Bab 44: Division, Pt 9
The gunfire around dies down and ebbs as the last of your enemies fall or flee. The defending residents around you then launch into deafening cheers that drown out all other sounds. You're also caught up in their moment of joy, and yell supportively as a result.
You even fling a fist in the air, and a few others join in your victorious gesture.
But Frank gets everyone to calm down after a few moments, then goes to the furthest window and sticks his head out.
The fighting at the western side of town also dwindles, and few bursts of gunfire are exchanged between the residents and their opponents. You can easily tell that one group is fleeing further west, as the sounds of their guns firing recedes towards the edge of town.
A scan confirms that the scant few enemy combatants still alive are definitely on the run. Their minds are frantic and chaotic and filled with dread. You sense panic in each of their steps, which doesn't seem to decline no matter how far they get away.
All of you can just make out the other residents' cheering, even from that distance. And it brings a smile to most of your faces. Those who aren't able to enjoy the moment instead tend to the dead or wounded, their minds dark from trauma and conflict and unimaginable loss.
One of them drapes herself over a body that's riddled with bullets and bleeding profusely. His dead body is still warm, but you sense no thoughts coming from his mind. It's all blank, and you're certain that he's beyond saving.
Her grief feels as deep as the ocean, and the person she's grieving no doubt meant the world to her. Now that he's gone, you sense her heart as it becomes heavier and heavier, as its beat becomes lopsided and irregular. Her heartache is so palpable that you personally feel the same emptiness fill your own chest.
That deep sense of loss is something you're distinctly familiar with, and easily identify with the grieving woman.
You wonder if you should do something, if you could use a low-level Surge to ease her mental and emotional anguish. Not just hers, but everyone else, as well. But a part of you reminds you that it's not your place to do any such thing, and that you don't exist to meddle in other people's lives. This is her loss to work through, not yours.
Another part of you wonders if helping is the same as meddling. Isn't it its own kind of interjection? Wouldn't that be you influencing their paths, no matter what? You suppose that you've already gotten this far and helped them fight off their enemies. Your very actions have helped the residents win this fight, without a doubt. Why stop now? The pain doesn't end only when the bullets stop flying.
And so you reach out with a highly subtle Surge which ripples all around you. It infuses itself into the defending residents around you, lightening and unburdening them to some degree. It isn't much, just a sense of calm, a sliver of peace, a measure of bittersweet victory. But it is enough to get the grieving woman to come to terms with her loss just a little bit easier.
It might still take her a long time to heal fully, of course. But at least you did your part to help, even if it is miniscule in the greater scheme of things.
"That was a good thing you did," Frank tells you.
You wonder how he knows what you've done just now, but then realize that he's talking about all the rest of the fight. The parts where you've been disabling and stunning the so-called 'gangers'. Something inside you wants to tell him that you could have done more.
It certainly wouldn't have been much of an effort if you opened up a Network and infused an Orchestra among the residents. Doing so would have saved even more lives, without a doubt.
But you find that you can't do any such thing. A bit of shame fills you at the thought. You can't imagine openly confessing that you could have saved more people, but purposefully chose not to. You do imagine that Frank could possibly never forgive you.
"I just did what I thought was right," you answer. "And I kinda wish I coulda done more."
"You did plenty," he replies quickly. "More than anyone else could, that's for sure."
His words don't bring you any sense of relief, only more guilt. You fight against yourself and resist the urge to look away. Every part of you wants to escape this conversation as fast as possible. Instead, a lingering silence sits between you for a few moments.
"You oughta check up on everyone," you say. "Make sure they're okay and all."
Frank nods in agreement, then grips one of your shoulders.
"Yeah, let's go take a look," he replies.
"Us? Uh, I'm not really a resident here, I don't think I should-"
"Horseshit," he interrupts you. "You've done helped out a whole lot here, and I want everyone to know just how much you made a difference today. We coulda gotten wiped out by all these damned gangers, but your psionic whatever powers really did them in. That's worth sharing."
There's a chorus of agreement from a few of the defending residents around you. You get a sense of their gratitude for you - they most certainly experienced your contribution to the fight. Although they aren't sensitive to psionic energies, they can instinctively feel the imprint you've made on all their psyches.
It's like hearing an echo, but from a place that's distant and unreachable.
"Lead the way," you tell Frank, defeated.
