Chương 77: R&R2 Ch. 16 — Fear

Nicholas had stopped paying attention to the lecture twenty minutes ago. The lecture had begun twenty-three minutes ago, but Rend seemed incapable of running out of breath. He was sure there were important things in the lecture, but Nicholas had more important things to deal with at the moment. The biggest problem being his own turmoil. The moment their mentor paused to take a breath, Nicholas struck.

"Come on Jasmine, we gotta get back in the field. We are only here for a few days," Nicholas said, grabbing Jasmine's hand and dragging her out of the train car. Rend called something at them, but Nicholas was hardly paying attention. What he needed to do right now was make up ground. Internally, he was still kicking himself over what he had done. Yes, he at the time had thought it was the best choice, but it had still left Jasmine all by herself having to use Book as well.

Just because each of them could handle the other's soul item didn't mean that they were good at it. And it had been his ego that had them decide to just fight right away. They could have waited, though they would have been waiting for a long time. He didn't remember it being unconscious and all, but Twister had apparently shown up to help out and save the day after Jasmine had already destroyed them all.

She had confided in him that her hammer build was going to take a while to heal, even if she burned up some of her own soul for it.

"Are you sure you're ready to go?" Jasmine asked, not stopping Nicholas from dragging her around.

"Nope, but we're going. I'm fine enough, promise," Nicholas said, continuing his march to exit the train. He was still in costume, and covered in dust and dried imp blood, but that, for once, that was intentional. There was something powerful about a hero stepping back out only hours later if you saw them go down. He needed to remind the people who watched him he wasn't so fragile.

"Okay then, drop the bond barrier," Jasmine said, pulling him to a stop. He could probably keep going. He knew she was likely going to follow him. But that wasn't the deal. Hero work, they let the bond go at the highest they could manage within reason so they could work together better. Right now he had both the bond and the telepathic connection walled off. He had hoped she wouldn't notice that, but truthfully, it was plain as day when one of them was cut off. Nicholas sighed. Jasmine raised an eyebrow.

"I'm fine, really," Nicholas said, letting down the barrier he had construed to keep his emotions away from Jasmine. It was a fact that irritated both of them. Their soul bond for the most part let them communicate and tell one another's emotional states. Their souls were linked, and that connection was most of the time stable. But, when intense emotions were in play, it often created a feedback loop unintentionally.

Fear rippled through their bond, and Nicholas felt his heart rate spike as the emotion he had just barely been able to keep under control sky rocketed.

"I'm fine," Nicholas repeated, already beginning to walk towards the exit again. Jasmine stood there stunned, her hands shaking, before she chased after him.

"You're obviously not fine, so why are you lying?" Nicholas reopened the telepathic connection. If he had to talk about this, then he certainly wasn't going to say it out loud.

"Because I need to be fine, because if I let myself stew, then I'm going to rattle apart. So this is the best solution."

"To just run right back into battle, barely able to breathe?" Jasmine asked. Even her mental voice didn't sound like it believed him, yet she followed him anyway.

"I almost died; several parts of it were due to my own ego and bad decision-making process. If I sit in the car and think about the things I could have done better, and more likely how much things could have gone worse, what do you think will happen?" Nicholas replied. This had been what he was thinking over while Rend lectured them for their weakness. Nicholas had enough self-awareness to know that he was prone to a spiral if he encountered a problem.

Fear was a problem, and his natural inclination was to obsess over it until he could fix it. He wouldn't get anywhere if he let himself do that, so instead, Nicholas focused on walking right back into the flames. If they were lucky, they would get a bunch of easy problems, and the fear would fade, as it was just one bad job. Nicholas doubted they would be so lucky, but it was going to have to be enough.

Jasmine threw up her hands and even through the waves of fear rippling across their bond, Nicholas got the sense of resignation.

"Fine, we're going to go, but I am in charge, and if I say we are heading back, we are heading back." Jasmine warned. Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"That's fair. I don't trust my judgement to make that decision right now."

"But you trust it enough to decide to go out?"

"No." Nicholas was incredibly glad Jasmine didn't have the power to shoot lasers from her eyes since the glare would have bore a hole through him instantly with the glare she leveled at him.

"I'm going with the swords, you're on defense," Jasmine ordered. The fear was affecting her too, Nicholas could tell, though instead of his desire to break free from it she seemed to be obsessing.

"Is the plan to have me protect us while you smash through the enemies?" Nicholas asked as he stepped onto the flying sword. Jasmine didn't need any help putting on the martial artist robes.

