Country of Champions 28

"I just wanted you to know that if you chose to walk the long road with me you wouldn't end up alone, a guest in someone else's happy life," Orison paused for another shot and chuckled, "I've seen what you go for and I'm neither an annoyingly chipper 'damsel in distress' or a visually impressive, nearly animalistic Alpha type."

To fill in the stretching silence, he added, "Keep doing you. When you become tired and heart weary, when having a best friend as a traveling companion isn't enough anymore, do what you gotta do. Just... give me a heads up if what you got to do is pointed my way. I'd hate to hurt your feelings with a knee jerk reaction, you know?"

Looking like he didn't know whether to laugh or cry in a very real way, Gan said, "Which scares you more, Little Boss? Is it waking up with me gone again or waking up in my arms... you're arms... Damn, this is powerful stuff. Can we change to something else for the party and keep all of this for us?"

"I like women, Gan. There's no doubt in my mind. Despite that, you being gone for good is scarier to me. But believe me, the guilt makes up the difference... and no. This is what's on the party menu and I won't tell you how much I have or I won't be able to save any for some special occasion later on," Orison said.

Silence descended again and after a minute or two went by, the Northlander stood up and said, "I don't want to think about this anymore tonight. I just want the welcome hug I didn't get and then I want to sleep and let my brain cool down."

With nothing else left to say, Orison gave him the hug he wanted and said, "Glad to have you back home, Gan,"

Choking back a sob so hard, it sounded painful, the scout replied thickly, "Sorry... You're right a lot of the time but you were wrong about two things. You're always in distress over something. A-and you're plenty impressive. You'll grow into the rest of it soon enough."

Gan gently pushed the young mage back and walked off to his room. A little confused, Orison stared down the hallway. The image of the scout's back burned into his mind's eye, looking lonelier than he had ever seen it. He didn't realize he'd zoned out until he heard the sound of clinking glass and something being poured. Turning around, he saw a tired and irritated looking Stag lining up for a second shot.

"I figured you'd be out til the early afternoon at least," Orison said.

With slit eyes, Stag let out a contented sigh, "That hit the spot. I was down to a couple of years left."

Orison sat back down with a snort and said, "As long as you never spend it all, you could live thousands of years, in theory anyway."

Resting his head back, Stag stared at the ceiling and replied, "Not in a world like this."

"Uh, not to be pushy but... Why are you even still up?" the young mage asked.

Shifting back to irritation, Stag lightly glared at Orison and said, "With the two of you carpet bombing the living room with emotional missiles, how am I supposed to sleep?"

Caught a little off guard, Orison said, "Sorry our, uh, feelings were too loud?"

Stag waved his hand like he was shooing a fly. "New level of sensitivity. I'll have it handled in a day or two... That hug he gave you, that was a goodbye hug to your future self, by the way."

A chill that spread out from his intuition gave the young mage goosebumps. "What does that mean?"

Stag gave him a dull look, "You know what it means. He's going to stick around until you've found what you're looking for, stay until staying hurts more than leaving and then he's going to slink away into the shadows. He doesn't seem like the type to let go easy. So, he's probably going to end up crawling back under whatever dark place you pulled him from and rot there."

As much as he wanted to get angry at the green haired man or rant and rail that he had already compromised so much, ask what more he was expected to do, he couldn't. A small voice whispered that he'd done enough. As guilt gnawed at the edges, he was ready to let things 'be what they were', as Gan would say. A heart full of friendship and indebted gratitude warred with personal desire while he wondered why it would be so hard for him to keep his best friend and both of them still be happy.

Stag winced like he had a sudden migraine and slammed back another shot.

A dozen questions that begged being answered at once, Orison simply asked, "Why?"

Weary and disgruntled, Stag said, "That would be the 10,000,000 merit question. I can say this much with some certainty. Whatever is eating at you, it's about the future. What's eating at him, is what's happening to you right now.

"You're what, afraid that you'll get in the way of his possible future whatever nonsense? He's being eaten alive because he thinks he's made you confused, hurting your own happiness and well being right now because you're trying to twist yourself to be able to accept something nature didn't design you to want. Don't know if you noticed or not but there's a part of him that still hates what he is. It gets really hard to shut down a voice like that when you see that part not only hurting you but the people around you. So much more so when it's someone you care a lot about."

Orison's eye's widened, a touch of anger dancing in them, "That's ridiculous!"

Stag nodded, "If he could see what you're feeling, he'd probably think the same thing about your concerns. It doesn't make them untrue... Look, I can tell what you two are feeling but I can't actually see what you're thinking and I don't know you like you know yourselves.

