Chapter 12 Leaving Last Stand

“Lasting consequences? What’s that?” - Misha, S Class Cape who everyone just sorta expects is unkillable after brawling it out with a kaiju.

Countless eyes, mouths and arms.

They all came, grabbing onto Lu, and no matter how much he ran, he could not escape.

“Are you going to do anything about that?” a voice asked.

He turned to him, “What do you mean?”

Aiden woke to screaming, throwing away the blanket as he rose. Sweat dripping down his face.

The screaming slowly stopped as he realised from his hoarse throat, that he was the one screaming.

Breathing out heavily, he reached out with his right arm, searching for his glasses-

Only to be reminded from the blurred stump in front of him, that he had lost his right hand.

“Damn,” he breathlessly murmured.

“That’s it?” a voice said beside him, Isaac. “Just a damn?”

He quickly glanced around, he was in some kind of medical tent. Isaac by his left and an empty bed by his right. There was a pervasive sense of sterility here. By the table beside him, were his glasses. Dirty looking, but someone had clearly put in some effort to clean them. Despite that, the lens was nowhere clear enough to use.

“She’s already up, damn Physiques,” the gadgeteer muttered as he rose.

“Are you alright Mr Isaac?”

He scoffed, “You’re the one missing a hand, and I’m just fine.”

Continuing, he spoke in a louder voice, “You know an in-joke in the meta-community are that Gadgeteers are basically just baselines that can survive a Gate. With the fucking Demon Gate still open, us idiots can’t produce anything really high tech. We’re stuck making things any random engineer could shit out their ass.”

“You sound very angry about that,” Aiden simply replied.

“Fuck yes I am! Engineers shit on us for being gifted! Metas shit on us for not being sufficiently gifted! Demons shit on us by existing!” he ranted, before falling back into his bed, energy apparently spent.

He let him stew for a while, before asking, “What’s with the Brettonia Gate that stops you from making higher tech?”

“Demons are the opposite of creation,” he replied, “with the Brettonia Gate still open it means all creations degrade at a slightly faster rate. Increasing greatly with its complexity. In Muryga one person managed to make a Quantum Supercomputer,”

He paused for dramatic effect.

“11.6 seconds. That was how long it stayed on before it completely broke down. And after the Tunguska Event, it became very hard to get approval to mess with advanced fuel sources or weaponry.”

“Then why don’t you just learn what you are missing? If an engineer could do your job why don’t you actually understand your power?” Aiden asked.

“I can’t,” he murmured, rubbing his face as if very tired. “Whenever a gadgeteer tries to learn anything relating to their specialty. The power auto activates and puts them in through the Trance throughout the entire thing. You’ll wake up in front of a whiteboard of solved problems without ever knowing how you did it.”

Shaking his head, he turned to his side, “Most people don’t understand what it’s like, to have your power take away control of your body. To have months or years wasted away on a long Trance.”

Finally, he grumbled, curling into his medical bed, back faced towards him, “Missing a few seasons of a TV show is the least of my problems.”

Isaac was silent after that, and Aiden wasn’t sure if he should interrupt his brooding.

Instead, he felt the… stump where his hand was.

It had healed over, the scars of the bite barely visible, though the dried blood was still on it. Every time he felt it, he felt like there should’ve been something there, something other than the emptiness.

“How long was I out?” he asked.

“Bout three hours,” Isaac replied. “The girl dragged you back, your stump had already healed by then but you were unconscious from the blood loss. You have a very good healing factor. Not the best, but enough losing half your fluids didn’t kill you.”

“How’d they replace my blood?”

“My suggestion,” he replied, “seeing your enhanced metabolism, I told them to shove a condensed nutrient bar in you rather than fool around with blood types. You won’t need to eat for at least a week.”

“Umm… thank you? How would I-”

“I’m footing the bill,” Isaac interrupted, turning around to look at him. “I know what it’s like to be given the capability for something, but to fall just short of what you need it for.”

He silently turned back to his arm. To the stump where his right hand was.

It had already fully healed over.

“If we retrieved your hand, they would be able to sow it back on, but the girl said it got chewed up by the Invader.”

Isaac stared at him, “I’ll be honest, growing back a hand will probably cost you an arm and a leg. You shouldn’t expect-”

“Thank you,” he interrupted, “I am well aware of how much it costs on average to grow back a limb.”

Eighty to a hundred thousand as a cheap ballpark.

Money he did not have, nor had the luxury to spend.

“It is just a hand,” he replied, “I’ll do fine.”

“Could’ve been worse,” Isaac continued, “it could’ve been Floridians.”

