| |
After getting our rooms on the boar situated, I decided to explore the deck. The ferry, which was really a yacht really, had swimming pools, restaurants, exercise rooms, and more. I sat cross-legged on a bench with my arms crossed as I asked,
“How come you didn’t get the slightest bit nauseous when going upside down at sixty miles an hour in the dark, and yet you’re vomiting just be cause it’s a little rough?”
Cloud had his head hanging over the guardrail as he grumbled,
“Jeez, you think it makes any damn sense?”
“Somebody’s irritable.” I said dryly. “How much could you possibly vomit up before you could only dry heave? You’re bound to run out of things to throw up in a little while.”
“Thanks for the reassurance.” He said sarcastically.
“Do itashimashite.”
I opened up my cell phone, scanning the maps I’d saved to get an idea of where we’d be going once we reached Nohin. We’d be close to the capital, so driving was pointless. Walking was the only transportation that’d get us anywhere any time soon.
Cloud flopped down next to me moaning,
“I hate boating.”
I shook my head saying,
“You don’t even get motion sickness, there’s no logical explanation that you get seasickness. Are you sure you didn’t eat something bad at breakfast that gave you food poisoning?”
“You think I wouldn’t know the difference between food poisoning and seasickness?”
“Well, it’d make more sense than only getting seasick when you can go upside down at sixty miles per hour in the dark, and ride in helicopters without getting motion sickness.”
He scowled saying,
“I think I’ve avoided traveling by boat since I was shipped to Mazar…”
“And I’m sure you were barfing your guts out then. Just think; now you get to barf your guts out merely because you have nothing better to do than tag along with Exodus and me. There’s no reason you couldn’t come up with some plan to get to Trenxi without waiting for Exodus to gather the relics and start a civil war.”
“Civil war, eh? Wouldn’t it just be a battle of organizations?”
“Not really, any able fighters against Twi-LIGHT will join Exodus after the first string of attacks. Keep in mind, Exodus has gathered an impressive army over the last ten years.”
“True, but could it hold up to the Twi-LIGHT forces and Ragnarok’s army?”
“That’s questionable, but Maaya said she was still getting about twenty requites a day. Exodus doesn’t get many fatalities, so that’s a lot. Even if it does take five years to train them, it’s still an effective process. Exodus has approximately three hundred thousand able fighters.”
“Impressive, not as large as Ragnarok’s army, but definitely impressive. Does that count the Exodus navy?”
“No, I believe the navy has thirty thousand, rather on the small side.”
“Mmm, how many does she have undergoing training?”
“That’s a scary number, roughly six hundred thousand I think.”
He nodded saying,
“Not bad.”
“By the way, you should chew your food more. You have very chunky vomit.”
He scowled as I smiled evilly and asked,
“Must you make such crass comparisons?”
“You bet, crab’s ass!”
He shook his head saying,
“Your mind was born in the gutter.”
I saw a movement to my left at the corner and I looked past Cloud to see what it was. Once again, if it was anything, it was gone.
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
“Nothing…”
The day, like the days at Exodus, were uneventful and rather boring. The most fun I had was antagonizing Cloud about not being able to hold down his lunch and that he should chew his food more. I suppose my mind did spend a lot of time in the gutter.
It was around two AM, all the parties were happening on the higher decks. I sat on the main deck, and though as I let my legs hang off the edge. The moon was half full, so it didn’t do to much illuminating. I rested my head against the guardrail bar to my right, and I didn’t hear a person walking on the deck until he said,
“Hey, it’s rather late. Although we’ve got another week at sea, and no wake up calls, you probably should get to bed or else you’ll sleep in until noon.”
“Speaking of noon, or lunchtime, were you finally able to keep some food down for awhile?”
He sighed saying,
“You really are obsessed with that.”
I stood up saying,
“You were the one to say there weren’t any wake-up calls for the rest of the week, so what’s the problem with staying up late and waking up at noon?”
“Nothing, I suppose.”
I met his eyes evenly saying,
“I’m surprised you’re not upstairs with Niketa at that party, she was bugging you all throughout dinner.”
“She is annoyingly persistent.”
He took a step closer to me, and wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me against him. I looked up at him squarely, my brain not locking though it buzzed loudly.
“Try to have a little faith in me, alright?”
He said, our faces hardly an inch apart when the doors to the deck slammed open. We both jumped and the still active wise-ass part of my mind though,
Dammit! Not again, that’s the third damn time...
The person tumbled though, two Twi-LIGHT soldiers dressed in black behind him. I bent down and jerked the pistol out of my boot and fired two shots, killing the Twi-LIGHT soldiers. We both ran over to see who it was they had been firing at. He tried getting to his knees, but he was bleeding to badly.
“So this is my replica…” Cloud muttered.
