The App 15 (Patreon)

The App

Chapter 15

-VB-

Somewhere out in Californian wilderness…

“Abe” cracked his neck side to side. Pulling out his phone, he looked at the last bits of information that Mel provided him.

“Are you sure they’re here?”

“{Yup! Mel knows for sure they are here!}”

The nukes still haven’t been found, and everyone with a name was searching for them. Unused nukes were rare especially since Scion took them out into the trash by either deleting the warheads wholesale or prematurely detonating them in space before they came back down after their first flight.

Unexploded ordinances often were able to survive Scion’s detection by not having been assembled at the time or assembled in a way that didn’t cause significant physical destruction. In the case of the latter, dirty bombs all counted as “not significant of a threat” to Scion and thus he left them alone.

Which meant…

The nuke he was looking for was most likely a dirty bomb.

The problem was that Mel took her securities and neutrality (surface neutrality) rather seriously. Someone moving a dirty bomb through her channel made themselves her enemies by degrading her trustworthiness.

And he, as her shovel, would need to “smack, stab, and sunder” her enemies. He, as her loyal servant, promised to do all that and more if she let him.

The problem, however, was that while the original seller of the nuke had been found and properly punished, the buyer had gone missing.

Mel had gone out of her way to find their information, but whatever they did, her sights had been obscured. Not much but enough that she couldn’t give him their exact appearance, exact name, and exact location. What she did find, she told him.

The culprit was a middle-aged woman wearing black something and she was supposed to be around here somewher-.

He ducked even before he realized he was under attack, jumped while still in the motion of ducking, flipped around, and made a heroic tri-point landing. Just as well, he heard a staccato of shattering rocks and tree barks behind and above him.

‘Silencer, huh?’ he thought amusedly.

And then his body moved again on its own, this time jumping as far away as it could, just in time for him to dodge something that came screaming down from the sky. The earth around where he used to be shattered, and somehow, he managed to weave and roll through even more of the silenced rapidfire.

He finally got back up onto his two feet and pulled out his shovel.

Then he whistled.

“I’m honored to meet you in person, Alexandria,” he grinned.

Alexandria stood up from where she landed and looked at him coolly. “You are not Mel.”

“No, I am not,” he grinned. “But I guess you fit the bill for who I’m supposed to be killing. A middle-aged woman, black attire, and around here somewhere.”

Then he noticed something.

A dazed Case-53 walked out of the brushes, and he made some sort of shimmering effect around him. Next to him was another middle-aged woman with a black business suit and a fedora.

“... Or there’s two of you.”

And then he dodged out of the way by not moving when the one under the shrouded effect moved her gun once and then settled back to where he would have dodged to and fired. Silenced bullets fired from her pistol cracked against the earth and the tree.

“Abe” blinked.

“Anti-Thinker field? That’s nice.”

And dodged again as Alexandria came in for a hit. Instead, he dodged around her first shockwave making fist, her second air-slicing kick, and then her brick shattering grapple. He wove out of them all and then swung.

CLANK.

Alexandria doubled over, looked utterly shocked, and then tried to rise up.

“Abe,” on the other hand, looked at his shovel.

“Oh. That’s a nice ability. Time stop on your body?”

Alexandria looked at him and then doubled over again. “W-What…?” she muttered as blood ran down her forehead.

Even the other woman looked surprised.

“Concussion, dear. Receiving the flat of the shovel to your forehead will do that,” he replied.

And then he moved in for the kill.

-VB-

“... Sorry, Mel,” he sighed while sitting on top of the Case-53 that had been making it hard for him to fight the fedora woman. “Two of them got away.”

“{It’s alright, Hyena,}” she crooned. “{You did a good job killing Mantellum. It’s good that you got him.}”

“Is that his name?” Abe asked while looking down at the headless Case-53. “Unfortunate man.”

“{Unfortunate, yes,}” she hummed. “{But at least we now know who baited you without Mantellum to mess with my precognition.}”

“Who are they? I mean, I know Alexandria, but I didn’t expect the other woman at all. She’s-”

“{Like you.}”

“... I think you are saying something more than just that.”

“{Oh, I am, Hyena. It explains how they made it seem like Spotted Owl and some of the regulars were involved even though they know better. That woman… she’s your counterpart.}”

He blinked in shock as he stepped off of the dead Case-53. “Her?”

“{Yes. Her.}”

He paused before grinning. “Aw, was this my birthday present?” he asked her before a portal opened. Seeing that it was Mel’s portal, he stepped right on through without even thinking about it.

“{No. I’ll get you something better for your birthday, Contar. Letting you meet your little sister was never going to be something I’d dangle in front of you.}”

He really felt like he’d done her a disservice by thinking less of her when he first began working for her. “Man, you’re making a grown man cry…”

“{Don’t. You ugly cry.}”

“Oh, come on, Mel!”

The portal closed behind them, and silence fell over the completely ruined remains of the once majestic Muir Woods.

The news would report that some villain ran rampant before cowardly fleeing before the heroes and rangers arrived. Mel would not correct them.