The moment she was gone, Rei pulled up his NOED and drew up Viv’s contact, calling her with a quick eye command. The line rang.
And rang.
And rang…
“Come on, Viv,” Rei hissed as the call went to voice mail, closing it and making to try again.
“Rei,” Aria caught his attention before he could. Her own eyes were alight, and with a wave of one hand she shared a screen with him.
Catcher, looking winded and sweaty, was on the other side of the video call, breathing hard somewhere under one of the outside lights that illuminated the campus paths at night.
“Catcher!” Rei exclaimed. “Where’s Viv?”
“Long gone, man,” the Saber got out through gasped inhalations. “She lost me near the Arena. Obviously she’s headed to Kanes, but I think even her Endurance out-does mine, at this point. I won’t get there before she wakes up half the dorm to figure out where Grant is, if she doesn’t know his room number already.”
“Shit,” Rei muttered. “That’s not good. We’ve got to find her.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” Aria corrected, staring at him evenly through her frame. “Catcher, the lieutenant major wants to make sure Rei’s clear, and he needs to speak to Hadish Barnes, but after that he’s being discharged. Once I get him back to his room I’ll come join you. If shit hasn’t hit the fan by then, I’ll drag Viv off the hunt myself until she’s cooled down.”
“He’s being discharged?” Catcher asked, surprised. “Already?”
“Apparently,” Aria said with a shrug. “Might be a while, though. Are you okay to go keep after her on your own for now?”
Catcher paused, looking suddenly conflicted. “I mean… yeah, but…”
“What?” Rei asked him, concerned at the hesitation. “What’s wrong?”
Catcher shook his head. “Nothing. I’m just… Thinking about it, I’m not sure I want to keep after her. You have to admit the girl’s got a point, man. Grant can’t be allowed to get away with this…”
“Catcher!” Aria hissed in disbelief. “If she calls Gemela on a fellow cadet without good reason, she’ll be lucky to get half a month in the brig!”
“I know!” Catcher looked pained, and the video spun dizzyingly around him as he turned his head in what must have been the direction of Kanes. Sure enough, the silhouette of the Arena loomed behind him, now. “And I know that’s not what I said in the hospital, but honestly… If anyone that’s not you is gonna pick a fight with the guy, Aria, it might as well be Viv, right? And he can’t get away with this!”
“He won’t,” Rei promised, feeling his ears grow hot. He didn’t like being fought over like this. It made him feel like a child. “But Viv can’t be the one to pay him back, man. It’s got to be me.”
Catcher grimaced at that, but after a moment appeared to see Rei’s point, because he nodded slowly. “Yeah… Okay. I get that, I guess.” He groaned, and seemed to steel himself to start running again. “Urgh… All right. I’ll try to find her, but no promises. Just meet be back at the dorms as soon as you can?”
“Okay,” Rei and Aria answered together, and Catcher ended the call with a muttered curse as he began moving again.
“He won’t be able to stop her,” Rei said the moment both their eyes were clear.
Aria made a face. “No, he won’t,” she agreed. “But maybe he can get in her way long enough for me to get there. I meant it when I said I’d drag her off myself if I have to.”
“I know you did.” Rei laughed grimly. “Maybe you should go now? He could use your help.”
Aria looked at him like he’d started speaking in some alien language. “And leave you to hobble your way back in the dark? You wouldn’t get back till morning, if you made it at all.”
“I can walk,” Rei insisted. Then he paused. “… I think.”
It was Aria’s turn to laugh. “We’ll find out when Ashton and Barnes are done with you, won’t we?”
Rei chuckled at that, letting his head fall back to the pillow. After a moment Aria sat back down, crossing her arms and looking around the room. Rei watched her, but the few times she glanced in his direction she looked away again quickly, turned once more into the shy, awkward girl he’d started to come to know.
“I’m glad you’re okay.”
