Chapter 16

Friends, Enemies, and… Frenemies?

We were walking next to the stream, and it was a beautiful day. The birds were singing, the fish were jumping, a kid was getting attacked by spider apes… Wait, what the fuck, a kid being attacked by spider apes or holly shit a fucking. A spider-monkey?

Damn, that was fucking funny, but damn it, Travis, not the time. Gotta save that fucking kid. I was about twenty feet away from the sight of the attack. I could see a kid, not a baby goat but a child, up on a tree branch just out of reach of the spider monkeys.

There were three of the fucker that I could see, and the kid was trying to find a way to get higher into the tree, but there were no branches in range. Every time the kid tried to move to a better location in the tree, the spider monkeys were there with spears or sharpened sticks. They were stabbing out, hoping to catch the kid off guard, get a stab in, and force their query from its perch.

The kid was trying to dodge the spear strikes and avoid getting stabbed in the leg. It definitely didn’t look like the kid could do this dance much longer. I could see a couple of fresh wounds, and blood was dripping down the tip of a few spears. The kid that was starting to slow visibly. It wouldn’t be long before they knocked the kid from the tree.

I started making my way closer to the motley crew, and when I was about ten feet away. I was really hoping I was in Step Lightly range and got ready to engage. Beth and Janet were behind me. They seemed to have seen what I had seen and were thinking along the same lines.

I had stopped behind a big tree with a thick bush on one side that provided a nice bit of cover. Janet and Beth caught up with me there and asked me what the plan was. I told them I was going to use my new ability to surprise attack these fuckers.

I asked if they could step in once and back me up once the chaos machine of battle was started and take out any spider monkeys they could. They both nodded, and we got ready to engage. I slipped to the edge of the tree and took a breath.

I wished I had just tried my new abilities before jumping straight into a battle that was life and death.

Then I stepped out from behind the tree and activated Step Lightly. Then I stepped, I felt myself move, and I knew the path my feet took to get to where I wanted to go, but then I was just there. I froze for a second in shock at my own speed. Then I remembered it was time to fuck shit up.

I immediately activated Pinpoint, and it was like when I was back in College on Adderall, trying to write a paper but even more intense, and I was focused as shit. I acted fast because I could feel my mana and stamina decreasing steadily every second the ability was active.

I slashed out and across with my Halbert and cut the closet spider monkey in half right where the spider and monkey bodies met. Then, without stopping to inspect my work, I used Step Lightly again. I stopped, and I was behind the spider monkeys as they looked over at their buddy on the ground in two pieces. I used Step Lightly a few times in succession to try and confuse my opponents, and It was intoxicating to be moving so fast.

I knew I was getting a little carried away, but the power felt amazing. I stopped flashing about and went on the attack again. I slashed out and copied my initial procedure, bisecting another foe. I was definitely on a power high, but the next thing I knew, there was a spear/stick stabbing out at my head.

I went to activate Step Lightly again, and it wouldn’t activate. All I could think was fuck as the spear point zoomed ever closer to my eyeball. Out of the fucking blue, Janet was there, slamming her axe down on the spider monkey that was trying to stab at my face.

She cut the thing's arms off at the elbows, the spear was dropped, and the Spider monkey let out a howl of pain that was cut short as Beth’s sword popped out of its chest from behind. Beth had jumped on the spider part of the creature's body and drove her sword into its heart, killing it almost instantly.

As the last spider-monkey creature dropped, we all did a quick check-in with each other, and we were all good. I was definitely a little shaken up, but I was okay. Then, from above us, we heard a little girl's voice.

“Thanks for the help, but I was dealing with that on my own. Who are you guys? My mom’s nearby, so don’t try any shit or shell fuck you up, okay?” The kid, well, I guess little girl, said down to us. I looked at her, a little confused, then just asked,

“What the fuck? Who are you, and what are you doing out here?”

“Yeah, watch your mouth, you little shit. we just saved your ass.” Janet said.

