Save State Hero 2 -ch1- (Patreon)

With a sniffle, Edmund turned his head to the side under Alina’s direction. Her hands laid to either side of his head and sitting directly behind him.

The vampire chuckled and began to carefully work at the bandages on the back of his skull. Her fingernails lightly plucking at the medical tape and peeling it away.

“Sick again? You just got over a cold a few weeks ago,” she murmured as she worked.

“Yeah… I dunno. Maybe being mortally injured, somehow surviving, and having a vampire tongue me to life gave my immune system a shock,” Edmund blurted out. “Could also be the trip through hell. Hells, plural.

“Coulda been the lovely romp in general in fact. Lots of people from difference worlds. Get that whole… war of the worlds trope going. Get everyone sick with the super-portal-flu.

“Or the apocalypse itself maybe. There was zombies and shit. Maybe I’m going to get a real deep craving for brains or flesh. Get the undead thing going.

“Or everything else wrong with that world.

“The whole thing was the horror post apocalyptic section vibe at the book store.

“Damn thirty-two flavors of apocalypse, what’s your choice, feel free to tell us how to scoop it and mix it for you. Do you want any mix-ins like gigantic frog monsters?”

Alina laughed loudly at that as the bandages came away completely.

“Ahhh. Yes. It could very well have been any of that. I’m afraid my saliva won’t really work to fix that on the back of your head.”

Edmund had an unfortunate thought of her tongue and what was coming next.

As well as the implication that her saliva could fix his sickness, but she’d have to do something else with it.

Like kiss him, he imagined.

“Damnit all. Damn… damn damn,” growled Edmund. “Tongue. Licky monster.”

“Awww, you never complain when I take care of your wound. Why’re you complaining now?” asked the vampire as she began to tilt his head one way then the other, her cool fingers pressing tight to him. “I rather enjoy caring for you like that you know.

“I get to taste your blood and I feel quite good about taking care of the wounds you took to save my life. I was supposed to die in that fight with Skipper.

“Regardless of this being the first pass through or the fiftieth, I’m alive. Even if you don’t plan on carrying this Save-state forward, all I can do is live in the moment.

“I think, therefore I am. I’m alive in this moment, so I’m alive. I don’t think of this world any less so than if it was truly the real one.”

Edmund let out a slow breath that could easily be called a sigh.

“This is still the first pass,” confessed Edmund. Over the last several weeks he’d been spending a great deal of time with Alina.

She’d tilted his head to the side and it’d allowed him to peer back at her as she did so.

The beautiful black haired and green eyed vampire was just about hanging off his shoulder like a pirates parrot.

At the moment she was dressed in street clothes that showed off her great figure that matched her beautiful features.

Going out with Alina always got them attention regardless of how they handled it, or how she dressed.

Which led to her just dressing how she wanted and not caring about what happened at all.

Didn’t hurt that she could take care of herself and anything that came at them. Realistically, Alina was a walking magnet for eyes and the disposition to not tolerate anything at all she didn’t like.

From going out to eat, clothes shopping, or just buying house-hold goods, it didn’t mater where they went. People were going to stare at her.

Edmund wasn’t too bothered about it if only because Alina wasn’t bothered by it.

His mind skittered over the truth of their lifestyle. Of what they’d been doing here since they’d come back from the mission.

This Save-state had become his “life”, of sorts. It was where he went to rest, and recover.

Given that this wasn’t going to be a final pass-through, there was no concern for any type of “data loss” with running it.

Or that’d been his original intention.

“Wait, really? You said… you were going to try other things,” Alina murmured, then leaned in close to the back of his head.

A moment later he felt her tongue sliding across his skin. Her saliva had certainly been working wonders to speed up his healing when working in concert with Ellie’s seed that lived quite happily inside of him.

“I have been trying other things. I’ve made some progress, too, but nothing great. Nothing that’d make me want to go back and really start it all over and make lasting changes,” Edmund mumbled, his body immediately responding to the beautiful woman and her actions. “Andrea’s still dead, Vince is still dead, Ryker’s still dead, and Dot won’t talk to me and just runs away. No progress at all for any of that.

