Chapter 2: no time for spite.
"You gambled back there that the locals would'nt pick you apart too Huck" I was sitting in the passenger seat this time around as Aiko made her way down an abandoned freeway. The road was devoid of any human life as gazelles grazed beautifully on the river bank running perpendicular to the main highway of Buriti.
"What, Koi nah I had been bumming around this sector for the last week." She seemed to be contemplating something as her brown freckled face remained stony; eyes on the barren road. I don't know what her problem was–she was my sister's keeper, not me. Well, I guess she was mine now.
"Can you listen really quickly?" Aiko slowed down from the high velocity we had maintained since the incident with Dennis. I've never been one to dwell on the past but since this morning–the morning air has kept forcing my mind's eye to the shattered mural that is my past.
I had spent an unhealthy amount of time with Aiko leeching her training as a royal guardsman. Every summer when she and Kash would come back from boarding school. Terrorizing the onyx marble walls of our gaudy palace with their talk of stratagem and use on my chubby body. Kash was a fierce debater while Aiko always solved everything with the swift physicality of someone twice her size. When my sister had fallen asleep in her vapidly jeweled royal bed.
We had spent nights attempting to find ways away from Buriti and its follies…cutting our arms and legs on screws jutting from vents–Spying on my Father and uncle for hours as they planned their next ill-fated assault on our own people. Aiko's eyes almost seem to glimmer in the moonlight. Now we were just two adults who seemed to not care about anything. I considered her my friend though it was a messy subject.
"Sure, you basically have me hostage. Like back when you would sneak from my sister's guard duty…" I let my eyes wander over the road again as the clay dirt was whipping small vortexes against empty houses. We entered the outskirts of the capital quickly. The drive felt so empty all things considered yet peaceful.
"Huck…I'm going to leave if you aren't taking this seriously–I've never left Buriti my whole life, i've rarely even been alone since I was assigned to your wonderful late sister" She pulled off the main highway abruptly. I felt her eyes finally breaking slightly from the normal thousand-yard stare. "We need to go by foot from here so we don't catch a stray air raid," I noticed she wiped a single tear from her melancholic face.
I'd never seen Aiko cry. She had been there when her younger siblings were dismembered and used as bargaining chips to her father…The head–Late head general of Vasca. The situation itself paled this one in my seldom-taken opinion. I remember my father's leathery face nearly cracking in the hot sun. we had just gotten anywhere with the rebels with Aiko's father's help.
Two weeks of village raids resulted in a major blow to the structure of the rebels at the time Obviously our parents saw this as a power move but only stood to exacerbate everyone involved. On one particularly dusty afternoon, they had taken her whole family and began torturing them mercilessly for hours on end…the only thing that had saved her was the fact my father had been particularly fond of her much to my mother's disgust.
Though Aiko and Dennis had been betrothed each had stalled on any plans in the 2 years they had been engaged. I had wondered if it was due to my sister's last years of school or Dennis being…odd to say the least.
She turned to me as we waited for the rumbling M-10 tank heading toward us. "You know Kash was supposed to turn 20 in 2 weeks?" Her words were conveyed almost in the same low tone as the rumbling. We stopped briefly as soldiers began assisting me and Aiko. They seemed more tense than the standard royal guards. There had been many talks of Dennis taking power and now he was nowhere to be found.
"I thought my sister's birthday was in October…" Memories of my sweet younger sister came rushing to me as I began placing a bulletproof vest briskly. Kasiha Vasca is the brightest pupil our shoddy Capital State College can offer: is all my father and mother would say. Like she wasn't wasting away in a state-run military camp. I had never been formally educated–A Vasca in name but my father did not want me. His fervent applause for my sister and Dennis still rang in my ears now.
The memories as fast as they came, went. Aiko now had a regime of soldiers lined up as she flawlessly led a speech I had disassociated from. "Huckleberry Vasca is the last remaining royal in all of Buriti…The rebels have taken the life of Grand Regent Dennis. We stand at the precipice of disaster as our country's enemies line at our borders–Cackling filthy hyenas ready to attempt to use this moment of weakness as their chance to fill their rapacious bellies."
Hushed voices came without mouths among the men standing resolute nearly eating every last word that left her mouth. Aiko's voice silenced the line once it rang out. "You are to protect our new King while he meets with Grandpa Aygu. You will cease any fire unless told otherwise by me or the king himself." The small Square formation of soldiers clicked in unison now are they took places to cover fire and stage the meeting.
"I do not know how long we have Huck until they arrive…I really want to speak with you alone" She motioned to a small alley being used as a makeshift base of operations. The brick wall had blown out of a sewing kit factory making it difficult to traverse quickly. The old building did not withstand anything above 6 feet when the bombs hit. I stepped over some militarized sandbags as the side opening gave way to a partially barricaded room. We stood in an office with a small amount of light peering through from a skylight with audible sounds of soldiers preparing for a confrontation outside the brick walls.
