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As soon as they arrived at the mixer, Amber realized it had been a terrible idea to attend. The room was less crowded than she had expected, but full of people way fancier than they had any right to be, in her opinion. The Chaperones’ headquarters were like a love letter to everything the shoreside community had thought Founders’ Wake would be: all thick metal panel walls, visibly re-outfitted and shaped to fit together from old military type submarine hulls. Large patches of steel bolted and welded in place, polished to a respectable shine, lined the room and made up the floor, the walls, and the ceiling —maybe seven or eight feet tall—. The chamber itself had easily two or three times the floor space of the Cloaca, and there were a bunch of those tall little tables scattered around for people to congregate and, well, mix. The drink service was set up along one of the walls, sharing a corner with the snacks (finger sandwiches, assorted pastries, some fancy stuff. Amber, on the other hand, had snuck in a flask full of skunknuts wine). On the other side of the room were two simple metal doors with signs that indicated they led to single-stall bathrooms.
Amber was not thrilled about the prospect of rubbing elbows with all the hoi polloi of Founders’ Wake for however long was considered “polite”— she had had enough of that on the shoreside (and she avoided getting involved. Unfortunately for her, her two best friends back then were Joshy and Oksana). And she was definitely not looking forward to seeing Ballaster Kodira. Devo didn’t seem to be doing too hot, either. He looked like a cornered shark; in high alert, obviously scanning everyone and everything around him, taking note of exits, putting together a strategy— his jitters weren’t helping her own. Zoox was as unreadable as ever, but if she had to put a word to his expression and body language, it would probably be “restless”. He kept looking around as well, but his shoulders and face seemed relaxed (well. As relaxed as living coral under heavy armor can look, anyway). Amber thought it couldn’t hurt to try and gauge where the others stood vis a vis ditching.
“Hey guys, maybe we should get the hell out of here, I'm sorry for draggin’ y'all into this boring—”
“Yes, well, this might not have been the best —” Devo (unsurprisingly) started talking over her. So relieved was Amber that she was not alone in her urge to leave, though, that she didn’t even mind that much. The look she shot him was only a little dirty.
However, before either of them could finish their sentences, they both realized Zoox was no longer standing next to them. A quick scan of the room found him standing at a table with a couple other brinarr —the one who stood out the most was none other than Tesselation, because of course they were there too—, having a very animated-looking chat.
“Ah.” Devo grunted.
“Well.” Amber was not much more eloquent. There was a brief moment of tense, awkward silence between the two as they watched Zoox talk with his hands very excitedly, giving off a happiness neither of them had ever seen from him before. It was equal parts endearing and deeply strange.
“So, should we…?” Devo trailed off, waiting for Amber to make the call. She had been ‘Captain’ of the Coriolis nominally for about two weeks, but she could get used to the little amounts of power she got to exert now and again. She really took a moment to try to bring herself to bail, but…
“Ugh, man…” she groaned, “we can’t do that to Zoox, though, can we? I mean, look at him!” To add insult to injury, Zoox chose that exact moment to accept a sip from someone else’s drink, and immediately exclaim a loud, giddy squeal. “He’s having the time of his fuckin’ life. Quite literally, too, most likely.”
Devo looked positively dismayed by her resolution. He look at Zoox too once again, having enough fun for the three of them combined, and sighed.
“Alright. I’m sure it can’t be that bad, anyway… right?”
“...Right, yeah. Can’t be that bad.” Amber tried very hard to put on a reassuring face, but judging by the fall of Devo’s pretend-hopeful expression back into one of anguish, she did not succeed.
“I think I need to use the bathroom.” He excused himself, and made a beeline for the metal doors at the back of the room. And well, yeah. Yeah, that just about tracked.
Finding herself ditched entirely (in a cruel turn of fate, after she had just decided not to do the ditching), Amber found nothing better to do than take a long sip of her flask and look around; do some scoping of her own. And the more she looked at the people at the party, the more she wondered what the hell the three of them were doing there. Zoox had fit right in with the other brinarr, sure, but her and Devo? She felt like at least she stuck out like a sore thumb among all the fancy-pants walking around. Everyone was wearing some sort of long coat, or weird headpiece, or was in literal full Chaperone uniform. All the red eyes on the armbands creeped her out. All she had going on —her actual, honest-to-gods Sunday best— was a short sleeved button-up and a clean pair of cargo pants.
