Chapter Twenty-Six: Masks

“See, that wasn’t so hard was it?” Olivia smirks as she walks over and takes a seat on the back of one of the couches. “Now then, that is out of the way, so let me ask – why exactly are you at a Kansas City casino?”

Clicking my tongue, I cross my arms. At this point, the buzz from the alcohol has all but vanished, and I feel more sober than I ever have before. “I don’t have to tell you anything.”

With a roll of her eyes, Olivia waves me off with a hand. “You know I’ll get the information eventually whether you like it or not, so just save me a bit of time please? I don’t know how long we have.”

Narrowing my eyes, I start, “How long we-”

When I see her give me an expression of genuine concern, I groan to cut myself off before I answer: “Fine. I signed a contract with NAER to serve as a train escort, and after the rough first half of the trip I wanted to relax.”

“NAER, hm?” Putting her thumb into her mouth, Olivia falls into thought. “They’re not the worst option, I guess, but they have a tendency to do some sketchy things regardless. I mean, Uncle Greg is their CEO so its probably okay…”

“Olivia.” She glances up at me as I speak. “Let me return the question, why are you here?”

She gives me a small smile. “I suppose the same reason as you, just that I’m on a business trip instead being on a layover.”

“Let me guess.” I clench my fist. “You work for your father’s company.”

Olivia snorts. “Of course I do, it would have been foolish not to.”

I do my best to take a deep breath. “Right. And it’s not foolish to drag me to a separate room extremely publicly.”

“It’s not,” She insists, “because I didn’t realize it was you until you said the lemon thing and I –”

“And the kiss?” I narrow my eyes at her. “Because to me, that seems like it was a mistake.”

With a guilty look, Olivia admits, “Yeah, it probably was but… but I couldn’t help myself. It’s been ten years, Minea. Can’t we just –”

“No.” I growl, taking a step towards her as I take off my mask.

She flinches hard as she sees my face but doesn’t seem surprised at the very distinct change that has occurred since the last time we saw each other. My stomach drops, and I thoroughly stamp down that tinge of hope that had been sitting at the bottom of my heart. Liar.

“It’s been almost thirteen years, not ten, Olivia. All for good reason.” I put my mask back on, finding a stabilizing comfort in its presence. “The lesson your father beat into me, scarring my face and stealing the closest thing I had to family since my mother died, was that I was not supposed to come near you. Ever.”

Standing up in a rush, Olivia argues, “That was a bullshit attempt for him to assert his control over me! Now that we’re both adults and Engines, there’s no way for him to do that anymore!”

Shaking my head, I nervously chuckle as I hug my arm. “I don’t believe that claim for a second, Olivia. The only thing this selfish attempt at reaching out is going to do is cause me trouble.”

My old friend freezes, looking at me with hurt eyes as she whispers, “Don’t do this to me. Please.”

My heart clenches, and I have to look away from her as I slowly ask, “If I open this door Olivia, can you confirm I’m not going to see masked guards there waiting for me?”

Her silence is all I need to know.

“Then let me make it clear.” I take a breath as I look back at her. “Olivia Colton, as long as your father is alive, I want nothing to do with you.”

She looks up in shock. “That’s not fair! What if he retires or–”

Unable to control myself any longer, I throw my arm out to the side as I yell, “I don’t give a shit! Jill is gone, all because of him! I want him dead ! ”

There’s a knock on the door behind me, but neither of us move.

Desperate, Olivia argues, “We can gather power, usurp him and then search for her! I’m sure she’s okay!”

I scoff. “Don’t give me that shit, Aeolus! We’re both educated Engines, we both know what happens to young girls, young Engines when they’re taken like that!”

She flinches. “W-Well, sometimes the stories aren’t that bad?”

“Keep telling yourself that,” I growl, “and maybe it’ll come true in some other world.”

There’s another knock at the door, a man shouting for us to answer him or whatever. Taking my wedges off, I crack my knuckles then give one last look to Olivia. She looks to be on the verge of tears, and that little bead of hope decides to bob its head up again.

Before I can stop myself, I ask, “If you have anything left to say, do it now.”

She looks at me in genuine surprise, then slowly states, “I’m pretty sure I was in love with you Minea, and I think I might still be.”

