Lake Stonecrest Promenade, Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 11:00.
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Sara checked the digest of her rewards so far.
> > You gained 2 points of Core Strength.
>
> > You gained 3 points in Presence.
>
> > You gained 3 points in Brawn.
She felt it right after they left the marina. The lake was entirely made of Mana-infused water. Fred's specter was full of Mana. The ambient density doubled her MP regeneration. Each breath chilled her lungs as Mana seeped into her body. She was getting used to feeling cold as mana moved inside of her. It didn't actually lower her body temperature unless she was forcefully pushing it.
"Can I drink this water, Abby?"
"Smartass. I mean can I use the mana in the water? Absorb it?"
"Can you?"
"Okay. Show me the details of my new Trait," she asked in a low voice.
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Development
Cold Affinity (major) 50%
You have a great affinity with the Cold element. Increase all Cold-related effects by 50%. Reduce Cold-related, damage, debuffs, and afflictions by 50%.
1 - Also increases Thermostasis' protection against lower temperatures (this will be applied to the Skill's description next time).
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"No drawbacks?" Sara was worried she would be vulnerable to heat or something like that.
"Thanks. Abby, keep me informed of changes in ambient Mana," she whispered.
"I'm a moron. Please do not assume I know and keep me notified," She half-chuckled at the self-derisive remark.
They abandoned the small yacht on some pier near the McDonald's. Sara's eyes were gleaming with greed and hunger.
"Well, here we are. The truck is a couple of miles away, though," Kelly remarked. It was in another town, actually. They drifted quite a ways south during their boat ride.
"I guess we check the restaurant first, then I go fetch the truck," Sara planned. "I'm pretty fast on my own."
"Right, miss Olympic runner," Kelly teased.
"Check this," Sara said as she dashed away.
The girl then did a double front somersault, skidding a bit at the landing because she wasn't used to her newfound strength. Loose stuff in her backpack and pockets fell all over the pavement. Her water bottle slipped out of its carabiner and shattered on the ground.
"Are you okay?" Kelly shouted.
"Yeah, but my water broke!" Sara shouted back.
"OMG, we need to take you to the OBGYN stat!"
It took a while for her to understand the pun. Sara sneered and went about picking her things up. Putting her backpack on a bench, she then did a running high jump that cleared a parked car, landing on the street.
Kelly was staring slack-jawed in awe, "I stand corrected. You are an Olympic acrobat."
Sara returned to the musician's side on the promenade, "Before Armageddon, I was just your everyday average girl. I wasn't in the cheer squad, gymnastics club, or anything like that."
Kelly looked to the lake, then back to Sara. The woman smiled, "You're some sort of superhero now. Not like Superman but more down-to-earth, like Spiderman or the Daredevil."
"Well, here we are," Sara pointed. "Let's get inside and do every teenager's dream."
"What, raiding a Mcdonald's?"
"No. Figuring out why the damn ice cream machines never work," Sara giggled as she put on her gas mask.
The Mcdonald's was full of bodies. The world ended at rush hour and people surely loved a burger after work. Since they broke the time bubble, the fresh corpses had time to decompose and filled the restaurant with a terrible stench.
"Eww, fresh bodies," Sara gagged. "Remind me to give Brett a french kiss for the gas masks."
"He'd be happy with just a hug though," Kelly remarked as she donned her mask.
"Eh, his loss," Sara flipped her hair and shrugged.
Some roaches and flies, but no sign of rodents. Or survivors.
"Abby, are you on the lookout for survivors?"
"Like a pig," Sara joked with a lilting tone.
The kitchen was ruined and dirty. They crossed to the back, stepping over the dead employees. The storage area was rather small, with several rows of standing freezers instead of a cold room. Freezers that looked half-empty. Plastic boxes with bags of buns and other room-temperature supplies were stacked on a pallet. Sara opened a freezer, noting that it was still cold. The amount of food inside was less than they expected, though.
Disappointed, Sara took a box of burgers, "I was hoping they had more."
