Instead of a bullet, an enlarged arrow took Aleph in the stomach. Glistening with liquid, he groaned at the impact but it failed to pierce past the head of the bolt. It is easily pushed out and clatters to the ground in a heavy thud. The barbs rang against the ground in company with the panicked shouts of onlookers, all heading either into the hospital or fleeing into the streets.
Shocked but not unconscious or thrown off their feet as the attacker was expecting, the orc deftly places another bolt into his other wrist-mounted weapon and fires again before Aleph can get his bearings, taking him in near the same spot. This time it is deafeningly loud, and Aleph feels the projectile pierce his stomach and stab into a bone on the other side just as it is painfully tugged forward by the cab beginning to lift off.
They do this near-silently, practically ignoring the already growing presence of authorities sprinting towards the vehicle. In a daze, Aleph sees them finally arrive; Hospital security in full coats with plated shrouds that leave them standing head and shoulder above the panicked bystanders. A dozen glowing eyes watch the kidnappers attempt to fly off, the blades that propel the vehicle still spinning up as it hovers five meters in the air. Each of them fire off attachments of their own, differing in propulsion and method but meeting their moving target all the same. Half of them slide off, being repulsed, sliding off, or outright shot out of the air by a defense system as they attempt to reach the cab’s exterior.
The other three puncture, thermobarically fuse, and magnetize to their target respectively with a sturdy steel cable. All three began pulling, the vehicle’s fans producing violent noises at the new cargo as each carefully and measuredly pulled the vehicle towards the ground. The orc tried to toss a smoke grenade back at them, but as soon as their glowing eyes turned back to look at them, he yelled out in pain and withdrew into the car. The lower half of an arm unceremoniously fell to the ground, Aleph himself being burnt across his leg from the vectorless attack. The cable holding him captive doesn’t so much as sizzle in it’s passing.
Two of the three guards not struggling to pull down the cab were angling for a shot on the driver as well when the remaining weapons on the removed arm decided now was the time to explode catastrophically. Ice, fire, phosphor, and electricity blasting away everyone involved- including the cab, sending it soaring upwards in an uncontrolled ascent, the aftermath below quickly fading to wind and swearing from above. Aleph was the closest to the blast, being suspended just above it, but nonetheless experiences only similar damage to the mangled shieldarms of the security forces below, now splayed down against the wide stairs of the hospital entrance.
A strange consequence borne of the hostage being the most durable participant.
Another consequence, however, was that when the explosion sent them flying, the sudden stop of the vehicle in it’s attempt to stabilize meant Aleph swung up and around it, and now found himself positioned at the top of the vehicle rather than dangling below. Good for purchase, bad for not dying- not when he was hundreds of meters in the air and climbing.
Other flying vehicles were on the approach, dipping past and around buildings and signs, but Aleph was unsure if he could manage that long.
“Fucking- shitting fuck, there’s less mana to keep us alive up here. Force the driver to descend.” Alec’s instructions drew Aleph out of the curled up form he was in, and sent him scrambling to try and break in through the windshield.
A sapient, humanoid, ape-like primate with a large mouth stared back. Despite peering at him with liddless eyes, the simian managed a look of horror and disbelief, jerking a joystick and failing to get the fans to properly start as they haggardly descended. Switches were flipped and emergency levers were pulled, but the most they were greeted with in response was an extra meter or two of height before the engine failed to start once more. Aleph, himself, wasn’t very successful at breaking through the glass, and so a desperate struggle formed between the two of them as Aleph furiously pounded at the glass and tried not to get jostled off as the vehicle moved to and fro. It became even more panicked when they were joined by the orc attempting to pull at Aleph with the remaining arm, their cable still remaining firm as blood dripped down the sides of the cab.
Aleph just began to worm his arm through a breached hole in the windshield when the engine finally gave out entirely. Whatever kept them somewhat aloft stopped with the silence of the thunking machine, and they fell like a rock to the surface below. Aleph, now dangling in the air, felt their hopes rise at the sight of a cordon formed around the crater with a cloudy cushion set at it’s epicenter.
