Chapter 263: Familiar Company
They met near the east end of Krey where the city started to thin out. The last stretch of commercial buildings before the neighborhoods gave way to the industrial district and then to the wide flat nothing of the outskirts. The kind of area where something weird could happen and most of the people who'd see it would decide they hadn't.
Alexander got there first and was standing outside a convenience store with a bag of chips he'd already opened, eating them like he was waiting for a bus. He was wearing a casual outfit. Pink shirt and grey joggers to go along with his natural pink hair.
"Yo, Zoey!" He raised the chip bag in greeting.
Lindsay arrived at the same moment from the other direction, adjusting her glasses as she walked, her green crocodile plushie hanging on her waist. She looked at the chip bag.
"You've been here thirty seconds," she said.
"I was hungry."
"The case starts in five minutes."
"I can be hungry and professional." He offered the bag toward Zoey. She took a chip. Lindsay did not.
Joseph came from the north end of the street, hands in his pockets, sunglasses on despite the overcast sky.
"Hey." He took a good long look at her.
"Later." Zoey had a feeling she knew what he could see.
"Got it." Joseph didn't push it, which she appreciated.
"Where's Caroline?" Alexander asked.
"I'm here." Caroline came around the corner at the exact moment he said it. She had her monk staff across her back.
"Happy to see you. I'm glad you could make it," Lindsay gave her a polite smile.
"I always have time to purify the Earth of evil." Caroline responded.
Then Jacky dropped off the fire escape above them.
She landed in a crouch with the spiked bat swinging loose at her side. She straightened up, looked at the group, and then looked at the one face she didn't recognize.
Tiffany was standing at the edge of the group with her greatsword on her back and her purple hair catching the wind and the expression of someone who was experiencing a level of excitement that she was heroically trying to contain. She had been standing there for three minutes already. Nobody had acknowledged her arrival because no one realized she was there.
"Hi!" Tiffany said, apparently deciding the moment was right.
Jacky looked at her for a long moment. "Who are you?"
"I'm Tiffany! I'm Zoey's best friend."
"Zoey's…" Jacky looked at Zoey.
Zoey ate another chip.
"She is," Alexander confirmed helpfully.
"You have another best friend, already?" Jacky said.
"She added me to the group chat," Tiffany explained.
"You said you weren't coming until next month."
"I finished my work early!" Tiffany beamed. "I'm very good at what I do."
Jacky couldn't tell if she was worth measuring herself against.
"Are you learned or connate?" she asked.
"None ya!"
"None ya?"
"None ya business!" Tiffany laughed, her eyes turning toward Zoey, looking for approval.
Unfortunately Inner Zoey is a childish goofy bitch and did giggle at Tiffany's childish joke.
'Don't blame me. How can anyone still fall for that?' Inner Zoey responded.
"Are you fucking with me?" Jacky raised her bat.
"It's just a joke, Jacky baby! I'm kidding! Relaxsu…" Tiffany somehow appeared behind Jacky, whispering in her ear.
Jacky turned, swinging her bat fully intent on seemingly taking Tiffany's head off. Tiffany giggled as she avoided the attack by not being there anymore. Standing at Zoey's side holding her arm. "A magjistar doesn't share their secrets unless they're fighting! And I can't fight with Zoey's friends! I wuv her."
"Wuv?" Caroline looked at Zoey.
"Some friend, you picked up Zoey…" Joseph could see the overwhelming affection this girl had for Zoey. Even without his eyes…
"I'm going to ignore that bitch for now. She rolled her neck and pointed the bat vaguely in the direction Caroline had come from. "So we going or what? Standing around talking isn't going to kill anything."
"We have a plan," Lindsay said.
"We have six daemons wandering around thinking they're about to pledge themselves to a dead empire. What plan do you need?"
"A plan about approach, positioning, containment-"
"Caroline, how many of them did you see?"
"Two." Caroline was already facing the direction of the drainage channel.
"Okay so six confirmed, two accounted for. Lindsay, you and Alexander head over there and cut off the channel exit before they push through to the housing blocks. Joseph, you take the north end in case any try to double back. Zoey and I push through the middle and flush them toward you." Jacky said all of this without stopping moving, already walking. "New girl, you're with me and Zoey since I don't know what you can do yet."
