Chapter Nineteen – Entering Endgame… Again?

It was still so early in the morning that the sky hadn’t turned fully blue yet, and dew still clung to the grass. Still, Emily walked across a ditch and was hit by a familiar message.

Entering Endgame.

“The limit’s here,” she said.

“Nice nice!” Trinity replied before skipping over to join her. At the moment it was just Emily and Trinity. Probably not the wisest thing, to head out with just one of her sisters, but the others were all sleeping soundly in that house they’d taken over and she wanted them to get at least eight hours of solid sleep.

The last night had been… kind of fun, actually? They didn’t have a working TV or anything, but the house they had… borrowed, did have a collection of boardgames. They’d spent the night playing games by candle-light, eating chips and candy, and generally lazing around.

Her sisters were all much younger than her, but Emily had still had fun playing silly card games with them, even if some of them cheated outrageously or were kind of bad at the games.

“Alright,” Emily said. She turned over and sat on the opposite bank of the ditch. The grass and bushes around were tall enough to hide her from view from the nearby road. “Can you find a nice rock, Trinity?” she asked.

“Yeah! You bet I can,” Trinity said.

“Thank you,” Emily said. “Find something that’ll be easy to spot tomorrow. We’ll place it more or less where the Endgame begins, and tomorrow, if we have time to come back here, we can place another at the new border.”

It would be a simple way to track the progress of the Endgame as it moved away from the centre of Saint Arie. She was certain that the HRF was doing something similar, probably with far greater accuracy, but she could hardly phone them up to ask about it.

She reached into the pocket of her coat and pulled out a small can of soda and popped the tab. It was a real breakfast of champions, but she was a college student, so it was well within her rights.

With a sigh, Emily opened the Robber menu.

Robber Power Shop

Total Robber Points: 3

Power – Cost

Unlock Simple Door (3 Points)

Minor Shadow Blend (3 Points)

Featherstep (4 Points)

Reach

(3 Points)

Whisper Drift (3 Points)

Summon Glow (3 Points)

Quick Patch (4 Points)

Gust Flick (4 Points)

Shadow Hop (5 Points)

Minor Illusory Double (6 Points)

Dust Hand (5 Points)

The number of powers and their point costs hadn’t changed as far as she could tell, which was probably good. Her sisters had suggested that it wasn’t static, but not being static didn’t mean it had to change constantly.

They’d also said that the powers would only work within the range of this Endgame, which was a little lame, but she could live with that.

Her goal this morning was to read through the skills to see if anything jumped out to her as so good it was necessary.

Unlock Simple Door (3 Points)

You can manipulate the mechanism of a locked door to open it quietly and without a key on touch.

Same as yesterday. A minor power that could unlock doors without a key. That was kind of neat. It would make breaking and entering easier.

Emily rubbed at her face. What had her life come to?

Minor Shadow Blend (3 Points)

You blend more easily into shadows, appearing to be darker than you truly are when outside of the radius of a direct light source.

So, a stealth skill. She wasn’t sure how useful that one would be. Maybe a little, but only to avoid notice at all, and only if there was no light around. It was a long way from being something like true invisibility.

Still, it was… cheap-ish. Having it could be useful. The last thing she needed was to be caught, and so anything that helped with that was good.

Featherstep (4 Points)

Your steps make less sound.

Not ‘no sound’ but ‘less.’ Another very minor stealth ability, and one that was a point more expensive than Minor Shadow Blend. Was Minor Shadow Blend kind of weak, then? It was cheaper than this skill, which also seemed a bit lame.

Reach (3 Points)

You can grab items that are slightly out of your reach.

Emily frowned. How? Was it like telekinesis? That would be useful. But something told her that it wasn’t quite that good. Slightly out of reach could mean anything from a few metres to it being limited to just out of her actual reach.

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Whisper Drift (3 Points)

Your whispers can carry over to someone you see without being overheard by others.

Now that was a neat skill. Like ventriloquism, but without having to spend time learning how to do that. Or was it voice projection? She wasn’t sure, but it seemed neat. A good way to communicate to her sisters while there might be hostiles around.

Summon Glow (3 Points)

You can create a small glowing light.

Emily blinked. Okay. She supposed that flashlights were annoying to carry around sometimes. She missed the one on her smartphone already. It wasn’t anything complicated, but the utility of having light on command was massive.

Maybe that was something she could look for? Powers that gave good utility as opposed to some that were just strong.

If she wanted strong powers, she could rely on her sisters. She had an entire menagerie of cool and interesting and powerful abilities to draw from there. This Endgame stuff was more about… being better at robbery and stealth.

Quick Patch (4 Points)

You can instantly patch up holes in cloth and tissue.

She had no idea why that was even included. Where was the utility in that?

Then again… Teddy did wear through jeans regularly, and Maple might not mind an ability to fix things instantly, even if it was simple.

Gust Flick (4 Points)

You can create a weak, short-lived gust of wind.

That… might be good as a distraction? Tip something over, make a can rattle by far away, maybe force someone to blink?

She could see some uses for this one, but they were very limited. This wasn’t the ability to summon a storm, this was something far weaker and inoffensive.

Shadow Hop (5 Points)

You can teleport up to two metres from shadow to shadow.

Now that was a power. Two metres was… a pathetic range, but any sort of teleportation was good. And shadows were common enough. She could definitely see uses for that. Crossing narrow streets and alleys, moving past a guard, maybe entering a building through a window.

And with that Summon Glow power, they could maybe make their own shadows, which might allow for some combat uses, at least for movement.

A lot of these powers were, she realized, aimed for use in the dead of night, which was pretty fair all things considered.

Robbery didn’t happen in the middle of the afternoon… as far as she could tell. It was definitely more of a nighttime activity.

Minor Illusory Double (6 Points)

You can create a small, unmoving visual clone of yourself. It dissipates upon close inspection.

A little more expensive, but not too much so, and honestly, kind of useful as well. It might be especially handy for Trinity. She could use that kind of thing to distract and make it seem as if she were in even more places at once.

They’d have to practice with it first, to see if it would even be viable in any sort of fight, but… yeah, it was something. Probably worth the points, if they were easy enough to come by.

Dust Hand (5 Points)

You can create a life-sized hand out of dust and particulates that you can move with your mind.

Emily frowned. That sounded like it might be weak, but it could also be alright? Would a punch from a hand made of dust do anything? Would it scatter on impact?

She was pretty sure that dust allergies were pretty common, but she didn’t think she could rely on that to win fights, otherwise they might as well start coating Teddy’s claws in peanut butter and hope that every HRF agent carried an Epi-pen.

Still, there were possibilities there. In terms of utility, grabbing things from afar was just neat, and smacking someone in the face with dust could blind them for a moment. Like… really lame pocket sand.

She was pulled out of her speculations as Trinity started to splash from puddle to puddle. “Hey now, you’re going to get dirty,” she said.

“Yeah!” Trinity agreed.

“Alright, enough of that. Are the others awake?”

“Athena is! She’s trying to put Teddy’s hand in a cup of water to make her pee herself.”

“Where… where did she even hear about that?” Emily asked. “No, nevermind. Let’s head back before anyone starts making too much noise. I do want to make some use of the day.”

***

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