Star Rebellion

by Alicia Howell

“That’s what most girls your age would do,” I put in. She glared at me and raised an eyebrow; Water had never been like most girls.

  “Glad that things went well on your end, but how much weaponry were you able to transport back?” Ares ran his hand through his hair, which looked like that had already been done quite a few times. I wondered it was a nervous tendency of his. If so, what was he nervous about?

  “Yea, we got two bags of ammo for AK-47s along with spare guns, probably close to thirtyish hand grenades, more machine gun ammo, but no physical guns for it, and then a decent array of handguns and short blades.” Water ran down the list, using her fingers to count out everything that we managed to procure.

  “How much is left?”

  Water shrugged. “Not sure; we were able to clear out the room, though some of the stuff did get messed up in the grenade fight. I believe it was also a smaller room, but was closest to our entrance. The armory where we had gotten the stuff our first time around was much larger, and had more assorted equipment. I think this one was just a restock room.”

  Ares nodded his head once, and then looked back at Arctic. “I wish I could say things have been going as well on our side, but it doesn’t seem like it. There’s a bit of an issue on Earth.”

  “Did more demons come?” Fire stepped forward, as if he could jump through the map and go kick some demon ass.

  “Not necessarily; the demons from Seoul, here in South Korea,” he pointed at a small country on the top right side of the map, “and from various places in China,” he dragged his finger along the coastline of a much larger country, “have started forming packs, which isn’t uncommon, but not the easiest thing for demons. They don’t like sharing anything, and often get into fights. Anyways, these packs have started moving further inland, and with it being summer in the northern hemisphere, that’s where Korea and China are, it’s not too cold in the north for them.

  “There’s another country up in the far north, what’s called a first world country like China and South Korea, which means that they have resources and can more or less fend for themselves. Russia spans from here to here.” Ares dodged around Arctic and moved his hand from close to South Korea all the way over to the other ocean, stopping right before a group of peninsulas.

  “That’s one country?” Waterstar asked.

  “Yup, probably the largest land mass of one, though the Asian border side, the side near China, is less populated, except on the coast. It’s a wasteland called Siberia over there; really hard to survive in.”

  “So, what’s the issue with Russia?” I asked, not seeing a problem yet.

  “They’ve threatened to launch nuclear missiles at both South Korea and China, namely the cities where large demon populations are. When Russians feel threatened, they take measures against it, and aren’t afraid to do so either.”

  “Well, this is Earth though, right? These ‘first world countries’ they can take measures against things like this, can’t they?” Fire asked.

  “In normal conditions, yes they could. Since they have been trying to keep demons at bay for two days now, and the machines that are able to keep back missiles are in more desolate areas, the demons have already taken out chunks and have made them non-commissionable, according to my associate in Italy.”

  “How does this involve us?” Forest asked. I could tell by the slant of his eyes that he was seriously considering all of this. He had a point; Earth politics had never involved us unless it came to them wanting to come back here. We didn’t trade anything important between the worlds since the Rebellion had been able to make harvestable land a couple of decades back.

  Arctic finally turned away from the map, where he had drawn a few lines crisscrossing along it. “A few ways, actually. Firstly, Ares thinks it might be possible that the missile will take out large groups of demons initially, but after the explosion, the demons will be able to thrive on the radiation that comes from nuclear warfare. Secondly, one of our portals opens up into Beijing, one of the places in China that missiles are aimed at. That means the radiation might film through the portal and onto Calsh, which it would either way, but in a higher concentration than normal with a direct route.

  “And finally, it would cause complications that would bring Calsh into, since all of humanity is fighting the demons. As soon as the demons are eliminated enough that China could spare some troops to fight against Russia, they will. The United States, a strong ally of South Korea, has assured me that they will try their best to negotiate with them to not start war with Russia until the demon problem is completely under control, but it would be much harder to hold China to a similar agreement. As I was saying early, that once we get our resources here secured and the demon population manageable, or at least in the surrounding area, we were going to send about half of our forces to Earth. If two large world powers are caught up in a war, then that would be putting our citizens at an even greater risk, which isn’t something I’m keen to do.”

