CHAPTER THREE: PET

When I closed down that forge I noticed a couple of really small chunks had been taken out of the rock wall. The weapons were being pulled from some alternate dimension too, then, and their mass was being swapped with material from the forge to maintain balance. That was kickass.

I turned away and time began again. Mia jumped at the sudden sensation of a heavy dagger sheathed at her hip and then pulled it out and inspected it, casting an eye over at the bone minions.

“You want me to fight, Zander?” she asked, her voice light and raising up at the end like she was really unsure what I wanted.

I nodded my head. “I should have asked you what weapon you wanted, but I figured a dagger was a good start. Can you?”

“Fight?” she asked, turning back to them, and then looking down at the dagger. Her fingers closed around the hilt and it was easier for her to grasp the handle than I had thought; no need to worry. “I can if you want me to. Kill them?”

Her voice was so gentle and sweet that it sounded strange to hear words like that come out of them. “Yes, they’re only minions.” I licked my lips slightly, watching her every move. “They don’t feel pain. They’ve been ordered to kill us.” I wasn’t sure about that, but it was a fair assumption. The Lich was supposed to be a terrible supervillain, after all.

“That’s fine,” she said with a small nod, and then she took off at a run, dagger held high. When she reached the first minion she threw her whole weight into shattering it across the ‘neck’ with the flat of the thick blade, and its biting mouth narrowly missed her hand. The head flew off and shattered into a dozen pieces on the floor, but its body kept coming. Mia kicked it in the chest and a rib splintered as it fell back. She stomped on its center and it broke apart easily.

Shit -- couldn’t I have done that?

But watching her fight I realized that maybe I couldn’t have. She ducked a slash from the other minion and then hissed through her teeth as a sharpened bone on its other arm scratched at her exposed skin, leaving a small red line. She growled and flipped the dagger, punching a hole through the minion’s skull with the hard hilt of her weapon, and then spinning and kicking through the center of its mass, breaking it in two. The jaw kept working, torso wiggling, like it wanted to be able to break through her skin again more than anything -- which was true, it was a minion after all -- and Mia ran up and booted the skull across the cavern, then grinned over at me when it shattered.

“You’re unbelievable!” I cheered and ran over to check she was alright. The scratch didn’t look bad at all, but I felt completely responsible for her wellbeing, to a degree I hadn’t expected. The thought of her being seriously injured after I’d summoned her here was pretty awful.

“I’m fine,” she said, in reaction to me taking her arm and squinting at her scratch. “I could do with some shoes though, Zander.” When she said my name it made me feel like smiling like an idiot. I didn’t know why. But yeah, she was bruising and cutting her feet walking around; I was an idiot for not thinking of that sooner, but I’d been distracted.

Sure, I had no more points, but I figured shoes would be free. I opened up the interface on a new section of wall and tapped quickly through it to come to clothing. I gave her some tennis shoes, as shoes with more protection cost a couple of points. But then I noticed the Points box was flashing lightly again, so I clicked on it.

You have defeated a Bone Minion!

50 points

You have defeated a Bone Minion!

50 points

Bonuses: 10 points

110 points

I punched the air when I read it. I clicked on the Bonuses box and it told me Mia had earned the extra 10 points with her speed. That meant that chain-killing minions looked like the way to go to advance as quickly as possible in my power. I grinned, happy I was already starting to figure this out.

I was tempted to immediately dump the points into her attributes and maybe start to look at skills -- or even go chat with her about new weapons -- but I realized I had enough points for a new member of my army. Or … maybe I wanted to save points up for a little while, take some time and get to know the system and what would be the best decision right now -- a large mediocre army or a small powerful army? I also needed to figure out the fastest way to increase their Loyalty for when I was forced to start recruiting low Loyalty people to my team.

I liked how this didn’t seem to be a levelling up system. It looked like I could fight purely with Mia and then pour all the earned points into someone different, if I wanted to.

Excited to get started on figuring this out, I turned around to hear voices coming from the tunnel that led to this chamber. I frowned, and realized with a jolt that I didn’t want the others to know about my power yet. It was hard to explain, and it would be even harder to explain why I had opted for this petite girl -- whose nipples I could almost see through her tank top -- over a heavy hitting dude or something like that. I had never heard of a super who could summon real people from another dimension. What if they thought it was … odd? That I was some kind of freak?

“Mia, can you … hide for me?” I asked her, scrunching my brow up. She gazed at me for a moment in confusion, but then nodded firmly. “Give me this a moment,” I added, gesturing for the dagger. She instantly placed it in my hand and ducked behind a large rock.

“Z!” Elle cried and ran into the chamber to pull me into a tight hug. “You’re fine, right? Tell me you’re fine. God -- I was so scared. Did your powers come in? Are you really OK?”

I pulled away from the hug and looked her up and down. Her hair was dishevelled now and her lipstick slightly smudged. I smiled, still thinking she looked beautiful, but the concern in her face and body language made her look so much more like the Elle I knew than her confident, sexual alter ego.

