This chapter is my favorite one planned so far! But its a tad mushy
Chapter 2:
“Damn it Akio! For once can’t you do exactly as I instruct?” Sergeant Cortez yelled furiously. “I specifically instructed if any guards saw you, you killed them!” Cortez was infuriated, as always, with Akio’s lack of obedience. Disgusted Cortez turned away from Akio, and brushed his long silver hair with his hand, behind his ear. “This was an inside job; we were taking out a defector. The citizens still believed that he was loyal to the Alliance. We were supposed to have killed him to make it look like the Grippans did it. Do you know how much work we had to do to cover your tracks?” Cortez asked rhetorically, then turned to face Akio and stared straight into Akio’s eyes with his light hazel eyes.
“No, I don’t and honestly, I don’t care,” Akio responded, “besides I don’t like to have unneeded bloodshed.”
“Ah yes all thanks Palvo. Curse your master,” Cortez said preparing to go on a rant. He started to walk around his desk. “He trains you in every field, and he does it well. Your potential shines, you turn into quite a soldier because of him… Then what does he do? He strips you of any will you had to fight with some silly final test where he throws his life away!” Cortez seethed.
“This time of year would be a very bad one to insult my former master,” Akio fumed.
“Just get out of my ****ing site! You’re disgusting me!” Cortez screeched. That was an order Akio had no trouble complying with. He stood up, leaving his chair turned around and headed out of Cortez’s section of the barracks, and snatched his Sword from the attendant outside of Cortez’s office. Akio began to walk through the corridors. It was funny the place was called a barracks, but it was nothing like old fashioned ones everyone thinks of. The barracks was set with odd looking white ceramic tile for the floor, walls, and ceiling. Mana powered lights lit the hallways, and there where no windows anywhere in the barracks making it difficult to tell night from day if you were inside.
Akio was changed into his normal clothes, out of that horrid disguise he had to wear; his clothes were simple, but elegant. His clothes were comprised of a baggy black shirt. The shirt’s sleeves reached to the beginning of Akio’s palm. His pants were also black, reached to his heels, and were quite baggy. Both his pants and his shirt had golden lacing around the edges. His clothes were the exact opposite of the soldier’s uniform, which were tight, and very exact fitting. Akio was the only non-ranked soldier who was allowed to wear whatever clothes he wanted. Akio was very thankful for this. He remembered back when he had to wear the military uniform. It was as if he had a whole extra layer of skin on his body; completely unnatural.
Akio turned left down the corridor, away from the route to his room. “One of these days they’re going to notice that I stray from my path every day…” Akio feared. He made a few more turns, heighten his pace, but kept his movements silent. He took another turn, this time to the right, and suddenly felt a hand touch his.
“I heard you got into an argument with Cortez again,” a voice said. Akio turned to see Celia, right on time, in their usual meeting spot. Her long brown hair was partly in the way of her green eyes.
“Oh, really?” Akio questioned and moved the hair from her face. “And how did you hear that? Surely rumors don’t spread that fast around this place.”
Celia let out a little giggle, bent down touching her skirt mocking him. “Come on Akio, you don’t think you’re the only one trained in espionage.” Celia joked playfully.
“With the way those guards stand watch, you really don’t need to be trained in espionage,” Akio joked back.
“Will you ever consider doing what they instruct you?” Celia asked resuming seriousness.
“For what?” Akio asked rhetorically, “So I can end up a high rank like you? Sorry Celia, but I’m not interested.”
“So they don’t decommission you!” Celia responded immediately, a bit offended.
“You don’t actually believe that they’ll decommission me. You’ve said it yourself, they see the way I progress, they’d never get rid of me,” Akio quoted. “Besides, I’m not going to adjust my morals for Cortez of all people. I’ve already got enough guilt on my hands.”
“Are you going to let that one instance, one mistake, one sin, dictate your entire life?!?” Celia questioned angrily.
“I don’t know, it depends. How much longer do I have to live? In this business you really don’t know.”
“I don’t even know why I come to see you anymore,” Celia threatened.
“Maybe because you have no other friends?” Akio shot back.
“I think you have this mixed up,” Celia countered, “I have no other friends because I come to see you.”
