Save State Hero 3 -ch 8-

Chapter 8

Edmund watched as Iren immediately shifted into her dragon form. Her head tilting away from the withering fire as she was shot by a large number of firearms. She tilted her head away and looked back into the portal, one of her wings covering up to cover her face.

“There’s a lot of them!” she called over the racket and then her head evaporated, struck by something much heavier than small arms fire.

“Well, that’s a reset,” Edmund muttered then sighed.

“I’ll take a look. I don’t mind. My shield should cover me for a time, then I can just come back and send it back to myself,” stated Dot, followed by a shield going up around her. She exited through the portal and looked around. Or more accurately, past the corpse of Iren. A large number of guns were firing again and Edmund felt like his hearing was going away damn near permanently at record speed. “It’s a god damn tank! They shot her with a tank! Also, this position isn’t bad, I don’t think these people are normally here, but they are at this time. There’s no buildings, no cover, and really I don’t—”

Dot’s shield shuddered under the impact of what was likely a tank shell. It even knocked her several steps away. Causing her to actually lose her balance. She came back at a jog and just went right into the portal.

She tried to say something, but Edmund genuinely couldn’t hear her.

He pointed at his ear and shook his head. Whatever she’d said, he’d missed it. The first tank round hadn’t been that loud, but the one that hit Dot had been incredibly loud. Perhaps because it struck her shield, rather than penetrating it as it did with Iren’s head.

For the interim, Edmund couldn’t hear a damn thing. It was all just ringing and deafening silence to him.

Dot stared at him, then nodded her head. She held her hands up together, started forming a spell, then cast it. Edmund didn’t see it go anywhere, but he felt it when it landed.

Because it landed on him directly.

Once he realized what’d happened, Edmund rewound the world back to the moment Iren had crossed over into the portal. Going to a Save-State that was there, but not an active one. The fact that he could move so freely anymore felt almost strange in a way.

Like getting fast-travel after hoofing it everywhere all damn game.

“Iren, don’t go in there,” Edmund ordered before the beautiful green Dragon could move. “You get your head burst by a god damn tank.”

“A tank? Holy shit. That’s amazing. I don’t think I’ve died to a tank before. Haha, that’s kinda neat. Did my head just like… pop?” she asked, looking rather excited for some reason.

“Yeah,” Edmund told her. “It really did. Just an explosion of beautiful green Dragon head.”

“Really? That’s… hm…” Harper murmured, looking thoughtful. “I want to be here, but I suddenly think that this isn’t the place for me. I’m not much more than you Edmund. I feel like I’d end up causing a number of resets. I’m sorry.”

Not waiting for an answer, Harper came over, kissed him tenderly, and patted his cheek. Smiling at him.

“I’ll go talk to Adeena. See what she’s been up to and if she has any advice. I find that she’ll give me a direction that helps me help you later on,” murmured his childhood friend. Watching him with a smile for him alone. “Ah, it seems like you really do see me as more. Finally. I’m glad for it.”

Harper kissed him again.

Then a third time.

She finally let him go, patted his shoulder, and left. Leaving him there with everyone else.

“It feels like everyone’s moving,” Dot proclaimed. “Even Alina.”

Alina for her part, had been lingering off to Edmund’s side. He hadn’t realized it, but she’s already taken his right hand in hers and was lightly drinking from him.

Licking at his skin twice she merely shrugged, her thumb pressing to the bite.

“Yes, though I think I’m further along than most expect. Don’t worry, I’ll give you advice when the time comes?” Alina answered, then grinned. She released her thumb to Edmund’s wrist and it was clear the bleeding had stopped. Then she moved behind him, leaned in, and gently bit on his neck. Watching Dot over his shoulder.

Alina’s arms then slipped around him and held him from behind.

“Iren, just go out there, take a look, and fly off. It’d be great if you could inspect the area for us. Do you mind?” Edmund asked, putting his hands atop Alina’s. Any thoughts he had of how much she had absorbed from the other Alina went right out the window.

