Chapter 14: Chapter 13: Abigail

Chapter 13: Abigail

After talking things out with Evelyn, Alexis and Ophelia, their dynamic had finally settled down, to Elaine's relief. Nobody was giving anybody jealous glances anymore and there was a newfound sense of belonging when they spent time together, all of them less guarded around each other. Ophelia was also starting to give the other girls hungry glances and Elaine wondered how open Alexis and Evelyn would be to that sort of idea but she didn't press it yet.

And so on Sunday they had a relaxed breakfast together and Elaine was looking forward to Monday, when they would be going out again. Not that going into combat was ever any fun but now that everything was cleared up Elaine was certain their teamwork would also massively improve.

However, when Lieutenant General Hayworth entered the cafeteria right as just about everyone was present and having breakfast Elaine knew her good mood wouldn't last.

This was probably going to be the bollocking she'd been expecting. In addition to Brandon Cooper, may he burn in hell, four others had died since that first day. Three Shard Bearers, two guys and one girl, had decided to venture out without finding an Awakener first, stating they “didn't need that cringy nerd crap”, and had promptly gotten themselves killed by Outsiders. Jordan's team had ended up finding their dog tags while clearing out a group of Thralls. The fourth Shard Bearer to die had been executed by Jeanne after he, too, had tried to rape a female Shard Bearer.

All in all, it had reduced the group to 31 people, 22 women and 9 men, five of them Awakeners.

Not a great track record considering it had only been a week since operations had begun but Elaine, for her part, found it encouraging that no Shard Bearer who had actually joined up with an Awakener had died. Though, she amended, this was in part due to her team coming to Jordan's rescue.

It had also had the fortunate side effect of finally convincing the four Shard Bearers who hadn't yet joined an Awakener to do so. None of them had tried joining Elaine's team, which she was grateful for. Not that she, or the others for that matter, would have minded another squad member but those four had been less than eager to be part of any team and Elaine didn't want to have to babysit anyone unwilling to pull their own weight.

But when Lieutenant General Hayworth called for attention he didn't start by tearing into them. Instead he said: “Alright, listen up, I've got an announcement to make but I don't want to keep you long. All of you still alive today have done a good job so far. The average level at the compound is at roughly three point four, which is higher than I'd been expecting, and this is despite some of you holding down the average. But that isn't what I wanted to say. As you have noticed we have lost a few members along the way, which is unfortunate for several reasons, but after having other military bases checking their new recruits for aptitude we have identified several new members who will be arriving here on Monday. One of them is an Awakener candidate and five more are Shard Bearers. Even though they came here later than you, please make sure to show them that they are part of this project. If any of them want to join your teams, at least give them due consideration.”

One of the Awakeners, Marcus Wright, raised his hand. The Lieutenant General nodded in his direction and Marcus asked: “Sir, won't the new Shard Bearers all need to join the new Awakener?”

The Lieutenant General shook his head. “She's only just started on the path to becoming an Awakener a while ago since. She's roughly where you were at eight weeks ago and will still need to undergo several treatments before she can lead her own Shard Bearers. Which means that of those five Shard Bearers, all of them need to be accommodated.”

Marcus nodded. “Understood. Thank you, sir.”

“Now, were there any other questions?”

There were a few but all of them were swiftly answered.

“Alright, that was all”, Lieutenant General Hayworth finally said. “Relax today, then greet the new recruits tomorrow and see if any of them fit your teams.”

**

“So, we'll be taking someone along, right?”, Evelyn asked.

“I'm fine with it so long as they're actually willing to do the work”, Alexis said.

“Yeah, I agree”, Elaine said. “Whoever we take along needs to fit in with our group. They need to be willing to work with us, they need to be good people and they need to have abilities that complement ours.”

“What about turning you on, is that a requirement?”, Ophelia teased.

Elaine blushed. “We're looking for a squad member, not a playmate” she replied.

“Ooo, playmates. I bet Evelyn could rock a bunny girl outfit.”

