Chapter 45: World’s slowest slapstick routine

After an impromptu seminar on rappelling, and halfway through Mato tying the harnesses and securing the rope, Cy finally speaks up revealing that he knows a spell called [Featherfall] that limits downward momentum to a very small maximum by adding magical resistance.

Izzy throws a bug leg at him.

“Why didn't you start with that?!”

“Cuz— I dunno, something feels off about using it at a near vertical drop! It's usually for catching yourself falling outta the air! Plus, it's super weird tryna walk with it active. You can raise your foot just fine but lowering your foot takes a second, so you wind up tripping in slow motion.”

“Wait, so can you just like, jump out of a plane without a parachute?” Demarcus asks Cy.

“Technically anyone can. Once. But yeah, I can do that pretty safely— so long as I don't lose concentration.”

Mato keeps tying off the ropes, looking up and remarking to the group.

“We oughta test it first. Isabella's leg’s hurt, someone’ll have to carry her down. Not confident on doin’ that unsecured.”

Cy stands with a shrug.

“Alright. I can go down and see what's up, then you can toss the rope down and I'll climb back up for the rest of you.”

Demarcus starts tying his armor back on from where he beat out the inward dents.

“I'm coming with. No one goes alone.”

“Sounds good. Buddy system.” Mato says, pulling out a torch from his bag of holding as Cy rolls his eye.

He holds the head of the torch against the flickering fire of Cy’s [Light] spell, and blinks, surprised when he pulls it out untouched.

Cy laughs and Mato sighs as Cy gets up, claps him on the shoulder, and pinches the torch causing it to ignite.

“Need a light, old man?”

Mato watches Cy walk back to the pit the juvenile Crawler Queen burrowed out of, and mutters to himself, grouchily.

“Just got used to smartphones and touchscreens and now there's magic too.”

Demarcus rushes to stand with Cy at the pit edge, and gives him a small wave of the hand to show he's ready.

Cy splays his fingers on one hand and begins moving it slowly downward, bringing it back up quickly, and floating it down again. Demarcus feels an odd pressure coming from beneath him, hitting the bottom of every part of his body.

“Alright, [Featherfall] is on us. Don't move too much, just give it a quick test by raising and lowering your leg.”

Demarcus lifts his leg, knee coming up, and as he releases the tension to lower it, he overbalances and nearly topples over, instinctually spreading his weight back onto the descending leg.

His foot lowers towards the ground at a rate just shy of half a foot per second. Even when he puts his weight on it fully, he just finds an odd tension in his muscles and can almost support himself stepping on the air.

“Woah!” He shouts, twisting forward and back, constantly losing his balance and tipping, overcorrecting each direction as any movement downward is slowed and limited but any movement up or to the side is not.

He eventually finds his footing, giggling, as Cy slowly walks to the very lip of the pit, explaining.

“It helps to manually slow your other movements. We're gonna jump into the pit, so slowly squat,—”

Demarcus follows Cy’s movements as Izzy and Mato watch on.

“—lean forward, and kick off like normal.”

Cy leans, slowly tips over, and kicks off the ledge shooting up into the air over the pit.

Demarcus follows suit, kicking off, and the two of them leap over the mouth of the pit, suddenly stopping and drifting down after they hit the apex of their arcing jumps.

Demarcus makes little noises of joy, awkwardly pinwheeling his arms and laughing as he floats downward. Cy, laying flat in the air and slowly drifting, cracks a pained and nostalgic smile, and laughs along with him.

Mato smiles as he watches on, and Izzy can't make up her mind on whether or not to look down on the boys playing around in a serious situation, sulking about her wounded leg, or genuinely appreciating a fleeting moment of joy.

Mato pats her on the shoulder, and assures her.

“We'll get our turn soon. That really is… Magic.”

Izzy sighs, but a sadistic smile creeps over her face as she looks back, and chuckles.

“Maybe we don't want one.” She says, pointing at Demarcus.

