Rain Harlow
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Chapter 54
🕑 Added 2025-06-05 15:00:09 +0000 UTCChapter 54: Spicy
Jack’s classes proceeded steadily. He memorized laws and procedures and attempted to help Highfive do the same with after-class studies, bridging things between the dry deliveries of their professor and the necessary breakdown that Highfive more easily absorbed. He’d get it, just in his own way, essentially. Jack also got him on point by ‘trading’ watching Smegheads In Space, Season 2, if they got through the study targets in time. That did the trick, and Highfive was right: Season 2 was hilarious.
He also got to see Highfive’s quarters in the very lively ‘El Salón’ of the Mantles (short for El Salón de la Leyenda de Plata, or ‘The Hall of the Silver Legend’), during ‘prime time’ in the evening. He met a dozen cadets in the process, hanging out in the halls or a highly frequented, large rec room built immediately after the subway, so that everyone passed through it. He’d never seen so many snack machines in one place, a corner bizarrely labeled with a wooden board hanging from the ceiling by swinging chains, spray-painted with the green text ‘Zona de Combustible.’ There were six different Infused chocolate bars in one! He’d only seen two anywhere else! Jack bought one of each while he was there.
Highfive’s quarters were surprisingly organized, well-kept, and relatively spartan. Unsurprisingly, he did have an impressive trophy shelf of various sports accolades. There was also a pristine-looking massive sniper rifle in a glass enclosure. When he saw Jack looking, Highfive said, “Was my grandfather’s. A hundred and twenty-four confirmed kills. Fourth highest. On record, anyway.”
“Wow,” was Jack’s only reply as he admired the showpiece.
“Yeah, belongs in a museum. Gonna donate it after I graduate. Family supports it. Just here to remind me. Dedication, you know?”
“I do, yeah,” Jack said, pulling his backpack from around to pull the books half out. He grinned the merciless smile he’d learned from Shifu Lindsay. “And today, we are dedicated to… The Law.”
Highfive sighed grandly as he dropped onto his couch. “That smile is pure evil, Jack. I hope I don’t ever have to see the professor do it…”
But the session ended up an especially efficient affair, over in record time, and then they were laughing at space adventure goofiness while eating through many layers of snacks.
Something beyond halfway through, Highfive said Bo was coming over to cook, something she’d promised for months due to a prior favor. Jack was not allowed to excuse himself, noting Bo herself said, ‘He will stay and eat,’ while wearing an insistent expression. And that was that.
Bo showed up hauling a bag of ingredients and a backpack also full of ingredients, with a big pan banging around over her shoulder. She nodded to them and immediately went to the kitchen. When Jack followed to say hi, she just upnodded to him and began immediately getting to business. When he lingered and offered to help, she just met him with a flat gaze and said, “No. Shoo. Out.” She flicked her hand once dismissively, then turned back to her work, ignoring him.
Highfive was smirking faintly with his fingers interlaced behind his head, as Jack sat back down in defeat. When he asked what it was she was cooking, a call came from the kitchen: “La Zi Ji! Mala pepper chicken. With infused sauce. If you don’t like spicy? You will learn to like spicy.”
“I like spicy!” Jack replied immediately.
“Good. Then you won’t need to learn. As much.”
Highfive just nodded along, and when he met Jack’s eyes, they both chuckled briefly.
The smells that eventually came from the kitchen were amazing, and even the sizzling sounds were amazing. The wait was difficult (even though it wasn’t that long), but it became increasingly clear that it was worth the wait. When Highfive caught Jack sniffing the air, he silently nodded emphatically, doing the waft motion, then giving a thumbs-up. When Jack did a silent raising of his eyebrows, like ‘That good?,’ Highfive squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head in an expression which meant, ‘It is, in fact, profoundly good, my friend.’
Abruptly, while they were just watching the third episode, she came around with two small, steaming bowls on top of plates, fancy wooden tongs poking up, and set them on the coffee table in front of them. “Thank you!” both guys said in unison, as she waved a hand idly in response and went back into the kitchen. Highfive dug into his immediately, as Jack took up the food and admired it for a moment. Dark orange chicken pieces sticky with sauce, red chilis, and flecks of green… glorious.
And it tasted even better. She was right, too… it was spicy even for him. It numbed his mouth so strangely — but that didn’t stop him one bit from devouring it.
Bo came back with her own bowl and sat on the floor in front of the coffee table to eat over it, watching the TV as she did.
“This is seriously incredible,” Jack said to her.
She nodded slowly. After chewing and wiping her mouth with a napkin, she replied, “I have half a sack of the peppercorn. When it’s gone, it’s gone.”
“Ah. Expensive, huh?”
