Transversals

XXI. Catalytic Converter

The agreement was laid out and set in reluctant stone by Dad: one week off of school to do this hunting thing with Ben, and Lana carries on normally in this dimension. She was kinda bummed about not being able to tag along with Ben like she usually does, but they'd be dragged back to Ingenist for detainment if I didn't go through and glitch the monitors on all the mirrors first. I knew that was the main reason Ben was taking me along. Definitely not because of my fighting skills.

So everyone was now in the loop: Afton, Mattie, Will, Dad, and Hanna all knew what I was and what was happening.

I couldn't sleep well that night, too nervous and excited for the prospect of the next day, which affected my performance and earned a few snarky comments from Ben in the midst of battling. But it went okay, overall. I got better at fighting, actually.

"Are you going to ever tell me how you got these swords?" I asked Ben, taking a hungry bite out of my sandwich and admiring the pink sky, streaked with deep purples, oranges, reds, and yellows. The sun wasn't setting; the sky was naturally like this all the time. We were perched on top of an old, isolated, empty home for the best view, because Ben promised wherever we stopped for lunch would be a sight to see.

"Jeremy got your swords," Ben answered, grumbling into his sandwich and taking a bite, elbows set on his knees. "He was our Ingenist hook-up."

"Wait, is he still going to Afton's school?" I asked.

Ben chuckled. "Hell no. He knows he'd be butchered meat if he did." Taking another bite and leaning back on a hand, the pink sky glinted in his navy eyes beautifully.

I tore myself away from the sight and looked out among the world again. The wind smelled of light floral perfume and the light hit the valley picturesquely: a sea of yellow, purple, and blue wildflowers smattered like an impressionist's river. It was as perfect as a song would state it, as a writer would describe, and I couldn't hold back the sigh. God, did Ben know beauty. I was almost bouncing with anticipation to see where lunch would be the next four days.

"Swords are impractical, I know," Ben began, putting his sandwich down and sliding a sheath off his belt. "But Dad had these things handcrafted. They don't catch on blue fire with those monsters and have thermal reactivity." He unsheathed the glinting, metal blade and held it in his hands gingerly, like a fragile snowflake. "It's why cutting through those monsters is possible. The blade heats up and slices like a hot knife through butter as soon as it meets something cold."

I noticed a little notch on the bottom of the hilt facing me, some sort of built-in drive in the center of the wood. "What's in the end?"

He looked himself and then sheathed the sword, slipping it back on his belt. "That's Mattie's design. Whenever we slay a monster the coordinates are documented and recorded in his computer through that." I stopped chewing as Ben picked up his sandwich again, casually admiring the sky. Eventually he caught onto my silence and laughed, eyes closing. "What, Axelson."

"You guys...have everything," I said, swallowing halfway through my rushed sentence. "Seriously. Can't you see a pattern to these things by now? I don't know, maybe save the world with this insane technology you've got access to?"

"Not enough data," he replied, searching for his water bottle behind him and then taking a sip. "That's why we're resorting to hunting them out. The tracker Mattie installed doesn't account for all the ice monsters, only the ones that go through monitored mirrors. A lot are showing up to dimensions...uninvited, we'll say."

"So when are you going to have enough?" I asked, slowly stealing the water from him and taking a sip. He only smiled and closed his eyes a brief moment, laughing lightly.