When Michael woke up again there was definitely sothing different about him. He wasn't a different person, so to speak, but sothing in his eyes had changed.
Perhaps there was a glint of confidence in there. Perhaps a hint of pride at having made it past F-rank, a feat that not just anybody could brag about. Until just recently, most people had never even gotten the chance to Awaken before being ripped to shreds by monsters or dying of starvation, exposure, thirst, suicide, or homicide. Reaching E-rank was an amazing accomplishnt, at least on current Earth.
"How's it feel?" Eik asked him.
"It's… amazing. I can't wait to get to D-rank!" he answered enthusiastically, looking at his own hand as he clenched and unclenched his fist over and over.
"Alright, alright, calm that horse, man," Eik laughed. "How about we get out of here first?"
"Is it ti to go?" he asked, getting to his feet. The characteristic look of worry sneaking back into his eyes.
"Yeah, maybe we should just get it over with," Heath said, his knee moving up and down restlessly as he stared at the ground in front of him. Eik put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. It was scary to go back there not knowing what the hell was going on on the other side.
Heath grabbed one of the fleshy mbranes cut from the back of the overgrown tadpole and forced himself to take several swigs of the foul water. Eik had killed everything inside with Profound Toxin and they had yet to get sick. He pulled a face as the liquid went down his throat.
"Uuh, Heath, if we're going back now then why don't you just wait to get so actually tasty water at headquarters?"
The realization made the tank do a spit take and he threw the balloons like skin sack to the ground where it burst and spilled its contents everywhere. "Crap, you're right! Gah!"
Eik picked up the stone badge and rubbed in between his fingers. He held it between his hands, his thumbs gripping it on each side, ready to break it in two. "Are you guys ready?" he asked.
He looked between each of his friends, their faces tense with dread. "Do it," Sonja breathed.
He nodded and put strength into his grip. With a crack like a dry biscuit, the badge snapped.
Imdiately there was no apparent magical effects following the break. No bright teleportation circle with strange, runic scribbles or mystical diagram accompanied whooshing sound. Just… nothing.
"I, uhm… Did I do it incorrectly, or?" Eik muttered with concerned hesitation.
"I an, it looked right to ," Sonja said, coming over to look at the two fragnts in Eik's hands. "That's how I would have done it too."
"Don't tell we're going to be stuck here?" Michael exclaid. "We'd have to eat striders and hunt for those damn tadpoles things to get anything to dri—"
With the sudden sound of sothing tearing, a thin incision ripped through space. A second later, it broadened into the now familiar sight of a fracture. For a long while they just stood there, waiting for sothing to happen. The fracture hung there as they watched, hands ready on the handles of their weapons.
"Should we just go through?" Heath asked, standing in front of the swirling portal, shield raised protectively in front of his friends huddled behind him.
"I think so, yeah," Eik said. "I doubt it's going to hang around forever, and if it disappears we won't have another one of these to summon another," he said, holding up the two sides of the broken badge.
"Alright, then, let's go!" Heath said and led the way. "Follow . I'll go through first."
Eik went through after him, keeping a firm grip on the tank's shoulder. Michael held on to him and Sonja on to the healer. The vertigo was barely noticeable at this point. They had employed fractures nurous tis within a short amount of ti so their bodies had grown accustod to the sensation and no longer associated it with an overwhelming urge to vomit everywhere.
"Mikla?" Eik heard Heath ask as his own ears and eyes were still adjusting to the new environnt. He couldn't yet tell exactly where they had landed but it was dark and quiet, the sound of their footsteps echoing off walls. There was a stale sll of the indoors that contrasted noticeably with the fresh air he had been inhaling just a mont ago.
As his eyes got used to the darkness, he beca aware of several pulsing lights around his periphery, as well as one bright source right in front of them.
"Mikla!" Heath called, a little louder this ti. They had co out of the sa fracture as they had entered through — fracture number three from the left — the lights in the periphery of his vision coming from the other portals. Breaking that stone badge must have sohow linked up with their original portal
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A small lamp stood on a table, illuminating Mikla's face as he woke up. Judging by his slumped position and the groggy eyes through which he looked at them, he had been waiting for them there for a good while. A mug of sothing stood half empty on the table next to a plate covered with crumbs and globs of dressing.
"Guys…?" Mikla managed as he sat up properly. "Oh, you're back! Well done!" he praised. From a bag leaning against a table leg he pulled a couple of containers of water. "Can I offer so of this? I was told that the testing area you went to didn't have the best options for water."
"I love you," Heath said as he took the water and greedily started gulping down the cool liquid. "Do you have sothing to eat as well?" he asked and passed the water to Eik.
Mikla pulled sandwiches out of his pack for all of them and Eik quietly thanked the universe for the Nidafjeld Alliance's bread traditions.
"So, how did it go?" the fracture specialist asked as he opened another fracture. "I know soone got through the fracture after you guys, but Atla seed certain that you would be able to handle it. I guess she was right," he grinned.
