As they enter the office, lieutenant Bumba casts a Divert spell ensuring they won’t be overheard. Roca messages him privately, worried.

Is this a mutiny? It looks kind of a mutiny

Let’s play it by ear. If they’re actually doing it, we’ll make them pay. Record everything if you’re not already doing it.

Way ahead of you, major. I hope it doesn’t come to it.

“Explain yourselves right now. Why shouldn’t I write you all for insubordination and conspiracy?” demands Delavega, his patience officially gone.

“We wanted to have a celebration in honor of our fallen and to commemorate our first true trial-by-fire. You vetoed it without giving it a second a thought,” commences Lieutenant Barro, the annoying quartermaster with a knack for eluding him.

“I did give the matter all the consideration it deserved - we’re on an active front, we’re not in a position to have a celebration. You can party all you want when you’re rotated back to Main Base,” Delavega says, waving a hand dismissively.

“You might be our commander, major, but you’re just filling the position until LC Valente recovers or we’re assigned someone with actual command experience,” retorts Fridy.

“I’m your commander still!” Delavega points out. “And I might have little experience, but far more than you Pigs sitting your asses around here.”

“That’s the thing, major. I was playing cards with Sergeant Kano - hic - from late yesterday to this fine day. Some wild bouts of truco and buraco, I assure you,” says Geni, leaning on a table to stop wavering on her feet. “People off-duty kept showing up and we always had four people somehow.”

Roca is muted, but she crosses her arms, scowling, a clear non-verbal ‘And?’ being transmited.

“And, you know, a real game of truco mineiro goes hand to hand with some cachaça. I just happened to have a couple of bottles that came straight from my family’s still to this alien shit-hole with me.”

“You were drinking on duty? I’ll have to report it too, sergeant,” he says, jaw dropping at the ridiculous amount of aguardente Geni and his traitorous sergeant consumed.

“Just a little pinga, major. You haven’t rescinded LC Valente’s orders on the matter and he allowed us to drink as long as we were fit to duty. Well, fit for duty might be pushing it for me now, but Barro was so kind as to get me an A-grade detoxifier.”

“Go on,” he says with an incredulous face, waiting for the punchline. He decies to just keep giving her enough rope she couldn’t help but to hang herself with.

“Well, while we were drinking the cana, good sergeant Kano let slip something interesting tidbits. Like a small one: that you Snakes have never experienced actual, true combat,” Geni concludes amid hics, smiling defiantly at him.

“What the hell are you on about, sergeant? We’ve been engaged nearly every day since we’ve joined this damn army!”

Are they on crack, major? What are they talking about?

“No, you haven’t really,” replies Geni, shaking her head at the two of them and stumbling a bit.

“And you still had the gall to look at us as if you were better,” comments Bumba, chuckling as he scratches his grizzly fur. “Lieutenant Roca daring to mess up with all my patrolling strategy too…”

“Let me dispel your confusion,” says Barro. “You might have done a lot more to fighting than us, but that doesn’t mean your regiment is the veteran between the two of us or even that it is blooded. The 2nd regiment has been deployed for two months here at FOB Pantera. The 1rst regiment has never been deployed, and you haven’t even been to your maiden battle.”

“Nonsense. We’ve been fighting in Alavir III for at least four months,” Delavega insists, bemused at their insistence.

“Alavir III is not a combat operation, major, it’s Group Raiding and Individual Neutralization of Danger operation, a G.R.I.N.D. What you were doing is known as grinding and it’s not considered actual fighting by anyone, not even command. The 1rst regiments is being readied for a real combat operation, but you haven’t had it yet.”

Look that shit up fast, Roca.

I am already! Unfortunately, it seems like he’s speaking the truth, major.

“I see,” Delavega answers, pensive. “And how does that excuse you lot from everything you’ve been plotting against me?” he asks, curious.

“Unity Regs say an unproven commander can be refused by a battle-tested unit with a qualified vote of its officers, major,” replies Barro.

