“Aaaahhhh! My cookies!”
Kiria let out a sigh as she pushed herself off of the cold, rocky ground beneath her, lamenting her best friend’s sense of priorities. Wherever they had ended up was dark. There were no torches lining the walls, and Zeo’s Fire Install had either died out, or was no longer nearby.
She reached a hand up to her head in an attempt to massage the ache away from it. She didn’t feel any serious injury on her, and based on the subject of Reina’s screeching, it seemed Reina wasn’t hurt either.
Another voice rang out from a few feet away. “We need a light.” Based on the demanding tone, it had to be Cain.
Dusting dirt from her palms, Kiria said, “I got it.”
Kiria did not have access to her Heart Slot like Zeo did, so she wouldn’t be able to use the same trick he had to light the way. But with the tools she had available, she could make something else work.
She reached around behind her back with her right arm. The skin on her fingertips peeled away, and the machinery beneath magnetized the metal rod to her hand.
She gripped the rod tightly in her palm, activating the cybernetics within her arm. Little bits and pieces moved into place, interacting with the rod in different ways — a tiny screw here, a tiny spark of electricity there, a tiny gear spin over yonder.
Once she was finished, the tip of the rod flared up, transforming it into a torch, albeit with a flame with a light blue hue. It was strong enough to render a decently-sized radius of the tunnel they were in visible, allowing Kiria to confirm that only Reina and Cain were with her; the other three didn’t appear to be nearby.
Reina was on her knees a few feet away, cradling a smushed box of lemon cookies in her arms with tears in her eyes. The torch lighting up caught her attention, and her tears instantly vanished. “Wow! Did you do that with your cyber arm?”
“Yes.”
Cain was suddenly near her, and had forcefully taken hold of her right hand. “That’s right, you’re a Cyberizer….and it’s only in this hand, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Where does the cyber arm end and the organic one begin? How are they connected? What powers the cybernetics? Does it feel pain?”
Kiria shrugged her shoulders. “It cuts off somewhere before the elbow, I think? I don’t know how they connect; I’ve never taken a look inside.”
“What? Why not? That’s the logical thing to do.”
“I never cared to, I guess.”
Reina walked over to join the two and take a closer look at Kiria’s arm, chewing on a smushed cookie in the meantime.
“No idea what ‘powers’ it either, it just….feels like any other arm, I suppose? And I do feel pain in it, yes. It feels more or less identical to my other arm, just slightly heavier, and it gets hot more easily.”
“Interesting….” Cain muttered, stroking his chin.
Pulling her arm back, Kiria stated, “We don’t really have time for this, guys. Where are the others?”
Reina perked up, eyes widening. “Oh no! They’re not here? D-did we squish them like we squished my cookies?!”
The chameleon girl cupped her hands around her mouth, spinning around in a half-circle. “Tyyyyyyyyygeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrr?! Aaaaaannaaabeeeeeeeeelle?! Zeeeeeeooooooo?! Are you guys there?! Are you squished?!”
Kiria held the torch up higher, moving around the area to try to get a better read on the environment. The tunnel they were in didn’t appear to have any distinct features, other than a pile of rubble on the ground and a hole in the ceiling several feet above.
If they were able to get to the hole, they’d easily be able to retrace their steps and return to the entrance they had come from, but the gap was way too far away to do that. They-
“Reina!” Kiria exclaimed. “Your grappling hook!”
“Hm?”
Cain’s eyebrow curved up. “Grappling hook?”
“The grappling hook you used when we fought the mech the other day!” She pointed up at the hole in the ceiling. “Can you use that to get us back up to the original tunnel?”
“Oh, you mean my super duper cool grapple-greave?!”
“Yes!”
Reina’s head slowly dropped low, like a guilty dog being scolded by its owner. “Um….I didn’t bring it….”
“Huh? Why not?”
The chameleon girl brought her scaly green tail up close, holding onto it as though it were a stuffed animal providing comfort. “Well, we went shopping, and we were gonna try on clothes and shoes and I didn’t wanna have to keep taking it on and off cuz it’s kinda a pain in the butt to put on and-!”
Cain scowled and shook his head in disappointment. “Useless….” Reina threw a crumbled cookie at his face.
