Levels were all well and good, but they really didn’t matter in the here and now.
What mattered was, well, the fact that her insides felt like they were made of broken glass and ground meat.
And beyond that, her self-created martial Skill came with a hefty dose of self-diagnosing power when it came to combat injuries, and it was telling her that she had internal bleeding from several sources. That would be … almost impossible to fix.
The kinds of injuries she’d suffered usually required surgery to repair, but with how tough she was, it’d take the likes of a diamond cutter to operate on her. And she sincerely doubted making the attempt would go well.
In the meanwhile, Gula might have had healing magic, but hers was more geared towards diseases and toxins. Would that really be enough, especially with the limit on how quickly she could use it in rapid succession?
Thankfully, with her power no longer telling her she should be scared out of her mind, she was back to her old self, completely, no distractions.
So, first, she needed to get her hands on one of the potions she’d left with Granger, at least if Gula didn’t show up in time.
Jaclyn reached for her phone, but only pulled a shattered mess of glass, plastic, and circuitry from her pocket. When had that even … you know what, it didn’t matter. Point was, she knew where Granger had been at the start of this, he should be somewhere in that direction, and he both had a phone and the potion.
But before she could take more than a few steps, Granger had already reached her.
“You okay?” he asked, then looked like he’d realized just how dumb a question that had been.
“Gimme your phone and radio,” she told him, focussing on keeping her voice even despite the fact that she wanted to snap at him, to get information about the situation as quickly as she could, but she wasn’t someone who lost her composure like that. And snapping wouldn’t have made things go any quicker, she received the requested items almost immediately. Both in hand, she began to limp towards the car while making some urgent inquiries
After a mere thirty seconds of back-and-forth communication, she decided that there was no way she was waiting.
“I’ll take the potion,” Jaclyn said, temporarily clamping the radio under her right arm while she extended her hand to Granger, who immediately handed over the vial of green liquid.
It looked so small, tiny, even, and yet, it seemed to encompass her entire field of view, its importance seemingly warping her sense of reality … or maybe that was just tunnel vision from blood loss.
Either way, she unscrewed it, stuck it in her mouth, and tipped her head backwards, feeling the liquid roll across her tongue and down her throat.
It tasted … messy. The first sensation she noticed was one of countless herbs, a blend of things she didn’t even have names for intermingled with others that felt faintly familiar and yet were decidedly not the regular tastes she’d encountered in the past, a confusing jumble of individual sensations, some of which might have even been pleasant had they not been piled together in such a ridiculous number.
And then, it hit her stomach. The liquid had already been dissolving, vanishing into seemingly nothingness on the way down, until it was all gone completely, the sensation of roiling energy having vanished.
Jaclyn stood there for a moment, puzzled, looking around in confusion. What had happened?
That was when she realized that she’d straightened without even realizing, rising to her full height instead of being hunched over to minimize the pain from her broken ribs. She was fine. Just like that.
Sure, the aftertaste of that concoction was growing increasingly vile, but that was an infinitesimal price to pay.
“Drive back to the precinct,” Jaclyn ordered. “I’m calling Frye.”
“Who is this?” was Frye’s first question. Understandable, since he couldn’t have Granger’s number saved.
“Jaclyn Abrams,” she said. “We need those treaties signed, yesterday.”
“Abrams? Oh thank god,” Frye sighed, and there was a loud creak in the background, as though he’d just let himself collapse into a chair of some kind. “Those videos were … alarming.”
“Let me guess, people without common sense decided to stick around and film things?” Jaclyn asked rhetorically.
“Are you okay? And when I say ‘ok’ I don’t mean ‘can you walk five steps without falling over dead’. Do you want me to send an ambulance or do you want directions to a … less public clinic? If you’re injured, dealing with that is your priority.”
“I used ‘the thing’,” Jaclyn said, deciding to be circumspect on an unsecured line, leaving it up in the air what ‘the thing’ was and what it had done to her.
“I see..
But Frye had picked up what she’d put down, understanding that she was fully healthy.
“That same woman was sighted in the facility holding Oliver Fields and killed him,” Frye told her. “He was the thief she was talking about, but she went back to the jungle. I don’t want to pursue with what we have right now.”
Oh, that wasn’t good. That was really bad, in fact. But if Frye was redirecting the conversation elsewhere, she’d follow.
“What do you want to do now?” Jaclyn asked.
