“Would that even hurt you?” Mata asked Elara about her bridge jumping remark as they passed through the curtain. Elara tilted her head thoughtfully and shrugged.
“Dunno, I’ve never tried,” she answered candidly.
“Well,” Niho chimed in, “height is probably the biggest factor.” The space on the other side was a night and day difference from the throne room turned banquet hall just outside. Where Bascimus made his hall a busy, crowded space with an unwritten code of social conduct this room the sharks led them to felt more like a break room in a factory center.
The walls and floor were still made of the same black sandstone as the rest of the palace but there the similarities ended. Instead of fine dining and pristine displays the much smaller room had one bare wooden table with bench seating and countless dings and dents cut into its surface, a glass front fridge stocked with local beverages, and a lounge space with two presumably scavenged recliners and an equally past it’s prime couch situated in a half circle around a wall mounted screen.
Four other men, pit sharks by their size and armor, sat around it with their helmets off and controllers in hand. An ancient, low resolution game played on the screen. The view was split into four equal segments, each a view for one of the players as they took turns gunning one another down virtually as the kartorim were led in.
“True, true,” Mata replied, “gravity as well, we never established that this was a one G scenario.”
Save for a bowl of assorted fruit on the table there wasn’t much food inside, but Voy didn’t mind. He’d eaten during the weeks prior to landing and wouldn’t feel hunger’s petition for a few days more. He assumed the pit sharks must operate in some similar degree of metabolic efficiency, they seemed no more pressed than he was about skipping a meal.
“Make yourselves at home. Fruit’s on the table, cans of gakk are in the fridge, help yourselves,” Niho said as he fell into an empty recliner. With a twist the pit shark unlocked his helmet from his armor. Violated hermetic seals hissed as the air mingled between his armor and the atmosphere around him. Pulling his helmet free Voy finally got a look at the man beneath, he appeared somewhere in his late thirties with a shaved head. His complexion was the same caramel tan as the majority of people he’d seen on Filigree.
The same could not be said for the others seated around the game screen. Sure they all had a distinctly darker than expected tan that came from exposure to the intense sun outside, but there was no commonality besides. Each looked different, foreign even, in their own way and in so doing only drew greater attention to the armor that they wore in common.
“Why’d you bring them in here?” a curmudgeonly looking pit shark with the faintest suggestion of age wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a handlebar mustache grumbled without looking away from the screen.
“The grey one dropped the big ‘R’ on the bass, didn’t even kneel,” Mata answered before twisting his own helmet off. All four of the sharks playing the game gasped or whistled with impressed surprise. Before finding a place to sit, Mata popped open the fridge and tossed two colorful beverage cans with filigrean text on them to Voy and Elara.
“Got some stones on you thurgy,” a younger looking pit shark with the least painted armor said. Tired of being out of the loop, Voy furrowed his brow and pressed again, looking at Niho.
“You dodged my question earlier. Why is it such a big deal to drop ‘the’ before saying Raikon?” Voy asked while cracking open the can Mata had tossed him. Uncomfortable silence passed between the sharks before Niho offered an answer.
“It’s a local superstition,” Niho tried to leave it at that, but Voy held an expectant gaze. “For a few centuries people have believed that a figure by the proper name ‘Raikon’ would rise from the Onimangu and lead Filigree and the Buffer at large into some kind of golden age,” Niho looked to the other sharks for approval, “Bascimus found out about this legend a few decades back and became obsessed with it. He calls himself ‘the raikon’ because he misunderstood the original proj-” Handlebars shot him a deadly serious look, cutting him off.
“He misread the original legend and, because Bascimus is the sort of fool who needs instructions on the bottom of a bucket to pour it out, hedoubled down rather than admit his mistake. He’s an arrogant little shit with a god complex and you pissed him off by not playing pretend with him. Happy?” Handlebars cut in, his gruff voice saturated with gripes and anger older than Voy himself. Mata handed the flustered looking Niho a can of gakk which he gladly accepted, cracked open, and took a long sip from. Voy followed suit and immediately regretted it. He nearly gagged the foul, acidic liquid back into the can.
“What the hell is this stuff?” he said holding the can up to his eyes in a vain attempt to discern some knowledge of the substance within.
“It’s gakk, like uh… beer? Seltzer? What do you call the kind of drinks that make you silly in Thurgia?” Mata answered Voy with a question of his own.
“Both and then some, there’s lots,” Elara replied with a mixture of concern and amusement at Voy’s reaction to gakk. Voy cleared his throat and banished the last of the acrid after taste.