Evelyn blushed too then hissed: “Is your mind always in the gutter?”

“Only when I have easy targets like the two of you”, Ophelia said, then continued, suddenly much more serious. “Whoever we take along, it must be someone we're willing to extend trust to. Whether that trust is created in the bedroom or not is ultimately irrelevant so long as it ends up with us trusting them with our lives.”

“Yeah, that's true”, Evelyn conceded. “I think Elaine and Alexis will have no trouble convincing people to join them thanks to the EXP and Credits bonuses they can rack up, but that might end up with us having to be picky.”

“I wouldn't be so sure”, Alexis said. “As the three dead idiots demonstrated, a lot of people don't want to get into”, she made air quotes around the next words, “'nerd shit' so we can't rely on that. The new recruits will probably pick an Awakener based on looks and behavior, same as we did. So”, she turned to Elaine, “just be yourself and we'll have a new teammate in no time.”

Elaine smiled at her.

“So what are we going to do today?”, Evelyn asked.

“We could train some more”, Elaine suggested and Ophelia and Evelyn groaned. “Or we could huddle up and watch a movie together.”

Alexis threw in: “Split the difference? We train our magic for two hours, then we all get cleaned up and have a movie day.”

Of the three Shard Bearers Alexis was the most enthusiastic when it came to training her magic, almost as obsessed with it as Elaine. Almost more so, really, since she had already created so many spells in just a few days.

To Elaine it seemed bizarre. Magic was not supposed to be just unlocked with the push of a button but the evidence was undeniable and she was glad that at least some of what the Professor had promised worked as advertised. Though, if she was being honest, the last few days had shown that the side effects she'd suffered hadn't been that bad after all...

**

Abigail Peterson was excited. Worried, but excited. She'd signed up with the army a few weeks ago. She thought she had nothing left to lose. Her chosen career path was essentially pointless in a world with no people in it so the way she saw it she had two options. Either hide in a refugee camp guarded by tanks and missile batteries and maybe make people's lives a little bit better by singing for them or grab a gun and help take the world back from those things so that she would have a world worth singing in.

The old Abigail might have been content being coddled but her mother was a doer who got going when the going got tough and now that the going couldn't get any tougher Abigail had found the resolve to do the same. So she'd signed up to help keep her mom safe. She'd only just gotten through the boot camp when her commanding officer had informed her that after the rounds of testing all candidates had been forced through they had found that she had the aptitude to join a certain military unit over in her old stomping ground of New York, a place her mom and her had moved out of years ago.

She would have accepted anyway but when her commanding officer had explained to her the benefits of accepting she almost wanted to kiss him. Almost. Since she would be part of a special forces unit her mother would receive better care and Abigail herself would end up with a great package deal as well so of course she accepted. Apparently of all the new recruits only five had qualified for this special unit and none of the others had been from her boot camp. She was elated to hear that she was apparently this good. Sure, her aim had been surprisingly better than she had imagined, but still.

And then the vehicle to take her away had arrived. It had looked bizarre to her. The inside looked like any military vehicle but the outside looked straight out of a scifi movie. All sleek and bullet-shaped and it shimmered in the air and blended in with its surroundings. The pilot of the craft had introduced herself as Prudence and had explained that she was an angel, which Abigail had thought of as a joke or a metaphor until the lady had flashed a pair of white wings and a halo. She'd heard rumors, but still.

How could you lose when the angels had come down to assist you?

So she sat down in the bizarre vehicle she didn't understand, next to three others.

Finally, Prudence turned around and told them all to strap in and finally they were off, the vehicle barely feeling as if it were moving, but with Prudence assuring them they were going well over a hundred miles an hour.

As Prudence explained to them they were going to head to another boot camp to pick up their last two members and from there they would head to Base 15.

