~October 28th, 138 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, the Gymnasium~
Zelen received the ‘pill’ from Wong on a lateral pass, then took a moment to scan upcourt.
Wong had already transitioned into a well-placed screen, giving Zelen the space to drive it forward himself, perhaps advance the pill by a good fifteen yards at least. From the corner of his eyes, however, he spied the red bib of another teammate streaming down the wing on the weak side.
Could he hit this kick? It would be on his weaker foot, but the angle looked tantalizingly ideal. And if the pass went through, it’d almost certainly lead to a score.
Having made up his mind, Zelen dropped the pill and wound back his left foot. And then—
Crunch!
The tackle had come from directly behind him, which meant he had no chance to see it nor brace himself. With the wind knocked out of him in an instant, Zelen crumpled without a fight and slid face-first onto the mat, with his tackler still firmly wrapped around him. The pill, of course, rolled harmlessly to the side.
The sharp blast of a whistle pealed across the room, at the same time as Zelen bounced painfully against the floor.
“Tackle in the back!” The whistle was quickly followed by the gruff voice of Captain Collima Duodecim, acting as referee. “That’s a flagrant foul, Vakta, one more and you’re off!”
As he tried to recapture his senses from somewhere within the whirlwind of pain, one thought shot to the fore of Zelen’s mind. Megha again! What’s gotten into him today?
His friend had slotted into the opposing midfield, then proceeded to hound Zelen everywhere he went. Megha’s defensive actions (and cheap shots) had escalated in physicality throughout the game, culminating in this latest sucker punch of a tackle.
And now, it seemed Megha had decided to stop and lie on top of his opponent instead of getting on with the play. To be fair, this was an age-old mind games technique, but Zelen couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he had to take it from his friend.
“Get off me.”
No response, no movement. Tempers flaring, Zelen dispensed with words altogether. He freed up one arm, then elbowed Megha in the ribs. Not with force meant to cause real harm, but enough to make his point.
Megha did get up then, but not before giving Zelen another hard shove in the back for good measure. By then, the play had resumed, with Wong having taken the free kick. As such, Referee Duodecim missed what surely should’ve been the Vakta scion’s second flagrant foul of the game—this time for unsportsmanlike conduct.
Zelen got up slowly, massaging his aching muscles and wounded pride. There was a turnover upcourt, which meant Team Blue was now on the attack.
Lieutenant Athelstan saw himself as the kind of Arenaball player that stayed loose and light on his feet, reacting to rather than engineering how the play developed. Right now, however, a simmering anger narrowed his vision until it focused on the figure of Captain Megha Vakta.
The freshly promoted captain roamed centre court, back turned to Zelen as if he’d already forgotten their earlier tussle. He kept his feet moving diligently, making multiple sharp cuts to present himself for passes.
Zelen let him, maintaining enough distance to lull Megha into the illusion that he was unmarked. He moved dutifully within his team’s defensive shape, while keeping his sights trained on his counterpart the whole time.
It didn’t take long for the pill to find its way into Megha’s hands: a diagonal kick from Nascimento. The Vakta heir spun, his eyes lighting up at the open court ahead: a clear line of attack—one Zelen had intentionally left open.
As soon as Megha broke into his eager sprint, Zelen sprang from the side: a defensive manoeuvre that was preemptive rather than reactive. He went in at a sharp angle (albeit a legal one), poised to wrap up his opponent and stop his progress.
He didn’t expect Megha to go down without a fight. Maybe a stiff-arm fend-off? A side-step dodge? He was ready for anything his friend might come up with, having studied his every move over a decade and change of playing with and against him.
What he hadn’t expected, was for Megha to lower his shoulder and counter-tackle, straight into Zelen’s chest.
The hefty impact—as well as the surprise—nearly knocked Zelen off his feet. But he held firm and stuck to his original plan, with arms shooting across Megha’s chest and back, hands struggling to find purchase on sweat-slick skin before grasping a handful of bib.
The two Reiters crashed onto the mat, collapsing under each other’s weight and ferocity. Megha immediately tried to get up, arcing his back and pushing against Zelen’s death grip.
His pill hand was more or less free, which meant the correct play would’ve been to throw it to a teammate (indeed bodies had already closed in, along with frantic shouts for a pass). But for whatever reason, Megha held onto the pill, and as long as Megha had the pill, Zelen wouldn’t let go.
“Fuck off!”
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With a vicious snarl, Megha did throw the pill, but aimed at Zelen’s head. His range of motion had been limited, which meant the throw itself barely did any damage, other than to make Zelen see red.
“The fuck’s your problem?”
It wasn’t clear who threw the first punch. Suffice it to say that punches were thrown, but only several, before the two Reiters were forcibly dragged apart by their teammates and opponents alike.
Much shoving and shouting—and a few more whiffed punches—ensued, but Referee Duodecim’s voice boomed loudest above all, “Unsportsmanlike conduct, Athelstan and Vakta! Athelstan, I’m calling this a double flagrant, so you’re out too. Both of you, get the fuck out of my sight!”
“Sir, there’s uh… a lot of blood.”
“What? God fucking damn it, Vakta, are you bleeding all over my floor? That’s it, I’m calling the game. All you fuckheads better scatter before I really lose my shit. And get yourselves cleaned up, for fuck’s sake!”
All around, the shouting quickly turned to grumbling. But the words Vakta and bleeding in the same sentence hit Zelen like a splash of cold water. He searched wildly amidst a gaggle of sweat-drenched bodies until he found his friend.
Megha knelt on the floor, supported by a nonplussed teammate on one side and on the other a Gaertner that had rushed in to provide first aid. Evidently, at least one of Zelen’s punches had connected, thereby splitting open a vein in his friend’s forehead.