Frank leaves the second team in charge of the defending residents, specifically in terms of getting the wounded medical help. Then he gathers up the first team and heads out towards Town Square. With you in tow, of course.
You make your way to Town Square in no time at all, and head straight towards the fountain in the center. There, a dozen or so defending residents gather up to report their successes and losses. You sense much of their psyches in disarray, a result of all the frenzied fighting. Thankfully their victory keeps them more or less balanced and upright.
You note that among the people gathered there are Carl, the Mayor, and the two other psions living in the town. Close to them are their teams - there's a sense of camaraderie that binds them together in those little groups.
As for the two psions, you had felt them fighting at the western flank. You had felt the Telekinetic - Chris - flinging various debris at his enemies. Mostly, he threw shards of glass or chunks of broken brick or other small but dangerous objects. You sensed that he had been channeling his energies at a near constant pace all throughout the fight, and never once tired himself out.
No doubt he knows his own limits and paced himself as much as he could.
You can easily tell however that his psionic energies are about equal to yours, at least while you're capped. Certainly not stronger than Kaja was at her peak, but he's definitely strong enough to hold his own in a firefight.
The other one, Nance, stands near him, but with a handful of her team just off to the side. Unlike Chris, her energy usage spiked up and down all through the fight. Also unlike him, she didn't use the energies of Telekinesis. Instead, she counted mostly on her ESP and Foresight.
Though she isn't as potent as you, even in your capped state, she still has enough ability to see shards of the future fly in towards her present. But you note that instead of focusing her energies on herself, she had turned it towards her companions all through the gunfight.
You aren't exactly sure what she's doing, and you would need to be closer to her to observe how she uses her powers. But you guess that she's using her Foresight to guide her teammates. A bit like what Frank does, but intuitively rather than through sheer combat experience.
Not that there's anything wrong with that in the slightest, and you decide to try something like that out in the future. The more you stretch your powers out and discover your capabilities, the easier this entire Walkabout will be.
You nod at the two of them in recognition of their powers and abilities, and they do the same to you. No doubt they sensed your own energies during your own fight, and know what you can do.
"Glad to see you're all alive and well," Frank tells everyone. "That was a hell of a fight."
"It was too damn much!" Carl complains. "Damned gangers just about brought a whole damn army at our doorstep."
"That was far from an army," Nance chides him, though he summarily ignores her.
"If they done brought that many guns this time, they're for sure going to bring even more next time," Carl continues unabated. "We can't wait for something like that to happen. No way."
"What exactly do you want us to do?" counters Mayor Lisa. "Start an army? Build walls?"
"We need to move our asses to the Fortress."
A number of groans escape from a few residents around you, but the rest agree with Carl and grunt or mumble in approval.
"That's the only place we can be safe," he continues. "They got all the guns we need to protect us from whatever's out there. These fuckin' gangers are prolly the least of our worries when all is said and done. What is onna them Sweepers show up? We ain't gotta chance in hell."
"What're you even talking about?" Frank protests. "Yeah, the gangers were here, but we fought 'em off! I even heard lots of 'em drop their guns on the way out. Guns that're now in our hands. We can hold our own against the worst."
"Yeah, and just how many of our friends and family died today, huh? I watched Ole Gregg bite it not even a minute into the fightin'. And he weren't the only one that fell dead today."
"Look, I ain't saying we won't be losing people, all I'm sayin' is that we, as a whole, still made it out alive. Goin' to some Fortress out in the middle of nowhere is only gonna get us killed. I mean, you think we're just gonna teleport there? Hell naw, we've gotta pack our shit up and walk our asses over. And who knows how long that'll take. While we're out there, we're exposed to everyone and everything. Not just whate'ers got guns, but the heat, starvation, and so on. At least here all we gotta deal with are gangers."
Tensions among the residents around you rise as Carl and Frank argue. Both of them talk in near circles with their own arguments, with neither of them giving any ground for the other. Clearly, they believe their ideas to be the only ones worth thinking about.
You grimace when you realize that this moment should be spent celebrating victory, but instead the survivors are mired in an existential standoff. A subtle Scan reveals everyone's thoughts leaning one way or the other, either for Carl's argument to leave, or for Frank's argument to stay.
It dawns on you that people subtly shift where they're standing as well, as they move somewhat closer to either Carl or Frank's side. And you note that Chris joins Carl, while Nance joins Frank.
