Jess: I love you guys, but you all have the “Ick.”
Schmidt: What?! What does that mean?! You youths and your slang!
Cece: No, she’s right. Schmidt, you got that f boy ick all about you. It’s the weirdly aggressive flirting to get something out of it, but also it’s non-committal.
Nick: Ha, yeah, that’s totally you, Schmidt.
Jess: Nick, you have it, too. It’s the desperate boy hot mess ick for you.
Nick: Wha--
Cece: Yeah, you fall in love way to easily, but struggle to change your ways.
Jess: Like an ‘Oh, she can fix me” thing, but the thing is, you’re in denial that you want to be fixed even tho you are looking for a girl to do it.
Nick: I DON’T LIKE THIS ANYMORE!
Winston: Wait, me, what about me?! What about me?
Jess: Uh...
Cece: Honestly, your ick is that you kind of remind me of my grandma.
It took several minutes for everyone to regain their hearing; Robbins’ shield-punching trick had produced a sound not entirely dissimilar to a subwoofer turned up far, far too loudly for a single beat, and Bruno wouldn’t be surprised if all their avatars experienced permanent hearing loss after the mission was over.
Not that Andi let something so trivial as deafness stop her from having a look at just what, exactly, Lothar’s uncontrolled magic had done to her grandfather. As soon as the rocks had stopped falling she’d rushed over to inspect the bleeding fissures that were slowly knitting themselves together along his forearms.
“Oh my god, are you okay?” her tone was frantic and her voice louder than necessary as her hands skimmed over the sealing fissures - mostly on his wrists and hands now, where they had been deepest. Blood still dripped to the floor from his fingertips with a steady tick tick tick, and he made sure to hold them where they wouldn’t drip on either of their clothes; he had no idea where their journey would take them, but walking into unfamiliar and almost certainly hostile territory while reeking of blood was, in Bruno’s book, not the cleverest of ideas.
“Andi, I’m fine. I’m already healing,” he said in his most reassuring tone, but she didn’t even bob her head in acknowledgement. Still deaf, then, he thought, and nudged her avatar’s boot with one of his feet. She looked up in surprise, and he gave her his most reassuring smile. It probably looked better on Brother Tyber’s face than his own, because she relaxed and let his - now mostly healed - hands go. He took the opportunity to flick the blood off and as far away from the group as he could before he turned back to survey the wreckage.
Queen Shandroth looked disapproving, her eyes flicking between Andi and Bruno, but she made no comment as she retrieved what arrows she could. Bruno nodded to her approvingly, ignoring the dirty look he got in return; they needed as much ammunition as they could get, headed into unfamiliar territory as they were, and no telling when they’d be able to get more. Robbins was looking off to the side, eyes fixed on nothing, and Bruno frowned.
“Everything alright?” he asked as he walked closer, and Robbins jerked like someone’d stabbed him.
“Hmm? Oh yes, I’m fine, everything’s fine. Why wouldn’t everything be fine? We should probably head up to that new entrance up there since you seem to have basically buried the rest of the tunnel.” Robbins’ words tumbled one after the other, reminding Bruno of Thomas for some reason, but a quick inspection of the chamber revealed the advice to be sound. Between both Bruno and Robbins’ enhanced strength they could probably have cleared enough of the entrance on the far side of the chamber to continue into the tunnels but doing so would probably bring more of the roof down on their heads and with the hollow ache of too much power used sitting behind his breastbone, Bruno was inclined to take the path of least resistance.
“Indeed. Let us continue Northward, then, so that we may find the Sky Stone and purge the invaders from my lands.” The imperious voice of Queen Shandroth was unmistakable, and Bruno exchanged a brief look with Robbins before they both turned to look at the Queen. Dr. Clarkson was a barely-there shimmer in the Queen, apparently unwilling to take back control just yet. Given where they were headed, Bruno could hardly fault her but the Queen wasn’t the easiest person to deal with.
Still, she wasn’t his first difficult superior officer and hopefully wouldn’t be the last. He dipped his head in a shallow approximation of a bow. “Sounds good, my lady.” Bruno looked around, assessing, and nodded at Andi when he caught her doing the same thing. She’d picked up a number of useful skills from her avatars and as much as he worried for her state of mind, he could respect the professionalism she displayed in the field when it came to covert operations. Her eyes - following the same paths his had - flicked up towards the weak light, down at Queen Shandroth - who’d begun to tap her foot impatiently - and back over to where Bruno and Robbins were standing.
