It took about a week for shit to go tits up.

Alex and the rest were playing cards and watching shows, as you do when you’ve got jack shit on your plate. Pokers a pain in the ass with only one working arm, so Alex uses both, forcing her arm to act like an arm rather than the pulped mush that it is. It’s good practice, and it’s cheap, even with the state of her soul it costs her practically nothing. She’s tried expediting the healing process but that has proven to be too much of a strain, she thinks she could manage it if her soul was whole though. Isn’t that a weird thought? Before her little demonstration with Goliath and that Hyena bitch she could only nudge cans safely. Now she’s speculating on something that’s probably much more expensive.

She guesses that magic works on the rules of what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s painful to force the appendage into motion, but she knows pain, down to its very core. The time spent holding her soul together was…enlightening, but she’d prefer not to dwell on it. The mere thought is enough for her soul to remember, and the phantoms wait in the shadows for just a moment of weakness.

The first few days were a bit frustrating, with everyone treating her like she’s made out of glass. She plucked out Goliath’s eyes for Fleshy’s (the probably not god) sake! She’s big and strong and magical, that combo probably makes her the most dangerous person here! The following days were worse, because they fucking noticed her annoyance and decided to tease her for it.

“What can I get for you madam Alex?” Sasha says “A can of beans or a can of beans?”

“Fuck you Sasha, I’ll get it myself”

“No, no. That simply will not do, wait here and I shall return post haste!” Then she runs off to the chuckles of the crowd.

“You’re all dickheads,” Alex grumbles.

Besides being buffoons, the group’s still trying to unlock their magic. Rania’s still the only one who managed and Alex doesn’t really know why, are their souls weaker somehow? Another question for Fleshy whenever it deems it appropriate to speak to her. Rania’s still weak as fuck with her magic, which vindicates Alex for how pathetic she was when she started, now she can make material hands! Well, whenever her soul’s fixed. Which is a weird thought, last time her soul was broken she forgot who she was, now she just has an admittedly annoying as fuck headache throbbing through her skull. Maybe it has something to do with the tendrils? She has no idea but it’s her best guess.

“Hey Alex, how far can I push the headaches before it gets to be too much?” Rania asks

Alex gives the woman a sharp look, “what did you do?”

Rania raises her hands in surrender, “I just wanted to see if I could get stronger faster ya’know, besides, you’ve apparently broken your soul twice so your not one to talk”

“Do you want to break your soul?”

“No! That’s why I’m asking the resident expert.”

Alex sighs, “You’ll know when you get there, your brain will basically beg you to stop. I really wouldn’t recommend getting to that point though.”

“Cool cool, I definitely won’t do that”

“I’m surrounded by idiots”

“Only the best kind I hope,” Sasha chirps as she brings back a can of opened beans along with a spoon. Alex mumbles her thanks and digs into her beans with exasperated enthusiasm. Her left arm is holding the can, forced to move in ways it shouldn’t be capable of.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Sasha asks worriedly.

Alex waves her off, “It’s fine, the cost isn’t really all that bad, cheaper than what Rania’s doing even. I have an ongoing theory that the less magical something seems, the lower the cost”

Sasha sighs, “That isn’t what I meant Alex, doesn’t it hurt? Like, physically?”

Alex shrugs, “I mean, yeah, but it’s just a broken arm.”

“A shattered arm” Rania corrects.

“Tomato Tomahto”

“They are not at all the same thing,” Sasha sighs, “Just…why are you putting yourself through this? You're strong enough already, and what you're doing won’t really help you grow. If anything it’ll just fuck you up more.”

Alex blinks, confused for a moment, does Sasha think she’s forcing herself to move around her arm? Sure, the original idea was training, but that’s kinda gone to the wayside over the convenience of using both arms. She tilts her head.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I’m not really putting myself through anything though?”

“You just admitted that moving your arm hurts,” Rania points out.

“Like a bitch, yeah. But it’s not so bad, holding a soul together is much worse.”

Sasha stares at her wide eyed and with something like pity, then she pulls Alex into a hug and slowly pats her back. Rania joins in and makes it a group hug.

This is so weird.

-

After that strange moment of intimacy Alex has found herself trying to realign the bones in her arm. She can’t make it heal faster, but she can at least make it heal right. It’s pretty hard actually, like putting together a puzzle you can’t see, she’s sure she’s made more than a few mistakes but it should be fine, right? Eh, she’s not a doctor. It’s mostly just compressing the shattered bone into place, but sometimes she has to grab a shard that’s gone wildly out of place and find a suitable spot, she navigates all this using the pain as a guide. She does it slowly, because this actually costs a fair bit compared to moving her arm. Guess realigning bones is pretty magical, who’d’ve thunk?

