Retro soul

“I give you three seconds to disappear from my sight or I'm calling the police.”

Viktoria said in a commanding voice imbued with anger, acting as if any possibility of her getting hurt was nonexistent. In that time Adam had removed the used cartridge from which a snakelike wire extended, tossed it away and switched the taser to a stun gun mode.

“Yeah, surreeee!”

He rushed at her, trying to close the distance with a few powerful steps, but as soon as he made the first one, he slipped on a large piece of a grey paste and crashed face first on the floor. Not only all the energy he put into attacking turned against him, but he also failed to properly break the fall.

The taser had slipped out of his hand and landed right next to Viktoria’s bare feet.

She picked it up with an unamused face as if this was just another daily occurrence in her life.

“Bad luck Mr.Robber?”

I’m counting on you, Adam! She's bluffing about the police, but for heaven’s sake do not try to attack her! Use that power of yours or something to take me away. Rora, I beg you, if you can, please tell him that.

With a silent hiss of pain, Adam slowly rose from the floor, leaving on it a bloody face print. His nose was bent to the right at an unnatural angle and a small stream of red was flowing down from it. Viktoria was waiting for him to stand up.

“That kind of hurt…”

After his second unsuccessful attempt at attacking, he became warier of her, to which she responded by slowly closing the distance between them. Adam tried to maintain it, but stopped after few steps, realizing that somehow his legs became entangled in the wire that he himself had shot upon entering the room.

“What the hell?”

He couldn’t move without removing it first unless he wanted to risk another painful fall. In response to his words Viktoria just sighed slightly, sped up and placed the taser against his chest, but nothing had happened.

“Huh? It's broken? Impossible…”

“A, ha, haha, can’t press the button?”

“You!”

She swung her free hand aiming for Adam’s broken nose, but the expected impact never happened. Her hand stopped right before the target as if she was only trying to scare him.
The calm mask of Victor’s twin sister cracked and revealed a glimpse of a shocked expression beneath.

“Why?!”

“Trade secret.”

Using the moment when she was distracted, he pulled the taser out of her hand and immediately pressed it against the nape of her neck.

“And bang!”

Viktoria jumped away from him scared, but that was the only thing that happened. This time it was Adam’s turn to be shocked, the taser didn’t work.

On one side of the room stood my confused rescuer, while on the other there was an equally dumbfounded abductor.

Just to be sure he tried pressing the trigger again and there was almost no delay between this action and the appearance of the crackling sound of running electricity.

“The hell is wrong with that bloody luck of yours?!”

“Why I can't hurt you?!“

They shouted at the same time, while I as an observer was the only one who understood a portion of the bigger picture of how their powers were interfering with their hostile actions.

The problem is time, Vincent and his lackeys can arrive at every minute now and I’ve got no idea how exactly Adam’s skill works like. Can he deal with all of them at the same time?

A strange situation when both parties were unable to decide on their next action happened, but instead of standing there motionlessly or risk harm due to the lack of knowledge of the foe’s ability they moved on to make the best use of this temporary ceasefire. Adam took out the knife and cut the wire restricting his movements, while Victoria took out her phone and made a call.

Shifting his attention in between her and me, Adam initiated one more attack attempt and was about to throw the knife at Viktoria, when during the swing the blade came out of its handle, flew straight at the ceiling and got stuck in there.

“This is bloody ridiculous.”

At the same time, Victoria's call connected.

“Vincent! Where are you! Wha-. No… I didn’t really… no, I promise… father wait, don’t!”
There was a sudden change from her commanding tone to a meek and servile one.

My rescuer decided to ignore a target that couldn’t be harmed and changed his plans. Using the fact that she was busy talking on the phone, he wanted to lift me up.

Father? Did father decide to interfere? Thank god!

“Yes… I understand… No, I really didn’t do anything… Please don’t shout... I’m coming back… I know that Violet’s not a toy… I will be back home soon.”

When the call ended Viktoria stood with a blank face as if she forgot about our presence. The changes in her voice, pale face and first signs of tears were finally noticed by Adam.

“A, haha, ouch, ha daddy’s girl in trouble?”

His voice made her snap out of it and in a fit of rage she wanted to throw the phone at him, but in the mid-swing her hand froze, unwilling to listen to her commands. This only served to further fuel her anger and she changed her target to me, but hesitated. For a brief moment she was switching her gaze between the two of us and it looked like she finally managed to realize that he came here to my rescue. In the end, Viktoria only snarled shortly at us and left the room in a hurry.

I’ve got a feeling that I owe Violet big time… No, wait. It was her fault to begin with. Let’s say we’re even now.

Three minutes after her departure Adam decided to lay me down on the bed, after which he finally relaxed and started whining from pain.

“Damn it hurts. Is it broken?"

He tried to feel around the new shape of his nose.

"Ouch, ouch, ouch… bloody hurts, but that girl sure was a beauty. Hey mate, look, I got my nose broken for you, in exchange help me to get that monochrome twin of yours into my harem.”

I hope it stays crooked for the rest of your life.

About twenty minutes later Aura and Silvie came to my flat. They were late due to the fact that one was working and the other was in school, only Adam who, after recovering his taser, was en route to home could respond to the emergency call received from Aura on time.

Silvie took both me and the idiot to the hospital where we learned that luckily for him, the nose was only displaced and could be easily set back in place, his face would stop looking like a balloon after about three to five days. Though we had to sell some bullshit story to the doctor as to how I got such a huge dose of muscle relaxant into my body, my family’s name came into play and did some work for me. Thanks to that visit and the passage of time I recovered most of my strength.

