Chapter 18

Pov - Skips 82648657/7255: Marie Kendrick

Red had been silent for too long. Even with the pressure he was trying to intimidate me with, it was obvious he wouldn't find an answer to his moral dilemma. We would keep wasting time if I let him continue with his nonsense. Having a type green run around was not an option. If Red could not accept that the GOC did the things it did for a reason, well, he'd have to find another organization that would take him in.

The pressure was something I had never experienced, but Strike Teams specifically trained to be ready for unexpected situations. I wasn't about to allow some pressure to stop me from eliminating my target. I opened the door to my car and started walking towards Sarah's home.

Her front yard was big and I wasn't interested in walking around just to follow the walkway, so I began walking through her grass.

"Hey! Where do you think you are going?" Gabe yelled as he got out of the car too. He still had a pensive look. What kind of solution did he think he could come up with that the GOC hadn't tried yet?

"To do my fucking job, you dick head."

"I said we wouldn't be killing anyone today." His damn almost emotionless voice reached me again.

"Your feelings don't really matter to me, Red. I won't risk this town becoming some kind of zombie town." The prions infection had been a mess to deal with. Ignoring Red's opinions is the best course of action at the moment. It was about to become dark and I didn't feel the need to fight off an undead invasion.

"But, is killing the kid the only answer?" Maybe ignoring him for the moment would also be for the best. I turned around and glared at him.

"Shut up and let me do my job." With that done I turned around and realized that the distance between me and the house was much larger than what it should have been.

I scowled as I turned around and faced Red once more.

"What is your fucking problem? That kid is a ticking time bomb. If you read the files sent to your phone you should know that type greens are just trouble waiting to happen."

Red looked at me in the eyes and opened his mouth. "I don't think killing him would be for the best. He could become a powerful ally. Just imagine it, he's basically a walking arsenal. He could fortify any place with enough time. Doesn't that sound useful?"

"Trying to use anomalies as assets always goes wrong. There is a reason we get rid of them as soon as we find them. It has been tried before and has failed. Plus, we don't know the extent of Mathew's powers. For all we know he could also bring into reality stuff from other video games. He's too big of a risk."

"But what if he's given help? Type greens are supposed to lose their minds slowly right? With the right help his deterioration could be stopped." He thought type green's special kind of mind deterioration could be stopped with some simple therapy?

"The GOC and many before it have tried using type greens for their benefit for a very long time. You sound arrogant as fuck saying the GOC could just control a type green and not have it backfire."

He was silent for a moment and I turned around.

"Now let me get to the house, we've wasted enough time."

"No."

"No?" This man was getting on my nerves. "You want to become some kind of guardian angel or something? You think you are above others because you care for the life of a type green? That you'll have a moral high ground? Well guess what? Killing him right now will save more lives than what a dozen trained type green could ever save."

He looked taken aback, finally he showed some damn emotion.

"You sympathize with the kid? Are you putting yourself in his shoes? Is that what's happening?"

Now he looked conflicted. "N-no."

"Then what? Why are you so against the idea of getting rid of a reality bender?"

He didn't answer anymore and I began walking towards the house. He'd expanded the space in between me and the house, but not by that much. Killing young people was always hard, but if working as a Strike Team operative for 27 years had taught me anything, it was that you did not sympathize with or felt sorry for a threat.

I had walked about half the distance between me and the house when the air in front of me shimmered and Red materialized in front of me.

"Look, I get what you are saying, but is killing him really the only option? Can't you give me like 20 more minutes to come up with something?"

I glowered at him as I answered him. "No, everything has been tried and nothing has worked. Now move. I'm not interested in wasting more time."

"What if someone like him teaches him? There has to be a type green out there who has not lost his mind."

"No, they all lose it sooner or later. What are you going to come up with next, are you planning to take him under your wing?"

He scrunched up his nose and almost looked disgusted by the idea. "No thanks, kids are annoying, and I have no interest in taking care of someone."

"That is what I thought." I took out one of my knives from my back pouch. "Now move, this is the last time I am asking." Getting into a fight with a type black never ended well, there were enough records of what happened to some agents to know what I was doing was foolish, but honestly? I didn't care much about the consequences at the moment.

Red had shown himself to only retaliate when pushed hard enough, plus, his retaliations were always proportional. If I somehow read him wrong and I actually offended him more than what I thought I would, he might actually do something against the GOC, but I doubt I did.

