Chapter Text
Without delay, destitute of the deft precision needed to survive, everything could immediately end. Jim kept his finger on the trigger, eyes blurred and dizzy from the chase, now latched onto any change in the moving shadows across the compact dirt ground, despite the layer of fog cast over it. Between intervals of catching his breath to apprehensively holding it, he listened for movement; the rustling of clothes, for hard boots to scuff against a bare tree root, anything that would indicate his opponent.
Jim kept his back pressed up against coarse bark that faintly clawed the skin under his thin linen shirt. Sweat streamed down his forehead, unforgivingly warm, and dangerously close to his eyes. He gained enough control over his breathing, just as his pulse went from pounding to lightly fluttering, and finally, he heard something that wasn’t him.
A boot drove down, shuffling against the ground at an immeasurable distance from him, but close enough that any attack would be merciless.
He held up the laser pistol, finger trembling over the trigger, and peeked around his shielding tree.
The clearing remained as lifeless as it had been for the last several minutes, those footsteps were replaced by a harsh gust of wind that weaved through the towering pine trees, its seemingly peaceful harmony unfortunately foreboding. Jim swallowed back the dryness in his mouth, in another attempt to keep quiet, fixed on whatever racket presented itself in this natural arena. Aside from the wind steadily picking up, or the chatter of avian alien creatures nested in the canopy of the trees, every other significant noise promptly retreated.
Jim ventured further from the tree trunk, wary of his footing, as he maintained enough control to keep the pistol in his hand. He blinked a few times, enough to get the blurriness out of his eyes, and once they refocused, nothing stood out.
A twig snapped from behind him.
Jim spun around, and instinctually, if not miraculously, ducked down, before a bright ray of light shot over his head, barely grazing him. He looked back for his opponent, who had been obscured as a silhouette against the blaring light that passed through the trees, standing braced, ready, their weapon clasped in both hands.
Despite his head racing with thoughts, he took his finger off the trigger and darted behind that same tree trunk. Just as he pulled himself completely behind the wooden fortress, another beam blasted to his side, before it dissipated within the dense fog.
Jim dropped down, low enough to be engulfed in the thickening mist, yet he kept his feet planted on the ground, set to launch forward. The footsteps got closer, then further, and returned, at a desperate pace. The opponent darted back into view, both hands still clung to their pistol and looked about, while not erratically, definitely wary.
With all that he could, Jim unsteadily held up his pistol, the figure of his foe in perfect aim, placed his finger back on the trigger, and pulled it.
The laser catapulted ahead, yet his surroundings seemed to slow down at that moment, victory was so close, within undoubtedly reach. Jim breathed out as his chest pounded, this time not from the debilitating dread that held him to that post earlier. The fight would be over, this was the end, it had to be.
But his rival dipped out of the way, and the laser lodged itself into a nearby tree instead.
The opponent spun around and charged ahead at full speed. Jim leaped up, but just as he, too, bolstered himself to run, he felt something warm graze his shoulder, and he backed into the nearest tree.
A pair of lean, muscular arms projected from the fog, an unwelcome, volatile omen. Jim made another dodge before they could wrap around him, but something hard hit him in the wrist. His pistol flew out of his hand to land more than an arm’s length away.
Jim got on the ground and surveyed whatever there was around him. A large, sturdy branch lay in reach. As a pair of hands hurdled towards him, he snatched it up and held it forward, pressing it against another body, only for those hands to grasp to the branch as well. There was a struggle and the other side was winning.
One push away from getting pinned to the tree, Jim kicked into the other body. He didn’t stick around as the opponent wheezed and coughed, gladly so as soon as he heard them bolt ahead. He scrambled for the pistol, vision barred by a rush of adrenaline, but just as he got a hold of it, something hard slammed into his back. He tumbled down, clasping his only defense tighter, as he let momentum guide him to roll onto his back, firmly bringing up that singular defense.
His opponent, his classmate, Kate Blake, stared down at him with her piercing orange eyes. In defiance of the grit on her dirtied clothing, her pinned back fiery red hair astoundingly held itself together, barely loose from their brawl. Her eyebrows furrowed and she snarled, revealing sharp canine teeth, as she, too, held her weapon to him.
“You think you're smart, don’t you?” she growled.
“Mm, yeah,” Jim replied as a snide smirk crossed his face.
Kate’s scowl hardened.
“You’re a terrible comedian, I’ll give you that,” she added.
Jim rolled his eyes.
“Thanks for the compliment.”
“It’s a pleasure , trust me.” Kate’s voice completely saturated itself in bitter vinegar as she held the pistol closer.
Jim looked to her weapon, then his.
“You know I can just end this now, right?” he asked.
Kate’s glare hardened.
“And you think I wouldn’t end it myself?”
