The Next Day

“Wow! This is pretty good!!”

“That it is,” Mark replied with a smile, watching Danielle take a large bite out of the sky-blue colored ice cream on a stick. He then took a modest bite out of his own ice cream before remarking, “I guess wherever you go, something like ice cream is a constant, huh?”

“It’s damn good at beatin’ the heat, that’s for sure!” Kate exclaimed, and then took a bite of ice cream herself — though in so sloppy a manner that she smeared cream over the sides of her mouth.

Mote eyed his three friends warily, noting how they each readily consumed the frozen snack in their hands; for his part, he was content to slowly lick away, savoring the sweet yet salty flavor of “Nikosa” flavor ice cream — the Nimalian equivalent of Vanilla, in terms of their “default” flavor of ice cream. The flavor itself was merely okay in Mote’s opinion, but what mattered more to him was cooling down, as the air all around carried an uncomfortable — yet not quite unbearable — level of warmth. It was the kind of fall-time warmth that was cool enough to signal the waning of summer, yet warm enough to discourage any kind of layering clothes, made all the worse by the group’s relative proximity to the equator of Nimalia. They weren’t currently in Compound Tresnon, after all; the Eximius Vir had traveled with Colonel Saito and Major Hackett the previous day, and currently stood within the city of Telsinoka — the capital city of the continent-nation of Tekdecé, Nimalia’s most technologically advanced nation.

As Mote looked out over his surroundings, Tekdecé’s technological advancement was obvious. The city of Telsinoka stood in the plains just north of Tekdecé’s equatorial jungle, and had taken advantage of the sprawling flatlands to construct a truly massive metropolis. Standing at the center of the urban sprawl was a skyscraper of immense proportions, reaching nearly three kilometers into the sky and easily towering over the rest of the city. The buildings in its immediate vicinity were “only” one kilometer tall, but even they appeared small when compared to the magnificent gleaming glass skyscraper known as the Center of Tekdecé, due to hosting all of the facilities for Tekdecé’s government — as well as for the government of the entire Nimalian Union.

Surrounding the Center of Tekdecé was a glass jungle of shorter skyscrapers for a kilometer around, forming a hexagon around the central towering spire. Surrounding that hexagon of buildings was a massive hexagonal reservoir of water, itself nearly two kilometers across as it stored enough water to support the entire metropolis. Six large bridges connected the central hexagon of buildings to the far side of the reservoir, each bridge located at the vertices of the hexagons; on the outer points of the hexagonal reservoir, right where each of the six bridges reached land, were small clusters of three skyscrapers, each nearly two and a half kilometers tall — making for a total of 18 such towers. Each individual cluster of skyscrapers were connected by a number of skybridges, allowing people to walk from one tower in a cluster to another without having to go all the way down to the ground, while also granting an impressive view of the city below.

The Eximius Vir currently stood atop one of the highest skybridges in the southern cluster, allowing Mote to look down upon the rest of the city through the windows that spanned from the floor to the ceiling of the skybridge. Billowing cumulus clouds occasionally obscured his view of the ground below, but from what he could see, the land all along the edge of the reservoir between the tower clusters was occupied by grand parks filled with greenery. And then, just half a kilometer back from the reservoir, the urban sprawl started up again, at first featuring kilometer-tall skyscrapers that formed a virtual wall all around the reservoir parks, and then slowly tapering down the farther away from the center of the metropolis you went. However, the taper was so slow, and the sprawl so grand, that even when over two kilometers above the ground, Mote could tell that the metropolis of Telsinoka extended to the horizon in all directions.

While he appreciated having the time to admire the view, though, Mote couldn’t help but feel restless. Ultimately, there was no reason for the Eximius Vir to be in Telsinoka — Saito and Hackett were present only to attend the NSD military summit, and the Eximius Vir weren’t allowed to attend. Their presence here, in the end, was just to vacation, a fact made even more obvious as Mote noted that he and the others were out of uniform — a first in quite a while. Replacing the green with black-trimming uniform on Mote was a navy blue t-shirt and jeans. The other Eximius Vir dressed just as casually, with Mark sporting a long-sleeved baseball shirt with a white chest and green sleeves, accompanied by a pair of shorts; Danielle wearing a white tube top and black sweatpants, exposing her toned midriff and her signature metallic right arm; and Kate wearing an ill-fitting crimson tank top with a low collar and baggy camo cargo pants with comically large pockets, her messy blond hair still tied back and partially covered by her signature red bandanna.

