Bab 177: 174 Backtracking Cuz I Forgot A Thing
Louisville, Kentucky, December 29th, 04:27.
I used to think of myself, James and Chibi, maybe May too as something of a disjointed, messed up family, but after visiting the Vasil household, I've come to the conclusion that our relationship is basically just normal.
Seriously, it was an effort and a half to keep them from physically trying to kill each other! Jean-Paul kept manipulating his sibling's bodies and Aroa would just blast everyone and then hide behind my legs.
And I did catch what I think was Cherie twisting her sibling's emotions seemingly without much care. It was very funny.
Speaking of Cherie, she seems interesting. Partly just because of her power. It's less potent than her father's but the Thinker aspect makes up for it. Frankly, if I ever find someone who can swap two parahuman's powers, I would be pretty tempted to offer her a trade.
The sheer possibilities that exist when you can not only know the location and feelings of everyone in the entire fucking city but also manipulate all of those emotions nearby.
The games I could play with that power. With a bit of effort, I could probably cause a cascading effect of psychological breaks throughout an entire city! That's like, Simurgh level shit! Not that I could ever match your majesty of course.
Point is, she has potential.
And with Heartbreaker likely to do something rash, she has an opportunity on her hands, the question is whether or not she'll grasp it. Either way, Heartbreaker is fun enough by himself, so I don't mind whatever the result it.
However he's unfortunately far too prideful to accept an invitation to my Clowns. And even if I offered one, that would run completely counter to my own point of him doing whatever he wants by himself. His daughter on the other hand, she'd make a pretty good Clown.
Thoughts for later I suppose.
For now, I have three main things to do, one being to collect a commission from Vendor, and the other, slightly more important part is to visit a certain Toybox.
Well, I say slightly, but visiting those Tinkers was actually sort of a major part of my plans for the next few months, I just kind of forgot.
Isn't it ironic that John's point about me being easily distracted was proven wrong by me getting easily distracted? I was planning to visit Toybox before Heartbreaker after all.
Ah well, it's not too big a deal since he wasn't too far away.
Y'know what, let's actually list things this time, if I at least think the order I need to do things then I'll probably not forget.
First I need to go pick up my dog, then visit Toybox, then Vendor, then I think I'm set for leaving the country properly this time.
Seems simple enough.
Luckily, I know where Cerberus is right now. He got hired to hunt down some weird moving forest thing, because the dude who's power made it swayed some rich dude's daughter into joining him in what is basically a cult, but small scale I guess.
And naturally I have no problem with my dog tearing cultists apart. But he should probably be done with that by now, which places him somewhere in Kentucky.
Which means I've got to portal to Louisville, then wait for either John or Jinx to get back to me about where my dog is, since he's not carrying around a phone or anything, another problem that might get solved at Toybox.
However luck seems to be on my side once more as John soon gets back to me about Cerberus being spotted running around in some forests to the South-East and I decide that this is a good chance to stretch my wings.
So, without bothering with subtlety even slightly, I mind myself climbing up to the top of the tallest building in the city, preparing myself for take-off.
I still haven't really practiced my flying much, but how hard can it be to 'go that way fast?'
"Worst case, I can just kill anyone who sees me eat dirt."
With that in mind, I get myself in a runner's stance and under the light of the night's sky, I bring forth both of my beautiful, majestic wings, each of them pulsing with power ready to be unleashed.
And with a single bound, unleash it I did.
the world behind me atomises as I am blasted forward, immediately breaking the sound barrier and turning into a line of blue-red energy as I soar through the sky.
"WOOOHOOOOO!!!" I scream out as the wind attempts to crush me, but thanks to some quirk of my biology, I don't even have to wear goggles of any kind to enjoy the sight of the world passing below me.
This feeling? Flying? This, is what freedom feels like.
I should get Lucy a jetpack or something while I'm at Toybox. But that's not really the same.
Hmm, there's got to be someone out there that can give parahumans the ability to fly. I'm sure she'd love it.
The only downside of my speed, is that it means I only get to enjoy the flight for about ten minutes before arriving nearby where my dog should be.
Deciding that I might as well test how my durability fairs against my own flight speed, I don't slow down and instead simply change the angle of my flight by almost ninety degrees, pointing straight to the earth.
I want to know just in case someone throws a building or something at me, so I know whether I should avoid it or if I can just fly through. Just because I'm doing something stupid, that doesn't mean there isn't a reason for it.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh, right.
Booooom!
The earth shakes and ruptures, trees are uprooted and reduced to splinters as the force of my landing hits the forest like a meteor.
Meanwhile, I simply lay there in my coffin of rock for a moment, letting the dust settle before climbing back to the surface, dirt and rock not being nearly sturdy enough to lock me in place.
With a simple gesture, I bring a hand to the back of my neck and crack it, observing the scene around me with little more than mild amusement.
