“You are definitely the luckiest thing I have ever run into,” he growled to me. “You one of those geniuses or something, always one step ahead of everyone else?”

“My powers make me strong and fast and balanced. I’m just smart. Smart people look at the world differently from others.”

“Yeah, brains always working. Met a lot of Schmot Guys in this business, always thinking, thinking, thinking. Never got a word of help off ‘em before, tho.”

“Well, did you ever pay them for advice? Let them examine you?”

“Them guys? Hells no. I’m not the brightest bulb in the drawer an’ I know it, but I’m not that dumb.”

I moved ahead, unlatched the back of his truck, and hopped up to sit down on it. He paused for a second, thought about that, and turned around to do the same.

“So, Schmot Gurl talking.”

“Go ahead,” he grunted, paying attention.

“You ain’t no mutate. You’re an Avatar.”

He looked at me, away, and back again. Thought about it some more. “You sure?” he finally asked.

“No, you could be something similar... but it’s the closest analogue. You’re like an earth elemental, except you can’t control the earth. You’re more like part of it, what with the strength and gravity and immovability and stuff.

“More to the point, I could feel it when you brought down the Weight of the Mountain. That was magic in the air, helping you do that, old and primal stuff. Mutates don’t use magic, they got Cores.”

“Huh.” He clenched his big hand, squinted up at the sky. “No wonder I could never use any of that Core stuff. Tried real damn hard, too.”

“Technically, you could, but as far as the Core is concerned, you’re just a normal human. You’d have to get Opened up by someone who knew how to do it.”

“Avatar.” He mulled that over. “What’s that mean for me? I ain’t never been contacted by no god or nothing, unless you count the couple who’ve punched me in the face.”

“You ever found yourself weirdly drawn somewhere and you didn’t know why, and you ended up fighting something there?”

“Huh.” He frowned harshly, thinking hard. “Yeah, a couple of times. Just wandering around, not knowing where I was. Once I was coming down from near-orbit after Herc slugged me, and the other time I was kinda lost in the jungle after taking down a drug lab one kingpin paid me to rip apart on another.

“You fight someone with elemental powers, or you fight something not of this world?” I asked directly.

He gave me that suspicious eye again. “That mean something?”

“Yeah. Warlocks tend to fight people. Avatars fight things on behalf of the gods and old powers. That Marko the Juggernaut guy I told you about? He’s a Warlock of Cyttorak. His job is to make himself famous and the power of Cyttorak feared. So, he goes around fighting stuff and making a name for the Juggernaut. Those who know he’s empowered by Cyttorak are naturally impressed.”

“Izzat so?” he grunted. “Well, weren’t that way, I guess? First one was this old alien thing with a devouring wind eroding away at everything, like it was eating away the world. Found it under some old ruins in Australia when I landed nearby. Ended up tearing the thing apart and burying it under the stones.

“Second time, that was Skrulls.”

That made me sit up alertly. “Skrulls? The shapechangers?”

“Yeah. I stumbled right into one of their infiltration stations, and noticed that the mass of the critters around didn’t match up with their sizes and weights. Killed a few, they reverted to green shifters, and I kinda went hogwild on the mass of them when they opened up on me.”

“So, would it be far-fetched to say you’re supposed to be a defender against things not of the world, and it doesn’t care what you do otherwise?”

He thought about that and shrugged a bit. “Well, it ain’t been giving me too many assignments, then.”

“Yeah?” I had to smile. “How many of the alien invasions of the last decade have you been in the area for?” There’d been at least twelve I’d found records of, and more rumored here and there.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“The big ones? All of them. Only a dozen or so of the little ones...” he trailed off as I smiled more widely at him. “Huh. I always thought it was this crazy world...”

“You went out for a drive or had the urge to take a job in this and such area, and shit happened?” I prodded him.

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the right of it. Huh. Just never pictured myself as a defender of nuthin’ before...”

“Well, the best defense is a good offense, and your job seems to be beating on stuff, not standing in the way of fusion cannons and soaking up hits,” I pointed out. “It also means that one way or another, you’re being led to places where the land wants you to be. Which leads to a couple other things...”

“Gawdammit, how much shit has been going by underneath my nose because nobody pointed this out to me?!” he growled, giving the steel of the truck’s bed a gentle whack, leaving only a small dent in it.

“Next intrusive question: Can you Spend Power?” It was the true hallmark of the Powered.

He gave me a wary glance, harrumphed, and looked away again. “Yeah. I don’t do it much, ‘cause it makes me weaker, more vulnerable, other stuff. I’ve done it to extend the radius of the Weight of the Mountain if I want to bring down a large building or something, and I’ve done it to make myself really, really immovable against some big hits.”

