Quest 1.1
"Hey Fye! Get up will you!?" scolded Athena. Her hands were poking the sleeping Fye. It was already 8 in the morning, yet he was still snoring under the cover of his blanket.
"Wake up!" Athena shouted as she pulled Fye's blanket off of him. His body was actually curled into a ball, making him like a small child while he was sleeping.
"Just a little longer mom." Fye groaned drowsily while giving a drooling smile.
Athena gritted her teeth in fury. She unsheathed the pistol she had kept underneath her apron and pulled its trigger. A swift projectile barely missed Fye's nose as it buried itself into the pillow where his head was rested. At that moment, Fye quickly leapt out of his bed, screaming and staggering to the floor.
"Woah! What are you trying to do, Athena? Kill me!?" Fye exclaimed in shock by the wake-up call he had just received from the woman.
"If that's what it takes to get your lazy arse up, then yes!" Athena scolded him back. "Get up! Breakfast's ready!"
"But it's only 8 o'clock." whined Fye as he laid his head on the floor.
Another bullet struck the wooden floor, just a hair's breadth away from Fye's head, causing him to jump up to his feet.
"Okay!Okay!"
x*x*x
"Bluerrgghh! The Hell? Is this even food?" Fye spat out the broth with disgust.
"And what's wrong with my soup, exactly?" queried Athena angrily, standing in front of Fye and Vexen as the two men were tasting a bowl of her homemade soup at the dining table.
"I know that you hate me for a few reasons, Athena. But please don't try to poison me to death with this thing."Fye said as he shoved his bowl away.
"Excuse me! I cooked this using the few best ingredients around in Granado Espada."
"Well those ingredients must've come from the swamps of Bahama, because that soup of yours almost tasted like a King Snail." Fye complained. He licked his lips a few times before drinking up a bottle of milk.
"It's you who have a weird taste bud." Athena growled. "Look, Vexen's enjoying it."
Vexen was staring blankly at bowl of soup while his hand stirred the broth with his spoon. After a few seconds, he dropped the spoon into the soup and shoved his bowl away as well.
"I've just lost my appetite." Vexen said plainly.
Fye giggled under his breath at this. Athena, however, looked angry like a pot of boiling water. She removed her apron and furiously threw it to Fye's face.
"That's it. I've had with you two ungrateful boys! I'm going to go and check the mailbox." Athena shouted before storming out through the back door located at the kitchen.
"She may be a good tactician, but her cooking skills are awful." Fye sighed while resting his chin against the table. "Darn it, I'm hungry! I want to eat Celeste's cooking!" Fye slammed his hands against the table a few times.
"Did someone call my name?"
Fye and Vexen turned their heads around, only to see Celeste walking into the kitchen, wearing only an unbuttoned shirt over her exposed pair of undergarments. Her hand was poking a small toothbrush into her mouth.
"Oh for God sake, Celeste! Put something proper on, can you?" exclaimed Fye, his face was already flushing red when he turned his head back to the table.
"Woke up on the wrong side of the bed, I suppose?" asked Vexen.
"You can thank your little pest for that." Celeste said accusingly as she presented a white ball of fur in front of them. "Found him sleeping on my bed this morning."
The two men hadn't noticed of the white round-bellied cat with a bobbing head that she was grasping on her left hand. Celeste tossed the cat to the floor. Surprisingly, instead of landing on four of its feet, it landed only with two.
"Snooping with the ladies again, huh Skies." Vexen sighed.
"I just can't sleep without having a nice and warm woman's legs to cuddle with, nyaa." Skies, the cat, suddenly talked in a cute squeaky voice.
Celeste shoved the cat with her foot as she was walking towards the dining table. "Remind me again why you are still keeping this tiny little pervert in our house. I know Fortune Cats are supposed to bring good luck to you, but sneaking under your blankets and purring under your legs is not good luck." Celeste commented in a mouthful of foaming toothpaste.
"Maybe you should just throw him away, Vexen." Fye suggested.
"Sounds like a good idea. I should do that." Vexen nodded with consideration.
"Or else teach him about privacy and boundaries between humans and cats." Celeste added. Upon reaching the table, she picked up Fye's bowl of soup and lifted it to her lips.
"You shouldn't do that…" Fye warned.
But it was too late. Celeste had already taken a mouthful of the horrible broth, but she didn't swallow it. Instead she rinsed her mouth with the soup. She then spat the mixture of broth and toothpaste into the sink located behind the counter.
"Not bad. Taste like Comodo Stew." Celeste shrugged. She took another drain of Athena's soup, and this time she gulped it down.
Fye dropped his jaws in disbelief, his eyes wide as saucers. Celeste was the first person to have liked the soup. Maybe it did taste like Comodo Stew just as she had stated. And perhaps it was really made from Comodo's meat.
"Hey, are those Athena's homemade soup?" asked Skies, looking at Vexen's bowl with curiosity.
Hearing that the cat's stomach was grumbling at the sight of the soup, Vexen lifted his bowl from the table and placed it under his chair.
"Knock yourself out." he waved at the cat.
With that, Skies rushed for the bowl of 'delicious' soup and greedily shovelled the liquid into his mouth, as if the cat hadn't eaten for weeks.
"I have to admit, he really is a big help when it comes to finishing off Athena's cuisine." Vexen said.
"You're right." Fye suppressed a laugh.
x*x*x
A few minutes later, Athena returned to the kitchen via the back door. She was carrying a newspaper and a piece of envelope in her hand.
"We're on the first page, again." Athena said cheerfully as she dropped the newspaper on the table for everyone to see. The headline was given the title, 'Bar in Coimbra Caught ablaze, the Undead Baron Killed.'
