Roughing It (Part 2)

Posted on Wed May 27, 2020 @ 1:11pm by Civilian Aleczandra Naqiis-Ryan & Commander Amia Telamon M.D. & Captain Lazanos Torena

2,145 words; about a 11 minute read

Mission: Et In Arcadia Ego
Location: Pangea/Caleb’s Cabin
Timeline: MD 05 0800

Aleczandra stretched and rolled over in the bedding where she lay next to Shay in the loft of the cabin. She gave a lazy smile and looked over at the boy next to her, shaking her head. Pathetic puppy dog. She left him lying there sleeping as she made her way down the ladder and out the rear of the cabin to the latrine, washing up in a bucket of cold water left out there for that purpose.

Coming back into the cabin, Zandra went over to the storage closet and pulled out a small black case. She pressed her thumb to the biometric reader and it popped open, revealing several vials of a pale blue liquid and a hypospray. She held one up and considered. Did she dare waste it down here? Juheni found it easier to wrest control from Aleczandra when needed, and this neurochemical he got from Hex would keep him in control as long as he kept taking it. But she only had a limited supply. Best to save it for when she was on a job.

Aleczandra replaced the case and grabbed a towel, some clothes, and the wrist sheaths with their knives. She headed out of the cabin and toward a small gap in the trees surrounding it, the dew on the grass chilly on her bare feet. The gap led to a small path that ended in a clearing where a small waterfall about four meters high plunged into a pool before continuing on its way in a small river.

Zandra stripped off her clothes and stood in the dappled sunshine, inhaling the warming morning air. Ah, it was good to be alive. She pulled her knives from her sheaths and let her feet slide in the wet grass, falling into a fighting stance. Slowly she started to move through the fighting forms, keeping her knife skills sharp. Juheni wanted to be ready if the Symbiosis Commission came for her.

Two Marines moved easily through the wilderness of Pangaea, picking their way along the trees in careful silence, both wearing their uniforms, sleek black armored vests and field jackets. They had their rifles slung and at the ready. The Marine in front of Laz was a Denobulan woman named Turos, a CPO who had spent a great deal of time out in the wilderness of Pangaea since being rotated in months ago. She was one of those people who seemed to take more easily to the wilds than the comforts of the base. Laz was trying to learn the situation on the ground on Pangaea, and was spending more time doing patrols surrounding the base to get a feel for the landscape. All the sensor sweeps and orbital imagery in the world never beat eyes on the ground.

He’d told Turos about the cabin that Commander Ryan had mentioned, and she knew the area well enough to lead him over to find it. They heard the waterfall first, approaching from the top of the short ridge where the water dumped out to the small pond. They crested the small rise and looked down to the pond where the falls came out. They saw the girl with colorful hair, and both knelt out of sight in the trees. “That’s her,” Laz said, his voice picked up by the comm unit that went around his neck, designed to pick up the quietest whisper he could make and transmit it to Turos’s earpiece. He looked down and winced, turning away. “And is she naked?.”

“She’s practicing with knives,” Turos whispered back. “That’s an odd thing for a teenage girl to be doing here, isn’t it?”

“I’m not one to judge on that count,” Laz said. “I don’t see anybody else around here, yet.”

Shay was slower to wake than Zandra, but when he did open sleepy eyes he couldn't find her anywhere. He called, got up, wrapped himself in a sheet, and put his head outside. It was a lovely early morning, but a little bit crisp. He shivered and went back inside, looking for somewhere to wash, having forgotten that there was nowhere and there would be a bucket of cold water somewhere outside. Shaking his head and thinking silently that it was lucky Zandy was such a gorgeous lady because anyone less special might not be worth going through all this.

Noting that it was just a few degrees warmer inside the cabin, Shay put on his boxers and went out with a towel around his shoulders to wash and then rushed back inside to dry himself and get dressed. Once he was sorted, it occurred to him that Zandy hadn't returned, and he wondered where she could have gone.

He decided he should go look for her first and then find something to eat afterwards. It seemed more honourable that way, in case she was in trouble or lost or something. So he followed the path away from the lodge, firstly having tried one that went around and back again and then deducing there was a clear favourite left which he began down. He got within hearing of the waterfall before he could see it, but as it was quite a way from the cabin. He was already thinking about going back when he realised what that noise was. He had always loved water and it's features. He stepped forward into the clearing and stopped in his shoes to see Zandy naked, apparently practising some very spiritual looking moves with knives. He was just speechless. He kept still, fascinated, as he watched her, not wanting her to notice him and stop.

Turos nudged Laz with her elbow, and he looked where she nodded. The young man standing there matched the description Ryan had given him, so that was the both of them accounted for. "Okay," Laz whispered. "Stop staring, kid."

After a few moments, Shay silently told himself the same thing and moved forward a few small steps where he stopped and called her name almost breathlessly.

