His friends were momentarily saved from Sam going on another wild tangent by Yvessa coming up with the brilliant suggestion of Sam putting some music on. So, Sam did the only natural thing and proceeded to involve all three of them in the process of rebuilding his playlist. A chance to show the three of them what good musical taste was actually like, while also putting the finish line of the first undertaking he had begun since getting here closer in sight.

“You didn’t put on any road trip songs at all,” Felix complained while they stepped out of the car after having easily found parking.

“What are you talking? I had Fast Car on! Even let it play all the way to the end.”

“That’s not a road trip song! It was just a depressing one.”

“Gah! I can’t win with you. First you complain that I don’t listen to the songs all the way to the end, and then when I do listen you complain that I shouldn’t have. If you keep up like this, then there’s no way that I’m letting you throw yourself off of that cliff.”

“Guys!” Yvessa called them from the back of the car. “Come help. There’s plenty to carry for everyone.”

“Everyone?” Sam pointed at himself. “Even the only person to have exercised today?”

“Me and Sarah also worked out,” Felix said. “We went to the combat class that Lin was teaching after finishing with you.”

“Really? What happened to not working out in the, ugh, ‘weekend,’ Sarah?”

“I missed a session during the week,” Sarah said and handed him a bag. “Take this. It’s not that heavy and we’ll manage the rest.”

“Not that heavy?” Felix moaned. “He gets to carry the blankets while I’m stuck with the drink coolers? How much wine did you even bring?”

“You wanted to get properly drunk, didn’t you?” Yvessa closed the trunk and locked her car. “What is with you and complaining about having to carry stuff anyway?”

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that my want for an equal share of the burden between all four of us was so unreasonable.”

“Well it is when the four of us include one little bitch of a guy, two girls and you,” Sam said.

“Sarah’s way stronger than me!”

“Which is why she’s carrying the heaviest stuff,” Yvessa said. “Stop whining.”

“I’m not whining,” Felix whined while they began following Sarah up the path. “OK, maybe I am. But I resent having to carry stuff for other people who don’t pitch in. Brings back bad memories.”

Yvessa laughed. “Bad memories? Like what?”

“Being the only guy in a five person household, maybe? With younger siblings who couldn’t help with the physical house chores, and a mother who was almost always tired due to having to take care of us when she wasn’t working? Who do you think was in charge of throwing out the trash? Carrying groceries back home? Picking up heavy stuff? This guy!” He pointed at himself. “So excuse me for not wanting to relive my childhood agonies as a grown man.”

Sam snorted. “Grown man? You’re only nineteen.”

“Don’t you start with me on that. I’m old enough to vote and drink and that’s that.”

“Old enough to kill,” Yvessa said.

“I mean yeah, I guess so… But I wouldn’t count the Epiraks as killing a real person like the soldiers did back in the old days. Can you imagine killing a person? That’s real crazy stuff.”

“You tell yourself that now,” Sarah said. “But when you come face to face with a Martyr and they start talking to you, you’re going to discover things aren’t as simple as that.”

“Plus, I don’t think that even killing the most monstrous looking Brute is going to be as easy as you think,” Yvessa said.

“Whatever.” Felix shrugged. “As long as I don’t have to carry anyone else’s bag, I’m going to be fine.”

“You really have a thing about carrying stuff,” Sam said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I have a flaw. This one single flaw in my otherwise perfect personality. Sue me. I bet you never had to be the one to be in charge of all physical tasks when you were growing up.”

“Not at all. Matter of fact, never had to do a house chore until I was eighteen.”

“That can’t be true,” Sarah said.

“It wasn’t. But can you imagine if it was? Every time my parents would try and criticize me for being lazy because of that, I’d be able to counter them by asking why doesn’t giving the cat IV infusion count as a chore.”

Yvessa burst out laughing so hard that the rest of them had to stop and look at her. “I’m sorry, but Sam trying to completely divert from Felix’s trauma by bringing up his own is just so funny.”

