open as he spaced out, while Claudia Hodgins bit the inside of his cheeks to kill off his own laughter and trembled in opposition.
“What have they done?”
“Ahah—AHAHAHAHAH! Aah, I can’t anymore! Can’t hold back! This is the best!” Hodgins convulsed with laughter upon looking at Salvatore’s face. “What you so surprised about, Salvatore? Isn’t that what you did to us? Well, but... you wouldn’t think we’d do the exact same thing as you, huh! There’s no helping it! Ahahahah!”
Even Lux, who had all along been shaking with a darkened face, lit up with a sparkle of hope and laughed a little.
“Is this the work of you people from the CH Postal Company?”
“Who else is there? Our corporate philosophy is ‘an eye for an eye’.” Hodgins was in such a good mood that he seemed like he could break into song right then.
A few of Salvatore’s underlings went down to the floors below. Gunshots and screams soon echoed again. The fact that the screams had come from Salvatore’s subordinates increased his anxiety and impatience.
“They’re doing this even though you might be injured... What kind of training do you use on them?”
“Basically a principle of liberalism. Most of the personnel I gathered back when I was building my company happen to be guys with nowhere to go that I coaxed and took in... Don’t know if my preferences are biased, but it turned out that lots of them were absurdly strong fellows. The ones who’re here right now are definitely two of the Auto-Memories Dolls that were off-duty and... probably a postman that was scheduled to return to town today. They’re elite of the finest kind even among us. Salvatore, since it’s you, weren’t you supposed to investigate me through and through?”
“Your company’s employees are former soldiers and mercenaries, right? If that’s the case, so are our postmen...”
“They aren’t just former soldiers and mercenaries. Benedict is an ex-mercenary who had the nickname of ‘Battle-Hungry Freak’ in another continent. Cattleya was a boxer. She has arms so strong that no one can beat her by using force. And that beautiful girl whose name you can even say everyone knows in the Auto-Memories Doll business... my adorable Little Violet, used to be Leidenschaftlich’s most powerful female soldier. It’s in the past, though.” Hodgins smiled at Lux. “By the way, my secretary is a former demigoddess.”
“‘Leidenschaftlich’s most powerful female soldier’?”
“Didn’t your patrons tell you anything? Well, she was treated as a secret in a way, so it isn’t impossible for civilians not to know about her. The military went as far as creating a troop just for her and made her work for them, but they never gave her recognition or ranks. She didn’t have a surname back then and it seems people just called her ‘Violet’. My friend found and raised her... She was the leading figure of the Great War in the shadows.”
Salvatore reminisced to the photos of Hodgins’s employees whom he had made his underlings investigate. One that had been engraved in his mind remarkably vividly was a beautiful woman. She was a girl of exquisite, suave facial features. Even if one declared her to have been the strongest female soldier, nobody could believe it right away.
“How did you make a woman like that yours?!”
“She’s not mine.” Hodgins smirked defiantly. “And she doesn’t belong to the military anymore either. From the very start, she... Let’s stop here; telling this story to you is a waste.”
The battle’s tune gradually grew closer to the top floor. By the looks of it, the fuss was escalating to a direction where even angry yelling was ensuing. It seemed the owner of the voice was a young woman. Even amidst gunshots, the conversation between those two people did not cut short.
Hodgins’s smirk deepened, Salvatore’s face becoming grim.
“You guys, give polite greetings when coming in.”
Salvatore’s underlings readied their guns all at once. The tension reached its peak, everyone inside the room paying attention to the door. However, it was time.
“Lux, please cover your eyes,” a beautiful voice that did not match such a place, which had converted into a battlefield, could be heard from behind the staff members.
A black lump jumped from the balcony. It looked like a beast at first. A stunning and terrifying beast that moved its limbs gracefully and trampled over its enemies.
No matter how much the “hunters” who had taken notice of the beast’s existence made bullets rain on it, its feet did not halt by a single inch as it bared its fangs. It steadfastly ascertained the battlefield even as it danced in the air, wielding its weapon with astonishing precision, bringing everyone to the ground.
“A-Aaaah!!”
The arm released from the battle-axe pierced and gouged the shoulder of the man who had been thrusting a gun at Lux. The beast swung the battle-axe and stationed Hodgins and Lux to behind itself.
Salvatore took a few steps back, and exactly two factions stood in position separated at his right and left sides.
“Major Hodgins, we apologize for the wait.”
“I’m always telling you that it’s ‘President’, aren’t I, Little Violet?”
The beast – rather, the woman – shot a cold glance at the one that she perceived as the enemy.
“You—What are you?” Salvatore vented his confusion at the sudden intruder who held onto the completely red battle-axe.
She had white and smooth skin like that of porcelain dolls. Her blue eyes were as glass balls. Her hair of gold seemed to waft with a sweet fragrance. The girl was beautiful to a rare extent, but that was not the only thing that made one’s eyes widen at her.
A living legend that Salvatore did not know was standing there.
“Violet.”
The loveliness he had seen in the picture was concealed by a shadow, a turbulent atmosphere similar to madness surrounding her instead. An air of lethargic strategizing as to which of them would move first flowed by, but the stagnancy soon shattered.
“PRESIDENT———! LUX——!”
“OLD MAN!”
Callings could be heard in unison from outside the room. The massive door was then broken through as if it were as thin a paper sheet. The one who stepped onto the door as it collapsed with a tremor and entered the room while holding by the collar an enemy that she had defeated with her silver iron knuckles was Cattleya.
“Aa~hn! You two~! Found yoou!” She tossed the prey that she had nearly killed toward Salvatore and his group. Being able to fling a human being as if they were an object meant her arms were simply that great as blunt weapons.
Following her, a gun barrel appeared first, and after bullet sounds ensued, Benedict revealed himself. It was a shot meant for delivering the finishing blow to Cattleya’s offensive.
Shooting the legs of all the men in black except Salvatore, Benedict clicked his tongue at the gruesome scene inside the room. “What’s this? Hasn’t V eaten out most of them?” Together with a sigh, he threw away the gun he had been holding, taking out another one. “Old Man~, we’ve left only this important-looking old dude~.”
“Lux! Violet is protecting you, right? President! You’re tied up!” Cattleya ran towards Hodgins, who lay on the floor. Without cutting them with a knife, she ripped off the ropes that had been restricting him using the iron knuckles and embraced him boldly.
Hodgins patted her back with taps and hugged her lightly. “Sorry, Cattleya. Didn’t my adorable young lady get hurt?”
“I didn’t!”
“Atta girl.” Hodgins left a kiss on Cattleya’s forehead with a pop.
Cattleya’s cheeks flushed red and she turned her back to him looking embarrassed, stamping her feet onto her happiness on the spot.
Benedict tore Cattleya away from Hodgins and stood between them. Contrary to being angry, he aggressively hit Hodgins from face to torso, confirming that the latter was alive.
“Ouch, ouch, what’s this? A new way of expressing love?”
“You’re fine, huh, Captive Princess?”
“You were worried about me, Darling?” Hodgins merely replied with frivolous talk to Benedict’s cynicism, looking delighted.
Briefly biting his lip, Benedict faced the ground. Hodgins had a feeling that the eyes Benedict had directed at him before casting them downward were moist, and was inwardly surprised.
——Huh, could it be he really was worried?
“Hey, Darling. Benedict.”
His sandy-blond hair rubbed into a mess, Benedict finally resisted energetically as if to say, “Quit it”. Nothing that resembled tears could be seen in his eyes anymore.
“Who’s that ‘Darling’, Old Man...?!”
“Could it be you were pretty worried about me?”
He was fully convinced that Benedict would deny it.
“I was. Don’t make me.” Yet the latter directed his sky-blue eyes straight at him and said, “I was hella worried. Don’t ever make me worry again no matter what!”
As it was much too blunt, after Hodgins was taken aback, his face slowly turned red. He had anticipated they would come save him, but right now was his first time learning he was cherished to that extent.
“Ah... that so? S-Sorry, okay?”
“Damn... Don’t go getting kidnapped when you’ve got that huge body! Is Captive Princess #2 all good?”
“Fairly. Little Lux needs first-aid...!”
Violet undid Lux’s binding. The latter’s body, which had been trembling in fear, and the sound of her heartbeats, which had grown noisy, were regaining their calm.
“Thank you, Violet.” Enduring the pain in her cheek, Lux smiled at the friend who had come for her rescue. “I thought you were some noble prince.”
Violet furrowed her eyebrows as if troubled. She then resentfully held Lux’s hands and helped her up. “My apologies for not being able to protect you. But I will not let you go through terrifying times anymore.” Just like a knight, she made Lux retreat to behind her.
Albeit gripping his gun, Salvatore remained unable to fire a single shot at the mere three people who had taken control of his company. As he shifted his gaze to the side, he could see his underlings collapsed and moaning in the open corridor. “There was supposed to be... fifty of them,” once he opened his mouth, his voice shook.
“Ah? Your minions? Even if the numbers are big, it’s no use if the quality sucks. Actually, were there that many of them? I was counting, but... Stupid Woman, how many did you take down?”
“Stupid Benedict! Erm... ten. I probably beat up about ten people.”
“I got twenty. The rest was V, huh?”
“I simply came here by climbing the outer walls, so other than the beginning and now...”
“Didn’t anyone run away? The math ain’t adding up.”
They were chatting carefreely, yet the contents of the conversation were the number of people they had defeated. In addition, there was an overwhelming difference in combat power, for they were unharmed and not even their clothes had scratches. That was also a difference in corporation power.
Biting his lip as if in frustration, Salvatore barked at Hodgins, “They came late, and that’s why you’ve lost! I already had you write the contract! The official scrivener went to submit the contract we exchanged to the government office so that it’d serve as a demonstration of formal legitimacy. It’s probably already been accepted... Take your leave as you please. But I’m billing you for the internal damage caused by your subordinates and the injuries they inflicted on mine!”
Salvatore had intended to wreak both psychological and bodily pain on Hodgins for a while, instilling terror on him and making him lose the will to fight back, but now he had given up on it. What he desired most – the unequal contract – was in a state of legal effectiveness. As long as he had it, regardless of what anyone could say, the fact that Salvatore had the advantage would not change.
“Salvatore Rinaudo. What’re you on about?” However, Hodgins had a facial expression that denounced he was helplessly puzzled.
“As I said, your company can no longer enter our routes...”
“So?”
“No matter how much brute force we used, that’s nothing in the face of a validated official document!”
“Again... so what? The papers were indeed filed. Seems like they also were submitted before help came. What of it?” Claudia Hodgins, president of the CH Postal Company and former major from Leidenschaftlich’s army, generally had an easygoing personality, as well as a cheerful and frivolous attitude. However, he was now glaring at Salvatore without breaking into a smile, letting a glint shine sharply in his eyes. “Isn’t it a matter that’ll be solved if we crush down your company?” He rolled up his shirt’s sleeves and took off a wristwatch that one could tell was a high-grade product. Next, he squeezed the strap with his fingers so that the watch’s case would be on his knuckles.
Anybody who was used to fighting knew. If one was battling without a weapon, the object called wristwatch was an overly useful thing.
“Salvatore, if only you hadn’t hit Lux, I wouldn’t be this angry.”
Salvatore fired at Hodgins when the latter swung up his hand, yet it did not even graze him. Oddly enough, the bullet that had failed to kill a person shot through the middle of the forehead of Salvatore’s portrait sitting inside the room.
“S-Sto...” The word that Salvatore uttered were the end of it.
The fist swung by a 194cm-tall man who weighted 85kg struck into Salvatore’s face with a wind-cutting sound. As his nose was broken without mercy, Salvatore shed a large amount of blood. A few of his teeth tumbled onto the high-quality carpet as well. He had convulsions for a moment, but eventually became completely motionless.
“Did you kill him?”
At Benedict’s question, Hodgins put his ear against Salvatore’s chest, shaking his head after simply checking the other’s heartbeat. “He’s alive. Let’s leave him be.” By the instant he turned around, Hodgins had gone back to his usual self. “Everyone, you did well. I’m so happy; my employees sure are the best. And I’m also the best for having chosen you!” Hodgins sang praises gesturing exaggeratedly, embracing the employees who had come for his aid all at once. He then came closer to Lux’s side, planting a kiss on the cheek that had not been punched. “I’ve made you go through a lot, huh. I’m really sorry, Little Lux.”
“No, I’m the president’s secretary, after all.”
Seeing as she did not appear too bashful, that sort of kiss was likely not a rare action. As the thread of tension broke, Lux crumbled and shed large tears. Hodgins frantically apologized again.
“That’s not it... I’m frustrated... It’d be great if I were like everyone else, and also had strength to protect the president. If I hadn’t been taken hostage, things wouldn’t have turned out like...”
Cattleya gently caressed Lux’s arching back as she was unable to stop crying. “What’re you saying? Lux, you have it good exactly because you’re a normal fragile girl. Ah, but it’s not like I’m not normal either. I’m strong and pretty, but I’m a super normal girl...”
“Cattleya, what you say is inconsistent.” Violet handed Lux a silk handkerchief.
Perhaps due to their heights being about the same, despite their faces not resembling one another and their body types being different, the figure of the tree as they nestled close to each other strangely made them look like sisters.
“Seeing girls huddling together is kinda nice, right, Benedict?”
“Old Man, just hurry and do something about this place.”
“Should we huddle too? Shall we?”
“Don’t play around and give the instructions!”
As Benedict dealt him a strong lateral kick to the rear, Hodgins ceased joking. “Eeh~, then, all dismissed...! That’s what I’d like to do but I have a request. Anyone who doesn’t have any plans for later, please help me destroy Salvatore’s company!”
“He~y, Old Man.”
“What is it, Mr. Benedict?”
“You haven’t checked things out so you don’t know what’s been made of it, but we left the international offices to the rest of the fighter staff. The guys who stayed at the main office contacted them. Since it’s those fellows... they’ll take them out without worries.”
“Amazing! But we don’t have fighter staff! It’s not like I hired you with that intention! Well, since there have to be people who can go into battlefields, I didn’t not have that intention, but...”
“From the very start, that was our purpose, President Hodgins. So that there will not be such happenings after this, we believed that laying waste to everything and thoroughly annihilating them was a good plan.”
