Four arms conked out a couple hours later. Madeline’s ATP refreshed at around the same time, and she also lost her dash when it did. Her abilities were on a twenty four hour time limit as well, it seemed.
Yesterday on the stairs Madeline had dumped all her ATP into Accelerate, which is why she’d had so many charges of it available to her. Unlike myself, Madeline had twelve whole points of ATP to work with, which had ended up buying her nine charges of Accelerate.
The base price was one point per charge. Apparently after putting six points into it, the price doubled.
The point cost for her ‘Strike’ cost similarly started at one and doubled after six points. ‘Reinforce’ was different. It cost three points to start with, and increased by another point with each additional charge. That made it far and away her most expensive ability.
“I think we should both buy at least one item right off the bat.” Madeline said.
“Really? They’re pretty spendy.”
“Yeah, but in terms of healing items, I’m out and you only have one left, and those seem kind of mission critical.”
“Wait, when did you use your last one?” I asked. She looked down and sighed before responding.
“About that, when I woke up this morning, I was in so much pain that I literally couldn’t move. Apparently All that shit from yesterday really messed up my back.”
“So you used a lifesaving potion instead of waking me up so that I could grab you painkillers?”
“Look, given that you blinded yourself by looking at a laser, I don’t think you're in much of a position to talk.”
“Okay, but that blindness was probably going to be permanent. We could have waited a couple days for your back to heal.”
“I don’t think you understand how bad it hurt this morning. I tried to sit up, and then I was in agony.”
“That bad?” I asked.
“Worse. Besides, I don’t think we really have a couple of days to waste.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m almost out of food. And I’m not sure my supply of nuts and candy is going to make it through however long this whole disaster lasts.”
“Ah.” Now that she mentioned it, she was probably right. There was a bit of ramen and dried cereal too, but we were probably going to want more than that. And we only had a ration each left. We could buy more, sure, but that was going to get awfully expensive. Even cutting it down to one a day, we had to make sure we also got barriers, potions, and kept some points on hand to aid in self defense too.
Procuring food was one of the few ways we could realistically save on points. Thankfully, I remembered I had a solution. “Madeline, I have a thirty pound bag of rice back at my apartment. And a bunch of other stuff.”
“And you didn’t think to mention this before now?”
“I kind of forgot. It’s been a bit busy.” I said.
She sighed again.
“Well, we’ll have to stop by there on our way to the roof, then won’t we?”
“Probably a good Idea, yeah. I forgot my phone charger too, so I’d like to grab that as well. Though, we’re gonna have to find my phone first.”
“And you seriously don’t remember where you lost it? When was the last time you saw it?”
“Yesterday morning, after sticking that sign to the front door. That reminds me, we should check that the lobby’s clear while we’re at it.”
“Probably.” Madeline let out another sigh. “Today’s just going to be a whole lot of going up and down the stairs, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. You can stay here if you want, I won’t hold it against you.”
“And worry about you dying the whole fucking time? I think not.”
“If you insist.” I knew from experience that convincing Madeline to do something she was disinclined towards was a losing game, so I didn’t press the issue.
I decided instead to change the subject.
“Hey, now that that’s settled, have we agreed that we’re each buying a potion?”
“I think so. We should both be good on barriers for a while, given that each one lasts a day. And we’re about to solve the food problem, in theory. All that’s left is to decide on our abilities for the day.” she posited.
I nodded, letting my gaze rest on the kitchen floor as I thought about how to distribute my remaining three points. Unfortunately, prices in the shop rounded up.
I was pretty tempted to spend two on the mech that I Repaired yesterday, honestly. The sheer firepower he had on command would be incredibly useful. Though conversely, that very same firepower could come back to bite me. Fire, being the key word here. His plasma gun could very well set the building ablaze. That being said, it would work wonders for taking care of any blobtopi.
Ultimately, I decided in favor of it.
I’d bring Four-arms back as well. He’d proven to be the most effective of the trio yesterday. I think that mostly came down to the fact that you didn’t have to worry about reloading a sword.
If I wasn’t animating Fry and Mick-chicken, though, I needed to keep them in a safe place. I picked them up. It felt weird, holding them when they were still. They weren’t just my toys anymore. They were living things, with some level of autonomy. They certainly seemed to have an inner worlds of their own, at least. You didn’t play video games, listen to music, and watch nature documentaries without one.
And they didn’t really share the personalities of their Animated media counterparts, so far. Four-arms belonged to a particularly edgy pilot in the show he was from, but my Four-arms was a pretty pleasant fellow.
