And so one hour later, we set off again.

Madeline rightfully complained about having to take the stairs again, but we got down and out without much of a fuss. The parking lot was still clear, too, the large bird thing from earlier having apparently set off for brighter pastures whilst we were away.

There were no lizards in the immediate proximity either. Which was good, because we still weren’t entirely sure how to deal with those. Using a barrier for a silenced shot everytime just wasn’t sustainable. They also preferred high places, meaning you effectively had to shoot them.

Though a crossbow might do the trick, come to think of it. Maybe one of these days we could get one.

Madeline took point, flipping her visor down. I readied the twenty-two rifle, and perched my welding goggles on my forehead.

Since our trip was going to be an extended one, we couldn’t afford to leave the door propped open. It closed behind us, and the click of the electronic lock was ominously final.

I gulped, and wondered why I salivated whenever I was afraid.

The sort of thing I’d google if I had access to the internet.

Sadly, I did not. And likely never would again. Not that thinking negatively was gonna get us anywhere. We had a convenience store to rob!

It was within a ten minutes walking distance, and I knew the route pretty well having had to walk there four times a week for nearly a month and a half previously.

That was before my current job in retail.

I did actually end up quitting after the second near shooting.

We decided to stick to the alleyways. They were narrow enough that a reptile wouldn’t be able to spot us unless they were right on top of us.

It went remarkably well up until we exited into a small lot behind an office building and came face to face with a bear beast.

It was my first time seeing one of them since the siege the other day. I hadn’t gotten a chance to get a good look at that one before Madeline dispatched it, but this one was close enough that I could make out all the unfortunate details.

It had hairless, racoon-like hands and feet. The fur that grew in starting halfway up its legs was a grayish color, with brown bands. Its head was shaped like that of a fish, basically just a straight wedge that extended from its shoulders. There were no eyes or other orifices visible underneath the fur.

Its spine was bent in concerning ways, with the rear end of the creature raised far above the front, even with all of its appendages fully straightened out.

Madeline first attempted to silently roll backwards from it, hoping that we could just turn back the way we came.

The unusual ursine was not having that.

It charged. Madeline sliced its front legs off, but the cone-headed carnivore’s momentum carried it forward in the form of a summersault.

Its back legs basically ended up in Madeline’s lap, causing her to yelp.

Those same rear appendages flailed wildly, clocking Madeline solidly in the kisser. It was no small blessing she had her visor down. Those claws would have torn up her face something fierce.

While Miss Madeline was stunned it somehow rolled onto its feet, and turned its warped countenance upon me. I sent a knife into its torso in response. The knife didn’t get very far, the fur apparently being more blade resistant than I initially anticipated.

I sent another and backpedaled. I really wasn’t doing much other than ticking it off with those.

New plan. I had laser beams on my side. Or at least my robot did. I sent a thought to my mechanical companion and a number of cubes peeled off of it, revealing themselves to be a swarm of laser drones.

Each one capable of firing a small beam. I hastily pulled my goggles down and had the drones swarm the now bipedal baddie.

The individual beams weren’t very large, but there sure were a lot of them. They carved my foe up quite handily, and without making too much noise either. I was worried they’d be a lot more unmanageable, and was relieved to find them to be intuitively controlled and precise.

The bastard bear thing disintegrated without fuss, and my drone swarm returned.

That made one more successful combat encounter for the day! I stared at my hands, and found that they weren’t even shaking all that much. In my experience that meant I’d be fine right up until I stopped moving, at which point I would be very much not fine.

So we just needed to keep moving.

I hurried a still dazed Madeline along through the vacant lot and into the next alleyway. She still wasn’t really with it after a minute's rest, so I pulled up her visor and stared into her eyes. She tracked my finger as I waved it back and forth just fine, but after shining a light on her, I found that one of her pupils was refusing to dilate.

That wasn’t good.

“Madeline, you have a concussion. I need you to use a healing Item.” I explained to her, as calmly as I could.

“A what?” She asked.

“A healing item. First aid kit. Use one from your display.” I repeated.

“No. Before that. Or after? What. . .?” She wasn’t terribly coherent.

Which wasn’t great. Her brain was internally bleeding all over the place as we spoke, and that could get lethal quick.

I remembered how Madeline explained that she’d had to use a healing item on me after I’d lost my arm. She said she’d had to touch the tattoo on my hand, and then she got a new option on her display.

I grabbed Madeline’s right hand, intending to try the same thing. She yanked it back almost immediately, the jerky movement causing her chair to roll back ever so slightly.

