Runner ch9 pt VII

    Contrary to movies portraying pearls of awesomeness strung up one right after the other, more wait-time and less do-time actually filled real life. So, like the army, for every hour of excitement and action there were four, or even more, hours of preparation, planning, practice, and clean up around it. Belongs to kagenokarasu.deviantart.com.
    Clippous handed me a laptop, one as thin as a child’s first book but wholly unbendable, with the instructions to write, in as much detail as I can muster, everything that happened since the hijacking until the moment I stepped on to the Lauriat.
    The past several hours of adventure, made for countless more hours of sitting, typing, and racking my brains about what happened. Best of all, I got to type it all left handed.
    At least she granted me permission to sit with the crew, Erras in particular, while I worked the report. Not solely for their company but for help in remembering some details I know I would forget.
    Like, “How many came to pick me up after I puked up my intestines?”
    “Four,” said Delus.
    “I thought it was three,” countered Erras.
    Delus shook his head. “The yellow Rhel, the Huyt, and two engineered guards.” He pointed to his fingers while counting.
    “Oh,” Erras exhaled. “I only recall seeing one.”
    “Ok, four became my escort,” I said and typed away until I got bored and my mind wandered. “You know, normally in cases where a super-awesome, one of a kind person, like me, saves everyone from certain annihilation, they get rewarded with like, a leadership position, like captaincy, or something. All the movies are like that, so it’s got to be true, right?”
    Delus huffed a laugh and Erras smiled.
    “But that means I’d have to be an officer, and bleh.” I stuck my tongue out. I barely succeeded at being enlisted.
    “You’re too young to be an officer,” Erras said.
    “There’s age requirements for that?” I dropped my left arm down to dangle and collect blood; it didn’t like all the typing I’ve made it do. “You’re not much older than me.”
    “I’m almost 50,” Erras said with a curious look on his face.
    What? “What?!” That old? So old! “How are you that old?” Oh my God, so gross, I’ve been having lewd thoughts about someone so much older than me?! “How is that possible?” What is wrong with me?
    Nory started laughing.
    “I’m not that old.” Erras frowned.
    Delus cleared the air and said, attempting to sound serious, “Most of us live to be 200.”
    I stopped my sputtering and choking.
    “No one dies at 100 and some even live to 300, naturally.”
    “Besides,” Erras’s defenses rose, “you’re all of 23. Hardly more than a child,” he muttered the last, deep under his breath.
    “Ha! What?” I held my left hand over my chest in mock indignation. “You seriously think that?” I laughed. “I turn 31 in October. Next you’ll tell me Erras isn’t your real name.”
    “It’s… not.” He frowned with disgust and looked away.
    Delus failed in his struggle to hold his laugh back, the snorts and gasps breaking past the fist that covered his mouth. When I looked at him, he said, out of breath, his face red with delight. “It’s Ellistirr.”
    I tried not to, I really did, but that snort just erupted from my nose, too late for me to slap my hand over my mouth to stop it. “Who named you that?” I wheezed out, trying not to laugh any more. Do not steal.
    Erras glared at Delus. “My mother, and I’d thank you to stop laughing.”
    Delus didn’t and neither did Nory, but Nory hid his laughter with higher success.
    “Well,” I brushed imaginary dust off the laptop and loudly cleared my throat, “now that we got that cleared up,” I pressed my lips thin to stop the next giggle from escaping, “we can continue on with my homework.”
    Everyone else had their own mini-reports to write, kind of like the dozens of sworn statements I’ve had to write in my life: just their side of the events that would substantiate mine, no big deal.
    I did miss hanging around the crew those few long days when Magenta and all them had kept me in isolation. I also wish I could say that everything worked out, that this crisis completely ended, we got out, and lived happily ever after. I finally got me a man, mama would be so proud, and I could settle down into some sort of white-picket fence kind of life, but as I left Erras’ side one night, deciding the gibberish I wrote made no sense, Birith nudged Verwet, and the latter gestured for me to come closer to his room, and so I did.
    Verwet looked around and tilted his head aside. “We have something we want to ask,” he said quietly.
    I fought a yawn. Sure, sleep can wait just a little longer. No one could leave their rooms but I could come and go as I wanted with a nifty little gadget Clippous gave me: a card that negated the force fields, and I could walk right through them.
    “What is it?”
    Vance sat up on his bed and crossed his legs.
    Verwet and Birith exchanged glances again. “We wanted your opinion on something.” His voice never rose above a conspiratorial whisper.
    My eyebrows rose, less in curiosity and more in growing boredom.
    “We kind of did something we probably weren’t supposed to do.”
    I hummed for him to go on.
    He held a data-stick out, kind of like a thumb drive but smaller in size yet holding far more data than just a terabyte’s worth. “We,” he tilted back to indicate Birith as well, “copied over that facility’s entire database. Background, names, history, everything. Even the secret stuff. We got it all before your Humpty purged it.”
    My eyes widened. Story belongs to kagenokarasu.deviantart.com
    Would that indict more or embroil us in deeper?
    “Keep it,” I whispered. “Don’t tell anyone.”
    He nodded and slipped it back in a pocket.
    Yes, this crisis ended, but this was just the first leg of my journey.

END