Aria spoke so softly, Rei almost missed the words. She was turned away from him, watching the room door, but he could tell she wasn’t focused on it. Her hands were gripping the sleeves of her plain button-down shirt, and Rei was reminded of the fact that her jacket had been taken away from her because of the blood.
Something pressed at his chest again.
“Thanks,” he said quietly. “For coming to find me, I mean.”
Still not looking at him, Aria gave a small shrug with one shoulder. “Did you think I wouldn’t? You scared the hell out of me, when you called.”
“… Yeah… I suppose I must have.” Rei, for some reason, couldn’t take his eyes off her red hair. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. You were just the first—”
He stopped himself. He had been about to say, “the first person in my contacts”, but something told him that wasn’t what Aria would want to hear in that moment. It wasn’t necessary, either, nor did it devalue in any way the fact that she had not only come running when he’d needed her, she’d also carried him across the campus at what he could only imagine was breakneck speeds to get him to the hospital.
“Thanks,” was all he managed to say again.
This time Aria nodded, though he thought he saw her swallow first. After a few more seconds of silence, she finally looked around at him.
“I’m serious, by the way.”
Rei blinked. “About Viv? Yeah, I know. She could—”
“No. About the SCTs.”
“Oh. Right…” Rei’s mouth went dry, and for once he was the one who turned away, staring down at his lap. “I know you are, but you don’t need to take on that responsibility. You already work three hours basically every night with me. More would just—”
“Help me as much as it helps you, Rei,” Aria interrupted him. “I don’t train with you guys because I need playtime. I mean—” she reached up to brush a hair out of her face “—it is fun. And that’s important to me. You know that. But you also challenge me, Rei. Not in the traditional sense. You’re basically a wet noodle when it comes to durability—”
“Gee, thanks,” Rei muttered.
“—but there’s more to a User’s potential than the numbers on their CADs.” Aria finished with a smile. “You… I don’t really know how to explain it… I think you force me to take note of my own weakness. The way you adapt. The way you learn. The way you fight. If I don’t change in response, I feel like one day I suddenly won’t be able to keep up with you.”
“Because Shido changes so fast?”
“Because you change so fast.” Aria was watching him intently now, he could tell. Even still averting his gaze he could feel her eyes on him. “D-Rank or not, if I didn’t bother correcting the things you take advantage of… It would be like Commencement all over again, only this time you’d be ready with a way to get around Third Eye.”
Rei smirked, now absently studying the scars along his right arm. “Impossible. Not like I am now. I’ve got a ways to go.”
Aria laughed quietly behind him. “Meaning you’ve already figured out how to get past it. Fine. I concede that maybe you still have some growth before you really have a shot at taking me down head on, but that doesn’t change what I’m saying.” She started to reach out, pausing, then rested a hand on his thigh over the blankets, just above his knee, and Rei finally looked up at her again. “You push me, Rei. In a way no one else does—or at least has ever tried to. Sure, maybe Hippolyta would grow a little faster if I found a training partner closer to my CAD-Rank. But despite that… I learn, with you. I learn a lot. I feel like a better fighter, after these two weeks, and it’s not like Hippolyta�
�s not progressing. I’m probably not more than a week away from C2.”
“It’s still not your responsibility,” Rei said slowly, trying hard to ignore the tingling pressure of her fingers on his leg, even through the fabric.
Aria huffed, and her hand retracted as she pouted. “Fine. Then how about you think of it this way? Do you know any other students who train an additional three hours a day?”
“I’m sure some of the Sectional hopefuls are doing a lot of extra—”
“Yes. They are. But not three hours’ worth, every day. And if you seriously want to make a showing at the Intra-Schools, I know you’ve already done the math. You’re going to have to train even more, even harder. Right?”
Rei hesitated, then nodded.
“Therefore,” Aria stared, as though entering the closing arguments of a court case, “can you tell me of a single partner I could find in the entire school who would push me as hard as you’re about to push yourself?”
This time, Rei had no argument to give. He just watched her for a time, taking her in, gratitude and amazement mixing together in a strange cohesion in his chest.
