The Daily Grind - Chapter 244 (Patreon)

“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.” -William Shatner, on his trip to space-

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James had been in a small local jail, once, as part of a field trip when he was in fourth grade.  A time so absurdly far in his past that it felt like ancient history, and the fact that it felt that far away in the first place really brought him an unsettling amount of perspective about just how far away something like Ancient Rome was.

That second part wasn’t important to what he was doing right now, which was trying to break people out of cells.  The point was, this place had a bizarre feel.  Recognizably a prison, but like it was simplified to something almost meaninglessly easy.  Just the circular halls, and alcoves with metal bars.  There was no… life here.  This wasn’t a place that was used and specialized, it was just a weird room that was being used, and it creeped him out, because it didn’t feel like a dungeon.  It felt human, but in a very dull way, with everything complicated shaved off.  Including the attitudes of the prisoners, and any reaction from them at all really.

“Please step back?”  James’ voice was strained, mostly because he was down to twenty shield bracer charges.  A pair of Status Quo agents had taken cover on the upper level, and were trading fire with JP, while James had triggered his invisibility earring and slipped off.  Due to the inherent difficulties in actually killing this strain of agent, they’d made the snap decision to accomplish the objective of getting everyone out, and go from there.

The problem was, the people in the cells weren’t exactly cooperative.  Breaking in was comically easy; the place was like a weird half-dreamed version of a prison taken from the eighties, and the cells were just iron bars and thick locks.  Thermite strips went right through the stuff, no problem.  It was what came after that was giving him problems.

The prisoners just stood, or sat on the cots, and stared straight ahead.  Dull eyed, swaying slightly, they were all breathing and clearly alive, but there was nothing going on there.

“God dammit.”  James hissed out as he ignited the thermite and hoped neither of the people in the cell touched it.  Then he fucking ran, because the agents shooting at JP were unfortunately not stupid.  Singleminded, certainly, to a near suicidal degree.  But that wasn’t really a problem for people who didn’t die to gunfire, and it still left them smart enough to shoot at his invisible ass when he was cracking cells.

An orange glowing line cut across his vision, and James followed Zhu’s directions even before the informorph’s yelled “Roll, left!”  He came to his feet with heavier gunfire now over his head, tracer rounds in the machine gun barrage highlighting the arrival of another enemy one level up.  “Step here!”  Zhu ordered, and James did so, standing perfectly still and trusting his friend as a grenade went off nearby.  The shockwave rattled his teeth, and James felt his insides ache.  He also heard, and saw a few flashes of, shrapnel pinging off the concrete wall and floor around him.  But nothing touched him.

In that moment, James felt a bizarre mix of emotion.  He was standing on a battlefield, with death on every side.  And he was untouchable.  Invincible.

The machine gun fire stopped, and James looked up at the next ring of the prison as he resumed moving.  Seeing the stone faced woman who was carrying the heavy weapon repositioning it toward JP, James acted on instinct, and grabbed her with [Move Person].  Moving someone who didn’t want to be moved cut down on the blue orb’s effective strength, and moving someone through something did so even more, but he really only needed her to go a foot to get through the iron railing and the metal plate she’d taken cover behind, and into the open air in the center of the prison.

The competence of the Status Quo agents continued to irk him as the woman kept a grip on her weapon, and didn’t look bothered by the fifty foot fall as she plunged past.  But she wasn’t gunning down James’ friend, so he’d take it.

“This isn’t working.”  He sent rapidly across their local network.  “None of these people are moving, there’s no way we can group them up.  Especially not-“ James cut off as a stray bullet triggered a shield around him and his location was revealed.  He sprinted for the ramp upward before he could get pinned down, and refreshed his invisibility while he was at it.

Alanna’s reply came back rapidly and efficiently.  “Reinforcements are arriving to you now.  Stop breaching cells, we’ll grab people through the bars and telepad out.  Prisoner rescue is our primary objective.  No need to stick around after.”  James nodded, then sent back a confirmation.  But before he could talk, Alanna added one more worrying thought.  “Camille is expected to be headed your direction.  Move fast.”

“Bet you an orb it’s about the big door.”  JP privately told James.

“No bet.”  James replied.

The big door, ten feet tall and twenty across, heavy steel with a complex locking mechanism, was exactly the sort of thing James assumed was going to be a problem.  But he was pretty sure the agents they were skirmishing with weren’t running out of durability, while the Order was.  Crouching on the ramp, he raised his Walther and put cluster shots into the exposed arms and legs of the agents taking cover, but he knew it would only inconvenience them.

The whole prison was a symphony of gunfire.  The break in the shooting were almost instantly filled by someone trying to take advantage of the lull, and not being able to hurt each other hadn’t actually stopped them from trying.

Actually, the fact the enemy were taking cover at all made James think that they were vulnerable somehow.  He passed that along to the others.  He didn’t know what to do with it.

James wasn’t actually sure what to do at all.  He’d been in a lot of fights in his recent life; more than he ever expected.  But a lot of them were dungeon fights, which were abrupt, and required instant brutal action to survive.  Though strangely, all of them seemed very survivable.  Not many of his battles had been against humans, and those that were, well, they were also pretty one sided.

This fight was going on for a while.  And after the first twenty minutes of running and being alert for anyone shooting at him, James had started to feel winded.  Not tired, but like he was slipping slightly.  His brain didn’t want to keep running at this pace, being afraid of everything around him, tracking a dozen variables in addition to communications with the others.  He wasn’t tired, exactly, but he was tiring.  And he was the most experienced one here, which meant they probably needed to hit their target and get out quick.  Alanna’s decision to stop treating this as an actually decapitation strike and instead just accomplish their rescue and bail was a good one.  If he’d been more alert, he would have made the same call.

