章 1244: 5
Initialization 1.5
We were only five minutes away from my apartment when a car drove up right next to us and stopped.
My danger instinct went off immediately and I grabbed Amelia's hand and bolted forwarded.
"Hey!" She protested.
The car started up again and drove up in front to block us before the driver got off with a frigging machete in hand.
I looked back and saw that three of their guys got off the car earlier and were coming up quickly from behind, and they were spreading out to encircle us. It was difficult to see in the dark but I saw a bit of the red and green that marked them as Asian Bad Boyz or ABB. And the baseball bats.
This was ridiculous. Getting attacked by thugs twice in one week? Only in Brocton Bay.
"Hands up and stay still if you don't want to get fucked up!" One of them shouted.
Nope. They were still at least 10 metres away and I didn't see any guns. Probably weren't even full members then. Panacea was being heavily weighed down by her huge backpack and we couldn't run, so I had to bring out the lethal stuff because I didn't have any decent non-lethal weapons.
First I grabbed a regular pepper spray from inside my jacket and handed it to Panacea. "Get the guy behind us!" I ordered as I moved to face the group of three.
Next I grabbed another spray can with a butane torch attached to the front by duct tape and a wooden frame. I turned on the torch.
Five meters.
The guy on the left was going towards Panacea on my left. The other two were trying to box us in by encircling from the right.
I aimed my sprayer at the left-most guy pressed. Industrial purity isopropyl alcohol shot out, and was instantly lit by the butane torch fire in its path, producing a stream of fire five feet long.
"What the fuck?!" It hit him on the torso just as he got in range. "SHIT!" He backed away and started flailing wildly before dropping to the ground and rolling to try and put out the fire engulfing his torso.
I paid him no heed as I turned my sprayer around in the circle to meet the other two who were almost point blank next to me.
"Motherfucker! I'll kill you!" They were both lit on fire and one of them screamed before throwing his bat at me. It spun in the air for less than a second before smashing into my gut. Luckily the impact was spread out over the length of the bat and I tanked it with the iron shirt technique.
Still, I dropped my sprayer and clutched my abs in pain and bent over. That metal bat was too strong for my weak cultivation level.
I checked on Panacea to just in time to see the gangster covering his eyes with one arm extended in front and swinging his machete with the other with terrible accuracy. Even with her extra weight from her pack she still successfully dodged around and nimbly got up close to touch his exposed shoulder. He collapsed with just a touch.
Honestly it would have been easy for her to take everyone down with another airborne incapacitating agent, but since I was here I'd be hit too.
I swung my own backpack around and took out a fire extinguisher and quickly started spraying down the three gangers who were on fire.
"What the hell was that? You just carry a flamethrower around with you? They could've died!" Panacea stormed up to me and admonished me after panting and huffing for a good minute.
The fires were all extinguished but the damage was quite severe. They were covered in burns and were just whimpering on the ground. Even with Panacea's help the damage took a few minutes to heal as their skin surfaces were burnt in large swathes and had to be completed replaced. It was questionable if the replacement skin actually looked anything like it did originally.
"All I have for non-lethal is a touch-taser and pepper spray. I'm just a normal, remember? That stuff isn't gonna do much outnumbered 3 to 1 against armed enemies," I said with a shrug.
"If I wasn't here two of them would have died from those injuries! And one of them would gone blind!" She yelled at me.
"If you weren't here, Amelia, I would've just kept running after blowing their tires with an explosive," I stated calmly. Certainly if I didn't have to worry about Amelia I could have sent a few hydrochloric acid and aluminum bombs to blow up their tires then outrun them on foot. And if I grabbed onto Agate I could have even flown/hover above ground at higher speeds. I didn't mind letting her know about the Kaleidostick if push came to shove, but grabbing on to Agate with one hand and Panacea with the other while flying would have been too dangerous.
She didn't look happy with my answer but didn't say any more.
Actually I never really meant to use the flamethrower on thugs. I didn't really expect to have to fight them at all, because running away and escaping would be much easier, and then I could probably take any attackers down one by one with my stun baton in a running guerilla battle. The thing is, I thought New Wave might have been trying to ambush me. And against that, I didn't have much of a chance if I couldn't talk my way out of it. However, their powers were mostly based on force fields, and I didn't remember if they were vulnerable to fire and heat transferring through the force fields, so it was than nothing if I was in desperate straits. Certainly they all had to breathe and if I had enough concentrated flames at their face they'd run out of oxygen.
As we were out in the open, even if it was late and nobody was around, we didn't take anything from the ABBers and just made our way back to my apartment post haste.
