Chương 20: 19: Reckoning, part two

The roof of the utilities building was accessed via a narrow staircase between the kitchens and the janitor's closet, which led to an iron door kept locked during school hours because nobody wanted kids trying to jump off the roof. Naturally, everyone who was anyone on the school's social scene had climbed up the water drainage pipes to the roof at least once and thus both teenagers and adults were content with the security measures in place.

Any of us could have burst through the lock with ease but it had just been faster and funnier for me to fly everyone there in pairs. Well, the Twins had asked to be carried first, Tomio had wanted to see how quickly I could transport squishy humanoids without killing them, and after that everyone else had asked as well. Then the big guy had broken the lock anyway so we wouldn't have to do the same on the way down.

"Liz," Tomio called out and the black-haired senior slowly formed a dark grey metal rod in her hands. It looked different than rebar and when it widened and sharpened as it formed I realized what she'd been making. The sword would have taken center place in a Conan the Barbarian prop set and it was wider, thicker and heavier than normal; Liz struggled to hold it by the time she was done.

"Ooo, phallic weapon get!" one of the Julias said, picking it up with ease and twirling it like a baton.

"How about another one?"

"You don't need two weapons to kill captured zombies," Tomio argued and turned my way.

"Why are you still here? Start bringing in the fodder as quickly as possible." Rolling my eyes at his demanding attitude, I leaped off the roof and vanished into the mists. For the first time since managing to fly through Proximakinesis, I used it to its full speed... which was something of a misnomer. Proximakinesis just pulled me along; it didn't have a set maximum speed at all.

At full force the acceleration and air resistance clenched at my guts, pulled back my cheeks painfully, made breathing require a major effort as it made my ribs creak and pressed at my tits like a groping giant. Even without Forced Acceleration I needed a touch of Force Adjustment to avoid bruises and with it everything started to ache. It took a moment to readjust Proximakinesis from pulling at a few spots to being evenly spread across my whole body while reducing air resistance by a factor of five.

In that moment I already was a third of the way through the school grounds and slowing down so individual monsters were more than blurs amid the mists took long enough I'd reached all the way to the front gate. The sense of freedom, of sheer unfettered possibility as I flew unaided at speeds no human had ever managed was indescribable. No car, hell, not even helicopters could move with that kind of speed. A blink and a whole city block had gone by, let alone individual monsters...

which made it totally impractical for gathering "fodder" however exhilarating it might be. With some reluctance, I slowed down and searched for likely targets. A pair of zombies shambling at the edge of a larger group drew my attention. Swooping down like a hunting falcon, I picked them up before they even noticed I was there. Bones cracked, flesh tore a little, but undead monsters wouldn't die unless decapitated or hacked apart so I brought the pair back to the roof at merely highway speeds.

"For me?" the Julias said as soon as the zombies hit the roof.

"Oh, you shouldn't have." Before I could come up with an answer, snarky or otherwise, they just decapitated both monsters at the same time, because of course they'd persuaded Tomio a second blade would just make things go faster. The second pair of zombies actually took less time to retrieve, both because I was getting the hang of rapid maneuvering and because I'd picked them up from far closer to the building. Nobody said anything as I dropped them down this time and the brunettes just killed them.

From there, we settled on a quick pace of two roaming zombies retrieved and killed every twenty seconds; with over a thousand of them still milling aimlessly across the grounds, we could keep this up for a long time.

"This is taking too long," Tomio grumbled half an hour later.

"Julia, have you leveled yet?"

"I'm only now getting close," the brunettes admitted with a hint of frustration.

"I guess we're too awesome for our own good?" Then she winked at me.

"Maya, try to find something bigger;" the big guy instructed.

"At this rate it'll take hours for three level-ups, assuming we can even manage it." Giving him a sloppy salute, I searched for a flayed one. There were a couple here and there, but away from the buildings and killing grounds we'd frequented most monsters simply hadn't evolved. Plus from a distance and with all the mist, the flayed freaks were indistinguishable from zombies.

All that contributed to my needing a couple of minutes to stumble into one, and getting it back to the roof with how slippery its corrosive slime was made it not worth the effort.

