Lucy raised her arm, her sword aimed toward the girl’s chest. Adam ran up, grabbed her wrist with his [Psycho-Pull], and slammed it against the tank.

"Stop!" He shouted.

"Chosen?" Lucy’s mystic cut off, the light vanishing into particles. She didn’t look hurt, only surprised. "What are you doing?"

"Getting you to stop!" Adam said. He marched up to her side, his grip still firm. "What the hell are you doing? Calm the fuck down."

"Chosen, she tried to attack you," Lucy said. "She’s a threat that must be eliminated. To think such a rotten person lived here, intending to sully Her Chosen with that foul corruption…"

Adam tightened his [Psycho-Pull]. It was like trying to crush a rock with his bare hands. What did they feed these War Maidens back in Astraea?

In truth, he understood Lucy. That red set her off, and in combination with her seeing him as some kind of angelic figure…it was a powder keg set to blow. Had this been back in the streets, he would've let her go to town on the intruder girl. Maybe even joined in, depending on his mood.

The stakes were different here. This was no time to be breaking jaws or smiting bodies or whatever. He gave one final shove and managed to push her sword arm away. She folded the blade back in before it swished in his direction. He grabbed her shoulder and looked her in the eye.

"Fucking hell, Lucy, remember what we came here to do!" Adam said. "We can’t interrogate her if you blast her to a million pieces, yeah?"

She looked between them. "She may try to harm you again."

Adam glanced over at the intruder girl. "Well, are you?"

The girl gulped. "You lettin’ me live?"

"No," Lucy said.

Oh, for the love of…

"I haven’t been able to understand a single word of what she’s been saying."

"Huh?" Adam stared at her. "You kidding me? The girl was gasping for air before she chucked that grenade at us. Did all that walking turn your eardrums into mush?"

"I heard her well enough, but I don’t know her language. The words—are those even words—sound more varied than they should be."

"Hang on, hang on," Adam said, scratching his head. "I thought you were having a conversation with her."

"I wasn’t," Lucy said. She then swished her blade and the girl froze, still pinned. She wilted beneath Lucy’s glare. "I was talking at her. That’s why I told her to speak properly. If she can use the cloaking technology, she’d have to read its manual first. The only explanation is that she worked it via trial and error."

Of course, I understand her, because she’s speaking plain American English. Adam wanted to say. He laid eyes on the water tank’s label. Storage Tank A-2. He lifted his tomahawk. Property of the Astraean Defense Order, it read in proper, standard English—

No.

English didn’t use pictograms, in the vein of Japanese or Chinese characters. English strokes didn’t consist of squares, hexagons, rhombuses, and other polygons. English grammar was an unoptimized mess, still clinging to its little intricacies even as they tripped up their own native speakers. Astraean was different. It was polished and well-regulated. Its linguistic patterns held consistency. He had spoken, read, and listened to it over the past-half week.

Wait, what? He stared down at his jumpsuit, then at the insignia on Lucy’s uniform. War Maiden Corps, it said.

"What I am speaking now?" Adam said to Lucy, a tremor in his voice.

"Common Astraean," Lucy said. "You’re quite fluent."

Adam turned to the cowering girl. One eye peeked out between her messy bangs. "And you?" Adam said. "What language am I speaking?"

"The one everyone else speaks?" The girl mumbled back.

No conscious effort. No flicking of a mental switch. The correct words flowed out without any hesitation. He checked his Augmentation Foci. Nothing. The Mystic Core bore no fruit either. He switched back and forth over and over and finally understood.

It made him want to vomit.

"Chosen?" Lucy said. "Are you okay?"

"No." He said. It came out as a growl, "I don't think I am."

"Is it her?" Lucy glared back at the intruder, "Would you like me to get rid of her? It'll be very easy to find an empty spot in the base."

"It's not her either!" It's your damn Goddess! First his organs, now his own linguistic comprehension. Were there no lows that awful deity wouldn't sink to?

"Um…if you’re not gonna do anything to me…" The intruder girl began.

Adam swung his tomahawk onto the side of the water tank as hard as he could. It produced a loud clang, causing the intruder girl to flinch. He breathed in and out, steadying the tremors running down his spine, shoving this linguistic horror in the confines of his mind, its cracks be damned.

"Shaddup!" Adam shouted. He strode forward until the girl was once again backed against the wall. "We're not done with you yet. First point: the language you’re speaking is called English, got it?"

"Okay?" The girl said.

"First rule: you try anything funny again and I’m letting my friend run a train all over you."

The girl nodded, fast.

