The Devil's Foundry

After a bit of searching, Electra and I had found a path up and out of the cove. We marched up into the surrounding jungle through luscious palm trees with verdant green foliage growing thick on the ground.

And the jungle was hot.

“God there are so many bugs.” Electra slapped the back of her neck.

“Really, Elenore?” I sent her a cheery smile. “I hadn’t noticed any.”

“Don’t call me that.” She glowered at me. “Why aren’t they bothering you?”

I shrugged. “Karma?” I stepped over a branch. “I don’t get sunburns either.”

“Karma my lily-white ass…” she slouched after me, arms hanging limply by her sides.

I tapped my chin. “I mean, maybe I was just a Saint in my past life.” I shrugged. “But really, do you expect me to feel sorry for you?”

She slapped her arm. Again. “God, ow! These things are the size of birds.” She hunched over. “Where are we even going anyway?”

“Somewhere not here.”

“Why bother though? You saw those guys in armor coming into the cove, right? We coulda just asked them for directions.” She glanced away. “Plus, there weren’t any hecking mosquitoes on the beach.”

I sighed. “Rule number one, never get caught at the scene of the crime.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Even though it wasn’t our fault?”

“Especially if it wasn’t your fault.” I shook my head. “The number of times I pinned my earlier jobs on some guy who just happened to be there… almost too many to count honestly.”

“What, really?”

I nodded.

“No way, I don’t buy that for a second.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Remember the Ascott Ruby?”

“What, the massive synthetic gem the Phantom Thief stole?”

“That was me.” I laughed. “And she got put away for it too! God she was so fucking pissed after she escaped the prison. We had a little feud going for months over that.”

Electra blinked. She opened her mouth to deny my claim, before pausing. “We never did find the ruby…”

“Sure you did.”

She stopped, looking at me with a complicated expression on her face.

“What do you think formed the matrix of my power core?” I gave a nonchalant little shrug. “Though, you slagged it pretty thoroughly. How’s it feel to be the accessory to a crime?”

“Oh you little…”

“Whoops!” I smirked at her. “I can see the headlines now: Rising Hero Destroys Evidence in Key Investigation!”

She laughed. “Yeah, right beneath ‘the most feared villain in the US captured.’”

“So you admit I’m the most feared then?”

“Please.” She rolled her eyes. “You’re small potatoes after Cypher. There’s just no one else left.”

I stopped, glancing away into the dense jungle.

“Um, Empress?”

“Yes.” I started walking again. “I suppose Heroes are rather good at what they do.”

For a few minutes we walked in silence.

“…So, why are we dealing with the stupid jungle again?”

“I can’t hunt for shit. You can’t hunt for shit. The only source of water was the ocean.” I gave her a look. “Gee, Elenore. You tell me why we left.”

She blew out an annoyed huff. “Okay now you’re just doing it on purpose.”

“Doing what?”

She huffed, waving a hand in the air. “Couldn’t you have just whipped up some… water foodinator or something?”

“Yes, of course, why didn’t I think of that.” I pressed a hand to my head. “With the three springs and one circuit board from my armor, I could make a device that synthesizes food from the ambient idiocy! It’s so simple!”

“What really?”

“No, idiot!” I hit her in the shoulder. Eleanor just danced back, sticking her tongue out at me. “I don’t have the parts, and even if I did, I don’t have the tools to work them.” The small tool kit on my belt, which I’d kept with me, of course, was for spot repairs only, nothing that required any amount of force.

She hummed as we continued to hike along, just above the coastline. “What about your new skills then? I mean, you must’ve gotten something useful from your class.”

I shrugged, pulling up my status screen and expanding the skills section with a mental flex.

Skills

[1/5]

Summon Demon: Level 1

Summon a creature from beyond. Be wary of your words.

“I have something called ‘summon demon,’ but the description is… less than comforting.” I shrugged. “You?”

“Ah, uh.” Her eyes did that flicking thing I was coming to associate with someone looking at their menu. God, I hope I didn’t look that dumb when I did it.

“I have ‘buzzer bolt.’” She lifted her hand. “Actually, that sounds kinda useful. I could probably give myself a jolt with my power, then shoot it at something like a bird, or some wild pig or something.”

I blinked. “Are there even wild pigs on most islands?”

“I dunno.” Elenore shrugged. “I think I read it in that one book, you know, the one with the conch and the big fire? They had piggies, right?”

I felt the urge to fall over and die. “There was a character named Piggy.”

“What? That’s horrible.”

I nodded. “Which was, more or less, the point.” I smiled. “It’s fine, he died in the end.”

“That’s not fine.”

No, it wasn’t. But that was the point.

“Aren’t you going to shock yourself?” I tilted my head at her. “I could use a good laugh.”

She puffed up. “What, you think I’m gonna mess myself up with lightning? You’ve gotta be thinking of some other fiendishly attractive blonde hero who wrecked your base. Like Wonder Man.”

