Arriving at the Start

Blood pooled around in the air making it difficult to clearly see the two of them. None of her reactions were what she wanted. Speed and strength were nothing like what she had become used to wielding on a daily basis. Being a normal human again felt like a prison, punishment for all of the progress that she made.

She couldn’t get over to them. There wasn’t enough strength in her body and the lack of gravity completely changed her concept of motion. The plants had caught her and hung her up. Not that there would have been anything that she could have done away. It already happened and she could only watch helplessly.

Once her body managed to cooperate with her, she floated back to the two of them, but Nerine fell in pulling Yumi away before she got any closer. Seiji was pinned to the floor with a large beam from the ceiling in the explosion straight through his chest. He likely died instantly. Only a hand and foot could be seen of Saki from the complete collapse of the ceiling. Blood and little pieces of them drifted reminding them how nothing about death was clean, despite their pictures from movies of how it would be handled.

They had no sense of where to go, but the damage to the station seemed to be getting worse for them. More explosions were echoing behind the wreckage getting closer to them. Below in the garden it felt like earthquakes, despite such a thing being impossible. Everything told them that they needed to leave and go higher away from all of the disaster.

Yumi looked at Nerine who tried her best to hide the pain that washed over her features. Even Nerine who seemed to pride herself on her maturity and composure started to lose it. ‘It’s a little weird being the only adult even though I’m not…but I need to be the one…this is my story.’ She gave a reassuring firm squeeze on Nerine’s hand to let her know that she had her head on straight.

After it looked like Nerine was ready to continue, Yumi pushed off like she was jumping, starting to get a little bit of a feel for zero gravity. She didn’t have the same sort of accuracy as before, her body more frail and shaken up by everything, even with her mind sharp from trials. She had to use her hands to push off and correct her collision with the walls of the massive chamber before she smashed into it painfully. It still stung her hands to absorb that weight and momentum, but she started to get a feel for it with each push.

Five or six floors up, she felt a little more secure in their position. The destruction didn’t seem to follow them up. Though the garden did, if she didn’t know better the entire station had this running from bottom to top. It might make it easier to navigate. But gravity finally returned as she felt her body gaining weight. She quickly put herself over the ramp as she found the ground to once more have meaning.

“I’m not sure this place is going to survive. Escape is starting to seem like the best course now.”

Chapter 476 – Arriving at the Start

With gravity restored, it became more difficult to traverse the gardens. They seemed to go on forever, making this station’s size greater than Yumi imagined. Its size spoke for something given that it was still holding together.. If she didn’t have to fear for her life, she might have even wanted to see it from the outside somehow. But she had more important priorities, namely staying alive to figure out what she needed to do in this world to complete it.

An hour into their flight, they stopped to take a break and rest. Her lack of the same stamina made only more acute with her shallow breathing and sweating. The pause and bit of quiet gave her a moment to take in everything more clearly than she had.

She hadn’t noticed until then that they weren’t wearing the clothes they left in or anything that was part of their wardrobe. For whatever reason that it was decided, they were given space suits or science suits, Yuki probably could have given her a better name for it. They were some sort of uniform that was a one piece that fit for either sex and gave no real thought to form or figure. It was definitely not appealing, but it was functional and made it easier for them. They didn’t have to worry about standing out.

The station itself looked advanced beyond anything that she could have dreamed up, despite it having come from her. ‘I really wonder when Yuki gave me these powers that some of him was added. I’m having trouble believing any of this is possibly from my mind.’ Everything about it had something abnormal, like it was modeled after something that she had seen before, but twisted in a way that made it completely unrecognizable from anything.

What she originally called metal had additional characteristics that certainly didn’t make it normal metal, were it to be metal still. When she touched it the properties of it changed as if it were responding to something within her. At a glance it had a roughness that seemed harsh, but altered itself when in contact becoming polished and almost soft while still rigid. Some sort of energy or light passed through it in reaction to her contact. It was like the ramp of energy or light in the garden, something beyond their comprehension and she felt completely inadequate to find the right way to describe it.

Nerine turned her head hearing a sound in the distance. It was unclear what it was, though it didn’t sound like the explosions. “We haven’t seen anyone else the entire time that we’ve been here.”

“You’re right. I’ve wondered if it was abandoned, though it would seem a little odd that they would still be under attack if that was the case.”

“Unless they tricked the enemy into thinking that they were still here.”

“Or they’re in shelters or somewhere else safer than we are. We still don’t have an idea of the scale of this place.”

The sounds came closer to them making Nerine stand up anxious. “We might finally find someone.” None of them could really be sure if it was a person coming or something that the station just did as a routine, but not being prepared would have been a mistake.

Yumi joined her, taking cover around a corner in the direction of the sound. “Hopefully, they’re humans. I’m afraid of this being a science fiction horror movie.” She made the mistake of seeing pieces of such movies on TV thinking that they were interesting only for the jump scare to send her flying behind the couch. However, she had completely forgotten to turn it off or mute it so the sounds of the TV continued making the effort partially futile.

“Horror movie?”

