Chương 106: Refrain

My alarm pulled me out of my sleep about four hours in. I spent two hours just staring at the ceiling, gathering my thoughts. Four hours was enough for me, anyway. I only had a few surface-level injuries. Nothing that would kill me. The others needed more sleep. But part of me knew none of them were going to just sit and rest during this. Something had to be done. Pushing myself up from my bed, I scraped together some clothes to put on over my costume. Things like my gloves I tucked into my jacket pockets.

No one was going to look at my feet any time soon, so I left my boots on regardless of how ridiculous they looked. I trudged my way out of my room, and made my way to Christian's just next to me. His door was unlocked, which gave me the opportunity to head down without any resistance. Didn't realize I'd never been down there before until now. It had the same sort of "aquarium" as my room, the great chasm of water within. What surprised me more was just the actual layout of the room.

There was this weird grid of mats on different parts of the floor, in the center, with multiple dummies on each mat. Some were on the floor, false limbs splayed out. Others stood sentinel on their posts. The walls were draped in weapons of all kinds. Swords, chains, cudgels, long blades on longer hafts. I knew he kept weapons on him when he was out fighting crime, since he needed to compensate for when he fought superhumans, but I didn't realize how much of an armory this place was.

Alongside random movie posters were different scrolls in some other language. I had no idea what they said. Off in the corner of the room opposite the glass wall was Chris, on his bed, nursing some illuminated plastic device. The size of a pencil, maybe. His focus was on the fish. Didn't even see me come in, it seemed.

"The Hell is that?" I blurted out, fully expecting something to get thrown at me just from the surprise of me showing up somewhere at sunrise. He looked up at me as I approached, taking an inhale of real air.

"The stuff I breathed in hurts a lot. Sam threw together this vaporizer. It's got ibuprofen, menthol, and apparently caffeine in it. Helps keep the pain down. It's not really good for me long-term but she said that if I'm just using it for a few days to recover, it won't do me any harm. Stuff doesn't taste great, it's like breathing in ice, but it's better than how it normally feels." Reaching the end of the stairs, I ambled around all the various weapon racks to not get poked, standing across from him.

My hands sat in my pockets.

"How does it normally feel?"

"Like every time I breathe I'm getting struck by lightning. Using this stops the pain for like ten minutes." I raised an eyebrow.

"Sounds like you're already getting hooked." He chuckled, which was then followed up with a cough that prompted him to put his forearm in front of his mouth.

"It's ibuprofen and caffeine. I can get that with a coffee and an Advil. Also don't like keeping my hand occupied. The second they can get this crud out of my lungs, the better."

"Right." I glanced towards one of the racks of weapons, before back at him.

"What happened?"

"I…" Chris looked off at the fish floating behind me as he tried to parse his words.

"So there were a bunch of armed guys next to people in cages. I didn't really do anything with them, because I was busy with two supers. One was this guy named Father Bambusa who like… made bamboo spears that he swung and threw around, hard enough it lodged itself into concrete."

"Super strength."

"That or a Wyrdwood phenomenon. The other was a Father Moroides. His thing wasn't like normal Wyrdwood stuff. He was covered in this like… hair. Very fine white hairs you couldn't see unless they were caught in the light. Didn't use weapons. Knew some kind of kung fu. Strong, though."

"Okay. So how did they beat you?"

"The white hairs were apparently the same as something called gympie-gympie. Sam told me it's a tree from Australia that has these little white nettles in the leaves. When they get in your skin, they release a neurotoxin that hurts so bad you can't get over the pain for weeks. Most of my body is covered by my costume… except for my mouth." I nodded.

"So he got a chance to hit your mouth, make you breathe everything in?"

"Yeah, but in two separate ways. The first time he did this like, slapping move to get a bunch on my chin, then afterwards he took some of the hairs off by hand and blew them at me, and I ended up breathing them in. That's why I need this," he explained, holding up the vaporizer.

"What I'm trying to figure out is how you let it get to that point," I explained.