**

After training and showering they all ended up huddled together on Elaine's bed, watching a movie. There had been some dispute over what to watch. Evelyn had suggested an anime movie, though Elaine and Alexis had slapped that down, saying that most anime movies were just non-canon cash grabs and Evelyn hadn't been able or willing to refute that. Alexis had wanted to watch something science fiction like I, Robot or The Matrix but nobody else had been in the mood for something existential. Elaine had tried to find a middle ground by suggesting a romantic comedy but the girls had made fun of her for it.

Finally they'd gone with Ophelia's suggestion of a horror comedy and had turned on Happy Death Day. Evelyn was a scaredy-cat and had tried to protest but had finally accepted after Ophelia had suggested that she could cuddle up to Elaine if she got scared. Not that there was much chance of that happening when watching Happy Death Day.

While looking for a movie Evelyn had asked how they even would watch anything and Elaine had explained it to her while Alexis and Ophelia had scrolled through the offerings.

Most of the internet had collapsed, though large parts were still accessible. The Outsiders weren't smart enough to deliberately target infrastructure but unfortunately with so many people stuck in their homes the available bandwidth was quite low all around. However, what was left of the government had decided to do away with all laws relating to digital piracy since they simply did not have the control or the manpower to persecute people for it anymore, even less so than had already been the case before the Invasion. So while Amazon and Netflix were down hundreds of half-baked streaming sites had gone up to let people have their fix of entertainment while they hid from the horrors outside. The government didn't just not mind it but were actively encouraging it. People occupied with their favorite shows were less likely to venture out of the safe zones, after all.

Elaine had also told Evelyn the rumor that the only reason a certain shopping platform was offline was that its filthy rich CEO had tried to buy the Outsiders off and they'd turned him inside out for his impudence. Rumor also had it that he'd tried to buy them off with a paltry ten percent of his fortune.

Unbeknownst to them, the rumor was entirely true.

**

Abigail wasn't sure whether the vehicle was simply a piece of turbo advanced technology or whether Prudence was a phenomenal pilot because despite the speeds they were going at none of them even got close to being motion sick.

Until the Jabberwock attacked.

Jabberwocks were large creatures born of Shub-Niggurath, part goat and part dragon. They had the bodies of stereotypical fantasy dragons, mostly. Lizard-like, four legs, a long tail, a huge pair of wings on their backs, a long neck and a face that looked like that of a crocodile but much squatter, more like a large dog. The Jabberwock had all that but also a huge pair of ram's horns, seven orange eyes with rectangular pupils arranged in a cluster, hooves on its hind legs and shaggy fur over large patches of its body, particularly on its legs and on the underside of its neck. That part was fine. What was less fine was its underbelly, which was riddled with revolting tumorous growths, some of which had hair or teeth growing out of them. From lips to tail tip the Jabberwock was a good twenty-five feet long and were it to stand on the ground it would have been six feet tall in the shoulders and that was before the huge wings and the head on its five foot long neck.

What Abigail didn't know was that this Jabberwock was only an adolescent and that the fully grown version would be more like forty feet long and capable of breathing fire laced with Darklight. This one was a whelp by comparison.

The thing had been lazily flying through the sky when it had spotted their craft and had gone into a tackle that Prudence had only barely avoided.

“Fuck”, Prudence swore, which startled Abigail. Were angels allowed to swear? “This thing is supposed to be camouflaged.”

The Jabberwock, having missed its tackle, turned around in mid-air to go for another attack.

“Can we outrun this thing?”, one of the recruits, an Asian woman, asked.

“We can”, Prudence said, “but we're not fast enough not to lead it to where we're going and we can't let it find any of our projects. I'll take it out. Someone take the wheel.”

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Nobody moved so Abigail took off her seat belt and switched places with Prudence. “What do I need to know?”, the brunette asked in her musical voice.

“Steer left and right like a car. Pull back to tilt up, push forward to tilt down. Lever off to the right is to regulate speed.” Then Prudence pulled the door next to the co-pilot's seat open and threw herself out of it.