“Tactically, it makes most sense for us to proceed Brony, me, you, and then Grandpa,” she told the Queen, whose face grew stormy almost immediately. Andi held up a hand and only long practice at keeping a poker face allowed Bruno to avoid snorting at the Queen’s expression - somewhere between petulant and flabbergasted. “However, I know you and your inclination to lead from the front, my Queen, and Lord Gan does not usually possess sufficient strength to make the gap up there any larger if necessary. However -”
“No, no, I wouldn’t want to denigrate my royal wife’s strength. She should definitely go first.” Robbins’ interruption was somewhat unexpected, and Bruno slid a confused glance his way. That didn’t sound like Robbins being sarcastic, but it was hard to tell sometimes. The man had a deadpan delivery that would have been the envy of half the NCOs on the last base Bruno’d served in, never mind the commissioned officers. Still, he looked serious enough and the Queen had apparently decided to take him at his word.
“Very well! Onward, then,” and with that Proclamation - Bruno could almost see it written in ornate calligraphy on a vellum scroll, and he didn’t have much of an imagination for that kind of thing - the Queen began hauling herself up the rock pile. With one confused glance at Robbins, Andi scrambled to follow her - and possibly past her; Bruno had to remind himself that his granddaughter also had super strength, though perhaps not as much as she used to. He pulled his eyes away from the slope one more time to give Robbins another questioning look.
“You sure you’re alright?” Robbins’ grasp of small squad tactics - especially ones with the crazy powers avatars and pilots tended to have - was second to none. Bruno himself was far more used to dealing with squads armed with explosives and guns, and it took him precious seconds to work out the maneuvers Robbins seemed to have down to instinct. Andi’s plan had sounded solid to Bruno, why did the other man not choose to abide by it?
“I said I was fine, didn’t I? I thought we all had our hearing back by then, but I guess old people have worse ears. So I’ll say it again; I’m fine. I’ll bring up the rear, catch anyone who falls, and we all get out of here safely. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.” Bruno gave the other man an obligatory frown for the insult but otherwise let it slide. It was the rest of the statement that he wanted clarification on, but Robbins seemed disinclined to speak further. After a few moments, Bruno gave up and shrugged before turning to follow the more enthusiastic members of their team up the rock slide towards freedom.
It took them the better part of an hour to get out of the cavern; the small beam of light had proven to be a fissure in the rock leading to the surface that had been both opened wider and partially blocked when parts of the ceiling came down, and was narrow enough to allow only two people to work on it at a time - which had added another twenty minutes delay to actually reaching the surface when the Queen had refused to surrender her spot despite being the person with the least amount of superstrength in the party. And, of course, she had insisted the men were too delicate for this task and their frail constitutions would surely fail when faced with such weighty rocks; which had meant, naturally, that only Andi was allowed to help her in a move that irritated Bruno and royally pissed off Brother Tyber.
Finally getting out into the rapidly weakening sunshine was a pleasure dampened heavily by the biting chill of the wind that blasted through their bones as soon as they stepped away from the shelter of the cliff face, and by the meninist rant Brother Tyber had engaged in in the back of Bruno’s head. Bruno winced internally and shook his head as some of Tyber’s points echoed his memories of a feminism rally he’d infiltrated earlier in his career for reasons he wasn’t allowed to disclose to the general public; the movement attracted the attention of the Queen, who’d been surveying the surrounding ridges with a jaundiced eye.
“Are you so discomfited by a little wind, then? Men. Your constitutions are so clearly unfit for the more difficult conditions here,” she sneered, and Brother Tyber - who’d been momentarily distracted by whatever he’d gleaned from Bruno’s brief trip down memory lane - bristled inside Bruno’s head, trying to take back enough control to refute the Queen’s arrogance. Bruno pushed the irate monk back down into their shared psyche and nodded to the lowering sun.
“My lady, we should find shelter before nightfall. I’m pretty sure that cave didn’t contain every centimoth in these mountains, and without as much warning as we had in the cave they’re likely to pick us off in the night.”
Bruno’s dry statement had the effect he wanted, and the Queen blanched before turning to bark at Robbins.
