TO CUT A TURNING TAIL

41). Pivot!

Bright lights flash up the room. Tens of small square lights at the white ceiling. The room has a luminant monochromatic décor. Seven flat (of an apartment) sized domes, each having a big bright light shinning form inside of them. A buzzing sound comes in and condensed fog is visible from the tiny windows of each one of the domes. The window acquainted slides upwards, from inside each one of these domes, a figure starts walking out, hindered to sight due to the fog. 

Coming out of the first gate is Samantha, she is wearing a white sweater with loose black suspenders attached to the black lowers. To add up, she has black nets adorned over both the elbow sides and the mere knee portions, a netted mask on the face which for now, is hanging by her neck. Similar to her is everyone's dressing: Kamaya, Lovi, Primus, Acker and Larriel, who happens to have had a change of hair. She has got her hair shortened to a side-swept bob cut with blonde highlights and a nose piercing, "you look alluring" compliments an orotund voice. 

Sitting by the wall's support beside her dome is Jon, he is back to his old wavy curtained hair which are well swept behind the ears for now. "Hi!" he waves like a child. She walks to him and they both hug each other. "Where's Connell?" she asks. "Already stealing my attention" he answers back. She laughs and looks behind, there is Connell walking towards them from the middle dome, where she had been chatting with the others. 

"I guess it's time to exchange partners" sighs Jon. In a moment, both Larriel and him disappear from Connell's sight. Soon, Connell's sight disappears, it comes back and she is standing in front of everyone. "Always trying to be the over smart one, huh Jon" picks on Primus. That was strange...... primus never chats! Jon is dumbfounded. He tensely shows his teeth and exclaims, "yeet!". 

"What's happening now day's you guys?" he asks in a rapid deliberate tone, everyone's shocked for a second; they congratulate him with pats after he bites them about his hard work over achieving flight without ken, and that also to speak at a normal pace rather than the typical slow pace, he wants to cry over that but it's a fair life for him at least. Anyhow, his slow-paced tone reappears as he says, "just kidding. I was speaking fast....". Al of them could guess so, they boo him.

To answer to his last question, Acker says, "you'll tell us, ... what's happening? Because if Marubi's not here, we don't know what's happening" he says. Both Jon and Connell slightly exchange looks, Jon's eyes turn red and his mouth halfway open to say something, he looks away for a minute and then grasps a confetto coming to his forehead, "I have good senses Lovi", he blows it back at her and then uncomfortably answers, "don't you understand what it means if I'm not answering you. Of course, there lived a dragon who challenged three mortals like a play game. And one of them said, kit's something you call a sacrifice. Now what? Of course, someone who says such out of the dictionary stuff is going to follow it and let someone swallow it" he rapidly states, his frustration is clear, so are the emotions but the wordings aren't.

 He adds one last thing, "now, it's a sad matter if you can't even understand goddam psychology! We'd lose that way. Coz those people, it feels like they abducted psychotics and their therapists from every single dimension that exists and brought them to one goddam unit and learnt everything together! They're nuts!" Connell kicks him in the shin to let him calm, Jon runs away from them to have a moment of peace.

 "He's so fast without a ken?" asks Kamaya. "He can't do that this often, right now good energy so he foolishly used it twice, but yes, he uses his ken lesser nowadays. Much thanks to Marubi." Kamaya simply smiles at this. Whilst, Larriel and Acker warm Jon in consolation, Lovi has her emotions under control. To Samantha and Primus, it isn't much of a heartbreak though they keep their mouths shut and play an internal ode to the deceased.

As they all stay aloof for the second, a thin woman in a similar dress, with blue sweater however, comes out on an opulent wheelchair from the farthest dome. All the heads turn to her, she has a boy cut which has cut short at the running ends and has a typical Korean businesswoman look to her. Big flashes of hair swept to both the sides from the middle, or more like the left side of the middle area. Her hair has been swept straight down to the eyes from both the ends of the forehead. Eh, that's what you call curtained hair! 

Her dark blue sweater is radiant in comparison to the other two pairs everyone know about (yellow and white) but the black pants with suspenders live on. She turns her head to them, she looks a few years older to them; like in the middle 20's or maybe 30's. Her visibly round eyes and her hooked nose, a cut on her forehead and her lips with a peaked cupid bow, a small cut above the chin; everything about her is alluring. 