"Just focus on keeping yourself safe."

"Keeping us safe." Jasmine glared at him, and Nicholas glared back just as hard. He wouldn't be just flying around being escorted, and they were a team. Suicidal idea to shock himself out of fear by just fighting constantly aside Nicholas wasn't going to do anything beyond that. He wouldn't risk their team, and he wouldn't risk her either. Silently the two took off into the air and cut through the criminals of the city.

Get their feet wet, and after the demon fiasco, apparently crime had spiked whether due to fear or something else they didn't know. That had been the biggest kick to the teeth, they hadn't even been the only one to deal with demons, several other super groups had been dealing with them too, and because their call for help had been deemed a non-emergency help had never been sent. Instead, most on-call supers for that had funneled towards the other sites.

Sites that had been on average weaker than what their team had dealt with. There had been two stronger sites, but that had been all. Once he got his fear under control if they were still in the city Nicholas was going to look over a map. He was pretty sure they hadn't found every hiding hole they had been using. And if he were a demon summoner super, with a flair for the dramatic, he definitely would have put a pattern together.

Patterns also would have made the power use easier and stronger if Nicholas's own ability was an indication. Words with more rules were more powerful. It was why die was so powerful. It had lower-level effects when he didn't complete all the conditions for the full use, but even still it was his strongest word. Though, maybe that was due to how much time he had obsessed over the word to make sure that he couldn't do it on accident." Ping" Jasmine stared at him for a moment while Nicholas rolled his eyes.

It wasn't a defensive word, but it was a sensory word. If he wasn't allowed to gather information, their team's ability was going to be reduced substantially.

"Couple high F ranks a couple streets over building power though their veiled," Nicholas explained. Normally, he would have just flown right over and started dealing with the problem, but he was trying to meet Jasmine halfway. Jasmine hadn't moved yet. This was irritating, but it was what Nicholas signed up for, and getting in this habit wouldn't be a bad one." Shield" It was still half-formed, but it was better than barrier for his current purposes as six panels of silver light formed in the shapes of shields.

Three around him and three around Jasmine. By tonight the word would be done, so that was progress. He wasn't a fan that it was going to be finished by him just using it constantly instead of engineering it, that meant there were going to be weird quirks to how it worked that he wasn't going to like but more words were better, and he didn't have enough time to perfectly engineer every single word. The group of five F-ranks were trying to break into a reinforced building.

Swords flanking behind her like the most horrifying set of wings imaginable, Jasmine lowered herself to the ground, even as Nicholas took position near the roof of another building to survey the battlefield. Jasmine was talking to the group, but Nicholas was distracted. His hands were shaking. Even when he was nervous, even when he could barely stand the idea of doing a task, emotional responses waited till afterwards most of the time. But his shaking hands were just the start of it.

His breathing hitched, his heart rate skyrocketed, and Nicholas couldn't stop himself from whipping his head around to look for more opponents. He was so off his game he hadn't realized when the fight started, only catching wind of it when he felt the first of the six floating shields dissolve. And it had been one of Jasmine's. Nicholas's attention snapped to her, and he poured his will into the remaining two manually, taking control of the orbiting shields so that he could block attacks properly.

As scared as he was for himself, it didn't hold a candle to fear for Jasmine. Last time he had left it all to her and her strongest soul gear was in pieces that she needed to fix. Not this time. Two of their opponents were physical types. One was a pyrokinetic, and as for the last two, he couldn't say for sure. But he was guessing one was a telekinetic and the other one? They were glowing, and that wasn't nearly enough for him to figure out.

With a telekinetic on the battlefield, that meant playroom was off, though he wasn't allowed to use that one, anyway. Book was for offensive commands, and until the shields were down Nicholas had minimal excuse. Pyrokinetic… The memory ran through his mind like a thunderbolt, and at his command Book returned golden pages glittering.

"Sorry I have to rely on you so much today," Nicholas said. Book and Quicksilver were not sapient as far as they could tell. But they were a lot more than just regular items, even more than Jasmine's soul items." Burn" The command intoned through the book and a series of silver explosions ripped through the flames, making them vanish. A proper pyrokinetic that was relieving. Nicholas was still scared. You could even argue terrified, but he was still a hero.

He was still Retort, and he was good at his job for what he'd been through so far. It wasn't calm, but it was separation as Nicholas disconnected from his emotions. Nobody was going to call it healthy, but it would let him fight.