It’ll probably make actually moving her arm even cheaper though which is nice. It’s through this routine that they all find themselves falling into, the others trying to unlock magic, Rania getting dangerously close to a broken soul, and Alex realigning bones. Broken up by food and television.

It’s actually pretty nice.

Then the distinctive creaking of the hatch opening echoes through the bunker, they’re varying levels of alarmed but all of them go for their weapons.

“Come out, come out amigo, we know you’re here,” Says the voice of a man, everyone turns off the safety to their guns while Alex draws her katanta, “come on, make this easy for me, it only ends one way.”

All of them point their weapons to the entrance of the living room. They hear a sigh then multiple pairs of feet walking down into the bunker. A man with two eyes on his forehead and a chin and nose like a witch walks into the hallway, he would be slim if it weren’t for the bulk of his chrome. Elian shoots him in the stomach, causing the man to go into cover.

“Now that’s just rude he says,” he says, “no way to treat a guest I’d think.”

“Fuck you chink!” Fergus yells out.

“How original,” he says, “say have you heard of the breaking wheel?”

He is met with silence.

“I wouldn’t think so, it’s old mediaeval shit, back when people were proud to be cruel. They’d take some chump, murderer, rapist, or thief, and tie them to a wagon wheel. Then they’d break the bones of their arms and legs around the wheel, and if they were lucky, beat them to death.” The man says “I hear the Kingdoms bringing back the practice.”

More silence.

“If you give yourselves up, we’ll kill you quick. If you don’t, well, I’ve always wanted to see history firsthand.”

All of them keep their guns trained on the hallway.

“Suit yourselves.” he throws a canister into the living room, it starts spewing out gas. Alex holds her breath and kicks it further down the bunker before rushing the doorway. The others aren’t far behind her.

The first man she sees doesn’t have much chrome, only his hands and a few plates of armor on his chest, he raises his rifle to be level with her. She moves as a shot from behind her blows off a chunk of the man's skulls. She moves to the man behind him as he tries to gun her down, a few hit her legs but nothing vital, she drives her katana through his eye. She turns to three others and dashes between them, dancing between their bullets as they try not to hit each other while shooting at her. One of them gets gunned down by Sasha, and now Alex only has to focus on two, she shoves her katana between the connection to his cybernetic arm and levers her blade so that it tears off, she gets shot in the back for her trouble, she turns to the last one as the now disarmed goon clutches at his connection port. She slashes her blade from side to side, cutting off his head before he can do anything.

She turns to find chaos as the slim-bulky man holds back six guns all by himself.

He’s losing though.

Let’s quicken the process.

She sneaks up behind him and shoves her blade through his throat. He gurgles and chokes on his own blood before he dies.

She is…awed at what she just did, she dodged bullets, she fought in a gunfight with her katana and won. She didn’t even need to lose her focus to do it, it just clicked and she did it. Sure she still got shot a few times, but those shots are inconsequential. Her muscles feel sore though, like she just finished a full-body workout. Even her face is sore. She gets a feeling and tilts back her head to let a bullet whizz by her face. She looks at the one-armed man and finds that he has a pistol trained on her.

“No need for that,” she says, “put the gun down and maybe we can talk”

She tilts her head again an instant before he shoots, letting the bullet pass by her. The man is shaking.

“H-how?” he manages

“I don’t feel like telling you,” she says as she walks slowly towards him, “but you can tell me how you found out where we were”

The man stutters and falls as she looms over him, katana drawn and form bloody.

“T-the owner” the man says “he talked.”

“Thank you,” she says, then points to the hatch with her blade, “now leave.”

He scrambles to his feet and goes to the exit-

A gunshot rings through the bunker and the mans head splatters, Alex turns to find Rania’s smoking gun pointed to where his head was.

“What the fuck?” she asks.

“They killed Fergus,” Rania snarls, “I’m not letting any of them get away”

Alex looks around and sure enough finds Fergus’s corpse riddled with bullets while Yorin kneels next to him, giving some sort of last rites.

“That doesn’t mean we kill him when he can’t fight back” Alex says.

“No,” Rania replies, “that’s exactly what it means.”