,<center>
## CARAVAN 1⅝
### by Jon Farrar
## [[Begin|1]]</center>
## Chapter 1
“Cross Town,” Ace mumbled as she pulled the jeep into the driveway she had used so often in her days leading a caravan. Despite the familiar layout, the scenery itself seemed to have changed overnight; more and more buildings seemed to pop up every time she arrived, a far cry from the barren outpost she had known for so long.
In the back of her mind, she was still vaguely stunned that the boy she had worked with—no, the boy that had stumbled his way onto Convoy's bus—had ended up running this town, much less to this degree of success. When she had first met him, the world was covered in a deadly toxin that twisted and corrupted the wildlife.
Twenty years later, he had turned his small chunk of the world into a verdant, pleasant little town. She still had one small issue with the place, however. “What a dumb name.”
To her relief, the new recruits were standing under the shade of a pair of oak trees, hiding from the scorching sun under the trees' broad, leafy branches. Ace leaned out the window of her jeep and waved to the duo as she honked the horn. As they stood and approached the jeep, she turned to the passenger's seat and the man sitting in it.
“Four-Eyes, was this really a good idea?” she asked her longtime friend and hired gun. It was only after he shrugged that she remembered his tenuous grasp on her language, and her even worse knowledge of his. *Vaquero* society was never her focus, however. As interesting as she found it that an entire civilization of mercenaries existed, complete with their own language and customs, it had always been pre-apocalyptic society that captured her imagination.
Of the two recruits, the male spoke up first. “Ah reckoned this here might've been the wrong place,” he admitted through a bizarrely-shaped mouth. All the parts of a normal mouth were there and working fine. It was the strange hooked protrusions jutting from the corners of his mouth that were unusual. Ace's gaze traveled up his soft face to find a mat of short blond hair struggling to even reach his eyes. That was when she noticed that his eyes were fairly bulbous and formed from countless tiny hexagons.
As she examined his thin, tall body, her mind drifted to Agent Venom; the biological weapon had left the world inhospitable in its terrifying wake, twisting and deforming whatever it failed to kill. This young man was just one victim out of many; “Abnormals”, they were called, usually by someone who would rather see them all dead. The other members of her former group were all similarly effected.
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|2]]
“...didn't introduce m'self,” the young man finished. His words only managed to break Ace from her train of thought because he accompanied them with a sudden handshake offer. “Y'all can call me Hivemind. Came up with it right before Ah left to join this here ranger unit.” Ace briefly worried about his utility if he was really so immature as to have earned his name so recently. If his callsign was so new, that made him a rookie, and rookies were always a risk. Then again, she'd taken that risk with Lad.
“And you,” Ace shouted at the female recruit, “who are you?”
“...um, hi,” the young woman mumbled in a barely audible tone. “I'm Whisper...but, uh, if that's too much...call me Wisp.” Wisp's long brown hair was lifted by a faint breeze, tugging it to the side and pulling long bangs over her eyes. She was fairly tall for a girl her age, and her muscles seemed to match Hivemind's. She was even quieter than Ace, though, so it was much harder to figure her out than it was the man she'd arrived with.
Ace paced back and forth in front of the two of them, her eyes flicking back and forth between them. “So what made you want to be rangers?”
“I was...I belonged to my mother's caravan when I was still a girl,” Wisp replied, crossing her arms in front of her chest. “Um, I wanted to help people. But then the, uh, the White Wind turned out to be...bad.”
It was hard for Ace to believe that she was once a caravanner, but it was reassuring nonetheless. “Being a ranger is different, Wisp...there's no central ranger headquarters or anything. What we do, we do for our own sakes, which is what makes our reasons so important.” She turned to Hivemind, casting a critical eye over him. “So why are you here?”
“Well,” Hivemind began, “Ah reckon it goes back to when I was no bigger'n a—“
A scream rang out from the town behind them, quickly snowballing into a whole chorus of fearful townspeople. “We'll continue this conversation later,” Ace growled as her fingers wrapped around the hilt of a sword slung over her back. It was the first relic she had ever found from before the world had ended, a relic that had led her all the way to the caravan life, which in turn led her to discover some shocking truths about both her world and the one that laid in ruins. “For now, stay close until we know what's happening.”
She turned to Four-Eyes, and with a fair amount of uncertainty, gave him a command in his own language. “*Sígame*.” When he nodded and walked in close to her, she breathed a sigh of relief.
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|3]]
The four of them trotted into town, only to find two dead bodies in the town square. One still had the cause of death nearby, however; a small, gray quadruped with a sleek body stood over one of the corpses, blood leaping to the sides in subtle sprays as it bit into its victim. Upon the group's approach, it turned toward them, the blades protruding from the sides of its body and the spur on the back of its head glinting in the sunlight. Its eyes narrowed as it let out a hissing noise, and in one swift motion, it was pouncing toward the group.
“A slasher!” Hivemind grunted as he drew a submachine gun and unfolded the wire stock. A short burst of gunfire knocked the slasher out of its pounce, but did little to kill it. “Y'all oughtta be careful; ain't often a slasher rides alone!”
Wisp nodded and slipped on a pair of odd gloves, red in hue and layered with thick pads that reached halfway to her elbows. Sure enough, a nearby window shattered as a slightly larger slasher bounded through it. Wordlessly, Wisp swung her arm outward, smashing the beast's nose with the back of her fist. Before it could get up and think about a counterattack, she had already clambered over and pinned it down. “I'm sorry, little one,” she cooed to the slasher in her grip before she took hold of its head and wrenched it around, snapping the neck and causing instant death.
Hivemind was a little less merciful, choosing instead to keep the slasher off-balance with a kick to the face, followed by a few quick headshots to keep the beast down for good. “Ah think that'll do it. Ah don't see no sign of more of 'em nowhere.” With a sigh, he turned his insect-like head back toward Ace. “Ah got into this here business 'cause of messes like this. A group of us was movin' along in the wastes when at least a dozen of these critters got the jump on us. The fellas responsible for keepin' watch of us didn't last too long, so me an' one other guy scooped up their guns an' made a stand.”
“Things like that tend to happen when you move through the wastes on foot,” Ace noted, biting back an urge to ask questions about Hivemind's gun. “It's remarkable that you survived such odds with a weapon you'd never used before.”
Hivemind shrugged. “Pa hadn't either, but I reckon we were both angry over what happened to Ma.”
“I see.” Ace cringed slightly, but in the process of turning her head, the view was much different than she expected. “Wait, where'd Four-Eyes go?”
A quartet of gunshots echoed in from the front of town, urging the group to run back toward the scene. Four-Eyes was standing there, with all four of his hands brandishing revolvers at some more dead slashers. “Sneak attack,” he mumbled, the language unfamiliar to him. “No sneaky enough.”
Ace heaved a sigh of relief and turned back to Hivemind and Wisp. “Anyway, welcome to the team.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|4]]
## Chapter 2
“Now,” Ace began as she sat with her new recruits in the back of the jeep while Four-Eyes took the wheel, “let me make the rules clear. Rule number one: I'm in charge. Talk all you want, but in the end, you better do what I say. I've been all over the wasteland, so what I say, goes.”
As Ace leaned back and put her hands behind her head, Hivemind cocked his head, confused. “So what's rule number two?” he asked.
“Oh, there isn't one. I don't need a second rule.” Ace let out a sigh as she rose back to a sitting position. She didn't want to explain the situation, but she just had to, so she looked out at the landscape as Four-Eyes ferried them through it.
The repair of the world was a gradual process, most easily seen wherever the green of grass pushed against the dusty brown of still-irradiated ground. Such vivid color and healthy plant life was previously only seen in Summerset Steppes Resort, a beneficiary of corrupt caravanners. Now that their secret had been exposed, however, the chemical suited to counteracting Agent Venom was starting to be spread all over.
“This isn't like a caravan," Ace continued. "There's no central ranger headquarters, no particular route, schedule, objectives...all we do is cruise around the world and find problems to solve. We don't ferry huge stocks of supplies around in this unit like the caravans did...we want to leave a place confident that they can take care of themselves. If you have any questions...you might want to hold them until after our first stop.”
Hivemind shifted in place, entering a more comfortable position. “An' where we goin' at?”
“Divide. It's the worst place to be...uh...”
“An Abnormal?” Hivemind shook his head. “Y'all can say it. Ah can tell by how y'all sound...it ain't so much a dirty word comin' outta yer mouth.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|5]]
Ace nodded slowly, her lips twisting up and to the left in a strange grimace. “I finally have time to address the concerns of my former caravan," she said. "The town is split in half by a large canyon, and the residents have taken to quarantining the Abnormal population on the east side. Divide is pretty much the tail end of most major transportation routes, and between the barricade on the bridge and the riots breaking out throughout the east side, few people dare migrate to the area, and resources hardly ever make it there.”
“So we's headin' out to make them knuckleheads in Divide quit their fightin'?” Hivemind sighed. He rolled his eyes as best he could, given his insect eyes. “Well, shucks, Ah was hopin' we'd see a little more action in this here ranger squad.”
Wisp shook her head. “Oh, no,” she protested, “I think it's wonderful that Ace had this idea. But, um, how can we help East Divide?”
“Yeah, how 'bout that? Ah reckon there ain't much that violence can solve there, seein' as how y'all mentioned riots.”
“Smart,” Ace grunted, nodding approvingly. “We'll probably be talking to the townspeople to figure out how to manage this. I haven't come up with any plans just yet. We'll probably be doing most of our planning right there in Divide, based on the details of the situation. We might also be split up...Hivemind, you'll have Four-Eyes with you in the event that that happens, and Wisp, you'll be with me.”
Ace turned her attention back to the landscape when the others failed to speak up in time to hold her interest. Population centers had been the top priority for the Agent Venom antidote, leaving large swathes of wilderness to maintain their horrifying wasteland ecology, full of dangers ranging from the smaller slashers to the gigantic glow bears.
Ace was hopeful that such a situation could be fixed, but not before the area was scoured for pre-apocalyptic treasure, possibly including the remains of some facility where more of the antidote could be manufactured. Such a find seemed completely unlikely, but Ace held on to hope, because it was what kept her digging and searching for more pre-apocalyptic relics. She brought her thinking back on track by telling herself that she'd visit South Divide, the towns' garbage dump, after the mess at the top of the canyon was cleaned up.
“We'll have to, um, talk to people,” Wisp suddenly started saying, though Ace didn't know if she had just ignored whatever came before that. “Leaders, especially...and, uh, figure out why this is escalating. The bridge...it's...it's really important. We have to get that barricade taken down. If not for them...the Divide...then for everyone that has to pass through.”
“An' Ah reckon splittin' up ain't so hot an idea,” Hivemind added. “If'n Divide is as bad as y'all say, lettin' us get split up is a recipe for disaster.”
Ace nodded. “We'll try to keep together as best we can, but Divide is unpredictable these days.”
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Once the bridge of Divide came into view, framed perfectly by an incoming sunset, Ace's jaw slackened slightly. Somehow, the westerners had erected a massive metal barrier on their side of the bridge, accentuating the structure with guards and barbed wire. “This is even worse than last time I was here,” she said.
As Four-Eyes pulled the jeep up to the outskirts of town, a bearded man peered critically through the window. “What'choo want?” he hooted.
Ace leapt out of the side of the jeep and addressed the bearded man, much to his shock. “We're rangers,” she replied. “Just passing through...unless, of course, there's something here we can help you with.”
“If yoo could help us exterminate some o'them Abnormal fellers causin' trouble, we'd be mighty obliged.”
It took both Ace and Wisp to keep Hivemind restrained. “Shh,” Wisp calmly told him. “Maybe later, OK? Please relax.”
“We'd rather not,” Ace groaned. “We would at least appreciate somewhere to rest for the night.”
“We got a lot over yonder,” the bearded man said as he jabbed a finger toward an empty patch of land safely ensconced within the settlement walls, “if'n yoo just wanna sleep in yoor car. Also an inn that-a-way if'n yoo got somethin' we want. Right now, it'd be lumber 'n' bullets.”
“We'll probably be fine with the lot. Thanks for the directions.” Ace leaned into the driver's side window with the news. “Four-Eyes. Allí.” The vaquero followed her gaze, and before long, had the jeep parked in the lot.
“Ah can't believe y'all held me back!” Hivemind said from the back. “That varmint deserved all Ah could'a done an' more!”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|7]]
“True,” Ace spat. “But if you're just going to lash out like that, you're just acting like a bandit. Disrespect is all over this world. I know I'm no Abnormal, but there were people out there that couldn't believe I was the one in charge of a caravan because I'm a woman.”
Hivemind looked up at her, his bug eyes less able to express emotion than ordinary eyes. “Shucks," he said, "what'd y'all do 'bout them?”
Ace shook her head. One of her fellow caravanners would have expected a smirk, but she couldn't appear quite that soft to new recruits. “I proved them wrong.”
Hivemind chuckled and nodded, trying again to roll his eyes. “Ah like that story, but what am Ah gonna do to prove 'em wrong?”
“Overall, people out there can't help but respect action, an established name. Here...we just have to make the east and west sides of Divide start getting along, and even if that guy doesn't change his tune, he'll at least be surrounded by people that don't like that talk.”
“Ah hope Ah can wait that long.”
Ace shook her head and gripped Hivemind by the shoulders. “You have to. That's an order.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|8]]
## Chapter 3
“Um, Ace,” Wisp squeaked as she walked down the road next to Ace, “was it a good idea to, um, leave those two alone?”
Ace shrugged as she strode through the darkened town with flashlight in hand. In her days as a caravanner, she had the chance to use a pre-apocalyptic mining helmet. There was a tactical advantage to keeping her hands free, but in town, she'd rather not have a helmet matting down her curly blond hair. “We had to,” she replied. “Imagine the scene they'd have caused coming in to get supplies along with us.”
“That's...that's true.” Wisp's hand traveled to her hip, where she had a bag of shotgun shells. No one in the group used a shotgun, but the shells were still considered valuable trade fodder, and that's just where they were headed.
It wasn't long before they found their mark, a wooden building with the words “General Store” etched into the front. Wooden buildings were catching on in popularity, now that trees were growing and metal was quickly becoming necessary for other things. Ace swiveled her light over the shelves lining the walls, stacked with everything from food to fuel. “Hello?” she shouted. “Anyone here?”
“Welcome, stranger!” a low voice growled from her left, causing her to spin on her heels and brandish the flashlight at a man standing in the corner wearing a black cloak over dark purple clothing. Between the cloak and the darkness, it was hard to discern anything about the man.
“Yeah, hi. We have shotgun shells for trade...fifty-six shots. What can we get out of that?”
“Ah...!” The merchant took a knee and messed with something under the counter, causing a series of lights hanging from the ceiling to crackle to life. Ace's flashlight had not prepared her for the sheer amount of resources stocked in the store. “Got a lot of good things on sale!”
Ace nodded approvingly. “A generator, huh? You must go on a lot of digs to get this stuff.”
“Digs?” Wisp parroted.
“Digs. Excavations in search of pre-apocalyptic resources. We'll have to go on one sometime.” Ace was torn about the popularity of digs. It was nice that everyone was taking an interest in relics from before the world ended, but most of them were just looking to cut a profit, and some were woefully uneducated about what their spoils even meant. “Anyway, let's see what we can get for our shells.”
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Ace and Wisp ended up with plenty for their shells. Ammo for Hivemind and Four-Eyes, a spare car battery for the jeep, and a fair amount of food. Four-Eyes was an excellent hunter, but meat alone could only get the group so far, as evidenced by the large amount of people who lost their teeth and bled profusely from the mouth before the Agent Venom antidote saw widespread distribution. Trading with settlements gave Ace a chance to pick up fruits, vegetables, and grains, as opposed to the irradiated plant detritus that was a former staple.
“Come back anytime...!” the merchant shouted at their backs as they left the store with their gains in tow.
“Hivemind should consider himself lucky that we found ammo for that gun,” Ace casually said to Wisp as they made their way back to the jeep. Lad encouraged her to be more open and friendly with her co-workers, but after years and years of not doing that, she found small talk fairly difficult. “My research shows that they were used by some sort of pre-apocalyptic military.”
Wisp let out a quiet gasp. “Um, wow, Ace,” she stammered, “you know a lot...about pre-apocalyptic things.”
Ace nodded, her flashlight raking across the empty streets in search of threats or hazards. “That's why I went into caravanning in the first place...I thought it would be the best way to research how the world was. I was right, too. Maybe I'll tell you about the Serpent building I explored sometime.”
She doubted she actually would, since that was the expedition in which she lost her long-time partner Convoy. The building was rife with technology and trinkets from the old world, but the horrifying events made it hard for her to focus on them.
Wisp was fairly quiet after that, but that only allowed the pair to hear a commotion straight ahead of them. All it took was one glance at one another for both of them to know what came next: a full-on sprint toward the jeep. When they arrived, their worst fears were quickly confirmed.
“Ah said git away from me!” Hivemind's voice shouted into a throng of seven men, prompting a chorus of hateful reactions.
“Whatever, freak!”
“You're the one that needs to get!”
“What's a monster like you doing on the west side?”
“We ought to throw you to South Divide with the rest of the trash!”
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Ace handed the supplies she was carrying to Wisp and gave her knuckles a good crack. Between the new lights and sounds, the men insulting Hivemind and Four-Eyes couldn't help but turn to face her. “Excuse me,” she said through narrow lips, “why are you harassing my fellow ranger?”
“Oh, this animal yours?” one of the men said, his muscles bulging against his shirt a little. “You ought to keep him on a leash.”
Ace shrugged. “He's smarter, more loyal, and much better company than you are. If he's an animal, what does that make you?”
The rowdy man cocked his head and blasted a glob of saliva at Ace's feet. “You some kinda beast-hugger, lady? Why don't you get lost? I hear there's an orchard nearby that could use a woman's touch.”
Ace's eyes shrank down to angry slits. “If you'd like to see how many ribs a woman's touch can break, please continue.”
The gang of hecklers weren't about to wait for Ace to throw the first punch. The rowdy leader of the pack took a swing at Ace's face, only to have her spin around the fist and throw her weight onto his arm, sending him into the dust. Two others tried to ambush her before she rose to her feet, but she struck out at their legs with a sweeping kick and flipped one of them over her shoulder as she stood up.
The other ambusher recovered from the pain in his legs in time to arrange a quick three-on-one attack, battering Ace in more places than she could block all at once. A fourth man came at her from behind and took her into a full nelson hold, leaving her without use of her arms to defend herself from the other six men present, who took turns taking cheap shots at her.
“I hope you're seeing this, you filthy monster,” the leader taunted when his turn came around a second time. “This is what we do to anyone who—“
His taunt was swiftly interrupted by Ace flipping over her captor's back, delivering a kick to the chin in the process. She planted her feet firmly in place and threw her upper body backward, bending herself into an arch and smashing the captor onto his shoulders in the process.
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|11]]With a low grunt, Ace pushed off the ground with her feet, gracefully flipping onto her hands. She landed on the other side of the dazed man who had once held her immobile.
“It's been awhile,” she mused as she held her side. “You boys are lucky I'm so out of practice.”
This infuriated the leader of the pack, causing him to charge at her with a guttural cry. Her response was to take a step forward as she threw a high roundhouse kick, catching him square in the cheek.
As she stepped toward the other men, one of them clearly had had enough of this fight, judging by the gun he drew. “One more step and I'll blow your brains out, crazy lady!” he warned. Three other men took this as their cue to grab their weapons from their holsters as well.
Fortunately, that was just the number Ace felt comfortable with. “*No*,” Four-Eyes insisted from beyond the view of the flashlight. Wisp brought the light to him to reveal all four of his revolvers jabbed into the backs of the four gun-toting men. “*¡Hasta nunca!*” he shouted as he gave them a push.
“Oh, so not only do you need a man to do a woman's job,” the leader growled, the force of the gun in his back causing him to squint in pain a bit, “but you chose this deformed *vaquero* to do it instead?”
“It took seven of you to hit me once,” Ace replied instantly. “I wouldn't be too proud if I were you.”
Clearly backed into a linguistic corner, the leader gave a slight shout as he shook his head. “My father's gonna hear about this, you got that? He's one of the ruling members of the Council of Divide! He'll make sure your circus never sets up in this town again!”
“What am I making sure of this time?” an elderly voice asked from behind Wisp. She turned her light to reveal an older man clad in a duster and fedora, his back bowed slightly under the weight of all the years he'd been alive. “I do wish you'd stop threatening people like that, Biff.”
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Ace quickly pushed Wisp out of her way and strode up close to the man, her eyes quickly taking in all she needed to see. After appraising his clothes and his skin tone, she nodded and stuck her hand out toward the man. “It's been a long time, Gate.”
The man's head suddenly turned to Ace, his eyes wide. “Everyone calls me Gator these days," he said, stroking his chin. "It's been a long time since anyone called me 'Gate'.”
Ace nodded and subtly shoved Wisp around to the side, shining the light on both herself and the older man. “I haven't been here for awhile," she remarked, "mostly because of things like this.”
The older man nodded, his wrinkled fingers stroking his chin. “You look just as young as you did then, Ace. What's your secret?”
Ace shrugged. “Lots of different foods and a job I love. Running Divide has ruined you, Gate.”
Gate threw his head back and blasted a hearty laugh into the night sky. “That's why I don't do it alone anymore...for better or worse.”
“Hey Ace,” Hivemind said, his insectoid head poking up from the back of the jeep, “ya know this guy? Am Ah gonna end up in trouble for all this?”
At the mere sight of Hivemind, Gate's shoulders drooped. “That's what this is about, then...Biff, you and your friends need to get out of here.”
Biff stomped his foot into the dust and let out an angry snort. “Come on, Dad, he's a fre—“
“Leave.” Gate got much louder when he had to repeat himself, a technique that ensured he wouldn't have to ask his son's gang to leave for a third time.
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“I'm sorry about the treatment your companions are going through,” Gate told Ace as he invited the whole ranger unit into his home. He had situated himself in a tower wrought from both wood and metal on the edge of town, his outpost granting a view of both the east and west sides of the city. “You can go ahead and blame that one on me.”
“But you've always been so kind to me and anyone I've traveled with,” Ace protested. “I know this wasn't your idea.”
Gate shook his head and peered out the window, his eyes locked on the barricaded bridge. “No, but it's what most of the members of the council want, and the council was my idea in the first place.”
“Um...what is the council?” Wisp asked as she took a seat on the floor.
“Well, missy, when the caravans disbanded, my position as an outpost liaison for White Wind left me in a bit of a pickle. Fortunately, I was able to spin that experience into becoming the mayor, without the connections to those jerks dragging me down. But let me tell you...most of these wrinkles came from fretting over both the east and west...so I told everyone in East Divide to pick a leader and send him to my place where we could work on this stuff together. The idea got really popular, and it eventually became six and six.”
Gate peeled his gaze away from the window and slowly settled himself into a chair made of a delightfully dark red wood. “But finding a man to corrupt in a group of twelve is easier than in a group of one or two," he continued. "Nowadays, the council gets run by bribes, blackmail, and blackjacks.”
“What in the hay's a blackjack?” Hivemind spat. Ace turned to him and saw the back of his shirt twitching uncomfortably. “Oh, an' can I take this here shirt off a second?”
Gate shrugged. “Please, make yourself at home...just keep your pants on.”
“Thank y'kindly!” Hivemind moaned in delight as he peeled his shirt off over his head, revealing six thin and silvery wings poking from his shoulder blades, flapping furiously now that they were freed from their fabric fastenings. “Ah...feels right good to let 'em have a stretch every now an' again."
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Now then," Hivemind said, "what's this about a blackjack?”
“No weapons are allowed in the council building,” Gate informed the group, glossing over Hivemind's needy wings entirely. “But a few digs later, someone found half a dozen skeletons carrying little clubs...about the size of that flashlight Ace has there. They've made it kind of a custom to sneak those into the place and give some last-minute threats to whoever would vote against them."
Gate gestured out his window to the bridge between the two sides of Divide. "Why, just last month," he added, "I bet the vote to tear down that barrier would've gone differently, but one of the guys from the east side was found bludgeoned just about to death. The other five...weren't too keen on voting against the demands of the west side after that.” Gate threw his hands in the air and let out a sigh. “And these discriminatory measures are really taking hold in how people tend to think around here.”
Hivemind, satisfied with his wings' freedom, let them fold against his back and pulled his shirt back on over them. “Ah think y'all did nothin' wrong, sir. Ain't your fault no one weren't showin' no respect to what this here council was made for. Ace, we gonna help this fella or what?”
“Without stooping to the same lows as some of the more unscrupulous councilmen?” Gate tapped his temple in deep thought. “I don't see much in the way of how that's possible.”
“Shucks, fella,” Hivemind interjected as he stretched his arms skyward, “when's y'all votin' next?”
Gate shrugged. “Two days from now. The guys from the east side put tearing down the barricade back on the ticket...and I'm willing to bet they're being threatened to shoot it down.”
Hivemind rose to his feet, holding his gun close. “Then I reckon all we gotta do is keep track o'them other votin' fellas an' chase off anyone that tells 'em how to vote.”
“Bodyguards, eh...?” Gate slowly nodded. “What's your name, kid?”
“Y'all can call me Hivemind,” he replied, standing at attention.
Gate took hold of Hivemind's hand and gave it a generous handshake. “I like the sound of your ideas, Hivemind. Come on back here when you're ready to settle down. We'll find a place for you, I'm sure.”
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## Chapter 4
“So why don't we go around the table,” Ace offered, “and introduce ourselves?” The table, of course, was the gathering place of the Council of Divide, currently inhabited by Ace, her rangers, and the councilmen from East Divide dressed in their ritzy black suits. It was decked out in lots of pre-apocalyptic furniture, including a lush crimson carpet and wooden paneling. “I'm Ace, leader of a ranger unit.”
“Hivemind here, reportin' for duty! Howdy, y'all.”
“Um...hi. I'm...I'm Whisper...but if you want...um...call me Wisp.”
Four-Eyes was positioned perfectly; he had plenty of time to watch the actions of the others and respond in kind. “*Me llamo Four-Eyes.*”
“We're the East Divide members of the Council of Divide,” a man to the left of Four-Eyes announced. He was a tall and fairly muscular man, with a thin dusting of black hair nested on his head and a conspicuously tail-shaped bulge in the back of his clothes. “I am Tegu. To my left...is Sludge.” Tegu waved a gloved hand to his left, at a sweaty-looking fellow with a wide waistline.
Past Sludge, a tall woman with bright red hair stood straight and nodded as she added her part. “I'm Alkaline. Nice to meet you, rangers.” Ace paused to wonder why a woman would accept being labeled a councilman, but she brushed it aside.
“Hudson's the name,” said a man standing next to Alkaline, whose body was covered in sickly gray feathers. His face tried to come out to a beak, but with ordinary human parts. The result looked more like someone had tugged on his mouth, and stretched it down and outward. “Politickin's my game. Real pleasure.”
Past him stood a huge man, his skin almost as red as the carpet and his arm muscles bulging to the point where his suit had ripped somewhere around his elbow to make room for his triceps. “Titan,” he grunted.
“Hey, hey, hey, fella's not the biggest of talkers,” the last councilman said, walking along the other side of the table to shake Ace's hand. He was short and stout, almost to the point of hilarity. “Big Tony, dey call me. Councilman Big Tony. Kind of a mouthful, i'n't it?”
“...yeah,” Ace mumbled as she returned the handshake.
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|16]]
“Anyway," Ace huffed, "Gate sent the four of us to protect the six of you. How is that going to work?”
Big Tony shook his head. “No, no, fuggedaboutit...!" he replied. "T'ree of dese guys ain't after no protection. “Titan, yeah, but den you's got dem other two...Sludge and Alkaline. Dey's got a little somethin'-somethin' too, ya know.”
“This isn't easy for me to admit,” Alkaline spat, apparently struggling through her words. “When I get nervous...I...I...” With a guttural cry, she fell forward, holding herself up against the table. Her arms shook as the color flooded from her face, until finally, she reeled back and let out a little vomit onto the meeting room table. Ace took a step back in shock as the vomit disintegrated the table beneath it, leaving a puddle-shaped hole in the thick, durable wood. “...do that. Sorry, I just...I'm not very good around strangers."
Big Tony laughed and nodded. “Yeah, remember dat time you's was t'reatened in an alleyway and you barfed all over that guy?” He turned to Ace, nudging her elbow and raising his voice in excitement. “You should'a seen dat guy! Dey brought him to the clinic, and half the palooka's face was gone!”
“That's not funny,” Ace replied, her face still and expressionless. She had to give a good first impression to these politicians, to make sure they felt safe and didn't do anything stupid in a panic. “Why is Sludge safe?”
“He's flammable...really flammable! Guy just sweats some oily stuff dat blows right up if you's give it half a reason!” Big Tony pulled out a match, but Ace was quick to slap it out of his hand. “Jeez Louise, lady, I weren't gonna blow nuttin' up.” Big Tony withdrew his hand to his chest, cradling it.
Ace crossed her hands over her chest. “Are we protecting you from yourself?”
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Tegu shook his head. “Today, we expect enforcers under the employ of the West Divide councilmen,” he spoke, his voice slow to emphasize how deliberate every word from his mouth was. Ace felt better sticking close to him than the chatty and reckless Big Tony.
“They come like bandits, threatening us with severe physical harm," Tegu continued. "Three of us remain safe from this treatment due to what makes them...an east-sider. Two more must keep from being coerced in order to force a tie in the votes. Gate casts a vote whenever we tie, and he will vote with us. Then we can have the barrier removed, and ultimately get around to re-integrating the two halves of Divide.”
“You all make it happen,” Alkaline pleaded. “I...I think I'll be going before I ruin the table anymore.” With one last farewell nod, she made her way out the door, with Sludge and Titan in tow.
Ace sighed and took a seat at the table, her rangers following suit. “When are these bullies supposed to show up?” she sighed into her hand, bored out of her mind.
“No idea,” Hudson admitted. “Could be ten minutes. Could be ten hours.”
