Young Writers Society

TW: brief mention of s**c*de

The lights were bright. Mari's eyes weren't accustomed to it. Neither was she accustomed to being attended by doctors using crystals. Apparently this was what it was like to be one of the rich and privileged.

A doctor leaned over her, filtering light through an emerald wrapped with gold to analyze her wound. "It's healing nicely," he said. "A couple more days and you should be good to go."

Mari nodded thankfully and closed her eyes again.

When they had arrived, she was separated from Ilias who passed out once they were in the cab. When she could leave her bed she'd have to go and look for him... She slipped into sleep.

~◇~

The next time she woke up, the light didn't hurt as much. She waited for a nurse to come by, then asked, "Excuse me? Could you please let me know how my second cousin Ilias Ravioli is doing?"

"He's currently recovering from surgery." She smiled. "Your cousin is very lucky to be alive."

She breathed a little easier. "Thank you." Then she fell back into unconsciousness.

~◇~

Finally, they let her move around the hospital. Mari missed her chemicals and the one garnet that was left (she'd have to ask what happened to the other one later), but she was counting being alive as a win, honestly. It hurt a little if she moved too quickly, so she suspected she wouldn't be jumping off rooftops anytime soon, but otherwise she was fine. And her arm was completely healed from the wound Ilias had given her when they'd first met.

Those crystals were even more powerful than she'd expected. She could understand the unrest about the wealth gap better now. She'd seen protesters on the streets back in the prime plane, ranting about how only the wealthy could use healing rose quartz... But she was getting distracted.

Mari poked her head into Ilias's room. A nurse greeted her, and she smiled. "Can I come in?"

"Come on in cuz." Ilias called from where he laid, sounding like one would expect when they'd lost a lot of blood.

Mari rolled her eyes, then walked in and took a seat by the bed. "Hey there, cuz. Glad you're alive. Probably." The nurse nodded at Mari, then left the room.

He softly laughed. "Quite literally by an inch, yes, I'm alive. Don't make me laugh, it kinda hurts."

"Oh. I shall refrain from making funny faces, then." She stared at him with an extremely neutral expression.

He just smiled. "That's still a funny face."

She threw her hands up. "Shouldn't have even bothered trying. Hey, well, is talking okay? Does it still work as a distraction?"

"Well, currently I'm not dying. But yes, it's a great distraction from being confined to a bed."

"Good. Now, you have a few options: one, tell me about all your greatest mishaps, two, we debate on whether squobas are rhokus, or three, I ramble on about the chemical properties of the highly reactive ellipse group elements, like syen. I've been told the third option is helpful for putting non-scientists to sleep." Why was she humoring him? Mari wasn't entirely sure, but it was likely a combination of guilt for kidnapping him and attempting to murder him when he'd done nothing but bail her out of jail and pretty much save her life, and plain old boredom.

"Yeah, I've slept a lot in the past few days. I'm good. Also, for option one that would need to go both ways and squobas definitely are squaricanized rhokus."

"Depending on how well you tell your stories, I mayy be convinced to share mine. Also, wrong. You're wrong. Squobas would be an embarrassment to rhokus, honestly. It's unfair to rhokus to lump them in the same category."

"Hey! All it is is essentially meat, with veggies, beans if you're having it with chilli beans, and cheese."

"Squobas have squo meat and ba bread. Rhokus have a thinner shell, much more variety, and can have cheese, edible leaves, various kinds of meat, spices... I could go on. Rhokus are clearly the superior food here."

"Yeah, squobas are literally just squaricanized rhokus. They have the same gist. Why not just call them squarican rhokus?" He gave her a look that said 'this-shouldn't-be-that-hard-to-comprehend'.

"Because that's misleading. Attaching the word 'rhokus' would give people the expectation of flavorful rhombican delight. And then they'd bite into a dry bun and a greasy chunk of meat that no sauce can cover the taste of and it's just an utter disappointment."

"Squobas are one of squarica's wonders! You're probably thinking of the poorly cooked ones from vendors and schools."