He didn’t hate the feeling in the least.
After a while, Aria started to go red again.
“What?” she asked quietly. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Rei didn’t answer for a moment, pondering.
Then he opened his mouth.
“I still think you just get off on treating me like you’re personal punching bag.”
When Ameena Ashton returned with the medical drone, tailed by the lumbering form of Hadish Barnes, the two of them were dumbfounded to find Aria Laurent, C-Ranked prodigy of the Galens Institute first years, in the process of soundly beating an already-injured Reidon Ward with his own pillow.
CHAPTER 31
As Rei had anticipated, Major Barnes had proved a much tougher character to crack than the good doctor. He played his role as the chief of campus security well, and while in the end even he admitted he couldn’t force Rei to reveal his attackers, it had come after a solid half hour of assurances, orders, and a scattering thinly veiled threats of extended time in the brig if Rei kept “withholding evidence”. Giving up at last, however, Barnes had left dissatisfied, muttering something about “your funeral, kid”, though Rei was pretty sure the major had seen reason in his argument that accusing anyone would only lead to more trouble in the long run.
“I can’t decide if you’re stupidly brave, or bravely stupid,” Aria muttered after Barnes and Ashton had left them alone again, the lieutenant major having told them they were dismissed shortly after scheduling Rei for a follow-up the next day. He was seated at the edge of the bed—having achieved such a position on his own, by some miracle—and as Aria looked the other way had managed with great difficulty to tug on the pants of the new uniform Barnes had had one of his men retrieve from the stock depot while they’d talked. His boots had taken longer, and giving up on lacing them Rei had finally relented to assistance when it came to pulling on the fresh shirt and jacket. His old one had been unsalvageable, which was scary, but there was a slim silver lining in the fact that the uniform had obviously been selected according to his newest measurements, and fit him like a glove.
He wouldn’t have to bother Quartermaster Sattar for another month or two after all.
“Probably the worst half of both options,” Rei grunted in answer, working through the discomfort of holding his arm up so Aria could help get the second stiff sleeve of the white shirt over Shido’s bands.
“Stupidly stupid?” She smirked, managing the rest before straightening his collar for him. Rei thought her fingers might have lingered over the open buttons, but in the end seemed to decide he’d have to manage that task on his own, for which he was grateful.
Between Viv running off to hunt the mastermind of his thrashing and Aria helping him to get dressed, he wondered if he wasn’t experiencing a little too much of the doting parenting he’d lacked in childhood.
“There are those who wouldn’t argue that,” he got out, letting her reach for his new jacket while he struggled with the buttons. He managed three, his fingers trembling as his arms hurt just from being bent at the elbow, and decided that was good enough. It was the middle of the night. If anyone was going to yell at him about a half-open shirt as he limped back to his dorm from the hospital—undoubtedly with more of Aria’s help—they could go and shove it.
“Yeah, I’m getting that impression,” Aria muttered, holding up the jacket for him. He got an arm in easily enough, but the second was the struggle again, and Rei was pretty sure all his grunting and groaning by the time they managed it had probably woken up any patients left on the floor Viv and Catcher’s earlier screaming match hadn’t.
“Rei… Are you sure about this?”
In the process of struggling with even more buttons—though merciful the sizable gold decorations were less numerous and easier to manage—Rei glanced up. Aria had taken a step back from the bed and was frowning down at him from under the brim of her re-donned cap. Her own jacket had been yielded to her cleaned—or a perfect replacement had been found—and she looked completely the part of a Galens cadet once more while she took him in carefully.
“Which part?” Rei asked, more to give himself time to think than anything else as he returned his attention to the buttons.
“Not telling them.”
“You were pretty steadfastly on my side about it while I was arguing with the lieutenant major.”
“Yeah, cause you seemed resolute on the idea, and I know better than anyone—okay, maybe not better than Viv—that you’re not one to stay down even when it’s good for you. So I’m asking you straight up: are you sure about this?”
