"Nah. Not a single gap in this thing." The woman turned back to her, goggles switched off.
Clancy swept the flashlight beam over the jagged clutter of broken stone and earth, which had clogged up the entire passage—likely the result of a collapsed ceiling. This was their only way out. If there were any branching paths from the main corridor, the woman didn't see any while carrying her upslope.
"Check the nearest rooms. See if there's any doors or passages in there."
Nodding, the woman made her way into the small room to their right. Clancy trailed closely behind her, flashlight held overhead in a ready stance. This thing was heavy enough to knock someone out, at least, and was easier to manage with her weak hand, compared to the knife.
The narrow indoor space smelled like mold. Tiny specks of dirt, floating freely in the air, were visible in the beam of her
flashlight. As expected, it was completely empty and abandoned, with its only occupants being pieces of rotten wood that might have been some kind of furniture once upon a time.
She was about to leave for the room on the other side of the corridor, when the woman held up a hand.
"Wait a sec. Do I have permission to check on this wall, without you bashing my head in?" She pointed to their right.
"Yes."
"Hmmm." The woman made a few knocks on it, before muttering to herself. "Ah, rammed earth. Oldie but goodie. No wonder it's still standing. I bet the opposite wall's made of the same thing."
"And how is it relevant?"
"It's not relevant to you." The woman turned back. In the shadows casted by her hood, Clancy could see a faint smile on her face. "But I happen to be very good at putting holes of all size in things, whether they're breathing or not. I can take out what I have on me, and make a try. So, may I?"
"Are you creating a passage to the next room?"
"Correct. And the next. And the next. Depending on how much stuff is clogging up the main corridor."
"Are you sure it won't trigger a bigger cave-in? I assume you'll be using breach charges."
"Oh, auntie is precise with her shit. Wanna take a look?"
After receiving a nod from her, the woman reached into the pocket of her vest, and took out a round, disk-like object with a small hole in its middle. The dim light made it hard to see what she was doing, but there was a clicking sound, and the next second, five petal-like contraptions sprung out of it.
"Ta-da. Meet the Fidget Spinner." The woman held it up, "Great for stress relief, whether you are shooting it out of a launcher, or manually slapping it on."
She pressed the device against the wall. It stuck firmly to the surface, as she reached into her pocket again, and took out two similar devices. Soon, they were all on the wall, arranged into a neat triangle.
"Now, I only have nine of these on me," she said, before removing another remote device from her cargo pants' pocket. "But, if nothing goes wrong, one big fucking hole will be coming right up in no time...okay, not that big, maybe."
They had retreated far back enough that there was no need for ear protections. But Clancy could still feel the little tremors created by the blast during both detonations, and when they entered the second room once again, the dirt in the air was considerably thicker.
"Not so tough now, are you?" The woman said, before giving the second wall a good kick, causing a clump of clay to crumble apart. Her voice had only gotten more raspy, despite her best efforts at muffling her hacking coughs.
Just like before, the hole created by her sticky explosive pellets was nowhere near large enough to allow someone to walk through. This one's positioning was a lot more awkward, with its lower edge almost at their neck level (the woman mumbled something about support beams messing shit up).
Clancy knelt down in front of the wall, waiting for the woman to step onto her shoulders and pull herself through the opening. After she got to the other side, the woman reached her arms through the hole, and grabbed her left hand.
The climb was significantly harder for her, however, with the gaping wound in her right palm. She practically collapsed onto the woman upon entry, who stumbled slightly, but didn't fall.
"Aww. Be kind to auntie's old bones, please?" The woman teased. Now that Clancy's flashlight was back on her belt and switched off, the glowing green dots of her goggles were back. "No worries. This one has its exit all clear and not clogged up."
"Good," she replied, and let the woman lead her through the darkness. Seemed like luck was on their side for once; after blowing down two rammed earth walls, they'd bypassed the collapsed section and ended up in the main corridor again.
"Hey, The 'old bones' part? I'm just kidding. Even if you aren't pressing a knife against my neck, I'm strong enough to carry you a lil' longer."
"There is no need to," Clancy wrenched her arm away when the woman tightened her hold on her right wrist, and grabbed the flashlight with her uninjured hand again, ready to switch it on and shone it into the woman's eyes. This woman might not be hostile for the time being, but she was still extremely dangerous, and not someone she'd like to owe any more favors to.
In the far distance, a faint light could be seen, and, as they continued their upslope trudge, the surrounding was getting slightly brighter than before. A good sign.
