Private Class Warfare

[Makko Vyres]

There was a warmth to Makko's face too. A colour that started at the base of his neck and rose up. It was not embarrassment. It wasn't the heat.

The fact that she was so painfully polite and efficient about matters irked him. It irked him a great deal.

"Fine, seeing as you're in charge."

It was a minor act of rebellion, but he was quite impotent in the face of the situation. She knew what to do and he didn't want to sit in the storm that was coming.

At least the knife was useful. The live trees had big overlapping fronds of dappled green and yellow. He kept hacking them from trees and piling them up for Cora to place.

At least the knife was useful.

Perhaps, he thought, they would do survival in the streets of a city slum. Then he'd enjoy watching Cora trying to get by.

Feeling the wind coming, he started pulling down heavy branches to try and lay over the boughs to anchor them down.

"Startin' to look like something," he grunted.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora made no comment to Makko's irritated remark. As far as she was concerned, he was coming around—maybe not to her, but to acknowledging the truth.

She was in charge.

What was more, he was actually doing what she'd told him to do. That alone was enough to send her confidence and ego surging. The two worked in relative silence, conscious of the approaching storm as the rumbles grew less and less distant.

"Indeed." Cora nodded from her position on the ground. The blonde had been lining the leaved edges of the branches with rocks where they touched the ground to anchor them in place. Layered fronds began to fill out either side of their makeshift tent, providing a wall of vegetation from the elements. A carpet of moss and leaves lined the ground, hopefully providing some primitive measure of comfort.

A bolt of lightning seared through the sky, striking somewhere close by. An angry roll of thunder sounded as dark cloud swirled above them. Rain poured from the sky like a faucet having suddenly been turned on, and Cora was quick to make her way into the shelter they'd constructed.

She motioned for Makko, an automatic gesture that surprised even herself.


Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

That gesture hasn't even come from a place of authority, Makko knew. She just wanted him safe and out of the rain.

He still didn't follow, not immediately. He wanted to imagine that he didn't like being told what to do, that he was naturally defiant.

Looking up to the thick blanket of rolling clouds, he almost imagined he could deny nature itself. Heavy rain drops struck his face, but he kept his chin tilted upwards.

Reality was different. He did exactly what he was told within the Fractal State. Railed against 'corporate greed' and authority whilst always knowing exactly where he stood in the gang pecking order. Makko idly rubbed the scars in the webbing between his fingers. They punished underlings by running a sharp blade between their fingers.

If he was truly defiant of authority, he would have lost entire fingers now or gone his own way.

"Damn it," he muttered, quickly heading inside.

That he wasn't as rebellious as he liked to believe, did not make his stuck up, bossy, and quite startlingly beautiful partner for this exercise any less irksome.

Steam rose from his shoulders in the small space. Makko wiped the rainwater from his brow onto his sleeve. There was almost no room at all inside. Nowhere to sit without at least their boots touching.

He closed his eyes, grinned and tilted his head back.

"You ever just sit for hours and listen to a storm? Sound of rain on glass..."

The rain here was even more relentless. The shelter much less of a sanctuary from the storm. They were right in the heart of it. He found the sound oddly relaxing.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

To her surprise, he'd actually come when she'd beckoned. Part of her figured that he would tell her to go expletive herself.

Abruptly, she became painfully aware of just how small the shelter was. Drawing her knees to her chest, Cora tried to make herself as small as possible. She watched Makko from her periphery, suddenly fascinated. The blonde had no trouble interacting with the opposite sex, but she'd never been in particularly close quarters with them. Her cheeks flushed when he smiled and she looked away, face tinged pink once again.

It was odd to see him happy.

For her part, storms made Cora anxious. She'd been afraid of them as a child, and could vividly recall bursting into her parent's room on a few occasions when a particularly loud storm had struck in the night.

Not that she'd tell Makko something as embarassing as that.

"Not really." She answered softly, idly drawing lines in the dirt with her finger. "I learned to be grateful for the rain. Where I grew up, it meant good harvests." Her other hand had come to wrap tightly around her legs, securing them to her chest.

Cora was bewildered at seeing him find comfort in a literal tempest.

"It rains a lot where you're from…?"

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

Makko looked over at Cora. She suddenly looked very small in her corner of the shelter. For a moment he thought she was trying to get as far away from him as possible. That was not it. At least, that wasn't quite it.

She didn't look like a walking ego then. She was just another young person stuck with him in this silly training regime. He watched her doodling lines in the dirty, even knowing they were not going to take any designed form.

"It rains a lot where I come from," he confirmed.

"Don't have any harvests on Denon. Don't even have much things that grow at all," he replied. He remembered some of the hardy weeds that could make a life in the cracks in duracrete bulldings.

"What did you do where you came from?" he asked. He chuckled softly. "As if you had a proper job," he added.

