He holds the steering wheel in his knees, he shifts gears with his right hand and eats his kebab while holding it in his left hand.
I look at him worried and I wonder what will he do when we get to the first curb.
-Where do you live? – He asks me.
I hear the front bumper scraping against one of the tires: he duct taped it, but it doesn’t seem to be a long lasting solution.
-Busto Arsizio. Northern outskirts – I answer.
He raises an eyebrow.
-Then you’re in the Delta team. Very well. What did you do to end up here? Are you a killer? –
The noise the straw is making tells me that I finished my coke. I put it in the cup holder.
– I am a thief –
He turns to me.
He’s not looking where he is going.
He looks at me.
He’s still not looking where he is going.
– Watch where you’re going, what the fuc_ – I am holding the steering wheel.
– What the fuck are you? – He blurts out while still staring at me.
Apparently the road is none of his concern, but it is mine.
– I am a thief! A thief ok? You know? Those people that break into your house and steal your stuff. Now would you please look at where you’re going? –
– And what the fuck are you doing here? Above all, what the fuck are you doing in my car if you’re just a fucking thief?! –
– You really like the word fuck, don’t you? Do you have to put it in a sentence at least five or six times to make you feel realized? THE ROAD! –
He slams on the breaks.
The seatbelt works outstandingly, otherwise I would now be conversing with the radiator.
– Ok, let’s go in order. You can’t be just a stupid thief for two, actually, for three good reasons.-
I snort.
-First: You wouldn’t have been sent to this world. Second: you wouldn’t be in team Delta. Third: they wouldn’t have assigned you to me! –
At this point I get pissed.
– I don’t even know what the fuck is team Delta, okay? – He puts a hand on his forehead and leans on the window foreseeing a long discussion. – And, to be precise, I don’t even know who you are! – I continue – All I know is that you dragged me into a Die Hard style battle the minute I met you, without even telling me your name. And I still don’t know why we killed those guys! –
He pulls out a small box from his shirt pocket, he throws whatever is in it in his mouth, and then drains something from a flask that was in the glove compartment.
– Listen up Princess, I already have a headache the size of a Zeppelin, so let’s stay calm ok? –
– Not likely, I’m pissed and I demand the right to express it! I was just quietly collecting my points when Mister Diamond Brain comes and feeds me to the refugees and to a crazy and filthy warmonger –
He spreads his arms out – Did you think this was a date, Cookie? –
He gets out of the car before I can answer.
I open the door, I remember the belt when it strangles me, I unbuckle myself and catch up with him.
He is opening the trunk.
I’m about to answer him when he lifts the false bottom of the trunk and anchors it so that it stands on its own.
Below it there are folders, a laptop, graphics and a lot of notes and data sheets that I don’t understand immediately. He moves the Asus with little grace and gets a folder that was all crumpled up beneath it.
The way he’s handling the netbook clogs one of my mitral valves.
– Stop! You brake it like this – I embrace the computer – You need to handle it gently…-
– What, that thing? I never even turned it on. Shelv gave it to me when I asked him for some documents. I asked him if he was taking me for a ride and he then proceeded to give them to me in dear old paper-
He sits on the back of the trunk and opens the folder in his hands.
I don’t put the computer down.
I sit next to him and peek. He hands me a couple of sheets.
– As I get it, they didn’t explain you a fuck. So: the Confederation has the duty to control the refugees. People can move legally from our world to this one only if they get all their powers blocked out and, even then, this possibility is granted only in exceptional cases. Otherwise, if you’re there you have to stay there. If you are a convict, you serve as an ally. In this case, only half of your powers get blocked through this lousy bracelet – He raises his right hand to show me a bracelet which is exactly the same as mine – and they assign you different missions. Each completed mission will gain you a point. According to your sentence you have to collect a certain number of points. So far this has been a brief, you already knew all this, right banana bunch? –
Banana bunch?
As a matter of fact my quiff is a bit flashy, but no one had yet compared me to a bunch of bananas.
I look up at the sky and remain silent, so he continues.
– Right. The Confederation has its own procedure to handle all this. They manage to intercept the moment in which a refugee enters this world. I don’t know what fucking interference is generated but it is perceived by the Shield tools. So they know exactly how many people from our world are on this one. The problem is catching them. Usually they send an ally to the exact point in which they perceived the interference, but the refugees aren’t always so slow, most of the times they can blend in with the people from this world and, once they’re infiltrated, it’s a pain to catch them. Unless they use magic. Luckily this often happens because most of them feel like a God in the face of these humans who know nothing about magic, so they suck their own dick and that’s when the Intra Dimensional Shield Confederation finds them, sends an ally who either sends the refugee home, but it happens very rarely, or kills him, which is what usually happens.-
He pauses, takes the cigarette package. – Are you following me? –
– I am, I’m not an idiot.-
I take one of his cigarettes. He gives me a dirty look but doesn’t complain. He moves a couple of filthy sheets in the folder in his hand.
