Chapter 46: Division, Pt 11
Frank, Nance, and their teams are utterly astounded at what has happened all around you. In one moment, everyone's guns had been pointed at everyone else. And in the next moment, half of the town had fallen to the ground unconscious, some groaning and grumbling in pain.
It takes a few good seconds for the two of them to recover, with Frank taking the most time to do so. Simply, the sight of his friends falling one after the other shocks him deeply.
"They… they ain't dead, are they?" his voice low and quiet and dry.
"Still breathing, don't worry," you tell him. "And they'll come out of it soon enough. Maybe a few minutes, maybe longer. No matter what, some'll get up faster than others, that's for sure."
"You best not be playin' mind games with me, Nomad," Frank tells you, his voice elevated a slight degree. You sense a hint of distrust in it. Perhaps understandably so.
"Nomad ain't doing that," Nance replies for you. "Trust me, I can tell."
"Could you tell Lisa was a psion? If you did, why didn't you tell me?"
Frank's question is met with Nance's silence. She gives him a long, hard look as she ponders what she needs to say.
"I didn't know," she eventually says. "I-I don't think no-one knew. Chris and I never talked about it, that's for sure. But I know for a fact that Nomad ain't doing any powers on you. Just trust me on that."
Frank sighs, then nods in agreement, though it takes a few seconds. You sense his doubt lift, although his mind still roils from the day's chaotic events. His heart, too.
"Sorry I accused you," Frank tells you.
"It's alright, I get why."
You turn your focus on the non psionics laid out around your feet, and do a wide Scan on all of them. Since they have no defense from your attack, you sense that they'll be out for a good long while. You guess it'll take them about half a day to get back up. Even then, they'll likely be mentally confused and physically weak.
Frank and Nance both turn their gaze towards Chris and Mayor Lisa at nearly the same time, as they ponder who to trust and who they can't. They immediately understand that the two psions will awaken first and fast.
Of course, you want to make absolutely sure how long they might stay under, and so you perform deep, focused Scans at the two of them in particular.
Chris is out like a light - it seems he practically emptied himself of energy. After all, he had spent a great amount of it during the fight prior, and defending himself against your Interrupt practically wiped out whatever he had left. It's clear it's going to take hours before he recovers. Even then, he'll be drained of energy and won't be able to fight. Hell he'll hardly be able to stand.
Mayor Lisa on the other hand tanked a great deal of your attack, though her energy reserves seem relatively low. Seems she used up a bit to defend against you. Thankfully, she still succumbed to you. But that doesn't take away all your worries - it doesn't take much to activate a power she's experienced in using. She certainly has enough to perform a handful of lethal Interrupts of her own, at least if she also knows how to do it.
What you worry about most is that you still have no idea what powers she's capable of, or which Discipline she's attuned to the strongest. She could be a Telekinetic terror for all you know, or she might be able to see further with her Foresight, or who knows what else.
Either way, having to fight someone like that would be tough for you.
Thankfully now that she's unconscious, all of her shrouds and caps have been lifted, allowing you to sense her full reservoir of energy. Activating your Third Eye and observing her glowing Thread more closely reveals that she's about equal to you in capacity and experience.
Which means it'd be a toss-up in a fair fight, of course. But you've got Noir in your Network, so you're certain you two could overpower her if it comes to that.
You hope it doesn't.
"Look, it doesn't really matter how long it takes for them to get back up," you say. "What matters is that we all get the hell out of here as fast as we can, before they do get up."
"I ain't leaving here!" Frank says, his eyes wide with disbelief. "This is my home. These are my friends, my family. I'm supposed to be protecting this town. Protecting them! I can't just turn tail and run like some mutt!"
"Frank," Nance immediately interjects. "Half your 'family' just tried to kill you. Tried to kill all of us! They ain't your family any longer."
"That don't mean we gotta run."
"What do you want then? Want us to shoot 'em?"
"We… we can't just do that. We're civilized people here, alright! We tie 'em up. And we hold 'em up in the Lodge under my watch."
Frank's voice shakes to some degree, even as he puts his plan together. You can easily tell just how riled up by all of this he is deep down, and it's more than he can physically bear. It must have taken everything he had to keep it all together while all those guns were drawn on him.
He clenches his fist tightly to stop his fingers from shaking.
