Yet through it all I heard a voice, shouting at me through the din of rushing blood, urging me to finally voice what I’d held back for years now.
It was now or never, and time to tell her the truth. There were no second chances.
“Haruka, I think it’s time we said goodbye.”
If she was pale before, she turned white in a heartbeat.
“Wh—what?”
I swallowed, and realized what I’d just said.
My subconscious had made the choice for me.
It was either the biggest mistake of my life, or the most selfless decision I’d ever undertaken.
I realized what it was I wanted the most.
No, it wasn’t what I wanted but what I’d decided was the best choice to make.
I needed to set her free.
I swallowed down past the growing lump in my throat.
“I said it’s time we said goodbye.”
A sob escaped her lips.
I watched the first tears well up in her eyes then slide down her cheeks.
She swallowed and asked, “Why?”
“You know the answer to that.”
“No, I don’t. I have absolutely no idea!”
“You’re going to be an Aventis, a member of one of the eight Prides.”
“So?”
I sighed. “Aventis and Regulars like me don’t mix.”
“That isn’t true.”
“Sorry, but it is the truth.”
I watched her tears continue to trickle. I felt like my innards were being burned. But there’s no avoiding the truth. It bites like Hell and worse when it comes between you and someone you really care about.
Damn it. I had to get this over with before I lost it.
“Haruka, you and I were never that close, so it’s not like we’re breaking up. We’re just…saying goodbye to an old friendship.”
“How can you say it like that? How can you sound so freakishly reasonable? Do you know how much this is tearing me up inside?”
“You’ll get over it. You’ll attend one of the five academies in Pharos for the Aventis, and you’ll make new friends—Aventis friends—and you’ll find someone ‘special’ over there. Pretty soon, you’ll be right as rain again. You’ll forget all about me and start anew.”
“Are you doing this to make me hate you? To make it easier for me to leave? And why do we even have to do this?”
“I’m doing this for me.”
“What?”
I smiled at her, and this time I meant it. “Haruka, you know how much I hate the Prides.”
She pressed her mouth into a thin bloodless line.
I added for good measure, “If I say goodbye now, before you become an Aventis, it’ll be easier for me. I won’t hate you as much.”
I meant that too.
Once the Haruka before me became one of them, I wouldn’t see her as Haruka anymore.
I pushed away from the fence and swung my arms, working the stiffness out of my shoulders.
“So, Haruka. This is goodbye. I’ll miss you, but I’ll get over you.”
I bowed to her formally.
“Thank you…for taking care of me all these years.”
When I straightened I saw some color had returned to her face, but she looked ashen. She swallowed a number of times, before wiping away her tears with the back of a hand.
Then she laughed bitterly. “I see. You were always like this. Always choosing to bear everything even if it made you the villain. I really was right about you. Since there’s no easy way for this to happen, you chose to make yourself the bastard of the play.”
“No. I just want to forget about you as soon as possible.”
Now she looked distraught.
I smiled nonchalantly, shoved my hands into my school trouser pockets, then felt my palm-slate in one of them. An idea came to mind so I pulled out the palm-slate. Calling up the screen that listed my contacts, I held it up for her to see. I made sure the voice command recognition was turned on.
“Contact listing, Haruka Amiella…delete.”
“Confirm delete,” my palm-slate requested.
“Confirmed.”
I heard a chime and knew the deed was done.
Her horrified look deepened before her expression turned hard and cold over the span of many seconds. Then she took out her palm-slate and held it up for me to see.
“Contact listing, Caelum Desanto…delete.”
“Confirm delete,” her palm-slate requested.
“Co…con…conf….”
Her hand trembled so much the screen was leaving afterimages in my eyes.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Go on. You can do it.”
“Shut up!” she screamed. “Just shut the Hell up!”
She gripped the palm-slate in both hands but her fingers shook badly and wouldn’t go near the screen.
“Haruka, you’re making this much harder than it has to be.”
“Go to Hell! I hate you!”
She turned and ran away, squeezing through the gap between rooftop structures that made this the secluded spot it was.
I stared at the empty space she left behind.
“That’s my girl. You never disappoint. So easy to manipulate.”
I looked down at my palm-slate.
“I wonder if I should delete all those photos and videos of us together?”
I was busy mulling that for a while when I noticed the palm-slate’s screen was wet. I wiped it dry but more drops landed on it.
“Huh?”
I looked up at the habitat’s sky. Still partly sunny. No sign of rain. Hell, it never rains inside a habitat.
Then I noticed it was hard to see. My vision was blurred.
I wiped at my eyes and my fingers came away wet.
I looked at them for a while.
“Well I’ll be. I guess I haven’t forgotten how to cry.” I laughed softly. “You hear that Celica, I guess I couldn’t keep my promise to you after all.”
A simple promise.
To cry for our parents, to cry for family, and no one else.
Well, I had no one else to cry over now.
Yet I was crying over Haruka.
I shuffled over to the fence. It was getting hard to see the school buildings ahead of me, and the habitat skyline beyond it.
