Save State Hero 3 - ch 15-

Chapter 15

Edmund was staring out the window from the passenger seat. Iren was slouched low in the backseat with a jacket that wasn’t big enough to cover her bust covering her. She was wearing it backwards with the back open against the seat.

Farady was driving and Cashatok was in the back with Iren.

The radio was on and it meant nothing at all to Edmund. It was all gibberish to him and meant no sense at all. There were times he swore he could identify a word here or there, but it never actually resolved into anything.

“Yeah,” Edmund muttered to himself. “Gonna… need something to be able to understand all this. This might be one of those idiocy moments where I break the world just for my own convenience.”

Farady asked a question to that with raised eyebrows.

“She wants to know if you’re a super villain,” Iren translated with a laugh.

“Depends on which side you’re on,” Edmund answered. Then he blinked. He’d forgotten he did have the Log with him. Though now, on what was essentially a Zeus world, he wondered if that was a bad thing.

A really bad thing.

Reaching to the pack at his feet he shifted his legionnaire breastplate and armguards out of the way. He found the Log quickly and put it in his lap.

Blowing out a breath he suddenly wanted to scratch his face.

Pulling off the helmet he set it down atop the armor.

“Oh, shit, I thought you’d already pulled the helmet off. It looked like your face,” Iren said from the back with a laugh. “That’s a neat function.”

Looked like my face?

I… oh.

That emoji I saw.

It was telling me I looked like me, rather than wearing a helmet?

Fucking super duper advanced helmet from scary-town.

Now I just need it to be able to translate shit.

Edmund tapped into the Log a very simple question. He wanted to know if he, at this time, modify the helmet to translate for him.

The answer was ‘no’.

The next question was just as simple as the first. If he could learn the language easily, and quickly, at this time, somewhere in this world that he could get a hold of.

Again, the answer was ‘no’.

Hesitating over the Log, Edmund glanced at Farady as she drove them along.

The beautiful Gold Dragon seemed almost unbothered by the situation as a whole. That nothing was wrong at all and all things were fine.

His fingers flicked over the Log.

Will Farady or Cashatok betray me or Iren?

Two letters appeared instantly.

No.

Why not?

A long answer appeared in the answer space.

Skipper is a well documented villain in this world. It is well known that she is evil and will betray anyone at the first problem that arises. The moment they failed, both Dragons knew that their lives were forfeit if Skipper could get ahold of them.

They have decided to trust entirely in you and your ability, though they don’t understand it.

Edmund blinked and then nodded his head. It made sense to him.

Sighing, he put the log back down in his lap and looked out the window.

There were an equal number of Dragons as to humans whereever he looked. This world was inhabited by both races, yet no others. They also seemed to live side by side to one another without any conflict or issues, somehow.

I wonder why.

Is… that… a Dragon spinning a sign?

Unable to look away, Edmund watched a freakishly pretty Red Dragon with bright red horns casually doing sign spinning at a corner of a street. Whirling it around themselves and flipping it end over end.

Doing it all while wearing a very tight fitting black bikini.

“Reds always look good damnit,” Iren growled from the backseat. “I have to actually work at it and they just… look like that naturally. I swear it’s unfair.”

Listening to that, Edmund looked to another Dragon that was currently handing out fliers.

“Fucking Dragons doing gig work,” Edmund mumbled under his breath. “This feels so fucked. All the Dragons I’ve ever met were in Legion. Terrifying creatures of power, destruction, and beauty.

“And… there’s a gorgeous red-head that should be doing camwork spinning signs.”

Iren laughed at that, then asked a question in the langauge the other two Dragons knew. Both responded, one after another, then Iren asked a question, and they responded again.

“Oh, they have cam-stuff. It’s flooded with super hot Dragons. Almost all of them are. With all of them being that good looking… there’s… less value in it, I guess?” Iren asked.

Shaking his head, Edmund didn’t really know what to say about that. This world seemed so familiar, yet also achingly broken.

“Log said there’s nothing for me to upgrade the helmet with or to learn the langauge easily,” Edmund reported. “It also said our new companions are unlikely to betray us. Apparently Skipper is a super known villain here and nobody trusts her.

