A xenofic by amara enid

“You are not.”

“I am too.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Yes!”

“Noooo…”

“Yeeesss…”

“NO!”

“YE—“

“Alright, let’s stop this right now. We’re not getting anywhere.”

“So I’m going.”

“No, you’re NOT going. I just said we should stop because I’m not changing my mind.”

“Since when are YOU the boss of me?”

“Well…someone’s gotta look after you, considering you’re not responsible enough to do it.”

“N…not responsible enough?! You JACKASS!”

“Someone grab me a cold one,” Bart whispered to no one in particular. “This is getting good.”

“Don’t you dare encourage them,” Shitan hissed from his position next to Bart (who was now snickering at the extremely foul insults Fei and Elly were hurling at each other.)

The Yggdrasil’s Gun Room was in uncomfortable silence whilst the two young people raged on…like they had been doing for quite some time. Rather, everyone else in the room was in an uncomfortable silence…Fei and Elly were livid.

“Give me a good, well thought out, nicely worded explanation why I can’t go with!” Elly demanded of Fei, who was seething at the shorter redhead. “So far all you’ve done is insult me—and let me tell you, they were fairly POOR insults at that.”

“That’s a hit,” Margie whispered to a stunned Maria.

“I never even knew anyone knew as many curse words,” she mumbled to the girl next to her. Margie shrugged.

“You obviously haven’t heard Bart when he gets pissed…”

Meanwhile, Fei was even angrier than he was before. “Oh, should I turn the reasons in at the end of the hour, she-who-knows-all? I’ll give you a good one! How about, A—you’re not prepared for what’s going to be happening? Or, B—it will be extremely dangerous?”

“How about C—you’re a chauvanist jerk?!” Elly hollered, causing Bart to snicker once again.

“That’s another hit,” Billy whispered to Margie, and Maria turned to look also. “Who else thinks this is going to be solved by a fist fight?”

There was a silence between the three young people.

“If so, my money’s on Fei,” Billy added a moment later. Margie rolled her eyes and Maria did likewise.

“OH, OK, sorry for trying to give a damn!” Fei snapped back, offended. “You don’t seem to understand the situation here!”

Elly narrowed her eyes and folded her arms over her chest. “And what, prey tell, is the situation? Besides the fact that you’re having a raving whiner fit because I want to come along.”

“Funny, I thought they were BOTH having raving whiner fits,” Shitan muttered to no one in particular and Bart concealed his laughter.

“They so loud,” Emeralda hissed to Maison, who simply shook his head and said not a word. Sigurd nodded his agreement, also watching the scene with disdain.

“The situation is that I don’t think you’re ready to handle what we’re going to go up against,” Fei explained in a somewhat level tone. “You would only be in the way.”

“I-in the way?!” Elly whispered in disbelief. “Gee. Why don’t you just tell me I’m completely worthless?”

“In this fight, you are!” Fei exclaimed. “That’s what I’m trying to make you see. The Ministry is going to have all their strongest troops, and there is no promise that you will come back alive. Hell, there isn’t even a promise that your body would come back at all in any condition!”

“Oh, THAT’S comforting,” Rico suddenly said out loud, and a few people laughed nervously but fell silent again quickly.

“Oh, spare me,” Elly said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve been in combat before. I know the consequences, Fei. You don’t have to spoon feed them to me like a baby. And I’m sick of you acting like you’re older than me or something—we are the same age, you know!”

“This is different,” Fei replied with terse agitation. “This is so very different…”

“Enlighten me,” Elly said just as tersely. “If it’s no obligation to you.”

“Enlighten us all,” Maison said to Sigurd, who nodded his agreement again. Emeralda looked between the two men and then looked back to Elly and Fei.

“They so loud,” she repeated.

“Let me ask you something, Elly. Do you think you could kill one of us here to preserve yourself?” Fei asked her pointedly.

Elly looked taken aback severely. “What sort of question is that?”

“Answer it! Would you kill one of us? Me?” He turned to his side and his eyes alighted on the group of Billy, Margie and Maria (with Chu-Chu mute at her side.) “How about one of them? Would you willingly sacrifice one of them?”

Elly looked over in mute shock. “No! Why are you asking me a stupid thing like that? Of course I wouldn’t kill one of my friends!”

“Yes you would,” Fei replied a bit smugly. “Oh yes you would…if you came with.”

Elly was completely silent. As a matter of fact, everyone was. It had been the first moment of complete silence in the Gun Room for quite some time. It was broken by Fei.

