Appreciating the first period of silence in the building since they had entered Pedro felt himself relax somewhat. Then a thought sprang into his mind. He couldn’t hear anything. No gunshots or fighting, not where he was nor deeper into the building. Mentally Pedro reached out to his spirit of air to see if it had carried out its task completely. He felt no response, no bond. It was gone.
‘Frag! We need to move now!’.
‘Wha-‘.
‘Now damn it!’.
He ran in the general direction that he knew Kay to be, towards the remains of a store that had been looted of anything valuable long ago. There was another next to it that still had its heavy metal shutters down, now covered with simplistic graffiti of the Nitro Mizuchi. Some words in Japanese, some poorly drawn cars, and a large, stencilled image of a water serpent creature in the centre of it. Wilde suspected that the shuttered store might have been the main hangout spot of the gang, but from what he made out from when he astrally projected believed that there should be a way to it from the abandoned storefront with the blown-out front that he was rushing through. While it was difficult to make out details in the physical world in the astral, he was sure he’d seen a person walking away from the group in the direction he was heading.
Although he wanted to race straight to this potential back entrance to the ganger’s location there were long-abandoned shelving units along with debris that had fallen from the neglected ceiling that kept getting in Pedro’s way. Kenda followed him as he went but continued to question him.
‘Frags y’r problem!?’.
‘My spirit! The spirit that I had fighting against the gangers deep in here! Its dissipated! Gone! They’ve killed it and now we’ve only got a bit’ve time before they either move Kay or call-in reinforcements!’.
‘Ah frag! Y’ know how many it took out at least?’.
‘No! I could only give it one task and I didn’t want to make it more complicated by having it give me constant updates!’.
Pedro could still feel the link to his spirit of man, so it seemed that Kay hadn’t been moved yet, but if the Nitro Mizuchi weren’t moving her that meant that they were probably reenforcing their position and calling for backup. Wilde considered ordering the spirit of man to follow up the spirit of airs attack to keep them off balance or even finish them off; he did have one remaining service due from it. But he rejected the idea as soon as he had it. If the spirit was attacking the gangers, then it wasn’t guarding Kay, and Pedro had no intention of leaving her defenceless.
Reaching the other side of the barren shop Pedro saw a sturdy door reinforced with metal bands behind the ancient counter, the newest piece of furniture inside the building he’d seen so far. With a smooth action he slid over the counter and stopped at the right of said door. Kenda chose to simply power through it, smashing the counter into fragments of mouldy chipboard and brittle plastic as she joined Pedro at the left side of the door. He arched an eyebrow at her cacophonous actions.
‘What?! Y’ think they didn’t hear any’ve the shootin’ before? If there’s anyone back there they know we’re comin’.
It was a fair point, so he didn’t press the issue, but Pedro’s stomach felt like it was in knots. They’d done well in their opening fight, neither of them had been badly hurt despite the Nitro Mizuchi’s “guards” best efforts. But now the element of surprise was gone. Any gangers left knew that there was somebody coming for them, someone with magical power. They would go all out to defend their turf and their payday, he was certain of that. Chances were good that they’d suspect he and Kenda were there for Kay and would try and move her as soon as they could. There was no time to summon more spirits, no time to astrally scout ahead, they needed to move now.
Despite wanting to burst through the door, Wilde fought back that desire. This was enemy territory; he had no clue if the gangers had time to set up booby traps since the fighting started or if there were already defences set up in case of an assault. Astral perception could only see magic and living beings; a grenade lodged behind a door, or a drone with a loaded machine gun would’ve been vague grey shapes to him. He couldn’t afford to get sloppy now, not when he was so close.
‘We need to be fast but careful. Don’t know if there’s anything set up for us on the other side’.
Wilde whispered in a tone low enough for his companion to hear but hopefully not enough to be heard by someone behind the door. For her part, Kenda had leaned down somewhat to hear him better, then nodded slowly.
‘I’ll open it slow. Check an’ see if there’s anythin’ there. If not, I open it up an’ we rush in’.
Now Pedro nodded in response.
‘Ok. Here goes’.
Gingerly as she could with her oversized troll fingers Kenda clasped the handle and slowly turned it. The tarnished aluminium handle groaned as she moved it bit by bit until it the door could move. With the gentlest of touches, she ever so gradually opened the door until it was ajar. From his angle Wilde was annoyingly unable to see for himself if there was anything amiss, but he could see Kenda examining the thin gap with utmost care. For a moment he thought that he could hear the woman’s mechanical eyes buzzing with the exertion she was putting them under.
