Array
(
[text] =>
The entirety of Glisten Fort roared in celebration, with Ace at its centre basking in glory. The soldiers around him cheered and raised their cups. In the corner of the hall, Claude merely wore a smile of amusement as he unhealthily downed an entire bottle of white wine. In contrast to the spotlight that Ace was under, he preferred the shadowy darkness that always accompanied the presence of light.
A few hours later, when Ace was truly drunk, Claude watched with a content grin as the equally drunk Nyal struggled to get the hyperactive drunk young prince out of the room. Claude walked over and swooped up the blonde haired young man in his arms. “I’ll take him back to his room,” he smiled reassuringly.
Nyal frowned as if trying to remember that he had a particular distrust of Claude. Then, a wave of headaches and dizziness hit him as the aftereffects of drinking worsened. With his thought process disrupted, Nyal forgot all about Claude.
When Claude got Ace back to the prince’s living quarters, he threw the young prince ungraciously on the bed. “You can stop acting now, your clothes drank more alcohol than you did,” he was laughing.
Ace sat up and rolled his beautiful sapphire eyes. “Yet here I thought I deceived even you!” He threw a pillow playfully at Claude who caught it and threw it back at him. “How dare you carry me like that!” he glared at Claude.
“Like what? A fairy tale princess? I thought it suited you best,” Claude chuckled, “the fragile prince, Acelin Yonsor, has a ring to it.”
Ace’s face fell. “It does not!” He grabbed the pillow that was thrown back at him and started hitting Claude with it.
“Doesn’t it?” Claude teased. “You are pretty.”
“I would call it handsome,” Ace argued, “and you’re the pretty one.”
Claude merely laughed as he tanked Ace’s attacks.
Unfortunately, laughter does not ever ring out for long amidst a war. One night of celebrations later, it was back on the grind. First on the agenda was a congratulatory speech from the King himself, which Ace nearly fell asleep in. That was followed swiftly by an update on the wounded who were moved down to the crypts against the better judgement of the army doctors. Then, it was a fire power count along with a resource count. Long story short, Ace felt he was been split in a hundred portions every day as he dealt with the more administrative aspects of the job that required him to oversee every little detail of the day to day business within the fort.
The genius deception which Claude had called “empty city plan” paid off but also infuriated Opalian whose military commander doubled down on attacks to nearby towns, guard posts and watch posts, causing a surge of refugees entering Glisten Fort and swift depletion of defence forces. Glisten Fort was beginning to spread its defences too thin amidst the chaos.
Claude leaned his weight against Ace’s desk swirling a bottle of red wine. “Do you plan on defending until the war ends?”
Ace looked up from the paper work he was signing off on and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Father told me to drive them back to their territory, I did that in the first month. Only problem now is that the war did not end, it reached a volley like stalemate. Then father had the bright idea that we needed to attack and then well, your genius ideas happened.”
Claude looked pleasantly surprised at the compliment. “Not my ideas, but they are genius, so what’s next plan of attack?”
“None, nada, zero, zilch!” Ace snatched the bottle of red wine and placed it on the opposite end of his desk, the furtherest he could reach without having to stand up that was also out of Claude’s reach. “You need to stop drinking!”
Claude did not seem to mind that he was robbed of his only hobby. “I have an idea.”
“Which is?”
“Blow up Howlite Castle.”
“Genius,” Ace rolled his eyes sarcastically, “how?”
“A series of bombs under the castle,” Claude said.
Ace glared at him, “that would never work, how are we going to get it in?”
“You won’t need to,” Claude said. “You won’t need to do anything, just tell me, do you want me to blow them up?”
“No,” Ace responded immediately, “they’re people with family! Of course not!”
“But if you don’t take out the army, Opalian would never have a reason to stop attacking.”
“Still no, your talking killing hundreds and thousands of people and possibly yourself!”
“So you’re worried about me?”
“Of course!”
Claude looked surprised. “Why? You don’t know me!”
“Because you’re my friend!”
Friends. That was an unfamiliar concept to Claude, to be precise, mortal friends or friends who cared about his safety. That was something he never knew. He had friends back in the Paladins, but those friends never cared for his safety, just like how he never cared for theirs. It was a mutual understanding, their jobs were dangerous and concern for safety had no place in their minds.
Just as Ace said that, the frosted glass door to his office swung open. Before he could react, Claude pushed him off his office chair and under his desk. Simultaneously, the shuddering blasts of bullets from a pistol rang out and small metal pieces whizzed over his head. Ace fell on the ground, his ears were ringing and his breath quickened in both fear and shock. He could not tell what was happening.
