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AA 1.50 - Let's Hear 'em Out
🕑 Added 2025-07-03 22:03:06 +0000 UTCWell, here we have another chapter! And I'm tired :)
Enjoy while I go and grill some meat.
-Plum
50 – Let’s Hear ’em Out
As Andy and his six compatriots started down the long trail leading to the base of the plateau, Tucker hissed, “Damn! Wish I had a flashlight. Did anyone bring a lamp?” Andy didn’t feel like it was dark at all, but he glanced up, noticing that the moon was absent, obscured by some glowering thunder clouds rolling in out of the east. It didn’t smell like rain, but even if the storm missed them, it hadn’t missed blocking out the primary source of light at night.
“No lights,” Andy said before anyone had a chance to respond. “Anyone within a mile of this place would see us coming down. Hell, maybe more like five miles.”
“It’s a pretty long drop if we misstep,” Lucy said, glancing at Tucker to let him know his concern had been heard.
“I’ll go first, make sure the trail is clear, and you all need to follow with one hand touching the cliff-face as you go. You’re eyes are going to adjust. Trust me, you’ll be fine.” With that, Andy turned and started down the trail, leaving them to, hopefully, come to the conclusion that he was right and follow along. When he reached the first switchback, he turned to watch and counted five bright figures slowly descending, already about halfway to him.
He waited, turning to look out over the desert. He wondered how good his night vision was. Could he see people lit-up like that if they were a mile away? Ten miles? Scanning the desert at the foot of the plateau and running his eyes left and right as he looked further and further out, he wasn’t sure. He caught a few rabbits close up, but nothing much else.
“That you, Andy?”
Andy turned to see Lucy approaching. “Hey.”
“Never mind, now I see your eyes. Anything out there?”
“Some rabbits.”
“How are we going to find them? The, uh, scouts?”
Andy thought about it for a moment, realizing there was a kink in his original plan. “Shit. Is it too dark for you to track?”
She shrugged. “I’m not sure. If I activate the skill, maybe the tracks will still light up for me.”
Chuckling, Andy said, “Well, try it. See if you can spot any tracks on the trail.”
“Tracks?” Omar asked, coming to stop behind Lucy.
Lucy nodded, holding up a hand. “One sec. Suddenly, her eyes flared with green light, and she looked down with a big smile. “It works.”
“She has a tracking skill, Omar,” Andy answered, speaking loudly enough that Bella and the others coming up behind could hear. “We’ll work through the desert between us and Construction City. I’ll lead us in a straight line; if they passed through, you’ll pick up their tracks.”
Lucy nodded. “I can keep the spell active pretty long.”
“Nice.” Andy had been thinking that, if she couldn’t track in the dark, he could have used his much lower-ranked skill. He was glad he wouldn’t have to. “All right, I’m headed to the next switchback. I’ll holler if there’s anything in the trail to worry about.”
Omar stepped a little closer and said, “Just a sec, Andy. I was thinking while we fumbled our way down here. What are we going to do in a fight? Brian and I both brought camping lanterns, but if you don’t want anyone to see us…”
“Nah, once we know where they are, I’ll scout things out, and then we can light up before we attack. Odds are, they’ll have some lights going too.”
Omar nodded, looking much relieved, and Andy turned to jog down the trail to the next switchback. It went like that for another ten minutes, corner to corner, before they reached the bottom of the trail. Using the mountains and foothills as a guide, Andy steered them in the right direction for Construction City. “We’ll head about a mile into the desert, then start angling to the south, looking for tracks.”
“Hey,” Bella said, “I can see a little better. I think those clouds are thinning.”
Andy turned to the east and watched the dark clouds for a minute, nodding. “Yeah, they’re moving south pretty fast.”
“Hallelujah!” Tucker said, slapping his hand on his bat.