Mote’s attention lingered on his friends for a moment. He couldn’t help but shake the feeling that they were all out of place, but he couldn’t quite place why — the crowds of people around them sported all manner of dress, all kinds of colors, and vast variances in height, hair color, skin color, and style. It was simply impossible to come up with a single unifying descriptor for the Tekdecénian populace; among the visual chaos, the Eximius Vir fit right in. Even their taller-than-average heights didn’t stand out all that much against the crowd. And yet, despite that, Mote couldn’t bring himself to truly relax — being out of his uniform simply didn’t feel right to him.

“You alright, Mote?”

The Electrotechnic glanced toward Mark, who was currently looking at him with a concerned expression. With an inaudible sigh, Mote returned to looking out over Telsinoka, still leaning on the massive glass windows of the skybridge. “…I’m fine,” Mote eventually replied.

“Are you sure?” Danielle eyed his unfinished ice cream. “You still have so much left!”

“Just because I like to take my time with things doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me,” Mote countered impatiently.

“Christ, Mote, do you really need to be so fuckin’ deliberate about everything?” Kate remarked, leaning with her back against the windows as she finished off her ice cream. “Just let loose once in a damn while!”

Mote glanced her way, just in time to see some of her ice cream fall off the stick and into her cleavage — where she readily shoved her fingers and scooped up what remained into her mouth. He promptly scowled. “I’d rather be slow and deliberate than loose and a mess.”

“Oh piss off,” Kate retorted, inspecting her now-empty stick for a second before grabbing the front of her shirt to begin fanning herself. “Just let me enjoy myself every now and then, you uptight asshole.”

“I think you could still learn some decorum. Just look at your shirt!”

“What? Do my boobs intimidate you?”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Mote snapped. While Kate’s form was certainly surprisingly curvaceous, the true meaning of Mote’s statement was obvious: Kate’s tank top was stained all over from her using it like a rag every time she wore it, including today.

“…Hate to say it, but Mote kind of has a point,” Mark commented with a sheepish smile. He then produced a napkin from one of his pockets and handed it to Kate, saying, “I get wanting to dress how you like, but wiping food on your shirt is a little much.”

“Fine then, I won’t use my shirt,” Kate snorted, ignoring Mark’s napkin to instead wipe her ice cream stick clean on her pants.

Mote released an exasperated sigh. “You—!”

“C’mon, guys!” Danielle interjected, jumping in between Mote and Kate and quickly looking between them. “We’re supposed to be having fun! I mean, this is the first time we’ve had some time to ourselves — all four of us! — and we get to use it to wander the capital city of an alien planet! Let’s enjoy ourselves!”

“She’s right,” Mark quickly added. “Today, and the next few days, we don’t have any responsibilities. It really is just us. We should take advantage of this as much as we can.”

Mote and Kate both stared at Mark for a second, only to then exchange a glance.

“You’re right… I’m sorry,” Mote apologized.

“Oh, shit, I didn’t expect to hear that!” Kate remarked in surprise. “What the hell’s been going on with you, Mote? Seriously. Usually I’m the one starting the arguments, not you!”

“I don’t know…” The Electrotechnic looked away, his attention diverted to a passing cloud below. He watched it slowly float by for a second before continuing, “it’s just… everything that’s been happening recently is just—“

“No!” Danielle shoved her way in between Mote and the window so she could stare him in the eye as she proclaimed loudly, “today is for free time. Free. Time! Don’t think about work!”

Mote responded only with a bewildered stare, followed by uneasily glancing to his left and right — taking note of the odd stares Danielle was drawing. “Alright, alright, fine. Just… not so loud,” he insisted.

Danielle’s mouth instantly curved up into a grin. “Good!” she exclaimed, and then withdrew from Mote just as quickly as she had jumped in.

“No work talk, though, huh?” Kate mused with a frown. “Not even complainin’ about—?”

“I said, no work!” Danielle declared. “Don’t talk about it, don’t think about it! Come on! Is it really so hard to relax for you guys?!”

Kate and Mote exchanged another glance, and then sighed in tandem.

“Alright, fuckin’… you win, Danielle,” Kate replied, a defeated smile on her face.

“So… free time, then, hmm?” Mote questioned, finally returning to slowly working his way through his ice cream. “What do we do?”

“We could just keep doing what we’ve been doing,” Mark suggested. “We’ve been out all morning, but we’ve still only seen one of the Sina cluster towers. There’s still the other two towers, or even the other clusters.”

