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Chapter 30 - Hubris Bespoken
🕑 Added 2023-08-23 22:18:06 +0000 UTCChapter 30
Hubris Bespoken
“Where’s the guy?” Ysolde asked as soon as Tara walked up to her.
“Got cold feet,” Tara replied casually. “Don’t worry about him. So, where’s Jenine?”
“... sorry, girl,” Ysolde looked at her apologetically for a moment before turning around and starting to walk away. “Gotta earn our keep.” The four men behind the corner were the first to walk out, while two from the nearby crevices slithered to the rear and blocked her escape path. Tara ignored them all, her gaze glued to the woman’s fading back. She sighed; what was even the point, she wondered?
"Not that I wouldn't love being sold to some yeast-infested dude to love me 'till he croaks," she said. "But I'm in a hurry. Any one of you know where Jenine is?"
“Just pipe down and follow us if you don’t want your jaw broken,” one of the men from the front reached forward to grab her arm. Tara let him and as he tried to pull her back, she stood her ground. He was almost a head taller than her, yet no matter how much strength he used, she was an unmoving rock. “What the…?”
“As they say, break a few jaws, then ask questions,” she yanked him forward rather easily and caught him with her other arm, fingers rounding his throat. Without so much as a second glance, she tossed him aside and at the nearby wall. The body flew like a ragdoll and crashed with violence and vigour, the man passing out on impact.
Even Tara was slightly surprised. Though both Ronald and she were well aware that they were much, much, much stronger than an average person, they still never got to truly contextualise how strong. Their primary exposure to strength was Ethan, and they could hardly compare, but now, standing here, having just leisurely tossed another human being like he was a bag of peanuts… self-actualization was horrifying, yet addicting.
“Speed it up,” she heard Ronald’s voice and stopped hesitating. Wind belted into her back as she rammed forward, kicking one of the men in the shinbone. A cracking sound boomed like thunder as the man screamed–she snapped his shin in half, milky-white bone protruding through the layers of flesh and blood while the man collapsed on the ground, wailing as though broken.
Adrenaline kicking strong, she stabilised herself and went after the other two–though she controlled her strength the best she could, it wasn’t good enough. A simple punch dislocated the man’s jaw, cracking it, while the other found himself with several broken ribs after an even weaker punch. She winced and cringed, blanking for a moment. She hadn’t intended to hurt them so much–merely incapacitate them.
Ysolde hadn’t gotten far enough away to miss the entire ordeal and she stood still with parted lips, staring wide-eyed at the sight that couldn’t be explained. Ronald soon rolled out from the shadows of the street, parts of him bloodied though he clearly appeared to be okay.
“Oh my God, finally!” Ysolde cried out and ran forward toward Tara; the latter stood still, waiting for the girl. “How did you do that? Thank you! They’ve been threatening me–take this, bitch!” Tara felt it–a knife went straight into her gut, and Ysolde twisted it, not holding back. Blood sprayed out, and though it hurt… it didn’t hurt. She lost 15 Health, and was losing 1 Health per 10 seconds due to the effect of ‘Bleeding’. It was nothing. In fact, she could already feel it–her body was rushing to repair the wound. And, within seconds, it effectively cemented the open gash and closed it, stopping the bleeding, while the knife itself could not be moved–Ysolde tried and tried, but, just like the man couldn’t move Tara, she was unable to move the knife even an inch. Eventually, she looked up at Tara’s eyes–the latter was standing perfectly fine, as though there wasn’t a knife in her gut.
“The fuck didn’t you dodge it?” Ronald asked with a sigh. “Both your jacket and the T-shirt are ruined.”
“Wanted to see what it’s like,” Tara replied casually as Ysolde’s knees gave out on her. She fell on her behind, lead-legged.
“What’s it like?”
“... not too bad,” Tara replied. “Like a dull toothache. Just in my gut.”
“... wow. When you put it like that, it sounds insane.”
“It is,” Tara shrugged, taking out the knife from her gut and crouching in front of the shaking Ysolde. “So, Jenine. Do you know where she is or was it just a bullshit story to get me here?”
“I–I–w-w-ho, who are–”
“I don’t have time for that shit,” Tara slapped her. “A simple question. Do you know where Jenine is?”
“M-Marquee’s,” Ysolde replied. “T-there’s… there's a secret room, basement… girls… girls dance there. And stuff.”
“Marquee’s?” Tara frowned.
“It was a pretty exclusive, high-end club,” Ronald explained.
“You know where it is?”
“Yeah. What about them?”
“We leave them.”
“...”
“I know,” Tara sighed and threw the knife away as she kicked Ysolde, causing the woman to go unconscious. “But I… I can’t, Ronald.”