“Scary, scary. Your expression is getting scary too, Little Violet. Smile! It’s ruining your cute face!”
“President~! I want you to buy me a new choker after we’re done. Look~! The pearls on it got torn off... It was my favorite too.”
“Okay, Cattleya. Be it chokers, clothes or anything, this uncle will buy it for you!”
“Hum... President. What should I do?” the non-fighting staff member Lux tightly clutched her skirt, looking nervous.
“Little Lux, let’s go back to the head office. I’ll have you be treated there too. It’s all right; everyone in the head office contacted the other employees, so there should be people gathering there. It’s safer than you coming with us. Benedict, take Little Lux to the head office, and then regroup.”
“Roger; leave some for me to mess with too.”
“We aren’t sharing cake slices... Now, Little Violet and Cattleya are going with me to crush the branch offices just like this. Let’s decide on the rules for one. No hitting girls. Hitting bastards is fine.”
“Understood.”
“‘Ka~y.”
The members of the CH Postal Company continued their strategy meeting without paying mind to the people that they had defeated lying on the floor. When they were done at last, they exited the building while making so that those of Salvatore’s postmen who had stood up once again would be beyond recovery.
Lighting a cigarette, Hodgins started walking with it in his mouth, and everyone followed him as well.
On that day, within Leidenschaftlich, gunshots echoed throughout several areas of the capital Leiden, yet no one attempted to keep them under control. Additionally, the military police did not make a move regardless of how many reports it received.
The nocturnal darkness deepened late into the night.
The lights were brightly lit in a bar at the corner of a business district. “Fully booked for the day,” said the clumsy letters on a paper pinned to the menu board in front of the shop. The figure of a seductive female dancer was drawn on said board. By the looks of it, that was a place where people enjoyed shows along with their meals.
The voices of people laughing pleasantly and lively music could be heard leaking from inside the bar. It seemed to be the feast of some company. The men and women were at a one-one ratio. Their ages varied and all of them differed in skin, hair and eye colors.
Even amongst them, there was an attention-catching few.
A young man was displaying splendid steps on a table with heeled boots that looked like womenswear. The dancers swayed their bodies together with him and danced purely as they pleased.
On another table, a beautiful woman was smiling while arm-wrestling with a man of fiendish facial features and plentiful muscles. Seeing as she twisted his arm in a matter of seconds, it could be that he let her win on purpose. However, the man who had lost rubbed his seemingly hurt arm with a strangely believable face.
A silver-haired young girl with a big gauze on her cheek was playing a card game with a blonde person of terribly tattered appearance. It was most likely poker. She looked troubled for not being able to read the other’s expression. While everyone else was emptying bottles of alcohol, only the two of them were making cups of tea into their nighttime company. Each was fixated with their own victory, playing in earnest.
“Ah~! I won~! I won enough to buy a kinda nice pair of shoes! Ah, Lux, aren’t those winning cards?”
“Women who can dance sure are great. V, you suck at playing this, don’t you?”
Benedict, who had had enough of dancing, and Cattleya, who had grown tired of arm wresting, came to sit at the peaceful table as if to intrude on it.
Lux put the cards that she had been hiding up to her lips on the table. “Want to quit poker, Violet?”
“That is right. The cards in our hands have been busted by a third party, after all.”
They did not have the will to get angry. If anything, Lux was so happy for being able to return to that trifling daily life with her companions that she wound up laughing. Perhaps due to the spot where she had been hit aching when she laughed, she arched her back with an “ow, ow, ow”.
“Are you okay? Is it not better for you to rest already...?”
“Yu~p, but I think it’s safer to be with everyone for the day... President Hodgins is here too so I can’t go home.”
Cattleya quickly reacted and looked at Lux’s direction with momentum. “What do you mean?”
“We’ve decided that I’ll be with the President today. See, it’s because the President’s home was in the company’s top floor. We have nowhere to sleep tonight, right? I also had that experience with being kidnapped... He was worried and got me a room at a hotel in the city. It seems President Hodgins will also be staying in it for a while. Until this mess is over, I’ll also be working from there. We’re going together today, so I have to wait for him.”
While Violet replied agreeably with a, “That is reassuring”, Cattleya became beet-red. One could tell from her face what she was imagining. She grabbed Lux’s arm and shook her violently. “You! Do you get what you’re saying?”
“E-Eeh? Our rooms are separated, y’know?”
“Cattleya, Lux is injured.”
“Not a chance. Dunno how many years it’ll last, but not even he is that shameless.”
“Hey! Don’t meddle into a girls’ talk!”
“Ah, you’ve said it. Then don’t barge into when I’m talking with the Old Man no matter what.”
Since another fight had decidedly began, as an accustomed form of coping, Violet and Lux left the two and started their conversation afresh.
“Speaking of which... Violet, are you okay? You’re dressed pretty cutely today... Could it be you were going to meet up with that person... with Mr. Major?”
The moment she received such question was exactly when Violet’s gaze had fixed on the bar’s entrance. “I am fine.”
Someone was heading her way.
Perhaps due to having come in a hurry, said person was out of breath. His sweat-dampened forehead was a proof of the efforts he had been spending until arriving there. He was caught by Hodgins and came to a halt, but even so, he aimed at and went toward her as fast as possible.
That person had soon spotted Violet from the bar’s entrance, and Violet had frozen in place the instant he had arrived as well. It was almost as if there were gravity between them that drew one to the other.
Violet stood up naturally and rushed to him.
——Ah, Violet.
Lux could tell.
——I see, so that’s how it is.
Anyone who was close by would be able to tell.
——The two of you are already like that.
After all, it was as though the air about her had changed completely the moment he had appeared.
“Colonel.”
The one standing there was Colonel Gilbert Bougainvillea from Leidenschaftlich’s army. Perhaps because he was on an off day, he wore only a jacket of fine tailoring and a shirt. Inquisitive stares from the people making a ruckus in the bar fell upon him all at once.
“Violet.”
After all, he was a man rumored within the company for moving the army in order to protect Violet. His existence was made known during the hijacking incident of the Intercontinental train, after which a year had passed not too long before. Of course, that was a story only told internally and Hodgins was publicly regarded as the main leader of such strategy.
The members of the postal company who had gathered up to save her had seen in person the man who came running while carrying her princess style. Back then, they had also witnessed Benedict being entrusted with Violet, his mouth open as if he had grown senile.
“Colonel, my apologies... I ended up breaking our arrangement.”
Her cottony hair was ruined. The outfit chosen for her and that her body was clad in had become like ragged cloths. Everything she had prepared for him had been reduced to misery today.
Nevertheless, seeing her dressed-up caused Gilbert’s heart to beat louder.
“You...”
“You look beautiful” was what he had started to say, but upon noticing a stare of pressuring quality to a fierce extent from the side, he trailed off.
Benedict seemed extremely unamused. He clicked his tongue as their eyes met.
“Anything the matter...?”
“Not really. There any law that says I can’t look at the bastard who snoops into V’s general area every once in a blue moon ever since that incident like he’s a rare sight?”
“You helped me out holding onto Violet back then. I’m grateful... And, I don’t know about any such law, but if it’s about putting up a watchdog act, I’m the one on top.”
Something like an electric shockwave ran between the two of them. Benedict remained not toning down his distrust regarding Gilbert until now, peeved by that man who seemed like he could become a love rival for Benedict’s significant other had he been in the same workplace as them.
“This was the curtain rise of their muddled battle!” just as the two had opened their mouths again, Hodgins cut in with a foolish commentary.
Silence. The two simultaneously glared at Hodgins as if looking at something deplorable.
Hodgins himself broke Gilbert and Benedict apart, coming in between them, putting his arms around each and laughing stridently, “Don’t fight for me! Man~, I wanted to try saying this once.”
“Shut up, Old Man!”
“Stay away, Hodgins. You’re reeking of booze.”
It was a conversation with a magnificent explosive power. By the looks of it, Gilbert and Benedict did not seem like they would get along, but their attitude towards Hodgins was similar.
“Old Man, tomorrow will be terrible for you if you drink too much. You’re at that age, aren’t you?”
“Darling... you’re saying that because you’re worried about me, right?”
“Hey, stop. Stop. I’m not a woman.”
As Benedict stepped away from Hodgins, who was attempting to give him a kiss, Gilbert and Violet were at last able to lock eyes with each other again. Violet had a face that denounced she had gone through a hellish time.
“Any injuries?”
“Minor ones. The same level as scratching a knee.”
“That’s good...” He was truly saying so from the bottom of his heart. Seeing Cattleya and Lux anxiously observing the two of them, Gilbert spoke further, “You too, any injuries? Aah... you need a medic.”
“No, no, I’m okay.”
Lux had already received treatment, yet it seemed like her wound might open the next day.
Perhaps always carrying it in his person, Gilbert took a fountain pen and small notebook from his jacket’s inner pocket, handing her a paper sheet that contained a certain address within Leiden. “This is the clinic where my home doctor is. You don’t need to pay if you give my name, so go there another day. You’ll probably need painkillers for a while. Even in the hotel you’re staying at, please give my name to the hotelman if you need anything. We’re on friendly terms, so he’ll treat you well.”
Lux acted uncertain when accepting the paper. “Ah. Thank you very much. You’re very generous... Could it be... that the hotel reservation... Mr. Bougainvillea, erm... Colonel Bougainvillea, was made by you?”
After glancing at Hodgins, who was entangling himself with Benedict, Gilbert nodded. “That thing asked me for it. I can’t say this aloud but I’ve also disposed of... the documents submitted to the government office in the name of your company. When I use my influence in places outside of my jurisdiction... I end up losing one card that I could otherwise use in the event of an emergency, but...” Perhaps as if remembering something, he furrowed his brows a little and chuckled. “Hodgins took care of Violet. I also won’t spare any efforts for you all in case something happens. If there’s any worrisome matter, it can even be through Violet, but do tell me.”
“Y-Yes.”
Cattleya and Lux mutely let their cheeks dye pink. Was there any girl whose heart would not throb at Gilbert as he displayed adult-man-like reliance in a different way from Hodgins?
“Colonel, you’re so cool.”
“Colonel, you are wonderful.”
No, there was not.
For whatever reason, the two had their fingers interlaced in front of their chests and were striking the same pose.
Gilbert replied levelly, “You aren’t my subordinates so you don’t need to refer to me by my rank.”
Violet pulled the hem of Gilbert’s jacket ever so lightly. “Colonel, hum... would you like to sit down? You must be tired.”
“Aah, no. I’m sorry but I’m taking my leave. You too, Violet. The two are at the Bougainvillea house and we’re making them worry. I already contacted them to say I’d bring you back, so come along. It stopped by a place a little far away, but I have a carriage ready, so let’s walk there. Miss Lux. You... were together with Hodgins for today, right? Miss Cattleya, what about you? We can send you home if necessary.”
“Y-You know my name?! Mine?!”
“Of course; I heard it from Violet. So, what will you do?”
Perhaps due to extreme happiness at that, Cattleya slapped Violet’s back with quite strong vigor countless times, making merry. “I’m fine! I’ll be here with everyone until morning today!”
“It’s probably better if you’re in big numbers. Well, my apologies since we’re in the middle of a pleasant talk, but I’m taking her along. Thank you... for always being so close to Violet. Let’s meet again somewhere else. Please let me at least treat you to a meal.” Gilbert all too naturally took off his jacket and placed it over Violet’s shoulders. He began escorting her away just like that.
“Ah! Bastard! Hold on! V is my little sister part!”
“Everyone, good night. Benedict too.”
“Wait! V~! Hey—Old Man!”
Binding Benedict’s arms behind his back, Hodgins sent Violet a wink. It was true that he was drunk, but his tactic was probably to keep Benedict away from Gilbert. He might have been paying for the sin of making the two of them miss out on the time they had to spend with each other because of his kidnapping.
Hodgins and Gilbert merely exchanged short goodbyes such as, “I’ll call” and, “See you”.
“Benedict’s had an overwhelming defeat, huh.”
“Old Man!”
“Man, he’s rivaling you... but he’s also not.”
The two young women left behind spoke while still staring at the bar’s entrance.
“To be honest, the President told me a lot about Violet’s past after that incident, and I didn’t not wonder if someone like him was okay for her... but, when you meet him, y’know...”
“Yup, its different when you get to meet him, right?”
“It’s because he really did cherish her that he made many mistakes, did his best to take back a lot of things, and now they’re like this, huh,” Lux whispered, deep in thought.
Treading through an autumn night in which the nocturnal winds were gelid robbed the two a little of the body heat provided by the warm interior of the bar. Violet, who Gilbert had put his jacket over, looked at him with only his shirt on as if to question him.
He soon noticed her gaze and their eyes met. He then smiled at her. “Aren’t you cold?”
Just from him simply throwing those words at her, as Violet was still unused to it, her heart raced. “No; Major, what about you?”
The times that the two of them met up were still at a point where they could be counted with one hand, and during such instances, the restraint brought about by his long absence would manifest itself in the form of agitation. From the perspective of others, that could almost not be perceived. After all, her facial expressions were generally emotionless.
“I’m fine. I’ve run around and sweated a lot today, so I’m still warm.”
“My apologies, Colonel.”
“It’s nothing to apologize for. I did that because I wanted to. Violet. It was also for Hodgins’s sake.”
“All right, Colonel.”
“Let’s walk a little slower. Once we get on the carriage, the way home will last a blink of eye.”
“Is that bad...?”
The one who had made the request was Gilbert, and the words Violet was about to say wound up dying out before they could take form. That was because he sweetly added, “I don’t have enough time with you”.
“All right, Major.”
Her eyes spoke more eloquently than her expressionless self. Violet’s blue orbs were glued to Gilbert’s emerald ones.
“I want to chat a little too. Is everything okay with that young man called Benedict?”
“By that, you mean...?”
“He seems to favor you.”
“He has another woman that he fancies. It seems they are in a relationship, and they themselves are hiding it but everyone around them knows.”
“That so?”
“Yes, he is... in an older brother-like... position regarding... my person, he told me.”
“Told you? That man?”