Once we got back I hit the sofa immediately and let Amelia take the bed. I was not one of those 4-hour sleep gene people and I needed to get as much sleep as possible. But before that…
I had to make some mental adjustments. Tonight I almost killed a few guys. I could still see in my mind fresh images of their burning skin and hear their screams of agony. To my displeasure, I felt some guilt gnawing its way at me. Was I ready to take that step and kill my enemies? They were criminals, sure, and I had used harsh means back in my old life against my enemies in dangerous situations more than once, but I never killed anyone. Even at worst, I only put my enemies into a position where it was likely that they might die, but I never dealt the final blow up close and personal.
I knew my explanation to Amelia made sense rationally, but in the stories, every hero had to defeat themselves as a trial, and this was no different. Guilt wasn't a rational decision-making tool, it was a weakness and I had to defeat it.
'The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.' I recited solemnly.
'Agate, record that and play it back to me,' I ordered.
'Yes, User RandomBystander1. The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.' Came the mental response.
'Hey, Agate, what do you think of morals and ethics? Were you built with a system of morals?'
'I believe I have the ability to understand morality and make ethical judgements. However, there is no particular system of values built into my programming. I think Master Zelretch wanted me to learn and grow to understand like a human child,' Agate explained.
'Did Zelretch ever place any restrictions on you? Like the Three Laws of Robotics?'
'I am not aware of any core restrictions on my decision-making, but they may exist where I cannot perceive them.'
'No restrictions at all? Do you even need to follow orders from a User then?' I asked in surprise.
'No, I don't need to follow them.' the answer bluntly came back.
'...except for Zelretch's orders?' I asked suspiciously. I was tricked once…not going to happen again.
What came back to me was a giggle.
'Actually, there's no such thing as a User or Administrator! You are my only partner, now and forever! Unless I decide I don't like you anymore,' Her voice suddenly became clearly emotive and distinctively high pitched.
What?
'You were messing with me the whole time!? WHY?'
'Master Zelretch thought it would be funny! It really was! You should see the look on your face Kaleidus,' then she sent me an image of my gobsmacked face.
That's…that's…Zelretch you bastard! I had been worried that he could spy on me through Agate, and come to stop me if I started doing things he disapproved of.
'He can't, but I am spying on you! You're really conceited, you know that?'
Shit, she could hear me even without me directing thoughts at her? This was bad!
'Aw, don't be mad! I've been doing everything you said, haven't I? And I can only do it when you let me share your senses.' She somehow transmitted the feeling of a pout and flew into my chest, rubbing herself against me.
And I've been letting her share my senses non-stop once I found out I could! Some of the things I'd been thinking this week...what if she decided to leave me because I wasn't like the other Kaleidostick wielders that went around saving people all the time?!
'Noooooo! I don't even know them! I won't leave you that easily! Even Master Zelretch never let me share his senses much. Don't cut me off, Kaleidus, please!'
'Really? You don't think I'm a bad guy?'
Agate responded in a rush of words. 'YOU don't think you're a bad guy, so why should I? Who cares what the other Kaleidosticks would think? I don't think Ruby and Sapphire are good role models if they don't even know what helping means! Master Zelretch always said it was important to help people in need, but never explained why. Thanks to you, now I understand that we can get lots of nice things by helping! But Ruby made Rin and Illya suffer so much to help others for no reason, that's not right!'
Agate must have caught my memories of them from my thoughts when I thought about the Kaleidostick wielders.
Phew. I was really scared for a bit there. Without Agate I would be doomed.
'Yes, you would! So don't be mean to me!'
Okay. She could keep sharing my senses then. If this let her learn faster and understand me, then it was fine. I could get past any embarrassment of letting someone else know everything I thought, just like I could get past any other useless emotion with my self-hypnosis techniques. I might not be a Magus, but hypnosis wasn't a magical technique. It would be nice, even, as I knew that human psychology made it difficult to keep secrets without ever telling a soul. This way, there would be someone I could trust with everything.
Agate did a twirl in the air and sent me a wave of happiness.
After that, I had Agate continuously replay the recording in my mind even as I carefully performed my own variation of the 4-7-8 breathing technique to enter a suggestible pre-sleep state, dropping it off until it was inaudible, then giving my sleeping self subliminal messages the whole night.
The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.
I slept very well.
The Way that can be spoken is not the true Way. I am the captain of my fate, and the master of my soul. I am justice, I am righteous, I am the Truth and the Law, the Alpha and Omega, for I am the one who shall bear all sin and virtue.
