Wasteland Survivor - Discovery - ch21
#22 of Wasteland Survivor
"I noticed it too, he wasn't too happy with the idea of being in a female-led camp, but I think he may provide a good role model to the other young males." I said to the Kitsune woman, Merilla.
"Well, not only does he look smitten with that elven girl, but he actually seems to defer to her, I never thought I would see a Kitsune male do that, Fox, and its all thanks to you." She replied. I had paid a price for these people, they seemed so far to be worth it but what was worrying me was that the golem had tracked them all the way here. Had we just attracted the attention of more enemies?
~"Little sister, no matter the enemy, I will not leave your side again, and together we are unstoppable."~ I felt a warmness build, it was Drath's feelings. I am not sure when I noticed I could feel all his emotions, but it gave me a lot of insight into my brother. The finding of him being able, and more, forced to feel mine in return was both sad and amusing. After I had finally relaxed enough from my mission to let Crystal get intimate with me I had felt a return wave of lust from Drath.
Finding the mate-less dragon a female was now my number one priority, but no one yet contacted had seen a single other dragon, let alone a female.
I reached out to him, letting my pride push through all my other emotions, ~"Drath, I owe you my life and more, my sanity. But sometimes... sometimes I think I ask too much. Don't you ever-"~
~"Nonsense, I will be by your side till the day either or both of us die. Your fight is mine little sister, and forever it shall be that way."~
I muttered, still in conversation with Merilla, "And yours is mine.", she looked little confused at first so I continued, "The question now is, do your people want to fully integrate into ours or would you rather remain separate?"
The multi-tailed female laughed, "I think those two are planing some integration, and its a course I would be inclined to back them with. We gain a home by joining you, while you gain the magic that we can wield. The only problem at this point is that none of us are trained in your peoples style of combat, it is very, regimented."
"It is that, I was not always a fighter myself, less than a year ago I was passing through life, Crystal my primary companion, with less care as to who might kill me but how to find my next job." At her blank look I added, "Uh, our culture rewarded people for work, even menial, with food and shelter, if you didn't work, you had a lot of trouble finding either."
"Oh, yes that is understandable." She still looked confused, but I wasn't going to waste time explaining a currency and economic system that would never be used again to someone who never cared about it in the first place. "I know how I can help, but these older youngsters, what can you get them to do, the males are only good with offensive arts, the females mainly healing and agriculture."
"Combat arts will be useful, as we found with Ryst and Bri, but those others, the healing especially, will be useful beyond measure. Our medical knowledge, even before the change, was imperfect at best. Don't get me wrong, there was some amazing things done, but when you healed that soldier who broke his leg on the tailgate of the truck we brought you back in, well, lets just say it did more to ingratiate you to my people than anything I could have said." I grinned at her, the incident had indeed been a random one, but that she had healed it in seconds and the soldier was left without pain and able to walk right away was nothing short of miraculous.
Just then Crystal was running over to me with a worried look on her face, "Hey babe, what's up?" I greeted her.
"Its the Elves, they are claiming we are holding one of their priestesses against her will, they have said they will detain our squad until such time as she is returned." She stated, I was confused.
"Uh, has anyone actually said they have a stray elf priestess?" I made a show of lifting a small rock near my feet, looking intently underneath.
"Its no joke Fox, they claim that Brianna is one of theirs and that she must be returned to them." She answered, leaving my jaw hanging.
"But, wait Bri was human, she was just turned into an elf by Kevin, this is st-" I began to rant but was cut off by the teenager in question.
"That's bullshit is what it is." Brianna said, then got a worried look, "Wait, they have our people hostage? That was lieutenant Jessup's squad wasn't it?"
Crystal nodded, "Yeah, he has his head on strait at least, won't try anything till we contact him. Which General Jennings is trying to do right this minute."
"We have to go there." She replied to my mate, "I have to go there, don't I? To sort this all out."
"Yeah hun, its looking that way." Crystal confirmed. "Babe, get Warrant Officer Nicols to sort out a team, we need to head this off diplomatically if possible, but I want no doubt about our chances to retrieve our team if it goes sour." I nodded and started to run off.
Merilla kept pace beside me, "Let me know if you need any Kitsune, we are at your disposal."
I turned my head to her, "Will do ma'am, now, if you will excuse me?" at her nod I poured on my power, leaving a small rooster plume of dust in my wake.
-
"Well this has gone to shit hasn't it young lady?" Nicols said, looking at me.
"Very much so, Sir." I replied, since our involvement with the mass kidnapping by hostile forces, Kevin, Lyl and myself have become the senior non-commissioned officers 'pet project', the first lesson we had to learn was that his name was always 'Sir', and every sentence ended with his name.
"I know you had nothing to do with it, but the question is, what do we intend to do to head this off? The Boss is planing on how to negotiate this peacefully, what I want you and the others in the 'pack' to help me with is an irregular plan should both the speeches and the gunfire fail to achieve our goal of getting all our people out safely. Understand that your giving yourself up to them is most definitely NOT an option."
"Sir, I Lyl and Kevin are on their way now, I asked, uh, Sir, that is I want to ask your permission to bring Ryst in on this, his magic will be something the Elves don't expect us to have, Sir." I replied, trying to work Ryst into our little 'pack' as he called it. My motives were a bit deeper than his magic use, of course, I wanted to have a chance to see his cute foxy butt a little more.