"After, we get the whole town together, tell them what happened from the whole fight onward, and we can all decide what to do," Frank concludes, though it takes him a few seconds to come to it.
You grimace at the suggestion - all you want to do is get as far away from Lisa as possible. Once she gets up, who knows what she'll do. Even Nance wants to protest it first, but you can see her thoughts rearrange themselves, as she processes Frank's words.
"You're the Chief," she eventually says. "You know better than us what to do."
Frank and Nance's team work quickly to secure Carl and his team, along with Chris and his. They search them thoroughly and empty them of all their weapons, from guns to ammunition to blades and clubs, everything. Then they bind them up with lengths of paracord and keep their ankles and wrists tied together.
Frank binds up Mayor Lisa himself, though he keeps you close by "just in case". Nance and her team take care of Chris and his team. You note that Nance has low levels of Telekinesis - just enough to levitate Chris and slide him across the ground. But it strains her to perform that feat, and you can sense her energies deplete quickly as a result.
They carry all of the prisoners to the Lodge where you're staying, and place them all into their own rooms, individually. Though they keep them tied up, they also make sure to make them comfortable and set them down on the beds or chairs.
While guards post up to keep watch in the individual rooms, you head back to your room and gear yourself back up. Although you truly would have wanted to clean yourself up a bit and maybe have a little breakfast, you'd rather just get away from here as fast as you can.
It doesn't take you very long for you to don your kit. And for some reason, having it all on you relieves whatever stresses that are working their way through you. Your kit has become your "home", and simply having it all equipped shields you from the negative emotions wafting around you.
A sigh escapes your lips as you affix your conical hat on your head. The very act of doing so simply feels… right.
Before you can step out, Frank brings Mayor Lisa into the room and lays her down onto the bed.
Though her wrists are bound up by a length of paracord behind her back, as are her ankles, you can sense Frank's doubt as to the bindings' effectiveness - it ebbs from his body in waves.
"I hate to ask you of this, seeing as you're getting ready to leave and all," he begins. "But can I get you to look out for Lisa here? For when she wakes up. I mean, none of us have a hope of handling her. At least you -"
You hold up a hand to stop him from speaking further. A shard of your Foresight reveals what he's about to tell you. Though you don't even need it to guess correctly.
"I get it," you reply. "And that's fine. I'll stick around, at least until you all figure out what to do with her. But you oughta know that the longer you take figuring it out, the stronger she'll get."
"And the harder to deal with, I get it," he says with a firm and solemn nod. "I'll take care of it. I'll post up a guard with you, just in case."
You nod in agreement, though you're not sure what good a non-psionic guard would do. You'd rather have Nance at your side - she'd be much more useful at suppressing Lisa. But she and her team have to deal with Chris and his team, and so already have their hands full.
"And also thanks again for everything you've done for me," Frank continues after a moment. "Not just me, but for the town. You didn't have to stick your neck out like that, but you did anyway. Means a lot. I'm sure plenty others feel the same."
All you can do is nod quietly, unsure of what to tell him.
"Far as I'm concerned, that book's yours now, you more than earned it," he says, pointing at the book in your hand. It's only now that you realize you've been gripping it all this time. It's all rolled up, a bit banged up, and its covers scratched up… but it's otherwise still readable.
You loosen your grip on it and allow it to unfurl a bit. Once it's relatively book-shaped once again, you stuff it into your messenger bag.
"Thanks Frank," you tell him. "It'll really help me last longer out there. I appreciate it."
"Also, when you leave, stop by my place," he says. "Pick up a couple bottles of water, or anything else you might need. Except my guns. Or my hats. Can't have those."
"There's time enough for proper goodbyes," you tell him. "Right now we still have some work to take care of."
You both shoot each other with grins, then he heads back out of the room and out the Lodge. No doubt to gather the rest of the town for that discussion. You're almost certain it's going to be a long one, and now you're starting to get a little tired.
You sense Noir somewhere out in the town, perhaps scouting the perimeter, or at least something like that.
Hey, stay close if you can, you transmit to her. I need someone to watch my back a bit.
I'll come by, no worries, she replies with a thought. Lemme just finish my circuit first. Just seeing if any of those weirdo militants are still around.
You agree with her mentally, then drag one of the chairs over to the wall opposite the bed. Then you plant yourself down on it and keep watch over the unconscious psion Lisa.
