Chương 13: 12: Growing Issues

"There... all done" the Brunette Twins said and dropped two half-liter water bottles filled with cooking oil on the table already loaded with food supplies. Taking a step back and wiping their foreheads in identical motions, they left after one final glare at the half-ruined kitchens. It was several hours after that enlightening encounter with the other super-powered survivors and it was my turn to help with the food.

A small hill of potatoes and onions were waiting next to the sole functional stove and with only the youngest cook being among the surviving adults there was enough work to go around. The twenty-something woman did not speak to me; she just handed over a knife, pointed at the food Julia had finished duplicating, then disappeared into the more trashed portion of the kitchens and the supply room and walk-in fridge beyond.

It didn't take a genius to add 'sole surviving cook' to 'somewhat clean kitchen' to guess why she didn't feel like talking, so instead of seeking out conversation I sat down and got to work. Contrary to Julia's boasting, duplicating food wasn't nearly as simple as she'd made it seem back in the cafeteria. The answer to why we didn't just cook once then make copies for every meal was two-fold.

First, there was no way to know how long the disaster would last and duplication didn't make anything fresher - and everyone wanted freshly made food if we could have it. Secondly, by how she'd been sweating after making just forty pounds of stuff, the ability had to be tiring. Duplicating all the added water in most ready dishes would be too much work. Plus there was the small water bottle full of oil; why put the oil there before duplicating? A weight limitation of some sort?

Julia wasn't going to share the fine details of her powers any more than I had revealed all of mine, so speculation would have to be left for later. The knife in my hands became a near-blur as Forced Acceleration combined with Force Adjustment, a hour-long task reduced to mere minutes. Greatly improved Agility maintained control, ingredients sliced and diced faster than most professional Chefs. As I worked though, I kept thinking it was all a waste of time.

It wasn't an issue with the job; cooking was my favorite housework, one that never felt like a chore. Creativity, precision, speed; even simple peeling was not boring given the small but ever-present danger of a sharp knife. No, it was the whole setup in the school that struck me as wrong. Buckling down behind walls and waiting to be rescued? It might be safe for now, but the monsters were growing more powerful, more numerous the longer we waited.

Hell, less than half of the survivors even had powers and of those that did, only two could actually kill a monster from what I'd seen. And what about other people that needed our help? Mandy and Jerry were out there with the monsters, possibly wounded, definitely in mortal peril. Every hour that passed without going after them, without a clue of what had happened to them, the urge to just drop everything and run to their help returned stronger. What of the rest of the city?

I didn't have many friends in the hell of teenage drama our school used to be and the less said about certain horrible teachers the better, but the rest of the city was another matter entirely. If it hadn't been for the big explosions announcing worse threats than slow, mindless freaks I might have already left. Tomio and Dr. Beth had saved my life and I was more than willing to help them in return, but hiding behind walls wouldn't help anyone if it got both us and others killed.

xxxx xxxx Speak of the Devil and he shall appear. Tomio wasn't quite the Devil, but what came through the kitchen's back door halfway through my shift there was beginning to bear a bit of a resemblance to certain less than wholesome figures. Oh, his appearance improvements were still looking almost as fabulous as some famous actors, but there was a certain roughness to the Chinese American young man.

Eyes that faintly glowed the same colors as his powers and an unhealthy pallor were less Conan, more Terminator and the blankness, the absence of expression fixed on his face seemed vaguely ominous.

"Oh, it's you," he muttered as soon as he got in, then looked around the kitchen and scowled.

"Where's Perez?"

"Who?" Wow, rude much?

"The cook, you twerp!" he growled angrily.

"Are you being deliberately obtuse?"

"She's in the back, probably the fridge." Which was way too long to be in the cold in my book but to each her own.

"What got your knickers in a twist, Tommy boy?" Because it couldn't be more obvious that something was wrong - again.

"Also, why would the cook's name be my business? It's her name."