"Nah, it's too expensive," Kelly started to explain. "Modern store chains use AI to predict sales and deliver just what each branch needs. McDonald's restaurants only have two to three days worth of supplies at most. By the look of it, they were expecting a supply delivery on Tuesday."
She shook her head but still started to count the boxes.
"Sara, if I may..." Kelly approached, her voice wavering.
"Yes?" The girl replied, confused.
"We have lots of food. A whole Costco and Target stores, military supplies, and more. The guys who went to the southern farms are bringing a live cow to barbecue tonight. Why are you so focused on gathering this much food?"
Sara scratched her forearms and looked away. "I won't stay with you guys at the university. And I..." The girl sighed. It was hard to explain her feelings. She felt embarrassed to expose this facet of her youth. Those weren't happy memories.
Kelly quickly noticed her discomfort. "It's okay if you don't want to say it."
She drummed on the box of frozen burgers. "Kelly, aside from the week you remained unconscious, what's the longest you went without food?"
The musician's eyes moistened. "Oh, goodness," she mumbled. "No, my parents never let me starve. I don't think I went a single day without food."
Kelly remembered when Sara told how she spent a month in a cheap motel. The glee she had in her voice. What has this girl gone through? Sara, on the other hand, avoided eye contact. Her body language displayed her shame as plain as the day.
"I'm a craven bitch," the girl misused the word.
Kelly smiled and was about to utter a nervous giggle, but reined her impulse. "You mean craving? Covetous?"
Sara knew the meaning of the word but she nodded anyway. "That. I'm a coward too. But I think 'craven' is an awful cuss."
The sympathetic musician approached and clapped her shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't understand your feelings. I'm a privileged person. Does that make me white?"
The girl sputtered and grunted. "Keep the old world politics where it belongs. In the ruins of their civilization."
"Deal. So, do you want to share your story? It might help."
Sara put the box of burgers back in the freezer. They went to the employee resting area, miraculously free of dead bodies.
"I spent three weeks having only melted snow, in the dead of Seattle's winter. A bunch of guys learned I was a girl and knew where I lived. They tried to catch me and... do awful things."
Kelly threw an arm around Sara's shoulders and squeezed the tiny girl. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't want to."
"No, it's fine. I saw them coming and surrounding the building. They didn't want me to escape."
"It sounds too much effort just to get a girl."
Sara grimaced. "I might have stolen a lot of cash from one of their drug operations."
Kelly gave her a brief glare, then squeezed again to comfort her. "Oh, that kind of awful thing."
"Maybe both."
"Maybe. But you escaped, right?"
"Not really. While they secured the escape routes, I took the bag of cash and shoved as much firewood as I could inside a pipe shaft between floors. It was too tight for an adult to move inside and it led all the way to a gallery on the roof. I climbed it with a small amount of dried food with me and a camping wood stove, those that look like a drum."
"I know about them. Fishing and camping do go hand-in-hand."
"Right. So, after I took the wood, food, and stove, I went back for my bag of clothes and left the rest behind. They started combing the lower floors while I climbed the shaft. By the time they finished searching, I was inside the moldy maintenance gallery on the roof. For some reason, the previous owners put a brick wall over the access door, so unless you had the building blueprints, you wouldn't know about that place."
"So, what happened next?"
"I stayed in the gallery until they left. But the guys were obstinate and camped the building, waiting for me to return. Some of my things, like my mattress, pillow, blankets, and books were there so they figured I would eventually show up if they waited."
"You were trapped."
"Yeah. The gallery had a grate I could remove and let the sunshine in during the afternoon, so I slept in the sun and spent the nights awake, burning a little wood on the stove to keep me warm. I would gather snow from the roof and melt it in a pot to drink, waiting for them to go away. I ate nothing for three weeks and spent my birthday trapped."
"No cake that year."
"Yeah. I went through a lot of cakeless birthdays. At least I kept the cash. Had to find another abandoned building to squat in, though."
"Wait, is your birthday in winter? We must make the biggest cake ever, then! Which day is it?"