“No,” I said dryly. “That would be the one who tripped over a storage hatch and fell into the trash compactor, like something out of a bad movie.”

“So you were watching!”

“I actually made that up.” I smirked. “What, did he really fall into an access hatch? My robot didn’t even have a trash compactor.”

She coughed into her fist. “Ah, anyway, I’m gonna start testing my power now…”

I laughed. “You do that, Elenore.”

She shot a glare at me before turning back to the task at hand. “Usually it’s just pretty obvious right?” She nodded to herself, and I crossed my arms. “Buzzer Bolt!”

I waited for a second, before raising my eyebrow. “Was that it?”

“N-no, I just, I don’t know how to trigger the spell.” Elenore flushed. “Usually it’s as simple as just saying it!”

“Really?” I tilted my head, “And that would be in those books of yours? The … light novels?”

“Don’t you start on my novels again.” Elenore said. “Or I’ll blast you instead of me.”

I hummed once, nodding along as she chanted the name of her ability like it was some kind of mantra. “Have you tried using, oh, I don’t know, your brain?” I tilted my head. “Like you do with your power normally?”

She paused. “Uh.”

“Elenore, please.”

Her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to ignore me.

“Buzzer bolt!”

A spark of what looked like electricity jumped across her arms.

I say looked like because normal electricity didn’t knock Electra, the electric hero, off her feet like someone kicked her in the stomach.

She hit the ground with a thud, steam coming off her suit as the heat flash evaporated any moisture she’d picked up during the trek.

“While that doesn’t look like the most comfortable way to get clean,” I said. “It certainly dried you off, didn’t it?”

“Ugh… shut up.”

“What, you mean you didn’t mean to blow yourself off of your feet with your own electricity?”

“What the heck happened?” She pushed herself back to her feet. “That didn’t feel like electricity at all!”

I hummed, tossing a few ideas around in my head. “Well, probably because it wasn’t.”

“Huh?”

“You just used ‘magic.’” I waved a hand through the air. “Why would it work the same way real electricity works? If some random wizard invented thunder magic, what’s more likely: he actually does the research necessary to understand the movement of electrons from areas of high potential to areas of low potential… or he just makes some spell that causes a line of glowing, superhot something to flash across the air from his fingertips?”

Electra’s frown deepened. “Ugh, when you put it like that, it makes more sense that magic wouldn’t be the same thing as electricity. God that sucks though.”

I nodded, placing a hand in front of my mouth. “Oh, my. Does the hero need help from me again, so she can use her power?”

She huffed. “I can still use it in a thunderstorm.”

“Oh, of course, a thunderstorm.” I nodded. “You mean those ones with the clouds, and the rain.”

She stared at me for a second, a betrayed expression on her face.

I patted her once on the shoulder. “Just trying to keep you grounded, Elle.”

“I’ll keep you grounded.”

She reached out, grabbing me before I could get out of the way.

“H-hey, what are you doing?”

“Hmm? Just limit testing is all.” She grinned sharply, fingers tightening. “My spell didn’t really do that much damage, y’know, gotta see if that’s normal.”

I squirmed, but without my armor I was just a shorter, less athletic woman. “Can we talk about this?”

“Oh sure, sure!” Electra laughed. “It’s easy. Stop calling me by my name.”

I paused, glancing to the side.

She scowled. “Buzzer…”

“Okay! Okay! I promise I won’t call you Elenore anymore!”

She frowned at me.

“Yep! No more Elenore from me, no sir!”

“Okay, you can stop saying that.”

I grinned. “Saying what? That I won’t use the name Elenore for this girl, Elenore, that I—”

“Buzzer Bolt!”

I let out a shriek as the surge of something that felt remarkably like lighting ran through me.

A second later, Electra let me go, and I staggered over to a tree.

“Ugh, fuck you.”

“That’s right.”

I staggered upright, glaring over at her. “I’ll have my vengeance, Electra.”

“Let me know how it goes, kay?”

“Oh believe me.” I was gonna figure out how fake magic electricity worked so I could build her a generator that made that instead. “You’ll be the last to know.”

She tilted her head. “Don’t you mean the first?”

I smiled at her. “I know exactly what I said.”

She leaned back. “Can you just not?”

“Hmm?” My smile grew wider.

“Uh, that’s…” Her eyes flicked back and forth, before locking onto something behind me. “Hey look, a city!”

I paused, glancing over my shoulder. “Huh, well look at that. Looks like we found one.”

I could make out the towers and the top of a wall over the trees. A few more minutes of walking and we caught sight of what looked like a small medieval city, complete with walls, dirt roads, and horse-drawn carts.

Electra glanced at me. “Think they’ll have what you need?”

I sighed. “Probably not. But at least they’ll have food, so we might as well.”

“Sure.” She laughed. “What’s the worst that could happen?”