Madeline continued to sip on her cup of water as we discussed our plans for the day. Currently we were thinking we’d start by cautiously peeking out the windows, before checking the halls again in search of my phone. Finally, we’d finish the day by finding out what we could see from the rooftop. Our check of the roof yesterday had been cursory, as we hadn’t wanted to tempt luck.
But first, we had a problem.
Namely, Madeline just informed me she had run out of ammo for her beretta.
“Already?” She’d gotten some use out of it, sure, but she was bound to need use of it again soon enough.
“I normally stock more, but it’s election season.”
“What does that have to do with having ammo?”
“Every time election season rolls around, conservatives freak out about the Idea that the government’s gonna take away their guns.” She said, “So ammo and firearm prices go through the roof. Common calibers like 45 ACP become nearly impossible to get a hold of.”
“Huh.”
“Yep. Which is why I’m out.”
“Well that's a bit of a pickle. Hey, do you have more for that revolver you lent me?”
“I got plenty for that thing. The lead’s cheap, and I buy the powder and caps in bulk.”
“Should we reload it?”
“I would, but I’ve never even tried a partial reload on it.”
“Why? It should be pretty simple.”
“Well Leo, do you remember how I had to pull the hammer back to half cock in order to rotate the cylinder?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember me flipping my shit at you for holding the gun by the barrel?”
“Yes, vividly.”
“Do you remember where the loading lever is?”
“Oh.” The loading lever, of course, ran the length of the barrel.
“And there’s your answer. That plus the fact that the front end of the gun can wave about during the loading process means that I don’t find it worth the risk.”
“That makes sense I suppose. Hey, do you want the gun back? You clearly know your shit better than I do.”
“Ehh. I was thinking I’d grab my claymore and use that.”
“You have a fucking claymore!?” I shouted, more than a little incredulous.
“Yeah, it's in my closet.” She said, like it was totally normal.
“And you didn’t think to use that yesterday?”
“I had a gun yesterday.”
“Technically you still do.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t make a great bludgeoning instrument. Anyway, scootch over. I’m gonna switch to my chair.”
Her wheelchair was facing her bed at an angle. She pulled her legs around off the side of the bed and placed an arm on one armrest of the chair. Bracing her other arm on her bed, she then pivoted her hips from the bed to her chair. The entire process was smoothly executed in the space of a couple seconds, clearly well practiced.
***
After moving to the living room, we started mentally preparing to open the blinds. Madeline had an apartment on the corner of the building, so she had twice the number of windows and viewing angles than most rooms in the building.
“Is the barrier still up?” I asked.
“Yeah, I got a timer on my display that says It wears off in about four hours.”
“Okay then. Here goes.” Madeline and I both held the drawstrings for each of her two main windows. We pulled at once.
The view was anticlimactically ordinary at first glance. But the more we looked the more oddities we found.
One of which was a giant lizard crawling up the side of a building on just the other side of the street. It was the same size as the windows next to it, and those windows looked to be at about half person height.
“Hey, that's the same kind of lizard I met yesterday. And is that a blobtopus on that streetlight over there?”
“It sure looks like one.” I agreed. “And there’s a pack of pookas over there.”
“Sure enough. Are they rooting through that dumpster?”
“I. . . think so? I can’t really see from here. And I’m not in the mood to try and take a closer look.”
“Ah!” Madeline exclaimed.
“What? Where!?” I yelped, startled.
“I just remembered I have something for this!” she said, before dashing off to a closet in her hallway just opposite the bathroom.
Madeline rooted through it for a bit, casually throwing things over her shoulder into the restroom behind her. I saw a sleeping bag, a tennis racket, a katana, and a few articles of clothing fly through the air before she apparently found what she was looking for.
She held the prize aloft for a moment, “bah-da-da dahhhhh!” she sang victoriously.
Madeline brought the small object over to me, and showed it off. “This here is a rangefinder. It uses a laser to measure distances up to 500 meters, and more importantly, the lens has five times magnification!”
“Man, you have all the best toys.”
“Yes, well, that’s what poor impulse control and a late night online shopping habit will do for you.”
“Speaking of such things, was that a katana I saw earlier?”
“Yeah, but it’s a cheap piece of shit so I wouldn't recommend trying to kill something with it. Honestly, It’s more likely to snap in half and hurt you then whatever you swing it at.” She said, “But nevermind that, let's see what this thing can do.”
“You haven’t tried it yet?”
