Chapter 371: Looking for Sisters

It takes about a week to find the exact spot in the desert where the twins disappeared a while back. Takes even longer to pinpoint the floating island that they’d technically been standing on at the time, and since I don’t know if the system sends people back based on geographical coordinates or the spot their feet were touching, we have to survey both.

That involves dealing with a certain party-hosting rich asshole. One that’s suddenly without Preservation bodyguards thanks to their all-hands order that’s got Call stuck at their headquarters as well. Can’t say I wasn’t looking forward to a very quick fight, but this works too; we get an easy prisoner if he shows up, and if he doesn’t, then things go extremely smoothly.

I tap out a message to Call before sending my Class Card away. Jumble nods down at the grounded island surrounded by electric fences and automated cannons. Neither look like they’ve been maintained all that well.

“Can those things get taken by the apocalypse?” she asks.

“If they’re technically machines, then yes. Definitely for the cannons and maybe for the fence,” I kneel at her side and squint down at the crackling perimeter. “I bet the generator for the fence would turn first, but I don't know if that’d spread to all the fences. Equal chances yes and no.”

Gil shakes his head as he steps out of a rippling portal. “Your answer’s yes; I’ve been in a few situations like this before, so trust me, anything with a long reach is more annoying than its worth. How’s it looking? Did rich boy manage to pay off some Preservation goons to stay with him?”

“Not that we’ve seen. Honestly, we haven’t seen much of anything. See down there?” I motion at the concert venue. “There’s a makeshift patrol path along the top of that, but nobody’s been out to patrol since we got here. How’re things at the desert?”

Gil crouches down behind a bush and squints to get a better look. “About as exciting as they were when you were there. Slice and Slosh are standing by right now, and I’ve confirmed that they don’t have the necessary brain bits to be controlled by a standard psychic. Even if Gasp is way more powerful than we expect, it’ll take her a few seconds to adjust to the new physiology.”

A warm wind crawls through the underbrush, blowing the insinuations Gil left hanging out of the way. We’re pretty sure that Ava, Gasp, and the twins will be at least friendly with us. Considering that they all owe their lives to me and Noland from the shitshow at the party, I’d hope that they consider us more than friends. And the hard truth is that we could really use a psychic or two of our own right about now.

But if they’re hostile for whatever reason, then Slice will deal with them. The desert’s been nuked once or twice before. It’ll survive another.

“Ohp, motion, get down,” Jumble hisses and ducks into a bush.

I can’t see exactly what she’s referencing, but the insistence in her voice brings my head down into twigs and leaves. Gil grunts as two separate twigs poke into one nostril, then snaps the both of them and gently places them on the ground. Jumble carefully pushes the foliage away so she can make out whatever’s moving down there, then signals for us to be quiet.

Pearl yawns in my head and smacks her lips, groggily rising from her bed. “Good morning, Shelby. How’s it going?”

I switch to internal dialogue and shrug. “Not so good, but once we know where to post guards, we can turn this into a passive thing and focus on other things. How was your nap?”

“Veeery nice,” Pearl says, voice straining as she stretches her body. “No luck with the research on those gold wisps still, though, sorry. They’re really, really weird magic. Maybe if we could find someone with that same spell or skill then I’d be able to reverse-engineer what they do…”

There’d be no need to reverse engineer anything if we could just do that. But maybe we don’t need someone with that specific ability–we just need someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything that every class can do. The resort doesn’t have someone like that, but I have a feeling that the Preservation definitely would.

I pull out my Class Card and quickly compose a message to Clutter about his new dozenth objective for when he gets there. He’s got a lot on his plate, especially since the Preservation seems to have halted every rescue operation since they started taking the apocalypse mech attack seriously. But they’ll have to go out again eventually if they want to keep their public goodwill.

We don’t have the manpower to pick up their slack. And HuSt definitely won’t be jumping to save a bunch of non-paying refugees. So we’re stuck helping the most dangerous situations we can and hoping that the world’s governments can handle their own tragedies for once. Speaking of…

The bush rustles around Gil as he disappears into a portal on the ground. Sounds of rusty metal shearing against itself accompanied by a symphony of screams and impacts briefly break through before he closes it behind him. Jumble’s ears twitch at the noise, and she sighs in frustration as she pulls back into the push.

“Whatever it was, Gil’s noises scared it off. Why’d he even come here if he was just going to leave?” she grumbles.

I shrug. “He’s working his ass off saving people. Hell, if we had the kind of portals that he does, we’d probably zip all over the world all the same.”

Jumble raises an eyebrow. “You can teleport.”

“It’s heavily restricted; not the same thing. We’re getting off topic, though–what did you see down there? Anything identifiable?”

