Akamori woke up the following day feeling like he’d slept for half a century. After getting himself presentable, he made his way towards morning chow. Or rather, he would have if the Sgt. hadn’t been standing there waiting for him just in front of the doors. A slow, defeated sigh eased out of him and he deflated slightly. He knew deep down this would not be a good day. He halted at the sgt.’s feet and snapped to attention.
“At ease, fuzzy. Your mission today is to fetch us some health potions from the supply storage. Do that, and you eat.”
“That simple? Just go fetch some potions and then I get chow?”
“That simple, Sergeant?” Sirsir said. His voice dripping with ire.
Akamori fought the urge to roll his eyes. These guys were worse than his father’s clan with the discipline and behavior. He amended his question for the Sgt’s benefit, who then nodded approval grudgingly.
“Yes. It’s that simple. We’ve got a mission of sorts, and we’ll need those potions.”
System Info: Quest Accepted. Milk Run. The Sergeant needs you to fetch some supplies for a mission coming up. Yasiin implied it’s little more than a cover for some internal hazing, however. But you’re a tough cookie. Good luck!
He paused as the translucent missive hovered in his vision before he swiped it aside. “A mission? In the void? I thought we were supposed to be running dark down here?”
Sirsir gave him a reluctant nod. “We are. I’ll explain later. Get those potions, you eat and then we do the mission.”
He recalled seeing how empty and poorly supplied the ship had been when they boarded it after leaving his home. The Captain had even mentioned it being a problem a few times. But the Sgt. wouldn’t lie to him. Or at least that’s what he wanted to think. The big non comm seemed like a simpleif honest guy. Simple and loud. Well, very loud, actually. This made him want to bring up the odds of not having the supplies.
“A question fuzzy?”
Akamori, “Yes, Sgt. I was just wondering, why request supplies we might not have?”
Sirsir sighed, looking exasperated. “Man, you fuzzies don’t know shit, huh?” He said. A fact he loved to iterate often while spoon feeding them the barest of information. “How can we know we don’t have it if we don’t do a proper inventory and check?” He leaned forward, clapping Akamori on the back as he redirected the crimson-haired man from the chow hall towards the opposite end of the bay at the supply section a hundred meters on the other side of the hangar section through the large cargo doors.
It looked so far away to Akamori as he took the walk in with a put-upon sigh. Great. The situation just felt even worse as he started noticing all the sneers and scowls from the Brotherhood marines drilling and messing with their gear. He dropped his head to the ground as Sirsir shoved him off on his way. He started feeling like a cat surrounded by a pack of hungry wolves.
“Now go on and be a good little fuzzy and come back with my potions.”
He noticed most of the marines glaring at him and felt the fight-or-flight need to slink along the bulkhead and out of direct view of the main through way. He stepped over the black and yellow tape markers on the decks, noting the workspaces for the tanks and armored troop carriers. He tiptoed along, trying to be quiet and unobtrusive. As he walked, he could hear occasional taunts from some marines chanting to him.
“Here fuzzie, fuzzie, fuzzie,” their voices laden with malice and drawing out the name.
There was genuine menace in their eyes, and Akamori realized this was probably less about the potions and more about the hazing. He padded lightly around some mechanics under a four jet hover carrier when he accidentally kicked a wrench off a tool box. The sound it made as it clattered to the ground, and the way the sound seemed to bounce and echo off of every surface within the Crasher’s hangar bay caused him to immediately freeze in place, teeth clenched. Oh boy…
Slowly, the mechanics wheeled themselves out from under the craft, as more marines began pooling in around him from every direction like a colony of ants converging on a hostile presence. He felt like a fish in a barrel. Frantically, he checked every direction and saw no possibility of escape. His shoulders sagged when he realized what was going to happen to him. He got the very real sense that resisting this was only going to make it worse.
“Well, well, well. Lookie here, boys. We’ve got ourselves a lost little fuzzy.”
A chorus of sneering followed the statement as the voice’s owner slowly emerged through the wall of marines. He sported a gold bar, and his nametape read Fennex. He had one of the squarest jaws Akamori had ever seen. Platnium blond hair shorn close to the scalp in a crisp high, tight and piercing blue eyes that bored into him like a Hoshun brown eagle. “You’re a little off the beaten path there, mage. You lost?”
