Gaia’s philosophy concerning life and all things significant had changed as of late.

Instead of trying to impose her will upon the world around her, which tended to end in agony for all parties involved not including her of course, she began to move with the flow. It’s why she didn’t mind Kara wasting her entire fortune trying to kill a miniature god that just wanted to eat some trees.

It’s also why, much to the surprise of the people down the staircase of the Purple Anvil, Gaia’s head bounced off the last step of the concrete stairs and had her body roll onto the disco floor.

To their ignorant brains, she had tripped and fell, but what actually happened was that Gaia went with the flow. While the other suckers spent precious time and Energy going down each individual stair, Gaia had commanded gravity to move her body for her.

“So really,” she explained, looking up to the disco lights. “Gravity is my bitch.”

People pushed each other back as they tried to get away from her. Someone ended up falling. Gaia tilted her head towards him. It was as if she stuck the crowd. A circle instantly was made around him as people stepped away. The poor dude looked at them and scuttled back.

“Johnny Boy!” she said, freezing him in place. He slowly turned around his head. He had a white mask on with a squiggly around the right eye.

He pointed at himself with shaking hands. “Yes, you—you need to relax, friend,” Gaia said, tilting the bottle. A beautiful dark red fell out of her wine bottle into her mouth. She offered it to him and he looked at it. “Why the fright boy?”

“Y-you hurt people that annoy you, and I don’t want to annoy you,” he said quietly.

“Ya see,” she said, raising the bottle towards him. “That annoyed me, but I didn’t hurt you. Aren’t I nice?”

“Y-yeah,” he squealed. “Nice.”

“Nice,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “And since you’re nice, and am nice, and that is especially nice,” Gaia said, pointing at someone’s thighs that had caught her eye, “How about you do me a favor and drag me to our dear bartender over there?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said, standing up.

“Did I say you could stand?”

He froze. He lowered himself to the ground, making Gaia laugh. “Oh, I’m just messing with you silly. How are you going to drag me if you’re on the ground too?” She stretched her hand to him. “Come on Johnny boy, put those beautiful muscles to use.

He stepped carefully towards her. He held her by the cuff of her coat. The crowd watched him curiously, parting behind him as he slowly dragged her across the floor.

“Uhm, here we are ma’am,” he said.

“Oh good,” Gaia said, getting to her feet. She wrapped a hand around his shoulder and helped him walk away. She nudged the bottle against his chest. “All yours bud. Scurry along now. Say hey to your mum for me.”

“T-Thank you,” he said, taking the empty bottle.

She slapped his butt, causing him to jump into the air with a yelp. She clicked her tongue as he ran away. “People are so sensitive nowadays.”

“Everyone is sensitive to electrocution.”

Gaia jumped back onto the stool behind her. It spun around to face the counter towards her one and favorite disco ball. He was a bubbly bear as wide as he was tall. His suit was made of 28 squares that went from his toes to his smooth oval head. They flashed in different rhythms that supposedly mirrored the chemical reactions happening inside his brain.

“Ibo!” Gaia yelled, jumping off the stool towards him. She slipped her legs under his armpits and wrapped her body over his head. He was cool to the touch. The lights pierced through her body, turning her into all sorts of fun colors. “Why has it been so long!”

“Gaia!” he said, his voice infused with a bright electronic tone. He sounded more machine than man, something Gaia greatly appreciated in him. He wrapped his giant arms around her and squeezed her back. “It pains me to not be in your presence, but it pains me more to be within.” He caught her by the arm pits and lifted her up, the squares on his face shifting into a smile. He sat her down on the counter. “I do enjoy what you offer to the table, but dear you are terrible for business.”

“Oh really?” Gaia said, raising her eyebrows at him. She stood up on the stool and kicked the counter, tipping the entire thing back onto two legs. She set her foot down up and made it curve to the other two legs. Her other foot slid back and the stool tipped towards the other edge. The tricky game of balance gave her an itching to surf again. She clapped her hands together, causing lighting to explode into thousands of different blue sparks. “Everybody, buy a drink!”

“That’s extortion,” Ibo said. “Not helpful.”

“Blah, never mind! Nobody buys drinks!” she yelled, putting a pause to their skuttling. They skittered back in uncertainty. She waved them off and rested her cheeks on the counter. The concussion of different drinks spilled and colorful powders sniffed from it over the years had permanently itched into the wood as a pleasant acidic smell. “I got questions.”