– Right… Now: I am no longer an ally, meaning, I was one but I finished collecting my points, so I now work part-time for the Confederation.-
– And what would your permanent job be? – I ask
– I’m a trucker –
Well, I guess he couldn’t be a supermarket clerk…
He doesn’t catch my expression and continues – Particularly I want to get this asshole who has taken the Iantor. Now, that’s my mission, and yours too now – he hands me a personal card.
It’s a file with a picture and a resumé of a guy named Sin. The surname has been canceled with a black marker as other information on the page.
There’s a picture.
An ephebic guy, pale, in a short hairdo with strands sticking out. The hair is an amaranth color with black on the tips. His eyes are white and he has a tattoo on his left cheek right below the eye in the form of a treble clef.
Light Novel - Service's code – Gosh… Who is he? A visual kei singer? – I laugh – I guess he’s also gay, is it written in here? – I start browsing when I get punched on my nape.
– Ouch! – I protest.
– Try to be serious, this one here is not easy to track down. I’ve already sent him back once, and I assure you that it wasn’t a piece of cake! –
I mutter and continue to read the file. I almost swallow my cigarette when I read Sevyhal’s Twins.- Sevyhal’s Twins!? By the Gods! He’s one of those two?! – I flip out.
– He’s one of those two.- He confirms.
– And the other one? –
– … Is not him…-
– Damn it! They were the terror of my State! –
– Of all the world, not just your State – he mumbles.
– Well yes, but I knew that they worked mainly in Sevyhal… Damn it… This one is going to kill us… I heard that one is completely crazy, cold and ruthless! And the other one is a kind of human caterpillar, and wherever he goes nobody and nothing survives him –
-He is the first one.-
– Fuck fuck fuck… And I worked for him without knowing it, fuck fuck fuck… – I’m scared shitless only now that I know the whole story.
He turns -What did you do? –
I snort – The Iantor. I stole it without knowing what it was, he commissioned this job to me but I never saw his face, he was always under in a hood and a_-
-_ black loden overcoat – he finishes.
– Hum –
He suddenly grabs me by the throat shacking me back and forth like a crack stoned pit-bull.
– YOU GOT THE IANTOR FOR HIM? YOU FILTHY PIECE OF SHIT, I WILL MASSACRE YOU! –
He let’s go of me right before sending me into a lack of oxygen coma.
****
He took me back to my house to get my things, and then he literally threw everything in the car, including myself, and now I have absolutely no idea where we are headed to.
– Can I ask you again? –
– Fire away
– What’s your name?
-Tears, Tears Eirdar, and the pleasure is all yours Princess.-
It ‘s like a rock hitting a stained glass window. The intricate kind you find in churches. Everything in my brain smashes.
I should have known it was him, I should have guessed, it was so obvious.
I was sent to give support to the ally who is chasing the one who now holds the Iantor, and he is the one running after Sin. Still… It’s like when you have all the clues but you can’t put them together because you can’t accept the truth.
The brain simply refuses to conceive this truth.
This man in his thirties, with ripped jeans and a dirty tank top under a lorry driver’s plaid shirt. This ruthless warmonger, with no respect for anyone or anything and with a lexicon that doesn’t go over ten pages, eight of which full of profanities. With jokes recycled from movies like Bad Boys and Die Hard, who listens to music like Let Me Put My Love Into You by AC/DC.
This.
This is my myth. Tears Eirdar.
Maybe with some polishing and a couple of years of high school he could turn out to be a normal person. Or maybe not, some people are just like that and you can’t change them.
I remain silent in the passenger seat, utterly depressed.
– Well? Princess? Are your batteries dead? Do you like to be called by gay nicknames? It’s that why you still haven’t told me your name? –
-Zen. Zendaru Of Samirien –
I say half-heartedly as I look out from my window.
– Let’s recap: you are Zendaru Of Samirien and you’re a thief. Age? –
-17 –
I hear him curse and mumble at the same time something indefinable that sounds like a pit bull’s growl with a lot of phlegm.
The only things that I grasp are the words Shelv, bastard, child, thanks to a strange piece of uncontrolled wisdom, and puberty.
– When you’re done disparaging me only because I am a year younger than what you thought, explain me what’s the Delta team and how did you know that I was part of it, when I didn’t.-
We are now in the outskirt streets of the industrial area South of Busto Arsizio. It must be at least five minutes since all I could see from the windows is the reflection of deserted streets, fields full of rubble, factories and abandoned warehouses.
– The Delta Team – he says – is one of the teams in which the Confederation divides its allies. There are four teams, created accordingly to the ability of the allies constituting them. They are sent to different locations according to the actual hot spot the refugees are using. At the moment, the hot spot, which as you already know is not fixed, corresponds to the areas of Busto Arsizio, Castellanza and South Gallarate. So, in that area, they alternate the most skillful allies, who belong to the Delta Team. You were obviously not supposed to know the team location: allies are given only the essential information, like the location and the number of refugees to face. But if you had bothered to check your badge at least once, you would have known to which department you belonged.-
I don’t listen to him anymore and I’m widely grinning. The last thing I heard was that I belonged to the team of the most skilled allies.
Then I get depressed again, when I remember that the number one ally is the one sitting next to me…
Comments (0)
See all