Leaf Erurainon
Aka Cryptid Rain
The door to the small apartment slammed shut behind Tisha
as she ran down the short hallway to her tiny dining room. She tossed her jacket down on the only other chair
on the opposite side of the table, sat down, removed the cigarette from her
lips and put it down in the ashtray, then reached into her oversized purse and
pulled out her corporate issued tablet.
She ‘woke’ it up, and then used both thumbprints to unlock the
screen. Once that was complete, she
pulled out a 5x5x5 cm cube, also from her purse, and then pulled out the
retractable cable from the cube and connected it to the tablet. As she set the cube on the table, the laser
outline of a keyboard and scroll bar sprang to life. She stopped to take a long drought from her
cup of soykaf and then set it down by the ashtray. Once she had activated her note application,
she paused to take another drag on her cigarette, and then began typing furiously. She wanted to get the information down before
her memory was clouded by time – despite her ability to pull up files with vivid
details from interviews from over a decade before. It was a nervous tic of hers, and she wasn’t
going to jinx herself now.
The first memory of the interview was as her source walked
into the “Oh-Four-Niner”. He acted like
he belonged there, even though his attire told everyone otherwise. He stood at least 1.75 meters tall, very
slender build, maybe 75 Kilos. He wore a
simple black fabric military style boot, in which was tucked a pair of Tir urban
pattern camouflaged pants. On his right
thigh was holstered a large caliber pistol.
He wore a black denim flight jacket, completely unzipped, under which he
had on a solid blue shirt. She saw a
pair of wooden handles extending just above each shoulder, framing the upturned
collar of his coat. Atop his head he
wore a wide brimmed hat, which shadowed the man’s face. She would never forget the very faint blue
glow emitting from under the hat where two eyes should be. When he spotted her he moved directly to her
table and sat down, only then did he remove his hat, revealing that he was an
elf with a light blue mane of hair, and an intricate tear tattoo ‘running’ down
from beneath his right eye. Both of his
eyes were a solid cobalt blue, with no visible iris or pupil. The hair was braided at the temples and
extended to the back of his head. The
tattoo was almost as interesting as his eyes.
The outline of a puddle of tears was stenciled neatly below both eyes,
but under the right one, the tears weaved a path down the outside of the
cheek. Within the stream of the tear
were a series of Japanese characters (In order, from top to bottom - クリスチャン侍; looking over the
characters she thought, ‘I sure hope I copied those down correctly. Otherwise, it is going to be pretty difficult
to look up the translation for the article), faintly inscribed, almost
unnoticeable, and within the end of the rounded teardrop at the end, it
contained a blue and grey yin yang, also very faint.
Here, she paused, took another drag of her cigarette,
then a fresh swig of the soykaf, and lastly accessed the audio and video
playback from her ocular implant that was jacked into her inner ear. While microphones can pick up incredible
detail, she still preferred the natural resonance of the eardrum. It was all neatly tucked into the chromed out
cybernetic skullcap that took up a fifth of her upper left skull. She poised her fingers and began to type once
more. She wanted to get the transcript
down, and then she would compose the article from there.
-=-=-=O=-=-=-
Tisha: “Hello Mr. …?”
Elf: “Call me Rain.”
Tisha: “Rain?”
Rain: “Ever been to Seattle?”
Rain: “Ever been to Seattle?”
T: “Oh, right… ok…. Um, Rain. Let’s see…”
R: “Mr. Johnson said you’d be buying me some real food,
and five hundred Nuyen to just meet with you.
So, how about we see a real meat platter and that cred stick before you
say anything more.”
She habitually took another drag from her cigarette as
she let the recording play for a moment.
T: “Ah… right... Excuse me… waitress, yes, we need two
platters of your best Kansas City import steaks, done medium rare, and two
drafts…”
R: “Just filtered water for me, thank you.”
T: “Um, alright, one draft, and one filtered water.”
Placing the cigarette back in the ashtray she got ready to
continue transcribing the conversation.
T: “Ok, here is the cred-stick.” At the very bottom edge of the visual
playback, her hand was tapping a cred-stick on the table. “Uh uh, not until we are finished here.” The optical playback remained focused on the
elf, while rustling and plastic on plastic sounds could be heard again, as she
replaced the cred-stick into her purse.
“I am sure, um… Mr. Johnson, has told you. I work for the ManaDyne news division, and my
viewers want to try and understand the SINless, to understand why you choose to
remain in the shadows instead of within the comfort and security, of the
Corporations, like ManaDyne.”
R: “For some of us, there isn’t a choice, for others, the
confines of… corporate life are… distasteful.”
