Mission: Hiding in the cornfields 1

The first thing I did was to gather all my equipment, which lead to the discovery of something new. When I gave Amanda the order to give me all my equipment there was one piece to many, one I hadn't produced and just like the fabricator before it seemed like something from a sci-fi novel. It was a plain choker, but I knew it would change to fit any outfit I wore and that the physical form didn't matter to it at all. I could see in its aura that it was semi-sentient, if still in the infantile stage. Putting it on I could feel something waking and trying to communicate with me telepathically. Just like my snake the communication didn't take the form of words, but concept instead, it asked me what I wanted it to be and I told it, guided by the light inside me, to become what I needed, to learn as it joined me on my adventures and to grow along side me, but into its own being. Infusing it with the light gave it more possibilities and those were already staggering. I could feel it reading different frequencies, parsing through code and creating its own library of knowledge. It, it was an it until it named itself, would never forget and only grow more competent with each day spent in this reality.

I contemplated if I had just gained a child for a moment, but decided it was merely a pet and that I was only responsible for its basic needs, the each his own was my motto. But it would undoubtedly proof useful in tonight's endeavor. When I masked up as Desu the choker changed in a very soft and very airy pink thing, almost like lace but million times more robust. A quick look in the mirror showed that it fit very well with the rest of my outfit. Amanda, keeping all the other snakes ready inside her, placed herself on my left shoulder and after a last check that no one would find anything treacherous inside the room, realizing I had almost forgotten the radiophone and giving it to Amanda to store, I teleported away. To be honest I should have probably waited for the night, but I wasn't going to leave those girls there for so many more hours, if I could help it.

Halfway through the city I remembered that I should have brought a camera, which prompted Amanda to remind me of the phones she still stored from the boardwalk incident. My AI choker was nice enough to research ways to gather conclusive and admissible evidence. If you illegally filmed something it wasn't admissible apparently, but if you, someone unrelated to the crime, happened to find something during a different incident, it could be used in court, which meant that if I wanted to ensure that the evidence would be admissible, the evidence would have to magically appear at another police raid and appear to be left there by accident. Choosing the most girly looking phone in Amanda's collection I ordered my choker to hack into the phone and delete all unnecessary data, including all information about the previous owner, while I removed the GPS- and mobile-chips to avoid being tracked. The momentary delay lead me to standing on the roof of an elongated, multi-story building. A school evidenced by the crowds of teenagers enjoying their lunch outside, and dealing and taking drugs, apparently this was one of the schools the captain wanted me to look into. If this was normal, and it gave every appearance of being an everyday occurrence, I could understand why I was told to look into it.

I didn't have any surveillance devices with me, but I placed a teleportation marker to return at a later date. Then I went to reorient myself and noticed I had drifted far of course, almost completely the wrong way to reach the outskirts closest to the apartment building I had started at. I didn't know why, but something, maybe the light, had guided me to this place. I didn't like being guided without knowing and so I refused to stay any longer and deliberately went back in the same direction I had come. Screw you, invisible guiding hand, I don't need a god like you to use me for your own ends.

On my second trip I passed through a nice neighborhood, when I noticed men in what looked like PRT uniforms surrounding what looked like a single family home. This time I could actually feel the light guiding me to notice this. I hated it, no one was allowed to decide for me, but when I saw the men break down the door, shooting inside and then dragging a crying and screaming girl outside, I saw red. Pictures of my own face in the mirror, white like a ghost, my sister face after her trigger, bloody and so so empty, her screams, my own screams, the crunch of my limbs being crushed, their infernal laughter, the lack of sensation below my knees. Everything bad I had survived in the last weeks struck me like a titan and like a beast woken from its slumber I charged. Screaming in rage in remembered pain I crushed the first agent below my soles, creaking of breaking ribs delighting my ears. I blinked atop the next man and crushed his face under my boots. By this point the other agents had noticed and three opened fire while the last carried away the struggling girl.

