Quantum wrath, p.8
Quantum Wrath, page 8
“You’ve gotta admit,” she added as she hurried to keep up. “We kicked some serious ass back there. Using those robots’ legs like clubs? Fucking genius.”
“Uh-huh.” I rolled my eyes. “Genius…”
“Well, I had the time of my life,” she said crisply. “Man, my limbs are buzzing! This is so perfect for me, I really needed this. Just fucking get out, smash shit, kill things. Mooooore, pleeease!”
She cackled like a lunatic and did a little skip hop that brought her boots squelching down on glowing, sulfur-smelling gunk.
I chose not to respond.
I could sense her watching my every movement as I turned my head from side to side. Every now and then, I knelt to look at a plant, and sometimes the odd footprint that I found.
“What are you even doing?” she finally asked. “Looking for clues like Scooby-Doo?”
Yes, Scooby-Doo was still well-known on Earth, even when rodeos and Disneyland all seemed like fantasy book shit. It was actually considered a national treasure and a pinnacle of entertainment for standing the test of time.
Of course, most reboots cast the Scooby gang all as super-hot superheroes, so they were actually trash. And Scooby-Doo himself was an AI dog who could barf up any meal Shaggy asked for. Then eat it as well.
But I couldn’t help being kinda proud of the franchise.
“I’m seeing what the plants are like,” I said absently. “It tends to go one of two ways, in my experience: Evil and carnivorous, or edible with healing properties.”
“Healing properties?” she scoffed. “Alright, nurse Heather-man.”
I ignored her. “After that, I scope out what the nearest city is like. See if it’s safe to enter, if I can blend in. Figure out the biggest threats. How to get food. How to–”
“But that doesn’t sound fun at all,” Lu objected and kicked her boot straight through a young sapling’s trunk.
“I’m not here to have fun,” I said irritably.
“Then why are you here?” she pressed.
“To not die,” I said with a shrug. “Oh, yeah, and to get rid of you.”
Her eyes flashed pink, and her voice rose to a grating pitch. “Fuck you, Heather-man.”
“I’m sure you’d like that, Lucinda.” I smirked at the simple pleasure of paying her with her own coin.
“It’s fucking Lucyra!” she shrieked.
The sonic sound sent icepicks through my eardrums, but I clamped my teeth together, shook my head, and muscled through it.
“Keep your voice down.” I turned on my heel and walked on toward the edge of the forest.
When the trees started to thin out, I slowed my pace a little and crept onward.
I didn’t look in Lu’s direction even once, no matter how many plants, trees, and birds I heard her destroying like a petulant kid, but her pouting was palpable.
All the better. Pouting also meant shutting the fuck up.
I squinted into the distance at the city. It was freckled with dim, flickering neon signs here and there, but most of the actual lighting seemed to come from some type of bioluminescent plants and vines that crawled over every available surface. The plants of the forest around us held no glow at all, but a swath of forest off to the west had a vibrant glow in the falling dusk.
In the nearest streets, I could see people that appeared to be human striding around. There were no manacles, ropes, whips, or slave carts in sight.
Perk number one. It was just nice when my first real look at a dimension didn’t involve the same boring slave issues as so many others.
Everyone was wearing dark, understated clothes. That would work well enough for me, but not for the scrub-wearing blonde woman traveling with me.
“Time for a costume change,” I said as I slung off one shoulder strap of my bag and swung it around to my side. I pulled out a dark pair of pants and a shirt.
“These are huge!” she protested. She held the pants up and shook them for emphasis. “I could fit all of me inside one of the legs with room to spare. And so tall. How the–”
“Here,” I interrupted as I tugged off my belt. I balled it up, threw it at her, and smiled. “Take this. And just roll up the ankles. Problem solved.”
“I’m going to look like a fucking idiot,” she muttered as she peeled off her skin-tight pants.
I swiftly turned away and went back to examining the city.
