The Carnival

[Kaden]

The good thing about having a nice little distraction like a high-speed race through a virtual city was that it let all the bothersome thoughts get pushed to the back of the mind; the bad thing about such a distraction was that they seemed to come rushing back, with renewed vigor no less, once it was over. This mental backlash had been the plaguing Kaden since he had returned to Kill Town. Instead of dealing with it like a rational human being capable of dealing with their emotions, he went in search of another distraction.

The wisps of bright pink hair that flitted through his field of vision, luckily, seemed like it would provide a very adequate distraction. Slowly making his way towards Ashe, Kaden let out a long, slow sigh when he saw who she was with. Of course Ander would be hanging around. Why not? Everything else had been working out so well for the courier. He planned on simply walking away and leaving the two of them be, but swayed himself. There was no reason the appearance of the black-haired bandit couldn’t be used to accomplish the goal he had in mind. He slowly made his way towards the bench they were sitting on, careful to approach from behind.

“Do I need a reason to a pretty girl like you?” he heard Ander’s voice.

It was all Kaden could do to keep himself from scoffing while he rolled his eyes. Before Ashe could respond, though, he leaned over the back of their bench.

“No, but you probably have one,” the courier spoke up. As Ander and Ashe both twisted in their seats, Kaden smiled and held up a hand to the thief before he could get a word out. “Don’t worry, I’m just passing through.” He then lowered his hand and turned his gaze to Ashe. “Unfortunately.”

“No please,” Ander spoke with a smile that probably looked genuine to most people. “Stay.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Kaden couldn’t help but let the annoyance. “No no, I’ll let you kids have your fun.” Leaning back, as though prepared to leave, Kaden surveyed the two as though for the first. “Odd, though. I figured you’d want Sage hanging all over you.” With a shrug, the courier dismissed the thought. “Catch ya later, Ashe. We should hop on a ride at some point when this is all over.”

Without waiting for a response from either of them, Kaden waved and continued on his way, not really having a clear purpose in aimless meandering. Fortunately, purpose almost literally smacked him in the face as he rounded the backside of a tent. Practically leaping in front of the courier was Juno. As the rescue worker initiated their meeting, the courier’s sixth sense went wild, causing him to almost leap backwards and prepare for a less-than-friendly encounter. Luckily it hadn’t come to that.

After the awkwardness of their “reunion” faded, Kaden offered to grab a bite with the hybrid. The dark-haired halfling seemed to have missed the sarcasm in the courier’s voice as he accepted the offer. After a quick decision to simply run with it, the courier led them to the nearest restaurant he could find. The brief conversation they had as the waitress brought their food seemed to die down fairly quickly.

Normally, Kaden wouldn’t really have cared about the opinions of someone who, at their last meeting, had swooped him off to a rooftop and then proudly proclaimed he would be “taking care of” the courier. Though he didn’t like the blatant conceit weaved through his thoughts, Kaden knew he had bested Juno before and had only gained more power since then. He seemed infinitely less threatening – physically, verbally, and emotionally – when viewed in that light. It made asking otherwise difficult questions much easier.

When the ex-fortune teller seemed to keel over onto their table in pain, the courier found himself at a loss. From what he could tell, there didn’t seem to be any external reason for the hybrid’s pain. Their waitress reappeared at the side of their table, asking if there was anything she could get the dark-haired youth. Juno waved her off, telling her she was fine, and Kaden simply shrugged. He couldn’t even guess at what the problem was. After a few minutes, though, Juno seemed to regain his composure.

Leaning back in his chair once again, Kaden crossed his arms and quickly found himself lost in thought. He tried to piece together what he had heard from Belle, Sophia, and Juno. Looking at his past exploits under the light of Belle’s brief analysis, Kaden could definitely understand the detachment he had been talking about, and even Sophia’s words – or at least what Kaden determined to be the most accurate interpretation – seemed to support such a view at least partially.

If that had been it, the courier wouldn’t have wasted too much thought on it. Juno’s words, however, didn’t seem to make any sense at all, despite the fact that Kaden partially agreed with him. Why would people follow someone who seemed so obviously detached from everything going on around him? Apparently even the plans and suggestions he came up with didn’t seem invested in. Why would anyone believe in someone like that? Kaden probably wouldn’t. Which, of course, led him to question how much faith he actually had in his own abilities. The whole thing was very irritating.

At the very least, the courier took solace in the clearest reaction he had to Juno’s words. He definitely wasn’t basking anything. Basking meant he would have been taking some enjoyment or satisfaction out of anything in his life. If he actually had any glory to bask in, he wasn’t aware of it. His life had basically been an endless cavalcade of shit. There were less fortunate people out there, sure, but not a whole lot of them.

“Or maybe I’m just too ‘detached’ to see it,” he mumbled to himself.

It was at that point that Kaden realized Juno had been talking while he had been absorbed in his own thoughts. The hybrid, unable to hear what Kaden had said, asked him to repeat it. The courier simply shrugged.

