DSL part 90 - Two cats instead of one cougar

As soon as Alpha had left Delmar hurried up his steps. He wanted to get as far as possible so she wouldn't find them again.
When the night fell the sound of a quadcopter approached them. To Delmar's dismay, it landed just beside them.  A hatch opened and from the bright light inside a black silhouette of a woman appeared. 
"I thought you were in a coma." Delmar greeted her displeased.
"I was." She answered. 
"How did you find me? I disposed of your spy."
"There's a reason why she's my best spy." Radiation smiled and held up her phone showing a GPS map. "Alpha tagged both of you with trackers before she left. I bet you didn't notice."
"What are you doing here?" Delmar snarled. "Are you going to bring me back to the society?" 
"No." She said calmly and walked down from the copter. She waved to the pilot, he nodded and the hatch closed behind her while the vehicle lifted to take off. "I've come to help you."
"Help me?" Delmar scoffed. "Wow…"
"Yes."
"You don't even know what I'm hunting."
"So what are we hunting?" Radiation said with a crooked smile and sat down legs crossed on the grass while the quadcopter disappeared behind the treetops. 
"No!" Delmar exclaimed a bit distressed. "No, it doesn't work like this! You can't just come here and say you'll help me. Why should I even trust you?"
"Why shouldn't you? I've helped you several times before."
"The first thing you did was to bring me to Gravity! Did you know he was the one who killed my whole bloodline? And you just took me there and presented me like the only mind reader he had left to kill! You let Nuclear blow me out of the prison knowing he might blow up the entire building and Then you let them assign me my worst enemy as bodyguard?! Did you want to see me dead?"
"No. Delmar, what do you mean Gravity killed your whole bloodline?"
"I mean that that's the reason why I'm the only one left. I found it in Cain’s diary, he wrote he feared for both of our lives." 
"You're not the first person I heard accusing Gravity of for that crime… chemical went on and on about it at our council meeting yesterday."
"You used me! You kept things from me! Cain’s books, my abilities, my father! I wouldn't trust you for a second again." Delmar shifted to his human form to hide the fact he was starting to cry by quickly wiping away any tears. "The worst part of it all is that I trusted you. As I said last time I saw you, fuck you! You can piss off!"
"Chemical once told me, there's no way I can make you do as I tell you. A psychic will always end up doing whatever they want in the long run. He told me there were only two things I could do to keep you alive, lock you up or help you. I've come to realize locking you up doesn't work very well so I've decided to help you instead."
"Help me? Why are you even so desperate to keep me alive?"
"I consider you to be my responsibility. And without Nuclear, the council doesn't find me very useful. My only real responsibility was to guard over him. Askr runs my faction, even with Nuclear gone. I can as well be out here with you. So what are we hunting?"
"The source of this mess." Delmar answered grumpily. "The shadow creature."
"The shadow creature? Is that the god the others on the council spoke about?" She asked.
"Probably."

Radiation unloaded a small backpack and picked out some sandwiches. 
"I brought some dinner for you. I figured you ought to be hungry unless you've already hunted for food. But since you've practically been running since alpha left you I guess you haven't."
"You don't have any canned tuna do you?" Newton asked and peaked down into her backpack. "I usually eat pet food."
"There's tuna on your bread if that's good enough for you?" She said and reached over a wrapped sandwich.
"It'll do." He shifted to his human form to unwrap the paper only to shift back to his cat form to eat the stuffing and leave the bread.
"Ham and cheese to you. I'm afraid raw meat would've been wasted on the trip here." Radiation handed over another sandwich to Delmar. He accepted it reluctantly.
"I guess this is the part where I should say thank you. I'm not sure I think you deserve that though."
"At least you're well behaved enough to acknowledge that you should've been polite." Radiation said and shrugged. 

