The door behind us was locked. I have absolutely no idea when that

happened, but it only seemed to make things more tense when Erik and I decided to back out of the situation. The older man’s glare made me want to shrink in on myself.

“Why did you think it was a good idea to use that accursed power again?” The man said, forcing everyone to pause.

“I used it because it worked,” Faye said, somehow only sounding annoyed with the man, even if she wasn’t looking at him.

“And we both know that I had it under control.” He scowled, “And there are better people for when I don’t.”

I could hear Erik’s eye calibrating, scanning every detail for weaknesses. I couldn’t blame him for reading himself for action, as I had a ball of hardened space behind my back.

The pair of us were emanating pure anger at this point. But, that only brought his attention down on us.

“And how the hell did You, of all people, convince a pair of Extremely Dangerous and let's not forget secretive villains to show up and help you out of the blue?” Even though his gaze was on us he refused to address us… but he did smile a bit when he obviously caught all three of us off guard. “What?”

Faye just kind of opened and closed her jaw for a moment. I desperately wanted to try the door one more time.

“These two are Theater members are they not?” The man said with a ‘gotcha’ look on his face, “A cyborg with time powers and a beastman with space powers. Quite the coincidence that you know such a pair is it not? And getting both of them on such quick notice, they have to trust you a lot don’t they?”

“We can trust whoever we like.” Erik seemed to gain his confidence, “And with this kind of situation, it's just paying off a favor at this point.”

With the other villain breaking the silence I was able to jump in as well. “Yeah, when someone keeps you from falling apart on multiple occasions, you kinda want to stay on their good side.”

Faye facepalmed, “Can the two of you just leave?” She said with a sigh, “You did plenty enough for today.”

“Why should we?” Erik said, catching me off guard. That was our cue to leave for real. “You ask us to come here without much explanation, then thrust us into a situation where some random man is tearing apart the spacetime continuum. There is an opportunity here.”

“Yeah no.” I deadpanned, “We can get details later, we have things to get back to with you know who. How about we let Faye get back to fixing this poor dude up and we can get lunch or something.”

“Do you really think I’m going to let either of you leave?” The man said with a twitch in his eye, “If the pair of you really want to ‘help’ you can go out and fix the rest of the rifts through the city.”

The idea sounded good, we could go and handle the problem easily. Far faster than any hero could. We were practically made for it.

Then I saw a small spell in the palm of Faye’s hand.

“Yeah… No.” I said with a bit of sass, breaking from the hypnotic suggestion.

“Not our problem, not our job.” Erik droned, probably not as affected as I was anyway. But with that, he got a sulky look about him and walked through the now unblocked door…

How come he got to open it?

I waved goodbye to Faye and followed the cyborg, much to the surprise of the older man.

From there we quickly exited the clinic and I stopped paying all that much attention. I just aimlessly followed Erik as I furiously texted Lucy, trying to see if she was currently staying at Faye’s apartment or not.

Whenever she’s in America she bunks with Faye. I couldn’t tell you where she stays when she’s in China though.

I never got a response though. It sorta felt like this sudden trip was being wasted, and of course, Portland was a place I would never visit otherwise. But we were quickly finding out that the shelter in place was making it so that most places were not in any hurry to open back up. In fact, I only saw about a dozen or so people out and about. All of them had some kind of worried look on their face, eager to get home or somewhere safer.

“Should we just head over to Faye’s place?” I asked randomly.

“We should.” Erik stated, “It would be best to make sure that whatever situation happened there is settled…”

Then… Something changed in the air.

Erik straightened up, a look of fear on his face. His sudden change in mood makes my fur stand on end.

“We need to get back to the clinic! Now.” He burst out into a run, leaving me stunned for a moment.

“Wait… WHAT!” I quickly caught up to him, having to actually keep my stride slower just to keep pace with him.

He kept his eyes forward, quickly covering the three or so blocks we had traveled. Any question I tried to direct his way was promptly ignored.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

We burst through the front door to the clinic with little regard, and I started to hear the screams… Two of them…

The man was awake again, and in what sounded like a lot of pain.

The other scream sounded a lot worse… It was Faye.

“Sir calm down.” A final voice was saying, commanding power behind the words. Even with the evident worry, “You can let her go.”

The two of us rushed through the door to the surgical room to find Faye on her knees, holding her forearm as her hand and wrist were distorted and blackened in spacetime.

Erik slid down to get close to Faye as the older man did his best to figure out what was going on with the person on the table. Who in turn was starting to calm down and fall asleep again.

I… I was stuck. The smell of the power was extreme. It was like pure ozone cut with an inky rot.

“It’s…” I tried to say, my voice laced with fear as a phantom pain ripped through my side into my chest. But it was just enough to get the older man’s attention. “Erik… It’s a curse!”

Faye’s head snapped to where I was struggling to stay on my feet, but her eyes looked like she only barely registered that I and even Erik were there…

It took a moment for Erik to make any kind of move. He looked like he wanted to cast some kind of spell, but he hesitated and pulled back.