It was near impossible to notice at first, falling as slow as they are, but as Cy sinks past the tunnel opening, Demarcus drifts ever closer to the opposite side, having jumped clear over the pit.

He wriggles, watching his slow descent.

“Uh-oh. Ngh, Cy? Cy!”

Cy falteringly twists midair, trying to see.

“Ya overshot it! Kick off the ledge a bit when ya reach it!”

Demarcus nods slowly, and as he nears the lip of the pit, kicks out his leg, mistiming it due to the spell slowing his kick. His first leg misses, hitting the wall inside the tunnel, while his other stays over the lip of the rock, his ankle acting as a lever to change the direction of his limited momentum as he pushes off the wall, and begins slowly spinning.

Cy lays on his back mid-air watching Demarcus spin. He laughs, and shouts up to his friend.

“You'll be fine!”

“I'm gonna puke!”

Cy keeps laughing as they drift downwards— right up to the point where his heels touch the edge of something hard and the angle of his descent shifts.

Cy lifts his legs even further into the air and raises his head. Peering between his knees he watches the stone wall of this tunnel slowly approaching, an inch at a time.

Right, he thinks, it's a nearly vertical drop.

Slowly, oh so slowly, Cy’s lower half raises into the air above him as his torso and head fall faster, comparatively. His feet dangle in the air above him, and he can kick them around during his slow fall, but anytime he tries to bring them down to right himself, he fails, and he lacks the core strength to do a midair sit-up. His head slowly floats towards the rocky wall, and his face is smeared against the stone, his lip catching against an angled edge, as the weight of his body above him is added a pound at a time.

He flips and continues falling as he hears laughter from above him, only to twist and find Demarcus, still spinning, pointing at Cy getting his just desserts. His laughter cuts off quickly as the heavyset man— in armor— smacks against the stone in slow motion and rebounds off of it.

As Cy’s hands scrabble against the stone, just before his boots hit the back of his head, he laments his decisions, and looks down to see the remaining 90 or so feet.

Mato and Izzy peek over the lip of the tunnel, responding to the sounds of grunts, shouts, laughter, and smushed faces, and watch the world's slowest slapstick routine.

Cackling and howling resounds from the two above as Cy and Demarcus fall ass over teakettle, nothing permanently damaged— save their pride— from the slow rate of descent, but the way their bodies are forced to twist as magic and gravity bats them about is certainly painful.

Unheard jeers bounce past Cy’s ears as he tries to contort himself into a cannonball position, thanking the Great Work that he received [Pain-focused Casting] and hadn't lost concentration on [Featherfall] on the way down.

Though he still debates turning it off early, doing the math on what height they could survive without major injury, just to end the humiliation.

And to keep Mato and Izzy from dying of laughter.

The gentle, dancing fingers of magical firelight brush against green and silver as the colors float gently, nearing the bottom of this forgotten pit beneath the earth. The [Light] spell tickles off them, glinting teasingly off the stained metal of plate armor. One of the floating figures opens its eye to recognize how close they are, and makes a decision.

Two bodies slam against the stone floor with a clatter, a squish, and a crunch. Demarcus pries himself off the floor, spitting out the unwelcome foreign taste that smacked into his lips as he kissed the stone. Something blocks his mouth and half his sight as he sees only grey, black, and flickering orange from one eye. He twists his askew helmet and smears the goop in his mouth and inside the helmet along his cheek. He sputters and spits, clanks his way to kneeling, and his eyes widen as he recognizes the pulped insect body of a crawler beneath him.

Demarcus stands quickly, thrusting out his right hand to summon his crowbar to him, and winces as he hears the clanging of it flying down the hundred foot tunnel above them. He takes in his surroundings.

A shimmering wall of magical fire blocks his view in front of him, and Cy kneels to his right, hand outstretched towards the fire, focused. Demarcus leans to peak around the wall, and Cy shouts.

“Don't!”

Demarcus pulls back, and begins to ask “Wha—”

Before his crowbar clocks Cy upside the head with a sound like a gunshot.

