Trailblazer Read online

  If Sally understood combat correctly, that meant that both Darthrok and Essley were now engaged and unable to run away. She was not in danger, but Darthrok definitely was. She winced as the scorpion snapped at him, getting a good grip on his shoulder and clamping down with its metal mandibles.

  Darthrok cried out in pain. “Get out! Just go. That’s got me down to fifty percent already. Don’t risk it. Go!”

  He sliced at the scorpion, making a good connection with its left leg and rendering it useless. The scorpion wobbled, then righted itself on its other seven legs.

  “Run, Sally,” Essley said. “Head east. I’ll catch up to you.” She brought her sword down on a weevil, cracking its exoskeleton.

  Sally looked from Essley to Darthrok, assessing all creatures. Darthrok was at fifty-eight percent health, Essley at ninety-one. Sally created a logarithmic algorithm that accounted for the current stats, then scaled it against the projected stats that would exist if all variables remained stable when the scorpion would be at zero percent health.

  Essley and Darthrok would both be dead before that happened.

  Sally flipped the staff around, holding it in a new grip that instantly felt comfortable. She approached the closest weevil.

  Sally pulled her goggles down over her eyes and assessed again, this time looking for structural weaknesses.

  There. The left side, where the body segments met. A poor weld. Sally moved in close, and brought the bo down directly on that point.

  It snapped, paralyzing the mechie on one side. While it tried to regulate its internal power supply, Sally grabbed the torch cutter from her backpack, ignited it, and pierced the power supply with it.

  The weevil went still.

  She adjusted her goggle lenses, flipping to the pink ones, and reassessed the situation. Essley was in good health. She could survive against two weevils alone.

  Good.

  Sally shifted her goggles to the green lenses, looking at power flow. For something as dangerous as the scorpion, she needed to disable its systems. Taking it apart bit by bit, as one would with a sword or a crossbow, would take more time than her friends had, even if Sally had their weapons skills.

  She didn’t have their weapons skills. But she knew how power flowed. Sujan had taught her.

  She dropped the staff and reached for a screwdriver. A lovely long one with a narrow Phillips head point.

  Darthrok stumbled back from another strike from the scorpion. His health went red in her vision, showing thirty percent.

  He saw her. “Sally, what are you doing? Get out before it gets aggro on you.”

  She ignored him. Thus far, the scorpion didn’t register her as a threat. If she was quick, she might be able to disable it before it could put the spectre of death on Darthrok.

  She ducked just in time to avoid the scorpion’s stinger, which jerked from side to side as the mechie tried to find the best way to kill her friend.

  This was it. The moment of opportunity.

  Shifting, she moved to take advantage of the scorpion’s position change. While the mechie was focused on Darthrok, it didn’t notice her lunging in, taking aim at its heat sink with the torch, and slicing through the exoskeleton.

  It sure noticed her then. Sally was aware of the distance between the stinger and her body decreasing as she jammed the screwdriver in, rolling the wiring up over the point of the Phillips screwdriver, tilting it, then using her legs and back to rip the wiring loose.

  The stinger tilted forward, tipping. Sally turned to run, but it fell, landing on her back.

  Sally had never felt pain before. Her green-hued vision swam under the onslaught of agony. The agony disrupted the confusion that swept through her. Vaguely, she felt pressure on her arm, felt the ground sliding beneath her, then felt her body being lifted. But she couldn’t worry about those things when pain rioted through her body in burning, aching spasms.

  A bird warbled in the distance, its pitch-perfect precision a testimony to its internal consistency. Superior artisanship at its finest.

  How nice.

  Sally wiggled her toes. She couldn’t remember the last time a bird had woken her from her sleep.

  Hang on.

  She sat up, squinting at her surroundings. She was Sally Strong. She didn’t go to sleep and wake up in the morning like other people.

  Essley and Darthrok came into view, looking worried.

  Darthrok came closer. He looked all wonky and wavery at first, but came into focus as her vision cleared.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Essley stopped speaking mid-sentence and turned. “Never mind,” she said, then dropped to her knees next to Sally. “Are you okay?”

