We hadn’t gone another two hours before Regina announced that we’d been discovered.
We had traversed over low, rolling hills and sotis through denser thickets of woods when we couldn’t go around them. The landscape wasn’t too terribly different from what I’d been used to here in this other world. The notable differences were the small lakes dotting the place, so of which had marshy bits or swampy bits attached at the sides. At one point we crested a particularly high rise, and I was astonished to see water in the distance.
We stopped for rest and snacks once per hour, so I knew my mother wasn’t being unduly stressed. The stubborn old goat was still giving shift over my objections. I watched in frustration as she selected all her skills using the first twenty-so skill points.
It amazed that I once considered those twenty-so skill points to be a lot. They were gone almost instantly for my mother, who shuffled them around a bit before pressing the button to confirm her result.
Every ti we stopped it was also a chance for to fu about my mother and how annoying she was being. On this break I was complaining to Chrysta.
“You understand, don’t you?” I asked. “She’s being ridiculous.”
“I understand that you are having trouble appreciating what it is you have. You have your mother. She hasn’t been taken from you.”
Chrysta was no help. I pouted in silence, peering at the vast expanse of this world I’d never seen before.
Using the fairy dust from Fairy Poppins, we were able to cover a pretty good amount of ground. The fairy dust lessened the effect of gravity on us, though she was limited in how many tis she could use it at once before exhausting herself. Luckily Chrysta had no need of this, being a ghost who floated everywhere.
Muppin, the enormous rochidna, hopped along, carefree, covering twenty or thirty feet at a ti. It was a fun ti, evading the Agency that gave the job and paid for my family to live in luxury.
“Sooooooo,” Regina said on our fourth break, taking aside and speaking to quietly. “Please don’t freak out, but we do have a problem.”
“What’s that?”
“Two hours ago we were spotted. I wouldn’t have said anything because it was just an airborne speck, but they’ve circled around two more tis since then.” She held up a hand to forestall my question. “We’re not being hunted by a dive bombing Nakamamon behemoth.”
As part of being a Ranger, she had sharp senses. I also had Eagle Eyed, an ability I got from getting intimate with Tara a lot of tis. Just before leaving on my R&R weeks, it had gone up to level 4.
Eagle Eyed IV
(Special Ability, Common, passive)
I- Your eyesight becos better than human. You are able to discern details at a distance, and analyze close objects much better than base humans.
II- Your peripheral vision and reactions are increased beyond human maximums. You may not be caught off guard.
III- You gain basic low light vision, and may discern colors in the dark.
IV- You gain basic infrared vision, and may operate in perfect darkness using gradations of heat and cold.
Which still, most likely, wasn’t as good as Regina’s enhanced senses. She had also progressed beyond level 25 and gotten so kind of class evolution as I had.
Sure enough, we spotted a recon flight precisely when Regina said it would be showing up. I had to squint to make the tiny speck in the far distance discernible at all, but there it was. As it drew closer and as I kept my eye on it, the more my vision telescoped out and resolved. It appeared to be a huge lizard, possibly even an alligator or croc-shaped Nakamamon that could sohow fly. I couldn’t say who the rider was, but Regina was sure it was another Ranger, and probably a female.
“You can tell all that?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t rember how many of the guys had long hair. The Rangers attract the hippie types.”
That made sense.
“I want to see sothing utterly bizarre flying,” I said. “A pufferfish. No, a manatee… why am I thinking only sea creatures? They look like they’re flying underwater because they float. No… I want to see a flying rhino. Or sothing that can’t hardly move, like a sloth.”
“You are such a dork,” Regina replied.
“A sloth with wings!” I declared.
She rolled her eyes real hard.
I turned a gleeful grin her way. “Makes you want to take sowhere private and do nasty things to ?”
“I would’ve said pleasurable things, you perv monster. Now I can imagine taking you sowhere private and punching you repeatedly in the shoulders until you can’t raise your arms.”
It was good to banter a bit. I still hadn’t internalized the loss of Tara, Isabelle, Ivy, or Cinzy.
They weren’t here on this world. And neither were Drat or Trent. There was no way through, at least as far as we knew. They were probably in custody and being interrogated for information… or worse. Thankfully those thoughts were only taking up a tiny bit of space in the very back of my mind, and not swirling around in a whirlwind of anxiety occupying my every waking thought.