Heat rose in Jim’s face, unlike the heat from the persistent running, the ongoing exhaustion, this heat rose drastically, all at once, and he felt every muscle in his body tense.
“Then why don’t you?” he snapped.
A blaring low ring ripped through the trees before either of them could pull themselves out of their unending deadlock. They kept their eyes on each other, unphased by multiple frantic footsteps led by a heavier, more imposing pair.
“What was that?” a gruff, deep voice demanded.
Jim’s gaze shot in the direction of the voice. A rocklike alien man in a neat, blue uniform towered over both teenagers with a coarsened glare.
The pair dropped their weapons. Kate shot a begrudging glance down at Jim as she held out her hand, only for him to brush it away and get up by himself. The unnerving, deeply irate stare of the uniformed man didn’t leave them, if not, it was fueled even hotter.
“I repeat, what was that?”
Kate straightened herself out with a trim tug at her collar.
“It was a messy melee fight that ended in no resolution, Commander Duchamp.” Her tone was flat, yet she held her head high.
“Correct, Miss Blake,” Duchamp said. “I’ll at least give you the credit for knowing your mistakes. As for you,” he redirected his attention to Jim. “What’s your reasoning?”
“How else were we supposed to end that, Commander?” Jim asked, on the edge of losing it, but still clinging onto whatever fragment of etiquette he had left in him.
“Sometimes you have to make a sacrifice,” Duchamp explained.
“So we were both supposed to lose?” Jim probed.
Duchamp firmly nodded.
“Exactly. Good to see you’re finally listening to your superior officers.”
The commanding officer turned the audience of intergalactic youths, their appearances spanning across several species, some who looked like Jim, others like their craggy officer, a few with scales, and a collective group with extra limbs, each of them fellow teenagers. They, too, had filthied their clothing, in their previous attempts at the same exercise.
Duchamp held his hand out, for both Jim and Kate to pick up their decoy pistols and pass them to him. Their commanding officer turned to the rest of the group.
“Now, let this be a lesson, cadets. While both of your peers are skilled, this isn't a part of the exercise. Sure, these futzy devices may look intimidating now, but the real deal is nothing compared to these fakes. Furthermore,” he paused as his scrutiny completely settled on Jim. “If you can’t follow basic protocol, you’re condemned to failure from the moment you set foot in the Etherium. Understood?”
The students chimed back a unanimous, “Yes, sir.” before Duchamp nodded solemnly to his students. Kate returned the gesture, almost by instinct, while it took Jim a moment to register it. Duchamp approached the sea of spectating students, and then into the mist, the student audience following the pursuit. On the fringe of his vision, Jim noticed those orange eyes, kindled with that same look she gave him during their training, before she moved past him, trailing behind their class. Jim ran a hand through his sweat-drenched hair as he lingered in the back of the group, far enough away from Kate as he could be.
The group collectively approached an oddly welcoming, yet elegant structure in the middle of the woodland. On the side of the building, labeled on a modest door, an engraved sign allotted the building a number and title, some honorary name from a legendary general from centuries past. Jim caught the door just as it swung closed behind the last student to enter, and he trudged in. The energizing stimulation that kept him cognizant for the duration of the training gradually dwindled, replaced with a throbbing ache all over his body. He tracked up the stairs, his joints creaking with each step, to eventually make it to the showers.
While there were a few peers in there, cleaning off the day’s worth of grime, he headed for a more secluded stall and turned on the typically cold water as warm as it could go. It was short-lived, the savory warmth of hot water, and once it completely went away, he shut it off, covered up in something clean, and wandered down the hall to a door at the other end of the building.
Jim scrubbed his damp towel into the side of his head, the inevitable ache remedied for the time being. He pulled it back as he closed the door behind him.
“Oh, you okay? You looked kind of rough.”
Jim’s attention averted to the broad-shouldered, young alien man with curly light hair, a rugged nose, and watchful eyes, who stood out within the oddly small room, a pen drenched in ink in one hand, several papers scrawled with medical terms strewn across a messy desk, and a textbook laid out beside the papers. Gerard Winthrop tended to be more attentive whenever Jim would return to their room, regardless of how deep he’d been in his studies. A faint smile crossed Jim’s face as he folded up the towel in his hand.
“Yeah, got my ass kicked,” Jim answered. “Nothing new.”
“Was it Duchamp?” Gerard asked.
Jim huffed out a half-hearted chuckle and responded, “Worse.”
Gerard’s face, previously unassuming, if not somewhat bright, fell.
“Kate? Again?”
Jim dropped his towel onto the side of his metal bed frame and apathetically shrugged.
“Who else would take an opportunity to kick me in the ribs,” he laughed.
Suddenly sparked by the new information, Gerard launched from his seat, but Jim threw his hands up before he could pick a clean shirt from the chest at the end of his bed.