“Nothing, really. Just thinking out loud, I guess.” A long sigh escaped the courier’s lips. Just sitting around thinking wouldn’t really help anything. Neither would sitting around talking to Juno. “You’re right, Juno,” the courier suddenly began. “I need to get my priorities straight.” Kaden hopped up from their table.

“Right now?” the hybrid responded, obviously having not expected that sudden turn of events.

“If someone says something to you that keeps bugging you, you should probably go talk to them about it, right?”

“I… yeah. That makes sense.”

“Unfortunately, that girl’s about as easy to track down as a dragonball.”

“Who are you—wait what? A dragon…” Juno let his voice trail off, convinced he had misheard the courier.

“Oh. Hahaha, yeah,” Kaden rushed through a fake laugh. “I did that too, actually. A dragonball. They’re these…” the courier hesitated, trying to think of the least insane way to explain as quickly as possible. “Artifacts, I guess. Apparently getting seven of them grants you a wish.”

Despite his willingness to distract Juno with tales of mystical artifacts, the courier had no intention of revealing that he had both hunted them down and witnessed a giant glowing dragon grant someone’s wish. Hopefully he’d pass the courier’s words off as some kind of colloquial expression. Either way, Kaden didn’t really care. With a short wave, Kaden exited the restaurant, thanking the hybrid for picking up the bill as the door closed behind him.

Not really sure where to begin his impromptu search for the priestess, the courier decided to head towards the rides section of the carnival. It had seemed to be the most populated in the past and, even if he didn’t find Sophia, he might come across someone who had seen her. It seemed like as good a lead as he was going to get. And, fortunately, it seemed to pay off rather quickly.

Wandering aimlessly, as sound a strategy as it was, didn’t seem like the best way to go about things. Instead, Kaden decided to spend most of his energy scanning the various lines that had formed outside rides. Sophia was definitely the type that would explore a curious-looking thrill ride, Kaden figured. It made about as much sense as anything else.

As he passed an otherwise empty ride labeled “Little Planet,” a flash of long blonde hair pulled the courier’s attention. Unfortunately, the owner had disappeared inside the doorway to the ride itself. Quickly doubling back, he rushed into the ride, hoping to find her before the ride actually started. A familiar voice greeted him as he crossed the threshold.

“Kaden! Want to go for a ride?”

“Piper?”

In spite of the fact that it was not who Kaden had been looking for, there was no disappointment in the courier’s voice. Piper stood with one foot on a boarding ramp and the other inside a small roller-coaster car. A shallow layer of water kept the tracks of the ride just out of view, and only one car seemed to move along it at a time; the car was big enough for two people to ride together. Though he wanted to find Sophia and, hopefully, put his chaotic thoughts to rest as quickly as possible, Piper’s offer during their race still hung in the back of his mind.

“Yeah, I suppose I could spare a few minutes.”

“Well don’t do me any favors,” the soldier teased as she hopped into the car and shifted over to make room for the courier.

“Oh come on. Like there’s any favor I wouldn’t do for you.” Kaden climbed into the car and tried to make himself as comfortable as the hard plastic bench would allow. “Still carrying that thing around, eh?” Kaden indicated the gauntlet on Piper’s hand.


“It’s a souvenir,” the specialist explained.

“Ha! You actually want something to remember all this crap?”

The car jerked beneath them as it began its slow course through a poorly-lit tunnel. The courier realized that he had no idea what kind of ride was in store for him, and questioned whether or not Piper did. Just about anything would be preferable over the ferris wheel she and Szar had dragged him on earlier. That much he was sure of.

“It could definitely be worse,” Piper responded as she cast a glance at the fairly nondescript surroundings. Whatever the ride had it store, it was off to a slow start. “At least we’re fighting off giant scorpions in a desert or hunting through a forest for some stupid bunker.”

“I’ll drink to that.”

“So, how’s things?” the blonde-haired woman asked, obviously lending the courier a helping hand.

Before could reply, though, a large set of double-doors, that had previously been obscured by the darkness of the runnel, swung open to reveal row upon row of little robotic children, all wearing some kind of unique costume or bearing a flag or other item iconic to a particular region. While that would have been fine on its own, as soon as Piper and Kaden passed through the open double-door, they began singing about their little, little planet. The words didn’t actually seem to fit the melody they were being crammed into.

“Really, Piper?” Kaden shot an accusing glance at his car-mate.

“Yeah… this isn’t really what I was expecting.”

“Anyway,” Kaden returned to the subject that actually mattered. “Things are ok, I guess. I’ve just been… I dunno. Out of sorts, I guess.”


“This place can do that to you,” Piper agreed.

“Nah, it’s not the place. I guess it’s the people.” Running a hand through his hair, Kaden shook his head. “Or maybe it’s just me. I don’t know.”

“C’mon. Something’s bugging you.” Piper nudged the courier with her elbow.

