SE 3.15 Strangers

6.14 Surprises

Derrick could feel the eyes of every User land on him like darts digging into a dartboard. Not to mention Shalka's own predatory gaze, which was like being stabbed in the heart.

Damn, that was uncomfortable. There was an intensity and focus to her that his Quantum Awareness translated as depth and weight. It was like she was trying to peer under his skin. It was all the more off-putting because of how at ease she seemed. Her playful smile and relaxed pose betrayed none of that intensity.

The purple eyed and long eared hybrid wasn't wearing the same outfit as last time, Derrick couldn’t help but notice. Where as before she had been wearing a thick sleeveless dress uniform, she was now wearing sleeveless System armor. Its fabric and plates were blood red with gleaming white highlights.

A combination of Red Works and Breakneck colors probably. The shades were too exact a match to be a coincidence. The gun on her back was also familiar. A standard System rifle made for human hands, proof that she was taking this at least a little seriously.

He had to wonder how skilled she was with the human weapon though. She’d only had her current body for a week.

Although what she was wearing technically counted as armor, no one would mistake it for practical. Not with the lack of sleeves and how its was just a little more form fitting than necessary. Not to mention the knee high high-heeled boots. Those would be absurd if not for the fact that the System made items could change shape. He’d bet that as soon as bullets started flying, the heels would disappear. Like her last outfit, this one straddled the line between the practical and cosplay.

Well, he couldn't complain about a lack of sleeves on armor. The most famous footage of him was from when he was fighting the Grey Legion over the dungeon in West Hills. He was famously without sleeves for that fight, thanks to them catching fire.

Even avoiding it, he'd seen the clip of him and the other Fighters pushing back a horde of Grey Legion Agent's with nothing but pistols and melee weapons. No doubt every User in the world had seen it by now. Except for Dewport and any other strangely isolated communities like it.

“This is a surprise. Why are you here Shalka?” he asked, off balance both mentally and physically. Physically because she had walked right up in his face and he was leaning back slightly to make space.

The Velorie Supporter had never left the city before as far as he knew. It was her job to help set the city up for the wave of Velorie immigrants that would be awakened if the West Hills Enclave ever had the resources to spare. She was a politician. He’d seen that Velorie hybrids were faster and stronger than basic humans but she was a Supporter, not a Fighter.

“You're being rude,” she chided him. “Do I not deserve a greeting? Even your lowest subordinates deserves a hello,” she said.

“You don't work for me or Red Works,” Derrick responded with narrowed eyes, sensing unwanted revelations in his near future.

“Ah, but I do.” She answered gleefully. “The System, in its infinite wisdom, asked for volunteers and so I did. Odd, that it included me but I lept at the opportunity to be at our side. As you command this mission, handsome, that puts me under you. This precious world is my home now, after all. Why should I not lend my talents to vigorously help defend it? ”

“Because you already have a job,” Derrick tried. “What about the other Velorie?”

“What about them?” she answered with a shrug and smile. “They were still dreaming when I left and will be when I return.”

“Don't you have to represent their interests?”

Not that he had any idea what that meant. Shalka had never made any demands in their name. She seemed to prepare the way for the Velorie mostly by being seen and promising that even though hundreds of aliens were soon to populate the city, it wasn't a big deal and everyone could just get on with their System given missions without worrying about it.

She’d stressed multiple times that the Velorie were eager to help and join human society and culture. A fact few people believed completely. Derrick was one of those few though. He’d dealt with Deleterious and Shalka to catch more than a few hints of how little Velorie culture there actually was.

“Oh, I am. If I survive and my help earns us any good will, it will be worth it. If I perish nobly, well, I'm replaceable. My replacement will no doubt find their job a little easier due to my noble sacrifice. Besides, it as been boring since you left. The whole city is waiting to see what happens next, no one cares about me but you.”

A pause.

“Or trusts me enough to include me in any of the many secret meetings going on,” she added coyly.

This made more sense. She wasn't here to actually help out with the fight. She was here to be seen risking her life and to sell him secrets about Greta and the Militia. A win for her and him, assuming she was being honest. It was probably true. He'd never thought there wouldn't be secret meetings going on behind his back. They'd been pretty constant since the Enclave was founded from what his few spies and allies told him.

