Concurrence Chapter 4-5

2800 words. Reworked a few of the initial paragraphs so there's some slight overlap from the last update

“This was all I could find,” she said, depositing her find on the countertop. He quirked a brow at her haul – a few pieces of fruit, a houseplant, and a collection of random household items.

“Better than nothing,” he said, grabbing an orange off the counter before it rolled away. He slid it along with his own findings across the counter, appraising their food with a satisfied nod.

“This should be enough for now,” he said, pulling a nearby stool closer, its legs sliding loudly against the tiles. Seela didn’t bother with a seat, crossing her legs as she sat on the cold floor on the other side of the counter, her immense height putting her at close to eye level with him.

Plucking her helmet off with a hand, she set it down with a thud, the Major getting a clean look at her exposed head for the first time. It was smooth and somewhat flat, tapering into a winding neck, her blue skin completely smooth save for a small number of scutes trailing down the back of her neck. Her hide reminded him of stretched leather, not a crinkle on her from what he could tell.

She turned her purple eyes to their haul. He had seen other Elites without their helmets before, dead ones of course, but something about her was different - she wasn’t as… bestial as her male counterparts. Whereas her brothers would have exaggerated proportions and huge mandibles that twitched like the fangs of a spider, Seela’s bone structure was more tapered, her features complemented by her flush skin. She could almost pass off as being acceptable to the eye, for an alien.

He smirked behind his visor as she picked something up from the pile, lifting it to her mouth, the four mandibles serving as her mouth flexing open. The Major noted the inside of each mandible was layered with spiky teeth, the sight making him grimace. Maybe acceptable was too polite.

“Uh, Seela?” he asked. She paused mid-motion, her eyes turning to him in an unspoken question. “You know that’s… toothpaste, right?”

“Yes,” she said, obviously lying, but squeezing the tube anyway as if to spite him, her gums smacking noisily as the paste splashed against her mouth. “Mm, interesting flavour.”

“Toothpaste isn’t food,” he sighed.

“You said if it had writing on it, it was edible!”

“I… just eat this,” he said, tossing her the bag of trail mix, a part of him wanting to see it smack off her sloped head. She snatched it out of the air, the plastic crinkling as she appraised its contents with a frown, narrowing her eyes at him after a moment.

“This is your find,” she said, gesturing at him with the bag.

“So? Trade you for the orange.”

“Trade?” she asked, following his pointed finger towards the fruit pile. A strange expression passed over her features as she paused for the next few moments, the alien soon nodding her head. “Fine, that is acceptable.”

She rolled the orange towards him, the Major stopping it before it fell, peeling at the skin with a finger as he watched her dip a hand into the trail mix. He suspected her way of eating would be entirely different, given her strange mouth structure, but she proved him wrong, her mandibles serving as extendible teeth that pulled the various nuts into her throat, the alien making a face as she swallowed a portion of it. “Salty,” she said. “but I like a brackish aftertaste.”

“They say you are what you eat,” the Major chuckled, but the jab was lost on her, Seela cupping another handful of the mix and chewing contentedly for a while.

“What are you doing?” she asked after a bit of silence. He had found a kitchen knife in one of the drawers and was slicing the orange into pieces, digging the point into each slice.

“Don’t like the seeds,” he said, tossing one such seed away and moving on to the next. “Looks like you can eat human food. And pretty well, too.”

“It would seem so.” She was wolfing the packet down, putting any thoughts of savouring aside. Weighing a couple hundred pounds, she must prefer the high protein count. “What is that one there?” she asked, pointing at the bag of chips.

“Pure calories,” he answered. That got her attention, Seela hovering a large hand over her pile of fruit as she contemplated what to trade.

“Just take it,” he said, tossing the packet at her. She caught it, her fingers so large they engulfed the bag, Seela flashing him a quizzical glance.

“You do not wish to eat?” she asked.

“I’ve always liked sweet over savoury, I’ll live.”

“But you are so small, surely one fruit cannot suffice you?”

He shrugged, silently going back to his orange cutting. “One would think you were trying to poison me,” she noted. “for all I know, this could be a bag of chemicals that would kill me as soon as I inhaled them.”

“Believe me, if I wanted to kill you, I’d do it with a gun, or one of these,” he said, waving the knife back and forth.

“Yes, I do recall you trying once before,” she chuckled. It was a halting, gruff noise, more a series of huffs than a laugh. “I would also grant you a similar death, Imp, for all you’ve done you deserve no less.”

“Gee, thanks a lot.”

