June 14th 2013, 2:12 PM
It was five days after his best friend’s death before Captain Crush managed to drag himself to work to see if he still had a job.
He’d managed to eat, drink, shower, and shave, and was looking entirely presentable when he arrived at the old secret HQ and went inside. He had a key, it still worked, and he made his way up to the main headquarters at the second floor.
There were two other knights he didn’t recognize. They were laughing over something on the television. There was Skullcracker playing chess with another knight. Some clerk in glasses was reading at a table. Why was a clerk in the secret hideout? Was it still secret?
There was Melissa. He recognized her, and made his way over to her.
“Hello,” she said. “Welcome back. Are you all right?”
He paused. Felt the rage slowly building. “My best friend just died. I’m not all right.”
“Oh,” she said quietly. “Nicator said you were on vacation. I think he wanted you to be able to come back.”
“Right,” Crush said bitterly. “Because he hasn’t gotten enough use out of me yet.”
“It seemed nice, actually. Kinda out of character.” He looked up angrily. “Your version makes more sense!” she said. “Sorry.”
“No mourning,” said Crush. “Declare the only person who might actually care to be on vacation - maybe he’ll come back, maybe he won’t - and hire a few more knights. All our man dying means is that we don’t have to pay him, right?”
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Melissa sighed. “That’s one way to work.”
“You know -” Crush sighed. He wasn’t angry at Melissa. Just her boss. “There are leaders who motivate their men via love. Or money. Nicator’s just scary.”
“At least s- he’s better than Pyre,” Melissa muttered.
“A dead fish is better than Pyre. You know I was scared he was Ilderia?”
Melissa gave him an odd look, and he finally put it together.
Crush froze. “She? She? You mean - but she can’t be. She’s not Ilderia. Ilderia was a leader.” Twelve knights at the high table and no man could see them without wishing himself worthy. “Ilderia could lead. Nicator’s tough but all he can do is win.”
Melissa gave a little shrug, swallowing whatever she would have said. Crush was pretty sure that was because Jim Skullcracker - Nicator’s right hand - was coming up.
“Morning,” he said to Crush, ignoring the fact that it was late afternoon. “Good to see you.” Looked at Melissa. “He bothering you?”
“N-no,” she said, looking away. “We were just talking.”
Crush glared at Jim. “What do you want?”
Jim held up his hands placatingly. “All I want is for all of us to get along. We’re all on the same team here.”
“All of us?”
Jim lowered the hands, his face full of false affability. “Well, we’re all on Nick’s team, aren’t we? We’ve all got our reasons for being there, but we’re there. And that means we work together and we talk to each other.”
Crush froze, irrationally angry.
“Well, I’m not. A little money isn’t worth getting my friends killed.”
“You sure about that?” Jim said, and Melissa flinched away from him. “You sure you should be blaming Nick for that death, not the one who fired the bullet?”
“There’s enough blame to go around,” said Crush. He turned on his heel, walked away. Over his shoulder: “Tell Nick I quit.”
Jim Skullcracker stepped after him, stopped, sighed, walked comfortably out of sight and earshot of the rest of the group. Pulled out his cell phone, called Nicator.
“‘Fraid not.”
“Take care of it.”
“Got it.”
He turned, went back into the main room. “Hey, Ver?”
“Yeah?”
“Need you for a sec.”
“Right.”