Sigma/Star

Chapter 132: Balance

"I can't believe he's been gone a month," Nami kicked a stone across the sand, watching it tumble to a stop. Riya smiled as she walked alongside the smaller girl. "Like, how long does he think he can just leave us here."

"He'll come back when he's ready." Riya knelt down and scooped the stone up from the ground. She glanced out across the waters of the ocean, before whipping the rock across the waves, watching it skip and bounce before finally sinking. A few gulls lazily drifted through the air above it. More and more of the birds had come by to gather as the students had continued to live on the island. The increased consumption of food was suspected of having attracted them here.

Rex's voice could be heard wafting over to the girls, and he could be glimpsed splashing through the water with Ardwen and Raul nearby, both of whom seemed to be trying to relax and not get sprayed in the face. Nami shook her head. "Can you believe him? What a little kid he is."

"If I recall, Nami, you're the same age as him, aren't you?" The young girl's face turned red at Riya's words, and she pulled her hands together in front of her self, keeping her eyes lowered out of embarrassment.

"I'm nothing like him!" Nami turned her nose up and away from Riya, trying her best to appear entirely opposed to everything Rex stood for.

Riya stopped, turning to stare down at her companion. Her slender frame was significantly taller than Nami's tiny body, and she could pat her friend's head with ease. "Perhaps that's the problem. You should be more like that, not the other way around. You don't have to grow up so fast. Chase wouldn't like that anyways." Nami sniffled slightly in response, the edges of her eyes beginning to fill with tears. Riya gently wiped them away with a single stroke of her finger. "You cry enough already, every night like this. Now is just the time to play." She pushed the smaller girl forward sending her stumbling towards the waters and the frolicking boy.

"Strong words, coming from you." Riya spun around to find Chandana and General Irina approach her. Chandana had a wicked grin on her face, while Irina held on to a much more reserved smile. The rebel leader strolled up to Riya first, placing a hand on her shoulder and spinning her back around to face the group as she continued speaking. "Want to explain why you're sending all the children off to play like you're not one of them?"

"Who isn't also crying at night?" Irina chipped in.

Riya's cheeks quickly turned rose, and she averted her eyes downwards into the sands, realizing she had been caught. "Well, it's just, they need to be happy, and I'll be ok."

"Like hell you will." Chandana flipped the girl back again so she would be forced to look at the woman. "Listen mother-figure. You miss your own little crush in your own little way, that's fine, and I know you feel for the lives we have lost and taken. But this is a war, and we're the rebel faction. And if there's anything I've learned about being part of that rebel faction, it's that you play when you're given the opportunity, or you go crazy and run out onto the next battlefield trying to kill everyone in an insane attempt to get yourself killed because you want off the psychotic loop that is war." The final words hung in the air, leaving the two to simply stare each other down. Riya gulped as a response, her terrified face expressing all of her emotions. "Now go!" Chandana spun the young pilot once more, and shoved her towards her compatriots.

"How sweet to be young and innocent again," Irina murmured, watching everything with a glimmer in her eyes.

"Oh, give it a rest. Just yesterday I caught you chasing seagulls down the beach like some little ten year old."

"Like I told you before, it stole my shoe!" Irina balled her hands into fists, stomping in the ground as she tried to make her point clearer. Chandana, easily one of the tallest people on the island, raised an eyebrow in response as she looked down on the petty general. She simply patted the woman on the head and started to walk away, waving over her shoulder.