Sara sighed and averted her eyes. "December twenty-fifth."
"Right, December..." Kelly said nonchalantly, then realization dawned. "Oh, dammit."
"Oh, dammit," Sara parroted. "Yeah, I share a birthday with the bearded hipster from Bethlehem."
"Don't blaspheme, young lady!" Kelly berated. "But yeah. You need a birthday Christmas cake."
"Please, no. Do you know what 'Christmas cake' means in Japan?" She recalled her otaku foster parents' joke.
"No? It isn't good, is it?"
"No good at all. It's a woman that has no date or boyfriend and spends Christmas alone. In Japan, Christmas is a couples' day. They usually have romantic cakes, but lonely women have their cake alone."
"I fail to see how it is such a terrible thing."
"Not terrible, lonely."
"Fair enough. We are still throwing you a party. With cake we will all share," Kelly proclaimed with finality.
An awkward silence followed. Sara sniffled. Kelly tried to lean closer but the gas masks made it awkward. At least the musician hadn't mentioned anything about her claim to be working to save humanity. It would be rather inconvenient for her to explain or deny her messianic task.
"The world always tried to take things from me. Not anymore."
"Atta girl," Kelly crooned. "Why don't you go get the truck, and I organize the stuff to take?"
*
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*
McDonough Boulevard Southeast, Atlanta, Fulton County County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 12:00.
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"Roll call!" Hainsworth shouted, then called a list of names.
Everyone he brought in this expedition was accounted for, although a few of them were wounded. The worst casualty was Joe, who was shot in the arm. He had taken too many risks and was sniped by an inmate on an inner tower.
But now the penitentiary was theirs. And with possession came the knowledge of a dark secret.
"Damn zombies," Trevor cursed. "The ones in here look nastier than those on the freeway."
Several of the inmates had turned to zombies inside their own cells. Few had escaped and apparently killed a few of the surviving inmates. The prison had become a necropolis.
"Show me what you found," Hainsworth demanded. Trevor nodded. The Major addressed the others, "You guys wait here. Good job, everyone."
The two walked deep into the belly of the prison. Undead prisoners rattled their cells. They had wasted a good amount of riot foam cartridges capturing the undead when the ones here were already born in captivity. Reanimated. Reborn. Whatever.
"Here it is," Trevor said.
Cellblock D's main hallway was cut off in half by a rectangle of shimmering iridescent purple light. It looked like cheap sci-fi SFX and had mirror-like qualities. Now that he examined the thing closely, it reminded him of a Star Trek episode he once watched on TV. The original series. But the rectangle gave him a bad feeling. His gut reaction was to get away from there.
"What is this?" He asked.
"I think it is a portal or gateway," Trevor said. "This shimmering silver disk reminds me of the He-Man cartoons."
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Hainsworth gave it some thought but quickly picked the discrepancy. "Wait, silver? Not purple?"
"Yes, sir."
"A disk, not a rectangle?"
"Also, yes. Are you seeing something different than me?"
"Don't touch it," Hainsworth warned. "This is some kind of visual hallucination. Did you like the He-Man cartoons?"
"Yes, I did."
"To me, it's Star Trek. It seems to use an image from your memory. This is dangerous, we can't let anyone come in here without the proper clearance."
"Which is a fancy way to say nobody you don't let in," Trevor raised an eyebrow.
"Indeed."
Hainsworth also noted that in both cases, the imagery evoked denoted a portal to elsewhere. Was this a magical passage? More importantly, was it two-way? Regardless of what was on the other side, would anyone entering that be able to come back? What was causing this? Too many unknowns. He wished they had one of the rebelling inmates alive to throw in there. No, too dangerous.
The two rejoined the rest and the whole group walked out into the sunlight. He looked to the north and saw the Bank of America plaza standing alone where it once shared downtown Atlanta's skyline with other skyscrapers. He wished to go and take his daughter, but he was trapped by the I-20 to the north and I-85 to the west. If he wanted to rejoin her, he would need to find another way around.
