Chương 55: 48: Materiel Trouble

Old Man Dallas looked younger than I'd ever seen him before. He hadn't actually been de-aged or anything and he still wore the same old leather trench coat, boots and cowboy hat but magic had left him changed just as it had changed all of us. Gone was most of the beer gut, the old broken veins and redness all over his face, a face that had slightly evened out so that it was no longer shaped like a potato someone had stepped on.

He was taller too, though his hunter's attire had adjusted to match his new seven-foot frame, and had limbs like tree trunks. The greatest difference was in the ease of his smile, the lightness of his steps, the new vitality suffusing both his looks and actions. Nobody would call him good-looking any time soon and he'd cheerfully shoot them if they did, but he no longer was a near-wreck in his late sixties; he looked distinguished instead.

"Sup, brat?" Of course, his manners left something to be desired. Then again, we kids had been bad-mouthing him and making up stories about how crazy he was for years before the invasion despite never meeting him up close.

"Done growing up yet?" By which I meant said manners were refreshingly straightforward. Why, the first time we ever met face to face he'd shot me then went on to plainly explain why he did. As he arrived in the cleared field he settled his favorite oversized gun - the same one he'd shot me with - against one shoulder with a habitual grunt despite his new ease of movement and sat to wait for the rest.

"Why old man? Afraid I'll outgrow you?" Unlike my father, I found bantering with the guy easy, relaxing even. The two shared the same kind of underlying intensity but instead of a perpetual sullenness and rage at the world, Dallas the hunter was just a cheerful old guy even when he shot you. Speaking to him after the recent family encounter was... it felt nice, easy. His carefree attitude was just refreshing.

"You have outgrown me in several ways," he joked and patted at his chest with a chuckle.

"What did Verity have you doing lately? You girls still ready to claw each other's eyes out, or something?"

"Not so much any more, no," I sighed and sat down at nothing, feet dangling half a foot above the ground. Unsupported flight; far more comfortable than any chair.

"Tearing down lightning towers, stopping small armies of demons, dealing with family" I shrugged.

"You know, the usual. How about you, old guy? How goes the hunting?"

"Hunting's been going very well. Me and Bertha here-" he gave the portable cannon resting against his shoulder an affectionate pat "-took down many of them nastier varmints. Them tower-building invading folks came up with some new surprises in the East suburbs." Then he made a beer bottle appear in his hand like a magician's penny, knocked the cap off with a casual flick of his thumb and started drinking.

If Force Awareness hadn't revealed several instances of bent space creating drum-sized spaces inside his pockets it would have looked like he'd picked up a beer-conjuring skill. Which would have been kinda awesome, in a self-defeating sort of way.

"Does beer even do anything for you?" I asked out of curiosity.

"The one drink I tried after gaining powers tasted more like piss than anything else." Not the only issue I'd been having with food lately; if I didn't use my powers to both make it tougher and reduce my own base strength several times over, everything seemed like it had the consistency of mush. Instead of answering, Dallas summoned another bottle and threw it at me like a fastball. After catching it with a touch of force adjustment to ensure it wouldn't break, I popped the lid and took a tentative sip.

It was good! No, it was far better than merely good. Sweet and salty, fizzy and thick, with a touch of spices I couldn't quite identify and a hair of bitterness, it was the best beer I've ever had. And despite superhuman constitution I could already feel the warmth and slight buzz of alcohol.

"This is... perfect." I stopped to drink more than a sip.

"Where did you get it?"

"Boost to everything I make personally," he told me after emptying his own bottle.

"Cast shells for Bertha, leathers, traps for the hunt, homemade explosives, glue and polish, this here hat," he touched the wide brim which indeed shone with newness "everything comes out a bit better the more I work on it, work goes faster the longer I work on the same thing. As long as it ain't a machine, it comes out better and faster. Plus Sarah spotted me some real good barley she'd grown." Now that was an interesting power, and I wasn't saying that because the option of getting drunk was back on the table.

I was about to ask how long it took him to brew because where did he find the time? Didn't most fermented drinks take months to years to make? But just then the first soldiers started arriving. By pairs and trios they all turned up within a few minutes of each other, well over a dozen men from their early twenties to late forties, all in worn, many-patched uniforms of some sort and with guns held at the ready.