"Hrmm, very well, I can see what you mean, while we seem to be very much above the norm so far as psi-abilities go at this time, magic is a whole other game, and its good to be able to meet an enemy not only with your own tactics, but with his own as well. See to it." He answered, inside I did a happy little dance.
~"Yeah, bring Ryst in too"~ I reached out to the telepathic leopard.
~"On our way."~ she replied, and from his look I could tell that Nicols had heard that as well.
A few minutes saw us all together, talking furiously, going through many notebooks of paper trying to brainstorm.
"But they just have magic? Can't we just use Fox and-" Lyl offered.
"You have seen what I can do when a little magic is applied to my archery, now imagine a few hundred archers with nearly the same talents." I answered, cutting her argument off before it got too far.
"Yeah, your right, but then, if we had... oh shit, why didn't I think of this before." Her eyes went wide, something had hit the mark. Her face flicked blank, the look she got if she was sending to more than one person at once. "Ok, I have someone coming, she will shed some light on this, but I think I just came up with the perfect plan!"
If Lylianna's normal mood was considered perky, her current mood would have to be nirvana, she practically radiated sugary happiness and triumph. I was starting to think she may be a projecting empath as well.
Then the girl in question opened the door, and we all broke into a similar grin.
"Yes, I can't believe we didn't think of doing this first." Nicols commended her.
-
I had wanted to bring Fox along for this, her intimidation factor alone was becoming legendary since the scouts of various people had been through the 'western-war' area and found so many bodies ripped and cut with just a single bayonet, but Crystal had told me a firm 'NO' to including her, she had commented that Fox had her own task to do that was both time consuming and unrelated to this task.
I had received another shock in this, but not from the Boss this time, Hellen had not only told me no current officers were available for this mission, but that we would have to make do with "just you and Sergeant Cope, Captain.", It had taken a moment for my brain to register that she had addressed me as an officer. It was still something I was working on getting used to, the soldiers, however, latched onto it so fast I was amazed.
"Sir, we are almost to their city. Sir." Private Johansen said from the gunners seat in the bushmaster.
"Ok, recapping the plans." I said, turning to the 'pack' and Sergeant Cope, "We go in with Brianna, she will make it known that she does not want to be with them and I will tell them that we support her in anything she decides to do." Nods so far, "If they refuse this or try to abduct her prior to our meeting, we put up a show of arms, a show only Sergeant, are all the soldiers clear on this?"
"Yes Ssir. I made damn ssure they undersstood exsactly what the ssituation would be. Ssome ssuggested themsselves that we remove ammo from clipss, but I want that ass a backup in casse plan Csssee falls sshort. Ssir." The snake-man replied, still unable to shake his lisp.
"Good, if they still refuse us or threaten violence, we go to our plan C. If that pans out right, we can be out of this with no blood shed at all. Although Crystal was hoping plan A would be the successful one." I concluded. "Lyl, how is she doing?" I asked both telepathically and vocally, for the benefit of those beside me, since Lylianna was in the other truck.
~"She is calm, I have been talking to her about this, she doesn't understand words much still, but she has the concept of what we want firm in her mind. She says she can spare most of us, but one or two might not make it."~ The feline telepath reported.
"Ok then, lets do this." I said, turning my attention back on the road we were travelling.
It was ten short minutes later we made contact with the first Elves, at the edge of their 'town'. Most of the houses were in the trees, but a few were down at ground level, this would be tricky fighting if we had to go beyond plan C.
"Most honoured warriors, we see you have returned our priestess to us, it is with much thanks that we-" One of the 'welcoming party began once we had dismounted, gesturing to his fellows to retrieve Bri from our ranks.
"Stop." The elven girl said, interrupting the flowery speech, "I am not your priestess, this is all a mistake. I was human up until a few moons ago, your people have no hold over me!"
"Nonsense, the Goddess has given us visions, ensured we knew you belonged to us, it is why you have come. Now" and he made those gestures again, "don't dally and come with us to the temple so we c-" The elven guards had moved at his gesture, trying to flank Bri. Everyone had been told that she would have to make this initial resistance on her own. One of the guards reached for a metal clasp and had it halfway to her wrist.
"No." Ryst said, power boiling behind the word that had interrupted the speech again, the guard who was carrying the band had dropped the now glowing hot piece of metal, "Those are bands of control, your kind have used them to enforce slavery in the past. I won't let you put that on her."
We hadn't planned for this, none of us expected them to use some kind of enslaving device on her. Had to admire the kid though, hope it wont get him killed though.
"Impudence! This is Elven land, you are here on our sufferance, you will abide our laws!" The man now began ranting.
~"Lyl, tell everyone 'Plan B', this is going to hell fast."~ I sent silently to the girl.
~"Done, Sir."~ Was her reply. I almost chuckled, even in her mind she said 'Sir'.
Rifles raised to point at the guards. This close, and with no time to draw their bows, they would be dead in the time it took to squeeze a trigger.
"Ssir. Where do we procseed from here?" Sergeant Cope said.
"That's up to them."
* goes and brews up some more Earl Grey *
More in the works, they day is young.