“Great.” Ace rose back to her feet and wrapped a hand around her sword. She used to use two blades at one point, but she found it unwieldy, especially the one she carried in her off-hand. It was hard for her to give up the other sword, since it was a relic carried by some pre-apocalyptic world-spanning entity known as Serpent. She had left it in the care of Lad, a child who had grown to be the mayor of Cross Town.
She had kept the Serpent armor, however, a lightweight yet durable cuirass that allowed her to move and attack with ease. In the downtime, she took the opportunity to take some practice swings at the air in front of the meeting room table. Things were a little cramped, but she had partaken in a swordfight in a room smaller than this.
She had plenty of room to practice her form, taking quick diagonal slashes downward that were sure to hit something important in any human body, and most of the inhuman ones. She was attempting to add a little something extra to her swordsmanship, but she didn't want to practice it in front of her charges, lest they lose faith in her.
Ace spun around as she heard the door burst open behind her, revealing a throng of burly men standing in the doorway. “There's a vote tomorrow,” the one in the front grunted, “and that means—wait.” He took a few steps into the room, jabbed a finger into Ace's chest, and stared right in her eyes. “You...! What are you doing here?”
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Ace rolled her eyes and raked her fingers through her hair. “Biff, right?” she chirped, fully aware of what his name was. “Are you here to coerce these people into voting a certain way tomorrow? We're here to make sure no one does that.”
Biff growled and put his fist through the table, prompting the councilmen to pile up in the back of the room as the rangers filed into the front, blocking Biff's gang from any further entry into the room. “Ah reckon this here means y'all better git,” Hivemind taunted. “Unless y'all don't much remember how last night went.”
“Who put you up to this?” Biff snarled, his eyes scanning the councilmen stuffed into the back of the room. “Was it that loudmouth Big Tony?”
“Um, Ace,” Wisp quietly said directly into Ace's ear, “we, should, uh...we shouldn't tell them. I mean...if that's OK with you.”
Ace nodded and took a step forward. “Think you can beat the answer out of us?” she asked, her expression still neutral. To her left, Wisp was slipping on her gloves.
To her right, Hivemind and Four-Eyes were hanging back. Four-Eyes was a gunslinger, through and through; despite having four arms, he was actually bad at close-quarters combat. Ace figured that Hivemind must not have been any different. She found it likely that he scooped that gun from the corpse of his comrade and hadn't tried a second approach to conflict ever since.
Much like the night before, Biff's reply was to be the first one swinging, this time at Wisp. He had seen how well it had worked with Ace, after all. To his dismay, it seemed to work about as well on Wisp.
She brought her arm up to block the incoming right, then the left, then swung her elbow across his cheek before he could throw another punch. Biff reeled from the impact, tumbling backwards over a chair in the process. “...maybe you should go,” Wisp advised him as he rose to his feet. “You...you and the furniture are, uh, the ones hurting the most.”
Biff let out a bellow and gripped the table with both hands, flipping it toward the councilmen. Fortunately, Hivemind was there to keep them from getting smacked in the face, leaving Ace and Wisp to deal with the enraged man and his cronies in a more open space.
With Hivemind and Four-Eyes keeping close to the councilmen in the corner, Biff's gang had no choice but to circle around the women instead. “You're pretty good,” Ace noted as her back pressed up against Wisp's.
“About time you finally realized it,” Biff sneered as the circle tightened. “You giving up, or—“
Ace cut him off with a wave of her hand. “I was talking to Wisp.”
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“You won't be talking at all once we're through with you!” Biff replied as he and his men closed in for an attack. Ace took a step forward and blasted one of them in the throat with a powerful kick, putting a swift end to his resistance, but also leaving herself open to be thrown to the ground by two others.
One of them stepped over her and took her by the throat, but that only lasted as long as it took for Wisp to throw a turn punch at his temple, which wasn't very long. Still, the scene was too crowded for Ace to get on her feet and reclaim the offensive, so she stuck to playing it safe while Wisp loomed above her.
She was able to watch Wisp's back in a limited capacity as two men came at her from the front and one from the back. Ace grappled and pulled him to the ground while Wisp spun on her toes, two fists thrusting through the air where her shoulders used to be. Her spin continued, letting her rake a punch across both her assailants at once. They both reeled backward from the impact, giving Biff room to grab her fist and throw her against the wall.
Biff continued pursuing her while the other men closed in on Ace. Before they could tighten the noose too much, she arched her back and pushed off with her hands, sending her feet springing square into someone's chest. She now stood on her feet, with one of Biff's thugs dazed beneath her.
Ace wasn't about to reach for her sword; she wasn't here to kill anyone. When she caught a glimpse of someone's hand creeping toward her back followed by a slight tugging from behind, though, her hand jumped straight to the hilt, determined to keep the sword so that no one could use it against her.
They may have been hired to blackmail and intimidate the councilmen, but they were still just thugs. Killing them would only set a dangerous precedent in Divide's political atmosphere, so it was her policy to avoid it. She wasn't about to stick to that policy if she or any of her rangers were under threat of harm. The mere threat of being sliced was enough to convince Biff's thugs to join him in dealing with Wisp.
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“I...I wouldn't do that,” Wisp warned as Biff and five of his friends closed in on her. “I, um...you can leave now, or I can beat you up. I don't want to impose...either one is OK with me.”
When the men ignored Wisp, that was her cue to break through the thugs' line of defense by smashing Biff in the gut with her palm, sliding between his legs, and sticking up a foot of her own. Her foot then served as a fulcrum from which to flip Biff onto his back.
Wisp scrabbled to her feet just as one of Biff's thugs aimed a punch at her head. She closed her arms around the punch, trapping his arm in hers and leaving him to take a couple headbutts. Wisp spun him around just in time to use him as a shield to intercept some blows from another thug, and one shove sent both of them tumbling to the floor.
The remaining thugs seemed to have given up not long after that, and resigned themselves to picking up Biff and their incapacitated comrades instead. After the seven men had hustled themselves out of the meeting room, the councilmen became a little more confident sticking their heads out from under the table. “Dem palookas get outta here?” Big Tony wondered aloud, still gripping the edge of the table.
“They're gone,” Ace affirmed as she fixed her sword and its strap. “Will they be back?”
“The way you dealt with 'em?” Big Tony shook his head. “I'm really doubtin' it! You's just spend the rest of today figuring out what to do tomorrow. I mean, you's a bunch of rangers, right? You's can't stay tied up in Divide; we'll find more bodyguards if we's ever needs 'em.”
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## Chapter 5
Ace and the rangers watched with smiles on their faces as the last scraps of the wall were removed from the bridge. “Gate gave me some directions,” she said as she sat in the back of the jeep with Hivemind and Wisp. “To celebrate, we're going on a dig.” Ace patted a white ball resting between her legs. “You two ever been on a dig? They're really something else.”
“Ah ain't done nothin' like that never,” Hivemind denied. “But Ah did get into a-rangerin' to try all sorts o'new stuff.”
Ace sat up against the back window of the jeep and laid the dig's events out to Hivemind. “We're heading out to meet one of Gate's friends out in the wastes. We'll help them turn the ground upside down looking for pre-apocalyptic relics. Once we're done, we take this white ball...this is the antidote. It'll kill off the latent Agent Venom in the ground, and the regrowth of the world will mark that place off for future diggers as already having been explored.”
“Mighty smart o'ya, Ace. Where's this here dig happenin' at?”
“Halfway between here and...” Ace sighed and rested her chin in her hand, watching the blotchy landscape fly past.
“Um, Ace,” Wisp mumbled, “where...um, where did you say it was? I mean, if you're OK with telling us.”
Ace hesitated for a moment before turning back toward her fellow rangers. “...Threering.”
Suddenly, all eyes were on Ace, even Four-Eyes', albeit only for a moment before he brought them back to the road. “The slavers' camp?” Hivemind shrieked. “Well, shee...oot.”
“So when we're out there in the field, we have to stay close. Is that clear, rangers?”
Hivemind and Wisp nodded silently. Wisp's eyes were wide, but Hivemind's were the same as they ever were. Ace wondered if he was even capable of widening or narrowing his gaze.
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“You...have arrived!” a man's voice rasped from under a pile of rags. Everything about him was covered except for his hands, which were dark in skin tone and looking fairly knotted. “After a journey from the settlements to the forbidding wilderness beyond, your harsh trek has finally ended!”
“Whatever,” Ace growled. “Gate warned me you'd be weird, so just tell me and my rangers what to do, got that?”
A sigh pushed its way out of the rags. “Just take up your weapons, OK? I can handle the digging.”
“With this machine?” Now that the subject had turned to the enormous yellow vehicle with the strange arm jutting from the front of it, Ace was much more interested. “This must be pre-apocalyptic. What does it do?”
Gate's friend clambered up the side of the vehicle, swinging himself into some sort of cockpit situated off to one side. “Strike the earth!” he cried as the vehicle roared to life.
Ace watched in fascination as he fumbled with levers in the cockpit, causing the arm of the vehicle to jab itself into the soil. When it raised back up, it carried the dirt off to the side of a newly-dug hole and dumped it there, creating a pile next to the hole. Ace rolled her eyes and lamented how little this felt like every other dig she'd been to.
She was used to tents being pitched in the middle of nowhere, theories and expectations slung back and forth over a campfire, hours and hours of thrusting shovels into the ground under the scorching sun. She had never seen a machine like this before, and she was starting to regret that she ever had.
“*¡Tiburóns de tierra!*” Four-Eyes bellowed over the engine of the digging vehicle.
“Huh?” Hivemind shouted. “Wait, y'all, what the hay's a tib—“
“Landsharks,” Ace grunted as Four-Eyes climbed to a higher vantage point on the rocks he was standing on and drew his revolvers. “The vibrations from this digger rig must be driving them crazy. Be ready for a fight!”
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Four-Eyes had spotted them first, and judging by his gasp, Hivemind must have been second. Ace eventually got around to spotting the trademark rounded fins racing through the sand, making a beeline for the rig.
“Rangers," she ordered, "protect the digger while he works! *¡Protegelo*!” Four-Eyes had tried to teach Ace how to tell him to guard someone. She still wasn't sure she had it right, but he was already all geared up to do exactly that, orders or no.
Ace let out a grunt as one of the landsharks jumped out from the sand, its rounded maw wide open and ready to slam a couple hundred razor-sharp teeth into whatever got in the way. Its short limbs ended in webbed feet that were held tight to its sides to better move through the air.
Ace unsheathed her sword and slashed downward in a single motion, bisecting the creature about as neatly as bisections ever go. Ace shook herself clean of some fresh blood just as two more landsharks leapt after her, raked her sword horizontally through the air, and ducked to avoid the corpses. Despite being dead, their speed and weight would have knocked her off of her feet and left her vulnerable to the live ones.
Meanwhile, Hivemind and Four-Eyes took to their guns, running dissimilar strategies with similar weapons. The bug-eyed young man was running and gunning right down on the sand, sprinting toward any fins he saw in the dirt and blasting at them with his submachine gun. Given the thickness of the landsharks' hides, however, he usually aimed toward their eyes or open mouths.
Hivemind ran toward one of the pouncing landsharks, launching himself into a slide to fireda volley right into the underbelly of the beast. “Reloadin'!” he shouted as he rose to his feet.
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When Hivemind reloaded his gun, Four-Eyes took that as his cue to start firing into the crowds of creatures. They were approximately the size of Councilman Titan, but the dig must have been happening right near one of their nests, because they were coming in by the dozens. Time Hivemind spent reloading was time in which he couldn't protect himself. Fortunately, he had Four-Eyes on a high rock to watch over him and rain revolver rounds into the landsharks, enormous bullets that were plenty capable of piercing their hides from any angle.
“*¡Recargando!*” was Four-Eyes' way of calling for cover of his own while he reloaded. Being on the rocks and having a digger nearby meant that the landsharks couldn't track any vibrations he made, but if they were close enough, they could hear the extremely loud reports from his revolvers just fine.
Wisp was likely the one least suited to fighting the landsharks, since their jaws and speed had a huge advantage over her measly fists, so she had taken to climbing up the digger and joining Gate's friend in the cockpit. Some enterprising landsharks would clamber atop the digger, seeking a weakness up there. Wisp was the one keeping them from harming the digger's operator.
Fists were fairly ineffective at harming the landsharks on their own, but with a good enough running start, Wisp could throw the landsharks off balance, an easy task considering their thin, short limbs. They moved on all fours, but a good running punch would make them stagger backwards, and often right off the side of the digger, from which they'd either try again or meet their end at the hands of one of the other rangers.
Ace fell to her knees after several minutes of lacking action, the stress of strife and swordsmanship having taken its toll on her. “They've stopped,” she announced as she joined Wisp atop the digger. “Are you about done?”
Gate's comrade shut down the machine and rose to his feet, stepping away from the controls. “That should do it!” he announced triumphantly. “Now we pick through the dirt I moved and take a look in that hole...see what we can find!”
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Hivemind and Four-Eyes soon joined them atop the digger, and soon the four of them were sitting at the edge of the machine's body, staring into the hole and watched the man in rags take a look. “Ah reckon we had ourselves one hell of a hootenanny!” Hivemind gasped, hunched over and breathing heavily. “Ah'm glad it's all over.”
Ace shook her head. “I hope it is, anyway,” she spat. “If we're lucky, that was the worst of it right there.”
Hivemind turned to Ace, his head cocked sideways. “If'n we're lucky? Shoot, what if we ain't?”
Ace's gaze turned to the direction from which the landsharks had approached. “Then we'll have to deal with their mother.”
“Their ma?! Y'all's tellin' me none o'them was fully grown?”
“That's right.” Ace rose to her feet, her gaze still turned toward the wastes and her hand wrapped around her sword. “Most landsharks don't live to reach adulthood, so one clutch yields a few dozen offspring in the hopes that at least one will. They live far from the usual transportation routes because vehicles send vibrations through the ground that they can't stand, but there's so many of them off those paths that new ones are rarely formed.”
Hivemind let out a bored sigh. “Stay on the roads or the landsharks'll git ya. Stay indoors at night or the locusts'll git ya. Ma taught me plenty 'bout where the landsharks live, but that means I ain't ever seen a grown-up one o'them.”
Ace's head titled back, throwing her gaze skyward. “You'll know it when you see it. For now, just relax and hope you don't see it.” With a grunt, she took off running toward the edge of the digger, and made it to the ground in a single agile leap, landing on her feet. “Now, we have to do something about these dead landsharks before a corpse mutt catches the scent of rotting flesh.”
Hivemind tore off his shirt and leapt toward the rock Four-Eyes had stood upon. His insect wings too small for any function except a mere glide. From the rock, he circled through the air as he slowly came in for a landing. “Ah know just what to do!” he gasped as he ran to the jeep, fetching an insane variety of supplies.
A pot, some water, some of the vegetables and grain Ace had bought in Divide, and more ended up hauled to the digger over the course of several trips. Hivemind's hands were shaking from excitement when he handed Four-Eyes his trusty frying pan. “Ah heard y'all can cook like no one else 'round here,” he said to the *vaquero*.
Before anyone could ask him what was going on, he was already running to collect irradiated plants. They made excellent material to start a fire with. Hivemind dropped to his knees in front of a landshark and looked up at Ace. “Reckon y'all could slice this fella up into bits we can get over the fire?” he asked.
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## Chapter 6
Ace didn't know very much about cooking, but the smells that drifted out of the pot Hivemind had over the fire were incredible. More importantly to her, the smell was one unlikely to set off any corpse mutts. They were never interested in cooked meat, and Hivemind had just about picked the landsharks' bones dry. What little that had remained after that had already been incinerated. Still, she was curious to see what he and Four-Eyes had teamed up to concoct.
“Um, excuse me,” Wisp mumbled, hugging her knees as she sat close to the fire, “the, um, the fire's still going strong, but...what...uh, when is this going to be done?” With that, she walked over to her task off to the side.
“Shoot,” Hivemind shouted, “reckon it's about finished! Now, it's possible Ah don't quite remember the whole recipe my ma told me 'bout, an' I know there was a few substitutions, but gather 'round an' have some wasteland gumbo!”
Ace raised an eyebrow and stared into the pot, and was greeted by a thick brown soup. Her eyes began to water as the sheer amount of seasoning that had gone into the pot flowed around her in a thick, steamy cloud. “Phew,” she said, “how'd you make this out of the stuff we had?”
Hivemind chuckled and shook his head. “Secret family recipe! But this stuff here will serve y'all well, hot or cold, for a real long time! Well...? Y'all gonna dig in or what?”
Ace shrugged and took a ladle full of gumbo from the pot, pounding it down directly from the ladle. There weren't any bowls, so all they could do was pass the ladle around and take turns having some gumbo. Ace was given the first bite, as the leader of the rangers.
Immediately, a barrage of seasonings and spices socked her in the tastebuds, stomping all over her tongue as the meat of the landsharks passed by on their way to her throat. “I've never had anything like this.” Her brain was having trouble deciding how much she liked it, so she held off on telling Hivemind whether she really enjoyed it or loved it.
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Four-Eyes and Hivemind were next in line to eat some wasteland gumbo. As the cooks, they had sampled the soup plenty of times before it was finished, so they were more prepared than Ace was for the incoming medley of tastes. “Ah think this is better'n how my ma made it!” Hivemind gasped. “Wisp, come have a bite!”
Wisp was over to the side, smoking the leftover landshark meat and turning it into long-lasting, easy-to-store jerky. Hivemind had showed her how to handle that task, so she could get it done at the same time as he prepared the gumbo. “Um, OK, if you say so,” she said as she walked over and took the ladle from Hivemind. “I, um...I think this is tasty.”
Last of all, it was time for Gate's friend to have a mouthful of gumbo. He pulled the rags away from his lips to make room for the ladle, and hooted approvingly once he emptied the ladle into his mouth. “The dig didn't go quite so well,” he admitted, “but this gumbo stuff is pretty good!”
Ace nodded. “So what did you find, exactly?” she asked.
“Hardware!” Gate's friend motioned to a trio of toolboxes overflowing with pre-apocalyptic tools. “Before the world ended, something was getting built right here, I can tell you that much.”
“Of course they were.” Ace rolled her eyes as she downed some more gumbo, handed the ladle to Hivemind, and jumped into the digger's hole. As she talked, she pointed at and kicked various items in the hole. “See this metal bar? This was the skeleton they would put up at the start of every building. They'd put this up and then slap other materials around the sides.” Ace looked up from the hole to see three pairs of eyes staring at her, and Four-Eyes enjoying gumbo back near the cooking fire. “Is this your first dig? I've been on plenty.”
“Reckon y'all know more about that there pre-'pocalypse stuff more'n anyone Ah met,” Hivemind gasped as he offered a hand to Ace to help pull her out of the hole. When she proved that she didn't need it, he took a step back and continued. “Maybe Ah ought to take this time an' admit this here gumbo stuff is pre-'pocalyptic too.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|28]]
Just as Hivemind seemed to have predicted, Ace's eyes lit up at that fact. “Incredible...!" she gasped. "But how did you manage to get your hands on a recipe for pre-apocalyptic cuisine?”
Hivemind chuckled and shook his head. “Reckon it's the recipe my family been guardin' ever since they found it. Ah ain't never been on no dig, but someone Ah descended from sure has! We've had that there recipe gettin' passed down through the family.”
Wisp took a sip of gumbo from the ladle. “Um, Hivemind,” she said hesitantly, “where is the...where is the recipe now?”
“Just in my head.” Hivemind shrugged and tapped his temple. “Ma's Ma got burned...bandits done torched her. She'd told Ma the recipe before then, but the paper itself done got burned with her. Then Ma...Ma told me all Ah needed to know 'bout gumbo before them slashers I told y'all 'bout before.”
Wisp reeled back, blinking rapidly. “Oh...my. I'm sorry, Hivemind.”
Hivemind dismissed Wisp's concern with a wave of his hand. “Nothin' to it. Y'all just hang close an' keep at this rangerin' stuff. That's what Ma an' Pa would've told me.”
Before any more talk could occur or any more gumbo could be eaten, the ground started to shake under Ace's feet. It was subtle at first, easily dismissed as a passing vehicle, but when it intensified instead of fading away, she started to worry. “Hivemind?” she barked.
Hivemind looked up from securely putting a lid on the gumbo pot. “Yes'm?”
“Remember what I told you about adult landsharks?” Ace's hand wrapped around the hilt of her sword, communicating everything else she needed to say.
Hivemind still felt the need for elaboration. “That Ah'd be unlucky to see one?”
Ace nodded. “You're not very lucky, are you?”
“Ah did just tell y'all how the rest of my family died. Luck ain't somethin' y'all find in the Hive.”
Ace pointed her sword toward the horizon far from the jeep. “Watch.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|29]]
Everyone's eyes slid along the blade of her sword and out into the middle of nowhere, where the ground suddenly erupted to reveal a gigantic brown landshark. Its rear limbs were the same size as the babies', now uselessly dangling from a body about as big as the Divide bridge. Its growth instead had been dedicated to redefining its forelimbs into two powerful fins. Those worked together with its broad, flat tail to push it through the ground.
“Everyone,” Ace whispered to the group, “get in the jeep.”
“But my digger...!” the man in rags choked. “Can't leave my digger!”
Ace whipped her sword away from the adult landshark, pointing right at Gate's friend. “You have to leave that digger. It'll vibrate the ground too much and won't outrun that beast.”
“So, um, the plan is to run?” Wisp wondered aloud, her eyes still glued to the landshark slicing through the distant earth.
“We have to put that thing down.” When Ace saw Wisp cringe at the suggestion, her response was to get insistent. “We're rangers, here to help humanity rebuild. Imagine what that thing could do to a settlement, any settlement. That landshark could rip Divide to shreds in a couple hours. If it follows some vehicles back to their homes, their families, that's it.”
Wisp's eyes fell to her feet. “Oh...I don't know...”
Ace barely held back her reflex to get more forceful. “Then you stay on the digger or in the passenger seat of the jeep. Four-Eyes...Conduci...whatever.” Ace resorted to pantomiming the use of a steering wheel. “Hivemind and I will be in the back, with a little gift from Lad.”
As everyone took their places in the jeep, Gate's friend clambered up onto his digger. “I'm staying here!” he insisted. “This digger's my life!”
Ace nodded. “Fine. Wisp, if you want to stay with this guy and keep him safe, go for it.” Wisp nodded and followed him up the digger, telling him all the while to keep it still. “Everyone else...take your places.”
“Ace,” Hivemind growled to her as they clambered into the jeep, “what the hay are we gonna do to that thing? Who's Lad? What's this gift?”
Ace chuckled to herself as she reached through the back window of the jeep. “When I used to lead a caravan, we picked up a little boy with a tail who took to being called 'Lad'. Now he's the mayor of Cross Town, and he told me to leave a tank I'd found on a dig with him. Now, a tank's huge, covered in armor, and has this enormous explosive gun on it, so it took a lot of convincing to make me give it up.”
“Then he must've given you somethin' mighty fine!”
Ace's reply was to pull a large, belt-fed gun with multiple barrels through the back window, mounting it onto a special brace installed at the very back of the jeep. “We're going to distract that landshark with our jeep and fill it with bullets until it can't hurt anyone.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|30]]
All it took to get the plan started was a few spins through the dirt, and the landshark was hot on their trail. “Go go go!” Hivemind panicked.
Four-Eyes didn't seem to need the hint since he was already driving away from the enormous creature, and Ace simply rolled her eyes and swiveled the mounted machine gun into position. She watched the beast for a bit as it swerved in and out of the dirt, using sporadic and powerful pushes to easily keep pace with the jeep as it bounced unsteadily across the wastes.
“Bingo,” Ace said once she'd decided exactly where to keep the weapon aimed, and took steady hold of the gun as she began to open fire. It was the first time she'd taken up a gun like that, and she preferred her sword in most other situations, so she found it much more difficult to keep the gun on target than she thought.
“Go fer the eyes!” Hivemind shouted. Ace decided to ignore his advice. The eyes were far too small to properly aim at. She did, however, remember his tendency to aim for the mouth and underbelly, taking a bloodcurdling cry from the beast as her cue to sink several rounds into its gullet.
“Four-Eyes!” Ace shouted. The *vaquero* had been given his instructions before the plan was set into motion, and his name was the cue to yank the wheel to the side and turn the jeep right around. Hivemind gasped as the jeep squeezed right past the landshark. Ace figured that it was just because it was a close shave, but then she saw the smaller landsharks clinging to the adult. Hivemind reached for his gun as they began to leap from their parent toward the jeep. “Hivemind, keep them off of me!”
The bug-like man let out a short chuckle before setting out to work. Quick bursts of gunfire were all it took to knock the landsharks off-kilter as they moved through the air, causing them to fall short of the jeep. They weren't fast enough to keep pace with the jeep once they were knocked to the dirt, so Ace didn't bother to take aim at them.
Even if she had, it wouldn't have mattered, since the fully-grown landshark didn't seem to notice its young struggling through the dirt. They let out pained shrieks as the adult battered through them; the ones that were caught in its jaws died too quickly to cry out. When the adult had finally caught up with the jeep, Ace let out a shout as she continued to open fire.
“Ace,” Hivemind shouted, “Ah don't know if this is helping much!”
“Then I know what will. Take over on the gun, will you?”
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Ace stepped back to give Hivemind room to hop behind the turret. Before he could ask what her plan was, she belted out a short yell and gave herself a running start before leaping from the back of the jeep. She jabbed her sword toward the ground, thrusting it directly through the skull of the adult landshark. It let out a pained cry as it slowed its movement through the dirt and jerked its head around, hoping to shake Ace free and into its enormous maw.
“Ace!” Hivemind's voice kept shouting, fading slightly as the jeep peeled off without her, and easily getting drowned out every time the landshark squealed in pain. After a few bucks, Ace's sword came out of the wound, giving her nothing to brace herself against and sending her tumbling through the air. The landshark's mouth lay below her, agape. If she fell into that cavern of jagged teeth, it would all be over for her. Knowing that, she decided on an all-or-nothing course of action.
Ace took a deep breath, waited for the right moment, and thrust her sword into the roof of the beast's mouth, creating a handhold from which she could swing her momentum up and away from certain death. She dragged the sword after her, cleanly slicing it all the way out of the landshark before its death throes could claim her sword forever or cause it irreparable damage.
When the jeep finally came back around for her, the landshark laid motionless, the internal damage too great for it to persevere. “Ace, y'all's insane!” Hivemind admonished her as he offered a hand to help her into the back of the jeep.
Once again, however, she proved his offer to be completely unnecessary. “I've done crazier,” she admitted as the jeep pulled up to the digger. “Let's get Wisp and get out of here.”
To her surprise, though, Gate's friend crawled out from underneath the digger. “There you are!” he shouted. “I'm so sorry...”
Ace took firm hold of his rags and lifted him off the ground. “Sorry about what? Where's Wisp?”
“Your friend? Slavers took her to Threering! I couldn't—“
Ace was already in the jeep, pushing Four-Eyes to the passenger's seat and driving to the slavers' camp before he could finish that sentence.
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## Chapter 7
“Hivemind,” Ace shouted through the rear window of the jeep.
The bug-eyed man shook his head. “Ah don't need to hear it, Ace,” he shot back. “This ain't our fault none.”
“That's not what I was going to do! I have a confession to make.” Ace motioned for Four-Eyes to take the wheel, which he did after she bent and jimmied herself through the window and into the back. “Please, I've never told anyone this. Just listen.”
“That an order?” Hivemind stared at Ace for a moment, then leaned back and laughed. “Naw, Ah'm just kiddin'. Go ahead. Ah'm all ears.”
Ace shrugged and took a deep breath. “Threering...is my fault.” Hivemind tried to speak up, but she laid a hand over his mouth until he stopped trying to talk.
“The first dig I ever went on," Ace explained, "I found a lot of pre-apocalyptic relics. They weren't anything I was interested in. After all, I wasn't about to carry a tent that large, and then there were shackles, chains, and cages...what was I going to do with those? The whip looked interesting to me, and there was this enormous vehicle on rails that I would've wanted to investigate, but I couldn't bear to take anything away from that dig site. What happened next...I hated it too much.”
Hivemind shifted, turning his whole body toward Ace. “Then...what did happen?”
“An important part of any dig is to put the clues together and figure out what you've found.” Ace sighed. “Most of the people there concluded that it was some sort of traveling slave auction. I didn't have any alternate theory to put out, so that's the version that took off. If I'd just found some other way to put the pieces together...” After brushing some hair out of her face, Ace added, “I'm glad Threering hasn't figured out that rail vehicle yet.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Hivemind balked. “Y'all's tellin' me that it was some doohickeys from under the dirt that went an' motivated a bunch o'them diggin' types into becomin' slavers?” Hivemind shook his head. “Ah don't buy it. Ace, it weren't no relic that made them boys into assholes. Ah reckon they might've been lookin' for some excuse to pull this kinda crap for a mighty long time.”
Ace shook her head. “Even so, I've been going on digs ever since. Maybe I'll find another facility like this...maybe I'll put an end to that theory."
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“Welcome to Threering,” a guard barked. He had a shaved head and a thick beard, and two guns were slung onto his back, a commodity few outside of Threering could afford. “Business or pleasure?”
Hivemind nearly offered a response, but Ace silenced him with a wave of her hand. “A little of both,” she shot back. “Mostly pleasure.”
Soon, the jeep was waved on through and next to an enormous red-and-white striped tent. Ace led Hivemind and Four-Eyes inside, her eyes darting from guard to guard. The slavers did their very best to make sure no one would have so much as a chance to break out of Threering, and the things people were willing to give up in order to own another human being made that task so much easier. A few of them glowered at Hivemind, prompting him to ask, “Ace, why's all them fellas givin' me that look?”
The word still sat poorly with Ace, but dodging around it would only raise more suspicion. “Abnormals. They're the ones that are usually taken forcefully to be slaves. Normals, I guess you could call them...don't usually end up for sale unless they're put up for trade.”
“Y'all's tellin' me people come here an' trade their own kin for...” Hivemind ended his sentence with a long, low whistle. “Ah knew slavin' weren't the nicest thing around, but...”