And then, just as she was realizing how much cooler she looked than everyone else at this total clasper-fest, she spotted a rush of dark hair on white metal.
To be clear. Amber was not afraid of Kodira. She was so not afraid of her, in fact, that she had not talked to or thought about her since the last time she had to tell her to go stick her fancy job offer up wherever she saw fit. It had been a peaceful couple years of only ever thinking about her when she made some grand announcement over city radio, or when she had the misfortune of crossing her path (which she made damn sure didn’t happen often— Joshy’s Knuckle was her turf and her safe haven). But then another one of those misfortunes had happened the previous day. And Oksana had actually walked up to Amber and had the gall to stop her and look almost bashfulas she handed her a snooty little invitation (curse those big, sharp eyes of hers. Curse her long fucking eyelashes). She did not know why she had brought it up to the other two, or why on earth she had thought attending was a good idea. Yes, Devo and Zoox both desperately needed to get out and learn to interact with others like normal people, but this thing missed that target by a country mile and then some.
And now Devo was hiding in the bathroom, and Amber had to stand there and somehow not be crushed by the embarrassment of having actually come to the stupid Chaperone party —after refusing to join those clowns on more occasions than she could count—, just because she had a lapse in judgement brought on by a pair of pretty eyes.
And she did not want those pretty, deceitful eyes to lay on her for even a single second of this entire thing; she wanted to keep whatever was left of her pride intact, thank you very much. And that meant staying far away from pretty eyes, and pretty hair, and perfectly manicured hands. It meant keeping the glistening white metal of the full dress armor she was wearing as far as possible. It meant staying away from that god-awful cape and the way it draped so easily around her shoulders and across her collarbone —why was there so much exposed skin? No accounting for actual protection, she guessed. There was probably an analogy there somewhere—. It meant not getting anywhere near the carefully falling skirt pieces that framed her waist, reinforced by shapely white steel hip guards. It meant avoiding at all costs even a glimpse of her eyes, of her nose, of her lips.
She could already see the self-satisfied grin on Oksana’s- on Kodira’s face if she saw her; she could feel the mockery seeping out of her, feeding that weird god complex she had going on. Like she could control Amber; like despite all the times she had pushed back and fought and worked for what she wanted, for what she was capable of, she could still be tossed around and commanded. She had thought Oksana understood that, once. Understood that pulling her own weight, owing nothing and being owed nothing, would always be the most important thing for her. She was a team player, but not ever, ever a follower. Never a fucking servant. She had thought Oksana was on her team. She had let her so much closer than she had ever let anyone. She had let Oksana row out with her to the open sea when she scattered her father’s ashes, let her watch the water glint and swallow him whole right next to her, and told her she looked pretty in the dying light. At her father’s funeral.
And then she had turned around and asked Amber to serve her. Or let her creepy god boss ask through her. Same difference. Same hurt.
She decided the best thing she could do to make sure to avoid Kodira’s notice was keep her back in sight at all times. She gave some serious thought to hiding in the other bathroom, but realized that was a sure-fire way to get busted sooner or later, and that smug fucking grin flooded her mind again. It almost made her sick. So lurking around at Kodira’s back it was.
After a couple of minutes Amber decided that her tactic was less tricky than she had imagined. Not easy, per se, but definitely not challenging. She was on high alert, and Kodira was not moving much at all. People came and went vying for her attention (gross) more than she had the chance to do much of anything. At one point she managed to get all the way to the snack table before being assailed by yet another guppy who stood between her and the water cooler and left her holding an empty cup for five minutes. It was honestly pretty funny.
So, left with fuck-all to do while her target was busy talking about… warships or whatever, she catched Devo finally leaving the bathroom and decided to check in on the rest of her crew for a bit.
