66. The Infuriating Little Brat

The Infuriating Little Brat

“If I had told you, would you really have gone?”

The map changed.

A lone figure was holding a street against a tide of monsters, slowly being overwhelmed by sheer numbers.

Lia tapped a nearby building. A few seconds later, stray shots from several monsters struck key explosives inside it. The building shook, then collapsed.

That opened a gap into another street, where the enemy had already gathered.

I leapt up, wanting to do something, anything, but another surge of monsters poured in from the side and reached the lone defender’s position. I did not even know where the place was.

Just before that position fell, the defender’s figure sank through the ground and disappeared into a tunnel. A moment later, the wreck of a nearby car turned into a fireball, swallowing that corner of the map and the enemies inside it.

“No.” I looked at the map, then Lia, then back at the map. “If you had told me Coach was there, I probably would not have gone. Or I would have evacuated the survivors while avoiding a fight.”

“Which would have failed to remove one of the enemy’s best pieces…”

The map shifted again, this time showing a small squad of people who looked like soldiers moving through a ruined district.

“…and would also have cost you an important personal resolution.”

A smaller but still larger group of monsters was heading in their direction.

Lia tapped the other side of the map.

Then a section of unstable ruins collapsed there.

The soldiers stopped and hid.

The monsters went to investigate the collapse and were spotted by the squad. Warned in time, the soldiers slipped around the distracted patrol in relative safety.

“Sometimes a small, seemingly irrelevant action can create enormous gains somewhere else.”

“I see…” In some ways, I still thought sending me into that situation blind was insane.

But I could also understand where the little menace was coming from.

“…Can you really manipulate the battlefield through a magic map?” Blame me if you like, but it seemed like a pretty relevant question.

“No.”

“But…” I pointed at the map, which had returned to showing the whole city. “Were those scenes fake?”

“No.” She smiled, showing far more teeth than a normal person should have, and sharper ones too. “Now you are pretending to be confused on purpose.”

“That does tend to be how facts work, yes.”

At that moment, despite our recent little breakthrough in understanding, I wanted very badly to strangle her.

Then she stopped playing coy.

I liked what she said next even less.

“In truth, I do not need the map to see the city, nor do I need the map to influence how events unfold.” She shrugged. “It is a prop. People are more willing to trust a map made of illusions, no matter how accurate it actually is, than they are to simply believe someone telling them what is happening. Especially when that someone looks like a little brat.”

I did not set the entire room on fire on my way out.

It was close.

Talking with Lia was as frustrating as ever.

But it was also… not exactly comforting, but at least… settling?

Nobody likes being manipulated or ordered around, but having to deal with things and people you dislike is, unfortunately, part of life. Humanity put that one in the brochure and then lost the brochure in a burning office somewhere.

So the question became: if I were the one making the decisions, could I do better?

The instinctive answer was yes. Almost everyone would answer that way without thinking and without examining the question.

But given a little time, most of us would realize that making life-or-death decisions for other people is terrifying, and that we want absolutely no part of it.

The truly arrogant would proudly insist they could handle the job anyway, or they simply would not care about the people who died because of every mistake, every hesitation, every lack of skill or information.

The existence of people like that is one of the strongest arguments against trying to seize command from a proven leader during a war, even if you happen to be that kind of person yourself.

As for me, how could a person have the proper amount of arrogance and self-importance without an accurate understanding of herself?

I knew what I was good at. I knew where I had every right to be confident, even if I could probably use a little less confidence sometimes.

Commanding a war was not on that list.

Gathering information across an entire city and nudging the situation in our favor?

Yes, still outside my skill set.

From every possible angle, I did not want to be in Lia’s position.

I might not like being manipulated by her. I would still curse and get angry. But as long as I had no better solution to offer, and as long as things went better under her guidance than they would under mine, the best choice was to stay out of her way and do my own job.

If possible, however, I would still beat the stuffing out of anyone who tried to make me admit that out loud.

Enough with the heavy self-reflection.

Despite being outnumbered to a ridiculous and frankly insulting degree, we were still alive.

The villain had shown up in person, failed to rescue one insane traitor pawn, and lost face badly in the process.

So what could I find for fun in this underground dump?

I used Force Sense, along with the Perception points that had given me superhumanly sharp senses, to search the base for my friends.

What I found was… genuinely unexpected.

“Here you are, dear. A plate of ginger chocolate-chip cookies, fresh from the oven.”

The elderly woman who had become our base healer offered me a gleaming silver tray.

It was filled with what had to be divine food, because after the week we had just lived through, it smelled like the finest meal any god could imagine.

“Thank you, Grandma Lin,” I said, and bit into one of those miraculous treasures the instant it reached my hand.

The peppery, almost mint-sharp bite of the ginger drew out the rich sweetness, and the slowly melting chocolate chips were nestled inside warm, crisp cookie fragments.

I chewed slowly, savoring every mouthful, then took another bite, and another, until I was practically groaning as I collapsed into a chair.

I had found heaven.

“These are… unbelievably good,” I praised the cook around another bite.

“It is the magic, dear,” Grandma Lin admitted, looking a little distressed. “My mother’s recipe was excellent, and I do not mind telling you that I was always a decent cook myself, but over the last few days I have found I can make food taste better than I ever could before.”

She sighed and nervously wiped her flour-dusted hands on her apron, which, despite several hours of work, had somehow remained miraculously and stubbornly clean.

“Perhaps even better than should normally be possible. I suppose some people would call that cheating…”

She wrung her hands, but I shut that thought down immediately.

“Grandma Lin, if anyone tells you making these cookies is cheating, you tell me. Then I will put a permanent force field around them so they can never again touch the amazing miracle food you can now create.”

I gestured at the plate while using Nearby Object Manipulation to keep even the tiniest crumbs from falling away from my mouth or the cookie I was biting.

“Thank you for the support, good child,” the old woman said calmly, though she was clearly basking in the praise.

The two of us enjoyed the fruits of her labor for a while, and the full plate of cookies vanished at a shocking speed.

At least my powers meant I would probably never get fat again.

Probably.

Maybe?

A body powered by magic and adjusted according to my needs and attributes had no logical reason to gain weight, right?