Chapter 6: 1.5

Surprisingly enough the trip to the river, operation cold water skinny-dipping, and berries breakfast gathering went relatively well. No alien plant or predator trying to eat them, or creepy monsters from the water. Jade's expectations of problems were silly. Chloe had been here for days, alone, and seemed fine.

She would never admit it, but she peeked while the heroine skinny-dipped. How could she not? Not that she cared about it — another lie she kept repeating to herself — but Jade was tiny and lacked certain charms. Given a chance to compare what she lacked with a prime example of womanly assets, she took the plunge.

Chloe was big for a woman, but not disproportionately big. The scale was correct in all the right spots. Her long and toned legs led to a firm and round butt. She had a slender waist, and yes, an awesome six-pack, one Jade could only dream of. Her chest now freed from the restricting costume, displayed their true gravity-defying prowess. Chloe’s heart-shaped face, soft features, and green eyes made Jade think of those angelic portraits she often saw on the supernet. The intense woman from earth, behind the white and gold costume, was nowhere to be seen. Those things though, Jade thought about them much, much later.

Her eyes snapped to the many thin and partially faded scars along the woman’s back and arms. That explained a lot. You could usually classify heroines in the entertainment industry into two different types. The skimpily clad ones, showing scandalous amounts of skin, with their costumes that would make even married men and women blush, or the conservative ones, with more classic costumes, some may be still form-fitting, but with a lot more focus on function over form.

Chloe had been an oddball in that aspect. She had one of those costumes that hid almost all the skin, but paradoxically it also emphasized every curve of her body, and somehow seemed more scandalous than if she’d been naked, not to mention that Wonder Light moved in a feline, almost sensual way. If she intended to cover the scars, that would explain the full-body suit. It did not explain the second part. The woman cleaning herself in the river had not a lick of sensuality in her movements or actions. Maybe another issue for that list.

Those fading scars, Jade recognized them. She’d seen the injury that caused those, she’d seen countless people with the same scars.

She remembered the octopus-like creatures of obsidian flesh with their long skin-stripping tentacles. The bulging purple eyes, the child-like glee of countless eldritch things as they ate the flesh of those around her, and even worse, the happiness she felt from them, as they brought her gift of flayed skin and torn flesh. The sadness she felt, knowing she would never summon them again.

“No, not mai aault.” Jade hissed. Her mind was a haze of conflicting emotions. ‘They cleared me on the trial. It was not my fault. I’m a victim like everyone else.’ She kept repeating the same words over and over, trying to convince herself of what she knew was the truth.

“Void?” Chloe’s odd tone of voice took Jade out of her mental reverie. She didn’t remember sitting by the river or hugging her knees, but that made sense. It was cold and she’d probably been tired of waiting for the other woman and got comfortable.

“Jaade. My aame is Jaade.” She was miffed her vocal cords were taking this long to heal.

“That is a pretty name, Jade.” The heroine had stopped midway trying to disentangle her hair. “Would you mind gathering some berries while I finish with this mess here?” Chloe gave an apologetic smile pointing to her hair. “There’s a nice berry patch down there.” As an afterthought, she added. “Don’t take the red ones, just the purple ones.”

Wonder Light's tone of voice and request was… odd, but chalking it up as normal heroine weirdness Jade put that out of her mind. Gathering the said berries was fun in a “I’ve never gathered wild fruits sort of way”. There were some minor hurdles to overcome, such as one big and hairy caterpillar she had no intention of getting closer to, or later trying to find a big leaf to pile the berries on, when she noticed that carrying them by hand would not work.

It took just a few minutes, but when she returned, Wonder Light had already dressed in her white suit and mask, even if the costume had seen better days.

Jade munched quietly on the tangy and sweet berries.

"We should follow downriver." Wonder Light said when the silence had become almost uncomfortable for Jade. The sorceress perked up at that and it was prompt enough for the heroine to continue.

"I could find nothing that might show any settlement upriver. No plastic, pieces of man-made stuff, small pieces of trash, or anything really. The water is clear and tastes fresh. We might be closer to the nascent, I suppose."

Happy to leave such decisions for others, Jade nodded.

They then packed whatever little they could. Chloe had found some sort of flexible vine, which she used to tie a sizeable piece of bark as arm guards. It looked uncomfortable, but Jade thought about doing the same for shoes. She found none of such other vines, and Chloe conveniently chose this time around to not understand her.

Jade smelled petty revenge, but what could she do? Counter-petty revenge op is a go.

The sorceress gathered all the remaining berries and ate them all. The full toothy smile with the mouth full of purple masticated berry and its juice dripping down her mouth must have been something else. Chloe stared for exactly five seconds before turning away looking sick.

