Chương 58: R&R Ch. 58 — Fallout

Nicholas wasn't running on empty, but it was a pretty near thing. He was just barely holding himself together as he dropped the corpse to the ground. He could feel Jasmine nearby and the shock rippling through their bond, but he had told her exactly what was going to happen. And she had agreed. Someone had to do it, and if he wanted to be the one to change the world, he had to be the one to bear that burden, though he had broken one of his own personal rules in the moment.

He had made it impossible to use die as a word with his powers, or so he had thought. But in that moment he hadn't cared; he had made the rules to be difficult to use the word, but that didn't mean he didn't know how to circumvent them. He had written the rules, so he knew how to fill out the qualifications for it, and the word had been powerful. Intoxicating was the other word for it, to feel that power course through him; he genuinely just wanted to go for it again, but he had to be in control.

While he had never planned on using die, there had been a reason it was possible to use if difficult instead of impossible. It was a tool, and the tools he put in the toolbox wouldn't control him; there would be better solutions in other scenarios. One word was not the end all be all of his power.

"I'm good," Nicholas said, turning to Jasmine to see her hovering, though out of immediate range if he wanted to attack her, not that he would do that. Nicholas was critically aware just how wide the gulf was between his physical capabilities and Jasmine's; she would always win.

"Are you sure?" Jasmine asked, not moving closer.

"That word seemed to be a lot."

"It was, but I'm alright now. It was just the moment where it got to my head, besides the rules on how to trigger that word are a pain." Nicholas said, purposefully smiling to hopefully disarm some of the tension.

"Could you tell me the rules of that one? I'm not sure if I'm comfortable if it's easy to fulfill." Jasmine said, and he knew that this was a make or break question for their team. He would have answered regardless.

"Next time we're in the soul forge, I'll explain the conditions for it. Promise." Jasmine breathed a sigh of relief.

"Also, I'm not hugging you until you're clean because this fight was disgusting."

"Totally fair, but first we need to go finish dealing with the people upstairs since there's going to be a snafu about all of this," Nicholas said, looking up. Even if he couldn't see them, he knew they were being watched.

"We'll be fine because anyone who has a problem with our actions can take it up with my family." Jasmine said, raising her voice at the end.

"I thought you didn't want to use family connections?" Nicholas asked, feeling touched. He knew better than anyone outside of Jasmine just how much she didn't want her family interfering, so that she was willing to do that for them was really kind.

"I don't actually want to; dealing with these problems is part of being a hero too. But this is bullshit enough I might make an exception." Jasmine hissed. That made more sense, and because of that, Nicholas knew what they had to do.

"Don't worry about it. We can handle it, but let's go face the music. I'm sure the door's unlocked."

"It better be," Jasmine grumbled as they walked over to the door to find that it was indeed unlocked. And there was an audience waiting for them. LongShot. Rend. And someone neither had met, but both recognized the A-rank in charge of the city Riptide. This was going to be a long meeting.

LongShot relaxed in his chair as soon as Rend and his two wayward disciples were gone. The meeting had been exhausting, and he wasn't going to try and piss off the two kids. His power screamed that they were all but guaranteed to make it past him. Though he hadn't wanted to get his actual boss mad at him either.

"So, what do you think?" Riptide asked, settling into his own chair, a pen spinning through the air around his head. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Rend is still the same, but those two are on a completely different course," LongShot answered easily. Rend was a problem; he had been since he had gone from a weak nobody to someone who could fight up three tiers, and he had a tendency to make that everyone's problem. With him consistently fighting up three tiers without a problem, it made even people like Riptide have to step gingerly around him.

Rend was known for carefully choosing his targets, so it was unlikely he could actually defeat Riptide even with it only being two tiers up instead of three. But known for didn't mean they didn't have evidence of the times he had done far more than that.

"So are they on a crash course for one another?" Riptide asked. That was harder to see.

"I don't think so. I don't think they'll stay together all the way to the end. But I don't think they'll fight either unless they have to." LongShot admitted.

"I want them out of my city as soon as possible. I trust you, LongShot, but I can't have Rend be building a team that is going to try and throw the world into chaos. I joined under Equilibrium's banner because I believe they're right to fix things slowly. Rend has never chased that."

"That's because Rend wants to go beyond the pinnacles." LongShot pointed out. There were always those crazy enough to reach for a height that didn't exist; it just rarely landed in the hands of prodigies who could terrify everyone they met.