T: “But, the crime riddled streets and abject poverty,
shown every day on the news feeds…”
R: “You mean the news feeds such as the ones coming from
the ‘News Division of ManaDyne?’”
Tisha shifted in her seat as she watched and listened to
the recording, and the clearing of her throat on the recording. She remembered her discomfort at this sudden
confrontation and took another drag of her cigarette.
T: “Surely you have seen the violence for yourself. Look at you; you come to this meeting armed
to the teeth.”
R: “Look lady…”
T: “Tisha, please.”
R: “Whatever,” the elf said with a wave of his hand, “Tisha, first off, this is not armed to the teeth. I have spotted at least a half dozen corp security, with enough firepower to level this building, just in this room. The only reason I am still allowed to sit here and talk to you is they don’t feel that I am any kind of threat to them. And who do you think sponsors most of that violence that you feed your audience? Hmm? All you corp types are the same, blind to the dirt under your own fingernails, but quick to point out the dirty tools being used.”
R: “Whatever,” the elf said with a wave of his hand, “Tisha, first off, this is not armed to the teeth. I have spotted at least a half dozen corp security, with enough firepower to level this building, just in this room. The only reason I am still allowed to sit here and talk to you is they don’t feel that I am any kind of threat to them. And who do you think sponsors most of that violence that you feed your audience? Hmm? All you corp types are the same, blind to the dirt under your own fingernails, but quick to point out the dirty tools being used.”
Tisha fidgeted again in her seat, and lit another
cigarette.
T: “Um… ok. I can
see that… this might be a sensitive path to go down… maybe we can discuss that
more at length another time.”
R: “Maybe, but let’s see just how good this steak you
ordered is first.”
She was not used to being the one put on the
defensive. Tisha felt herself getting
annoyed, with a mental tic she paused the playback. She picked up her cigarette and walked over
to her apartment window and stared out onto the city. The view from up here was calming. From here she did not have to see the dirt,
the SINless, she reminded herself of how ManaDyne controlled the city despite
people like Rain and his ilk. She calmed
herself down, and then returned to her seat, replacing her cigarette in the ashtray. She typed out a note to remind herself that
she had been wondering where the waitress was with their steaks, and her taking
a drink to drag out the pause while she tried to think of a new avenue to take
the interview, and how she could turn the tables back on the elf. Once these notes were written down, she
resumed the playback.
T: “Ha, um…. OK… how about we talk about Rain. People almost always like a good human-interest
story. How long have you run the
shadows?” Before the elf could answer the dinner plates arrived, “Ah, here we
go.” She said in an enticing tone.
There is a long pause in the recording here. The elf just stared at her before
responding. She slowed the playback
down, trying to detect any reaction, any emotion. No emotion or tell of what he might have been
thinking. He finally began to cut into his steak and would talk in between mouthfuls
of steak. She noted that he barely
touched the potatoes.
R: “Well, as you can tell… I was born an elf.” He said,
gesturing to his ears. “This caused some… problems between my mother, an
Amerindian, and my father, a corporate suit of some sort, but the real breaking
point was when my brother was born a dwarf.
Ironic, right. Throughout classic
literature there has always been tension between elves and dwarfs, but in this
case, it was between my human parents.
When my brother was born, good ol’ dad bolted. I’ve not seen or talked to him since so… I
don’t really know the story there. Mom
went into a tailspin. Booze, men, and
then, when BTL’s hit the streets…” Rain looked off to the side for a moment,
Tisha slowed the replay down once again, there is some clenching of the jaws, a
vein throb in his temple, and then he returned to his meal. She resumed normal playback. After taking another bite, he continued. “So, I guess you can say that is when I hit
the streets.”
T: “How old where you?”
R: “I dunno… thirteen maybe, tops.”
T: “Did you take care of your brother? How did you survive?”
R: “Well, the Corps do not like to bring in homeless gutter rats. Har… I mean, Steel Horse, that’s what he went by… not sure if he still does or not, we don’t really see much of each other. We scraped a living off of handouts and dumpster dives. At least we did until we figured out a better way. The local gangs were not really our scene, so we kept to ourselves, and they left us alone, for the most part. We actually started our own little security gig, if you can believe it. We escort kids to and from their public schools, made sure bullies didn’t pick on them, and when they did, we took care of business. We were ok at it, not great, but the lunch money was enough to put some food in our stomachs.”