“And that’s blackmail,” Ibo said, clapping his hands together and pointing them at Gaia. “Why didn’t you just ask—you didn’t even need to do it nicely! I would have taken, Ibo, my favorite disco ball, I got questions.”

“Would you be answering to me if the threat of immense pain wasn’t behind every word I spoke?”

His head shun red. “Of course not. You think I’m a push over?” He popped upon a champagne bottle. He poured a glass for him and for her. “I don’t who or what the Daughter Of the Deep is. She appeared yesterday out of nowhere, and the world been going crazy ever since—crazier than usual! Last update is a Howl on Summit 23, Bronze Fields. They say she’s fighting the Deep. Others say she’s conspiring with it to destroy the 3rd City like she destroyed the 4th.”

“Isn’t that expensive info?” Gaia said.

“What?” Ibo said, his mask becoming a flashing question mark. “You kidding? The whole city knows already. Someone revealed the Iron House’s Howl frequencies—the main and the back-up.”

“Good to know, but I’m dealing with a different fiasco. Use your fancy machines to look up a dude with a buzz cut, a cute butt, and that’s slightly shorter than me.”

“The whole world is going to change, possibly end as we have our first and final City War, and you’re not interested?”

“Nope!” Gaia said, raising her glass. “Cheers to not giving a fuck!”

“Cheers!” he said, clicking his glass against hers. He set it down without drinking. “And I’m going to need more information than that.”

Gaia groaned. “Your search system is terrible.”

“Try keywords that are slightly more objective.”

“I can’t be not objective. I am the objective. How is iding people according to buttock structure not a thing yet?”

“My information gathering system—”

“Surveillance,” Gaia said, taking a sip.

“Allows me to search for any person, or thing, in the city, inter-connecting every suit to create a supercomputer that spans for the entire range of the city— I would hope you would forgive me for it not being able to assist you in finding a date.”

“Blah,” Gaia said, waving him off. His radio transmitters were one trillionth of what a supercomputer actually was, but those were just numbers. Ibo wouldn’t know about them. “If butts aren’t in your equations, then you obviously don’t understand the human condition. Look up anyone that lost an arm and is connected to the Iron house.”

“24 in the past 5 years.”

“Include the stuff I mentioned.”

“Slightly taller than you?”

“I said slightly lower.”

“No results for lower, but I do have two for slightly taller.”

“Huh,” Gaia said, tipping the drink at him. The pink liquid swished around in the glass towards the edge. Three drops went over. Gaia turned the glass around and licked them before they slid down. “See. That’s two mistakes already. Guess your supercomputer sucks.”

“The Screwdriver and the Undying.”

“Undying—of course.”

“Of course. His parents died in the 4th Fall, but he ended up winning the youth Gauntlet three years ago, one of the few Rats to ever do so,” Ibo said. “I know, I know—youth and the underground, doesn’t really seem like a good mixture, but it’s the best place to learn for them. Sometimes even Rankers volunteer there to help the younger ones out in the training facilities, and even in matchups that are obviously skewed towards one side, the expectation is to go easy enough so that your opponent may learn. Wonderful place, really. I’ve been wanting to—”

“Uh-uh,” Gaia said, pointing her finger at Ibo. He raised his hands up, the colors on his mask freezing. She tapped her finger against the counter and he continued.

“The reward was a Blank Card and entrance to the 40th Game. Previous winners always became Ascended, so there were lots of expectations on this one—but hear this. The skill he got? A healing skill! It would have been amazing it he wasn’t a Transmuter-Manipulator, or if he hadn’t trained his entire life to be a frontline.”

The red vanished, leaving a single green square in the dark blue. “So he entered his first coliseum against a Rank III Iron House member called Arxon. He had Life Shield, Fire Barrier, and Fire Blast.” Ibo’s face light orange. “Would you like to see the fight? It only lasted a few seconds.”

“A Gauntlet winner versus some spoiled kid with that boring build? Pass.”

“But—”

“Ah,” Gaia said, raising up. “Are we talking about butts again? Because, whatever it is we were talking about before, it really wasn’t doing it for me.”

“You asked,” he said, tilting his head.

“Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?” she lowered her cheeks to the table. Finding out why the Locust was attached to that kid might give her some insight on what nonsense Devi was up to this time. “So where were we? Our dude wiped the floor with the other dude?”