Devo stood near the vicinity of the restroom doors for a while, looking around again, scrutinizing every face he could get his eyes on. It didn’t take a genius to know what —or who— he was looking for, not after seeing how he got when they had to talk to the Hand of Guidance a few weeks ago. And there were actually a few parishioners at the mixer, as far as Amber could guess, but after some time he seemed to decide they weren’t a threat, because he visibly relaxed. He made his way to the catering tables in a way less paranoid manner. After getting himself a bright purple drink, he analyzed the floor and picked a particularly intellectual-looking group to approach. It must have been a record time for him, taking all of three minutes to say something that ticked off the person he had been standing next to. They turned their whole body to face him and ran him through with a look so scalding, even Amber felt like she should be taking notes. And so Devo dejectedly returned to the beverage table, his expression once again like he smelled something particularly rancid.
Zoox, on the other hand, still seemed to be doing great. Even after he was done speaking with Tesselation and their crew, he looked genuinely in awe of the whole situation he found himself in: he looked up at the walls and ceiling, like the bare metal panels held some obscure beauty only he could see. He stared shamelessly at people: fixated with wonder on their clothes and their mannerisms, walking around and waving occasionally at the few who noticed him; none of whom (oddly enough) seemed too bothered by his gaze. He approached a few of them, too— pointing to their clothes or the beverages in their hands and asking questions. Zoox actually got stopped by a couple of people who wanted to make conversation with him as well, and he engaged them in earnest until they parted ways amicably. He drifted amid the crowd and let it flow through him like Amber imagined all types of critters would flow amid a coral reef; adaptable, welcoming. He was undoubtedly having the best time out of the three of them.
Amber was amazed at just how caught up she had got in all this: Zoox was out there having a blast, and here she was, behaving no better than Devo —worrying about micropolitics and skulking around miserably by themselves, doing their darndest to avoid being seen. It was by no measure either of their proudest moment, and Amber was knee-deep in it.
So deep, in fact, that by the time she noticed someone had gotten a little too close for comfort, there was already a knife to her throat.
The steel was cold against her skin, and she could feel the firm grip of her attacker’s arms around her shoulders. The blade was small, and the stretch where it touched her neck felt… strangely sticky. Its edge, she noticed after a second, was blunt.
Before Amber could turn around, a slightly moist whisper blew into her ear with the self-satisfied tone of an old man flashing a shit-eating grin wider than his face:
“Vibe check”.
Amber didn’t know wether to roll her eyes before or after elbowing her assailant in the gut (she really was caught in her feels— the whack felt positively gentle). In a split second she had shrugged him off and turned around to shove him a few feet back.
Ol’ Joshy steadied himself while relishing in a few loud guffaws before closing the distance between him and Amber again. He held the tool of her short-lived subdual out for her to see clearly: a hastily wiped off butter knife.
“I tell ya, Amber, you’re gettin’ soft!” he shook the knife at her disapprovingly, a playful smile peeking through the edges of his overplayed frown.
“Alright, yeah, whatever,” Amber retorted, snatching the spreader out of her mentor’s hand. “What the fuck are you doin’ here, Joshy?”.
Joshy raised one hand up to his chest, feigning hurt, and fished an unceremoniously folded invitation out of his pocket with the other.
“What am I, the de-facto leader of an entire neighborhood in this city, doing at the influential people party?” Sure enough, when he unfolded the cardstock rectangle, the inside bared the same silver trim and embossed type as the invite Amber had gotten from Kodira the day before. The one key difference, other than the thick groove along the middle from being folded, was that Joshy’s invitation actually featured his name at the bottom, printed in the same silver color as the edges.
“Alright, big shit! Good on you, man!” Amber could not help clapping one hand on Joshy’s shoulder as something resembling pride hummed in her chest. “Least these claspers can do to give you the credit you deserve for everything you do down there.”
Joshy gave her a crude look and chuckled. “Got fair credit from your dad for everything I did dow—”
“Aaand gross! Gross.” Amber shoved him again, harder this time, struggling to hold back an outraged laugh. “You’re a real fuckin’ slimehead, Joshy.”
