Mana Pool Snippets - Keystone

Part 6

“I get that a lot around here.”

“Oh and I brought you something.” Andrea held up with her hands a basket of red fruit. “It’s apples.”

Jaruka did nothing.

“Just take it,” Scott whispered.

Rolling his eyes, Jaruka took the basket and said, “Thank you.” It would take him time if these were poisoned or naturally grown. He set them inside on an empty chair.

“See that wasn’t so bad,” Scott said.

“Don’t. Just don’t.”

Katie leaned down to Andrea’s height. “Tell him what else you have to say.”

“Oh, yes. Nearly forgot,” Andrea said. “I want to talk about what I did to save my parents.”

Jaruka looked back at the crowd. “Come inside, I don’t want these hopeful people to know about it.”

Arana told Keeji they have to stay outside, just so that Keeji doesn’t get his nose in Jaruka’s things again. He led them inside the dropship, which caused a stir from the crowd and the Livingstons.

“Hang on, we have to be there too you know,” Morgan yelled.

“This is just a small talk, your child is safe.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Jaruka gave the stink eye, then said everybody to cool themselves down. It failed as usual. Scorning the crowd he went back inside and closed the hatch.

Inside the Marin’zal gunnery dropship, it was originally built to house four rows of seats for troops, a weapon rack above the seats, two side turrets (now removed), and very minimal storage. Before Jaruka was sent to earth, it was heavily modified within a couple hours to suit his needs. The two middle rows of seats were gutted out. The third seat row on the port side was gutted and replaced with a basic kitchen and shower, which had its fill of Jaruka’s random rage attacks. Most of what he could recover from the Lunar Spear was strewn all over the place like clothes, gadgets, and stuff the terrans failed to associate with. The middle was Jaruka’s recovered glassblowing furnace and tools; the furnace still cooling down.

Scott, Katie and the totems no better to not mess with anything on the ship, but Andrea didn’t. She was looking at Jaruka’s Custom T31ZK Plasma Rifle sitting on its pedestal, next to his katana. She was about to touch it when Jaruka moved his hand between Andrea’s and the plasma rifle’s battery.

“No touching. That’s my rule,” he said.

“Oh, sorry,” Andrea said. “It looks so cool.”

Jaruka sniffed. “Alright, kid. Tell us. What did you do?”

Andrea sat down at the fourth remaining seat row. Her porcupine totem exited her and sat two seats to her right because of the quills. The totem reminded Jaruka one of those metal spike covered wallowbads from his homeworld, or a certain jackass.

“What I did was charge my mana, speak words Dallas told me, touched the crystal on the front yard, and this… energy escaped me,” Andrea said. “He kept screaming in my head since you crashed through the window, but I was scared what would happen. I couldn’t trust him.”

“What is the spell?” Jaruka pressed. “I had a hard time remembering what you said to trigger it and my patience is waning thin.”

“It wasn’t a spell, I think. It was a limerick.”

Jaruka blinked and his arms fell to his sides. “What the crog is a limerick?”

“It’s a poem,” Scott said. “Or a type of human poem. And watch your language.”