Four-Eyes, as usual, said nothing, instead choosing to stay vigilant in case of any spontaneous gunfights. He had mastered the art of keeping two hands free from his shirt and two hands hidden; it allowed him to both appear nonthreating and keep hold of his weapons. Ace felt better having him around.
“You there,” one of the guards intoned, snapping all three rangers at attention. “This is your last chance to take a look at the slaves available before the next auction begins. I recommend you take it.”
Ace nodded and waved her companions into the back of the tent, a secluded area where cages stocked with humans lined the walls. There were about two Abnormals for every ordinary human locked away, and their expressions ranged from desperate to completely broken. Soon, she'd found Wisp's cage, where the lean brunette woman stood with shackles around her wrists and ankles, as well as a heavy metal collar around her neck.
Her eyes widened in surprise, one of them set in the middle of a black ring. “Ace!” she exclaimed, or at least as close as Wisp ever came to exclamation. “You came for me!”
“We'll think of something,” Ace promised her.
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Hivemind scoffed and ushered Ace and Four-Eyes to his sides, using them to obscure his hand as it slipped between the bars. “Ah already gots me a plan,” he clarified as Wisp came up to the bars.
To Ace's surprise, he easily jimmied the locks on the restraints using a tooth he'd claimed from the landsharks, a needle-like tooth found in the front of a landshark's mouth. “Ma lost the key to our lockbox," he explained, "so we had to get it open somehow. These things ain't half as hard to go pickin' into.”
Ace's questioning gaze persisted, and he somehow knew exactly why that was. “The cage is a whole 'nother story, though. Ah can't do it with this littl'un.” Dejected, Hivemind broke the tooth off inside the lock on one of the handcuffs, then jammed the remaining tooth into the other. His usefulness exhausted, he stepped back from the cage.
“At least it'll jam those locks...now it ain't possible to make those cuffs lock again," he said, looking satisfied at his handiwork. "Wisp, y'all just hang in there, an' we'll tail whoever goes an' buys you, so y'all can pop 'em in the mouth an' come back with us.”
With that, a loud siren rang out, a signal that the auction was about to begin. Ace took her seat in the bleachers surrounding the enormous area in the center of the tent, with Hivemind and Four-Eyes on either side of her. They watched in disgust as a portly man stepped up onto a circular podium, a whip strung in his hands.
Ace couldn't bear to be too attentive as he started to bellow about the beginning of the auction. She knew that if she looked up at the poor victims being sold, she might be motivated into acting rashly, which would only end badly for her and all her rangers. Once she remembered what she was here for, she slowly turned her eyes and ears back on.
A group of four was claiming ownership over a young Abnormal girl with abnormally skinny arms. Two holes were cut in the back of her shirt, through which bony protrusions poked. Ace knew exactly how she would react, and therefore found it easier to take her hand away from her sword.
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“Next up,” the ringleader announced, “is a real rare sight in this place: a healthy young woman!”
Ace nearly growled in contempt as Wisp was dragged out into the open, clad in rags, but Four-Eyes and Hivemind were both there to calm her down. “Wait,” Four-Eyes ordered.
“Fella's right,” Hivemind whispered in her other ear. “Ain't no one gettin' too far with Wisp, remember? Wait it out an' see who buys her.”
Ace leaned back in her seat, trying her hardest to stay calm and keep track of who was walking out of there with Wisp. Her mind sparked with thoughts of tearing this tent to the ground, to bring some serious misery down on anyone who had a part in messing with a ranger under her care. In the end, she knew that taking a stand here was more suicidal than anything. All she could do was hope to get her own kind out of Threering safely.
“Sold!” the ringleader barked, bringing Ace's eyes down to the center, where she studied the man who had thrown so much of his resources away in the hopes of keeping a broken young woman at his beck and call, only to have been given a beacon directing plenty of rage his way instead. He was old, lecherous-looking man, and Ace became visibly irritated when he laid his knotted fingers upon her face.
“Wait, those hands,” she whispered to Hivemind. “Where have I seen knobby gross hands like that?”
“Don't matter none,” was his reply. “We'll have plenty of time to get real acquainted-like when Wisp thrashes him.”
Ace nodded and rose from her seat, with her fellow rangers in tow, as they followed the old man out of the tent. They stalked him, waiting and watching, knowing that if they tried anything too close to Threering, everyone involved in the scuffle would be dead. Ace waved her companions in close as Wisp and her buyer got into a small brown car. “Stay here and cover me,” she ordered them as she crept in closer. She dove in close, pressing her back against the car door and mentally prepared herself for the impending brawl.
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Suddenly, a loud thump and the sound of a car horn spooked her from her spot, leading her to peek her head up and look through the window, at the scene of Wisp rubbing the blood off of her giant handcuffs. She looked up from her handiwork and gasped at the sight of Ace. “I didn't know you were coming,” she insisted. “He was, um, trying to touch me.”
“Not anymore,” Ace mused as she helped dispose of Wisp's anklets. “We're sorry we didn't come back soon enough to keep the slavers away.”
Wisp shook her head. “No...I, um...I was wrong to stay with that man. He's...he did it. He flagged down the slavers...uh, he gave me to them.”
“That's just the sort of thing Gate would never tolerate.” Ace couldn't fathom how that man had ever struck up a friendship with the kindhearted, gentle Gate. “He sure went through a lot to double-cross us just for a slave.”
“Um, Ace...he knew me.” Wisp stepped out of the car, prompting Hivemind and Four-Eyes to rush over to join her. “He and I...uh, we were both...both in the WPA.”
“What the hay's a WPA?” Hivemind spat, confused.
“Wasteland Preservation Association,” Ace explained, not wanting to sit there and wait for Wisp to choke out the words. “For whatever reason, they're completely against humanity rebuilding.”
Wisp raised her hands in front of her chest, waving them dismissively. “Oh, no,” she argued, “I was in it to preserve animal life. Those poor rock hares and slashers...they're just as alive as we are, so I wanted to keep them safe.” Wisp's vague excitement fell away as soon as she stopped talking about the animal kingdom.
“But...but then the, um, the people were too extreme," Wisp continued. They...they attack settlements and rangers, and that's...that's too much. So I quit. That man...he wasn't acting in accordance with, um, with your friend's wishes...because he was too busy being from the WPA.”
“Shucks, this is all way over my head,” Hivemind balked. “So Wisp, y'all's keepin' those cuffs? Y'all gave that fella a whoopin' with 'em!”
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## Chapter 8
Wisp's eyes swept back and forth over the cuffs from Threering, each shackle adorned with a ring of landshark teeth. These were the broad, triangular teeth that the back of a landshark's mouth cultivated, not the needle-like teeth that Hivemind had earlier used to pick locks.
“Oh...my,” she mused as she pressed her index finger into one of the teeth, instantly drawing blood. “How did, uh, did you get the teeth to stick?”
Hivemind yanked the shackles away from her. “Shucks, it ain't dry yet!” he snapped. “But to answer y'all's question, it's sticky stuff that done came outta some tree. Compliments of Ace.”
She had been hoarding the adhesive in case of an emergency, but replacing Wisp's gloves and raising her spirits by means of giving her a new weapon just felt right. She shook her head and listened to the two of them talk while she sharpened her sword.
“Oh...that, um, that was quite generous.”
“Ah reckon it was. So y'all's not in that WPA thing no more, is you?”
“Of course not. I, uh, I don't like hurting animals, but if they...if they attack people, I know what has to be done. That's why I didn't...didn't go to fight the giant landshark. I heard what Ace said, but, um, it wasn't hurting people then.”
“Ah know, but that there stuff we splashed down in that dig site will make sure whatever's livin' there turns right back to normal. Won't be dangerous to no one no how, Ah bet. That's the best way to make sure no animal gets hurt...make 'em go back to normal. An' in the meantime, the more dangerous critters gotta be stopped, or someone gets hurt.”
“I...I get that now. OK. I just...I never should have stayed with that dangerous man.”
“No one could have known,” Ace snapped as she turned to face the others. “Now, if you're ready to move onward, I'd like to go to Cross Town. You know, send Lad my regards, maybe catch wind of somewhere else that needs people like us.”
Wisp nodded. “I, uh, I would like that a lot. Moving on...it, um, sounds good.”
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“Y'all's got friends in mighty high places,” Hivemind said to Ace as the four rangers sat around a low table in extremely comfortable chairs.
“It's coincidence, mostly,” Ace shot back.
“Quite frankly, Ace, no it's not,” a young man admonished her as he entered the room carrying a tray with five tall glasses of water on it. His ratlike tail swished upward, the handles of a bag looped around it. “We found more bullets for that big gun. They're yours!” As Ace claimed the bag of ammo belts, he ran his fingers through his short, straight red hair and continued. “But back to my other point...I became a leader because I was hanging out with such a great one when I was little.”
“Ah reckon that makes y'all that Lad fella Ace keeps yammerin' about,” Hivemind guessed. “Name's Hivemind. The other lady here's Wisp. Ace an' Four-Eyes...I reckon y'all know by now.”
Lad scratched the back of his hair and chuckled. “Has she, now? I hope she didn't make me out to be some kind of legend! I'm just a guy with a tail.”
“Um...it's such a...a nice tail,” Wisp stammered as she took a long sip of water.
Lad clutched his tail in his hands. “Thanks...! Wow, Ace, you found some real winners here! This guy, is he from around here? The accent sounds fairly local...pretty Riverside-ish.”
Hivemind nodded. “Ma said somethin' 'bout a place called Riverside,” he confirmed. “'course, there weren't no Riverside by the time I was born. Everyone came here.”
“Yeah, I was there for that. People have started moving back there, you know...they dunked some antidote into the river source, and it's done wonders.” Lad's eyes turned to Wisp. “You, though...where are you from?”
“...Downeast,” she replied curtly.
Lad's eyes widened. “And you agreed to meet Ace this far away...? Wow.” His pleasantries aside, Lad brought his attention to Ace as he shook Four-Eyes' hands. “If you came to tell me that Gate's been murdered, I've already heard.”
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Everyone sat forward in their seats, shocked. “Gate, murdered?” Ace repeated numbly. “I didn't even know. Who did it? How?”
“So far, all we know is that the WPA have taken responsibility,” Lad sighed. He walked to the window, staring skyward as his hands gripped the sill tightly. “On top of that, they've sent people to my doorstep, complaining about the deaths of the slashers you guys put down. You bet I told them to get the hell out of my town...!”
Lad took a deep breath, doing his best to stay calm. “Convoy died to help make this wasteland a better place," he rasped, "to put a stop to monsters like corpse mutts and Angel. How could they want to get in the way of that?”
Wisp visibly cringed at the accusation, but made no move to defend her former comrades. Ace, grateful for her silence for once, continued. “If I ever find one of their members, I'll pass that on to them...but frankly, I'd rather talk business right now. Know anywhere that could use us rangers?”
Lad clapped his hands and started rubbing them together as he let out a laugh. “Oh, Ace, you're going to love this. Your new friends...well, they might love it. Depends on what they know about Serpent Worldwide.”
“Serpent Whatwide?” Hivemind spat. Wisp merely chose to shrug.
“Ace, I think you know this story better than I do.” As he gestured to her, he added, “Go on, tell them about Serpent.”
Ace felt that Lad might have been mocking her a little, but she didn't care. She was to the pre-apocalypse what Wisp was to animals. “Serpent Worldwide was some sort of global collective,” she began, “who seem to have specialized in military research and development. Their technology was responsible for my sword and armor, actually, and you've seen how well the sword works.” She could see their interest waning already, so she decided to skip right to the juicy part. “They created Agent Venom.”
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“So these Serpent fellas," Hivemind said slowly, "they's the reason the world's been so messed up?”
Ace nodded. “They intended to twist and befoul the land of their enemies. What they got instead was a global catastrophe. They knew that Agent Venom would create beasts like the corpse mutts and rock hares, but they chose to just develop an antidote instead. Why they didn't preserve themselves with said antidote, however, has always confused me.”
“Maybe there's gonna be more of those glowing boxes in this facility,” Lad offered with a shrug. “Now that we understand electricity a little better, you might even be able to get away with recovering one.”
Ace hadn't even thought of recovering one of those. The box of buttons and light was what they had used to find out a lot of what they knew about Serpent to begin with. To actually hoard one of them and preserve it for reverse-engineering was a prospect that excited her. “Wait, you mentioned a facility...is that what this is about? One other than the one in Shroud?”
“That's exactly what this is about. The day after you left, some diggers arrived, complaining about a door they couldn't open. I listened in a little, and the door they found sounds an awful lot like the one we had trouble with. You remember...” Lad dug a small card from his pocket. “...we had to use this with those machines?”
“Of course I remember. I'm not that old.” Ace smiled and ran a hand through her curly blond locks. “You think that will work in this other place?”
Lad shrugged and tossed the card at Ace. “Only one way to find out, right?” he posited. “I can't check it out because I'm busy leading government and all, but you and your rangers have time, I bet.”
“Depends on where it is,” Ace lied. She had plenty of time, but she wasn't about to sound desperate.
“Ask around in Downeast. That's all I can tell you. After all, I've only heard stories from people passing through.”
“Um, that's really far,” Wisp reminded everyone. “But I think we should go...if, uh, it's OK with Ace.”
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Ace was already out the door, fetching some leftover gumbo as a means of thanking Lad for his hospitality and information. On her way to the jeep, however, a blur of movement past the gate into Cross Town caught her eye. Tickling the hilt of her sword, Ace decided to ditch the gumbo in favor of investigating the blur.
She ducked around the corner, moving cautiously in case the person she'd followed was keeping any eye out for exactly that. When she saw dust kicking up from under a shoe disappearing around the corner, she sprinted after the source, only to find a young girl carrying a barrel of gasoline.
“Stop!” she shouted at the girl, who froze in shock at the sound of such a commanding voice. Ace was glad for the relatively poor instinct. It gave her time to realize that the girl was the one she'd seen at the slave auction, the one with the back protrusions and strange arms. “Put that stuff down; it's dangerous!”
When the girl remained motionless, Ace groaned and forcibly separated her from the volatile drum. She still bore her slave restraints; between that and the size of the barrel she had, Ace wondered how she'd moved so fast. She decided to drag both the barrel and the child back to Lad's home.
“Where'd you run off to?” Lad groaned as Ace flung the door back open.
“I found this girl carrying this oil drum. Go easy on her; she's a slave.” As the girl fidgeted in her grasp, Ace added, “She's plenty scared, too.”
“Then Ah reckon y'all should fetch my stuff,” Hivemind offered, “while we all figure out a thing or two 'bout this little lady.”
Ace shrugged and did as she was told; she wasn't the best with children. When she reentered the house, it was to Lad kneeling next to the girl, asking, “What is your name?” The girl averted eye contact, prompting Lad to sit down in front of her. “I'm Lad. Who are you?”
After awhile, the girl began to sniffle. “I don't know,” she admitted.
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Wisp smiled and slowly offered her hand to the girl. “I know you were with bad men," she said softly, "in a big tent...red and white...they hit you, right? And put those big chains on you? And left you in a cage?”
This caught the girl off-guard. “How did—“
“It's happened to me, too.” Wisp raised her wrists, revealing her spiked restraints. “My name is Wisp. You don't have to worry. You're safe with us.” When the girl grasped Wisp's hand with both of hers, it instigated smiles all over the room. “That's it. Now...what's your name?”
The girl turned away. “I don't know...I don't have one.”
Hivemind's brow furrowed. “Then how long's y'all been in that there tent?” he wondered aloud.
The girl stared confusedly at Hivemind, possibly due to his accent, so Wisp took over. “How long did you live in the tent?” she inquired.
The girl thought about her answer for a minute. “Always,” she finally guessed.
Wisp recoiled in shock. “Always? But...where were your parents?”
“Different cages. But then the mean men took them.”
Lad shook his head. “Damn,” he gasped, “she was born in there. She's been a slave all her life.”
Hivemind shook his head and pulled out a landshark tooth, using it to undo the slave chains just as he had for Wisp. Her eyes widened at the sight, clearly unsure why she had been unrestrained. “You're free,” he explained. “No more o'these here chains slowin' you down. Feel any better?”
The girl examined her wrists and ankles curiously, clearly never having seen them before. “The men with the cages...they're mean. The men that took me after that...they're mean. You...you're...not mean.”
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“It's called 'nice',” Lad interjected as he took the girl onto his lap. “Speaking of which, we need something to call you. Now...I came up with my name all by myself. I can do a decent job for you too. Want me to try to give you a name?” The girl nodded, eliciting a big smile from Lad. “Good. You're pretty smart. Tell me, what are those things on your back?”
The girl shrugged. “The men with the cages...called them...'freaky',” she replied.
Lad shook his head and held up his tail for the girl to see. “I've heard that too. Trust me...they're not freaky. They're wonderful, whatever they are. They actually make you look like a certain animal, along with the arms you've got. How about you stay here where the nice people go, and I call you 'Mantis'?”
“OK...you're Lad...I'm Mantis.”
Ace took Lad aside while the little girl conversed with Wisp and Hivemind. “Can you really take this girl in?” she asked.
“You did it for me,” Lad shot back. “One good turn deserves another. Um, someone here in town says they used to say that before the apocalypse.”
“So what's it mean?”
“Something about being nice to people the same way someone's nice to you?”
Ace rolled her eyes and returned to the others. “...rangers,” she walked in on Hivemind saying. “We's the fellas that help any which way we can.”
“That's very...nice,” Mantis observed. “You must see so much.”
“Oh, sure! All sorts o'places, people, animals...I tell ya, one of the worst things them fellas did by stickin' you in that cage is denyin' you a chance to see the world gettin' rebuilt.”
“Rebuilt?”
Lad nodded. “Did you see how nice and green it is here, and all the nasty brown outside? Everything used to be this green.”
Ace shook her head. “This crap can wait,” she barked as she moved in close. “Mantis, who are the men that told you to put that barrel there?”
“I don't know,” Mantis admitted. “I did what they said.”
“Like you always have.” Ace shrugged. “Lad, take care of this girl...but make sure these guys don't come back, for her or for whatever they were going to do to this place.”
Ace stepped back, allowing her fellow rangers to resume their small talk with Mantis. “You have pretty hair,” Wisp gushed. “It's the same color as mine!”
“I bet ain't no one done fed y'all too much, neither,” Hivemind guessed. “Try a bit o'gumbo, tell me what y'all think. Ah made it!”
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## Chapter 9
“Um, Ace,” Wisp objected as the wind of the open road rushed around them, “was it a good idea to...to leave Mantis there? Or to, uh, not go to Divide?”
“We wouldn't be much help in either of those scenarios,” Ace informed her. “She wouldn't do well out here on the road with us, and Gate's already dead. I don't even think I want to see Divide.”
“Ah don't see what good we'd do, either,” Hivemind balked. “Fella's already dead, an' whoever did it's already come an' gone.”
“But, um,” Wisp protested, “what if...what if they come back...and kill someone else?”
“Well, if they done went an' found more bodyguards for themselves, then that's all the good we could've done. We're best off headin' elsewhere. Besides, Ace ain't gonna turn back from that there Serpent buildin' for nothin'.”
“Please don't talk about me as if I'm not here,” Ace said. “We're going to Downeast and—“
A sudden explosion in the road cut her off mid-sentence and sent the jeep reeling. "*¡Dios mío!*” Four-Eyes shouted as he veered back on course. Ace was having trouble figuring out what was happening, at least until an enormous vehicle rose from the horizon behind them, bearing several men clad in sparse rags and face paint. “*¡Banditos!*”
“Ah, bandits,” Ace growled, fondling the hilt of her sword. “The scourge of the wastes. Hard to believe people would still act like that in this day and age.” It was easier for Ace to understand their motivations back when conditions were worse, but with the wasteland on the road to recovery, such thuggish behavior wasn't even the only way to live a decadent life anymore. The bandits had options in this world as it healed, but they chose to stick with what they knew best. It didn't matter much to Ace; if they came after her, she'd make them pay.
“Ace,” Hivemind blurted, “reckon we should get on that there big gun an' mess 'em up!” Hivemind watched as the bandits' vehicle came into full view, a massive eighteen-wheeled machine with a large, flat section on the back on which more bandits waited.
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When the bandits on the bed of the semi truck began to fire their guns at the rangers' jeep, Hivemind made a grab for the mounted gun.
Ace, however, stood in his way. “We need to save those bullets for something serious,” she protested.
“Beg your pardon...? Ace, them fellas got guns!”
“We have Wisp and myself. We'll distract them while you and Four-Eyes keep the jeep safe.”
“What in the hay are y'all gonna do to—“
Ace had already communicated her plan to Wisp with a simple nod of her head, a plan that began with the two of them waiting for the uncoordinated bandits to all run out of ammunition at the same time. Unfortunately for Hivemind, it happened in the middle of his sentence, leaving him to trail off as the two women leapt from the jeep and landed on the bandit truck bed. Their guns wouldn't be much use to them now that the fight had been taken to close quarters, an area of expertise where Ace and Wisp were at their prime.
In particular, the bandits standing at the tail end of the flatbed, where the women happened to land, had no chance. Ace turned her descent into a downward slash, and Wisp immediately wrapped the chain of her cuffs around one poor sap's arm and spun him right off the back of the truck.
“Next!” Ace barked as she flicked her sword away from the corpse she had lodged it in. Three bandits took the bait, one of them even managing to bring his gun up over his head to block an incoming slash. Ace's sword was ill-equipped to hew through metal, despite the other materials it had more or less ignored over the years. At the very least, Wisp rushed in with a series of jabs to incapacitate two of the fiends, surprising the third long enough for Ace to sneak through his guard.
These antics had given the remaining bandits plenty of time to reload, despite their panic, and they were now raising their guns and taking aim.
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|46]]
Wisp, never one to be outdone, took hold of a bandit and stood in front of Ace. When the bandits opened fire, their bullets slammed into him first. He screamed out in pain as the bandits kept shooting anyway, slicing his flesh to ribbons as blood trickled onto the flatbed.
The bandits were using small-caliber guns, and poorly-maintained ones at that. There was no way the bullets would make it through the human shield to either of the rangers.
One of the bandits growled as he noted the futility of gunfire in this situation and discarded his gun, prompting several of his comrades to do the same. Their hands free, they went for some melee weapons instead. Everything from axes to tire irons was brandished at the women, much to their indifference.
“That, um, that won't work,” Wisp remarked as she unfastened her left cuff, courtesy of Hivemind busting the lock. She leapt forward with a spin, raking her spiked restraint across the crowd and catching three of them in the face. A fourth bandit gasped as the chain wrapped around his hatchet and pulled him along with it, sending him tripping over the edge of the flatbed.
Ace took a quick step forward, stabbing her sword into the stomach of another bandit, leaving just one bandit on the flatbed. “You broads are quite a handful,” he snarled. “I'll give you one chance to ride with us willingly before I kill one of you and keep the other for myself.” With a lick of his lips, he added, “I see one of you is a slave.”
Wisp shook her head. “Um, actually...mister, uh, bandit, sir...I just like the slave restraints. They're...they're very heavy, so I like fighting in them.” Ace buried her face in her hand as Wisp continued. “And...and I'm not a slave. I'm a, um, a ranger.”
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Ace took a swing at the bandit with her sword, who was quick to draw a length of steel pipe and block the attack. Ace recoiled from the impact, giving the bandit time to slam his pipe into her stomach and drop her to her knees. She looked up to see him raising his pipe over his head, aiming for a quick finish, but Ace was quick to lash out with her leg and knock him off-balance, causing the pipe to slam down on her shoulder instead.
It hurt, but a strike to the back of her head could have been lethal, so she was actually pretty thankful, all things considered. She took up her sword with her other hand and went for a thrust, but the bandit turned it aside with his pipe.
“Wisp, what are you waiting for?” Ace snapped. “Help me out!” The ensuing silence caused her to whip her head around in a bit of a panic.
The bandit let out a sadistic laugh. “Oh, the slave girl? She was climbing into our big rig, last I saw her! I think she's one of us now!”
As if on cue, Wisp's head poked out of the driver's side window. “Um, actually,” she corrected him, “I've...um, I've taken control of this vehicle. Your friends in the front...um, they died.”
“What?” The bandit let out a low growl as his grip on his pipe tightened. “You little...this is my rig!”
“It, um...it looks differently from where I'm sitting. Ace, can you, uh, come inside the vehicle with me, please?”
Ace nodded and leapt for the passenger side door, apparently just in time. Wisp let out a low chuckle as she yanked a lever inside the vehicle, causing a loud click to emanate from the flatbed.
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Ace gripped the side of the semi truck as it barreled down the road, and fended off a couple incoming pipe swings with her sword. "I'll kill you both!" the bandit holding the pipe snarled at her. He continued to speak, but Ace tuned him out as she realized he was slowly getting further and further away from her.
It was only after looking down that she realized that the flatbed had become detached from the rest of the vehicle, leaving the bandit to lose speed and ultimately be stranded on the road without any supplies or transportation. When she finally got into the vehicle and sat in the passenger's seat, she managed to ask, “Wisp, how'd you know to do that?”
“Um...when I was in the WPA...we...we had a vehicle like this.” Wisp nodded and pointed to the dashboard, covered in all sorts of machinery. The amount of buttons, levers, and indicators was fairly staggering. “It's...it's a very complex machine, but, uh, we were taught to drive them. The WPA...they often use these to, um, bring animals from place to place.”
“Interesting,” Ace admitted. In her caravanning days, she had used a pre-apocalyptic bus to move supplies around, a vehicle that had been retired from service after the death of Convoy. From the way Wisp had put it, this vehicle was dedicated to such work, proving that the pre-apocalyptic world had plenty of need for it as well.
“Oh yes, it feels so nice to drive a vehicle this big.” Wisp gave the steering wheel an affectionate pat as she pulled over next to Ace's jeep, which had stopped to wait for the two women. Hivemind and Four-Eyes stood ready to shoot, but a friendly wave from Wisp made them holster their weapons. “Um...hi.”
“What in the hay was y'all thinkin', jumpin' on the bandit wagon like that?” Hivemind scolded them immediately. “Why, y'all had me worried sick!”
Ace shrugged. “Next time, don't worry," she replied. "We can take care of ourselves.” She gave Wisp a glance out of the corner of her eye and added, “We're not keeping the big rig.”
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## Chapter 10
Ace looked up at the trees growing around the road into Downeast with scholarly interest. “The leaves on these trees are different,” she noted.
“They're like needles,” Wisp agreed. “Isn't it neat? They even stay on the trees when it gets cold. They're forever green. I've heard people say that these were the same gnarled, black, awful trees all over the wasteland until we got the antidote. They perked right up after that.”
Hivemind nodded. “Ah reckon the pre-'pocalypse was a mighty interestin' place on its own,” he surmised, “even if it didn't have no landsharks or corpse mutts.”
“Someone out there was wise enough to keep samples of these things, too.” Wisp gestured toward the trees. “That's what made Downeast notable...they found someone who had kept the beginnings of all sorts of plant life down here. Most of it doesn't grow this far north, but that's OK. Plenty of trade comes through Downeast...it's the last settlement on this road before the unexplored far north.”
Ace was glad to see Wisp so excited and talkative about something, so she decided to keep her fellow ranger talking. “Then why do they call it Downeast?” she asked.
“It's in a valley.” Ace shook her head at the succinct answer, but was relieved when Wisp continued talking anyway. “The road we're on travels through a mountain range to get there, and much of the road leading into the far north is uphill as well.”
Ace raised her eyebrow. “So what's with the 'east' part?”
Wisp pointed through the trees, likely aligning herself to the compass directions more than bringing the rangers' attention to anything in particular. “No one's really gone further east than this. There's land, but...”
“Well, Lad only pointed us to the town itself, but the Serpent building can't be too far off. Still, Wisp, I'm hoping for your help in this town, OK? You know the area, and perhaps you know the people too.”
Wisp averted eye contact with Ace. “It's...been awhile...but, um, I can try to...to help.”
Her sudden regression concerned Ace, but she decided not to press the issue, instead watching the sunlight filter through the needles of the trees. With neither woman particularly talkative, Hivemind chose to take up the slack. “Phew, Ah'm gettin' a might cold,” he complained.
“I'm sure that either there's clothing we can acquire on-site,” Ace reasoned, “or everyone else here is used to it, so you should be too.”
Hivemind pouted. “Ah don't much like the prospect of that.”
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Four-Eyes eased the jeep to a stop in front of the gate leading into Downeast, allowing a pair of guards in tall, fuzzy hats to inspect the jeep. “No problems,” one of them eventually barked to the rangers. “Enter.”
The two guards each took hold of the door at one of the sides and started pulling, yanking open the gate and revealing a row of small beige-and-white houses on both sides of the street, all alike. “Welcome to Downeast. Enjoy your stay.”
As the gate slid shut behind them, Ace's eyes scanned the town from her new vantage point, revealing a staircase of scrap metal to her left that led up to the wall around town, and a larger red brick building to her right. “We're in,” Ace noted. “We're here to find the Serpent facility. Wisp, how would we go about finding out where it is? Who do we ask?”
“That red building,” Wisp replied, “it's called Vern's Place.”
Ace leaned into the back window and gave Four-Eyes instructions to head toward the building. “Why's it called that?”
“The sign says 'Vern'. We think the building was a pre-apocalyptic gathering place.”
That certainly got Ace's attention. “We're going to Vern's Place.”
The four rangers made their way inside Vern's Place, and since Ace was in the lead, she was the one that bore a dozen stares from a variety of patrons. Hivemind was next into the building. “Well, howdy!” he cheered as he walked in with Four-Eyes hot on his heels. “Wow, mighty fine place this is!”
Wisp was the last person to file in, renewing the stares of everyone present. In particular, one man came out from behind a counter wearing a black vest over a white shirt, his light brown facial hair dominating most of his face. “No,” he barked. “No no no. You get the hell out of here right now.”
“Oh, um...it's OK, Barkeep,” Wisp assured him. “I'm not...”
Barkeep shook his head. “No. We all know what you've done here. You've got a lot of nerve showing your face around here, you know that? I have half a mind to beat you right here.”
