Dual Settlements Part 1- Benji

At least one day passed. Maybe more.

Reca felt as if her default state was a deep sleep, only interrupted by fragments of smoky dreams and by her occasional bouts of wakefulness. She could feel the wheels moving, but every time her eyes fluttered momentarily open, the desert was the same as always. She'd go to sleep with a dusky chill covering the land an awaken to a bright, crisp heat that radiated from the sky- had the night passed while she was asleep, or had the clouds just moved apart?

Evening blended into dusk, and morning blended into afternoon. The passage of time became just one of Deca's wheels- that was to say, a circle- but Reca had neither the presence nor the mental facilities to articulate the feeling to her travel partner.

When Deca slowed to a stop and turned off her own headlights, Reca was so lethargic that she paid no mind to it. Sleep was just a bit more peaceful, and the nightmares were a bit less frequent. The noise of the river infiltrated her mindscape and, long before her conscious mind had processed it, it had already made its way into her dreams.

Dreams of hanging by a thread from a broken rope bridge over a roaring river. Dreams of getting stuck in a crumbling city during a storm surge. Dreams of having a picnic with a half-imagined mother and father by a creek that seemed wholly too loud.

Tired of seeing water, Deca opened her eyes once more, but found the same old black river flowing right before her. It was thicker here- one could no longer wade through it without getting swept up- and the water was bubbling white in the places where the current was strongest. She couldn't even find it in her to be excited. How was it that, despite her hours and hours of sleep, she was still so exhausted?

Reca flopped back onto her side and would have gone back to sleep, too, if she hadn't spotted the settlement.

It wasn't a miracle cure, and the corners of her eyes were full of crusty sleep gunk, and her head was still all mixed up. That said, she suddenly felt a wave of adrenaline course through her muscles that propelled her against her will off of Deca and towards the riverside village. The sky was purplish, so she figured it was either twilight or dusk- either way, if there were any lights in the settlement, they were currently off.

The settlement straddled the river, and the buildings- geometrical, brutalist, and made of concrete, unlike the scrap metal and wood structures in Andistronica and Bastion- were barely even crumbling. The only noticeable indication of decay came in the form of what must have once been a bridge over the river but was now a pair of unstable cement outcroppings on either side.

On Reca's side, all of the buildings were painted in a fading purple; on the other side, they were painted in an almost radioactive-looking green. Flags- also purple and green, bearing hasty drawings of molecule configurations Reca didn't know enough chemistry to understand- flew limply in the wind next to the old former bridge on both sides. Strangely, there were two flagpoles on each side, but only one of each bore a flag- the other stood empty.

In what almost passed for serenity next to a raging flume of acid, Reca noticed something that had evaded her in her previous fog state- there were two distinct sources for the sound of rushing water. One of them was the river itself, of course, but the other was coming from somewhere inside the settlement, much quieter. Careful not to make any loud noise, she tiptoed past buildings labeled 'library' (why did all these little towns have libraries?) 'pool', and eventually 'town hall', approaching the source of the rushing water- the backside of the town hall itself.

When she peeked around the corner, she saw two people- a young man and a young woman- in a faded purple robe and a bright green construction worker-esque ensemble, respectively- holding what looked like a garden hose. Acid, ostensibly boiling hot, spurted from the hose at uneven intervals and, despite their best efforts to wrangle it and keep it pointing at the wall, droplets of the toxic stuff inevitably splattered back onto them. They weren't wincing in pain (well, maybe they were a little); they were smiling.

It was in her best interest to keep quiet when around two strangers with an acid projectile weapon, so she made her breaths long and drawn-out and as muted as possible...

Until Deca pulled up behind her, engine quietly roaring.

The strangers' eyes turned towards them. Then, in the span of twenty seconds, ten things happened:

One, the purple-robed man screamed, his voice shrill and high-pitched- his hands left the hose.

Two, the green-clad woman clapped her hand over his mouth and simultaneously lost control of the hose entirely.

Three, the hose spiraled out of control, writhing like a snake on fire and spraying sizzling acid in every direction, dissolving the plaster on the walls of nearby buildings in a patchy and chaotic pattern.

Four, Reca and Deca leapt back, narrowly avoiding the 'rain'- Deca flinched as she backed into what must have been a residential house, judging by...

Five... the lights that suddenly came on inside, coupled with the silhouette of an older man sitting up in bed.

Six, the man who had screamed earlier desperately began to wrestle with the hose and eventually got it under control, if barely.

