NOVEL NEXT 2.19 Let us Discuss the Discus
"And I've learned just about all I can from staring at the ceiling," Phanya said, finally flicking the annoying spring away. "I imagined so many stupid 'battle plans' for weak points that I'm either starting to see things now, or my eyes are getting a little too adjusted to the dark. Hey, Sal!"
A light thud reverberated through the car as Salazar slammed an external panel shut. "What now, damnit!?"
Phanya smirked, she couldn't help it. But she didn't want to push the merc over the edge, and made sure to wipe the smirk from her face before she stepped out of the car. "We're almost set up here, how's the weapon situation looking?"
"Not great. Laser and sonic weapons are shot — as in, they're busted — and I'm not exactly the sort of tarhound to carry explosive ordinance. Except for this." Salazar appeared in view, holding up a metal disc slightly wider than his splayed hand. "Explosive mine! Oh relax, it's remote-detonated and built rugged to bounce on the road, so it's inert right now. Now if one of you has secret black market enhancement bullshit that lets you walk on walls, we should be set!"
Salazar bared his sharp teeth in a false smile, and Phanya's glare grew flinty until he dropped it. "Don't give me that look, woman. Between the swarm storm and your clown shoes, every single weapon that I ever spent the time and money to install has been smashed and stomped. And we only have this much because I stored the mines underneath Isabel instead of on top, so you figure out how to use 'em. What about that pet you have?"
Tapper retrieved the mine and weighed it in his hand. "I am not sure that Kakisi is capable of scaling sheer surfaces, let alone while carrying nearly his own weight in explosives." Everyone looked at Kakisi, acting as if they expected him to answer. The little familiar plopped onto the outer wall of the jitney, struggled to climb halfway up the surface, and plonked down on top of his shell.
"O...kay, then," Salazar admitted.
Ricky stuck his head out of the window and offered, "Throw it like a frisbee?" He chuckled at his own joke.
Phanya almost snapped something back, but Tapper spoke first. "Actually, Ricky's sarcasm has almost made a point." He still held the mine while everyone else bickered and busied himself with examining the weapon, balancing it like a serving tray on his fingertips. The mine was approximately 20 centimeters across, thicker in the middle that tapered off to a rounded edge, and weighed a little over 1.7 kilograms. Tapper took the time to calculate a precise measurement, because something about the mine's dimensions registered a match deep within his data library.
"Aha! Yes, not quite a frisbee, but by the grace of serendipity this mine nearly shares the physical characteristics of a discus. Minus the explosives, of course." Tapper looked at the three blank stares and launched into an explanation, "Discus throwing is an ancient sport from prehistoric times, though today it mostly only exists as an event in the Retro Olympics. The world record for non-augmented humanoids is 78.4 meters, and cybernetics can nearly double that length."
"Wait, hold up," Salazar cut in. "Why would you just so happen to know something so random? He's full of it."
"Sir, I am a high-end bartending robot, and my model comes pre-programmed with a million-and-one bar trivia factoids. I am, as you say, chock full of 'em," Tapper advertised, with a happy eyebrow wiggle. "But the point is: I do believe that Phanya actually can throw this mine up to the ceiling."
Salazar gave Phanya's lithe physique a long and disapproving look before he frowned and shook his head. "You know what? I don't even want to ask why the twig is going to throw it and not the kid in freaking power armor. You lot can do whatever you want, just let me know when you want me to blow it up." He stomped off, and Tapper handed the mine to Phanya.
She held it at arm's length at first, but after the fear of it exploding passed Phanya bounced and spun the mine in her hand a few times. She hated to admit it, but it really did feel perfectly balanced for throwing. "Well, I guess I better get some practice in."
"That's the spirit, Phanya! We're all learning to trust our instincts today!"
Phanya found a vaguely discus-shaped piece of compacted trash to practice with while everyone else started packing up their meager supplies. Ricky brought any empty bottles they had over for Tapper to fill with the remaining soup, but he stopped midstep when he neared the pillbug shell. It still simmered on the fire, and over time the chitin had reacted to the heat with the lip expanding outward while the middle contracted around the pooled liquid. Now it was a wide, shallow circle that looked more like a giant saucer instead of a round pot. But Ricky didn't expect for his mind to suddenly highlight the shell with a green wireframe mesh and flood his mind with knowledge.