“What?” she taunted. “Never seen a naked woman before?”
“I’m just not interested in seeing you,” I said in my most blase voice.
“Liar,” she muttered. “God, you’re so uptight, your asshole has probably puckered itself into oblivion.”
I smirked and quirked an eyebrow as she stomped back around to join me.
“Is it so hard to believe I don’t find you appealing?” I asked.
“Everyone finds me appealing,” she informed me with one hand on her hip.
“Until they hear you talk, maybe,” I yawned.
A silent glare was her only response, so I had a strong feeling I’d hit the nail on the head.
I smirked and threw a black shirt at her.
She held it up and flapped it like a flag. “Jesus.”
“You can just call me Heath,” I said.
She let out a snort of reluctant laughter.
I glanced over to see her knotting up the shirt around her waist. Then she stepped back and stared down at herself as she turned her body this way and that.
“Well,” she sighed. “How do I look?”
Honestly, she reminded me a lot of the eras on Earth when 90s fashion would come back around. It seemed to happen every forty years or so, and I’d never minded the baggy jeans and tight little tops women turned to during those moments. It always reminded me of a simpler time back in the mid-2020s, before the super-plague took over.
And to be fair, the slope of Lu’s muscular and cinched little waist as it widened to her hips did credit to the original look.
But this wasn’t just any random woman. This was the shrieking little gimp who’d latched onto me like a flea.
“You look like a scrawny baby villain in a big man’s clothes,” I said. “But at least we’ll stand out less at first glance.”
“Baby villain?” she repeated in a shrill, outraged voice that practically made my brain cells audibly grind against each other. “Did you just call me a fucking baby villain?”
“Yep,” I said with equal fire but less shrillness. “And I’m your babysitter for the next seventy-two hours. So do me a favor and just pipe down while I figure out what to do next.”
I didn’t wait for her response. I just strode through the forest diagonally toward the city.
She was silent for a long time, and I wondered idly if I had earned her hatred yet.
She was a hard nut to crack, but we’d get there eventually. I’d make sure of it.
“Where exactly are we headed, anyway?” she finally sniffed.
“There’s a road up there.” I pointed ahead. “From what I can see, it cuts through the trees and heads into the city. The road would be a more natural way for us to head toward town if we were from this place. And there are some other people on it, so we’ll be able to listen in and see what they’re saying. Oh, yeah, also…”
I paused and reached out to tuck her hair into the neck of her borrowed shirt.
She stared at me with bafflement.
“What did you do that for?” she asked.
“There were definitely some people who spotted us running away,” I said. “Your hair is kinda conspicuous. If we’re going to stay in this city, you should keep it hidden for now.”
“What about you?” she threw back. “You’re fucking huge. You can’t just lumber into town like some roided-out bear and expect no one to bat an eye.”
“Sure I can,” I said calmly. The range of people on the road looked diverse enough that I wouldn’t be any more out of place than I would back on Earth, where most people took my size as nothing more than a reason not to fuck with me. “But for the record, I’m not sure if we’ll be going into the city yet. It seems big enough to lose ourselves in, but depending on what we overhear, we may turn aside before we go in. Regardless of what we do, I’ll be keeping my zenith under a tight rein. I expect you to do the same, unless you’d rather be off on your own. Which would be fine by me.”
“I don’t even fucking know how to do that!” she erupted, and she flung her hands in the air while she stamped her foot at me. “You can’t just expect me to contain such raw–”
“Okay, well, here’s your crash course,” I interrupted as I brought us to a stop under the trees. “You can start by calming the fuck down.”
She took three deep, heaving breaths, but if anything, it sounded like she was gearing up, like a freight train chugging up a hill.
But then she squared her shoulders and faced me with a surprisingly settled expression.
“Now what?” she asked.
“Well, what do you do when you use your powers?” I asked. “As in, what does it feel like, internally?”