“Urban exploration, huh?” Kate commented absentmindedly. “I dunno. What the hell is there even to see?”

“Are you kidding?! There’s tons!” Danielle exclaimed, and then produced a brochure from her back pocket. “There’s parks, museums, shops of all kinds… they even have something called a ‘vieh’, which I think is an interactive, 3D movie! And that’s just the start of what’s here! You name it, they have it!”

“A quiet place to read?” Mote suggested.

“Somewhere to tinker with tech?” Kate interjected. “Or to blow stuff up?”

“Oh, c’mon!” Danielle pouted. “That’s just what you guys usually do in your free time! How can we read or tinker in a group, anyways?”

“Fair enough.” Mote shrugged. “I don’t have any other ideas, though.”

“Ever the fuckin’ stick in the mud, huh?” Kate remarked.

“I don’t hear you offering any better ideas.”

“Hmm… …does fighting count as work stuff?”

“I could get behind some training, actually—“

“Training counts as work!” Danielle insisted.

Kate responded with an exaggerated shrug. “Fuckin’… okay, then. I’m out of ideas.”

“Really?” Danielle looked between Mote and Kate in exasperation. “You’re out of ideas already?! But there’s so much to do!”

“That’s just how they are, Danielle,” Mark pointed out, and then eyed Mote and Kate with a friendly smile. “We could try doing something that we did when we were young.”

Mote and Kate exchanged another glance — this one of confusion — before turning back to Mark. “…What?” Mote questioned uneasily.

“Well, the parks down there look pretty big, and open,” Mark commented as he looked down at the greenery that bordered the hexagonal reservoir on all sides. “They don’t look too busy, either — at least, not from up here. So I was thinking that we could go down there, maybe play some tag, or something.”

“Tag?!” Kate scoffed.

“We aren’t kids, anymore,” Mote declared.

“You don’t have to be a kid to enjoy some tag,” Mark countered. “The way I see it, we have a nice day, here. A little warm, sure, but it should be cooler by the water. And we just had some ice cream. I think some kind of physical activity is exactly what we could use, right now — if not tag, then we could just take a walk. And once we’ve tired ourselves out, maybe we can try that vieh that Danielle mentioned. A movie sounds nice.”

“Tag sounds like a lot of fun, to me!” Danielle remarked. “Followed by the vieh, too, that’s a great idea! I’m in!”

“…Aw, fuck it. If Danielle’s in, then I guess I am, too,” Kate eventually conceded.

“And I suppose I could… watch,” Mote reluctantly added.

“That’s good enough of a commitment, for me,” Mark replied with a smile, and then began leading the group down the skybridge, toward the closest tower. “Now, c’mon — it’s like Danielle said. Let’s see that we take advantage of these vacation days as much as we can!”

---

*

“Ugh… is this really needed?”

“Shut up,” Pierce snapped, in response to Obra’s complaint. “You think I like this, either?”

“Or me…” Conrad muttered.

“Why are y’all complainin’?” Liask grumbled, “but be quiet! We’re almost there!”

Pierce passed Liask an impatient glance — or at least, he passed a glance toward about where he estimated Liask to be, as all four of the Chaotics were currently invisible. To support the fact that Conrad could only turn someone invisible if they were touching him, he was currently riding on Liask’s back, while holding hands with Pierce and Obra. The three men — Pierce and Obra, especially — had voiced a number of complaints about the arrangement since they first started walking a couple hours ago, but the necessity of keeping their presences hidden was obvious in the face of their surroundings. Instead of the typical sandy beige wastelands that Treséd was known for, the group currently trudged over flat grasslands, softly lit by post-twilight moonlight and extending as far as the eye could see in every direction. On the southern horizon appeared the beginnings of low foothills, but just north of that, barely a kilometer away from the group’s current position, stood a walled city with imposing fortifications, not unlike those of Compound Tresnon — though significantly heavier and also featuring a number of guard towers and a tall, castle-like structure in the center. Overall, the city looked much like a fort, making it live up to its name of Fort Rokres.

“I’d still like to know why we couldn’t just fly in…” Conrad complained.

“As I said before… Fort Rokres has an energy shield, just like Compound Tresnon,” Liask explained, her tone bearing the tired annoyance of someone who’s had to explain something over and over again. “Flyin’ into that thing would’ve been like flyin’ into a stone wall.”