The door slams to the ground as a V2 masked guard kicks it down, holding up a little SP designed after a classic glock at me, backed up by four other guards with the same Ignition level behind him. Their masks are ugly hightech things that cover half their faces, the very same as they were on that day if not a bit newer. I know they yell something at me, but my mind is caught between two separate vectors and their words don’t register.

The truth of the reason Jill and I were there, what it meant for both of us at the time. I wonder, did it mean something similar for Olivia? A quick glance over at her finds that she is completely focused onto me, anxiety in her eyes, waiting for a response.

“Maybe I felt the same for you once,” I finally admit, to probably both our surprise, “But not anymore. Now all I feel when I look at you is pain.”

Stopping the flow of DE into my mask, I give her a smile. She flinches at the sight of it, then takes a step towards me with a hand held out.

“Goodbye, Olivia.” My focus moves entirely to the masked goons as I tighten my grip on my purse. “Good luck getting to sleep at night.”

Then just like that, there’s a deafening crack as the guard shoots. I feel a small prick of pain on my ear and have to hold back a yelp of pain. A bead of warm liquid drips down onto my dress, and I quietly growl at the sight.

Fine then. I guess we’re going to do this the hard way. Before any of them can shoot again, I gather up my DE, then slam it into my heart as if it were a drum.

Thump.

All at once, the guards freeze up as a surge of my power washes over them, varying expressions of shock and fear rising on their faces. Not letting my chance go to waste, I flare my boost as I rush forward at them with the entirety of my strength. Stretching out far I grab the shooter by his face before I pilot his skull into the marble floor.

They both shatter like eggs.

Thump .

This reverberation is not as strong as the first, only locking up three of them. The one who withstands it is on me the instant he can be, his fully boosted knee coming straight at my face. With barely more than a millisecond to think, I whip out my hands and push the blow away from my head while pushing myself to the side at the same time. Unable to stop his momentum immediately, the guard shoots past me, and I use what little time I just bought myself to grab up the first guy’s SP, using my DE to begin charging up a shot.

Thump .

I keep my feet moving to put even just a little bit of distance between me and the one who is now behind me, flicking the gun up as the third beat resounds. With a pull of the trigger a bolt of scarlet energy flies out, slamming right into the chest of one of the frozen guards. As he collapses, the man next to him seemingly manages to pull himself together, clenching his hand into a fist as he begins to gather DE.

Oh shit.

Before I can charge another bolt or attempt to stop the guard from using his power, the guy I dodged is on me again, having grown a vicious looking array of black porcupine spines out of the side of his limbs. As a running right punch comes for my face, I let the sharp points scratch into the side of my mask as I barely manage to sidestep the blow, putting the man between me and the other guards.

I begin charging up another bolt in the SP as the guard slams his foot into the ground to conserve his momentum, stabbing his left fist at me as he pivots his body. I manage to get out of this one by taking a step back, but find myself unsure of if the guard attacking me can grow spines at will to punish an attack. I really don’t want a spine piercing from my knuckles to my elbow or piercing through my clutch and destroying my phone.

I quickly fall into an familiar groove as he continues to take swings at me, the steps to our dance one I’m more than familiar with. Backstep away from the followup, duck under a stray punch and resist my trained urge to counter, momentarily sidestep a blow while returning to my original position immediately afterwards to keep utilizing him as a shield. I let out an almost bored breath, noting mentally to thank Baxter next time I see him, then smirk as the man attacking me releases a frustrated screech.

Idly I check my remaining DE reserves, and I find that while I still have about 65% still left in the tank, I’ve lost a lot more DE than I would have thought I would have. Maybe I’ve underestimated how much energy shooting a DE takes, or perhaps my V2 upgrade is just really expensive? Considering that I have no idea how many total goons I’m going to have to fight through to get out of this place in the first place, I should probably be a bit-

My thoughts are interrupted as in the middle of a backstep I bump into the wall at the back of the room, and I yelp as a spine pierces right into my shoulder as a result. The frustrated guard laughs in elation before he raises his other fist for a final blow, but that emotion swiftly swaps to one of terror as I press the barrel of my stolen SP into his chin. For an infinite moment we stand there staring at each other, playing a game of chicken neither of us can realistically pull out of.

Fortunately for me, pulling a trigger is far faster than completing a half pulled punch. Unfortunately though, this also opens me up to the attack from the Engines in the hallway, though I do dive to the side as soon as I can to try and dodge. As their large spined friend crumples to the ground deader than a doorknob, the one who was charging throws a ball of condensed electricity over his shoulder like a baseball.