“Hey, you walked right into that one, iunno what to tell ya.” Joshy was not even trying to contain his laughter at that point. It was contagious in the same way as a nasty bug or maybe a mold. That is to say: it felt like home. Amber truly relaxed for the first time in the whole evening.
“What are you doin’ here, anyway?” Joshy continued. “I would have invited you, don’t get me wrong, but they didn’t really hand out any plus-one tickets”.
“Maybe they only didn’t give you any, ‘cause they didn’t want any more stinky Knuckle-dwellers than necessary up here, ay?” Amber teased, twirling the butter knife around in her hand.
“And yet here you are…” retorted Joshy with a smirk.
“Well, I may be something of a… influentioner myself,” she sneered lightheartedly as she mimed inspecting her fingernails (there was still some leftover abyssal grime under them).
It stuck in Amber’s head a bit, though. They didn’t hand out plus-one tickets? That seemed counterintuitive to her (but hey, what did she know?). And she definitely hadn’t gotten one with her name embossed on it all fancy-like…
“Aight, Fry, out with it.” Joshy snatched the butter knife back from her and crossed his arms, looking straight at Amber’s eyes. She did not appreciate the old nickname.
“I’ll show you a fry—”
“How’d ya get in here?” He pointed the utensil at her like an accusatory finger. He sounded like he had caught her with a hand in the cookie jar. It was extremely annoying.
“Dang, Joshy, alright. Chill. Not like I broke in through the vents or anything. Kodira invited us, okay? Geez. Devo and Zoox’re right there.” She gestured to her crewmates, still busy with their own doings (or lack thereof, in Devo’s case). Joshy’s face of soft complicity very quickly turned back into that insufferable knowing grin.
“Invited all of y’all, or invited you ?” He wiggled his eyebrows in a way that Amber was sure was designed to annoy her specifically as much as possible. This was exactly why she didn’t want to tell him.
“Shut the fuck up, Joshy.”
He was right, of course. Joshy was always fuckin’ right one way or another.
When Kodira had stopped her in the middle of the street (her street), she had not even had the decency to avoid eye contact —with those damn cunning eyes that dared look timid while running her through like harpoons—.
“There’s this mixer happenin’ tomorrow up at the headquarters, and… Well, I just figured maybe you’d want to come. Lots of old folks from the shore and so on.” She had held the invitation out to Amber like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like the thought of touching Oksana’s skin didn’t set her brain on fire. “Mostly ballast-adjacent, but… I don’t know, could be nice.” She had pinned Amber in place with dark eyes and darker eyelashes and waited for her to try and wiggle out. And she tried! To her merit, Amber had tried to brush the whole thing off.
“I’m busy, Bubba, please let me keep walkin’.” Kodira, evidently —obnoxiously—, had not moved. She had, instead, taken a step forward and furrowed her brows like she was pleading.
“Just think about it, aight? Your crew can come if you want.” She motioned with the invitation toward Amber. When Amber refused to even look at it, she sighed and leaned forward. And then she tucked the damn thing directly into Amber’s breast pocket. “Please.”
Then she left. And Amber just stood still there for about five minutes. ‘Your crew can come if you want’. Bargain bin chum, and she had eaten it up whole.
At least Zoox was enjoying himself.
“Listen, Fry—”
“Don’t fuckin’ «fry» me, old man—”
“Listen, Amber." The shit-eating grin was mostly gone, but Joshy still looked a bit too animated for Amber’s taste. “You know you’re the one who keeps doin’ this to yourself, right?”
Joshy was always fuckin’ right, one way or another.
“Your point being?” She dodged the question. He noticed.
“Look. She hurt you. I know she did. I’m definitely not one to tell you to just forgive an’ forget. What she did to you was fucked up. But it’s been twenty five years, Fry.”
Twenty-five years of what? What did time even mean down here? Twenty-five years of odd jobs, beating drunks up, and crashing at the Cloaca. Twenty-five years without being able to catch a fucking break. And all of it while Kodira stood at the captain’s chair of the city, one hand benevolently outstretched toward Amber and the other behind her back holding a fuckin’ knife.