"Oh, excuse me for never having tried a gourmet squoba with whatever atrocities the ruling family puts on top." She rolled her eyes. "Such as whipped cream. I bet someone somewhere in the ruling families has put whipped cream on a squoba before."

He wrinkled his nose. "Now that is atrocious. No, one day I'm having you come over when I'm having a barbeque and you're having a real squoba. Assuming you're up for that instead of killing me."

"Huh. Well, it's not so much you or the squoba as the rest of the family that's a concern..." What was she doing? This ruse would be over soon. She shouldn't still be talking to him, much less talking about future barbeques with the literal-celebrity Ravioli family.

"My family tree is not a tree. It's a shrub, a burning one. You'd still be welcomed, family or not."

She raised an eyebrow. "Really. I'm just a second cousin, you know. And maybe I'd prefer to stay away from the flames." She wasn't even a second cousin. They were practically strangers. Alright. As soon as he got better, she'd be leaving. Mari had a mess to clean up, after all... they'd pretty much killed their employer. He did try to kill them first, but still. It wasn't a good look for an assassin to turn on the person who hired them.

"I didn't say you had to come. I just gave you the option." He closed his eyes, tapping his fingers on the bed..

"Sure, sure. You want to sleep now?"

"No. I'd rather be up and running."

"Okay, 'want' was the wrong word. You should get rest now."

"I can't." He opened his eyes again, focusing on her with a serious expression.

"Well, it's not like I can forcibly put you to sleep. So. Like in all the groups of the elemental diagram, there are nine elements in the ellipse group. All of them are reactive, but syen has a tendency to combine with elements from other groups, like zeu from the rhombus group, creating a variety of different deadly effects-"

"Why didn't you kill me?" He asked rather suddenly.

She blinked. "Well, why didn't you kill me? I did kidnap you, after all."

"Because I wasn't getting paid to do so. But you had me right there, on the ground. You could have just taken the information and killed me. You weren't able to take out one target. Why leave your other one alive?"

"If you'll remember, I was going to kill you, but running from a large explosion makes it rather hard to do that. And then I killed our employer, so it's all moot anyways."

"You stopped when I told you. You hesitated, and talked to me. And you could have killed me after killing our employer. Remember, I'm competition."

She frowned. "Well, without someone to pay me, killing you would've been unnecessary. But... you're right, I suppose, in that I hesitated that first time." Mari thought for a moment. Perhaps talking through it could help her figure it out. "There were multiple factors. Curiosity and likely-misplaced gratitude were two. Curiosity because hiring an assassin to kill another assassin is only done when that assassin is out to get you, or if they know something they're not supposed to. So, I was wondering, what do you know about our late employer?"

He was silent for a second. "His plans. Not the part of there being other assassins, mind you. But Dr. Ghee's research."

"Ah, his research on fluids in the astral plane."

"Yeah. He and a few others were going to take it after Ghee was dead. Cause some big time damage to the government. Of course, after the assignment, once I wasn't in his employ I'd consider it worth it to take him out. I don't know how he knew that I knew though."

"As I said, the walls have ears. Probably these do as well, actually." Mari glanced around the small hospital room.

"I am the ears in the walls. Relax, I checked for bugs and whatnot."

"You are the ears. Great. That didn't sound weird at all." She chuckled.

"You know what I mean, it gets the point across."

"Whatever you say, Ears."

"Hey! That reminds me, you never told me your actual name."

"My actual name? Camryn, duh." Mari smirked.

He put a hand on his face and groaned.

"Or Sasha, maybe. Ooh, no, Annazelle sounds better."

"Couldn't you just say you didn't want to tell me?" He replied, staring at the ceiling and dramatically waving his hand around.

"No, no, that wouldn't be as fun. One of these days I'll slip my actual name in and you won't be able to tell if it's real or not because you'll be way too suspicious."

"No, I'll know. I just will. There's a difference between a real and a fake name."

"Well, what about a nickname? Is that a real or a fake name?"

He stared at her. Well, with a few blinks. "What I've been calling you is close to your actual name, isn't it."

"Is it?" She stared back, with her aggressively neutral face on again. No blinking from her side.

"It is. Your expression says it all."