"So, why did you leave him?" Radiation asked and sat down with her back against a tree and took a large bite on her sandwich.
"Leave who?" Delmar asked and raised an eyebrow.
"Reed of course. You two had obviously something going on. Chemical told me he kept you hidden in his apartment for a month. Was it a hard breakup or was it a relief?"
"I didn't leave him." He said irritated. "We just have different responsibilities to take care of right now."
"I can understand why you left him though. You two hated each other, right? Stockholm syndrome never lasts forever."
"I didn't leave him!"
"No?"
"No!"
"It's he aware of that?" She asked casually and took another bite. Delmar just looked at her annoyed. "What was the last thing you told him before you left?" She asked.
"Goodnight."
"Oh, wow…" Radiation lowered the sandwich from her mouth. "That's a really douchey break-up line."
"I didn't break up with him!"
"Then what did you do? Why didn't you bring him out on this little adventure as well?" She was obviously mocking him. 
"I'll see him again when I've dealt with the shadow creature and he wanted to deal with the rebels. As I said, we have different responsibilities to take care of."
"So you're using him as a reward to yourself? Finish the quest and win your loved one back. Doesn't that seem like a bad idea? The chemical faction is preparing a siege on Blacktown as we speak. You have no idea if he'll survive it or not."
"Why are you really here Radiation?" Delmar asked irritated. 
"Here." She reached over her phone. "Call him." Delmar just glared at her. He had no intention to do as she told her. "Call him and tell him you love him and that you'll see him soon when we get back." She wanted a Confirmation. She didn't truly believe it. 
"I don't know his number." Delmar dismissed her.
"I've got it in my phonebook."
"I don't want to call him."
"Ah, as I suspected." She lay down the phone on the ground and nonchalantly took another munch at her sandwich. "You never got that far with him. Was it unrequited love?"
"We made a soul embryo together…" Delmar mumbled hurt and annoyed. Radiation lowered her sandwich, stopped mocking him and fell silent. He hugged his legs where he sat and looked away.
"Do you love him?" She asked, seriously this time. Delmar didn't answer her immediately. 
"Yes, I think so."
"And he loves you back?"
"I believe so."
"Then what are you so afraid of?" She frowned concernedly. Then she forced over the phone to his hands. "Call him, I bet he's worried for you."

