Stella Vir: First Flight

As the three members huddle up Desai begins to lay down a rough idea of a plan that he had thought of while on his shift.

“Okay so we should try to go in a week from now, we use the lamp posts to mimic days here. So at some point they get dim and then go completely dark. It’s more prevalent in the lamp posts near the center of the camp but not here. So just wait for me to come by and grab the two of you, I’ll be stationed that night near the edge of the camp where the backline trains used to run. There is a pathway that will draw us to the exit there”. -explains the guard.

Razzo asks: “So in the meantime what should me and Dre be doing to prepare for this?”

Desai whispers cautiously: “Just act normal, be helpful but not too helpful, don’t try to attract too much attention to yourselves and try not to get too close to anyone. Just try to keep a low profile, and I’ll try to get the necessary equipment as well”.

Dre asks: “So Desai what’s going to happen during that night?”

The guard says: “We have to move inconspicuously throughout the camp as the leaders don’t know this is happening, and carry only what you can carry in your hands and maybe we’ll be able to find a way to transport more afterwards. We also have to go through a pathway that has been barricaded because it caved in and collapsed. I've gone through it myself in the past and it can be a little snug at times but both of you should fit fine compared to me”.

Dre mutters under its breath: “Sure sounds like an easy way to get killed”.

Razzo nudges Dre and replies: “Stop being so negative we’ll be fine just hold your breath in instances where it’s snug you heard the man”.

“What breath?!? I’m an automaton, a living machine, doesn’t mean I require oxygen” - exclaims Dre.

“I guess get skinny or something? I mean you got one less limb that you need to get through”.

Dre rolls its eyes but decides not to make anymore comments as to not drag out this task any longer than it needs to be.

The guard turns and is about to get going but adds a few more things: “Also two more things, first once we get out of the tunnel we will be met by a friend of mine who’s a scout. The second thing is the place where we’re going was last known to us to be occupied and under surveillance of the Minerau, so we have to be careful as to not alert them while we’re there”.

Dre mutters one last backhanded comment: “Great…”

“Okay I guess we’re on the same page in that case, see you in a week from now”. - says Razzo with a childish grin.

Desai nods his head and goes back to the center of the camp where they were last stationed. Dre and Razzo are left alone outside of their pop up house. The two of them go back into the pop house with a brief breeze sweeping throughout the camp and flowing freely throughout all the holes in the building. Dre takes a seat on its bed and powers itself down, Razzo takes a seat across from the robot but his anxious, and excited state doesn’t allow him to rest so he goes and sits outside leaning against the pop house. He makes a ball of energy to fidget with and looks up at the dark ceiling of the station. He spends hours just staring up before closing his eyes and entering a peaceful nap. The next few days happen just as Desai described, with Dre and Razzo leading normal lives in the camp. Dre went around to various points in the camp with a group of builders putting up structural supports and the precise points to carry out maximum effectiveness. Razzo was spending more time with Izabela learning how to control his energy and sculpt it better into the uses that he wanted to make it into. The first morning Razzo didn’t really know what to do as when he trained with the light post he almost exploded half the camp and fried Dre, he couldn’t ask Dre for advice as the robot had already left to go work on setting up support beams throughout the camp. So Razzo went exploring around the camp and stumbled upon Kronos who was grudgingly helping put up the support beams Dre pointed out were required. Kronos notices Razzo walking up to him and rolls his eyes before he even walks up to him and hopes he won’t be bothered by him. His hopes were falsely rooted.

Razzo tries to ask Kronos: “Can you tell me…”

“What?!? What do you want? You want me to redecorate the camp too just like your robotic friend is making me do with his recommendations?” - says Kronos aggressively.

“Point me in the direction of Izabela, please point me in her direction” - Razzo quietly finishes his sentence.

Kronos points in the direction towards the middle of the camp and Razzo begins heading in that direction without saying so much as another word.

Razzo wanders in that direction for a while until he sees the leader's tent. He approaches the tent and the two guards that had previously given Dre a hard time halt him.

One of them asks: “What is your business here?”

Razzo asks: “Can I see Izabela?”

Before the guard can say anything the second guard cuts him off: “Just go ahead”. And signals with his hand for him to come in.