Abigail slowed them down and circled around, the vehicle handling like a dream, as they all watched the angel who had jumped out of a... whatever they were riding in. Abigail had taken to thinking of it as a flying car since it had no wings she'd seen.

**

Halfway through the scene where the protagonist finally figured out who kept killing her there was a knock on Elaine's door. She extracted herself from the pile and went to answer her door and saw that it was Jeanne. Elaine immediately stood at attention but Jeanne calmed her down.

“Are you free to talk?”, Jeanne asked as she saw the three girls huddled on Elaine's bed, though as they saw who was there they righted themselves.

“Of course”, Elaine replied. “Should I get presentable and meet you somewhere?”

Jeanne shook her head. “Don't bother. Actually, it's really fortunate that I found you all together. What I want to talk about concerns your entire team.”

Elaine nodded and led Jeanne into the room, then sat down on her bed with the rest of her team. Jeanne stepped into the room and sat down on the chair next to Elaine's desk.

“So”, she began. “The Lieutenant General wants to send a scouting team out to Albion, led by me. The trip might take several days. I want you and your team to be the ones to accompany me. Since this is outside your mission parameters you may decline but I'd appreciate your cooperation.”

Elaine thought about it for a while, then said: “I'd be willing but I can't decide for them. What do you think?”, she asked, turning to her girls.

“Our objective is to get stronger, so this sounds like a golden opportunity to me”, Alexis said. “You have my vote.”

“If you're doing something stupid and reckless you need healing and Darklight protection so you need me around”, Ophelia said. “Count me in.”

“I won't leave them to fend for themselves”, Evelyn said. “And I want to test out the skills I've been developing.”

Jeanne smiled at them, then said: “Thank you. We'll leave on Tuesday.” Then she turned to leave, but Elaine stopped her.

“Hold on.”

“What is it?”, Jeanne asked, turning back.

“The new recruits we're getting on Monday”, Elaine said. “One of them will need to join us. Can we force a rookie to come on this mission?”

Jeanne bit her lip. “I hadn't considered that. I... if your new recruit is willing to accompany us, then we'll take them. If not, I fear you will have to wait for the next batch of recruits for reinforcements.”

“I understand”, Elaine said.

Finally, after explaining some of the specifics and telling them what to prepare for Jeanne left them and they went back to the movie, the anxiety soon replaced with enjoyment of the comedy.

**

Prudence fell out of the Gospel, then folded her hands in prayer as white light engulfed her.

Prudence was one of the Ophanim, those who were allowed to bask in the light of the Lord, just two steps below the Seraphim, the Angel Lords. When the light engulfing her faded she was no longer just a red-haired woman in military slacks. She wore a suit of armor, but not medieval armor. Her armor was high tech, roughly a century beyond anything the humans were capable of producing, and that was before the runes and enchantments came in that made it tougher and lighter and gave it a couple other useful properties. On her back beat a pair of snow white wings and her red hair was billowing in the wind. She drew a sword from a sheath at her waist. The sword, similarly, was not just a piece of sharpened metal but instead a marvel of technology.

She beat her wings to gain altitude, then held the sword in both hands, at head height and pointed forward.

She thrust the sword forward and magic circles, orange in color, appeared all along the blade, parallel to each other. As she thrust the sword she cast a spell with it as her focus and as the spell passed through each of the magic circles in turn it was amplified, again and again until a lance of searingly hot fire erupted from the tip of the sword, straight at the Jabberwock. The flame flooded over its massive body, singeing its fur and sticking to its body. The thing howled with pain and frantically beat its wings, then rolled, anything to put the fire out. As it was distracted Prudence rushed in to deliver a killing blow straight to its heart but the Jabberwock had apparently given up trying to put the fire out and swiped at her with one of its claws. Too focused on the offensive, Prudence didn't manage to dodge out of the way in time and was slapped sideways, careening towards the ground.

