by Katie Vack
The boy in question might actually, appearance-wise at least, be even more showy and overdone than his 'name'. He looked human enough, except that his left hand had claws rather than fingernails, and a chitinous scorpion tail (clearly the origin of his name), which revealed he was in fact a mutant from Other Earth. He had short, spiked purple hair which he must have spent hours perfecting, and his eyes were lost behind a pair of reflective aviator glasses. He was wearing a black leather jacket, unbuttoned to reveal a shirt which seemed to be advertising for some band or other. He had fashionably ripped, loose fitting jeans with all manner of chains attached for no apparent reason, and a pair of high-ankle boots with heels that must have been nearly two inches thick. "Don't call me boy." He said, revealing a set or rather pointed teeth, before turning to look at Grayson. "Sup." He made a kind of hand gesture, something like a clenched fist but with his little and index fingers outstretched, which Grayson assumed must be a sign of greeting back on his home planet.
"Sup?" he made sure to store the unfamiliar word and gesture for later investigation. He turned back to Karolus who, as much as he hated to admit it, seemed almost to be the most normal of their group. "The name's Grayson. Grayson Hunter."
"I'd like to say it's nice to meet you, but I'd be lying." Grayson wasn't sure whether to be upset by Karolus' rudeness, or appreciative of his honesty, so he decided simply to stay quiet. "I was told that I'd be taking charge of some kind of elite team, that I'd finally have my own command. And what did I get?" He looked up at Grayson, and he was shocked by the depth of the anger in his eyes and the ease with which he had spiralled into such hysterics. "I get two children, a woman, and a couple of others who can't even be bothered to turn up when they're supposed to! For the first meeting!"
That was too far. Grayson didn't have a clue why the man was taking it so badly, but he had no intention of letting anyone call him a boy, regardless of the circumstances. More than that, he was sick of appearing younger than he actually was. "I'm seventeen, Karolus." The man's expression darkened at the disrespect of using his first name, but Grayson didn't give him the chance to break in. "I'm a lumin. By you standards that makes me, what, fifty? I have no intention of letting you patronise me, and next time you forget that," he leaned closer, "I might have to remind you more directly."
"If there's a problem with having a woman on your team," Sora's voice was sickly-sweet, and everyone turned to look at her, all thinking pretty much the same thing. "How about you tell me now?" The level of venom, the blatant threat in her voice, was blinding. "I'll tear your balls off, and stuff them down your throat. Understood?"
There was a long silence as they all sat there, nobody quite sure what to say or how to act anymore. It had been a fairly level argument, relatively speaking, but Sora had just escalated it to near-conflict in a matter of seconds. Grayson was still trying to get his head around the fact that this was a silvan speaking, but found himself unconsciously backing away nonetheless. After what seemed like an age, Thief decided to choose the worst possible moment to throw his opinion into the mix. "For the record, I'm not letting you call me a boy either."
That was it. Karolus leapt to his feet, pushed well past his already stretched tolerance level. He was practically screaming, all semblance of rationality swept aside by blind anger. "That's it, I've had it with you! In case anybody has forgotten, I'm in charge here, and I will call you whatever I choose to!"
Sora was on her feet a split second later, her chair crashing to the floor. While she was seemingly a lot calmer than the other man, Grayson couldn't deny that her quiet fury was unquestioningly more terrifying. "I'm beginning to think you shouldn't be commanding this group. I'm beginning to think we need a new leader."
"I agree with her," Thief chimed in, and Grayson glanced furiously at him. The sheer blindness of the boy was unbelievable. How could he even think saying that was going to help?
"I see. So that's how it is." Karolus drew his greatsword, hefting it before him in a two handed grip. It looked around fifty kilos, with a blade about a foot in breadth and over six in length, and he was clearly only wielding it through constant use of his magic. "You." Grayson found himself facing down a mountain of blade. "What do you say? Who are you siding with?"
He held out his hands in a placating manner, trying desperately to salvage the situation before it turned into a complete bloodbath. "I really don't think we should be doing this..."
Karolus looked away dismissively, muttering something along the lines of spinelessness, and only the gravity of the situation kept Grayson from joining in to defend his honour. "Alright then," the aetherial turned back to face the silvan, "this is your last warning. I'll happily continue this group with one less member."
Sora smiled coldly, pulling the glaive off her back. It was in essence a four foot wooden staff, with a sixteen inch, dual edged and vaguely leaf shaped, blade protruding from each tip. Where the greatsword focussed on raw power, the glaive was a weapon which relied upon speed and precision to kill, and while Grayson would normally be interested in a fight between such varying warriors, all it spelt now was more chaos.
Sora was tall for a silvan at a little over six feet tall, but, as was usually the case, was still dwarfed by her aetherial opponent. She was wearing a hard leather jerkin, sleeveless, over a plain brown shirt and trousers. If Karolus was used to wearing armour, as aetherials generally were, he didn't have it with him today. The fact was that, with virtually no protective gear, it was highly likely that at least one of them was going to end up dying.
