The Lantern Bearers

chapter 15: flux wave

The next morning, yui was up and about, doing this and that to do upkeep on our run down house. Her usual routine is to sweep debris, gather scraps to repair the house and make it more livable, do stock, and clean all the guns we have, including loading them and making sure they were all in top form. Despite her reluctance to using fire arms, as soon as it taught zeus how to disassemble a gun and clean it, she has been on top of the cleaning/repairs game ever since.

Usually, she buys canned foods, drinks, and such, but she quickly found out that we were broke and needed to go out.

Yui walked up to my bed.

"Master, we need to scavenge again." She whispered.

"Uuugh what time is it?" I asked.

"Two o'clock AM, Master." She said.

I looked at her and seen her clothes. The girl was getting more revealing by the day it seemed and i just took notice. Her shirt was full of holes and rips, her belly was visible and her boobs were close to showing nipple, her skirt is almost gone and was close to showing her privates as well. I was so focused on other crap, that didn't pay attention to her appearance until now.

"Why didn't you tell me your clothes were torn to where you were almost naked??" I asked.

"I never seen an issue with it. I read in a book that women who wear less clothing is more appealing to males. Is this appealing master?" She asked with a tilted head.

"Yes- i mean, you can't run around half naked like that, its indecent! What if zeus seen your....stuff?" I asked.

She tilted her head.

"Your breasts and vagina, come on!.....you have those right?" I asked out of curiosity.

"Affirmative, i have female reproductive body parts similar to willow's. As well as breast functionality." She said with a nod.

"Wow.....i mean, you cannot walk around like that! Do a protocol to alert me when you're in need of clothes or to automatically change into less revealing clothes!" I exclaimed.

"Affirmative, setting protocol to aquire and maintain "decency"." She said all robotic like.

"Aye....i need a drink..." i said, feeling the base of the bed for a bottle of booze, but couldn't find one.

"You are out of liqour, master. The bottles have been repurposed as molotovs." She said.

"Son of a bitch....fuck it, let's go before they get up." I said as i put on my pants and shirt.

"Affirmative." She said.

Once we were all geared up, we turned on our lanterns and braved the darkness once again.

Ever since our encounter with karma, i have been on edge ever since. Watching for scope flickers or glares, dirt shooting up, and so on.

Yui could tell i was getting nervous and held my hand. I was a bit taken aback, but the way she smiled as she did it made me feel....calm.

The trip didn't take long, we had only a few mutant dogs and birds to contend with, but nothing noteworthy, due to yui taking them out in seconds.

As we approached the store building, i would pull out my bolt bag, but yui put her hand on mind and shook her head.

"Allow me, master!" She said as she morphed her hands into drills, jumped up in the air, and drilled into the earth.

I was assuming she wanted me to follow and the hole, but right when i began to she came back, making the hole bigger.

"Here you are master! Bolts take too much time so i drilled a hole into the store!" She said with a smile.

She was too cute to be grumpy towards.

"Thank you." I said as i crawled through her tunnel.

It didn't take long to crawl through the tunnel and it beat having to use bolts to figure out where all the anomalies were.

Once we emerged, i immediately looked over the clothes list zeus gave me. He wanted shorts, white tee shirt, jeans, and....a long coat. The tee shirt, jeans, and long coat combo is like mine.....is he mimicking me?

"Master? Is this decency efficient?" Yui asked.

I turned around and seen her new outfit.

She wore a black romper looking body suit, a crop top denim jacket, and knee high socks that....was ripped, covering only a few inches from the knee, due to her robotic feet tearing through the socks. Overall, not bad of an outfit, and it worked perfectly with her iconic helmet!

"Not bad yui, not bad." I said with an approving nod.

"Thank you master." She said with a smile.

The moment was short lived as there was a low rumbling. Earthquakes were usually brief, but this.....this instinctively made my gut sink. I immediately ran up to a window and seen a pink light in the distance.

The dreaded flux wave. Ever now and then, the god eye emits a blast that covers the whole earth. It serves as a worldwide nuke reset button, wiping out all anomalies, mutants, and artifacts and placing them in different locations once the glowing hot ground cools off and goes back to normal. Objects and buildings aren't effected by the blasts, but humans?....they get erased, even their gear does as well. See, it essentially brings back anything taken from a location. If you took a hat from a building and walked back to camp, the flux wave will manifest a new hat in replacement of it, giving you two hats if you want to wait that long.

Being caught out in one is a lantern bearer's worst nightmare in comparison to the worst of anomalies and mutants.

"TAKE COVER!!" I yelled.

She pushed over a cabinet.

"Nonono thats too flimsy!" I yelled.

I was racking my brain as the light grew brighter outside.

"Master?" She asked.

I looked at her.

She jumped up and started drilling out a sizable hole.

The rumbling got more violent and the light outside glowing brighter.

"Jump in master!!" She yelled from below.

I took no time in hopping down the hole.  It was a good several feet and there was a makeshift room in it.

As soon as i landed, she grabbed me and pulled me towards her. I heard some people yelling for help up above, but they were quickly silenced as the deafing roar of the flux wave passed over us, lighting up our dug out room with the light above, shining a circle in the middle of the room.

It seemingly lasted forever, before the rumbling died down slowly, until it was silent. The room was still lit by the white hot surface above.

The aftermath of a flux wave makes all surfaces it touches unapproachable and untreadable. It makes the surfaces white hot, of thousands of degrees. What's bizzare is that it doesn't radiate heat, otherwise we'd be melting, but it only has heat on the surface itself. If you walk by a patch, you won't feel it, but if you touch it, consider whatever part of you that touched it, ash or goop. What's scarier is that you won't feel a thing because of the intense heat, it burns your nerves instantly. So, if you mistakenly tread on it, you could instantly die or lose a limb and not know it.

The heat takes forever to die down....so we were stuck in a hole for god knows how long....