Chapter 350 (1/2)

Randidly looked around, rather bemused.

Although the Executive Board of Star Crossing insisted they meet here, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why. They were meeting in what appeared to be, i.e. had the sign out front, an old Bob Evans building. Sure, they had done away with the dumb employee dress, but it was still the same squat building, the same interior, the same smells.

What was new was the guards at the door, and the very professional and attractive waitstaff, who smiled flirtatiously at Randidly’s group as they arrived. Simon seemed profoundly nervous by the attention, but since his talk with Randidly, he seemed to have calmed down a lot. Thea glowered at the men who dared flash her eyes, unsure of what to do with the attention. It almost made Randidly chuckle.

Decklan, who stuck to Randidly’s back like a shadow since they were reunited, although they never really spoke about why, appeared bored. Dozer opted to stay back, and check in with his squad who had grown a lot as a unit due to the exposure to the skeletons, and Clarissa thought the whole thing sounded dumb. So the four of them would be the representatives on this rather political call.

Randidly would have preferred to skip this step, but everyone had received the notification about the Raid Dungeon, and people were panicking. The prospect of having one month left to live, for the very energy to be sucked out of the air… that was a new, mysterious threat. And considering how suddenly the System descended.... The people had learned to fear the unknown.

So the political niceties were necessary. If the heads of the Villages were willing to assure their populations that everything was okay, there would be that much less chance that someone would desperately run to the Raid Dungeon, aiming to clear it, and end up annihilated by the rips in the world.

Sitting, Randidly felt profoundly foolish, being in the Bob Evans, at a large, mahogany table, sitting across from three individuals with their hands folded in front of them. An large African American man, who reminded Randidly annoyingly of the cop from Turtletown, gazed meaningful at him. Next to him, and overweight and balding man was slowly buttering a piece of bread, his eyes remaining on his work at hand.

The final member of the Executive Board, a thin, Asian woman, was frozen, gazing not at Randidly, but at the man next to him, Simon.

“....mom….?” Simon whispered, and suddenly the woman was moving, climbing up over the table with an animal grace and leaping across the distance between them, arriving before Simon and wrapping him up with her arms, squeezing the boy so tightly that her hands were white.

“Oh god, Simon...Simon! It was…. You were… Oh god, if something had happened to you… I didn’t know… oh baby, you’re safe now.” There was sobs in her voice, deep chasms of realizations and emotions and relief, as the small woman pressed herself against Simon. Although Simon was still growing, he was now a bit taller than the woman, and while this was happening he just stood there, eyes wide, trembling, his hands unable to figure out what they should be doing.

Randidly stayed still, letting these two have their moment. To be sure, it was time spent that would not move him towards any actual goals, but Randidly knew that moments like this is the reason that he sought out strength. He did not necessarily want to be strong, after all. He simply needed the strength to protect these moments from the control and suffocation of the System.

A sharp flash of anger ignited in his chest, and Randidly’s hands clenched into fists.

“Other mom…? Does that mean mom…!” Simon said, finally finding his hands, gripping the woman’s shoulders.

But she just looked up, tears in her eyes, and slowly shook her head.

“Maybe- maybe like me, she’s-” Simon began, his trembling growing worse, but the woman continued to shake her head.

“...no, Simon. I’m sorry. Darcy…. Darcy is dead. I saw it myself.” In that moment, her voice silenced all talk in the Bob Evans, even though the space was rather big. Because in that moment, her voice carried the weight of the darkness of the System, of a pain that they all shared. Everyone had watched another die, everyone was filled with a huge weight of regret over that which they cannot control.

The weight they felt in that moment that they had been reminded how weak they were.

Perhaps that was just as true before the System, as after, but the System had ripped away the veneer of civility and showed the monster that was hiding under the guise of fate and destiny. The endless hunger, the vicious instincts, the deadly finality, that constructed our world. ...And this was the wagon that Randidly was resolving himself to hitch himself to with a Class.

There was darkness, and there was light. That was the way it was.

Absorb. Class dark. Know darkness, know hope. Neveah whispered, and Randidly smiled. But that was for later, to internalize. For now…

Simon and the woman, whose name was Denise, went off to the side, and began to talk softly to each other, constantly touching the other. The overweight man looked up from his bread and coughed.