Makko closed his eyes. He wanted to see how she reacted to the jibe. He also wanted her to think that he didn't care about her reaction.

The lighting was bright enough to be seen through the shelter, through his own eyelids. The thunder was closing in.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora glanced over the hunch of her shoulder. Denon? She'd heard of the world but had never been, knowing it to be a hot topic on the Senate floor at least. A crime-ridden industrial city-planet headed by corporations, home to both underground terrorist groups and a new wave of vigilantes attempting to stem the tide of delinquency.

But mostly, people just trying to survive.

At least, that was how it had been described to her. Mako's rough demeanor made a little more sense now, and she idly watched a raindrop roll along the sharp cut of his jaw.

Cora turned away, tucking her chin into her knees as she blushed furiously. Her face only lifted to fix him with a haughty glare, cheeks still tinted red.

"I'll have you know that my father is a Viscount. As his heir, I was partially responsible for managing the estate and cultivating our family name."

Which was an embellished way of saying that her time was spent learning to be a proper Noble. Fencing, etiquette lessons, attending social events and the like.

"I'd imagine you did something a little more…blue collar on Denon." She sniffed.

A stroke of lightning exploded above them, briefly illuminating the inside of the shelter. Cora squeaked, jumping in a brief startle.

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

His entire face creased up at the notion that being a Viscount was a proper job. Makko had a great deal to say about such a bold proclamation.

In fact he had started to compile a list of questions. He didn't have much in the way of education, but he could think far enough ahead to try and set a verbal trap for the viscount's daughter.

That changed when she suggested he did blue collar jobs. Questions became retorts. Retorts that would be formed of short, four-letter words.

The look of anger, sharp and dangerous, vanished when she squeaked. Cora looked vulnerable rather than proud. It was all bluster and self-defence, not genuine spite.

Makko forgot that nobles were not as emotive or physical as 'blue collar' types. He reached out - not far in the confined space - and laid a hand on her upper arm.

"It will pass soon," he said softly.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora's arm twitched, and for a few moments she stared passively at Makko. She'd been taken aback by the gentle hand and comforting words—and truthfully, part of her silence was to wait and see if the kindly facade would fall away and he'd begin mocking her.

She stared at his hand, noting the thickened tissue between the webbing of his fingers and the tattoos twining up his wrist and arm. They were roughly the same age, and she could help but imagine what his life was like. More painful, if the scars were any indication.

"Y-yeah." It was all she could muster in the moment, swallowing thickly. His physical touch was putting her off kilter, but it had an odd measure of comfort to it.

"I don't understand why you like storms. They're so…violent." Her question was less accusatory this time, at least. It made sense that he liked violent things, after a second thought.

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

She didn't recoil in horror at the touch from a peasant. He supposed that was progress or at least meant the storms were more of a bother to her in the moment.

He left his hand on her arm, but stared off into the distance through the shelter. It was a comfort for him too, not that he would admit it.

The storm didn't upset him. He had not left his city at all until Lossa brought him to a jedi temple. His world had been chaotic and violent, but there had been an order to it. A clear hierarchy and familiarity to those streets.

Makko felt alone in the Jedi order and out of place. That, deep down, frightened him. He would never admit as much. Fear was weakness.

"It's violent," he replied, not catching her inflection. "But there's something calming in witnessing something so...much larger than us up close and being safe from it."

Another flash of lightning. Thunder followed almost immediately, deep and resonant. Makko have her arm a gentle squeeze. This time he turned his gaze towards her.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Makko's reasoning didn't make sense to Cora.

"That's terrifying." She insisted. "There's nothing you can do to stop it, and how safe can we be behind a bunch of sticks and leaves?"

A thick gust of wind blew, but their shelter held. They'd had enough sense to set it up in a valley, where the surrounding hills and bumps would dull the more violent winds.

Cora sucked her teeth when the lightning flashed, feeling the rumble of thunder reverberate unpleasantly in her stomach. She'd barely registered Makko squeezing her arm until she'd caught his gaze from the corner of her eye.

Face still flushed, she ventured a question that had been on her mind since he'd reached out.

"Why are you being nice to me? I thought you hated me."

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

If he had known that being nice would have unnerved her quite so much, Makko would have done it before. Long before it occurred to him to be comforting because she genuinely looked small and frightened.

Makko kept his gaze on her as he answered the question. He smiled from one side of his lips.

"No one said you're not still irritating and pompous and stuck up and and and..." he said, rolling his free hand in the air.

There was a sudden patter of rainfall. Makko didn't know, but it was simply the trees above suddenly dropping the water from their leaves in a cascade. He knew as little of trees as he did of the life of nobility.

"But you looked put out and you know..."

Now Makko looked embarrassed. He wasn't winding her up any more, but trying to be honest. It was more difficult for him.