"Ugh, just bring me whatever you find," one of the Julias spoke out loud what I'd been thinking, Tomio nodded and we went back to random deliveries. Twenty more minutes after that and with the Twin Terrors only just having gone through a power-up I had an idea. Monster mutation was triggered by nearby kills as they gathered overflowing magic the killer hadn't fully absorbed. That's what Tomio's theory had been when he'd first explained about mutations, but all the events since didn't exactly fit.

Monsters mutated rapidly - more rapidly than we gained powers from killing them unless we were either careful to separate them or fast enough to catch them mid-mutation. Moreover, mutated monsters were so much more powerful than basic zombies that the power totals didn't add up. As I'd kept killing the mutant plants for example the fight had grown more dangerous, which wasn't explained by the available power being simply redirected. What if Tomio's theory was wrong? What if magic actually grew in the process?

With nothing to lose and a lot of time to gain if I was right, during my next sortie I accelerated to full speed... then flew through a crowd of zombies. It was like being hit by water balloons filled with tomato sauce; a long line of them straight through the middle of the group burst apart and splattered gore every which way. A quick barrel roll and a reduction of friction took all the revolting gooey bits off me. I'd mostly grown numb to the horror of it but I still wanted to look good.

I didn't have to wait long; the zombies out here had been around long enough and there had been enough incidental kills that the survivors of the group started mutating immediately. Grabbing a pair by their now skinless necks, I carried them back to the others.

"Oh, you found a pair of those," the Julias said with identical frowns. Apparently, they shared my distaste for the skinless, skin-melting freaks and two quick cuts later the monsters were dead and she... they were sitting up straighter.

"Oh, yeah. That hit the spot. Bring more if you can find them." The two flicked their swords and sizzling droplets fell to the rooftop.

"Liz, I might be needing new swords soon enough. These won't hold up to many more Flayers."

"Fine," the dour girl grumbled and started making more even as I flew off once more. By the time I got back, the remaining zombies of the group had either fully transformed to Flayers or were being eaten by those who had. My arrival drew every corrosive red freak's attention to me, which made bringing them in two at a time complicated. A feeding frenzy broke out and I had to kill more than one before returning to the others with my catch.

Ten minutes of that and Julia was on her way to the third power-up while I had just gotten mine. Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m7d Powers [2/22 pts] Force Adjustment II Forced Acceleration II Immutable Force II Progressive Regeneration III Proximakinesis II Super Suit I Attributes [0/22 pts] Might 13, Agility 10, Reason 2, Vigilance 5, Ego 8, Luck 1 The power points I kept with an eye towards getting Force Adjustment soon, but the attribute point I immediately assigned to Agility.

There was no streamlining, very little in the way of extra flexibility added. Instead, the moment I crossed the threshold towards truly superhuman Agility everything went both faster and slower. Faster, because it gave me a considerable increase in speed. Slower, because I could mentally keep up with that speed, somehow without warping my perception of time. I was faster and I felt faster, without the drawbacks that normally came with it. This text was taken from Royal Road.

Help the author by reading the original version there. At the same time my coordination, sense of balance and accuracy went from what a human could do to almost machine-like precision, without the sense of rigidity and inflexibility of being a construct of metal and plastic. Even the sense of hardness I got from raising Might to thirteen mostly faded. Every little bit would help when we attacked the plant-zombies, no matter how good Tomio thought his plan was. xxxx xxxx"Finally!"

the Julias said and from one moment to the next they went from swimsuit-model-level looks to a boy's wet dream. While it added curves the difference was far from cosmetic as height, broader back and hips and the subtle play of muscle under skin all made an appearance as the two of them stretched languidly.

Tim snorted in disinterest, Tomio stared with a dark gleam in his gaze and Liz scowled and tapped a foot at the rooftop in obvious impatience; we all knew at this point that the brunettes were being deliberately provocative.

"Can you duplicate empowered objects quickly, now?" Tomio demanded without further ado, obviously fed up with the girls' bullshit no matter how useful she/they were.

"Probably, fearless leader," one Julia said absentmindedly and flexed, testing the changes in her form.