"Believed to be the work of mercenaries or bounty hunters, the remains of the Undead Baron Wahlansche was found under the rubbles of the building, along with three burnt corpses which had belonged to Gavis. The owner of the establishment could not be found; investigators believed that he was kidnapped by the perpetrator of this incident." Vexen read a part of the contents in the article.
"So they are labelling us as kidnappers? That sucks." complained Fye out of disappointment.
"I feel sorry that we have to set the place into flames though." said Celeste.
"We can't leave too much evidence for those Royalist troops." Athena reminded.
"By the way, Athena, whose letter is that?" Vexen asked, pointing to the envelope which Athena was still holding in her grasp.
"Oh yeah, I almost forgot about this."
Athena rushed out to the living room, which was located in front of the kitchen. There, Rezxy, dressed in a sleeveless shirt and a pair of shorts, was laying his back on a long, red couch, an opened book covering his face.
"Rezxy, there's a letter for you." Athena told him as she approached the couch.
Rezxy lifted half of his body up, causing the book on his face to fall to his lap.
"Huh? For me, who's it from?" asked Rezxy in a jest.
"I don't know. There was no name on the envelope, except for yours that is." Athena shrugged. Handing the letter over to Rezxy, she then went back to kitchen to join the others.
Rezxy took a closer observation on the piece of envelope in his hands. His own name was written neatly in black ink on the clean stark-white paper. There was no address of their residence on the envelope, which could mean that the sender had delivered the letter personally to their home. The most unexpected thing for Rezxy was when he saw at the back of the envelope.
The letter was sealed by the insignia of the Vespanola kingdom.
He felt like as if his blood had frozen in ice. The Vespanolan had already discovered the existence of him and his Thunderspring Squad. The Queen will never tolerate a bunch of outlaw mercenaries to interfere with her country's matter, and the Thunderspring Squad had done quite a lot of things which attracted the eyes of the kingdom to them.
Shaking the tense away from his head, Rezxy quickly unsealed the envelope and removed the folded piece of letter that was inside it. Carefully unfolding the paper, he then began to read the neat handwritings on it:
To Captain Rezxy Lycis,
Yes, I know who you are, and I know about your Thunderspring Squad. And I was also informed of your current meddling with the Royalist's affairs in Granado Espada recently. Rest assured that your secrets are all safe with me, as I have no intentions of getting you or your teammates into any trouble with Vespanola.
Anyway, I'm here to offer a task for your mercenary team. I'm sure that people of your calibre will have no problem in accomplish this mission that I will be entrusting you with. Your mission is to enter the Prison de Joaquin that is located at the Joaquin Crater. Inside the prison, there's a basement where you will find a very unique 'artefact' implanted on the building's power generator. You're to retrieve the artefact at all cost and bring it back safely. Once you've accomplished your task, you'll be rewarded with a total of 300 million Vis, cash.
I certainly hope that you would consider my offer, as this artefact will be the 'future' of Granado Espada and the kingdom of Vespanola.
On the corner of the letter was written the word 'Zero', and large 'Z' was engraved in red ink underneath it. Rezxy could guess that the word 'Zero' was sort of a codename of this letter's sender. Whoever this Zero is, he means business.
Rezxy immediately got up from the couch, and slowly walked to the kitchen to meet his teammates. When he arrived, Vexen, Fye, Celeste and Athena were all sitting together at the table, while Skies was still gulping down his soup on the floor.
The four of them stopped chattering and turned their eyes towards Rezxy, eager to listen to what their leader was going to say.
"It's a client." Rezxy raised the letter to his shoulder so that everyone could see it.
"A client? Who was it?" asked Athena.
"Some guy by the nickname Zero. He has already provided us with the briefing." Rezxy replied, already intended to skip the part that their client was an associate of Vespanola.
"Zero? Like the number zero or the loser zero?" Celeste raised an eyebrow.
"So what's the plan, Rex?" Vexen queried, taking a gulp from the small bottle of wine in his hand.
"We're to obtain an item from the inside of Prison de Joaquin, and to return the item safely back to the client." Rezxy explained.
"Prison de Joaquin? But wasn't that place abandoned since like a couple of years ago?" Celeste asked in bewilderment.
"You're right, and our mission is to retrieve the client's artefact for him. Once that has been accomplished, we'll be rewarded with an amount of 300 million Vis."
That caused Fye to spray out the milk he was drinking upon Vexen's face.
"300 million? You're joking!" denied Celeste.
"5 million for killing the Wahlansche is high enough. But 300 million for a mere treasure hunt? Quite preposterous." retorted Athena.
"This is a scam, alrigfht. There's no way that someone will be crazy enough to pay so much of cash for some stupid antique." Fye stated.
"300 million, that's quite a lot of fish, ayy Vexen?" Skies suddenly interrupted the conversation.
After wiping off the milk from his face with the apron that Athena had removed earlier, Vexen tossed the piece of cloth roughly to Fye's head.
"So what's your decision, Rex?" asked Vexen.
Rezxy looked at his comrades for a while, took a deep breath and exhaled heavily.
"I hate to say this, but I'm going. Whether it's a scam of not, there must be a good reason for the reward to be this high," Rezxy made his decision.
"Suit yourself. I'm behind you all the way." Vexen nodded.
"This mission might sound illogic, but if you're going Rezxy, then count me in." Athena said.
"Me too. I could use some nice new jewellery." Celeste beamed.
"I'm sure that you will all be helpless without my magic, so I'll go as well." Fye joked to them, although Rezxy could spot the slight nervousness in his face.
The Thunderspring Squad had all made their decisions. Rezxy gave a satisfied smile at his friends.
"Then it's settled. Moving out, Thunderspring Squad!" Rezxy bellowed courageously.
"Yes, captain!" the four of them yelled out in unison.
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