“The things we will be fighting…” he trailed off, “were once human too, you know. I’ve seen it! Humans made into Gears…” He looked at Rico purposefully. “…Just like Hammer!” Fei looked over at Elly, who still said nothing.

“Could you do it? Could you kill people who were once our friends? I don’t think you could,” Fei replied for her. “I know you couldn’t. That’s why you are most definitely not coming with us.” He gave her an even, all-knowing look. “Or, knowing what you do now…would you even still like to go with?”

Elly was silent and she turned her back on him, huffing.

“What a jerk,” Maria whispered to Margie (who nodded vehemently.) “And Elly’s soooo nice.”

“You wouldn’t even kill one!” Fei hollered accusingly. “You would be a huge burden, Elly.” Elly stared ahead of her into space, and glared at the air.

“You would be utterly worthless,” Fei said and the room was filled with some tittering.

“Hey now…” Bart said a bit angrily. “That was a wee bit too far, don’tcha think Doc?”

“Indeed,” Shitan replied slowly, looking deep in thought. Bart wondered if he had even heard his remark at all.

Elly made no reply, only began to stalk in an obviously upset manner towards the door. Emeralda tried to catch her arm on the way out. “Elly…” The peridot haired girl never finished her statement because the other girl kept right on walking, breezing out of the doors in a cold huff.

There was yet another long, awkward silence. Everyone had different looks on their faces but all of them held shock in some measure, whether it was big or small. Fei remained in the middle of the room, staring after Elly in an almost hypnotic state. The atmosphere of the room was incredibly heavy, almost like one could have stirred it with a spoon had they so desired.

“Way to go, Fei,” Bart finally said, sarcasm flooding through his voice. Fei shrugged.

“What else was I supposed to do? She’s not going,” he replied solidly, drawing a round of sighs from everyone.

“It was just a TAD on the excessive side,” Shitan retorted at Fei who simply shrugged again. Maria nodded.

“You didn’t have to be so mean about it, Fei,” she said in disdain. Chu-Chu bounced around a bit.

“What’s the matter with chu?” she squeaked, giving Fei about as much of a glare that she could. “If I were Elly, I would hate chu!”

“Well, what you think really doesn’t matter,” Fei snapped, eyeing the small creature with anger. “You’re rather inconsequential to it all.”

“Someone’s been hanging around Doc too much,” Margie said after a moment. “Your vocabulary seems to have gone through the roof lately. Either that or you’ve been reading the dictionary.”

Fei looked around the room defensively. “What is this? Unload on Fei day?”

“I think you deserve it,” Billy said after a contemplative silence. “You were a jerk.”

Fei rolled his eyes. “Thaaaaaanks, that’s what I needed to hear. You guys are simply fantastic for moral support.”

“What are you getting all pissed at US for?” Billy asked him. “You were the one who was mean.”

“I had to explain it like that, so stop acting so…you know,” Fei said, staring the younger man down. Billy glared intensely at his antagonist.

“No, actually I don’t know,” he said in a rather acidic tone. Margie snickered.

“Fight, fight, fight,” she chanted softly and Maria reached over and put a hand over her mouth. Margie made little noises of protest against her silencer.

“Why exactly did you have to explain it like that?” Sigurd asked suddenly, wanting to avert another potential crisis. Sigurd was relieved when Fei turned away from the belligerent Billy and towards himself.

“I couldn’t put her in such a dangerous situation. There’s a ton of people out there in Nisan who need Elly very much…and she wasn’t going to take a simple ‘You’re not going’ for an answer. You guys know Elly. So I explained it…a little differently,” Fei explained, holding his arms out like he was pleading his innocence in a court.

“You were a little unkind about it,” Maison said to Fei after his plea. There was a chorus of murmured agreements.

“I saw her crying, ya know,” Billy interjected. Fei chose to ignore that remark. “Are you going to ignore me because you don’t like the fact you were an ass?” Billy asked of the cool Fei.

“Elly has to understand, and so do you guys,” Fei said simply, drawing a wave of comments.

“This is turning into an all out war!” Maria suddenly spluttered. “One at a time, sheesh! I think YOU’RE the one who’s gotta understand,” the girl shot at Fei who simply blinked.

“Eh?” he asked in confusion.

“You have to understand her! Elly! She’s not some robot, y’know…” Bart said. Shitan looked over at Bart in shock.