“But they don’t work on us,” Voy paused, realizing ‘us’ was too vague, “Kartorim I mean. Toxins filter out too fast, we never feel it.”
Mata smiled sagely, beckoning the expression to ripple through the rest of the sharks in a silent, shared amusement. “And why do you think we started brewing gakk?” Mata cracked his own can as he spoke, sucking down a long sip. Voy’s face tingled as the swig he’d taken earlier metabolized. “Gakk would probably melt a regular person, but if it’s anything for you like it is for us it’ll just get you a little buzzed.”
A single hiccup from the table caused Voy to turn and see Elara has begun discovering gakk as well. She crunched the can and tossed it’s empty carcass into a trash bin by the room’s entrance.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Kinda tingly. Can I have another?” she stood up from the table as she asked, batting her eyelashes. Mata gestured over to the fridge.
“Go nuts.”
As she got up to fetch herself another beverage Voy tried to let himself relax, if only a little. Whatever Bascimus’ eccentricities, he was preoccupied for now. These ‘pit sharks’ seemed pleasant enough despite being gene-forged. The living data swimming in Voy’s nervous system could wait a little longer.
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Elara hadn’t intended to take Mata’s ‘Go nuts’ to such an extreme. The first gakk was just a tingle, the second was just a faint warmth. She’d never been able to get ‘goofy’ as the sharks put it. Ever since childhood she’d been totally inoculated to the effects of alcohol, it denatured before it ever reached her bloodstream. How was she to know each gakk would make the next one easier, greasing the gears of impulse along the way?
The pit shark with the wicked Handlebar mustache sat across from her now and a pile of empty gakk cans had accumulated around them. After Elara’s fourth can he’d taken it as some sort of challenge he was obligated to answer. Both were well past the point of inebriation. A permanent wide-mouth grin perched on Elara’s face. Handlebar’s swayed on the bench seat across from her with a determined yet unfocused scowl. His pit shark brothers stood around them both, morbidly fascinated by the impromptu contest of livers.
Elara picked up another can and narrowed her eyes at it as she tried to grab the pull tab. Her fingers couldn’t quite coordinate the effort. With an annoyed huff she jammed her pointer finger down through the can’s top, crunching metal aside and spilling some of the drink on the table. Yanking back her finger she brought the open can to her lips, turned the bottom of the can up and drank down it’s contents. Once it was empty she let her arm flop down from her face and land clumsily on the table.
“Anotherrr one for meeeeeeeee…” she taunted, crushing the can in her hand. Handlebars groaned and fell into an elbow supported lean on the table. Grabbing his next can with too much force made him lose balance and wobble, nearly falling back from the table. Instead of fiddling with the can’s pull tab the pit shark slapped it’s top against the table’s edge. It ruptured and sprayed a misty stream of gakk into the air.
Handlebars wasted no time in pressing the rupture up to his mouth and squeezing the can, forcing all the liquid out in one uncomfortable gulp. Gasping for breath after, Handlebars tilted his head back and once again nearly fell out of his seat before catching himself. The crumpled, empty can fell from his hand into the floor. Elara covered her mouth with one hand while she laughed and pointed at the wobbling shark across from her with the other.
Voy stood behind Handlebars a bit, still holding the same half-empty can of gakk he’d started with. Still giggling Elara looked up at him and saw the unintentional worry in his eyes, his mouth tense with unspoken concern and a smile he forced. His arms were folded across his chest and he rocked on his heels. Her giddiness caught on a net of sudden sobriety and the mountain of empty cans beside her was, for a fleeting moment, just as alarming as it should have been.
“You’re up ‘rim, unless you,” Handlebars choked on a burp, “unless you wanna ketchel out.” Elara’s brief foray into self awareness faded. Mata was offering her another can.
“WHAT,” she yelled without meaning to, “is a KETCHEL?” she snatched the can and bit into it, draining it the same way Handlebars had. This is fun, she thought. All her life she had to walk on eggshells around people. She could relax and lean into a moment because of who and what she was. It had been her dream to one day have someone who would break at too tight a hug or cover their ears at too loud a shout to call a friend. Since meeting Voy she’d gradually felt less and less like an escaped zoo animal and more like a person. For the first time she could remember she didn’t feel out of place. Not even a little.
“A ketchel is a type of fish that lives near the beaches, big flat creatures. They’ll make chase if you run from them, but if you turn and run or swim at them they dart for deep water,” one of the sharks that hadn’t yet spoken chimed in to answer her question. He was a touch paler than the others and the top of his head was devoid of hair. Baldness had not yet claimed him fully, however, and a band of brown hair clung to the sides and back of his head.