A normal human would have had their body shattered by the blow. Even Prudence would have suffered heavy damage if not for her armor. As it was she only suffered a moment of disorientation and a cracked rib and she beat her wings once to stop herself from hitting the ground and then she was off again, swiping at the huge beast again and again with fiery arcs, trying to harass it as best she could so it wouldn't notice her real target. The Jabberwock dove at her, trying to catch the tasty morsel in front of it, but she dodged it and poked it with her sword wreathed in flames. It swiped its tail at her but her next attack shortened it by a foot. It summoned a portal to have spiny tentacles grasp her but she was long gone before the portal even finished forming.

And then, finally, she found her moment. With a single decisive horizontal slash she cut off the Jabberwock's wings, making it plummet to the ground.

She knew these things were as hardy as cockroaches though so she didn't give it even a moment. As it was still writhing in the small crater its impact had produced Prudence dove at it, her sword in both hands, and rammed it into the beast's chest. Her sword was buried up to the hilt in the creature's body before she had finally managed to find the canker that passed for its heart.

**

Abigail wasn't sure she knew enough about the craft to land it safely so she just slowed it down as far as she could before she got worried about it turning off and plummeting and asked one of the others to hold the door open for Prudence to climb inside, which she did after making sure the thing was dead.

“That was incredible”, Abigail said once Prudence sat down.

“I try”, she said, a tad smugly, though she was breathing hard. She'd made the armor and wings disappear for her slacks the moment she'd climbed inside.

“These things looked a lot bigger on the news reports I watched”, one of the others commented.

“That was an adolescent”, Prudence explained. “The fully grown version is much bigger and breathes fire. I wouldn't have been able to beat one of those on my own.”

“Then I'm glad it wasn't one of those”, Abigail said.

“So, what can we even do when even someone like you has trouble with these things? We aren't that strong”, one of the girls in the vehicle said.

“More to the point, why aren't you angels taking care of these things if you're this strong?”, another asked.

Prudence sighed. This was precisely why she hadn't wanted to get into fights. Finally she gave up and explained: “Earth isn't the only battlefield in this war. Heaven, Hell and some other places you have no need to know of have been invaded as well. What angels are on Earth are all we could spare.”

“Whoa whoa, hold on, I thought those were demons. What do you mean?”, the same girl asked.

Prudence really hated how clueless the mortals were. Then again, the Lords of Heaven and Hell had done their best to keep this knowledge hidden and for millennia that had been a good thing. “Hell isn't as evil as people here on Earth have been claiming. It's simply a different philosophy from Heaven. In short, they hate those things just as much as we do and are also assisting in this fight. And yes, none of you are all that strong. As far as I can tell none of you know magic and all of you are human. The special unit you're about to join will give you powers. Powers that will allow you to take these Outsiders on.”

“So what, you're saying we'll become angels?”, the lone guy of the group asked.

Prudence chuckled. “Not unless you're willing to die first. No, it's... well, I haven't been fully briefed either but as I understand it you'll be unlocking powers already slumbering in you.”

“That sounds so surreal”, a girl said.

Abigail chuckled in response. “You just saw her throw herself out of a flying car, grow wings, pull out a fire sword and use it to scorch a goat dragon's fur. But us getting a power-up sounds surreal?”

“She's got you there”, another girl said.

Finally Prudence leaned over to Abigail. “You're actually doing a pretty good job piloting that thing”, she said. “Wanna keep going?”

Abigail thought about it. “For now, but I'm not sure I can land this thing without crashing it.”

“I'll walk you through it”, Prudence promised her.

**

The girls had not only watched Happy Death Day but also its sequel, which they all agreed was not as good as the first but still great. They had to pause the movie to laugh when the main character gave an old man a bottoms-up gesture before chugging a bottle of drain cleaner.

By the end they were huddled up in a pile. Just a few days ago that might have been an issue but now everyone was cuddling with everyone else, though Elaine was still clearly the center of attention.

Just when Evelyn was about to fall asleep cuddled into the women around her a notification woke her up.

She smiled and cuddled into them all again, then pressed a single kiss against Elaine's cheek.

 

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