MM Ch. 5

MM Ch. 5

Chapter 5: The Disagreement

Black Thunder had refused to bring an army along, so it seemed apparent that they did not wish to fight. Dain had shown his face again, in addition to his miniature 'posse', a man decked out in an oversized trench at his right, and another peculiar skinned woman at his left. There wasn't much of a threat to be given by the three and thus, Jen concluded as a possibility, not every member of Regnum Noctis needed to be present for the conversing of the two sides; in fact, only Jei and Conan flocked to the surface, Jen tagging newbishly behind and hiding in the open doorway to observe the friction.
"And what have we done to deserve the honor of your presence, Dain?" It had to be Jei; Conan's voice was a great deal lower in octave. Plus, the movement of his hand to his mouth and the low chuckle emitting from his throat gave a hazy idea that he hadn't been cracking himself up. Dain didn't seem to show much appreciation of the humour involved; he offered a sneer, a rather hideously smug parting of his lips, and his head fell back rather significantly.
"It wasn't you," It looked as if he only possessed one eye, for the other had been deeply concealed within the fallen strands of his hair that shielded half his face; it was that sole eye that did the searching, darting every which way around the outside of the building, even prying in past that open door, which made Jen step back out of view with a gasp. "Where're your little buddies?"
"They don't have enough clearance to be hearing this..." Conan this time. Jen took a second step backward; well then, that meant she definately wasn't supposed to be eavesdropping. There was no doubt that Conan knew she was there, though. He seemed... sort of gifted that way. "What's this about?"
"It's that jerkwad, communist, retarded follower of yours..." Dain shifted his cane from one hand to the next, holding it at a diagonal angle at his chest. "Dameon." Dameon. It always came back to Dameon, a man who, as Jen had come to notice, didn't seem to be all that important a person. "He's killed off four soldiers--- a solar law, you know--- and severely injured two more, without provocation! Even with our medical knowledge, it'll take weeks for them to heal!"
"Dain... Dameon had every right to attack you and yours." Jei never seemed to sound serious about anything. No, she had far too much of a certain sarcastic wit. It wasn't exactly a brilliant leadership quality to possess, but Jei seemed to pull it off rather well. "Have you forgotten the war? He doesn't need provocation to have the right to attack."
It was a good point. It was a war, after all. Even Jen knew that, after her something-odd hour of actually being a part of this world and its containments. Dain didn't seem to approve, however; the top to his cane was pulled off with an easy 'pop', sliding hurriedly from the cylindar body of the object a thin, rusting blade, which he swung forward with a 'whoosh', settling its point just beneath Jei's jaw.
"You, my aquaintance, are an illegal group of activists out to spoil the running of a perfectly logical government." He certainly sounded irritated enough, though he stared down toward Jei with a horrid smirk against his bony face. "You're lucky I don't just arrest the both of you on the spot; lucky that beating you and your little worshipers into the dust will only boost mine and the dictatorship's rep." His blade was lifted, leaving a three-centimeter line no thicker than a papercut against the formerly unbroken surface of Jei's tanned skin, pushing the dirty metal back into its black container. "Constrain that mongrel of yours; I'll see you when I see you."
He began to turn, and Jen noticed how Conan's entire stature seemed to loosen, as if he'd let out a great deal of stress Dain's presence had caused. His right hand was lifted, thumb and forefinger pressed against opposite sides of his head, when the threat returned, turning over his shoulder, one foot sliding against the cobblestone ground beneath him with a familiar 'crunch'.
"And tell your blonde 'bombshell', Conan, that if she wants to listen in again, I'll have her head on a platter." A sharp shiver ran up Jen's spine as she backed her farthest from the doorway, her arms flat against the wall beside the opening leading to the outside. So he had seen her. Dain smirked again, his head falling backward, turning again, and again once more. "And not a silver platter, either. One of those... plastic ones... you know, the ones you can get for five dollars at a grocery store..." He paused again, his head falling in a series of rapid nods, as if clarifying what he'd said, and he turned again, marching off with the arrogance only a man of great power could have, his silent companions turning to hurry off silently after him.
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Dameon got a rather lurid scolding after the Dain incident, both Conan and Jei's input interrupted by Annelise's own shrieking reprimanding. Hikaru only laughed; she so far had shown no liking toward Dameon, despite the latter's claim of the former being "his best friend". It took at least fifteen minutes for each of the three reproachers to spew all they had to say, interrupted several times by Dameon's protests to redeem himself. Annelise had ended the meaningless debate, truthfully; having gotten overly angered in the middle of it all, she stormed off in a hurry, leaving Jei and Conan to depart Dameon with nothing but a 'don't do it again', and Hikaru having to saunter off with nothing but an utterance of the infamous Japanese insult, "baka".