  Was she okay? They’d both asked, which seemed to indicate that she might not be okay. She brought her hands to her face, patted her chest, and checked her internal systems.

  “I think I’m okay,” she said. “I had a brief but extreme power surge. But…” she trailed off, searching for any injuries. “Nope. I’m fine.”

  She stood and a sick sensation seized her. “Oh no!”

  Essley’s eyes, already wide, went even wider. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s mud in my hair!” Sally could feel it, making the back of her head heavy. “And on my butt! And my feet! My boots are ruined!”

  Even as she mourned her boots, Essley and Darthrok laughed. How they could laugh at a time like this, when fancy boots were being ruined, she didn’t know.

  Essley tried to dust off Sally’s back and hair, to minimal effect. Mud didn’t dust well. “I was so worried! I thought the scorpion’s venom had gotten you.”

  “No,” Sally said, retrieving her backpack and slipping it on. “Just too much power. It’s fine now.”

  Darthrok hugged her suddenly, fiercely, then let her go just as quickly. “You had us worried. Apparently, your fighting style is…” he paused to find a way to characterize it. “Fixing stuff to death?”

  “Unfixing,” Sally corrected. “I unfixed the heck out of that thing.”

  “Yeah you did! You screwed it!”

  “Unscrewed it,” Essley added.

  Technically, since a screw hadn’t been involved, she’d done neither. “I Phillipsed it.”

  “What?” Darthrok had that look again, like he wasn’t sure if he’d heard actual words or just some arbitrary bleeps and bloops.

  “Phillips. That’s the plus kind of screwdriver. Flathead is the minus kind.” She looked for her screwdriver to brandish it as clarification, but it wasn’t anywhere nearby.

  She searched the ground frantically. Heck! She really liked that screwdriver. Especially since it had vanquished a scorpion.

  “I put your screwdriver in your backpack,” Darthrok said. “If that’s what you’re looking for.”

  She took a deep breath. “It was. Thanks.”

  She let out the breath in a big gust. Then she smiled. “We did the thing!”

  Essley laughed. “If you call having things go seriously south on us from the beginning ‘doing the thing,’ then we definitely did do the thing.”

  Darthrok patted Sally’s shoulder. “Nah, we did more than that. We found out what happens when Sally’s in a tough situation. So now she knows.”

  “True. But now what? Hang out and do some more hunting?”

  Sally shook her head vehemently. “No! We can go now!” She gestured at her hair and her boots. “Yuck.”

  “Ah.” Essley nodded sympathetically. “Yeah, I don’t like getting muddy, either. I think there’s a place in town where you could get clean. Isn’t there?”

  Darthrok shrugged. “How would I know? I don’t go around looking for places to take a bath.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt you.” Essley wrinkled her nose.

  “Hey! I don’t stink. Not most of the time, anyway.”

  Essley shrugged, her lack of agreement clear. “Anyway, let’s go, before Sally leaves us and forges her own way back. She looks pretty uncomfortable.”

  Had
she been so obvious? She was trying not to let on how disgusting it felt for her hair to be heavy with mud and her pants to have a damp, dirty seat.

  She began the walk back to town with her friends, hoping Darthrok would walk fast.

  “There’s no heat.” Sally wrinkled her nose.

  “It’s a fishing village,” Essley reminded her. “Not very fancy, but be glad. That means they have outdoor showers so you can get clean. Just wash off fast, scrub your hair fast, and you’ll barely notice the water. Then we’ll go to the haberdasher for some fresh clothes. You like clothes shopping.”

  Sally wasn’t sure what kind of fashion a little fishing village would offer, but she noted Essley’s attempt to distract her from the cold water running in raw pipes that hung overhead. She, Essley, and Darthrok were inside a square that was fenced off and had a raised wooden floor so the water could drain easily.

  “So…naked outside?” Sally made a twirling motion with her hand to indicate the sky and the great outdoors all around them.