He shuddered, “Gods no, I have enough mental scars already.”

It was at that time, one of the field medics walked in, “Aiden Bu?”

“That’s me,” he replied as he helped himself off the bed.

“You’ll be needed at the command tent. We need you to debrief the Hunters coming in.”

“I understand,” he answered, standing up. Briefly neatening up his appearance. Heavily dirtied, covered in dust and dried blood, his attempts were ultimately futile, but still, he had to try.

“Good luck,” Isaac waved as he left. Following the medic out, he was directed to a Guard who walked him around the military encampment. Around him, he could barely make out the disciplined movement of the Guard as they finished setting up camp. People were on patrol, some were tinkering with massive machines, cheering as they roared to life. Above head, the skies were black with hundreds of open eyes staring down.

He was only out for three hours, which meant they set up this entire thing in that time.

Eventually, they arrived at the larger command tent. Jun and Alexis were loitering by the entrance, and they waved as he neared.

Waving back, he saluted the Guard, who saluted him back, before letting him on his way.

“Are you alright?” Alexis asked first.

Her face was heavily scratched, one of her eyes covered in a bandage. “I’ll live,” he answered. “What happened to you?”

“Some kind of tiny, vicious bear jumped on me,” she replied, scratching at one of her cuts. “Ow.”

He almost chuckled, “Must’ve been a drop bear.”

“Becareful, theygoafteraccents,” Jun added immediately after.

“They do?”

Both Ostralianders nodded.

“I don’t have an accent do I…” she murmured, just as someone pushed aside the tent flap.

“You’re all here?” Freddy, he realised from the voice, “Good, come in.”

What Aiden didn’t see, was the hard look in Freddy’s eyes as he saw the stump.

“Putvegemiteonyourhead. Itrepelsthem…” Jun added as they walked in.

There were five people sitting around a square table. A large map situated in the middle, marked with the current Bleed Radius and Gate location.

Then the atmosphere became heavy, as two men locked eyes.

Aiden’s eyes narrowed like a hawk catching sight of its prey, cold and dead, they narrowed on a man in a dark black trenchcoat. Sitting on the side, his right arm was heavily bandaged and sealed away with arcane runes.

And this man did not shy away from his gaze.

For he was the one simply known as the Annihilator, the man with the most destructive power within the entire state, the Boulevard of Broken Dreams. It was an ability of utter ruin, entire countrysides and armies have been brought low by his power.

Alexis couldn’t breathe, for the pressure was too much. Like a golfball had just spontaneously appeared in her throat. She couldn’t move, for the intensity of the Annihilator made her feel like a single wrong step could result in all their deaths.

‘Is his arm ok?’ Aiden thought as he squinted at the heavily bandaged limb. Not quite making out what was wrong with it.

Meanwhile, the Annihilator, real name Allen Gibbs, sometimes known as Allen the Annihilator, was staring directly behind Aiden, staring intensely towards the sky at their back. ‘Oh shit oh shit oh shit. It isn’t working! Why is that kid staring at me? Am I dressing weird? Is there something on my face? Aaaaaaaaah! Why did I agree to come here? Why does there have to be so many people here? I wanna go home…”

… and was regretting his life decisions when he automatically said ‘yes’ to the pretty lady that called him for help and came over because it was too awkward by then to refuse.

Eventually, Allen the Annihilator silently turned back to the table, straightened his collar, before slinking into his trench coat to hide because this meeting was clearly beneath him.

And so, in the grand battle between myopia and social anxiety, myopia won out.

Freddy chuckled as he slapped Alexis on the back, “Don’t worry bout Allen, he just has some personality issues.”

The woman next to Allen smiled, she had long sandy red hair and a long scar going down from her eye to her cheek, “😂🤣” she said as she nudged a silent Allen.

“Foxy, who’s one of the teachers back at M.I.A,” Freddy introduced, gesturing at her.

“👋😉😘💦” she replied.

“Ew, and the answer is still no,” Freddy replied.

“😢”

He gestured next to a pair of twins beside her, “Next to her are Lieutenants Brandy and Randy, from the Tuba family.”

Two nods, dressed in identical military wear, the two men were practically mirrored.

“And Colonel Howard,” he finished towards a middle-aged man with greying hair, “Who’ll be directing the military ops in the area.”

“And here’s Alexis, Jun and Aiden,” he gestured at the three of them to take a seat, “We’ll need you three to give us a run-down on everything you saw inside. Then you can be on your way.”

