Rouge XVIII (Patreon)

Rouge gazed out at the green and golden island coming into view on the horizon. The crisp, salty wind tugged at her clothes and curls, the blue sky stretched overhead from horizon to horizon, and the clear, sunny day made the waves glitter like a million living jewels poured over the ocean floor. Honestly, it was pretty idyllic, as long as she didn’t look around at the beaten, battered ship she was standing on.

The Star was no longer the worn but tidy vessel she and her friends had boarded in Bright. Hastily patched sails and spliced ropes were everywhere, and several boards had popped corners or deep cracks along the grain. There was even a section on the main deck that everyone was walking around very carefully, because it creaked and dipped ominously whenever weight was put on it. The best that could be said for the ship was that it was afloat, and she suspected that was only because the game called for it to be, not because it would be in real life.

Vexxx, who was sulking on the floor nearby, stood with a grunt and came to stand a few feet away from her. “Can we ask when we reach the island? Why do we have to wait until they actually finish docking?”

“Because,” she said, not nearly as patiently as she would have liked, “they’re busy. And when we reach the island, they’ll be even busier. It’s not like they’re going anywhere anytime soon.”

He growled in frustration, though his voice cracked halfway through, taking away a good bit of the desired impact. “No, but we should be. If Jean doesn’t remember anything, then we have a lot of investigation to do, and only a few days to do it.” His eyes flicked to Silus, who was snoozing in the sun-warmed collar of Rouge’s tunic. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he said, “They’re just NPCs! They’ll probably just turn back into bits and bytes when we’re done, anyway, so who cares if we ‘inconconvenience’ them while we do your stupid quest!”

Rouge glared at him. “Bridget says all Natives persist once they’ve been generated, at least until they die naturally or some jerk kills them for no reason except that they were ‘inconvenient’. It’s part of what makes Veritas so realistic. So, yeah, I’m going to treat them like people, and as long as you’re with me, so are you! Or I’ll-”

“What?” he sneered. “Go running to Nana and tell on me? You’re all grown up now, right? So it’s you and her against the last ‘kid’ in the house.”

She stared. He had been particularly awful since that morning, and now she knew why. He must have overheard at least part of her conversation with Nana. She flushed. Had he listened while she cried about how sad she was that she had an amazing new stepmother, a baby sibling on the way, and a new, no doubt larger and fancier house in her future?

“No,” she said, when the quiet had stretched too long. “I’ll just give you a few gold when we find a Traveler’s Guild, and send you back to wherever you want to go. I’m tired of fighting with you, and listening to your nasty comments, so if you want to go, then do it.”

For a moment, she would have sworn his face fell, but then it hardened again, and he just said, “Fine. Whatever.” He turned away, but clear as anything she heard him mumble, “I knew you didn’t want me around, either.”

Reaching out, she grasped his shoulder and easily spun him around. “What does that mean?” she all but shouted. “You always do that! You push and push and push, and then when someone pushes back, you act like they’re the villain! Well, I’m not the bad guy here! I’ve tried really hard to make friends with you. I even shared my snacks with you! But no, you’re never happy! Then, when I give you what you seem to want, you throw shade?”

He scowled at her defiantly, but she just set her fists on her hips and glared right back at him. Something occurred to her, so she said, “And that’s my question.”

Startled, his mask of bravado broke, and he said, “What?”

Nodding in satisfaction, she took a step back, dropping her arms into a relaxed stance. “For the blankets and pillows. You promised me an honest answer to one question, and that’s it. Why do you push people away, when you really want to be friends?”

Her cousin opened his mouth, obviously ready to give another of his flippant responses, but stopped. His eyes flicked away, and he stared at the sea as he said, “Someone else told me that, recently. I’ve been trying to do better. It’s just that… No one ever wants to be with me. My friends are mostly jerks, and I know they probably talk about me just like the rest of us talk about them when they’re not around. Girls never like me. Nobody wants to play with me more than once.”

He looked back at her, and gave a wry grin that was almost personable. “Well, not unless they’re going up against something that’s weak against lightning. Then, I’m the first person they call. Otherwise?” He shrugged, looking away again.

Moving back to the railing, Vexxx grasped it in white-knuckled fingers before admitting, “Not even my mom likes me. She can’t wait for me to graduate college and move out. She wants me to get a job and start saving up for my own place, and start applying for scholarships to college or vocational programs, all so I’ll go away as soon as possible. So, yeah, maybe I push people away a little bit. At least then I know why they don’t like me.” His voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. “If I try, and they still hate me, then that just means I really suck, doesn’t it?”

Gingerly, she reached out and patted his slumped shoulder. “No,” she said. “It just means you haven’t met the right people yet. The wrong ones, they’ll reject you, and the bad ones, well, they’ll accept you, and then start making you into something they like better, until you’re not even yourself any more.” She tilted a brow at him, and saw his cheekbones darken. Yeah, she’d thought maybe his ‘friends’ were that type.

“I dunno,” she admitted. “I mean, I’m really just a kid, too, even if Nana is ready to start trusting me with my own bedtime.” She snorted a little laugh, though she knew it went deeper than that. “But I’m starting to get the idea that the adults are just like us, just a little bigger, and more experienced at handling the fallout of their mistakes. They definitely mess up, and somewhere, your relationship with your mom got messed up, huh?”

“My dad left because of me,” he muttered quietly. “And now she wants to marry Brad, but she can’t because of me. I ruined her life.”