“Saved a whole lot of Legionnaires though. Lot of talks with Runner and Srit here.

“We’ve been able to make a lot of leeway with many things that, but… I’m still limited whenever I go back to those time frames.

“Mostly just the fight where Ryker died and moving from there. Which is where I chat with Runner and Srit.

“And Claire. Claire… Claire is so damn chatty anymore. I swear whatever she did to me directly affected her. She will just walk right up to me and start chatting as if she knew who I was and the last conversation we had.”

The biggest issue was couched in his statement though. Hidden in the words and leaving him without many choices.

A lack of usable save-states.

“Yes. The changes you’ve mentioned have certainly benefited many. Though I’m looking forward to Ryker being saved,” Srit admitted. “Far more than I’d like to admit but I do look forward to his return.

“Runner is still mourning his friend and it’s painful for me to watch him suffer so. He’s there, he’s active, he’s being a dad, he’s just… in pain.”

“Oh! Well, that’s all good news. Progress, not perfection,” Alina said with a laugh. “Progress. Not perfection. As you always say, Eddy.”

Alina put her hands to his chest, pushed in closer to his back, and continued to lick at him.

Only to laugh softly as his heart began hammering in his chest.

A sudden thought popped up into his head.

Or more accurately a memory.

Several of them.

“You-you know this makes me all fucked up when you do this,” accused Edmund. “You can hear my heart rate go wild when you get close like this. You know exactly what you’re doing and why I was bitching about it!”

Alina laughed again, a laugh filled with warmth and care. She didn’t stop licking at his wounds.

It was a confirmation all it’s own.

Unable to help it given her laugh, Alina finally stopped with her ministrations. Only to rest her forehead against his spine.

“Ahhh, fine. Yes. I’m well aware of your attraction to me and how this makes you feel,” admitted Alina. “Since this is your first and only pass through so far, maybe I’ve got a better chance to keep you to myself than I thought.

“After all… you keep coming back, despite the pain, and problems. It’s been weeks since we ended the mission and yet here you are.

“Living with me in an apartment and working at Legion together. Despite everything else, we’re still just… moving along together.

“Though that Dryad of yours really is persistent. Really persistent, not that I can blame her.

“I’d very much like for her to get the hint that we’re making our own private love nest and she isn’t exactly a welcome partner.

“Thankfully she hasn’t overstepped. Yet. She’s a Dryad so… it’ll probably happen at some point.”

“Uh… you’re kinda… making it seem like you want to be in a relationship. Or that we’re already in one,” Edmund said quietly. Unable to help himself he reached up and put against Alina’s wrist.

“I mean, I figured. Yes. That we’re already in one and just neither of us put a name or a tag to it.

“Dating in our own weird way and just rolling with it. It isn’t as if you went back after Romina. You send the pretty Dryad off after she does whatever it was she came to do,” Alina answered. “Doesn’t that mean I’m the defacto girlfriend?

“I assumed we were just living it before we acknowledged it. I’ve been enjoying myself a lot with it.

“I know that eventually you’ll go find and fix Dot so I don’t even have to worry about my friend, either. Then you’ll just… wrangle it all back into place so we end up here again.

“I just have to make myself the best girlfriend I can be. That and I really am happy. Outside of Dot, everyone I care about is alive and I can chat with them whenever I want.”

I didn’t actually go after Romina or try to run her down.

I didn’t even text her, actually.

Ellie never stays long and does leave after whatever it was she wanted is over or done. Or just to help me.

Check up on me.

Only thing I’ve done is spend time with her and try to figure out what I can about my sister’s court case so I can prep for it.

To be fair, she really is as bright as she ever could be.

She was never this cheerful and… warm… in our previous lives.

Everything I knew about her in the old life, those echoes, doesn’t apply at all.

Does it.

The last thought came through as a finalization of a line of reasoning he’d been following for a while. That this Alina was not the same one he’d been in relationships with.

“— just keep on moving along. Then, one day, Dot will suddenly be here, and I’ll never know any different. All while… licking… my Eddy’s… head?” Alina continued letting out a throaty chuckle.

