Life Isn’t So Simple Chapter 276: Reunion

Greer rushed in first.

It was instinct more than strategy. The big man surged to his feet with concrete dust falling from his shoulders and his connate magji activating before he'd fully understood what he was looking at. Stone crawled up his arms and across his chest, the familiar grey-brown armor that had stopped daemon claws and magji spells and everything else the world had thrown at him since he first unlocked his mahna. Greer had been the wall of their group since they were teenagers. Every fight, every case, every situation that required soone to stand in front and take the hit, that was Greer. It was the only thing he knew how to do well, and he did it better than anyone in Brimton.

He threw himself between the panda-head woman and the others.

"Get behind !" Greer roared as his stone armor fully encased his upper body.

Zoey didn't slow down.

Max hit the center of Greer's chest. The stone armor that had never been breached by anything short of a B-Grade daemon cracked from the point of impact outward like ice on a frozen lake. Greer's eyes went wide behind the fractures as his feet left the ground. He flew backward, his armored body carving a trench through the hospital floor before slamming into the far wall hard enough to leave his imprint in the plaster.

He tried to get up. His stone magji was already trying to reform, trying to patch the cracks, trying to do the one thing it was designed to do. Max and Cody didn't give it the chance. The hound heads lunged in tandem, one from each side, and their jaws closed on Greer's stone-covered arms. They bit down and pulled in opposite directions.

The stone shattered. Pieces of Greer's armor exploded off his body like a shell being ripped from a turtle. Underneath, his actual arms were exposed and suddenly very, very vulnerable. Greer scread as the mahna that sustained his stone armor was ripped away through the hound heads' teeth.

But Zoey was already past him.

Dante's smoke filled the room in the seconds after Greer went down. Thick, choking, semi-solid clouds that turned the destroyed ward into a grey void. He was sowhere inside it, hidden, using the concealnt to reposition and plan. Against most opponents, this would buy him ti. Against daemons, his smoke could suffocate them or disorient them long enough for the group to capitalize. It was Dante's greatest asset, the ability to control the battlefield.

Zoey ran through it.

She didn't bother trying to see through the smoke or sense him through mahna detection or any other clever approach. Overdraft turned her body into sothing that operated at a speed the smoke couldn't account for. She crossed the room in the ti it took Dante to reposition once, and when he realized the heavy footsteps were getting closer instead of further away, the fear hit him before her fist did.

Max caught him in the ribs as he tried to dodge left. The impact folded his body around the hound head's face. Dante's smoke dispersed as his concentration broke, revealing him to the entire room, doubled over with his mouth open in a silent scream. Zoey grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and threw him toward Baxter's general direction. His body hit the floor and skidded.

"LOWELL! BARRIER! NOW!" Reid shouted from sowhere to her right.

A shimring wall of light materialized between Zoey and the remaining three. Lowell was on his knees behind a toppled hospital bed, both hands extended, his cracked pocket watch glowing in his palm. The barrier was bigger than anything he'd produced before. Desperation had a way of drawing out the best in people, even cowards.

Zoey punched it.

The barrier rippled. Held. Lowell gritted his teeth as the force transferred through the barrier and into his hands. His arms shook.

She punched it again. Harder. The ripple turned into a crack. Lowell cried out as blood began to drip from his nose.

The third punch destroyed it. The barrier exploded into fragnts of light that dissolved before they hit the ground, and Lowell was left kneeling with nothing between him and the thing that had just walked through every defense his friends could offer like they were made of paper.

"P-Please, I didn't, I never wanted to..." Lowell started.

Zoey grabbed him by the face and slamd him into the floor. The tile cracked beneath his head. He went limp.

Pria was running. She'd been running since the barrier went up, using it as cover to sprint for the stairwell. Her bell earrings chid with each stride as she gathered mahna for a sound spell, sothing loud enough to disorient the attacker and buy her ti to get distance.

"Sound Volu II: Shrieking..."

Zoey appeared in front of her. One mont she was standing over Lowell's unconscious body. The next she was between Pria and the stairwell door, and the spell died on Pria's lips as she stumbled to a halt.