James kept moving, hoping to loop around to the next ramp and flank the unsuspecting agents on the third level before they realized he was invisible and on them.  But as he reached the second ring of the prison, something interrupted him.  A door just at the top of the ramp; not a row of cell bars but instead something more like the guard station that he’d come through with JP and the mimic duo.

The door had a window with bullet resistant mesh set in it, and so it didn’t surprise James too much when the figure on the other side checked through it, a gun raised to breach, and then shouldered the door open.

His first thought as he made eye contact with the man was to ask him who his tailor was, and if the suit had magic powers.  His second thought was to remember he was invisible, and to let the guy slip past unharried.  The man was at the tail end of middle age, salt and pepper hair and a face with a few scars on it, but the way he was keeping to the walls and how his hard eyes flicked across the prison cells told James he wasn’t with Status Quo.

Not that the tidbit of information answered the question of what he was doing here.  Or where he’d come from; James didn’t get why there was another entrance here one floor up, when Status Quo had clearly disguised the first one and put effort into it.  He still shot a small text to everyone just in case, and processed three incoming texts about ongoing movements.

One of those texts was from Smoke-And-Ember.  The camraconda James had only met a couple times announcing his and Alex’s arrival, along with a heads up to James.  He glanced through the railing and down at where JP’s shield bracers were still flaring as they took hits, even with him behind cover.  The endless gunshots playing out an equally endless cacophony of sound in the enclosed concrete tube of a prison.  Then abruptly, JP’s shields weren’t the only ones taking hits, as Alex slid into a crouched position next to him and raised something.

Just in case JP’s warning hadn’t reached him, Alex decided to add a yell that was loud enough for James to hear it over the firefight.  “Friendly fire!”  The girl’s voice cracked as she went for a bellow and ended up with something more like a screech.  She corrected for the faux pas with a trio of Nerf dart fireballs, the orbs of plasma screaming like nails on a chalkboard as they carved melted holes out of the concrete floors and walls, and sent droplets of molten iron raining splattering onto what was left.  In their wake, a noise like a mild thundeclap signaled the air slamming back into the emptied space, and the screams of hit Status Quo agents were the first sign of an emotional reaction from their enemy.

It would be wrong to call what followed ‘silence’, but the gunshots stopped from both sides.  And then, a single digital voice rose up through the concrete cylinder.  “Cease shooting!  We desire to communicate!”  Smoke-And-Ember amplified his voice to be heard.  “Please do not-“ Whatever he was going to keep saying was interrupted as running footsteps from the ring below where JP and James had come in announced new arrivals, and seconds later there were muffled whumps followed by metal impacts near the group below.

Having apparently found shooting to be ineffective, the newly reinforcing Status Quo agents had opted for tear gas and flashbangs.

James had made jokes before about how the shield bracers were effectively flash bangs on the enemy side whenever they got shot in the dark, but this?  He was twenty feet up and on the other side of the space, and he still felt the concussive pop in his teeth.  From the screams Ruby and Prince were making, they had it much worse.

When he saw the two people jumping up and scrambling over the railings like gravity didn’t apply to them, James took two actions.  First, he rapidly sent a message to the knights down there that they were about to be flanked, along with his own feed of the growing cloud of caustic smoke in case they couldn’t see, and second, he started shooting.

He knew it would give his position away, but he did it anyway.  “Zhu, keep an eye out.”  James ordered, and started putting down fire on the two who were closing on his friends.  One of them was a man with a sharply gelled hairstyle, carrying a broad headed axe at his side like it was as casual as a briefcase, tie still perfectly placed against his dress shirt.  The other one was a woman who was soaked in blood that James was pretty sure JP had stabbed three minutes ago.  He shot both of them in the head, burning cluster shot charges and then using his bracelet’s reload magic when he emptied his gun.

The first barrage stopped them briefly, but then the two melee fighters leaned into his bullets, and ran through into the smoke, undeterred by James really actually trying to kill them.  “I am worried,”  He hissed, mostly to himself, “that we’re going to get out of this and I’m going to forget that bullets are actually dangerous.”

A bullet pinged off the wall near James, and he sighed, ducking back down and refreshing his invisibility just in case.  Being fireballed hadn’t stopped the agents from shooting back.  But down below, the tear gas was clearing, and while JP and Alex’s video feeds had gotten tear stained and blackened, James could see through the skulljack that they were moving and fighting and not dead yet.

“What do I do?”  He asked, starting to worry that he didn’t have a way to tip this fight.

“Go open this door.”  Zhu ordered him, orange lines and light setting him around the ring he was on to the other side, and a perfectly normal looking office door that was set between two cells.

“…why?”  James asked.  “And why is that… why are there so many ways in here?!”

“Think later.  Go now.  Someone needs to get in.”  Zhu told him.  “And duck!”

James ducked, tucking himself into a roll forward that he could only really accomplish because he was wearing a dress shirt and not armor, and saved a shield charge.  Then he got up and started running.  Zhu’s path took him around the back on a Status Quo agent who was currently swapping the magazine of his pistol with a dull eyed mechanical motion, and James decided to try to cut that problem away early.  Letting go of his mental grip on his own acceleration, he spent the majority of his Velocity to activate a spell he’d already forgotten the name of.  Turning the majority of his new momentum into bone durability, James tracked slightly off of Zhu’s planned route, and lunged forward as he approached the woman.  She didn’t even register his presence until both his knees slammed into her, and James applied at least one skill rank in judo to maximize just how much it would hurt when he slammed her head into the railing.

