Chương 126: Reuben

Most of us never really talked about what Foras made us see. We gave our explanations to Eliza per our psychological evaluations, but that was the majority of the discussion. I barely even talked about it much with her. We'd been on awkward terms since that one argument. I give her the bare minimum to check me off and approve me for patrols, she doesn't ask any questions. There was, however, one time that I did recall the topic arising again. It was August 8th. Two days after our time at the "Funhouse."

Jairo and I were on a joint patrol today due to a growing need for a buddy system. ADU mini attacks had started cropping up. Small ones, but still featuring armed men or Wyrdwood weaponry. They were all flash-in-the-pan, some of which were dealt with by civilians. One was even sitting in the hospital, comatose, from getting hit over the head with a cast iron skillet by an old woman. But even a minor threat, when they're carrying guns, prompted some measure of safety.

The change in my ROE meant I'd deal with the major threats while Jairo handled evacuations first before supporting me. He decided to make it known as we lunged from rooftop to rooftop. We couldn't maintain a conversation smoothly, as I engaged in large pounces across multiple roofs, while with his speed he could bounce between individual roofs through sheer momentum alone. But he still made croaking, buzzing comments whenever we ended up next to each other.

"I just don't get it-" WOOSH THOOM"-Man! We all proved we-" WOOSH THOOM"-Are as good as you! Why-" WOOSH THOOM"-Can't we get the same-" WOOSH THOOM"Rules of engagement!?" I caught him by his helmet before he rushed off again, not wanting to chase after him for further conversation.

"Look," I started.

"I didn't ask for the promotion. But if I had to guess, it's not about competence. If more of those Fathers show up, you guys are perfect for handling them. But if Brother Gleditsia's there, do you think you could handle him? He cut a kaiju in half and still had the gas in him to beat the shit out of me. Shivvy had to save my ass."

Mentioning the metal creature's name prompted him to pop out of the collar of my costume, a felid head sticking out from a strand of liquid alloy, before its eyeless gaze fixed on me out of curiosity. Jairo lowered his arms and slouched his shoulders.

"…Yeah, I guess. I'm just kind of mad that we're seen as your lackeys most of the time. People forget Chris is the leader or that I'm strong."

"You aren't just strong," I assured him, letting go of his helmet and patting his shoulder.

"You're also faster than anyone I've ever seen. And in a throwdown with just skills, you'd kick my ass too." I feigned a chuckle, trying to push some sort of levity into his ears. If he had them. Still wasn't sure how that worked when he transformed. I wasn't sure if he was sure either.

"Thanks," he muttered, before tugging my hand off of him.

"Let's keep going." We rushed off again, a far more silent patrol afterwards for all of maybe ten minutes before we hit the residential part of Charlottesville, and had to take to ground movement. My lunges that let me keep up with Jairo required breaking up the roads, so we agreed to just walk our way through.

An exasperated yell lured us down a turn and into a cul-de-sac, where two individuals — a man and a woman, both probably twenty-ish years older than Jairo and I — were arguing as they stood in front of their house. The man was holding some sort of vacuum-looking contraption. I took the lead, Jairo quietly admitting he wasn't good at the mediator stuff. That was a mistake on his part since I was bad at it, too.

"What's going on?" I called out, my voice carrying well before I risked being in anyone's personal space. Keeping a few paces away to avoid any sort of interpretations of menacing, I sat my hands on my hips. The woman spoke first.

"We have an extended basement and a wall broke, and now the entire Rivanna River's flooding our fucking basement! And this asshole-" She started, before pointing at the man.

"-Won't call the fire department to help deal with it!" The man then followed up.

"I'm not callin' the fire department because it took me three daggum years to get the city to approve the extension, and they'll find it as an excuse to revoke the permits they gave me for it! You know how much it cost to get the damn stamp?"

"A lot?"

"Three thousand of my hard-earned dollars, and I gotta spend an extra grand just for the land that I already pay taxes on every year!" I took a deep breath before nodding.

"Okay, pretty expensive, then. You're going to need some sort of help with handling it, though," I pointed out.

"We can get some resources to come in."

"What, so your boys with the city can take my permits? I just told you that's not happening!" There was a bit of a smile under my mask from getting to actually point out something was wrong, but it wasn't really visible due to how much it covered of the lower half of my face.

"We're not with the city. We don't handle any sort of land stuff. We're federal." I crossed my arms as his eyebrows raised.

"So are you interested?" He put down the vacuum, sitting his hands on his hips.

"I… Okay. How do you plan on helpin'? I've seen y'all on the news. I know you and the other one are super strong but what's that gonna do?"

"Do you trust me?"

"Well, my daughter was one of the hostages when the tree guys did that recent attack, and y'all got her out of there. Suppose I gotta."

"Okay." I reached into my belt, procuring a card and holding it out to him.

"Hold onto that. That's my insurance card. You'll understand why in a few minutes. Where's your basement?" The man and his wife led us to a bulkhead by the side of his house, opening it and leading us in. Overhead lights illuminated what could already be smelled: A lot of rich, metal-heavy water. It almost smelled like tinfoil. Just metallic. Pretty sure the term for it was "ozone." If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

"Jeez," Jairo croaked out behind me as our boots splashed down into the water. Our. But I only heard my own. I glanced down. I forgot Jairo doesn't wear shoes when he's Teiú. Since he needs the grip from the claws on his feet to move quickly. That's why I only heard mine. Looking back up at him, I clicked my tongue.

"Am I the only one coming down here?"

"I don't know what's in the water!" He blurted out.

"River water, Teiú."

"Yeah but whatever's washed up from the basement floor!"

"I clean the daggum thang!" The older man retorted.

