NOVEL NEXT Chapter Three Hundred Sixty One
The next three days passed relatively quickly. While fighting on the first day of each bracket was a pain because I had to be one of the first in the round, and there were many more powerful opponents for me to draw, it was also a benefit because I got the full four days off for each round.
For the eleventh round it would be another four days, though there would only be one fight per day instead of two, though there would only be two days off before round twelve. Over the last few days I'd gotten another fifteen G-ranked chits from Benny in exchange for twenty Might and forty Focus, meaning my friend had broken the three hundred mark for Focus and the seven hundred mark for total points.
I still needed to upgrade Earthseeking and Sucking Mud, and was having trouble coming up with a good combination for either of them. While I could just upgrade them normally without synergizing, now that I'd realized how to make this Skill stronger I was loathe to leave power on the table. I couldn't be sure, but I had a decent guess that this process was similar to how my Wish ability had been created. Maybe not exactly the same, but I was betting the resulting power when I got DS Mastery to the peak would be absolutely amazing.
Despite not having any real ideas for my last two skill upgrades, I was relatively happy with the results so far. Which meant I was in a pretty good mood that was completely ruined when I left the training room to find an agitatedly pacing Benny. When he saw me, he let out a sigh of relief and rushed forward to shove his hand in my face.
"I don't know if anyone told you." I said dryly. "But that 'talk to the hand' thing went out of style years ago. I hear these kinds of trends are cyclical though, so maybe you can bring it back if you try hard enough." I smirked at him, but the expression melted into concern when I saw his face remain twisted in worry. "What's wrong?"
He seemed to realize that he wasn't being clear, and spun up his scan ring, shifting it from the normal dormant mode to the screen. As he did that, I realized that the ring had been what he was showing me. Texts circled the band when it was dormant. Once he had the display up though, I was able to more easily read the message from Celine. 'Things are going wrong, get somewhere safe. I love you.'
"Well that's...ominous." I said as my stomach began to tighten with sympathetic anxiety. "Did you call her back?" I knew he had, but I had to make sure. He wasn't in a good place right now, so overlooking options wasn't beyond the realm of possibility.
He ran a hair through his messy brown hair. "Yes. Obviously. Nothing. I tried six times and got no answer." He started pacing again. "What the hell, man? What's going on? Celine isn't in the tournament herself. Did one of the other factions jump her? Is this a trap? Do I care?"
It said a lot about how far Benny had come that the idea of this being a trap occurred to him. But it didn't feel right to me. Celine had been trying to make amends, even put herself in a bad situation with her family to do it. A trap just felt out of place, which just left some kind of attack...which wasn't much better.
"Come on." I said to my friend, grabbing his shoulders to stop him in place. "We need to go talk to Callie and the others. We'll figure out what to do as a team, ok?"
His eyes were shimmering with fear as he looked back at me, and it tore me up to see the panic and agony in his expression. "What if..." His voice broke. "What if she's dead? What if the last thing I ever said to her was that it was her fault I couldn't trust anyone? What if she's lying somewhere in a ditch with no head like those sleepers Aiden killed down in G-district." He was shaking, and voicing that possibility seemed to be too much for him, he blurred down the hall, smashing open the door to the bathroom.
I could hear him puking from where I stood, and honestly I didn't blame him. That had been gruesome, and I tried not to think about it, but the idea that one of those bodies could be someone I knew. Just imagining Callie's head exploding like that made me want to vomit myself.
Following him into the bathroom, I ran the sink and then passed him a cup of water to rinse out his mouth. he swished and spat, then downed the rest of it, eyes still vacant and breathing shallow. That...that wasn't just fear. That was a panic attack. Which made sense in this situation, but told me that some of what we'd been through affected Benny more than he liked to let on.
I clapped him on the shoulder. "Hey." I said, getting his attention. "She'll be fine. I can feel it. She texted you. That's not something people can do easily from captivity. She's probably on the run. Let's go check with the others and make a plan and we can find her and help her. Don't forget we have Rime around, she goes where we go. Whoever is after her, if anyone still is, will be in for a rude awakening."
He swallowed hard, but seemed to cling to my words. "On the run. Right. We can help." He grabbed a bottle of mouth wash and swished a few times, so no one would be able to tell he'd just puked his guts out, and I stepped out of the bathroom while he washed his face with cold water and tried to breathe for a bit.
