January II

Gaia, I’m so tired, John thought, looking at the slowly constricting vine walls all around him. His health was at about half, and another vine whip curled around the floor like a hungry snake. The free space inside the capsule of vines he was trapped in slowly contracted in every direction, less space to dodge as the whip at his feet unfurled itself and snapped at him. Since he had been fighting for days, his Reflex Mode uses were fully refreshed.

I thought you didn’t need to sleep? Cinder asked, hiding inside him at his command. The vines proved to be stronger than he had anticipated, shattering through his defenses and cutting his health down with each heavy whip. Though Cinder was made of fire, antithetical to the vines themselves, John didn’t want to see her struck nonetheless.

I don’t need to sleep, sure, but my muscles ache. We’ve been here for three days already. I’ve got water in my inventory to last a while, but the hunger debuffs are only going to get worse. Every time we escape, more vines pull us back. I can still feel them pulling on my arms, like they were trying to pull out roots. In the total dark of the mound of vines he was trapped in, John activated Symphony of the Night to hear the faux snake coming. What’s the over-under on Abigail finding her way out and calling backup? Think the vines destroyed her phone too?

On reaching out, I feel one controlled fire I can manipulate right at the edge of my range, near Phoebe’s compound. Another flame of a magical nature burns much closer, a few yards straight ahead. It may be a piece of Abigail’s body, Cinder replied; her voice in his head nearly distracted him from the subtle hiss the tendril of vine emitted as it lunged toward him.

John activated Reflex Mode, easily stepping past the vine as it launched past him, failing to curl around his arm. Three more shot toward him with similar intentions. The seemingly senseless appendages were unfazed by the Afterimages his incredible speed left behind. His vision faltered when he took another deep breath, and a sense of euphoria crept up on him.

John, this enclosed space is running out of air, Cinder informed him, a danger that crept up on him more insidiously than the vines’ direct attacks. John dodged under the first vine’s lash, listening for the sound of the other three creeping up on him. He jumped to the left when it sounded like they were going to close in on him, only to fall right into the clutches of the deceptively clever foliage as it withdrew the dummy vines it was fooling his hearing with, suspending him in the air by the three limbs it held on to.

Despite his explicit instructions not to, Cinder revealed herself in a flash of heat, erupting from John in an inferno that threw off the vines binding him, conducting the fire around her as the blaze grew and her mana drained. Totally drained of mana and taking some from John, Cinder pushed the flame out until it totally obliterated the interlocking sphere of vines the hivemind plant had woven around John.

The gunman dismissed Symphony of the Night, blinking the light away as he emerged into the relieving, invigorating light of day. A battalion of creeping flora made its move toward him the moment he emerged, seeking to entrap him once more. A wave of wriggling tendrils wound up before spilling over him. John channeled a Mana Bolt of a hundred mana into each gun, using the beams to cut through the vines and Jumping high up into the sky.

Jump level 10! Jump may now be angled to access areas without a straight-forward path. Jump will default to the shortest accessible path for mana usage purposes.

Not bad. Been waiting for that to use my Evolution Point on it, John thought, using Move on his whole body to slow his fall. Where’s that fire now?

Coming up on the right, Cinder replied, back inside him after her uncharacteristic attack drained her. John squinted at the canopy as he fell back through the leaves of the Valvian trees, swatting away the invasive vines and landing on a branch above a shockingly green fire with Josephine at the center.

“Josephine? You’re still alive?” John asked, downing a flurry of vines with a volley of bullets while he dropped to the ground. Despite their constant efforts to subdue him, the vines didn’t even approach her.

The elvish woman suddenly opened her eyes at her name, though her familiar scowl reemerged when she saw who had spoken it. “More surprised you are. Get in here, quick.”

The fire remained burning, and John dodged around a coterie of subduing ivy, circling her flame and using it as cover. “Won’t it burn?”

“Trust me!” Josephine yelled, blasting a gout of the same green flame from a hand to burn away a vine that would have wrapped around his throat from behind. The verdant flames burned away the vine but left the leaves of the tree it settled on unharmed as it fizzled out.

The ground beneath him shook, and more vines erupted from all sides, making another gambit at entrapping him in a vine heart. He grit his teeth and leapt over an incoming whip, rolling into Josephine’s flame and landing with his head against the nape of her neck, back to back. “What is this?”

“My natureflame. It doesn’t burn that which can be found in Valvia.” Though their backs were pressed together, John felt the grimace in her voice as she continued, “Including humans. You’re welcome.”

“Right, thanks. So the vines aren’t native? Why are they even here at all?” John asked, heart racing as the pure joy of rest worked its way through his body.