“Whatever this is about,” Ace growled as she put her body between Wisp and Barkeep, “I don't care. She's one of my rangers now, and she's done nothing but good under my service, so you get as mad as you want, but if you lay a hand on her, I'll cut it off.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|51]]
“No,” Barkeep said again, jabbing a finger into Ace's chest. “We don't need your kind around here for anything, and harboring you isn't worth harboring...her.”
Ace shrugged. “Just tell me...I've heard there's a pre-apocalyptic building somewhere around Downeast that was discovered recently. Tell me where it is, and I'll take all my rangers there. Including the girl you seem to hate so much.”
“And how do I know you're actually rangers, anyway, and not just more of her WPA goons?” Barkeep reached into his coat and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun, brandishing it at the group. “Why shouldn't I just shoot you all right now?”
“I, um, Ace and I already told you,” Wisp pleaded. “I'm not with them anymore.”
“And that means I'm supposed to forgive you for letting those snow drifters in here? Do you know how many people that killed?”
Wisp nodded. “And the guard tower...I, uh, I was wrong to topple that onto those houses. I know. Please...I'm not with the WPA anymore. If...if you want us to leave, I understand. But please...Ace has nothing to do with all that. Let her have the information she seeks so we can be gone.”
Barkeep let out a low growl, but ultimately decided to lower his shotgun. “Follow the roads into the far north, and I'm sure you'll find it. Those guys want to use it as a base of exploration operations, but they can't get inside. Try not to kill them all on the way over, you monster.”
“Uh, wow,” Hivemind said as the rangers clambered back into the jeep. “Wisp, what the hay did y'all do to these people?”
Wisp shook her head. “I, um...I used to be in the WPA," she answered. As you know, they're dedicated to helping the wasteland animals...at any cost. They found me because, um, I was tending to snow drifters...”
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Hivemind briefly looked behind him as the northern gate was closed behind them, sending them well on their way to the relatively unexplored lands of the far north. “OK, back up," he demanded. "What's a snow drifter?”
“Oh, they're big, gray, furry creatures," Wisp cooed, clearly much happier talking about animals. "They've got bushy tails, beady eyes, little claws to help grip things, and they have these skin flaps that let them catch the wind and sail through the air a little! Oh, they're so cute...”
Wisp trailed off, having caught on to the fact that Ace and Hivemind were staring at her. “Um...anyway...I would always feed the snow drifters, even before the WPA found me, and, um, when they promised me a way to help them even more...I listened.”
Hivemind cocked his head sideways. “An' what did y'all do, exactly?”
Wisp did her best to break eye contact before continuing. “They said I just had to...to set food out to where the snow drifters could all eat it. They, um, had me leave out a pot of meat at the guard tower...and...and pile things up for the snow drifters to climb on. They all jumped...jumped at the guard tower at once and brought it down...on top of some houses.”
“...shoot. Did y'all know it was gonna happen like that?”
Wisp shook her head. “Of course not!” she cried, louder than Ace had ever heard her. “One of the houses was Barkeep's! He was my best friend until that day, until I crushed his whole family! Now he lives under Vern's Place and...obviously...he doesn't want to see me ever again. Because I'm a monster.”
Hivemind let Wisp sit there and cry for a minute before wrapping his arm around her. “Hey,” he admonished. “None of that talk, y'hear? Y'all shacked up with some real bad fellas before, but that ain't gonna hang on your character forever. For what it's worth, what Ah seen of y'all suggests you ain't no monster. Matter of fact...carin' about the animals says a lot about you, Wisp. Ah reckon Ah ain't seen anyone takin' mercy on a landshark before. An' seein' you with that Mantis girl...Ah think y'all's a pretty damn good person.”
Wisp sighed. “Thank you, Hivemind, but...but I don't know...”
“Ah do. Ah seen it.” Hivemind retracted his arm from around Wisp, choosing instead to wrap it around himself. “Aw, shoot, Ah just realized...we didn't get no clothin's for this cold weather!”
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Ace's nap was swiftly interrupted by the sudden arrival of something wet and cold on her nose. She awoke with a start to find white flakes swirling all through the air around her. “What's this?” she shouted, reaching for her sword.
“That's what Ah said,” Hivemind agreed. “Apparently, Wisp is so damn used to this. It's called 'snow'...like rain, but cold.”
Ace was still on edge, however. Rain used to be a very dangerous substance when Agent Venom was much more prevalent. The rainwater was often rich in Venom, which proved alarmingly toxic for whatever was caught in it.
Ace worried that the snow was just as likely to be tainted this far outside of civilization, but all she could do was watch Wisp's complete joy over the snow and surmise that nothing was going to happen. The group had pulled over to take a rest, with Ace and Four-Eyes sleeping first, then keeping watch as Hivemind and Wisp had their turn.
“We need time to rest," Ace noted, "but how can we with this snow falling from the sky? I've never been here to see this...what do we do about it?”
“Wisp says y'all should sleep inside the jeep, or we should find that Serpent buildin' in the hopes that it ain't so bad in there.”
Ace shook her head and threw herself behind the steering wheel of the jeep. Four-Eyes was out cold on the seat, leaving her with no room to evade the snow, but she definitely wanted to be rid of it, just in case. Wisp looked up sullenly at Ace's movement, but a good stare convinced the young woman to get out of the snow and into the jeep.
Before long, Ace managed to find fresh tire tracks that had been through the area, and decided to follow them. She doubted she'd find anyone in the area except for explorers, and she had been told that they were likely congregating at the Serpent facility, so she quickly surmised that these tracks would lead her there. The ride was slightly slippery, however. She had never driven in such conditions before, and her first time was definitely shaky.
Wisp stuck her head in through the back window of the jeep. “Um, Ace,” she began, “go easy on the...the steering wheel. And...uh, the brakes won't help much. Take it slow.”
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“What would you know?” Ace snapped, her eyes glued to the road.
“Oh, I...I drove bigger vehicles than this for the WPA...remember? They, um, they were very slippery, and...and one wrong move could tip the whole thing over!”
Ace shook her head slowly, keeping her eyes peeled as she kept following the tracks. “Then why don't you drive?”
“No, I couldn't, I...I don't think I would know how to use such a small vehicle.”
Ace scoffed and turned all her attention back to the road. Wisp was left with just Hivemind to talk to. “How do y'all stand this weather?” he said. “Ah'd lose them wings o'mine if they weren't under this here shirt...reckon they'd freeze right off.”
“Oh, we...we find ways. Some of us are lucky to be...you know...mutated in a way that, um, keeps the cold out. The rest of us...we...we just get used to it from living here for our, uh, whole lives.”
“Shucks...I can't much fancy what it'd be like, livin' like this forever.”
“Oh, not much different than I feel about...about some of the other places we've been together. I, um, got really hot while I was stuck in Threering.”
“Um, yeah, 'bout that...I figured y'all would've been a bit worse off than y'all was comin' outta there.”
“I...I felt like I deserved that. Downeast...um, they were afraid to...to put me in their jail. They made me leave forever instead. It was harsh...but I never felt punished enough for what I'd done. It wasn't long...but the time I spent in, um, Threering...I was beaten, belittled, and locked away. I, um, felt like it was finally some...some comeuppance for what I did with the WPA.”
“What, y'all don't think you repaid your debt none by helpin' us around? The things y'all did while—“
“Quiet,” Ace admonished them. “We're here.”
The snowfall had intensified as Ace had spent time on the road, but through the weather, she could still catch a hint of metal ahead of her. Two vehicles were perched out front, one on each side, and she could start to hear the sound of complaints and hard work. Ace was quick to pull up to the vehicles and emerge from the jeep to find two men obscured by heavy clothing, particularly the thick black scarves they sported.
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“Rangers, reporting in,” Ace announced, trying not to shiver as the snow fell around her. “What's going on here?”
The two explorers seemed shocked that rangers had even bothered to come this far, but after glancing back at the door, they eventually came to decide that there was something more important at stake. “Dis building refuses to open!” one of the explorers exclaimed. “None of my comrades have broken through and gotten us inside!”
“I might be able to help.” Ace dug the plastic card from her pocket, hoping that it would work on this facility as it had way back when she had first been inside a Serpent facility. In the old days, the White Wind organization that ran the caravans had gone through a campaign to destroy all traces of Serpent, but Ace had smuggled some knowledge out of the one she had visited. It was that knowledge that had dissolved White Wind and distributed the Agent Venom antidote.
Ace shook her head clean of the memories and raked her eyes across the area around the front door. She gave a small delighted gasp when she saw the protrusion she was looking for. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and swiped the card through the slot.
She couldn't bear to open her eyes out of sheer suspense, at least not until one of the explorers shouted, “It's open!” That was all Ace needed to hear to start shoving the explorers out of her way as she ran into the Serpent building, flashlight at the ready.
“She's a might obsessed with pre-apocalyptic stuff,” Hivemind explained behind her. “Y'all know she came all the way from Cross Town just to see this here place?”
“Impressive, comrade,” one of the explorers replied. “You rangers are welcome to explore dis building. We only wanted an outpost, da?”
“Just don't be surprised if she tries carryin' half the place outta here. She'd take the whole buildin' if she thought she could load it up on the jeep!”
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Ace paid them no heed, her mind too focused on the building around her. She scanned the building with her flashlight, revealing the same circular lobby adorned with the name of Serpent Worldwide that she had found in the other Serpent facility so many years ago. The standardization coupled with the sheer distance between the two areas was nothing that could be attributed to coincidence. Ace wondered how they had communicated such exact specifics over such a distance, and if there were any other Serpent buildings out there that had the same layout.
“Um, wow,” Wisp mumbled, “she sure...sure loves this stuff. Everyone stay out of her, uh, way.”
Ace knew it was a joke of sorts, but she was grateful all the same for the distracting people being kept behind her. She was still riding the high of her card successfully cracking the door, leading her to wonder briefly if there were more cards like this, or if she had been extraordinarily lucky to have acquired the only one.
She was anxious to get a better look at this facility than the one she had seen so long ago, the one that contained a live corpse mutt that had ripped Convoy to shreds. With this facility being so remote and quiet, she doubted such dangers lied within, but just in case, she always had her sword on her back to keep her safe.
“Ah reckon they ain't got no lights here, do they?” Hivemind said as he stumbled uncertainly through the darkness. A thump sounded from behind Ace, causing her to swivel on her heels and shine the light along with her, only to reveal Hivemind nursing a stubbed toe. “Wisp, where'd your light go? Ah thought y'all had one for yourself.”
“You won't need it,” Ace said as she ducked into a hallway on the opposite side of the lobby. The layout of the facility she'd toured all those years ago rang fresh in her head now, as if she'd never left. As she traversed the hallway, she threw open doors on both sides, mentally recalling the other facility to make comparisons. The room of wires and the carpeted room containing machines were both intact, but Ace was most interested in the third room she barged into.
Just as she'd hoped, a bevy of cleaning supplies blanketed the room, partially obscuring a generator in the corner. “Bingo,” she said as she brought the old machine to life, feeling thoroughly satisfied when it let out a roar and turned on the lights in the hall outside.
“Thanks!” came Hivemind's muffled reply from the lobby.
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## Chapter 11
The other rangers watched in fascination as Ace effortlessly strode up to the door at the end of the hall and opened it with another swipe of her card. She couldn't remember quite what the other Serpent building had kept behind the door at the end of the hall, but this one's label of “Weapons Research & Development” had her plenty interested.
She had found a lot of information on Agent Venom in the previous building. If they hadn't classified that as a weapon, then she figured the stuff that would be on display here would be incredible.
“So how the hay'd you even figure how to do that?” Hivemind asked as the four of them slipped through the door. Ace's horror stories of the other area had been enough to keep the rangers on their guard. “Open the door, Ah mean.”
“Trial and error,” Ace admitted quietly, her voice rapidly fading due to the spectacle before her. The first Serpent building she'd toured had contained a small room behind this door, replete with glowing boxes describing the creation and effects of Agent Venom.
This room, on the other hand, was a massive stockpile of armaments. The door had opened up to a balcony overlooking a warehouse partially dug into the ground, possibly to preserve the unassuming shape of the building. Boxes of guns and ammunition lined the walls, while a variety of vehicles were scattered across the middle.
One in particular caught Wisp's eye, and before Ace could even think to remind the group to stick together, she had already scrambled down the metal steps to observe a strange bubble-like contraption with a flower-like arrangement of blades sticking out of the top. Further inspection revealed a smaller but similar setup on a finlike tail poking from the back of the bubble. “Ace,” she said, “I...I think I recognize this one.”
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Ace had leapt over the guard rail to the warehouse floor, anxious to keep Wisp safe. “What'd you say?” she asked, just because Wisp was too quiet.
“I, um, recognize this vehicle,” Wisp repeated.
“Now just how the hay is that possible?” Hivemind balked, having just arrived on the scene with Four-Eyes in tow. “There ain't been no one in here this whole time, or else we would've seen a trace of 'em somewhere, right?”
Wisp shook her head and turned to face the group. “No, I...I've seen a vehicle like this somewhere else before.”
“I'd sure like to know where,” Ace spat, “because I haven't.”
“Um, I don't know.” Wisp turned back to the bladed bubble, her hands pressed against the glass door. “It was while I was...I was in exile. Some men...they had found one abandoned in the wastes...um, they wanted my help to get it running, but I...I know an empty fuel gauge when I see one.”
Ace shook her head, pawing at the blades sticking out of the top. “So you don't know how this thing even moves.”
“Sorry, Ace.”
“Don't worry about it. On the other hand...” Ace's eyes swept back and forth over the crates of weaponry along the walls. “...we have to get at least one of these crates. A little payment from our 'comrades' for helping to crack this place open.”
“An' y'all don't wanna get none of these here vehicles?” Hivemind protested. “They look mighty interestin'...!”
“Interesting, but useless to us rangers.” Ace turned to the bladed bubble and scoffed. “What are we going to do with this thing if we can't get it out of here and we don't know what it does? We're better off with guns and ammo than with some weird bubble machine.”
Hivemind let out a low whistle. “Comin' from you, Ace, that really means somethin', huh? How 'bout we just find somethin' else to take as a souvenir instead? Maybe we ought to explore a bit more.”
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Ace nodded, already examining another unfamiliar vehicle nearby, a smaller bubble affixed to a large black triangle resting on a trio of wheels. “None of these vehicles can help us, but maybe something else here can," she hoped aloud.
What Ace was truly hoping for, though, another one of the glowing boxes like she had found in the other facility. If this facility was truly like the one in Shroud, that's where the interesting information would be. Plenty of guns had been discovered, but Ace's sword and armor were rarities that bore Serpent's mark, so she was definitely curious to know how they were made.
“Other than the guns?” Hivemind shrugged. “Look, Ah dunno what y'all saw in the other buildin' y'all never stop talkin' 'bout, but this'un just looks like it was made to hold all this stuff.”
“No.” Ace shoved some crates away from a wall under the door they had entered from, revealing another door leading deeper into the facility. “The door promised me both research and development, and a warehouse isn't a place for either.”
“Oh, my,” Wisp mumbled as Ace opened this new door with the aid of her card. “That was smart.”
“You pick up on a few things when you've been on as many digs as I have.”
Ace led the group further into the room, a large facility set underneath the rest of the building. Her prior hypothesis of a standardized Serpent building design was under attack. She decided to drop it until she found a third building to compare things to.
In the meantime, Ace was anxious to learn the functions of the machines before her. “So is this research or development?” she asked herself.
“Hell if Ah know,” Hivemind admitted, walking around the large machine dominating the center of the room.
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Ace snapped her fingers, the wheels in her head starting to turn. “No,” she blurted, “this is development. I remember...those chairs Lad has in his house, those are of a pre-apocalyptic design. I asked him how he acquired them one day, and he told me about a facility similar to this...it had this black section that could actually move things along without any human input, mechanical arms like these ones that did the work, and in the end, it would put out a chair. I think he said the diggers who found it called it an 'assembling line'. Something like that.”
Hivemind gave the machine a slow nod. “So y'all's tellin' me that fellas from before the world endin' had machines doin' all the work for 'em?”
“I wouldn't go that far.” Ace walked around the machine the group had found, hoping to find some sort of control panel she could use, but to no avail. “No dig has ever found anything beyond one of these assembling lines.”
“But if we was to fix up this here machine, it'd make...uh, what's this thing for makin'?”
“Who knows?” Ace wondered aloud. “Weapons, based on where it is. Beyond that, I have no idea. If there were any completed weapons here, they've already been taken.”
Hivemind jabbed a thumb toward the door out of the complex. “Or packed into them there crates in the other room.”
Ace's shoulders drooped slightly. “If that's true, this is kind of a letdown. I was hoping for more than a machine that can make ordinary guns and ammo all on its own.”
“Um, excuse me, Ace,” Wisp interrupted, “but...but there isn't a major breakthrough in every, um, dig, is there? But this one is...!”
“How? There's plenty of guns out there.”
Wisp shook her head. “Oh...you wouldn't know. Explorers...they don't, um, have a whole lot. They...they get paid by the discovery...and they can't discover things if they, uh, can't explore...which is hard to do without guns.”
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“Ah get it,” Hivemind chimed in, to Ace's relief. “If'n the explorers get to keep this here stockpile, an' the gun-makin' machine, they got all they need out there, 'specially if they's not averse to huntin' for meat. Maybe then, they's can get to discoverin' things up in these parts, an' they'll get to leave right soon...y'know, get outta this here snow stuff.”
Wisp giggled. “Oh, um, there's snow in...in Downeast, too.”
“Well, that's just my luck. Ah don't need a new weapon; Ah need warm clothes!”
“Maybe...maybe we can arrange a, um, trade with those explorers up there.” Wisp nodded at the card still in Ace's hand. "After all...they'd never be here without our help."
“Comrades!” one of the explorers shouted as Ace commanded the door to open. “We have been worrying about you. You have been gone for so long...all is well?”
“No,” Ace replied as she opened the door behind her. “Better.”
The explorer gasped through his scarf as the warehouse of weaponry was revealed to him. “How did all this stuff get here?”
“This is a pre-apocalyptic facility used to create all sorts of weapons.” Ace flicked her head to the side, flinging stray hair out of her face. “It would have been weirder if the place was empty.”
“Well, comrade, I'm certainly thankful you showed up! How can we repay you?”
Ace held up her hands, bringing up her fingers to count along. “The facility is yours, under three conditions. One, we want some of these supplies. One of us in particular owns a pre-apocalyptic weapon, for which there might be ammunition around here. Two, you are to hand out the guns and ammo in the room behind me to other explorers in need, to help assist in exploration efforts across the far north.”
The explorer nodded. “And what is the third condition?”
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## Chapter 12
“Oh, this is mighty fine,” Hivemind cooed into his new scarf, courtesy of the explorers. “Ah reckon if I could keep this here stuff on all the time, I could handle Downeast no problem!” He had to keep a stubborn hold on it, lest the movement of the jeep sweep it off of his face and lose it in the snow, but he was nuzzling into it too much for it to slip away anyway.
“Um, Downeast gets colder than this,” Wisp informed him. “This time of year...it's just the beginning.”
Even through his scarf and polygonal eyes, Hivemind managed to relay a sentiment of shock and fear. “Colder? How the hay does that even happen?”
“...I just know about the animals.” Wisp broke eye contact, looking a bit dejected. “I'm sorry...I don't know about the, um, snow, other than...it's cold.”
“Shoot. Y'all from Downeast sure are a different cut, huh?” Hivemind nearly lost hold of his scarf, but snatched it out of the sky in a hurry to keep it nearby. “Ah dunno how y'all put up with it now, much less if it were even colder!”
Wisp shook her head. “Even so, we don't spend much time actually outside...we try to stay inside and be, um, warm. Even if you're from Downeast, you can't...can't stay in the snow, or you'd, uh, die.”
Hivemind gave a brief shiver. “Obviously, but Ah wasn't exactly cozy even in the Serpent buildin', neither! An' that's how y'all live every day?”
“Of course. We have those clothes, though...they sort of help.” Despite her rationalization, Wisp was sitting around in the same style of clothes she'd worn since Cross Town, and was even less perturbed by the weather than Hivemind was. “Ace...?”
“Huh?” Ace mumbled, having been caught off-guard by the sudden address to her.
“I, um...can we stop in Downeast again? I have to talk to you about...something.”
Ace's eyes narrowed. She knew Wisp wasn't welcome in the area, and by association, Ace's entire ranger unit was regarded by the people with suspicion. Wisp must have had an incredible reason to want to go back. “I'll tell Four-Eyes to make another stop, but we're low on food. We'll need more supplies soon.” Ace looked over at the wooden crate lashed to the jeep, making the back a lot more crowded. “Other than weaponry, of course.”
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Ace gave the jeep a pat on the door as Four-Eyes and Hivemind went to find supplies to trade for in the town on their own. Having Wisp in tow was too risky. Instead, Ace took her off to the side, since she could handle being heckled as a result of traveling with a former terrorist. “So what's this all about?” she asked impatiently. She could handle it, but not for long; there was too much out in the wastes for her to do.
“Um...it's about the, uh, Serpent weapons place we were in,” Wisp clarified as she led Ace through the streets, past a few angry stares.
Ace crossed her arms as Wisp stood at a crossroads, waiting impatiently to resume following. “I don't know why you're telling me about it after we left it so far behind.”
Wisp sighed, her shoulders drooping as her pace slowed. “It's also about...about Downeast, and what I, um...what I did.” Wisp led Ace to one of the identical-looking buildings all lined up along the street, only this one had been barricaded and boarded up. With a grunt, she swung her slave bracers right through the flimsy wood keeping the door shut, and waved Ace inside. “Do you, um, remember my story?”
Ace nodded and leaned against the wall. “You let snow drifters into the town, and they caused a ton of chaos, including toppling a guard tower onto Barkeep's family. What does that have to do with Serpent?”
Wisp sighed and ducked into another room. Ace shook her head as a commotion ensued, watching as Wisp threw various items over her shoulders, digging through a pile of her old belongings. When she finally reemerged, it was with a small black box. “Barkeep and I were...we were in love. And I found something to, um, give to him. I think it's pre-apocalyptic.”
Ace snatched the box from Wisp, looking over it with suspicion. “What would he do with a box?”
Wisp chuckled and grabbed the top half of the box, working together with Ace's grip on the bottom half to wrench it open, revealing a gold band with a large rock set into the top of it. “I think it goes on...on your finger, but beyond that, um, I don't know what it does. Or...um...I didn't.”
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“I still don't get it,” Ace scoffed, turning the band over in her fingers. “I'm glad you showed me a pre-apocalyptic relic and all, but I'm still lost on the connection to Serpent.”
Wisp reached into her shirt and pulled out a thick stack of yellowed paper, held together by a maroon shell. “This book is the, um, connection,” she asserted as she placed it on the floor and sat down next to it.
Ace lowered herself to the floor as well, spying text on the book that identified it as a “Serpent Sword Manufacturing Manual”. Her interest piqued, she motioned for Wisp to continue.
“While you and Hivemind poked at the...the assembling line, I, um, found this book on a table in the corner. It describes the, uh, process that goes into making a sword like yours.” Ace started to try to read the pages, but Wisp was quick to flip through them, to the point she was most interested in. “Look at this picture.”
Ace already was. “That's the same rock as in this band...!”
Wisp nodded. “It says it's called a...a 'diamond'. This is apparently one of the most amazing materials the, um, pre-apocalyptic people ever found. Part of the process...the process of making a Serpent sword...it, um, involves a layer of this...this diamond over the blade.”
“And down here,” Ace mumbled, jabbing a finger at the bottom of the page, “it credits one Humberto Fernández Morán with having invented the diamond blade. And this number, 1955? That's the year...hard to know how they numbered their years before the apocalypse, but still...we've seen things noted to be at least thirty years younger.”
Ace nodded approvingly, slowly allowing Wisp to see her smile. “This is truly an impressive find,” she concluded, patting her fellow ranger on the back.
“Oh...thank you.” Wisp gathered the book and band back up and put them away. “What should we do with them?”
Ace was already headed out through the door. “Lad tends to know where to ship things like this. We'll bring it back to Cross Town and thank him for the lead with a special gi—“
Ace's plans were interrupted by a loud banging noise echoing throughout the entire town.
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Taking Wisp by the wrist, Ace rushed outside and started listening carefully, eventually triangulating the noise as having come from the southern gate. “We have to investigate,” she blurted as she dragged Wisp along behind her. “And if needed, we have to help. That's what rangers do.”
Fortunately, Hivemind and Four-Eyes had had a similar sentiment, and had rushed to the southern gate to meet them. “We ain't parked too far off,” Hivemind assured her, easing her concerns about the fact that they arrived on foot. “We just came runnin' the moment we heard the noise.”
Wisp gasped, her eyes transfixed above the gate. “Um...I just saw a tail,” she informed the group. “A gray, bushy tail. It's a...a...a snow drifter.”
If she had waited a few seconds, Wisp wouldn't have had to explain that to the group; the creature managed to ram its way through the gate all on its own, giving the team plenty of chance to see it for themselves. “All townspeople, stand back!” Ace ordered over her shoulder, unsure if there even were people behind her or if they'd already scrambled. “Hivemind and Four-Eyes, you—“
Wisp put a finger over Ace's mouth to silence her. “Ace,” she insisted, “can I, um, do this alone? If that's OK with you...”
Ace's mouth got halfway through asking why before she shut it in a hurry. “If you start failing, we're not going to watch you die.”
Wisp shook her head. “Then watch me prevail.” With that, Wisp was running toward the snow drifter, her chains jingling madly with every step. The creature stood about twice as tall as Wisp did, and regarded her noisy advance with curious eyes. “You!” she shouted at the snow drifter. “You should go away! Go...shoo!” The snow drifter seemed cowed into inaction, but stood its ground nonetheless. “I don't want to hurt you, but if I have to...I will!” Wisp unfastened one of her shackles, waving it threateningly in front of the snow drifter. “Go away!”
The snow drifter replied by pouncing at her, drool dripping from its lips as it sailed through the air.
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Wisp let out a gasp as she sprang backwards, leaving empty road for the snow drifter to land on. Her shoulders and gaze drooped under the weight of the realization that she would indeed have to execute the creature, but Ace was glad to see her get straight to work.
She jumped forward through the air and spun herself around, swinging the empty spiked shackle around. The snow drifter howled as the combination of blunt and piercing pain crashed into its left foreleg, and it wrenched itself away out of reflex. Wisp, being attached to the shackle as she was, was sent flying through the air by the the beast's retreat, swinging her directly into the outer wall wrapped around Downeast.
“Wisp!” Hivemind hollered. “Ace, we gotta help her!”
Ace shook her head. “I've fought alongside her plenty of times,” she asserted. “She can take more than that.”
True to Ace's assertion, Wisp let out a faint grunt as she swung herself upward, slamming her other shackle further up on the beast's limb. As the snow drifter howled and bucked, she took hold of the empty shackle and slipped her wrist back into it, then used it to dig into the snow drifter's leg once again. This elicited another pained cry, and the snow drifter shifted its weight to the side to slam its shoulder into the wall. Wisp hung motionless from her shackles, their landshark teeth still firmly embedded in the beast.
Hivemind raised his submachine gun to open fire at the beast, but Ace put her arm on top of it and lowered its aim to the snow. “She can handle this,” the lead ranger grunted.
“Ace, no!” Hivemind balked. “We can't let her get walloped like this! This ain't right!”
Ace shook her head. “Neither is she, and she won't be until she does this. Trust me...I've seen people like this. They get this hang-up on something that's hurt them badly. But the hurt never stops, not until they find their way back to it and finish their fight.”
Hivemind let out a low growl and gripped his gun tighter, but still kept it aimed at the snow while Wisp went through her ordeal. "If'n you say so," he said, itching his shoulder with his free hand. "Ah imagine this ain't your first time seein' this."
A quick, vague memory of Convoy's face flashed through Ace's mind. "...it's not."
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In the time it had taken to calm Hivemind, Wisp had shaken herself off and made it all the way onto the snow drifter's back. Its fur was much thicker along its back than down its leg, leaving Wisp to become obscured by the thin strands of fur that were well-suited to keeping the frigidity and moisture of the snow off of their bodies.
However, what was ideal for letting snow slide off of the creature's back was also ideal for keeping Wisp up there. Now working under more favorable conditions, she was able to make her way to the snow drifter's head just by moving her grip from hair to hair, minimizing the beast's pain. Ace shook her head at the thought of Wisp showing such mercy, but she was content to watch her ranger swing along the beast's hair and travel all the way to its head.
Wisp took off her slave shackles and dangled them down, ultimately wrapping the chain around the snow drifter's neck. Her hands wrapped around the loops where her wrists were supposed to go, her palms getting jabbed by the landshark teeth circling the outside of it. Traces of blood trickled around the braces and down the chain, but her grip held fast nonetheless.
The snow drifter tried to escape into the town, but a stern yank on the chains caused it to rear up in surprise. In its state of shock, it whipped its body around and charged through the gate instead.
Ace and her rangers clambered into the jeep and hurried through the snowfall to find Wisp, ultimately finding her still clinging to the snow drifter well outside of Downeast. Her whole body was shaking, possibly from being cold due to the snow falling directly onto her, and possibly from the strain of having to kill an animal. Either way, Ace was quick to peel her from the corpse and get down to business.
“Hivemind! Four-Eyes! Any chance you can cook this thing?”
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## Chapter 13
“Ah'm surprised y'all's willin' to give up this here sword cookbook or whatever it is,” Hivemind sneered as the jeep rocketed along the winding roads that led back to Cross Town. “What if y'all need another sword?”
Ace shook her head. “I can't go through these processes,” she explained as she patted the book. “The technology that goes into making a Serpent diamond sword isn't something we can just load onto the jeep.”
“Then it sounds like we need one of them there big rigs!”
“Um, Hivemind,” Wisp cut in, fidgeting her fingers nervously, “big rigs are...they're complicated. We couldn't just, uh, replace this jeep like that.”
Hivemind scoffed. “If y'all say so. So Wisp, don't y'all care what the fellas in Downeast think of what y'all did to that snow drifter?”
Wisp averted her gaze, except this time, she lifted it skyward. “No. I'm not a Downeaster anymore...I...I'm a ranger now. What they think isn't, um, a big deal...it's what I think of myself now.”
