Chapter 35

When it comes to clusterfucks, this one takes the cake.

Even at that point, I knew that this was going to be a hell of an incident. Two foreign nationals in a stolen car stormed an amateur movie shoot, assaulting a number of locals and killing one before abducting and escaping with another.

To make matters worse, she was a goddamned healer. Nobody really cares about any other class of Weapon (Fire mages were actually a running joke in the eyes of the public Norms). If someone who was already famous got a specific class or weapon, then it might be news, but the public had a specific interest in healers, since their abilities could be used outside of the portals and help Norms out. Reports of Healer class Weapons camping out in kids hospitals, cancer centres, and emergency wards popped up on the evening news daily. Anyone harassing a Healer, or (god forbid) hurting one risked murder by mob if they were caught doing it.

And we’d just basically abducted one.

Little did we know at the time, that it had also been recorded.

The puppy pile in the back continued to snore away, stinking bad enough that it even distracted me. The whole event had me shaken and to be honest, more than a little worked up. It was the first time I’d ever really fought another Weapon (for keeps). My Skill made the hand-to-hand fight totally unfair, but it was the pistol shots afterwards that had me most shaken. If they’d had a rifle, or even a shotgun; we’d have been goners.

Holding their weapons hostage had worked though. Maybe that was the route I should take, steal the weapon and show it to them. If they’d killed me, the weapon was gone forever and they’d be basically a Norm. ’Do what I tell you and you get your little toy back’. Those that fuck around on me maybe get a cursed item too, or maybe even a collar?

I drove for two more hours, making random turns and getting lost. It was a new experience for me since cell phones had rendered that particular experience obsolete years ago. I recall my father having paper maps in the glovebox when I was young. Even then they were an anachronism and asking me to read them was met with a sarcastic comment about his ability to use technology. Asking someone in a gas station for directions would be met the same way I supposed, perhaps making us stand out in the memory of anyone we asked.

That I wanted to avoid.

Sleeping beauties in the back seat continued to snore as I pulled up to the pumps and rooted around for the cash that Robbie had turned some of my Silver into. The glovebox had, of all things, a pencil case in it stuffed with cash. While B&E’s weren’t unheard of anymore, nobody would expect that a beat-down shitbox like this would have the thousands of dollars in cash stashed away that it did.

Two hundred dollars poorer after gas and snacks, I pulled out again in the late evening. The Vegas event was still days away, and we needed a place to hole-up for a while and decide what to do with the girl. I briefly thought of dumping their bodies and trying to make my way alone, but there is safety in numbers, and Robbie had already proved himself to be a resourceful survivor. A survivor that could teach me a lot before I got rid of him.