A flickering barrier of fire appears around Cy’s head, an inch off the skin, as he is sent sprawling. The crowbar's impact against it was answered with an explosion of sudden heat, the spot where it hit is bright orange, fading to yellow, then white, and then invisible further away.

The sudden jolt and being thrown to the floor breaks his concentration and the wall of fire in front of Demarcus disappears. His crowbar slams into his hand and is quickly forgotten and thrown aside as Demarcus kneels next to Cy, spouting apologies.

“Shit! I'm so sorry! Your head?!”

“Demarcus look ou—” Cy begins, rolling on the floor after a second recovering from his daze.

“Oh.” He says, looking not at Demarcus but further into the room.

“I guess it really was out of ammo.”

Demarcus follows Cy's gaze, and with the wall of fire gone, sees the rest of the room.

Above them, in the top corner of this square room, is what can only be described as a mounted machine-gun turret, pointing directly at the closest living thing; Cy.

With Demarcus standing still, the clanking of his armor abated, and the clanging of his crowbar over, a faint sound finally registers to his helmeted ears.

Click-click-click-click-click-click-cl—

The fast-paced and rhythmic noise widens Demarcus' eyes as he recognizes the sound of a gun with no ammo trying to fire. And judging by the speed of it, if it had ammo, they'd be mince-meat by now.

Demarcus ignores it once he recognizes it not as a threat, and turns back to Cy. He reaches quickly towards his friend's hair, then pulls back as his fingers near the flickering and fading flame around Cy’s head. He charges on, grabbing his friend by the head, and pulling the hair aside, trying to see the wound through the fire.

“Ow, ow. Quit it” Cy says, smacking Demarcus’ wrist.

“I'm fine. I've got a passive skill that takes high velocity impacts and magic for me. No slow impacts though, otherwise that fall woulda been more pleasant. And no one would be able to touch me.”

Demarcus helps Cy stand, and they hear Mato call down to them, his voice a bellowing worry.

Cy shouts back up that they're alive, but to hang tight. When he's not quite loud enough and Mato can't hear him, he starts again before giving up with a sigh, gesturing to Demarcus, and Demarcus shouts it up for him, far louder.

Cy stares at the turret as Demarcus looks around them.

They're in a rectangular room, more like a decorative stop along a longer hall than an actual room. An alcove. It's not as obvious, because to either side of them where there might have been a hall is instead just unearthed and torn apart stone, the beginnings of a hive-like structure is visible in the edges of resin and bio-structures in the dark. All around them are the minced and shot up bodies of crawlers. In front of them, beneath the turret, is a metal door. Simple, rounded at the top, but shorter than expected.

Oddly, the left hall is also shorter than expected. Not enough to force you to duck, but Demarcus notices his head would only be a few inches from the ceiling if he were to walk into the hall out from under the pit. Where the hall continues to the right, however, away from the signs of insect infestation, the ceiling is far higher.

Beside the door, set into the wall, is a metal placard above a glass pane set into the wall. The glass is dark, displaying nothing, while the placard has a strange foreign script on it made of standardized lines arranged in different shapes to represent characters. There is an oddly shaped shallow hole beneath the black glass window. There are similar glass panes set into the walls of the alcove to the right of the opening to the hall on either side of them.

“Dwarvish.” Cy says, pointing at the metal placard.

“I— never really learned it. Or a translation spell, cuz all the spells I've learned were in— nevermind. But this character is the prefix that means the thing being described is in charge of the word that follows.”

He turns to call back up the pit to Mato, and stops as his eye catches something. Demarcus follows, turning to see the much wider and taller door— or at least the right half of a double door— taking up most of the wall. Demarcus stares in, trying to make out shadows in the dim light, while Cy examines the remnants of the other metal door beneath their feet.

“So, do we call them down now or see what's in the spooky room first?” Demarcus asks.

Cy leans towards the room, taking a step, before stopping and sighing.

