Fowlhunter [GL]

Slit-gold eyes tracked the guards walking back and forth. In the shadows, Ennanis watched silently, wings folded and breathing quiet.

Beside her, Pelia crouched. Her peachy-red hair was vibrant in its ponytail, and her cottony blouse and skirts snagged easily on things—it was decidedly not very good as spying gear. Then again, the inverted fluorescent coat on Ennanis probably wasn’t the tiptop of spygear either.

It seemed that the number of guards on the amethyne mining level had increased once again, a thick and impenetrable barricade of security. If this was normally how well-guarded it was, Capri and Ennanis would’ve never made it as far as they had on their first try.

There was no way they would be able to do this discreetly. Fortunately, with Pelia around, they wouldn’t have to.

As they waited, Ennanis looked to the peach-haired girl again, and pondered something. It was easy to forget that this girl, though just a college student barely into her twenties, was the daughter of Ahi Vesuvio, the owner of the mines, and just about everything else of significance in Kanch. That fact alone granted her an unreasonable amount of authority in this place. Still, it only made it all the more puzzling.

Ennanis made sure the guards were out of earshot.

“Let me clarify something, Miss Vesuvio,” she said to her in a low voice. “Why did you choose to help me?”

After all, it was such an insane mission they had: breaking out the Kraken via a planned volcanic eruption. Sure, they had agreed to do it in order to prevent a future, even more devastating explosion. But the plan was riddled with risk, and if it succeeded, it would destroy the Vesuvios’ amethyne mining level. Pelia was practically helping her undermine her ancestors’ generations’ worth of work, and all for—what had she said?

“Capri told me to,” Pelia answered.

"Are you friends?"

"......"

"Something more complicated than that?" Ennanis prompted, gently.

Ennanis didn’t know that much about Capri. In total, she had known the young girl for two weeks at most. And yet, interacting with these two girls stirred an instinct of responsibility in her. Amanita had once talked her through her squabbles, back when she was young and fiery.

“......” Pelia did not seem keen on responding. Perhaps the topic was personal to her. So Ennanis diverted the subject.

“Angels have no concept of family,” Ennanis said. “But Capri once told me that family is something important to humans. That a human would lay down their kingdoms and their own lives, just to protect those of their kin,” Ennanis said. “But you, on the other hand, are effectively betraying your family. I fail to understand.”

Finally Pelia’s head jerked up, emerald eyes suddenly ablaze.

“Family is important to some people, sure. But my father is a corrupt, delusional and power-hungry piece of shit,” Pelia doled out. “My mother was his angel consort. They only had me because my dad wanted a sunblood kid and an angel wanted gold. I never knew her. She never cared for me or my dad, and neither did we.”

Prometheus damn. Young people didn’t pull any punches. But Ennanis said nothing; just listened.

After a moment of silence, Pelia continued:

“Capri, she’s… one of the few who’s ever cared for me. But, I-” Pelia choked slightly on her words. “I never treated her well. Ever since we were kids in school, I always picked on her.” Her voice wavered, as if she herself didn’t know why she was speaking, but when she saw Ennanis listening to her quietly, it came spilling out. “She had weak lungs, and she always had to study twice as hard to keep up with any of the other students. But she was always so kind at heart, and it made me greedy. I wanted to see how far I could push her. Isn’t that awful?”

Ennanis listened.

“I’m no different from my father,” Pelia added, looking down at her hands. “I’m rotten to the core. So if I’m going to be rotten, I might as well fully become the curse of this lineage. It’s only what I deserve. That’s why I’m helping you with this.”

“......” Ennanis gazed at her. “You’re kind at heart too, Pelia. You just have yet to realise it.”

Pelia gave her a dubious look in response, and Ennanis knew she didn’t believe it. But the angel hoped that, one day, she might.

“Well-” Pelia coughed after a protracted silence, eager to change to subject. “We’ve got things to do. I’ll be able to bring you in, since the guards already know that you’re here on investigation,” Pelia said. “But we’re going to need a cover story for your… ally.”

“I’ve got one,” said a third voice.

Pelia jumped. Her eyes widened when she saw Jemi, who had appeared without a sound, approaching them.

“Why’d you take so long?” Pelia complained as loud as she could without getting heard.

Jemi ignored her. Her cloak rippled around her, red tail of her scarf following her soundlessly as she stepped up towards them. She walked right past Pelia—her gaze focused only on Ennanis—and she slinked around the angel in a lazy circle, who hadn’t reacted before when she appeared, and didn’t react now more than a mute, downward follow of her eyes where Jemi moved.

“…You’re back,” Ennanis noted. “Where is the Cockatrice?”

The woman glanced up at her, violet glittering below her lashes.

“I spoke to her. But it’s not her you need right now,” Jemi drawled. She looked off-handedly at Pelia. “You needed a story? She’ll be my angel consort, and I'll be her noble.”