"I've seen how you fight. You've knocked out grown men in seconds."

"Those are random, untrained guys, Leo. What I did barely hurt them, just left them incapacitated. These two were very conditioned martial artists. If I tried putting in the effort to stop them, I'd have maimed them, possibly even killed them. Just because you and I have killed in the past doesn't mean we need to do that again. We need to-""Who said you had to kill them?"

"What?"

"I agree we shouldn't kill them. We need the information they have. And if we start killing them, they'll put in a lot more effort to try and kill us. So that's fine, you don't have to kill, but what's the issue with maiming them?"

"They're still people, Leo! They shouldn't go unpunished, but we need to show some kind of mercy. Going too aggressive at a time like this could tip us over the edge." Bringing a hand to my face, I rubbed it before looking off to the wall again.

"That kind of mercy is good for purse-snatchers who are more dumb and selfish than evil, Chris. These guys aren't dumb and selfish. They're evil. Evil isn't gonna be stopped with a black eye or a sprained wrist. I'm not telling you to kill them, because I wouldn't either. But you know I'd draw the line in the sand and make it clear to them and all their pals that worse'll happen if they don't call it quits. And I'm not asking you to be me.

But you know what you can do when it comes to saving people" Chris didn't look at me. His gaze moved to the floor.

"... Making more serious injuries. Sending firmer messages." His hands stroked across his face before looking up.

"You're probably right. That's what I should be doing. I just don't know how I'd even do that." This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"…You willing to piss Tancred off?"

"I'm not really one to make enemies."

"We've got more enemies than friends. I'm interested in setting up a situation where you two can go and try to re-secure those trees. If I set that up, would you be willing to try? To go deliver real mercy?" His gaze lingered across the room. I couldn't tell what was going between his ears as his eyes focused on a random corner. They then finally met mine.

"…Yeah. Yeah, I would be." I nodded, tapping a fist on his shoulder.

"Wait for now, then." From there, I turned and made my way to May's door, though was interrupted by her opening it right when I reached her. Shivvy slipped out of her room, crawling up along my side and sitting on my shoulder.

"…What the Hell were you doing in there?" I asked the metallic creature, prodding at him a little and watching his body ripple from the contact.

"Eating my Little Ollies," she explained, drawing my gaze back to her. Aside from some bruising, scraping, and an eyepatch, she seemed to be in better shape than Chris.

"Which aren't exactly easy to grow as big as I got mine""Sorry. I've been training him to eat wood because of the Wyrdwood. Did he get all of your plants, or…?"

"Just a couple of them. He listened to me scolding him and escorting him out, at least," she added on, crossing her arms.

"Alright. So… can you tell me what happened?"

"Huh?"

"At your mission. What happened?"

"Oh. Just, there was this baseball player who joined the ADU and he threw these like seed bombs at me, and there was this other guy who was like… spitting vines at me and they were tangling me up and I-""That's not what stopped you. You and I both could've picked out five different ways to deal with that immediately."

"You don't know th-""I didn't, but I do know. What happened?" She looked down, hands hanging at her sides.

"Shit. I… those guys were there. I was really fighting them. But they had hostages by the vine guy. Just all tied up by his ankles."

"So you ambush. What stopped you?"

"Well I was trying to but like, in the pile I saw- I-" She took a deep breath, before her single eye focused on me.

"I saw my brother for the first time in years and he was one of the hostages." Oh, fucking Hell-"And I saw him when I was planning an ambush and it just made me start thinking of him and how he was in danger but I was still mad at him for walking out on us and I'm not you, Leo, I can't think about so many things at once, and, and-" Reaching out, I put a hand on her shoulder.

"May. Slow down. Breathe. What's your brother's name?" I was still praying I was just making a big misunderstanding. She took a deep breath, her eye shutting. When she exhaled, she answered.

"Tyson. Tyson Hart." God damn it. I guess I couldn't hide my reaction well enough, as she then followed up with a"... Why are you looking at me like that?" My hands went to my hips as I looked off to the side, as though somehow not facing her when I said it made it any better.

