"Yeah, they aren't being very helpful on the solution end, are they?"
"No, they're not. And I have no idea why."
"Well, Ary's told me more than once, that the other champions, gods, and the like always queer the rules. They're hard to predict and hard to deal with."
I nodded, "Yeah, I know, I've been told the same thing. But I'm still surprised that Cenewyg is running as fast as he is. If he kills us off, we have to go back to the beginning; we'd be way behind him then. It's his best option, strategically, and tactically he's been here before, so he knows how to lay the traps for us. We saw that in the last sphere, right? So why isn't there a trap in each one?"
Nikki shrugged, "Maybe he has limited resources? If those guys hadn't made such a nice donation to our cause, we'd be getting low on funds ourselves now."
"True."
"But I do like your idea of getting ahead of them, and contacting your Stephanie. I should see if Ary can help with that at all."
"Can't hurt to ask," I agreed. "By the way, did she have anything for you when you napped earlier?"
"She had a bit of a chat with your wife, Darlene. Other than that, nothing."
I sat back in my chair, surprised. "What?"
"Apparently Darlene is tired of waiting for you to get back, so she can ask you just what the hell you are," Nikki smirked. "She saw you, didn't she?"
I sighed, "Yeah, when I was gated into the temple by Aryanna and Fel. What did she tell her?"
"That you'd explain when you got home, and that it wasn't anything to worry about."
"Well, that's not too bad," I said relieved.
"Then Ary and I had this long discussion over whether or not Darlene likes cats," Nikki smirked.
I groaned, "Let's not go there."
"But we have such a long flight, Bro, and it is an interesting topic for discussion, don't you think?"
"I think I'm going to take a nap. Wake me when we land."
We landed six hours later, changed planes, and flew another two hours, then arrived at our final destination, took a cab, and got dropped off rather close to the portal. As airport security was non-existent, we had all of our weapons and other items still with us.
"I wonder if we're ahead of him, or behind him?" Nikki asked as we carefully made our way to the portal.
"There was a flight two hours before ours, that was a lot more direct. If he got that, he's ahead of us. As he wasn't on our flight, if he missed it, he's probably behind us."
"Well, at least we made good time; let's see what's up next, shall we?"
I nodded to her and after checking our surroundings; we approached the portal carefully, checked it, and then stepped through.
I looked around as we stepped out, we still moved quickly to opposite sides, though at least this time we kept our weapons out of sight.
It was daytime, and we were in a park. I knew it was a park, because there were kids running around, adults sitting on benches watching them, and things were laid out all nice and orderly.
"I can't believe no one noticed that," Nikki said after walking quickly over to me as we struck out for the park's exit. Which hopefully was down the path we were following.
I shrugged, "We just appeared out of thin air, unless someone was watching that specific spot, they'll just figure that they missed us, until they noticed us."
"You hope."
I shrugged, "Isn't more than that to do really."
"So what's our plan for here?"
"Well, I think we should go to the portal traveler shop here, and get some help. This one is close enough to the portal that we might as well use it."
"Plus we can avoid another run in like we had at the last one if we flash our gold at the wrong person, right?"
I nodded, "Exactly."
"I just thought of something," Nikki said.
"Hmmm?"
"Cenewyg knows that portal comes out in the middle of a park, right?"
I nodded, "That's a fair assumption."
"So he's not going to use it when there are people in it."
I thought about that, "Good point."
"So unless he got here way before us, he won't be coming through until tonight."
"Makes sense. So there's a good chance we're ahead of him now."
"Now, we just need to stay there."
I agreed with her. Now just to find the way out of the park, and a map, so we could find the shop we needed.
"Isn't that it?" Nikki said pointing across the street when we finally made it out of the park.
I looked at the small shop and nodded, "Looks like. Guess this is a fairly popular portal."
We crossed the street and went inside, there were two people working behind the counter, a man and a woman.
"Good evening, how may we help you?" the woman asked.
"We're ahh, travelers; I need to convert some paper, and perhaps some gold?"
"Ah, yes, of course," she smiled, "portal?"
I nodded, and put the paper money from the last sphere on the counter.
"Is this a popular trade route?" Nikki asked.
"Popular enough," She said and examined our money. "Have you been here before?"
I shook my head, "We're on our way to a place we heard about, a few portals over from here."
"Oh? Care to tell me?" She asked smiling.
"Umm, maybe next time after we've had a chance to see if there's anything worthwhile there," I said and smiled back.
Nikki wandered over to the wall, which had a large map of the world on it, while I exchanged the paper money. I had no idea if I was being cheated or not, but hopefully they wouldn't rip me off.
"What's the air travel like here?" Nikki asked.
"They magnetometer everybody, and X-ray all the carry on bags. Don't try to bring any weapons onboard, you'll never get past them." The man said grumbling.
"What about checked luggage?"
"Put any handguns you have in a locked case. That should be okay."
Nikki nodded, "Sounds reasonable."
"If you brought any guns or ammo from the same place you got this money, I have to warn you that it won't work here." The lady told me.