“We’ll have to find another way back up then,” Kiria stated. There were two directions they could take from where they were, and neither seemed any more potentially helpful than the other, so she went with her gut instinct and took the road behind her, blue torch lighting the way. “Keep an eye and ear out for any signs of the others. If we find them before we get to the exit, then good. If not, we’ll go back to the spot where we fell and try to look for them near there.”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
As Annabelle came to, her eyes gently fluttered open like the wings of a butterfly. She could feel that she was lying on the ground for some reason, so she placed her hands on the ground to push herself upright.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
However, rather than solid ground, her hands instead pressed up against the tight, toned abs of Zeo.
She let out a high-pitched squeal at the realization, her face reddening until they matched the flames emanating from the fireball hovering in the air above them.
Zeo appeared to still be unconscious from the fall, although he seemed to be stirring from his slumber now, perhaps having been awoken by Annabelle’s shriek.
The elven girl quickly pushed off of him and got back to her feet, dusting herself off and turning away to hide her shame. Zeo groaned as he sat up, resting his forehead on his palm. “Whoa….what happened….?”
“We, um….we fell, I think.”
Zeo tore his face free from his hand and looked up towards the far-away ceiling. There was indeed a hole there, far out of their reach.
He looked around the area, although there wasn’t much to look at in the current stretch of visibility the fireball offered, other than some big rocks. He turned back to Annabelle, standing up beside her. “Are you okay, Annabelle? Did you get hurt?”
“N-no, I’m fine! Thank you, Zeo….”
“Is anyone else here, or did we get separated?”
Now it was the elven girl’s turn to survey the area, but she came up with the same result. “I think it’s just us.”
“I guess we’re just gonna have to pick a direction and start moving,” he announced. The conviction in his voice helped soothe Annabelle’s worry. “Let’s look for the others.”
BAM!
The two jumped in surprise as a massive slam thundered out from the rock wall behind them. They turned around in unison, looking for a source of the noise, but found nothing.
“What….what was that….?” Annabelle asked, her voice faint.
BAM!
Zeo held his hand out in front of Annabelle, pushing her away from the rock wall. “Get behind me!”
The elven girl obliged, turning around to run away from the rock wall, but the instant she did, she froze.
“Um, Zeo?!”
Sensing the panic in Annabelle’s voice, Zeo swiveled around in a full circle. “What is it, Annab-?”
He didn’t have time to finish his question. Once he turned around, he saw for himself what had caused Annabelle to shout out for him.
BAM!
Standing in front of the two was a massive, four-legged beast. It was only partially lit up by the red flames of the Fire Install, but the parts of it that were lit up were terrifying enough on their own.
The beast’s head was the size of a car, with a mouth filled to the brim with jagged fangs. Its eyes were an erratic swirl of yellow, as though someone had taken the stencil of lightning bolts and printed it across the eyeballs. Its body was covered in a thick layer of spiky yellow fur, soaked in blood that, somehow, you could tell wasn’t the beast’s own.
The beast let out a bone-chilling growl, peeling its jaws wide open. A glowing orb of yellow energy formed in its throat, building up in size at a rapid pace.
BAM!
The rock wall behind Zeo and Annabelle suddenly blasted open, rocks spraying in all directions. Tyger poked his head inside, wiping sweat from his forehead. “Yo! Thought I heard you two! You guys alri-?”
Still facing the beast, and recognizing the warning signs of an incoming projectile attack, Zeo quickly grabbed hold of Annabelle and jumped away right as the monster fired the massive yellow orb of energy.
The ball rammed into Tyger head-on, launching him back into his side of the wall.
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
A few short minutes after starting their walk through the tunnels, Kiria’s group finally came across a landmark. The tunnel they were in led them directly to a massive cavern, and one lit by a low orange glow all over.
“Wow, it’s pretty in here!” Reina exclaimed, skipping ahead of the group.
“Reina, be careful. Don’t go too far,” Kiria warned with a sigh.
The cave had clearly seen some activity in recent times. There were a few mining carts scattered here and there, and even a few footprints in the dirt. Some of the rocks that came from the ground had been broken down and pushed up against the emptier walls of the cavern to keep them out of the way of the central floorspace. There were a few cigarettes lying around as well. Littering scum.