Uncertain if he’d actually done any real damage, he dropped the Route Horizon spell as he rolled off of the woman’s body, his face right in front of hers while tired looking green eyes stared blankly at the ceiling overhead through his invisible form.  There was a thin line of blood on the side of her head, but James was pretty sure that it wasn’t a potential concussion that had put a disinterested expression on her during a firefight.  Kicking the gun over the edge as he landed in a crouch, he mule kicked backward and hit her again, stunning her long enough that he could focus on [Move Person] and flick her out into the open space on the other side of the railing, dropping her at least three or four floors.

It was, he grimly noted, a lot easier when they weren’t resisting.  His head was still staring to pound though, and he wasn’t sure he could do that more than one more time.  Still, he didn’t have to.  The door Zhu was aiming him at was right in front of him.

“Who am I letting in?”  He asked out loud as at least two agents a level overhead realized someone had just thrown their coworker off a ledge and started taking shots at the space behind James, clearly aware that there was an invisible combatant in the area.

“I have no idea!”  Zhu answered as a bullet clipped the shield’s range, and lit up their combined position like a firework.  “But it seems like it couldn’t be worse than doing nothing!”

The door was locked, and James had been informed recently by an irate Nate that shooting door locks didn’t actually open them.  But the truth was, shooting a locked door wouldn’t open it unless you hit it correctly, and the reason Nate had been irate is that James had kept proving on their test field that he could do it consistently.  His enhanced Aim didn’t just let him hit what he wanted, at close range when he had a second to think, it let him make shots that were wild odds at best.

He didn’t really have a second to breathe here; another bullet found his shields, and he frantically did the mental math to figure out if he was under ten charges left at this point.  He wasn’t, but it was getting close.  So James just didn’t stop running, and started firing with a shaking, sweating grip at near the door’s handle as he raced toward it.

Then his shoulder connected with it, a flare of pressure echoing across his body in the area, though James noted there wasn’t the bruising pain he expected.  He thanked JP for the foresight of whatever magic shirt he was wearing right now.  He also also more immediately sent a wave of gratitude at Zhu as the infomorph grabbed the handle ahead of them at a lightning speed, and had turned the latch as much as the destroyed mechanism would allow.

James, invisible and hard to notice, burst into an office that was in the process of being ransacked by a group of men in biker leathers and armed with a mix of submachine guns and baseball bats.  A sudden halt to the activity occurred as he looked around at the dozen or so people who were all staring right at him.

Quietly, daintily, James stepped to the side and slid along the wall.

“If you say anything,”  Zhu whispered in his ear,  “I will tell Alanna.”

James almost broke right there and replied.  Though Zhu’s comment was fair; high on adrenaline and having trouble keeping his thoughts straight, he was about two seconds away from making a quip.  Now that he was called out though, James was having a hard time thinking of what he would have even said.  Maybe pretend to be a butler and give a classy “Please, gentlemen, enter”?

He’d never get the chance.  The group raced past him, one of them bumping against him and giving the seeming empty air a confused look before shaking it off and hurrying into the ongoing fight.  James could hear them shouting, trying to figure out what was going on mostly, but also at least one of them said something about how “this is what we’re looking for” and “this is where she said to meet her”.  He sighed as he ended up in the clear, and took another step around an overturned desk, and was surprised when he saw out to the front of the office portion.

Mostly he was surprised because through the broken down entrance door, he could see the wall signs outside that indicated that this was the first floor.  “We climbed two levels of prison just to end up back on the ground level.”  He blinked.  “What the fuck.”

“Oh, like this is the worst thing you’ve seen.”  Zhu huffed at him.  “We have ten basements at home.”

“Really?”

“No, but I didn’t know the exact number.  Have you caught your breath?”

James checked.  His heart was still racing, his attention hard to keep, but he was a little better.  “Yeah.”  He said.

“Good.  Then turn around.  We need to get to the door.”  Zhu said.  “I think it is going to open.  I can feel it.”

Setting a comforting hand on Zhu’s manifestation, James grinned.  “You’re so fucking cool.  Alright.  Let’s move.  We can meet up with Alanna and the others, they’re going to be arriving real soon.”

_____

A normal day for Arrush had gone from being an unknown, to an impossibility, to a fantasy, to… a normal day.

He woke up, with his boyfriend tangled around him and whatever blankets he had tried to accumulate scattered to the corners of their bed, and had to scramble to reach the dose of painkiller potion on their dresser before he started screaming and woke Keeka up.  Arrush wasn’t a stranger to hurting; he’d done it all his life.  But he’d gotten used to being able to exist without the constant ongoing burning in his joints and flesh.

A while back, Reed had tried to explain to him that the potion was actually sort of just a slightly different exercise potion that improved the recovery and development of nerve endings, ligaments, and tendons, instead of just musculature.  Arrush hadn’t fully understood half of what was being said, but it had been at a time when he was far more worried about asking questions, so he’d nodded and decided to seek context later.  He hadn’t, really.  But he remembered the point, which was that development of his nerves meant, for a ratroach, that he would become dependent on this potion rapidly.  Either he kept taking it forever, or the pain would come back worse, unless a more permanent solution was found.

Fortunately they had a permanent solution.  And a perfect example of it was curled around Arrush’s chest, Keeka’s remade body looking so similar to how he used to, but… better.  Cleaner.  Not caustic or tormented, still beautifully asymmetrical and still him.  A messy patchwork of parts reforged into a complete body that didn’t rebel against its owner.

Arrush watched his partner sleep for a long time, a sideways grin on his muzzle, until he accidentally drooled on his pillow again and the acidic hiss prompted him into motion.

One day, possibly one day soon, he’d be next in line for the same treatment.  And he wouldn’t be able to make the excuse that others needed it more anymore.  It was terrifying, and despite knowing that it could work and wouldn’t ruin him, Arrush was holding back for some reason he didn’t fully understand.  Not exactly fear, not exactly guilt, but a feeling that tasted like both of them.