Their eye and hair colors were certainly similar, and the man could be said to be an androgynous beauty, but his speech and conduct were much too different from Violet’s.
“He himself was saying so.”
“Aah, he indeed called you his ‘little sister part’... Should I interpret that as him showing affection for you...? But it doesn’t look like we will get along very well.”
“Is that so?”
“It will probably be difficult.”
As Violet had heard the story of Hodgins and Gilbert’s past, she estimated that such assumption would be disproved. Gilbert and Hodgins were also a duo that one would not think got along well.
“It seems he’ll get in the way when I’m with you.”
Since Gilbert made a face as if he had swallowed a bitter-tasting bug, Violet did not voice her opinion in the end. “Major.”
“What is it?” As Violet called him, the middle of his brows immediately softened.
“If you had managed to meet with me as planned today, where did you intend to go?”
“Aah, I had actually made an arrangement for us to go horse-riding.”
“Horses.”
“You can ride army horses, and I think long rides aren’t bad if it’s on fine autumn weather days... Did you not like it?”
“Colonel, there is nothing that I dislike if I am in your company.”
“That answer makes me happy, but I do believe I want to learn about your tastes little by little. Kukuh.”
As Gilbert suddenly laughed aloud, Violet tilted her neck. “Is something the matter?”
“You... probably haven’t noticed it, but you’ve been mixing up ‘Major’ and ‘Colonel’ when referring to me.”
As he had been promoted from major to lieutenant-colonel and from lieutenant-colonel to colonel, it could be said that referring to Gilbert with a lower rank was terribly inappropriate.
Violet corrected her posture and apologized again, “I... am sorry. My apologies, Colonel.”
“No, that’s not it. I’m not angry... Ever since you were little, you used to call me that. The first word I heard from you was this one, too. I’m saying that if you can’t get used to it, I don’t mind the ‘Major’.”
“‘Colonel’... Colonel, I will not mistake it anymore.”
Her figure as she attempted to memorize it, in order not to forget it, was lovably stubborn. Gilbert caught a glimpse of her past self from that immature aspect of hers.
At the beginning, the two of them had had an inept exchange. Almost like how children would do it, they had told each other their names.
“Ma... jor.”
“Can you understand what I’m saying, Violet?”
“Major.”
After learning words and coming to know discipline, she had become his weapon.
“If that is Major’s order...”
“It’s not an order...”
“If... it is your desire...”
He had wound up loving the girl-weapon.
“Major’s eyes are here.”
“I wonder... what this is called.”
It had been a one-sided love.
“I will become your ‘shield’ and ‘weapon’.”
“I shall protect you.”
“Please do not ever doubt this. I am your ‘asset’.”
Even so, he had loved her.
“I love you!”
“I don’t want to let you die! Violet!”
“I love you, Violet.”
The girl-weapon had wept that she did not understand what she had been bestowed with.
“What is... ‘love’?”
No one had taught her about it.
“What is... ‘love’? What is... ‘love’? What is ‘love’?”
“I do not understand, Major...”
She had also not understood why he had said such a thing to her.
“What is... ‘love’?”
She had searched for the meaning of those words and for him, who had disappeared, encountering them by chance at last.
And so, they had reached the present time.
“Violet.” Gilbert took her artificial fingertips as she stood still.
Her index finger made screeching sounds.
“Since we’re at it, won’t you call me by my name?” He pointed her finger at himself.
The fingertips that used to be soft and have body temperature in the past did not anymore. The same applied to one of Gilbert’s arms.
“I am Gilbert. Gilbert Bougainvillea.” He pointed at Violet next. “You are Violet. Violet Evergarden.” He moved the finger both ways, saying, “Gilbert, Violet... Gilbert, Violet.”
The two who had ended up with mechanical part had grown and changed. They were not parent and child originally. Not siblings, either. They had also ceased being superior and subordinate.
“Lord Gilbert.”
At Violet’s predictable response, Gilbert smiled bitterly. “The ‘lord’ part... isn’t necessary.”
He had supposedly spoken gently, yet Violet showed him an aspect of disconcertment. “My apologies... Have you... come to hate me...?”
“No. I don’t know how to feel anything but affection towards you... It appears that...” while thinking that it was also valid for himself, Gilbert stated, “hum... you become insecure about it every now and then, but I’ll never hate you.”
“How come?” Violet asked.
How great would it be if he were able to show the insides of his heart to her? Presenting with a form that “this is love” would be so simple. However, it was due to not being able to do such a thing that people uttered words to proffer their love.
“Because I love you most.”
Violet started searching for that term within the sea of words embedded inside her. “‘Love... most’...” As they rolled out of her tongue, what appalling yet passionate words those were.
There was no other sentence more fitting of Gilbert Bougainvillea.
“Love me... most?”
“I have eyes for nobody but you. You’re the only one I’m fond of.”
“That is... to love most?”
“I will hold you dear for eternity, and continue to love you.”
She did not ask “That is... to love most?” a second time. Violet’s cheeks were rose-dusted, her heart started palpitating to the point of aching, and her field of vision blurred. She was unable to look at Gilbert’s face. Unwittingly, she cast her head down, yet he wound up peering at it. The distance between their faces was just about enough for them to kiss.
It was currently nighttime and the two of them were alone in that place, so whatever they did, no one would be looking. Maybe they could manage to keep it a secret even from God.
“I had a phase of... liking you... then I fell in love with you, and now, it turns out I love you the most. Do you understand?”
“Does it never diminish?”
“The affection?”
“The love.”
“I wonder. But I don’t want that to happen and will probably reconfirm whether I do love you numerous times, so it’ll likely intensify, not decrease. You fill me up with it.”
“With love?”
“Yes. The reason why I believe I love you is because you granted me that feeling.”
Violet Evergarden, who had been learning and copying from him – from people –, was able to take in the meaning of those words.
“I do that to you, Major?”
Again, her manner of referring to him had changed. Gilbert thought it was fine either way.
“You do that to me.” Gilbert silently planted a kiss not on Violet’s cheek or lips but on the fingertips that he was holding onto.
Silence.
Those were artificial fingers. She was unable to feel anything from them. Her arms were gone, and would nevermore return.
Placing a kiss on such a spot could transmit nothing.
Even so, he had deliberately kissed it in an affectionate manner. For some reason, that action – Gilbert’s feelings – caused Violet’s eyes to grow hot as if burning and produce tears.
Violet attempted to stop them. Those were incomprehensible tears. Why were they flowing at that moment? They would definitely trouble the man in front of her.
Nevertheless, tears were already pooling in her moist eyes until, finally, a single drop spilled down. Sure enough, the round tear that had fallen from one of her eyes left Gilbert distraught.
“Violet.” Seeing her reaction, he promptly let go of her fingers. “I’m sorry.” He stepped back, raising both hands as if to have her understand that he would not do anything else. “I’m really sorry.”
Violet did not answer. She stared at Gilbert without even wiping off the tear as if spacing out. Her attitude was not of anger. Her aspect was not of sorrow, either. He had no idea what she was thinking. She had the gaze of someone who seemed to be having a dream.
The two of them had lived separately, and he had thought that her facial expressions had become richer ever since they had reunited, but once she clammed up, he could not read her. Her lack of expression and well-featured doll-like traits did not allow Gilbert to study her emotions. However, the one thing he could fathom was that his action just now had been foolish.
——What am I doing?
He had told her that he would wait however long it took. The kiss on her fingers might have been a violation to that promise. He should have been the best gentleman for her, but he may have lost that right.
When she was by his side, she was unbearably endearing. The love towards her that lit up within his chest wound up overflowing.
“I swear I won’t do it anymore...”
The army colonel of Leidenschaftlich was losing face in front of the girl he was enamored with.
“Violet...”
What face was he making now? What did she think of it?
“Major, I...” Violet called him with her wind chime voice. She grabbed onto Gilbert’s fingers and took one step forward. The distance between them had shrunk once again. And then she took another step.
She was close enough to be embraced by Gilbert.
“Violet...”
“Major... please.” Violet peeked into Gilbert’s eye.
The emerald-green orb that had unchangeably borne beauty, kindness and a little bit of loneliness ever since they had first met was right there. Violet was now reflected in it.
Violet was inside his world.
“Do not swear so.”
Gilbert’s eyelid blinked at her straightforward words.
“Please, do not swear... that you will not do it.”
Seeing tears well up in Violet’s eyes once again, Gilbert impulsively reached an arm out to her. He caressed her golden hair as if to soothe her, earnestly listening to what she was attempting to tell him.
“Major, you explained it to me, right? That to love is to think of wanting to... protect someone the most.”
He wiped her tears with his fingertips.
Violet entrusted her cheek to his hand and shed more tears. “This has... applied to me since forever.”
She was attempting to replenish her lacking life. Rather, the truth was that the two of them could have done that from the moment they had met, for it was almost as if they made up for each other’s unskillfulness, but they had missed one another countless times and had not intersected well.
Violet’s chest was now being filled up with a warm feeling that she was experiencing for the first time.
“It always, always has, since long ago. I merely... did not know it...”
——This loud throbbing in my chest, this ecstasy, the fact that I end up swayed by your every action...
“I...”
——...the reason why I cried that I wanted to be by your side and asked you not to leave me anymore...
“Major... I...”
——...the reason why I am crying now...
“I, as of now...”
——...is that, once the “like” and the “love” fell and piled up like snow, and I became unable to melt them down, I had wanted to let you know that I wished the same to be valid for you.
“...have a feeling that I...”
People would declare it as if offering a prayer.
“...understand it better than before.”
“I love you”, that is.
#violet evergarden#fyeahvioletevergarden#violet evergarden gaiden#kyoani#kyoto animation#gilbert bougainvillea#claudia hogdins#benedict blue#cattleya baudelaire#lux sibyl#akatsuki kana#takase akiko#novel#my translation
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WHO: The Twilight of Adam boys
WHAT: The boys head into the jungle in search of Blue.
WHEN: Day 12
NOTE: For future reference.
kian
The cool, damp air and grey overcast are small beacons of familiarity to Kian in an otherwise-unprecedented situation. Unlike their last trek into the jungle, no one dares speak a word to one another, all eyes and ears peeled for even the smallest sign of Blue. The eerie - and admittedly, uncommon - silence gives him more time to think, more time to reflect on his actions these past few days. What was the last thing he even said to Blue? Was it something bossy, mean, critical? He can't remember. He'd take it all back if it meant the other boy would be okay. "Does anyone know what Blue was wearing yesterday?" Kian asks as he steps over an exposed tree root. "Maybe it'd be helpful if we had some, like...Blue's Clues to go off of. In case he's not able to respond to us."
callum
Nothing like a perfectly innocent question to piss Callum off. He grumbled a little, brows pulling together as he forced himself to recall something, anything, from yesterday. "I think like a... green... green sort of shirt," he answered. Which wasn't particularly helpful to the group since green would blend with just about everything in this damn jungle. "Would it really matter anyway? He'd hear us before he saw us, right? So if we just kept calling out for his name or something..." It would lead anything dangerous straight to them. Callum sighed.
dash
As predicted, Dash became the de facto caboose of the search train. The makeshift crutch he had been given was incredibly helpful, but also forced him to realize that he was going to have to work on his upper body strength sooner rather than later. He scoffed quietly. A green shirt. Great. The only color less helpful would’ve been brown. "Yeah, gotta say? Sudden and loud noises haven't always come with the greatest outcomes for us," he piped up, though pig trauma notwithstanding that would probably be the go-to move. "Don't think we should try to telepathically connect with the guy instead or anything, but just a little something to keep in mind up there."
sawyer
Like Dash, Sawyer’s bum ankle and heavy cargo pushed him toward the back of the search group. He carried a rucksack full of boiled groundwater and ripe bananas on his back, gaze cast toward the trees, alert for any sign that something or someone had come through here. Occasionally, he’d let out a whistle - a little tune he’d plucked from the depths of his subconscious. Nothing. No response. “It ever strike you funny there aren’t any birds on this island?” He asked the group.
callum
Of course Dash had to pipe in. Callum was beginning to regret calming down about letting him tag along but at least for once he wasn't spouting dumb shit, instead speaking the thoughts on Callum's mind. It would be dangerous to be hollering and hooting for Blue when not all of them were in the best shape to defend themselves. It left the boys no choice but to remain somber and keep their eyes peeled. At Sawyer's question, Callum tilted his head in thought, realizing he had never really thought about it. Who had time to pay attention to the little details when you were busy trying not to die or distracted by the hunger grumbling in your belly? But with the group making an effort to be quiet, he listened for once, trying to concentrate on whether or not he could hear anything bird-like in the trees above. "Hmm... yeah, you're right. Guess that is kinda weird. Does that mean something's eating them? Or something's... off with island?" Was it... radioactive or something? Because that would really fucking suck.
sawyer
"I don't know." Sawyer craned his neck to look at the treetops, shielding his eyes from the overcast. They certainly were tall enough for birds of prey to nest in. Even deserted, this island was vegetation paradise...so why did it have wild boar and wolves, but few mice, few rats, few squirrels? Nothing added up. Nothing about anything added up. "Maybe I'm just talkin' out of my ass," he sniffed, "but it feels like...y'know, with the wolf from earlier – what if this is one of them islands rich folk come to hunt game for sport? Or...somethin'."
dash
Dash let out a long, low whistle, which quickly evolved into the whistle drop in that one DJ Snake song. When there was no twittering in response, his brow furrowed. "Okay, seriously, I kinda called that," he said in response to the rich guy island thing, which was a quarter-truth. He didn't know if Lukas remembered their first real conversation but Dash did, and he literally had just mentioned The Most Dangerous Game in passing. He might've jokingly accused Sebastian of the actual hunting-and-killing back then, but still. “Or uh, you ever hear about Sandy Island? Tiny ass place that was charted somewhere between Australia and New Caledonia for ages. Then something like eight, nine, ten years ago... Some group of scientists went to go and check it out?” He shook his head. “Nada, bro. Nothing there. Phantom island. Try and tell me that isn’t some LOST shit. Who says that isn’t also some kinda trippy celestial maneuver courtesy of the all-supreme demiurges bonking around upstairs?” It wasn't something that Dash necessarily believed. It was just better to shoot the shit about impossible things than humor the thought of what felt like the real threat of some Bezos-looking motherfucker rounding the corner with Hitler's golden gun. Which he got off the billionaire black market, naturally. "Or maybe the wolf and pig just adapted into like, vegetarians."
