NOVEL WEB Chapter 9 — Powerful Emotions
“Veronica? Veronica!” a man called from his office.
“Yes Paul?” A young woman responded as she rushed into the room.
She immediately took notice of his feet up on the slovenly mess that was his desk, his tie half undone and his questionable beverage sitting half finished in his hand.
“I’ve been waiting on that final draft all day, how am I supposed to submit the numbers to head office if you can’t get the spread done in time? It’s really not hard to do. Do I really have to do everything myself?” Paul said, his tone aggressive and demeaning.
Veronica was nearing her limit, she had been enduring the same abuse since she started the job a month ago. This was her first job since graduating University, and she was having a hard time balancing herself after the first week. The company had personally recruited her as top of her class and the onboarding process was quick and smooth. In her first week she was introduced to her team of twelve and her boss, Paul. At first he was helpful and polite, showing her how they do things, and answering any questions helpfully with a smile. After the first week however, everything changed. It wasn’t just Paul, the entire office changed, as if reverting back to their original demeanor. The smiles were gone, the laughter was gone, even the scent of the office changed to a dreary smog of despair.
“N-no sir, I’ll get it done right now but you only assigned the project to me an hour ago,” she responded, instinctively moving backwards towards the doorway.
“I don’t have time for your lazy excuses! I need it done now! You really need to learn to be a part of the team because I’m quite tired of having to call you in here almost every day. Now, stop getting distracted, manage your time better, and get the damn draft done!” He yelled out.
“I-I will get it done, but I need more time, you’ve just given it to me. It’s unfair of you to take that tone given that I’m still new, and on top of that I’m still hitting all my metrics with flying colours!” She finally bit back, her anger beginning to boil over.
“New? It’s been a month already! Don’t think because you’re the only woman here that we’ll go easier on you!” Paul yelled, aggressively vacating his seat and marching over to her, his face just a few centimeters from hers.
The smell of the beverage on his breath invoked an instinctive reaction in Veronica, some past childhood trauma boiling up inside her as she shoved Paul backwards. Paul, despite his size, and weight, tumbled quite easily. He flailed wildly as he fell backwards, crashing into his desk, the noise echoing throughout the entire floor of the office.
“How dare you, you crazy-” Paul started but was interrupted as several other employees came over to see what was happening. “Call the police! She assaulted me!” Paul shouted instead.
“Paul, that’s enough…you’ve been unfair to her, just as you’ve been unfair to all of us. This is just the final straw and we should have acted sooner. You need to resign,” one of the employees said, with more yelling in agreement.
“Resign?! You lazy cretins couldn’t handle this job and you certainly couldn’t handle this office without me! Who’s going to keep you in line, yourselves?!” Paul yelled viciously, laughing arrogantly.
Paul finally managed to push himself back to his feet and turned to reach for the phone.
“Fine, I’ll call the police and say you all assaulted me, let's see how you like that,” Paul said, smiling as if he’d just won an award for his brilliant idea.
“Hey Paul, remember on my first week- scratch that, remember yesterday when you had me redo the charts in an hour after I had just spent a week making them? If I remember correctly, you poured your coffee on my keyboard and said ‘even my spilled coffee is more valuable than the work you just delivered to me’ do you remember? Because first of all, what the hell kind of insult is that, second of all-” The man cut off as he planted his fist in Paul’s face.
Paul went down, and the office fell silent, the only noises that could be heard were Paul’s screaming cries of pain.
“You can’t do this to me!” He screamed out, the building suddenly shaking. “You’re nothing compared to me! You’re all dirt!” He screamed some more, the building shaking with each outburst.
Slowly, the air around Paul began to distort and then Paul himself began to distort.
“What the hell is that?!” Someone yelled—only panic ensued.
They all tried to run out of the room at the same time but there was no space to move, too many of them had gathered inside the room and they tripped over each other. They struggled to create some order to vacate the office but it was too late, Paul had become a weird slime that was absorbing everything around him and growing larger with every object it consumed. Veronica watched as the slime got hold of one of her coworkers, swallowing him and exploding immensely in size, she didn’t even have time to scream before it got her next.
----
I was resting in my bed reading about the Ottoman empire, hoping to find any clues to my dreams. It had been a few days since that malicious man had attacked me, and I had seen no trace of him since, so I tried to push his existence out of my mind for now.
“Interesting, it seems as though that dream was a mixture of eras of architecture because the room I was in was carved out of stone? Or, at the very least, that’s what it looked like. Something about it just seems…old, older than old. Yet, some aspects don’t seem any older than a couple hundred years,” I said, scratching my head in annoyance when suddenly Cadeyrn started sounding an alarm in my head.
“Man, it's 7:30PM…what's going on?” I asked, the alarm adding to my growing annoyance.
“There seems to be a very strong quanum disturbance nearby,” Cadeyrn responded.
Immediately I felt fully awake, my eyes sharpened as the information from Cadeyrn’s senses entered my head. A faint, low rumble shook the ground as I struggled to stand up off my bed.
“An earthquake?” I asked, but didn’t bother awaiting a response. “Let's go Cadeyrn, Inazuma, system activate, Cadeyrn Spear form, Inazuma Lightning Mail form,” I said telepathically.
As Inazuma’s lightning wrapped around me forming my armor and Cadeyrn forming my spear, I wasted no time. I opened my window and dashed out, breaking the screen in the process. Surrounding myself with flames I took flight and sped off in the direction of the quanum disturbance.
“I’ll have to come up with an excuse for the screen later. We need to move fast,” I said, tensing up as I started to feel the density of the quanum coming from the monster.
Arriving at the scene, I was immediately awed by the sheer size of it. Its form was incomprehensible, a writhing mass of energy that engulfed everything in its path. Its weight and density were immense, crushing everything beneath it with devastating force. Several buildings had toppled like dominoes, power lines sparked and fell, and the air was filled with the sounds of screams and sirens. It was impossible to know where to begin.
“It’s huge...this is on a completely different scale,” I stated terrified, sweat forming at my back.
“It seems to be growing larger,” Inazuma added.
“Guh...I don’t even know where to start…” I grumbled while surveying the damage.
“Another Guardian approaches at high speed!” Cadeyrn called out loudly.
“What!? There's another guardian?!...IS IT HIM?!” I yelled out as my blood started to roar through my body.
---
Alden was relaxing at home on his third floor balcony whilst questioning Nero on the 4th World and their duty when Nero interrupted.
“There seems to be a monster with a massive amount of quanum close by,” Nero stated, with audible concern.
“Well, shouldn't we go stop it?” Alden asked, annoyed.
“There’s already another guardian proceeding to the scene. They should be sufficient without the area sustaining much damage,” Nero stated simply.
“Even so...I wouldn't be able to forgive myself if innocent people got hurt. Let's go.” Alden commanded as he stood.
A blue light flashed briefly and Alden was equipped in cold steel armor with two blades.
“Ok, my master, I will guide you through this. First we have to get there before it grows any larger. So we need to use Sonic Booster,” Nero said, hurriedly.
“Right...Sonic booster!” Alden called out and, as soon as he did, the air carried him upwards. He could feel his body start to propel itself forward slowly but ramping up speed quickly towards the target.