Special Needs Forces

On the second day, Frezja came to Lukier who was still lying in bed like a corpse and brought him some food to keep him from starving, then sat down on a chair and started a typical nurse conversation.

"How are you feeling today?"

"Bad."

"I’m not asking about your mental state, I was more concerned about whether something hurts you"

"Ugh"

"Okay, I understand that you don't want to interact when you’re in mourning, but I need to know if you can get up and go get some food yourself or do I need to feed you like Puszymir"

"I’m not hungry."

"Maybe you're not, but if you don't operate on manual settings, you will have to be drip fed or you’ll die of weakness. I'll let you reflect on it, but when I come back in an hour, I want an answer." Frezja got up and started to leave the room but Lukier decided that maybe he does want to talk after all, just not about his health.

"How is it... that no one but me cares?"

"You mean Captain's death?"

"Yes. And you and Rigel are acting like it was just another insignificant person" Frezja paused at the door for a moment and then came back to the chair from earlier.

"We miss Biel too," Frezja said, "Rigel is busy panicking and that distracts him from being sad. And this panic also makes him unable to command... let's hope he gets used to it."

"And you? Tawny? Tanager?"

"We've already seen a lot of good friends dying. It's sad but life goes on even when he's gone. Anyway, the others probably weren't as close to him as you were. Honestly, when your last girlfriend died in the cave you seemed to cry less than now."

"We’ve been together in this team from the very beginning. If only I hadn’t let him go alone back in that monster…”

"Come on, don't blame yourself, it's not your fault. Nobody knew that idiot Ibis was a bomber" and Frezja got up again "And please eat that food or else it’ll go to waste" she added at the end and went to do some other things and Lukier went back to crying.

Rigel, on the other hand, looked like he found his soul mate in Lawenda because they had a lot of topics to talk about and they were doing friendship quizzes together and it turned out that they had a lot of friendship % and Rigel was starting to feel a little better after losing a friend. Although Melisanda and being the new captain still stressed him a bit, Lawenda's motivational speeches were working when he was feeling like a pile of poop. He just didn't know if he had some post-traumatic stress disorder that made him a little uncomfortable to take on more demanding missions. Either that or it was the fact that the missions were only in caves and sewers, though the neighboring region probably stole the cave quest from them so they only had the stinky sewage one left and he didn’t want to touch it and preferred to wait for something better.

Something better, however, did not want to come, so the team was free as the captain refused to accept any assignments. It also meant that Tawny had a lot of time to teach Tanager to fly a ship and it was very laborious because Tanager was phlegmatic and color blind and Tawny had to translate all the controls to him 3 times and then listen to Tanager’s uninteresting stories that happened to him while learning to fly. After 4 long hours of flying with Tanager, Tawny made an excuse that he had to do something because he didn't feel like sitting with Tanager anymore that day.

So he went to the kitchen to get something that could be microwaved instead of boiled from the fridge, and fate wanted Rigel to come to the kitchen.

"Oh hey, how's training Tanager going?" Rigel asked, wanting to start a conversation, but Tawny didn't like the topic.

"How is being a captain going?" He answered the question with a question looking into his eyes like he was judging him that he spoke at all.

"Okay, sorry I asked"

"It was an honest question" Tawny corrected himself

"Oh, you know… it is what it is, I guess I’m slowly starting to get it"

"Have you decided who will be second in command?"

"I thought maybe Lukier?" Rigel replied hesitantly

"Lukier is depressed and in this state unlikely to be useful."

"Okay then what are you suggesting, are you going to propose yourself?"

"No, I don't want power, I'm not fit to be a leader. But you're just as bad and to be honest you should give up the position to Frezja because she is the most capable of all of us"

"Hey, I'm capable too, I was making a lot of rational remarks during missions with the old captain"

"Then start being rational again because if you keep delaying it or stressing over it we’ll eventually get transferred to another team or something"

And then Rigel began to wonder why Crow’s and his team weren’t combined into one if they lost their captain and Crow lost the entire team, but when he thought about it, he decided that for whatever reason it didn’t happen, it was for the better because they already had Crow as a captain and it wasn't cool. This conversation with Tawny was also not fun because Rigel was starting to feel worse again and decided to leave him in the kitchen and pay Lawenda a visit and ask for advice. He found her in her room listening to Caramelldansen lying face down on the bed.

"Knock knock, am I interrupting something?" Rigel asked as he entered Lawenda's room

"Come in" said Lawenda and turned off the music

"I’ve come to talk about my problems but I see that you look like you have a problem too"

"No, I just don't know what to think about this new team because so far everyone is sad and it's understandable because your friend is dead, but I'm new and I find it strange here so far."

