Chapter 95: Chapter Ninety Five

Since Celine was helping Jessie, Cark was patrolling the clearing, and Martin and Sarah were tagging along with their boss, Benny, Callie, and I were completely alone when we got to the top floor. We'd put the strap guy and all the H outside, and Benny was keeping them doped until after the fight, when we could hopefully come up with something to free them, once there was no one to trigger them or blow up their heads out of spite.

Luckily with enough taps that tranq ability lasted quite a while, so Benny just had to dip down and check on them once an hour, or twice an hour for the G ranker. Which gave him some time to come sit in on our brainstorming between re ups. Sadly, before he could be of help I had to actually get him to understand the premise of the plan. He seemed to be missing the core concept. "So you're saying you want us to wish for like, weapons we can use against the Heartrippers? Some kind of secret ace in the hole?"

I sighed, rubbing my temples and looked to Callie. "I swear he isn't stupid. This is just a bit meta for him, he tends to be a mostly practical thinker. Clearly I'm having zero luck with this, probably because I'm trying to be vague so I don't influence his wish too much and invalidate it. Can you explain this to him?" I was almost definitely being too cagey about my explanation, but my power was kind of a stickler about fair compensation. If I was weighting the wish it would invalidate any payment.

Callie, as it happened, had no such limitations. He's talking about wishes outside a physical context. Stuff like wishing for the right weather for our combat style, or wishing for good luck, or for them to come in from a specific direction. Maybe even some kind of animal that naturally counters psychic abilities in a radius. I think there was a mention of that during my monster research..." She trailed off, flicking her scan ring and sifting through pages. "Ha! Found it!" She turned to me triumphantly. "I wish we a Circadian Dream Bat!"

The usual words of flame appeared across my vision.