"Good. You got a name, kid?"

"Penelope, but everyone calls me Penny." The girl said. It suited her.

"Alright Penny, my friend and I just had a little miscommunication, is all. You still broke in and tried to whack us. Don’t think you’re off the hook yet." Adam said.

He examined Penny further. Her clothes reminded him of a garbage bag. Her arms were skinny like tree branches and blotchy with red spots. Malnutrition, or disease. The scraps on her plate belonged to small animals and wild fruit, neither of which were nutritious or filling. Acne covered her cheeks. Kids like her were a dime a dozen in Steeldale. They dumpster-dived, they nicked wallets, and they stood outside soup kitchens on rainy days. Charity bait was an apt description.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

The workers loved these types of kids. They’d be nice to this girl. Sympathetic, even. Not to him. He stopped crying after he turned eleven.

"Lucy, frisk her down. We’re doing this in a place that doesn’t stink to high heaven." Adam said.

"Interrogation?" Lucy said, "Good idea, Chosen. Will you to be leading?"

"Yeah? It’s not like you can speak English." Adam said. "Just keep an eye out if she tries to hurt me again."

"As you wish, Chosen." Lucy cancelled her mystic. He caught a glimpse of a disappointed grimace as the light faded. Her posture kept straight as she reached out and pulled Penny up. The younger girl squeaked as she was whirled around and her body was patted down. Once done, Lucy bound her wrists with cable and frog-marched her back to the entrance.

"We want answers on you being here. Who, why, where, how, and what. Start thinking as we walk." Adam said.

Experience (Conversational) acknowledged: 15%.

----------------------------------------

They took Penny to one of the empty rooms in the Barracks. Sat her down, and gave her a bottle of water and a snack bar to calm her down. The girl spluttered as she drank, but chomped down the rest of the snack with gusto. It must’ve been the best tasting thing she had all week. Penny gave a small grin at Adam, then almost jumped up from her seat as Lucy cleared her throat behind her and spoke to Adam.

"W-what she’d say?" Penny asked.

"She’s going to annihilate you if you try to blow me up again," Adam said to Penny.

"I won’t. I swear, I won’t! I only had the knife and the bomb because the boss said I needed a weapon against the Blast Witch, but he didn’t have any more guns so they gave me the last one in the stock—"

"Okay, enough." Adam slammed his palm on the table. Penny stopped blubbering. She’d cried up a storm the whole way back. Adam thought back to his youth.

Steeldale taught him three methods of cracking answers out of rats. 1. Barrage them with force until they submitted out of fear. 2. Worm the talk out of them with honeyed words and false kindness. 3. Combination of the previous two. Penny’s situation was the third. Lucy was the muscle, who had already softened up the target. It was his duty, as the so-called ‘nice' guy, to bring it home.

He wanted to snort. He, the brat who once broke a nerd’s jaw with knuckledusters for the location of a weed stash, was playing the good cop? Not much of a Pitbull, was he? He brushed the thought off. He couldn’t afford to go light on Penny. She sobbed up a storm in the water storage, but no-one hid that long from Lucy’s detection without being at least a little hardy inside.

"First off, who are you, really?" Adam said. "Not your name, I know that, but whose crew were you running with?"

Penny spilled the beans. She belonged to a crew of machine scavengers, led by a man called Raz. Somehow, they’d heard rumors of the MOB and thought it was full of treasure. Her duty was to fix any broken machines in the base, which would then be carted away and sold to markets for ‘bundles of chips’.

They failed, obviously. All of them were hunted and killed by the so-called ‘Blast Witch’, except Penny. She hid in the water storage, scavenging food at night when it was all clear.

"I only checked on you guys because everything got real quiet and such," Penny said. "If I’d known, I never would have…"

She blew her nose on her sleeve beneath Lucy’s affronted stare. "Where’d the Blast Witch go? Did she run away?"

"Forget about the Witch," Adam said. "That cloak you got, where’s it from? You steal it?"

"No!" Penny slammed her hands on the table. Lucy reached for her blade. Adam waved her off.

"I bought it second-hand off the trader. Y’know, the ones that move from village to village every few weeks. I’m good with machines, plus I like the star-tech, so I wanted to see if I could fix it. Thing was scrap when I traded my chips in." Penny said.

Star-tech was obviously the Astraean technology. "Is this sort of stuff common?" Adam said.

"Sometimes? It pops up in scrap-shops or merchant carts from time to time. Always expensive. I spent all my pocket chips on this piece and now…" She shrunk back in her seat, arms folded despondently. "You’re not gonna give it back, are ya?"