“Damn sensible of them,” says Bumba with a predatory grin, the Kishi fangs in display. “Only the unit’s original officers vote, I should add in case you’re thinking of bringing in more of your people.”

“What will it be, Major?” asks Fridy, with a serious look on her fair face. “It’s seen as very negative stain to be refused from what we’ve studied. Surely you don’t want that on your record.”

Shit! That’s true too, major. I’m afraid they’ve gotten us good.

“You’re holding my command and career hostages, is that it?”

“Of course not, major!” protests Fridy. “We’d never threaten a superior officer.”

“Yeah, we’re just informing you of Unity protocol, major. We know it’s a lot of things to memorize,” adds Barro.

“But we -hic, heard there’s been Barker movement around FOB Stonewall reported though,” says Geni.

“Might be a good idea to take a patrol there to bolster the American collared fuckwits,” offers Bumba. “Maybe our unproven troops in case there’s combat to be seen, yeah?”

“If it’s for a serious operation, I think it’s only prudent that I heal Lieutenant Roca so she can go with you,” piles on Fridy.

“I’m sure I can find some mana potions if there’s a need for Fridy later,” Barro continues the Pigs’ relentless assault, driving Delavega into a corner.

“All right, all right, shut up the lot of you! I get it, you win. I’ll do the damn patrol with everyone of the 1rst Regiment I brought with me today. Now get out of my way, babacas,” Delavega snarls out his concession of defeat and storms out of the room and the hospital.

Capitan Roca is about to follow him when Fridy calls out, “Wait, capitan! I have to dispel your debuff!”

The Pigs san medic and patient smile and laugh as they achieve their victory. A combined effort based on the ability of everyone to stall the Major, Geni’s simply ridiculous resistance to drinking cachaça, a fruit of her mineira origin, and the unwitting sergeant Kano’s known crush on his Pig counterpart.

***​

“Aí sim, porra!” I cheer out loud after checking with Bamba if the Divert spell is still up.

The major sets out in the afternoon with all the fifty Snakes he brought from the Main Base to help recon FOB Stonewall’s borders, a miserable sergeant Kano in tow. We of the 2nd Regiment are finally free to plan and prepare our celebration. A rotation of the guards and pickets is agreed between soldiers and spellcasters as I drag tables and chairs with the other quartermasters. Tom and Diego are put in charge of the effort of excavating the goods they soon regret hiding so well. The Chibamba head cook sets his own line of barbecues and has his team drag cutlery and glasses over from the canteen, not giving a shit about Captain Castanho’s suggestions.

“Shit, Barro, you really splurged,” comments Diego as he pants after dragging a heavy crate with Tom. I recognize that one but the Monocle brings it up anyway.

Ancient Nurink Grasseater Meat

Cuts of meats from the Nurink beats, harvested only after their deaths by psich-feedback due to the natural death of one of the psy-circle’s mates.

Highly prized through the galaxy for its extremely fatty meat and controversial-less harvesting.

“You boys have no idea,” I reply with a shit-eating grin. “Diego, please take that one to Sergeant Kaio. Tom, help me with these two here,” I instruct them, pointing to two other boxes.

After we put everything in place, I reach for a pocket and bring out a handful of alien cigars, handing them to my assistant with a smile.

“Are these…?”

“Merge-Trance Weed, yeah,” I confirm his suspicions as he looks over the purple cigar. “Thanks for bullshitting the Major yesterday, Tom, I know it’s not your forte.” The Mapinguari is smiling from ear to ear - the cigarettes have gotten very popular for their effects and the complete lack of (chemical) addiction on Earth’s people. I’m sure there are some aliens out there that dont have it as easy with this one.

“Damn, Lieutenant. If another one of these is my reward next time, you should say so earlier. Then I won’t even hesitate.”

“You’ve seen and heard everything that went through here today, right?” I ask as he searches his pockets for a lighter. “Keep in mind that besides having to keep everyone with food, guns and essentials, we’re also a kind of morale officer. People don’t believe me when I say it, but fighting is just a small part of the job, Tom. Nearly everything before it is our duty. Share those cigars wisely.”

