Unfortunately for Dante and I, we learned a bit about who the shapeshifter was and what she was made to do—mostly ‘cause the girl wouldn’t shut her damn mouth for more than ten seconds. Apparently, her name was KB-124, but obviously I wasn’t gonna say all that so I opted for just KB. She didn’t wear any clothing, though she also didn’t really have any womanly parts to cover up. Not to say she was underdeveloped—she literally didn’t have anything.
That wasn’t the only thing weird about her as she told us she only came into existence a month ago. I had a hard time believing that considering she looked to be in her twenties, and yet with the way she kept gawking and pointing at all the things outside, it made some sense.
“Type Two Surfer, inform me of what those structures are!”, she demanded, pointing at the houses we ran past.
Well, I was the only one running. Dante was flying next to me in his forcefield, sitting down while his hand was aimed at KB’s forcefield. His attention was fixed on the Status Board map that showed where my daughter was, and it annoyed me that the
only one of us filled with a sense of urgency was me. If this guy was cool with Sunshine, then could he at least show some damn worry?
KB groaned. “If you don’t intend to tell me, then you might as well take me there so I can figure out why that place looks so shabby.”
I jumped over a car and continued my run towards the wilderness ahead. “That place is called a house, and it looks shabby because it’s probably been ten years since it had any maintenance done on it, or anyone living there.”
“The size of these ‘houses’ seems very unnecessary for just one person to live in…” She sounded genuinely confused at my answer, as if the need for houses were a foreign concept to her. “They’d only need sleeping arrangements the size of their bodies to function for the following day. What could possibly be the reason for such an impractical creation?”
“It’s ’cause a family needs a space to live, and you can’t fit a family inside some small bedroom,” I answered, choosing not to turn back to her again.
“A… family?”, asked KB, a hint of disbelief and disgust in her voice.
“I guess someone who’s only lived for a month wouldn’t know that.” We turned a corner, passing by cars with zombies underneath them. “Family is what your group is trying to take away from me.”
“Huh?”, she gasped. “It looks like you are as brainless as I assumed you to be. The lifeform ‘Sunshine’ isn’t what you call a ‘family’. She's something that needs to be harvested and eventually terminated.”
I stopped running the moment I heard that with Dante putting his flight to an abrupt halt soon after. “What did you just say?”
“Gosh, do you really need me to repeat myself?” She folded her arms, forming a slight scowl on her face. “I said that lifeform Sunshine is an abomination whose only purpose is to be t-”
With a hardened fist full of rage, I punched a hole through KB’s bubble, missing her face by just a few inches. Her eyelids fluttered an absurd amount of times before her gaze shifted to the left. It was then that KB realized how close I came to knocking her head off, and quickly backed away.
“Y-You can’t get mad at me for stating a simple fact, you Type Two Surfer!”, she stammered, sweating profusely.
“I can do a lot more than get mad,” I said, raising my other fist.
“Do you really think we have the time for this?”, Dante joined in, forming a bubble around my body except for my hand inside KB’s bubble. “Or are you too stupid to see that she’s just provoking you?”
“Provoke?” KB stood up with widened eyes. “What kind of idiot would use this topic as a tool for provocation? This Radion has been with that apocalypse bringer for years, so it of all people should know the danger that lifeform brings.”
“I don’t have time for this,” I murmured, staring at KB with a fierce intensity. “Get this forcefield off of me and let’s keep moving.”
“And what do you intend on doing once we do?” Dante laid down in his bubble. “Get to Sunshine and help her beat some random RA user?”
I pulled my arm out of KB’s bubble. “Is that an actual question or are you too stupid to know what my intentions already are?”
“Do you really think your daughter’s so weak that she can't handle an enemy all by herself? The kid ain’t weak.”
“It’s not that I think she’s weak. It’s just that if someone with the strength of a Jason or Kofi had this green lady’s mindset, and they knew Sunshine was near them…” My tone grew more worried. “I don’t wanna imagine what they’d do.”
“Then don’t,” he said. I turned my head to him, and he wasn’t looking at the Status Board anymore. Dante had a serious look directed towards me. “The only thing you should be doing right now is having the faith that she can win or escape on her own. Actually, scratch that—have the faith that whoever is with her right now isn’t hostile at all.”