  “No, that would be weird. Keep your clothes on, just get the mud off. Then you can change into new clothes. We can even send the ones you have on to be cleaned, if you want them back.”

  “Shower in my clothes?” Sally looked to Darthrok for confirmation. Considering she often saw a person streaking back to their place of death after using a godsend so they could retrieve their possessions, the idea of keeping clothes on to get wet seemed nonsensical.

  “It’s weird,” Darthrok said. “And as far as I’m concerned, just do what you want. I’d get naked.” He grinned.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” Essley argued.

  “I might.”

  Sally squinted at Darthrok. Was he kidding or being serious? He might be playing a trick on her. She looked from him to Essley and decided to play it safe, albeit soppy and unpleasant.

  She sighed. “Fine.”

  She removed her backpack and all the things she didn’t want to get wet, handed them to Essley, then stepped under one of the pipes and pulled the lever.

  Gasping as icy water poured over her, she quickly scrubbed her hair, breathing in sharp gasps. She sluiced her hands over her clothes to swipe off the mess, and when she couldn’t stand the cold anymore, she judged herself clean enough.

  “Done.” Her teeth chattered.

  “Aww, poor thing!” Essley seemed sympathetic, but she laughed.

  Sally wasn’t sure what to make of that.

  Essley grabbed a large, blanket-like towel and dropped it around Sally’s shoulders. “You must be freezing. Let’s go!”

  Sally almost wished her friends had gotten as muddy as she had, so she could see if they would really shower in frigid water with their clothes on.

  Wet, freezing, and wearing clothes that now weighed ten pounds more, Sally felt…disgruntled.

  Kind of cranky, even.

  She couldn’t recall ever feeling cranky. Ever. She had always been pleasant. This new feeling was interesting, even though it was disagreeable.

  As Essley propelled her down a tidy little street, Sally wondered how she could express this feeling. A facial expression? Some kind of characteristic walk? Insulting random passersby?

  The first option had potential, but she dismissed the other two.

  Aha! She knew! As Essley guided her up a set of wooden steps, Sally made a loud, snorting sound.

  Essley froze. “What was that?”

  “Disgust?” Sally answered hopefully.

  Essley shook her head.

  Sally looked to Darthrok for support.

  “Nah,” he said. “Sorry. That sounded more like ‘heinous sinus infection’ than ‘disgust.’ Try again.”

  Sally dug deep into her sense of dissatisfaction, thinking of her soggy feet inside her squishy boots. Her pretty boots.

  Her pretty, ruined boots.

  “Blehhhh!” she shouted.

  A young adventurer who happened to be passing by leapt back, stumbled, and fell. Just as quickly, she rolled to her feet and hurried off in the direction she’d come.

  Darthrok grinned at Sally. “Yeah, I think that’ll do it. Good job!”

  Sally laughed. He was half-teasing, but that was half the fun.

  She was still giggling at her rude outburst as Essley guided her into the haberdasher. Sally promptly forgot all about her amusement.

  Who knew a fishing village had something like this?

  “I should have come here sooner.” Sally no longer felt the wet or the cold as she studied the racks upon racks of clothing and the outfits displayed on automatons which hung from the ceiling.

  “Wow.” She admired a small, but seemingly entirely functional hot air balloon mounted in the center of the store.

  “I thought you might like it.” Essley smiled, looking smug.

  On cue, the store’s CM swept into view. “Darling.”

  Sally did a double-take. She’d never seen a CM like this before.

  He was the most glamorous, gorgeous thing she’d ever seen. Not handsome the way Sujan was, or beautiful like a woman either, but entirely his own kind of being.

  And sparkly.

  So sparkly.

  His hair was longer than most men tended to wear, but he styled it almost straight up. Sally had never seen such facial symmetry, such full, pouty lips, or such defined eyebrows. Most strikingly, he had a tall, willowy frame, which he used to pose dramatically as he let them admire him.

  Sally admired. She admired a lot.

