෴Raz෴
෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴
Hornet’s Nest
෴෴෴ ෴෴෴ ෴෴෴
Ground Pound.
Raz activated the combat reflex designed to nearly instantly allow White Fire to the maximum power he could handle before it hurt. As it powered up, he dropped to a knee and drove his fist straight down into the dirt.
A sharp, high-pitched snap marked the impact. The built up energy vanished along with it. In the same instant, he felt something strike his knee where it was touching the ground. There had been no visible effect, but Raz had felt something blast out of him, and some of it hit him.
He glanced at his status, and then repeated the move. The rebound, as he was calling the feeling hitting his leg, didn’t exactly hurt, but it was getting uncomfortable.
“Well, the mnemonic to trigger it worked. It sounded cool in my head, and it did—something, I guess. But what?”
Ok, so it works when I have something to hit. Glad it doesn’t seem to take much energy to use. It looks like the real trick is going to be controlling it.
He raised a hand, fingers spread wide, palm facing away from him. Power rushed to gather around his fingertips. The energy felt poised, ready and eager to strike out. The tingling giving way to pulsing pressure, the pressure giving way to a tight, almost cramped, discomfort.
It feels like I’ve got a lot of… something, built up. The more I hold, the more it wants to be fired off. But how do I do it?
He allowed the white fire to surge higher and higher, to the point where discomfort was about to become pain then engaged another procedural chain to regenerate energy. Watching his personal energy dip, then level out and refill, as his energy regen chain took effect brought a smile to his face.
“I can do this all day.”
Whatever this actually is.
Standing just inside the rail surrounding Brock’s workshop, Raz closed his eyes and opened his sensoria. The new sense beckoned for attention. As he focused on it, the noise and chaos of raw alien sensations assaulted his perception. The sheer weight of such a mass of sensation felt like it was searing his nerves and he instantly opened his eyes and disengaged from the new sensation.
He found himself lying on the ground looking up at the sky. The wave of disorienting sensory input had washed over every other sense, and knocked him off balance. Raz sat down on a flat topped rock and tried again. This time he managed a full second before pulling out, nearly retching at the onslaught of sensory input.
It’s so strong. I can’t even tell what I’m sensing. It’s just too much. Bee, dial that sense down to just above zero sensitivity.
This time the chaos was weak enough that he could handle it. He heard a sound that was and also wasn’t sunlight, tasted the energy of wind in the air, felt and smelled tendrils of unseen forces gripping and surrounding his body. A feeling like the impact of moonlight on his ears and rough textured colors rubbing across his tongue were the breaking point.
He shut his sensoria down and opened his eyes, gasping for breath. “It’s still so much!”
Is there anything else you can do?
[I regret to inform you that enhanced cognition, or a prolonged period of neural adaptation may be required to fully make sense of such a chaotic sensory experience.]
Well of course it would be. But for the moment, it’s not an option, so let’s forget about that, and focus on what we can do.
Raz once again settled himself on the rock and opened his sensoria with eyes closed, focusing only on this new sense. There was nothing. A perfect, beautiful, serene, nothing.
Hmm, how would I look for the meaning in a raw network capture, or decompiled machine code. Let’s approach this as a sensory only problem. Bee, start by mapping all that incoming data into audio and visual input only, as an additional overlay channel. When I say, turn it up very slowly starting from zero. For now, anything you can’t do a good map into audio or visual, just discard.
[This is a much more complex task than you think it is. I’ll do what I can.]
Above him the sky slowly came into focus to his eyeless vision. It was a black abyss dotted with roiling masses of furious energy. Each one shone with it’s own unique pattern and signature. The bright chaotic light in them didn’t illuminate, rather the light served to highlight them. The sun still ruled the sky. In this otherworldly perception, it was visible as a stringy, squiggly patchwork of lines and curves. Each line or shape moved and writhed much like pockets of dancing illumination in the sky.
Above, or possibly below it all, he became aware of a sound. A single sustained note underlying everything. The sound wasn’t loud, or soft. It just was. A sound that seemed to fill the air around him, and resonate through him. The longer he listened, the more distinct sounds he became aware of.
The sky continued to brighten as his sensitivity rose. The sandy soil beneath him was an inky void, black like space with occasional tiny, half seen flashes of the light that illuminated nothing.
