Bel: Visit even more rainbow drinkers.

"Oh dear, oh no, oh lamentation," you say. "Marauders! Brigands. I am undone."

You hit him in the face with a frog.

 

Out of sheer surprise, you catch the thing by one leg in your teeth. The fluffcheep sets up an excited racket. He's probably proud as puff that you've not only bested your violet enemy, you've finally caught your own dinner. With that in mind, you catch the freaked-out frog in your hand as you burst out laughing, and hold the wriggling thing out for your pet to peck in the head.

"No, you eat it," you laugh, "I'm stuffed, couldn't touch another bite." You roll off of Erskin to lie in the creek yourself, laughing until your stomach hurts.

 

"Look at you, mighty hunter," you say, paddling muddy water over him. "We'll have you worked up to puff-tailed hopbeasts in no time."

The two of you splash and snap at eachother for a while, getting pebbles lodged in various unmentionable places, before a prickle goes down your spine— a tiny sound, a frisson of electrics, just on the edge of perception— and then again, a little closer.

"Hsst," you say to Bel, stilling him with your arm out, and turn carefully towards the source of the disturbance, fins pricked. "Something's coming."

(i can write them, i just want bel to have a reaction turn)

 

You go perfectly still for a moment, not even breathing, but you can't make out anything over the rill of the creek. You don't doubt Erskin for a moment, though. You snatch your mostly-dry shorts off the shrubbery with one hand and shove your pet under the same shrub with the other. "Stay," you tell him sternly in a very soft, serious voice; he hunkers down and shuffles half-atop his still-twitching frog as if he thinks it's about to be stolen. Good enough.

Now you're beginning to catch just the hint of whatever Erskin's hearing. You take the moment's grace to use your double-equip slot and get out a combat knife as your secondary specibus, stick it in the sand among the reeds at your feet, hidden, just in case. Your main specibus, you set to fistkind, but you don't equip it yet.

Then, with an encouraging grin to Erskin, you grab your wet hankie and stand up, as if you're just innocently having a bath. If the noisemaker isn't hostile, this might keep them from becoming so.

 

You blanch as Bel stands up, but too late, his back is turned, he's set to engage. Biting back a hiss— no noise, landdwellers don't have good hearing but no noise— you roll carefully out of the creek, drift from one rock to the next through the grass, circle a quarter of the way around the oasis under as much cover as you can. You're wet, good— you dust yourself, your horns, and think for a moment before you pull a scaley pelt over your shoulders— it's from a swamp biome but the mottled brown-grey-white scales are good enough for a hide between two large, leaning stones. You've got a line on Bel in profile, and it's strange to be seeing a friend, in this situation, someone besides Reggie to work with.

The approachers are seven, maybe eight kids, lowbloods, one or two mid-, and your gut clenches. Bel bloody well loves lowbloods, and he's just standing there smiling, waving a bit, while at least two, maybe three of the lot veritably sing out with power. They've the look of questants, tired but purposeful, with fresh scratches and bruises— a scavenger hunt, an archaeological dig, an endurance test, you're not sure.

They're not obviously armed, but that doesn't mean anything, really. You flip through your strifecards, checking over your pistols— all cleaned, fixed up, loaded, all primed to shoot on a moment's notice. You draw two— there'll be time enough for your blade should it come down to a scrum. You can draw that as you charge.

 

When they come close enough, you greet them cheerfully. "Looking for water? I won't stop you, but you might want to go upstream of where we've been having a bath." You glance down, and -- Erskin is gone. Just. Poof. Vanished.

He left you to face these guys alone? No; you won't believe that.

But you said 'we' and here you are by yourself, so you have to cover lest you give away that someone's hiding. You add, "Don't step on my lusus, he's hunting frogs somewhere in here."

The whole time, of course, you're observing them carefully, cataloguing every detail. Age, size, caste, probable strifekind, clothing, bearing, possible injuries, points of weakness. They look like kids on an adventure, and there's every chance they won't start trouble if you don't. But if they do, you think the odds are fairly even. You'd be more confident if Erskin hadn't made himself scarce.

 

The trolls spread out, drifting towards and then around Bel in a cautious envelopment maneuver. An orangeblood's eyes glitter, then spark as he licks his lips nervously.