You glance over at Mayor Lisa to see what she chooses, but then realize something startling. All throughout the fight, the Mayor didn't use any psionics at all. Although everyone in town did everything they absolutely could to fight off the enemy combatants, the Mayor did nothing.
You didn't sense even a sliver of her psionic energy emanating out, certainly not like Chris or Nance. And you can definitely tell that she's much stronger than the both of them, though you're unsure how much.
The thought nags you greatly, to the point that you confront her about it.
Why didn't you use your powers to fight off those people? you ask her Telepathically. All the rest of us did.
All I can do is use Telepathy, she replies. What good is that in a firefight?
But her answer is unconvincing in the slightest.
You could have used it to coordinate the defense! you tell her. Would have seriously helped if you just kept some order through the entire battle!
Why don't you mind your own damned business, stranger, she thinks to you.
You sense her anger rise, directed towards you. It's clear that she doesn't like you poking and prodding her about her powers. But you can't help it. People died, and she did nothing at all!
And who the hell are you to judge me, anyway? she continues. You're hiding what you can do, too. It's not like I'm calling you out for keeping your powers secret.
Well the difference is that this is your town, your people, your friends, you reply. And you did nothing and just let them die!
Her anger peaks at your last transmission, and you sense her mind become cloudy and dark as a result. She shuts off your Telepathic connection to her instantly, and it feels like she has slammed a door in your face.
"Hey, you know what I think?" says the Mayor. "I think Nomad here is one of the gangers. I mean, you show up one day, and a whole army of heavily armed ganger soldiers appears the next. That can't be a coincidence, can it?"
Shock fills you and Frank both at the accusation. It stuns you to the point that you can't even respond to it - it's patently absurd. But those same words sink down into Carl, who accepts them readily. They sink down into his conscious mind and take root among the rest of the hateful emotions he has towards you.
"Holy shit, yeah!" he says. "That makes total sense! Now I know why I wanted to shoot the hell outta you when we first ran into you! I guess now's better than never to make up for that mistake!"
Carl then brings up his gun and points it straight at your chest, ready to blow it wide open with a single shot.
Bab 45: Division, Pt 10
"I reckon we got ourselves a rat," Carl says, venom dripping from his voice. "And we all know what to do with them mangy little shits, don't we, boys?"
A murmur of agreement rises up from the residents directly around Carl, and you see them tighten their grip on their weapons. Before they can bring them up to bear, Frank gets between you and Carl, right in the way of his aim.
"You don't know what the hell you're talking about," Frank tells him. "Now put your damn longarm down."
"You seriously don't see what's happening here? Your city scav friend shows up, and suddenly there's a massive attack from them damn city gangers the very next damn day! That ain't any kind of coincidence, Chief!"
"I do see what's going on, and I got my own thoughts on that. But what you don't see is that Nomad here fought them gangers on our side. If it weren't for them, we might still be fighting even now."
Carl grits his teeth as hears Frank rebut him. You sense him heat up as he gets more and more aggravated. It seems the last thing Carl wants is to be confronted, or at least for you to be defended.
"In fact," Frank continues, "If Nomad here's on their side, they woulda killed us all in our sleep rather than hit us in broad daylight. Coulda taken us down from the inside first, killed me for example. And that woulda softened up everyone else for a surprise attack at night. You see what I'm sayin'?"
"Yeah, well you know what I see?" Carl retorts. "I see a damn old fool too trusting of any random scavenging bottom feeder you come across."
"And all I see is an aging man gettin' soft in the middle but real hard against everything else. Not everyone's your enemy, Carl. Not everyone wants you dead. If you keep thinking that, then you're gonna end up having no-one at the end."
You sense Carl's anger rise even further, even though Frank is doing his best to calm the situation down. He begins to shake and quiver as his face turns a little brighter with rage.
"Know what I think now," he says through gritted teeth, "I think you're in on it. You're helpin' the gangers for whatever reason. Maybe you're in it for the cash, or maybe you just wanna see some of us get killed. Well I ain't havin' none of that now."
Frank is utterly stunned at Carl's accusation, so much that you sense his thoughts tumble around in absolute disarray. He simply can't make heads or tails of his words - they're such a logical leap that it's literally mind-boggling.