Still a lot of visual noise. Anything you can do to keep the meaningful data and get rid of the noise?
[I’ll try, this is a task better suited to enhanced cognition.]
I get it, just do what you can.
Then something shifted in the ground. A small movement accompanied by a starburst effect of multicolored strands of light that appeared for an instant then vanished. The instant of strings and streams of light almost outlined something vaguely torpedo shaped, long cylindrical with a rounded blunt nose.
There it is! Bigger than I’d hoped. No doubt that thing will turn out to be some kind of monster land shark or something.
Raz stayed focused on the alien view before him. The visual noise improved marginally, but not enough to make any significant difference.
With his eyes still closed, Raz cracked open the floodgates to White Fire, allowing it to concentrate and build up around his hands. He lifted a hand in front of his face.
His hand glowed like a burning fire. The glow extended far beyond the halo of energy he’d imagined. The bright glow washed out everything else in his view. He tried to force the glow down into a tight sheath around his hand. It contracted ever so slightly inward. Just as he managed to compress the glowing field down into a nearly form fitting field around his hand, he noticed his rapidly falling energy level and forced the door to White Fire closed.
I just had a thought. What would happen if I ran out of energy, while white fire was still ‘on’?
[Let’s not find out until we have as much resistance to it as possible. And maybe let’s be farther away from other people and infrastructure.]
The image of him building power out of control until he simultaneously burst into flames and exploded was an unwelcome intrusion to his mind's eye.
Yeah, I’m not looking to test myself to destruction, just wondering if it would shut off, or rage out of control.
[Unknown, but let’s not test it any time soon. It feels like it would go out of control at least for a while.]
When he opened his eyes, the dim ethereal imagery of his new sense was immediately drowned out by the bright visual intensity of the normal world.
Well, that’s kinda cool. I’ll have to play with it more later. Time to test some more.
Refilling his energy as he got to his feet, Raz looked around again, wondering what he could test on. He created some new procedural chains to assist with rapidly allowing enough power into his fist without overwhelming himself.
What was that thing that moved?
He stood still and faced outward toward where it had been. Within a few seconds, the increasingly familiar feeling of a ping returning came to him.
So that’s probably the same thing. I wonder what it is.
Raz engaged the new sense with his eyes open. Superimposed over the visual world, in an awkward sort of 2D/3D with bad parallax handling, the HUD gave him an overlay that included the new sense. He closed his eyes, and the overlay remained in his view.
“Ok, let’s see if I can stir up a bit of trouble.”
But just a bit. This looks like it’s smaller than the lizard-rat, and way smaller than the snake, but still plenty big, and no sense being stupid about it.
He stepped over the rail, watching the spot where the movement had come from before. As his foot touched the ground, the shape underground went active for a moment, and shifted in place as well. It looked to be about thirty feet away, and a few feet underground. Raz stamped his foot, it moved slightly again, but didn’t move.
“All right, you don’t want to show yourself? Let’s see if this stirs you up.”
He repeated the ground pound. Filling his fist with power then blasting it into the ground. There was almost no visible effect, but the creature moved, burrowing over to Raz’s right. Raz kept his eye on it, and repeated the ground pound.
Hmm, maybe I’m wrong. I was picturing some kind of burrowing land shark kind of thing. Maybe it’s just an alien potato or something. That’s a letdown.
“I’m disappointed. I thought the whole ‘Ground Pound’ would be a cool move. Something you’d see in a movie. Maybe a little explosion, or create a tremor. Bursts of fire shooting out of the ground. I don’t know, something awesome. Instead, this move looks a lot cooler in basically every movie or video game ever than in real life. That rebound on my knee isn’t much fun either.”
A short burst of Somatic Recovery took care of the minor aches.
So, between you and me, the healing ability has turned out to be one of those quietly awesome powers.
[That this comes as a surprise to you is the most concrete evidence of your impaired cognit—]
The sudden strong feeling of danger from behind was unmistakable.
Afterwards, Raz couldn’t have said for sure if he instinctively went into the slow time, or if Bee triggered it for him. He also couldn’t say what exactly triggered his awareness of an incoming threat. He spun in place in time to see the ground open up almost beneath him. Off balance and moving painfully slow, he could only watch as three massive triangular jaws opened up before him.
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Without a bloodstream already flooded with adrenaline, he struggled to move in the thick, heaviness of the slow time. The incursion creature emerging from the ground didn’t have any such problem.
