Upon actually getting back to her wall cutout Eryth experienced a minor moment of clarity and decided that, perhaps, putting her rather squishy human body anywhere near the spot she just ate a bullet from might just be a bad idea. That said, the closest unoccupied spot on the wall was closer to Sam. And Eryth’s inner survival instincts seemed to consider any decrease in distance between Sam and herself an all-around bad move.
Her next closest option had the benefit of being even farther away from the walking vis-bomb, but the downside of already being used by the sweaty guy who had nodded at them when they first got to the roof some minutes ago. Right now she didn’t have a matrix, which meant that for every minute that passed her sanity would become more a topic of some contention.
There was potential for a very awkward conversation:
“Hi, do you mind if I crouch right next to you and shoot people? Don’t worry about the matrix, I’ve probably got a good while before I’m overcome with the uncontrollable urge to end your life.”
Not a great icebreaker.
Honestly, this whole situation reminded Eryth of finding a spot to eat at the canteen back in Breakwater. Especially when she had only just started working as a courier and didn’t know Arnold and Sam yet.
Wait a second.
Eryth glanced around, only now realizing that one-half of her total number of friends was currently missing.
Where’s Arnold?
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Arnold just stood and stared as Eryth and Sam climbed towards the roof. His hands were on one of the lower rungs, his right foot planted at the base, but he just couldn’t make himself move.
He could hear the sounds of screaming and the sharp crack of bullets against metal pouring in through the opening above. Going up meant moving towards death.
Why would he move up?
How could he move up?
He would have to be crazy.
As he clenched the ladder in his hands so hard he could feel his muscles tearing he glanced upwards and saw Sam looking at him with a raised eyebrow. Eryth was above her and was apparently just standing at the top for some reason, probably she realized that going up there was insane.
Sam tilted her head upwards, motioning Arnold upward to join her. The motion broke the freeze that was arresting his thoughts, but rather than climb towards doom he scrambled backward from the ladder and started sprinting away through the cargo hold.
No way in hell was he going up there. People were shooting at each other! What kind of absolute lunatic would he have to be to willingly put his life in danger?
He thought he saw Sam roll her eyes but she was clearly crazy so who cares what she thinks.
As Arnold scrambled his way through the narrow corridors of scuffed crates and banged-up barrels he thought about how much of a bad idea deciding to go on this delivery was.
He shouldn’t have left the Break. There were good reasons why his grandparents had decided to settle in Breakwater rather than keep living in Sunside. Humanity wasn’t made to live without plants, without rain, without lakes.
Arnold wasn’t religious. The idea of a god was a Darkside thing, and his family was a mix of Break natives and former Sunsiders. That said though, if there was a God, he clearly made humanity so it could live in the Break. Everything else was off-limits. Settling elsewhere was hubris, and he had made the mistake of forgetting where he was meant to be. His Dad had told him that he was getting greedy by signing on for this, and if he got out of this alive he would be in for the scolding of a lifetime.
He would welcome it. If he got scolded it would at least mean he made it out alive.
As he scrambled through the tight corridors he came to the realization that he was now completely lost within the cargo hold. He hadn’t spent as much time exploring the wagon as Eryth and Sam, preferring to just hole up in the closet where they all slept and practice his vis control. Now, that decision was coming back to bite him. If he was calmer, maybe he could have worked it out and found one of the paths that led to the front half of the treadwagon. Disoriented as he was though? No chance.
Whenever Arnold heard footsteps nearby he would immediately run in the opposite direction. What if it was Arnett the lead protector? Would he make him go fight? Would he just shoot him for running? What if the entire security team had been killed already and these were raiders? The ceaseless sound of impacts against the outside of the wagon’s hull only seemed to stir up his spiraling thoughts.
So Arnold just kept aimlessly going nowhere for a while.
Eventually, though, he started to flag.
He had been going full-tilt the whole time, aimlessly racing his way back and forth while his mind overwhelmed him with panicked thoughts and stories about how he was being hunted by anyone and everyone. To be blunt, it was a state that had managed to utterly exhaust him in a matter of minutes. Of course, it felt longer to Arnold, but fight or flight responses tend to do funny things to time perception.