I kept the endotracheal tube for the future use.

During the information exchange with Silvie and the rest, I learned that they had some knowledge about Viktoria, her challenge mode and power, but they were severely underestimating the amount of mana she had gathered to strengthen her ability. Adam knew that she was lucky, but thought it was more like a luck in gambling type of skill. To begin with, how did they obtain that information? Apparently, it was disclosed as a warning from TET after Viktoria once came close to breaking their rule number three.

She was probably the only esper widely known in the entire esper community where everyone did their best to remain anonymous.

I asked about the connection between Rora and Viktoria, but they had told me that there was none. My VIP seat had allowed me to observe Victor’s twin misunderstanding as to Adam’s true identity. She probably saw him simply as her daily lucky chance for a heroic act, in this case stopping a robbery, at least till the moment of discovering that she couldn’t hurt him, which meant that she didn’t know that he was connected to Rora. On the other hand, my destroyed phone hinted strongly that some kind of a connection between those two girls had to exist.

I got Adam to explain some of the inner workings of his skill. It was a type of an on/off power where he could choose its target and prohibit that person from performing any hostile actions. In other words, Viktoria didn’t hesitate to throw the phone at me, she simply couldn’t do that. I found it hard to believe that there was no weakness in his power.

Oh! I almost forgot. The stupid front door that wagged its tail in front of every intruder was gone. Simply gone. No trace left. How did she do that? Was it connected with her barefoot state? How did she even manage to do anything with it without waking me up? Heaven’s help me I would love to know that.

[Do you want to confirm the purchase?]

I clicked ‘yes’. After this simple move, I barely had 100$ left on my account. Today was only the 5th of February, which meant that some harsh days were in store for me before this month ends, but I was convinced that there were things in one’s life that simply had to be done.

“Can I play now?”

Asked Aura sitting on the chair next to me, curiously eyeing some game icons that were on the laptop's desktop.

“Sure, I will go and check how’s Silvie doing.”

“No, stay.”

She grabbed my shirt in a slightly threatening manner, which I was already getting used to as it had happened many times today.

“I will be back in a minute.”

“I will go as well.”

“If you want to.”

Since the time Aura had learned that I (Rora) was in danger she became my shadow, no trace was left of her previous animosity or indifferent behavior. Back in the hospital, Silvie had told me to let her do that for a while and she would stop after calming down.

“By the way, Aura, how’s Rora and her tuning? You talked with her right?”

“Still needs more time and try not to use your power, it’s not helping.”

Now that I think of it, she always seems to ‘wake up’ right after I use it.

“Got it.”

We moved from the living room to the bedroom, where Silvie was busy removing salt, blood, dog food, used taser cartridge with thin metal wires, melted plastic pieces, stain left on the wall after the battery explosion and one blade stuck in the ceiling.

At first, I was going to do it myself when they had brought me back from the hospital, but as soon as I had started, after two rapid moves, I had spread on the floor in all directions like a slime. The aftereffects of the drug prevented me from any work for the rest of the day. Seeing this and since Aura wasn’t planning on letting me go anytime soon, Silvie had offered her help.

“Amato, how?”

Asked Silvie pointing at the knife's blade above.

“Ask Adam, he did that. Do you want something to drink?”

“No thank you.”

She still had some work to do and I felt Aura pulling me back to the corridor.

“Something’s wrong?”

“The smell of blood, I don’t like it and it’s cold. Let’s go back and play.”

She’s incredibly cute when she acts so docile, watching me with her big brown eyes and tilting her head, creating silver waves of hair. What’s more, she’s only interested in the inner me! Completely ignoring the outwards appearance.

Ehh… I kind of miss Vio. Cute is good, but it’s way more fun to mess with that blondie.

I made sure that the temporary cardboard barrier, stitched together with duct tape, was still pretending to be the door and went back to living room, where we had a brand new electric heater set on max.

While Aura was busy checking the content on my hard drive, I was trying to recall Violet’s phone number. Vic never bothered to remember it and I had a tendency to rely only on my phone’s memory.

Nope, nothing, can't remember it. Should I visit home tomorrow? I can’t leave it for later or it will only fester and create more problems in the long run.

But when I think of meeting with Bitchtoria... Maybe Violet will be fine without my help? She somehow managed to get father involved... Still, Bitchtoria had said something about Vio not being able to leave own room.

Damn, what should I do?

“Let’s play this.”

“Hmm? Ohoho~, now little girl, you’ve just won my attention. I hope you’re prepared to spend the night here as it won't end fast once we start.”

Aura nodded slightly and started downloading the game. It was Civilization II. I put aside my worries for later and decided to focus on playing with her.

“How did you even found this old gem?”

“I like to read about and discover for myself games that people tend to call iconic. For example, last time I spent over two weeks playing Fallout one and two. I must admit that it’s really hard to find the kind of climate they have in new games. Especially when you play it for the first time, not only there aren't any tutorials that treat the player like a three-year-old, but everything simply seems so different, strange and fascinating. Learning and discovering it by yourself, after that starting your second playthrough with the help of obtained knowledge and using exploits that you had no idea even existed before is the thing I love best.

In Fallout, I really like the part when the dialogues change if you create a character with low intelligence that goes around and only communicates in ape sounds. Walking around the wasteland as an idiot only interested in ice creams and shiny things, who still has the mission of the chosen one and the fate of the world on his arms is a lot of fun. Even the rewards you obtain are sometimes better since there are lots of side quests available only for idiots.”

I was speechless, not only I had learned that she could speak well if the topic was aligned with her interests, she also had a true retro gamer soul!