Renegade Letters [Freedom Planet FanFic]

Letter I : December 20th

Dear Himika,

I know that this letter might be somewhat redundant, however I just want to inform you that I am back home, well… back at Shang Mu that is, it seems winter have finally reached it’s hand on the forest metropolis as snow began to fall, it already reminds me of Shuigang. Sadly as we both know the soft and shining white snow will eventually develop into grey slush, an unfortunate side effect of urban development. Either way, I have arrived safely and looking forward to seeing you again, admittedly… I feel awkward about this because I have two dragons with me, whom I’m convinced love to bring me misfortune. Ironically I still remain protective of them despite said misfortune.

Before leaving Shuigang, it was no surprise when all of my co-workers began to surround me and interrogate me at my last hours of work before leaving. They did not hesitate to bring up the dragoness who was waiting for me to be done with my business, and already began speculating. I simply remained silent however they insisted and I simply respond, “She’s just an old friend, no need to overthink or misunderstand my relation with her.”

My confrontation with my co-workers was only a minor issue compared to when we arrived at the ferry, don’t ask why we decided to take an airship as oppose to a train, granted train is cheaper but Lilac insisted on an airship. I’ve heard it’s a common thing with Dragons, ironically despite not having the ability to fly, unlike the dragons of legend, which by the way I have interesting things to say about that when I get to you; Dragons, like Lilac that is, enjoy flying, likely a psychological thing that honestly I wouldn’t know about. Of course the idiotic captain decided to look at my history and what did he find? Well frankly it’s obvious what he found, lots and lots of crimes. Sometimes I hate the big red flag attached to my back that more or less says, “Hey! I’m former Red Scarf, please scold, scoff, insult, or alienate me please!”. Once again the captain’s stupidity met no bounds when I gave him obvious proof that I’m not with the scarves and that I’m a citizen, a legal citizen to both Shang Mu and Shuigang, still he wouldn’t let me in. It didn’t take long before I lost my patience and decided to take the train while Lily and Lilac takes the airship.

“Where are you going?” Lilac asked.

“Given this idiot’s incompetence, I’ll be taking the train, I’ll meet you at Shang Mu.”

The captain didn’t appreciate my comment, however before he could even dare call the guards on me, Lilac actually stepped in and threatened the captain to let me leave in peace, so he did.

In the train it was worse, as in let’s say I bumped into some old friends…

Obviously they recognized me and I recognized them, I remained silent and made no eye contact. I was honestly expecting some form of disrespect, which I did. Why else would they do the same? However they had youth with them, she was fairly young, I’d say like about fourteen, she was a scarf like the rest of them but she was sweet, she’ve heard of me it seems.

“Are you Raiku Taiga? The Red Scarf who could’ve been the youngest senior in history!” she simply asked.

“Yeah… I suppose.”

“Hey, why did you leave the scarves, I’m sure you had a good reason, but I want to be like you or at least what you could’ve been!”

This hurt me inside, I wanted to tell her the truth, but I can’t. She’ll eventually learn, however sadly she wouldn’t be herself anymore, by that time she would have already been desensitized. Strangely I envy Lilac for this, I know she likely left due to a misunderstanding, but in the long run, I think her and Carol made the right choice, I truly do envy them, if I was at least a year or two younger, perhaps. Even then I think Brevon’s monstrous interactions with this would would’ve done the same, it wouldn’t have mattered.

Well, I’m here now, the winter festival is upon us, and I’d rather not think of such things at this time of year, all that matters is finding Lilac and Lily, I’ll tell you all about it when I come visit.

Letter II : December 21st

Dear Helms,

I’m writing this letter to inform you about what I’ve learned, or that is the little I’ve learned, mainly because most of this stuff was more or less already common knowledge. However before I continue, I want to ask how you’ve been doing on your expedition with Carol and Milla, I don’t know much about Milla, however I am worried about Carol, to be fair we’re both aware of how mischievous Carol can get and I don’t think either one of us would ever want to look back even once with her involved, at least that’s the Carol Tea I remembered, frankly at least her sister was more well behaved, though we don’t talk much about her sister for very good reason, so let me digress.

