Ch31 Refried

 

“Dude! This is insane!” exclaimed Tim.

“It is indeed ‘insane’,” I agreed. I was lying, but agreeing in this situation was the proper social response.

 

Tim had received a notification while we were eating, from one of his ‘webzines’, one that specialized in hero information for the “outer east sectors.” Apparently it was a ‘fan publication’ that Tim used frequently, to keep abreast of new information about the heroes of E13 and the surrounding sectors. I had him link me the address; it sounded wonderfully useful.

 

The notification had been due to an update on the villain Trebla’s ‘blog’. The footage of his fight vs the heroes earlier today had been posted shortly after the fight had concluded, but the notification that alerted Tim was due to the second video to be posted on the site: Ifrit’s and my fight with the sidekicks. The four of us were now huddled around his phone to watch, although Cindy and I for different reasons than entertainment. I was just keeping up appearances of being an “interested teenager,” while Cindy… looked a bit pale and worried, actually. Hopefully there was nothing in the video that would give away her ‘civilian identity’. It would cast suspicion on Mikey and I to be working with a “powered” criminal… although I doubted Tim would suspect his best friend. The “best friend” designation seemed to give a lot of leeway on social issues; Mikey and Tim often traded insults, but treated them as if they were telling jokes.

 

“Aw dammit. That’s Jennifer,” said Tim, his excitement over the video suddenly subdued.

“Jennifer?” asked Cindy.

“The girl with the glowy weapons. She went to our school,” said Tim.

Mikey elbowed Tim in the ribs, “Dude not so loud, and don’t go blurting that everywhere.”

Tim elbowed him back before saying, “She’s already out jeez, she triggered in the middle of her fencing match; everybody saw.”

“Still man, you never know how far it’s spread. Some idiots might not even think to check until they hear a rumor. If the wrong person hears…”

“I think she’ll be fine, look at her,” said Tim, pointing at the screen.

 

Poena (or Jennifer Heartly as it were) was indeed doing fine for most of the fight, although that was mostly because we hadn’t been aiming to kill her. She, however, was taking full advantage of the fact that her power didn’t kill, and on the screen she stabbed Ifrit, which set off the explosion (with appropriate exclamations of surprise coming from Mikey and Tim), and from there things went more or less fine, with only the minor hiccup of having Human.exe forcibly shut down. I was glad to see that even with Human.exe shut down, my actions didn’t look too weird from an outside perspective.

 

…Right up until I glanced at the others. Tim was staring at the screen with his eyes wide and mouth open, and Mikey was doing the same except he was looking at me instead of the video. Sigh, that was going to be a conversation later. And why was Cindy staring at me too? She was there! She saw most of it first hand!

 

I reviewed what I remembered from the fight. Sure, I used a lot of tendrils trying to grapple the shifter, and in a couple spots my limbs bent unnaturally, but that was normal for a shapeshifter, right? And I hadn’t permanently injured anyone! A few broken bones maybe, but bones were nothing; bones healed easy.

 

“Wow,” exclaimed Tim, finally breaking out of his daze. “I… can’t decide if that was terrible, or karmic justice.”

Mikey and Cindy turned their stares to Tim, before Mikey snorted and patted Tim’s shoulder. “Definitely a bit of both dude.”

“Karmic justice? Am I missing something?” asked Cindy.

Tim and Mikey explained their less than pleasant experiences with Jennifer to Cindy, whereupon Cindy got a thoughtful look on her face before asking, “Jennifer… Heartly?”

“Yup, that’s her,” confirmed Tim, “You know her?”

“ I remember her. She was a grade-A bitch back in middle school,” said Cindy.

“Well, not much changed,” confirmed Mikey.

“True evil is timeless, unless you throw it in a volcano,” said Tim, looking up at the roof as he stroked his chin. I didn’t understand what he meant, but it must have been a joke of some sort because both Mikey and Cindy snickered at it.

 

We finished our meal, and Tim tried to suggest our plan for Alley Run, but it seemed both Mikey and Cindy weren’t up for it. Mikey had been moving boxes all day, and Cindy had of course been fighting the sidekicks with me, although we didn’t say as much. We settled on instead trying some of the other games at the VRcade, stuff that required less walking. Seems they also had a few non-VR games like Gribblins n’ Ghouls.