"Fine! Tell me where's Julia then." He glared at the small hill of potato peels as if it held all the answers he was looking for.

"It was supposed to be her turn to help here."

"... really, now." I rose from the pile of cooking ingredients, feeling the knife's handle bending inside my clenched fist. The two-faced bitch! She told me new arrivals had to do it.

"Let's go find her. I have this sudden urge for a little girl talk." He snorted.

"You can't murder her, her powers are too useful. Just finish here and-" BOOM! The distant explosion was so loud it was more a shockwave shaking bones and organs than it was a sound. The ground shook, glass shattered, pans and pots fell off the shelves and onto the floor but the sounds of their fall were lost in the roar and the tinnitus that followed. Dust fell off the ceiling and walls, ground brick and plaster drifted from cracks forming here and there as the building shook. It was not a gunshot.

It was no bolt lightning, unless one struck inside the kitchens without us noticing. Maybe an earthquake? I'd never been in one, having never left the state; Florida doesn't have earthquakes worth mentioning. Tommy staggered, almost losing his balance before grabbing a shelf but otherwise mostly fine. I was affected even less, the tinnitus fading away as soon as the shaking ended thanks to Progressive Regeneration.

Moments later Perez the Cook fell out of the walk-in fridge, eyes red, wide and unseeing, tears running down her cheeks. Not everything due to the quake, probably, so wouldn't ask. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

With the disaster - whatever it might have been - subsiding, came back sounds; the din of metal on metal or concrete, the crunch of pieces of glass as more fell from shattered windows, the creaking of the damaged building settling... and the screams. Tommy managed to run out faster than I did somehow but I easily outpaced him in the two seconds it took us to get to the cafeteria. There, we were greeted by total chaos.

xxxx xxxx Every window, every pane of glass in the cafeteria had been completely shattered along with a great deal of food bowls, water glasses and coffee cups. That wasn't the problem; every window had been covered by layer after layer of iron bars already thus most of their shattered pieces had been caught by the barriers and not fallen on the students below.

Every unpowered student had dropped to the ground, stunned or insensate, most with minor injuries where they'd hit furniture on their way down or had small objects from upturned tables fall on them. The two students with powers and Dr. Beth - Julia was nowhere to be seen - had toppled, too, but unlike everyone else were slowly coming to their feet. That wasn't the problem either. The huge crack across an uncovered part of the ceiling was.

Wide enough for my arm to cleanly get through, it was spilling what looked like fog thick enough to cut with a knife. The unnatural fog was filling the cafeteria with a slow, almost glacial pace not by spreading out as normal fog should have but clumping up in thick, opaque patches. Worse still, the sound of something hard scraping repeatedly like nails on a blackboard came from within the fog-covered area and all options for what its source might be were bad.

"Shit," Tommy succinctly summarized my own reaction as well then we both leaped in to help. There wasn't much we could do, really; pull tables off people, note if someone had any severe looking wounds, pick up dangerously sharp fragments of glass or concrete that were too close to the half-conscious students but not much more. Neither of us were doctors or even had knowledge of first aid... but somebody else was and did. In the blink of an eye, Dr.

Beth turned from a placid, snarky, slow-moving man into a tornado of action. A sip from a plastic water bottle that glowed dark red instantly made all the scrapes and punctures and bruises he'd just taken vanish and some drops into the powered kids' mouths did the same for them. Then, locating the most critically injured people with a single glance around the cafeteria, he dashed from wounded student to wounded student, heaving vanishing wounds and returning health in his wake.

Not everyone got back to their feet at once; the obvious healing potion wasn't strong enough for that but curing sprained ankles in a few minutes was still a big deal. That one kid with the concussion Dr. Beth instructed to stay with his mouth shut and his ass on the floor for at least an hour in no uncertain terms. Then the scraping sounds stopped and both Tommy and I tensed. There was an odd sound between the crack of stone on stone and the flapping of a flag against the wind, the thick mist blew out suddenly...

and a split-second later a fist-sized red orb exploded against the big boy's back. The miniature explosion seared through Tommy's jacket and into his back, then set everyone Dr. Beth had already healed screaming once more. The realization that those that hadn't been healed hadn't heard it because their eardrums must have burst from the much bigger explosion earlier was followed by the very appealing smell of cooking bacon... and some gagging at noticing that the meat cooking wasn't bacon at all.

