Angie chuckled at his misunderstanding. “Those are RVs my family brought in for the use of the families of the people working for us.”

Lindsay pointed to a grouping a little farther out. “My family did the same thing. Though we have no idea how many of our own people will arrive with their families.”

Nate shook his head at the ridiculousness of the situation he had found himself in. How had he found himself friends with these two ultra-rich girls again?

“So, what should we do?” Nate asked, his back now to the window showing off the garden. “I assume we have some time before anything reaches this area of the city.”

Aura nodded.

The action brought both girls’ attention back to her. “Well, I know what I want to do.” Lindsay glommed onto the apparent fox beast with a vengeance and began petting her.

Nate chuckled as Aura’s stream of telepathic communication turned to a glitchy, mushy mess under Lindsay’s assault. He only stopped her when she started to drift towards her tail. Aura’s illusion only hid the three extra tails. It didn’t make them disappear entirely. Besides, it was clear that his companion was enjoying her ministrations.

“Is it just foxes you like, or all cute, fluffy animals in general?” He asked Lindsay, while Aura hid behind his legs.

Her ears were a bright red as she looked away.

“She’s always had a thing for foxes, but all cute semi-fluffy animals not trying to kill us will do her in.” Angie supplied with a smile.

“Traitor,” Lindsay hissed.

***

With nothing else to do, they eventually found themselves playing video games in one of the rooms off to the side. The games weren’t nearly as developed as what Nate was accustomed to on OE, and they cost three times as much, but they were still fun. It was another of the industries that hadn’t seen as much development as a result of the world changing.

People still needed entertainment, so it had, of course, happened, but the focus on it would never be there in this world. They couldn’t afford for it to be, not outside of the major cities, anyway. Not unless what he was attempting to do really started to make a difference.

They had first checked out the training pavilion, but Anna wasn’t there at the moment. She and Landon were both out doing something. Due to the sudden attack on the city, he had gotten trapped here, and his visit back had taken on a slightly different tone for the moment.

Aura’s ears perked up and her head turned towards where the gate in the wall was. A moment later, they all heard the distant sound of an explosion.

Nate paused the brawling game and hurried over to the window. The rear of the gate tunnel was just barely visible from the room they were in. A thick black smoke was pouring out of it, while the guards stood ready to intervene at the side. The gates were still dropped in place, preventing any outside entry.

Opening the window, he jumped out and began running toward the gate. Aura followed hot on his heels.

Behind him, Angie and Lindsay took a more measured approach and took the time to go through the house and get the keys to a cart. They passed him a minute later, slowing enough for him to hop on.

In the heat of the moment, he had forgotten how stupidly large the Chrighton estate was. Just because he could see the gate, didn’t actually mean it was close enough to run too quickly.

When they reached the gate, they saw that someone had crashed into the first of the thick gates that had been dropped in place. The gate wasn’t damaged, but the car had gone up in flames. A dark oily smoke had filled the top of the tunnel. The guards on the other side of the wall were peering into the destroyed cabin of the car and shaking their heads. Whoever had been inside was already dead.

It wasn’t clear if their running into the gate was an accident or an attempt to enter the compound. Either way, it hadn’t succeeded.

Looking past the burning car, Nate could see more cars on the road than when they had arrived a few hours earlier. The area where Angie’s family lived was not exactly remote, however, the roads that led to her home were not typically filled with a lot of traffic either.

“Do we need to help them move that car and clear the gate?” Nate asked.

“Not until it stops burning,” Angie said. “But I do want to see what is going on out there.”

Built into the side of the tunnel was a smaller pass-through area for the guards and others to walk through the wall.

Lindsay led the way through, only to hiss in pain when they reached the door that would have led them out. The heat from the nearby fire had heated up the handle to a burning hot state.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Aura?” Nate requested.

She glanced at him and nodded. While maintaining her illusionary disguise, she activated part of the affinity in her second tail. A burst of glacier ice formed in the air around them, dropping the temperature of the tunnel severely. With a flex of her will, she flung the ice at the door, cooling it near instantly.

“Uh, what just happened?” Lindsay asked through cold, chattering teeth. “Is Aura not a normal beast companion?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I think she’s pretty normal. She just happens to be a very smart girl, is all.” Nate winked at Aura as he opened the door for them.

Outside, they were closer to the burning car and the destruction it had attempted to wreak. From their current spot by the door, they could easily see the three dead bodies that were being consumed by the fire.

“How did it even explode?” Nate wondered aloud as they joined the guards by the gate. “That’s not a gas model car. Is it?”

Most of the cars that were being produced in his new world ran off of some form of ground-up beast cores. The engines were magitech devices, in other words. Expensive, but reliable, with a very good energy conversion rate. Not to mention, in a pinch, if you were stuck outside the walls, you could shove an entire beast core into the tank to get home. Though that would damage the engine.

