Alex POV

“We aren’t totally screwed!” Daniel yelled enthusiastically. Alex herself almost despaired at the overwhelming odds, so this situation must have been worse for Daniel who relied on his knowledge. Alex had to suppress a yawn though. Even if Daniel finished his decoding within three days, the day neared its end. Daniel thankfully suggested to call it a night, so even he got caught up to by exhaustion despite what seemed like boundless excitement.

Alex settled down for more meditation only to see Daniel collapse. One second he embodied health the next… Alex didn’t want to entertain the thought. For now she needed to do what she could for her best friend. “Alisha what do you think happened? The only damage he took was a cut on cheek which we addressed, so…”

“Yes, I skimmed through the experiments but his condition displays the same symptoms. Irregular breathing, contracting muscles that you would call cramping, and his veins are faintly glowing. The problem is that I think we need a defibrillator; the writer mentioned the need to restart the heart of some of the subjects except we don’t have any. We have 3 days to catch a charge from lightning.”

Alex felt impressed by Alisha’s calm attitude and ability. What was she? An eighth grader? She didn’t look it, calmly gathering wires, rods, and two metal plates after grabbing the inert defibrillator.

Alisha roared, “don’t just stand there! Help me get these outside!”

Alisha’s call for help shook Alex out of her reverie. She still had to check outside before they made any rash decisions, so she had Alisha wait while she peeked outside. Her house had stayed intact fortunately; as she looked around, there were no signs of any recent activity. Her dad and Ben, Daniel’s dad, must have succeeded in drawing away all the monsters. She called down that the cost was clear and helped carry the odds and ends up the stairs.

The neighborhood looked strangely fine but with no activity, giving off an eerie ghost town feeling. The wind chimes that some of the Neighbors owned didn’t help. Alex broke the silence, “We have to find the tallest point around, right?”

Alisha nodded mutely possibly scared of drawing monsters, but she suggested, “we should go to Mr. Bricken’s house.” They walked in silence with the occasional blood splatter making them wince. After 15 minutes of nerve wracking walking they stood in front of what could be considered a mansion.

Alex whistled, “I never understood Bricken’s obsession with making his house larger. I heard from your brother that Brickens simply wanted to show off his wealth, but seemed pointless.”

Alisha grunted, “Well his ‘pointless’ archaic displayment of wealth helps us a lot.”

They entered without the usual ceremony required by Mr. Bickens. Alex thought that was one of the main reasons he had no friends in the immediate neighborhood. Well the person was dead most likely. She hoped no bad luck came from marching right in. Just as she thought about uncomfortable possibilities, Alex found one of the worst standing right around the corner.

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The monster seemed to be what used to be one of Mr. Bricken’s dogs, and the unfriendly bulldog had become 500 pounds of fierceness, ugly and hungry. With a growl, he leapt at them with startling speed unfitting for such a monsterous size.

Alex saw the rods Alisha held clenched and knew what she needed to do. She could simply use the mutt’s momentum, because in a normal match she would have even laughed at such stupidity.

Wrenching one of the rods away, Alex plunged one end into the ground angling the tip towards the charging monster. Already in the air, the stupid beast couldn’t stop from skewing itself. Not waiting to see the monster die, Alex grabbed another rod and with a roar she shoved the tip through the roof of its mouth instantly killing it… or so she thought.

The monstrosity was still struggling even though by all rights the thing should be dead two times over. The fact it was suspended in air by the two rods was buying them time. Was there nothing she could do against these monsters?

Alex was perilously close to despair when she remembered that she actually managed to puncture the monster with only her strength. Did it have something to do with what that book said? Alex usually timed a burst of anger in the image of a flame with every hit in fights, in matches or on the street, but that image helped way too much recently. Also with the sledge hammer a simple image shouldn’t be capable of enhancing her strength to such an extent.

Ignoring the struggling beast, Alex sat herself down into meditation on the spot. What if she tried scaling up the image? She focused on her emotions already aflame with anger and instead of calming down like usual she fed the image everything she could think of: her frustration at her powerlessness, her best friend in danger, the “Gifter” wrecking her world, her father having to sacrifice himself, everything became fuel for her inner flame even the strange crystal was fuel. Alisha stammered her first sentence in a while, “Alex! What do you think you’re doing?!”

Alex almost lost her hold on the “flame” at Alisha’s outburst. She felt startled when she opened her eyes to see herself outlined with blacklight. Taking advantage of her confusion the monster tried to slash Alex with its claws uncaring about worsening wounds as it broke the rods. However this was fruitless because the attack felt telegraphed in the extreme... a faint outline of blacklight foretold the attack!

With all the monster’s attacks being telegraphed so obviously, Alex was able to deal several blows at various vulnerabilities. She even began to feel she was practicing on a training dummy albeit a live one. Even so the beast still hadn’t given up and Alex’s sharpened instincts for danger became very useful in the next crucial moment. After a rather fun minute of bashing away and just letting loose, she noticed that instead of the usual slashes the faint outline formed a strange structure in front of its mouth. Her instincts screamed that was bad news so Alex struck the monster’s muzzle upwards hoping to disrupt. After that split second a stream of flames gushed out of its jaws.

The struggle continued for another minute but even the monstrous vitality gave out from the sheer amount of damage Alex dealt. The fire attacks were a pain but she found that she could dodge or disrupt the... well spell structure by simply punching through that because her own... aura seemed made of the same stuff, her punches muddled and messed up the structure. One time the fire stream backfired even, and with an anguished howl the monster finished its death rows.

With the fight ended, Alex made her flame dissipate like normal. Seeing how her mental flame wasn’t just her anger, Alex thought she would have a harder time cooling down but her worries were unfounded. Except, the exhaustion hit her like a freight train mixed strangely with hunger.

“You won finally?” Alisha peeked from a neighboring house at a collapsed Alex surrounded with the smoldering remains of the house with the carcass of the beast in front of her.