Why did I have to be right? It's a damn land shark. At least it’s probably blind if it lives underground.
Raz awkwardly side stepped toward the workshop, his feet kicking up clouds of slow motion dust and grit. The heavy jaws full of jagged teeth and a stubby sharp tongue pivoted toward him. He couldn’t see how much of it was out of the ground, but if the mouth was any indication, it was plenty big.
The land shark closed in on him fast, too fast. He’d barely gotten out of its path when a single eye stalk emerged then opened. The eye twitched, then focused its double hourglass shaped pupil on him and the heavy jaws followed. Even in slow time, it managed to whip its head to the side, striking his leg and sending him spinning to the ground. As Raz slowly rotated and fell toward the dirt it advanced in slow motion on many rows of stubby legs that resembled cup-shaped paddles.
He landed hard on hands and knees and immediately launched into a sideways rollover away from the snapping jaws. The mouth opened wide as it lunged to bite him across the chest. Raz braced his hands against the outside edges of the grimy, dirt covered jaws and scrambled with his feet to try and keep moving toward the workshop and avoid getting trapped and trampled under the land shark’s knobby, spiny underbelly. His grip on the outside of its jaws as he kicked along the ground created a fragile stalemate he was doomed to lose.
Another threat pinged his awareness. The land shark was pushing him toward the other one for a two on one setup. As soon as Raz became aware of the other creature approaching from the side, he knew he had only split seconds left to act.
Pack hunters!
Without any planning or fancy articulation, Raz dropped the barrier between him and White Fire, letting it burst forth into his body. Energy surged and burned in him. He gasped when the searing shock of pain struck. The seemingly endless ocean of unconstrained power ripped across his body and stole his breath. The land shark made a choked, gagging sound before it went stiff and then sagged. Something between saliva and vomit drooled out of its slack jaws.
The notion of an abrupt threat sharpened, causing Raz to turn his head just in time to see the other one start to emerge from under the sandy dirt. In the split-second it took to move his hands from one land shark to the new attacker, his entire body filled and overflowed with white fire, tingling and burning with trapped raw power like he’d been splashed with scalding water. A bright blue-white flash appeared as he slapped the second land shark. It jerked away from the contact then made a stuttering movement and continued the attack. Raz half rolled out of its path and caught the jaws with both hands. Like the first, it spasmed with a gurgling choked sound before going still. Something foul smelling began to leak out of its mouth.
In the fading grip of the slow time, Raz scrambled for the safety of the metal rail surrounding Brock’s building. He was just starting to feel the effects of adrenaline when he heaved himself over the rail. Rolling over, he whirled to look back around for the next threat. Invisible fire surged and flowed.
With the white fire blazing through and around him, his new sensory input that used it had been completely washed out. After an effort of will, he managed to get the output under control and close it down. The burning tingling feeling drained away, leaving him shaking in the aftermath of a sudden intense surge of adrenaline and action.
He nearly allowed himself to sit down in the wake of the battle, an abrupt weight of exhaustion falling over him. A glance at the still forms of the two land sharks was enough to get him to his feet to stagger over toward the shop door.
As he moved toward the door, he heard a sound above him. Hex popped out of the trap door on the roof, rifle in hand. She scanned the area before looking down at him.
“Are you ok?” she called out.
He nodded wearily. “Yeah, but I think you were right about something nasty enough to keep everything else away. I think we got lucky on the way in.”
She nodded and flipped down the magnifier behind her red dot scope. “What are those things?”
He started to point then stopped. The palms of both hands were red and blistered as though he’d held them against a hot stove. The back of his hands up to the elbow was deep red like a bad sunburn. As soon as he saw his hands and arm, the pain of his injuries rushed in, filling him with weariness.
“I’m gonna call them land sharks. They work together more like wolves or some kind of pack animals, and—” he paused for an instant. “Actually, let's talk about this inside. I’m getting the willies being out here now.”
She nodded. “Should be safe inside the ring, but yeah, hurry inside, I’ll cover you.”
Raz pushed through the sudden tiredness and jogged for the door while he channeled somatic recovery into himself.
I’m really hungry again. I wonder if he has more food ready yet. Is white fire powered by food?
