Rogue. I held my breath, fearing the worst. Half a dozen terrible images of what this guy might become raced through my mind, but none of them happened; instead, I was left with the mixed result Rogue. I wasn't sure how to take that.
"Woah," Micheal gasped. "You weren't kidding. That shit was intense. That voice you mentioned? It was fucked up."
"It was," I agreed, still trying to decide if the choice of his class was a bad sign. He mentioned that he'd made some bad life choices, I thought. What if he's worse than the Warrior was?
Micheal started talking about whatever it was he'd seen or heard, but I was too focused on my own questions, so I tuned him out. No matter how much I turned all of this around in my mind, I didn't have any answers.
At the beginning of all this, I thought the orb's judgment had decided that I was good and, therefore, worth saving. Whatever was going on was clearly more complex than that. After all, the first guy that I'd seen with these powers was a rapist, and the second guy was clearly suspect. In fact, on the whole, it seemed far more likely that it was the reverse. Whatever was controlling this seemed to be turning the good people into monsters and giving bad people powers to run amuck with.
That can't be right, though, I argued with myself. I'm not a bad person. I—
"Earth to Anna," Micheal said, waving his hand in front of my face to get my attention and entirely disrupting my train of thought. "Come on, we've got to go."
He didn't touch me, at least, which probably would have made me freak out, given everything that had happened. "Alright, but shouldn't we take what we can before we leave? You know? Like supplies?"
"Shit, good call," He said, scratching his head before walking over to a cheap gym bag that was on sale nearby. "We can load this up. There's flavored waters in the cooler by the counter, and over by the door, we have protein bars on clearance. So we can—"
"Wait," I said, looking suspiciously at the darkness. We hadn't heard anything in quite a while, thanks to the way the tentacled monster covered the door, shielding us from the violence. Still, that didn't mean walking in the dark in that direction was a good idea.
I turned on the light he'd given me earlier. He'd meant for me to use it as a club, but it had other uses as well. What I saw made me want to turn it right back off, but I held firm, and my hand only shook a little.
"Maybe we skip the protein bars and just go with the water," I said, taking a nervous step back at the sight of the slithering mess.
What had started as a wall of thorned vines and snakes had mutated. It was a giant mouth of some sort and was using acid or something to eat through the gate. It was a process as slow as it was silent, which was why we hadn't heard from it in the last few minutes. It still had a long way to go. However, toward the center, it had widened a hole large enough to get several thick tendrils through.
The things were slowly spreading this way. As they went, they littered the cluttered tile floor between here and there with thin strands of thorns and tripwires. Though the evil-looking things were still half a dozen feet away from their escape plan, one thing was clear. This little oasis of safety wouldn't stay that way for much longer.
"Fuck that," Micheal growled, brushing past me to grab something from off the shelf behind her. "Walking through that shit blind would have been ugly, but we're going to get hungry sooner or later. Who knows when we'll find more food."
Then he pulled out a zippo lighter and turned the can of athlete's foot spray into a little flamethrower. The tendrils immediately retreated from that small gout of fire. Well, some shrank away, but those that were too slow blackened and crisped. It was not a pleasant smell.
"Well, that thing was right; it said I'd do more damage with improvised weapons, and this clearly isn't how this shit was meant to be used," Micheal said with a laugh as he played exterminator and slowly forged his way to the display stand that was his goal. "What about you? What powers did you get?"
"We can talk about all of that," I sighed, feeling my skin crawl at the sights and smells of what was happening now. The probing tentacles were in full retreat, but that didn't make me feel better. I just wanted to get away from this.
"Okay, princess," he said with a shrug. "We'll get you out of here and then figure out what's what."
I bristled at the tone more than the comment but didn't say anything. I just held the flashlight as he grabbed a few display boxes and made his way back. Then I went for the waters. In less than a minute, the bag was filled up, zipped up, and heavy enough that I had trouble lifting it. Fortunately, Micheal handled that part. He lifted the thing and moved it to the top of the shelf like it was nothing.
"Alright, I'm going to go first," he said, so you're going to have to push this behind me so I can keep my hands free if anything attacks us up there. "Does that sound good?"
I was about to ask what he was going to fight them with, but he took the mop handle spear he'd made earlier and broke it over his knee, creating a pair of skewers. So instead, feeling a little flustered and seeking to reassert myself, I asked, "Is going first like a guy-chauvinism thing or what?"
"Well that, and…" he hesitated, "If you went first I'd be staring up your shirt the whole time, and I didn't think you'd like that much, but I mean, I'm game if you are."
I was struck speechless at that. I just stood there, trusting the near darkness to hide the way I blushed at his words. In this skirt, he'd be able to see my white cotton panties if I did that; my mind screamed in shame. At that moment, I was unable to completely stop myself from imagining that humiliating image. Micheal chuckled at that and then started to climb. I followed him as soon as I'd calmed down enough that I didn't want to yell at the man. I could tell already that he was going to be more than a little infuriating, and yelling while this was going on was the last thing in the world we needed.
Climbing the display shelf to reach the top wasn't so hard. Getting the bag in the vent was only slightly harder, and once we started moving, pushing it along in front of me wasn't so bad. The way the cold metal dug into my knees as we moved through the cramped shaft was worse than the bag, but worse than both of those things was the fear.
Between the darkness and the horrible sounds that were echoing up to us from other stores and sections of the mall, we'd been plunged back into the violence. Even if we were safe and hidden for the moment, part of me knew that was a lie.
There's no way he can kill one of those things with sharpened broom handles, I told myself. Even that denial was better than the sounds of screams and wet meat being ripped apart.
Sometimes, we passed over grates, and I got glimpses of the chaos below us, but it was never a welcome sight. The candy store was overrun by devilish little goblin things, the electronics store was a hellscape of blood-spattered monitors and flickering lights, and the shoe store held a young couple that was making a last desperate stand against terrible demonic creatures that were half again as tall as either of them.
They were a striking Asian couple, and though the woman seemed to be wielding light as a weapon, the man fought with quick, confident movements that spoke of training he'd had even before all this. There was clearly a reason these were some of the last living people that she'd seen in the mall. Everyone like her, who was practically defenseless, was already dead.
"We have to help them!" I hissed to Micheal, but he didn't even bother to answer. He just kept moving.
I knew he was right, too. There was nothing we could do. If they'd managed to fight the monsters back hard enough to get some breathing room, they could have scampered up here with us, I realized. Unfortunately, we had no rope, and they had no time. Instead, they were wounded and slowly falling back.
Still, I couldn't just leave them. So, instead, I reached out and willed my energy to them. I wasn't sure anything would happen, but eventually, I felt the essence flow and a pop-up appeared.
You have healed light wounds. You have applied energize x2. +55exp. Distant healing is less effective than touch-based efforts.
I was definitely below half of my energy now, so I stopped there. I wanted to do more for them, but I had no idea how long it would take for me to re-energize or what other terrible injuries I'd have to treat between now and then. So, I left the two of them at that. Still, even after I'd moved past them, I couldn't help but imagine Ryan and I standing just like that, back to back, fighting to save each other. Some deep, romantic part of me hoped that the two of them would make it.