Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Six - Operation: Look Like A Big Hero and Don't Die

  I decided to keep that one Save I had standing next to my bike. It was just far enough 'back' that I could use it as a starting point for scouting, and there would be a lot of scouting.

  I was about to do exactly what the nice doctor had told me not to. There was a breach coming up, and I was going to be there to stand in its way... but not the first time, and not alone.

  The plan, for now, was simple; get Fran and Becky onboard with playing the big damn heroes again. We had done a bit of fighting next to each other, and while that had only been against a little E-rank portal, I was pretty sure it was good enough.

  I had a lot of stuff going on all at once, so I decided to draw up a list to start with, something simple.

  Operation: Look Like A Big Hero and Don't Die.

  Part 1: Convince Fran to join

  Part 1b: Convince Becky to join (don't mention the electrical discharge thing)

  Part 2: Wait until tomorrow

  Part 3: Inspect the Breaches in person.

  Part 4: Reload and call Fran and Becky again, but better.

  That seemed like a more or less reasonable setup. The long part would be the wait overnight, and then waiting overnight again. As much as my time looping power was a huge blessing, sometimes it could be a bit of a curse. Two nights of post-op recovery in a row, maybe more, all because I wanted a better idea of what I was getting into was... a bit much?

  Still, it wasn't all bad. Better a bit of inconvenient suffering now than... death?

  I grabbed a spare burner from the back of my bike. I had a few stashed there, batteries out and sim cards pre-paid, just in case. I plugged one back in, then dialed Fran's number from memory.

  The conversation was short. She was busy with something, and we'd already more or less agreed to meet up. I told her that I'd call her tomorrow with more details... which wasn't true. Well, it might be true in some future version of tomorrow? Yeah, that was good enough to assuage some of my guilt.

  Then it was Becky's turn.

  I took a deep breath and then hesitated some more. Calling Becky wasn't the issue, it was... okay, so it was calling her that was the issue. After her little moment at Jane's shop, I figured that Becky had either changed names and cities, or was going to act like nothing at all had happened.

  If it was the latter, then I was happy enough to play along.

  The phone rang, then someone answered. I waited.

  They waited too.

  The moment stretched on for a few awkward seconds before I cleared my throat and spoke up first. "Hello?"

  "Oh, uh, hey," Becky said. "Sorry. Usually, when it's a scam call, you can kinda just leave it all silent for a while, and if you don't say anything, they eventually give up. And I wasn't really expecting to be called, you know? Who calls, nowadays, anyway? You know, we have an Order server we're all on, it's way better for chatting and shit, and there's some voice channels too, if you want. Sometimes I watch Mouse playing games on there."

  I found myself relaxing a little. Something about Becky's prattling was oddly comforting. "Hi Becky," I said.

  "Yeah, hey," she said. "So, uh, what's the call about?"

  "Just wanted to see if you were down for a bit of..." I paused. I was about to say 'fun,' which would have been a nice, if sarcastic, way of saying that I wanted her to come along to beat up some monsters and be our third fighter, but the implication there might have been a bit much. "Uh, sorry. I mean. Fran and I know about a breach that'll be happening on the edge of the city tomorrow. We could use you for it. In-costume."

  "Oh, yeah, the costume that I got at Jane's place? That one?"

  "Yes?"

  "Oh... right, yeah. I can do that."

  "Is something wrong with the uniform?" I asked.

  "Nothing," she said, very quickly.

  "Becky?"

  "Hey, uh, text me the location, I'll see you tomorrow. K? Bye!"

  I blinked at the phone, the dead line tone the only sound coming from it. That was... weird, but maybe it was something innocent? Or maybe it was very much the opposite of innocent. My mind certainly went places.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Well, whatever. I got on my bike and headed out. The breaches, as far as I had discovered, more or less started some three miles to the west of the industrial park.

  It was a nice ride, at least once I got out of the city centre and into the calmer parts, where the traffic wasn't as bad. That area between the walls, where traffic squeezed down into three incoming and outgoing lanes, was always a nightmare to navigate. Even cheating by riding between cars didn't save me very much time.

  Eventually I made it out of the city. It was damned near one in the morning though, and I knew that the breaches were going to start at some ridiculous time in the morning.

  So, I stopped by some gas station, filled up on energy drinks and some shitty reheated glizzies, then I checked my phone for a while and found a shitty pay-by-the-hour capsule motel out by the edge of the city. Not ideal, sure, but it was better than nothing.

  I rode in, parked, picked the slab that looked the least crusty, then tried to sleep.

  Fuck, I missed my bed. And I couldn't stop wondering if Mister Couchtop was missing me, which was a stupid thing to be thinking about while in a sleazy motel in the ass-end of the city. This was the kind of dimly-lit, cigarette-smelling place where pretty young women went missing. Most pretty young women didn't carry a hand cannon with the safety off, but maybe they ought to.

  It took a long time for me to fall asleep, but eventually my alarm went off and I awoke with a start, feeling more tired than when I'd settled in. The drugs were wearing off.

  Groaning, I slid to the edge of the slab, applied some of that salve to my arm and armpit which really was getting crazy itchy, then I dropped some of that eye stuff into my eyes, just in case. I left me blinking back tears.

  It was currently six in the morning. A whole two hours before shit went down.

  Breakfast was a XXXXL Burrito from a vending machine. It tasted like sadness and damp socks, but I supposed there were some calories in it, maybe. I really didn't want to find out, truth be told. It filled me up a bit, and left me a little depressed, but that was what I had around.

  I made a mental note to bring better food, the next time I ran through this whole thing. Not that I planned on being here at this kind of hour for the final loop.

  I was a little worried that with the operation, the post-op jitters, and only, at best, six hours to sleep, I'd be a bit rough even in the final loop, but maybe things wouldn't be so bad? At least I wasn't going in solo.

  The first stop was...

  I stepped outside and then stared at an empty parking spot. A spot that had very much contained my bike.

  "What the fuck," I said.

  Shit, I'd started off being constantly worried that my bike would be nabbed, and then I relaxed about it, and now it was just, not where I'd left it.

  I stomped into the motel's lobby, demanded the guy behind the counter pull up security, and when he refused, I reached over the counter with glowing eyes and pulled him close enough that he could probably smell the burrito on my breath. He politely acquiesced and I got to see some grainy CCTV footage of a couple of young punks fiddling with my bike before casually riding off with it.

  Fucking Fortress ENE. Couldn't have anything nice here.

  There wasn't even anything I could do. Not reasonably. Why chase after them when I could just Reload. But I was here, now, already, and not in the mood to Reload.

  So I called an auto-taxi instead, pissed off the entire damned time. That was the kind of mood I was in when I arrived at my first destination.

  All around Fortress ENE, and most other fortress cities as far as I understood it, were 'checkpoints.'

  They were large, reinforced buildings, a couple of stories tall, with almost medieval parapets above them. They were always alongside the main roads in and out of the city, and there was usually some token guard force at each one. They were meant to have shit like AA emplacements too, but I had a sinking suspicion that those around Fortress ENE were undermanned and under-equipped.

  The one I was stopping at was checkpoint West-Two, the nearest to the breach, and where any teams coming over to stop it would be told to muster.

  ***