If there was one thing I was thankful for, it was Ingenuity giving the ability to monitor myself and stop the worst of the nasty thoughts from getting control over .
If there was another thing I was thankful for, it was that I now had Vellenia and Shakindria on my side. Both of them were speaking pleasantly to my mother, and I knew this because I got a sense of their emotional states and a vague sense of what was going on with them whenever I concentrated. This was the wonder of having a bonded Nakamamon.
And the third thing I had to be thankful for was the presence of both Larelle and Chrysta. I hadn’t given even a single thought to the possibility of trying to do sothing illegal and having half my team cut off back on earth. It was pure dumb luck that Alan and Regina were here at all. It was further dumb luck that Larelle and Chrysta were also here. Plus, Larelle had her permanently bored Magmamander, which made heating up elixirs, potions and such a much simpler task. Plus, he was really cute with how unimpressed he looked at all tis, while I was concocting things that were, by all accounts, nigh impossible.
Hey, the UI told it was Nigh Impossible and required sothing like 20 successes. I was a master of the nigh impossible.
I was also a master of forcing myself not to miss my lost teammates.
We returned back to the group, not sure about what to do regarding being spotted by the Agency’s recon people. For all intents and purposes we were fugitives here in the other world.
“Were you in on Plan Epsilon with Drat and the others?” I asked.
She turned a look of so much forced innocence on that I knew imdiately she was about to lie.
We reached the group. Chrysta was making the rounds, ensuring a safe periter, while Larelle used her Magmamander to get a cook fire going and get so dinner. My mother asked Shakindria to fly her up level with my mobile herb garden, where she picked a few things and helped Vellenia with the cooking.
“Where was Trent in all this?” I asked.
“Sleeper a-a-a-a-a-a-a-gent,” Alan said.
“Hang on, what?”
***
Trent had long passed out of the feeling like life was over and he was dood and there was no point in going on. This always happened when his mana pool emptied out here on earth.
So his mana pool was empty. That didn’t matter on this side of the portal, because earth didn’t require his talents as a person who could magically move and shape stone. Losing your mana to the earth’s lack of ambient magic was to be expected. You spent two days wracked by a deep depression he generally felt when at the very end of his mana pool, while the doctors and nurses on staff fed you a cocktail of antidepressants, kept up soothing music, played video gas with you, and allowed you to call your loved ones. After that, they brought in the occupational therapists, the always-cheerful faces and their fixation on whether or not you were capable of doing all the things. And if you weren’t, they would help devise ways for you to be able to do the necessary things.
Well, after that, your body would even out, and you’d be stuck with your enhanced body, no special abilities, and sohow, so-weird-way, your Tokens that corresponded to your attributes.
He used his enhanced stats and superhuman attributes to beco the night. He headed halfway across the world to his specially built and paid for small apartnt in the middle of Philedelphia. Then put on a special outfit, and headed out to where he could do so good in this world: the an streets.
Just now he was on the corner of Radcliffe and MLK Boulevard. Philedelphia, the city of brotherly love, looked like the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse film. At least, this section of Philly looked like it. Graffiti, burned out husks of houses, literal tents underneath the highway forming a tiny little tent city… this was exactly where he needed to be. The weather was cool tonight, a pleasant sweatpants and hoodie weather that would not last. He prowled, looking for exactly the right sort of person.
Trent’s job in this world was not like his job in the other world. Okay it kind of was. In the world with Garnet, he traveled to strange places, found that people needed his particular set of skills, and he supplied their needs with his earth magic. Like Atlas holding up the earth, only he was shaping the earth itself.
Trent’s Sorcerer class gave him enhanced Affinity, which he didn’t think would be useful back on earth, and enhanced Likability.
He used the latter to chat up the people here in these tent cities. They discussed how everything had been going, whether they were getting enough to eat, and while doing so, he looked for the signs they were doing drugs. He wanted to help everybody, but for right now, he had a duty to the ones with jobs who had sohow fallen on hard tis. They had a husband who’d been slapped with a rare illness, bankrupted them and then died. They had a wife who’d taken them for all they had in the divorce. They’d made a social dia post and been fired.
