Sequel

The week of silence is likely obvious to those of you who read Partners. Is Partners over? Not quite. Will it update soon? … I have no idea.

Everything keeps changing and I keep wanting to throttle my characters.

I applauded Mari in this. And Talen is seeming more and more like Una, which I find strange. What's up with Rel's odd view of Mari... I wonder...

This was fairly word heavy, I was kind of surprised, but at the same time I didn't want much conversation about it. Kind of surprised Paw didn't murder someone but the poor guy's likely in shock.

Read, Review and enjoy.

...ish?




The next week was back to routine. Rel was thankful for it, just as he was thankful for travelling to the rally with Paw on one side of him, and Muan on the other. Muan watched out the window, chattering away in near incomprehensible Sidhe the entire time while Paw pointed out various landmarks and things that Muan might find interesting.

The university the rally was being held at was an older thing. A remodelled temple of Rahl-ta, that had been altered some five hundred years before becoming a university from a temple of Ramen-ai. Reusing stone structures was common in their culture. But additions had been made. To the Ramen-ai’s temple, a wing had been added, the inner sanctuary of Rahl-at, meant only for the priest lines. When the priest lines gathered in the west, against the coast of Norash, the temple had been converted yet again, into a university. Wood and brick created yet another wing, where classes on sciences and administration rooms were held, while literature, art, religion, philosophy classes and the library were found in the older structures.

Volunteers had altered the university lawns, building a huge sound stage and setting up stalls for shirts and buttons and any number of other things, with slogans from ‘free the Sidhe’ to ‘te hehsu?’ which apparently was a philosophical Sidhe question about the intelligence of other races. Apparently. Paw lost Rel somewhere in the metaphysical applications of reality, the giggling fits over another race using that saying and the existential possibility of metaphorical intelligence.

Way over his head.

Which meant that later on he’d pin Paw in a chair somewhere and make the Sidhe explain it to him.

The car pulled right up beside the stage and as soon as the door opened, Paw went off to the stage and climbed the side of the metal … metal…

Rel wasn’t one for construction, so all he could really call it was the frame of the stage. That thing. That they hung lights and curtains from. Paw climbed right to the top and to the middle of the stage before he settled down and looked out over the area where the crowd would gather.

Muan looked around and around and around, turning on his heel, neck stretched out as he peered over everyone’s heads. Mari was moving between groups of people, talking into her cell phone at times, scribbling something on her clipboard at others. When Mik arrived everyone just seemed to drive away from the side of the stage. It wasn’t really a conscious thought from any of them, more like they were nudged away by something bigger than themselves.

Mik spoke with a well dressed man, just about the same age as Mik was, who seemed to reflect Mik’s shining personality. Almost like a mirror. The other man went on stage first and Mari finally approached Mik. There was a shout on stage and Mik turned away from Mari.

Rel glanced over his shoulder at Muan and found the Sidhe had edged away, to a plastic chair. Muan had it in his hands and was gnawing on the back of the chair. Rel made a startled sound and moved towards Muan, motioning with his hands.

“Put that down, you don’t know where that’s been. Don’t chew on things when you don’t know where they’ve been.”

“Chewy, chewy, oh so yummy.”

Muan’s quoting of television commercials was starting to get annoying, but Rel had a sneaking feeling the Sidhe was doing it to poke him and so he said, as if he wasn’t bothered in the least, “but you don’t know what some people has done to that plastic. It would be safer to chew on a rock than on…”

The male tossed the chair to the side as if it weighed nothing at all and began searching about on the ground for a rock, “ever sharp knives make for better cutting.”

Creepy, a shudder of fear ran through Rel, but he managed to draw Muan back towards the stage as Mari locked eyes with him. The woman was annoyed, pissed, angry, barely contained hatred was rolling off of her as something near pity worked its way through her continence.

Leave it to a woman to turn his understanding of emotion on it’s head. If every man felt that many emotions all the time the world would have ended long ago.

Mari met them halfway to the stage, “alright, stand and look pretty, you may have to answer a few questions, but this is mainly about Mik’s and Talen’s speeches.”

“Mik and… Talen?” Rel turned the name about in his mind before he found the answer, “as in, the president of Norash, Talen?”

“Yes, now get up on stage and just inside the curtain so Mik can see you, do as he says, go,” Mari shooed them towards the stage.

Rel and Muan climbed the steps and moved to just where Mik could see them. Likely a few in the crowd could see the pair as well, considering there was someone in the front row elbowing their companion and motioning with their head. Rel looked down, wondering if perhaps this was a bad idea, wondering if he would be recognised on sight… and then what? Have the entire thing go strange because he had been a death row convict?

And how strange was that to think of at that exact moment? When Muan was staring at the crowd and Mik had just turned towards him. How far had he gone? From death row inmate, looking forward to his own execution to living the strangest sort of life, actually living the life?

Mik made a motion and Rel poked Muan, leading the Sidhe up to stand between Mik and Talen as Mik seemed to imply he should do.

“I would like to introduce you to Muan and his partner.” Mik paused, glancing at Rel before back at the crowd, “Survivors.”