Oof. That one hurt. Rouge braced her toes against the bottom of the railing and leaned back, staring up into the cerulean sky. “I thought my mom hated me for a long time,” she said. “Do you know what I figured out?” She watched him from the corner of his eye as he shook his head. Smiling sadly, she went on, “I realized she’s just too selfish to care about anybody who can’t do something for her. So, I know what it looks like when a mom doesn’t love her kid, and your mom adores you to bits.”

Vexxx’s head whipped around, and he stared at her with wide, vulnerable eyes. She stood straight again, and turned to face him.

“She can see you’re angry, and you keep pushing her away. You probably know all her buttons, and you push them every chance you get. But she’s still in your corner. She wants you to grow up, yeah, because every kid has to grow up eventually, so she’s telling you to get a job, and earn money for the things you want to do. Someone who doesn’t care wouldn’t bother. They’d do the bare minimum of looking out for you, while avoiding you whenever they could, and then the moment you finish school, you’d be out on your own, without any skills or money to help you. Plus, I saw the way she looked at you when you’re not looking at her. She looks like she spends every waking moment trying to figure out where she went wrong and how to fix it.”

Vexxx’s mouth opened and closed a few times, so he looked like nothing so much as a deflated blowfish, and then he said, “But what do I do about it?”

Rouge thought back to her Nana’s question that morning. Do you want me to fix it all for you? The temptation was to step in and fix it, but if she did, if she could even help, would that really solve the problem?

“You have to talk to your mom. Just you two. And if you don’t like Brad,” she held up a hand as his lip twisted in derision, “really don’t like him, and aren’t just jealous of him, then you need to tell her about it, but trust her to make the best decision she can for herself. Because the reality is, in just a few years, you really will be gone, living your own life, and probably making at least a few choices your mom thinks are dumb, but she may still be stuck with Brad for decades, especially if she marries him.”

Vexxx grimaced. “He’s so boring. And he makes my mom boring, too. She hasn’t played a video game with me since they started dating. They go to the opera, and his idea of a fun date is dressing up to go to an art gallery opening. I mean, if she really liked that stuff, she would have done it before, right? So, she’s just pretending, because she wants him to like her, and-”

She lifted that eyebrow at him again, and he stopped talking, seeming to realize the hypocrisy of what he was saying.

“And that’s what I’ve been doing, too,” he said on a sigh. “Only backwards.”

She grinned. “And my work here is done.”

Reaching out, Vexxx popped a tiny lightning bolt right between her eyes. She yelped, clapping her hands to her face.

Player Vexxx has dealt you two points of damage.

“Next time, stop while you’re ahead, fam,” he said, grinning, and she grinned back as they both turned to face the rapidly approaching island. They had entered the cove that sheltered the small but bustling town a while ago, and they both jumped as a chain loudly rattling announced that the crew of the Star were dropping anchor.

“Are you ready to go ashore?” Horatio asked, poking his head up so he could see them from the stairs.

Rouge and Vexxx exchanged glances, and both turned to look at Codswallop. Vexxx had only realized today that his horse had been swept from the ship during the storm, so it must have respawned back in Refuge by now. Wally, on the other hand, was still very much with them, and definitely wasn’t going to fit in the dinghy the Star used to transport people and cargo to and from shore when there was no dock.

“Oh yeah,” Rouge answered, feeling her face threaten to crack as her grin somehow grew even wider. When Horatio had told her that Wally would have to swim to shore if he couldn’t stay still in the flat-bottomed boat, she’d actually been worried for half a second. Then she remembered another little perk she got from being the Saintess of Gina.

Vexxx looked at her questioningly, but Rouge just shrugged and patted Silus. “Wake up, sleepyhead. Time to go ashore.”

::What? Um, Oh. Oh, I’m so sleepy.:: The bat wiggled, emerging from Rouge’s collar, stretching her wings and yawning exaggeratedly. She dropped off the rogue’s shoulder, twirling in a way she usually didn’t after just waking up.

Rogue stared after her suspiciously. ::Were you awake the whole time?::

No response.

::Silus?::

::Oh!:: The bat squeaked. ::Me? No. I slept. Soooo sleepy.::

Rouge rolled her eyes. Yes, that was very believable. Well, at least her little friend knew when to keep ‘sleeping’ now. It hadn’t been that long ago that Silus would have wanted to be part of the conversation, even when it was personal. She supposed all of them were growing up, little by little.

But right now, Rouge was going to embrace being a kid.

She turned her eyes to her ostrich, who was shifting from foot to foot, his eyes locked on the broad, golden beach. “You ready, buddy?” she asked, vaulting from the railing into his small saddle. Nodding eagerly, Codswallop spread his fluffy, puffy, useless little wings, leaped into the air… and flew.

[Avian Flight]: Even ostriches dream of flying. For one ostrich, that dream may come true. Allows up to fifteen minutes of flight per day while riding Battle Mount Codswallop.

The people below and in front of them all stopped, gawking at the sight of an ostrich soaring above them in the sky. She knew from experience that flying inevitably broke the sense of disbelief that powered Wally’s [Confabulation] skill, so now everyone would be seeing him in his full glory, but as the sun warmed her skin, the wind tugged at her hair, and Silus whirled around them playfully, she just didn’t care. Lifting her hands, Rouge leaned back and let out a whoop of sheer, ebullient joy, and Wally echoed her, lifting his head to release a powerful, booming call that they could probably hear on the other side of the island.

Speaking of which…

Leaning forward, Rouge checked the skill timer before glancing out over the gently waving palm trees. “What do you think, buddy? Can we make it around the island in fourteen minutes?”

Wally looked over at her, then nodded, warbling happily. They'd never know what they could do if they didn't try.