"That's actually a reasonable plan," Lindsay said, slightly annoyed that it was.
"Yeah, no shit. Let's go."
Caroline fell into step alongside Zoey as they moved. "I have a question about the plan."
"Mm."
"Why are Jacky's plans always delivered like she's annoyed to have to make them?"
"That's just how she talks."
"She's always like that?"
"I'm pretty sure she does."
"How does she have friends?"
"I think we're her only friends."
Caroline considered this. "Ah."
"You're not my only friends!" Jacky shouted.
…
The drainage channel ran behind a long row of industrial units, wide and mostly dry this time of year, the concrete walls sloping down into a flat floor about eight feet below street level. It smelled like rust and standing water and whatever the units on either side had been seeping into the ground for the past twenty years.
Two daemons were in the channel. One looked like something that had been assembled from the concept of a boar, tusked, heavy, moving on four legs but with the wrong number of joints. The other was upright, thin with elongated fingers that scraped the channel walls as it moved.
Both of them were just traveling together.
'Dumb bastards. We already killed the woman you're here for.' Inner Zoey laughed.
Jacky dropped into the channel without announcing herself. The boar daemon turned at the sound of her landing and got the spiked bat across its snout before it could finish turning. It made a sound somewhere between a squeal and something deeper, stumbling sideways. The thin daemon reacted faster. It lunged for Jacky's back and got a face full of Tiffany, who had followed Jacky into the channel and had her greatsword out.
Tiffany's blade caught the thin daemon mid-lunge and drove it back into the channel wall. It hit the concrete hard, scrabbled, found its feet. It looked at the sword. At the girl holding it. At the expression on that girl's face, which was cheerful and bright and completely wrong for someone pointing four feet of blade at something.
It took a step back.
"Super-Duper Mega Slash!" Tiffany announced.
The big sword sliced the daemon and its magji shard in half.
Zoey had come in behind them and was watching Jacky work the boar daemon. Jacky didn't even need to summon any daemons. The boar daemon got its tusks under her guard on the second exchange and launched her up the channel wall. She hit the slope, caught herself, and shoved back down off it before she'd fully stopped moving, bat coming down on the back of its head with her bat, shattering its skull. It dropped as Jacky madly swung her bat multiple times until she found the magji shard and smashed it.
"Hoo, that felt good." Jacky said, to nobody in particular.
"I'm done too!" Tiffany echoed, looking genuinely pleased.
Zoey heard the distant roar of Lindsay's Man-eating Croc doing something energetic at the west end. A chain sound from the north, Joseph. Further away, the slow ripple of Caroline's purifying light.
She checked her own count. She'd punched a hole through one C-Grade daemon. She'd caught it trying to sneak up behind them while the others were watching the channel and had handled it quickly and quietly. That was four.
"Two more," she said.
"I know where they are," Jacky said, already climbing out of the channel.
"I tried using my mahna to sense the daemons but I don't have the talent for it." Zoey was surprised about this fact. She thought with Boxy, she could really go into any field and master it. But, it seems some paths were still locked to her.
"Heh. I wasn't the strongest student of Supreme Magjistar High for nothing." She said it with all pride and confidence. "Come on."
The last two were bigger than the others.
One had found a derelict unit and was crouched inside the empty space behind a rusted loading door. The other one was outside the unit, facing away from the door, holding a position that made sense if you understood that it was covering for the one inside. Guarding. The two of them were working together.
The group had approached quietly enough that neither daemon had moved yet. They were standing in a loose semicircle outside the unit entrance.
"The one inside is the stronger one," Lindsay murmured, tablet out, reading the mahna signatures. "The one outside is distracting."
"They're using their brains," Alexander said, sounding genuinely interested.
"They've heard what happened to the others," Joseph said. "They're scared."
That landed in the group for a moment. These daemons had traveled to Krey because they'd heard about a First-Grade Daemon King declaring herself an empire. They'd arrived to find the empire gone, Poison dead and her entire operation dismantled. They were in a bad spot and they knew it.
"They're still a threat," Caroline said. "Scared or not."
"Yeah," Jacky agreed. "You want to do the thing?" She looked at Zoey.
"What thing."
"The thing where you walk up to something and it panics."
