“Oh? What’s the price tag?” Felix asked. He was curious where she’d go with it. Her pursuits were different than most.
“Points, and some of your time. I want to use your power to start combing through future builds and plans. You’re a walking time machine if we do it right. So… that’s what I want.”
Now it was Felix’s turn to freeze.
She was right. With the right application and a healthy dose of points, Felix was a time machine to a limited degree. Especially with things that would have a set value. Like the Fist.
“Done. Put in the request and kick it up the chain. Gotta go. I should probably have those contracts to you later today, or tomorrow. Need to have Lily take a look at ‘em,” Felix said.
“Be sure to have the princess take a look at your sausage while you’re at it,” Felicia responded, then promptly disconnected the call.
“She’s a vulgar thing,” Abera muttered. Her face showed nothing but disgust at the moment. “A disrespectful creature.”
“And incredibly loyal for all her faults,” Felix said, pulling up another contact in his wrist device. “There is something to be said for that trait outweighing every other. I’d take a loyal psychopath over a disloyal warrior.”
“And what are you doing now?” Desh asked, watching Felix closely.
“Calling up my lawyer so we can begin the negotiations on a contract. I’d like to get this put away as quickly as possible. If possible, I’d really like to walk away from this with you two as allies and partners to Legion. You’d receive your power from Legion based on how much my people are invested in me. I think that’d be the best way to play the middle for us both. You’d be free to seek worshipers outside of Legion, but gain power from it simply for supporting it. And I’d keep control over my own company without a concern.”
Abera snorted and Felix wasn’t sure how she felt about it.
Desh, on the other hand, nodded his head, laying a hand on Abera’s forearm. “I think that’d be something we could work out. This all seems… negotiable,” said the god of trade. “And negotiable is a great way to start a deal.”
Chapter 28 - The Way It Is -
It was late in the evening, everyone else had turned in for the night, gone to bed, or gone off watch.
Here, with only Eva, Felix had no need of guards or assistants. Originally he’d been alone until Eva asked if she could just work in his office with him.
The quiet scratch of Eva’s pen was the only sound Felix could hear. The soft scritch of it as she swept it back and forth across the page.
Having been around constant noise, sound, and people moving around for so long, Felix couldn’t do very well with absolute silence.
It was deafening.
So quiet that you could actually hear the silence. That it throbbed in your ears and made your ear drums ache.
That it grew so loud you could swear it was the roar of thunder.
“Felix?” Eva asked, the sound of her pen stopping.
“Mm?” Felix responded, staring at the window he’d called up.
“The assignment I’m working on is arguing for a point of view that I don’t hold,” Eva said.
Nodding his head, Felix dismissed the window.
Time to try another angle of approach. “Ok? Sounds like a good way to expand your horizons.”
“Yeah, I get that but… I don’t know. I think I’ve run out of things to say.”
“Well, what did you pick to talk about?”
Felix thought again on what he wanted to accomplish.
He wanted to see a documentary he was going to have people from his media team work on for the previous year, he’d have it put together in a year from now.
Effectively giving him a year in retrospect, and a way to see the future.
Equipment(Siege of Tilen and Skipper City): A retrospective over the last year
Documentary made available.
Upgrade?(112,493,128,312,489,500)
It’s almost as high as when I tried to give someone else my own Powers. What the actual hell.
“I’m taking the position of allowing Skipper to take over, rather than fighting,” Eva said.
“Huh. That’s… definitely an interesting point of view. Let me think on it for a bit. Maybe let your subconscious chew at your assignment. And while that’s happening, let me throw a question at you,” Felix said.
“Sure! Is it what you’ve been working on?” Eva asked excitedly, bouncing up from her seat and walking over to his desk.
“Yep. So, you know what I did with the Fist, right?” Felix asked.
“Yeah! That was pretty cool. I never realized you could use your power as a way to view the future.”
Eva stepped up to the other side of his desk and picked up the pen she’d made for him. He kept it with him most of the time, and pulled it out whenever he sat at his desk.
“I’m trying to do something similar, but different. I want to see a documentary I’m going to have made in a year, about the previous year.”
“Uh… oh! I get it. That makes sense. Considering the way the Fist turned out, that should work, right?”
“And it can. It just costs enough points that I’d have to turn the entire gold reserve for the country into dust to do it. Which obviously isn’t possible.”
“Hm. That’s… ok. How can I help?”
“I think I’m missing something. The Fist was much further than a year out if I don’t miss my guess.”
“Yeah, but the Fist isn’t going to alter the actual future. If you had this completed, you’d be able to change, avoid, and alter everything that had already happened.”
“Fair point. What if I did it for two years instead of one…”
Felix paused to try just that, working through his power quickly.
“So?” Eva asked, her excitement clear in her voice.
“It uh… it only went up by about a hundred thousand points.”