The older man rounded the surgical table and pushed Erik aside, eyeing up the damage on Faye’s hand. “We need a tourniquet… Should cut off the blood flow too, keep it from spreading.”

“Erik…” I said through gritted teeth as I stumbled over to the cyborg, pulling him aside, “We need to get her to the Doc.”

That snapped him out of whatever funk he was in. He quickly grabbed a small red disk out of his pocket and clipped it to Faye’s sleeve. I pulled my phone out and got ready to activate the AI assistant.

“Alright.” I said to the older man, “Sorry about this but we're taking things from here. Hey doc, go home!”

With a flash, we were in the lab. Erik quickly went to guide Faye to the gathering couch, while I rushed to find the Doc.

It still hurt to move, but it was more like an upper body cramp than the piercing pain it was a few minutes ago. Fortunately, all I had to do was run upstairs to the kitchen where he and Reed were probably arguing over something.

Then from there, it was a hectic few minutes as the Doc examined Faye and ordered Erik to grab stuff for him. My job ended up being that of placating the Doc and Reed with the details of what exactly happened. Which I didn’t fully understand either.

Eventually, I got the question out as to how Erik knew what was happening.

“Oh…” It was kind of weird to see the cyborg embarrassed as he was setting strange plants on one of the metal tables for the Doc, “I was reading ahead…”

“Wait WHAT!” Reed forced me to cover my ears, “I thought you said you weren't doing that anymore?”

“Um…” Erik looked away from all of us. “I was interested in seeing what happened to the man we helped… But then I saw him reach out and injure Faye.”

“And yet you didn’t tell me a thing.” I groaned, “You were literally just complaining how Faye didn’t give us any warning at all.”

“Um…”

“Yeah yeah, I was more worried about getting to Faye as quickly as possible,” Erik stated.

“Guys?”

“Yeah, and you were lucky I was able to sniff out what it was.” I huffed, “Apparently I’m getting phantom pains now too.”

“Hey.”

“Lucky you,” Erik stared daggers at me, “You only have to deal with searing pain every once in a while.”

“Why is…”

“At least you have remedies for that. I would love to figure out what my issues are, to begin with.”

“HEY!” Reed shouted, gaining our angry looks that were meant for each other. “The ‘porter”

I looked over to where the teleporters were, and one was going off… Erik’s… who was already here…

“Hey, Doc,” Reed said with alarm in his voice. “Something's going on with-”

The living lightshow cut himself off as two people appeared in the chamber, stuffed together. One was in a full hazmat suit, and they were propping up a familiar figure. The man from the clinic.

The Doc didn’t even acknowledge the anomaly as he carefully mixed and synthesized multiple things at once. The older man struggled to open the chamber, forcing Reed to rush over and open it for him.

And that was it, I was done. I couldn’t take it anymore at the moment. Someone had just casually broken into a system I knew wasn’t accessible to someone like that.

“Archer.” The Doc got my attention, “Plug in one of the G.A.A.S. units and set it to scan the nervous system. Also, make sure that the exo-thaumaturgical levels are set to somewhere between five and fifteen percent.”

It took me a moment to make sense of what he was trying to say. Exo-thaumaturgical was a completely made-up word as far as I was concerned. All the G.A.A.S. unit was a magic-powered CT machine that we sometimes use for our monsters.

But I did what he asked, minus setting the levels that he wanted because they didn’t exist... I think. As soon as I was done the Doc turned to the older man.

“You. Set him on the platform and let Archer run the test. I need to pinpoint whether or not this is coming from their nervous systems or if it's just affecting their mana paths. And Erik-”

“We’re really just handing out names now?” I cut the Doc off, glaring at him. He paused for a moment and continued.

“Erik, take Reed and see if you can’t find one of our other healers, if you can’t we can always resort to Archer’s healing pad.” The Doc finished what he was saying. I straightened up and started to involuntarily growl. I could feel my almost nonexistent tail twitch and my ears fall close to my head. Even as the rabbit I couldn’t help myself.

“Why?” I could feel my eye twitching as I pushed just a bit too hard on the keyboard to the G.A.A.S.

“Oh don’t act like I wouldn’t know about that. When it went missing it was all a lot of important people could talk about, so I tracked it down. And if we don’t use it, Faye may never use her arm ever again. I know for a fact that it’s the only reason you aren’t permanently bedridden too.”

I couldn’t look at the Doc. My emotions were just running way too high for the moment.

The older man slowly set the barely conscious man on the scan table. He took the helmet of his suit off and warily looked between me, the couch where Faye was lying, and the Doc with his… choice of clothing. Eventually, he broke the silence.

“I get wanting to be comfortable in your work environment, but some kind of dignity should be had.” He took a step back as I slammed the enter button on the machine. “I am Doctor Yancy… And you?”

“I am just the Doc.” The Doc smiled as he leaned away from some fumes that were coming from his final product. “And any unnecessary clothing interrupts use of power, the less I have the more powerful I can be.”

“He’s a shut-in.” I sassed

“A powerful one.” He shot back. I just rolled my eyes and looked at the results on the machine.