Zoey looked at the daemon outside the unit. She reached for the Fighting Aura, let it sit at the surface of her skin, not active, just present. The passive quality she could never fully turn off. The one that made people and daemons alike want to flee or fight.
The daemon outside the unit turned around. It had been holding its position. It was doing its job. And then it looked at the person who had just started walking toward it and every instinct it had said run and run immediately.
It did not run. It tried to fight.
Zoey walked through the exchange without breaking stride. The daemon's attack was fast, a full-commitment lunge, and she moved sideways and let it carry past her, caught it at the wrist on the way by, and used the momentum to redirect it into the wall of the unit with enough force that the corrugated metal dented.
She held it there for a second, arm twisted, its face against the wall.
"The one inside," she said, to the group. "Now."
She felt them move. Caroline formed a barrier, going up around the exit before anything could use it. Lindsay sending the Man-eating Croc through the gap in the loading door. Jacky following two steps behind with the bat. The sounds that came from inside the unit were brief and not pleasant and then they weren't sounds anymore.
Zoey looked at the daemon she was holding against the wall. Her boxing gloves ate the daemon alive piece by piece as she unleashed several punches. Each impact tearing another large chunk of flesh away until Max, the left hound head, stole the magji shard from Cody, the right hound head.
"Brutal." Jacky laughed.
"Yeah, I guess so." Zoey shared. "Don't you find it strange that Poison was able to connect all three races? Humans, Daemons, and Magjistars. They were working together under her. That means there is undeniable proof that daemons aren't impossible to coexist alongside."
"Coexist? Why would we coexist with monsters that eat people?" Jacky looked at her as if she was retarded.
"Nevermind. I don't know what I was saying." Zoey dropped it. She didn't really expect these guys to understand.
"Weirdo." Jacky chuckled as they started to leave.
"It is strange though." Alexander spoke up. "Why would humans and even magjistars of all people ally themselves with daemons?"
"I initially believed that they were under threat of being eaten or tortured. But the way they fought against us… People who are being forced don't fight like that." Lindsay muttered.
"Guys! Come on! They're daemons! Maybe they brainwashed them or something. I don't see why you guys are thinking so hard about this."
"If it happened once, it's possible to happen again." Caroline added.
"Then we'll just crush them again! Until we can wipe out all daemons." Jacky raised her bat.
"That's impossible. Daemons are born through the suffering of humans. Unless we somehow achieve world peace, daemons will never go away." Lindsay replied.
'Or if we kill all humans…' Inner Zoey realized.
'Shut it.' Zoey didn't want to go down that line of thinking.
…
They ended up at the convenience store afterward. Not because it was planned. Just because Alexander was already there technically and Tiffany had asked if they could get snacks and snacks were good after a workout.
The owner watched seven people file into his store. He didn't comment on their strange attire. Simply considered them cosplayers and went about his day. Unknown that a magji tool held by Lindsay helped him come to this conclusion. It helped inhibit critical thinking, not in a way that made someone dumber. Just made them more liable to not think deeply about the young adults covered in who knows what and carrying most likely illegal weapons.
Zoey got a water bottle and leaned against the end of an aisle while the others sorted themselves out. Tiffany was already in conversation with Alexander near the back. Lindsay was reading something on her phone and eating a rice ball. Joseph had gotten a coffee. Jacky had taken over the magazine rack, standing in front of it with a bag of something sour and reading what appeared to be a fashion magazine with the expression of someone who would deny doing this if asked.
Caroline came to stand next to Zoey. She was quiet for a moment.
"She's similar to you," she said, looking at Tiffany. Tiffany had just said something that made Alexander laugh very suddenly.
"Like when you tried to purify me because you thought I was a daemon?"
"That's right."
"I'm still getting to know her. I don't know if she's exactly like me but I'll find out eventually." Zoey couldn't really imagine being an assassin by choice. She didn't want to kill people. Plus she already had loads of money from fighting legally, so there wasn't a reason to even ask about it.
"Where is she from?"
"Dhara."
"I don't know much about Dhara."
"Different from what you know. They handle things differently over there."
"Hm." Caroline watched her for another moment. "She's strong."
"Very."
"How did you meet?"