“And yet she keeps trying. She keeps pushing, and insisting, and—”
“And tryna reconnect with you? To find some semblance of common ground again?” Amber hated it when Joshy got all paternal and soft like that; it was uncanny and out of character.
“Some common ground,” she scoffed, “always on her terms. She stole half my fuckin’ danish the other day, Joshy! She tried to draft me again. Her priorities are crystal clear.”
“Really?” He seemed dryly amused. “I’d love to hear your read on that.”
“The power trip rotted her brain, man! If she still has any interest in me it’s as an asset. As a tool. And I would sooner become a blink shark conservationist.”
And yet here Amber was, wasn’t she? After letting Kodira steal half of her berry danish, after telling her she would consider her offer —‘just to get her off her back’, she told herself—. Here she was, playing her little game, attending her uppity party, drinking skunknuts out of a flask she snuck in because she knew she couldn’t stand the fancy shit. Amber wondered for a moment where all her self respect had gone without her noticing.
Joshy let her words hang between them for a second before lifting a single eyebrow.
“And you really believe that.”
Amber did not move a muscle. Joshy sighed.
“Listen, Amber. One of these days y’re gonna have to admit you still give a shit about Oksa—”
“Kodira.” The name slipped out of her mouth before she could stop it. Joshy saying it right then felt like soiling it, somehow. It belonged in the past, and it definitely didn’t belong to the person she had become.
“Start there.”
One fuckin’ way or another.
Joshy pulled his own metal flask from a pocket in his cargo vest and took a swig.
“We all gotta face our ghosts one day, Fry. And either we play nice with them or they vibe check us to all hell.”
Amber had not once in her life tried to ‘play nice’ with anything about her past: not Gil leaving, not her father’s death, not the literal end of the world as she knew it. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to start now.
“Well, old man. You’ll find I like my ghosts like I like my blink sharks.”
“Oh, yeah? And how’s that?” It was a rhetorical question; they both already knew the answer.
“Fuckin’ dead in the water, Joshy. That’s how.”
The silence between them was not exactly heavy, but it wasn’t comfortable, either.
“Alright then, fair’s fair.”
They stood there, alternating unflinching swigs from their respective flasks until someone else walked up to them and, after a brief moment of giving them a weird look, addressed Joshy and asked if they could steal him for a bit.
They exchanged a silent nod and Amber went on her way.
‘On her way’ where, exactly, she wasn’t sure. The room was not the largest she had seen in her life, but it wasn’t exactly small, either. If amber had to guess, maybe twenty-five feet along, fifteen across. There were no pillars, no conveniently tall decorations to hide behind. The tables were not much shorter than she was, but still too short to inconspicuously hide behind. She was resigned once again to her little avoidant dance, orbiting around Kodira. And she was just about sick of it. She strode firmly toward the snack table to grab something to eat, at least. Anything that didn’t mean revolving around her.
The table was now littered with a few discarded pastry liners and a neat pile of dirty plates. On one of the platters, piled among all the other sweet offerings, Amber spotted several danishes with dollops of different colored jellies. Though most of them boasted a shiny red filling.
And wasn’t that just absolutely rich.
Amber yanked a danish off the platter like it owed her money and tore off a large bite. She could approach her; she wasn’t scared of Kodira. Amber could walk right up to her right now and tell her what was what. She could ask her what the fuck this was about, why all the mystery around the party, what ‘your crew can come if you want’ was supposed to mean.
“It means exactly what I said, Amber,” she would say with that insufferably smug smile. “And I’m guessing it worked, because you’re here.”
Amber would scoff at her for that. “Don’t toot your own horn, Bubba. We’re only sticking around for Zoox over there,” she would gesture toward him.
“I’m glad you brought him, then,” she would reply, almost faster than humanly possible. Her expression would start to soften, and it would drive Amber up a wall. “Are you enjoying yourself?” There would be a slight blush on her cheeks and Amber’s heart would start racing in her chest out of sheer anger (nothing else. Nothing else). It would take a considerable effort to retort dryly.
