7Chapter Five: Enmity Between You
"Lukas! LUKAS!" I yelled, standing up from my wheeled stool. "What the hell did you just drop…?"
The door to the shack slammed shut in my face. I felt like I was going to explode.
"Stupid bastard…!" I growled, clenching my teeth and hands tightly. Lukas always knew the exact right ways to piss me off. He had a real talent for it.
"Um…oh…" The nyololin girl Eleme floundered over in the corner. Her lifeline had run out on her.
I grinned and bared the moment, same as I had for the last six years. I turned to Eleme and shook my head slowly.
"Looks like you got what you wanted: you get to stay. You're going to explain everything to me, ," I sat back on my chair and rolled over to Eleme threateningly, causing her to slightly press into the corner of the room.
Oh, sorry, I should've introduced myself, right? If that idiot Lukas was around he'd insist on it, along with an autobiography too. Hell, I'm feeling generous, I'll give it. The name's Zymech— or at least, that's the only name you need to know. I'm a yoshi, born and living in the Mushroom Kingdom until six years ago when the wonderful Princess Peach issued an edict kicking all of the yoshis out of the land.
Why, you may ask with a confused, bewildered, and possibly even sad face? Answer: I hardly know. Some vague scandal at the castle, followed a few years later by the Queen of our own land visiting Princess Peach in some mysterious meeting. Three days later and BAM, my mom gets a fancy letter telling her to screw off back to Yoshi's Island post-haste.
Then terrible things happen. Do I really need to bother telling this? Answer: No, I don't. I bet Lukas already wrote about it anyway, idiot is insisting on recording as accurate a history as possible. What's the bottom line of what you need to know? I live in Sarasaland now, and my best friend is an idiot shy guy who reads books all day and brings suspicious nyololin girls back to my shack in order to board them up.
Heh heh, I bet he's going to get mad that I said he was a shy guy in here. He gets so weird whenever someone brings it up, but hey— Nothing but the TRUEST HISTORY right here folks!
"My name is Eleme," The nyololin girl responded a little testily. "Please stop calling me ."
"What's inside the bags?" I said, ignoring her. They were tightly tied up and had the appearance of holding sand. They weren't bombs, in any case.
"Um…" My new scaly friend floundered. "…Starm."
Wow. That knocked my socks off.
"You're bullshittin' me," I drawled a bit accidently. It seems to just happen every once in a while.
"Open it up if you have to, just be very careful!" Jagged-Tooth said back to me. She had one long tooth that seemed to always be sticking out of her mouth.
I shrugged and went over to the bag of "Starm". I crouched down and poked one of the gray and featureless pouches very carefully.
…Yep, it was Starm. I've learned quite a bit about machines and intelligently-created things over the years, and I could recognize a bag of Starm by the flinty compactness in its touch. It was unmistakable. Now, for the obvious question #2:
"So, what are you two doing with these?"
The snake's response surprised me. It was getting harder to gauge her actual willpower.
"Can I just tell you what's happened in the last two days?" She asked sharply. I blinked in surprise at the sudden bite.
"Alright," I shrugged and sat back. "I'm in the mood for a story."
Nyoly's story was certainly…something. Being ordered by her bosses to turn Lukas in, being there when he got snatched out of the streets like a tool, getting ordered to go rob a CBC base, actually robbing the CBC base (the full GENIUS of this egregious maneuver would not become apparent for a little while longer), and then making a slap-dash escape by truck, and the two of them taking the bags of Starm with them. An awe-inspiring tale.
Now if I was Lukas I'd probably be telling you every damn detail of what happened after this, like my response to Eleme's story, the stupid conversation we had as we waited for Lukas to come back… That's not me, though. I'm an engineer; I use mechanical science and mathematics to find the easiest ways to produce a machine, rather than make up and prolong junk as a writer and then call it "art". Speaking of being an engineer, here's one good snippet:
"So you're an engineer?" Nyotebook said.
"Yep, I sure am." I leaned back, keeping my eye closely on the nyololin and the bags of Starm. I was rather curious about the strange bow she carried around, but she wouldn't tell me anything about it.
"So, you work with mechanics…and your name is Zymech?" Snake-san asked curiously.
"You don't think that's my real name, do you?" I sneered back.
That shut her up for a good five seconds.
"But…Eleme is my real name." The sad adder said a bit angrily.