“Press conference,” Frye sighed. “Things are buggered to hell right now, but thanks to you, we’ve got more than just empty promises. I’ll meet you at the precinct and set up something on the way. Then we pull an all-nighter and make sure we can sign both treaties tomorrow.”
Frye paused briefly to take a breath before continuing.
“Do you have a spare outfit appropriate for a press conference?”
“Maybe?” Jaclyn said. She did have a spare outfit at the precinct, but that was comfortable outdoors wear, nothing formal. And her closet was currently buried in the jungle, while all she had at the hotel room was the result of a spending spree at the Marks and Spencer down the road.
“I know a tailor shop that’s outside the jungle that handles high society stuff, he should have something good, or at least something he can alter. I’ll text you the address, and the BPA will pick up the tab.”
“What kind of outfit are you looking for?” Jaclyn asked. Frye might have said he was done with the tests, but she wasn’t. Not entirely.
“Something appropriate for your role. Formal pantsuit, preferably. Blue and black color scheme, close as you can get to the strike team uniform designs. But it’s your choice, you got your position because I trust your judgment,” Frye answered and Jaclyn grinned.
She’d already been planning on getting a pantsuit, but matching the colors of the uniform, that was a nice touch, one she’d never even considered. And now that made her wonder about Frye’s exact background. Somewhere in the government, obviously, but where exactly, and what about his social situation? That wasn’t some kind of spy tailor she’d been sent to, but one for high society.
Still, that was a question for later. She passed their new stop onto Granger, then went back to the phone call.
“What are the talking points, and what are we avoiding?” Jaclyn asked.
“I’ll be giving the speech, you’ll mostly be asked questions. Try to keep things focussed on how we’re handling things, preparing strategies for everything, but try to keep as vague as you can without sounding suspicious on the subject of magical healing and how we’re acquiring powers. We don’t need treasure hunters mucking things up. See you in the precinct in an hour.”
And with that, he hung up, leaving Jaclyn alone with her thoughts, contemplating.
Though before she went too far down that rabbit hole, she shot off a quick message to the officer currently wrangling the precinct’s children, asking him to keep the kids away from the television and make sure no one told Eve something had happened to her mother because of something they saw on the news because she was fine.
And she checked her status sheet.
Name: Jaclyn Abrams
Race: Human
Class: Anima Monk
E-Rank, Level 6 -> 10/20
Class Abilities
Spirit Bond: Honey Badger (F-Rank)
Spirit Projection (E-Rank)
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Statistics (0 points available)
Body: 80 -> 100
Magic: 5
Mind: 75 -> 85
Spirit: 74 -> 84
Skills
Pugilism 23 -> 27
Fist of Indomitable Badger 28 -> 29
Athletics 24 -> 25
Situational Awareness 25
Bullshit Radar 17
Martial Arts 27 -> 30
Alternate Skill Set (currently inactive, switch unavailable)
Mana Control 5
Utility Magic 4
Ballance 13
Breathing 7
Inspect 3
Movement 5
***
Four levels, good skill growth, and forty stat points of which she threw half into Body because she needed raw power to make sure that in the next fight, she could actually do damage.
But with that done, she decided to start thinking, fully losing herself in her contemplations, only paying enough awareness of her surroundings that she could notice threats and respond when spoken to.
That lady had been the dragon, she was pretty sure about that by now, growing ever more certain the more she thought about it.
Flame-based powers, not to mention that absurd strength, that sounded like a dragon in human form, didn’t it?
Not to mention that she’d simultaneously been an experienced fighter while still being terrible at combat. So perhaps she was used to fighting, just not while in human form?
People who got punched for the first time weren’t as calm as that bitch had been. And they sure as shit didn’t just walk off being poked in the eye like that. They’d panic, fearing they’d lost their sight for good, or blindly flail. They didn’t use sweeping attacks to buy themselves some space.
And despite that, there were so many things Jaclyn would have done differently, starting with using a proper roundhouse kick instead of what she’d been with. It had almost killed her, sure, but that had been a result of raw power instead of technique. And those fists … they’d been standard, proper, fists, formed in a way that wouldn’t break one’s thumb the instant you hit something, fingers clenched together, thumb tucked underneath, but that was all. Rote and mechanical.