"Oh, well in that case," Nikki said and we dug into our packs for all the ammo we had, and laid that and the guns on the counter, "How much?"
I haggled over prices with her, while Nikki discussed airfares with the man, trying to get an idea of how much flying cost here.
"Anything we need to know about? Like are our clothes okay?"
"I'd replace the backpacks, with something a bit more modern, but they should pass. People will just think you like the retro look."
I nodded, "Okay, thanks. See you in a few months I guess." I said and waved as we both left.
"Think they figured out we're champions?" Nikki said after we had left.
"Possibly. I've only dealt with one of those places before though and from what little I've picked up, there is quite a bit of trade that goes on. People go to the less developed worlds, and bring back stuff to sell here. Precious stones, metals, whatever is easily carried and sells for a lot."
"I really wanted to ask them about the next sphere," Nikki sighed, "But I didn't want to clue them in to where we're going."
I nodded. "Well, let's go hit the airport, I take it from the way you were looking at the map, that our next stop is a trip?"
"Not really, but if we fly it, we'll save a lot of time."
"How far is it?"
"About a ten-hour drive, if the roads here aren't bad."
I looked around at the size of the city, and suspected the traffic probably was pretty heavy.
"Oh, let's hit a luggage store, so we can check all the weapons and stuff."
I nodded, "Sounds good to me."
Six hours later we were standing in front of the next portal. We'd caught the last flight to our destination, just barely; security had been a pain, adding an hour to our time at the airport. Apparently there were a lot of hijackings or something her
e.
When we landed, we had to bribe a cab driver with quite a bit of cash to take us where we wanted to go, because it was after midnight, and we wanted to go quite a ways out of town. But at least our luggage made it there with us.
Best of all, Aryanna had told Nikki, while she was napping on the flight, that Cenewyg hadn't come through yet.
"Well, let's see what we're in for," I sighed as we stepped through. The high tech spheres may have annoying laws, and be a bit overpopulated, but at least the travel times through them were fairly quick.
Twenty-Four
Chocoga
"What the f...?" Nikki said as I looked around. Usually the land features are the same on the other side of the portal, as before you stepped through. This was not the case here, or maybe it once was, but obviously, things had changed.
We were standing near the edge of a large concrete basin, which was full of water. Looking around I noticed there were a lot of very large buildings behind us, all well lit up. For that matter, where we were, while in shadow, wasn't all that dark.
"Unless the time changed, it's like two in the morning," Nikki said and motioned towards one of the buildings, "What are all those people doing?"
I looked, and there were a lot of people on the streets, walking along, or whatever. There was also a lot of vehicle traffic.
I took a closer look at the cars. None of them had wheels.
"Holy..." I laughed, "Look, Sis, it's the flying car!"
"Huh, wonder if that cost anyone a foot?"
"What?"
"Forget it," she grinned, "old joke. Take a look at the people, at what they're wearing."
I took a good look, to say that they were showing a lot of skin would be an understatement. They also had a lot of body art going on, from what I could see; which was probably due to the lack of clothing.
I also noticed that it was pretty warm outside, which of course would make it a lot more comfortable to walk around in what amounted to a bathing suit and not much else.
"You know, they dress a lot like the folks do back in Saladin," I observed.
"Yeah, well I bet they don't have camera's on all the street corners back in Saladin," Nikki said to me.
"What?"
"Look," she pointed at a utility pole off a little ways. There were a number of small globes mounted around it. "I've seen camera's like that in security areas when I was in the military. Look around, there's one like every hundred yards."
I did as she said, and sure enough, I could see them everywhere.
"Do you think we're on one right now?" I asked
"Well, there seems to be a different type around the, well whatever that is," She said gesturing to the concrete lake, "and none of those seem to be pointing to this spot that I can tell."
I nodded, "If Cen came through here on the way out, he wouldn't have wanted to be observed on the way back in."
"We're going to stand out like a sore thumb here, Bro. What'll we do?"
"Let me think," I said slowly as I had noticed the big advertising boards on the sides of the buildings were animated, like huge television sets. I motioned to Nikki as I watched the ads.
"Huh, are those commercials, news reports, or movies?" She asked as we both watched the scenes playing over them.
"No idea."
"Well, I guess we need to strip down. Let's see what we've got in our packs that we can cut down to size, so as to not stand out too much."
It took us a little while, I ended up in a pair of boxers and a cut half shirt, Nikki wore about the same, only on her the half shirt was a bit more risqué, but we matched, so we figured it would work. I still had my outfit from home, but I wasn't sure I wanted to go around in a loincloth.
We got a few looks as we started to walk down the street, I noticed that most of the people here were fairly thin, not skinny exactly, everyone looked trim and fit, but there were very few people with any kind of a 'muscular' build. While I didn't look as muscular as I normally did, I still looked a lot more so than any of the people around us. So did Nikki for that matter.
"Now we just have to find out where the hell we're going," I said.
"Might as well ask someone," Nikki said and stopped one of the guys who was trying to check her out.
"I'm sorry!" He said immediately, "I wasn't staring! Honest!"