“You seemed to be doing fine from what I saw,” Derrick stated. She'd certainly been busy anyway. She'd seemed to fit right in with the human members of the council. All smiles and small favors.

Shalka gave him a sad grin. Or what he thought was meant to be one anyway, her sharp teeth sent very mixed messages. Yet at the same time, were oddly attractive. Images of woman from his life with teeth like hers superimposed flashed through his mind. His last girlfriend from before the Scourges, Kate and Scynil. Strangely, it fit the best with Kate, not Scynil.

All of a sudden, Shalka's grin broadened and she let out a short laugh.

“You don't have any eyes for the subtleties of politics, handsome. Not everyone is as kind as you are.” She accused. “You are an amazingly accepting race, few others would be even this welcoming to strangers in such a crisis. Yet, to most humans, the Velorie are just another type of alien. A problem to be solved and controlled. Not invaders but hardly friends. They resent my meddling, even when all I want is to help you... us survive. Even worse, they don't understand the great things we could do together. The skills the Velorie, broken people that we are, bring to the table. That's one reason why I like you Derrick the Red, you have passion and a very open mind.”

Huh. That felt almost like honesty to him. He was passionate and open minded, because he knew he would need to be if he wanted to do more than survive. Many people, like the militia and Greta were trying to rebuild the past or a reflection of it. Derrick knew that the second the Scourges had arrived, everything had changed.

“Oh, and what skills do you bring to this mission?” Derrick asked, forcing himself to focus on the mission and not the large sparkling purple eyes staring into his own.

“Unwavering courage and loyalty,” she replied with a flutter of her eyelashes. “Oh, and a high pain tolerance. Use me as you please.”

Perhaps she thought she was being cute or seductive with her ripped from tv attitude. Her resume had been seriously annoying to him though. As far as he knew, all of his employees were brave and loyal. Her playing at it seemed like an insult to those who were genuinely fighting the Scourges with everything they had. The desperate protectors and proud fighters that had flocked to his side when he had offered them a way to fight back.

“I'm sure I can find something for you to do,” he said coldly. Thanks to the System and surviving plumbing, they had yet to need to start digging latrines, but maybe now was the time to start.

“Fine, I admit I'm not a Fighter of your level.” She said with a pout. “I've got other assets though.

Then, she reached out, and made to grab at his shoulder. The movement almost as if she was going to jump in his arms or hug him.

That was a step too far for him. He needed to stop this here, before people got any funny ideas. That he would tolerate this kind of thing. He grabbed her wrist, summoned up his disapproval, and hit her with a pulse of auril. He probably should have remembered what happened last time he did that, auril, by its very nature, was closely tied to instinct though. Using it defensively was a hard habit to break.

For a second, the pulse seemed to work as intended. Complex weavings of invisible power flowed out of him and the lithe hybrid flinched back, the hand he was holding jerking in his grip. But then she caught herself and shuddered, a small groan escaping her lips. Her eyes met his and she smiled at him and giggled.

“And in public too, how brazen.”

Derrick was too confused to be properly embarrassed. Another pulse of auril, this one designed to scout, confirmed that she had no auril to defend herself with. Which was just weird. This was not how auril worked. She should have received a blast of pure disdain, not whatever she'd just felt. Enough negative emotion to overwhelm her and send her stumbling away at the least.

“How did you do that?” he asked carefully. “You don't have auril or manna. You shouldn't be able to resist that.”

“And I never have,” she agreed with a laugh. “You really don't have an eye for the subtle stuff, handsome. I'm not resisting you, I'm embracing you. There's more to thoughts than just the surface of them.”

Even if that was true, it would be stupidly hard to read whatever remnants of emotion were behind what he projected. Racial ability or natural talent? No, this was a conscious effort on her part.

“You've trained to resist auril even without having any?” he asked. “I thought you came from an unchallenged area.”

An unreadable look flashed across her face, momentarily smothering her grin.

