Anecdote of the ambuscade

Arrived in her room Natasha pulled Carla to her bed while Dana was following them behind, timidly.

The girls went to sit in front of Natasha waiting for her to start talking.

However, the latter didn't initiate the discussion right away, instead, she left the bed and walked toward her closet, she opened it and reached a glass box, took it before she walked toward her mini-fridge which was in one of the corners of the room, she grabbed a bottle of fruit juice and returned to the bed.

She put the box in the middle, leaned aside to pick a plastic bag in a compartment of her bedside table, she placed on the plastic the bottle of juice so that the bed would not get wet and opened the glass box which was filled with cookies and other biscuits while making a sign to the girls to help themselves.

Natasha noticed that they were a little hesitant. While wondering what was wrong, she took a glance at the food and the drink, and then she hopped out of the bed as if she just remembered something. " I forgot to bring glasses " she exclaimed, " give me five minutes ".

Carla grabbed her hand before she could go and pulled her back to the bed. " Relax, it's okay. We can drink directly to the bottle I don't mind, we rarely used glasses or goblets back in the battleground " she told her with a smile, maybe she was trying to impress her. They stared at the young girl as if to ask her what did she think and the latter shook anxiously her hands in the air to say that it wasn't a problem for her too.

" Alright, then can you tell us about what happened there? Like, against whom were you fighting or how did you win against them? " Nat' asked very enthusiastically.

" You're more interested in Jamal's prowess, aren't you? " Carla replied teasingly before she began to laugh uncontrollably after seeing Natasha's cute reaction, " sorry I couldn't hold myself, it's just adorable to see how obvious your love for him is ".

" Please don't say such things, it is already enough irritating when it's Lina who makes fun of me, there is no need for you to join her, " Natasha complained while throwing a pillow on her face.

Carla caught it in midair before it hit her. " I need to find a way to avenge myself since you almost got me killed with that pie of Lina ".

" You're still holding that grudge? Can't you forget that already? " Natasha replied after throwing another pillow.

" I will forget when my belly will stop hurting, " Carla said before throwing back both pillows at Natasha's face.

" Tell me the story and I promise to massage your belly " the latter tried to negotiate.

Carla suddenly looked at her suspiciously, " when you say 'massage' you don't mean that kind of massage Lina would surely refer to, right? "

" Huh? No! I mean normal massage, what kind of person do you think I am? " Natasha replied while looking a little offended.

" I'm sorry, but I know you for only a few hours and the repeated dirty jokes of Lina make me feel doubtful, " Carla justified herself.

Natasha turned towards Dana to seek some help, " you have been living with me for almost an entire week, so please tell her that I'm not that kind of person ".

The girl was nibbling a cookie silently when Natasha talked to her, she nodded before she looked at Carla, " she is telling the truth, she is kind but it's just Lina who loves teasing people especially Natasha ".

" You see? "

" Alright alright, I believe you " Carla admitted while agitating her hands, she picked a cookie and threw it inside her mouth before she announced, " okay, so let me tell you what happened back here ". Then she started telling her about her adventures since he met with Jamal until then.

While Natasha was listening to her attentively Dana fell asleep on her lap after eating a dozen of biscuits and drinking half of the juice. Natasha noticed that when Carla finished telling her about how they won the war in the last city against a woman who could somehow manipulate people, she curiously and suddenly became all serious, so she told her to wait for her to carry Dana and put her to bed in the room next to hers before completing the rest of the story.

Natasha came back a few minutes later and jumped on the bed where she recalled that Matteo had seen a vision where Jamal and his group have been attacked by a group of undead but didn't know more and she realized that it was the occasion to get more details.

" If I have followed you well, you had finished your global mission quite in advance and left to head here early, so why did it take you so long to arrive? " she asked as she couldn't directly talk about Matteo's visions.

" I'm sure you already have an idea, but it's okay I will tell you, " Carla shrugged after curiously staring at her for a moment, then she paused and sighed, " we have been attacked by some of those moving corpses ".

As expected, Natasha was not really surprised by her revelation, so without wasting any more time, Carla started giving her more details.

" Volga and Jamal were rolling ahead of the group, as usual, so they were the first ones to notice the threat. Immediately, he told us to stay inside the cars and to not panic, but we could see that he particularly was worried and I have to admit that it was the first time I saw him make such a face, normally, he always keeps an expression which seems to say that he has the control over the situation. He managed to repel the first ones by slashing one until it could move no more, even though it was still alive... or dead... you got my point anyway, and the second one by putting a grenade in its mouth and making it explode its head. Of course, I got down from my car to give him some help- "

" You look so like me in that part " Natasha quickly commented while already imagining what kind of reaction Jamal must have had.

" ... but the situation rapidly turned out worse, " Carla carried on. " More of them kept coming in our direction and no matter how many times we would shoot at them they wouldn't fall. I'm ashamed to admit it, but even I started to feel scared, they were like immortals even the one whose head exploded earlier, got up on its feet to walk towards us, even now I'm still wondering how could it orient itself. Despite the efforts of Jamal to try to reassure everyone, they couldn't help but tremble and crying out their fear. They were still some brave people like Volga, Nelson, Sania, Pam, and even that Andre guy, who could stand to continue shooting at the undead, despite the general panic "

" Since I was incapable of completely calm myself, Jamal, after he noticed it, grabbed my shoulders and forced me to look at him in the eye and he told me this 'until a minutes ago, I was expecting you to be our hope of getting out of this situation but, obviously, you are too scared to do anything so don't get in my way, return in your car with all those scared cats where you may feel a minimum of security and where you can keep shooting at them while trying to convince yourself that you are not completely useless' ".