She pulled a face, crossing her eyes and sticking her tongue out of one side of her mouth. "An thi? Wha doh thi thay?"

"That you're clearly trying to cause me great pain." He smiled, unable to stop himself.

"Weh, I thin-" Mari relaxed her face and started again. "Well, I think laughter is supposed to be good for you. Unless you're recovering after surgery, of course. But then you can just laugh mentally." Laughter was one of Mari's best tools, honestly, even more than her chemicals. Funny how a joke could immediately make someone warm up to you and provide crucial information. She'd done that in one of her first missions from her mother... No. She had to focus on the present.

"I'll try laughing emotionally. My head hurts and my emotions aren't destroyed yet."

"Great. That works too." Mari glanced at the clock on the wall. "I know time works differently here in the asteric plane, but I mean it, you should rest. Once you get better you can actually laugh. Also investigate the fluid bombs, if you wish. I know I'll be going back to Garnet-13 once I can leave and getting a sample to run through the lab."

"Well, you're up and walking. You could probably leave right now if you wished."

"Up and walking is different from up and able to fight. I'm planning to stay until it doesn't hurt too badly to climb buildings. Right now I don't think I could even climb over a table."

"There's such a thing called stairs."

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Too bad assassins won't wait patiently on the roof while you climb up twenty flights of stairs to catch up to them."

"I doubt you'll have any more assassins going after you. Unless our employer's friends decided otherwise. Even then, a hospital isn't safe. Even if there's taboo. With what I know that was shared with you, they'd ignore it."

"Hey, I bet some of these nurses can throw a mean punch." She shrugged.

"With the patients they deal with? Probably. Probably have sedatives in their pockets. Still, don't underestimate anyone. Or overestimate."

"I'll just estimate, then." Mari sat there for a second. "You're not going to sleep, huh."

"Like I said, too much energy." He shook his head.

She got a mischievous glint in her eye. "Okay then, care to use that energy to put on the show of, 'Ilias Ravioli's top ten mishaps and/or embarrassing moments and/or failures'?"

"How about I use my energy in a different way that doesn't involve being utterly embarrassed because I told someone who won't even tell me her real name about these incidents. I will tell you, this right here, being shot in the back is definitely on my list of failures. The only thing good is that I can tell people that I got shot and the bullet stopped an inch away from my heart and some person decided it was worth the trouble to keep me alive. And I can't tell whether that was stupid or not."

"Ear? More like Mouth, because that was a whole waterfall of words. Anyways, I think that decision was the opposite of stupid. We assassins snuff out enough lives. When it's not to make a living, I think it's more worthwhile to save them. Unless, of course, said life tries to snuff out your life, and... Yeah. Well. I meant to say, Lavinia here is open to any other ideas you might have for burning off your energy."

"Lavinia."

"Yes. Lavinia Soledad, if you want to go with the full name." Mari's poker face made another cameo.

"That sounds like Lavatory Shoe Dad."

"You botched it on purpose. This is an insult to people named Lavinia everywhere."

"Well, it doesn't insult them if they haven't heard it."

"I've heard it, Eel Eyes."

"Well you aren't a Lavatory."

"What an astute observation! No, I'm a spielanx."

"In name as well, Maria." He was still tapping his fingers.

She watched the pattern of his tapping. Morse code? Or just a way to release energy, like she did sometimes? "Yes, my name is not Lavatory. Lavatory diverges from Lavinia after the letters 'Lav'. If you must know, Maria is close to a nickname of mine."

"Mmm. What letter do I have to remove?"

"Well, do you think 'Mria' would make sense?"

"No, but what if I removed the other letter? Mari?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Bingo."

He raised an eyebrow. "Actually?"

"No, it's actually Mria- Yes, it's Mari." She counted the taps of his fingers. He seemed to be unaware that he was tapping them.

short long short short. long long long. short short short long. short.

love, she deciphered.

long short long long. long long long. short short long.

you

short short.

i

short long short short. long long long. short short short long. short.

It just repeated. Mari figured out the order of the words in her head. "I love you?"

He froze and clenched his fist as he looked away.