She shrugged. “I reach for them, I guess. Kinda feels like they live in my chest. What does it feel like for you?”
“Okay.” I ignored her question and focused on the rest. “So instead of reaching and pulling, try pushing.”
“Pushing?” she repeated with a snort of derision.
“Pushing down,” I said with a nod. “If ‘pulling’ is so natural to you, then why should ‘pushing’ be so absurd?”
“Okay, okay,” she muttered. “I can try. But how will we know if it’s working?”
I slung my bag onto one shoulder, reached inside, and rooted around until I came up with a tiny toy snake.
“What the fuck is that?” she snickered.
“A test.” I flicked a switch on the bottom of the snake, and its eyes glowed red. They immediately started flickering rapidly.
“Okay.” Lu folded her arms and stared at me with the corners of her lips twitching. “But only if you tell me why you carry a little plastic snake around with you.”
She didn’t deserve an explanation for jack shit, but I decided it’d be quicker this way, so I just shrugged.
“I had it on me when I warped for the second time,” I explained. “I got myself a bunch of weapons and tech before then, but it all turned out to be useless after my warp… Except for this fucking plastic snake, for whatever bizarre reason. But when I first learned to calm my zenith, I used the snake to practice. I don’t need it anymore, but I dunno. I’ve just always carried it around. Not like it takes up a lot of space.”
“That’s…” Lu seemed like she was at a loss for words, but she finally managed to rein in her snickers. “Okay. I’ll try this… pushing thing.”
“Helps if you close your eyes the first few times,” I grunted.
Her pink eyes fluttered shut, and she sucked in a deep breath and held it.
“Don’t do that,” I sighed. “You need to let energy flow through you like normal. Well… Actually, I’m sure ‘normal’ for you is like touching a damn live wire. But just breathe normally, alright?”
“Ugh!” she hissed. “Fine.”
She took slow, steady breaths, and after a few moments she clasped her hands against her chest.
Finally, in fits and starts, the snake’s eyes got a little less flickery.
When they calmed down completely, I blinked with surprise.
“Okay, good,” I said.
Her eyes flew open. “I did good?”
The eyes immediately started flickering again.
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
“Alright,” I said. “Let’s try something else.”
In the end, it took several different techniques for Lu to finally be able to sustain the whole ‘reining it in’ thing for a while.
“Jeez,” she muttered after the third successful time. “Feels like I have a fizzy champagne bottle in my chest. I hate it.”
“You get used to it,” I said. “It’s a muscle you need to exercise. So, better start lifting. Keep the snake.”
She made an overdone kissy face at me as I chucked the snake at her, and then she stuffed it in her pocket.
When we got to the edge of the woods, the first thing I noticed was the skyline.
The city was to our right. But directly ahead, the land was a flat wasteland with nothing but wispy gray grass on its surface.
The sun here was an ominous shade of green, and just now it was in the process of setting. It washed the grayish landscape into a muted, sickly shade.
But in the middle of the otherwise-empty landscape, a massive tower stabbed up into the sky like a clawed finger. The tower was perfectly centered against the luminous green orb that was the setting sun. I felt like I was staring into a giant viper’s eye, and it was an oddly ominous sight.
I gave my head a shake, before we went to join the people trekking down the road.
Lu seemed to have run out of things to needle me with, so she focused on staring at the crowd around us.
“I hate not being able to understand people,” she grumbled. “Can you, with your translator?”
“Not unless you stop talking,” I sighed. “And what happened to the translator I got you in Laylix, by the way?”
“It went crazy while we were warping,” she said with a frown. “It was practically screaming in my ear the whole time. Then when we landed, it split into pieces. I barely had time to think about it, what with the whole ‘us totally kicking ass together’ thing.”
“What about the one you stole?” I pointed out.
She shrugged. “I tossed it.”
“’Course you did,” I muttered. “Always thinking ahead, aren’t you?”
