1.8 – God, just don’t drop me!

Nathan noted the scars all around her body. Some were visible on her arms, others on her face, legs, and one giant one even on her neck.

Those weren’t there in the game. Realization struck him almost too suddenly. Whatever reason there was for the blocks in his mind, they seemed to be falling away with each passing moment, and he remembered almost all of the scenes with Vermillion Strike in them. She was cruel, far too cruel for his liking, and he fought on the forums with people who said she was excusable, that her motivations were justification for her actions.

And now here she was, standing in front of the police, apparently a hero. His head hurt.

She approached, looking him and Alicia over.

“Hello there kids. I hope you aren’t hurt. Were you here when I decimated that criminal scum?” She paused, looking them over once again. “You don’t seem to be hurt from the blast, at any rate.”

Nathan noted the strange glint in her eye. Were her powers the same as they were in the game?

She then touched both of their shoulders gently, squeezing them. To his shock, there seemed to be genuine concern on her face, and it did reach her eyes.

“We are fine, thank you for asking.” Alicia mumbled, averting her eyes.

Nathan couldn’t even get himself to say anything. He felt so completely torn out of the situation that a sense of vertigo overtook him.

“Good!” She stepped away, putting one-finger to her chin. “I think I’ve seen you somewhere. Oh! You both are students of Ako academy, right? I just knew I’ve seen you somewhere! We’ll be seeing each other soon, then.” Her lips turned into a sweet smile.

That took Nathan out of the situation more than anything. Vermillion Strike, not only a hero now, but apparently she was in the academy. That wasn’t a small thing. She was one of the main antagonists, not a minor one. Alicia was changed too, but within the parameters of his expectations, and she was just a very minor antagonist before. This was much bigger of a change.

It also had several implications. The game he had played for so long, and thought so lovingly of, was no longer a tool for prediction for this strange reincarnation he found himself in. True, he wasn’t able to remember everything, but he remembered some things, especially once he saw certain people.

But he knew now that he couldn’t rely on the information stored in his mind anymore. They could be used as a base, sure, but something strange had happened.

“We are students of Ako Academy, yes. I assume that you are a teacher?”

“That I am! I’ll be teaching you some combat classes, though I mostly only teach second years and third years!”

Not our teacher then. Not for now.

She waggled her finger in front of them. “Anyway, kids, it’s quite late, and I believe even more police will arrive. Someone should have escorted you already, but everyone is too busy apparently. Do you live far away?”

“No, just a few blocks. We ran here in like five minutes,” Alicia offered.

“Well, then!” She suddenly stepped closer, wrapping one arm around each of them, and she gave them a completely wild grin. “Let’s go! Just tell me where to drop you off!”

Before Nathan could even process what had happened, he found himself several hundred feet in the air, looking at the city below from a bird’s eye view.

“Okay, show me!” Strike ordered, looking at Alicia, laughing at their expressions. Thankfully, Nathan didn’t look like the only one who almost shat his pants. Alicia seemed almost just as scared as he was, but she shook herself and pointed her shaky finger in the direction from which they had come from.

“That way, there’s a kind of technologically enhanced house.”

“Oh, a rich girl, aren’t you? Very well then! We’ll go a bit slowly so I don’t break your necks.”

“Shouldn’t you have done that before you just flew up into the air so quickly?” Nathan asked, wondering if he was just how close he was to death for the second time in just as many days.

“Nah, harder to do something like that when we fly up, but far easier when we fly forward.” She laughed as if it was a funny thing, and then moved forward.

They continued slowly, making Nathan fall back into thinking once again.

Once he wasn’t in a situation that involved trying to understand the strange phenomena going on around him, instead of resting, he instead thought of even more phenomena. Now? he had one of the strangest things to happen to him right besides him, and so he felt it was a waste if he didn’t ask any questions that appeared in his mind.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

First off, he focused on her once again, looking her over. Her outfit was completely different than it was in the game. He remembered that she was in an organization, though he couldn’t remember the name. Red… something?

Her outfit was nowhere near as revealing in the game as it was now. While before she had worn black as well, it was a complete body suit covering her from shoulder to her toes. Now it left far less to the imagination, her hips and legs free to see for everyone.Perhaps that was the point, though? Catch the attention of the one fighting you. Try to distract them to strike in a moment when they weren’t paying attention. It made awful sense, no matter how much he disliked it.

But no, what distracted him more was the amount of scars she had. She was pristine, back in the game, and definitely not scarred to this extent, though it did give her a special kind of charm. Nathan hated to admit it, but he found her far more attractive this way.

“May I ask, where do those scars come from?”

Her smile never dying, Vermillion Strike looked at him, and then she looked back ahead. “From several fights I had with villains. Of course, they are dead. The one I fought today didn’t give me one, at least, but I almost die in a lot of fights. Super villains aren’t that easy to kill, and they don’t play fair. Remember that.”