Like Tom. Guy had been living out of his car after his house caught fire and the insurance company had found so obscure loophole as a justification for screwing him out of the money. Tom still had his car, and his job, but he had a lot of money tied up in a court case that had just lost. His baby girl had just gone off to college and he’d paid her tuition just before the fire.
Now, Trent also had Affinity, and initially he’d thought there was no use for it, but after he’d hit Affinity 12, he had co back to earth and noticed that he could see magic. Or at least, he could see whatever molten core was burning in people’s souls. If they were burnt out, on drugs, or very depressed, their molten core had cooled and hardened. If they still had hope, ideas, aspirations or goals they were working towards, he could sense that bright fire inside, or the multifaceted diamond rather than the lump of coal. So of these folks had been through hell, but the pressure hadn’t broken them. Instead it fused their determination into sothing special, multifaceted, and sparkling with possibilities.
He could, in so instances, sll that. If he got close enough to shake soone’s hand, he could taste the magic of their souls.
Trent did not ntion this to anyone other than his fellow Agency employee friends. He knew how it would sound.
Instead he passed out salads, fries, and bottles of water, and smiled at the thanks he was getting.
“There was another couple of guys out here a week ago.”
“Two weeks ago,” another holess person said.
The first one shrugged. “Filming everything to put it up on social dia. They haven’t been back.”
“I can’t say I can be back soon,” Trent said. “Sorry, everybody.”
“Vegetables,” one of them said, chuckling. “I’ll take a tomato over a guy with a cara in my face any day of the week.”
A few of them were dead souls: drug addicts, people on the verge of giving up on life. He gave them the sa awkward, cheerful pep talk as the ones with their souls still churning away, and so of them even managed fake smiles, but their eyes were blank and expressionless. None of his words dried out the cold stone cores their souls had beco.
No, he didn’t ntion the way Affinity worked here, or the fact that people sohow had magic inside them.
Instead he shook Tom’s hand, slled the bright potential in Tom’s soul.
“Can I get you anything?” he asked.
“You already gave a good al, saved so money. Nah.” Tom waved him off. “I wouldn’t want to impose. I’ll get a bead on a place soon, even if it’s a little one.”
Likability told him Tom was lying. He had so kind of debt that couldn’t be paid off with him like this. He couldn’t get a good night’s sleep or a shower, he couldn’t do the work he needed to, and he definitely didn’t have the ti or ability to get his shit in order and find a good house.
“What happens after that?” Trent asked.
“Pay it forward,” Tom said. “You got to. Pam over there, she gave a pillow. Trey gave a sleeping bag. Linda gave a couple of pairs of socks.”
Trent was nodding.
“I want you to pay it forward,” Trent said, burning a Likability Token, and gave him a key. “I’ll be back in a couple months.”
Attached to the key was an address, just a few miles from here. Tom already had a job, a car, and the most important thing: he had the shining, burning core of a soul that lit him from within, and showed he wouldn’t just give up.
“What...”
“It’s a small place, but it’s all paid off. Bedroom and a closet and a shower and a little kitchenette. Once you get your own place, you give this key to the next person who can pay it forward.”
The little apartnt had been arranged for him by an Agency friend’s wife. She was a social worker and victim advocate. She’d burst into tears when he told her what he wanted to do.
Tears were swimming in Tom’s eyes. The Likability Token made the sincerity impossible to miss. Tom believed him, and Trent understood that implicitly as well. There was no subterfuge, no hidden catch. Trent had just given him the thing he needed to get back on his feet, to pull himself up by his bootstraps.
“You’ll co back and give out what these folks need, right?” Trent asked.
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.”
He would, too. At least for a few months. Maybe he always would. Tom had been here for so ti, and he knew these people.
“Good.” Trent clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder, and nodded. “I’m counting on you, Tom.”
And then he was gone. He was the night. He made his way back to his car, and prepared to make the drive out to Pittsburgh. He had a little place out there, not much more than a bedroom, a closet, a bathroom and a kitchenette, but it would tide him over for a few days while he searched out the next worthy soul. And then, he’d head to a little place he had out in in Cleveland, before stopping over in a little place he had out in Detroit. Then Chicago.
He had a fair few Likability Tokens.
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