Reality Heist - Geordi Riker (ready player one ebook TXT) 📗

little spear gun. You already shot your harpoon, killing one of the King's buddies. The Ribaiasan smells the blood, notices you, and charges.”
“I use my ability to manipulate the elements to turn the water around him to ice.”
“And freeze yourself in the process.” Jesse laughs as he snaps the trap shut.
“How do you figure? I can keep the water warm around me.”
“Actually, that's impossible. You can't control both ends of the spectrum at exactly the same time.”
“Yeah? As if you would know.” I scoff.
“Actually, I would know, seeing as how that's my ability.”
It takes me a moment to understand what he just said, “Bull shit. That super power stuff is just make believe.”
“Legit,” Jesse protests, “I'll show you.” Chase hands him a glass of water. Jesse sticks a finger in and touches the surface of the water. The water slowly solidifies, top to bottom. I watch, stunned as he reverses the process and it begins to sizzle and steam rises.
A grease-covered Amaar walks in, rubbing his hands on a rag. “What'd I miss?”
Chase looks up, “Oh, Jesse just spilled the beans about how he has a peculiar talent when it comes to the temperature around him.'
The water evaporates. Jesse grins at my expression, “That's my Kiko Hendo, climate change if you don't speak Japanese. It's my special power. I'm not exactly the best at it yet, but it's getting there.”
“By leaps and bounds,” Ky mutters sarcastically.
“Oh, I'm sorry, little miss Chimamire no Butsu. Guess not all of us already know how to use ours the moment we get them.”
“Hey, at least mine isn't some lame-ass excuse of an ability like climate change. Mine even sounds cool.”
“Bloodied boots does not sound cool!”
Chase motions me over, and I leave the two to their bickering. Amaar also joins us, but perches on the edge of his seat to try to not get the white couch too dirty. “Those two will go at it for the rest of the flight, if we ever manage to get this bird in the air,” Chase shrugs, looking expectantly at Amaar
He grins, “My Seitoshi is working wonders.”
“So we're leaving soon?”
“No. Let it take some time. My power's normally used for making bombs or just making things spontaneously combust.”
“Seitoshi?” I ask.
Amaar's grin widens, “Short for Seitoshi no Enjinia, engineer of life and death.”
“How come this is the first I'm hearing about all of this?”
“Well, would you rather us say upon meeting you, “Hello, you just traveled to an alternate time-line. You now have an ability in the incubation state, that will slowly start to manifest itself over the next few months, don't worry, it's all under control, even though we have no idea how a young person like you ended up here, but hey, now that you're here, time to teach you all sorts of stuff, like how to talk the lay of the land, and yadayadayada.” Chase replies snarkily.
“Sorry,” I say, “Didn't know that it was a sore spot.” I turn to Amaar, “Engineer of Life and Death, huh?”
“Yeah, my ability enables me to telekinetic-ally move anything mechanically related, tools or gears or entire machines, but that takes a huge amount of energy to do, so I try to avoid that whenever possible. So no, Chase, I will not move the Chaser for you, so that we can make it to the mansion sooner.”
“What's the point of being able to move stuff with your mind if you can't get this bird off the ground?”
The hovercraft sudden comes alive beneath our feet, a low humming vibrating in the air and causing the ground beneath us to shake. I stare out the window as the city buildings drop away while we rise in the air. “Finally,” Chase mutters, shooting Amaar a look, who simply shrugs it off. The hover craft shivers, tilting slightly before straightening out. I glance over to where Jesse and Ky are still arguing, Jesse's face unusually pale as he glares at Ky while keeping a white-knuckled grip on the couch he's sitting on.
“What about you, Chase? What's your ability?”
“Gizo, forgery. But it's a lot cooler than it sounds. Not only does it make my forgeries exceptionally high quality, but I don't even need to have the right paper in order to make it work. What I do is I get in people's minds and mess with the stuff they see before the synapses reach the part of the brain that translates those synapses into recognizable images. I can also use their minds to figure out what they're expecting to see, and use that knowledge to create the image.”
“Wow, that actually sounds really hard to do.”
“Meh, it used to be, but when you've been sliding around as long as I have, you get the hang of it and move on. I could be arguing with Dutch about something while I forge my way through security. Too bad it doesn't work on telling the metal detectors that I don't have gun, so I always end up getting strange looks when instead of keys and change, I put a single coin from a lost civilization, known to some as Tibet. That's my Kinetic.”
“Kinetic?”
“Yeah, the little doo-hickey thing I use to amplify my powers. Everybody's got one, and it has some sort of connection with what you can do. Amaar, yours is a gear or something, right?”
He grins, “Yeah, nice little metal one. Perfect fit for my hand. People don't know what hit them.” Seeing my expression, he digs in his pocket and pulls out a simple gear that could have come from anywhere. Silently, it floats a couple inches above his hand, slowly rotating. “See? It's my Kinetic, the little tool I use to amplify my abilities.”
“Say, didn't you have some sort of little object?” Chase asks, turning to me, “I hope you didn't lose it, or leave it behind, that would suck.”