And they sat down, Alexis began first. Nothing much they didn’t already know, she fought with a few feral kangaroos before getting ambushed by a drop bear somewhere. Sustaining minor injuries and a cut on her right eye before Freddy found her.

Aiden took the lead for their side, Jun grabbed him upon seeing the Gate expansion and space warping, running towards the edge but never making it. They got surrounded and fought off a few dingoes similarly made feral by the Gate before they encountered the invader.

Jun was mostly silent throughout all this, so Aiden detailed their initial actions, how Jun tried to run but no matter how much she ran she wasn’t travelling any distance. Similarly, how when he tried to walk towards it, he couldn’t get any closer to it as well.

He left out the fact Jun was crying. Instead, going straight to how they could still move around the monster, and by walking in a shrinking or expanding circle around it, they could get near or away from it. Then onto the how the arms attacked.

And finally, on how their attempts to hurt it utterly failed, requiring Jun to slow it down with her ability before they got away. Him carrying an unconscious Jun.

“I lost my hand here,” he added, “it grabbed me and I had one of my spawns bite off my wrist. It bit it cleanly off,” he said, showing his stump, “but it couldn’t even leave a scratch on its skin.”

Jun added a detail here, how she woke up somehow and picked up the injured Aiden to run away.

And it took her ten minutes of running at full speed to get out of its ability range.

Their audience was silent throughout most of this, the first to speak up was the Colonel, “High B, maybe even an A depending on how tough it is.”

“🤔”

“I was thinking that as well.”

“Space warping and high strength and durability,” Randy began.

“A difficult opponent,” Brandy finished.

“Is that all you have?” the Colonel asked.

Jun shook her head, speaking slowly to sound normal, “I carried Aiden till the scouts found us.”

“It ate my hand, however, I poisoned it before it became fully detached from me,” Aiden added. “I’m not sure if it was effective.”

“🤔😷❔”

“No I don’t,” he replied to Foxy’s question. “I just know it was a poison of some kind. My power doesn’t give me much information.”

“🙁”

“Regardless,” the Colonel began, “the three of you did a good job surviving and returning with this information back to base. This has not gone unnoticed.”

“You guys plan on killing that thing?” Alexis, who had stayed silent during their talk, spoke up.

“We’ll have to,” Freddy answered. “What it is doing is called Channeling, a technique that channels all of a realities level into another dimension. If it is allowed to stabilise it, then that piece of reality is stolen away.”

“And the corpse of Kaiju Katie,” Brandy began.

“Has been caught in the radius,” Randy finished.

Aiden glanced at the map, the kaiju just inside the Bleed radius, however, the Gigantes remained just outside.

“Is it the same as a Meta Technique?” he asked.

“It is,” Freddy answered, “it uses the principles of Expansion and Reinforcement, but is very easy to do due to a ‘ride the current’ effect that only appears at the other end of a Gate.”

The Colonel nodded, “We use it as well sometimes to claim land when the Enemy is easy to deal with. Either way, we have to kill it and close the Gate or we’ll lose this section of the Outback.”

He rose to shake their hands, shaking both Jun and Alexis before getting to Aiden.

Who instinctively put out his right arm.

“Ah,” he said, “sorry bout that,” before switching his left.

The Colonel simply nodded in understanding, “Kid, you never need to apologise for a wound taken whilst defending your world.” He turned to Freddy, “Frederic?”

At which point Freddy stood up, “Alright, now let’s go outside, the strategy meetings gonna start. Highly confidential stuff.”

They each stood up and went outside, Freddy following behind them.

Outside, he said to all three of them, “Aiden, how did Jun manage to wake up during that?”

Raising an eyebrow, he began, “I believe I tried the same thing you did. Reinforcing someone else’s Hume with-”

“And you used your power for it didn’t you.”

“-Yes, yes I did,” he admitted.

Freddy sighed, “Should’ve told you this earlier…”

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, eyebrows furrowing.

“Hesavedmylife,” Jun threw in, “He saved my life.”

“No no, you’re not in trouble,” Freddy hurriedly added. “You may have just made a choice without knowing the full implications. I told you before that Manifested have an easier time learning certain Meta Techniques due to their power. What I haven’t told you yet is that doing it this way closes some paths to you.”

Continuing, he said, “Doing a Meta Technique with your Manifested ability is easy. You’ll figure it out after maybe less than a week of trying. But starting this way means you’ll lose the option to do it the way someone like Isaac does it. Without relying on his ability.”

“Is that a bad thing?” Alexis asked.