R: “Well, the Corps do not like to bring in homeless gutter rats. Har… I mean, Steel Horse, that’s what he went by… not sure if he still does or not, we don’t really see much of each other. We scraped a living off of handouts and dumpster dives. At least we did until we figured out a better way. The local gangs were not really our scene, so we kept to ourselves, and they left us alone, for the most part. We actually started our own little security gig, if you can believe it. We escort kids to and from their public schools, made sure bullies didn’t pick on them, and when they did, we took care of business. We were ok at it, not great, but the lunch money was enough to put some food in our stomachs.”
T: “Are you still in the protection… ‘business’?”
R: “No way. Too
high profile, too many ways to get yourself killed.”
T: “Well… then what?
Did you ever try to get in on the ground floor anywhere?”
R: The elf snickered and shook his head. “Tried to… sort of. Once I got wind of Tir Tairgire’s
independence, I started planning on moving out there. Figured a nation of elves, I’m an elf, why
not. My brother didn’t want anything to
do with it, said he had his hands full with just one elf, so, we went our
separate ways. I headed west. I’m not really sure where he ended up.”
Here Tisha paused the playback again. Angles began to run through her mind. Maybe she could hire a private detective to
see if she could track this… ‘Steel Horse’, down, but how would she get it to
pay? She wasn’t about to front that kind
of Nuyen to track down the brother of some source she just met, and it was
unlikely her director would agree to that kind of expense, not without some
assurance of it producing anything lucrative, he was already going to flip his
lid over the steaks. It was probably a
moot point if she couldn’t get this guy to meet her for another sit down anyway. She took another drag off of her cigarette,
used what was left to light another one, and then crushed out the old one. Her soykaf had gotten cold by this point, but
she barely noticed. Setting the cup back
down, she resumed the replay once again.
T: “Sounds like it was a decent plan.”
R: “Yea, it sounded good, but… Tir is not the most…
receptive to outsiders. Even one of
their own… ‘kindred’. I didn’t have any
personal documentation. No birth
records, no public records, no sponsors to endorse my entrance into the
country. I spent about a week at their ‘transition
center’. At least they fed me. They were about to send me packing when an
officer, dressed like this,” the elf indicated by pointing to his pants, “approached
me. Introduced himself as Captain
Abrazân. Said he would sponsor my
entrance into the country and application for citizenship, IF, I would
willingly enlist in the Peace Force, specifically, with their ‘Border Patrol’.”
Tisha paused the playback once more, and got up from her
chair again. She had to stretch and
think some more, so she paced back and forth.
What a strange world to live in, to not be able to go where you wanted,
when you wanted. Maybe the elf could
provide a window into the mysterious nation of Tir, which would pay handsomely…
again, if she were able to meet with him again.
After only four passes of the table, she sat back down, eager to keep
going, and resumed the playback.
T: “So, you were in.”
R: “It didn’t last long though.”
T: “What do you mean?”
R: “It didn’t last long though.”
T: “What do you mean?”
R: “Six months later, I was fresh out of the advance
school for matrix-communications, a sort of radio-telephone operator from the
twentieth century, but with today’s tech, and had been assigned to a quick
reaction force on the border with the ‘California Free State’. A call came in. One of the patrols out in the border region
between Yreka and Redding had made contact with a small force, but was on the
heavy end of the engagement. We hopped on the birds and made it out to the site
in less than ten minutes. It was pretty
intense. Hard to tell where our patrol
was. Shouts and shooting was coming from
everywhere. I “called in” to let the
base know we were on the ground, and had made contact. We moved forward and had not moved more than
fifty meters when I spotted my first enemy.
It was an elf! It made me hesitate,
why would an elf try and sneak into Tir?
It didn’t make sense to me… back then.
After I regained my composure, I raised up my rifle and took aim, but
before I could pull the trigger, my rifle exploded in my hands. I think something set off the rounds inside
the chamber. I may never know, because
it was lights out for ol’ Rain. I have
no idea how long I had been out, when I finally came to, I could feel the
warmth of the sun, but I couldn’t see anything, totally blackness. When I touched my face it was sticky with
drying blood. My eyelids had been glued
shut by the blood that had dried. When I
tried to use my fingers to open them, the pain was excruciating. I laid back down and just listened, tried to
figure out what to do. I was there for a
long time, not really sure what to do.
Sometime after dark, pretty sure it was dark because I was shivering by
then; I heard footsteps in the brush. I
pulled my pistol and aimed it out into the blackness, trying to pretend I could
see. It was a local man and his
family. I think they had come out to see
if there was anything to salvage. You
know, loose gear or weapons. Who knows,
but I do know they were not fooled. They
disarmed me pretty easily. After
reassuring me that they weren’t going to kill me, they told me that I had been
left behind by my unit, or they were all dead.
