AN: BONUS chapter for 300 power stones.
They came home heroes, which Adam found amusing. If they failed to get sector 5 back, they would have been shown as losers.
Eclipse rotated back through the bone gate three days after Zone Five was liberated, and the welcome on the Hub side of it was the kind that made Ren roll her eyes and Lyra preen. The footage had done its work. A guild barely two years old had lost a sector to L7 machines and then taken it back with one man. The rest of the offensive had used the breathing room to take the whole line back to where it started. The board did not care that Adam had nearly emptied himself doing it, it only cared that it was done.
High Command paid him in the currency he actually wanted. Eclipse was granted full salvage rights to Zone Five, everything in it, the three dead giants included, to keep, strip or study as the guild saw fit. No oversight, no quota, no sharing. For a research division that had been begging scraps off the front for a month, it was the keys to a kingdom. Aldyn Tovis nearly wept on the comm when Adam told him. Three borderline-Tier-Seven chassis, a hundred thousand wrecked androids, the cracked husks of five troop-foundries, and a desert's worth of alien metal and biology, all of it shipping back to Floor Twenty-One under Eclipse's seal.
"That's a decade of work you just handed me," Tovis said.
"Then get a decade younger," Adam said. "I want to know how they made a machine that capable, and I want to know it before they bring the next one."
He meant it. Somewhere out past the dust a rival civilization was being fed black technology by a library, and the only way humanity stayed in the fight was to take the enemy's toys apart faster than the enemy could build better ones. The salvage was not a trophy. It was ammunition for a war that had only paused.
But that was tomorrow's problem, and Sage, gently and repeatedly, reminded him that he was allowed to have a today.
So he took a break. An actual one.
For the first time since the gate opened he slept until he woke on his own. He ate food that Lena sent up, and let Henrik talk for an hour about his new toys, listened to Sophie complain that being a Sequence Eight Clown had not, in fact, made the other members stop asking her to read their love lives. Rest of the time he spent with Ren, either sparring or enjoying each other's time.
It was good. It was also, after about a week, quietly unbearable, in the specific way peace always was for a man who had built his whole second life on the certainty that something was coming.
"You're doing the thing," Ren said one evening, not looking up from her book. They were on the couch on Floor Forty, the lights of the Hub block coming on outside the glass. "You look like a man on a failing mission."
"I don't know how to do nothing," he admitted. "Time is ticking."
She marked her page. She knew him too well to argue the point, so she went sideways at it instead. "Then don't do nothing. Do something small. Something that you can control." A pause. "You've still got that token."
He had. The Force Join Token, the last of the three, the one the Boys world had paid out. The others he had spent to reach worlds he needed. This one he had been saving, the way people save a thing precisely because spending it always seemed wrong.
A token that let him pick the world. Any world.
And he found, turning it over in his head that night with the lights low and Ren's weight warm against his side, that he did not want to pick a hard one. He had spent two years picking hard ones. It's time for a different flavour. He wanted an adventure. A world where he can get stronger and it would not affect him in a negative way and he knew exactly which one.
The deployment bay on the morning he left was nearly empty. He had not made an announcement. Ren walked down with him, and this time she did not stop at the line. She stood at his shoulder with the easy look of a woman going on a trip, not to a war.
"You're sure," he said. "It's supposed to be the easy one. You could stay and run the place properly for once."
"Brandt likes running the place. Let him." She bumped his arm. "We haven't done this yet, going on a normal expedition. I want to try it with you, especially since you choose the world."
He huffed a laugh, because she had him there. He turned the token in his fingers, a flat disc of warm Bazaar-stuff that had been burning a hole in his spatial pocket for a year. Group deployment was a simple thing, mechanically, same tier and a hand held at the bay. He had simply never once chosen it.
"Worst case in this one is a sunburn," he said, and took her hand.
"If you say so."
Adam fed the token to the interface and made his choice.
▓ EXPEDITION DEPLOYMENT Force Join Token consumed. Host-selected destination accepted. Companion deployment confirmed: R. Delacroix, contact-bonded at the bay. World: L1-0631. Designation withheld in standard records; flagged host-recognised. Threat baseline: Small. A gentle world. Apex anomalies exist far above baseline and should not be provoked. Dilation: 10:1. Window: 360 days, voluntary extension available.
▓ DEPLOYMENT CONFIRMED Objectives scaled to host tier as a courtesy, not a test. D — Live in the world thirty days. C — Catch your first pokemon. B — Be recognised as a trainer. Earn one badge. A — Break a syndicate moving against the region. S — Stand at the top of the ladder the locals climb. SPECIAL QUEST (replaces ritual) —
1. You are not allowed to use any of your active powers in this world until all objectives completed or 360 days expire. 2. Catch a legendary or mythical creature.
