Once the group got into the truck, Blair had to get behind the wheel.
Martyr sitting in shotgun didn't approve of it very much because Blair had only driven a car a few times in her life.
"Bro calm down, I got this! You didn't even know what a friggin seatbelt was before you met me!" Blair yelled back at Martyr, trying to speak over the rain that had gone back to crashing down on the roof.
"It's not like I don't think that you don't know your way around a car, but it takes practice actually driving a car to be able to drive a car!" Martyr said while wiping his eye on a towel that Vanagloria got from a backpack in the trunk.
"It's the best we got, aight!" Vanagloria yelled from the back of the truck, putting on a light blue hoodie she found in one of the backpacks that wasn't hers. After she helped Martyr get into the truck she ran to the back to grab a few random backpacks. She got four of them, three of them were black, one dark blue.
"Just help direct Blair through the process, that's we got you in the front." Vanagloria said, stuffing her staticky blonde hair into her hood.
Vanagloria really liked her how her hair looked but it was so hard to take care of and it always ended up messy. Right now it was getting really annoying to have to pat it down every time her lightning powers started to act up.
"Yeah, Styrmir said a town was just a mile or two down, it won't be a long drive, your eye will probably have recovered by then." Blair was looking around the front of the truck, checking to see where all the buttons were.
"Plus it's a completely straight road, it shouldn't be hard."
"I hope my eye will be good by then. This could be bad though, I think I had some of my fire element in my eye when it hit." Martyr took the towel off and started blinking frantically.
"Why would you have an element in your eye?" Vanagloria asked, trifling through the backpacks.
"It's just a thing that happens when some people with elements get an adrenaline rush. I have it for sure, Styrmir had it when he came down. I think you have it too, but only in one eye for some reason." Martyr responded.
"I do?" Vanagloria looked up with a can of body spray in her hand.
Martyr turned around towards the backseat and put his left arm around the driver's seat. "Yeah before you got struck by lightning one of your eyes burst out in electricity. it looked just like Styrmir's eyes."
"Really?"
"Actually yeah I noticed that earlier on the balcony." Blair said. "Remember I told you your eye was like pure gold after your shot. It was like that for a while. It probably because only one of your parents had elemental powers"
"That makes sense." Vanagloria said, trying to see the color in her eyes through the reflection in the window.
"I wonder how much I look like my parents." She thought to herself as she stared at the perfectly replicated version of herself in the dark glass.
"Can you get me my bag, I think I got something in it that can help my eye." Martyr interrupted her.
"Oh right, which one is it?" Vanagloria put the body spray away in one of the bags at random.
"The black one by the door."
"Oh my god." Vanagloria groans at the weight of the bag as she passes it to Martyr who effortlessly lifts it from her and puts it in his lap.
"Okay I think I figured out how to drive." Blair said out of nowhere, laying her foot on the gas.
The car doesn't move but the engine makes a revving sound that was loud enough to hear over the rain outside.
Martyr turns his head over to Blair with an expression of complete straight-faced disappointment.
Blair puts a hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh as she realizes what she did. Vanagloria put her nose into her shirt, making muffled laughter at the situation.
"You've got to be kidding me." Martyr says as he moves the stick out of park making the car slowly move forward.
"Wait wait wait wait! Why is the car moving!" Blair yells as she slams the brakes.
"Use that speed, don't even use the gas right now. Get us back onto the part of the road that isn't broken." Martyr goes back to searching in his own bag.
Vanagloria continues to look through the bags in the backseat, looking for anything that could be useful. It's much harder now that whenever the car jumps at a bump in the road, all of the contents in the bags rattle against each other.
Blair eventually makes her way onto the slightly smoother country road. "Everyone has their seatbelt on right."
"I-I do." Vanagloria said.
"I got mine on. If you're planning on using the gas, do it as light as you can." Martyr said, pulling out a water bottle that has glowing orange and red liquid in it.
"Is that just a bottle of pure lava?" Vanagloria said, looking at the bottle. The car starts to pick up a little bit of speed.
"Yup, this is what element looks like in your bloodstream. It took me a few days of pouring condensed fire into it for it to fill up fully." Martyr said, rubbing his eye again with his hand.
"When we stop next I'm gonna drop some in my eye and see if that solves it. I don't want to accidentally pour it in my car and melt a giant hole in the floor."
"I would be more worried about you putting that in your eye." Vanagloria said, eyeing the bottle.
"That is way too dangerous to just have in a backpack." She thinks to herself.
"Look. I think that's the town." Blair says as the car goes over a small hill.
"Wait Blair is that Umberville?" Vanagloria said as she looked at the town.
"Oh my god it is!"
The familiar looking town slowly starts to get clearer and clearer through the rain as they inch closer.
"I guess we did come back the way we came." Blair laughed.
"I slept most of the way up to Phobos on that bus. So I'm not surprised I didn't recognize the city on the way over here." Vanagloria leans in between the seats to look out of the front window.
