Chapter 20

Marie and I were back on the road when we had to stop at a gas station. Apparently her car didn't run on magic. When I asked her why, she just looked at me weird before she sighed and explained how that would exhaust her every time she'd use her car for long trips. Which, because of her job as a Strike operator, she did a lot.

I considered offering myself as a battery just so we didn't have to stop every now and again before thinking otherwise. I had recently taken a lot of hits to my pride and I wasn't about to debase myself so much.

Marie got back into the car, started it, and began driving. The car was a camaro which looked amazing from the outside, but I felt like the inside was cramped. My head was almost touching the ceiling and I refused to make myself smaller.

"Where are we going? And why are we leaving?" It was apparent we were not staying in Montana; I wanted to know why we were leaving so soon though. Montana was bound to still have anomalies around.

"Because I haven't received a new mission. We are going to roam the countryside and look for something."

"That sounds extremely ineffective." I was not sure how rare anomalies were, but just traveling like gypsies, hoping to run into something, was not something that sounded worthwhile.

She pointed her finger at me. "Aren't you supposed to be a god? Do your thing and sense out for something."

I frowned at her. "I am here to help you people. I'm not here to do your job."

She raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you unable to do it then? Is that it?"

I scoffed at her. "I can do it, I just don't want to become a glorified radar for you. Don't you have some kind of mission board? Or maybe there is a team that needs help with something?"

She waved her hand back and forward. "No, there isn't some 'mission board' and there isn't a team we are going to help."

Now I raised an eyebrow at her. "But there are some that need help?"

She tensed and then seemed to try really hard to relax, which… didn't really do that much. "We are not going on rescuing missions."

Ohhh, a sore spot? Time for a little payback then. "Are you bad at them then, is that it? You prefer your lone wolf shtick?"

She glared at the road in front of us. "Fuck off Red."

And the conversation died, great.

I waited for a moment before I began talking about another important topic we had to discuss.

"I am not sure we should go around killing sentient anomalies."

She was silent for a long moment before she talked.

"And why is that?"

"Well, you are clearly not emotionally stable." She scoffed. "And I don't want to kill."

"You said you no longer had morals, what is your problem with killing?"

I thought about it and the conversation I had with THE SPECTER. "I wish to stay true to some self imposed rules. I no longer have a moral compass, true. But that doesn't mean I can't simulate one."

She hummed and motioned me to continue, so I did.

"Morals are rules guided by feeling right? I just need to have the rules guided by my will alone then."

"Your imaginary morals sound incredibly fragile and unreliable. You think you can keep them with just will alone?"

She was underestimating my capacity to self-dominate. Which now that I thought about made sense. Unless the Foundation had told anything to the GOC about me, the amount of information they'd have of me would be rather limited. "Yes, I am in control of myself. There is no reason behind why I shouldn't be able to just make rules."

"Well I think it won't work. Morals, most of the time, and especially with this kind of work, have to be flexible. You just making rules and abiding by them just because 'you are in control' doesn't really sound like a sensible idea."

She kinda had a point with the flexibility part but…

"Do you have an issue with me Marie?" I was seriously getting tired of her goddamn attitude. "What's your problem?"

Her hands tighten on the steering wheel. "My problem is that I, an agent who specifically asked to not be placed in more teams or I'd retire, got forced into working with someone. Worst of all, I got paired with an emotionally stunted god."

"Hey! I'm not emotionally stunted. I have feelings and emotions." Was my fine control of my muscles affecting how many facial expressions I made? Being conscious about your body all the time was sometimes weird. Wait, do I have a body or an avatar?

"Well, you fucken appear to be! Your reactions are apathetic! Your empathy is non-existent! Why are you even trying to be so human-like!?"

"Do you think I wanted any of this to happen? Huh!? I was a human goddamn it! I don't want to become something past me would be ashamed of. And why am I trying to mimic humans? What the fuck else am I suppose to mimic? Should I just become an emotionless, apathetic, blob!?"

She slammed on the breaks and almost made the guy who was behind us crash into us.

"Fuck off." She got out of the car, walked down and to the side of the road, and lit a cigarette as she glared at nowhere.

I just sighed and leaned back into my seat. How had the conversation derailed so much?