 

I was discussing Gribblin Tamer with Tim on the way back to the VRcade. Strangely enough he didn’t play Gribblin Tamer himself, claiming that he didn’t like touch screen controls, but there was apparently a ‘console attachment’ you could buy that turned your phone into a true portable console, as well as providing access to a wider variety of games. He pulled his out of his device bag, and showed me how it worked. I wanted one, and Tim said I could buy them at the mall, but they were expensive. I looked regretfully at the bag of candy I was carrying. I… may have spent too much on snacks lately. Hopefully the money for the Trebla job came in soon.

 

I was still getting used to the fact that there were things of worth besides food, weapons, and allies. At this point, I had satisfied most of my survival needs; I had allied with a powerful faction, I had made large strides in improving my combat utility, and I had stockpiled enough energy that I was no longer watching my reserves constantly.

 

Mass at 298% norm.

Energy reserves = 25 days continued operation.

 

Humans pursued objectives that weren’t survival based once all their needs were being met. I didn’t have an interest in most of them; ‘Careers’, ‘sex’, and ‘drugs’ were all irrelevant to me. Scientific pursuits were useful and interesting, but considering the massive headstart humans had, it was more efficient to leave that to scientists and tinkers. For now I would simply continue my research into video games. I had seen them as a way to train for possible scenarios, but humans saw them almost entirely as entertainment, so it was a good starting point to bridge the gap between our ways of thinking. I’d need to divert a few more resources to this goal, instead of funneling everything into acquiring fuel.

 

Still, candy was pretty great.

 

I picked a piece of ‘rock candy’ out of my bag, and ate it slowly. If I mixed a few small flakes of metal in with the candy, it made a strangely satisfying, metallic-sounding screech against my teeth when I crunched down on it. I crunched through a few more pieces of candy, but was then startled when some organic screeches coming from the mall were added to the cacophony in my mouth. The others also noticed, and we moved to the banister that separated the walkway from a multi-story drop.

 

Below us, a swarm of rats was emerging from one of the stores on the bottom floor. They were in pursuit of a small crowd of people, and after a few moments an evacuation warning announcing a rat swarm was broadcasted over the mall’s PA system. Strangely, I noticed several humans did not heed the warning until they saw the rat swarm themselves.

 

“Whoa, I’ve never seen a swarm that big before,” said Tim. I had to agree; I saw sixty-five rats down there and counting.

“And in broad daylight? They must be desperate,” replied Mikey.

 

Indeed, the swarm was acting strangely. In my experience they hated bright lights, and would attempt to single out a weak target to gang up on using their superior numbers. The rats below were attacking more like individuals than a group, simply picking the closest targets to themselves and rushing them. Even stranger was that the rats were ignoring some easy targets in favor of targeting some of the larger mutants in the crowd. Utterly bizarre, why would they target a seven foot tall mutant with spiked ridges on his arms instead of a three foot tall normal child?

 

“Jeezus, what the hell are they doing?” exclaimed Mikey, “I’ve never seen them this riled up before.”

“S-should we call nine-one-one?” asked Tim unsteadily.

“They’re already on their way if they announced an evacuation,” said Cindy. She was tapping the banister while scowling down at the swarm.

“We should get going as well,” I said, beginning to herd them away from the banister and towards the nearest exit. Seriously, humans never seemed to react quite as fast as I would like them to.

 

The next exit was located a few stores down, and we turned into a hallway that led to elevators and stairs. On some floors the hallways would also lead to a bridge that connected to surrounding buildings, but there wasn’t one on this floor. We were heading for the stairs when one of the elevators ahead of us dinged and opened.

 

And out fell a huge rat. It wasn’t as big as the one that had chased me in the sewer, not by half, but it had barely fit into the elevator. And its face was wrong. Stitches turned its face into a mash of features, and its fur had been removed in other places to allow for larger stitchwork along its spine. Inefficient and sloppy stitchwork. Its muscles were being pulled at bad angles which made its movement stiff and jerky. It sort of gave the impression that it was wearing a rat disguise. A bad one.

