milliways_bar | (no subject)

Entry tags:

kida,
voodoo

(no subject)

There is a child at the piano in Milliways tonight, but she isn't playing it, per se.

More like she's standing on her tiptoes to see the keys properly, poking at them--and her eyes go wide go wide when they produce a tinkling noise, urging her to repeat the gesture with her palm, not hitting hard but enough to produce clusters of noise.

It makes her giggle: they have nothing like this in Atlantis. Obviously, the instrument bears further scrutiny as she climbs up on the bench.

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It's been another long day at the firing range. Voodoo's half considering just pitching a tent there and getting it over with, but then again he can't argue with the -

Huh.

This is new.

Seems like someone's discovered the piano. ~~He has, too, come to think of it.~~

He approaches the piano, his M4 slung over his shoulder.

"You need help, kid?"

She looks up at him slowly, unblinking and silent. But she doesn't look scared, just curious.

He's tall.

Really tall, compared to her.

"Nuh-uh. 'S just fun. 'M not in trouble?"

Voodoo shakes his head and smiles. "Nah, you're not in trouble. Just wanted to see what you were doing."

He gives a sidelong glance to the piano and scratches his stubble.

"I think I remember how to work one of these..." he says, sitting down at the bench next to Kida.

Deep the back of his mind (deep as in you sure we can't take this to an antiques roadshow? deep), he vaguely recalls how Hot Cross Buns goes.

And, after a few missteps, he finally pulls it off.

He's not bad, but he should probably stick to his day job.

She watches him with rapt attention, reaching out to touch keys like he did though she doesn't grasp the concept of a melody involving particular keys.

"It doesn' work right," she says, brows furrowing as she tries it again.

"That's 'cause you're not pressing the right keys, sport." He plays the melody again, then points to one of the white keys in the middle.

"That's middle C. I'm just playing B, A, and G right here," he says, pointing to the respective keys in turn.

Kida nearly climbs over him to reach the proper keys, anklets and jewelry jangling on her limbs.

She plunks her fingers on the keys--obviously not musically trained at all by the way she has no sense of time or length of keystrokes--and comes up with something that sounds like Hot Cross buns played by a six-year-old.

The performance makes Voodoo wince a little, but he recovers.

"Okay, not bad, but you're playing quarter notes where you need half notes and halves when you need quarters." He plays the melody again.

"Quarter - quarter - half. Quarter - quarter - half. Now you try."

Kida does it again--the piano is such a new thing to her that even a simple melody hasn't gotten to the point of irritation. She bites her lip, but midway through the second repetition stops and considers Voodoo.

"How come you wear stuff on your legs?"

Voodoo blinks. Then -

"Oh, you mean this?" he says, patting the pistol holster on his right thigh.

"'s for my job. I'm a defense contractor," he lies.

"No, I mean these," she says, poking at the jeans. Her own legs are bare--as are the legs of every other Atlantean. "Nobody wears stuff like this where I'm from."

Blink. Blink.

"You guys don't wear pants?"

"Nuh-uh. 'S too hot in Atlantis."

Voodoo shrugs. "Makes sense."

Beat.

"Wait, Atlantis? As in under-the-sea Atlantis?"

She nods, with a bright smile. "Mmmhm. My name is Kida. 'S really Kidagakash, and people always address me by title, but I like just being Kida."

"Kida, huh? I like it. 's got a ring to it. People call me Voodoo."

"Voodoo," she repeats, smiling. "Okay. Does everybody where you're from carry these things?"

She touches the pistol holster with small fingers, bright-eyed and curious. Guns, along with musical instruments, are very new.

Voodoo shakes his head. "Not everyone. Maybe ten percent of the entire population. I'm just part of the ten percent." He gently pries her fingers off the holster. "But you really shouldn't touch it. These things are pretty godda - very dangerous."

She levels a look at him that's surprisingly glare-ish for such a young child. "Why? You don't say stuff is bad unless you say why."

Voodoo sighs, then unholsters the P226, ejects the magazine, and racks back the side, clearing the chamber. He catches the ejected round and holds it up for Kida to see.

"They're dangerous because they can kill people."

He never was very tactful. Or one for euphemisms.

"But my pet can kill people too," she says--pet is the only word the Bar can really find for the animal that Kida's raising much like a housecat--studying the bullet.

"It's tiny. What does it do?" she asks, peering at the round held between Voodoo's fingers.

"Nothing good. When I pull the trigger on this -" he motions to the P226 - "it flies out at about 340 meters per second. When it hits something, it penetrates it. If that something's a person, then it could wreck their internal organs. Or kill them if it hits their heart or brain."

"...Oh. You do that to people a lot?"

