59. I Am Nothing Like You

I Am Nothing Like You

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs,” he said in that casual, easy tone I hated.

We both knew he was mocking me without technically mocking me.

“As for why I’m stronger than you when we both had a chance to join the fighting and gain power? It’s because I didn’t waste mine on cheap little tricks.”

“Flight. Teleportation. Telekinesis. Maybe useful, but all of them split the focus of power you need to win in a fight. Tricks that don’t help with what matters most, especially when those tricks disappear.”

He snorted.

“And I didn’t waste anything on making myself pretty, or graceful like some sissy, or all the other things little girls care about.”

“No,” I growled, lifting into the air and preparing to continue the fight, even though he did not seem in any hurry to move. “You didn’t.”

“What are you even doing here?”

Not because I wanted to talk. We had run out of things to say to each other years ago.

But I badly wanted to keep the fight going while I healed.

Every second of regenerative energy flowing through me was an advantage.

And there was something else I had been ignoring.

Something about this situation was wrong. My instincts told me something did not fit.

“Obviously, so I don’t have to deal with those neighbors anymore,” he said, lifting the enormous axe onto one shoulder with an affected carelessness neither of us believed.

“Or rather, so I won’t have to deal with them afterward.” Wait, did he mean— “But I came here mostly to see you.”

“Oh, come on.” I folded my mostly healed arms and glared. “You can lie better than that.”

“I’m serious. The world has changed, little girl.”

He slowly swung the axe and pointed it toward the ruined, burning trailer park.

“I don’t mean the monsters. I don’t even mean the war. War never really changes. Monsters have always existed.”

I ignored the obvious conversational trap in what he said about monsters.

He knew what kind of person he was. I knew what kind of person he was. We both knew the other knew, and none of that changed anything.

So I flew just out of his reach, but still within throwing range of his oversized weapon, and waited quietly.

He would lose patience first.

He always did.

“I’m talking about magic!” His piglike eyes shone with malicious greed.

“You’ve seen it. Felt it. Used it. Every fight, every little bastard standing in your way—you put them down, and you get stronger for it!”

His face grew strangely animated. His voice filled with longing, the same way it used to when he talked about the wars he had served in, the people he had killed, and the few times he had gotten drunk enough to speak carelessly.

“This is something that can change everything. Not even those invaders who think they’re invincible, who can send armies running, can stop that. I know it—and you know it too, girl!”

“Considering I see people differently from you, and I’m not as cruel as you are,” or as dangerously insane, “I can honestly say I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t play dumb on purpose.” He snorted with contempt and pointed the huge axe at me.

“We’re the same, little girl. We both want to be exceptional. We both want to rise above our so-called peers. We both like physical pursuit, hands-on work.”

His eyes glittered with madness, as if he could see into the deepest part of my soul…

Or at least into whatever my insane coach imagined my soul to be.

“Tell me you don’t enjoy this. Tell me that when you took down your first zombie, you didn’t feel satisfaction. Victory.”

“Tell me that after you tasted that power just once, you didn’t want more. Tell me that after the first time you killed, you recoiled in horror, puking and crying like your whining bitch friends.”

“Go to hell, old man!” I shot back, and only managed to stop myself halfway to him.

“My friends have killed more monsters and saved more people than you have, or we would have heard about you already!”

And I would have made absolutely sure I stayed far away from him.

Liya had played me.

That short little bitch had definitely known who I would run into here, and she had sent me anyway.

“Ah. So you can’t say it, can you? You can’t say the truth, because the truth is that by their standards, both of us are monsters.”

He laughed.

In that moment, I had never wanted to punch his face more.

“Society doesn’t like monsters. Especially monsters who want to be heroes. I should know. So if we have a unique chance to grow by doing what we truly enjoy, why bother trying to become something we’re not?”

Hearing him, I suddenly understood.

I understood what had felt wrong in this situation.

What I had been ignoring.

Why he was so strong, yet no one in the resistance had mentioned him.

Why he could fight me so easily, while the trailer park had been occupied by monsters I could wipe out without much trouble.

What he really meant with all that talk about monsters.

Looking back, I should have seen it immediately.

Perhaps some lingering attachment to a former teacher, some bias born of familiarity, had blinded me for an instant to the obvious.

“You joined the invaders, didn’t you?” I said flatly.

It was less a question than a statement, and inside me rage burned white-hot.

After throwing in with those murderers and monsters, how did he dare talk about becoming better? About right and wrong?

“Why wouldn’t I?” The fanatic excitement returned, madness showing from deep inside him.

“Gaining power through violence is their entire philosophy! Strength through conflict. Power through conquest.”

“Not just strength, either. Immortality. The dream every false religion ever chased finally made real. Don’t you see how perfect that is? A civilization like us, little girl.”

“I am nothing like you!” I shouted back.

Then I charged.