I shoved the slate into my pocket before I could accidentally drop it.
I didn’t bother wiping my face.
Big boys don’t cry, she used to say.
Bloody smart thing to say to a ten year old about to turn eleven.
“Gods damn it…I miss you…Celica.”
I bowed my head and squeezed my eyes shut.
“Why…why did it have to be her? Why Haruka?”
Why the Hell was she chosen? Why was her body compatible with the Symbiote? Why did the Prides take everything and everyone that was dear to me?
I hated them.
I blamed them for my parents’ deaths.
I blamed them for my sister’s death.
Why did we Regulars have to be so subservient to them?
My fingers bent the wire fencing into an unrecognizable tangle.
I held onto it, and hung against it for a long time. Even after the school bell sounded signaling the end to the lunch break, I still hung onto the fence and refused to move.
I had no intention of walking back to class.
I would accept the detention this would garner me, but I wasn’t in any state to sit through afternoon lessons.
Around me, the school grounds quickly grew quiet as students ambled, shuffled and straggled back into class. Beyond the grounds, I could hear the sounds of the habitat city.
I squeezed my fingers around the fencing loops, and clenched my teeth for a long, painful moment.
“Damn it…what the Hell have I done…?”
#
(Caprice)
By some miracle – an act of divine intervention from the gods above – both the girl and I managed to get ov
er the school wall and up onto the rooftop without being seen.
Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say ‘without drawing attention’.
Maybe someone had seen us but thought they were imagining things.
After all, it’s not every day you see two young women jumping a ten foot wall and into a school, then scrambling up a sheer building wall on their way to its rooftop.
There are times I really regret wearing a skirt, and this was one of them, as I was sure to give anyone under me a glorious view of my toned derriere.
I also regretted today of all days not having regular clean underwear, and having to resort to my private collection, the kind I would be too afraid to wear out in public.
The kind I would only dare to wear in the privacy of my apartment as a guilty pleasure.
The kind a girl would reserve for a special date with her special guy.
That being said, what in the name of the gods possessed me to buy that ensemble in the first place!
It’s not like a had a boyfriend or the time for one!
I spent all my free time studying, and training, and what was left over was spent sleeping.
Boyfriend?
What boyfriend?
In any case, this thought, and wondering how I was going to stop my opponent, kept me company as I managed to scramble onto the rooftop, after tossing myself over the mesh security fence.
Again, by some stroke of extreme good fortune, the rooftop courtyard was empty. The students that ate lunch at the various benches and tables had all departed for class. As I landed in a crouch on the permacrete roof, the second bell sounded, announcing that afternoon classes were now in session.
I realized I was going to be late for class as well. Very late. In fact, the way things were turning out I doubted I’d make it back to Galatea for any of the afternoon lessons.
The girl in the black and white skinsuit turned and faced me.
She might have been surprised to see me, but judging from her body language, I didn’t think that was the case. There was no way she hadn’t sensed me, unless her Fragment lacked a sensorium field and I found that doubtful.
For a heartbeat she stood in the middle of the courtyard, held down by indecision. Then I saw her glance over her right shoulder into the sky over the opposite side of the school building. Ignoring the smaller buildings within the school grounds, the main building was shaped like a giant octagon some three hundred meters across. We were standing on the east side, and the girl was looking at the sky over the west end of the octagon. I glanced in that direction and saw the small, discus-like drone hovering a few hundred feet over that side of the school. The thing hadn’t moved in a long while, and I believed it was watching someone on the school grounds…or on the rooftop.
Unfortunately, if someone was there the various machinery penthouses prevented me from seeing them.
I decided enough with the delay, and then leapt toward her.
Now it was my turn to strike, and this time she wasn’t going to run away.
With both gauntlet blades fully extended forward, I kicked off and crossed the fifteen-foot distance between her and me in the blink of an eye. My sharp Valkyrie Armored feet flew inches off the ground, before I landed a few feet away from her and delivered the first of many slashing swipes at the girl.
She skipped back repeatedly, somehow managing to elude the blades, but not the piercer-fields that surrounded them.
Even when she managed to block one blade with her lance, the second would come close enough to inflict damage on her skinsuit.
It wasn’t long before she was sporting a handful of narrow, long rents that revealed bare skin underneath.
That was to be expected. To wear a skinsuit properly, you had to be buck naked underneath.
I heard her muted cry behind the visor of her helmet. She sounded more frustrated and angry than in pain.
Adjusting the grip on her jousting lance, she wielded the weapon against me in a manner it was probably not designed for. In fact, she wielded it more like a spear.
But the Valkyrie Armor sensed the narrow blade-like piercer-field projecting around the tip of the lance, and I realized I’d better take her seriously or else I’d be wearing a shredded uniform back to class.
Too late. The narrow piercer-field brushed against my midnight-blue blazer, and a thin cut emerged.
I felt a stinging pain as the field drew a line as narrow as a scalpel along the skin of my midriff.