“Hell yeah! Quartermasters rule!” he offers me a fist bump and I won’t leave him hanging.

“Yeah, quartermasters rule,” I agree and turn to go.

“These cigars work on a handful of people, right?” he asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“They do.”

“Come have one with me then, Lieutenant. I’ll get another two people!”

Since I got the cigars to begin with, I accept the invitation.

We have a few hours until the party officially starts but we have most of the preparations done already. So we head to the party area and sit on the chairs I’ve laid in place for the event. Two other people join us at Tom’s invitation: Clara, unsurprisingly, and Omar, a companion of Diego from the assault squad that sports a volumous afro hairdo. We exchange pleasantries as we form a circle and Tom lights the Merge-Trance, taking a hit and passing in on. Sergeant Cariri arrives in time to take a puff of the second round.

They say the drug is even better when you use it with close friends, but I’m sure it will do even if I’m only acquainted with the other two. The buzz of the cigar starts making us pensive- not in a bad way though - I wouldn’t have bought these if it had bad effects. The substance takes us through two distinct moments and the first one is introspective. It’s saudade on a flaming stick. A rich, deep multi-faceted feeling, a nearly physically painful longing for something or someone that is lost, but also with joy at the many memories of happy, unique moments. With a hope that one day we might come to experience something like it once again. Nostalgia or melancholy just don’t do it justice as many poets and writers have written in the past.

I reflect how I now sit on the blue dirt of an alien world as its red sun sets and I reflect on how far I’ve walked from my humble beginnings and the dark destinies I’ve avoided when many did not. Life for poor black men in Brazil is far from easy or safe. I’ve lost my share of family and friends, whose remembrances bring aching to my heart. Some caved in when faced with no good opportunities in our ridiculously unequal society — they joined the factions that controlled our favela to gain a measure of power, to gain a feeling that they could guide their own fates. They picked up guns and were killed for it. Public education and health don’t seem to ever reach the favelas, and often neither does basic things like water and sewers, but the police and rifle bullets come like clockwork. It’s a shame they never find the politicians and rich bastards that really profit from the disgrace in the favelas.

Others I lost to the scourge of drugs. Some lucky few recovered from their addictions due to the effort of the community and local churches, many did not, being executed for debts or joining the huge open-sky cracolândias to fade into oblivion after their families lost hope and the strength to deal with it. The losses that hurt me the most were the ones that screamed of injustice. My grandfather gunned down returning from work. A cousin run over by playboys playing a race with their rich daddy’s brand sports cars, justice averted because of their money. A family friend wasting away before her time from cancer because the hospital administrator embezzled the money for her drugs.

There’s great injustice in this universe, I know. But I survived it, and I keep on doing it.

I tell you some of my worse memories, but they quickly fade away; they are not what the drug makes me focus at. Instead, I remember the first championship I won as a young footballer and how I hoped to follow in the footsteps of so many national heroes. The emotion of raising the modest cup after giving my all with the second-hand football sneakers my mother worked so hard to buy.

Then I relive the days that I built my puxadinho, a few rooms built and tacked together to my mother’s house in Mangueira after working hard and saving a lot of money. It went up in a traditional way of the favelas: I bought the materials and food and drink for a Brazilian barbecue and called for friends and family to help me erect the modest building under the guidance of an uncle who worked in construction. After the work was done, I had my first true porre, drinking until I threw up while the people around me laughed - only to join me in short order.

The second stage of the substance sets in, and euphoria for being alive washes over me. Jumping out from my seat with a whoop, I’m the first off to begin the party with a certainty that I’ll remember this day with a feeling of saudade in the future.

But that’s just the first part of it. True to its name, the cigar leads us to a trance - and then it makes us share each others’ experiences. Not all of them, but the ones that stuck out the most positively in our feelings. It briefly merges our conscience, making us experience past events from our lives.