He didn’t let it bother him today. Today was a normal day.  He left Keeka to sleep, leaving his boyfriend with a series of soft touches before slipping out of the bedroom.  Keeka tended to stay up late, and while the Order didn’t really operate on a standard schedule, Arrush liked being up early because he liked the sunrise.

Shuffling around their apartment in the Lair’s underground, he took his time getting dressed, reheating leftovers, eating breakfast, and pretending that he knew where to stack things to make their living room couch slightly less of a mess.  He then spent a good ten minutes firmly brushing at the tan fur that covered over half his body, focusing especially on his arms, before dumping what he’d shed into the garbage.

And then he headed out.

Heading out was also scary.  But it wasn’t too bad if you got up early enough.  Humans, Arrush had found, didn’t actually like something about five AM.  And most camracondas were implicitly understanding of his constant anxiety around others, though it turned out they also didn’t like being up early.

The only person Arrush passed on the way out was Mars, the human engineer working on the expanding underground garden’s irrigation system.  The two of them made eye contact, and Mars offered a small nervous smile before going back to what he was doing, because he was also awake at five AM because he wanted to avoid everyone else.  He’d just come here the long way.

The stairs up to the ground level of the Lair were cold and echoing and Arrush enjoyed the solidity of them.  They were clearly designed for utility, and were a rough part of the building with more sharp edges and cool metal than most of it, but they weren't hostile about it.  The stairs did their job, and he felt like he could appreciate that they did it without being painful.

There were more people upstairs, the part of the Lair that never really slept was the communal space of the lobby and the dining room that always had at least one person eating something between a response shift or snacking while they glared at a magic item until it did what they wanted.  Some people glanced up at Arrush, but aside from one wave, no one really talked to him.  He was just another ratroach going about his business.

And wasn’t that a wonder all its own.  There were about twenty ratroaches in the building right now, though most of them stayed in the space sectioned off for them while they got healing both physical and mental.  But they were here, and more of them were here with every delve of the Akashic Sewer.

Arrush found several of his claws clenching at the thought of where he’d come from, sharp spikes biting into chitin and flesh as the almost overwhelming hate for his creator caught up to him.  He followed his own therapist’s advice, practicing mindfulness, acknowledging that his own hurt was neither unusual, nor acceptable.  It didn’t make the anger fade, but it made it easier to handle.  He was a victim, but he would not let that define him.

He was still on edge when he reached the kitchen, but Arrush felt like he had it under control.  He had to duck slightly to get through the second door into the dishwasher area of the place where half the Order’s food was prepared, just so his antenna didn’t smack against the lower than normal frame.  But as the door shut behind him and he was left mostly alone in the space, he started to relax.

Knife-In-Fangs was already present around the other side of the dividing wall, six mechanical arms moving in strikingly organic patterns as the camraconda methodically took apart melons into cubes.  He was holding the fruit still with his eye as he cut over and over, a display that would have been perfectly at home in the horror movies that Nik always picked during movie nights.  Only with cantaloupes.

Arrush greeted the camraconda as he slipped his triangular head through an apron and tied it around himself, the extra arms he had that faced in uncomfortable and awkward directions actually highly useful for this one task.

And then he got to work, falling into a pattern of scrubbing down the pots and pans from last night.  Soak, scrub, sanitize, rinse, stack.  A repeated set of motions that took enough of his focus that he couldn’t actually do it and be properly angry at the same time.  And, more importantly, it was useful.

He’d been told more than once by members of the Order of Endless Rooms that being useful wasn’t a requirement to stay here.  That no one would think less of him for just ‘taking it easy’ for a while.  It had taken him months to even be able to properly articulate to anyone the fact that he didn’t know how to even start on the process of taking it easy.

It wasn’t that Arrush wanted to work, it was that, initially, he really was terrified that if he wasn’t valuable enough, he’d be thrown away.  Him and Keeka.  Himself, he could tolerate, but Keeka simply wasn’t acceptable. So he’d kept pushing until he was given small things to do out of what he now recognized as a sense of exasperated defeat.

Now, though, he just wanted to be useful because if everyone here was a little useful, then everything was nicer.  James had explained the concept to him, of everyone pulling together to make things better, and when Arrush had found his suspicion slowly fading and his willingness to believe taking its place, he’d decided that he agreed.  Not because he was told to, not to avoid being hurt, just because he liked a lot of people here and wanted to take some of the work.

So he cleaned dishes.  Carefully, working with long gloves to keep from filling the sinks with his own coarse fur, and a mask to avoid accidentally dripping his glowing saliva into the sanitizer water.  Though it turned out the sanitizer liquid was actually shockingly good at neutralizing the corrosive nature of his bodily fluids, even if Deb told him that he should under no circumstances ever drink it.  She had also sworn a lot while saying that.  Arrush remembered it because James had said something - probably a joke - about how medical professionals weren’t supposed to know that much profanity.

The memory made him smile, but he kept it as a thin line and tried to not open his maw.  A lot of his memories of moments with James made him smile, in a way that was becoming familiar to him.  His life with Keeka often elicited the same response, though more powerfully.

By the time he was done with his simple task, a couple other people had shown up to start preparing breakfast for the hundred and fifty people who were going to want it.  Arrush moved with the kind of alacrity that he’d been working on, of being fast without panicking, to tackle some small side goals in the kitchen.  Scrubbing down one of the walls, fetching Knife-In-Fangs a worrying number of onions, replacing the cleaning buckets strategically located around the kitchen, and starting the coffee brewing.

And then there were more pans.  And also more noise.  Voices and clatterings and the hiss of food on the flat top, almost enough to overwhelm him.   At one point Knife-In-Fangs had said something shocked and rapidly left the kitchen.  But Arrush was determined to be useful, so he focused on breathing, and cleaning things, even if he was secretly relieved at around seven AM when a couple of the younger humans came to replace him for the rest of the morning.