"Zandy?" he said. "Wow. Did I ever tell you how beautiful you are?" He knew it was corny and would make her grumble at him, but as long as she didn't throw a knife at him. Anyway, he couldn't think of anything else, watching her graceful movements with the forms she was undertaking and her lithe, surprisingly strong, body, immaculately shaped and contoured and just breathtaking physique. "If I didn't, I should have!" he added, realising that having begun acting alpha male with her, she had completely turned the tables on him over such a short period of time. This girl was good and such a delight with it.

Aleczandra’s routine ended with a quick movement, and Shay felt a breath of wind against his ear and a tiny burning sensation as one of her knives flew past him, barely nicking his ear, and thunked into the tree behind. Her blue eyes locked with his, the wind causing her rainbow hair to blow a bit across her fierce gaze, something predatory in her eyes.

Oh, right. The boyfriend, Juheni told himself. Bastard’s going to make me kill him one day. Everyone needed to scratch the itch occasionally, but relationships meant vulnerabilities, and in his line of work, that usually meant death. But it would be entirely too conspicuous to leave the boy buried out in the woods somewhere.

Zandra’s naked body relaxed slightly. “Morning, love,” she said, brushing back her rainbow hair. She still moved with a predatory grace as she sauntered toward Shay. “Sleep well?” She leaned in and pressed against him, kissed him, then kissed his ear, her tongue flicking out to lick away the small bead of blood her knife had drawn before walking to the tree and yanking out her knife, the motion making nice motions in certain parts of her naked body. “I was just going to go for a swim, if you wanted to join me,” she said, tossing a look over her shoulder at Shay.

Laz and Turos looked at each other. They both knew what that meant, and neither of them wanted to be there to see it. Already, Laz was pretty sure he didn't want to tell Commander Ryan he'd seen as much of his daughter as he already had. Trying to explain witnessing the rest was a little too much. As silently as possible, the two Marines tried to slip away. Still, in the back of his mind, Laz was thinking about the way the teenager had thrown that knife at her boyfriend. It was a skilled throw, and she missed on purpose, but that sort of thing seemed beyond what a girl that young should be capable of. It nagged at the back of his mind until he heard the hum of a drone soaring nearby overhead.

Turos looked up. It was one of theirs, on a security sweep. She gestured the information at Laz, who just nodded. Maybe the teenagers would be too carried away with their time together to notice? Though when he thought of the girl and her knives, he somehow doubted it.

"A swim? Now you're talking!" Shay laughed and began to remove his clothing, so recently put on, but now just an encumbrance. "Race you!" he called back, charging like a bull in a china shop towards the pool at the bottom of the waterfall, but as he got closer, he slowed down and ended up standing close to the edge, speechless at the incredible beauty, both in front of him and by now having just run past him as well.

The waterfall itself was just breathtaking and so pure, clean, undisturbed, perfect, with a roar of its own and a picturesque scene to take anyone's breath away. The stunning young lady who had just beaten him into the water of the pool that the torrent rushed down into was even more breathtaking, and Shay didn't know how he could have had such luck as to have met her and to have found her to be interested in him too. It was like a fairy tale, and this place made it all the more in keeping with that. Blown away, he stood at the side of the transparent pool and watched the mermaid that he imagined he could see swimming as if she were a fish herself, in the azure blue water, beneath the fading rose colour of the rays of the sun as it just finished rising in the sky. Stretching his now naked body out and reaching upwards with both arms towards the sky, Shay's sense of unbelievable bliss made him want to pull in a deep breath, fill his lungs with the pure air as he readied himself to shape a form to dive in.

As he looked up briefly, he thought he saw something small but easily seen as its black, sleek form glinted and sparkled back, reflecting the warming and strengthening sunlight, moving steadily across one group of trees to the right of the pool.

Putting up his hand to shade his eyes as he followed the glinting towards the sun, he was aware of a splash of water from the pool. He immediately dropped to hunker beside the water's edge and speak to Zandy as she approached to question why he had stopped and why he wasn't in the water already.

He pointed to his observation, and then realising that his early morning homage to the stunning goddess in front and just below him as he crouched at the water side was probably doing nothing to encourage the serious and enquiring words he was saying, barely five minutes after he had just challenged her to a race to the water and now crouched very close, without a stitch of clothing on nor any sort of explanation as to why he wasn't in the water with her. He had none. Who could have? How could he say he was taken with the moment and the fantastic scenery when there was Aphrodite herself waiting in the pool. All he could offer was to continue to point, somewhat child like, and blush.

Aleczandra looked up, following Shay’s pointing finger. She frowned, puzzling out what it might be, then smirked. “I bet it’s a security drone, from either the colony or the marines.” Aleczandra hauled herself out of the pool, water cascading off her naked teenage body. She stepped up close to Shay, pressing herself against him. “Why don’t we give it something interesting to watch?” she said, kissing him passionately as she pushed him down into the soft grass beside the pool.

TBC

Shay Corene
Psychology Student
NPC Amia Telamon

Marine Captain Lazanos Torena
Commanding Officer
21st MEU

Aleczandra Ryan
Student
NPC Caleb Ryan

 

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