Bug Iron: Not to be confused with pig iron. Gently cooking the exoskeletons of giant bugs over several hours, without letting them dry out, hardens the chitin into something comparable to metal. Just as strong as cold iron, with half the weight and zero magic interference!
"Ooo. Tapper, do you see this thing?"
Tapper scooped the last of the stew out as he mused, "Yes, it is quite strange how this shell opened too wide and shallow to serve as an effective cooking pot. Maybe it can be fashioned into a wide-brimmed hat?"
"I — what? No. Tapper, I just identified this as bug iron, and my Blacksmithing skill says I can work it just like metal. We transformed the material on accident, and the system recognizes that!"
"Fascinating! I wonder if I unknowingly fed some mana to spur the process, or if anyone could achieve similar results."
Ricky looked around at the piles and piles of dead bugs surrounding their encampment. "More importantly, this whole time I could've been turning all these bug husks into workable metal! Dangit! Wonder I can still iron-ize some locust legs and —"
"Alright boys, I think I'm ready!"
"Dangit!"
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Tapper patted Ricky on the shoulder again. "Do not despair, my friend. You have already gone above and beyond in your efforts! Have faith, maybe we will be beset by a horde of giant bugs once again. All in due time."
Ricky tried to pout, but a small chuckle still escaped the sulk. "Yeah, maybe. Still feeling antsy, though. I'm going to, I dunno, see if I can reassemble my Chain gizmo real quick. Don't have enough mana for the full transmorgifier, but I can do a gizmo at least."
To Salazar's great surprise, the jitney started right up without a fuss. The fussing instead came when Phanya told everyone to wait with the car just inside the opening of the subway monster tunnel. "Guys, chill. If I screw this up and collapse the whole ceiling, then you need to already be out of the way. Remember how I can run so fast that it's a whole feat? Exactly. Salazar, are you sure you'll be able to time it?"
"Don't worry about me," Salazar said as he adjusted his goggles. The telescoping lens swiveled in unpredictable patterns, making any observer feel as if Salazar were constantly giving them an off-putting side-eye. "I've got 32x zoom and independent tracking on these bad boys, you just worry about hucking that thing."
Phanya raised a thumbs-up over her shoulder as she walked to a designated spot in the cavern. Everything else fell away as Phanya focused on stretching her body, feeling every joint pop and loosen with a meditative flow. A gentle chime roused Phanya from her zen, indicating that her Aerobic Set had activated and made Phanya even more flexible. She double-checked that the mine was held snugly against her forearm, and Phanya took one last steadying breath. She was centered, she had a battle plan, she was ready.
In a burst of movement Phanya ran forward, just for a bit of extra momentum, before she started to spin on her feet with every step. One, two, three times she spun like a top, with every rotation leaning her more to the side. At the last moment her knees, hips, waist, and shoulders all twisted at the same time as both arms shot outwards, and with a roar of effort Phanya threw with all her might. She reorientated herself and stood, panting but otherwise frozen in anticipation as she watched the mine sail through the air. The spinning explosive hit the wall of the cavern at a shallow angle, nowhere near the ceiling but all according to plan.
In all her searching Phanya had noticed a stretch of relatively flat compacted garbage, and now the mine's angular velocity carried it around and up the wall of the cavern towards a particularly large and fragile stalactite. It was going to work. She couldn't believe it, it was going to work! Then a shock of realization wiped away Phanya's triumphant smile.
Oh skrat, it's going to work.
Phanya was too busy sprinting to look back when Salazar detonated the explosive, but she certainly heard it. What she did see was Tapper and Ricky standing in front of the jitney and waving at her in celebration, until a dull cracking sound thundered within the cavern. Their movements became urgent and panicked, begging Phanya to run faster, and the dust clouds nipping at her heels agreed. All logical thought ceased against the need to keep her legs pumping, so when her instincts screamed that she needed to jump now Phanya obeyed without a second thought. A massive hunk of tarmac tumbled right where she had been running a split second before, and before she could panic Phanya landed on and launched off that hunk like a springboard.