Fry was a generic goon in his show, so he didn’t come packaged with any particular pilot’s baggage. Mick-chicken was an original model, with no tie-in media to his name.
I wondered if my impression of them helped to shape their individual quirks in any way. Mick-chicken in particular had a flaw in his design that caused his legs to fall off at the joint if not handled with utmost delicacy. It had made posing and reposing him a real pain. While that issue had been seemingly solved post-animation, that may have contributed to his awkward movements and endearingly uncoordinated mannerisms.
Or maybe not. What do I know, really? Nothing. My entire life has been one repeating cycle of assuming I’ve known things, and then being proven very wrong.
I had been pretty sure I was straight at one point, for instance.
“You alright, Leo?” Madeline interrupted my internal meanderings. I’d apparently been staring down at the lifeless bodies of my mechas for a while.
“Just having a minor existential crisis. You know how it goes.”
“You wanna talk about it?”
“Not in the slightest.”
I gently deposited my small, unmoving friends into my inventory. I then re-Animated Four-arms. I’d placed him onto the countertop when he went dormant earlier, and I saw him examine his surroundings as he righted himself.
Both Madeline and I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Is it weird to say I missed him?” Madeline asked, placing him onto her lap.
“I dunno. I don’t got a good grasp on a version of normal to compare it to at this point.”
Madeline squinted at me. “That was a hell of a sentence sir, but ok I guess.”
I shrugged as I opened my inventory again in order to bring out my next mech. This recently Repaired fellow was from an anime that was closer to being in the super robot genre than the real robot genre that the brand was more known for. This had contributed to the series being poorly received upon release, but over time it had come to be regarded as a classic.
I tried watching it myself, but I can’t say I saw the appeal.
The mech was cool though. I’d seen a couple mecha pirates, but this was the only example I’d seen of a mecha gangster. He had a long black trench coat, a matching striped fedora, and was covered in an assortment of ridiculous straps. Overall he read more like a villain from a tokusatsu joint than a mech, but that was probably why I liked him.
As I mentioned before, though, I was mostly after his guns.
I set him on the kitchen counter and used Animate. The bands of light and graphite clouds took a bit longer to disperse this time, and there were more of them too. Part of that might just come down to him being one of the larger models that I owned. He cost me a pretty penny too.
It was most of a paycheck, actually.
I ate a lot of ramen that month.
When he came to, he gave me a lazy two fingered salute. A bit of attitude on this one, then. I leaned over to take a closer look at him. The biggest change was that his coat was now pliable. Before it had been a bunch of cleverly swiveling parts that did their best to give the visual impression of fabric.That was one of the concessions they’d had to make in adapting the Animated version into a physical object made entirely from rigid plastics.
Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.
But now he had a real coat. Neat. His joints were different too, but that was normal for these guys. They needed the enhanced articulation to walk around properly as living(?) creatures.
I looked over to Madeline to ask her if she was willing to allow another passenger, but she spoke first.
“What the hell, that’s way cooler than I thought it would be!”
“I mean it's a fun little light show, but I can’t really take credit. It all happens automatically.”
“You just breathed life into an inanimate object! How are you not fucking impressed!?”
“That’s my point, I didn’t do shit. I just pressed a button. It’s like- I don’t have ownership of it, it just happens. And it could stop happening at any moment, is what it feels like.” I spouted.
“I mean you're not wrong, but what’s stressing out about it gonna do for us?”
“I don’t know. It’s just, like you, I had a nightmare and it’s left me feeling kind of stressy and anxious. Sorry.” I’d been feeling not quite right since this morning, and had been doing my best to ignore it, but doing so was basically impossible. When I got like this, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it other than distract myself.
“Hmm. . . Anything I can do to help?” Madeline asked.
“No, but I appreciate the offer. What did you choose for your abilities?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.
“I was thinking one charge of Reinforce, two charges of Strike, and four of Accelerate.”
“Doesn’t that leave you with three extra points? Oh right, 25% percent for a potion. That adds up then.”
“Yeah. buying ‘em now.” She fiddled with her display for a second, before closing her fist to dismiss it. The tattoo on the back of her hand glowed brightly for a moment, bands of light wrapping around Madeline and her chair. She shivered after they disappeared.
“That did not feel pleasant,” She said, “Like my pins and needles after your arm falls asleep, but everywhere.”
“Gross. Are you feeling any different now though?” I asked.
“Ehh, not really?” She experimentally clenched and unclenched a fist.
