Ravens of Eternity

252 One Happy Family

Eva, Miko, and Amal all sat in front of Amelia’s Habitation terminal – which now had a much larger screen – and joyfully talked to the rest of the family back home. And while the three of them hardly phyiscally aged, those on the other side clearly withered.

Slowly, but surely.

Both Amal’s and Miko’s mothers had bonded through their children, and together they helped Mack organize and run the channel. At first they helped with simple things – uploaded them to their countries’ preferred social media sites, added a few language translations, that sort of thing.

This freed up Mack to do the editing full-time, which greatly increased the quality of their videos.

But then they found that they needed to organize it all better, and so the trio created and formalized a family-owned business – one that centered around the videos.

That company was, of course, called the Conspiracy of Ravens.

Very recently, they started selling various swag – baseball caps and flight jacket patches and messenger bags. The Ravens’ logo was beautifully stitched on every single one of them, and the fans loved them.

Under their leadership, the entire enterprise grew.

Not that they suddenly became incredibly rich, but they all certainly had enough to live and eat and sleep well. None in the family had anything to worry about in the slightest, at least in terms of making a living.

.....

Most importantly, everyone in the family was happy – that was all that truly mattered in the end.

Although Eva smiled and laughed as they chatted, there still was a deep sadness inside her. It was clear for everyone else to see. She simply missed her grandparents dearly, even after so much time had passed.

They’ve all experienced a variety of wins and losses, but none hit her quite as hard as losing the two of them.

Eva felt as though she was cursed in some way. That, for whatever reason, she had tremendous difficulty letting go of things. Especially those most precious to her.

Despite the sadness she felt, she came to every weekly chat without fail. The family had grown beyond blood, and she cherished every single one of them. Not only that, but she needed to support Miko and Amal as best she could.

She knew that both of them would be in her place too, someday. And that one day, the weekly calls would end altogether.

Eva shook those thoughts right out of her head, then smiled as the family chatted. Though this time it was a little happier than before. Or, perhaps it was simply less sad.

Mack was also on the call, of course. He was, for all intents and purposes, one of the family. He had been there since the beginning, and stood firm at every turn. With him was Beth, the nurse who helped him see through his addiction.

They had been seeing each other for some time, and seemed very happy together. His youthful scruff had turned into a rather gentlemanly beard, which Beth scritched and scratched at while everyone talked.

Eva watched as the two of them doted on each other, and a warmth filled her.

Seeing them all grow gave her a sense of accomplishment, of pride. She now firmly believed that everything they had all fought for empowered the family as a whole. All they had to do was keep it up.

Although she could never stop their deaths, she could certainly help enrich their lives.

“Hey, so, before we end the call,” said Mack, “Beth and I wanna announce something...”

He looked around at everyone with a bit of trepidation, somewhat unsure how well he was going to be received. But Beth simply nudged him with a warm smile and gave him a little courage.

“The two of us are engaged,” he finally said.

Everyone immediately showered the two with congratulations, even before he could finish his rehearsed mini-speech. In fact, he was left practically speechless as the family’s two most powerful matrons harangued him with numerous questions and statements.

Such as when the date was, and where the venue was going to be, and if everyone was invited, and what kind of food should be served, and that he was the first in the family to finally marry, and that it was about goddamn time.

Mack scratched the back of his head sheepishly, unable to answer any of their questions. All the while, Beth giggled helplessly.

“We... don’t have a date yet, okay?” he said. “But I’m sure we’ll have it soon, like a year. No more than that, though. I’m hoping, anyway.”

“Is there a way we could be there, too?” asked Eva. “Seems too important for us not to be.”

“Yeah!” Amal echoed. “We need to be there! Keep a line open!”

“I’ll figure it out,” Mack replied. “But it shouldn’t be a problem to host a stream, at least, I wouldn’t think it wouldn’t be. Unless there’s, like, bad signal or something. Well, if all else fails, I’ll make a video so you three can watch it.”

“Not good enough,” said Miko, her voice sarcastically stern. “We’ll need a highly detailed action plan immediately!”

Everyone had a good laugh before they said their goodbyes. Each of the family members ended their side of the call and winked off their screen one by one by one.

Eva slipped out while Miko and Amal chatted – they were still high from their lively call. Neither could believe how cool their patches looked, and wowed at how well their two moms built everything up.

On her end, Eva surreptitiously got into her workout gear, left the hangar, and took to the streets of Helios. She rode a hopper and went straight towards her favorite sparring gym, which she began to consider her temple.

It was one of the few places where she found peace, which she needed after every call. She was always a torrent of various emotions after each one, and found that nothing cleared it all up quite like a workout.