“Are you drunk?” he asked the eye-patch clad young man bluntly. Sigurd rolled his eyes (rather, his good one.)

“He has to be,” the silver haired man replied. Bart looked offended.

“I get righteous and I get slandered,” Bart said. “Maybe I should just go back to being like Fei here.”

“Hey!” Fei exclaimed. “I am NOT like you.”

“Actually…” Margie said, trailing off in thought. Fei shot her a helpless glare. He was being cornered by too many people, and he hadn’t enough talons to lash out at them all. Tensions were running high on the Yggdrasil, and now it was beginning to show.

“She wants to be with you! Are you totally blind?!” Billy asked, incredulous. “I mean, haven’t you noticed that? She doesn’t care if she gets slaughtered or whatever…she wants to be around you, Fei.” Fei was silent at this.

“Damn straight!” Bart hollered at Billy, who nodded. “That little boy over there has got a better hold on things than you do, Fei!”

“Watch it!” Billy hollered back across the Gun Room. Bart ignored him and instead hopped up on a table, drawing shocked looks from everyone. Shitan inched away slowly.

“This is the end, I know it,” the doctor said (with quite a bit of sarcasm, he had become especially proficient at sarcasm lately). “He’s gone crazy and now he’s going to kill us all.” Maria looked a bit frightened at this (she still was not used to Shitan’s sarcasm.)

“Fei, you stupid…stupid guy!” Bart spluttered, having become so flustered that he had run out of proper insults. “If I were you, I would chase after her, grab her in my arms, and say, ‘Let’s go together! We can die together, if it comes to that!’…You know! Or something along those lines!”

Margie looked up at her cousin. “Seriously?”

“Wait…I do believe you left out the part where I fall on the ground and start laughing so hard I begin to cry like a little girl,” Shitan remarked in thoughtful deadpan. This drew some laughs. Bart glared at both the doctor and his cousin.

“Don’t get out of control now, Young Master…” Sigurd said, looking up warily. Bart turned and gave him an ‘I know what I’m doing’ look.

“Aw shutup,” he grumbled, jumping off the table. “You people are so unimaginative.”

“Forgive us for stifling you,” Billy said in amusement.

Bart made a grumbling noise and promptly gave the blue haired man the ‘one-fingered salute’. Sigurd closed his eyes and sighed, shaking his head.

“You will be the death of me,” he muttered to Bart (who was grinning maliciously at the stunned Billy.)

“Anyway, why don’t you go talk to her?!” Bart continued undaunted a moment later, walking over to Fei. “Tell her to come with. You should let her know how you feel!” He paused a moment. “If you care about her, then don’t hold it in! Go tell her!”

“Ah yes, a declaration,” Shitan remarked, adjusting his glasses. “It would be rather fitting.”

“See? Even No-Emotions-Man here agrees with me!” Bart exclaimed, pointing at Shitan (who in turn shot Bart a ‘look’.)

“Excuse me…I must have more emotions than I let on, because unlike anyone else here, I am MARRIED,” Shitan said in an irritated tone. Bart shrugged.

“Whatever! Who cares! Fei, you need to go tell that girl how you feel!” Bart said, finishing with a flourish. The Gun Room was silent for a spell, anticipating Fei’s response.

“I…well…what am I supposed to tell her?!” Fei asked, flabbergasted.

“Tell her you care!” Bart exclaimed, becoming more fervent with every word. “Didn’t ANYTHING I just said get through to you?”

“I’m betting on ‘no’,” Maria said blandly.

“Ditto,” Margie said just as blandly.

“But I didn’t mean to imply that I—well, you know!” Fei exclaimed.

“Ooh, the icky L-word,” Shitan said in deadpan once again. Margie looked at Fei like he was an inferior.

“Fei…we ALL know. Did you two really think you could hide it forever?” she asked, her hands on her hips. Maria nodded.

“Yeah. It was meant to be!” the other girl added, taking her place next to Margie.

“Fei should tell Elly now,” Emeralda said, her eyes boring into Fei’s own. He looked away uncomfortably.

“Women don’t like insensitive men!” Margie exclaimed upon seeing Fei’s persisting reluctance. Bart snickered.

“You’re hardly a woman,” he remarked to his cousin (who stuck her tongue out at him.)

“You have to treat women right, or they’ll leave ya like that,” Billy said, snapping his fingers. Bart switched his gaze from Margie to Billy.

“What do YOU know?” Bart asked, and Billy gave a secretive grin.