“No idea. Brought here through one of your guild’s mirrors no doubt,” Josephine added as the flame barely shrunk around them, receding a few inches inwards and downwards. The vines lashed at the fire around them when it shrunk; however, any that made contact burned down to the root. “The trees around us are dying. They’re giving me the energy to keep my fire going, but they’re all either losing to the vine’s influence or starved by its presence.”

“What’s the plan?” John asked, scrolling through his character sheet as he spoke to the elvish druid.

“Was kind of hoping you could come up with one,” Josephine admitted. “I won’t have enough mana to keep the natureflame going with both of us inside much longer. If you’d found me earlier…”

“Can’t dwell on the past now. What do we know? How can we beat this thing?” John asked, scrolling between his two skill evolution points and the skills which could be evolved.

“It’s got a brain of sorts. Everything it binds and kills is in service of getting more mana and nutrients to the brain. If I could get a natureflame like this one inside its ‘head’, I could restore the natural balance of the local flora. The invader’s disparate pieces should die on their own.”

“Working on that…” John commented, tapping on Jump and bringing up its upgrade screen.

Long Jump might be good for the flight, in another year. I could really see myself getting a lot of value from High Speed Movement. Getting the extra edge on opponents that match my Agility would be invaluable… but neither of those things are what I use Jump for. Displacement is a lot like Jump, but with extra steps, John thought, tapping the skill to accept it without any further thought. If I can get myself directly captured by the brain, maybe this’ll work.

Displacement, Active Skill, Level 1, Cost: Base 10 MP, Variable
Activate by targeting two entities or objects which are within (Skill Level*100) meters of each other. The position of the two targets are switched using spatial magic; a clear path is not required. At an additional mana cost, the user may shift the target’s orientation and momentum; any change in orientation or momentum in one target must be mirrored in the other.

I’ll miss you, Jump, you served me well, John thought, summoning his guns to his hands after reading the new skill. He fired a volley from both guns, using Displacement on as many bullets as possible midflight to make their trajectories and destinations chaotic. A bit too chaotic, as one that would have hit a vine instead slammed into his chest, fuck. I’ll have to be more careful than that. Way more careful than that.

“Alright, I’ve got a plan,” John said, tracing the outline of a box with Mana Construct, almost mime-like in his motions. “I’m gonna get inside the brain, then swap with you so you can burn it from the inside out.”

“What?” Josephine yelled. The guardian natureflame fluttered around them at her response. “If you don’t do it exactly right, I’ll be trapped in there, with no hope of getting out.”

“Got any better ideas? If not, the alternative is both of us getting trapped right here, with no hope of getting out,” John said, motioning with his arms to the vines all around them. “Trust me.”

“Fine. Don’t bother with the cover,” Josephine said, kicking the reinforced Mana Construct box he was making for her outside her natureflame, though the moment it entered the domain of the vines, a single whip shattered it. “I’ll cover you. Try to make it quick. Follow the vines to their roots, and follow those roots to the brain.”

“Follow the roots to the brain,” John repeated under his breath, somersaulting out of Josephine’s natureflame and twisting around a flurry of vines midair. More came to subdue his lithe form but a circle of natureflame spun around him; Josephine twisted threads of grassy green fire to encircle the gunman, keeping the vines off him. A great gaping maw made of sinewy plant rose from the soil below, using Assess Threat and Find Weakness John could tell it meant to swallow him, and that this is where the vines were collectivizing. The natureflame encircling him dissipated when he passed the jaws of the giant, cut off from Josephine and the trees outside.

The ‘head’ was much smaller on the inside than the outside. John figured it kept parts of itself separate from each other by space, since they were all connected anyway. He channeled a Mana Bolt through a pistol, slicing the furthest vine off its root, and switching with it via Displacement brought him further inside. Should be about seventy meters away from Josephine now. Can’t get too much further. Think you could pull off another save if you needed to, Cinder?

For me, generating attacking flames is horrifically inefficient, but given access to your mana, I could. It’s not something we should make a habit of doing, Cinder explained, floating alongside him in her incorporeal form. The plants are warmer above. It could be what you’re looking for.

Unlike the soil he had been trapped against before, this time he trod on vines. When he crouched down to jump into the hivemind’s upper chamber, the vines he stood on encircled his feet, trapping him in place as more slithered toward him. Shit, of course the main body would be made entirely of vines.

Sure hope this works like I want it to, John thought, pumping another charged Mana Bolt into each pistol and cutting a section of vines out of the ceiling. The vines at his feet pulled him deeper into the ground, but soon they were pulling on nothing when he activated Displacement, swapping with the section of ceiling he had cut out and taking advantage of the new spell to ensure his orientation and momentum made him briefly fall upwards. By the time gravity and reality had corrected themselves, he was walking deeper into the upper chamber. Every step, another vine tried to stop him, but flame-trailed bullets kept the floor in check while he used Displacement to swap places with random pieces of severed vines.

