Chương 21: 20: Reckoning, part three

The aftermath was worse than the fight. I crawled out of the crater and the puddle of green-black gore with my everything still burning and regeneration pressed to the limit. Both arms up to the elbows... weren't really functional and every time I moved them around I could feel broken bits grinding under the skin. Every second more of the cracked or outright shattered bones got fixed; that they weren't fully fixed yet meant either I'd been out of it for only seconds, or something more critical had been fixed first.

Tim peeked from around a pockmarked, still-sizzling piece of the roof, eyes wide. He saw how close he'd come to being melted, gulped, then took several steps back from the slowly expanding mess. Liz just gave me a half-hearted glare then got back to scraping bits of caustic goo from where they'd burned through her clothes with a metal rod. That they'd yet to burn through her skin meant the girl was way tougher than I'd expected.

I'd apologize for getting her caught in the splash zone later, but ramming the tentacled abomination had been the only way I'd come up with to take it out. Tomio was also there, watching in silence. He said nothing as his eyes shifted from the crater, to me, to Tim and Liz. I got ready to tune out the complaints I could already see in his accusatory stare because frankly? I'd gotten tired of his whining. He hadn't helped us kill it, he'd been too out of it, so he didn't get to criticize either.

"Whoa, you killed it," a pair of annoying voices said in stereo, heralding the two Julias' arrival. The Twins were leaning on each other, sweat and dust from the building's collapse giving them a blotchy, chalky-white complexion. They blinked, took a second look at both me and all the gore, then chuckled.

"How does bathing in the blood of your enemies feel?"

"One out of five, I wouldn't recommend," I snarked back then winced at the burning getting a bit worse. My first thought was to negate friction and let the goop fall off but the state of my body suit made me reconsider. Friction was probably the only thing holding the surviving bits on me at this point.

"Anywhere to clean up around here?"

"We've showers," the Julias suggested.

"Getting them working was the first thing I helped the group with."

"We need to see if anything useful survived the collapse, scavenge supplies-" the big guy interrupted but I was done listening to him.

"A shower sounds nice," I said, then got my Super-Suit power working on a replacement. Enough energy to reform it should have gathered by the time I was done washing all the crap off and then...

"I'll be heading out after that," I told them because... there wasn't anything else keeping me here, was there?

"You're leaving?" Tomio demanded, his incredulity at the statement strengthening my determination to do just that.

"But the group-""Is not my group, big guy," I shot him down.

"You saved my life, I saved yours in the cafeteria. I came back to warn you of the threat back there," I pointed at the crater behind me, "and we all took it out together. It's past time I searched for my friends elsewhere; it's obvious now they aren't around here." Where I'd search for them I didn't know but I'd think of something. In any case it wasn't his decision to make. xxxx xxxx The showers had hot water and it was heaven.

The goop and the remains of my costume had melted under the steaming jet in the first five minutes with a bit of help from my powers, vanishing down the drain as if they had never existed. The rest of the half hour since I'd spent near-weightless and held up only by Proximakinesis as all the damage and pain went away and I felt fully relaxed for the first time in nearly a week. Well, almost fully. My fingers trailed the row of half-healed pinpricks around my waist, a second one around my left thigh.

Where the tentacled grotesque's thorns had pierced my regeneration had been slowed to a crawl; it would probably take days to heal at this rate. It was a good, if painful, reminder that for every power out there a counter probably existed. In every fight since getting regeneration I'd been reckless, relying on it perhaps more than I should have.

Name: Maya Wennefer Bio: female human, 17y3m8d Powers [7/27 pts] Force Adjustment II Forced Acceleration II Immutable Force II Progressive Regeneration III Proximakinesis II Super Suit I Attributes [5/27 pts] Might 13, Agility 10, Reason 2, Vigilance 5, Ego 8, Luck 1 Five power-ups at once... how powerful had that bloated tumorous excuse of a plant been? No wonder killing it had me nearly exploding.

The uninvested power still beat a warm tempo through my veins and with no great danger looming ahead now was the time to spend it with a plan in mind. To that end, I started with an attribute I had been, perhaps, neglecting and added a point into Reason. Unlike with every other attribute increase so far, there was no physical change whatsoever. My body not being altered was kind of a given, but not even my senses, my perception adjusting at all? That I had not expected.