They did not land anywhere near the cordon.
In fact, it rapidly came to be that they were plummeting towards the glass atrium of the hospital.
Rather than smashing through and into the civilians below, they skidded against a blue, transparent dome of energy that redirected their momentum perpendicular to it, violently tearing the barbed weapon from Aleph and sending him along in a similar trajectory. Aleph felt his innards protest at the sudden movements but was in measuredly less pain than when the device was still inside of him, despite the gaping hole in his lower torso.
At least, for the brief moment between when it was shorn from him and when he smashed through a third story wall.
Aleph was still a blur as he smashed in and through, with all the velocity of a prolonged fall- only about twice again as strong as on earth. Coughing dust out of his lungs, he had broken more than a few bones and once again felt even shittier than the day before, but, as luck would have it, at least this time he didn’t get up not because he couldn’t, but because he was simply in too much pain to move.
Around the same time he settled there, a crash could be heard below, and an alarm went off in the building. Wheezing the remaining particulates from his respiratory system, Aleph took in the first proper breath he could to swear out loud, “Fucking hell,” as another security team rounded the corner.
----------------------------------------
“This situation feels familiar somehow.” Aleph couldn’t help but say, sitting across from Ravanaugh.
“You don’t say.” She gave noncommittally, an even look on their currently-very-elven-and-internally-pissed-off-demon face. Her coat took the form of a dress now, overlaying her existing dress in a way he’d appreciate the exotic look of if he hadn’t just spent an hour under the knife getting poisoned barbs out of his stomach and mana-blocking cement that was functionally more of a poison to him out of his everything. Whatever is in that IV was like a kick in the ass, though, and Ravanaugh just finished reasoning that it would at least be enough to get him through the ‘screening and release’ process of the hospital’s onsite security.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
While they recognized he just got kidnapped without his knowledge or consent, and the property damage was well within their expectations- something that left Aleph rather flabbergasted in and of itself- he was beginning to understand just how much their society valued records and data. Ravanaugh was appropriating one of their distant relative’s personas to sign off on his full release with recompense and free treatment, and was vested in that persona. That being said, this was all going to be forged anyway to keep their assailants’ employers in the dark. It was just to pass the review of a small board of inspectors.
They had scant moments to be told all this beforehand however, so he was mostly on his own with the timed questions that were prepared for him. In the rush, he was only given a little bit of information to get through each one.
“Why did you follow them out of the building if they were trying to kidnap you?”
“I’m a refugee, mam, and they acted like they knew me and wanted to help. I don’t think I need to explain where I’m from to tell you why they thought it would be profitable to take advantage of me.”
He only had a brief explanation on this one, but Aleph could fill in the gaps on his own. The Luna colony- the one that got razed to the ground, much to his dismay- was a major hub of science and industry. Few of the refugees that came here stayed, though, after getting contracted by places with a higher demand for those jobs. The golden fashion standard wasn’t doing Mortum any favors in that regard.
The fact that he was taken from that prison could easily be explained as his escape shuttle crashing near a Zharovskaya base- something that, again, happened in frighteningly large numbers, just far away from Mortum in most places- forcing them to have his memory partially wiped to maintain the location’s secrecy.
Of course, he didn’t so much as hint at that being the case yesterday during his interview, but considering the proof of such was owned by Ravanaugh under contract…
“What about the durability you displayed? You exhibited at least half a decade of high-end cultivation in your body across the entire spectrum of stress conditions yet none of the training that one would receive to handle it.”
This question actually made him consider whether the person in front of him was really Ravanaugh, but he regathered himself quickly. “That was a combination of subtle vital redundancy and my reserves of soul that I hadn’t spent yet. Truthfully, this set me back quite a few years in terms of cultivation.”
The words ‘soul’ and ‘cultivation’ were actually a trick, as they held entirely different connotations, meanings, terms, and even practical usage to different cultures and languages. This was called a ‘translator bomb’, and served to leave his answer far more vague than it appeared to be as a direct result. Definitely too vague to be valid for a proper review process. However, he could reasonably expect them to just grumble and fill in the blanks for themselves yet again. Or Aleph hopes, because he has no idea what the proper terms are, himself.