“Lord Gan! I require you to find us a suitable location to rest for the night.” Her tone was imperious, and Bruno mentally rolled his eyes. Of the many things Robbins was not, the most important two at the moment were an outdoorsman and even remotely his avatar. Still, the other man didn’t seem to be too miffed by the Queen’s order and merely bobbed his head.
“Yes, my Queen and wife. I’ll find us a place to sleep at once.” He turned to go, but Bruno caught him discreetly by the elbow and stopped him for a moment.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Bruno murmured, making sure to keep his voice low as the Queen loudly began expounding on the joys of having a husband well-trained in the good, husbandly arts. Robbins gave him an indecipherable look and half-smiled.
“Sure I know what I’m doing. How hard can it be? Just gotta find someplace out of the wind that doesn’t lead back into the hole we just came out of, maybe a little water, and uhhhhh a little, y'know, somethin’-somethin’ on the way. It’ll take me, what, ten-a seconds?” He said the last part in a voice that Bruno supposed was some sort of reference to something Robbins had seen that Bruno hadn’t, and the man deflated somewhat as Bruno kept up his steady stare. “I know, basically, what I’m doing, and I can fake the rest. Trust me, I can do this.”
Bruno released his grip and watched him go for a moment, turning back to the conversation at hand just in time to completely miss Robbins stumble over a rock he would have normally have avoided.
Their campsite for that night ended up being a large boulder that had rolled down from higher up at some point, and come to rest at the corner of an overhang and the mountain face. It provided a certain amount of shelter from the wind and protection on two sides from any opportunistic nocturnal predators, and managed to somehow have ice nestled in the deepest point between it and the mountain. No fuel, of course, but some diligent chipping was enough to get chunks of the ice into their canteens and as unpleasant as sleeping with what were essentially icepacks would be, it’d get them fresh water in the morning.
Robbins took first watch, and the night passed without incident - as did the next few days. As they progressed further and further out of the mountains, the pockets of ice they’d found tucked into crevasses and the hollows behind rocks dwindled in both size and frequency, and there was nothing edible to be found. Not even lichen grew on the rocks, a fact Bruno found disquieting in a way he couldn’t quite put words to. Brother Tyber was unnerved as well, staying in the back of their shared mindspace as the days of travel wore on all of them.
The morning of the third day started off like the two that had preceded it; quiet, cold but rapidly getting warmer, and completely desolate. They hadn’t found any ice the previous night so Bruno had rigged a condenser as best he could with a rock and some of the utensils from Gan’s pack. It’d been barely a third full by the time they’d risen to start walking for the day, and they were all on short water rations.
Midway through the morning, Robbins collapsed.
Andi was at his side in a moment, running from where she’d been walking companionably beside her grandfather, and Bruno himself wasn’t far behind. Robbins was down hard, convulsing, and both Andi and Bruno spent a chaotic few minutes keeping him rolled onto one side so he wouldn’t choke on his tongue or fall off the cliff. While they held on to him, Bruno at least could feel the heat rising off the man in a most concerning fashion; he had to be running a temperature of at best 103, if Bruno had to guess. When the fit finally subsided, they got Robbins into a sitting position and Andi was the first to speak.
“What the hell, Brony?” she demanded, the bright light of panic still shimmering in her eyes. Bruno seconded her question with a quick hand gesture, unwilling to undermine the authority in her voice but equally unwilling to let this slide.
Robbins just breathed for a few minutes, visibly trying to collect himself before reaching for his cloak and flipping it off his shoulder. Underneath the cape his shirt sleeve was torn, revealing a badly-tied bandage from underneath which nasty yellow fluid crusted on the frayed edges of the sleeve. Bruno reached down and twitched the bandage off quickly, prompting a sound of agony from Robbins and a fresh gush of nasty yellow fluid. Underneath the bandage was a jagged and raised puncture mark, surrounded by green-grey skin shot through with dark veins and stinking to high heaven.
Andi reared away, covering her nose and mouth, and even Bruno had to fight down a moment of nausea. Bruno didn’t have to ask what had happened - Brother Tyber was pressing forward in their shared mind with lists of symptoms and possible antidotes to centimoth poison, along with the grim certainty of death without treatment in the first three hours of exposure. Bruno looked down and caught Robbins’ eye, a certainty and regret tinging the other man’s gaze.