A few moments later, Claude’s voice came over the desk. “You can come out now, Your Highness,” he chuckled lightly. When Ace did not, he frowned and leaned over the desk, Ace was collapsed on the ground, his face drained of blood and his eyes staring blankly as if not quite sure what to focus on. Claude sighed and squatted down next to the young prince. Ace saw him and threw himself into Claude’s arms, immediately starting to sob loudly. Claude smiled and patted the young man to comfort him. “Ot’s alright now, though, I may have killed her, so if you were thinking of trying to get information out of her, that may be difficult, ” he said softly.
Ace slowly got up with help from Claude, his eyes was red from crying. “I didn’t think of that,” he said. Immediately, he saw a black haired woman in a white Parisoran army uniform with her head tilted in a strange angle. Ace could only assume that Claude had snapped her neck. Though in his mind, everything happened so quickly that he wondered how Claude was capable of doing such a thing.
“It’s alright to be scared when someone comes for your head,” Claude said gently. “I heard Opalian sent the Crown Prince to take over from his disgraced uncle, the Major General.”
“Did he send her?” Ace asked, folding his arms in front of his chest defensively.
Claude shrugged. “I don’t know, but it would make sense. She’s been undercover in the engineering department for quite some time now, that’s a Lieutenant’s medal that she’s wearing on her military engineer uniform.”
Ace frowned. “There were spies in the army?”
Claude raised an eyebrow in disbelief, then Ace’s brains truly processed what he just said. “Of course there are,” he corrected, “we have spies in the blue banner army so naturally they would have spies in Glisten Fort, I’m so stupid.”
“No you’re not,” Claude assured him. “You were just thrown in the deep end.”
“Will it end when the war ends?”
Claude shrugged. “That would depend on who sent her, if it was the Opalian Crown Prince, maybe.”
Then, as if it was Ace’s most unlucky day, the emergency alarms went off again. When Ace and Claude rushed into the meeting room, they were informed that they were under siege once more. The radars once again were filled with red dots.
“Your Highness, what do we do?” Nyal asked with a worried frown.
“Can’t we use the same trick?” Major Ambrose Holler of the artillery department asked.
Claude scoffed and was tempted to spit in his face. “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Are a fool, Holler? Or do you think the Opalian military leaders are fools?”
Major Ambrose Holler’s face flushed red with anger and embarrassment, even Ace felt second hand embarrassment for him.
“Then what do you propose,” Colonel Wrenyssa Holler swooped in to rescue her cousin.
“A game of chess ends when you checkmate the king,” Claude said, “who do you propose is the king of the blue banner?”
“You said they parachuted in the Crown Prince,” Ace answered.
“Take him hostage,” Claude said, “the war will end. Unless the Opalian emperor does not actually care for the Crown Prince.”
“And how do you propose to do that?” Nyal demanded.
“By improvising,” Claude answered flatly. “How long can Glisten Fort hold off an attack for?”
“If they come at us full force? One hour,” Nyal answered. “We don’t have enough fire power to hold them off longer.”
“So approximately less than two hours starting now,” Claude muttered, “should be enough time.”
“What are you going to do?” Ace asked with a worried frown as Claude got up to leave.
Claude shrugged, “I’ll think of something. Give me an old unmarked fighter jet, you just worry about holding them off. It doesn’t hurt to go old school sometimes.” He turned to leave again, then he paused. “Don’t worry about me Ace, they can’t kill me.” He smiled at Ace, black eyes twinkling with life that was not there before. He was excited to get back out into the field again, doing what he did best, doing what he’s done his entire life.
*
One hour later, on the main air station of the blue banner army, the Major General looked solemn and depressed as he stood beside his nephew, the Crown Prince. He had a look of anger and hatred as he stared at the lively Glisten Fort, the distinct heat signatures of people rushing around.
“Good job, Uncle,” the forty year thin haired and long faced Crown Prince smiled menacingly. “You fucking idiot, you got scared by a little boy.”
The Major General felt heat rise to his face, it was not his fault that he was careful. He could be sending hundreds of thousands of men to their deaths and he refused to have those deaths on his conscious. One could not blame a cautious general, could they? Though, smartly, he did not respond to his nephew.
The Crown Prince smirked, staring greedily at the rising fort before them. “Fire at will!” he ordered. The officers in the control room echoed his order to the fleets of mechas, fighters and tanks that were approaching Glisten Fort.
“Your Highness,” an intelligent officer suddenly spoke up, “there’s an unidentified fighter jet that just landed on our air station.”
The Crown Prince swung around in fury, “why was it permitted to land if it was unidentified?”