Eventually, after stumbling around for another ten minutes Arnold found the spot Sam and Eryth had been lying around for the last few days. It wasn’t quite the cleaning closet that he had been looking for, but his thoughts were so disorganized he didn’t care. He just associated the space with safety and gambling debt.
He curled up behind a couple of barrels in case somebody came after him.
He was safe.
He would just sit here and wait.
The raid would end soon, and he would hide here until the caravan reached Chaolus.
Naturally, no sooner had his breathing calmed and his thoughts stopped strangling each other for the privilege of screaming the loudest did the wall behind him explode.
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Wherever he was, Eryth figured he was probably fine. As much as Arnold liked to play around with his vis, she honestly couldn’t picture him ever getting into a fight. It was like trying to imagine a cloudless cycle at Breakwater. It just didn’t make sense.
Putting the grouchy courier out of her mind, Eryth glanced over toward the sweaty guy. Well, his name was apparently Terrance. A piece of information she received via a single-word response in between huffs and puffs when she crouched next to him and asked for his name.
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His eyes had lingered on her wounded arm for a moment and the conspicuous absence of a matrix, but other than that he seemed nice enough. That said, Eryth couldn’t help but notice the way he always kept her in his vision. She could have also sworn that there wasn’t so much dust piled up around on the roof before.
Shaking her head, Eryth peeked back through the cutout towards the wagon behind them.
The treaded truck was still there, now firing ballistic rounds into the wagon’s shielding like a drill boring into stone. The buggy was just flat-out gone. She had no idea what had happened to it. Maybe the sweaty guy- maybe Terrance had done something to get rid of it. The last remaining motorbike was swerving back and forth like a drunk fisherman celebrating another successful catch, probably feeling rather unsafe after what happened to the other bike.
Welp, time to play distraction for Sam.
Holding her gun in her right hand, she peeked out from her cover and tried to sight the driver. Unfortunately for her, her left arm was completely useless since the nerves were still blissfully detached, meaning no stabilization. Eryth waited until the bike slowed down to swerve in the other direction and fired. Just like with the other bike, she fired a four-round burst, aiming slightly low to let the gun push up. However unlike the other bike, she completely missed.
The first bullet almost grazed the front tire, but with only one arm to manage recoil, she lost control of the gun as the other shots uselessly burrowed into the ground. Little puffs of pale sand made sure her failed attempt was extremely visible.
Which the bike’s ride-along vis-user seemed to take offense to.
Maybe Eryth was still shaken up from getting shot earlier, but she hadn’t really paid attention to the user before taking her shot. They didn’t seem to be doing anything, so she figured she could ignore them.
Of course, that was a bit of a mistake.
As the user met Eryth’s eyes a feeling of vertigo unlike anything she had ever experienced in her life consumed her. It was like somebody had suddenly put hypersonic cleaners in her inner ear. She immediately fell over. She couldn’t tell which way was up. She was falling even as she shook on the rumbling ground. Every direction was the wrong one and she could have sworn she was spinning even though she knew she was lying still.
Just as she started to throw up the feeling suddenly stopped. Suppressing the urge to vomit she pushed herself up a little only to see that now Terrance was the one lightly convulsing on the ground.
Okay.
Problem-solving time.
Eryth leaned her back against the hot metal wall she had been using for cover and willed her brain into order despite her overwhelming feeling of dizziness.
So. Angry vis user who can attack instantly and immediately incapacitate. Not good. How do you even go against that? If Sam got hit with one of those before she was able to discharge her vis…
Eryth glanced over at where Sam was crouched, her matrix pouring out vibrant light like a caged crimson star.
Sam noticed and called over with an eager grin. Barely audible over the noise of gunfire and the engines.
“Ready?”
“Just a second!” Eryth quickly replied.
“Alright. But maybe hurry up a bit?” A bit of strain crept into Sam’s voice. “The tingles are starting to become a bit insistent.”
Eryth noticed the sweat on Sam’s brow.
If Sam wasn’t able to discharge all that then she would probably become less of an annoying troll and more of a fine mist.