“You knew.” The words fell colorlessly from his lips, without a questioning inflection, but Robbins nodded anyway.
“Yeah. Figured we sure as hell weren’t getting any help from the monks after the Ogri got through with them, and thought maybe we’d find something on this side of the mountains.” He waved a weak hand at the black, craggy rock that surrounded them. “Which, of course, we didn’t. Too late to turn back, might as well keep going until I couldn’t any more.”
His voice was weak, and the few words were drowned out by Andi’s sound of protest. “Mmm! No! No, we can still save you - we can still save him, right?” Her eyes appealed first to Bruno then to Queen Shandroth, the former meeting her gaze with a slow shake of his head and the latter meeting it with a cool, unsympathetic look of her own.
“No!”
Robbins reached out and took Andi’s wrist gently. “Listen, listen - hush! I mean it, listen - I will probably be fine. This isn’t my first time dying, and anyway I’m not really here. When this body dies, I’ll jack back into my own back home and I’ll be fine. Nothing to worry about Andi, geez, I mean it, I’ll be fine.” As he spoke he stroked the inside of Andi’s wrist soothingly, even when tears started spilling from her eyes. Bruno blinked as something in the back of his mind clicked.
“That’s why you’ve stayed all pilot, even when Shandroth sends you to go find food and shelter.” Robbins nodded as Bruno spoke, wincing a little when Andi gathered him up in the armored arms of her avatar.
“Yeah. Gan’s not too happy about dying - man that guy is shrill - but this way I get to keep him from feeling the worst of it. Mostly.” He winced again as Andi clutched him tighter and patted her back awkwardly. “Yes, that’s very nice, just - maybe not so tightly?”
Andi obligingly loosened her arms a little and Queen Shandroth took that as her cue to step in. “Husband, what seems to be the matter?” She asked imperiously, and Robbins rolled his eyes.
“You know those marriages vows are always ‘til death do you part’? Yeah, those’re going to expire in the next day or so. Along with me.” His face was a cross between resignation and annoyance - though whether the latter was due to the fact he was still being clutched in steel-clad arms or that the Queen was a casual misandrist, Bruno couldn’t say. He caught Robbins’ eyes and made a carefully covert stabbing motion before sliding his eyes to the dagger the man had on his hip, and frowned when Robbins shook his head.
Has to be natural, he mouthed and Bruno nodded. If Robbins’ greater experience in the Metaverse led him to believe that letting his avatar die slowly of poison was better than a quick end on a knife, Bruno wouldn’t doubt him.
“Well. This is most inconvenient. If you had told us sooner that you had been bitten, we might have been able to do something about it. Then again, men are not very clever about such things so perhaps the expectation of action was just too high.” The Queen sounded bored and moved off before Andi could punch Dr. Clarkson back to the fore like she’d been planning, if the look on her face was anything to go by when her head came up in the wake of that extremely callous statement.
Robbins just shrugged it off. “I know what I’m holding over Jenika’s head for the next forever. Well, you had better get moving, you’re wasting daylight.” His light tone was belied by the darkness in his eyes when Bruno turned a thoroughly appalled glare on him.
Andi beat him to the punch, however. “No. We’re staying with you until…until you go back.” Her voice stumbled uncertainly over the word everyone was thinking and no-one wanted to say, but it firmed up in the end so much that Bruno was vividly reminded of a day nearly fifty and some change years ago when another young woman - so very similar - had firmly declared that he could get over his awkwardness on the dance floor and dance with her if he only applied himself. He blinked at the sudden surge of nostalgia even as Andi marched off to tell Queen Shandroth that they wouldn’t be moving any further today.
It took some arguing, but in the end the Queen agreed and they moved together into the shelter of a nearby depression in the mountain. The stayed there for long hours as the sun traversed the sky and the seizures hit Robbins more and more often, one particularly fierce convulsion mid-afternoon robbing him of the ability to speak. So too did his fever rise as the sun fell, glazing his eyes and leaving him sweating even in the shade. In the end, as the sun crossed the horizon, so too did the light of MetaPilot Brony Robbins slowly drain out of Gan’s body. As the last few pale beams slipped behind the mountains, the body of Lord Gan Vallethio let out a last, raspy exhalation, and lay still.
