ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-THREE: Ripples IV

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It was loud. The helicopter was still overhead, and a car alarm was going off. The rush of the wind had been joined by the sound of water sheeting down the pavement as it followed the slope of the bridge toward Apex. Somewhere behind Alden, a man was screaming profanities so vehemently that he sounded unhinged.

But despite all of that, there was a kind of shocked hush from most people in the immediate aftermath of the…

What was that? Alden wondered as he shucked his poncho and let it fall. The plastic had ripped almost completely in half along his chest, probably from catching on some part of the bike or car as he scrambled away from the water. He wanted full-coverage armor now.

Saving his powers was important, but under the circumstances, he wasn’t willing to be stingy with them anymore. Shielding his body wouldn’t protect him from drowning, but for all he knew, the ocean was about to pick up a tugboat and throw it at him.

He plunged his hand into his messenger bag and grabbed the second poncho.

Shit. I didn’t lose entrustment, did I? He was actually great at following skill rules, even when he was distracted. They’d become second nature. But what had just happened was a major distraction. If he’d accidentally rolled around on top of the bag and lost skin contact at the same time, if it had been temporarily airborne during that drop…

He focused, wrapping his skill’s magic around both bag and poncho at the same time, preserving them then hastily undoing it so that the strain of holding two separate objects with Bearer wouldn’t start to take a toll.

Good.

Preserving part of an entrusted stack—or a single item from inside an entrusted bag in this case—would normally end entrustment on the non-preserved portion. Alden was redefining his burden when he did that, separating it out from the things that would no longer be under his protection. What he’d just done was his way of making sure that he could bear the poncho and the bag separately from now on. Two burdens instead of one.

He slicked his hair back in a partially successful effort to make it stop dripping in his eyes, then threw on the poncho, ignoring the arm holes and just wearing it over himself like a big plastic bag.

He’d accomplished his manual wardrobe change quickly.

His heart was still drumming with adrenaline. People were still picking themselves or their companions up from where they’d fallen, looking around with confusion and fear.

Alden’s eyes landed on a pink stiletto heel on the pavement nearby. He had the beginnings of a thought about how the owner must have abandoned it because it was bad for running, but he promptly forgot to wonder about something that mundane. The water rushing past the shoe was starting to interact with it oddly. The liquid piled around and on top of the stiletto, like it wanted to cover it.

He stared as more and more water snuggled up to the shoe until it was a vaguely stiletto-shaped blob nearly as tall as his knees.

Oceanic anomalies. Avoid seawater.

I’m currently drenched in seawater.

His poncho had helped with the light rain, but it hadn’t done nearly as much for him when it was ripped and all of the icy water that had crawled up to encase that lamppost had suddenly decided to let go. His jeans were soaked to the hips, and his shirt was saturated. His few dry spots weren’t going to stay that way for long.

Some freaky magic thing is going on. Is just being wet dangerous? Should I strip and try to dry off right away?

But I need to keep up with everyone.

The splash of approaching footsteps drew his attention to Dee, who’d been clinging to a van a couple of car lengths behind him.

“Are you all right!?” She shouted the question way too loud in his face.

“Yes!”

“Let’s go! Let’s run. I don’t think my bicycle is the best choice with this much flowing water.” She picked the bike up anyway and lifted it over her head as she started forward. “Stick to the center of the bridge!”

The bridge.

“Is it okay?” Alden asked, hurrying after her. Their feet kicked up small waves. “The bridge dropped, right? Is it broken?”

It looked all right to him, but the thing about bridges was you couldn’t really see what was going on below them when you were standing on top of them.

“All I know is we’re not at the bottom of the ocean. Since neither of us can fly, let’s hope the pontoons and the anchoring are all still doing whatever it is they do!” She was a lot less composed than earlier. She kept running fast then stopping for him to catch up. “You can’t fly, can you? Not holding that one back?”

“No. I’m a Rabbit. I preser—”

“Ha! Good one! Not the time for jokes, though! There’s chaos attacking right now.”

“It’s not chaos,” said Alden. “This is just magic of some kind.”

The watery assault hadn’t touched his authority. Nothing on the bridge was being degraded or transformed in any way he could see.

And he was so grateful for that he couldn’t put it into words.

Is the System holding it back somehow? Is it still out there at Matadero?

Dee stopped beside a hatchback that had water crawling up the wheels, watching it cautiously. “I really want to blast this and see what happens. So I’ll know just in case…”

Alden was looking ahead of him as he ran past her, trying to spot his classmates. Klein had already carried Jupiter, Everly, and Njeri forward to tighten up the group. Maricel had been with the instructor when the water had risen. As for the front runners, they were probably blasting toward Apex even faster now. They’d be off the bridge in no time.

I should be able to see the guys at least. Haoyu, Lexi, Kon. Where’s Mehdi’s lion coat?

