“We should be good here,” Batty spoke in between large and haggard breaths, stopping just on the last step of the stair landing and leaning heavily against the wall. She took a couple more deep inhales and exhales before answering the question the otherworlder was about to ask, “I don’t think they’ll follow us up here.”
Calvin, albeit less tired, still felt his shirt and pants cling to him from his sweat. He warily turned and looked back down the stairs, noting the bloody steps up with a frown, “You sure? We literally just went up two flights.”
“Those things look too big to fit in here and I don’t see a scratch on the walls. At least not big enough to make sense. They won’t chase us here, no. Not like those fucking things,” Batty went up and kicked a destroyed beetle sitting on a corner.
Calvin’s brow raised, only just noticing the machine’s carcass, “careful.”
“You be careful, kid. I don’t know what power you—” She turned around, freezing as her eyes widened, looking below Calvin. “—your leg.”
“My what?” He looked down, immediately noticing something dark dripping down his pants.
His face turned, his heart raced. He bent his legs and reached down, touching the damp spot with his glove. The black colour he applied on the gloves made it hard to ascertain whether or not the liquid was what it was.
Was what he thought it was.
With a quick and anxious pull of [Colour Control], his glove turned into the cleanest white he’d ever seen in his life… and the bloodiest red.
“Oh,” he whispered. Using the power again, he looked down and turned his entire outfit white. “Oh shit.”
Twice on the left leg, thrice on the right, and another one on his thigh.
It was a miracle that he only got hit six times with all the bullets that flew before he got to block the barrels with his pebbles.
'Fuck. I thought [Vigilant Aegis] blocked the rest,’ he vaguely remembered activating the power as fast as he could, and as much as he could.
The problem with that particular power was that he could only activate it when he knew an attack was coming, where it was coming from, where it was going to hit, and only at the moment it came.
He could anticipate it, but he couldn’t 'pre-fire’ it.
For as long as he had the power, he’d been getting by using the 'finger-feeling’ of it. The typical feeling of an extra limb which inadvertently flares up like an alarm bell in his mind whenever he could use the power.
'I guess I was too focused on my back,’ he thought, rationalizing how the bullets got to his legs. 'Remember the legs next time, Calvin.’
“Shit,” Batty muttered, quickly running towards him. "Shit!"
He stepped up the stairs to meet her, suddenly feeling the strength in his legs sapped. Putting his arms up, he tried to brace himself as he fell like a puppet without strings before feeling a pair of arms hold him up from his torso.
“You’ll be okay, kid. Just keep awake, okay?” She spoke with a tone laced with a hint of panic.
“Yeah”, he muttered, completely feeling dizzy.
Calvin’s thoughts were elsewhere as his mind slowly turned foggy. The beating of his own heart gradually boomed in his ears, overpowering Batty’s words that kept trying to pierce through.
His eyes looked down again, at his bleeding legs, at his mess of a costume. 'Weird… [Colour Control] ignored blood for some reason? Maybe it’s because it’s not a part of my pants… but then, how about the dye? The power obviously overwrote it. If that’s the case, then what does it consider as part of the object I’m trying to recolour—’
His thought paused as new stimuli pierced through the fog in his mind: he felt himself get sat down on the corner, Batty’s face quickly appearing from the side. She swore and shouted, trying to speak words towards him while frantically tearing open the red parts of his pants.
His gaze fell back towards his wounds, the redness dripping down making him feel calmer and foggier for an unknowable reason.
'Huh, some of them are only grazes. That’s good. Less chance of permanent damage. Still, that’s going to need stitching.’ Calvin stared, evaluating his injuries.
He was familiar with them, growing up where he did. He had seen his share of blood and gore, and listened to the blabber of nurses and doctors in the wards. Curiosity was also at fault, and the sheer availability of knowledge due to the Internet made it so that every question caused by the gruesome nature of his environment was answered— and remembered with the accompanying trauma.
'Good thing I packed needles and threads,’ he thought. 'Then again, I don’t know how to sew. Maybe I should learn—’
“—focus! Calvin!” Batty’s once-muted voice came back and pierced through the tinnitus he didn’t realize was even there. She pressed on his wound, frantically looking around. “Damn it! I need to stop the bleeding…”
'It can’t be that bad?’ He looked down. 'Right, there was an artery there. Blood is good. I need blood. Maybe I can borrow blood from future Calvin.’
He closed his eyes and blurrily felt for [Personal Debt], trying to steer his thoughts towards borrowing blood.
Another thought occurred to him, 'Maybe I can borrow 'health’ from future me? Like from a health bar. But I don’t have a health bar, though… maybe it might work, still? Let’s just try blood first.’