“What?!” Felix pivoted on Sam. “Were you really trying to do that?”

“Not consciously. It must be one of my defense mechanisms… Always trying to keep the focus of the conversation on me and my suffering in order to compensate for no one caring about my emotional woes while I was growing up. I had a troubled childhood, you know?”

His hands occupied, Felix had to bump Sam with his entire body in order to signal his displeasure at Sam’s actions. “Not cool man.”

“I’m sorry.” Sam held his hands up in peace (one not being occupied and the other not carrying something too heavy). “For what it’s worth, I was totally going to pivot to conversation back to you by bringing up my own experience with sexism.” This time, Sarah joined Yvessa in laughing.

“Seriously. Are you doing this on purpose?”

“No. But ask me what my experience was.” Felix turned away from him and resumed his walking, the rest of them hurrying up to catch up with him. “Felix, buddy…? Sarah…? Yvessa? You’re really not going to ask and force me to leave the joke untold? It’s a true story.”

“I feel bad for Felix,” Sarah said.

“Finally,” Felix called out from the front. “Someone with a conscience.”

“Felix, this is all getting out of hand.” Sam ran up to him. “The way things are going, I’ll never be able to provide my argument about why your anger at carrying stuff for me is more than justified.”

“Let me guess. You have a similar experience to mine as well?”

“Yes. But I wasn’t going to bring it up. Truly. Now ask me about when my big sister was sexist towards me.”

“Fine… I’ll give you this chance. Why was your older sister sexist towards you?”

“She made fun of me for listening to the song Barbie Girl.”

“I don’t think we heard that song. Was it already on your playlist?”

“No. And it’s not going to. The trauma is too much for me to bear.”

“How is your sister making fun of you for listening to a song sexist? Do you know the song Sarah?”

“It’s about a famous doll. Maybe because of that.” Sarah said, and Sam nodded in confirmation.

“That’s not sexist. Maybe if she took your phone away and told you that you can’t listen to songs like that, that would have been sexist, but just making fun of you isn’t.”

“Yeah. It’s more of a case of toxic masculinity, Sam.”

“OK,” Sam said, “so maybe that wasn’t sexist. But what about the time when I was the only boy in a five person household and had to do all the physical tasks? That isn’t sexist?”

“Not necessarily,” Felix said. “In my case, it was less about me being a guy than me being the oldest. Now that I’m out of the house, my oldest younger sister, Gia, is picking up my mantle. Although now my mom also helps, so there’s less work to be done.”

“OK! Maybe it wasn’t sexism in your case. I apologize to you and your family. But”—he leaned in closer to Felix, whispering so as to not be heard—“in my defense: I do have a very similar experience to yours, which in my case was definitely driven by sexism, and which caused me to view yours in the same lens”

“Then why didn’t you say it?” Felix whispered back.

“I didn’t want to come off as trying to one-up you.”

“Oh. That’s actually really nice of you.”

“Yeah. I also didn’t really mean to divert attention from you like Yvessa—”

“Guys, we can hear you,” Sarah said.

“Damn. I forgot about your stupid, magically enhanced bodies.”

“It’s got nothing to do with that. A ten-year-old would’ve heard you.”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I thought we were being quiet.” Sam leaned even closer to Felix.

“Don’t look at me, so did I.”

“We can still hear you,” Sarah said before walking between them and breaking them up.

“I don’t understand,” Sam said. “It always works in the movies. Two people start whispering to each other in order to not be heard by the rest. And most times they don’t get made fun of by someone else telling them they can still be heard.”

“It must be because we’re guys and they’re girls.” Felix nodded. “Sexism.”

“Why are you going along with him all of the sudden?” Yvessa asked.

“Maybe I’m still angry that someone diverted the focus of the conversation away from me and my childhood traumas to Sam’s.”

“He did that,” Yvessa said.