“And what's y'all thinkin' about yourself?”
“I think...I think I'm not the woman I once was. The, um, woman that the WPA manipulated...the woman who blindly followed orders...I'm different now.”
Hivemind rubbed his chin. “All that from a snow drifter, huh?”
“I guess...I guess you had to have been the one doing it.” Wisp turned her head to Ace. “And, um...thank you for letting me go through with that.”
“You needed it,” Ace replied without moving. She was enjoying a period of rest and kept her eyes glued to the clouds scrolling by above her, and she wasn't about to lose her comfortable position just to make eye contact with Wisp. “I know that.”
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The back of the jeep went quiet as Four-Eyes turned off the road and into Cross Town. Lad made plenty sure that the guards at the front gate knew Ace and her companions by sight, and ensured they were always welcome in his settlement. “Ah like this place,” Hivemind said, a failed attempt to break the silence that had overcome the group. With a shrug, he jumped out of the jeep the moment Four-Eyes put it in park outside of Lad's cozy little home on the back edge of town.
Ace and her rangers followed Hivemind to the door, where he was already knocking. “Lad!” Ace barked. “It's Ace. Open up.”
About a minute passed in which the door remained closed. “Shoot,” Hivemind growled, “where's he at?”
Ace shrugged and opened the door, inviting herself inside. “He's probably somewhere out in town. I'll leave him the diamond band and the sword manual, and then we can go look for leads on where we're needed next.”
Hivemind craned his head, peering around the room. “Ah dunno, Ace...the place is a might messy.”
When she heard him mention that, Ace suddenly got a lot more suspicious. Lad had pre-apocalyptic furniture all through his house, including a couch whose cushions were strewn all over the floor in front of it. A vase had also fallen to the floor, spreading glass and water all over the floor, and a couple blankets were piled up in a corner of the room when they were ordinarily draped over the back of the couch.
“You're right. Lad would have cleaned all this up. Something's wrong.”
“Oh...my,” Wisp gasped, overcome with concern.
Suddenly, Ace's eyes caught motion in the corner of the room. Her hand leapt to her sword as the blankets in the corner began to shift, only relenting when she saw the head of a young brunette girl poke up from the covers. “You...!” the girl shouted.
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“Mantis!” Wisp gasped. She broke ranks immediately, running over to the young girl to scoop her up in a tight embrace. “Are you OK? Where's Lad?”
“Yeah, everythin' alright 'round here?” Hivemind asked as he stepped in closer. “The house is a right mess!”
“I don't know,” Mantis gasped as she wrapped her little arms around Wisp's shoulders, clinging desperately to her. “Some men visited Lad, and they were mean...I could tell just by their voices! I hid when I heard them.”
Hivemind began to ask a question, but Wisp was quick to silence him. “It's OK,” she assured the young girl, “we're here for you now, and we're nice, right?”
Mantis tightened her embrace, snuggling right up against Wisp. “That's right...especially you, Wisp.”
Wisp ran a hand through the little girl's long brown hair. “That's right. You're OK now. Do you remember anything about what happened that you can tell us?”
“I...I...”
Ace heard Mantis let out quiet sobs into Wisp's chest, and she motioned for her ranger to calm the girl down. “Please, Mantis,” Wisp gently urged. “This is important. The more you tell us, the sooner we can help Lad.”
Mantis peeled her face away from Wisp, nodding and taking a deep breath despite the tears in her eyes. “Four men,” she choked. “They were...um...”
Wisp sighed and cradled Mantis closer to her. “I know you know what happened. I've done this too, but...trust me, please. The more you say, the better things will get.”
“They...they...” Mantis let out a long sigh. “...they were looking for me.”
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“Why you?” Ace growled, her hand still hovering over her sword. She had known Lad longer than anyone in her life other than Four-Eyes. The difference being, if someone told Ace that Four-Eyes was in trouble, she'd laugh it off. But Lad had always been soft. It was that softness that made him so beloved by Cross Town, but in times of crisis, it made her worry about him like a mother.
Wisp turned to Ace with a harsh stare. “Ace, please,” she commanded before turning back to Mantis. “Why did the mean men want you?”
“They wanted me back,” Mantis finally answered. “They took me out of my cage...and told me to do things...and they were mad that you found me and brought me here and...freed me.” She had an especially hard time squeaking out the last two words, clearly unaccustomed to them.
“Where would they have taken Lad?” Ace asked, more gently this time.
Mantis shook her head. “I don't know.”
“What about their car?” Hivemind piped in. “Mantis, remember their vehicle any? What'd they do with y'all after the cage an' all?”
“Oh...!” Mantis seemed much more excited at this prospect; this was her chance to really help. “It was blue...and something gray stuck out of it on the front...and it was really loud...and fast!”
Ace nodded. “You heard the girl,” she commanded, resuming the role of leader now that the unfamiliar territory of being gentle was out of her way. “Our objective is to find the kidnappers' car. Interrogate the townspeople and find out if they've seen the car Mantis told us about. Rangers, out!”
"Wait!" Mantis shouted, reaching a hand toward them. Wisp noticed the halting gesture and complied immediately, and the others fell in around her to listen to the child. "Lad...Lad's a good man. Let's help him!"
Ace was familiar with the look Mantis was giving her. She'd seen it in Lad's eyes a few times, back when he was younger. "You can ask everyone in Cross Town if they sad Lad, or the car you saw. My friend Four-Eyes will go with you." She gave the child a small smile and added, "He's kept Lad safe before, when he was your age."
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An hour later, everyone had gathered back at the jeep after splitting up to gather information. Hivemind, Wisp, and Ace had all gone alone. Mantis was placed under the care of Four-Eyes so that she could help without being placed in too much risk, lest Lad's kidnappers return. “Report in,” Ace demanded.
Hivemind was the first to step forward. “Well, ma'am,” he began, “I found some fella who was by Lad's house while the hollerin' was goin' on. He up an' hid when them fellas started comin' out of the house, but before that, he heard 'em complainin' about all the obstructin' Lad was up to. He was in the way of somethin' mighty important to whoever made Mantis go an' try blowin' up the town.”
Ace nodded slowly, frustrated with the information despite her interest in it. “So did this 'fella' tell you where they went after that?” Hivemind shook his head, prompting Ace to let out an annoyed growl. “Wisp, what'd you learn?”
“Um, nothing,” she admitted, “but...but I think I know what Lad might have been obstructing. Right about now, the wastefowl migration begins.”
“And that is...?” Ace began tapping her foot, waiting impatiently for Wisp to continue.
Wisp, not used to such ignorance in animal matters, stammered out an apology and continued. “Oh, um, you know the strange pink things with the beaks? They're very tall and clumsy out of water, but swim very easily. This is the time where they leave cold waters to look for somewhere warmer. They're bad at watching where they're going, though. Once they find a path, they remember it and follow it to the letter next time they move.”
Ace rolled her eyes. “You think Cross Town expanded and blocked these idiot birds from walking, and these guys want to blow the whole place up? Sounds like the WPA to me. It'd be nice to have some sort of confirmation on that, but it'd be even better to know where they took Lad.” Finally, she squatted down to make eye contact with Mantis, who had since taken to clinging to Wisp's leg. “What did you learn?”
“I learned...uh, I forgot.” Mantis stood silently for a bit longer, trying to remember, before finally giving up and looking up at the *vaquero*. “Four-Eyes, where did they say the mean men went?”
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Four-Eyes walked out onto the road and jabbed his finger into the air, toward a route seldom used at that time. “Riverside,” he spat. “That way.”
Hivemind seemed most shocked by the reveal. “But Riverside ain't been a place for so long,” he stammered, “there ain't nothin' left there!”
“Lad said there was an effort to rebuild Riverside,” Ace disputed, shaking her head. “Still, Lad's the one that suggested everyone evacuate Riverside back when the conditions were inhospitable to begin with. He saved everyone there.”
“Sure, reckon Ah know the stories 'bout him, savin' a whole town when he was no older'n Mantis here.” Hivemind sighed and tilted his head back; were he capable of doing so, he probably would have been rolling his eyes. “Told y'all...Ma was there when that happened. Ain't no Riversider that would've taken Lad hostage like that.”
“Then it was clearly someone not from Riverside.” Ace turned her gaze over Wisp. “I'm intrigued by your theory; if we're really dealing with the WPA so often, we might need to take...more drastic steps to deal with them.” All of her rangers seemed shocked, but Ace was adamant. “If we're to help the wasteland heal, they're a blight we have to be rid of.”
Hivemind stepped forward and pointed toward Riverside. “First of all, we's gotta go get them fellas an' save Lad.”
“Right. Rangers, into the jeep! We've got to get to Riverside.”
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“Riverside,” Hivemind mumbled, awestruck by the sight of buildings rising from the horizon. Despite the migration of people back into Riverside, very few of the buildings were new. “Reckon there's a fair bit o'history for me there...Ah was born there, but Ah don't remember much of the place.”
“Try not to get too attached,” Ace spat. “We're there on business, remember?”
Hivemind nodded. “Lad's been brought there for some reason or another. We's gotta fetch that fella an' put him back in his cushy little house of his.”
“Um, I'd like to know who tried to buy Mantis...and why,” Wisp mumbled, stroking the young girl's hair as she slept.
“An' why the hay did y'all bring her along, again?”
Wisp shot Hivemind a menacing look. “If we left her behind...um...someone else might attack her. We...we have to keep her safe.”
“An' the front lines, they's as safe as it gets, huh?” Hivemind scoffed. “Real safe place to keep a little lady like her.”
“Then we'll split up,” Ace commanded. “Hivemind, you and I are definitely going to save Lad, and Wisp can stay with Mantis. Four-Eyes is free to choose whether he'll stay...or go. I'll be sure to ask him in his own language. Regardless...Team Mantis will stay onboard the jeep and guard the little girl. Team Lad will follow me in tight formation and subdue the kidnappers by any means necessary. I hope that there are no questions, because we're about to arrive.”
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## Chapter 14
Ace took the lead heading into Riverside while Hivemind crept along behind her. “Ah've always wanted to see this place,” he mumbled, “but this ain't how I wanted to do it.”
“Focus on the mission,” Ace barked over her shoulder. “You can go sightseeing after we're done.”
Their stealth attempt was quickly ruined by the arrival of an elderly man, one of the oldest Ace had ever seen out in the wastes. His hair had all fallen out, save for the thick mustache that adorned his lip. The moment he spotted Ace, he hobbled right over with a big smile on his face. “Well, I'll be!” he shouted. “I'd recognize y'all anywhere!”
“Sheriff Wayne,” Ace gasped as she stood up straight and took up his offer for a handshake. “It's been a long time.”
“Twenty years or so, I reckon. But I ain't no sheriff, not no more. I'm too old fer that now.” Wayne shook his head. “So where's that Lad fella?”
Ace sighed. “Missing. We tracked his kidnappers here. Have you seen a blue vehicle with its engine sticking out of the hood?”
“Yep! Saw 'em tearin' ass through the town before they went an' followed the river uphill.” Wayne's gaunt, wrinkled finger jabbed toward the back road out of the town. “If'n what y'all say about Lad is true, I hope y'all catch the varmints responsible an' mess 'em right up.”
“Of course.” Before long, Ace was running back toward the jeep, Hivemind barely able to keep up.
“We ain't even gonna talk to that fella more?” Hivemind asked as Ace leapt into the back of the jeep.
“Nope,” Ace scoffed as she opened the back window, where Four Eyes and Wisp were huddled around Mantis. “We've got a job to do. They're not here...they went upriver. Four-Eyes, *vamanos*.”
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When Ace had brought Lad up the river, it was to find a clean water source for the town below. The mission had ended in failure, but the people of Riverside had managed to relocate to what ultimately became Cross Town.
This time around, Ace stared at the now-cleansed water and raced to Lad's rescue, hoping that this mission would end more successfully. To expedite this, Ace recreated her initial plan, hopping out of the jeep with Hivemind stealthily while Wisp and Four-Eyes kept Mantis safe.
“Stay here,” she ordered them. “Hivemind and I will go on ahead, and try to get the drop on Lad's abductors.”
Ace took the lead, her aptitude for moving silently making her a natural choice for the leader. She had to be sneaky a lot of the time, simply because she used a sword in a post-apocalyptic world full of guns. Hivemind was a couple yards behind her, keeping watch over her approach with his submachine gun. She tickled the hilt of her diamond-edged blade as she started hearing a scuffle by the deep blue roadster the kidnappers had been seen driving.
She froze as she heard a sudden disturbance of the water, followed by Lad gasping desperately for air. “Blow me,” Lad scoffed through ragged breaths. “I'm not giving in.”
“You better,” a high-pitched male voice slowly intoned. “No one's coming all the way up here to save you.”
“Like that matters. You're not having your way with that girl or that town. Torture me all you want...and I'll still tell you to blow me.” Ace cringed as she heard Lad grunt from the sudden impact of a boot to his stomach. “What'd I just say? All four of you could stomp on me and I wouldn't change my mind.”
On one hand, it pained Ace to see Lad go through so much and be treated so brutally, but on the other hand, it gave her the chance she needed to approach without anyone noticing her. Her feet shuffled silently through the grass on the hill, quickly closing the gap between her and the four men burying their boots in Lad's torso.
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Once Ace had come sufficiently close, she stopped and unsheathed her sword as she assessed the situation. If she tiptoed in any closer, she risked being detected, but if she somehow avoided that, she would be in an excellent position to defeat all four men at once.
She threw a glance over her shoulder to Hivemind, who nodded reassuringly at her. After that, she decided to simply bisect the two closest men and worry about the others later.
Ace took a quick step forward as she dragged her sword from her right to her left, ripping right through one man's spine before anyone knew what was going on. Her intended second target, however, had better reflexes than she had anticipated, and managed to get away with a mere flesh wound.
“Who are you, crazy lady?” the high-pitched man asked. He was on the far end of the crowd around Lad, and he was reaching for his gun, as were his cohorts.
“Wouldn't you like to know,” Ace growled as she flicked her sword to the side, jettisoning blood off of the blade. “I'll be taking this man from you now.”
“Not until we're done with him!” The man blasted Lad's side with a vicious kick. “He stole a slave that we bought fair and square!”
Ace shook his head. “Strictly speaking, that would have been me. You're the ones that gave her an oil drum and told her to blow herself up? I caught her doing that and took those pesky slave chains off of her.”
The man drew his gun, a double-barreled shotgun, and jabbed it directly into Ace's chest. “You don't know who you're messing with, crazy lady...all this is beyond you. What's the life of one slave in comparison to the well-being of the entire world?”
“If that's the case, just buy another slave. Or maybe two.” Ace nodded toward the kidnapper she had managed to kill. “After all, you've got this fool to replace.”
“That's it, lady!” the man shouted as his finger began to squeeze the trigger of the shotgun. Ace was grateful for the verbal warning, since it gave her time to swing her sword upward and bat the weapon away from her chest, causing its bullets to spray harmlessly through the air.
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Hivemind was quick to leap to Ace's aid, spraying gunfire into the man to her left before he could make a move to subdue Ace. This left one man unaccounted for, and Ace probably would have been fatally wounded had Lad not found the strength to help.
Unfortunately, all he could really do was wrap his tail around the gunner's arm and yank it downward, causing the pistol to fire into Ace's leg instead of her chest.
Ace let out a short scream and took a knee, cringing in pain as Hivemind fired over her head and into the gunner's. The leader, dissatisfied with the slow reload speed of his gun, smashed the stock of it into Ace's cheek, knocking her into the dust as he made a grab for one of his fallen comrades' weapons.
Before he could, Hivemind's translucent wings tore through his shirt and started flapping wildly, pushing him along the ground as he ran. He stuck his foot out ahead of him and slid into the leader's legs. After the last of Lad's kidnappers fell to the ground, Hivemind straddled him and jabbed the submachine gun into his neck.
“Y'all move just once, and Ah'll blow your head off,” Hivemind growled, buying Wisp and Four-Eyes plenty of time to rush to Ace's aid. The *vaquero* loaded his longtime partner into the jeep and administered some rudimentary first aid, while Wisp collected Lad's battered body from the scene of the crime. “So how 'bout y'all tell me what y'all's got against the mayor of Cross Town?”
“How about you shut the hell up?” Hivemind's hostage groaned.
“O'course. Wisp...? There any way I can tell them WPA types apart from the normal folks?”
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Wisp left the jeep to cater to Hivemind's needs, leaving Mantis to cuddle up with the wounded Ace. “Oh, um, there's a special...a WPA key,” Wisp intoned as she rifled through the pockets of the dead men. “It's the, uh, only way into their headquarters.” The scene went quiet for a minute. Ace was too busy gripping her leg and closing her eyes in pain to see exactly what was happening. “But, um, no one here has the...the key.”
“Shucks.” Ace heard the sound of a submachine gun smacking into a skull. “An' this fella ain't gonna talk...almost as stubborn as one of us Riversiders. Not quite, though.”
As Ace heard Hivemind adjust his gun, he added, “So that's your last warnin', fella. Spill the beans an' I'll let y'all live.”
“Live for what?” the prisoner shot back, his voice even higher in pitch than before. “Live where? In the future you're working for? What makes it any better than—“
Ace was vaguely curious how the man would have finished his sentence, were it not for Hivemind pulling the trigger. “We ain't got time for this,” Hivemind barked. “We gotta find Ace some medical attention in a real clinic! Four-Eyes ain't gonna keep her alive on his own, now, is he? The more time Ah'd have gone and spent with him, the closer she'd be to dyin'! Now come on, we gotta tell Four-Eyes to put the pedal to the metal an' get Ace to somewhere civilized!”
Wisp started to provide her own rationale to counter Hivemind's, but their voices got much less distinct as the pain started intensifying. Ace resigned herself to lean back and stare at the clouds as she felt her consciousness ebb away, and did her best to rest. She had taken plenty good care of her rangers in the times they'd shared together, so she was confident in their ability to take care of her before she lost too much blood.
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## Chapter 15
A sudden weight on Ace's chest brought her back to her senses in a hurry. To her surprise, however, her eyes were alerting her to a pitch-black room, and her ears were picking up on silence. She tried to bring her hands closer to her face, but they were held back by something cold and metallic, leaving her body splayed over whatever she was resting on. At the very least, whatever was under her back was soft and comfortable.
“Ace?” a quiet voice mumbled from her chest.
She struggled to see who was there, but it was to no avail as usual. “Who's there?” she barked. “Where are we?”
Ace started to feel hair brush up to her neck and chin. “I'm Mantis...remember? And this is a place I've never been...but Wisp called it 'East Divide'. She said it was the closest and best clinic she knew. She told me to tell you something.”
If all of that was true, then the presence of the chains only confused Ace even more. “Yeah?”
“They put you in chains to keep you still so you can heal. They said something in your leg was broken.”
Ace scoffed. “If that's true, then where are they now?” Ace wished she was conscious and consulted when they had made the decision to chain her to the bed, and she was raring to tell them as much.
“The bridge blew up,” Mantis replied hesitantly. “It was scary. Wisp said that as rangers, it was up to them to solve the problem.”
“Then they need my help!” Ace struggled against her restraints once more. Mantis let out a low shriek, causing her to relent. “But they really want me to stay here instead, huh?”
“Yes please. Can you hold still? It's late.”
Ace rolled her eyes, incredulous at the thought of taking orders from someone who looked to be about ten years old, but at the same time, she knew Mantis was right, and that getting some rest was likely the best course of action.
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A beam of sunlight cut its way through the window and over Ace's eyes, rousing her from her sleep just in time to spot a young woman clad entirely in white enter the room with a tray of food. “Good morning,” she cheered through a wide smile. Ace's attention drifted to the ceiling above her, from which a large variety of machinery was suspended. “I bet you're hungry, aren't you?”
“Less hungry than confused,” Ace groaned as she tried to fold her arms over her chest, an impossible task due to the restraints. “Am I a patient or a prisoner?”
The young woman let out a short giggle. “Oh, I've heard from your friends that you're a feisty one! We're going to put your leg in traction, but that means we need your total cooperation, or you'll just hurt yourself even more!”
“Traction?” Ace had never heard of this before; she was starting to doubt that she had actually made it to a real clinic.
“Oh, yes, it's a procedure we just found out about thanks to some enterprising young diggers!” The nurse sat down next to Ace and began feeding her the food. Ace absolutely hated it; the food was bland, and being fed like a child felt demeaning. Being chained up as she was, however, there was nothing she could do about it.
“The idea is to hold your leg immobile," the woman continued, "with the help of that stuff hanging from the ceiling...it keeps your leg bone nice and still so it can put itself back together the right way!”
Ace let out a low snarl. “What about my arms?”
“Oh, we'll free those up for you in a jiffy!” The nurse gave Ace one last spoonful of mushy vegetables before digging a small key out of her chest pocket, which she used to undo all of Ace's restraints. “Now, I'm unlocking these because I trust you to not move around too much and try anything stupid, OK? If you try to walk on that leg of yours, we might have to start everything all over again, and you're the type that wants to be back on the road as soon as possible, right?”
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“I am a ranger,” Ace confirmed as the nurse slowly guided her broken leg into a cloth loop slung over a pulley in the ceiling, restraining it in an elevated position. “Time I spend in here is time not spent helping people out there.”
The nurse shook her head. “Oh, I know, dear,” she sympathized, “but you'll never be a ranger ever again if you don't do as we say and heal properly! You have to work with us so you can work with your rangers.”
Ace had expected much worse from the machinery present over her head, but if it was just a setup to hold her leg up, she could live with that, on one condition. “There has to be something I can do from here to help.”
“Actually, yes.” The nurse handed Ace her trademark diamond-edged sword and sat at the foot of the bed. Before Ace could question what was going on, the nurse removed her white coat to reveal a shimmering patchwork of scales on her back. “Be a dear and strip off that ingrown scale, would you? It's jabbing right into my spine.”
The nurse reached around and strained to point her finger to one particular scale, which was growing sideways out of her back. As Ace gently maneuvered her long instrument of death in for a gentle surgery, the nurse added, “My name is Chroma.”
“Ace,” the lead ranger grunted as she gave a subtle flick with her sword, jettisoning the rogue scale away without any effort. “Nice to meet you.”
Chroma sighed in relief and rolled her shoulders a few times, flexing her spine in the process. “Thank you, Ace.” She slipped back into her clinic uniform and pulled open a nearby door, revealing Mantis nestled on top of some supplies.
“Now, this little darling is going to be at your bedside until you're well again," Chroma said, waving a finger in Ace's face. "If you need anything, either she'll get it or fetch one of us nurses, but either way, you let her know, OK? While you were out of it, we taught her a few basic caretaker tasks, so if you're in need of food or drink, or you need to use the bathroom, she'll help you with that. She's very smart, you know. She your daughter?”
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Ace sighed and rose to a sitting position, not feeling in the mood to engage in conversation. “A rescued slave," she said, nodding to Mantis. "She's taken to the name Mantis.”
“No wonder the little dearie was so eager to learn and so quick to follow orders.” After a moment of silence, Chroma performed a double-take. “You say you rescued her?”
Ace nodded. “The men who bought her planned on using her as a suicide bomber, but I hauled her away from her explosive barrel long enough to get answers out of her. I was injured fighting those men.”
Chroma leaned over and gave Ace a quick kiss on the cheek. “Then I salute you, darling. We'd be honored to nurse you back to health, free of charge.”
“Why do you care? I just did what was right.”
Chroma stood up and turned her head toward the sleeping girl. “She looks like someone I used to know. East Divide is usually safe from slavers just from the sheer numbers of people around here, but there was one dig that went horribly awry...”
Ace rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that's how I ended up in Threering in the first place. Someone took a liking to one of my rangers on a dig, sold her into slavery, and tried to buy her for less than he'd sold her. Tried to play the system and get himself a slave...”
“Damn slavers...” Chroma planted her forehead against the wall, unhappy with the dark turn the conversation had taken. “If I had my way, I'd be spending my time freeing slaves, but this is good too. Really, as long as I can help someone...”
A small mumble came from the supply closet as Mantis roused herself from sleep. “Ace, Chroma, hi,” she said. “Ace, are you behaving? Chroma told me it's really important that you listen and let us take care of you!”
Ace let out a small chuckle. “You'll be glad to know that I was put into traction without any problems.”
Mantis nodded excitedly. “Chroma taught me all about traction while you were sleeping! And I helped make sure you stopped losing blood!”
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Ace nodded over her shoulder, urging the girl to come to her bedside so she could pat her on the head. “Then I have you to thank as much as I do my fellow rangers, and Chroma. Good job, Mantis.”
The girl's reply was to let out an excited gasp. “Ace said I did a good job!” she chanted repeatedly. Ace hadn't realized just how rare compliments were from her until then.
Chroma chuckled and stepped out into the hallway outside Ace's room. “I'll leave you two sweeties alone,” she announced as she closed the door behind her.
Ace watched the door well after the nurse left. “Mantis,” she said, “I need you to do something for me, OK?”
Mantis stopped her chanting and stood at attention, just as disciplined as any ranger. “What is it, Ace?” she gasped. “They told me to do anything you need me to!”
“Good girl.” Ace's gaze traveled to the window. “Is there any way you could help me keep up with what's going on out there? You said Wisp and the others were investigating the collapse of the bridge...”
“Um, I don't know.” Mantis gazed around the room nervously, anxious to ensure that she never failed her patient. “I'll ask Chroma if she can figure out what's wrong outside.”
Ace gave Mantis a nod of approval. “You do that. I'm going back to sleep.”
Despite Ace's plans, sleep was difficult to come by. Her mind was too busy racing with thoughts of her fellow rangers to allow her to rest. She agreed with their assessment that the bridge of Divide was important enough to investigate, but she couldn't help but worry all the same.
It was one thing for the people of Divide to vote up a barricade, but nobody had ever made an attack on the bridge itself before, much less succeeded so drastically. Without the bridge looming across the canyon, one of the wasteland's most valuable trade routes was torn asunder, a scenario that did no good for anyone. Not even the intense riots spreading between East and West would drive someone to destroy the bridge.
Even when the barricade was in place, movement was only hampered, not outright prevented. Neither side profited from a detonated bridge, since the West Divide people would love a chance to go to Threering, and those on the east side would much rather have easy access to incoming supplies. Furthermore, no random punk from either side was likely to accrue the hardware necessary to detonate the entire bridge.
Ace suspected some outside influence, but she was in no condition to find out, only to hope that her rangers had the necessary training to fix everything.
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## Chapter 16
Ace's stomach growled fiercely at her, begging for food. After a few weeks of bland hospital food, she was plenty used to it, and would gladly take some to satiate her needy stomach. What she ended up with instead, on the other hand, was a huge surprise.
“Howdy!” a familiar voice rang from outside her door. Before long, Hivemind was shoving his way through the door, with Wisp pushing the wheeled cart he was pulling. “Ace, how's it been 'round here?”
“I'd rather be out there,” Ace replied, rubbing her hands along her injured leg. “How much longer am I going to be stuck in this bed?”
“Ah dunno...ask your friendly nurse-in-trainin', Mantis.” Hivemind's eyes darted around the room looking for her, ultimately settling on the cot she had put up in the corner to sleep on. “When she wakes up, anyway. Ah heard it was soon, anyway, an' we pulled off somethin' real good-like, so we figured we'd celebrate.”
Wisp pushed the cart up to Ace's bedside and pulled the lid off of a pot resting in the middle of it. “Hivemind...he made you some, um, food,” she said as she pulled a huge cut of meat out of the pot and laid it on a plate for Ace. “And we...we know all there is to know about the attack on the bridge.”
Hivemind nodded. “So have a slab o'glow bear steak, compliments of me an' Four-Eyes, an' have a listen!”
“Of course,” Ace said, tearing into the meat in a hurry, grateful to sink her teeth into some real food for a change. Despite its thickness, the meat came right apart with little effort, and it was rife with juices and flavor. “Tell me right from the top...how did they even manage to destroy the bridge?”
In lieu of an actual answer, Hivemind jabbed his fingers into his mouth and produced a short, sharp whistle, apparently the cue for Four-Eyes to enter the room carrying a huge metal tube of a weapon. “Ah reckon it's some kinda bomb tube...witnesses were tellin' us they set this here thing up in South Divide an' shot a bomb up at the bridge. They blew it up from below.”
“It's a, um, pre-apocalyptic weapon,” Wisp clarified as she took a small helping of glow bear steak for herself. “It makes sense based on...based on where it came from.”
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Hivemind pulled a slab of meat out of his mouth so he could quickly make his way into the story. “Wisp, I was gettin' to that!" he snapped. "So anyway, Ace, y'all would've really liked to have been there! Since them fellas were hidin' in the canyon with this here bomb tube, our only choice was to head right down into the canyon ourselves. Weren't that a rush?”
Wisp rubbed a cut on her knee. “Uh, I guess.”
“So anyway, we found us some fellas hidin' in the canyon, ordinary an' Abnormal alike. It would've been real heartwarmin' if it wasn't insane.” Hivemind shrugged. “At least it's calmin' down some of the discriminatin' that goes on 'round here. Some fellas even confirmed one of these varmints is who went an' killed your friend Gate!”
Ace let out a low growl. “You took revenge for Gate without me?” she spat.
Hivemind shook his head. “Easy, Ace, you'll wake up Mantis!” Hivemind nodded over his shoulder, reminding Ace of the little girl's presence visually. “But yeah, we had to do somethin' 'bout that fella an' his friends. Sorry, Ace, Ah know it would've felt good to get your hands on him, but we had to make sure he didn't get his hands on no more weapons! 'sides, if ya knew the fella was WPA, would that make you glad he ain't free no more?”
“The WPA?” Ace nearly leapt to her feet then and there; only the vague pulling sensation of her traction sling kept her from standing on her bad leg. “But why...?”
“I can answer that,” Wisp chimed in, moving in close to Ace. “When I was in the WPA, they tried telling me that South Divide, the garbage dump...it's actually a dried-up river. I never believed that, but a lot of them do.”
Ace's eyes gave a series of rapid, confused blinks. “You're telling me that they destroyed a bridge because there's supposed to be water underneath it?”