“Don’t worry about it, innocence is better that way.” A bit of envy passed between them as she wished that she could be in Nerine’s shoes. However, it ended quickly as the sound arrived and the tension reached its peak for Yumi. It was only made worse by the fact that she couldn’t see anything. Whatever it was nearly sat on top of her, but she couldn’t see it. ‘Above or below?’

While she looked in the most likely places someone called out to them in a demanding soft voice, “What are you doing out here?”

Yumi whipped around hearing them behind her, completely confused how that was even possible. But before her stood a human, thankfully, in the same uniform as them with two more joining them. It was a young looking man, probably close to her current age with the others looking to be more like teenagers. Because they all looked the same, she really didn’t know what sort of purpose they had, not that wearing something different would have given her any more clues than before. She just felt the same level of lost and in need of answers.

Until they pointed something at her that was likely a weapon.

“Would you believe that we were just out for a stroll?” she replied with a joke despite the serious situation developing in front of her. There was no good answer that she had for them. She wanted to make something up, but she didn’t understand the rules and anything that she might have tried to lie with could have only made things worse. At least joking, she could hopefully not get into too much trouble.

A barrier locked the three of them into a cell that was like a prison for them with Yumi behind it and their captors feeling better about their situation now. “I guess you don’t believe me then.”

Their new friends left them alone, likely to get someone more important to interrogate them. Yumi stared at the barrier, hovering her hand close to the barrier. It had completely no reaction to her. Slowly testing with her covered foot, she found it had nothing harmful about it. Testing with her finger, it rested on the barrier and then she realized that it was just like the thing that she walked on in the garden, but more opaque.

She sat down resting against it to face the others. “We’re not alone here, it seems.”

“And not a horror movie?”

“For now at least, we haven’t seen the aliens.” Those little bits could give her some relief. Though Yumi still had no clue about what was going on and they hadn’t met anyone that could help them. “Hopefully, the next person we see will be less of the shoot first and ask questions later type.”

“But they didn’t shoot us.”

“It’s just a saying, Nerine. Don’t worry about it.” Things could have been worse, they could have just killed them. They didn’t know the severity of intruding on their station. ‘What happens if I die? Everyone else just gets to wake up like nothing happened. Do I reset back to the start? Do I lose to them and they get control now?’ She didn’t know if this was a one shot attempt, if she could never fail or if she could fail as many times as it took to succeed. Given how bad things had already gone and their lack of powers, she felt far more vulnerable than ever before. It was a strange sensation to no longer have something that she trained for years.

“Just rest for now. Things seem to be safe.” All they could do was wait. A technology that they didn’t understand with a confusing setting, they would be worse off trying to escape. Not to mention, she had no frame of reference for any of the technology that she saw. She couldn’t possibly guess how anything worked if she tried to hack her way out of the cell. As much as she didn’t like waiting around for something to happen, it was their only choice.

A few hours or days, Yumi really had no clue of the passage of time within the cell. They all slept and got surprisingly good looking food distributed to them by something in the wall. One interaction with the wall was all it took before someone arrived to interrogate them.

The same young man from before stood in front trying his best to look intimidating, but clearly failing. Reading people was something Yumi tried to improve with Yuki in her five years, but never got it down the way others had. ‘I wonder why he’s back? Is he someone important? Seems a little young for that…’

Standing behind him were a couple others that she couldn’t easily see with the way the light hit and their being obscured by the man trying his best efforts to have bravado. Yumi found those behind him more interesting, mostly because she couldn’t see them very well and expected that they had more value to her than the guy pretending.

But that didn’t stop him from starting and attempting to get her to talk. “Who do you work for? Feds? Cons? Corpers?” He tossed out a lot of terms that clearly had significance in their world. If nothing else he was useful for feeding her bits of information, but it lacked any sort of context for Yumi. All she knew was that these were all groups that likely had some issue with these people.

Yumi crossed her arm not really feeling that impressed by the stranger. “We don’t work for anyone else, besides for you. Though I don’t know for how much longer that will be with the way you’re treating loyalty.”

“Don’t you lie to me! You’re not in the database! So cut the crap and tell me who sent you!”

It was worth a shot, but she had so little to go on that she couldn’t create a more convincing lie to work against them. So she only had a remaining play, which didn’t know how it was going to work out. “You first then.”

“What?!”

That seemed to get under his skin, as well as make him sweat. “You’re not the one in charge here. You’re not even someone that should be talking to me. So stop pretending that you’re someone other than a nobody and let me talk to your boss behind you.” His thinly veiled bravado crumbled quickly as she began to poke holes.

“I’ll show—“ The person behind him grabbed his shoulder, keeping him from moving towards Yumi. It seemed that things were finally progressing a bit. They made them stand down and relinquish their position.

Taking over for him was a young woman looking maybe a few years older than Yumi. She had bright red hair that was tied back in a practical way with waves through the lengths. Freed strains hung over her shoulder balancing out her bangs that rested just above her eyebrows. There was definitely something different about her, she had confidence and presence even for being so young. And the two with her clearly respected her deeply. “I would be the boss you wanted to see. You can call me Sumiko.”