Spectrum intermission #2: Spring

Alcohol is both a window into truth and shame.

Intermission 2: Spring
Between chapter 2 and 3
Robin's Journal
Quarto 10, 535 PB
Entry 15

I'm glad we're finally through with all of the lengthy vacation to Erika's home. While it was nice not to worry about the typical trials and tribulations of this tumultuous territory of Spectrum, where things are hectic and I use a lot of T's. It felt like I was out of my environment and purpose, almost as if I wanted to commit to my current job as a Slayer, even if I didn't like it at first, it's grown on me. Morgan said during one of the first weeks that I needed to be here for my own intentions, not just to help babysit Florence... Even though I still intend to do that, he needs direction if he really wants to prove himself.
Older sisters always will take care of their younger brothers, I'm not sure Morgan gets that. I don't think she's ever had family, but it's the older siblings birthright and duty to make sure their younger ones do not do something stupid.

Erika's parents lived in the country of Kingsweld, a snowbound country across the Jade Sea. I was completely shocked how technology can be so different when you head outside of Rosewall, I heard even Cambris hasn't gotten around to manufacturing as advanced technology such as high performance computers and those strange cell phones you can tap on the screen. Kingsweld has cars without the typical rubber tire, the streets are lit with lamps and the roads are paved with bricks. Actually, I really got a kick out of that.

Even if circumstance says that the roads in Kingsweld are paved with bricks is more just a lack of resources, labor and money from the fact it technically isn't controlled by any governing body who could probably set up an agenda, everyone tends to fend for themselves and they seem to like it. The bricks in each city as we drove through each one were different. I actually had Erika's dad, who was a builder tell me each and every type of brick paving so I can possibly one day pave the Goldshore manor with my own special brick road.

The first kind is called the 'Herring Bone.' It's named after a Herring, duh. Well, it's actually named after the bones of the fish. Each tile is set up to press up against other tiles at two different angles, allowing less amount of slip in exchange for symmetry. The second is the 'Stretcher Bond.' It's kind of like how most brick buildings are made in such a way so they can slightly sway from a breeze or light earthquake and not send the entire thing to pieces like the block play sets I gave to Florence when I stepped on one and ended up kicking it across the room. Don't step on those.

Actually, I just realized how boring this journal is, I'm not sure if whoever is eventually going to steal or read this journal is going to actually care how bricks are paved, but damn it, it matters to me! But I digress, and will return to the subject of Erika's home for our 2 weeks of vacation. Well... It was more like 10 days not counting the traveling... I need to stop undermining my own points. Erika's parents, Brandt and Hanna are very stout and stuck in their old ways. They fish for their own food just outside of their home, which was surprisingly a re-purposed boat from the Ash War about 20 years back, when Astra invaded Rosewall while it's territories, my fathers included were starting to fall apart when the Ash weapons caused a rebalance of power.

They took us in with open arms we quickly sat down and had a long dinner and a conversation as well, we learned that Erika moved to another country because her father was a member of Spectrum before he settled down back in the early days of the company.
She decided to take up attempting to do it to somewhat live up to his fathers legacy, though it seemed his mother really just wanted her to stay in the country and get a somewhat normal, less deadly profession, but she began to argue about how she wants to prove to herself that she could do it. I admit, I admire her determination, but it seems like if she tries too hard she'll end up burning her candle's wick to the end, if you don't mind the metaphor.

After that, we slept for nearly 10 hours each, I didn't think traveling in a plane could be so potentially tiring, but it turns out that because of the sun moving as we traveled, it completely messed with all of us. I had to slap Florence to get him awake, and that barely ever happens now a days. And no I don't hit him all the time, that would be very cruel. I just hit him sometimes, there's a difference.

The first thing we did after recovering from the flight was go camping, camping wasn't my thing back when I tried it out back during our entry exams, and it still isn't. I didn't have an outfit for it, and one of my dressed was torn up by a branch as I was running past it, it's kind of what I get for wearing long skirts in any sort of action. After that, we went fishing even though no one brought a fishing rod.

