By the time I woke up, even more people had streamed into the ValuCo.

I didn’t realize, at first: healers had already patched them up, and they’d already exchanged torn clothing for fresh shirts and sweatpants from ValuCo’s bounty. But the pile of torn, bloodied clothes was conspicuous, and some of the newcomers bore injuries that magical healing couldn’t fix. One woman was missing almost her entire hand, down to one thumb sticking out from a misshapen palm.

John almost refused to come out to the parking lot with us, wanting to stay on hand to offer his services as a healer, but Kurtis convinced him. “If we were just sticking a hose into the gas tank we wouldn’t need you, but the rest of us barely know a Honda from a Hyundai! Come on, this will be ten times easier with your help. There are tons of people available to heal, and you can join them as soon as you get back.”

Davi passed him a giant jug full of beads. “Throw these at the monsters! I bet we can get you a LOT more points while we’re out than you got at the kill zone.”

John accepted the beads, but frowned. “I thought you wanted me to be looking at cars, not monsters? Kurt’s gonna be distracted too. You three gonna be able to handle them alone?”

“It won’t be just the three of them. I talked TAF into helping,” Kurt said. “If we head out of here to the south, that’s closer to Alabama and southern California. We can travel together for a little bit at least.”

We met up with the eSports legends, and headed over to the administrative area opposite the kill zone. Zephyr was clearly nervous, but seemed determined.

“I can’t stay inside,” she said. “Need to le’l up.”

Avalanche glared at her. “You go back into the freezer the moment you start feeling sick, okay?”

Zephyr started to roll her eyes, then stopped as Avalanche grabbed her shoulders. “Don’t give me that! You scared me yesterday. I don’t want to see you like that again. Promise me you won’t push things?”

Zephyr hesitated, then nodded.

With that, we were ready to go.

You might have expected us to head straight for the semi trucks, but we'd decided that might be a mistake. Why take apart a potentially useful truck when there might be personal vehicles around that used the same fuel? Better to disassemble one of those to get our samples.

I led the charge outside, but Avalanche, JoeyT, Davi, and Zephyr were hot on my heels.

It was overkill.

Only two monsters attacked when we exited the building, a far cry from the overwhelming onslaught we’d faced earlier. A third skittered at us as we left the narrow sidewalk and entered the parking lot proper.

We killed all three monsters without issue. John chucked handfuls of beads, sheer quantity ensuring he “hit” each monster. A Fire Bolt from Byron made one hesitate, which gave me an opportunity to smash it to the ground with a Powerful Blow. Avalanche and JoeyT took out the second monster. Zephyr surprised all of us by running out to the third one, but holding back her blow. She let it attack her before sinking her axe into its spine.

“What the hell was that?” Avalanche asked.

“I had to know,” Zephyr said. She pulled up one pant leg, twisting her foot to get a clear view of her ankle. It looked pristine, lilac scales shining in the morning light. “Huh. No da’age.”

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Avalanche growled inarticulately, clearly frustrated by her friend’s recklessness.

Kurt hastened to disrupt the growing argument, gesturing to the passenger cars pulled up in front of the admin area. “John! Any of these look like good candidates?”

“Not those two - they’re electric. And not that sedan, that's regular gas for sure. Maybe this one, let me check.” The older man peered at the gas cap of a shiny bronze SUV and tapped the door. "Diesel only, says right here." He lowered himself to the ground. “Fuel line's right here."

It took a little bit of fussing around to figure out how to disconnect the fuel line safely and get the gas pump running. John got down the ground with Kurt to offer advice while the rest of us ringed the car watchfully. It didn't take long before I heard an exclamation. "Got it!"

Kurtis rolled away from the SUV, tugging out a casserole pan filled with layer of murky liquid.

A rotten smell filled the air.

John wrinkled his nose. “Well. That gas ain’t no good. Don’t even need to look at it to know that much.”

I grimaced. We’d expected that, but sometimes you’d rather not be right. “Let’s get it inside. We still need to do some testing. I hope it will still work in a diesel engine.”

Our resources were limited, but with John’s expertise we still learned a great deal.

Safely back inside the building, he tilted the pan back and forth. After a moment, he gave us his verdict. “I think those damn aliens just made it rot real fast.”

“Gasoline rots?” Byron asked.

“Sure enough. Ain’t you never had trouble starting your lawn mower after a long winter?”

Byron shook his head. “Mowing the lawn was my brother’s chore as a kid, and I live in an apartment now.”

“Well, diesel goes bad too. This stuff has spoiled. If the rotten-egg smell wasn’t enough to tell me, the color would be: much too brown. Worse than that is all this particulate.” He tapped the pan, making a collection of brown flakes and white crystals jiggle. “Don’t remember what these are, but I know I had to clean a ton of them out of a fuel pump I bought from the junkyard before I installed it. Some of them might be bacteria, wild as that sounds.”

We poured our purloined liquid through a filter and - very carefully - tested how flammable what’s left was by running side-by-side tests with a gallon of vegetable oil, carefully exposing samples to flame and seeing how much it takes to set it alight.

The verdict: it was still a flammable oil, but a much worse one. Far closer to vegetable oil than gasoline.

“It’s not pretty,” John said reluctantly. “But a diesel motor should be able to run it, as long as we can clean out all the crap. Probably going to need to take it all out, run it through a filter, and put it back in. Get a working pump, fix the ignition, fix the brakes. We’d probably better forget about the power steering… Still. Got our work cut out for us, if y’all are sure you want to do this. People here are pretty nice.”

“Better to have options,” Byron said. “What else do we have to do with our time?”

“Earn points, maybe,” I said. “Though I wish I had a better sense of what ability to take next.

“I’ll probably take something ice-related,” Twinkles said. “I don’t know if you noticed, but Zephyr and Avalanche went right to the freezer as soon as we came in. Zephyr was still, you know, kind of okay… but she seemed tired. Too tired. The freezer is a good solution for now, but we can’t take it with us.”

“I got a blueprint for something called a ‘Small Heater,’” I said. “If that’s available, there might be Small Coolers too.”

“We’ll look into that, thanks,” he said. “I might still take an ice ability, or something like that. The percentages, the… synergies? Resonance? I had a good amount between my first two abilities, and I’d like to keep that up if I can.”

“Makes sense. I’d do the same, if I had any damn clue how to. Powerful Blow and Sprinter! They should both be fighter abilities, right? But my numbers are terrible.”

“Maybe Sprinter is more of a… rogue thing? Fuck, dude, I don’t know either. Your friend Kurt - he’s doing interviews, right? Maybe that will turn up some hints before we need to make our choices.”

“Maybe. You’re right that we have other things to deal with right now. Zephyr’s taking a break, but are the rest of you up for going back out in a bit? I want to grab a snack, but after that our next step is probably finding a truck with a, uh, mechanical fuel pump?” I glanced at John for confirmation.

“Yep, that’s right.”

Twinkles nodded. “Avalanche will probably stick with Zephyr, especially if we’re going to be out for a while, but the rest of us will be there.”