[No, this is a more complicated topic than you might suspect. But the short answer is that your assimilation of multiple abilities is putting a significant caloric drain on your body, and you’re feeling your body demand the required fuel.]
Is that why it seems like I could eat so much and it wasn’t filling me up?
[I don’t know the details, just what has been noted about catalyst users occasionally needing a large supply of nutrition.]
Something else we need to look into then.
Back inside, he found Brock still obsessing over the devices and his hint that he might be able to identify the thieves. The translucent box over his head with the words ‘Planetary Scan” was now at 3450/3600 and falling by about one digit per second.
Raz ignored his attempts to bring that topic up, and inquired about lunch instead.
The other man shook his head in disbelief. “You cannot be hungry again! You just ate so much! How can you want more already?”
Raz shrugged. “Do you or don’t you?”
Brock looked annoyed, but fetched him another heaping platter of food. From the sounds of his work and stream of good natured cursing, Raz surmised that he’d immediately started yet another batch of food afterward. Hex came in from the roof.
“I didn’t see it happen, but something grabbed those two and pulled them underground. By the slurping and crunching sounds, I’m guessing it ate them.”
Dang. I missed analysis and the catalyst sacs. So it seemed like I was able to send white fire through my hits, or actually just through contact. Should I be unlocking more abilities as fast as I can while I’ve got a place to do it?
[White Fire is integrated, but my advice would be that you haven’t used it enough to consider moving to the next ability. Spending more time with the base ability would be a better plan. I don’t think you’ve gotten a handle on it yet. With attack abilities, learning to control them is an important step you shouldn't skip.]
Yeah, but right now we’re at least relatively safe. About to go play mailman, literally who knows where.
[Excellent point. It would be safe to unlock more. However, there are advantages to using an ability until you’ve mastered it at each level before advancing.]
So basically, there is an argument for either choice. It was Shatter Strike, Insulation 2, and Ground Control, right?
[Correct. Any of those could be acquired at this time without hazard.]
Anything you can tell me about them?
[Shatter Strike is some form of attack. Insulation is a further resistance to White Fire itself, in this context a sort of defensive ability. Ground control is the central tree, and appears to be more of a utility or an ability aimed at furthering the control of White Fire.]
More control sounds good. Is Shatter Strike a ranged or hand to hand attack?
[It does not say.]
Hmm, any of them have sub abilities?
[Ground Control includes two. I can see one that unlocks at the bottom of the ability, called something that roughly translates into Friendly Fire. The other ability is at the top of the Ground Control ranks, and so I can only tell that it exists, not what it is. Shatter Strike has one sub ability that is unidentified as well.]
Raz thought about his options as he ate his fill. Afterwards, he thanked Brock and made his way to the bedroom to rest. Somatic Restoration took care of his burns, although he noticed an increasing resistance to the healing. He laid back on the bed to relax, and could instantly tell he’d be asleep within minutes.
Those sub abilities are kind of enticing. Let's get Ground Control unlocked and hope for the best.
[It will be unlocked by the time you—
It felt like no time at all had passed when Hex was nudging him awake. Vague images of fighting against a very tall man who seemed normal, but was completely invulnerable, and a strange mouth filled with unsettling hooked teeth, but without a body faded like morning mists in the sun as he came to full awareness. As he opened his eyes, he could tell that new abilities had come online, without any sense of how they worked or what they did.
“Hey babe, time to get up.” she nudged him again.
He rolled over and grunted.
“Brock located her. He’s getting his door setup, and says it takes about ten minutes, so it’s almost time to go.” She stroked his forehead as she spoke. “I would have let you sleep longer.”
Rubbing the grit from his eyes, Raz nodded and sat up, failing to suppress a jaw popping yawn. “Is he still on the hook?”
She looked confused for a moment then smiled. “If you mean is he still going on about those teasers you left him with, yeah. He’s still way on the hook. I think he might be more obsessive than I even thought. Wouldn’t stop pestering me for more information. I was honestly glad I don’t have much to tell him.”
Raz shrugged as they headed into the building. “He seems to get past it fast, I was worried he’d already be over it. Gotta strike while he’s still hot for it.”
Back on the main workshop floor, Brock was fiddling with a device Raz hadn’t seen before. It was a vertical toroid, tubes and wires wrapped around the ring, completely obscuring the underlying structure. Brock was speaking loudly to someone when they came in, but stopped and turned toward them as soon as he heard the door.