I’m suddenly a young black child (again) running after a football with my friends through the unpaved streets of my quilombo, our parents looking on with smiles from our precarious wooden houses. On my shirt is (badly) painted Palmares F.C., a childish throwback to the glorious quilombo of old, the civilization formed by runaway slaves and natives that so many times stood up to he might of the slavers and the Portuguese Crown.

Then I’m a teenager and a blight has fallen on the crops the whole quilombo worked so hard on - some suspect and grumble that it must have been the neighbors’ brand insecticide, weaponized to wipe out our organic crops. I feel distress as a shoddy, run-down truck comes to pick up most of us to work on a rich man’s plantation. I know it’s that or hunger. There we’re worked hard and given very little, being forced to pay outrageous prices for everything. My sweet revenge is my secret tryst with the farmer’s daughter...

Fuck, Omar, that was smooth, I begin to think as my conscience briefly returns, but it’s swept away again, carried forcefully to see memories through the eyes of the people that lived them.

I’m a young were, frolicking in my infant maned-wolf form through the mostly open fields of the Cerrado when I feel something is wrong, a bell ringing in my sub-conscience. There’s a small copse of trees by my side and I get the urge to look up.That’s when I spot the black panther looking straight into my eyes, ready to pounce.

I know I’ve been a fool and that I’m going to die, but in that brief moment I can only remark how gorgeous my nemesis is as it launches itself from the branch towards me with a mighty jump. I barely have the time to lament my death before a red blur intercepts the predator, hitting it in mid air and saving my young self. Uncle Danilo has bitten the panther’s side when it was distracted charging me and the mythic and the animal face off for what seems like a long time as I hold my breath, amazed at the unexpected rescue. The predator realizes it’s outmatched and grudgingly retreats eventually, leaving me to shower my uncle with affection even as he scolds me for my carelessness.

“You could have died, girl! Why don’t you listen to us?” he growls even as he picks me up, hugging me tightly. The onças were the main animal they taught us to look out for, but every generation eventually lost someone to the felines.

Then I’m older, and I’m proudly showing my first investigative journalist award to the extended family who ohs and ahs. Now grizzly, uncle Danilo praises me the most as he holds apart his two savage pups, growling at each other and I laugh with his exaggerated compliments and his twins’ antics. He’s spent physically after nearly going feral, but it fills my heart with joy to see him stand with our clan once again.

Damn, that first memory from Clara was exhilarating. I can see why people like this so much.

Then I’m a young Mapinguari, a very gangly child being picked on in primary school, crying as my tormentors circle my huddled form. I know my parents have told me how I’m different and how I should never try to reveal my true self lest the Veil falters and exposes us. The ancient spell wasn’t cast thinking about the hardships of children looking similar to their true selves in their human guise, different though it may be from the average human. But a girl comes swinging to my rescue, swinging at boys and pulling girls hairs. There are six of them, but she beats the two toughest ones without getting a scratch, too fast for a normal kid, and the cowards scatter.

I quit crying and look at her in wonder, untouched even after challenging the toughest bullies on our class. She’s a tall, black girl and she extends a hand to help me up confidently.

“I’m Alessandra,” she says, her smile bereft of her two forward-players making me giggle as I accept it. “I’m in the know, Tom,” she whispers at me, “and I’ve got your back!” I know then that we’ll never leave each other’s sides.

Then I’m older and I stand in a line with a handful of similar-aged Mapinguaris, family all around us in the dark cave hidden from human eyes. With the breaking of the Veil we had no option but to act, our security amidst the humans gone in a moment. These are my cousins and relatives, and we’ve volunteered for the Unity Army so that the people around us are guaranteed a place in the Station that’s being towed to Earth’s Orbit.

“You… were… foolish,” admonishes us our ancient matriarch, nearly two centuries old and showing it, standing up only by leaning on her staff, adorned with teeth and claws from animals and beasts who do not roam this planet anymore. She speaks haltingly, but there’s still wisdom in her voice and a spark in her eyes; she would not be Lorekeeper still if that wasn’t the case. “You should have thought things through!”

