There Are More Struggles Everywhere
Phesx Caolia guarded the pizzeria, sitting in one of the empty tables as night fell and still half the establishment bustled with a crowd. The tea house in front had already closed with signs telling the reason, advertising the pizzeria and its future tea drinks.
Just as Phesx yawned, a roaring engine sounded from outside as a Myertha parked. A beauty in black clothing and a long jacket took her helmet off, showing that striking natural orange hair and those rosy, orangish lips.
Phesx looked at this beauty, and so did others in the pizzeria. She walked inside, grabbing many people’s attention. Some looked at Phesx, wanting to see how he reacts this time, but others felt the call of a future life and love itself from their hearts.
Trembling faster than they breathed, some prepared to stand up and confess their unshakable, true love to the beauty, when she walked to the guard dog still sitting and just looking at her walk to him.
“Are you tired? You look tired. Buy me a pizza, I’m awfully hungry.” Pheli said, caressing his head. She walked around and sat before him. Phesx barely bothered to sit straight, looking at the reception, where a young woman winked at him before going into the kitchen.
“You’ve come, mn. How was the ride?” Phesx’s voice was semi-broken and soft, so his words couldn’t be heard correctly. But Pheli’s voice wasn’t. She smirked and glanced at him with celeste playful eyes only he could see, “Not good enough. I missed you~.”
Phesx lifted his eyebrows and threw the tip of his tongue in front of his left-upper teeth. Pheli smiled, looking charming and genuine now. He shook his head before grabbing her hand, “Was my healing confirmed?”
“Oh yes. Although they still have some questions, you can join the next group.” Pheli nodded, showing him pictures of a document simply confirming his ‘healthy-enough’ certificate to be sent to ‘the field’ again. She also spoke while grabbing his hand, intertwining their fingers. Those pictures were probably taken before burning the documents.
Pheli deleted the image afterwards, with Phesx feeling in a better mood. He wouldn’t mind earning double, almost 200,000 credits each month, if he could. It had been 2 weeks since the returned from Coalely, and the week was just starting, so might as well.
“Where is it?” Phesx asked, caressing her right foot under the table, somewhat childish and playful. But Pheli let him, even ‘hitting back’ his shoes in response. She said, “In a convention. It’s of old people, but everyone there might… be onto something.”
“Like a cult?” Phesx frowned, feeling ominous. Pheli briefly jumped her eyebrows, “Aha.”
“It’s about assassinating their leaders. We need someone to blend in and go through the initiation. Guess who they like the most? Young, naive victims like you.” Pheli briefly briefed him as they waited for the yummy pizza.
“Preutians, huh? I guess my ‘form’ is already in their hands.” Phesx said, drawing circles on the back of her hand with his other hand. She thinly smiled, “Of course. HQ’s admins didn’t waste a second when I just pronounced an ‘F’ after proposing someone else in my group.”
“I also had your information with me if the agreed, ready to give it away. I work fast, don’t I?” Pheli finished with a strong smirk from the left corner of her mouth. Phesx lifted his eyebrows at her with his head tilted leftwards, “No, no. You’re perfect, Riverlye explodes in 1 second without you.”
“No. I think it’s you who would blow up without me.” Pheli countered the sarcastic son of a Preutian. Phesx wasn’t weak either, bombarding her with a disgusting grin, “Nah, I think this one is on the contrary.”
“Y…” Pheli stared at him, wide-eyed. Then, her cheeks slightly pinked. “…you.”
“Oh, here comes your pizza, babe.” Phesx victoriously smiled before looking at the side. The young woman served the pizza herself, smiling at the two lovebirds. “One for our door-holder, another for our door-holder’s reason to earn a bunch. Have a good meal.”
While the young woman spoke for them only, Phesx purposely raised his voice, sounding even boyish-manly. Pheli looked around with her fidgety eyes after he called her in such a corny way. However, after a bite, she calmed down and relaxed, closing her eyes to enjoy the delicacy.
As always, it barely had a taste of grease, and oozed an incredible aroma of species and a few green pieces here and there. Of course, no pineapple. She wasn’t wicked nor heartless.
“…” But then, she opened her eyes and looked up. Phesx was there, only grabbing two slices, eating them slowly as he watched her eat. Pheli was used to this. Phesx simply stared at her and did nothing whenever he wanted.
When she worked, bathed, wasted time in shooting practice, combat dummies, chatting with her female colleagues, selling her bions and weapons, and even things she’d rather not say, or she’ll grow warm up just thinking about them.
Such a thing is something that could be considered in the ‘lower levels’ when debating a relationship’s intimacy, but when it was actually put into practice, Pheli blushed like a teenage girl kissing for her first time. Playing DJ or trying to find the outlet, or both at the same time for him was so embarrassing, but it also made her feel so much closer to him.