Ah, shit.

That's the one question they always ask.

"Only when I have to."

Which, incidentally, is a lot. More than he'd care to admit to a kid he just met, anyway.

"So you're a guard."

It's a very simple equation in her mind; guards carry weapons, everyone else stays out of their way when they're on the job. Only, the guards Kida knows carry spears. Not guns.

It's a considerably messier way to die, that's for sure, with a sharp stone point and the end of a stick buried in your gut. (Kida will grow up to be one of those guards, but she doesn't know this yet.) "Are you good at it?"

Sure, he'll go with guard. No rush to correct her.

"I'd say I'm good at it, sure. But there's always room for improvement."

Kida probably won't realize he means exactly that unless she visits the firing range sometime.

She nods sedately. "The guards at home use spears. Are those better?"

"I'd say they are. They've got much longer range, and they're about as lethal."

That, she considers. "And a longer range is a good thing." She hasn't yet begun to train for being a warrior, and so has no real grasp on the concept of being out of your enemy's range while they're still in yours. Nor does she have the faintest idea that this is a good thing, though if you sat her down and explained it she'd latch on pretty quick.

Kida sits down on the piano bench, thinking, and for a second her tattoos glow brighter, as does the crystal on a thong around her neck. It happens sometimes, though it makes it harder to mistake those blue designs on her cheek.

Voodoo just staaaaares.

"Uh...what was that?" he finally manages.

"What?"

Kida is expectant, but she's used to the tattoos by now and the blips of brighter light from the crystal. It's just what happens when she thinks about home.

"Your tattoos were glowing. So was that crystal-thing."

She looks down at the crystal, which has faded again.

"Oh, they do that. It's okay. Everybody's do sometimes."

...uh-huh.

"So...why were they glowing?"

"'Cause I was thinking about the guards at home. When you think about Atlantis your crystal flares."

"Oh."

That makes sense.

Kind of. Sort of. Not really.

"You're not Bound, are you?"

She shakes her head (don't worry, Voodoo, the narration doesn't get it any more than you do) and looks back at the door.

"Nuh-uh, I can still go home if I wanna. I will in a little bit." But she wants a milkshake first. (They're a very rare novelty for someone who lives in a place with no cows.)

"Oh."

A pause.

"So what do you do in your world?"

"I'm supposed to start lessons soon. I have to learn stuff like politics and formal addresses and stuff." Her tone of voice should be very easy to read on this: she really doesn't want to.

"Papa says it's what I have to do 'cause I'm the princess. And there's no prince." And even if there was, she'd have to do it anyway.

Voodoo grunts in sympathy. Because seriously, UGH, POLITICS.

"Can't pick your family, I guess. But it could always be worse."

"How?"

She wants to play in her water garden with her pet. Her mother is already dead and her father...isn't the same. Her city is mostly destroyed and she can't see the sun anymore, and her friends are dead, so many of her people are already dead. She doesn't rule them yet, and won't for a long time, but still... How could it be worse?

Voodoo pauses at that.

It's another triple-degree day in Mogadishu, compounded by both their loadout and the hot desert gusts coming in out of the inland. Yesterday Fifth Platoon cleared the warehouses on the south side of the multinational compound. Today it's the west side.

He's third in the stack, behind Vandal and Chemo. Chemo peeks inside, then looks back at them. Two floors, he mouths. No skinnies.

Clear it, Vandal mouths.

Chemo nods, then pivots around the doorway into the warehouse, his M4 up. Vandal and Voodoo follow, Vandal covering the stairs, Voodoo covering the first floor.

"First floor clear!"

"Stairway clear!"

"Second flo-" Chemo's interrupted by an earthshattering BOOM as the second floor explodes in a hail of twisted metal and glass. The blast knocks Voodoo on his ass. The last thing he sees before his vision goes black is a shard of glass the size of his fist sticking out of his leg.

It doesn't take long for him to regain consciousness.

The shouting helps.

"Skinnies on a balcony! 10 o'clock! Supressing fire!"

"DOC! DOC! CHEMO'S DOWN!"

A hand, huge and strong, grabs him by his lapel and drags him out of the doorway.

"Off your ass and on your feet! We're in contact!"

The profanity shakes him awake, and he racks back the charging handle on his M60.

It's going to be a long day.

"Lots of ways, sport. Lots of ways."

Kida doesn't answer or offer even any semblance of affirmation.She has nothing to reference but the cataclysm, and she doesn't remember all of that. Just the light and her mother slipping away and letting go of her hand. That she took her bracelet.

"Okay."

Voodoo pauses before standing up. It's time to try his hand at the kill house.

"See you around, Kida. Hang tough."

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