Starting Life From Zero: Far From Home

Chapter Eighteen

In the back of the carriage with a blanket laid out to catch any loose parts that might move out of place, Rocket had dismantled one of the strange devices that he had brought along with him when he joined Otto. Rocket enjoyed building things: this was the first thing that he had learned about the Raccoon on their journey.

Despite walking upright and showing a vast intelligence, Rocket was not a Demi-Human. He was some kind of magical super smart actual raccoon that someone had made this way. Otto didn't quite get what had been meant when all of this was explained to him, but he did know that Rocket was in denial of the fact that a raccoon is what he was.

As Rocket preferred it that there was nothing like him anywhere in the universe and there never would be another one.

"All these things you make, the gun and the other stuff—you just dreamed them up one day?" Asked Otto.

Rocket was still going through his stock of parts and cleaning them, trying to get them fitted together. "I base them on things I seen, some of which I stole. And then other ones I imagined them up all smart like," Rocket said.

"He's a liar." Kate Bishop's voice cut through their conversation with a very matter of fact aura about it. "He modified a gun he had with him already and some of this stuff he makes he just gets lucky and it comes to him—nothing to do with being smart."

Kate was a woman that Otto had guessed was about his age, though she seemed to treat him like a child at every opportunity.

"It's not a lie and it's not luck. I can build all this shit because of my Divine whatsit," Rocket said.

"Here we go with this again," Kate said.

"It's real! My Divine Protection of Forge," Rocket explained. "Let's me make all this shit," he said waving his hands around over the assortment of parts for his gun. "And let's me make all them goofy trick arrows you're carrying."

Kate rolled her eyes. "I don't considering tying an exploding magic rock to a stick to shoot it at someone a new invention," Kate said.

"Then you do it yourself!"

"You've got smaller rodent hands though."

"I ain't no rodent."

Otto forced a chuckle. "Oh yeah, this is all very entertaining," he said. "But haven't we done this exact same argument before?"

This divine protection that Rocket had was only just now coming up, but it made sense. There were some weirder ones out there and some that seemed downright useless. Otto had one himself and it wasn't something that the user had to be taught to use or be made aware of. From the day you could understand, you just had it there and it was a part of you. Even easier than walking or using your own limbs you just had this understanding of it.

Rocket went back to raking his fingers through the parts that were laid out in front of him, searching for whatever it was that he had to put back in place next. "Look, Otto, there's a reason why no one asks you to pick the conversation topics. Because you're boring."

"Well, in my being boring Mister Rocket, I avoid the brunt of the trouble out there," he replied.

"Tell that to those bandits we saved you from. Or the mabeasts that we had to murder our way through. It seems like you've got pretty shit luck," Rocket said.

Kate shrugged. "We did travel from the edge of the country almost back to its center—it's not like we just came a short way."

In the distance the capital was visible now, Lugnica's capital was so spread out and far reaching that the edges of it could be reached well before you came anywhere near the center. Even now they were miles from reaching the city, but the castle on the distant hill was visible and the red and orange and brown tops of the houses and buildings formed a kind of sea of color that blanketed the landscape.