kian
"What's a demiurge?" Most of what Dash was talking about flew right over Kian's head - partly because it was chock-full of foreign phrases like celestial maneuver and New Caledonia (was that an actual place??), and partly because Kian was running off of a few hours of sleep, as it were. Tired, sore, and still horny as all hell never made for a good combination when the other boys went off on their existential tangents. "It has to have been inhabited at one point. I've read that Hawaii has a feral hog problem 'cos those twats procreate so quickly, so you'd think if there's one hog, there'd be a whole bunch of them? But they're all gone."
dash
"Oh, uhhh. The ol' creator, a.k.a. capital G-o-d," Dash explained, pointing toward Joe like you hear that? "Or more like a second class version of that guy. Depends who you ask, I guess," he continued, and dropped his hand. Kian made a good point. Bloodthirsty monster that she was, it was sort of a bummer that the damn hog was charging around all on her lonesome. It reminded him of that whale who operated on a different frequency than everyone else or something, and just wandered around the ocean without any buddies. "You know I hate the bitch, but that's kinda depressing."
kian
At the mention of God, Kian cast a wary glance in Lukas's direction. Surprisingly, the other boy hadn't said so much as one word since the break of dawn. Perhaps even since last night. "I dunno if you can say that," he whispered at Dash more than to him. Was it Jews who didn't believe in God? Or was that just Jesus? Either way: "I bet it was dumped here and left behind. Same goes for the wolf. Big animals just don't survive on tiny islands without any sort of prey."
sawyer
Sawyer let out another whistle — again, no response. He hated to think that this, their presence here, was all some elaborate scheme by a higher power to…what? Humble them? Teach them what they already knew, that the world didn’t give a single fuck about them and they were truly on their own? It was situations like these that led Sawyer to believe demiurges didn’t exist at all. Life was just a very chaotic, very unfortunate thing when you weren’t the one in control. “Well,” he said, breaking the silence once more, “maybe they’ll come back for us soon.”
jungle
A single dirty black Converse hi-top peeks out from beneath a bush.
dash
Dash had just hobble-swung himself over a root when he spotted something. While finding bits and pieces of Blue's clothes wasn't exactly super comforting, it was better than nothing so he chose to focus on that positive. A shoe could totally be the first thing to lead them to the guy. A little out of breath and pink in the face, he repeated Kian’s words: “Blue’s Clues.” He approached the bush then knocked the shoe out from the leaves with the end of his crutch. Hi-top converse didn’t really mesh with Blue’s whole hockey bro thing, and he struggled to remember Blue's actual fit. When it came to the jocks, they all sort of dressed in the same unforgettable way. His brow furrowed as he looked toward the guys who were last with him. “Uhhh, this his?"
callum
"Holy shit." Callum swiftly made his way to the back of the group to get a closer look at Dash's find, pushing aside anyone he needed to get his hands on it first. Snatching it off of the ground, he gave the thing a good look, inspecting it from every angle as if a map straight to Blue was drawn somewhere on it. "It has to be, right? I mean, it's not like there's anyone else on this island." Duh. "Yo, this means we're close. He has to be somewhere here." In his excitement, Callum looked around frantically. Then he yelled. "Blue!!"
jungle
The moment after Callum speaks Blue's name, a roar of thunder is heard from above.
sawyer
Sawyer had shuffled over to Dash, peering at the dirty black hi-top in his hand with an indiscernible expression. It was a shoe, alright, but it looked very...small? Blue was a tall guy - he knew this because even he found himself looking up at Blue when they talked. Shit, maybe the lighting was just playing tricks on his brain. Lighting and pure fuckin' exhaustion. "Marcher, wait - " He didn't get a chance to finish his sentence before the storm clouds above gave a low rumble, a sure warning for rain to come. "Dammit," he muttered beneath his breath.
callum
Callum was largely unfazed by the thunder. If anything, it served as a reminder that they were on a time crunch. "Guys, c'mon," he urged them, grip still tight on the shoe as he made his way back to the front of the group. "This means Blue is close. It's got to. Keep your eyes peeled," he demanded of all of them.
kian
Kian did not appreciate being literally pushed out of the way by Callum, thank you very much, but he appreciated the roaring thunder even less. If the impending storm was anything like the one from the first few nights on the island, it wasn't going to make finding Blue any easier. "Blue?" He called out, shielding his eyes with his hand. "Blueeee!"
dash
Dash cast a sideways glance to Sawyer. This means Blue is close, Callum said. Does it? Dash thought. His brain snapped back to The Most Dangerous Game. Random shoe didn't mean some other unknown living person was on the island, emphasis on the alive part. But finding Blue was more important than putting his mind hand on that particularly searing hot thought stove. He joined the shouting despite his initial aversion to the idea. Rolling darkness shifted over them as the clouds moved overhead. "Bluuuue! Blue, my man, do you hear us?" If the guy called back, what were the chances his voice wouldn't get drowned out by the thunder?
jungle
Movement in the bushes closeby.
dash
At the sound of bushes rustling, Dash yelped on instinct and jumped back, knocking shoulders with the boy closest to him. “Nah, man! I called it! Fuuuuck this.”
callum
Callum turned his head toward the movement, squeezing the shoe so hard that his knuckles turned white. Could it be? Has this boar not done enough? Callum dropped the shoe, reaching behind him to pull out the small makeshift spear he'd kept in in the drawstring bag he was wearing. "Come out, you piece of shit..." He dared the thing.
jungle
More movement in the bushes but it's closer to the back of the group now.
sawyer
Sawyer stumbled on his feet when Dash backed into him, a hand flying to the other boy's shoulder to keep him steady. "S'alright," he murmured. They'd heard enough ominous rustlings in the bushes, at this point, that he had a pretty solid idea of what not to do when threatened with something that had the potential to harm them. He slipped the rucksack off one arm and rifled through it 'til he found the powder compact he'd stashed away that morning, cracking it open and angling the mirror so that what little remained of the suns rays would bounce off of some of the further trees. "Does it sound like...?"
jungle
More rustling from the bushes. And then suddenly, a monitor lizard quickly lumbers out from the beneath greenery, desperately trying to make its way past the boys.
kian
Kian would later deny flinching at the sight of a robust lizard waddling its way out of the bushes, moving in a zig-zag pattern between their feet. "It's a lizard, innit," he gasped.
callum
The tension Callum felt in his body dissipated when he caught sight of the giant lizard. Not a boar, he thought. Thank fuck. The way the thing moved made his stomach twist in weird ways though. He made a face at it, backing away when it passed him. Once it was gone, he sighed. "Alright, let's keep moving."
dash
Dash's face was still twisted with apprehension even after the lizard did its mad, wonky sprint through them. "Ew. Why's it gotta be so big?" he asked no one in particular, but then more pointedly to the group he continued: "And are we still gonna to do the yelling thing after that?"
sawyer
Well, he'd be damned. Sawyer had never seen a lizard so big, before - or at all. He watched it trail into the bushes, slowly closing his compact and sliding it into one of his pockets. "Yeah, might be a good idea to stick to something less attention-grabbin' for the time being," he said, swooping down to pick up the shoe Callum had dropped. His brow furrowed. "This - wait, how could this fit Blue, it's a size nine.”
dash
Dash's eyebrows shot up and he leaned over to double-check the size himself. He inhaled through his bared teeth, then nodded. "Yeah, I dunno. Unless... Anyone ever hear the guy complain of ingrown toenails, by chance?" he asked wryly, then immediately felt a little bad for it. If this wasn't Blue's shoe, then they were back to square one.
jungle
It starts slow but it starts. Droplets of rain begin to fall from above.
kian
Kian stuck a hand out, feeling a couple droplets fall into the palm of his hand. Ugh. Not good. "Not that I know of," he said. "Has anyone else lost a shoe...?"
callum
"What kind of question is that?" Callum asked, incredulous. "It's obviously Blue's," he insisted despite the shoe being a questionable size, stabbing a tense hand in the direction of the hi-top. It had to be. They had to be close to him. They had to be close to finding him. Callum needed that shoe to be a sign that Blue was nearby.
dash
Dash shifted uneasily on his feet, clutching onto his crutch as rain fell on his shoulders. He shivered when a cold droplet hit the back of his neck, then hesitated before he spoke. "Hey, man," he started. "If it's not his, then uhhh. Then no biggie. We'll still find him. We just... We gotta find another clue, or keep walking. Sound good?" Dash wiped at his face as the rain came down. "Like we're for sure gonna find him. And now that the weather's gone to shit, he's definitely not on the move or anything. Maybe we should check in places where a guy'd go to escape the rain."
sawyer
Sawyer drew his bottom lip through his teeth, his emotions - and sensitivities - heightened by the whirlwind of stressful events that'd plagued him over the past twelve hours. "Yeah, no, it were just a thought," he muttered after Dash spoke in his stead, scratching the back of his neck with his free hand. The hi-top sat heavy in his hand, its soles caked with mud, the canvas worn and dirty. This shoe didn't belong to Blue, and it didn't seem to belong to any of them. Something here didn't add up. Sawyer unraveled the laces and tied them to the drawstrings of his bag, just in case one of the boys at camp had lost a spare or something. He didn't know. It felt like something worth holding onto. "Dash's right. Let's check around the clearing, see if there's anywhere he could've taken shelter."
sebastian
Sebastian thought about things for a moment or so in silence before he conjured the energy to say it aloud. "It might not be his," he reasoned, "There were other people on that plane," other people that they could find torn in half or strung up in a tree, rotting away and being eaten by various jungle insects or worse. That would explain the discrepancy in shoe size if the other boys were indeed correct about that.
kian
"I don't think the pilot was wearing chucks, though?" Kian said, crossing his arms over his chest. Thank fuck he at least had a hair tie to keep it out of his eyes as it started to drizzle. "And there was that one suitcase...that didn't belong to anyone here, either."
jungle
The rain picks up and starts pouring.
sebastian
Kian made a valid point, it was pretty unusual for a pilots uniform to include sneakers, even if it was a private charter. Still, there had to be an explanation unless they'd managed to walk past the local Zumiez without noticing it already. "Maybe there was more stuff in the cargo hold than just ours," he suggested, pushing his hair out of his face as it became damp. "Does anybody know how private charters work? Maybe they were moving commercial cargo as well," though the shoes had definitely been worn before, "Maybe it was the crew's luggage or somebody on the T.O.A. team," he added, grasping for an explanation, admittedly.
joe
joe had been standing in the middle of the group. it was the convenient middle of the road position."no offence but i don't care who the shoe belongs to. we can figure that out later." blue should have been their main focus. he had been alone and lost all night. "jj probably knows shit about private charters." joe was convinced the curly haired boy knew everything except where to find the clit. he wasn't phased when the rain started to pour. heavy rain was his element. he had hiked and played matches in downpours before.
sebastian
It was an interesting find since they couldn't clearly match it to anybody in the group but Joe was right, it didn't really matter right now if it wasn't going to help them find Blue any sooner. As such, he nodded his head in agreement, "Keep the shoe, we'll deal with it later," he instructed as a result. He wiped his forehead with the back of his arm and looked up at the sky briefly, "We have to move quickly. This rain is going to wash away any tracks Blue might have left and we'll be fucked anyway if we get caught out here without any shelter for ourselves," hopefully Blue had already found some that they could crash in due time or at least before the rain got any worse.
callum
The talk of the shoe not being Blue's and just being someone from the plane's was like a kick to the gut for Callum. It practically slashed the hope he was hanging onto so hard in half. Though thankfully, Sebastian's sensible words soon pulled his attention and he was quickly agreeing with the other boy. "He's right, let's get moving," he urged, more than happy to start them off in a forward direction. "Keep your eyes on the ground. Anything that looks like a shoeprint, footprint, more clothes," he almost wanted to say 'blood' thinking back to what he found yesterday but decided against it, "anything that looks like it shouldn't belong in the jungle." He strode forward with intent, moving aside leaves and pushing away branches.
kian
With the sudden onslaught of heavy rain, seeing beyond the first few meters in front of them was becoming harder and harder. Kian tried in vain to shield his eyes from the downpour, but to no avail. Staring at the ground was useless, too, as water battered the dirt and grass. Fucking tropics. “I can’t see anything!” He shouted over the rain. “Can you?!”
dash
Makeshift crutch plus rain did not an easy journey make. The rain came down hard enough that his shirt was immediately soaked through, and he nearly stumbled over a root as he rushed to keep with everyone. "Can see shit!" he answered back to Kian, relying more on the keeping an eye on Sawyer who was closest to him and following his footsteps. Sudden rain wasn't uncommon down in Florida and with the exception of actual hurricanes, the downpours often lasted up to thirty minutes then fucked off. "This could pass quick. Maybe we should find a place to wait it out?"
joe
"We have to keep moving." They couldn't afford to waste time. The rain was going to wash away the Blue's clues and Joe was pretty sure he heard on Crimewatch or a similar show that the first 72 hours were the optimal time to find a missing person."We don't know how long it's going to be pissing it down for."
sawyer
No matter which way you looked at it, pouring rain was the worst weather to have a search mission under. Sawyer did his best to power through it, mud kicking up at his feet, clothes sticking themselves to his skin as he trudged behind the other boys with his heavy rucksack and limping gait. He caught Dash slipping in his peripheral and slowed his steps for him - they couldn't afford to lose another member of the pack to this place. "Let's make it to the clearing," Sawyer called out. "We can figure out where to go from there."
dash
Dash nodded in agreement as he squinted through the rain, even if no one would catch it. His side started to act up more than his leg, and visions of popped stitches plagued his head despite the fact he was about 70% sure they were intact. He tried to push the stomach-turning thoughts aside and focus on this one thing: getting to the clearing. When they got there, he'd have a moment to rest. When they got there, they'd figure out their next move.