“Do you wanna see if it affected your strength at all real quick?”
“Oh, good Idea.” She grabbed her grip strength trainers off of the carpeted living room floor where she’d left them yesterday. She gave the red one a squeeze, and I could see an eyebrow arch in surprise.
“That’s way easier than it was yesterday, but that might come down to the stat increase I got. I should have tested it earlier.”
That was right, her body stat had increased. There was no telling now whether her increased strength was entirely affected by that or if Reinforce was doing anything.
“Is it alright if I try pinching you?”
“I mean sure?”
I stepped a bit closer and tried pinching a bit of skin on her forearm. Keyword there being tried, as in I couldn’t actually pull her taut skin enough to pinch it. Her fucking body fat percentage was too low for there to be any loose, pliable skin.
“As funny as it is to see you struggle like this, I don’t think we’re gonna get any useful data out of it.” She said. “Try the back of my hand.”
I did so, and barely managed to squeeze a bit of dermis between my fore finger and thumb.
“Huh. I’m not feeling anything. Are you using any strength?”
“Yes. All of it, in fact.” My hand was literally trembling.
“And I can feel it when I pinch myself. . . So I guess it's working?” she said, seemingly unsure.
“Let's hope so.” There wasn’t really anything we could do about it at this point regardless, so I enacted another change of subject.
“Hey, did you notice that your chair glowed too?” I asked.
“No, I was a bit busy dealing with the horrid feeling of being pricked with a million needles all hooked up to a car battery. But if my chair’s been Reinforced too, that's good.” She tapped one of the large wheels of her chair. They were shaped like large shields, entirely covering their spokes with battered plate metal.
“This chair’s meant to take a beating, but it isn’t indestructible. My stunts yesterday couldn’t have been good for it. And I don’t have a whole lot of options for a replacement.”
“What happened to the one you broke, by the way?”
“It's in my inventory, along with my weight rack. I didn’t really wanna look at them after what happened.”
“Ok.” I turned to my newly Animated party member who I’d been neglecting. “Are you alright with having Tommy here ride with you?”
“I’d be happy to have him aboard. Are you ready to go?”
“Yeah, I think so. Did you remember to grab your claymore?”
“I totally forgot. Lemme go grab it.”
***
After making sure we were both fully equipped, we set off on our little adventure. Though by all rights, this one should be less eventful than the last.
I was pointedly ignoring the feeling of ill omen that had been plaguing me all morning.
We decided to check the lobby first, as it was only one floor down. The elevators still weren’t working, so the stairs were our only option. The lobby was clear, and nobody had fucked with the front door.
We worked our way up the flights then, our next destination being bloptopus manor, the seemingly abandoned apartment our last scuffle had been in. Neither of us were super jazzed about revisiting that particular locale, but I wanted my phone back.
When we entered the apartment again, the first thing that stuck out to us was the smell. We’d both barfed in there yesterday, and the sour scent of bile and acid remained. It was gag inducing. Thankfully I found my phone kicked under a table in the living room, and we got out of there quickly after that.
Part of me wanted to clean up the mess I’d made of the place, but I didn’t think trying to scrub two people's worth of puke out of the carpet would really be an effective use of my time. Plus, I’d already irreparably ruined the front door and their standing lamp, so it felt like kind of a lost cause.
After fleeing the scene of the crime we went up to my room. Though Madeline was definitely starting to sweat from pulling herself up so many flights of stairs. I felt bad, but she was pretty firm in not wanting my help.
I opened the front door with my keys, and found the living room ransacked. The door had been locked, so it was probably just the fault of one of my roommates. Or a blobtopus. We did a quick check for monsters, but didn’t find any.
That left roommates. Which only really meant Jacob.
I wasn’t even all that surprised. I’d gotten so depressingly used to his shit that this barely registered. I would be glad that this at least served as evidence that he was alive, but he was one of the few people in this world that I would use the word hate for.
Overall, Madeline was more upset than I was.
“What in the actual fuck happened to your apartment!?”
“Jacob, probably. This is about on the level of your average drunken and/or stoned rampage for him.”
“Seriously?” Madeline asked. I think she thought I was joking. I sighed.
“Yes. Not even the first time.” I deadpanned. She looked over the wreckage of the shared living area. Couch cushions were tossed haphazardly around. The television had been knocked over, and there were cracks in the plastic housing. The screen side was face down on the floor, but it was probably shattered. The garbage can had been overturned, and its contents were scattered far and wide. Plates were shattered. A cupboard door had been torn off its hinges. The fridge was empty. So was the freezer. And the closet pantry. Pretty much complete devastation.