“Janet! You can’t call her a little shit. She’s probably been through a lot. I doubt her mom. I'm really close by. Come on, just, just don’t be a bitch. Oh, shit, sorry.” Beth finished talking to Janet and then waved her apology to the little girl.

“Yeah, screw you, lady. I'm not a little shit, and yeah, don’t be a bitch.” The little girl said, then smirked. Beth was smirking but trying to hide her smile and doing a poor job of it. The little girl saw Beth’s smirk and smiled while Janet ground her teeth. The next moment, the little girl had worked her way out of the tree and walked over to Beth. Once she was standing in front of Beth, she looked at her hands on her hip and then said,

“I like you. You’re cool and pretty funny, and I like your hair. It’s pretty. I lied. My mom is dead, and my dad, too. I’ve been on my own for a long time now, and everything got super scary, and I think maybe I could come with you cuz maybe it would be better.”

Tilly said all of this very quickly, and when she started talking about her parents and being alone, she began to tear up, but she pulled it together by the end of her little speech. Then she held out her hand. I’m Tilly, but everyone calls me Til’s. Can we be friends? She was about ten years old and looked like she had been using dirt and blood to wash with.

Tilly’s hair looked normally curly but was a matted mess now. She had a ripped Pokémon shirt and jeans and had some sneakers with velcro for laces. She looked filthy, and we could all tell she was barely keeping it together. The fact she was still alive after being alone all this time was kind of amazing.

Beth just looked at her, and then she looked like she was about to cry herself. Instead of shaking the girl's hand, Beth made her sword and shield disappear into her bag of holding and wrapped the girl up in a hug, and then they both started crying. The little girl was really sobbing, head barred in Beth’s chest, and Beth was quietly sobbing herself.

After Tilly had fully cried it out, she looked exhausted. She yawned, and we knew we should get her back to the tree house to rest and get her wounds cleaned up. Beth popped Tilly onto her shoulders, and we all returned to the tree house. Once we got there, we cleaned Tilly’s wounds and put her in the bed, and she knocked out before her head hit the pillow.

Once Tilly was out, Janet grabbed a bottle of tequila, and we all hopped up on the roof to talk about what to do with this little kid under our care now. We sat down, and Janet passed around the bottle. We all took a few sips, and then Janet let out a breath and spoke.

“So, are we really gonna become that little girls fucking new family? Cuz it’s not like we don’t take risks, like, what if we bite off more than we can chew? I'm not saying it's gonna happen, but we get taken out, and she’s on her own all over again.” Beth had been frowning at Janet when she had started talking. By the time Janet was done, Beth was looking more concerned than mad.

“Look, it’s not the ideal situation, but I’m not just gonna tell the girl l to fuck off. She’s obviously had a hard go of it, and if her parents are really dead, then they probably died in front of her or something equally as fucked up. Let’s keep her safe for now, and maybe we can find another group of good people to leave her with later on.” I said to Janet and Beth.

“Well, there's one thing that we kind of need to talk about?” Beth said, and Janet and I looked at Beth.

“What are you talking about?” I asked her, confused.

“The Claremont Hotel. Remember? All the people you said were in chains. That place sounded pretty fucked up, and the leaders of that hell hole are probably a lot weaker than us now. We should really think about intervening. Those people are probably being treated horribly, and maybe we could find some trustworthy people there after we kill all the fucking assholes keeping those pore people prisoner?” Beth said.

Beth's eyes had hardened with every word she spoke. I blinked a could times, shit I had totally forgotten about that whole encounter. Those guys looked fucking crazy, but it took a ton of XP to get to level ten and gain a class. We had to at least have the advantage over those fuckers.

“So, what do we do? Like, should we go see what the fuck is going on there nowadays?” I asked Beth. “Wait, you're on board? Just like that? No convincing?” Beth asked me, looking slightly shocked at my answer.

“What? Beth, we’ve been through the fucking shit together. You and Janet are my ride or die's forever now. I’ll always have your back.” I told her and Janet. Beth looked touched by my words, and Janet smiled at me warmly and chuckled.