Delmar found Reed’s number in the long list of contacts. Radiation seemed like she kept the whole society in her phonebook. After staring at his number for a long while he pressed the dialer. After just two signals he jumped straight to the voicemail. Reed had neglected the call.
"This is Reed’s voicemail, if I don't take your call you're probably not worth my time or I'm not available. I think you know which reason for yourself."
Delmar would’ve recorded a message for him unless he had sounded like an asshole in his voicemail. The recording had been a perfect imitation of his old image of the fire shifter. A stuck up egocentric douchebag… he ended the call feeling even worse than before. This had been a bad idea…
"No answer, he neglected my call." He grumbled and gave back the phone. "According to his voicemail, I'm not worth his time."
"Wrong." Radiation said encouraging, "I'm not worth his time. It was my phone you called from, remember?"
"I guess…" he sighed and flopped back on the grass. "I don't know what I would've said anyway.  Maybe he's mad at me for just leaving him behind like that. No… he is probably mad at me for it. That's the hard part of speaking through phones. I don't know what the person on the other side of the line thinks…"
"Poor Delmar, so that's why you hate phones so much? They reduce you to a normal person." Radiation said sarcastically.
"When did you get so annoying?" Delmar complained. 
"The moment I realized there was no reason to tiptoeing and playing nice around you anymore. It doesn't matter what I do you'll never be like just like Cain. There's too much…" she waved a hand towards Delmar. "Whatever that is he chose to mate with in you. I can understand why he didn't bother telling anyone who it was. Whoever it is it's not very charming."
"Well thank you. I don't think you seem very charming either… are you sure it's not you who is the other parent?" Delmar answered with a snide remark. Radiation just laughed scornfully.
"Hah, that would've been something." 
Delmar sat up and studied her contemplating. She was still the same Radiation, she had just dropped all the facades. This was her. The real her. She was here for his sake, but yet she acted like he was a stick in the mud. 
"Who am I to you?" He asked. "Your mind is so filled with gateways I'm not sure I even know you at all."
"Do you want an honest reply?" She answered. 
"Yes please."
"I think you're the result of my biggest mistake."
Delmar scoffed. 
"No don't get me wrong." She continued. "What I'm saying is that, if I hadn't been the one to convince Cain he needed a child to finish his book, he wouldn't have started the obsession which had him killed. I was the one who pushed him and encouraged him even though chemical denied his wish. If it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have gone so far for you. He lost himself in his obsession for you, and that was my fault. He died because of me."
"He didn't die because of you… he was murdered. Murdered by a petty woman who didn't have a proper reason." Delmar grumbled. "Murdered to make it look like an accident."
Radiation frowned and leaned forward.
"How do you know this?"
"I stumbled upon his murderer in Blacktown. His death had nothing to do with you." 
She sighed relieved and leaned backward again. "Thanks for telling me that. I've been blaming myself for almost 400 years. Cain was the first shifter I ever met. It was a time when the name new Devantos made sense. It was just a hundred years old. I was a teenager when they found me. I had just realized I was able to control every street lamp and every light bulb in the city. I was playing with the whole city's lights at night. One night Cain joined me on the rooftop. The council had sent him to read my mind and to see if I had any bad intentions with my actions. Also to introduce me to our species. I really liked your dad. He was around me all the time in the beginning, he helped me get to know Nuclear. When they told me I was going to get a mentor it was a no-brainer for me. I asked to get him. The other energy shifters thought it was a strange choice at first but they liked to have Cain around Nuclear. That way he could warn us if Nuclear was getting any funny ideas again. As my mentor, Cain was like a father to me."
"Let me guess, he was more of a father to you than he'll ever be to me."
"Yeah, I wasn't going to say that though… it's not really the thing you'd like to hear." She gave him a sympathetic crooked smile.
"Mind reader… remember?" Delmar said and tapped his head with a finger. "I hear the things you don't want to say out loud as well."
She sighed. 
"One day he showed me your soul embryo. He was the proudest person I had ever seen. That was the day his whole life went into a downfall. He and Chemical broke up, I didn't see him much after that. He didn't want to be around Chemical anymore. A few months later he had lost track of you. That was when he started searching for you like a madman. He stopped eating, sleeping, and he was always in the library searching through scout reports when he wasn't out in the forest looking for you. Chemical managed to find it in his heart to forgive him and repair their broken relationship but just a few weeks after Cain set out to look for you again. He never returned that time. Chemical's rangers found his bones under a stiff cliff… I think He has been mourning since…" she sighed and looked down on the earth. "At least I have." They both sat quietly for a while. Newton crawled up in Delmar's lap and lay down as a comforting warm pillow. Delmar lay a hand on him. Newton never said much, but he was a good friend who knew how to comfort by just being there.
"I'm sorry I didn't contact you sooner. I didn't know life was such a struggle for you." Radiation said sorry. "I really tried to help you when I found you though. It wasn't easy with the long list of criminal records you got. I thought I could help you to a better life and to become a better person…"
"You did."
"It felt like Angi made a better job at that than I did." Radiation scoffed a bit sadly. "When she was with you it felt like you were really trying. I only made you angry at me in the end."
"Hah! I was blind with fury at Angi in the end too, when she had just left me. So mad with fury I was going to attack her pack just to give her a lesson… It was you who picked me up from that messy black pit. Not her."
Radiation smiled humbly and looked down.
"I guess I did something right then…"
"By the way, it turned out she was the daughter of an empathic psychic, so she cheated. She knew exactly what to tell me to make me do what she wanted."
"I had hoped I could be there for you like Cain was there for me. Unfortunately, the council had a lot of opinions on what we should tell you and what not. They told me not to show you Cain’s books yet, and then they went about and showed them to you anyway, without me knowing. I'm sorry you thought I kept them from you. I wanted to tell you everything, but they didn't let me."
"The truth is a dangerous thing to them… Gravity tried to exterminate my bloodline for a reason. Do you know anything about them? 'The Others'?" He asked.
"Not much, no one really spoke to me about them."

***

They continued their march towards the oilfield in the morning when the sun had risen. Delmar went ahead with the two cats trotting behind him. First Radiation as a slender black short-haired cat and after her Newton, the fat brass colored Birman.
"I used to have a mountain lion following in my footsteps, this is quite a downgrade." Delmar said amused.
"How can you say that? Now you have two felines following you instead of one." Newton said happily with his fluffy tail held high. "It's twice as good."