I didn't let him, I blinked into the air, avoiding the arms fire and dropped Amanda atop the firing squad, she reached a length of 20 meters and a width of at least 4 meters before hitting all of them from above, they wouldn't die, the light that had flown into Amanda's enchantments prevented her from doing any lasting harm, but they were now cut of from me and the last man. The only reason my boots could was because the material for them hadn't been directly infused with light, only the enchantments inside the boots where saturated with light. But even so I couldn't blink again, the light rejected my action which slowed down the recovery of the aura inside my boots. I had to get the last agent the old fashioned way. Luckily for me I had just the right thing, ordering Amanda to disgorge the guardian snakes I took one of them and threw it at the last agent. I missed, but the little girl over the mans shoulder managed a last bout of resistance by slithering her body in a way that cost her abductor his balance. A single stumbling step was enough for my guardian snake to catch up and it wrapped itself around the mans leg. Blocking the blood flow by spangling the leg and causing the bones to creak from the stress.

Even professionals can't endure that kind of pressure and while Amanda used her big body, damage immunity and the other nine guardian snakes to fight the 3 agents, I caught up with the abductor, who was trying to shoot the snake on his leg without causing any damage to himself, while containing the girl with one hand. My guardian snakes weren't damaged that easily and before the abomination of a human male could do any more damage I was on him, kicking him straight in the head. Immediate unconsciousness only happened in movies, but he was dazed by the kick so I managed to extract the girl and ordered the guardian snake to choke him into unconsciousness. Leaving the choking man behind I put sat down the girl behind a parked car and tried to calm her down, but she choked out:

"86.234 percent chance that you can help my parents, please, please my parents!"

I didn't know what it was with those percentages, but reading the pleading in her eyes I couldn't refuse. I had made the regeneration staffs on my bracelets for myself, but they weren't limited in that way. Ordering Amanda to release more snakes to guard the entrances I put the girl in fireman's carry and blinked inside the still open door. Inside everything was chaos, bullet holes littered the walls and bloody footprints caked the floor. The girl whispered something about percent and went limb in my arms. Checking that here breathing was stable, I lay her down on the least damaged piece of furniture, a kitchen table with multiple bullet scars and went to look for the sources of the blood. I found two adults near the stairs, there was so much blood, I didn't, I couldn't look. Simply removing and placing one of my healing staffs from my bracelets on the bodies tripled my nausea and I threw up, all over the entryway from the kitchen to the stairs. There was an immediate feeling of light, love and healing behind me. The mere presence of it soothed all my aches and purged the blood from my mind. I knew the dead was done and my staffs had been destroyed in the process. They couldn't channel this much light, their aura was meant for gradual healing over time, not pure bursts. I would need to create new ones.

Staggering out of the house I ordered Amanda, who had collected and subdued all kidnappers with guardian snakes, to watch for more intruders and teleported back to my apartment.

There I tore of my clothes, they would clean themselves in time, threw them into the wardrobe and proceeded to shower and clean myself with such force that I must have lost at least 3 layers of skin before I could finally stop. Then I broke down crying. Only when the hot water of the shower run out did I manage to compose myself and leave the shower. My face looked like a mess, red eyes with purple shadows and a burning red nose. But still my reflection looked beautiful, complete and only then, in front of the floor length mirror showing all my limbs healthy and whole did I come to terms with what I had done. I had saved two lives and protected a child from my own fate, I had been a hero. A small voice in my mind tried to tell me this was bad, that I had disrupted all my plans, but I didn't care, if one child could keep her family intact for just a little longer this sacrifice was worth it.

And there were still more for me to save that day, I hadn't even begun searching for my original objective. But first I created 10 new staffs of regeneration, five for each bracelet, if there had just been a single person more who needed my help, I would have had to watch someone die. I didn't create more than 10 because I couldn't justify spending more time on eventualities when children needed my help, so I clipped my new staffs onto their respective bracelets and ripped a teleport scroll to return to neighborhood where I had left Amanda. The place was swarming with police and PRT, I immediately hid myself, but I had already been noticed. Blinking 3 housed to the right, where I could feel Amanda, I picked up what looked like a tiny little blindworm and continued to blink away from the scene. I felt space twisting behind me, the aura changing in ways I was intimately familiar with from creating Amanda, but instead of waiting for and potentially being delayed further I used another teleport scroll. Appearing back at the roof of the hospital I choose to first replenish my teleport charms from Amanda's stores.

Then I made my way into the direction of the nearest city limit on the horizon. I had a job to do. Everything else, my sister, feelings, even berating myself over disrupting and probably permanently destroying my own plans could wait until I was done. For today, I Desu am a Hero and Heroes never sleep.