It was what all expedition vehicles ran off of for good reason.

Gasoline and diesel were still around; however, the refineries were much less prevalent. Combine that with a general lack of easy ways to ship the fuel and a third method to power, the vehicle had needed to be developed. Well, fourth, but batteries hadn’t taken off here the way they had on OE.

“It still uses oil to keep everything lubricated,” One of the guards said unhelpfully.

While that explained the thick black smoke, it didn’t tell them why it had exploded in the first place.

“Did you see what happened?” Lindsay asked the other guard.

He nodded and pointed to the road that had continued to grow ever busier. “They were weaving in and out of traffic, driving in the ditches when they could. Just generally acting like insane idiots. They had to hop back onto the road to go around the driveway, but ended up clipping a few cars and getting sent into a spin. Next thing we know they were careening into the gate and then exploding. I wouldn’t have thought there was enough force to cause an explosion.”

“Are these beast core-fed engines usually susceptible to blowing up?” Nate asked, suddenly worried about something he hadn’t even considered a concern before that moment.

Angie shook her head. Normally, she would have chuckled at the oddly out-of-place question, but it didn’t seem like the time or place. It was only when he asked questions on subjects like this, which were common knowledge, that she remembered his memory had been damaged.

“While they do use ground-up beast cores as the power source, they ensure that the fragments aren’t unstable.” She frowned and glared at the car unhappily.

Aura flexed her qi and used her second affinity to create a layer of ice above the car. The air around them filled with the hisses and pops of cooling metal as the fire was doused in an instant.

The two guards took the chance to peek inside the car and gave dual snorts. “There are enough liquor bottles in here to pickle an army. I can’t say much for the initial explosion, but they certainly would have kept the flames going.”

Angie held a hand to her head as she felt a headache coming on. “Push it to the side, out of the way. We still have more people expected to arrive within the next few hours. Make sure you both stay safe. I’m sure this won’t be the last car on the road in this state.”

The two guards’ cultivation was more than enough to give them the strength to push the car out of the way. Even with its flat, melted tires.

With that done, the group went back through the tunnel and to the house.

“Your family didn’t bring much,” Lindsay commented as the cart drove past the battered SUV. “Are you all going to be alright?”

“My mom has a storage bracelet,” Nate told them, knowing it would come out eventually. He would try to keep the fact that he had one as well -not really- a secret for a while longer. Either way, if you couldn’t trust your friends and family, then who could you trust?

Lindsay’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly a few times at his casual declaration. While Angie, who was driving, twisted around to stare at him with wide eyes.

“You’re about to run into the retaining wall,” He pointed ahead of them, to the stone wall the cart was rapidly approaching,

She spun the wheel at the last second, keeping them from hitting it. “You can’t just say something like that, Nate!”

“Sure, I can. I mean, I wouldn’t do it with anyone else, but you two are my friends.” He shrugged. “Besides, George already knows. I’m sure it would have slipped out on accident at some point.”

“Why does George know?” Angie hissed, pulling the cart to a stop in front of the house.

“We stopped by his place to pick up a few items for him. He’s the one who told us to come here, remember?”

“And you just whipped them out from the storage bracelet,” She muttered with a shake of her head. “I would have expected more sense from your parents. I suppose there is something to be said about expeditious moves during times such as this. Just be careful. Enchanted items of any sort are not exactly common in this particular area.” She glared at him while she spoke, making sure he understood what she was saying.

Yeah, she had noticed something was up with his crossbow that first day on the wall.

He nodded.

“Good, now let’s head back inside. I believe I was about to beat your character with mine for the fifteenth time in the game.”

“No, that’s not true!” He denied. “I was just starting to get the hang of the controls and understand how the finishers work. If you would quit cheating all the time, I would have picked it up by now.”

Lindsay rolled her eyes. “Puh-lease, I was beating you both, and I wasn’t even using the finishing attacks. There was nothing but pure skill going on there, baby.”

The two ground their teeth but couldn’t retort. What she had said was true. She really was that good at the game. With a quick shared glance, Nate and Angie made a tacit agreement to gang up on her character. Lindsay would know defeat if it was the last thing they did.

Hours later, Nate had improved as he fully grasped the combos, and finishers used in the game. However, even teaming up with Angie’s character, they had only managed to defeat Lindsay’s sword-wielding elf maiden a handful of times.

“Ugh, whatever. I give up,” He said, at last, a relaxed smile on his face. Despite everything going on, he’d had fun playing with them. “I’m tired, and it’s obvious that Lindsay is a secret master of this game. She probably trains under a waterfall with the game in her hand or something weird like that.”

Both girls laughed at the odd mental image.

“Thanks for this. It was fun just playing a game with friends. It felt nice to be normal again.”