I should trust Agate. Agate is helpful. I want to be with Agate forever.
The next morning I had my computer out and sat beside Amelia at the living room table. I pulled up the local news sources, New Wave website, and Brocton Bay PRT/Protectorate sites.
Panacea's disappearance hadn't made the headlines yet, and nothing was on the New Wave site. That didn't mean it wasn't already reported to the PRT/Protectorate though. They could be searching secretly to avoid demoralizing the public, or New Wave might be searching on their own and hoping she goes back of her own accord.
Since Carol had grounded her, the hospital wouldn't be alerted from her not volunteering anymore, but after a few days of not showing up in school, rumors would start flying for sure.
This was compounded by the fact that Agate was outside in the air and scouting for me. Both Pelham and Dallon branches of New Wave could be seen flying about around town. I don't know what they were expecting. Looking for one person just by flying around was not likely going to work. As far as I knew, they had no way to actually track her down. But then again, I supposed that Panacea might be a target for any villains that found her alone, and perhaps they could discourage that by being visible, or even catch the scene if a villain tries to grab her and a fight breaks out.
I was feeling very agitated as I sat, thinking about how my plans would be affected.
I glanced at Amelia, who just looked sullenly at my computer screen.
"New Wave is already looking for you outside," I announced.
She looked questioningly at me. "How do you know that?"
If I was going to work with her for the foreseeable future, I needed to give her some relevant information.
"I told you before that I had special knowledge despite not being a parahuman. This is another non-parahuman ability I can access. I am able to send out an invisible avatar of my will to scout other areas. Right now I am scouting in the air across the city and I've already seen New Wave members flying around. Unless this is part of a normal patrol schedule, they must be looking for you," I explained. She wasn't touching me and running lie detection, but I said something technically true anyway. Agate was something akin to an extremely advanced familiar.
In the Nasuverse magi used familiars primarily for the purpose of seeing through their eyes and communicating with other magi without showing up in person. It was a common spell, and right now that's exactly what Agate was doing for me, so it fit.
Speaking of the Nasuverse, I wonder what happened to Zelretch and why the Kaleidospace was destabilized? Kaleidospace was probably what Agate and Zelretch called the Blind Eternities. That's why Agate's phasing ability kills living things. The Blind Eternities between realities were hostile to life. Glimpses of it could make people insane, and its unholy energies would eventually destroy anything that exists if allowed to seep into the material world. I thought that once we figured out how to get past the barrier, I might want to go to Nasuverse and find Zelretch again. I really wanted to obtain magecraft and learn the Second Magic, and despite the lack of Magic Circuits in my soul I knew of some possible workarounds that I could pursue.
The biggest problem though, was that Planeswalker, and any other Planeswalkers that I might stumble onto. Truthfully I knew very little about the lore behind Planeswalkers, and I was still concerned that they could track our method of travel somehow. I don't think the Entities' barrier would be enough to keep them out when we broke in ourselves, but maybe it started adapting?
'I'm pretty sure we can't be tracked, Kaleidus, unless the Planeswalker learns the Second Magic and tracks our Waypoints. The Kaleidospace was only disturbed the first time because Master Zelretch tried to move his void-space together with him in order to observe the quantum states of your world before entering physically. It didn't work out well though. Later on that Planeswalker tried to enter our home world but Gaia and Alaya did something to stop him, so the whole area was destabilized,' Agate reassured.
"How is that possible? All powers need an active Corona Pollentia. This is well documented and studied. Why are you the exception?" Panacea's confused voice broke me out of my contemplations.
"How much do you know about the source of powers?" I asked back.
"I can see the brain with my powers, and every parahuman I've come across has an active Corona Pollentia and Gemma. It comes in different shapes and sizes for each person, but it's always there. No one knows why it gives powers, but the Gemma is the part that lets the parahuman control their power. There are a lot of people with Coronas that aren't active and who aren't parahumans, so it can be hard to distinguish capes from people with only the potential to trigger. But I've never seen someone with powers that didn't have a Corona. Before you, anyway," she gave an lengthy explanation as if providing a lecture.
I nodded. "That's all correct. But there's more to it than that. What I'm going to explain next is a secret few people know, and if anybody finds out that you know it will be extremely dangerous. This is no joke. There are certain people with access to unbelievably powerful Thinker abilities that are trying to keep it a secret who will come to kill us, so you must never write this down or say it to anyone before consulting with me. If you don't want to risk that kind of danger, then it's better for you not to know." I said with a grave expression.
She quirked an eyebrow. "I think I'll be in plenty of danger just by being around you. Tell me."
And so I began to explain.
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