Without a word she snapped her head to Pedro and looked him in the eye. It was slightly unnerving to gaze into the featureless black mechanical orbs that served as Kenda’s eyes, there was an uncanny valley element to it, but he was more concerned about their current situation. The giant troll gave him a sharp nod and gripped the handle tighter. Recognising what was coming Pedro backed off from the door somewhat and readied himself to break into a sprint.
SLAM!
Throwing the door wide open with such vigour that it dented the wall behind it, Kenda and Wilde both paused for the briefest of seconds, waiting for some trap to be sprung. But seeing that nothing happened the pair broke into a mad sprint down the hallway it opened into, Pedro first followed somewhat awkwardly by Kenda who had to stoop down to travel through it.
The hallway was short, with only a couple of doors on either side of it. In the back of his mind Pedro figured that this was the storage space and employee only area when the mall was in business. He didn’t care about any of that though. He just opened the only door to the right, the direction that he was sure Kay was in. It opened into a bare room with only some fragments of plasterboard that were roughly piled against one of the walls.
More importantly was the fact that one of the walls had been blown out though, or smashed through, the source of the plasterboard on the floor. It appeared to lead into another barren room that had a door at the other side. With no obvious traps or ambushers in wait for them Pedro and Kenda charged through, Kenda with her shotgun in hand, Wilde seemingly unarmed but still fully capable of casting spells.
On a level he knew that they should have done the same as they had with the previous door. Carefully open it to ensure they weren’t setting off a trap or running into some well-armed and alert gangers.
Pedro should have done that, but he didn’t.
Instead, he ran up to it at breakneck speed and kicked it with all the might he could muster.
Kay was nearby. She was alone and scared, and he was close, so close to her. He needed to get to her, he didn’t care about the danger to himself or to Kenda. Not when there was a chance that the gangers could be trying to take her away at that very moment. He didn’t have a layout of the building, the fact he’d found this back entrance was luck more than anything else. There could’ve been any number of exits to where the gangers were.
An image flashed in his mind of him bursting into where Kay was being held only to discover that he’d been too late again. The woman he loved lost again because he wasn’t fast enough.
Deep down Pedro knew that if he didn’t rescue her now, she’d be lost forever. If the Nitro Mizuchi managed to sell her back to MCT Kay would be locked away in a fortified archology that he’d never be able to break into, no matter how hard he tried. And that was even if he could find out where she was in the first place. MCT had thousands of archologies across the world. They’d send Kay wherever they wanted her to go; he’d have no way of finding her. It had been half luck that he’d manged to find her so quick this time.
No. There were no other options now. Even if it was a stupid risk he needed to get to Kay as soon as possible.
Swinging wildly open with the force of his kick, the door hung limply from its hinges as splinters brushed against Pedro’s face. He was in another hallway mirroring the one he had just come from, but as he ran down it, he could see through open doors that the rooms along it didn’t hold Kay. Some scavenged sofas, fridges, weapons and boxes of ammunition scattered within them, but no Kay. With no other options he rushed down the hallway to the door leading to the main store area, the place where any remaining gangers would most likely be.
‘The frag happened t’ bein’ quick n‘ quiet!?’.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Kenda battered after him, comically stooped over to fit through the unaccommodating hallway. Her face was twisted in a grimace of frustration and the barrel of the shotgun gripped tightly in her hands was pointing in Wilde’s general direction, but from the way her head darted from side to side she was more concerned about gangers than angry at him. That was what Pedro told himself.
‘We’re close damn it!’ He hissed at her through his teeth. ‘We can’t let them take Kay away again!’.
Without thinking or caring about the consequences Wilde pushed open the door to the main section of the store, the only door in the hallway that had been closed other than the one he’d just burst through.
Opening this one properly he stepped into what could only be the main hangout spot for the Nitro Mizuchi in Redmond. There were more scavenged sofas, a tridio unit set up in the middle of the room, assorted cases of cheap beers and spirits, countless half empty takeout containers. Far more pertinent to his situation however was the half a dozen Nitro Mizuchi gangers that were all staring at him, their guns already pointing in the direction of the door he’d come through.
Pedro stood dumb before the assembled gangers.
All of them looked scotched and seared to some extent, but none of them showed any sign of fear or hesitation. That said, both the gangers along with he and Kenda seemed to be momentarily stunned at the turn of events. Before anybody could do anything one of the gangers leaped forth over the remains of a sofa that seemed to have been torn in two.