So, Astraean tech had escaped the MOB and propagated across whatever wastelands lurking outside. Adam recalled the visions he’d seen while digging through Lucy’s corruption. Ramshackle buildings made out of bits and bobs, men and women dressed in whatever outfits they scrounged up, forests and fields untouched by humans…at least it wasn’t a desert like the movies.

He prodded Penny a bit further. She lived on a farm in a town called Rick’s Flat with her mom and dad. She wandered around the roads a few times, repairing machinery for small commissions. Her breed of survival skills was common in the world, apparently. It was as much as he expected from a grunt like her.

"Alright Penny, I get you. I get that your boss gave you a raw deal and you’re screwed because of him. I feel that." He wasn’t joking. Steeldale gang leaders weren’t known for their intelligence or foresight. Hell, he would’ve flunked high school if not for the sheer boredom that came with juvie confinement. "We can’t give that cloak back. It belongs to us."

"No, it doesn’t!" Penny protested. Her hands clenched. "You can’t do that! I spent days on that thing!"

"My friend here disagrees," Adam said, jabbing his thumb to Lucy. "Says you took that cloak from her home. You gonna tell her otherwise?" Penny looked over her shoulder at Lucy, whose hand was now on her blade. Lucy tilted her neck. She cracked her knuckles. Penny shivered.

"This place is your turf?"

"Damn straight. You gonna challenge it?"

"No," Penny said. "But, Raz ain’t the only scavenger out there. A whole heap of other guys are gonna come for treasure. You saying you can fight them all off?"

In response, Adam stood up and walked over to Lucy. He whispered something in her ear. Lucy thought, then smiled and nodded back. Adam returned to his seat.

"She’s the Blast Witch." He said, the instant his bottom touched the hard plastic seat. His statement hung in the air like a foul smell. Penny’s jaw froze in place, her eyes bulging like a fish. The bottle of water fell from her hands and rolled across the ground, its contents sloshing everywhere. Lucy picked it up and threw it in a nearby bin.

"She’s the Blast Witch," Adam repeated. "The monster who killed your crew is standing behind you right now."

Penny looked at Lucy, then at Adam, and then back at Lucy. Lucy summoned a cluster of light in her free hand. She molded it in the shape of a grenade, then stuck out her index finger and let the cluster travel to the tip. A loud crash resounded through the room as Penny scrambled back, falling out of her chair and landing on the ground with a hard thud.

"You’re lying. You’re lying, lying, lying! There’s no way that’s the Blast Witch. She looks like a normal person! The Blast Witch was a monster with a gun fused to her arm and six goddamn eyes!"

"Hair’s the same. So is the clothes. She had a makeover." Adam said. "And c’mon, didn't you notice she's got the same light?"

"No, no, no…"

"And you broke into her home without knocking. Sucks that your crew died, but what did you think would happen?" Adam said. Then, without missing a beat, he added. "Also, I beat her."

Penny didn’t even dare to speak at this point. The girl looked one step away from combusting on the spot.

"Yeah, you heard me," Adam said, raising his voice. "I pulled off what your crew couldn’t."

Because they softened her up.

"And now, she listens to me."

Because she thinks I’m her religion’s chosen one or whatever.

"She’s my underling, get it?"

There was a thump. Penny’s head rested on the ground, the rest of her body in prostration. "I’m sorry!" She blubbered. "I’m sorry for breaking in! I’m sorry for hurting you! I just wanted to make some money to feed myself. I hid in the storage because there was water and I’m sorry if this where you guys lived I swear I didn’t mean to cause you harm!"

"I didn’t understand a word of that, but may I take it she’s been subdued?" Lucy asked.

"Please don’t kill me! I’ll do whatever you want! I’ll lick your shoes, live in the manure pile, give you Granny’s brooch—anything!"

"Anything?" Adam said.

"Uh…" Penny looked up. "Well…"

"Quick tip, Penny. Don’t say crap you can’t back up." Adam said. He leaned back in his seat for a few moments and watched Penny squirm like jelly. "Anyway, you can fix machines, right? I saw the tools."

"Y-yeah!" Penny said, "What needs fixing, um, boss?"

"Lights. Doors. Computers. Whole bunch of broken crap. We can’t let you go, since you’ll blab to outsiders, so welcome to your new job, Penny." He extended his hand. "Don’t worry, we’ll feed ya. Best rations you’ll ever taste."

Experience (Conversational) acknowledged: +15%.

User Adam Westfield’s Competency Level has increased from 1-5 to 1-6!

Acquired 1 Biometric Key!