Afterward, he sat in the small fenced off spot behind the Lair on a rough wooden bench, eating an egg and veggie burrito and trying to keep himself from crying at the flavor of food that didn’t hurt and wasn’t blood.  Usually he was better about it, but the memories of his life weren’t always so easily ignored.  Just over the fence and up a barkdusted hill, the sounds of engines and tires filled the air.  The public road was, one of the chefs had told him once, a weirdly normal reminder of the mundane world that existed all around them.

To Arrush, it was as magical as everything else, though.  He’d been in cars, knew what cars were, he could even drive in an emergency.  But the idea of hundreds, thousands of people, driving back and forth, to and from work, shopping, appointments, family, every day?  It didn’t make sense to him.  It was too much, too big, too… too alien.

So he didn’t think of them as cars.  He just let the noise be a background part of his own normal day.  Passing roars of distant beasts that reminded him that the world was large, but his place here was familiar.

When he’d gone back inside, anxious about having to pass by a large group of people still lingering after breakfast, Arrush was pleased to find that the dining room was emptier than normal.  It looked like a lot of people had left in a hurry, though.

It hadn’t taken long for a new kind of creeping anxiety to crop up in him, when he learned why.  And, eventually, when no one called on him, he went to find out what was going on himself.  Finding the briefing warehouse mostly empty was also odd, with only a few humans and one camraconda lingering.  And Ben and Planner, who were likely to have answers for him.

“Hey Arrush.  Sorry, kinda busy.”  Ben said, eyes flicking rapidly across a glowing series of both ethereal projections and computer screens.

“Where is everyone?”  Arrush asked, enjoying his lungs and voice being in a healthy period at the moment.

Ben glanced up at him, the friend gnawing at his lip.  “Trying to get a bunch of prisoners out of a Status Quo facility.  I don’t know if you know…”

“I was told.”  Arrush cut him off.  Maybe a little too fast.  “Why… why am I not…?”

“I don’t know, or have a good reason.  We threw this together in a hurry.”  Ben answered instantly.

Planner’s scratchy voice joined in through the open air.  “We selected for those with small unit training.”  They said bluntly.  “You are an exceptional delver.  I chose to exclude you as a combatant here.”

Arrush felt his face flush, a radioactive green tint creeping in to the exposed skin around his eyes and muzzle.  Though he said nothing.  It wasn’t as if he had a good counter argument to that.  All the same…

“James is there.”  He said in an anxious rasp.

“Yeah.”  Ben answered.  “A lot of knights are.”  He glanced at one of the screens, then back up.  “You want to help?”  He asked abruptly.

“Yes.”  Arrush answered without hesitation, nodding sharply enough that a drop of drool splashed to the floor and started smoking as it marred the smooth concrete.

Ben didn’t even glance at it.  “Ethan!”  He called.  “Get to the armory and get Arrush’s armor!”  On the other side of the warehouse, the young man groaned as he rolled to his feet and worked himself from a plod to a jog as he left the warehouse.  Then, in a softer voice, Ben continued.  “I’m not gonna just throw you in.”  He said.  “And Nate and or JP will be pissed about this.  But I’ve got a bad feeling about something I can’t pin down.  So if I absolutely need you… and it’ll probably be dangerous…”

“I don’t care.”  Arrush said, towering over the pale nonhuman man, his arms folding against his body.  “I want to help.”

Ben sighed.  “Yeah.  Me too.”  He said.  “Hopefully, though?  We won’t have to.”  He nodded toward the chair next to him.  “Settle in.  If you’ve got a religion, try praying for things to go smoothly.”

“I… don’t think I do?”  Arrush didn’t know what to think of that sentence, but he still sat.  And waited, and watched, and worried.

His normal day had lasted almost four hours this time.  That was almost a record.

_____

Alanna watched through through Nate’s eyes, as the man sighted on a Status Quo agent that was currently peeking around a hallway corner in the building he had a great angle on.  The skulljack hardware they were using filtered pretty much all emotion out of things, but Alanna had a kind of preconceived notion of Nate, and so her imagination filled in the steady breath, the tightened grip, the small things about shooting at another human with the intent to kill.

Maybe she was imagining it.  She didn’t shoot to kill that often at humans.  Once, honestly, and it had been awful.  It was also why she’d quietly stopped drawing her sidearm in dungeons when they were fighting anything that seemed even remotely intelligent; hunting something that was at most basically an animal, and at worst just a hollow puppet for a larger dungeon intellect?  That was one thing.  Killing someone, even if they were being controlled, or emotionally compromised, or actively trying to kill her, it felt wrong.

There was a line, obviously, and no one in the Order was likely to give a Status Quo sect the benefit of the doubt on this.  Some people weren’t going to change.  But they could, because they were people, and that loss was a tragedy.

Alanna didn’t so much think all of this as she did just feel it, a thrum of regret in her heart dulled down by the toughening potion.  And then Nate’s view jerked a fraction of an inch as he pulled the trigger twice in measured succession.

Six hundred feet away, a plate glass window cracked in two places, a chunk of it breaking away as it fell to the ground below, spiderweb lines racing through the rest of the glass.  On the other side, someone Status Quo affiliated was slammed against the wall they were taking cover behind as one of Nate’s bullets took them in the shoulder.  The grim looking machine pistol they were holding skidding away from them as they reeled back, blood dripping from their nose, and tried to dive for cover under a desk.

Nate took two more shots, but didn’t connect with either of them.  “One hit.  They’re bleeding.”  He sent, the text nature of their links making it seem like emotionless efficiency.

“Nosebleeds don’t count.”  Alanna replied.

“Light penetration on the hit, keep your eyes open.”  The response was still stripped of tone, but Alanna could read the sarcasm in it with a hint of a smile.