The ganger pointed his arm towards Wilde, palm open. It was a cybernetic arm. The image of the astral signature of the person who had driven Kay to such hopelessness with his words flashed in his mind. He couldn’t tell without assensing him to be sure, but Pedro knew that this was the man before him.
Mechanical sounds erupted from the gangers cyberarm as it began to shift and change before his eyes. Metal fingers bent in directions that would be impossible for a normal person and the palm opened into a dark metal hole as the main body of the arm became more ridged.
‘Think Fast Jackass!’.
PLUNK!
Time, which had already turned to a crawl for Wilde now seemed to freeze. He watched the grenade fired from the gangers cyberarm arc towards him in unerring velocity.
Death was a certainty in Pedro’s mind now.
In the seconds it had been from him opening the door to the room what had been turning into a successful rescue mission was swiftly turning into a bad farce. Pedro had always been warned about rushing into things, by Vega, by Sophia, by his mother, even by Kay in the past. He knew the dangers of heedless aggression well enough; he’d suffered the consequences for it many times before. Bruises, broken bones and burnt relationships in the past. He’d tried to keep himself in check as he went about attempting to rescue Kay constantly, attempting to stop himself from escalating a situation or allowing things to get worse. And after all of that, after how well he had been doing, at the very last moment, when things were at their most critical, he’d given into temptation and ruined it all.
He saw the arrogant smirk of the ganger with the gleaming chrome mechanical arm and felt hateful bile rise within him. He saw the grenade in the air and felt crushing despair.
There were so many things that Pedro still had left to say to Kay, places he hadn’t taken her, things they had left to do together. He’d always heard that a person’s life flashed before their eyes in the moments before their death, but in that moment all Pedro felt was an overwhelming sense of… dissatisfaction.
A cold realisation settled over Pedro as he reached an epiphany. He was willing to die for Kay, he’d do so happily if that meant that she’d get to live a life of freedom and contentment. But before he died for Kay, he was going to fight for her with everything that he had. He’d fight until his last breath, until there was nothing left of him.
With the frenzied energy that only a dying man could muster, Wilde furiously lashed out at the mana surrounding him, hurriedly forcing it into a spell. His one chance of possibly salvaging Kay’s shot of freedom and saving his own life. And that of Kenda’s.
Mere feet from his face a shimmering translucent wall of pale blue light apparated before him and just as it formed the grenade struck it and exploded. A flash of blinding light. A deafening roar. Thick acrid smoke.
Pedro fell to his knees as his physical barrier spell crumbled in the aftermath of the grenade’s detonation. He had hoped that it would ricochet off the barrier and land closer to the gangers, but it seemed that it had been set to explode on physical contact. The drain from casting a powerful spell so quickly had almost overwhelmed Wilde and the barrier hadn’t withstood the force of the explosion, but it had done its job. He was alive. For a couple more seconds at least.
‘Koko ni kite mo i to omou yo! Watashitachi no tokoro e!’.
‘This is our house! This is Nitro Mizuchi turf!’.
‘That’s what you get! That’s what you all get!’.
None of the gangers seemed to be any more able to see through the smoke than he was and appeared to believe that they’d killed him and Kenda, or at least badly injured them. A grim grin formed on Wilde’s face as he thought about the fact that the most significant damage he’d taken since entering the Nitro Mizuchi’s den was at his own hands, due to the drain from recklessly casting his spell. The thought of that amused him somewhat.
Suddenly he felt a great crushing pressure on his right shoulder only to find himself soaring through the air to is left. Pedro was able to keep a hold of his senses just enough to see Kenda step over the smoking crater created by the grenade and open fire with her shotgun. He saw a ganger’s head burst apart in a grewsome eruption of blood and bone. The man’s body managed to stand for a second, blood spurting from the bloody stump of its neck before it collapses to the floor.
THUD!
Wilde hit the floor hard but wasn’t badly hurt by the throw. Sitting up as quickly as he could he found himself behind one of the many sofas littering the place. Kenda had done her best to get him to some minimal form of cover before going on the offensive. Or perhaps she was serving as a distraction? Taking stock of where he was Pedro could see that she’d thrown him as close to the door that presumably held Kay as she could. There was a chance that in the chaos that he might just manage to sneak Kay away to safety.
Moving to his feet Pedro kept low and began to inch himself closer towards the door before stopping himself to look towards Kenda. She’d jumped behind a sofa of her own for cover, but the bullets of the Nitro Mizuchi gangers easily tore through it and slammed into the troll. Her armoured jacket managed to stay intact, but Wilde could already see that if Kenda remained in her present situation she wouldn’t last much longer.