“So, what are you thinking?” I asked Beth. That’s how we spent the next two hours planning what to do about the Claremont group. We also got drunk. We talked about the Claremont thing for about thirty minutes, and the other hour and a half was just us getting drunk.

The following day, Tilly was still passed out in bed with Beth and Janet when I woke up, but shortly after I got up, Beth woke up, and we started making some breakfast. Beth and I figured we’d give Tilly a little taste of some of the good stuff, so we made pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, and English muffins with strawberries, jam, and butter. With maple syrup for the pancakes, too, I might add.

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That had been a particularly excellent find on one of our scavenging trips. Tilly woke up as we were finishing up breakfast. Her eyes were wide, and she was literally drooling. I heard her stomach rumble, and that kind of snapped her out of her stunned state. Tilly looked down at her stomach and then placed her hand on it. After a few seconds, she looked back at Beth and me and then blushed.

“I’m sorry, can I have some of this food? This looks amazing! Did you make all of this, Beth? You're so cool! My mom was a great cook, and you cook like her. I knew you were a good person. Thanks again for helping me. I know you could have just left me there, but you saved me, so thank you.”

Tilly finished speaking and then just stood there beaming at Beth. Beth looked surprised for a second at the outburst of words but smiled at Tilly and said, “Sure, Tilly, have as much as you want. You must be hungry. Eat up.” Beth led Tilly to a chair and got her all set up to chow down. I made a pot of coffee and poured a cup for Beth, Janet, and myself. Then, I walked over to the bed where Janet was still sleeping, poked her in the shoulder, and then said, in a soft voice,

“Wake up, sleepyhead, come on, up-and-at’em. We got shit to do today, you and I, so come on, get up. I got coffee here for you.” She didn’t get up or open her eyes. She just reached out a hand for the coffee. I placed it in her palm, and she closed her fingers around the mug. With a loud exhale, she sat up, opened her eyes, and took a big sip of coffee.

“Damn, that’s what I needed. Oh, breakfast, sweet.” Janet said, and then she got up and walked over to the table, where she put her hand on Tilly’s head and ruffled her hair. Then Janet sat down across from her and started eating. Tilly said, “Hey, knock it off.” Then she glared at Janet, stuck her tongue out at her, and went back to eating.

After we all ate and cleaned up, we explained to Tilly that Janet and I would be go out today and return later. Tilly would hang out with Beth, and Janet and I would see them later. Tilly seemed fine with the plan. She liked Beth the best anyway. When Janet and I headed out, she was already talking away at Beth. Beth was definitely looking a little overwhelmed.

Before Beth could try to trade places with either of us, we ducked out the door of the treehouse and hopped down. We made our way back down a road that the forest had almost entirely reclaimed, back out of the hills, and back down to the backside of the Claremont. We ran into a small pack of frog-like creatures that spit globs of electrified saliva.

If it hit you, it would feel like you just put your finger into a 110 electrical socket. Fucking annoying, and it hurt. There was a group of four of them, and Janet and I got tagged by electric spitballs multiple times. I really didn’t mind killing those little assholes, if I’m being honest. Fuck them electro-spitting ass hats.

When we finally reached the Claremont Hotel, we could see that the main part had collapsed pretty severely, and there was nothing left but a pile of rubble. We could hear a lot of activity happening on the property, but the fences around the large complex didn’t let us see in, so it was back up into the trees again. We got up into a big tree. Janet and I then looked into the property.

We were looking in at a pool area. That was all we could see from here. We’d have to move to another couple of locations to fully scope out the whole place. The first thing I noticed was that the pools weren’t empty. They were drained of water, so in that sense, they were empty, but that didn't mean they were empty. There were sickly, emaciated people everywhere, sitting, standing, laying down, and I’m pretty sure just fucking dead, left to rot amongst the other captives in the pools.

