Hydra Heart

Chapter Six

Chapter 6: Long Distance Relationship

Tenra tidied the Kit-chen antsily, waiting for Vesta to come back with Molly. His guest hadn't even eaten the bread he offered, but had picked it apart and gotten crumbs on the carpet.

"Good morning, Pops." Tenra's daughter, Shay Solis, had come emerging from her quarters, still dressed in some light blue PJs, rubbing her eyes.

"Good morning? Young lady, it's 20 hours! Why are you just getting up now?"

"I was, uh." She scratched her head and let off a yawn. "I was up late doing homework, you know?"

"You work for a secret organization! You don't even go to school!" Tenra groaned and rolled his eyes. Sheesh, teenagers, right?

Shay Solis was fifteen years old, and stood a foot shorter than her father. She'd inherited some of his looks, his atrocious eyesight, and some of his desire to fight against Alogos. From her mother, she had inherited a vast quantity of spunk.

"Okay, I was playing Girthworm all night. Happy?"

"Those screens are gonna rot your brain, kid. Now, get on your computer and track Molly. She should be home by now."

Shay grumbled, but did as she was told. They slid down a ladder and got down to the armory, where there was a LightBox that could operate without its signals being detected. Shay cracked her knuckles and sat down. Her father was right behind, looking over her shoulder.

She ravaged the keyboard with her 110 wpm typing speed, opened up TrackGod, and selected Molly.

"Yeah, looks like she's..." Shay did a double take. "Sprinting away from the Nidus Correctional Facility?" They looked at each other, both thinking the same thing: oh no.

--

Molly and Vesta sat next to each other on the couch, heads cast down. Shay was cozy in a chair to the side, relishing the instance where Molly was the one in trouble.

"You got arrested? And you broke out?" Tenra's eyes were wide from something between anger and stress. He was pacing back and forth in front of the guilty party, placing and removing his face from his palms for around twenty seconds. Then, he took a deep breath.

"Alright, I'm calm. Now, tell me how you got out."

"Vesta can block shit with her mind," Molly boasted.

Vesta elaborated on the misleading statement. "We were shot at, and I finally had that moment you said I would, where I realized what Backlash did. It caught the bullets and suspended them in air, then I used more SOLE to send them back."

"Holy shit." Tenra and Shay looked in awe. Vesta was nonchalant.

"Also, I have a question." Vesta sat up, mimicking the posture of the others in the room. "I know I sent back a couple dozen bullets all at once. With a normal SOLE powered handgun, I can normally only pop off about twenty rounds before needing to take a few seconds. How is it that I felt fine after not only stopping the bullets' initial trajectory, but completely reversing it? Do Kits just ignore the laws of physics?"

"Oh, that's actually a really good question." Tenra reached out a hand. "Can I see one of your guns?" Vesta obliged and handed a pistol to him.

"See this 25?" He pointed to a specification number on the barrel of the gun. "That means 25% efficiency in conversion to SOLE. A Kit, on the other hand, converts SOLE at 100% efficiency. Also, this-- ugh-- this bothers me so much; if you ever see somebody saying their device converts at higher than 30%, no matter what it is, they're full of shit. The amount of times I see..." Tenra shook his head, lost in thought about the time he got ripped off on a crate of grenades.