"You think I'd leave it dirty if I put an extension on it!?" Jairo and I exchanged glances, before I shrugged at him. He sighed and put a claw into the water, immediately shuddering.

"Cold, cold!" He shouted.

"I'm cold-blooded, man!"

"Do you not keep a pair of shoes with you?"

"I do but I don't wanna-""We're not chasing anyone! Get out, dry your feet off in the grass, and put them on," I called out. Giving it a minute, he returned with a pair of human feet in a pair of orange, rubbery shoes that sat almost like socks on him.

"Was that so hard?"

"Not really, I guess."

"Yeah. Now come on." The two of us trekked further into the basement after the homeowner handed us the flashlight. It honestly wasn't a bad looking place, clearly well taken care of. The floor wasn't flat concrete, instead using actual tiling patterns, with now-ruined carpets and furniture. There was a pool table I had to yank Jairo away from so we could focus on the task at hand. The trickling and rushing of water became louder and louder until we saw the source of the water.

At about foot-level was a hole in the wall, maybe the size of my fist, now half-submerged but causing water to rush in.

"Small hole. Something must've eroded it, somehow. Any guesses?" I asked, looking over at Jairo. He hummed and planted his fists on his hips.

"Well, Hercules," he started with this faux-heroic voice.

"This is clearly the work of the dastardly Hole-Man!" I stared at him. He stared at me.

"…I don't really know construction stuff, Herc."

"I can tell. Looks like we have plenty of time before it hits power outlets, though. This basement's huge."

"Yeah, it is." Jairo twirled on a heel, splashing up some water.

"He said it cost him three thousand just to get the extension approved, I bet the extension took over ten thousand to be actually built."

"Need to figure out a way to plug the gap for a minute…" I glanced back towards the pool table, trudging over to it and collecting a few of the billiard balls.

"These'll have to do."

"They gonna all fit?" Jairo asked. I shrugged.

"Slows the rush at least," I noted on my return to the hole. Squatting down, I stuck a few of them in and used my hand to hold them in place, making what was a constant flow into more of random spurts and trickles.

"Okay. Step one done. Step two is figuring out how to keep them in place."

"Would be a great time for you to figure out your gravity thing." I shook my head.

"I've been trying. There's this exercise with turning a water bottle and like, it does nothing for me. The water goes down a little slower but it's such a small change I can't even tell if my brain's just making it up."

"Well, uh, there might be a way."

"How?" I asked. Jairo rubbed the back of his neck.

"So when we were in the… the thing. The memory I had to go through was when you fought that Gleditsia guy." There wasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of my brain being able to stop my head from turning to look at him immediately.

"You went through it."

"Yeah. I uh… couldn't even get past fighting Gleditsia. He beat the crap out of me every time. Your strength works so differently than mine so for the first couple goes I was just a regular guy fighting him, and he has super strength."

"And then what?"

"I kinda… figured out a bit of how your power works. I don't think it's the exact same, since it was a demon making stuff up, but like, I know you sort of lose yourself when you really let your powers out. I kinda do the same when I transform all the way."

"Like at that ADU thing, with Mother Belladonna." He watched me for a few seconds, before nodding.

"Yeah… Yeah, like that. I really gave in, there. It's like I stop tensing a muscle in me, and then everything just kind of overcomes me. That was the first time I really let it all the way go instead of just loosening it."

"So you let go of that tendon and could use my powers?"

"I… I don't even know if it was like that. So much as it was just me not letting myself think too much about it. And when that happened, it kind of overtook me. Then I was strong enough to actually fight him."

"And then what happened." Jairo sighed.

"He just has so much bullshit he grows out of his ass, man! He makes swords and teeth and tentacles and… and… cada porra cabulosa!" I raised an eyebrow high enough it poked up out of the top of my mask.

"Not so damn easy, is it?"

"Makes me wish Shivvy ate the guy!"

"At some point he might," I noted, before realizing something.

"Shivvy," I called out. His felid head popped out of the collar of my suit again.

"Hole?" I asked, pointing at the hole that was leaking water all over my fingers. He just stared at me.

"I dunno why I feed you, sometimes," I griped, before looking back up at Jairo.

"So even with the strength, Gleditsia kept beating you. But how did you figure out my power? I do all that already."

"Well-" He started.

"I'm not sure how to really describe it. But I started getting a big headache at one point after he broke my leg, wanting to stop him, and he actually did just… stop moving. Like he was stuck under a waterfall." I perked up, my slouch vanishing as I became more enraptured by what I was hearing.

"And then he started like… squatting, and scrunching. And he splatted against the ground-""So you did win."

"…he grew back together and had one of those wood things maul May to death."

"Jesus fucking Christ," I blurted out. Made me realize how easy I had gotten it with the two I went through.

"I- Yeah. But- But it's just… it's not real. So I don't let it get to me. Eliza thinks I'm actually handling it super well. But that's beside the point! I wasn't touching him but I made him stop, and he got flattened! That's gotta be gravity, right?" I nodded.

"Has to be. Sounds like you had to really give into some mental strain for it. Wonder how much I would need to…" I glanced at the billiard balls, focusing on them. I just kept iterating on the thought in my head to hold them still. Let gravity work on either side of it to hold it in place. There wasn't even a way to know if that was how it really worked. But I focused. My mind centered entirely on the billiard balls. Hold them. Hold them still.

"…Nothing," I conceded.

"Just not in it enough."

"Do you want me to like, punch you?" he asked.

"No. But that means it's time for plan B." Raising a finger, I stabbed my finger through the wall, right above the pool balls, causing more water to start leaking through.

"Why the Hell did you do that!?"

"Superhero inflicted damage. Now our insurance can pay to fix his wall." I raised my mask up and smirked. Had to smile to hide how pissed off I was at still not getting my powers to work right.