"Hector," Hainsworth approached one of the survivors, "I need you to stay here and guard the place. I'm sending someone to relieve you by nightfall. Can't let all the work go to waste."
The man wasn't happy but accepted the mission, "Yes, sir."
*
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*
Stonecrest Avenue, Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 12:00.
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They finished loading everything edible from the McDonald's onto the truck. Sara felt a sense of satisfaction at the sight of the boxes of burgers and cheese, pallets of bread, jugs of oil, large bags of fries and nuggets, along with a lot of other items.
Outside, they sat by a concrete table and ate lunch. Then they went along Lake Stonecrest waterfront, raiding the fridges and cold rooms of every restaurant they found. They were driving down Stonecrest Avenue when Abby chimed in.
She slowed down the truck and stopped in the middle of the road. No traffic, no cops, no parking.
"We got ghosts," Sara said. "Who you're gonna call?"
A worried Kelly ignored the joke as she bit her lower lip, "Dangerous?"
"Only one way to find out. I have my knife and enough mana to stab a couple dozen ghosts or wraiths into oblivion. Come, I'll protect you."
"Am I the damsel now?" The musician feigned indignation.
"If you want to. I'm no hero, though," Sara denied as she opened the door and climbed down. Out of the truck, the two looked around. "Where are they, Abby?" She asked, not bothering to hide it from Kelly.
She looked. A high-rise building with a spiral tower. It looked like people stacked regular polygonal prisms but skewed each layer a bit to the side, leaving the edges hanging. "There. Regal Lakeshore Hotel and Convention Center."
The building was a big rectangular five floors tall concrete box with a decorated and modern exterior, with black panels contrasting with pastel-painted concrete and a few planters along the wall with green shrubbery. From the center of the box rose the aforementioned spiral spire, another twenty-five floors of apartments.
The polygonal tower's exterior was all made of dark-tinted glass giving it a stern outlook. Most of these were actually solar panels, but that is a story for later. Each floor rotated a bit relative to the one above, making the building seems like it spiraled upward. The different angles caught the sunlight in many ways, sending reflections on the smaller buildings around.
"People called it the 'sky pencil'," Kelly remarked. The pet project of the mayor's son, a promising architect. It caused quite the fight with all the NIMBY opposing it. In the end, they could go with the local project or let one of the big chains set up shop by the shore. The council approved it by a narrow margin."
"Set up shop by the shore. I bet they were sore," Sara joked.
"That was their campaign slogan. The mayor alleged that keeping it local would benefit the community."
"Did it?"
"I have no idea. I was in high school. Not much time to follow local politics."
"I hear you," Sara grinned. "So, our ghosts are in there. Let's go."
October was a great month for bass fishing, which Lake Stonecrest had in spades. The town was rather bloated with tourists and anglers, hoping to have a bit of entertainment before Winter set in. The Regal Lakeshore Hotel and Convention Center was at half capacity when Armageddon struck. A fact the two women suspected as they entered the lobby full of dead bodies.
They had to use flashlights because the building had no power. Sara had one that attached to the forehead and a big one with LED's everywhere which could create all sorts of lighting, including party or police lights.
"I think I'll have to knock a star off of this hotel's rating," Sara remarked. She made a whiny voice, "Poor hygiene and plenty of dead bodies, no electricity, water, or any utilities. The lobby stunk of cadaverine. The staff was unresponsive and stiff."
Kelly grunted to stifle a laugh. "Already joking about the dead?"
"I didn't wish to be the one to clean this up," Sara said as she stepped over the bodies and the pools of drying fluids they leaked in these few days. She bitterly remembered all the work she had to clean up Lakeview Apartments. Without a gas mask. "Where are the ghosts?"
"Thanks, Abby."
Kelly looked but declined to comment on her conversation with the fairy. The considerate woman could hear only Sara's side after all.