"Yeah, we're, uh, we weren't expecting anyone to be here," a rustblood says, gesturing vaguely at their phone. "Who are you, dude, are you with Allain?"

 

"I don't know who that is, and if you don't want me to think you're about to attack me, you need to stop surrounding me." There's a subdued glitter as your steel knuckledusters materialize on your hands. "I'm here for peace and quiet and a bit of bouldering. We don't have to fight. Take some water and go."

 

There's a tense moment as the trolls size Bel up, look at one another, and finally split up to go towards the stream. Two midbloods keep watch like peerbeasts, standing stiffly and staring in all directions as the other six party members refill all their empty tanks and canteens, captchaloging each container as soon as it's full.

When they turn to go they split again, filtering warily past Bel in ones and twos— and at some imperceptible signal the pack wheels in a smooth, practiced motion and charges inwards for him, strifekinds snapping into their hands.

 

You must have subconsciously sensed their intent, because you've snatched your knife out of the sand and hucked it at their psionic before you consciously register that they're attacking. You don't wait to watch him go down; you've been picking out your targets since you first stood up.

A fountaining of wet sand where your feet were, and you're in among them, using every bit of terrain you've observed in your time here -- launch from solid rock, shove someone into a thorn bush, skid on soft sand and gut punch someone backwards over a knee-high boulder. By a lucky chance, they've all got melee strifekinds, so you don't have to kill. You crack bones, dislocate joints, knock skulls.

You hope Erskin is watching. He said you must be like lightning on the battlefield. You want him to be proud.

 

Your breath catches in your throat as they explode into violence— you aim, aim again, but you can't be certain of your shots and, and, and anyway, psionics, blazing, you can smell burning hair. You whine softly in the back of your throat, wishing you had Reggie here to hold against you.

Charge, you think, get your bloody sword out and go, but still you curl there, your aim jittering from one clot of bodies to the next. Bel is superb as usual, utterly graceful and composed, nearly dancing with his opponents. Gorgeous. He scatters them, drives them here and there, finally routs the whole lot of them into a scrambling retreat. You lower your pistols, slowly, watching them flee— and then the rustblood turns on his heel, sparking, blazing silver— your fins clamp back, your teeth ache, you know that feeling, a storm building, a rising ringing preparatory build— the dirtscraper puts his hands to his forehead, and you swing your pistols up, not Bel not my friend you can't have him you can't TOUCH HIM LIKE THAT, and you blow both his horns off.

 

For a moment, the desert is silent except for the reverberation of Erskin's shots, so close together that they echo as one -- and then the interlopers go pounding off across the desert in full rout, some of them crying.

Pride and love fill you up like blazing molten fire. You glance to where the faintest plume of gunpowder smoke reveals Erskin's hiding place, and spread your arms wide. "MY RIVAL CAN BEAT UP YOUR RIVAL!" you bellow giddily. "AND YOUR LUSUS! YOU BETTER RUN!"

When their dust plume is receding over the horizon, you plop down on the rock Erskin was perching on before, and peer under the nearby bush to make sure the fluffcheep is all right.

 

You're frozen for a long moment, watching the strangers run— you'd normally wait half an hour, change hides if you couldn't leave outright, and spend the rest of the night camped. But, but Bel. When the strangers are little figures on the horizon, too small to see you, you slide out from between the rocks, slide down the rocks, and jog to Bel's side, brushing dust off your face and horns.

"Are you alright? Were you damaged? Did anyone get anything in you?" You ask, checking him all over. You're trembling and nauseous from the strain of being out in the open this soon, but if he's hurt— and everyone's gone, the fight's over— "This was supposed to be safe I swear, Bel, I didn't know, I, I forgot, it was supposed to be safe but nowhere's safe, I'm so— stupid, fuck, were there knives, are you cut— no one was supposed to come. I didn't know. I didn't think. I thought it would be safe, I'm so stupid, I'm sorry, are you alright—"

 

"Hey. Hey!" You take him by the shoulders and give him a sharp shake. "Breathe! I'm fine, they were scrubs. Thanks for the backup. That was hands-down the best 2x-pistolkind shooting I've ever seen."

 

You take a deep, shuddering breath and drag your hands down your face, trying to get yourself together— trying not to throw up, or burst into tears. You hate this you HATE THIS.