She slowly looks each of us in the eyes, male and female Mapinguaris, but we do not ask for forgiveness nor do we feel shame. After a while she nods in approval. I can’t see because of the folds in her skin, but I’d wager she’s smiling.

“It was foolish, but… You have fire in your bellies, the kind of fire I thought only existed in our ancient stories, when magic still flourished in this world. You make us all proud!”

With a mighty effort she raises her staffs and brings it down with the strength we never suspected she still had. “Go forth and claim the stars if you must to!”

All the Mapinguaris around us erupt in cheers, so uncharacteristic of our solitaire, reserved people. Jubilation runs through my veins and my comrades’.

What a badass Granny, I think, making a note to ask Tom more about the old lady. My musings about his lady friend are then summarily shunted aside for the last time.

“No, fuck you, Valter!” I scream back at the teenage Cabriola taunting me even as he lowers his horns to charge me. Anger consumes me and I want nothing more than to lock horns with the idiot and spill his guts on the sands with the peixeira knife. My hand instinctively searches for it on my belt, never mind that I’ve known and been friends with the idiots since I was a billy-goat.

But as he races towards me, something rises up to fight my anger - logic. If I lock horns with my friend, I say to myself, one or both of us will probably die. I can’t do it, I can’t kill a friend. So I don’t charge to meet him and he picks up speed as he approaches, head lowered, arms out. I just look at him, scowling. While I don’t want to enter a peixeira-match, I don’t want to lose either, stupid though our argument might be.

If I can’t use words, horns or peixeira to solve this problem, I suddenly decide to use something else. He’s nearly onto me when I move, dodging his arms and reaching for his horns. With skill borne out of years of practice, I use my whole body, turning myself to flip Valter violently over my back and shoulder. His momentum comes back to bite him in the ass, knocking the air out of him as he hits the ground like a train-wreck. I stand victorious over him while the haze that threatened to take over me retreats and I help the fool up after he’s got his breath back.

A slow clap surprises me, and I turn to see the village’s witch approaching me.

“Oswaldo, I’m recommending you to the Peacekeeper Corps’.”

My jaw drops, but I feel a hand on my shoulder.

“Congratulations, Waldo, I knew you’d do it!”

My dream has come true, and I’ll become an apprentice to the prestigious Mythic organization - the only widespread one - in the steps of my grandfather. I hug Valter, all our stupid fight forgotten in a second.

And then the effect of the Merge-Trance weed ends, and I’m glad I’m sitting as the world turns around me for a minute.

“That… was fucking great,” says Tom, looking at me with glee in his eyes as he pats his pocket.

“Damn, it really is good,” says Cariri - Oswaldo - and we start discussing our shared memories for a while.

We laugh, tease and get to know more of each other until I stand up and announce we should begin the festivities.

“Man, the hangover I’ll have tomorrow…” comments Omar.

“That’s the best part, folks: no hangover tomorrow if you don’t want it, I’ve brought a truckload of the good stuff!” I’ve bought all the Earth-compatible alcohol beverages brewed in warded caskets that I could find. The drinks will be magical - sorry, I had to say it.

“Now we’re talking!” pipes up the man.

“Damn, I’m hungry,” comments Clara, patting her belly. It seems like Merge-Trance weed shares some characteristics with ours now that I stop to think and realize I’m hungry too.

Cariri reaches for a pocket, but is surprised to find nothing there. “I could have swore I had some chocolate in this pocket!”

“I did too - I think,” comments Omar, equally confused as he doesn’t find it. I wonder if someone went through our shit when we were tripping, but besides the sweets no one is missing anything.

“Eh, screw it, let’s go bother Kaio! I’ve had the Cook prepare some salgadinhos and he should be frying the first batches!” I asked for salgadinhos of all types, the small fried pastries that we need to make a good party - coxinhas filled with chickens, croquettes, rissoles, and others with everything Cook had in hand - from cod to cheese, egg, ham, meat…

“This party will be awesome!” cries Tom as everyone pats my shoulders and backs.

Damn right it will! I prepared it after all!