It's only moments later that your eyes droop a little, and it occurs to you that keeping watch is boring. More than enough to start putting you to sleep, at least in your current state. Your body clearly needs some rest. Although you certainly got a little bit of sleep last night, your own circadian rhythm dictates that the daytime is when your body actually rests.
You sense your own body falling towards that state automatically, almost on schedule. Of course you can't sleep - doing so undermines the purpose of keeping watch in the first place. And if Lisa wakes while you're asleep… well, you'd rather not think about that.
Instead, you focus your energies into your Temperance. Not so much as to energize your body, but rather to put it in a sort of hibernation state. Something that uses low amounts of energy, enough to allow your body to rest and your energies to recharge.
At the same time, you channel some of your energies into the Discipline of Connection, and emit a constant low-level Scan in a small area around you. That allows you to get a sense of everyone and everything in and around the Lodge itself. Well, at least everyone and everything that has thoughts and feelings to read in the first place.
Finally, you close your eyes and pour in another small amount of energy into your Third Eye. As it opens up, you peer into the flowing streams around you and keep watch over the dozens of swaying Threads reaching up and out and around.
The energies from the three Disciplines weave into each other, allowing your mind and body to come to rest while also maintaining a watchful vigil. You even out the energies until you can sustain them easily, allowing them to swirl into each other and bind together. From there, you form another Combination Power, and name it Chakra.
The name is fitting, considering you feel an abundant connection not just to yourself, but to everyone around you. It's almost as though you're walking amidst the ocean with sparse strands of kelp swaying to the beat of the waves.
Despite half the Threads here belonging to people who have violent thoughts about your existence, you still feel at one with them. It's here, where you're all merely shapes and silhouettes and Threads that you find that you're all the same in the end.
Chapter 47: Division, Pt 12
Your psyche is jarred slightly as a group of people enter your perception, just at the edge of your Chakral perception. They come closer towards you in small clumps, and from every direction. Their constant thoughts spike up and splash outwards even as they approach. It's clear that everyone else in town is coming to the Lodge at Frank's behest, to discuss the fates of Mayor Lisa, Carl, Chris, and their teams.
So of course, they're all chattering about it furiously.
And since your physical body is running on minimum power, you don't hear a lick of it. Instead, you get barraged with a heap of thoughts and emotions from everyone around you, more than enough to interrupt the serenity you've found within your Chakra.
It feels like tiny earthquakes striking you from all sides, as though you're at the epicenter of it all. Though each one doesn't do much, the greater whole shakes you, vibrates you, unsettles you on every level.
As a result, you peel back your Chakral perception closer towards you, and shape it so it only watches over everything inside of the Lodge. In here, all you can perceive are Frank and Nance's teams as they watch over their charges. This brings you back to the peaceful and mellow trance you've been enjoying thus far. But you know you can't just leave it at that.
You can't simply withdraw into some peaceful inner palace blind to the world around you, especially if things go poorly for Frank. For all you know, most of who's out there lean towards Carl's usual combative demeanor and that scenario would end really poorly for all of you.
Instead, you reach out to Noir and message her Telepathically, "hey, be my eyes and ears, wouldja?"
She agrees with you, then transmits what she sees and hears and feels directly to you, through the Network. Her raw senses come in slowly, enough for you to control just how much you want to see, and how much you want to hear, and how much you want to feel.
As much as you'd like to experience life directly through her eyes and ears, you can't. Not right now, anyway. If you devote all of your conscious self to experiencing the world through Noir, you'll end up ignoring what's happening inside the lodge. That's as good as sleeping through it all.
Instead, you set up a kind of theater in your mind. It's there that you project Noir's eyesight into a dark corner, and watch as though she's streaming a live news report. The sounds she hears also come in all around you, or more specifically, stereoscopically. It's almost like you're at the cinemas, minus the mumbling couples and the annoying crying child and the rest of the audience, really.
You also dull the sense of touch that she's sending you. Although it would be nice to feel the wind on her furry body or the grass under her paws, you don't need that much information. Instead, you bring it down until you can just barely sense what's happening around her body.
Right now, she's weaving through the tall grass and you can feel the soft earth compress slightly as she takes step after step. The grass brushes up against her whiskers which seems to softly electrify your cheeks.
All of it combined feels truly delightful.