"Why the fuck did you engage with them," you ask, and your voice comes out nearly level. "They didn't have to know we were here and you just— stood up! naked! like something out of some filthy magazine, what did you think was going to happen, did you— did you really— on your own, did you think they WEREN'T GOING TO ROLL YOU? THERE WERE THREE PSIONICS ON THE TEAM YOU COULD HAVE DIED, BEL! DO YOU FUCKING WELL KNOW HOW LONG THAT MANY TROLLS WOULD TAKE TO KILL YOU?"

You may be yelling. Just a bit. With your fists around his horns. Whoops.

 

"Yes, actually," you say sharply; not yelling, but a bit alarmed and a bit annoyed. You reach up and pry his hands off your horns, and hold them. "I've been fighting trolls since I was five, you know this. And of course they knew someone was here, the flyer is right there. They would've searched until they found someone. I'm not stupid, Erskin, and I'm fine, we're all fine. Pull yourself together."

 

"Oh, you've been fighting trolls since you were five! That's alright then! You've been fighting trolls since you were five, you've got everything handled, you know everything, you're an impervious machine because you've been fighting trolls since you were five!" You laugh, sharp and bitter, and let him go. You step back. You rub your face, struggling for calm— you find it in a sort of strange, icy fury.

You square your shoulders, raise your chin, point at your left horn.

"My left horn is about half an inch shorter than my right. When I was five it was hit with a rock. Until I turned out my sylladex. I didn't have much, then, so they kept hitting. They got sloppy and missed a stroke and I bit their hand off."

You point at the bite wound on your shoulder, the big arc that stretches halfway down your chest. "This was someone's mom. I didn't know to hide while I slept, and she took me back to her charge to share. She had me confused with another highblood engaged in a revenge cycle. The girl just didn't care. I was five."

The mess on the side of your forehead, that cuts through your eyebrow. "I needed salt. I wanted to go inland. Some other trolls in the queue suggested I pay for everyone. I declined. They insisted. I was, oh, six, maybe. What were you doing when you were six? With your campaigns? Your points and ribbons? Your paintballs. And you went home, after, didn't you."

There's some sort of horror building in his wide blue eyes, some kind of pity.

"I didn't hide well enough," you say, pointing to an old bullet wound— it had gone through a significant mass of your vascular pump, and out the other side.

"I didn't hide well enough," you say, pointing to the faint sheen on your wrists, under the fresher bite marks, where the psionic restraints had chewed down to the muscle over the course of a day.

"I didn't hide well enough," you say, pointing to the mottled line across your jaw— they'd worn your rings.

"This," you say, drawing your thumbclaw along your vivisection scar. "Seven sweeps. I told Jethro this one. I shared a cave with a nice couple on an awful rainy morning. We had tea. Told jokes. I woke up to her hands inside me. After I got loose I had to pack myself back together. Good luck, wasn't it, they had a book. On how to do that."

As for the rest— the branching burn damage patterns of most psionic attacks fade fast, really. They don't scar.

You put your hand on his shoulder, run the pad of your thumb over the scar there, the bite you left in him— hardly there, the softest gentle line of lighter skin.

"You went to fight," you tell him. "You went to fight, like it was something you could do and then be done with. You think in terms of, of armies, of command, of campaigns, and I know those are hard, those are bloody and deadly you've done damn well to win all that you have. But you don't get it, Bel, you're so smart but you don't get it."

You hardly know what it is, though, just that he's so hopelessly wrong. "You could have died. You could have. If you'd been as alone as they thought you could have died a stupid, pointless death out in the middle of nowhere. The world doesn't let up. You're not safe. There's nowhere safe."

You scrub your face again in your palms, sit down tiredly. The worst of the trembling is over, at least.

 

You've been sitting down for half his recitation, a lump growing in your throat. After he falls silent, it takes you a few moments to work up the words:

"The thing you don't get, Erskin, is that I know. I've always known. We were hatched to die. It's what we're for. Don't you understand?" You reach out a hand uncertainly, then let it fall to your knee. "We're trolls, my love. Trolls don't die of old age. We fight until someone kills us and then we finally get to stop."

 

You look at him, horrified into stillness.

"And you spend all your time fretting about other people's suicidal ideation, do you? Bel Kadros, what the bloody rotten fuck."

 

You give a soft laugh and spread your hands. "Don't tell Pancho, she gets upset. Now you know why I'm brave, I guess!" You shrug.