Well either you doing alright with those two, I can tell you that yesterday was quite eventful, mainly because I found myself trying to find both draconic girls in Shang Mu, which by the way is not exactly some small town or port city, it’s a huge metropolitan city which houses the most wealthiest and powerful beings of this planet. So you can imagine my panic when I couldn’t find them, I literally looked everywhere, every district, every street, every logical building (I say ‘logical building’ because I don’t think a six and fifteen year-old would go to certain places). after about ninety minutes I finally found them, they were in a local restaurant called ‘Seafood Joy’ or something like that, honestly the title was so bad that I didn’t care to remember the name, however there they were eating plates after plates of sushi.

“You know, I thought we agreed to meet somewhere… less obscure…” I stated.

“Obscure?! Me and Carol always come to the restaurant chain to get some sushi, ok… ok, I’ll admit the name is pretty cheesy, though the food here is great. It seems Lily really like sushi.” Lilac explains, I did give the sushi a shot, I’m not going to lie it was damn good sushi, shame how the obscure places always have the best quality.

After we had our lunch we went straight to the Shang Mu Metropolitan Library, I remembered this place when I was young, I remembered getting bored that is, at least with the books, Himika was the bookworm of the family, I was more of the computer wiz, who would find all sorts of shortcuts and back doors in order to play games on these integrated dinosaurs they called computers, alright they weren’t that old but the security and parental control was indeed poor. Admittedly I was tempted to get on those computers right now and just relive the good old days, alright I did and I even showed both Lily and Lilac how to get around the security and blocking apps, (This included Alt-Tab, which surprisingly you’d think people would know about this the most). When the fun and games was over for me and Lilac we went to doing research, Lily decided to continue playing on the computers.

Sadly my efforts were in vain, most of the things in these books about dragons were already common knowledge, and, well things Lilac already knew about as a dragoness. Apparently dragons digest food 1.2-1.5x faster than avalicians, some dragons can actually breathe fire, others are actually warm-blooded, I also learned that there’s even records of some dragons with actual wings, though none of this info helped. While we were skimming through as many books as we could, Lily got bored of the computer and decided to help out, despite likely not understanding a majority of the concepts there.

Lily grabbed one book, skimmed and would ask us what certain words meant, it was alright until she found a certain phrase, which admittedly caught my attention, not for the right reasons though.

“Hey what does this word mean?” Lily asked, “Pan-Se-...”

“OK, maybe you shouldn’t be reading these anymore!!!” Lilac immediately interrupts, I knew very well what word Lily was going to say and my attention was had.

“So, does that mean you can…”

“I don’t want to talk about it!”

“I-I mean, how exactly would that work?”

“I. Don’t. Want. To. Talk. About. It.”

“Like, I didn’t know dragons had such a reputation…”

“Raiku! I’m straight, end of discussion!”

“Hey! You guys haven’t answer my question!” Lily pouts, interrupting our one sided argument.”

“E-eh, maybe when you’re older… and when you know how you, erm, feel about certain… groups.” Lilac explains, I simply remained silent, she was the woman and dragon in this situation. Though other than that, only other interesting fact was one article talking about a city called Long Tudi, which caught both of our attention because we knew it translated to ‘Land of Dragons’, this made Lilac very excited but depressed because she knew she wouldn’t be able to follow me after Shang Mu, in fact we weren’t sure if this ‘Land of Dragons’ even existed, though we do have a lead: the article originated from the Yěmāo clan. It’s going to be interesting going back to my family’s homeland.

Letter III : December 25th

Dear Helms,

Well it seems unfortunate events have continued to follow me, however thankfully this time it led to convenience. Apparently my folks had the same idea as I did to visit my sister, who by the way recently got engaged, a fairly wealthy fellow, however he was respectful and Himika had already told him about my history. His name was Saki Shirubā, he actually came to Shang Mu from Shuigang for his studies, both him and my sister are brilliant and take education serious, the man was about nineteen years old and he was an arctic fox, this may be irrelevant but don’t you think we have a lot of foxes in this planet… either way when I got to the lounge where they lived, I was quite surprised to see my mother, father, aunt, cousin and grandfather there, it was even more awkward because… well… I had Lilac and Lily with me. My cousin, a very young pre-teen girl, wasted no time gushing at Sash Lilac’s presence, oh it was was fun trying to come up with an excuse as to why the heroine of the damn planet is with me, and I did have to avoid telling them about me being a former Red Scarf.

“Raiku my darling! What a pleasant surprise, how have you been?” My mother asked, “Oh! Who’s this nice lady here?”, it took her a couple moments to realize who’s she speaking with, “OoooooOOoooH I see you have a thing for heroines, then, well it’s my honor to meet the young lady who saved our planet.”

