“What do you mean, you slayed a dragon!?” The Rookie asks looking utterly bewildered.
After getting everyone settled, and blessedly getting most of the mess cleaned off of my body. We all sat down and explained what happed to the two. There is also the inevitable question from the three about what the hell I am. So, I give them a quick explanation, much to their shock.
Thomas, being the only one not injured or with his head stuck in the clouds, ends up giving most of the report while I pipe in and add a detail or two every now and again. Mostly I just sat there and used my claws to work on cleaning up the cut of my jeans. Removing the ruined leg and trying to make sure that my new shorts will last the rest of the trip home.
“Well, I mean… I called it a fluffy dragon because it sort of looked like one. You saw it at the airport before, didn’t you? I spotted it from the roof after you guys got separated and it flew away." I say, as I finish trimming my jeans.
Continuing, “Anyways, I called it a dragon because it sort of looks like one. But I guess it's not actually one… It didn’t breathe fire or anything. Honestly, if this was Monster Hunter, that thing was closer to being like a Barioth mixed with a Gore Magala… Wait, was Gore Magala considered an elder dragon or just a monster? It’s not a wyvern…”
Thomas speaks up and answers, “It was an immature Elder Dragon, it changes at the end of the game.”
“Oh, that’s right. Wait you play? Cool, maybe if we can find a couple Switches and we can go hunting; I’m a Hunting Horn main.”
“Great Sword.”
“Nice! I can get Anna to join us and then we can play! Gotta see if we can do like a local connection or something though or see if we can play using LAN. I think that was an option…”
Before I can get too excited, the Sergeant speaks up and gets our attention. The Rookie just seems confused about what we are talking about.
“Can we get back on task please? So, you guys killed a not dragon, dragon then? Is that right?”
“A Fluffy not Dragon, Dragon.” I correct.
“Ah, of course… Alright, so you helped them out and then you all made your way back here.”
Thomas answers, “Yes sir. That is correct.”
He nods his head while rubbing his injured leg, “Thanks for the report. Haaa, this is going to be a pain in the ass to report when we get back. So much paperwork… This was supposed to just be a normal recon mission. Just take the Rookie out and get her some valuable experience.”
He continues after shifting a bit and trying to get comfortable.
“Ok everyone. The day is almost over, so we are going to stay here and relax for the night. Early tomorrow morning we are heading out and getting the hell out of here before we rack up any more injuries. Sandy, how are those pain killers doing for you?”
She lazily waves from her table, “Better, but I still have a big ass needle sticking through my leg…”
“Don’t worry, we’ll have hospital food to look forward to in our near future.”
“Joy…”
“Rookie, Sanders, Thomas. You three are on night watch tonight, decide amongst yourselves the order.”
I speak up for this, “You can just leave the night watch to me. I don’t sleep, so I’ll be up anyways.”
He shakes his head at this, “Thank you for the offer, but we can’t leave the watch to a civilian all night. Even if you are able to. We have our responsibilities as soldiers.”
“Hmm, eh. Alright, if you insist.” I say with a shrug.
Not like it matters, guess I’ll have some people to pass the night with…
“Ok then. That concludes matters for the rest of the day. Feel free to relax for the rest of today, tomorrow we have a lot of walking ahead of us."
Sandy, now lying down in her booth, raises and waves both of her hands, “Yay, more walking… whooo…”
With the Sergeant dismissing us, those of us that can walk get up and go to do our own thing. Be it cleaning a rifle, eating some food, or in my case, claiming a corner and cracking open my book.
I still have at least a couple nights left of this one. Luckily, I have the last two of the series waiting for me at home to read, so I am not too worried about finishing it too quickly.
Soon the day comes to an end, night arrives, and the soldiers go to sleep. Thomas ends up being first on the watch, so we end up chilling and talking about games. Apparently, besides going to the gym, he was also an avid gamer before the world up and ended. He ends up thanking me for stopping the Fluffy not Dragon, Dragon from eating him and we have a pretty fun time.
Some hours later, it is Sanders’ turn. For the most part we mind our own business until he eventually works up some courage and comes over to talk to me. He ends up asking me about what I was saying earlier, about him and Sandy dating and being a cute couple.
The desire to bully him flares up again but, this time I keep it down. He seems really serious about this, and I don’t want to be a dick.