Of course, payback came when she did the same to him and watched Phesx and his pottery arts. Nevertheless, instead of feeling ashamed or disgusted by such thoughts as she ate, Pheli seductively stared at him with upturned eyes.
After a while, with Phesx grabbing another 2 slices, Pheli finished another slice before enticingly asking him, “Is this to fill my belly before filling me, or to keep me quiet from your late night ‘duties’ lately? Nobody rushes missions a week before taking 2 weeks of rest.”
“Mn,” Phesx’s eyes stiffened. Before he could speak, Pheli slowly blinked and said, “Riverlye already knows. Do you think they wouldn’t tell what someone as crazy as you would want to do before having a short break? Even if your body wasn’t… weird, they would still be curious.”
“So, are they… not amused with what I’ve been doing?” Phesx quickly accepted it. But he had to be sure. He didn’t want to stop.
Pheli smiled at him, looking just cute. “They don’t care, of course. It’s just that they don’t wish to treat their mad dog like it’s a puppy instead. Do you see?”
Seeing her wide smile, showing some teeth, and her celeste eyes sincerely staring at him. Phesx felt perplexed for a moment. Then, he spoke in a breathy tone, “I see.”
Phesx took her hands firmly, bending over bit by bit before kissing them. They smelled of pizza, too, but that only made the notion a bit better. Pheli looked with fully opened eyes at him, at his head as he bent, and his eyes as he sat back straight on his chair.
“Finish your meal before I take you for a ride, eh?” Phesx smoothly whispered to her face without parting his eyes away. She looked at him, dumbfounded and silly, before rubbing his backhands with her thumbs. Lightly responding, “Okay.”
… The night continued to progress, nobody could stop it, time was always neutral…
And as time passed, the clients began leaving, and soon, the Pizzeria welcomed less and less nightly customers. Leaving a few minutes after the last client, Phesx brought his gal outside the Pizzeria, whose owners bid him farewell with knowing expressions.
After going for a ride for an hour, they returned to his house. Phesx watched as half the moon colored the top of Pheli’s head as her butt swayed, inviting him as they went up the stairs. A night of passion ensued into the softest of truths breathed into the air from their mouths. Once and again.
. . .
2 days later. Riverlye HQ.
Phesx walked out of Emer’s study. The old man had 2 piles of brand-new pizzas. They would keep their warmth and aroma for long, even if Emer ate them all. The old man was less and less talkative, but he treated Phesx well.
Lately, as Phesx became capable enough to avoid Emer’s strikes even as Emer went almost all-out, and returned the favor by plucking some hairs from the oldie’s shins, Emer guided him.
Phesx didn’t feel he was being given an easy hand after tasting the hard one with broken, bruised lips. Instead, Emer seemed to finally want to see something from him, so whenever Phesx lacked in something he didn’t even know could exist as something lacking, he taught the young boy.
It couldn’t be said Phesx could learn more from only movements, and that he needed to meet other ‘snakes’ who could make his limits seem too little a bar to become satisfied to advance. But Phesx learned strange little things like the hidden meanings behind words he wouldn’t have understood as a kid, or a tone that’d tell him if to run from or remain polite to someone.
They didn’t correlate. One was the secret world’s teachings, the other his ‘intuition’ since he was a kid, or at least since he could remember. But they all felt perfectly the same thing.
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Phesx walked into the workshop, sweating and still bruised, but only by half of compared to what he’d gone through before, as the door opened in less than a second. He smirked when he saw this, as it meant his status was definitely growing; somewhere, somehow, but growing.
“Ah, ahh ahh ahh…” Phesx stood stiff on the doorstep as a black woman moaned over Waleks’s counter with her lower back against it. They looked at him, wanting to know who dared interrupt them, when they saw Phesx, and he looked at them.
Both parties fell silent, speechless… helpless. Waleks thrust in one last time before looking back, both his and the beauty’s bodies were fully bare, but at least they used Waleks’s furniture. Pheli has long told him of how Waleks used her furniture, trying to give her hints in the past.
“Where is your girl? I thought she would at le- oh,” Phesx frowned, wanting to go grab his things. He felt curious that Waleks wasn’t drowning in pleasure with his medic, when a brown, fully bare beauty came out of the showers. “Right.”
“Hehe,” the medic giggled, not bothering to cover, even spreading her legs to stand a few meters before him. Phesx closed his eyes and opened them with a dramatic pause before commenting after Waleks resumed his physical activities…
“At least have some respect.”
“Uh? Ah, sorry. Here, I’ll let you pick them and where. Don’t feel burdened, they’re all on me.” Waleks turned his head to Phesx again, wearing an idiotic expression as he and the black beauty were drowning into each other.