“Gerard, it’s okay, I’m fine,” he said as he let go of the chest’s lid. “At worst, I’ll just have some bruises.”
Gerard bobbed his head, his hands up as well, and he sank back into his chair. Jim glanced back at him, clutching a pile of clean clothes in his arms, and gestured to him, which prompted the other teen to swivel around in his seat, some semblance of privacy.
“Then, please, do me a favor and tell me if it’s worse than a bruise this time. Okay?” Gerard asked, still facing the opposite wall.
Still wrestling with a pair of trousers, Jim replied, “Yeah, I’ll do that this time.”
It didn’t take him long to get everything else on, but once he was completely redressed, Jim knocked on the wall to his side.
“You can look now.”
Gerard turned back around, only to see Jim reaching for a grungy, dark jacket that hung beside their uniforms.
“Jim?” Gerard sighed.
After he got the jacket on, Jim knelt on the floor and pulled a pair of worn-out boots towards him.
“I thought you still wanted to go to the abandoned pier,” he said. “Would give you a break from whatever you’re doing.”
“Are you sure? As you put it, you got your ass kicked today.”
Jim smiled in response as he pulled on his second boot.
“So? That’s every day for me at this point.”
Gerard looked as if he were ready to say something, yet he clamped his mouth shut, glanced aside briefly, and paused. His eyebrows twitched, and the cogs in his head were working hard to come up with a response. Instead, he gingerly set his pen aside, got up from his desk, and approached the coat hanger as well. Jim rose to his feet as Gerard weaved his arms through the sleeves of his long, casual coat.
“You remember the path?” Gerard said as he straightened out his coat.
Jim pulled open the creaky door and held it open.
“Always.”
The boys didn’t hesitate to leave their room, which after they locked the door, they followed the worn, yet surprisingly vibrant red rug from their room to the stairwell. Upon descending a few flights of stairs, they passed through the last door, finally met by crisp wind.
The trees faded in and out from the impenetrable fog, heavier than it was nearly an hour ago, and it dampened the air enough that a light shower wasn’t too far out of the question. Jim recalled the landmarks, how far the main path would go beyond the perimeter of campus, deeper into the forested thicket of the solitary landmass that housed their academic grounds. The main path delved further into the boundless forest, like a road to nowhere.
Not far from the main path, a lightly padded trail weaved into the overgrown forest. Jim led, familiar enough with his surroundings that he easily dodged thick branches and caught his footing quickly, while Gerard strayed not far behind him, more cautious of his foothold, wary of any unearthed roots. Every couple of steps, Jim would stop, look back, and wait for his friend to catch up, before he’d continue their descent, further from civilization.
Within a few minutes, they stumbled out of the thicket, met by a large, winding coast, dusted with white sand that was eventually interrupted by the rocky, sharp drop off the edge of the landmass, into the depths of the Etherium. Several abandoned docks, feebly propped up by aged, rotting wood, protruded from the coastline, reminders of the crucial purpose they held decades ago. Rocky crags hovered overhead, typical of this landmass on every edge of it, some of them peppered with evergreen-like trees, and one, in particular, remained as the final resting place for a rickety shack. Gerard passed beside Jim, agape at the scene.
“I dunno what it is, but this place just feels like something. You know?” Gerard’s voice was low as if he maybe didn’t want Jim to hear his comments.
“Yeah, it’s nice,” Jim added, just as mesmerized by the complete lack of civilized activity in the area.
Gerard, his attention completely locked to the scene, hardly dipped his head. Jim huffed out a laugh as he swung around him and shoved his hands in his pockets.
“There’s gotta be some decent shit around here,” he said.
Gerard snapped out of it and asked, “What’re you thinking? Old gears, or maybe more rusty pipes?”
Jim calmly pivoted around as he stepped back, and let out a slightly smug, “Definitely pipes, maybe something interesting.” He spun around and launched into a sprint.
The first area he knew to check was a small cove nestled between a large crevice, which was filled with rocks and fallen timber, and close enough that the large mass was in view, yet far away that he wouldn’t know if there was anything noteworthy unless he’d dig through the piles of natural debris. Every few strides, he’d glance behind him, and Gerard wouldn’t be too far behind. They made it to the pile, Jim was remarkably not worn out, but when Gerard stopped not far behind, he hunched over, gasping for air.
“I don’t know how you do it, Jim,” he heaved. Before Jim could inquire, Gerard interjected with a laugh, “I’m fine, just haven’t done the same physical training that you have, that’s all.”
Jim got to his knees, instantly surveying anything discolored or lustrous caught between the dark matte rocks and damp driftwood. He dug through at the sight of something somewhat red and gritty, which unsurprisingly surfaced as yet a rusty pipe, like the dozens of others they’d collected over the last several weeks.