“You’re the one that pointed that out and had a fit about it. We were going to slide right back into feeling bad for poor Felix and now we’ll have to hear all about Sam having to go through the same thing before we can get back to me.”

Sam nodded vigorously. “And before we could move on to justifying his feelings by presenting my theory of relative suffering as justice. Also known as my manifesto against being screwed or fucked over. With plenty of examples from both my professional and personal life… What? I have a lot of complaints.”

“Just tell us your own sob story so we could go back to Felix’s, then,” Yvessa said.

“Well, there’s not much to tell. I once worked in an office where I was the only man, and not only that, but most of my coworkers were young adults in the same age range as I was. Just awful, awful work environment. I hated every second that I had to be there.”

“Get to the point.”

“Well, there’s not much to the story that you haven’t already figured out. I was just trying to give it some extra flavor in order for it not to seem redundant to Felix’s. You got the gist of what happened. I was the only guy. I did the bulk of the physically demanding tasks whenever they propped up, even though that didn’t have anything to do with my job description, and without taking into account my physical condition at any given time. Same thing for computer related problems, by the way, as we didn’t have a dedicated IT department. Happy now? Can we move the focus back to someone who actually deserves our pity?”

“Oh? So now I deserve your pity?” Felix asked.

“Don’t take it personally, Felix. I despair for every person who isn’t myself. I’m very caring in that way, like Jesus.”

“Does that mean that we’ll get to put you on the cross for our sins one of these days?”

“Only if you behave extra naughty.”

“I’ll think about. So… how long till we get there?” Felix asked Sarah.

“A couple more minutes.”

“Why can’t we just grab a spot around here?”

“Because, we’re not anywhere near the top yet and if we aren’t going to get the best view possible, then what the hell are we even doing here?”

“What’s the matter Felix?” Yvessa asked. “Your hand getting tired?”

“You know what? Now that you mention it… yeah. How about you carry one of these coolers for me?”

“Tsk… I don’t know. I’m just a frail, dainty woman. I’m not strong enough to carry one of those.”

“Really, Yvessa?” Sam shook his head at her. “We just had this conversation; Felix doesn’t like being given work just cause he’s a guy.”

“No,” Felix said, “that’s you. I just don’t like feeling like other people have it easier than me for no reason after a lifetime of being forced to grit my head and nod when there was an actual reason for it.”

“Are you really angry or are you just a little bit peeved?”

Felix turned his head to consider the question for a moment or two. “The second one. Especially because you are indeed pretty weak and not just being lazy.”

“Thank you. It is mostly laziness, though.”

“Then how about lending me a hand with one of these?”

“No chance.”

“So what’s the deal with your cat anyway?” Yvessa asked Sam.

“Really? We’re back to that? Even though we still haven’t finished with Felix’s bit?”

Felix shrugged. “Nah, we were pretty much over with mine.”

“Really? But I didn’t even get a chance to justify you using my burning hatred of feeling like I’m being fucked over.”

“Eh. We’ll keep it for another time. Maybe for when we’re both actually being fucked over.”

“So the cat, Sam?” Yvessa prompted.

“What? Oh right. Well, there’s not much to tell really. She was pretty old, about nineteen at the time. Had trouble with her kidneys like almost all senior felines. Vet said that we needed to give her infusion. Some sort of medicine, I reckon. And since taking her to the vet all the damn time was going to be both very costly and counterintuitive, we decided to infuse her at home. Long story short, my parents weren’t good at it. I took on the mantle, did it pretty regularly.”

“Did she recover?”

“Not really. If I’m not wrong, we started giving her the treatment a couple of months before she died, so maybe we staved off her death for a month or two. Still worth it though… Why are we talking about my dead cat?”

“You brought her up,” Felix said.

“Fair enough. Maybe this is some sort of cosmic punishment for me stealing your thunder.”

“I thought that you didn’t mean to do that.”