"Well, you sure are one strong, independent, ruggedly charming lady. I like that."
"...Are you flirting with me?"
"Goodness, no. Auntie's not into the duty-bound type," The woman let out a sigh, "They tend to die for things that aren't worth dying for."
"People who want to die for what they believe in can be easily accommodated. It's those who don't mind dying in order to achieve their goals that you have to watch out for," she said. "And you seem perfectly willing to be the first kind of people."
"I don't see a difference. Both types will end up dead, period." The woman's voice gained an odd cheerfulness, "Besides, auntie doesn't have a lot of years ahead of her. You gotta' forgive her for getting a little silly and senile at times."
She tried to recall the few glimpses she caught of the woman's face. Certainly wouldn't count as an elderly person, but she wasn't young anymore, either. It was her raspy voice that was misleading.
"Is it because of your breathing problems?"
"Bingo." The woman gave her a thumbs-up. "Nothing unique. I've seen enough dead folks to know where I'll end up in a decade or so. May as well let a stray bullet or swatty bot do the job, before I drown on dry land."
That was more information than Clancy expected to get from the woman. Maybe she was loosening her tongue a little, because of her sentimentality towards her...dead alternate self. And the strife on this dimension's Console Continent, no matter how dramatic it could get during certain isolated incidents, wasn't nearly enough to breed this kind of casual brutality.
"How long have you been fighting in the Console Wars."
"My entire life?" The woman answered. "Funny you should call it that."
"What's so funny about it."
"Uh, for one, it implies that there are still fights between CPUs," the woman said, in a matter-of-fact voice. "And no new CPUs will ever be born again in our world."
She didn't ask more questions, mostly because they were close enough to see the opening ahead. Chunks of debris were floating in the dark blue void; at the highest end of the slope, the ground below vanished into a steep drop. Same for the ceiling above.
As she walked to the edge and gazed past it, it quickly became apparent that the entire corridor they were in was cut out like a slice of cake, floating in this gravity-less environment. If she had any doubts that this was a Resonance event, they were definitely gone now. Out of habit, she reached for her binoculars and touched nothing.
The woman didn't see one while going through her belongings, either. Much like her ear protections and rifle, it was just another object displaced by the space-time instability that landed her here.
She raised her flashlight in a gesture of notification, before switching it on again. The light couldn't quite penetrate the darkness of the void, but it did make her able to see more things in the corridor. A protruding stone statue of a bizarre, turtle-like creature, carved right out of the stone wall, more empty rooms, and a dark blob writhing at the edge of the broken ceiling above—
The second she ducked and backed away, a gunshot came from behind. Followed by another, while her ears were still ringing from the first. She switched off the flashlight, but when she retreated to a safe distance and glanced up, the outline of that writhing blob was still visible against the dark blue void.
No, it had a neck, and two humanoid arms just came out of that thing.
A third shot. This one created a see-through hole in the creature's center mass, which sealed itself as quickly as it was created. The woman muttered a flurry of curses, after her next shot proved just as fruitless as the first. Good—she hadn't gone completely deaf from the lack of ear protections.
The creature slid further down, revealing more arms and appendages below its humanoid torso, like a grotesque centipede dangling over the edge of the ceiling. Its first pair of arms reached for the floor below, swinging, trying to get a grip on the broken tiles.
The woman yelled a word she couldn't quite hear, as an object collided with the creature's elongated body and stuck to it. Clancy dropped to the ground, covered her ears, and squeezed her eyes shut, a split second before the explosion hit.
Dust and pieces of stone chips rained down on them. The rippling shockwave went right through her body, bringing with it a fresh wave of nausea, as well as a dull pain in her ears and chest. When the smoke cleared away, and she opened one eye, her vision was a blur. Then she felt a hand on her shoulder, helping her up.
The creature was gone.
"Don't you just hate it when things eat lead and refuse to die?" The woman sighed, as she tucked something back into her pocket under the faint glow of her goggles. "There goes one of my last three Fidget Spinners. Don't think that offed it for good, either. Just pushed it off the edge."
"Plenty of extradimensional threats...are like that." Well, it was too late to wish she'd joined the Azure State Marines instead of the Leanbox military, wasn't it. "This is a Resonance event. Which means, more are coming."
"Woah. You PC folks sure had it rough, before the Cage came down. No wonder Commander Daisy Bunny's such a sourpuss." The woman shrugged. "Hmmm, if this space-time bullshit went on long enough, maybe we'll get to see some unfortunate souls, haunting the oblivion they were stuck in? Some unfortunate souls that actually have buddies and teachers back home, who still hadn't given up on them?"
