by Jamie Hawke
“You’re impressing the team, Protector,” he said, and took me in a strong embrace. “Welcome to the battle for humanity’s survival.”
“It’s er, good to be here.” I almost felt like I’d just arrived at my first day in a corporate job. He must’ve noticed, because he led us to what he called a “think room” full of couches, snacks, and a fridge full of beers. There was also a machine in the corner that reminded me of a virtual reality rig, complete with headset. When we’d settled down he noticed me glancing over at it.
“You’ll get a chance, you know.” He nodded toward the machine.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s part of why we wanted you to come by. To test your abilities, see how the prana and Ichor have settled in, if your body’s adapting and all that. Can I check the markings?”
“Markings?” It took me a second to realize he was referring to what I thought of as the tattoos on my chest. I opened my shirt to show him. To my surprise, they’d changed! Not in any way I could understand, but the patterns had moved about, new symbols showing.
“I see,” he said, and nodded to indicate that I could button my shirt again. “You’ve chosen the warrior class, and have the shield. Smart.”
“You can see that in the… markings?”
He nodded. “That and more.”
“Level?” he asked, turning to Red.
“Two,” I answered. “I selected warrior with the first, then chose the shield skill.”
He looked back at me, impressed. “Not a bad choice for your build. You’ll get there.”
“Are you a warrior?” I asked, fully aware of how badass he was, and buff. The guy’s arms were as thick as my legs.
“Druid,” he said. “Technically—with my connection to nature and all.”
“Ah,” I said, but was puzzled and he saw it.
“My form of the class relates to animals, more than trees and all that. I can speak with them, call upon them for help. Stuff like that. But enough about me, let’s get you in that simulator and see how your body’s coping.”
I admit, I was a bit nervous. It wasn’t about two ladies and impressing them anymore, but a group of their bureaucracy, you could say, actually putting me to the test. Red stood by, watching with a confident look, like she knew I couldn’t do wrong here. Pucky’s expression was more of hopeful support, while Elisa was watching with curiosity.
The assistants finally had me all strapped in, and then Mowgli held the facemask and asked, “Ready?” I nodded, and watched as he put the mask on and a whole world appeared around me. “Let it calibrate to the space between your eyes, your breathing patterns and all that, and… Never mind, it says it’s calibrated. Good, fast. Now, just move, see how it feels.”
It was like I was simply in this world, the machine letting me walk and jump on an exact ratio to real life. I was sitting on a hillside with leaves rustling in nearby trees. All around as far as the eye could see were more hills, more trees, and the occasional lake with sunlight glimmering on the water. It felt so real, minus the breeze that hit the leaves.
One thing was for sure—if I was going to be their Protector, I was damn sure going to require one of these in my house to catch up on the latest Call of Duty. Then again, with all the real fighting going on in life lately, I kind of wondered if I’d give a damn about games like I used to. Maybe instead I’d crave the mundane and get into reality shows or something. Ugh, even the thought made me shudder.
“Now what?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” Mowgli replied.
I turned, looking around, and then suddenly felt like I’d been yanked backwards. Scrambling to break free from a strong grip, I managed to catch a glimpse of a tall ogre, thick tusks sticking out from the bottom of his mouth. What the hell was this? I was supposed to fight this thing?
One more twist and I broke free, only to see his massive, green foot coming to stomp on my face. I thrust my arms up blow for blow, caught his foot, and tried twisting it to throw him off balance. Didn’t work. He was too strong, and instead I had to dive sideways as the foot kept coming and made a dent in the ground.
“Good,” Mowgli said, his voice coming from the ogre. “Now don’t worry, this isn’t as much a test of your fighting skills as your body’s ability, so… I’m going to simulate upping your levels. Now, tell me how this feels.”
At first there was nothing, then a surge of energy hit me and a green bar showed up, going from two to ten real fast, my stats going along with it as smaller graphs below.
“Whoa!” I said, stepping back and moving my arms about, feeling power unlike anything I’d ever experienced.
“I think he likes it,” Red’s voice came through, distantly.
“You’re damn right I do,” I said, turning back to the ogre and putting up my fists. “What’ya got now?”
The ogre grimaced and then charged, and only now did I see the huge war axe in his hand. Or maybe it had just appeared? Either way it was coming for me, and fast. That was fine, because I sidestepped and moved into him, catching him with an elbow to the face before the strike could hit, and then swept him to the ground.
The hill I was on shook as he hit, and then again as I came in for a stomp like he’d done to me. He rolled out of the way, then back at me after my foot landed, so that he was able to grab my legs and take me down.
“Shit!” I shouted, feeling him claw up at me and then watched as he rose, both fists in the air and ready to take me out.
The bar appeared again and brought me to level twenty in a blink of an eye. I wanted to see what that felt like. I took the first ogre hit, my health and defense high enough to survive it now, and then caught him with a good blow to the stomach and follow-up strike to the throat. Heaving him off, I circled and came at him brawler-style, actually catching him a few times and then finally knocking him down with a good hook to the jaw.