Even in a supposedly cleared empty lot at the edge of town with not a monster in sight, everyone had kicked gun safety by the wayside over the past two weeks in favor of being ready to shoot the moment monsters showed their ugly faces.

"Hey there, fearless leader," a vaguely familiar soldier greeted old Dallas after throwing a speculative look my way. He was far from the only one to do so, of course.

"Why are we in an empty lot in the suburbs, so far from the front lines?" More soldiers were staring my way by the moment, the quality of their attention ranging from friendly winks to open leering.

"You're here because you'd probably die in the front lines now," I muttered but as every survivor that didn't want to be horribly murdered in an ambush had enhanced senses, a good three quarters of the men reacted to that statement in some way or stared at the blonde girl sharing a drink with the senior gun-nut. Some with amusement, others with rising anger or derision, a few with curiosity. Almost everyone did more than a little staring too, and not at my head.

Those that didn't react to the words at all were mentally assigned to the idiot group, either because they didn't develop enhanced senses or because they didn't pay attention.

"What are you doing here, girl?" one of the taller, bulkier men asked not exactly in a friendly manner but then I hadn't been friendly either; intentionally so. He looked like he was in his late twenties, maybe even just on top of the big three-oh, with the kind of solid bulkiness meant for function instead of form, skin a shade lighter than mahogany and an aura of intensity that was more than natural.

A broad face with strong lines sported ridged black hair, coal-black eyes and a rather forbidding, saturnine manner, but his smile was warm, if a bit condescending.

"I was sent here to solve a problem," I answered, getting up from my not-chair, feet firmly planted a foot above the ground. A mousy-looking blond at the back muttered about a 'flying bimbo' which got a few chuckles and a lewd gesture or two from his fellow troubleshooters. I rolled my eyes at the expected reactions, temporary annoyance tempered by the knowledge of what was coming next.

"And no, it isn't the problem Martin is thinking about, there in the back." Several people openly laughed at that while the miscreant in question took me in from head to toe with a smirk. Actually, his eyes scanned appreciatively from my toes to a bit under my head before he responded to my calling him out.

"Hey, you know my name! Read my mind or something?" No, I'd peeked into his wallet while trying to miss the rest of him.

"Quick, can you tell what I'm thinking now?" More of them laughed.

"Everyone knows what you're thinking, Martin!" Old man Dallas said with a laugh, obviously amused. I was a bit amused even if I was more annoyed. The bulky black guy was not amused at all, if the clenching of his fists was any indication. Awesome looks but very little chill, to my disappointment. Never liked the brooding types, mostly because I brooded enough myself. And with ol' dad removed from the field by yours truly I felt like doing something fun for a change, so...

"You're obviously thinking something very complex and impractical involving big guns," I answered Martin with a shit-eating grin to the sound of whistling and "cute" remarks from his friends.

"Tell you what, big guy," He was actually over a foot shorter and at least sixty pounds lighter than me.

"Go ahead and raise that gun of yours." I pointed at the rifle held at his side to avoid misunderstandings.

"Tag me just once with it and we'll see about doing more things with other guns." More catcalls from the peanut gallery.

"You want me to shoot you?" Martin was confused and in my experience people like him tended to default to 'witticisms' to cover up that confusion. In that way at least the young soldier didn't disappoint.

"Now why would I want to ruin such awesome looks?"

"You won't. You'll just help me make a point. Just pretend I'm a demon, or something" Martin hesitated despite repeated commentary from the peanut gallery involving chickens and his masculinity. From the side, Dallas caught my eye with a wave then gave me the ugliest grimace he could while making finger-horns on his head. I nodded at him and he sat back with a satisfied smile.

"In fact, why don't we make it so you don't have to pretend?" I told Martin, to most people's confusion. My feet touched the earth and the dry sand and gravel stirred as I stepped forward, pulled after me as if by invisible strings. Another step and more sand and gravel moved, swirling up to my knees. A third and the sand reached my hips. A third and fourth and tons of loose Earth completely engulfed me, my head and long hair the last to disappear under the rising gravel tide.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. Using my force abilities had gotten easier since they were grouped together in my sheet, especially when combining several powers to achieve a complex result. Here, Force Adjustment weakened gravity's grasp on the mass of earth, making it as light as tree bark while maintaining inertia. It also temporarily reduced friction and cohesion so the mass could be shaped more easily.

