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He shook himself out, habitually stepping further away, trying to discard the sticky chaos of the other’s rapture. How do you even live in this constant storm? Dorian looked over his partner with a trace of pity, who was already reaching out impatiently.
“Hand that thing over.” Marex turned the cap over in his hands and remarked disapprovingly, “Full of holes, pff! Probably for cooling their tiny brains.” He brought the fabric to his face and sniffed. “What is that reek?! A strange smell… like our food, but processed. Oh! And I catch a distant spirit of alcohol? Like our glint, exactly!”
Marex was no longer bothered by the holes or the origin of the disguise. The smell of « glint » acted on him like a powerful sedative, awakening images of his home world in his memory.
“Oh, glint, how I adore it…” He closed his eyes for a moment, greedily drawing the air into his nose.
Pulling on his find, Dorian looked at his companion with concern.
“What are you sniffing it for?! You won’t happen to get tipsy from these vapors, will you?”
“If only a little bit, it won’t stop us!” Marex resolutely pulled on the red headgear, hiding his locators, and strode confidently toward the “Emperor.”
“Wait! Does your emotional instability not correlate with this ‘little bit’ of yours?”
“Everything’s fine, don’t worry.” Marex froze dead in his tracks. “I have a feeling someone is staring at me… Dorian! Stop gawking!”
“I wasn’t gawking. What kind of words are you even picking?” He mechanically touched his temple, checking the implant. “My translator is working in overdrive; the lexemes are practically pulling themselves from the local info-field…”
Suddenly, Dorian himself felt a sticky, bone-chilling sensation of a foreign presence.
“Do you still feel something?”
Marex became unnaturally composed. He turned slowly, peering at the backs of passersby:
“Yes. Do you think the disguise didn’t work? What if they figured out who we are?” Anxiety began to flood his aura, staining it an unpleasant, muddy gray color.
“No! Please don’t get anxious, or you’ll pass it to me!” Dorian nervously adjusted his cap. “They didn’t give a damn about how we looked before either. Just a couple of passersby looked at the locators, that’s not it.”
“It passed!” Marex shouted joyfully and once again surged into the thick of the festivities.
“And that doesn’t bother you at all?! Although…” reflecting, Dorian added under his breath, “Better if it doesn’t. There are still perks to your volatility.”
Moving toward the target, Marex suddenly caught a snow-white projectile to the temple. Before he could swear, a company of young people surrounded them. They packed around the scouts so tightly that Marex had to literally “glue” himself to his companion. From such embraces, Dorian startled, barely suppressing the urge to strangle his “brother” on the spot.
“Sup, boys!” wheezed one of the strangers, exuding a thick odor of unknown origin. “We saw you cuddling by the dumpster, and then you put on these…” he jabbed a finger at the camouflage covers, "...caps! Full of holes!”
The gathering erupted into laughter. Dorian, already poisoned by Marex’ bile and intoxication, aired thoughts he wouldn’t even dare think on Margondia: “You’re the one full of holes!” He pushed his companion away with force. “Look at your ears! Useless chunks of flesh with holes!”
Marex was taken aback for a second by such audacity, but immediately supported his brother hotly: “Yeah! Look at your ears!”
The human flow quieted down, but only to break into a new fit of laughter. One of the guys, wiping away tears, magnanimously offered: “You guys are brilliant! Come with us to the bar, hic… the festival’s gonna end soon anyway!”
“Festival?” Dorian began to cool down, returning to his usual track. “What are you celebrating?”
“Ha-ha-ha!” came from the crowd. “They’re absolutely wasted! Blind drunk!”
The situation was starting to frighten Marex. To all questions and even direct insults, these creatures answered with laughter. Taking a deeper breath, he practically roared:
“Where is your Emperor?!”
“Who? The Emperor?” The guy, still maintaining a semblance of balance, leaned forward with a predatory, drunken smile. “Ah, well yeah! There he is right over there!”
He turned, jostling his friends aside, and pointed straight at the figure in scarlet:
“Name’s Chris! Say hello! Let’s go, boys, leave Chris alone with these…” He pronounced the last word almost festively.
Bowing slightly, he indicated the path to the ruler and began to step away behind the Margondians’ backs. The crowd followed him at a measured pace, dissolving into the festive chaos. Around them, the brass horns of a street band blared louder and louder, and handfuls of confetti soared into the air, settling on the heroes’ shoulders like multi-colored paper snow.
Dorian directed his locators toward those leaving, catching snatches of conversation:
“We totally could’ve brought them along, they’re hilarious! Or have you still not forgiven Chris for that other time?”
Dorian strode resolutely toward the target. Now that the barrier had parted, the path to the “sacred tree” was open. Huge inflatable figures, illuminated from within, floated above the heads of the citizens, and the scent of pine mixed with the aroma of burnt sugar and gunpowder char from firecrackers. The entire city seemed like a single, pulsing organism, gripped by a strange joy on the verge of madness.
“They said we’re hilarious…”
“I heard!” Marex walked beside him with a skip in his step, deftly dodging children running past with glowing toys. “That means their Emperor is kind too!”
Dorian didn’t answer. He looked straight ahead, to where, in the radiance of thousands of lights, the majestic Chris sat upon his carved throne. Under the cover of holey caps and foreign merriment, the two scouts took their final step out of the shadow of the snowdrifts toward their great — and, as it seemed to them, quite successful — mission.
Chapter 4: This Was Definitely Official First Contact
Trying not to draw any more attention, they slipped closer, taking cover behind a massive snowdrift. Here, in the halo of the festive illumination, the “Emperor” looked even more majestic and intimidating, and the sea of people around him seethed with an incomprehensible rapture.
Dorian squinted, trying to organize this chaos into a coherent blueprint. His brain habitually latched onto the details: children approach, utter a coded cipher, receive the crowd’s approval — and only then does the leader extract a reward from the depths of his sack.
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