That wasn’t good news, though.  If even bullets from Nate’s absurdly out of place M24 weren’t doing more than causing bee stings, it was going to be nearly impossible to actually kill any of these people.  “Keep shooting at anyone who moves.”  Alanna said.  “Cover our rogues, I’m going to link up with James.”

“Good luck.”

The words were simple, but Alanna took them to heart.  “Alright, let’s move.  Nate’s covering our approach, and I’ve got a date to catch.”  Myles and Yin gave her different levels of anxious nods, as Alanna led them in a rapid sprint across the garden sidewalks that connected the parking structure to the office buildings.

There were still civilians out here, covering behind bushes or trees or white concrete rectangles that someone probably thought made for nice benches.  Not many people, but a few, and their trio came across a woman in tear-streaked makeup and a torn blouse when they crouched behind one of those concrete lines.

No one was shooting at them, so Alanna took the time to give the woman a reassuring smile.  “Hey.”  She started.  “Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay.  Stay down, and let us handle things.  Are you hurt?”

“My… my leg…” The woman stared up at Alanna, the fear in her eyes mixing with confusion at seeing her in out of place combat armor and a handful of magic items that didn’t really fit the aesthetic.  “I can’t feel it.”

Alanna pinged Frequency-Of-Sunlight with their location and a view of the surroundings.  “Okay.  A friend of mine is on the way to get you out of here.  She looks a little weird, don’t freak out on me, okay?”

The woman gave Alanna an incredulous look.  “Someone is shooting up my dental clinic and you think the last straw will be someone who looks weird?”  Her voice steadied as she reacted to the insane comment.

Alanna grinned at her.  “Good.  There you go.  Now stay down, we’ve got to move.”  She peeked over the edge, and double checked with anyone who was watching this side of the building, but saw no one inside who might be about to shoot them.  They seemed occupied for some reason.  “Let’s go.”  She silently signaled, and the hopped the barrier, Myles and Yin hot behind her.

The group rushed the rest of the way across, the mild overcast day providing odd contrast to the chunks of garden that had been cratered by grenade blasts or the smell of burning rubber and gasoline from the infernos that had been cars just a block away.  Reaching the base of the building, underneath one of the shattered windows, Alanna [Move Person]ed herself in first, slipping into the second floor with her gun up and her infant authority swirling around her wrist.

No one greeted her.  The place had emptied in a real hurry.  Myles and Yin joined her shortly after, Myles looking a little worse for wear as he used the short range spell, a tiny line of blood dripping from the corner of an eye.  “Okay.”  Alanna stated.  “Get to work.  Bail if you hit trouble.  Momo will be joining you soon to help.”

“Yes’m.”  Myles swept his eyes around the office, one hand already starting to pull a series of USB sticks out of a pouch.  “Yin, look for anything weird, I’ll start stripping computers.”  His companion gave him a mock salute and started checking every closed door in the place.

Alanna left them to it, and moved into the building.

She processed small details as she walked, keeping her pace steady.  No point getting ambushed now when she was alone, before she even joined the fight she was headed toward.  Part of her attention was split coordinating other teams moving through the building, all of them finding a similar lack of resistance, which seemed to point to Status Quo having fallen back to their prison complex to make a stand.  Which was a terrible idea, really; the place wasn’t defensible.

The rest of her focus on the space around her painted a weird picture.  In movies, when an office building was attacked, there was a narrative language to it.  Papers fluttering everywhere, chairs overturned, flashing lights from the fire alarms, maybe a few computers sparking with shattered screens.

This place was so utterly normal that it hurt.  The hallways Alanna was stalking down had intact frosted glass panes next to partly open doors into different businesses, real or shells for Status Quo.  There wasn’t a spilled potted plant or overturned bench in sight.  The worst she saw was some bullet holes in a wall and a splash of blood on the ground, and the smell of ozone as she approached where Alex had been putting down fireball cover earlier.

She linked up with a few other Order knights outside the breach into the prison.  “Where’s Simon?”  Was the first thing she asked Matt and Knife-In-Fangs as she joined them outside the door.

“Injured, out.”  Matt shrugged.  “He’ll be fine, probably.”  Alanna knew the lack of concern was probably due to the hardening potion, just like she knew she would normally be irate at the dismissal of a knight’s injury.  But Simon wasn’t dead, so it didn’t matter.  “We going in?”

“Coordinating.  Wait.”  Alanna flicked her eyes up, the gesture hard to shake even though she didn’t need to, and sorted through the skulljack feeds.  “All teams, move in in fifteen.  Stay close, overlap shields, the enemy have machine guns.  Do not fire on the non-squo combatants.  Spread out to the prisoners and prepare to telepad out.  Confirm.”

A series of confirmations from other groups came back to her, minus a few other people who were out of the fight from injuries.  Alanna didn’t have time to check severity.  Instead, she pulled a small flask from her belt and took a long drink of reflex coffee, counted down the last few seconds, and then nodded to the others, kicking open the door and dashing through the security checkpoint, into a concrete and iron cylinder of cells and gunfire.

Someone plummeted down the central shaft as soon as Alanna walked in, silently flailing as they fell through the open air and out of sight.  Bullets almost instantly started pecking at her shield bracers, and while Alanna was wearing four of the things and had over a hundred charges ready to go, she didn’t want to deplete them if she didn’t have to.  So she burst forward, getting out of the line of fire from the agents on higher levels to press herself against a flat metal wall between to segments of railing.

“Huh.  That really is a big fucking door.”  She commented, looking across at the massive metal vault door that dominated the other side of this level.  To her right, JP and a handful of others who she half recognized were actively dueling with a pair of people that crackled with lightning and swung fucking war axes around.  Alanna didn’t waste time, and dropped her rifle to its sling, letting Matt and Knife-In-Fangs take her place as they worked to countersuppress the agents upstairs.