Her parents apparently FISH BY HAND, it was probably the craziest thing I've ever seen, digging hands into holes, grabbing fish by the mouths and throwing them over to be cooked for later. I mean, Erika's Mother and Father are quite strong, her dad is nearly 7 feet tall with this huge beard that covers half of his face, her mother is pretty hardy herself but it's still quite interesting to watch. They invited me to join them but I was afraid to since I didn't want a fish to rip one of my fingers off in a horrific accident, they just called me paranoid.

After that, we set up our tents and created a campfire so we could some of the fish and got ready to rest for the night. The floor was hard and I ended up sleeping on a rock that night, we all had to squeeze into one tent and it was loud and noisy and Erika kept trying to sneakily open a bag of chips that we bought from the bazaar while not waking anybody up, she failed. Everyone woke up and got upset with her and her discrete chip bag opening.

After that, we took another trip to the bazaar where I actually managed to pick up some legitimate outdoorsy wear, along with a very nice sun hat that everyone mistakes for wearing some kind of sombrero. It's a sun hat, not a sombrero you nincompoops. There's an entire market street comprised of people sitting at small booths to sell their wares, it's a fairly free market and people advertise not by radio or television, but by shouting it at the street for anyone willing to hear. That's why Erika was interested when a mustachioed man shouted that he had chips. Erika cannot escape her willingness to buy chips, I am a woman without that quality.

After that, Erika's Parents, Erika, Morgan and I all began to drink at the tavern, we left Florence at an ice cream shop where apparently he caused another pistachio related incident that I had to pay out of pocket, it was one of the reasons I wasn't able to buy a horse so I can have a proper horse-drawn carriage and not a depressing embroidered shack with wheels. Erika got into a bar fight with a midget until she decided to give him the rest of her chips as an apology, I was confused.

There was one particular shopkeeper who was selling animal masks, having a beard that could rival Erika's father, he was shouting literally as we walked three feet from the booth. Telling us how we should “BECOME LIKE THE SHEEP PEOPLE! THE SHEEPLE!” as we just picked up the pace, walking away and back home out of fear the man was on some sort of drug that makes you want to become a sheep man, his accent was so thick that if he wasn't yelling he just sounded like he was using entirely euphemisms. Kingsweld is weird.

Morgan has been acting stranger the past couple of months, she occasionally glances in her pocket to pull out a red cell phone, I asked her about why she never would actually call anybody on it, but she tells me only to “forget about it” and “it isn't your issue.” We all decided to sit down to talk about it, but Morgan got upset and left for the night until we actually got on the plane to get home. I'm somewhat worried about her as she's gone strangely aloof since the new year broke through.

Maybe if we give her space, she'll actually listen to us and let us in on this issue.

Maria's Journal entry #2
Quarto 10, 535 PB

I hate planes so much.
Someone forgot the cat food.
Lily is the dumb.

I made a haiku, this journal still sucks.

Spectrum Intermission: Winter

This chapter takes place between 13 and 14

Intermission 1: Winter
Decem 14, 534 Post Bellum
Journal Entry #39

“It's been so long since I've written in this journal. The last time I wrote in this was when I decided to leave for Spectrum. I can't believe it's been six months since I ran off from my home. There are so many things you lose track of when you join here, and one of those is time.

The next five months after we got accepted were devoted entirely to physical training and conditioning our bodies to actually be ready to fight real threats at the our physical best. We were woken up at 5 AM every morning by our instructor, typically with some kind of air horn which at first I feared to be waken up by, but eventually I became desensitized to it and it just started to get on my nerves. It got me up pretty consistently, so I guess that the airhorn is doing it's job.

The first thing we would do is go for a 10 mile run, this was required by everyone who was enlisted by Spectrum and mostly a requirement for the 4 month physical training period. The entire run would take about an hour, though at first it took me more than an hour due to just not being used to it. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised at how out of shape I actually was.

I mean, I thought I was healthy but as soon as I got about a week in I realized I'm kind of... weak. Eventually I was able to keep pace with Maria, I'm kind of surprised she spent so much time on her physical rehabilitation, but I guess when you have no family and spent all of your time cooped up in the hospital, all you do is run or work out.

The next thing was running along a pretty big obstacle course, it was full of things like jumps, swings, stuff to climb and sidle across to pretty much test your maneuverability. The first time I completed it.. I was in the bottom 20 with my total time. Keep in mind that there is currently 852 students at the academy so... that's pretty dismal to be honest. Maria eventually got into the top 40 times, since it's mostly a speed and agility test and she has that down pat. Jonah also scored as low as I did, though Gabriel managed to hit the top 100 as well.