After he was stable, we headed to the living room to loop in Callie, Abel, Mel, and Rime. Cass and Cark were out at the park...thankfully. I didn't want to explain to the little girl what was going on. After Callie heard everything that we knew, she grimaced. "That...that's bad." She bit her lip, gnawing at it in a way I only saw her do when she was really nervous. "This could be a trap. And even if it isn't...I'm not sure I can risk us for Celine after what she did."
Benny looked ready to attack her. "What she did? You mean when she leaked our next opponent to us so you could prepare for your match? Or when she helped us learn about information gathering at the academy, compromising her own advantage so we could get access to information." Callie looked at him sadly, and he closed his eyes, taking a long, slow breath. "Look. I'm sorry. I get it. This is risky. I can't ask you to put yourself in danger."
He turned to walk away and Callie stood up, grabbing his arm. "Oh stop being a drama queen." She huffed. "I'm not letting you run off to do this by yourself. And you aren't wrong. Celine helped us plenty of times. We might have died during Aiden's siege if it wasn't for her. If it means that much to you...we can help."
My friend's relieved smile was cut off as she shoved a finger in his face, continuing. "But." She said sharply. "If we're doing this, you need to listen to my orders. You're way too emotional right now. We can help her, but the person doing it needs to be making smart calls. You have to follow the chain of command here. If you don't, then I'm going to have Abel knock you out and lock you in a room, no matter how much you hate me for it. I'm not letting you get yourself or any of the rest of us killed."
Benny looked uncertain, but finally, he sighed and nodded. "Ok." He said dully. "I can agree to that. But you need to help me. Help her. Do SOMETHING. Because if that was one long way of telling me to sit tight and wait it out or something you can fuck right off."
She smiled wryly, she turned to Rime. "I need you to get in touch with Frostbite. Find out what's going on. No way there was an attack at the academy or even in the city proper involving an active diplomatic attache and she doesn't know about it. We need to know what's happening and where before we can decide our next move."
The blue haired F-ranker nodded. "Seems like a good start. I'll need somewhere private to reach out? You have any quiet rooms I can use? My scan ring is untraceable but she isn't a fan of being overheard."
Jessie stood up. "I know a place. This eyesore is bigger than you can imagine, and I wander around here sometimes. I still don't know why we can't paint the place, but either way, there's a room I have in mind." She waves the ice user after her, stopping before she leaves to grab Benny in a bonecrushing hug. As my friend grunted in discomfort, she buried her face in his shoulder. "She's gonna be ok, Ben. Just have faith."
He smiled tensely down at her, resting a hand on her head, and then she let him go and headed off with Rime. Callie, still in the zone, turned to Abel and Mel. "I need you two to reach out to the Magnificent Fable Forest. They're the only real connection we have to Celine's faction, and are the best bet for getting information from anyone we actually know."
They two of them nodded, and I wasn't sure how they would manage it, because we didn't get a number from them, but they didn't seem worried. They just headed out of the room, presumably to start getting in touch with some of their own contacts to try to find a lead. Callie turned to Benny. "Did you call Sarah or Martin?"
My friend looked stunned for a second, but then shook his head. Callie nodded understandingly. "Alright, well that'll be your next move. Reach out to her team, see if they know anything. Once we've heard back from all our sources we'll head for the Academy."
"What?" Benny snapped. "Why the hell wouldn't we leave now? She could be in danger, or hurt, or even dying!"
"Which." My girlfriend said calmly. "Is why we wait. The Academy is a protected and secure place. While it's possible she might be there, the chances of her being under threat while she's that defended are low. Which means if we head there, we might be moving further away from where she actually is, and not find out until we're already there. So yes, we sit tight, and once we know more we decide what to do."
Benny deflated, but he seemed to accept her explanation, slumping down on the couch like the bones had gone out of him, and staring worriedly off into the distance, completely oblivious to anything else but the storm of pain and fear I was sure was in his chest.
It was funny. If it had been any other situation I might have pointed out that they were fighting, that he was angry at her, or a dozen other things. But now...it didn't matter. Because seeing him like that the best answer to any question I could ask about how he felt, or any question he could ask either. He would forgive her, I knew he would. I just hoped to the gods that his forgiveness would still be possible. Because if it wasn't, I was pretty sure he wouldn't be extending that same mercy to himself.