“I mean permanently. Was grown from a small habitat of trees where I’m from. They all burned to nothing. They were better when fresher. Oh well.”
“Huh.” Jack looked down into his bowl, seeing the little flecks and pieces here and there. “I’m sure Memoria can regrow. Restore it.”
Bo shook her head as she kept eating.
He pressed on it. “It’s a cultural artifact at this point. You could-”
“No.” She met his eyes in a pause, briefly, before looking away. “It’s useless. Will we cultivate every spice of a planet on a few, scant rocks? Risk death on the mountains for a mouth tickle like we do for coffee? Let the ashes scatter forever. A better thing to preserve: the poetic death of everything on that platform. Remnants just new corpse-blooms.”
The dark sentiment silenced further commentary. They ate silently and watched the show. Jack flickered his eyes to Highfive, but he just shrugged helplessly. Soon, he was laughing and repeating a line on the show. “He is a smeghead, dude! Ha!”
Well, it did happen to be a personal subject. I dug it up. If she wants it buried, that’s her right.
Bo didn’t seem any more perturbed than normal. She paid rapt attention to the screen, a strange little hint of wonder buried somewhere in her eyes. She even sniffed in humor a few times with a ghost of a smile. It was as if the TV made her forget her mask temporarily. She also added, “Get seconds, thirds, fourths, you two. You’re huge. Eat to scale.”
Neither could resist, either. They had seconds, thirds, and fourths. Bo eventually had seconds, at least.
When it was time for cleanup, Bo couldn’t shoo Highfive or Jack away, however much she protested. She got wedged away from the sink, to which she stood and glowered at them for a while, but soon gave up and began packing away what stuff she could without cleaning.
Jack was at the sink cleaning, with Bo behind him, and Highfive was off to use the restroom. He offered, “Hey, sorry about earlier. Didn’t realize-”
“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupted smoothly. “You’re too nice. I don’t throw sorries at you, don’t throw them at me.”
Jack couldn’t help but chuckle. “Fair enough. Noted.” After a moment of thought, he added, “A market deal.”
“Yes.” Possibly a tone indicating amusement.
“Hey, you wanna run together again, sometime?”
“I dunno, do you have a thing for me? Because you’re not my type. Too much bulk.”
Jack was nimble, Jack was quick. He scoffed. “You? No way. Likewise, Tiny. Forget it.”
“Perfect, then,” she replied, and the hint of humor was undeniable. “We’re two stars unaligned.”
“But somewhere in the same vicinity?”
“Something like that. Ugly organization.”
“Butt ugly.” He affected a deliberate hick accent. “Like a green bean and a cabbage in a basket! Multi-tiered. Separate baskets. Just… hangin' around…”
There was a rickety exhale from her nose that was definitely akin to a laugh. His back was to her, so he sadly couldn’t see her face break.
Got her, though.
When Highfive came back, he stopped, looked between them, then had a pained, crestfallen expression. “Oh nooo, there was some kind of moment again! I knew I shouldn’t have taken a piss! Damn it!”
“Yeah,” Bo replied, “we’re going on a date.”
Jack nodded and added emphatically, “Romantically. I’m a lucky, lucky boy.”
Highfive’s eyebrows were climbing to the roof at this point.
“He really likes it spicy, after all,” Bo dropped with sheer sauciness.
Highfive’s mouth was wide open, his hands up helplessly in shock. Jack tried to keep his face straight, but the combination of her quip and Highfive’s face was too much, and he broke out in laughter.
Highfive quickly sank his shoulders, looking aggrieved as he shook his head at them. “That’s just wrong, dude. Just plain wrong. Seriously? Just no, man.”
It was a nice night, all around. After Bo left, just as Jack was leaving, Highfive told him he was glad they were connecting. Lighthouse was called away on patrol training for days, and that wasn’t good for Bo, according to him. She didn’t have any other friends. Jack assured him he was glad to be another, whatever her prickly exterior. It didn’t bother him.
Did this guy bug her about the food favor just to get her to socialize a bit? What a peach. But then again, that food is still its own reason, because hot damn, it was good!
Law class continued to be more or less a steady, monotonous routine through the bulk of the current lessons. Spec Ops class, meanwhile, finally got a bit more interesting.
He walked in one day to Agent Marrakesh showing teeth when he smiled for the first time, and then he said, “Today, we get to open things up a bit, Junior Agent. Time for territorial operations familiarity. Congratulations are in order, by the way: your clearance just got upgraded to W-point-S. Filling it out will take a while, trust me. For now, let me dribble the nectar in your hungry maw over time.” ‘S’ meant ‘special,’ something he might possess for a long while due to unranked, highly sensitive, specific info.