“Ok, so if one year is that high in cost, but the year after isn’t, that means that something happens this year that is incredibly monumental,” Eva said, crossing her arms over her chest and nodding her head.
“Or apocalyptic,” Felix countered.
“Sure, that’s a possibility. But it could just as easily be that you somehow cured cancer or AIDS. I’d say that’s monumental enough to skew quite a bit of history if you changed it or avoided it.”
“Hmm. That’s… fair… I just don’t like it.”
“Why, because I said it?”
“No, because it’s optimistic. Optimism gets people killed.”
Eva laughed at that and shook her head. “Felix, I swear. You’re such a grump sometimes.”
Unable to help himself, Felix crossed his eyes and stuck out his tongue sideways at her.
“You call it grump, I call it reality.”
“Grump, grump, grump. Grump-o-saurus-rex.”
“Har har. Fine. Go, get back to your assignment. You’ve made your point. I’ll just have to try again from another angle.”
The entire office churned into a sudden blazing red maelstrom of crackling power.
Felix shot to his feet at the same time as he slammed his hand down on the panic button.
Shimmering and growing denser, the red energy began to spiral rapidly in a circle.
Then everything exploded and Felix felt like his stomach was turned inside out and used as a stool at a dive bar.
When his vision cleared, Felix could see the stars above him, and the outlines of buildings ominously hanging over him.
Looking around, Felix realized he was in the middle of a street. An empty, barren street, full of wreckage and debris.
And he was naked.
Stark butt-naked.
“Felix, what happened?” Eva asked from behind him.
Taking a moment to glance over his shoulder, he saw Eva, naked, behind him in a similar position to his own.
“Don’t know. Questions later, action now. We need to get off the street
. Immediately,” Felix ordered.
All around him were businesses that were burned out, looted, or simply destroyed.
“Mechanic’s shop, there,” Felix said, indicating the building.
Getting into a low crouch, Felix started making his way over.
“I’m naked!” Eva hissed.
Felix ignored her, focused entirely on getting out of the street. It didn’t matter where they were in Tilen, being on the street at night was asking to get shot by anyone with an itchy trigger finger.
Without hesitating, Felix entered through the broken door and went straight into the building. Taking account of his surroundings as he went, Felix felt rather certain that the building was unoccupied. No one would choose this location to hold out in since it had no roof, too many entrances, and was unlikely to have anything of value.
For the moment, it served his purpose perfectly.
Ducking into an office, Felix started to sort through the wreckage to see if he could find anything usable.
“Felix! What are you doing? Where are we? What happened?” Eva asked, entering the office behind him.
“Surviving, don’t know, don’t know. We need to arm ourselves and get clothes. After that, information gathering. Did you notice any street signs by the way? I didn’t see any,” Felix said, opening a desk drawer and sorting through it quickly.
“What? Street signs?”
“Yeah. I figure we’re somewhere in Tilen. If we know what the street is, that’ll help. Well, if we know the street, it will. If we don’t, not so much. But hey, information is information. Ah, a knife. That’s a start.”
Felix pulled out a six inch folding knife from the bottom of the drawer and flicked it open. Seeing the action was working, he thumbed the locking mechanism and closed it.
He set it on the desk and went back to digging.
“Felix, I… I don’t—”
“Two options, Eva. Sit down, be silent, and get yourself together. Or start helping me dig through this office. We’ll have to clear this building out completely and then figure out which way to go from there. Wait, do I own this knife now?” Felix asked curiously.
If he did, he could use his points to modify it into something better. Or clothes, even.
A quick check revealed that the knife did indeed belong to him now. Which meant the owner was dead and had no will or heirs, abandoned it willingly, or… something else entirely.
Smiling, Felix pulled up his point screen.
Received
Spent
Remaining
Daily Allotment
150
0
150
Resources Inaccessible/Blocked
—
—
—
Eva Adelpha
4,900
4,900
0
+ Loyalty Bonus
1,010
0
1,010
DAILY TOTAL
6,060
4,900
1,160
Staring at the point screen, Felix had to fight to keep himself together.
Something seriously wrong happened. Very, very wrong. Ok, keep it together. We still have some points.
Sliding Eva’s points away from herself, and into his pool, Felix continued in his search for resources.
He needed to keep his mind occupied and working.
Occupied and working was much better than shock and inactivity.
Behind him, he could hear Eva starting to shift things around as she started to search.
Good. Good. Let’s see what we find.
The building was empty of people, unless you counted the corpse they found curled up in a fetal position out behind the building.
The shop did however have a few things that were usable as far as resources went.
Some of what they found still had owners, some of it didn’t. Everything that Felix could get his hands on that didn’t have an owner he turned into dirt if he couldn’t use it immediately.
For a mechanic’s shop, there happened to be some seriously expensive gear. Felix was more than happy to dust it all for points.
Three sets of mechanic’s jumpsuits, oil smeared and everything, were welcome additions.
Other than the knife, though, they found no weapons.