“Nice one,” Mowgli’s voice came from him again, and he stood, assessing me. “How about…” He held out his hands, and suddenly nine more of him appeared, all identical and equally as buff. “…now.”
They all came at me and I was dodging, punching, striking with more speed and power than seemed would ever be realistic. Each time I took a hit my levels increased, so that I brought it back on the ogres with a vengeance.
A good kick took out one’s legs, an uppercut sent another onto his ass, and then a knee to the face ended one more. Then I stood there, looking around, and they were all gone while my level indicator said “Level Fifty.”
Damn.
There was no more room for doubt or wondering if this was for me. After experiencing that, I knew there was only one route for me—I was going to become the best Protector these fairy tale guys and gals had ever had, and I was going to level the hell up as fast as I could.
I felt a pinch and then the world vanished. Mowgli was standing there with the facemask in his hands.
“Not bad,” he said. “And what’s more important, your body didn’t fight off the Ichor sims. Usually we can tell in there how one will react, but in your case, survive long enough and you’ll do just fine.”
He turned, pulling up a screen that was part of the machine as the assistants helped me out of the rest of it. Then Red and Pucky were congratulating me, showing me the playback on another screen. It was like watching myself in a movie.
“It affects everyone differently,” Red explained. “I’ve seen some people puke, others pass out. You were like you belonged there, owning it.”
“But… isn’t it wrong of me to want to level up?” I asked, realizing the deeper meaning there. “It’s like… wanting to take lives.”
“You have to remember they’re our enemies,” Red said. “They’re evil, and wouldn’t hesitate to take your life, too, if given the chance.”
Pucky nodded. “And there’s judgment. Maybe not all are truly evil, but if one is about to gut you, I say tear his fucking spine out.”
“Whatever you do,” Mowgli said, turning to sh
ow me the screen, “you’ll do it well. Everything here says your body is taking to it, that you will make an excellent warrior, and that we shouldn’t have any problem upgrading you along the way.”
“And if there had been problems?” I asked. “What, you’d have put these marks on my chest just to be tossing me aside if I didn’t perform adequately?”
Mowgli’s grin faltered, but then he clapped me on the shoulder and said, “Good thing you did. Come, join us for the meeting. You’ll want to hear this.”
I turned to Red and the others, hoping for more of an answer than ‘Good thing you did,’ but they were already following him to this big meeting he mentioned, so I did too. We went up a floor and into a conference room that had illustrations of many of the Myths as they might have appeared. There was even Beast looking much more like what I’d imagined him from reading the story as a child, before ever being exposed to the Disney stuff. There was a mermaid—oddly no one had thought to cover her breasts with sea shells, though I imagined breasts weren’t exactly ‘private’ among real mermaids. It was hard not to stare at that one.
Good thing the room was large, because soon many more Myths started filing in. The main group joined the conference table in the middle, and I was amazed to see many Myths I recognized there. Jiminy, Bagheera, and Beowulf sat near Mowgli, and Thumbelina was on a small cushion at the corner of the table. There were many whose identities I couldn’t be sure of, such as the one nearby with the golden fleece around his shoulders—Jason, from the Argonauts story, maybe? Made sense, but I wasn’t sure how all the gods fit into this stuff, aside from Thor, who’d already been mentioned.
“The fact that Peter has returned is worrisome,” Mowgli said, agreeing with a woman a few seats over who wore red and gold, and had her black hair pinned up in a bun. “And with the information Elisa and the Protector’s team brought us,” heads moved my way, curiously, “we know the enemy is preparing to make a big move. But where?”
Nervous glances around the table. Finally, one of them stuck a hand in the air. The man had a piggish look to him, and as I looked closer, it was possible to see that maybe he actually was a pig who moved like a man. One of the three little pigs?
“My team believes they have something,” the pig said. “But… it’s a stretch.”
“Go on.”
“A Lost Soul. They’ve heard talk among the Legends, some of our undercover agents have… and they believe the Legends are trying to revive a Lost Soul.”
There were a few scoffs around the table, Myths rolling their eyes or shifting uncomfortably, but Mowgli leaned forward, curious.
“A Lost Soul, “Mowgli said, turning to me, “if you haven’t guessed by the reactions at the table, is not supposed to be something that one can bring back.”
“But they’ve found the snake leaves,” the pig cut in.
“Right,” Mowgli said, frowning. “I was going to add, aside from having recovered that, which in itself some doubt exists.”
“I have firsthand reports of seeing the leaves,” the pig countered.
“And the body of a Lost Soul?”
“That part… I’m more confused about. Also, of course, confirming that the leaves are indeed the actual leaves.”
I leaned over to Pucky next to me and whispered, “Leaves?”
“An old legend about some leaves a man used to bring his wife back from the dead, after seeing a snake do it,” she whispered back. “Real hokey stuff… not sure we should worry. There was that story, another related to true love—several, actually, depending on how you define dead, and there’s more out there related to necromancy as an artform. But… as far as we know, actually bringing a Myth or Legend back from the dead has never been done.”
Even they had their lines, their fairy tales that seemed no more than stories, then. Except that the Legends believed they had one of these items.