Sunshine only gave me vague details about what she and Dante went through in the few weeks they allied up, but to think the guy would be so defensive of her capabilities was unsettling. Amnesia or not, this was the same loan shark who tried to kill my daughter not once, but twice. What could have possibly made him change his tune like this?
“Dante, why do you care so much about my daughter?”, I asked, calming my composure. “I get wanting to take her back to the Underground, but it sounds like you’ve really come to respect her for some odd reason. A respect that goes beyond just your goals.”
He took a glance at my feet and said, “I think there's some more important things you should be worrying about.“
That’s when I noticed that I was… sinking into the ground. No, I wasn’t sinking. I looked down and realized that my feet were melting, green ooze and mushy bones piling up where my feet used to be. I struggled to maintain my balance and ended up using KB’s forcefield to keep my body steady.
“What the hell is happening to me? Did one of you do this?”
KB snickered, covering her mouth with both hands with a devious look in her eyes. “Ha! Ha! It seems you have finally figured out my genius plan, Type Two Surfer. For the next ten minutes you will suffer the most unimaginable pain a Radion like you can experience. Pain that only I, KB-124, was smart enough to exploit. This is revenge for what you-”
A section of her forcefield bulged inward, striking her gut with a jarring impact. The once snickering woman was now rolled up in a ball, holding her fist in the air like some defeated cartoon villain.
“Don’t worry about her,” sighed Dante. “Your body’s just reacting to the heavy rain. Zombies can’t handle the rain, so they stay out of it.”
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“You foolish fool of fools!” KB shouted through the pain. “You weren’t supposed to tell him that.”
“Why’d you wait till now to tell me something so important? I could’ve died ‘cause of you!”
“I wanted to see how far your determination would get you before you turned into a puddle,” he chuckled. “Looks like it wasn’t too far.”
“I oughta melt you in a puddle, you little prick,” I hissed, reaching for his throat. “Put a bubble around me already.”
“Can’t do it out here,” he admitted, shrugging his shoulders. “The rain interferes with my ability to reshape energy, so your only option is to…” He turned his head to the bar behind us and rubbed his hands. “Go inside and wait for the rain to stop.”
“Bullshit. You just wanna get a drink.” I tried to absorb KB’s forcefield, but none of the energy went into my fingers. It was the same feeling I had with Rosalina, like something was preventing me from going through with my actions.
“Jerome, it’s either you melt in the rain or we go inside and wait. The choice is yours.”
************
To my annoyance, I ended up going into the bar with those two, though I ended up having to crawl the way there since Dante wanted to see if I’d be able to make it before the rain reduced me to mush. The guy really pissed me off, but I’d be lying if I said I didn't notice the small bubble underneath my gut that followed me during my crawl.
Was he preparing to help me up in case I actually failed? Well, I couldn't care less for what the answer to that question was. There was another question that I definitely needed an answer to.
Why the hell did I come in here in the first place!?
It wasn't like I completely disagreed with how I should approach Sunshine’s growth as a fighter, but for some odd reason, the decision I made didn’t feel like it came from my own volition. It was like something… manipulated me into choosing that. I had a feeling that the mark inside my head had something to do with it, but even knowing that, I couldn't do anything about it.
I almost thought it was Dante’s doing, though when I asked him if he was keeping me in the bar to try and get my kid captured or worse, he said how that’d even be possible if he was waiting with me. When I told him he could just walk out and leave me here to heal, he repeated his earlier weakness on how he couldn’t reshape energy during the rain. If those reasons weren’t enough for him, he seemed very certain that Sunshine would embarrass him in a fight anyway.
That sounded satisfying. My own flesh and blood beating on him like I once did. It could be like one of those passing of the torch kinda things. Or a Hunter family ritual maybe?
Then again, that ritual might not be a thing if Dante’s stomach killed him first. I warned him that drinking unchecked ten year old beer from an abandoned bar wouldn’t be the safest thing to do, but the dick ignored me and chugged that shit anyway. I could’ve told him that wine was the drink you could have after a long period of time, but I thought it’d be a good lesson for him to learn for later.
As for KB, she was in the middle of vigorously rubbing her eyes after she had poured random bottles of alcohol on her face. The only reason those bottles got inside her forcefield was ‘cause Dante wanted to see how many he could throw inside the small hole he made in there. Clearly the guy was never a star player as he only got three out of ten in her bubble.
But with him now drunk and doing who knows what in the bathroom, that gave me some time to get some information out of KB.