Carl readjusts his aim, and instead points his rifle right at Frank's head. The act shocks almost everyone around you. A handful immediately raise their weapons in Frank's defense, and point their weapons reflexively at Carl. But his posse returns the favor in kind, and raises their weapons up at them in response.
You sense everyone's nerves shoot sky high as a result. Everyone's fingers quiver on their triggers, ready to tear each other apart at a moment's notice.
Chris, the Telekinetic psion, sidles even closer towards Carl. Though his thoughts and emotions about you are relatively unsure, you sense his distrust rising steadily. His own animosity rises up the more he thinks about you, even as he begins to spin up some of his energies. Clearly, he's prepping to attack you alongside the others.
"I'm with Carl," he says. "I just don't quite trust some outside psion in our town. 'Sides, if the Mayor says you're rotten, then it's gotta be true."
"What in the hell is going on with you?! With everyone?!" Nance yells out. She walks over to Frank's side, and pleads with everyone else to calm down. "We can't be doing this to each other! We're practically family! And Nomad here's been nothing but helpful - sensed their energies all through the fight, and they took down plenty of them gangers. Way more than you or me combined, Chris!"
But her words are hardly heard, and everyone tightens their grips harder instead.
"Whoa, let's just take it easy now," Frank says as calmly as he can. Though his weapon's at his side, and his voice is as even as possible, you know that his emotions are practically rioting. He wants nothing more than to give in and start firing, to rid the town of Carl and his people. It would be easy enough for him to do, and you sense that he could consider it as a service for the community.
You can just about see his thoughts dance about in his head, taunting him as the moments pass. Thankfully, he has the strength to keep himself cool, even despite all those guns pointed at his head, threatening him with oblivion.
"We never did get along much, you and me," Frank continues talking to Carl. "But like Nance said, we're still part of the town. It takes both of us to keep it running smooth and safe. Everyone here has. And all of us here gave blood for each other all through our lives. Let's not spill what we've given just 'coz our heads are gettin' a little too hot."
Although Frank does his best to be diplomatic, Carl has long since stopped listening to him. All those words accomplish is to make him angrier and angrier. Unreasonably so. It rises with every word that gets spoken, as though each one is an insult laced within another insult.
When it hits a fever pitch, you realize that you have to do something. If things keep going like this, everyone around you is liable to die. Sure some of these people might deserve it, but the rest don't. They've all just gone through a traumatic event, and don't need more on top of it. No-one needs their friends and family turning their guns on each other. That's a kind of cruelty reserved only for the lowest common denominator.
Not even wild animals do that to each other.
You have no choice this time but to remove your self-imposed limits and unleash your energies. With everyone here running hot, you don't have a choice but to do so. You just don't have enough energy to deal with all of them as you are now.
Chris, Nance, and the Mayor are immediately beset with awe as you open up, as your psionic energies fill the space around you, as your temper fills the air. Although a moment ago Chris was ready to join Carl and was spinning up Telekinetic energies, his enthusiasm falls flat quickly. He practically stumbles down on his ass as he backs up out of dread.
Simply, your psionic energies far overwhelm his, and sensing what you're truly capable of brings him to the ground.
With a powerful Scan, you dig deep into everyone around you, to get a sense of their psyches. And more importantly, to uncover just what the Mayor is hiding. And you find that she is certainly much stronger than she seems - part of her energies are still masked from you.
But it hardly matters now. What matters is that something is driving a wedge between the people in this town, and you've somehow become a focal point for that divide.
And it's here, in this moment, that you realize that something else is happening here. Something much larger than you, or this entire town. It's beyond the Mayor wanting to hide her true nature, beyond Carl's inability to let go of his anger, beyond whatever else might be heating up under the surface.
You can just about feel it tugging and tearing at the residents around you, slowly and surely ripping them apart. It reminds you of the Conductor, and how it manipulated the frenzied Crazed. But this feels far more subtle, far more insidious. It's something that has taken root and worked its way into the residents' hearts and minds for a long time. Perhaps for years, since the end of the world.
Tensions are high and everyone is ready to shoot everyone else. You sense their fingers tightening on their triggers, even as Carl's bottomless anger tips over the edge past his limits. You get a whiff of a sliver of glee mixed somewhere in his emotions, which his whole posse mirrors as well. It's almost as though they want to open fire on everyone else around them.