She bit down on her lip and fidgeted as we joined the people striding down the street.
There were no gates to the city here like there had been in Laylix. In fact, the city had no clearly defined edge at all. It reminded me a little of a mountain range, with the low-lying foothills being small, widely-spaced buildings, and the inner mountain range being a clusterfuck of towering metal.
They’d certainly developed here to rely a hell of a lot on massive, intricately constructed architecture that looked like it wouldn’t survive a single earthquake.
“… Can’t believe they’re making us do this,” a down-trodden man grumbled to his companion. Like a lot of people on the road, he was weighed down by a mountain of bags tied to his back. “Sure, the mercenary rebel raids were scary, but evacuating the whole damn city…? Why couldn’t the Unit just stick with the inspections?”
“All for the sake of rooting out a few lousy mercenaries,” his companion agreed gloomily. “I miss having a home where I didn’t have to pack up and leave all the time.”
I immediately started filing things into place in my mind. One city, maybe more, were frequently evacuated for the purpose of hunting down rebel mercenaries, in place of inspections that had previously taken place for that purpose. Since these people were heading into the city ahead, I could only assume that we had arrived in the middle of them being shuffled there from the place they had just evacuated.
I tuned into another conversation that was taking place just behind us.
“I hope the Unit doesn’t launch too many raids here in Pyrgeira,” a tired-sounding woman sighed. “I heard they’re starting to attack civilians as if they’re mercenary bands. They don’t even care anymore. Believe you me, all that chaos we heard on the east road was another one of those skirmishes…”
It sounded like there was a good chance this woman was referring to the skirmish that Lu and I had been personally involved in. If so, that was all to the better– people who assumed us to be innocent but laggardly civilians were better than people who suspected us of being insurgents.
A collective mutter ran through all the people around us.
Then all of a sudden, it escalated into shouts and screams.
I snatched Lu’s wrist and yanked her off the road with me just in time. Bodies thumped down into crouches on every side of us as everyone else did the same.
Three black blurs on wheels raced by on the road. People snarled and shook their fists at them as they passed.
Others just seemed more downtrodden than ever.
“Imagine rolling into town on cushioned seats,” one of them sighed.
“And not sleeping in bug-infested roadside shanties,” her companion muttered as he scratched himself vigorously.
“Alright,” I said softly to Lu as we rejoined the crowd. “I’m thinking we’re good to head into the city. The only thing is…”
“Excuse me…” A timid hand plucked at my sleeve. I turned around to see an ancient-looking, bent-backed old woman smiling up at me. “Are you looking for a job?”
“Depends,” I said gruffly. I had no idea what the hell this woman was talking about or what type of person she assumed I was, but maybe I could use this to my advantage. “What do you need?”
She gestured at the mound of interconnected bags that was heaped onto her back. “If you wouldn’t mind being of assistance, I’m willing to hand over a few nuggets. I was saving them for a rainy day, but…”
“Sure,” I said without hesitation. Always good to figure out the currency in as casual a way as possible. “I wasn’t exactly looking for a job, but I’ve lost most of my stuff anyway, so…”
“Ahh.” She clucked her tongue sympathetically as she loosened the straps of her backpack mountain. “Can’t imagine anyone bold enough to rob a big man like you, so I’m assuming the raiders got to you? They cleaned out my niece’s flat, too.”
I nodded noncommittally as I shouldered the bags.
At my side, Lu was smirking openly at the sight of me suddenly becoming a pack mule.
I turned to the old woman and smiled.
“Anything else that needs carrying?” I asked. “My assistant will be happy to take it for you.”
I grabbed Lu by her shoulder and shoved her forward.
She shot me a ferocious scowl, but then did a prim little curtsy for the old woman.
“Oh, my,” the old woman murmured as she looked from her bright pink eyes to the chiseled abs that were exposed on her midriff. “Raiders caught a pair like you. Goodness, the rest of us don’t stand a chance.”