“KB, pull yourself together and answer some questions I have for you,” I said, slapping the long table I was sitting at.
She turned her head a bit, squinching an eye at me. “And why in Daemon’s name would I do that?”
“Maybe it’s ’cause you have nothing better to do right now,” I retorted, picking up a joke book on the stool next to me.
“I have plenty of things to do, like…” She picked up the empty bottle and scanned it once again. “Figure out how to absorb this mysterious liquid like the son of Daemon did before.”
“Are you stupid?”, I asked, flipping through the pages. “You put it in your mouth.”
She pursed her lips. “Why would you put this entire bottle in your mouth? That’s physically impossible, and would likely put an end to a human’s short life.”
“You don’t put the bottle in your mouth. You put the liquid inside the bottle in your mouth.”
KB’s squinched eyes widened as though I had solved one of the world’s greatest mysteries. She put the bottle to her mouth and started to drink what was left, though I assumed there wasn’t much. And considering her disappointed expression, it looked like I was right.
“God, you’re like a baby,” I muttered, setting the book down and grabbing a half-empty wine bottle. “You spilled everything you had in there. Watch this. I’ll show you how it goes down a man’s throat.”
I opened my mouth and let the tasty liquids drop into me. I felt the raw touch, the hard work of the farmers whose life work was to prepare such a delectable feeling. The wine flowed throughout my bones, filling the void of a man who hadn’t tasted this type of amazement in such a long time.
That is what I would’ve been thinking if I actually tasted the wine. Upon it falling into my mouth, I immediately felt a rush of pain and spat the liquid onto the ground.
I gripped my chest, wiping my teeth with my other hand. “Jesus… I knew I couldn’t consume things, but why the hell did that hurt so much? Usually it would just fall out of my body like I was a hole.”
“Why do you keep calling me names that aren’t my assigned name at creation?” she asked, giving me a nasty look. “My name is KB-124, not ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’.”
“Huh? It’s just a saying—not an actual name,” I said, setting my head down on the table. “And I don’t wanna call you that long ass name, and shortening to just KB is tiring too. I’ll just call you Emerald. Maybe Emmy for short.”
She looked at her skin, then back to me. “Y-You can’t change my name because you’re too lazy to say the rest. And then you have the audacity to base it off my skin color!?”
“You got something better then?”
Even with her deep green skin, I could still see her cheeks flaring up into a bright red. “Yes, the name I was assigned to, you surfer! KB-124.”
“Did your parents name you that?”
She paused for a moment, seemingly taken aback by what I asked her. “Parents?”
“Well, yeah. You’re so defensive about your name, so I assumed there was something special tied to it. Like some kind of parent or caretaker was behind it.”
“I… I don’t have parents,” she said somberly. “I’m a being made with only energy, so I didn’t really have anyone ‘name’ me. I’m just Number 124 out of 125. Nothing more, nothing less. That is what I was assigned, so it would be greatly appreciated if you called-”
“In other words, you were made without any love?”
Her eyes bulged upon hearing that.
“It just sounds like no one really cared to actually give you a name, so they went with some number. They didn’t care about your future, your appearance, personality, nothing. You were just another creation out of many others to perform whatever acts you people do.”
“W-W-What!?”, she exclaimed, pointing a finger at me. “All you did was examine my skin and name me the color of that skin.”
“I named you Emerald because I examined your skin. Judging by what you told me before, it sounds like I put more thought into your identity than anyone else ever has.”
At that moment, her face started to burn as her energy made body lit up like a flashlight. Immediately after that, she slapped her face and her body cooled down.
She folded her arms, and her face reverted back to a more confident look. “Y-Y-You are such a fool, Type Two Surfer! You think your Surfer ways of naming your offspring is so good and so perfect. You think it makes them any better, huh? Well, how about this? Since you’ve given me a substantial amount of information today, I’ll reward you with some information of my own.”
“That’s good ‘cause I was gonna ask you a question about my d-”
“I’m gonna give you some distasteful information about the lifeform you named ‘Sunshine’. I’ll tell you all about the disease that’ll eventually ruin the world as we know it. I’ll even tell you about our plans to utilize her to her fullest.”
“Good, I wanted you to do that in the first place before the convo got all mushy,” I said, picking my head back up.
“Hmph! Maybe then you’ll finally see that you shouldn’t be the one by her side.”