Kayel sighed as he pushed uneaten food across his plate. He, Nyssi and Tenuk were alone in the all-you-can-eat buffet in the main hotel restaurant. It turned out that most Vrekans ate two massive meals a day, one at about 11am and another at around 10pm. Considering it was currently about 7pm, normal dinner time for other races, there was no one else around, and there wouldn’t be for at least an hour, when the handful of Lanex who worked on Thalsa two would come to eat.
“Eyes bigger than belly?” Nyssi asked as she returned to the table with another bowl of shellfish utterly soaked in butter and herbs.
“No… I’m just… kinda too pissed off and upset right now…” Kayel admitted right off the bat. “I feel particularly annoyed because Retvik’s not here to enjoy this with us.”
“Yeah, understandable…” Tenuk had been particularly quiet. He’d said very little the entire time they’d been in the restaurant, and he’d done nothing but eat bowl after bowl after bowl of ice cream. It turned out, seafood and fish in particular didn’t sit particularly well in Tenuk’s stomach, and he’d had aches and pains all day. But on top of all of that, Tenuk was utterly floored by waves of guilt that he’d been unable to express until now. “I am so, so sorry about what I did.”
“Oh, so you’re going to admit that you fucked up, Tenuk?” Kayel tutted. “Because you really did. Sure, we’re all hard to kill but we clearly ain’t immune to everything! Retvik’s completely and utterly screwed right now! Strapped to a bed in a glass cell on his own! And those bastard medics wouldn’t let us stay there with him!”
Nyssi sat back down and started tearing the shells off her new meal. “Can I be really honest? I think it’s probably for the best that Retvik’s on his own. He’s going to be really pissed off at us and he needs time to cool off.”
“Not that I blame him…” Tenuk sighed. “What I did was really, utterly wrong. Like, unforgivably wrong. Sure, Retvik found the strength to fight all those monsters but I didn’t think he’d end up the way he is right now.”
“Gonna be more honest, Retvik being ill isn’t completely your fault, Tenuk!” Nyssi was upset as well but she was trying to make the most out of the situation. “Sure, you triggered Retvik’s Defensive Stance, but you also harmlessly knocked Retvik out before he could do too much damage to himself. The doctors really fucked up when it came to calming Retvik down. Sure, he was still running on pure adrenaline but surely they could have worked out how much to give Retvik without causing him to overdose!”
Kayel continued to frown. “Most of the population here have hardly seen Temthans before, let alone Rethans. It’s like 90% Vrekans, 9% Lanex and 1% us.”
“Yeah but Lanex and Rethans are allies. They’re pretty tight.”
“So?” Kayel countered. “Temthans are supposed to be allies with the Vrekans and the Vohra. But when we all met Talok, you were confused as fuck!”
“Only because Talok is, really weirdly, a female Vohra who has been de-gendered! That’s insanely rare and not supposed to happen! If anything, Talok’s kinda like Retvik, she gets protective and angry too!”
Tenuk pushed his bowl to one side, then banged his head on the table, which instantly caused Kayel and Nyssi to stop arguing.
“I know what I did. I broke Retvik. I broke his trust. He won’t want to be my friend any more. So, as soon as we get back to Palaestra, I’m packing my stuff and going back to my dad. I’ll just say that I had amnesia the entire time or something.”
Kayel and Nyssi both fell silent.
“What… what you did was bad… but Tenuk, mate, that’s going too far…” Kayel eventually muttered. “You did something wrong but you can’t throw your life away because of it.”
“Yeah I can. I don’t deserve you lot. I’m a master shapeshifter but I’m also a fucking coward who let you all get hurt.”
Nyssi tutted, then got up, made her way around the table, sat down next to Tenuk and then proceeded to slap him around the head. It was a gentle slap, intended to shock rather than to harm.
“Don’t be so fucking stupid!” Nyssi hissed. “You’re not a fucking coward! You fucking turned into a fucking Banikan and breathed fire at those fucking things, while I was busy panicking and trying to drag Ilga away because she’s a slow-ass Lanex who can definitely get killed unlike us! Yeah, it is fucked up that you intentionally triggered Retvik’s Defensive Stance but you deciding to go back to your stupid dad is the worst fucking thing you can do for pretty much everyone!”
“I deserve it-”
Nyssi slapped Tenuk again, this time slapping one of his fluffy ears. “Shut up. Instead of this stupid shit, you need to sit and think about what you are going to say to Retvik when you apologize to him.”
“Assuming Retvik gets better…” Tenuk sighed.
“He’ll be fine!” Nyssi tried to be a bit more optimistic. “They found a Rethan doctor on Thalsa One that they’re bringing in, and what they overdosed Retvik on isn’t that damaging in the long run. Will Retvik be angry at us? Probably. Assuming he even remembers what happened. But you and Retvik are best buddies and Retvik is stupidly kind and tolerant, he’ll forgive you. Eventually. I’m sure of it.”
Kayel went back to his food and tutted. “Sucks that they’re not letting us see him though. Normally, when one of us gets hurt, one of us stays close by to look after them. Can’t do that right now.”
Nyssi grabbed her bowl from across the table and also started eating again. She had a lot of shellfish she wanted to eat before it all went cold. “We’ll be able to see him soon. Alright, overdosing Retvik on tranquillizers is bad, but Rethans going Defensive Stance is a known problem, the issue was there’s no one here capable of dealing with it properly, and they made the mistake of treating it the same way you treat Feral Kardia.”
Teuk glanced up at Nyssi. “What’s the difference?”
“Feral Kardia, you treat it with a butt-load of sedatives and by putting them in a plastic box close to friends and family so they remember who they are and go to sleep, then you follow it up with anti-fungal remedies and a meat-free diet for a week. A Rethan going Defensive Stance needs to be isolated, strapped down and left alone to let the adrenaline run its course, and then gently told that whatever triggered them is happy and safe and the Rethan did their job protecting them.”
Tenuk took a deep breath and sighed. After a moment of silence, he got up and headed to the bathroom.
“He’s really upset.”
“Of course he is!” Kayel frowned. “He’s doing exactly what he did last time Retvik went funny, he’s blaming himself. Except this time he feels worse because he did it on purpose and the Vrekan and Lanex medical staff messed up… I think we all need to speak to some therapists or something. We’ve been through a lot the last year or so. But Tenuk in particular, he’s a technically a teenager. And, worse, he’s a Spast, and they’re just not used to this sort of chaos.”
Nyssi nodded in agreement. “You’re absolutely right. In the mean time though, we need to get Tenuk to make the most of the fancy hotel stuff. Keep him distracted.”
“Hah, yeah. we ought to make the most of this stuff too. Maybe I’ll take Tenuk to the massage place or something…”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. In the mean time, I’m going to go back to stuffing my face.”
“I think I’ll join you there, but I’m going to get a fresh plate of food. And maybe a drink. You want a beer or something, Nyssi?”
“Only if you’re going to be drinking alcohol too.”
Kayel sighed, then smiled, just a little. “Yeah, I’m probably gonna grab me one of those fruity cocktails. Just a shame that Retvik’s not here.”
“We’ll arrange to do this again for Retvik when he’s better. He won’t miss out. And he wouldn’t want us being sad either… Oh, welcome back, Tenuk!” Nyssi grinned.
“You guys getting drunk?” Tenuk asked.
“Yeah. Better to drink together, right?” Kayel smiled properly this time. “Plus, you deserve it, after you turned into a Banikan and tried to fight all those monsters…”