To Goats and Goldfish

Chapter 3

A man stalks the wood.

His body is weightless. He walks along the canopy, his footfalls leaving no trace on the thin layer of leaves below him.

To his back is an Aegis encampment, built into a neat little opening in the forest. It was a disgusting place, where weak men go to waste away, far from the city they swore to protect. On any other day he'd waltz right into that camp and mean business. But today isn't one of those days, because he had a mission. An Ourania mission.

The target entered camp three days ago, accompanied by an armed woman, if you consider a sword being armed. On most missions the man would walk in, neutralize everyone on site and secure the target. But this wasn't one of those missions. The swordswoman was to be left alive, and should absolutely not be engaged with.

Since there was no knowing how long the two would be in camp for, the only viable solution would be to draw them out. And he knew just the way how.

For a moment, he wondered if the no-engagement rule was because they thought she'd beat him. No, that certainly wasn't the case.

...

The soldier looked weak. In fact, calling him a soldier at all was generous. He was wearing a white singlet, though his arms weren't quite what you'd expect from someone meant to be a 'protector of the people'. In his defense, that wasn't really his job, not anymore.

It was a simple fact of Aegis' military, if you're weak, you get sent out to the outskirts where you spend your days delivering supplies and harvesting wildlife. Even if you did receive a dangerous job, it'd get outsourced to the first person to come by who was dumb or competent enough to take it.

A waste of training and a waste of life, that would be how a real soldier would describe anyone posted outside the city. Even so, the scrawny yet sleeveless man appears content, he puts out a cigarette on the table he stands behind as Val approaches.

She places a bag of oversized snake teeth on the table, Adelaide lights up her own cigarette some steps back.

'Finally leaving us then?' The sleeveless soldier asks, opening the bag and placing each tooth on a scale, absentmindedly typing each value into a monitor to the side.

'Nuh uh.' Val responds, 'Adelaide says it's too late to go out so we're leaving in the morning.'

'Smart woman.'

'You want us gone that bad?' Val asks with trademark snark and antagonism, 'We eating too much of your stale bread?'

'Not at all, actually.' Over three days and six jobs completed, the man has grown accustomed to the moody thirteen year old's antics, perhaps even fond of them, 'the faster we eat through our supplies, the sooner we get to go back to the city.'

'That seems like a bad system.'

'Oh, it is. But it's systems like that that keep morale high. You'll get it when you're older, little lady.'

'Hey-!' Val begins to retort, but before the fruits of the man's deliberate jab can be enjoyed, Adelaide steps in.

'The train heading west, that passes through Mesobury. Any idea where the closest station is?' She asks.

'Western train..?' The man's brow furrows. 'Any trains out west've been blocked off for close to a decade now. Politics and all that. If you want to take the fast way into Mesobury, there's a-'

'Absolutely not.' She cuts him off.

'Fair enough.'

'Woah woah woah, what is this!? More secrets!?' Val butts back in.