He rounded a corner in the viney vestibule. A small open hole in the mass of vines let light in to shine on an oblong mass of wood. Upon closer inspection, the vines on the ground all converged on the wooden shape. The shambling, olive green appendages encircled the wood, their roots turning a deep yellow where they connected to the brain.

The wooden organ cracked and shook before splitting open to reveal grinding and spinning wooden blades inside. Vines slithered down the walls, congregated at the floor, and unraveled from the ceiling, all wrapped around his limbs, pulling him into the brain grinder of the plant hivemind, intent on making him into fertilizer. Before it made contact with him, he activated Displacement, switching with Josephine.

He had hardly opened his eyes to the light of day when he heard the ungodly piercing shriek of the dying hivemind.

“It just couldn’t take me,” Abigail explained with a satisfied smile, picking a piece of vine up from the ground as John approached and wrapping it around her sizable bicep. She pulled it tight and turned her arms to flame, ruining the mockup would-be restraint. “When we got separated, I figured we’d regroup here. The woodshapers needed help defending Phoebe’s workshop, and I couldn’t walk very far into the forest alone anyway. I was getting pretty worried about you, though. I can only wonder how Jenny feels.”

“No kidding!” John squawked, scrambling toward her as a new look of worry overtook his face. “Still got your phone on you?”

“No way. I was shifting in and out of fire so much, and the second it saw the technology drop out of my pockets, that was it. The vines took down most of the communications, but Phoebe did manage to make something wireless out of the pieces of my phone. We kinda had it under control by then though,” Abigail finished, fist bumping John despite their new mutual worries.

“You handled yourself pretty well out there, next time you’re the patsy, though. Thanks,” Josephine said, walking up to John and clapping him on the back before turning her head to Abigail, “to both of you. We’ve made a new home here.”

“Who knew she could smile?” John teased, turning to Josephine and accepting her hand onto his wrist, grabbing her wrist with his own. She palmed the underside of his arm, and though it didn’t hurt, he felt her natureflame burn something onto him.

“Hey! What was that for?” John asked, turning over his arm to see… nothing. She brushed her fingers over the underside again and revealed a network of roots that met at his palm. Unlike his right hand which held his gun’s soulbrand and Astra’s binding mark, the roots were hidden if he wasn’t in the direct presence of another bearer.

“Just paying you back. I think mine looks better than yours,” Josephine mocked back, turning her arm around to reveal the identity tattoo he had imprinted on her so she could see through his mask. Before his eyes the ink on her shifted into the same root system she had burned into him.

Quest Update: Guild Relations
Objective Complete: Recruit Phoebe Cross to the Rider-Waites!
*Optional Objective Complete: Recruit (Josephine Cross) to the Rider Waites!
Rewards: 75,000 XP, Hoverbike Gatling Gun, Discounted Upgrading Services (Terms Pending); *250,000 XP, Hidden Perk: Heroic Disposition

Between the hivemind and the quest reward, he had leveled up twice, and he quickly tapped the perk as Phoebe walked his motorcycle over.

Heroic Disposition: Hidden Perk, Exclusive from: inFamous, Self-Interested
Due to your kind nature and ambitious assistance, people see you as the Champion you truly are. Even villains pause before attacking you! People you help and similarly heroic allies perceive you as though you had (Charisma*5). Enemies with (Target Charisma<Your Charisma) are **** to attack you and perceive you as though you had (Charisma*2); however, due to your naive selflessness, you perceive enemies as though they had (Charisma*2).

“Gave the Beast a few upgrades. Valvian law made the stock models way slower than yours, but I used what I learned in the mass production process to make the engine a bit more efficient overall. It’ll run a bit faster, a bit longer. The tribe made a gun attachment to the hoverbike as a thank you for everything. When it’s on the bike, you just press a button on the right handle to crank it.” Phoebe demonstrated the feature, pressing her thumb on a red button slightly inset on the side of the right handle. A mechanical arm popped out from under the surface of his bike and began rotating the crank on the mounted rifle, which issued rapid clicks as it dry-fired. “You can rip it right off, the Rejuvenating Rushwood base will regenerate when you want to stick it back on. Mitigates upkeep too.”

“Can’t wait to try it out,” John said, running his hand over the finely polished wooden barrel of the armament. “I should really get home. It’s been days without a word, Jenny’ll be worried about us. Phoebe, you’ve got my guild ID, right? Send me a message when you join.”

“Can you say hi to her for me, John? I’ve got to go home. I was gonna meet my dad… yesterday. I’ve really gotta go,” Abigail responded, climbing onto the back of his bike. John raised an eyebrow at her, though he had been planning on taking it back instead of the slower zeppelin, he had yet to say so.