Then she lowered her head down and put her mouth on his neck.

Several times she’d pantomimed biting him on the neck but hadn’t ever done anything. It’d left him wondering if she was testing the waters to actually drinking from him.

Edmund began to chew at the inside of his cheek.

He realized that Alina was right.

But also wrong.

If he didn’t get moving soon, he really would fall into this lifestyle and it’d be harder to move again.

Break time was over and all the little things he’d been working at were no longer the focus.

If he was going to get a better ending, he needed to start up his second route.

Where do I even start?

Probably… the think tank.

Just to see what they say and what can be done.

“Can I drink from you?” Alina asked in a frightened voice.

Edmund blinked.

That’d been something he had always been curious about if he was honest with himself, but the previous Alina’s had never wanted any part of.

He had even offered once.

“Sure,” he answered without really thinking about it much. His curiosity wanted to be sated.

“Oh! Really? Thats-ah… okay,” Alina said, then leaned in toward his neck again. She licked the skin twice, then wrapped her mouth around the spot.

There was a tight sensation that felt a lot like getting a shot for a split second that devolved into a ticklish feeling instead.

“Srit, you’re aware of my save-states, right?” Edmund asked, still holding to Alina’s wrist.

Surprisingly, he didn’t really feel any different from how he normally did. Having a vampire feed from him felt almost boring in how simple it felt.

“Yes. You currently have five that you can interact with,” Srit agreed. “The first is your Twilight Zone Tunnel, as you call it.

“The second is the think-tank.

“Third is the… the save-state right before Ryker died. Claire and Runner were able to stabilize it… somehow. I really don’t understand how it was managed but Claire did most of the heavy lifting.

“The fourth is this save-state from this morning.

“The last… I honestly don’t know. It’s so broken that it exists but it isn’t even possible to gauge what it was.”

Edmund sighed.

That had been the world breaking save-state that had been the moment of Andrea’s death. One that had been shifting from gold, blue, and red.

Only to finally settle on red.

“In other words, I have one save state I can really work with and a starting point so far in the past, that it’d get screwed up pretty bad due to the loss of Andrea,” Edmund summarized.

Alina grunted at that and bobbed her head, but didn’t pull away from his neck.

“Yes,” agreed Srit as well. “You are correct. This is somewhat of an impasse. I’m not sure how I could advise you.”

This really wasn’t something new to Edmund. He’d seen the problem himself when he checked on his save-states and saw the failure.

Coughing lightly, Alina came off Edmund and licked several times at his neck. Only to lay a kiss on it then hug him.

“Unrelated, your blood tastes old. Old and rich in life. This is those echoes I think,” Alina said in an almost dreamy way. “As to the save-states, all you can do is go back to the think-tank point and try to push forward from there. Knowing that at some point you’ll need to solve Andrea’s death and go back from there.”

Well.

She came to the same conclusion I did.

“That was before the fight with the unregistered super, right?” she asked after a pause.

“Yeah. Before that,” confirmed Edmund with a huff.

“Save the world before you go,” Alina prompted and squeezed him tighter. “It was really hard to ask to feed on you. Don’t make me do it again.”

A chuckle paired with rolling his eyes and Edmund did just that. Putting down a save-state.

“Oh yeah, breaking that vampire-cherry is a noteworthy event,” Edmund agreed.

“Yes. It was. Alina created her own save-state in that moment,” Srit agreed.

Sparking a strange thought from Edmund.

Not waiting any longer, he instead opened up his power fully.

The world faded out and away and left him with a black and empty open space. Moving off into infinity.

Off to the side was a number of blurry ghost-like images. All of them strangely writhing about but not really aware of Edmund either.

He had no idea what they were and had chalked them up to being representations of his echoes.

“Srit, you here?” Edmund asked.

She of course didn’t respond.

When he was here, he was alone with his power.

The only place Oz was able to respond and work within his power, was the save-state tunnel.

Which was exactly where he wanted to go at this moment.

Activating that save-state, Edmund was flung into another alternate darkened dimension. Quite similar to the way his power displayed itself.

This time, however, the expanse of the are was filled with save-states.