His first idea was a success. A familiar 'filling’ feeling filled him nearly instantaneously as his pull of the power. He felt his senses sharpen somewhat and his brain un-fog a bit. Anxiety, and panic, and pain instantly bit at him as he returned to reality from the 'injection’ of blood.
“Ah!” he screamed from the pain flaring up.
Quickly, he attempted his second idea, pulling on his power to borrow from an imaginary health bar. He might suffer trying to repay it, but it’s better than dying.
“Shit, doesn’t work,” he murmured, heart racing as the power didn’t budge from his prodding. His eyes suddenly widened as he watched Batty grab his coat’s sleeve. “What are you doing?”
“We need to bandage this,” She said, pulling on the cloth.
He grabbed her arm and pulled back, “Don’t! My friend brought me this... just, wait a second.”
“Are you really—” She caught a small pouch that suddenly appeared in mid-air. She tore it open and spilt the contents on the ground, clicking her tongue as she saw what was inside. “Kid, we need something bigger or you’re going to bleed out.”
He looked towards the open kit, wanting to smack himself as he saw the band-aids on the ground, 'That’s your backup medkit, dumbass.’ “I have some—”
Calvin reached behind and felt for the proper medkits with proper bandages he attached to his belt.
Nothing.
Just the spikey part of velcro grazed his numbing fingers. Not the bottle of water, not the snack, just one thing was there and it wasn’t medkit-shaped.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“Shit.” 'Don’t use velcro next time. Maybe [Surface Meld] would be better,’ he noted.
“Fuck this,” Batty cursed as she started tearing parts of his pants for longer strips.
'Actually… Meld?’ He quickly grabbed her wrist. “Ugh... wait, let me try something!”
She tore his grip off, “Stop playing around, kid!”
“Wait. Wait. I think I can do something better,” Calvin winced as he pressed on his thigh, closing the wound. "Ugh, fuck!"
He started sifting through his new powers and reaching for [Surface Meld], using the power to glue his skin and tissue together to close the wound. He felt his spirit drain tenfold, likely because he was using it inside the thigh as well, trying to prevent bleeding internally.
Calvin had no idea if it’d work, but it’s probably good enough for now.
“There,” he said, feeling faint but moving on to his other wounds. “Closed. Hooh...”
“What did you do?” Batty asked, looking at the bullet hole that stayed closed. She wiped away the blood and saw not a single drop pouring out of the wound.
“Superhero shit,” he joked. “I need to close the other ones. Can you squeeze them?”
The bullet grazes were simpler to 'close’, although he ended up opening them again in favour of bandages fashioned from bedsheets from his pocket.
Batty wrapped his wounds up even after closing them with [Surface Meld], clearly experienced with how neatly the bandages ended up.
'Pink bandages…’ He let out a light chuckle at the ridiculousness. “Ow. Goddamn... it’s going to be hard to hide this when I get back.”
“That’s what you’re worried about? You almost bled out, kid.”
“Almost,” he echoed as if making a point. “I’m just trying to look forward to getting out of this place.”
“Haah… just wear baggy pants,” Batty said, sitting beside him and resting her head on the concrete. “Are you okay now? Does it hurt?”
“Like a bitch, but I’ll take that over bleeding out,” he shrugged, immediately wincing from the movement.
“About that… we don’t know if you’re good yet. You might be bleeding internally.”
“I’ll be fine. I can sorta… borrow blood.”
“Borrow… what?”
“It’s not a Mythos thing, you wouldn’t know.”
She rolled her eyes, “we need to be more careful. You almost died. We almost died.”
“I know,” he whispered, feeling the dread and trying to push it down deep.
If the very real outcome that was his death wasn’t clear to him back then, it was now. Very much so.
Calvin took out a couple of bottles of water and some energy bars, “five minutes and we move on.”
“You giving orders now, kid?”
“You look like you need five minutes, woman.”
Batty’s eyes narrowed, “Woman?”
“Stop calling me kid. I have a name.”
She rolled her eyes and took one of the bottles, drinking a bit before looking him up and down, “You sure you can walk?”
“No, but we need to get out as soon as we can,” he said before gulping down an entire bottle of water. “I don’t know how long I’ll last with these. I don’t know if Lightspeed’s still alive. And I don’t know how long that stim you took will last before you conk out.”
“Right,” she nodded, taking an energy bar, “the way out is far and we can’t really run.”
“Well, I can’t run,” he joked self-deprecatingly, gesturing to his legs.
“Your left leg only got grazed. Your right leg got hit but I don’t think it got hit somewhere where it matters, so it’ll be—”
“—somewhere where it matters?” He echoed almost sarcastically. "Like my entire fucking leg?"
