Scarlet picked Bec’s unconscious body up from the dead man and threw her up and over her shoulder. “Up you go! You did good, kid. Black was a meanie implying you couldn’t handle yourself. You are capable.” She whispered in Bec’s ear, sticking her special training device to her protégé’s head. “You are focused.”

Black and Scarlet vacated the area in moments. Running far faster than Bec could have ever kept up with, they ran for a few hours on their own. Black had anticipated a situation like this in his document Possible Outcomes for Bec’s Crossing of the Suburbs. In it, he suggested that, if Bec was rendered unconscious, the optimal course of action was to have the group carry her farther in. She was in tremendous danger every moment she spent in the Suburbs, so they would have to trudge on without her. The second Bec slept, the second they’d keep her under and hurry towards their destination. They didn’t want to tell her that or she’d have pushed herself even harder. She was just not ready for the Suburbs. People trained for decades only to die on their first excursion.

Scarlet tutted to herself in the night. She was going to turn Bec into a true tour de force in the city. Gray, the endless! Scarlet, the eternal… Purple, the lucky tag-along. Bec had shifted the balance of power on Dust just by giving Scarlet the means to live wild and risky. She felt the small phone on her belt bounce as she bolted through the streets and alleys in an advanced anti-tailing pattern. Black followed her lead tightly, much to Scarlet’s chagrin. While his skills made that… inevitable… it still made Scarlet’s teeth clench a tiny bit tighter at the thought of how easy he read her. Black was as much a monster as Bec, but the terrifying part was that he simply wouldn’t admit it to himself.

There was a pale, corpse of a man just standing there in the middle of the road and she skidded to a stop. Scarlet probably would have seen the man sooner had she not caught the distracting bug of thought that Bec seemed to be chronically inflicted with. Distractions could kill. Turning the corner, she found herself on a frighteningly poorly lit street.

“Black, 114, 300, 1000. B.” Black heard the preplanned rendezvous code indicating that they would split and reconvene at the location she just described. He always heard her, so she need not check. She tried to jump away to a rooftop, but her teleportation was… short? It didn’t work right, as she only moved a few feet which made her stumble a little bit. Damn, it’s like being a teen again, she thought. Black had already disappeared into an adjoining alleyway.

“Don’t run.” A cough followed the words from the man in the street. “The girl. She is like me.”

“So what?” Scarlet was stalling to look for exits.

“Tsssk tsssk tsssk. A fly does not ask what the spider needs them for. I will take the girl. I like her.” He wobbled a bit and started shuffling toward Scarlet.

This is bad. Reeeeallly bad. Scarlet bit her lip. She suddenly couldn’t move well. She didn’t even need to take a step to know this. She felt her limbs slowly become sluggish and heavy. She released spindles of Fabric to push back the man’s advance, but they dwindled and she lost control of them.

The weight of Bec on her shoulder was starting to drag. Her Shoulder! Bec shouldn’t even have been on the register. Slinging Bec off her shoulder and flopping her on the ground, Scarlet sighed. Placing her hand on her fledgling student’s head, she thought out loud, “Survive, Bec. Survive.” Turning to the slowly approaching emaciating man, she sighed again, louder. “I cannot believe this grotesque man managed to ensnare me! What is this Word? Illness? Sickly?”

The man wheezed out a laugh. “Grotesque? I have feelings you know.”

Scarlet harumphed. “Not any worth considering… considering the circumstances.” She chucked a blade in his direction. This technique had gotten much more deadly over the months as she slowly mastered the art of just placing the blade in people at a distance. The first blade didn’t move as far as she expected but she quickly adjusted with her second and third blade. Her opening move failed resoundingly. The blades dissolved into dust as they pierced the man’s clothes and made contact with his skin.

“That tickled.”

Ignoring his mockery, Scarlet pulled out a ball from her back pouch, wrist sagging from the weight.

The man cocked his head curiously as he continued his approach. He watched as she twisted the two halves of the orb to activate it. Suddenly, the ball in her hand turned into a fluid. “Mmm, what is that?”

“Stomach acid. Yours.”