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Marie only got into the car after she had smoked two cigarettes. I tried manipulating the ashes around her to stay outside of the car so it wouldn't stink it, but Marie noticed the change in the air around her and glared at me, so I stopped.

I glanced at her from my peripheral visoin and decided I would break one of my rules. She was right about them having to be flexible. I hated that I was about to do one of the things I swore I wasn't going to do, but the situation demanded I do something.

Firstly, I made her ignore me by making myself so unimportant to her she wouldn't notice what I was about to do. I wasn't sure if I really had to do this, but she was part of the GOC, maybe she would be able to sense I was doing something.

Then I reached out for her soul, and did something I had never tried before, I tried to read it in depth.

Marie's soul was dark and gloomy, it almost felt like a light bulb about to flicker off. I began trying to figure out how to go read her more thoroughly when I thought of that one Shrek scene where Shrek tries to explain to Donkey how ogres are like onions… maybe souls were also like onions? Y'know, maybe they had layers and I could try to read a deeper one than just her outer shell.

I tried to do just what I decided may be a possible route to find out how Marie ticked, and suddenly Marie cried out in shock as her hand spasmed a little as one of the many tattoos she had appeared to have shocked her with some electricity.

She looked left and right, right at me and then stopped the car once more. She carefully got out of the car, and walked to the back of her car where she opened her trunk before taking out some knives and a biker looking helmet. I quickly followed her and walked a bit away from the car and road. What I tried had obviously been a mistake. I should have been more careful.

Oh well, shit happens.

I made myself not so boring and unimportant to her senses, and waited for her reaction.

Marie immediately jumped a little, and threw one of her knives at me. The knife, which looked really cool, accelerated in the air more and more before I reached out and caught it.

"What the fuck were you doing!?" Marie looked pissed at me.

I felt the need to apologize, but I knew Marie wasn't going to be happy with an insincere apology.

"I tried to see your memories."

She hissed at me and one of her knives began to faintly glow.

"And pray tell me what you think that would achieve?" She put on her helmet without taking her eyes off me, and I felt how her soul and mind were somehow obscured to my senses.

I sighed a little. "To understand better your points of view and get some more in depth knowledge about the GOC."

She grabbed another knife. "And here I thought you promised to not be a threat. I feel like giving you a pass on this won't be good for my continual survival. First you defend a threat, and now you're trying to invade my mind." She shook briefly in anger. Her soul was a flutter with negative emotions.

"It seems you can't be trusted Red." I tensed a bit before I decided I wasn't going to bother with this nonsense for the moment. She could try and kill me at another time.

I needed to think of a way to temporarily incapacitate her without actually damaging her and her gear. If Clef's reaction to me destroying only one of his uniforms was so severe, I didn't want to think how Marie would react to me destroying all of her knives.

Maybe I should try something fun for once? I had been pretty to the point whenever I had to fight anyone. I also mostly used spatial control to defeat mostly everyone. I had to try one of the few things I had tried during my containment time.

With that decided I started to grow some scales all around my body. I had thought about what kind of first inhuman transformation I would try out and briefly considered growing some wings. The idea came from that one superhero anime where this Hawks dude had these cool red wings, then I remembered the nickname I had almost been given and trashed the idea in a heartbeat.

Still, I wanted some wings because y'know, wings. So I went for the next best thing that came to mind.

My body began increasing in size, ignoring many laws that dealt with matter, and my back sprouted four bright red wings. The scales started turning the color of my hair and two black horns began to form out of my head.

Then Marie started laughing and I realized I now looked like a weird AI generated lizard human.

This was humiliating, absolutely embarrassing. I considered killing Marie and realized that was too extreme. Then I thought about deleting her memories of what happened, but if she had another array connected to her memories' consistency it could backfire on me again.

She was still trying to remain in a ready position but I didn't feel like fighting her anymore.

I ignored her flimsy attempt to stab me, got into the back seats of her car, and lied down as I began to return my appearance to my normal one.

… fuck me.

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AN

Ps. Marie's 'flimsy' attempt to stab him was not actually flimsy, Gabe is just breathing in too much copium at the moment.

This day was tiring, so enjoy small chapter.

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.