The room grew oddly silent as its patrons filed out one by one. Jen wanted desperately to break the ice between the two of them, yet no words could combine themselves into a well-educated sentence to be spoken; wanted so badly to leave the room as so many before her had done, though there was no where to go.
"I didn't do it for me..." The words were faint, but still there, as Dameon's head lifted only an inch to fall again against the outstretched heel of the palm of his right hand.
No... it couldn't be. Jen's teeth began to chatter, though her face lifted to unbearable temperatures, her heart pounding hard in her chest. It had been Dameon who'd saved her from that syndicate maniac. He couldn't... he couldn't have a love interest in her! No! Not already! Her racing thoughts sent Jen into a realm of muttering, holding her cheeks in her hands as she whispered to herself.
Dameon seemed to know all too well the thoughts racing through her mind, as a deep-chested laugh rose up through his throat, smothered only by the placement of one hand flat against his mouth.
"Relax! I'm not interested in you..." His gaze was shifted over toward her, one hand lifting to rake back through the overlengthed strands of hair hanging down along the right side of his face, to clear his vision path. There seemed to be a sort of awkward silence about him, a sense of regret... held in the depths of his russet eyes that caused Jen to gasp as she caught sight of it. Maybe... just maybe...
"I... excuse me... um, Dameon?" One of her slender hands was lifted from its uneasy clench on the collar of her clothing, extending slowly outward toward him. "I-- I- I was just wondering... do you...? I mean..." No. Just stop. Now. His gaze had already dropped from her, down to the floor, his fingers having tightened around the strands he held. He seemed peeved. Nevertheless, Jen just hung her head and picked up her sentence where she'd dropped it. "I-- I mean... aren't you already married? To Hikaru? How could you... ho--how could you be interested in someone if---" She stopped again. He was looking at her again, his eyes wide in shock as his hand fell with a thud to his leg, leaving his hair to fall back in place before his face. Yep. That was wrong. He wasn't married. She could tell by the look on his face he'd been utterly shocked to hear such an assumption. Well, the proverb about making an ass of oneself wasn't just an empty threat.
"Hold it... me? And Hikaru?" To her surprise, he broke into a rather loud succession of laughs, his arms wrapped tight around his waist as he fell forward. Jen had to sit rather dumbfounded at his behaviour, a look of pure confusion against her face. "I'd hate to break it to you, but Hikaru's not exactly my number one fan..." He stood, then, straightening up to his full immense height and starting off toward the doorway as so many before him had. His hands slid slowly to his pockets as he stopped in the doorway, turning over his shoulder to look back toward Jen, who still sat on the ground, having barely moved as he did.
"Oh, yes... and while we're on the subject..." Jen's attention was caught once again, straightening from her slouch and leaning carefully across her legs, awaiting his next words. "Next time you see Hikaru, ask her to look at you..." His head was dropped backward, his thin mouth extending across his face in a rather wide smirk. "It'll be quite an... 'experiance'..." He nodded to her, turning on his heels again and leaving Jen to her lonesome.
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A sharp outcry of pain shattered the otherwise peaceful air of the outside world. Jen writhed in agony as the jagged scrapes of skin on her shoulderblades were bathed in rubbing alcohol, biting her lip and clenching her eyes to keep from crying out again.
"What's the matter?" Annelise halted in her patting of the stinging substance to Jen's injuries at the ear piercing shriek, one eyebrow tilted as her head fell to one side. "Certainly a little rubbing alcohol doesn't ail you that much!" Jen winced again, her shoulders relaxing as she turned over her shoulder to face the woman behind her.
"I don't know how much you've evolved... but that stuff still stings me!" Her hands were pressed tight to her mouth as the liquid was stroked again along her wounds.
"What in the world happened to you, anyway?" Jei's head tilted toward one side, her arms crossed across the back of one chair as she watched the exchange between Jen and Annelise.
"I already told you..." Jen managed to murmer between winces, "I was hit by a truck... I think something about that collision might be the cause of my appearance here." And, just like the first time she'd tried to explain it, she got only responses along following the lines of "What the hell's a truck?" and "Your appearance here? You can't really be from Earth, can you?"
The wounds were bandaged, and Jen's tense form crumpled into her lap, her arms wrapped around her waist and her head bowed forward. Annelise stood from her seat behind the newcomer, her bottled rubbing alcohol in one hand and the used paper towel she'd used to dab Jen's scrapes in the other.