“Nope. Bought it. Took it out of the box. Got ready to try it out, got distracted, and then put it in my closet where it sat for two months.”
She popped the front cover off of it, and looked through the lens. “Oh, five times magnification is not as impressive as I was expecting.”
“Really? I’d think it’d be five times better than normal vision.”
“Yeah, well, five times normal vision apparently sucks. Here.” I took the proffered gadget and put its monocular lens up to my right eye. It was certainly doing something, but I found it hard to get my bearings at first when peering through the small aperture of the lens. And only seeing things through one eye didn’t help.
So, less impressive than one would hope, but having been previously disappointed by multiple pairs of binoculars, I wasn’t shocked. Maybe scopes and binoculars were more impressive at the higher end of the price spectrum, but I hadn’t the means to afford those sorts of things.
My indulgences in the realms of model kits had already threatened to bankrupt me.
Eventually I caught sight of the pookas through the looking glass, and I saw that indeed they were rooting through a dumpster. Apparently they were quite able scavengers too, judging by the mess they were making.
I swiveled my view to look at the lizard on the side of the building, and I could just make out a smattering of white feathers stuck to its maw. I pitied the poor pidgeon it had feasted upon.
The blobtopus nearby was demolishing a bird’s nest. It had probably been eating the eggs.
I reported my findings to Madeline.
“Jeez, these bastards must be doing a number on the local ecosystem. Hey, do you think the zombies eat things too?” Madeline asked, grimacing.
“Well, that dog thing did bite me, but then again the human shaped ones generally use weapons, so I can’t say whether they crave for human flesh or not. I’m kinda tempted to say they don’t, on account of the whole being on fire thing.”
“What does them being on fire have to do with whether or not they eat people?”
“Well, usually in fiction, the supernatural themed zombies don’t eat things.”
“Supernatural?” She raised an eyebrow. “What happened to magic not being real?”
“I never said anything about magic.” I responded.
“Would you skip the pedantry and get to the point already?”
“My point is that just ‘cause they look supernatural, doesn’t mean they are. There’s that quote, about sufficiently advanced technology appearing to be magic. I bet that applies.”
“You know that’s always kinda always been what I’ve been saying.” She shot back.
“How so?” I said, finally turning my attention away from the rangefinder’s view to level a suspicious squint at her.
The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
“What I’ve been trying to convince you of is not that because magic exists we should just throw everything we know out the window and buy crystals. I just think that there are things out there beyond our current comprehension and that they should be acknowledged.”
“Huh.” I said. Why didn’t you tell me that earlier?”
“I tried too! But you get all huffy about this stuff.” I could be a bit touchy, but in fairness I had my reasons. I supposed now was as good a time as any to open up about some of them.
“I’m sorry about that,” I sighed, “but the whole thing with the pandemic and all that killed some people that I cared about. So I get defensive about those sorts of things, and that can make me a little unpleasant to be around.”
“I get where you're coming from.” She winced. “My aunt nearly died. So apology accepted.”
“. . .”
“. . .”
We both hung out in silence for a bit, absorbed in memories of the previous great collective trauma. I broke the silence first.
“I still think sasquatch is a hoax.”
“Bigfoot is real and I’m gonna fucking prove it!” She rejoined.
***
We peered out at the invasive fauna for a bit longer, but after some ghouls showed up we called it quits. Those things sucked.
We then decided some leisure time was in order.
Which mostly meant that Madeline kicked my ass at fighting games. I never could get a handle on the series of precise inputs needed to pull off combos. I could figure out spacing and play footsies to a certain degree, but when I could only pull off a three hitter at best, that hampered my ability to do any real damage.
I still had a good time, though. The animations were pretty cool, and seeing my poor character get demolished with fireballs, spin kicks, and super attacks was interesting in its own right. At one point Madeline juggled my character all the way up a wall, and I was so helpless to stop it that I found it kind of funny.
After wasting an hour or two doing that, I decided to let my mecha’s play. Hopefully they’d get revenge for me. Fry sat back and watched, while Four-arms and Mick-chicken divided up the controller back up between them. Mick-chicken was on the right this time, in charge of pressing the face buttons. Four-arms took hold of the left joystick and used his left leg to pull the trigger, which was bound to dashing in this game.
They got their but’s whooped at first, but started pulling it back around remarkably quickly. I’d noticed it earlier, but they were fast learners, and were uncanny in their ability to coordinate. It seemed to me like they communicated with each other on some sort of invisible wavelength.