 

Inferior design.

Estimated threat: low.

 

I wouldn’t bet my bag of candy that this rat was made by whoever made the bioweapons, but if I did, I’d feel confident in my bet.

 

“Uh, um, that, uh…” sputtered Tim, who had frozen at the sight of it. 

“That’s a huge fucking rat,” said Mikey.

 

Eh, it was big. But I’d seen bigger. More importantly was how to handle this situation. Killing this thing would be easy for me or Cindy, but we couldn’t do so in front of Tim without compromising our civilian identities. Maybe Cindy could lead Tim and Mikey out of the mall while I handled the rat? Or maybe I could kill it while Tim wasn’t looking.

 

The rat decided for me. After it settled itself into a better stance it sniffed the air, and its gaze slowly drifted over to us, before locking onto Cindy. Damn, I had detected that Cindy was a mutant through smell myself, and it seemed the rat was able to determine that as well. Seems this swarm really was targeting mutants.

 

“Yeah, that doesn’t look friendly,” said Mikey.

“It’s not. We should start running,” I confirmed. Running would buy me time to figure out how to kill this thing without Tim seeing me do it.

 

It still took a moment to snap Mikey and Tim out of whatever daze they were experiencing, but the rat let out a broken skrre-eek and that got them all running at top speed. We ran back out of the elevator hall and turned back towards the food court, the large rat lumbering right behind us.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

 

Around us, other parts of the mall were starting to get a bit chaotic. The rat following us wasn’t the only large one, and while the larger mutants were fending off the small rats decently well, the big ones gave them trouble. There were also plenty of mutants with only minor mutations, such as extra eyes or limbs, who were no good at combat. A couple people being attacked by rats looked completely normal, but I suspected they had less visible mutations, similar to Cindy.

 

Our feet pounded the floor as we ran ahead of the stitched rat, but I was already noticing a problem. Tim was no good at running, and Mikey and Cindy were both starting to flag below their maximum speeds, still tired from the long day of activity. The rat wasn’t fast in comparison to the non-stitched variety, but it was still fast enough to keep up with us even if it couldn’t reach us. I made sure I was at the back of the group to intercept it just in case.

 

We arrived at the food court, which in the short amount of time we had been away, had devolved into utter chaos. Rats were attacking any mutants they saw, as well as ransacking the food stands. Seems whatever had been done to them couldn’t completely override their instincts.

 

This was less than ideal. There was an exit from the mall at the back of the food court, but we would have to traverse the entirety of the food court to get there. Easily done if the goal was to stay alive, but I also did not want to compromise our civilian identities, nor let Tim and Mikey get injured.

 

The large stitched rat arrived behind us, skidding to a halt in confusion at all the noise and activity, and we were forced to enter the food court to keep away from it. Mikey grabbed an abandoned food tray and flung it at the rat to buy time. In its diminished capacity I doubted it even registered the hit, but the food on the tray distracted it.

 

“Where… gasp… should we go?” asked Tim.

“Back of the food court, grab anything you can to fight with,” I replied.

“And dude, drop the duffel,” added Mikey. Tim had been running with the heavy, device filled bag.

“No way… gasp… it took too long to get all… gasp… of these,” replied Tim.

 

I grabbed the bag from him since it wouldn’t hinder me, and we began traversing the food court quickly. Unfortunately there wasn’t much on hand to use as weapons besides food trays, although they were better than using one of my knives since I could use them to bat rats away. Cindy began knocking rats off anyone we passed, and Mikey and I followed suit. It was a good idea since the mutants would join our group and made a good meat shield. The larger rat was still following behind us slowly, and I made sure to chuck food at it whenever possible to distract it. Whoever it was that modified the rats had certainly made them a lot dumber; the originals would never have fallen for such an obvious deception (although, the originals would probably have just taken the food and run to begin with).

 

We got closer and closer to the exit, but the rats were starting to cluster around us; there were simply too many mutants in one spot for them to ignore, and despite how stupid they were acting there was still a lot of them. We needed a way to split the growing swarm.