For a breathless moment, Phanya flew. Between the adrenaline, raised platform, and her feats, Phanya jumped further than ever before in her life. Too far, even. She was going to slam into the cavern wall, and there was nothing she could do to slow down. Phanya couldn't even enjoy the sensation of total weightlessness, she could only watch as Ricky and Tapper scrambled to push and pull at each other. What were they doing? The two stood defiantly at the mouth of the cave, shoulder to shoulder directly under Phanya's path, and together they hefted Ricky's gizmo thing.
She felt, rather than saw, something tug at her ankle, and Phanya curled into a ball with her forearms covering her head. Whatever happened next, she really didn't want another concussion. With her eyes shut and nothing else to occupy her panicking thoughts, the avalanche of asphalt thundering in her ears filled Phanya's entire world. Then she hit the wall, elbows and knees first, and in a moment of agonizing clarity Phanya felt the impact start from her padded joints and ripple around every bone in her body.
[Status effect gained: Stunned]
Phanya couldn't think straight, but she probably wasn't dead if she could still read system messages. As a bonus, the debuff numbed the pain to a dull throbbing that made everything all fuzzy. Her thoughts, her body, the very air was fuzzy. It even felt like the wall was giving her a fuzzy hug.
"Phanya! Ricky! Are you alright?" a voice shouted, their heavy concern a shrill alarm bell in Phanya's mind.
"Nnnguuh," the wall said.
Once the debuff vanished, Phanya reevaluated why a wall would speak or hug her with a powered hauler suit. "Hey, Ricky?" she croaked.
"Mmm?"
"Remember how you said that we need to test the limits of our enhancements?"
"Mmm."
"You were right, we should do that."
Mismatched lights appeared in the fuzzy darkness, cyan blue and orangered, and metal hands pried open Ricky's bear hug. Phanya slowly stood and tried to thank Tapper, but thick dust blanketing the air threw her into a coughing fit.
"Yes of course, the air quality here is horrid. Suck!" The two humans groaned as the air around them suddenly turned into a miniature maelstrom, but they couldn't complain about its effectiveness. The air cleared enough for Phanya to see Ricky leaning at a slight angle against the side of their car, complete with a new dent in its paneling.
Phanya breathed a deep sigh of relief. "Thanks for the save, guys. Seriously. But, uh, how?"
"Through the power of teamwork!" Tapper said. Now that he verified his friends had not sustained serious harm, his enthusiasm came rushing back. "Ricky activated his Chain gizmo, I cast Spray on it to forcibly launch the chain and attach it to your ankle, and we altered your trajectory before you could collide with the wall!"
"Combo casting, nice. Didn't know that was a thing."
"Serendipity!" Phanya weighed whether she should tell Tapper that the 'word of the day' routine was growing on her nerves, until she noticed his body language droop. "Unfortunately, there are compatibility issues. Using my magic through Ricky's gizmo fizzled the Spray component, so I cannot access it without waiting four hours of sleep cycle first."
"Are you all ready to get going yet?" Salazar asked, leaning out of the driver's side window. He had the foresight to don his gas mask ahead of time, so in the darkness it looked like a techno-plague doctor studying them from above.
"Just catching our breath. And we're fine, thanks Sal," Phanya said up to him.
Salazar's green goggles bobbed slightly as he shrugged. "Hey, I didn't hear anyone wailing something like 'Oh no, she's dead!' so I figured everyone made it out fine."
"Anyways, what are we going to do about that?" Ricky asked. The others followed his gaze, taking in the cavern for the first time. Most of the ceiling and part of the far wall collapsed in the explosion, spilling debris over the floor in a jagged mound. The gaping hole above showed the open sky without letting any light into the cavern, probably as another strange dynamic of the Glass Eye, and instead the shock of deep blue taunted their escape as something just out of reach. "I don't think the jitney can drive up something like that. And it will take just forever to pound a smoother path into the rubble."
Tapper marched over and opened the passenger door, sweeping an arm for the others to enter. "Not to worry, friends! During our camping break I have been formulating an alternate means of egress! I just require some minor assistance."