Wish upon the Stars chapter 363

I hadn't visited the location where my cousin and her guards were  living. With the tournament ongoing and my team's deal not to seek  outside help, it seemed smart to minimize contact, but I had at least  gotten an address from her in one of our conversations, so I was able to  direct Jessie to the location. Lucky the expanded space came with a  possible expanded entrance, or we'd never have fit Randall in the car.

When  we arrived at the rented house (Natalie had been in a hotel for a while  but had moved into semi-permanent lodging a while after confirming my  team's strength in the first round, since between us we had a decent  chance to make it all the way.

I  grimaced as I looked up at the house. It was dark and silent, but  looking close I could see a few issues. The lock on the door was snapped  and it hung slightly ajar, some of the windows were cracked. I tried  calling again. No response. Shit. I turned to Callie, who was standing  close, offering support silently with her presence and through our bond.  "Someone's been here. But it seems weird there wouldn't be more mess.  Nat is a candidate. She's not going to go down easy."

There  was a loud crack behind us, and we all spun to stare at Jessie, or  rather, Randall, whose back she was on, who had stepped on a curbside  bench and smashed it to kindling by accident. We all glared, and she  just shrugged, saying in a soft tone. "Well, he's a bear. They aren't  made to be stealthy."

Rolling  my eyes, I turned back to the house, my tension pretty much shattered. I  was still worried, but it's hard to feel stifled by the gravitas of a  situation when you're walking around with a big clumsy teddy bear on  your team. I looked at Callie. "Do The Four have a higher Perception  than you? I know of the G-rankers present you're our best stealth agent,  but I don't really know what they can do."

She  glanced at them questioningly and when one of them nodded she pointed  to him. "That one does, apparently." At my snicker, she just shrugged.  "What? It's not like I lunch with them. When would I even have the time,  we're together almost any time I'm not working or training. They're  acquaintances through my uncle." She turned to the  indistinguishable-from-their-sibling hooded figure. "Check the house,  report back if you run into anything we need to know about, and be  careful in there."

The  only real upside to this was that we knew there was no one over F-rank  inside. With Rime and the rest of our crew along there was very little  chance they'd be able to overpower us. I hoped. No matter how many times  I repeated that to myself a part of me was pretty terrified we were  kicking an anthill and about to be ass deep in F-rankers we couldn't  beat. Speaking of which, I looked at Rime. "Is Frostbite coming to meet  us here?"

I'd  asked her to tell our ally we needed her on hand after we found Celine,  since the other team had a decent chunk of people on hand. The blue  haired ice user nodded. "She's on her way. This isn't exactly a central  location, which I imagine is the point."

That  was the best we could ask for. Callie, hearing the confirmation,  dispatched whichever of the The Four had been pointed out, and one of  the figures vanished. I'd seen them use that trick in the fight with the  mercenaries, but I wasn't sure how much of that was taking advantage of  lapsed attention. This time they just blinked out of existence right in  front of me, and I recognized that they'd used Perception to erase all  traces of themselves from my sight.

The  door to the inside shook slightly as it creaked a smidgen more open,  but it didn't make any sound or anything, and if I hadn't been looking  right at it I'd have missed the motion. Callie put a hand on my arm.  "She's fine, Shane." She said softly, her voice being run through  Stealth to prevent it from carrying. "Your family is tough, and if her  guardian is anything like yours, in the very unlikely circumstance that  something happened to her, they'd have burned down half the planet in  retribution."

I  snickered at that, but it actually did make me feel better. If there  was anyone I trusted to have my back it was Zeke, and remembering that  Natalie had someone like that really helped. Not to mention her two  guards, whose names I'd forgotten if I ever heard them. She had plenty  of backup even without my team coming to help.

After  two minutes the hooded form reappeared in front of us among the other  three. The weirdest part was that somehow even knowing where there  hadn't been one of them before, I somehow couldn't figure out WHICH of  the figures had just appeared and which had been there for the entire  time we'd been waiting. "The house is empty." Reported the F-ranker.  Signs of a struggle. The inside is bigger than the out, and the fighting  was mainly in the middle of the top floor, so none of it spilled over  onto the exterior."

I  cursed, stalking through the door, letting it bang open as I strode  into the house. Near the exterior it looked like a nice normal house,  but the further in I got, the more signs I saw of combat. Acid burns,  fire, purple crystal and some strange blue glowing slime that had stuck  at least two literal lightning bolts to the wall, suspending them  harmlessly inside the gel in an extremely disturbing way.

I  saw splatters of blood in a few places, none of them too big, so I was  pretty sure no one bled out here, but in and of itself the fact that Nat  and her people hadn't managed to kill any of their attackers was  jarring. I also wasn't sure how they'd attacked this place. Was Nat's  guardian not living with her like Zeke was with me? The whole loophole  of protecting their own residence should have applied. Though maybe that  was a liberty Zeke took with his contract to help as best he could.

