22 Preparations

We went to the backyard and when we were about to go out we saw Rose just going into the house.

When she saw Hayley, she understood immediately.

"You don't want the cold aura to leak?". Sometimes I forgot that she became much smarter after the meteor shower.

"Yes, if we prevent the cold from leaving her, she is not scary anymore". Probably Hayley didn't like the way I said that, but I was unable to tell any of her expressions

"Then scary aura is linked to the cold aura you talked about?".

"They are the same, apparently".

We went out and G had a jump scare an was all bothered… but it was way better than the reaction he had before in Hayley's presence.

"Can you try to warm yourself with the solar energy or something?"

"You know I don't control it!!" He tried to take distance from Hayley

… Warm yourself… I left again and went to get clothes again and this time I gave G thermal clothes.

It didn't work since the clothes blocked the sunlight, he became weaker after wearing them, we were also unable to cover him completely like Hayley.

Rose interjected at that moment

"You said that Gerhard light moves on its own reinforcing him, right?"

"Yes, it maybe moves accordingly to G's instincts or to help him out by its own".

"Since that light seems warm wouldn't it try to keep the cold aura away from him?"

"Mmm, that's a nice idea"

The only one not happy with the idea was G so we stayed outside to see if the energy in G's body responded in some way, I told him to keep working in the meantime like if we weren't there.

G's efficiency dropped a lot since Hayley was there, I was quite happy to torture him a little after he left me in the septic tank and what he has done to me in the morning training.

After a couple of hours, G was more comfortable, he couldn't control the light like the others could control their powers, but the light seemed to help him and was creating a new layer to protect him. He was able to work normally. While we were out I made Hayley suppress her aura from time to time, but since it was difficult just the first hour was she able to maintain it, afterward since G was getting accustomed to it wasn't that necessary for her to suppress it.

It was past noon when Hayley and rose, went back into the house, Hayley couldn't eat while covered like that and to let her go around the house we decided to eat outside with Hope and G.

At the time we were outside, we heard shooting and saw smoke… but this time it came from 2 different parts of the city. One of the sources was the same as yesterday a little to the north, which means that Jamie's group was still at war with that other guy, the other source came from the edge of the city about 1,5km from us.

The second source was giving me a bad feeling…

Two more groups were at war and all of them were quite close to us.

I was looking the smokes with a worried face and both noticed

G was the first to talk.

"What's wrong Spence?".

I indicated one of the sources.

"That one is the battle that involves Jamie's groups we talked about" and then I changed the direction of my hand to the second source "And that one… is new… that means that there are at least 4 groups in conflict right now, and we are near both, we need to move soon".

[Ding]

[Mission: Move to a safer place.

Type: Emergency

Reward: 25 System points.

Punishment: Hostile Environment

Time left 23h 30m 02s]

'System what is the exact meaning of the hostile environment?'

[The survival difficulty is going to go up by several levels]

…

Hope was looking at me with a worried face.

"We should be ok, but we have to leave this place tomorrow at sunrise, I don't think we have as much time as we thought"

Both were surprised by my words, all of them already knew that we were going to move out eventually. But none of them expected that to be tomorrow.

"G look for the spares that are most difficult to find in a normal house we should be able to find almost anything you need if we look around to take with you the most important. Bring the ropes and the training gloves to keep training" we couldn't stop the training, so we would take the most basic things.

Even if he thought it was strange to try to keep the training going in these conditions he didn't say anything.

"Hope, check the backpacks try to stuff them with the dried food we have, the cans are too heavy".

"I'll go talk with Rose and Hayley".

I went in and found both happily eating, I sit with them.

"Spence what's wrong?".

"The conflicts near us are escalating too quick. I think we should move tomorrow after G wakes up".

Rose was the first to react.

"Do you need me to scout around?".

I thought a second about it, Dante still hasn't come back and I wanted to know where he was.

"Do you think you can use it without any problems?".

"Yes".

"Ok, then do it, try to look for Dante".

Rose Closed her eyes and when I thought she was going to open them like the other time she fell to the side.

I catch her in time.

"Rose!!" She opened her eyes right away, it was weird.

"Calm down, I'm fine, when I used my power it was like if my soul left my body… I saw myself falling and you caught me"

"Your power really evolved…" I was quite surprised, I'm not sure if this was better or worse than the power before, we couldn't use it right now.

I thought a second about it.

"Don't use it for now, if you leave your body for too much time, maybe it becomes more difficult for you to wake up or something, so we have to test it in a safer place"

After saying that Rose looked discouraged, but she knew that it was too dangerous to keep trying her power like this.

"Hayley for how long you think you can go around dressed like that and suppressing your aura?

"If I'm not moving about an hour, but moving the limit should be for about half of it"

"Ok mmm go outside and train while G and Hope are working I need them to get used to the feeling especially G".

After that I Helped Hope to verify everything, each of the girls was going to carry 1 backpack. In my case I additionally was carrying the first aid kit, and G was carrying spares, he could be able to carry more stuff, but if a battle breaks out I need him able to fight.

Each backpack had about a week's worth of food and water, a blanket and a change of clothes.

Since that was ready I wanted to see how useful Hope's power was, part of the afternoon we were trying a couple of things. First, we tried to make her move a couple of objects with her mind, but it didn't work, well, I didn't think it was going to work like that. I threw a couple of things at her, and told her to think about repelling, deflecting moving around a lot of things, I also tried with different items.

In the end, her power works only on metallic objects (at least for now). She can repel them, my theory is that she creates an electromagnetic field around her, and when a metallic object enters on it gets affected by it and change its trajectory.

It wasn't an amazing defensive ability as I thought at the beginning, since it's used as a shield was quite limited and situational. But the creation of electromagnetic fields could become something amazing if she is able to control it. But it wasn't too helpful for our current situation.

I waited for Dante, I had a couple of ideas about where to go, but since I lacked information I couldn't decide which one was better.

We had everything ready to leave early, Rose and Hope were helping Hayley to look at all the thermal clothes we have in the house to make a suit easier to move around.

I was looking at the kitchen knives and decided to take 3 of them that I thought could be useful in the future.

The sun was already down when Dante finally appears.