“Do not misunderstand, a quick end is a powerful show of honour, as there is no prolonged suffering for either party. I am but returning the compliment.”

He tilted his head at her, and she chuckled again, his reaction amusing her.

“Indeed,” she replied, tearing open the chips, holding one up to her snout before taking an experimental bite. “Despite being my enemy – these things are stale –  you have not made an attempt to betray me, which is more than can be said for my former Covenant brethren, and that deserves praise.”

“Does it? Even the fact I’d shoot you on sight if we hadn’t ended up stranded together by circumstance?”

“Especially, that fact,” she replied. “I felt somewhat in danger when you came at me with that knife a while ago, I can only imagine facing you down in equal footing would be exhilarating. You are fearless if nothing else.”

It seemed her whole outlook revolved around combat and glory, no wonder she had been so against the idea of concealment.

He noticed she was almost done with the bag of chips, sliding another of his finds over to her side. “Let’s see if you have a sweet tooth,” he said, the Elite examining the bag of opened candy. “Even though sweet is the last word I’d use to describe you.”

She pinched one of the little rocks of hardened sugar between her nails, beginning to nibble at its surface with her mandibles. As soon as she bit into it, she spat it back out, the candy falling to the floor with a loud tap. “Argh, disgusting! Humans eat that drivel?”

He chuckled, and after a bit more knife work, his orange was ready to eat. He set the knife aside, lifting his hands to his helmet. The slightly grainy view of his HUD gently petered out as he lifted it away, and before the neck of the helmet filled his vision, he could have sworn Seela’s mandibles were flexing in what might be shock.

Seela

Streets of New Mombasa

Eight Hours After Rupture

“Argh, disgusting!” she said, trying to lick her mandibles clean of the overwhelming taste, but that just made it worse as the sensation glued to her tongue. “Humans eat that drivel?”

He laughed at her plight, Seela pushing away the candy as he called it, putting a hand on her stomach once the sugary taste subsided. It was liberating to have a meal in her after so long running on an empty stomach, and she couldn’t help but direct her appreciation towards the Imp. He had found more food than she did, but had elected to share rather than keep it all for himself. Giving meals away, let alone trading them, was unheard of in the Covenant, and once again she found herself conflicted that this creature had shown her more charity than all her Covenant brothers combined.

He was still a Heretic, of course, and an annoying little thing, his earlier accusation still fresh on her mind, but his resentment towards her seemed to be born from her Covenant background, not because she was female, which she had expected it to be, which was a nice change of pace from her prejudiced kinsman.

She was brought out of her thoughts by a clicking noise, and she looked up, seeing that the Imp was fiddling with his helmet, apparently done with his strange fruit de-seeding. His hands gripped the sides of his visor, Seela splaying her mandibles wide in surprise. He wasn’t going to take it off, was he?

The meal had put her in an acceptable mood, but not that acceptable, and she’d rather keep the food on the inside than out. Yet a kind of perverted intrigue washed over her, what kind of grotesque, abomination would look back at her if he was doing what she thought he was doing? Nobody in Regret’s fleet knew what Demons and Imps looked like beneath their intimidating armour, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be the first.

A wave of shock eclipsed her features as his helmet gently lifted away, a rush of surprise soon following. She had only been felt this kind of astonishment once before, back when she had been offered the position of Minor in Regret’s frontline ranks.

His face was covered in pinkish skin, topped with fuzzy, brown hair that was cut short, a pair of equally brown eyes with white sclera peering back at her. A small button nose sloped out of the centre of its face, and below that, a pair of lips sat above a small jaw covered in ungroomed stubble.

The Imp was… Human. She hadn’t known what to expect, chitinous plates like a Yanme’e, perhaps, mixed with something much more alien and hellish. Instead he looked, well, like a Human.

She watched with wide eyes as he set his helmet down next to hers, the starkly different headgears seeming to stare at one another, just as their users were in that moment.

His smooth skin was covered in a few faded scars, Seela unable to tell how old or new they were, the one sweeping over one of his eyes drawing her attention, had some beast mauled him? She finally tore her eyes from his flat face when he moved his arm, a piece of the orange ‘orange’ in his hand. He took a tentative bite of the fruit, Seela noticing his teeth were small and dull.

“You… You are Human?” she asked, struggling to find her voice through the soup of confusion that was her thoughts. “How?”

He took another bite, still staring at her, raising one of his hairy eyebrows at her. He seemed just as confused as she was by the question. “What do you mean, ‘how’?”