I ignored it.
The Symbiote inside me now would heal the cut in a minute or so.
A cut or two I could afford. If it wasn’t deep the Symbiote would ensure there would be no scar.
But blood loss was another matter, and that I couldn’t afford.
I blocked the lance and its piercer-field with a gauntlet blade, then struck back.
My moves were reflexive, and as I stepped through one combination after another, careful to defend while attacking, mindful of openings while slashing, a second troubling thought crossed my mind.
Why me?
Why had Arisa chosen me as her representative?
I wasn’t the only one with a Fragment in her family’s employ. I wasn’t the only one the Lanfear Pride had in their possession. I had met two others like me over the past month, and both were older, better trained and far more experienced than I was. So why choose me?
I was young, and inexperienced.
I was a first year high-schooler.
I didn’t have the practice or training to be doing this.
Since summoning the Valkyrie Armor’s blades, I’d spent a mere month practicing with them.
I wasn’t ready for this!
So why send me?
Had Arisa really been blindsided? Had she really not expected trouble? Was that why she felt I was up to the task of delivering the vial to the boy?
Wait, I was thinking of him as a boy when he was actually only a couple of weeks older than me.
But that aside, how could Arisa have assumed that the agreement between the Prides would hold?
As I defended against the furiously thrusting and jabbing lance, I was starting to curse my lack of ability, and Arisa’s lack of foresight.
Then fresh doubts crawled across the back of my mind, doubts that presented a distraction I could ill afford.
What if Arisa had chosen me because the others in her employ were busy dealing with problems elsewhere?
What if this girl in front of me was the least of her worries?
Perhaps by sending me to greet him and bring him into the fold, Arisa had lulled whoever was behind this into a false sense of security where they believed this girl in front of me was sufficient for the task – whatever it may be.
Through the Valkyrie Amor, I sensed the lance’s piercer-field extend significantly.
I backed away, and almost immediately realized she’d feinted and that my footing was wrong. I lacked the stability to weather the next blow which came in the form of a barrier-field shaped like a battering ram of sorts projected ahead of the jousting lance. The impact knocked me off my feet and onto my backside. Remembering that to stay still was to die, I moved, rolling away ungainly from the lance as the barrier-field changed to a piercer-field. The girl plunged the weapon at me, and its tip punched a hole in the ground I’d rolled over a heartbeat ago.
I stopped rolling and kicked out, willing a barrier-field to form around my armored foot. I succeeded and my kick connected with the girl’s right leg, sending her back and then down to one knee. It gave me time to gain my feet, and renew the offensive.
But as I slashed, cut and parried against her, all the while dancing between courtyard benches, tables and hard seats, a third realization crossed my mind.
We were both amateurs, and as such we were both making mistakes that leveled the field between us.
Nonetheless, I refused to give up, even as my concentration slipped more often than not, even as I found openings in her defensive posture more often than not – n
either of us refused to give up.
Pivoting on one foot, I managed to spin kick and knock her lance aside, my Valkyrie Armored leg protected by a barrier-field against the lance’s piercer-field. As risky as it was since for a half second I had presented my back to the girl, the move paid off. With the jousting lance out of the way, I used the kick’s momentum to carry me into the next attack.
Slashing down with my right gauntlet blade, the field around it cut a long path down the front of the girl’s skinsuit, exposing even more skin that included the creamy curves of her small bosom.
I was right. She was no bigger than I was.
I experienced a brief moment of solidarity with her.
It was a feeling only small breasted girls’ like I could empathize and understand.
I had great legs and a great ass, but up top I was less than impressive.
I choked back a sob.
The distraction cost me.
Swinging the lance back up, the girl generated a barrier-field strong enough to crater a permacrete wall and slammed it into my gut.
It was the Valkyrie Armor that saved me.
I wasn’t able to consciously will a barrier-field to block the lance, but the Fragment manifested one automatically, and it spared me from a blow that would have broken most of my ribs and crushed my insides. Even so, I was sent tumbling backwards several yards before a nearby bench brought my careening body to a stop.
For a half dozen heartbeats I was frightened she would finish me off, but instead she dropped to her knees as though exhausted, before recovering a few seconds later.
By then I was staggering to my feet, but hardly ready for another round with her.
But she surprised me.
She retreated at an unsteady run, heading for the rooftop mechanical penthouse at the northern end of the courtyard. Using the jousting lance Fragment to propel herself into the air, she leapt up onto the roof of the building.
Less than steady on my feet, I had no choice but to run after her. I had to really concentrate on maintaining control of the Valkyrie Armor, especially the armored legs that encased mine of flesh and blood.
I crossed the courtyard, and leapt onto the roof of the mechanical penthouse. I was faintly surprised to learn the penthouse ran much of the length of the octagonal building’s rooftop.
The girl was a dozen meters ahead of me on the penthouse roof, and running with a purpose now.
Pride X Familiar ReVamp (Pride X ReVamp Book 1) Page 3