joe
Joe turned around to attempt to look at the boys behind him instead turning his neck while making suggestions (he wanted to bark orders but he didn't have it in him, he wasn't like Sebastian or Callum). He was torn. All he could think about was finding Blue but his instinct was to follow orders. Not to mention he would have done anything Sawyer told him to. "Alright, let's head to the clearing." Blue wouldn't be there but the others had a point, they couldn't see shit. Joe tried to rub water out of his eyes.
callum
Callum had wandered ahead a good amount, hand held up above his eyes in effort to keep water away. "Guys, hey, I think I see something down there–" He turned around from the edge he was standing on, hoping to find the boys close by but in his haste he seemed to have strayed several paces ahead. "Yo! Hey!" He called out, using his other hand to wave wildly as he stepped forward to call for their attention. With the downpour heavier, the ground had gone muddy and Callum slipped over the craggy terrain he was once so confident walking on. "Ahh!" He fell backwards, rolling down the hill's slope.
dash
Dash could only make out the vague shape of Marcher up ahead and through the pelting rain. The guy called out to them. He saw something, he said? It was hard to hear. But then what came next happened in the blink of an eye. He was there one moment and falling the next. “Marcher — Callum!” Dash called out and slipped on the wet ground as he stepped forward too quickly. He reached a hand out and steadied himself against a tree. Hoping someone a little more able-bodied got there first, he tried to push ahead. “Jesus Christ, this fuckin’ asshole,” he muttered to himself through clenched teeth, fast and low, and hoped the aforementioned asshole didn’t snap his damn neck.
sebastian
Sebastian darted to the edge of the incline, his eyes following the trail the other boy has made as he fell down the muddy slope. When he was certain that it was safe enough to traverse with care and skill, he dropped to his hip and slid down after the other male, careful of any rocky surfaces he might encounter on the way. “Cal, stay still” he instructed when he reached the teenager, trying to assess the collateral without worrying the other boy.
callum
Callum's tumbling came to a halt when his legs smacked into an angled rock peeking up from the muddy ground. He cried out, hands shooting to the shin of his right leg as he curled into himself on the jungle floor. The collision with the rock had torn his pants and ripped into the flesh below his knee. With his eyes squeezed shut tightly, he couldn't make out what the damage was, but whoever made it to him first and pulled his hands aside would be greeted with a bloody gash that exposed bone.
sebastian
Sebastian crouched as low as he could without putting too much pressure on his legs. Placing a hand on Callum’s chest he mirrored the actions of the EMTs that had treated him, the day of his accident, instructing him not to look at the wounds he’d suffered. “Just keep your head down, man, look at me,” he insisted. He tried not to let it show but there was fear in his eyes, the moment he saw the blood. Was that bone? It made him feel sick and a shooting pain traveled up the length of his shin, reminding him of how it had felt when he had been the one in Callum’s position months earlier. “Full name? What’s your full name?” He asked, his hand on Callum’s shoulder now, ready to push him back if he got curious about his leg again. “- and your birthday?” He added a moment later.
callum
For once, Callum was thankful it was pouring out because at least it would be indiscernible if he happened to cry. "Why the fuck does that matter?" Callum snapped, in disbelief that Sebastian thought to ask these questions at a moment like this. His irritation was growing more and more fervent with each word out of the other boy's mouth and if he wasn't so busy clutching at his shin, he would be smacking Sebastian hard across the face. "I'm fucking coherent," he lashed out, "I don't need to tell you my goddamn name– ow!" In his anger, he attempted to stretch out his legs, sending a searing pain up his shin that had his head slamming backwards into the ground. He groaned angrily, pulling his hand away from his leg to grip at Sebastian's arm, yanking at the material of his shirt. "How fucking bad is it? Just tell me how bad it is–"
sebastian
“Then answer my fucking questions if you’re so goddamn sure of yourself,” he ordered, letting Callum pull him around if it meant he wasn’t going to try and stretch his leg out again or worse, try and stand. He moved his position to inspect the wound more closely, trying with all his might not to get queasy at the sight. The last thing the group needed was for Sebastian to start throwing up or passing out to add to the evening’s affairs. “It’s hard to tell,” he lied, “I mean it’s not hanging off, I think it’s just superficial but you’re not going to wanna walk on it,” he was talking to himself as much as he was talking to Callum when he pulled the bandana from around his neck and re-tied it around the other boy’s leg.
callum
"Callum Marcher!" He roared, curling forward from the intensity of his yell but thankfully not by much thanks to Sebastian's steady hand on his shoulder. "Callum Kai Marcher, you fucking piece of shit, ugh–" He let his head fall back against the ground, worn out from his little outburst. Staring upwards at the sky, he tried to make out what he could from the spaces between the trees to distract himself, blinking away the droplets of rain that fell into his eyes. "November 15th..." He spoke again, blowing out the rain that got into his mouth, wanting the tiredness and shock from the injury to overtake him so he could pass just the fuck out already. He hissed when he felt a tightness around his leg, peering down to see Sebastian's bandana there to keep pressure. When he was feeling better, he had to remember to tell Sebastian thanks and apologize for being an ass.July 13, 2021
dash
There was no way in hell Dash would make it down the slope without assistance if he didn’t want to take a major tumble over himself. He made it to the ledge with some difficulty and tested the integrity of the ground in front of him with the end of his crutch before he got close enough to peer over. The rain made it difficult to see the extent of Callum's injuries, but he could tell Sebastian made it to his side safely. He imagined how Warren might’ve toppled over cliffside, and what he must've had going through his head, hundreds of times. Something in his chest loosened at the realization that no one was left alone to suffer this time, but only a little. Shit still felt bleak. Callum yelled his own name, sudden and loud over the sound of the rain. Proof he was conscious enough to form words, at least, was a pretty good sign, right? Dash cupped a hand around his mouth and shouted: “How’s it looking down there? Can you get him back up?”
sebastian
"Yeah, yeah, get it out of your damn system, you big baby," he didn't want to stir Callum to the point that he would try to get up and choke Sebastian out but he did want to keep him focused on chewing him out instead of focused on the pain or the sight of his injury. "Get back man, I don't need you down here too," he called out to Dash who was far, far too close to the edge of the hill for Sebastian's liking. "Gimme a minute," he called back as he considered his options, jaw clenched and his teeth slammed together in his mouth as his chest fluttered with anxiety over the other boy's situation. What if he couldn't get him back up? What if none of them could? What if moving him just made it worse? "What do you think? You think we can get back up there or are we going the long way around?" he asked Callum, now that he was sure that if he had indeed hit his head, it hadn't knocked all of his brain cells out of his ears, not yet anyway.
callum
Callum would normally be the first to make something more difficult than it has to be for the sake of saving face, but right now, as much as he wanted, he knew there was no way he could go uphill on anything. He took one look at the hill he stumbled down on and pained expression painted features. "Long way," he answered, even if his ego was screaming at him not to. "I can't fucking– it's not gonna happen, man."
sebastian
Sebastian had figured as much but left the final assessment up to Callum, whether it was for the sake of certainty or for the sake of avoiding a greater argument for bossing him around. Either way, the decision had been made and he nodded his head in agreement, taking in a slow steady breath, mentally preparing himself for the trial ahead. He turned back over his shoulder then, shielding his eyes against the rain with his hand pressed to his brow, "We'll meet you back at camp, you go on," he instructed the other boys.
callum
Callum hated this. He hated being the burden. Head dropped in defeat, he let his gaze turn to the side, allowing himself a moment of self-pity before Sebastian would inevitably have to help him up like some child and assist him as he hobbled around. But then, amidst the pelting rain, he noticed something on the ground. "Hey," he started, grabbing Sebastian's arm to alert the other boy. "Hey, wait," he urged. "Look!" He stabbed a finger out, pointing toward the trees further down. At the root of one, a dirty old shoe laid. "Shoe!" He called out. It reminded him of why they were out here in the first place. Why they couldn't just turn around and head back to camp. Blue. "Blue! Blue's here!" He yelled, his excitement outweighing his current pain.
sebastian
Sebastian narrowed his eyes, focusing his gaze through the sheet of rain that had been falling without waver for what felt like forever now. Callum was right, another shoe- a shoe that matched the other one but still didn't explain where the fuck it had actually come from. "What the fuck?" he uttered softly, almost under his breath as he tried to piece the evidence together. How did they end up with two shoes and no feet to fill them? If the owner had been eaten alive, there'd be some evidence of that. If they strung up in a tree somewhere, all blood and bones, there'd be some evidence of that. How did a person lose one shoe and then lose another so much further away? It didn't make any sense. "Yeah, yeah, yeah," he agreed with Callum plainly, so as not to get into another argument with the boy about the source of the shoe. "I'll go get it," he informed him, standing to full height then, "Can you count my paces as I go? I wanna know how long you think it is from here to there, might tell us something about how far he's traveled," Sebastian lied, just giving Callum something to do instead of writhing in pain.
blue
blue tried to focus, though his head felt like a cloud and he still felt odd since his fall. counting the thunder like his dad taught him, even if it was overhead. the rain falling down made it more difficult to hear so he moved closer to the opening, and that is when he heard someone call his name. "God?" he asked the sky, but the voices were close, and he moved as fast as he could towards them.b Dripping wet, with a look of confusion all over he realized he knew those voices. "Cal! Seb!" it wasn't God, but it was a divine moment to hear them again. "Guys!" He yelled out, making his way through the slippery greenery and rocks until he found himself just a few feet from the ones that had come off the cliff. "Boys!" He beamed, a victorious smile painted his face and tears ran down, happy ones. All he wanted was to dogpile hug them, celebrate this reunion but then he noticed cal's leg. "oh shit! what happened?"
joe
Waiting at the top of the hill was making Joe nervous. Sebastian shouted up at the Adams on the top of the hill ,telling them to go back, but Joe wasn't sure that was the right choice. Sebastian was huge but how the fuck was he meant to lead an injured person back to camp by himself ? With the rain obscuring his view Joe couldn't even tell exactly how injured Callum was. All he knew was that Callum was conscious. He perked up at the sound of a third voice."Is that fucking Blue with you? Blue!" He shouted down. He was ready to sprint down the hill. Fuck the mud and rocks, they didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that Blue was ok.
callum
Callum felt defeated, resigned to nodding and counting Sebastian's steps in his head to keep himself at bay until he saw Blue himself run out of the woods and right up to them. "Holy fuck, BLUE." In his surprise, Callum attempted to sit up and in doing so, sent a shot of pain right up his leg. "Fuuuck–" He threw himself back onto the ground, hand moving to grip his leg in attempt to ease ache. "Jesus–" Was he imagining this? Was Blue really here? Or did he actually just pass out from the initial shock of his injury and this was some sort of fever dream?
dash
Sebastian had shouted orders for everyone to meet back at camp but no one had moved yet, stuck at a standstill as they watched him lead a limping Callum. He didn’t immediately spot Blue when he initially came bounding through the trees; his attention was brought to him when he heard the boy’s victorious shouting. It felt surreal as fuck, the fact of his reappearance and that it would happen immediately after one of them got shit totaled. It was still sick, obviously, and Dash felt his heart sag in relief that they found him. But the demiurge was also an cruel ass mistress, like some genie in a bottle shtick. Oh, you want a thousand bucks? Here comes a stampede of goddamn deer—have a little topple hillside, why don't you? Then you can maybe get your treat with wish number two. Joe’s yell shook him out of his shock. “Oh fuuuck. Blue! Blue!” he called out, a lump in his throat, waving his free arm in the air to signal where they stood. He wanted to jump on the dude's back and tackle him into the mud in celebration if his side wouldn't split open in the process. To Joe, he asked, “Jesus, man, how do we get down there?”
blue
blue shot his arm to wave at joe and dash and the guys at top, so relieved to be seeing them all that his mouth hurt from smiling even as the tears poured down. "I missed you guys, " he said to everyone but seb and cal were the closest to hear it. he took a quick glance at the wound and turned his head to the side to not do that again. he took a deep breath, mustering what physical strength he had, "if we lift him, can the top guys pull him up?" he asked to the group, his eyes on callum and the pain all over his face.
joe
"The same way as Sebastian." He shrugged. It seemed simple enough. All they had to do was tread carefully, watching for any rocks and being careful not to slip. Joe looked down at Dash's makeshift crutch. Nothing on the island could be simple. "Oh shit, your fucking leg." He pointed out like Dash wasn't aware of how much pain he was in. "You could stay up here? Or you could grab onto Sawyer? I can carry you crutch and the backpack with all our shit in?"
sebastian
Sebastian was halfway convinced that it was the stress and anxiety that made an image of Blue manifest so spontaneously between the sheets of rain that turned the stubborn ground into slop beneath their feet but as soon as the boy spoke, Sebastian knew he was real. "Holy shit Blue, you're alive," he remarked unintentionally revealing that in his heart of hearts, he was almost certain they'd be coming across his corpse or what was left of it in the days to come. "He fell from up there," he explained, looking up to the top of the hill where the other boys watched in nervous anticipation. Sebastian shook his head sternly, "No fucking way, it's not worth the risk," one wrong move and the rest of the boys could come crashing down the side of the hill just as Callum had done only minutes beforehand, if not, they could easily slip their grip on Callum himself and worsen his state. It simply wasn't worth it. "We're going back to camp, we'll take the long way on the flat, it's the only way," maybe it was the only way, maybe it wasn't but it was the only path forward visible to Sebastian for the time being.
blue
as the rain fell overhead, impeeding his vision and making his headache worse, he recalled what he had been doing right before. "I know a cave I think, it's over there," he pointed in rhe direction he had come from, maybe.
sebastian
Sebastian nodded his head in agreement, relieved that Blue had not only managed to survive the duration of his disappearance but had also managed to find a cave along the way. "That could work," he said, thinking out loud as he mentally cataloged their options. They could try and make their way back to camp and hope that the storm didn't worsen before they got there or they could try and find this cave of Blue's, wait out the storm and try again in the morning, hopefully with Callum feeling better after a lengthy rest. The answer was obvious to the male as soon as he'd given it enough thought. "Okay," he announced aloud, "New plan," he called out loud enough so that all of the boys could hear, hilltop and below, "Blue found a cave, we're going to go there for the night, wait out the storm and then head back to camp. Any objections?" he hoped for the love of God there weren't but since Dash was a habitual pain in the ass, his eyes drifted to the pink haired boy first.
dash
Dash was about to answer Joe when Sebastian spoke up again. Between the sound of the storm, the distracting exhilaration of seeing Blue again, and his general state of exhaustion, Dash only picked up some of what the guy yelled up at them. Well, he heard the words cave and storm and camp. “What the hell, they know about some cave? What fuckin’ cave?” he asked no one in particular, wiping away the water from his face. If there was a cave nearby, Dash was hitching his cart to that prospect rather than hiking all the way back to camp. He wanted to snap his crutch over his knee, all the good it did him. Cupping his hand again, he yelled down: “All right, cool, bro. I’m going to find a safe way around the shitty slip ‘n slide. Meet you down there!” Dash let out a clicking sound out the corner of his mouth, then turned to Joe again. "Okay, that was kind of a lie. We're going with your plan." He handed the crutch over to Joe, then looked over at Sawyer. He hoped the boys on the ground had their backs turned to look after Callum so Sebastian wouldn't bitch up at him again. "Mind if I cop a ride, dude?"
sawyer
Sawyer had long passed the point of caring whether the other boys see him cry, and when Blue reappeared at the bottom of the hill, the emotions he'd been pushing down inside himself erupted like a volcano of tears. Gross, snotty tears, the very same kind that overcame him with that fateful first catch at sea. He couldn't believe it. He almost didn't want to, for fear of having the rug pulled out from beneath their feet again. But there Blue was, alive and well, and Sawyer couldn't stop himself from covering his face in his hand as his shoulders shook with relief. He's still sniveling like a baby by the time Dash addresses him. Oh. Right. They still have a whole hill to get down. "Hell yeah, buddy," Sawyer laughs wetly, clapping Dash on the shoulder and giving him a shake. He shrugs the rucksack off of his back and loops his arms through the drawstrings like one of them baby slings he's seen new mamas carry their newborns around in so that Dash can climb on - comfortably. "Let's conquer this fuckin' hill."