I stood there in the shower, waiting for something to happen and feeling stupid when nothing did. Nothing obvious, but Reason, intellect, was not about obvious things. It was how one thought, processed information and eked out patterns of hidden meaning. The first difference I noticed was memory. Details of past events did not stand out more, as with Vigilance, only information did. What happened, when, how, the raw data uncolored by visuals or emotions.

Numbers stood out, comparisons came almost naturally, and along with the clarity of Vigilance it was easier to see why things were happening, not only that they did. It was like gaining several years of perspective in an instant, seeing how painfully stupid some of my decisions had been. Some, not all. There was something very, very wrong with Tomio's survivor group.

Oh, the big guy himself was just drunk on power; his motivation now stood out like a neon sign in the dark the moment his actions were taken all together rather than seen in the heat of the moment. Like a parent shaking her head at a teenager's antics, I just saw them for what they were. Not so for everyone else. I knew what they did, how they did it, even the why from situation to situation, but the whole refused to make sense. Every interaction was stilted.

Conversations broke up like ships hitting reefs hidden under the surface. Motivation... was simply absent. Some of the things everyone had done were illogical, from Dr. Beth's refusal to take charge to how half the students didn't do anything. Even my own actions while in the group made less sense. I'd chalk it up to trauma, I'd certainly been through enough, but it was too consistent for everyone here. A piece of the puzzle was missing. Sighing, I put my next point into Luck.

Seeing what every attribute did, having a basis to compare and make decisions from was outweighing the price of a single point out of twenty-seven. Even if it weren't the perfect decision, even if it didn't follow the optimal attribute distribution, I could not have a good idea of what said distribution was without knowing what the attributes did. So I increased my Luck to two and waited for the changes. And waited. And waited. And waited some more.

Ten minutes in and there was only some minor itching, but that was the pinpricks slowly healing, not something Luck did... I hoped.

"Wow. Poster girl for the amazonian look, much?" I did not slip and fall on my ass and anyone saying otherwise is a filthy liar. I fixed both Julias with my best glare instead, but they waded in with only pink towels loosely wrapped around their torsos and shamelessly ogled me. Fortunately for them, recent events had made me far less body-image conscious so I didn't kick them out through the wall.

"What do you want, Double Trouble?" I demanded, folding my arms under my breasts. And the shower had been going so well...

"Can't we clean up after the big fight too?" one of them asked as they both started their own showers.

"Hope you didn't use up all the hot water."

"If you were worried about that why didn't you wait another hour?" I'd simply leave, except my costume would take ten more minutes to reform and there was nothing else to wear. Six power points; spending two of them on Super Suit and avoiding Julia's bullshit was becoming more tempting by the moment.

"Well..." she drew out the word as her other body poured on big heaps of pine scented shampoo. Then, between one moment and the next, they were both covered in it. I guess they didn't need to worry about running out.

"I did want to talk to you about leaving."

"I'm not changing my mind," I told them bluntly.

"Your antics are certainly cementing that decision; you're even more a shameless pervert now than you were before."

"For your information, we're exactly twice the shameless pervert I used to be; there's two of us now." They both laughed.

"And it's just healthy libido. You'll understand when you grow up."

"Shut up, Julia. Not having to put up with your immaturity is worth leaving this dump by itself!"

"Dump? Are you sure they'll have hot baths wherever it is you're going? Not to mention food, lights, clothes... cellphones?" I did not respond to them, either to the implied question or to the rest, so se spent the next few minutes washing in silence and ignoring each other. Of course, Julia could never shut up for long.

"It's dangerous out there, you know. Really dangerous."

"It's a zombie portal invasion, of course it's dangerous you useless bimbo!" I exploded, because if not shutting up was her problem a lack of patience would be mine. It was the one thing attribute increases had not changed.

"Unlike you, I didn't have monsters brought to me for free power-ups so I'm well aware of the situation."

"Sure you are," they said, the two of them helping each other with towels and clothes in perfect, eerie coordination.

"Be certain you're ready to fight, is just what I'm saying. You never know where some strong monster might be lurking."

"Thanks for the warning, I'll keep it in mind," I told them then turned around and refused all further communication until they left. A few seconds after they slammed the door behind them my costume formed, covering every inch of skin from the neck down. Couldn't it have happened ten minutes earlier?

"Fucking Julia and her so-called warnings," I grumbled and got back to my stat sheet. I was about to spend my next attribute point when I hesitated. A warning? Under the obvious harassment, the constant need to have everyone's attention be on her, beyond just being her previous bitchy self doubled up Julia had outright warned me. Nebulous and unspecific, yes, but a warning. Dr. Beth had also given one in our little talks in his office - both of them.

