North Touimai Arrival - The Fall of Touimai (Part 7)

As we just finished crossing Greygor Bridge, I heard the clapse of thunder. But this time, it had more of a deeper metallic thud to it. 

"Heodia. Here they come." I said. 

She nodded back and we began running as fast as we possibly can. 
The familiar whistle sound could be heard soon after that. 

"Prepare for their impact, Void."

Sounds of explosions and the screams of residents covered my reply. 
Yup, these are all the 28cm shells I'm very familiar with. I thought as we were running through wide 2-metre alleys with raging fires behind us. I didn't get those unknown memories that happened to me back in West Touimai but we were right at the start of the shelling, so I thought it would come sooner or later. 

"Hey Void, you okay?" Heodia suddenly asked me. 

"Hm? Yeah, I'm okay. If you're talking about the memories, I'm not getting them. Though I can't confirm it right now, I do have a theory on it." 

She was scanning me, head to toe, which I thought was pretty dangerous since she was in the lead and was running at high speeds but she IS an android after all, so she should be fine. 

Finally convinced, 
"Alright, I'll trust your words for now. But when you DO get those strange memories again, ask me for help." She said. "I'll be glad to help. Deal?" 

Looking straight at her eyes and nodding a bit, I agreed. 
"Deal." 

"Good. Stand behind me. My calculations predict that this whole alleyway will collapse soon. We need to get out of here ASAP." 

I looked at my surroundings. Heodia was right. Sooner or later the alleyway we were running through will collapse. But there was a slight problem or... what I thought. 

"Huh? Stand behind you? There's no opening... unless..." 

"You guessed it!"
Heodia then stretched out her arm. A gun instantly appeared in her hand. A rather large one in this time and era but as they say, usually the bigger the weapon, the more firepower it has. 

It took some time I but soon recognised the weapon that she was holding in her hand. While the shape wasn't the common plasma-powered weapon from what little books I read about the plasma topic, Heodia's plasma weapon did have plasma's unique soft glow. 

"Interesting. Is that Uto's design of a plasma weapon?" I asked. 

"Not sure. The design may be Uto's but the features and other capabilities of the weapon may be designed by other members of his team." She replied while charging the gun up. 

Oh okay. 
While waiting for the weapon to charge up to the desired strength, I first looked behind us to observe the fires and then checked out the weapon in finer detail. Rather than a plasma weapon, whose shape looked like more of a beefed-up sniper rifle with fancy LED lights, Heodia's weapon looked more like the weapons produced and designed during the 'Ancient Era' (Around 60,000 years ago)

It had a cool shade of black, a classic colour but what makes the weapon stand out at a first glance is the soft glow of a hellish red flowing through small clear tubes and into the weapon. 

"Alright. It's done. Void, you may wanna cover up your ears now." 

"Huh?-" 
A massive sound echoed throughout the alleyway while the weapon fired out a blackish-red ball, probably at around 50m/s (which is pretty slow for a projectile fired from a gun), and once it came in contact with the buildings in front of us, it melted. The glowing ball of plasma continued to melt everything in front of us until it slowly disappeared. 

"Alrighty, let's go." 

"Yeah." I replied to Heodia. 

Since the ground is still several hundred degrees celsius and everything I have with me right now, including the backpack, stuffed with food and other materials will just melt when it comes in contact with the heated ground, so I asked Heodia to carry me through the tunnel. 

"You want me to carry you through the tunnel?" Heodia repeated what I just said to her. "No problem." 

"Oh! Thank you." 

She swatted to allow me to jump on her back and off we went through the hot tunnel. I was barely surviving as the extreme heat was killing me, but I managed to live. 

Oh! Is that the exit right there? That's good!

"Hang on tight Void! I'm going to speed up since we need to get out of there right now! The fire is spreading faster than I'm running currently!" 

I clutched my hands even more tightly onto Heodia, and as she was about to speed up,

"Please wait!" someone said out of nowhere. We both looked at the area where the voice came from. 
I wasn't able to react; same with the person but Heodia turned around sped up, crossed the distance from us to the person in a flash, carried them in her arms and continued running like nothing had happened all within two seconds. 

"Heodia turn around-" I started. 

"No problem already got her." Heodia cut me off. 

I was confused but then I saw another person in her arms with their eyes closed.

"What's going on?" 

"I'll explain to you a bit later, once we find shelter." She answered. 

We finally exited the tunnel, and in the nick of time as well, the moment we left and ducked fire blasted through the tunnel like a bullet when being fired. The fire was able to extend its reach up to several houses across the street but only caused minor damage.

  Heodia ran down the broken concrete street and into a fairly large building. 

"We're safe here. Uto has created a strong barrier around this building for us. I'll explain some things and rest here for the artillery rounds to end." Heodia said as she made the bed for the girl sleeping on her back.  

Uto made a barrier just for us? But how- wait. I'm thinking of a cheeky god here so... 

"Hey, who's a cheeky god?!" a voice said from behind me.

I turned around to see a blue transparent screen, just a bit over my head. 
"Ah... Uto... I was joking of course..." I replied. But sadly he didn't buy it. 

"Hmph! You got a real attitude on how you treat your god you know! Shall I take back some powers of yours?" threatened Uto. "But moving on, you, the android and another figure laying in the bed?" 

"Oh yes, uhh, I have now given a name to the android, Heodia, and about the girl in the bed right now, we got no clue." I answered Uto. 

He looked surprised to my answer. 
"No clue? Did you just kidnap her from somewhere?" 

"Of course not!" 

Uto now had an annoying grin on his face. Clearly, he was making fun of us. 
"Well jokes aside, Void, I'm going to tell you how to use your powers with and without the curse." He said. 

"Wait what?" 

"Yeah, you heard me." 

I was extremely confused at this point. It was around a day after my first meeting with Uto but I was 100%, no- 110% sure that he did not say what he just said right there. But I decided to continue the conversation to learn more. 

"You can use supernatural powers with the help of the curse? How so?" I replied to Uto, being very interested in the topic. 

"Yeah so the curse allows you to use powers with much greater extent but at a cost, while if you learn how to use powers without the help of the curse then you will get much weaker results but no cost for using it at all." Uto explained to me. "I'll add it to you later." 

If Uto is taking action, then maybe I should be cautious too. And that last sentence, 'I'll add it to you later'... what does he mean by that?