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Past of the future, future of the past...
Chapter 7. Never the same.
"Entering Hoenn airspace!" announced the navigator. "Current speed - 100 km/h, altitude - 10 km."
"Coolant temperature… normal," added mechanic. "Reactor’s working at optimal capacity. Main propellers rotating at 300 rpm, blades angle set at position 4."
"Good," responded the captain, looking in the front window. "Rad-scans?"
"I think directed rad-scanners are picking up something in the Meteor Falls… looks like our target," said the radiation safety officer. "Pilot - drop us down to 3 kms and lower the speed to 30 km/h. When we'll be directly above the Meteor Falls - shut down the primary propulsion and deploy the auxiliary thrusters, then transfer the control to me."
"Acknowledged, commencing corrections," replied the pilot, slightly shifting joystick and thrust control rudder.
"Good," noted the captain, then relaxed a bit. Right now, they were escorted by a few of military helicopters, tiltjets and some Hoennian military Pokemon, just in case anyone gets the wrong idea upon seeing such a great airship. After all, it was equipped with a nuclear reactor for power source and, should the rest of the airship be destroyed and the ultra-durable protective shell breached, will cause a lot of contamination…
----
"Your Majesty… your Majesty..." a scientist in Zemlino carefully tried to wake up the Emperor, who was sitting asleep in the chair near the ORBCOM station, after all those crazy events of yesterday.
"Hm?.. If there's a third moon around the Red Planet - notify the Team 37, especially if it turns out to be an… eyed balloon or something…" the Emperor replied without actually awakening, being, apparently, in the midst of some bizarre and adventurous dream.
"Again…" the Empress, who has just recently arrived to the flight control center, sighed, knowing a bit too well, just how enthusiastic her husband could get about anything aerospace-related. Especially after the first manned flight, when he has, somehow, managed to get into the SP-04 "Black Bird" spaceplane and, therefore, become the first human in space...
"Anyway… now with the "Red Explorer" around the Moon, "Hauler" preparing to deorbit and "Dreamwing" back in hangar… we need to decide, how to direct the space program," said director of Zemlino FCC. "During the last nine months, it was directed solely towards building and launching the nuclear pulse battleship to open the road towards the skies again, with a few resupply vessels for it, but now, once we did it and made our intentions on keeping it open clear… what do we do?"
"Honestly…" Empress started, in uneasy voice, "... I don't know. I mean, yes, we've opened the road to space again and people of the Empire are very happy about that, as well as showing Nation, that we're no jokes, but… I'm not really sure, what kind of directions are to be made of greater priority."
"Orbital factories," Emperor replied, waking up upon hearing it at once.
"Factories? Well… yes, they can be of use, but…" began director, only for the Emperor to interrupt him:
"No buts. Even though I'm not big at ruling, I think we should capitalize on our success and get the info about the materials, which can be produced only in microgravity, and how they can help to improve the lives on the ground. I think info about the orbital hospitals can also help, since they are something everyday human can understand. If they start telling, that it'll be only available to aristocracy and rich - we should capitalize on grandiosity of our new Integrated Program Plan. It's finally time to put it back into action and make it reality."
"... I guess," sighed Empress, thinking about words of her husband.
"No time for guessing. We must make them realize, that the only way for them to get access to all the cool space stuff is to support the space program and help it grow as never before. We're on the verge of greatness now and we must achieve it."
"Hopefully, you succeed at this," said director of the FCC, "because I'd hate the program falling apart, after all we've done..."
"We all would," replied the Emperor and the Empress at the same time.
----
"So… that's it," murmured Damien, seeing gigantic nuclear-powered airship soar through the skies back to Soris, carrying highly radioactive corpse of Rayquaza inside the shielded cargo section. For all of the Draconid People, it was one heck of a blow - not only the Dragon Lord was killed, but they could not even bury it properly, having to allow sorisians to stuff it into an underground nuclear waste dump. And, what's worse, none of them could do anything about it - not only Rayquaza's corpse was radioactive enough to be able to give human a fatal radiation poisoning in matter of a few minutes, burying it in classic way would've allowed the leaking isotopes to, eventually, contaminate the groundwater and cause a big ecological catastrophe.
"Grannie…" started Helian, "... What will happen now? With no Dragon Lord?"
"I don't know," said the Elder, looking at the airship too. "But I think, that the world will never be the same…"
----
"So, we're done with preliminary checks," sighed mechanic, who was servicing the "Dreamwing" in the hangar #2 of Zemlino Space Center. "So far, everything looks fine."
"Great," replied commander of the spaceplane. "Hopefully, our birdie will stay fine in the future too."
"Hopefully… but it may get replaced with the new nuclear-powered spaceplane soon, when they iron out the hiccups of nuclear turboramjets and aerodynamics of the aft. I've heard Emperor got opposed to the idea of jettisonable aerodynamic tail cone and they're busy developing something, which will allow everything to come up and down in one piece."
"Cool. Almost like our machine."
"Yeah. From what I've heard, test flights of the SPN-01 "Blizzard", the first BLUEBIRD spaceplane, should start pretty soon. And with no Rayquaza around, they should be safe enough."
"Safe, you say… the debris is still in place, though. And I don't think, that this spaceplane can be as armored as the battleship we've launched recently."
"Well… yeah. Still, we've managed to take a flight to the "Red Explorer" and spend some time up there, so, maybe it won't be as bad. Besides, I've heard some rumors about how there are plans for dual-purpose weaponized satellites, which can both destroy targets in space and use their weapons for clearing space junk."
"Hm… Interesting and kinda makes sense. I guess those laser researches in the ISFs 5 and 9 will be put to good use, after all."
"I guess."
"Hi, guys," said the engineer of the "Dreamwing", approaching the two men on this catwalk. "Anything wrong with sensors?"
"No, nothing is wrong with them," replied mechanic and was a bit surprised upon seeing, how crewmembers of the "Dreamwing" suddenly got grimier and exchanged looks of understanding.
"I guess we may have another dragon problem soon enough…" stated the commander, looking at the machine. "And who knows, if we'll have to resort to warships again…"
----
Awake.
Alive.
Those were the first thoughts of the young dragon.
Right now, it did not understand the situation yet, but some strange memories, belonging both to the dragon and not to it at the same time, were flooding its mind.
It was slowly to understand some things, but not too fast.
It understood, that its name was Rayquaza, the Sky High Pokemon.
It understood, that it exists to protect the skies and deal with Groudon and Kyogre.
It understood, that something must've happened to its predecessor, if it was awakened right now.
With those thoughts, young dragon has struck the hard shell of the egg and broke it apart, freeing itself. As it has just remembered, despite most of the Legendaries, like itself, being near-immortal, there were still contingency protocols in events of something exceptional happening.
And, apparently, something exceptional it was.
The young dragon has remembered the last moments of the old dragon, when it fought some huge cone-cylindrical metallic construct and, somehow, was struck down by it.
Whatever moves this construct was using, they've had near-infernal power. And young dragon could not allow itself to suffer the fate of its predecessor.
For now, it will lay low and explore, as it grows back to the power level of a full Legendary. Then… it will depend on circumstances.
With those thoughts, young pitch-black serpentine dragon took off, flew past the obstacles and left the cave, well-hidden in the mountain range. Right now, it had to, first and foremost, survive and grow up.
----
Inside the bridge of the huge sorisian airship, there was not much action now. Rayquaza's highly-radioactive corpse was now in the reinforced storage, they were en route home, everything on the airship worked perfectly… honestly, it was kind of boring.
"Guys…" started the navigator, "Do you remember our first assignment? The aerial expedition to Alola?"
"Oh, I sure do!" replied the pilot, shifting in the chair a bit. "How we all have flown to it, how we've spent a decent amount of hydrogen burnfuel for our recon plane and heavy-lift helicopter, how technicians were able to assemble the mooring masts in just three days… that was the time!"
"Especially with how we've managed to bring some Flygon eggs to Soris. Who knew, that those insect-dragons will become so popular at our home!"
"Well… they did become popular with our colonists, didn't they? I mean, by the end of our stay there, quite a few people liked their partner 'Spirits of Change'. Including you."
"... Yeah. Also…"
With those words said, pilot reached out for one of his MFDs, quickly selected "security camera feeds" options and looked at the feed from the top hangar a bit. In it, an insect-dragon was quietly sleeping, curled near the tandem-rotor helicopter - much like during their return from the expedition.
"... Nah, she's fine. Took Sunny form for some reason, though."
"I would've said because of our cargo, but it'd be stupid. By the way… strangely enough, but native Alolan Flygon seem to be extinct nowadays, with Hoennian subspecies, somehow, having replaced them."
"Hoopa's shenanigans again?"
"Likely. May also be combined with the fact, that Hoennian Flygon, while lacking the sheer versatility of its Alolan progenitor, is better adapted to the desert conditions. I guess they've just lost the competition there."
"And our region has preserved those dragon-bugs. Cool."
"I guess. I've heard from some of my friends in ISF 4, that some scientists from Hoenn and Alola would be really happy to get more data about the extinct-for-them Alolan Flygon."
"Likely."
Author's notes:
ISF - Imperial Science Facility.
ORBCOM - Orbiter Communicator.
MFD - Multi-Function Display.
Sorisian nuclear airship is based on that.
BLUEBIRD spaceplane is based on the real M(G)-19 "Gurkolyot".
Alolan Flygons are based on that wonderful picture.
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in the equivalence of sunflowers and kennedy smiles
so... idk what happened to my original post but it deleted?? so here’s a repost of my bluesey fic
read on ao3 here
Summary: Blue Sargent loved to receive flowers. The first were from Adam, the next, Gansey, the third, in a rare occurrence of thoughtfulness, were from Ronan. The fourth were an accident, and the fifth were from a boy at her school. But lacking from all of them were her favorite flower of all.
Blue Sargent decided she liked receiving flowers. The first, of course, were the ones from Adam, which she still thought about and felt her heart squeeze in a quiet sort of way. The next were from Gansey. They were a small handful of flowers picked from Cabeswater. The third, in an odd burst of rare kindness from Ronan, were a beautiful bunch of blooms, unmatchable to any known species, that changed color to match her mood. When she didn’t want to speak to anyone, she hung one outside her door and when she was feeling particularly fond, she would hand them out. They never seemed to wilt or run out and they were one of Blue’s most sacred possessions.
The fourth had been a mistake. They were for Cialina, dropped off by some boy vying for her attention. They never really seemed to get that when it came to men, she was only ever interested in their tips. Except he had gone to the register when Cia was covering for Blue while she ran to the bathroom and later, when he asked a busboy what the name of the register girl was, he told him Blue. Thus, flowers got delivered to Nino’s care of “the girl named blue” and imagine his surprise when he walked in to see Blue grabbing them off the counter.
If he had been a decent human, he would have let her accept the flowers, let her wonder who sent them, and never speak to her again. He hadn’t included a name on the note. Except he wasn’t. He was a Raven Boy which meant the world was his oyster and he was the one allowed to shuck the pearls from within. So, he marched right up and without even a beat of awkwardness announced, loudly, that those flowers were meant for the pretty girl working the register. Blue had to insist that she had been working the register all week and had to stand in shame as no, he insisted, the prettier girl with the nice smile who was working the register. Finally, Cia had come out to see the commotion and, there she is! He looked triumphant. He pulled the flowers from Blue’s hands and presented them, boldly, to Cialina.
Cialina was a hero. She laughed, loudly. It was possibly the first time that Raven Boy had ever felt rejection. She handed them back and announced that unless these roses were made of money, she wouldn’t want them from the likes of him. But she didn’t stop there. Her eyes zeroed in on a girl sitting at a booth, giggling at the spectacle. She snatched the flowers back and dramatically presented them to her, getting on one knee and professing her love. Two weeks later and the two were still together.
The fifth time Blue received flowers was from a quiet boy in her Literature Class. She figured it must have taken weeks for him to sac up enough to ask her out and he didn’t even do it directly. He paid someone else to deliver a single red rose to her. While slightly charmed from the experience, she had to track him down after class and explain to him that it wouldn’t work out. He immediately turned to toxicity. He accused her of selling out. He had known the rumors about her Raven Boy boyfriend existed, but he thought she was one of them. He thought she was better than that. Why would she sink to that level if boys like him were around?