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Wisp sighed. “I know," she huffed. "This is why I quit the, um, WPA...even if I believed them, what purpose does this all serve?” As her head lowered, she added, “How does this help anything?”
“That there bridge is probably rock hare food by now,” Hivemind balked, “but they ain't the best of swimmers. Ah don't get it none either. Poor Wisp here ain't been much help with that.”
“Um, what I do know is this...” Wisp fetched a slender shank of metal from her pocket. “...this WPA key shows us this was a serious action.”
“A declaration of war,” Ace growled as she reached for her sword. “So how long until I can take the fight to them?”
Wisp rolled her eyes. “Ask Mantis or one of the nurses. We're not sure.”
Ace shook her head and removed her leg from its sling, despite the opposition of her fellow rangers. Hivemind attempted to stop her from swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and rising to her feet, but she easily shoved him away. With a deep sigh and a grunt, she pushed herself off of the bed, forcing her legs to support her.
She stumbled on her feet slightly, more from having not stood up over the past few weeks than any direct effect of her injury. Once she managed to get her bearings, however, she stood just as straight and tall as the rest of her rangers, if not more so. “I knew I could,” Ace snarled. “Why'd you try to stop me?”
“'cause we ain't goin' after the WPA just yet,” Hivemind replied sternly, standing directly in front of Ace. “We got ourselves a more immediate concern, don't we, Wisp?” Wisp's reply was merely to nod. “We done caught wind of some new settlement startin' up out in the dust. 'pparently, some diggers went an' settled in someplace. Fellas were lookin' to make a town all their own...some kinda digger paradise. Things went belly-up when they got themselves a whole mess of bandits, though. Now, they're diggin' up all sorts of weapons, or else the bandits are gonna kill 'em all.”
Ace nodded. “Of course. It strikes me as odd that the bandits would show such intelligence as to actually coerce people to work for them like that...but that just makes it all the more worth checking out. Where did you say they were?”
Hivemind chuckled. “That there's the confusin' part. I ain't told y'all nothin' 'bout where they're settin' up shop 'cause I don't know nothin'. I was hopin' the name 'Shroud' meant somethin' to y'all.”
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“Of course it does,” Ace said, already deep in thought. Shroud was where the first Serpent facility had been, where she had learned the truth about Agent Venom, and where she had lost her dear friend and fellow caravanner Convoy.
It was an underground city formed after the apocalypse, though recent events had brought a cave-in down on their heads, leaving a crater where there used to be a subterranean metropolis. It didn't surprise Ace to hear that enterprising diggers had just decided to build on top of the crater, especially considering the wealth of relics Serpent held beneath their feet, but she was glad to hear about a new settlement being founded all the same.
“Tomorrow," Ace ordered, standing tall in front of her rangers, "we head to Shroud and solve their bandit problems.”
“Oh,” Wisp said, “why not...why not today?”
“Today, I have to work out. I've been out of the ranger business for far too long to just jump right back into it.”
“The hell you are, darling!” Chroma shouted as she reentered Ace's room. “You're not ready for that kind of ranger business, Ace.” A forked tongue lashed in and out of her mouth as she continued speaking. “You're staying here.”
Ace shook her head. “There's people out there that need me, just as there's people here that need your help more than I do.”
“Ace...?” a sleepy voice mumbled from the corner. Mantis groggily rose to a sitting position on her cot. “Ace, why are you standing so soon?”
“Stubbornness, mostly.”
Hivemind scoffed. “Stubborn as a mule, that one,” he groaned as he finished off his serving of glow bear steak. When all eyes in the room fell upon him, he added, “Ah dunno what a mule is. Just that Ma always talked about 'em...which Ah bet she learned from her ma. An' so on.”
“Anyway,” Chroma said, rolling her eyes, “it's nice to see you back on your feet so soon, but I absolutely can't have you hunting bandits so soon after your release!”
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Chroma attempted to clap a hand on Ace's shoulder, but she shrugged it off. “I can't leave those diggers to their fate,” she rebutted. “Besides, my rangers risked their lives enough as it is. They need me too.”
“Maybe they can think about needing you in a way that doesn't involve stressing your bad leg...?" Chroma suggested. "Can't you use a gun instead?”
Ace laughed. “That's the one thing I'm bad at.” Such ineptitude was what made her hire gunners for her old caravan in the first place. “I'm sure I can figure out something, though.”
“I don't believe you, sugar, but I'm reasonable.” Chroma sighed and walked to the corner of the room. “Mantis! Feel ready to try your hand at being a field medic?”
“I...I don't,” Mantis admitted, rubbing her arm shyly.
“Too bad. Someone has to keep Ace in line, and she's not going to answer to Wisp and Hivemind here.” With a sly wink, she added, “But how could she resist a little cutie like you?”
“You're talking about me as if I'm not here,” Ace groaned. “I hate it when people do that.”
<center>~~~</center>
“Remember, Ace,” Mantis chided her patient, “you have to stay in the jeep until there's no more bandits. Your leg should be fine after that.”
“At least I'm still allowed to drive,” Ace said, her hands tightening around the steering wheel. “I'm surprised you're not stopping me from that.”
Hivemind chuckled from behind her, in the back of the jeep. “It's 'cause Ah told her y'all got shot in the brake-hittin' leg!” he joked. “Ah ain't never seen you use that none!” Ace let out an annoyed sigh, but that only riled up Hivemind even more. “What, y'all can't take a joke?”
“Honestly? Bullets are easier to cope with. At least I know what to do about it.”
Suddenly, a hand reached through the back window and patted her shoulder. “Shucks, Ace, all y'all's gotta do is laugh at it! Ain't so hard!”
Ace rolled her eyes. “Lad tried his best to make me socialize like a normal person, but he never prepared me for this.”
“Socializin' lessons?” Hivemind nearly fell out of the jeep from laughing so hard. Were it not for Mantis and her medical concerns, Ace would have slammed on the brakes then and there.
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## Chapter 17
Enormous mechanical arms rose from the horizon to wave to Ace, beckoning her to drive toward them. “That must be the place,” she surmised. “It looks like they have more of those digger rigs, too.”
“But Ah don't see any sign of 'em bein' used,” Hivemind added from the back of the jeep. “None of the smoke an' rumblin' Ah remember from when Gate's pal had one goin'.”
Ace shrugged. “Maybe the bandits don't want those vehicles turned on them. Maybe they don't realize that they're diggers. Who knows...and who cares?”
“Either way, Ace, Ah was hopin' y'all would let us handle it. If things go belly-up, swing by with the jeep.”
“Don't worry. I might have to stay seated, but I won't be sitting this one out.”
“Just remember,” Mantis said, “you can do whatever you want as long as you don't use that leg.”
As if Ace didn't get the message the first few times, Mantis went so far as to point to the leg with the broken bone in it. “I know, Mantis, that's why I'm in the car. Do you mind?” Mantis tried to nod, but Ace wasn't done speaking. “And one more thing...if my rangers get into too much trouble, I am saving them no matter what it does to my leg, do you understand?”
“...OK.”
Hivemind scoffed. “Ace, Ah think y'all hurt the little lady's feelin's,” he scolded her. “She's just tryin' to make sure y'all feel your best. Go on, apologize.”
Ace let out a low grumble, but it only resulted in Hivemind repeating his last sentence even louder, so she relented. “Fine. Sorry, Mantis.”
Mantis turned back toward Ace, wiping a tear from her eye. “It's OK. I just want you to get better, because...”
Ace shrugged. “Because then I can go back to being a good ranger?”
Mantis shook her head, but failed to share her actual reasoning.
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Ace pulled the jeep up to a pair of digger rigs, their arms forming an improvised wall, albeit one not staffed by any guards. “Weird,” Ace said, “most settlements usually have someone out front to keep an eye on who comes and goes.”
Mantis pointed a finger through the windshield. “Maybe they're all in that hole,” she guessed.
“Huh. They might be.” Sure enough, Ace pulled the jeep up to the hole, an impressive wooden scaffolding that held back the dirt to allow the diggers to descend a spiral staircase and dig ever deeper. Ace was pretty glad to see that; not only would it put them reasonably closer to Shroud and the Serpent facility, but it was also an old-fashioned dig site, not mucked up by the use of heavy machinery. It took a minute for Ace to remember what she had actually come for, but eventually she came around and yelled down the shaft, “Hello...? Anyone here?”
Ace began to tap her foot impatiently, waiting for a response, but it was only after catching a glimpse of Mantis scowling at her that she realized she was using her bad leg to do it. She resigned to drumming her fingers on the steering wheel until a young boy finally poked his head up from the mineshaft, his fair skin and blond hair mottled with dirt. “Oh, hi!” he said. “You don't look like a bandits!”
“We're not,” Ace assured the child. “We're rangers.”
“Neat! My grandpa says he was a rangers until I was born!” The boy clambered out of the mineshaft and made it halfway to the jeep before freezing in his tracks. “What's a rangers?”
Ace sighed and rolled her eyes. “We go wherever people need help, and help them. Get it?”
The boy nodded. “Sure! So that means you're here to help us dig, right? Dig up whatever the bandits want until they go away?”
“What? No, we're here to make the bandits go away whether they like it or not!”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|92]]
Ace motioned through the back window of the jeep, prompting Hivemind and Wisp to leap out and into the dirt. Once she was confident the boy had seen his fill of Hivemind's gun and Wisp's spiked bracers, she added, “Just tell us where they are.”
“We're too slow,” the boy replied with a shrug. “They went to a ring place to find more people.”
“Slaves,” Hivemind said, skipping to his conclusion. “Ace, this ain't addin' up at all.”
Ace shook her head. “The digging is too deliberate,” she elaborated, “and their desire to haul in external help...this is not the sort of planning I've ever seen from bandits.” She couldn't decide if she was dealing with smarter bandits than usual or a different group entirely, but she quickly decided that she didn't care. “Look, kid, are they going to be back soon so we can deal with them?”
“I-I-I don't know!” the boy stammered, taking a step backward.
Wisp sighed and took a knee in front of the child. “You're scaring him!” she told Ace before turning to the boy. “There there, little boy. We're here to make everything OK. Now, where are the mean men that are making you dig?”
The boy thought about the question for a moment before replying, “Getting more people so they can make them dig too.”
“Very good.” Wisp patted the boy's filthy hair. “Did they say when they would be back?”
“All they said is that if we don't make it to a shroud by the time they're back, they'll kill us all. What's a shroud?”
All eyes turned to Ace, the only person there knowledgeable enough to tell them what they needed to know, aside from Four-Eyes, who outright couldn't due to the language barrier.
“Shroud is an old town that you've been living on top of this whole time,” Ace told the child. “I don't know what bandits would want that's down there, though.” Shroud likely still had guns and mining helmets laying around underneath the collapsed ceiling of the underground town, but there were better ways to acquire both of those things.
The boy's eyes suddenly lit up. “Oh, then we found a shroud! We found buildings and people and everything!”
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Wisp cringed as she and Ace came to the same conclusion simultaneously; they both knew there's no way he saw people that were actually alive after being buried in dirt and rubble for years on end. “Oh, wow, you're a great digger!” Wisp congratulated the child, causing a smile to spread between his cheeks. “And they still want you to dig some more?”
The boy's smile and pep dissipated quickly. “Yeah, that's weird. We found the shroud, so what's left?”
Ace snapped her fingers. “Serpent,” she spat. “The only thing left would be the old Serpent building.”
“That sounds neat!” Ace showed brief surprise at how quickly the boy bounced back and forth between emotions. “What's in there?”
“Nothing a bandit would want...though they may have somehow caught wind of the other Serpent building we found, rife with weapons. Maybe the bandits are looking to capture a similar supply for their own use in something larger.”
The low rumble of approaching vehicles caught Ace's ear, and presumably those of Hivemind as well. “Ah reckon we'll have a chance to find out right soon,” he guessed.
“Of course. Four-Eyes and I will stay in the jeep. Hivemind and Wisp, take up positions in Shroud at the bottom of the mineshaft. This kid here will show the bandits the progress the diggers have made, and you can ambush them as they come down into the tunnels.” Ace let out a massive sigh and threw in the final order. “And of course, Mantis, you're going to be my field medic.”
The boy perked up a bit and peeked through the window. “Who's Mantis?” he asked.
Mantis threw open the passenger door of the jeep and stepped out onto the dirt to introduce herself. “I'm Mantis!” she said. “I'm learning how to take care of people that are hurt or sick!”
“Oh, neat!” The young digger jabbed a thumb into his chest. “I'm Little Rock! Mantis, maybe you can help my grandpa! He's been sick.”
Mantis shrugged. “I don't know about that. Ace, we should take his grandpa to Divide once we're done!”
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“That's a possibility,” Ace replied cryptically. She still wasn't sure what she'd do after the bandit situation was dealt with. She was leaning toward chasing the WPA however she could, and she knew that her fellow rangers would have their own reasons for coming with her. On the other hand, Wisp and Mantis would never let her hear the end of it if she abandoned Little Rock's grandfather.
“Uh, Ace,” Hivemind said, snapping his fingers right in Ace's face. “y'all gonna take that jeep an' hide it somewhere? Them bandits ain't gonna like seein' a vehicle they don't recognize.”
Ace nodded. “Good point. I'll bring it around and hide it among these digger rigs. When I see my chance, I'll bring it out.”
As she did exactly that, Four-Eyes gave her a questioning glance. “¿*Qué*?” he spat, confused from his unfamiliarity with nearly every word the group had spoken besides “bandit”.
Instead of dignifying him with a response, Ace kept her ears ready to give a listen to the bandits' approach. “Why aren't you in the mines, boy?” a low male voice shouted.
“They sent me up to tell you!” Little Rock replied. “We found your shroud!”
“Well, isn't that nice? Come on, we're going down there. We have to show you and all the new friends we brought you where to dig now.”
Amidst the jingle of slave chains, Little Rock stood his ground and belted out a reply. “OK, but let my grandpa stop working! He keeps coughing, and he can't even dig!”
“Oh, don't worry, little boy...we brought someone that can do his work for him...believe me, we'll make sure he doesn't do any work ever again.”
The bandit let out a chuckle, and Little Rock was quick to join in. “I don't know why that's funny, but thanks, mister bandits! Let's tell my grandpa right now!”
Ace heard their footsteps as the two of them moved over to the wooden staircase winding down the mineshaft. It didn't take her long to guess what the ensuing gunshot meant. “Poor Little Rock,” Ace said to herself, fondling the keys to the jeep.
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## Chapter 18
Ace waited patiently for her signal; she knew the calamity had to start sooner or later. She had to wait for the distinct sound of Hivemind's firearm before she fired up the jeep and urged it into action. She stole a glance back at Four-Eyes, who was waiting patiently in the back, cleaning his weapons.
In a way, Ace envied her *vaquero* companion. In the decades she'd known him, he'd never been in any sort of panic, so long as he had his guns. Despite not knowing the language he spoke, his eyes and posture as he turned and nodded to her told her enough. If anything, he was hurting for another good all-out brawl like the landsharks had given him.
A few minutes later, the panicked staccato of gunfire she was waiting for echoed up from the mineshaft. “Finally,” she said to herself as she cranked the ignition, dramatically breathing life into the jeep. Confused shouts issued from the gathering of bandits. As she sent the jeep flying over a sand dune and directly onto one of the bandits, it seemed to answer their questions well enough. At least with Ace around, the bandits outside the mines had something to worry about.
“Kill them!” one of the bandits shouted as he barely avoided being run over. Ace could only imagine how crestfallen the guy would be to have dodged death so narrowly, only for Four-Eyes to line up a gruesome headshot as she pulled away from him. Four-Eyes hit the deck as the bandits returned fire, taking cover in the bed of the jeep. As he laid there, he fired blindly over his cover. Between the movement and his weapon choice, it went poorly, but at least it kept the bandits in their hiding spots.
Ace's primary plan was to keep the jeep going in circles around the mineshaft, allowing for slight deviations to ram into unsuspecting bandits. One in particular didn't even get hit. In his haste to take cover in the mineshaft, he took a rolling dive for the hole, but his scream told Ace that he overshot the stairs.
The ones that were already taking cover along the mineshaft hole didn't fare much better. They were out of risk of being run over by Ace, but that only meant that there was little they could do to stop Four-Eyes from using them as target practice, to say nothing of the other rangers down below.
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“All these people getting hurt...!” Mantis mused as one bandit got hit by the jeep, causing him to flip jerkily over the roof.
“They're mean people,” Ace assured the young medic-in-training. “They've hurt so many people.” Ace paused to hurt one more of them, spinning the jeep around in a rapid U-turn and slamming the back into a bandit. Four-Eyes gave her a dirty look as he held on tight, but he seemed content enough when the jeep started circling the mineshaft in the other direction. “And if we leave them alone, who knows how many more people could get hurt...!”
Mantis didn't appear to buy that explanation, but she chose to stay quiet. Meanwhile, ace poked her sword out the window, committing a drive-by beheading. As she withdrew the sword, she saw a bandit standing in her path, anticipating the jeep's approach with a wooden board full of jagged metal shards. She was wary of approaching him, since if that weapon made it to her tires, it could very well leave her stranded around the digger camp.
Fortunately for her, a spray of bullets knocked the troublesome target off of his feet, forcing him to stumble well out of her way. Both the direction and quantity of bullets didn't fit Four-Eyes at all, confusing Ace almost to the point of making her pull over, at least until a familiar face slowly lifted his way out of the hole on thin, silvery wings. “Ah reckoned y'all was hurtin' for a little help,” Hivemind said.
“Where's Wisp?” Ace bellowed twice, her first attempt having been drowned out by Four-Eyes firing all of his guns at the same time.
“Deeper. Varmints went an' took some diggers hostage, includin' Little Rock.” Hivemind paused to land on one of the defunct digging rigs, exterminating a couple bandits who had taken refuge there. “She says she's the quiet one, so she's the one best suited to gettin' them diggers outta that Serpent buildin'.”
Ace pinched a bandit between her jeep and the digger Hivemind was standing on. “They made it in there? There's nothing there except some civilian relics and...”
“An' what?” Hivemind asked as he landed on the jeep, joining Four-Eyes in the gunfight.
Ace sighed and brought the jeep into a prime position to allow her rangers to shoot down the last of the bandits on the surface. “Some relics and a corpse mutt,” she sighed. “This is where Convoy died.”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|97]]
The surface survivors scattered, Hivemind was free to approach Ace and speak in a normal tone of voice. “Shucks, ain't that lucky for us, then?" he asked, jutting his chin toward the Serpent facility buried underground. "Them bandits are just gonna breach that thing's restin' place an' get themselves taken care of.”
Ace shook her head. “Not if that's where they're bringing the diggers," she answered, "and not if it's where Wisp is going. It doesn't matter if they know about the corpse mutt or not. That move is putting everyone in danger.”
As if on cue, a line of slaves poked their heads out of the mineshaft, making a break for the surface. The last one in line was no slave at all, but Wisp, herding them all to safety with Little Rock sitting on her shoulders. “Ace, Hivemind, Four-Eyes, hi,” she gasped, exhausted from the sprint up the stairs.
“Wisp, I want a full debriefing, now. What happened down there?”
“Um...the bandits closed the door behind them, and...and it won't open. So I took everyone they didn't bring in there and ran.” Wisp stopped to catch her breath. “Ace, they have a card like you did.”
Ace reeled back in shock. “And they know how to use it? Just what's gotten into these bandits?”
“I don't know, but...but you better listen to what Little Rock has to say.” Wisp gently lowered the boy to the ground. “Go on...it's OK. Tell Ace what happened.”
Little Rock cringed for awhile, but eventually summoned his strength once he caught Wisp's gaze. “They hurt my grandpa,” he sobbed, “and then they said he still had one more job. So they opened a door and threw him inside. When it closed...there was lots of loud sounds. It was really scary. Then the bandits said more people had to go inside, and took a lot of them away. We had to wait outside, but then Wisp came and took us all away.”
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“What, are they feeding the corpse mutt?” Ace wondered, her hand on her forehead. “How did they even know about it? Where did they get a key?”
A loud roar shocked the group out of seeking any answers. Ace knew it wasn't the sound of a corpse mutt, especially since it was coming from right behind the jeep. Wisp pulled Little Rock into the back of the jeep with her, seeking refuge from whatever the noise was.
“Ace!” Hivemind shouted. “It's one of these here digger rigs!” Ace nodded and sent the jeep rocketing forward just in time to dodge the digging arm of the machine. “Shucks, what's next?”
Ace didn't feel like holding still and waiting to find out. With a short yell, she yanked the steering wheel to the side, forcing the digger rig to follow her into the open. “Hivemind, Four-Eyes!” she commanded. “Try to line up a shot on the driver! Wisp, get Little Rock in here and man the big gun!”
“But Ace,” Wisp protested, “I—“
Ace already knew how that sentence ended, since it was a thought she herself had gone through when she first tried the mounted machine gun. “Never mind that! Just point it toward the digger rig and hold down the trigger! You can't really aim the thing anyway!”
Ace hoped that was enough to dispel Wisp's fears, because she was already driving the jeep away from the digger, only to whip it right back around and stare the enemy down.
“Hey Ace, can't we just skedaddle?” Hivemind wondered, utterly confused by the fact that Ace had turned around.
“No. This place isn't safe until we take them all down. Besides, what if this last bandit knows what's going on here?”
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Ace slammed her foot down on the gas pedal, sending the jeep directly after the digger rig. As they made a pass, the rig's arm once again tried to assault them, but it was far too slow to damage the maneuverable jeep.
The male rangers had no way of lining up a shot on the driver with such a close pass, but Wisp took to her job well enough. She gave the machine gun a quick squeeze, the recoil shocking her off of her post momentarily. Ace let out a dissatisfied sigh, even though she knew Wisp would be ready for it on the next pass.
“Is this what they always do?” Little Rock gasped, overcome by the adrenaline of the situation.
Mantis shrugged. “I think so,” she admitted. “This is my first time with them.”
“This is normal, yes,” Ace scoffed as she darted past the digger rig a second time, this time farther away, to let Hivemind and Four-Eyes pepper the driver's compartment with gunfire. No solid hits were landed, but it kept the driver at bay easily enough. The third pass went worse than the other two when the digger rig suddenly hosted a small contingent of rifle-wielding bandits taking potshots at the jeep.
The group in the back let out a series of panicked shrieks as they crouched down, minimizing their profiles. Wisp was quick to poke herself back up, however, since it was her job to man the turret. She raged back against the digger rig with a burst of powerful gunfire, hopefully causing the rig some solid structural damage.
Wisp and Hivemind began to chat back and forth about something that Ace couldn't quite hear. She hoped it wasn't anything that would be ruined by another pass in the jeep, because that's exactly what she did. As she pulled up to the digger rig, Four-Eyes kept one arm steady with his other three, picking off all the riflemen with consistent and well-aimed blasts.
As they fell, Wisp took Hivemind and lifted him clear over her head. His wings started to beat furiously until he finally lifted away from Wisp's grip, swooping up into the air and landing on the rig with a flourish. Ace eased the jeep to a stop next to the rig, eager to catch Hivemind and his victim. “Let's find out what he knows,” she snarled.
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## Chapter 19
“Talk,” Ace growled as she stood over the bandit with her sword directly under his chin, “or I'll cut your head off.”
The bandit's first reply was to spit on Ace's foot. “You want me to talk?” he said. “Fine. Nice day out today, ain't it?”
Ace shook her head and ground a heel into the bandit's crotch. “What's this digging operation all about?”
Despite the very visible pain he was in, the bandit still managed a mischievous smile. “Getting dirt out of the way, of course.”
“Very funny. Out of the way of what? What good is Shroud to the likes of you?” Ace reached for Little Rock and pulled him to her leg. “What was worth orphaning this child?”
The bandit sighed. “Look, how should I know? I ain't the one in charge around here, if you really have to know the truth.” His arm shot up, pointing a finger into the sky. “If you want to know stuff, our boss should be back any second now. Something about getting a wench to pick up what we came here for? I might have misheard, but I sure as hell hope that he's not off chasing some tail while we're stuck out here in the sticks watching over a bunch of dirty old people.”
Ace rolled her eyes. “Why the sudden change of heart? Is your leader not all he's cracked up to be?”
“That, and I'm dead either way, right? Once I stop being useful to you, you'll kill me? I don't really care what's going on here, just that I'm getting paid.” The bandit let out a long sigh. “Although getting paid isn't much use when you just end up getting killed.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Hivemind butted in. “Gettin' paid? That ain't what bandits is known for, or they'd've paid these digger fellas.”
“Bandits...?” After a long, confused stare and a gasp, the prisoner continued. “Oh...! We're not actually bandits. We just dressed up like them.”
“Um, why?” Wisp wondered aloud. “That doesn't...that doesn't make sense.”
“No, it doesn't,” the prisoner agreed. “Oh, here comes the boss now.”
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Ace and the gang were incredibly confused, at least until their ears picked up on the dull roar filling the sky. As the source of the noise hovered into view, a chorus of gasps ensued.
“That's one of those blade bubble things!” Ace shouted. She watched in awe as the machine held perfectly still in the air, supported only by the whirling of its blades. “Alright, you, I'm definitely more inclined to agree with you now.” Everyone continued to watch, their eyes transfixed on the bubble hovering in the air as it dipped a large cable into the mineshaft. “Oh...you idiot, your boss must have said 'winch', not 'wench'. That cable...it's a winch.”
“That...makes more sense.” The prisoner nodded thoughtfully. “He's still an asshole, though. You think he's just trying to keep his nice white coat from getting dirty?”
“Wait,” Wisp blurted, taking the prisoner by his shirt, “white coat? Was your boss wearing a white coat when you first met him?”
“Yeah, why?”
Wisp's jaw went slack, as did her grip on the prisoner's clothing. “That's the WPA uniform. You don't see white coats on anyone else out here in the wastes, do you?”
“Oh, hell no,” Ace said, her gaze returning to the flying bubble and its winch. “I just figured it out. The WPA must know a few things about Serpent to target the facility like this...or maybe they just know what I went through in there so long ago. Either way, their stated mission is to preserve the wasteland and its unique creatures, right? And they do that through extreme methods, don't they?”
“Ace, what in the hay is y'all talkin' 'bout?” Hivemind asked.
Ace took a deep breath, but she had no need to answer the question herself, because the flying bubble started to rise higher into the sky, which put its horrific cargo on full display. “They came for the corpse mutt.”
“That is demented,” the prisoner said from behind them. Despite no longer being held by any of the rangers present, he still stuck around. “They should've paid me at least double for...that.”
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Ace glared menacingly at the prisoner, but ultimately came to accept his greed. Thinking back to the supplies that were still abundant from her rangers' raid of the Serpent building near Downeast, she decided to strike a deal with the punk. “We might pay you double for telling us where they could be taking that monster," she offered. "Depends on how much they paid you in the first place.”
The prisoner shrugged. “All I know was that I was in Divide, looking for some work, when someone waved me into a pretty big building somewhere far from the bridge. Lots of people in white coats were there, and they told me, all I had to do was dress up like a bandit and oversee some digging.”
“I doubt that's where they're taking that horrible thing, but it's a lead nonetheless. Thanks for the heads-up.” Ace wanted to shoot the bubble down as it passed over them, but she resisted, even to the point of telling Hivemind and Four-Eyes to hold their fire. “As much as I'd like to, that would just bring them all down on top of us...not to mention anger the corpse mutt.”
Wisp nodded. “Of course, Ace,” she said. “I know it's hard...hard for you to keep your, um, cool, when we're dealing with the, uh, corpse mutt that ate your best friend. We have to go back to Divide and...and see if the people there would know where the mutt is going.”
Hivemind shook his head. “Wait,” he began, “why can't we just follow them fellas in the jeep?”
“Um...I bet they'd notice us, and...and maybe send the corpse mutt after us.”
Ace shook her head. “Nothing stops those freaks,” she elaborated. “An explosion, maybe, but Lad has my tank. If that thing gets towed to Cross Town, I'd be less worried, but there's no point in worrying at all. You're right...we have to go to Divide. We have to drop these kids off anyway.”
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“Of course y'all can't come along!” Hivemind scolded the kids as Four-Eyes kept a steady course toward East Divide. “Ah reckon this is gonna be the most dangerous thing we've ever done!”
“But what about Ace?” Mantis sobbed. “What if she gets hurt again?”
“Four-Eyes knows a thing or two 'bout keepin' someone from dyin', an' we'll come right back to the hospital where you an' Chroma an' whoever else can take real good care of her, y'hear?”
Mantis shook her head. “That's not enough...Ace is such a nice person! She saved me from those mean men...I don't want to leave her!”
Ace scoffed. “Scared?” she asked. “Don't be. If you're working in the clinic, no one's going to attack you. Besides, they won't get far into a place as big as Divide.”
“And I'll be there!” Little Rock added. “Just stay with me if there's mean people, Mantis. I know how to deal with mean people!”
“How assuring. See? You'll have people all around you, and you'll be able to help more than just me.” Ace looked down at her leg and added, “That, and you still have a lot to learn about medicine.”
Mantis nodded. “I...I guess I do,” she said. “But can Little Rock really come too? I mean, what they did to his grandpa...”
“Varmints must've used his corpse as bait,” Hivemind spat. “An' all the other people they brought down there, too. Right shameful, it is.”
“Hivemind, please!” Wisp snapped. “That's the last thing he needs to hear right now.” Indignant, she turned her full attention to the children. “There, there, you two...it's OK. Everything will get much better when we bring you to Divide. I'm sure Chroma will help you find a job to do and a place to stay. We'll all be able to put this mess behind us, OK?”
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“OK,” Little Rock echoed. “What's Divide like? I've been from dig to dig since I was born. I've never been to a settlement before!”
“It's got all sorts of people that do lots of different things," Wisp told him, as he and Mantis crowded in close to her. "Some are diggers, some heal people in the clinic, some are merchants who trade things back and forth...there's all sorts of things people can do there! And there's buildings...boxes bigger than those digger rigs where people can live or work!”
“Wow, neat!” Little Rock clambered across the crowded jeep to sit on Wisp's lap. “Why do they call it Divide?”