"Lightning'll hit the trees anyway. Be fine as long as a tree doesn't fall on us." His gaze fell down from her eyes, passing over the elegant curve of her neck, down to his hand and back up.

"B'sides, wind and rain gets in and I'll keep you warm," he promised, finally looking away.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

If Cora had been bothered by being called irritating and stuck up, she didn't show it. Perhaps she'd have some sharp words for Makko as well, had the storm not been raging outside of their crudely constructed hut.

Her eyes widened at the mention of a tree falling on them, but otherwise, she didn't move. Cora simply couldn't, as if even shifting her foot would cause the shelter to collapse and the storm to swallow them whole.

It was only when he promised to keep her warm did she shift rigidly in surprise, raising her head to meet him with an open-mouth gape just as he'd turned away.

"Y-you will do no such thing!" She insisted, embarrassed from both the proposition and the crude images it conjured in her head. For a moment, she wanted to pull away, but his hand on her arm was a small comfort she ultimately allowed herself to indulge.

"Th…the jungle is warm enough." She asserted, clearing her throat. "I won't need you to be doing something so improper."

Father had warned her about boys.

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

Probably shouldn't have mentioned a tree falling down, he thought to himself. They had seen fallen trees so it wasn't hard to imagine another coming down. Makko did not always think before he spoke. In fact, he mostly spoke before he took time to think.

He saw her expression. His grin revealed as much.

Improper. He wondered what her voice would sound like if it was trying to cry out his name through agonized gasps instead of chastising him for his behaviour.

Makko canted his head to one side as he let such thoughts play out.

"Improper, but fun," he declared. "You shouldn't let your life be ruled by other people's rules. But..."

He turned towards her, still smiling and still holding her arm.

"Only proper thoughts in my little head. Of course. We can get some rest and get going once it passes. B'sides, you wouldn't know where to start anyway."

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

"I-I know how it works!" She insisted, perhaps a bit too aggressively.

Cora settled on glaring daggers at Makko, as embarrassed by the teasing as she was by her own rebuttal. Why was that what she'd chosen to respond to first? Perhaps it was the insistence that she lacked proper knowledge; indeed, Cora only understood the mechanics of intimacy on a biological basis. As far as she'd been concerned, that was all she needed to know until her wedding night.

Part of her wanted to know what she was thinking, but she'd never ask.

Theatrical bursts of cloud to ground lighting danced all around them, and an ear-splitting crack rose from the rolls of thunder. A nearby tree had been struck, hitting the ground with a monsterous thud and shaking the ground beneath Cora and Makko.

Adrenaline surged through Cora and she squeaked in surprise at the cacophony of sounds, free hand snapping to Makko's and squeezing it tightly. After the noise had passed, it took her a few moments to rein herself in. "S-sorry…" Her hand withdrew from his somewhat reluctantly, immediately missing its warmth. "Y…you're right. We should rest, i-if we can with all of this noise."

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

The look in his eye revealed how much he was enjoying this. Later, he might convince himself that it had been to distract her from the storm. That it had been nothing to do with either wanting to annoy Cora as much as possible or because he was almost always subject to the whims of his own teenage hormones.

"I-I know how it works!" She insisted, perhaps a bit too aggressively.

Makko met those daggers head on. His smirk matched by a salacious raise of one eyebrow.

"Is that because you've touched it enough to know just how to..."

A nearby tree had been struck, hitting the ground with a monsterous thud and shaking the ground beneath Cora and Makko.

Makko straightened. He let out a sharp breath. There was no amusement on his face as he looked in the direction of the sound.

There was nothing to be done. They'd chosen there spot and a tree would or would not fall on them. Maybe this whole Force thing would give them a warning, but he couldn't say it had ever guided him before.

"Y…you're right. We should rest, i-if we can with all of this noise."

As she started to pull her hand back, Makko reached out and placed his other hand over the back of her wrist. His breathing was audible now, as the panic started to subside. Little finger and thumb wrapped around her wrist to hold her gently.

"You're right," he agreed. All attempts to wind her up abandoned for now. He looked down at her hand and released it reluctantly. Makko gave her arm a brief, reassuring squeeze and released that too.

"Let's lie down," he said, looking at the bed of moss that was still dry. "Nothing improper," he said firmly. It was awkward to try and maneuver around in the small space.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora's head was buzzing from a whirlwind of embarrassment and suggestion. She knew that he was just trying to get a rise out of her, and she hated that it was working so well. If they'd been anywhere else, she would have likely scoffed and stomped off. Makko was the most vexing person she'd ever met.

Yet, she swallowed thickly when he held her hand in place, and for a brief moment their eyes met, catching the little huffs of breath that rose in their enclosed space.

Perhaps it would have been better if the tree had fallen on them.

