Lightforge was running for his life. He had never been particularly talented at stealth, but now he didn’t even bother trying. The only thing that was going to keep him safe at this point was speed, so that’s where he put all of his energy. His friend had probably sacrificed one of his lives to let the gadgeteer escape a hopeless fight, which he could only repay by staying safe.
The closest safehouse would be his base, but that was a bad idea. He knew that the bad guys were watching it, and he was in no shape for a fight. He also couldn’t move the gateway thanks to an exploit that he’d used to move it with people inside. So it was best to avoid the place for the time being.
The next best option would be a friend’s base. The bad guys might find them, but at least they would be safe so long as they were inside. Unfortunately he wasn’t sure where any of them were. He could always ask, but he didn’t have time to sit around and wait for a response. Best to do that after finding somewhere to lie low.
There were other options that he could use, places where someone might not think to look. But those were places where other people would be in danger. After the fiasco with his friends trying to help him run away, he wanted to keep the danger more contained.
As he thought, his body was moving on autopilot. He sprinted through the streets, heedless of anyone that tried to get in his way. Every ten seconds he would hop into the air, bouncing off of his platforms to get a little extra speed for a few moments. He took twists and turns through the streets without a thought, his body knowing where to go.
He didn’t realize where he was going until he turned a corner and saw his shop in front of him. All of the windows were shattered and the interior had been torn to shreds. It looked almost like someone had dropped a bomb inside, but he couldn’t help but smile. Because all of the destruction was inside the shop, barely spilling out into the street around it.
Nothing else in the area had been touched. And in some small way, that was a silver lining that he hadn’t really been expecting.
He ran through a broken window and straight into the back room. He threw open the hidden trapdoor and dropped into his hidden lab before slamming it shut behind him.
He stumbled through the dark lab for a few steps before collapsing to the ground, panting and slick with sweat. He rested his head against the cold, hard floor and breathed deeply. This was it; his great gamble.
He was betting that people wouldn’t come looking for him in the bombed out building. And, if they did, that they wouldn’t find the hidden basement. It felt like it was too late to change his mind at this point, so he was either right or wrong. The only way to find out was to wait.
Some time later his vision started to fill with notifications as someone started sending messages back and forth among his friends.
Sunbird: C & L, you guys ok?
Lightforge: I’m ok. C got me out, but I think he sacrificed his weapon to do so. C?
Sunbird: !?!?!
Cannoneer: I thought I could escape in the confusion, but they got me.
Grey Guardian: What the [BLEEP] is going on? What have I been missing?
Lightforge: Hey, GG. Got jumped by some baddies. Long story.
Sunbird: C, what were you thinking, [BLEEP]-ing moron?
Cannoneer: That I could get L out? And it worked.
Sunbird: Don’t talk [BLEEP] like that, I know better. That was your last revival.
Grey Guardian: !!
Lightforge: What?! You’re kidding, right?
Sunbird: Tell them.
Cannoneer: It’s fine. My pod will be recharged in a few weeks. I’ll just be more careful until then.
Grey Guardian: S, you’re on guard duty. Don’t let him out of your sight.
Sunbird: Way ahead of you. Open the door, C, I’m on my way.
Cannoneer. Fine. L, are you really safe?
Lightforge: For now. We should probably all lay low for a while, just to be safe.
Cannoneer: You got past the guys guarding your base? How?
Sunbird: Shut up, C! He said he’s safe, and you already died for him. Trust him.
Grey Guardian: L, want me to meet you? I can escort you to my base if you want.
Lightforge: Don’t worry about it. I should be ok for a while.
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Sunbird: Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I wish we could add Circe to these chats. We could use her illusions to get around for a while.
Lightforge: Yeah, I know. Have any of you tried adding her to your friends list?
Cannoneer: I never asked.
Sunbird: Me neither.
Grey Guardian: I asked once, but she brushed me off. It was pretty early on, so she probably wasn’t comfortable with me yet.
Lightforge: [BLEEP]. Alright, the next person who runs into her, let’s get that done, alright? Now stay safe, I have to make some plans.
Lightforge dropped out of the chat and tried to sink into the ground beneath him. Cannoneer had sacrificed the last charge of his Revival Pod to save him. He wasn’t dead, of course, but still. Lightforge had no idea how he would feel if he didn’t have that safety net in the back of his mind.
Could he do anything about it? Probably not. His studies of System Energy were still in their infancy, and there was no guarantee that he would find a solution even there. Slowly he dragged himself up and through his lab, despondent.
