Lament and Fruition
A History Between the Head Agents of the Echelon
By Kagomes_Luver2789
Part 5: "A Goodbye to Rural Nobility"
-------------------------------------
Homesickness is a dreadful and forlorn feeling indeed.
It's even more so when you know that there's no ailment for your own.
-------------------------------------
Heh. I still remember all the times a certain someone would pride himself in speaking to me by my nickname, Kay El. It was a memento from none other than my father, and he had donned it on me since... well, since before I could honestly recall any memories of my childhood. It's a funny thing really, how my father came to call me such, because it started (if I can remember correctly what my mother told me) when he began another of his usual verbal tussles with my mother.
Now, I say it was usual because I knew from experience how much my father loved to pick fights with anyone, and more often than not, he did. One of his prized rivals just happened to be my usually quiet, yet eloquent, mother. He would bicker about petty things with her, from losing so much as a single stalk of sugar cane from the harvest inventory to missing his precious cup of red wine every dinner (usually due to the fact that he had drank it all before evening).
However, when my mother's time was due and was about to give birth to my infant life, my father, instead of being the comforting and conciliating man most women expect to have at their side, was being as querulous as ever, with his topic of choice being the name they would give me. My father was bent on having my name be "Kristobal, the Third", but my mother heavily preferred the name Eric because it was the name of her father; and also because she thought it was a very euphonic name, or so she told me (and still does).
She had fought with him right to the moment where she was literally minutes away from giving birth to me. Thus, my father, who was now tired and angry from hours and hours on end with no fruitful result, gave up and let my mother have it her way. With her exhaustingly long fight out of the way, my mother was full of pride in her triumph as she squeezed me out of her petite body.
However, her victory was short-lived. Upon her return to the manor with my giddish body now clutched in her loving embrace, my father acted as if he had no memory of their last debate and was calling me by his beloved Kristobal. At first, my mother paid no heed to his complete disregard of the fact that she had won out in their little feud, but her patience could only hold out for so long. By evening, she was like a kettle on a stove and was now completely beyond her boiling point. Heh, I remember my father once described it to me as "an evening with the devil's mistress" (of course, he never told my mother what he thought of her tantrum-induced rage). The mind can only imagine what atrocities my mother could have committed when the rational part of her cerebrum was busted like a bulb.
Needless to say, my father never called me by the name Kristobal again, lest he meet with my mother's satanic temper once more. However, he never let go of his preference for the name completely. It was at times when my mother wasn't around and he knew he could get away with it that he would call me by a short little nickname that he came up with: Kay El. It served as a subtle hint towards the name he wanted his son to have.
I wonder if my father would have been proud to know that I use his affectionate sobriquet more than my own name now.
* * *
I don't want to sound like I'm ragging on him when I say this, but Juan had a strange love for mythology. And it wasn't any kind of mythology; it was a specific love for Greek and Roman mythology. And it wasn't any kind of love; it was more like an obsessive, undying love that you would normally find in engrossed bookworms and nerds. Or stalkers.
...Okay, so maybe I am trying to rag on him. But he doesn't know that.
Anyways, his strange love for a strange subject came guaranteed with a strange story, as one would expect. For that, we'd have to take a slight detour to both of our childhoods, back when we were in elementary school. It was during the time when we were still in second grade (This, fortunately for me, was the only time I'd ever spend a year with him in school, since this was about the time the school had become privy to just how advanced Juan was. He would normally have been in preschool, but the teachers noticed early on how easily he soaked in the material, and had moved him up a full three years, much to my chagrin), when we had begun our semester-long unit on Greek mythology.
Juan, for his part, was not very interested in the subject at first, like most of the other students in the class. His face would always gnarl with utter distaste at the thought of having to learn about a mysterious culture's equally mysterious myriad of deities, many of which didn't even seem to make a lick of sense. It is also now that I would like to take the time to expostulate on the little power struggle that went on in our class on a day-to-day basis between my stout classmate and our woeful instructor. There was almost never a day where Juan would not openly object to some material in the class that he found tedious, boring or simply not to his fancy in any way, shape or form. At first our teacher would retort with a simple 'because you have to' or 'live with it', but after several months of constant belligerent remarks and behavior, the most he could illicit from her was an exasperated sigh or grunt. Apparently, Juan had made an adult reach the end of her long reserves of patience (yet again).