The other guy, uh, just shoots at me with his SP.

As I hit the floor mid-jump I feel a sharp pain in my bicep, which might just be the luckiest place that guy could have hit me. I notice as I run to try and escape the ball lightning that Olivia has moved to hide behind a couch, then immediately follow her lead as the orb hits the wall I was in front of and violently explodes. A cacophony of noise explodes into my ear as the wall crumples, an utter mess of screams, music and the distinct sound of electronic slot machines. It’s immediately clear I had no idea where we were in the building, and I kind of hit myself for letting Olivia drag me into this private room without watching where we were going. We must have circled back towards the main room at some point and I just never noticed.

Then I blink as something clicks, and I immediately know what I need to do. With determination I pop up, risking them hitting me with a second shot, before I sprint into the thick cloud of dust that the explosion threw up. There’s barely time to react to the messy hole onto the gaming floor, but I only slightly clip my foot as I leap through it onto the casino’s game floor. As I do, there are shouts at me to stop, but I just grit my teeth and hope to god they can’t shoot me in my back before I’m out of their line of sight.

It’s total chaos as I run for my life, though I can’t tell if it is because of the explosion or my power now being let loose in full force. Half the patrons stand there in shock or horror, all while the other half make a break for the front entrance. It takes me a moment to notice the stampede, but I quickly click my tongue and am forced to swiftly rethink my escape plan on the move.

Sliding to a stop, my eyes scan the environment for a solution, and I do eventually find one, namely a huge ass glass window from which you can see the fountain proudly displayed at the front of the casino. Shifting my momentum in a different direction from the masses, I notice several casino guards looking at me in shock and confusion. To my relief, none of them even try to stop me as I run past, which probably means they either have no idea whats going on or simply aren’t being paid enough to care.

As I near the window, I decide it’s probably not a good idea to just slam into the window at full force without hitting it first, so I raise my SP and fire a shot that I had been charging into it, which… doesn’t do as much damage as I would want, but it’s enough. I slam into the weakened glass right where I shot, and it barely even seems like it’s there as I burst through.

Glass scatters out onto the grass around me like a shotgun blast, and I wince as I see a few patrons that had managed to get outside take a few cuts as a result. Without time to care about them, I run off into the Kansas City streets and I know that I’m home free after I reach a point where I can’t hear the chaos of the situation anymore.

Well, as much as I can be after pulling shit like this I guess.

Lost, I wander the streets in a slight haze until I remember that I still have my fucking phone, upon which I check the location of the depot and make my way there. I almost want to cry when I see the Maniac Magee in the distance, and that urge doesn’t get better as I see Jun standing outside my sleeper, looking down at a pile of boxes that definitely weren’t there when I left this morning in confusion.

Words not exactly working at the moment, as I push a bit of DE into my mask, I barely manage to get out a simple:

“Uhh. Hi.”

Recognizing my voice, the mechanic grins as she looks up at me. “Oh, hey Minea, how many things did you even buy to-”

She cuts herself off as she notices my current appearance, her expression rapidly shifting between one of confusion, then interest, before finally one of concern. Her jaw gaping, she stares at me, and I awkwardly shift beneath her gaze as I continue to approach her.

“Um. Wow.” She visibly swallows. “That dress is gorgeous on you, but uh, the blood doesn’t really match… That’s not yours, right?”

I can’t help but awkwardly giggle at that, running a hand through my hair and grimacing at the blood.. “About 70/30 probably? I-I’ve had a night.”

With a huff, Jun gains a small smile before offering me a hand. “I can tell, Minea. How about we get you cleaned up and changed before you tell me about it?”

I start to reach out, but pull my hand back as I hesitate, Olivia popping back into my head for some reason. Is that all that comes from letting someone else take the lead? Is this a bad idea? Nervously, I look up to see if Jun’s expression has changed upon seeing my hesitation, but find that if anything it’s almost gotten kinder.

Fuck it. I’ve made so many bad decisions tonight, what’s potentially one more?

As I put my hand into hers, she squeezes it so gently that something within me just gives. As I sob and my already flimsy facade begins to crumble, Jun just pulls me into a hug and holds me close as I begin to cry into her shoulder.

Why, oh god why, does such a terrible idea have to be so warm ?

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