“I didn’t. But as we all know, Karma is not a strict Kantian, so she wouldn’t give a shit about my intentions.”

“Any other depressing topics you two want to bring up before we end our hike?” Yvessa asked.

“Why are you asking? You want to give it a go as well?”

“No thank you. I came here to have fun and relax. Not to wallow in self misery and bitch about the past.”

“Is that why you’re not planning to drink? Are you one of those drunks?”

“She can’t answer that,” Felix said. “Because then she’ll have to bring up her own painful past and thus show herself as a liar.”

“I’d rather be a sad drunk than a horny drunk like you,” Yvessa told Felix.

“Hey, I’m a sad drunk as well. First, I get horny from being drunk, then I get sad from being turned down. At least, I imagine that I do. You see”—he turned to Sam—“I never actually get turned down.”

“I get what you’re saying… But for some reason, my mind just took it to mean something very dark.”

“Just don’t accept any drinks from him, and you’ll be fine,” Yvessa said.

“You guys are twisted.” Felix shook his head. “Are we there yet, Sarah? Seems to me like we’re pretty high up already.”

“Just about. There’s this spot that I remember and I want to check out if it’s empty before we look for some place else.”

“If it’s not, we can always use physical force and remove the current occupants. What’s the point of all this strength if you’re not going to use it, right?”

“It’s certainly not about being able to carry heavy stuff without bitching about it,” Yvessa said.

The two kept their bickering to a friendly simmer for the rest of the hike, which wasn’t more than a couple of minutes. Somewhere along the way, Sarah led them away from the main path into a clearing empty of foliage that had a spectacular view of the surrounding countryside and even the far edges of the capital, Transit. “That reminds me,” Sam said while they began to set everything up, “did I tell you guys the jokes I told Sarah about the name of the capital?”

“No,” Felix said.

“Eh… you’re better off then. They weren’t that good anyway. Now if the capital was named something like New Earth, then I would have something to work with.”

“Are you bringing this up because you found out that was one of the most common name for cities on New Terra?” Sarah asked.

“I sure did. I was looking through the list of most populated Terran cities and was overall pretty satisfied with the cultural and geographical variety between them. That is, until I came upon number thirty-two on the list, which sent me into a right rage when I discovered that it wasn’t the only municipal unit by that name.”

“You think that’s bad?” Felix laughed. “I grew up on New Earth street. So it’s not just settlements that get that naming treatment.”

“The street where the Terran embassy on Larsus is located was renamed to Earth after it was built,” Yvessa added.

“Wow,” Sam said. “People sure do love that long gone blue marble, don’t they?”

“It’s an easy name to agree on,” Sarah said. “Just like New Terra. We all have, had, Earth in common.”

“Need I remind you of my objections to the ‘New Terra’ name?”

“And yet you couldn’t come up with a better one yourself.”

“Define better. Cause I could definitely have come up with some funnier ones.”

“Just sit down,” she ordered him. They had finished setting up everything by this point, with enough blankets separating them and the ground that it was easy to forget it was even there. The drinks coolers were set next to Yvessa, who took charge of them and filled a glass of their choice for each one of them as well as a smaller glass of wine.

“I thought you weren’t going to drink any?” Sam asked her.

“Just one glass. Otherwise, how could we say cheers? You want some of this as well? You’ll like it, very sweet.”

“No, but I’ll suffer through it for the occasion,” Sam said and was forced to quickly set down the glass next to him once Sarah handed him a plate laden with food. “You know… I didn’t realize that you would bring real plates. That’s not really my idea of a picnic.”

Yvessa shrugged. “Why waste plastic when we are perfectly capable of carrying real dining ware?”

“Still… it’s not very picnicky. How will people know that we’ve been here if we aren’t going to leave all of our plastic trash on the ground?”

“Is that what you usually did on picnics?” Felix asked.