“I already said it was not about resistance,” she responded, quickly regaining her former confidence. “Unless you mean acquiring resistance the old fashioned way. Consider some experimentation part of any deal we strike. I’d prefer we did that in private though.”

Now, Shalka was almost embracing him, her mouth aimed directly at his left ear. He could feel the heat coming off of her. Derrick idly wondered which act would make him seem weaker, giving in or running away.

There was a polite coughing noise from his left.

“I also came here to help,” came a dry voice from off to the side. “I can leave and come back at a better time if you want.”

“Oh, hi Jenny,” Derrick said thankfully to his old ally as he carefully pushed Shalka off of himself. “Long time no see.”

Now that he thought about it, if he had managed to lure some Fighters away from the West Hills Militia, it made sense that she would be among them. She was by far the most friendly voice among the leaders of the Militia. While they'd never been friends exactly, they had been fairly close allies. He liked to think they had more in common than he and the Demnols did anyway.

Derrick and the dark haired ex-police officer had done many missions together. After they split up, she and her partner had become respected members of the Militia, joining with many other law enforcement types.

From the corner of his eye he saw Shalka demurely backing off. Smiling at the newcomer, apparently undisturbed by the interruption.

“You seem to be doing well for yourself,” Jenny said professionally, all indifferent cop at the moment.

“You too,” he replied in his best boss voice, attempting to ignore being caught with Shalka practically straddling him. “I should have guessed you would volunteer for a mission to rescue thousands of people.”

Like many of the Militia, her armor was blue and designed remind people of the uniforms the police wore. They even wore identical, blue featureless masks.

The only interesting thing about her equipment was the fist sized silver orb floating above her shoulder. Obviously some kind of manna device.

“Yes, you should of. I should have guessed things would get messy as soon as I started working with you again,” she replied with a small smile.

“The noble Jenny Barros and I talked a great deal on the way over here,” Shalka said calmly, the change in attitude somewhat jarring.

“Shalka was so well behaved on the way here, I thought the rumours might be exaggerated. You have a type Derrick,” the human female accused with humor.

“Rumors?” asked Derrick carefully. Did people think he and Shalka were sleeping together? They'd only even met a handful of times and never alone. People must be hard up on gossip if they were focusing on his love life, or lack thereof.

“Type?” asked Shalka, cocking her head to the side.

“It is nice to catch up, but it’s not really the time or place for personal issues,” Derrick interrupted, retreating behind professionalism. He didn't have a type, did he? He'd always found himself attracted to very different women. He was attracted to Scynil and she was nothing like Shalka. Kate... was sort of similar to Shlak? Taller but they were both blonde and on the thin side. Mentally, it was hard to say due to the whole Hollow Majesty thing Kate had going on.

Wait. Kate was technically kinda part alien, having alien memories in her head. Only a few people knew about that but Blake might have told Jenny. Did she think he had some kind of alien fetish? He was ending this conversation right now.

“Meg and Blake are still on their way back?” he asked no one in particular.

“Change of plans there actually,” Mathew said, having appeared now that it was polite to do so. One of the things he appreciated about the older User was his decorum, you could count on him to mind his own business. “They want us to meet them near the next possibly Corrupted Station.”

“Corrupted Station? I thought we were headed to Flint Creek.” asked Jenny and then she gave Derrick a look. “Messy already. This never happens with the Militia.”

A spike of annoyance hit him with that comment.

That's because the Militia is a bunch of unambitious cowards that never leave the safe zones that others have created in West Hills. It's easy to be organized when your highest ambition is patrol duty, he thought but didn't say. There was no point in antagonizing her, so he just nodded.

For some strange reason a silence had descended on the group. Mathew had raised an eyebrow his way and Shalka was grinning like a shark that smelled blood.

“I suppose that is mostly true,” Jenny admitted with obvious reluctance. “I'm here for just that reason. I probably made a few enemies just because I thought saving people was more important than local politics.”

It took Derrick a few seconds to realize what was going on. He'd said that spiel out loud. Not in his head, out loud. Huh, he was surprisingly OK with that. It wasn't like what he'd said wasn't true.