The blood wasn’t quite as much as advertised, but it still made for a striking contrast against Megha’s skin and clothes, and some of it had splattered onto the mat in spectacular fashion. In any case, it was enough to erase all of Zelen’s anger in an instant.
He made to rush over to his friend, then was stopped by a firm hand in his chest.
“Look, I don’t know and I won’t ask what got the two of you so worked up.” It was Captain Duodecim, remarkably calm despite his earlier threats and insults. “But even I can see now isn’t the time to hash it out. He’s fine, Athelstan. Just looks worse than it is. Hit the showers, cool off. Kiss and make up on your own time, deal?”
Even after nearly three years on combat duty—and having already racked up a higher kill count than his former Instructor—Zelen still felt like a cadet in front of Collima Duodecim. Besides, the man was right. Whatever grievance had set Megha off, Zelen wasn’t about to get a meaningful word out of him in his current state.
“Yes, sir,” Zelen panted, then backed off a step.
At this, Captain Duodecim raised a sardonic eyebrow, as though Zelen had just told an off-colour joke. He muttered, “Not going to lie, it weirds me the fuck out that you still need to call me sir. With the career you’ve had, how the hell haven’t you been promoted yet?”
~October 29th, 138 AH~
~Joint Base Akra, Reiter Garrison~
It was with weary eyes and a heavy heart that Lieutenant Zelen Athelstan sat down for the most important mission briefing of his career.
The meeting room was the fullest it’d ever been. Fifteen Reiters in all occupied the front rows, to a one sitting quietly with uncharacteristic attentiveness. The rest of the room was filled by a veritable platoon of Corpsmen, many of whom exhibited an anxious energy that spoke to the unique solemnity of the occasion.
The nature of this next mission was already an open secret. For weeks leading up to this meeting, one particular phrase, more than any other, had cropped up in hushed conversations across the JFB: the Mothership.
Zelen, of course, fully understood the import of that phrase—to himself, to his fellow Reiters, and to Akropolis as a whole. Try as he might, however, he failed to pour his whole concentration onto this momentous occasion, given that his thoughts kept drifting back to Megha Vakta.
He’d tried all last evening and this morning to open a dialogue with his friend. All of his attempts were evaded, deflected, or otherwise ignored, which only compounded his misery and sleeplessness. The silver lining was that at least the anger seemed to be completely gone, with Megha himself looking rather dour and despondent anytime Zelen did manage to catch sight of him.
Even now, his sleep-deprived eyes kept flitting toward where Megha sat, one row in front and across on the other side of the room. And when Major Ghata Vakta leaned over to his little brother to whisper something, Zelen took the chance to start his own surreptitious discussion.
“Have you talked to Megha recently?” he turned and whispered to the man sitting beside him.
Lieutenant Lui ‘Jockey’ Wong had been a classmate of both Zelen’s and Megha’s for eight years, before failing the Gauntlet and needing remedials to earn his callsign. He now looked around the room with nervous eyes before whispering back, “Why?”
“Did he tell you about the stick that’s up his ass?”
Wong let out an uncomfortable cough, then said, “No, but I might’ve heard him complaining about the stick that’s up yours.”
“What? What stick?”
Having wrung the rectal metaphor for all it was worth, Wong spoke plainly, “Come on, man. Isn’t it obvious? You think you’re better than us.”
“What?”
Zelen’s volume control failed him for a second, and Megha across the room looked up for a heart-stopping moment, before turning back to his brother. He lowered his voice again as he continued, “I do not think I’m better than anyone.”
“You think I don’t know that? The truth is, Megha knows too. But that’s not really the point, is it? Whether you think it or not, Athelstan, you are better than us. Miles better. Fuck, you’re probably better than anyone else in this room except maybe Spindrift. And not only are you better, you’ve gone and decided to rub it in our faces by refusing your promotion.”
Zelen was floored.
He’d always known himself to be on somewhat of a different wavelength from his fellow Reiters. That had started when he’d still been a child who didn’t know fractions from multiplication tables, and had continued (if not worsened) into his full-fledged career, where nearly all of his combat experience had come from solo deployments.
There hadn’t been much thought behind his refusal of the captain rank. He pictured the captains he knew well—the responsibilities they shouldered and the respect they commanded, especially from the younger generations—and simply believed himself unready for and unworthy of such a role.
He could concede that this line of thinking might’ve marked him out as eccentric (what else was new?), but did it also present him as arrogant? Enough to explain his friend’s violent anger? Something didn’t add up.
He expressed as much to Wong, “OK, but is that really enough reason for Megha to punch me out?”
Wong first gave him a withering look, which quickly turned into a wry smile, as if he’d thought up a joke Zelen wasn’t privy to. He shrugged then said, “It’s just a complicated age. I wouldn’t worry your pretty little head about it, alright? Megha will get over himself soon enough. In the meantime—”
Wong didn’t get to finish his advice, for the door banged open then, and in walked briskly the muscular figure of Fenix Duodecim.
His arrival all but confirmed the veracity of the rumours that had bubbled for weeks. The fact that the General himself was giving this brief left no doubt as to the enormity of this mission.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Fenix had barely reached the podium before turning to the room with a loud and expansive smile—a smile that, to this day, made Zelen’s blood run cold. “Normally, this is where I bore you with pleasantries and a lengthy preamble, but you’ll forgive me if I get straight down to business today. I’m just that excited to get started. I hereby commence the mission briefing for Operation Leviathan—or, as I like to call it, the one where we finally bring down the Mothership.”