▓ EXPEDITION ACTIVE
The bay dissolved into light, the familiar instant lurch of a Bazaar transit, and then the light turned to sun.
They came out standing in grass up to their knees, side by side.
Grass, green, ordinary and warm, rolling away down a shallow hill toward a fence line and a dirt path and, far off, the white roofs of a small town with a windmill turning lazily over it. The sky was an absurd, uncomplicated blue. Somewhere a bird was singing.
Adam stood in it for a long moment and just breathed. Beside him Ren turned a slow circle, taking in the hills and the windmill and the one lazy bird, and some knot she had carried since the gate broke came quietly loose in her shoulders.
"Oh," she said. "Oh, this is nice."
I got fond memories of this place, he thought, and the recognition came up warm and a little disbelieving, the way meeting an old story in the flesh always did. He knew it the way he had known all of them, in the broad strokes of a life lived watching screens in a world he no longer belonged to. The outlines of it more than the fine print. A starting town behind them. A long first road ahead. Small creatures in the grass that a child could befriend and a champion could ride. Coloured badges and a ladder that climbed toward a hall of four masters and a crown. A red-and-white syndicate that would, eventually, need someone to break it, which the objective board had already flagged in case he got bored.
"Seems pretty peaceful for now," Ren said, looking at Adam as if questioning the statement.
"What? Did you think, that it would rain lava or something? I told you it's a nice and peaceful world."
Ren still looked at him questioningly. "At L5?"
"Well. There are some creatures that can be considered dangerous..." Adam said, scratching his head awkwardly.
"For example some of them control dimensions, time, can revive others, pull continents etc."
Ren squinted her eyes even more. "Aha, and this is a so called peaceful world, no danger at all?"
"Absolutely, you are gonna love it here, I have a feeling about it." She let it go, because the sun was warm and nothing was on fire... Yet.
[ Host, lets not relax. We don't know how the creatures of this world will react to you two. As the worst case everything becomes hostile as soon as they see you. ]
This could be an issue. People here don't have extraordinary abilities. Well most don't.
Down in the grass, something rustled.
It came out a few meters ahead, picking through the stalks without the faintest idea it should be afraid of either of them. A small brown bird, round and rumpled, with a tuft of cream feathers on its head and bright black eyes that fixed on them with total, fearless indignation, as if they were the ones standing in its grass. A Pidgey. He was almost sure it was called a Pidgey. It puffed itself up to twice its size, which took it all the way to the size of a loaf of bread, and made a sound that was clearly meant to be threatening.
"Look Adam, this little guy looks so cute," Ren whispered, delighted. "And it's threatening us."
"I see that."
The man who had defeated three continent-killers with his hands crouched slowly in the grass so as not to scare it, and the woman who could cut the throat off a god crouched down beside him, and the two of them held very still so the little loaf of feathers would not fly away.
"Hey," Adam said quietly. "Easy. We're not going to do anything."
The Pidgey eyed them. It did not leave.
Adam smiled, looking at the little guy, remembering his childhood.
"Can I pet it? Is this one of those dangerous creatures?" Ren asked, looking eager.
"Uh, no it's just a bird. Well a tough little bird. They are called pokemon. People in this world catch them, train them and battle. It's like a sport. To people here pokemon are a way of life, apart from battling they assist humans in their daily lives and also maintain the natural order of the world."
Ren listened carefully. Then she nodded. "OK, I want to catch this guy."
Adam looked at her, then at the Pidgey, then back at her. "Sure, I guess."
Ren smiled. "Ok, tell me what to do?"
"Well, first we need pokeballs. They are containers used to hold your pokemon. You throw the ball at it and if it stays it's caught. This process is a bit more complicated but that's the gist of it. To make it smoother it's good to defeat the pokemon or befriend it first."
Ren looked at the little pokemon again, then she blitzed behind it and knocked it out with a small touch to the head. The pokemon went limp. After she knocked it out she took it in her arms and turned around heading towards the town.
Adam just stared at her like she was some sort of an alien. Ren you should be the one with desecrator title and not me. The world is unfair.
Sighing Adam followed expecting more of such scenes in the future.
[ Host, you read the special mission. Are you going to complete it in this world or wait for the next one? ]
This one definitely, I wanted to do it properly anyway. I don't need the powers to achieve my goals here. We have time and knowledge of the world. Its very doable.
AN: If we get to 300 power stones, I will release an extra chapter on 500, another one. If you wish to support the story and read ahead, visit [email protected]/skeri123