When Verox came to, she gasped for breath and sputtered dusty debris. Her body was heavy, but the rubble lying atop her did her weakened physique little justice. Before her, little remained. Even through her groggy vision, she could see that much. Whatever the Ascension headquarters once stood for, it had all been left barren, stripped of its dignity.
Grunting, she struggled to her feet and followed the downward path of carnage. Metal was warped. Power suits were strewn about, bloodied.
But no matter where she looked, there was no sign of life.
For the first time in her experience, things were quiet. There was no subtle hum of enchanted arrays powering the grid or the presence of humming white noise that once grated on her ears but now felt like an absent lullaby in the face of tragedy. All of the trainees she’d equipped and watched grow for the last three decades no longer ran about the halls, respectfully lowering their heads or offering friendly, subservient smiles.
Without the friendly bickering, youthful jokes, and smell of sweat, she desperately stumbled to a place she could’ve gotten to with all of her senses entirely diminished—her lab.
To whatever deities may preside over the tower, she begged for her lab to still be in one piece, untouched. Her life’s work, all her research, if she could just find that, she could start over all again. If somehow the ELS remained intact, maybe she wouldn’t even have to start over.
Yet her mind raced with visions of more tragedy. Maybe her lab would be in pieces, turned upside down and razed when the boy could find nothing of his sister. Oh, how she had tried to warn Abellar.
Might made right in the tower. How had the old badger, who she’d seen no sign of and she presumed now dead, forgotten something so simple? They had been tasked with the girl’s care and had known the risk, yet high on opportunity, Abellar had been careless. She had been careless.
Ivy should have never been part of normal operations, never been made so easily accessible to anybody, because no matter what Abellar tried to lie about, this had been an inside job. Someone from their compound had kidnapped the girl. One of their own. Maybe out of ignorance, maybe a competing sector within the faction.
She had no way of knowing, and suddenly, she reached her destination. Despite her hopes, she never once truly expected her lab to remain untouched in all the chaos, yet as unimaginable as it might have seemed, it remained untouched on the outside, giving her hopes within might remain whole, undisturbed.
Despite her ardor, she couldn’t deny that the boy had passed through. Scraps of earlier generations’ power suits lay in pieces everywhere, some even embedded at high velocity into the very walls.
Intentionally, she ignored the amount of blood painting everything from floor to ceiling. No matter what she did now, she couldn’t change the past, and her heart ached enough already without thinking of all the faces that would never excitedly peer back from within one of her designs, the monitors picking up their increased heart rates and rising cortisol.
A familiar red light scanned her, and the door hissed open, cool air offering her sweet reprieve from the scorched air haunting the compound.
“It’s such a lovely design,” an unexpected, blood chilling voice said from within, admiringly. Hesitant, Verox stepped inside the lab. The brother was there, running his hand over the ELS, his back to her. “I hoped whoever had designed it would find their way back here, which I assume to be you. No offense, but you’re a little old to be running around playing hero like my sister.” He turned around and walked to the control panel and gestured at it. “I took the liberty of looking over your database, and I can’t help but wonder why then, if Ivy scored so well, she’s no longer here or why she wasn’t protected. As your note says, ‘best synchronicity ever recorded, shall take under direct supervision’.”
“I never wanted to lie to you about what happened,” she tried explaining, then gulped and shrinked back as he took a step toward her. “Please don’t hurt me, I want to find her as much as you do!”
“I highly doubt that is the case. This is the last family I have left we’re talking about, so no, I don’t think so.” He clicked his tongue. “I do respect your interest in her though and doubt you had anything to do with her disappearance. Especially if that elder fellow didn’t know anything. He didn’t seem like a very trustworthy type. After I killed him, my good friend Jarvick even tried to attack me in his defense.”
Now that was a lot to process, but Verox would’ve never made it to her current position if she couldn’t think on her feet. “It was an inside job. That’s all I know. I swear I had nothing to do with it and was trying to find her when Abellar poisoned me.”
“I see. I wondered why you were taking a nap on the floor in the midst of all of this and why, as sole engineer of the ELS, you were even on that floor. To make something this precious, something that would captivate my sister so deeply, you’re definitely not a normal person.” The boy sighed. “But we still have a problem.” He thumbed behind him to where a trainee, one she recognized as Demron, was slumped, past out on himself with a concerning dark spot around his crotch. “This one seems to know something, and he keeps passing out when he looks at me.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“To be fair, the emanant pressure you’re putting off is enough to even stifle someone like me, and I’m the proud owner of a full Rare deck.” She gestured toward the trainee. “They don’t have anything more than a mix of commons and uncommons, similar to your sister.”
