?
?
?
“Watchu got there, buddy?” echoed a distinctively human raspy voice right beside Skavit, like rocks brushing together. His left large, pointy ear twitched for a moment as he looked up at the human, his short whiskers twitching while his large black eyes stared up at the male. The soldier was wearing, as a standard for the region they were acting in, a green uniform, a boonie hat, a scarf, and standard body armor. There were also the recently added protective pads along the thighs, shins, and calves, mostly after some incidents where they realized that because of their size, the Aidin were way more likely to stab someone around those areas and the lower back.
The human himself, though, was quite a familiar face for Skavit, a softer brown color coating the furless face, a sharp nose, and small lips alongside thick brows above his dark eyes. The cheap artificial scent from his deodorant, which always pokes his nostrils like tiny needles down to his lungs, barely hid his distinct scent. That one was called Arizona, the grenadier of the squad that had to take the vermin under their wing.
?“Oh! Jyst writing for family before we go,” the alien rodent replied, using a pen to write just one last thing before folding the letter and shoving both items inside a pocket on his vest. “They’ve been interested.” He added.
“Ah, I see, I see,” the soldier mumbled out, humming, the sound rumbling through his throat, making the vermin’s sensitive ears twitch. “Man, you’re lucky that you’re working so close to home; if I sent something, it would take quite a while for it to get to my family,” Arizona replied with a quick look around the barracks to see if anyone else was present. Then, he took a seat beside the smaller alien’s bunk bed.
“Oh? How long?” the rodent asked as he shifted on the mattress of the bunk bed, creating a little space between him and the human while curiously staring up at him with those large eyes that looked more like an eight-ball without the white, his whiskers idly twitching.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
?“Eer… Let’s see…” he replied, taking a second to think. Then, with a click of his tongue, he began listing. First off, we haven’t set up trans-solar communications yet, and they will take another year to get ready for use. “Then this array would have to send a message to the closest array, then that array shoots it to the next, so on and so forth,” he added, ready to spit out more until he felt the rodent’s claw tap his shoulder.
“What’s a trans-solar…” Skavit squeaked out as he looked up at the human, stopping in the middle of his question and tensing his lips. “Comm… Comm?nications…?” he blurted, his lips and tongue tripping over it, tilting his head to the side, looking up expectantly.
“Almost there, buddy, don’t try too hard.” Arizona smiled, reaching out a hand and giving the rodent a few pats on the head. He felt a little bad for Skavit, but the struggle of his kind to pronounce the “u” sound was quite amusing. “But to keep it brief, Solar means Sun, and it’s the core of your Solar System, which is made up of your planet and some others. So trans-solar means stuff that can reach beyond a Solar system.”
Skavit listened intently, nodding along as knowledge of what’s beyond his planet was so casually explained. It was quite hard to wrap his head around the concept of something so impossibly large, even after seeing some visual representations here and there during his course on human language. “I… see…” he mumbled in deep thought, the gears in his mind visibly working.
“Mmmhm. So yeah, you got it pretty easy here, champ,” the human replied before abruptly giving the rat some rough pats on the back, which almost pushed him off the bunk bed. After the words got out of his mouth, though, he’d furrow his brows, taking a second to think about his own words before questioning. “I mean—... do you? Have you gotten any days off or something?”
“Oh! They told me that,” Skavit chirped, those pointy ears perking up as he quickly straightened his posture, recovering from those pats which felt more like shoves. “My family prefers that I stay,” he then explained, his bare tail brushing against the sheets behind him.
“Huh… Why tho?” The brunet asked, a tinge of confusion tickling the back of his mind. Meanwhile, the rodent would just squint his eyes and look up at the marine as if he had some mental impairment.
?“Ye all look like gods, even for me. Imagine my parents,” the rodent replied, keeping the argument brief, which made the human feel a stinging sensation in the back of his mind, making him also question his own intelligence.
“Good point.” Arizona nodded before swiftly trying to change the subject of the conversation, leaning back a bit. “So, excited for your deployment?” the brunet asked.
“Eeeh…” Skavit let out while looking away for a moment, his furless tail lying against the mattress of his bed. He also seemed to be in deep thought, trying his best to think of something that wouldn’t offend the human. He’d idly click his tongue and even scratch the brown fur on his cheek.
“Yeah, yeah. I know you’d rather be in combat and all, but I have a more important question…” Once again, Arizona breathed in while looking around, unsure of how to approach the topic he was about to bring up before whispering, “Look, I’ll be straight here: does your clan or the Royals have any grievances or something of the sort? After going through the outpost, we’ll be escorting the Ambassador to meet other Royals, so I’m just making sure.”
The rodent blinked, a bit caught off-guard, tilting his head to the side at the taller alien before diverting his eyes as he took a few seconds to think, reaching within the depths of his mind for something. “Well… The Royal Ziff-Tredan Clan did go to war with the Yeth Clan before ye hymans arrived...” he replied after a few seconds, then glancing back up at the brunette soldier, tilting his head to the other side questioningly. “Aren’t ye sypposed to know something like this?”
?“Hey, look. Our job will be to escort a representative, so I barely got any info here. Command is still figuring things out, but I think they are aware of that one.” The human sighed, leaning back a bit as he stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. “The real question is: does your Clan have anything against them?”
“I…don’t really know.” Skavit squeaked as he came to a realization. “I was still yong when I got sent to the capital, so my clan never told me anything. Then, I spent the next few years learning from ye Hymans while being trained by the Ziff-Tredan Clan, as most were as a favor, so I didn’t get anything in regards to their grievances either.”
“Okay, so regarding you, we’ll be blind,” Arizona mumbled to himself, letting the silence take over the room, the faint sounds of voices in the background being the only thing audible. “I’ll report it to Sarge Mornin’.” The brunette sighed, slowly getting up from the bed, adjusting his vest for a few seconds. Meanwhile, the alien rodent looked up at him, curiously twitching those ears.
“Oh, also! Why ye all call Sarge Wood that?” he asked, tilting his head to the side before figuring out that he should also get going and hopped off the bed, standing tall beside the human, his pointy ears only reaching around the fellow soldier’s chest.
“Oh?” Arizona let out, taking a second to process his question before an impish grin appeared on his face. He’d take a quick look at the door of the quarters, leaning in as if to gauge the time he had left before quickly lowering himself down, landing a hand on the alien’s shoulder and making him tense up. “Alright, so, when joining the Marines, he was always the first to wake up, so-.”
“Hey! You two!” another marine from their fireteam yelled from outside the barracks, startling both Skavit and Arizona. “Wood has been waiting for your asses! Do you idiots want to get left behind?!” the voice roared.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit…” Arizona mumbled as he grabbed the oversized rodent by his scalp, scooping him up before hurrying up to the exit of the barracks, with the poor alien letting out a squeak as he got dragged out like a sandbag over the human’s shoulder.