"Try not to move too much... I'll give them a closer examination tomorrow." She let her head fall in a nod, her silver bangs falling in a flop against her forehead. "For now, you'll be fine. You should consider yourself lucky in comparison to some of the other things I've seen." She offered a small arc of a smile toward Jen as she turned on her heels and padded barefoot out of the tiny white-walled room, back out into the rest of the building. Jen cocked her head toward one side to follow the movements of the other woman, before turning her head toward Jen, the light upward curl of a smile against her mouth, which only caused the same to be shone back to her.
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"...ask her to look at you..."
It was just too bizarre of a request, that Jen couldn't shake from the back of her mind. And yet, curiousity got the best of her, and she was forced to the closed door of Hikaru's room. A knock to the door and a calling of the woman's name did nothing, and Jen still invited herself in, turning the loose doorknob and pushing the wall-like separation inward.
It was perhaps one of the worst living situations Jen had ever laid eyes on. The floor, carpetless, lay cluttered with bloody gauze, some of which were held captive in one of the ten-odd cardboard boxes thrown haphazardly across the room. The bed lay, pushed up beneath the sole window in the room, its sheets wrinkled and horribly unpresentable. The air reeked horribly of secondhand cigarette smoke, a hunting rifle lay propped up in one corner, and the only light to luminate the room came from one light dangling over a simple desk. It was at this desk where Jen found the object of her searches, hunched beneath the illumination, her right hand clapped over her eyes and her left holding a quivering pencil, scribbling diagonal lines of crooked kanji along a sheet of printer paper lying flat on the surface of the desk.
The sharp, quaking breaths emitted from the opposite side of the room suddenly fell to a cease as Hikaru lowered both hands to the flat surface of her desk, her spine suddenly set upright though her head kept bowed down.
"You there... blonde wench... get out..." Jen gave a jump at the voice, her hands automatically reaching out to cling to the side of the doorway she stood in, already all too used to having Conan to hide behind. No; she couldn't leave yet. There was still the matter of what Dameon had meant. She opened her mouth to speak, startled at the weak, strangled cries that had somehow replaced her entire vocabulary.
"Well?! What are you waiting for? Get the hell outta here!" Jen lurched forward at the command, fingering her throat rapidly as she tried to find her voice.
"I--- I-I mean, I..." No. That wasn't going to do anybody any good.
"Spit it out and go away! I don't want to have to kill someone Conan has such a strong attachment to!"
That brought Jen to a halting silence. Conan? Have feelings for her? Her head was shaken in the negative as she looked down to the floor, her hand clenching to a shaking fist against the side of the door panel.
"Then look at me. Look at me, and I'll go away." Damn. Damn them. Damn Dameon for arising such a peculiar curiousity in her. Now there was no doubt something, anything, was going to happen.
The room fell to the silence of a dead man as both figures stood solemnly on either side of the room. Hikaru lifted her head, turning her gaze over her shoulder toward Jen's trembling form.
"What?"
"I-- ah..." She lifted her head again, staring wide eyed across the room as she took an uneasy step back. "I said... look at me?"
What should've happened in a moment's time took ages to complete. Hikaru turned, making her way one shaky step at a time across the concrete floor, staggering in and out of a straight line as she approached the doorway, staring at Jen for a good while after her arrival, eyebrows narrowed as her face contorted to a scowl. This was it? This is all Dameon wanted to happen? Jen just stared dumbfoundedly back at the other woman, not knowing what else she was supposed to do.
Had she known she was going to be slapped, she would've braced herself. The force of the other woman's palm to her cheek sent Jen propelling across the other room hard enough to slam into the opposite wall, had her hands not lifted to shield her face from the solid surrounding.
"Think you're bein' funny, do you?!" Yes, Hikaru was definately angered. Her hands were lifted, reaching out to grasp the collar of Jen's shirt, pulling the two nose-to-nose. "Taunting a blind woman! You're lucky you're on Conan's good side!"
Blind?! There was no way! She... she had seen her, looked directly at her, and now she was trying to say she hadn't seen a thing? Jen freed herself, backing away from Hikaru, nursing her rapidly bruising cheek with the palm of one hand.
"I-- I'm sorry! I had... I had no idea..." Jen's eyes went wide as her jaw began to tremble, the sting of the slap beginning to set in. Quickly did she turn on her heels, running fast as her legs could carry her out of that room. Conan... Conan could give her answers. And an ointment for her cheek.