Chapter 15

(I'm trying to make the writing style better, if this new style feels better then previous chapters please say so. Thanks for reading!!!)

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VI strolls through the back streets of the Undercity, water flowing through gaps in the ground of the alley.

Thunder echoes above. As she's about to leave the alley she looks back into it and sighs gloomily.

Shaking her head, she makes her way out of the alley towards the direction of music.

Arriving at the last drop she walks past the usual commotion and heads to the back room and heads down a staircase arriving at two doors, one has crayon writing of Harry on the door while the next has her and Powder written on it.

Taking a deep breath as she goes to open her door.

As she enters the as always dirty bedroom, she finds Powder fidgeting and pacing through the room.

Powder quickly realizes someone entered the room and runs over to Vi and looks around behind her anxiously. "H-How was searching for Harry, did you find him?"

Vi tenses up and shakes her head, "He wasn't there."

Powder starts shaking slightly and snuffles as tears start flowing, "Why…"

Vi guides Powder to the lower bunk bed of theirs and hugs Powder closely as they sit down, "Don't worry, we'll find him…"

"How will we find him if no one else is looking!" Powder screams shaking her head sporadically as she pushes herself away from Vi.

"We searched most alleys in the Undercity and today I cleared out a lot of the slums, sooner or later we'll find him." Vi declares adamantly, then lowering her voice as she leans her head on top of Powder's as she whispers, "we have to…"

The stay like that for a while until the door opens again and Vander enters, "Thought I saw you enter."

Vi tenses up and stares at Vander without saying a thing while Powder stares at the ground miserably.

"So, you went out looking for him again?" Vander summarizes.

Vi's stare grows to one of anger, "Yeah, so what?"

Vander groans, "I thought I told you to stop looking for him."

Vi hisses back, "What, so I just forget he existed?" as she jumps up from the bed.

"No, just don't go look-" Vander utters irritably.

"Don't you always say that we protect our own?" Vi yells over him.

Vander yells back, "Not when it doesn't do any good!"

Powder, being surrounded by the yelling interrupts them by yelling herself, "Stop!"

Both Vander and Vi quickly realize that Powder was still there with them.

"H-Harry is somewhere out there I know he is, so w-why can't we go out looking for him?" Powder hiccups.

Vi sits down next to her, opens her mouth to speak but cuts herself off.

Vander sits down in front of both, "Harry is smart, he knows how to survive in the Lanes. He's most likely somewhere safe so we just have to wait till he wants to come back home instead of going out and hunting him down."

Powder looks at him sadly, "Why wouldn't he want to come back home?"

"I don't know, but when he does, we will." Vander says as he pats them both on the shoulder, stands up, and leaves the room.

Vi goes back to leaning her head on top of Powder's.

"I miss him…" Powder cries quietly.

Vi hugs her softly with one arm, "I know…"

(MIA) {ß These literally mean nothing but line breakers.}

Harry sits on the ground of Doctor's lab in front of the glowing vat containing Rio, surrounded with books, some on the basics of energy transfer, one on the basics of what runes are and the differences between world runes and basic runes, a few different language dictionaries, and in his hand is the notes from Reveck depicting his early research of shimmer.

Harry stares up at the vat, "wait, so that shimmer stuff makes people sick?" "Is that why she needs to be in this vat?"

Reveck stares down at Harry from the corner of his eye away from a small experiment involving shimmer, and a lump of mutated mucus that use to be a rat, "No, it's actually the only thing keeping her alive."

"How does that work?" Harry asks dropping his head to the side. Staring at Rio with a look of confusion.

"Mutations in organic beings tend to be unstable." Reveck responds with a hint of anger in his usual neutral apathetic tone.

Harry nods his head slightly and goes back to reading.

An hour or so passes and the doctor is currently being handed a rat from Harry, this rat is the new test subject.

He grabs a vial of gunky purple shimmer from Rio and plugs it into a weird machine along with a second vial of blood from himself. The two liquids pour into the machine, it then starts making a whirling sound.

It ejects a new vial of now clear and slightly glowing shimmer.

Reveck injects it straight into the rat and watches as its muscle mass quickly starts to build as glowing purple veins spread throughout the rat.

He looks down at the rat before saying, "note that human blood diluted shimmer has less cancerous growth then rat blood diluted shimmer."

Harry dutifully does as told.

After this recent success Reveck leans back in the chair.

He looks down to Harry who finishes writing the note and asks him, "I would like to know why you were lost in the fissures back on Progress Day."

Harry looks up at him in shock, his skin paling, "I… I did something dumb and-and it made everyone scared of me… my parents left me, my own mistake destroyed my cousin and auntie's lives, another mistake took auntie's life, and everyone else now knows that my mistakes always destroy…" he takes a shaky breath, "I'm alone…"

Reveck nods slightly, "I've come to learn that loneliness is often a by-product of a gifted mind."

He looks straight into Harry's glowing green eyes, "and the past few days has certainly shown, you have a gifted mind."

Harry noticeably looks happier after hearing that and goes back to reading in one of his many books.

(GIG)

Off the coast of the Piltovan docks a body of a dead man floats, the currents slowly push him over face up revealing him to be the Deputy Sheriff.