"Oh"

"Frezja is cool, Tanager is cool, the redhead scares me-"

"Understandable, he scares me too"

"- and I tried to talk to this injured guy because he looks friend shaped but he wasn't interested in talking about anything"

”Lukier will start being nice when he gets better, and so will the others. I mean maybe except Tawny but everyone else is cool."

”Okay, but that's not why you’re here, you came to talk about your problems, not mine. What happened this time?"

”Well um... the team has doubts if I’ll be a good captain again. And it makes me doubt if I will be a good captain, too"

"Why? Because you didn't want to accept the hard mission with the cave monster?"

"Well, yes, and there’s some truth in it."

"And what are you going to do, go on a difficult mission just to show the rest that you’re worth something?"

”That was my plan, but I’m not sure and I came to ask for advice. Do you think we should go to the sewers with the monster or not to go to the sewage with the monster?"

"If you think you think you’re up for it, go ahead”

"Yeah, about that-"

"If you don’t feel like you’re up for it, don't give a shit about what the team says"

Rigel thought for a moment and then walked out of Lawenda's room and thought a second time and then made a mental pros and cons list of accepting a difficult mission and decided that he would take the difficult sewer mission so he wouldn't look like a wimp. So he gathered the team in the living room and said that they were going to the sewer to catch the monster, though he didn’t like that they were going to the sewer. He picked Tanager Tawny, himself, and Lawenda for the mission, and Frezja stayed with Lukier at the base again.

When they were standing over the open manhole to the sewers, nobody wanted to go in first and that's why they stood over it and played rock paper scissors and Tanager won, but then everyone said that the winner was going first and he went first because he didn't understand the rules of the game. When they got down to the sewer, they felt sick from the stench because it was a sewer and Rigel made a note to buy gas masks next time. But now he didn't know what to do because the sewers spread through tunnels all over the city and the monster was in an unknown location. After a long reflection and impatient comments from the team, Rigel said that they should split up but he wasn't sure if it was a good idea because he remembered how Tawny died when Biel told them to split up in the underground tunnel, but on the other hand, they wouldn't find the monster if they went all together.

"Okay then... uh- Tawny and Tanager go to the left and me and Lawenda will go left" "We all go left?" Tawny asked "No, I said right" "You said left twice" "Right, then" "Who goes to the right?" This conversation was getting very awkward because this was one of the moments that showed that Rigel was not made to lead. "Me. Come on, Lawenda, let's go right "

And they did as Rigel told them, and they walked through the sewer tunnels until they were lost. While walking through their tunnels all the time, they came across each other and realized this place was like a maze and it was better not to separate the team again. Now everyone was lost in the smelly sewer and the monster was missing. They didn't even find any traces or anything that would lead them to a good track, because the monster was swimming in that cesspool rather than walking on the sidewalk next to it. After an hour of walking without finding any traces of the monster, Rigel decided that he didn’t want to do this mission anymore and wanted to go home and because he was the captain, he ordered everyone to retreat. Except that now they didn't know how to find the exit they came through, so they left through the nearest hatch, and it turned out that they were very far from the parked ship. They had to walk all over town stinking like hobos and it was kinda yucky and Rigel now realized that if they got on the ship like this, the ship would get soaked with that smell and they all would want to puke while flying and he stopped the team then said they should wash themselves first before returning to the ship. To the comment that they didn't have any showers or bathtubs in town, Rigel replied that they should walk to the lake now. And they went to the lake on foot, which the rest of the team didn’t like, because firstly, the lake was in the opposite direction to the ship, and secondly, it meant they would return to the ship wet and instead of stinky the ship would be wet. But they did it anyway because that was what the captain wanted and when they returned from the lake to the ship, they dried up, but it was also late.

"Did you catch the sewer creature?" Frezja asked when the team returned

"No, but we went to the beach instead" replied Tawny and went to his room

"Rigel, what the hell are you doing?" Frezja asked

"We didn't find the monster, don't blame me"

"Damn, Captain would keep looking until he found it"

”But I'm not that captain, get over it. I’m not gonna spend half the day in sewer if there’s no sign of the monster"

And Rigel went to his room because he didn't want to listen to comments saying he was a bad leader. After a few days, 5 days to be exact, Rigel accepted 7 different tasks and 5/7 of them failed because the monster either ran away or was not found at all and Rigel was starting to think he was shit but Lawenda kept telling him that it was just bad luck and the next missions would go better. The team was slowly getting used to the fact that Captain Biel was dead and Rigel would probably make some progress eventually, just like Biel did.