“They’re throwing in with us because we were already able to resist. They assume we can resist further.”

“Makes sense. It’s what I’d do. But I’m a Green. We’re different as a whole. And I’m different from most Greens,” Iren admitted.

“I’ll consider myself fortunate that there aren’t more Dragons like you, Iren,” whispered Edmund. “Because if there were, I think I’d have a lot more problems. And a lot more Dragons around me.”

“Probably not! I think I’m pretty territorial and I’ve already had to stop myself from killing these two,” confessed Iren with a nervous laugh. “They look at you in a way I’m very familiar with. A way that makes me want to tear their ovaries out and strangle them with them. I don’t mind the others in our relationship I think because they’re not Dragons. I think if they were Dragons I’d have to fight my instincts to obliterate them.

“I have no idea how Goldie keeps everything in check the way she does. Or Taylor for that matter. I don’t think I’d be very good at what they do. At all.”

Farady turned the wheel and took them off the main street and into a neighborhood of sorts. One that looked an awful lot like the one he lived in with Harper.

Thinking about his childhood friend Edmund had to keep himself from sighing.

At both times he knew he had lived a life without her, except now his predominant memories of growing up were all with Harper. Where she thought it was strange that one day he woke up, brutalized a relative she didn’t like, and then went back to normal.

Yet she never let him get far. She’d latched onto him and drew him in so tightly that from that moment on his life was Harper’s life.

Farady pulled them off the neighborhood streets and into a driveway, then straight up into a garage that was opening up. Except even as they moved toward the garage, a strange portal opened up right there in the garage. An oval that stretched out horizontally  and yawned violently one way, then the other.

It clipped a stack of paint cans and they all fell straight into the portal.

Vanishing from sight.

Farady cursed and shouted something while Casshatok let out a yelp that sounded as if it were bordering on a scream. A true to life horror-movie scream.

Then the portal inverted on itself, vanished, and ceased to exist.

“The fuck was that?” Edmund demanded, looking at Farady then Iren.

Iren was already in the middle of clearly asking a question though, then looked to Edmund.

“She said it was a portal rupture. They’ve been happening for the last thirty years I guess. Give or take. They randomly open up all over the world, swallow up everything they touch, then vanish,” Iren explained even as Farady continued to talk. It sounded like Iren was doing a live translation. “And… apparently… sometimes… oh, oh! Sometimes they spit things out instead of taking things in.”

“Sounds like what happened to Leila, Red, and Sam, I guess,” Edmund muttered with a shake of his head as Farady got them moving again. “Are they rare? Common?”

“Depends on the area, I guess,” Iren stated, still listening, though to Cashatok now. “Some areas it’s far more common, in others, it’s quite rare. Farady said it’s rare in these parts.”

As the car slid into the garage Farady blew out a breath and turned the car off. Then she looked to Edmund and said something with a quirked brow.

And another portal yawned open, though above the car. A flat purple oval that vibrated in a way that could only be called violent. As Edmund stared through it he could see an endless number of worlds through it with other portals opening and closing all at the same time.

Things being bisected by them, shot through others, or dropped.

Endlessly opening and closing across what Edmund knew were multiple universes, worlds, and planes. There were quite a few that seemed to tear open into absolute blackness and nothing.

“Fuck,” he whispered as he gazed into it.

A woman suddenly fell out of a portal and vanished into a different one that opened up.

Then reapeared much further up.

Or perhaps it was further away.

There was no way to put a relationship tag to it as Edmund watched because it looked like she was falling away from where he was now.

Only to fall into another portal and then slam into the hood of the car.

Literally exiting from the portal that was above the car in a single instant as if she hadn’t been nearly two or three hundred feet away.

Then ther violent and trembling oval shut itself and the four people in the car were staring at a woman stuck to the hood like an ornament.

When they lifted their head up, Edmund was floored.

“Harper?” he blurted out even before he could process it was indeed Harper.

“Uhm?” asked Harper. She was dressed in what looked like her street clothes. She had her purse at her side and her makeup was done up in a normal fashion for her. “Where’s… where’s… Adeena was with me and… what?”