Akamori held his hands up placatingly. “Look guys. I feel like we got off on the wrong foot. Why don’t I just quietly slip out of this here mob, and you guys go back to drinking beer and banging your faces against your tanks?”
System Info: Negotiation check Roll: Modifier: -1: 5, 1, 2
System Info: Negotiation Check results: Failed. Modifiers “Bit of an Ass”. 1 success, 3 minimum requirement. +1 point of Luck.
Well shit. Probabilities were a bitch.
Fennex stepped forward, nearly looming over him. “What makes you think we want to let you go? Fuzzy?”
“You don’t really want to let me go, do you?” A defeated sigh eased past Akamori’s lips.
The sound of cracking knuckles heralded future pain, waiting to greet him. Fennex smirked, rolling his shoulders experimentally as he handed his beer to a junior enlisted. Focusing his full attention on Akamori he grinned. There was a lot of buried animosity bubbling up here.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“Nope. Tell you what. Since you’ve been such a good sport, and because you’re so green, we’ll take it easy on ya.”
Akamori tensed up to prepare for the coming blows. He’d take his beating so he could just move on with his day. Fennex advanced, rearing back to strike him. As the fist flew in for his jaw, though, something in Akamori sparked and he pivoted on his feet. He seized Fennex’s outstretched arm by the wrist and torqued it so that Fennex flew over his shoulder. The Lt. slammed into the side of the armored hover carrier, then he drove a knee into Fennex’s face, crushing his nose.
“Oh shit,” Akamori said in stunned shock. He’d reacted so automatically it didn’t even register until Fennex balled up in a heap. As the Lt. dragged himself together off the floor, the sinking pit of dread in Akamori’s stomach widened to the size of a planetary body. Mistakes were definitely made.
“I regret my choices…” he muttered softly.
“Damn straight you do. Don’t hold back boys. Teach this mage why our types don’t mix.”
Fists and feet came at him from every direction. The blows were too many to block, parry, or evade. Frozen spikes exploded in the back of his left knee as a wrench crashed into it, buckling his leg. Icy fire bloomed in his side as boots crashed into ribs. Fists slammed into his face, and he did his best to cover his head. An eye threated to swell shut. His skin turned bluish purple in several areas. They pummeled Akamori on the floor amidst a flurry of limbs that would have made his father blush if it weren’t for the volume of bodies delivering them. The beating persisted until they’d tired themselves out. Fennex wiped a small trickle of blood from his nose, then dismissed his marines.
Akamori lay on the deck, bruised and bloodied. His hp hovered at 2. His vision was red and blurred at the edges. His HP Gauge flashed plaintively. Pain flared throughout his body in both dull aches and sharp pangs. Ok, so he was an asshole. He got that. But maybe there was something to this discipline and respect thing. Blasting their LT’s face into their tank with his knee probably wasn’t the best play. Note to self: Don’t be such a dick.
He also cursed all the damned training he went through with his father. Becoming near autonomic reflex got him the ass beating of a lifetime. But in the back of his head? He did kind of enjoy beating that prick. He hated bullies and making one bleed brought him a small measure of pleasure. A dick move, sure, but… he had little to work with here. Slowly, he pressed himself up to his elbows, noting that the marines kept a wide berth away from him now. He felt like somehow this entire process was going backwards.
He’d have enjoyed avoiding them by a wide margin before the ass beating of a lifetime. He breathed shallowly as he stood up, his lungs burned with agony. Like he had a hedgehog stuck in his lungs. Akamori rose, using the side of the carrier to crawl upwards. Each movement was slow as a snail and shot daggers of ice through an ever present oppressively dull pain. His legs shook, and he saw black spots in his vision. He didn’t dare look back towards the mage bay, but he was certain the Sgt. had been watching the whole thing. It was hard to miss the brotherhood company stomping a massive mudhole in his fourth point of contact.
Limping the rest of the way, he finally reached the cargo section, and the quartermaster’s office set up just in front of it. The supply sergeant glanced up at him from behind a desk. Then the man’s graying eyebrow climbed curiously.
“The Medical bay is a deck up.” he said with an index finger pointing upwards.
Akamori shook his head in the most motion economical way possible to avoid the piercing pain spike of movement. “Sgt. Sirsir sent me to request a few health potions for a mission later.”
Without placing the small spell tablet down, the man shook his head, not even offering to look at Akamori. “Don’t have any health potions. Dunno why he sent you for any, especially something in a spell like that.”