There were several guards as well, sitting in big wooden lifeguard chairs with assault rifles, keeping watch over the slowly dying people in the two pools. We climbed back out of the tree and regrouped to talk.

“That was fucking sick. I mean fuck! I think I might need to leave Travis. I’m scared I’m going to lose it. Go in there, and seater and kill every last one of those evil fuckers, caution be damned.” Janet said, seaming pretty distressed at the situation going on behind those walls.

“Okay, okay, I hear you. Just take a second, then. We must do this right, or we are risking more than our lives here.” I said, and that seemed to start calming her down a bit. “Besides, there’s probably some other horrible shit going on here. We’ve gotta get a better understanding of this group, then we kill every last one. We just need to do this right.”

I reasoned with Janet, and eventually, she deflated, the wind taken out of her sails but had gained a hardened look in her eye that said death was coming. We started making our way around the property. We stopped and climbed into trees to see inside four more times and saw a medley of different cruel scenes playing out.

One time, we climbed up and saw a secluded tennis court full of crates, and some definitely had police logos on them, so they probably broke into an abandoned police station or something along those lines. The next time we looked in, we saw a large group of tents with people walking around, drinking, and eating.

There was music playing from what sounded like a set of speakers, and girls being led around, barely clothed, looking totally drudged up and out of it as men took their pick and led them off into the small tent city.

I had to talk Janet off the ledge after we saw that. Janet was ready to kill every last one of the assholes after that. She eventually calmed down, and we carried on with our scouting mission. The next and last time we looked inside, we found the largest open area we had seen so far. It looked like it used to be tennis courts, but now, it is a large work area where prisoners were doing hard labor and other things we couldn’t make out from our viewpoint.

In that particular workspace, there were bodies tied up to the fencing, some obviously dead, and some that looked like they were in the process of dying, all as a message it looked like to show what would happen if they didn’t follow orders and do as they were told. It looked like hell on earth, if I’m being honest. These assholes were really fucking pieces of human garbage. To take advantage of someone after what was probably, for most people, the worst day of their entire lives.

It almost made me physically ill, and Janet had stopped watching, and her face was just an emotionless rock when we had climbed out of the tree. She wouldn’t talk to me except for short one or two-word answers, and I knew she was barely containing her furry. We had all the info we needed to know these guys were from the pits of hell, and it was only fitting we sent them home.

Janet and I headed back to the tree house, and once there, we pulled Beth aside and told her what we had seen and that we would have to intervene sooner than later. That night, after Beth put Tilly to bed, we started planning. We worked late into the night, drinking and planning. At the end of the night, we decided to go with a good old-fashioned diversion.

Janet would start our attack by creating a diversion at one of the two gates. Hopefully, she would have got a good crowd of our enemies all in one place with her diversion. They would think they had the upper hand when they saw it was just Janet. Then Beth and I would throw bombs over the walls, blowing them up and causing some good chaos.

While shit was going crazy, we would jump into the fray and kill as many as we could as fast as we could. Dealing with the first wave of attackers would be critical to move on to the leadership as fast as possible. That way, we could kill them before any of them could escape paying for their crimes.

The next day, we made another trip down to the Claremont, just Beth and me this time, so Beth could better understand the layout before the attack. As we descended our second tree, Beth was wiping tears away from her face. We were about to move on to the next scouting point when I heard a noise coming from a dense grouping of bushes about ten feet behind Beth and me.

I waved at Beth to get her attention, and she stopped whipping her eyes and looked at me. I put my finger to my lips and tried to subtly point with my thumb over my shoulder. Beth looked, and I could tell she definitely heard what I had by the look on her face when the rustling sound happened again.

I pointed with my head, and Beth and I slowly and nonchalantly walked closer to the bushes. We didn’t know if it was a creature or a group of people looking to ambush us. Whatever it was, it obviously knew we were there and was hiding from us, so I was going to find out what it was. We got within ten feet, and I nodded to Beth, then popped my halberd from my bag of holding and activated Step Lightly in one motion.