Andy smiled as he walked. He didn’t mind them making some quiet small talk. They were probably miles from any hostiles, at least judging by what he was picking up with his Reaper’s Senses. He didn’t smell anything worrisome—no musky bestial body odor, for instance. The sounds were another matter; he could hear growling coughs that reminded him of lions, weird hoots and howls, and a dozen other strange sounds. They were all distant, though, so he focused on things closer to hand, and, for the moment, all he heard were his companions.
“Hey, Tucker,” he said over his shoulder. “What’s the deal with your class? Frontier Steward or something?”
“That’s right, man! I get experience for doing things around the settlement, but the System also clued me in that I can earn bonuses for defending it. Seems pretty cool.”
“What the hell? How’d you get that, and I’m sitting with just a Fighter class?”
“What’s wrong with Fighter?” Brian asked.
“I mean, nothing, I guess, it just seems bland.”
Andy looked at Omar. “What about you?”
It took the man a moment to realize Andy was talking to him, then he cleared his throat and shrugged. “Pyre Sentinel. The System gave it to me when I kept the bonfire going the other day.”
Andy’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s… well, that sounds kinda cool. Any abilities?”
He nodded. “I can make wood burn with some mana, and it burns like a son of a bitch. I also can…” He sighed, shaking his head. “This is gonna sound loco, but I can hear spirits that need help moving on.”
Lucy cleared her throat and interjected, “That sounds really neat, Omar, but let me just ask real quick… Andy, should I be tracking now? I mean, in case they got closer than you think?”
Andy nodded. “Yeah. I should have thought of that. We can always rest for a few minutes if you need to regenerate mana.”
“Okay,” she said, and her eyes began to glow again.
“Dude, Omar, that class sounds pretty sick,” Tucker said.
Andy smiled at the guy’s enthusiasm. Thinking about the two “advanced” sounding classes, and Bella’s earlier comment, he said, “Bella, you know you can earn more than one class, right? Did you know you can also evolve a class?”
“Huh? Evolve? How?”
“Well, let me describe what Lucy and I did; we’ve both gotten a class to evolve. In fact, while we’re walking, I should probably give you guys a short version of my little speech I’ve got planned for the community tomorrow. The information is kind of pertinent considering we’re likely to get into at least one fight tonight.”
“I’m listening,” Brian replied.
“All right, well, here’s the deal. It’s just a theory for now, but I think a person’s intention has a significant impact on how the System responds to their actions. I started thinking this way on the first night when…” Andy told his little story, and then he explained the details of how Lucy had become a Monster Hunter and how his actions, improvement point expenditures, and intentions had earned him an offer for the Umbral Reaper class.
He'd answered half a dozen questions by the time Lucy hissed and grabbed his belt, stopping him in his tracks. “Hold up!”
Andy lowered to a crouch, holding his spear ready. “What?”
“Tracks. You almost stepped on them.” She moved past him, staring at the ground. The clouds had moved on a few minutes earlier, freeing the moon from its prison, and though it wasn’t bright, those of them with normal human vision could now see cacti and desert brush as dark shadows, and Andy didn’t have to be so careful about their path. That said, Lucy almost stumbled over a little barrel cactus, and Andy grabbed her arm, pulling her away from it.
“Thanks,” she whispered, glancing to where she’d almost kicked the little hook-spined natural booby trap. She quickly refocused her glowing eyes on the apparent tracks and started moving off to the left.
Andy looked at the others and held a finger to his lips. “Time for quiet.”
“Right,” Tucker nodded.
Andy hurried after Lucy, watching the ground before her to ensure she wouldn’t walk through anything dangerous. Meanwhile, he stretched his hearing, focusing on the little sounds that his subconscious had already dismissed. He followed Lucy for a long while, maybe half a mile, when he heard the unmistakable sound of people speaking in low voices. He grabbed Lucy’s hoodie, and she stopped, looking over her shoulder questioningly.
Andy tapped his ear, whispering, “I hear ’em talking. Let me sneak forward and listen for a minute.” He turned to the others. “You hear that? I’ll scout things out, but you all need to get ready; this is where the, uh, rubber hits the road.”
“So to speak,” Brian said with a raspy snort.
