Chương 22: Interlude II: Holdouts

"Mom, you can't possibly want to stay here! It's not safe!" the teenage girl almost cried in frustration after half an hour of trying to convince her parents to get somewhere safer than a suburban house whose greatest safety feature was a white picket fence.

"Because running out in the fog with a war going on is better?" middle-aged Mrs McMerrick had her stubby little arms on her hips as she glared down from the unimpressive height of five feet and repeated the same argument for the seventeenth time.

"There's no electricity, communications are being jammed, water is coming in barely at a trickle, you can't see past your nose, there's explosions all over the place and we've been hearing gunshots every night since the blackout. Leaving will get us killed, sweetie." The older woman told her younger, slimmer but otherwise identical daughter.

"Here we have a good, solid basement full of supplies, medicine, fuel and a generator that will last months. And it's a civilian home, soldiers shouldn't bother us here. Why don't you and the other kids stay with us instead?" It would have been a good argument... had the whole mess been a mundane war and not something far worse. The problem with magical disasters is nobody with common sense would actually believe they're happening.

The problem with common sense is that it's about common things and magical disasters were as uncommon as could be. Perhaps fed up with the cyclic nature of the argument, maybe possessing less patience than the older generation, the teenage girl huffed, turned around and stomped away, each step cracking against the late night silence like a hammer blow.

"Amanda Elinore McMerrick, get back here this instant!" the older woman shouted out, with the predictable result of the girl ignoring her as she vanished through the mists. She went only as far as the nearest intersection where another pair of kids awaited a safe distance from the argument's splash zone. While the younger McMerrick was a normal, if short, teenager dressed in rather threadbare, grime-covered clothes, her two companions could not have been further from normal if they tried.

The boy would have been an awkward-looking beanpole in out-of-style shirt and jeans if not for the half-ton of steel plating wrapped around his form from head to toes in a jagged, spiked, terrifying offspring of a medieval armory and a futuristic robot. The chest and back plates were repurposed manhole covers, all four of the armor's limbs had started their life as car and motorcycle parts and the two blades protruding over the suit's wrists were sharpened jackhammer heads.

The tiny, maybe-second-grade girl wore a black, long-sleeved jacket, matching skirt and cute little black pumps that would have more fit a Sunday morning stroll in the park than wading through mist-covered, cratered streets strewn with rubble and corpses, some of which remained ambulatory. But more than her presence in a war zone or her pristine attire, the girl drew the eye because her form seemed to flicker and twist constantly.

A second, more careful glance revealed that to be an optical illusion; she was merely facing all seven cardinal directions simultaneously.

"... stop it, you're making my head hurt," the boy in the overbuilt power armor complained, but the younger girl was not having any of it.

"You need to start thinking in more than three dimensions to use your skills properly," she admonished in a high-pitched voice.

"Abstract it as math if you're having trouble; I've heard it helps."

"I'm working with basic armor, car hydraulics and off-the-shelf electronics! I don't need multi-dimensional math for that!"

"If you want to remain a barely mediocre gadgeteer-" the little girl started but then noticed the third member of their group stomping back from her parents' house and changed gears.

"How badly did it go? Did they at least agree to arm themselves?"

"Why do you ask questions to which you know the answers?" the older girl grumbled and stomped on the sidewalk hard. Her delicate boot sizzled upon contact with the stone, pressing into the suddenly softening, red-hot surface and leaving an imprint that did not fit the shape of the boot at all.

"Never mind, it probably involves being unbearably smug yet also accommodating us lesser beings, or something." She turned towards the power-armored boy with a grimace of discomfort and awkwardness.

"I need a favor. Could you stand guard here for the next thirty minutes or so? My parents won't leave the house so I need to ward it."

"No problem," the boy nodded in agreement, his heavy armor shifting position with barely any sound.

"I can't see any monsters nearby; it's incredible this block wasn't hit once in the past three days."

"Unfortunately, I can," the older girl said, catching her long, dark-red mane in a ponytail to keep them out of her eyes.

"A large patrol is coming this way; they're less than a quarter mile out and closing."

"You know, not being limited to specific skills is cheating." Sudden whines came out of the power armor and several blinking lights turned on across its limbs.

"How does fire magic let you see long distances? It doesn't make sense."

"Fire has been used to illuminate and reveal for as long as mankind has existed. Of course it can be used to see far," the girl reminded him, eyes glowing red as she seared another symbol in the sidewalk a dozen feet away from the first.

"For a more concrete explanation, fire is light, energy. If I can control it then why can't I pull the light from several blocks away directly to my eyes?" She took a few more steps, then burned another symbol.

"Now remember; I won't be able to help you in the fight, a major working takes most of my attention and once started I can't stop or the gathered energy will be released uncontrollably."

"Huh." The boy pressed a button on either wrist and electricity started crackling over both his blades.

"Why don't we fight the monsters together and you make with the hocus pocus afterwards?"

"Good idea, Jerry," the redhead said with a bitter laugh.

"If only I hadn't started the spell the moment good ol' Mum made up her mind and refused to listen."

"That's what happens when you don't plan ahead," Jerry grumbled, all his power armor's systems finally checking green.

"Also, Amanda Elinore?"

"Mom wanted to be traditional and stuff," the teenage girl said as she carved the next symbol in line a bit further down the road.

"I prefer Mandy. Less pretentious."

"... said the sorceress as she used Tolkien elvish to cast real magic," the younger girl added sotto voce. Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. xxxx xxxx The eight-foot-tall, emaciated humanoid with the monstrous claws and skeletal face charged Jerry's armored bulk at speeds exceeding those of most highway vehicles. Its claws slammed into the heavy iron plating and rung it like a gong but shattered in the process, leaving the monster wailing at the loss.