The panda head tilted slightly. Curious.

"I was just, I only did what Reid told

to," Pria's hands were up, palms out, the universal sign of soone who had run out of options and was trying words instead. "He's the one who planned everything. I just, he asked

to make so calls and I..."

Cody snapped forward and closed around Pria's right hand. Her earring hand. The one she used to channel her sound magji. The scream that ca out of her when the hound head squeezed wasn't a spell. It was just a scream.

Only Reid was left standing.

He'd been using the ti his friends bought him to charge his gravity magji to its limit. The air around him was visibly distorted. Objects near his body were trembling, pulled toward him or pushed away by fluctuating gravitational fields. His black leather gloves humd with mahna circuits working overti.

"Gravity Volu III: Crushing World!" Reid slamd both palms toward the floor.

The gravity in the room multiplied. Everything not bolted down was pulled to the ground with trendous force. Hospital beds crunched into the tile. dical equipnt crumpled. The floor itself groaned under the sudden increase in weight.

Zoey felt it. Her body beca heavier. Her legs, which had been moving at speeds that left afterimages, slowed. Each step beca sothing she had to push through instead of glide through. It was like walking through water. Not the worst thing she'd experienced, but enough to make her acknowledge that Reid wasn't trash.

She took a step toward him. Then another. Slower than before, but not stopping.

Reid's eyes widened behind the gravitational distortion. He increased the output. The floor beneath Zoey's feet cracked from the concentrated downward force. A lesser magjistar would be kissing the floor by now, pinned flat and unable to move. Most daemons would be in the sa position. Even B-Grade threats had been brought to their knees by this spell.

Zoey took another step. Her muscles bulged further as Overdraft compensated for the increased resistance. It was like training with heavy weights. Inconvenient, not incapacitating.

"What the hell are you?" Reid whispered.

Zoey didn't answer. She took another step. Then another. Closing the distance between them at a pace that was slow by her Overdraft standards but still faster than Reid could maintain his spell while also preparing to escape.

Reid ca to a realization.

He could not win this fight.

Greer was down. Dante was down. Lowell was down. Pria was down. His gravity was slowing her but not stopping her. Her physical strength was so strong that his gravitational manipulation couldn't do anything. She was simply too strong.

Reid reversed his gravity on himself.

His body shot upward like a rocket. The ceiling above had already been weakened by the initial wall explosion, and Reid burst through it with his arms crossed over his face. Plaster, rebar, and insulation rained down as he punched through one floor, then another, then the roof of St. Elara's hospital itself. Cold air hit his face as he erupted into the sky above Brimton, blood streaming from cuts on his arms and a deep gash across his forehead where a piece of rebar had caught him.

He didn't look back. He adjusted his gravity to propel himself forward and flew.

Zoey watched him go.

'Flying is so bullshit,' Inner Zoey cursed.

'I almost had him too...' Zoey looked from the rooftop of the hospital with a frown on her face, seeing him fly off into the distance.

She leaped back to the room. Four bodies in various states of broken. Greer was conscious but couldn't move, his stone armor in pieces around him. Dante was curled on his side, both arms wrapped around his ribs, breathing in short gasps. Lowell was face down and motionless, a pool of blood slowly forming under his head from the impact with the floor. Pria was clutching her mangled hand to her chest, tears streaming silently down her face.

Baxter walked in through the hole in the wall.

He was breathing hard from the excitent. His eyes were wild and darting between each of his forr friends like a kid in a candy store trying to decide which jar to open first. The smile on his face was so wide it looked like it hurt.

"Now, where do I even begin!" Baxter laughed, clapping his hands together.

He went to Dante first. The entertainer. The one who'd made him into a punchline. Baxter crouched beside him and grabbed a fistful of his bleached hair, lifting his head off the ground.

"Hey Dante. I think I've got a good impression for you." Baxter leaned close. "It goes like this."

Baxter mimicked Dante's voice with surprising accuracy. "Did you guys hear what happened to Baxter? The fucking loser tried to show his face at the Summit and got laughed out of the building! I swear, I've never seen soone so pathetic in my entire life!"