“I really wanna know— but this is supposed to be your adventure. I'm supposed to let you do everything yourselves. So, probably tell Mato the bottom's clear. Or— up to you.” Cy says, sounding tired and disappointed to Demarcus.

Demarcus likes to say he's not the brightest, but he picks up on the little signs with people. Especially when it comes to his brothers.

“Supposed to?” Demarcus asks. “Doesn't that kinda imply you're being told what to do? What, is it the book?”

“I told you, I don't have that book.” Cy answers, curtly.

“Then what? You hate being told what to do. What happened?” Demarcus asks, watching Cy closely for the little signs.

Cy grits his teeth, then relaxes, running a hand through his shorter hair.

“It's easier when it's myself telling me what to do. Will you just call them down?”

“Nah, man. I—” Demarcus begins.

“Yo! Y'all are good to come down! The bottom is clear, but there's a dungeon down here!” Cy yells, cutting him off.

Demarcus glares, and lightly smacks Cy on the shoulder with the back of his hand.

“Don't be a dick. I'll drop it, but I'm your fuckin friend man. Your brother. You don't need to hide shit from me.”

Cy doesn't even look at him, arms crossed looking up into the pit above them. Pouting, like he does.

Demarcus lets it lie, but can't help but wonder, worriedly, just how long Cy went without them. How long has it actually been since Cy entered this world? And what the hell made him so damn different?

He thinks about this as Mato rappels down the pit, Izzy holding onto his front, guitar in his bag and injured leg extended in the air.

It's the obvious things like the way Cy dresses now, in the greens and browns, the new scars— but it's also in the little things.

The way he holds himself, that same cocky confidence that no one can hurt him in a way that matters— but less of a front, less to prove. The way he distances himself, he always put up walls thinking he was too smart, that he was too different, too broken to be understood— but desperate for someone to get past those walls. But, now, the walls are more absolute. The Cy here now doesn't want anyone to connect with him, like his friendship is a fire that may be warm, but will burn if you get too close. Cy doesn't want him. Or, at least, thinks he doesn't.

And that hurts.

Mato scrambles to climb when he sees the turret, but sets down once he's assured it's empty, and works to untie Izzy and himself.

Demarcus decides he'll just have to prove Cy wrong. Slip past those walls, and if he can't— break them. Show the scared kid he knows is hiding in there that there's no point to being safe if you're alone.

Demarcus’ fists tighten. He's been unwanted before, and has proved to himself that he's worth it every time. Cy is wrong. He has to be wrong.

He watches Cy as the three discuss.

“Whoa. You said this was a dungeon?” Izzy sucks the edge of her teeth.

“That can’t be what it’s actually called. Too much like a video game. And great, more dead bugs.”

“Looks like they came from that-a-ways, got shot up when they got here, dug up in a panic.” Mato says gesturing towards the left hall with the first signs of hive.

“I swear I've got some bug in my socks.” Izzy mutters as the others continue.

“Only a few tunnels in this area, besides the big one. A few digging crawlers getting shot up in a hall doesn't warrant a hive evacuation.” Cy says.

He shifts his arm and his [Light] spell splits. He sends one floating down the hall with the edges of resin.

The hall narrows, its walls covered in the resin and waxy structures of the bugs hive— probably made from the rocks the bugs eat, Demarcus thinks. His face crinkles in disgust thinking how the green-grey hive is made entirely out of bug poop.

More bodies of the crawlers are visible further in the hall.

“Look.” Cy says.

“It's not just the coal crawlers, there's soldiers here too.”

Cy steps a few feet closer, Demarcus follows while the rest stay back.

His [Light] spell drifts further, and alights on larger, reddish-brown carapaces— crushed and mangled on the floor.

“And I think some of these are past the edge of the hall, out of sight of the turret. They weren't killed by the— hey!”

Cy yells at something behind him, and Demarcus turns to look at Izzy, who has hobbled over towards the short door beneath the turret.