" Did he really said that? " Natasha couldn't help but be surprised, she was not very used to hearing Jamal having such harsh words.

Carla nodded while joining her hands and smiling slightly. " It may sound rude at the first sight but it's the way Nelson used to talk to us when he wanted to motivate us, just like in the real Army. The thing is that Jamal knew, at that moment, how to speak to me so that I could feel more courageous and it worked perfectly since, almost immediately after he told me that, I started to feel like my blood was boiling while my adrenaline was rising very quickly. I don't know how to explain what happened later, it was like my body was on automatic mode, I turned my back to the group of undead while my hair started growing bigger, straightening and hardening itself ".

As an example, Carla repeated the process before Natasha's eyes.

The latter leaned forward to have a better look at her hair after the process was completed as it grew so bigger that it was like the back of a giant porcupine. She couldn't hold herself to touch it. Since Carla didn't stop her, she grabbed one hair as thick as a stick and when she tried to bend it she found out it was as hard as steel.

" Does it hurt? " Natasha inquired while pulling slightly on it.

" Not that much " Carla shrugged while doing her best to stay relaxed since she didn't want her friend to find out she was feeling quite uncomfortable. She waited for Natasha to take back her place in front of her to continue narrating the story.

" I don't remember how I did it but it was like instinctively, I shot my spiky hair on the undead like arrows and but only some of them reached their targets since it was my first time doing it that it was not very accurate, but the essential point was that the hard hair of mine could actually kill them. After I saw those who got shot falling, I got my hands on my back and I picked two, one hair in each hand. I intended to jump on the group of the rest of them but... one thing that I didn't pay attention, back then, but I can't stop thinking about it now, is that when I glanced at Jamal to inquire about his reaction and to be sure that he was not against I was about to do, he stared at me with some kind of proud smile as if... as if- "

" As if he was expecting you to do the exact thing you have done and, at the same time, was feeling proud that you did it ". Since she seemed to have difficulty finding her words, Natasha completed for her, since she knew exactly what she was talking about.

" How do you know? "

" Because I can feel like he had the same smile he showed me the first time I activated my power to make appear my sword of fire, " Natasha replied while smiling and replaying that moment in her mind.

" How does he do that? Do you think like he has some kind of special ability which allows him to see in the future? " Carla asked her eyes full of expectations.

Natasha chuckled before shaking her head, " no, he just has a very sharp intuition for that kind of stuff ".

" Well, anyway resuming my story, with my hair in my hands as weapons, I ran towards the undead and started thrusting them in their hearts while Jamal was holding those I missed to get too close to the cars and hurt my comrades. It took me one hour, I think, to kill them all ".

" But you had still enough time to come help me since you said you were near the city " Natasha pointed out.

" Yes, you're right but even though we managed to overcome that danger without losing a single life, people were not so confident to go on our way. It was exactly as Jamal had said, those people just come from a long battle, they have lived many traumatic events and they had the hope that they would leave all those horrible souvenirs behind them while coming here, in Stainfall. But on their way, just near the city where they thought they would finally get the tranquillity they have been seeking for such a long time, they got attacked by monsters almost immortal who seemed to come straight from their nightmares, they all thought that they would die there. Put yourself in their shoes, at that exact moment, if someone came to tell you to accompany him to go slay those monsters, what would you respond, honestly? "

Natasha couldn't reply even though she knew the answer, she just bowed silently her head.

" You see? As you may have guessed those people were still scared while feeling completely lost as they couldn't know where else to go, for them it was like there was no place safe. It was chaotic to a point that there was even a group of people who wanted to return to their desert and lifeless hometown. It took Jamal the rest of the day to convince them that the best solution for them to ever feel safe was to follow him to Stainfall. He said that there is no way for them to obtain freedom and security without fighting and he promised them that it was actually their real last battle and that they did not have to worry about a thing since they wouldn't be the ones to fight on the frontlines. Finally, he promised to never put them in danger ever again, neither he would let anyone endangering them. I have to acknowledge that the hardest part was to convince them to fight during nighttime. But hopefully, he managed to achieve it "

" He explained to us the plan, how we should be quick to place ourselves in our respective positions and how we should make of use the projectors to frighten and immobilize the undead while giving us the time for you and me to finish the job. I remember after that he pulled me aside to tell me that they would rely on me more since you would be probably extremely exhausted "

" Then, we got in our cars again and we rolled as fast as we could to arrive in the zone of combat, Jamal was guiding us through the ways and the alleys with his sharp ears. Just imagine that the guy could tell by the noises of the fight, we couldn't even hear, where you were exactly, " Carla said excitedly, even Natasha, who knew him with many various talents, didn't know that he could do that, the only way she could rationalize that was to suppose that adding with the knowledge he had of the city, he managed to deduce where would be the perfect place for her to carry out that battle.

" And, well... the rest of the story you know already, " Carla finished.

" I see. That was, indeed, some crazy adventure, " she commented before she left the bed to go disposing of the empty box and bottle in a corner of the room, then, she returned to lay down on the bed before Carla imitated her and lay down next to her.

" Thank you for the story, it was very interesting. Have a nice rest, because the training of tomorrow will be hell, " Natasha muttered before she gradually fell asleep.

" Good night " Carla responded while slowly closing her eyes at her turn.