He wasn’t too worried yet since he could feel the weight of his entruster’s presence up ahead. Precise distance wasn’t so easy to determine, but direction was. If Haoyu had fallen off the bridge somehow, Alden would know.

A woman suddenly appeared out of thin air thirty yards ahead of him, distracting him from his search. Her bare calves were sticking out from the bottom of a fluffy white bathrobe. Her feet were shoved into a pair of boots similar to the ones Lucille had worn for the obstacle course. All of that, plus her teal hair whipping around freely in the wind, made her look exactly like someone who’d just been given a few seconds warning before the System stole her away from a peaceful night in.

Plopstar.

She leaped onto the roof of a minibus in a single bound and turned to face the west. She lifted her arms over her head.

[Warning: Hazard in your area. Do not interfere with Avowed on assignment. Avowed on assignment are indicated on your interface.]

A dark red interface-generated halo, very similar to the targeting halo Alden had previously used except for the color, appeared over Plopstar’s head.

Some distance away, tiny white lights formed high out over the water—more than Alden could quickly count. A crackling sound filled the air as they expanded and gained a fuzzy quality, like the edges were blurring into the air around them.

They shot toward the waves all at once, so fast and bright that they left trails in their wake. When they hit the surface, they burst. There was a sharp, loud pop of sound, and steam boiled up instantly, the white cloud of it lit from beneath with the rapid flashes of the hyperbole’s magic as it ricocheted around down there, still burning hot.

Assuming Alden’s knowledge about Plopstar’s skill was up to date and she was using it to full effect, the area she’d just fried was the size of a couple of city blocks. Through the thick white steam, he couldn’t see what effect it was having on the ocean other than heat generation. Was there something down there to hit? Was she punishing a bad patch of water?

He didn’t have time to stop and admire her work.

As he sprinted by her, another field of tiny stars was forming over the ocean, and up ahead, as if to mirror them, the lights of helicopters and spells rose above Apex as people sought the safety of the sky.

******

A minute later, Alden was dashing past a truck with the name of a flooring company painted on the side when he spotted a girl in a pink shirt and a denim skirt trying to open the latch on the door of the trailer.

“Maricel!”

She was so focused on her task she didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, she said something in Tagalog and threw her right hand up into the air swiftly. A clamor of violent bangs sounded from inside. The whole trailer bounced on its tires and rocked back and forth.

Maricel was still facing the truck. She leaped back into Alden’s lane, swept her hand through the air hard again, and the door burst open violently. Stone slabs and tiles crashed onto the pavement right behind the trailer. A pink granite countertop, dragging a wooden A-frame it had been strapped to with it, smashed into everything else with a clatter then broke free of the frame and flipped over onto the empty car parked behind the flooring truck.

The end of it went right through the windshield.

A couple of witnesses yelled, none of them as loud as Maricel herself.

Alden dashed toward her. “Maricel!”

She spun to face him; her brown eyes were huge.

“I thought it would be little things!” she said. “Like the sidewalk bricks at school!”

She made a gesture with her hands in front of her, as if she were trying to show him an imaginary, innocently-sized paver.

“Where’s Klein?” Alden asked. “The others—”

“He got teleported before we caught up to them. Before the water did that…Alden, the bridge felt like it was falling!”

Up ahead, Dee was bounding along with the bike in her arms. She didn’t seem to realize she was leaving them behind yet, but Alden wasn’t worried about it. The uni student had been checking over her shoulder for him every few seconds.

“What do you mean he got teleported? He just told me he’d reject it.”

“He couldn’t. It wasn’t a rescue teleport. It was an official emergency summons to help somewhere else. He barely had time to give me this.”

She held up Mehdi’s infogear watch.

The small screen flared, and an incongruously soothing voice announced that the neighborhoods around Nilama Marina should be avoided due to heavy flooding.

“The System has also ordered local evacuations of the following areas due to increasing risks,” the voice said. “In Apex: Punta de la Luna, Albatross Cove, Sānjiǎo Beach…”

So the bridge gets Plopstar, and somewhere else gets Klein, thought Alden while the voice kept naming locations.

Maricel turned back to look at what she’d just done. A small cloud of dust was hanging over the scene of the crime. “I saw the word ‘flooring,’ and I thought there would probably be something I could use. But I couldn’t see inside. I didn’t mean to break—”

“It’s fine. Let’s just go.”

“Wait! I want something. In case the water comes again.”

Oh, thought Alden.

She was trying to find a way to fly. That sounded awesome, but…

But you can’t move as fast while using your shaping. There was a reason we helped haul all that dirt around the track instead of letting you do it yourself. What if you wear yourself out? Do you have some idea of how much your skill has recovered since gym earlier? That countertop looks heavy, and if we start piling bodies on top of it, how much weight can you hold? Is it worth it to try this, or should we keep running and trust the bridge?

