Chapter 36

A Smelly Threat

The crowd did not stir, completely shocked. It gave me a window of oppurtunity to try again to get Stephen to realize what I’d been doing.

[ Get up. Take the credit. ]

He still looked completely lost. Fuck!

I didn’t get to send another message because the masked man's lackeys recovered, the second biggest seeing his chance to make an impression on the others. He drew a shotgun and held it up to my chest.

“You think you can get away with that? You got fucking lucky you little noob shit. We’re gonna slice that shitty helmet off your bloody corpse.”

The other men recovered, and were egged on by the second in command’s bravado. They drew their own weapons.

Behind them, Stephen stood up, he still had his hand out, like I asked, but now he raised it above his head, looking me straight in the eye, desperate to communicate what he wanted me to do.

I didn’t know what he wanted. But I knew what I would be thinking in his shoes. He brought his hand down, and squeezed it into a fist.

As he did I bent down, clenched the energy still coursing through my body… and forced it out. It burst from within the core of my mind, knocking the men away from me, their bodies and weapons going flying every which way.

Stephen stepped back into the fray. “Enough! No one threatens my Right Hand. Join us… or get the fuck out of here.” He spat the last sentence at them.

The second in command snarled, still somehow too stupid to just walk away. Stephen motioned with his hand, I rushed forward, and he snapped his fingers. I used the very last of my energy to make the fishbowl coarse with energy and then flex out, my mental power seeping out like steam, burning at the air. It was so intense the man’s face started to turn red, as if being lightly burned.

Cool, I didn’t know I could do that. It must have been a side effect of the fishbowl encasing my head. I didn’t think there was actually water in here, thought it was just for show but it apparently had some kind of water like properties. I wasn’t complaining.

But I wasn’t kidding around when I said it was the last of my power. After that show, my energy reserves were completely spent. I didn’t know how some light fire was supposed to scare this guy if seeing his boss be completely chopped in half didn’t.

“I changed my mind. We don’t want you fuckers around. Run back to your boss. If you don’t… I’ll show you the full taste of my power. I went easy today. If I could do all that by Enhancing a noob… what do you think I could do with someone with way higher Stats?”

Stephen still had his hand up, pretending to direct me, he added some of his own power to cover me. It washed over my body like a warm embrace.

The guy spat. Disgusting. But he got up without saying another word and gestured for his men. They unequipped their weapons and fell into step behind him. The crowd parted to let them go. Some members of the crowd tossed the skull masks after them, others crusehed them under foot.

Against all odds, we had somehow squashed the problem.

Stephen let his power release, the warmth leaving me. He held his hands up, yelling to the crowd, “Do you see now? This is my power! I can enhance you all and together… she is next!” He pointed to the horizon, where the monster had finally found where we were, her foot falls beginning to reach us in our gathering place.

But, for the moment, the crowd didn’t care about that. They were swept up in our display of power and by Stephen’s words. United as one, the crowd cheered.

“We will be in touch!” Stephen yelled over the crowd. “Give me a few more days for my power to grow! On the last day…” He ran a finger across his throat and pointed back to the monster.

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The crowd roared. Rising to a deafening level. Stephen turned back to me and grinned, holding out his hand for a fist bump. I smashed the hell out of it. Over Stephen’s shoulder I saw the girl. She flashed two thumbs up at me before disappearing in the crowd as it began to disperse. The monster was here and it was majorly pissed off. It had gone this whole time without destroying a single person.

It made up for it in spades. It reached for the crowd, picking up and throwing them, popping the heads off of others. The scene of our success had quickly given way to chaos. I grabbed Stephen’s arm.

“Come on, we better run,” I said.

He bonked me on the head. “Why would we do that?” He grabbed my hand and yanked me forward, toward the monster.

As the crowd was a mass of people running every which way, we ran straight through it. I didn’t know what he was planing but I went with it, hoping he had some big showy finale planned. Maybe he wanted to jump up and punch the monster in the face, that device mounted to his fist.