“You remember Friend or Foe. That was easily one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had. I think some other people would agree with that, too. But… it’s weird. Afterwards, I felt like if I had been able to get through that alive, I should be able to handle most stuff, right? I mean... killing off gigantic zombie monsters and fighting off soldiers in a ghost town… we had to have done something right to get through all that, y’know? And now, after talking to people, I feel li—“

As their car rounded a soft corner, Kaden suddenly found his upper body drenched in water. Having been shifted in the car to face Piper as best as he could, the courier whipped around see the offending party. A small child-bot sat of a fake pier the stretched over the shallow water of the Little Planet ride. His feet were dangling over the pier’s edge, kicking “playfully” in the water. As his feet swung back and forth in time with the song that was playing overhead, water was kicked up into the path of the cars. Before he realized what he was doing, Kaden illuminated the his surroundings in a flash of bright blue light. Where the mechanical boy, and his pier, had once sat was nothing. Ashes drifted through the shallow water in the wake of their car.

“As reasonable a reaction as that was, we could always go find another ride…” Piper offered after the courier’s outburst.

“I… wow. Sorry about that.” Kaden seemed to shrink down in his seat as he looked at his hand. Wisps of smoke slowly wafted into the air where the energy had escaped.

When the courier failed to speak for several moments, Piper reached over and placed her hand upon his, interrupting his line-of-sight as directly as possible. She achieved the desired result when Kaden looked to her, still blatantly unsure of what he was going to say.

“Something’s really bugging you, Kaden.”

“Yeah. I guess so,” the courier replied, confusion still in his voice. “It just seems so stupid. I keep thinking back on things that have already happened and it… it makes me feel so… I don’t know. Unsure, I guess. Even the times when I’ve been able to help people… was it really me or was I just in the right place at the right time. Am I someone you believe in, Piper?”

Taken aback by the suddenness of the courier’s question, the woman considered it a minute, leaning back against the bench and staring at the ceiling as she did. After several moments of enduring the ride’s awful song, she leveled her gaze at the courier and gave him a soft smile.

“You were talking about Friend or Foe earlier. The things that happened, the things that we managed to live through, I don’t think that would have happened if we hadn’t believed in each other. Fact was, we were in one life-or-death situation after another and usually only had each other to rely on. There were times where it felt like I believed in you more than I believed in myself.”

As Kaden listened to the woman’s words, he found it suddenly uncomfortable to look her directly in the eye. Instead, he let his gaze drift down to her hand, still gently settled atop his. He clenched his fists as he turned her words over in his mind. Finally, he spoke.

“You know. My father used to be a cop. I used to try and get him to tell me stories about it all of the time. I was so… amazed by it. He said he didn’t like to because the stories weren’t… nice, I think he called it. But dad, I would always say, you’re catching bad people who had done bad things. To me, that meant he was doing a nice thing for everyone else.” Kaden stopped and shook his head, a weary smile on his face. “Whenever I said that, though, he would tell me that there were no bad people. Everyone was good inside, but not everyone got the chance to show it. That’s what a cop did, he would say, find the people who hadn’t been given a chance.”

“That’s…” Piper searched for the right word.

“Ridiculous,” Kaden finished. “Of course there are bad people in the world. There are horrible, awful people in the world. Even as a kid I knew that, but my father… he believed in that so strongly, even after the things he had seen and the things he had done. Even now, I’m not sure how he did it. I wish, more than anything else, that I could have the kind of complete, total, and unshakable belief in something. Anything.”

“Tell you what. You believe in me, and I’ll believe in you.”

“Yeah…” Exhaled a sigh of something as close to relief as he was going to get. “I think I can do that.”

As the two exchanged a warm smile, the ride’s preposterous song slowly faded away and a second set of double-doors opened up, allowing sunlight to pour into the ride. A very rude design decision. The more Kaden thought about his frustrations – thought about them reasonably – the more ridiculous it seemed. Yes, when someone tells you something important, it should be processed, but it should not be used as a device to measure every event of one’s life. If there were things in the courier’s past that he didn’t like, all he could do was remember them and try to do things differently in the future. No amount of thinking of hand-wringing was going to change things that had already happened.

If nothing else, Juno was right in saying that were people who believed in Kaden. Whatever their reasons were, they seemed to think he was someone to look to… or at… or up to… or whatever it was they did. Shying away from it, or turning a blind eye towards it, wouldn’t help anything. He couldn’t stop being himself, and if that’s what people put faith in, he felt he owed it to them to make himself… better.

Offering Piper his hand, Kaden helped the woman climbed out of the ride. She indulged the courier, though they both knew she needed no assistance. Looking around once more, Kaden let the sights, sounds, and smells of the carnival wash over him, taking them in as though for the first time. While he certainly felt more at ease than he had been, there were still people that needed to be found and things that needed to be said.

“Piper. Thanks. It’s… well, I don’t usually get the chance to just talk. I’ve been told I should do it more often.”

“No problem,” the soldier replied.

“I definitely need to get going, though. I need to find someone before Gamer has me falling through more portals.” The courier turned to leave, but stopped. “If you ever need to… y’know… whatever, you’ve got my number.”

Despite the fact that the courier had actually said basically nothing, Piper smiled and nodded. Giving one more quick wave, Kaden set off into the carnival once more. In his seemingly endless introspection, the courier really hadn’t figured out what he was going to say to Sophia, or guessed at what else she might have to say to him, but the very last thing he wanted was something that continued to hang between them.

“She’s gotta be around here somewhere…”