To End a War: II.V

Written by blueberryripple13

Whilst her team were all peacefully rounding up innocent bystanders and citizens, Aurora was getting a grown man’s blood projected onto her body.

“Maeraka!” She shouted to the woman in front of her, “Watch where you’re stabbing!” Aurora lifted a hand and the red liquid came out of her clothes and onto the carpet next to her, all whilst glaring down her friend.

“Sorry!” Maeraka sheathed her sword and instead pulled out a small, golden dagger and pulled an enemy guard by the back of their collar, “You might want to move,” She warned the siren before slitting the man’s throat clean open. Maeraka then threw the dagger at another man’s forehead and waltzed over to collect it and then to stab it into another guard’s abdomen.

The guard choked up blood and spewed it out all over Maeraka’s shoulder and back. She froze in disgust and motioned for Aurora to help her out (which she did, very happily).

Maeraka scanned the hallway and noticed that she and Aurora were the only two people around.

“Rory,” she asked, “Where are the others?”

“I think they went down one of the corridors near the entry. They were trying to find out where the guards might have come from,” She explained.

Maeraka sighed in annoyance, “Why did they say anything to me?”

“Well they did,” Aurora began, “Well, sort of. Eliza just kinda shouted it and hoped that we all heard. I think you were too busy bring your wrath down on these dudes to hear.”

“Yeah, probably,” the Genie chuckled. “But I was pretty good right?”

“Yes, definitely” Aurora assured. “She also said for us to continue on to Goodman unless she says otherwise, so I guess we should keep going.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

The two girls walked to the end of the hall in an uncomfortable silence. Maeraka took to tracing an invisible line over the piles of enemy corpses with her sword and Aurora was fiddling with her hair.

“So,” Maeraka spoke up, “How is your brother’s wedding coming along?” She asked awkwardly.

“Good, good,” Aurora answered, equally as awkward. “He is having some last-minute stresses about the tux he is going to wear. He thinks it looks too much like something out mother would force him to wear as a child. She used to force us in horrible clothing and then parade us around at fancy dinner parties.” Aurora cringed at the very memory. “I remember how once I had to wear this ghastly mustard lace dress with a really itchy lace turtle neck and the sleeves were all the way down to the middle of my palms. It was the ugliest thing I have ever worn in my life! It was so the skirt was so poufy too!” She buried her head in her hands and laughed out of embarrassment. She had no clue why she shared that story, but she was happy that Maeraka was laughing with her.

“Maybe I should get you one for your birthday. I’m sure Fan would love to make you one,” Maeraka offered.

“Don’t you dare!” Aurora playfully swatted at her friend. By this point, the girls had reached Chase Goodman’s office and stood there nervously, both wanting to push the door open, both wanting to wait for the rest of their friends to arrive, and luckily, they did.

Eliza, Taylor, Rachel and Giselle came running at the girls and stopped in front of the door. Giselle grabbed the bronze door handle and tried opening it, but after a couple of attempts, the door refused to move.

“In the name of the lord, why won’t this door move!” Giselle yelled out in exasperation.

Rachel pulled the vampire back and away from the door, “Probably because whoever is on the other side has used both a locking charm and a charm to keep it in place, so people who want to arrest the dictator, a.k.a. us, won’t get to him.”

“Giselle,” Taylor started to get very annoyed, “Can you try opening the door again, this time by kicking it down?”

She nodded and walked backwards a couple of metres to give herself a running start. Giselle sprinted towards the door, and kicked it with all her strength, only to fall onto her back, almost winding herself.

“Well, that didn’t work,” Eliza pulled Giselle back onto her feet. “Do you think that there is another way in?”

Aurora scoffed, “I doubt it. And even if there was, they would use the same protection there as they have here.”

Maeraka looked at the door handle with a quizzical face and whilst her friends were arguing about magic doors, she walked forwards and twisted the door handle, “Don’t worry guys,” She said as the door swung open, “We were twisting the handle the wrong way!”

Giselle looked like she was about to strange Maeraka, “I tried kicking it open! How does the door handle affect that?” Maeraka just shrugged and waltzed inside.

The rest of the girls followed Maeraka into the office and found exactly what they were looking for: Chase Goodman.

The man stared at the girls with fear in his eyes and a smug grin on his face as he was surrounded by many body guards, of which outnumbered the girls. Taylor locked eyes with the dictator and felt a small rage start to build up.

“The gig is up, Goodman,” Taylor pointed both her swords at the man, “Your entire country has been evacuated and we have you surrounded. Jashington’s military force is waiting outside this building for my command and my friends here have Eoberona’s military on command as well.”

“How about,” Chase moved in his seat, “we sit down and discuss this over some tea.”