“We have… a total of fifty thousand points, give or take,” Felix said. They were hunkered down near the side entrance of the building that had been used by employees.
It was locked from the outside, but they could leave in an instant from the inside.
“Is that enough to give me a teleport power? Or portals?” Eva asked.
Felix grimaced at that. He’d actually already tried.
Adding any power at all to her would require upwards of a couple hundred thousand points. Even something simple like increased eyesight.
For the life of him he couldn’t figure out why it would cost so much. It wasn’t normal. It didn’t seem correct on any level.
Which means there’s an outside influence here. But I don’t think it’s my friend who I owe favors since… well since this is more likely to get me killed than anything.
“Honestly… I don’t have access to any of the points for Legion. Only your points and mine. And when I try to add any powers to you, I get a cost that’s… not realistic. At all. Something very wrong is going on with my power. I’m also starting to think the goal wasn’t to drop me here. Something… someone… intervened. If I had to guess… Lily maybe. Or Neutralizer,” Felix said, staring into the darkness of the vehicle bays.
“Oh… so… we’re stuck out here then,” Eva said a touch lifelessly.
“For the moment. How far did you get in your hand to hand training with Miu and Ioana?”
“Not far. They said I’d be better off sticking to my powers. I don’t have a knack for it, I guess.”
“How about guns? Did you work with anyone?”
“Yeah. Andrea, or Adriana I guess. I’m not a marksman or anything but I did alright,” Eva said defensively.
Felix sat there thinking to himself.
It really left it up to him unless he wanted her to start spending her one shot powers. He’d sent her all the names and activations a while back.
“Let’s do our best to not use your powers. There’s no guarantee I’ll be able to get them back any time soon,” Felix said. “For now, leave it up to me. I think our first immediate need is information. I’m not keen on risking it but… that post office across the street might be ideal.”
“What? The post office?” Eva asked.
“I figure it’s less likely to have people there, and if we’re lucky, it’ll have a route map. A route map would tell us where we are in the city. Or so I hope. Worst case… empty building with nothing for us,” Felix said.
Eva sighed, pressing her hands to her face. “This is insane.”
“It’s definitely not good. I think you need to realize that this will probably get worse though. Optimism and trust are probably the quickest ways to get killed out here. The teams we sent out to scout typically come back with some pretty bad stories about what was going on.” Felix paused and took a shaky breath.
“I guess what I’m trying to say is… I wouldn’t be surprised if this got worse, and we end up hurting people. Or worse. I normally try to limit the amount of harm I cause but… this isn’t going to be fun. Or easy.”
Eva choked off a broken chuckle that almost sounded like a sob. “So you’re telling me you’re going to murder people.”
“Probably. And if I have to kill fifty people to protect you, I will. And that isn’t something you can stop, prevent, or talk me out of. It isn’t your fault, and isn’t your doing, so you can’t be responsible for it. But if—and I hope it’s only an if—if it happens, I won’t hesitate,” Felix said.
Eva didn’t respond to that. Instead, she looked away from him, unwilling to meet his eyes.
“Alright, let’s go. I’ll take the lead. Stay close to m
e and don’t hesitate to pop a power if you think we need it,” Felix said.
Wish I had given her some more utility powers instead of all the combat ones. Teleport or Portals would be rather nice right about now.
Opening the door, Felix slipped out and started back towards the road. Reaching the sidewalk, he hesitated, listening intently for whatever he could.
There’d been no working clocks or watches in the mechanic shop, but it felt like it was the small hours of the morning. They’d have to act quickly and maybe find a place to hunker down for the night. It might be easier to move about in the daylight when people were less likely to shoot at a shadow coming near.
Felix mapped out the path he wanted to take across the road. There was a truck he wanted to search but he didn’t dare.
Not right now at least.
For all he knew, he was next door to Skipper’s Headquarters. The last thing he wanted to do was get caught out in the open by her. He had the distinct impression she’d do awful things to him.
Taking in a slow breath, Felix got low to the ground and crept out into the street.
Sure steps and smooth movements carried him across the road quickly.
It wasn’t until he stepped off the sidewalk and onto a side approach for the post office that he let out the breath he’d been holding.
Not waiting for people to come investigate if they did see him, Felix went up the steps quickly. Easing up to the side of a sliding glass door he peered in to see if he could catch a glimpse of anything.
There was the briefest flicker of an orange glow. Deep, deep within the post office. He couldn’t be sure, but he’d swear it was a fire.
Which to Felix sounded like a pretty awful idea. Sure, it was cold out, but not that cold.
It was a risk he’d never take, that was for sure.
“Is that a fire?” Eva asked from beside him. “I’d love a fire.”
Maybe it’s a group of people with a similar mindset to Eva?
Pulling the knife from his pocket, Felix flicked it open as quietly as he could. Grimacing at how bright the damn thing was he looked down to the ground.
Super Sales on Super Heroes: Book 2 Page 31