“Excuse me?!” Lilac wasn’t expecting that kind of response, though I expected an even more surprised reaction.

“Ma, she’s just a friend, an old friend, I knew her a while back, there’s not going on, so please stop insinuating that.”

“Yes, Martha, there’s no need to bother Raiku, if he says she’s just a friend then she’s just a friend”, my father intervened.

“Psh, you men are so clueless, fine then.”

With my parents out of my hair about Lilac, now there was my cousin.

“Unbelievable! How come someone boring like you is friends with someone cool like her?!” If only that girl knew, either way after that offensive tangent, her mother took notice of Lily.

“So who’s the little girl?” She asked me, but then turns to Lilac, “Younger sister, perhaps?”

“Oh no, she’s uh…” Lilac began

“She’s an orphan I found, I’m trying to find her family.” I admitted.

“Why can’t you just send her to an orphanage?” My aunt responded

“No.”

“Come on Raiku, please don’t be so self righteous.”

“No, he’s right to try to find her real home.” Saki counters, “Can me and Himika talk to Raiku and Lilac in private.”

“Alright, uh, Natalie you’re okay playing with Lily?”

“I see no problem!” Natalie stated, taking Lily with her.

After all of that mess, all four of us goes to a secluded area, it was a backyard of sorts, not exactly a big or typical suburban yard, so here’s how this conversation went down:

“You know, it’s strange meeting someone of notoriety, Sash Lilac, however my fiance already told me about you, or at least what Raiku told her about you, if you follow?” Saki explained.

Me and Himika stood silent, we both wasn’t exactly glad for Saki to spill the beans on Lilac, despite our contrast on our interests, we certainly act and behave the same way, from our action you can tell we were twins.

“He did, did he?” Lilac acknowledged.

“I…” Me and Himika lost our breath.

“Well, I guess that’s sweet of you to be talking about an old friend like that.”

This wasn’t exactly the response I had expect, I would say that she was legitimately that clueless, though I know her well enough to tell that’s not the case, rather that revealed my true feelings or not, she’s definitely curious. Though I don’t think you care too much about that, on to the more important crap.

“So what exactly is your game plan, Raiku?” Saki continued, “As in, have you found an leads?”

“I have, but it’s honestly a big ‘if’.” I hinted.

“How big of an ‘if’?” Himika asked

“A pretty massive ‘if’.” Lilac explained, however it was still vague.

“I got a copy of the article”, I hand over the article to Saki, his expression showed intrigue but ultimately disbelief.

“Hmph, I don’t think such a place exists, I know that I’m essentially trampling over Lilac and Lily’s dreams here, but this ‘Long Tudi’, there’s simply not enough actual evidence, however I know what you’re thinking. You want to go to Yěmāo, which was where this document originated from, honestly if you want to go sure.” Saki explained.

“Well I’m going there anyways.”

“I know you mean well, but it’s honestly a wild goose chase.”

“Hey, you guys! I don’t think we should argue, not during the winter festival!” Himika cried.

“Honestly I’m just being realistic.”

“I’m sure that if we find the source of that document, we can see for ourselves if it’s true or not.” Lilac reasoned, in my defense.

The discussion was beginning to heat up, until my grandfather came.

“Hehehe, quite the interesting discussion you four is having. I hope it wasn’t turning into an argument.”

“Grandpa, we were just…” Himika began.

“So my grandson, you want to find that girl her real home, well, you’re right to go to Yěmāo then. Shame… it would’ve been nice to see my homeland one more time, though I will say that you should try finding… a particular man.”

“Thank you, grandfather.” I said, however he scolded me.

“No need to be so formal, to your own family member, my child.” He turns towards Lilac, “I don’t see why you can’t join my grandson on his journey, Hiroin.”

Lilac remained silent.

“Do you have some hero business?”

“Not, really…”

“Then why would you deprive yourself of your own heritage and culture?!”

“I…”

“You know, the Red Scarves I’ve known were honorable and damn respectful, granted they were still criminals, youth today.” Those were my grandfather’s last words before leaving us, me and Lilac simply remained silent, we could hear him trying to explain everything to the rest of my family, I honestly didn’t know he knew about my time as a Red Scarf, but who was this man he spoke about?

I’m going to see if I can convince a friend of mine to help me get to Yěmāo, let’s see if my former reputation as a Red Scarf will save my ass, if not, well I guess I still have Lily’s claws or death and Lilac’s whip-like tendrils to back me up.