Said shaping was done with Proximakinesis, molding the clay-like substance into the hollow form of those fireball-wielding demons for me to wear like an overly-thick suit. To add some realism to it, a second layer of Force Adjustment fanning out in two globes around the disguise's claws amplified air molecule impacts, rapidly heating the air into orbs of fire." Well, Martin?

"I asked, making my voice boom, echo and growl eerily by adjusting the sound waves." Can you shoot me when I look like this?

"Sliding forth a bit faster than those glorified imps could actually move by lifting the whole costume around me, I was suddenly within reach of him." How about now?" He raised his rifle and did just that. Or at least he tried. But no matter how he struggled to pull the trigger it simply wouldn't budge. It was stuck there through the field nullifying any force he exerted, the one I'd laid down when I'd gestured at the rifle.

I dismissed the right-claw fireball then tapped Martin in the forehead with the edge of a superheated fake nail. There was a sizzle from the contact and a yelp as he toppled on his ass, surprised by my suddenly moving even closer faster than he could track. He stared at me with too-wide eyes, not a hint of condescension or leering in them.

"As you can see, guns are really easy to mess with in a magical fight," I told for everyone to hear, gravel and soil sloughing off with not a grain clinging to me. Moving with the thing had been awkward, splitting my attention to pull a puppet on strings while also walking around, so even though it made getting my points across so much easier and seeing through it with Force Awareness meant its main drawback wasn't an issue, it was discarded.

Besides, being pretty was awesome and also made the point you couldn't judge a book by its cover when it came to magic.

"That's the greatest but not only problem with relying on tools out there. Since we have more and more people using them, someone had to come up with a solution."

"If the solution is charging at monsters to punch them in the face, pass," another naysayer put in his two cents. At least this one, a beanpole in a camo suit, seemed to know something about me.

"Even if guns are unreliable they've yet to fail on any of us and won't if we shoot the casters from a mile away." His weapon, a long-barrelled rifle only a little shorter than he was tall, supported that way of thinking well enough. It also fell victim to the second most serious problem with guns. A real solution would have been to either give up on firearms completely or to become gunsmiths in addition to gunslingers... but I doubled this lot would accept that.

Emboldened by my silence on the matter the sniper, probably one of the few surviving soldiers sent from outside to have such a weapon to begin with, was about to speak up once more but an older voice cut him off.

"Do not be so sure, sonny," Dallas said with a grunt.

"Bertha and I, we been hunting varmints since the first night and have seen shit guns, even powerful ones, can't easily handle." He looked at the city's ruined skyline in the distance with unmoving eyes, caught up in the memories. The rest of the soldiers gave him time and deference they had not given me and for the first time I wondered just what had Dallas been doing while Mandy, Jerry and I were slowing down the enemy's advance to be so well-known and respected among his fellow gun-nuts.

Not called them 'gun-nuts' for one, that annoying little voice in the back of my mind told me snidely.

"Yah don't wanna be caught with yer gun bricked, trust me. Was the reason I called ya all here," the old man finally said and the soldiers reluctantly nodded.

"OK, let's try this again," I told my apparently captive audience and gestured at the sniper.

"You get to shoot me with that boomstick. If you bring me down in less time than a bad guy could get to you from extreme range, you all get to skip class and I get egg on my face to go with the bruises. No tricks; I won't be messing with your gun this time." I tossed my hair and gave him a standard challenging pose. The guy looked at me, then at his gun, then back at me. And then he snorted; so did quite a few of his friends.

"Did I say something funny?"

"Do you know what kind of rifle this is?" I shook my head in a wordless negative.

"Do you even know what my power is?" I shook my head again and he sighed.

"How can you make such a challenge then? You got a death wish or something?"

"No, but have had holes shot through me before; they didn't take." Also, Force Awareness gave me an idea of the base firepower of his gun and how much of a force multiplier powers would need to bring to make it a threat and he simply didn't have it.

"So don't worry about it and go ahead."

"Your funeral" he said and fell into a shooting position with proper bracing.

"I am tripling the gun's confirmed range of two point two miles with my powers, how much time do you reckon this gives me?" Ah, so that's what he was laughing about.

"Three minutes seems long enough given known enemy speeds," I innocently replied as I floated to the other side of the empty lot we'd gathered in; it wouldn't do for people to get injured by ricochets. He just gave me a grin and a thumbs-up, then his rifle barked. A steel-jacketed round almost as thick as my thumb burst out of the barrel in a trail of fire and slowly, almost sluggishly flew through the intervening distance.