“It looks like they were mining in here,” Kiria noted. “Any ideas what they were digging up?”
Cain was standing by one of the nearby walls. There were huge gaps in the wall, like someone had taken giant scoops from them, with the only thing visible being tiny slivers of twinkling orange crystals. “Forcestones,” he answered. “Forcestones are-”
“You don’t have to explain, I know what forcestones are, thank you,” said Kiria, shutting down his incoming lecture. She walked over to one of the mine carts, although there wasn’t anything of interest inside of it.
Grumbling to himself, Cain then said, “These appear to be some kind of explosive forcestone. I found signs of them in the tunnels when we first arrived. They seem to be common in this pulse.”
Kiria brought her free hand up to her chin. “We ran into a group of miners the other day….Is this their doing?”
“It’s either them or the city,” said Cain. “Judging from the look of this site, it’s probably the former.”
“What makes you say that?”
Cain gestured around the cavern with his hand. “Just look around. There’s no organization to anything. The floor space hasn’t been cleared out properly, none of the equipment seems industry standard, and the mining itself looks sloppy and incomplete. There doesn’t appear to be any kind of signage around either, and none of the tunnels leading out from here look like they were marked by the city.”
After taking a look at all three tunnels that spread out from the cave to confirm what Cain had said, Kiria nodded. “You’re right….If it was the city, they would probably have built a proper accessway from here to one of the pulse exits. This cave looks like it was worked on in secret, then quickly abandoned once it was cleared out.”
“Of course I’m right.”
Ignoring that last statement, Kiria said, “So those miners we ran into the other day likely aren’t with the city, and they’re gathering explosive forcestones. That’s not good.”
“Explain these miners you encountered,” Cain demanded. “Who were they? What were they doing?”
“I didn’t get much from them, honestly. They were operating on the outside of the pulse when we found them, but they took off running when…. ‘we’ confronted them.”
Cain’s eyes narrowed, seeing through her words. “That idiot….”
“They did mention something about new weapons,” she continued. “They sounded pretty dangerous.”
“Explosive weapons, most likely, using the forcestones.” Cain said. “They seem to be clearing out as much of the stones as they can find in the pulse, perhaps to get to them before the city is able to.”
Feeling confident in their deductions, Kiria nodded. “Yeah. This doesn’t sound good. We should contact the authorities when we get back to Radecross.”
Kiria prepared to continue down one of the tunnels to get to the exit, but came to a sudden stop. She hadn’t heard Reina’s voice in quite some time, and Reina’s voice was very, very loud, so she would have to be quite far away for it to not reach one’s ears. “Reina? Where are you?”
No answer came.
“Did she run off?” Cain asked. “How childish….”
Kiria felt her breath hitch in her chest. Had she wandered off down one of the tunnels while Kiria and Cain were talking? Had she gotten hurt? While they hadn’t encountered any yet, there were likely monsters roaming around inside the pulse, and if Reina didn’t bring her grapple-greave with her, she might not have brought her bow either to defend herself….
Kiria quickly took off down the nearest tunnel, yelling out Reina’s name, eyes scanning the floor for any signs of her, like footprints or crumbs of damaged lemon cookies.
She found nothing, but something did find her, right beside her on the wall.
“BOO!”
Kiria gasped and jumped back, nearly dropping her hold of the torch. She was about to swing it at whatever had screamed at her, but stopped, feeling the tension in her body evaporate as Reina’s giggles hit her eardrums.
“Ha ha! Did I scare you, Kiria?!”
Reina’s body appeared from thin air, like an invisibility-granting blanket had been yanked off of her. She was perched on the wall of the tunnel, clinging onto it with hands, feet, and tail. Evidently, the chameleon girl had used her color-changing abilities to camouflage herself against the wall.
Reina dropped down from the wall, still laughing to herself. Cain joined the two ladies not long afterward. “How long were you hiding there?” he asked.
“Mmmm….a few minutes!”
“What would you have done if we had taken the other tunnel?”
“….I didn’t really think that far ahead, actually!”
Cain and Kiria let out identical sighs.