She looked around one way, then the other. Farady had already hit the garage door button and it closed in that instant with a rattle and clank.

“Well,” Edmund said and opened his door. He gathered up his armor, the Log, his pack, and put it all away, then exited the car. “It seems Adeena sent you on her behalf if I don’t miss my guess. What exactly happened where you were?”

As Edmund spoke he went to the hood and helped Harper down from it. Taking her hands and getting her down.

“Adeena and I had been out shopping and we’d just gotten back. I tripped over that stupid rug in the lab and fell into the wall mirror. Then… I was here,” Harper explained, looking at Edmund, then the three Dragons who were getting out of the car. “Iren? You… you and Edmund are supposed to be in Australia. Is this Australia?”

Australia.

Alright.

So now I’ve got a bit of an idea of where I ended up timeline was.

That’s a pretty good start and realistically, being in Australia is probably where I should be if I had to pick. That means if I went back to the main timeline in the main Save-state I could make it work, right?

Because I’d be in Australia at this time.

I think.

Maybe?

“How long has it been since I was in Australia?” Edmund asked.

“A day,” Harper said, shaking her head. “What exactly happened?”

Harper’s purse took that moment as it’s time to formally exit the stage.

The strap broke, fell to the ground, and spilled it’s contents onto the ground as if it were a frat-bro on a Sunday morning after a full night drinking.

“Damnit. I told Adeena I needed to buy a new one and she said it’d be fine,” hissed Harper as she squatted down and started loading everything back into her purse. “Oh. I don’t remember putting this in there. It looks like a little… electronic board thing.”

Harper held it up to him.

“Is this yours? I was in a bit of a hurry this morning and just loaded my purse from our dinning room table. I ended up with your house keys as well,” she said.

Edmund took it and just shook his head.

He could see Adeena’s fingerprints over all of this.

Everything, in fact.

Because he’d seen how wild and chaotic the portals had been. How absolutely terrifying they were. That the very idea of Harper falling through all those portals and ending up here was ludicrous.

Impossible, really.

Unless Adeena was involved and had skewed it all for this exact moment. Where she had likely balanced a great many things on the edge of a knife, spent hours and hours changing things, just to get this singular outcome.

This single moment.

“The stupid rug that Adeena insisted we buy six months ago. The same one that she insisted we not return despite the fact that it kept bunching in that one spot,” Edmund said. It wasn’t a question. Just a confirmation of his thoughts.

“Yeah,” Harper murmured. “This was all her plan I take it? You needed me, and probably that chip? So voila, here’s your Fay-touched childhood friend in the flesh. Here to help and do whatever it is you need?”

“More or less,” hissed Edmund and set everything down. He put the helmet down on the hood of the car and his eyes caught on the compartment at the back of it.

Then he looked to the green narrow electronics board in his hand. It had a connector that suddenly looked very suspicious and familiar.

He already knew where this was going.

Knew what was about to happen.

Because it’d be the one thing he needed now more than anything just to be able to do anything here.

The rest would be up to him of course, and whether he succeeded or failed was on his shoulders.

But Adeena was his Fate. Fate’s Fate and his end.

All in one.

Pulling open the compartment, Edmund looked inside. He didn’t see what he was looking for so he opened a side compartment of the helmet.

There, he found exactly what he had been expecting to find.

An open connector with the exact type of connector that was on the board he was holding.

Realistically it looked al ot like an M.2 storage disk and had the connector to match. Given what he needed, Edmund was willing to bet that this was some type of translator device or program.

Perhaps even a Virtual Intelligence that Ryker had been working on and left floating around inside the lab.

Pushing it into place, Edmund moved the plastic lock over the edge of it, and it settled into place. Secure, firm, and not going anywhere.

Quickly, Edmund put the compartments back into the helmet, locking them into place. Then he stuck the helmet back over his head and pulled it into place. Shifting his head around, he got it into place, and then let his hands fall to his side.

Several emoji appeared, a strange flickering took over the screen, and then it went to a black screen. Edmund could see nothing at all. Only to then reappear.