"Huh. Where should we stop?" Martyr says as the car goes by the first building.
"I mean we have a little inn styled motel for visitors. I don't think they would allow you in the orphanage, nor do I really wanna go back there." Blair says, stopping at an intersection.
"Yeah it's right over here." Blair makes a surprisingly smooth right turn and is followed by another into a parking lot outside of the motel Vanagloria was very familiar with.
Blair comes to a full stop
"I don't want to hear anything." Blair puts her finger up in front of Martyr's face expecting him to say something about the turn.
"I wasn't gonna say anything." He says defensively.
Martyr then opens the cap of the bottle and pours a ton of the magma-like substance straight onto his eye.
"Shit, that doesn't hurt?" Vanagloria said, looking at the scene.
"Nah it actually feels great. I feel so refreshed right now." Martyr says as his skin starts to absorb the lava pouring down his face like tears.
"Okay, grab your bags and let's go in." Martyr said enthusiastically, like he had been waiting for this moment for hours, which he probably was.
"And honestly I am too." Vanagloria thought, hopping out of the car. She fell asleep at the colosseum but it must've only been for an hour, maybe less. So it felt like she hadn't gotten good sleep in a very long time.
The inn was quite underwhelming compared to the skyscrapers in Phobos. From the front it looked like a normal sized house with a double door at the front and two windows on either side. It had an old medieval look to it with overhanging triangle shaped roofs and generally wooden design.
Vanagloria opens the tailgate of the trunk and reaches in to pull out her backpack and Blair's.
"Blair!" Vanagloria shouts out as she throws Blair's backpack at her only to hit the sidewalk where she used to stand.
Blair sees the bag flying at her and jumps out of the way with her hands up and eyes wide open, letting the bag slam down on the ground next to the inn. "Damn Gloria. Don't just throw 30 pounds of clothes at me."
Vanagloria throws on her backpack and runs over to meet up with them before they walk into the inn. "Sorry, I didn't really think that through."
"It's fine at least I didn't have to go out in the rain." Blair said, struggling to put her backpack on.
Martyr twists the fake gold handle of the door and presses it open with a very faint creaking.
A smell of honey hits Vanagloria as soon as she walks through catching her off guard. The inside looked very cozy and medieval compared to the city they had just left. It had wood walls with animal skins and shelves with an assortment of different fancy mugs and plates. There were empty tables with empty stools all around the room and two big bars on the sides of the room.
In the center of the back of the room stood a front desk with a very unexpected person sitting at the booth.
"Wait, Martyr stop right there." She whispered to him.
"Wait, why?" He turned around with a concerted look on his face like if he took another step he would set off an Indiana Jones type trap.
"Blair look up at the counter."
Blair had to stop herself from laughing when she saw their sleeping friend at the counter.
"Wait, is that who i think it is?"
"Yeah that's Pentas." Vanagloria was wheeze laughing at thinking of all of the stupid ways she could scare him awake.
"Oh we have to scare him." Blair said, on the same wavelength as Vanagloria. "Martyr can you do the snap explosion thingy?"
"Blair I'm not gonna go terrorize a random guy I've never met." Martyr looked uncomfortable with the situation they were about to put him in.
"Aw come on… he won't care, I proooomise." Blair said giving him a look that she could use to get any straight guy to do whatever she wanted.
Martyr really didn't know what to do. He kept looking at Pentas and then back to Blair that kept on creeping closer to him, looking up at him.
She was letting a little light element go to her eyes, getting her purple eyes to sparkle very slightly.
"Nah I see what you're doing. It wouldn't be the first time I've seen that trick." Martyr leaned into Blair's face with grin. She backed up just a little bit, looking a little offended.
"Woah woah woah."
Everybody turned towards the counter to see a very awake Pentas. He was fixing his very messy brown hair at the sight of them.
"What are you guys doing here?"
"Oh we're here to get a room." Martyr gave one last look back at Blair to show who was the boss and walked up to the counter putting his arms on the counter.
"Oh uh… we uh… who are…"
Pentas stumbled over his words as he attempted to talk to the city boy who was close to a foot taller than him.
Vanagloria at first was disappointed that she wasn't able to scare Pentas, but watching his gay-ass try to talk to their hot new teammate was way funnier.
"You guys can't be here." He eventually mustered up a very bad joke.
He was completely embarrassing himself like usual.
"Yeah yeah, very funny, give us a room." Vanagloria told him while she leaned up against the counter.
Martyr felt kind of like a trophy she was showing to Pentas. There aren't many guys like him in Umberville so it felt really cool bringing him back home even though he for sure didn't have feelings for Vanagloria.
"N-no I'm being serious. You guys can't be here."
"What do you mean?" Martyr asked. He already looked confused from Pentas not being able to talk to him but this looked like it made him even more confused.
"My boss really doesn't like the fact Vanagloria is from earth."