“That’s for me to know,” the younger man said cryptically. Bart made a noise.

“Some holy guy you are, Billy-boy…you’re a tad too corrupt for my tastes as a holy man,” Bart mused.

“Gimme a break,” Billy said, rolling his eyes. “I’m 16. Like I’m going to be perfect. I’ll worry about being perfect when I’m old and decrepit.”

“Wise plan,” Bart said, giving it some thought. “It might work.”

“Separate those two NOW,” Shitan said, looking alarmed. Sigurd nodded fervently.

“I agree. Pretty soon, Young Master will be allowing others to tinker with the Bart Missiles…” Both Shitan and Sigurd paled considerably. Bart and Billy both grinned.

Fei was in the middle of the room, dumbfounded. /This is CRAZY. This concerns me, and me alone!/ He had hoped that while everyone else was busy with other things, he could sneak out unnoticed. Unfortunately, ever-alert Emeralda caught him.

“Fei, where you go?” she asked innocently, drawing everyone’s attention back to him.

“Ah yes, Fei,” Margie said with a devious voice. “Where were we? Mwahaha!” she gave an overdone evil laugh and Rico looked pained.

“Her and Emeralda are as bad as each other,” the demi-human vowed.

“Fei, I say you go to her and tell her what’s truly inside,” Shitan said. “’Spill your guts now, and worry about picking them up later.’ Someone once spoke those words to me…I think it was a family member…I cannot recall…” Everyone waited for Shitan to finish his sentence.

“Doc?” Fei asked, and Shitan shook his head and looked at Fei.

“Yes?”

“Were you going to finish what you were saying?” he asked quietly. Shitan’s face lit up like he had remembered something and he nodded.

“Yes! Indeed I was. It rots the human soul to keep things inside…and something as large as this must possess immense destructive qualities. Fei, keeping something like this inside is only tearing you up on the insides. No matter how foolish one feels, it is always better to get things…off your chest, I guess you could say. Don’t worry about being eloquent, or dramatic, or anything else. If Elly wants to hear it—which I’m sure she does—she will not care how it is worded. Believe me. Emotions are powerful things, Fei. If you chose to hold it in now, it will only come spilling out later.”

There was silence.

“Does anyone else feel insignificant?” Maria asked, looking around.

“You talk too much,” Bart told Shitan. “But it carries a message often…if you have enough freakin’ patience to sort through the babble. He’s right, Fei.

” Fei scowled and began to stalk for the doors. “Alright! Alright! Damn…I’m going! Could we just please turn the spotlight off Fei for a few minutes? He’s going!” Billy snickered.

“He’s talking in third person,” the young gunslinger observed. “Should we be afraid?”

“I am!” Maria piped up.

“Be afraid,” Shitan said in the same monotonous deadpan. “Be VERY afraid.”

“After all,” Sigurd remarked thoughtfully, “what’s more frightening than a teenager with a declaration of love?”

“A teenager with raging hormones,” Shitan replied. “Head for the high ground when that happens.”

“Good luck, Fei!” Margie exclaimed.

“I don’t think he’s going to need it,” Maria said quietly, after Fei had left through the door. “They make eyes at each other when they think no one is looking.”

“They make eyes at each when they KNOW people are watching,” Margie corrected. “They do it right in front of us all.”

“I have a headache from all that arguing,” Bart grumbled. “Bah! Stupid kids.”

“Stupid kids that aren’t much younger than you, you dork!” Maria exclaimed, glaring at Bart. Bart waved her off.

“Yes, Love is one of life’s many little headaches,” Shitan mused.

“What’re the other ones?” Billy asked. “These two?” he asked with a grin, pointing at Maria and Margie, who turned on him, glaring.

“There are many,” Shitan replied, adjusting his glasses. “Anger is another, I believe. I’d say we all got our healthy dosing of love and anger today…thanks to Fei and Elly.”

I think I made some mistakes in this re-write. I can’t fully remember the scene. If you see or notice a mistake, please email me or get in touch with me…tell me what I’ve done. I don’t want to be sitting here writing things that are incorrect.

Right now I should be getting in the shower, but instead I’m writing these things for you wonderful people. See? I do love you. I sacrifice my personal hygiene for you devoted people… I don’t know, I guess I’m trying to say…Thanks for actually being a regular visitor to Silence and Death. And if you’re one of those people who just happened to stumble upon it, thanks for dropping by anyways. Love you guys.

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