“Don’t touch.” She said, groggily.

“Why?” I asked, rightly impatient.

“You have problems with touching.” She explained slowly, like I was the impaired one here.

Even despite the frustrating circumstances, I was warmed a little by her concern.

“I’ll be fine.” I said.

Madeline squinted suspiciously in response.

“I’ll be fine, I promise.” I said again.

“But you’re hurt. I need your hand.”

Eventually she consented, though she gave me the wrong hand. She gave me her left, which made sense given that it was her dominant one.

“Other hand, Miss Madeline.” I prompted.

“Why do you call me that?” she asked, seemingly a little frustrated.

“Miss?”

“Yeah.”

I grabbed her right hand, and turned it so that it was palm side down. She nearly always wore a pair of fingerless gloves, and I was worried I’d have to struggle through removing them to get access to her tattoo. Lucky for me this particular pair also had a large gap on the back, meaning I had access to the dimly glowing emblem I needed contact with.

“Because I grew up spending more time watching anime than talking to real people. So I feel the near instinctual need to attach prefixes to people’s names in emulation of the system of honorary suffixes present in japanese.” I finally replied, tapping on the stack of healing items in my inventory. The option to use one on Madeline popped up, and I poked it with my thumb.

It got to work immediately, Madeline’s eyes coming into focus. I quickly let go of her hand. She raised her left to touch the side of her head, wincing.

Her expression eased a bit and she opened her mouth.

“Leonardo? What happened?” She asked.

“You got kicked in the face by a bear and ended up with a concussion.” I responded.

“The bear! Where’s the bear!?” She cried, suddenly alarmed.

“It’s dead. I shot it with lasers.”

“Oh. That’s good. Where are we?” She asked, scanning around us.

“Another alleyway approximately fifty feet farther north of the previous one.”

“So we’re still not done with our little adventure then. Darn.”

“We could head back. I think getting concussed is a pretty good reason to head back.” I offered.

“Maybe.” She checked her display. “But my CR still hasn’t gone up and one vending machine’s worth of snacks is only gonna feed us for another day, max.”

She was right. We’d both eaten our way through nearly my entire stockpile. That had been a good couple weeks worth of food, but it was demolished in just four days. We both needed an absolutely astounding number of calories to sustain ourselves, now.

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

My CR hadn’t gone up yet either. We needed to make up for our previous losses at least.

Madeline said she felt fine aside from the small gap in her memory, and was entirely unwilling to head back on her own. So on we went.

The convenience store was only a short jaunt away. Madeline made us wait at a corner, apparently hearing undead shuffling nearby. After she notified me I noticed them as well. They were definitely approaching our position. With purpose too. I suspected they’d heard us talking earlier.

Neither of us had been in the state of mind that would have allowed us to remember to be quiet, in fairness. That still left us with several oncoming problems in the form of a mass of undead beings in various states of decay.

We backed up the avenue we’d just come from so that we’d have some space when they rounded the corner. A flaming skeleton was the first to arrive, and it sprinted forward with wild abandon. I was slightly stunned by its appearance, less because of it and more because of what I saw surrounding it.

A ghastly semi-transparent armature engulfed it, all odd angles and too sharp corners and weird flexions. It almost seemed like some sort of living being was attached to the bones of the creature, its inexplicable movements manipulating the joints and marrow of the skeleton to produce motion. At the head of the partially opaque thing mounted on the skelly was a pulsing lung-like organ that billowed and contracted with the movements of the familiar blue flame below it. From that organ a stringy tether dangled and wafted through the air hypnotically, twitching occasionally like a cat’s tail.

“Madeline are you seeing that?” I pointed at the phantasmic horror feeding off the skeleton, and Madeline looked at me strangely.

“Yeah, it's a skeleton with a mace and a bunch of his friends. I’m pretty sure they want to kill us, so I’m going to go murder them first. Brb.”

She dashed off with that, clearly not seeing what I was seeing and having learnt nothing from her past mistakes.

To her credit, she did manage to take down that first skeleton with ease. I saw the spiny jelly-fish that was once adhered to it flail its appendages for a while after the skeleton disappeared. Limbs that had once firmly grasped yellowed ivory now grabbed at empty air. Its movements shortly weakened before it too faded into nothing.

Madeline cleaved through a specimen enrobed in chainmail next, the iron links providing next to no defense before her darkly enshrouded armament. That zombie had both a bit more flesh on it, as well as a much smaller creature attached to its spine. I only observed both for a moment before they vanished.