The next second, I had my halberd raised and pointing at the throat of one person in a group of three people that had been hiding behind the bush. They just stayed where they were, crouched behind the bushes, mouths open, eyes wide. In the next few moments, Beth made it around the bushes and raised her weapons at the three.

“Why were you spying on us?” I asked the group, and I had to ask once again before they actually registered my words. The guy I had my halberd pointed at blurted out,

"We weren’t spying on you."

"We don’t even know who you are.” Another man then chimed in,

“Are you with the people from the Claremont?”

"Wait, how did you do that? You know, just appear like that." I ignored the last question as the tension got so heavy you could have cut it with a knife. I told them we weren’t, and they visibly relaxed a bit. So, they must not be with the Claremont people either, or they would probably be shitting themselves right now, not relieved. The last member of their little group was a woman, and she asked why we were there. I told them straight up.

“We came to scout this place out cuz we're going to kill all the fuckers in there, keeping people prisoner. Then we are going to free and help all the people they hurt.” The woman blinked a couple of times and then told me.

“You need to meet our full group. That’s what we’ve been trying to do for weeks now. Maybe we can help each other out? There are too many armed men and women in there for the two of you to take them down. You gonna need our help.”

I looked over at Beth, and Beth rolled her eyes. I smiled and looked back to our captives? Or no, wait—our captive audience.

“What level are you guys? And what’s the highest level in your group? You all seem pretty fucking weak, if I’m being honest.” I told them, and they looked pissed at me after that. The man to the left of me told me so.

“Hey, fuck you, man,” he said as he started to stand. It looked like he was about to say more when I cut him off.

"Stop talking and listen," I told him.

Then, I Put my hand on his shoulder and forced the man back to the ground. I think the quick movment made the guy pull a muscle or, at the most, he broke something because the guy let out a brief shot of pain before he held his leg.

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry, that looks like it hurts. My bad, but still, people have abilities now. Powers that, before the integration, would just have been figments of science fiction. Can you and your "friends" really do anything if they have somebody in there who can throw fireballs or something else? The other two members of the group, not distracted by pain, looked confused at my words, but they all still shut up and looked like they were having some heavy thoughts.

“You are dramatically uneducated about the power scale of this new world we find ourselves in. We have gained power in this world that was unimaginable pre-integration, and we plan to take and run things justly. You might just get in the way when we take the Claremont. Not to be rude, but that's just how it is.” I told them.

The lady and the man, who wasn't still massaging his leg in pain, were just staring at me in shock, a wee bit of anger in their eyes but mostly shock at my confidence.

“Now, we are willing to meet with this group." I looked back at Beth, and she just nodded. "

See, Just know that if you try and pull some shit, you won't be the one to walk away, so get the idea into your head that you couldn't harm us in any capacity.” I finished, and I still think they didn't really know what to make of us yet.

I felt a little bad that I had to be a little harsh with these guys, but you never knew who was trying to fuck you, and the memory of who I met Beth, Janet, and Tom came to mind. Not like they could do shit to us if they tried, so I might have gone a little overboard with the whole don’t fuck with us bit, and I did feel a bit bad about that, but I had to let them know we were not the one's to fuck with.

Oh well, it was done now, and they definitely looked a bit intimidated, but I hadn't wanted to overdo it, fuck it. I looked over at Beth and caught her eye. She lifted her head in acknowledgment, and I asked,

“Should we just meet this group now? I did already say we would. Sorry about that, by the way." I said.

"Probably best just to get it out of the way. What do you think?” Beth asked me.

I thought about it for a second, then just said fuck it, "I don’t really want to have to figure out all the meet-up shit that I’m sure we’d have to deal with if we let them go and tried to meet up later. Right? Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, makes sense to me,” said Beth. We hadn’t been talking loud, but we weren't keeping our voices down. We were just talking about our new friends as if they weren’t there. I turned back to our guessed and said, “Hey, where the fuck are you all camped out at? Is it far?”