"Let's find out." Tomio didn't respond to the needling by more than his customary glower and I decided then and there never to be a manipulative bitch like Julia had become - or perhaps always had been? The jury was out on that one. The big guy cupped his hands, both of which glowed in a kaleidoscope of reds, pinks and indigos. Slowly at first, but picking speed as it went, a vortex of those glows formed between his palms, drawing in the radiance from them to a single point.

Over the course of several seconds, a walnut-sized orb of gleaming quartz took shape, containing the lights within. Rivulets of sweat formed on Tomio's forehead, indicating that making the thing was by no means easy. From what I'd seen in my own powers list, such a cost meant the skill would be significantly more powerful than others of its rank.

"That's a bomb, isn't it?" I asked as soon at it finished forming. It was the only thing that made sense.

"You're catching on," Tomio agreed and handed the crystal over to Julia. The twins both frowned in concentration and an instant later the second twin was holding an identical copy of the crystal "It's not really explosive, the skill was not meant for that use. But if placed properly, I can control exactly when they'll detonate. With enough of them a loss of efficiency won't matter."

"Says you," both Julias grunted and more crystals appeared.

"Just because I'm awesome doesn't mean this is as easy as I make it look."

"The difficulty is irrelevant," Tomio said at he looked across the mist-covered grounds to the main building. With his back to them he didn't catch the brunettes glaring daggers at him, or the exasperated sigh they sent my way. Serves them right; they'd chosen to follow the big guy around, not me.

"Those monsters need to be destroyed before they can turn on us."

"I can fly out with them, place them all around the building," I offered, because if there was one thing I agreed on with everyone here was that the plant-zombies had to go.

"Won't work," he immediately shot down.

"I need to place them myself to link them all together."

"Well, I could fly you around." I really wanted to see those stupid plants dead.

"That is fine." A few minutes later the Julias produced the hundredth orb, Tomio deemed them sufficient and started gathering them all in a small bag. Sweaty and panting as if they'd run a marathon, the Twins just collapsed where they stood. I picked the big guy up in a princess carry and we flew off, which at some level I at least found hilarious.

He probably didn't share that opinion if his worsening mood was any indication, but as we flew around the main building, setting down crystal bombs as we went, both of our moods improved. I didn't know if it was a play on more time to prepare or whether the plant-zombies had just screwed themselves, but every exit at ground level, every window, every hole in the walls was overgrown with those wiggling black roots.

We kept away from those that stood in the open, but as far as we could tell there was no actual exit for the zombies to leave the building.

"You know, what we're about to do to them is what would have happened to us if we had followed your plans to barricade ourselves inside the cafeteria and wait for any monsters," I couldn't resist saying after every crystal had been planted.

"Just get us back to the roof," he grouched and I found it easier to do and be smug in silence than argue further. I was increasingly uncertain I'd be staying with the group for much longer. The moment we touched down, Tomio walked to the edge and looked at the enormous bulk of our target as it was half-hidden by the mists.

"Turn around. This might get messy."

"No," I told him.

"I want to see." This was the mutant plants' reckoning and I was not going to miss it.

"Suit yourself," he grumbled back, and the orbs exploded. An immensely powerful blast of pink light seared at my retinas even as a hundred deafening booms rattled most windows, shattered those closer to the blasts and stabbed at the eardrums of everyone in the vicinity. My eyes teared up a bit but I did not look away and in the fraction of a second Regeneration had already taken care of the irritation. Then the entire main building collapsed like a giant house of cards.

It did not blow up, pieces of it were not thrown around by some blast wave; whatever Tomio's grenades did they weren't actual explosives. The walls, pillars and everything else simply fell as if they couldn't hold up their own weight. A gravity attack? I was about to ask the big guy when he just screamed like a little girl and fell back, stunned and twitching feebly. What the hell?

"Shit," Liz cursed. She'd also decided to watch and now she was looking at the slowly settling ruins with apprehension.

"There's something moving where the main entrance used to be." At those words my blood went cold and I focused where the other girl was pointing. From under the pulverized double doors of the main gate, the rubble of the two lower floors and a mostly intact piece of roof, a tentacle as thick as my thigh was pushing through the ruin. xxxx xxxx"Fuck, no!" I shouted as I dodged under the sweeping blow of a fifteen-foot-long tentacle.

