Thursday 16 May 2013

Aquila 2

He hung up without saying goodbye. Aquila blinked, shrugged and put her phone away. Then she changed into an eagle and flew home.
Her parents had just started to watch a movie, so she joined them. Actually, she was lucky enough to catch a place on the sofa - usually her parents were on that and she and her brothers were on chairs or the floor.
At about the middle of the film she shifted her weight, the remote fell to the floor, the language setting switched to Engllish and the batteries fell out. At about the same time she heared someone open the door. Probably the landlord on his way to his half of the building. She ducked under the table to pick the batteries up, when suddenly the door opened and some feet she didn't recognise stood right in her living room. Someone shouted 'Freeze', loudly, too. Aquila got up rather surprised, while the movie went "I think we should blow this place up." and
"Yeah, I'll get the bombs. You get the cars.". She was even more surprised to find someone with a gun in her living room. No one normal walked around with guns, it was probably even illegal - she was just about to ask who he was when he switched on the light and Dragona walked in. She sighed to herself, then said: "You know, you could have just used the door bell, right?" "Well this is awkward.", he replied. Aquila sighed again, this time not just to herself.

She made sure they went far enough her parents couldn't hear them, though their English wasn't that good anyway, then she arched an eyebrow, then said: "Why did you run in here with guns? I'm perfectly safe."
"You were there when Ytol was killed." Dragona answered, "He'll want to pay you a visit too. The best thing we can do now is all get together. Get a large group of us in the same place. I have some friends that could help. It's the only chance we have."
The first guy, looking like a motorcyclist wearing all black, nodded, "And, we have to assume there are more people than Ytol Heas that have come back to life. The person, or whatever managed to revive them, must be very powerful. We need somewhere easy to defend." Aquila wondered why he hadn't taken his helmet off, yet.
"My island. It shows up on no map because it's so small, and it has some magical and physical defences. Particulary a huge naval cannon, that I'm rather proud of." Dragona told her. "It would be the best place to go under the circumstances."
Dragona's phone rang and he answered it.
"Hello?" he said.
"Hello Emit. And yes, I do. All wear gas masks and black clothing, carry automatic pistols and ride motorbikes? Fun to shoot? They the ones you mean?"
"Thanks Emit. Any ETA on them?"
"Come to my island tomorrow, Emit. We need your help."
"Our last meeting hasn't even happened for another... thousand years or so? So not long at all, in fact."
"Bye Emit."
Aquila hadn't uderstood a thing. She was just about to ask what that was about, after all he sounded a little worried, but before she could he turned to Cabader.
"We have some of our friends The Blue Moon heading this way. I'll get up on that hill over there with my sniper. You need to stay on the road and Aquila... to make sure you're safe, could you stay in the car?"
She liked his car. It had a clever talking computer in it, called Steve. Maybe Steve knew what they were on about and would tell her, too. So she nodded, smiled and answered: "I'll talk to Steve."
"My car isn't called Steve." Dragona said, a little confused.
"The artificial intelligence is."
"No it isn't, it doesn't have any name." Now he was confused and surprised.
"It told me it was called Steve. We're good friends." She had a hard time not to laugh.
"Ok then, you can talk to Steve whilst Cabader and I shoot everyone." Not a hard time not to laugh anymore. Oh well...
Before she left she made sure her parents were occupied with the movie and wouldn't look out. If anyone was about to shoot anyone else, it'd be better if they didn't look out the window or move around so they'd be seen from outside. Just in case. Then she went to talk to Steve.

She closed the door behind her, sitting where the drivers seat should be - in a German car. But English cars were the other way round. "Hi Steve!" she said. "How are you?"
"Hi Aquila! I'm fine, you?"
"I'm fine, but... confused. Maybe you could answer me some questions?"
"Sure, what would you like to know?"
"What's the blue moon? Who's Emit? Why does he get a bye and I don't? Where's that island? And will I have to pack warm clothes? How long will we stay there? .... will he really kill people?", she finished.
"That's a lot of questions" Steve said, "How did you end up with them?"
"I guess Dragona was so worried about me he forgot to explain things to me. But it's fine, you know the answers, right?"
"I do. Which one would you like to be answered first?"

By the time Dragona opened the door they had established that the Blue Moon weren't nice, Emit was a friend of Dragona from the future, the motorcyclist guy was Cabader, Dragona probably just forgot the bye already thinking about how to get to her the fastest, that the island wasn't in tropical seas and that she'd better pack some warm clothes.
Steve had shown her how he could use his windows as screens right at the beginning, so Aquila had been sitting in a nice forest for the past while. Their talking hadn't mannaged to block out quite a few gunshots, though. She had tried to ignore them, anyway.
She really liked Steve's ability to create smells, too. She hadn't only seen but also smelled the forest, and so their conversation had been a lot of fun. She was quite sure that a cloud of forest-smell hit Dragona in the face when he opened the door, but he didn't react to it. Maybe he hadn't noticed.
"Me and Steve had a wonderful conversation," Aquila said with a smile.
"All the Blue Moon are dead." Cabader said without any emotion, "We are leaving."
"Oh, ok. That was quick." She was glad she couldn't see anything.
"We didn't waste any time," Dragona replied. He and Cabader agreed that Cabader would fly and him and Aquila would take the plane. "Want to see my island now?" he asked her. "Could I get some clothes first? I also have to tell my parents I'll be gone."
"I think I still have some of your clothes, and you can call them?"
"Ok."

They left a few minutes after Cabader had gone. The flight didn't take long, maybe an hour, but Aquila really enjoyed it. She had windows on both her sides, and so a great view on the sunset. It started when they had risen between two layers of clouds, and the whole world seemed to turn pink, red, purple, light blue, and then dark blue. The channel had glittered in a red-ish gold when they crossed it, though she had no idea where exactly they had crossed it. She had seen the shadows of ships on the sea, though, a lot larger than the ships due to the low sun.
The island seemed more like a small rock in the sea, to her. It didn't have many plants, hardly any at all in fact, and the only animals she noticed were a few birds. But the house seemed friendly enough to her, and it turned out to have a room for guests. Cabader had arrived before them, but he said he wouldn't need a room, and Aquila decided to first occupy the room before asking questions.
She was just about to fall asleep when she realised that they had left all the bodies on a frequented street of a German town, ready to be found and reported and top of the news for the next few years or so - actually, by now they probably already were. Bodies, in a part of Germany where leaves on a pavement were frowned upon. There was no way they could've gone unnoticed. Not feeling too happy, she fell asleep.

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