Alden had questions, but no time to stand around figuring out answers.

Let other people decide what to do with their own magic, he told himself. She knows her powers better than you do, and you’ve got enough to worry about on your end of things.

“Hey!” Dee shouted. She’d realized Alden was lagging, and she was motioning for them with an arm.

Maricel lifted the counter into the air. The night was turning white from all the steam Plopstar’s skill was creating.

Alden’s timer said he had a little under five minutes left until he got to leave. If he was going to help Maricel with the countertop using his own skill, it would take him a couple of minutes to secure a slab of stone with some of his supplies and even start running with it. So he was out.

“All right. You bring it with us. But do it really fast?” he suggested. “We need to catch the others.”

Dee was back with them in an instant.

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“Aha!” she said upon spotting the pink granite slab floating in front of them. “I see what you’re thinking, but we need to move. I know Shapers like to have a lot of control, but you can push for speed instead. Unless you’re going to ride it? That might be a good idea if you want to make your own way. Or if you could take Alden’s weight all the way to shore, too…”

“I’m all right running,” Alden said. “My timer is coming pretty soon.”

An odd look crossed Dee’s face at that, but she was more focused on Maricel.

“I was going to try to get to the others and help everyone,” said Maricel. “So that if the bridge falls or the water…climbs back up here?…we have something.”

“Out over the water then!” said Dee, pointing. “If you don’t have time for control, keep it out over the ocean and if it falls it falls, okay?”

“Yes!” said Maricel. “Yes. Okay. I see.”

“The instructor’s gone,” Alden reported as they set off again. “He got summoned to do something.”

Dee froze for a split second. “I wondered! That’s better than him getting taken by the chaos water. Um…so it’s just us now. And the others if we catch them. I’ll stay with you all. Let’s keep at it!”

It’s not chaos water. I guess I might’ve thought so too if I didn’t know much of anything about chaos….

The Disaster Alert notices were still listing the probability of chaos exposure as low.

Maricel’s power was stronger if she was close to the thing she was shaping, so they crossed the highway again and ran along the eastern edge of the bridge. Alden was out in front now; Dee was at the back. They were both trying to make sure Maricel could run without worrying about impediments. The countertop was soaring along beside them like a magic carpet, occasionally shooting forward rapidly then stopping as Maricel tried to find a rhythm that would be easier on her.

If the bridge so much as quivered, she would pull it back in and they would climb aboard.

 

[Disaster Update: Oceanic anomalies resulting from spill of a magical contaminant at Matadero continue.]

 

Alden kicked an abandoned backpack out of their path. Rain slid off of his poncho. He kept preserving it and unpreserving it, trying to get the shape right for running.

[Observed effects include: forced submersion—usually but not always of elementally defined objects, rapid motion of submerged materials, sudden influxes of water in limited coastal areas]

 

His timer hit the three minute mark. He whipped his head around, trying to see through the rapidly thickening white mist. He felt like he was running through a humidifier. There were no more motorcycles or mopeds going by anymore. That was a good thing, since it lessened the risk of them being mowed down, but at the same time, it made the bridge feel deader.

Almost there. We have to be getting closer.

“Listen!” he shouted back to the others. “I’m getting teleported out soon. Before we hit the end of the bridge. Should I—?”

Haoyu.

Alden suddenly realized he was very nearby now. Still up ahead but not far. To the left a little.

“Haoyu!” he called.

He should be way ahead of us. Why isn’t he?

“Haoyu!”

“Alden?”

A moment after Haoyu’s reply came toward him, there was a thump as a pair of feet landed on the roof of a car two lanes over. Mehdi. His coat was gone, and the thin black t-shirt he’d been wearing underneath was starting to sag at the neck from its own sodden weight.

“Is Klein with you?” he demanded.

Alden was relieved to see any member of the class looking unharmed. “No! He’s gone. Teleported!”

Mehdi groaned.

“Why aren’t you moving forward?” Dee shouted.

“There was a kind of traffic pileup. We only just sorted it out. By the way, if we break some things doing a good deed how much trouble do we get in?”

******

Alden ran up on a scene so superheroical that he might have stopped to stare at it on another day. Crunched vehicles were in a pile against the barrier. A compact car had been sliced in thirds, then the thirds had been moved. Mehdi’s coat was draped over one of them. Another car with a crushed side, deployed airbags, and the driver door ripped off was sitting in the road.

There was Haoyu, crawling out of one of the wrecked cars and handing a purse to a short lady with gray hair and a pair of infogear glasses hanging from a beaded loop around her neck. She patted his arm and said something in a language Alden didn’t recognize, but it was probably some version of “What a nice young man, you are!”

There was Lexi with one sleeve of his shirt torn, standing in the rain with Writher blazing around him, sizzling whenever a drop touched it.

And there was Kon, blood pouring from his nose and mouth as he looked down at something in his palm.