Monster Salvage Crew [4]

Icebreakers And Flare Ups

The heat of the midday sun was merciless, which was making Sara sweaty on top of everything else. She didn’t know why she cared about being sweaty, she had already been soaked in blood, some of it her own and some not. The sweat was at least creating some slightly less dirty streaks down her face.

“Can I ask you a question?” asked Vincent out of the blue, the two of them had been on an uneventful lookout for the past couple of hours.

“Only if you can’t help it,” replied Sara curtly. She felt hot and sticky and wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so she hoped he would keep his questions to a minimum.

“So, uhm, does your arm not hurt?”

“No, not really.” She stretched her left arm and the overlapping scales slid over each other with a rasping sound. “It’s itchy, but other than that it just kinda feels… abnormal, if that makes sense?”

“Oh, I was actually referring to your other arm.”

“What?” She looked at her right arm with alarm. She had been certain that it didn’t have any mutations. “What’s wrong with my right arm?”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No, what are you talking about?” she snapped.

“Seriously, you’re missing about half of the skin that really should be there. You know, ideally speaking.”

“Oh, right. I mean, it hurts, but not that much,” she said. She was missing skin in a strip that ran from her shoulder to her wrist.

“Shit, that’s badass!”, he said, admiration clear on his face.

“Oh, thanks, but it’s just practice. You can manage with pain, if you just get in enough horrible practice.” She gave an awkward smile, feeling uncomfortable with the praise.

“Right, but shouldn’t it have healed by now? I mean you’re still Dosing, right?”

“Yeah, ordinarily, but I’m holding it back.”

“What could possibly possess you to do that?” He sounded genuinely curious.

“Normally it’d be a pretty bad idea, but I’ve got…” She considered hiding the truth, but it was far too late for that. She held up her left arm. “I’ve got a huge mutation problem. So I need to be careful with healing, especially because I’m not used to Omicron Dose.”

“Wait do you actually call it that?”

“What else would I call it?”

“I don’t really know any of the Krow names for Dose, but we Dose with Fire Eyes,” he smiled, but then he made a pained expression. “I haven’t personally used it yet, but the rest of the group does.”

“You’ve never Dosed before?”

“I’ve done a little bit before,” he looked downcast. “Today was supposed to be the first time that I was going to use a full Dose, but Maddox said it wouldn’t be a good idea if someone else was coming for the first time as well.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s not your fault,” he said, but despite the words he still looked disappointed. Suddenly he got a glint in his eye. “You’re changing the subject!”

“I am? What was the subject?”

“The fact that you actually say, like, Alpha Dose and stuff.” For some reason he flailed his arms around as he said this.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m doing an impression of you, that’s what you sound like.” He was blushing furiously.

“Why were you flailing your arms around then?” Sara felt like she was either talking to a lunatic, or she was losing her mind herself.

“Don’t look at me like that. I was doing an impression of a robot, because you sound kinda like a robot.” He was talking so fast it was a wonder he did not trip over his own words.

“Okay?”

“I’m sorry, okay. I just didn’t expect the stereotype about arena fighters to be true.”

“What stereotype?”

“That you’re all nerds, but, like, fight nerds.”

“What? Listen, we take Dosing to the absolute limit and that’s dangerous, so we need clear language to unambiguously describe Dosing.”

“Okay, okay, I’m sorry I brought it up.”

Sara thought that was going to be the end of the conversation, but Vincent kept looking at her expectantly from the corner of his eye.

“What?” she asked after a minute.

“Nothing.” He said quickly.

“You keep looking at me like you want to say something.”

“No, no, it’s just,” he wore a sheepish grin. “I’m a huge fan of yours and it’s kinda wild to be talking to you.”

“You’re a fan of me, specifically?” she asked, incredulously.

“Yeah.”

“Why? I’m, like, a D-Lister, at best.”

“What? No way! You’re up and coming. You’re the hot new talent with the cleanest Super Punch out of anyone in the arena.” he said excitedly.

“Don’t call it a Super Punch. I hate it when people say that. It sounds so childish.”

“Mega Punch?” He gave her a huge grin.

“That’s even worse!” she objected, even though she couldn’t help but smile back.

“Alright, what should I call it then?”

“It’s a Momentum Transfer, which is the easiest form of Energy Conduction, which is the Secondary Characteristic of Delta Dose.” When she mentioned Delta Dose she was reminded of the injector she still carried in her back pocket. She carried a small amount of Delta with her in case of emergency. Although it was unlikely to be of much help to her today, mixing Doses was never a good idea.

“You’re not beating the nerd allegation with a sentence like that.” He smiled at her and for the first time she noticed that he was not just smiling with his mouth and eyes, but somehow managed to smile with his entire posture.

Sara only barely realised that she was smiling back.

They spent the next hour making casual chit chat. A part of her told her that the only reason she was talking to him was because it kept her distracted from the heat, but she didn’t quite believe it. The truth was that he had an infectious energy. She didn’t let go of her worries, but they were pushed into the back of her mind.

In a lull in the conversation they smiled at each other. Vincent’s teeth seemed to glow against his brown skin. Sara felt surreal, like she was high. Somehow he had the most beautiful everything she had ever seen: his teeth, his skin, his lips.

He moved his head closer to hers.

Is he going to whisper something to me? Wait, is he trying to kiss me? Have we been flirting this whole time? Oh my god, you embarrassing loser! How do you not know what flirting is? Focus! You have to kiss him back! Be normal about it!

He pulled back suddenly. “I’m sorry, I misread the moment. I thought… I’m sorry.”