Its cries cut off with a wet gurgle when the left wrist-mounted jackhammer cut through its torso, the sharpened, super-hard, vibrating chisel gutting sinew and shattering bone with ease. Half a dozen more monsters followed despite their fellows' failure and Jerry did not feel particularly confident taking them all in melee.

Exhaust-like attachments under both arms thundered in their direction, overpowered, over-sized, over-engineered versions of modern cameras' flashlights delivering directional blasts more powerful than flash-bang grenades. The monstrous charge disintegrated into a wailing, flailing tangle of limbs, quickly silenced forever with well-placed blows while they were incapacitated. Fireballs arced down from the sky, blasting Jerry from all sides.

Had this been the prototype version of his armor, even the relatively weak explosions from the flight of imps would have quickly broken through and killed him. Had it been the second or even the third iteration, the imps' fire would have cooked him alive before the armor was destroyed, but Jerry wasn't worried. Over the past four days he'd improved upon the original design many times. The Mk XII had robust enough environmental systems and insulation to wade through molten rock or liquid nitrogen.

Not bad for something built out of scavenged car parts, if Jerry said so himself. Twin, shoulder-mounted ball turrets the size of melons swung around a constant storm of rapid-fire that tore through the air more loudly than heavy machine guns. Instead of bullets, they spit out bolts of what looked like needle-thin, too-straight lightning that made inch-wide craters at anything it was pointed at at over sixty shots per second. One imp fell, then another, then a third, and all the survivors were forced into retreat.

It wasn't actual lightning - Jerry had yet to build a functional electrolaser - but even fairly mundane pulse lasers could be dangerous if the power was cranked up high enough and improved via super tech. With the imps dead or fleeing, the turrets returned to harrying distant targets or breaking enemy formations while Jerry eliminated stragglers that made it through his long-range fire. This was the fifth enemy wave he'd stopped cold, but his armor was running hot despite the cool atmosphere and humidity.

Damage was also slowly accumulating; the monsters didn't need to punch through his chest plate if enough repeated shocks broke a load-bearing joint or damaged his servos and half a ton of metal fell on his chest.

Name: Jerry Norris, HP: 64/75, SP: 16/75, MP: 31/45 Class: lvl 15 Gadgeteer Skills [1/5 pts] Academics lvl 4, Assessment lvl 14, Deception 2, Energize lvl 11, Energy Weapons lvl 5, Enhanced Armorer lvl 14, Enhanced Electrical Engineer lvl 11, Enhanced Roboticist lvl 11, Fabricate lvl 14, HEMA lvl 8, Instant Repair lvl 12, Language: English lvl 3, Language: French lvl 1, Persuasion lvl 5, Piloting: Battlesuit lvl 6, Programming lvl 5 Stats [5/75 pts] Strength 14, Dexterity 21, Constitution 20 Intelligence 49, Wisdom 16, Charisma 13 Fortunately Jerry had leveled, and with the lull in the fighting he could assign his points properly.

He was very tempted to put all his stat points into Intelligence again. Not only did it let him think faster, remember better, understand most things, do mental calculations and visualize multiple things at once, it had also upgraded all his mental skills at the twenty and forty point milestone. He'd originally expected it to open up magic as well, only to find it involved more comic book super-tech when his robotics hobby had turned into a series of powerful tech skills. But no.

Previous encounters had shown that a pure Intelligence build was not good at actually fighting, even when using superior weapons. It had almost gotten him killed several times, would certainly have without Mandy's help. He'd been forced to spend points on Dexterity and Constitution just to survive, and only boosting his other stats too at Mandy's insistence had revealed that Wisdom was the primary magical stat, or that strength made using heavy weapons and armor somewhat bearable.

With the battle not yet over he could not afford to spend points that wouldn't be immediately useful in a do-or-die situation. Since he was also running out of stamina from all the fighting, he raised his Dexterity to twenty-six, also improving his Stamina by forty-five points. Skills-wise, he'd long since decided what to invest on. The single point he got every 3 levels was the only way to unlock skills without using them himself first, and thus the only way to unlock supernatural skills, period.

It was how he'd gotten his original Shocking Grasp and Observe, which had since evolved to Energize and Analysis. Those had been joined by Instant Repair, a spell that spent MP to do exactly what its name said without needing tools or time and effort, plus Fabricate, which would transmute materials into a finished product provided you knew how to build it in theory. Where he would have had to spend days to build anything remotely complex and useful, with them he could build things like his armor in the field.

But skill and instant crafting were still limited by the materials available. His armor was still iron, and though his combined skills improved its base abilities more than a dozen times over, that base was crude; time to change that. Jerry paid the recently earned point and got the first level of Metal Creation. The cost of thirty MP per pound of created metal was significant, but acceptable. The skill being limited to bronze and iron alloys was not; he'd have to grind it.

"Hope you're done with your tinkering, because they're coming," the seven-year-old Verity informed him. While not engaging the monsters directly, the little girl's ability to always know what was going on and to be in several places at once had often caused confusion, diverted hungry monsters, or just slowed down an enemy wave long enough for Jerry to laser them to bits. He was not going to hold minor things like breaking local spacetime against her, even if looking at her when she did gave him a migraine.

"Just some minor touch-ups," Jerry told her. Instead of building anything new, he had spent his available MP on Instant Repair to restore his power armor to pristine condition and Energize to fill its capacitors for the coming battle. Those pulse lasers were quite the energy hogs, after all.

"Now let's send those monsters back to whatever Hell they crawled out of."