However, there was something about ancient Roman and Greek mythology that Juan seemed to find fascinating. Perhaps it was the allure of such vast stories of triumph and grandeur by beings that no sane man would ever believe inhabited the world; maybe it was the inspirational struggles depicted in stories of mere mortals taking on and sometimes even trumping the gods; or maybe he just liked the pictures in the book. Knowing Juan, it could have been any of the three. The fact of the matter is that at the end of unit, he was infatuated beyond a shred of doubt with the subject of Mythology. Infatuated to the point where he would probably marry his own book if the legal system allowed.
One day whilst my friends and I were walking up to the lunch counter at our school, Juan decided to tag along behind us, dragging along a bag that seemed to weigh more than himself (not very hard to find a lot of that, actually). We were used to having the runt follow us from time to time, but we were not used to seeing him tote around such a large bag. As expected, queries arose.
The first to speak his mind was one of my friends; "Whatcha got in there, squirt?"
"Well, if you must know, it's full of Mythology books from the library," replied Juan, pulling out a picture book with an image of Zeus on its cover and the title, Greek Myths for Children.
I took the book from his tiny hands and started fingering through the pages, much to his annoyance.
"Hey!" he yelled, angered by the sudden loss of prized treasure, "Give that back, Eric! That one's my favorite!"
I glanced at him with mischievous eyes before closing the book and tossing it in his direction, watching him as he stumbled sideways to catch the book before it fell to the ground. I simply laughed as he glared at me with menacingly childish eyes.
"Don't let that temper raise too much, Zeus," I teased playfully.
"That's not my name, meanie!" he replied poutfully.
"Really?" I responded with sarcastic confusion, "I could have sworn it was by how much you love using it!"
To this my friends broke into giggles, pointing fingers at Juan and calling him 'Zeus' before moving further along the lunch counter to get our meals, leaving him where he stood with a slightly teary-eyed face. As I probably could have surmised, my little taunts in the school's lunchroom didn't go 'unnoticed' (by unnoticed, I mean untattled) by the caf supervisor. After receiving the umpteenth lecture about my use of words with others that semester, I finally decided that my father was completely right about calling the Alvarez untrustworthy. It was from that time on that the rivalry between Juan and I exploded to the proportions that they were for the next couple of years.
However, what I didn't expect was the label I placed on him to become as permanent as it did.
* * *
Two years. How does one interpret it? Do they see it as a lapse of seven hundred thirty days? As a span of twenty-four months? Or perhaps as a period of eight seasonal changes?
However they view it, I certainly knew one thing: for Juan and me, it represented the time we had currently spent searching for clues; for leads; for revenge.
There were a lot of changes that happened in both of us throughout that time, though. I could certainly tell that Juan had matured an awful lot (and if I'm so bold, I would even say he had matured more than I had. Shocking!). While we may have started somewhat rough around the edges, the two years of traveling and searching together established a sturdy camaraderie between the two of us. We had grown two distinct, yet similar personalities. Juan had become a more serious, collected kind of guy, something he had to be in order to even think about being taken lightly by anyone at his age. For my own part, I had grown a deal more than Juan (physically, that is) and I seemed to be lacking that seriousness that now characterized him. If anything, I had become more cynical (and comical?) in my approach towards everyday life and getting by. Don't get me wrong; I was still as adamant as Juan was in pursuing our assailants, but I just didn't feel the need to take the lifestyle that accompanied that pursuit as serious anymore. While I sat around and drank beer, Juan was usually analyzing clues and possible leads on the matter. I considered myself the brawn of the duo; Juan was the brains.
However, these last two years weren't spent on just idle scheming, fruitless search and drawn-out character development. On the contrary, we had actually unearthed quite a bit of information regarding the "men in black" as we had come to call the intruders on the night of the attacks. After many a day loitering around in bars and pubs by myself (since Juan obviously didn't look or act the age to get in [haha, I love these cheap shots]), I gained quite an earful of a conversation between two men in uniform and a friend of theirs sitting at the table behind me at a bar. Apparently these two men served in a special section of the Actonian military, a covert organization that this region's presiding officer had put together, comprised of a force of erstwhile mercenaries and bounty hunters with empty holes in their wallets. From what I gathered, this "unit", which, at the time, was kept hidden even from the governor, was supposed to be an elimination task force; in essence, a group of hired assassins/hitmen, meant to "silence" those who opposed our governmental overseer. Therefore, it was no surprise to me when I learned that our particular region's presiding officer was none other than the ever so infamous Ozzal. Knowing that alone made the thought of revenge all the sweeter.
One last thing: I couldn't hear well for the music blaring in the pub, but I believe the men had said the name of this organization was the Actonian Secret Elite Force. However, by the time we had finally reached the phase of our vengeance where we would confront these uniformed assassins once more, they had already gained a more...established name:
The Echelon.