---

They walked down the river, slowly making their way through the dense vegetation of the forest. Wonder Light took the lead, and they declared a truce on their budding revenge wars. At first, Jade’s head moved on a swivel, any little noise caused her head to snap in that direction. As the day wore on and nothing happened, she started to enjoy the wild nature of their trip.

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Not to say there were no issues. With nothing to cover her body, Jade suffered from creeper vines lashing at her bare skin, leaving welts and irritated patches, until she learned to recognize them and avoid such vines. The effect was more annoying than debilitating. They also noticed that their skin and body strength were closer to what it was back on earth when empowered by the spark.

Chloe was way stronger than Jade, she’d always been stronger, but the ease with which the woman moved through parts Jade struggled with was disheartening.

Today seemed to be one of those days that last forever. Jade felt like they’d been walking for hours and hours and the suns didn’t move since hitting their zeniths.

They stumbled on a three with gnarled branches, long leaves, and yellow round fruits and Chloe decided it was time to rest and eat. Jade plopped herself beside the other woman and then lightly poked her sides to get her attention. “Heere, why?” She asked.

“I’m guessing you skipped all those survival lessons registered supers are encouraged to take.” At Jade's blank look of confusion Chloe facepalmed. “Forget it. Well, see there and there?” She pointed to yellow fruits on the ground. They seemed half-eaten, some sort of bird had done its best to poke several holes in the fruit. “Yeah, exactly. They’re half-eaten. Normal fauna would not be eating those if they were poisonous. I can only hope they will not be poisonous to us as well.”

Jade mock-glared at the other woman. How dare she gamble with their lives!

“Pfft.” An amused snort. “This place seems very tame and compatible with humans. We saw nothing other than normal forest critters. I mean, that hare back there had a horn in its head, and the serpent before that, I can swear it drew an imaginary line and threatened to attack if we crossed it…”

Wonder Light had stopped and now was looking straight at Jade once more. And Jade did her best attempt to not look utterly confused.

“I should have guessed you saw nothing.” The other woman sighed. “Look, just follow me, ok? These critters are very strange. As long we don’t invade their territory, I think we’ll be just fine. And it doesn’t seem that any bigger predator lives in this area.”

Once again, Jade was happy to leave such matters to the other woman, she seemed competent enough. She grabbed a fruit and broke it down before pushing small pieces into her mouth. She made a face, this one was tart with no sweetness. Almost like eating a lemon-flavored pear.

About to take another bite, the sorceress stopped. Something felt different like the air moved differently, but Jade knew it was not the wind. A prickle of pain at her back made Jade turn and grab at what had hit her. It was some sort of wooden dart, with a fluffy flight.

The woman she saw leaping from the bushes heralded the start of the ambush. The ambusher had strips of fabric woven similar to a belt tied below her navel. Jade did not know what purpose it served since the woman was not wearing anything else. Her body was instead covered in tribal marks, like hundred of crisscrossed black lines from her sternum to her knees. She had a necklace that dragged towards her belly button, made of fine threads of red and blue. The woman had more thread tied on her wrists and arms. Her face had different markings, with triangular black shapes from her nose to her neck, and a red line painted from one side to the other on the same line as the eyes.

The woman's hair was straight and black reaching her lower back, Jade guessed. The woman had a patch of shaved hair in the middle of her head starting from the forehead and going halfway through her head.

She had a wooden spear in hand and with a grunt of effort she lunged at Jade, aiming at her chest. Jade moved away, but from the same place the dart had hit, a numbing sensation spread over her back and muscles. It was not enough to prevent the sorceress from actually moving, but made dodging a troublesome thing. Giving up on that, she rotated her body slightly, in a movement that would make her martial teacher proud, and deflected the spear away with a circular arm movement.

The other woman seemed prepared, because she immediately let go of the spear and using the momentum from her lunge, tackled Jade to the ground, the hands snaking around the sorceress's neck.

Jade trashed wildly having flashbacks of her fight with Wonder Light. Her now numbing hands hit something hard amidst the leaves, and without thinking, she grabbed it and swung with all her might toward the other woman.

Later, once things calmed down, the sorceress postulated that the numbing poison had a different effect on them than the aggressors expected. While it numbed her muscles, it did nothing to impede her strength. Jade’s hands thundered and the rock she was holding hit the other woman like a hammer. Bones broke and blood splattered all over the sorceress, her enemy crumpling lifeless.

She pushed the other woman away, then picked the spear, ready to face the incoming army. Only there was none. Around Wonder Light, four others now she paid more attention, adults similarly attired and painted, all unconscious and still visibly alive.

She looked down, took a deep breath, and studied the one she had defeated. Female, small breasts, the face, now a rictus of surprise and pain, was young. The hunting party that attacked them had mistaken Jade’s size for her age and sent a teenager to subdue her.

“Shit. Not mai faalt.” Jade murmured her mantra.

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