He slowly looked at my knife and then at me. "You mentioned you had read my file a while ago. Do you really think you can cow me with a knife?"

"You think a Strike veteran runs around with normal knives?"

He paused for a moment. "Fair enough. I still think it's a pretty suicidal response."

That is the kind of response you get when you are against someone who doesn't mind dying.

There were a tense few seconds where time seemed to pause before I tried sprinting past him. It all seemed to go well when suddenly I was facing him again. I tried turning left but realized he appeared in front of me once more. I took a step back and turned around only to see him there too.

Was he somehow cloning himself?

"No, I just made all directions relative to you point at me." So I would need to cut through space to get out?

"You said you didn't read minds."

"I said I didn't invade them, your soul projects your thoughts well enough I can read them without really doing anything other than being around you."

I took in a breath and tried to clear my mind. I didn't want to clue him in on my next action. I need to distract him a bit.

I started pumping some mana into my knife as I tried to get some kind of rise out of him. "Am I to take your actions as you stopping me from doing my job?"

"Look, I get that you are annoyed and want to go all murder hobo, but do we really have to escalate so fast?" I traced in my mind the runes on the knife that were necessary for space altering effects.

"From my point of view, a threat is protecting another threat. If it wasn't because I was ordered to, I would've tried to kill you the moment we met."

His face twisted in annoyance as he glanced at the sky. "Why are this world's people so fucking unreasonable."

"Because we have learned that to make sure humanity survives, actions have to be taken. It's nothing personal."

"Well it feels pretty fucking persona." He paused and took in a breath. I tried to subtly activate the enchantments on my knife when Red continued.

"Look, no matter what you do, you won't win in a confrontation against me."

I smirked at him. "I don't have to win against you, I just have to reach the kid."

He looked frustrated and exhaled harshly. "I get your point, I really do. But I also want you to get mine. Killing every threat ever won't solve your issues."

"It sounds like it would to me." Like, literally, if every threat died, everything would be better.

I tried to see how much mana my knife had and decided it was enough. I slashed at where the house would be if Red hadn't manipulated space around us and saw an arc leave my knife. I watched as it cut through the bent space and revealed a gap where space was normal. I quickly jumped through it and activated my time erasing amulet. Making it had been a pain, and I hated the nickname it had coined me, but it was a damn nice gadget.

As the time it would have taken me to reach the house was erased and I appeared in front of the front door. I was about to kick the door in when I felt Red's hand land on my shoulder.

"That is a nice trick." He sounded mildly impressed, a bit patronizing too. "I'm afraid I won't let you get to the kid no matter what, at least until I can come with an idea that could help us."

And suddenly I was next to my car once more… I have decided that I hate gods.

I looked around and realized I would just get tired trying to get to Mathew. I felt angry at the fact that he didn't even take me seriously, but it was made pretty clear who was the one calling the shots at the moment.

I don't think there was anything I could do to reach the house before he could do anything about it other than overcharge my time skip, but that would be too dangerous. So, feeling absolutely vexed, I just sat on my car's hood and turned to look at Red.

"So, how much time are you going to give yourself to come up with a solution? Till people start fucking dying?"

He looked conflicted. "No, it won't take me that long."

"So you recognize the fact that you can't stop him from causing an incident. Why do you even care if I kill him or not." I had insinuated he sympathized with the kid before in hopes I could distract him enough for me to do my job, but now that I had no choice but to wait for him to do anything knowing his reasoning would at least help me in writing my report.

He looked at me a bit aghast before he sighed and looked away.

He brought up his hands to his face and looked at them.

"I am no longer human."

… That was not a good enough reason.

He glanced at me again and continued. "Yeah yeah, I get that, for most people that would be the case, but unfortunately for me, it explains enough."

Stop reading my thoughts. "So, how does that explain your reasoning?" He looked a bit guilty before responding.

"I… don't have morals anymore. I remember having them very clearly. I remember what I thought about people who had none. I detested them."

Ahhh. so this is why he sounded so fake with his 'anger' at the kids death sentence.

"So what, you are trying to fake having morals till you somehow regain some? Seriously? You are stopping me from eliminating a threat because you don't want to feel like the fucking bad guy?"

He sat next to me and I noticed how the car didn't tilt even if his weight should have made it tilt.