Wisp tapped her finger to her chin for a moment before replying. “I think it's this big canyon that did it...they named the whole town after that because it takes the town and splits it in half! And there's this big bridge that goes between the—“
“There used to be a bridge,” Ace interrupted scornfully.
Wisp nodded. “Uh, right. Used to be. It...fell.”
“Are they making a new one?” Little Rock asked, his voice trembling slightly from excitement. “That's what I would do!”
“Of course they are, but they don't think they can make one as good as the one that used to be there. It was pre-apocalyptic.”
“Wow, neat!” Little Rock's smile quickly faded. “Wait, what's that mean?”
“Means it's mighty old,” Hivemind chimed in when Wisp failed to respond. “From before you were born, or your Ma, or your Ma's Ma, or her Ma, even.”
“Oh, like the stuff we dig up! OK!”
“Exactly like that,” Wisp confirmed as she gave the boy a hug. “You sure are smart.”
Little Rock started to blush. “Thanks, Wisp! I just hope I'm smart enough to be in a big town like Divide.”
“You'll do fine,” Ace said. “We're the ones chasing a corpse mutt.”
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## Chapter 20
“Ah reckon this is it,” Hivemind surmised as his neck craned backwards to let him gaze up the entirety of the building's enormous exterior. “Big ol' buildin' far from the bridge? There ain't none bigger than this 'cept Gate's tower.”
Ace nodded. “And at least I can join you this time,” she growled, staring at her leg as if it itself were at fault for what had happened to it. “Being stuck out of action was so boring.”
“But y'all was havin' plenty of fun with the jeep an' them bandits, right? Runnin' 'em down had to feel mighty fine.”
“You boys and your guns did most of the work. Four-Eyes was already picking people off before you showed up.” Ace let out a sigh. “Turns out people don't just stand out in the open and let you run them over.”
“Um, excuse me,” Wisp interrupted, “but...but shouldn't we go inside?”
“We was gettin' to it!” Hivemind snapped. “Ah'm just a bit nervous...Ah was shootin' the breeze with Ace here to hold off this here darin' plan.”
Ace rolled her eyes. “That's not what I was doing,” she scoffed, throwing Hivemind under the bus. “Now, if you're done being nervous, I'd like to get this over with before that corpse mutt causes any damage.”
Hivemind gulped. “Uh, yes'm.”
“Good.” Ace was glad to see that her subordinates still knew who ran the rangers, despite having been out of action for awhile. She was pretty sure they were all on the same page at this point anyway, but confirmation was always welcome. “Everyone, follow my lead.”
Ace shoved open the doors to the colossal building, revealing a crude replica of the standardized Serpent lobby she had seen twice before. The walls were cobbled together from all sorts of various scrap metal, their paint jobs mostly intact to boot.
The only modification that was made to the metal was the stark addition of the letters “WPA” painted onto the wall with immaculate detail, right down to the “P” being replaced with a stylized picture of a wastefowl preening itself.
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As the rangers wandered into the room, they were beset on by a bespectacled woman wielding a clipboard. “Excuse me,” she said, “but I'm afraid weapons aren't allowed past thi—“
Her sentence and her life ended right there, as Ace swiftly beheaded her with a quick swing of her sword. “Don't you tell me what to do,” she snarled. “You're the ones that disrespected Convoy like this.”
“Beggin' your pardon, Ace,” Hivemind mumbled, “but ain't it a bit silly to assume all these WPA fellas are on that same level?”
Ace whipped her head around to glare at her fellow ranger. “No.” Two security guards barreled down the stairs in front of her, only to be picked off by pinpoint shots from Four-Eyes and his trusty revolvers. “Remember, team, our goal is to find anyone that can tell us about the corpse mutt.”
“An' what, kill 'em all?” Hivemind scoffed. “Look, Ace, I know that Convoy was a real important fella, but this ain't gonna help him none, hear? We gotta take this nice an' calmly, an' go straight for the top. Half these fellas probably ain't so happy 'bout the plan to tow a corpse mutt around either.”
Ace sighed and leaned against a wall as three more guards approached the team. “I just can't believe they'd do something so horrible. It's like they've never dealt with corpse mutts up close before.”
Hivemind followed her to the wall as Wisp tore through one of the guards with her spiked bracers, ripping his throat open. “Ah know it don't sit well with y'all none, but a lot of these here people ain't guilty of nothin'.”
“They're guilty of aiding the WPA in the terrible things they do!” Ace shoved Hivemind to the side briefly to thrust her sword into an incoming guard's guts. “They're accessories to murder!”
Hivemind let out a long sigh as he fired his gun over his shoulder and dodged the falling body of the guard he had just killed. “They ain't a'cessories to nothin'! No more than you were an a'cessory to that varmint who ran the caravannin' business!”
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“General White...” Ace muttered. Her mind flipped through rapid images as she spun around another guard and cracked him in the back of the head with the hilt of her sword, leaving him stunned on the floor for Four-Eyes to finish off. White Wind was the organization responsible for delivering supplies all over the wasteland, an effort orchestrated by one man just so he could keep the best supplies for himself. “I'm not like him.”
“An' hardly any of these people," Hivemind said, pointing at one of the security guards with his gun, "are like the fella that decided throwin' a live corpse mutt into populated areas was a sensible thing to go around doin'.” Hivemind twisted his body around, throwing his weight into a gut punch and following it up by squeezing the trigger of the gun, ripping directly through his victim's stomach. “I doubt most of 'em even know. So let's focus on findin' the fella highest up on the food chain 'round these parts, OK?”
Ace let out a long sigh as she stomped on a guard's foot, causing him to bow over to cradle it, from where she could most easily slice his head off. “Fine.” Then, to cover up the fact that she had been genuinely swayed by Hivemind's words, she added, “But only because it gets us back on the trail of the corpse mutt quicker.”
It was remarkable that such a shoddy construction could hold despite being five stories tall, but Ace quickly came to suspect that the wooden walls added to the upper floors were supposed to be some way of handling that. It added a nice, rustic, touch, she found herself admitting internally.
She quickly ran out of time to admire the woodwork, however, as security guards came from both above and below, forcing the rangers into the middle of the third floor. “Stop right there!” one of them called out as they sent Ace and her group doubling back into the middle of some kind of work space. Ace briefly mused that Hivemind must have been relieved to see that the ordinary people he had stuck up for before had long since evacuated.
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“We're not stopping until we see who's in charge,” Ace replied. “We have a mass murderer to catch.”
“A dozen of my men are dead in the foyer,” a slow, sneering voice said from the top of the stairs to the fourth floor, “and you are the one accusing others of murder?” Before long, the source of the voice was standing amongst his guards, a blond man in a fancy white suit adorned with a single red flower pinned to the chest. “Besides, I do not think you have an appointment with me.”
Ace held her sword in both hands, keeping it between her and the man in white. “Those men you dressed up as bandits might have told you something about it if I hadn't reacted so violently to their enslavement of those poor diggers.”
“That certainly explains a lot of this animosity. What, pray tell, did you see?”
“Everythin' from the disguises to the corpse mutt,” Hivemind growled, his grip on his gun tightening. “Ah reckon there's lots to answer for.”
Wisp had been extremely quiet up to this point, even for her, but this appeared to be her breaking point. “Damn straight there is!” she snapped, shocking nearly everyone in the room into taking a step away from her.
“When I joined the WPA," she began, taking a step toward the man in white, "I was told a lot about looking out for the health and well-being of all life in the world. The more I stuck with it, though, the more I realized that no one here cares about the gift of life at all! If you did, you wouldn't slaughter humans, and you certainly wouldn't use a corpse mutt to do it! Do you have any idea how dangerous they are? You're lucky your own men weren't killed by that thing! You better find the people that caught the corpse mutt and call them back right now!”
By the time she reached the end of her monologue, Wisp was standing in the middle of the crowd, panting heavily. After an awkward silence, she added, “Um, if that's OK with you.”
“Oh, if only it were,” the man in white derided her. “But alas, we need that creature for our plans.”
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“Then I suggest you tell us what those plans are,” Ace said, wringing the handle of her sword. “Then we could be on our way right now. We might not even have to kill you or your little friends here.”
The man in white replied with a derisive laugh. “Impressive bluff. You are quite entertaining...! Perhaps if you entertain me awhile longer, I might even cooperate. Show me that fighting spirit that got you this far...prove yourself against my guards!”
“Like we already have?” Hivemind taunted. “Shucks, this'll be easier than shootin' fish in a barrel.” All eyes fell upon him for a long, silent moment. “Uh...somethin' Ma picked up from her Ma, who got it from her Ma. Ah dunno what it means.”
Ace pointed her sword at the man in white. “We'll do it, but not to play your sick little game. It's just that it's the only way to get to you, you scum.”
The man in white shook his head, his arrogant laugh only irritating Ace further. “Scum?” he repeated. “No, my name is Thorn. I apologize for not formally introducing myself sooner. Now, do not start the fun without me! I would like to go pour a drink before you all spring into action.”
Ace, on the other hand, did not feel like waiting. She had to distract herself and she knew it, so she turned to Wisp. "I was impressed by your speech," she said.
She expected Wisp to smile and be happy to be complimented. Instead, the woman clammed up even further, her face turning red. "...um, thank you," Wisp squeaked into her hands.
Ace had no idea what was happening to her companion, so she tried to socialize again. "Well...I...ugh, forget it." Ace had tried to behave herself in Thorn's home, but the anger and urgency of her situation just wouldn't quit.
Ace sighed, gripped her sword tightly, and began walking toward Thorn.
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## Chapter 21
The first guard Ace stepped up to clearly expected her to wait for Thorn to come back with his drink. She could tell by the shocked expression that covered his face as she split it in half with her sword. Ace's mind was made up; her objective was to beeline through the enemy to reach Thorn. Her mind drew a straight path through the crowd to the stairwell leading up, and her sole focus was to attack enemies on that line.
“Oh, you could not wait?” Thorn complained as he rushed back down the stairs, shaking his finger as if he were scolding a child. “I cannot believe how rude that is! I have half a mind to allow these guards to shoot you! In fact...” Thorn started to raise his voice. “...would you please stop killing for just a moment?”
All eyes in the room traveled to Thorn, including Ace's, which made it that much harder for her to pull her sword out of her latest victim. “Fine, say your piece,” she said. “And then we'll see if it makes me want to do anything differently. Probably not.”
“Oh, you...!” Thorn waved his hand toward her and let out a brief laugh. “I am impressed with your resolve and skill, of course, but while I was up there pouring my drink, I realized something: it is hard to see that with all of these men in the way! Besides, one of them may have greater resolve than you, but his less motivated colleagues are obstructing him. And I'm a strong believer in giving everyone a chance to prove themselves.”
“Quit your yappin' and skip straight to the point!” Hivemind demanded, standing alongside Wisp and several corpses. “We ain't here for speeches unless they tell us how to get to that there corpse mutt!”
Thorn sighed. “And find out you will, if you are amusing enough!” Even his own employees seemed confused by this, but he continued nonetheless. “A test for each of you...is what I have decided upon! Diggers under my personal employ have found evidence of various pre-apocalyptic pastimes. Help me reenact them, and you can have your information and your freedom alike! Refuse or lose, and I will have you executed. What say you now?”
Ace flicked her sword, sending the blood running along it down to the floor. “What's the first challenge?” she asked, her words dripping with irritation.
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Thorn pointed to two random security guards in the crowd and motioned for the others to give them space. “First of all," he explained, "something the pre-apocalyptic people called a 'duel'!” The two guards he had selected acted out the sequence of events as he explained them.
“First, two men stand back-to-back and walk a decent distance away from each other. When I give the signal—FIRE!—that is the cue for the men to turn around and shoot at each other.” The guards' dedication to their act was so extreme that they actually opened fire on one another, leaving only one survivor. “That is the nature of the duel," Thorn concluded, waving an arm at the corpse. "Which one of you will play this game?”
Ace was very grateful for the visual explanation, because she didn't think she knew enough of the vaquero language to explain it to Four-Eyes. “Do that,” she barked at him, pointing at the demonstration that had taken place. “When he says 'fire', shoot.”
Four-Eyes nodded and stepped forward as Thorn hand-picked his champion duelist as well. Ace ran to where the necessary number of paces would take her companion, and waved him over. After that, all she could do was step back and watch, waiting tensely for the two of them to get their command. The wait felt interminable. Four-Eyes stood staring at the wall, looking a bit confused. His opponent was gently tickling a fine-looking handgun covered in ornate designs.
“Fire!” Thorn cackled with glee, causing both men to spin around on their heels and reach for their guns. Four-Eyes was slower on the draw than his opponent, causing Ace to wince as a shot was fired at her long-time traveling partner. However, the shot merely grazed Four-Eyes on the shoulder, which would have been inconsequential enough without the three other arms all locked on and firing accurately into the opponent.
“Ah, a case of nerves?” Thorn balked. “You have chosen a better champion than I did. Well done; the first challenge is yours!”
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Four-Eyes was glad to have picked someone off, but Ace was getting fairly bored. “So just tell us where the corpse mutt is and be done with it,” she hissed up at Thorn.
In response, Thorn shook his head. “You have to take part in all the challenges, remember? If you do not, we will have you executed.”
“Um, if I may,” Wisp cut in, “if you just told us the next...the next challenge more quickly, we'd be less, uh, impatient.”
“Will you, now? Then you shall be the one to be in the next challenge: boxing!” Thorn shoved his fingers into his mouth and produced a sharp whistle, summoning an extremely muscular man whose head was shaved bald, and whose guard uniform had its sleeves torn off. “Boxing seems to have been a fairly popular activity in the pre-apocalyptic world, in which two men punched each other above the waist until one of them was knocked out. Knock out this large fellow, and you will have passed my second challenge.”
“This is dumb,” Ace said, pushing her companion forward, “but at least this is all you, Wisp. You don't even have to kill him, just knock him unconscious.”
Wisp nodded. “Uh, I can do that, I think,” she stammered as she stepped up to the muscular man. “Please don't...don't underestimate me, sir. I'm fairly good at, um, fistfights.”
Before the man could rattle off any sort of reply, Thorn let out a short yell to start the fight, and the other guards were quick to form a circle around Wisp and her adversary, pushing Ace and Hivemind along with them to see the fight. The muscular man started the fight with a fierce haymaker, hoping to finish Wisp in a hurry, but she was quick to tilt her body to the side, letting the fist sail over her harmlessly as she sank a counter-punch into his stomach.
It didn't seem to faze the man much, but it kept him in check. It taught him that such vicious blows wouldn't work on her, forcing him to rely on much faster, weaker jabs. A pair of these caught Wisp on both sides of her chin, but from the stories she had told of her brief stint in the slave cages at Threering, Ace knew she'd stood through worse.
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Wisp was a natural enough choice for Thorn's boxing challenge, but she was having trouble all the same. She threw a trio of punches at the man's face, only for all of them to be blocked by his stocky arms. That left him open for another body blow, but it was only about as effective as the first one.
Wisp let out a short whimper, unsure of what to do against such a large and durable target without her spiked bracers. Ace wondered along with her as she danced and ducked around the incoming punches. With the only acceptable targets being above the waist, it mystified the lead ranger as to how her subordinate was going to win.
Wisp was willing to test several hypotheses, at least. Not knowing where to throw punches did not stop her from tossing a few out and seeing what effect they had. The body blows were worthless, staggering the big man back a step or two at most; the shots aimed at his face were always blocked.
“That's it!” Ace shouted through the crowd of rowdy guards. “Wisp! Get through his guard and hit his head!”
She had no way of knowing if Wisp had heard her or not, but she had her fingers crossed all the same. Fortunately, either Wisp had, or she just came up with the idea on her own, because her punches soon turned into vicious crosses, swinging wide across the man's body in an attempt to knock his arms away from his face.
Her tirade was tireless, unlike her opponent, and when he tried to back her away with a punch of his own, it was just the sort of opening she needed to beat his face into a pulp. “Left!” Hivemind cheered, swinging his fists in time with Wisp's. “Right! Left! Right! Yeah, that'll do him!”
Hivemind's vernacular aside, Ace nodded in agreement, glad to finally see the big man fall. He rose to his feet, but not in time to beat Thorn's ten-count. “A wonderful show!” he cheered, applauding wildly. “That's two challenges out of the way. Now, if I could only see some fencing, I'd let you all go!”
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Whatever "fencing" was, Thorn's announcement seemed to be the cue for someone to waltz out in a strange white jumpsuit with black gloves and boots, and a black matting of sorts over their face. They looked fairly confident, but from the sword in his hand, Ace already knew how this game went.
As Thorn calmly explained the rules of fencing, Ace took her sword in both hands and gave it a monstrous overhead swing that sliced through both the man's sword and the man himself. “There,” Ace barked, snapping Thorn out of his fencing-based reverie. “I win. Are we done now?”
“You were supposed to wait until I gave the signal!” Thorn replied, flustered by Ace's inability to care about his pre-apocalyptic games.
In a different situation, she'd probably be eager to see this sort of thing play out, but she had business to do. “We were both ready. He brought up his sword and everything. It's his fault his sword didn't stand up to mine.” Hivemind darted in and held up the two pieces of the fencing foil for emphasis. “See? That would have happened regardless of your signal. Now tell us where that corpse mutt is headed so we can get out of this dump.”
“If you must know,” Thorn scoffed, “it's being airlifted to Riverside.”
“Now why in the hay is y'all so apt to let us know that?” Hivemind wondered aloud.
Thorn gave a hearty chuckle. “Smart boy, good of you to ask such a question. Simply put, everyone that is a higher rank in the WPA than I am is out with that corpse mutt. Your slaughter shall only put me in charge, from which I can drop this silly 'preservation' pretense.”
“Um, you're not going to con people into thinking...thinking you care about wildlife?” Wisp stammered, recollecting her spiked bracers. “I can...I can live with that.”
Ace nodded and turned to leave. “Sure,” she agreed. “We'll leave this whole organization bloodied, broken, and demoralized. Go ahead and lord over...that. As a ranger, if your actions lead to trouble for someone else, you're screwed, but until then, I doubt I'll care about you. Come on, rangers. We're going to Riverside.”
The remaining security guards didn't dare impede them.
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## Chapter 22
“Now,” Ace said as Four-Eyes drove the jeep, “just to help me brief you two on the situation...what do you know about corpse mutts?”
Hivemind shrugged. “Honestly, Ah ain't heard much about 'em,” he admitted, “an' other than that one that done got pulled outta Shroud, Ah ain't never seen none.”
“Um, nothing,” Wisp echoed. “You're the...the first I've heard of them.”
Ace shook her head, annoyed with her companions despite being glad that they lived in a world where corpse mutts were a rare sight. “Sightings have declined in recent years due to increased awareness,” she surmised. “After all, you must have incinerated something dead in your lives, right?” Both of them nodded.
“And they never told you," Ace muttered into her sleeve. "...well, corpse mutts are why. Their keen noses can pick up on the smell of blood and decaying flesh from miles away, and they've been known to charge through anything between them and their meal. They're large, twisted creatures with four giant legs full of exposed muscle, and nothing gets in their way. Anything remotely near their meal...is sure to be destroyed.”
“Ace, this some kinda ghost story?” Hivemind balked. “Ah know one of 'em killed your friend, but is they really this bad?”
“Did I mention that they're bigger than the jeep and don't feel pain?” She could tell she hadn't, because something she said drained the color from his face. “Yes, even the adult landshark reacted to being shot full of bullets. Corpse mutts react to nothing.”
Hivemind ran a hand through his hair. “Well, shoot, what about that thing keepin' Cross Town safe? Maybe we ought to wheel that in to Riverside an'—“
Ace cut him off with a wave of her hand. “It's too slow. By the time we'd get the tank to Riverside, the corpse mutt would have already destroyed the town, and by the time we got it back to Cross Town, it'd be gone too. No, we need a way to take it down with what we've got.”
“Um, Ace?” Wisp interrupted timidly. “I...I have an idea. Maybe the, uh, WPA themselves have a way of harming the corpse mutt. After all...what...what if it came after them?”
“Wishful thinking."
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Ace reached up over her shoulder to pat the mounted gun on the back of the jeep. “They probably have something up their sleeve," she said, "and your suggestion's good, but we shouldn't plan around it. We have to be ready to use what we've got, because it's all we can rely on.”
Wisp cringed, visibly hurt by having her suggestion rejected. “But, uh, is...is what we have enough?”
Ace sighed. “Probably not, but we're still trying, you hear me?”
Hivemind put a hand to his chest. “Ain't gotta tell me twice,” he said. “Ah reckon Riverside is a hometown to me, even if it ain't been a place since Ah was born. Ma an' Pa were born there, an' their Ma an' Pa too...ain't none of 'em gonna be too happy if I up an' abandon 'em.”
Wisp gave a slow nod. “Um, I don't like the WPA,” she reiterated. “They used me, just like the caravans did...which, um, isn't very nice. I just wanted to take care of animals and...and be nice to them. They took that concern and...and...and used it as a weapon! I don't want them to, uh, do that to...to anyone else.”
“Well, I'm glad you two are so sold on this,” Ace said. “All I know is that they're hurting people, and it's our jobs as rangers to help people. Which reminds me.” Ace glanced back and forth between her two recruits, their confusion growing as she stayed silent. “How many other rangers have we seen out there? Not many people can handle this pressure, and the ones that can usually die out there on the front lines. You two have proven yourselves time and time again to be above all that, though.”
“You're welcome,” Hivemind replied slowly, “but why the hay is you gettin' all emotional on us?”
Ace shrugged. “Oh, it's just that this is our most dangerous mission yet. I'm not going to lie to you about that. If we end up having to fight the corpse mutt, I'm not confident that we even can. If anyone's seen any weakness in a corpse mutt, they haven't lived to tell anyone about it. If we don't try, however, the world is sure to regress back to the wasteland it once was, except it will be presided over by the WPA instead of White Wind, and at least the caravans were of some help.”
“So this ain't nothin' more than a mission to save all mankind from some power-hungry maniacs an' their unstoppable livin' weapon?” Hivemind rubbed the back of his neck. “Shucks, Ace, y'all sure know how to make a fella nervous.”
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As the architecture of the recently-revived town of Riverside rose into view, Ace's emotions were decidedly mixed. She was glad to see everything still standing and all the people still working hard and looking fairly content. But in that moment, it only meant she had a lot of evacuating to do, and if any property damage were to ensue, she would feel at fault for it.
A lot was riding on her shoulders, and she truly felt it this time. Even the White Wind fiasco had failed to faze her, since she had spent most of that time in a haze of rage. As the wind whipped through her hair, she silently cursed Hivemind for having snapped her out of her anger back at West Divide. With that anger, she could have easily coasted through everything. She probably would have deeply regretted something she'd have done, but at least the world would be safe.
“Uh, Ace?” Wisp said, waving a hand in front of her leader's face. “Are...are you going to be OK?”
Ace gave a slow nod. “I think so,” she replied. “We don't have time to make sure. We have to get everyone out of here so that no one gets hurt.”
“I thought about that too.” Wisp's neck swiveled back and forth. “Um, where will they go?”
“Away. It doesn't matter. They just can't be anywhere near this town. Got it?”
Ace's heart sank when she heard a familiar noise droning through the sky. When she looked up and saw the bladed bubble carrying its carnivorous cargo, she knew she was too late. She stared down the street as several townspeople began to notice the machine hovering over the outskirts of town as it gently descended.
One of them spun away from the sight at breakneck speed, though the state of his neck mattered little. Someone had shot him with a loud, high-powered rifle from afar, spilling blood and gray matter into the street. The smell reached the corpse mutt almost instantly, agitating it into action. The moment its legs touched the ground, it leapt free of its airborne harness and ran straight into the city.
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“Four-Eyes!” Ace bellowed, pointing at the dead man. She was glad her *vaquero* understood nonverbal commands so well, and braced herself over the side of the jeep, grabbing for the dead man and dragging him along behind the vehicle. The corpse mutt, angry to have its meal snatched away, began to give chase to the perpetrator.
With another shout of a name and another pointing of her finger, Ace urged Hivemind onto the mounted gun. Even in this sudden state of panic, she knew better than to ask Wisp to use a gun. The bullets, large and relentless as they were, didn't seem to bother the beast one bit. It merely bowed its head against the lead wind that was blowing against it.
The situation only continued to escalate as the rifle reported once more, flowing directly through Ace's hair and hitting the ground behind her, causing the dirt to erupt around the bullet. Ace's mind and eyes alike started to jump rapidly between the two threats bearing down on her jeep and her rangers.
She wished she had a second mounted gun to keep both the bubble and the corpse mutt occupied. Still, she knew that she would have to make do with what was at hand. “Four-Eyes, Hivemind, shoot that machine!” she commanded. “Wisp, you're on driving duty! Don't worry, it's like your big vehicles, only faster! Just stay on the road!”
Ace watched the gears turn in everyone's heads as they processed her orders and quickly moved to carry them out. The instant Hivemind let go of the mounted gun, she took over, letting out a scream as her knuckles tightened and her shoulders braced themselves to deal with the powerful weapon's recoil.
She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Hivemind reinforce her order to Four-Eyes with a pat on the shoulder, a pointing of the finger, and a demonstration. She hoped that at the very least, the attack would keep the sniper held down and cowering inside the bubble, forcing them to take cover instead of letting them try to burst one of the rangers' heads open from the sky.
Suddenly, a fierce bump shot through the jeep, knocking Ace off her feet despite her hands still operating the mounted gun. She craned her neck around to glare at Wisp, who had briefly allowed the jeep to drift off of the road. Ace in particular managed to fall directly onto the dead man she had pulled into the jeep to bait the corpse mutt, wincing disgustedly at the unique sensation of another person's blood getting on her face.
The blood itself didn't disgust her too much. It was that, despite all of the insanity around her, her mind somehow found time to think about how hard and nauseating it would be to clean the signs of her dead passenger out of her jeep. It was only after that moment of distraction that she realized that Wisp had swerved off of the road to go around the bladed bubble that had tried to box them in from the front.
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“There's two of these things now?” Ace growled. She was already worried about how many bullets were left in the mounted gun and had no idea what to do about the first bubble hovering alongside her, but having a second bubble in the mix was enough to make her reevaluate her entire plan.
At the very least, she had managed to lure the corpse mutt way out into the middle of nowhere where its rampage would do the least damage, so she could at least revel in that accomplishment. “How are we going to do deal with this?” she said to herself.
Hivemind clapped a hand on her shoulder. “Four-Eyes an' I managed to pick off the fella that was shootin' at us before,” he assured her. “No clue if there's another varmint with a rifle in that there other flyin' machine.”
Ace looked over her shoulder, surprised to see the bubble flying fairly close to the jeep. “Then I'll go into that one first.”
“Ace, what the—“
Before his sentence was done, Ace ushered him in front of the mounted gun, forcing him to take over while she ran across the jeep, planted her feet on the roof, and pushed off, making a fantastic leap and grabbing hold of the metal bars underneath the bubble itself. Despite her recent period of inactivity, her grip and arm strength was sufficient to allow her to turn herself around on the bars, facing away from the bars on the other side of the bubble. The machine hovered steadily over the jeep as it careened through the wastes, steadily enough for Ace to rock her body back and forth and gain momentum until finally flipping herself into the open door of the bubble itself, knocking a man and his rifle out of the other side.
Ace's entrance caused the pilot to panic and pull away from the jeep in a hurry, and the sudden tilting of the machine threw her off-balance, threatening to buck her into the same fate as the gunman. Ace had nowhere to lock a tight grip around, and she was reluctant to jam her sword into the machine lest she puncture something important she didn't know about. All she could do was scrabble desperately for handholds as she slid out of the bubble.
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Ace flailed her arms as she fell out of the flying machine. Her hands barely found the bars once again, and the momentum swung her around a bit. She watched below her as Wisp brought the jeep underneath her in a hurry, glad to make the short drop onto it.
Her mood dissipated in an instant when she came down hard on her feet, and felt something in one of her legs immediately give out, causing her to tumble clumsily into the back of the jeep. “Dammit,” Ace groaned, fondling the spot where her leg had been broken once before. Judging by the massive pain and inability to stand up that she experienced, she quickly realized that she had broken her leg again with those stunts.
Ace's allies started to shout concernedly at her, but she couldn't make out any distinct words apart from her name. She was too busy fretting about the situation at hand. She viewed herself as a nigh-useless soldier, a liability to the rest of the team, and she still had one corpse mutt and two bladed bubbles to deal with.
None of them posed much of a threat as long as the mounted gun's ammunition held out, but it was quickly becoming more and more of an issue. She stared at the corpse mutt, absolutely livid over all the damage it was intended to cause. Looking into its hungry eyes, she could hear Convoy's screams all over again. She didn't want that to happen to anywone else.
Most of all, however, Ace focused on her fellow rangers, and how much trouble she had caused them last time her leg was injured. That had only been at the very end of a confrontation. This time, she had managed to suffer a severe injury right in the thick of battle.
She couldn't think of very many uses she could be, now that she was so injured, but she had one in mind. Her arms still strong, she wordlessly shoved Hivemind away from the turret and took hold of it herself. “Ace, c'mon,” he said as he helped her up, leaning her against the turret so she could rest her weight on it and her working leg. “Y'all sure about this?”
“Of course I am,” she snarled. “This mutt is mine.”
Ace couldn't pour her rage into a fierce attack with a gun like she could with a sword. It didn't stop her from feeling a little better now that she was of use again. It was difficult to keep the gun's recoil in check with her battered body, but it was even more difficult to miss a corpse mutt from such short range, so she didn't worry about it too much. All she was worried about was pointing and shooting.
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With Ace's mind clearer, she could even start being a leader again. “So Ace, what're we gonna do about them there flyin' machines?” Hivemind gasped as he reloaded his submachine gun.
“Without gunners present inside them, they're fairly useless,” Ace replied mid-epiphany, her voice hoarse from shouting over all the noise. “As long as Wisp doesn't crash into one and wreck the jeep, they're not even a problem. Let Four-Eyes try and pick them off while you help me deal with this monster somehow.”