"Umm, sure. Look, can you tell us where West James Avenue, Chocoga, is?"
"You're in Chocoga!" He said, still a little flustered.
"Well, yeah, I know. But where's the street?"
"Why don't you look it up on your phone?" he said looking at her like she was some kind of a freak.
"I lost it."
"You lost your phone?" He said looking at her like she'd just murdered the Pope, six kittens, and his mom.
"West James Avenue, Please?"
"How could you lose your phone? And what about his phone?" he said motioning to me.
"So you don't have your phone either," Nikki sighed. "Well at least I don't feel like a complete idiot."
He pulled something out of his pocket, and waved it around. "No, I have my phone!" He said triumphantly.
I looked around us, people were starting to stare.
"Oh, how nice, now maybe you can show us you know how to use it?" Nikki said in a rather sweet voice, dripping with sarcasm.
Phone-boy apparently didn't notice.
"Of course, I can, because I didn't lose my phone!" He said, and I watched as he touched the flat surface of it, and the whole front lit up. He tapped out a sequence of some sort on the front, and was suddenly a small map displaying on it. There was even a dot showing where we were I guess.
"But seeing as you lost your phone, I guess you won't be going anywhere, will you?" He said and laughed at Nikki.
I sighed and facepalmed as Nikki snatched his phone and punched him in the face so hard he stumbled back a good five feet, his head hitting the ground as he landed on his back and laid their unconscious. I didn't think he'd be getting up anytime soon.
"Thanks, sweetie," she said as everyone around us gasped, and a couple of people even screamed. "Now, let's see, how does this thing work?" She mumbled and started to look at the screen as I grabbed her arm and started dragging her over to one of the alleys. I noticed a lot of the people were holding their phones up and looking at them.
"We need to leave, now!"
"Hold on, I've almost got this figured out. Okay, there's the street, there's the lake, there we are ... Got it!"
The phone started to make a noise then and a green circle appeared on the screen, with a red circle next to it.
"Huh, I wonder what this does," Nikki said and touched the green one.
"Eth! You're on the news! Who was that wakka that hit you?! That was brutal! You're gonna be famous tonight!"
We looked at each other.
"Hey, Eth, you there? Eth?"
Nikki dropped the phone and we quickly walked away. "On the news?" She said looking at me, "I only just hit him!"
I looked around; there were a few cameras here, but not as many as elsewhere.
"Destroy the cameras," I told her.
She nodded and we did, moving along carefully. There weren't that many back here in the alleys, just the occasional one here and there. When we got to a spot where we could peek out of one I grabbed her arm.
"Look," I said and pointed.
On one of the big displays on the side of a building, there was a rather clear shot of Nikki punching the guy, and him stumbling backwards, then the two of us ducking out of the frame. That was followed by a picture of both of our faces, the one of me wasn't very good, but the one of Nikki was pretty clear. Then it cut back to the guy lying in the street and people running over to him, he was bleeding pretty heavily from the face.
"Shit!" I growled, "Now what."
"How the hell did that get around so quickly?" Nikki said shocked, "I just hit him, what, five minutes ago?"
I scanned around the street some more, and I noticed someth
ing I hadn't paid too much attention too before. Some of the more outrageously dressed people weren't walking along the streets, they were hanging out by one of the light poles, and people would occasional stop and take their picture, or have their pictures taken with them.
The folks in the second group would give them something, and then walk on.
That gave me an idea.
"Come," I grabbed Nikki, and pulled her back down the alley, near a dumpster behind one of the shops.
"What are we going to do now?" She said shaking her head. "I shouldn't have punched the little twerp, should I?"
"I have an idea, strip."
"What?"
I shucked my clothes as fast as I could, and shifting to my champion form, I put my loincloth on, and donned my weapons harness, and put all my weapons in place.
"What, are you crazy?" Nikki said looking at me.
"People will think it's a costume, now shift and let's see if we can make a similar outfit for you," I said and looking at some of her pairs of pants I cut one of the black ones up. I'd been wearing loincloths for so long now; I could make one out of damned near anything.
"What about my chest?" Nikki asked when I was done.
I cut another strip of cloth off another shirt and wrapped it around her and tied it behind her. She had a pair of sandals; I figured I'd go barefoot.
"Toss the backpacks," I told her.
"What about our supplies?"
"We'll take the gold and silver," we were both still wearing a couple of necklaces and other jewelry, I always wore something, in case I needed to trade, and when I'd left Hiland, I'd been wearing my usual amount. Nikki apparently had already learned to always have some on hand as well.
"We don't have all that much left anyway, so it shouldn't be hard to carry. As for the rest of this," I motioned to our packs, "unless you can hide it easily, trash it. Those bags stand out, and they were in all the pictures."
Nikki nodded, "Sorry, Bro. It's my fault, I shouldn't have punched him."
"Eh, with the way he was drawing attention to us, it was probably the best thing to do." I said and tossed the rest of my stuff in the trash.
"I screwed up," Nikki sighed and tossed her stuff in as well. "Let's go."
Portals of Infinity: Book Five: Demigods and Deities Page 25