Sara looked away, embarrassed. She didn’t know what to do and words refused to come out of her mouth.

“What the fuck is that?” she blurted after spotting movement on the ground below.

“What?” asked Vincent, but Sara paid little attention to him.

She was looking at a broken shop window. It was empty now, but she could have sworn she had seen a person moving past it a second ago.

“Where are you looking, I can’t see anything.”

Sara felt the Dose running through her system. Careful not to exacerbate her mutation she coaxed the Dose around her eyes. Her vision sharpened beyond the ordinary enhancement of her Dose. It was enough that she could make out smudges on the window, but she couldn’t make out any movement. She pushed it until she could see dust particles floating in the air. She felt a twinge in her left wrist. It was her mutation, trying to resume its growth. She pushed her vision as far as she could. She could feel a creeping in her wrist now, but it didn’t matter to her. She was already going to have to cut off her arm to get rid of the mutation, a little more wasn’t going to do any harm. So long as it didn’t creep up beyond her shoulder anyways. She saw tiny flashes of light, blue lighting in miniature. She recognised that wavelength of light.

“Get down right now!” she shouted at Vincent.

He didn’t respond quick enough for her liking. She moved to put a hand on his shoulder and push him down, but before she could reach him a person ducked out of hiding. A man whose face was bright yellow from the nose down, he had small black spikes along his jawline. Blue lightning flashed out from these spikes and a glow emanated from the back of his throat. Panic flashed through Sara, all thoughts of gentleness fled her mind. She threw Vincent to the ground as fast as she could.

The man opened his mouth in a silent scream and a fraction of a second later a thin blue beam of light shot up at Sara and Vincent. For a moment she thought she had been quick enough, but as Vincent was falling his fingers passed through the beam for a moment. They hit the ground and Sara scrambled over to where Vincent lay dazed. His fingers inflated like a balloon.

“I’m so sorry about this,,” she whispered. His eyes were full of confusion and fear.

She grabbed his forearm with one hand and his wrist with the other. She pulled as hard as she could and could just barely make out the sound of snapping tendons over his screaming. She could feel the swelling spread to the rest of his hand and redoubled her efforts, she didn’t have much time left.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” she mumbled, but she didn’t think he could hear her.

As she was tearing the structure in his wrist it gave less and less resistance. Gas bubbled out of a wound forming along his wrist. The last few scraps of muscle and skin ripped in quick succession and she threw his swelling hand to the side. It barely left her fingertips before it exploded into a fireball. She had gotten it off fast enough that the flames didn’t touch Vincent, but her left hand was engulfed and caught on fire. Tendrils of the flame dug into her skin and the smell of burning flesh entered her nose.

“Fucking hate Pyromancy,” she said through gritted teeth. She took a deep breath and screamed at her hand. “Stop that!”

The fire reluctantly died out. Her hand shouldn’t have been able to catch on fire that easily, but Pyromancy broke rules like that. The only reason she was able to put it out by yelling was because she was Dosing on Omikron and its secondary characteristic was Pyromancy.

“We’re under attack!” screamed Sara at her teammates, who were busy with salvage on the other side of the building she was on. “At least one guy, he’s Dosing on Gamma, heavy mutations along his jaw, capable of Bursting!” She wasn’t sure if everyone would follow along, but at least Looks should know what she was talking about.

“What just happened?” asked Vincent in a weak voice. He was gripping his forearm and staring at the stump that was now spewing blood.

“You’ve been hit by a Burst, but listen that’s not important. I’m going to put a tourniquet on your arm, okay?”

She didn’t wait for him to respond. She ripped off her sleeve and tied it around his arm as tightly as she dared without tearing the fabric. He grunted, but didn’t try to stop her. He was still bleeding, but at least it had lessened. She didn’t know if he would bleed to death in a matter of hours or days, she wasn’t even sure that the bleeding was bad enough that he would bleed to death. She knew almost nothing about administering first aid to an undosed person. She placed a hand over her emergency Dose in her back pocket, maybe she should give that to Vincent. However if he had hardly ever used Dose before, it might not help him much to receive the hardcore Delta Dose she carried with her. She felt paralyzed, she knew how to fight, not how to help people.

“We should get back to the others,” Vincent’s voice cut through her daze.

“Right, uhm, are you okay?” she bent over to pick him up.

“I think it’s not as bad as it would have been if-” he started to say, but his eyes widened and he shouted. “Behind you!”

Sara turned around just in time to see that the man with the mutated jaw was standing on the edge of the building. She had counted on the enhanced hearing that Dosing gave her to let her know if he had approached, but her Dose was still spreading out through her body after she had concentrated it around her eyes. If she had been using Delta like she was used to it wouldn’t have taken this long.

The man ran at her. Blue lighting was shooting out from the spikes along his jaw, he was already charging another Burst. He tried to grab her face, but she ducked underneath his arm. When she came back up she hit him in the stomach with an uppercut. The man went flying off the side of the building. She hadn’t expected her punch to carry so much power.

Don’t think about it, worry about Vincent, she told herself forcefully. She turned to pick Vincent up and saw that the ground around her feet had frosted over. She hadn’t expected that either, but there was no time to reflect on it. She picked Vincent up in a bridal carry, behind her she heard the sound of another person scaling the building.

She didn’t know what was going to happen next, but she knew that this was just the beginning.

Previous: Part One, Part Three

Next: Part Five

I would say that I’m sorry for the cliffhanger, but otherwise this part would have been at least twice as long. That just feels excessive to me. Anyways tune in next Sci-Friday for part five!