“If you’re so worried about having other friends then why do you come to see me every day?” Akio asked seriously. Celia didn’t answer, but instead moved a bit closer to him, grabbed him by his hips and drew him near. She leaned foreword and kissed him. That was enough of an answer for Akio. He raised his arms, clutched her, holding her close and kissed her back, hungrily. Their lips separated and Akio wasn’t ready to let “love silence” set in. “Fraternizing with your subordinates isn’t allowed,” Akio said, worried.
“Then we won’t get caught, we won’t let anyone see us,” she said, they always went through this, to her it had become very tiring.
“Its not that I’m worried about-” he started.
“How many times do I have to tell you, I have the floor plans, there are no mana cameras!” Celia interrupted. Akio opened his mouth to protest but she quickly silenced him with a kiss. They were the same height as each other, so one didn’t have to look down at the other as the embraced, and the other didn’t have to look up, a true democratic relationship; they were equals in each others eyes. Today though, Celia seemed nervous, and tight, making her appear needy. “What’s wrong?” Akio questioned.
“Akio… have you heard of the Shade uprising in the West?”
“Of course, just about everyone has by now, it’s been going on for about a week now,” Akio answered.
“It’s really serious this time; they decided they needed the best to calm it down,” she finished. Akio withdrew from the embrace and stared into her eyes.
“They’ve sent…”
“Yes, they sent me to end it, I could be away for months, maybe a year or more,” she informed him dreadfully.
“I’ll request a transfer!” Akio blurted out.
“Don’t be silly Akio, they would never let you.”
“Then refuse!” he yelled, even though he knew he shouldn’t.
“Akio, I can’t…”
“Why? Why is the military so important to you? Why is it more important then me?” he whispered with jealousy.
“I never told you why I joined the military did I?” she asked. Akio just shook his head. “When I was little, really little, my parents came down with shades,” she began. Shades, also known as body snatchers they are evil creatures from a different realm, which have come to Gaia. They cannot survive here long without a host body, so they penetrate into a human’s body, and slowly absorb the host’s soul until only the Shade is left; this occurrence has come to be known as Shade’s Disease. “They killed themselves, making sure the Shades didn’t totally take over, they did it to protect me and my older sister who became like a substitute mother. That didn’t phase to me much in the when I was young because I couldn’t really remember them much, and had my sister. But one day, she too came down with a Shade, I tried to hide it from the townsfolk, and protect my sister, and I lasted for about a year. One day, I was sick, and feel asleep from a fever, my sister feared that the bouts when the Shade had control of her body was becoming too dangerous for me, so she turned herself in. They killed her, and gave her an “honorable burial”.” Celia said, choking on the words, tears started to flow out of her eyes, “Honorable burials don’t make the dead anymore alive.”
Akio wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks with his thumbs, and brought her head to his and kissed her; this stopped her crying, and made the sad, sad memory fad away. “I told the military that I heard what the Shade had said during my sister’s bouts and how I could be useful. They trained me, and I’ve dedicated my life to not letting the Shades do to others what they had done to me… and I don’t plan on stopping until the eight towers they Shades spawn from are destroyed,” Celia finished.
“Well then, I have my work cut out for me, you’ve already got two down,” Akio said in a rather serious tone for a joke.
“Don’t take my work away from me now!” Celia responded to make sure he was just joking. “We should get going now…” she said regrettably. They kissed again, and afterward had a long embrace, unwilling to let each other go. Akio was the first to loosen his grip, and Celia responded by totally letting go and beginning to move on; he just watched as she disappeared from view. Akio’s heart sank he didn’t reach out to her, and tell her how he loved her. He just watched her go; he watched her fade away to nothing. After waiting a while, Akio also moved on, it was late so he got to his room fast just in case.
Before going to sleep he reached over to his desk and wrote a quick letter to Cortez requesting a transfer, it was unlikely it would be accepted but doing nothing would be better then just letting her go. He put the letter outside his door; the night shift would be there soon to deliver the letter, nothing worry about.
He fell to his bed exhausted. The mana memory bed adjusted to his shape immediately, and Akio quickly drifted into a sound slumber…