They studied tactical scenarios, including subject cases of actual missions declassified specifically to serve that function. He learned first about historical missions in Year 24-26, during times of rapid expansion at the height of the First Generation’s power, most obviously in the extensive accomplishments of The Chrome Giant.
Jack drank it up. First, he got a more real breakdown of the scenario humanity faced back then than he ever had previously. Memoria had only half the radial control of territory as modern day, around a thousand kilometers. They had four primary territorial enemies with footholds, albeit perpetually weak and very far from their own central territories. The enemy’s ‘biggest hitters’ couldn’t make the journey across the gap, which also had the problem of no land bridge. The ocean was inhospitable and hard to cross without casualties.
They had to bridge to their territory and simply couldn’t. The only solution was to entrench and grow colonies. So long as humanity kept destroying them, they couldn’t really wage war properly. Not like they wanted. It was restricted to perpetual skirmishes with the ‘locals’ having the edge.
They made up for this usually by spreading out in order to grow power bases, often hidden. Underground. In the mountains. Hidden in the forest with supernatural aid. Time and the concentration of Allotment were the primary drivers of creating ‘cement’ for a claim. They focused on time, meanwhile throwing their might at humanity’s outposts outside the ironclad central territories.
In the very beginning, they were actually aided by dozens of other entity presences, or loose temporary alliances, as well as a general borderlands saturation of the P-Rems, which were not friendly with anyone. They all fought each other for the most part.
But with each passing decade, this dried up, and the real threats got stronger. They’d blocked out their rivals as they grew in their central territories. Their ‘default’ soldiers were getting better. Their resources to get across the ocean were more efficient. So on and so on. Fortunately, Memoria and humanity weren’t sitting on their hands, and each of their sometimes narrow victories, goring out a colony stronghold, secured them a little more energy for their rival’s failures.
Technically, The Chrome Giant’s specialty, his calling card, was leading ‘Extermination Squads’ with him as the primary weapon, and obliterating colony defenses, which he eventually became utterly unstoppable at. He had two big issues, though: others had to find them, and he couldn’t be everywhere at once. A dozen times, at least, humanity was saved by a humble scout or data analyst finding a hidden base at the critical hour. The territory that needed to be covered was staggering.
Jack learned that non-Chromey teams handled most P-Rems, whose presence in those days was thick. Mutated animal packs, sometimes tribes, such as the now-extinct ‘Rock-Skinned Apes’ and the ‘Leapers’ (he was not told what they were, sadly) were common and still a huge problem at that time, but there was an entirely different threat he’d never heard about, but did fit with a certain thing he’d fought: the spike-throwing plant creatures. As he got breakdowns of strike teams hitting ‘hives,’ he was amazed to hear about their sophistication, complete with castes of ‘builders,’ ‘soldiers,’ ‘defenders,’ ‘drones,’ and so forth. Jack had faced ‘hunter-scouts,’ nimble creatures on eight leaf-stalk legs with a central spike-spitting head.
These creatures, called the Myconium as a whole, or ‘Conies’ in general, were a kind of hyper-advanced plethora of fungal colonies once an utter plague to humanity, though thankfully, they more-so supercharged the forests they inhabited into teeming mini-jungles, alien but incorporating vegetation rather than destroying — but not tolerating apex predators. Eventually, humanity discovered special chemical cocktails with which to more or less napalm them before finishing off their more durable leftover warriors. The only way to completely get rid of them was through Memoria’s zonal influence. So they got gradually pushed out like other P-Rems.
However, they no longer existed, instead of remaining on the outskirts. The reasons were stated to be multi-faceted: a need for certain rich biomes with a lot of fresh water, constant attacks from both humanity and the other strengthening invaders, apparent weakening technology and genetics, and a fading ‘will’ were the biggest things.
At around this point in the lessons, Jack commented, “These things sound like a faction unto themselves. Like the invader groups you keep talking about in vague overtures. Like the Phanties in the south.”
Agent Marrakech turned from the ‘digital whiteboard’ display he used to raise an eyebrow at Jack over his smart glasses. “What ‘south’ are you talking about?”
Jack blinked. Was he nitpicking? “What anyone is talking about when they say that. South on the standard Ant map — I mean, you just had the map up-”
“And what are the standard map’s key features, north and south?”
Jack exhaled a patient breath through his nose. A navigation test? Come on. “The Prime Meridian going up from the pole, and the antimeridian south. The 90th meridians make east and west.”
“And what is the true location of ‘the south’ by coordinates?”
“Uhhh… between the 80th and 70th degrees latitude, and… maybe the 100th and 160th longitude, east.”
“Maybe, you say. And what about directly south of the pole?”
“That land and the bases there are not under threat… The Queen’s Range arcs way down. The mountains. Otherwise, it turns into the ocean.”
“So the south isn’t the south? Isn’t that room for confusion?”