  Arctic folded his hands and looked around at use expectantly. I think only Forest and I understood everything, what with our background in politics and such. I turned to my other teammates, “Basically, it will indirectly affect us by them trying to fight two front wars, one against demons, and one against each other.”

  “Not to mention Russia has been itching to make people glow in the dark since their Cold War,” Foreststar interjected.

  “Glow in the dark?” Water asked, looking a tad on the mischievous side.

  “Something that radiation does. And no, you are not allowed to experiment with nuclear weapons,” Arctic put in quickly before glaring at Forest who merely shrugged.

  “Hmph, fine. Then what’s the plan?” Water asked, crossing her arms.

  “Well, a few things will happen on Calsh first, but then we’ll send you, Darkstar, and Firestar up to Earth. The Russians haven’t launched any missiles yet; they had merely sent a message to Seoul and Beijing to evacuate if they could and warning them of what they were doing. What you three, plus Ice, will do is first two of you will go through the St. Petersburg portal and get an audience with Moscow, calling him Mister Moscow will be appropriate enough, Calshians have never used their proper names. You will ask him to please go to the Vatican first and foremost, while the other two requests the same thing from Mister Beijing, and you’ll enter the Beijing portal. While you four are on Earth, Vlad, Forest, and Ares will go through the Rome then Divine portals and try to get a conference with the Council of Angels, hopefully to get them to agree with helping humanity. If that doesn’t work, then I will have to take a different approach to the meeting at the Vatican. If they do agree, though, then we will simply be indebted to the Divine and humanity will live to see another day.”

  Arctic sat down and tented his fingers once more. I spoke up first, “Do you have a specific thought for who should go to which country?”

  Arctic nodded his head. “Ultimately it is up to you to decided, but I suggest that you and Fire go to St. Petersburg while Icestar and Waterstar go to Beijing.”

  “Why?” Waterstar asked immediately.

  The corner of Arctic’s mouth tipped up. “You and Fire are a destructive pair, and I think that Moscow will take more persuading to not attack, while China has the larger demon population, so if necessary, yours and Ice’s expertise in fighting may be useful to them, if he accepts the help.”

  I nodded my head in consent. Persuasion. I could do that quite well. “How soon do you need them in Italy?”

  Ares spoke up this time. “No later than midnight of Saturday, which is today, Vatican local time.”

  “What time is it there now?” Forest asked, finally speaking up again.

  “They’re quite a few hours behind us, so three in the morning. Be careful, St. Petersburg is two hours ahead of them, while Beijing is ten hours ahead. So it's five am and one pm, respectively.”

  “Got it. What do you need done first on Calsh?”

  “Nothing, go to Icestar in the infirmary, you can
leave once he is ready. I’ll stay here and get everyone else situated and under control; I’m planning on some raids to our natural gas fields soon where I’ll set up an outpost, and from there it’ll go onto the harvesting land. I’ll go through the Rome portal by ten o’clock their time. Vlad, Ares, and Forest, please try to send at least one of you there to meet me and give me an update and what the verdict is with the Divine, no, I’ll stay Earthbound.”Arctic added the last part as Ares started to say something. Instead, the dark haired man simply nodded. “We will meet in Vatican City, in front of the Pope’s lodging.”

  We were just heading out when Arctic spoke once more. “Water, please stay behind a moment.”

  We all looked at Waterstar, but she obviously had no clue what was going on. She shrugged her shoulders and stayed in as the rest of us left from the room. We all crowded along the doorframe to try and hear what was going on. I heard Maegan's name brought up a few times, along with a defensive, unintelligible statement from Waterstar. As Water was opening the door to leave, we all backed away to make it seem like we hadn't been eavesdropping. Arctic's voice carried out after her. “Remember, any more offensive instances and we'll have to decide on something.”

