Chapter Thirteen - Koschei

Alice and Crystal followed Koschei out of the corner where Pavlo had sequestered himself and back into the main bar of the Last Resort. "Do you have a place to sleep?" he asked.

"We don't, but we'll be fine, I'm certain," Alice replied. "Why do you ask?"

Koschei rubbed a knuckle past his nose. "We'll be heading out at six."

"At night?" Crystal asked.

"In the morning," he replied. "It's an hour before the guard is changed on the walls. There's light enough to see without torches, and the city's coming awake, so there's a little bit of noise cover."

Alice nodded, though somewhat reluctantly. "Is it so important not to be seen?"

Koschei raised a hand and wiggled it in a so-so gesture. "The guards have taken out a few Stalkers before, just opened up on them while they're running out of the city. More often when they're coming back. The trinkets we grab, they're worth more than what a soldier makes in a month in this shithole of a city."

Which meant that the guards had a clear financial incentive to shoot anyone returning to grab what they'd found. "Did you want to meet somewhere?" Crystal asked.

"Here. Five," he replied. "You'd better be more ready than you are now. Pavlo might pay me to guide you, but that doesn't mean I need to babysit you there."

"Got it," Alice replied. "Is there a place you trust around here for gear?"

He frowned, then nodded. "The Frenchman's place," he said.

"Where's that?" Crystal asked, and that set Koschei towards the bar. He returned quickly, with a little writing pad and a borrowed pen. He scribbled an address down on one side, then drew a very simple, barebones map on the reverse.

"That'll get you to his place. Better hurry. He's rude even when you don't show up ten minutes before closing. But the prices are good, and he cares less about the government than he does his clients."

"Right," Alice said as she gingerly took the note. "We'll head over, then. See you here at five." He nodded, then rubbed his nose again before walking off. "He's a man of few words," she muttered.

"He doesn't seem all that bad," Crystal replied. "I mean... a bit rude, but not mean, you know?"

"I suppose," Alice said. "In any case, I can think of worse travelling companions. Did you want to visit this place?" she asked, raising the little paper.

"Sure!" Crystal said. "I think we'll be much better off if we look the part. Besides, knowing what the locals use will give us a better clue of what's going on, right?"

Alice shrugged a shoulder. "What do we know?" she asked. "We've been here for half a day, it should be enough to piece a few things together."

"Well, obviously Meagan was around. Or her powers were. Or something. I think it's pretty much the same as what happened with you, but without the brain-eating nightmare monsters and more time shenanigans. The magic objects are new too."

"I see. Meagan's magic displays itself differently than mine. That's... entirely logical, actually. We have different domains, different expressions of our magics. It wouldn't make sense for them to appear the same, or have the same functions. Meagan's seems to be linking itself to items that can allow normal people to express a small fraction of her power."

"A trick per trinket," Crystal said. "There's probably lots of them around with similar powers. I wonder why they're all so concentrated? In the world where I found you, the powers were kind of spread around all over, you know?"

"Meagan might just be better at keeping a lid on things?"

"I guess. What about the big storms? I don't remember her ever doing something like that?"

Alice frowned as she thought. No, she couldn't remember Meagan ever directly controlling the weather. It had happened that one or two of their group had to deal with the weather in some way or another. Preventing tsunamis, or pushing away hurricanes. Those were some of the more mundane times where they acted to save people.

Meagan... wasn't entirely useful with that kind of thing, except to act as an early warning system.

They had had a small online chat room just for the twelve of them, and there was a 'schedule' page on it that Meagan updated weeks or months in advance with disasters and the like so that they could all be ready for them.

"No, I can't remember her creating storms," Alice said. "Could that be a local event? Or maybe a storm was ongoing and whatever happened to her happened to coincide with a large storm?"

"And then her magic made it loop," Crystal filled in with a nod. "That sounds a lot more, uh, what's the word? Plausible?"

Alice and Crystal slipped out of the bar, then started to follow Koschei's directions towards the Frenchman's place. "So, we have an idea of what's going on. And how to fix it, right?"

"Get to Meagan, give her cheek a smack," Crystal said.

Alice choked. "What?"

Crystal blinked at her, then smacked her face. "Give her cheek a smack? Like to wake her up."

"Oh, yes, okay," Alice said.

"What did you think I meant?"

"Nevermind," Alice said. "Anyway. Yes. We'll find Meagan and... shake her awake."

"Of course, we'll save this world while we're at it," Crystal said. "I'm kinda curious about what made this place so special? Like, different, I mean. The storm thing started, uh, was it three years ago? I can't remember."

"It hasn't been long," Alice said. "Whatever happened to make this world different from our own occurred a long time ago, however. World War Two clearly ended differently. And I think this is technically still the USSR, which... doesn't quite track, it fell long before now on our Earth."

"Neat!" Crystal said. She stretched her hands out over her head. "So, what's that mean for us?"

Alice considered it for a while. "Not overly much. It's an old superpower, but I can't imagine them being much of a threat to us. They might be somewhat annoying if they get in our way, but that's all."

Crystal spun, then leaned into Alice's side. "Yeah! With the two of us here, there's nothing to be worried about."

Alice nodded, then looked down at where Crystal was pressed into her side. She shifted a little, wrapping an arm around Crystal's shoulder. "Don't worry. We'll get to her."

"Oh, uh, I'm not worried," Crystal said. Her quick, clipped tone suggested otherwise to Alice. "A-anyway, we're here!"

They were, indeed, 'here.' That being, in front of a gated pawn shop down the side of a busier street. The shop was lit from within, but looked almost deserted otherwise. Posters were glued to the walls, hiding anything within, and the door could have passed for a vault's, being all metal with a letter-slit of glass at head height.

There was no handle, just a buzzer next to the door.

Alice pressed it, and there was an electric buzz from within. A few moments later, the shutter over the door's window slid aside and a pair of eyes looked out to them. "Who are you?" a man asked. He had a thick accent, one that Alice recognized even through her linguistic magic. This was a Frenchmen, just like Silenced Annihilation's friends and family, though perhaps a little harsher.

"Hello, we were sent by Koschei," Alice said.

"We wanna look at some stuff!" Crystal added.

The door remained closed, then the man sighed and ripped it open. "Get in, quick," he replied while tucking a small handgun away to the small of his back. The Frenchman was a scrawny-thin man, with a pitiful moustache and bags under his eyes that suggested a dire lack of sleep. "What are you looking for?" he asked as Alice and Crystal stepped in.

The shop was a bit of a mess. Shelves all over, filled with either beaten up boxes of heaps of unidentified equipment. A lot of it was army green, however. There was a scent to the air too, burning plastic and old rubber.

"We're... venturing out of the city, to the west," Alice said.

"Into the Zone!" Crystal cheered.

Alice gave her a look, which flew over her head leaving her unaffected.

The Frenchman looked at the two of them. "The two of you?" he asked. He squinted. "You barely look old enough to drink."

"Which is why we want to see all of the best gear you have," Crystal said with a cheerful smile. "Just let us see what we'd need to not die? Please?"

Alice could barely believe that it worked.

***