"Well, Koko what…I doubt you keep asking me to talk to keep just tindering your resignation?" I sat down in a rickety leather chair that instantly gave way. The shards of wood splintered my right ass cheek like I has been attacking a porcupine den.
"You need to choose how we will move forward once you give a pardon to these insurgents–Mind you I do see your idea but you only have handled the issue of reuniting our military. We still contend now with I will have to step down to a fifty-six-year-old madman who employs child soldiers." Aiko flinched as the words left her full lips. Her trepidation was admirable but I did not have time for her doubts.
Her deep brown eyes were now transfixed on mine like she meant to gleam at what she assumed were little thoughts I had given to the matter at hand. "You think too small–I didn't have you commit treason for nothing Aiko. With Dennis out of the way dead…you stand to benefit greatly as a minister of defense and internal affairs."
I stood up after saying the whole monologue I had been saving since the car ride. "You don't seriously think the Daughter of the highest-ranking Military official can really act as a petty minister while you parade a pirate as our general."
Why is she fighting me so hard? We had spent so many years fighting a cartel turned freedom fighting group. The amount of foreign aid they received nearly outweighed our own, at least from a military standpoint.
"I do not plan on going to war, once this civil issue has ended we can focus on rebuilding and reeducating the masses." I knew this was a good idea yet her laughter rang out to my chagrin.
"You're very naive, we do not have the manpower to educate the children, they are not tools Huck. Every generation since the Svetlan retraction of the annexation has felt the cold grip of poverty, ignorance, and violence that infests nearly all walks of life here in Vasca." She said down at the desk in front of me looking down at her rifle. She fiddled with the long gun anxiously keeping clay from jamming the weapon.
"And you are too willing to say our people cannot do anything but eat ourselves from our own growing pangs…I do not agree that the retraction of our oppressors should be lauded as our savior from our own people" This time I found myself sitting next to her on the dark mahogany desk.
Its curves allowed an ease of conversation that made me lean into the spirit of my words. "You can act as the hidden hand rooting out the garden for snakes. I act as the face placating Cartel Aygu so they feel like they're standing" Aiko's eyes flashed with a burning look that matched my intensity.
"You are a drunk idiot Huckleberry Vasca….But this plan is one I can agree has some merit Huck–all these years you've chosen to stay in the shadow of your family still make me uneasy." She adjusted loose curls frayed from her braided hairstyle that framed her light brown skin well under the subtle sun rays.
"I didn't have a purpose…the people only love me for my rejection of my family, my family only loved me for my rejection of the people, and no one has ever taken me seriously due to everyone else's accolades." I usually spent my time drinking at any run-down building they passed for a bar in the lower wards.
Aiko and I had a very complicated history, to say the least. I had briefly been betrothed to her until one racey night at a Svetlan delegation…I was deemed unfit for the crown and forced marriage. I had always been happy for my own freedom but saddened that Aiko had no agency. No one has asked either of us about our opinions on the matter but that was life is in Buriti nobility.
We had never once talked about our short engagement 3 summers ago, even at the time it was something that made both of us feel like cogs. Ever turning pieces of a machine with no purpose but to burn fuel. My sister had told me that night had been the worst the family had ever seen me.
"When you shot Dennis…how did you feel?" The sparkle in her eyes briskly faded to a black shark-like gaze piercing through my mind. I did not fear Aiko like the grizzled soldiers she ordered around in a dogma-laced tune. I respected her deeply. She was my future commander, my second in command, and my only living life-line to my past now.
"I felt like you were the better of two evils–I take no pride in laying Dennis to rest. Even if he was a showy moron with a god complex, He was sweet to me and we had spent the last summer with talks of redistributing the wealth of your family" Somehow the same woman that sprayed her finances cantaloupe-shaped brain onto the dirt was now lost in another moment…in another time devoid of the constant bloodshed of our homeland.
"Aiko I'm not evil, Kasiha we both know was the true monarch–Her death will be the mark of another dark age for our people. I just want to be some fucking torch that leads us to the end of the tunnel." The gravel in my voice began from how much we had been speaking in the short time.
"You realize what I meant when I said I made my choice?" even though we were less than a foot apart the distance between us felt like an increasing expanse as each moment passed. A wall existed but it did not matter to me anymore.
"Aiko, If I can't make up for the sins of my family…You should easily be able to do to me like you did to Dennis." I felt her hand on me shaking me from the stupid gaze I had placed on her face as I finally realized how much I truly loved this horrid place.
"Im by your side Huck, if you abuse your power ill just break all your bones to show you the true lesson: without structure, there is no system…"
The end