I am not really sure about that part, because those who found me never
mentioned anything more about the scene.
To make a very long story shorter, they took me back to their home, and
called for a local doctor. When the doc
arrived, she explained to me that both of my eyes had been shredded by the
shrapnel from my exploding rifle, and she would have to replace them if I wanted
to ever see again, which of course, I did.”
The elf pointed to his solid blue eyes, “There were no body banks in the
area, and cybernetic replacements were not readily available. Apparently the only eyes she could get her
hands on had been these. I’m not
complaining. A few days after the
surgery, when she took off the bandages I could see perfectly. They function exactly like my old eyes. Not any better, not any worse, they just look
different. It sure would have been sweet
if they could do something like magnification, but… maybe if I get enough Nuyen,
I’ll upgrade them”
The reporter jumped back in the recording and played this
part over. As she went back over this
part of the story, she leaned back in her chair and continued to smoke her
cigarette. Those eyes… she had seen them
in entertainment vids from the ‘Cal’.
Apparently it has been a fashion trend out in the ‘Free State’. Solid reds, blue, green, pretty much any
color you could think of. As the
recording approached where she had left off before, she put the cigarette down,
and put her fingers back to the keyboard.
T: “They do give quite an impression.”
R: “Not always handy in the Shadows, that’s for sure. The
family and the doctor were a part of a small community. They apparently had… differences with the
Pope and those who proclaimed to be ‘Christians’ in the CAS. They shared their faith with me while I
recovered… It made an impression on me…”
The elf had paused in thought here, “but that’s not germane to our discussion
here. In any event, I thanked the
family, and the doctor for helping me, and when I was able, I headed back to
Tir Tairgire. I arrived at the border
expecting a warm welcome… but… that was not the case. Apparently the prosthetics the doctor had
used were suspect.” Tisha let an
involuntary snicker escape her lips as she listened to that part. “No amount of arguing about being a member of
the Border Patrol, or telling them about a ‘Captain Abrazân’, made any
difference. I had been locked into an
inclined chair, and was pretty sure the sharp implements were about to come
out, when a voice come over an intercom behind me. It told the ‘interviewer’ that I was to keep
what I had on me when I arrived, and be provided with a one-way ticket to
wherever I wanted to go, and nothing else. Not so much as a ‘thank you’ for
your service, nothing… I knew that
voice, but I said nothing. I would bet
my pretty blue eyes that it had been Abrazân.
So, I went to Seattle; I didn’t have anywhere else to go and thought, ‘why not’.
T: “Well, when they indoctrinated you into the Tir
military, they surely gave you a SIM.”
Tisha slowed the recording down once again. Normally she would look for a reaction in the
person’s eyes, but that was not possible here.
Instead the elf raised his head and looked just off to the side for a
moment. He remained quiet for several
moments before turning back to the reporter, and began to talk again, so
resumed normal playback speed. He spoke
slowly at first, but got back to speed quickly.
R: “Not sure what to say about that… while I went through
a complete medical screening, they never inserted anything permanent, that I
know of. Definitely nothing as large as
a SIM chip.” The elf paused for a moment
longer. “Anyway, while I had been
trained in the basics of combat, and some rudimentary matrix running, I made a
conscious choice to stay in the shadows.
To do what I could for the SINless, humans and metahumans, like me. Since then, I have made my way the best I
can. I’ve seen what the Corps do to
those who live outside their walls, so… before you judge those who live outside
of the ‘protection’ of the corporations, it might do you well to get to know
them better.” Another pause of silence,
“I think we are done here. Did you get
your money’s worth?”
Again, the visual playback remained locked on the elf,
but the familiar rustling of her hand in her pocketbook was heard as she
retrieved the cred-stick.
T: “One more question.
What brings you to Boston?”
R: “The only thing I can think of is, ‘One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid
it.’ Take that as you will."
It was the reporter’s turn to
pause for a moment of reflection, leaving a silent section in the
recording. Tisha took another drag of
her cigarette, and reflected over the entirety of the conversation as the playback
continued.
T: “I might like to meet with you again… sometime.” She
said as she handed over the cred-stick.
R: “We’ll see.” And
with that, the elf stood, turned on his heels, and said over his shoulder,
“Thanks for the steak. It was really
good.” And then he was gone.
It was going to be a long night. Her deadline loomed, and she still had an
article to write. She got up, walked
into the kitchenette, started a fresh pot of soykaf, and returned to the
table. She set the recording to loop,
and began to outline her report.