Pedro had never like Kenda. She was an inconvenience at best and an active threat to his relationship with Kay at worst. A couple of days ago he would have perhaps hesitated for a brief second over choosing to sacrifice Kenda for Kay before leaving the former smugglers muscle to her death. The only reason for any hesitation at all would be him wondering how Kay would react to Kenda’s demise before deciding that he’d rather morn Kenda than Kay.
Now though, Pedro found himself more reluctant to abandon her.
They’d been companions in their quest to save Kay for hours at most, not even a full day. But in that time he’d developed… a sense of comradery with her? A grudging respect? He wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps it was just down to them being forced to spend time together in a stressful situation, or a result of learning a little more of her past that made him reticent about turning his back on her. Had their positions been reversed would she hold similar hesitations?
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bullets burst through the sofa he was hiding behind, but due to his magically enhanced reflexes and the fact the sofa hid his precise location they all missed him. Nevertheless, the close call helped Pedro reach his decision. Regardless of whether he was willing to leave Kenda behind for Kay, the area was too dangerous to escort Kay from. As far as he was aware there were no other entrances or exits from the room his beloved was imprisoned in, that meant leaving would involve Kay having to run through an active firefight, an unacceptable risk in his mind.
With his judgment made Wilde steadied himself against the bullet hole ridden sofa and once again prepared to cast another spell. Mana ebbed and flowed according to his will, twisting around in an invisible vortex as he bound as much mana into the spell as he could. Doing so would ensure the power of the spell but it came with the added threat of the draining effect of the spell potentially overwhelming him, something that in his current predicament would likely spell death for Pedro. It was worth the risk though as far as he was concerned though; the gangers all looked like they were wounded to some degree and the longer the fight went on the greater the odds of them receiving reinforcements were. A swift end was needed and that was what he was going to provide.
A question sprung into the spellcasters mind as he gathered the power for his spell. Why had the spirit of air he had called upon to fight the gangers not inflicted greater casualties amongst them? They all had fully automatic rifles along with an abundance of ammunition for them, and the presence of a cybered-up freak who’d had a grenade launcher built into his arm certainly explained how they’d eventually overcome it. The fact that most of the gangers had a similar glassy eyed and slightly frothing at the mouth expression as the ganger in the main area that had consumed combat drugs also suggested that they were pushing themselves to greater limits than would otherwise be possible for them. But still, the spirit should have managed to kill one or two of them in the time it had been fighting them. Wilde hadn’t spotted a signal body on the floor and doubted that the gangers would have had the time or inclination to move their friends remains out of the way before he and Kenda entered.
Then it hit him. His precise orders for the spirit were:
‘Without being seen enter the building before us and go to the largest congregation of people inside. Once I give the order you are to attack all of them with your full power and keep them engaged in combat for as long as you are able. There is a woman inside’, He had mentally shown it Kay’s astral signature. ‘She is being protected by a spirit of man. She, the spirit, myself and the person next to me are not to be harmed in your attack’.
He had ordered the spirit to fight them and keep the gangers occupied, but he’d never actually told it to kill them! The overly literal entity had chosen to interpret its commands as an order to keep the gangers engaged with it rather than killing them! Instead of wiping out a group of enemies all it had done was rile them up!
The intense frustration that Pedro felt at that moment almost caused him to lose control over the spell he was casting. It was only down to his well-honed skill at combat magic that let him maintain his composure long enough to finish casting it.
As the swirling sphere of crackling blue electricity swelled in his hand it grew from the size of a seed to the size of a golf ball, then the size of a baseball, to the size of a basketball. Taking a breath to keep his composure over his profound sense of irritation and to brace himself for the deadly situation he was about to throw himself into. With a sharp but fluid motion Pedro rose to his feet and launched his supercharged ball lightning spell towards the gangers, taking care to ensure that both he and Kenda would be outside of its blast radius.
‘MINES BIGGER JACKASS!’.
Blinding light flashed as lightning bound in the sphere erupted amongst the gangers, electricity scorching and searing all that it touched. The smell of ozone, burnt plastic and meat joined the existing smells of gunpowder and body odour that were already present in the room.
Catching himself before he fell, Wilde held onto the sofa serving as his cover as he unholstered his pistol. The spell hadn’t knocked him unconscious, but it nearly had left him winded. He was barely able to maintain the spell enhancing his agility and was grateful for his mother’s focus letting him enhance his reflexes at the same time without any effort on his part. He took deep breaths of the stale and sickening air as he felt a cold sweat begin to form on his brow.
Pedro was reaching his limit and the fight was nowhere near finished yet.