Then another fireball followed. Ever touched a hot curling iron by accident? The fist-sized energy sphere bursting against the side of my head was more like someone shoving the curling iron against my skin and holding it there until agony had me doubling over and in tears. Something trickled down my cheek and the burning spread, less intense than the initial impact but still painful, molten wax instead of searing metal.

Something fast and dark flitted at the edges of my vision and a third orb burst against Tommy's leg, burning through his trousers and blasting him off his feet. I got up, half my face numb and my balance iffy but otherwise functional. Even if I hadn't been, I doubted the three-foot-tall winged demon would have given me time for my Progressive Regeneration to fix everything, and the purple-skinned, dog-faced, disgustingly wrinkly thing was readying another fireball.

This one I dodged by a foot, Forced Acceleration working overtime to slow down its relative speed to that of a minor league fastball. Then I leaped. Flapping stubby wings like a bat out of Hell - which for all I knew he actually was - the little bastard made a barrel roll then tried to blast me in the back.

An abrupt adjustment of gravity and drag sent me off my previous course mid-jump and the magical explosive missed my flank by less than an inch, cracking against a table and leaving a fist-sized hole with blackened edges into it. That very table I grabbed as soon as my feet touched the floor and threw it like a giant Frisbee at my assailant, who managed to dodge despite my powers making the throw a hell of a lot faster.

A series of strange, rapid-fire barks as the little demon swooped in my direction made me certain the he was laughing at me, the little shit. The table was followed by a much smaller Frisbee in the form of one of the few unbroken plates, which shattered against the demon's chest in a loud, clear crash as if it had hit a wall. It barely shoved the thing back a couple of feet and its follow-up fireball caught me wide open, exploding against my chest. I cringed, but the expected agony did not arrive.

The small explosion made less of an impact now than being hit by a pillow would have before gaining powers. Looking down, I saw my skin-tight black leotard slightly singed all across the chest area, with a more serious burn over my heart but otherwise still whole. Relief flooded through me like a shot of warm chocolate as my last and most fabulous superpower no-sold an attack that would have had me on my knees at best, otherwise.

Apparently, the imp thought that was cheating because it started throwing explosive orbs with great speed and fury but little in the way of accuracy, a dozen splashing around me over the few seconds that followed. One barely scraped against my left little finger, another singed the edge of my ponytail, but while my costume took a lot of punishment, becoming brittle and cracking at places and one of the boots having half its sole melt away, I remained relatively safe yet cringing inside.

Without a costume as tough as I was taking the damage instead of me the fight would have been long over; each of those explosions looked as deadly as a shotgun blast. When next I jumped, Force Adjustment reduced my weight along with increasing my own strength while magnifying Forced Acceleration to the maximum. Flying in the air faster than the fastest fastball ever thrown, I was also ready for the damn imp's aerial agility while it was definitely not expecting the much faster leap.

We struck each other violently and I grunted; its flesh felt like granite. But granite was just a rock and my powers had further grown since the time I'd punched through something with rock-like toughness. The imp flailed, claws like flint arrowheads scraping against my suit and leaving shallow cuts that would have drawn blood had it been mundane cloth, but it wasn't as strong as me even before Force Adjustment entered the equation. It slammed on the floor with me on top and went cross-eyed.

I had zero ideas how or why an apparent demon could get concussed and cared only for the opportunity to slam it down again and again, stomp on it with both feet, then pull at its head until it tore off. The battle won, I collapsed on the floor, gasping from the effort. Unnaturally thick mist still came through the crack on the ceiling.