And, In a cruel twist of fate, the hospital was far less competent than they made themselves out to be, and would not even try to call him out on his bluff that he had the redundancies he claimed to have gotten installed.
I have the sneaking suspicion they’re slightly more reliant on whatever superdrug they used on me than they strictly need to be.
Showing no sign of refutation, Ravanaugh moved on to the final question. “What relation do you have to ‘Ravanaugh?’ Separate witness testimonies and lobby recordings indicate you were lured into the vehicle with that name. Be honest- the coat you wear ensures you cannot lie.”
Aleph gave them as inscrutable an expression as they could manage.
Okay. Fuck. So maybe she had less of a handle on the situation than she thought. This is not the question I was ready for… wait, is their coat glowing yellow?
They just gave him a hint, and he was a damned man if he wasn’t going to take it.
The orc certainly knew how to get around telling the truth when they spoke to him. I can definitely do the same. But just a nod or shake to my head is too obvious… I think… no, I think I can work with this.
Aleph slowly lowered his head before burying his head in his hands and choking out a sob, one he had practiced hundreds of times.
“Sir?” ‘Ravanaugh’ asked, a tinge of worry in their voice. “Vauntergale apologizes for the conditions you’re being put under, but please- oh no, sir, just please-”
“I- She-” He started, wiping more dried tears from his eyes. “She took it from me.”
“What.” The elven woman asked, a little too harshly, completely different from how she behaved a moment prior.
“Its- silly, I’m being- so emotional right now…” In a particularly extravagant display of melancholy, he took out a handkerchief as if on queue, sniffling loudly into it before he finished. “She- she took away something I can never get back. I…” Aleph felt the strands of his hastily-constructed story connect in his mind, and the next words he spoke with such confidence that his mouth was moving before he could fully transcribe it.
“Ravanaugh- There’s no other way to describe it, but to say Ravanaugh stirred a fire in my heart that I thought was extinguished long ago would be a pittance of it. For all but a day, she was everything to me…” Aleph evoked as much of a kicked puppy as he could physically manage with the material he had. And, the exhausted, downtrodden look he held in his mind’s eye was excellent material.
Head sunk, Aleph knew he had won when out of the corner of his eye they took in the complicated expression the elf wore on their face, and no coats gave away anyone’s real thoughts in the moments that followed. “I’m so, so sorry sir, I-” the elf twitched an ear, suddenly, as their headpiece gave a dim glow, and their concerned emotions gave way to sheer confusion with anger close behind. “You- you bitch! Who exactly did you set on who, huh? Because I’m certainly not the one in control of the situation!”
Wiping the fake tears from his eyes, Aleph looked up at them, stifling a chuckle with his other hand. He had actually used a similar but very different tactic as a party trick, but never before was he this successful in getting a response out of the recipient. His squeaks were met with a glare from the elf, however, who bore into him with a cold intensity.
Holding that breath a moment longer, they exhaled a deep sigh, got up from their seat and massaged their temples vigorously, sharp elven elbows digging into the heavier fabric set into their hips. “Beyond all expectations,” she began, “You surpassed my sister’s. Welcome aboard, I guess.”
She then started towards the door, leaving Aleph confused as he got up too. “Wait, you’re just going to leave?” Instead of gracing him with an answer, she left down the hall. They idled at the desk, uncertain of whether to follow. Then an elven swear bellowed down the hall, followed by another voice he thought he recognized. Moments later, a familiar human face greeted him from the door.
“Well, that could’ve gone better-” she said, nodding slightly, “-for sis. You, on the other hand, did stunningly. Want a job?”
“Depends. Will you let me sleep before I explode again?”
“Yes. I owe you that and… more, after all you’ve been through. We can discuss your ‘advance payment’ tomorrow. For now, all we have to worry about is transit. How do you feel about another cab?”
“I’m sorry, what did I just say about exploding?”