When Makko released her, Cora felt like she could breathe again. Her hand reflexively pressed to the spot on her arm where he'd touched, and she shuffled her way to one side of the shelter. Which wasn't very far, considering they'd been sitting toe to toe.

"Nothing improper." She repeated, pressing her back to the angled wall of sticks. Moss wasn't the most comfortable setting, but it did provide a modest layer against the hard ground. Untying the shirt she'd been using as a headband, Cora stuffed it beneath her as a makeshift pillow. Never did she think that she'd long for the spartan lodgings of the Jedi temple. At least they'd provided a real bed and blanket.

The rain was beating down on the shelter with more rhythm, and the thunder rolled more gently now. With the worst of the storm passed, Cora concentrated on the white noise of the rain, letting it lull her to sleep.

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

Makko took a moment to make a decision. Top and tail or face to face.

He decided on the latter. It was awkward to turn around without making contact, proper or improper. Makko laid down, turning his back towards her.

Makko had slept in the driest corner of an alley in the pouring rain, he had slept in the trunk of the burned out shell of a speeder. He fell asleep before she had even cleared her head of all the thoughts Makko had put there.

Thoughts that he would deny he had - because she was deeply irritating and not worth his time, obviously - transformed into dreams. Soon those too faded as the patter of rain turned his dreams into him struggling to keep his head afloat in an open ocean.

Makko had never seen an ocean.

He woke in a different position. The rain had stopped. Sunlight found cracks in their shelter. The ground beneath them was uncomfortably damp.

In horror, he realised that he had her hair across his nose and mouth. Worse still, he had an arm across her waist. Very carefully, Makko started to roll back and lift his arm from her.

She murmured and rolled back towards him. Makko winced, realising that something hard was uncomfortably poking into her back, bound to wake her.

His sucked in air over his teeth and reached down. He had left the knife on his belt when lying down. He gave a sharp tug to push it back around his belt and away from her.

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Despite the poor conditions and unsavory company, Cora had managed to catch a few decent hours of sleep. She'd been back on Ukatis for much of it, in the warm, secure embrace of her mother—

—which was odd, given that neither of her parents had been particularly affectionate with their children.

She awoke slowly, peaceful face scrunching at the unpleasant sensation of something jabbing against her back. Murmuring sleepily, her eyes cracked open, slowly focusing through the scattered sunlight streaming through the gaps in their shelter.

"Wh—" Her gaze tightened in confusion at seeing Makko so close to her, vaguely recalling that she'd been facing his back last night. Her consciousness took a few more moments to kick in, and it was then where she registered his arm around her waist, somehow pinned in place by her own body.

Cora gasped, startling so hard that her back hit the wall of the shelter, jostling the sticks and leaves. "PERVERT!" She declared, scuttling to the corner of the cramped structure and sending him an iron glare. "How dare you! You said you'd do nothing improper!" Picking a small rock from the edge of the moss, she hurled it at Makko in a show of frustration.

Foregoing a more ladylike disposition, Cora grumbled as she crawled out of the shelter.

"Father warned me about boys like you!"

Makko Vyres

 

[Makko Vyres]

"Ow, fething hell!" cried Makko as the rock bounced off his forearm.

The sudden, sharp pain send his heart racing. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as his body went into a natural flight-or-fight response.

Given the anger that descended, his body had chosen fight.

He turned away from her sharply, looking for something to throw back as she crawled for the way out.

Unfortunately, before she could leave the shelter, he slammed into the sticks that she had already jostled. The sticks holding the frame of the canopy together.

There was a woosh as the entire canopy came crashing down and Makko found himself climbing out of a world of darkness and cold, wet leaves.

He cried out in surprise and frustration.

He burst out of the pile, covered in the rainwater the shelter had been made to keep off the pair.

Barely a moment passed before he leveled a finger at Cora and took a step forwards.

"This is your fault!" he declared angrily, wagging the finger. "I didn't put my arm there, why did you go and roll around the place!?"

 

[Corazona von Ascania]

Cora had been partially outside of the shelter when it collapsed on itself due to Makko's ministrations. Fortunately, she'd managed to scramble away from their temporary lodgings, which now sat in a pile on the ground. Unfortunately, she was now covered in leaves and rainwater.

"Look at what you've done!" She gasped, gesturing wildly to the heap of sticks and leaves, then to her own clothes.

Then he accused her, and her face flushed with anger.

"Excuse me? Why should I believe you? You're the one who was behaving so crudely last night!" Scoffing, she busied herself by aggressively wiping the debris and moisture from her clothes, or at least attempting to.

Flustered, her hands found her hips as she stared him down to continue the scolding.

"In addition to having no shelter, now our clothes are wet—do you have any idea how long they'll take to dry? Never, with humidity like this! I swear, do you ever think before your actions, Makko?"

Makko Vyres