“Felix please. Look at me. Do I look like someone who goes for a picnic? The closest I ever came to one was eating takeout food at a park with a friend.”

“What’d you eat?”

“Sushi… I think.”

“Ah, of course. The pinnacle of picnic foods.”

“I put some sushi in that box by Sarah if you want some,” Yvessa said.

“Seriously? Am I the only one that’s ever been on a picnic here? You’ve brought us enough food for ten people, and none of it is out of place in a gourmet restaurant.”

“I beg to differ,” said Sam, who had just finished shoving into his mouth one of the sushi from the box that Sarah handed him. “I’ve had gourmet sushi once or twice, OK, just twice, in my life. And by gourmet, I mean one of those restaurants that charges twice as much for a roll as any normal place, not one of those authentic Japanese ones. And this sushi is just normal.” This time, he dipped the piece in sauce before eating it and making yummy noises.

“Yeah,” Yvessa said, “I just saw that there was sushi on the lunch menu today, so I grabbed some to go cause I knew that Sarah loves them.”

“We have sushi in the mess hall?”

“We have pretty much everything in the mess hall,” Sarah said. “The menu is just constantly changing. Another of those luxuries the academy provides that we won’t have in our regular service.”

“Maybe we won’t.” Yvessa chuckled. “But if Farris ends up taking Sam under his wing, then he might find himself dining just as good as he is today. The higher ups and very elite units eat well. As long as they’re behind the front, at least.”

“So what?” Felix asked, “Farris will just give Sam some cushy job as his adjutant or whatever? Keep him away from the front lines until he’s ready? You really think that he’ll do that?”

“No,” answered Sam and Yvessa in unison. “Don’t worry, I was just joking. Sam will find himself thrown to the same wolves as we will in three and a half years.”

“Yeah, if I can get as strong as you guys or close to it by that time. Are we really going to get thrown to the wolves?”

“Of course not,” Sarah said. “We’re all probably going to be placed into elite units, average level seven or thereabout. Lead by a Ruler, probably. A role that will have us see plenty of action, but overall pretty safe. They want to nurture us into becoming Rulers, not smash us against the wall until we become ones or die. Even the ningani have abandoned their old trial by fire methodology more than a century ago.”

Yvessa sighed. “Although I know from personal experience that there are still plenty of idiots that think those kinds of methods make for better Rulers.”

“Pressure makes diamond is how the saying goes, no?” Sam drank some of the wine in order to mollify his nerves (it was the only drink at hand). It was pretty good. “So who gives a shit about all the lesser gems that we crushed in order to make one diamond in the end?”

“Hey! You weren’t supposed to drink yet, we still haven’t toasted.”

“I’m sorry. I thought that it was fine because people were already eating.”

“We weren’t supposed to start eating as well!” she turned an accusing eye on Felix, which caused Sam and Sarah to laugh.

“Alright Yv, calm down,” Sarah said. “Let’s have a toast right now. Everyone has their drinks?”

“They do now,” Felix said as he took the glass that Yvessa gave him. “What are we toasting to?”

“Friendship!” Sam suggested.

“No!” Felix shot him down.

“Oh c’mon! I never had the chance to toast to that. Can you imagine? Twenty-two years without fulfilling that cliche? What if I die tomorrow?”

“Then you’ll just have to wait for the next life when you go on a picnic with friends who you’ve known for more than a week. Besides, you don’t really want to toast to that, do you?”

“Nah, probably not. What do you want to toast to, Sarah?”

“To Sam,” she suggested and raised her glass.

“Any other suggestions? Felix, Yvessa?” Sam tried to mask the blush creeping up his face and the other two’s chuckles weren’t helping.

“To Earth?” Yvessa suggested.

“Which one?” Felix asked.

“To both of them. Old Earth and New Terra. May the four of us keep the best of both worlds alive for centuries still!”

There was no place for debate at that point. “Cheers!” the three of them cried in response and four glasses clinked in confirmation.