As previously established, nobles often entered special relations with angels, in order to have a greater chance of siring sunblood children. Many nobles were often of sunblood descent themselves. Though she claimed to definitively not be of noble lineage, Jemi had the clear look of someone who did. If Ennanis truly was Jemi’s consort, it wouldn’t have been strange for Jemi to demand to follow her around while she carried out her investigations.

“Um. But you’re both wome—?” Pelia began, then her face twisted. “I mean. Never mind. Okay. That will work, I guess,” she relented. She glanced toward Ennanis. “And you’re… okay with this?”

Ennanis gave a shrug. “It's for the mission.”

“Excellent!” Jemi said cheerily and flapped her hand. “Okay, kid. Tell me what you guys have been up to.”

Pelia did not look pleased at being called ‘kid’, ‘guys’, or at generally being ordered around by the human. But, after a moment of gathering herself, she started to explain.

As Ahi Vesuvio had previously let on to Ennanis, the grates were often touched up. That meant that there was extra of the grates’ material stored somewhere. Pelia said that she knew where it was kept. That way, they could go there and carry out their test attempts of breaking the grates before trying it on the actual thing. While Jemi was gone, they had managed to obtain the guards’ schedule so they could sneak in unimpeded.

“How about the cameras?” Jemi asked. “It’s going to be impossible to stay in the blindspots if we go in the room.”

With a start, Ennanis realised she had forgotten about the cameras. But all the same, no guards had come for her. Because…

“Oh, there’s no need to worry about that. The cameras on the amethyne floor aren’t working,” Pelia answered. “Rather, they have never worked. My dad doesn’t want any records of his activities to come to light, you see, so the cameras are mostly dummies, merely there to scare.”

Jemi dragged her hand over her face. “Great. Of course no one could’ve told me this earlier.”

“Of course not. The system is there to deter thieves exactly like you,” Pelia sniped, but turned away in a huff. “Okay. Whatever. Let’s get going. The error in scheduling only gives us thirty minutes, maybe less.”

“It’s not nearly enough time for us to haul any grates out of the storage room for testing,” Ennanis added. “We’re going to go in, experiment, and leave.”

“Sure,” Jemi nodded easily. “Sounds simple enough.”

“It’s secured behind specialised locks and alarm systems that I don't have the authority to bypass,” Pelia said.

Jemi shrugged. “Still easy.”

Pelia raised a brow. “Are you very skilled with Soleki?”

“Nope. Not in the slightest.”

Pelia made a face. “You’re… a sunblood though?”

“Don’t need it.” Her voice was nonplussed. She seemed imbued with a fresh confidence, as if a layer of latent lethargy had stripped itself from her person and been replaced with bright, ringing energy. Her dull-gold hair even seemed lighter, smoother.

Ennanis’ gaze lingered on her humming figure, but Jemi did not elaborate further. They caught her up to speed with the rest of their rudimentary plan, and then they set off.

The way down to the storage room was a distance away from the lava pools. They had to take the elevator up to an intermediate floor, a sort of mezzanine above the main mining level.

There were guards there. Pelia marched right up to them with all the gall of someone who was supposed to be here and not like someone who was presently about to blow up the mines from under their feet.

"Who's there?" one of the guards demanded as they approached. When the peach-haired girl came into the light of his lantern, his eyes widened, and he lowered his weapon immediately. "Oh, Miss Vesuvio? What are you doing here? Where's your-"

"I'm here to accompany the angel on her investigations," Pelia declared, with so much pompous confidence that Ennanis would’ve believed her too. "You remember her, right? The commander?"

The guards glanced at the rose-haired angel, and appeared to remember. "Oh yeah, the one that was with the boss." "The one that turned up outside the bunker." "The one that those guys were talking about." "That commander's investigations are still going on? Man is she taking a long time..."

"But then..." the guards all looked to Jemi. "Who's that?"

Before the woman said anything, Ennanis wound an arm around her waist. In a swift motion, the angel pulled her in until she was flush against her side.

"She's my lady," Ennanis stated, with a face so straight that even Pelia found herself believing it.

In response, Jemi didn't show a hint of surprise. She merely curled herself around the angel, leaning her head on her shoulder. She smirked challengingly. "Mm-hm. Any of you have a problem with that?"

"Uhhhh," the guards mumbled in an extroardinarily unified awkwardness as they stared at the two women tucked around each other, at the angel's emotionless dead stare, and the smaller woman's cold-cut smile. All this ignited within them the sudden, potent desire to exit the situation immediately.

"Sure," someone eventually grunted. “Can I get your names?”

“Ennanis.”

“Rijina. That’s Lady Rijina to you,” Jemi smiled.

“Fine… Lady,” the guard waved them along. The rest of the group followed suit. It was thus they all ambled into the elevator.