Zoey thought about how to summarize the undercover mission in Dhara. "Work thing," she said.
Caroline accepted this.
Jacky, from the magazine rack without looking up: "Is anyone going to say what happened in Luminaurora or are we all just going to keep dancing around it."
The store got a little quieter.
"What do you want to know?" Zoey said.
"I want to know what actually happened. Not the version going around where everything went perfectly and the Council saved the day. I was there for the part before you showed up and I know how bad it was." She finally looked up from the magazine. "You were in the Oubliette."
It wasn't a question.
Zoey looked at her for a moment. Then she looked at the rest of them. Lindsay had put the tablet down. Joseph had turned slightly. Alexander wasn't gesturing anymore.
"Yeah," Zoey said. "I was."
"How long."
"Years, decades, could have been centuries. Hard to tell in there."
Jacky put the magazine back exactly where she'd taken it from. She wasn't going to say anything soft about it, because Jacky didn't do that, but she was paying a specific kind of attention now. "And coming out of it, that's why you were gone so long after."
"Part of it."
She nodded. "My body's still messed up from what Poison's people did to us before you got there. Joseph's too, I'm pretty sure." She glanced at Joseph.
"I recovered," Joseph said.
"He recovered slower than he's admitting," Lindsay said, without looking up from the tablet she'd picked back up.
Joseph didn't confirm or deny this. He drank his coffee.
"My mom's in a coma," Zoey said.
It came out quieter than she'd expected. She hadn't planned to say it here, specifically. But they'd been talking about what happened, and her mother was part of what happened, and she decided why not.
Nobody spoke immediately.
"Poison," Tiffany added. "Poison did it."
"Yeah."
"Is she… is she going to wake up?"
"Doctors don't know. The Sinclairs are looking for something. She's being cared for." Zoey said the version she'd said to other people and then, because this group had just fought daemons with her and deserved more than the version: "I don't know. I'm looking for something in the magji world that might help."
"What kind of something?" Alexander asked. He'd moved slightly forward without seeming to notice he'd done it.
"A sort of magji tool or daemonic object that can help her. A body flush. A body reset. I'm not sure exactly."
Alexander looked at Lindsay. Lindsay looked at Alexander.
"Star Clan," they said at the same time.
"Their healing division," Lindsay said. "They specialize in healing to a level that nobody else in the OM comes close to. If there's a way to treat your mom, they'd know it or know who would."
"Where are they?"
"They maintain an estate north of the Luminaurora. Maybe three hours." Alexander was already pulling out his phone. "I've done two cases in that area, I know the area. I can get you in contact with their outer representatives. Well, who they have left after the war…"
Caroline had her mantra face on. "I want to help," she said.
"I feel for ya, but I don't think I can really do much." said Jacky.
Joseph simply said: "Tell us when."
"We'll find something, no matter what." Tiffany said.
Zoey looked at all of them. These people who had fought daemons with her, gotten hurt for her, who had just collectively decided in a convenience store that her mother's situation was now a shared problem. She hadn't asked for any of it. She'd just told the truth.
"Okay," she said.
Alexander was already texting. Lindsay was already ready to move. Joseph was finishing his coffee. Jacky had picked the magazine back up but she was facing slightly toward the group now, a different angle than before.
"One thing," Zoey said.
They looked at her.
"The Star Clan." She'd heard the name before, in different contexts. Enough to know something. "What do I need to know before we go?"
Alexander and Lindsay exchanged a look that lasted slightly too long.
"They're traditional," Lindsay said, carefully.
"How traditional."
"Very."
Alexander had put his phone down. He looked like he was choosing his next words with some care. "Their healing practice is genuinely extraordinary. One of the best in the magji world. But they have certain views. About how the magji world works and who belongs in which part of it."
"They hate gullies," Jacky said, from behind the magazine.
"Jacky."
"She's going to find out anyway. The Star Clan are damn good healers and super racist when it comes to anyone who wasn't born and raised in the magji world from a long family line." She lowered the magazine enough to look at Zoey. "You should know what you're walking into."
Zoey said nothing.
"You still want to go?" Jacky asked.
"Yeah," Zoey said. She had to try. Even if they were racist fucks. What if they could help her mom?
Jacky raised the magazine back up. "Thought so."