Then she lifted the sledgehammer off her back, and started a silent run forward.

The Status Quo shock troopers - Alanna was proud of that one - were technically flanked, but one of the people she didn’t recognize was on the ground and clutching her chest, the other one looked like he could barely see, and while her camraconda partner had locked down one of the troopers, the other one was pressing Alex and JP hard enough that Smoke-And-Ember was going to be exposed and out of position soon.  So Alanna arrowed straight for that guy.

Just in time for him to trip JP with the blade of his axe, a spurt of blood painting the concrete, and then turn to brutally chop sideways at Smoke-And-Ember.  Alanna was still three steps away, but Alex was right there.  The air snapped into a harsh chill, and Alex’s breath came in gasps, but for a brief moment, nothing could kill her, and the axe stopped on the tips of her outstretched fingers just before it took Smoke-And-Ember in the neck.

The fighter pulled back like he’d expected it, and kicked JP as Alanna’s friend tried to stand, sending him sprawling past and toward Alanna herself.

She ducked past him, the two of them using their skulljacks on instinct to coordinate and not stumble into each other, and whipped a sledgehammer that weighed nothing toward the shock trooper’s center mass.

So far, the Status Quo fighters had proven capable of shrugging off bullets, walking off being knifed in the throat, and barely being dazed by repeat kicks to the head.  Which made it somewhat of a surprise to Alanna when she felt ribs snap and fleshy bits pulp, a sensation that was not at all pleasant, before her hammer strike was arrested by some outside force and the shock trooper sprawled sideways, tumbling wildly halfway through the iron railing that surrounded the ring of walkway.  It wasn’t an easy hit; some of that lightning danced back up the impact site, lighting up Alanna’s pain receptors like she’d just dunked her hands in acid.  But it was gone fast enough that she got away with just mildly panting and not screaming.

“Nice timing.”  Alex sighed in relief upon seeing Alanna, her shoulders sagging.

Alanna just nodded, looking at the other frozen soldier, trying to decide what to do with her.  It would be so easy to just execute the woman.  But that wasn’t how the Order worked.  Wasn’t how Alanna worked.  “Drop your weapon, get on the ground, and don’t move.”  She ordered the frozen figure.  “Ember, give her three seconds.”

The camraconda nodded, and blinked.  The woman in the bloodied suit jerked forward, and then stopped, stared down by someone who didn’t look even remotely interested in having a polite duel.  It took her slightly longer than three seconds to drop her axe, the metal weapon clattering to the concrete just barely audible over the gunfire around them.  But she did drop it, and Alanna gave her a slight respectful nod.

Then, from overhead, there was a crash like demolition work was going on.  Shouts and screams and profanity, far different in tone than the way Status Quo had been fighting back without real emotion, reached Alanna’s ears.  The gunshots took on a different beat; rapid fire, different from the measured crack of shots so far, more like a rattle of bullets, and not quite the heavy thrum of a heavier machine gun.

A ping caught Alanna’s attention; James, slipping around the outside, headed their way.  He said Zhu was talking about the big door.  Which was ominous.

“Begone.”  The word was spoken with a commanding, imperious tone, and despite being spoken normally, it was audible over everything else, coming from three rings up.

Peering up over the edge, Alanna saw a chunk of the railing, four bodies, and a handful of objects that were probably guns or maybe shoes, get blasted out from a central point.  Two of them landed on upper levels, one person just dropped straight down, while another, windmilling his arms, crashed into the railing only a meter away from where she was covering JP while he checked on the wounded woman he’d brought along.

Alanna didn’t think of herself as old.  But she did think of the guy who had impacted hard on the edge, and was scrambling to keep from falling, as a kid.  Her brain flicked through details - young black man, hair in cornrows, casual clothes - and took only a couple seconds to realize this was one of the outside combatants James had let into the prison half on accident.  She didn’t know if they were allies, or enemies, but he was a kid.  She’d be shocked if he was of legal drinking age.

So Alanna dropped her weapon next to JP, lunged over, and grabbed at one of his arms, just before he slipped down.  Her augmented upper body strength letting her hoist him up, her hands scrambling between the iron bars as she moved him over the railing like he was a rag doll.  And he may as well have been, groaning in pain and coughing wetly and slumping on the concrete floor as she set him on safe ground.

Alanna glared upward at the spot three layers up, where a woman in plate armor stepped up to the breach she had created.  The fire the Order teams had been taking when they’d started trying to take control of the ramps abruptly abated, shield bracers going dark as every Status Quo weapon locked onto Camille, and started hammering her.

And she ignored it, making a two fingered gesture like she was summoning a drink by the pool instead of worrying about something as petty as being shot.  Her sister, a perfect copy of her in every way, stepped up next to her.  Then she spoke in a voice that Alanna could hear perfectly well, at the same time that James flicked off his invisibility and slid down the ramp a few meters away, Zhu helping to shove him along as he inched down under the cover of the bars.

“An opportunity, a problem, and a threat, sister.”  Camille spoke with the utter assurance of someone who knew they were untouchable.  “It was your fortune sense that brought us here.  Which is which?”

Alanna felt like she couldn’t tear her eyes away, but a small nudge from James got her attention.  “Look.”  He said, eyes locked on the second sister.  “Holding back.”  He whispered.

Alanna narrowed her eyes, and made the connection James had.  The first Camille was bulletproof beyond all reason.  The second one was keeping back from the ledge, and had a plated arm up to cover half her face.  But all the same, she looked around the prison complex with a rapid eye.