With that woman’s toughness, something like a spearhand would have been almost infinitely better. It was simple physics. When you punched something with enough force in a small enough area, you’d tear straight through. Punch with anything less than that and you’d just wind up pushing the target away and compressing it.
Blows that had sent her flying when they were dealt using fists would have ripped her to pieces if they’d instead been executed using a spearhand.
On top of this, Jaclyn was focussing on the circumstances of a thief being chased. Oliver Fields had found a bunch of mystic treasures in a jungle. A jungle that had held the bolt-hole of a dragon. And then, someone with vaguely draconic powers had hunted down and murdered Fields for “stealing”. Didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to draw that connection, did it?
It was at this point that the car finally reached the tailor shop, Jaclyn got out, and entered.
If she hadn’t known this place was here, she’d have walked straight past it.
Small, but filled with high-end merchandise and a highly skilled proprietor.
Jaclyn passed along the message about what she wanted, had herself measured, and then, she waited, but she was barely even aware of her surroundings beyond knowing that there were no threats around.
So, the dragon they’d been gearing up to fight had been human, or at least wearing the form of one.
Why hadn’t Daedalus warned them about that? Had he been meaning to screw her over?
No, that couldn’t be it, not if he was half as smart as it seemed. He could have just kept mum on the situation if that was his goal, it was perfectly conceivable that they could have simply not run across each other in that vast jungle.
She also doubted it had been a simple oversight, he was too detailed on everything else, which then brought her to one simple conclusion. He’d only encountered a minion and made a whole bunch of assumptions based on that.
That was a problem, something she’d need to point out to him. Police officers were supposed to take things down exactly as they’d happened in their reports, and to keep what the deduced out of the raw reports for a reason, adding their conclusions after the raw information.
You needed to start your deductions based on a spread of facts as close to objective reality as possible, not something that had already been filtered through someone else’s view of the world.
Sure, Daedalus was being helpful as he understood it, but some more raw information would have been really nice.
It was at this point that Jaclyn received her clothes, tried them on in the little cubby set aside for changing, and came out with a tired smile on her face. It fit like a glove, had well-hidden spaces inside for her gun and a vial of potion if they ever got their hands on enough for her to routinely carry some, and overall, she had complete freedom of motion.
She’d had several pantsuits in her old closet, mostly for court appearances, but she’d always felt like she had to be careful about what she did and how she moved. Not to mention that those suits, unlike this one, were quite uncomfortable
And then, she finally decided to call up Robert, only to get his mailbox. She rattled off a quick message about how she was fine, news only got part of the relevant information, and how Eve would still be staying with him for the foreseeable future. Things had seemed plenty dire even before the dragon had reared its ugly head.
It was only a short hop from the tailor’s shop to the precinct, where she was greeted by Frye wearing a new suit, directing several people, and the helicopter sitting on a nearby building told Jaclyn exactly how he’d gotten here so quickly.
She largely stayed out of the setup, this was decidedly outside her area of expertise, instead choosing to go inside and collapse in her chair.
Be it coincidence, or due to some kind of cat-innate ESP, Felix found her there and curled up in her lap while she stared off at nothing.
From there, Jaclyn briefly dropped by the orcish encampment out back, got some more information about how dragons worked in this bizarre world, learned that they did not normally have alternate human forms, and finally collapsed back into her chair once more. Physically healthy she might have been, she felt utterly shattered.
A nap felt appropriate right now …
***
Jaclyn woke up when Granger was gently shaking her awake, gently lifted the cat off her lap and placed him on the ground, then cast Cleanse to get all the orange hairs off her suit and finally followed him to the front desk, where Frye was preparing himself.
“Ready?” he asked and she nodded, so he led the way out through the main door, stepping up to the lectern that had been set up there.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
“Many of you will no doubt be aware of the footage that was recently spread far and wide, which showed one of the dangers of the jungle in addition to throwing up many additional questions, mainly about the government response. I am here to answer those questions.
“I am Director Rowan Frye of the Bureau for Preternatural Affairs, and the woman next to me is Deputy Director Abrams, previously of the London Metropolitan Police Department. While I’ve been setting up the Bureau since the moment the jungle appeared, the Deputy Director has been exploring the new lands themselves, uncovering monsters and retrieving materials with supernatural properties.
“In barely two weeks, we have created an entire national-level agency built to combat supernatural threats while harnessing benign magic for the benefit of the United Kingdom. In another two weeks, we’ll be ready to take on anything that jungle can send at us.”