"I had thought he would slow down, but the wave proved he was moving just fine. Until we know more, I can't have them jeopardizing our work." Riptide said firmly.

"That's going to be exactly what they want to get the other two onto his same rank," LongShot pointed out.

"Then it's the perfect time to get them out of here, the gulf E to D takes time even for people that speed run, and Retort and Retribution don't seem to be the type to risk destabilization regardless of what Rend tells them." Riptide said. LongShot considered that for a second before nodding.

"I'll put together some various travel plans for them and see where they bite," he said, standing up.

"Make sure to hem and haw when Rend asks to be transferred or travel, since he will think we want to watch him and his team closely." Riptide said before LongShot could leave. That would likely make it easier for him.

"You two should have ranked up already. That fight would have been effortless if you had, and you wouldn't have had to reveal a hidden trump card." Rend said to Nicholas and Jasmine now that the two of them were clean.

"And we told you we're not doing it till our souls are fully stabilized, and if you want to fork over the treatment for it, we'll do it." Nicholas said, nursing the hot chocolate he was holding. Rend rolled his eyes, but he wasn't willing to rehash the argument again.

"I was going to wait until you two were healed, but we're going to be hitting the road soon to travel and get you more karma and belief."

"Why are we leaving now?" Jasmine asked.

"Because they'll want to watch us, so we need to slip out before that's set up."

"And we're leaving now?" Nicholas asked curiously. They could get packed fast, especially if they just threw things into Jasmine's soul, but it wasn't like they were ready to go.

"What? No, we're leaving next week."

"But didn't you say we had to go fast?"

"We have to move faster than the speed of bureaucracy, which means we have time to get everything in order before we go." Rend said, as if it were painfully obvious.

"If we leave too fast, wouldn't that mean they have the watch ready by the time we get back?" Jasmine pointed out. Rend looked at her as if she had something brilliant.

"We'll just move bases instead. It's not like I can't just buy a second one, and when I find a good teleporter genius, we can travel back and forth." Nicholas ignored the two as he stared up at the ceiling. Travel would be fun, but it also meant he wasn't going to have a chance to have his space the whole time; it had only recently started to feel like the base was his space. It was going to be annoying.

By the time he zoned back into the land of the living the conversation seemed to be done and Rend had vanished to who knows where, while Jasmine was in the kitchen getting a snack.

"I'm going to try and shower off the miasma of the day and then get something to eat," Nicholas said, standing up and giving Jasmine a wave.

"Tomorrow, since we have the day off, do you want to go out on a date with me?" Jasmine called as he was rounding the corner. His first instinct was to say no along with the next one, but his brain eventually caught up with him. But it had been his idea to try the whole dating thing, so he couldn't say one thing and act the other, and he was only feeling prickly because he was irritated. Nicholas could be an adult about his feelings enough to realize that.

"I'm not sure about tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty wrung out, but yeah, I would like to go on a date sometime soon." Nicholas said, trying to strike a balance between what he should do and what he wanted. And he genuinely wanted to try; otherwise, he never would have brought it up.

"How about we hang out tomorrow and maybe on the first stop on our road trip we do a proper date? That way we both have some time to mentally reset after that," Jasmine said, putting it quite delicately in Nicholas's estimation. That had been a lot. He had murdered Beyonders on mass in the last two weeks, but today was the day that he had taken his first human life, and it had been as easy as a conversation for him.

He had barely had to move, just puppeting himself with various workings, and the end had just been him talking. Nicholas wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not, but he mostly right now didn't want to think about it, so he stepped into the shower, enjoying the hot water blasting him from all directions. He actually for the most part, wasn't that filthy. But purple soul flames leave a certain residue on everything that he didn't want to have coating him anymore.

Likely they would just destroy that costume because there was certainly no salvaging it unless he spent the time to make power word clean. Nicholas made a mental note of that one. It would be super useful to clean things up and he could probably use it on injuries to clean out infection before he tried to use recover. It hadn't been a problem for him so far since he was a super and was resilient, but there was always the chance something like that was necessary.

Tomorrow, even if they did go on the date, Nicholas was going to have to tell Jasmine the rules for die. And he was going to also make another rule for himself. Book wouldn't hold a work like that. Not ever.