Peppermint

Chapter 13 - Little Light Of Love

***GABE***

"This feels like a video game," Harris says. "Our light friends have to carry something, and we gotta escort them through certain danger. Can't let any of 'em get hurt or die either, right?"

"Please, buddy, I need to focus." I peer around the corner and wait until I'm sure there aren't any enemies coming at us, then I beckon everyone else forward. The light elementals keep on moving that meteorite, slowly but surely. In the time it takes them to reach this junction, we could have an oncoming horde ahead of us, and Harris and I would need to do some elimination. Freeze or burn, you Peppermint SOBs. Or DOBs. Or just COBs if we're going to be as gender-neutral as possible. Even though they probably wouldn't be so nice to us if we weren't a single-gender ensemble ourselves.

"Sorry! I know, I'm bad at this focusing thing too - look out!" He fires a stream of flame over the light elementals' heads, over the space rock, and onto a couple of lab-coated creepers trying to sneak up behind them.

"Whoa! Maybe next time, try not to come that close to burning my nose off?" Park yells without turning to look at Harris.

"Sorry!" Harris yells again.

"Over here!" I point down the next corridor ahead of us, where two more lab coat goons spill out of a door, only to retreat when I start throwing spear-length ice blades at them. Smart thinking. Of course, they'd be smart. Aren't you supposed to be a genius to work in this place? I bet they conduct a secret IQ screening, only letting you in if yours is 160 or more. Or maybe 170, in which case I think Einstein's human (though not his angel) would be counted out.

The spears stick in the door, wobbling like movie props for a long moment until the scientists close the door completely. Then they fall out and shatter into snowy messes, which I whip up into swirling clouds until we finally move the meteorite past that point. Then I melt and evaporate the snow into a billowing steam cloud that completely obscures the corridor behind us. For now, anyway. I don't know how long it'll last. Usually, when I do steam, it lasts maybe a minute, but then I tend not to make this much of it at a time.

I hope I don't tire myself out before we're even halfway back to the elevator. And that itself would only be half the battle, because once we're back to ground level, we have to run through that big public area with the coffee carts and the ugly-ass camera poles. And who knows how many security guards are going to come after us? Or, worse, Alicia Wahlberg herself?

I'm trying not to think too hard on these possibilities, but they won't stop flooding my mind when I should instead be flooding the corridor behind us. Can I do that? If I'm staying still, I can sense the water moving in the pipes behind the walls, despite said walls being thick as bricks. Literally. I could pull the water, very forcibly, through the pipes, and maybe through the walls until they all burst and these labs are condemned.

Again, though, I can't stand still long enough to get it done. Being constantly in motion, I have to rely on ice and steam. Liquid water, not so much. It's funny, liquid water is the state that's got the most motion, but when you yourself are in motion, your elemental fails you in that state.

(Assuming you're a water elemental, that is.)

So I keep on running, with Harris by my side, flinging ice at Peppermint workers who may or may not be armed, but would definitely be all too inclined to raise the alarm if and when they get the chance.

Maybe if I'd thought to get behind the light elementals and the meteorite, I'd be more effective at defending the space behind them. But I didn't think. None of us did, really. We saw a problem and solved it with perhaps a little too much efficiency, enough that it crossed the line back into inefficiency.