Jaclyn hid her wince at that proclamation. If he was wrong about that, it’d bite them in the ass in a big way, trashing public trust. But as powerful as her enemy had been, she’d at least drawn blood and even managed to blind her with a simple trick. Sure, neither had let her win, per se, but that also meant that the power gulf between them could not be insurmountably vast. Technique and proper planning would then close that gap, especially with the full power of Daedalus and the Worldstrider Tribe behind her.
Mystscale was recovering from near-lethal injuries inflicted during her escape, something that Jaclyn had confirmed with her own eyes since if that arrogant bitch had had her full S-Ranked power, that fight would have gone very differently.
Jaclyn and her allies, in the meanwhile, were on an upward trajectory, gaining power and growing increasingly good at using it. If they managed to grow faster than their foe recovered, and do so before they hit a point where their growth massively slowed, they had a chance.
But they’d have to act quickly, because time was not on their side. Therefore, if they weren’t ready in two weeks, they were likely buggered anyway.
As she’d been thinking, though, Frye had been continuing.
“This speech was meant to be held tomorrow morning, announcing the first treaty with a sapient species other than our own, which is slated to be signed at that time. However, for obvious reasons, I chose to inform you of our efforts today, instead of then.
“We know the face of our enemy, we know Alaxia Mystscale’s origins, we’ve identified her powers. And soon enough, we’ll demonstrate that the only true royalty we will accept exists at the sufferance of the people!”
His voice rose in volume during the last sentence, earning a few scattered cheers. Understandable, as the speech was mostly being seen by reporters who were paying rapt attention, but it was a good sign nevertheless.
“Now, do you have any questions, keeping in mind that operational security is an issue here?” Frye asked.
Almost a hundred hands went up, one for every reporter. Oh, crikey.
“Deputy Director, what exactly are your powers?”
Jaclyn hid a sigh before answering. At least she’d expected the question and had prepared a suitable answer.
“Their exact nature falls under operational security, however, I’ll clarify some of the things that are visible indicators of my power in use. I’m basically a human honey badger who’s good at martial arts. I’m tough, and I can manifest badger projections.”
And the Q&A session quickly spiraled into an interrogation. Of her. At least Frye had the good grace to not look visibly annoyed at being soundly ignored. Or was he happy with not being the one treated like a particularly interesting bug under a microscope?
Either way, Jaclyn referred some questions towards others, like saying that people should start engaging with the Worldstrider Tribe, barely holding back from reassuring the reporter who’d asked by saying “they don’t bite”, and oocasionally used the “operational security” card when necessary.
Granger also was a surprising amount of help for that, heckling one reporter particularly pushy about her power with a shout of “hey, you’re the one who badgered Achilles into talking about how his heel is vulnerable and then shouted that from the rooftops, right?”.
Apparently, he had a million of those, earning laughs from most people, but searching glares from the pushy jackasses he targeted.
And eventually, things finally came to an end, when the sky was already growing dark as night fell.
***
Frye let himself fall into a chair in the conference room.
“So, that’s done, but we need to prepare some things. Do you want to use the conference room here, or fly back to Cambridge? And do you need to do anything before that?”
“Cambridge, please,” Jaclyn said. “I need to arrange for Eve to stay with a friend of hers, but once the moppet is squared away, I’m ready.”
“Does your ability to ignore toxins let you drink as much coffee as you want without overdosing?” Frye suddenly asked, yawning.
“How about you introduce me to the Director of Operations, and we’ll handle things while you sleep once we’re back in Cambridge?” Jaclyn offered. “I promise we’ll wake you if we need your input.”
Frye tried to answer, but the moment he opened his mouth, he was cut off by a titanic yawn.
Jaclyn chuckled. “With all due respect, Director, I feel like I should just go ahead and do that.”
“Good i- …” a third massive yawn disrupted Frye’s reply, so he just nodded his assent.
“I’ll be back once I’ve got childcare arranged,” Jaclyn told him and headed out.
She’d long since retrieved her spare phone from her desk, and now, she used it to arrange a sleepover for Eve before searching for good coffee places that were open late in Cambridge. Frye had had a point. She was immune to toxins, but there was no such thing as a “toxic substance”, just substances that were toxic even in small amounts. Why not see how far she could abuse that idea?
And on the way out, she had some more orders for Granger. After all, she’d had an idea.