The woman's tone didn't sound like she was expecting an answer. But Clancy spoke up anyways.
"I'm not ending up as one of them. And I sure am not giving up on...her." She paused, and looked towards her injured palm. "How far is the range of your night vision?"
The woman put a hand to her goggles, made her way to the edge again, and knelt down. "Not very far. Switching it to thermal, however..."
There was a long silence, before the woman made an "Ooh" sound. "Huh. I was actually checking for more of those things. But they didn't have body heat, did they? C'mon, rock, move just a little faster."
She, too, knelt down besides the woman. Not out of the hope that she could actually see anything.
"Okay. There's definitely a warm body down there, right below us." the woman said. "If it's dead, it hasn't been dead for long."
That was all she needed to hear. Quietly, she stood back up, and reached for the extra bundle of ropes, strapped onto her back holster.
"I'm not alone when I end up in here. There's one person I've come to save, and two who were keeping her in that place," she said, as she switched the flashlight back on, uncoiled the ropes, and made her way towards the strange stone statue on the wall. "The body you saw could be either one of these three."
"Uh-huh." The woman turned back to her. Her tone was carefully neutral.
"You are a mercenary. I can't pay you, and I don't think you are expecting payment under the current circumstances, but I'm quite certain you won't jeopardize your own survival for my interest." She took a deep breath, "I still have to make a request for help, though. Were I still able to climb, I'd have gone down there myself. And, if we both get out of this place alive...I will repay you to the best of my capability."
"Ah, I see," the woman said, after a long silence. "Family. How they blindside us every single fucking time."
"Rei Ryghts," the ghostly pale figure muttered to herself, as she glanced into the dark blue void. "Of course. You keep creating more problems for me, even after you are long gone."
Her grating, emotionless voice was the same too. Except that it didn't feel like this...Rainbow Aktivis was using her monotone to conceal her deep contempt for humanity as a whole, or the fact that she had completely run out of fucks to give.
It sounded like there was never enough emotions in her in the first place.
"From the looks of it, this should be the last of your power," she said, before shifting her gaze back to her. "As for you? I have no idea how you end up in this state, but fate and fortune do work in strange ways."
She was suddenly very aware of how the woman positioned herself right in front of her body, and was making side glances at it.
"I have a question for you." Rainbow Aktivis took a small step towards her. "If a thief had stolen a briefcase full of valuable treasures, and, upon discovery, threw everything away out of spite, and you stumbled upon one of them by complete accident..."
Aktivis. Soft-spoken and polite. This combination was even more terrifying than the bitter control freak she was marginally acquainted with, considering that the last time she...became this woman, she was dying and obsessed with claiming vengeance.
"...When its rightful owners came to you, asking for its return, it would be morally wrong to refuse their demand, right?"
"I-I have no idea what you are talking about!"
Rainbow Aktivis responded with a sigh. "You have, unknowingly, picked up something from our world. I'm certain of it. Otherwise I would not have landed right next to you."
Was this a better time, she might have bothered to make a guess about what that "something" was. But the alarm bells were going off all over her mind, drowning out every other thought, until all that was left was Run.
"I wish to borrow your body, just long enough for me to retrieve it. Or them. Perhaps more than one of these have ended up in your world." Rainbow Aktivis turned back, towards her limp body. "It would be ideal for the both of us, if you are willing to cooperate—"
The alarm finally got loud enough to break her out of her freeze, and she lunged forward. In the split of a second, her blade shot out, aiming straight at the woman's chest.
Rainbow Aktivis didn't dodge. The blade went right through her, without connecting with anything solid. Reeling from the momentum of the strike, she fell forward, just in time for the woman to grab her by her right wrist. The cold, forceful grip was a hundred percent solid and real, and, in her shock, she forgot to yank her hand away.
Until she was pulled closer, and the woman's other hand seized her by the throat. Only then did she start struggling.
It was already too late.
"As a certain sinister spy once said, you are an amateur and a fool." Even her chiding lacked any feelings of real disgust or disdain behind them. "Using a physical weapon in the realm of the incorporeal like that."
"See, Gold Crystals only amplify—and fuse into you—what is already there. Being the first of the Golden One, I embody that property, despite the limitations my current state imposed on me," Rainbow Aktivis said. "And I can feel the fear radiating off you, even before I crossed over. Let's magnify that by a factor of five."