Stephen stopped right underneath the monster. He inhaled deep and shouted up at her: “HEY!”

The psycho girl stopped in the middle of chewing up a person. Her mouth stayed open and the gore from inside tumbled out, dribbling down uncomfortably close to me.

She bent down, intrigued. Her giant eyes were closer than they’d ever been, two big saucers, staring us down. I could tell she didn’t recongize Stephen in his new glorious leader git up. But as usual she had only eyes from me. She broke out into a toothy grin, corpses sticking out between her teeth.

“Your days are numbered, Cthulhu wench! By the last day, we will destroy you! Enjoy your last few meals you big, ugly, stinky–!”

She lurched her head forward, gobbling us up in one bite. I didn’t even feel an ounce of pain, I think she may have swallowed us whole. The Game Over screen greated me but, this time, there wasn’t a horrible mangled view of my body. A nice gift and perfect end to a day that I thought was a resounding success.

I backed out of the Game Over screen and went to go to the writer’s nook but Stephen beat me to it with an invite.

I teleported straight into a hug. “WE DID IT!” Stephen screamed as he wrapped his arms around me, hopping around in a circle.

“I know! How the fuck did we manage it!?” I said, laughing.

“By being stupid lucky idiots," Angelia said as she stepped into the room.

“Get in here!” Stephen yelled, scooping her up. She fought him at first, her whole body language giving off the impression of a touch adverse cat. But her sour face eventually gave way to smiles as we all spun around in a circle.

We kept spinning, all the way to our booth, where we finally disengaged and fell into our spots, still laughing.

“What the hell was that speech at the end though?” Angelia asked. “If everyone wasn’t so busy running around and dying you could have seriously jeopardized things.”

“What are you talking about?” Stephen said. “That was badass. I threatened the monster head on. No one else has done that.”

“It was dumb,” Angelia said.

“You did call her stinky,” I added.

Stephen crossed his arms. “Yeah, that part I wasn’t too proud of… I just, I don’t know, I got caught up in the moment.”

“The power may be going to your head,” I said. Speaking of heads, I remembered my fishbowl and unequipped it, suddenly feeling much closer to everyone.

“She’s right,” Angelia said. “If it wasn’t for Darcy we would have lost today. Not just the day but the whole thing could have ended as soon as that masked fuck knocked you out.”

Stephen's crazy high flew a bit closer to Earth. I was grateful that the girl said it and I didn’t have to.

“Yeah, I know. You were amazing, Darce.” He grinned at me. “But I gotta do better, I agree.”

“We have a few days left. You guys have to finish your training. And maybe in the meantime we can prevent the others from seeing you directly. We will close off the cave. Tell them you are gathering your power. Which, really, isn’t even a lie.”

“But–” Stephen started.

“I agree with her,” I said. “We have to keep up the presentation. The more appearances you make the more chances there are for them to notice the cracks in our story. It’s too risky."

He closed his eyes tightly, rubbing his forehead like he was nursing a migraine. I knew it for what it was though: extreme thinking. It didn’t take him too long. He opened his eyes, sighed. “You’re right. I’ll stay out of the spotlight then.”

The girl clapped. “Fantastic! How is your training going? I assume good, I don’t think anything you guys just did would have been possible without it, right?”

I nodded. “So right. It’s going well. Our strength has grown, the amount of energy we have access to has improved all that’s left…”

I looked to Stephen for help. How did we explain what we were going to do?

“You guys are learning more than Magic, aren’t you?”

My heart started racing. Shit. How the hell did we navigate this?

She saw me struggling. “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me. If you can’t, I’m sure there’s a reason why.”

Stephen and I both nodded enthusiastically. She laughed. “Okay then, keep your secrets.”

"Tomorrow we should have everything figured out," I said. "We're entering the final stretch."

Angelia took on a more somber expression, all traces of the laughter gone. "We are in general. We've got everything we need in regards to the amount of people. It's all up to you guys now."

No pressure, right?