"It seems to me that, knowing the harvest was coming, you picked the apple before it was ready. You can't put it back on the tree and it's too bitter to swallow. Lucky for you, as long as you don't throw it away, it'll sweeten up. There's just one problem, now that it's picked, there might be someone else who's willing to eat it before you are."

Immediately, the young mage thought about Captain Rogers and how they were about to have a decent amount of time handling business in the Plague Barrens. If he hadn't jumped the gun and opened a can of worms he wasn't ready to deal with trying to 'get ahead of the problem', the good Captain would have been nothing but another 'friend'. Now that Gan was hurt and vulnerable, the story was quite different. He thought it was possible the scout might settle for someone out of some misguided selfless reason.

Had he been thinking more clearly, he would have realized that he was blowing the problem out of proportion. Had he been paying closer attention to Stag, he would have noticed the slight wicked curve at the edge of the green haired man's smile. With foolish and unnecessary resolve, he headed to Gan's room.

After hitting the scout with the lavender sleep ritual, Orison climbed onto the bed and went into deep trance after pulling Gan to him. At the very least, he wanted the Northlander to see that waking up with the scout in his arms wasn't scary at all... He was wrong.

A subtle shift began stirring him from trance. The next moment there was a ripping sound and he felt much cooler despite having his arms wrapped around a softly expanding and contracting source of heat that felt much different than it did a moment ago. That heat source's expanding suddenly hitched before the expanding and contracting became more ragged.

The scout was much faster to wake up from magically induced sleep than the young mage was to stir from deep trance. By the time all the lights in Orison's mind clicked on, he was pinned down by a wild eyed and angry looking Gan. In the next second, he realized his teaser suit wasn't activated and trying to reactivate it didn't do anything.

Lamely he quickly said, "I was just trying to show you that-"

"Do you think, I'm some kind of saint!?" Gan growled in a heated whisper.

The Northlander ground against him to illustrate his point. A shudder shook both of their frames but for entirely different reasons. The shock of the situation had stolen Orison's voice long enough for Gan to notice the young mage's trembling and anxiety.

With what little rationality he could muster, Gan said, "Get out before I do what I want with you no matter what it was you were 'just trying to show me'."

Gan's snarling face, the humiliating situation that was way outside the borders of what he had planned and the barked order to finish it off, caused Orison to snap. Unaware in the heat of the moment, Orison's eyes became serpentine and blazed with spiritual potency. Stored essence throughout his body activated at once. In a tenth of a second, Gan was the one pinned down, unable to free himself.

The young mage said through a rage fueled hiss, "Your conduit ate my suit. Whether you're aware of it or not, it would only do that if it's what YOU wanted."

Lowering his head down til their noses almost touched, he stared through the scout's eyes as if he was scouring Gan soul. "It's laughable that you think you could take ANYTHING from me I didn't want to give."

The sudden twitching of an uncomfortable truth trapped between them distracted Orison enough to keep from saying something cruel. It also reminded him that they weren't having a squabble in the training room but in rather compromising positions on the scout's bed. More than anything, he became aware that the instinct propelled impulse to intimidate was having a much different effect on Gan than it would have on most.

The summer storm inside his head cooling down rapidly, Orison made to climb off while he said, "Aside from my teaser suit, apparently. Now I'm-"

Hands freed, Gan reached out and pulled Orison back to him. Even if Gan had been the most beautiful girl in the world, Orison was almost as far away from willingness to indulge as he could get. It did give him an idea of how to disentangle himself from the current situation, however.

Whipping a hand around to latch onto Gan's throat, he slammed the man back down into the bed and said seethingly. "If you come at me like that again, you better damn well make sure you have all the playing you want to do out of your system. If not, the first time I catch you f***ing around, at least I won't have problems anymore because you'll be spending the rest of your life as a girl... after I rip your d*ck off."

Gan let go. A nervous chuckle clawed its way out before a hiccup followed it.

With a set of triathlon gear and over robe in place, Orison turned back towards him. "So, we're in agreement? We are best friends who currently support each other's right to enjoy whatever private entertainments we want?"

Voice a little squeaky, Gan said, "Uh, yeah."

"And the line between us, is that something I need to plan on you crossing someday or have I scared you off for good?" Orison said with a smirk.

Choosing that moment to remember he was a Northlander bad*ss, the scout leered at him and said, "I'm tempted to cross right now... But you're right. I'm not ready to settle down yet."

"Take off the promise ring," Orison said sternly.