I raised my rifle to shoot one of them before thinking better of it, I didn’t want to risk the sound of the gunshot attracting more. I sent a knife forward of me instead, manipulating it to stab a mummified corpse wielding a warpick through the eye.

That didn’t kill it immediately, but it did cause it to drop its pick. I subsequently hefted the top of the polearm with telekinesis, dropping the pointy end of the pick on the poor revenant's skull.

That did drop him. It was a shame that my new pick dissolved with the zombie. If we could scavenge their weapons our lives would be a whole lot easier.

A much fresher zombie with all of the meat still on its bones appeared next. Its eyes were both accounted for, and only glowed dimly.

The less decayed the undead, the more dangerous it was in my experience and proving my point, this one had a crossbow. It turned to aim it at Madeline, who was otherwise engaged with another skeleton swinging a large double bladed ax.

I could see the trajectory the bolt would take highlighted in magenta sparks, and while I supposed I could have attempted to alter the projectile's path mid-flight, I found it easier to just telekinetically shove the zombified archer a bit in order to throw off his aim.

The crossbow bolt flew just afield of its intended target, and Madeline startled a bit before accelerating towards the ranged attacker and bisecting it. I got the skeleton she’d left behind by stirring a floating knife around inside its ocular cavity.

I briefly attempted to interact with the large ghostly creature that robed itself around the skeleton, but got no results even with telekinesis.

I stopped Madeline just before she finished off the archer zombie. Its top half was still struggling on the ground. I tore its crossbow from its grasp and used it to poke at his head. I found what I was looking for attached to the back of his neck. A semi opaque leech like thing that terminated in a loosely woven cord that faded some distance from the main body.

From what I could tell, all the undead had this strange-nasty thing, and the more rotten the corpus the bigger the spirit-bug attached to it.

“Allright, you can kill him now.” Madeline grunted in response and speared her sword though his head, the blade glowing dimly beneath ebony stripes. The wooden crossbow crumbled in my hands.

“Do you wanna tell me what that was all about?” Madeline asked.

“You didn’t see anything strange on the zombies?” I asked.

“Nope. Just as weird as they are normally. You asking me that twice does lead me to believe that you saw something though.” She observed.

“You’d be right. They had these like, parasite things on their heads. They came in different shapes too, like they were more or less evolved depending on the state of the corpse they were attached to.” I explained.

“Weird.” She commented.

“Very. My question is: why is it that I can suddenly see them and you can’t?”

“You don’t think it has anything to do with your eyes changing colors and suddenly gaining psychic powers?” She suggested dryly.

“Oh. You know, that does make a certain amount of sense now that you point it out.”

“Yeah, I bet.” She rolled her eyes lightly and shrugged, gesturing for me to continue leading the way.

***

We both got another point of CR from that, which got me my lost ATP back. I used it immediately on a weapon that I’d selected in advance. It was a ridiculously large sword that cut with vibratory force, supposedly.

In effect it even hummed slightly as it hovered before me.

In Scale model form it was only the size of a small dagger. That actually made it easier to use as a projectile, so I was happy with it. I could shoot the little thing forward and slice and dice to my hearts content all from a safe distance.

Madeline only got a slight stat increase, so she’d just have to continue as before. She grumbled a little at that.

“Why do you get all the cool new toys?” She groused.

“Because I spent a large quantity of my extremely limited funds on them, missus I get 500 dollar amazon gift cards from my grandmother every christmas.”

“Look, I know I’m a spoiled little rich girl, but it’s not polite to point it out.” She pouted.

“Yeah yeah. We’re almost there.” I said. The little corner shop was just out the alley ahead of us, but actually entering the place would come with some risk.

First was that entering from the front would force us to spend some time on the main street. A lizard would almost certainly spot us and raise a ruckus the moment we left our little alleyway.

Second was that the place was definitely rigged with some sort of alarm system. Whether that was a silent alarm sent to law enforcement or an old fashioned buzzer I did not know. If it was the first, that was fine. I didn’t think there were any cops to respond to a call at this point anyway. The latter was what we needed to avoid.

Thankfully I had a potential solution for both of those problems. If I was going to be breaking and entering anyway, I might as well go through the loading entrance in the back. I knew precisely which unmarked door that was, having worked there. It was locked with a pretty serious latch, but I could cut through it with another laser beam.

A small line of drones detached from my mech and sliced their way through the lock, and we were in. The back door was just hanging open behind us now, but it wasn’t like I could shut it anymore. We’d just have to be quick.