“I take it that your mission was to report to me and the System didn’t fill you in on the details,” Derrick asked and received a confirming nod. “Typical, I guess we can fill you in on the way. Things have gotten just a bit messy out here.”

He considered their next move. A moment of hesitation. How much did he trust Jenny?

“I don't suppose you know how to ride a motorcycle?” he asked hopefully.

Break.

“Nothing?,” Derrick repeated. He'd explained what he'd found out about the Inoculation enhanced bees to Meg and she was in the process of explaining what they'd found at the site of the possibly corrupted System Station.

“Unless you count air,” Meg said. “Which I don't. It's as close to actual nothing as we get around these parts.”

“All we found was a hole in the ground,” elaborated Blake. “Right where the Station was supposed to be. Obviously the discount Decepticons had packed up and evacuated already.”

“We weren't exactly subtle on our way in,” the leader of Breakneck admitted. “I imagine they knew we were coming and just bugged out.”

“Do you think they came here. To our next target?” Derrick asked.

They were just a few miles from the second Station that the System thought might be corrupted.

“We found tracks leading in this direction,” Meg informed him. “But they faded before giving a clear direction. Hard to say what the Rebel Instruments did once they hit the paved roads.”

“All the civilian vehicles confused the issue too. Three different groups of Users were surviving right next to the Rebel Instruments. The machines didn't seem to go off road much,” Blake added. “Lights travelling down a highway all look alike to people, especially from a distance and through trees.”

“There's something at the second site. The manna scanner confirms it,” Stacy said with certainty. “A single powerful Fold draw, centred on a tiny town.”

That sounded like a Station to him. The question was, had it been corrupted and was it defended? There could be scavengers in some kind of low power mode there. It wasn't like they needed to power themselves with manna. There were other options as long as they weren't trying to create shields. It wasn’t like solar power or even gasoline had stopped working.

“So we have no idea how the killer robots will defend themselves,” Derrick asked. He imagined it would be easy for a robotic Scourge to build traps. Especially since they seemed to focus on stealth and mobility. Landmines would be a real pain to deal with.

“None,” Meg admitted and shrugged her broad shoulders. “We talked to the locals, but they had only ever seen a normal looking Station here before the scavengers drove them off.”

“We should just shell the site with Tempests,” Blake said suddenly. “Just to be sure. That would at least tell us if there's another of those stealth fields there. Maybe even provoke a reaction.”

That got more than a few nods from the gathered Users.

“What if there's survivors there?” Jenny asked seriously. “If it isn't corrupted, a working Station is the logical place for them to gather and hide. We can't risk friendly fire.”

“Tempests have a pretty sophisticated guidance System,” Stacy informed her. “We can fire a spy shell before setting the scenery on fire. A group of survivors nearby should be easy enough to spot.”

“Even if they're hiding inside buildings?” Jenny asked with obvious skepticism.

Derrick ran through the options in his head. One familiar option stood out.

“If we don't see any signs of corruption from above, I'll check it out myself,” Derrick said. “I'll just get close enough to check the nearby area with auril and report if it's clear.”

It had to be him, he was the only one of them skilled enough to have a chance of detecting non biological Scourges.

“Leading from the front again, how shocking.” Blake said. “I suppose I'll go with, if it comes to that. Not before we send a squad to clear the path though. No point in risking our leadership and experts until we get to the town. What about you Jenny? You want to make sure we don't bomb anyone shuddering in the ruins right?”

“Of course I'll go,” Jenny said with professional indifference, maybe even a little eagerness.

“Sounds like a tentative plan then,” Derrick said. Meeting over, everyone went to their own vehicles. Derrick had his bike, stashed back in the Abomination's trailer and climbed into the back of their mobile command centre. Coordinating their plans had been the most pressing issue. A close second though, was talking with Third Striker.

He had accidentally injured his alien tutor when he threw that Fold grenade. The strange effects of the weapon taking him out of the fight. While the short Crusader hadn't seemed angry, Derrick was nervous. Opening the door, he expected to find Third Striker meditating in his favourite chair and was not disappointed.