Shocked and a little hurt under the confusion, Gan struggled and with the sound of a painfully cracked knuckle, took off the plain gold band Orison had given him in White River. After taking a moment to load it with some things, Orison slipped off the ruby ring. In one fluid motion, the young mage put it on Gan's finger and hit the swelling digit with healing. He took advantage of the scout looking at the ruby ring numbly to slip his finger into the gold band.

"If you ever slink off for any reason while still wearing that, I'll track you down. Depending on the situation, I'll hug you, kick the crap out of you or murder you... Not necessarily just one of those... If you give me that ring back, I'll only accept it if you've found someone that makes you happy. You'll have to be a damn good actor to trick me.

"If the day comes that being best friends isn't enough, you give me that ring and I'll give you this one back. That way, I'll know you're serious and not just teasing me or some other possible dumb misunderstanding... Don't worry, by the way. This little baby's going to be tricked out real soon."

Orison finished his speech by pointing at the plain band with a cheeky grin.

"You know that Northlanders aren't built to handle this kind of sh*t without having something to break. Can you pretend we're still drunk?" Gan asked with a warble in his voice.

Looking at the person who was still his best friend, Orison said in an exaggerated tone, "I can't believe you actually took that seventeenth shot, Gan. Hoooow are you going to keep it down!?"

The scout shuffled over to the young mage and buried his head into the thinner, smaller shoulder and ugly cried. Once he was calmed down enough, Orison left him to get himself put back together and went through the adjoining door into the master bedroom. Safely on the other side with the door closed, the young mage slumped to the floor and let off a sigh of relief before instantly feeling guilty about it.

Annoyed and suffering a little adrenaline after-shakes, he took a long, hot shower. Changing into a set of casual clothes with proper shoes, he silently thanked Rio for being a spend thrift and made his way to the kitchen. After grabbing a quick bite to eat, he made his rounds and found out that Stag was the only one still sleeping at ten in the morning.

Stepping outside, he hollered at 'the boys'. By his tribe's laws, Gurrut was already a man but not by Avalon law. He had a couple of months left before he was eighteen. That didn't stop the orc blooded teen from being able to get on the same wavelength as Rio or stepping up to handle responsibility.

According to some of the earlier memories that Orison had of the 'future not meant to be', Gurrut was mentally flexible and much different than his more traditional tribal kin. He had even gone to Avalon secondary school for a time. He also had the build up of daily cleansing lash scars to prove it.

With those thoughts in mind, he had Rio show Gurrut over to the Second heaven commissary circuit to pick up some party supplies and a few personal items for the young man. While he handed over some funds for Rio, the bulk of their trip's funds were in Gurrut's hands. With merits burning a hole in his pocket, Rio was itching to go.

Before, Garret could volunteer to tag along, the young mage asked him to take Stag and Gan to the same place. It seemed that the brothers were bonding quickly but Garret's enthusiasm was wearing Gurrut out a little. The Orc blooded young man might be flexible minded but he was slightly tilted to the introvert side of the scales.

"A hundred thousand? Are you poor?" Stag asked after he saw his merit budget.

"Am I supposed to be worried about merits and the mostly disposable things it can buy?" Orison said dully.

Stag nodded thoughtfully. "Fair enough. The drinks alone made it worth the trip but... Can I hope for more?"

Orison chuckled. "If you do, it won't be in vain. My skin's not thick enough to turn your life upside-down for just a little side bar sipping. That was just a bit of perk sharing."

Garret sighed. "Our ride's here... What kind of life did you lead before you came here that 100,000 merits is a 'poor' shopping trip, 'uncle' Stag?"

Climbing into the cab, Stag regaled Garret about his days as a debauched nightclub owner as if it were years ago rather than a few days.

With the house to himself, Orison sauntered over to the training room bunker as if he didn't have a care in the world. That changed as soon as he was inside. After spending a quarter of an hour to make sure his surveillance security was as tight as it could be, he silently waited for 12:34 PM.

When the time passed, a nearly invisible ripple spilled across the world. Only people with spiritual sensitivity over a certain threshold had a chance to catch it but it set off every planar sensor in Avalon. As soon as it was over, Orison checked his space to see a small collection of items added to it. Combing through them, he wasn't surprised to see that the couple of things used to make items or supplements for Dr. Odd were missing.

Riding the ripple to hide it, Noxflora had sent him a tithe. It wasn't some impressive thing and there had been a small doubt in Orison's heart that she had done it to butter him up because of what lay in the Plague Barrens but she had done it a few times until the the resources she requested had unleashed an unintended consequence. Some of that dire situation would have been reversed by his time slip but there would still be plenty of 'abyss' to pay for his spiritual daughter.

"Well, my new focus isn't going to make itself," he thought.