By Kagomes_Luver2789
Part 5: "A Goodbye to Rural Nobility"
-------------------------------------
Homesickness is a dreadful and forlorn feeling indeed.
It's even more so when you know that there's no ailment for your own.
-------------------------------------
Heh. I still remember all the times a certain someone would pride himself in speaking to me by my nickname, Kay El. It was a memento from none other than my father, and he had donned it on me since... well, since before I could honestly recall any memories of my childhood. It's a funny thing really, how my father came to call me such, because it started (if I can remember correctly what my mother told me) when he began another of his usual verbal tussles with my mother.
Now, I say it was usual because I knew from experience how much my father loved to pick fights with anyone, and more often than not, he did. One of his prized rivals just happened to be my usually quiet, yet eloquent, mother. He would bicker about petty things with her, from losing so much as a single stalk of sugar cane from the harvest inventory to missing his precious cup of red wine every dinner (usually due to the fact that he had drank it all before evening).
However, when my mother's time was due and was about to give birth to my infant life, my father, instead of being the comforting and conciliating man most women expect to have at their side, was being as querulous as ever, with his topic of choice being the name they would give me. My father was bent on having my name be "Kristobal, the Third", but my mother heavily preferred the name Eric because it was the name of her father; and also because she thought it was a very euphonic name, or so she told me (and still does).
She had fought with him right to the moment where she was literally minutes away from giving birth to me. Thus, my father, who was now tired and angry from hours and hours on end with no fruitful result, gave up and let my mother have it her way. With her exhaustingly long fight out of the way, my mother was full of pride in her triumph as she squeezed me out of her petite body.
However, her victory was short-lived. Upon her return to the manor with my giddish body now clutched in her loving embrace, my father acted as if he had no memory of their last debate and was calling me by his beloved Kristobal. At first, my mother paid no heed to his complete disregard of the fact that she had won out in their little feud, but her patience could only hold out for so long. By evening, she was like a kettle on a stove and was now completely beyond her boiling point. Heh, I remember my father once described it to me as "an evening with the devil's mistress" (of course, he never told my mother what he thought of her tantrum-induced rage). The mind can only imagine what atrocities my mother could have committed when the rational part of her cerebrum was busted like a bulb.
Needless to say, my father never called me by the name Kristobal again, lest he meet with my mother's satanic temper once more. However, he never let go of his preference for the name completely. It was at times when my mother wasn't around and he knew he could get away with it that he would call me by a short little nickname that he came up with: Kay El. It served as a subtle hint towards the name he wanted his son to have.
I wonder if my father would have been proud to know that I use his affectionate sobriquet more than my own name now.
* * *
I don't want to sound like I'm ragging on him when I say this, but Juan had a strange love for mythology. And it wasn't any kind of mythology; it was a specific love for Greek and Roman mythology. And it wasn't any kind of love; it was more like an obsessive, undying love that you would normally find in engrossed bookworms and nerds. Or stalkers.
...Okay, so maybe I am trying to rag on him. But he doesn't know that.
Anyways, his strange love for a strange subject came guaranteed with a strange story, as one would expect. For that, we'd have to take a slight detour to both of our childhoods, back when we were in elementary school. It was during the time when we were still in second grade (This, fortunately for me, was the only time I'd ever spend a year with him in school, since this was about the time the school had become privy to just how advanced Juan was. He would normally have been in preschool, but the teachers noticed early on how easily he soaked in the material, and had moved him up a full three years, much to my chagrin), when we had begun our semester-long unit on Greek mythology.
Juan, for his part, was not very interested in the subject at first, like most of the other students in the class. His face would always gnarl with utter distaste at the thought of having to learn about a mysterious culture's equally mysterious myriad of deities, many of which didn't even seem to make a lick of sense. It is also now that I would like to take the time to expostulate on the little power struggle that went on in our class on a day-to-day basis between my stout classmate and our woeful instructor. There was almost never a day where Juan would not openly object to some material in the class that he found tedious, boring or simply not to his fancy in any way, shape or form. At first our teacher would retort with a simple 'because you have to' or 'live with it', but after several months of constant belligerent remarks and behavior, the most he could illicit from her was an exasperated sigh or grunt. Apparently, Juan had made an adult reach the end of her long reserves of patience (yet again).