Dante's eyes were squeezed shut. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.

"Ring any bells?" Baxter released his hair. Dante's head thudded against the floor. "Panda. His jaw."

Zoey looked at Baxter for a mont. Then Max smashed into Dante's lower face. The crack that followed was swallowed by Dante's scream. Dante's jaw hung at a disturbing angle.

"Let’s see if you make any more impressions like that," Baxter said quietly. Then he moved on.

Pria was next. The gossip. The one who'd called every contact she had to make sure Baxter couldn't settle anywhere in the state. Baxter stood over her as she held her ruined hand against her body.

"You know what was funny, Pria? I didn't even know it was you at first. When I tried to start over in Greenwick and suddenly everyone stopped returning my ssages, I thought it was just bad luck. But then it happened again in Morrow. Sa pattern. Sa sudden silence. And I thought, who do I know that has contacts in every magji community in the state?" Baxter squatted down to her level. "Just one person."

"Baxter, please..." Pria's voice was barely above a whisper.

"Please what? Please stop? Please don't hurt ? Is that what you said when you ssaged those people and told them not to associate with ? Is that the tone you used when you destroyed my chance at a normal life? Twice?"

Pria's bell earrings chid softly as her body shook.

"Her other hand." Baxter ordered.

Pria's screams echoed through the destroyed ward.

Greer was third. Baxter stood over the big man who couldn't move, whose armor was destroyed and whose mahna had been ripped away. Greer looked up at him with resignation.

"You know, Greer, I never had a problem with you personally." Baxter's tone shifted. Almost conversational. "You were always just doing what soone told you to do. Reid said jump, you jumped. Reid said beat Baxter until he can't stand, and you did. Because that's what you do, right? You're the muscle. You don't think. You just listen."

Greer said nothing.

"The problem is, you hit . You specifically. Your fists. My body. And I rember every single one."

Baxter nodded at Zoey. "His hands."

Greer didn't scream when Max and Cody went to work on his fists. He just closed his eyes and took it. That annoyed Baxter more than the screaming would have satisfied him.

Lowell was last of the four. Still face down. Still bleeding. Baxter nudged him with his foot until Lowell groaned and turned over. His glasses were gone, probably crushed sowhere under the debris. His eyes were unfocused and glassy.

"Lowell." Baxter's voice was different here. Not gleeful. Not theatrical. Sothing harder to place. "Look at ."

Lowell's eyes focused on Baxter's face. And then, for the first ti since the wall exploded, Lowell spoke clearly.

"I'm sorry." Two words. Quiet but genuine.

Baxter froze. His mouth opened and closed once. The wild energy that had been carrying him from body to body seed to stutter. Of all the things his forr friends could have said to him, of all the begging and bargaining and deflecting, an actual apology was the one thing he wasn't prepared for.

Then his face hardened.

"Too late."

Baxter pulled his foot back and kicked Lowell squarely in the ribs. Once. Twice. Three tis. Each kick accompanied by a word.

"You." Kick. "Watched." Kick. "Everything." Kick.

By the ti Baxter was done, Lowell was unconscious and Baxter was breathing like he'd just run a mile. Sweat on his face. Fists shaking at his sides.

"Are you satisfied?" Zoey's voice ca from behind the panda mask.

Baxter turned to look at her. The question seed to confuse him. Like he'd forgotten she was there. Like for the last few minutes, the entire world had been nothing but himself and the people he'd been dreaming about hurting for over a year.

"One more," he said. "One more and then I'm done."

Zoey nodded. "Then let's go find him."

The sirens were getting closer. More Peacekeepers.

"Polar. Get us out."

"On it!" Tiffany's sword carved through the outer wall in a single stroke, opening a new exit that led to the building's exterior. Wind and sunlight flooded the destroyed ward.

The three of them left through the opening. Baxter didn't look back at his forr friends this ti either.

He didn't need to. He could hear Pria sobbing and Dante choking and Greer's heavy breathing and the silence from Lowell, and all of it sounded exactly the way he'd imagined it would during all those nights alone in that shack with nothing but the dark and his thoughts.

One more.