“Not much. As I said: not really my scene.”
Kodira’s expression would pretend not to drop, but Amber knew her too well not to notice. She would keep a thin professional facade when she tilted her head very slightly to the side and asked “Is there anything I can do to help that, Bams?” And that would be the last straw for Amber.
She would be unable to hold back from grabbing her by the collar of that stupid little cape thing she was wearing and looking into her eyes as they shot wide open. She would drink in her shock, the first real emotion Amber would have seen on her face in a long fucking time, and snarl a “listen here, you…”
Oksana’s lips would part in disbelief, and it would be unbearable not to yank on her collar and—
Amber violently snapped herself out of the fantasy (gross. Fantasy was a gross word. But even she couldn’t lie to herself about her little delusion being exactly that). She realized then that she had gotten closer than she ever intended to Kodira. She could see a few scratches in the armor, along the back and the shoulders. She could see a tangle in her hair, right behind her left ear.
Amber immediately rushed three steps back until her hip bumped against the snack table and the details faded once again under the smooth lighting. She downed the rest of the danish in one bite.
When she finally stopped hearing her own heartbeat, Amber took a deep breath and sighed. She took one last look at Kodira and let the pang of whatever painful emotion she always provoked in her travel from her chest through her entire body until it dulled. She tore her eyes away from the Ballaster and looked to her left, at the drink table, where Devo remained brooding, apparently not having moved at all in the past hour. Amber decided it was about time to join him.
“How’s it goin’ there, Surley Temple?”
“What?”
Amber rolled her eyes. Right. This was Devo “literally grew up under a rock under the sea” La Main she was talking to.
“Never mind. How you holdin’ up?”
His expression shifted ever farther down the offended scale. One corner of Amber’s mouth curled almost imperceptibly upward.
“About as good as you, by the looks of it”
She felt herself relax into a full-fledged smirk once again. This was comfortable: the dull, fond annoyance that settled at the bottom of her chest every time she talked to Devo took the weight off of everything else. She could work with this.
“Yeah, well. At least Zoox’s having fun”
Zoox seemed to have settled into a single group, again standing next to Tesselation, listening and nodding at the conversation at hand. He looked fine. If coral could smile, it would probably look a lot like Zoox’s face at that moment. Amber genuinely felt glad for him, even if literally everything else about the situation at hand sucked majorly for her.
“You should talk to her,” Devo broke the silence that was beginning to brew, not even looking her in the eye. Instead, his gaze drifted vaguely Kodira’s way.
Like a blink shark flashing away, all the fondness vanished; leaving only irritation behind. Whatever had been comfortable about that silence had promptly turned sour.
“You have no fuckin’ idea what you’re talking about, guppy.”
“Just saying,” he insisted in that infuriatingly condescending tone of his. “You keep acting like there is some kind of magic field around her that will shock you if you get too close.”
And Amber had just barely taken enough of this shit earlier from Joshy to last her a whole week. She wasn’t about to take it from this clasper.
“And you keep acting like a shark stuck in a drag net,” she snapped back.
Another degree down the offended scale for Devo’s eyebrows. Served him right. He looked at her for a moment and then went back to pondering the bottom of his glass.
“...Fair enough.”
It was. It was fair enough.
He must have been feeling just as defeated as her, because they silently agreed on dropping the matter. Amber knew ‘fair enough’ was as close to an apology as she would ever get from Devo. She appreciated it as such.
Here they both were, after all. Uncomfortable, irritated, paranoid yet absolutely bored; sipping on whatever alcoholic drink they could get their hands on while the party moved on around them. She scanned the room once again. Zoox seemed content enough— no longer starstruck, but calmly enjoying himself. Amber thought he better appreciate what they were doing for him.
She finally gave in and turned to Devo.
“Hey, you wanna get the hell out of here?”
Devo looked back at her, his guarded expression dropped instantly.
“So much.”
There it was again— the pang of affection. She rolled her eyes once more and stuffed the flask back in her pocket.
“C’mon, let’s get Zoox.”