You watch as Noir continues to pad through the grass forward. As she does so, the chattering of people fills the air ahead of her. The sound around you shifts in various directions, as she angles her ears up and out. As a result, you get a sonic sense of where the cluster of people are, how far they're standing, and roughly how large the cluster is.
It seems that they're just around the corner, and that there are numerous dozens of them.
As Noir gets closer to the corner, she looks up constantly, specifically at the Lodge's upper floor. There's a wooden balcony up there that sits over top of the entrance and overlooks the Town Square beyond. You sense a rush of Temperance flow through Noir - a very precise amount of it and only for a moment.
It's within that moment that she leaps upward with absolute grace and without a single sound. She gets up slightly past the banister railing, arcs over very slightly, then lands gently on the railing itself without a hitch. She then drops down to the balcony floor and ambles over to the center of it, close to the edge overlooking the crowd below.
When she peeks, you see the town out there, or at least those who could come out. And there are quite a lot of them. You guess about sixty or so, or about two-thirds of the town? You're not sure. No matter what, you don't get a full view as Noir quickly plops down on her side, as cats are wont to do.
You suppose that she does this to maintain the appearance of any old cat. No-one really cares about a cat snoozing in the shade, after all.
Even though you lose sight of the crowd below, her ears angle in ways that you still hear everything they say. One of her ears sounds as though it's cupped over the balcony floor, allowing Frank's voice to echo up from underneath.
It sounds muffled, rightfully so. There's a lot of wood between him and Noir.
"Sorry for calling you all out here in the heat," Frank tells them.
He seems to be walking back and forth below, but his pace is slow and even, and he stops here and there occasionally.
"But we need to talk about that attack we just suffered," he continues. "And more about all that's happened after. Because we all got a decision to make. A real hard one, too. Maybe a few hard ones, all right in a row, I dunno."
You note that he only speaks after he stops moving, and that his voice booms outward in different directions each time. It occurs to you that he's addressing the crowd in front of him like any experienced speaker would.
"I see a lot less of you than I did yesterday, and that's a sight I can hardly bear," he says after a long pause. "Though I'm thankful that I am seeing as many faces as I am now. I'm sure plenty of you feel that way about those around you."
"We need to do something about them gangers!" shouts someone in the crowd. He's met with a chorus of agreement.
"I know, I know, and we'll get to that," he answers. "First we gotta talk about what happened just after the fight. And I'm warning all of you now that not all of us are gonna like what I'm about to say. That includes me…
"Don't worry I ain't gonna beat around and just come out and say it. Carl and some of his boys pulled their guns on me, and on Nance, and on the newest trader, Nomad."
You hear all kinds of murmurs erupt from around the crowd, though you can't quite make out everything being said, and all you get are slivers of conversations. Still, you get a sense that people are somewhat split on it, with some saying things along the lines of, 'I knew something like that would happen,' and others saying, 'Well you all musta done something, then."
You don't feel surprised in the least, considering all you've seen thus far. Whatever this thing is that has divided the town, has done so thoroughly.
"First it oughta be known that the Mayor accused Nomad of leading the gangers who attacked our town. But before you all cry out in support, just know that if it weren't for Nomad we'd be in a whole lot more trouble, and there'd be a whole lot less of you now."
Frank is met with a handful of jeers, unable to accept his words. You get the sense that these few are defensive of the Mayor, with one particularly loud one claiming that Frank's experience is singular, and not that important compared to the Mayor.
But the loud one is quickly rebuked by a dozen or so around him. You can't quite make what they're saying, but it's clear that they're in support of you. They literally shout at the loud one claiming that Frank's experience is far from singular. It's enough to drown him out and shut him up.
You easily guess that they're the ones who fought at your side. Or rather, you at theirs.
"Let's all calm down now," Frank tells everyone a handful of times. Each time he does, people quiet down more and more. Once he has their attention once again, he continues.
"I would believe the Mayor myself, honest to god," he says. "But the fact is the Mayor's been lying to me. Maybe to you. Maybe to everyone. It's a real big lie, too. And I just can't make out why and what for. Been driving mad thinking about it.
"Anyway, what's important here's that the Mayor hid the fact that she's a psion to me. Not a psion like Chris or Nance, but from what I understand someone way stronger and more capable than them, combined. Probably combined and doubled and then some."
