The room pulled itself apart, each piece flying off into the darkness and disappearing, sending Xavier spinning down into the darkness. ‘I don’t even know why I’m surprised at this point.” He thought, ‘All I’ve been doing for the last few minutes is get yanked around like some five year old’s balloon.’ Even as he fell, Xavier was beyond being overwhelmed by the ridiculous experiences he was being dragged through, and managed to block out his natural fear of the fall as he closed his eyes and think about what was really happening to him, but his thoughts were interrupted as he felt the tingling of wind in his hair and across his skin. Untucking himself, Xavier opened his eyes just in time to watch as he plunged into a cloudbank that had appeared in the way of his fall.
There was a muffled sound like falling into an overstuffed mattress as Xavier hit the cloudbank. It felt like falling through a curtain of water as he dropped through the cloud like a stone. Punching through the other side trails of cloud stuff clinging to him as he fell. On the other side Xavier looked out to see a familiar sight.
‘It’s a city’ was Xavier’s only thought as he caught a brief glimpse of the sprawling metropolis below before his momentum spun him until the city was out of view. Carefully he untucked his limbs to stabilize himself, rotating to face the city below as it quickly grew closer. Yet, there was little time to admire the view as an impact was looming near in Xavier’s future if he couldn’t find a way to break his fall. As confident as he had been in the bizzare dream space from before, as far as Xavier could tell this place was real. If he was unable to halt his descent he was going to be only so much blood on the streets below. Suddenly Xavier was wrenched from his thoughts as he heard a voice he was swiftly learning to hate.
*DEPLOY PARACHUTE AND AWAIT RETRIEVAL*
Along with the voice, another text prompt appeared in Xavier’s view. The prompt showed two messages beside each other. The first simply declared “Parachute Equipped” while the other was a counter displaying a rapidly falling value labeled “Altitude”. Xavier quickly glanced over his shoulder to see a parachute pack strapped to his back. Quickly, he patted down his chest to find a pull cord hanging from the straps. Scrambling to get a grip on the cord, Xavier ripped out the cord. The relief he felt at the sound of the parachute unfurling from the pack was immense. It was only overshadowed by the pain as he decelerated, and blacked out.
A figure in a beige trench coat was running through the streets, towards the Outer City, desperately trying to keep a fedora firmly on his head. “What are you doing Lucas!” a female voice shouted through his earpiece. “We can’t deal with a rogue Transfer right now! You need to be out there yesterday!” Lucas grunted, “Look Allie, as much as I appreciate the issue, I can’t get over there any faster. I’m too close to the city core to use any powers, and getting arrested is not in my contract.”
The voice on the other end laughed, “That’s why you’re going that slow? I’ve got the whole district tapped right now, nobody’s coming after you unless I say so.” Lucas smirked. “Oh you’re that certain… Well, confidence is nice but can you really keep up with me?” he asked, a silver volto mask was pulled from the air and placed over his face. “Definitely, do whatever you want as long as you rescue this one.” Lucas’ eyes narrowed and the mask flashed, the light pouring through the eye sockets blocking the view of eyes behind the mask. He chuckled, “Nice.” The force of the takeoff shattered the sidewalk.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Xavier woke up in his parachute, gently gliding ever closer to the city. ‘I must've passed out for a while, I think I’m below the skyline now.’ Xavier was firmly planted below the top of the city floating nearly a thousand feet above the city streets. He was thinking about how he was going to get down when he heard a sound like a boulder shattering car off in the distance. The streets were for the most part laid out in a grid, so Xavier could see all the way down the street towards the beige and black-clad figure hurtling towards him.
The figure was quickly growing and it, or they since it looked like a person, was nearly at Xavier. They were drawing even closer with their arms outstretched like they were going to try to catch him. But Xavier was in a parachute, and the person was just going to get tangled up in the… “Fiddlesticks on a rock burger.” And the figure collided with him, intercepting Zavier’s descent but getting them both tangled in the parachute.
The decidedly masculine figure spoke. “How’re we doing, Allie?” An in distinct voice came from the man’s ear, seemingly to dispense a reply. “What the heck are you doing?” Xavier shouted at the masked man whose arms were currently tangled in his parachute straps. “Huh?” The man replied “What do you mean? I just saved you from falling.” “Yeah sure, but I have a parachute! Who even are you?” The man glanced above Xavier’s head and saw the parachute. “Weird, you do have a parachute. Gotta say that’s new, hold on stay calm.” Then the man started pulling his arms out of the parachute. “Hey guy, you can’t do that, you'll fall!” Xavier started shouting as the man kept trying to extricate himself from the parachute.
“Nah, I’ll be fine, I do this sorta junk all the time.” The man said as he fully removed himself from the straps and remained floating in the air nonplussed as he started working the straps off of Xavier. “Oh yeah,” he suddenly looked up at Xavier again. “Name’s Gravitas, or that’s my alias anyway. I’m an independent contractor, but right now I’ve been working to help save you new guys.” Xavier just hung from the straps of the parachute that kept falling closer to the ground even though Xavier himself was being held aloft by the guy named Gravitas.
“What do you mean new guys? Am I not the first person to literally fall out of the sky?” Gravitas chuckled at the question. “Yeah, guess it’s a bit surprising, but yeah you’re not. People keep showing up at intervals though it’s getting increasingly easier to deal with as the system adapts.” “Wait.” Xavier demanded, “What do you mean system?”
“Hmm?” Gravitas went, before looking back up at Xavier from the parachute straps. “Oh right, yeah you know that voice when you show up that told you to pick a location and there were thousands of useless options and then it took you to ‘create a character’ and then you ended up falling towards the city? Yeah that’s the system.” Xavier’s ears perked up at the mention of the strange selection screen. “Wait, you went there too?” “Yeah man,” came the reply. “I’m a Transfer too, I know it’s a lot to take in but if you just wait a second I’ll give you the rundown on the way to the nearest Safe Hub but we really do need to get you out of the parachute before anything else happens. Got it.” At Xavier’s nod Gravitas went back to the parachute straps for a few moments before pumping his fist and the parachute slipping past Xavier’s shoulder before floating slowly down to the street below.