"I don't want to lose myself. I feel like if I stop following my past morals I would lose something. Like," he sighed. "I don't know how to explain it. Just, I don't want to become a heartless bastard I guess."

I hummed. So he really didn't think like a human, but still tried to imitate one. "Were your morals just erased then?"

He perked up at that and looked at me like I had just offered him candy.

"That's it!"

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"So nothing will happen to Mathew? He will be alright?" We were back inside Sarah's house and I had to actively stop my intruding thoughts of just going upstairs and be done with this affair.

"Yup!" Red was really giddy about his idea. Now if the fucker had told me what it was, maybe I wouldn't be so skeptical about him actually having a plan.

"Are… you sure? You look a bit too happy about what you are about to try." Sarah, on the other hand, looked at Red like he was a very dangerous animal.

"Ahh, my bad, I just haven't really had the chance to do this very often, and it solves all of our issues." Red looked sheepish as he 'apologized'. There was no real weight behind his apology, like he was only paying lip service.

I decided to intervene to get this done faster. "Mathew will be alright. Don't worry about him, he won't feel a thing. I swear, he won't even remember he had powers." As I finished talking I saw Red glancing at me and I just gave him a stink eye.

He closed his eyes and nodded silently, seems like he at least agreed that it was for the best.

"How would he not remember them?" Sarah sighed. "It's all he's been talking about for the last month."

I smiled at Sarah. "Don't worry Sarah, Red knows what he is doing."

She still looked a bit dubious but still called Mathew to come down stairs.

"Honey! Come to the kitchen. Remember the people I told you about are going to help you with your powers? They are here."

I heard the kid running down the stairs as he shouted. "They can see them too!? That is so cool! Do they also have powers?"

I saw Red cringe a bit at how loud Mathew was, but he still tried to smile at the kid who came running into the kitchen.

Sarah smiled genuinely at Mathew and answered. "Yes, they do." She motioned her son to walk closer. "This right here is Red, he wants to show you his powers." She whispered the last part into his ear.

Mathew glanced at Red and marveled at him. I didn't know how to feel about a kid looking up to some threat like that, but I decided to ignore that for the moment.

Red crouched to Mathew's level and opened his hand, and suddenly I wasn't so sure about how truthful I had been towards Sarah about Mathew's safety.

In Red's hand the reddest colored fire I had ever seen appeared, and I felt it start trying to consume everything around it, trying to dominate everything that was in its domain and use it as fuel.

"This right here is my power Mathew, I'm going to use it to help you a bit, I will defeat all the zombies with it."

"So they won't attack us anymore?"

"Yup, just look at the flame. Concentrate on how it flickers."

I also watched the flames closely. That was the only reason I actually saw anything. The flame in Red's hand expanded so fast I wouldn't have seen it if I wasn't augmented. It expanded over Mathew and Sarah, and passed through them.

Mathew and Sarah just stared at where the flame was moments prior to whatever Red did before they both blinked and looked at us surprised.

It was Sarah the one who spoke first. "What are you two doing in our home?"

Red stood up straight and stretched a little bit. "Don't worry about it Sarah, we were on our way out. Thank you for your time." He turned around and began walking towards the front door. I waved at Mathew and Sarah and quickly catched up to Red.

As we walked outside I glanced backwards and saw the family of two just staring at us weirdly from one of the windows the front side of their house had. What had Red done to them?

I bumped him in the shoulder. "Are you finally going to tell me what you did?"

He seemed to think about it for a moment before he responded almost absentmindedly. "I erased his reality bending potential."

I stopped for a moment and considered the implications that sentence had. Red could potentially help erase the type green situation…

Still, there was one more thing I had to know. "And the confused looks they were throwing at us afterwards?"

"I erased his power's effect on both of their minds too. Like that, we are sure Mathew's mind is not corroded and the two of them won't remember them."

"Huh, alright."

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AN

Alright, I don't know when Imma address him getting his morals/humanity back, but I do hope this cleared a bit the reasoning behind his actions.

Did Marie's reaction to everything seem reasonable? Mind you, she is a somewhat suicidal Strike veteran so… Idk, I think it was alright, I still want to know what some of y'all think.

If any of y'all find a spelling mistake, has questions, has some criticism, or whatever, please leave a comment. I enjoy reading them.

Thanks for reading.