Except where there had been emoji’s there was now text.

Listing out that his helmet was in ‘face’ mode, it was actively working to keep him locked to his original universe, that the current atmosphere was breathable and that he was currently in a ‘Zeus listed’ world.

There was a pause and an asterisk appeared beneath that information.

When he focused on it, a box was brought up and read off ‘Assumed homeworld of Zeus’ which made Edmund feel even worse about the situation.

That he’d need to do some testing with his Save-states immediately.

“It’s his face again,” Farady said with a warm sounding hum. “He’s rather handsome though. For a human, that is. And you say he makes you clutch?”

“Yeah, he’s good looking. Male Dragon’s always look too good. To the point that they’re unattractive,” Iren replied with a huff. “And yes he’s made me clutch. Why, wanna die? I’ll kill you. Tear out your guts.”

Iren finished it with a laugh that sounded warm and unrelated to her promise of violence entirely.

“I think I could fight you for him,” Cashatok interjected with a laugh that matched Iren’s. “Did you want to have an aerial battle? A human battle? Ground? I’d take that fight. He’s attractive, clearly able to construct a harem, and he’s my type. If he can successfully make Dragon’s clutch, then he already makes it past where most humans fail in a relationship.”

“Agreed. I think I’d fight, too!” Farady said and closed the door she’d been leaning again to meet Iren’s gaze with a wide grin. “Do we tell him we’re fighting for him, or do we just let whoeever wins be the closest to him.”

Iren laughed loudly at that and then flicked a hand at the other two Dragons.

“You’re both silly. If you win against me, and I vanished, or wasn’t near him, he’d ask about me. He’d look for me,” Iren explained with a shake of his head. “It isn’t a normal relationship that you’re thinking of when Dragon’s battle for someone. He genuinely loves and cares for me. Even if you beat me, it woudn’t change anything.

“You won’t win, but that’s not the point of this. I’m just warning you that you’re welcome to fight me, and I’ll win, but you’re wasting your time.”

Edmund blew out a sudden breath and all three Dragons suddenly looked at him.

“Yes, it’d be a waste of time,” Edmund agreed. “And you don’t need to translate for me anymore, Iren. It seems our beloved Adeena sent me some type of translator program though… Harper probably won’t understand any of what you three say.”

“Actually I understand it?” Harper confessed. “Uhm… Adeena… bought me a cute little set of earings. I liked it so much I had them enchanted with some translation enchantments because they really fit all my business atire for Legion.

“It made it easier to deal with people if I didn’t need a translator and… well… here we are.”

“In other words, Adeena, my Fate, my end, Fate’s Fate, gave me the starting point,” Edmund stated, nodded his head, then looked to the Dragons, then specifically to Iren. “And yes, this is a Zeus world. The helmet can apparently tell the difference. That’s that.

“Even more so, it… said it’s it’s home world. I have no idea what that means in this regard but it definitely explains the weirdness to my Save-states.”

“Homeworld? Great! Does that mean we could kill him? Rob him? Steal all his weapons and loot? This’d be a great chance for us to figure out what he knows and take his things!” Iren cheered and clapped her hands together. “I’ve always loved robbing other Dragon’s of their hoard.”

“You… you’ve taken hoards?” asked Farady sounding shocked.

“I didn’t realize that was a thing,” Cashatok.

“You two are weirdly soft in weird ways,” Iren said, looking at the other Dragons. “You’re willing to fight for a mate, but you’ve never stolen a hoard?”

“My bank account is empty,” Cashatok said with a shake of her head. “And I don’t… I don’t want to go to jail.”

Edmund nodded his head, then shook his head.

It was like Dragons just living in a normal modern time, with some of their original aspects and natures still available to them.

Iren wasn’t wrong though.

This was an opportunity to push in on Zeus.

Blinking, Edmund bent down to his pack and pulled out the Log.

He set it down on the hood and typed in a quick question.

“Does Zeus have the means to break into Runner’s realm and free Nadine,” Harper read aloud. Then read off the answer the Log gave out. “Yes.”