This was most certainly an Alina that had took a good amount from the Alina at the end of the world. That Alina at the end had been ag reat deal warmer with him and had touched him often.

“Haha, you got it! This should be fun,” Iren said, spun, and rushed through the portal.

No sooner than she made it through than she jumped into the air, transforming straight away into a large green Dragon. Her wings snapping down and propelling her upwards into th eair.

“Dev, is this the… Alina… from the end of the world? Edmund had mentioned it once,” Dot asked, looking at Alina.

“It is,” Edmund answered for her. Then reached up and gently pushed his fingers through her hair. To which Alina rubbed herself bodily against him, her arms tightening around him. “In the same way I brought Dot-E over, I brought the End Alina over.”

Dot was watching him, watching Alina, then she grinned, flicked her hair away from her ear and shoulder and tilted her head to the side.

“Well,” she said and then threw up a shield on either side of herself. “Looks like I’m not the princess in this moment. How actually delightful.”

Dot walked out of the portal, then threw out several different spells to the left.

“Hmph,” Alina growled out, then pulled her head back. She licked at his next six or seven times, kissed him, then moved out through the portal as well. A golden sword appeared in her hand and she lept to the right. Vanishing out of view.

“I… this is fine,” Ellie remarked, coming over to stand next to him. She took his hand in hers and held tightly to it. “You’re not exactly an action and adventure hero unless you want to be. Do… you want to be? You could. I know how to do it you know. To make it work for you.

“Would you like to show off like they are? Maybe… maybe for your sad little house plant who loves you?”

Edmund realized in that moment that she had indeed heard when he’d called her that.

He leaned into her, kissed her head, and whispered in her ear.

“If I had said ‘best girl’ they would’ve lost their minds. Who was there at the start, and who was there at the end, Aenor Yew? You were. Don’t fret,” he spoke for her alone. “I don’t need to show off, not right now. But thank you, dear.”

“I-ah, yes, I now understand,” she said, turning a deep red color, and began chewing at her lower lip. A partial smile forming as she gnawed at one corner of her lip. It looked quite cute.

Edmund just let the Dragon, Vampire, and Sorceress run the fight. He didn’t need to get involved.

His life and his powers leaned more toward finding the right moment, solving problems, and forcing conclusions that normally wouldn’t happen.

Not fighting.

Except, looking at Ellie, he suddenly wanted to do exactly what she said.

“Actually, how would you set it up so I could show off,” he asked.

“Zip us back just a bit. Just a little. And I’ll make it happen,” Ellie said, squeezing his hand between both of hers.

Edmund did so, pushing them back five minutes instead of just two.

No sooner than they had moved, then Ellie ran off. She grabbed Edmund’s Legionnaire helmet, stuffed it down on his head, and then pulled up his wrist. She tapped at it several times.

Then suddenly he heard music in his helmet.

It certainly wasn’t his music, or anything he’d listened to, it head a steady four beat, but the song was changing it’s style even as it went.

“I made it for you!” Ellie said, clapping her hands together several times. “I remembered you dancing with Dev in the store and you had timed it to the music. So I made this when I had time. It’ll play for about an hour and then loop, but it’s not very catchy or anything, it’s just something to time everything to.”

“I remember that,” Alina said with a warm smile, turning to look at him. “I’ve watched the videos more than a few times. It looked rather… romantic in retrospect. You just didn’t kiss me at the end.”

“I barely knew you and you refused to listen to me, Dev,” Edmund said with a laugh.

“But why are you listening to music? We weren’t talking about that before? Did we hop backward again? Did I die?” Iren asked, putting her arms above her head and looking at him in very much the fitness model turned thirst trap way that she was.

“I felt like showing off,” Edmund said and gestured ahead of them. “Open the portal Dot. I feel like being a Save State action hero.

He grinned to himself, looking out through his helmet as the song continued to beat along.

***

Lifting his rifle Edmund fired twice, counted the beat twice, ducked under a man with a sword swinging for his head, came up out of the crouch and rammed the blade at his hip into the man’s jaw, jerked it to the side, and kicked him away.