Seven, the woman sprinted off towards the former bridge and leaped, managing to barely clear it, just before-

Eight, the man in the house threw open his door, yelling incoherently about waking up at 3:00 AM.

Nine: the woman on the other side of the river hid herself behind one of the nauseating green blocks.

Ten: the man rolling around on the ground with the acid hose looked up to the older man with big, sad, guilty puppy-dog-eyes.

"Mayor Baris," he groaned. The older man- the mayor- tapped his cane, which appeared to be a repurposed rusty pipe, against the young man's forehead.

"I can't believe you, kid! You were supposed to clean the graffiti- nothing more."

"I was doing it!"

"You were also doing something else, I bet. Or someone."

"Don't bring Aguri into this!"

"Don't play dumb with me, Benji- the one bringing Aguri into this is YOU, kid! I bet you thought you could get out of doing your manual labor duty by inviting that lady friend of yours into our sacred village, eh?"

"No-"

"Tonight you sleep in the poolhouse- locked! Tomorrow you re-plaster the walls you damaged!"

"But-"

"No buts!"

"Yes, Mr. Mayor."

Baris pulled a rickety ring of rusty keys from underneath his nightshirt and walked Benji to the pool room that Reca had seen earlier. When he was safely and dejectedly locked inside, Baris returned to his house and finally the village was dark again, allowing Reca an opportunity to breathe and Deca an opportunity to relax her strained mind.

"Lucky that guy didn't see you," said Reca to Deca, puzzling over that strange fact. Baris had come within centimeters of Deca- she was parked right next to his door, after all- but he had never given her so much as a glance. He had gone straight to Benji and ignored the massive conspicuous neon vehicle where, by all accounts, nothing should have been at all. He had also ignored Deca, who had been pressing herself against a wall in full view of both men during the entire altercation.

There was no explanation for it... except maybe that Baris was blind, given his cane. But how had he known the walls were damaged, then? How had he known where to tap when he tapped Benji's forehead?

Reca inchwormed over to the pool room and peeked through a hole between the slab of concrete that acted as a door and the slab of concrete that acted as a wall. It was too dark inside to see much, but she could make out the faint edges of the room, plus a swimming pool (now empty) and a dingy cement-cast slide. Where was Benji-

Without warning, her vision was occupied by another eye staring back at her. She fell back, but then the demure, shaky voice from earlier whispered something-

"Sorry, did I scare you?"

"No," Reca lied, scooting back to the door.

"Who are you?"

"I'm a wanderer. My name is Reca."

"I'm Benji."

"I know."

Seizing what seemed to be as good an opportunity as she was ever gonna get, Reca geared up to ask all of her questions, one by one.

"So, is Mayor Baris blind?"

"Sorta. He lost his peripheral vision."

"What happened to the bridge?"

"The Mayors broke it apart back when the villages split up."

"Villages? Plural?"

Reca hadn't stumbled upon one settlement twice as large as the previous ones- she had stumbled upon two settlements right next door to each other. The prospect should have been exciting, but she felt as if something major was missing from her understanding of the story...

"Bleach- that's this place- and Ammonia- over the old bridge."

"Bleach and ammonia, huh?"

A faint memory stirred in the depths of Reca's frazzled mind, but she was unable to produce a definition for either of those words. Maybe they were just names after all.

"They aren't supposed to mix. So that's why the Bleachers don't want me and Aguri together..." he let out a pained sigh. "Y'know, this whole thing is giving me deja vu. Was it a day... a week? A few days? Well, a while ago, there was another visitor."

Reca suspected someone. She was also glad to know that she wasn't the only one with a messy sense of time.

"A girl with brown hair?"

"That's her! Wow, do you know her?"

"Hardly."

"She tagged our wall and zoomed away in her red rocket wagon thing."

Rocket wagon? Was that the wagon Reca had given her from the blue house? She could have sworn it didn't have rockets on it at the time. But then where could Rivergal have gotten them...?

She had more questions for Benji. If Rivergal was traveling fast, she'd be in Hell by the time Reca and Deca got there, and then maybe Reca could interrogate her.

"How long has it been since that pool was full?"

"Oh, long before I was born, for sure. We have a clean water well here for drinking, and we used to have enough for- well, everything- showers, even baths! Pool parties, water fights, washing graffiti off walls... Now, not so much."

"Why'd the villages... break up?"

"There are two main families in the village- we don't have a very high birthrate, y'know, considering everybody's basically family here- and a long time ago they got into a feud about who was wasting water and who was being stingy... look, I don't know, that stuff wasn't in my time."