“That’s unpleasant.” He burped. With a hollow-sounding btoom, a plume of smoke poured out of his mouth, and he fell to his knees.

“Ouch. Yuck.” He coughed and shuddered. “I’m going to need surgery to get that stuff out now.”

“I’m sorry, honey. People usually die when I do that.” Scarlet looked disappointed as he dried her hand. This movement further drained her and, knees wavering, she fell to her hands and knees. Bec lay by her side, still out cold. “Bec, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me you’re out of tricks already?”

“Please come closer and find out.” Scarlet was barely holding herself up now. The man weakly pulled himself up to his feet and began shambling again. Closer and closer. Damn, he really doesn’t seem concerned. Worse, he’s focusing on Bec, not me! Scarlet fell on her stomach, totally unable to move now.

“Come here, my pretty.” He reached out for Bec, leaning precariously over to touch her face.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Scarlet gritted her teeth, unable to move. “BEC!”

A flash. An explosion. The man was blasted back, skidding a few feet with smoke emanating from singed hair. Scarlet subdued the light to an extent, letting her see a dark outline of someone glowing in the epicenter. Bec was up?

As quickly as the light appeared, it vanished, revealing Bec standing there, if what she was doing could even be considered standing. Her head and limbs seemed to dangle like a marionette with no puppeteer. She quickly pulled herself together and began to move in a regimented way as the smoldering man just curiously watched. Bec flexed her right knee, bending it shakily, as the wound steamed. She flapped her hands. Clenched her fists. Slowly, she seemed to regain some kind of lost dexterity as she stretched.

The man tilted his head. “That is odd. You are soooo weak… like me. I sense it on you. Yet here you are? Awake, fighting? I don’t understand.”

Bec said nothing.

“Ah, I see. You are stil—”

Bec replied in a neutral tone. “Yes.”

With a hacking cough, he continued, “That may be a problem. I don’t think I can eff—”

“You can’t affect Bec right now. Your weakness cannot affect humans on a physical level. Only mentally. Odd. I was under the impression that physical contact was crucial to mental manipulation.”

“I try my bes—” The pallid man got gutted, interrupting his response. Scarlet watched as Bec was in his face in an instant and striking him. Scarlet gaped as Bec fought with precision and tactics. A punch to the shoulder was paired with an ankle strike. A subtle strafe as she engaged cross strikes to prevent him from turning while she angled towards his back. These were counter-Word strikes. They were meant to make it difficult for people to apply their touch range powers on the person by multi-striking, only hitting through clothes, and breaking sight lines.

The man tried to lash out, whirling blindly, with a swinging punch, but his form was terrible. Bec not only redirected the attack but seemed to amplify its kinetic energy causing him to overextend himself unintentionally. A rapid and decisive blow to the inside of his grounded leg forced him down onto his hands and knees. A swing of her leg met his gut with such an impact that the dust shook off the road even around Scarlet’s distant spectating. The man was slung over the nearby buildings with a crash.

“We have to go. None of my empowered hits could hurt him. I was wrong, he can influence physical blows on a near skin level. I did everything I could to delay him. He is Black’s problem now. Also, he seems to be very radioactive, Scarlet. Get yourself checked when we make it to the City. Just like Bec only much, much more powerful. I don’t even know if you’re safe.” Bec quickly offered her hand to Scarlet while a rapid-fire info dump flew out of her mouth. Finally, a question. “How did he overpower your mental faculties?”

With strained breath, Scarlet pulled herself up without the help of Bec. “I was… never great at resisting mental Words. I—” She took in a deep breath to collect herself. “I usually just overpowered them, in response. He really used mental skills at range, huh. I’m sorry, I should have realized. How did you…”

“I don’t know. The only reason I—I—I—” Bec gave a full-body twitch and collapsed on the ground like the strings on her puppet were suddenly cut.

Scarlet was pretty dumbstruck, but she was a professional first and foremost. She reached over, verifying a pulse on Bec. Once she confirmed that Bec hadn’t just died, Scarlet picked up the body and ran towards the rendezvous point.