Wasteland Survivor – Reaching out - ch18
#19 of Wasteland Survivor
Don't ask why, it jus flowed out, might have had something to do with Fox deleting my porn collection, I have too much free time on my hands now :D
I adjusted the mic, "Is this thing on?" I asked, and heard some chuckles.
"Get on with it Fox." Crystal said, sighing.
"Ok ok." I turned back to the crowd, mixed military and civilians, the largest single habitation in Australia now, all of them originally human, well, except for Drath, "As you may have heard from the rumour mill, we are running short on fuel for our trucks and cars, we have plenty for the aircraft so far, but it won't be much longer before what we have will become contaminated and unusable. Also, despite the great work of the scavenge teams, we can see the end of our ammunition supply, its not all that far away, but will hold for the moment. What we have gathered you all here for is to get all this information strait and let you know that we are working hard to make up for the impending loss of modern technology with either our new powers or with older, more sustainable methods." I Explained despite my hate for public speaking, damn Crystal for drawing the longest straw.
"To prove to you all that we have this under control, I am happy to announce that between Private Burks here and some of our civilian engineers, we have built a steam powered power plant, its running the lights and sound equipment here tonight, and will be switched over to the main grid tomorrow, leaving more diesel for running the trucks just a bit longer."
"Thanks to the work of Kevin here and many, many of you, we now have over seventy five percent of us showing useful psi-abilities, the down side of which being there are very few human faces left. Despite this, we are living as humans should, we care for each other, we fight for each other and still have enough free time to make and consume alcohol." I nodded to the members of the motor pool, who had constructed five stills so far, two of which haven't even exploded yet. Some laughs were had at my joke, but most people were still listening intently.
"We do have some information about the latest developments. We are no longer alone as far as intelligent species go, as far as we can tell, if you read a legend about a monster or a non-human race, it now exists. We have been in talks with elves, dwarfs, shit we even had a delegation of gnolls, that's dog people by the way. They saw the results of our fight back west. They have heard of what we did to the invaders here in the city. They want to pay us to protect them from monsters. Now one of the things I have noticed, every thing we are here, from fox people, to werewolves, to spider-men, they are all races out there in the world now. We have all become one of the things living out there. And I can tell you, there are no 'new humans' in this world."
Crystal saw where I was falling, and stepped in to take the mic, "What Fox is trying to say, badly," she punctuated her comment by punching me in the arm softly, "is that in order for us to survive we need to form relations with these new races. They can farm and supply us with a steady food income, they can hunt and fill our larders with meat, all they want from us, is a little bit of fight. I know all you rifle-jockeys will be on board to do a little shooting for your supper, but we need more than that, we need support staff, we need logistics, we need to rebuild this rag-tag group we have here into a clan, and when we do that, we will be in control of our destinies again."
With her words, the crowd cheered, hell I cheered. How the fuck she gets that response with just words, I don't know, guess its all in the delivery. Or its because she has a bigger rack than me.
Later, as the bottles of roughly made whiskey were all but gone, I turned to Crystal and slurred, "Shit babe, what's next, the world?"
Her reply after a soft chuckle, "Your drunk Fox, find a cold bed and turn in, your not coming anywhere near me with breath like that."
-
I saw Fox stagger away from her mate, cursing slowly about the world moving around too much.
~"She asked a valid question though."~ I asked the wolf.
"The answer, Drath, will depend on what my people want, if their hearts are in it, I will take them as far as they want to go."
~"A good answer, my leader, good answer indeed."~
After finding a nice place near the fire to curl up, our packs alpha returned to me, "Drath, Fox has thrown up in our bed. Can I sleep out here with you?" I couldn't help chuckling at the thought of my little sister doing the sort of thing only the young can get away with.
~"Of course, Crystal, my pack leader and my sisters mate is always welcome company"~
As she curled up against my chest, I found myself reeling at the thought that the words of this little creature could not only command the respect of so many, including myself, but that the power within her could likely fell a legion of dragons. It seems I found a worthy pack indeed, if only I could find a mate...
-
Yelling. Wait, no, its more than that, its more like someone using a megaphone that's right up against my ear.
"You piece of shit rifleman, your supposed to be the best of the best, you can't even be the best of the worst. I can barely count you as a rifleman. That's it! Your discharged, get your arse out of this camp right..." The yelling droned on and on, beating a path through my brain cells, what few of them were left after drinking what was on offer last night.
I punctuated the stream with 'Yes Sir!'s and 'No Sir!'s as appropriate, hoping Sergeant Nicols would run out of steam or find someone in worse shape to yell at soon.
"Now get out of my sight, get some water into yourself, you are to report to the command tent at oh eight hundred. Dismissed!" He turned and walked off.