“You! Are you ready to go?” He looked at Raz. Brock’s Planetary Scan box had been replaced with another box titled, Targeted Portal. The box was flashing yellow, with 387/600 remaining on the countdown.
Raz picked the envelope up and slipped it in his pocket. “Ready as ever I guess.”
Brock nodded. “Excellent. The door shall be aligned vithin a few minutes. The longer ve take after that, the farther it will drop you from the target spot. Do you understand?”
Raz thought about the door that had brought them here. “I think so.”
Brock pressed a button. A low, deep, throbbing hum started up in the workshop. “When the doorway turns on, try to go through it as soon as possible.”
Hex eyed the doorway with distrust. “Where exactly is it taking us?”
Brock ignored the question and handed her a small device reminiscent of a smartphone. “This vill point you to my Leibchen, and back to the door when you’re done. You can also call me if something goes awry. Vhen the gate opens, get through it as fast as you can.
The two stood in front of the toroid circle and waited. Brock talked around the subject, then finally broke.
“Vill you look at my footage of the break in and tell me vhat you know?”
Raz shrugged. “I could. Make it worth my while and I probably will.”
Brock twitched. “Deal! And the devices you mentioned? Vhat can you tell me about them?”
Hook, line, and sinker.
Raz shook his head. “I’d want something in return for that. How long till this door opens?”
Brock looked at the various incomprehensible dials and readouts. “Soon. Very soon, five minuten, maybe seben.” He hurried over to the workbench and brought the case holding the gloves and accessories.
“Take these, then tell me what you know!” he snapped at Raz.
Raz resisted the urge to grab at the case, shook his head and lifted his hands away from the box with a concerted act of will. The contents of the box seemed to exert a magnetic pull on him that was hard to ignore. “That’s ok for a start I suppose, but hey, you proved they’re yours, and I’d hate to have to be responsible for anything of yours. I don’t like borrowing things.”
Brock grew frantic. “Keep them. Keep the set! They're yours now. These are much more valuable than you think! I need to know the answer!”
Raz resisted the resurgence of the all but overpowering urge to reach for the case, keeping an eye on the countdown above Brock’s head. “You’re right. You do need to know. I just remembered where I know them from, and you’re not going to like it.”
The bearded smith looked as though he was about to burst a blood vessel. “Fine! Keep these, and tell me. If your information is vorth more, I’ll pay it. I swear it on my honor.”
Raz looked at Hex. She shrugged and leaned in to whisper in his ear. “I’ve heard he’s very good about keeping his promises. Maybe even a little obsessive about it.” She said with a wink.
Raz looked at the case containing his gauntlets with as much fake disinterest as he could muster. “I’ll take this as a down payment. I’m pretty sure you’re going to owe me for this. As for the video, I’ll have a look when we get back.”
The humming from the toroid gate changed, rising in pitch.
“Yes yes, take them. The door is about to open! Tell me!” Brock begged. The scan countdown flashed red as it hit 29,28,27.
Raz swallowed then talked fast. “Ok, The sensors I found are visually disguised, lead shielded, air droppable sensor packages that form a sensor net, and relay data gathered via ELF. The company made a splash in the security world a couple years back, but soon after that, they went to military contracting only. Basically, someone with big time resources is either spying on you, or looking for you.”
Brock gasped and went pale. The timer flashed 0. He spoke, but his words were lost in the surge of noise as a roaring sound and a rushing wind erupted from the gate. The initial blast of cooler air nearly knocked the three of them down. He pointed at the gate emphatically. Raz clapped his hand over the envelope in his pocket lest the wind steal it away.
“Where are we going!?” Raz shouted at Brock. Realizing he’d missed this info only now at the last second.
Brock looked at him and shook his head, pointing at his ears. Raz started to walk toward Brock to try again but the short man shook his head vehemently, pointing toward the portal.
Location air pressure differentials. I guess that’s why the other door had that forcefield.
Raz grabbed the case. Hex had her hands full with her own gear. They struggled against the rushing air. The instant they passed the halfway point into the portal, the rushing air ceased. The abrupt change in resistance caused them both to stumble. They half stepped, half fell through the round gate into darkness.
The End (of Act 2)
Stay tuned for Act 3 (normal posting schedule)
Where everything goes to hell, storylines converge and collide, and no one lives forever.