Chapter 5: 1.4

Jade stayed in bed after waking up the next morning. It was chilly and the blanket felt awfully thin. The pillow she was hugging felt nice though, warm and soft. She hugged it closer and rubbed her head against it. The extra warmth caused by the friction felt nice.

“If you're done trying to bury in me, it's time to wake up,” Chloe said in a flat voice.

“Aive oore minntes?” Jade asked sheepishly.

The heroine didn't respond, she simply got up from her position, with Jade still in her arms, then deposited Jade in the makeshift bed. Without another word, Chloe left the cave.

Jade looked at the woman walking away in the semi-darkness, There was a lot to unpack there, And Jade was not so sure where to start. For all the sorceress's bravado, she still didn't know how to deal with the other woman. Jade was pretty sure that something else happened during that fight. Wonder Light behavior was strange, as was her own. That did not change the fact the other woman tried to kill her, or that the same woman have been taking care of her for days.

Ultimately, she felt annoyed that the other woman hadn't even touched on the subject. Could have also been the fact that Jade was not in a state to talk in the last few days. She decided to give some time and see if the other woman would try to talk about things.

Sitting up in her now cold bed, Jade hugged the sash and looked around. In the dim light, the cave seemed bigger than it was. What she found strange, though, is that this was no natural cave. The floor and walls were too smooth and even if there were residues of normal vegetation in the place, the cave looked too artificial. Looking closely, she noticed that beneath the leaves in the middle of the room, there was a circle raised a little more than the rest of the floor. Yep, definitely man-made.

Taking a deep breath and stealing her mind Jade got up. It still hurt, but less than she was expecting. Looking down at her bare chest, legs, and stomach she clicked her tongue in annoyance. That she had to undress every piece of clothing to use the nanosuit was uncomfortable enough. This same scenario crossed her mind several times, one where the suit would malfunction and she would have to ditch it. But in those cases, she always planned on using the expanded space from her utility belt. What good were triple preparations, if all of her hard work got destroyed because of dimensional hopping?

That was also another fact that perplexed the sorceress. She had crossed to another plane, namely the void, several times before, with and without her belt and suit. They never malfunctioned. Both of the technocrats that worked on her stuff were adamant they would last, and, truth be told, Jade believed them.

Tales of interdimensional travel were not news. Not with supers and aliens involved. It was a documented, if random process that every super learned at some point. She dropped that line of thought. Nothing she could realistically do at the moment, not with her spark empty. And trying to force things while this hurt was a no-go.

And thinking about hurt, she pondered about things she’d been ignoring. Jade dearly wished she had paper now, to create a list of problems she needed to work through. She had already gotten isekai’ed. Where was her cheat system with [Appraise] and a personal notepad? Snorting at her own childishness, she realized she had no clue what might have happened, why it her body hurt so much after they ended up here. She would have guessed something related to the dimensional hop, but Wonder Light was fine, so it had to be something else, and the only thing she could think of was the thread connecting her and the other woman. A thread she could not feel anymore, like many other threads, but that she pulled and strained like a maniac just before falling into the rift.

The villainess — could she still call herself that? — back on earth that was more PR related than anything else. As far as she knew, she committed no crime during her time as super. That the number of deaths attributed to her counted on hundreds of thousands didn’t factor in this case, she’d been a victim like everyone else. Casey had explained to her one time, that as far as publicity goes, being hated was as good, if not better, than being loved. Jade didn’t care or pretended to care, she just didn’t want to think about that. Most of the time, she just wanted to be left alone.

But that still begged another question. Now free from the many things trying to take away her agency, she also realized that even when knowing about the threads, she had been incapable of actually recognizing them. Sure, she knew they were there, and knew what they were doing, but somehow, she had a blind spot in her mind. Even now she did not know how to explain, how to put it into words.

‘Another topic for that list.’ Jade sighed.

Thinking back about the heroine, Wonder Light seemed a different woman. Not that they had that much contact back on earth, but they had taken part in interviews on occasions, being arch-nemesis and all. Jade did not care for such things, but the ad revenue and payments were always welcome. Wonder Light had always been confident, direct, intense, if aggressive. She could not reconcile the overbearing woman from before with how… nice the heroine behaved. How many problems for the list already? This list-making thing clearly was not working.

She looked down at herself again. She’d always been skinny, even before her spark. The daily routine of exercises and training helped to burn any baby fat left in her body. She always thought of herself as feminine enough. Her legs were lean but shapely, she had nice tights for her size, and the training only added to that. She didn’t have a feminine waist, but then again, she was already tiny, any less there and it would be uncanny territory. Her long black hair flowed down to her mid-back, and despite her somewhat Asian name, she didn't share the ancestry, at least she thought she didn’t. No iconic eye shape.