The grip on her neck and wrist loosened. The wrongness was immediately apparent, as she fell backwards and went completely limp. The bone-chilling cold crawled through her flesh, rendering her immobile, slowly blacking out her vision, choking her up.
Just like before, when...
"That should keep you busy for the time being." All she could see now was that rainbow scarf, moving further and further away from her. "Now, after sharing a body with someone else for so long, I am looking forward to being back in control for once. Elizabeth A. is not a generous host—"
A flash of blue obscured the rainbow scarf. When the scarf was visible again, the body it was wrapped around was as still as a statue, frozen in mid-turn.
"We'll see about that."
Ms. X gave the woman another pat on the shoulder, as if greeting an old friend. Then, she moved away and knelt down by her side. The red valve in her left eye socket was spinning, or maybe it was her entire vision that was spinning.
"Now, I can only quell her for a minute or so..."
She couldn't hear a word after that. Ms. X's face was morphing into another familiar one, glancing down at her with the same cold, detached curiosity.
A hand was ruffling up her hair, moving down the back of her neck, sliding into her collars. When slender fingers touched her shoulder blades and unhooked her bra straps, she knew what was going on. That afternoon, it was happening to her again, all over again—
"All of you are of extraordinary value, because of your limitless potential."
Ms. X leaned towards her, whispering softly. A gloved hand was also touching the patch of skin behind her ear, except that she struggled a little back then and felt a squeeze on her throat. Not hard enough to choke her, but hard enough to be a warning.
Even if her lips weren't melded together by fear, and a scream managed to escape out of her mouth, no one would be there to hear it. The sound of blood rushing in her ears could hardly drown out the sweet, cold whispers—your hair is so soft, so pretty, just like a kid I knew when I was little. A real swashbuckler, that one.
A pause, followed by a sigh. It's a shame she died at such a young age. We could have been more than friends.
"Some of your peers have unleashed more of it, but yours are no less interesting or potent than theirs. Besides, I am not one for favoritism."
These fingers started caressing her cheeks, tracing her lips. She felt warm breath tickling her skin, and the thick, slimy dread that was clogging up her lungs only got thicker when she realized what was coming next. No, not the kissing part, anything but the kissing part—
"The clock is ticking. Time to make a choice."
Her silent pleading fell on deaf ears. The sensations were chillingly vivid, and if the desire to gag wasn't already overwhelming every single inch of her being, it sure was now. Unlike before, no one came knocking on the doors at the last second, inquiring, in her cold, harsh monotone, if a certain someone still remembered their appointment.
It...it...didn't stop there.
Her clothes were being ripped off. The same way it went in nightmares she could only remember snippets of. And now she was being touched in...no, heavens, no no no no...
She didn't even want to think about the sickeningly good sensation that was washing over her, together with the urge to start screaming and never stop.
"Yes, it is a choice, and you are never completely at the mercy of fate. None of us are."
A choice? A CHOICE? If she could just choose not to freeze up and feel like she was going to puke, she'd have done it long ago—!
The red valve in Ms. X's eye socket was turning slower and slower. No, it was grinding to a halt. Time was running out. Soon, that Rainbow Aktivis would hijack her body and trap her in this state forever and leave everyone for dead and go off to do some other terrible things, and Brøø would have died for nothing—
No, she...she...
She hated this.
Paralyzed by fear. Couldn't do a thing. Couldn't save a single person.
No. No way. Not this time, no! She was DONE being fucked over by random assholes, figuratively or almost literally! She would NOT let it happen again!
And she was close, so close. So please, for once, just for once...
"GET UP AND MOVE!"
She didn't know if she was screaming these words out loud, but she chose, and she moved. Like a fish swimming through water, towards the shade of white in her narrowing vision, just as that rainbow scarf started moving again.
For a second, she thought she had failed. There was no way she could've reached it in time, with her slow, slow movement speed. That woman was much closer to her body, and she must have more tricks up her sleeves—
Then the darkness fell upon her, and she felt cold metal bars pressing against her back. Her eyes snapped open with a gasp. Immediately, out of reflex, she slipped into her enhanced vision.
Rainbow Aktivis was still there, glancing down at her with these chilling grey eyes. Ms. X was nowhere to be seen.
"So, you have help. I have to admit, I've made quite the miscalculation," she said, without sounding disappointed or annoyed at all. "Keep in mind, however, that I will take back what rightfully belongs to us, sooner or later. For our world's future."
After throwing that out there, she, too, vanished into thin air.
A/N: Rainbows make me cry: The Chapter.