“Do you have anything I can take back?”
A contemplative pause from the old man as he turned to review a rack. “I suppose I can part with a few duplicate potions.”
The supply sgt. placed a few orange bottles with cork stoppers on the counter. The bottles had “CONJURATION” written on them. Then his gaze swept back over Akamori.
“Thanks,” Akamori said awkwardly. He reached out slowly to claim the bottles. Every nerve in his upper body protesting the action. He just wanted to be unconscious, so he didn’t have to feel. In the past, he might have felt himself overcome with anger for the sergeant. But he just felt resignation.
Fine. If that’s how it had to be, then fine. He gave the supply sergeant a nod and wave as he turned to limp back. He didn’t test his luck again and kept a wide berth around the Brotherhood marines, practically glueing his bruised and beaten form to the wall as he moved along. The marines studiously ignored his presence and focused purely on their hardware. They had sent the message. The marines and the mages mixed like water and oil. He got back to the mage bay and saw the Sgt. waiting for him with his massive arms crossed. The light glinted off of his bald head as he nodded to Akamori. Dark eyes narrowing as they studied Akamori intensely.
“Got my potions?” Sirsir said.
“Here, Sergeant.”
Akamori produced the orange bottles and the burly sgt. took them and regarded his wounded private curiously.
“You look a little roughed up. Are you a little roughed up there fuzzy?”
Had he not expected Akamori to be so composed? That just made him want to dig in more. He wasn’t some backwater undisciplined hick. He was a Hoshun spell warrior. “No Sgt. I just tripped and fell on a tool in the marine bay.”
Sirsir leaned back to scrutinize him for a beat. “Mmm. Tripped you say?”
“Yes, Sgt. It was a nasty fall. It won’t happen again.”
Sirsir glanced over his shoulder, and Akamori turned to follow the gaze into the marine bay where they all glowered at him like hungry wolves. Fennex among them. This wasn’t quite what he had in mind when he daydreamt of traveling the stars and having adventures.
“Make yourself some new friends?” Sirsir asked him.
“Yes Sgt. Lots.”
“Good,” the Sgt. cooed. “Best get to know them well. They’ll be dying for you someday.”
That caught him unprepared, and he turned to face the Sgt. again. “Say again, Sgt?” He winced and rubbed his swollen and bruised jaw.
The Sgt. gave the Brotherhood marines another nod, but this one colored with an emotion that Akamori hadn’t seen the big tech warrior wear yet. Pensiveness? Sadness? Respect? It was hard to tell.
“Those men out there? They don’t have magic. They can’t hear the aether. Can’t use it like we do. All they have is thier non magitech. Some it’s pretty impressive, but there’s only so much a zero can do against magic and to it. That’s why there’s so many of them. Gotta offset the scales. For the Brotherhood, it’s a game of attrition. Overwhelm the enemy with numbers and hope it’s enough. For the brotherhood? This war is a meat grinder, and they know it.”
Akamori blinked in shock from the one eye, not swollen enough to make it feel like he’d just stabbed his face.
“An if that ain’t enough, there’re many officers in the Federation that don’t value the Brotherhood as much as we should. They treat the zips like disposable pawns. Frankly, I’m surprised the Federation hasn’t unraveled yet as it is.”
“Kinda sounds like maybe it should.”
Sirsir nodded quietly for a moment, his gaze still fixed down the bay at the Brotherhood marines as they worked on their tanks, armored personnel carriers and weapons. “Maybe. But then who would stop the Sauridius?”
Akamori had no answer to that. He’d felt that threat first hand. Watched as it claimed his family and old life on Hoshun. It’d happened to his world, and it would no doubt continue happening throughout the sector and beyond, if unchecked.
“I ain’t saying shit’s perfect here. But we serve a purpose. Without us, shit like what happened in your world would be everyone’s story. Now then. You’re looking a little rough. See Private Sala after you eat and then get suited up. We’ve got a job.”
Akamori nodded, noticing a look from the burly NCO. Something approaching respect? This was clearly some kind of shit test, and Akamori got the feeling he’d passed. Personally, he would have preferred something a little less painful or life threatening. But the lesson sunk in. There was a divide between them and the marines. One that didn’t sit well with him. If his lip wasn’t swollen and bloodied, he might have chewed on it thoughtfully as he shuffled off.
“Understood, Sgt.” and dismissed himself.