“I know,” he said. “I can’t either.”
“We just hope they think nobody’s gonna believe them and keep their mouths shut,” Tara said as Ronald started guiding her toward the club, keeping to the darkness so as to avoid detection.
“Until others start Awakening, and then they’re gonna connect the dots.”
“And then they’re gonna connect the dots,” she nodded. “I know you think this is a bad idea.”
“...”
“Thank you for going along with it.”
“... I don’t think it’s wrong to want to save people, Tara,” Ronald said. “I just think… it’s gonna get so much worse.”
“What is?”
“Everything,” Ronald said. “Ethan told us that he didn’t want to stay in the city due to the initial chaos. But we both know he would have thrived in it. And yet, he’s still keeping to the mountains, not a word of return. My gut feeling is that the worst is yet to come.”
“... monsters,” Tara mumbled as they took the right corner, entering a narrow alleyway full of trash that they had to navigate through.
“I think so,” he nodded. “One or two of those wolf things probably can’t do shit. But hundreds? Thousands? And what if monsters like the one Ethan fought in that dungeon come out?”
“The world will be fucked,” Tara said. “You think he knows?”
“... so, we’re talking about the unspoken?” he cracked a smile and she replied in kind, shaking her head.
“He knows.” She said.
“I think we both figured that out a long while back,” Ronald said. “The question now is how does he know?”
“What were the chances, huh?” Tara mumbled.
“There’s that word, infinitesimal.”
“Fancy.”
“I know.”
The remainder of the trip to the club was spent in silence, nearly half an hour of steady, somewhat slow walking. In Ronald’s memories, Marquee’s always looked alive, even from the outside. A neon sign always shined bright red and strobed in the night, and there was always a massive line outside the club where seemingly every young person in the city was desperately waiting for a chance to see the club’s insides.
Now, though, there was none of that–the neon sign was turned off, there was no line, the doors that were always open were now closed and were flanked by two men with automatic guns, several security cameras, and even a stealthy guard in one of the apartments above the club.
Both frowned, turning stiff for a moment. While taking a knife to the gut was quite survivable, taking a bullet… neither wanted to test the theory.
"You don't happen to know some secret backdoor entrance that a celebrity like you would have been guided through instead of waiting in line?" Tara asked.
“... I think we should go back, Tara,” Ronald said, surprising her.
“What?”
“Think about it,” he said as their eyes locked. “Best case scenario? We fight Jenine and a bunch of girls in there and we save them. Then what?”
“What… what do you mean ‘then what’? Isn’t that the whole point?”
“We can’t stay here to help them, Tara,” he added. “And we sure as hell can’t take ‘em with us. So, what’ll happen when we leave?”
“... you think they’ll go back to this?” Tara asked, frowning.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But the small chance they’ll recover to live bountiful lives doesn’t seem worth the chance we might die.”
“...”
“... so, we leave them?” Tara’s voice was low and cracking.
“Think bigger things,” Ronald said.
“That’s how every fall begins,” Tara said, sighing and turning around. “We set out to save, but when it becomes inconvenient, we draw back and think bigger.”
“...”
“They don’t care for the bigger, Ronald,” she said, glancing at him. “For them, the bigger is now.”
Ronald stayed silent as she walked back through the darkness, her shoulders slumping. He feared as much, returning to the city. Ethan’s warning was likely the only reason she hadn’t rushed off and stormed the building, all else be damned. He worried–worried that little of reality was visible to her, as though there was an indivisible truth she was desperate to divide.
He glanced back at the facade of the past, his heart heavy. More and more he realised the weight of their new lives and the limits of one. Perhaps, he mused, that was why Ethan ran to the mountains. He knew, and thus he knew he couldn’t change a thing. The boulder would roll down the hill as the waves would wash ashore. Some things preclude a man’s hand; if even Ethan, whom Ronald was certain knew the future at least partially, deemed the entire reality unsalvageable, how could the two of them change it?
He followed after her, stalking silently in the dark, guilt tearing away at him. But he swallowed it. There was no benefit to humouring the alternate reality in which the two didn’t hesitate and went and saved the girls. Ronald stood firm by what he told Tara–even if they did rescue them without a hiccup, it did not solve most of the issues that plagued the potential future. It was a flimsy armour, shaky and feebly stitched, but it was better than the fire of cowardice that burned just beneath the surface. Perhaps it was true–decry the power, but once in possession of it, recognise its limits. Or perhaps it was that the allure of power birthed fear of losing it. And thus, the stirring heart once full of fire calms, and the raging roars of justice quiet, and the eyes turn glazed and empty, mind in desperate want of what was lost.
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