“…” Phesx tilted his head to the right, giving Waleks a stare only Pheli usually gave him before. Now, she just ignores him and threatens, but even that stopped happening a few weeks ago. However, Waleks met this beauty now, and his girlfriend suddenly wanted to share him with her heart open to another, but one that would value him as she does.
Long story short, Phesx wasn’t good at just killing, he was the perfect wingman. Regardless, Waleks understood he over spoke. As Phesx looked to his right, still outside the workshop, and returned his stare into the workshop, Waleks called out to his first girlfriend.
“Darling, could you bring his stuff? Aaggh, yeah… Um, sniff. Yeah, just give it to him.”
Phesx’s left eyebrow jumped again with Waleks’s wording. The medic smiled at Phesx before turning around to seductively walk into the storage room. Then, she returned, with Phesx’s heavy bag around her shoulder and torso like it weighed a couple of feathers at most.
It was a bag with the size of an obese short adult, and it was full, but there she was, walking to its owner while her breasts swayed and bounced.
When she took it off her shoulder and passed it to Phesx, something dropped behind her, a pen that Phesx didn’t recognize as his or Pheli’s. He lifted his left eyebrow again, ‘At least she didn’t open my bag to use something of mine.’
Then, as expected, she groped herself a bit before turning around and bent over. At first, her legs were crossed, but then, she crouched, opening them wide. The medic smiled at Waleks, also winking at him, when they suddenly heard what their hearing couldn’t listen to prior, Pheli’s voice.
“Mn. Not a bad product. How much to just own you? Too problematic to rent. Let’s just grab you and go. What say you, my man?” Pheli looked at Phesx after voicing. Phesx just looked at her, his eyes all on her, and hers on him.
As Waleks and the beauty he was connected to sweated, Pheli hit a button on the wall. The door closed immediately, giving Phesx a glare that seemed dangerous, but one he couldn’t help but to smirk to. Thus, as gasps of relief sounded from inside the workshop, Phesx hugged his woman’s shoulders with his left arm and easily carried his bag with his right hand.
“Let’s go, let’s go. There’s still time, and Waleks should arrive on time, but I somehow… became enlightened in something.” Phesx said. Pheli lifted her eyebrows, letting them jump up and down once smoothly. “Oh yeah? What’s that? I hope you don’t shut your eyes close when you do ‘that’.”
“I won’t. I’ll also speak a lot, so you know how many things I have to tell you and…” Phesx smoothed the beast with sweet things, leading her into a cornered space to sneak attack her.
… After talking about life, an indifferent, cold, resting-faced Pheli walked through the corridors… with Phesx hugging her neck with his right arm. Whenever he nudged her neck with his arm, just a bit, she’d gladly rest her head on him.
Before arriving at the administration, she stepped up and met the rest of the group before appointing them for the mission. Now, official or not, Phesx would be recognized in Pheli’s group. Before, he was called out as an Artista. From now on, he could only be called for a group mission along his group.
After being checked, the group headed to the tunnels. This time, they wouldn’t go far, and there wasn’t a shortage of time, but they wouldn’t go slow neither.
The group arrived at a long hallway, where the same number of guards from before supervised. Crossing the hallway, they arrived at the underground landing zone. It remained the same as before, with only a smaller transporting chopper.
There were only 2 other groups waiting for them, and no Instructor. At once, it became obvious Pheli was leading this, perhaps vying for the Instructor position after a while, and at last.
“How much aircraft does Riverlye have?” Phesx asked as they went in, followed by the other 2 groups. Pheli stood beside the pilot cabin’s entrance, holding a handle sticking from the ceiling beside them. The chopper only had enough space for about 40 people at most, and only 1 column.
“No warplanes, but I think 15 helicopters, all for transport or cargo. If we had a combat helicopter, we’d be pursued by the military everywhere.” Pheli softly uttered as everyone sat down, orderly and giving her respect.
Pheli looked at them before banging the cabin’s entrance with her right sole. The ramp closed as the 2 main rotors at the sides began working, and so were the auxiliary, smallish ones further behind them. Then, she looked at them as the interiors went dark before a dim red light illuminated everything.
“We’re moving onto Chtsté. We’ll take 2 to 4 days for this mission, or a week if there are any changes to the convention’s schedules. Choose your young partakers. This one will be their leader. Follow his command, and worse comes to worst, he might just help you survive.”
“The ‘cult’ we’re after have been known to sell bodies of females and males alike, all of which nobody will miss, except a few family members. Don’t misunderstand or charity for a good will, we’re being paid well by a criminal lord who wants to mess someone else’s business but is too afraid of the dirt, and the difficulty.” Pheli adamantly reminded everyone.
“Your fellow Artistas have already worked inside and placed cameras, but only around their narthex. We’ll be able to see what’s inside, and use that footage for our employer’s benefit. Don’t forget to wear your white smiley faces masks. You won’t be able to use red there. It is either white or you’re an infidel.”