However, there was something about ancient Roman and Greek mythology that Juan seemed to find fascinating. Perhaps it was the allure of such vast stories of triumph and grandeur by beings that no sane man would ever believe inhabited the world; maybe it was the inspirational struggles depicted in stories of mere mortals taking on and sometimes even trumping the gods; or maybe he just liked the pictures in the book. Knowing Juan, it could have been any of the three. The fact of the matter is that at the end of unit, he was infatuated beyond a shred of doubt with the subject of Mythology. Infatuated to the point where he would probably marry his own book if the legal system allowed.
One day whilst my friends and I were walking up to the lunch counter at our school, Juan decided to tag along behind us, dragging along a bag that seemed to weigh more than himself (not very hard to find a lot of that, actually). We were used to having the runt follow us from time to time, but we were not used to seeing him tote around such a large bag. As expected, queries arose.
The first to speak his mind was one of my friends; "Whatcha got in there, squirt?"
"Well, if you must know, it's full of Mythology books from the library," replied Juan, pulling out a picture book with an image of Zeus on its cover and the title, Greek Myths for Children.
I took the book from his tiny hands and started fingering through the pages, much to his annoyance.
"Hey!" he yelled, angered by the sudden loss of prized treasure, "Give that back, Eric! That one's my favorite!"
I glanced at him with mischievous eyes before closing the book and tossing it in his direction, watching him as he stumbled sideways to catch the book before it fell to the ground. I simply laughed as he glared at me with menacingly childish eyes.
"Don't let that temper raise too much, Zeus," I teased playfully.
"That's not my name, meanie!" he replied poutfully.
"Really?" I responded with sarcastic confusion, "I could have sworn it was by how much you love using it!"
To this my friends broke into giggles, pointing fingers at Juan and calling him 'Zeus' before moving further along the lunch counter to get our meals, leaving him where he stood with a slightly teary-eyed face. As I probably could have surmised, my little taunts in the school's lunchroom didn't go 'unnoticed' (by unnoticed, I mean untattled) by the caf supervisor. After receiving the umpteenth lecture about my use of words with others that semester, I finally decided that my father was completely right about calling the Alvarez untrustworthy. It was from that time on that the rivalry between Juan and I exploded to the proportions that they were for the next couple of years.
However, what I didn't expect was the label I placed on him to become as permanent as it did.
* * *
Two years. How does one interpret it? Do they see it as a lapse of seven hundred thirty days? As a span of twenty-four months? Or perhaps as a period of eight seasonal changes?
However they view it, I certainly knew one thing: for Juan and me, it represented the time we had currently spent searching for clues; for leads; for revenge.
There were a lot of changes that happened in both of us throughout that time, though. I could certainly tell that Juan had matured an awful lot (and if I'm so bold, I would even say he had matured more than I had. Shocking!). While we may have started somewhat rough around the edges, the two years of traveling and searching together established a sturdy camaraderie between the two of us. We had grown two distinct, yet similar personalities. Juan had become a more serious, collected kind of guy, something he had to be in order to even think about being taken lightly by anyone at his age. For my own part, I had grown a deal more than Juan (physically, that is) and I seemed to be lacking that seriousness that now characterized him. If anything, I had become more cynical (and comical?) in my approach towards everyday life and getting by. Don't get me wrong; I was still as adamant as Juan was in pursuing our assailants, but I just didn't feel the need to take the lifestyle that accompanied that pursuit as serious anymore. While I sat around and drank beer, Juan was usually analyzing clues and possible leads on the matter. I considered myself the brawn of the duo; Juan was the brains.
However, these last two years weren't spent on just idle scheming, fruitless search and drawn-out character development. On the contrary, we had actually unearthed quite a bit of information regarding the "men in black" as we had come to call the intruders on the night of the attacks. After many a day loitering around in bars and pubs by myself (since Juan obviously didn't look or act the age to get in [haha, I love these cheap shots]), I gained quite an earful of a conversation between two men in uniform and a friend of theirs sitting at the table behind me at a bar. Apparently these two men served in a special section of the Actonian military, a covert organization that this region's presiding officer had put together, comprised of a force of erstwhile mercenaries and bounty hunters with empty holes in their wallets. From what I gathered, this "unit", which, at the time, was kept hidden even from the governor, was supposed to be an elimination task force; in essence, a group of hired assassins/hitmen, meant to "silence" those who opposed our governmental overseer. Therefore, it was no surprise to me when I learned that our particular region's presiding officer was none other than the ever so infamous Ozzal. Knowing that alone made the thought of revenge all the sweeter.
One last thing: I couldn't hear well for the music blaring in the pub, but I believe the men had said the name of this organization was the Actonian Secret Elite Force. However, by the time we had finally reached the phase of our vengeance where we would confront these uniformed assassins once more, they had already gained a more...established name:
The Echelon.