“Don’t kill ’em all without us,” Bella hissed, and the disturbing thing to Andy was that he couldn’t detect a hint of humor in her voice.
“Not if I can help it.” With that, Andy jogged toward a palo verde tree in the direction of the voices, willing the shadows to close in around him. He glided through the desert, running from tree to cactus to greasewood to ocotillo, always trying to keep some shadowy object nearby that he could blend into.
He paused frequently to listen, and when the voices became more than indistinct murmurs, he stopped, squatting low, to listen.
A woman with a low, raspy voice was saying, “…telling you, I don’t care what you all do, but I’m going up there tomorrow. I ain’t going back to Hardhead. You saw what Brooks did to Trig!”
“We’re at war, Shawna. They’ll kill you if you go up there.” This speaker was a man, and his voice sounded young.
“Look,” said another male voice, older, “let’s just sleep on it. I’m fuckin’ dead. Walking all damn day, sitting under the sun, watching that place. I get it, Brooks is an asshole, and we’ve got too damn many assholes at Hardhead, but it’s our home. We’ve been safe there while the city goes to shit.”
“I mean,” said another feminine voice, “you can say that, but some of us don’t have the same rights. You know I’m right. I’m not even that bad off compared to some of the conscripts.”
“Jesus,” Shawna replied. “Who starts conscripting people on the third day of the apocalypse?”
“Third day?” the older guy snorted. “Brooks started that shit on day fuckin’ one. Him and ex-military buds—”
“Hey,” Sawna cut him off, “that’s not what it is. I mean, I know lots of military folks and they aren’t murderers and rapists.”
“We don’t know if that stuff’s going on.” The older guy said, but Andy could hear the denial and doubt in his voice even as far away as he was.
“Come on, Oscar. You’ve heard what some of the conscripts are saying about how things go down when Brook’s crews come around—especially Rhodes.”
They kept talking, but Andy wanted to get eyes on their encampment. It sounded like there were only four people, and it also sounded like most of them weren’t interested in a fight. He was willing to hear them out, if for no other reason than to gather some intelligence about the Construction City settlement. He wasn’t surprised to find them camped out under the broad canopy of a mesquite tree.
He inched closer, stopping by a greasewood bush about twenty feet away. He peered between the branches, noting the dim embers of a near-extinguished fire and four sleeping bags. Remembering the first crew he’d run into from their settlement, he scanned the branches of the mesquite, looking for someone on watch. He didn’t spot one, nor did he find one when he checked the area around the camp. He stared, listening and smelling for a long while, but he couldn’t find anyone on lookout.
As the Hardhead “scouts” continued to speak in low voices, Andy got up and hurried back to Lucy and the others. He figured they’d surround the scouts, and Andy could confront them. He wasn’t sure he’d offer the ones who wanted to defect the opportunity, but he wanted to hear what they had to say. It seemed a little paranoid, but he also had to consider the possibility that their whispered conversation was an elaborate ploy. That would mean they were expecting him or someone from his settlement to be listening in, which seemed far-fetched to Andy, but anything was possible.
“Well?” Bella asked when he jogged up.
“I found ’em. They were talking about how much they dislike their settlement. I want to try to talk to them.”
“Andy—” Bella started to say, but held up a gloved hand.
“I get it. Trust me, Bella, I get it. I just don’t think these are the same kind of people who captured you and your friends. I’ll let you tell me what you think after you hear ’em, okay.”
She stared at him for a long minute, her eyes dark in the moonlight, and then she nodded. “Okay, Andy.”
Andy looked at the others. “Any objections? There are only four of them.”
Tucker shook his head. “Let’s hear ’em out.”
Comments
Brandon Lydick
I bet there's some way to combine classes as well to increase their quality, which actually reminds me.... The system said the aliens coming would be between levels 10-20 but it never said what kind of classes they would have. Shit
Jonny Glass
The exact moment I sit down at home with a cigar, the masterpiece continues. You're a blessing Plum