Once was just a prank, twice was stupid teenage drama, but three times? I was neither stupid nor spiteful enough to ignore it and my plans could wait; surviving the thread could not. All the remaining points went into Might, the best and surest way to gain a direct power increase. The itching around my waist and thighs magnified, the bursts of resilience, vitality and health fighting on the lingering poison from the tentacled horror and allowing Regeneration to reverse the damage.

My muscles grew denser and my bones even more so, the power in them doubling and Proximakinesis following suit. Then it was time for powers. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. Force Adjustment III: adjust forces and force-like effects from and on you and objects you touch by a factor of up to eight, selectively. Automatic trigger on self vs harm. Forced Acceleration III: boost internal forces at all levels, speeding actions and internal processes by up to 150%.

Immutable Force III: Resistance to all alteration except through physical means, immunity to supernatural negative emotion, disease or entrapment. Proximakinesis III: exert total forces up to double your maximum strength on touch, divided and controlled as easily as you can visualize them. There weren't enough points to get the fourth tier of Progressive Regeneration, but in a way that was good. I had to stop relying on it so much, tanking hits that I didn't have to and charging into every fight.

Regeneration actually worked more to my benefit if the fight lasted longer in any case. Of the third rank powers I could get, Forced Acceleration had the smallest numerical increase, but that was deceptive. First, it helped in just about everything, in and out of a fight.

Since fighting was of more immediate concern, I considered how it helped defensively in dodging hits and speeding up recovery, offensively in delivering more and more accurate hits with greater impact per hit, tactically in how even marginally slower enemies could never catch up or escape thus could be fought on my terms. I didn't like how it left me relatively brittle though. Immutable Force hadn't changed in its wording much, except for a blanket immunity to disease.

But absent numerical quantifiers, an improvement by one rank was a major boost to a given power, which meant a major boost versus non-physical attacks. It was a tempting proposition, especially with the mind control and whatever weirdness was going on with the survivors here. Proximakinesis was both an immediate doubling in strength and a major improvement in control.

No longer limited to what human limbs could do, it could deliver all its force at the head of a pin, slice along a surface like the world's sharpest dagger and far more that would take time to explore. As with speed, it didn't give much in the way of defense... unless stopping blows on touch counted. Force Adjustment was pure gold. By itself it would have been no better than the others, the jump from second rank to third only a 60% boost of effectiveness.

But it was a boost that applied to all force effects, and everything but my regeneration was a force effect. After comparing the potential benefits qualitatively and numerically, a process helped along by increased Reason, I settled for the third rank of Force Adjustment. Feeling far more prepared to face any threats, I got out of the showers and finally got around to leaving. xxxx xxxx Liz had done far too good a job fortifying the building.

There was no exit, not even a window or ventilation shaft, except for the kitchen's service door. The layers of iron bars were several inches thick and while I could tear through it would take time, raise a racket, and bring everyone loaded for monster.... which was their intended purpose to begin with. The door it was. Finding Tomio waiting there for me came as no surprise.

Liz and the Julias being there, too, was more unexpected as was the school bag loaded with supplies for the road and another one full of clothes and underwear. Three guesses at which one the Julias were holding and the first two didn't count.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay?" the big guy put some token effort to convince me one final time, though he didn't look like he expected me to change my mind at the last second.

"Us survivors are stronger together. Just look at what we accomplished!"

"There's more than just our accomplishments out there, big guy." Killing a monster aside, those weren't much to speak of, anyway. It's been nearly a week and only I had set foot outside the school - unwillingly at that.

"Mandy and Jerry are who knows where and I intend to find them. Find and help more survivors, clear more areas of monsters. The school's mostly clear now, what's left of it that is."

"Just let Maya go, Tommy," Julia huffed in exasperation.

"This has dragged on long enough." She raised the bag with the clothing and presented it to me.

"Present from your biggest fan?"

"Pass." I could make underwear as part of my costume with the next redesign. Food would be much harder to find however, so I accepted Liz's bag with a nod. Julie pouted at that and it was the best part of my whole departure. I waved at the three? four? of them then rose to the air. Then Liz's bag exploded with a deafening boom that rattled my bones. xxxx xxxx Red, pink, purple blasts burned through every muscle, every synapse, every ligament, went through my whole body down to the marrow.