The song started shifting upward in it’s tone, telling Edmund that it was time to deal with the same damn tank he had already blown the tread off of.

Turning he stepped on a man who was on hands and knees, propelled himself to the top of the tank’s broken tread. Then dove partially to the side, rolling over the top of the spinning barrel.

Lifting his rifle he shot a round staright into the optics, stepped up past it, and beyond to stand on top of the turret. Shouldering his rifle he sloted it in perfectly to where it went on Legion armor and proceeds to snap fire until the magazine ran out. On the exact count matching to the beat of the song.

He thumbed the release, let the magazine fall away, crammed another in, hit the catch, raised it as the turret continued to spin, and started dropping more targets. Most of them were all focused hard on the Dragon that was strafing them with fire, or the Vampire was quite literally flying about with a golden sword and removing heads.

Ellie had remained behind at the portal with a rifle and was taking potshots as they came up. Since she technically remembered where everything was as well as he did, she was doing almost as well as he was.

The music shifted into a new section, Edmund waited three beats, then immediately got up, walked down the end of the tank’s turret, then the barrel and stepped off it. Hitting the ground in front of a group of women with shotguns.

He shot one in the face, snatched her shotgun out of her hands, then shot the two other women with it, one getting each barrel. Turning he looked to the new tank that would be coming over the crest of a hill. This was where he had nearly died last time and he needed time. He needed to rush ahead and get to a point at the hill in front of him that got him out of the way of the downward angle of the barrel.

Surprisingly, very much not at all like the last time he had been at this point in time, Iren appeared. The big green Dragon slammed into the top of the tank. Her claws grasped at the turret, tore it nearly off on one side.

She slammed her massive talons into the junction where the tank turret met the hull several times. Then jerked at the turret with her other big claw.

It reminded him of when she tore boxes open with her hands rather than trying to find something to cut the tape. She’d just brute force them open.

The turret came off with a horrific screech of metal and several pops and clangs.

Iren tossed it to the side with a boom and crunch of metal, threw her head back, then breathed a burst of fire into the internals of the tank. Hosing it down like someone would spray clean a dirty chair with a hose on the back porch.

Iren snapped her jaws shut, hopped down from the tank and prowled over to Edmund. Bumping him lightly with her large Dragon snout as she passed with a snickering breath.

“My love,” she purred, grabbed the tank, and tore the turret off it, just as she had the other one. Jamming her claws into the point that the two distinct parts met between hull and turret this time much sooner and making it happen much faster.

Okay.

When the hell did this turn into a rom-com?

I knew something had been changing since I finished up the route and freed Dot, but now it’s just obvious.
This is glaringly obvious. Iren is far stronger than she was even just a few days ago.

She’s even more affectionate as well, just as Harper and Dot were.

The hell is going on?

I’ll ask Adeena. I need to figure out what’s happening with Iren.

Iren tossed the turret to the side, blew a lungful of fire into the hull of the tank, then stalked off. Looking for more people to destroy.

Except Edmund was fairly certain that was the end of it. That there would be no more coming.

Looking about Edmund saw no one left standing. There was also no sign of anything remaining of the column they had somehow intercepted. There had been no sign of this when they’d come here in the other Save-State to figure out where everyone had arrived.

Yet they were here now.

“Any thoughts on why they were here?” Edmund asked, his rifle slowly lowering.

“I refuse to drink from them, you’re my only blood now, Edmund,” Alina apologized, landing with a soft pat next to him. “So I do not know. Though… Dot might have something?”

Edmund followed the gesture Alina accompanied with that statement and looked.

Dot had several individuals floating in a bubble, staring up at them with unseeing eyes.

Oh. Oh!

Shit.

Dot-E taught her spells, and Dot taught Dot-E spells.

Their spell repertoire probably expanded massively.

I wonder what would happen if I went through as many Save-States as I could. Would all the Dots have different spells and different things to teach one another?