Looking  around, I shouted. "Hey, if Natalie's guardian is here I'd like to  talk. It's not interference, I just want to confirm a few things. Even  if you aren't living here you should be keeping an eye out right?" My  voice carried into the depths of the empty house, but I got no response.

Callie  shook her head. "They probably followed Natalie. We need to figure out  where she went. What about your tracking skill? You have a starting  point here, so you can follow her trail right?"

That...was  a good idea. I should have thought of that. I was off my game. My  stomach roiled and my chest was tight. I had exactly one biological  family member who I was aware of in this entire damn star cluster, and  she was on the run from insane cultists who had tried to kill me  multiple times. Nat and I weren't close, we barely knew each other, but  what she represented...a member of my family I could talk to. Could  learn about.

"Shane."  Snapped Callie, and my head came up, I'd been standing still for a  minute, lost in my panic. Callie knew about my tendency to drift off,  but she usually left me to my thoughts. This time she was looking at me  sternly. "I know. Ok? I know how scary this is. How confused you are. I  can FEEL it, and it breaks my heart. But if you spiral and let her die  it's going to break YOUR heart, and that will hurt me a million times  more. I need you to focus up. Ok?"

I  took a long, deep breath. "Yeah. Yeah I'm good. Thanks Cal. I'm ok." I  turned to the destroyed room and triggered Eye of Revelation. There  was...a lot. Footprints, all over, some of the attacks were glowing,  showing me they'd been Nat's, and I had to stop for a second, not  because I didn't have a trail, but because I had like seventeen of them.  Nat had lived here, there were traces of her everywhere.

It  took me a few minutes to sift through the traces, figuring out how the  passage of time effected them, and using that to date the most recent  trail. Once I got it, I set off down the hall, following several  passages back further into the house. We stopped in the kitchen, and  everyone looked at me quizically, until I reached up and put a hand on  the refrigerator and shoved to one side.

The  large metal machine slid aside easily, smashing into the wall because I  was way too strong to do something like that without paying attention.  Behind it was a small closet full of cleaning supplies, and I stomped  down on the floor of that closet, crumpling a well hidden trapped door  that led down into a cement passageway.

It  was a huge relief that they'd managed to rehide this place behind them,  but the blood smeared across the cement as we climbed down the metal  ladder into the tunnel was...less encouraging. It wasn't enough that I  was sure someone was dead, but it wasn't a little bit either. Handprints  on the wall showed where someone had tried to hold themselves up, and  the prints were lower to the ground and smaller than they would be from a  man or even a reasonably tall woman. Natalie was small like that.

Callie  stepped up next to me as she came down the ladder. "This keeps going.  And it's not a huge amount." She squeezed my arm. "I know it doesn't  feel like it, but this is a good sign. I sent Jessie with Rime to take  Randall around the back of the house to look around. Mel went back to  let them know which direction the tunnel is going, so they know which  way to head."

I  nodded silently, not trusting myself to speak right now. I was...angry.  Irrationally pissed off at everything. This was taking too long, my  cousin was hurt, possibly dying and I couldn't help and everything was  getting in my way and I just wanted to punch something and throw up and  possibly strangle a cult member. The cocktail of unpleasant emotions and  feeling was not helping myself control at all.

Callie  just smiled at me reassuringly and then set off down the tunnel. She  could feel what I was, and she knew I needed a minute to clear my head.  But I also needed to keep moving, so once they pulled ahead I followed  after. The tunnel went on for an unusually long time, the blood smears  getting more and more fresh as well as having less blood on them, which I  took as a good sign.

About  three quarters of the way down we started hearing noises and feeling  shaking. We reached the end of the tunnel and opened up a hatch at the  top of a ladder, pushing aside a bunch of leaves to reveal our place at  the edge of a massive clearing. In the center of that clearing, glaring  at a series of hooded figures, was Nat and her two guards.

One  of them was cracking whips made of blue gelatinous material like the  stuff from the house. There were dozens of types of energy caught along  the whips, and the taller hooded figure, whose face had been revealed as  a red bearded giant of a man with a shave head, was bringing them down  to ward off the other forms.

The  smaller hooded figure, who turned out to be a strong looking blonde  girl with her hair in a pair of braids, had a huge axe coated in green  smoke that she was lashing out with in short, sharp chops.

Surrounding  them was a huge construct made of some kind of red energy in the shape  of a wall of briars, and I could see that while it was F-rank, some of  the cultists were hard at work tearing through it. Off in the distance, I  could see Jessie on Randall's back with Rime bringing up the rear.  Without even waiting, I dropped to my knees to condense my poison lava  fists. I needed to help.