They checked the front desk and Sara turned on a laptop. It demanded a password but after looking through the drawers, she found a sticky note with it. On the laptop, she found the room assignments and learned that some of the apartments were reserved for more permanent residents. Not really guests, not really tenants, they rented via a famous short-term rental third-party app to skirt around most of the red tape involving either of the two. These wealthy tenants had free reign to decorate their apartments however they wanted.
She memorized the pattern, then turned the laptop off to save battery.
"Which floor is the ghost on?"
The elevators, as one would expect, were dead. "The stairs, then." The fire doors didn't open from the outside and Sara had to wedge a plastic shim to push the latch. After a minute or two of wiggling the shim around, it opened. Fire doors weren't built with access security in mind but they were too sturdy to tamper with.
"I assume you learned to pick locks in Seattle, right?"
"Yeah," Sara said as they climbed the stairs, thankfully free of dead bodies. "I usually pretended to be a boy. It was easy."
"I see it," Kelly snickered and poked her tongue out. "You are quite boyish sometimes."
Sara sneered, "The homeless guys were kind enough to teach an orphan lad a trick or two, god knows what they would do with a girl. They showed me the pawn shops that would ask no questions, stuff like that."
"You learned street smarts and skills," Kelly remarked.
"I made ends meet by pickpocketing and burglarizing homes after school. Met some interesting people, picked some questionable skills, and avoided drugs and prostitution like the plague. Some gangs wanted to recruit me to transport contraband and some odd job, and I had to change districts quite often. Then one of them found out I was female, during the winter three years ago. Then the safe raid happened, police arrested me, I struck a deal with the DA, and entered Witness Protection."
"Now nothing of that matters because some fucking higher beings couldn't settle their differences with anything other than extreme violence," she rambled with anger. "You can't imagine it, Kelly. The savagery. The brutality. Neither side was better than the other. They broke their homes, then they broke ours."
"And what do people do after humanity almost went extinct? They start killing each other and themselves for petty stuff!"
At each landing, Sara would ask Abby if they were level with the ghost until they reached the fourth floor.
*
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*
"Sky Pencil" (because to hell with that fancy hotel name), Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 12:30.
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The middle of the tower was empty, giving anyone in the long circular hallway a full view of the floors above and what seemed like a party venue below. Sara got a bit of vertigo as she stared up. A large round metal ball hung from thick metal cables above, dimly reflecting the light from their flashlights. Six panoramic elevators allowed guests to take in the view of the open shaft. She counted twenty-two floors of apartments.
"Isn't this wasteful? All this empty space inside a building?"
"I'm no architect," Kelly prefaced. "But I think it allows them to make the building larger without violating some building code limitation. You know, they might have a square feet limitation, and the empty space doesn't count or use up any materials. Helps with ventilation and is downright breathtaking."
"You said it, girl!" Sara chimed in agreement. "But this might be a bitch to keep warm in Winter."
"That's the trick. It's closed on all sides and the rooms themselves work as insulation. Heat needs a way to escape."
"Uh, hadn't thought about that. Most buildings I lived in had no windows, doors, or insulation. The ghost is this way," Sara pointed.
The door was unlocked and they entered, calling for the spectral resident.
"I'm in the restroom," the ghost shouted. It was a young man or a teenager according to the voice.
"Well, come out then," Sara summoned. "We're not going inside."
As they made their way into the living room, Sara noticed that the bedroom door was open and the dead corpse. It was on a gaming chair facing away from the door. It probably died playing some videogame as the decoration hinted it was inhabited by a male young adult. It was minimalist, with naked walls and only one or two movie posters.
"I'm coming out!" The ghost said, and then crossed the closed door. Sara averted her eyes. It was naked from the waist down. "Sara, my savior angel!"
The ghost's sexual organ was bloated and it had clear marks of fingers wrapped around it. What it meant made Sara disgusted. He was pudgy with flaps of skin and blubber falling around an imaginary belt. His skin was greasy and repulsive. His face was pockmarked by too much acne and his torso was covered in small snack crumbs, shards of potato chips, and cookie crumbs. She could even see a strip of sliced lettuce stuck to a nipple. Such were the physical manifestations of his sins.