Elara went wide eyed and clapped once at him. “THANK you misterrr…. Uhm… halfway hair guy?” He wrinkled his nose at the unintended slight.
“It’s Meka,” he corrected with obvious offense.
In front of Elara a barely functioning Handlebars stared intently at an unopened can of gakk, contemplating a mystery only he could divine from it’s label. In all likelihood the ‘mystery’ was whether or not he’d stay upright after another can of the stuff.
While Elara waited for him to decide if he would lose now or later, she realized she never got the other shark’s names. This, she would remedy. Gripping the edge of the table with both hands she leaned forward with a wild eagerness in her green eyes.
“I do not know you,” she inclined her head over zealously to the youngest looking shark, “or you,” A repeat of the same action followed, this time directed at the dread-locked shark. Straightening and placing her hand against her chest with a metallic click, she cleared her throat and spoke in an official, pompous sounding variation of her allodoan accent. “I am Elara of House Caldion, er, sort-of of House Caldion. It’s messsyyyyy…” she trailed off for a moment before recollecting herself, “Who are you?”
“I’m Karik,” the youngest looking one answered first, “You’re gorgeous by the way.” Elara hung on that a moment. The remark didn’t make her mad perse, but… she moved only her eyes over to Voy in a wordless request for assistance. Voy did not see this gesture however. He was too busy staring daggers at Karik. His gakk can was crushed in his hand and the fluid it once contained had spilled into a puddle on the floor. Karik took a step away from Elara and Voy, not lifting his gaze from the floor. Elara’s heart fluttered and she became giddy again as she looked to the last man.
“I’m Patuk,” he said, nodding his head forward once as an informal greeting. Satisfied she turned back to her opponent. Handlebars looked less motivated by the second to continue.
“Alright Handlebars, moment of truth,” she dropped her over-tuned accent and spoke more naturally again. Blinking away his contemplation, Handlebars shot her a puzzled look.
“What did you,” he sequestered a burp, “call me?” Elara suddenly realized ‘Handlebars’ wasn’t actually his name. Mata evidently found humor in the development, balling his hand into a fist over his mouth while he disguised his chuckle into a cough.
“I called you Handlebarssss,” Elara reiterated, “because of your cool mustache.” The confused, bristling pit shark softened at the compliment, blushing the tiniest bit.
“...fairnuff,” he concluded before setting the gakk can down unopened. Patuk slapped his hand against his defeated comrade’s back.
“Good effort brother,” Patuk reassured him, “fucking ‘rims right?” Handlebars nodded listlessly.
“Ffffucking ‘rims…” Handlebars agreed while being helped to his feet. Lighthearted congratulatory first bumps went Elara’s way from Niho, Mata, and Meka as she stood up from her own seat. The gakk most definitely hindered her balance. The room spun and tilted as she got back to her feet. Stumbling soon followed, but the combination of poor balance with near instant kartorim reaction time led to an odd wobble-walk that never fully resulted in a fall.
She bit her lip as she tried to re-assert control over herself and struggled against laughing at the inherent humor in her predicament. Salvation came as a sudden, silent embrace as she leaned too hard to one side. She looked up and Voy’s steel colored eyes met her own. Worry still populated them, his pupils widened as he looked down at her and assessed to what degree she needed him.
“Can you stand on your own?” he whispered. She smiled sheepishly and let her head fall against his chest.
“I may need a minute,” she confessed with a modicum of embarrassment. Voy only held her tighter.
“Take as long as you need,” Elara closed her eyes and let her body begin its work breaking down the gakk. The intensely toxic compounds within resisted resisted more firmly than most. A moment passed silently with Elara teetering on the edge of sleep while Voy served as a scaffold for her to remain somewhat standing. Eventually the spinning sensation subsided and her thoughts became less soupy, enough that she could open her eyes and look around again.
The pit sharks had all gone and clustered around the TV again, back to the game they’d been playing when she first walked in. Voy remained where he was holding her up in his warm embrace. He’d turned his head to watch the game played on the screen, but otherwise remained committed to holding her up. That was another new sensation, she realized. Growing up she was almost always the strongest person around. Her mother disappeared when she was young.
Her father was always elsewhere, never near enough to comfort her but always able to send someone to keep her in line and safely stowed away on some ship or backwater planet. When she needed someone to lean on the only people around would buckle under her weight. Until now, until this very moment. She brought up and arm and squeezed it around Voy, reveling in his ability to not crumple under the strain.
So complete was her bliss in the moment that she didn’t register the whine of approaching aircraft engines, the missiles that streaked out from them, or the explosion from their impact until the blast wave rippled over her and set the world spinning again.