“Keep your ears to the ground, ladies and gents,” Mowgli said, and with a glance at Bagheera, added, “We’ll be on the streets ourselves, you can count on that. You can also be sure that if Pan is out there using his shadow network, whether this Lost Soul thing is legitimate or not, they’re up to something and it’s going to be big.”
The discussion continued on, with questions being raised about the pizza hideout and Elisa giving her briefing, along with Red. I started to get a sense of what having a real job and going to meetings must be like, and was damn glad that didn’t seem like it was going to be a major part of my life. From time to time it’d be like this, sure, but mostly it would be going out there on the streets, fighting and, I hoped with a smile back at Pucky, fucking.
She apparently had the same idea, because her hand found my leg and caressed it in a way that totally brought my mind back to that moment in the car with her, when we’d left my DNA trail with the agents.
Oh, shit, I thought. What about my family? Friends?
“If they have my DNA,” I said to Pucky, voice barely a whisper now. “Doesn’t that… I mean, won’t that… my family?”
She frowned, eyes glancing around to remind me we were surrounded by Myths in the middle of a meeting. “Don’t worry.”
“Don’t worry…?”
“Yeah, we took care of it.”
I sat, waiting.
“Fine.” She leaned over. “I was giving you a hard time about the DNA, earlier. At the safe house, I had the car demolished, all evidence destroyed.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I sent over the hell hounds. The fire they breathe… no way that car or anything in it would’ve survived.” I sat back, relieved, only then noticing that Myths were starting to stand and make for the door. “We’re done?”
Red and Elisa were coming our way, others working past us. Pucky stood and said, “Looks that way. Feeling up for a challenge?”
“In what way?” I asked.
“While they’re looking for answers, we’re going to be kicking your ass to get you trained up. I’ve got my good kicking shoes on, just hoping your ass can take it.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” I said, grinning.
“To be clear, I’m not flirting when I say this,” she explained. “We’re really going to kick your ass. It’ll be tough.”
I laughed. “And I’m really, truly, looking forward to it.”
“Good,” she said, then leaned in and said, “and maybe we’ll find time for that other stuff.”
As if I needed the extra incentive. I tried to play it cool, but the damn grin on my face gave me away. The others reached us and we made for the car, on our way to make me into this great warrior of a Protector.
16
We didn’t linger, instead heading straight for the closest safe house. Now on the other side of Anaheim, the car took us to a residential neighborhood. The farther up the hill we went, the larger the houses were. Some had grand columns and balconies, all were more magnificent than anything I’d ever had the fortune of setting foot inside before. At a turn with palm trees leading to an elaborate driveway and electric gate, we pulled up at a large house—it had to be one of the more expensive ones around—and stopped.
“Here?” I asked.
“You expected something else?” Elisa asked.
“We stopped by one of mine earlier,” Pucky grumbled with a glare at this place. “It wasn’t quite so…”
“Glamorous?”
“Showy.”
“Doesn’t it stand out a bit?” I asked. “Draw attention to itself?”
“That’s kind of the point,” Elisa replied. “Who expects a hideout to be so marvelous? If there’s going to be a hideout with people preparing to go to war, you generally don’t think it’s taking place in a neighborhood like this. You’d assume it’s off in some warehouse or basement.”
As the door opened, we pulled forward again, entering a garage that was about the size of my off-campus apartment. This was nuts.
“Come on, I’ll give you the tour,” Elisa said. “I want to get to know my hero
.”
“I, uh…” I turned back to Pucky and Red. They nodded.
“We’ll check back with Mowgli, see how long he thinks we’ll need to lie low before striking again.”
My look had really been directed at Pucky, though, because I’d been sensing a bit of hostility from her toward our new friend. But Pucky simply smiled and said, “We’ll find you two shortly. Maybe in the viewing room?”
“Viewing room?” I asked, earning me an excited smile from Elisa.
“You’ll see soon enough.”
She started to walk towards the door with me following behind, trying to not look like I was staring at the way her long blue cotton skirt clung to her ass as she went. I had a moment to turn back and say, “Are you sure? Maybe you two should come along first and—”
“Jack, you’ll be fine,” Red said.
“No labels,” Pucky added, shrugging.
Red turned to her with a questioning look, but I figured that was my cue. Elisa stood with hands folded in front of her, her eyes curved into her gentle smile. Two doormen stood with the door leading from the garage to the main house held open. Elisa took long, graceful steps in front of me as we walked, the guards following about three paces back.
We entered to find the inside was more glamorous than I could ever have imagined. Stepping in from the side entrance, we first walked through a hallway with a chandelier and old paintings of men in swan motifs, seven of them, and then into the main entryway with its mirrored stairs and a swan fountain at the top.
“Something tells me this isn’t just a safehouse,” I said.
“Guilty,” she said with a gesture to the stairs. “It’s based on a theme from my past, but it’s not quite what it seems. It’s not all really here, exactly. If anyone outside of our circle enters, agents included, they see a statue of a nude man in the fountain instead of a swan, and various other nudes for the paintings instead of my brothers.”
“Isn’t that awkward?” I asked.