It seemed to be an unconscious habit. "Sorry. Sensitive topic?" She glanced away. "You don't have to answer that." Well, she was a little curious. And tempted to make fun of the way he'd turned the exact color of a maraschino cherry. But she could read a room.

He didn't answer her. In the brief awkward moment of quiet, Mari heard noises coming from outside the room. Perhaps a troublesome patient?

"Soooooo I'm going to even things out from my brief jaunt in jail and wipe my own memory of the last minute." She slapped her forehead. "All gone. Now, what's your favorite element of the elemental diagram?" Mari couldn't help it. She defaulted to chemistry. Chemistry was a safe topic.

"Ay you guys!" Ilias said in a low dumb tone.

"Gold guys? Last I checked, 'guys' wasn't an element."

"Kidding. Gold's too rich. Blends with my skin. Silver's my favorite if you haven't noticed."

"Ah, the wolf mask. Of course. And of course you'd still choose a precious metal."

He just shrugged. "It doesn't matter to me. Yours?"

"Ooooh boy. I'd have to go with syen. The way it originated on Ellipse but combines so well with elements from Squarica and Rhombico... But oxygen and the other square group elements are also neat. And shwuin is great-- it's the odd element out, without a group, and yet it forms the base for the crystals that are everywhere on the asteric plane. Oh! Speaking of gems, would you happen to know what happened to my third garnet? I used one and hid the other, but I'm missing one."

"How about I just tell you when I fell off of the roof after getting shot in the back, that was my second time falling from a roof. And the other assassin is crispy last I saw him."

"Crispy." Mari gave Ilias a look. "My mother gave me those three garnets to be used in emergencies. It took her weeks to get the wiring right to create such a powerful explosion."

"Admittedly, she did good." He wilted slightly, looking guilty. "That would have been strong. Admittedly, I took that wiring off and redid it with silver rather than brass."

Mari couldn't help but feel like it was a waste of a garnet, but she'd be a hypocrite if she said anything. She hadn't used it to its full potential either when she'd tossed it at their employer. "...Fine. Evidently, it worked, and we're both not dead."

The door bust open. "Mwahahaha, but you'll be dead soon!" A nurse held up a syringe as she- no he--ran into the room. It was a dude with a full on blonde wig and overdone makeup. He struck a pose with his nose in the air and the syringe pointed at them.

Ilias just groaned, and muttered a curse under his breath.

Mari looked at the newcomer, unamused. What kind of crazy spielanx was this? He had seven fingers, meaning he was one social tier above her, but that didn't matter if he was insane. "And who might you be?"

"Midnightravenguard the Glorious, aka your doom." He moved on to another pose, lifting a leg and stretching out his arms and contorting his face into an expression that was probably supposed to be threatening. It was decidedly not. Especially not with the smudged lipstick.

"If you were James Bond, you'd keep us here all night with that name." Ilias mocked. ",And at the moment you look anything but glorious. You know what?You kind of look like my horse when a child gave it lipstick."

Midnightravenguard--Mari decided to just call him Mid--dropped the pose and glared at Ilias. "You die first."

"Yes, I at the moment cannot do anything." Ilias stretched his arms out, hands splayed open to show he had no weapon. "So, do it. Kill an unarmed and severely wounded spielanx, who might I mention is a member of the ruling family."

"You're taking all the honor of it." Mid frowned. His eyebrows were a bushy black.

"Who hired you?" No offense--actually, yes offense, he was a joke. Ilias still laid there, just taunting the guy to stab him with that syringe. His expression was stone cold, but you could see in his eyes he was laughing hysterically. Laughing emotionally. Mari was proud. One of his fingers started twitching.

"It would be against my code of honor to disclose that information, as..." Mari tuned out Mid and watched Ilias's tapping instead.

Fork. Under. Pillow. Rid. Annoyance.

Mari made brief eye contact with Ilias, just long enough to confirm that the message had been received. Then, in the space of a second, she reached under the pillow, whipped out the fork, and threw it at the syringe. It flew out of Mid's hand and bounced off the wall behind him. He blinked.