She focused her sight on the apparition's forehead. "Can you... put some clothes?"
"Sorry. I died like this," he nudged his head toward the bedroom.
Oh, great. The corpse was also naked. Why did so many perverts become ghosts?
Kelly was dead silent, watching the interaction.
"Look, we came here to help you move on," Sara went straight to the point. She was very uncomfortable in the presence of this ghost. "How can we help you? What is your last wish?"
"I want a girlfriend!" The ghost cheerfully revealed.
Her stomach churning, Sara turned around and grabbed Kelly's arm. "We're leaving."
"Is.. is the ghost naked?" Kelly asked. "A boy?" Sara nodded. "Cute?" Sara cringed and shook her head. "Okay, let's get out of here."
"No, wait! Don't leave me alone!"
"Is he turning?" She asked Abby.
Still with her back to the ghost and dreading a surprise attack, Sara changed gears, "Look, I'm not leaving. But you are going to... sit on the couch and put a pillow on your lap."
"I can't move solid stuff."
"Yes, you can, I've seen other ghosts do it. Just focus."
The ghost sat on the couch and levitated the throw pillow.
"Whoa! It works! Now I can boot my PC! Thank you!"
She saw the ghost crossing the wall. Sara turned around and saw him sitting on the gaming chair. Next thing, the corpse's arm moves.
"WHAT THE HELL?" Kelly screamed as she saw the mummified body move. "A zombie?"
Kelly hugged Sara and the girl brought her hand to her foster father's knife.
The body started to move rhythmically. "Abby, what is he doing?" "You don't mean he's..."
"What's going on? What's this noise?" The college student took a step to the side and saw the dead body moving. She screamed and panicked, running back to the living room and dragging Sara with her. Shaking, Kelly pointed at the bedroom door. It was her first time seeing a corpse move this close, after all. "Let's get out of here," panicking, she tried to drag Sara.
Abby answered in Sara's head.
Sara wheezed at the thought. Would she have to pretend to be a dead body's girlfriend? Better use the knife.
"Kelly, look at me. I don't think it's dangerous, just disgusting. I can deal with it. Would you wait outside?"
"What about you?"
"I'll be fine. I guess."
"You guess?" Kelly's voice rose an octave.
"Please, Kelly. I'm tough. And I can fight if push comes to shove. But not if I have to keep the Princess alive."
"Okay, I got it! I'm in the way." Kelly left, half-scared and half-irritated.
Sara entered the bedroom. The ghost turned around. Sara drew her knife.
"Sara! My PC is not turning on. I think the battery is dead," the onanist specter whined. Parts of the ghost detached from the rotting body sometimes.
"You only get one wish, then you have to move on. What do you want? Girlfriend or the computer?"
"I want to play League of Legends with my girlfriend!" He stated.
Sara put on her business grin.
"I think the game servers are down. The world has ended and there's no electricity. Look. If I agree to be your girlfriend for the next five minutes, we can play... blindfold LoL."
"How does it work?" The zombified corpse asked, clearly interested.
"Did you ever see people playing chess without a board? They just call the moves to one another, then try to keep the board in their mind. So that's what we'll do. We'll play LoL but without computers. We'll tell what each of our units is doing."
"Great! I can play the whole team if we do like that," the dead gamer became very excited. In a different sense from his previous form of depraved excitement.
"How do we begin? I only heard the guys at school talking about it. I don't know how to play League."
"You pick five heroes from the roster..."
Several minutes passed as the ghost explained LoL to the girl. His girl...friend. Sara was screaming and groaning inside her head.
"So, I want Sylvanas from Warcraft," Sara named the first character she could remember.
"It's a different franchise," the ghost protested. "And there's the problem with DOTA. I guess Ashe... Okay. Ashe is a Sylvanas ripoff anyway."
Sara shrugged and ignored the burn. "Why can't we mix it up? Didn't you say heroes needed skill and an ultimate?"
"We can make it work. Okay, we'll mix WoW heroes with the LoL ones. Just one."
