It's a lit­tle long (1112 words). For­give me! Com­ments and crit­i­cisms wel­come and encouraged.

---

South­ern Nar­dinia (for­merly the British Isles):

Com­man­der Julien wasn't happy. He stomped around the room chang­ing the scenes on the mon­i­tor wall seem­ingly at ran­dom, throw­ing switches and jab­bing but­tons like he was mad at them. Only it wasn't the but­tons he was mad at. And at nearly 2 meters tall, he was not an elf you wanted mad at you. Trust me, I'd been here before.

"Are you com­pletely insane? This room mon­i­tors every square kilo­me­ter of Nar­dinia and there is noth­ing on the long range sen­sors to even remotely indi­cat­ing that that the humans are mobi­liz­ing after 30 years, and I trust these sys­tems far, far more that I trust you or your brother."

"Sir, I real­ize that what Nash is say­ing sounds out­ra­geous, but I've known him all his life and I've found him to be right time and time again."

"Regard­less Tamarind -"

"Tanaka sir" I mut­tered meekly.

"Tanaka. Regard­less Tanaka, it will take much more than the 'feel­ings' of your nephew-"

"Brother."

"- brother. Please don't inter­rupt me again. I need actual evi­dence if I am to go to the coun­cil and sug­gest we evac­u­ate based on the 'feel­ings' of your brother."

Sud­denly a scream came from the cor­ner of the room. I glanced over at Nash, my baby brother, just as his eyes rolled up into his head as he collapsed.

"No! Must leave now! Must leave now! All Die! ALL DIE!" screamed Nash as he began writhing in what looked like pain, "MUST LEAVE! ALL DIE!"

"Get him out of here! Now!" the Com­man­der shouted, turn­ing his face turned an inter­ested shade of purple

"Yes sir. Sorry sir. He just gets like that sometimes."

How embar­rass­ing.

"You might want to con­sider hav­ing him com­mit­ted. Also con­sider what might hap­pen if either of you go spread­ing these rumors around. Last thing we need is to have every­one panic­ing over the rav­ings of -"

"Yes sir, I under­stand. Thank you for see­ing us Com­man­der. Come on Nash!"

I heaved him off the floor and walked out of the room, car­ry­ing him as best I could.

"We tried Nash. That's the best we could have hoped for."

"Tanaka? It is Tanaka right?"

There was a rather large elf stand­ing before us. It didn't bode well after the events in the Com­man­ders office.

"Yes, " I replied, "and you're Vegas if I remem­ber cor­rectly. You're part of the FSDF."

"Yeah, Spe­cial Ops," replied Vegas some­what absently, "Lis­ten, did he really mean what he said about the humans destroy­ing everything?"

"You really shouldn't get involved sir. It will just cause you trouble."

"Yes, I can imag­ine that it would. Truth be told how­ever I think I actu­ally believe him."

You could have knocked me over with a feather. Here was a high rank­ing offi­cer in the Secu­rity Defense Force telling me he believed my brother's ram­blings. I'll admit, I was more than a lit­tle skep­ti­cal. I fig­ured he was try­ing to get us to say some­thing that could be con­sid­ered trea­so­nous so he could arrest us. Need­less to say what came out of his mouth was some­thing I was not ready for.

" To tell you the truth, I'm not the only one. See some of us on the Long Range Patrols have been see­ing evi­dence that the humans are try­ing to retake Nar­dinia. We report it and it gets buried so no one else hears of it. "

I sim­ply stared.

"Wha… what kind of evidence?"

"Small stuff, like things dis­ap­pear­ing, noises and sightings."

"You've seen humans in Nardinia!"

"Not humans but… things. Things that weren't there that day or the night before. Look, I can get you in to see the coun­cil and give you some evi­dence of human tres­pass­ing for you to use, but you have to keep my name out of it."

"No prob­lem there," i man­aged to mutter.

"And if you decide to leave, I can just about promise I can get 10 - 15 oth­ers to join us."

Us? Did he really just say us?

"Oth­ers?" I asked, totally con­fused now.

"Oth­ers in Ops that are dis­grun­tled. Elves that have been given the rough and dan­ger­ous jobs and posi­tions con­stantly over time and passed over for pro­mo­tions. These are all good elves, they just don't like to play the polit­i­cal game other do and as a result aren't con­sid­ered for decent positions."

I had no idea what to say.

"Thanks for the help. I will try not to let you down."

---

The coun­cil mem­bers sit high above the cham­bers floor. Each has their own seat on a tower that is prob­a­bly 50 feet tall. I guess it gives them a feel­ing of supe­ri­or­ity. There are sup­posed to be 4 coun­cil mem­bers, each an elected rep­re­sen­ta­tive of each dis­trict, how­ever the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of my home dis­trict of Carta died a cou­ple weeks ago and they haven't filled the posi­tion yet. Figures.

The inquiry, as they called it, had been going on for 2 days. We had said every­thing we knew twice and even brought some of the evi­dence Vegas had col­lected over the past few months. Of course his name was never mentioned.

"Tanaka. Step forward."

I did, star­ing up at the cur­rent Coun­cil Pres­i­dent, con­vinced that he was going to sim­ply exile Nash and myself from Nar­dinia. A prospect Nash rel­ished, and one I didn't.

"This is a very seri­ous sit­u­a­tion before us. You and your brother are claim­ing that the humans are com­ing back to Nar­dinia after being forced out by us over 30 years ago. After review­ing the sup­posed evi­dence and lis­ten­ing to the tes­ti­mony of you and your brother we have decided not to pur­sue the mat­ter any fur­ther. And fur­ther more, you and your brother are never to speak of it. You will have noticed that there is no one in the Coun­cil Room, no wit­nesses and no spec­ta­tors. No one who can sub­stan­ti­ate what occured here. No one who will be whis­per­ing in the streets and refresh­ment houses about the 'Human Inva­sion'. When we leave this room, this mat­ter will dis­ap­pear. Any fur­ther dis­cus­sion or rumor be grounds for imme­di­ate trial."

He banged the gavel, then they all got up and left.

Silence.

I should point out he actu­ally used air quotes around human invasion.

---

I walked out of the Coun­cil cham­bers with my eyes glazed over. Stunned was the only word for it. Not only were they going to ignore every­thing we has said but they were going to pre­tend it never hap­pened and we were to never men­tion any­thing that had happened.

I glanced over to Vegas, waited for him to see me and held his gaze.

"Gather your peo­ple, " I said qui­etly when I walked up to him, "We leave tonight."

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