“I mean you’ve told me that he makes a mess of the place, but this seems a little extreme.”
“It's a little worse than usual, but not by much.”
“How hasn’t he been evicted?” She asked.
“He’s the building manager’s son.” I replied.
“And that lets him get away with it?”
“That plus a lot of lying on his part. And while I hate his guts, I haven’t been in a rush to get on the bad side of the person who runs the place.”
“That fucking sucks.” She said, “Also, if he’s the son of our landlady, why doesn’t he have a studio apartment for himself? Why does he need roommates?”
“I haven’t really figured that one out yet. Honestly what goes on in his head is a bit of a mystery to me. Apparently he told his mom we’re best friends.”
“What in the actual fuck gave him that Idea?” she asked, understandably incredulous.
“I wish I knew. I do know that he finds it handy that we clean up his messes for him.”
“The more I hear about this guy, the more toxic he sounds to me.”
“You might be right.” I sighed again. At least he wasn’t my problem anymore. Even if Madeline kicked me out of her place, I wasn’t coming back here again. The current scenario had been just the excuse I needed to leave. I’d been wanting to for months, but I still had half a year left on the lease.
“Let me grab some stuff from my room and then we’ll check the roof.” I said.
“Alright. I’m sorry that your food got stolen, but we’ll figure something else out.” She said.
“Oh I don’t keep any of my food out here. Jacob would always steal it. I have a half-size fridge in my room, and I use my dress closet to store my dry goods.”
“Oh. Neat. Or, sorry I guess?”
“Eh. I’ll toss it all in my inventory and then I can say goodbye to this place for good.”
I found my room as I left it. In other words, a charred mess. That was my fault though, and my rice was unharmed in my closet where I’d left it.
I grabbed my rice cooker while I was at it, stored in my room because of Jacob. Same went for a backup gas burner. I couldn’t use it in the apartment, as it turned out, because it set off the fire alarm. But it might come in handy later. I kept all my favorite cooking utensils and pans in my closet, actually. Which probably sounds weird to you, but it was a necessity in this damned apartment.
I grabbed everything else I’d left there while I was at it. Originally I hadn’t thought I was moving out, so I’d only brought the basics. But I realized while I was at Madeline’s that I felt more peace there than here.
I actually couldn’t relax here. There was this gross sticky feeling in my center. It felt like I could choke if I wasn’t careful. My chest was all tight and squeezy. There was something cloudy and unpleasantly pressurized in the back of my brain too.
I think I was afraid.
Man I’d gotten so used to feeling that way that I’d forgotten that it wasn’t normal. Madeline was right. Jacob wasn’t just an asshole.
He was poisonous.
I remembered my first interaction with him. He smiled, acted friendly. I thought that he even seemed nice at the time. But then, when my other two roommates weren’t around, he’d casually started saying some of the meanest shit. He said, and I quote, that my hair made me look like an asshole.
After that he said it was a joke and laughed. I didn’t particularly find it funny, but maybe my sense of humor and his didn’t match up.
I’d brushed it off.
But he kept doing it.
He just kept pushing, and everytime I didn’t immediately call him on his shit, he’d take that as permission to push me harder. Eventually, I told myself that there was no reason to take it, so I pushed back.
But then he started acting hurt. Like it was all my fault. And then I felt bad, so I apologized. But he didn’t stop. And everytime I tried to make him stop he’d act like the victim.
He always retaliated in force too. He’d break things, steal things, always with some lame ass excuse nobody believed, or he’d outright deny it was him.
And how awful of me to blame him for it too. Couldn’t I see how that was hurtful?
And he seemingly had infinite energy to put towards fucking with me. Eventually I got exhausted. Worn down. Fighting him just didn’t seem worth it anymore. So I begged. And that sort of worked. For a bit. Lately he’d been getting worse again.
At least my room had felt safe. He’d had yet to intrude on that space, but only because I made sure it was always locked, I suspected. If he could have, he would have broken the things in there too. Or stolen them.
God damn it.
I was crying again.
Madeline found me curled up in my closet. Which, you know, wasn’t ideal, but I was feeling a lot of things and I was feeling them with a fair amount of intensity.
I think the worst part was that he wasn’t even the first person to pull that shit on me. I hadn’t been willing to recognize what happened to me the first time though, so that meant that when it happened again I hadn’t been ready for it.
Which kind of made it feel like it was all my fucking fault, thus why I was currently having a breakdown, hugging my rice cooker.