“I’m fine,” I said. “How was the fight?”

“Yeah, we apprehended him,” Primer cut in, his hands on his hips and his chest puffed up with pride. “Sunport is a safer place for it.”

“Right,” I said, rubbing my hands on my jeans and glancing over my shoulder to check if Mia was still hiding. I just … didn’t want to explain it just yet.

“So?” Sonoro said, his arms folded. “Powers or not, kid?”

I looked down at the dagger in my hand and then opened my palm and showed it to them. “Uh, yeah,” I said. “Summoner.”

“You can summon weapons?” Lady Luck cried. “That’s so cool, Zander! We have to think of a great alias for you. Do you get any innate fighting experience with the weapons you summon?” She stepped back and looked me up and down.

I shrugged, wanting this conversation to end so I could get back home and work on my powers as much as possible.

That was going to be my life now. Getting stronger. Getting better.

“I think it’s just weapons,” I said, and even stopped short of adding ‘and armor’ because I didn’t know if I could pull clothing from the other dimension without a person to put them on. In that case, they’d arrive as an exact fit, surely, which would not be that useful overall.

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“That’s great!” Elle said excitedly.

“So great,” Sonoro repeated, but his tone was completely sarcastic. It was true -- it was a fairly useless power, especially in the context of their group. But I was finding more and more that I didn’t want to be a part of H-Bomb. If I could build my own army, I could be my own team. I could give them all earpieces, build up their loyalty and pour points into them, and sit from afar and reap the rewards.

Fuck, this was going to be amazing.

“Listen, I have a killer headache,” I said, and it was half true. “I’m gonna … I’m gonna stay here and play around with my power for a minute and then I’m gonna walk straight home. That cool?”

“You don’t want to walk with us?” Elle asked, sounding slightly disappointed. Fissure let out a loud sigh.

“I dunno where my mask went,” I said truthfully. I’d dropped it somewhere. I shouldn’t be seen up in the city with H-Bomb without it.

“We have to get back to the mayor for our reward. If the Lich escapes custody or does any more damage we might not be rewarded. Let’s get out of here,” Fissure said.

“This place is disgusting,” Sonoro agreed. “Listen, Z, congrats on the power,” he added, turning to me but not really looking at me. “You should be on the lookout for someone getting their power around now who can, like, use any weapon or something.”

I frowned. “Why?” I asked.

“Your foil?” he said, looking at me like I was dumb.

I understood suddenly -- the universe did tend to balance itself out in this way. First, powers usually had limitations so no one was world-endingly strong. Usually. This wasn’t always the case. Also, when one person got a power, often someone else relatively nearby got a power that either worked in tandem with theirs, or worked seamlessly against it. We called that person your foil. They ended up being sidekicks or nemeses a lot.

Would they get suspicious if a foil of the power I’d made up didn’t turn up? Should I just tell the truth? No, it would be even weirder now, since I’d already lied about it…

“We gotta get moving, let him figure out his weapon shit,” Fissure pressed.

“I’ll see you soon, Zander, yeah?” Elle said. “We’ll hang out and talk about H-Bomb, and stuff.”

I shrugged and smiled. I would need to sit down with her and tell her I didn’t want to join. I had definitely always been the type who didn’t work well on the lowest rung of any organization, and I didn’t really like anyone else in her group except her. I was really feeling the idea of a maverick super, calling the shots behind the scenes, answering to no one.

I was suddenly really extra glad I hadn’t told them my true power. I didn’t want anyone to know. I had a true secret identity, and that was the way I wanted it to stay.

“See ya,” I said, and made a show of settling onto a ledge to get comfortable and bringing up my interface. I pretended to stare at it and read it, but all it told me was my stats and to press my palm against a large solid inanimate object again. What it hadn’t told me was that object would get eroded, so I was glad I’d tried it first on a cave wall.

When they’d gone and their voices had drifted away into silence, Mia peeked up from the stone and I waved her over. “Sorry about that,” I said. “New to powers and I wanted to keep my secret identity.”

“Oh, of course,” she said with a small laugh. “If this is your only power, I guess that’s why you wanted me to fight for you?”

I felt strangely judged. She was acting more distant than she had before, looking down at her new tennis shoes and kicking at some debris. “Uhh…” I said.

“Who was she? Was she another one?” she asked, not meeting my eyes.

It took me a second to figure out what she was referring to. “Elle?” I asked. “No, you’re the only one I’ve ever summoned.” I almost laughed at how this was sounding. But she wasn’t looking amused.

“She sure hugged you, huh?” she said, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear.

This time I did chuckle. “I guess she did. Are you jealous?”

“No.” She frowned and looked me in the eye. “I just want to know who the people are we’re going to be working with, that’s all.”

“Yeah, she’s just a friend from when I was a kid. That was her team of superheroes.”

Mia raised her eyebrows, looked away again.

“What?” I asked, no idea what had bothered her that time.