Mari retrieved another fork from under the pillow. Somehow it didn't surprise her that Ilias had a hoard of pilfered cutlery. "Next target is your eyes," she declared. "If you value your life or your eyesight, you'll run."

Mid gulped, turned around, and ran, holding a hand to his wig so it wouldn't fall off. As he left, he called, "You'll regret threatening the Glorious Midnightravenguard the Glorious!"

Inside the room, someone coughed. Mari whirled around. A lady in a neatly pressed suit was leaning against the wall next to the window. "Sorry about that," she said. "But Agent Midnight is an effective distraction and attention-grabber, even if his character is... questionable. Now, we have about five minutes to get you out of here while everyone else is focused on him."

"Hold up. Stop. Rewind. How do we know that's not a trap or something? And does it look particularly like I can move quickly?" Ilias said.

The lady uncrossed her arms and held out a badge. It had an official seal. "Agent Emily Potash. I work in a classified division of the government."

"Yes, that doesn't particularly answer my questions. More the second than the first."

"Who said anything about moving quickly?" She tossed a set of clothes to Ilias and another to Mari. "We're going to stroll right out of here."

"That works. Mind giving some privacy?" Ilias asked as he inspected the clothing. More than likely looking for bugs.

The agent nodded and took out a chip of mica wrapped with platinum from her pocket. She tossed it into the air, and it expanded into a folding screen about a foot taller than Ilias, blocking off his side of the room but also preventing access to the door. Then she did the same for Mari. "You get one and half minutes," Agent Potash said.

Mari shook out the clothing. A shirt with an elastic band around the bottom--likely so it wouldn't float up in the asteric plane's strange gravity--and trousers. She felt along the linings. Nothing that would indicate bugs, but who knew how much government tech had advanced? Well, it was still better than a hospital gown, and she could find other clothes later. Mari was dressed in forty six seconds.

When the folding screen went down, Ilias barely got his shirt fully on. Which allowed a glimpse of the many scars on his lower back. A fight with a tough target? Or... something more purposeful? Mari frowned, but before she could ask, Agent Potash clapped her hands. "Let's get a move on."

The corridors were quiet. In the distance, there was the sound of raised voices, with Mid's prominent among them. He yelled something about saving the squos and using fake squo meat instead. Agent Potash ignored the shouts and directed Mari and Ilias to the elevators.

Ilias was quiet, jaw clenched. It was hard to tell whether it was pain, distrust, or both. He walked with a limp and his eyes were a darker grey, like oxidizing silver. So probably both.

Mari shot him a glance. If they weren't careful, his recovery could be delayed. Inside the elevator, Agent Potash pressed the button for the first floor and stood there with her eyes leveled carefully at a spot directly in front of her. Ilias looked at Mari. Mari lifted an eyebrow. She gestured at his wound. "How are you doing?"

"Fine." He feigned, looking forward again.

In Mari's experience, "Fine" rarely meant fine. It meant he was hiding his pain so people around him wouldn't worry. It also meant he didn't particularly want to be questioned about it. Yes, she was speaking from personal experience.

The elevator dinged. Agent Potash stepped out, waited until the receptionist was distracted by talking on the phone, then walked confidently out of the hospital, with Mari and Ilias following. There was an onyx-black car parked outside.

"How are you doing?" Ilias looked back at her.

Mari considered the question. On the whole, she wasn't doing bad. The wound hurt occasionally, but she could move, and she wasn't in danger of losing her life at the moment, at least, she thought. She was rather suspicious of Agent Potash, and eager to retrieve their weapons, and curious about Dr. Ghee's research... "Fine," she said simply. After all, it could also mean one was thinking too many things that would be out of scope as an answer.

Agent Potash opened the doors for them, and Ilias motioned for Mari to get in first. "Ah yes, ladies first, right into a potential kidnapper's car," she said. But if it were someone associated with their employer, they would be dead by now. She wasn't entirely convinced Agent Potash was really a government agent (badges could be faked, after all), but Mari was convinced that she knew more than Mari currently did. And her philosophy was that more information was always a worthy pursuit. She got into the car.

"I just feel like it would be much harder for me to slide in than it is for you." Ilias got into the car after her.