Her abdomen was lean and if she squinted enough, she could imagine the beginnings of a four-pack there. That left her chest or the lack thereof. The less said about that, the better, she decided again for the hundredth time. Jade tied the sash around her waist, like a skirt. Not that she had any illusions of modesty, it just felt more comfortable that way.

Leaning against the cave’s wall, she slowly walked outside. Green greeted her. She saw big hulking trees creating a dense canopy that extended as far as she could see. Their bark covered with green and brown moss, mushrooms, and ivy-like plants. The understory had countless different trees. None which she could name. Some looked like palm trees, others had tortuous barks and small leaves. Bushes, herbs, creepers, climbers, so many she had no name for. They all looked familiar, but none she outright recognized.

The more she looked, the more she saw other colors. Tiny mushrooms with white caps, big ones with red caps dotted with white. In a conspicuous clear patch, a single purple mushroom. Behind a nearby bush, she noticed enormous flowers, with red-brown cabbage-like buds. The flowers had five lobes, reddish-brown with white spots. A breeze from that direction brought the scent of rotting meat.

On the other side, she saw and had to laugh, a flower that had the most sensual red lips she’d ever seen before. Jade was not the most experienced person, to be honest, she had no clue what a love life was about, but the more she looked, the more she thought that if she’d want to kiss someone, it had to be someone with such beautiful lips.

Maybe she could try? What was the harm? No one would see it. And would be a shame not to… well, kiss the plant? That idea sounded better and better the more she thought about it. Decision made, she took a step towards the flower, and immediately rough hands covered her eyes and another arm snaked around her, dragging her away.

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“Don’t look at it too much,” Chloe whispered. “It almost got me the first day too, luckily or unluckily, some sort of vine monster grabbed my feet and pulled me away.”

Jade felt a sudden feeling of loneliness, before holding the other woman when her legs gave out and her head spun. “Waht aas taat?” She asked shakily.

“Alien flower,” Chloe said simply. “So, take care, yeah?”

Taking deep breaths, she decided to keep a counter. On her journey to find a nice bush to work on her morning business, she’d almost died, at least she thought the chances of dying by sexy lip flower were high, and she still had to pick a bush.

Alien forest one, Jade zero.

More careful now, she looked again, trying not to look directly at any other pretty flower. It was something she’d never thought she would see in her life, with all of earth’s forests incursion domain. Not even drones or any sort of automated surveillance worked in those areas. Here and now, she felt sad that despite how beautiful it all was, safety was more important. She counted that as another loss.

Alien forest two, Jade zero.

Gathering her bearings, she freed herself from the other woman and moved to a nearby bush. This one had marks of being moved and what she thought as step marks around it.

Jade did her business and took it as a win over the murder forest. And decidedly not thought about the fact she was not messy down her intimate parts even after five days of feverish sleep.

‘I don’t remember it, it never happened. You can never convince me otherwise.’

The sorceress also noticed that walking, albeit uncomfortable, was not painful anymore. She guessed she would not be running anytime soon, and probably her walking speed would be horrible, but that she could at least walk on her own feet was another win in her book, even if it had nothing to do with the forest. She would take every win she could.

Alien forest two, Jade two.

Jade returned to the cave’s entrance, stopping by Chloe’s side. She wanted to know what would they do now, but her mouth hurt, talking would only make things worse. Then she did the next best thing. She looked at Wonder Light, and when the heroine met her eyes for a few moments, Jade looked around, as if to ask: What now?

Might be that she was better at this expression-talking thingy than she thought because Chloe understood her on the first try.

“I don’t know. I've never been to a forest before, and what little I remember was my biology teacher ranting about how humankind didn’t deserve nature and said nature was better served by the incursions.” Smiling wryly she continued, “There’s a river not far from here, to the east. If ancient history did not lie to me, it is easier to find settlements if we follow it. The question becomes then, do we want to find people?”

With all her eloquent glory, Jade did a very elaborate shrug.

A hint of a smile cracked on the other woman’s face, before vanishing again.

“I’m pretty sure I know the answer, but can you use your powers?” when Jade shook her head, the heroine continued. “Yeah, me neither. I think I’m still stronger than the average person, but no more powers. There were theories that the spark changed us. Increased the baseline, if that makes sense. That even if you lost it, you’d be better than you were before. Guess they were right.”

Jade nodded sagely. She did not know what research the other woman was talking about, but it didn’t hurt to pretend she understood it.

Chloe squinted her eyes looking at the sorceress, then snorted. “Well, to the river then. We need water, there are some berries around there, and now that I don’t need to babysit you anymore, I want to get clean.” She looked around the forest again. “Even if I think it is a horrible idea.”

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