  “Alright teams! Let’s set out! Oh! That’s what we should do, establish team names again. I doubt Mystic Team will work for us anymore, especially since we have a new member…” Waterstar started rambling on like she usually did, and I mostly tuned her out, contemplating what had happened in the room with Arctic.

  The walk to the infirmary was spent with her having a one sided debate on if we should be team demon killers or team purge. Fire and I both kept quiet; it was best not to encourage her at times like this, else she’d manage to go on for hours.

  I knocked on the door, my knuckles rapping against the templar’s cross.

  The same nurse from before opened the door and at first I was surprised, but then I remembered it had actually been quite a while since we were last here. “Is Icestar…?”

  “Yes, right this way,” she opened the door a bit further and we followed her down the row of beds that made up the main infirmary; there were ten beds, but only a few of them held patients that had required intensive care. Ice’s was at the far end.

  The nurse briefly checked all of the monitors that were surrounding Ice before leaving us. Waterstar walked up to the head of Ice’s bed and poked him in the cheek, as if it was the most natural thing to do.

  Icestar looked at her for a moment before raising an eyebrow, “Can I help you?”

  Water looked back at Fire and I with a fake look of panic, “He’s lost his memory!”

  Fire cracked up and I let a smile come over my face. Icestar covered his mouth with a hand, but we could see his body shaking with laughter. Leave it to Water to make the situation less intense.

  “So, seems like we can’t chuck you to the demons yet. Damn shame, I was hoping to take over Cerberus,” Fire joked while he punched Ice’s arm, the one that wasn’t bandaged.

  “Ha, right. Not even over my dead body will you get that car, though I heard you guys went for a joy ride earlier without me.” He glared over at all of us before smiling again.

  “I got to drive on the way back! We went over a mountain of demon bodies.” Water looked pleased with herself, even though she had only killed two demons this entire day.

  “If there’s any blood on my baby…” Icestar started his threat, but didn’t have anything to finish it with.

  Water giggled and patted him on the head. “Don’t worry your pretty little head; I’ll make sure it gets washed.”

  “Pretty little head, eh? Water, you’re starting to sound like those damn demons,” Fire made a fake gun out of his hands and pretended to shoot Water. That got another round of laughs from all of us.

  “So Dark, you’ve been pretty silent?” Ice looked over at me questioningly.

  “Welcome to Team Purge,” I stuck out my hand and we shook.

  “One question, who the hell thought of the name Team Purge?” Ice looked over us then stopped at Water. “Oh wait, that’s obvious.”

  “And here I thought you guys were ignoring me in the hall!” Water did a little dance of success that we had finally chosen a name. Though technically Vatican had started it, but all the same.

  Before she could go on another rambling spree about it, I spoke up again. “You’ll be going with Waterstar up to Beijing while Fire and I go to a place called Saint Petersburg.” We all launched into the discussion about what had happened with the nuclear weapons, with Waterstar mentioning more than once she wanted to see one in real life explode.

  “So basically, Earth is once again about to try and destroy itself, so we need to do two things: be peace keepers and keep Water away from explosives.” Icestar smiled up at the blue-haired girl.

  Water stuck her tongue out at him. “I’m surprised you aren’t questioning all about the Vatican-being-a-Greek-god-slash-angel thing.”

  “Compared to demons invading humanity, it doesn’t seem that strange.” Icestar shrugged as well as he could while staying propped up on the pillows.

  “So, when can we bust you out of here?” Fire asked, punching his hand.

  “Go talk to the nurse; I think she said that the doctor was going to come and check on me soon, but that was like, half an hour ago.”

  “Alright,” Waterstar half skipped over to the nurse at the other end of the room and tapped her on the shoulder. They talked for a little, and then we heard Water’s laugh come from them.