"Fair enough." Mari watched Agent Potash's face through the front mirror. Her dark eyes were focused, and her black hair was tamed into a bun with near-surgical precision. "So, Agent Potash, where are we going?"

"We have a facility on Quartz-2. Our trained medics will take care of the rest of your recovery, and you'll be further briefed upon arrival."

"Exactly what do you mean by 'taking care of the rest of our recovery'? What does that entail?" Ilias asked.

"Rest, nutrition and hydration, etcetera. Possibly an experimental treatment." Agent Potash left the city and directed the car through the space between floating cities.

"Experimental treatment?" He looked appalled.

"Nothing much, just some edible crystals. Our doctors will explain more."

"The words 'nothing much' and 'crystals' do not go together in a sentence."

"As I said, our team will brief you." Agent Potash refused to say more.

"Yeah, alright. But why us? Why particularly now? So you can use experimental treatment that could possibly make us explode?" Mari sat back and let Ilias interrogate the agent. They were good questions, she had to admit.

"No one said anything about explosions. There is a 99.999% chance that there will be no explosions."

"So there's a 0.001 chance that we'd explode. That's reassuring. How about the other unpleasant ways to die?"

"Information overload from asking too many questions. Fries your brain."

"Also, did you ditch the weird guy?" Ilias asked, looking out the back window.

Through the mirror, Mari could see that Agent Potash's hands clenched on the wheel, as if she wanted to strangle it. "Yes. Unfortunately, he'll catch up later."

"I can't blame you. Although I did find him amusing. Would he really consider killing me?"

"Pfft. That guy? No. I wish. Then he'd get fired, and not even nepotism could save him." Agent Potash rolled her eyes. Apparently Mid was annoying enough to crack her cold, information-on-a-need-to-know-basis facade. Good progress, yes?

"How'd you get stuck with him?" Mari asked. "Some kind of punishment?"

Agent Potash suppressed a groan. "Suffice it to say I had... a disagreement with the higher ups, and now I'm forced to babysit him for the next few months. Which, as you can see, is no easy task."

"That sucks," Mari sympathized. They passed by an emerald city. Up ahead, a large city of quartz was orbited by smaller cities of rose quartz and smoky quartz. Agent Potash directed them towards the rose quartz. Many of the buildings were pyramid shaped.

Soon enough, Agent Potash was landing the car outside one polished pyramid. Somewhat unnecessarily, she announced, "We're here."

"Really? I thought we were stopping to get some gas in the tank and snacks, maybe stopping at the astericport to send me back home." Ilias replied sarcastically.

"Or getting a quick rhoku," Mari chimed in. "Saying hi to a few of your friends."

"Having a barbeque in my back yard so you can actually have a proper squoba."

"Going to a fast food restaurant so you can experience the atrocities of cheap squobas."

"My dear cousin, if it's bad, I don't think I'd like to try it."

"That's the point."

Agent Potash looked like she was barely refraining from rolling her eyes. "Wonderful, you two are chatty. Let's have you be chatty in the interrogation room, yes? Not to worry, it has snacks. And comfortable chairs."

"Those chairs don't happen to be electric chairs, right?"

"Of course not. Who do you think we are? Wait, no, don't answer that." Agent Potash pinched the bridge of her nose. She muttered, "Midnight or these two, which is worse."

"You sure you don't want me to answer that? Either of those questions." Ilias leaned forward from where he sat.

Agent Potash sighed, then got out of the car and opened the door to the backseat. "Come on, before you talk yourselves to death."

"Would that be suicide or murder?" Ilias got out of the car.

"Accidental suicide, I think," Mari said. "Or suicirder. Murdicide? But then you're killing murder, or murdi, so that doesn't make sense."

"And to answer that second question of yours, we're worse. Much worse." Ilias smiled at Agent Potash.

Agent Potash rubbed her eyes. "This is going to be a long day." She was right.

"Lead the way our illustrious tour guide. I love seeing the inside of a classified government building." Ilias said.

She seethed, then snapped, "This way," and led them into the pyramid.

< Chapter 6                  ~◇~                   Chapter 8 (coming soon) >