Soon enough they were giving Madeline a run for her money. She started losing a round here and there, but slowly the rate at which she lost increased until she was losing nearly every match. She was in the midst of yet another round of getting her ass served to her on a platter, when suddenly her opponent fumbled, and she retaliated in force. She swept the opposing character into the air and started an aerial combo that took off the majority of Fry and Mick-chicken’s health pool.
They still had some health left, but Madeline went for the finisher, dashing forward and landing a single heavy attack that ended the round. She raised her controller, and whooped. I looked at the two mechas. Four-arms was looking to his right at Mick-chicken, who was completely still.
He was still bent partially over the controller, his little taloned hands hovering just above the buttons. His gaze was locked to the screen. Was he in shock? Or just ready for the next match?
From observing Four-arms's body language, I could tell that wasn’t quite right. I stood up and walked over to check on him. He didn’t react as I approached. I gently tapped his backside, and I watched as he tumbled onto his side. The light had quite literally left his eyes. What were once glowing red dots were now flat and unreflective.
“Is he. . . Dead?” Madeline asked, notes of horror clearly at play in her voice. I wondered the same thing. I picked him up ever so gently. His limbs were locked in place, though I could still feel a bit of play in his joints. There were no signs of life.
“He’s dead Jim.” I said flatly.
“What the fuck Leo!” she cried.
“In fairness, I’d probably be more upset if I didn’t think I could bring him back to life.”
“You're gonna have to break that down for me, chief.”
I pulled up my display, and immediately tapped on the Animate ability, bringing up a list of candidates. Mick-chicken was listed there, alongside Fry. I glanced over at Fry to see he was now inactive too. I also saw that I’d gotten two more points of ATP back as well.
I showed Madeline my display and explained my findings.
“So less dead, and more in suspended animation then.” she said, her hand cupping her chin as she spoke.
“More or less.” I agreed. Her choice of phrasing was oddly apt, their animation had quite literally been suspended.
Neither Fry nor Mick-chicken’s bodies had gone back to their pre animation state, their bodies were still modified in the ways my ability had seen fit. They’d just gone still.
Four-arms had been concerned at first, but he settled down after figuring out that I could bring them back if I so chose.
“So are you gonna bring them back or what?”
“Eh, I was thinking maybe not immediately.”
“Why not?” Madeline tilted her head slightly as she asked.
“Well, I got a couple reasons. One’s practical, the others more emotional.”
“Let’s get the gucky emotional stuff out of the way first, please.”
I raised an eyebrow but complied.
“Right,” I started to explain, “So far as I can tell these guys don’t sleep. I had them keep watch last night, and unless they got some shut eye in the time between when you got up and I did, they didn’t get a wink.”
“They were up when I got up. And they started playing vidya games pretty soon after.”
“Yeah, so I kinda feel like they deserve some time to rest, silly as that sounds.”
“Honestly, given how emotionally attached I’ve become in the space of a day, I can’t criticize.” She agreed, nodding her head.
“The more practical reason for not doing it right away is that, as far as I can tell, My Animate ability works on a twenty four hour timer.”
“Okay. . .”
“And I got two points of my ATP back as soon as they both went to sleep.”
“Really?”
“Yep. And if I’m right I should get the rest back within a couple hours.”
“Oh, cause you’ll get more once your other guy conks out.”
“Mmh hmm. Hey, you mentioned yesterday you had to sort of buy your dash ability? Can we follow up on that?” I asked.
“Oh shit, right. I never really explained that, did I?”
“No. We were busy, and then when we got back to your apartment we got kinda distracted and forgot.”
“Ok so, you know how you have to think about it whenever you wanna open your display?”
“Yeah, I have no Idea how that works.”
“It’s kinda freaky, isn’t it? Anyway, I found out yesterday I can use my dash just by thinking about it in sort of the same way, but I have to spend ATP to get a set number of uses for it first.”
“Huh. Continue.”
She did so. “Well, the thing that threw me for a loop there was that those uses are on a cool down. It's not just that one point gets me one use. It sort of recharges over time.”
“So that’s what I meant by ability purchasing.” she continued. “And I believe your abilities to be similar. You just ‘purchase’ mechs to use.”
“Ok yeah, that checks out. And thinking of ATP as buying power instead of mana or stamina makes more sense when you consider the shop as well.” I responded.
“About the shop actually, isn’t it kinda weird how it takes percentages instead of a set number of points?”