So, I be honest with him. I tell him that, personally, I don’t really know these people well enough to honestly gauge how a relationship would go between them and I also explain that my experience is basically nonexistent. But I tell him that I do honestly think that they would make for a cute couple, and that if he isn’t against it, he should at the very least go for it and give it a try.
To help make him feel better I tell him that the Rookie already shot me down and about how horrible my very first sort of maybe confession into a rejection went. It got him to relax some and laugh, then he went off on his own to do some thinking.
As an aside, he showed me the picture he took of me posing in front of the Fluffy not Dragon, Dragon. As a joke, I took the camera and labeled the picture with an appropriate title.
With him doing his own thing, I return to my book, feeling proud of myself for hopefully being able to help with the birth of a future relationship.
They really would make a cute couple. Got this whole Bully X Nerd thing going on. Especially with her being taller than him and with all those cool scars… If I saw them in high school, I would have been rooting for them to get together. Her pushing him against a locker and boxing him in as he blushes furiously. “What are you blushing for you little nerd? You like getting pushed around?” She asks him, looming over him with a predatory smile on her face….
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Ah bad Lain, bad! No fantasizing about your new friends playing out your mad delusions. No horny, bad! Focus on your book!
I reel in my ADD riddled mind before it can crawl away into the darker recesses of my brain and reduce me into becoming some fanfiction writing degenerate. A fate I only narrowly avoided in high school. I instead focus on reading my book. The plot is thickening, and there are tells of betrayal and love in the future.
Sometime later, Sanders switches with the Rookie and she ends up coming over to join me in the reading corner. She doesn’t say anything for a long while, the only sound being that of me occasionally turning a page.
I peek over my book and find her looking pretty bored, just looking out at the restaurant or messing with a part of her armor and its straps.
She is cute. She really does look great in all that armor…
Her eyes go to me, probably feeling me watching her again.
Before she can say anything, I ask her a question, “Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask… Rookie, that’s not actually your name, right? Just a nickname?”
“Hmm, it’s both.”
“Oh, how’s that work?”
“My name is Amanda Rook. So, Private Rook. Eventually people just started calling me Rookie, but considering that I am actually a rookie, I never really tried to stop people from using it, so it stuck…”
“Oh.”
“When we met, you said your name was Elizabeth, right?”
“Yup, good memory. Why do you ask?”
“Well, how do you get Lain out of Elizabeth?”
“Oh! Ya, I’ve got a bit of a story to that. I never liked my name, I mean, Elizabeth makes me sound like I should be in Britain, ruling from a castle and living to be 120 years old! Anyways, my friend Anna and I were watching some old anime for fun, and I showed her one that I really liked, ‘Serial Experiments Lain.’ She knew how much I hated my name and decided that because of how much I like the show, that she would call me Lain from then on. It made me really happy, so I considered it official and started to just use it as my own name wherever and whenever I could...
“My parents weren’t very happy about it; they liked the name they picked for me. They tried to compromise with me by calling me Lizy… But that wasn’t much better. Sounds like a name for a lizard…”
I really miss Anna…
I look to the girl sitting across from me.
What the hell is up with me? I haven’t even told Anna about how I feel for her, and here I am getting a crush on some girl I just met… Yes, she is very cute, and that uniform makes her butt look amazing, but I literally just met her.
I think the loneliness might have been making me a bit desperate. Either that or my mutations have removed some of my inhibitions. I doubt it would have happened, but what would I do if she had actually said yes last night. Getting together with a complete stranger…
“Hey… would you prefer if I call you Amanda or Rookie?”
“Hmm, either is fine. Although most people just call me Rookie.”
“Alright, Rookie. I wanted… I wanted to apologize for last night, and for watching you. This might just sound like excuses, but I don’t want you to see me like a creep or something. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to hang out with other people, especially with people outside of my family. Recently, I’ve decided to be more open with the fact that I like girls… and I think that might have made me act a bit less restrained than I normally would have…
“I really do think that you are very attractive, but I let my loneliness get the better of me and make me act like a perv. So, for that I am sorry…
“And you don’t need to worry about me coming on to you or anything… There is already someone that I like, but I have been too scared to out myself and confess to her for some time now… Again, I’m sorry. This might make me sound like a jerk, but you were the first cute girl that I have seen in while, and I just couldn’t help myself…
“Uhhh, saying it like that just makes it sound like I am blaming you for being cute… I wish I could word this better…!”
I try to continue, but she stops me, her face flushed with red.
