"No More Mr. Nice Guy"

::one night after the fleet docks in Io for the winter::
 
The Blazing Chariot was quiet, the only time of day it ever was. It was a dark night, the light of the watch lanterns the only light to be seen. Another tiny light formed to join it, in the hand of the wolf girl. She raised the light to her lips inhaling and holding for a moment before exhaling a plume of smoke she tried to shape. A chill wind blew over the deck of the ship as the sounds of footsteps tracked across it. "Eddie," came the female voice of Edea's lion girl companion, "What's eatin' at you?" "Who says I'm stressed?" replied Edea. "You're smoking. You only smoke when you're really thinking hard about something." Edea sighed before taking another puff and exhaling. "Shit, ya know me too well...fine. This whole trip..." "You regret going?" Edea went silent at the question. "I dunno. This whole trip's just..." "Not what you expected? You didn't think it was gonna be that easy?" "Shit no! I'm not as smart as you, but I knew it was gonna be hard. Shit how do I...I thought we would be more...I dunno...heroic..." "Whaddaya mean?" "I mean I knew we weren't gonna come back to some great homecoming or something...but...yeah I thought it might feel a little different..." she paused to drag before continuing. "I thought I'd find something that made it all make sense...but it's the same here. Everybody's just as petty and power-hungry as back home..." "Well at least we got a nice crew to hang out with..." Gerry replied. "Yeah...that's the thing...I thought we were gonna be this big epic pack of heroes like in the old stories...and we'd be living them and then singing 'em! But it's hard to..." "You don't like 'em anymore?" Gerry said, "Ya wanna leave?" Edea sighed, "Hells, I dunno. I do like them but it's hard to sometimes. Anaxa wants to dominate everyone she can and rip apart everyone she can't. Calliope kinda lives in her own world. Zephyria's so haughty and detached. They're supposed to be my people too...but sometimes I feel like back home. I mean yeah they're not screaming at us left and right trying to make us their bitches but...ugh..." "...Sure they have their rough spots. Our culture's definitely a bit...extreme...at times...but hey we balance it out with our bandmates and what about the Admiral and Orri?" "They're...yeah...the Admiral approached me the other night and asked me if she wanted us to help her setup a criminal empire in Io. And Orri...well...she's the scariest of all sometimes..." "That sweet pastry who loves dresses and romance novels?" "Yeah, ya know what else she loves? Fighting. She sees a fight, her little brain just knocks everything out of the way to get to the fight, everything else be damned. Remember when she kicked Hephane into the water so she'd salvaged faster so she could go kick a malaka with a burning sword? She goes from 'not scary' to 'most scary' in a second." "......oh," Gerry said flatly.
 
Edea looked out into the night. The silence only broken by a cold wind blowing through. "Are we the weirdos? I mean....is there something seriously wrong with us? Not the lyrics. That's just venting. Did we just pop our of our maters not tilted enough to live...anywhere?" Edea dragged again as Gerry looked on in silence. "Are we...am I just not mean enough...not extreme enough...to live in Meria...to live in this world?" she said as she sniffled a little, "I feel like a lost pup at the feet of gigantes...trying not to be eaten or stomped on...I wanted to run off with you and play music and be happy...but..." Gerry smiled. "Look, I may be the brains our little troupe...but you're the heart of it...whatever we do we gotta do together. Your power comes from songs of battle and I before I picked up an instrument, I learned to skulk and strike from the darkness. It's let us live this long." "Yeah, okay, but..." "I'll follow your lead but you asked what I thought and I'm telling you. Maybe for now we need to take cues from our pack and pride. Maybe if for a time...we need to be the predators they tried to raise us to be...at least here." "So we just become as bad as there are?" "Maybe for a time, we gotta play by SOME of their rules...I'm not saying we just go crying home begging for forgiveness...we pick and choose...and we get mean when we have to...only when we have to...but whatever we do we gotta do together," Gerry said. Edea looked at her for a long moment before taking the final drag of the tobacco, now reduced to its last nub before putting it out on the railing of the ship. "That was a good smoke.........Yeah..." "Don't worry, Eddie, I'll keep you on track...just like you've always done for me," she said with a smile. "Yeah" she said as they clasped and hugged. "Gerry...I think we need to have a talk with the Admiral."