A very cute pout graces my eyes for a short moment before Jumble switches to business mode. We back out of the bush and make our way deeper into the forest surrounding the island to stay out of sight, then Jumble kneels down and spreads her hands over the ground. A large piece of thick beige paper appears over the roots and soil, glistening with a thin layer of deep black ink that coats it from end to end.

With a simple pulling motion, Jumble removes most of the ink from the paper. What remains dries in a heartbeat to leave behind a very detailed map of the island–more detailed than anything I’d be able to draw, and I’ve actually set foot on it. She taps right on the edge of the concert venue with her claw, leaving a tiny dent in the ink that quickly fills itself in.

“That’s where I saw movement. It could easily be a guard, but it could also easily be some kind of earth-native animal. One of those bushy-tailed rodents, if I had to guess.”

“Are you talking about a squirrel?”

Jumble nods. “Yes, them. The very chaseable ones. If it is a squirrel, that means that the defences aren’t as fine-tuned as we’re thinking. We might just be able to throw a few relocation coins over the fence and teleport in without any worries.”

“Perfect. Let’s–”

My entire body vibrates from a deluge of messages all arriving at once. Jumble snickers as I summon my Class Card, still vibrating from the backlog, and swipe to the messenger. Most of them are from Clutter and Agathe hashing out a lot of details, a few are from Gil and the others at the desert site, but this new huge chunk is all from Ebb. Detailing down to the last second everything that the Preservation’s doing in preparation for their meeting.

Jumble leans over my shoulder and whistles. “How’d she manage to claw that much information from them?”

“Apparently she’s a master negotiator. Who knew?”

I tap out a quick thankful response, then get to studying all the new information. About five messages in the realization hits that I don’t have the brain power to go through all this on my own. So I forward all the messages to Gil, who’ll forward them to the people who can do something with that information. He knows way more about the people here than I do, and he’s been at the system’s whim for years. Can’t imagine how connected he’s going to be now that I’ve locked him down in the city for a while.

“Should we go back and talk to the others?” Jumble asks as I send my Class Card away. “The meeting’s not for another two weeks, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get started right now.”

“You’re right. But we’re not going back just yet. Here.”

I hand Jumble a relocation coin and step away from the map. She tilts her head and narrows her eyes at me as she tries to figure out what I’m about to do. In a very adorable way, might I add. Her eyes trail over me as I bend forward to gently drop a coin onto the ground, then flick it onto her map.

“Hey!” she cries in surprise. “Don’t get dirt on the map!”

A small smile tugs at the corners of my lips as I snap my fingers. Jumble squeaks and bats my coin to the side, watching it with anticipation for the spell that I obviously put in it. The coin sails through the air, slams into a tree, and lodges itself halfway into the bark. Jumble crosses her arms and pouts at me.

“You knew I’d fall for that.”

I grin and sneak a quick hug, then pull away before she can do anything back. She feigns annoyance for all of five seconds before she shakes her head and waves me off.

“I’ll get some of the Stonestep Paindne to watch this place for us,” I say. “Watch that coin for me until I get back.”

Jumble glances over at the tree. “You probably want me to take it out of the bark?”

I nod. “Yes, please.”

She sighs dramatically and waves me off once more. I grin and blow her a kiss, then turn to leave. The absolutely adorable blush that rises on her face almost makes me stay, but we can’t have another Tuesday afternoon happening right now. Missing a strategy meeting was bad enough, but the sly looks from Gil and… well… everyone else were so much worse. Even Clutter knew. Clutter. And the death glares from Fleur…

I shudder and snap my fingers for real this time. The landscape warps in an instant, shifting to a simple ruined highway overpass somewhere in some rural place. All the speed limit signs are in kilometers, so we’re pretty damn far from home. Quest turns at the sound of my arrival and motions for me to stand next to it, overlooking a massive lake just inches away from the highway underneath us.

Out of the center of which juts a massive mint green crystalline structure that stretches to the heavens like a sunbeam falling in reverse. Even the shape looks like the strangely refracted tetrahedron of sunlight filtering through a living room window.

“Fleur altered me to this just a few hours ago,” it whispers, as if the wind itself would overhear. “I didn’t want to alert anyone else, but I have a horrible feeling that it’s starting. We have less time than we’d hoped.”

I want to ask Quest what it’s referring to, but my words freeze in my throat and refuse to leave. There’s something blatantly obvious about the pillar; it feels like Fleur’s salt, just in a different colour. But there’s something horribly wrong about it.

Because there’s absolutely no life–or magic–radiating from it.

Almost like something already killed the halsia inside.