“Don't open that!”

Izzy drops her head back in frustration.

“I wasn't gonna open it! I'm not stupid! I was just looking.”

“Good. Seeing as I am— the only…”

Cy seems to trail off, looking pensive, and growing frustrated.

He screws his face up hard in resigned frustration, takes a deep breath, lets it go, and turns back.

“I'm getting ahead of myself. Got excited about the dungeon. Do whatever you want. I'm just here to keep you alive.” He says; that last sentence said with a bit of derision, like a mantra he hates. Like the words are instructions hammered into him by an aggressive, micro-managing boss, that he repeats to himself to prevent another dressing-down.

“You take it from here, boss.” Cy says, walking back and patting Mato on the shoulder.

“Uh… ya alright son?” Mato asks.

Cy sniffs, imperiously, crossing his arms and letting his [Light] spells drift after him. Pouting.

“Yep. Just— staying in my lane.”

The rest of them share a look, but after an awkward moment, Mato speaks up.

“Well, this place might connect with the outside. The edge ’ah the mountain would be— that-a-way.” He says, pointing at the wall at a 35 degree angle from the taller hall on the right.

Demarcus watches Cy’s lips twitch, and his eyebrows grow tighter. He clearly has something he wants to say, but is keeping it to himself.

“So I guess we’re goin’ down that hall. Should find somewhere to rest first. Need to clean that wound a’ yers Isabella. Though we oughta conserve water.”

Mato thinks for a second, tapping the center phalange of his curled finger against his chin.

“Cy,” he begins, and Cy seems to snap out from his inner thoughts and pouting a bit, but doesn't stop sulking as he looks at Mato with a single stink-eye.

“If this is a dungeon, is it gonna have one a’ them fountains like the pyramid?”

Cy rolls his eye.

“No. That was a tutorial. Don't expect the real world to hold your hand.”

“Ey.” Demarcus says, softly elbowing Cy in the side.

“Just cuz we don't know what you do doesn't make us stupid. Don't take whatever's pissing you off out on us.”

Cy challengingly stares Demarcus down for a moment, but Demarcus stands firm, and quirks a smile. Cy’s eye softens, and he sighs.

“Dungeons found in the tutorial are largely designed to give you all the tools you need to survive them. Dungeons in the real world aren't so nice. Most aren't even intended to be ‘Dungeons.’ That's just a qualification given by the Adventurer's guild cuz it's where people go to die. They're often just incredibly dangerous places sealed away for a long time. [Wizard] towers, vaults, ancient prisons for crazy powerful monsters and the like. That kinda thing. They're not guaranteed to have everything you need, not even guaranteed to have air. Some are designed to kill you dead. So, no, it's not gonna have a fountain—”

“Hey guys, I found a fountain!”

The group turns to find Izzy having hobbled past them into the broken double door. She stands just past the threshold into the dark, raising a thumb to point off to the side, somewhere past the door and to the right.

The flickering [Light] illuminates the large dusty glass cylinder that we stand around. Water, still as the grave, fills the container up to a line, labeled with dwarvish script drawn on the outside among many others, measuring the volume. Demarcus estimates it's still hundreds of gallons.

“...Still not a fountain. More of a water tank.” Cy remarks.

“Yeah, but it's got a spigot.” Izzy points out, gesturing to the metal spigot near the base of the tank, about 3 feet off the floor.

Cy’s [Light] spells bathe the surroundings in warm orange light, and the party examines the massive room they find themselves in.

The long, relatively empty room is the size of warehouse, or, as Mato thinks of it, like a mechanic’s bay.

All along the outer edges are shelves of strange objects and parts of metal, ceramic, stone, or even jade. In the center of the room are several pieces of industrial equipment. Some are more familiar and identifiable, like cranes or hydraulic lifts with a space set in the floor to work beneath— others, less so. One seems to be a massive— pod, for lack of a better term. Like something from The Matrix or one of those wind tube games where money flies all around you and you have to catch it.