He dug through in a different spot, then another mostly met with more pipes and broken gears, or small pieces of machinery that had partially eroded due to the ruthless elements. Nothing looked worthy of keeping at this point, but Jim dug a little more into the mound until he noticed a subtle glimmer between a pair of rocks.
From between the rocks, Jim wrenched out a gear, barely touched by the unforgiving weather, if not ruined at all. Unlike the other metallic gears he'd found previously, this one was hardly scraped, aside from a part of the cogs being melted nearly smooth. Jim held it closer to his eyes and ran his thumb along with the stunning damage on the device, and then to the delicately carved insignia, accompanied by clearly ingrained letters. Gerard leaned in closer, just as captivated.
“That’s so…” his voice trailed off.
But Jim interjected, “Yeah, it looks almost...new.”
“It can’t be, it must be an alloy or something that keeps it in that good of condition,” Gerard said.
Jim shook his head as he held the gadget closer to Gerard.
“Maybe, but you see this?” he asked.
Gerard squinted. He rotated it about in his hand, checking each side of it, until his attention honed in on the lettering.
“Cepheus Innovations and Parts.” he read aloud. Gerard’s brow creased and he looked closer at the markings. “Cepheus is a company, isn’t it?”
Jim nodded.
“Yeah, they make a lot of the machines they use in the mines on Montressor, if not all of them,” he explained.
Gerard pressed his lips, looked to the side, and then back at Jim.
“Okay, I don’t see what you’re getting at.”
“Cepheus started up four years ago,” he said.
Gerard clicked his tongue, his mental cogs at work, but that abruptly slowed down as well.
“Oh, and everything else we found, it’s often from at least sixty years ago.” Gerard elaborated.
“Exactly,” Jim got up as the pieces came together in his head. “And this, whatever it is, it’s made the gear useless. Like you see this,” he pointed to the melted side. “Something melted it. Which means something hot, something that works.”
Jim chased down the next assortment of materials, the majority of them brandishing the same type of damage, but just as new and unscathed by the hellish weather conditions. He let his vision drift up, in the direction of the large crevice.
On top of the rock heap, deeper into the cranny, a beaten, half-burnt longboat rested, its solar sail danced in what little wind forced its way into the shallow ravine. Jim stood paralyzed as a few fresh sparks crackled from the smashed engine. He heard Gerard climbing over the rocks and driftwood, only for him to stop immediately behind him.
“Jim, what the hell is that?” he mumbled.
Jim couldn’t get the words out. It had to be engineering students getting inebriated at late hours and keeping their property damage hushed.
Yet that longboat, it didn’t look like any of the vessels utilized at the academy, not for the secondary students, the university level students, not even the vessels sailed by instructors. I was shoddily pieced together, with stray rivets barely holding it together and old wood hastily tossed on, a shocking contrast to the brand new engine attached to the derelict craft.
Gerard took Jim by the shoulder and said, “I know this looks bad, but couldn’t it just be somebody on campus who just didn’t want to get caught?”
Jim glanced between his roommate, the wreck, and the metal piece still clasped in Gerard’s hand. When he returned his focus to the wreck, something danced in the foggy, a flag of some sort. However, it wasn’t bright, as the Imperial flag would fly in a heavy fog, it was dark, almost black against its natural veil.
“Shit…”
“Jim, what’re you—”
Jim slowly backed up.
“We need to go.”
“What is it?” Gerard’s tone softened, not as secure as it’d been before.
“Later, let’s just get out of here,” Jim responded.
Jim led a mad dash across the abandoned shore, unbothered every time he nearly tripped over a rock, but every few steps, he’d assure himself that Gerard kept up. Upon finding the entrance of the trail, Jim ushered Gerard to go ahead of him.
As he watched his roommate clamber back towards civilization, rustling clothes shuffled close by.
Jim held his breath. He glimpsed back.
Slightly cloaked by the haze, a shrouded figure hovered at the start of the tree line. A shock of blond hair blew in the breeze, an astonishing contrast to the dark overcoat the follower adorned. It had to be a prank from the upperclassmen.
But he didn’t dare take the chance.
Jim launched forward, quickly caught up to Gerard, who had made it close to the main path and although they returned to civilization, they didn’t stop running. Jim hardly processed the sight of their pursuer. It didn’t matter at this point. They didn’t bother to stop by any of the posts or the furthest dorm. They eventually wore themselves out enough to stop by one of the academic halls, where if anything were to happen, there would hopefully be faculty to witness any challenges. The only presence around them happened to be the hiss of steam from nearby campus machinery, the bickering of wildlife, and incoherent conversation from an open window. Jim nearly keeled over as his soreness made its vicious return completely overwhelmed by a wave of fatigue.
It must’ve been a prank, upperclassmen would have nothing better to do at this time. But to break an engine that bad would be the top dedication for a prank Jim could think up, if not an outlandish pipe dream.