She calmly turns to them and says, "I guess it'd be fine if I can come with you all then?", her voice is soft and calm, but has a rough texture. Everyone including Jon bows to her, "it'd be our pleasure" they say. "Mam, would it be fine if we can get an introduction?" asks Jon with utmost sincerity. However, he doesn't need it anymore, his eyes lay on her fingers, she has marks on her hands, black circles over the knuckles which are followed over the fingers as lines and stop at the nails. These lines follow over the other end of the circles as well, i.e., there are markings on the wrist as well. They much replicate bones; two circles and a line in between them. (I know they're three circles in a bones drawing -_-)

"I am Kaila, 27, from the generation of Marubi. I don't have a ken. I used to, till it was that it froze and everything relating to it as well. If you remember the Tumburuns, I am one of them, but I have exhausted much of my energy and I don't want to revive myself. So, let me just spend the remaining of my energy wherever I can." She obstinately smiles. 

"Anyhow, what help can I be of? If you think about that, not significant combat, but over the years I have developed great surveillance skills. Since I don't have the energy anymore and half my body is jammed, that's the best I can do. I can still fight I guess; my abilities need my leg to function so I can't do that. But I can create sound waves if needed. But that was never my cup of tea I'll be honest. And I don't even wanna waste any more of my energy on those suckers. If it wasn't for Marubi's predicament, I would have loved accompanying you and your friend as well." Jon bows again, gets up and snaps, "Jon here". Connell walks in for a handshake which she doesn't get, "I'm sorry, I can't move my hand much. I apologize young sprout". "Connell here" she greets uncomfortably and walks back.

******

Jon and Larriel are sitting at the same hill, witnessing the sun rise, "You know you look better in this hair" comments Jon. "But you don't look as interesting with this accent" she notices. Jon is astonished over the use of the word, "It's not accent". "It is". Jon is fidgeting, his hands on his laps and his upper body shaking. "You know I like you" he says dingily. She unimpressively rubs her hair back to the ears and slyly asks, "like I like you?", the way she says it, it's bleak yet teasy. However, Jon is confused over the word play, "huh?". "No, the way I like Kamaya" he answers back. "Are you serious? Because I like you the way you like Kamaya" she says in an ailed tone. "What do you think about Shridgaar?" he asks gravely, bringing back the same old absurd foolish question; his eyes stuck to the sky in front of them. "What do you think about Kargzaans?" she asks. "What do I think of them doesn't matter, what matters is how we think during the combat". "And that is why, I think me pretending I have my ability in good health is a healthy precaution," he says slowly, even his legs have started moving with more ease as he places one of them on the tree log behind him.

 For a minute, Larriel calculates things and then Jon turns to her, "it's Connell. She is good, but that scares me for some reason. And I know I shouldn't be scared of anyone ever. But, she is one to be intrigued about. I just want to ask her what's all the stuff she had been doing, how could she be so good. But she never uses her ken, she isn't an Allover. What's her surname anyway? Is she like, an Allover or she has something different to give? And what is she? She survived but she never wore the nets", Jon would have continued to blabber if it wasn't for a birds slow-paced chirp. 

"I think she is just a closed book", Larriel reasons. "Then I would like to read her", that is when Larriel and Jon realize someone had been eavesdropping. It's Kamaya chortling on Jon's bad joke. "I know you knew I was here the whole time," he says, "but someone had to break the act!". They both laugh and start making grumpy faces, for the first time in his life had Kamaya made a grumpy face. As they all fall silent, Kamaya shrugs and asks, "shall we leave now?". Jon innocently raises his eyebrows in question, "we have some work, you know" Kamaya adds. "So, changes in the plan? Now I am gonna be a part of your group too? Wow, isn't that spit in the crotch, kick in the face amazing!" Astonished at how absurd a statement Jon just passed, Larriel leisurely sputters, "what.... was.... that?" "Oh!" his exclamation sounds like a burp, "I'm sorry. A jumbling of words. Just like now our plan might be jumbled as I have walked. Hmm?"