"Wait." I muttered, "I ain't even in the army, my girlfriends the freaking leader of this shit and I...I..." I ran to the latrine area and emptied whatever was left in my stomach. "Ugh, I am going to kill whoever made that shit."
"Morning Fox!" One of the motor-pool guys wandered past, all I could manage was a mutter and an evil stare.
I found the washing water, considered non-drinkable, and just fell forward into it, falling to the bottom of the half-rounded out forty-four gallon drum.
Pulling back out was harder work, but when air became an imperative I managed to get myself clear of it. Still swaying a little, I fell forward again. This dunking did the trick, coming out the world seemed to come into focus.
I staggered back to Crystal's and my shared apartment, one of a few blocks of apartment buildings we had taken over for residential use. And upon opening the door my nose told me I had been a very naughty fox last night.
I managed to clean the bed, clean myself, get some food and make it to the meeting, albeit still chewing on the last of breakfast.
"... and with that in mind we will be beginning to protect the strongest of the races along with the weakest first, giving us a position of strength over their strongest and showing at the same time we are not heartless bastards. The strongest races so far to ask assistance have been the Elven, Dwarven and the Wolven. We will send delegations to each of them, enough to defeat what they want defeated, mainly a few nasty creatures they think 'un-killable'. The Gnomes, I don't know if any of you have met one yet, they could leave our steam tech for dead, or screw it up and make it a weapon, but they are almost a danger to themselves. Thankfully there are not many of them and they are happy to relocate their homes to here, they will be the first of the 'weak races' we shall help." Crystal was speaking to the officers.
"Ahh Fox, nice to have you here, which leads me to the second of the weaker races we shall assist, the Kitsune. They have a major problem, they are actually quite powerful magic users, astoundingly so in fact, but their lands are being attacked by some metal creatures that shrug off their spells and tear their homes apart. As some of you will know they closely resemble a walking-talking fox with an excess of tails, which is why we are sending just Drath and Fox to assist them. Not only will you fit in to their tightly and a little xenophobic world view a little better, neither of you rely on your abilities offensively. If your feeling up to it fox you will be off this morning, a side mission will be of course to try and persuade their people to relocate, try to stress the difficulty in sending an operative such a distance just to deal with, what should prove a minor threat."
"Unless any of you have any questions regarding your parts in this, you are all dismissed." She finished up.
I wandered up to the front where she was talking with some of her senior officers. The most important of which, of course, had already worked all the details out and was trying to keep to the sidelines. This wouldn't do.
"Hellen, how are things?" I asked her, sneaking up on her.
"Oh, Fox, good." At my raised eyebrow she laughed, "Ok, very good. I can't believe how well Crystal is taking to all of this, she is a born diplomat, what did you say she did before all this happened?"
I chuckled at the 'glowing' echidna morph, "Well she was delivering pizza for a while, she hated that and managed a job making sandwiches for..."
"Dear gods, the world almost let someone like her slip away into obscurity?" She replied incredulous.
I grinned, "Yeah, I always told her she was the most awesome person I knew, I guess now she is just believing it. Can't say as I have changed my opinion of her though, and begging your pardon, but I now know a lot of fairly awesome people."
Crystal had, by then, disengaged herself from the mob of officers, turning them on each-other to hammer out their roles in the tasks set them.
"What you two gossiping about?" She asked, striding over.
"Oh, about how Drath was so looking forward to some more relaxation and that he didn't want to-" I began, laying it on thick for her.
"Can it you, Drathnial and I were talking last night, he has been itching to get some wind under his wings and some blood on his teeth. He also mentioned something about you having a lot of work ahead of you to catch up." Crystal cut in on me.
I nodded, the gig was up, "He said something like that to me too. Alright, when and where do I need to go?"
"As soon as possible and the area is marked on this map." It was the Captain who replied, handing me the papers. "And as Crystal said, it would be good if you could persuade them to move down this way."
"Wait, you want me playing at diplomacy? Shit you must be desperate."
"We are, good luck babe." Crystal said, giving me a kiss and a hug.
I turned to the door and reached out with my mind, but was startled before I could form my thoughts to send.
~"We are packed little sister, the pack beta has seen to your provisions and we are to leave at once!"~ Drath called to me. 'Pack beta' was his name for Nicols.
I laughed, running forward and, seeing him swooping down to me from one side, jumped up catching his neck on my way back down and landing on his neck.
It was a long flight, but eventually Drath called to me that we were over the camp of the Kitsune.
I looked down, ~"Drath, how can you tell, I can't see anything?"~
~"Look now little sister."~
I felt his power flow over me and when I looked back down at the location he indicated, it revealed many small huts and a few foxy forms moving about among the scrub land.
~"That magic Drath or just psi?"~ I asked him.