"That went better than I thought it would. Didn't even break many bones.~" I probably would have been completely unharmed with my armour out and any damage I did take was gone before I could even really point it out.
So what have we learned?
If someone throws a building at me, I can just fly right at it.
Granted, there's probably something to be said about the difference in materials between a building and dirt, but whatever, caution is so boring anyway.
Now, time to find my dog.
First, I wait a couple of minutes for the after effects of my turbulent landing to calm down, and once it does, I close my eyes and focus on my senses.
My sense of scent and hearing specifically. Both of them are insanely potent, to the point that I feel like having normal human senses again would likely feal like going blind and deaf.
In no time at all, all that exists in my mind is those two senses. The scent of the forest, earthy, filled with gross scents of plants and animals, none of them suited to my palate.
The sounds of trees creaking and falling, thanks to my landing, as well as the rustling of leaves and the cracking of branches following the movement of the various animals. Each of their footfalls I can hear, their laden breathes clear to me as day.
But none of it is what I am looking for, so I tune it out. The leaves, the wind the careless footfalls, and I focus. Until...
Gotcha.
My dog may not be so careless as to make unnecessary noise with his steps, being surprisingly stealthy for his size, but locating him is not too difficult when you simply consider one thing.
An animal's instincts are sharp, and any that sense him know to keep their distance. So all I have to listen for is a ripple of noise, a ripple of fleeing animals with Cerberus at it's centre.
However I still don't care to attempt any stealth of my own, so I simply turn to face his direction and bring my wings back out.
Looking at the dense thicket of trees before me, I believe that it's time to test that earlier theory out.
With a thundering boom, I launch myself forward, moving in a straight line for my dog, crushing every tree that tries to stand in my way, and with the speed I'm traveling, it only takes me about a dozen or so seconds before I can smell him, and even less time before he is right in front of me.
Naturally, I don't slow down or make any attempt to move out of the way, simply choosing to barrel into him instead, sending the both of us tumbling for hundreds of feet.
"Who's a good doggy!~" I exclaim once we stop rolling, manoeuvring myself to be above him so I can give him some good scritches.
He returns the favour by spitting acid in my face.
How rude, now we're both naked.
"What was that for?~" I ask with a pout as he gets to his feet, throwing me off of him.
"Nice tattoos," he grumbles in response, not answering the question but successfully distracting me anyway as I twist and pose to show them all off.
"You like them?~ I made them myself!~" I exclaim with pride, happy with how the designs turned out.
"They suit you. Now whaddaya want?" He asks, reminding me that I'm here for a reason.
"Oh right! I'm gonna go get my head cut open by a stranger so they can mess around with my brain," I say with a straight face, making Cerberus look at me like I'm an idiot, which prompts me to continue, "but obviously I want some insurance, so I figured I'd bring you along and that way if they do anything untoward that you can kill them all, or maybe die, who knows with Tinkers right?~"
Typically the chance of death would deter people from accepting an invitation but, like clockwork, Cerberus simply gets excited instead.
"When?" He simply asks, his weird tentacle things wagging in what I assume is excitement.
"Now," I answer before realising that he can't fly like I can.
...If he just runs with me on top of him acting like a jetpack, I'm sure we'll get back to Louisville quick enough.
Forty minutes later and I'm not entirely sure if using me as a jetpack got us here any faster. Because while yes, it did make us faster, it also caused us to keep crashing, so it kind of cancels out.
And now I need a bath because I am covered in dirt and my hair is a mess.
One interesting thing did happen once we arrived at the city's outskirts, relatively well hidden with the sun still not having risen, and that is that we got to see a lot of flashing lights in the form of emergency service vehicles.
Just from a quick look as we made our way to the local arcade, it seems that one of the skyscrapers blew up or something and fell on some other buildings, causing a little bit of chaos, some property damage and a couple corpses.
The heroes even seemed to be in full swing helping the emergency services with relief efforts, and I guess it is nice to see that the ol' tax dollar is being put to good use.
I sure do hope they catch whoever was responsible for that.
Ahem.
Anywho, time to go.
Thanks to Stacy, I happen to know exactly where Toybox is currently staying, so all that's left is to give them a visit while walking my dog, then I can actually put my holiday abroad into swing.
=================
A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
I completely forgot that I planned for Lusia to visit Toybox before leaving the country, but whatever, it all works out I guess.
Also, the chap may be worse than usual, but I'm tired cuz I'm visiting my dad and he's making me get up early to do work. Took everything out of his shed (a lot of shit) and put it back in but neater, also finished building my grandad's patio, something we started years ago but apparently he will only continue building it when I'm visiting for some fucking reason.
On the upside, I got a nice new backpack which will be important for certain future canon events of my life
also for some reason when I use italics now it puts a double space before it, idk why
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