I could have moved out of the line of fire easily enough; even if the bullet had been homing I could have outflown it with sheer speed or burned it out of the air with applications of various forces. Instead of doing any of the above I just stood there until the bullet flattened against my thigh like a splash of mud. Mr. Beanpole Sniper was either a horrible shot for a superhuman or was still worried about my survival still. That won him some points, at least.

Then the next bullet fired and the next, five of them shot in the space of a normal-time second that felt closer to a minute on my end.

"Was that it?" I told him, flicking the last, flattened round back at him to examine, Proximakinesis stretching out to making it seem that flick had sent the nearly-two-ounce disc to land perfectly on the guy's rifle... balancing on one edge, of course.

"No," he growled, discarded the spent clip and loaded a fresh one he took out from a pocket that had been empty moments before. Then another five-shot barrage came at me with the apparent speed of serious fastballs... which meant they had to be traveling at a couple miles a second in real-time. He'd tripled their velocity much as he could triple his gun's range; this seemed familiar.

This time the full metal slugs shattered on impact, feeling like thrown pebbles would have to a normal person; annoying but largely irrelevant.

"You will have to try harder than that!" I shouted out and the guy's face went red. Yeah, I was being a bitch but he was still holding back. He'd not tensed up before each shot or focused to any great extent or shown any other sign of giving it his all, possibly because he didn't take this seriously, more probably because he still didn't want to hurt me. Problem was, we needed him to give this his all.

There was a reason I'd picked the guy with the biggest-looking weapon and most raw power in him other than Dallas and the big black guy. They needed to be convinced that the problems with guns were real - which they were - and that would only happen if someone they knew was badass with a gun and was not friendly to me had tried his best and failed. Getting him to really try... well, I could be fairly abrasive when I wanted to even if nowhere near some other ex-cheerleaders I could name....

fuck, was I becoming another Verity here? The next quintet of shots came more slowly. Still less than half a second for each, but this time I could see how his eyes narrowed, how his entire body strained to handle the power that poured into the barrel with every pull of the trigger. The slugs that came out didn't have just their range and speed multiplied; they also became an inch and a half thick and over a foot and a half long the moment they exited the barrel.

When the first one struck and exploded, it hit with eighty times the force of the original bullet, almost like being on the receiving end of a punch from someone in my weight class. Not a very strong one, no, but it would have definitely drilled a hole through most monsters. Five in quick succession pushed me back and would have left bruises if not for regeneration.

"A for effort," I told him from right behind his back, using Chronal Leap to get there in an instant.

"The fuck!?" he jumped and looked around, most of his friends surprised at my sudden appearance too.

"How the hell did you get here so quickly?" The only ones not to react were Dallas, who gave me a wordless toast before returning to his beer and the big black guy who'd been taking in every detail with a stare like iron nails.

"Super-speed," I told him.

"I crossed the field in super-speed at Mach seven. If you had super-senses-" I shrugged "well, you still wouldn't have seen me coming, I got a power for that. Now," I tapped at his gun "as powerful as you can make this weapon with your power it still couldn't really hurt me. Can you honestly tell me the Enemy with all their experience with magic we do not have, cannot bring in monsters that could similarly tank your shots or cross your whole range faster than you can kill them?" He shook his head.

"The second problem with guns, tools in general, is that while they start out more powerful than people, they don't grow by themselves while both we and the enemy do. At the point we're reaching, the growth of our base abilities is already outstripping what guns can do. Even if you spend all your remaining power to boost them you won't match the effectiveness of someone boosting their own growing abilities with that power."

It was a problem Verity had foreseen, that people from the magic side had solved by having specialists craft magic weapons for others to use. That brought up other issues, issues that had saved my life when a certain mind-controlling bastard became over-reliant on outside aid. But as with all problems, there were solutions.

"You asked what I was doing here?" I put my hands on hips and returned their glares with interest.

"I'm the best we have at enhancing mundane weapons and their capabilities without crippling interference either with your skills or your ability to grow through them." There would still be some, but in the short term it wouldn't matter; they needed to survive the rapidly approaching endgame for this invasion before worrying about long-term anything.

"So stop whining and get to work; we have many weapon augments to test out." Helping people despite their protests was so very annoying... but it was both rewarding long-term and could save lives.