You immediately pulse outward with a strong Surge, one filled with hesitation and reluctance and indecision. It sweeps over absolutely everyone around you, overwhelming them temporarily with a deep sense of doubt.
Though it isn't quite powerful enough to shake them completely free, it is enough to extend everyone's hesitation. Those with their fingers poised to shoot instead relax to some degree, enough to stave away death for a few moments more.
This is far from enough, of course. All you're doing is delaying the inevitable, and you need to do something else to end this madness. Or at least, long enough so you can get away from it.
The absolute next thing you do is fire up your Network to its fullest potential and connect Frank to it. Not just Frank, but those who are aligned with him such as Nance and the fire team that fought alongside you. Though most aren't psionic and can't benefit from your energies directly, they're still affected by your abilities to some degree.
Just like the Orchestra you had created with the Watch, you link your allies to each other, bolster their minds and bodies, and unite them from a metaphysical standpoint. Equally as important, by being in your Network, they become somewhat immune to your Surge, and recover from its effects far faster than Carl and his people.
However, you don't create an Orchestra. No matter how much you want to truly unite your allies and turn them into an unstoppable army, you simply can't. Having them kill their own people would only cause serious trauma to develop in them.
Frank is already at the edge of his ability to cope with all this, and him pulling the trigger on someone would only break him completely.
No, you have to do this another way.
Instead of sharing your Foresight through your Network, you step into it. Rather than experiencing the numerous slivers of the future build themselves into your present, you split up and instead meet the slivers moments before they join.
On top of that, you activate your Temperance and push your perception and synapses to their absolute maximum. You accelerate your own thoughts and cause your neurons to fire hundreds of times faster than normal, all within that infinite moment in time.
And in doing so, you experience the world through fractions of a second, just as the slivers form into the now. The world seems to slow down all around you, on every level possible. Everyone seems frozen in time, and are practically still like statues. But they haven't become slow, of course. You've only become much, much faster. Or at least, your thoughts have.
To be specific, you create a new combination power - Temporal Acceleration. And by unleashing it on yourself, you find yourself able to think and perceive far faster than everyone else around you.
It's there that you begin the third part of your attack, one that will hopefully end this deadly standoff. You start off with the most aggressive and unstable of everyone around you - Carl. Of all the people here, he's the one you need to concentrate on the most.
So you gather up your energies and inject him with a potent Interrupt. But instead of Stopping him, which would most certainly kill him, you instead mirror your headache and reflect it onto his own mind. It immediately takes hold of him, and his biological functions echo your own - at least in terms of pain. The sheer amount of it puts his mind into disarray.
And then do the same with the next person down the line, and send a truly painful Interrupt straight into his mind and body. You also do the same with Chris and the Mayor, and infuse the two of them with as much crippling pain as possible. Then you make sure to Interrupt everyone even remotely aligned with Carl, and inject them with your own brand of pain.
Once you've Interrupted everyone you need to, you step out of your Foresight and return to the present.
You're beset with a massive headache the moment you do - using that much energy in such a short amount of time compounds the pain, sharply. And because you've mirrored it into your opponents, they too feel that same crippling pain course through their heads.
You grip your head and groan as you shake it off, having been used to these attacks for years now. It overwhelms your sense for a few moments, causing your vision to blacken and fade. It's certainly more than enough to bring you to the edge of consciousness, just like all those years ago when you suppressed the Shadow Sweeper. Thankfully you're able to remain standing and conscious, even despite the ringing in your ears and the fading of your sight. The headache is still exceedingly painful, and you vow to yourself to never do this attack ever again. It's simply unbearable.
Your opponents however, can't handle it in the slightest. You're able to manage it well, sure. But they haven't ever experienced a pain of this magnitude in their lives. Carl immediately drops his weapon and screams in pain as he clutches his head. He falls down on his knees a moment later, then falls flat on his face, knocked out by the agony of it all.
His posse suffer similarly, with a few writhing around for a few extra seconds before they too succumb to the searing headache and fall unconscious. Chris is immediately overwhelmed, and crumples to the ground without so much as a peep. His eyes simply roll to the back of his head and all goes dark for him.
The Mayor is the last to fall of everyone, and it's clear that she does her best to fight against your Interrupt. But the pain is too much even for her, and she too goes out like a light and topples to the ground like a felled tree.
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