The lights were out and the underground area was almost pitch black. The reactor that he’d hidden away down here was plenty to keep the power going, so the destruction above him must have taken it offline somehow. That would have to be the first thing he worked on. His tools should provide enough light for him to work by. But until then, he was in the dark.
That was the only reason that he saw it. In the featureless blackness, there was a single pinprick of flickering light. It vanished if he looked right at it, only appearing in the corner of his eye. What was it?
Carefully he made his way through the darkness, feeling his way towards the tiny spark of light. He reached out and found himself touching something large that sat on a table. His multispectral analyzer? Did it still have some power?
No, the displays were all dark. The light was coming from something just beside it. He gently swept his hand through the darkness and found something smooth on the tabletop. It was only when he picked it up that he realized it was a syringe. When had he used…
His eyes went wide as he remembered. This was the cleansing item that Grey Guardian had gotten for him. But why was it still here? While some consumable items left behind a container like this, they always evaporated after an hour or two. This one should be long gone. And what was that light?
He lifted the syringe close to his face and inspected the little mote of light glowing in the bottom of it. It moved around as he inspected the syringe, rolling back and forth inside the vial. It took him a moment to recognize it for what it was.
A single tiny droplet of glowing liquid in the bottom of the syringe.
He froze in place as he stared at the tiny glow. With one trembling hand he conjured a glowing hammer to see where the syringe had been before he picked it up. It had been lying at the front of the open multispectral analyzer.
Once, he would have assumed that he simply hadn’t used all of the contents of the syringe. But that wasn’t how the system worked. Consumable items didn’t leave behind residue like that; they emptied themselves completely upon use. And then they evaporated. Always.
Here he held an example that flew in the face of what he had known to be true. But why?
Gently he set the syringe down where he’d found it and used the light of his summoned tools to navigate to the reactor. It wasn’t broken, fortunately. It had simply shut itself down as a precaution upon sensing the fluctuations from the shop above. It hadn’t prevented all of the damage, but it fended off the worst of it.
It took some time to make adjustments and get it back into working condition, but it was simple work. All the while Lightforge’s mind was drawn back to the syringe and the mysteries that it held.
After nearly half an hour, the reactor came back online, bringing up the lights and the rest of the underground lab. He’d been careful to leave everything above without power, so as to continue masking his presence.
His entire body was trembling as he went back to the analyzer and ran it. The machine whirred gently as it went to work, studying the strange energies contained within it. His heart was pounding as he waited, almost unwilling to breathe.
At last the machine finished its analysis and began displaying the interior of the scanning area. Just like before there were faint lines of energy connecting two small chunks of concrete, separated by a shard of glass. Colored light should have been dancing and sparking within the glass, but instead there was a soft glow of rainbow light that led out of the glass in a miniscule tendril of energy that would have been easy to miss if he hadn’t been looking for it.
The thin line of restorative energy snaked away from the glass and away from the analyzer. It reached out and touched the syringe lying beside the machine. The energy led to the tiny droplet of liquid, making it dance and spark with energy.
Being restored.
Lightforge’s legs gave out and he collapsed to the floor. The restorative energy that he had discovered wasn’t limited to the physical structures around him. Something about the arrangement of the debris wasn’t allowing the energy to do its normal work, so it sought any outlet that it could find. And in this case, that meant restoring the functionality of the spent consumable item.
He reached out to the syringe and inspected it.
Name: Spent Deluxe Cleansing Medicine
Type: Healing, Consumable
Quality: Epic Rare
Uses: 0.0001/1
Effect:
* Remove all negative status effects from a target, regardless of strength or source
* Cleansing from this item cannot be prevented
* Target becomes immune to all effects cleansed by this medicine for 10 minutes
* Target becomes immune to this item’s effects for 72 hours
WARNING: Insufficient uses remaining. This item cannot be used.
In the hours that he’d been away, the energy had restored a tiny fraction of the medicine that would normally be stored in the syringe. It was far too slow to be useful; refilling the syringe would take years at the rate that it was going.
But it was a proof of concept. That energy could be harnessed, controlled, used towards ends that he could direct. And while it might be slow to restore an epic rarity item, what about something more direct?
Could he use this process to refill the energy of a revival pod? That would likely be a direct transfer rather than some sort of transmutation. If he could pull it off, then he would change the face of the world that he was living in.
He could restore the extra life that Cannoneer had sacrificed for him. Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out if it was possible. One piece of equipment that he could test his hypothesis with. And, more likely than not, he would destroy that equipment in the attempt.
But he had to try.