Jack rubbed the back of his head. He could’ve said it was south of New Babylon, but that wasn’t perfect, either.
The agent had one of his typical, thin, humorless smiles. It said, ‘I am a spook’ loudly enough to send chills up most human spines. “I see you’re smart enough to get the point. In Special Operations, we cannot deal with potentially life-threatening miscommunications. You’re stepping into a world of sudden 180-degree turnabouts dropped in your lap upon a piece of intelligence you have to decide and act accordingly upon within seconds, and then move. Potentially. And then, you have to communicate it to others. Get precise in your head and translate that to reality. Leave no room for confusion.”
“Understood, sir.”
“I know it’s some hardassery to drop in the classroom. But that’s my choice. Now. Rephrase.”
“Okay. I’m referring to the Phanties… who threaten Fort Circe centrally, and the surrounding territories such as Wilkesland.”
“Good. Yes. The Phantasmal Reach most threatens those areas. And you think the Peripheral Remnants known as The Myconium resemble something like them?”
“Yes. They’re more sophisticated, almost sapient in their hivemind, alien way.”
“Almost, hmm? Is that enough to be a true faction?”
Jack considered it carefully. The other factions were entirely sapient in their ingenuity. They couldn’t be dealt with via conventional tech exclusively. Using even vague overviews and breakdowns of how the war progressed, and seeing how they could adapt to threats, and then the way the Myconium folded against the chemical napalm and never really evolved to deal with it… “No. No, on second thought. Because they weren’t evolving and adapting to threats. We beat them, and just kept beating them, as we might animals, regardless of the higher tier of difficulty.”
“Evolution, hmm? Is that what every faction must have?”
Jack thought he saw where he was going with it. He certainly knew the commonality between the two species. Memoria and Quallakuloth. “Maybe not. I imagine what defines them is their Archon.”
“The Archon. So the Myconium, lacking an Archon like a true faction, were thus doomed against Memoria.” His teacher’s skill at making something between a statement and a question was nearly supernatural.
Jack squinted his eyes as he said uncertainly, “Yyyeees.”
A slow nod from Agent Marrakech, once again somehow lacking true agreement, as if he were simply acknowledging what Jack thought. He then turned back to the whiteboard, which was wiped on a dime and changed to a new bullet list. “On to Operation Alpha Zeta 23 in Year 26, aka Mission Valkyrie Purity. No mountain habitats could be considered stable or secure without deep and thorough cavern clearances of over thirty problematic infestations. The Valkyries were considered prime real estate for various specialty cultivations, and key for securing the surrounding territories in the slow march to taking Dronning, Enderby, and Kemp along the coast of the King Haakon Sea…”
On to the subject change. Eugh. What was he getting at…?
But he was soon listening intently to descriptions of crack soldiers and the rare ANPs of the day going on spelunking extermination excursions, destroying entrenched hives of bizarre creatures in caverns with flamethrowers, explosives, flamethrowing explosives, and so on, in nightmarish conditions, with heavy casualties and a few sample stories of supreme heroism, all for the glory of the motherland.
Hell yeah.
No sooner was it getting good than the class was over — about the first time Jack was sorry that a class was.
It had been a busy cluster of days, and very productive. Temp scores were a thing of the past, and when he woke up one morning, he had more G.P.E., more Inner Energy, hit Level 1.8, and, biggest of all, his Fitness had finally improved! He’d been expecting it.
After entering his trance and getting the boost from Memoria, he checked out his body in the bathroom mirror. His body fat was clearing, and he was looking pretty ripped, with well-defined muscles, including… Abs, baby. The abs are lookin’ good!
It had been a bit since he’d checked out all his gains on the stat bio, so it was time for a little review before getting the day rolling…
Shaper of Metal
Material Controller (Metal)Primary Mutation: Channel Memorite
Governing Attribute: Create
Magnitude (Pressure): 130 (100%); (Force): 104 (80%)
Fitness: Excellent; G.P.E.: 23% Evasion: 2.4Level: 1.8
Allotment: 140 [ 130 ][ 0.0 ] Augment
[ 2.0 ] Control — Cord 1.1, Cloud 0.8, Throw 1.4, Spear 0.2, Collect: Sphere
0.4/2.2
[ 2.8 ] Create — Lift 0.2, Grapple 0.2
[ 1.0 ] Interpret
[ 0.0 ] Destroy
[ 1.0 ] Transmute — Quick-change 0.2Techniques: Fragile Spike, Inner Energy 0.4, Parry 0.1
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« Chapter 53 | Table of Contents | Until next time... »
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Note: He'll muse a bit about the stat bio next chappy. Just wanted to drop it for ya'll here. It'll also be at the beginning of the next, for convenience.