Frank is met with a chorus of 'how could she' and 'so what's' and more critically 'I didn't know either'. Their voices rise up sharply, but quickly settle down over the next few seconds. You can't help but imagine Frank waving his arms at them to calm them down.
"Fact is though, if she's that kinda powerful and whatnot, why didn't she do anything in the fight? If anyone saw her fight, raise your hands. I seen Nomad do their thing during our fights. You might not believe me unless you saw it yourself. But it's like they stunned them gangers from a distance.
"Like, in one moment their faces were angry as they squeezed on their triggers, and in the next they were stumbling around all dizzy-like. We all felt Nomad do it, like through the air. Now I know you don't take me for no hippy, but I felt it. Others did too. Felt waves of it pass through us, and hit the people we were fighting.
"So lemme ask again - did you see anything like that at all? Did you see the Mayor put herself up during the defense? Anyone?"
Frank pauses, waiting for an answer. Nothing comes but grim silence.
"What I'm basically saying is that if Nomad did stuff that helped us out, why isn't there anyone here who can say the same for the Mayor?" Frank asks rhetorically. "And kinda leading to that, how can you trust anyone who's supposed to be leading the town, but doesn't even show up to fight back when it's getting hit?
"Y'all remember when the last time the gangers showed up? Was just maybe a half dozen at the time… But where was the Mayor? She weren't at the front fighting them gangers off, that's for sure."
"She ain't supposed to be fighting up front!" someone yells.
"That's definitely true," Frank rebuts. "But she oughta be close enough to know what's going on. She oughta been handling the rear, if you know what I mean. Coordinating defenses, all that. But she weren't then, and she weren't now. You trust her to be there if and when all this happens again?"
He gives them another few moments to absorb what he's saying. You can hear his boots click and thunk softly against the wood, as he seemingly paces back and forth on the porch below.
"Now I'm not sure, and this is just me guessing, or maybe it's some kind of soldier intuition or something," Frank goes on. "But I think Lisa did some brainwave psion shit to Carl that made him pull his guns on me, well Nomad at first. But then me. All his boys followed right after.
"And that means, well, I don't know what that means. I just think we can't trust our Mayor. Maybe we even need a new Mayor. And maybe the old one's gotta go at the same time. And we're all here to figure that out. So now, let's talk about it."
All manner of shouting erupts in quick succession thereafter, none of which you can make out at all. You barely catch certain words here and there, but that's the best you get.
You can just make out Frank's voice through the din, as he attempts to shout everyone down. He does so, but it takes him a long while - perhaps a whole minute.
"No, no, keep it down back there, thank you," he says with his voice still loud. But as the crowd in front of him quietens, so does he. "Let's go one at a time, alright. You, Bill. Old Bill, I mean. Give us your take right quick."
"Look, I ain't no fan of the Mayor doing all that, keeping that shit all hidden-like," says Old Bill. "I don't rightly care what you all do with her. But I don't want Carl to get caught up in her… whateveryoucallsit. Psycho-head shit. Far as I'm concerned, he's done nothing wrong."
A murmur rises up to agree, even as Frank calls out another person to speak - someone named Annie.
"I think we oughta move to the Fortress like everyone keeps talking about," she says. "We can leave the Mayor here to rot for all I care. But she ain't coming. Not if she could brain melt us or something."
An even larger chorus of agreement comes up to support her, it's enough that it seems like the majority of them out there.
"And what about Carl? And Chris?" adds Frank. "Both their teams trained their longarms at us. They was all meaning to kill, saw it in all their eyes. Can we trust them around us, too?"
"You said yourself that they was just tools to some mind game," someone calls out. "I say they innocent. They oughta go free."
A few agree with that sentiment, though many more scoff at them.
"Carl's always been a shit to everyone," says another person. "Always got the notion that he was always just looking to put the hurt on someone. Don't need no mind-control psycho-bitch forcing him into any of that. He'd do it in a heartbeat. I say they all stay here with the Mayor while we head south. They can all go to hell."
A number of cheers erupt from around him, but an equal amount jeer loudly in protest.
You hear Frank attempting to calm them all down once again, but before he can do anything, you sense something within your Chakra stir. When you refocus yourself onto the Threads around you, you quickly notice that Lisa's Thread stirs rapidly, as her mind regains consciousness, and as she comes back to her full senses.
Weekly Power Status
200+ Power
Ranking 
0 Power
stone 
Paragraph comment