No, no," Eik said, stopping the man. "Tell us how it went out here first. We were afraid of coming back in case there was an all out fight going on or sothing."
Mikla looked back over his shoulder as he entered the portal. "Don't worry. It wasn't quite as complicated a we initially feared. But maybe Atla should be the one to explain," he said and disappeared through the fracture.
Eik stepped out on the other side after Sonja and Heath, entering a well-lit, fully furnished room with high ceilings and large windows. In the middle was a solid long table of wood. On one side of the table sat Atla with her nose buried in docunts, a sharply dressed man on the other as they appeared to be discussing the contents of the docunts. His focus was on her finger as she pointed at sothing on one of the pages.
"You're back!" she exclaid, a beaming smile conquering her face as she saw them. "Even earlier than I expected. How was it?"
Like lightning from a cloudless sky, anger struck Eik, burying itself in the pit of his stomach and sending a flash of heat racing up through his skin and terminating in his face. He ramd his fist into an end table that stood peacefully next to the humming fracture.
It looked fragile but he still stopped for a mont when a web of cracks flared out from the impact site. To think he was now capable of nearly imitating what Rock Fist Bart had done to the walnut counter in his store. It was almost enough to frighten him but recent events had heightened his threshold for stuff like that.
A vase of twisted glass with a multicolored bouquet of flowers stuffed into it wobbled and fell to the floor and broke with a crash, the sound slamming the rage back into him. "What the hell was that?" he bellowed, taking a step forward toward Atla whose gleeful expression had fallen. "We nearly got killed! Why? How could you let her co after us again?"
The sharply dressed man stood up slowly, getting into a ready stance, but Atla stopped him with a raised hand. "Let's finish this so other ti. I'll contact you later, alright?"
He nodded and swept aside a lock of gray hair, his eyes never leaving Eik. He exited, leaving his work on the table. Atla watched him leave and waited for the door to close behind him before she turned to face them.
Without a word she bowed deeply, almost to a ninety degree angle. Her long, bubblegum pink hair fell over her head and nearly swept across the floor. The place looked clean enough that it probably wouldn't have mattered anyway.
"On behalf of myself and everyone who failed to predict and stop this incident before it happened, I apologize. The Nidafjeld Alliance believed, erroneously, that the matter had been handled and that the danger had passed." Her voice had beco that of a stiff diplomatic official rather than the bubbly amusent that usually characterized her deanor.
"But why? How could she co after us again so easily like that?" Eik asked, powerless frustration mixing into his anger.
Atla made a face. "When nka Tokanami ca after you back then and was knocked unconscious, Goran Gehun took her into custody and sought to have her prosecuted. Do you rember him? Vice leader of the 6th squad of the 11th division of the Departnt of Internal Conduct of the Nidafjeld Allia—"
"Yes, yeah, of course we rember!" Eik snapped before she could finish speaking. "We almost got killed! So what then?"
"Right, right… Well, in the end her family arrived to plead montary insanity due to the shock of learning of her son's brutal death. She was ordered to pay restitution to you, which I will be handing over to you today, by the way. It was concluded that she likely wouldn't co after you again."
"That's all?" Sonja exclaid, disbelief clear in her voice. "She nearly killed us and that's all that happened?"
"While the Tokanami family is not particularly powerful in the alliance overall today, they are a rather old family whose na gained great respect in the past when they had mbers more powerful than they do currently," Atla said.
"So they leveraged the power of their family to get her excused?" Michael asked. "That's so unfair!"
"That happens on Earth too, Mikey," Heath sighed. "And it did before there were ever any super powers too, unfortunately."
"So what's going to happen to her now? And us?" Eik asked, hot flas of anger still running through him. "Is she coming back again in a week's ti for a third round?"
Atla offered a weak smile that was probably ant to be reassuring. "Not this ti, Eik. That I can promise."
"How the hell can you promise sothing like that?" he shouted.
"Because I talked to Goran Gehun a couple of hours ago. The judge was the sa one who let nka go the first ti around and she apparently didn't enjoy having her forgiveness underestimated. nka Tokanami has been sentenced to death."
Eik's eyebrows shot up, her words catching him by surprise. "Wait, I—… Really? She's really been sentenced to death?" His eyes flickered to his friends whose faces were no less taken aback than himself.
"She has, yes. She is going to die and she won't be able to co after you anymore."
Michael stumbled toward the long table, Eik following him to slump into a high-backed chair. "Damn…" he mumbled as Heath and Sonja sunk into chairs next to his. "I thought we were going to be killed when we ca back."
" too," Heath said.
"I'm still not convinced that I'm not already dead," Michael muttered, leaning against the table.
"You're not dead and you won't die today," Atla said with a smile. "Now, who wants to see the rewards? Two tis compensation and the reward for the rescue mission!"
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