Supernova

Chapter Forty - A Life Lived in Vein

Needles agreed to take me back to the lake, but there was a silent agreement that hung in the air between us that it wasn't going to be right away. We went back to the target practice lanes in the gym for our time alone, which I decided didn't bore me anymore. Even though I was consistently getting a good shot. I rationalized to myself that if he was using me as a pawn in his lying by omission to make Demon jealous, I could overlook my own lies too, and the blocks of time that we spent there stretched on and on and on.

But alas, tour time came again, and the four of us sauntered into the long hallway of clipboards and missions. The uneasiness that the other pairs and teams had towards Elias had dissipated into a respect and awe during our brief socialization period, but now that I was back on Demon's shoulders, our sidekicks following with cold eyes and indifferent facial expressions, their uneasiness had seemed to return. I didn't mind that. I felt like I had been able to put our family back together, and as far as I was concerned, we were the only four people that mattered in the entire Academy.

Perhaps because it was no longer my first time, and-slash-or Demon was no longer feeling generous, he took it upon himself to look over the clipboards in the section meant for teams of four himself. He put me down and seemed to tolerate my standing next to him, but his black hands snatched the missions off the walls, his silent eyes reading them over, placing them back without offering me a single word or glance. I scoffed loudly and dramatically rolled my eyes, window shopping through the wall myself. He pretended not to notice any of it, and I quickly grew tired of being ignored.

"If you two weren't doing retrievals during your temper tantrum," I started, my voice cold but quiet, and out of Needles' earshot from where he lingered with Elias near the back wall. He didn't turn to look at me, but from the angle of his face, I could see he was giving me a side glance. "What kinds of missions were you doing?"

He paused long enough for me to think that he was actually going to ignore me, until he let a single word drop out of his mouth.

"Defense."

I'd never bothered to look at what any of the other mission stamps meant, because Demon had told me that retrievals were the only ones worth doing, and I trusted him, or at the very least craved his approval, enough not to question it. But now, as he continued to scoff, more at the missions themselves than at me or the question, I decided to look over them. There were four different kinds. R for retrievals, A for assassinations, S for support, and D for defense. Retrievals, I was well familiar with the logistics of. Assassinations, like retrievals, were variable in their specifics, but relatively straightforward. There also wasn't many of them. You had to jump through a fuck ton of hoops to get an assassination mission request approved, apparently. Support typically centered around disasters, typically the aftermath, but sometimes in preparation or to handle active situations. Defense sounded a lot like what American tours, New York specifically, were like. From what I could see, there weren't very many of those either. Prissy kid privilege, no doubt. I couldn't imagine many of these doorknobs signing up for them willingly when they could just play heroes doing bullshit missions, all the while ensuring themselves a safe path to graduation and King and Queenhood.

"Something to prove?" I asked him, still cold and quiet, after I'd gathered that information.

"Something like that," he answered. I didn't like his tone.

We needed a win. Him and I. Something to share. His silent eyes were still on the wall, focusing solely on those with a large R stamped onto them. When his large black hand reached for one to inspect more closely, I shoved density into my hand and pushed on it, hard enough that it shook the entire wall, causing more than a few of the other mission clipboards to fall and clatter onto the floor, before he could pull on it. He tried anyways, his fingernails strained under the effort, ending with a vicious look in my direction. Our sidekicks, and the other pairs in the hallway, were looking over in our direction. I didn't pay them any mind. I waited for his black eyes to find me. When he did, he was glaring.