He tilted his head. “That’s a thing? Does explain why all the weak ones were already asleep by the time I found them.”
Had he just admitted to killing all of the trainees when they were utterly helpless?
“Don’t look at me like that. I let the ones who didn’t try to fight me leave. It was only the ones shouting and rushing me that didn’t get to walk away. And to be fair, I did warn them I wasn’t sure what I was capable of.” The boy grunted. “I’ve only got, like, six Legendary cards slotted. I’ve got another four empty slots. I really thought someone might’ve been able to give me a fight, but I even let them group up around the corner to attack me together.”
Six…
Verox gulped.
Six Legendaries…
She slowly took out her system interface block and scrolled to the leaderboard panels. If he had multiple Legendary cards, he would be within the top twenty—no, top ten of any of the factions. As she scrolled through the Expansionists, she found nothing. She thought he wasn’t Ascension, but she checked anyway. Nothing.
General rankings?
Nothing.
Her heart dropped into the bottom of her stomach when she checked the last, but definitely not least, and found him.
Destruction Leaderboard:
Rank 7: James Winstein
Only interacting with the girl, Ivy, even gave her an idea of what to search for, but there he was. Ranked seventh… on the Destruction faction’s damned leaderboard! How did none of them notice this sooner?
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, miss engineer. Verox, was it?” He grinned after she flinched away. “I checked your ID,” he explained, patting the same side of his chest where her ID was sewn, “earlier when I found you in the old man’s office.”
“I see. So what now?” she asked, looking toward trainee Demron.
“Wake him up, question him, maybe convince him answer is better than not. After that, it should be pretty clear what will happen.” He tilted his head when she gasped. “I’m going to find my sister, and you’re going to bring that,” he pointed at the ELS, “with us. Or rather, I’m kidnapping you and taking the mecha for myself so I can give it to Ivy when I find her. Either way, he knows what’s going on, and I’m too scary for him, so I’ll be stepping out while you get the information we need. Chop, chop now!”
She stepped out of the walkway so he could exit, leaving her to wake and interrogate the poor trainee. Her eyes hardened as she regarded the young man. “What have you gotten us into, and what in the name of the tower could have possessed you to do it?”
----------------------------------------
Ivy remained focused for so long that all the voices fell silent, and then started up again, and then went quiet again. She hardly noticed. Her focus was fully on those four inner compass points. She needed to choose, and the choice she made would decide the path she would follow from this point onward, but she couldn’t avoid thinking about the current situation too.
The first, the one she thought of as ‘north’, felt very strongly like it would help her in dealing with a large group of enemies, but she wasn’t sure how well it would do at fighting directly. The second felt like it would work best if she wanted to slip away on her own, but she got the distinct impression that it wouldn’t be able to help anyone else. That one was very self-focused, very tightly centered.
The third continued to call to her, most in tune with who she’d been up to now, but she didn’t want to make the decision solely based on feelings. That one seemed best suited to strengthening a group, which also seemed relevant right now.
But the last one, west, that one felt aggressive. And right now she needed something aggressive. Even if the third could make her whole group move faster or punch harder, would it be enough?
Could she afford to gamble on something increasing the group overall to the extent that they would make up for her own advancement being lesser? Or should she gamble it all on giving herself the power to deal with anything that came against them single-handedly?
Both north and south felt group aligned, while east and west were personally skewed. North and west felt antagonistic, while east and south had a more protective vibe.
This shouldn’t be so difficult. But knowing this was the only possible upgrade she’d be getting until she found a way back to the tower, she felt paralyzed by indecision. She’d never had so much riding on one simple thought before.
“Sorry, everyone, but I’ve got to focus on myself first,” she muttered, then giggled softly. “What am I, a guidance counselor?”
She let go of the part of her that clung to the group augmentation direction and focused in on the personal attack.
Green light flashed. Startled, she opened her eyes to see the card floating in front of her, ready to be claimed.
Strike - Attack, Physical, Contact.
She laughed at how simple it was, but it was exactly what she’d asked for. Combined with her existing Adversity card and the retributive force of Retaliate, she now had a significant advantage over anyone she fought one-on-one, she just had to be sure they didn’t have any way to hit her from a distance.
A sudden wave of exhaustion flowed over her, as though she’d been holding something very heavy for a long time and was suddenly able to put it down. If she weren’t already sitting against the wall, she’d probably have collapsed on the spot.
As it was, she slumped over against the guy next to her.
“Sorry,” she managed, too tired to worry about moving. “Just need a quick nap. Wake me when we get there.”
----------------------------------------