“C’mon, we have to get him back to your room, the personnel are going to swarm us any second now, and we don’t want the officials of this boat to find him, the chances are it’s government run.”
I pulled one of his arms over my shoulder and Cloud did the same. We laid him down on Cloud’s bed, and I got a look at his wound. He had a deep and poorly bandaged cut on his right arm, what looked like the scrape of a bullet on his left arm, and was shot through his right shoulder, bleeding badly. I instructed Cloud to get disinfectant and bandages, and he obeyed as Kuraudo opened his eyes. He tried sitting up, but I pushed him back down saying,
“Don’t move, you’re bleeding badly and have lost a lot of blood.”
He blinked a few second before asking,
“Akhy?”
I nodded saying,
“Yeah, it’s be. Just relax, I’ll take care of your wounds.”
“Wait, the reason I came here to find you was because Twi-LIGHT is planning an invasion.” He stammered, “They want to invade Mazar, the king of Mazar has been collecting Skyevi’s relics.”
I froze, by my mind cleared enough for me to say,
“Tell me more later, just relax.”
When Cloud returned with the bandages, we exchanged looks and I had the feeling we both knew collecting relics was going to be a luxury. Ragnarok was going to start fighting within itself, could the country really hold up to warring itself and Mazar?
After taking care of Kuraudo, I sighed and leaned against the wall saying,
“So, what do you think is going to happen now? If Twi-LIGHT starts attacking Mazar because they’re collecting relics, and if they succeed, not only will the battle lead us back to Twi-LIGHT, whatever relics are left it’ll be nothing up combat to get.”
Cloud had been nodding off on the sofa, and yawned saying,
“I think I’m going to take a nap, you should too.”
I scowled and stood in front of him saying,
“This is serious! Wake up!”
“You must be tired too. You’ve been up longer than me dealing with Exodus.”
“Yeah, but just because I’m tired doesn’t mean I can relax and do what I please, some of us are employed as you just pointed out.”
“Twi-LIGHT can’t take over the ship unless something really big happens, if this trip is going to be less than a joy ride might as well snooze when we have the time.”
I sat down next to him and pulled out my cell phone. I scanned the ship maps, which I’d downloaded over the week, and fell asleep while memorizing the layout of the ship.
Sora held an arrow in her bow, pointing it at the heart of a Mazarain. She didn’t waver as she said,
“I do not want to kill you, King Rividi. But I know you understand why I am here.”
He smiled, dark eyes glittering.
“Yes, I know why you are hear. You want the Key of Seventh Heaven, the relic of Mazar. Each county was given a relic for a reason, Skyevi. You might upset the divine curse upon this world by bringing the relics together.”
“You do not understand.” She said solemnly, “The relics contain the curse. If they are not gathered into one place, and become one than then Ragnarok will begin.”
“But Ragnarok the war before the end of the world, the tale you prophase is merely the end of the world.”
“Humans cannot live harmony, there will always be contradiction and people who cannot resolve contradiction. Those people, if in the right place with the right power, and lead this world to oblivion. This world will die because of divine intervention from the Dead Divinity, if I transform the relics into my body than I can at least control the fragments of what once was a divine being.”
“Such honorable words, lady priestess. But why sacrifice yourself for a world that rejected you?”
“This is a life no one but I should ever have to know, I will do everything I can to make sure no one else will walk this road.”
He nodded saying,
“Go ahead then, honorable priestess. Shoot me with one of your divine arrows and let the blood that I spill harden on the steel point of your arrow that will pierce my heart and reveal to you the Key of Seventh Heaven.”
“Key of Seventh Heaven…” I muttered as I opened my eyes. The room was dark, Kuraudo was still unconscious and Cloud was asleep. My head rested against his shoulder, his arm around my shoulders. I reached for my cell phone, and snapped it closed so the front screen would light up.
It read 4:39 AM, still to early to talk to Rei and Maaya. Than again, I didn’t even know if I was going to be able to tell Maaya what was going on. Kuraudo would just become a lab rat, a toy for the “good guys” to find out the weakness in the “bad guys”. How could I really say Exodus was doing the right thing if they were making Trenxi’s specimens, most of them born to the world as people that never should have existed but had hearts and minds, and dissect them? It was as bad as taking an innocent civilian and putting him or her through painful tests to find a way to kill him or her. If I let Maaya know about Kuraudo, he’d only end up dead when he didn’t even get a chance to live a life he’d been forced to live. Either I was getting soft, or thinking to much. Probably a little of both.
Mazar wasn’t a sour topic with me. It didn’t give me nightmares like it did Cloud and all the other people that had been involved in the war. The first attack between Ragnarok and Mazar right before I was born hurt Ragnarok so badly my parents had resurrected the country from ashes. So, thanks to Mazar, I’d grown up rather normally until Maaya started keeping secrets and ending up getting Rei and me so curious we couldn’t help but follow. Those years were a hell ride I didn’t like to look back on very much.
