Peppermint

Chapter 21 - City Of Blinding Lights

***GABE***

The elevator finally reaches the bottom of the shaft, allowing me to look up and see just how far we've come. The jalebi is no longer visible, but it's still up there, hanging over our heads. Otherwise it'd be down here, probably raining all over us. I'm not sure which option is worse.

I let go of the elevator cable, but my light persists for a few seconds longer than it does for TJ. He shuts his down immediately, but me, having such a new power, I'm not 100% sure where the on/off switch is. It takes me some time to visualize it shutting off, but even then, there's still a bit of a tingle in my fingertips and a persistent shine under my fingernails.

"Noobish question," I tell TJ in an undertone, hoping it's really him and not Penner because I honestly can't be sure anymore, "but does this ever go away?"

"When I first started light-elementaling," he says, "it dimmed slowly. Very slowly. And only if I didn't use that power for a while."

"Oh good." I stick my hands in my pockets, where the faint gleam is no longer visible. "I didn't wanna add too much sparkle next time I was at the Pride parade."

"Hey, what are you doing?" TJ seizes one of my wrists and pulls my hand out. "We gotta cut into this thing to get out."

"What?" Then it dawns on me. "Oh." I kneel next to him as he fires up fast-moving light blades on both hands. Can I do this? I just have to copy him, I guess. Think like Alex - he has to observe and copy other people all the time. No, not on schoolwork, you assbutts - social cues. And, in my case now, elemental powers. Which I, again, do to the best of my ability, though it's still very limited because I can't make my light rev up to TJ's speed. I can't even make a spark against the metal surface of the elevator the way TJ does.

"You want me to speed you guys up?" Yash asks.

"You can do that?" I ask at about the same time TJ does.

"I can," Yash says with a small shrug, "but it's tricky. I mean, you guys ain't exactly jalebi cooking. If I speed your time up, there could be side effects. Like, oh, I dunno, you'll both piss your pants-"

As Javi struggles to hold in his juvenile laughter (I say while undergoing the same struggle), I resolutely focus on speeding up my own light chainsaw. "Thanks," I say, "but I'd rather not ruin my Christmas present."

"What, those pants?" Yash asks. "Who'd give you nut-huggers like those as a gift?"

"It's not the pants, dude, it's what's inside them."

"Someone gifted you a second cock?"

I almost want to just let the subject drop, but if the alternative is letting Yash headcanon me as a double-dicked monster... "Hogwarts underwear."

"You're a nerd," TJ says.

"Geek," I correct him, speeding up my chainsaw even more and finally matching him spark for spark. "To quote my brother, 'Trust me, there's a distinction.'"

I don't think Yash time-manipulates either me or TJ, judging from how we finish the job with dry pants. Even so, we manage to pop a sizable hole in the top of the elevator in a pretty short time. Yash does, however, speed up time on the edges of the hole to make them cool off faster than they would normally. "Even though metal loses heat pretty quickly," he points out. "It tends to have a low specific heat. You guys know what I'm talking about, right?"

TJ's the only one who shakes his head, prompting Yash to give him the abridged version as we all climb down into the belly of this cuboid beast. From there, I press the button to open the door, revealing a small room where Kaufman supervises Harris, who supervises Aditya as he clicks away at an ancient computer. It almost reminds me of a certain climactic scene in the original Jurassic Park - hell, the computer graphics look exactly that dated. And here I thought the Second 'Verse was supposed to have more cutting-edge tech.