"We're friends. Tyson and I. I didn't uh… know you were related. I had a hunch because of his last name and the fact you two looked similar but I didn't want to assume. Especially after what you said at the raid." I could feel her gaze on me. Burning into my cheek. Shivvy leaned over to closely inspect my face. He had most of a cat's face going, but so much of it was smoothed out that it just made him look inauthentic. He prioritized giving himself whiskers before he bothered with detailed eyes.

Maybe the lack of detail was better. The first thing I expected to hit the side of my face was a slap, though some sort of luck made it be words instead.

"I understand. You deal with a lot already. And it wasn't really like I wanted to find him, I gave up on that." Looking back towards her, I nodded.

"I just… wish I knew so I could explain that he's been out here, and he's been okay."

"He ran out on me while my dad was dying of cancer. My dad… he really was giving my brother Hell for quitting school to focus on helping my mom take care of him. Mom left around the same time because of it. It was just me and dad for a couple of years as he went into remission. But the cancer came back, and everything went wrong again, and Tyson still never came back and-" She stopped herself, inhaling.

"Breathe. Breathe." An exhale.

"I blamed a lot on him. For leaving us. But there in that moment I couldn't stop thinking about him, and I was trying to figure out how I could still ambush the vine guy without getting the hostages hurt, without getting Tyson hurt. I can't think like you do. I can't plan the way you can. By the time I realized I was overthinking, they were already kicking the shit out of me. I had to escape and abandon my brother like how he abandoned me." My eyes studied her.

The tension in her neck, her own eye searching for some kind of response in my face, her fingers tensing and curling over and over. I clicked my tongue.

"how I think isn't the right answer either. I can't really see what's happening in the moment when I think too much, and I end up going down routes that don't work best, or things surprise me. Trying to think like me is what made me homeless for half of a year. What stopped me from telling you about Tyson. If I wasn't so caught up in my own thoughts, he might not be there right now. So that fault's on me. And you? You're smarter than me. You think better than me."

"What do you mean?"

"You've got great instincts. Your gut tells you the best move constantly. When you used your blood at the raid, or when you told me about how you were able to move sunlight using your own teeth for Hidalgo. You probably just had those ideas instantly pop into your head, right? You just went with them. If you can do that again, you could easily beat both of those guys. You just gotta trust your instincts."

"I just… when I think about seeing him, I tense up. I get scared of what I'll do if I talk to him."

"You're allowed to get scared. But for that fight, you put it in a box and leave it on a street corner until you've got those scumbags kissing pavement."

"But I can'-""You can. I've got a plan to get us a chance to go out and right some wrongs without Tancred or Richmond breathing down our necks. No approval bullshit getting in the way. If I can get it set up, would you be willing to go out and save your brother?" Her eye followed my face again. Trying to see if maybe I was sneaking a lie behind my ear or something, if I had to guess. When she realized I wasn't blowing smoke up her ass, she took another deep breath.

"…Please. What do you need for your plan?"

"For now, I just need you to wait. I gotta talk to one last person." I turned and walked off from her, immediately heading into Sam's lab. I didn't even bother being light about opening it. Frankly, there was some catharsis in startling her down there. The lab was a mess, more than usual. Crap and scrap and everything inbetween stacked up far more than usual. Sam didn't even seem startled by me. She was just standing by a desk, sipping coffee. But her body language was tensed.

Instinctively reacting to the idea of another chair visiting her. The look on her face wasn't some sudden immunity to me. Those eyes were sunken with defeat.

"Sam," I started.

"What?" She almost wheezed out, audibly weak.

"I don't trust you. Not after what you did. I have no idea if I can ever trust you as much as I did before all of that. But you might be able to earn back a bit of it, if you can help me." I could immediately see her posture adjust. There was this tiny bit of brightening in her eyes. Like saying the word 'Walk' around a dog.

"…What do you need?"

"I need you to help me save Jairo Carter."