“Dude, what are you on?” Rachel waved her arms out in pure confusion. Giselle chuckled at her friend’s outburst whilst Maeraka prayed to be anywhere else but where she was currently.

That feeling wasn’t very uncommon as one Octavia García was trying to break up a fight between two small children at an old port by the Yue shore. After retrieving their group of people, Octavia and Dontae were waiting for the twins to arrive so they could be on their way back to Eoberona.

“Here I was thinking I got get a break from my normal job,” she muttered to Dontae next to her.

She snickered, “I was going to say that once this is over you can go home and relax but then I remembered that you live in the palace with Scylla and Charon so that is never an option.”

“True, true,” the teacher agreed, “but speaking of the twins, where are they? They should be back by now.” She looked off to where her adoptive children should be coming from as Dontae decided that she had enough and threw both squabbling kids over her shoulders and walked towards some of some the older folk from their village.

“Watch them and make sure that they don’t fight,” she commanded. Dontae turned around and walked back towards Octavia, of whom was pacing around in circles and worrying now that she didn’t have anything else to do.

“We can always call them,” Dontae offered in some kind of support. She was never good at helping other people out emotionally and she knew that the protocol was that if someone is late to a rendezvous, don’t call or message them, and instead let them contact you.

Octavia tuttered her head in disagreement, “You and I both know that I can’t do that, but hopefully they just haven’t messaged us because they forgot, yes, that must be it!” Dontae felt saddened by what Octavia is clinging to, in hopes that Charon and Scylla would be okay, but Dontae had to agree that is was in character for them to do that.

Just as Dontae put a comforting arm around Octavia, a black bus pulled up in front of them. The door opened and out jumped Scylla.

She fell into a dramatic roll on the floor and then kicked her leg out as she stood up for a little extra flourish, making some of the people that Octavia and Dontae had retrieved, laugh.

Charon stumbled out next looking half asleep and holding a large eski in his hands that Scylla grabbed off of him and nudged him in the direction of Octavia. He seemed to have lit up at the presence of his mother and lumbered over to where she was standing.

Octavia embraced him and gave him a kiss on the forehead, “Do you know where Edvard is?”

“He’s going to be here soon, I think. I’m pretty sure that he is coming with Rose on medic duty. He’s been taking some first-aid courses with her. I think that it is because of his teaching degree.”

Octavia nodded, “Yes, that would make sense. You have to go through two years of first-aid training as part of the course requirements. I found very boring but from what I heard, Edvard is enjoying it very much.”

“Makes sense,” Scylla pointed out from a few metres away, “he is a nerd anyway!”

“Scylla!” Octavia shouted back. “Stop making fun of your brother’s fiancée!”

“Never!”

“Excuse me!” Victoria ran over to Charon. “What are you going to do with us? Where will we go?”

Octavia smiled at the girl and answered with her best teacher voice, “We are going to take you all to a floating base between Eoberona and Eshington and then sort everybody out there.”

Victoria raised her eyebrow, “What do you mean “sort out” and what happened to your face?”

Scylla walked over and past Victoria, “What’s it to you?”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know, you tell me.”

“You can’t speak to me like that!” Victoria pointed a finger at Scylla.

“Really?” She challenged. “But I just did.”

Octavia grabbed her daughter by the arm, “Don’t get into a fight with a child, Scylla. And as for my face,” she turned to the young girl in front of her, “I got attacked by acid 21 years ago.”

“Then why aren’t you dead? I heard that acid is very dangerous” Victoria questioned.

“Magic,” Dontae looked her in the eyes with the stubbornness of a thousand angry horses.

Victoria pursed her lips and walked away and back to Johnathan, of whom was trying to put the baby to sleep.

“What did they say?”

“Nothing useful,” Victoria looked over to the group of adults with a distasteful look. “All they said was something about taking us to a floating base in between Eshington and someplace called ‘Eoberona’ but I don’t want to go.”

“Well,” Johnathan put a supportive arm around her, “I think that you should at least be grateful that you’re outside.”

“Yeah, about that,” Victoria looked down at her thin, grey dress, “I’m cold. Do you think they have any warmer clothes?”

Johnathan looked at her with a grin that quickly faded to a small frown as he noticed how pale she looked in comparison, and how her brown hair and eyes only made her look more like a ghost.

“I’ll go check for you, and see if they have anything for Oscar,” He gave the baby over to Victoria. “In the meantime, you can wear mine.” He took off his beige windbreaker and placed it over Victoria’s shoulders. He started to walk over to the group of adults that Victoria was talking to earlier but stopped in his tracks as he saw a couple that looked oddly familiar.

The man had similar blond hair and it seemed like he also has blue eyes, but Johnathan wasn’t completely sure. The woman had a light brown hair and her face looked a bit like his. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he was almost sure about their identity but he wasn’t completly-