“Literately!” Ibo said, jumping forward. His hand crashed against the counter and sent splinters flying. “Arxon’s head melted in the blue flames before the ref could step in—oh—oh the screams of them both, one in wrath and one in agony, created a duet of both sides of the human condition, and the crowd’s silence as it transpired, the brief moment in which it took their rusty minds to realize the improbable had happened, and the roar of the kid that followed it as he stood past the fires, so primitive and raw as his skeleton regrew its flesh in front of our eyes, empty of any ulterior motivation but survival and supremacy, and the earth shaking bellowing that the crowd answered with, it was…It was art,” he said, panting. “His brain melted. Some suspect he's the first true immortal to come back from true death.”

“You watched a low stake fight like that?” Gaia said.

“Only two ways that fight can go, Gaia, and it went exactly the way I hoped it would. A Rat killing a Ranker in that manner had numerous ramifications. There’s been more talk about taking Rats off the streets to train them becoming Rankers, and more talk to make sure they don’t.” His squares split into four colors. “There are four sides to—”

Gaia pointed her finger. Ibo reacted perfectly by not talking nor moving—the later was of course not required but appreciated. Movement was distracting.

That part is interesting. If it caught Ibo’s eyes, then it might have caught Devi’s. That annoying woman did have a knack for finding troublesome brats. “So his arm melted in that fire?”

Ibo didn’t respond. Gaia smiled and lowered her finger.

“Yes,” Ibo said, unfreezing.

“Why?” Gaia asked.

The squares formed into a question mark. “What do you mean why?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “What happened to the kid.” She took the champagne from him and started drinking.

“On accounts of not being able to fight with one arm, he vanished from the scene. “He’s been working at some bookstore Rob’s Lost Tombs in between block 271 and 270 ever since. He spends weeks in there without returning home. Want to hear a few more interesting notes?”

“It’s what I live for,” Gaia said, setting the bottle down.

“The Iron House burned his older brother in revenge. They were planning on evicting the entire family, but I do believe they’re holding a baby hostage.”

Gaia chuckled. “What?”

“They have a history of adopting children though, they got a Rat from the 4th Fall too, so they couldn’t be called out on it. That has put the Iron House in a very tough position.”

Gaia tipped her glass, smiling. “I think I might want to meet this guy’s family a visit.”

“Block 293 room 2314.”

Gaia stood up, taking her stool and the bottle with her. She kicked open the door to the backstairs and went up. Knowing what the hell Devi’s motivation was would have made everything so easy to understand.

But no, Gaia thought, kicking open the door to the roof. Everything needs to be a pain. The sun greeted her. She placed her stool in the center. Maybe I should have taken my sword back.

She placed her hand out and flicked her fingers. Oh well, I guess I made a slight mistake. Nothing that couldn’t be solved. All she had to do was kill that hot lunatic. She was the second unknown variable in this mess, and arguably the most dangerous.

Getting rid of her will guarantee everything will return to the way it used to.

“Uh,” she said, looking up. “Hello?” The Deep should have reached Kara by now. Either she was dead and the sword was going to return to Gaia, or the sword would return with her and her silly gang on it. In either case—

Gaia narrowed her eyes. It was hard to see in the sunlight, but something bright bronze skid over the walls, vomiting out wires and metal as it spun towards the sky.

“Huh,” Gaia said. The bottle slipped out of her fingers. She caught it with her toes and flicked it back to her hand. “What a head-butt.” Now if something like that impacts the earth? It would probably make a 20-mile crater, destroying all the cities and sending earthquakes across the lands and oceans, a little hello to any life that might have existed on the other side of the world, and then a goodbye, because nothing on the surface was going to survive.

The mountain slowed down at the edge of the stratosphere, but instead of continuing in an upside U pathway, it returned the way it came from.

“Oh-oh-oh!” Gaia jumped to her stool. She pointed her finger at the mountain, tracing its trajectory as it went below the walls. When her fingers reached the ground she flicked them up as if she fired a bolt. Thunder cracked in the distance. After a delay, the white walls shook and cracked, tossing massive chunks tumbling down. Every other building followed suit as a strong gust of wind sent Gaia flying back in laughter.

She landed on her back as her stool flew right above her head, smashing against the door and breaking into pieces.

“Girl still got it,” Gaia said to the sky with gasping breath. “But then again,” she thought, sitting up with crossed legs. She poured the last drops of the bottle in front of her. “You did make me.”