No alarm rang. Whether that was because I was right about the back entrance being less secured, or that it was because it was a silent one, I did not know or care.

I did feel surprisingly guilty about the property damage though. I forced down the rising sense of shame and continued on. Madeline hesitated a little to enter into the store proper, but followed my lead.

Destroying that vending machine had just felt different to breaking and entering into a proper place of business, I found. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because the vending machine had already felt like it belonged to us. It was a part of our housing complex, after all.

This store was someone else’s though, and that made what we were about to do feel more like proper theft. I guess the Idea that society’s laws about ownership were probably no longer a thing just hadn’t sunk in yet.

Honestly I kind of wanted to turn back.

I looked at Madeline and she clearly seemed equally uncomfortable.

“So we need more food, but I’m feeling weird about this. Do you wanna see if we can’t pay for things the old fashioned way?” I suggested. We could at least leave some cash.

“You know that sounds a little silly given the circumstances.” She said. I was about to argue before she continued:

“But I feel the same way. Apparently this isn’t quite a line I’m willing to cross yet. I got a twenty in my wallet. What do you have on you?”

I removed my own wallet from my inventory, and counted the bills therein.

“Five dollars and fifty cents.” I reported, disappointedly.

“You know, I’m not sure why I keep being surprised at how broke you are.” Madeline said.

“Look, I have a bit more in my bank account.” I rebuked.

“How much more?” She asked.

“Forty dollars and some change, last time I checked.”

“So basically nothing then.” She dismissed.

“That’s enough to feed me for two weeks!” I exclaimed.

“That was enough to feed you for two weeks. Now that might feed you for half that if you stretched it. And in a convenience store with nothing in it but overpriced snacks and a smattering of tv dinners and beer, you will not be stretching it.” She said pointedly.

I slumped, defeated. She was right. Even if I had access to that fourty dollars it wouldn’t have gotten me very far. With five I could get myself a large bag of chips, and a jerky stick if I was lucky.

“Anyway, have fun figuring out how to feed yourself into perpetuity with your chump change. I’m gonna take a look to see if they got any hot pockets.” Madeline turned to the freezer section, but I grabbed the back of her chair before she could set off.

“Oh no you don’t. In case you’ve forgotten you’ve been eating on my dime for nearly a week.” I said. She flinched, having suddenly remembered where all her meals had been coming from.

“Only four days, really,” She said weekly, in an attempt to defend herself.

“Regardless of how much time exactly, you are two thirds of the reason I’m almost out of food! You owe me at least twenty dollars by my estimate, Miss Madeline. Pay up!” I demanded.

“I don’t owe you, you’ve been living in my apartment rent free!” She cried.

“And I’ve been cooking, cleaning, and saving your life more than enough to make rent and then some!” I shot back.

“I saved your life too! Pretty sure we’re even on the life saving front.” She argued. I disagreed, but there was no real need to press that particular point.

“I still deserve fair compensation for my labor. Given all the work I’ve done, twenty dollars should about settle the tab. Pay up.” I repeated.

Madeline groaned, feeling especially miserly.

“We’ll split it.” She said after a moment's thought. It was a desperate ploy, and I wasn’t going to let her get away with it when I had a better alternative.

“Or,” I paused to take a breath and point at a relevant shelf, “we get the overpriced flour and sugar over there and I make baked goods.”

“What kind of baked goods?” Madeline asked, intrigued.

“Flat bread, pound cake, cookies, you name it.” I bragged. I may not have been a master baker, but I knew the basics.

“Can you make donuts?”

“The old fashioned sour cream kind, yeah.”

“That’ll do!” With twenty five dollars between us we nabbed a diminutive bag of all purpose baking flour, some sugar, and some shortening. In a proper grocer we could have gotten more, but here everything was at a markup. So we settled for what we could afford.

It was only after we got to the counter that I remembered two things.

One, I knew how to operate the register, and that the manager almost certainly hadn’t changed the password.

Two, the register had the ability to do offline payment processing. Which meant that even with internet and cell service down, we could pay with a card.

I shared this information with Madeline, who justifiably berated me for wasting our time.

I cleaned out my bank account buying frozen food and toiletries. Madeline wrote a check that she knew would bounce in order to basically clean out the store of everything else. She figured that the banks were hardly in any condition to fine her for it.

Was that basically stealing with extra steps? Probably.

Was that going to stop her? Most decidedly not.

I put the mildly fraudulent check in the register and signed the receipt. Then we left, having unnecessarily left a record for our possible crimes in order to assuage our guilt.