A seemingly endless amount of them.

“Oz, I just loaded in. You’re in a dead branch that hasn’t been accessed in months,” Edmund stated. “Moving to here from pretty far into the future, in fact. Srit is free and Zeus died. So did Ryker.

“Right now I’m trying to work to save people. Like Andrea, who’s soul is missing right now. I lost some save-states though and need to collect new ones.

“I really need you to help me with the save-states. Let me know when you’re up to speed.”

“Ah, one moment, Edmund,” Oz replied.

Edmund nodded his head at that and started looking to the save-states all around him. Focusing on a blue one Edmund walked over to it and leaned in close.

It looked a lot like a bunch of kids opening presents. Likely from a parents point of view or a grandparents, given they were clearly sitting in a recliner with a cup of coffee.

Smirking, Edmund couldn’t relate.

“I’m now up to date, Edmund. Thank you for letting me know of the situation. I also confirmed that Andrea did indeed die and her soul is missing,” Oz remarked. “I’m gratified to her Srit is free as well.

“As to getting more save-states, I’m not quite sure how I can help you with that?”

“I need more slots, or I need you to fix one in particular for me. That or tell me how I can get to this tunnel in the future without too much fuss,” Edmund answered, slowly walking away from the save-state and looking to another.

“More slots,” Oz repeated.

“Srit made it sound like it was possible, but I’d have to take them from others. That’s fine. I just have to find memorable moments from other people I was around, and push myself into those. Don’t I?” Edmund theorized.

He’d been thinking about this a lot.

A great deal, in fact.

While they’d warned him about going into someone else’s save-state, and that it could create two of him, if he went into a save-state of another persons, all it would do would let him load into himself from there.

Or so he had reasoned.

“That’s… I do not know. That seems quite possible,” Oz murmured, his voice sounding quite strange. “Edmund is acting very different and is exhibiting qualities that are in direct opposition to expectation.”

“Make a footnote later Oz. Focus. I’m not the Edmund you knew. I killed Zeus and stabbed Skipper in the heart,” he growled. “For now, how do I get back to this location in the future? What’s the best way to do it?”

“I’m not sure. Such experiences like this one aren’t advisable. A normal human body doesn’t… doesn’t… you’re not human anymore?” Oz asked suddenly.

The way he’d been speaking had suddenly shifted as well.

“I’m not? Well. Honestly that’s not much of a surprise now that I think about it.

“I have a Dryad tree in me, a vampiric Angel just used me as a juice box, and I went through enough portals and waypoints that Srit said I wasn’t human anymore.

“Not to mention… Runner did tell me I was bringing strength and abilities with me each time I went backward. Maybe he was talking about that.

“Actually… any chance I can talk to Runner?”

“No, Edmund,” Oz said in a voice that was a bare whisper. “Runner is indisposed and won’t be available for much of anything. Until the mission that you’ve already completed, that is.”

“Hm. Can’t even tell him I’ve already completed it and get him to swing over?” Edmund tried.

“No. He is quite literally out of contact. He has been so for a significant amount of time,” Oz reported. “Ryker is the only point of contact for him and he’s been hard to get a hold of for many.”

That’s fair.

Even if I did get a chance to talk to Ryker, I’m not sure it’d be terribly productive.

But… it’d be better than not talking to him, wouldn’t it?

“Something to consider then. I’ll put in a request to talk to him when I end up wherever it is that I’m going. Could I put that in through you, Oz?” Edmund asked.

“Yes, I can relay messages to him,” Oz answered.

“Great. Now. Tell me about how to get back here in the future,” Edmund repeated. He was determined to see if he could get into other people’s save-states. Except even as he thought about it, he realized there was an answer to his question that he already had.

He knew exactly how to get to this place and had already done it once after all.

Fuuuuck I’m stupid.

Ha.

Alright… let’s go off to Alina, then save load in rapid order, and get ourselves a ticket to the tunnel.

Perfect plan.

I love it.

It absolutely lacks everything that’d make it sensible.

Fuck, I’m fucked.

“Nevermind. I’ve got my answer. Nevermind about everything,” Edmund muttered.