Blue was quick to put him in his place. Her Raven Boy boyfriend wasn’t even at the top of the list of reasons she wouldn’t date him. To start, it was the fact that she had never found him the slightest bit interesting or attractive in any sort of the way. And it wasn’t just physical. She had heard the comments he made in and out of class, and frankly, she felt repulsed. She didn’t even give him the decency of handing the rose back, she let it drift to the floor as she turned on her heel and left him in the hall.
Blue Sargent didn’t much care for roses. They reminded her too much of Orla. Loud and ostentatious and always the object of someone’s affection. No, she much preferred something useful. Like sunflowers. She had learned in her environmental science class that sunflowers can be used to leach the lead from soil and the groundwater. Sunflowers, always seeking the sun, bright and yellow, and tall, had the ability to heal. Blue liked that idea very much. Sometimes, when she wasn’t dreaming about being in far off countries or being a tree, she dreamed of being a sunflower, face tilted toward the sun, following its path as she stood, grounded and at peace.
Gansey was constantly giving her flowers, but never once had he brought her roses. He brought her sprays of wildflowers he had found on hikes or pressed flowers he had left in books or leaves he thought looked cool. Each set was so different and unique and Blue could feel her heart squeeze, this time loudly, whenever she looked at them.
Gansey didn’t just bring flowers to Blue as an apology for going adventuring without her, he handed them to her when they were together. He would tuck them behind her ears or into her hair or in her pockets or in the laces of her shoes. They were thoughtless but at the same time so thoughtful that Blue was sometimes shocked by the complexity that was Gansey.
---
On her birthday, Adam, Ronan, and Henry all surprised her with one sunflower each. They weren’t chopped off at the stems. No, they were preserved in little vials, able to be replanted so they could grow. Together, they planted six sunflowers, one for each of them, an honorary one for Noah, and one for Gansey who was tied up with a family engagement and couldn’t make it.
It had been Henry’s idea, he had heard her advocating for the merits of sunflowers regularly. Adam had supplied the flowers (no dream flowers, he had said, Blue would want the real deal.) And Ronan had come up with the idea to help her create a garden. Without anyone telling her, Blue had known that Gansey hadn’t played much of a role in the planning of her gift, despite the boys' attempts to make it sound as if he had. And even though she knew that he was busy with this mother’s campaign, it still smarted a little that Gansey, the person she thought knew her best of all, was beat getting her sunflowers. It was petty and insignificant to be upset about, so Blue pushed it aside and allowed herself to focus on the joy she felt while planting her sunflowers in her backyard with the best friends she could ever have.
Soon, she had six sunflowers growing in the yard, right next to her beech tree. All her most sacred objects living in one backyard.
---
When Gansey had returned, he took her on a hike so they could celebrate her birthday together. They were marching across a field, up to the crest of a hill. Once they made it to the top, Gansey threw himself down and presented a handful of small flowers he had collected on the way up. Blue hadn’t even seen him pick them. She stared at them in her hand. They were a collection of dusty colored daisies. There was a twang in her heart, a confliction of emotions. As always, the flowers made her insides swell with the fondness she felt for the boy staring up at her. But at the same time, she felt the slight twinge of annoyance that made her feel angry with herself because it was something stupid. She just couldn’t help but wish they were sunflowers.
She tucked the flowers behind her ear and grinned down at Gansey. He looked at her, face tilted up at her. His hand came up to shield his eyes from the sun behind her and the look of complete adoration on his face made Blue pause for a second. She walked in a semi-circle around him. Gansey’s face followed her as she moved, tilted up at her like she was the sun, sustaining him.
All at once, the pieces fell into place. Blue didn’t need sunflowers from Gansey. He was her sunflower. He would follow her as she rose and set, never once faltering. He would do his best to leach the toxicity from her environment, no matter how much she protested, he would always try.
Gansey, who would follow her wherever she went, Gansey, who looked at her like she was the sun, was her own sunflower. And if she was honest about it, if she had to choose which brand of sunflower she preferred, deep in her heart of hearts, where she would never admit it, she knew she would always choose the sunflower with the Kennedy smile and the perfect nose.
Blue’s annoyance from earlier vanished and she grinned, a beaming, glowing smile.
“I love you,” she said, meaning it with every fiber of her being. She dropped down to her knees so she was face to face with Gansey and grabbed him by the front of his mauve colored polo shirt and kissed him soundly. One of his hands came up to cup her face, pausing to gently feel the flowers behind her ear before pressing his palm completely to her cheek. His hand was warm and smooth and safe and Blue had never wanted anything more than for this moment to last forever.
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wiccapediaowen:
Owen was used to a lot of academic and theoretical magic, testing the limits of what it was and using it to strengthen young witches. Magic during his daily life always had a purpose. It was good to be reminded that sometimes magic could just be….nice. It could be hedonistic and warm and fun. Obviously a daylight ring would be practical and serve the very real purpose of protection, but the end goal was to feel the sun and something about that was so pure and simple that it stole the air out of his lungs. There was so much humanity left to protect in Jonah. Many witches were happy to destroy other species and build defenses against them, and Owen had done plenty of the latter. But why had he never focused more on this part? Protecting the goodness before immortality burned it away for good. He sensed that it would take more work than getting the vampire tipsy and letting himself be kissed under streetlights in a dangerous city. You should have let me leave when you had the chance. I’ll keep tabs on you until the end of time now. “I’m offering. But it will take time. Be patient with me.” Because he had changed his mind already - there was no way he was outsourcing this job. He’d just have to do the research and do the magic himself. It was a skill he should already have mastered, he just didn’t interact with enough vampires to ever practice, and he didn’t need to worry about selling the expensive items for money when he could make literal gold out of most of the base metals. This wasn’t a task he could trust anyone else with anymore. “I want to be there, the first time you use it. In case the enchantment goes wrong. Amongst other reasons.”
Jonah turned his palm to link their fingers and Owen was entranced by the sight. Such a simple and intimate romantic thing, yet something he never indulged in. And nothing he would have expected from someone he assumed was looking for a hookup in a bar. Who went from seeking a nameless fuck to looking for excuses to hold hands? He had severely misjudged Jonah. That or Owen was just an easy mark. He wanted to rip the doubts out of his head and full on commit to trusting him, but he didn’t really know how. The witch had told him too much about magic, promised him something worth a small fortune, and almost let him come close to the Academy. “Stop,” he groaned, half teasing and half serious as his looked up at the ceiling to get himself under control. What was he supposed to do? Jonah had just told him he could hear his heartbeat, the very thing that kept him alive, and it was so shockingly personal that his heart stuttered in its rhythm. Not to mention he kept dropping the word sexy around like it applied, like it wasn’t out of place.
“It’s complicated,” he shrugged off the question about why he left the leak where it was. Unless Jonah wanted a lecture on the properties of rain water versus naturally occurring groundwater versus water in constant motion through metal man made pipes. There was no middle ground for him, it was all or nothing. It wasn’t like he just had a metal bucket shoved under there either - now it had turned more into a small pond in the floor he had to figure out magical drainage for. He blinked blankly at Jonah when he painted a pretty accurate picture of Owen in wool in front of a fire when it rained, curled up with a book. ““Forget vampire kinks, I think you might have a librarian kink. That initial drink makes so much more sense now. What would have happened if I had worn a sweater with elbow pads?” Now it was his turn to study, to judge Jonah based on what he did when it rained. He loved the smell too, all versions of it. “Petrichor. It’s one of my favorite words. The smell of the earth when it rains after a long time of warm dry weather.” The thought of Jonah at work was equally endearing, helping those that lost control of their cars in the rain. A dark thought crossed him, and he asked the question as casually as possible in the hopes of getting the real answer. If Jonah was attacking patients, he didn’t know how he’d handle it. “Does your control ever slip around patients? Being around all that blood must be hard.”
“There was this underwater Mayan city, once. I barely got to go in, I was there more for historical references and emergency backup in case anything was booby trapped with protection spells. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” Most beautiful place he’d ever seen, he mentally corrected as he watched Jonah talk about his sire. Fuck, he was pretty. It must be a vampire thing, something about the transformation that made people more attractive so hunting was easier. “So it’s a chemical thing? That bond. I’ve heard of it, but I didn’t realize how strong it was. To block out hate like that.” Owen shrugged. He was revealing too much about magic. He was putting other witches at risk because he missed being looked at the way Jonah was looking at him. Owen tried to keep it as brief as possible. “You choose what you want to study, but every witch has a primary strength and a secondary. Some have a third or a fourth natural talent. You can improve in any area of magic with time and practice, though.”
His hands flew to his lips when he was back in his seat, the same feeling tingly feeling there that he got in his fingertips when he did any sort of casting. Owen shook his head, endlessly amused by how eager Jonah was to walk him in the direction of the Academy. He was ready to turn him down - and then a hand was being offered up, the perfect mirror image to what he had done earlier. Do you trust him? It was such a small moment, thoroughly unimportant to an outsider, but he knew he had come to an internal breaking point. All in or all out. “Okay.” His hand slipped in Jonah’s, using the leverage to get up from the small table. The night air felt good on his flushed skin when they made it outside. He linked arms, steering them both in the right direction. His whole body was tense with anticipation by the time they made it to the end of the block, turning to face Jonah with his heart beating out of his chest. “I have to go. For real this time. Be safe, okay? Don’t hang around witch territory too long.”
If Jonah had had a heart that actually, truly, worked, it would have skipped a half dozen beats when Owen said that he was offering to make the ring, like that was some small thing to offer instead of the literal life changing thing it actually was. He’d never been more thankful that Owen couldn’t hear Jonah’s heart like Jonah could hear Owen’s. “I can be patient. I have all the time in the world,” he practically breathed out, afraid if he was too loud, it might ruin the moment and make Owen change his mind. “Besides, that just means I get to see you for longer and that’s more than a win in my book,” he admitted. If Owen was promising this huge thing, it meant he wasn’t going to just up and ghost Jonah. The longer it took, the more time Jonah could try to spend with the nerdy witch and that was almost as exciting as the thought of getting the sun back. Almost. But to be fair, the sun had had longer to win Jonah over, it had had longer for Jonah to pine after it. He smiled softly when Owen said he wanted to be there the first time he used the ring, not doubting for a second that Owen was interested to make sure the thing worked, but also glad he backed up Jonah’s suspicion that maybe it was about a little more than that. “You can do or have whatever you want if you can make me that ring,” he said honestly. That was the sort of thing Jonah would never truly be able to repay him for.
Jonah had never really been much of a handholder. It was such a weirdly intimate gesture and he’d never really seen the appeal of it. But now he couldn’t stop from wondering why he hadn’t tried it earlier. It felt amazing and warm and sensual - but maybe that was less about holding hands and more about it being Owen that he was holding hands with. He couldn’t help but grin at the groaned ‘stop’ from Owen and the sudden falter in his heartbeat. It was nice, being able to hear the effect he had on the other considering how cool he seemed to try to stay on the outside. He unlinked their fingers so that he could drag the tips of his own along the pulse point of Owen’s wrist, the rushing warmth of the flowing blood warming his own touch. This hadn’t been what he’d sought out for the evening, but this sudden connection he felt to this man was better than anything he could have hoped for for the evening. Even if things didn’t pan out, if Owen got home and decided a vampire wasn’t his style, at least Jonah had realized that maybe this was something he wanted, that not every connection had to be forged in death and control and abuse and blood. “Is it the magic? I thought only vampires got to be this supernaturally pretty,” he couldn’t help but muse.
“A librarian kink? Is that even a thing?” he couldn’t help but ask with a laugh. “Oh, baby, I’d have had you pinned to the bar,” he teased playfully at the mention of elbow pads, moaning softly. He was joking, of course. He was pretty sure he’d never found elbow pads sexy, but there was a very good chance that Owen would be the one person on the planet who could pull the look off. It wasn’t really Jonah’s type, this whole bossy nerd vibe that Owen had going on, but that was one of the things that made all of this so much interesting. It wouldn’t have taken much to pick up some handsome human at the bar, but this? This was so much more fun and rewarding. There was a time and place for cheap and fast to satisfy a surface itch, but this? This was satisfying something deep and visceral that Jonah hadn’t even realized was there.
He paused, thinking over the question about losing control with patients, knowing the answer Owen wanted, knowing the truth, and wondering how to satisfy both of those things. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I like a challenge,” he commented. Of course being constantly surrounded by blood wasn’t easy, but he’d worked hard to control himself, to get a system going. “Even the most noble of Physicians loses patients,” he added on. It was an Emergency Room, people died all the time. But he suspected that answer wasn’t going to be enough for Owen and instead of leaving blanks for Owen to incorrectly fill in himself, he expanded. “I’m better at keeping control than I used to be. I chose Emergency Medicine because if an extra liter of blood goes missing, no one’s going to measure what’s on the floor to make sure it adds up. It’s been a long time since I’ve lost control enough that I’ve killed someone. And when it does happen, I always have the bags ready for a transfusion. Bagged blood is easier for their body to use than it is for mine,” he said, keeping his voice low so that no one else could overhear what he was saying. He hoped there was enough white in the grey area that Jonah had just presented that Owen didn’t write him off instantly.
“An underwater city?” he repeated. “I thought those were only in movies,” he added on, thinking about things like Atlantis that only existed in fantasies and stories. But here was Owen, saying he’d actually been to one. “I can’t imagine the things you must have seen in the world. Can’t believe you choose to set roots in this place.” It wasn’t like this city had anything going for it, not like some underwater city or historical ruin would. “I guess,” he shrugged when Owen asked if the bond with his Sire was a chemical thing. Jonah didn’t really know the mechanism through which it happened, and he didn’t care enough to look into it. “It doesn’t block out the hate, though. The two things both take up residence, constantly at war. It’s hell,” he corrected. To have to stay with the person who killed you, who stole everything from you, was one thing. To then be forced to care deeply for them? It was a new kind of hell, one that had made Jonah wish for actual hell on more than one occasion. But any suicide attempts he’d made had quickly been thwarted by his sire - fucking bond. Jonah nodded when Owen gave a little more detail about how magic and the specialities worked and he wondered what Owen had chosen for himself and where his natural talents fell. “Are the more natural talents passed down through families?” he asked, suddenly desperately curious as to how genetics worked and were altered when magic was involved.