After that, We do this weird thing called Yoga, it's mostly just stretching and breathing exercises. The rooms tend to fit about 50 people and ours is ran by a guy named Joseph Page, he seems excited about everything especially when it comes to doing glute exercises. Something about holding back the hands of time, that notion makes absolutely no sense and I wonder why they hire such eccentric instructors for all of these sections of physical training.

After that is sparring, we had wooden versions of our weapons made, though I swapped back to a straight sword when I realized that the Scimitar wasn't working out. Luckily for me, my fencing training is starting to integrate with the sword training I've been getting from Instructor Willows, I pretty much always win our little practice sword fights with other first year students, though sometimes I'm still surprised by how many different fighting styles people seem to have. It pretty much means I have to memorize each person's fighting style and how to beat them, which can be pretty mentally taxing and I'm sure no one else thinks about these things that much.

After all of that is EVEN MORE RUNNING, another 10 mile run to top it off. I understand that we need to be in fighting condition, but I was starting to get really bad blisters on my feet from just having to run constantly all day with only one break for eating lunch.

Maria's starting to get a little better, she still has her moments where she'll get mean or upset for no particular reason. She has this weird habit sometimes of not sleeping all night, just leaning against a chair and sipping a glass or water or a cup of coffee and not really looking at anything in particular. She's told me that it's mostly her not being able to sleep, though one or two times I heard her mumbling to herself, almost like having a conversation with someone who wasn't there. She doesn't seem to be getting worse or anything, so I guess you take the bad with the good.

She does a couple of things that seem just absurd to me if she's pretty much burning about 6 hours of workouts every single week. On top of that, every weekend she puts in about 2-4 hours in that fighting club she joined. At the end of the week, she's so drained I pretty much have to pull her out of bed. I guess the good thing that comes out of that is she just doesn't have enough energy to complain to anyone anymore.

Jonah is a bit odd sometimes, he seems a lot more solemn than he lets on. It's like as soon as he's done interacting with people he'll just sink his head and wander off somewhere alone for a couple of hours before coming back. I don't really know if something is bothering him because every time I ask, he'll just say everything is fine and thank me for caring. But how am I supposed to know what's wrong if he doesn't tell me?

He enjoys knitting club though, I'm really glad he's found something in his life that he can enjoy even when hes going through troubles like he is now. Otherwise, he's just been struggling with his physical training, apparently he was sick most of the time when he was a little kid and he grew up missing months of his school just not being able to leave the house. Luckily, his parents are both doctors and taught him a lot of stuff themselves.

Morgan is very taciturn with me, I don't think we've ever had a conversation longer than 2 or 3 sentences ever since that fight during our initiation exams. I could understand why with how irrational I got when she accused me of being a crook, but well.. You think one of us would try and patch it up already. I've tried but to be honest I'm actually a little nervous to do it, I keep thinking I'm just going to end up making things worse...

I'm not sure I've interacted much with Erika, though she seems very kind and helpful to her team and everyone seems to tolerate her pretty well, I would like to come hang out with her once all this physical training is done, to be honest I've been working out so much that every day has become kind of a blur in my own head consisting entirely of me running, it's absurd.

Florence and Robin come to visit us sometimes and both seem to be pretty enjoyable to hang out with. I am kind of jealous of Robin's bravado sometimes, I wish I could become as passionate as she is when it comes to dealing with other people's situations. I sometimes see her with me whenever I go to my history class for college credits. She keeps me awake after that one time I fell asleep during class and ended up with a piece of paper attached to my face. That doesn't seem to be a problem after autumn began when it started to get colder

Since winter kicked in, I realized that I didn't pack any winter outfits with me when I moved out of my dad's manor. I guess I assumed that the dorms were heated enough for me not to worry about it, but my hindsight makes me sound like a complete idiot. To be honest it would make me miss home if it wasn't so cold and dead where I've lived the past couple of years. But I digress, this isn't really the point of this journal.