Imagine that.

That’d be wild.

“They don’t know why they’re here,” Dot said, then make a gesture with her hand. All three people were crushed into one another and became a ball of human slop. Bones sticking out in grotesque ways as the meatball of human jiggled in the air. It was easily the size of a small boulder. “They were ordered to be here by their command. Those tanks are from elsewhere. A portal opened up and brought them here.

“The soldiers were all from this realm though. They were all part and parcel to this place. The people in the tanks were also from this land, but had been trained in a hurry. It all started up about half a week ago.”

Edmund frowned, his face screwing up in a weird way.

“Half a week? So in other words… right around the date that I reset the Save-State so we could do the hero registry mission. That about right?” he asked, somewhat annoyed. “It’s Skipper. Adeena already told me it was going to be here before we even got her.

“And before you ask, Adeena told me that Skipper is now getting an awareness of what I’m doing personally, as I’m a danger to her survival. Now… if I go backwards far enough… she’ll have the ability to try and plan ahead for us.

“It’s… you know, just what we needed. Someone trying to put a spanner in the works even while. Not horrible at all, nope.

“And it can happen just randomly.

“Of course it’d happen without us really ever knowing the when and where, either, because if I go back too far, it’s entirely likely we’ll run into something.

“In fact, if we’re being charitable here. That took fifty or sixty tries to get right. That’s a lot of… a lot of uses.”

Edmund didn’t want to think about th efact that there was the distinct possibility that people were lost in the shifts. He tried not to think about it, that there was always the lingering odds that people ceased to exist.

That regardless of how well he did, every reset was always a risk for someone. Even if it wasn’t him directly taking the risk. It was still risk.

Except, he had been careful.

He’d reloaded the moment anything had shown up outside of expectations and simply had it checked by Iren, Alina, or Dot.

Yet even then, there was a risk. A risk that if he pushed too far, too soon, even just once, it’d be over.

A single mistake was all it would take.

He realized his arrogance in that moment and looked down to his combat boots.

“All it’d take is if I had gone through the portal first and gotten hit by a tank shell,” he explained with a shake of his head. “Nowhere is actually safe anymore when Skipper can get an idea of what to expect and move to that and try to put something there.

“Adeena said it was… Time. Time itself that had allowed Skipper to walk into all of this and do as she has been.

“Apparently Fate really doesn’t like Time. Maybe I should try to make some time to go find Time. Tell her I’m not exactly having a grand… time… with her meddling in this situation.”

“That sounds kinda weird,” Iren said as a dragon followed by a laugh. “Fate doesn’t like Time. I wonder how Luck would feel. Is Luck a person too?”

“Probably,” Alina said and came over to Edmund. She flased him a wide smile, gnawed at her lower lip in a way that caused it to pout at the same time. “Darling, can I have a drink please?”

Unable to help himself, Edmund grinned, shook his head, then pulled off his helmet. Alina was indeed acting like the Alina from the end of the world, mixed with the Alina that was growing steadily of this Save-State.

A loving, caring, and highly spoiled vampire who drank from him at the neck, rather than his wrist.

Often with a pout that that was very odd on her pretty face.

Before he could even invite her to drink, Alina was kissing him. Both of her hands on his face, cupping it tenderly. Then she pulled away a few inches and sniffed at him. Several times.

Sniffing at his face, jaw, and neck, before she wrapped her arms around him, and sunk her fangs into his throat. Her arms settling around his waist.

Alina’s hands started to move up and down his back at the same time. Drinking from him while holding him. Edmund could only put his arms around her in return, and let her drink.

“Geeze, Dev,” Iren said, got down to the ground, and laid her large body around Alina and Edmund. “I get it, you get the hungry-nummers just looking at him. But really, we’re surrounded by bodies and—oh. Got it. Nevermind. Haha.”

Ah, that’s a good point.

She refuses to drink anything but me and there’s blood everywhere.

Alina’s arms tightened around him, as if he’d pull away.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he murmured.