As soon as he opened the side door and stepped in, Third Striker opened his odd eyes and looked at him. Derrick found it difficult to read the bald alien's youthful features. His strange double irised eyes drew his attention.

“Thank you for delivering me to safety,” Third Striker said formally.

That was one way to describe what was essentially a piggy back ride, Derrick mused as he wondered if the formality was a good or bad sign.

“It was nothing,” Derrick said carefully. “It's obvious that I fu... messed up and hurt you. Are you alright?”

“Yes, I am fine,” Third Striker explained with a rueful smile. “I was spent, not injured. I did it to myself really. I panicked when I sensed what I thought was a Feral Artisan and threw my will against what was essentially an explosion. The results were... predictable.”

“No,” Derrick stated firmly. “You didn't hurt yourself. Even if I am forgiven for it, it is not up for debate that I was the one that hurt you. I lost control of my manna because I chose to use an untested weapon the battlefield. It was stupid.”

“That is true. It was foolish,” Third Striker returned. “But it is not the entire truth. I could have been more help to you and your allies.”

Derrick opened his mouth to speak.

“Silence, Tower that Raises Red.” Third Striker said. “I am a Warder Crusader, charged with the defence of all thinking life against the Feral Artisans. Through my victories I have risen higher and accomplished more than most do. I saw my chance to test myself against a rare foe and took it. I chose to fight that way because it offered the most reward to myself. I could have fought at your side, repelling the machines with blade in hand. It would have been safer for all involved.”

“Any help is appreciated,” Derrick replied honestly. “You don't need to apologize...”

“I wasn't,” The alien interrupted again. “I did what I did for good reason. Strength is the only sane goal in this universe. All who serve the System learn this. I pursue it unashamed.”

Ah.

“I was merely explaining that I chose to put myself at risk,” he continued. “Like I did when I agreed to train you. I was never unaware that manna from what you call the Canvas was dangerous. Of course it is. I am training you because I believe I can learn from the experience. And from that learning, I will earn greater glory from the System.”

Huh. He'd honestly thought the half alien liked him and that was why he was training him to use manna. He had a fancy title for helping the Crusaders after all, Blooded Ally of the Orders.

“Shouldn't you already know about Canvas manna?” Derrick asked, hiding his hurt feelings. “Doesn't your order exist to fight the Feral Artisans?”

There was a short pause, in which the teenage seeming alien looked embarrassed.

“It is possible you are labouring under a misunderstanding. While my higher level and prestigious Role may seem glamorous to a neophyte and becoming a Crusader of any Order assuredly requires rare skill, I am simply average amongst the knights of my Order. One among thousands of questers. I am still fighting to earn my way into the higher ranks. I have never been taught the secrets you seek to master. If my Order even knows them.”

“I have heard rumours that such secrets exist but if there is a scholarly component to the Order of First Warders, I have never seen it. I would not have, for my training was done on battlefields. I was taught what was needed to serve and then sent to earn glory among thousands of others. It has been decades since I last spoke to another Warder.”

Right, that shouldn't be a surprise. Getting to know Scynil and Third Striker better had blunted his earlier impression of them being zealots and warriors, that was still true though. Despite their technical proficiency with the strange powers offered by the System, manna and auril were weapons to them.

“So my ability must be very rare then,” Derrick said. “Or you would have at least heard of it.”

“Maybe,” Third Striker said with a shrug and a smile. “Perhaps the power you wield is not what you think it is. I learned some hints during the battle against the machines, when I felt the canvas manna attack reality itself. You touch the power of the Artisans but not the source of it, I think. You are reaching towards that source but may be finding something merely adjacent. Dangerous, yes, of course. Interesting, assuredly. Not necessarily the purest power of the Shaping Strangers. I look forward to studying the phenomenon you created with the Fold explosive.”

Shaping Strangers must be another name for the Feral Artisans, Derick noted. Scourges seemed to collect cool sounding titles.

“We have to defeat the Rebel Instruments first,” Derrick said. “Not to mention find out what is going on at Flint Creek. Can I count on you to help out with that?”

“Of course,” Third Striker said. “