"I get it. But wait, now people are only allowed to... like... breed, with their own family members?"

"No! We aren't allowed to breed at all! That's half the point of why we split. Too much inbreeding- like, why do you think Baris has no peripheral vision? Basically, every five years, the Mayors get together to break open the DNA testing kits in town hall and see which of the village's adults are best fit to bear kids. Then the two healthiest people are chosen, and..."

"Ew."

"What, would you actually rather us have inbreeding?"

"No, I just didn't like the images that came to mind."

"You sound pretty young- you sure you know about this kind of thing?"

"I-"

Anatomy lessons had only taught her so much, but she recalled something- a funny conversation with one of the village adults back when she was new. A week old? A month old? Three years old? She couldn't remember. She wondered if time had been so fluid before the apocalypse. Either way, she heard their voices,

"And when two people love each other very much, well..."

She had blinked at the illustrations in the biology book, unable to really comprehend them. She didn't like things she didn't understand- not then, and not now.

"Which two people did that for me?"

The adult teaching the lesson had looked down her, not quite confused but apparently not quite sure how to answer.

Then he had laughed. Then Reca's memory flaked away again, and it only returned with a memory of eating a can of IXtrixent- a 'growing girl's supplement'- later that day.

"I what?" Benji asked.

"I... I don't remember what I was gonna say."

"Okay. Well, if you remember anything you know, please tell me."

There would have been a moment of silence if it weren't for the river rushing by.

"How did the apocalypse happen?" Reca thought she might as well ask.

"Uh, I don't know. I thought nobody-"

"No, no. That's what I expected you to say. Y'know, I've asked so many people- way more people than I ever expected to find- about the apocalypse. Even some who lived through it! And the thing is, every single person either missed it or didn't give me the chance to ask or wasn't around for it. How is that possible? You'd think it'd be major, right? What if something happened that made everyone forget, or what if something happened that made them look away at the crucial moment? And, plus, all of the timeframes seem to be different. I have no clue when it even happened, which is kinda worse than not knowing how, you know?"

He didn't respond.

"You know?"

Silence again, then a response-

"...Maybe."

"I guess I should just stop expecting an answer," Reca choked. Then came a sniffle, then a sob.

"Hey, don't cry," said Benji. "I'm locked in a room, and you're the one crying because you don't know as much about the apocalypse as you want?"

It did sound a little silly when he described it like that.

"Mean th-thing to say," whimpered Reca.

"Maybe so."

"Do you heat your water like you heated that hose earlier?"

"We did have a water heater when I was little, but it broke down. Coach Brandonn says cold showers fortify a man's soul, anyway, so we aren't allowed to complain."

"So you only have an acid heater now?"

"The acid comes from the river."

"I know that."

"And the river is warm."

"I- wait, it's warm?"

"You've never felt it?"

"I did, way upstream, but it felt normal for acid back then."

"Maybe the water gets warmer the further downstream you go. I don't know."

Rivergal's description of Hell as a tropical place with no winters floated idly back into Reca's head, but she wasn't sure it was a good idea to bring it up given her nature as a nuisance in Bleach.

"One more question."

"Hit me."

"Why have you been so nice to me?"

There was no response once again.

"I mean, why did you just answer my questions without even getting mad at me for asking them? You haven't even asked me much in return."

"My girlfriend is across the bridge, and the commotion probably woke her family up, too. I would have had someone to talk to all night if-" his voice took on a sardonic tone- "you hadn't shown up."

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault. Or maybe it is and I'm just rationalizing. But whatever."

The conversation was fraught with silent patches, but this one was the longest.

"Four more questions."

"Oka-"

"One, have you ever thought about what if you and Aguri are picked to mate? Two, do you need some help plastering the walls tomorrow? Three, do you want my help mending the relationship between your villages? Four, is there anything I should tell Aguri when I go over to Ammonia?"

He didn't answer, but Reca could hear him sighing.

"One- we won't be picked because Aguri has six fingers on both hands. Two, sure, as long as you don't get caught. Three, you can't, but I'd like to see you try. Four... wait, how do you plan to go there?"

"I have my ways," said Reca, thinking back to the raft in the van.

"Then," he said after a minute of thought, "Tell her, 'I love you.'"

Several minutes later, as the stars began their descent towards the horizon, Deca drove as slowly as possible towards the bridge, where Reca sat, kicking her legs over the rapids and waiting for the sun.