“St, stop calling me cute an, an, and attractive. Please! It’s ok, I forgive you!”
She takes a few moments to relax as I let my own nervousness go back down. Seeing her be so flustered makes my desire to bully her rise, but I force that down with an iron fist. This is most certainly not the time or place for that kind of flirting. Not when I am trying to get her to not see me as a raging pervert.
Eventually she speaks. “Uhhmm, it’s good to know that you have someone that you like. I really hope that the two of you can get together. As long as you don’t keep staring at my… my butt… I won’t think of you as a pervert or a creep. You saved not just my life, but everyone else’s as well. You even fought a dragon like monster to save some complete strangers. So, you're not a creep… Maybe a bit weird though.”
“I’ll take weird. Would have to be considering that I was willing to fight a Fluffy not Dragon, Dragon with nothing but a sledgehammer.”
That gets a laugh out her and we both start to relax a bit now that the awkward conversation is out of the way, and she knows that I won’t be trying to crawl into her pants without warning.
“So, Rookie, and this isn’t me trying to flirt or anything, but do you have anyone that you like? A guy, girl?”
She gives me a look.
I put up my hands defensively.
“Again, not for me! I just want to get to know you better. Maybe we can be friends. Figured that since I told you about me having a crush on someone, that I should ask if you have any crushes… You know, get to know each other better…”
She ends up looking a bit embarrassed.
“Sorry… I mean ya, I wouldn’t mind us being friends. Uhm… I don’t really have any crushes right now. I’ve been so focused on training and surviving recently that I haven’t really given it much thought. It just hasn’t been important. Uhh, and if your curious… I have no idea if I have any interest in girls… Maybe?”
“Haha, that’s alright, it’s not like this is something that you have to have figured out. You can wait till the future when life becomes less apocalyptic to worry about stuff like this.”
I end up changing the subject, asking about life on the base, what sort of stuff she does for fun. We talk about our families; Rookies parents are apparently also still alive and living on base with her. She asks me questions about my journey south, and I tell her all about it. She is fascinated when I tell her about Sky as she has been meaning to ask me about the Kobold friend that I had mentioned before.
I tell her that I will introduce her but, give no promises on her getting to pet Sky.
Eventually I tell her about my fight with the one-armed bear. How I don’t remember how I killed it and how lots of the damage left on it didn’t look like anything that I could do with just my claws.
This gets her thinking, and she ends up asking me a concerning question.
“I’ve been meaning to ask… How do you keep turning into a shadow?”
“Huhh? What are you talking about?” I ask, tilting my head.
She tilts he head back at me, “What do you mean… how could you not know?”
“I honestly don’t know what you are talking about… I’ve actually been meaning to ask why it is that you guys keep calling me a Shadow.”
We both tilt our heads again in confusion.
“Ok...” She starts.
“Uhm… Well, the best way that I can describe it is that when you don’t have any light shining on you, you sort of just disappear into the shadows. Sometimes I swear that I can even see the shadows on walls and stuff trying to move towards you. You're telling me that you have never noticed this…?
“Just earlier, when I was trying to find you in this corner. For a little bit until the light was fully on you, you just looked like a human shaped blob of shadows sitting in the dark. It was sort of scary looking…”
I reel back a bit in shock, “Really!?”
“Yes, really… How could you not tell? And besides that, how are you able to read in complete darkness?”
“Oh… well I’ve got some crazy good night vision. Even in complete darkness, I can see in color. For me, no matter how dark it gets, I see everything as if it is the middle of the day. It’s crazy because I know that night vision does not work like that. I should be seeing thing in greens or greys. Just shapes or something like that.
“I don’t even see shadows… I just get a vague sense of where they are and if I am in them…”
I point to her lamp, “Like for instance, your light here. I don’t actually see the light coming from it, because to me, everything is already lit up. Instead, this lamp is more like an area of ‘I am not in darkness.’ It’s hard to properly explain, it's just sort of a sixth sense chilling in back of my head. I don’t even really notice it unless I focus.”
“Well… that certainly is different. Maybe when you get the chance, you should try and focus on that sense and figure out why it is that you keep turning into a shadow blob? Maybe you will learn something?”
My thoughts go back to the bear’s carcass, how whole sections of its face seemed to be just gone or shredded. Something I would never be able to do with my claws and teeth, no matter how much I rampaged.
Speaking not just to my new friend, but also to myself, I say, “Who knows… Maybe I have magic…”