He held his hand out for the other and while he waited nervously to be turned down again, it reminded him of a scene from a Disney movie. Out of the two of them, Jonah was definitely the street rat to Owen’s independent Princess and he couldn’t help but smile softly at the thought. Idiot. He let out a breath he hadn’t needed to hold or even take when Owen finally agreed and took Jonah’s hand and the other eagerly walked with him out towards the street, though he was sure to take his time with it. He only had until the end of the street and he didn’t want to rush getting there. But it came too soon and as Owen turned to face him, Jonah’s hands reached up to grasp Owen’s face before pulling him in for an almost desperate kiss. If holding Owen’s hand made Jonah feel warm, his lips sliding against the other practically set him on fire and he pushed in closer, wanting to absorb as much of this moment as inhumanly possible. When he finally did pull back, he was grinning like an idiot. He’d never had much of a poker face. “Promise I’m going to see you again? Without me having to track you down,” he said, hoping that Owen wasn’t going to go home and somehow talk himself out of wanting to see Jonah. If it happened, Jonah could find him easily enough, but he wanted this to be something Owen wanted too.
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Deep Connection Part 5
May 7th, 1986
Moscow
It is early morning, Legasov had slept for a few hours at home in his apartment. He quietly climbed out of bed, missing the nights he had shared with Ulana, but he is oblivious to what has happened to her. Legasov mindlessly got dressed in one of his suits, knowing he would be at the Kremlin in only a few hours. He knew he must keep his head straight, and focus on reforming his report, but his thoughts ran astray. He could not keep his mind off Khomyuk. Legasov missed her gentle, warm embrace and her soft brown hair. He missed the sweet scent of orchids that radiated from her. He missed her confidence and defiance. Most of all, Legasov missed her company. He knows that she truly understands him. He knows that nothing he every says gets lost on her.
As Legasov is pulling on his black dress shoes, he gives his report a final read. A cigarette hangs from his lips as he quickly scans the paper. As he finishes, Legasov neatly tucks the papers into his jacket and stands up. Upon exiting the building, Legasov sees a car parked across the street. He sighs as the driver watches him. Legasov approaches the car and enters, and without saying a word the driver takes him to the Kremlin. Legasov sits in the back seat, mindlessly looking out the window, his thoughts anywhere but there.
Upon his arrival at the Kremlin, Legasov sits quietly, looking over his report, while Scherbina stands beside him. Scherbina says something, but Legasov nods and gives a simple reply. Scherbina then steps in front of Legasov
“Khomyuk was arrested last night” Scherbina says in a low raspy voice.
“What? Why?” Legasov says in surprise, his voice filled with worry.
He and Scherbina exchange a few more words, but Legasov can barely hear them, their conversation seems distant. Legasov can barely function, his mind racing as he thinks about what Khomyuk must be going through. He now regrets having sent her here to investigate. Legasov shakes his head a little as he pulls off his glasses and rubs his temples. He can hear his heart beating in his ears, and he can barely breathe.
Just then, the Kremlin aid comes out to get Legasov and Scherbina for the meeting. Legasov stands up and follows Scherbina into the room, managing to clear his head a little. He sits down beside Scherbina in the meeting room. Legasov is hardly able to keep himself from staring at Charkov. As Scherbina is speaking he addresses Charkov and Legasov is caught staring. Moments later, Scherina gets down and Legasov stands to speak. He speaks absently, reciting his speal on the long war that must be fought in Chernobyl. He knows it word for word, but as he speaks, his mind is still on Khomyuk. Once he is finished speaking Legasov sits down, his expression blank as he looks up and down the table.
After the meeting, Legasov hurries out of the room in pursuit of Charkov.
“Comrade Charkov…” Legasov calls
Legasov is followed by Scherbina, who has a horrified expression on his face.
“Valery…” Scherbina says in a stern whisper as he watches his friend with a horrified expression.
Charkov stops and turns to face Legasov who quickly approaches him with long awkward strides.
“Yes, Professor?” Charkov says in his silky, cynical voice.
“My associate was arrested last night” Legasov says, his heart racing, for he knows this is his only chance of freeing Khomyuk.
“Oh?” Charkov says in false surprise, his bushy eyebrows raising slightly.
“I mean no disrespect, but I was wondering if you could tell me why?” Legasov asks desperately, feeling his hands tremble as he speaks.
“I'm sorry. I don't know who you're talking about” Charkov says, tilting his head slightly, the corners of his lips curling slightly in a deviant grin.
“She was arrested by the KGB” Legasov says, hardly able to keep himself from trembling with frustration and anger.
Charkov just raises an eyebrow and looks at Legasov.
“You are First Deputy Chairman of the KGB…” Legasov says, his frustration audible in his voice.
“I am! That's why I don't have to bother with arresting people anymore” Charkov says with a friendly chuckle and a fake smile.
“But you are bothering to have your people follow me” Legasov says irritated, clenching his fists.
Just then, Scherbina seizes Legasovs wrist, fearing for his safety.
He begins trying to lead Legasov away saying: “Professor, the Deputy Chairman is a busy-” but he is cut off.
“No, no, it's perfectly understandable” Charkov says as he turns to Legasov, “Comrade, I know you've heard the stories about us. When I hear them, even I am shocked. But we're not what people say. Yes, people are following you. People are following those people…” Charkov continues slyly, “And you see them?” He says, pointing at the figures lurking further down the hallway, “They follow me. The KGB is a circle of accountability. Nothing more”
A moment passes as Legasov looks from Charkov to the men and then back to Charkov.
“You know the job we're doing. Do you really not trust us?” Legasuv says in surprise, his eyes widening a little.
“Of course I do! But you know the old Russian proverb: "Trust, but verify." And the Americans think Ronald Reagan came up with that! Can you imagine?” Charkov says with a false friendly smile, “It was very nice speaking with you”
Charkov turns and begins to walk away.
“I need her!” Legasov blurts out urgently, hardly knowing what he is saying.
Charkov turns to Legasov, the air of friendliness gone as he gives Legasov an icy stair.
“So… you will be responsible for her?” Charkov says threateningly.
Legasov swallows as the threat registers. All he can do is nod in response, his throat tightening up.
“Then it's done” Charkov says sternly
“H-Her name is--” Legasov manages to say
“I know who she is…” Charkov says, his friendly air slowly returning, “Good day, Professor”
Charkov then turns and continues down the hallway. Legasov sighs and stands there for a moment before turning to Scherbina, expecting a lecture. Scherbina has a look of surprise on his face as he looks over at Legasov.
“No, that went surprisingly well. You came off like a naive idiot…” Scherbina says in a raspy whisper, “Naive idiots aren't a threat”
Legasov takes a moment and nods before making his way outside. As the cool evening air hits his face Legasov takes a deep breath. He slowly walks away from the Kremlin, a car waiting for him in the street. Legasov enters the car in a daze, only worried about getting Khomyuk. He says nothing as he sits down in the back seat, but the driver knows exactly where to go. It seems like no time has passed as the car approaches a large 19th century looking red brick castle. The driver stops outside and Legasov gets out. He slowly approaches the door. Upon entering, he is greeted by the blonde man. The sounds of caged men echo through the walls. Behind the infinite number of cell doors are junkies, drunks, lunatics, and the many enemies of the state. Occasionally, a scream of pain echoes through the halls. The prison is dank and decrepit. Paint is chipping from the old walls and despite the noise made by the prisoners, their footsteps echo through the halls. The blonde man slows and approaches one of the cells. Without saying a word he unlocks the door, it squeals on its hinges as it opens.
Inside the cell, Khomyuk is sitting on the floor, still in her radiation protective clothes. She is leaning against the wall, and her hair droops down into her face. Her under eyes are dark and sunken in, and her skin looks severely pale in the dim light. Legasov steps into the cell and looks down at Khomyuk, relieved to see that she is okay.
“I'll come back when the paperwork is complete” the blonde man says before closing the cell door, locking it and walking away.
Legasov approaches Khomyuk and squats down in front of her. He reaches out and caresses her cheek. Khomyuk looks up at him with a bit of relief, but he can see that she is numb.
“Are you alright” Legasov says softly, looking into Khomyuks eyes.
Legasov is surprised by what he sees, she is hardly the confident, determined woman he met in Pripyat. Khomyuk looks numb, defeated. She cannot hide her misery. Her eyes fill with tears and she sniffles before composing herself.
“They didn’t hurt me” Khomyuk says after a moment, “They let a pregnant woman into a room with a-a… It doesn’t matter… They were stupid. I-I was stupid”
Khomyuk swallows and looks at the floor as the misery of the situation washes over her.
“Dyatlov won’t talk to me… Toptunov and Akimov, yes, but…” Khomyuk stops and shudders, biting her lip, “Valery… Akimov, he, he had no-no face”
“You want to stop?” Legasov says softly, lifting Khomyuk’s chin and looking into her eyes.
“I-Is that a choice that I have?” Khomyuk says softly, staring into his eyes, her emotions still numb.
Legasov sits down beside Khomyuk, taking her hand and holding it gently. She looks over at him and sees he isn’t well. Khomyuk holds his hand in hers and gently lays her head against his shoulder.
“Do you think the fuel will melt through the pad?” Legasov says softly, looking over at her.
Khomyuk looks up at him in slight surprise.
“What?” Khomyuk says, thinking she misheard him.
“It’s a matter of probability, so, what are the odds” Legasov says, a little amused as he looks over at her.
“I don’t know… a forty percent chance, maybe” Khomyuk says confused, not knowing what Legasov is getting at.
Legasov chuckles and then says “I've said fifty. Either way, the numbers mean the same thing. "Maybe." Maybe the core will melt down to the groundwater. Maybe the miners I've told to dig under the reactor will save millions of lives. Or maybe I'm killing them for nothing…”
His voice falters at the end and he looks away for a moment.
“I don't want to do this anymore. I want to stop…” Legasov confesses.
“But I can't. So tomorrow, I will wake up and make more decisions that will kill more people… because there is no alternative” He continues, his voice breaking.
“And no, I don't think you have a choice any more than I do. I think, despite the lies, the stupidity--” Legasov says, addressing her, “--even all this... you are compelled. The problem has been assigned, and you will stop at nothing to find the answer. That is who you are”
Khomyuk sighs, looking at the ground between them, knowing he is right.
“A lunatic…” Khomyuk says softly, looking up into his eyes.
“A scientist” Legasov replies, almost proudly.
They sit for a moment and Khomyuk leans in, but before anything can happen, the cell door is unlocked. They quickly separate and look up to see the blonde man removing his key and opening the door. Slowly, they stand up. Khomyuk manages to stand up on her own with little trouble, but Legasov groans softly as he begins to sit up. Khomyuk reaches down and takes his hand, helping him up. As Legasov stands up, they are face to face for a moment, and he can smell the faint scent of orchids on her hair. He takes a deep breath and licks his lips as he looks down into her eyes. He gently touches her arm as she turns around. Together, they walk out of the cell. Khomyuk fills out the papers for her things and hands them over to the prison attendant. The attendant disappears into a back room. Khomyuk bites her lip and looks back at Legasov.
“do you know they were running a safety test?” Khomyuk says softly.
Legasov sighs and then nods
“There's something else… Akimov says he shut the reactor down, and Toptunov confirms it. They pressed AZ-5…” Khomyuk says, getting anxious. Wanting him to explain everything, to make everything better.
“Apparently not soon enough” Legasov mumbles, wiping his brow.
“No… No, they say Akimov pressed AZ-5, and then the reactor exploded…” Khomyuk says, looking into his eyes.
Legasov stiffens as he takes a breath. A pit forming in his stomach, as he is overcome with fear, but Khomyuk doesn’t notice.
“If it had been just one of them, I would have written it off as faulty memory… or-or even delusion... but they both agreed. They were adamant…” Khomyuk continues before turning to Legasov.
Legasov seems lost in thought, not looking at Khomyuk.
“Comrade?” Khomyuk says softly, taking a step toward him.
“Do you think it's possible?” Legasov says, turning to her.
“No. No, I think it makes no sense. I think… I think it's what I would say if I wanted to cover my own mistakes” Khomyuk whispers, searching his eyes for an answer.
“But?” Legasov says, looking over at her.
“I-I believed them” Khomyuk says, her voice barely audible.
Legasov takes a step closer to her and leans in slightly as he says “Then you should pursue it. We have to pursue every possibility, no matter how unlikely... and no matter what-or who- is to blame”
Khomyuk nods a little. The prison attendant then returns, carrying a bin with Khomyuk’s personal effects. Khomyuk gathers her things and turns to Legasov.
“I’ll go back to the hospital… and re-interview Toptunov and Akimov… If they’re still awake” Khomyuk says, looking into her eyes.
“They’re not…” Legasov says, looking up at her.
Their eyes meet and Khomyuk’s heart sinks. She does not need to ask, for she knows just from his look that they’re dead. She sighs and looks at the ground.
“I’ll meet you outside” Khomyuk says softly before going to change.
Legasov exits the prison. As he is standing outside, he looks around, taking a breath of the cool night air. He looks around, it is dark, the sidewalk lit every couple of meters by dim street lights Everything else is lit by only the night sky. After a few minutes, Khomyuk emerges from the prison and approaches him. They stand in silence, engulfed in darkness. Legasov caresses her cheek and smiles a little. As they look into each other’s eyes, Legasov kisses her. Their lips lock and Legasov caresses her cheek. As they part, Legasov looks into her eyes.
“Let me take you back to your hotel” Legasov says softly, awkwardly taking her hand.
Khomyuk nods a little and interlaces her fingers with his, leaning against him a little. She feels a kind of relief, but the numbness within her still ceases to subside.
#chernobyl#chernobyl hbo#chernobylhbo#ChernobylHBO fanfic#fanfiction#fanfic#chernobyl fanfic#writing#Valery Legasov/Ulana Khomyuk#valery legasov#Jared Harris#ulana khomyuk#Emily Watson#boris scherbina#Stellan Skarsgard
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