"My team then will be Sylvanas, Annie, Warwick, Teemo, and Blitzcrank."
"I ban Blitzkrank."
"What? You can't do that!"
The ghost paused. "It's in the rules."
"Look, you wanted a girlfriend, right?" Sara pointed out. "First lesson. Did you ever play DnD?"
"Yes. I played since the 3rd edition. Before bards could wear metal armor."
"Good. Think what would happen if the DM said to his girlfriend that she couldn't play an elf bladesinger," Sara said as she remembered her character choices for the game that never happened.
"Oh! That's bad, right? I never played RPG with a girl."
She felt like a fabled unicorn. What was wrong with guys like him?
"So, you should cut your girlfriend some slack. Otherwise, it's no fun. Do you want to win or do you want to have a good time? Besides, I never played LoL. Do you want to crush me like a newbie noob and then make me hate the game?"
"No! I don't."
"Because if I like the game, I might cosplay a character of your choice in the next convention," she teased.
"Okay, you can keep the stupid robot," said the stupid naked pervert ghost.
*
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*
"Sky Pencil", Panthersville, DeKalb County, Georgia. Monday, October 28th, 2019. 13:10.
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"Ha! I break your nexus and win!" The man-child zombie gloated.
"Okay, my loss. Now, I have to go."
"No! You're my girlfriend. We should at least kiss."
"We agreed on one game. It is well over that now. I'm leaving," Sara stated with finality.
"You can't go! Are you breaking up with me? We didn't even kiss."
Not even his own mother would kiss that emaciated bloated reanimated corpse. Sara wanted to throw up or run away. But she needed to finish the job. The "put-the-ghost-to-rest" job.
"We can't kiss," she said as she stared into his eyes. "How long since the last time you took a bath? Brushed your teeth?"
The zombie gamer stumbled on his own words and just made a series of confused noises.
"At least two days, and you are rotting. Look, a relationship takes work. And respect. How much effort did you put into this date? None. And would you force your own girlfriend to kiss a zombie?"
The guy looked at his arms. Then at Sara. She couldn't read his facial expressions very well but the glint in its dead-fish eyes triggered her defense instincts. Sara drew her knife and infused it as the zombie pounced on her. She stabbed his neck upward, splitting the frail skull and spilling brain matter everywhere, including on her and on the faceplate of her gas mask.
> > Assignment Complete.
>
> > You gained 2 points in Flattery.
>
> > You gained 2 points in Composure.
>
> > You gained 2 free Skill Points.
Sara screamed her frustrations out loud and ran away from the dead body.
Drawn by the noise, Kelly rushed up from downstairs. "Sara! What happened? Did the... zombie hurt you?" She shot a wary glance toward the bedroom.
"It's gone," Sara sighed as she stowed the knife.
"What is this thing on you?"
"Zombie's brain. I'll be fine, Kelly. Seriously. I just need a bath and a change of clothes. Let's search the rest of the building."
"Is it contagious? Are you infected? Were you... bitten?" The college girl gasped as she took a step away from Sara.
"Am I?" Sara wondered.
"I'm fine. Let's see if the showers still work."
Kelly sighed and tried to touch the girl but the sight of decomposing brain matter kept her hands away from Sara's shoulder, "Is it always like this?"
"It's almost never easy," Sara lamented.
"Why do you do it, then?"
"Because the Seraph I met gave me a feather and hope to keep on living. He gave me more than hope. Kelly, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. The ghosts, they need me. If I leave them alone, they will eventually turn into malevolent wraiths. They can affect the physical world and eventually kill someone."
It was visible that Kelly wanted to ask more things but she rested her case. The girls moved to the apartment next door and checked for dead bodies, finding none. It looked inhabited by a young newlywed couple by the wedding pictures on the wall. Its former tenants were out when the world ended.
After handing her backpack to Kelly, Sara moved to the bathroom and checked the shower. The building still had water in the tank. She had to let the shower run for a minute to cycle the stale water in the pipes, then ducked under the shower head with her clothes on.