Metal scaffolding frames with wires and dark display monitors attached are in neat rows ascending by size, ranging from 2 feet tall all the way to 12. The frames have nothing in them, but based on empty ports and conducting pads on their base it seems like something would normally stand within them.

In several places, odd tools litter surfaces with some of the parts spread across them.

Mato approaches a desk. Along one side are several familiar tools, simple parts, and some completely foreign. A nearly empty metal tankard, with a wide handle for stout hands, has some tepid liquid rotting within it. His shadow casts over the silhouette of something in the center of the desk, and he turns, profile to allow the light to get past him.

The metal thing makes him gasp and stumble as his subconscious immediately identifies the rounded steel with wires and diodes sticking out and splayed from its side as a head. Or the shape of one. Folded and interlocking metal stylized in the shape of a beard, dim sockets for eyes, with their machinery absent.

“Okay so this is definitely a computer, right? I mean, the keyboard's different but this is a fuckin’ computer.” Cy says, astonished and the group turns to him.

A tall, darkened metal obelisk is set into one wall. Wires lead from it to several of the frames in the center of the room. A boxy screen is set into it about 4 feet above the ground, dark. An odd keyboard, long, in that same dwarvish script with the standardized lines but arranged in different ways to make up different characters, but the keyboard has far too many individual keys to be a simple alphanumeric system. Next to the keyboard, set into the metal obelisk, are several open ports, some with little metal cartridges inserted into them.

Mato, unnerved and confused, quietly remarks “Technically, this is just the terminal.” He says, gesturing to the screen and keyboard.

He pats the metal obelisk they are attached to.

“This is the computer. Reminds me of the first ones the navy was usin’ in ‘Nam.”

He mutters to himself quietly, in a memory he’d forgotten he had.

“Jimbo always joked we shoulda been in the Navy. The computer rooms were air-conditioned.”

Mato traces a tube from the top of the computer, following it along the wall back to the water tank in the corner. Several other tubes lead from it to other pieces of equipment in the bay.

“The Vietnam war was in the 70s, right? Is this place only 50ish years old?” Izzy asks from where she sits at a far too short and clearly too stiff chair at a desk, fiddling with a ratchet wrench.

“Seems older’n that.” Mato remarks.

“Yeah, here's the thing though,” Cy says, eye wide looking at the computer terminal, silently tracing the power feed into the wall.

“This is Dwarvish tech, and they've had computers for, like, 200 years. But—!”

He looks around the room, suspicious.

“Not in the Wider World.”

He looks at each of the group, one by one, letting what he's saying sink in.

“Less than 1% choose the Game of Gods, how many of those do you think know how a computer works? How to make one? And even then, how long do you think it’d take to get the industry in place to actually build them?”

Cy holds up a tiny green and brassy square, almost impossible to see from where the others are standing.

“And how long to build microchips?”

“The Wider World lags behind the mortal world, technologically, by a few centuries, though they make up for it with magic. So, I have no idea how old this place is. If it's so recent, why doesn't anybody know about it? Cuz trust me, I know this town; Nobody knows about this.”

He wildly gestures at the massive workshop around them with a flailing of his arms.

“What even is… this?” Izzy asks, copying Cy's flailing arm gestures.

“I think— I think it makes robits.” Mato says, his pronunciation of the word ‘robot’ coming out funny.

“Golems, more likely. That'd be the equivalent in the Wider World. Or… not a lot of magic here. I don't know.” Cy admits.

Demarcus is the one to point it out, his gaze scanning across the empty frames.

“Great, but if that's true… where are they?”

The question lingers for a moment before Cy walks towards the double door they entered from.

“I'll secure the door.”

A spell is cast, and stone shifts to block the door, as Mato returns to Izzy's side and the water tank.

“How's the leg?” He asks.

“Hurts. Feels like my heart is in my calf.” She replies.

“I bet. Let's clean it up.” Mato says, pulling a pot from his bag of holding and filling it at the water tank.