Grayson got to his feet, attempting to call on his caster magic, although he had no idea what he intended to do with it. It didn't work anyway- caster magic was emotional, drawing power from darker feelings things like hate, anger, and jealousy, but all he was experiencing now was a sense of impending horror, coupled with the knowledge that he had no way of stopping the events. Off to the side, Thief stood up too and backed slowly away, equally helpless. Grayson noticed absently that his right sleeve hung down to his knees, shrouding whatever he had for a right arm and hand.
"Please don't-"
"Shut up." This time it was Sora who cut him off. "If you have nothing to contribute, just stay out of the way." She stepped back with her right leg, glaive held back in her right hand, left one held out before her. "If this is what you want, angel."
"Don't say I didn't warn you." Karolus raised the sword, holding it vertically by his right side. His wings unfurled to reveal an intimidating four metre wingspan. "This was your choice."
Sora leaped forward, glaive held suddenly in two hands, swinging it diagonally downwards to cut him open from shoulder to hip-
Karolus charged forwards, greatsword cutting through the air in a horizontal swing to cleave her head from her shoulders-
The earth shook, and there was a sound like a thunderclap. Sora skidded to a stop, bringing her glaive back in towards her body. Karolus stumbled to a halt, the momentum of his sword spinning him around in a full circle before he finally stopped moving. Everybody turned towards the entrance is surprise.
Silhouetted against the evening light, standing just inside the doorway, was an eight and a half foot and heavily armoured hellion. Behind them, standing outside in the street, was an even more gigantic combat mech.
"What in the name of god is going on in here!?" The voice was metallic, grainy, echoing deafeningly around the room from a dozen interlinked chassis-mounted speaker units.
There was a moment of dead silence, before Grayson swore loudly.
This time, nobody felt like arguing with him.
Introductions
"Oh. Oh no." The hellion, which had been introduced by the other newcomer as Seth, seemed inordinately characteristic of its species; as though every hellion stereotype ever imagined had found itself born into this particular creature.
He was an enormous male, having to stoop just to stand inside the room. He was heavy enough that the floorboards were splintering simply from him standing on
them, even with his weight spread over his wide, flat hooves. Looking utterly deadly, it appeared as though his every feature had evolved for the sole purpose of violence and hard survival. His skin was dark, somewhere between grey and brown, leathery and reptilian, and capable of deflecting and dispersing most blows as though they were nothing more than insect bites. His head protruded upwards and forwards from his shoulders, and seemed to resemble that of an eel more than anything else. His eyes were sunken deep into the sides of his skull to protect them from attack, and had a second, translucent, pair of eyelids to ward off dust and grit in the storms Helios was famous for. His mouth was filled with row upon row of serrated shark-like teeth, and his long tongue was forked, ending in two vicious barbs.
What he had in brawn, however, he appeared to make up for with what he didn't have in brainpower. The rest of the group could do nothing but watch as he tried to sit down on his third chair in a row, only to have it shatter predictably into pieces beneath his weight. He sat where he had fallen for a few seconds before, with a ripple of iron hard muscles, he hauled himself casually back to his feet.
"Oh. Oh no." The words were deep and booming, and the combination of a heavy accent and a body never designed to speak them made them almost unintelligible. Despite his naturally aggressive appearance, not to mention the heavy plate armour he was wearing and the miniature armoury sprouting from every spare inch of space, he showed no signs of being particularly warlike- if anything, he seemed to be immersed in a deep confusion. He walked over to the next chair along.
Karolus was unimpressed, and complaining loudly in the hopes that someone would eventually take notice of him. "I'm telling you, having that brute in here is a big mistake. It's only a matter of time before something goes wrong and one of us gets hurt." He had recovered disconcertingly quickly from his hysteria, and Grayson was beginning to wonder whether it was better to have an angry angel than an irritable one.
"I do not see the issue. He has shown no signs of aggression towards any of us, and I cannot see why he would do so anyway." The second newcomer, the mech pilot, was of some obscure species which Grayson had never seen before. From what could be seen through the visor of his smaller suit, the man was bald and anaemic looking, and his skin clung to his bones with barely a scrap of flesh in sight. His eyes were pure white, reinforcing Grayson's suspicions that the man was in fact blind. Likewise, he appeared to have no mouth, and when he spoke it was always through the medium of an inbuilt speaker system.
Grayson's first thought, upon seeing him, had been to find something solid to stand behind- it might have been the second or third mechsuit he'd ever come into close contact with, and he tended to err on the side of caution whenever giant killing machines were involved. His second thought, after he had regained his composure and stored his weakness away for later confrontation, was that there was no hope at all of getting it through the door. He had assumed that the pilot would have to step out of it and that when that happened the slight unease which still hung in the air could be minimalized. This, however, was not the way things had turned out.
He had to be honest; for all the experience he had with quick thinking and spontaneous adaptation, his brain seemed to grind to a sudden halt and throw away his ability to speak. All he could do was watch incredulously as the front of the two storey death machine split open, and down from inside it stepped another mechsuit.