“Bone and ligaments. It went through the muscle, but you can probably grit through that— no, like you said, you have to grit your teeth through that,” she examined his thigh next, “I don’t think you broke bone there, but it does look dangerously close to an artery.”
He sighed, munching on nuts and oats while a train of thought started leaving the station, “Actually, do we need to go to the top?”
“That’s where the exit is, yes.”
“But you didn’t enter from there, right?”
She paused, nodding slightly, “two floors up from here. Temporary portals.”
“And if the lockdown’s really lifted…”
“It’s a faster way out… and the floor above should have a shortcut and should be the last floor the beetles have access to,” she said, her voice turning into hushed mutterings as her hand unconsciously started scratching her chin. “Ah, but the cape said they destroyed the portals.”
“Did he?” He asked, eyes looking up as he tried to remember the past hour. “I don’t remember if he did.”
“He did.”
“Isn’t it worth checking out anyway?”
“Right after we get some rest.”
“And new pants,” he murmured, summoning a pair of jeans from his pocket.
Batty looked at the pants before turning to Calvin with a curious look. “Do you like pink that much?”
He sighed, feeling more tired after hearing the question, “It’s a long story.”
As he was changing, Calvin’s eyes naturally fell towards the destroyed beetle across them on the landing. The beetle’s carapace was smashed, burnt, and melted, obviously from different powers.
'No metal stake, though,’ he thought, trying to sift through the debris with his eyes. “By the way, how’d you even find this place?”
“I’m good at what I do,” she shrugged, munching through an energy bar Calvin gave her.
“But you had nothing to go on? Just my description of the scarabs.”
“Familiar scarabs,” she corrected. “I didn’t think I’d find anything either, at least, until I kept asking around. Then it became… weird.”
Calvin tilted his head, “Weird how?”
“Imagine finding something familiar but not remembering why that is.”
“That’s… pretty normal, no?”
“That’s what I thought too,” she spoke, taking a gulp of water before continuing, “but… if everyone finds it familiar, and no one remembers why. What do you call it?”
----------------------------------------
'…weird.’ Relia set her eyes down at the slightly steaming, slightly green, and mostly brewed beverage in the large mug she cupped in her hands. 'It’s just grass water. Why does it taste so… good?’
It was mint, if it wasn’t obvious from the smell, mixed with some lemon and a bit of honey. It was probably a calming and pleasant brew… if it weren’t for the current circumstances.
She neared her lips against the rim of the mug, blowing the steam away with her breath— something she hadn’t done in years. With a modest sip, she felt the warmth immediately spread in her mouth and down her throat, followed soon after by a mix of coolness, sweetness, and slight tanginess that felt like an amazing symphony of flavours blending and supporting each other with their own traits.
'Sweet,’ she noted, taking another sip.
She wasn’t too into sweet drinks at all. She wasn’t too into tea either. In actuality, she wasn’t into any kind of beverage at all. The only liquid that fit her palate was water, and she was fine with that.
At least, until now.
'Maybe I should try drinking more tea,’ she thought as her heart felt calmer after another sip.
Although it wasn’t certain whether or not it was the tea that made her chest feel like air or the fact that she’d gotten used to the fact that she was sitting across one of the most infamous villains in Bastion’s history. She’d bet on the latter but hoped for the prior.
'He’s just so… normal,’ she thought as she took another sip. Her eyes quickly darted up, trying to sneak a glance at the man.
A man sat leisurely on a rattan chair, sipping his own tea and scratching his bare chest. The man wore a kaleidoscope shirt with a deep V-neck, showing his impressive musculature that was unusual for someone with his particular powerset.
The man yawned— or at least it looked like he yawned. It was hard to tell with his entire head glamoured to look like a brain in a jar.
“Lighten up,” a voice spoke up, coming from her side. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost, honey.”
She turned to the woman wearing a brown jumpsuit, casually lying down on the sofa like a thirty-year-old unmarried, unemployed, and unmotivated slob. She was missing chips and alcohol to complete the look. Then again, her intimidating figure mostly broke any thought that she was anything like how she looked.
Relia turned back towards Brainmatter and flinched, realizing the brain was actually turned towards her, “Ah— sorry…”
“She practically has, Maxxy,” Brainmatter said, his tone mostly amused.
“Still, you’re a hero, honey. You should have some backbone in you, especially in front of this lazy-ass nudist.”
“Aren’t you here for a favour, you beast of a woman?” Brainmatter spoke as if annoyed, but to Relia, it sounded more like playful banter.