I actually felt the heat, like holding a hand around an incandescent lightbulb and seeing the glow through it except it happened to my everything at once. It didn't quite hurt, but each wave felt like the combined aches and exhaustion of a beating, holding my breath for minutes underwater and a four-minute mile. Flashbangs, nausea and good old kicks to the head assaulted all my senses, the world twisting madly for a few seconds before I crashed.

The impact hurt; not nearly as much as pretending to be a meteor had but more than a simple fall. On my hands and knees, I gasped, shook my head and tried to get my bearings.

"She's still awake?!" a voice barely audible through the tinnitus asked.

"Hit her with the rest of the charges!"

"There aren't any left; I used them all," a slightly deeper, angrier voice said as I drunkenly rose to my feet.

"Liz, ground her. Ground her now!" Something flew in from my right, eyes full of tears not quite seeing details beyond small and black, then cold, hard metal snapped tightly around my wrists. A moment later each of the metal rings weighed a ton, unbalancing me and dragging me to my hands and knees again.

"She's not going anywhere," the first voice said and with regeneration working through the haze it came clear enough to be recognizable as Liz. Huh.

"You should have taken my offer to stay," Tomio gave a self-satisfied grunt as his booted feet came into my field of view.

"The drain and fall were meant to kill you... yet I find myself pleased you survived. It means I get to make a slightly amended offer."

"Pass... Mommy taught me not to listen to people sneaking bombs into my food." Probably the same stuff he'd used on the school. Good news, I felt weaker, slower, drained of stamina... but I hadn't practically disintegrated like the building's ground floor had. Bad news, Regeneration had to fix my entire body to fully get rid of it, which would take minutes. An eternity in a fight.

"Are you even listening to yourself? You sound worse than Julia."

"Shut up, bitch." He kicked me; it hurt like a normal kick would have a normal girl, that is to say barely at all given the situation.

"You ruined everything, challenged my authority, made us the target of monsters and forced my hand in dealing with them. I could have let all that go, but then you killed the boss monster. You stole my kill, my power. That I could not accept." Gods, how far off his rocker was he? He sounded like some Saturday morning cartoon villain explaining his dumb plan. Which... it was good for me but still...

"Now? Now you get to join or you get to die. Julia, give her a good shock."

"... no. No I don't think we will," the Twins said after a drawn-out moment of silence.

"What?" Tomio turned away from me to glare at the two brunettes.

"You're challenging me? How is that possible?"

"You said it yourself big guy; your hand was forced. For your plan to work you needed me stronger, too strong for the base loyalty influence. You probably planned to force a more strict agreement but Maya decided to leave, didn't she? I guess everyone here annoyed her sooo much she decided to strike out on her own immediately after the fight. You couldn't have that; she'd notice something was wrong the moment she got too far from you and nobody likes having their head messed with."

The twin terrors laughed but it sounded hoarse, like a bad rehearsal from an actress that didn't fit the role.

"Thanks for asking directly for the info, by the way. Otherwise the secrecy binding would have held." Son of a bitch. I'd thought it was bad but mind control? On the entire group? How powerful was he?

"You think you're clever? You have no combat skills, no power beyond just utility and cheap tricks," Tomio was saying but I was more focused on how the metal handcuffs pinning me to the ground worked. I could feel the force being applied to them, not just weight but something else. I guess Liz had more than just a rebar-making trick, which made sense really.

"I absorbed the power of thousands of animated vines, probably hundreds of plant-zombies as the building fell. I'll crush you like a bug."

"Your bombs killed them, yes," the Julias said as Tomio slowly advanced on them, "but it was my power that made them so how's this for a cheap trick?" For a moment, the two brunettes became the most stunning girls I'd ever seen. The kind of women that could cause traffic accidents walking down a street? Multiply the effect by a thousand, blast it directly into the bodies of any observers till our eyes glazed over and our cores burned with need, and that's what I felt as someone who liked men more.

After an indeterminate time, I snapped out of it to find my face redder than a lobster, Tomio still trying to shake it off, and both Julias on their knees as Liz pulled the right one's arm behind her back and kicked her repeatedly in the gut. But best of all, about half the weakening effect had faded away.

"Hey Tomio?" I called out, managing to time it just right for him to take my fist in his ugly, lying face the moment he turned to look.