I admit, I laughed, and it was mean. Then again, who isn't mean out here? The pitiful python here was an exception, I guess. Even after I got to know her slightly better, she still acted as mopey and generally polite as she did here.
"You know Lukas doesn't use his real name either, right?" I asked pointedly.
"What?" That seemed to legitimately shock her. "But…his name is famous! What…?" She was really flustered. "How is that even possible?"
"Oh, I'm just kidding." I laughed. "Nah, nah, Lukas is one of those people dumb enough to use his real name around here— ah, no offense meant." I shrugged. "I really don't know why you'd use your real name, though."
Nothing really happened after that. We stopped talking for the most part and I waited for Lukas' return and the answers to my further questions: specifically about what was the plan from here on out.
Things became problematic after I realized we had been sitting there for two freakin' hours.
"Um, do you have anything to drink?" The nyololin asked quietly. The heat was clearly getting to her. I guess that's a cold-blooded problem.
"No."
"Oh."
Heh, 'no' and 'oh' describes our relationship well, I guess. But as I was saying…
"Where the hell is Lukas?!" I stood up angrily and grabbed both sides of my head in frustration. I didn't have time to babysit poor Ms. Eleme. I had SCIENCE to work on! Things to CREATE!
"Um…he should've been back by now." said fearfully. "I wonder…"
"No time to wonder. Let's go find him." I grabbed the key to my shack. "My time is valuable, and it's slipping from my grasp."
"What?" The girl shrieked. "I can't go out there. If the Organization got Lukas…!"
"Well I'm not leaving you here." I moved towards her.
Of course she equipped her bow at that point. Was she seriously threatening me in my own house? Yes, yes she was. Normally I would've given her what-for but I was in no mood for violence, which I am very adept at.
"Alright," I threw my hands up mockingly. "You wanna stay in my house against my will? Fine. But I'm not leaving you here alone."
Lukas insists I don't say what happened next, in the spirit of 'spoiling a surprise'. Really, he's forcing this whole story to be based on his perspective, and his control is absolute. He wants to wait until the part when he gets back to my shack to reveal my 'special guard'.
Eh, what do I care? I'd like to just give a neutral and completely accurate portrayal of events, but I guess sometimes the better story just has to come through…
So there I went, out wandering on the town. I had no idea I was about to wander into hell. I don't really want to dwell on every detail of what I saw, so I'll just try to cut to the point.
It was around 3 PM that I was coming back from Lukas' place, finding the door open and the inside completely empty. Not a good sign, huh? Well my worry was very much distracted when a group of soldiers started down the street and began firing fireballs at people.
"Remember: the Organization terroists are recognizable by species:" Called an ugly pionpi leading the charge. "Flys, kumos, nyololins," His gaze landed flat on me. "…and yoshis as well."
Three assholes immediately tossed fireballs at me. I wasn't having any of that, though. I ran like I was on fire. Like a scene out of some kind of horror movie I could hear screams all around me, and I caught occasional glimpses of some poor bastards caught on fire. And you know what they all had in common? They were all minorities.
This keyed in with part of the story Eleme had told me, with the soldiers getting ready the previous night at the CBC compound. I'll just fill in the details right now: they were getting ready for this attack I was experiencing here, the mission of killing the minorities of Shinar in the excuse of fighting against John's Organization. Why, you may ask? Why, I still don't know— maybe the Queen is insane, maybe she's the Naught in mortal form, or maybe she's just pure evil. Maybe that's something we'll all learn a bit further down the road.
I could describe listening to the screams of the innocen…er, the defenseless, but I don't think that's important in the end. What is important is that I managed to get back to my shack with my fast yoshi feet (us yoshis get all of the best deals, serious) and immediately blamed Eleme for what was happening.
I said something like: "The STA have rolled into town…' and 'You brought them here…' and something something. Hey, I was stressed. Really stressed. I can't remember.
And THEN the Organization (as I would later learn) burst in and took both of us. If Scales gets a chance at this later don't believe her if she says I screamed. In fact, I wouldn't really trust much she says, she'd probably want to get back at me for before.
Hey, can I stop now? Please? I don't really want to continue. This is tiring in a weird way.
AN: Chapters for this will probably be a bit shorter from now on, partially because I accidentally roped myself into writing another new story. I tried to write Zymech in a different style than Lukas, I hope her style of narration represents the different person I've made her out to be. Also keep an eye out for unreliable narrating, I tossed some obvious and some not-so-obvious examples into this chapter. Thanks for reading!