Razzo pops his head into the tent and sees Kaner Jefe and Em discussing something around the end of the table. They turn to take a look at him.

Kaner asks: “Can I assist you with something champ?”

“Can you tell me where I can find Izabela?”

Jefe mocks under his breath: “Already lost his girlfriend yikes”.

Em answers: “Shut up Jefe, she’s probably at her camp getting ready for another scouting expedition, you can find her camp to the left of the entrance that you came into”.

“Thanks!”

As he pops his head back out he hears the two guards arguing whether they should have just let him in without asking the leaders.

The first guard exclaims: “We are guards, we're not meant to let everyone in!”

“I’m not getting in shit because of your nonsense again, I don’t want to deal with Anker”. - replies the second guard.

Razzo slips by behind them thinking ‘that’s not my problem’ as the two guards continue to go back and forth with one another. He continues to travel to the edge where he was brought in by the guards. Then he gets to the edge of the entrance and thinks to himself ‘they said go left but they didn’t specify if I’m going left from inside or from the outside, well logically it would from the outside because that’s the entrance right?’ He decides to go right and travels through and ends up at a nice camp filled with people.

Razzo asks one of the people: “Is the leader here?”

One of the people points him in the middle direction of this camp. He thinks to himself ‘why are they so keen on always having everything stationed in the middle’. Razzo gets to the middle of the camp and asks if he can come in and hears from the tent a deep voice telling him “Come in”.

Razzo thinks that it would be odd of Izabela to have a deep voice considering she hasn’t had one up to this point and voices don’t magically get deeper overnight unless you’re this guy Alfred from school. But that was just a terrorist posing as Alfred because everyone saw right through the charade, especially considering Alfred also grew a ginger beard down to his chest overnight as well. Razzo snaps out of his thoughts by shaking his head and steps through into the tent only to see Anker sitting shirtless with a large round belly and chest slouched over the table. He appeared to be inebriated smoking from a tube connected to a stand with herbs and coals burning up above.

Anker exclaims: “Ah Razzo” he says accentuating his name “Just the person I wanted to see, how are ye boy?”

“I thought this was Izabela’s camp, why did you want to see me?”

Anker smiles: “Company’s always nice when you’re having a smoke. Ye must’ve gone the wrong way, but since yer here ye care for a toke? It’s that good good!”

“No I’m okay I need to learn how to work with energy better”. - says Razzo shaking his head.

Anker raises a finger: “I can be of service with dat!”

Anker goes to try to get up and topples himself over and falls on his belly before rolling over his back.

Anker takes a deep breath and says: “You know what, I think I’m just going to take a moment here instead, so maybe do go find Izabela after all”.

Razzo walks over and stands concernedly over Anker: “Do you want me to go get someone to help you?”

Anker smiles: “No it’s okay this was that good good stuff just a likkle bit stronga, I’ll take me a nap and be back to normals soon”.

Razzo shrugs his shoulders: “Okay if ya say so”.

After that odd interaction Razzo exits the tent to continue back the other way towards Izabela’s camp. Before he leaves Anker's camp he stops a small group of young adults who are around the same age as him and tells them to check up on Anker in about an hour or so just in case. Feeling like he did all he could he exits the camp and continues back towards the way he came and in hopes of finding Izabela. Razzo reaches the entrance of the encampment where he was first brought in and decides there’s no point in overthinking this and simply moves forward. He swiftly gets to the entrance of what he believes is Izabela’s camp and asks around if there’s a way to go and see her. They point him in the direction of the middle of the camp, Razzo goes to the middle and notices the leader's tent.

He announces himself upon arriving: “Is anyone home?”

He hears a soft voice come from the inside: “Come in”.

Razzo sticks his head in first and then walks the rest of the way. Upon entering the tent Razzo sees Izabela sitting behind a table with three other people around her, one man and two women with some kind of plans being looked at and discussed in whispers. Izabela looks up to see who it is disturbing her meeting. Upon seeing it’s Razzo she rolls up the plans and hastily dismisses the rest of the people with a few final words for the people leaving.

Izabela tells them: “We will discuss plans later”.