Gabriel's sister's home was destroyed by invading Riftfallen, he got the phone call just this last week. His parents got a hold of him and requested him to leave Spectrum academy and he acceded to leave. He was very upset about the entire thing because well.. He spent enough time with us to actually consider us his friends. So unfortunately that leaves us one person short, but Ashley spoke to us yesterday about finding a new person to join our team. Apparently he's been here for about a year or so and knows what he's doing. He left his own team to join this one, but I'm not exactly sure why, so here is my reminder to remember to talk to him about this. If I forget, I'm stupid.

This entire thing is just a reminder to me that we're in danger nearly every single day by just being here while the black split in the sky looms overhead. You can have a normal day and then just have it ruined by what seems to be a natural disaster. It isn't ever out of malice, it's just... doesn't care what gets destroyed. Both this and what happened with Maria are only reminders of the times we live in now.

Oh, I forgot to mention the fact Maria is alive. I'm kind of wondering how I wrote about Maria's mood improving when I thought she was dead for two and a half years and that her being alive would be a much higher priority. It makes it sound like I found her corpse and it's behavior is 'better' than before. Well, Maria's alive. There, I said it. Maybe I'm just so used to her being not dead that I forgot I thought she was dead; Life is weird.

She really loves her cat.. Which she's called 'Cat.' She refuses to call it Snowy for some reason, even when I asked her to get it's nametag and collar she insisted on calling it 'Cat' instead of Snowy, luckily I superseded her and managed to get it's proper name printed on it's cute pink collar. Then I found out it was a boy... My bad. It's actually funny, Snowy climbs onto Maria's shoulders like a parrot when they are together, it's the strangest sight I've ever seen.

At first I missed my home, but eventually I got used to not having all of luxuries I got accustomed to, at first I didn't know how to live without all the things I was used to. People to clean up my room, cook my food, parcel out my day into a schedule, tell me where to go, tell me what to wear, tell me what to say... And all of that left in an instant, I still have access to my savings account, which is probably more than what most students have here since Maria never seems to have enough money for her own food some days without my help.

But after a while, it's been kind of freeing. For the past couple of years I knew that my father didn't really see me anything more than just my last name. As soon as he passed away all I would have is ownership of the company, but I'll still be living the same way I live now, with everyone picking everything best for me. I don't consider myself a rebel, but I don't think I could go back to a life where I don't get an option to decide how I live.

It's all thanks to my butler, Alistair; who probably acted more like a father to me than my own dad ever since he divorced my mother and bent the rules so they couldn't take any of his claim. He got me out of there, gave me my bags and gave me places to go. Because of what happened to Maria, I felt like I should do something that felt more real... defending others instead of sitting behind the scenes, ignoring everyone and everything like they're ants on an anthill.

My therapist told me that these were originally to help me cope with my life issues in a clean and timely manner, but as I was writing this I kind of wondered why I continued to write them.

Sometimes at night I do think that maybe being in Spectrum will kill me, it keeps me up and makes me restless in my bed until I'm forced to get out and walk around until I calm down. I guess that's a fear everyone here has, but at the same time we're the only people with tools to help stop them. A new doctrine was passed with heavy financial backing by my own father to make it so these tools can only be used by people affiliated with Spectrum, Sometimes I feel like I'm writing my own memoir instead of a journal...

I'm still not 100% sure about how Rosewall treats weapons. Back when they had much looser laws, we nearly erupted in a civil war after the Astrians invaded, and suddenly these weapons used to combat Riftfallen were stripped from anyone who owned them. Maybe I don't know enough about ethics to actually comment, there are professionals for these things and I'm just some rich girl trying to fight alongside with a bunch of people willing to risk their lives.

Today is the day our physical conditioning ends and we enter specialized combat training. Apparently Ashley is going to introduce us to the new team member along with showing off something that is supposed to be the entire reason the Ash weapons allow us to fight off Riftfallen, it's pretty interesting to see that in action, but it's also really exciting for the possibility to use it myself.

I should stop here, Maria's annoyed that we're going to be late to go see Ashley.

Things to do:
Meet sister and mother
Think about job after Spectrum
Buy clothes that aren't REALLY INAPPROPRIATE FOR WINTER – Priority.
Help Maria find hobby that doesn't involve punching strangers in the face. – Also a priority."

BONUS JOURNAL
Maria Journal Entry #1
Decim 15, 534 Post Bellum
Journals suck.

What am I, twelve?