She rented out and activated five of the sparring androids, and entered into a frenetic routine filled with evasions and parries and strikes and counterattacks. And as Eva sweated out all of the things that frustrated or depressed her, she also soaked up more of the things that made her happier and more fulfilled.

Eva shed those thoughts of her family’s ultimate demise or of her own existential loneliness. Instead she replaced them with the promise of their future, of the power of their unity.

She found that processing those emotions through an incredibly strenuous exercise was incredibly gratifying. Every punch or dodge reinforced the positives, and lightened the negatives. The universe simply felt more at ease the more she breathed.

The androids coordinated themselves and attacked Eva with increasing combined ferocity. One or two would feint at her while a third or fourth would commit real attacks. The fifth usually hung back and made any opportunistic strikes.

Though they got through her defenses from time to time, she did her best to maintain her upper hand. She danced around them with expert footwork, and struck back with decisive blows. In between her attacks, she made sure to parry and evade every attack thrown her way.

She found five to be a good challenge, and was looking forward to eventually adding a sixth.

Some of her more enterprising fans had long since figured out her routine, and had come to the gym on occasion. They usually came to talk, or watch in awe, or simply ogle at her toned body. They simply couldn’t resist.

This time wasn’t any different.

It didn’t take long for a small group of her fans to show up. They were, for the most part, happy to see her, and watched as she fought against the automatons. One of them, a small and youthful girl, drooled as Eva moved.

She couldn’t help but admire the Raven, at her lithe, athletic beauty. And she couldn’t help but covet. She felt as though she could never be the same way, a fact that she audibly lamented.

But Eva simply encouraged her.

“Don’t, like, hop into a ring against five and expect to win,” she said between breaths. “Just focus on a bit at a time. A simple spar one day. A complicated dance another day. It all adds up in the end.”

The others also chatted a bit with her while she exercised, mostly about her ‘Cast, her life, and her future. Though she liked to ask them questions about their lives and their futures, too. She simply liked to hear what people were doing, and where they were headed.

And if she had advice for any of them, she gave it. Even if it wasn’t solicited.

Also, she found that while she talked with them while she exercised, she practiced her ability to multitask. Eva found she slowly got better and better, but was nowhere near as proficient as Miko. Or even as Amal, who had gained the proficiency to treat multiple people at once.

She could barely fathom how they accomplished it. Still, she worked at it, and hoped to grow her skills.

Most importantly, now that Pelli was hardly in her life, she welcomed these few random moments with her fans. They gave her someone outside of the Ravens to talk to, at least to some degree.

And despite the fact that she never saw Pelli very seriously as a partner, she still missed him. He had this cute, boyish laugh that really endeared him to her. Of course, she also greatly enjoyed his physicality and his levity.

Although it came with a pang of loneliness, she sighed with relief when her fans finally left her alone. They had chatted for the better part of an hour, and decided that she needed her privacy. So, they collectively left her to her devices and went their separate ways.

All of them held a bit of warmth after their exchange, as though Eva had gifted them with it.

In a way, it was true.

Regardless, now that they had gone, it meant she could focus on the androids and finish up her training for the cycle. This workout had been taking a rather long time, and she decided to end it with a bang.

So she poured everything she had into the androids, and took them down one by one. Sure, she took a few painful hits in the process, but they were less than last time. As long as she improved, she was happy.

Eva evaded their attacks, and counterattacked with vicious strikes and throws. Each time, she hit the multiple sensor points on them, and slowly but methodically deactivated them.

By the end, she was breathing extremely heavily and completely out of energy. She was laid out on the padded mat and slowly recovered her stamina. The deactivated frames of the sparring androids were laid out in piles around her, monuments to her small victory.

She had completely worn herself out in a ritualistic attempt to quiet her heart and mind. And in doing so honed her edge, and kept her sharp.

An alarm suddenly rang all throughout her body. Tiamat’s Transcendence demanded that she move, that danger was near.

But she couldn’t move – she was utterly spent and had nothing left. Only a fraction of a second later, she heard the sound of a suppressed pistol as it discharged. Then immediately felt a sting in her neck.

Eva panicked as she felt some substance spread across her body, right from where that sting originated. She reached up with what little energy she had, and pulled out a tiny pronged dart.

But it was too late. It had already poured in millions of nanites, all of whom released their chemical payload into her body.

Her world began to spin as it spread through her, even as she fought hard against it. Nothing she did mattered as she had no energy left to fight it off. She couldn’t do anything else but lie there as the lights around her faded.

And, after a few moments, Eva fell into darkness.

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