POV: Baggage
Day ten. They were supposed to be further along by now and not so far west. She put on her clothes in the coach. Runa was still asleep. That was good. They’d need more food though. A lot of it had been used to heal her.
Baggage retrieved a small mirror she used to check her appearance and went to where Drake-dono was sleeping.
He was not a nice man. Maybe not even a good man. He could be nice if you stuck a knife in him though, which only meant his behavior was a choice. He chose to give her a humiliating nickname. He chose to vent his anger and force the world to deal with it. And she had a suspicion that he had made other choices, such as not earning good behavior in prison. She wasn’t sure how Earth prisons worked, but even she could spot an incentive to self-rehabilitate. He had chosen not to do so.
Baggage was perfectly familiar with the Earth holidays of different cultures. She knew that Thanksgiving was important to most Americans. If Drake-dono, no, Drake had earned two weeks of good behavior, he’d have seen Ethan and Lily on Thanksgiving. Lily would have told him he was the best dad ever and Ethan would have reluctantly acknowledged his father’s lack of failure. By the date of the ritual, he wouldn’t have been eligible as a hero or at least he wouldn’t have a deadline hanging over him.
Maybe if one of the other girls would seduce him it would help. That’s what all the books said. Although the books also said that the Facilitator was normally expected to do it. Baggage had said she would, actually sworn that she would. It was a Tenkan policy she agreed with. It boiled down to: ‘the Facilitator’s dignity is not worth the lives of hundreds of thousands of people’. That was the deal, they’d uproot some guy with a future and drag him to Tenka, possibly to die. The last thing they wanted was for that man to be distracted.
And the men they brought from Earth were hardly the ones at the bottom of the barrel.
She stood over him. The heater was nice near her feet. He was breathing unevenly and his arms and legs twitched. The sword and pistol were next to him, both were supposed to be amazing. The artificers had said that if Drake’s equipment was typical of Earth, they did not expect the next hero to have any common ground for communication, and he might not even be able to talk to them without the aid of the ‘internet’. Whatever that was. Drake had said it was for exchanging pictures of cats, but she was fairly confident he was lying.
She poked him with her toe and jumped back, he sat upright and tried to scream but he hadn’t drawn enough breath. There was no scar on his body. Runa had been right, he looked good without a shirt.
What did Earth feed those men in prison? Whatever it was, Tenka needed it.
She waited for him to get his bearings.
“G’mornin” he slurred.
“Mirror,” she said while handing him her mirror.
“C’mon Baggage, can’t you wait until after breakfast to pick a fight?”
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“This won’t take long and I think you’ll be happy.” She squatted down next to him. “Look in the mirror.”
“Fine. I’ll look.”
He looked for at least two solid minutes. He didn’t seem vain, he was surprised.
“My hair grew over those dots and you did something to my eyes.”
“Your face was sunken and your skin was pale and icky.” That was her medical diagnosis.
She could see the wheels in his mind as he put facts together.
“Baggage, how old are you?”
“Thirty-eight,” she said.
“You look like you’re in your early twenties.”
“If you say so. Do you understand about healing now?”
“No. Not at all. Why did you do this?” He was still staring at his own face. What did he see in that mirror? Hopefully, a reason to be decent to others.
“I didn’t do it. I tried to tell you. The general kind of healing takes care of all your damage, it doesn’t target a stab wound. That’s why your ‘fast, cheap, good’ didn’t make sense to me.”
“That makes more sense.” he didn’t apologize. So far she didn’t think he ever had.
“How long will this last?” he asked.
“You’re still an old man-”
“I’m forty-two! I'm not old!”
“-and you’ll need healing to maintain it because your body is falling apart. Theoretically though? You can have something close to biological immortality if you take care of yourself and have a lot of healing magic.”
He touched his face. “If this is a bribe, I’m still going home.”
“I know, Drake-dono.”
“Baggage, how old is Runa?”
She nodded her head, “Nobody knows. Runa was a candidate for the last hero team, not selected though. That was forty-five years ago. She’s at least in her eighties.”
“She could be thousands of years old?” Drake asked.
“Yes, but she spends her time brushing my hair. So, I think it’s closer to eighty.”
“Possibly. Alright, we should get moving.”
Number of Thank Yous from Drake: 0
“Oh, and Baggage? I don't think you need to use the Dono suffix with me in private.” Drake said as he walked off.
Number of Thank Yous from Drake: 0.5
This was like the girl talk beginning eromancers had when they said they wanted to be Facilitators. They snuck their lunch into the library where Baggage was studying and said, ‘What if the hero is really gross? Would you still do it?’
And then Baggage would write down the names of whoever said ‘no’ and got them kicked out of the program. She had her own issues getting along with others.
They agreed to leave the campsite and hoped they wouldn’t need Runa. Risky.
Sayaka convinced them, “the enemy knows where we are because of the fire. We may as well move on. We’re going to die of something sooner or later. May as well be this.”
An hour later it occurred to Baggage that she shouldn’t be taking advice from nihilistic assassins.
By the afternoon, Runa began to stir. Baggage got her some water. The first thing Runa asked for was a mirror. She crackled when she saw her reflection. Huge divots taken out of her body, as someone with a garden trowel carved into her and healed it up. “Worth it!” she proclaimed.
“How does it feel?” Baggage asked hesitantly.
“Alive! Like everything is fresh and new.” Runa said.
“Is there anything you need? Water? Food?”
“Makeup. I have some in my pack. No one looks closely at an old crone or diseased people. The chunks out of skin can help me pass for one or the other.
Baggage had been wondering if Runa was going to ask for someth diabolical. She could relax, it was just makeup. She helped with application, it was soothing.
“Baggage-chan you are such a treasure!”
“Thank you, Runa.”
“I just have two more favors to ask of you.”
“Yes! What?”
Something happened. Baggage was briefly muddled. Then she snapped back, at least she thought so.
“Thank you, Baggage. Please stop now.”
“Stop what?” Baggage was confused. Did the scenery just change?
“Patting your head and rubbing your belly. You can stop.”
Oh. She was doing that. Weird. What had happened?
“My second favor is much smaller. It's a tiny thing. Such a small favor, I doubt you’ll remember it.”
Second favor? What happened to the first? Shouldn’t she remember that? Well, she could figure it out later. Runa needed her now.
“OK, Runa-sama!”
“Baggage-chan, what would I do without you?”