  “I’m James,” he announced, as if he needed to. They could all see his name by looking at him. “And you…” he made a clicking sound with his tongue, “are downright tragic. What happened to you?”

  “Scorpion,” Sally answered. “Mud. Cold water.”

  She shivered.

  “You poor darling.” James swept toward her. “And those poor boots. What a loss! But this is what I’m here for, it’s what I do. Let’s make you shine.”

  He began propelling her toward a back room, as Essley had propelled her toward this store, but with more determination.

  Sally looked behind her, toward her friends. “Is this good? Do I want to…shine?”

  She was pretty sure she couldn’t pull off a look with that much glitter and so many ruffles.

  “Just link your account and do whatever he says,” Essley advised. “I’m pretty sure this place was made for you. It’s kind of like Raoul’s, but all about you rather than where you live, and much more…well, much.”

  Sally threw a desperate look to Darthrok for confirmation, but he only shrugged and smiled.

  James tugged her down a hallway that was dark, then bright red, then dark, then bright yellow, and continued changing every second. The strobing shift from dark to light made movements seem mechanical.

  “Neat.” She passed her hand in front of her face several times while James led her along. He paused, opened a door, and made a grand gesture like she’d won a major award and the prize was just inside.

  “Hang on,” she said. “Is there something terrible in there? Because this seems like a great way to kill someone.”

  He arched one immaculate eyebrow. “Do I look like someone who would dirty my store that way?”

  “No. You really don’t.” She hoped he’d say more, but it seemed she’d received all the words from him that she’d get.

  Sally nervously inched into the room. A light came on and Sally gasped. “How does it all fit?”

  James smirked. “Magic, darling.”

  Sally stared up at what appeared to be eight stories of clothing display windows that encircled the room, which she realized was a dressing room.

  He entered behind her and closed the door, standing next to a control panel of switches and levers.

  “Let’s get started,” he declared. “Now, can I assume that this is your standard fashion?” He waggled his fingers at her wet clothes.

  Embarrassed to be in such a haphazard state, Sally shrugged. “I like it.”

  “Are you willing to
take some risks?” James grinned at her with a wolfish expression.

  Why did this suddenly feel riskier than the scorpion confrontation? Sally longed to grab a socket wrench to hold, for its familiar weight and comfort.

  “Some risk,” she agreed slowly. “Not too much. I have to be a certain way. Not too…extreme.”

  “Hmm, a professional thing?” he asked, biting his lip thoughtfully and gazing up at the story upon story of displayed fashions.

  She nodded. “Yes. Work.”

  “Gotcha. I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I want you to answer with the first answer that comes to your mind, no thinking. Quick, quick like a bunny, got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Dresses or pants?” he demanded.

  “Pants.”

  “Flowing or form-fitting?”

  “Form-fitting.” She carefully executed the tricky f-words with effort.

  “Bright or muted?”

  Sally hesitated. She liked both.

  “Quick!” he snapped.

  “Both!”

  He smiled, but continued the interrogation. “What’s one word that describes you?”

  “Strong!”

  “What’s your favorite snack?”

  “Churros!”

  He put a hand to his chin, gazing at her intently. “Okay. One more. Do you have a boyfriend? Because I might need to marry you.”

  A laugh rose in Sally’s throat, but James looked so serious she wasn’t sure if he was joking. She didn’t want to offend him if he’d fallen in love with her. “No.”

  “Is that no, you don’t have a boyfriend, or no, you won’t marry me?” His eyes sparkled with amusement.

  Ah, he was teasing.

  “Just no,” Sally answered primly, then shot him a mischievous smile.

  He laughed. “Fair enough. Okay, let’s get started. Go behind the screen, please, and change into a robe. Those ruined clothes are making me sad.”

  She followed the direction of his pointing finger, then went to the other side of the thick, metal screen. Gratefully, she quickly peeled the sodden clothes from her skin, wiped off with a soft purple towel, and pulled on a silky pink dressing gown with a script pattern running down the long, flowing sleeves.

  She felt fancy already.