Cy snatches the pot from him as he walks past, and begins boiling the water with a controlled flame coming from the palm of his hand as he walks back towards Demarcus.

“Alrighty, let's give ‘er a look. Can I get a light? Thanks.” Mato say, a [Light] spell drifting next to him, and he begins peeling off the chameleon cloak.

“I'll try not to pull nothin’, but this might hurt. I'll need some— thanks.” Mato says as Cy sets down the pot of sterilized water, cooled to a reasonable temperature by an ice spell, next to Mato, and roots around in Mato’s bag of holding to boil another pot for drinking.

Mato pours the water over the impromptu bandages, softening them and unsticking them from the bloody flesh. Izzy takes a sharp breath and grabs Mato's shoulder.

“Yer doin’ great.” He says.

Her face is twisted in a grimace as he unravels the bandage, and her eyes water as he reveals the pale bloodless wound. He pours the water over and into the wound, and she gasps, tears coming down her face.

“I'm sorry, we'll be done in a second.” Mato says.

“There. Still hurtin’?” Mato asks, now washing the bandages in the water.

Izzy trembles slightly, desperately holding back a few tears. Her voice shakes, wet and choked.

“No— yes— it's… I— I—”

Mato stands, laying a hand softly on her back, suddenly concerned, and the words burst forth from her, quiet and sudden.

“I miss my dad.”

She barely makes it through before the dam breaks, and she's racked with sobbing.

Mato stands and hugs her close, and she dampens his dusty shirt.

“Oh, I'm so sorry. Yer okay. Yer okay.”

“Grief comes in funny moments, ya know. Lil’ waves that pop up when ya least expect it. I remember havin’ to pull over cuz a billboard with a duck on it made me cry, a bit after my wife died. Yer still close to it so it's gonna be a lot. Ride through it, grief‘s important.”

“It’s just— we've been going so hard— one thing to another I— haven't really thought about it. He's gone. I'm gone.” Her crying slows, but her voice is still raw with emotion as they whisper to each other.

“I mean, I guess not really. It's good to know afterlives are a thing. That he's probably alright out there, somewhere peaceful.”

“That’s a good thought. Hold onto it. Cuz I just bet he is. I just bet they'd let him watch you, like a guardian angel. He's probably real proud. I know I am.” Mato says, doing his best to keep her together.

“N’ he'd be real pissed if I wasn't taking care of his baby girl, so let's get you bandaged back up, alright? Not so tight since yer done bleedin’”

She laughs a bit at that, not so much that it's all that funny, it's just the thing to do with all the emotion swirling.

Mato rebinds her bandages, and they rejoin Cy and Demarcus, mid-argument about killer robots. Mato interrupts them with annoying sensibility.

“We oughta rest here for a bit. Eat, get some water. Maybe if we kill some time the rescuers will get closer.”

The group agrees, but Cy chimes in.

“See if you can take a quick power nap. I'm betting y'all earned some levels. Might need ‘em.”

A few hours of rest, some joking, some naps, but Demarcus keeps an eye on Cy, sitting in the corner and fiddling with parts. Still distant, like too much time with them is dangerous, avoiding them when he can like exposure to small amounts of radiation. He can survive being with them for a little while, but it's as if sitting down, having a conversation, actually being their friend…

Would kill him.

***

Level-up!

Tier 2 [Respectful Ranger], level 1 — Tier 2 [Respectful Ranger], level 3

Skill earned — [Simple First-aid] (active)

Skill earned — [Field Triage] (active)

***

Level-up!

Tier 2 [Loyal Warrior], level 1 — Tier 2 [Loyal Warrior], level 2

Skill earned — [Morale Boosting Words] (active)

Skill earned — [Reassuring Presence] (passive)

***

Level-up!

Tier 2 [Punk Rocker], level 1 — Tier 2 [Punk Rocker], level 2

Skill earned — [Enhanced Art; Blood, Sweat, and Tears] (passive)