Slowly, Rei nodded. He understood her concern, but he could see the pattern of events play out in his mind’s eye. “I don’t want you to think I’m not pissed. I am. Or I will be, once I have the energy to feel anything other than sore and tired. But there’s jack to be gained for reporting Selleck and the others.”
“Mateus Selleck?” Aria asked sharply, and Rei recalled that she’d been asleep when he’d filled Catcher in. “The Saber?”
“Yeah. We kinda… didn’t hit it off, last time we were in a cross-training group together. Looks like I left a bad taste in his mouth.”
“Who were the others?”
“Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
Rei frowned, managing finally to close up his jacket. With a breath of relief he let his arms relax, reaching for his cap, the only part of his original uniform left to him once again, retrieved by Barnes’ team from SB7’s elevator lobby. Unfortunately, he found himself unable to lift it higher than his nose, and after a few seconds of awkward struggling felt it tugged gently from his hands.
“Who were the others?” Aria asked again, sliding it carefully over his white hair.
With a sigh Rei filled her in on the details of the ambush, from Warren and Emble’s betrayal to the beating itself. While she didn’t rage and scream like Viv, Aria demonstrated herself at least less able to keep her emotions in check than Catcher.
“I hope they find Grant dead in a ditch tomorrow,” she hissed, face contorted in such fury her eyes seemed to glow the same shade as the green vysetrium of Hippolyta’s bands. “It would serve him right.”
“Not for me, it wouldn’t,” Rei growled back. He had found, as he’d finally voiced in detail all the events of the afternoon, some of the anger he thought wouldn’t hit him until he’d spent a good night in his own bed. “I’m not just keeping this from the staffers because I don’t want my school life to get more complicated, Aria. I’m gonna pay those assholes back and then some. Grant needs to be alive for me to do that to my heart’s content.”
Aria snorted. Apparently unable to help herself, she reached up to straighten his jacket for him. It was oddly in her nature, Rei was discovering. So quick to blush and stutter, right up unt
il the moment it was time to take action. Indeed, once she was satisfied with the state of his uniform as a whole, she offered him a hand to stand.
“I’m hoping you still mean on the field. I would want to be there, and I’d want every member in our class to watch it happen.”
Rei accepted her assistance gratefully, wincing as he let himself get pulled to his feet. His legs shook, but held. “You’re seriously bloodthirsty. Has anyone told you that?”
“You really know how to flatter a girl, Rei.”
Rei couldn’t help it. He sniggered, and was pretty sure he would have gotten himself whacked with the pillow again had it been within easy reach.
While standing had been simple enough, walking proved an entirely different matter. Rei made it to the wall on his own, guiding himself along it to the door at a snail’s pace, but Aria seemed to give up on patience when it took them a minute to make it 10 feet down the hall. Initially he grunted in discomfort when she looped her arm under his, helping to hold him up, but when he found they could move along at more than a crawl with assistance he made no other complaint, and settled into hoping they would make it outside before Aria noticed the color of his ears as she held him close to her.
The night sky was a brilliant cacophony of lights and darkness, the city rising up in a staggering of well-lit towers like a mountain range of steel and glass to ring them on all sides. Directly above, the crossing patterns of the air-lanes mixed with the still stars that hadn’t been swallowed by Castalon’s light. It made for an amazing view as they turned left out of the hospital to follow a northeast path that would take them first to the Arena, then on to Kanes.
Or would have been an amazing view, rather, had Rei had any focus to give to it.
Everything hurt. Everything. He trusted Ashton when she said that getting up and moving was what he needed to assist Shido in repairing his battered body, but the longer he walked, the more he ached. Within a minute his side was throbbing to an excruciating point, and he had to admit that—for all the agony his fibro had caused him—the discomfort of a bruised internal organ was new to him. His legs pained him with every step, and he was breathing hard before they were so much as out of sight of the hospital.
Iron Prince: A Progression Sci-Fi Epic (Warformed: Stormweaver Book 1) Page 49