Focus. How does the user’s attack work? Well, Eryth wasn’t being attacked right now, and based on the fact that Terrance was slowly pulling himself up he wasn’t being attacked either. The only thing that changed was that now they were both behind cover. Line of sight? How to block the user’s vision…
Eryth looked around her, hoping to spot something she’d missed. As her gaze traveled over Terrance he tensed, and the accumulated dust all around him seemed to vibrate.
Ah, that would work.
“Can you control the dust?” She plainly asked.
At this, the user tensed even more... but eventually nodded.
“Yeah. D-don’t get any ideas though just because you know what my matrix does. You so much as point that g-gun in my direction I’ll fill your lungs with sand faster than you can bl-blink.” He was trying to be intimidating, but his words kinda just tumbled out, like he had been saving them up for a while. He also sounded kinda young. Like, even younger than Arnold young.
Eryth raised her hains placatingly. “Hey, relax. I just need your help to distract that user on the bike. My friend is gonna take out the truck with the turret, but if she gets distracted before she can finish…”
Eryth pointed back at Sam with her glowing matrix. Terrance glanced at her and immediately blanched.
“She’s gonna blow up the whole back of the wagon!”
Eryth blinked. Apparently it was even more vis build up than she had thought, and so she immediately increased how crazy she considered Sam from slightly nuts to basically insane.
“Well, hopefully not, but I need your help with the vis user to avoid that.”
Eryth had noticed how since she sat next to him, Terrance hadn’t really done anything. He had basically just been keeping an eye on her the whole time. Except for when they both got hit with the dizzy ray. He must have figured it safe to peek while she was incapacitated.
Terrance nodded.
Eryth quickly explained her plan (really it was so simple it could barely be called a plan), and she moved over to her original wall cutout. She would take a potshot, and while the angry user turned her inner ears inside out Terrance would toss up a cloud of dust, making sure to keep it centered on the bike even if the driver tried to escape. And after all that, Eryth would signal Sam.
Peeking out, she found that the potshot was unneeded, as the user was nice enough to demolish her ability to stand without prompting the moment Eryth poked her head out. She tumbled forward and landed half out of cover, immediately vomiting onto the catwalk down below as she convulsed. Thank goodness the people on the truck focused on the cockpit or she’d be full of holes.
After a few seconds of heaving up the dregs of her stomach acid under the constant attack on her balance, Eryth started to worry that the sweaty user wouldn’t actually do his part. However, when her nausea went from mind-destroying to merely week-ruining, she knew he had successfully blinded the angry bandit of dizziness.
“Saam! Goo ferit!” Eryth managed to call out to Sam with a throat hoarse from bile and slurred from disorientation.
“Alright! Cross your fingers that I don’t blow up!” Sam replied with a slightly maniacal laugh.
Eryth was too tired to pull back behind the wall, so she got front-row seats to witness what happened next.
The turret that had been firing at the cockpit of the following treadwagon abruptly stopped, confusing the two raiders manning it. Next, the entire chassis of the vehicle took on a pale red glow.
Eryth could feel the power there. Usually whenever Sam manipulated metal the only hint that something was weird was the fact that it was floating, but this time, there was so much power and sheer presence being inflicted on the steel that the air itself seemed to vibrate.
Eryth could see the truck’s driver start to panic and try to yank the steering wheel but it didn’t budge. The metal didn’t listen to him. It listened to Sam.
And Sam told it to bend.
With a brutal screech, the entire form of the truck twisted into itself like a crushed can. As it compressed burrs grew from the truck’s bed and turret and speared through the flesh of the terrified raiders, locking them into the mangling ball. At some point along its conversion into scrap, the engine must have cracked open, because the fuel that was now dripping all over the jagged metal sculpture ignited and burned as it hovered there, held aloft and glowing by Sam’s honestly insane build-up of vis.
And floating there it stayed. Lightly shuddering and burning as it occasionally twisted or compressed a bit more. Short screeches and metallic groans occasionally spilled into the air. Until, without warning or fanfare, it abruptly stopped glowing and dropped to the sand below, falling away from the speeding caravan as dust billowed around it.
Huh.
That was... A lot.
Eryth threw up again and passed out.