  “What the hell could they be talking about?” Fire asked, perking up an eyebrow. He looked comical like that, especially because he had let his red hair hang loose from its normal ponytail, at least for the time being. I shrugged and went over to join Waterstar. She was probably asking the nurse if any cute guys had come into the infirmary recently.

  “-might know him. He has dark hair and pale skin, kinda in a gross way, like he’s never seen the sun, and his eyes are a stark blue color, like it’s intense to look at,” the nurse was saying when I walked up. She saw me and abruptly stopped.

  “Water, have you asked her-” Water’s shoulders had become rigid.

  “Waterstar?” I started again.

  “Yea, he’ll be here any minute. Let’s go.” She spun on her heel and walked back to Ice’s bed.

  “Water, hold up.” I put my hand on her shoulder so she was facing me again. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Right. Nothing. What’s up?” My eyes slanted a little.

  “It’s stupid. She was talking about Vladimir, and it wasn’t nice.” Waterstar avoided looking at me and I relaxed a fraction.

  “You know that some girls can be... you know. Ignore it. Vlad was probably walking past and she made moon eyes at him, he ignored it and walked on, which leaves a prissy nurse upset.” Water’s mouth tilted up a little.

  “I know. Still, she didn’t have to be so rude about it.”

  “Come on,” I chuckled a little and walked back with her to Ice’s bed and leaned against the window again. I shook my head to Fire’s curious look and I saw that he now relaxed also.

  “Doctor’ll be here any minute,” Water was saying to Ice when the door opened.

  “Ah, so you must be the team Arctic has sent,” he said as soon as he saw us. “I’m sure you guys are hoping for a swift release, are you not?”

  “Yes sir, Arctic has assigned a mission for us and-”

  The doctor held up a hand. “Not even the Commander can force the release of a patient who has been through intensive care without my permission. This is my field, and if I don’t think your friend is ready to be released, then he more than likely is not ready to be released.”

  “But sir-” Fire started. He had taken a few steps around the bed so he was face to face with the doctor.

  “That’s my final word.”

  I pushed off the wall and nudge Firestar slightly with my shoulder. He backed away. “Hi, my name is Darkstar.” I held
out my hand to shake.

  The doctor took it and eyed me warily after speaking to Fire. “Please, just call me Doctor.”

  I nodded my head. “I know that you are an expert in medical care, and we should really value your word and opinion on Icestar’s condition.” It took a few seconds, but the doctor finally looked into my eyes. “So, will you please say that Icestar is ready to be discharged? Go over the scans and everything first, of course. No need to be hasty. But, he is ready to be discharged, correct?”

  The doctor’s blue eyes glazed over for a second and he nodded his head. He went about the various monitors and consulted his clipboard for a moment before looking down at Ice. I could tell that even with my influence, he was still doing everything as professionally as he would normally, though the end verdict might have been different. This guy, at least, knew what he was doing, something to be respected in times like this. “Son, you’re ready to be discharge. Just be sure to take this antibiotic once every hour.” He handed Ice a canister; we heard pills rattling around inside.

  “Have a nice day,” I said and shook his hand again, letting go of my power.

  “Dark, that might not have been necessary,” Icestar started.

  “Can’t take any chances, we’re on a timed schedule,” Water said before I could. She rifled around in the backpack she had brought and dropped a pair of clothes on Ice’s bed. “Arctic gave them to me,” she explained.

  She left our little area and drew the curtains closed behind her. As Icestar changed into his usual cool gray clothing, I thought I heard someone crying before the door of the infirmary opened and closed quickly.

  Waterstar was standing by herself next to the door and ignored our curious looks.

  “You're such a nice person,” Firestar said with a smirk at Water.

  Water turned her back to us and started towards the door. “Come on, back to our room. Icestar, your backpack from the NOPCW is there. I took the courtesy of fighting off some demons in the garage to get your tool kit and stuff like that.”

  “There are demons in the garage?!” Icestar looked like we had told him that he only had a few hours to live.