“Nothing, it’s just … you associate with teams of heroes? Are you part of one?”

This surprised me. “Uhh, I guess so. Sometimes. Is that weird?”

Mia shrugged. “I don’t know if I’ve ever met a superhero. It’s nice to meet you. Did you have an alias yet? Hero aliases are always lame cliches like ‘Truthstorm’ or ‘Fire Eagle’ or whatever.” She looked genuinely exasperated at the idea that I might be one of them.

“No, brand new power. No alias. What do you think it should be?”

Her eyes sparkled with thought. “Well. You can pull people from the Inferno, right? So maybe something like Infernal?”

“Hold on, the Inferno? What’s that?”

Mia looked wide-eyed with confusion that I didn’t know the answer, and then her breathing quickened as she struggled to begin to explain the place. I watched her chest rise and fall and then she shook her head hard, noticeably paler.

“Shit, no, it’s OK,” I said quickly. Judging by the state she’d arrived to me in, fear and tears in her eyes, maybe I didn’t want to push her on this one. At least she had looked intact, not cut up and bruised … or was that worse? Whatever had happened there, where I pulled her from, it had been scarring without getting her physically hurt. “Please, it’s OK. I won’t make you think about it again.”

“Do you need to put me … back? Now that I’ve helped you fight?”

Damn, the fear in her eyes. I chewed my lower lip and brought up the interface. It really didn’t say anything else. Just reminded me how to get a new forge. Nothing about her going back. Nothing about a time limit. “Mia, I really don’t think you need to go back,” I said. “But it could be that I just don’t know how these powers work yet, so please don’t be too mad at me if I’m wrong. I’ll pull you back out of there if you end up going back.”

She nodded slowly, bitterly, and I felt awful that I couldn’t help any more than that. I desperately wanted to know what the place was -- after all, it was kind of looking like it was the basis of my entire power -- but I just couldn’t push her yet. Maybe later when she knew me more, or even when her Loyalty was higher.

I needed to change the subject. “Infernal isn’t a bad name but I think it doesn’t really say what I can do.” She looked up at me again with some interest, so I continued to speak, trying to calm her down if I could. “Although, you know, that’s not a bad idea. People will hear my alias and try to figure out what my powers are, but I decided I don’t want anyone to know as much as I can help it. Since my power is to upgrade fighters, I can be on the sidelines.”

“Something like Centurion,” she suggested. I was about to give a reason to dismiss it but actually it wasn’t bad.

“Yeah, I like the idea of my name being something to do with commanding a group of people. That sounds pretty cool. I just … wouldn’t it be weird to call myself Centurion and have like two or three people?”

“You said you wanted your name to be misleading,” Mia said, a mischievous grin on her face. I raised my eyebrows.

“Huh. That’s pretty smart,” I said, and bit my tongue and didn’t add even though your Intelligence is pretty low… because if she didn’t know I could see her stats that would be a bizarre and horrible insult. Even if she did know I could see her stats, it was a pretty weird thing to blurt out.

“Also,” I added, “you’re not bothered by this? Like, I can’t control you or anything but you don’t mind being a part of this?” I gestured between us wildly. “Whatever this ends up being?”

Mia smiled and shrugged, looking particularly cute when she did. “If it’s a choice between being a part of this and going back there?” She threw her thumb over her shoulder to nothing in particular. “Zander, I’ll follow you anywhere.”

There it was, the reason behind the loyalty of 8. Whatever had happened to her in the Inferno, whatever that was, it was so crappy that she automatically liked me a lot for freeing her from it. I was fine with that, but I couldn’t help but feel a little bad if all the silhouettes I’d seen were actual human lives stuck in some kind of tortured existence. Were they all just … waiting for me to free them?

I’d need to get started earning a lot of points. That was the only way to help them.

“Let’s get out of this gross cave,” I said. “We’ll find you somewhere nice to sleep, how’s that sound?” My mind went over every nook and cranny of my aunt’s farm, ex-farm, really, since my uncle died, and brought up a couple of potential places I could stow Mia away for a while that would be warm and dry.

Until I figured out something smart to do with her. With everyone I summoned, actually, if they were staying forever. It occurred to me now that I had kind of a lot of responsibility with this power, and not just in the traditional ‘use it for good’ kind of way. I actually was going to be bringing people here and I’d need to make sure they were safe and happy if they were going to stay loyal -- and loyal if they were going to be any kind of asset to me. And hidden, if I was going to stay faceless.

I reached up and rubbed the back of my head as I led a cheery Mia out of the winding tunnels of the catacombs and up towards the surface, hoping no one would see me exit with a whole new person.

Sure, this power was going to be a lot of fun, but as I reached out to help Mia when she stumbled over her untied shoelace, I realized it was going to be pretty difficult, too. These weren’t minions, these were lives, and I had a sneaking suspicion I was going to start caring about them whether I wanted to or not.

That was how my power was going to balance itself out.