“A little bit. But it's not all that strange when you look at just how useful the shop items are.” I said.
“I mean I get that everything you can purchase is pretty powerful, but why not just make them cost multiple points?”
“Oh, I think that’s ‘cause you can raise your maximum ATP.”
“You can do what?”
I remembered then that I hadn’t told her about the stat increase I’d gotten. I showed her then what I was talking about. She raised an eyebrow, and upon checking her display found that a stat had increased for her as well. Tapping on her radar chart showed her current stats as compared to their old values, which made it more clear. Her body stat was the one to get a slight bump up, and her CR was at eight. She had killed more things than me yesterday, after all.
“This is pretty bizarre.” She said, “You know what it reminds me of?”
“A video game?” I queried.
“Well, yes, but more like one of my Korean webcomics.”
“Or a web novel, yeah. The thought makes me kind of uncomfortable to be honest.”
“It's not great,” she agreed.
“You know what always bothers me about those? How often that shit gets hand waved, just because it’s so common in the realms of fiction.
“Yeah, you can’t really blame authors for wanting to skip to the good part though, especially given how derivative most of those works are. That being said, we have been given a couple hints as to why it’s actually happening to us”
“I’m not following Miss Madeline.” From my perspective this shit had been dropped on our laps with little to no explanation.
“You remember when you first found the display stuck to your hand?”
“Yeah. There was a little spinning square.”
“After that.”
“It said something, though I don’t actually remember what. Then it asked me a question, and I said yes because I was pretty sure that I was about to die.”
“Right, but what it said was kinda important I think. It said we were ‘eligible to receive foreign aid’. The specific phrasing there is what I’m after.”
“It is a little odd.”
“Which is why I think we should break it down term by term. First is the fact that we’re ‘eligible’. That means that this superpowered nonsense is selective. If someone can be eligible then one can also be illegible, after all.”
“Professor Madeline, I have a question.” I said, raising my hand.
“Yes, the student in the front, go ahead.” She said, pushing up a pair of invisible glasses.
“What’s the criteria for selection?”
“I’m not entirely sure, but my current hypothesis is that killing a monster is at least one factor.”
“Yeah, that fits. We both got ours after killing some invasive fauna.”
“But not immediately. There was a short delay before the display and accompanying tattoo showed up.” She pointed out.
“Is that why you think that there are multiple factors for selection?” I asked.
“That’s one reason. The other is that if you have to kill a monster to get a display, then our situation ends up being much more dire.”
I understood what she was getting at. So far we’d convinced ourselves that the reason that we’d found no signs of human life was because everyone was using barriers. If you had to kill a monster to get a barrier, that drastically reduced the number of people who were likely to have one. And that would mean that there were. . . other reasons everyone seemed to be absent. I found myself involuntarily thinking about the finger in my inventory.
“But I vote we don’t think too hard about that right now.” She said, pulling me out of my own thoughts and back into the present. “Instead I’d like to get to my next point.”
“Ok.” I nodded my consent to the change of subject.
“What I’d like to focus on next is what we were eligible to receive. That is, ‘foreign aid’. And in particular what that term implies versus what we received. Leonardo, what do you think of when you hear the words ‘foreign aid’.”
I thought for a moment. “Charity, I guess? Like donations to third world countries.”
“You're not far off. The actual definition is much broader, however. ‘Foreign aid’ Refers to anything given to one country by another country or an independent organization. This can include money, medical supplies, or even military matters, such as soldiers or weapons.”
“Wait wait wait!” The scope of this suddenly felt much, much larger. “You mean we got this thing from a country?”
“Or an independent organization.” she corrected. “But who or whatever gave it to us has gotta be pretty powerful.”
“Right, because we can do things that shouldn’t normally be possible. So whatever gave us these abilities can probably do even more than what we’ve seen.” I blurted.
“Because a nation or organization wouldn’t normally hand out weapons that they themselves couldn’t deal with.” She concluded.
“And that’s what our abilities are. Weapons. God, that’s a lot less fun sounding than just having superpowers.” I said
“Yeah. It is.” She sighed.
My eyes settled on Four-arms, who was sitting cross legged on the floor. I wondered just what my little mechas were capable of. Did they have a conscience, or morals? Or were they just guns waiting to have their triggers pulled? They were clearly intelligent. But did they have their own will? Could they disobey my orders?
Would it be a good thing or a bad thing if they could?