“And even if we were able to get in, where the hell would we land?” Pierce questioned. “Sure, the place might have an airport, but we’d still have to explain where the hell our aircraft came from.”

“Your landin’ woulda drawn a bunch of attention, anyways,” Obra muttered.

“Hey, I landed just fine.”

“I dunno…” Liask commented, “it was a little… rocky…”

“Wasn’t very steady on the way here, either,” Conrad pointed out.

“Oh shut up,” Pierce retorted. “My flying skills are perfectly serviceable. I got us all here in one piece, didn’t I? And sure, the landing was rough, but you know what they say: a good landing is one you can walk away from, while a great landing is one where you can use the craft again. By that measure, my landing was perfect!”

“Yeah, yeah…” Conrad sighed wearily. “Still. Did we really need to walk this whole way, though?”

“The hell are you talkin’ about?” Obra snapped, “you ain’t done any walkin’ at all!”

“Yeah, but I’ve still had to sit here and maintain this invisibility for hours.”

“You’re only saying that because you haven’t had a chance to nap,” Pierce countered. “I know you’ve been practicing keeping your invisibility going while you’re sleeping, Conrad. You can totally keep it up for hours and hours on end.”

“If you knew about that, I clearly wasn’t doing well enough…” Conrad grumbled.

“Alright, y’all… really?” Liask finally interjected again, “we’re here for Minilas, remember? She has it way worse than any of us, right now. So stop complainin’ so much.”

A brief moment of awkward silence followed Liask’s statement. Eventually, Conrad released a weary sigh. “Sorry,” he apologized. “I’ll just… keep quiet.”

“We should probably all keep quiet at this point,” Obra muttered, his voice lowered as he eyed the close walls of Fort Rokres. “Who knows if they can hear us…”

“They won’t. Not as long as Conrad is here,” Pierce declared.

“Gee, thanks for the confidence,” Conrad deadpanned.

“Still, Obra is right,” Liask said. “Especially y’all, Pierce, Conrad. Don’t forget y’all ain’t speakin’ the local language. Obra and I can understand you ‘cause we have those translation implants, but as far as I know, no one in Rokres has the implants. To them, you’ll just be speakin’ gibberish.”

“It’s worse than that,” Obra pointed out. “Since y’all ain’t speakin’ Akian, the Rokresians will know immediately that y’all are outsiders if you say literally anythin’. Even Liask and I gotta be careful; they could tell we ain’t around here just from our accents.”

“Well, we are outsiders,” Conrad pointed out. “I get most Tresédians don’t like outsiders, but it’s never been that much of a problem, before…”

“You don’t understand,” Liask countered. “You’ve spent most of your time in Compound Tresnon, which is the most open of all the Compounds in Treséd. Most Compounds wouldn’t even let you inside their walls, since you ain’t Nimalian. And Rokres, well…”

“They capture or kill outsiders on sight,” Obra stated bluntly.

“…Oh,” Pierce replied uneasily.

“What? Why didn’t you say that earlier?!” Conrad questioned irately.

“Why did you think I wanted to wait ‘til night to approach Fort Rokres, and do so invisibly?” Liask retorted.

“I thought you were just being super careful! Not that we were putting our lives on the line!”

“Well, it’s too late to turn back, now,” Pierce declared as the group closed to within a kilometer of Fort Rokres. “Look, all we need to do is sneak in, see if they know anything about the Bleeders or Minilas’s location, and then sneak back out. We shouldn’t be in there for any longer than a day, and even if things go tits up, we’re Chaotics! We can easily bail out.”

“I wish I was so confident…”

“Anyways, we’re gettin’ close!” Obra hissed. “Y’all really should shut up! This is where the serious part starts.”

“Easy for you to—…!” Pierce started, but suddenly stopped as he stared blankly at Obra — the now very visible Obra. He immediately snapped his attention to where he expected Conrad to be, only to find that he was still invisible. “The hell are you doing?” Pierce questioned.

“It’s not me!” Conrad quickly refuted, “I didn’t stop doing the invisible thing!”

“What…?” Obra glanced back toward Conrad, and then down at his body, at which point his eyes grew wide.

“Shit… it’s gotta be CENT fields!” Liask exclaimed, “Obra, everyone, get back—!”

Before anyone could react to Liask, however, three tiny objects suddenly sprung into the air around them — followed by a blinding flash of light, a painfully deafening screech… and the blackness of unconsciousness.