Twice in a lifetime: Book 2

One Ticket out of here, now!

"Where are we, what happened?" Jean asked. She looked around, and all she saw was sand. That wasn't true, her friends were there and there was a dead tree husk a few feet away. "Ruby, did you...?" She saw Ruby, she was bleeding from her head.

"I'm alright." Ruby grimaced. "A bit of the building hit me before we all got here."

"Where is here?"

"I don't know...... I didn't teleport us here."

"Let's do a head count!" Lucy yelled, almost seeming excited to be stranded. "There's me, you, Jean, Eli, Johnny, and Zen." She looked at Zen, his googles were gone, revealing that he had no eyes. He was sitting completely motionless, staring off at nothing.

"Zen, buddy?"  Jean spoke, sitting down so that she was now eye level with Zen. Zen continued to stare as if Jean wasn't even there. Jean stood back up and turned to the others. "Okay, how do we get back to school?"

"I can't teleport right now, I guess I'm too injured." Ruby spoke, her skin covered in scrapes, cuts, and dirt.

"Cool, only contribute if you have an actual idea." Jean snapped back. 

Zen slowly stood back up. "That way." He pointed off past the dead tree husk.

"Zen, Buddy?" Jean repeated. "What are you pointing at?"

"The nearest building is only four miles away." He started walking. With no option, the rest followed behind him.

"How do you know this?" Jean asked.

"I had to vastly expand my performance output, since we're so far out. Be glad I can do that, otherwise id just be a hunk of meat you'd have to carry."

"Zen, buddy, explain for real."

"Fine, if you stop calling me buddy. That's demeaning. I'm seventeen, not three."

"Deal, just explain how you know where we're going, and maybe what happened to your eyes."

"To put it simply, I'm a robot. Well, maybe that's not right. I still have my organs and flesh and muscles here. My dad kind of scooped out my brain and put it in a jar. He was kind of insane, thought this would protect me from the same disease that killed my mother. Lot of good that did, I'm still sick." He laughed at this last sentence, before continuing. "Anyways, he took out my eyes and made an artificial brain by through my eye sockets. I'm remotely connected to my actual brain, back at Akemi labs. My robot body is why I have these fingers. I don't even have two powers." He laughed again. "But I do have excellent hearing, it outlines my surroundings for me. So technically, I can see. So come on, we got some walking to do."