“Depends.” She looked towards Relia and nodded.
“W—what?” Relia stammered.
She sighed, “Show her a picture of the thing. You know? Surely you have one?”
Her mind reeled, trying to figure out what the mad woman was talking about. Then, she remembered why they had come here.
Or, more accurately, why she was dragged here.
She put down the cup of tea on the ornately carved table next to her, careful not to ruin it with her carelessness. She then opened her holowatch’s interface and started tapping on it, going into the Vanguard network and retrieving a copy of the image sent from the lab. An image of the device they found on site.
Relia took a quick glance towards the villain, feeling weirded out that she was about to, essentially, show evidence to one. Despite that, she powered through and pinched her fingers, stretching them after and enlarging the photo into a hologram large enough for everyone in the room to see.
“Hmmm…” Brainmatter hummed, looking intently at the photo.
She took a look at the photo herself, trying to see if there was something she missed.
A golden scarab on a white surface, surrounded by measurements from top to bottom. It was the typical type of photography used for evidence. The original 'whole’ beetle was on the top half of the image, while the bottom half housed a 'dissected’ version, with each part that once made up the beetle gruesomely surrounding it in a neat and organized manner.
Most parts she could somewhat understand, despite her own ignorance of tinkers and their tech, except for a curious little ampule containing a red and black viscous liquid.
'It looks like blood,’ she noted like she did the first time she saw the photo.
“What do you think?” Maxine asked, turning curiously towards the archvillain.
“What is it?” He leaned forward and looked closely at the image, scratching what Relia assumed to be his chin. “A drone or something?”
“Possibly,” Relia answered this time. “According to the report—”
“You don’t know what it is?” Maxine sat up, her beastly eyes squinting at the brain in a jar.
Brainmatter looked intently at the image before shaking his head, “I can’t say that I do. It does look familiar, but nothing beyond that—”
Maxine’s growing gruesome grin at the corner of Relia’s peripheral made her neck tingle like she just felt her breath behind her back. She tried to ignore the feeling and turned towards the less scary person in the room, the literal archvillain that terrorized an entire section of districts in the city for his entire career.
“That’s why you came here?” Brainmatter’s tone grew serious.
“I came here thinking you did this,” Maxine spoke and gave a nonchalant shrug. “Apparently not.”
“Did what?” Relia had to ask, despite the serious atmosphere making her want to run away.
He ignored her question, leaning back on the chair and massaging the jar he had for a head, “I might have. I don’t know yet.”
“You don’t know?”
Brainmatter ignored her, “You remember Hammerhead?”
“No?” She asked, unsure herself.
“Me neither,” he said with a cryptic tone.
“Hah,” Maxine chuckled, “must’ve been a bad one.”
“Really bad,” he let out a laugh himself.
“What are you two talking about?” Relia asked, feeling her head spinning.
“You’ll see,” she looked excited, like a lioness looking forward to hunting an isolated shivering deer, “go on, Miguel. Do your thing.”
The 'eye-wrinkles’ on Miguel’s brain head rolled before he looked towards Relia, “Missmoke, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah?” She nodded, trying to ignore the man’s reputation.
“I’m going to use my power, okay? You have my word that I won’t control or otherwise change anything while we’re in there, understand?”
Despite the genuineness in his voice, she glanced towards Maxine who gave her a nod, “Just get on with it, won’t’cha?”
“Unlike you, Maxxy, I want to maintain at least a modicum amount of manners and not just drag poor helpless kids with you whenever you want,” he spoke with a laugh, “besides, not a lot of people like telepaths using their powers on them. For obvious and good reasons.”
“Right.” She sank further into the couch and gestured towards Relia. “It’ll be fine, honey. Wouldn’t have dragged you here if it wouldn’t be.”
She deliberated for a moment but nodded regardless of her inclination to decline, “…okay.”
“Good.” Brainmatter snapped his fingers.
In an instant, the world around Relia turned into a sea of blackness, making her flinch and step back in vigilance. Alarms rang in her head, up until she saw Maxine still sitting where she was, floating in thin air, grinning at her with no small amount of amusement in her expression.
She turned towards Brainmatter who was also looking towards her with a grin obvious on the creases of his brain.
Lights started appearing in the darkness, catching her attention. Small and faint at first, before multiplying at a speed that filled the void in a near instant with galaxies and universes of light.
'Beautiful,’ she thought for a moment before shaking herself back to focus. “What’s happening? Where is this place?”
“This,” Brainmatter gestured around, “is the collective consciousness of everything in every corner of Tahan. In the entire world. Where we are going to look for the insane piece of shit that literally tore a piece of memory from every living being alive.”