Panic, confusion, and fear prevailed over the blood-soaked tension in the Gym as I looked around the crowd of roughly 75 students and teachers, all bearing one injury or another. I could see they had no clue what I was talking about, but it was the eight unidentified people wearing varying types of armor or outfits that I saw the most emotion in their eyes.
Setting aside their affiliations, they were returners, and the keywords I had uttered were more than enough reason to get flighty.
All of them appeared to be either pre-teens or no older than 16 and based on the strange looks I was receiving from a couple, I knew they were questioning what I had said.
Dropping an instance that was large enough to cover one of the largest states in the Continental United States was no small undertaking, and I don’t blame them for being skeptical, but there was one thing I had going for me, and it was time to use it.
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"I know you may not think I’m telling the truth, that I am prophesying doomsday or something, hell I bet those two in the back huddled together whispering are probably thinking I’m a member of Partaevian, but let me make this clear: I am Nexus, and THAT ALONE should be more than enough reason for you to heed my word." When I noticed a switch flick in the minds of everyone who was in the know, I turned to my brother and darted my eyes toward Sonnasitc.
’Take him along if you want. I don’t care, but we need to move now,’ I said as I swapped out my shinguards for something more flexible yet durable.
I needed to be able to run long distances at a high speed, and for that, my all-purpose dragonhide boots wouldn’t cut it. Expertly crafted or not, they were meant for fighting, not marathon running.
’Taylor, the people…’
’A little over four million, Brenden; there’s nothing we can do; we don’t have the time or technology to move that many people, let alone save anyone from the school.’ Standing up, I kicked the ground with the toe of each boot a few times to make sure they were snug.
’How sure are you about this? It’s a pretty big leap to jump from terrorist attacks to summoning a hundred thousand square mile wide Instance.’ Brenden asked as he walked over to his friend, who was frozen in place beside Piniki. She had tears in her eyes as the reality of what she was about to do sunk in.
’75-80 Percent…I can’t say I am 100 percent convinced since all I have is conjecture and some clues, but I know how Draven thinks; you saw that last video he put out before the battle back then, he wanted to become more well-known than Xipher, to become the top villain, as idiotic as it sounds, I have to give it to him, the guy is smart.’
’He practically idolized me and, as such, would continuously try to outdo the plans and plots I came up with. Hell, there were even a few occasions where he worked alongside some of the groups trying to stop me and being honest, he was good at unraveling my work.’
’All the signs are here, little brother, the mass terror plots in key points all over the state, large cities, hell, he even targeted Columbine; he’s trying to use a mass-scale inscription.’
’Can you not break it?’ Hearing this, Brenden, of course, asked the obvious question but ended up looking at his feet when he saw me shake my head from side to side slowly.
’No, the scale of this inscription is too large, and there are no doubt hundreds if not thousands of nodes I would need to destroy, and that’s only if I can decipher and crack the inscription blueprint fast enough.’
’Then there’s the sacrifices; I don’t doubt hes drawing close to finishing things, and the light show will soon begin. At best, we have an hour to get out of here, and with a hundred miles to cover, it’s going to be a close call.’
"Sonas, look at me," kneeling down in front of his friend, my brother absorbed all the information I was giving him and gave one final push to the sonic power hero.
"All isn’t lost; this is but a tactical retreat; the emergence of an instance doesn’t spell instant death for everyone; our strength will be necessary if they have any hope of making it out of there alive." Gripping his friend’s shoulders, Brenden forced the goody-two-shoes to look him in the eye.
"But we can’t do that if we get sucked into the instance with them; it’s time to go…"
’Take him and Piniki north, like I told Dad; knock them out if you have to,’ Feeling an intense gaze trying to burrow into me, I slowly turned and met the eyes of a young man wearing a deep shade of royal blue light armor and almost broke into a grin.
It wasn’t necessarily the armor that gave his identity away to me, but instead, the weapon attached to his back…a golden trident.
’Well, well, well, if it isn’t HydroLift, I’d recognize that dumb trident anywhere; it also explains why he is glaring daggers into my back. He had been steadily climbing the leader board, but when I jumped, he dropped hard down to 7th place.’
"You’re him, hmph, not much to look at, are you?" Noticing he had my attention, HydroLift stood up and started walking toward me.
"Dude, we REALLY don’t have time for this," I said, rolling my eyes and hiding the smirk begging to appear on my lips.
"DUDE, we do; what’s the worst that happens? We end up in a big Instance, hah; someone of our strength should easily make their way through it, so I demand a duel, right here, righ…"
BANG
Without even allowing HydroLift to finish his statement, I sucker punched the annoying asshole right in the mouth with the full extent of my maxed-out Alpha-Ranked stats, the impact of which sent several teeth hurtling out of his gums into the air as his head snapped back and he flew across the Gym before crashing down into the bleachers.
"UGH," Groaning loudly, Brenden swapped to our Telepathic link to chastise me.
’Seriously, Taylor, of all the times to hit a hero, you choose now?’
’What? Even in Dire Situations, I got Time to Beat a Hero’s Ass."