~"It is real magic, their kind can't use psi at all. It would normally make communication hard for you, not knowing their language, but of course you have the most amazing creature in the whole world here. Part of your muddle-headedness this morning was because I spent a part of the night cramming their language into your little skull."~
"Oh" Was all I could reply before he drew his wings tight against his side and dived for the ground.
Just before we hit the ground, light bloomed and power smashed around us, it would have done some serious damage had Drath not been able to turn aside such attacks. At the last second he snapped open his wings again, braking to a stall and landing perfectly on the ground. I leapt off his back, rounding to face the first being I could set eyes on, a male Kitsune, his hands glowing with the magic he was even now prepared to unleash to save his people.
"Why you ungrateful, trigger happy, cow tipping-" I began to berate him, starting off with light tones, intending to work through the full repertoire that Nicols had shown me, when yelling of alarm came from the other side of the camp.
"The golems come, run for your lives!" A fox-man ran past me yelling, I turned to look the direction he had been coming from and I could see a dust cloud on the edge of town.
"Drath!" I yelled and jumped. He was under me and we were heading toward the site of the alarm as fast as his wings would propel us.
The attackers were few, numbering just five, but they stood about fifteen feet tall, looked to be made from either steel or some other hard metal and one was chasing down a family of fox-people. ~"Drath, this is why we are here, lets end this fast."~
I began to sing my part of the Song of Blood, Drath was on queue with his part of our duet. My eyes lit with fury and I leapt off the dragons back at one foe even as he propelled himself toward another.
After a few slices proved my bayonets useless, I sheathed the long blades and balled my fists. "Lets see how solid you are." I said, teeth bared and dancing around the hulking metal beasts.
A regular punch would have done nothing more than hurt the fighters fists, my punches were anything but. I lashed out again and again, denting the thing all over its body. I aimed mainly for its limbs, particularly the legs, if I could stop it from moving it can't kill anyone. After a bit of work I found this held and moved on to my second.
In the moment it took to reach it, I caught sight of Drath, tearing pieces off his opponent, he had started with the head, but it proved that the thing could operate without it when it almost took a hold of his left wing, only quick movement and a lashed out kick kept it from securing a hold on the draconic warrior.
My second target was much quicker to dispatch, I dented all around its knees and elbows, restricting its movement severely and then knocked it to its back. Finding Drathnial to have defeated his first target and working on his second, I dashed at the last just prior to it smashing a young female into the ground. My first punch knocked it back several meters and laying it out on the ground, I darted in, smashing around its joints, even breaking one leg off with the force of my blows.
The song was dying down, its need abated, our foes were either non-functional or disabled, I let the battle lust flow from me. I reached my hand to Drathnial's flank, slapping him hard on the scales, "Nice work old lizard, that's three more to me but only two to you. Given up yet?"
"Great warrior!" One of the Kitsune called, "You and your pet have saved us this day, as your leader promised! We will gladly pay the tith-" Drathnial cut him short.
~"Pet? PET? You puny worms are barely..."~ He began and continued for some time, his tail lashing and eyes glowing bright red, of course the Kitsune couldn't hear him at all, they were stone deaf to the minds language. Shit, I missed some of the guys speech because of Drath
~"Calm down Drath, they don't know you are intelligent, cut them some slack, their people have been getting butchered by those things."~
"... but we reluctantly decline, of course, the invitation to join you at your fortress. Our families would not survive... WAIT, WHERE ARE YOU GOING?" He cut short his speech as I jumped on Draths back and told him to start walking us away.
I turned back to look over my shoulder at his cry, "Well, we did our job. You don't want to come back where we can defend you, your mates and children. This is too far for us to travel each day just for an ally who can barely support themselves let alone send regular tithes. Good day and safe trails." I turned back.
~"HA and you said you were no diplomat"~ Drath mocked me in my mind.
"Wait, we, I... I spoke in haste. There are more of those things, if you won't stay and defend us we will get cut down by them within a week. Its just the journey to your people will be fraught with too much danger, I fear none of us will make it." He admitted.
I jumped down from Drath, strode over to stand before him, "Now, you see, if you pledge yourselves to travel to our camp, then I can see a point in continuing to defend you. Make your people ready to move, it is about two days travel to the rendezvous site. From there you will be picked up and driven back to our camp. I will not let anything harm your people, be at ease in regards to that."
The man was almost broken down in tears thanking me, I tried to maintain my detachment though, if only for image sake.
~"Would you really have had us fly off and leave them to the wilds?"~ Drathnial asked me.
~"Honestly, no Drath, I can't stand to see any innocent people hurt, and these fox-people have children Drath, children are the most innocent and precious things in the world."~
~"Good words to live by, my little sister, good words indeed. Now if only you could teach them civilised conversation."~