“Is this Fox?” A group leader asked after Pheli paused, who waited for them to choose their partakers instead. She looked at the person but said nothing. The group leader lightly nodded before looking at a tomboy with short hair and more than humble body. She stood up and nodded at Pheli, “I’ll be in your hands, Snow, Fox.”
“Me too, I guess.” - “Yep, what else? We could see something we’d been talked about so much.” - “We’re counting on you.”
Another person stood up from the other group, talking to each other before looking at Phesx. He looked at them, analyzing them before nodding. “Do try to do as I said in case we need to do something quickly. How fast are you?”
The other 2 youngsters looked at each other before staring at Phesx with newfound interest. Pheli looked down at him, proudly smiling from the right corner of her mouth.
… They flew for just 2 hours. The helicopter could be faster, much faster than the other helicopter the group boarded before, but that wouldn’t help in a tunnel where they had to remain hidden. Thus, they could only go at the maximum speed as in that other mission. Even then, they only spent 2 hours from Sargonde’s center to Chtsté.
Their target was in the southeast of Chtsté, west from where their contractor wanted them to destroy someone’s business and show it to the country. They stopped at the former’s territory, where their employer willingly aided them with as many vehicles to infiltrate in covert as possible. By then, everyone had their masks and cloaks on.
Phesx felt strange. Before, even if they met whoever contracted them, it would only be a weird, brief stare before ignoring it, taking them to be one of those who just liked superhero names and suits and nothing else. Phesx experienced in when personally delivering his rescues.
Now, however, not only were they stared at like they were godly mercenaries in the aforesanctum order, the criminal lord who hired them came to see them. Although there was some disappointment in his eyes when he saw them with their ‘equipment’ on, he seemed to understand, somehow.
What was more flabbergasting was the ‘welcome ceremony’ the boss prepared, lining up the toughest and most loyal people in his gang to guide them into mediocre vehicles with thin armor.
Everyone glanced at them with 3 parts fear, 2 parts challengingly, and 5 parts respect. It was comical when Phesx thought about it in the moment, but afterwards… he realized something. And as they were on their way to the western side of the small region, Phesx asked Pheli.
“Has there been any change to the internet? About us?” Phesx frowned behind his mask. Pheli tilted her head before seriously replying with a question, “Do you want us to become celebrity couples?”
“…” Phesx was speechless: (´･_･`).
Phesx could hear Pheli smile madly beneath her mask. He shook his head, helpless. Teon and Layo held their chuckles, while Imán and another man he sat together outside their group shook their heads with smiles failed to be restrained.
“Well, there are only 2 names remaining. The contest became more and more heated as time passed. And they’re even crediting other lagjs’ works of art to us, making them all resent us.” Pheli patted his thigh and said, casually looking ahead afterwards.
“There is ‘Hidden Eyes’ and ‘Special Agents’ now,” said Pheli. Then, thinking of something, she looked at him, resting her head on the backrest. “Lately, the internet has been seeing more and more of these ‘exposed jobs from the shadows’. Many crazy people who spoke of these things before and were buried in the sand of endless nets are now resurfacing because of it all.”
“Some of them work in Lýmoca for certain business. There’s actually 4 widely known influencers who have advertised for the cult we’re targeting. It’s something, isn’t it?” Pheli said, looking at the front with somewhat of a ‘lost’ voice towards the end.
Phesx turned his eyes down, thinking as he also faced the front, deeply falling into some thinking. “Yeah…”
Layo, the caring young woman, leaned forward from the back seats to the middle seats before smiling and speaking to him. “We are actually so popular that the government has officially started investigating us. This made our ‘handsome’ president gain rebukes and mockery from other nations.”
“Is it not so bad elsewhere?” Phesx asked, frowning and feeling strange. Layo kept her smile as she returned to her seat. Her long chestnut hair flew between him and Pheli before it was pulled away. Layo continued, “Well, countries like ANS? Nah. Zyckevele and KAA are also still a gentle image in our world. But K Tribes’ nations, Wondurs, and the EPA Commonwealth are seeing something… similar.”
“Why is this so?” Phesx pouted. Pheli grabbed his left hand and started playing with it, intertwining fingers on and off, kissing them, and giving them massages.
Layo sighed, “Aah~. All supercontinents have some organized crime, whether the environmental friendly polies want to admit it or not. Lýmoca just happens to be one of those with the largest number of them. Oof, but compared to Moonblue’s south, we’re not as bad.”
“Hey, be careful there, alright? Infiltration missions are usually the most dangerous, even when our information is unquestionable.” Layo gently expressed, pushing the back of his seat.
Phesx nodded, looking into Pheli’s celeste eyes, who looked at him serenely. “I won’t die so young. Maybe if I rock the world once or two. Not before.”
Pheli rolled her eyes, but they smiled at him afterwards. They saw each other.
…