The poor intelligence officer nervously shook their heads, “I don’t know, Your Highness.”
“Who permitted the landing?”
The intelligence officer turned back to their screens and scrolled through the records, “no one did,” they exclaimed in surprise. “There’s no record of communication from the fighter, in fact, our radars didn’t even pick it up as it was approaching!”
“It’s a Marksman XI model, they went out of circulation nearly a decade ago,” another intelligence officer chimed in pulling up surveillance from the empty docking bay. “It’s unmarked.”
On the hologram screen, the Crown Prince could see the fighter jet land and the cockpit open up. A shadowy black figure got out and ran into the belly of the air station.
“Why,” the Crown Prince demanded, “was there no one in the docking bay?”
The intelligence officers looked from one to another not quite sure how to speak back to an arrogant prince. Eventually, the Major General coughed, “Your Highness, you asked for every man who could fight to be out there fighting, even the engineers and support technicians.”
The Crown Prince’s face flashed in embarrassment not unlike that of his uncle. “Summon my guards, we’re going stowaway hunting,” he ordered as he stormed out furiously.
*
Claude leaned against the wall in the blind spot between two surveillance cameras, behind a slightly open metal door with a small glass window. He predicted that his target would be in the control room, but it would be far too difficult to capture the Crown Prince there. He placed himself as bait, revealing his presence through the surveillance camera, now he waits for his prey to walk into his trap.
Very soon, footsteps came thundering down the corridor, Claude held his breath and counted.
One.
Two.
Three.
He reached for a hand grenade inside his robes. Ace would certainly laugh at it and call him old school, though old school was Claude’s preference of style. With confidence and familiarity, he threw it around the slightly ajar door. The grenade went off and from the corner of his eyes, Claude saw the bulky heavily armoured guards get flung backwards from the impact, their blast protection shield made it difficult for them to get back up and they lay on their backs like helpless turtles.
Claude reached across for a rapier that magically appeared, attached to his belt, as he touched it, pulling it out and dancing around the door. Bullets rained down on him as soon as the guards saw him, but he saw his target too. Hiding behind all of it, the Crown Prince, also in a bullet proof vest and blast proof helmet. Claude quickly poked the two guards who were on their backs with his thin blade before swiftly ducking down and kicking the guards following behind in the chin. He was conscious to not move too fast, which in turn meant catching more bullets than usual, that meant more pain. Usually, he could dodge them, the threshold for speed to get his former job was the speed of light, three by ten to the power of eight meters per second.
Claude’s brows knitted itself as he felt the searing pain of the many small pieces of metal burying itself in his delicate flesh, creating a burn mark around the opening of the wounds. That was a perk of being what he was that he severely disliked. All metals mixed with gunpowder burnt his skin. He often wondered why the combination of the two could hurt him when the two things alone did not. He assumed it had something to do with the nature of the curses.
Claude cut down the guards elegantly as he felt trickles of blood leave his body. More importantly, he smirked when he saw the increasing fear and distress that was in the Crown Prince’s eyes as he got closer, as the royal realised that the guards were no match for him.
Upon reaching the last four guards, the Crown Prince turned and sprinted down the corridor, the way he came, yelling into his radio for back up. Claude sighed, why do they always run? It was painfully annoying and boring to play catchup. He killed the remaining guards with ease and chased after the running prince. In a few steps, he had caught up and grabbed the middle aged man by his neck.
“Gotcha,” Claude whispered with an eerie smile. He sheathed his rapier which disappeared as it slid into seemingly nothingness.
“Please,” the Crown Prince begged, his lips trembling. “Please, I’ll do anything, I’ll pay! I can give you whatever you want!”
Claude chuckled but he did not reply. He quickly walked the Prince through the maze of curved corridors and back towards the loading docks, but not the dock he came through. It was a different dock. He had scanned the docks as he walked by the entrances earlier, this dock had a fighter jet. A brand new Opalian special, green and shinning, the Striker-2000. The hatch to the cockpit was open so he shoved his hostage in there, ripping off a piece of his robes to tie up the Crown Prince’s hands. Then, he got into the pilot seat.
“You haven’t got a key,” the Crown Prince mocked, “you should turn yourself in now, you’ll never get away. The dock is closed, you can’t take off!”
Claude rolled his eyes, he pressed his left hand on the touchscreen control board and used his right hand to press the button that started the engine. The fighter roared to life. Ahead of them, the doors to the airspace opened. Claude smiled, it appears there was a mole amongst the Opalian intelligence officers. Without even looking, he pressed the keys and buttons with alarming familiarity. The Crown Prince gaped, the Striker-2000 was a new design, its setup was different. No one should know how to pilot one aside from the test pilots. Yet Claude took off with ease.