My eyes fly open as I remember the rock in my pocket, the one I was about to throw away that first day but decided at the last moment to keep it. I dig into my pockets and pull it out. It's still smooth, and has those weird Japanese characters engraved and filled with gold, but the rock itself is now a solid light gray colour. Chase holds a hand out, and I drop it in his palm.
He turns it over in his hand, studying the characters, “Any idea what they mean?”
“No.”
“Strength, Endurance, Spirit,” Jesse reads from over my shoulder. His voice cause me to jump, “Sorry, didn't mean to startle you.” He grins, “You guys just sounded so serious talking about whatever it was, that I just had to investigate.”
“Of course you did, Sticky.”
Jesse's eyes widen innocently as he stares at Ky who's still lying down on the floor with her puzzle, “Whatever have I done to give you the impression that I would actually snoop? I'm not some sort of spy, you know, I have honour.”
“Yeah, honour of thieves,” Chase snidely replies.
“Okay, to be fair, that skill was encouraged by my father, as long as I returned the stuff after it was noticed that it had gone missing. I still haven't given that lady back her necklace. She's convinced she lost it.”
“What I don't get is how you guys could possibly be okay with this.” Amaar mused.
“With what? It's not like we're killing anyone.”
“Wait, what was it that your brother Hai did as a skill again?” Chase asked, an innocent expression masking some ulterior motive.
Both Jesse's and Amaar's faces turned beet red. “That's really neither here nor there, Chase,” Amaar began.
“Besides, odds are we won't run into him,” Jesse finished, “Doesn't really matter, then does it?”
“Why, what does your brother do?” I ask, confused by the turn of the conversation.
"Like I said, doesn't matter. We aren't gonna run into him or anything, so forget it."
Chase just shrugs it off, and starts talking about different ways to tell a convincing lie. Jesse slouches away, joining Skip and Dutch in the pilot “shell” as they call it. Basically, it's cockpit made entirely of glass walls and floor, with the controls projected as interactive holograms. Talk about science-fiction cliche. Amaar's already promised me a tour of the entire craft, if we can find a “half-decent” one, at which Jesse had snorted sarcastically.
The Chaser shudders as it plops on the manicured lawn, nearly clipping a nearby fountain thanks to Dutch's skills behind the hologram. The place is huge, with large green lawns spreading out, decorated with neatly trimmed hedges of varying shapes, statues, and fountains, nearly perfectly symmetrical. Ky grinned at the forest she could see in the distance, and started to walk towards it. The only thing that stopped her was Skip's barked order “Team meeting”. Her shoulders stooped and she shot him a murderous glare, “Didn't think we could have had that on the craft?” but she fell in step with the rest of us as we made out way up to the mansion.
Upon entering, Jesse let out a slow whistle, “It ain't exactly a Five Star Drifter headquarters, but it ain't too shabby.” Dutch saved Chase the trouble by clipping Jesse across the back of the head. “Ow!”
“Try to not spit on the Palace of Versailles on your way out,” Chase hissed, “Some of us don't mind the idea of living in a place above ground. I'm sure there's a basement if you're really that desperate to try to maintain some sanity. Otherwise, it's your turn to cook.”
Yyeah, right, it's Tuesday, you deusch. Amaar's on kitchen duty.”
“Dibs on the queen's room,” declares Ky, still sounding a little miffed.
“Negative,” Skip squashes her hopes, “Take a room close to the kitchen. This place is ridiculously huge. And our mission's not going to take that long. I'd rather not waste more time tracking you down than doing actual work.”
“What kind of mission sets us up in this sort of place?” Jesse complains.
Skip produces a file from his backpack after taking a seat on one of the vintage couches. Ky collapses beside him, but doesn't crane her neck to try to read over his shoulder. Skip flips the file open, “Looks like some paintings in an art gallery.”
“Lame,” Jesse complained before walking away, “I'm gonna go make supper. You probably won't need me on this one anyways.”
Skip glances up to watch him go. He shoots Chase a look, “What exactly did you do?”
Chase's eyes widen as he assumes a look of innocence, “Me? Why is it that every time Jesse's moody, you find a way to pin it on me? How do you know it wasn't that one?” he demanded, jerking a thumb into Dutch's gut.
“Perhaps because he was with me?” Skip suggested, “And you're always in the thick of things, especially when it stinks of trouble.”
“He brought up the older brother fiasco again,” Ky sighs, leaning her head back so that it touched the top of the couch, “And he didn't drop it when Jesse asked him to.”
“That and the fact that the kid's already been moody for at least a week now,” Chase quipped, “If he weren't a guy, I would be inclined to suggest that it might be that time- Ow!” Ky smacked him, effectively cutting him off.
“It's probably just to make up for the monsoon season he's missing out on. Although, if he keeps on wishing for it, New York might actually get to experience one, for the first and only time in its history. It would be interesting to see if we ever come across a dimension that breaks off of this one, especially if he does create a monsoon. It would also help in