This one was smaller, and humanoid to the degree that, if he didn't know better, Grayson could have mistaken it for nothing more than a cybernetic suit of armour. It was crimson, unlike its super heavy silver counterpart, and seemed designed for versatility rather than sheer destruction. Under a couple of metres tall, Grayson figured that the pilot couldn't be much taller than one. Trying, with mixed success, to come to terms with the somewhat amusing concept of a mechsuit within a mechsuit, he couldn't help but wonder about the possibility of there being a third hidden away somewhere.
The pilot, having downscaled to a size that could actually fit inside the room, had stepped casually through the door, introduced himself with an unpronouncably long name that Grayson had immediately (and slightly patronisingly) shortened to Crayton, and proceeded to converse with them as though nothing at all had happened. The near-fight was never mentioned at all.
"It's not a matter of it trying to hurt us." Karolus sounded absolutely adamant, but Grayson was getting the impression that he might just be like that all the time. "What if it wants a hug and ends up breaking someone's spine? What if it rolls over in its sleep and crushes someone? Just look at what it's doing to the furniture! I have no intention of spending all my time cleaning up after some overgrown lizard." Seth, to be fair, was hardly doing anything to help his case. Five chairs were now lying in pieces on the ground, and he was in the process of moving along to the next.
"What's the big deal about the furniture?" Grayson asked. "It should be covered in the expenses. Oh," he added as an afterthought before considering the possible repercussions, "and do I really want to know why you'd be sleeping next to him at night?"
Karolus scowled, and his face flushed red with outrage. He looked about to voice a very loud reply before he was interrupted by the sound of more wood smashing. His words died in his mouth and he hung his head in defeat. "The problem isn't the cost. I just don't want it breaking everything whenever I turn my back on it: it gives me a headache. It's bad enough that it's not properly arranged. Having it broken is just another-"
"Brick in the wall?" Thief chimed in, and Grayson choked inwardly- while the actual quote was lost on him, he had a bit of experience with people who believed that repeating lines from famous poets or philosophers made them sound intelligent. It was all in the way they spoke; as though they were expecting everybody around them to show them respect for their hollow achievement of memorizing someone else's quote, and were proud of themselves for doing so. He decided simply to ignore the boy, and the rest of the group, in a surprising display of unity, seemed to have the same idea.
"Back to the topic at hand," Sora stated in a tired an exasperated manner, "I don't see it being a problem so long as we aren't all clean-freaks or hopelessly paranoid." She'd calmed down just as fast as Karolus had, and Grayson was finding it extremely disorientating. It was like she couldn't decide whether to be happy or upset, angry or calm, and had decided to spontaneously flick between them every short while. "If anything," she spoke over the crash of a table giving way, Seth having turned to the next closest piece of furniture, "I think it's cute. He's just like a child."
"Great," Karolus grumbled, "we have the good fortune to be saddled with the child from hell- it's like the Fallen had a baby with some kind of Koto sea monster. I don't want it on my team, that's all." Now, though, his complaints had lost a lot of their venom, and he seemed to be arguing more for the sake of it than anything else.
"I do not believe there was ever any choice," Crayton 'spoke' and Grayson flinched mentally. He was having a lot more trouble getting used to the man than he was letting on- he spent most of his time evaluating people, and for the first time he could recall he was faced with not one but three individuals he couldn't place. Seth because his personality was currently locked deep behind his wall of stupidity, Sora because… well, she was Sora, and he didn't even know where to start with her. The problem with Crayton was that there were no cues to read- his sightless eyes gave away nothing, and there was no expression at all in speech voiced by a computer. While Karolus and Thief were still much harder to read than most people, at least Grayson could understand them a little.
"And why is that?" Karolus glanced up.
"You were not the one to put this team together. I presume that you could petition to our employer to have him moved, but you would be unlikely to get your way. More likely than not you would be told simply to come to terms with it and move on." Again, Grayson didn't know what to make of the man. That comment could be helpful, or condescending, or simply a statement of the facts, and he wouldn't have a clue which.
Karolus frowned, giving it up at long last. "Fine. But you're the one who brought it here, so you can be the one to watch over it. Besides, that mech's the only thing here which can match its strength."
"I do not follow your logic. I only met him by chance, perhaps a half hour before we arrived here. It is not like I had anything to do with his place in our group."
Grayson raised an eyebrow at that. "If you've never met him before, why were you able to find him today? Surely you'd walk straight past him like you would any other passer-by."
"It was kind of hard not to notice him. He would have been in a lot of trouble if I had not been there when I was."
"Oh?"
"From what I can tell, he was asking everyone who walked past whether they had seen a 'flying person' or a guildhall."
"But," Grayson tried to wrap his head around that, "there must be hundreds of guildhalls in a city like this."
"Yes, and this does not even class as one anymore. But that was not the problem. The problem was that, when he was asking questions, he managed to frighten quite a few people. They seemed to think he was threatening them."