“Depends, in some cases, you want a Simple Expansion over a True Expansion. Less Hume consumed, won’t damage your allies caught in its area of effect, etc. Starting with your ability to do a Meta Technique stains it forever, you’ll eventually be completely unable to do it the simple and basic way. This means however you use a Meta Technique, it’ll always be stained with your ability, which might not be a good thing.” Freddy looked at Aiden, then at Jun, “If he did a Transfusion on you like this, worst case is that it fucks with your Hume in a way very similar to Bleed. I suspect if he wasn’t new to his ability that was what would’ve happened.”

“Oh,” Aiden replied, genuinely apologetic, “I’m sorry I didn’t know-”

“It’sfine,” Jun quickly added.

“Yeah,” Freddy replied, “it’s fine today, Jun’s own Hume was able to digest your own, and it is fine to learn Meta Techniques this way. Just know that doing so without first exploring the Simple and Basic versions locks them away permanently. You’ll teach yourself a precedent to always default to using your power for a Meta Technique. It’ll be even harder for you to learn a simple technique afterwards.”

“And how would we begin using a simple technique like that?” Alexis asked.

“Same way I told you, strong imagining of how your Hume works on yourself or the world around you. You can use your power to form the basis of how you imagine what your Hume looks like but you can’t use it to activate it,” Freddy said.

“Not only that,” he glanced very quickly at Aiden, so fast only Jun noticed it, “if your power has some cost you’re not willing to pay, sticking yourself on using your power means you’ll have to pay that cost every time.”

“I see,” Alexis, the only person with an eyepatch said.

“Either way understand that it’s a choice which one you’ll do. Plenty of people are gonna tell you they know what’s best for you, but the truth is you’ll have to be the one that decides it. Decide by yourself how you want to pursue it. Your power yields results faster, but you’ll never learn the way to do it as others do. Understand the strengths and weaknesses of each option and pick your own.” Freddy glanced behind him, “I’ll be needed back there soon, find Isaac, he’ll give you a ride back.”

“We’rejustgoingtoleave?” Jun asked.

“Yes!” he emphasized, “because you’re kids in a fucking warzone. You barely survived one encounter with an Invader. Go home, get better, until you can stand here as equals.”

Freddy patted them all on the head before he turned around to enter the tent.

“One last question!” Aiden yelled out.

Freddy turned around.

“Does using your power for one type of a Meta Technique affect the others?”

“Only if you’re mixing it with another. Like Imbuement and Reinforcement for Transfusions. But the effect won’t be as bad if one of them was learnt the hard way.”

“Thank you,” Aiden nodded, “that was all I needed.”

And they left. Finding Isaac in a trance as he tinkered with the aircraft that brought them here. “Well, what are you staring at?” he demanded after apparently finishing, “Get in, we might still make your bedtimes.”

“Ilivealone,” Jun quickly said.

“Me as well.”

“Blyat we all live alone?”

Isaac rolled his eyes, “Right, manifested, tragic backstory, no parents. Of fucking course. ”

“Youdon’tknowIliveabadlife!”

“Just get in, I don’t need a biography right now,” he grumbled.

Jun pulled her eyelid as she sped into the aircraft. Alexis following after her. “And you,” quietly, Isaac grabbed Aiden’s arm, “Know whatever I said in that tent was the delirious ramblings of someone’s mind affected by Frederic’s stupid Hume. Forget. Everything.”

He simply nodded, not really sure how to react.

As the aircraft began hovering into the air, Aiden pulled Jun away from the windows, “Jun, do you remember what I yelled out back against the Invader?”

“Like, thethingyouaskedmetoremindyouabout?”

“Yes.”

“Umm…” she scratched her head, “Somethingaboutfastvenomousblackseacrates? Oh! Anddirewolf! Irememberthat!”

“Yes, I remember dire wolves as well,” he said, having reabsorbed that memory. “But, what was it that I yelled when I lost my hand?”

“Umm…” she furrowed her brow, “Fuckyoufish? Sorrythat’sallIremember.”

“I see,” he replied. Slightly disappointed, even if he expected that result.

Venomous black sea crates and fuck you fish.

He transferred the first to restore her Hume, and the next to poison the Invader in a last-ditch effort to spit in its face.

He knew it was poisonous, because of the same reason he still knew what hopping or hearing was after making a rabbit. Creating an animal doesn’t take all that constituted it, just the memory of the animal itself.

Those two were forgotten to him now, even if he still understands what a snake and fish are, even if he knew what he created those two for, he no longer knew which snake and fish he used then.

He’ll either have to relearn it or…

Like his hand, let it be lost.

And like that, they left Last Stand. The sun just beginning to set in the distance.