Unchosen Champion

Neon had no idea what he was in for. A storm was cooking. He should have had an inkling that it would be coming, since he had been the root cause of its development, but he was blissfully ignorant. Even if he was anticipating it to some extent, he couldn’t be prepared for the full consequences of his actions.

Platinum was dutifully making her way back to the city he had christened Neon Park. Once she returned to her home, she planned to take out all of her built up frustrations on the Champion that sent her away. He was aware she wouldn’t willingly play the role of Neon Park’s emissary, especially for such a long period of time, but he’d roped her into the arduous task anyway, declaring her as the only one he could trust and showering her with rare compliments until she reluctantly agreed.

After the assignment grew exponentially more difficult with the confirmed proximity of another super settlement in Silvervalley and the apparent formation of the Pacific Republic, Platinum was obligated to follow the leads and investigate further. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Her task was meant to be a simple, but long trip, where she merely applied her unique travel abilities to navigate all the way to Colorado from New York City. At her supposed destination, all she needed to do was relay an invitation to Camila Alvarez for her to return home by request of her grandmother. If she ran into anyone else of reasonable prominence, such as a Champion from another settlement, Neon had his own messages prepared that were intended to open diplomatic channels in the future. That he had sent her on the cross country road trip and not Carlos seemed to be because he had anticipated making contact with other settlements besides the one they were looking for.

“If he tries to get me to go to Australia, I’m seriously kicking his ass.” She grumbled into the whipping wind as she shot through the frigid night, south of the ‘Great Lake’. “You’ll be in the finding out phase soon enough, Neon!” She shouted into the wind, letting her voice echo across grass and trees that had been dusted by freezing mist that developed over the lake’s cold expanse.

Somewhere in Brooklyn, the subject of her normally friendly animosity felt an unusual chill and shivered involuntarily before glancing over his shoulder.

For the last forty days, Platinum had been traipsing across the entire continent, making connections all the way to the West Coast. Considering how simple her task was meant to be, it had clearly grown into something truly absurd. Thankfully, her road trip was coming to an end soon enough. She hated to admit it, but the journey was a productive one. Neon was right to make her do it, but that didn’t excuse him from her annoyance.

The vast majority of time, Platinum had been simply traveling by herself, passing through abandoned suburbia with its emptied parking lots dotted with pioneering weeds and derelict vehicles, collapsed empty strip malls, and criss-crossing highways that led to the next concrete island full of deteriorating pavement and crumbling signs. In between, the scenery would transition into vast swathes of overgrown woodland filled to the brim with magnificent trees of impossible scale, grand snow capped mountains, rocky temperate hills with brush lining bubbling creeks, enormous windswept plains, arid chilly highlands, and dry cactus-spotted deserts. Nature had never really appealed to her before, but there were moments where the majesty of the terrain left her with a sense of awe. It was certainly better than the neglected cookie cutter sprawl that she found herself following for so much of the time.

However, the scenery was mainly dominated by something else. Most of all, she was traversing across abandoned farmland.

Sometimes it was flat. Sometimes it was hilly. Maybe it was rocky or maybe it was terraced. Most of them were rectangular, but plenty were arranged in enormous circles or other geometric shapes. They were dotted with abandoned machinery, broken fences, and random clusters of buildings. The farmlands were hot, cold, dry, humid, or dusty, but they were all the same in the end. The fields were covered with lush grasses, plain clumpy dirt, leafy bushes, mounds of snow, or towering trees intent on pioneering new areas. They were full of insects, flocks of birds, and frequently bordered by herds of livestock, but generally, they were occupied by monsters.

Sometimes they were monotonously planted with a single species of resilient leafy green crops. Other times, they were sectioned off into large strips of prepared dirt, waiting for seeds, but there were so, so many farms. Platinum was sick and tired of farms.

“Whole damn country is overgrown farms.” She grouched as she flew across yet another flat square. This one was lined with small mounds that had been covered in a thin layer of snow with the entire field surrounded by a ditch on the interior of a simple wooden fence. It was the same as ten thousand other fields she had traveled over.