"You're not getting out of here alive," I punched the pulsating main mass, "you're not getting your filthy tendrils on more corpses," I kicked back another constrictor limb trying to sneak a grab at my legs, "and you're most definitely not getting me!" Grabbing one of its limbs near the base I pulled with all my might and the grotesquely bloated flesh tore, oozing foulness worse than a thousand lanced boils. The maneuver cost me, however.

In the second or two I stayed still, another one of its limbs wrapped around my waist and squeezed. A moment later I hissed in pain as dozens of thorns pierced through my bodysuit and drew blood. Pushing Proximakinesis to the maximum, I forced the thing to let go or lose another limb as its flesh began to tear once more. Liz was growing rebar to restrain the monster's movements, but at the size it had achieved her metal grew too slowly to effectively hinder it.

Tim, on the other hand, was throwing paper airplanes that flew and maneuvered on their own, delivering a constant barrage of tiny lightning bolts and fireballs like WWII bombers against a battleship. Unlike those old planes however, his paper minions lacked the firepower to more than annoy our enemy. Julia was still utterly spent, unable to even flee from her spot in the roof to save her own life - lives? - while Tomio looked physically fine but mentally... absent.

Something must have gone seriously wrong for him to sit out the fight. I'd left them both back on the roof; bringing them any closer would just be adding bodies the plant could infest and use against us, and I had no idea how far that ability had grown. A tentacle cracked through the air like a whip the size of a telephone pole, and for the first time I didn't dodge quickly enough. The blow struck my hip and I suddenly found myself fifty feet away, embedded half a foot into the paved school grounds.

Everything from my right hip to my right knee was a numb, dull ache and something deep felt way out of place. Regeneration was working overtime, but large area blunt trauma was slower than other wound types to heal simply by how much total tissue it affected. The monster was slowly but inexorably moving towards Liz, crushing and melting its way through barricades of rebar as fast as the average person could run.

I had no idea how good Liz's physical boosts were, but something told me they weren't good enough to outrun the tentacled horror for long, especially with how she had to stop every few feet to raise another barrier. I launched myself at the monster plant and the moment I got within reach it stopped pretending to hunt the other girl, several tentacles exploding in my direction faster than I'd been previously moving. But I'd already been ambushed by its kind not once but twice; this time I was ready for it.

Rolling under the closest limb I tapped it with one finger, also pushing with Proximakinesis and Force Adjustment along the direction it had already been going. Unable to stop and without a target, it slammed into the tentacle sweeping in from the other direction. Their individual speeds momentarily broke the sound barrier like whips; their combined speed reduced them both to green-black gore.

But the monster had far more limbs than I could easily outmaneuver or redirect; one of them snared my left thigh and squeezed, more thorns drilling through my costume to deliver pinpricks of agony. I broke off with more effort than the first time, my erratic flight path revealing I had grown slightly dizzy. The thorns' stings weren't healing, or if they were it was too slow to matter in the fight. The skin around each pinprick was itching fiercely, the sensation demanding I drop everything and start scratching.

Poison, probably, or another corrosive. The dizziness had to be coming from somewhere. All of it combined meant I couldn't afford more of those thorns getting a bite at me. That's how it wanted to play things? No... fucking... way! I flew back, searching the rubble for something heavy. A piece of bronze larger than a washing machine with half the school motto still legible on it would do.

I picked it up with a grunt; even with all my powers it felt heavy, like all the bags after I was done with the Christmas shopping spree. Then I flew up and up and up until the barest hints of what was left of the school were visible through the fog. What goes up must come down and thus the piece of bronze and I did, as quickly as both gravity and my own powers could push. Half a mile later, we crashed into the monster's pulsing core like a meteor.

The thing was tough; it had taken my kicks, it had survived several of its limbs being torn off, it had literally shrugged off an entire building crashing on top of it. A wrecking ball's worth of bronze at the speed of sound? We smashed right through its flesh, through twenty feet of rubble and another six of pavement and gravel, then we hit bedrock. A wave of agony as most of the bones in both of my arms shattered was followed by an explosion of volcanic heat through every vein in my body and I saw no more.