The outer shell of the Striker-2000 looked remarkably similar to most other Opalian fighters, amidst the battlefield of raining bombs and firepower, no one bothered to look too closely at the incoming green ship that blended in amongst its forest green coloured brothers perfectly.
*
From the main control room of Glisten Fort, Ace paced back and forth anxiously, it was a nerve racking experience knowing that despite the recent increase in military supplies and resources, they only hand enough fire power to hold back the Opalian for an hour. Now exactly forty nine minutes and twenty six seconds had passed. Soldiers firing at opposing fleets was simply not good enough, there were too many targets to shoot down. Even if they had 100 percent accuracy, it was still not possibly. The various floating hologram screen showed footage from fellow fighters’ surveillance camera. Every so often, a blast from the enemy would cause a camera to black out due to physical damage, the intelligence officer in charge would then have to bring up a different camera, be it fighter, mecha or tanks. The largest screen was an overhead view from a satellite camera. It was blurry but it gave a good idea of the chaos below.
“Your Highness, the fighters are nearly all empty of bullets,” Nyal warned Ace.
“Chaffs refills just ran out,” Colonel Dashielle Crowfork reported. “Those pilots are sitting ducks if they go out without chaffs, they won’t survive.”
Ace frowned, seconds were ticking by slowly. “Recall the ones who are out of everything,” he ordered. A bead of sweat dribbled down his forehead. “How are the tanks and mechas going?”
Colonel Wilder Pisaolo of Information Technology and Intelligence department answered. “Fire power’s running out, there’s a couple of tanks running around empty.”
“Call them in,” Ace sighed. The clocked ticked over to fifty one minutes and twelve seconds. There was still nine more minutes that he had promised Claude. “How much firepower left in the fort?”
“Not much,” Nyal answered. “A few more nuclear powered shots, that’s about it.”
That would buy a couple of minutes. “Load and fire them,” Ace ordered. “Have everyone come back, we barricade ourselves in.”
“That would put us five minutes short still, Your Highness,” Colonel Wilder Pisaolo reminded the young prince.
Ace ran his fingers through his beautiful blonde hair, stress was etched into his face, “I know that,” he snapped. He urged his brain to think but he could not think of anything.
“Your Highness, there’s an incoming unidentified fighter jet requesting to land, it’s got Opalian markers,” an intelligence officer shouted across the control room. They pulled up a surveillance camera locked onto the mysterious foreign fighter. The footage was blurry and it was difficult to see who was in the pilot seat. Then, the windshield of the fighter fogged up at a remarkably quick pace and a finger reached out to draw a cartoon wine glass on the windshield.
“Let them land,” Ace breathed out in relief, “it’s Claude.” He turned to Colonel Wilder Pisaolo and said: “Call up Opalian, time for negotiations.”
The control cheered as if they had already won.
A couple of minutes later, as Glisten Fort blasted its last attacks at the invading Opalian, Claude strides in with a very ungraceful looking Opalian Crown Prince. The largest hologram screen at the centre of the control room showed a connecting symbol as the video call for truce went through to the blue banner base.
The Major General of Opalian’s ugly old mug took up the entire space of the screen.
“Uncle! Uncle save me!” The Crown Prince cried and begged in Opalian whilst Claude kicked the back of his knees to make him kneel gracelessly on the ground with his hands tied behind his back. His distress was eminent and his general appearance was scruffy.
“We’ll return him if Opalian will consider a peace treaty to end the war,” Ace proposed.
The Major General yelled something to someone off camera and there was a back a forth interaction for a while. In the meantime, the firing from the Opalian troops ceased. Ace’s mouth curled into a smile, it meant that the Major General was likely to be negotiating with the emperor back in the capital of Opalian.
Ten minutes later, the Major General turned his attention back to Ace. “We will call a temporary truce, Opalian diplomats will fly into the Parisora capital city tomorrow for a peace conference.”
“Might I presume cease all fire until the outcome of the conference is determined?” Ace asked cautiously.
The Major General’s face fell more as his brows knitted together, tight enough to squish a fly. “yes,” he replied through gritted teeth. The camera turned off as the video call disconnected. The control room cheered as the other cameras showed the fleets of Opalian military units slowly retreating. They had won, to some extent.
Ace turned and hugged Claude tightly, “we did it!”
Claude merely smiled, but it was a sad smile and no one noticed it.
