The frenemy of my enemy is my... friend? Ugh, something like that.
- Star Guardian Ahri, League of Legends
I slowly blinked awake. I felt... Good? That was not what I was used to after surgery.
In my experience you feel like crap, extremely loopy and just drift in and out of consciousness for the remainder of the day with a little break in there because a nurse is pleading with you to eat some food to give your body energy to recover and especially make a bunch of blood.
Not that I was going to complain about it. I much preferred the "waking up on a Saturday morning after having gotten like 12 hours of sleep, so you're fully rested and actually have energy to grade papers" feeling to the one I had after my last surgery.
"You're finally awake."
My ears twitched to locate the source of the sound. They could do that now. It felt... Interesting. Definitely a good interesting though.
I lifted my head to look at whoever had just spoken. Oh yeah right, that makes sense. It was Naruto, the only other person here with me.
Wait, those words.
Was he...
No, no he wouldn't do that.
"You were trying to cross the border, right?"
With a groan, I let my head fall back down into the soft exterior of the surgery-table.
"Is this payback for earlier?"
"BELIEVE IT!"
I had no one to blame but myself. My hubris proved to be my undoing. And that was despite or perhaps because of me arguing that flying closer to the sun would actually not make the wax melt...
"In more serious news, we need you. Liam and I are holding on but only barely."
With another groan, I got up.
"I can't believe you just Skyrim'd me. I thought you were better than that!"
I elected to ignore the audacity of replying to that with a shrug.
“Also who’s Liam?”
“Some magical guy who just showed up and started killing Antithesis, I don’t know? He’s helpful though.”
I raised an eyebrow and gave him a look.
He sighed.
“Look, it’s best if you just meet him yourself. I don’t really know how else to describe him…”
Welp, I was going to have to leave the tent at some point anyways. Which probably includes meeting this magical guy that just showed up for no reason.
Naruto left the tent and I followed closely behind him. Truth be told, I was eager to test out my new toys.
Speaking of toys…
“Okay, I think you should wait with your upgrades until after I’ve determined that I can handle the situation. I should be able to? But better safe than sorry.”
Aaaand as soon as I took a look at the situation around me, I realized how silly that sounded. There were like 20-something copies of Naruto frantically spraying and praying and also some guy who stood out from the crowd of cosplayers.
Not because he was dressed normally, but because a dark purple poncho is distinctly different from the bright orange jumpsuit Naruto is known for.
So that must be Liam.
He turned, and looked at me with a roguish grin.
“You’re finally awake.”
“No! You are not Skyrimming me also! One guy doing it was bad enough!”
I cut him off, and also, because I apparently could do that now, sent a sword flying through the head of some Antithesis he had been engaged in combat with.
“Well, it’s good that you’re here. I was starting to run out of mana.”
I was about to protest that magic wasn’t real, but even though the burden of proof lay with the party claiming the outrageous statement, I did consider that we had never disproven the existence of it. Mostly because it’s hard to prove something that doesn’t have a set definition isn’t real.
“Lyona, is magic real?”
Unless you had a probably all-knowing alien AI to help you figure things out.
The protectors have yet to find evidence of any supernatural phenomena that cannot be explained by science. Do however note that sufficiently advanced technology may be hard to distinguish from magic. It may remain bound by the laws of the universe, but those laws are rather flexible and can be bent into a lot of shapes in the right circumstances.
So no.
“Magic isn’t real.”
He stuck his tongue out at me.
“Bet.”
Tapping his cane twice onto the ground, a huge mandala appeared in the air above us, which quickly shifted into a hole in space from which a gigantic tentacle stretched out to grab an approaching Model. With a sickening crunch, the tentacle crushed it into goop before slamming its mass into the ground, sending a needlessly big dustcloud into the air.
Alright. I see how it is. Challenge accepted.
Once more, time seemingly slowed to a crawl around me, as my senses sharpened.
I lined up my blades to make a pathway for me. The artillery-situation had still not been addressed, so I was going to just have to run over them.
‘Lyona, can you highlight the most dangerous Antithesis in the area for me? I want to prove a point.’
Rather than a response, I got an outline around a really big alien. A model 12, Lyona would later tell me. I had my target, so I ran towards it, using two of my blades to walk and the rest to block and intercept model 5 quills.
Yeah, I could handle this now. I turned around to give Naruto a thumbs up, before realizing he would not be able to follow along what I was doing until what would feel like an eternity for me.
Oh well.
I jumped down, spear in hand and all of my 10 blades trailing behind me. I rammed the spear into whatever passed for the head of the 12, while my blades fanned out to go dice up some vegetables.
I must have hit something important, because the big alien just dropped dead.
I ran and literally sliced my way back over to the makeshift base.
“And I did that without any collateral-damage.”
He shrugged.
“Different Roles. I’m a summoner, you’re an assassin.”
Time sped back up to normal, as I relaxed.
“Bruiser, actually. Maybe with a bit of juggernaut thrown in for extra spice.”
He then proceeded to take a step to the side, puking his guts out. He wiped his mouth as he looked up at me.
“Admittedly, that mental boost spell hurts. A lot.”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“Then why the fuck not just use nanites like everyone else? Also please tell me you have medical utilities unlocked?”
“I mean… Flexibility with how I use the spells, and open options for if I want to make a different change later. Also… No, I don’t.”
I was about to ask him if he’s stupid, which granted, was a bit of a silly question, making him state the obvious and all that, when Naruto interjected.
“Right, I’m going to leave you two to your… Dick-measuring contest or whatever. I believe it’s now my turn to get my upgrades?”
Liam grins at me again.
“I’m oom.”
“Take a fucking mana-potion or whatever equivalent bullshit you have then. You’re the mage, you deal with the crowds. I’m the tank and melee DPS in one so I’m gonna be both the frontline and hog all the attention and develop main-character syndrome. Healers adjust!”
He looked at me like I was the idiot.
“That's not how mana works.”
“Don’t care, figure it out.”
With that, I lept back into the fray, perception once more speeding up to be in sync with my body's speed-limit.
Those dream-lessons were one hell of a drug, because thanks to my new directional hearing, I could get a sense of where everything around me was, which - paired with the slow-mo affecting the rest of the world - made weaving in and out of enemy fire both incredibly easy and fun.
I had a manic grin on my face, within what felt like seconds. Who would have thought fighting off an alien invasion-force could feel this fun?
After a long time of murderizing plants, I figured I should check in on Liam. I hadn’t seen any of his bullshit that he claimed was magic since I started, so better safe than sorry.
I wasn’t too worried about him coughing up blood earlier, since he definitely had enough points to buy class 1 medical and a hemo-restore plus nano regen.
But it couldn’t hurt to check in on him anyways.
…
Oh.
I was wrong.
It could hurt.
Fucker had pulled up a table and chair and started sipping tea!
Luckily for him, I was in a target-rich environment, and had plenty of punching-bags nearby to help me let out my frustrations.