"Brett told me he's going to turn on the university WiFi and web servers," Kelly gossiped.
Sara's heart fluttered and she even forgot the zombie brains on her hair. "We're getting Internet?"
"Not really. There's no connection to the rest of the world. Just the university intranet and some sites, like a Wikipedia mirror."
"I'm hungry," Sara remarked as she discarded her ruined clothes.
"How can you keep this slender figure with all the stuff you eat?" The college girl asked with obvious envy. She was unnerved by the moving zombie and all this ghost talk. "And don't give me that extradimensional stomach bull." She tittered a laugh. "Bulls have four stomachs."
"I have a fairy that steals away the excess food and monitors my blood to decide which nutrients my body needs. Then she gives me just that. I could eat everything in that truck and not gain a single ounce."
Kelly examined the naked girl. "You have some wild tan marks. I didn't notice it in the rain because it was too dark."
"Nobody could tell my ethnicity but I'm sure it's a wild mix of races," Sara defended herself. "But yeah, I tan like crazy super fast. A couple days working under the sun and BAM. Bronze skin. Two more days and I become velvety chocolate. Then if I spend a week or two indoors, people start thinking I'm three-quarters caucasian or some bullshit like that. People said I was weird several times, some even called me a chameleon but I don't care."
"You do you, girl," Kelly encouraged.
She shut the water and ran a hand over her hair, glad she asked to cut it short. Sparing a glance at her ruined clothes, Sara sighed. They would remain right there until the hotel staff could pick it up and take it to the laundry.
"But boy, oh boy, don't you have a round butt," Kelly teased. "Here, a clean towel."
Blushing, Sara took the towel and wrapped her torso.
"I believe you now," Kelly poked a tongue at her. "Are you cold?"
"A bitch's heart is pure ice," Sara joked sardonically. "Do you really believe me?"
"Yes. You have magic, ghosts are real, and pillows can float."
"Oh," Sara said, a bit disappointed. "I had a last trick to try and convince you."
"Does it involve dead people and body parts?"
"Only my arm. Here, hold my hand," she reached out with a damp arm. Kelly held it. "Is it cold? Does it have a pulse? Do you doubt this is my arm?"
"You sound like a stage magician," Kelly chuckled. She examined the hand and felt for her pulse. "I can sense it. No, this is your arm. it's damp and a bit cold from the shower, but that's expected."
"Good. Don't let go of it," Sara said and closed her eyes.
The girl started her mana manipulation exercise, taking a dollop of mana from her core and pushing it down her arm. She then started moving the arm around her arm in an eight-figure pattern. The cold was almost painful but Sara kept pushing and compressing the mana as much as her concentration allowed.
The moisture on her arm froze as the temperature of her flesh dropped vertiginously. A combination of the mana and Qi infused into her flesh, her cold affinity and her concentration kept the flesh from being damaged by it.
"Eek!" Kelly shrieked. "Your arm is freezing!"
"It's fine," Sara replied without opening her arms. She feared that losing control now would be catastrophic.
She withdrew the mana and opened her eyes. Her arm was covered in tiny ice crystals. It glistened under the flashlight's light.
"Help me, Abby. I'll try to do the same but with the heat."
The girl focused again, but this time imagined her sieve inverted, pushing the orange out. It was ten times harder and slower than with the blue of ice mana but she slowly warmed her arm.
Just chilling herself was basically free due to her affinity. She brushed the ice away and spent five minutes bringing her arm back to a normal temperature.
"Ta-da! Magic," Sara chimed.
Kelly giggled and hugged her. "You ARE Elsa!"
Sara groaned and sighed, "Yeah. The cold never bothered me anyway," she quoted sarcastically.
The musician didn't let it go.
She kept her arms wrapped around the tiny girl.
Kelly giggled and tittered, excited at finally having proof of Sara's claims. "Let's get you in some warm clothes. We need to go back soon."
"We have to check the top floors before we go, it won't take long. There's one more ghost in here."