Kazuki’s death really bothered me, mainly because I had this one weird dream that Kazuki was either immortal, or a humanoid like Cloud and me. He was shot, right around his heart but got right back up. What bothered me about it was that I couldn’t remember if it was a dream or it really happened. I’d always had a strong sense of dreamland and reality, and a certain reluctance to hide from reality in dreamland, so it bothered me for years after. Seeing Kazuki on Neivila reminded me too. It wasn’t like the Sora/Zeru/Skyevi visions, I could tell those were memories. Not my memories, but memories all the same. They weren’t dreams, and I could tell easily.
I never really understood Kazuki’s reason for starting Exodus. Although they were against Twi-LIGHT, they were also after Skyevi’s relics. What was bothering even more was the latest memory; what was Skyevi and that Mazarain king talking about? Skyevi was supposedly a divine being from the start, but if that weren’t true, and Skyevi really was a human who was “rejected by the world” than if she wanted to combine with the relics, wouldn’t there only be Skyevi and no relics? Or could it be she did collect them all, attempted to become one, failed, and only that’s what sent her into her sleep?
If so, than why was the sword’s pulse the same as Skyevi’s? She must of spiritually become parts of the same entity, but couldn’t fully become “one”. Was that because she was human? So, now that she isn’t human could it be possible to complete what she started? Was that Kazuki’s goal?
“I really should focus on the present…” I mumbled to myself. “I have enough going on before it boils down to Skyevi’s lifetime…”
The Key of Seventh Heaven must be another Skyevi relic. If it is the Mazarain relic, Ragnarok probably already has it or it’s what Trenxi is after now. Either way, if we can’t find information on other relics we’ll have to go after that one.
Cloud was the one to wake up first, although nine AM was anything but early. We decided to leave Kuraudo to sleep, and after attentively walking through a few halls, things were no different from how they had been yesterday. Seemed the commotion of last night wasn’t wide-spread. Who could complain?
I entered the breakfast room first, since we decided it would be best we entered separately to avoid questions within our group. After saying good morning and ordering a two egg omelet and home fires, I inwardly though to myself when Cloud entered,
We’re walking the path to destruction keeping secrets like this.
Maaya and the others apparently didn’t hear gunshots or anything. We wouldn’t know exactly what happened until we got Kuraudo’s story. I though there wouldn’t be any problems until Maaya asked,
“By the way, where you last night Akhy? I knocked on your door but you didn’t answer.”
Damn.
“I was prowling and exploring until pretty late, I don’t think I crawled into bed before two AM.”
She nodded saying,
“Makes sense then, I knocked around one. I figured you’d be insomniac so I wanted to ask you if you remember the name of that one singer we used to listen to that you and Rei hated but I liked. Do you remember her at all? I think her name started with a J.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell. If it was a blues or jazz singer, I won’t remember. I only like the N-Rock mixed with N-Pop.”
“Kinda interesting to think people in Nohin who like Ragnarok music call it R-Rock and R-Pop, don’t you think?” Maaya chimed, apparently unfazed from my brain block.
“You could probably find it in the shelves at a music store once we get to Nohin if she’s still putting stuff out.”
“Mmm, that’s a good idea.” She replied.
Kairi looked back and forth between the both of us saying,
“You’re weird. Why not just listen to music from your country?”
“Well, Maaya got us into the music form her country so…” I said taking a deep slug of orange juice. It was kinda nasty, definitely from condensed. Yuck.
“You’re still weird.” She said stubbornly.
It was another uneventful day spent exploring, but now with Kairi who had been irritable that I hadn’t spent any time with her yesterday and that I couldn’t of been on a date since Cloud had spent most of the day vomiting. The ocean was calmer, not that it made much of a difference with how huge the boat was so it didn’t rock or anything, but he was still getting sick. Made no more sense than it did yesterday.
“Akhy, are you going to make me stay at Exodus after we’re done in Nohin?”
“Chances are we won’t go back to Exodus HQ, there are a lot of relics here in Geosprit we need to collect, so you’ll probably be with us for quite a while. Don’t think you’re going to follow us everywhere though, you’re going to have to stay away from the combat with Phyress or Maaya, who ever decides to stay behind.”
“Really?” She asked, her eyes hopeful and her mood brightening.
“I’m not making any promises, but there’s more than a good chance.”
She smiled saying,
“I hope so.”
|
Help Us Stop Plagiarism -
Nearly all works at PnP are original. However a few people choose to plagiarize.
To check, choose a phrase from the work, then either drag and drop to the search box or copy and paste.
click on search and works at Google will be shown which match. Just to be sure, please do this before
you recommend or rate the work highly...
|
 |
|
|
|
Select a Random Book
|
|
Welcome !
