10: The Basement

As expected, the basement was dark, but not as dark as when Jay first saw it. There were cheap light bulbs hanging from the ceiling; they're not very effective at lighting up the basement, but at least they're there.

Lady Blue went down the concrete stairs, and Jay followed behind her. Even in the dim light, he noticed that her board shoulders bear a messy arrangement of scars. Upon closer inspection, those scars looked like letters, but with her tank top in the way, Jay couldn't read the entire thing.

At the bottom of the basement, there were three steel doors, each one had different labeling. There was also some miscellaneous stuff laying around like one would expect in a basement; a few brooms were laying on the floor next to several cardboard boxes; an axe sat on one of the cardboard boxes along with a huge plastic basket of rags next to two washing machines, a dryer and a metal closet, presumably holding some cleaning supplies from the looks of it. Lady Blue walked past the doors and reached for the closet, almost tripping on the bright blue basket along the way.

Jay watched the woman opening the closet; there's nothing special in there either, just some cleaning products and more rags. After a second, she closed it back. It seemed she opened it on habit or something, like Jay used to open and close his fridge for no reason.

Then, Lady Blue began floating up in the air. The System mentioned that Lady Blue's power was the same as Kaon, so it's not surprising that she used the same technique to lift herself up to stand on a closet that's taller than her.

Once she's up there, Jay's eyes focused on a small metal box, almost blending in with the closet it's on. Lady Blue didn't waste any time crouching down to open it up and click some buttons. A manhole opened in the middle of the room, but the transmigrator's attention was more on the buttons. Just like in the cabin, his fingers passed through the buttons when he tried to push them.

Each button was nicely labeled with neat hand writing, but Jay couldn't get a good look at it because his environment began blurring out before the lighting changed to a dimmer setting because a few of the light bulbs broke and no one fixed them.

Lady Blue was no longer on the closet, so Jay got closer to the tiny box. The System showed him this for a reason.

He reached for the box's lid, but his hand went through it like it did with the wall. Jay let out a groan of frustration that no one could hear. Right, he's in a memory after all.

Footsteps distracted him from the box, so he turned around just in time to see one of the three metal doors being opened from the other side. The smell of sewage came out, and Jay gagged, but then his eyes widened when they landed on a familiar figure. The woman was covered in cut and bruised, her white tank top was caked with mud and blood, but she matched up the stairs.

Once again, Jay followed the memory of Lady Blue as she walked up those stairs and slammed the basement door opened. The cabin wasn't a bright sunny house with an aroma of food anymore, instead it's a neglected home. The sinks were empty and growing mold, the kitchen counter had stains on them, and the dining table was pushed into a corner to make more room in the hallway. Dust covered everything, but at least there's still sounds of birds and insects going about their day.

"Armani!" Lady Blue shouted loudly enough for the veins on her neck to stick out. "Let's flood the forest! Those fuckers are coming!"

Footsteps came from upstairs, and the dark skinned woman glared at her friend. Evergreen was dressed in a plain white T-shirt and military pants completed with combat boots. There's a scar across her nose that wasn't there when Jay saw her last time.

"No! A flood will kill everything!" Evergreen shouted back, and she looked more sad than angry. "It's called a natural disaster for a reason, Blue!"

"I'm the one flooding it, not you! You do your part of the plan!" Lady Blue ran past the other woman and kicked the door open.

Jay watched their argument continuing to take place as they walked out into the patio. Lady Blue lifted her hands up in the air, and the transmigrator felt a sense of dread as he watched Evergreen screaming in anguish.

A wall of water suddenly rose as high as the trees; any animals, plants and literally anything that weren't fast enough to escape the area were caught up in the tsunami. Lady Blue's eyes turned completely white as she sent waves upon waves crashing into the trees, and screams of men were heard once in a few seconds.

Evergreen stood still, watching the destruction of the forest until a bullet was fired at them. The woman wiped away her tears before she started chanting underneath her breath. Anyone who escaped the tsunami was being pulled into the water by trees, holding them down to drown.

One superhero was in the sky, floating in midair and aiming a sniper rifle at them. It didn't faze Lady Blue because she sent a wave at him.

"That's enough, Lady Blue!" Evergreen stopped her chanting to shout at her friend. "Take the water back to the lake where it belongs. Any longer would kill everything—"

She didn't get to finish her sentence when Lady Blue was attacked by a man coming right at her. The man was wearing the signature grey suit of the United Superhero Council, and Jay recognized the signature sniper rifle on his back. It's one of the few visual aids that the author decided to include in the book. A map would be useful, but no, the author decided that a sketch of a gun was more important.

Lady Blue sent a wave crashing on them both while the man tried to physically beat her up, and when the wave washed away, both the hero and the villain were gone.

Lightning bolts were being fired at Evergreen, so she opened the door of her cabin and got inside. She reached into her pants pocket to find a walkie talkie as she ran towards the basement. Seconds after she reached the basement door, the door was opened and a wave of water rushed in. The woman yelped before she spoke into the walkie talkie.

"This is the last message from Evergreen. Do not use the tunnels to or connected to Wolfwood forest check point. Lady Blue lost control of a flood, so the flood will probably destroy the check point, and I'll make sure no scumbags from the hero council know of its existence."

After the message was sent, Evergreen was hit by a wave of water flooding into the basement. She was caught up in the riptide, but it didn't stop her from chanting.

In the next second, Jay witnessed how Armani Wolfwood's gruesome death scene came to be. Her skin contorted and stretched so far that her limbs reached different corners of the room while she was suspended in the middle of the basement, her head above the flood but her body was still crashing in the waves. The three doors were blocked by vines and wood coming out of Armani herself, and when the ceiling lights broke, the doors were gone.

A zap of lightning bolt came into the basement, barely missing her head. Two figures wearing the United Superhero Council uniform were at the basement door; their eyes watched in horror as Armani Wolfwood self-destructed.

"I can't feel a heart beat!" The female superhero whimpered as she fell down to the floor where water went up to her knees.

Her male counterpart was just as surprised, but he still shot a lightning bolt from his fingertips towards Evergreen.

"Stop it, she's dead!" The female superhero shouted at him, her eyes were full of tears.

"She's not your friend anymore, Kayla! She's a villain!" The male superhero angrily said back. "She killed herself, so don't feel bad for her."

"Don't feel bad!" The female superhero sobbed. "Oh, don't feel bad for the victim who was manipulated into doing a villainess' bidding and would rather die than live without said villainess!"

"Evergreen is loyal to Lady Blue, huh..." The male superhero began dragging his partner up from the flood water. "We still have Lady Red to hunt down. One sister down, another one to go. Come on, Kayla, think about our mission!"

After a few more comforting words, the hero managed to convince his partner to leave. As they were leaving, Jay began making his way down the flooded staircase.

The crystal necklace which JJ took from the present cabin was on Armani's neck, half submerged in lake water with a ton of debris. Just like everything else in the memory, the transmigrator passed through the corpse of Evergreen like he's a ghost.

In the dim light, Jay finally reached the box on top of the closet. Just as he's about to touch it, the environment around him started melting at a rapid pace.