She focuses her attention on the newcomer: “So what can I help you with Razzo, do you prefer Razzo by any chance? It just rolls off the tongue better”.

Razzo says shyly: “Either works whatever’s easier for you. The reason I came is I need help practicing using my energy appropriately”.

Izabela smiles at him and tells him: “Come with me…”

Together they walk outside of her section of the camp and back towards the entrance that they came in. As they get to the edge where the trains used to run she hops down onto the tracks. She looks back at him and waves over for him to follow her onto the tracks as well. He slowly climbs down into the tracks, and they face each other face to face.

Izabela tells him: “If you’ve never used your energy before then it will take lots of practice to be able to wield it like an extension of yourself. Fortunately for you, you’ve got a lot of time to get good at it”.

She pulls a little bit of energy out of her wrist and makes a bow with her finger. Then she puts her hair back in a ponytail and ends the energy stream while using the bow to hold her hair.

She smiles at him and says: “You see it may seem simple but it carries its own challenges to be able to master it. It requires you to be in tune with yourself and feel how much you’re drawing and how much you need to in a given situation”.

“Well how do I know how much is enough in a given situation, and how much is too much?”

Izabela tells him: “It’s hard to know it takes practice and lots of it to become fully in tune with yourself, let's try it out and see what you’re made of”.

Razzo tries to pull energy out but he cannot do it consistently to make the more complex shapes that Izabela tells him to make. Razzo’s energy is much more chaotic than that of Izabelas and forces him to grow more and more frustrated as he tries harder and harder. With the energy coils becoming more unpredictable in the way they are pulled and begin to come out in places where Razzo isn’t even pulling the energy from. Then an energy flare bursts out from Razzo’s core and is sent Izabela's way with her only being able to make a shield in the last moment to protect herself from the flare. As her shield is hit with the flare and she absorbs the blow it sends her flying back and she barely gets her footing whilst stopping just before the wall of the tunnel and dropping down to one knee.

She yells to Razzo: “ENOUGH!”

He turns to look at her and she's down to one knee 20 meters from him. He stops what he’s doing and runs over to help pick her up. He extends an arm and helps him up and she grabs his arms to help herself up.

She tells him: “You’re far too emotional with your energy, you must control yourself and have poise if you are to use the energy at all”.

Razzo stands with his head down and looks defeated by what she’s telling him now. He remains silent and doesn’t say anything as if he’s receiving a lecture from a teacher for doing something bad and getting in trouble for his shenanigans. She sighs and walks over to him.

Izabela touches him on the shoulder and says: “It’s okay a lot of people don’t get it right away and it can be very tough. Especially for you who has so much power".

Razzo replies quietly: “I get what you mean but how am I supposed to get any good and be helpful if I can’t even control my emotions. How am I supposed to help?”

Izabela gives him a soft smile: “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, you’re just going to have to practice and try to go slow as much as you can and take it out little by little”.

Razzo nods his head in agreement but a disappointing result for his first training session as he thought he would be able to get good at this skill right away.

“Don’t worry you got this, but let's go back to the camp. I have to go on a scouting journey later today and you should try to relax and take your mind off things”. - she says trying to comfort him.

“Can I come with you on the scouting mission?”

There’s a brief moment of silence between the two of them as Razzo eagerly awaits a response while Izabela tries to think of a kind way to say no.

Izabela decides to compromise: “Listen, let's think about it for the next one but tomorrow lets do this again and see if there’s any progress made”.

Razzo remembers what the guard said about keeping a low profile before the operation and breathes a sigh of relief that she didn’t say yes. That would not have been very good of him to do considering the operation they’re attempting themselves in a week's time. Razzo agrees with Izabela as they head back to the camp. They part ways as she enters her camp and he continues on to his own pop up tent to meet Dre.

She calls after him: “Just don’t stress yourself out, you'll be great!”

But how could Razzo not stress himself out when he felt like the whole fate of the universe was riding on his shoulders. He didn’t want to disappoint people the way that he had gotten used to and the expectations that were lost on him. But now it mattered more than ever, and what if he couldn’t live up to them? What would happen if he failed now? He pondered these thoughts as he headed back on a short journey to his pop up house at the very end of the camp.