Unknown - The_Growing_589064

There is a bad feel to this crowd, a nameless, pointless, directionless anger simmering just under the surface, lacking only the spark needed to burst into full flame.

That spark comes in the form of a well armed squad of uniformed men and women marching toward the disturbance in lock-step. The crowd scatters and reforms—oil sitting on the surface of a storm-tossed pond. Several men, and some women too, heft fist sized rocks and stare at the oncoming soldiers from beneath lowered brows.

A young Sergeant moves forward with confident steps, hand on her gunbutt. “Come on, folks, go back to your homes. Break it up.”

“Make us!” shouts an anonymous voice in the milling throng.

The young woman squares her shoulders, eyeing the crowd with a level stare. “I’m asking you again. Please clear the area and return to your homes.”

“Who died and made you God?” Another anonymous voice, stirring the crowd.

“Clear the area!”

Dakota is running before the first rock clears the crowd. It deals the sergeant a glancing blow on the shoulder, causing her squad to draw their weapons and advance on the group. A few more rocks fly; furtive, like the first raindrops preceding a torrential summer squall.

Koda is able to grab onto a beefy man just about to launch a good-sized rock. Her palm screams its displeasure as she clamps down on his wide wrist and squeezes hard.

“What the fuck?!?” The man rounds on her, fully intending to use his free hand, now cocked into a ham-sized fist, to turn her face into pop-art sculpture. Suddenly, his eyes widen and his arm drops back to his side, unnoticed, as he stares over Dakota’s right shoulder.

Taken aback by the abrupt change, Dakota turns even as she keeps her grip on the man’s wrist. Before her, the crowd parts like the Red Sea before Moses, admitting five-feet-five-inches of pure attitude.

“Excuse me,” Kirsten growls, hands on hips, green eyes flashing fury. “Would someone like to tell me what the hell is going on here??” Asi, ever Kirsten’s shadow, adds his opinion to the mix, growling low in his throat as he sits at Kirsten’s side, ruff standing up in spiky threads.

A hive-drone murmur sweeps its way through the crowd. Snippets of conversation stand out here and there, and Koda listens with half an ear, an ever-widening smirk on her face.

“…King…”

“…robotics lady….”

“…saw her on TV just last month!”

“…great….”

“…can’t believe….”

“...shorter than she is on television!”

Dakota bites back a smile at that remark, watching as one of the MPs moves stiffly forward, as if drawn to Kirsten simply by the strength of her aura. Kirsten’s cool voice carries easily through the still air. “Mind telling me what’s going on, Corporal Hill?”

“Yes, Ma’am. Both sets of subjects were attempting to forcibly procure this family dwelling when….”

“English please, Corporal. I left my military law dictionary in my other coat.”

Snickering is heard from the crowd, and a slow flush creeps up the young Corporal’s neck and dusts his cheeks with clown spots of crimson. “Ma’am. Corporal Smythson and myself were patrolling this sector when we came upon these two families,” a crisply uniformed arm gestures in the direction of the families in question, “fighting over this house. As we attempted to intervene, a crowd began to gather. Sergeant Li and her squad then approached from the south and asked the crowd to disperse. They refused.”

“Damn right we refused!” a middle aged man yells. “We’re not a bunch of jarheads you can get just bully around! We’ve got rights, you know!”

Kirsten turns to Li. “Is that when you pulled your gun, Sergeant?”

“No, Ma’am.”

“And when did you pull your gun, Sergeant?”

“When the rock hit me, Ma’am.”

Kirsten is taken aback. “Rock?”

“Yes, Ma’am. That rock.”

Following the direction of Li’s pointing finger, Kirsten spies the crumbling chunk of gravel at the Sergeant’s feet. She looks up slowly, lancing her gaze out over the crowd.

A dozen rocks leave a dozen suddenly limp hands, hitting the ground in sodden thumps.

Kirsten bares her teeth in a parody of a smile. “So,” she begins, voice soft, lethal, “these are your ‘rights’, hmm? I wasn’t aware that the right to assault someone was in our Constitution. Would anyone like to point it out to me?”

“They’ve got guns,” one man mutters, gesturing toward the soldiers.

Kirsten turns her full attention on the speaker. He pales appreciably.

“Did they pull them? Threaten you in any way?” She holds up on hand. “Before that rock was thrown?”

The man drops his gaze and stares down at his feet. “Well….”

“I’m sorry, did you say something? I couldn’t hear you.”

The man raises his eyes, expression belligerent. “They were gonna.”

“Ohhhh,” Kirsten replies, nodding wisely. “They were going to. And you know this…how? Telepathic, are you? Maybe you could tell us when the droids are going to strike again. We could use a man with your talents.”

The man flushes brick red as some in the crowd catcall and elbow one another. Kirsten’s impenetrable gaze sits heavy upon him, and he finally has no choice but to drop his eyes, sagging visibly like a balloon with a slow leak.

Kirsten scans the rest of the group. “Anyone else have anything insightful to add?”

Feet shuffle. Heads hang. Crickets chirp.

“Alright, then. I’d suggest all of you go back to your homes and stop acting like idiots. Or better yet, go on over to the parade grounds and watch as a hundred soldiers, just like the ones you’re attacking here, get put into the ground for giving their lives so that you could stand around here acting like idiots.” She pauses for just a moment, letting her words sink in. “Am I making myself clear to everyone?”

The only sound heard is the shuffling of feet.

“Good. Then get the hell out of here. You’re using up all the good air.”

As the crowd, grumbling and shame-faced, begins to wander away, Asi takes that as a signal that his ‘guard dog’ duties are over for the nonce, and only then does he notice Dakota standing several yards away, looking on. Yodeling in canine joy, he tears off after her, his tail wagging so hard that it twists his body into all sorts of interesting shapes. Koda braces for the impact and catches his furry body as he all but launches himself into her arms, covering her face and any exposed skin he can reach with giant swipes of his tongue.

Chuckling, Dakota presses him back and scratches behind his ears with deep affection. She stills as she feels eyes upon her, the gaze’s weight as palpable as a caress. Straightening slowly, she turns her head until Kirsten’s brilliant smile comes into view. She swears she can feel her heart fluttering in her chest and wonders at the seemingly autonomic response to something simple—albeit beautiful—as a smile. She notes another instinctive response as she responds to Kirsten’s smile with one of her own—one that stretches her facial muscles in ways they haven’t been stretched in quite some time.

Asi a shadow at her side, she allows her long stride to eat up the distance between them until she comes to a stop no more than a foot away. The smile is still there as she gazes down into mesmerizing green eyes. “Hey.”

Kirsten touches Koda’s wrist briefly before dropping her hand away. “Hey. It’s good to see you awake. How’re you feeling?”

“Refreshed. You?”

“A little sore for a few days, but now? Pretty much back to my old self.” Her lips twist in smirk of self deprecation. “As you can see.”

Koda looks around a the now emptied street, then over at the MPs who are in amicable discussion with the two families who had started the confrontation. “Good work.”