“This is… how can you…” She hated how confused her tone sounded, taking a moment to collect herself. “You are an Imp, yes? You wear their armour, you fall from the sky like they do, you fight like one.”

He chewed in silence on his fruit, his jaw not powerful enough to consume the whole piece in one go. “Explain yourself,” she snapped. “what trickery is this?”

“The hell’s gotten into you?” he replied, Seela thinking the same thing. “I was born here on Earth, that’s about as Human as you get.”

“Born?” She balked at that. Imps were created, not born, at least that’s what she’d thought until now. Was this why he had been confused when she called him an Imp?

While she battled with this new revelation, the Imp, no the Human, removed one of his gloves, seeing the juices from the fruit were making a mess. His hand was likewise smooth and covered in pink skin, each of his five digits tipped with blunt nails, not claws as she had expected Imps to wield.

“I thought you were a…” Seela trailed off, narrowing her eyes at his face again, as though she was trying to will him into turning into the monstrosity he should be.

“Am I that ugly?” he chuckled, leaning back when Seela craned her neck towards him. His flippancy was a complete contrast to her amazement at this development, and it agitated her.

“Why did you not tell me you were Human?” she said, leaning back and resting her arms on the counter.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he countered, and it was true. Same height, same build, all the differences were in his combat prowess. How could she and by extension, the Covenant, be so easily tricked? “Did you actually think I was a devil or something under all this gear?”

“Yes!” she said. “Imps put up more of a fight than Human warriors, you couldn’t possibly be one of them, you had to be a different species, summoned or created by your false Gods, perhaps.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, chewing on another slice of orange. “Anyway, you thirsty?” he asked, switching topics. “Found some soft drinks, but I’m guessing you prefer clean old water.”

She was still reeling from this new development, but her eagerness to sate her thirst eventually overpowered her hesitance. In fact, knowing he was Human put her a little more at ease. He didn’t have claws or fangs, he wasn’t some abomination with burning eyes, he was mortal, like her or anyone else. His features sort of reminded her of a Jiralhanae, minus the fangs and snout, and smell most of all, which she would prefer any day over what she had imagined Imps would look like.

Despite her discouragement from the candy, she tried his cans of liquid anyway just to see what they were like. The soda was like drinking down thick syrup, Seela unable to swallow a single gulp. He fetched her a glass of water from one of the taps, which was still working despite the carrier taking a chunk out of the city, and her stomach grumbled its approval as she quenched her thirst.

The Major offered her the last of his findings, warning her that it was also a sugary substance. To her it looked like small balls of frozen water, but pink in colour, and he used a spoon to scoop little chunks off so they could fit in his tiny mouth.

“You Im… Humans certainly like your sugars,” Seela noted, and it felt strange to refer to him as Human, like a part of her still wasn’t convinced of his species. “but I will try some.”

The spoons were too small for her to use properly, so she just scooped the substance straight out of the tub with her hand. It felt like solidified cream, and her mandibles had difficulty gripping the wet substance, but it left a very fruity taste on her tongue and was more edible than the drink or candy had been. Apparently ice cream was made purely for the pleasure of consuming, not at all like the military rations she was accustomed to.

“You said you were born here,” Seela said, breaking the lingering silence between them as they ate. “Did you live in one of these buildings?”

“Nah, I meant here as in, this planet,” he replied, his spoon clinking against the bottom of his bowl. “Can’t imagine living in this soup of a city.”

“It is very condensed,” she agreed. “I couldn’t begin to guess how many of your kin lived here before… we arrived.”

“One-twenty million, give or take,” he answered, Seela’s eyes widening as she recalled Human numerics. “I don’t know how they did it, but the whole city got evac’d a few hours after your fleet moved into high orbit, saved a lot of people.”

“Some, not all,” she corrected. “We crossed many Humans on our patrol routes, and some of them were… civvies, as you call them.”

“Yeah?” he said. He wanted to ask her to elaborate, but didn’t, perhaps assuming she did what anyone in the Covenant did when they found a Human.

“On my last patrol, we engaged a mix of warriors and non-combatants. This was when the carrier was still above the city,” she added, pushing the tub of ice cream aside, as the memory had ruined her appetite. “I only found out a few minutes later the warriors were covering the retreat of a few civilians, one of which I believe was a female, as she was carrying an infant. She put herself between me and the child, as any mother would when an alien aims its carbine at you.”

Her eyes met his brown ones. “You asked me before if I always thought the Covenant was in the wrong. I do not regret my service to the cause, but in that moment, when I saw that child, it was a very… stark reminder that the Covenant is not all it is made out to be back on the homeworld.”