Camille’s eyes locked onto Alanna, and she froze before she realized she wasn’t the one making eye contact with the woman.  It was James, sitting next to her, that Camille had just seen.  And Alanna got the sudden impression that the answer to that question, of problem, opportunity, and threat, was actually one thing, and it was a thing she was dating.

“You need to get out of here.”  Alanna sent over the link.  “She made you.”

“Yeah, I see.”  James sent back.  “Give it a second.”

Alanna’s heart pounded against the confines of her dulled emotions, until what felt like an eternity later that Camille kept sweeping her gaze around the space.  The second sister’s voice didn’t cut over the gunfire that was still raining down on their position, but she did certainly say something.  Something that made the first one look toward the heavy vault door on their level and nod.   “James, you can’t fucking fight her.”  Alanna ordered, sensing her partner tensing up.  And then she made it a broad command to every knight present.  “Do not engage Camille!”  She sent rapidly.  “Telepad out the instant she closes on you!”

She barely had time to get it out before the tankier Camille took a running start and flung herself out over the edge, dropping like an armor plated rock toward a spot alarmingly close to their position.  In the side of her mind, Alanna spotted two innocent little texts from knights who had run dry on shield bracer charges, and one who had taken a shot.  Not lethal, but that was a yet, and those messages were going to pile up.   “No, calling it.  Everyone out.  Grab a set of prisoners, telepad, now.”  Out loud, she said the same to everyone around her.  “JP, get your new friends.  Alex, Ember, on me.  Sorry James, we’re not gonna see that door.”

“Our… our friends!”  The woman on the ground, bleeding from her coat and chest, screamed as JP pushed her back down.

“We might get them.  If we don’t, we can come back, but only if we’re alive.”  JP snapped, pulling a charm bracelet off his wrist and pressing it into hers.  “Pop these, don’t ask me questions.”  The last word came out as almost a screech as he flattened himself down against the metal wall around the central shaft, gunfire slapping into the other side like fireworks.

“I can’t leave.”  James told Alanna suddenly.

“Fuck you, yes you can.”  She said, then followed his line of sight back upward to where the other Camille was looking their direction.  “James…”

“It’s her.”  James stated confidently.  “That’s our Cam.  You know it.”  Even as he spoke, the other Camille was busy twisting the long bladed mace she was carrying to flatten the agents near the vault door.

She did know it.  Her Empathy still worked, even if her emotions were dull right now, and she knew damn well that the person up there was looking at James like he was her last fucking hope in the world.  Alanna hissed in a breath, and was about to say something, when a flickering red light snaked out from somewhere on the second floor.  “Fuck, down!”  She snapped, pulling James back behind cover as the Status Quo artillery magic twisted into a straight line pointed at the Camille who was examining the vault door.  There were maybe five downed agents at her feet, all of them seemed alive though crippled and out of the fight.  But no one had ever accused Status Quo of caring about human life, and as the area lit up in a conflagration of light and heat, it washed over the downed agents just as much as Camille.

The armored woman stepped out of the fireball, exposed skin of her face smoldering away in what looked like an incredibly painful burn, one arm half missing.  The other arm, though, flung her mace upward, and there was the sound of concrete being split in half.  Whether she hit her target, Alanna couldn’t tell.

“You needed Sarah and a choir to fight someone who couldn’t do that.”  Alanna hissed at him, checking as knights got out with prisoners in tow one by one.  She popped up with her rifle, signaling Alex and Matt to move too as she covered them with suppressive fire on the only agent that seemed to still be shooting their way.  It didn’t do much, but the man on the other end of her scope at least ducked back down.  “Zhu, get him out of here.”

“No!”  Zhu exclaimed.  “We need to wait for the door!”

“The door is the size of a fucking oil tanker and isn’t moving!”  Alanna snapped back, nodding at Smoke-And-Ember in acknowledgement just before he vanished along with the two new people.  “Matt’s out.  Alex is out.  JP, you’re up.  Think you can make that ramp and hit the next cell with people?”

“Fuck.  Fuck me.”  JP was shaking, and wiped a blood covered hand across his forehead without really thinking about it.  “Yeah.  I can… yeah.”  Alanna passed him the rest of her coffee.  “If I die, I’ll fucking haunt you!”  He snapped, and started running.  No one shot back at him, but he still ran like he was about to die.

Alanna turned back to James.  “Let’s go.  We can hit the next row, and…”

James and Zhu caught her arm in unison, two limbs both grabbing her as the duo peeked through the railing at a small angle to where Camille had stepped up to the massive metal door.

All Alanna could smell was cordite, and her ears were ringing even with the fancy noise canceling headset, and even though the sounds of combat were fading, the sounds of the wounded and dying were filling the air in a twisted collective whine.  But she still noticed the detail of the hiss of the door cracking open, the tiny wisp of vapor from the other side sliding through as mist, the way Camille looked a little confused as to why the door was opening.  Small details.

Her boyfriend and his glowing orange second coat were staring at it like they were waiting to see what was going to happen, like they needed to know.  Alanna knew that look.  She also decided, right then, to trust them.  “JP’s out.”  She sent.  “Outside teams pulling back.  Only a few knights left in here.”  She told him.  And then Alanna made a choice.  “You take the door, I’ll grab Cam.  Don’t you fucking do anything stupid.”  Alanna ordered.

James turned and caught her lips in a kiss.  “I never do anything stupid on purpose.”  He said.

“That’s not even close to what she said.”  Alanna heard Zhu say, the navigator’s manifested eye spinning in a loop on James’ shoulder.

She didn’t laugh.  She didn’t have time.  She needed to get upstairs, fast.  “Here.”  She handed James the sledgehammer.  “Seriously, please don’t fight her until I’m back.”

“Be careful.”  James told her in loving reply.  And then a simple “Let’s go.”

And they set off to accomplish one last pair of objectives.