The crowd began murmuring to one another, watching Muan. Some pointed fingers, others looked pointedly, knowingly at Rel. Rel looked from the crowd to Mik for help. But the man was watching Muan.

“Can you calm him down?” Mik murmured, not taking his eyes off Muan.

Rel glanced at Muan. The Sidhe looked like he had just caught wind of something he didn’t like. Chest puffed out, dominating stance. At Mik’s words, Muan turned to Rel, retaining his stance for less than a second before the Sidhe gave Rel a fake smile and wrapped an arm around him. Muan pulled Rel close, protectively.

What the hells…?

“As you can see, the program can do a good deal for the Sidhe. But we need your help, still,” a pause, an ‘insert independent thoughts here‘ space that was just long enough for a person to think on Mik‘s words, just enough to allow the words to sink in, “There are some who say we shouldn’t help the Sidhe. There are some who say the Sidhe are unintelligent, animals, soulless beings that are good at imitation. Some say we should let them die, few say that we should go out and finish what Mother started. I say they are wrong.”

BANG.

Rel’s face hitting the side of the fucking stage was what that was, Muan pressed tight against his back for a moment before the Sidhe was up again, dragging Rel with him. As Rel regained his balance he realised the awful truth.

Muan had slammed Rel into the stage a moment before the sound. Mik’s back was to them but there was something about the way the man swayed, at the odd little sound that came out of Paw’s mouth as Mik toppled sideways and hit the stage.

Blood was welling up from a wound in Mik’s chest. Paw dropped to Mik’s side even as the crowd screamed. Talen shouted something and Rel swore he heard a helicopter.

Rel turned to the crowd and shouted, “GET DOWN.” As Muan took on an aggressive stance, hands spread from his sides, teeth bared, mouth open just enough to separate the teeth and show off those sharp, lethal weapons.

As the crowd tried to drop to the ground, Rel swept through their minds, amazed at how simple it was, how easy it was, to stop them for a fraction of a second to search through their thoughts. He couldn’t find the gunman with his own mind, but from the minds of everyone else he pinpointed the bastard and snapped an order to the man’s body not to move.

Even as Muan clicked. No. Not quite clicking, not the tongue to the top of the mouth sound that one makes to call an animal, but the kind of sound at the back of a throat, like the rumble of a dog’s growl except harsh and quick and loud. Muan launched off the stage, seemingly taking little effort to leap to the middle of the crowd and slam into the gunman.

Rel took his eyes off of the Sidhe for a moment, looked to Mik and Paw. Paw had a tight hold of Mik’s hand, holding it in both his own as the Sidhe babbled something. Something that was in no language Rel knew. Tears were in Paw’s eyes and Mik wasn’t breathing.

Mari was on the stage a moment later, leading a medic crew carrying a stretcher. She directed them to Mik and snapped out orders for accommodating Paw. Once Mik’s body was on the stretcher and Paw and he were heading away Mari turned her attention to Muan, dragging the struggling man back to the stage. And her hatred, her anger and frustration and annoyance came to a boiling point.

Rel let the people of the crowd go, not realising he had been holding them down. They stood as one and were seemingly reflecting Mari’s emotions towards the man. Anger, hatred and a still silence that went beyond those emotions that slowly settled in. Rel was surprised the man made it to the stage in one piece. Surprised someone hadn’t tried to kill him in the crowd. Surprised Mari’s look hadn’t stripped his flesh from his bones. Muan thrust the man at Mari and Mari, arms crossed, clipboard still in hand and phone vibrating loudly in the silent stage, looked the man up and down.

Up and down, jaw clenched.

Like she had no idea what she should do. Or, perhaps, she was trying not to do something impulsive.

Like… take her metal clipboard and hit the man as hard as she possibly could?

Blood splattered the stage and a tooth bounced to Rel’s feet. Mari gave Muan a look and the Sidhe reached down, snapping the man back to his feet, healing the odd dent that Mari had made in the side of his face. Mari dropped her clipboard and glared at the man.

“You can’t beat me.”

“Beat you? There’s not a mark on you,” Mari said, her lip curling up in a cruel sort of way, “don’t worry Rel, I don’t plan to use Muan like that. Essuan on the other hand… would be more than happy.” The woman stuck to fingers in her mouth and whistled loudly and just like that security was on the stage, followed by several men and women in black suits looking about as pissed as could be.

“Uh-oh,” Talen muttered at the sight of them, “I’m in trouble. But first. Mari, Rel, Muan, I would like to have a press conference before my council gets their claws back into me. Twenty minutes, program building.”

“No,” Mari snapped as security led the gunman away in handcuffs, “twenty minutes here. These people deserve to be the first to hear whatever you have to say.”

Rel’s head felt funny. Controlling the crowd, rolling through their minds like that… it had taken a lot out of him. He felt a bit ill.

“Fair enough,” Talen murmured with a pause. A pause as Rel’s vision blurred, “perhaps we should sit him down before he… and there he goes.”

The stage came up to meet him, but Rel didn’t hit it. Muan had caught him and Rel hung on the edge of consciousness for a long, tortuous moment before his mind slipped into blessed unconsciousness.


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