Hivemind nodded and took to the back of the jeep, attempting to fire at usual weak spots like into its mouth or eyes, but to no apparent effect. “Ah don't think Ah'm much help with this thing.”
Ace shook her head. “I didn't think it'd be much help against the bubbles either, but the point was for you to keep them hiding more than to actually cause some damage.”
“But Ah can't do nothin' to a corpse mutt with this little ol' thing!” Hivemind lowered his head. “Ah don't think that gun you're shootin' causes the critter any damage either.”
Despite Hivemind's skepticism, Ace went on shooting. “A corpse mutt can easily run faster than this, and seeing as how it's bigger than the jeep, anything we can do to keep it away is good.”
“If'n y'all says so...” Hivemind shrugged and returned to shooting at the corpse mutt with his submachine gun, eager to do anything he could to keep the beast at bay. All the while, Four-Eyes, lacking any new orders, kept his revolvers pointed at the bladed bubbles. Despite Ace's dismissal of their current usefulness, she was still hoping to see her *vaquero* show her some kind of weakness to them in case she had yet another to deal with at some point. The thought drove her crazy, on top of the corpse mutt and her own leg; she was hurting for a definitive win, and bad.
Ace had plenty of problems to deal with, but Wisp seemed to be raring to add one more. Her voice was inaudible over all the noise around them, urging Ace to yell for her to speak up. “We're almost out of gas!” she finally succeeded to inform her leader on the fourth attempt.
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## Chapter 23
Ace knew quite well that if the mutt managed to reach the jeep, her entire unit would be dead. The bubbles only supported the mutt's destruction, for it was the main threat present. Ace knew that gunfire could only slow the beast down; if the jeep were to stop, even the biggest gun would only annoy the creature for a few seconds before its massive jaws tore everything apart. “That's if it manages to reach us,” she said to herself.
“What was that?” Hivemind asked, turning away from the corpse mutt and its foul breath.
Ace gasped, not realizing that she had said that out loud. Still, it was the only plan she had, so she chose to share it with Hivemind. “The jeep is running out of gas, this gun is running out of ammo, and this dead man is running out of blood. We can't keep this up much longer. We have to put some space between us and that monster.”
Hivemind blinked slowly. “An' then what?”
“Exactly. The only way we'll find time to think is if we retreat somehow. We need a new plan to deal with this thing, now that we've taken it into the middle of nowhere.”
“But that's just it!” Hivemind emptied the rest of his clip into the beast, then swept his hand outward in a grand motion. “Where the hay are we gonna go in this here place? There ain't nothin' out there for us to make this work! Ain't nowhere to hide!”
Ace sighed. She knew Hivemind was right about the terrain, but she still had one thing in mind. Her reply was to simply point up and ask, “Do you think Wisp would know how to drive one of those?”
Hivemind slapped his palm against his forehead. “An' just how do you propose to get yourself in one of them bubble things with that leg of yours?”
“Once I had a grip on those metal bars coming out of the bottom, the rest was all in the arms.” Ace nodded her head toward her shoulder. “See if Wisp is up to this or not, will you? If she won't try to drive a bladed bubble, I will. I saw the controls for a little while. There aren't even pedals like in a car, it's all in the arms.”
Ace gave a sort of half-pout as she exhaled, blowing hair away from her eyes. “It's the perfect job for me,” she huffed. Hivemind attempted to protest some more, but Ace silenced him. “Unless the next words out of your mouth are a better way to keep away from that corpse mutt, your orders are to help Wisp climb into one of those bubbles and bring it down here so Four-Eyes and I can get inside. He'll take over at the wheel if you tell him to.”
“Ace,” Hivemind said, “y'all's insane.”
“Well, someone in the wastes had to be, in order to take on the WPA and their secret weapon. Sane people don't fight and change the world; they stay safe at home and let people like us handle the crazy stuff.”
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Hivemind took Ace's position behind the mounted gun, letting her sit and rest as Four-Eyes bent and pulled himself through the window to replace Wisp in the driver's seat. Meanwhile, Wisp herself threw open the passenger side door and clambered onto the roof of the jeep, standing patiently and letting the wind shove her hair around as it pleased. Ace thought she heard her muttering something to herself, but there was no way she of all people would be audible, considering the circumstances.
Wisp unhooked her left bracer and swung her right arm around a few times, building up momentum in the chain. She let out a grunt and jumped off the side of the jeep, lashing the swinging slave bracer outward to wherever it would make contact. The bracer clamped shut around the same metal bars Ace had gripped when she climbed into the machine, except this method would hold until Wisp jimmied the bracer a certain way to get it open.
This let her stay with the bladed bubble even as it continued its rapid criss-cross of the jeep's path. No matter how much she was jerked and tossed around by the bubble's erratic maneuvers, there was no chance of her letting go. However, she still had to pull herself up in a hurry, because the bubble was getting closer and closer to the ground, to better impede the jeep.
Ultimately, Wisp was able to use the motion of the bubble to swing into the cockpit, pausing to reach through the open door and unhook her chains from the underside. Before long, the bubble made a rapid ascent, presumably yet another panicked reaction from the pilot, which made room for the other bubble to swoop in and harass Four-Eyes.
Ace cringed as Wisp haphazardly tossed the pilot away, causing him to fall directly onto the other bubble's spinning blades. Despite the gory display, the bubble itself was completely fine.
Ace watched Wisp's bubble nervously as it started to bob erratically in the sky, concern over the young woman's flight skills clouding her mind. It wasn't long before the jeep left Wisp and her struggles behind, which only made Ace worry even more. Her worries were quickly replaced by more pressing issues, however. “Damn!” Hivemind shouted. “The big gun's empty!”
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“Those were the last bullets,” Ace lamented, her gaze turning to the beast that those bullets held back. “Wisp, you better figure that thing out fast.”
Fortunately, behind the ravenous corpse mutt and its powerful strides, she could see Wisp's bubble streaking straight for the jeep, leaving her to tell Four-Eyes the good news. Their languages being different as they were, the only way she could accomplish this was by pulling at his shirt and handing him scrap metal to weigh the gas pedal down with.
Wisp's flight skills were sufficient to bring the bubble down next to the jeep, drawing the corpse mutt's ire to a disturbing degree. The beast felt as if another creature had come to encroach on its feeding time. Ace knew well that there was nothing a corpse mutt hated more than an interrupted meal.
Thinking fast, Ace turned to the dead body she was resting next to and hacked off the poor man's legs with her sword, tossing them directly into the beast's slobbering maw. The sudden presence of raw meat and blood in its mouth gave it enough pause to let Wisp approach the jeep. The gang took their chancce to jump ship into the flying machine, the others loading Ace in first.
The group let out a chorus of screams as their bubble suffered a bite from the corpse mutt, the tearing of metal and shifts in weight indicating the loss of one of their metal bars from the underside of their bubble. “That was close,” Ace groaned as she nursed her injured leg.
“Um, it's nice to see you all,” Wisp choked. “I...I was worried I wouldn't be able to figure this out, and, uh, I also worried about the...the corpse mutt.”
Ace shrugged. “We're fine. Don't worry about it. Worry about keeping this thing in the air while that corpse mutt chases our jeep.”
Seeing her other vehicle be discarded as a sacrifice to the monster brought Ace an unexpected pain. Now, both of the vehicles she had in her days leading a caravan were gone, and this very corpse mutt had been the cause of both losses one way or another.
With the old bus retired in Convoy's honor after his death, and the jeep being thrown into the wastes with its grisly cargo, all traces of her old job were gone. Despite her disdain for White wind, she remembered the caravanning job itself very fondly. “We have to kill that thing somehow,” she growled, her eyes fixed on the jeep.
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Wisp shook her head, her eyes glued on the equipment in front of her. It was a complicated array, perhaps more so than the big rigs she claimed an affinity for, but she seemed to have a handle on things nonetheless. “It...it'd be nice to kill the corpse mutt," she agreed. "But, um, this bubble doesn't...it doesn't have any weapons.”
“An' me an' Four-Eyes got guns, but they ain't no good against that critter!” Hivemind added. “We ain't got nothin' we can use on the thing from here! What in the hay do y'all suggest we do?”
Ace sighed. “We have to tear the thing to pieces,” she said. “I'm not just saying that because I'm incredibly angry, either. How else can we possibly stop that monster's rampage? If it can't feel pain, we have to cripple it to the point where it just plain can't harm anything. Its anger and hunger get a lot less worrisome when it doesn't have any legs to stand on.”
“An' just how do y'all suppose we can do that?” Hivemind shrugged a little, looking ready to throw his gun on the floor. “Ain't no way y'all can just stride up with that fancy sword of yours an' cut it up.”
“I was thinking an explosion of some sort, actually.” Ace pulled herself to the edge of the cockpit, peeking her head out of the open door. “If I'd thought of it sooner, I'd have rigged the jeep to detonate somehow. I don't think that would have been enough, but...”
Wisp let out a quick gasp. “Oh!” she exclaimed, fidgeting in her seat due to conflicting desires. As much as Wisp seemed to want to turn to face the group, she had a bubble's flight to keep her eyes on. “The big rigs I drove when I worked for the WPA...they used very different fuel than normal. Maybe these bubbles use even stranger fuel. Maybe it would cause a big enough explosion to tear the corpse mutt apart.”
“Could be,” Hivemind concurred, “but how do y'all expect to get some fuel down by that thing an' blow it up? Ain't like there's no spare cans in here.” He let out a low groan as he rose to his feet, gripping the sides of the doorway as he peeked outside. “Why, we might be sunk at this point, huh? Shoot, an' that's if the WPA don't know we're onto 'em. An' after the mess we made, that's a big if. Ah don't see any of this happenin', fellas. Sorry."
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Ace nodded grimly. “You're right,” she admitted. “Sorry, Hivemind, Wisp, Four-Eyes. This is what I wanted to warn you about...give you a chance to walk away from.”
Hivemind turned and opened his mouth to give a reply, but a crackling sound issuing from Wisp's general direction interrupted him. “All units, be advised,” a male voice announced. “This is Pilot Number Four-Six-One-Zero, calling all units. Our mission has failed...I repeat, our mission has failed! Four unknown persons intercepted the cargo and have brought it far from Riverside! Exercise extreme caution if attempting to bring aid. These four persons have hijacked one of our own flying machines and...”
As the voice continued, Hivemind shook his head in disbelief. “Well, what do ya know?” he said. “They's talkin' 'bout us!”
Ace made her way over to the panel of instruments, glad to see a familiar sight hanging off of the bottom. “I thought so,” she mumbled as she reached for the radio, knowing exactly what to do with it from her days in the caravan. The gears turned in her head as she stared at the equipment, and as a realization came over her, she grabbed the radio and called in a reply.
“We certainly did," Ace hissed at the man on the other end of the radio. "If you want to let that corpse mutt loose on some unsuspecting settlement, you'll have to go through us first. We're looking forward to seeing everything you've got.”
Hivemind snatched the radio away from Ace before she could shout any more taunts to whoever was on the other end. “The hell is y'all thinkin'? Like we need more problems 'round here!”
“Actually, we do.” Ace gestured all around, driving Hivemind's attention directly into the bladed bubble itself. “In case you haven't noticed, the WPA has a lot more resources than we do. They're the ones that donated this machine to us. Without it, we'd have died already. They have to have something capable of stopping this thing in its tracks, or it'd be too much of a danger to use like this. They didn't bring it with them because they didn't think they'd need to on such a routine operation. But now they have to bring the big guns.”
“And then we, um, take those guns?” Wisp said. “But Ace, how...how will we do that? If they're capable of stopping a corpse mutt...do we, uh, stand a chance?”
Ace let out a chuckle, against her own expectations. “Who cares? Things already look bleak for us, don't they? But one in a million odds is better than none in a million." Ace shook her head. "But enough about that, I need to stay useful. Wisp, how do you fly this thing?"
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## Chapter 24
ce kept the bubble circling around the corpse mutt as it tore apart the jeep and the cadaver within. It gave her good practice in maneuvering the flying machine, even as the radio crackled to life once more. “To the person or persons responsible for misappropriating WPA property,” a female voice intoned, “identify yourselves!”
Ace rolled her eyes, looking for the hover controls Wisp had told her about. “This is Ace,” she said. “I'm in your flying machine, distracting your corpse mutt. I'm the one you want.”
“You know more of what you are interfering with than I expected.”
“I was at the dig site when your people pulled this thing out of the ground. I didn't think anyone was stupid enough to dig up Shroud and let it out.” Ace gave an exaggerated shrug, even though it wouldn't be visible to whoever she was talking to. “You know that's a vicious, wild animal you've let loose upon the world, right?”
A cold laugh issued from the radio. “The only vicious animal is the human. That corpse mutt only does what its instincts tell it to. If its instincts tell it to eat, it eats. There is no malice in its actions.”
Ace rolled her eyes. “If that's how you feel, maybe you should get over here so this thing can eat you. Maybe then, there can be some actual progress in this world.”
“Progress?” The female on the other end of the radio scoffed. “What you speak of is regression! What you rangers strive for is a return to the way things were before the apocalypse...back when the world was ruled by greedy men who pushed the poor into wars to line their own pockets!”
“It beats a world ruled by bandits and monsters,” Ace rebuked. “If you don't like it, there's plenty of wasteland left where you can go ahead and be an idiot while the rest of us rebuild.”
“Idiot?” the woman repeated through the radio. “Yours is the kind that insists on rebuilding! You are the one that keeps putting things up no matter how many times we demonstrate how easy it is to tear them down! What good is your precious government when one simple bribe or threat can bring all of Divide to its knees?”
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Hivemind snatched the radio away from Ace. “Y'all's sayin' that the crap Divide's goin' through is your doin'?” he shrieked. “Weren't enough to just blow up the bridge, was it?”
“Whoever you are...if there is anything I have learned from all this, it is that bridges, walls...even populations can be rebuilt. Leaders are much harder to come by. Judging from your accent, you might have an answer to this one...is there anyone else from Cross Town that could fill Mayor Lad's shoes? If it were anyone else, who would have come to the rescue then?”
“So it was y'all WPA fellas who went an' kidnapped him! Ah bet it was y'all who was gonna make Mantis go an' blow herself up, too!”
“Mantis? Who is...well, whoever that is, you are probably correct. The WPA is much bigger than you know.”
Ace snatched the radio back from Hivemind while the woman was still talking. “And what, you're their leader?” she spat.
“Indeed I am,” came the reply, laden with static. “I am Gaea. I have no trouble telling you all of this, because soon, you will be dead.”
“No, I figure we'll kill you instead. After all, it's like you just said...we can kill this corpse mutt and steal away all of your pre-apocalyptic flying machines, but leaders are much harder to come by.”
Gaea's cold laugh issued forth through the radio. “As unobservant and outmatched as you are? Excuse me for not believing that my death at your hands is even possible.”
Before Ace could muster a reply, shrill beeps screamed out from the dashboard, calling for everyone's attention. “What do y'all suppose a missile incomin' is?” Hivemind wondered aloud.
Wisp, on the other hand, was quick to gasp and grab hold of the flight controls, yanking the entire bubble to the side in a hurry. Ace watched the patch of sky Wisp was in such a rush to leave, letting out a gasp as noise and fire flew through where they'd been. The fire slammed into the ground, triggering a powerful blast that buffeted even the corpse mutt below. "Missiles are bombs!" Wisp replied. "I...I think I've helped transport them...when I was in the WPA!"
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Gaea unleashed another vicious laugh as another bladed flying machine descended from the clouds, although this one was much bigger and much less bubble-shaped than the one Ace was piloting. Unlike the open doors of the cockpit Ace and her rangers had climbed into, the other flying machine had a front end that tapered out to a cone of sorts, with the top half of the cone being a window.
“Do you see now?” Gaea's voice called over the radio. “My flying machine is superior! Yours is a lost cause!”
“Rangers, we need a plan...!” Ace said, her voice stretching over the last few words as she swerved around another one of Gaea's explosives. “Wisp, how do you shoot the weapons on this thing?”
“There are none!” Wisp replied, leaning right over the pilot's seat. “What do we do?”
Ace's eyes darted all over the cockpit, searching for even the slightest inspiration. She quickly left the task to her companions, however, as two more missiles shoved their way through the clouds to get to her. As she watched them streak by, the ideas came to her in a hurry.
“Wisp, I'm putting you back in charge of flying.” Ace pulled herself out of the pilot's chair and crawled her way to the open door on the side. “Try to get her to shoot the corpse mutt if you think you can...but when she's out of missiles, bring us in close to her machine.”
“What in the hay do y'all think you're doin' now?” Hivemind scolded his leader.
Ace replied with a smirk and a shake of her sword. “The same thing I always do.”
Wisp shrugged and brought the bubble closer to the ground, much to the displeasure of the corpse mutt. It had been content to lap up the remains of the WPA goons that had been thrown from the flying machines, but it saw Wisp's maneuvers as a sign of aggression and an encroachment of its territory, a challenge that it responded to the only way it knew how.
“The corpse mutt...it won't let go!” Wisp shouted. “Come on...get your mouth off of us!”
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Static and Gaea's laugh filled the cockpit once more as she brought her flying machine over to hover menacingly over the proceedings. “Remember,” she taunted the rangers, “the corpse mutt is only following its instincts!”
Ace peered out of the door of the bubble, watching the corpse mutt tug against Wisp's efforts to fly away. Its powerful jaws were wrapped around the back end of the bubble. If it were merely gripping the bars on the underside, she'd be less concerned. As it was, she worried that its teeth might puncture something important. With so little time to spare, she beckoned Four-Eyes to her side and asked for his help.
“This is the end for you!” Gaea bellowed through the radio as she commanded her flying machine to vomit a spray of missiles right at Ace and her crew.
That was exactly what Ace was waiting for. “Now!” she barked, signaling Four-Eyes to unload all of his revolvers directly into one of the corpse mutt's eyes. As the bullets pounded their way into its head, it reared back as its mouth fell agape in shock, suddenly releasing its grip on the bubble.
Wisp shouted in surprise as the machine jerked up into the air, leaving the corpse mutt to bear the brunt of the missile spray. Despite the booming shockwaves bursting out of the missiles' explosions from below, she kept the bubble steady as she turned the body of it through the air, pointing the door and Ace directly at Gaea. “Like this?” she asked hesitantly.
Ace smiled and nodded as she unsheathed her sword. “That's perfect.” She pulled herself up onto one knee and gripped her sword as if it were a javelin. She could feel the blade effortlessly parting her skin, but she couldn't bring herself to care about such an injury at the moment. The only thing on her mind was lining up her throw, for she had but one chance. After a deep breath, she tossed her sword toward Gaea's cockpit.
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As Ace came out of her trance, she realized Gaea had been taunting her over the radio the whole time. “...still can't defeat me!” Ace tuned back in just in time to hear the WPA leader squawk. “The corpse mutt may have been defeated, but there are others! As long as I, Gaea, am here to shepherd this wasteland to its rightful conclusion, there—“
The radio went silent as the sword's unerring sharpness allowed it to pierce the canopy of Gaea's cockpit, with enough force left over to nail her to her seat by way of her throat. The flying machine, suddenly lacking a pilot, was vulnerable to the air currents around it, eventually losing its stability. Before long, the whole contraption fell into a wild tailspin that kept it rotating right up until it plowed into the ground, exploding on contact. The blast knocked Ace out of the doorway and onto her back, forcing the wind out of her.
Amidst the cheering and celebrating of her comrades, she was tempted to lose consciousness. After all the hard work she had put in recently, it only seemed fair to her that she be able to rest. Hivemind and Four-Eyes knelt on opposite sides of her, calling her name and keeping her awake, but she wanted nothing to do with it.
“Just get us back to Divide,” she ordered weakly. “Mantis is going to be so mad that I managed to break my leg again.”
“So that means we done finished up 'round here?” Hivemind asked, leaning over her and watching her eyes close.
“It sure looks like it. That other pilot must have fled; I haven't seen him at all since he panicked over the radio. Gaea's dead, and so is that corpse mutt. Mission accomplished, rangers.”
“What about your sword, Ace? Don't y'all want us to go an' get it?”
“I...later. I need to see a doctor as soon as possible.”
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## Chapter 25
“Again, darling?” a vaguely familiar voice cut through the darkness. Ace opened her eyes to find herself in the West Divide clinic, in the exact same room and setup as last time she had been there. “You really have to treat your body better.” Chroma was quick to step into view, her exasperation obvious.
“I did what I had to for the world's sake,” Ace said, thinking not of her body, but of her sword, which was conspicuously absent from the room. She'd wielded the thing about as long as she'd been working out in the wastes. Still, it did exactly what it needed to. “Sometimes you have a chance to help more people than just yourself.”
Chroma let out a long sigh. “The shape your leg's in...sweetie, I don't think you'll be helping anyone ever again. It's not just your leg, either. Your whole knee is looking worse for wear.”
Ace tried to examine the situation for herself, but all she saw were the covers to her hospital bed. “What are you talking about?”
“Your friends told me all about you jumping out of a flying machine and landing on your feet.” Chroma moved over to the window and pulled the shades away, letting a beam of sunlight into the room that illuminated two sleeping rangers on the floor. “That little stunt might have cost you the ability to walk for the rest of your life.”
Ace stared intently at her legs. “I haven't stood up since then, but I was able to bend my knees just fine!”
“And that may have torn them up,” Chroma groaned. “I'm sorry, sugar, but we'll do what we can to get you on your feet again. It's just...there might not be any way to actually do that. Not with the tools and know-how we've got.”
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Ace lowered her head, her mind buzzing with concerns about her future. “Do they know about it?” she asked, gesturing to Wisp and Hivemind.
“Nope. Those two hauled you in, told me what you did, and passed right out. They're exhausted, Ace. Apparently you had them hitchhike and everything? Let them have their rest.”
“Exactly!” a younger voice called from the doorway, heralding the arrival of Mantis. As she ran into the room, Chroma stepped around her and left. “Ace, we found a pre-apocalyptic book about the body recently! It's taught us a lot. The book says Wisp and Hivemind had sleep deprivation...it makes them sleepy, sick, and eventually they start seeing or hearing things that aren't there!”
“We had to stop the WPA,” Ace protested, her head falling back into her pillow. “Normally, I'd have let them sleep, but there was a living superweapon we had to take care of.”
Mantis nodded. “They told me all about it...it sure sounded fun! What's it like to fly through the air? I wish the flying machine still had fuel. Or maybe there's another one somewhere! I'll ask Little Rock to dig one up someday, and then I'll be able to fly to whoever's been hurt and pick them up!”
Ace shrugged. “Sure, kid, keep dreaming. Where is Little Rock, anyway?”
Mantis took a seat on her usual cot. “Well, he said he had something to do when he heard you were coming! He said he'd be back soon, but I don't know where he went.”
“Whatever.” Ace had only been conscious for a few minutes, but she was already anxious to leave. She started to pull herself out of the bed, but a sharp pain in her legs swiftly reminded her of why she was there. “Just fix my legs so I can get back on the road.”
Mantis shook her head. “And what if we can't, Ace? Chroma says we might not be able to fix your legs, ever.”
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Ace gave Mantis a fierce glare. “But I have to return to the road. My rangers need me.”
“Do they really? They seem really strong and powerful to me!” Mantis ran over to Wisp and knelt over her. “She's really nice, knows a lot about animals, and she can punch people too!” Scooting over to Hivemind, she added, “And he can fly and has a gun and knows how to survive away from towns! They told me all about it!”
Ace scoffed. “Sounds like they're expert babysitters, too.”
This remark caused Mantis to jump to her feet and spring over to Ace's bedside. “Hey, I am not a baby...and those two have never sat on me!”
“No, no...!” Ace gave a slight chuckle at the girl's overreaction. “It's a word from the pre-apocalypse. Apparently that's what they called anyone whose job it was to take care of those younger than them.”
With a nod toward the window, she added, “I found a book about it on a dig once. No merchant's ever tried to buy it, and no one's wanted to put it in their old world knick-knack collection, including me. If you want it, it's in the jeep...oh.”
Before either of them could dwell on the loss too much, Little Rock saw fit to dash into the room, still sporting his trademark coat of dirt. “Oh, Mantis!” he greeted her. “Is Ace awake? Oh, she is...well, that's good! That means I can give her this!”
With a massive smile over his face, he brought his hands out from behind him, revealing a metal cage containing a small white creature. “Mantis told me it can get lonely in this room sometimes," he said, "so I wanted to make it better! That's why I found a pet mouse for you!”
“Pet?” Mantis parroted. “What's that mean?”
Little Rock turned his smile to his peer. “People used to take care of animals! They'd keep them in their house, feed them, and it made them happy! Ace can take care of this little mouse when she's lonely.”
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“Oh, neat!” Mantis said as she bent down to peer at the tiny animal resting in the cage. “Hi, mouse! Aw, it's so cute...but its hair is so dirty! Little Rock, what does it eat?”
“The same things that people eat.” Little Rock hoisted the cage onto a nearby table, leaving the mouse and its simulated habitat in clear view of Ace. “That's what the man who had it told me, anyway. Maybe when Wisp wakes up, I can ask her!”
“I'll keep that in mind,” Ace said, a little tired with the children and their escapades. Still, the gift was appreciated; last time she was in the clinic, she had nothing to do except sleep and wish she was outside. “Is there a way I can get outside sometimes? That's what I'd really appreciate.”
Mantis nodded. “Chroma said she paid a friend to work on something,” she began. “When she told you that you could still drive last time, it gave her an idea...she said that if they put you on wheels somehow, you could move around without your legs!”
Ace shook her head. “There's no way they could fit a vehicle in here. That's impossible.”
“Chroma said that too. She said it'd have to be smaller, and her friend told her that someone might have to push it!”
Ace opened her mouth to shoot off a rebuttal, but she quickly closed it. She found herself swiftly silenced by the sheer logic involved in the operations of Chroma and her inventor friend. “Huh. You know, that might actually work.”
She definitely looked forward to seeing the end result of this experiment. The mouse was a nice gesture, but she'd have much rather have the opportunity to go outside and serve Divide however she could. She hadn't quite accepted the pessimism Chroma and Mantis held about her legs.
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All the same, though, Ace knew that anything would be better than staying cooped up in the confines of the clinic day in and day out. “Did she say when the thing would be finished?” she asked.
Mantis could only shrug and make her way toward the exit, accidentally tripping over Hivemind and falling onto Wisp in the process, waking both of them up. “Uh...wha...?” Hivemind said, still drowsy from having been roused so abruptly. “Ugh, can't believe Ah fell asleep here.”
“Well, now that you're awake, I've got something to tell you.” Ace had been doing her best to avoid thinking about the possibility that her legs were ruined forever, but with her fellow rangers rousing themselves from their slumber, she needed to prepare her contingency plan. “The doctors doubt I'll ever be able to walk again.”
That news was more than enough to rouse the rangers from their drowsiness. Hivemind was particularly perturbed by the news. “Say what?”
“It's true.” Ace sighed and kept her eyes on the mouse in the cage, struggling through the words and the thoughts of her fate. “Jumping out of the flying machine may have destroyed my legs forever. I can't be a ranger anymore if I can't even stand up.”
Wisp shook her head clear of all the grogginess, clearing the clutter from her brain so she could join the conversation. “Um, can't you...can't you drive?” she reasoned. “You were driving last time you, uh, got hurt.”
“Nope.” Ace reached in through the top of the cage, allowing the mouse to regard her hand with excited curiosity. Little Rock was amazed to see the bonding already taking place, but her mind was definitely elsewhere. “Whenever I try to move either leg at all or try to bend my knees, I get nothing but pain out of the effort. My broken bones might even be tearing the inside of my legs apart. I think I'll be stuck in Divide for the rest of my life.”
“What's that mean about the rangerin' business?” Hivemind choked as he walked to Ace's bedside with his head hanging. “We ain't go no vehicle, an' now we ain't got no leader either? What in the hay do y'all suggest we do?”
(link-undo:"Previous") | [[Next|137]]
“What will you and Wisp do?" Ace repeated. "Hivemind, this is Divide. A lot has happened around here, and I'm sure there's much for us to do here. Hell, all over the wasteland, if you want to get a new car to see it." Ace let out a short chuckle. "Mantis is right...you two are plenty capable of handling the needs of the wasteland on your own. You've grown a lot since we first met in Cross Town.”
Hivemind raised his hands and started to count on his fingers. "Hold on a minute, then what's Four-Eyes doin'?"
Ace smirked and shook her head. “Nice try, but he's staying with me. He's been my companion for decades, after all, and I need better protection than these two kids and this mouse could provide. Without my sword, I just have his guns to depend on.”
“We...we tried to find it,” Wisp mumbled toward the floor. “We checked the, um, crash site...and it wasn't there. I guess you, uh, need Four-Eyes more than we do.”
Ace had just wanted Four-Eyes nearby for additional companionship. The idea that he'd protect her started as an excuse. But as soon as Wisp agreed, she knew there was truth to it. It cut her deeply to hear it, and it made her feel even more useless than she had before.
Ace couldn't help but feel like a liability. Still, no matter how much she might need a babysitter, she could at least rest easy knowing that the world didn't. The greatest of threats had been dealt with by Ace and her crew. Meanwhile, she'd seen so much greatness out of her friends spanning multiple generations. She had faith in their guidance for the world.
“Ace...?” Hivemind asked, waving a hand in front of her face. “Y'all's zonin' out on us...”
“Oh, right.” Ace buried her face in her hand for a moment, letting her mind get its bearings before concluding her speech. “Hivemind and Wisp, I have two final orders for you. First of all, you are to continue to assist the rebuilding of society however you can...go on digs, defend towns from bandits, spread Agent Venom antidote, whatever.”
“Um, what's your...your other order?” Wisp asked.
Ace turned her head away from her fellow rangers, half to hide a single tear rolling down her cheek and half to facilitate her plans for the rest of the day. “Go away so I can go back to sleep.”
## The End
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<sub>Caravan 1⅝</sub>
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CARAVAN 1⅝
by Jon Farrar
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Caravan 1⅝
© 2017-Tue Apr 01 2025 Jon "the Red" Farrar
https://jontheredrc.itch.io/