"You... talk... too... fucking... much..." I underscored every word with a kick, getting in enough hits to send him reeling back and bloody, before Liz's attention returned to me and the metal handcuffs weighed me down again.

"That's a cool trick. Magnetism?" I said as I just managed to keep myself upright but not fly, and taking a combat stance was slow and hard with the weight of a small wrecking ball on each wrist.

"Metallokinesis, actually," the black-haired senior said as she charged me, my arms pulled behind my back at the last second before she gave me a one-two combo on the solar plexus and throat. Her hands felt like steel, not flesh, which meant they only just managed to bruise me.

"Give up. You never stood a chance."

"Oh please. I was already healing before Julia played her hand." A purple blast struck me in the back and I didn't even flinch. A bit of weakness, a bit of exhaustion, barely enough to affect me at all through Immutable Force. Several martial arts moves failed to push me around because if you can shatter a wall while flying with zero leverage, no amount of martial arts skill would matter.

"And Magnetism or Metallokinesis, they're just Force." The pull around my wrists was cut down by a factor of eight, but why abide even a minor annoyance? The metal's own durability was reduced by the same factor and striking them together shattered them like clay. A red blast attempted to blind and deafen me while a pink one shocked me like a taser; far weaker than individual bombs, I shrugged them off along with Liz's expertly delivered blows.

Rolling my eyes, I used my speed to bury my fist into her diaphragm before she could even think of dodging.

"Stay down. You'd already lost the moment your bombs failed to kill me." Then I walked towards Tomio. Slowly. Inexorably. Dodging most of his blasts, playing for time for my Progressive Regeneration to both heal me and adapt while my slow advance mocked him. At full strength once more I got into melee range and started pummeling. Whatever strength and toughness stat he had it was at least as good as my own, especially since he was larger.

He even had a decent physical power that helped him not immediately explode into gore. But with neither speed nor recovery it was the work of half a minute to reduce him to a bloody, crying, pile of bruises.

"She needs to kill you, Tomio," Julia croaked as she crawled closer with just one of her bodies. The other, the one Liz had given a beating to, was either unconscious or in no condition to move around.

"As long as you live, the agreements of secrecy, non-aggression and staying with the group you tricked us into will be binding."

"I see. You can explain to him because he asked you for information." Tomio gurgled, perhaps to give an order, but with no teeth, a shattered jaw and bleeding tongue there was not much he could say.

"Can he release everyone from here? Heal on his own?"

"Yes you can release us Tomio," she said and I could see a small smile on her battered, too-cute face.

"And no you can't heal."

"Well that makes things easier." I'd already broken his legs but I did it again in a couple more places, then went on to do the same to his arms.

"I don't see Dr. Beth healing you after having his brain messed with like that. Plus they don't need to hurt you. All they need to do is... not feed you."

"But..." Julia stared from a now unconscious Tomio, to me, to Liz.

"They're your problems now," I told the Twins.

"I don't care enough to deal with it." I got off the ground slowly, testing that the weakness was truly gone when Julia called out.

"Wait!" she said.

"Some of us want to go with you!"

"Not happening, Double Trouble,"I told her, trying to contain the storm of emotions about the whole shitty situation.

"I'm grateful for the warning, for the help here and for getting me to leave despite what mental bullshit he had you under, but I'm done with stupid teenage drama. This is a magical disaster zone, not fucking high school. Maybe we'll meet again after I've calmed down and you have grown up."

"Mandy and Jerry left for the city," she said instead of whatever offensive or lewd comment I'd been bracing for.

"... what?" The fuck? I was back down in an instant, lifting her in the air by the neck of her blouse.

"Talk. Right now!" Couldn't she have said so a bazillion days before, saved everyone the trouble?

"Mandy was really worried about her parents and Jake about that aunt of his." She coughed and I relaxed my grip. A little; I was still pissed.

"Tomio had asked them to stay, but I managed to talk them into leaving before his fucking loyalty aura got to them too much. It was after that he bound everyone to secrecy." She tried to smile, coughed blood, then looked worriedly at her twin. The other brunette still hadn't moved.

"Will you... will you do me a favor? Fly to Dr. Beth, bring a potion? I think she... we... are dying. We share senses, you know? Feel what the other body feels. I don't know what will happen if one of us dies. Please?" I brought her the potion. Nobody in the building talked to me; they looked away or hid while I dealt with their problems. Ignoring them, I waited until both Julias healed and could deal with the aftermath by themselves. Then I finally left the remains of the school for good.