“You’ve probably never heard of Earthjumping, or basic Teleporting, and how it works, then.”

“Teleporting? I’ve seen that pop-in, pop-out stuff. Pretty annoying stuff, but most of them ‘poppers don’t like coming into a twenty-grav Weight field,” he smiled mirthlessly.

“I’m talking the strategic kind. Y’know, Terra to the moon, starships in orbit, to and from the LaGrange Point...”

“Oh, that level of stuff. I read about the tesseract ant crossing the ends of the strings brought together, that kind of thing?”

“Correct. But do you know what the most common usable string is?”

He squinted and scratched his head. “The string? No, can’t say I have.”

“Your Lived-line. The line of your life. Picture yourself and everything you did out there today.” I waved at the desert in front of us. “Now imagine if you could see all of it at the same time.” His eyes began to move, darting back and forth, trying to picture it all. “That whole track of ‘you’ is your lived-line, the line of your life. So, the easiest places to Teleport to are the places that your lived-line has actually reached, the line of your life through the fourth dimension.” I tapped my cheek thoughtfully as he grunted, wondering where this was going. “Furthermore, you’re an Avatar of Earth. Most of us poor sots who want to use this method have to be touching the ground, and can only Teleport to another place on it that connects in an unbroken line with our lived-line. But you’re like a moving part of the ground, so it should just follow your lived-line anywhere...”

“You’re talking like I can teleport or something?” He finally managed to sound incredulous.

“On the planet only, and you’ll have to spend power to do it. I dunno how much, but probably nowhere near as much as you amping up your Weight of the Mountain. You can probably take people with you, too.

“More to the point, if the Land wants you somewhere, you can probably just let it dump you there. Instant excitement on demand!”

He looked at me like I had finally lost it. I just tapped my noggin. “Schmot Gurl talkin’ here. You’re not allowed to doubt me!” I declared confidently.

He looked away, and up at the clear blue sky again. “So, what yer sayin’ is, I can move myself to anywhere on the planet I’ve already been... and maybe the planet can move me somewhere it wants me to be.”

“Which is probably a lot more convenient than driving there,” I noted for him.

“It also means... I should be driving around a lot, going to a lot of places, so I can go to them anytime I want,” he realized.

I nodded. “Expanding your lived-line is a big, big thing for the teleporter set. Eventually you start extending it between planets and dimensions as you get more powerful. You never really outgrow it.”

He rolled his eyes at me. “I think I’ll stick with just the one little planet for now, girl.”

I laughed despite myself. “Mountains stay put. Got it!”

“Should I test it out?” he wondered aloud.

“You ready to get dropped into a fight? If you don’t control it right, that’s probably gonna be a good excuse for the Land to send you somewhere there’s an infection to lance out.”

“Huh. Well, I’m never NOT ready for a fight, but there’s ready, and then there’s ready.” He pointed. “Looks like they sent Angel to scan the area for a missile site.”

I eyed the flash of gold and silver in the distance, zipping through the sky at speed and defying gravity entirely as it did so. “We can move a few miles down the road if you want to, wait until he flies off. What will he do if he identifies you?”

“Eh, probably nuthin’. They ain’t really got anyone in the Aerie who can take me on easily, and pulling the whole team out here just ‘cause he saw me here is dumb.”

I drummed my fingers. “Do you want them to see your truck?”

He grunted. “They probably know it, but not really. What you got in mind?”

“Launch another missile?”

------

Angel converged quickly on the dark figure falling from the sky, his in-built radar picking out the third launch with ease.

It hadn’t acted like a missile. There was no acceleration, it was only getting slower, and it was describing a perfect parabolic arc.

More like something had thrown something up, not set off a rocket...

It wasn’t moving, just sort of plummeting straight-down... feet-first, he realized as he came closer, seeing the arms crossed, and a patient look on the stolid, square-jawed face.

The Mountain. Here. Falling from two miles in the sky. Didn’t even have his coat on, bulging arms crossed over his wife-beater undershirt as he plummeted from the sky at speed.

He glanced over at Angel idly, just a turn of the head, and then down at the ground approaching at 200 mph indifferently.

“Uh, Fugit, I found the missile. It’s, um, The Mountain. Something launched him up into the air, and he’s falling to the ground. Maybe again?” he reported into his sealed helm, tagging along above the falling mercenary curiously.

-There’s no seismographs registering anything strong enough to hit him hard enough to do that,- Fugit /answered, somewhat suspicious. -Did something toss him up there, maybe?-

“Who, Hercules? Primus? You can’t just throw something that big and heavy at Mach 2! Hold on, he’s about to hit the ground... holy shit!”