*
As Ace collapsed into his massive comfy bed that night with a sigh of relief, Claude leaned up against the wall with another bottle of expensive red wine in hand. He did not look particularly impressed. Ace’s heart sank as he sat up with a sheepish and anxious look. “I feel like I’ve done something wrong.”
Claude gave him a slow judging nod. “Your defence plan was woeful!”
Ace hung his head feeling awful. “I’m not smart like you.”
Claude sighed, “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“But you said it like that.”
Claude didn’t speak, he just downed the entire bottle of wine and proceeded to get another one out of the cabinet.
“The level at which you consume alcohol is incredibly dangerous,” Ace stated blankly.
Claude sighed again. “I drink because the alcohol is the best thing here that I can use to keep my body functioning, I’m not like you, young prince.”
He dodged the question, again, Ace thought. “How would you have defended the Fort?” Ace rounded back to the previous topic, he wanted to know what he could have done better.
“I would have gotten the first round of fighter jets fly out in formation dousing the tanks and mechas on the ground in flammables,” Claude started.
“Wait, what flammables?” Ace looked confused.
“You had too much fuel to spare and not enough fire power, but fuel can also be a weapon,” Claude said drinking his second bottle of wine in less than five minutes. “Then on the second round drop bombs on said flammable land-based enemy units, blowing them up and lighting an easy going massive fire in the process. They’ll be a mess and it’ll buy you plenty of time as the air units are forced to prioritise saving wounded soldiers.”
Ace just stood there with his mouth open in awe, “that seem so straight forward and easy, why did I not think of that?”
Claude shrugged, “because you’ve become far too reliant on technology, sometimes going old school can be helpful.” He then muttered under his breath: “Along with general knowledge of chemistry, biology and physics.”
“Why did you ask for an old unmarked fighter?”
“Because it’s unmarked and uses some analogue signals that I can work with and jam the highly digital and fancy new radars that all militaries use these days.”
“I’m gonna pretend I never asked,” Ace told him after not understanding a word of what he just said.
“They’re cleaning up the battlefield now aren’t they?” Claude asked.
Ace nodded, “is there something wrong?”
Claude merely shook his head. “Clean up’s always the worst, you find out who didn’t make it.”
“You said you’ve fought in a lot of wars,” Ace started with a curious and inquisitive frown, “but there hasn’t been a war for nearly a hundred years on our planet until Opalian invaded earlier this year.”
“I don’t fight in mortal wars, Ace,” Claude answered. “I fight in ones that involve monsters, magic and gods.”
“You’re pulling my leg, again,” Ace rolled his eyes. Then, he remembered something, “I’m flying back to Sparklieyr, Parisora’s capital. Will you go back with me?”
Claude placed his second empty bottle on top of the cabinet. “No,” he replied as he turned and headed for the door.
“Wait, where are you going,” Ace jumped up from his bed, he had a sinking feeling in his heart.
Claude paused and turned around to stare at him weirdly, “I’m a wanderer, why do you ask?”
Ace ran over and slammed the door to his living quarters shut. “Um, its just, I, um……”
“It was nice meeting you, Ace.”
“But you can’t leave,” Ace protested, “I need you.”
Claude looked mildly bewildered. “No you don’t.”
“I…I DO!” Ace insisted, running his hands through his hair with a distinct look of stress on his face.
Yet Claude appeared confused. “But, I’m a nobody, you don’t even know me.”
“Because you refuse to tell me anything!” Ace cried.
“Because it’s the past and it’s irrelevant,” Claude defended himself.
“Nothing is irrelevant if it’s about you,” Ace said.
Claude sighed. “Perhaps its better if you cool off alone,” he said reaching for the door once more.
“Stop it Claude, I LIKE YOU AND I DON’T WANT YOU TO LEAVE!” Ace screamed, tears welled up in his eyes and he hung his head unable to meet Claude’s eyes. Claude, however, did stop abruptly in his path.
For a very long time, Claude just stood there and listened to Ace sob gently, completely at lost to what he should do. Eventually, he reached for the door again. “I’m sorry Ace, perhaps you should have some time alone.”
“Claude,” Ace pleaded, “please don’t, please don’t leave me alone.”
“You’ll be a well loved prince,” Claude said as he turned his back on the sobbing young man. As he stepped out, he sighed and wondered whether his decision was right or wrong. He felt a tear trickle out of his left eye, then he became conscious of the fact that his right eye could not cry tears. The decision to leave suddenly felt right again. Ace had a prominent and bright future ahead of him whilst Claude Van Dysher does not actually exist in this world. Claude picked the name just as Ace asked him for a name. The name held more sentimental value than actual connection to who he was.
[text_hash] => c0b722e3
)